okay we're now recording um this is a meeting of the Brookline um school committee Finance subcommittee um and simultaneously a meeting of the full Brookline school committee both meetings were publicly posted and there's a quorum for both bodies um so they are
meeting simultaneously uh Mariah noga is the chair of the finance subcommittee and she will be chairing both meetings and I'll turn it over to you Mariah thank you um welcome to the March 5th 2025 Finance subcommittee of the Brooklyn school committee which is a concurrent meeting of the school
committee um we have several items on the agenda related to the FY 26 budget development um I'm just going to pull up the agenda so I have it for myself handy um so the first thing we're going to do
is continued um discussion of um strategies to increase revenues and contain costs we have several more questions that have come from the school committee to staff and we're going to go through those I'll preview the um those questions are
um apologies as I'm they are what is the level service um budget for FY 26 and so Susan will walk us through that um and then there was two questions from last week that we um did not get the chance to do have answers for last week so that
was to provide detail on the $400,000 in proposed services and supplies cuts and to um to explain what is the um what would be included in the 400,000 that is proposed in cuts to the building department um and then in addition I
believe we have some more detail on the question that we got some answers from last week but not completely on the outof District transportation um so we'll we'll talk about those then and I'll just preview the rest of this then
um there is a proposed um uh vote on reductions and revenue increases um based on what was already presented to the committee we we'll pull that up before we do public comment just so that the public can comment on that as well but we won't discuss it then we'll go to
public comment um and then we will um do a possible vote on the um slate and it there might be amendments to the Slate there might be of course any changes to that but that way the public has the opportunity to have that before they comment and that's our plan for this
evening so um without further Ado I'm going to tr can I ask a question on that of course go ahead than um so I'm not sure that I'm
comfortable voting on any Cuts before we discuss the FY 26 editions and I haven't had a chance to look at them because they were sent at 2:30 and I'm driving now um well we have a chance to to discuss the whatever it was like two
plus million that was added before we cut I think maybe you're confused about what you've received because there was no the Slate is the thing that you received like two days ago no I'm not talking about that I'm talking about what was sent at as a level service and
then the plus two million of additions that were put into the budget and itemized just at 230 so you're I see what you're saying let's you're saying you might want to remove some of the things that were the
additions right I I mean I haven't had a chance to look at them but I'd like to discuss why we're add but why we'd be cutting or looking at cutting before we look at what was added sure that was and we can talk about all of that at our discuss want to make sure that we're gonna talk about it oh yeah oh yeah yeah
yeah you'll get the chance to do all that talking and and we'll have the chance to like I'm thinking the level service question is going to take up quite a bit of time um Andy and then Stephen um yeah could I just ask a question to clarify so any vote taken today by the
subcommittee would just be a vote to recommend a slate to the full school committee but it it doesn't lock in anything right correct okay correct Stephen thanks Mariah I continue to be confused about the process by which we are getting questions answered
from the administration about budget related questions we submitted well I understand from several school committee meetings ago that we were to submit questions to you who Consolidated them and then submitted them on to PSB to date I don't think they've been answered
in any way whatsoever let alone a comprehensive way it looks like part of the agenda for this meeting is to answer some of those questions but not all of those questions I just want to I'm not asking I just want to understand does this meeting attempt to answer some of
those questions and then put the rest of those questions on for a later docketed agenda item perhaps tomorrow where are we in this process and the reason I'm asking this is because I want to understand what this is in fulfillment of so there was something like 19 pages
of questions submitted I tried to distill some of them into that were sort of common themes or big picture questions you all received the link to that document and the big picture questions are on that first page in addition to the questions that came from
the initial budget request there were some additional questions from the committee came from the first list of the $8 million in Cuts I added those questions as well so if you go back to that document you'll see I've noted of the Six Original questions that I boiled
from the 19 Pages two were answered last week two are proposed or three are proposed for today um we're chipping away at it Susan I will let Susan talk about timeline of when she'll be able to get through some of the other stuff but I believe she was thinking about taking
it as an FAQ approach but she's but she I'll let Susan answer on okay so so part of this meeting will be a discussion of where we are in the process and how questions will be answered well we're going through that I mean this is the this is a meeting where we are answering questions that were in that document and I think I'm not sure if we're going to
have enough time to sort of talk about when we will exactly answer all of those things but maybe Susan wants I don't know if Susan you're prepared to answer when we would be able to get the answers to the other questions in the document or not
I don't want to put you on the spot though so you know if you're not prepared for that we can get there thanks Maria sure happy to uh provide some insight uh so tonight we're gonna address these tomorrow you'll get
a list of uh some of the responses to the FAQ so we're trying to chunk it we recognize that you're you're interested in like really receiving as much information as possible um and so we've kind of course kind of course corrected
I guess uh since there's so many questions this year um we want to make sure that we have meaningful conversation about what's in there um but there's no way to have meaningful conversations about everything so we're going to talk about these items tonight
and then we're going to send you a batch of FAQ answers tomorrow with some more information including class siiz information that folks have been asking for both for current year as well as um um next year's uh uh
enrollment um using this next year's enrollment data so you'll get that tomorrow um and then we'll we'll just keep chunking them and then sending batches of FAQs out um so that you should be getting some in a regular basis and we'll just try to give you as
much as we can and not wait until we get um you know all of them answered so you can kind of digest it a little bit at a time that makes sense yeah okay thank you and so Mariah you were saying that the Consolidated list
has answers on a document right now from what has been responded the answers are on our meeting materials Pages because all the materials have been presented but the questions that have been boiled are on that first page of the Consolidated list of questions the questions yes but were you saying that
the answers that have been delivered have been Consolidated as well no I haven't put like links to the specific materials or anything we could do that I've said the that they've been answered but we're also like I'll say that the level service question is being answered it was answered like very broadly or
like we're getting the right answer today I'll say the more the one you were expecting I think today and then there's some information provided on Transportation last week more provided on Transportation this week so I'll I'll try and do that but for people who are attending the meetings and I think you're at last meeting you'll see like
when these answers are coming through I'm just trying to juggle it all you yeah I appreciate it I appreciate it Mariah yeah thanks Carolyn and then we'll go to Susan for the discussion on level service budget thanks um I have a sort of similar thing I want to say um
as Stephen just said with respect to the process um and I just have to say it like it's my job to have to say it out loud so I'm frustrated and perplexed maybe naive but I don't think so about this process partly because it it it it
seems so cumbersome and I'm I'm not understanding why it's so cumbersome this process of emailing questions and then things are prepared in writing which I would imagine is time consuming what I don't understand is I'll just
take as an example on the level service budget document we just got stiens extra comp the FY 26 initial budget request is 1, 15922 $1
13 based on the specificity of that number I can only imagine that somewhere there's a backend there are inputs that when someone says what are the stiens what's the extra comp that
that could just be either discussed in dialogue by somebody who has the information in front of them on a computer or that we could have access to that backend information and this
process of emailing questions and waiting for a meeting um we waited three weeks between full school committee meetings since the budget was presented just seems really cumbersome and I think it's adding to frustration so that's one
statement I wish that could be done differently and then just as far as what we do later in terms of voting um and I guess we'll talk about this later like I can see myself being
willing to vote on things to take off of the cuts list for example raising the materials fee to $8,000 but without the full scope of what's on the table and a balanced
budget I'm not prepared to vote to I hope that voting to take something off the C cut list doesn't imply that I accept the other cuts that are on the the thing you sent out the other
day well we'll talk about it because we don't have to do those cuts it's a proposal and we can have different amendments to votes without further Ado any more comments or can we move to Susan's presentation I guess a followup to what you just said so is what you're
proposing that we're going to be voting on later this document or specific line items of the document my proposal was a slate and then we can amend the Slate so if you say I only want to vote for these things that's fine we just we can vote for whatever we what we can vote for
whatever we feel like voting for to recommend to the full committee so if you want to say no I only want to recommend you know for example to remove materials for or whatever other things you want to that's fine we'll have that conversation but let's do the rest of the presentation so we can get to the fun which is the
conversation so go ahead Susan okay Bet say can you uh put up the level service budget document yeah as as Betsy is doing that I thought you know it might be important to start off by
providing a definition of level service because as I've heard the term used it's not used in a consistent way um but there is an actual definition of what level service is so what level Services is the cost of
operations um that are necessary to maintain the same level of service in the next fiscal year that we're providing uh to students in this fiscal year so as we all know we've had this conversation that enrollments change and
so we're not going to provide the same uh we're going to provide the same level of services to the student population in 26 as we would for the students in 25 so I just want to make sure because I I have heard people say uh things like uh
um refer to level Services being level funded and level funded just simply means that you're funding at the same level as the prior year uh so they're two different things and I just want to make sure before I walk through this that um people understand what that
definition is um to provide context uh for uh the information that's before you so first I'm going to just kind of you do Susan Betsy can you make it so that we can see the bottom of the document too it's important I think the whole thing fit on the page let me
sorry thank you sorry go ahead Susan okay can you can everybody see it I think a little bit bigger let me make it full full yeah I'll do that right now
thank you I think you can keep going at the same time Susan if you like okay all right so in the First Column is the FY 25 budget so the question is how much does the
budget grow from 25 to the 26 budget if we're just providing a level service program no enhancements in other words no new things um so the the next column which is um number
three um that is just simply the difference right the difference between 25 and 26 um the next column that you're that's in the table is what are the new requests and um and then if uh we you
know we we can talk through that I give you a sheet um that that ties out to each one of these lines these accounts so you can then drill down and see what is included um in the
94,5 69 in professional staff that's new um and then the last column of uh the the table is just the initial budget so the initial budget is is what was in your budget book so the First Column and
the last column are information that's in your budget book and the middle columns um our information about level service and what's new so I I just thought that you know I can give you the level service budget but then I I knew that you would ask me so then what's new
so I figured um I tried to do it in this way I know that it's a lot of information um I know it's uh taken a a little while for us to uh collapse and combine U this in a way that's digestible so hopefully this is helpful
to you so so um as we go um through and I'm not sure what what is most helpful so let me just share the documents that that kind of um are part of this level service presentation one is just this
table here and we can talk about um the lines that are there uh there's a second document that are the budget drivers I saw a lot of questions about what's driving the budget and um uh the level service budget what components people
