is going to work if you keep going we won't be able to have a meeting in the back could you please just listen in the hallway could you please just listen thank you thank you I appreciate it we want to hear everybody
who wants to speak we we want you to be here we welcome you there will be a long meeting tonight we will be here for as long as it takes to hear everybody who wants to speak we have a list of the people I ask that you listen to our
speakers and to our conversation please do not interrupt us we'll just have to stop and the meeting will go till 1: in the morning and that's really hard for everybody so I ask for your cooperation and your respect and we will hear you and we will consider what you are saying
for sure many many decisions will not be made tonight so you're going to walk away not knowing what the decision is going to be because we have many meeting meetings ahead of us we have another meeting on the 20th and another meeting on the
27th okay see each I didn't hear what he said okay are we ready to [Music] start recording in
progress okay good evening everyone we have a large crowd that the people online can't see but I can see and we go out into the hallway so thank you everybody for for being here it is a night where we're going to talk about the budget for next year as I just
mentioned we probably will have many decisions that are not going to be made tonight this is a long process we want to hear from everybody before we make final decisions we have many meetings ahead of us including uh March 20th and March 27th there may be more than that
is there another Finance coming up Mariah okay and there'll be another Finance for sure so this is not your last opportunity to be heard um and it's not your last opportunity to be seen so I thank you for cooperating and listening to all our speakers when they
come just to give you how the night's going to go we have administrative business we do that first we have public we have public comment we're going to have 10 people speak the first 10 people who sign up then we're going to go to uh
the presentations on uh the budget we're going to talk about that we won't get to everything but we will get to some things for sure um we have a couple of actions that we're going to do we need to go into executive session for about a
half hour uh and then we will come back and we will listen to the other uh public comments and speakers so that will be later you're welcome to stay as long as you want if you don't want to stay that's fine you can always go home
and watch it on big it's live link so you can do both and uh we are going to begin are we ready any other okay y okay here we go we have uh
Andy is a uh on Zoom tonight as is Stephen and Val and so Andy asked me to chair the meeting tonight so I am Vice chair so just to let you know okay we're going to start with a consent
agenda uh there are a number of items on that uh mostly the first ones are all past records that means they're the minutes of those meetings um and do we do Pierce separate Pierce construction yes there's two do you want me to talk about them or well now let's just do the
let's do the first part first the minutes uh and do we do the gifts and grants with that Mariah and we have gifts and grants so does someone would someone move though so moved okay I'll second it any questions the
comments okay we'll vote uh Jesse sorry Suzanne I do have a question okay K you're just doing the past records and the gifts and grants we're not doing the piers okay thanks we're going to do that separately thank you I only see oh I see this one B which one
are we doing now oh like oh there is a pier item then I do have a question what the $33,000 change order is and I thought when we voted on the GMP recently maybe I'm incorrect I thought you said there were no change orders yet but this says change order
number 14 but mostly I'm just curious what it is um I did and there were none in the GMP for the first part there may have been some change orders for the fire um piece whatever the change orders have been we
have voted them okay um so and this one is just to manage the contract of the uh the testing and inspection services that's add it's an additional contract we we actually used the amount that we
had had and this is the additional amount thanks MH okay we'll take a vote Jesse yes Sarah yes Mariah yes Helen yes Carolyn yes Andy yes stevenh yes and Val
yes is that yes pH I'm sorry yes thank you okay oh my vote is yes as well thank you um now we're going down to 1B separ separate vote 1B Helen do you
have anything to say about that or as I sorry as I explained earlier this is for testing uh and it's a not to exceed number so we don't know exactly how much it is um it depends on how many soils they have to test and um things like
that so uh this is common that we do this sort of thing and the building department the building commission says the number should be not to exceed 250,000 and they have to submit reports each time they do Bill into this account
would you like to move it yes I'd like to move it thank you I'll second it are there any questions or comments Jesse Yeah my question Helen is this is this already cared for in the original budget for the pro for the program still within the budget within the um one of the contingencies I think it's the
construction thank you okay we'll take a vote Carolyn yes Helen yes Mariah yes Sarah yes Jesse yes B yes Stephen yes Andy yes and I vote Yes as well thank
you okay we're going to public comment I have 10 names that we're going to hear from now we'll hear the other 28 later in the evening um how much time are they getting Betsy three minutes each you get three minutes each please keep it to
L yeah if you can keep it to less that's fine if someone has already said what you wanted to say you could say I agree with them um and uh just be really aware of of the time we have a lot of people to hear from and I want everyone to have a
chance iiz people could I excuse me could I ask the people in the room to yeah you know what people cannot hear you online a lot of talking going on in the room and the mic is picking it up I'd like to ask if you could just ask the people in the room not to speak unless they're at the
podium at the mic in the order Stephen we can't hear you with someone is speaking here so you have to wait please okay well I don't want I'm not on the list I want toip you have a question people on
unless I'm happy thank I appr and forgive my ignorance I don't want to take anyone's time thank you my name is Kevin Smith I'm a resident and my question being for someone who doesn't know the process here and so on and so forth I literally was one of the F first people in the
room and didn't know there was a sign up and that's fine so if I have a provision and I can't make another meeting how can I make my opinion heard by you folks as I certainly like everyone here have lots to say in regard to this you know especially as a lifetime Brooklyn resent Etc so what Avenue should I take to make
sure that I'm heard okay so the whole process of signing up is where is it Betsy online okay so but if not in this meeting but elsewhere yeah I'm going to get to that yeah so I first want to make sure that people knew that if you sign up you sign up online uh it goes to
Betsy and she's waving and um you have until noon of the day of the meeting to sign up okay got that if you did not sign up you didn't know how to sign up you still want to be heard you should send an email to us and you can address
it to the school committee it usually would go to Betsy and she'll send it to all of us we had over 80 emails just today alone so that is a and we read them we do read them you the email address is schoolc commmittee
psbma so School uncore committee okay so thank you we do want to hear from you okay our first uh speaker is Rick Stone and after that will be John Fergenson so Rick if you could work your way and if John could
then work his way that's the way to do it let them through thank you to lift it all guys thank you all right good evening members of the school committee Dr gillery and everyone in attendance both here and watching at home tonight
uh thank you so much for allowing me to speak with you my name is Rick Stone and I've been teaching music in Brookline for over 20 years now thank you I started as a sixth through e8th grade General music teacher in 2013 I uh began teaching fourth to e8th grade instrumental music full-time we have
such an incredible and varied selection of performing arts classes in our fourth through eighth grade curriculum ranging from ensembles such as band chorus and Orchestra to classes like digital music production music exploration in Guitar ukulele students really have an opportunity to choose and experience such a wide range of musical paths
during their time in the Brooklyn Public Schools of the many ways we showcase student growth and achievement throughout the school year our instrumental cor concerts and band concerts Orchestra concerts are something that I consider to be a true highlight I never grow tired of seeing how well the kids perform and progress
from grade to grade and I'll tell you there's really nothing like seeing over 120 to 150 combined fourth through eth graders join together for a grand finale at the end of a concert it's really something to be a part of you never really know what to expect during a concert which is one of the things I
most enjoy about live performances just a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of witnessing a sixth or eighth grade band on stage too loud sorry they were on stage being loud as well playing rocking out to Smoke on the Water while the audience is clapping Along on two and four which is not necessarily an easy
achievement and the fifth grade band that was out in audience randomly got up started dancing and let a conga line through the entire auditorium at Driscoll it was really really something um looking back on this made me think about the countless hours of work and preparation leading up to the concert
the time rehearsing in class every week students taking private and group lessons and all of the parental help supporting their kids investing in instrument rentals and lessons reminding them to practice at home of course and then finally everyone coming together for the
performance all this all this leads that moment where preparation meets spontaneity that only a concert can bring out and it's really one of the things I consider to be so powerful about live music and so essential to our lives and culture with regards to our school concert we have a lot of people
in the community coming out and it would not be possible without the help from the school the school's custodian and staff who help us set up countless chairs they're there setting up chairs they're there unlocking and locking buildings um
they're doing so much cleanup so much work so many things behind the scenes service work and the food service workers they they're supporting everyone as well I definitely do not forget about you and do not do not forget that either so thank you guys because it really takes everyone's
help and support to make this happen I really can't imagine not having opportunities like this in the future for our students in the entire Brooklyn community community and I hope that we can all come together to pass a school budget that not only keeps our Conservatory thriving but all the essential staff and programs that we need moving forward thank you guys so
[Applause] much John you're up next and after John Lydia faan uh just to let you know if you've not been here before or not watched us before we listen we take notes but we
don't respond so just sometimes that's frustrating for people but that's that's what we do okay everybody here on Zoom yes um actually um regarding that so those of us who are remote could we ask that uh speakers uh not pick up the
microphone and lean into it because that makes the audio quality really bad and difficult to hear so if you could leave the mic um on the podium and and just speak um as normal thank you can we ask that you come to the next meeting hi can you ask that you come to the next
meeting do you want you want to come to the next meeting no people on Zoom can they come to the next meeting I don't know what want kind of important oh John a question I'm sorry John's not here I'm sorry he didn't oh
John come on up please yeah John and then Lydia is next I said John [Music] be put it up AER that's
good I'm John Ferguson I'm also an instrumental music teacher in Brookline I'd like to thank you I would like to talk about the proposal which has been described euphemistically as restructuring to completely eliminate the instrumental music program this proposal would Rob
our students of a fundamentally important area of their education our instrumental music students learned the first steps of holding an instrument and caring for it the discipline of practicing at home and how to work toward a concert performance they achieve this regardless of background physical or emotional disability or
financial need Central Administration talks about the importance of inclusion in equity however they're proposing to dismantle one of the largest programs to address inclusion and equity in and Equity a program thank you a program that ensures that every
student has access to a high quality instrument and private lessons regardless of financial situation without our program this opportunity would no longer exist an instrumental study in Brooklyn Public Schools would be reserved only for those with the means to pay for it all of our fourth
through 8th grade elementary concerts as Mr Stone mentioned conclude with a grand finale where students at all levels and all grades play together on a specially arranged piece our concerts in this piece in particular lead to a surge of student student enthusiasm that sustains
and re rejuvenates their commitment to learn an instrument Central administra excuse me Central Administration agreed at the last school Committee hearing that the conservatory program was strong and therefore we should keep the after school music groups I conduct one of these groups the Brooklyn Youth
Orchestra we've won numerous Statewide competitions over the years including a gold medal showcase performance at Symphony Hall it is ludicrous to think that this group would exist if there were no students learning to play instruments in the schools the alltown orchestra concert that I
also conduct is a shared concert where elementary students play side by side with the Brookline High School orchestra students most of whom began playing their instruments in our fourth grade Conservatory program this collaboration generates interest and excitement for the kids to choose music in high school
again if kids are not learning to play instruments in Conservatory there will be no kids to put in the high school ensembles incidentally this year's alltown orchestra concert which is this Wednesday at 7 p.m. features an orchestral composition by a former peer student who so enjoyed making his own
songs in Middle School orchestra that he chose to pursue a career in as a composer he's currently a composition major at oberin College I don't think any of you would want to live in a world without music I doubt anyone here could go the next 24 hours without listening
to some type of music in the car on a TV show even being on hold on the phone music is a part of our society and as such it deserves a place in any thoughtful well-rounded School curriculum in a time of great Discord in the world let's not abandon the study of
that which is beautiful and meaningful and expressive I propose we stop threatening to cut music next year and in future years and find a more reasonable solution thank you thank you very much Lydia you're up next and then
[Applause] Masha Lydia is up next and Masha kogan is uh after that good evening um my name is Lydia faberman I am a parent can you hear me okay um I'm a parent of two PSB students
currently enrolled at the pier school I'm here tonight in shock that the committee is being asked to consider these disastrous Cuts proposed by Dr gillery on February 13th the very things that are at the heart and soul of learning I'm with you tonight to share a petition that was written by a group of
incredible parents and signed by almost 900 individuals at the time of writing these words this petition was emailed to all of you and I encourage you to read it if I'm speaking too fast tonight I also encourage you to read the additional 124 comments that are at the
end of the petition as well dear school committee members we the undersigned Brooklyn stakeholders have lost confidence in the ability of the administration to manage the massive roughly $8 million projected fiscal year
2026 PSP budget deficit in a way that genuinely prioritizes our students at the February 13th school committee meeting parent after parent spoke of the importance of protecting student facing staff positions and prioritizing
students when balancing the budget instead the cuts proposed by the administration include a death sentence of our exceptional um fourth through eighth grade Conservatory program the elimination of Middle School sports the elimination of summer programs that
serve vulnerable students the elimination of about half of our first grade teacher aids the reduction in the number of teachers at BHS and More in response to this proposal several school committee members raised questions about other possible avenues for savings
including potential savings within the central administration offices answering this line of inquiry at minute 4H hour 19 minutes of the meeting Dr gillery replied I don't see significant dollars in this as currently suggested looking
at Central raises central office I don't see that being several million dollars while Dr Giller replied in terms of significant dollars and several million the proposed cuts that would directly impact students start at just $100,000 Middle School sports that is
roughly equivalent to the salary cost of just one central office staff member yet the impact on our middle schoolers would be immeasurable the PSB Central Administration is comprised of the offices of the superintendent teaching and learning student services
educational equity and administration and finance we do not accept the administration's claim that no significant Cuts can be identified in any of these offices especially since the number of central office staff has substantially increased since 2013 a
year that had almost identical enrollment levels to the present time nor do we accept the claim the proposed cuts are the best possible path to a balanced budget that prioritizes student needs and well-being above all else thank
you masa's up next and then NRA Pollock will be next picking up where Lydia left off our trust is further eroded by the opacity and confusion surrounding the circumstances that led PSB into this massive deficit resulting in the
commissioning by the town of an external audit to answer questions that should have been readily and transparently answerable by the administration we therefore ask that you unequivocally reject the package of cuts proposed by the superintendent's office for the 26th
fiscal year insist that a new balanced budget be proposed one that genuinely prioritizes our students and do not vote on the 2026 fiscal year PSB budget until the results of the audit are made public which is expected to happen well before the budget vote deadline the start of
town meeting May 27th 2025 school committee chair Andy Lou ended the February 13th meeting with an announcement that the select board is launching a study committee to prepare for the next override vote which will include a component for PSB operating
expenses while an override is just at the planning stage for now we hope and expect that the first step of any such plan will be restoring the trust of the voters in the PSB administration's ability to manage the PSB budget with a proposal that genuinely prioritizes our
students and if I may have a few minutes uh to say that please take a look at the petition because there are over 100 comments that people have made that they may not be able to share with us tonight thank you after Nera is
sidest I'm really thank you I'm here to present the parent perspective on the proposed cuts to the performing arts program this is a uh letter that was written immediately after we heard about these cuts and uh received uh 816 signatures within 5 days over the break and then now has almost a thousand and
while you hear that you will hear that this letter applies to the conservatory program proposed cut um you can hear that it highlights the broad and deep support for the Performing Arts in general in Brooklyn as parents students whose children have benefited directly from the Performing Arts education provided in the public schools of
Brookline we are writing to express our strong opposition to the proposed cuts to the performing arts program in the current budget had we been aware of this specific proposal in advance we would have raised these concerns at the February 13th school committee meeting the performing arts program at Brookline High School is truly a crown jewel of
PSV with accomplished student musicians training and performing in multiple bands orchestras choirs Acappella groups and musical theater Productions these experiences in turn propelled BHS students into advanced musical groups in college careers in the Arts and lifelong joy and community Through music the
strength that the Performing Arts at BHS is a major reason that many of us choose to live in Brookline and send our children there knowing that they will Thrive the BHS performing arts program is strong because of the robust training and experience that students receive in the Brookline grade 4 to8 Conservatory program growth as a musician requires
individual lessons and practice but relies heavily on shared musical experience in an ensemble the value of music education to mental health to development of personal so social performance and Leadership skills and to the development of a strong Community cannot be overstated the proposed plan
to completely end our fourth to eth grade Conservatory program no more instruments in fourth grade no more band Orchestra chorus music production music exploration or Guitar ukulele in fifth through e8th grades replacing our incredible Conservatory program with General music classes and cutting the already limited amount of music class
time our students have from twice a week to once a week is shocking this plan and the required overall reduction of seven FTE reflects a lack of understanding of the value of this program to our community and to the overall development of our students cutting the grade 4 to8 program will decimate the program at BHS
and hurt our students both short and long term Beyond recognizing the accomplishments of students specifically trained in our grade 4tha Conservatory program a program through which many students have won awards and received High honors and recognition across the state of Massachusetts and Beyond we must recognize that it is a program that
meets diverse needs and support students at all levels of ability and interest with its wide range of classes and offerings it is a program that levels the playing field offering every student in the public schools of Brookline the opportunity to learn an instrument to participate in large ensembles and to
have student choice in the many different Conservatory class options and it is key to understand that it is not possible to replace the impact of the conservatory program with opportunities outside of PSB in addition to the critical training taking place within the context of the school day requiring
no additional transport or tuition cost from our families it is through our performing arts program that PSV supports every student regardless of income or background while families with sufficient resources and musical experience will find ways to provide some level of music education outside of school these opportunities will be
completely eliminated for many children and there will be many PSV students left without access to music education who will never have a chance to realize their potential in this domain this is unacceptable in a community like Brookline that values both equity and the Arts and I'll stop there
yeah after Sid will be uh Liz crane thank you hi my name is sraa I'm really happy to have the opportunity to speak here so as we think about the budget I actually wanted to take a step back and think about what are priorities for the Brooklyn education system I
would argue that our parties for Education should be number one optimize every individual's learning and developmental potential and that means not only rigorous academics like reading math and science but also Direct Services like speech PT and behavioral support for children with
special needs number two provide opportunities for Challenge and enrichment for every learner of all abilities including academic competitions music Sports um um we need to engage each and every student number three develop a lifelong love of
learning and number four Foster fun and community and by commun I include our service workers our food and custodial staff who are so important uh to this community so by by focusing on these priorities I think this will help us
focus on what we should prioritize in the budget second thing I wanted to mention is that we don't have outcome measures for education in Brookline every year we focus on the mcast and that's an okayish metric it's not great what about teacher feedback about how effective they perceive the curriculum
what about long-term accomplishments of the talents of the students what about the satisfaction of families of children with special uh learning needs are their IEP goals being met are their children happy and are the ham families happy to keep their children in our school district and what about the longitudinal
performance of the school system over the years if you look at the mcast DAT I know it's not great but grade four reading performance those who have met or exceeded expectations that percentage has stayed the same from 2001 to 2016 ignoring the precipitous drop after the
recalibration of scores in 2017 so our District's academic performance is flat why are we happy with no progress over 20 years or two decades the third thing I wanted to say is now is our opportunity to reimagine ourselves how
