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[Music] right good evening and welcome to the March 27th 2025 meeting of the Brookline School Committee um we'll start tonight with our administrative business um I'll begin by moving the consent agenda these consist of minutes from the school
committee Kora at um our last two finance meetings on February 26th and March 5th as well as acceptance of funds to establish the H Edward Schluntz scholarship do I have a second thanks Suzanne any comments or questions about
those uh before we vote I did want to say something about um the scholarship so um according to the documentation we got uh this scholarship is being established to honor the greatest high school football coach in Massachusetts by his grateful former players so for those who don't know who Ed Schluntz is
um he was an English and PE teacher here from 1953 to 1982 he coached football during those same years and was athletic director from 1970 to 1990 uh and was inducted into the Massachusetts Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 1986 um and of
course his name is on our gym so that's who we're voting to um to honor this evening all right let's vote uh Jesse yes sarah yes steven yes suzanne yes
helen yes carolyn yes val yes and I vote yes all right let's go to Kieran for the student report um all right thank you Dr lou um so March was and continues to be for the next four days um a pretty busy month at
BHS uh I just want to first begin by congratulating all the sophomores um who did finish up MCCAST English uh yesterday was the last day of the two tests um so they only have MCCAST math actually and then they're done with
MCCAST forever um and you know I can just say that as a senior who's who's been taking the test since uh third grade actually was the first time I took it uh it doesn't really get more fun so um you know congrats to them for you know braving through it and um you know
just they're almost done so um but in terms of you know what's been happening at BHS throughout March um one of the biggest updates actually comes from our student government um so you know just for background um you know the Brooklyn High School student government is sort of divided into three bar three uh
branches I guess you could say um one of them is the student council and then the other one is the legislature which is composed of both 16 uh student members and 16 faculty members um and on March 13th so just over two weeks ago uh the legislature passed what is called the
equitable grading bill um so this was a you know student driven bill student driven process that's been two years in the making um you know so two years ago actually we had uh student representatives who were serving on the student council in the legislature at the time um and they had noticed that
there was misalignment or misalignment um in classes of the same level within the same subject you know so students taking uh responding to literature honors in one class with one teacher had a vastly different experience than students taking the same course at the same level but with a different teacher
um and so they thought they sought to remedy that um and the final product was um a bill that was just passed by the legislature that standardizes midterm and final exams so the nature of them what the you know what the content is that's covered uh late work and
extension policies um within classes and then the basis for final grades uh among these classes so just ensuring that the final grade is representative of all four quarters um weighted evenly um and so I I mean I can just say from personal experience actually this was a a pretty
monumental undertaking um and I want to you know particularly highlight um two juniors Eric Barton and Adit Shanker um who were you know particularly instrumental in getting this bill across the finish line I guess you could say and you know getting it to where it was um you know there was a a lot of um
teacher feedback and a lot of you know opinions on the bill that you know they had to consider and um you know I think the this final product is really a testament to their hard work um in other news uh Brooklyn Theater and the Drama Society actually had a a pretty busy
month um so annually um you know they go to states for for uh drama for you know productions um and this year they actually reached the semi-finals of the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild State Festival um with their production
going up um so a big congratulations to them um BHS students actually who are part of the the drama society who take theater classes at the high school um also have the opportunity to write and direct their own productions um so there were two seniors actually um who wrote
and directed their own you know hour and a half two hour long show um and they were able to perform that um for the entire student body um unfortunately I didn't get to go but I did hear from from people that it was a great show um and then just about two weeks ago the AC
capella fest a capella fest at BHS um was held um tapin and it featured uh all of our you know various a capella clubs the a capella choir perfect pitch notify and glee club um and it was a pretty great show um so the performing arts at
BHS recently has been on a roll um and then Oh yeah yeah of course um so and then spring sports also um just began this month most of them began uh two weeks ago March 17th um 900 BHS students
are actually registered to play a spring sport um which is 40% of the student body um which is a pretty you know staggering statistic um I want to also give a special highlight to the girls varsity hockey team they were uh seated number 28 um in the MIAA D1 state
tournament which was actually the first time that they've made it to the first round of the playoffs um so obviously a pretty historic season um and then I would be remiss if I didn't plug the tennis team um you know we're always uh we play at Waldstein Park if you guys
want to come see um we love it when people come out to the matches um but we're all looking forward to you know it's going to be a great uh final season actually at VHS in terms of sports and then just looking ahead um tomorrow is going to be the junior semiformal um so
I I went to that last year as a junior um I can say that I had a a very great time there um so you know it's going to be a fun night full of dancing and food uh I think it's catered from Canes and Anastasia so you can't really go wrong with that um and um in more I guess
serious news all students have to be or have to submit their content their course um and elective requirements by April 1st um so the schedule actually um I'll send this to Betsy as well and she can get this to you guys um if it's too small but um this was just the timetable
for signing up for courses um taking electives um and then next Wednesday BHS will also have a special schedule because um BHS students will participate in the annual day of dialogue um which addresses you know uh fostering conversations around expression of
sexual orientation at BHS um and how we can make BHS a more welcoming place uh for all regardless of their sexual orientation um so that's what's been happening at VHS uh during the month of March thanks Karen Helen yeah thank you thank
you for that great report um so I had two questions one um the new legislation that went through does that mean at the end of let's say US history everybody in US history honors in midterms gets the
exact same test um so it doesn't necessarily like standardize the questions or anything like that but it does ensure that you know the same amount of sort of content on the midterm uh like the same proportion comes from the same units um so like you know I can tell you that
like if your first unit is like uh the constitution and whatnot the same percentage of each midterm is going to have to have the same percentage of questions devoted to that specific unit um so that's really how it's trying to standardize it um it is going to be the same um sort of like number of questions
designed to take the same time um but you know the like the individual questions um I think that is up to teacher discretion that's great and now I've got my second question can you just go through the slides real quick because there was something
uh sports go back uh I think that's amazing that 900 students I had read that too uh have signed up for spring sports that's it really is a testament to us really looking at the whole whole child and really making sure that all
aspects are attended to and um are you going to let us know I know what I was going to ask you are you going to let us know when the varsity team's playing oh absolutely yeah yeah um maybe send a little I can definitely I can send you guys our schedule thank you all right thank you very much Kieran um
our next item is public comment um so we have 11 speakers signed up tonight and so we can accommodate them all at the beginning um I did forget to mention before as I always do that there are seven of us around the table uh we have Valrius remote and Brian Noa is absent
um all right our first speakers are Emily Jaffy and Shirley Shei can you hear me okay good evening my name is Emily Jaffy chair of the Brooklyn Special Special Education Parent Advisory Council i appreciate the opportunity to speak
tonight on behalf of families of our most vulnerable students i am here to strongly oppose the elimination of any learning center teaching positions these positions are not optional they are essential to providing special education students a free and appropriate public education or faith that they are legally
entitled to under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act we understand the budget challenges the district is facing closing an $8 million deficit involves hard choices but special education should not be where the only student facing cuts land
inclusion and equity are not aspirational values they are mandated obligations eliminating these positions would directly undermine students access to their least restrictive environment and signal that fiscal pressures outweigh our commitments to our most vulnerable learners this proposal also
arrives in the context of a troubling pattern of neglect by PSB administration for students with disabilities including but not limited to indirect service providers have gone unpaid disrupting vital services like OT reading and other therapies mandated under IEPs higher
professional staffing shortages are leaving IEP goals unmet and students unsupported and special education facing parents being excluded from key decisions including participation in two principal searches desite despite CPAC's advisory role under state mandates and
despite a decadel long history of inclusion these issues have significantly eroded our trust cutting learning center teachers now only exacerbates this harm learning center teachers are central to making inclusion work they assist students in meeting
grade level curricular demands by providing individually tailored instruction instruction in reading mathematics and written language as well as social emotional learning and executive functioning skills lc teachers modify each lesson to meet the unique needs of each student a task that
becomes increasingly challenging as case loads expand the introduction of a new literacy program next year compounds this challenge as it requires the initial development of lesson plans from scratch necessitating substantial time from special educators lc teachers work
isn't limited to just what's visible in a classroom or on a breakdown regardless of how complete it may appear case load numbers do not tell the full story one student may need daily academic and behavioral support another may need consultation and check-ins a headcount
doesn't capture each individual students complex needs nor does it account for the unseen workload the countless hours of behindthe-scenes work that LC teachers do to support our students for example IEP development and meetings are critical yet unaccounted for each IEP
meeting requires hours of preparation attendance and follow-up activities and meetings often occur during the school day resulting in the cancellation of services for groups of students student evaluations occur throughout the year as needed for special education students and upon any parent request each
evaluation takes between four to 10 hours diverting additional time from teaching training paraprofessional staff on each student's goals and objectives demands significant time and resources from special educators especially as we see an increase in paras without prior
school-based experience or academic support expertise crisis intervention and deescalation often calls for multiple LC teachers as first responders further taking time away from their students IEP goals time that must be made up according to the mandates of
DESIE relying on a visual workload analysis to justify cutting any positions is both flawed and dangerous it risks prioritizing optics over outcomes and spreadsheets over students it is certain it is a certainty that reducing LC teachers will adversely
affect our special education services and result in fate violations the reduction would absolutely impede student progress resulting in more out of district placements and higher needs for support as students progress by grade both leading to significant increase in cost for the district down
the road there is a human cost as well lc teachers build trust with their students over years they are often the one consistent adult who understands their students learning style needs and their potential removing teachers or changing placements is not just shifting
paperwork it is breaking relationships that support progress and belonging lastly the impact of any learning center cuts would be profound beyond special education lc students are part of general education classrooms if they are not properly supported gened teachers no
matter how skilled or dedicated cannot absorb the additional responsibility without compromising the quality of education for all students maintaining the current level of LC teachers is necessary for the success of both special education and general education
programs brookline has long prided itself on being a district that values inclusion and diversity of learners moving forward with these cuts would send the opposite message when budgets are tight students with disabilities are the ones to be sacrificed this is not
the Brooklyn we strive to be i urge you to reject this proposal and instead seek alternatives that preserve and protect the essential support students require cutting learning center teachers may appear to save money in the short term but the long-term costs financially
legally and morally will be far greater our students are watching let's show them that Brookline stands by its most vulnerable even in difficult times please vote against the proposed cuts to the learning centers thank you thank you Miss Jaffy our next speaker is
Matt Rosenthal here like that great okay all right thank you good evening my name is Matt Rosenthal and I'm the K8 math curriculum coordinator i've been in a leadership role in Brookline for the last 10 years
of my 29-year career i'm once again asking you the school committee to maintain the K8 curriculum coordinator positions as they are currently constituted k8 math K8 English K8 science and K8 social studies for our K coordinator team it can feel like we are nowhere 4.7 miles away in our Chestnut
Hill office to help the district we have already given up hundreds of thousands of dollars of materials probably like four or five FTEEs worth through strategic ordering deferred contracts and grant writing uninvited to district leadership meetings we've crafted and received significant praise for a curriculum map of all K for all K5
teachers that includes a new ELA curriculum along with the science social studies and math scope and sequence this will allow for curriculum connections and appropriate timing of assessments yet the fate of our team is still uncertain to this day even though there have been signatures of 108 teachers and numerous testimonials regarding our
impact and instances when this committee has moved to restore our positions you have these and I I will leave them with Betsy after this uh despite the uncertainty we continue to do the work in reality we're not nowhere we are everywhere we touch every building and every student K through eight every material that's in our students hands is
from us every book every map every microscope every virtual manipulative every assessment platform we provide teachers and students with what they need and then we go directly to classrooms to support their use in social studies thanks to our coordinator Greg Porter our students have lesson plans and conversations appropriate for
5-year-olds or 10 year olds or 13-year-olds from all walks of life in response to global or local events greg was delivering PD to a special educator and delivering materials to a second grade class recently when he happened upon social studies with every student writing about a different country greg
stayed to partner with the teacher to answer content questions clarify misunderstandings and even modify grammar in English how would you expect to coordinate the roll out of the new fish tank curriculum including professional development without an ELA coordinator like Kristen Gray in science our third graders in all schools have
actual fish tanks with actual fish so they can learn about real life cycle traits so our curriculum can finally be aligned to state standards what an effort by Emily Spec our science coordinator emily was in a fifth grade class recently supporting a teacher with the energy unit several enthusiastic students wanted to dig deeper about the
energy sticks and conductors emily responded to student inquiries on the spot and then followed up to provide additional resources for the teacher and in math today I was sitting with two fourth graders one who had finished her work early and another who was struggling with the math and the language to one I asked probing
questions to extend her thinking and to the other I proed provided visual models to help her get unstuck and did I mention that our eighth graders the first cohort to go through our curriculum adopted by the school committee since they were in third grade was tops in the state yes I did mention
that we support all students across Kaid because our schools are set up that way k through 8 generalist administrators can't do this at our core we are a teaching and learning organization all of our students and teachers deserve content expertise in our K8 schools we
are highly visible and collaborative our impact spans K through 8 and we are quite frankly unappreciated as leaders i ask that you maintain our current positions thank you again for your time and consideration thank you Mr rosenthal and our next
speaker is Greg Porter good evening everybody can you hear me okay yes we can uh good evening uh my name is Greg Porter and I'm the K through8 social studies coordinator as as Matt just said um this is the second time I've been here at public comment um with
a sub curriculum subcommittee meeting in between i signed up tonight to ensure that the KA curriculum coordinators were discussed during tonight's budget meeting as more time passes the decisions you have to make are understandably becoming more complicated and challenging and I don't envy the position you all are in as you weigh
these options i'd like to begin u by acknowledging and appreciating the powerful statement the school committee has already made in support of schools you've already made the determination that we will not meet the $8 million budget shortfall for FY26 is there are
not enough options left to make up for this deficit you've identified areas that must be protected in support of our schools because you know that these cuts would have been crit to critical areas of need including food service custodians and ALC math specialists just
to name a few and the reason these considerations are so challenging and more so than in previous versions of this budget process is that we the public schools of Brooklyn are at a breaking point we have come to the point of maximum stress on our school system
with any all of these cuts having a massive impact on the quality of a Brookline education and I would imagine that you're concerning yourself that the next cut could be the straw that breaks the camel's back and as it pertains to the K8 coordinators that's exactly what
we're talking about as you heard over just a few moments ago and over the last several weeks from coordinators like Dr rosenthal Dr martin K12 coordinators hundreds of elementary and middle school teachers the KA coordinator role is an essential one and tonight I'd pose a new
question for your consideration if the KA coordinators were to be cut where would our collective and individual educational leadership go to remind you just some of our tasks include curriculum materials instruction instructional support professional development coaching budget management
data collection and analysis differentiation and accessibility the list goes on so where will all of that go who will manage it will it be pushed onto the teachers to manage for themselves and for the K5 teachers management of four different subject
areas man uh content um would it fall on building administrators to pile onto an already overflowing plate to central administrators who are tasked with management of all aspects of K12 or to the proposed directors who even if you found someone who was
outstanding that would be one person taking on the work of five without the content area expertise or capacity to provide direct support to teachers across eight schools in five disciplines do any of those scenarios sound to be in
the best interest of students of teachers of families of Brooklyn the obvious answer is no you've already made the right decision to draw a line in the sand as it pertains to the budget crisis and you know that we are at the breaking point a cut of the K8 coordinators would
lead to an immediate and sustained negative impact on the public schools of Brooklyn for years to come i ask you to continue your protective stance in support of the schools by removing the K8 coordinators from the proposed cut list tonight and if during your deliberation you have any questions
about the role of the coordinators that would help you better make your decision I implore you to ask me i will stay on the call until whatever time this meeting ends and I'll answer anything you want to know thank you so much for your time
[Applause] thank you Mr porter our next speaker is Caitlyn Simmon good evening my name is Caitlyn McCarthy Simmon and I am a school psychologist at the Ruff and Ridley and Ruckle Schools i've had the privilege of
working in this district for 11 years members of the school committee I urge you to reject the proposal to eliminate the district-wide psychologist or any psychologist or adjustment counselor positions we are in the midst of a childhood mental health crisis over the past few years we've seen a significant
rise in anxiety depression and other mental health challenges among young people as school clinicians we are on the front lines offering counseling crisis intervention referrals for further treatment and preventative social emotional instruction we provide vital support to students and staff and
conduct universal social emotional screenings to identify students who may be at risk a reduction in clinical staff positions will drastically reduce our ability to pro provide these critical services which impacts all students in Brookline schools school psychologists
are the only professionals qualified to complete psychoeducational assessments which require extensive time and expertise and must be completed within legally mandated timelines these assessments are crucial for identifying students with disabilities and ensuring that they receive appropriate
supports without enough time to conduct thorough evaluations we risk disproportionately identifying students of particular groups as disabled something with which the district continues to struggle eliminating the district-wide psychologist would result in an additional 8 to 10 evaluations or
roughly 80 to 120 hours of work per psychologist increasing testing case loads is not the same as increasing the size of service delivery groups testing must be done individually within the mandated timelines when the case loads get too high the district-wide psychologist is required to help balance
the load without this support the quality of work would drop and critical clinical services would be sacrificed who knows at what cost furthermore when the demand for evaluations exceeds the capacity of our staff the district would have to contract with outside agencies contracting to fill a position is