that they had some confusion about like what's structural um what in the FY 25 budget as we know we're o we're overspent in a number of categories um and so as we approach FY 26 we have to account for uh the costs uh that are in
25 that are now being funded through one-time resources Andor that we have cut back on spending or Frozen uh positions and such that in FY 26 are are then um you know available for for full
funding so I wanted to I I thought as I was reading through the questions and listening at the meetings that uh that was of high interest to most of you and so the second document are the drivers of the level service budget um also
included in the pack is is a list of what is new um and uh by account as I said and um uh in in you know uh Det detail and then the last document that was uh sent to you is the special
education transportation and folks wanted to better understand uh what's driving you know the increase there as as most of you know last year um we had a big um increase to that line and then we went out to bid and we got much
better pricing which then drove that down and so why is the number up again I think that's really the um you know the question that's in in in the front of people's minds so uh Diane's here with us uh this evening and she's going to
walk you through um uh special education Transportation um and what's behind the numbers and you know what's uh what's kind of driving those increases so you can see that so those are the four components of the information that I have for tonight and I want to make sure
that I spend um a proper amount of time for each of you um to to understand the information of course um I'm sure you'll have follow-up questions and that's fine too and then the last thing I want to say just in terms of um context is that um and I didn't have
time to finish this piece of it but I'm I'm going um through each line that you see here and I'm going to give you notes about what is what the increase is related to because when you do it by line it's not the same as like what are the budget drivers right the budget
drivers influence Ence many of the lines right and so um I'm trying to give it to you in as many views as I can not to confuse you but I know that um all Learners um uh you know uh start to process information and one format will
resonate with somebody and another format will resonate with someone else so I hope that you find this information helpful so with all of that in in mind um I I I can walk through the numbers of course the level service budget um all
in is uh uh 10,886 uh and no 10,886 571 and we can look at the budget drivers um for that um I'm not sure if you want me to just pause and let people
maybe ask I think it would be helpful if you give the story of what this is telling us you know I think the budget drivers that that's why I I what I was going to say Susan is that um I'm going to ask the committee to let you go unless you have a question which is like
clarifying because you didn't hear something right or something like that let's let Susan go through and talk about the budget drivers document which ties to column three here um she's got the the new requests which ties to column five here and let's let her talk
through those things and get to the end of it and then we can ask our question so Jesse if your hand is a clarification that that's fine but if it's not a clarification then let's hold any questions until Susan has been able to sort of as S as Helen has said tell the story of all the different content that
you're seeing here I guess my question is that regardless of which budget drivers were told I'm struggling with the 10,886 th000 because it's greater than the $8 million that we s we thought we had a gap in the last meeting and so I'm
wondering how it's possible 8 million is a net is The Net 10 million doesn't include the increased revenues well proposed revenues right it's level service so I mean wouldn't we just be getting the same Revenue we got this year to cover
something or we revenues aren't the same thing so the town is giving us revenues which have nothing to do with the level service budget that's right so if you look in your budget document and this number perhaps will ring a bell budget itself
has increased by 13,469 198 that's what our expense side budget has increased by okay and so if you add the level service budget to the enhancements right that the increase is
13,46 998 okay that doesn't mean that's what we're cutting but when you ask to do a level service budget that's different than how much money um our budget Gap is those are two different
numbers Susan why don't you go ahead and continue with the the presentation of the drivers of that's based on the the detail of column three and then we can did everybody understand first of all I just want to make sure I don't want to
leave does everybody understand that the budget increased by 13 million and but the Gap is 8.2 million because we got additional Revenue I think we I think that right can I just Jesse I think to clarify your what you're asking it would
be like a $5 million gap if we did level Services is that accurate Susan what would the Gap be if we applied the revenue is that what you're asking yeah so 2 million less right exactly $2 million less than the8
million two million less than the8 million is that what you just said Susan so right so if you take out I want to make sure I'm answering the question so the Gap right now is 8.2 million and it includes all the new things if we take
out the new things which totals in column five right which is 2, 260,000 we take that out um then the Gap then goes down by that amount like six million then okay I see
be six milon then yeah yeah if you took out everything new but there's reasons for some of the new including your literacy program and other things that that's not that everything has well Susan honestly everything has a reason yeah I'm just I'm just let's let Susan go through the presentation and we can
have discussion afterwards so go ahead Susan Okay so Betsy if you could bring up the next document which is level uh level versus 25 um and the budget drivers you can make that a little bit bigger that' be great okay I know yes and scroll down a
smidge yeah thank you so I I tried to give you as much information as I could you know I um I heard that you know um you wanted a little more detail than we provided in the budget driver document on page 17 the budget so um again first
of all this is level service now um versus the fy2 budget and the question I'm uh answering here is what is causing the budget to increase so dramatically from 25 to the FY 26 level service budget and me much of this we've talked
about but I understand that that you know it's hard um if you're not sitting here every day um doing this work that um you know pulling this the the parts together of presentations from the past
may not obviously be um at the Forefront of your mind so there's a couple of things I've tried to do one is to reference back where we when and where we started talking about these things so that so that you um maybe that will help
um trigger some um um you know some of our prior conversations for you so when I uh uh developed the um forecast for the staffing component um I took the
base of you know base costs from 25 all in um and uh I applied two uh 2.75% and said if everybody in the school district got 2.75% on their base then it would the
cost of that would be 3,255 n71 so that's for all employees um the next line is and and and so again that's that's for the same staff right um because we've taken out the staff that are
new if we look at employee raises um that are not Cola so that would be like step Lane the principles adjustment longevity all of those other you know those kind of um forms of
compensation um then uh steps would be uh 1 million 887 771 the lanes 165 you can read across um you recall that in January we had a conversation about uh a principal's adjustment and I put 65,000
in the budget for that um based on the vote that that you took at that time so Allin so for all this like salary related um raised um adjustments that are not Cola that is what the impact is is um these costs that are in those two
lines we would call and we refer to as breathing costs and so you could anticipate that next year um those costs will be a little higher than this now there'll be some variation because how many people are putting in for Lane
movement um varies from year to year and um until I have been here for more than a year of preparing this information I I can't say uh yet what what your trend is in that area um so shall I continue or
arlyn has a question is that a clarification question Carolyn it is thanks um thanks Susan so on the employee raises presumably the this that's not
Unit A and Unit B you're talking about unaligned everybody everybody nonaligned asme everybody what I want to know is how much of this 3255 971 is discretionary
because it aren't Unit A and Unit B raises built into the contract I don't understand why it's expressed this way can we hold on that's a question that I think we can come to once we get all the way through so keep going Susan it's a good question but let's just hold it till we get to the
the end of the presentation so then um I read and I heard from you you know you want to really understand what is structural what do we mean when we say structural that means there are expenses in the current year that are really unfunded in general right I mean
we're finding ways to fund them but we would consider them to be expenses in this year for which we did not include in the budget when you had adopted it last year okay and so um extra compensation we talked about this um at
our meeting in um I think it was in November yeah in November and I walked you through a document that had it extra comp broken up into a variety of different categories some were like our summer programs some are different forms
of compensation that staff reive because of maybe a position they hold um it can be a differential depending on what um what uh Your Role is um so for example if a custodian works nights um then they
get a differential if uh certain Paras work in a particular um um type of a role they get a differential so um extra comp can be those types of things um extra comp would also be um uh you know
uh subbing and other other expenses so I don't want to walk through what we walked through then but um you know at that time when we had done the analysis uh we had identified $730,000 um you know here in 26 we have a spending plan and it includes um
allocating expenses to all of our grants and recurring revolving funds um and to make sure that we have funding for all aspects of our educational program that that uh um enable us to deliver quality
learning experiences for kids so um so we've talked a lot about the grants there are other grants besides the idea that are kind of rolling back um expenses into the operating budget that we haven't had a chance to talk about but I I had put some information in the
back of the budget um here on pages 88 to 94 and and I know that's not what we're going to do tonight but we can um walk through the grants um and revolving funds so that you better understand that because if if we have the same amount of Revenue of course but our expenses are
going up so for example um teachers or parents that are charged to the grant if they get a raise and you know as we know they do um then it takes more money um in order to be able to pay for those uh additional costs Andor you have to
reduce the number of expenses to the to that special Revenue fund um so you either raise revenue or you have to change your expenses so um in this case um a couple that we hadn't talked about that are really um putting you know um
are causing um some additional increases from Grants are the seal grants so on the finance committee you'll remember that a few months ago and I should have looked it up but I I don't remember which month it was but it was this fall um we had
talked about an seal Grant um and it was a grant that had been in place I guess for a couple of years um and uh unfortunately we didn't get it however there's expenses in the grants that were pretty essential to the work we're doing
and or um the work had uh been completed and so we have to we we've had those expenses so um some of the expenses from those that seal so I can give you an example on the non-salary side um included in that expense my
understanding was Naviance which is the software uh program we use um for and in the area of guidance and um and so it's not um an expense we can do without because it's you know it's pretty
essential to our core operations so um so that's an example so there so there was Title One there was a health grant that we got less money for but we still have the expense so in other words um if you know I think I think you understand and so seal so it's those grants um
along with the idea um that this this this this a grant um component it accounts for about 1.8 million we've talked about we've talked about this um um in in R meetings so that that's the impact and again
whatever the costs are in 25 they're more in 26 right so whatever the costs were that we've been talking about in 25 as we roll forward to 26 are greater so it's going to cost your structural deficit in 25 is is is going to be greater in 26 so um this accounts for
all of that um on struct uh the salary structural deficit there's a new staff component we've talked about this if you go back to our new position PCN report that I provide you every month you'll notice that there are a number of
positions um that uh Target special Revenue funds those um were one-time um funding sources for those positions and so uh you know in in FY 26 we you know we still have the expenses we still have
the need and so those costs um roll forward so I call those structural right they weren't in the 25 budget but therefore services that are being delivered to students in 25 that we have to pay for um and then there's some minor you know salary adjustments so uh
late you know Loa return information came in and step in Lane um after I had done the you know analysis before we published that came in and then I had also talked to you about breakage before so those are the components so those would be like the on the salary side
what's driving these costs these don't have every year um and they and they um you know it's it's uncommon to have uh this many items um be unfunded but as
you know FY 24 was UN underfunded as well and so we've been in the process of trying to catch up um I believe that um this budget before you um catches you up right it it includes everything um that