can we serve as an Exemplar to every school district in the state in this entire country we need to set aside conceptual philosophies ideologies all this sort of stuff and look at the data what are the things that actually matter to the students for example Brook line can serve as a new model of Education
that prioritizes textbooks over screen time reduce her Reliance on computers and software um we can serve as an example of a school district that values reduced screen time um increase student teacher interactions um and a return to textbooks that can make it easier for
new tech teachers who have to develop their own curriculum and not to mention it can save a lot of money number two Brook line can inject more transparency into all aspects of the decision-making process and this goes without saying number three Brook line can highlight how a school district can provide
challenging learning opportunities to individuals of all abilities every student no matter their ability deserves and wants to be challenged and then number four Brooklyn can reduce Central Administration decreasing overhead and improving efficacy of initiatives and and efforts and the last thing I want to
say is that we can serve as a paragon of Excellence for providing the needs of students with special needs we should be the school district that families of children with special needs want to be a part of thank you thank you very much Liz crane is up next and then Aon
seg seg SE good evening my name is Liz crane I'm here tonight in the context of the materials fee program with a message of both appreciation and continued advocacy I have taught biology for the past 23
years at Brookline High I've taught some of your own children and literally thousands of other BHS students over the decades I teach or have taught many of our flavors of biology AP biology bio1 elll biology Biology one honor I bio as
well as biology based electives I've stayed after school to prepare hundreds of labs help students understand tricky Concepts cheer on their milestones and provide a listening year for those struggling I've gone to their weddings celebrated their babies and exchanged
holiday cards my students past and present are like family and I also have my own nuclear family I have two children Molly and Hannah who gratefully attend the Brooklyn Public Schools via the materials fee program having brookln
treat my own children as their own means the world to me it is one of the major reasons I feel so connected to this town it's one of the major reasons I've remained here as a teacher PSB parents are my true friends Molly
and Hannah adore their teachers coaches principal and peers we are fully a part of the fabric of BHS and Pierce I am so grateful that the school committee and in particular the finance subcommittee voted last night to reject
a proposal to charge families like mine 122% more in order to send my children to school here were this proposal to have been enacted it would cost my family $116,000 per year of post tax money to
continue sending Molly and Hannah to Brooklyn schools this is a sharp contrast to the typical 3% annual raise and fees so thank you for doing the right thing this year thank you for understanding that an affordable and
predictable materials fee program is a direct reflection of our district values and an invaluable tool for educator Recruitment and Retention and let us please continue to partner together to be sure that insulting disrespectful and
damaging proposals such as this do not get repeated our school communities and our educator morale simply cannot tolerate it this program is personal to me people say that actions speak louder
than words this program says to me we see you as a whole person we value your family and your children we agree that your own children should benefit from this incredible school system that you have helped to build please stay in
Brooklyn for your career and become doubly invested in this District both as an educator and as a parent thanks for listening thank you Liz Aran you're next and then Jim
Durkin Jim Durkin will be coming good evening my name is Aron seev and I have two children at Pierce in fourth and seventh grade like others gathered here tonight I'm distressed by the student facing Cuts being considered these Cuts would not only affect my kids
but also deprive those younger than them from having the same Rich experiences that they've had I know others will speak about the cuts and make specific proposals so I'd like to focus on two additional bigger concern bigger picture concerns first as most of us know rline School population has been largely flat
in recent years even declining it's been noted before that at the same time administrative staff and budget have grown I'm not sure it was mentioned on the record but just by how much it has grown so some numbers uh from looking this up online uh just uh in the past
three years from fiscal year 23 to fiscal year 26 the administration and finance budget has grown from 8 million to 11 million a 44% increase yet during that same time the number of students in Brookline declined from 7,60 to
7,023 if we go back another three or four years we had over 7,800 students meaning that we now have 90% of the student body that was served a few years ago by a much smaller central office and administration budget how much smaller in 2017 Administration finance budget
was under $1.7 million allowing for inflation that is 2 .2 million in today's money that same budget for next year is 425 per higher 425 per. we can cut the entire amount of next year's shortfall
$8 million and still have an Administration and finance budget 60% larger than it was that year allowing for inflation when we had more students does anyone here really believe that our students would be deprived of quality education if we downsize the central
office to be 60% larger than it was just a few years ago when Brookline had more students and ranked High just like it does today would they be harmed more by such Cuts than by taking away some of the many student facing programs being discussed secondly I'm concerned about
some of the people that are in management and decision-making roles the people making up that astronomical growth in the central office and who perhaps may be part of the reason that we are in the pickle now how are we going about picking candidates does anyone check their background do the school committee even
Googled their names to see where they've been and what they've done I'll provide two examples our HR Director resigned in disgrace from a previous job last June among other things accused of Staff intimidation and a quote from the news here making agreements with the
superintendent that have financial implications without ever communicating that to their Finance team unquote our Deputy superintendent for administration Finance resigned from a job as superintendent 5 years ago after a vote of no confidence in that District it
left their leadership in shambles this is all publicly available information online how does hiring people that so recently failed other districts make any sense one would think there's an effort to fail us on purpose seeing these hires is it surprising that last year we had
to pay half a million dollars in Damages to school staff following payroll errors and delays to our lowest paid staff across the schools thank you for your time thank [Applause] you let's go Jim okay
so Jim is next then our last speaker uh in this round will be Jonathan Rose just a reminder that we do not call out uh particular positions and names so just should no I'm asking you not to so that
that's what we're doing go ahead Jim thank you uh mad Jonathan Rose right after thank you Madame chair members of the committee my name is Jim Durkin I'm the legislative director for ask me Council 93 we represent about 350
workers here in bookine including a 100 dedicated custodians and cafeteria workers in your [Applause] schools I think a few of them are here tonight uh these work are under the
threat of privatization a threat that would result in the loss of the jobs they love and the loss of their pension and affordable quality health insurance coverage for themselves and their families in a sad iony the management officials who bring proposals to elected leaders like you proposals like this
keep their generous salaries and of course their health care and their pensions and that is particularly hard to take when growth on management side of the budget drastically outpa Paces other areas of the budget budget and of course that's been the case here in Brook line for the past 3 years as was
just noted where according to the superintendent's proposed budget the administration line has risen from 8 million to just under 10.4 million over the past three years and they want another 1.1 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1st that's a 43% increase
in just four years contrast that with the teaching and learning line which has risen just 11% over the same period but we're heading into tough Economic Times and Tighter budgets for school districts and when that happen happens people like cafeteria workers and custodians are the first people targeted for cuts but it's
not just the workers who suffer it's also the kids their parents and the teachers they suffer too from the loss of these trusted long- serving workers who are part of the fiber of our schools workers will be replaced with a revolving pool of strangers with unknown
histories and backgrounds who tend not to stick in the same job for as long as public sector workers because the pay and benefits are so lousy then in the not to distant future the taxpayers will be impacted from diminished service and steadily Rising costs that's because the pattern is always the same with
privatization a for-profit company secures the contract with a lowball bid then after a few years when the school district loses the infrastructure to provide the service in house the cost of the contract goes up every single year and before long the district's paying
more for much less than what they were getting from the in-house Workforce simply because they panick during tough times and took the path of lease resistance casting aside their Workforce for some perceived short-term savings so look we know we're facing challenging times but we want to stress tonight that
we stand ready to work with the district to find solutions that will not replace your trusted custodians with a part-time minimum wage cleaning crew or your cafeteria workers with a corporate giant trying to squeeze every last penny of savings out of a sloppy Joe and I should
add that the food service program area is the only one operating right they're not costing you any money they're making you money so we stand ready to work with you and anyone on Fair Solutions and rest assured that we are prepared to be very
visible and very vocal going forward thank [Applause] you thank you Jim and Jonathan you're up now all right last this is a tough gig this
is a big group hi everyone my name is Johnny Rose I'm a physician and researcher at briam and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School much more much more important for tonight I am a resident of Brookline the Washington Square area and I am dad to these three
kids Oliver and Lucy are in third grade at Driscoll and Jack's in the beat program I'm here to voice my opposition to the proposed plan to cut school programs and implore the school committee to use its power to fight for the children in our
community this town is built on families and at the heart of that are our children families are drawn here because of the Great Schools and the sense of community and so many amazing aspects of Brookline stem directly from that it's what leads to the vibrant neighborhoods
to the beautiful parks to the safe community and frankly it's what leads to the high property values that so many benefit from some think it's merely the proximity to downtown but it's not there are other places just as close to the city like Austin and Brighton that
aren't focused on families Brook line is special because of the community centered around its families children and our schools but with all the focus on balancing the budget is quickly and hly as we can I fear we're losing sight of that last year the town cut the
elementary foreign Lang program this year class sizes have been allowed to exceed prior limits and even legal fire codes Lucy and olly are both both in classes with 25 students making them the largest in the district well above prior
limits and well above surrounding towns the rooms that they occupy permit a maximum of 25 people so with on most days with all the kids a teacher other supporting staff we're exceeding the fire code day in and day out not just on
a random day with a special event but every single day that's completely unacceptable and now the plan for next year is to gut services like Performing Arts music Youth Sports math reading programs that help struggling students in the town we should be adding services
and capabilities not cutting them a child's development happens through so much more than just basic academics Lucy and olly attended the project Discovery program last July for extra literacy Support over the summer this program was incredible and
essential to their continued development with both state and National surveys showing kids are struggling with reading it's just devastating to think that other kids won't have this opportunity in the future the very heart of this community is our children and our schools and
gutting the school programs will negatively affect them and will ultimately gut this community I understand the need for fiscal responsibility budgets are important they're necessary but it can't come at the expense of these kids are there ways to be more efficient
that don't involve taking away child- facing services and are there reasons that in a town of our Resources with our tax base the budget needs to be so rigid we have literal billionaires living here almost done I'm sorry we have billionaires and so many others that
come very close the fact that we choose to balance our budget at the expense of our kids is unconscionable at the very least why can't we delay the cuts until we have more information from the upcoming audit listen I don't have the answers to these questions I'm just a dad but this I know
the proposed plan is unacceptable continuing to provide amazing services that our children deserve will maintain our community it makes Financial sense and ultimately it's the right thing to do we have a saying in our house don't we Ollie whatever your superpower use it for good and so I implore the school
Community to use your superpower to fight for the good of our children for our schools don't abandon them with these proposed Cuts thank you thank you very much okay we are going to move on to the next section we will have um more public
comment probably about 9:45 you're welcome to stay as long as you want thank you for being a respectful and quiet audience I really appreciate it right yeah
okay right the right right do the right do the right okay we're going to move on now the right the right and uh we're going to begin our conversation about the budget it's a continued
discussion and if you could go quietly we'd like to continue our work here we have a lot to do tonight we might give it a minute there are stairs if you want to take the stairs they look backed up oh what one minute just
okay we're going to begin again or continue um and I believe Mariah is going to present uh what they what you did last night correct Finance subcommittee so we had a two and a half hour Finance meeting last night um and
at the end of that we made um two votes um do we have all the members of the committee we do so the first um the first motion that we uh the first vote that we took which was unanimous was to recommend um
five to not accept five of the proposed um items so those five were do not raise the materials fee tuition to $8,000 do not pause Middle School intra
and extra M sports do not um do not cut the grade one Paras do not pause non-mandatory summer programming that specifically project Discovery and and do not restructure Performing Arts so so those votes were taken last night um as a as a
recommendation sorry thank you oh that's loud those votes were taken last night as um a recommendation to the full school committee and I I sorry let me read the second one as well then the second one was to accept um three actions and those were to reduce the new
position request from the office of student services if you all recall that was something where they had been adjusted since the initial budget request was put out and so that was a change of about 990,000 um to remove the it um the additional it request that had been put in for 70,000 and to reduce the reserve
fund optimization um by 1 FTE so to take it from 8.5 to 7.5 so those votes are on this piece of paper that you have um um in front of you that was also a unanimous vote and the total of the votes that we accepted um was around 1.1
million so it reduced the 8.2 to just over 7 million or so um so I think we're going to hold these having the full school committee ratify these votes we're going to have a presentation um from Dr Gil and Dr given and possibly some other people next and
then we'll come back and consider um not just the votes from Finance last night but additional things we might want to um consider from tonight other questions we have from tonight and so on so that's the plan okay Dr Giller I think it's you and Dr given
sure thing sure thing good evening everyone thank you for being here tonight as well as uh for sharing your thoughts um and giving us your feedback we genuinely appreciate it and are taking it to
heart so tonight is my mic working we can hear you you can hear me now okay so tonight we will give provide an update uh where we are with the overall budget um revenues we have some
updates from the gicc and then we will also share reductions uh from central office uh as well we've gone through um our Central team and we'll make some recommendations here
tonight so with that Dr given no can you hear me no can you hear me now how about now maybe else stand
better okay all right so uh up first is some news we received from the town um our Revenue allocation um has uh been increased and we're delighted to hear that uh the town received their health
insurance um rate increases and um the deputy Town Administrator uh shared with me that we would be getting an additional uh 77,000 in um in additional Revenue so
that that's great so here before you is um that information so our revenue is going up to 141 m937 32 uh which makes our Gap a little
smaller um so the new Gap in uh between our Revenue allocation and the expenses uh is 8, 57584476 [Music] [Music]
of our budget season so um you know that's probably the last we'll see in an adjustment between now and town meeting though if something changes I will let you know thank you Dr
given so uh now we'll go into um a series of additional recommendations for uh cost reduction measures and uh um each of the offices will present their
um uh measures so first up is the office of administration and finance and uh we're putting before you uh pausing the um replacement of the director of data and information systems it's a 1.0 position currently unfilled this
position is Frozen for the remainder of this year in order to help uh uh address some of our current year um fun funding challenges so the estimated cost savings here is 152,153 [Music]
[Music] [Music] detail around that as outlined in um our strategic plan goals four and five Dr for tuna office of teaching and learning in the office of teaching and learning we're proposing the elimination
of one of our OTL senior director positions um this will result in a loss um a reduction in strategic leadership and oversight affecting the Department's ability to drive some key initiatives um especially some of those related to um
the Strategic plan goal number one this change will slow down decision-making processes and reduce the level of support provided to faculty and staff this position does provide a lot of support to our principles
um and is important to our office but we recognized what we needed to do um we're also recommending an Athletics fee increase um the range of course would be up to the school committee but that would be a revenue generating strategy
and um the range of$ 116,000 to $199,000 and this would allow us to keep our current programming add some programming for um no cut Sports and to
have our unified Bachi um ball program Jody just really quickly on that last one is there an amount that you're recommending here um I would recommend Stephen um the
400 um amount because I think it's a reasonable amount and it would cover what our deficit in um Athletics would be this year which was $100,000 thank you jedy you're welcome okay Suzanne
question about we G to do clarifying questions now is it a clarifying question yeah yeah is this is this per student yes per student per season per stud student per season and is there is there a sliding scale for kids with don't have the means or families I'm not
sure Mariah can you answer yes the financial ass there is financial assistance based on on basically the same way that free lunch works there's the different tiers of financial assistance so yes and the these numbers are net of the financial assistance which is significant and growing and
projected to continue to grow thank you also if I could sh is that clarifying yeah clarifying um so if you have more than one student who's taking a sport I think the fee was it's not less anymore it used to be okay I have a question
sorry what's the current fee Jody 300 um Kyle did tell me Kyle Williams who's our Athletics director I think I'm getting his title right um did tell me that peer districts do have a fee of um many of them have a $400 uh
per season fee so that would be on par with other districts there are some who have fewer but certainly some peer districts including Newton do 400 per season for the office of student services there was a position that has
been vacant uh this year that was reconstituted uh the committee will remember we discussed this um proposal for re um configuring the uh senior director of guidance and counseling uh restructuring that over to the director
of civil rights and bullying prevention um so the uh the OSS team is recommending um not uh continuing with this position so this would be a reduction um for the student services
division Caroline clarifying question where was this seen in the budget like where was this captured that would be in the student services in that or chart in their
salary yes y next up uh Jody you're going to talk through OE I'm sorry I'm not sure I'm clear [Applause] so if I go to office of student services
page 27 I'm asking for sort of what the line where I would have seen this not the org chart page 27 there's not sorry maybe it's page 32 so there's leadership management
professional staff where where was this page 32 which one is that in there's this management or leadership in leadership line this this
position right here y so uh Carolyn it's in the leadership line okay leadership so that would come so that included 165 156 sorry
okay thank you you're welcome uh Dr Fortuna the cut to central office is the office of educational Equity um consisting of an executive director and an assistant director I want to say a
little bit about this office and what this loss Will mean to us as a district oee is uniquely positioned in the central office it's both student and staff facing and it has a districtwide scope of responsibility eliminating the executive
director dor of educational equity and the assistant director will reduce our strategic leadership policy development faculty and staff training Community engagement student support and AD advocacy overall the executive director and assistant director of educational
Equity are critical in ensuring that schools actively create a diverse Equitable and inclusive learning environment for all students promoting positive student outcomes and a sense of belonging for everyone this change will reduce the support provided to students
faculty and staff eliminating in District professional development through Equity cycles and student facing support through restorative practices the public schools of Brookline have been Forward Thinking in their commitment to educational Equity
by creating this office in the year 2018 this not only aligns with the Department of Elementary and secondary education's vision and strategic objectives but Al aligns to the Massachusetts educator diversity act in
which desie has been directed to implement the following District diversity plans PD on culturally and linguistically sustaining practices diversity and bias training for District employees and school committees diversity equity and inclusion officer
and teams and public relations campaigns related to diversity Jesse I'm sorry yeah just as a oh just as a clarification Jody then so are we out of compliance in some way the way you described that are we like we will be
out of compliance with some Jesse requirements yes thank you from the office of the super I had a question on the sure Jody are you saying that we are unable to comply with desie by having um
teams that are made up of building based folks no we would be able to do that what we wouldn't have is the diversity Equity inclusion officer and team that desie would like us to have okay thanks you're welcome
it is going to be mandatory is going to be next year sorry we can't hear the question we can't hear question I understand could you repeat the question I'm G to ask the audience not to shout out questions I know I know but it's just the online people can't hear so it
doesn't work very well so the bill was just passed in November of 2024 so we are in compliance now we have been in compliance but we will be out of compliance once the position is eliminated and or if there's not a team in place what's happening in the room yeah
they can they cannot excuse me they cannot hear they cannot I understand that I understand that but you would need to raise your hand and we don't typically uh address during public comment okay okay so
