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recording in progress right good evening and welcome to the April 10th 2025 meeting of the Brookline School Committee uh in addition to the seven of us around the table uh we have Val Frius and Mariah Nebrega joining remotely uh I'll start with our administrative business by moving the
consent agenda which is just the minutes from March 6th 2025 and March 13 2025 second from Suzanne thank you any discussion before we move to a vote all right jesse
yes sarah yes steven yes suzanne yes helen yes carolyn yes val yes mariah yes and I vote yes as well um all right so next up we have the superintendence report including the spotlight on
excellence all right good evening everyone we will share a few slides with you tonight and then uh we have two special presentations um that will happen at the end that are both under our spotlight on excellence so first up uh we want to
give a shout out to Rebecca Palasios um each month the Massachusetts Farm to School and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education run the terrific tray competition with the goal of highlighting exceptional
meals using local ingredients brookline won an all vegan school meal featuring kelp meatballs cilantro lime rice salad and veggies from local farms and herbs from the BHS indoor garden in May everyone will have the opportunity to
vote for the terrific tray of the year at https um backbit okay back slash for us older people um vote hyphen
2025T and the winner will be um featured at the healthy kids healthy program summit and the deadline to cast your vote is May 9th professional learning for fish tank uh with the ELA curriculum that has been adopted the Office of Teaching and
Learning has held two literacy PD sessions to implement our new curriculum Fish Tank thanks to the leadership of Kristen Gray the literacy specialists and teacher partners um as well these sessions have been interactive and wellreceived our literacy specialists
and K5 teachers are excited as they explore the curriculum together our MTSS support the office of teaching and learning also held a full day summit uh to build out the MTSS support model the MTSS planning team engaged in
activities and learning to clearly define the rationale for updating MTSS goals and the corresponding revised strategy developed clear and actionable definitions for tier 2 and tier 3 instruction outlining specific parameters for implementation to guide
consistent and effective support for students as well as drafted an assessment map that clearly outlines the purpose timing and tiers of all key assessments facilitating data deci decision dri u datadriven decision
making and with that I'm going to turn to our spotlights um tonight the town recently held a contest which encouraged students to design I voted stickers for the upcoming
town elections tonight we are joined by town clerk Ben Kaufman to recognize the finalists and announce the winning I voted sticker contest designs uh thank you Superintendent Gillery uh Chair Lou and the committee um I'm Ben
Kaufman i'm the town clerk uh here in Brooklyn uh starting in uh 2024 we introduced the first of Brooklyn's new I voted stickers we partnered with a local artist by the name of Caroline Barnes to do a sticker that we used at the November election and after that success
uh we wanted to expand our outreach and our engagement on the sticker a little bit more and the idea we had was to reach out to some of the incredibly talented students that we have here in Brooklyn so we uh opened up a design competition for K through8 students in Brooklyn those could be students in the
Brookline schools or go to school in uh another uh school in Brooklyn uh they did not have to be a Brooklyn resident we ended up having a tremendous amount of success from the uh competition we had more than 90 students submit designs uh which was a really really phenomenal
number to see uh it was very hard to narrow those designs down uh I can tell you there were 91 that I wanted to keep uh but a panel that we had put together which included Superintendent Gillery and Sheroo among others uh helped narrow it down to nine finalists that were put
up to a public vote uh over 1100 people voted over a week in March uh to come up with uh actually not one but three stickers that we're going to be using at the upcoming May election um so uh I believe on the next slide we have some
of the finalists and uh if the committee will allow me I just want to uh acknowledge each of the students who designed these stickers in no particular order uh Nova C a second grader from Lawrence School A a fourth grader from Wrl Hannah C a fourth grader from Pierce Nyla A a
fifth grader from Baker Nev A a second grader from Wrl and uh Aaliyah G a fifth grader from Lincoln uh all of our finalists um which was very very exciting um even though they will not be made into the official sticker their designs will be part of election day they're going to be made into buttons
that our pole workers are going to wear on election day so uh keep an eye out uh for the buttons that our pole workers are going to be wearing um the three stickers that did win actually each fell into a category based grade so uh on the next slide we'll have those three winning stickers um I believe we have a
dramatic review um Sloan M a first grader from Lawrence uh did this uh unicorn sticker um because uh I truly believe elections are magical i think there should be another one if you click there we go um Genevieve B a fourth grader from the
Driscoll School um did a turkey inspired sticker uh which is a nice call back to our November sticker as well as the uh lovely turkeys that we have here in Brooklyn uh who are fierce advocates for what they believe in as I hope everybody who shows up to vote is um and the uh
first place sticker was a sticker designed by um Vivian B an eighth grader uh at the RNL school um which is of uh downtown Koolage Corner with a green line train coming through um so all three of these stickers are going to be available starting April 26 for early
voting as well as on May 6th for election day um if you're voting by mail just pop on into a polling place and let them know and I'm sure they'll let you have a sticker um and uh certainly if you see any of these students please thank them um I do want to make sure that I um give an appreciation to the panelists um town administrator Carrie
Superintendent Gillery uh school committee chair Andy Louu as well as um chair of the Brooklyn Commission for the Arts Andy Dean and President of the League of Women Voters Felina Silver um for helping be on that panel a special thank you to Christina Metaf from the town administrator's office who did 99%
of this work even though I take 99% of the credit um and I want to make sure I also thank uh Mama's Delicatess the Brooklyn Booksmith and the Brooklyn Recreation Department um who donated gift cards and swimming passes for the winning designs um it's always excellent to see our community come together to
support elections um both by voting but also uh through our businesses um most of all I want to make sure I thank the students um who submitted um 91 students put a lot of work uh into these designs um they were really really incredible um every single one was better than whatever I could have possibly come up
with um and uh all of them are going to be getting a button of their sticker that they can wear many of theirs will also be made into buttons for election day um and for all of those students um I hope that they uh keep this in mind when they are old enough that elections are important elections are not scary um
and they want to make sure that they show up and they vote um so stickers are available starting April 26th election day is on May 6th make sure you have a plan to vote um and make sure you talk to the young people in your life about why voting also matters thank you so
[Applause] much next up we will turn our attention to Roland Hayes School our spotlight on excellence tonight shines a light at the Roland Hayes School second grade community needs wants and needs project
the Haye second graders engage with some of our town leaders and staff members to broaden their understanding of how a town works and what it means to be a member of the community now let's see if I have my audio set
correctly for this to work april 10th 201 We can't hear it remotely how should we do that we're working on it i share I leave it on excellent
let's get started on this maybe that's We're still working on it thanks for your patience hello and welcome to Roland Hazes School Spotlight on Excellence tonight here at school committee April 10th 2025 we are going to be talking about a unit of
study that happened much earlier in the school year community wants and needs with our grade 2 students to begin we thank Karen Joshua and Amy Trusel the two lead teachers in the grade and then our two pair professionals working closely with those students in that grade Miss Carla and
Miss Denise both of whom are just excellent staff members supporting our kids and then of course our second grade students themselves let's get started on this project the second grade students at Hayes School wanted to learn about their community as a part of their social
studies unit called community wants and needs we and by we the royal we is the teachers reached out to Christina Metaf the town communications officer for Brooklyn and she helped us connect with several guest visitors from various town departments so that the students could
learn more about different ways that Brookline meets the needs of our community along the way they made many many connections with people who work here in the and for the town aaron Norris economic development planner for Brooklyn came to talk about
public art and how it helps the community he led the students in a design project for public art and their work was displayed in town hall christina Metaf again communications officer for Brooklyn came to engage the students in the first ever student survey about recreation programs for the
town she also taught the students about her job and why communication is so important in a community and she helped them to write a group mad lib public service announcement which was actually really super fun ben Kaufman the town clerk for Brooklyn came to explain the
election process for the town and the children designed their own future voter buttons which was exciting some of the kids actually believe they would be voting today and we had to break it to them that they had to wait quite a long time because they are only eight years old so then our students eventually during
this unit of study got out into the field and along with the guest speakers the teachers arranged two field trips to the local fire station and the waterworks museum you'll see pictures here one of a bunch of kids in the back of an ambulance learning what happens in an ambulance they also as you saw in an
earlier picture rode the fire pole down they spent a lot of time at the fire station which is right adj adjacent to our school then at the waterworks museum there's some pictures here they learned about how the fire department works to keep our community safe and when we got a tour of the fire trucks and learned
about the EMTs and other services provided at the Waterworks Museum we learned all about the importance of clean water for our community and saw the history of how water systems have changed over time here in Brooklyn they also got some video
support and made their own video and here's a video from Chaz Kerry town administrator hello hey school second graders uh my name is Chaz Kerry and I'm Brook Lane's town administrator that means I have the job of making sure everything runs on a day-to-day basis and I work with people
like Mr aaron Mr ben and Miss Christina to help make this town a wonderful place to live and visit and I do that by listening to the people who live here and work here and trying to figure out what their wants and needs are so that we can do the most good for the largest
number of people i want to thank you for all of your hard work that you've been doing to make the community a better place i love your public art ideas i've heard about you filling out those surveys and you've even been learning about voting i'm especially thankful and proud of the work you've been doing for the Brookline Food Pantry your food
drive and the craft sale that's a really important thing that makes this community a better place i'm very happy to see that you're interested in local government and I hope you keep that up i hope you continue to be a part of local government local government is really the place where people can do the most
good for the most people in their communities i really believe that and I hope in your learning about this you may come to believe that too so please keep involved please stay in touch and please continue to do such good work in your part of the community so that all of us
can make Brookline a better place what's so great about these moments with the town administrators is that we're making local service and local government really real for our students and very tangible so that they know that they're a part of a community not just
one individual in a school they can see themselves as a greater whole and we're really appreciative for everybody including Chaz here who took the time to spend with our kids then our students began their work directly with the Brooklyn Emergency Food Pantry working with Elizabeth Bowen
who's the director there elizabeth is also a former Hayes parent so we have a lovely connection with her she keeps coming back and back year after year to support our kids which is amazing as the culminating project for this unit we asked the students how they could address a need in the community then again they invited Elizabeth Bowen the
director of the Brooklyn Food Pantry to come speak to us about how the food pantry operates and helps people in our community get the food they need she encouraged the students to get involved by donating food items having a fundraiser and even volunteering at the food pantry when they get older the second graders were really excited about
the idea of having a food drive at school and also wanted to use their time talents and treasure to have a craft sale fundraiser for the food pantry and this is how they launch their food drive here at the school [Music]
hello hey school everyone in second grade has been learning about community wants and needs we learned that some people in our
community don't have the food they need we also learned that people who need food can get it from a place called the Brooklyn Food Pantry the Brooklyn Food Pantry has lots
of free healthy food for people who need it the director of the Brooklyn Food Pantry told us that we could help and so can all of you [Music]
second grade is having a food drive we're collecting food to donate to the Brooklyn food pantry this will help people in our community bring donations to the main lobby from December 9th to 13th please bring non-p
perishable items like soup rice and oatmeal honey coffee canned fruits and vegetables pasta tomato sauce and cooking oil thank you
[Music] pretty special the food drive was a pretty big success the kids made posters that were all over the school and you'll see a poster here um each one was individually
made so we have maybe 50 different posters each one of them really beautiful and the kids each took their time making these really really beautiful and elaborately drawn posters to get everyone's attention they made the posters and the video advertisement to let the whole school community know about the food drive the kids collected
food items for one week and on Friday counted them and sent them to the food pantry in total they collected 423 food items so our whole entire lobby was really became um a collection point and we were overwhelmed by the generosity of our people in our
community then they had a fundraiser and the students got to work crafting and created items bookmarks paintings ornaments bracelets etc to sell at a fundraiser parents and school staff were invited to attend and students loved using their creative talents and then selling their work for a good cause and
through the fundraiser they raised over $340 to donate to the food pantry which is really amazing i know I bought a few things um I my house is filled with little bookmarks beautiful bookmarks that we use for our books at
home and then finally the end results the end results I think you'll be able to extrapolate from this are that a lot of good feelings kids really feeling connected to their community have a much deeper understanding of how Brookline works um but essentially the title of
you know the unit of study was understanding community wants and needs and then beautifully how the community comes together to meet those needs the teachers our pair of professionals the entire school were really proud um of these kids and all the work they did and
moreover the kids were really proud of their own contributions to the community and felt connected with each other and the good work going on in our town so that is a brief presentation tonight i apologize that this is not in
person i'm actually away um I'm leaving tonight i'm on an airplane heading out to Las Vegas for a conference thanks to the BEF very thankful for that opportunity as well but did not want to delay any further in getting this good information out to you guys because
we're doing amazing work here at the Roland Hay School this is a snapshot of one grade in one point of time of how we're trying our best to make a real difference not only in the lives of our students but in the greater community in total so thank you thank you for watching i look forward to connecting
with all of you in the future and asking any qu answering any questions you might have or hearing that warm feedback that you'll have for our kids and our teachers here at the school thank you so much and enjoy the rest of tonight thank you so much to the Hayes community
and with uh without further ado our public schools of Brooklyn spotlight on excellence is awarded to Hay School's second grade community wants and needs project in recognition of the community wants and needs project which allowed the Hayes second grade students to better understand how a community
operates and engages in experiential opportunities to work collaboratively and to make a difference and so we will present them their award uh uh when I go and visit the Hay School [Applause]
great thank you Dr gillery so this takes us to public comment uh we have 12 speakers signed up tonight uh each of whom has the floor for three minutes and our first speaker is Daniel Lipton thank you good evening my name is Daniel Lipton i'm a Brookline teacher parent
and resident you probably know I'm going to sing tonight though I have some laryngitis so won't be my best but I first want to emphasize a few points though it may not officially be in the list of budget cuts the potential grade 2 section reduction is a huge concern
for many of us at FRR i would like to thank our fantastic principal Candace Whitmore and her administrative team members of the school committee and members of our FRR PTO for helping us to advocate for this important cause also
please save base they are an important part of PSP and on that note do you hear the teacher singing a song of union women and men who will not be rifted or laid off or bumped again
when the beating of the heart echoes the beating of the drums we won't let our schools be stripped bare when tomorrow comes recently over 60 staff at FRR signed a petition we need five sections at each grade level under any condition
with our large EL population low-income students and TLC we are unique five section stability is what we seek we need to keep all of our education innovators we need to keep all of our
curriculum coordinators don't wait to add people back in August when it's too late we need time to plan ahead and deserve to know our fate enrichment and learning for all is always a strong case so why are we
thinking of making cuts at base with a little creative thinking and support from you bass has the potential to bring in much needed revenue we know that you have heart and can do the right thing you brought back learning centers custodians and food servicing but we
need you to do even more bridge the budget gap without making our schools poor we always serve with pride we've supported every override please advocate for more money from the town don't let your staff and students down would
rather be at home planning our lessons than standing here before you but sometimes singing from lay is what you got to do we are all people wanting to work for the benefit of each and every kid we are thankful for the audit that
the town did please listen to your heart don't let our wonderful schools fall apart keep all our jobs show us your grace and don't forget that even base does student face and totally changing the topic but that's what song bridges
are for please honor the hard work of principal Candace what more do you hear the teacher sing singing a song of union women and men who will not be rifted or laid off or bumped again and the beating of the heart echoes the beating of the
drums we won't let our schools be stripped bare when tomorrow comes thank you [Applause] thank you Mr lipton our second speaker is Matt Rosenthal
hi good evening my name is Matthew Rosenthal the K8 math curriculum coordinator i've been supporting Brookline students teachers and families since 2015 i'm asking you to maintain the K8 curriculum coordinator positions as they are currently constituted full-time K8 math K8 English K8 science and K8 social studies yesterday in this
room I participated in a full-day workshop on the district's implementation of a multi-tered system of supports for next school year why would I be invited to support this work if my role were not in the plans for next year ka coordinators have a significant impact on student outcomes we are living
the teaching and learning goal in the strategic plan with a scope and sequence and common assessments the student experience is cohesive across all schools we're able to track student progress during the year and because we are K8 over multiple years the strategic plan describes professional learning communities in math our team has been
coordinated to meet with teachers to examine student work and progress determine their conceptual understanding and figure out what students need from additional support to enrichment in last year's eighth grade math MCCAST our schools ranked number one three four and five in the state in number of students
meeting and exceeding expectations this was the first cohort of students to use our new curriculum when they are in third grade success in 8th grade is an accumulation of support from all teachers and specialists from kindergarten all the way up a cohesive curriculum coordinated across the district plays a role in these outcomes
without our coordination across K8 student outcomes will worsen there will be less consistency across schools and greater disparities among groups of students ka coordinators meet the needs of 250 teachers we are the go-to people for an incident regarding a current event a book discussion about
immigration a question about the high school placement of a student with significant needs a new student several years below grade level a parent who asked that their child skip a grade or isn't being challenged a fish tank that's malfunctioning needing current and past achievement data needing lesson plans when teachers are out for extended
periods which is more than you think needing additional resources for intervention consulting with special education or the department of English learners seeking new approaches or latest trends in our field alternatives have been proposed such as having a generalist administrator or having us teach a core class neither of which is