we know of right here right now now okay so that's the salary side if we go to what are the drivers on the non-salary side and and we've talked you know about this as well we've talked about this at finance committee meetings both last year and this year um and um you know
though we attempted to address the issue last year by increasing these non-salary lines in in OSS um by uh over 20% it wasn't adequate um and that you know I can't explain that um OSS will have to
you know kind of give you the Deep dive um into you know what is really causing that um and I understand you know that um you know if we have the same number of students or or are close to that then then it begs the question so why do we
have a $1.2 million for the same number of students and that is a question that I C I I don't have the data to be able to analyze it and answer that um but our OSS team at some point um you know will be able to provide you with more details on that and then settlements is the same
thing we saw this um last year the deputy um you know had lowered the amount in in this line during the budget process uh and um and the settlements are are higher than than um what was uh anticipated and um and so now these are
settlements in this year these aren't new settlements for next year uh uh but in fact there settlements that have been agreed to this year causing pressure on our current year budget and our obligations um for those students in the upcoming year transportation we can
drill down into this um you know I'm gonna let Diane do that but we sent you out a worksheet so we can kind of dive into what is causing this $696,000 increase when we when we attempted to to capture it um last year and so I'm gonna
have Diane walk you through that and then um and then uh as you can see if you in in the back there's you know some additional increases to um on online services books and subscriptions some of this has to do with contracts um so when
we look at professional Technical Services and the online books subscriptions and tools and and this relates um directly to the conversations we've been having around contracts you know and having adequate funding for that and then um then all of the other
non-salary lines in combination um inre es to them so this is for you know your increase in your regular red Transportation contracts and your you know all of the other all of the other services that we have that are non salary account for the
$461,700 or the 3,65 in the non-salary side is being driven by um um th the those OSS costs that we have uh been um discussing and and again this is in
fy6 not in fyy $25 so um the combination of the two you know so the salary drivers the non-salary drivers um together account for that 10 million 886 571 that it was in I think it was
column three or four of table three thank you so that is uh those are the drivers um that is why we are you know here you know so some of it is related to employee raises some of it is related to a variety of different types of
structural deficits that have been identified in this year some creeping up from 24 that were not captured in 24 um but existed that's why we had to go for a reserve fund transfer if you recall um and that was after tapping some of these one-time revenues right when you tap the
onetime revenues the problem is in the next year you still have the expense so we're being pinched um by that um but uh yeah so that's that um hang on one second Susan Andy is this a
clarification yes go ahead so thanks Susan um yeah my question is kind of to try to check my understanding of what you've been um just presenting so I believe you're saying that what we're everything's labeled here as structural that means the projection forward into fiscal
26 of um money that we're spending in fiscal 25 but was not budgeted in fiscal 25 correct okay and if you add up all of those items on this slide that are labeled as structural it comes to over $5 million so that actually seems to account for the vast majority of the
fiscal 26 budget Gap that we are trying to close now correct okay so so what I've been saying makes sense I'm trying to make sure I'm understanding um sort of the um the implications of what you just presented yes
and then on top of that the other Big Driver of course is your raises yeah right yeah and then there's the other you know smaller amounts but they they're really not um um they not important yeah important but not significant right okay thank you
Val assuming this is also just a clarification it is I want to clarify the um the deficit on grants I understand you're saying thatal and Title One are going to go down from fy2 but my understanding is we don't project
the money we're getting from Ida to go down in 26 is that correct that's correct but the shifts in the positions um that we had been talking about are what is are coming you know
have to come back on the operating budget and we're having to deal with that using one-time Revenue sources in 25 that we're not going to have in 25 and in 26 and so we have to um account for that but yes that's thanks yep
carilyn sorry my question was the same essentially as vs okay yeah thanks okay why don't we go on to are you going to present the new items now Susan is that your plan yeah we can or since we're right here before we go to
that because that's on a different column can we can I have Diane show you and talk about the special education transportation sure since it's related let's go quickly because we're at 5:45 already so I want to make sure that we go a little faster through all these things so we have enough time this is
really important I just don't want us to over spend time on it given everything on the agenda yep so Betsy if you could bring up the um the document for special education transportation and then I'll I'll I'll turn that over to
Diane to walk you through right good evening everybody um special education there are a number of cost drivers Transportation costs around the country are going up uh driver shortages are driving the costs
up for everyone in both regular and special education um and if you look from 23 to 24 our numbers of riders went up but our costs went up phenomenally and we were not in Brookline isolated in this
problem everybody in Massachusetts and in fact nationally has been dealing with the same problem when we went out to bid um in 25 we got better pricing and that was great and that helped us stabilize into 26 but our numbers
continue to go up and as long as your numbers go up your price is going to go up um and looking forward to 26 our pric is going up because in the in the contract that we signed for we have pricing for
25 um 25 26 27 with regular contract increases each year so not only are the numbers going up but there are regular contract increases built into our contract with our vendor where doing our very best to you
know maximize capacity in the Vans we try to put as many kids in a van as we safely can um Safety First and making sure the kids have a good experience but when we can we want to make sure that we're not running half EMP Vans to the best we
can and I know the director of um facilities and transportation is you know meets regularly with the vendor every Friday and they go over the routing and do all that they can because obviously it's not in the vendor's interest to reduce the number of runs
but it is in our interest so they talk about that frequently questions Stephen thanks um Diane can can I ask you for a level of detail here so going
from FY 25 to 26 have the same number of o students right that we're projecting well actually our numbers are projected to go up a bit we have some kids that have not yet gone out of District that are projected to be going
out of District so what's the number difference four okay so the transportation dollar difference is 700k so can you break it's not just the
four kids it's also the contract increase from one year to the next I understand um can you help break that down for us a bit more to help us understand what exactly that Transportation difference is I'm not sure I understand what you're
asking there's a $700,000 difference between the two school years right in transportation costs R of District students million and 25 was 3.7 million budgeted what are you talking about I'm lost too are you asking me yeah I don't
understand your question on your first slide it said Transportation costs for out of District students the difference was 700k is that not correct oh that's from budget I mean if you look at the budget to budget as Oppo but if you look
at the year-to-date actuals you can see we're spending far more than budget this year I see so what are we actually spending this year that's that's this number can you no you can't see my yeah I can I can I can see your mouse yeah right there that's what we're spending that's what we're on track I see so the
actual the actual Delta is closer to there's there's very little change projected correct from what we're actually spending this year because the numbers have gone up so much okay so then my question is more about the change in actuals can you help us
understand the difference between what we initially projected and what we're actually spending can you break that down for us a bit further sure in District we were projecting 70 students and now we're moving 99 I see so that's very sign
D okay thank you Carolyn thanks thanks wait I'm sorry and can I just really quickly and I'm assuming that's going to account for the bulk of the of the tuition increases as well well not necessarily in District
transportation isn't coupled to out of District tuition right but that change in numbers that was not projected surely is tied to the change in tuition costs is the out of District change is tied to the some of the change in outof
District tuition costs okay thank you can I ask one question or Caroline first Mariah you're breaking up by the way am I shoot yeah okay go ahead go ahead Helen I've already asked a few questions I I do have a question but you go ahead
yeah I just a a clarification what is Foster RSC Transportation RSC is the name of our vendor yeah and the department of Elementary and secondary education asks for us to track our expenses for foster care um mckin vento
homeless and special education separately so that's why see but it's all the same vendor so foster care was budgeted at 436 but only came in at 106 is that correct so far this year so far up because we're at
Half Point so it would be but there still might be some savings there if were at half there may okay or there may not Foster is one of those really volatile Foster and mcken V it can happen at any time during the year and we are responsible for the
transportation if they move out of town um if mckin vento if they um move out of town and choose to remain schooled here we're responsible for half and if foster care depending on what's decided as their home domicile
District then we can be fully responsible okay thank you I think it's it's important for people to understand too like if you look at FY 23 there were two students and the cost was 216,000 for that transportation for two students so when people are
understanding I mean there's a lot of costs that the district is responsible for and to Diane's point it's extremely volatile because it depends where they you know where their Foster placement is and everything else and how costly that is and it varies a lot thank you Diane
for this oh go ahead if you want to add anything else and then I think we'll keep going the whole point of the Foster and the mckin vento is to as much as possible stabilize the lives of the children and to allow them to maintain their educational stability since their home life has limited stability we want
them to have their school life have some stability so it is a lot of money but that's that's the thinking behind it yes it's very it's it's very important for that reason Carolyn go ahead and then we'll keep going after that super quick um this is is a yes or no I assume it's
yes the esy is mandated it is and just jumping back to the level service budget to the regular Transportation line it looks like the increase is comparable to the out of district is it what accounts
it super briefly for the million 47 um increase in transportation three factors in that one I believe one of them is simply a bookkeeping change of moving 300,000
from professional and Technical Services over to that line because it was miscoded last year that's for athletics Transportation am I right Susan correct and do you want to take the rest of that line yeah so the increase in
regular education Transportation the contractual increase is very small um and I believe the rest of it is Special Ed yeah sorry I'm looking at the line on the level service Budget Transportation which is
distinct yep I think from out oh I'm sorry out of District tuition that's my bad thank you yeah so so there's three components to transport actually kind of four components that roll up into the into
Transportation um at at the highest level and so it's Athletics it's out of um student Services um and regular education Transportation there's also been a shift again some of this most of our accounting has uh been cleaned up as
I said to you last year it'll take three years to kind of get everything um you know clean and um uh hitting in the right um account codes uh but we we' made great progress and so uh another small adjustment is in the K8 um we had
a transportation line in the current year um and that um should have been in the um field trip line it I mean it's only $2,000 but you know e even though those are small amounts we really want to have integrity with the data that's
being charged to each account and as I said to you last year as we were going through this um consolidation process and correction process that has been um ongoing uh challenge in Brookline for 20 years that it would take us a couple years to get everything just um
completely but we're in good shape there's a few of these accounting adjustments and we'll try to call them out so that you understand where those uh lie do we want to carry on to new requests and row column five there you
go sure so I'll tell you how it's organized um May maybe I can start and and say you know this is this is a document that that's you know was created by the entire Administration this isn't something that you know though though oftentimes um I'm presenting information
it's not that uh this it's my information so I just want to make sure that people understand that principles participate in in this process um uh directors coordinators um and so even when you're looking at the budget reductions it's not I want to be clear