Stephen okay yeah Stephen uh this was a you can ask the question yeah yeah this was a response that Dr Fortuna was giving to my question about what she meant by our being out of compliance if we were not to have which pieces of the
list it's hard to read but which of the five items down there I guess are would we be out of compliance with like a state regulation or a mandatory requirement um or not and so that's what
Dr funa is answering did I get that right yes and it would be all five so these are this is the expectation that each district across the Commonwealth will be implemented right but the like I know hard to read again but the third one that says diversity and impact bias
training I think Val asked whether that could be done through like internally or something like that I think was oh okay so that would bring us back into compliance right District understood these for all those things okay yes sorry um just a clarification
the budget for educational equity in the book is slightly higher than this number I'm just if you just could clarify so that is salary that's so that's a combination of both um administrative salaries okay and a portion so the are the
supplies is the balance okay so it's the office of educational Equity but what has been backed out from that is the um professional development because that's in another cut slide so I didn't want to count that twice it also
includes benefit costs I have a question which might be for Susan to clarify there so I was going to ask what other savings would be realized in terms of all of the PD Etc
that's rolled up and rolled out of oee you're going to get to that thank you from the office of the superintendent um we're putting the communications specialist um on the board here the Comm specialist as you
know coordinates the district's website as well as the weekly Communications um and manages all aspects of communications including the various social media platforms our rooc call system Etc so this uh this body of
work would have to be restructured or redistributed um within the organization the reserve fund you heard Mariah speak about it a little bit earlier um from the finance committee last night I believe it was one one
position that was scaled back from the 8.5 so we are recommending um another possible savings here of 2.5 FTE which is the equivalent of 225,000 um and that would leave us five
FTE in the reserve fund Bank to distribute um as needed uh recommend the strategy here on the school ad Administration side so this is uh for 225 Helen 225
113 on the school administration side can I just mention one thing just so people know that um I'm updating a spreadsheet too so we'll have this all to look at afterwards as well okay I don't have to no you don't exactly yeah and we have a running total at the
end here too that should tally this out and hopefully they match um we reduce one vice principal um at the estimated cost of 130,000 this is would be at a K8 um and so again we've discussed this I think in
detail last night uh loss of administrative support in school academics and operations as well as evaluation case load impacts um so we've not called out the school uh at this moment but uh we do have a consideration
here Val I see your yeah Val do you have a clarifi question I do I just want to clarify bumping um is applicable to Unit B as well is that correct correct okay thank you Dr given do you want to talk about
this one this is recommended strategies the education training conferences um we've scaled back the conferences and Susan can talk more about what's in here but we are Rec um realizing at this juncture a savings of about 367,000
so in essence what this is is completely eliminating all of the money uh in the area of education training and conferences except for uh for the literacy program um for mandated
training and for some uh essential memberships uh to associations that we need in order to be stay uh stay AB breast of current uh legislative changes and um so it would eliminate all of that
I think that all that would remain in those lines is approximately $128,000 could sorry and you said the 128 includes literacy and mandated trainings is that correct okay thank you in summary the total if our math is correct
here um gives us a range of opportunity from these um reductions um as well as increases in um
the athletic fee um from 1.7 to $1.8 million um so this would then reduce um I think last night you said 1 .1 1.1 1.1 so if we stay with the
8.2 1.1 would put us at 7.1 and then reducing um us down close to at the uh 1.8 number um little north of five million or so it still as a gap if they're accepted
yeah um The the Reserve fund so in the first uh the first bunch of cuts proposed there was a proposed cut of one FTE this is an additional 2.5 FTE proposed right
correct a total of 3.5 FTE proposed cut from what was a pool of 7.5 FTE 8.5 8.5 sorry so there is now a proposed Reserve fund of five FTE I'm
just checking my math correct with if we accept both of these if you accept Okay thank you there more on is there more on here or yeah you
wanted so earlier tonight you received an FAQ document um in response to many many of the questions uh that have been asked we still have another group of them um but we sent you what we had responses to and we will continue to
work on um providing answers to the remainder questions that have been asked in the form of an FAQ in addition to that there have been several um questions raised about what do uh you know it you know what are the specifics behind the high school
restructuring um um and and that reduction there was more questions about the transportation transportation services and that reduction plan custodial Food Service beep consolidation all of those will be at upcoming school committee
meeting so we'll just chunk them in the next two meetings that we have to make sure that we cover and you have the opportunity to ask questions about those there's still ongoing work right now for example beeps registrations um and parent acceptance Clos at the middle of
this month and beep wants to wait until they know what their um enrollment is going to look like for next year before they go through the process we also have a new interim Deputy that will be joining us at the same time has started already um and so the three of us will
meet to uh put together uh that proposal for be but some of it is timing we want to make sure that we have all the information we need to be able to make a truly informed uh decision and have an understanding of the Ripple effects of the plan yeah I'm Suzanne
oh Suzanne just um one who's talking oh Jesse go ahead sorry yeah just one um note is that that the FAQ was sent out right before this meeting basically so there's no expectation that we've really had any chance to right do anything but see that
it came right okay right thanks okay Mariah are you are you next yeah okay no you're you're doing a good job so Mariah's I think you're going to put it up on the screen yeah you're so good
so she's going to put up on the screen what we had before with the additions and I mean this is really small potatoes but do we still have the conference U money for the school committee to go to
masc that got cut okay so I just want to make sure that we gave our part yeah the membership we have to keep we we yeah sorry Suzanne can you just explain what the process is here like are we
going to be asking questions or comments so Mariah's gonna put this up uh I Mariah I would like us to vote on your recommendations at the beginning okay so then we'll vote on the recommendations and then I think we'll take I don't know we can go through and
see if there are particular items that we want to have a conversation about the greens and the whites um and then uh we will be able to ask questions you'll be able to make comments but I think we'll take just you know one at a time uh there is a process
we do with masc with the when they have these articles where you go through each item and if anybody wants to comment on that you say comment and then you go back otherwise that means people don't want to spend time talking about it they
could vote it up or down I don't know if we're going to do that or not on that's so you've updated this right yeah she just we we cannot we cannot hear what is going on in the room right now I'm asking Betsy for technical
assistance to zoom it to legibility thank you yes you can't okay let me figure it out on my side sorry let me stop sharing and make it better so if you just want to look at what we what was recommended last
night um Mariah can you send it to all of us yeah um I can send you okay so we took off the table 61 14 15 and 16 let me pull it up and that'll better
okay great great I actually think all members of the committee were there last night is that true no you went there just is that more legible now it should be more legible but possibly hard for people in the room to see the top of it is basically the
same as what you you don't have the bottom half because the bottom half I was just typing in real time see how there's this line right here that's what just happened yeah but this is terrible to see I'm sorry everybody um these three dots yeah and then do
what I already tried zooming it before it didn't do anything because it's like well now now it is now it's making me into a liar thank you technology shaming us once again okay hopefully that's a little better um and okay so if you can see I'm just
going to scroll over a little bit um I added the new I know this is painful sorry everybody I added the new Gap that's here you can see yesterday from Finance is this column H so you can see the three green things that we agreed to last night that's the vote in front of
you um that's rows 13 and 7 and then we voted to remove as um as Suzanne was saying 611 14 15 16 which are um materials fee um uh Middle School sports grade 1 Paras
um some non-mandatory summer programming and Performing Arts so if you would like Su Suzanne do you want to take those votes first and then we can just go into the rest I would like to yeah I would like to one one thing Mariah can I suggest that you change the initial Gap if you haven't changed it I did already
I did thank you yep yep so there's you can see here let me just say that there's this new Gap as of tonight and then down at the bottom I have a little tracker which shows last night's tally and this night's tally so the green things are what we voted I'm presuming we're going to accept those things next
and then this is the um pending total of what we haven't accepted or not accepted and then this is the running Gap yep so proposals accepted is green proposals removed is red um proposals pending is white and revised Gap is gray
so you can see it dropped slightly from yesterday even though we haven't done anything just because of the GIC change so when we say proposals removed that means we are not going to consider them as part of the cuts correct those were the four things they were added back in
to the total no they're not added back in they're just not contributing to the reduction in the Gap yes and that's the five things that we voted on so I'll make a motion can one let's do the first okay I'll make a motion to accept the um
I'm just going to refer the vote to the first vote from Finance is that okay think that okay okay um any comments questions I know we had a lot last night sorry the first vote from Finance
meaning all eight items the three uh the three greens and five Reds no just the five Reds just doing the Reds the greens is the second vote yep oh sorry did you still want to Second it Ste I still want to Second it okay I heard that oh okay
okay seeing No Hands let's take a votes uh Jesse yes Sarah yes Mariah yes Helen yes Carolyn yes Andy yes B yes Stephen yes and I vote Yes as well okay thank
you thank [Applause] you um okay I'm going to make a motion for the second vote now which was the three we accepted second thank you just just to remind people
that was the the new position requests that were reduced from OSS removing the it position and res reducing the reserve fund the it position that had been requested from the town and this was our share of the it position the 70,000 y so it's 1 three and seven yeah
Helen Helen sorry if I remember correctly OSS had asked for 1.2 million correct it was more than that I think was she was saying the total of the
value of the OSS ask was 1.2 million it was not it was 2.2 million yeah it was more the increase the new positions the 20.9 or whatever it was new position yes she's asking what was the original value of the 20.9
positions it was more than 1.2 million yeah it was closer to 2 million yeah so we're not taking all of the position no only the ones that Lisa said on upon re-evaluation she did not think were necessary up till now this is what we can take correct and new position but
it's not the one point that's not the 12.9 that's 1.2 million this is literally the first thing where Lisa said upon reevaluation we don't need these positions okay and does this include benefits I think they're new position so they wouldn't have had benefits anyway
right yeah these are you didn't put those in to the budget the the benefits until you get because you don't know what they're going to ask for okay great thank you okay we have a motion and a second
so we will take a vote wait I'm sorry oh Sarah sorry the 17 is included seven okay but I thought we were just discussing 17 okay okay Carolyn your vote Yes
Helen yes yes Sarah yes Jesse yes Steven yes Andy yes B yes and I vote Yes as well okay okay now I think we're just going to go to the questions portion of the and discussion portion of the
evening is that correct I believe so okay um uh is there anything in particular that Finance did after that that was right that was the end of the two and a half hours yesterday yes we got that so I I think that what we can do are a couple of I mean I guess my question to
the committee is and let me move this over a little bit you know are there things that we want to accept tonight do we want to hold all of this to allow for feedback from the community before we make any decisions further um how do
people want to proceed what specific questions do they have based on these are there things that they want to know about these new proposals in front of us um I think all of that is bare game for this portion of the of the meeting
Carolyn just generally speaking I mean we've um can I actually ask that you not stop sharing I can I can pull it up if you want when I find it helpful to actually sorry I have my own version never mind
just directionally I think we all we've received an enormous amount of feedback from the community um that I think much of what was just
presented um is responsive to um so there are I'm oh Stephen go right ahead thank you um I I actually wanted to put up for discussion the general supplies and services reduction we actually got a
good amount of detail on this and it seemed to me that what was proposed at Finance subcommittee last night was was an was what if I unless I misunderstand
Dr gillery what was proposed was a level of supplies that was acceptable to your Administration and it's a level of cuts that we can consider right now um whether there can be further Cuts contemplated as Jesse brought up last
night I think is something that we could discuss uh now or at a later date but I think the level of cuts that have already been proposed is something that I'd like to put up for consideration of the shortest term because it seems to me like the next lowest hanging fruit
supplies and services yes this would be line number nine on Jess is proposing to propose Jesse or steephen I'm sorry Steph sorry Jesse okay Stephen's proposing to take a look at number nine
nine or is that the motion I would be happy to move that we vote this as a cut suppli I'll second it you want a second okay can I ask a question before we um oh I see Andy's hands up I don't want to yeah Andy's hand is up
Andy um yeah before we go any further sort of voting things in or out I I do not yet have a sense of so given the things that we just did vote and things that we took off the table um how does our remaining budget Gap compare with the sum of all the things that are still
possibly on the table including the things that have not been discussed in detail and will be presented more like at our next meeting I'd like a sense like do we need are we going to need to accept 90 well Andy the answer is how much the answer is 6.9 million is the revised Gap and there are
8.5 million in pending proposals okay and that that includes the thing everything that's been discussed including things that haven't been fleshed out yet like for example everything that is not green or red and just to be clear that everything that you didn't just vote on is what it
still includes um just to be clear I put in a placeholder value of the median level here if we go with what jod recommended which I could put over here it will be slightly different but that's that's what it is I'll just put that okay 6 point so we need to find 6.9 out of about 8.5 at this point
[Music] correct Carol clarifying question oh sorry um no go ahead Val if that's a clarifying question thank you so when you're talking about the this Gap I just want to understand is the the high
school proposal has that already been netted out of this and the building proposal that Helen raised last night are those no where so we're they're not on this chart at all is that right they're in the chart in pending the high
school proposal is 20 right row 20 right here yeah and the building proposal is you guys are are so much faster than me before okay thank you but is the high school 500,000 is
that it was reduced to 250,000 by staff um at some point in the past week or two so I so it should be 250 it is oh yep not on mine nope not on yours but on on the live version it is right thank you
yeah trying to bring you the down to the minute you are Sarah when I look at this chart I think that 9917 and 19 might all be K to8
reductions and I was just sort of I guess I need to figure that out in order to be ready to um vote for nine because nine definitely seem seems to be all K to eight schools so I was just sort of wondering for balance because our high school is you know so much I
don't think that's true Sarah I think nine is because for example last night at Finance we heard about just as one example the um director of operations training is included in that one there so that is a blend in in in um nine in
the general supplies and services and if you look at the document we got yesterday it showed you which office things came from okay yeah Helen well not to steal the whole I don't know if you're going somewhere I just wanted to clarify I just when I read through it I was I it felt to me like was more heavy
towards K8 so it just made me look at the whole chart and I wanted to know if we're examining teacher specialist counselor case loads is that both at the high school and at the k8s actually that was my question what
is included in that of course the ma math Specialists you see what I'm saying is I just and before I vote nine I kind of need to know if there's a little bit of balance in what we're looking at here um K to8 versus high school did we just REM Betsy did we get
a second on the motion to look at nine I second you did okay so I guess we are looking at nine yeah so I wanted to answer Sarah's question if that's okay um if you look at the OTL
cuts on I think it's line nine um if you look at the OTL Cuts those are mostly related to K8 but not entirely not entirely says all offices and then there's all offices about 17 is 17 all K to
eight there I just what I want to say is that um when we're bucketing these items um as we are some of the cuts for example in Education and Training Ross everything
and so once that gets taken off the table then we're increasingly getting a smaller View and slice one of the reasons why we haven't taken a deep deeper dive on the supplies and services line in the high school is because we still have the pending 250 that we're
not sure exactly what's included in that reduction and so we didn't want to start taking things away that were part of their thinking so that's why at a future date we need to um have the high school present what their um proposal is and then from there we
can you know make further decisions okay that's helpful to know that that's going to happen in dat yeah thank you just just I just want do we have Mariah did you have that um on the
screen the um number SE uh which number is that nine did we had a we received it in our email yesterday or in the meeting materials and posted online for the meeting okay what those are okay thank you uh Carolyn then oh that's right it's
actually a little bit more than 400 it's 4011 and change yeah okay um so if we're discussing the motion about number nine on the round one suggestions um even though it was
discussed yesterday at finance and we got information on it um given new information and assuming there may be yet still more information I I and I admittedly have not processed the
information that we got yesterday about this I personally would not be inclined um to to vote on this one yet okay uh Ellen did you want to say something or don't well I actually I
think I'm hearing what Carolyn's saying and I think there's some things that need to be fleshed out here so that we understand what those options are I mean you know obviously some of the votes we took already were very clear-cut they're
easier to take uh others are are much more difficult so I'd like to understand some of them such as number 17 I'd like to know who what positions are included in that um uh case load it's it's a
large number it's 1 1200 um I do know that 12002 I'd like to know what's in there 1.2 million yeah that's what she 1.2 million what did I say 1,200 sorry 1,00,000 just rounding zero
just rounding um just just before we do that if we do that next we have a motion you want to withdraw it whose motion was my second no who who motion it was his motion Steven's motion for what
number nine so we have a second we don't right now I will second okay we do it's back on the table sorry um can I make a comment about why I am and why I think
um we don't need to make all of the decisions tonight but we really need to start to make some decisions I think that um a lot of these questions a lot of the the these things in front of us
people have questions about and I think they're looking well I'll say that like we can ask a lot of questions but at the end of it we're not going to feel good about a lot of the changes or a lot of the votes we're going to take no one feels good no one felt good about presenting them no one feels good about
taking the votes and I will speak for myself that I don't personally feel like I have um as a member of school committee an obligation to make $8.2 million in Cuts I think that um school committee can make reasonable cuts and then school committee again speaking for
myself as a member has a role of advocacy to say when when we have done what we can do and when we can't do anymore Without Really causing serious damage with that said this is a prime hiring period for people and if we are
leaving if there are things that we feel like we're going to make changes to we would be doing staff a favor to not leave them anxious not not knowing what's happening and and leave them basically either feeling like they have to go apply while they still think that
they might have a job or whatever it is I would I think it is the right thing to do to have our serious inquiry do the right you know do our due diligence as as Carolyn and and all of us are wanting to do but not let this Fester to the point that people miss the opportunity to get another position when they really could
be in the prime hiring period so um I appreciate all these different things and I do hope that we start to make some progress because at some point it's going to come become something that none of us are willing to to cut and then we have to say okay that's it and now the town and town meeting and select board
and everyone else needs to step up because we can't decimate our programs again my my opinion we can't decimate our programs we can only do what we can do in good faith but not to the detriment to the severe detriment of a Brookline education we got to make some motions
tonight and we have so we have a we have a motion and second it on the floor which is to look at number nine and to vote on on that amount of reduction in general supplies and services at 400
thou 41,000 205 I actually checked 411205 okay Jesse yeah um to what do what percentage of what we could cut is that in other words how far along are we are we is that 20% of what's out there
is that 80% of what's out there you mean of General supplies it's about 5% because it's 411 of 8,520 oh no no no I meant that's true I'm saying sorry what did you mean no I meant at all of supplies let's say it's
you know 1.8 million and we're and we and we came up with 411,000 my qu the question is not going to start getting after this meeting is going to be why only 411 did we look hard enough if you look at supplies and service is it only the supplies and services supplies is
supplies and services so 1.9 counts yeah not not Transportation not any of those it's so you should be able to add up those two lines that are there in your book and that'll tell you what the percentage is Right supplies and
services so Jessie Jesse I think we can go back to this line also as we get more information about the supplies line if we think we need to make deeper cuts to supplies and services that was my point from earlier is I'm comfortable moving this as a starting point for this because that was my yeah that was my
question just bring it up again thank you yeah in the same way that I think we're bringing up the reserve sections more than once we agreed to that first cut and it looks like we're going to look at a second cut as well yep okay other questions
conversations comments I'm gonna go for a vote on this okay we're ready um Mariah yes Sarah yes Jesse yes Helen yes k
no uh Steven yes Andy yes Val yes and I vote Yes as well okay what's the next one we gonna do you want me to answer Helen's question please the numbers I would like 12.9 what they are I I yeah okay so