viable for the former we offer content expertise in second grade I asked students on the spot probing questions to extend their thinking while simultaneously grabbing connecting cubes to help kids who needed physical model to understand the material generalist administrators cannot do this for the
latter this is not analogous to high school department heads who teach a class and whose whole department is in one school we are spread among eight schools and need to travel among buildings within a day the scope of the job from in-class support to behind the scenes coordination is extensive we
support all of K8 because our schools are set up that way k8 finally this has been a challenging two months for everyone we continue to differentiate the curriculum problem solve around students prepare students for MCCAST organize professional development for the spring the summer and the fall and write summitive
evaluations of staff we do not want our children left behind because they are not getting the depth of content from someone who is not a content specialist we want all students K8 to be prepared for the rich resources at Brookline High School i ask that you maintain our current positions as full-time K8 coordinators thank you again for your
time and consideration [Applause] thank you Mr rosenthal our next speaker is Greg Porter still on okay uh greetings again everyone my name is Greg Porter and I'm the K through8 social studies curriculum
coordinator um you've heard from my colleague Dr rosenthal and I over the past month how valuable the coordinator role is to teachers and students here in Brooklyn further away like here is better yes oh sorry about that um in past public
comments we've spoken about the diverse job responsibilities that we have how everything we do is student facing and has a direct impact on students how we're central to departmental data collection analysis dissemination and decision-m and that there would be a loss of institutional and departmental knowledge that would occur if our roles
were cut we've talked about the lack of true savings associated with cutting the coordinator roles in all of the configurations that have been presented particularly when most of us would need to be offered a unit A position that will cost the district significantly more than the educator we would be
replacing respectfully we we've shared the lack of clarity regarding where our work will live once we're gone will it go to the teachers overflowing plates the building administrators overflowing plates the decreasing number of central administrators or a new option no one
there's a real possibility that key components of the work that we do every day that's essential to the schools will be picked up by no one contributing to the deterioration of the quality of education here in Brooklyn i'll add to that list other impacted areas that are district-wide things like misaligned or
unaligned K- through5 progress reports the creation and use of a program review process the creation and use of a professional development plan the creation and use of a community response to world events time-sensitive collaboration and support of building based responses and crises the
evaluation of nearly a hundred educators and the direct support for educator leaves all of our areas both of departmental and district work are directly connected to the strategic plan and you've heard from hundreds of educators administrators and families advocating on our behalf and despite all
of this turmoil we continue to deliver highquality support across eight schools and nine grades it is an honor and a privilege to do what we do and that service that we are here to do is what keeps me coming back hearing Roland Hayes second grade talk about their unit
of study seeing a second grade teacher literally modeling civic action at the top of his lungs for the last two months that inspires me and that's what keeps me coming back i'll conclude with this one of the most difficult parts about budgeting is that in a school is that
people make up 90% of the budget and leaders are asked to separate the person from the role in order to make difficult decisions i understand that and at the same time I'd like to share with you the words I've shared with teachers in the social studies department as we've under undergone monumental change if teachers
make up 90% of the budget they are not our greatest cost they are our greatest asset when you invest in your assets you are investing in what is best for your organization the social studies department invests in teachers because it helps us create the best learning environments for our students based on
what you've heard of our roles the return on the district investment in the KA coordinators is extremely high and maintaining our role through this crisis will be central to the continued success of the public schools of Brooklyn thank you
[Applause] thank you Mr porter our next speaker is Darby Nefair good evening everybody and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Darby Nefir i use the pronoun she hers and I've been had the privilege of
serving as the coordinator of counseling and guidance at Brooklyn High School for the past 10 years in this role I lead and support our counselors and generalist social workers who are essential in helping our students navigate the many challenges they face
as a school counselor myself for over 38 years I've never seen challenges as profound as they are today many of our students are facing mental health challenges which have intensified since the pandemic and we cannot ignore the impact it's having on their academic and
emotional well-being brooklyn High is an excellent educational institution there's a heavy weight of stress for many students while stress is a normal part of life when it's rooted in academic pressure food insecurity or uncertainty about their future it
becomes a barrier to success as of today 25 BHS students have had to receive intensive outside mental health treatment and in a recent Panorama screening that was revealed that 55% of our students report feeling challenging
emotions up from 37% just a few years ago we need to continue the support we offer our students especially those at risk of not graduating there are currently 54 students in grades 10 11 and 12 who are at grave risk to earn the
credits needed for them to graduate and this does not yet include the students who are struggling in grade nine federal funding is uncertain and state support for mental health is also at risk of cuts however we must prioritize the support of our students the support our
students need including maintaining essential essential roles like school counselors and social workers students become more limited in their learning when their emotional health is not stable and these professionals are vital for the well-being of our students
offering both academic guidance and emotional support currently our counselors have case loads of 190 to 207 students and 40% of students have identified their counselor as their go-to person for support at the school
the student support teamwork offered by deans educators and other key school personnel should not be deflated due to the budget the social work team at BHS has already experienced a cut this year from five social workers to four the
current plan is to continue with only four generalist social workers at BHS for next year current social work case loads have jumped from to between 25 and 40 students per counselor case load and are now maxed out we have had to create
a weight list for support for the rest of this school year reducing these positions further undermines our commitment to equity and wellness as outlined by the PSB strategic plan over the past decade initiatives like data team and student intervention team have
been essential in identifying at risk students and providing early interventions these efforts along with our schoolwide work on trauma-informed teaching and community practices must continue and staff cuts would hinder this critical momentum in conclusion the
challenges our students face are growing not shrinking it is critical that we provide stable ongoing support for their academic and emotional needs i urge all of us to continue investing in the resources necessary to ensure that every student at Brooklyn High has the
opportunity to thrive thank you for your time and attention thank you Miss Nefair our next speaker is Megan Kennedy Justice eric you're going to have to let me know if I need to adjust the mic uh I'm here to talk tonight about the role
of BHS deans in maintaining safety and building community at Brooklyn High School i currently teach math to 77 students over 60% of whom have IEPs 504s IAPS or other needs some examples of how
the deans at BHS have made it possible for me to teach more effectively include uh that I have called for a dean when a student is disregulated to the extent that they are disrupting class or otherwise not able to function a dean has come to get the student immediately
i've called a dean when a student smells like marijuana the dean has come or a dean has come as soon as possible i've called the emergency number the 5444 for another teacher who had a fight break out in the middle of their classroom i typically rely on deans more
often for their support outside of class while I almost always include parents on any emails of concern I also rely on a student's dean to tell me what the most effective approach is is for a particular student it isn't always contacting a parent first i reach out to
a dean if a student is having difficulty attending class consistently is chronically disruptive at a lower level or is having social difficulties in my class is regularly falling asleep in my class has been caught cheating or is in danger of failing my class i reach out
to a dean if I hear from a student that someone else in the class or another class is being bullied or otherwise might be being victimized that another student is a potential threat to themselves in addition many times I've been in a dean's office when another a
student has just come right in disregulated and needing attention usually they knock first but not always they see their dean as a supportive adult even when the dean has had to administer consequences to them deans know their students on their case load
better than I do unlike me they have a four-year relationship with them they spend hours building these relationships and providing students with the support they need our neediest students need the most support in order to keep them safe and to keep the rest of the community
safe at the high school um and the dean spearheads both the students academic team and their emotional support team deans are critical to building the community fabric at BHS that keeps us safe deans bear the main charge of creating culture
among students and also among teachers of freedom and responsibility that we value indeed with each interaction the deans spend much of their time educating students about something that's more important than academics how to be a good person and a responsible citizen in
the world it is a mystery to me why we're considering cutting our administration our deans dean cuts will mean that deans have less time for the critical work of intervening in situations before they become problems as well as educating students as they
administer consequences for students poor choices at BHS student safety depends on our depends on building creating and maintaining a robust sense of community eliminating deans will
threaten this [Applause] thank you Miss Kennedy Justice our next speaker is Barbara Brown hello friends hello friends is this is this
good um I'm speaking on a different topic and it's hard to come after such moving uh critical uh comments that have come before but I want to talk about Brooklyn Adult Ed because my family has participated and enjoyed it and
benefited from it since 1930s starting with my mother-in-law who arrived in the United States without a high school because there was no high school near where she lived in Canada she went and got her GED and from there
she was able to get her LPN and from there she was able to do the nursing she wanted to do all her life i live in her house with her son um so I want to just tell you where I've come into this i'm sorry um I forgot my
glasses um I'm just beginning my perspective on it uh it's been part of my No I I'll I'll I'll just I'll just pretend I I can read what I see okay my first explan time with um
Brooklyn Adult Ed was when I signed up for a meditation class i'm not sure it was the greatest class but it told me that I wanted to do some more of that and since then I've gone on weekl long retreats and it's part of my daily life and it's made my daily life better i
wouldn't have done that if it had been started with all day retreats but having a little class one day a week introduced me to the theme and that's one of the advantages of a program like Brookline Adult Ted in the 80s I taught a course on aparate in South Africa and two of my
students went on to become regular organizers against aparate uh then I started teaching classes on um through adult ed i've led 20 16 walking tours on Hidden Brooklyn
slavery and freedom in our town and without an organization like that it would be very difficult for a tiny organization such as ours to find an audience brooklyn Adult Ed does it they do it efficiently they do it easily and
I love them um and by the way my next public uh adult education tour is on April 27th on Sunday at 2 PM i don't think I've seen any of you on any of my previous tours and maybe not any of
you and so you can sign up thank you [Applause] thank you Miss Brown our next speaker is Arthur Conquest oh okay good evening
uh I was with Helen I don't know less than an hour ago i got here thank you okay uh I will okay thank you Barbara i've been on one of your tours and enjoyed it and enjoyed it
arthur Wellington Conquest II third town meeting member precinct 6 chair of the advisory board of Bassy i'm here this evening to speak briefly in support of the
organization uh hoping um you'll give you'll give it a chance to live survive um Irving Schwarz the former uh assistant director uh to Linda Lawson the founding director was the first
person I met when I arrived uh to Brooklyn the first week of September 1982 over the years Bassy has accomplished a variety of incredible
achievements that have benefited Brookline High School the town of Brooklyn children and adults from the B vulnerable population from public housing uh in
particular in its heyday Linda Lawson the founding director purchased computers for a lab in Brooklyn High School funded and supported uh the copying center created under Malcolm Win the
first basketball camp during spring vacation the summer camp fair uh to name just a few initiative Bassy was responsible for creating first presently Bassy is not
operating with a deficit second uh not the school committee or the school department school department's fault but say five years back approximately
$400,000 mysteriously disappeared from Bassy's revolving fund and third the program is still trying to recover from COVID to put to put our situation in
some kind of perspective the summer before COVID um hit BY summer program grossed a million dollars we're hoping at some point excuse me that we can get back to that
what is more but not related the former director was terminated in keeping with Linda Lawson's vision Basey is still providing administrative support and services to
the economically under underserved population with the school department's music program a worthwhile undertaking michelle Trevette and the other staff are working as hard as they possibly can
crawling and scraping freeishly from the dungeons i'm asking here this evening that you give them a chance to remain doing so thank you for your time and consideration and I'd be happy to
respond to questions you may have but just let me say one more thing i have uh two children all right both of them are adults who knows i don't want to show my age they both are college
graduates my son in computer engineering from Morehouse my daughter from Georgetown and from Yale Medical School i'm telling you
this it would have not happened had it not been for the Brooklyn Adult and Community Ed and I mean that along with 23 other black children from Brooklyn many of them from the
housing development many of them from uh Medco that's what the Brookline Adult and Community Education means to this community thank you [Applause]
thank you Mr conquest our next speaker is Errol Silverman thank you Arthur that was fantastic and I thank everyone here for your service i know this isn't an easy job it's going to be a challenging meeting for everyone so I promise to keep it extremely short
because it's going to be a long meeting and we all want to get home to our families um my name is Errol Silverman and I am on the board of Bass uh Bass as you know is one of the oldest most successful community programs in the country um our youth especially those in
public housing and our seniors really depend upon base but for this meeting in particular I want to talk about base being an asset and not a liability so it's it's differentiating from all the other things that are being cut today
oftent times we run out of surplus and we're more than happy to absorb some of the school systems expenses so when you're making your vote of certain things to cut I urge you to look at it as not necessarily a red line item on
the balance sheet but the upside that we can actually absorb some of the custodial fees some of the rent so forth and so on and I I urge you to keep the lights on at base and thank you again [Applause]
thanks Mr silverman our next speaker is Paul Epstein and Todd Ortiz so you'll be sharing the three minutes got it three weeks ago I spoke from this podium on behalf of our custodians who
emptied the trash barrels and polished the floors today I'm here to advocate for a different group of colleagues a small but stalwart department whose important work with students is less visible to district stakeholders i'm talking about our social workers throughout this painful process of budget deliberations which unfairly pits
passionate professionals against each other in a quicksotic quest to stave off elimination and forces you all to make thankless decisions a term I've heard again and again is studentf facing it's been stuck in my head for weeks as I sit in my office literally facing students
in an IKEA chair 3T away from me because social work is by its very nature secretive and is largely practiced behind a cloak of confidentiality I thought with help from my friend and colleague John Ortiz we tell you just what it is we do in the public schools of Brooklyn
so we drive students to Worcester on a Sunday morning to ensure that a prescription drug abusing freshman completes their intake at the only inpatient adolescent substance treatment program in the state we send a morning text to a a
student a school avoidant sophomore and show up at their front door at 7:30 a.m when they don't text back we run the restorative justice circles and mediations when harm has been done and healing is needed in the community we respond in in seconds when
a student is melting down on the floor of a guidance counselor's office and needs to be assessed for safety we make dreams come to a reality by coordinating an official graduation ceremony for a terminally ill student who was attended by his family friends
and former teachers we administer a fund that allows us to give to get the eyeglasses the winter boots the emergency food relief the rental assistance to avoid eviction the tea passes our students need to show up
ready to learn every day of course these examples exist on top of the core function of our role to offer top-notch clinical therapeutic social work support to BHS students students who all too often are doing school while struggling with serious mental health conditions like the two-headed monster of anxiety and
depression if forming strong relationships a vital building block of good teaching it is the very raisant detra of social worker social work all of Matt's Dubois positive data about BHS students sense of belonging and ability to identify a trusted adult doesn't
happen without a full strength starting five of LICSSWS do we have more social work staff than most other comparable districts i'm guessing we do yes and that's something to be damn proud of not a reason to trim mental health supports whenever budgets get
tight we have already We already have a wait list to access our services it will get significantly longer if we cut 20% of our department parent after parent vents to us about the nightmarishly difficult task of finding an outside clinician with availability who accepts
their insurance everyone in this room everyone watching at home and everyone who's been paying one ounce of attention knows we're in the midst of a massive crisis in adolescent mental health we're the ones attending to our hurting teens we're the ones expertly supporting them and keeping them safe and we implore you
to reconsider the decision to diminish our district's commitment to the well-being of our beloved students [Applause] thank you Mr epstein and Mr ortiz our next speaker is Lisa
Reading good good evening good evening my name is Lisa Reading i'm an associate dean at the high school where I have worked since 2001 at the March 20th school committee meeting two BHS dean positions were
nearly eliminated when asked by a school committee member why not cut both right now Hal Mason responded "We probably couldn't run a high school if we took the axe in that way
he is absolutely right the average associate dean and dean of students case load is 240 students my particular case load is 269
sophomores and on top of that I teach a math class deans are the administrators who walk the hallways supervising students engage with ex escalating students intervene in brewing conflicts and provide an adult
presence that is sometimes enough to prevent our students from making poor decisions but sometimes our students do make poor decisions like when they smoke
marijuana vape THC or nicotine or drink alcohol in our school bathrooms when they sell drugs on our campus when they fight in our
hallways vandalize school property bring a weapon to school or they bully or sexually harass another student these things do happen at Brookline High School
some of them happen daily and it is the deans who are the administrators who respond in the moment to address the situation and we are the ones responsible for investigating the
incidents and allegations of bullying title six and title 9 we conduct the interviews and we support students physical and emotional safety we keep our students and our schools sta
safe safe by administering consequences and support for poor student behavior we practice progressive discipline and we are always trying to educate students especially after they
transgress deans are safety care trained this means we are trained in deescalation strategies both verbal and physical so that we can intervene in situations to keep students and staff
safe we create in attendance improvement plans behavior improvement plans individual curriculum accommodation plans all to support student growth and development deans also plan to organize and chaperone high school milestones
like the junior semi the prom after the prom party and graduation not only are de deans studentfacing every single day we are parentf facing we team with parents in support of their struggling students we