it is not Town Hall sitting here just making these independently um so anyways the new requests uh I've I've organized it again the first the first uh column is you know what cost center you know um this
this expenses related to and then what programs so OSS is a a compilation of special education nursing uh guidance Services Etc um so um in this case I'm just going to walk you through the first line just to to
make sure that you understand how how this is set up um and then the account so you could see on the documents we've been looking at it's set up by account codes right so we've named what account code um and then uh you know we named
whatever the specific item was so that you wouldn't have to wonder you know um where where that information was provided by the um budget U manager and then the cost you know the that what what that new um cost was and then the
implications we tried to provide you with a little bit more context so in this case um this this 2500 provides training on uh changing special education mandates for special education administrators so um it's a new ask for
the upcoming year it's $2,500 and that is uh where is charge so um uh the first so when you look through the list you can you know read through what those new items are and then the
total for um uh education training and conf refences um is 498 if you look at the level service document the first table that we looked at you'll see this number there um under enhancements for new educational
training and conferences you know the next category is um uh new general supplies and so this is a list of what is new as opposed to what um you know was funded in in
fy2 um and legal services um as you know we've talked about this that there's two components to the increase in legal services we wanted to add additional resources um for the contract negotiations that will take place in FY 26 we're not negotiating um with the
teachers union this year um and we tried to estimate Bas based on what we saw was um your costs were in and prior negotiations what that might be so we increase that by 110 and then with the transition of the new Deputy
superintendent in OSS um we increase the amount of money for legal as uh with all these contract settlements and um agreements that that are being made now um and or have been made in the past that um having access to somebody that
um you know can provide um guidance and um maybe some interpretation about um uh you know those contracts and agreement would be helpful so that was 160,000 in there um we we've talked a bit about
Athletics at the last meeting um and so there's some new Susan I want us to be conscientious of time and maybe not go through every line of this because I think that will take a long time I'm willing to be overridden by the committee but I'm just thinking okay that this is okay to keep going can I
ask one clarification question if you were to go to for example line two the explanation here how to what ENT um are the explanations meaningful still because this the second one there says the
comment this is valuable but not Mission critical so I'm presuming this was an initial comment that was made in this process but like if it's not Mission critical why is it in here I guess is my question um have there been subsequent
like is this an initial comment and there's been subsequent conversations that have clarified that some of these things really should have made it in or no it's it's it's a great question so I'll speak to that one in particular so we have three new operations staff
members but I guess I don't want you to speak to it in particular I want to understand generally because there's multiple places where people have said like this would be great but we don't need it so I guess I'm just wondering well the decision process that made I'm assuming that some new requests were
denied is that correct yeah well this wasn't yeah so we presented you with the all-in budget right the initial ask there wasn't any any trimming um that took place oh we we talked um you know
pretty ex you know throughout the process about making sure that we captured all of the costs these are the things that were new right and um and valuable because we have a new strategic plan that was adopted last year and we wanted and we thought you were asking us
to provide you with information about you know how do we deliver on that on that new strategic plan so if we cut these things out then there would be no knowledge that these are things that would you know be important um as we move forward also with the override
coming um before us next year getting having the committee be familiar with some of of what the these items were we thought would be enormously beneficial as we um approached our budget um Development season this year um in in
service to um the Strategic plan um the new sips that the principals put forward I mean um you know you had asked that we make sure that we fund these so um that that that was the idea behind um the development of this budget okay yeah Al
do you have a clarification yeah I want to make sure I heard what I just heard there was nothing on the wish list from anybody that was that was there was a no to so what we got was the wish list
of everybody we didn't ask them to do a wish list because you remember when we kicked off the budget process we knew that there was a huge structural deficit so we asked people to put forward what it was that they needed you know some things you can need
but may not be Mission crial and essential in other words you can we've talked about this so you can postpone training it doesn't mean it's not important um so that was that was the thinking behind it that if when we met with with
staff you know we were really clear that um for anything we add you know there's going to have to be a subtract so let's be very conscientious when we put this budget request together to make sure that that we can connect this to like sips in the Strategic plan and or um you
know some kind of a uh you know a need that that uh has arisen that we couldn't identify before so that was that was uh the way that um we presented the the budget development
process and and uh what we've followed throughout thank you Stephen hi I'm sorry I just need to just want to follow up on what valda said Susan um so so this budget was an all-in this document
is an all-in document that represents the vision of Excellence that the principles helped come up with um and and it's it the the 8.2 projected Gap that was initially presented to us
included all of these asks correct okay so I think the reason why I want to make sure I understand that it's because when we were initially presented with a round of proposed potential Cuts they didn't include rolling back some of the things
that are marked here as potentially not Mission critical so that seems like a a process mistake or oversight I just that that's why I'm not sure Stephen we know that they don't
because they could be for example in the 400,000 in service and supplies cuts that we are going that's what I'd love for clarification yeah I think we'll get do some of those things are they included in things like the things like supplies yes thank you Susan yeah yeah
and not only that some of the new positions are being reduced right but if you don't know we have the need especially when we're coming up with the override I mean the El need is real although we can't fund it if we never mentioned it um then we'd never have a a
conversation about that right and so um but as you know in the propos I got it I just want to make sure that that some of this is represented in the proposed Cuts as well that's really the clarification that I'm for so let me let you go on with this now yep okay well I think we're not going to go through this in
detail I think people can look at that I think um the next thing on our agenda is to go to the 400,000 um if I'm not mistaken in the reduction yeah okay oh look there's that same thing I
just asked about on the second line here yes exactly I swear this was not a setup no no no um yeah so I can't even it's so small is there any way to make
it a little bit bigger I know you like them in PDF so uh so that you can um have a clear document if you expand it so thank you okay so you had asked for a list of what the
$400,000 in reductions to the supplies and services lines are and so that's um what that 400 $1,000 um represents in Cuts some of these are new and what we tried to do over in the far so let me walk you
through again it's cost center it's program So within ANF we have finance and operations um Human Resources data and it and human resources and then the account that we're cutting and this is really important because when you go through this process I want a a you know
a tie directly to various line items and this is kind of how I cross walket and then um so the cut of the 2,250 um and is is for this budget and financial data sync tool that we think
would improve efficiency and our ability to um provide um data um in a uh with a quicker turnaround and then our Data Systems would sync up which they don't right now so a lot of work we have to do is take from one system and take from
another system and put them together in Excel which is clunky and so the idea here and this you know is consistent with our goal of efficiency which is in our strategic I think that for the interest of time we can't go through these lines I'm going to ask that if the committee has specific questions about
lines they can ask them but otherwise we'll scan it and then we'll keep going okay okay so why don't we take a minute or two of quiet time and people can just speak up and raise like they can just don't don't worry to be raising your or can I amend your suggestion say if
there's a place where um the these supplies represent some of the asks that were in some of the previous documents like non-mission critical that are in there to be rolled back I I would love for that to be highlighted for instance you're talking about like the second
line that I just highlighted the one that was the for yes or if there are multiple examples of that ju yeah yeah so so I tried to do that for you where it says so that's what I I just wanted to go to the ask I wasn't going to go through line by line I was just trying
to use that first as an example of what information is in each and then the last um column is type and it was there I said this is an enhancement which means that you would have seen it on the other document if it says a service reduction it means it was in the level service
budget okay and so if it was in the level service budget we're reducing it and so what's the implication you know it was put in because it relates to the Strategic plan and then in the comment section you know know the thinking behind reducing it so just so you
understand you know I was trying to um I was trying to make that crosswalk because not everything that's in the enhancement or in the new request um is is is part of this reduction thank you okay so that that's how I tried to lay it out for you so
you'd have that crosswalk are there other specific questions from the committee on some of the details that they see here Jessie go ahead one question about the knas Jesse has his hand up first and let me go to him and then we'll go to you
I'm sorry go ahead Jesse what page of the budget book has the supplies I mean this 400,000 sort of hard to compare it against anything unless we know what it was before what is it in the budget book on a certain page supplies and services or is this PO perie it isn't um that's
why I tried to give I was looking everywhere for it um so so how does this re what the 400,000 seems to be things like maybe we don't need it or we'll we'll take a cut because we have to what what percent or portion based on your
knowledge do and then is this of what could be reduced is it 400,000 of 800,000 or $400,000 of $4 million well when we had put forward the um reductions like what how would we close the gap of the 8.2 million this is
what what the type of thing that we were thinking we would be reducing so that's all um we have looked at other lines um and other accounts we will be bringing forward some additional um items next uh tomorrow
night um that will cover other lines besides supplies and services so this is just supplies and services Jesse but I I would like to answer your question so I did put the page numbers and so I mean it would take me a little bit of time to go through through but I could do that what I tried
to do is say it's in the cost center so if you went to the office of administration and finance I'm just using the first one so you want to know how to connect the dots yeah yeah right and I'm just saying it's a finance related expense you know what program okay and then if you look under um
online services subscription and tools on I don't know what page it is off the top of my head 24 right you're going to see an increase there right and so I'm I'm what I'm saying for the office of admin ation is finances we would cut
$25,000 for this particular tool out of that line that's how I mean the problem I'm having with this is that the 400 is arbitrary it just happens to be the sum of uh a small list of things people are
temporarily agreeable with to remove bie can we hold the discussion until the end this that gets to a comment and not a clarification so I'll pause that bit for it because we've got other people wanting to comment Helen do you have a clarification maybe not okay
Sarah is there an easy way to know if the OTL um line items are mostly K to8 and not high school or is that a something I should ask later the um easy answer Sarah is
they're mostly K8 okay thank you now I do want to speak to one thing though we've we've bucketed it into Cuts right so the high school has a half a million dollar cut that they're going to present you see what I'm saying so
what we're trying to do here is is it say that related to supplies and services we recognize when we put the budget forward to you that that there are some things that we could reduce um and and my question was a
clarification question only and not a commentary because we'll do the commentary later okay I totally hear you yeah and I think Jesse's question I'm gonna frame it in terms of a clarification is sure like why is it 400,000 and not 4 like it seems like the
decision was made by the dollar amount and not by the actual content of the cuts but and so why isn't it you know 43,45 because that represents actual things as opposed to a round number but that's I think well the cut isn't a round number the cut is a little higher