we're going to um 17 17 not to discuss I can't discuss it but I can tell you what it is so it's eight earning Center teachers it's for uh guidance counselor SL uh adjustment counselor positions I think
they call it clinical therapeutic therapeutic therapeutic okay it's it's guid the social workers yeah whatever by whatever term you use guidance and adjusters social workers what by whatever um and guidance counselor so there's four of those
there's a0 five uh ETF and a for nurse can I ask a question Susan sure B thanks um so in IEPs there have been a lot of additions for counseling that
have been going to adjustment counselors and have we talked to OSS about their comfort level with um providing the mandated services with this reduction they were the the ones that proposed
this okay thank you Stephen may I ask a question about a different row or do you want to stay on 17 right now Suzanne well let's stay on 17 for a little bit okay I'll hold my question okay thank you Carolyn is it about 17 it's not okay Mari I I would
just reiterate my previous question that I emailed which is I've asked what the resulting workload would be um from this cut to understand how that would look across the schools and I don't think we've received that information no you
haven't um and the team is working U working to get that yeah so it's not just looking at the staff and so it's looking at the staff but it's not looking at it just solely as numbers that's the aspect where they have to actually dig
into um the students and their needs as such so right the complexity piece is really important Dr Giller so exactly I'm not comfortable voting on this until we know that yeah I don't think we're good we don't have a motion no FL so I don't think we're voting tonight but we are trying
to get some information Helen yeah I would like to understand I know that after covid we hired eight elementary schools social workers in the past we had no social workers in the elementary schools and I think what we're looking
at here is for social workers and I full disclosure I'm a social worker I this is not my favorite place to go at all however that is a service that we could have um either contract for or allow the
Brooklyn Mental Health Center to help us out with um I'm wondering why four and not eight and I'm not sure if that's possible to answer now so we we can take that later because we're not going to be voting this but that would be my
question uh just uh Stephen and Dr schmuckler is here as well so she's yeah I'm not I'm not putting her on no no no I'm not I'm not saying for her to answer but I'm saying I'm acknowledging her presence number one but then also saying she's listening to the conversation and capturing this as well Stephen and then
Mariah um I I whenever we're ready to move on I have two other questions that I'd like to raise okay okay I'm Mari are you on this one oh I just had two proposals to make to vote but not on 17 no okay just a second we're just trying
to see if done with 17 for tonight Andy are you on 17 um well yes um just to ask uh so that wasn't one of the things that was mentioned as next steps to to be discussed so I'm wondering when uh when we would be having uh that discussion basically I'll just flag over
here that I have some notes on a lot of these and so um let me just say like many of them we actually have so um and or some of them you'll see there's some of my proposals here or earlier notes from what other things have said but we've requested presentation to clarify
impact on case loads whatever 18 is oh the beep classrooms that was requested um custodial services and Food Service model was requested again a lot of these things we've requested additional information or or it's been recently presented so we'll just make sure I
think in the next like we'll make sure that we're still like consolidating the ones where we're getting additional information this has been a process obviously as we refine where we're going could we add learning centers to 17 I mean just to explain that's all all of
that is in 17 the question was exactly what are all the resulting case loads from all of these reductions and what that looks like Caroline can I go back to my question though when uh roughly when could we have that discussion we have meetings scheduled currently for the 20th and the 27th
um and as the person why don't I loop with Susan why don't I loop with with Susan tomorrow and lonus and we can make some additional meetings happening for finance as well okay since it's the single largest remaining um pending
proposal you know I don't I don't want to sort of Leave it to last if if that can be avoided understandable yeah thanks sorine I'm sorry just a process question I'm unclear on why Mariah
you're coordinating that no offense Mariah I don't mean that disrespect I that's the question I think is for Dr gillery I thought we were just talking about when the school committee would next meet so I'm not sure why L I thought the question was for Dr gillery about when the information would be
available which would determine when we can meet oh I you were saying when when the in for what meeting would this next be available or are you saying when this when are we when will it be available so that we can meet because it's not just
this there's multiple other pending proposals and we're trying to get through every single thing that people want to know about understandably but every single project has multiple stakeholders who all need to feed into it and they're all working many of them like you might have the same person who
is responding to four or five questions and they can't all be stacked up for one meeting so we're trying to work our way through this and it just takes time to plan and to organize all of the different questions that are coming from the school committee and the public to get answers in a way
that is respectful of Staff time and their other workload to keep the trains running and also make sure that we all as school committee members can continue to I I really genuinely appreciate the work you're doing on this Maria I I'm confused about the process though it
seems to me that Dr gillery should be driving when the information comes to the school committee and that that should be going to Andy who would plan the meetings okay thanks I mean that respectfully okay Caroline thank you um
I'll Pigg you back on that and also respectfully um and respectful of the work that staff are doing and the time two things one is and I've already asked um separately for
Andy to schedule a meeting a regular school committee meeting next week I'll bring that up again um I have to say that for some of these and I don't I don't know that I want to spend a ton of time tonight on questions maybe if we have
time I have to say that some of these seem to me things that either a should be readily available like I've asked multiple times about the backend inputs for stiens and extra comp it's a number
that is 1,592 2113 it's so specific that presumably there's a spreadsheet somewhere with inputs and so it shouldn't I'm I'm not sure what the preparation or
presentation needs to be to Simply make that information available to us and the public likewise I asked last night to start talking about restructure or consolidate beep classrooms presumably
that's not on this list because it's just some vague notion that somebody came up with so I would think that some somebody would be able to that that somebody who put this on the list has enough command of the information that
they could just talk about it without it having to be a presentation such that that's a reason we don't have a meeting so and that's not directed at really anyone in particular and certainly not you Mariah but it's a frustration for me
about this process so are you talking about number 18 when you talk about beep is that I am okay and I'm not I'm not actually that was addressed earlier tonight we said that we did we talked about that they talked about why it was not like why the
information would be presented in the future okay oops I'm sorry I missed that somehow yeah okay they they're waiting for some of the registration so Margaret has a better sense okay I did hear that
and yet the notion of restructure consolidate must be something that if I say what would that mean that somebody who put it on this list could answer that question so it sounds like instead what
you're saying is it's just a vague possibility like you could restructure anything well no I believe that Margaret's involved with that and she's not here tonight but we when we know we're going to talk about it like next time if she's prepared then we can have
that convers ation with her okay so that does that does not that is not a satisfying answer and generally speaking that's my feeling about a lot of this stuff it's surprising that if people are able to put things on these lists with
such such specificity that we can't sort of that it requires a presentation to answer the questions so but I don't want to spend a ton of time but that's an ongoing frustration Carn can I um help at least maybe with the stiens and the
extra comp um it's in at least the unit a and the unit c contract in about 12 different places in each contract um I believe it's all of appendix B of the unit a contract and they're um I don't
think any of them are round numbers and they change um by school year so what do you are you saying say I think that's where the backend numbers are coming from is from the contract um
for the for the stien amounts for a lot so some but so there are individual I'm not sure if you are saying that what's in the contract is if you do some extra work or have some additional assignment you will be paid
this much or that this number represents some of the some of the extra comp I believe is by position uh and it's effective you know starting the September 1st of each school year and if I recall the stiens are sort of
in various places um for different activities and coaching and things like that uh in both the A and the C contract okay thank you well I will look I would I I appreciate that v um it
would be helpful to have that sort of laid out a back end of the budget too okay Stephen your hands up I just wanted to bring up row four was that one of your proposals
Mariah what number did you say row four that was not what I was going to bring up now but oh have had it I when we talked about it initially uh oh can you scroll back up if you don't mind it's okay um wasn't that one of the
relatively easy ones since this wasn't coming out of our budget directly or do I [Music] misremember it is a transfer from the schools to the town below the line so it does come directly out of our budget and we are instead shifting it back to the
schools from the building department could would you mind refreshing my understanding about what the potential downside of this would be I will defer to Helen to talk about that thank you yes and I I must say just as if we we've gotten push back on every
single item here because all of them are important and we don't really want to cut anything um that we don't have to um this was a stab at the we presently uh
transfer 3.6 million approximately uh dollars to the building department to maintain our uh buildings and this would be um you know a cut to that that transfer part of it was based on the
increase that they wanted 162,000 I spoke about it at the meeting yesterday I don't have the figures right here in front okay it was 162 to level fund right and part of it was hopefully Savings in um uh utilities which um
today I got an email from the building department saying no that I was wrong in my estimates um but I think there's more discussion that needs to happen there okay thank you R I would like to propose to accept
rows 21 and 24 which are currently vacant positions with no 20 near not that one 21 this number 21 not that number 21 so 21 the director of data information systems and before the director of civil rights and buing prevention so this
would be pausing these positions for a year is what the proposal is second Helen I'm I'm okay with it but I want people to understand by voting this we can't be asking for data right all the time you know it's we're just not going to get it um the people have to do their
jobs and to try and then you know respond to every data request is difficult I would just uh add that in the absence of that position we are getting data just takes time so I would disagree slightly with that we'll never get it but I'm saying yeah and I think
that as you know we continue to pull data the people that are getting it for us can get it smoother and we you know we're working in parallel to try and find ways of getting some of that data Maybe in a methodology that there's more access to we'll we'll slowly get there
but you're right I mean it won't it shouldn't get better than now by much but we'll still going to work hard on it every day yeah I second that thank you Stephen any other comments or
questions we'll take a vote okay Jesse yes Sarah yes Mariah yes Helen yes Carolyn yes uh Val yes Stephen yes Andy
yes and I vote Yes as well I want to make another motion okay Mariah make a motion to increase Athletics fees to $400 per season seconded he I'm going to make a motion to increase Athletics fees to $400 per season second just a second comments or
questions on that I think we should be discussing the kinds of things that the community has asked for before these before
that okay anybody else have a comment or question it's sort of a comment I mean one thought is that we could do maybe 450 and give a discount for the second kid being
400 you know and that would Kyle and I talked about a lot of different and variations on a variations on a theme and I think that um I think that at this point a straight line
is much easier to to admin handle exactly to handle okay then I'm fine okay uh seeing good point we haven't voted yet we're gonna vote now 400 which is the
116600 yes okay Mariah yes Sarah yes Jesse yes Helen yes Carolyn yes Val yes Stephen yes and Andy yes and
I vote Yes as well Carolyn um I have a comment that's not related to any of these things specifically and it's going to be quick but it this is reminding me about Revenue generation um I'd like to sort of add to
the to the list of things that should be talked about um something that was brought up sorry that's okay um um something that I think Susan you brought up somewhere along the line in the last
year with respect to revenue Generation Um which is that some of the programs that use our school buildings pay for use but not all
and there was some conversation about sort of the process that's supposed to happen when we lease or don't lease space um and I and I don't think that was ever I I never heard much more about
that but I'm interested in that I can email you about it separately if you want I think what you're referring I think you're misunderstanding what she's talking about I think what you're referring to is the process to allow bef um and 21st century fund to have offices in the building she's not talking about
rentals for yeah she's not talking about that and I think that was something that was in capital and policy and maybe that's where to follow up on yeah and we're working with Town Council to probably get licenses to one of the things it's hard to ask for money for
somebody whose sole existence is to support the schools and if we have an office that we can allow them and most of them have one little office to charge money for that seems somewhat counterintuitive but the after school
program's sole purpose is to support students so I'm not so it's sort of it it's it's a parody issue I mean it's it's a few things for me I don't see the parody across programs and I see us
voting just now to raise the fee for children to participate in athletics but we're not charging certain programs to use space and it's a potential Revenue
generation so it has nothing to do with my obviously but it's a potential Revenue generator and it's curious to me that we don't pursue it okay uh Sarah did we did yeah it passed
okay Sarah from what I've heard everybody say I would like to see if we can turned to 17 and one of my reasons is that I think that um we heard you say so clearly Mariah that we need to think about some of these decisions in the you
know soon and not put them off so I just wanted to ask when I see 17 and I see a question answered over here in our um asked questions um about how Learning Center um case loads would be staffed
with this reduction um was this written by OSS and so I can trust that um it's been you know really well thought through and this was the recommendation that OSS meant and when they say that a small increase in case load numbers may be expected um was you
know was is that the feasible so um if we go to these questions and you count front and back 1 two 3 4 5 six oh yeah was so my first question about this
is was that did OSS come up with this my second question is how do we know if there was consistency applied and my third question is is this maybe the best information we'll get and it's not feasible to get much more
information than a small increase in case load numbers may be expected because there is movement in and out of um IEPs so oh Karen you want to respond to that I can I can respond to the the second part of your question um the
directors are actually from my understanding doing a additional kind of Deep dive into sort of case load workload analyses and so you can expect to get much more um robust data to really support the recommendation that I
also believe came from OSS and from the directors uh having been doing this work for a number of weeks okay so then we will wait for that thank you Mariah I'm gonna make a proposal I'm
just trying to get us through to um not reduce High School athletics by the $100,000 but to reduce it by $ 67,341 week from Anthony Meyer and Kyle Williams I know 800 emails ago probably
in your in your email queue so I'm sure you've been reading it for your bedtime reading but what it said was that essentially um the the cuts they gave us were slightly larger than 100,000 it was 110,000 but but of those
110,000 approximately 35 the balance that you would see here the um girls gym gymnastics which was on the proposal for cuts as well as to um complete the cycle of Unified sports for next year which was a override commitment and so um being able to
retain that 30 uh 32,000 and change um would allow us to have those two things it would not provide an expansion of um Sports the additional 75,000 of that 110 would be an a further expansion through um assistant coaches and some other
things um but this would allow us to not cut any not make any reductions to our Athletics programming further I would just say that um Athletics has experienced a boom in um in registrations participants yes um
I I think I think uh the numbers Kyle showed me were something like a 30% increase in the past four years or just tremendous and so um with that said even if we did not vote to increase for example some of the assistant coaches because of the increase in the Athletics fees that we are also voting and because
of the typical stiens that assistant coaches receive it actually might mean that they could still do some of those things depending on what their um signups are for some of those Seasons so I but I do think it's important that we retain the programs we have and retain the commitments to completing the
unified cycle so my proposal would be to cut 67,0 345 um which again would maintain those commitments but not fund an increase um off the top of things so you want us to vote to redu
to save to accept cuts of 67 345 because they had built in 100,000 instead of 100,000 correct okay correct uh do we have a second to that I'll second that thank you Jesse any other questions or comments about that
Caroline I'm GNA say the same thing as I said before I I am not comfortable working off of this list when we have the things that were presented tonight that are responsive to what we've heard
in I don't know hundreds of emails from the community and like I it just feels like we're doing something that's directly student impacting um and I'd rather hold on this
one well actually making it better than the original cut right sorry is actually a better proposal than the original cut suggested we are not taking cuts and we are not removing anything that they have that's the whole point it's a wash with
some sa so you're saying the proposed expansion will not limit what they want to do next year what I'm saying is they they had a couple different things they wanted to do um and we are retaining the things that they would have removed but there is still the possibility of many
of those things being able to happen for them because of the way that their financing Works in general so a couple more students means that they can pay for that assistant coach anyway and so it's it's really and um we have an amazing athletics department who can who and I I trust Kyle completely and of
course the entire Athletics team and the high school team to be able to maximize that um but this um and I spoke about this with Kyle as well and and he understood and was supportive so what does the piece mean at the end eliminate proposed expansion then what are we going to lose so again it's the idea of
the assistant coaches for some of these programs and stuff like that all right so so 67 allows us to maintain what maintain the maintain both the girls gymnastics which would have been cut and to maintain our commitment to the entire
cycle of Unified sports so they do I think it's basketball in the fall we would be botch in the winter and then track and field in the spring if I I believe I have that correctly go team and you talked to Kyle about all this did okay thank you stepen nope I just found it I'm sorry I
I withdraw my hand okay so are you so the 60s so you're saying it's not a 100,000 correct it's 67 345 correct so you're you're saying they could do everything that you spoke with
them about with only reducing there's other things in there but there is more flexibility for them still to be able to do some of those other things with the increased Revenue um that they get because again their their participation has been increasing which gives them more fees more fees as well to be able
to work with that's right I guess the calculus there sort of confuses me because the increased Revenue my understanding of it is it was presented as a as a as a reduction in
the Gap you're they're they would not be taking remember all of these are sort of projections but his projections are relatively conservative imagining a level number of participants from this year to next year however in practice what they have seen year-to year in the
past four or five years is quite a large increase in the number of students who participate I want to say they've gone Kyle forgive me for misrepresenting your numbers but something like 1350 to 1800 students um right um over the past four or five
years which is a tremend this increase in the participation and that kind of increase in the participation allows them to be more generous with the assistant coaching because they've got more students in the programming it allows them to pay those stiens um I understand I guess given the fact
that Kyle isn't here and I don't know that this is urgent I would I'm not comfortable voting on this one tonight I'd want to hear from from Kyle I think okay uh we have a motion though on the floor
in a second right Jesse second yes I did okay I think we'll take a vote and see what we've got um Jesse yes Sarah yes Mariah yes Helen yes Carolyn nope Val
yes Stephen yes Andy yes and I vote Yes as well um Helen Helen can go Helen can go before you put something else on the table I'm wondering we have a um amount of money
of 1.2 almost 1.3 million for outof district placements as a placeholder I think um for kids who might need to go out of a district that's usually an exceptional we don't know that that's
something that you know we we can't count we we don't know for sure and I'm wondering if a we might be able to reduce that amount because 1.2 is probably 12 kids going out of District additional maybe a little maybe 10 with
Transportation either could we reduce it or eliminate it and if we have to that's what a reserve fund is for right the town's Reserve fund is for exceptional issues um I'm putting it out there I don't it's not on the it's not it's not
in here and uh it's I think's asking us to reevaluate you need to that's a nicer way of saying it yes I'm asking you to re-evaluate it please and look and see if there might be some monies to be saved there as opposed to and then I
guess it's a question for Dr schmuckler too and I'm not asking you now to answer it but I would I would that would be a for me an easier place to make a cut um uh right now um these are students don't
know about we may not need it and you know these aren't times when we can can save money like that unfortunately can I ask a question on that yeah Val Su Susan or or Karen can you remind me
of what the increase was um in students we didn't know about who went out of District between FY 24 and fy2 it was like one no the actual was significant that was what we learned last night at the finance
subcommittee can you turn on your mic so we we can't hear my recollection is the in increasing costs were significant but the there's a chart in the budget book that shows us that the net increase to students was Zero there are 66 students so there is not an increase in students the things that we learned about last
night have to do with Transportation Rel related to mckin vento and foster care and that is where you saw the additional headcount and the extreme variability year toe related to both the cost for those students and the number of students wait it wasn't the number of O
placements that went up and from projected to actuals no if you look in the budget book on everyone's looking and I forgot my budget book at home can you imagine like I know what is it like the what do they call that that thing the the the Cobblers children have no
shoes or whatever right so I don't have my page 31 Stephen in the budget book has the the table showing Net Zero change in Auto District placements then can you say again Mariah what now I'm really I'm I last night the detail we saw was on outof District transportation