significantly more expensive costing up to one and a half to two times the salary of a full-time psychologist and results in lower quality evaluations there's also a national shortage of school psychologists after two years of effort we are finally fully staffed this year when we inevitably
find that we have underestimated the need for psychologists if positions are cut we risk being unable to fill those roles let alone with the same quality of personnel even fully staffed our time is stretched very thin and the demand for our services is ever growing i urge you
to consider the impact of these cuts on our students their well-being and the overall health of our school system please protect the clinical staff that our schools desperately need thank you for your time thank you Miss Simmon our next speaker is Jamie Rondo i'm uh getting
some feedback from outside the room that people are having trouble hearing many of us um who are in the room so everyone around the table and public commenters please make sure to speak directly into the mic thanks hello I'm back good evening my name is Jamie Rondo i'm a 3 to5 learning center
teacher at Hayes i genuinely appreciate your efforts to protect custodians and food service workers you've expanded ALC and RISE classrooms and listen to families advocating for middle school sports and conservatory thank you however I am deeply concerned about the
proposed cuts to students support services robin Hood is a hero because he steals from the rich cutting special ed support does the opposite it steals from our poorest students cutting six learning center teachers will double the workload of those who remain case loads
and workloads are not the same in one moment we're teaching chapter books and fractions the next we're teaching genuine life skills like how to walk across the street individual sessions are not a privilege they happen because there's no one else they can be grouped
with without enough learning center teachers evaluations will pile up iep services will be delayed and we will be forced to send more students to outofdist placements these cuts do not save money they create a financial and actual legal crisis our student support
team counselors and psychologists keep our building safe they see students but they also manage crisis and deal with the aftermath they get called when students are threatening self harm destroying classrooms or running from the building this sometimes sometimes happens in our building on an hourly
basis from multiple areas of the building cutting any members means fewer trained adults to intervene before situations escalate and fewer staff to support the students after a crisis counselors are trusted adults because they teach SEAL lessons in every
classroom weekly without adjustment counselors it's not going to happen they see students short-term and long-term supporting both general education and IEP students without them more students will struggle with mental health because fewer of them will have someone to turn
to losing the district psychologist will pull school sites away from our students right now they evaluate at least 60 students per year providing counseling and spending about 25% of their day on those crisis response calls consultation
and risk assessments when I need something I go and ask my school psychologist the school they the district psychologist handles out of district evaluations without them school psyches will spend hours of traveling leaving students without immediate
support brookline is getting a messy reputation not just for an 8 million budget crisis but for how we treat our highest needing students cuts are not looking at the long game we are pulling Jenga blocks schools cannot function without learning center teachers
counselors and school psychologists families are actively voting us off the island however Brookline is not a reality TV show my students lives are not game pieces on a financial spreadsheet and you have the power to be a real life Robin Hood hero thank you
thank you Miss Rondo our next speaker is Rachel Dunar [Applause] uh I think this is this is good yeah yes if if it feels uncomfortably closed it's probably about right yeah all right hi um good evening Dr
hillary members of the school committee hello to everyone watching at home um thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my name is Rachel Dunar i am a learning center teacher in the public schools of Brooklyn this is my third year in Brooklyn and hopefully not my
last um I am here tonight to address a proposed solution to cover the deficit for FY26 that involves cutting of eight full-time learning center teacher positions across the district i want to start by saying I don't envy the position y'all are in having to make
these really tough decisions to address this budget crisis and I appreciate the hard work that you all have been doing that being said um there are many reasons why any cuts to specialed positions would be detrimental to our
school communities firstly the learning center position is a big job we're tasked with supporting one of the most vulnerable populations of students in addition to our roles that are laid out in our job description writing individualized education plans providing
academic services both in the classroom and in our learning centers and evaluating students for special ed eligibility we are meeting with families providing modified work for classroom teachers ensuring that accommodations are being met in the classroom and during standardized assessments and
collecting and aggregating data to monitor student progress many of us myself included are members of the QBS team who supported students in need of extra support during an emotional or safety crisis sometimes at risk to our own physical
safety secondly many of us struggle to meet the service minutes mandated in a student's IEP already an average student receives 285 minutes per week which computes to 3,420 minutes for a 12 student case load in the 1,800 instructional minutes per
school week this current structure is simply untenable and would only be exacerbated by any cuts to special ed this isn't even factoring the rising number of students being found eligible for services each year there's also a rising mental health crisis among
children across the nation especially after the COVID pandemic and we're definitely seeing that in our schools with our children who are having trouble uh regulating themselves emotionally thirdly the nature of small group instruction with students allows us to
cultivate strong relationships with them that their classroom teachers don't always have we are considered students trusted adults in the LC a safe space for them when they are disregulated if this motion were to pass you wouldn't just be cutting an educator you'd be cutting a lifeline for the students if
we had to redistribute case loads we're not just redistributing case loads we're redistributing souls i want to reiterate that I do not envy the position that you all are in and you have to make a tough decision i just hope that decision you make is what's best for the Brooklyn School
community thank you thank you Miss Dunar our next speaker is Cassandra Powski i think so do you think so maybe a little taller i'm wearing heels today so a little higher thank you so much that's good
thank you okay thank you dear school committee my name is Cassandra Powski and I'm a fifth grade teacher at Hayes and today I'd like to begin with spring and fifth grade it is both an indescribable time and yet so
specific and is known to the broader population as entering adolescence it is a smelly but also a complex time and I cannot take this on on my own who am I calling in spring but really every day the student support team our adjustment counselors and
psychologists are crucial to the success of our students individually our classroom communities the friendships forming and faltering the stress and anxiety of upcoming transitions to new grades the crushes budding within our walls and the hygiene of a growing child and these examples are a drop in a
bucket of calls texts and emails that the student support team gets every hour of the day the student support team are crisis responders they are always aware while looking for bat signals while also responding to a student they are doing three jobs at once at most times as I
walk my students through the hallway I could see a member of the team calmly guiding us in a redirection while blocking an escalation to provide privacy while walking for any necessary support to join we don't need less we need more the student support team are teachers each week they implement
SecondStep lessons the social emotional learning curriculum in classrooms providing space to practice real situations and challenges as well as facilitate problem solving discussions to very applicable and developmentally accurate scenarios even if the students pretend the scenario could never be them
the student support team are coaches they implement a variety of lunch groups to meet the needs of all students from a girls group working through the dynamics of friendship to a one-to-one lunch where a student can learn to eat in an expected way around the cafeteria and have a low-risk environment to be told
maybe at school ketchup and milk shouldn't be mixed together the group could be coaching executive functioning skills to benefit our older learners and on another day be working on taking turns and sharing through collaborative games the list continues and the student support team guides with flexibility and
adaptiveness ready to help everyone the student support team steps in and steps up two programs in Brooklyn are steps to success at MECO members of these programs are not always at a singular building and therefore are trying to meet with multiple students while also also traveling from school to school
when a student in one of these programs needs in the- moment support the school-based counselors and psychologists step in when information needs to be relayed it's the student support team that connects everyone together the adjustment counselors and psychologists are essential they are members of various commu committees
present for IEPs and conferences involved in after school classes and are a consistent dependable presence in our schools eliminating any of these positions will mean less safe spaces for kids more dangerous escalations without enough staff and underdeveloped social skills if we are a district that focuses
on restorative justice over punishment we need counselors and psychologists we cannot be a successful school with any less thank you [Applause] thank you Miss Powski our next speaker
is Marlene Gonzalez hi Gonzalz um I teach uh English at Pierce so does that work that's fine um my kids just finished an argument unit that was accidentally but fortuitously timed create an argument to lobby a schoolboard as to what electives should
be saved coding cooking or music part of this unit was focused on crafting appeals to a specific audience which meant I had to do a little bit of knowledge building about what a school board even is how we in Massachusetts call it a school committee how one gets to serve on it and what its
responsibilities are helen I have a picture of you on my whiteboard it reminds them like what would convince me it has confused every adult who walks in my room i actually got a text about the substitute was very confused um my home room also calls you
the mother of all new buildings because we had to learn about subcommittees they love you Helen come visit us um anyway I could answer some of the kids questions but I realized I needed more background info luckily the Massachusetts Association of School Committees can tell us exactly what your role is this
was especially helpful when it came to questions that children and adults have when it comes to budgeting and according to the MASC one of your fiscal responsibilities is to work to ensure that necessary funds are appropriated for the district and that a balance is maintained between the needs and
resources and the distribution of available monies we are out of balance and in so much need as someone who spends their Thursdays watching school committee meetings I've been heartened to see you vote to protect some vital services and I've been horrified but not
surprised to see you make cuts to the Office of Teaching and Learning to wipe out the Office of Educational Equity and now to threaten the Office of Student Services with cuts and even with all of these cuts that will make teaching and learning up
to the standards we have set so hard if not impossible we're still about $4 million away so it's time to work to ensure that the necessary funds are appropriated i call on you to lobby the select board to release these funds and give our kids the schools they deserve
this isn't a BEu or MTA talking point this is a needed move to keep Brooklyn schools functioning in a way we can all be proud of thank you [Applause] thank you Miss Gonzalz uh our next speaker is Lucy McNeel
hi can you hear me yes we can okay hi my name's Lucy McNeel um I'm a sixth grade teacher at Pierce School you might remember me from last week i actually called sick today otherwise I would be there um but I want to thank you so much for your decisions
that you made last week to protect um protect custodial staff and hearing us um last week today I'm going to talk a little bit about the proposal to cut K- through8 curriculum coordinators and I'll speak just like in general about the roles of curriculum coordinators um as you know like students in sixth
grade have incredibly rich science content that they're learning some of you have had kids in my class and like directly know this um and I just want to emphasize that this kind of instruction cannot exist without a curriculum coordinator um in fact Emily Spec our science coordinator made it so that any
child that is in the Brookline public schools in sixth grade whether they're learning at Pierce or at any other school they're being taught highlevel standards that align with the state um while still allowing us as educators to have individual ideas and um get excited
about new projects and that kind of balance um that she has built takes years of expertise dedication and relationship building that she's done um she like continues us to let us shine as science educators giving us opportunities to bring creative ideas in classrooms through really thoughtful
budgeting access to materials and professional development opportunities um she met with me every every week last year in order to work through new curriculum and has been in my classroom countless times in order to provide feedback if I have a more complicated lab going on or supporting me when I'm
absent um truly there is no one that knows and loves engaging with students more about science and as I was planning that Matt even brought this up my next meeting with her she's like currently navigating releasing trout with third graders like going on a field trip so
none of these like larger scale projects could happen without a science curriculum coordinator um and just to reemphasize more things that Matt has said um all of their curriculum coordinators are experts in the fields that they are in and they bring up resources and practices to us because
they are experts in that right they are in the rooms teaching students and without the professional development they give right the schools would look totally different um in general just the surrounding areas like districts like Boston Newton Lincoln Cambridge all
retain curriculum coordinators that are specialists in their subjects so um I want to recognize that you guys are all trying to make this as efficient as possible and like people have said the position you're in is an incredibly difficult one um and I just want uh the
the positions that are being put in question like DEI custodial staff and curriculum quarters coordinators are putting like putting these positions in question is uh I worry that it's making the district it's going to be more difficult in the future for the district
to attract and retain highquality educators that are committed to equitability and have strong content knowledge on the topic they are teaching um and when Greg was speaking about job responsibilities for the curriculum coordinators I just want you to think
before putting jobs on the agenda to ask individuals what their job descriptions are what their assignments are right because forcing like hardworking professionals that are working for the students to advocate and speak about themselves and these decisions like puts
a lot at stake for the district um so I really encourage you not to go through with this proposal and I just wanted to ask you how you guys are continuing to show you believe in supporting diversity equity equity and inclusion in schools because as we're seeing like education
and DEI under attack as a nation I really want Brooklyn to consider where they're standing and how they're showing up for that so thank you so much for your time [Applause] thank you Miss McNeel and our last
speaker this evening is Dana Blackman Brown oh is it okay yep thank you sir all right hello everyone um my name is Dana Blackman Brown and I'm a learning center teacher at the Lawrence School hello parents
thank you for putting your children on loan to us it is an honor to be your child's teacher i know cutting learning center teachers and consolidating case loads is a mean to closing the overwhelming budget
gap i do not envy you but this would cause a crisis in our schools here in Brooklyn i believe understanding the grave consequences of cutting learning center teachers can best be told through giving you a window into my day not through the rigid PDF file that details
my schedule my cont my day contains far more than what's in writing not determined by a preset schedule but rather student and communal needs so I'm going to tell you about today so today I actually had prep in the morning but it was used for a student consult due to a
recent crisis rather than preparing for my lesson that was next block it's a good thing that at 9:30 last night I prepared for it i then proceeded to teach from 9:00 a.m to 12:07 where I had an intended learning center but because of the new sexual education unit I'm
shifting that student's intervention to tomorrow which will actually take a prep away from me tomorrow i had about 20 minutes to eat and then from 12:45 to 2:30 p.m i was in um multiple consults and then dealt with a
student crisis so I had about 30 minutes today to myself right now we have case loads that demand our entire day and more imagine if we moved all our highest need students in the seventh and eighth grade to two teachers one classroom and only
three learning centers the consolidation of case loads will move our schools out of compliance this results in legal implications and more importantly student needs aren't met i'm here to best support students your babies i care deeply about the
Brooklyn community and without a fully staffed school and fully staffed special education program we cannot best support and teach one another thank you for your time and hearing me [Applause]
thank you very much Miss Blackman Brown and that brings our public comment to an end and takes us to continued discussion of strategies to increase revenues and reduce expenses so there are four uh items that we have staff presentations
for tonight um beep OSS information technology and Brookline adult and community education uh in that order I think so uh Dr gillery are we going to start with Brookline early education program we Good evening everyone we are starting
with beep this evening miss uh Eberheart is here sorry um that one all right hello everybody i don't really actually need the microphone but we'll keep it oh at home hi sorry about that i always forget that
piece that's right the the camera people would always say to me it's Hello Margaret welcome my name is Margaret Ebahart and I am the principal of early education in the public schools of Brooklyn i want to thank you for inviting me here this evening to talk about the Brooklyn Early
Education Program but before we start I just want to take a moment and pause um just settle in for a minute for all of us we just heard from all of our colleagues who talk about their I'm
sorry okay yep is that better um I just want to take a moment and pause and just honor and reflect upon the comments and the the passion and the heartfelt feelings that people shared with us tonight about the work they do
with our most vulnerable students in learning centers and across the district um beep is a special education program it's an early childhood program but it's its roots are in early childhood because that's how it started all those years ago but its home is also in special
education we work with the most vulnerable students as they enter us from early intervention and come into the public schools of Brooklyn we are often the first place where they come to learn to be a part of a public school when their children are just 2.9 they
just learn to walk they haven't been on the earth even for three years so I just want to honor the comments of my colleagues um and to to feel this the feelings that they're having and to acknowledge that these are really difficult times that we're we're living
in and that we're processing in and I I just want to take a moment to pause take a deep breath and just settle in for a moment before we begin to talk about if that's okay with all of you all right so I made a few slides and presentations to talk a little bit tonight about beep um the slides include
a few things they talk a little bit about the current state of enrollment because as you know beep falls under two categories it falls under a revolving fund which brings in tuition for the district and under special education oss the general fund right so there were two
funding sources for beep along with some grants from the department of early education and care that fund some of our family engagement work right so we're going to talk a little bit first about our our um our application process and earn lottery so if you look at the first slide you can see that we had 387
applications received for beep we had a financial aid assistance request of 74 families i don't necessarily have to read the slide i think you can read it for yourself i think the most important parts that you'll be interested in looking at is the enrollment right now is a 241 confirmed full IEPs not paying
and that is a that's evolving figure because that's just the current students that might be moving on to the next level in prek is 27 financial aid approved parents who have applied and have been approved is at 31 and then paying students at 183 so
the general ed openings are at 29 we are holding around 36 seats for special education and we are maintaining a weight list for people who are interested in remrolling and beep so if you look at this it's sort of just a slide that sort of talks about we
what we've talked about before what our current capacity of enrollment looks like what our proposed enrollment was when we came back when we were here earlier for financial finance subcommittee and what the actual enrollment is for today
this is just a reminder of where BEAP is located in the district and the total number of classrooms that compose the early childhood program so that's 23 of them four of them are RISE classrooms four of them are ALC or comprehensive
classrooms and then 15 of them are inclusive preschool and preK classrooms and those are the locations of BEP classrooms so one of the things that um OSS asked us to look at was a way for us to restructure our programming to think
about ways to reduce the costs in the program to to so that we would have less cost in programming and student services next year as it relates to beep so we looked at our programming and we looked at ways that we could restructure programming to better use the resources
that we already have um and maximize learning opportunities for students which is always at the heart of everything that we do so what we where we go our proposal and what we've done for next year is we are going to reduce the program by one inclusive
prek classroom we had an extra classroom that we moved from Clark Road that we didn't have a place for we had extra spaces there and we moved that classroom and then we so we're closing that classroom next year right so that was that will reduce the FTEES for the power
professionals in that classroom by two we're going to take our RISE classrooms and the inclusive preschool and pre-K classrooms and we are going to um combine and restructure those classrooms so that the paraprofessional program uh educators and the inclusive
paraprofessional educators will be combined in one classroom with the special ed teacher to work together all in a sort of co-art model with the rise um classroom we have had enormous success with this model that we started