it's 411,000 something or another right yeah I mean my that's perfect I mean I I yeah in in in the scope of what we're discussing 411 is like 400 right Susan my question is what the clarification is
number one if I was if I hadn't answer you that question I would go through this budget book back and forth for three or four hours to try to find each line item and then go back and see what what was the change what did they decide upon what did they pull out makes it extremely timec consuming for like each
School Community member to do that if they're so uh inclined and the second thing was even once I do that it would still not be I wouldn't know what proportion of what could be done is I'm looking at I'm only looking at like a a swipe
here that's that's the that was my question I I know what you're saying Mariah about the it seem too even that's okay but even if it came out at at 652 th000 what is that of what could be done because it's nowhere close to where we need to be I mean I think we'll all
agree question we're we're never going to take it all out of supplies but let's pause this correct exact exactly and keep going on um the next question which is I think the we're through supplies and services
it's the building department okay to speak to this y so just to sort of give a context for this um our first of all I would like to make
sure that people know that we appreciate immensely the work that's done by Charlie and his team you know they do Yan's work of keeping our buildings running running well getting us through covid all sorts of things so this is no
reflection this uh cut from what they are asking is no reflection on what they do and it's it's more just looking at the numbers and trying to figure out where we could do some savings and this you know obviously
we want to do non-student facing savings this is one of them so if you um what I did was go through what Charlie had presented to us at the capital subcommittee meeting um and as
you can see this is sort of a a shorthand there are um graphs excuse me spreadsheets for all of this uh the FY 24 budget uh was uh estimated well was budgeted at 3.6
million and 3.4 million was expended so 181,000 was returned to the town in fy2 through January 17th uh of this year uh we've spent approximately 1.2 million
of the 3.6 million that was budgeted for fy2 um FY 26 there's a proposal for 3.7 million I'm I'm rounding up here so to just be quick uh which is an increase of
162,000 over fy2 um so the proposed Savings of 400,000 that was put forward um would basically be not doing the increase over last year since the year before a monies were returned we
don't know exactly what will happen this year but assuming that you know we what people don't see here is in from FY 23 to 24 there was a significant increase in the building department
budget um so we're s I'm suggesting uh and I think the the staff is suggesting because I I followed up on the 400,000 that they were proposing of 162,000 level funded Building Maintenance budget level funded to FY
25 and 238,000 reduction because the FY 26 gas budget that I looked at that was given to us um the actuals for this year we've only spent 162,000 of it a $1
million uh budget for FY 25 so therefore it would seem to me that let's assume we we triple the 162,000 it still doesn't get us to 1 million so therefore taking
238,000 of that makes sense is that clear Jesse you have your hand up his hand is from before I think oh okay yeah right any questions on any questions on this uh proposal the details of the 400,000 Caroline go
ahead yeah so what would be in the 162 Helen that wouldn't get done and I also have a question about um I see reducing gas budget but
um is fy2 covering electricity currently to date yes um we can we have the um you have that slide right um somebody should be Betsy
on the third one I think or the second one here you go so here um I I brought these numbers here so that everybody can be on the same page um if you look at fy2 to date and this is from Charlie
these numbers the original budget was 2.2 for electricity we've expended 1.1 there's an account balance of 1.1 to4 if you look back the year before now remember um
Driscoll Charlie has told us we have saved in one month $30,000 in electrical because of the geothermal so I'm assuming that's why he hold on yeah um only increased
that budget by 43,000 for for 26 so there's there's the electrical budget we're not touching that what I looked at more was the gas budget what was expended through January 17th now I'm assuming you know maybe there's a couple
months that aren't included whatever it is I think considering we only have two more months to go I think it would be hard to get to the million and if you look the year before uh I'm sorry Helen can I just can I just
cut to the chase on this are you just aligning projections with actuals no then I don't understand can can because the actuals the the projections the the the pro we don't have actual projections but even Helen's
Point even if we were to Triple the amount expended through the middle of January we would still have a huge balance in the gas account so she's proposing to reduce it but to about 800,000 for next year and I think what we based on our actual spend this year right based on our
actual but we're not aligning it we're not like shaving off everything that we don't think there would still be a huge um cushion within the natural within the gas account okay but we're significantly sh we're significantly reducing our projected spend here based on the fact
that our actuals to date this year and in previous years's Helen or just this year uh this year um I is there is there a longer trend line than this year I think I do have it but I don't have it here I don't think I prepared that and I should have part of tricky too Stephen
because Driscoll went on to um I see is there is there a way to prate based on the other schools I'm just wondering if this if this spend to date per school year is sufficient for us to make a projection change or whether we need to look at a longer set of data points I obviously defer to you how ear yeah no
no it's a good question and I have that data and I'm sorry I I I should have included it um there are other areas that you know it's not clear to me um such as um Charlie has been trying for
three years to get HVAC um technicians he says if he can hire three he can save us $300,000 now I didn't take that one because we don't have them you know are they double counted there maybe so you know I don't think we I'm just asking
because I'm wondering about the relevance of the data points to projected gas prices this is obviously not my field I'm just wondering what the methodology is for what we're doing with our projections although I really appreciate the effort to find savings here right and I think I think what
we're doing is saying this is what we think Charlie if there's another way you want to do that 400,000 we don't usually direct his his spending you know what I mean so he will use his best judgment for what's
necessary in this I think what we will there will have to actually be a budget and I think the next step is probably going back to Charlie Simmons and Charlie young to sort of get their stamp of approval on this approach um and that will hopefully answer your Carolyn your
question Carolyn too as to you know if there's any impact um if level funding his deferred M his repair and maintenance budget you know does he feel there'll be a significant impact or not okay questions on this
one what's that any more questions on this so the 400,000 was just a number the 162 in I don't know if you're assuming it's work I guess project is just you just I
don't know who who came up with the 400 that was the increase based on the fact that in uh 181,000 was returned in FY 24 we can't know what will be returned this year but there was money's
returned so we took last the original 400,000 amount come from well that's what I'm telling her okay this is a little bit different I think I think you're you're explaining where the 162 came from
thank you I'm good this is fine' um we're gonna go to public comment in a moment before we do Betsy do you mind toggling over to the spreadsheet that I sent the committee earlier this week and making it a lot bigger I just want to show this to people before they have public comment
this is not a vote yet this is a proposal which I have made the red things can you make it a little bigger Betsy and maybe just make it so they can see the expense um portion particularly the expense line because that's the I think what people will be acting to
um thank you so the proposal is to accept the cuts that you see in green to pause or you know to defer any decision on the cuts you see in white and to um not accept the the uh the the cuts that
you see in Red so scratching out in case you can't read them not accepting the raise of the materials fee not accepting pausing of sport in Middle School um not accepting the uh halves of the instructional AIDS not accepting the um
pause in the summer programming like project Discovery and not accepting the Performing Arts programs um and other than that they are mostly accepted I will say there's a couple changes um you can see that for the transportation there was a proposal there to both um
reduce U native language support program busing and also reinstate the the SoBro fees and there there's that it would not accept the um the agreement or not accept the South Brookline fees um it would only reduce a fraction of the um
costs at the high school there would be new expansions to programming at the high school be removed but we would continue the funding for unified Bachi to complete the annual cycle of Unified sports that was promised in the override and it would retain funding for gymnastics which is a current
programming and then I would just highlight that the last line um the high school that cut has been reduced from 500,000 to 250,000 um but that is so that is already something um but again those would be the that's that's the proposal and we
can now go to public comment and people are welcome to comment on this or comment on any other thing they wanted to go um to talk about and then we will return to committeed conversation and other questions Carol and I'll make sure we go back to your question as well about the co
question um so Lauren go ahead Lauren you should be able to unmute now yes I just did thank you bety um hi Lauren Bernard um uh former town meeting member and um commissioner for
poar recreation um I I can't read this very well the slide that you just um put up there I'm not able to read it super well but from what I can glean here
um thank you um I was curious about a couple of things so this proposal this is sort of a big picture question so the big picture question is and comment is you know is I mean it seems to
me that you have to have these sorts of lists but to to make sort of firm decisions before the audit is completed the results of the audit are are known seems to me to be um you know very
premature and um my other comment is um I know we're not supposed to ask questions but I'm confused I'm sure other people are what a food service hybrid model would be um does that mean cutting staff but not
products um does it mean having certain people working and not others um and then for Sunset ba and CE it says BAC is working on a proposal for school
committee you know so are we still talking about just gutting the funding for that um seems like pretty low amount 20 $24,000 uh doesn't really do much um and
I'm you know I'm I'm concerned I I can't see if I can I I don't see it in here is the custodial reduction in here oh yeah here it is TBD um it says a million dollars if I can read it correctly um I would just
like to point out and I'm I'm sure other people will point this out tomorrow that uh from what we understand from the meeting with asme yesterday it's uh by March 20th cust personnel and Food Service Personnel are going to know whether they have jobs or
not which again is in in for the audit uh is completed and and the report made um you know I would like to point to the safety issues that this brings up you know these are custodians are in the
building with children during the school day after the school day and uh they are known we know they are qued um we start going to you know uh outside companies for-profit companies we don't know what their safety system is and I shudder to
think that my 20 quaries went through um I don't know you know I I had to submit them three times before they got reviewed that just a reminder we have a time limit on comments I should have mentioned that before if you can remember well I'll finish up with this thought um you know we need it seems to
me we need to get a lot of HR processes right before we have to start thinking about processing quaries for you know hundreds of outside company employees but I just you know the safety issue is really bothersome not knowing who's going to be in the building with children and that that could rotate on a
regular basis let alone the the ethical question of you know having to to to lay off you know all of these people but that aside just safety um anyway thank you for the time I appreciate it thank you Lauren T go ahead just a reminder
two of the time limit okay so I'm going to try and keep it short I'm not going to comment on your thing because I just saw it uh I know you're getting a lot of What Not to cut I'm going to talk about three things I propose to cut uh I don't one of them is
out of District I think that somebody should look very carefully at H how and whether these students can be served better in District because it could be Pennywise pound foolish to send them out of District we can control in District we can control out of District it could
be a a win all around it takes the right person to really look at this I think this needs studying the second thing is I'm shocked there's a million dollars for computer leases uh I don't know why every kid I don't know if it starts at K or three or whenever gets a laptop in
the high school every family has the option of buying their own or getting a school one that should be implemented throughout I would much rather unhappily buy my kids a computer than use a school one the last one is I'm now going to
touch the third rail it's the office of uh educational Equity so I did a little exercise I went and looked at mcast scores over the last three years so post pandemic 22 uh to 24 what has happened uh is that Black
and Hispanic students actually fell behind an additional 0.5% this is significant on the mcast scores across the board 3 to 10 in those last two years and so my question is