and Diane broke out for us the the three sub areas of outof District transportation that typically are are I'll say are stop me when I get this wrong Susan are supervised by the office of student services and those include out of District transportation for out
of District placements but they also include costs for mckin vento um which is homeless students and Foster students but wait wait the the my my huge aha moment is about to collapse so what the moment when Dian was
presenting and and she and she's and I was saying when when I when she said that the number of actual placements did not actually go up significantly from projected school year
25 to 24 to 25 but from actual 20 24 to projected there was not placements it's cost Stephen the question was all it was the number of students that was the huge moment because it wasn't can I okay then I am Susan's gonna crush your aha moment
I think instead of me no no no I'm actually not where we're seeing the big increases in in District and I can't speak to the details around that I can just say how many kids were transporting like I don't know I can't say to what
program and and Karen and I haven't had the opportunity um to connect yet and um I'm looking forward to that very much but on the transportation side when we're just looking at how many we're transporting the budget for this year was predicated on inhouse or in Town
transportation of 70 students we transporting 99 and that accounts for the the The Lion Share of this increase that we're we're experiencing and then next year we added that a little bit more um and the reason why we projected
just a little bit higher is because of the winthrip house and we're trying to grow that program so we made an assumption um but all of this you know like I said I'm looking forward to uh collaborating with uh Dr schmuckler and and reviewing it
further the reason why you're right was the one where because there was the fourth line which I forgot about which was the indri this and then I'll stop asking my question last night was about the $700,000 increase in transportation from one year one school year to the next school year
projections that was my I'm I just want an answer on why there was an increase of $700,000 in O transportation from one year to the next if there's the same number of projected o students the answer that I thought I got last night
was that it was not the same number am I now to understand that it is the same number it was different placement Stephen so I think it was different Roots okay so that's what I understood in the first place and then I was asking does $700,000 really account for different
Roots I just want an answer to that question does different Roots really account for a $700,000 difference and the same number of O placements okay you can remind him then yeah that has been my question all
along Stephen you know when we had that conversation last night you were on point and your understanding was correct that what we're planning on this is on Transportation side right we have to do a projection what our transportation department looked at is is a little bit
of the more recent information about how many additional students they anticipated we may need to transport so how many kids were transporting which sounds odd to me um does not equal the number of students in out of
District placements um okay and and so it's not like a one for one type of a thing because you might have two students going to the same program so you wouldn't count that as two students necessarily you're transporting but one
run and that's to your point on RADS so next year we're anticipating a slight increase in the number of uh out of District students we are transporting The Lion Share the increase though is for the student population that we're transporting to our in District programs
that we're trying to grow to prevent out of District placements so uh you had your understanding that you repeated last night was was on point Stephen well actually it sounds like you're giving me a new understanding now which is that it is possible to have a $700,000 swing
with the same number of placements because you could have doubling up in the same school you can have that that doubling up can be two students who are formally at the same school are now at different schools plus different routes all of this can in fact add up to 700,000 that's what I thought I just
heard you saying it can because we're transporting significantly more students within the public the boundaries of Brookline so that is a possible swing that that is of volatility yeah and many more Roots as a result of
that okay thank you I'm GNA make you have another one I have more you have more I do I'm GNA to Caroline's point I'm going to um to make the recommendation for row 27 and
28 that is reserve fund scale back and reduce one VP question about 28 how many um VPS are in the elementary schools right now across the eight
schools and yeah and and if and to follow up on that why are we only reducing one is what was the formula or student to student population in the school to principal ratio which I believe is 500 to1 or something nationally or something like that there there was something I know that I had
sent in about this where there's some threshold after which Vice principles would sort of be have to have and then there's some gray gray area this is one reduction I think if I memory search right I don't have all the spreadsheets I did in front of me but that there's at least one other school that has a vice
principal many they have okay so right so one has three L answer right so one one school our largest Ka F frr has three Vice
principles and our smaller k8s have one which is inclusive of Lincoln rle and Hayes um one VI one vice principal um
Driscoll Pierce Lawrence Baker who am I missing that's the other one has two okay so at this juncture what we're doing is recommending removing one it doesn't mean we won't come back with another
recommendation but at this juncture it's removing one Vice principle right but is is that based on what's the metric or what's so it's looking looking at the school size so those groups like I was saying school size okay yeah so at
this I think um it's not it's like Vice principles to staff and vice principles to students right I mean there's like because there's some of the school where like the those metrics are very different right and some of the schools have many more staff than you might think because of the intensive programs
that they house so like Lincoln for example right yeah yeah so that's my proposal did we get a second yeah I mean I'll second it I especially after your point if that we'll just revisit it if at some later point if required so this is if required
yeah I'm seconded can I can I turn in okay hold on let me see where we are I'm sorry I was having a mic malfunction um so we have a motion for those two and Jesse you second
it yes it was for the it 27 and 28 correct and Stephen did you have a comment or a question I I have a comment okay um so I'd like to if it's if it's okay I'd like to discuss the reserve
section fund so um so I think this is maybe a the if not one of the top priorities for this current school committee is to maintain if not improve uh class sizes but I think I I
really strongly support Susan your strategy of Reserve sections to maintain flexibility to address it in specific instances rather than to try to deal with the problem in the aggregate that just seems really smart to me so I
really like this strategy uh my my question is um we we have the data to identify some of the outlier classrooms right now where we're likely to be bumping up against the limit if not already
surpassing the limit of what is a workable learning environment why I guess this is a question for Dr Giller as much as it is for you maybe more for Dr Giller why why can't we take some of this reserve section and apply
it right now to where we know those classrooms are or those grades in schools are diminish the reserve section fund and then scale it back because my worry right now is that if we scale it
back further another 2.5 FTE then we're looking at a total of five FTE we know of at least three classrooms that are really on the bubble right now so ideally we would would we would already allocate three
FTE then we would really only have two left it's it it feels um I want to make sure this there's a really good strategy here I guess I would just like to hear more on your thinking about how we could use the reserve section fund and whether
we could start using it now really to plan for where we know those outling classrooms are so Stephen that is the thinking there but we are waiting a a little bit longer um for once Megan uh
fully once the office of registration and enrollment um rolls everyone forward you'll see those projection that we have right now we've made some recommendations based on the um class siiz guidelines and those uh sections are right up against that so once we do
our cross check with the buildings because if you recall last year um one of our schools was advocating for an increase but our schools knew um more information about what the student situation was actually going to how that
was going to materialize in the in the next year um we have that information um as well so we are thinking about thinking about it in that way so that's great news first of all so would that mean you see using the five remaining
FTE by applying maybe two allocating two or three of them in September and the other two or of them in January or do you not really see using any of them in January because the hiring Market's so thin then can you just say a little bit more about how you use it and the reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to
imagine like how I guess I'm trying to imagine how big it needs to be for it to really be optimally used so the we have a couple of things running right now especially if I think about Dr
School in particular um because that's that's the school that's on my radar where I know we have uh a number of classes right at the guidelines um so um in another month or so I think we'll be at a spot where we can make that determination whether we're going to add
that FTE to them now I'm not going to wait until September to do it if the school has the solid information about their enrollment and projections for next year but uh Megan tends to send I think it's in
April April early May um sends out notices of you know sort of are you planning to return or what are your intentions and those types of things schools do sort of that cross check teachers do that cross check with uh with families as well so there's that
internal process that also um has to be understood and so we just want to make sure that we don't prematurely assign a unit then have to retract it back as well so that's the strategy that's the thinking that goes uh along with that
that was really help thank you very much okay we are ready for the vote on the motion on the floor which is for 27 and 28 um Jesse yes Sarah yes Mariah yes
Helen yes Carolyn yes Val yes Andy yep Stephen oh I'm sorry I didn't realize 28 was also being ined in this may I ask well it's too late I I abstain okay and I vote Yes as well okay we should think about wrapping
up this part I have more to I don't think we should no sorry okay I why don't why don't I why don't I take this offline do a little bit of formula stuff and you can all can keep talking and then I'll bring it back up okay Caroline well while she's doing
that I'll make a comment that's relevant to that um as we're doing this I just want to make sure we're clear that or I'm clear that there's still like this whole set of unanswered
questions and things that haven't been discussed or addressed or explained including some things that were added to the budget proposal that we received the initial budget proposal so even if we came up with $10
million I want to make sure that at the end of the day everything is going to be addressed at some point including questions about things that were added and that's part of why and I said this last night I don't feel there are
some things I'm not comfortable talking about until I fully understand things that were added before the oh gosh here's all of what we have to cut so just putting that out there again as a sort of process
observation so I'm not sure how this all plays out or what the number is going to look like now yeah wait need little drum roll you need some more time I do okay sorry okay um how how much time do you need do you want us to go to the next
agenda item which is to you I need like two minutes May oh well we can we can stretch for two minutes or that's a good idea why don't we stretch let everybody stretch I mean you're nowhere close to anything so like carry on you know to
the exent you want well I think we're in Hi how are you good good there's one right e no I'm good I e e
e e e e e so with the votes we just took um we've accepted $2.4 million in cuts which takes our Gap to 5.6 and
change and there's still 5.47 five in pending proposals wait so the Gap is larger than the pending proposals correct if my I don't know if my math is Right which it kind of makes sense
because if you think about it Andy we shifted 1.3 here and we reduced 1.3 here we accepted 1.3 in proposals and then we and then the pending proposals has been reduced right but then the Gap would should have been reduced by the same amount it does by 1.3 million we've done
nothing but accept things since uh since the beginning right and it's and it's reduced by also $1.3 million but if the Romanian Gap is bigger than all the pending proposals then we have no way to close it yet but it was it was bigger
than it was before too look it was it was 7 million before and it was 6.7 and now it's 5.6 and 5.4 so it was always bigger Oh I thought the last time I checked with you like after the first vote we took tonight um the first pair of votes rather the Gap was 6.9 million
and there were 8.5 million in pending proposals um I don't think so did I mess something up is there something I shifted from the wrong row I have I I can confirm something pretty close to your numbers I'm just looking these were the
three we took yesterday those were the ones we zeroed out help me out P people and then 4 items that we accepted but not at their full right the 67 345 was the only one we accepted it less than
its full value and I accounted for that and the fees for athletics right we picked the lower I see some math people here in the audience I've been doing this exercise along with you Mariah and I have something very close to your number thank you Michael no one they can't hear you
so the pending numbers should be added correctly because I just went that was what I was getting hung up on and I went through and readded them and made sure and you can see like you can see this on oh no you can't see it on the screen but I will revalidate that I captured all of the
I'm pretty sure I am I mean look we might be off by a little bit somewhere here but rough order of magnitude directionally we are in the same planet right okay so by removing but with our first vote removing um the five things
in red from consideration we've already um we've already made it so that U more Cuts will have to be proposed or more more proposals will have to be made for consideration um I think I would I would comment on that if you wanted to if you were planning to actually cut 8.2
million which I personally do not feel like I need to get to um because I I then I don't then you would need to add more and if you feel like at a certain point PSB cannot accept any more cuts and you want to advocate for increased
funding then no I don't agree with your statement but you're correct Andy in your in your overall statement there's not enough here yeah Val thank you um Dr Giller can I just follow up on something Carolyn
mentioned the the two-ish million in um additions past the level service budget are are you looking at those to see if there are proposals there to make or H how are those being evaluated at
this point in time we did right so can you um what's on the screen can you hear me now yes I I just wanted to mention that some of those cuts have already been accepted tonight
to the things that are new for example when you accepted the cut of 900,000 in new staff it reduces some of the requests that were new enhancements that you saw last night also in the 400,000 are some of
those cuts as well so there's there's cuts that have already been accepted that were part of the um additions just keep going thank you that does not mean that we're not still considering
other bring forward thank you Ken um I'm sorry I I can't really see sorry I thank you yes
um I'm going to have to move um to accept line 22 what that that's a senior director in OTL I'm second can I make a comment sure go ahead um R I am I am going to reluctantly vote Yes
I know how hard our senior directors in OTL work um and this is a real sacrifice as are is everything here um but I will also be voting yes
stepen uh can Jody can you provide more clarity on this cut I'm sorry I know you did already but would you mind repeating some of it I'm going to start by echoing what Mariah said this is a huge sacrifice to
our department and our district um I'm going to actually rebut a little bit of what Jesse said this person the reason you get data is because of this person in my office when you want data um you won't be
getting that as quickly um we won't be able to have the responses to schools but at the same time I understand why the school committee has asked and the community has asked for this cut and I just want people to
understand how painful that it will be for our organization and for us moving forward and launching any new initiatives with it uh I think I'm probably going to abstain I'm not ready to make this cut yet you know it doesn't mean it wouldn't happen
but it it's too soon for me to uh vote to make this cut so I just thought I put it out there are we ready to vote Jesse yes Sarah abstain Maria reluctant
yes Helen I'm going to abstain k yes Andy I've SE Val yes stepen are you there yes and I abstain as
well if I could just explain my vote I I may change that vote later but I feel like right now I'd like to see some of the other OSS uh numbers and see where that goes so that's why I've abstained I think we
probably in the end will need to take this just as we need to take other um awful decisions that we don't want to right so but did that you said you said other OSS you meant other OSS or you meant other teacher and teaching and
learning no I'm talking about U the OSS some of the stuff that I pointed out of the 1.2 million that's in the reserve fund those things that I'm hoping might I'm going to I was only asking because I'm going to say that I agree with everything you've said thank you Betsy
what was reason five yes to four abstain I think okay I'm goingon to make a motion as well okay you so let's make you mean for another one yeah okay so let's do one more and then I want to take the
temperature of the committee because we do have some business we have to take care of tonight addition to this I know this is super important but I also know that we're going to be coming back uh on the 20th to do more work on this so uh let's go with your motion Mariah or
sooner than the 20th um my motion is line 29 the scaling back training and conferences for 367,000 okay do I have a second second okay any
comments questions my only com yeah my only comment is again as per before is that I think I understood I think it was Dr funa made the um discussion about this and said it would be like down to barebones so it's not like we're anticipating going back
to it again to look for more because this is I think there is nothing more this would be it okay yeah okay thank you for the clarification I'll just say I'm going to vote Yes but it's a reant yes I really think um training and conferences are important uh and um I it
really hurts me to have to say yes but just so you know okay let's take a vote Jesse yeah I'll just add a comment I'm going to vote Yes I see everybody's point on this and I it it it's painful um it's non student facing at the end of the day and
we're not looking at sort of like reducing teachers or anything God forbid so yeah I mean I understand this is very very difficult um but it's non- student facing is at least uh part of the
picture here okay Sarah yes yes Mariah yes Helen yes and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to put this money back in next year hopefully after node
Carolyn yes yes Andy yes a yes Stephen yes and I'm a reluctant yes as well okay uh so let's just take kind of a straw vote here poll where we are with the
committee um there's some formula so we still have uh several pieces of business some are fast we also have a executive session scheduled for 9:10 and we have uh coming back at 9:45
to hear 28 more people speak so um it seems to me we have to move on a little bit I I know we not as far as we want but we've done pretty well today uh and um we will try to have oh
sorry Andy you're the chair yeah so before we move on though I was wondering if we could get some clarity from the committee and from lonus on um basically which items are going to require sort of a full dress discussion by the committee you know with staff presentation and
staff available to answer questions and um which things are going to be okay to deal with as part of an FAQ right so um as part of the presentation earlier the next steps were said to be um the high school transportation um custodial and food
services and beef consolidation um and I to that I would certainly add uh what's currently being called case loads that certainly seems worthy of a discussion so um I guess my questions would be are there other things that need to be elevated in that way so to to become sort of items in a
school committee meeting and also for each of those when would it be realistic to um you know to be able to have a discussion with staff that that that where everybody can be well informed yeah um yeah so we're thinking we're thinking that would be planned offline
we'll we'll touch base with I mean with you Andy what I don't want to take offline certainly is um uh if there are items that the committee wants elevated to become like you know a planned discussion rather than being addressed in an FAQ that aren't already so that's
okay we so you you mentioned about five did we get my my general sense at this point is that two and two and eight are which are the uh custodial and Food Service would be elevated to a discussion um I'm not sure yet on base
because I don't know what they're going to propose to us but it might be that 17 would be um and I'm just looking and probably 25 that's my guess that's oee so oee
okay I mean you think there's another one that people want to elevate well that's why I'm asking people should speak up do you want me to pull up the list again so people can sorry I have a comment yeah Caroline Caroline um well Mariah's
having sorry I don't mean so I was saying let me just go through this again sorry with it up on the screen so my thinking was we were going to have custodial and Food Service as a a privatization topic or a hybrid Services topic I should call it um then a
ums hold on sorry my brain was resetting there for a minute um and then I think we want to have the OSS conversation the case loads conversation I I don't know that beep is a full conversation I think it's going to depend um and then the I
think oee will be a full conversation but but if there's other things that people and it looks like Carolyn has something Carolyn oh we've got lots of hands Carolyn then Andy then Stephen so there are other things that have been sort of floating in the questions or
even brought up by members of the public that I have ongoing questions about so again I don't know if it's a presentation um a couple people in the public have raised a question that
spending a million dollars on leased computers I'm I'm interested in that that's a pretty big number um but I don't know if that's an elevation and Andy I appreciate you keeping really good track of sort of the the um hot
items I I don't know I mean there are other things that I would like more information on but I don't know if they make the next meeting list or how it works but that that was an interesting um comment from the public from a few
people okay that's good step and then Val thanks I'd like to request uh doing um a a conversation about drivers to O costs that encompasses Transportation
tuition um and settlements said o o yes transportation and and settlements yes and I I I know Dr schmuckler that you got here like 20 minutes ago but um we'll give her a day to figure this all out and Stephen how
do you envision this discussion sort of leading to action on on on the budget I'd like it to inform us on how um how uh reliable the projections that we're getting
are okay thank you okay thanks I have a a I guess and you mentioned some discussions on items that Dr Giller presented tonight and I think I'm unclear on what that discussion would be that
we're not like what what more information and presentation than what we had tonight and what we've heard from the public would we anticipate on the ones that we just that that he presented on tonight I
guess I share that question Val yeah I would agree with you as well uh sorry you mean like the the central there were there were items that were proposed tonight that we've got slide presentations on that explained the reason for reductions I think line row
27 row what is it 20 oh I was reading right 25 26 for example and so I think what if Val I'll just jump in for a second I think I think the question was what other information would we need besides the slide presentation that had
the justification sort of in it to have a bigger discussion the next right 21 to 28 we've been taking votes on but you'd mention at least 25 wanting more conversation so I'm wondering I think that was Mariah who I think what I said was I anticipated it would be a
discussion in committee as opposed to FAQs oh I see yes because we haven't discussed it and I expect a robust discussion around it so that was all I was I because I thought Andy was asking us essentially to give him agenda placeholders for the
future so we understood how much time was still in front of us for discussion so that's why I was differentiating between ones that I thought probably our questions would be answered in an FAQ versus ones where it wouldn't just be questions it would be debate discussion