are even a source of support for them we are teacherfacing we support teachers in the classroom with classroom management and student success plans we team with our social workers our guidance counselors and our nurses to
provide social emotional support including crisis management and help students return from hospitalizations after a crisis there was a lot of talk at the March 20th meeting about our most vulnerable students those students are
not just in one or two programs at BHS we have our most vulnerable students throughout our entire school deans have students on their case loads who are housing insecure school avoidant English language learners new
to this country and students in the foster care system deans are the administrators for students in our special education programs for example Excel RISE and Connections cutting deans means less
support for these vulnerable students and it would destabilize our student support structure before I end I want to acknowledge that BHS used to have a different administrative structure with fewer deans
however back then we did not have the mental health crisis that we have had since the introduction of social media cell phone addiction followed by the pandemic and back then we did not have four buildings on our BHS campus to
operate and supervise we are a different and larger school than we were a decade ago if you cut deans you cut support for students teachers and families you cut supervision and you create a less safe
school environment for our 2100 warriors thank you [Applause] thank you Miss Reading our next speaker
is Angela Jen um hello so I'm bringing a much more light-hearted perspective on BA today um but I wanted to speak on behalf of adult ed so one of the things that makes me proud to be a Brooklyn resident is the town's commitment to the broader community through the arts and creative
enrichment and as a young adult with a fully remote job I've found it challenging personally to find community in my day-to-day um but Bass E has been one of the brightest spots for me week after week and season after season through Bass E I've learned ballroom
dancing with my partner and I'm currently enrolled in a pottery course um which I've been attending for the last couple of terms and through this program I've met incredible members of the community who I almost certainly would not have otherwise and I found that it's become a treasured third space
for many uh that makes a lot of people look forward to the weekend ending um Bassy not only teaches important lifelong skills but it also enables meaningful organic connections it's a very special and meaningful and increasingly rare thing to find in this
digital world to have a program that's centered on connecting us in our mutual excitement to learn and create in person and it encourages us to be joyful and playful and to challenge ourselves and to learn from each other my pottery class has become its own community where
the students and instructors develop meaningful rapport seasoned classmates warmly share tips and tricks with new and returning students alike and people get to know one another on a deeper level and my classmates range from students to retirees people had taken
pottery as a Brooklyn High student and who has returned 10 years later to continue their passion in the very same studio to parents of former Brookline students who have seen the school and campus evolve over the decades to folks who have recently moved from other
countries and have taken many base classes as a way to settle in and meet new people in a creative space and from chatting with my classmates it's abundantly clear how much of a community cornerstone base is and this is just one of the classes this is just one class
among many of their offerings and I think one of the most remarkable things is that it does all this with affordability and accessibility in mind i've heard firsthand from classmates that if it were not for the affordable class fees they wouldn't have been able to take these classes at all as many of
the others offered in the greater Boston area are much more and often prohibitively expensive and these classmates return term after term to continue honing their skills and contributing to the community and the vibrancy of the class i think Brooklyn is a very special place and I really
hope to see Bassy continue its mission of nurturing a joyful engaged and connected community for generations to come thank you for your time thank you Miss Fang and our last speaker this evening is Marcia Holly hi my name is Marcia
Holly i've been a Brookline resident for over 40 years my kids were schooled here i'm a retired public TV producer for the last 11 years I've been teaching at the Brookline Adult and Community Education Center one of the big reasons we choose to live
in Brooklyn is to benefit from the values our town holds its excellence in learning high standards for quality education public parks and general well-being bc base has been an important component
of all the town offers for almost 200 years offering a great variety of subject matter and excellent teaching with teachers whose passion for their subjects goes to their students as well but I wanted to hear it from my students themselves so I asked them and I asked
fellow teacher Brooklyn poet laurate Jenny Barber to reach out to her students and here is some of what they had to say from Ruth Hobberman brooklyn adult ed has played a major role in keeping me excited and
engaged with the community i came to Brooklyn knowing no one and was able to sign up for fabulous classes that allowed me to meet interesting people my own age older people desperately need this kind of opportunity
carrie Laughman over my 40 years educ residents in Brooklyn I've taken many classes at Brooklyn Adult Education from introduction to Mac remember that in the '9s to my current classes in poetry analysis and writing they have enriched
my life immensely at every stage brookline would be immeasurably harmed if this program ceases to exist from Anastasia's Fos Anastasia Voss the classes not only teach they become a
source of relationship development and friendship the teachers knowledge of their respective subjects is impressive and their generation their generosity in impairing their knowledge benefits their students greatly without this resource
Brooklyn will be poorer and as former director of Lincoln extended day Barbara Popkins says "As educators we're always being encouraged to teach the children we work with and to model it too to be lifelong learners
but how can we the adults the teachers be lifelong learners if the opportunity of going to Brooklyn adult ed classes is taken away and what would its sessation say to our town's commitment to lifelong
learning with everything that is happening in our country right now this is a time to buttress education learning and community now more than ever we need to keep Brookline community and adult
education a vital resource in our town thank you [Applause] thank you very much Miss Holly and to all of our speakers that brings public comment to an end for tonight and takes
us to our budget discussion so there are six topics that I expect we'll be discussing this evening uh let me list them number one the building department uh number two uh we'll be hearing an update from Dr given on some revised numbers that are related
to actions already taken uh number three Brooklyn Adult and Community Education number four the Office of Student Services uh number five Brookline High School and number six uh curriculum coordinators uh there's not a new presentation on that
but uh we left things unresolved uh at an earlier meeting so we need to revisit um I don't think tonight is the end of our budget discussion um and I don't plan to be asking for a vote on a final uh budget request uh the town school partnership has asked for an update on
our process so far and has scheduled a meeting for next Monday for that purpose uh so at that point we'll be discussing with our town partners uh the state of affairs after tonight's meeting uh so before we get started uh I'd like to ask is anyone volunteering to be the keeper of our spreadsheet i know several
members as well as Betsy have been kind of updating as we go along uh Stephen I see your hand up so unless somebody else really wants to do it up uh okay if uh Yeah okay so Mariah if you're willing to do it that would be great since you created it sure do you want me I'll just
keep it going here and then I can show it at the end does that work sure that's fine we just want sort of one person to to be doing it rather than a bunch of people um getting on the document thank you all right so uh first up we have the building department i believe Helen uh
yeah go ahead thanks Andy so just before we start I want to kind just pick up a little bit part of where we left off i think last time I just want to I guess ask Dr
gillery at this point is the assumption that this ongoing spreadsheet is the comprehensive list of what's being presented as options by you and Dr givens or is there
anything else that that you're going to be offering i I don't believe so i think we've put somewhere around $10 million in options up for consideration okay uh at this juncture uh and continue to refine um
what's already in existence and we'll continue looking um for opportunities that may be behind the scenes but no no new proposals okay thank you yep andy I'm sorry could you say the order of the presentations one more time sure number one building department number
two um some updates from Dr given on revised numbers related to things we've already done uh number three Brookline Adult and Community Education number four Office of Student Services number five Brookline High School and number six curriculum coordinators
all right Helen do you want to start us off with um building department sure I'd be happy to do that um first of all um Mr simmons can't be here tonight because he's at the advisory committee talking about their budget to advisory so can't
be in two places at one time unfortunately however I did have time to go and talk with him and um Mr young Charlie Young from uh the finance department to to make sure that these numbers are as right as they can be
let's put it that way um so you'll see on the first slide if somebody Okay I'm going to walk you through this um and um then you can ask questions at any point that you want um the original request
from the building department for the FY26 repair and maintenance budget for the school department that means outside contractor service contractors is $3,77 and $3,77,112 sorry and this was taken from
and confirmed uh today with Mr young and um and the budget book on March 20th we the school committee voted to level fund the 26 request and at the time it was my understanding that it was
$162,499 however upon further investigation my understanding was that was the requested 4.5% increase that the building department had requested for our particular uh R&M budget the actual um
re uh the town reduced the increase from 4.5% to 2.5% which uh was an increase that was approved at $90,000 not $162
um 4.99 so one of the actions I think I will ask once I get through everything I think will or and and explain the rest I will be asking to resend that vote and then redo it um for the next part
so um which vote Helen huh which vote the second the next page the one for 162 okay it went from 162 to 90,000 um if you could if somebody could move the
Oh I'm sorry thank you thank you so um I spoke with Mr simmons uh about the possibilities of cuts and where we might be able to affect some savings and it's some pain too uh certainly uh but these are the areas that sort of were on the
bottom of the list of all the things that our $3.7 million go to um this includes So what I did was put the 90,000 for the um um FY26 request the
2.5% 150,000 that was there for repairs and patching to flooring surfaces and these are things that won't happen next year we we know that and we would have to accept that um 75,000 for painting
services interior and exterior it's mostly you know doing things that um we do on a regular basis uh but I think for one year we might be able to not uh do that um 45,000 for window services
including screen repairs and window cleaning um and then the last one's a little more complicated this doesn't come out of the repair and maintenance budget but it somehow is connected so let me explain the 240,000 for HVAC uh
technician positions has been in the building department budget for the last couple years that we pay for however it hasn't been filled they've had difficulty finding people at the rate that they give for certified HVAC people
um and at the same time we've contracted for services uh for about $400,000 so what we discussed and actually what I discussed with Charlie was two positions but I'm thinking that
maybe all three positions since we haven't been able to fund it and we do have the money in the budget for ser for contracted services I would recommend that we we take all three positions if Mr um Simmons were able to hire somebody
uh for one of these positions I think some of the money from the contracted services depending on when he hired the person might be able to be put over into hiring that person or we might revisit i mean one of the things that oftenimes
happens but not always is that um in the fall there's monies that sometimes come to the town from uh the state from different sources uh and those monies for us are not very usable as a school department because you can't really hire
teachers in the fall you know our programs are set our our year is sort of set but Mr simmons budget could be able to absorb that and use that right away um
so what I am um suggesting is that we first vote to resend the first vote and uh of the 162499 and then vote to accept um a
$600,000 um uh reduction in the building department our contribution to the building department the uh just to be clear the three positions include health care costs also um so have we been double budgeting up to now for that work
like budgeting once for the positions and again for the contractors who actually end up doing the work yes I think that's been the case all right uh however I think it not not through any ill will or anything like that i think it's just been hard to find those
positions if we were as Mr uh Simmons had told us at one of our um capital subcommittee meetings if we were to hire these three people we could save probably $2 to $300,000 so it's you know it would
really it would um in balance would be a very good efficiency and probably better service too um yeah so maybe I'll stop here and see if there are questions so have you have you made your motion um
would you like to for a second should I do them both together or Let's do them separately before you make the motion can I just ask a clarifying question of course is there a reason we can't just move the
437501 which is the original motion plus the difference to make 600 why do we need to resend the first motion because I think it's cleaner that's all i mean yes you could do the math the other way if you want
but I think it's just an easier way to look at it and present it i don't know i don't remember whether our previous vote made reference to level funding because that would no longer be sort of a correct description it did make in which case we should resend that because then it's no longer
an accurate description exactly that that was the reason that I put it in there okay um yeah and I let me be clear i mean you know the building department is not happy with what we're doing i'm not
particularly happy i do want to maintain our buildings on the other hand we continue to have $3 million in the budget there for HVAC services for plumbing for electricity for um I have it all here if you want to know what
what is in there um I have a print out um for fire safety for emergency generators um for all the maintenance things that we have to keep up in the buildings throughout the
year security services hazmat um asbestous removal things like that yeah um Andy um well thank you Helen for doing this work and bringing it to the committee are these more clarifying questions Jesse and Sarah before a
motion gets on the floor i think it is um in if memory serves me right I thought the reduction we were talking about earlier was 400,000 and you're mentioning this 162 which was the one that we voted before 162 we only voted the 162 before we never voted the 400
because I wasn't sure at that time i had thought erroneously that the gas bills utilities utilities were where we could save apparently that is not the case i've gone further and checked that out thank you you're welcome Sarah i just wanted to say that the
other day at expenditures and revenues I said that we didn't spend all of um the money allocated last year and it turns out I was mistaken what we do instead is that sometimes we carry over to in order to pay our bills so just wanted to
clarify that if anybody had been paying that close of attention but thanks Sarah i do have I have a question on that statement and then I have a question about are about I want to recclarify what the motion is sure and then after
the motion are we going to discuss more yes okay so Sarah when you when you say we it's the building department okay correct they Okay thank you it's our money it's the building department's
budget and the building department staff okay thank you and you had a clarification also on on the motion or Oh yeah well okay why don't Yeah so you want to move first the rescending of the Well either way let's vote to rescend first
and and then we can go on from there i move that uh the school committee vote to rescend its vote of March 20th 2025 in which the allocation of the fiscal year 26 school repair and maintenance budget was reduced by $162,499
is there a second thanks Jesse uh so any discussion on just the motion to rescend before we do that one okay don't see anybody start again with Jesse yes sarah yes steven yes suzanne
yes helen yes carolyn yes mariah yes val yes and I vote yes as well all right would you like to make the other motion i'd like to make the second motion that uh the school committee vote to reduce the allocation to the building department for
FY26 repair and maintenance by $600,000 as specified above do we have a second to that okay thank you Suzanne all right so any discussion on this one well okay i was going to give Charlie a
little leeway if he wanted to but maybe we'll leave it like this for now all right do members have any questions or comments on these proposals okay um I think Mariah and then Caroline um just so I
understand the HVAC tech positions how much is the salary and how much is the benefits assumed or is there no benefits assumed what's the calculation there the benefits are included so we were assuming with benefits about 80,000 because they're
technicians not certified people so how much does a technician make just so I understand i'm That's a good question that part I didn't have from Charlie okay i'm just surprised that it's that low including benefits but okay it it could be higher but let's let's go for
that and see i don't know on that one was that it Mariah yes okay then Caroline then Stephen thanks um so I think I need to I I want
to understand this whole thing now here because um my understanding is that by saying we want to reduce the
building department's budget by $600,000 so that they do $600,000 less work on school buildings my question and concern especially based on what we've heard from
um Commissioner Bennett and Charlie Simmons isn't here to talk about it that it seems to me that we're reaching across into the town and saying cut this
allocation to the building department's budget um and don't do that work uh sure but I just want to finish sort of contextualizing my my question like we don't say to let's cut town council's budget
by X and then the next time we need town council services we'll we'll go it alone or or not use them next time there's a open meeting law complaint or something and figuring out ourselves so I'm it's not clear to me that this isn't sort of
reaching across in a way that would I understand your question but um there's one sort of thing that probably you don't know the building department school maintenance comes out of our budget so it's different than the uh
legal uh department i don't think we pay anything into the legal department i'm not 100% sure um and it comes off the top of our it used to be that we had we owned the building department budget it
was all within our budget and then and then it became clear that they did a better job of managing it doing it and so we would give over at the beginning it was $600,000 that we would give over to them it's now three million um so
it's more um it's it's our it's our money in some ways because it's taken from our budget before it comes to us correct okay so it's not a line item in our correct this
book correct so the suggestion is to say to the town give the building department $600,000 less because we'll we'll just say no thank you to that and we'll manage with these particular items right
and so if it's a different allocation from the town to the building department and the building department's budget would be different because we're saying no thanks to that amount no because the town also funds part of the building
department it's complicated i understand that so their their buildings and their percentage does it is not included in I understand that but the town the advisory committee approves the building
department's budget so ultimately this is a change to the building department's budget and would that this have to then be approved in the AC hearing probably okay probably be because they do do that um
just as they approve our budget um you know and so then how is this a savings to us if it hasn't how is it $600,000 of savings to us if it hasn't
come to us and it's not in this because it comes out from the top from our budget if you look at the Okay I understand what you're saying it's you know there are certain things that the tone takes so it's not really advisory you
know that yeah so that and that's why I have this perspective on it so it's not really that we are spending less we're just taking less no we're spending less and we're taking more we're
spending less on services except for the 240 that was a sort of double counting uh we're spending less on services and keeping it in our budget
so and then we have a memo from Commissioner Bennett yes that that sounds like he had concerns with this and it would have to go through AC right
okay okay um thank you um thanks for doing this work Helen oh you're welcome um two questions first is this a proposed work deferral are we proposing to do this work and the accumulated work in subsequent years
yes I mean it would be you know we would whatever would have gotten done under these three uh two three items and you know if there's you know the the 2 point the level funding um would be u delayed
so for instance washing windows we might wait a year well I guess what I'm really asking is do we anticipate then that the school year 27 request to the town would be higher than initially anticipated because we're deferring work and we want
to make it up so I'm trying to get at is is this a capital cost deferral rather than reduction really it's a deferral yeah you can't say it's a true and then my second question is when you said can I just say one other piece to that so there is the CIP that
has in it you know a number of these items uh for different schools that are supposed to happen this summer so it's not like nothing will happen you know but it's got the the repairs mostly and patching the um those sorts
of things okay and the second question I have is when you said they're not happy I guess I want to hear a little more about the ways in which they're not happy like we we don't do obviously school repair and maintenance uh for just cosmetic purposes we're doing it to