what is our return on investment on this office I know there's more staff diversity but that should be handled that could be handled by HR our mission statement is not to have an office of educational Equity our mission statement is more equity for students all students
achieving and if the this experiment that we had is not working it's not helping students achieve then we we don't have the funds and lean times to spend money on experiments if that money were to be taken and put to starting the calculus project in earlier grades I
guarantee you you will see return on investment in a year so I am really really concerned about the return on investment on something that is so expensive and whether it's actually fulfilling the mission that it's supposed to which is helping our students that's it that's my comment
I'll also email to you the sheet that I made thank you T Kevin hi my name is Kevin McKenzie I'm a teacher at the Lawrence School um I'm speaking in support of I just want to share my support for actually maintaining specialist curriculum
coordinators in at the very least sixth through e8th grade but universally K to8 I myself am specialized a sixth seven eighth grade generalist who is responsible for all of the core academic subjects and also presumably World Language if that position is going to be
cut um is mind-boggling to me it's going to be incredibly inefficient my coordinator has brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars to this to this District through grants reconnecting us with critical programming like Facing History at a time when we clearly need it um I also want to speak to my deep
concerns about privatization efforts proposed before you um our custodians and Food Service workers are union they are asme union and I'm also very concerned that the cuts to Food Service workers especially would be impacting one of the towns most diverse workforces
this is largely a Workforce of working mothers and women of color and taking away good union jobs from them with Benefits privatizing them just so that in several years when we can no longer do it in house the people we contract to when history indicates that has not gone
well can then shaft us when it comes time to raise the contracts and break those costs back up to essentially what was pre privatization if not higher without any of the retention of that that staff or any of those benefits of having that done inhouse thank you for
your time thank you Kevin Jen hi thank you for all the detail on this uh my name is Jen donatelli and I'm a a parent of student at Hayes and an active member of the community there um the comment that I have is twofold the
first is for the items that we have in the red versus green versus white it's hard to understand the criteria that's being used to make the keep versus uh cut decision on what gets um kept and some of the items that are still in
green is recommended budget cuts I think one of the most important criterias I would consider this group to see is the impact to student outcomes as we all have a you know I think a shared commitment to minimize impacts to
negative student outcomes and there's three or four of these on here that I think may have a material impact that are still in white and green such as the teacher specialist counselor case loads the 1.2 million effect there math Specialists new position reductions puts
increased pressure on teachers and could have a significant impact to the student outcomes in FY 26 I think that's a really important consideration to take in um as we think of the red and green and where we land thank you thank you Jen just a clarification for anyone
looking at this the white ones are not being dis proposed for at least by me for now so the white line see in in this column that is where they're all adding up the second column it they're not in that consideration so that's why you see no dollar amount there go ahead
Justin sorry I was unmuting uh Justin abson I'm a Lawrence parent I wanted to hit on something tall said um and covered a little more well one thing is Technology's increased a lot since 23 it's tripled uh up to almost $2 million uh and that's uh subscription software
licenses and things um it would be great to see a closer look at that I saw some things get trimmed but they were pretty small numbers against that large number and I don't really understand the cause of the increase um and again the a million dollars in leases that at a $500 computer that's like 2,000 computers a
year you could buy 2,000 new computers and throw them into bin every year for that amount of money so I'm just a little I'm a little baffled by how large that number is um and then I think the the the last piece the last piece I had comment on around that was the um was
also we we seem to have increased Staffing a lot in the last five years while we've had enrollment decreasing uh enrollments decreased 10% and been flat staff jumped 20% Total Staffing um it would be it would be behoove us to look
closer at that I'm not I just don't understand why and also this out of District it seems to be spiraling and we still don't have a clear explanation of what's driving the costs we we don't know the drivers of the drivers so to speak and i' really love to see some uh
you know someone shine some sunlight on that and really show us what exactly is increasing an analysis across the spectrum of what is going on with the tuition what is going on with the transportation are certain types of Transportation more uh expensive than others so we really break it down and
try to figure out how to get a handle on that um we just know it's going up we keep paying for it we don't seem to know why that's it thank you thank you Justin Britt um thanks for giving us a chance to speak I'll be quick um as we continue
to go through this process and it's a hard one so I appreciate all of your thoughtfulness and time um I hope that we can narrow in when we talk about details particularly around like student facing and non-student facing staff the non student facing staff that I saw
present Ed at the last Finance subcommittee meeting is a very broad bucket including people who are in schools and people who are not in schools so as the conversation continues parsing that and getting into the details I hope is something we can do um same goes for our custodial FTE like I
know my building is hybrid so we have seen clean Co come in and when we need things that we are seeing in clean Co to happen differently it is our in-house custodians who we go to to help us manage that communication so it's unclear watching if a million is all of
our custodians or some of our custodians um and so it's hard to think about the impact on students in our buildings if we don't quite have a grasp of what that size is appreciate the time thanks thank you Brett are there other public comments okay we will go now to um
committee discussion and questions um Carolyn do you want to go back to the question question that you had on the uh drivers and you were asking I think about the staff you asked about the 2.75% on the I did
yeah is Susan Susan you're still here yes sorry there's so many little squares go ahead Carolyn yeah I guess my question is I I don't understand what that first line of the cost drivers is
but I suppose I can ask the question as what is the cost of discretionary raises for FY 26 Betsy do you mind pulling up the um driver's document sure yep thank you
just so we're all looking at the same line is this the right one yeah so you're asking of the 3.25 million in that first first line Carolyn how much of that is discretionary versus contractual
correct so I would have to go back and calculate that but because there's I let me just be sure that I understand so would that just be any contracts that the school committee has signed sealed and delivered on would be considered not
discretionary and then all other contracts that have not been agreed to by the school committee would be non-discretionary you know the way that I understand your request for clarification this kind of goes to a piece of information that I've
been asking for since December which should be par for the course information provided to school committees as well as the public which is a comprehensive org chart and salaries so it makes it very difficult to understand sort of where
the money's going in terms of of raises without that information so we've never even been able to have this conversation before so I suppose Sign Sealed and
Delivered I don't know what the process is of discretionary raises I do know that we have Unit A and Unit B contracts that have raises baked in so that's not even up for discussion I guess what I'm
asking for is what is the number that in the universe of things that are possible would be on the table to not be spent as part of raises for FY 26 so
like Susan maybe another way of asking it is do you know do you know the number for units a b c and asks me to to carve out of that bigger number yeah where where I'm struggling with it Val is that ask me has not been settled that's why
I'm asking the question right ask me has not been settled you don't have contracts for raises Cola raises for them okay so what is aggregate what is the aggregate salary increase that is not mandated by
a contract that's what I ask so I just want to be clear I'm not trying to be difficult because if I give you an a number then and it doesn't include what you're hoping for then you get upset so I just want to make sure so what I'm saying is that what you who you have
contracts for right now that are in place that are are agreed upon between the school committee and the labor unions is Unit A B and C you do not have agreements for with
askme for increases for FY 25 or 26 okay so I set aside money in the fy2 budget and in the FY 26 budget for ask me and non-aligned I can tell you tonight what the non-aligned amount is
but I have to go back and I'll have to parse out if what you're asking for is anything you haven't agreed to and I'm happy to do it I just want to make sure when I do it then that is what you're asking I think I'm asking for nonaligned I appreciate the clarification because I
am not your job I don't have the all of the nomenclature and apologize for any naive on my part but I'm trying to understand of of what costs we have
control over where we to say and not that anybody wants to say it and I'm not proposing to say it but in the world of possibility were we to say hey can someone take one for the team this year so we don't have to lay off
teachers what would that save us something in that universe is what I'm trying to get at and have been trying to get at for a couple months thanks Susan is that something you can provide when do you think you'd be able to provide that um
split I can give you nonaligned which is what she's asking for it doesn't seem like see I would say non-aligned and asks me contracts are are are in parody but I'm not sure that there's when when can you provide that
I can work on that um you know tomorrow could you just give us the non-aligned right now because I I I assume 20 yeah 275 great thank you Helen so I just want to provide a
little context for why Susan I think has included everybody in those employee raises are we what we have done over time is usually be give the nalign the the same as the union gets it's just
been it seems fair to do that that way um and that's that's sort of been forever since I've been on the school committee so that's the context of course that makes complete sense the question is if we're
tightening belts in the world of possibilities of belt tightening what is would would what could we tighten our belts on that would not put us in breach of contract think you heard 200,000 sorry
275,000 we can't hear somebody Mariah was just repeating the figure but you did cut out Mariah did I thought we heard 275,000 not 200,000 yeah okay I'm sorry go ahead Stephen um I just can I try to
uh say what I understand the the main story from this meeting to be and and can you correct me if I get it wrong Susan certainly try okay I this was my this is my takeaway from this slide
um if you include Revenue back in this slide we the level funded budget with Revenue suggests that um we there was there was about 2.2
million in additional requests from the administration and there was about $6 million in in what your in what are structural cost drivers that produced the initial $8.2
million budget Gap that came to the school committee is that is that right I'm really boiling stuff down but I just want to make sure I got some big picture stuff right I guess you could frame it that way I haven't really thought about it that way
because in addition to that you'd have the salar so I guess mathematically so so to I have to think it's an interesting way to frame it so I I I feel like I made you very uncomfortable by saying it that way is that did I am I miss no up I just I'm
breaking up no Mariah was okay uh the reason I'm asking is because I I'm also trying to get in my head what the implications of this slide are for um the previous override and what it suggests it should have been I know we
we can we can always get it more right in retrospect but it suggests to me that the cost drivers that are salary related um those are structural those we can't touch um well really a lot of this we can't we can't touch anything have to
do with fape either everything other than the the the 2.2 this is all level funded we can't touch any of this so it's the Six Million really that knowing what we know now should have been part of the
override request that would have been that would have gotten us to the place we need to be now is that what this presentation is should be leading us to the understanding is that is that a correct understanding in your view Susan
I hadn't like I said I haven't thought about it in those terms and I wasn't here for your override so I don't know dial wasn't your responsibility to get us to the right number of the override yeah yeah so so um I would say that I I would agree with your statement
Stephen that I don't think everything um was included in your override okay yeah that's really all I wanted to say out loud I'm just trying to wrestle with the the big picture of what I can conclude from your
presentation yeah and I think Mariah had said um that there were limitations put on what you could ask for the override I think I heard putting aside the politics of what was and wasn't possible yeah I'm just trying to understand what structural factors are
driving our budget Gap or the the proposed budget Gap and what are what are part of what is part of the request that we think would Drive excellence in Brooklyn that we are going to have to wrestle with in making the decisions to close the budget Gap