at Clark Road it has increased inclusion opportunities it has increased opportunities for differentiated instruction for intervention and real opportunities to build school skills for all of our students it's been a really successful model at Clark Road which we
carried over into Driscoll um this past year and that's where we thought about how we could consolidate those resources and better use and and and and and combine educational pedigogy and methodologies in early childhood education can I ask a question before you move on
Margaret of course you may thank you is that I just want to understand is this four total or is this six total FTE that you're proposing six total six total thanks six yep because it's one from each of the four prek classrooms preschool and then the two from the
closed the classroom that we're the classroom that we're closing thank you and one further clarification question sorry it's me Stephen i get sorry Stephen does this impact the number of students that you would take no so So it's just a delivery model it's a delivery model we So one of the things
that we did over the last couple of weeks is that we um we ran the lottery around six different ways we tried to see if we closed more classrooms could we increase savings without impacting revenue right without decreasing number
of students that we could enroll and also decrease the revenue and we couldn't do that when we tried to do that when we tried to combine more classrooms and consolidate that way it impacted the revenue and the revolving fund too much and I couldn't even get to 200 paying tuition seats right and
that's the goal that's the the goal that we're aiming for to maintain the revolving fund that we need to maintain the expenses associated with the revolving fund so this was the best way to to maintain the number of seats so we're we we're losing some obviously but
the truth is that we always have more seats sometimes we hold special ed seats we don't always have as many kids as we hold the seats for and some classrooms have less than others so this way we did not impact the enrollment in that regard so we'd have a smaller buffer we have a
smaller buffer for sure but I don't Well it depends we still have 36 we're at 183 right now and we have 36 still general ed openings right so we will fill those openings it will take time and a lot of work part of the challenge with running
the lottery is that you run the lottery and the lottery is a very fair and equitable way to enroll students and you lose people that way right because they don't get their first choice they don't get their second choice then they lose out in the lottery for extended day and then there's then they can't then they
can't come so one of the things I really want to think about for the next academic year cycle is can we do that a little differently is there a way to be equitable and fair and not biased but think a little bit differently about that piece because we really do go
through if you're on the wait list and you got accepted for you got accepted to let's say Beacon but you really wanted to go to Ridley that was your first choice we spend a lot of time as a program going back over the wait list I've spent the last two days calling people who had been placed somewhere
else and offering them a spot that opens somewhere else right because I'm trying to honor what I tell families when they when they participate in the lottery that requires a lot of additional work but it's the most equitable and fair way to do it so but it does take a lot of
time and you do lose people and so I'm trying to figure out a balance that might work a little bit better so there would be one inclusive classroom i'm sorry no go ahead there would be one inclusive classroom left i'm sorry said that again how many inclusive less so we'll have 23 this year we have 24 we'll have 23 next year
yes and they would all be in one inclusive classroom instead of two no I'm sorry i'm sorry i all be classrooms are inclusive currently if you said there were 15 inclusion i see i see yeah so I say inclusive because some of the programming right some of the like the rise program is considered subspar right
there they have a different like you know requirement when you're when a student is placed in there yeah i understand yeah and the ALC is really an inclusive program but it has a different model of instruction because those students have higher needs they might be medical they might be a developmental
delay something like that hello so I'm wondering um with your lower numbers of enrollment I'm wondering if our increase in cost has caused any of that yeah yep it's been a hard couple of weeks i'm
not going to lie about that either our most vulnerable families the youngest families are paying more i I think that um you know the increase I So here's what I'll say about the increase we discussed that and we had a we had a meeting about that i don't necessarily know that it's the increase for next
year that's the concern for family it's the 8% the following year and the 8% the following year that compounds to 25% so if you have a student that's three entering beep this current year then you're looking at that expense
um that might not be something that you can budget for and that you worry about and you don't want to make many parents want to make a choice that they can stick with for several years right which is appropriate for the kids you want them in the same right so and so I so
it's a it's if it's a it's a difficult position to be in and and as we discussed at finance subcommittee that my recommendation and even though we are very much committed in beep to the financial aid piece I don't know that we have the fiscal structure right now to support 45 of them right because you
really are asking it's it's hard if you had more revenue and you built up a reserve and you and you slowly phased that in again I think that would be a better choice place structurally for the program and for the district because to
Andy's point it's a less of a buffer and it's hard right because people enroll right they give us a deposit they say they're coming and most of the time they do but you know Brooklyn as Dr given will often tell you has a large churn right people come and they go often
right and if you're building a house on a structure that has that much churn that's a little bit concerning sometimes that's a big worry for me i think about it often and I spend a lot of time with the rest of staff really looking at those numbers and really focusing on
where that revenue is which feels a little strange sometimes right because I joke with you all the time that I didn't go to Wharton School of Business right like I didn't go to school to be a CFO or a CEO um but I respect that that's part of the job um but it does feel a
little bit scary sometimes i'm not going to lie about that either and um and so I want to always make sure that we're being mindful of that because you don't want to cause structural issues right that's the whole what we talked about last year right and so we're working on
that and I do think that I would like to have a further conversation with finance subcommittee and then again with school committee at some point about thinking about that piece about the financial aid and about the number of revenue tuition paying seats i think it's a really important thing to consider i mean I I I
you know supported accepting vouchers in beep like going through the state process of and and we weren't able to do that because of all the requirements that we had to meet for everyone that works in the program you had to meet the same requirements of EEC and that wasn't going to happen but I do think that it's
important to because those family those families that come here a lot of them are just here from from other places it's really hard and it's a home for them and and we're we're really helping there was a mom recently who said to us um I I've never had help like this before i've never had help like this
before so so much of the work we do at BEP is for children but it's also for families and that's and that's sort of like unique to this age it's unique to the early childhood age it's the same for for kindergarten first grade second grade it's for every educator the family
piece but I think it's that initial phase that that is that is unique to be so um anyway there's one more slide so I I send you all these information and so I I just so what we tried to do is come up with a thoughtful way to consolidate the resources that we have to create
learning environments where you're you're having opportunities for a inclusive educator and a special educator to work together to support students with IEPs and students that do not have IEPs that benefit from the training and skill of teachers who learn
a different pedigogy and methodology to be a teacher and in beep you really see that play out as some of these educators were sharing with you um you see that play out very much so because like I said while we're an early childhood program and our roots are actually in
early childhood we are a special education program serving the most um some of the most vulnerable students in the community so those are the so the the goal when the OSS came to me to to us originally was so that those six positions would be
reallocated to elementary schools to meet the needs would need to request for students that we know are moving on from beep to the elementary school and also would would leave some more reserve because
you know those needs are coming they're not they're not going away they're getting bigger and different and some of the needs and I'm sure that the educators in the room can attest to this more than I can don't necess necessarily fall under a special education profile
but because of the needs of the children in the community that have grown up in these COVID times right they're different but you can't always define them in a way that you would necessarily to put in an IEP the social emotional needs are great for children and for
adults right so that is how we try to restructure the program to impact the program least educationally to impact staff least educationally but to maintain the high quality that we that we provide for the community
so Carolyn and then Jesse sure thank you Andy and thank you Margaret um I have a Thank you for all this information it's clear i just have a couple of background questions to refresh my memory of course yes
um and they may be for Dr given they should be easy dr given when we had the second quarter report I think it was nine am I remembering correctly that beep expenses
were in deficit at that point okay there shouldn't be okay there it better not be and when um reserve funds were used from the
beep revolving fund to um close our FY25 deficit what what's the balance what was the balance what can you refresh my memory what we used and what's the balance now in the B reserves if anyone knows
I think it was 1.2 right that was the amount that we used to close the so where does that leave I think the start of the fund was like 2.1 and I think it's at a million dollars right now okay thank you welcome and beep
is only for Brooklyn residents that is correct there are no yeah we we talked to Dr gillery and I last year about we used to offer a beep to um teachers who work in public I mean people who live um work in the public schools of Brooklyn
or in the town of Brooklyn and long ago we had that as a and it was really a lovely thing to have i wasn't here then but it was very popular and I think that there was some feeling in the town that it was taking seats away from residents right so we don't have that anymore i
have been approached by educators who would love to do that and I would have nothing would have made me happier than to be able to offer those seats to um to those people but I that would be a conversation to have with the school committee we also talked about MECO we had a few MECO families who have
preschoolers freeers um and they asked me about and I worked with Malcolm um but again I don't think we were in a position in that at that time to talk to the school committee about how could we make that happen i think both of those things are wonderful things to think about i just don't know you know um how
how to make that happen necessarily when we're sort of in the midst of other things but those are two really important things that we should consider um for the future jesse hi yeah so a question or two sure how
does the removal of the six paras affect the students in the program so I don't think it should have an impact because we are going to we have the by combining and co-eing with let's say a rise classroom and an inclusive pre-k or preschool classroom we will have three we have three rise educ rise para
educators one inclusive par educator and two educators working with a group of children and that should really increase opportunities what we've seen what I see in our program where we have a special educator and an inclusive educator working together I see different outcomes for students because there's
more opportunity to collaborate to differentiate instruction and to really think about what works best for students because sometimes students that are not on an IEP might benefit from smaller group instruction in in a quieter space and you can do that with reverse inclusion and particularly at this age
it works really well and then we have a multi-disiplinary team of specialists like I walked into a classroom a rise classroom today where the speech and language pathologists and the OT were leading a group of rise students and other students in a classroom so those are the wonderful opportunities that you
have in a program like this where you have multid-disciplinary team of educators plus inclusive educators and special educators so I guess my question also I guess continue that one before my other one is um if the number of students with IEPs needed one-on-one Paris or something are we getting to a
situation where we might find ourselves short and then have to so that's always that's always a challenge like so the way that you structure the program is that you use the you're using the program Paris to meet the needs of the the children's IEP right so sometimes and we've encountered this this year as
well a student will come to us and they actually do need a onetoone and I think and and that's been harder to to fund right because of the current situation that we're in and so I'm hoping that with at least releasing some of these positions for for the kindergarten and then having some others that we would
not encounter that you always are going to meet the requirements of the IEP and if a student requires a onetoone then the student should have a onetoone i don't not this should not impact that and this should provide better better collaboration and inclusion opportunities for students great at this
age it works in a different way than it does sometimes for older kids and then I guess my final question there was that slide but I think I remember what it said about transitioning the Paris to the K to1 or something like that and that I don't that that's that was the conversation I had with okay OSS i just don't know what that looks like in
practice and we always have people who leave like there's always people who come to the program and work as a par educator and they're working on becoming a teacher or they're working on something else and then they would leave and leave an open position i guess we're not in that right all right so my question is if we're um removing them
from beep right do they have Yeah my my guaranteed locations to go to somewhere especially if they have um professional status or they've been here a long time right they would be able to take a position somewhere else that is correct at least that's my understanding and those are available so
I mean okay there's a need for them there's a great need for them it's not that we're creating new new par okay so this is not budget neutral we are saving those we are saving the money by not creating new positions there were new positions that were in that original budget request and if you recall and we
we reduced them that was the conversation that I had with OSS with Lisa when she was here that was one of the things that we really thought about and we're really trying to be mindful of that because we understand that the greatest resource that we have are the humans that teach children right um and
so that is where this this concept origin originally came from and because we've had a lot of success at I want to say Clark Road but when we were at Clark Road and we moved um it's a model that works for children and it really provides opportunities um for the
differentiated instruction and for the use of two different approaches to education that matter for young young children particularly helen I don't know Stephen was maybe so I I'm think that you found a
solution that a good solution it sounds like for kids which is the most important piece I was I'm not clear about is are there any savings that I was just going to ask that I don't know and and so that for that piece where Dr for Dr given and I we talked about that
a lot I don't know because the so so I did try mind you I ran the lottery six different times um and there was no way for me to reduce more classrooms no I'm not asking that oh I don't know I don't know because the goal is not to I think we need those uce any more classrooms
margaret let's let Susan answer that question thank you so the savings would be 251,856 thank you and are those are those savings that have already been accounted for uh so so that those don't go under the new position reduction line
that we already accepted on on the spreadsheet okay dr dr given I'm I'm just confused so if we're if we're transferring the the paras from beep into different grades where do the savings come from in the
budget that you have right now we had added a number of positions we cut some of those already earlier and there's still some new positions in okay so by making the cut to beep those staff members would move into those open
positions that we haven't cut thereby the reduction will occur okay and the amount of money that would save us so it's not counted twice i'll reassure you it's not counted twice i I did check that um it's 251,856.6
i'm sorry i don't understand so the the savings isn't coming from a proposal to beep right removing people and this the cut is to beep the staff members that are in beep will bump into open positions
elsewhere oh I see so I see thank you very much stephen did you have another question from before okay um I just had one margaret would you mind saying a bit more about the um the co-eing model that you were describing i'm just interested
in how that works how it originated um you know how many of those we have currently so currently in in beep we have the comprehensive classrooms that we have the ALC classrooms as you call them in the elementary schools have co-teers they have a inclusive uh educator pre-K educator and then a
special educator who works with that teacher to adapt and implement the um IEP right and we we have those models at Driscoll and out out at Partan and then at Clark Road what we did when we um opened a we were we moved a RISE
classroom over to Clark Road is we did this the a similar thing with the RISE teacher and the inclusive pre-K educator so those two teachers work together to serve the needs of the students that have an IEP that are in the RISE program and also the inclusive students in that
in the program so co-eing has a a couple of different models that work um and the different ways that you use them i think that it will require us to do a little bit more professional development and to think a little bit more about what that looks like um as we expand those opportunities in beep using the model
that we had over at Clark Road and so the teachers plan together um the curriculum it gives opportunities for the uh inclusive educator to work in smaller groups with some students while you also have a special educator who can support the classroom as well in addition to the par educators who are
supporting the whole classrooms as well right right so some teachers parallel teach where they teaching the same thing at the same time some teachers divide and conquer in the classroom and how does that look um and some teachers um I can't remember what the other terminology is but there are about six different models of co-eing that you can
use and um in in the I don't want to say experiment but in the model that we've been working at with um over at Clark Road the teachers work together and they do a lot of we we call it in deep reverse inclusion where you might go into a smaller setting um peer models with children that have identified needs
in a smaller space in a smaller classroom to do the same type of work to practice the skill that you might then do in a larger classroom so there's currently one such classroom that originated at Clark Road and No so there so those other classrooms have always existed at beep the comprehensive
classrooms um right I'm talking about the one with the rise yes that was the first one that we did over the last and you're proposing to create a second one with the rise to do that across and the position that gets freed up by the elimination of the that's right I think it's a it has worked extremely well um
and the students have really benefited and really grown a lot in skill it's a it's a different model and I think I when I when I talk to other educators and other leaders in early childhood this is a model that many of them are using um and then you look at the IEP and figure out the amount of
inclusion time versus the amount of subs separate time for children and what that looks like in the AB and sequence suzanne yeah i just want to thank you Margaret i uh BEAPE is near and dear to my heart early childhood and you just have a wonderful program so I just want to really just give you a shout out for
that it's fabulous and your staff is fabulous and if you recommend this savings I will support that so thank you would anyone like to make a motion at this point i'll move it that that we go along with
this uh recommendation that uh essentially what do we do we're saving six position we're moving six positions and and in the budget we are now saving 251,856 dollars without uh harmful impact to any of the students we have or
will have next year is there a second Jesse thank you so any further questions or discussion before we vote all right I'll start at that end this time carolyn yes helen yes suzanne yes
stephen yes sarah yes jesse yes yes and I vote yes as well um yeah thank you very much Margaret for the the thought that went into this and for your presentation thank you i have to thank Rachel Krian and Erin Hearnie who are my lens to be and really help me to grow
and learn as a leader in the field of special education and also to Lisa Leman Harris uh Dana Le Donna Lisenberga um Reva Rosenberg and Sarah Moahan who are also part of our administrative team who work really hard um to make the program run and to Lisa Marie Pedro and Saladine
Weise who work on the other end um I really couldn't do that with all of without and to the teachers and the educators in the program who are really special i've been doing a lot of tours the last couple of weeks with families um and one one dad said to me last week
um this is exactly what I want for my children like this is the environment that I want for them this is the kind of learning that I want for them um and I the teachers and the and the educators and the specialists are what make the program i get to come and talk um but
they do the work the day-to-day work they are they are in the classroom making a difference and they are making a huge difference i'll leave you with this final thought i was over at a school the other day and I was having a conversation with a student who was telling me about the trip to the ice
cream museum and that they went into the sprinkle pool and what kind of ice cream did I like but for me the most powerful thing about that moment was this is a student that came to us two years ago who did not talk to me two years ago or
share anything with me two years ago right and to see that student share with me and ask me like "What's your favorite ice cream?" And then later on in the day to see that student lying on the floor um reading books with two other students and having like a dialogue that's the
work of the educators right and so I I appreciate them tremendously um and I thank them tremendously for their work and I thank all of you for your work and I'm sorry for the for the position that we find ourselves in and I hope that we um can
get all somewhere to a different place together [Applause] thank you Margaret all right next up we have the Office of Student Services Dr schmuckler thank you yep thank