maintain the quality of the plant so that there's strong educational experiences to be had are there does any of this unhappiness rise to the level of serious concern like for instance does the lack of repairs and patching to flooring services present any potential
um hazards so I think that that if there were a hazard if it was unsafe we they you know there's 5% contingency in the budget also um that's staying there we're not taking it out so
that could cover it possibly um but they didn't raise an objection about the Well no so yeah I I wouldn't say Charlie was happy i'm not going to say that but when we talked about what is feasible and actually even in Dan Bennett's um um
memo he talked about the same same items actually he added in carpentry right uh I didn't use the carpentry piece so that's still there and we do pay for I guess I'm just looking for an expression of confidence
that these proposed def this proposed deferred work um doesn't propose any serious threat to the quality of education in Brooklyn in school years washing windows i mean I like clean windows believe me I would be I've pushed probably many years to get seems
obvious but I feel like this is the level that we should be involved in in in probing a proposal like this so I feel No no i I I'm taking your question seriously i'm not Yeah i I think if you're asking me I think this is fair
and it's it's numbers that we can live with okay thank you Ellen yeah i'm going to just make one more comment Andy unless anybody else has something that's a new hand Mariah right yeah it's a new hand please go ahead then thank you
um so Helen could you just confirm is the 45,000 for window the entire budget for window or a portion of the window so it's um if you see it's for shades and screens and for cleaning
so is there more is there more window service money still in the budget there's a glazing services for 30,000 there's um glazing meaning replacing windows that have been broken okay and what at the same question for painting
is it is the 75,000 the entire amount yes okay and the flooring services is the 150 the entire amount correct okay i guess my question is might we consider restoring a little bit of the floor to me painting and windows are nice to have
obviously but not like um I guess essential safety things um with that said flooring like if there's an issue and of course Charlie I know Charlie would not like if there was a real problem as you say he will address it but I guess I'm just wondering if we should restore some of the funding to
flooring i think one of my concerns is just that we have spent a lot of time over the past couple of years really working on our multi-year plan addressing the deferred maintenance and I wouldn't want us to get into a position where we end up building up our
deferred maintenance issues again so I guess I would like to maybe for your consideration think about restoring some funding for flooring so that we um can address the flooring needs as they come up rather than having them tip over into the deferred maintenance
can I follow up on her question please uh thank you Maria is it okay for me to continue or you Yeah I mean but I I I want to make sure I get an answer to the question at some point but if you're on the same vein have at it yeah um so in
reading um Dan's memo um I was struck by two things one was that his his sentence that said the financial situation the school department is facing has nothing to do with public buildings division and has not contributed to any budget
deficit so I didn't have a chance to reach him today but in you know I only saw it this morning so and when I read that sentence it said to me that like we're trying to reduce funds for things that out of things that they need to do
in order to reduce our budget and so I I questioned the entire enterprise of trying to cut anything there and the second part had to do with his statement about setting us back he said um and I quote "This is taking a
very large step back and will have numerous adverse effects on school building operations and maintenance for years to come." So I'm thinking maybe maybe one of those two individuals should really be here the next time we talk about this so we can really get it from the folks in the
building department again Helen I know you're acting as intermediary and it's super important and critical what you're doing i'm just thinking that in the ways that we're make having this discussion and the outcome that we may vote upon without the actual other side of the
group to present something maybe it's just too early to discuss this and actually vote on it i'm I'm going farther than Mariah to say painting may have to be done in places where it's flaking off or there's you know some kind of problem because of moisture and windows can get broken and whatever else
is going on the money needs to be there on their side to do our stuff so I'm sort of leaning towards saying let's not reduce anything meaning let's have them come back to us when Dan and or Charlie is available Charlie Simmons to present
to us and to not really defend but just to educate us and inform us from their from their side what's what needs to be done suzanne are you responding to Jesse yes I am so we're looking where we can make cuts
and we know things are coming up tonight we know that we're coming up against a deadline and we asked Helen to look at maintenance and uh the building budget and this is she looked at it she talked
to Charlie this is what she has come up with it doesn't mean that Charlie can't move money around he almost always does that as he sees fit so he may say "Sure I'll do my this is what I can do for 3 million," which is what he'll still have
in his budget it may be that there's a floor that warps or we have a flood and he has to take money from something else i don't know what that would be maybe we don't need as many window replacements and he will do that he is really good at doing that and so that's what this is about this is
about finding some money that we can use to bring our deficit down and and we need to do that we're on we're on a tight time frame and this is a very uh reasonable approach and I know that Charlie and Dan really understand what
we're saying and they will make it work and so um I think I am going to vote for the motion and think we should move forward on this understanding what you're saying but that this is where we should be tonight well I guess my comment is based on the memo I would not
conclude that either Charlie or Dan agree with this proposal it just ends it doesn't say here's what I think you should do it doesn't say signed you know I'm glad we all are on the same page it just ends you know he says the issues have been explained many times and hopefully have been put to rest meaning
there's a long-term problem uh the department carries over funds every fiscal year to allow us to pay the previous year bills of the new fiscal year so yeah you're right he moves money around but funds may dry up there may be some unanticipated expenses and suddenly
it's harder to do that and it'll have to come out of some other service or something i understand i'm just saying 3 million still feels like it's a reasonable amount of money to keep in the and this is only part of his budget you know that there's the salary budget right and there's I think it's seven the
actual number is 7 million something that comes out of our our budget so I'd like to go back to Mariah's question about the flooring um was it were you going to propose an amendment Mariah or just I wanted to get Helen's sense of
you know could we put 25 to 50 for example back into flooring that would still be a $550,000 reduction but I feel I personally feel a little bit uncomfortable about entirely reducing flooring given that that truly is a
safety component and I agree i I completely agree with Suzanne that I know that if there was an issue Charlie would find you know he would shuffle money around but I still would feel more comfortable having having it not zeroed out so I guess my question is Helen what do
you think about you know 25 to 50,000 remaining in i certainly we can do that uh we can also um Yeah I mean that's that's Can I have a suggestion could we do a dollar amount and leave the
flexibility to Charlie and the building folks well that that's certainly possible too i was just trying to find things at least that you know because people will say "Well where are you going to take it from?" So I wanted to make sure there was detail but certainly I for my part I think we should let them
just you know work through it and figure out where where um where it can happen okay so this would mean just amending your motion to state only the number um and leave it open u what it would be
applied to all right would someone like to move that is that of a separate question oh okay so it hasn't actually been moved okay i thought I had moved it but I might Well you made the original motion and I'm asking whether someone would like to
amend to remove any reference to where the cuts are going to come from only the amount which is still just do what the actual um the action doesn't say where it's coming from it just Well but when when Helen stated it she did say as as outlined on
this remove that part yes so you're proposing to remove that um and Suzanne you're seconding the amendment so we'll need to make we'll need to vote to make that the the motion um well can I just ask one more question Susan okay um just
a question for for you Helen uh so so I I agree with you completely Mariah that that was why I was raising the question about that was my example was flooring services for the same reason i I guess given the frustration evident in the
memo i'm wondering if it's worth I I I think you raised a good point Jesse and I'm wondering if you think I might despite the the necessity of passing further cuts if it might be worth waiting a week to give Charlie and uh
and his office the opportunity to weigh in on these to make sure that there's that there's strong consensus on these i'm asking for your opinion on this Helen and I which I which I trust i I think in terms of collaboration yes i
think they will probably say we need it all because that's sort of what the building department has always said but when we you know we come down to it there are things that you know if we're willing to live without them then I think that that that makes sense um
we're willing to live with a lot of things that you know um positions we've caught caught and things like that it's we have to look everywhere you know uh is my opinion we can't you know we can't say well this is off the line because
it's part of the building department it's part of our budget so um I I you know it's whatever the committee wants i'd be happy to have Dan and you know we I asked them we tried to get them here tonight they
obviously couldn't come and you know somehow it the advisory committee and us are not in sync on these things always so all right I think we should move to vote on the amendment so this is a vote um
asking whether we're amending Helen's original motion to remove any reference to the the uses that are going to be eliminated all right i'll start with our remote members uh this time Mariah um yes val yes carolyn
yes helen yes suzanne yes steven yes sarah yes jesse yes and I vote yes as well so now that becomes the motion is there any further discussion before we vote on that uh Caroline I know you had your hand up earlier oh yeah i just
wanted to sort of um extending what other people were saying um and just also it it I guess I worry a little bit because you know we've gone through deferred maintenance before millions of
dollars worth um and um I I sort of worry about kind of the public looking and saying like we've built these buildings and now we're
not paying to maintain them um but mostly it's the it's the kind of Dan and Charlie part i worry about even if we know that Charlie's great at shuffling money around um I'd be concerned about causing waves by by reaching across um
well and that's why I went and talked to him before proposing any of this but I hear what you're saying do we have the ability to defer the vote uh no uh now that the motion has been made and seconded we we need to take a
vote on it um if you don't agree you can vote no um and it could come up again at a later meeting well that's I meant like timewise did we have the ability to defer to a later week no right because we need to we're going to town school partnership on Monday yeah and as I said
I don't see this as the end of our part of the budget process but I think um you know it I would like to wrap up as much as possible tonight so that we have uh we have something coherent to to say on Monday thank you
um all right so let's vote let's start again with our remote members mariah yes aal yes carolyn um no helen yes suzanne yes steven
yes sarah yes jesse no and I vote yes so that passes give me a moment to write something down all right uh so our our next item is a report from Dr given um about some
revised numbers that are related to um cuts that we already did vote to take good evening can you hear me sometimes you struggle okay so this is just more uh of an update at uh one of
our prior meetings uh the school committee took action to reduce uh three custodial positions as opposed to moving towards a different form of a hybrid model and in the moment I gave you an estimate of 75,000 for that in addition
we had also talked about uh leveraging um the revolving fund uh for a few thousand dollars more than was in the original budget so that vote um at that time uh we move forward 181,194 as the reduction but uh I had
the opportunity to go back and to um you know revisit the exact uh reductions that would take place and the and the total um reduction would then be 213422 so this is just a correction it
affords you an additional 32,228 um in savings um so if you don't know if it requires an action it's just kind of course correcting on the dollar amount so I don't think it takes any uh any action required on on your part so I
will defer to Andy if you would like to take uh a formal vote on that um if if not I think that that depends on whether the wording of our previous votes included the the dollar figure and I'm not sure whether we can
look that up uh quickly enough to figure that out and so that suggests that we should just go ahead and take another vote now um to to to be safe the vote was to reduce by three FTE yeah I don't think this changes anything this these are just how these are just
accounting but I don't think Yeah this is the con yeah as long as uh as long as we weren't in the in the language of the motions specifying like dollar amounts before i guess this is something we can always revisit later I suppose if uh if it turns out it's a problem so yeah all
right okay um in addition since uh the budget was presented to you we had a couple of additional retirements that have come in and so the breakage associated with uh those more veteran staff leaving um and replacing them with
uh uh a lower um level of uh experience would uh allow us to save an additional 8639 this is standard practice when teachers leave we budget them at master's six and so this is just the
delta between master 6 and what those staff members are currently being paid at so that um allows us to reduce the deficit um by $86,39 so FTE remains the same in this case it's just the amount I'm carrying
on the salary lines gets reduced any questions okay Stephen no just thanks Susan okay there's a thumbs up all right um and then the third is um uh again a
modification to an action that was taken and this would require a vote so the action was that um we would uh not support adding the cyber security position um that the IT department on the town um was proposing for the
upcoming school year um the IT department uh came back and said we would prefer to keep that and reduce the and one FTE and IT help desk um in the school department and the difference
between the two is 23,550 so we would achieve greater savings by uh going with this recommendation from fun in the IT department so but you did vote that as being a reduction in the cyber security
position so I would uh recommend that you do take action either by rescending that and revoting it or just by making a motion to um swap out uh uh the FTE that would be reduced
i'm sorry I just didn't understand so that's an addition it's not a subtraction the 23550 you would be a able to further reduce so further reduce okay that wasn't clear because yeah further reduce by 23550
I don't think our vote was about the cyber security position it was just about $70,000 from IT services it was with related to staff and not to leases and other equipment so whatever you bill is appropriate i'm
just telling you that by making this choice it affords you 23,550 more in savings uh would anyone like to move I suppose accepting the the third item yeah I would move to accept that thanks Jesse
second and seconded by Helen any discussion all right uh start with Carolyn yes helen yes suzanne yes steven yes sarah yes jesse yes val yes mariah yes
and I vote yes as well all right thanks very much Dr given absolutely i'll kick off okay helen I actually have a question so um do you think there may be more retirements this year um or
resignations that might be some other cost savings i mean I know in years past we've estimated rather large sums depending on how senior the staff was i I took as much as I could up front
given our financial uh situation I don't anticipate there's going to be s significantly more because we were about as aggressive as I could be without putting us in jeopardy okay thank you just just a followup so we added we're
adding all those differences up Andy it's 32 oh sorry susan I hope Mariah is Yeah that's what I meant about 130 something 14 i I am adding them in the spreadsheet yep 3286
yeah i'm not sure there's a breakage item yet on the sheet but you can create one oh yeah i just reduced the initial gap so it's it just reduces us from just over 8 million to 7.9 uh okay sounds good all right next up we have Brookline
Adult and Community Education so I I'll I'll walk you through some of the financial information but Michelle's here to share with you some important uh details about um base and its long history here she can do far better job
than I ever could so I'm going to turn the mic over to her uh so she can just That's fine thank you good evening Dr gillery Dr lou and members of the school committee my name
is Michelle Mcloone i serve as the director of Brookline Adult and Community Education um or also known as BASE or Bassy as you've heard this evening uh I want to begin my um comments this evening by thanking my staff i know they're at home
watching they have little ones um but I I really want to give a shout out to Tvette Campbell 19 years with bass that's a long time um she's really done a wonderful job and she is our rock jesse Donnelly Meredith Force Tristan
Conway and Michelle Aguilar Wisnooki i just thank you all for uh all your hard work in developing programs uh for the community under very challenging circumstances um brought upon us by this global pandemic
um you've all done a fantastic job and indeed I think that you will agree that we really make a fantastic team and like I said I know you're watching but time to put the kids to bed and come back tomorrow and give it another day i also want to thank my advisory board um
Arthur Conquest got up and spoke um this evening he has been our fearless chair um Peter Meyer who couldn't be here this evening super supportive errol Silverman um who is also here from our board got up and spoke earlier uh Zorida Fernandez
Marina Broadskaya and of course our our beloved and uh recently departed Chobi Hoy um who was just an amazing support and a great mentor um your time support and guidance has been instrumental and
much appreciated so this evening I know you all have some very difficult decisions in front of you including whether or not to sunset base a program which has served Brookline since 1832 offering classes and programs for
adults children and seniors i like to separate the seniors because they're special demographic i know they're adults but you know they're they're near and dear to us um we have from English as a second language and workforce training to robotics music lessons and
summer camps we are a cornerstone of the community and its learning and add value um to what has become you know a wonderful place to live here in Brooklyn with top-notch education but BAS is just it's more than
a department i think we're a trusted bridge between the schools and the broader community from our English language learners and seniors to children who depend on summer camps and enrichment programs everything that we offer supports professional growth
workforce readiness child development and the social emotional well-being of all of our residents we are proud of our strong relationships with a robust network of community partners from Boston University to Brooklyn Housing the senior center uh
and the Brooklyn Robotics Initiative which is made up of some of the most talented young adults that I have come across in my career and they should be very very proud of all that they've done the the BBots as they like to be called
um they've really they earn all the accolades um that that they've received just wonderful kids but these partnerships were years in the making and they provide real opportunities for growth equity and innovation especially
for under reppresented students all that being said we recognize our financial responsibility and we welcome transparency the loss of a hundred excuse me the loss of $190,000 in grant funds and rising
costs will unfortunately lead us to a possible and sadly a projected deficit that may be out of our control no matter how hard we work to prevent this we understand should the program close that it is not due to a lack of support by
you and the school administration the fiscal situation in Brooklyn and our neighbors we're all facing it is nothing less than daunting and you are forced to choose between programs and teachers this is very unfortunate considering we
all have a common purpose but children must come first we know this and honor this along with you if you must close the program I hope that you will consider speaking to your colleagues on the town side of government to see if
perhaps they would consider maybe I don't know adopting base we're we're up for adoption potentially so if um you could advocate for that we would be appreciative so that we can possibly provide another 200 years of service to the community so best luck in your
decision thank you for your time and consideration thanks Thank you Michelle so I'm going to walk through um some information that I've shared uh before and some additional information
that um Michelle and I had uh put together for tonight bit of an update on the status of FY25 um and then how that would play out in FY26 so just to remind you uh that again
um this strategy is to sunset base and there's two components to this you know and uh the direct um known impact is the benefit cost uh which is uh been updated here as you know the town received the
rates for FY26 a few short weeks ago and they gave me refreshed information on the rates as well as those members that uh participate and so previously this number was 23,000 it's now
52957 so these are some of the above the line costs that Ellen had mentioned earlier when talking about the building department being above um the line so uh so that's one part and and I think you know pause in case anybody has any
questions is everybody clear about that what that piece of this is no no i'm sorry that that is the updated actual cost yes of the benefit component thank you yes okay sure