now can I can I make a comment on that before can you hear me better now I finally accepted my fate and put on my headphones okay so um before we get to you Helen I think that I'm GNA put aside the whole conversation about the earlier override but I'm just going to say that
we we just heard more or less from Susan that even if we put a lot even if all the unaligned um employees were not given any raises we would still be at just around $5 million in breathing costs and in a world where
um $5 million in breathing costs is compared to uh $4 million that we're getting from the town increase in your onye Revenue not to mention the um increase in um out of District costs that are um have a we
following a substantially different rate of increase than other increases we we were going to be underwater right and and if you take this and go back several years to your point you know we were there's just not a lot that it makes it like we couldn't have done much
differently because this is like this these are sort of the arcs of change with the budget um I think that you were mentioning Stephen oh level service budget but really there are drivers here we can choose to provide a lower level of service but that's the option that's
going to be in front of us in some places right because we can't afford a same service budget so I'm just like you're like well we can't cut these things well we can we're just going to have a lower level of service and that's going to be the choices that we're going to have to make but this list doesn't
include lots of stuff that we do pay for so I don't fully understand the logic there and I actually don't want to I'm not trying to get into a debate with you but that but can you clarify that what do you mean by this list which is the drivers why would the drivers include
everything we pay for or maybe you can clarify what you meant what I understood from what you just said is we can't afford all this stuff because it's on top [Music] of it it drives us to be this is what
drives us to be a have a gap from what we want to do and our Revenue except the what we want to do is not is this that's not in front of us that's my point the the that these
costs have nothing to do with whether or not we choose like these costs are just the costs of doing the same things and then that means that we have to make choices about what we don't do right because these costs are sort of just the regular cost there's not some amazing
amount of discretion in here even if even if we take out the part that in theory you that you picked up on Carolyn that in theory could be discretionary as opposed to a true level service like there's no there aren't other things here particularly that are here so but
this is not the whole what we're doing wait this is the change and this is the change in cost this is just what FY 26 costs more than fy2 to do the same things so the point is in FY 26 we can't do the same things as we did in 25 there's not some magical thing in the in
this in these drivers that is going to let us I guess my point is maybe in FY 25 and 24 and 23 we were overspending to begin with not to mention filling the Gap with one-time funds which is not
sustainable well Carolyn can I go ahead Helen I think Carolyn there are some expenditures that we don't have control over I understand that the 35% increase in in in special ed is an increase of
course you know and that's that's a big part of what we're seeing here you know the other thing that I was looking at the Town projections for uh for our expenditures for 2026 and they projected in
2025 143 million they're giving us 141 million two million less you know I mean that it may be a non it's a non-starter but that's that's what you know you would expect if their project they would be projecting what
was important our overspending is not the town's fault I didn't say that just like you know when the the snow the snow budget goes out of control you know they get a reserve fund transfer if our special ed costs which are required you
know or we and we're going to be trying to look at some of them I'm sure but you know if they they go over that's not something we can control I I would also yeah well go ahead I think another thing
too um I mean the costs are real you know these kids have needs and it's our responsibility to um provide them with the services and supports that they need to be able to access their education and um and advance in their learning um so
even when we look at the structural deficit on the salary side under grants whether it comes out of the grant or the operating budget there's still real expenses for those students you know so it's not just um you know on the non-salary side that we see these
increases but the the real costs that um are required for those kids of course we're and we're not the only ones we're not the only ones experienced don't think we have to cut something we I don't think any of us are spending so
much Carolyn I I for my part I don't see it as overspend necessarily I I see it as it's the administration's responsibility to present us with a vision of excellence and it's the school committee's responsibility to Advocate as vigorously as possible for the full funding of that vision of excellence and
it's the town's responsibility to figure out how best to balance that that vision of Excellence with excellence and other services as well so so I don't see it as as overspending but is the school committee Prosecuting our responsibilities as best as possible and
and if there need to be compromises made and we could disagree whether something is excellent or not I don't need to get on the soap box I'm sorry we just plugged a two point something million dollar Gap in this fiscal year with one-time funds from
from reserves so we are literally overspending right but Carolyn there the spending choices are being made because of the drivers of special education so you know these are again these are sort of unpredictable things that we're
working through and man okay I just want to be clear and we don't have to complete this conversation now let's just make sure that this doesn't sound like Carolyn is questioning special education because that's not remotely that this stuff is special education is a given but they're
like we've all been getting dozens and dozens and dozens of emails from the public for example about how heavy we are in Central Administration and money that is rolled up into to some of those positions some
of those activities some of those offices so just and I expect that that that is a conversation that's going to continue but I'm certainly not questioning the the real drivers
especially when it's special education why don't we if it makes sense as the subcommittee the full school committee is willing to is fine of course to continue to chime in I'm wondering at the school committee given that we're already almost at 7:00 the
subcommittee wants to discuss um which if any vote that we would like to take Betsy do you mind pulling up my spreadsheet Y and Carolyn I heard you say I think you said that you might feel comfortable voting on the red things but
not some other things um Sarah I see your hands up so why don't why don't you go ahead sure Carolyn because that question was asked you would you like to answer that uh go ahead you haven't spoken at all so I'm I'm going to answer that
question and hope that my colleague Carolyn will come in to back me up so um on if we're going to start the conversation with the red lines um I really like the idea of leaving out the instructional AIDS in first grade I feel
like we've said before that the um the education that students get early on helps us out with expenses later and so it seems to be a really good idea um sorry I don't know if I can keep on talking because my family is so loud you can hear me we can't hear them at
all go ahead great okay um so I I think that you know we when we're thinking about um student outcomes we want to make sure that we get two students early and so I'm very happy to see that that is one of the red lines I also feel that same way that um math Specialists is not
on this um I I don't want to cut them I think that um our teachers need the support of the mass Specialists and they can't do the differentiation that they need to do if they don't have the mass specialist so I'm glad that that's not in our green um that's not green right
now so I thought that I would talk to um one of the green lines but let let me actually stop there so that other people can speak to what's red Carolyn do you want to chime in or Val yeah can I speak to white I'm sorry
clarification on what um Sarah you said um what did you say about the the first grade pairs I I just wanted to make sure I interpreted what you your yeah I wasn't speaking very clearly because I have three children and they're very loud so let me try that again um looking
at the red lines here I'm really happy to see that we're not going to try to cut first grade instructional AIDS okay I think that when we think about expenses and about student outcomes that we all know we've said this before together that if we get to students
early we help them out and that ultimately saves US money long term so that seems to be appropriate that it's in the red line I think that our instructional AIDS can do a lot in classrooms sometimes they um can be trained to do even more um with small
groups and standing in for teachers or being like a you know a co- teer in many different ways thank you uh Val go ahead thanks on the white line of examining teacher specialist counselor case loads I'm hoping that
when we get that presented to us that it's presented as workload and not just case load number so I'm just hoping that Dr Giller whoever is putting that together and presenting that back to us that there's differentiation made for um
workload versus just a numeric case load and Val I think that that's um good to sort of Define a little bit more just to for the type of information that we'd like to see do you mind doing that or can I step in I don't know that either of us should I think that can I ask I
would ask lonus lonus can you please um give us a ETA for and I think when I requested that information I also I think alluded to your point Val of you know what like tell us how you're going to measure what the resulting workload
case load whatever this ends up being is going to but lonus can you give us an ETA on when we will have a response to the questions on this one I'm hoping within the next few days um I know both Lisa and Karen are looking at uh at this
question and I saw some activity uh some discussion and email about it today thank you thanks so if I could because it's on the same topic Stephen would you mind if I please ahead Helen thank you um so what I would like to know also on
this line item is what we remain with when when you take out these 12. I think that was in the question I wrote too I believe that was yep also yes yes what remains and what is the resulting workload case load Etc and if
people remember this is hard for me to say because I'm a social worker but we did hire eight social workers one for each Elementary School back at the beg at the end beginning when Co when we got back
after covid and um that was with arpa money you know just to to sort of refresh people's memory who may not have been on the committee or or were on the committee and weren't you know necessarily aware of that I think um leaves still and what it
leaves there are still social workers at the high school and social workers at the uh in beep two in beep and four at the high school maybe l and Susan I believe that the breakdown of the 12.9 was eight Learning Center teachers four
guidance or social workers and a 0.9 ETF is that cor am I remembering correctly the breakdown um let me see if I can find that quickly okay while you Stephen go ahead while um thanks yeah I I have a a separate proposal to live alongside of
the current proposals um I think there are two proposed Cuts in here that the administration itself has endorsed and only two um one is the new position reduction which
OSS has endorsed as a as its actual request and I please Dr Giller correct me if I've misunderstood this is based on my understanding of your comment from our last school committee meeting that it represents the actual request from
OSS not the previous one that this is this this um the number of FTE represented in that line represents their actual request for the school year budget and
they and they're also doing a little bit of refinement on that right now Stephen as well so we will be getting that tighter um okay pretty close what their ask is so so I I want to suggest one
Stephen you said there were two but okay right so so the second one is the supplies item which is currently white it's item it's item um nine the general supplies and services reduction I I want to suggest um that the two of those
proposed Cuts be considered with or without further proposed Cuts as as this committee considers as something we um uh cut um I think in terms of
practice it's fine that school committee obviously members also talk about this I'm just thinking because their process is going to be Finance subcommittee is going to recommend something to full School commit which is fine like that's I think it's okay if your comments sort of inform what the subcommittee does because it might help us not have the same conver like we might not waste our
time tomorrow if you do though can't we just sort of do it since we're also the because there's other stuff happening tomorrow so Finance subcommittee is recommending this school committe and'll be additional presented tomor to school committee and then school committee can consider those
things plus whatever Finance does so good again I think it's helpful if other members help Finance refine their thinking I just want to keep in mind that the end of this Finance has to is hopefully voting to recommend something to full for tomorrow AB Caroline and then Sarah what I still don't understand
about this process I think I asked us in the beginning is what your thinking and intention is here Mariah I am perfectly comfortable voting to remove some of these cuts that you put
in red but I'm not prepared at this time for that to mean that I accept the ones that are in green is that is your thinking that we are voting on red and
green or the red and then the green is still on the table to be considered weighed against whatever else is brought to us in the coming weeks so my thinking was