you yeah thank you y perfect yeah good good evening it's good to be back here again in this my I think second and a half week here feels very much longer
um so I think as many of you heard from everybody here and Brookline and as we all know has a a long and storied uh history uh and tradition of supporting all students in inclusive environments and particularly supporting students with special education needs with
excellence and innovation it's why everyone in this room and people choose to come and work here or come back here um as in my case uh and it's also why people move to Brooklyn and send their children to the Brooklyn public schools
and while we are very much mired in the stress uh and hardship and challenges of this budget season um we are also continuing to work on making sure that that tradition continues um as we move into FY26 and we continue to provide
services with excellence and innovation and care uh for our students our families and for our faculty and staff um so with that um I have a quite a few things to get through today um we're going to start with out of district
tuition and before I get started I want to give a huge shout out to the OSS team of Joan Taneta who's the head clerk Kelsey Nash office manager and Kristen Bupra who's the out of district coordinator they have spent many many
many hours these last two and a half weeks alongside me uh really working on um looking at the out of district tuition um and making sure that we have accurate accounting um so that we can really look at what's the picture for the remainder of this year
FY25 and know what's happening in terms of FY26 I think as people know uh out of district is from a budget perspective very volatile it's very unpredictable there's an enormous amount of flux in and out of the system uh in terms of
student needs and so having dayto-day accurate budget budgeting and accounting uh is integral um and so just really thank you to the team so next um so this is just big picture uh these are special education
rates from 2021 to 2025 these come from DESIE um they're actually pretty close the 1320 is a little bit under we're at 1359 um and and that was actually the other day on Aspen and as you know we have many students move in in the spring
um so that number could be changing but as you can see we've had an increase from 2021 from 17% to 18.6% 6% in 2025 so that's kind of just to give you some context in which oh the number yeah
1359 well the 7089 is also wrong it's 7133 um again and if you probably you know run the search today the numbers will be a little different so anyway that just gives you the bigger context next slide so these are these are out of district
tuition rates so there two groups of students uh who are receive tuition um students who are placed out of district um through the IEP process and students who are on settlements and in your budget book those are also budgeted differently so if you look in your
budget books you have a line for out of district and you have a line for settlements so that just gives a quick look at um what that looks like again FI23 through 26 obviously the FY23 and 24 I'm
going back and so um numbers may be off by one or two uh FY25 are and FY26 obviously I've been able to really look at the lists and really see what's happening and what's the movement um and so the result of that number makes up
the kids in out of district and and receiving out of district tuition so you can see you know 23 was 80 um 24 was 84 and then 86 and as we move into FY26 uh we're at 83 now there's a lot of
movement during the year in terms of and I'll show you on on another slide um in terms of kids age out and so at 22 uh when a child turns 22 they age out on their 22nd birthday so kids students
move in and off the out of district list uh in terms of when they age out we have students who graduate so generally that's at the end of the year and settlements generally run till the end of the year so generally settlements are written um for year end and so students
also will move in and out of that list year end so just to give you an example of the kind of fluctuation so in FY24 we started the year off with 12 students um which made that the 24 and then at the end of the year 14 student settlements
ended when you look at FY26 we started the year with 10 students um additional 16 students went onto the settlement lists for 26 and then seven student
settlements will end by the end of this year so we move into FY26 with 19 students on settlements 64 students in out of district go ahead is it okay to ask a question a clarifying question why do we
I mean I understand what settlements are but why do we differentiate between out of district and settlement i mean they're all out of district correct and we're we're paying for everybody correct correct so why wouldn't we just go with the 86 number well that is the number um
I think again they're separated out in the in the budget um and certainly from an OSS perspective it's one list but we do look at them separately uh just from a management perspective but that is the totals are all the students out of
district so you could you could collapse them in the budget if you wanted to or you could keep them separate the way they are now okay well this is helpful thank you sorry Sarah and then Sorry Sarah sorry i Go ahead it doesn't matter
go ahead okay um just for the public watching can would you just briefly explain just give an explanation of what you mean by out of district versus settlements sure so all
of those students are in schools outside of the district right and so in terms of the way and again this is not my this is sort of how things it's been done historically um in general students who are on the out of district column it's happened through the IEP process so
Brookline IEP teams have recommended that we cannot serve the student in district and they've recommended an out of district placement uh in general students are on settlements it has not come through the IEP team process um it has come through uh either a parental
placement and then the district and parents write a settlement uh in terms of moving forward with an educational program uh Sarah was next unless this is a followup so I think I'm not alone but I should only speak for myself i think
that this is new information for us and it was um depicted much differently in the um in the budget proposal so I really thank you for coming up with this for us because the settlements numbers weren't anywhere near the numbers for out of district so we have now in our
understanding of the budget or I'll just speak for myself my understanding of the budget have added um 19 uh students to our understanding we didn't know that before and that's not a critic thank you yeah that's absolutely to thank you for your
clarification not to criticize yeah i now I'm confused that I I don't think we added anybody to the budget they were just in different buckets right right they were in different buckets but it wasn't presented in a way that in my opinion so again just speak
for myself that it was clarified that there were 83 students i've been going on the assumption that there were 64 students for next year for FY26 oh okay it's new information to me i guess you I should I should have checked in with you because you must have understood
Ellen I think you were next no I I I think so we have to be careful this year it's total 86 next year it's 83 because some kids are graduating out it's what I would assume you know that and that's how you were able to get to that there
no more qu I mean are there more questions because actually the next slide will show you that if we can yeah okay so next slide again this is just to illustrate um just how much shift in movement happens uh over a year and FY25 this was
actually an unusual year you don't see as you can see with the comparison with FY26 that much movement usually within your out of district tuition list so for example we had five students age out three students are going to graduate
seven students on settlement's end on the flip side of it we have had three new students this year and we have nine in process and so when you do all of that in and out is where you get to FY26 number and then next year we've looked
at the list um because one of the things that is important is students age out at various stages so this year we had a number of students age out between September and December right so in terms of tuition we're paying tuition until a student ages out um and and a number of
that was baked into the budget so next year what it what it does do though is we have two students graduating at the end of next year but there's really very little cushion in this budget just in terms of looking at we don't have students moving in and out of the budget
uh as we did this year and this year sort of a full year's tuition was in the budget for students who are aging out now some students out age out in May and June and so we will expend a full year's tuition if a students age out earlier we're not expending a full year's
tuition so that's just important in terms of I think there are often questions as to why numbers and dollars don't match and why sometimes it doesn't make sense there is so much variability as well as variability in terms of students with a day placement students
with a residential placement for this year we have students moving to a higher level uh which we we're already projecting for next year so we're already putting that into the budget right so we might have students in a day placement and they're needing residential and so you have to account
for that and and that's already baked into the FY26 budget in in the numbers that you'll see in a little bit is everything we know right now for FY25 and FY26 is already baked into this budget
so so in in the budget since some of this is new information we have claims and settlements which portion I mean shouldn't it I guess be broken out for us at what settlements because settlements relate to correct out of district tuition yet it's mixed in with claims and it's
$313,000 more than this year it's the the words are okay perfect yeah so that 800,000 was the projection for settlements that you see for the settlements exactly component um and
you'll see it broken out from a budgetary perspective in the next slide any questions on this before we if we can move on we good okay sorry i just want to say for for Valor and anybody else online uh Dr given just said the claims are wrapped in with settlement costs
and that it's in that line thanks Stephen yeah sure okay so we also get tuition uh it it comes from two different places right so you find tuition uh either through circuit breaker
um which is um you get in and through the general fund so again in the budget it's listed in two separate places so for FY25 you can see the amounts for circuit breaker and then the general fund tuition and
then the general fund settlements and those three amounts in the budget make up your total of what the budget protection is for out of district tuition so for example for FY25 everything together your general
fund your circuit breaker your general fund for settlements is 9,396 and 888 in FY26 we already know that's our circuit breaker amount with the general fund tuition
general fund settlement amount your total is 11,655735 Okay so so that's where I get lost okay so what is driving the latter two rows what is driving the the cost of the
latter two rows yeah I understand the question i I understand the circuit breaker it's the general fund that I'm confused about especially the because it's that one point so I really appreciate that you lay laid out the numbers that enrollment is flat
enrollment placement is flat that was something that we had gone back and forth on but now that I know that yeah I'm really curious to see the the cost disagregated and understand the drivers for the increases and costs for the specific items one of those of course is tuition and then transportation is the
other big one so so I would really appreciate a deep dive into the drivers of the tuition increases in the general fund sure so as you know and actually this year tuition there's a 4% increase right which obviously doesn't explain the delta but you're seeing that and
then really the difference between costs and placement so as I said we've had a number of students move from day placements to residential placement each one of those placements can have a delta of up to $200 to $300,000 difference so it doesn't take a a whole lot of shift
in those directions to create that kind of a delta between the tuitions and you can have it in the opposite way as well right um move in students in residential where we you know you have a student move in and you are obligated in terms
of a residential tuition so when you see fluctuations like that that is often the reason that you're having a change in in type of placement for students more students needing higher level of placement um and so that's really what
you're seeing and the increase however if you turn to the next slide you will see that it's not as big a delta as Carolyn you had a question do you want to go back okay i had a question too oh sorry Belle go ahead that's okay but
maybe you're going to on the next slide um this is FY25 budget to FY26 budget right not FY25 actual um the the total is the FY25 so this is the budget you're going to see the actual on the next slide that
was a question because we we spent more than we budgeted and just if you don't mind similar partly for me and I think probably helpful for people watching too when you talk about I think this is confusing and if I even understand it right when you
talk about the tuition going up 4% it's confusing to me because I my understanding is the state sets no okay unfortunately ely there isn't and I I don't know if you remember two years ago
in FY23 it went up 14% so the the state there is actually no maximum obligation of what private schools can raise tuition the 4% and was actually you know 3 point something um is really kind of
where people think it's going to go some schools raise it more than 4% so on the average it's 4% almost every year but if you look on our list and again some schools are more raise it more than others but there are no
there's no cap on on on Okay so when you say 4% you're just saying that's the the average increase of tuition at all of the schools where we have students and so when you're doing the budget you've got your FY25 tuition and we're adding
4% to that when we create the FY26 now it could go up when we get the real you know it never goes down unfortunately but in general that's been the that's been the trend which is why people use 4% except for that year when that there was that huge bump
okay so um so this is FY26 so as you can see and you saw on the last slide the FY26 what was projected based on the trends and the information when those projections were made was
11,655735 the actual FY tuition costs with everything we know today right and that's all we can do uh is a [Music] 10,592795 so you can see that there's a delta of a million63
Any questions on that are we still talking about out of district costs here yeah that's the full So why would we pay for pair of professionals well I'm I'll get there oh I'm sorry i'll get there sorry i didn't realize you were I thought you had finished no no no sorry yeah and just to
be clear so the the difference from the actual actual 25 to projected 26 is that's a that's a 10% difference and within the range of volatility that can be expected from tuition
increases for for for flat levels of of out of district placements that 10% increase from year to year is something that is within a predictable range of volatility that's not something that you look at you're like that's nuts 10% is
something that's we we should never ever see a 10% from one year to the next i mean it's it's high um but it's also you know I think if you look at other districts it's what districts are facing sort of really across the state just in terms of um you know rising tuition
rates and you know just sort of costs of of placements okay thank you yeah um but as you can see um so again there is some you know what the tuition costs are budgeted now is
under what was projected right so that's where you get that delta from the when we were looking at this and why you're seeing what is at the bottom is we currently in right where we are now have unbudgeted needs in FY25
um that we're already in the process of and again this is also you know in terms of special education in general we've had in the last two weeks a number of students moving in with very high needs all who need paraprofessionals um and so what you're
seeing there is you know as you know Dr given and Dr gillery and I were looking at this in terms of we've got FY25 unbudgeted needs that obviously get loaded in to FY26 um so again these are our best
projections in terms of moving into FY26 with you know a a budget and a tuition piece where hopefully you know tuitions will actually match what's been projected um so in terms of paraprofessional need as you can see
there um currently in terms of need and looking at four potential between now and the end of the year so that's an addition of nine paraprofessionals costed out at you can see it there and then the other piece there is some reserve and Stephen this
will get to your question again and this is just sort of my own kind of past practice and also knowledge of what happens with out of district tuition in terms of looking at your trends and putting some reserve in your tuition
budget so that again when you have unex you know unexpected expected shifts and you're not then out of budget um and you're not then over budget um so there is some reserve in there in discussion it's generally it doesn't match what the
shift was this year and so one of the things um that seems prudent is to add a little more reserve in the tuition for out of district we do have the section reserves but there's not a lot there in terms of the kind of movement and the kind of sort of budgetary impacts that
out of district can have um and so those two costs with the increased need for paraprofessionals that we're seeing right now the tuition reserve is 646 which then leaves the ability to reduce the current budget by
417,000 if all of that is certainly on the lower part is approved um so that's that's sort of what that was as we were looking at there's this delta on the positive end of the budget in the tuition piece we're also seeing new
needs on the other side that are currently unbudgeted for FY25 and 26 sorry for the lots of questions this is great um I just want to make sure I fully understand the parap what you said about the five paras and four are you
saying that like in the in the recent weeks slash small number of months nine students have moved into Brooklyn okay so the four are really students where people are concerned that are
already in Brooklyn where teams are concerned that we may need to we may right the the five come from move in so literally in the last move in students who've moved into the district in the last couple of weeks with onetoone IEPs with one sorry onetoone pair of
professionals on their IEPs which again is what happens in terms of you know students and their needs needs and the need to provide what's on their IEPs yeah and sorry I just want to understand also sorry on that five y moveins is
that is that sort of a typical move in um so four of those are moving and one is one is a current need just so that we're um okay so it can happen yeah I mean I think I think it it does it's a lot all at once like truly in terms of
for schools in the last few weeks um it has been a lot and the level of intensity of need of the students move in it it's not typical often you'll get one student you know we get a lot of moveins over the summer which you know again as we all know we don't know what's you know in terms of summer we
always get a lot of moveins with high needs which is why you need reserve because you don't know you know what the level of IEP need is coming in um the number of students with high needs is is not typical but I think that's also in terms of you
know I think people always wonder like what happens with special ed and why you can't you know the budgetary process is because there's so much that's unknown and so in terms of budgeting from a you know always with a cautionary reserve um really helps you know not having a
situation where suddenly you're midyear and you're you're out of budget and then you're having to pull from other departments so it's just sort of from my perspective just a more prudent way of of budgeting val and Stephen thank you i I want to
understand what you're recommending you're recommending that we reduce this by 417,000 no that's that's what would be surplus that's what you could reduce you could take that if you approved you know
obviously we need the paraprofessional costs we're watching four so what we know now is five but I put it there just because it's March we still have three months left of school um the tuition reserve I'm putting it there but you could approve it or not approve it that
leaves in terms of the top delta of 1,63 if you subtract the 646 from the 1,63 which was the overage delta between what was projected and where tuition came in you get left with 417
of savings that can then reduce the deficit so that's that's so it is it is reduced by 417 we're just saying it different ways so I guess my my question is sorry that's okay my question is given how over we were on
tuitions from FY25 budget to actual that seems to give no slack in this system or very little slack in this system is that I I guess my concern is that we're going to end up where we were in in sort of January
of this year saying how is it that we're 800,000 a million over in a particular account well as I said there is already reserve in so if you go back so no you don't need to in the um
10,592 um again with what we know right now and what we're projecting there is some reserve there um but in terms of thinking about what would be the most healthy reserve would be to add another 250 to it um the other thing I do want to say just in terms of FY25 as I'd
mentioned a lot of students were aging out and there are tuitions we're carrying we're encumbering tuitions for 12 months where we may have only paid four months or five months so that's also going to give some cushion to the
what happened with the FY25 budget right because we're carrying a full year of tuition and we didn't expend a full year of tuition and so in terms of the overage you've got cushion there just
from just that budgetary piece okay thanks i now understand why you were looking at me blankly in my previous comment i misunderstood something right so what was the actual tuition cost for FY25
um that's what I thought the FY26 that's what I was referring to that 10% i was wrong when I said 10% that's Yeah that's FY26 i've got on my computer i don't have it off the top of my head but we are the actual tuition and what was
actually budgeted is pretty close ah so again because we're we encumbered okay tuition for students who aged out okay so so let me just make sure I understand yep do you want to Dr gibbons
Mike sorry so what you're going to see on the next quarterly report as a result of uh all the work that's been done is that um where we had anticipated we were going to be over in these tuition accounts we
believe at this time we're going to break pretty close to even so it's going to be more favorable which is in one of the reasons why you're generating savings here okay it's by doing it it's by going through student by student and
discovering you know where we had over encumbered in the prior quarterly reports so the news is actually very good okay so I just to make sure I understand I'm sorry for my slowness so the we're we're anticipating that we
initially overbudgeted our projected FY26 OOD tuition costs by a million63 and we are also correcting for a parish or no I'm wrong already 26 um
sorry we but we projected previously too high a number and that million 63 is the difference between a correct number and our previously higher number it's a result of a little bit of that because that sorry it's a a result of a little
bit of that but again it's not the only factor because of as I said so much fluctuation within the actual tuition costs for different students we have a number of high-end res but the point is we're bringing our our projected
OD tuition costs down correct okay for 26 for 26 correct and we are also correcting our current and projected par shortage We're correcting that on this slide we're increasing the number of powers we're planning on having correct thus
fixing that those are the two things we're addressing on this slide okay then I just want to reiterate Val's concern since the difference between our FY 25 actual OD costs and the and the projected amount was so significant shouldn't we have some buffer or does