so we have a um financial update in our packet and maybe you can't but is there any do do you are do you have this in front of you and is there a way for you to contextualize these numbers to what we received in our packet i'm not sure
what you received in your packet but the next slide okay is some information that I had shared at the last meeting but we paused because it got late so I'm guessing that's the information you have and that'll be on the next slide uh this is more just refresh when we presented this information back in
February um I had provided you with a little bit of information about the second part of the base conundrum I'll say yes that'll be on the next slide um and so the second if we could go back there we go
so the second part is kind of the history um I will say and I agree with Michelle that a lot of effort has been put forth to try to uh make base uh uh profitable or at least break even over
the since COVID and uh no matter what strategy that has been employed so far unfortunately it has not led to the revenue exceeding the expenses so the information I have for you so what happens is that you have a
fund balance and that mean that is either increased or decreased by the difference between the revenue that you take in and the expense so when the expense is higher than the revenue the fund balance decreases okay so in
FY23 the you had a fund balance of 486 24 that went down uh to 333 so it was lowered by 152,000 um FY25 when we began the year
we had 1238.95 this information on FY25 you'll see in your budget document and I've presented this before uh which is a reduction of about $29,000 from the prior year this year uh Michelle went after
grants and some other onetime money um for ARPA and other uh resources some would be reoccurring in terms of a grant for community and we'll see that um on the next slide uh but in spite of those efforts um it's still not going to be
sufficient to cover all of the expenses for the year in FY20 so at the end of this year and we'll we'll go to the next slide in a second um we uh anticipate
that we'll again um be under uh uh byund somewhere between 6,000 and 166,000 which with a fund balance of 123 we can hopefully cover most of that
depending on how the spring receipts turn out okay so what happens when the fund balance runs out then we have to pay for that out of our operating budget you cannot close a revolving fund at the end of the year in
deficit you have to cover the costs okay so if um the numbers are not as favorable and it's in deficit more than 123,000 then that money has to come out of our operating budget
so because the fund balance will expire this year under all circumstances and for the last several years the revenue has been less than the expense there will be no money available
to offset the deficit so if you choose to keep base for next year what you'll need to do is increase by maybe 150 to 200,000 our operating budget so you would be increasing the operating budget which is not part of
our proposal right now by about 200,000 um plus the 52 to cover the benefits um in order to ensure that there's enough money to be able to pay for the operations of base in
FY26 so I'll pause there and take your questions i'm sorry I'm a little confused but there's a fund balance of 123,000 presently at the beginning of this year which will be gone by the end of this year so there will be no fund balance
but it'll be zero it'll be zero and there's a possibility that it'll be greater than the deficit will be higher than zero and so we'll have to absorb that out of our 25 budget and then next year there will be no fund balance so as
you can see okay that the difference the 152 and then the 200,000 we can anticipate that it's going to be upside down again by approximately that amount so you'll need to increase your FY26 budget by between 150 and 200,000 in
order to continue to fund base yeah two questions one is maybe I missed it how do you calculate the benefits cost what is that 52,000 the benefits are based on the health insurance costs oh oh you're talking employee benefits okay i missed it okay i'm sorry maybe
you didn't say employee last time the second is more of a maybe a philosophical question if I look at the 105,000 that's what you had in this document we got for best case scenario right if I if I look at what percentage that is of the school's budget I mean it's like
0.07% all right it's less than a tenth of a percent and it's like minuscule right i mean that's just doing the math so I'm saying just philosophically why would we why would we even consider losing a program with 200 years of history and
not find a way to not find a way at 007% of the budget i mean there are many and this is not a criticism or anything yeah right i mean I knew you were going to say that uh you know but I'm just thinking that maybe we
need to find some way in Brooklyn you know to do this even if we you know as we're saying we can't at the same time what can we do to make it happen i mean there are so many resources in the town not
saying even in the town government but for something that is $100,000 worth thinking about closing something it just I'm I'm fascinated that we're even discussing it i mean just that's just my comment so I' I'd like to actually build on what
you're saying Jesse because um you hopefully this year will end out by the the spring semester you'll have some good earnings and we we will be at zero but I think the summertime is when you have a lot of income from kids programs
and things that we care about that they they do with children so I'm wondering if there's a way to keep track of the budget i mean you know the deficit you know can hap happens as we go along it's not I mean if if base can
stop working for instance if if we saw was a $300,000 deficit and or two even a $200,000 deficit in September we would know that right away you know I think I think we need to give them building on
what you're saying i think we need to give them some time to really try and work at getting up the revenues so that there isn't a deficit and the program could go on i mean that's where you know and just to keep a really you know good
track on how things are moving um and making I'm sure your board is work thinking about it all the time on how to bring in more revenues um and I think you're getting some good you know publicity from Brooklyn news different places that you know this is a program
that's a really good program people really appreciate it but to do that Helen we would have to add to our budget in order to cover any we have to add if we if it's a month sure quarter by quarter so when you take the vote of
your budget you're appropriating money for something if you don't appropriate money and it goes before town meeting and it's not included in the budget then there is no appropriation so I we can go through the other slides just so you have the context and then you can certainly deliberate um so the
next uh So the other piece of that to your point Helen um the summer program seems to you know be profitable and money has been collected and the community has um shown an interest there and so we're suggesting that the sunset
not be at the end of the fiscal year rather September 1 um which would allow us to continue with the summer programming um so that's what this slide is certainly if you'd want to hear more about the summer program um Michelle can certainly if you have any questions
about that she's she can answer those those aren't questions I can answer but if if you're if you're good on that we can go to the next slide and I can walk you through yes okay so Michelle and I have met multiple
times um to put together you know what we believe is uh uh the estimated program revenues for this year and the expenses from now uh from the beginning of this year until the end of this fiscal year and so what you can see when
you look at that is that we're going to have um general tuition of about uh collected of about 15 uh 416,000 and then music lessons so this is the program um Kenny had had spoken about previously at other meetings that
we've had and he and I have had conversations or email uh exchange around you know what what would we do there uh should bass be sunset would we'd still maintain the music um uh lesson program we would just have to
manage it um differently uh then there's some donations that are collected and then as I mentioned before Michelle is very aggressive in going after some ARPA money now ARPA money expires right there's no ARPA money left so after this
year that revenue will no longer be available um the grant that Michelle wrote for uh the mass cultural um uh I think it's cultural council right yeah um uh was awarded 17,000 and uh she
believes that um if she applies again that she would be able to receive that uh grant in FY26 so we counted that as kind of a recurring revenue source when we go to the salary side what you'll see there are the salaries for the six
positions are in the first line not the benefits there are no benefit costs in this analysis um then instructor wages and professional technical services by and large are for the staff who actually deliver the programming both of those
lines right Michelle yeah um and then online books and subscriptions and tools this is predominantly for the scheduling software used um for the music lessons if I misspe all of it all scheduling okay all
scheduling and and revenue collections so that's not just for music um and then of course supplies for the various programs and then uh there's a little bit of money for uh memberships i believe 14,000 you're right so when we
add all of that up um it's 791,000 the revenues are 685,000 but I can't it's a little blurry from this distance um and so you know what you can see is that there's not going to be enough revenue in order to
support all of the expenses now what happens when we take the So so that's FY25 and the reason there's a range is that in this estimate we went with the best case scenario for for revenue collection in the spring so the best
case scenario is reflected here in this and with the best case scenario for revenue collection which would be about 115,000 Michelle estimates estimates it would it would mean that our our deficit is about
105,000 if we do not receive the 115,000 we got the worst case scenario of collecting only 55,000 for the spring sessions um then the deficit would grow to 165 so uh depending on how the spring
plays out will determine what level of deficit not whether we have one it's the degree to which we will the deficit will be okay um again the fund balance is 123 uh so even if you looked at at at at
at achieving you know kind of the mid-range in revenue we will not have enough money to pay for all of the expenses and base this year the next um column
FY26 if is just replicating 25 uh but but looking at that without having these one-time revenue sources so when we take ARP uh the ARPA money out then it reduces the revenue you know
down to 580 the other part of the ARPA money is it's offsetting some of the expenses in the salary line this year when we restore that uh the expense goes higher so the revenue goes lower the expense
goes higher and so it makes that delta greater uh that's without changing any programming and you know you know could we cut cut you know maybe a support staff position but even if we cut that the delta as as Michelle mentioned is is
significant it's very very steep um and so that is really what you're looking at here um the impact of losing the one-time uh sources of revenue next year and as as we know those that's federal money the likelihood of getting
more federal ederal money next year is highly unlikely especially given the current climate uh out there so um so that's that's really you know what the numbers look like that's our best estimate right now of where base will
wind up uh by the close of this year um and so you and certainly I can take any questions or Michelle can answer any any questions you might have regarding uh any of these details stephen
um okay thank you so obviously nobody wants to lose base no um I guess I have a question for Michelle first um I guess what's not clear to me is why the only options on the table are sun seting or fully
funding base did did you and your team consider or or is it viable to consider proposing models of something in between where say the most profitable classes are proposed for for continued funding
while some extremely paired down version of base operates for a couple of years while you and the board come up with a new business plan i'm not saying this stuff is easy i know I work for a nonprofit i and and then some new course
of action is charted with your board so that we don't lose base which would seem like a like a real loss for for Brooklyn but but that there's an opportunity to shrink and then rebuild is that is that a viable course of action yeah well we
discussed it as a staff um and we talked about a lack of $190,000 in grant funds is really going to hurt us um I'm going to if if we continue I'm going to definitely reapply for grants and look for other ones but
there's always a risk like the 17,000 um dollar grant I asked for 200,000 so you just don't know what they're going to award you that being said um we talked about what we believe is a real need in the community which is
um late afternoon programming for children so when the PTO uh programs that are run um end we've heard that they end around 3:30 4:00 and then parents are stuck you know with they can't get out of work in time you know
or they have to arrange for transport it makes it difficult so we thought we might take advantage of that opportunity um we have a survey that we've prepared we have not yet sent it out but we we would um we just didn't want to disappoint people and in case the vote
was you know to end end the program um but you know hope hopefully that's something that we might look into running the only the most profitable classes like you said it's it's something that we're trying to do uh it's very difficult
because for example sewing it's probably not the best best example to use but um this past year we had 20 students enroll in sewing right but two years ago we had none so it's really hard to predict what the enrollment is going to be um in our
in our models um but with the afternoon program only running the most profitable and most you know our our um most popular classes are the ones out of the unified arts building um the pottery the woodworking painting um you know things
like that and um I think it would be a loss for the community because it's very rare i think Brooklyn is the only dark room in the Boston metro Boston area is what I've heard um so there's a lot of special things out of UAB um you know
hopefully someday if again if we're allowed to continue once we get back to the kind of revenues that we had in the past we'd be able to contribute for the wear and tear that our students take in the unified arts building for example um
the faculty over there the directors and everybody they've been wonderfully supportive but you know it's it's something that we need to do for them and I you know would hope to do um we also want to run some more familyfriendly programming on Saturdays
uh right now it's just for adults but we've heard that you know like a mom and me or a grandparents day or so you know so something that will pull the community in um you know could increase some of our revenues on the weekends and
then the last thing would be to um offer our English as a second language courses in the evening um right now we only offer them during the daytime um and we would need to recruit some more teachers to teach in the evening because the instructors we have now don't teach
evenings but um those are just a few of the things that I would hope would raise the revenue such that we wouldn't have that deficit we would make up for at least the 190,000 at a minimum i I guess what I'm looking for is is there some
minimum level of funding that the school committee could provide that would allow you to continue a meaningful level of operations while you regrouped for the future so that we don't lose base permanently but we we give you a we give
you the chance to build a bridge to a future where you flourish in a moment where we would otherwise struggle to fully fund you yeah i I would say based on our projections for next year we we would
need a minimum of 400,000 ultimately to to be comfortable over over a period of how long um that would kick us off um because you know hopefully we would bring in that additional revenue i'm I'm hopeful that
it would happen but um you know that would be the ultimate but but over over how long so uh the length of time would would be probably a couple of years I think you know and and that's just based on on past history and some funding that
we've received i think that would take us at least a couple years thanks Michelle yeah sure thank you i'm not sure I've understood though the answer to Steven's original question where you were asking like is it possible to sort of focus on the most profitable courses
and you seem to be saying Michelle that that's hard because you can't predict early enough which courses will be profitable uh at times um we do have historic data in our registration database and we can track and see which courses have over the history of the
program run into the most revenue um we're trying that model this spring instead of 125 classes we're offering 90 I believe um and and we're trying to reallocate our resources on the work
that one of the program managers is doing to shift to do some work on children's programming or some of these other things that that I've mentioned does that answer your question Andy um no not completely i'm still trying to
understand like is is what Stephen was suggesting at all feasible that you kind of you over time like you've built up some understanding of which courses will be profitable you're saying you've already done that to some extent these 90 courses you are running are the ones you thought would Yeah and it changes
each term it changes each term based on you know what who's available to teach it um space if that's an issue that's only usually an issue over the summer but um yeah Jesse yeah Michelle um
so I guess to follow up on Steven's point um is there within the financials a fixed part that doesn't what is that sort of Yeah okay so if we're looking at the overall budget do
you want to just continue i'm sure Yeah you sure um my my I guess my question is to run the program with and 120 courses and to run it with 90 courses is just 30 more people teaching those courses right
i mean okay but as it would as it let's just say you haved it because you had to um save on expense mhm okay so there'll be less revenue but you have only 60 courses or even 30 courses it sounds
terrible but I'm just saying let's just say yeah you had a So what's the fixed cost as you reduce the number of courses at some point you're just increasing revenue because and and your expense is your teachers and your instructors yeah and maybe some room rentals or something
but is there some lower part where this is going to be what it needs to run yes and then um the most expensive line is is our staffing line it's it's an average of $400,000 a year which really isn't too bad for a staff of six when you think about it but but still it's
it's yeah that would definitely we would need to um meet that in in order to meet our fixed expenses and then we also have the additional um cost of the benefits that we haven't been charged very
recently um that Susan mentioned um and I believe we could uh if if we reduce one of our staff members uh a support staff position uh I I think that would cover the cost of the
benefits so that you know we're we're trying to plot everything out as best as we can knowing what our expenses are what our potential expenses could be and you know um offering mainly just those core classes that we know will run and
we can reallocate resources with the staff and restructure some things suzanne well kind of following up on Stephen and Jesse saying is there a way Michelle that you can balance have it a balanced budget is there a way that you
can show us a balanced budget i mean you for instance you have general tuition uh as leveled from last year going into next year yeah i mean do you anticipate there'll be I I guess I'm trying to get to a balanced budget somehow i I know
you can't do it completely and it's projected but it's it's hard it's hard to have an unbalanced budget it is when you don't know when your funding source is is so unknown and you know we've been we've
been doing this for a number of years of course the pandemic was really hard on us m um but I would love for you not to have to be in this position year after year and I would love for us not to have to be in the position of year after year having to make these really tough decisions and having to do this so I'm
just wondering if you could do a balanced budget uh you would have to decide it's it's your budget what that might look like but that would help us going forward i see what you're saying um when Susan and I sat down and took a look at FY25
and then you know be because of those variables we went with let's just do an identical to this past year that is not my goal is to only bring in $415,970 and then an additional
$145,000 for the music extension lesson which I believe with the 17,000 brings us up to about $580,000 in revenue um I would I would like to I've been aggressive in my projections of 20%
growth annually is what I what my goal was that was my goal some years we have passed that other years we've only had 11% growth it it just it just hasn't been consistent every single year um and
I've I've met with um people with more of a finance background to help walk through some of that um and they kind of laughed at me a little bit when they said "What percentage did you want 20%." Like that's a lot for a small basically a small business to try to grow that
quickly each year and get back to the revenue model that we had prior to the pandemic which was about 1.6 million so it's it was significantly the the pandemic really really hurt us um with the lack of
revenue coming in and cancelling classes we haven't had a catalog the expenses for the catalog run about $100,000 for four cataloges to be mailed out um each each year um so we cut that expense to
try to be responsible um but it has helped it has hurt us in our marketing efforts so you know we really have been operating with our hands tied in many ways um and I I really you know
if based on you know past conversations I've had with former finance directors if if I could have a $400,000 cash reserve that would be enough to help us get through some of these unpredictable rainy days but that that
is a lot of money i mean it's not the problem is it's not unpredictable rainy days for years now base has been losing money and I and we're not seeing a a business plan for having it stop losing money at such a rate uh um I'm happy to pull some
numbers and things together i mean I have some general things i I wasn't prepared to present that tonight i am happy to do that for you if that's something you'd like um you know it was my understanding we were just going to quickly go through the update and move on to I didn't
realize you'd all have all these questions this evening um but I'm happy to answer them and I'm happy to get you whatever you need if I can't answer them this evening uh Stephen I I guess I have a question for Dr given
um Dr i wonder if if you have any suggestions for us if if you see any financial course of action for the school committee whereby we might continue to provide some smaller level of funding of of of financial support to
