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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good good afternoon this is the February
13 2025 meeting in the chadam finance committee this meeting is being recorded and will be available shortly Hereafter for scheduled and ond demand viewing on any smartphone or tablet device if anyone is recording this meeting please
notify the chairman seeing none pursuant to Governor Hy's March 29th 2023 signing of the acts of 2023 extending certain covid-19 measures adopted during the state of
emergency suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law general laws chapter 38 section 20 until March 31st 2025 this meeting of the chadam finance committee is being conducted in person and via remote participation
every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings as provided for in the order a reminder that persons who would like to listen to this meeting while in progress may do so by calling the phone number one are code
508 945 4410 conference ID 810 83567 pound sign or join the meeting online via Microsoft teams through the link and the posted
agenda while this is a live broadcast and simult cast on chatam TV Xfinity channel 1072 despite our best efforts we may not be able to provide realtime access we will post a record of this meeting on
the town's website as soon as possible thank you Andy I appreciate that um let's start please with a roll call Tommy here Barbara Madison here John papalo as a Fisheries meeting Joan sprag here Andy
young we've is here Kristen andrees here Tracy Shields and it was absent Eric Whitley here thank you and the chairman is here all right we've got a quorum we're going to continue our FY 26 proposed budget
review today with the schools Cape Tech and mon mono Regional um kri let me start with with you anything you want to say note by way of introduction or we should just go to Aaron orcut from the Cape Tech Regional Cape Cod Regional Technical High School sure I'll introd
introduce Ain um so we have um Aaron from the Cape Cod Regional Technical High School the business manager who will be presenting uh their budget for FY 2026 um the total assessment for chadam is
424,000 of $163,200 for FY 2026 for the Cape Cod Tech terrific thank you welcome here thank you very much thank you for having me uh Dr Sor sends his regrets but with uh so many towns we try to divide and conquer a bit and he was here a few days
ago in front of the board of Selectmen um and I have the pleasure of being here today um I would like to thank our full school committee um including the members of our finance subcommittee um Mr Tulio our chair as well as uh Mr micho and Mr
gazi uh reviewing our overall enrollment um as you can see we have increased enrollment by 19 students this year we are up to 681 students which is a uh definitely a high over the past I would say 5 to 10 years um as you can see
chadam um is level enrollment uh we still are currently educating 20 of your students in the town um our most uh our the biggest fluctuations came in the town of towns of Barnstable and Dennis um and really Brewster um got quite a
shock this year with a 10 student increase that was um quite a large uh influx of students from the town of Brewster so looking at the um enrollment uh via pie chart uh it's easy to see that Yarmouth and Barnsville together uh
make up about 50% of our students with the remaining 50 coming from our other 10 sending towns uh this is just a quick uh six-year look back of our enrollment as I previously mentioned we are up to 681
students which is by far the most we've had um in at least the past 6 to 10 years um we had 457 applications last year for about 180 spots um so it is certainly um
a it it's we have certainly more um en enrollment applications than we do seats to educate students our budget unfortunately this year we're bringing you a budget that far surpasses uh any increase that we've asked for in previous years uh as you
can see the budget increase is 5.68% uh this is certainly did not come lightly um in in proposing this budget uh there are many cost drivers that are coming behind this as far as why the increase was so large this year um I can
say that we are in good company or bad company however you wish to look at it as far as budgetary increases um we all seem to have um have some very high costs to to come over this year so as you can see our budget is up 993 th000
um to f 5.68% um I will highlight the fact fact that we have not added any staff members in this budget this budget had envisions um the same Staffing with the possible reduction of an aid uh but really there's uh no large additions to the
budget really just some significant increases in existing costs so a snapshot of where the money comes from essentially we have three large funding sources uh the first being local Revenue which really is the smallest of those funding sources that's
typically comprised of Interest um income that was generated as well as facility rentals in years past this number had been larger um and that is because this is also uh represents typically a contribution from our excess
and deficiency fund um as it currently stands our excess and deficiency fund is very low um we have not reached anywhere close to the maximum um and we're we're tapering off our use of excess and deficiency um as a means to fund the
budget we had been able to contribute quite a quite a bit in the past few years um and a lot of that had to do with interest earned on our building project um that we were able to turn back and and credit that back to the town for the assessments but of course
as we're as we just closed out the project um there really isn't um much uh much more in interest uh earn to be realized the second um major cost cost center or funding CER center of the