the does the individual level show you so precisely that you're confident that having a very small buffer will be sufficient is your con concern around FY26 yes i again with what we know today
um if it it there's I think there is enough buffer um in terms of both what's in the tuition and if you if we add this additional 250 reserve um you know I'm based on everything that I know and
everything that I've been able to do there's certainly more work to be done this has just been two and a half weeks um in terms of really getting like at a mic micro level um you know the reason why I think it took four of us many hours is because it's just a lot of very
micro work like literally student by student um so based on again everything all the information we have to date I think there is sufficient reserve um
for most of the exigencies that happen in terms of out of district should we you know I think the reality is two two residential placements can be half a million dollars so that's why you see these wide fluctuations that you know
it's not difficult to have a million dollar delta between what you projected and and what your actual is i just want to say thank you for giving us this level of detail and also coupling it with fixing the Paris shortage on the
same slide so that we don't make a decision just based on on changing your projection of OOD tuition costs for FY26 that would have been a mistake I think for us just to make a decision about that without also correcting what's currently a problem in our Paris
staffing profile so thank you for putting those two things together for us my pleasure i just want to make sure I understand something you were saying earlier and this has to do with your last question Stephen so um we thought for a while that we had
that we had significantly underbudgeted in FY25 and are you saying that that would that was that was because we were over encumbering by not taking into account um students who aged out mid year and when you correct for that it turns out we actually budgeted more or
less correctly i mean that is what the numbers are showing based on the analysis we've been able to do to date okay thanks that's very helpful to know so you can go ahead yeah so I was thinking it might be time to make a motion somebody get ready to do that has
a question how much do we have alan we can't hear you thank you for telling me that i'm sorry i forgot to turn on the the mic what I was asking is or what I was saying is I
see the 250,000 that we have in reserve here approximately how much more do we have in reserve for any of those you know unforeseen out of district tuitions that we might have yeah about 800,000
800,000 and that that seems in in your experience over the years has that been I mean we've never gone for a reserve fund transfer so it must work some so you know again and this is This comes from you know we used to um carry about
a $1.2 million reserve um yeartoyear in out of district and this is 10 years ago and the costs are just exponential right in terms of where tuition is so that's sort of again my experience around and then if you you know you don't need it
you in this year now that's a large reserve when we're in this kind of budget piece and so that was you know initially I'd put in the 800 certainly if we did we had the time the kind of increases that we had this year it wouldn't cover it but I think we had an
unusual year this year right although I think we're all saying it's an unusual year every year in in so many ways um so that's kind of you know that's how we you know we carried like a 1.2 reserve um and again you know that's your circle
brain you roll it over um so that you know into and again when we met and looked at it that's why we added the additional 250 to say even though it sounds a lot it's two placements right in terms of um so you you're carrying you know a
million50 reserve in tuition and so again that's something you know for the committee to look at in terms of um you know what what makes sense with everything that you know
can I just ask is there transportation information available today as well or or is that it for this presentation so transportation is the budget side of it is managed by OAF dr gibbons is there o is there OOD transportation information available as
well um I don't think it did it include OOD transportation information was presented oh I apologize thank you and I think you know the important thing also to
remember which I'm glad you brought it up is every placement that isn't residential has transportation right so when your placement costs increase your transportation costs increase all right would anyone like to make a motion sure Suzanne yeah I'd like to
recommend or make motion that we go with the OSS recommendations around out of district placement uh adjusting the line items under tuition cost to be the 10,592795 and also including then the pair of professionals at 396,000 the
tuition reserve at 250,000 seconded thank you thanks Stephen any further comment um before we vote I would like to say thank you so much this was a tremendously clarifying and helpful presentation certainly for me yeah I'd
like to say thank you and thank you to Kristen as well for all the work on this that's nine Paris just to be clear okay thank you and again the potential is just you know sort of that reserve piece with what we're seeing right now it's five currently we're in that are in
process sorry I'll make one quick comment too also thanks and just responding to your explanation about the reserve amount um that seems prudent even though it's a
lot of money based on what we know so I'm comfortable with that all right let's vote jesse yes sarah yes stephen yes suzanne yes ellen yes carolyn yes belle yes and I
vote yes all right you can write down another $417,000 um is somebody writing this into an I am so our projected gap is now $3 million are you the keeper of the spreadsheet at
this point i shall be all right say that one more time it is $3 million7,223 okay so so now we're looking at the FY26 identified new needs so these were part
of that initial 21.9 uh FTE um and what is remaining on the table in terms of the work that u OSS leadership did and principles um as
identified needs are 2.4 four unit A FTEES um and that's broken down with the rise teacher at Hayes the ALC teacher at Lincoln um a point 2 o OT increase at
Hayes it's a currently a point8 FTE a 0.1 OT increase at Lincoln which is currently a staff member with a 0.9 um and then if you go to the other page
um a 0.1 at of speech atr FRR which is also currently a 0.9 why those nines shift is important is given uh case loads currently we're asking our 0.9 to do additional testing um on a time sheet
basis and so the need over the year is it it used to be intermittent you know you might have a serviceson testing or a proportional share testing um but now it's become a constant in terms of those case loads i think you heard me say also we've got some shifting to do in terms
of case load equity with related services particularly that's not that's budget neutral but we're we're also trying to look at that so those are the um unit A FTEES if you go back a slide Dr and then also in that request were three
paraprofessionals from Hayes and this is where the beep this is where the beep offset of the six beep offset paraprofessionals come in um three paraprofessionals uh for incoming K uh to the rise program at Hayes two
paraprofessionals for incoming K at Lincoln and then one that's okay and then one paraprofessional uh which in the original request was under OSS system uh that's at Lincoln um
and then three paraprofessionals at run for incoming case and so as you can see Dr particular if you go back a slide it's nine altogether in terms of new requests those will be offset by six
in terms of the beep and so what's remaining in the request is an additional three FTEES of paraprofessionals and the 2.4 unit A Just to be clear the it additional teacher and rise is because we're moving
up a year I'm assuming correct yeah so that's an important piece for people to understand we're expanding the program to another to fourth grade now another grade yeah and there currently 17 students uh in the program and then
we're expanding and we have um three incoming kindergarten students into that program two incoming kindergarten students into the ALC great how is it that the program is only one FTE in cost there must be other costs associated
with it i would assume the PAR requests so it's the it's the teacher yep yep val I just want to make sure I understand this offset or maybe I didn't understand it when Margaret explained it i thought that she was just talking about staff
availability for other positions and not a cost associated so we'd still be paying for nine new pair of professionals I guess is my qu is that accurate Karen as opposed to three yes okay thank you okay yeah so it's not
a budget offset okay well well we need to count those pair of professionals somewhere we're not counting them anymore in beep so now we're going to count them here i guess the piece is you don't want to
count them twice right you would have had we would have had to have had nine that nine is being offset by six but you're not you're not realizing it's not a total well we're concerned I think that we might be counting the savings twice
which we definitely don't want to do and mislead ourselves so Susan yeah I don't know if you can help clarify this no so when we talk that there's seats and there's people that fill the seats so we're going to have nine seats and six from beep are going to fill six of
those nine seats now there's the people will move from beep because we just cut their positions from beep that's different the humans are going to move into some of these open slots that we still need
because we have this programmatic uh shift that we need to um fund for next year so all of our thinking right now is relative to the superintendent's initial budget correct so what is this relative to the superintendent's initial budget like was were all of these positions in
that budget yes they they were okay so then we are realizing some savings by our recent action on beep okay okay okay um as I said the the last time I was Oh
I don't actually I prefer this um so these were the proposed reductions that had originally uh been made by Dr okonnell and the OSS leadership team um as you can see the original proposal had
12.9 but as discussed last week the bright 1.0 that was in the original proposal uh was a double count so so at off the top this is actually an 11.9 because there was the bright you remember from
last week that bright clinician was already out of the base um so when the math doesn't work that's why because it's actually starting at 11.9 um so you know as as you've heard from
from everybody here um every reduction has u significant impacts um and it's hard to quantify on a piece of paper what those impacts are from the dayto day um I certainly think my colleagues here
um gave you a glimpse into what that dayto-day impact is um I'm happy to go through them again uh just to kind of refresh so the proposal for the district-wide psychologist as you heard it's prek through 12 it's um 50 to 60
evaluations per year uh including out of district um that obviously has an impact on all the other psychologists in district um evaluation case loads would increase by five to seven students over the year an evaluation in general for an
initial eval and a reeval takes between 8 to 12 hours for a psychologist to complete an evaluation um it's also irregular so when I say it's 5 to seven that the overload of testing is is not equal right so it's it's testing needs
are much higher in some schools than others um so in terms of workload impact obviously the additional testing time on current psychologists IEP meetings impact on counseling case loads and as you also heard impact on tiered support
um what's important about tiered support is um when there's you know not enough tiered support obviously students at lower levels don't necessarily get their needs met and that pushes everything up in the system so that's the impact of
the proposed um psychologist reduction any questions yep just a quick question how many psychologists do we have in the district if somebody knows okay 15 i think it's 15.7 something yeah
it's probably close to 16 but they'll get you the accurate it's a It's a partial FTE no 16 16 i think it's 15.7 if I remember correctly but they'll check it out um in terms of the the district
nurse again yeah are there It's hard to read the impact thing there but um No it's not yeah what about particular testing certification that a district-wide
psychologist might have that none of the other psychologists have so our district psychologist uh does have expertise in areas that other psychologists uh don't have there are other psychologists who may have uh in terms of testing students on the autism spectrum yes using the
[ __ ] um so yes there there is expertise um that is not necessarily held by other by other school psychologists so I guess the question is going to be you know in considering uh the this
position what would it cost the district to fulfill those tests I guess you know using a consultant or some other agency at a cost so now we're that we're starting to spend money that we're not that we you know we have a position so
there's a person that does those very specialized tests if we were to eliminate that position or a fraction of it there'd be some all those tests if they're you know reduced completely then all those tests would have to be done somewhere else the ones that no one else has training to do i mean there are
other people in the district who are also able to do it it's just a matter of volume but not every psychologist has that level of expertise there are a few others but I guess my question is if if the volume strips the capacity then
we're paying other dollars to cover the correct need correct within the regulated times for which it has to get done and while they're doing that all the other tasks that we heard about that have to get done correct are not done
what generally happens in any area where you push beyond need is you end up having to do contracted services um which absolutely has a cost to it right so I mean before we consider this we I would think we need to know
something about what the costs are no I'm saying for that row item it has nothing to do with the other positions right now what I'm saying yeah I I have to agree with you that it's that's that would be very hard to vote on tonight um so maybe we'll keep on
with this conversation but just to earmark that that would be a really hard cut to make tonight thank you any other questions on that so the point for nurse uh I think as you heard is uh so we have 3.4 FD nursing at
Brooklyn High School this is where this um we have a spring retirement so the they are currently operating um with 3.0 0 um so from a organizational perspective Trisha felt like given that they are
operating from a 3.0 perspective they do have two float nurses who currently don't float to cover the high school they really are floating beep and K8 um in general you've got the the different buildings so in general 3.0 and O FTEES
from her perspective and again from what they've been doing um has very much met the needs but again people are absent people are sick and it might mean that the float nurses are now floating for nine schools in in well actually 10
schools instead of um nine which is what they currently do um that that was the recommendation from um from Trisha so that's what that is can I do you and move move on
um the BS the Yeah I just a question sorry about that um what's what do they So this retirement is happening at the end of this spring end of this year or what happened sorry it's already happened okay so that I'll
sharpen the question then given that we're down to 3.0 though then what happens again in real terms when you have this percentage less of capacity but you still have kids getting sick or kids that need shots or kids that need
someone to sit with them because they threw up and they got moved to the sit with the nurse and you can't leave a a second grader by themselves you know whatever again how do we This is all at Brooklyn High School this is just at BHS yeah the 3Es were at Brooklyn High School and so the impact this impact is at Brooklyn
High only okay thank you yes but there will there will be an impact in terms of the floating nurses who may have to cover it hasn't it hasn't been a necess necessity now but it could be thank you
so the BS BHS um social worker recommendation again you can see it's an open position uh it was a vacancy that hasn't been filled this year and so when the team um looked at it and Matt is
here so he can speak more to it if you want him to um the they would be operating again similar to the nurse with the same FTEES and case loads that they have now it's still an impact right all the current
social workers are now seeing more students um and as you heard last week it may impact general education weight lists so in terms of students who need to be seen by a social worker the current case loads with this reduction
which is currently in place um social workers are seeing on the average have 28 weekly sessions with students and each have five students that they see as needed uh so that are not scheduled for weekly sessions um so that's in terms of
what that looks like in terms of you know high school case load and workload matt do you want to add can I ask a question and I don't this maybe is for Matt h how does that logistically work that seems to me to be they're back to backto backto back
every day that's correct okay and I I guess Matt what's your take on this position then uh yeah I mean so we're in a position right now where we're living that
reality with four the the consequence of that we talked a little bit about uh last week so there are some weight lists on the general education side uh some social workers who are attached to programs are seeing students who are not in those programs for the disable
student that might have a learning center plus counseling on their IEP so that's one way so we are lucky that we have four additional uh social workers who fall in special education at the high school but the consequence of it yeah is that those schedules are very very full
how long has that position been unfilled uh since February 28th carolyn um so the social workers are doing I'm going to really expose my naive here
um I've had two kids go through the high school but we haven't availed of of social work services so it's anything from is it like um therapy like somebody
wants general support or you said something about sometimes it's called for in an IEP like this the sessions are Yep yeah uh yeah so it's a lot of Yeah so it is it's counseling is therapy within within
schools um our social workers also have a lot of expertise so if a family needs a thing backpack food housing they left their backpack at school whatever it might need our social workers are also employed in that way uh the majority of their time though is spent in direct service so work doing counseling with
students and then also on the other side um with consultation and sort of wraparound support i would say um what's nice about um working and living in Brooklyn is we do have a lot of really solid community based partners but that's a lot of work to do wraparound
services um within that 18.6% number you saw um earlier in terms of that increase in special ed services um we we're seeing it a little bit with out of district tuition the intensity um of that additional 1.6% is definitely different in the last five years right
so it's not just a shared number sort of the intensity um of those cases have also increased pretty substantially uh Matt as long as we have you could you just explain just a little bit it's probably longer than the discussion we can have now but kind of the roles
between the guidance counselors and the social workers and the school psychologist i mean are are those all potential um service providers to students who need similar
uh services could you just explain that just a little bit how we So the the role um of a counselor looks a little bit different in the K to8s than it does in the high school uh so with the the size and sort of the volume at the high school there is a lot of scheduling sort of the more traditional things you'd think about guidance a lot of career
planning but they also sort of will do some triage services with with student mental health um at the high school the psychologists and the social workers are doing the majority of the counseling um uh for students generally within uh special education and within general education um at the K to8 level there's
a lot of overlapping expertise they all have a lot of similar skills but we do try to make um those roles uh distinct uh so our school counselors are really doing a ton of prevention based work um I felt really good in the last four years I've been able to come to you and talk about some very real improvements
that we've seen in student mental health it's so much because of that prevention based work that we're doing uh our counselors are also doing a lot of tier 2 work uh so that's small groupoup focused work that's usually sort of time bound usually six to eight weeks um our psychologists as you've heard about are doing a lot of evaluations they also
carry a counseling case so usually about 10 to 12 students and those are uh kids that typically have it on their IEPs um our adjustment counselor social workers they are doing a lot of that IEP mandated counseling uh for students and their case loads can sort of range from
20 to 24 um there's a lot of um that's not captured in that triage work um you've heard about a little bit i encourage any of you to hang out with anybody on the clinical team we have Driscoll here uh in the front um uh uh throughout the day they wear walkies on
their person and I guarantee I'll bet you a dollar within about a half an hour the walk is going to go off it's going to because a student's having a really hard time in the classroom and they're going to come and they're going to support that student um so that's sort of that that intensity that we're that we're sort of talking about that's not inherently captured in the additional
1.6% jesse go ahead can you um speak about the genet weight list i mean I assume that we're we're one way to look at it would be like I don't know god forbid like an emergency room yeah you know you said and outside
St e on you know Chestnut Avenue there's a clock that says you know you're going to wait 21 minutes going to wait 44 minutes it's going to be 92 minutes they want to keep it down to four minutes okay so that's sort of what it is um and that's scary you know if you're driving up Cambridge Street and you see it 42
minutes and you know so how do we how do we shift how do we think about that though for our kids who have a an issue otherwise they wouldn't be needing to be seen when they have to wait a long
time i mean it just essentially is a stressor to the system because if the kid becomes say very anxious or or switches into dysregulation now suddenly you're pulling from another person so are we right sized to handle and as
you're talking about the intensity of that 1.6 1.8 you know percent increase of being even more um sharp in intensity are we right sized and if we're not what do you know maybe it would be helpful for our committee to see where do we
need to be rather than how we'll be able to meet the need with less or stretch people or float people and things like that yeah okay that's that's a really really important question um I I feel really really proud of the work that our teams have done uh people have sort of
acknowledged that we're very much in a youth mental health crisis we have been last 12 years it wasn't just a pandemic uh situation um uh student needs are really intense with our current staffing models i feel pretty good that we have our arms around it that does not mean that problems
don't exist of course right i'm on I'm on the phone all day long with teams who are sort of working with kids who are going through a really really hard time but we are responding we are able to generally meet students needs right i wish I could forecast perfectly what this would look like i can't i'm also deeply concerned about there being
weight lists what we know is the longer that students and and adults wait to get mental health care those problems don't go away right so that absolutely is a worry that I have uh where that does certainly stress the system is we have to rely more on community partners but they also have weight lists right i know
I've talked about cartwheel in the past and that's a really strong partner because that eliminates that that uh weight list part of it um but that can absolutely stress the system well no thank you for that because I think for say parents watching Sure from outside this room to see you know impact