base whereby we guarantee it continued existence um but declined to fully fund it given our financial situation and its growing costs is there is there a course of action for the school committee that you can see that way or is that not an
option available to us we either fully take on the costs of base or we don't well there is a town wreck program and one of the things Michelle and I had uh talked about early on was maybe a merging of that um because there is some
crossover in programming um and there's also you know advertising and there's other things that you know maybe if the programs merge together on the town you know in under the town's kind of opaces of community um in you know uh
programming that uh you know perhaps that might help both you know uh both programs my understanding and certainly Michelle can speak to it more clearly than I is that um historically the wreck
program was centered around sports um and right and and uh base was more cultural I would say and uh but there's lines that have been blurred in that way so um that was one of the things we had
talked about um also you know what about um combining you know and doing more of a collaborative model between um let's say Newton and Brookline because of the close proximity um Michelle explored that and uh that didn't seem to be
something that Newton was um enthusiastic about uh doing with us so uh a lot of things you know as Michelle said they're you know investing in programming and marketing that was a strategy that has taken place already we
added another person to develop programming this year and it was just I think the the issue isn't the quality of programming with bass i think our our Oh no one's contesting yeah no no it's not that i I really do think that uh the
this type of programming I think struggles since co I know in prior community that I was in we had the same phenomenon that when COVID hit a lot of the
community-based programming you know um uh for obvious reasons um was no longer something that you could offer and then once co um you think just the business model isn't there cost that is
unless we meet these costs yeah i I just I wish I could I'm usually pretty optimistic in I hear you i wish I could come up with a a pathway forward i I don't see it
um I don't see a a clear I wish I could i understand i hear you i I uh I don't I don't have an answer for you tonight i'm sorry for that
excuse me is it appropriate for me to come and say something um yeah go ahead please um re remember um Helen might a couple of years ago uh the uh the town side
uh gave the recreation department $500,000 to run summer programs for free so students that may have come to Bassy in the past could take programs
through the recreation department free how long the $500,000 is going to last I'm not sure okay i don't know what the intricacies but but that has been a part of the reduction in the
summer program or students coming to the summer uh uh program that we need to look at as well i'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt but um yeah Carolyn and then Mariah
yes um thanks and I I appreciate that this is a a lot and questions and forgive me if this you went over this um I just want to get a little bit of historical context so I'm I'm hearing
totally that co the co years really crushed if you can just super briefly like were you always was it always fine profitable
were you always dipping into reserves what did that only start during COVID like it's Yeah because this is a problem that you're we're saying is is COVID based then there's this temporary money that's going away um I just would be
interested in more of the history and sorry I'm going to sort of piggyback another question so the history and have you always gotten
um as much as like $100,000 annually in grants to bolster and this is a sort of separate question people are asking what are the most profitable parts i'm wondering if you know where you're losing the money
um and then related to to all of this is just the the question of if the school department were to you know give give a boost
um I have concerns the same way I do about using sort of one-time infusions in the schools and we've seen this with ARPA all over the place so
would an infusion and I'm I'm not ask obviously I value but I just have to ask this sort of as a fiscal question my concern would be that even if the school department gave an infusion that that's not sustainable
structurally that there's a and and we you'd still be in the same position in a few years and that's a difficult question i'm not not so much a question but I'm I'm putting it out there as a concern and if you'd like to
address that that's um with regards to grants I've been applying for grants through the Brookline Community Foundation they've they've provided us with a safety net grant um one of the reasons we've lost money is because we've given away this is before ARPA but
we've given away a lot of money in in scholarships because we didn't want to turn children away and that was at the direction of a former school committee most members aren't on the committee today um and I think the thought at that
point was that you know the growth was going to pull us out of the pandemic much faster and our revenue and enrollment has a good trajectory it's just not fast enough um so we we are getting there in terms of how long has
the program run into uh a deficit uh when I first started here five and a half years ago I I was told I had 1.6 million in the account and when the pandemic came I realized very
quickly that something wasn't right um and I approached the school committee and they graciously uh awarded an audit and the audit came back and they took a look and they said there was an issue with the Munis system where um the way
it was set up at the time was that people were spending money off of projections and what they put in their budget rather than actual so since then I've been told that that has changed and been fixed but the auditor when he came
in said that the last time the program did run a profit was I believe he said 2018 i'd have to pull all the reports together to show you but that was rather shocking to me you know as as I said
when they hired me um you know it wasn't there was $1.6 million is what I was told and there really wasn't so when we had the the pandemic come and we had to cut all those classes and switch from inperson to um online you know we did
end up losing more revenue as a result of that and we had to cut our staff there was only two of us working full-time and the rest either lost their job there was 11 of us and now we're down to to six um with probably one
So fiscal year not being with us so given your tenure and it's overlap you you came right before the pandemic couple week like six six weeks unfortunately wow yeah okay so and I'm
this is not a again not a criticism i'm just trying to get the whole context i guess it would be fair to say that in your you you don't you haven't experienced the program thriving because you inherited Yeah i
even pre even without the pandemic mhm there and you don't know or we don't we don't have that in front of us like I'm wondering if it was you were told it was 1.6 let's pretend it even was five years before that was it 3.6 i don't know and
it sounds like you might not know and I do have that information i don't have it in front of me i'm happy to get it for you um but in general it was around 1.6 1.8 million for many years prior to
that okay yeah so it was sustainable with a larger staff and and with a catalog and more marketing it definitely was yeah okay thank you yeah sure did I answer all your questions you had a lot of them i'm sorry they were sort of
intertwined um I see Mariah's Yes you did thank you i think after that we may need to move on because we have quite a number of other things to to deal with tonight mariah thanks Andy um I just wanted to say that like other members of the committee have voiced um you know I
find this to be a really disappointing um place to be and you know Bass as we've heard from so many members of the community has really been something that welcomed them to the community that offered learning and connection when
they were most seeking that and I do think it will be um it would be a tremendous loss for the community and so I really really really want to um emphasize and hope that perhaps school
committee members and I'm happy to you know do this work but that we reach out to wreck i think that the natural partner of Bass is Wreck and there's a lot of different systems that they have in common you know the need to register the need to all the different things
that they do working with children safety protocols there's just so much in common um and yes the programming itself has been different but I don't see that as you know an insurmountable obstacle and so um I really want us you know for
however this vote goes to see how this partnership with Wreck can really make base much more financially sustainable um through again perhaps you know elimination of some of the of the costs that they both have in common they don't both need registration systems for
example and so I really think that we should pursue that um and I would like the committee you know I don't know if we need to vote a formal resolution of it but I really think that we should be um supporting that that type of collaboration so I would suggest
tableabling it for now uh we can revisit this but I have to say I'm very concerned that um I don't think the school department is in any condition to put up $400,000 when uh there seems to be no plan to for base to ever return to breaking even oh I I do have a lot of
information like that i just don't have it tonight but I do understand what you're saying it is a lot of money um but but there are plans in place it's not like I'm winging it you know um I think I might have misunderstood your question before about a business plan yeah so
perhaps we should table this and before we take this up again um there should be some discussions with with RACK okay with RA with Thank you all right thank you very much Michelle all right next up we have the Office of
Student Services please thank you so much if I understood sorry one one question hold on a second so if I understood Susan correctly uh the summer programs are profitable
and they could at least go I mean we could at least make that clear that that base could continue through the summer to get those profits i I think that's what I heard Susan say i assume that no action is needed for that right uh unless unless
Well I think they need some clarity andy I do think that people who might be considering registering would feel reassurance if we were to commit that no matter what happens the summer programs will run so I do think there's a community benefit to saying that out
loud how much would we Well I guess it's actually not on the next fiscal year's budget right um well didn't Susan say it wouldn't end till after the summer program which means the summer program is happen i thought you said that 91 Susan oh that's
the proposal that's the proposal Jess yeah so if the summer program this year were to run at a loss we would have to cover that out of the FY25 budget not FY26 correct or would it come out of FY26 it would oh well then well but it
would they but they're predicting a surplus there i guess we need the numbers you need to do the numbers and come back to us so we can Yeah this is Yeah right there
that's small though so So the current projection is for a profit this summer of about $9,000 no that's last summer fy oh FY25 is summer of 24 okay can I get clarity the numbers that are shown here are just for
the program they do they or do they not include all the associated salaries of the office staff right it includes that okay so this is a quote unquote fully
loaded presentation of the cost yes no right just just so Susan do you think we would need to add money to the FY26 budget in order to cover ourselves for this summer no
then I suppose there's no problem in providing clarity thank you i'm not sure we need to take a formal vote on it so doing nothing means that it's right well unless people are afraid that something's going to happen and then they don't register they will be going through the summer and we will be
working on whatever the future is um okay if that's the sense of the committee if no one objects I'm not sure we need to take a formal vote but that's the clear sense andy I'd still like us to take a formal vote i'm going to make a motion that make a motion yeah
committee um commits to um keeping base open through September but but what does that mean there's some action that we take or not but to commit to we don't keep base open we have to provide money to ensure ourselves
against them making a loss which is what I think Mariah said i don't I don't agree that's an action we can take i think it is a motion it's an action that we just took which is to not close the program before September but that means that that means that we're liable for
any losses that might occur and we don't have that budgeted and Susan just said to you she doesn't think it's going to have to incur a loss we don't need to add anything to our budget susan wants to So if that's the case why do we need to take a vote we're not adding anything to our budget we're
not taking an action andy this is for the community to feel like it wasn't just a conversation but there was a firm commitment made so it was moved and seconded right yes okay so we just voted then
I want clarity uh Susan is about to provide some clarity yeah so when I responded I was responding to us sunsetting the program if we're not going to we still have benefit costs and other costs you can't just go a little bit at a time and and tick away at it
because you are going to ultimately have to have an appropriation approved at town meeting if you're going to keep it open longer than the 31st of August okay but up to the 31st of August um if you're
sunsetting right if you're going to sunset at that time I think you'll be okay because it won't go negative right i think you'll be okay okay if you but the decision has to be that you'll sunset and I we only showed this slide
because we wanted if you to give you the option since it's been advertised parents have already paid that we would be able to at least honor the commitment given that um the likelihood of it being not profitable seems very slim since
there's a history of it being profitable but beyond that you can't just pick away at it because there'll be no appropriation which has to be done now right in order to be able to make a commitment also doesn't take into consideration what what is going to
happen with the benefits right so bu baked in this we should be okay if you're going to sunset if you're not going to sunset then that's a different conversation i just want to be clear right but that's two months of appropriation not at 12 months correct okay uh Val and then I do think we're
ready to vote i'm satisfied now well I'm I'm not quite yet so I I just want to make sure that we're decoupling these votes so we're going to table a vote on base in the in the big picture to another meeting and we're going to vote on the summer now is that right i just
want to make sure I want to make sure we're going to take base up again yes I think we need to um after maybe some conversations with Wreck um and with better and with a business plan uh to consider okay thanks yeah all right
uh let us vote uh Caroline this is no money right this is as Mariah said just reaffirming our commitment to keep it open on the understanding as that Susan has provided that we don't actually have to budget anything for this but but Susan did you say that means we are suns
seting it or we we can meet again no there's no motion to sunset we're not saying anything about after August 31st um Susan did yeah ju just to be clear if you're not going to sunset base you need to
appropriate some money in the FY26 budget right right but we have another uh it doesn't have to be at this meeting right this motion is simply to state the school committee's commitment to keep base open through August 31st of this year
that's my understanding of the motion yes Betsy is that right what my understanding of that is Oh what my understanding of that is means that that is committing to at a later date funding base that what I think what I think that that
means is that means that we will at a later date commit to funding base so I want to make sure that what we're voting on is something that's very clear for the community right we don't want to vote that we're going to have the summer now only to later take it away so I just
want to make sure that we all understand that if we vote to keep the summer that means that at some point we're going to be allotting money to keep base open that wasn't my understanding of No it doesn't cost money for the summer Sarah yeah Sarah it doesn't cost money it goes in the revolver we don't need to
allocate money in the general fund to it if we run the summer so in the future we might vote to sunset base but any sunset date would not be before the summer programs run so parents and caregivers can feel
confident that if they have or will sign up for these programs they're not going to be left in the lurch at the last minute that the program is not not running that's all this vote is doing is saying yes we will run these programs for the summer beyond that we're not making any commitments
why do we need to vote that that's what I was asking before but I I think uh just for clarity sake I don't see any harm in in voting it and some some benefit for the community really small thing before we take the vote is there any significance to the September 1st date versus August 31st does that run us
into the school year does that commit us to additional funding no okay no concerns all right let's vote uh Carolyn this is not a reflection of my value of the program i'm going to abstain
helen yes suzanne yes steven yes sarah yes jesse yes val yes mariah yes and I'll vote yes as well thank you guys for coming all right so thank you for raising that
Helen i think it's a useful thing to do um all right um Suzanne has something on the line item uh we had down 23,000 do we now no longer put have that in there right well we haven't taken action on it so that
stays white it's going to come back okay yeah thanks all right dr schmuckler Office of Student Services is the mic okay okay okay good evening everybody i thought I would just start by giving of
a high level um data just in that really reflects I think the district's ongoing commitment um sorry that's okay um that reflects the district's ongoing commitment to
students in special education and to student services in general uh this is the um proposed budget by office um which as you can see uh almost 40% of the budget supports uh students in
special education and student services obviously this was pre the reductions um so the superintendent's um office has been reduced and you reduce the um office of educational equity um so just again I think uh
importance of the ongoing commitment uh in terms of the district and special education and student services next slide and this just shows that from FY23 to 26 uh again just um the levels of
support uh in terms of special education and student services across the years next slide so this is um you saw this uh March the 27th uh so that's just a refresh in terms of out of district uh
numbers for tuition um and as we discussed last time out of district is students who are placed out of district and then students are settlement both of those groups uh we pay tuition for um and so those are the numbers just over time next
slide and so this just gives you and I think Steve you had asked um just to take a look at the data from FY24 and FY25 fyi24 is asterisk because it's probably not 100% accurate i'm sort of going back
and trying to um uh recreate it uh you'll also see um it also does not align with the budgets in either FY24 or 25 particularly around um your settlement numbers um and so
again it's just you won't be able to kind of match up necessarily between what's in the budget um but that and as you can see the expenditures and then what was budgeted all all in which is your lines for tuition your lines for
settlements uh for both FY24 and FY25 can I ask just one question i I'm unclear the total under FY24 of 84 in parentheses and the 70 in underneath what does that mean yeah um so that just
shows sort of the dynamic nature of sort of out of district so in general settlements end in June the 30th and so for example at the end of FY24 we ended with 24 settlements on June the 30th and 14 students came off
settlement and so we started the FY25 fiscal year with 10 students on a settlement so at the beginning of the fiscal year on September the 1st we actually had 70 students in out of district and currently um there are an additional 16 settlements this year and
so that you see the number of 26 and again just you know that's sort of the nature we talked a lot about last week about students who age out and withdraw um during or graduate during the year and so that happens throughout the year generally settlements end June 30th and
so you'll always see those those kind of fluctuations and they can be very large fluctuations in terms of tuition amounts uh so that's what that reflects next slide so this is where we are today so
on the 27th uh we looked at the current numbers with everything loaded in that we knew then um and so we had 66 students out of district we had 19 settlements and that brought us to a total of 85 students uh on March the
27th moving into the fiscal year as of today we have an additional four students um in terms of our out of district numbers and we've had two students that are are coming off settlements because they're moving out of Brooklyn uh which
happens we did not know that on March the 27th so again just um I think as I said this is a very dynamic process and changes week by week um similar to we talked last week about moving students and the needs that we had in March for
moving students with the additional of paras i think in both areas we just see an enormous amount of flux and dynamism and budget volatility uh in terms of the impact if you're not sort of running with the contingency uh which
will bring us to the next slide um and so again that just gives you um budget estimates right of just where we were on March the 27th and then we've had an increase and
I'm again we're forecasting um so we have four students who we know are going to be on the out of district list i'm budging it in a mix of you know it's $500,000 which is three resident three day placements and a residential placement and so again I'm projecting
based on what I know now what those costs are $100,000 is an average cost of a day placement um so that's what you're seeing in those estimates with the settlements that's what's being reduced from the settlement line um and so again you're just seeing a little shift in the
numbers in terms of number of students out of district number of students on settlements so next slide and so last time we met we looked at um our out of district numbers and we looked at the contingency um I had baked
in prior to our meeting on the 27th a contingency of $800,000 in terms of just looking at the last two years where both in FY24 and FY25 um it's been underfunded and you've needed to go to the town for a a reserve
transfer um and so and then at that meeting we added an additional uh $250,000 to the contingency so on March the 27th we had a contingency of a million dollars a million50
um with the where we are now in terms of um we've already actually gone into that contingency so we're currently sitting with $650,000 in the contingency uh from the