yes okay Caroline I've also asked a few times and maybe this can happen in finance Although our finance meetings now seem to be full school committee meetings too um the same way that we received a whole
packet um on the idea Grant I've been asking for more understanding about how Meco funds are allocated um which has nothing to do with what I think about the Meco program but it's $2.3
million um and I'd like a better understanding of how we can use that money and how we are using that money um especially because some of some of that Grant is appears to be being reallocated in the FY 23 proposal for
new staff so um I need a better understanding of that Grant allocation similar to what we had I think it was February 5th on the IDE I think you're stirring a couple things together one is current year Grant proposals and
acceptance which have quite a bit of backup and detail because those are actual submissions and then there's futureye um allocations or expectations of allocations that are in the budget book so the idea grant that you saw was the actual submission we're not going to
have the actual submission for next year's Meco Grant and what I sent you when the last time you asked me about this I said to you this I sent to you I said here is the Meco Grant from the packet that we reviewed in October so you can see what this year's Co Grant was and it was on page 75 or whatever of
our October gri grift but it didn't have it had a full 30-page breakdown of all of the Staffing in Meco and it talks about all of those details but we won't have that for next year because it doesn't exist because of all of those things right these are projections that
they're putting in based on okay what I thought you sent me was a onepage summary with bullet points no there is all of our grant packets include a summary because that way people don't have to read the 115 page backup but it also includes for that particular one it includes 30 pages of the actual Meco
grant that includes all of the Staffing all of those details are in that packet and that is in well I can ask you offline somewhere in our past okay I still would like better understanding of
the proposal for how um what's being un funded within the grant to fund new positions within the Meco allocation for FY 26 you're referring to
the two advisers that were added yes it's on page U you don't have to answer that now I mean you can if you want but I can and I'll give you an update on that one of the things that uh we may need to talk closer to the mic
sorry is that good yeah okay um Claire and I were discussing this earlier as we were going through and I realized that I didn't make an adjustment that's in your budget on the metco I will answer your question and then I will give you a follow-up adjusted metco um page for for
your budget book but when um so when I put it together yes we put the two in where's the money coming from on the non-salary line if you read The metco Narrative you'll see that the after school programming that was in Pilot form for the the last two years is going
to be um Sunset so the funding for those two positions is in fact a restructuring of how we're trying to support families did I say that correctly so I'll give you an updated one I can send that out tomorrow any additional
questions probably thank okay um thank you everyone for working so hard on this budget so far it's a good start we have can I sorry can I just comment thanks um I just want to put in a plug that we either keep
going with some of these or if we don't um that we do this next week because Mariah made this excellent point earlier which is that if if these are these are people and um it's better to know sooner than to be sort of strung
along week to week so so we could we we have we need to honor the time because we have staff members and uh outside Council coming so we need to move forward now if you want to stay later after we have the additional public
comment we can vote to do that we can do that so whatever's whatever the committee wants we will do okay so we're going to move forward now we can come back to this later tonight or we can do it
when we have our next meeting um Dr Fortuna are you going to lead us in the competency determination standard for Brookline High School class of 2025 I am so when the
state removed the mcast um requirement for graduation what they actually did was remove something called a competency determination which is um the mcast was the proof that
students had mastered all the skills in the curriculum Frameworks through grade 10 it's different than graduation requirements Brookline still has our own graduation requirements but this competency determination was separate
from that and that's what the ballot question did it removed um the mcast as being the means to measure the students competency for graduation so what you have before you tonight is a proposal
for our students to pass a series of nth and 10th grade classes to show or their equivalency as determined by the curriculum coordinator to um determine their competency to receive a Brookline
high diploma they'd have to earn this in conjunction with meeting all of the Brookline High graduation requirements thank you so just to let you know uh the curriculum committee subcomittee met and we discussed this and we recommend approving this so
that's that's where we are um so does someone want to move this I'll make a motion that we accept it thank you I will second that uh do we have any questions or comments we'll take a vote Jesse yes
Sarah yes Mar yes Helen yes Carolyn yes uh Andy yes Stephen yes B valie and I vote Yes as well she can shime in okay um Andy are you doing the
um thank you Dr funa for that are you doing a I record in the affirmative Suzanne sorry yes okay yes absolutely yep um do we have statement from a safe and inclusive School environment um I would
ask Sarah B and Sarah right are we doing that tonight B do we want to do that tonight I don't think we have it do we you didn't circulate it we didn't circulate no okay so I think we're not going to do it tonight okay and uh Andy what about
uh the statement on the upcoming independent review of the budget so I'll ask the committee what they would like to do so just um in the last day or two um the town has signed a contract with um with an auditor to carry out that um that independent review of PSB financial
and management practices that was requested by the school committee and Town School partnership um so I haven't had time to to draft any statement but I would suggest that the school committee put out a statement um basically informing the public about the reasons for
um the review the scope of work and the timeline which is that they're going to start work right away and um should report back within eight weeks that's the um that's the timeline and also to thank our town partners for for supporting this um so I guess I'd be asking the committee to um just approve
that I write something and um and put it out or if people want to wait um and until there's actually a draft to review that would just mean a week or two delay depending on when we meet next Mariah I would make a motion that perhaps um you
and Jesse and Sarah as our representatives to the expenditures and revenu thank you expenditures and revenues committee is that what it's called perhaps work on it on behalf of the committee and then we we could come up with something we wouldn't have to come back to the committee correct yeah essentially just the committee could
delegate it to the three of you to figure it out I'll second do we need a vote on that sure I made a motion I don't oh sure got a sec we're going to go for a vote Jesse yes Sarah yes Mariah yes Helen yes Carolyn yes Andy yes
Steven yes Val yes and I vote Yes as well okay thank you thank you um we are going to go into executive session uh so I'll explain how that works for people we uh go off into the small room over
there and we have a conversation about a couple of topics that I you'll hear about and uh then we will come back we're hoping to come back 9:40 is uh are we back ahead of schedule well we're a few minutes ahead of schedule
we're right on schedule um and then we will come back into Open session so you are welcome to stay here and sit so you could take a walk around the block whatever you'd like to do for about 40 minutes uh well because we're going be in the other room having a
conversation okay I just want to let you know what's happening um it is online if you think you want to go home and you want to watch it online and if you actually are going to speak you can speak from from online so that's that's an option what am I missing oh I do have to read that no I know yeah so I move to
meet an executive session pursuant to Massachusetts general laws chapter 38 section 21A for the following purposes to review a proposed response drafted by the office of Town Council and possibly take remedial action regarding an open meeting law complaint received honor
about February 10th 2025 and filed by Cara whis Carol Carol Weiss sorry thank you pursuant to purpose one and oml exception allowing discussion of complaints or charges brought against public officials to conduct a strategy
strategy session in preparation for negotiations with non-union Personnel oh this okay Deputy superintendent for administration and finance pursuant to purpose two and to review and approve executive session minutes from the February 6 2025 and February 26 2025
meeting pursuant to purpose seven do I have a second yes thank you Jesse and we take a vote Jesse yes Sarah yes Mariah Helen yes Carolyn yes Andy yes Steven yes Val
yes and I vote Yes as well so all of us are going to meet over there and uh what do the online people need to do how do they okay we're moving going
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[Music] uh welcome back we're back an open session uh we have uh 28 people still to speak so we still have uh more to go tonight uh if
what the first person up is Susan below okay okay Laura Paris hi yes I'm here Nina Bishop is after Laura U thank you all for your dedication to our schools and community
in brookly and thank you for this opportunity Brooklyn as a community has for a long time time identified with the values of appreciating differences in culture background and experiences and protection of our most vulnerable community members there's no denying that
Brookline is proud to be known as a welcoming thoughtful aware Community do we always express these values effectively and authentically we need to do more our schools despite our efforts so far do not provide the same educational outcomes for all our students data
clearly shows our panoramic survey each year shows that not all students feel a sense of belonging or safety in our schools and now is not the time to walk back initiatives designed to address these issues if we undermine efforts in our schools that are the expression of
these Community Values whether it's programs staff or Administration we are considering cutting we will be messaging to our students Educators staff and wider community that we don't care if some of you don't get a quality education we don't care if you don't
feel like you belong in in our schools or if you feel safe and we won't protect you you can't DIY implicit bias training or restore to Justice practices you can't just substitute whoever is available for experts no matter how pure
their intentions we need the department of educational Equity especially right now to eliminate it would be irresponsible harmful and absolutely contrary to the values important in both our schools and wider Proclaim Community I know everyone here agrees that all our
kids deserve support of safe schools so please consider the very broad impact that targeting the department of educational equity for administrative reductions would have because if we signal by our decisions here that we are okay with only some kids being supported
and protected they will hear and they will be right that none of them really are thank you very much thank you Lord Nina Bishop you're up next and then Kenny you're after n all right uh hello members of the school
committee and Dr uh gillery thank you for the work you do in our community and for the time you've taken thoughtfully to listen to what your constituents have to say um I have actually SE seen Studio data on the student belonging and it's
looking good for students in Orchestra um my name is Nina bishop and I've been teaching in Brooklyn for eight years I started working in the district as assistant wide Conservatory teacher and now I direct the three orchestras at BHS I have
121 students in these ensembles these numbers would not be possible without the conservatory program which is a valuable source of training for all students at BHS the FTE in our department has been reduced significantly over the past decade and I
fear that our successful high school programs will shrink and eventually disappear if this trend continues there's a general idea that learn learning an instrument supports other kinds of learning but I think it's important to back this up with data so I'm going to share some specifics a 2022
metaanalysis from the educational research review evaluated the cognitive and academic benefits of Music training the review demonstrated that learning to play an instrument has a positive impact on cognitive skills and academic achievement researchers found that
students who started music education before age 8 were more hopeful about the future and they score high they score higher in key measures of positive Youth Development music education contributes to improvements in creativity confidence mental health and emotional stability
and student performance for the past two years my Orchestra students have been awarded gold medal rankings in a Statewide competition placing them in the top 5% of public school music students in Massachusetts Orchestra is not alone in
this distinction our drama students have been recognized in the Massachusetts theater Guild State Festival last year camarada students were invited to perform at a Red Sox game and for the mmea convention the accomplishments of our Performing Arts students raised the
VIS visibility of our community and although they are intrinsically valuable they're also impressive additions to the CVS of our students seeking to stand out in the competitive field of college admissions I had a look in Naviance and the data I found aligns with what the
the researchers are telling us my Orchestra students are matriculating to Buu to Harvard MIT Cornell Welsley Yale NYU UMass Amherst and many other competitive schools this is not one or two students but a representation of
what happens every year I'm happy to share the reports if you're interested I'm hoping that you are open to the idea that students in our Public Schools deserve access to highquality K through2 Performing Arts education within their Community please please do not treat the
treasures of our culture things like language and the Performing Arts as lwh hanging fruit as subjects to be abandoned when budgets are tight save the music and preserve our culture thank you thank you Nina thank you for your
service with our students Kenny and then after Kenny I before I make my statement I'll say I just heard Sarah say she's my kids violin teacher you're lucky you're lucky to have Nina Bishop as we all are um good evening my name is Kenny kol and
I've had the privilege of working in the public schools of Brookline for nearly 20 years first as a Spanish and music teacher at Brookline High School and for the past 13 years I've been the districtwide K12 Performing Arts curriculum coordinator I'm also a proud graduate and parent within the Brooklyn
school system over the last 13 years overseeing our music drama and dance programs has truly been a dream job I have the honor of working with nearly 30 exceptional truly exceptional K12 music drama and dance Educators and through my
role I collaborate with just about every student family principal vice principal curriculum Co coordinator member of senior leadership guidance counselor custodian and secretary across the district the work we've done together
has been incredibly rewarding as a department we have continuously updated and developed our curriculum at every Lev level to best support students and always always always with a bottomup approach valuing the expertise of the outstanding Educators around me we've
also worked closely with District leadership to overcome challenges like the complex Conservatory schedule which we've managed for over a decade despite the addition of new and at times additional school buildings and changings and changes in locations
together we've made it work year after year without adding additional Staffing costs the past few weeks since the February 13th school committee meeting have been challenging for me and many others however the overwhelming support from the Brooklyn Community families
students and members of the school committee has been heartening the recognition of Arts as a vital part of education is the Brookline I know it's the Brookline that stood up in exactly the same way against proposed cuts to the Arts in the past some of us were
there this makes me question why did we face this again while I understand the budget challenges why would cutting a subject so integral to student development be considered as solution music and the Performing Arts Foster essential growth in students
socially emotionally and intellectually countless studies show how they enhance brain development and transfer to other academic domains with this in mind I urge us not to revisit this path of cuts not to come back next week next month
mon next year or in five years with some other suggestion to cut the arts for our students in any fashion implying that our work isn't a core and essential subject matter that our students need and deserve our Arts programs despite
being the smallest in comparison to other departments produce remarkable work cutting from what little weekly time and what relatively small amount of Arts Educators in the district that we have seems counterproductive I want to thank the community again for
its support as a parent I stand with you for my children have also greatly benefited from our outstanding Arts programs and I hope this will be the last time we find ourselves presented with cuts to the Arts in Brookline thank you thank you
Kenny Irena are you are you here oh then Chi-Chi wo is uh next dear school committee members my name is in Nisha I've been teaching middle my name is Irina narisha I've
been teaching Middle School orchestra classes since 2008 and I've been working for many uh different districts uh around Massachusetts I had I have had the privilege of teaching Elementary uh stre and middle school orchestra in Brooklyn
Public School since 2019 originally I came here to speak um about many de uh many benefits of our Conservatory program and importance of preserving it as other of my colleagues
spoke earlier and while I was waiting for my turn I was thrilled to hear that the cuts to our performance art program are off the table for now and our program will continue to flourish I'm convinced that it was um
the right and wise decision and clearly all of you and many of others feel the same way if you haven't recently um seen our program in action I would love um for you to visit our conservatory and invite
each of you to come to our classes and certainly to our concerts of which um there will be many this coming spring I know that you will be blown away by the the high level of the performance and more importantly by the happy faces of
our students and the joy they had while playing the instruments um individually and as a group um the clearer pride and and they showing and the results of months of
hard work I want to thank you again and I hope I can convey my deep appreciation for your support and your dedication to our students future thank you thank you Arena uh chi chi Wu then Lauren
Bernard uh good evening school committee members Dr Gill um chich Chi wo town meeting member and uh member of the diversity commission um but tonight I'm speaking as chair of the Brookline Asian-American family Network the advocacy group for the largest racial
minority in the public schools of Brookline constituting one in five students baath and is highly opposed to the idea of eliminating the office of educational equity and we're really very disappointed there's a proposal to do so
and to lay off Claire Galloway Jones and Christy Hernandez two of the most prominent educator women of color in the district come on is this what really what we're going to do lay off um prominent women of color in the district and Target them for
joblessness this would directly and negatively affect our our students and our community the office of equity provides significant support and services for hundreds of students of color including our API students their teachers and family our community has a
very real and significant stake in ensuring the existence of the office of equity Baffin worked really close with the office of equity over the years such is working to distribute about 200,000 in arpa fundings that baffan obtained to support AAP aapi students in PSB um and
issuing joint statements of support when our community was the focus of hate incidents during the covid-19 pandemic in fact Baffin actually obtained grant funding from the Brookline Community Foundation that was used to partially support the assistant director provi position for two years and we were
promised that after the grant funding ended PSB would permanently fund the assistant director position which was specifically created to support the aapi community um finally we understand that some folks have questioned the value of
Dei programs um and question the office of educational Equity because of that um we hope that those such voices are in the minority that PSB and the town of Brookline would not be part of or give into the anti- Dei ugliness coming from
the Trump Administration um PSB and Brooklyn should welcome diversity should support equity and want inclusion for all of its students and residents thank you thank you Chi-Chi uh Lauren you're up next and then Eric
schmeider good evening can you hear me yes we can yeah okay thank you uh Lauren Bernard um Brooklyn resident and um commissioner for Park and Recreation um I want to first thank you
all for uh preserving Middle School sports and music music and drama as an after school director I see every day how these sorts of uh activities and opportunities for enrichment are really essential to student well-being and
student wellness and um that leads me to my next point which is perhaps the most important factor in student wellness is safety um I'm sorry I have a bit of a cold and
sore throat so I'm not speaking so well the I the the notion that we would be considering cutting the jobs of our custodial and Food Service staff presents a really scary safety situation
for someone who works in the school at a time when there are not a lot of people around like myself um and even more so when there are children during the school day um our food service staff for one thing is cost neutral they're not
costing you anything they're huge bargain and we just talked about someone just talked about prominent women of color and our food service staff is mainly made made up of you know sort of non-recognized women of color who work hard day in and day out to feed our kids
this is not you know this is an essential service um we have children with feeding disorders in the school we have children with food serious food allergies we have children with eating disord orders um and children most you
know dramatically with food insecurity or I just like to call it oldfashioned hunger and they know who these children are they know not to put them near something with soy if they're allergic to Soy they know to set aside a sandwich for a child who's a really picky eater
and struggling with maintaining weight they know that this child has a feeding disorder and work with the ot's occupational therapists to give that child something that he can eat or Digest I've seen this firsthand these are not something that a contracted Food
Service Company is going to do moreover having worked with food service companies myself in another career I have never heard of a company that just you know takes over the serving of the food and that's it that
just provides people their full service companies they come with their own contracts their own rules their own regulations and their own very questionable hiring practices we're not going to know if they do cories we're not going to know if they do sories we're not going to know any of that stuff so I get very concerned about
safety with regard to Food Services and when it comes to custodial services that presents an even greater safety risk you know we in the name of safety we've shut parents out of our schools and in the name of safety the
thought of having solely contracted companies third-party for-profit companies com in to clean our schools uh as late as midnight with master keys and again questionable hiring practices we have no control over
that really is very unsettling and we already have some first you know thirdparty companies that help out our custodians but they follow the directions of our custodians excur just excuse me Lauren
could you uh wrap up please yes I'm I'm about to get there okay thank they are members of the community who School Community who know the children and so I ask you if if you can't do the right thing because if you know if it's the wrong thing to do simply think about the
safety aspect and think about that very carefully thank you thank you Lauren Eric you are up and then Marissa oh there you are thank you Eric good night everybody thank you and uh I'm going to read what I wrote despite the fact that
you've taken the two significant items of the music and sports and you're going to save those things the implication initially was that you don't find those things essential and I'd like to know and I'm not ask this is rhetorical because I know you can't answer but what argument
demonstrates the value of kids becoming more sedentary and less collaborative what is the argument for children not receiving guidance for Creative expression of making a moment beyond their narcissistic little selves as they do when Guided by accomplished