weight lists could be pretty uh scary sure so thanks for the comment about that shall we continue with the slides thank you Matt i need that for my own mental health okay okay so uh the point to there's a
point to guidance um and Matt might need to come back if you um that again as they're looking at sort of the work and workload and case load uh there's a point two uh which is likely to occur through attrition
um and that in terms of um that it's a point 2 so the other eight uh is within another department um that also while not substantially may impact guidance council loads as well in terms of that point too but that's that is what that
one is the other elementary guidance is uh current [Music] staffing person in a position uh who's a point eight um and they would like to maintain that
current staffing pattern uh and not move to a 1.0 and the school feels like it's working and that's reasonable and they want to support that so that's where that point two comes from any questions
yeah is that a reduction in the dot what is it oh sorry go ahead oh on the attrition can you help me understand a point to attrition yep without being uh overly specific so it's it's moving roles that's going to change
that person's point too and that position itself will no longer be a position um so the consequence of that is that that 0 2 is going to be removed from guidance and the other 08 will be removed from a different party uh different when when Anthony comes back when the BHS teams comes back we'll be
able to give a little bit more detail here okay got it will be a real point too yeah got it thanks um so in terms of beep and again not we're not double counting but I just want to kind of give the gestalt so the initial what you initially saw just so
if you're going back and comparing was a 0.5 ETF a 04 psychologist which actually was not accurate there was a just an error there is the psychologist at beep is 6 so that point4 actually was not
something that could be reduced um and then a point 2 social worker um and I think you may have heard me say two weeks ago that when Margaret was doing the consolidation it really made more sense to allow her to do this consolid considation really think about
programming and then come back and say with the consolidation with all the moving parts make a recommendation in terms of what felt she would be able to do in terms of supporting the needs of the program um and making sure that she
was fully staffed in all the very different uh places and so you've heard obviously about the six paraprofessionals um what the beep team looked at is being able to reduce the um 0.5 ETF to a.3
um or reduce that it's a 0.9 currently um and reduce it to a.3 so it's not a.5 cut it's a.3 cut um currently there are 2.7 FTEES ETF at beep and so that would be a
reduction there would be 2.4 FTEES all three FTEEs at beep are a8 um so nobody there is a 1.0 so that's sort of why you've got that 2.4 FDE and then as we heard in terms of the
paraprofessionals um in terms of the cons consolidation they will be able to be offset uh at the K level so in those other categories of psychologists and social workers like
how many FTEEs would be would be left after these proposed reductions so so again that was the original piece i think what Margaret came back with was the six pair of professionals and the so I showed it there in terms of that was
the original what was there and when she did the consolidation and programming work she did not I don't know oh she's still there so Margaret jump in in terms of looking at again both the needs of what the school psychologist and the
social worker ETFs also at BEEP are not don't work that don't only do IEPs right they're no guidance counselors at BEP so your ETFs at BEP also play a dual role they're not just so you know in terms of looking at there's 63 students at BEP on
IEPs that seems like a very small number for that level of FTE but they don't they do much more than and not to say ETFs at the elementary schools also don't just run IEPs they do huge amounts of other things as well in terms of you know consults and all the rest of it but
it is a little more of a direct studentf facing role at beep than it might be at the elementary school so just to be aware of that much yes so we spent some time the last couple of days looking at where else we might find some savings in FTEES
in beep and thinking about the fact that all the other positions in beep are student facing like the multi-disiplinary team is student facing we looked at at case loads in speech and OT we have two OT's we a few years ago we used to have 2 point I don't remember
the exact number but it wasn't three full-time um and then we looked at speech and we thought was there way to reduce there but that became challenging as well so the only place that we thought we might be able to find some reduction is in our ETF
um but I will say that reducing the ETF which would really impact right now we've looked at since we have the 2 point I don't know exactly what the total number is the whole half-time part-time thing confuses me a little bit um it would impact mostly our intake in
um ETF and that's that's a hard that I know that everyone needs to make some cuts it's a hard it's a hard impact on us because that is the person who helps with the transition yeah it's from early intervention into the program and since this was a newer thought I can't the
social work is impossible we only have one and we for all the 286 students that we have um that person is working more than more than and it was a big a big discussion last year that we needed more social workers in be with the educators
in the program and and that that social worker is running lunch bunches and skill groups and we just I we cannot reduce that like I just that's impossible for us the ETF is a hard and I'm trying to figure out is there a way to to move figure out a way to fund that
piece of it from a general ed perspective from a revolving fund i've been trying to think about that all day if there's a way to do that because she does do some general educational work in terms of interventions and running the child fund working with community groups so I'm trying to figure out a way if
there was some way to move some of that expense from OSS to um the revolving funds i did not discuss that with Karen or Naen because I spent the day thinking about it after we discussed this yesterday so um that's sort of my input
on that piece okay thanks so the the original proposal about the social worker and psychologist no longer Yeah well the psychologist is we is only 6 right and so I think what happened is she there the psychologist that we have is on leave like and there the position was in two different places on that
sheet and in the one spot it was the correct FTE at the bottom where her name was on leave right and I think at the other part it wasn't I did not see that until after we were looking at the list with um with Matt and with Naen and I like I said with the social worker that that would really be I don't know how we
would figure that piece out so thank you you're welcome Helen so sorry sorry just historically um BEEP has always had two social workers i don't know when it went down to one i don't even remember that uh
when that happened for years we had two two social workers because of I'm sorry we can't hear we need to come up here and talk because I already talked unclearly before and you have to talk
into the microphone exactly just sit sorry this is Rachel and maybe introduce yourself too so we can people can know i'm Rachel Craig i am a program coordinator for beep um who has also been a parah a teacher and in pretty
much every role you can imagine um we did have social workers we had more than two we had social workers who were doubling as team chairs also working alongside special education teachers who were chairing their own meetings if they were not severe students that we were
bringing in um I think it shifted when many of the budget crisis started to come about and people were realizing that the special education program that was seen as an early childhood program
was funded mostly by tuition and not the town and um other funding sources that way we had to start making it a little bit clearer so the the funding source of our social workers became
um the TF role it was I think Lisa Lamont told us it was 2009 that it shifted to the model of having um TFS in the district so we followed along with that model um we also found or not we
but prior to us they found that it was hard to delineate the social work component with a special education chair who was sort of conflicting having dual roles in those meetings so that was when they went to two uh there was something
like 2.7 that they combined into a 1.0 when somebody retired so we got two TFs and then one social worker that was it and the social worker I think was 08 at the time and then we had a grant for
some other funding to do the point two um and that's how it kind of played out but the intake team is invaluable to us and the amount of um time they spend with families supporting families who have immigrated into the country and
move into Brooklyn and they're they're working with these families non-stop it's not a cut and dryit situation that they're doing it is truly endless amounts of work to hold families hands through a registration process that is not welcoming they try really hard but
Aspen's confusing and these families take time and energy and compassion and our intake team does that so not to go and it's it's not only that it's also at any time of the year you may have a new student coming in for early intervention whose families have been so taken care
of i mean individual attention and then they come in are worried about coming in so that that role is really a critical role i can I understand what you're saying and our hope is that we are proactive in the support and care for families so that by the time
kindergarten rolls around it is less impactful on the district absolutely um we are putting our whole hearts into the work that we do and cutting even more than we have already cut is traumatizing to us
i think for me I don't know if we want to make a we let's continue let's continue at least let Dr schmuckler finish so if you can go Dr gillery to the next to the next
slide okay so um you saw this the last time and one of the things that um principles and special a directors did is really look closely at workload um
and so from that piece uh both Driscoll and Hayes and Pierce um really should be off the table and I think you've heard from all the other learning centers why they should all be off the
table so that's I'm sorry can you repeat that i missed what you were trying to get up there so when we looked at the workload piece um again looking at the um so what and well let me explain to you what they did so I know there was a
lot of concern about the schedule right which was really just an illustration of what workload looked like sure the principles and the special ed directors took the current so if you go back to I think it's one slide down Dr gillery no
no the other way i think it's maybe two down sorry I think I put it there in case I need it which I do um when you what they did is say so say you're at Baker they took the current case load of 80 students and then they said if what
would it look like so to actually do the work right not just look at it on paper if we had a design for these 80 students with one less teacher what would that look like and they went you know grade by grade so really mapping it out to
say was this proposed reduction what does it look like in in actuality right in terms of thinking about all the the various impacts that you've heard right in terms of increased IEPs increased testing uh increased group size
increased consults so that's um Dr together if you go back to the Do you want to stay on this was it okay to move back so do you want to go back to Yeah okay okay okay so that so that work was done um already as I think you saw last
time you know Driscoll and Hayes uh in terms of where they were starting from um when you look at that increase um it was pretty much off the table at that point um Pierce you know Jamie also did
that and she's got two buildings right so the the complexity in terms of looking at you know because what this work entails is looking at it's not even right so the aggregate is one to two student but you you look at grade bands and you look at cohorts so different
grades have larger numbers of students than others right so they did that exercise so that's that's what that exercise was in terms of um and they did it here people came together and really looked at it together in terms of um
again was this proposed recommendation that was again not my recommendation but was that did the data support in terms of and again remember case load and workload and instructional groupings which we looked at last time um what would that impact be in terms of
group size right and you've heard in terms of it would impact small group size that we currently have in our learning centers it would add to that group size um so those three elementary schools and and sorry if you Dr gillery sorry if you go
back this does include the high school you're not seeing it there but this is this is a this was looked at K through K through 12 uh in terms of the high school you heard from the high school last week their learning centers
work a little differently because everyone teaches four plus one and they are working with learning center coort or in small group and those learning center teachers are writing progress reports teaching for all of those
students across a 4 plus one day um so that's sort of how how the learning center works so can you go back to the bar graph or the Oh either one is fine so are you saying all else aside but just looking
at this bar graph itself um are you saying the reason even though Wrl and Lincoln have the same bars as Pierce the difference is that Pierce is in two
locations the two buildings yeah and how many individuals are you saying that the individuals move across no they don't and I think that's you know when you're when you're in one in terms of the learning center teachers so you have
learning center teachers in the K five I think the split is and then so they do not move across um so in terms of you know sometimes teachers will teach a three four five grade band the next year they may be in a four five grade band
um Jamie had to because of the two buildings she was very limited in what she could do based on where students are and right and it's not even right the dispersion of student and student need is not even across grade which is why you you see the large range even now
right again these are averages I get that okay I'm just not clear on and again my question is limited purely to this graphic yeah yeah it's just not clear to me what the difference is between Pierce Lincoln and
Wrl i'm not sure it matters tremendously but I'm just curious and I don't want to belabor it i don't understand what it is about being in two buildings that makes a difference so if you have more students in third grade well let me think they split so if you have more
students in Yeah you can't move teachers between the buildings to match the cohorts and so when they looked at actual cohorts right real real lifetime this is the amount of kids middle school these are my low shift grade bands you couldn't shift
teachers amongst grade bands because she's got two different buildings so the impact would be disproportionate in one of the buildings compared to the other exactly thank you it it since it's not labeled is this you you early on you said case load and then
you said workload which one was this this is case load is it doesn't say this is case load it's students per learning teacher so this is case load overall it's not group size so it doesn't account I mean I mean
I guess a um another level of detail or another slide maybe you're going to show it would have another set of column that shows the anticipated minute capacity of those cases since you since the principles are doing it in real time meaning for now like in March of 2025
they have the full view and so the next thing to know would be what their what the minutes would be if we're going to wonder about whether we have the right size meaning the the sufficient capacity
I mean that was the exercise that say that they did in but this is just saying like for Lawrence for example that there'd be nine students currently and next year we're projecting there'll be 10 students in the case load on average for each yeah this does not speak to
workload in terms of as you know as I shared one student can have three times 30 a week and one student can time can have three times 30 a day right so this does not speak to workload when they when they met they looked at workload load
but this is a case load view this is again this just looks at the aggregate increase on case load okay your workload as as people shared is what does that look like in terms of minutes and service delivery and all the additional things that sort of similar to the
psychologist you know it's not just it's all of those things IEPs all etc i think and on just another question on average how many learning center staff are in say Lawrence or Lincoln in other words if Dr sorry it's
on yeah if you look at because the so that those are your learning center teacher FTEES per school what they are currently what the current range is okay which were on the range slides that and then what what they would look
like in terms of FY26 in this proposal so I guess I guess without knowing the workload impact so going at Lincoln from 11 per person to 13 per person could be
minimal or it could be maximal in terms of impact on the system is yeah is that do I have I mean am I interpreting it correctly i'm trying to draw a conclusion from like the one row going from 11 per person to 13 per
person absolutely so if you have 11 high intense student needs and you went to 13 that would be an unmanageable workload increase if you had again it's based on your intensity of your case load which again was the what they tried to do was
look at exactly that right it's not just about it's about matching kids it's about compatibility it's about all of those things that go into it's a very complex kind of process in terms of uh sort of the work so that again was the work that principles and and the
special ed directors did so in the case of a um I'm sorry I'll stop So in the case help you out it's okay in the in the case of a you know if you go from 11 to 13 and it just so happens that one of those students is one that
disregulates a lot so the potential ripple effect could be more dramatic than just a delta of two per person in other words in other words I mean given what Matt told us about right um it and you mentioned earlier too I mean this
steady seem increase in mental health stress among the student population and we don't know where you know it's maybe it's moving as a ripple or maybe it's not i thought it was more maybe related to COVID and things and there's a you know a grade or three grades or something and we'll see it move through
it doesn't sound like that's the case and Matt's saying yes that my my conclusion is correct what he taught me to this evening so um so in that case we're only to anticipate more need um as we move as we move the entire
school system through the years and I'm just wondering how any increase in case load with with uh an an indeterminate amount of minutes required for workload as the system is even more stressed would be
warranted sarah were you gonna follow up on something Jesse said and then Stephen sorry so Stephen do you want to go okay thank you so I think the reason why I said I I think I'm going to help you out is because I think that I'm going to ask for some of the same information in a
different way so that we can all all nine of us can figure this out so um I really appreciate that the the principles actually took the schedules and made the schedules in order to try to run this run the numbers and see how it worked and when I look at your bar
graph I understand that we're not out of compliance with the law in terms of numbers because we probably are staying within the instructional groups that we need to but when the teacher when the principles went and they made actual schedules I wonder how much information
we can get from that are we at the point that we could say that there are issues of compliance because of what we've written IEPs for would we were the principles able to say we would still be
able to deliver on the service delivery that we have assigned to each kid was that like did they do that much work that they were able to say that i so I don't think in terms of um well in terms of compliance I think where you see you know it being off the table
um they don't have that level of detail but in terms of you know our compliance in terms of certainly in terms of instructional grouping um we are you know very well within um they certainly don't did not do again they looked at the big picture they looked at number of
minutes you know across a week but they certainly it's not that level of micro um analysis miss Stephen and then Helen I guess I would just like to uh ask us the school committee if we could
move more i I really appreciate your questions in particular Jesse because I I'm with you on the direction of your questions but I want to go through the rest of this presentation um and the reason is because I feel that our our the way that we're jumping into the
details feels misguided to me and that's because I I really appreciate how you're taking us through all of this i feel like you're really gamely presenting the details on what you were given but I think we're we're staring at the trees and missing the forest and it's and it's
feeling very frustrating to me specifically it seems to me that the what has happened is that we are taking a system and we are taking pieces of the system and we're looking to reduce headcounts in pieces of the system at the same time that we're referring more
and more children into that system so we're we're making it more and more taught at the time that we need more more and more slack so it feels to me instead that this this approach is is missing a holistic view and what I again what I really liked that you said when
we when we spoke to you before you came into this position and that I hope you will have some time to do as an interim um is do is is to help us move towards a strategic analysis of the delivery of special education services because I I really do think that there are cost
efficiencies to be found in the delivery of special education in PSB like you did for us tonight with OD um or or at least to help us find the right balance with OD but I don't think we can do that by looking at elements of the system and tightening it i think the only way to do
it is to look at how these different pieces interact with each other and how different modalities of deliveries of service can be more cost-effectively and while guaranteeing FAPE delivered so I I feel very um unwilling to dive into the details with
you although I really appreciate how how seriously you took all of these proposals do you feel able to embody these thoughts in emotion of some yeah I would want to move to take all the K8 cuts off the table period um I mean there there was quite a
variety of um Yeah well let let me let Helen speak and then Well I I'm just curious so what in the end was your actual proposal for uh was it to remove all was it to remove half of the numbers
what I mean As I said the three are off the table and I would propose you take them all off can't hear you Karen thank you i said the three that I in again trying to show you the process and
sort of the work that people did again not my proposal um the three were off the table and again I think everything that you've heard we should take them all off the table including um like the partial lefties
like the BHS nurse and um BHS guidance elementary guidance just the learning center we're just talking about learning center at the moment okay that was my question so Stephen I I would propose to take all of the proposed K8 cuts off the table the only
things that I would leave on the table right now are the proposed cuts at BHS which I would leave to uh the administrators at BHS to address at their next presentation to us yeah can you can you back up the Yeah back up the slide so we see what we're talking about and I and I really do mean all of them
because I think things like the social worker and the district-wide psychologist everything is system i'm not just talking about the ALC about the learning centers oh I thought when Andy just asked you that you said "Yes I'm only talking about the learning center." No I'm sorry i'm