27th we also have two students on what we call a wraparound list uh that means two students where um concerns have been raised and we're trying to do wraparound um which means really trying to um prevent placement really try look at
what's happening why is you know why are things um not working as we would like them to be and what we can do um and so those are students we're watching and again I'm just estimating uh in terms of you know the rate of day placements and
so it leaves us uh with a contingency if we factor that all in which I think as I've shared the way I've always sort of managed uh and out of district list with really looking at what is your what is your all-in number in terms of budgeting
and projections um that's where we are today uh in terms of the contingency what I haven't done yet and Susan and I talked about this today is we haven't actually gone and looked at the impact on transportation right so all of the every time you add an
additional student in a day placement you're adding transportation costs so we have not um and we will do that um early next week we have not factored in the transportation costs to that any go back lus any questions i
know that's a lot of information and a we had tried to take some savings from that we haven't I haven't touched that right so the you took $417,000 um which is still in this and it's okay yes okay so what I did is
obviously reduced the contingency mhm so the 417,000 is which was a reduction on 327 is still there okay thank you y okay any other questions on that before
okay so um I'll start off by saying as I think I have every time I have you know stood up here all of these um proposed reductions have very significant impact as you've heard from um certainly my colleagues this evening uh these
certainly are not proposals or reductions that I recommend um but these were the proposals um that were part of that initial 12.9 this is what's remaining after the reductions that people made on the March the 27th um so
this is the same um information uh that was presented on the 13th and the 27th um and if you go to the next slide and then I'll go back to this one all in all there four and a half FTEES
uh in in this list um I'll talk about the beep one in a moment and that is the um that's the dollar amount attached to those reductions the beep that you're seeing there that is
actually a um a coding error so the beep psychologist is a 6 FTE and if you remember last time Susan and I were we were having a little sparring here as to whether it had or had whether that had had or not had not been taken out there
was a position in the original 21.9 which was a.5 FTE psychologist at FRR that had been taken out which is what I thought Susan was talking about but this is actually um is still in the budget so we're carrying it from a dollar
perspective as a 1.0 but it is actually a 6 it used to be a 1.0 for the last couple of years it has been a point 6 so there's currently you're sitting with a point4 FTE there um that could be is a savings is a reduction that has been
incorporated into the 4.5 um and the dollar amount so if you want to go back up wait sorry that's that's an adjustment that's not a vote we have to take right
well it's just it's you don't I mean you don't have to take a vote it's just to let you know because if you looked in your budget books on the salary you would see a 1.0 for the beep psychologist and it's and the attached dollars and it's a point6 so it is a savings it's a reduction that um can be
taken out but but it's a savings that doesn't require a vote it's a savings that that's that's an actual just a simple adjustment correct so so Mariah for for our record keeping that would be just something that we would change the deadline at the top right maybe not oh
in this particular case Stephen the FTE is in the budget so to reduce the FTE I would prefer that you take the vote the in the other case I was making an adjustment not to FTE at all it was just the dollar amount that was represented in the budget the FTE remained the same
this is actually in the budget were carrying a 1.0 it should have been carrying a 6 so you are in fact reducing your budget by a point 4 FTE so I I see that so we would be taking a vote to reflect what's actually there yes okay
thank you what's actually in place not in the budget got it yeah exactly um I don't know if you want to go back up and if there are any questions on the two lines with attrition so are how are I know you're not recommending that
we make these cuts at all can you um necessarily can you um maybe just illuminate a little bit on that like for the learning center position a whole FTE disappears and yet we can still meet our capacity or will we be dipping into
tough territory in terms of student support so the high school has done their sections uh for special education um and they based on their sectioning um that isn't that will be by attrition they feel like they are well positioned
to provide all the services they need based on current sectioning with with letting that position um be in a position empty okay thank you okay so that's separate from BHS
correct this the learning center 1.0 was in the OSS okay yeah and then can you please explain on the first row current faculty request correct so it's that's a it's currently a point8 um in the it's being carried in the
budget as a 1.0 because that is what it has been many years ago the current faculty is at a point8 the current faculty would like to stay at a point.8 so similar to but we're carrying a 1.0 so we would be honoring the faculty
request to not move it to a 1.0 and I think this is obvious but I just want to make sure that I'm not super dumb the the FTE column is the reduction by Exactly reduce FTE by Exactly okay thank you yep
mariah yep the FTE we're reducing thank you could you tell me the dollar amount of the um it's on the next slide the district-wide psychologist um it's 153611
with benefits okay so if we were to for example vote like if I were to make a motion I would take the 532 433 minus the 153 correct okay and and all these other
positions the benefits or fractional benefits are baked into that 532 already correct okay um I would like to make the motion to accept these cuts less less the district-wide psychologist position
um which I based on everything we've heard I feel like doesn't um doesn't seem to make a lot of sense but the rest of it um I would make the motion for the committee to accept I'd second it quick
question and yep Caroline thank you was the point for nurse part of this at is it still it is sorry on the other slide okay sorry it's Dr dr schmuckler what was that um
psychologist amount again 153 611 i'm sorry sure can you advance the slide please advance one slide please she just as that one oh okay yeah thank you sorry
no no we're good we're good that's okay yeah thank you my mistake all right i mean I might um I might propose an amendment to also um exclude the.3 uh intake ETF from beep um from
from the list of cuts but see if anyone that was discussed uh March 27th meeting as well so if you do both of those your reduction will be 343180 wait a minute can you go
back so what are you saying yeah so Mariah's motion sort of excluded only the district-wide psychologist um I would I'm proposing to amend that to also exclude the.3BTF and you said how much was that 343180
how could it be that much i'm sorry i tried but what's just that cost yeah because that doesn't seem Oh wait sorry uh do the math quick 50,000 yeah no that that is if you take the district one
psychologist plus the uh.3 ETF subtract that from 532 443 it leaves you with 343180 but we're asking what is just the.3 ETF oh the.3 ETF
[Music] is 35652 and sorry can I just to review that was the position that does sort of intake correct okay thank you and what does ETF stand for educational team facility okay
right thank you i can never remember that i'd like to retract the second i'm sorry okay so currently my uh proposed amendment is unseceded oh seconded Helen okay um so is there any discussion before we vote on that amendment well could you just did we
have the discussion on the.3 ETF already at another meeting uh I mean it was discussed at on March 27th and the discussion at that time I think also included uh the beep principle um okay and if I might be BE actually came
through with like 256 when we had asked them for 100,000 um and and got a better program out of it um and they they were uh I thank you for remembering that um they were saying that this was a critical piece of
helping new families coming into the program yeah um Stephen um just for discussion can you go back to the previous slide please i I um I'm not I I guess I would like to ask
for rationale for making these cuts from people who are in favor of it i I don't see why we should support any of these cuts except for the current faculty request given the strong need for fully staffing our special education currently
well that's what I asked earlier right Stephen with after the attrition for example of the two that's a 1.2 would we be in danger of not being able to provide all the services and then I guess I'd like to echo that question mariah has her hand up maybe to answer
the question well from my perspective um I we've been told that learning center um that they can section learning center in a way that meets all the students with learning center on their grids needs um the BHS guidance point to I
believe we were told at the previous meeting ties to another cut um and the BHS social worker is currently an open position um and so I I that is my understanding of the situation is none of these are
cuts in services right um can we hear from Anthony yeah so I I see that Anthony Meyer wanted to comment on this yeah yeah so I mean the Yes the BH um the point two of that
guidance um is I can say right is Alex yes I can say I'm just making sure um is Alexia Thomas who um is currently in that position and she is the new director of um guidance and
counseling so that's where that point 2 comes from in terms of the attrition I think the8 piece the high school will be speaking don't then then I guess I would I would want to know why wouldn't we want to replace the
1.0 that in attrition from the learning center is why wouldn't we want to hire the session yeah Robin is on Robin on Robin's on the zoom if you want to she was there before there she is
maybe she could speak to that Robin do you want to speak to the learning center 1.0 Sure that um that position once we looked at um as you said it was attrition once we looked at where that position is servicing students and we looked at the sectioning and how we
could um reconfigure staff um we're able to meet that need we're able to meet that cut if um if we go forward and it would not impact um students right when you say not impact students what
does that mean that means that we are able to shift people around through sectioning and specialized programming and meet the needs of students i'm sorry i I don't understand how reducing by one FTE can result in the
same level of service um because the way that we've been able to to section students and the way that the specialized programs are supporting you know cohorts of students we're able
to move staff around to meet the sections that we need and meet the specialized program numbers that we have coming in next year okay thank you also oh I'm sorry it's okay um we should
remember that there's going to be 44 less kids at the high school approximately next year so that also is probably reflected in part of what we're seeing here all right looks to me like we're ready
to take a vote on my amendment to um add the.3 beep ETF um or to rather remove that from the list of proposed cuts so I'll start with Jesse yes sarah yes steven yes suzanne yes
helen yes carolyn yes yes mariah this is on your amendment correct yes it's on my amendment yes i I vote yes yeah don't leave Helen we're about to vote on the main motion or what's become the main motion now that the amendment has passed with my vote as
well um all right i think Are we ready to vote on the main motion now all right start again with Jesse yes sarah yes steven yes suzanne yes helen yes carolyn yes belle yes mariah yes and I vote yes
as well what's the total size of this the the total dollar value of this again it was about 180 like 340 or something 343 343180 thank you 343180 and what's the FT they removed how many
FTE total [Music] so it's 11.6.2 they removes you've left 1.3 so it leaves you with 3.2 thank you all right thank you very much Dr schmuckler next up we have Brookline
High School we have uh Anthony Meyer and Hell Mason with us thank you school committee members thank you district leaders i'm joined by Hal Mason as Dr lou said and uh Robin
Fabiano can you hear me okay um uh so we appreciate the opportunity to be here i want to be super clear about what our task is tonight our task as high school leaders is to share with you um the final bucket of reductions to the high
school $250,000 um of reductions this comes after uh the March 20th meeting when we shared some possibilities and since then we've engaged as you can imagine in a number of discussions um and tried to make
difficult decisions they are painful uh but we also believe that they are manageable so my hope is that our presentation will be mercifully short for you um we have two slides well one including the So this is what we would
plan um for $250,000 worth of cuts as you heard from Dr schmookler um there is a 0.2 guidance piece under OSS um a reduction the
other.8 of that 1.0 position is reducing an associate dean we have an associate dean who will succeed um Miss Nefer as our guidance coordinator so there would be an opening position this is a cut we
can make through attrition um uh then we have um I'll just speak to the MCCAST coordinator you heard about that while it is a paraprofessional position I would argue it's quasi administrative in terms of supporting um HAL in terms of
um working through the MCCAST in a world um where uh there are less needs given the changes um in the MCCAST we believe we can reduce this position as you can see these are approximations um we will share the very
specific numbers that get us to a total of 266 but we've approximated those here for you um I'm going to turn it over to our wonderful special ed director Robin Fabiano to talk about the two paraprofessional positions and hopefully
you'll hear a theme here of cuts through attrition um that we think are manageable thanks Anthony so we have 40 positions pair of professional positions at the
high school this year um we had some difficulty in the beginning of the year making sure our numbers that 40 was um allocated to us so I was delayed in hiring one pair
professional and through this year we have had a number of pair professionals on FMLA or have left and we've had to rehire which is typical of the high school and many other schools hiring pair professionals and so we have been able to move people around to still meet
all of the students IEP grids and services working with under the 40 um pair of professionals that we've been allocated and so um I feel as though since we have not been fully funded like fully hired through the year we're able
to reduce at the general population and then we have one specialized program where we've looked at the numbers and we're able to reduce one pair of professional um associated with that program i'm being somewhat vague because these are assigned to people these are
real people and um we haven't had those discussions yet i do know that those two positions can be reallocated to open positions to help with the incoming needs at the um prek to 8 schools and so
those people wouldn't lose jobs they would be reallocated and I think that's really important thanks Robin um so I think the second thing that we would do is just share with you um in the past on March 20th we shared a very broad organizational
outline and we've heard feedback that it would be helpful to get a better sense of our administrative structure student support structure and so Hal is going to speak to that thanks Anthony uh so uh using the same
format that we shared last time I sort of broke out just what the uh dean structure is so you see we have uh two head deans one does 9 and 11 the other does 10 and 12 uh associate deans underneath them and serving both somewhere north of 900 students each we
have our program leaders SWS and ACE and then we have the dean of student support systems and I try to break out some of the responsibilities so the ones on the right there then would be the ones that most of the that all of the deans and program coordinators take care of and then individually that Brian is more of
our specialist in uh title six title N uh he's he runs our uh SIT uh specializes in the bullying investigations things like that some of the really complicated legal cases that we really need to have that it's really
helpful at a school this large to have that one controlling hand on that's able to do it but there's so many things that the deans do i know Lisa spoke earlier and and she painted a picture of you know a certain aspect of what deans work is it's more than that it's more than
just the few the small percentage of kids that are getting in serious trouble we we have those kids we we've always had those kids we've had fewer since Kenny graduated back in what year was that Kenny 1991 91 since ' 91 the problem seems to have lessened a little bit i don't know if it's connected to
Kenny graduating um but it's the deans play they're they're they are important in in those more troubled cases but they're even more important in being the adult face of the school they're the important people that find the kid that cut a class and get right up in their
face and tell them what they need to do and call home and stop that behavior right away so there are kids that are that have other issues more significant issues but the day-to-day adult face of the school is the are the deans and it's
super important that we have that structure in place and um it it really is what makes the high school um a caring loving place so there's the whole structure and gives you some idea of what we of how we run
the uh administration of the school we'd love to answer questions thank you very much um Caroline has her hand up and then Mariah so on the in the day-to-day um where associate deans are teaching
and also doing these things and being sort of adult particular leaders and then and they are aligned and then the deans are unaligned so that's a 12-year position a
12-month position yes and the unaligned are they get a little bit of a stipened for summer work I guess why what is the reason for not having all
the deans be associate deans aligned in terms of like would there be a difference in cost and I guess I'm asking like what do
the what do the full deans do in the summer so I guess I'm just asking for sort of the the rationale it's a larger job uh they are taking on some of the tougher cases they're the ones typically leading the more
complicated re-entry uh meetings they are I should I should really let Anthony speak so she's been both been an associate dean and the the head dean but it's it's a very different role sure so I think as Hal Good question Carolyn thanks for asking it um as Hal said and
I can't see that small of print but there are some tasks that they all share is just being deans and there um that's really important our unaligned deans run our really important student support teams along with Darby uh along with
others where we're constantly meeting weekly to identify who's struggling in what way and facilitating that process documenting um appropriately what interventions we're trying to figure out kids who
really need support um so and then um as Hal said our unaligned deans are involved in the most complicated cases and supporting the associate deans in decisions they're making in communications home in overall support
um because some as you can imagine in our most complicated cases there might be four associate deans involved and a dean involved with multiple students and trying to navigate that um they also serve on our senior leadership team um
and as Brian sorry as Hal said about Brian he is absolutely supporting people um both in supporting the school in really important prevention work um and really important long-term work uh to
the question of um of summer uh the summertime they are helping us plan for the next year so a lot of work around planning professional development planning our opening days
getting ready I think we'll be working a lot this summer on a transition as Darby looks to retire we're going to be bringing Alexia Thomas on board as our guidance coordinator and thinking about what moves we need to make and frankly some of that is dealing with and and
we'll begin this hopefully shortly and we've truthfully already begun but how are we planning for these shifts if we're down a social worker if we're down an associate dean how do we ensure that the school continues to run well um so I
think a more general answer is rightly associate deans as members of unit A very much have appropriate limits on what they can be asked to do the reality of an unaligned position where I'm cutting or we're cutting um a position
in a bargaining unit that work has to go somewhere and the reality is unaligned positions are easier to shift work um as you know as long as we're being reasonable and being good teammates um so I think that piece is really
important and in the absence of the senior director um that Maria Lataz used to be in Brian's work is not only important that dean of student support um is not only important for the high school i think it's going to be a key piece for our K to8 districts i'm
mindful of the assistant principles and principal principles at the K to8 schools who don't have that person to go to for support and our dean of student support can offer some of that counsel and training um because the reality is a
really complicated investigation can upend uh an administrator's schedule and workload for uh weeks at a time anthony can I jump in can I jump in for a second and just add something
i just want to add two thoughts the first one is that the unlined dean deans also hold a case load so they're they are assigned students and with um an associate dean being cut their case load will increase in terms of the summer I
think that people that live in schools all the time the day-to-day from September to June is really it can be like a reactionary life and and flow and in the summer is where we do all of our planning and so to have a team um you
know a senior leadership team that is planning um and we really only have eight weeks because we're starting school we're closing school and then opening school and so we have you know four to six weeks to really like thick think think scope and sequence like how
is the whole year going to run and we need people to help think about professional development think about um our faculty meetings think about how we're going to run student support teams think about case loads and and onboard students that are moving in over the
summer and help us get our our school ready so I think that the three unaligned deans really play a huge role in that thanks Robin so Mariah and then Helen and at some point someone should make a motion
um Anthony what with with one fewer associate dean what will be the impacts and how will you manage those impacts on the affected grades sure so I think that is work that uh
we've begun to do and it when once we have clarity hopefully shortly we'll engage in that work more fully but I would just say the planned associate dean would be one of our two nth grade deans and so imagine two there's 250
kids who we need to shift approximately shift the case load um and so with a single associate dean there and likely the dean of student support systems we need to make sure we have the appropriate uh administrative leadership