passionate professionals and then regarding privatization I'd like to say that schools are a public good custodial and food services are integral to the stability of that public good they're part of a team part of continuity the
children know them they're predictable they know each other they know each other's behavior my daughter apparently has such a good relationship with lunch lady that she gets an extra two muffins I I'd like to know where is the historical proof that a for-profit
entity will certainly be more effective at providing a clean and healthy environment for children a private company's primary commitment is to profits for shareholders Steward Healthcare is a very good example of how that turns out I have a suggestion and
this is speak speaking about private companies in our schools I'd like to suggest a line item cut the pandemic opened the door for Google's integration into our public schools and its value is in question I would argue it's not essential money for
Google impacts uh Essentials that are proven valuable like teachers instead of um an option is instead of cutting it you could tell Google how about you guys pay us for using the data uh for our children
because you integrating into our schools you're cultivating brand loyalty and committed customers um your uh exploiting and profiting from data collection everything from biometric search Behavior scanning homework and emails
Google has been sued numerous times they've settled and admit no wrongdoing so of course they haven't done that problems with Chromebooks Studies have shown shallow learning lack of retention diminished comprehension and attention span as seen
in Finland especially which has been totally digitized where they found an increase in service level engage an increase in surface level engagement at the expense of deeper learning kids are getting around the restrictions and leading to a resource sucking
whack-a-mole it's compromised security teachers are disconnected from the students with a Reliance on the systems there's a cost of updates maintenance and Disposal and I did not move to Brookline so my kids could do data entry so with these budget cuts is your goal
to make our students dirty hungry and culturally impoverished and I have a last sentence I want to hang out with Ben Franklin he played violin guitar was a swimmer philosopher inventor and had the ability to collaborate with a bunch of other very intense people but with an absolute
focus on stem and a willingness to cut things that taught the great minds that made our very fine world you're going to give me a bunch of Mark Zuckerberg's a man with questionable social skills running a social network thank you thank you
uh just a reminder when you come to the microphone or online if you could just identify yourself that would be great uh Marissa is next and then Elizabeth Sullivan good evening my name is Marissa Sloan I have been a school psychologist in Brookline since 2017 I am also a
Brookline resident and a parent to a second grader at RL previously through the material fees program tonight I speaking on behalf of the drco clinical team I would like to speak to item 17 and share some details about what it is that a clinical team does each day at Dr
scho our team consists of a school social worker three guidance counselors and myself the school psychologist it seems like it might be helpful to provide some specific titles but whatever we are we are a close and collaborative team who support each other in the drisle community on a daily
basis our responsibilities include but are not limited to Individual Counseling group counseling teacher consults scal or executive functioning classroom l student support during and after bullying investigations psychological testing for
special education support for students returning from hospitalization for both mental health and medical purposes crisis management registration of new families incoming kindergarten registration eighth grade transition to high school and coordination of 504
meetings in addition to these responsibilities clinical team members across the district May on any day at any school be called to help students who are experiencing heightened emotions and need support because they are for example unable to enter their classroom or the school building running away from
their teachers or running off of school grounds engaging in aggressive behaviors threatening to hurt themselves or others withdrawn and unable to engage in learning and more all of these scenarios can and do happen and students require skilled clinical support during these times just as a side note this is not
something the Brooklyn Mental Health Center would be able to help with in fact the less support these students have the more time is taking away from teachers who should be teaching and students who should be learning at times we spend the entire school day with students in crisis if that is what they need when one of us is required to
intervene in a crisis such as a student expressing suicidal adiation we are able to contact and immediately support each other through the long and serious process of determining a student's suicide risk we do this more often than we would like to but find comfort in the fact that we never face these situations
alone to someone who has not worked in a school it may sound like five clinical staff to support a student population of approximately 515 is too many or an appropriate place to make a cut given significant budget deficits given that students are individuals with variable needs who
require differing levels of support our time is not equally divided by our case loads but it is Ever Changing based on the needs of our students while I have spoken to just part of item 17 there are several critical Cuts proposed for staff who support General and special education
students daily I can assure you that while you are considering a decrease and service providers there will be no equivalent decrease in the level of care our students require and deserve I would like to end by rering that school clinical staff and Educators for that matter are not simply their FTE
or budget line items simply looking at the numbers is not reflective of our school's Dynamic environment for our students diverse needs thank you thank you Marissa uh Elizabeth Sullivan is next and she may be reading a letter from Katherine Lenahan and then
Joshua parad Joshua here okay yes I'm reading on I'm first reading my own letter and then I'm reading a letter on behalf of Catherine lenan my name is Elizabeth Sullivan and this is my seventh year in Brooklyn my
sixth as a learning center teacher at Drisco on February 13th Dr Giller proposed the elimination of eight Learning Center teachers Miss noga then asked how Learning Center Works across the district her question was met with silence I'm here to hopefully answer that question and explain the role of
learning Center teacher first and foremost we provide specialized instruction to students on IEPs in our Learning Centers we teach phonics math reading comprehension writing social skills and more we teach every child using different methods curricula and move at the pace that they need second we provide support to our students in
general education settings we support their academic gains in their classrooms Behavior regulation during specials like PE and music and social skills during lunch and recess additionally we provide in the- moment support when our students are disregulated thirdd we have evaluate students to determine special education
eligibility we test students in all academic areas write reports outlining every subtest and result from our testing and go to meetings with families to discuss those findings all of this while crucial is incredibly timec consuming fourth we collaborate with teachers service providers and families
we meet weekly sometimes more with each general education teacher and service provider on a students team to discuss upcoming curriculum accommodations and modifications progress concerns behavioral supports and common language we work with our Learning Center par professionals as well as our students
onetoone or shared Paras to understand our students needs and help them to best support our shared students while our PA professionals are incredibly vital to supporting our students they are not able to complete testing or attend meetings in our said our case loads are still our case loads even with the
support of our incredible PA of professionals to eliminate Learning Center positions means more students more testing and more meetings for the remaining teachers this means a lower quality education for our students who deserve the best the I and IEP stands for individualized by eliminating
positions you will be reducing our ability to deliver that individualized instruction with larger groups and last time to address each student needs as Miss FIA stated during the last meeting not all students are made the same not all case loads are made the same she was exactly right some of our students
receive 30 minutes of support a day some receive multiple hours we have students in the same classroom who need support simultaneously in different locations some may be working on grade level material in their janed classroom with special education support While others may receive direct instruction in the
Learning Center during the same block it becomes impossible to support all of these students at once when you are being stretched so thin and meeting minutes for the sake of meeting minutes rather than thoughtfully scheduling yourself to support students in the best way possible lastly the district will be
paying a lot of money in legal fees for the lawsuits and settlements that will come from students not getting the support they require due to these Cuts I urge you to look closely at this prop proposal and reach out to myself or other Learning Center teachers across the district to better understand the effects of eliminating these eight
positions thank you um and now I will I'm going to read a letter on behalf of Kate Lan who is a kindergarten teacher at dris scho dear school committee as you know the K to8 curriculum coordinator positions are on
the list of possible reductions due to the budget deficit I want to take a moment to express my gratitude for the essential role our curriculum coordinators play in our school they are truly the backbone of ensuring that our students have everything they need to succeed their support for teachers is invaluable and we would be lost without
them over the past four years Greg Porter has been critical in making our social studies curriculum Equitable and current he has been consistently present in our classrooms always ready to assist at a moment's notice he frequently visits classrooms to observe lessons and is always willing to help teachers
troubleshoot any curriculum related challenges before Greg's involvement our social studies curriculum was fragmented he introduced us to three potential programs and facilitated our ability to Pilot them his support during the roll out of the new curriculum has been remarkable providing us with the wealth
of resources to ensure a smooth transition I also want to express my heartfelt gratitude for Kristen Grace on wavering support to all teachers no matter what we need she consistently makes herself available and present her guidance through implementation of various assessment platforms and tools along with the professional development
opportunities she provides has been vital Kristen always puts students and teachers first she has presented us with an amazing library of decodable books and various series to enhance our small reading groups moreover she stays up toate with the evolving landscape of reading and writing instruction ensuring
we have the most current materials and curriculum Emily Speck has been Hands-On at our school always willing and available to assist teachers her constant emails with engaging resources for our students have been extremely helpful Emily consistently offers to meet with teachers and teams to support
the implementation of Science in our classrooms furthermore she proactively sends out grade specific and age appropriate resources for natural events such as the solar eclipse ensuring we are well prepared to teach our students Matt Rosenthal visits classrooms to observe lessons and provide support to
our teachers he sends out pacing guides that help us stay on track and shares resources for our students his efforts in helping us Implement a new math curriculum have been key most recently the kindergarten team had a rewarding professional development session with math Specialists and other kindergarten teachers in the district we learned
about the assessment platform we will be using this year and it was a great opportunity for growth the curriculum coordinator's dedication to making social studies literacy Math and Science accessible to all students cannot be overstated if these positions are cut next year I am concerned about the impacts it will have on our program and
more importantly our students as you can see the common theme is that these curriculum coordinators are present in the classrooms and always making themselves available for teachers these curriculum coordinators truly go above and beyond in their roles and it would be hard to do our jobs without them thank you for considering the importance
of retaining these positions and this is assigned by 108 K to8 Educators thank you thank you Elizabeth uh Joshua you're next and then Sarah soluchi hi good evening um I just want
to start by saying thank you to the school committee for the tremendous work that you're doing I'm incredibly grateful for your service um I'm a BHS parent my name is Joshua Paradise it's late and much of what I would like to say has already been covered so I will just make
two observations first as I've been watching this process for weeks or or more than a month it has been a real struggle to get the administration to identify Cuts in the central office or even to provide basic levels of budget
transparency I mean there's so much talk about being culturally responsive in the classroom but I am not seeing any cultur responsiveness to the overwhelming number of people who are coming out to speak at meetings to sign petitions I
don't see it and I want to address Dr gillery specifically um Dr gillery Trust once lost is very difficult to regain it is time to step up and show that you understand the connection between the budget and the district priorities it is
past time to show that you have measurements and data for what is working and that you're prepared to cut or change what is not working there is a shocking lack of any data or a presentation of the connections between
what we are spending and student outcomes second I want to address an issue from earlier this evening we were told that removing the executive director and assistant director in the office of equity would put the district out of compliance with State
mandates this as far as I can tell is either a lack of of understanding a willful Distortion or even worse an intent to mislead the school committee and the public it is accurate that Massachusetts passed a law in November
of 2024 for people who want to look it up it's chapter 71 section 101 and it reads public school districts and Charter Schools shall appoint or hire a diversity equity and inclusion officer or establish a diversity team the role
and responsibility of a diversity officer or team may be assigned to an existing School employee or existing School entity this does not need to be a full-time position for Brookline to be in compliance that doesn't mean it's the
right decision or the wrong decision but we need accurate data to make decisions I am not an educator I am not a lawyer I am not an expert in this area and yet I found the text of law in
minutes I am deeply concerned about the overall quality of the data that is being presented and what else may be unintentionally or intentionally misleading thank you for your
time uh Sarah is up next can I just can I just comment that just to in defense of our staff it was very clearly stated that while we would be out of compliance we would get into compliance by making some of these changes so I just want to I just want to recognize that on the record after we shout it's not a
discussion I'm just a saying that let's don't do this okay it wasn't very clear to me but uh Sarah you're up and then Jorge Aranda is next after you hi um I want to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak
tonight I want to thank Helen for coming to visit our ALC program today at Lincoln um thank you for coming Helen um my name is Sarah soluchi and I'm a Special Education team teacher working in the alc program at the Lincoln School tonight I am speaking on behalf of the
entire ALC staff including the upper ALC teacher Mami Sato and our service providers par professionals beloved students and supportive parents we are urging you to reconsider any budget cuts to our schools especially those that will directly harm the most vulnerable
students the alc program serves students with multiple disabilities in complex medical conditions who require individualized one to want support for safety and meaningful participation all day due to the increasing numbers of students we would like to address the critical need to reinstate a third
classroom a middle cohort for our second and third grade students for the upcoming 25 26 school year without the third classroom we will face number one an unacceptably High student teacher ratio our direct instruction to students
will decrease significantly an ALC teacher with six students students is able to meet with each student between 30 to 60 minutes per day next year either the lower ALC teacher will have 8 students or the upper ALC teacher will have seven
students number two non-compliance with the 48-month age Gap law which is vital for our students legal and ethical treatment just as we would never place any third and seventh graders together in the same classroom we cannot allow this practice with the within the alc
program next next year I'm going to share a few excerpts from parent letters that were submitted to the school committee the first one is from a second grade parent quote if parents do not feel that their children are safe in the alc or believe that their ability to
access the curriculum is compromised by under Staffing they will petition for their children to be sent to an outed District placement where they can receive the resport supports they need to be safe and make adequate Pro uh progress when students with disabilities
move out of District it's a loss for the entire Community it's also also quite costly for the district as those placements are expensive require Transportation far distances and typically last for the duration of a student's career keeping the middle ALC
classroom will allow my child and his classmates to stay in District in this way keeping the middle ALC classroom will both save the district money and allow PSB to continue to provide the inclusive education that it Prides itself on end quote a parent of a
kindergarten student wrote qu given the highly individualized needs of each student in the alc it is impossible to Envision a classroom with such a wide age range in which our kids dedicated Educators can do their jobs effectively and safely end quote a parent of a sixth
grade sixth grader focused on brookline's diversity statement which Prides itself on its inclusivity and acceptance of all children quote supportive communities May look different in different environments but I am still wondering how your recent decisions to cut ALC programming work in
favor of creating a supportive Community specifically at Lincoln most would agree that these decisions in fact create working conditions that are more challenging and far less supportive in my opinion the only thing these decisions support is double standards end quote Sarah could you conclude
please yes the urgency of reinstating the third classroom cannot be overstated it is our job to advocate for our students who are not able to advocate for themselves we urge you to consider the long-term consequences of these budget cuts on the most vulnerable members of our school Community thank
you thank you Sarah Jorge is next and then another Sarah Sarah Jer hi can you hear me yes yes we can go ahead okay thank you uh good evening first I want to thank you for staying up
so late next I want to say that I have seen the result of Miss Elizabeth solivan and miss 's work on my school son and they're amazing they have made a huge difference uh and next I will move to what brings me here today and that is
the overcrowding in the fourth grade in GRE school school I think I have already raed this issue in this panel uh there are three sections that just that received new students after the feruary vacation all three classrooms are
currently at 25 students if if you count in the teacher and the par professionals there are 27 people in the classrooms they are out of compliance with the fire department and most importantly this is already negatively impact impacting the
learning of our children it is not a question of this is happening of where of will this happen it is already happening and so what I would like to do today is to urge you to use this uh five 8.5 FTE Reserve that has been discussed
already to open new sections not only in res school but also in other schools that urgently need additional classrooms um we have received communication through the 2026 uh budget that the situation is
going to be monitored at Riso this does not make sense I do not understand if this means that there's going to be a new section opening in the middle of the year or if there's going to be a new section opening early next year what I do understand is that the classrooms are
overcrowded the children are not safe and they're not learning as they should and so I urge you to use these Reserve positions to open new sections and finally I want to thank you for maintaining the the music uh lessons
they are amazing for children I have also heard rumors that there are plans to impact Librarians and I want to urge you to preserve these positions these people are professionals they make a huge difference differ in the learning of our children and in the life of our
community thank you thank you Sarah you're next and then Ann Greenwald good evening my name is Sarah chasner thank you so much school committee and Dr Giller um and the whole leadership team for the tremendous amount of work you've put into um trying
to make the budget work for our kids I recognize you're all here for kids um and thank you for all the ways that you've already listen to the community by way of introduction my family and I moved here um last summer in large part for the quality of the public schools my
daughter is in kindergarten at F frr and we plan to send my son there in two years uh professionally I've spent most of my career um in K12 public charter schools um in central Administration roles and including five years as a chief people officer so I want to speak
to my perspective on the process of making Cuts not specific cuts M themselves um so here's what I believe based on a career of being in central Administration and having been the person leading cuts um during covid I believe one Central Administration is
critical to the success of schools and I believe as a central administrator we have to demonstrate that we're being more aggressive with cuts to Central Administration than to schools um unfortunately I think with a budget deficit of this size there's no real way
to avoid some cut to schools and it's at the same time not feasible to completely gut Central Administration but I do think you have to disproportionately impact the central office rather than the schools um so before touching
schools what I think the community would like to see sort of in this order is here are all the non-personnel things we're cutting then here are the ways in which we're freeezing salaries or taking you know pay cuts or whatever at at the top then here are the central office
roles that we're cutting that we believe are furthest away from student impact student learning and the student experience and I would say the staff experience because of course staff are the most important impact on student learning and and um and then at that
point you start touching things that directly impact the student and staff experience um so I'd love to see that um process and that sort of level of nuance about um which what what what impact do these Cuts have on students and how far
away from the student and staff experience are these cuts um and this is a sort of methodical process that um I'm I'm see starting to see and I hope we can see more of and I speak as a parent and a former um Central administrator um in this process so thank you again for
your significant efforts on this front and for staying late tonight thank you Sarah uh and okay we'll come back you an if you're around uh Justin
aome Abrams hello first of all thank you for everything you all have done tonight I know it's been a tough one and I appreciate everybody's time um a lot of what I was going to say has already been said so I'm just going to touch on what was said before about software this is a
bit of a bit of a hobby horse for me now we spend a million dollars per year ear computer leases you can buy 5,000 new Chromebooks every year for that price and throw them away we spend another almost two million on software online book subscriptions and licenses that's
tripled in the last two years I don't know why but we seem to love technology and I would personally like to see less of it in our schools I'd like more books and I suspect I may not be the only parent who feels this way it would be cheaper and much better for every aspect of our children's development and
well-being as pretty much every research study on the topic has shown to date we work so hard to limit screen time at home and then they go to school school and then a couple comments on things we've also heard tonight how am I doing on time all right
oh give give me two minutes all right um so so uh one comment on cono custodial and Food Service workers is they're integral to the schools these are the people who nourish our children and they keep those schools clean and safe for all of our children so that they can