talking about You're talking about everything here we just saw anybody so there's a 0.2 There's a 0.2 FTE elementary guidance that's included in your Yes i think that's a bit broad
and respectfully I I mean I understand where you're coming from um I wonder if we could simplify things for now by sorry just voting separately on the LC because it seems like there's that's headed in a clear direction and then we can spend some time on the other
positions if we want i'll move to to take the LC's also LC's I think other than the high school because we'd leave that to the high school leadership um but I'm open to
so uh okay I think Helen spoke first so this is to turn um K8 LC's red on our spreadsheet um okay any further discussion before we vote on that okay carolyn
yes helen yes suzanne yes steven yes sarah yes jesse yes val yes yes and I vote yes [Applause] sorry I'm just taking a second to write
can I further move at this point the the rest of the motion the remainder of the K8 proposed sure go ahead i'd like to move the remainder of the K8 cuts that they be removed for from consideration i'm open to friendly amendments does that include the district-wide psych
psychologist yes okay so so the only the only things that would still be on the table if your motion were to pass BHS positions yeah would be the BHS nurse 0.4 BHS social worker 1.0 BHS guidance
0.2 and the one BHSLC position yes okay i feel like that's moving a little bit quickly i might have to v vote no just because um we we're going to get more information you know we're going to have an audit we're going to have more conversations so we might not be able to
say "Let's take everything there off the table right now." Do you think that you'd be okay with uh having this come up on April 10th yes that's our next uh scheduled meeting sorry no not April 10th no I I would like to see the audit first oh well that doesn't come in until
early May uh that's really pushing it would you mind putting the table back on the screen on the screen dr and sorry I was also going to make a comment but I didn't know if somebody wanted to second Steven's motion even though I'm not going to vote for it either but I don't know if somebody wants to second it can
you can you repeat that to put all of the K8 special education cuts on to take it off the table well these aren't just special education and the and the district-wide psychologist can we go by position Stephen because I'm I'm confused now about what position
we're talking about i see perhaps I I could rephrase it as all the nonBHS cuts because to me those come up in a separate presentation because they were going to be revisited anyway by the BHS administrators so just to list them the
ones you're proposing to take off the table would be the 0.3 ETF at beep um the 0.2 follow row by row here yeah so it would be the districtwide psychologist the the nurse the And then moving to the
next page the nurse I'm sorry not the nurse excuse me so just the just the first row in this one first row in this one okay and then moving to the second row of this the guidance
the beep cuts and the we already did the last row so I just want to make sure you're not doing you're not there unintended consequences stephen going back to that guidance I I thought I heard Matt say that that teacher wanted
to stay point8 that guidance counselor you're right Val yeah that at the elementary and that's correct well I don't understand yet what the motion is right maybe we should do this line by line huh yes I agree
we're going to have separate motions for each line okay only a few lines all right and there I want to have an option for people to vote if they don't feel ready to vote on a particular item yet um I guess let's make it clear that a no vote doesn't mean taking it off the table forever just that uh we're not
accepting that proposed cut at this time is it okay if I make a comment or should I wait until there's a motion and then comment it's a general comment if it's a general comment maybe this is the time okay thanks my general comment
is although I am open to considering some of these I'm not happy about it for obvious reasons in addition to sort of process reasons i feel we're now
um I am open to considering these if I feel and believe that we have exhausted all other options and I I I'm not convinced um that all other options non-
studententf facing non-school-based have been exhausted we're still working with sort of this there was like the first set of bad ideas that were really
bad then this was sort of a second round which was these things plus some central administration um I'm not convinced central administration has been exhausted so
that fits into my thinking uh speaking for myself I agree with Carolyn on this at this point the only thing that I would I feel.3 ETF for beep um I really think we need that position the others I would prefer not to decide on yet until maybe
April 10th which is our next meeting but if we're moving them red Andy isn't that the same as moving anything else so we've moved red that it can always be reconsidered there's nothing we would have a higher we would have a higher bar for that I suppose
i mean I think sorry Valet I understand your point um I I guess my sense is like by the letter of the law anything could be reconsidered i'm not sure we've really had that
conversation in terms of the process so it's true anything we do can be overturned at a subsequent meeting by five members so but my feeling has been when we're turning something red that's people should have people should
be able to have confidence in that yeah so I'm not sure what my conclusion is other than maybe Well I'll leave it to Andy well I mean I would rather not take action on things on which there's no real consensus yet on the committee it's a little It's proving hard to discover
what that is at the moment can I Sorry go ahead just a question i'm uncomfortable with pushing some of these off because of two reasons i mean in other words in terms of taking not taking them off the table now reason being that
while it's true that they're potential central office cuts and we should be looking at them and I've personally have asked for them and not gotten them yet I would like to see them and we'd like to see them so there may be opportunities there and we're fully um uh confident
that between now and say midappril those are going to show up if not sooner um and as well we had 19 pages of questions um that Mariah alluded to a couple weeks back we haven't gotten I don't think all the answers to those yet and so there there I believe there are other
opportunities and I'm not sure why there's a connection um Carolyn maybe you can um guide me here as to why we can't take of some of these positions that we're confident are needed to provide service while we're still
working as a committee to handle say central office for example can I proposing that we go line by line and and vote on each one now I would I would I would support that can I put that more strongly i I'm proposing this because I think there's two major risks one is
that if we don't maintain cuts if we don't maintain position if we don't our our proposed cuts to to special education need to be backed by very strong strategic analysis or else one we risk denying FAPE to students which is
very very serious both for the students themselves and for the district legally and two it's fiscally irresponsible in the medium and the long term it may be fiscally strong in the shortest term but we're going to be pushing people into settlements and then they're going to be
pushed out of district and that makes no sense and having a short-term savings to get to the finish line for this year at the cost to the district next year and in subsequent years to me makes no sense and it's fiscally irresponsible and the reason that I'm pushing this now is
because I think it's right both fiscally and for the students themselves what are you talking about so we've already So for special you're talking about special education and we've already we've already taken action on the special education item the rest are not they're in OSS they're not but for items like a
like a district-wide psychologist without an analysis backing the elimination of that position and a description of where the responsibilities of that position are to go in some detail i think it's irresponsible i'm trying to make as strong a case as I can to the rest of the school committee right now for eliminating more lines on this chart
because that's that's my position so I just want you to hear my rationale for it sure and my just to be clear my perspective in what I was saying was not so much to take things off the table but a
potential more sort of willingness to consider to consider them um I would consider the nurse i don't know what the impact is but um so that's what I'm sort of looking at so I think we're I think we're actually saying the same thing i'm
just thinking about action versus taking off the table although taking off the table isn't action but yeah I hear what you're saying you know it's 9:00 and it seems to me maybe we pause on this think about it
and on the rest of of the pieces of this um and and go on to the high school and see what's happening there i would I suggest I um I I respectfully disagree i think that we have we've seen evidence
about what some of these rows represent in terms of um especially from from Matt in terms of right sizing and capacity management and service delivery and so if there are certain rows here that we're we as a committee feel are absolutely
um ready to be taken out of consideration for any reduction we should vote it and and demonstrate I think to the again all the people watching at home you know and and and here uh where we stand so I mean I'm happy to make a motion row by row if that's what you'd
like okay so each of them each motion will be to take an item off the table i.e turn it red um and as we've said we can five votes at a subsequent meeting can overturn anything we do but you know making it red is a kind of moral commitment right none of these really have to have although I I'm not sure why
they're not here maybe they're on another slide what the financial savings or at risk is in terms of if we were to remove what the benefit in terms of reducing our our gap is i don't know nothing is listed in terms I'm sorry
well I know but I'm saying as we're looking it's just like taking a position or taking two or half or a quarter there's no magnitude on anything so it's confusing all right so those who want to make motions um to that effect turning things red uh let's let's have at it then yeah um do you want to I was going
to say that I'm not sure the committee wants to do that maybe we have a vote on whether we're going to Well if no one motion then we don't vote and if it is seconded you can vote it down let me move to remove the first row from consideration seconded psychologist districtwide psychologist
okay and again a no vote on this just means we're not turning it you're voting to not turn it red yet it doesn't mean that we're voting to accept the cut okay so I just have a few questions i mean is I don't know what that amount of
savings is do we assume it's a unit a kind of average 100,000 is that is that what we assume well there is there is no savings if we're not if we're taking it off the table well but the savings so the we need that
information to I I agree with Susan's question did anyone second Jesse's motion on the first line i was motion steven made it and Jesse seconded okay i'm I'm confused because if the let's just say for round numbers
districtwide psychologist $150,000 if we're taking it off the table we're not getting a reduction because we're maintaining it so I don't know that's true but if we if we were to vote it not off the table to keep it yeah we need that information in order
to make a considered dis decision okay all right and so just to be clear a yes vote on this motion means that that item is off the table and a no vote on this means that nothing happens right so we we do have a question on the floor i think this what what are we talking
about so there's a range of non-PTS that would be bumped um and so I would estimate approximately 92,000 and so my other question might be is it possible to have something less than full-time but still have a district-wide
person i mean are we part-time uh point8 i mean I'm just asking because I'm trying to I I understand the nose i understand the shaking of the head but I'm just asking in terms of No no I'm not asking I'm asking Karen
she's our leader here i just want to um clarify there was a point there there was a 0.5 added to psychologists if you did a reduction of
the 0.5 it would have no impact on the current case load so you could reduce by 0.5 and it would have no impact it wouldn't increase the case loads at this point because it's a new ad for next
year okay now I'm confused yeah so that wasn't even in the No it wasn't in her slide that's what we were having a sidebar with this is why we need slides the day before this is late break
sorry we're pausing here while um two of the deputy superintendent confer right so in in the the package that I was given my understanding is that it was a 0.5 request at
FRR and in the that package that was taken off in terms of things that were felt were more enhancement and again not my word but that was what was used i thought that was already taken off so that's why and if it wasn't
okay so then because that was again on the original 21.9 FRR had request well no no the 21 the big in the init the very initial there was a 0.5 FTE request and there was a 1.0 O
requested for of BCBA and there was the 0.1 speech and in the pack that I was given only the 0.1 speech at FRR was remaining the other two had been removed if the college hadn't that five is still
a.5 so I'm just I just want to make sure it hasn't similarly that there isn't just just to clarify Karen if we were to reduce this by 0.5 it would not have an impact on well you would introduce this if
that.5 is still in the in the budget and hadn't been it's separate from all this Susan I I can't hear Susan can you answer this question my recommendation is to table this and
so that we can thank you okay tie things out and confirm whether it's been double counted or not there's confusion between what was already reduced and what isn't so I would just recommend um that we table this until the next um
to confirm whether or not it has been included because the proposals are broken up into different buckets and so it gets a little bit confusing when the people that are putting together the various details um are looking at that and then Okay I withdraw the motion yes
I see no objection to that withdrawal so it is withdrawn um yeah I mean I would prefer to um stop where we are tonight on this maybe I can make a point i mean I think we feel bad about leaving people still
not knowing what's happening but on the other hand we don't want to make decisions that are are not appropriate and so I think I understand it's not easy this is none of this is easy for for all of us um but I think it's wise
move right i would just add um to Helen's point is that um just so the public's aware at least from my point of view this is the first time the school committee seeing this literally is right now with you so in the in and um it's the first time I'm seeing any of
these slides so um so it's um a consideration when the public's looking at the nine of us trying to eight of us trying to um grapple with the information and to make decisions
sort of in real time so I completely agree with Helen in that this does present a bit of a challenge to the whole community because we're pushing it out in time but and I and I agree that given some time to dig into the details
and and think and ponder on this for a short bit we should be able to come back with a much more solid recommendation or response thank you i mean we're we're getting important new information all the time it was a complete surprise to
me that uh we could realize $417,000 worth of savings from what had been the the out of district uh tuition line can I just ask for bookkeeping purposes um roughly can we estimate the the cost of the of the what we what we
did not accept in the ALC reduction and the potential total cost of the remaining special education uh proposals is there are you asking from the original uh from what from what
was presented tonight what the cost because we have we're we're trying tally um what the cost of the cuts removed are and what the cost of the pending items are can we can we get just a rough estimate of what there is sure and just
for point of clarification these were presented two weeks ago when I presented i said just for a point of clarification this was presented two weeks ago when I'm presenting and again they're very detailed so yes you need time to really
consider everything carefully but and certainly any clarifying piece you know we can clarify the 0.5 and again make sure we haven't double counted like it's sort of again like the bright thing that it hasn't been taken
twice um because that's really important information in terms of being able to make any decision because that will obviously change you know some of these and it would be helpful um and hopefully it doesn't create too
much work although there's obviously the real value the the the the meaning value of all of this um I agree with Suzanne it would it would be helpful just to the
dollar amount throw a dollar amount column in there thanks absolutely all right thank you Dr schmuckler we're not done you're not done oh what what's left oh Scott no I are they quick all right so
okay so in [Laughter] terms So in terms of and we spoke a little bit about this obviously um there are three areas well two we currently get where we receive revenue that's circuit breaker and Medicaid uh we
working with um again Joan Tanetta looks at Medicaid um and maximizing we're currently not fully maximizing our Medicaid so we're working really hard with our teams to make sure that we are uh maximizing that and then obviously
maximizing circuit breaker um as you can see that's a big portion of what funds um tuition what does it mean to maximize that I thought it was just a formula that's in terms of Medicaid uh in terms of a circuit breaker the circuit breaker you can the the state has certain
requirements as to how IEPs are written in order to be able to claim and so just writing one something a specific way might mean that it doesn't meet the requirements for a circuit breaker claim and you can't claim it so really looking
at what those are and making sure our IEPs are written so that we maximizing the ability to claim is that only for indist out of district or for both both okay both um but largely that piece around more that like micro claiming is
on indistrict students that's right yeah yeah have you been looking at um Medicaid with respect to federal government potential impacts right now i mean we haven't yet just in terms of whether we're even going to have that
ability to claim yeah not no we've again just been looking at just how many um how many people were able we're able to look at in terms of Medicaid and making sure that we're doing the work to maximize that okay thank you and then as you heard last last week in terms of
tuition in we're already in the process of doing the paperwork for Winthre House for the middle school program um and and again as we know we're going to have capacity for a number of years in the ALC and so really looking at that obviously with the ALC team in
collaboration in terms of looking at that in terms of three revenue streams and then the last any questions um so in terms of the tuition in and I love that you're moving so quickly on this um and sharing our amazing programs
um with others are are you talking about like potentially this would be revenue for FY26 that we could hear about in the next few weeks and the work on Winthrop House was done by Sarah Ladner Paul it certainly wasn't done by me but I have had experience in districts of
tuitioning in in terms of just you know how it works and can you give us any sense or you don't want to say yet like any sense of what those numbers would potentially be um so really you look at what sort of the program costs and then
there's sort of a formula that Desi gives as sort of a guideline um so you could tuition in sometimes anywhere between 30 to $60,000 depending on the true cost of the program karen do we currently um have eligible
families signed for Medicaid yes okay yes but we have eligible families where we're not able to bill and so that's the piece in terms of doing sort of that just extra work extra outreach okay thank
you and then lastly my recommendations one more and then I'm done um so one of the recommendations as as many of you know and as you've seen in the type of um volatility and certainly other towns and cities and districts
have this and this would be done with our town and school partnership is to establish an education stabilization fund again for the very purpose of unanticipated or unbudgeted costs um and that is part of you know section 24 of
the act of 2016 it's something to consider um in terms of that partnership in terms of just um sort of the out of district piece um really just recommending and and we're already working with the team around monthly OSS
calibration meetings in terms of just making sure that tuition again because of all the changes just keeping um doing that work in ongoing in real time and then monthly meetings between OSS and OAF we need to make that we have point
in time OD count and budget and then obviously dynamic budget pro projections and adjustments throughout the year because things change so rapidly and then I would also recommend and again this is just past practice a monthly report to school committee so that
you're able to kind of track on a number of levels um where things are in terms of um OSS not just tuition par profofessionals sort of all the work uh that we're not just on the money side but also on the outcome side and sort of just the
gestalt of um you heard from Matt some of those tracking pieces around all the work that we're doing and now I'm done so this education stab stabilization fund is a very interesting piece that we haven't had up until now and that's why
we've had to have some reserves not always covering everything um other towns do it but what do they fund it with um in general it's funded through the town
appropriation appropriation yeah but okay yeah it'll come off the top and so we're paying for it but it it does cushion and again in partnership with the town sort of for all these unanticipated things that
offer you know have such an impact on budget and then obviously impact the town school um piece so it's just something to think about well I mean I think other towns when they have a high-cost student that moves in that you know needs a private
placement often time go for a reserve fund transfer we don't do that right um so the question becomes how do you Yeah and so that the mechanism where that's sort of part of the process and it has to be decided in partnership so yeah I
will say that the um that was a recommendation or not a recommendation there was a recommendation to consider um made by BAC which was a study that was done a few years ago i I just happened to have gone through it recently so one of their slides specific
to schools revenue allocation mechanisms for town school partnership number eight consider whether the establishment of a reserve for unanticipated special education costs is needed and or appropriate so um definitely been been
floated all right thank you Dr schmoker um all right so it's already 9:25 uh Dr gillery the the other two items we were going to take up tonight were information technology and Brooklyn Adult and Community Education um how long do you
think those would take because I'm thinking about our next meeting on April 10th um currently what I have for that one uh would be revisiting the building department revisiting BHS revisiting curriculum coordinators um and we have some unfinished business from the
segment just now um would it make sense to push this push the remaining items off until then as well we should be able to take I believe we should be able to take uh it up that's um and we'll realize some
savings there and then Dr fortuna will let me know about base andy is it possible to consider a meeting for next week um we could consider it i don't know how whether we could actually schedule one for next Thursday on such short notice i
think people have things going on yeah and and Betsy is telling me that BIG wouldn't be available for next Thursday all right so next we have information technologies says Scott Moore so I'm actually going to introduce Scott let
you know that the cuts that you're going to see tonight are in addition to the some of the cuts that were made in the $400,000 cuts that you've already accepted so these are in addition over and above that um so Scott at least I