presence at 22 tapen given how important that 8th to 9th grade transition is the other piece that I don't think we mention here um in many ways 22 tapen is its its own school in terms of its own
custodial team its own food service team so our unaligned deans and our associate deans are serving food sometimes when we're down a food service worker we're entering codes into the machine we're uh
as kids are um buying their meals um so I think it's making sure that the associate dean remaining at the nth grade level sorry at the with the nth grade class has ample support that we have appropriate presence uh at 22
tap-in and across the campus um and that we're supporting all associate deans and deans in a new structure that subtracts one of the unit A associate deans and I think Helen Yeah I'm not sure
everybody was here when Maria Latas was here and her position which I'm trying to remember exactly the the and so people may not be aware that there's already a position that has been taken away or that has not been filled let's
put it that way it was taken away because that was that was last year's um No it was taken away because we it was reconstituted to the senior director of civil rights and bullying and that position was reduced um in some of the
earlier meetings that we had right so that that's but I don't think that um people who came on in in May would know all that thank you it's a really important compliment to Dr for Matt Dubois who we are so fortunate to have
and it's that key compliment um that is I mean Matt does a lot of work supporting our counselors supporting Darby uh and the larger high school team Maria played that key role of supporting on investigations
um and all that kind of complicated mess right Suzanne uh I also hope maybe somebody takes a vacation in the summer I'm just thinking But I would highly recommend Al certainly does yeah there you go there you go i'm sure that you're busy season
uh I'd like to move that we accept the cuts to BHS that the administration has proposed i'll second it thank you sorry i have one more question that's okay we just moved it that's all i But I just saw Andy wanted to vote sorry Andy i
just want to make sure I understand with the associate dean and this might have been Mariah's question asked a different way my understanding of the associate deans is that they're teaching classes and being an associate dean and I think you said this is a reduction made
possible by somebody leaving uh yes so yes to your point that all of our associate deans have a 0.8 8 administrative portion of their job and a point to either teaching or if they're guidance counselors by training they
would have a 20% load of guidance counselors so so so so so you're losing a point to classroom teacher and I guess I just want to sort of I assume you're confident that that's not going
to negatively impact courses being offered like I've seen a we've gotten a few emails about like um kids who want to take two science courses or that I want to ask I think it's the point to
guidance counselor we just voted on the OSS budget this this partic thanks Val this particular associate dean is also a her point 2 is a counseling load so it's not a teaching assignment perfect thank you that answers the
I'm good you're good i'd like to propose removing the point associate dean from this vote does anyone want to Is there a second i don't see a second okay so let us proceed to voting on the main motion
start with our remote members val yes mariah sorry Andy what is the main motion i missed it oh just to uh um to to accept what uh what Anthony and Hal have brought to us today can we just confirm the dollar amount because they said they were going to say it and I
don't think we heard it um approximately it's 266 plus some dollar like they said hundreds of dollars i don't have it in front of me but it's we were trying not to outline exactly what people earn but uh it is we can email that tomorrow oh
it's 266 and change $266,000 and change okay yes um okay oh right carolyn yes helen yes suzanne yes steven no sarah yes jesse
yes and I vote yes uh thank you very much thank you for your time and your support and Robin as well all right uh finally uh under budget tonight we have curriculum coordinators so there's no new information or presentations about this but that was a
discussion that we left unfinished earlier so if there anyone has things to say about it now um this is the time and we should probably try to take a vote on it tonight stephen
I I think we learned that um the the this the proposed savings are relatively light and the proposed disruption is relatively heavy so I'd like to remove I'd like to propose removing this from consideration yeah I
think that was a phrase of Sarah's that I liked very much i'll second yes I'm stealing this entirely from Sarah's comment um All right is there any further discussion on that one
um Sarah did so a yes yes is to take this off the table right Stephen so this turns that line red if if we vote yes on it so I'll start with Jesse yes sarah yes steven yes suzanne yes helen yes carolyn yes mariah yes val yes and I
vote yes as well all right give me a moment to write and then I will continue the meeting mariah could you update us on the number sure the number is um we are at 6 million accepted
6,248,562 and the revised gap is1,722,983 i think you missed the $6,000 added to the BHS FTE but otherwise I have Oh you're right i did oh yeah then I take it all back
1716 1716 y 983 can you You can see it on the screen right uh now we can yeah thank you all right this takes us to our school committee action of the night which is a
second reading and possible vote on the personal electronic device policy which is a new policy in our manual uh Stephen uh you want to discuss this okay thank you so this the PED policy um you've seen it before there are I
think there were two small changes to this one was that the first paragraph of the grades 9 through 12 just mentions that BHS will follow a limited use policy um and the second Betsy do you
remember the second what was the other blue highlight illustrative oh right we added the word illustrative to consequences the big conversation was whether to have this section at all when I um when I asked principles again about this there was
only one principal who who had a concern but it was a very mild concern and it wasn't shared so I left it in um the only other thing I'll mention here is that as Val pointed out the AG's office is considering their own peed policy and
the standard that they're considering is bell-to-bell which is of the four uh standards is the most restrictive however it's not clear to me what the timeline for consideration of this policy is it could be short it could be years so it's my suggestion that we
consider passing this proposal if it's if it meets with interest from the committee now and then we amended if to bring it into compliance with any future policy that the state passes jesse yeah i had one change in rereading it
and that was that in this particular version of the policy when it discusses caregivers and parents it somehow only discusses them in terms of caregivers so I did a little checking
through the policy manual online and I'll just give you five examples of um what they say today and other policies so in the student code of conduct um that's current um that term is
parenting/guardian 72 times in the student admissions policy it mentions the word parent eight times in um assignment of students to schools the only reference to the adult is a parent in the wellness policy it says parent
caregivers seven of eight times one time is just a parent and in the substance use prevention and education policy it mentions parents guardian once and parent once so it's my recommendation that to be as inclusive as possible and
to respect the traditional family lives also where people where adults are called the parents that we just modify the two or three places where it occurs i think it's all in the illustrative consequence section and and just um move to change the word caregivers to
parent/caregivers so is that a motion yes I'll second that all right is there any discussion on that before we vote to amend just are you doing it just for this policy or
wrote the book no I think as we get to other policies over time we'll Well we could just do it if if people feel strongly i don't know yeah what he's saying is that this is the exception that parent caregiver is
the standard language is what's there oh I thought you said there were differences it largely depends on when the policy was last part of that also and I think um in doing some research on it um what I what I found um was that for school communications using a phrase like
parent/caregiver can be the safest choice when you want to be comprehensive and respectful of all family structures it's formal enough to be clear while acknowledging different roles in a child's life can can I just suggest I'm neutral on this topic can I suggest perhaps making
the motion to um to pass the policy pending yeah sure of course okay that was the idea yeah just as rather than just to move the change yeah i guess no one has moved the policy yet so there's really no need to um to vote separately on the uh
Okay but when would this go into effect and how does something like this go into effect so it would be it would be p it would go into effect immediately and it would be placed into the policy manual um and I'm sorry what's the
communication how does that work i don't know how Betsy how do we communicate the passage of a new policy yes so principles I guess would be responsible for communicating with their
communities and teachers i mean I can write to the I can write to the principles after I'm not meaning to be prescriptive i'm literally just curious that's fine i was just curious i mean since it's a um schoolwide a districtwide one as compared to the the
ones we got after the summer from each of the principles probably um Dr gillery maybe in the superintendent's newsletter it's because it's a sweeping district policy might be another way of letting people know through your official channel yeah in fact it probably best to communicate through Dr gillery to the
principles as well so yeah makes a lot of sense i would move that we accept the policy as we see it with the two changes for the word caregiver to become parent/caregiver i think it's more than just in the illustrative consequences so I would just do a blanket change to the document
yeah wherever it is yeah yeah is there a second i'll second if if no one else has spoken up any further discussion suzanne I would just hope that when we do get the state policy we make sure that this is in alignment with that um
this would have to be um strengthened you know because of the bill to bill yeah i mean I don't know but but it could be Yeah when we looked into it I think Val Val updated us it could be a very long time if ever if it pass we would be sensitive to that of course
yeah and and we also might just want to take a look at this I don't know 6 months a year from now just to see if it's working with in our schools just just for the school committee's possible interest limited use was the second most restrictive the second least restrictive
that's the that's the BHS C standard the third sorry there was the first category the second category was um what BHS is being proposed to be off and away for our K8 is the is the third category and belltobell which is the uh which is
being proposed by the AG for all schools at all levels um is the most restrictive category okay thanks all right um I can't remember now have we voted no we haven't not yet not yet it's getting late sorry
um all right start with Jesse yes sarah yes steven yes suzanne yes helen yes carolyn yes val yes mariah yes and I vote yes as well um so Dr gillery would you um would you communicate uh this to
building leaders and anyone else who might be involved in implementing thank you all right this takes us to subcommittee and liaison reports i would suggest not having those uh unless somebody has something very urgent to
report okay uh would anyone like to raise a new business andy I just want to Can I just do one quick thing yep um just an FYI for finance that we are looking at holding a brief finance meeting next week so it will we are not
going to cover budget stuff we're going to do other finance business or not not next week whenever it was scheduled to be i can't remember if it's next week or the week after but we will have a meeting that's all betsy is saying it is next week okay thanks Mariah um all right so I now
move to Was there a new business uh well I asked for new business i thought that was new business any Anybody else have new business oh I just Oh go ahead Caroline oh it sounds like Okay Carol and Jesse have new business jesse well it's this is like in the new business i sort of feel like Batia you
know our student coordinator our student representative so can I make Pieran i'm sorry yeah maybe that's his last was that I'm sorry what's that it's on his That's his last name okay i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry yeah i just wanted to um
to mention um in a good you know good news story um at the Hayes International Night last Friday afternoon I um spoke with uh Dr see as the principal about the fact that Passover was coming up
this coming weekend and would had anybody thought about putting up some educational poster about an upcoming religious holiday at the school um and um the reason I followed up with him I mean the reason I I spoke with him is when I came in to see the international night to participate um there was a
Ramadan poster there and then Ramadan ended recently and I I suggested what what about Passover as a a next uh holiday to have a poster up and he said sounds like a great idea and so I pitched it to a couple parents and let the parents run with it and uh the result is that tomorrow both at Hayes
and at FRR there'll be two um English posters you know going up um uh Principal Whitmore approved it uh this afternoon as well was what message I got from a parent and um there are two posters that were made so they're going to Hayes and FRR um but there is really
nothing to stop us uh from asking the parents that that um have um uh raised our hand to do it at their two schools to reach out to maybe the other schools too and the the the poster is available as like a PDF so it can be printed and then perhaps distributed next week and
in the rest of the schools but it's a start and the parents were happy to do it and both principles were very supportive so it's going to happen tomorrow thanks thank you well just a nice news okay so on Saturday night I was able to go to
the teen center gayla and our former principal uh both of ninth grade uh when it was over at old Lincoln and uh Pierce School Piper Smith Mumford was honored uh at the event and it was really a very
nice uh community event and um so I just wanted to let everybody know and also steps to success is having their gayla on May 4th sat with the Saturday of that weekend i think it's May May 3rd excuse
me May 3rd so and that'll be at uh the high school uh if you guys remember we approved it um at the tapen uh 22 tapen okay Carolyn I have a couple so one is can
can we confirm when when our next meeting is um Betsy it was sometime it was the first week of May right uh or was it No it's right after April vacation right okay
it is it's May 1st is it May 1st okay no so I'll just say again sorry i'll say because I want to say this in open session i've said it in email i I wish that we would be meeting um next week i
don't know if April vacation necessarily prohibits us from meeting i know I'm the one who said not Thursday but I don't know if town hall is closed on the 24th or whether that's a possibility but generally speaking I I think given the circumstances
um that that I'm I'm I'm not super comfortable with that long between meetings um and I'll just piggyback on that by saying which I think I said last
week also um I I'm not um personally confident that all options have been exhausted outside of the classroom um I've emailed specifics to the place
where I've been told to email them um I think there's you know I I'm not convinced that all options have been exhausted i think there should be more offered in central
administration potential for freezing unaligned raises more revenue generation with rental income from school properties um and I've got one more thing that I
just have to say um I don't enjoy saying this um we've had three principal searches ongoing FRR and Pierce and Baker um the Baker search appears to have been
concluded without the promised um by in writing and in policy and practice community uh opportunity for staff and community to meet the
finalists um we've heard from several Baker uh community members about that um I've heard from people personally I've heard from staff personally um and I think
it's really unfortunate that that process was bypassed um and I I object to that um and I'm I'm unsatisfied with that that process that deprived the community to uh have the opportunity to
meet the finalists as the other two school communities just had in their searches since this is new business I guess no one can respond because we can't deliberate so Caroline I suppose you have the last word i would like to raise
one item of business which is um I think we maybe should revote um the OEE vote that we took um just to reflect the fact that some of the money we were voting on was from the Brookline Education Foundation um and um like we can't
repurpose that at will so Mariah do you have a do you have a more precise formulation of this in mind sure so just to just to recall to people there was the general fund and then there was the title one funding and the BEF funding associated with OEE and BEF subsequently
told us that they would not allow us to reallocate those funds that were for 23,500 um and so I don't know if it needs to be a vote but but probably it does that we need to revote to not reallocate the BEF funds um for a
different purpose yeah I mean really I I should have brought this up under budget um because like I'm not sure that we can take a vote now as Suzanne is pointing out under new business well it's not a new business it was supposed to be under the budget but it went so fast I forgot to
say something at the end so we're just going back to that moment um in the in the budget discussion this is still part of the budget it's just that I didn't speak up in time i mean now that our intention is pretty clear I'm not sure there's any particular urgency about
actually voting it um can you explain again why it has to be voted i I didn't hear mariah you want to address Jesse's question i mean the reason I think it needs to be voted is because we originally voted to reallocate so we essentially need to resend the prior vote to
reallocate we don't have to i can adjust the budget yeah but that wasn't in the um motion i thought we voted just to not take the funds no it was in the motion because there was the original 330 and change or whatever it was i have this in
the spreadsheet and then we added the 44,000 of title one funding that would was going to be for equity leads we reallocated that and then we also voted to take the 235 from the BEF and reallocate that
so you're saying that the 235 cannot be reallocated correct okay it's just not Is it clawed back or is it They just don't give it to us the second one yeah they're not going to give it they're basically saying not accepting grant
exactly okay right so I think we probably can't vote it now but I I think or the need to do it and are because this is new business now and unfortunately you and I both forgot to raise it under the properly docketed heading yeah but why can't we just go backwards a little bit because we're no
longer under that item like we're we're on to new business right um and I regret having forgotten about it at the time um but I think it's clear that we need to do this we will probably do it without any controversy at a at a um meeting in the near future
just one one quick question under new business i I saw that there was a school committee meeting docketed for next week is that not real then for next Thursday oh right well there had been one for next Thursday but then next Thursday wasn't going to work and so we kind of
revised the planning so that we tried to get everything done uh for now uh at tonight's meeting okay thank you and so G so given the next meeting on May 1st is that what it is right now that's three weeks from tonight that's
that Thursday um are are do you have the the Oh bless you are there we asked Bass to come back with a model and you know your your request there are there other categories that we have not yet um worked on that are going
to be showing up then and the building maintenance I mean what are the like I mean in terms of like that's why that's why I didn't dock at a meeting for next week because it's really not clear what we'd be talking about well that's what I'm asking is what sort of in your mind are those next categories caroline said we're sort of out of categories or she's
proposed some but hasn't heard back yet and then we're sort of that's what I'm trying to get at it yeah I think things for me right now things are pretty open-ended i mean on Monday we're going to the town school partnership we'll update them on um what we've done so far i look forward to hearing you know from
our town partners at that point uh and and just take it from there right okay and if it becomes necessary to have a meeting before May 1st I think we would we would we would schedule one even if it were during vacation week you know if it were really urgent to do it thank you
the other piece that will happen hopefully in the next two weeks and Val can probably correct me if I'm wrong is the House budget will come out and that may be different than the governor's budget hopefully more in years past it's
always been more this year and that's usually with Republican governors but you know uh we can still hope that there may be uh some more revenue that would come in and that would be a big help that's right Helen it's usually just
before just after um school vacation um I was going to basically agree with Carolyn that I really do feel like I I hear what you're saying Andy about you don't necessarily know what we talk about but I feel like it would be beneficial to at least pull membership
for availability on Wednesday and perhaps the following week and just get it like so even just put it on the calendar cancel it if you need to but have it be on the calendar so we don't so we can get a quorum um all right i don't see any downside in
polling so we can at least do that finance is meeting super short if that's what Betsy is talking about it would be like probably half an hour or something so don't let finance hold us up okay so it
could Are you saying it could be a double meeting yeah okay all right i don't see any harm in uh in polling so um uh members might be interested in next Wednesday and the following Wednesday just to just to
check for availability all right yeah betsy is saying that she can't guarantee that BIG would be available so it might just be a Zoom call all right any further new business with that I move to meet
executive session pursuant to Mass General Laws Chapter 30A Section 21A for the following purposes purpose two to conduct a strategy session in preparation for negotiations with non-UN personnel superintendent and purpose seven to review and approve executive
session minutes from the April 2nd 2025 meeting is there a second i second thanks Suzanne uh Jesse um yeah Jesse yes sarah yes steven yes suzanne yes helen yes
carolyn yes mariah yes val yes and I vote yes we will not be returning to open session good night everyone recording stopped