learn there their student facing um my kids know them my kids talk about them more than they talk about their teachers not that their teachers aren't wonderful but I hear all about brunch for lunch the Fantastic French toast is not fantastic but pretty good according to Will and um I I really think it would be
a mistake uh my professional experience in my day job I've never ever seen this actually save money it looks like it saves money on paper but you always end up getting a lower level of service and you end up paying more ultimately to get back to where you were so I just think
it would be a huge mistake and it's also so clear they're invested members of the school community so I would hate to see that happen um I think they've been overlooked tremendously in this whole process we've talked a lot about teachers a lot about saving music so I just wanted to touch on that also on
outof District expenses we spend about I estimate a little over $200,000 a year per outof District student between tuition and transportation so it just makes me ask the question what are we doing to figure out how to maybe serve those students inhouse at 200k per year
per student it seems like we could provide we could invest that money internally spend less and also keep those students in District I'm sure it's not pleasant to spend an hour in a van each way every day to go to a school that's far away um and then also lastly
when I look at the reserve and we still have about I think four or five FTE held back there I just can't get around reserving potential or just in case FTE while we're looking at cutting real ones thank you Colin your next Colin Stokes and
after Colin Dave Porter hi I'm Colin Stokes a parent of a BHS graduate and a current sophomore and a town meeting member from Precinct 7 echoing the appreciation for all of your dedication um and I want to talk about item 25 over 20 years in an education
adjacent career I've come to be passionate about Equity um it's been tarred as something Shady but it's just the idea that we need to provide uh children with what each of them needs to succeed and some children may do great
with just a classroom and a teacher but we serve children with a wide range of needs so what you might call classroom facing uh jobs aren't the only Educators who are essential the teachers in those classrooms need the skills to engage
with children's differences the curricula need to be unbiased and representative of the range of cultures and experiences of diverse children the school environment needs to be welcoming and accessible so that children aren't distracted by feelings of alienation or
bullying and these programs aren't diversions from academic rigor they are what it takes to get academic rigor especially for students who arrive at Brookline schools without as much early childhood resources as their peers or
whose families have not gotten a fair shot and as others have mentioned dramatic gaps persist between white and Asian students and black and brown students beginning in the early grades unfortunately Equity doesn't happen passively it takes extra investment
extra expertise and extra leadership it takes something like a director of civil rights and bullying prevention and also something like our office of educational equity which exists because of hardfought advocacy from families and faculty it's a tiny team in the central
office just two people it isn't bloat uh no they can't wave a wand and equalize the scores overnight but they are instilling new classroom practices that will level the playing field over time the uh current Duo has by my look at LinkedIn about 40 years of experience
between them including classroom teaching they've provided a remarkable range of direct support of students families Educators and administrators just from listening to school committee meeting reports they help navigate bias related incidents in multiple schools incidents which are not going to stop happening just because the budget is
tight they work with Community groups in deep conflict to create spaces for Mutual education and empathy they've launched innovative ways to train and Coach teachers around cultural competence like Equity leads and uh a bespoke online learning program losing
momentum on these efforts would be tragic and it would also put us out of compliance with state law unless we redistribute the responsibility to other staff of a diversity officer team providing diversity implicit biased training for School Employees and school
committee members as required in the educator diversity act so I know there's tremendous pressure on you right now um I also believe that it's precisely when the pressure is on that we need to protect those who are at the greatest risk I'd rather my kids had a few less Advanced options or extracurriculars
than leave those children even farther behind thank you so much thank you Dave Porter and then uh nazomi ETO hi can you hear me zero dollars this year for for taller
microphones I might do that thank you uh my name is Dave Porter I'm a town meeting member in Precinct 6 I'm the parent of a first and a third grader at RL um plan currently is that they go right through high school we moved here
for the schools I want to thank everyone uh including staff uh for the hard unhappy work that you're doing here I'm here to make a meta observation tonight about parent engagement um you've seen a whole lot of it tonight uh tonight is a
weak night it's rainy it's increasingly windy it's really late and a lot of us were here tonight that's just the tip of the iceberg what you don't see is the many folks at home with kids who are too busy to come out
you don't see frankly unprecedented fulmination in the WhatsApp groups you don't see the co-parents that are at home with the kids thank you Julie so why are we engaging well last
year in order to close a similar but smaller Gap the grade school language program vanished um we weren't paying as close attention as maybe we should have been but it seemed really sudden and the folks who were
paying attention seemed to think that it was pretty sudden too that program is gone for the full duration of my children's time in grade school in their lives then this year the first round of proposals from the central office
included no cuts to the central office I'm glad that's turned around um thank you for taking music and sports off the table for now so there's a trust problem now there's a lot of us
parents we are waking up with respect we are angry and we vote I want to Echo Echo Mariah's words from earlier please it's your duty to cut as deeply as possible but not deeper lines can be
drawn the town can and should step up and on in that in those fulminating WhatsApp groups I've seen a lot more understanding of and support for prop 2.5 overrides than I
expected above all please don't go back to forgetting that the point of the school committee is the schools cut student programs last thank you [Applause]
thank you Dave uh nazomi yeah I'm probably saying that wrong and then Nancy heler hi my name is noomi ETO I'm a Brookline resident and um a drisol parent I'm here to defend the music art
and Sport programs in-house stuffing and all the things that make Brooklyn schools more human when I recall my own school years what comes to my mind first is the experience of singing together with winning or losing sport matches
painting murals with my classmates or simply chatting with lunch and custodial stuff as an adult now I know how much work passion and advocacy by the adults in my community went into these programs
I am grateful for those adults for their insights and I am proud of my community in turn our children in Brooklyn need to know that the adults in their community are fighting to protect the wholesome education that teaches them what's truly
important for their uh future lives not a bare minimum we want Brooklyn to remain in their heart for many years to come our society is increasingly more complicated fastpaced and
unpredictable when our children hit the obstacles that we could not teach them how to jump what get them through aren't the beautiful school buildings they graduated from it is the experience of having their mind body and soul nurtured
by their home community and the strong will to strive for the better life for themselves for their children and for the fellow community members this is the time to show them that we have that will and that we are
fighting to prepare them for great lives not just great degrees or jobs I asked the school committee to make this budget decision as part of the town's strategic planning and to prioritize children and community
building over a large executive team fancy school buildings or PRI privatizing everything we want overall physical accountability many young families that moved to Brooklyn did so for the good
Public Schools not just for good academics but for the whole human education that cares about the children's well-being during the school years and for the rest of their lives is it idealistic yes but if Brookline does
not try to preserve the ideal of public education who will thank you thank you very much uh Nancy heler Terry okay Elise Terry she's remote hello
everyone my name is Elise Terry and I am a teacher at the hay school thank you to Dr Giller the school committee my union colleagues and the Brooklyn families and community members for your time tonight I'm reading a letter written by members
of the Middle School social studies Department dear Dr gillery and school committee members we the Middle School social studies teachers of the public schools of Brooklyn are writing to express our strong support for Greg Porter and his essential role as the K
to8 social studies curriculum coordinator Greg plays a key role in ensuring a consistent and rigorous curriculum across eight different schools by facilitating our Department's work toward clear and aligned curriculum benchmarks and materials Greg helps
maintain consistency ensuring that students receive a high quality education in social studies regardless of location Greg Works directly with teachers offering guidance to improve our instruction and adapt to students
needs this support helps us grow professionally and ensures we can engage with students effectively with both historical content and current events Greg also manages resources selecting materials and providing additional tools to enhance the
curriculum he organizes professional development opportunities and writes grants to secure additional funding Greg's work has brought Facing History back to Brookline restoring an essential link to this program at a critical time this work has brought
thousands and thousands of dollars to our department without Greg these grants and the work they fund would be lost through all he does Greg has a tremendous impact and what you'll next next see in the letter which we plan to make widely
available are a number of testimonials from teachers about how essential Greg really is to our work what will be clear from all of these testimonials is that there is simply no way that a generalist coordinator for all Middle School
subjects could ever deliver these results replacing Greg with one would have a significant negative impact on us as Educators and inter turn our students as you build the budget for next school year please ensure that Greg
and the other curriculum coordinators are a part of it thank you lores thank you very much yeah lores yeah Laura you can be next then after you Stephanie
Freeman hi my name is uh Laura ban Walsh and I want to start off by thanking you for being here tonight I think you guys are going on to our live and I know it's really really late so thank you I also want to thank you for the work that you've done so far to save Middle School
arts and sports uh Irina spoke earlier about the importance of conservant Conservancy program she's taught both of my children on viola and that program has been invaluable so thank you for that as we think about Equity to me Equity is about the ability to access
the curriculum and as the mother of a fourth grader at dris school the class size is making it more and more difficult for my son and his classmates to access that curriculum as has been brought up earlier they are up against
fire code at this point it is simply not safe so please as you've got those Reserve FTE please go ahead and assure us that this year is the last year that our children's classrooms will be out of
compliance when I think about equity and having the ability to access the curriculum I think about the work that our Learning Center Specialists do each and every day my daughter has had the opportunity to work with Dan O'Brien at the baker school my I have kids in
different schools and he has been incredible in helping her reach her full potential in seventh grade she goes to Learning Center three times a week but even that doesn't capture all that he does for her he checks in on her every
morning to see if there are ways that he can support her when she is struggling with a class he meets with the teachers he is in constant communication with my husband and I so that we as a team can support my daughter in her educational
Journey he is a godsent and we are lucky to have him and that is what Learning Center Specialists mean to the community so please help my daughter and other children on IEPs be able to be as fully integrated as possible with the help of
those specialists and finally I'm a teacher although not at Brookline and I can tell you that those custodial staff members are so incredibly important at my school we're lucky enough that our custodial staff is inhouse and the amount that they support me on a daily
basis is immeasurable they help me set up for debates if I want to rearrange my room they know my students by name they are well aware of and they joke with the kids and the kids know them and they are safe adult presence that is not
something that you can just Outsource and think that it won't have an impact so thank you so much for all that you're doing thank you for saving arts and sports and please when you think about Equity think about the ability to access that curriculum thank
you thank you Laura uh Stephanie's is okay Brian yeah this is Brian I'll be speaking on behalf of both uh Stephanie and myself okay great uh first I want to start off by thanking the school committee especially at this late hour for your service and all that you are doing um
it's clear based on the discussion so far that uh we are all pulling on the same end of the Rope my wife Stephanie and I have two daughters in first and fourth grade at Hayes we moved here from San Francisco six years ago where the public school systems were clearly going
to fall short of our expectations for our children in San Francisco and many cities like it the Devolution of public schools has driven almost every family who could possibly afford an alternative out of the system altogether to private school or to
another town for us it was another town all the way across the country Brooklyn We Now fear that we are staring down the very same reality here in Brooklyn that drove us across the country years ago there are some very distressing trends that jump out when combing
through the budget recently published by our schools three large ticket items appear to be growing at rates far exceeding that of the district as whole par professionals out of District tuition and transportation have grown at 78 68
and 84% respectively between 2023 and 2026 meanwhile the growth in overall budget during that same period was only 21% the growth in the largest overall line item professional staff was only six was only 16% during that period why
are the these three costs growing so dramatically every year what efforts are being made to decrease these costs for 2026 and to curb their explosive growth rates going forward at this rate we will continue to chip away the general education funding
OD in an item so I implore the school committee to please provide granular explanations as to why these line items are growing in such an alarming rate and to focus attention ASAP on bending their growth curves
to help close the gap for 2026 certainly but perhaps more importantly to avoid hitting the iceberg so clearly now in our view if these costs are genuinely unavoidable we must call attention to it now and make it clear to town meeting we
are heading toward a major crisis every single year if that is in fact the case we need to have a plan to increase revenue for our schools to that end I I want to ask all of us who care for our students to support the effort among some in the
town meeting to increase the proportion of town Revenue that is devoted to our schools as opposed to luxuries such as our public golf course and finally I'd like to ask that our level of advocacy seen here tonight be channeled into action town meeting needs more
representation from folks who've been in the room tonight to realign our Town's priorities to ensure our schools are the last place place that we look to make painful Cuts during such budget shortfalls thank you thank you Brian Daryl you're up next
and then Theodore great thank you uh good evening everyone my name is Daryl donatelli uh and my wife Jen and I are proud parents of a first grader and a kindergartner at Hayes I have to say I'm very encouraged
by the number of PSB educators parents and community members uh who have made their comments tonight further underscoring that much like what Brian was saying at the beginning we all have the same Collective goal uh providing the best possible education and
experience for our children it really is why we all call Brookline home uh at Hayes every email that Dr selus sends starts with the North Star if you're not familiar it reads when children and
teachers feel engaged safe and supported we have room to grow and learn through collaboration and risk-taking with our peers on last night's Finance subcommittee meeting we heard about deficits in the fiscal year 25 budget which are carrying over into fiscal year
26 structural deficits which will not be erased without some risk-taking and some collaborative problem solving versus reactive stop gapping so I encourage the school committee to strongly consider what actions will be taken to do three
key things number one evaluate the impact of the recommended actions on student outcomes this has been mentioned by a few commenters for example we've heard a lot tonight about the negative impact of cutting the Performing Arts under no circumstances should we be
moving backwards in the quality of Education we offer our students so therefore that evaluation should be inherent in the annual budgeting process number two improve the financial planning and Analysis process so that
deficits are identified more immediately rather than shifted to Future budget years further handicapping the town's ability to meet its education needs and number three Implement ways to proactively understand and address
spikes in costs which are not sufficiently offset by Revenue out of District Medco and other programs come to mind and when those are left unmanaged has result in worse outcomes for our full student population as we
risk cutting fundamental core programs I appreciate the opportunity to provide a comment and thank you for all you are doing to support our students thank you darl Theodora you are next and hopefully last it's been it's
been a long night for you all um I'll keep it very brief the first thing I wanted to say is um uh my name Theodora kosa parent of two Hayes students I'm also um co-president of the PTO at hay but I will speak only as a parent and
hopefully representing lots of fellow parents but by no means everyone at school um I will really cosign what uh Lauren Bernard spoke about earlier tonight uh in her comments regarding custodial and Food Services uh the people we work with at Hayes uh in in
the custodial positions in the Food Services positions really are a part of the family and the Comfort they give our children is not just physical it's mental it's it's part of of their day-to-day to see these familiar faces and feel comforted so I would urge you
and I I hope we can be helpful in figuring out a way to keep custodial staff and food services staff in housee as opposed to outsourced the second thing I want to say and I'm so happy that I'm closing out the public comments in this way um Financial conversations
are always very difficult I work in budget Finance for for my entire career and when there are situations like this um it's very easy for us to turn into US V them and have um find the bad guy I just want to compliment you all the
administration um leadership the school committee for working together and not turning this into an USV them battle um we are appreciative of everything you do we're appreciative of the hardships you're going through in making this possible and I especially want to salute
Dr Giller um we're grateful to have you on board we're really really grateful that you our um district superintendent and I am personally behind you our family is behind you uh we love seeing you on our campus um during the week on
the weekend like you did this past weekend and um please let us know how we as parents can help thank you everybody for your work thank you very much um we have two people who are a no-show are they still a no-show and
Greenwald and Nancy heler okay then we're going to call that the end of public comment we got through it okay uh thank you to everybody for staying so late and for giving us your input we really appreciate it um two
things I'm gonna get to you yeah okay uh under new business I just want to uh let people know that the curriculum subcommittee is now scheduled for Monday March 17th at 4m. that's a new date so it's March 17th we're looking at Social
Studies K through 12 so be there if you want or be online um okay so we can either adjourn for the night or or Mariah has one more line she wants to is that what you want to
do I'm gonna ask the committee what they want to do want to continue with one more on the budget continue budget I guess continue budget yes is that I I would is it an EAS thing or something that we're going to have to it's my because I think it's not I think
it's late we why don't we start and see how far we get or you could say this why don't you just say what the thing is and then we can decide whether we continue um I'm going to make a motion to um accept the um reduction of the
communication specialist and again with appreciation and regret for making that yes and understanding of the importance of that position in the communication strategy of the district
um and that was one of the line items for this evening do we have a second I'll second it a second well okay any comments or yeah this will be a vote with regret because
I really value the superintendent's uh letter that comes out every week I mean that we didn't have that in the past and that will be missed by families by us um by by everybody in the in the district along with the other things that the
person does so I would just Sor one of the key items for I came F this year next year was the revamping of the website that this person was overseeing the planning for um as well so again these are these are Big visible
communication tools but unfortunately this is I think where we are at right now where we're making really hard choices I will probably vote reluctantly to do that to cut but it is reluctant because one of the things we always say is we need more communication
not less communication so I I'm really torn about this when I think it's tough Stephen tough yeah I just wanted to ask about the the website so does that mean that the website would not be overhauled would that project be
suspended so Neil has worked um very hard and I believe we're meeting tomorrow to actually look at some of the mockups so we may be able we had planed to do a wi roll out um getting
involvement having groups come together to pick themes and those types of things so I'll know a little bit more tomorrow when I meet with him but I believe that he has uh sort of narrowed it down to three themes that he thinks that will be
beneficial for so we may be able to get this in this year but I assume it was his job to manage the so who does that well that's the what we figure out next we don't have that answer are completely
filled out again as as we're shifting around positions here sure wait but but I do want to know whether that means that the suspension of the website overhaul project for PSP would would it be put on hold or do you foresee it being no I'm saying that
that work I believe is in process to be completed this year okay thank you question it's more the management of the website and you have to keep it up to date that was yeah that was going to be my question so UMES
know before this communication specialist how was the website being managed I've only had it with him here my Michael ch um but Michael was a halftime communication specialist and that's it was in his that was right yeah
it was Michael Chan but before that my vague recollection is that it was scattershot across the different um groups and kind of like the way it is in the town but they have more formal training on the town side now and that's my
recollection um but there was in maybe 2014 or 15 a big like all of the schools got websites there was a lot of work put in to improve the websites overall about 10 years ago including the district website
sounds like a good job for a retired Tech I think it's late I would like to make a proposal if I could it's late at night we don't know all the things that are still coming for us I think it may be wise to just wait
and um unless there's a a reason to make this tonight well we have a motion on the floor that's been second okay do okay well let's vote then Jesse Yeah uh no Sarah sorry
yes Mariah yes Helen abstain Carolyn with regret yes Stephen um um no Andy
Obin Val Val no she didn't I said yes yes oh sorry we didn't hear that I'm gonna abstain I don't know if it carried or not I don't think so okay no it didn't
okay okay uh I think that's the last word for tonight thank you for all the hard work we did it's a good good effort thank you for everyone who has been here everyone who is still online stay tuned there's a lot more to come thank you everyone good night I
will recording stopped [Music]