believe you've already accepted them perhaps you haven't um Scott will um be presenting on things that are within his portfolio not the entire um expanse of subscriptions but things that are within his portfolio
just a question then Jody is that is what else does subscriptions what what else is in the portfolio that's yeah so um I believe I sent a white paper or a briefing to uh you all about subscriptions in the district and
to try to give a sense of the depth of what subscriptions do and um so the big broad categories of subscriptions is that um one level of subscriptions is systemwide platforms we have a student
information management system that helps basically do scheduling and report cards and all that that's a subscription service and without that you you can't run the school district that's probably like the foundation of how of um of that
management system and so and in my propos in my white paper I said in those categories those things are hard to cut um so we have a bunch of systemwide platforms uh I will be mentioning some that I think we can cut uh in that
category then also within subscriptions the there's curriculum and assessment tools that are used throughout the district and um those are usually done by curriculum adoptions it used to buy you used to buy a whole bunch of textbooks now it's a subscription
service and as long as you have that curriculum and or those assessment tools you're subscribing to that service those two are hard to cut without um uh without changing curriculum the third area that I mentioned in in my
briefing was edtech management tools i'm calling them edtech management tools or technology management tools um I work really closely with the town CIO um on we they're technically IT and I'm ET um
but for all practical purposes together we're technology and um so in the work that I do we have some technology management tools that help us to do that work data interoperability tools that make tools talk to each other license
costs things behind the scene that allow us to um or my department to function efficiently with the staffing that we have you take many of those things away and then you're relying on people to do those processes they're not as efficient they're not as accurate they make
mistakes the technology system approach is stronger so we have tools in that category um and those are hard to cut as well um then in my role as director of educational technology and libraries
um and with the support of the technology plan that this committee in 2015 helped um support and the subsequent technology override of 2015 helped support it we have a collection
of tools to support learning um in the classroom and we also have a collection of highquality content uh in databases through our library system and both of those things came out of that technology plan and um uh so and we've been
operating under that technology plan both fun as well as myself school uh it we've been operating under that technology plan and what was created in there for the last 10 years and for the most part you have not heard about any
technology requests because of that work that was done 10 years ago and I bring that up because there's probably a lot not a lot of things that haven't asked for things in over 10 years or whatever right so um but that's um to the degree
of which kind of thoughtful um proactive approach that we tried to take with technology after that the the technology technology plan at that time was designed to really address structural flaws that we were not able to do up
until that time and since that time we're doing it I think we're doing it well now using that in fact there have been some cuts to it but we're still managing but there have been some cuts since that 2015 um so there were edtech library to edtech learning tools and library tools
and then within my budget as well there's some assisted technology tools that um we kind of co-support with the assisted technology team because of the overlap with technology and uh so I think that kind of summarizes a lot of the subscription services that are in
play in the district so what I'm presenting today tonight tonight is um a followup to that briefing report that I sent you guys and with with thoughtful places that I
believe that we can cut um they're sensible cuts um they're survivable cuts um and um uh and I hope that you will you will accept them and I add another line add
another red bar to your list um so what they are is so plus right now we are a Google Workspace for Education Schools district we do not pay for that um since Google has developed a lot more they're
starting to have tiers of services and you for $36,000 you could be at or we could be at the Google Plus service tier which provides a lot of their newer features and a lot of their more robust tools and things that we could leverage in uh in
Brookline u are part of that Google+ so I put in a request that was a new request at the time we are withdrawing that request so that request is not going forward for a savings of $36,000 out of out of next year's budget
proposal um the next item is Zoom licensing uh during the pandemic we added Zoom licensing very popular right we're people are zooming in now um a lot of people are still using Zoom um but the the degree of our licensing we can
scale that back so I'm proposing a scale back in our current Zoom licensing uh we have other tools that people can use as well we have Google Meet that would should suffice for a lot of uses um so we have that and also people will still
be able to use Google as a or um Zoom as a basic um meeting which just means that they're limited to 40 minutes but that also could be used so by just scaling back we'll still have a collection of licenses to distribute for specialty
purposes and certain needs and I think those needs still exist in the district but we don't need to be at our current level so I put that as a as a savings of about $20,000 what What's the total What's the total of what we pay right now about 33,000 oh okay so it's okay 32
or something like that all right okay i get it so I'm comfortable with that number i'm still working with the vendor on what those n numbers will be but I believe that that 20 is is free and clear and the need for is it okay to ask a clarifying on that one Andy oh okay
thank So the need for full like multi-hour Zoom sessions and something like that intersects with what percentage of the user base in other words is 20,000 enough what if you made it 28,000 for example i think I think Oh oh you mean Yeah yeah yeah i'm saying
like at what level in the organization or across which parts of the this is 4K to 12 right that you're for this is yes for this whole all zoom licensing there's a couple like you guys I think these meetings are using a a zoom government account for this meeting or
whatever but for uh our day-to-day use I've been covering that in in the Zoom uh in the Zoom licensing that we have um I believe at that $20,000 cut what we would probably have is about a 100 licenses right now we
have a thousand licenses um with a 100 licenses that we could distribute to meet those needs but people just have to demonstrate why some of the other tools aren't available or or don't work for them right so a say a uh classroom
teacher who is going to have a uh a halfhour um parent conference and do it over Zoom zoom basic should work right right so they don't need an advanced license so Um the next um item is Seessaw seesaw is
a learning platform that we brought in during the pandemic as a K2 um learning system um because the pandemic is over uh usage is very different now than it was then so I'm arguing that it served
its time for us and although it is used in pred predominantly and very excitingly by preK teachers as a communication tool um additional use in K1 and two is a little bit more mixed
and uh we also have other ways that we can support some of their same needs with other alternative tools that we have so I think we can confidently get rid um discontinue the seesaw service for a savings of
$14,775 now these prices are my existing prices th those are the numbers I paid this year for those for these tools uh the next tool is um and I would put those all those first three were all in systemwide kind of platforms that's
where they originally appeared in the in the report that I sent you um uh pair deck is would be in the collection of edtech learning tools that too was a tool that we added during the pandemic um it helps make slideshows and
things interactive for students which was important when you were doing remote and hybrid learning um usage yeartoyear since the pandemic has been coming down steadily there's still some power users it's a much smaller number um so I don't
think it justifies having a whole sitewide subscription in order to support that um and anything that anybody has done to date in pair will still work they just without a professional license to pair you can't
design new pairs uh so uh and we have some other other tools like I said that we can work with people on uh to to do some of those same needs so that would be a savings of $16,875 yes I sure I can stop and answer perk so
um because I know a teacher who who uses perk and I assume likes it so you're saying that teacher would still have access to anything they've created yeah so uh recently I was reviewing usage and it was and it was just it was
interesting there was somebody who hadn't even signed into pair but was showing student interactions on pairex that they had designed or whatever this month and all year yet they hadn't signed in since like September okay right so you're like and I suspect that
that's because they built that pair deck into like a canvas module and then each year they carry some of that work forward okay um so yes there'll be there'll be some people who will be like I need that license and I think in that case they can probably talk to their
department head we would still allow them to be licensed we're just not covering a license broadly and that was kind of my other question like so it's not completely out of the question it just might be yeah i'm very this is a little sidebar i'm in in my work and
especially when you're trying to innovate and have uh new adoptions whatever uh you need to be kind of we need to be committed to those new adoptions because people do not like it when you turn them on to something and
then you rip it away so but sometimes things change at the same time so my team is regularly like "Oh you're right that tool is being retired not by us it could be being retired by the company and everyone's like "Oh my god I love that tool." You're like "What do we do
now?" My to my team is constantly being like "What is the tool that would the next tool that would support a similar function in a similar way that we could use some of those are free some of them cost or whatever." And that's what I meant about that portfolio right sometimes we're adjusting things within
that portfolio to try to still meet the needs but we're still operating within those costs of that portfolio these will reduce my portfolio in in cost these are real savings but it basically will bring me back uh to about prepandemic levels
and I think it's time right so uh that was the World Book oh so the World Book Encyclopedia would be the next one it's one of the things in our library database it's loved but we have more than one electronic encyclopedia because the state provides us access to another
one Encyclopedia Bratannica so under the circumstances and we we don't need to keep two so um now of course there is some stuff going on with the federal government and library and um some you
know funding things that might hit libraries and u museums so there's a little anxiety like what happens if the state doesn't cover that but if that happens we'll deal with that when that comes okay um and then there are some
additional uh OTL requests um that Jod and I just talked about and she said those should also they those are are not going to go forward so there was I think $6,000 of of some additional things which adds up to just over $100,000 of
additional savings helen it looks like yes you um so I'm remembering back and I Helen could you just speak closer to the mic i'm sorry i'm rem rememberh remember remembering back pre- pandemic when
PTO's were paying for sub subscriptions and there were all you know there were all these people coming to us at that time saying oh we have to have this prescription subscription we have to have that one by doing any of these are we going to start that process again the
PTO's are going to end up paying for it and then we're back where we are uh there is a little bit of PTO Oh contribution stuff still happening but not nearly what it was at that time right um so these
uh I like I don't I wouldn't imagine on on these that the PTO would be looking to supplement any of those those things or feeling like they were like "Oh we need to do this now because you know my teacher doesn't have a Zoom license." I
don't think that's going to happen uh Steve Stephen thanks for this i'll miss Seesaw um what's our edtech software and capacity readiness if there's another uh need to
work uh to to to do school with a hybrid model or remotely for an extended period of time so um I we would in we're in good shape right i and in fact the the tech plan that we had
really helped us to be where we were when it happened and we were able like where there were people who were like we don't even have enough devices we need to start ordering them and there were whole supply chain things we had stuff and we were able to do it some of these
additional items that we're removing now were added to help simplify that and maybe some of those things would we'd probably have to have Zoom licensing go back up whatever right uh if if that was to happen uh and maybe we would need a bringing back of pair deck or something
just because it's more remote but uh I think those chances are slim I don't think there's a lot of of verve to to see that again even if we did go into a pandemic situation I I think um there's such trauma from the first one um so I
think we can successfully make these cuts and I trust that and you guys have proven it already that when those situations come we adjust and that's what a lot of these were these were adjustments that were made during that
time to make the difficult situation even better or as best as it could be during uh under the circumstances um and now it's time for us to give that back thanks i'm happy to move these cuts is there a second yes thanks Jesse any
further comment all right let's start with Carolyn yes ellen yes suzanne yes steven yes sarah yes jesse yes val yes and I vote yes as well thank you very much Mr mor thank
you all right all right the one remaining item was uh Brookline Adult and Community Education and I'm told my mic just uh nope I think it's back on uh I'm told that staff are all right if we push that
to u to April 10th so let's do that because it's already um 9:45 um all right our next item is subcommittee and liaison reports anyone have problems if we don't do those all right new business any I do have a quick new business okay
it's administrative i had emailed I think maybe you and Andy Betsy about this um I believe we're scheduled for April 17th um technically I think that's school
vacation after well because the 18th is school vacation so for me after school on the 17th is the beginning of school vacation well it is and um I have long-standing
travel plans because it's school vacation so I'm hoping we could um maybe poll about doing that um on an alternate day i have surgery that day Carolyn so I'm happy to not have a meeting that day yeah i mean we may not need a meeting
that week because we're meeting on the 10th um Okay right so let let's it may not even be an issue okay all right any other new business no oh yes
i was I was keeping track in a spreadsheet that I got a copy of from Mariah earlier today so I just wanted to read back what at least what my total is so across the three uh reductions hopefully this is close to yours Stephen uh are um $769,742 which brings the 3675 that we
had before down to 2905481 that matches okay yeah 2,95,481 so we're under 3 million and All right a lot of work yes thank you all right i think we're adjourned thank you everybody Part: 2
[Music] [Music] hello and welc welcome to kids these days I'm unu and I will be your host for today's show we have many acts planned for you so stick around some performances include music skits and
even improv games to start us off we'll have Maddie and Izzy playing the banjo and Fiddle take it away
[Music] [Music]
got's AEK able Creek have some fun going able Creek going a world going able Creek [Music]
girl CRI Creeks wide and crib Creeks deep CRI Creek when I sleep roll my pants up to my knees in going AEK going a creek fun going a creek
going [Music] thank you Izzy and Maddie now we have a
PSA [Music] un the [Music] now we have an interview with a very special guest sardan would you like to introduce yourself yeah thank you um my
name is sardan and I go to BHS I'm 15 and I'm in 10th grade um I write a lot and I also like to do like things in the Arts so what was your previous experience in Middle School like um my
experience in middle school was like very like interesting it was like a lot of um work like they would give us a lot of busy work that didn't really like teach us that much we just had to do lots of practice and then there was like a lot of I would say like outside of middle school stuff that happened like
dramas and stuff like that that like made the stakes higher than they needed to be if you had a second chance to go through Middle School what would you have done differently um I think I would have worried less um I worried a lot in
middle school because I was like well if I do this wrong and this wrong like it's going to mess up like everything that happens to me in high school and like I really took all my grades and stuff seriously um I think you should take your grades seriously in middle school but I also think that you should like
remember that it only like how you do in middle school mostly eighth grade is when it starts to affect your like high school life like if you do really good in eighth grade like you will be set up for success in high school if you could Outlaw any rule in
school what would it be um I would outlaw maybe like um that tardy's ad up to absences I think that's ridiculous like some people just like can't get to school on time every single day because the like outside factors
that they can't control and like it's like kind of unfair one final question what advice do you have for middle schoolers um my advice is to like kind of like I would say like Branch out and
meet as many people as you can but um don't let what like new people that you meet say that if it's negative don't let that like affect you in a bad way because like you won't remember this in a couple years you just need to like um
like utilize every opportunity you can like if there's a new club join it if there's like a after school program do it thank you sardan now we have a viola performance by Justin in [Music]
that was fantastic now we have an break so don't go anywhere own back abuse or support this message and interested and now we have an improv game called the bell game in this game Katherine and
La will be doing an improv scene but if the Bell gets rung they'll have to change what they just said into something completely different take it away hello everyone and uh first of all we'll start off by asking the audience for a hobby now will anyone be willing
to volunteer uh anyone can't see uh yes you in the back dancing well we'll start off with dancing well so I was just walking down the street someday and I saw a dancing studio and I thought it'd be a great
place because my cat and I have been really into it lately that is awesome I I just have one thing to tell you you see this this other dance you down the street and they're also really good but they only allow dogs they only allow um bigger cats they only allow fish and you
see the fish that there are super good and they would be really beneficial for you but your cat I don't know my cat's fancy it's a tuxedo cat uh it's a orange tabby it's a Siamese cat it's a bobc cat
that's great no except you know cat eat fish just saying H maybe um they will out skill the fish uh maybe they'll uh submit themselves to the fish Maybe um they
will leave the fish alone I don't think that's happening i' I've seen your cat we we you realize I've seen your cat before it ate five fish under 10 seconds I don't know how that's possible uh that's because um it was uh
stuck in a dragon's dungeon I couldn't find food uh that's because um it lost um all the cans of cat food that's because it was running down the street because it was scared cuz it was being chased by a
fish you mean my fish my fish does have a really liking for cats it's very delicious which is why I'm scared that you which is why I'm scared for your cat is your uh fish a genetic mutation due to radioactive
waste yeah kind of but it it's a long story it's a long story it's not really that long of a story I'm just lazy I don't feel like telling you well why not because gatekeeping uh what does that have to do
is your fish a royal guard okay so basically your cat does not like my fish so we can't be friends goodbye whoa that was awesome now we have a quick break
[Music] [Music] over the years climate change has been affecting our planet so many things have happened like in the 1800s climate change has had a big impact on not just
the us but the entire planet as a whole would you believe in the past 32 years the temperature has risen 49% to add on in the past 45 years I covering the Atlantic has shrunk 40% [Music]
[Music] one go there are multiple organizations that fight against climate change such as save our Winters who are snowboarders That Couldn't snowboard because of the lack of snow this has all happened because of climate change you can help
prevent this from happening by taking bikes or walking to locations you need to go you can also help by using less fossil fuel such as coal natural gases and [Music]
oil next up we have a reenactment of the second Prophecy from Wings of Fire this act will be performed by Haley go ahead Haley hi I'm MO and welcome to my play there's a continent called peria
dragons receive prophecies on puia and I recite one of them beware the darkness of dragons beware the stalker of Dreams beware the talons of power and fire
bewar one who's not what she seems something is coming to shake the years something is time to Scorch the ground Jade Mountain will fall beneath Thunder and Ice unless the lost city of night can be
found that was a great skit by Haley now we have a quick ad Break um I'm sure glad my great grandpa made this base nuclear attacks are dangerous according to the bulletin of atomic scientists the Earth is on brink
of atomic disasters radiation from the nuclear attacks is dangerous to humans and the climate thermal flashes can ignite fires the explosion can be devastating destroying everything up to within a 6 kilometer
radius my great grandpa passed down generations of facts about nuclear fallout shelters the nuclear fallout shelters can protect from the most harmful effects of nuclear explosions how to find a fallout shelter
you near you you go to fallout.com falloutshelter list SL Boston slash now I'm interviewing Olivia a sixth grade from Pierce hi Olivia how are you
I'm good thank you so has anything interesting been happening these past few weeks well yes actually Brookline is millions of dollars in debt and that's sad for the rest of us and what why is that
sad well you see my school is in a budget freeze so they are like cutting so many of the great things that make the kids happy but they didn't cut Science Social Studies
English or math I also hear there's been a renovation going on in the actual Pierce building do you want to talk to us about that sure yes there actually has been a renovation going
on um I'm really excited for the kids who get to um go to the new school when it's finished in a couple of years but that sucks for the rest of us because we have to be dumped at other schools for the rest of Middle School oh by the way what happened to
your leg there oh yeah it's really a long story but if you must know it was a dark and stormy night I was walking home innocently from school and it attacked me huge yellow
eyes big green teeth huge blue ears and a gigantic forehead with no hairline it was a Lucas it Leed on to me it went for my leg you see it broke in many places
very traumatic experience when I went to the doctor it had said it was the worst case yet crazy story is there anything else happening at Pierce
no well thank you for joining us Olivia we're so happy that everyone came to see these talented people in their performances that's all for kids these days bye [Music] [Music] the