we have an $8.2 million gap and it would be great to be able to whittle that number down by the end of this week not close it but get closer to a number and to make some progress on that front so the that was my goal and that's why I
brought the green things and the red things one possibility that Finance could consider I'll throw this out there for you all to consider before we hear from Sarah and Val is to split this into at two votes or perhaps more than two votes one could be to um consider the red options whether or not we remove
them and one could be to consider the green options or some subset of things so that way you could still vote to remove things from consideration but you know you could vote two different ways I guess is my point does that make sense Caroline it makes sense I guess I feel
like that is and I don't mean this as a criticism of you but and I I I have expressed to school committee members and other school committee members have expressed amongst ourselves frustration with this process the public has
expressed frustration with this process and I feel like this is sort of um part and parcel of that because I don't know what's on the table my ideal expectation would have been to
be presented with a an entir different and more appropriate set of potential Cuts proposed Cuts three weeks ago and my expectation is that we will have proposed Cuts in front of us tomorrow I
guess from lius Susan whatever the process here is um that I want to weigh against the the many things that were proposed 3 weeks ago so again I mean I'm I will happily say raising materials fee
tuition to $8,000 is off the table um I'll happily say 11 I agree off the table but without knowing what else we're are is on the table it it I
there's no way I can possibly um feel prepared to address the full list here because it's essentially incomplete understood and last year we had some of that challenge as well I
think um and we chose not to vote until we had an entire list and but the scale of this year is different and you know the time is not different so you know that was my thinking but I'm I'm willing to of course whatever the subcommittee wants that's what we'll go along with so
Sarah go ahead and if you could just talk about this this question of what you feel comfortable with voting I think that would be really helpful right that's why I raised my hand was just talk about it I do think that um it would be premature right now to to say let's definitely not do this tonight I
think that it's good to just start the conversation start in because then we can start to weigh our values on this and um have some conversation so I would like for us to hold off a little bit about the decision of how we're going to
vote about vote about this and consider the cuts in front of us and talk about them so sorry I didn't so you do want to talk about the green ones or you don't want I'd like to talk I'd like to start having that conversation later on if carollyn still feels that same way I
would be very happy for her to change what we're discussing um but why not let's take a little bit of time on this have some initial conversations isn't that what we're doing hold on Val go ahead I'd like to move to remove the items in red from
discussion okay is there a second I will second um Carolyn how do you vote Yes Sarah yes D yes and I vote Yes okay so there's our first vote um
and now the second question is do we want to um consider some it doesn't have to be what's here it could be we could be adding some things um I hear what you're saying Carolyn and some of these things feel and I think Stephen was alluding to this like a
little bit more obvious to me of like there's like the 991 274 that's just a right sizing of the ask right so I don't feel like there's any problem with that one the and I'll just give it another example the 70,000 from the town side I'm just trying to I'm trying to
differentiate even in my own mind between some of these that are much more straightforward the 70,000 was an additional position for it that would just not get funded so again that one is much more straightforward um the 90,000 of the reserve fund that's taking us from eight and a half to seven and a
half again that's not a real position um so I I guess like you know are is your position Carolyn that you are uncomfortable with any of taking any of these changes because even if we could I'm thinking even if we could chip away at some of this which might be again
over a million dollars it would be great to reduce deficit from no and I appreciate the question that's not what I'm I'm just my real question was if we vote Yes on the red does that mean we are approving the
green oh right no and I think right we can split it into as many but we could take these one at a time we can do this however we want to do it I have a question about the sorry go ahead I have a question about the beep and I'm not sure that's got talked about much yet um
and maybe it's going to have to be answered down the line um I guess I need to I'd like to understand what the implications of that are um specifically like what does that mean
does this mean beep classes getting larger um and is that presumably whatever's proposed here is allowed um for preschool classes so I don't know if we got much detail on that also sorry go
ahead go okay lonus can you speak I will say it sorry I will say it because it's kind of in here last week when we had the report on how the current fiscal year deficit was being um plugged with
Reserve funds $1.2 million of which is coming from beep I know I could find it somewhere but I don't think we saw the back endend of that I don't know what kind of reserves beep has in the
previous FY 225 sorry in the Q2 report beep was actually the only Pro uh cost center I think that was running a deficit on expenses so it's not clear to me what the impact and we just raise
their fee which means they're you know need to be keeping up so it's not entirely clear to me what the impact of that 1.2 coming out of their reserves means um and um I don't know if there's any
relationship to this and what making their classes um smaller or or if that's if what consolidate means does it mean changing locations can you answer
this thank you lonus so it's looking at um and I'll get Margaret to Fan this out for me a little bit more and get give de greater detail tomorrow but it's looking at truly a consolidation of uh some classes right
now that um have added capacity or typically run much lower I know the um the prek at the preschool classes are you know those classes evolve over the course of the year um but also some of
the um uh one of the other classes and I think it's looking really at the Driscoll looking at two sites looking at Driscoll and looking at the putterham location I think is where Margaret is thinking about uh this but I'll get a
deeper detail for that for tomorrow night thank you it would be really nice to know if you're T speaking with Margaret um you know if there's anybody who's going to leave that position um this year anyway so that maybe we
wouldn't have to eliminate anybody's position in order in the consolidation I would really love to know that um to be decided FTE if there's if you pretty much know that you're going to lose some current teachers thank you Sarah
other comments from the subcommittee on how they want to proceed or things that they feel May perhaps other things that they would feel comfortable adding to the list that I've proposed or they would feel uncomfortable and want to remove from the list Helen you're not on the
subcommittee so I'm gonna like go ahead and make a quick comment or you took your hand down even better okay go ahead Sarah um I would like to address line item 13 for a little while to hear what my colleagues feel about that um
sometimes when we make uh a cut we don't get great savings out of it because we have to figure out how the task will be approached elsewhere so if we restructure teaching learning K8 curriculum coordinators um and we go
from having 4.8 positions to having 2.0 um I'd like to hear from jod you know what that means maybe jod was going to talk about this tomorrow night anyway so i' be willing to hold off but I'd like to know what that means like does
that mean that there would be an somebody who is well versed in all four subjects or would the new um people I don't know be stem oriented what what's the expectation there I
think we heard a little bit about that from Jody at the original presentation but jod if I think you're here I'm sorry I can't see all the people but if you are here jod is she she was earlier yeah okay Jody do you mind just if there your if your thinking has whatever has
evolved or you know over the past couple weeks that would be great to hear I think this would be a very difficult sorry looking at the wrong screen I think this would be a very difficult cut um and change for us to
make at the Middle School level like um the specific teachers and finding that that unicorn generalist would be very difficult however I think there's creative ways that we could work
around that um that might require some negotiations with our teachers union um to have have a lead teacher for each subject area lots of districts have the director of
Elementary aded model which is a a I feel a really strong model we would lose um some evaluation ability um that these positions provide they really focus I
think on the Middle School level subject specific areas and release some of the evaluation load from from our school principles so this isn't an easy cut to suggest but it's one that I think though
difficult could be workable I our principl we're pretty sure that our principles would have a heavy heavier evaluation load with they definitely would because they' be using um two evaluators and to go back to Mariah did said that you spoke about
this before so if it were two positions one k to8 one k to five the other 6 to8 my question that I didn't ask very well before that I want to know is that person would still try to
support curriculum in the five different curriculum areas so they would have to be a person who's versed in I mean that's what you're saying this difficult about this cut is like that it just doesn't it doesn't quite
makes sense somehow um and it you know it's not it's not a large savings to us um so if we stipended teacher leaders um can you give us a an idea like is it is it still a
$415,000 savings no it's actually a little bit less than that um because we'd be adding the two positions in we'd only be cutting um 2.8 so I think that number is a little high Mariah um I could be wrong about that I don't have
the sheet open in front of me that was the original number presented to us okay yeah so then that's the very one okay um so I I do think that we would be
switching more to a focus on Middle School pedagogy rather than subject area expertise um which would be a change and could have a longterm impact on our test scores and how about differentiation is the are the curriculum coordinators is
that something that's expected to to come from them they do help advise our our curriculum coordinators are wonderful so this is difficult for me to talk about and they do advise our um
teachers on how to reach all students they consult with teachers when teachers are having um a difficult time with in their subject area and in their classroom Carolyn and I just want to highlight
we're at 7:22 it's almost an hour over which we knew we were going to be late because of this one but just to keep an eye on the C on the clock apologies if this has been asked before um and again if we had an org chart I wouldn't have
to be asking this question Jody is it so so can you just very briefly how many curriculum coordinators are who are not who not their names what are the positions now and do we still have a
World Language person working full-time as a curriculum coordinator for what's now what six through eight or does that individual what what is what does that position look like now thanks you're
welcome that individual right now because of the nature of World Language and we um tried to explore doing this for all of our curriculum coordinators is a point8 um coordinator and teaches
point2 of um their time we would here we would be losing our math our k to8 math curriculum coordinator our K to8 literacy curriculum coordinator a K8 social studies coordinator and our who
did I forget kd8 science coordinator did I answer all your questions Carolyn you did exactly thank you and I guess I'd have to say at this time I um I would Redline this that's where I'm
leaning I don't know what other people are thinking I think given the time I'm going to propose that we um essentially take the easy greens that I mentioned before and call the night a night so I'm
going to move that we accept the 990 row I'm GNA Betsy do you mind moving the like menu over on the left so I can see the numbers yes I was going to say if you could give me the item numbers and I'll have the thank you yep so item I'm going to move item 1
three um seven and I think that's it right now is that that's what I agreed on before right 13 and 7 did I miss anything so that would be $991 plus 100 you want to do nine too Mariah I
personally do want to do nine so I'll like can I get a sense of like the committee before I added on there would you support um adding nine for now Sarah Val Carol so that's related to the list that we got that we got earlier exactly
that list thank you Betsy M I'm sorry but I feel like I would need more time to just go through this yeah that's fine and it and orig it wasn't on here for a reason so um yep so I'm gonna make the motion to um accept 1 three and
seven for now um if there's a second okay thank you Caroline B how do you vote Yes Sarah yes Carolyn yes and I vote Yes um okay
so I think that that's the last thing on our agenda for tonight um and I think that that will we will then go into tomorrow night and that will be our rec those two votes will be our recommendation to full school committee and of course we will be receiving additional information
tomorrow night we'll have more information I'm sorry more time to process some of the information we receive tonight um but this will give us a basis from which to continue the conversation at tomorrow night's meeting and I want to say thank you so much to
the multiple staff who have stuck with us through this long long meeting and to the committee members who've all been here much appreciation and of course to all of our colleagues on advisory committee and all of the public as well who has been with us through this so
thank you and we will continue this tomorrow evening by bye bye bye bye thank you