budget is state aid which we're predicting to be 4.27 eight um that comprises both Chapter 70 and chapter 71 uh Transportation Revol uh reimbursing leaving a majority of the
budget to be funded through local assessments um as you can see local Assessments in total this year is 13,918 th000 this is just a look back of our Revenue sources versus the operating budget that we've proposed as you can
see that local Revenue number of 270 that is a significant decrease from what we had been contributing and again that is because of the excess and deficiency fund not being not having the capacity really to take more relief off of the
towns Mr chair join please thank you Mr chair uh you you keep mentioning the excess and deficiency fund will you tell me what it's comprised of and how it grows absolutely so excess and deficiency is much like a Town's free cash and how money essentially is put in
that is if we are if we underestimate the state revenue that we that we've predicted for the future year so if we have revenues that come in an excess of our budget uh that money is deferred to excess and deficiency as well as unspent budget but typically most of the money
that goes to excess and deficiency is because we've received more um we've receed more Revenue than than what we budgeted for I did mention that in years past the interest earned on the borrowings for the building project um
that interest that was captured was deferred to access and deficiency and that is why over really over the past five years we've been able to contribute so much from that fund thank you yes ma'am um this is again um just a
graphical representative of the numbers that I just showed you um I would say what's most significant to highlight is that purple um that smallest uh bar in the bar graph and that again is is demonstrating that we really have had a
shift um an increase in assessments uh an increase in state aid but a decrease in our local Revenue so what is the money used for it's easy to see right off right off off
the bat that um at least 35% is teacher salaries uh again when you look at the entire building and the staff um we're up about 75% of our budget is uh salaries and benefits um building
leadership Insurance building Insurance these are all things that uh we pay for out of our budget and this is where we've seen some significant cost drivers this year um moving to um I can show you after this really where we um we saw the
most increases uh essentially aside from having um just uh concluded our collective bargaining um we had to enter into a new five-year contract for transportation that was
about an 18% increase um over previous years um so that was a large cost driver of our budget is a new Transportation contract and how we do it is we essentially take The Upfront hit of the 17% and then we have a we have a level
and fixed cost going forward for the next for the future four years after that um our utilities and heating absolutely increased as well as our insurance our building Insurance uh we saw approximately a 24% increase in the
premium costs for property and liability um so these are really some of these major cost drivers for our budget was a transportation contract um a collective bargaining agreement our building insurance as well as um I what I would
call an explosion in our Sports um for many many years you may follow us and know that we we barely um were able to field some teams and our sports are are they're full to the point where we may have to have cuts and we've never had
cuts ever before but we're running freshman JV and varsity level in both girls and boys sports so it it abs absolutely has increased our budget yes ma'am Jo please thank you Mr chair um how uh how do what is your
transportation budget comprised of how much what percentage do you get from the state and and what percentage comes from uh what from your charges um it depends on the gear um transportation reimbursement really just
that is that it's a pot of money that um depending on what claims are put against it from from the prior year it's not always funded at 100% although that is the state's um it's what the law says and it's what the state is is attempting to do is to fund reimbursement for
transportation at 100% but it has really never reached that level I believe last year the reimbursement rate was somewhere around 94% so it was fairly High um our transportation is composed of of regular Transportation um late Transportation um
but also so we do have special needs Transportation um as well and that is a significant driver in this year's budget we have individual transportation for um a few of our students thank you Barbara please thank you Mr chair
um I'm not excited to hear that you that you might have to cut back something on Sports why why is it costing more if you're having greater participation in sports because we're Fielding more teams so now we have more coaches that that we have to employ um we have more travel
costs with bus transportation more costs for the supplies and the uniforms um when I say Cuts this year we had enough that we could have fielded two freshman boys basketball teams um and sometimes those numbers just get too unwieldy we
don't have enough gym space we don't have enough coaches on hand um so really we've never we've never cut but we're to the point where it's not feasible for us to to run a varsity JV and two freshman
teams per sport right Andy thank you um transportation how many viable competitors went for that bid none just
one um it was an interesting bid that I structured this year um there is there's a caveat we are um a recipient along with our vendor Cape destinations of a cc Grant which is funding the purchase
of 10 electric buses MH so our bus is going to go partially our bus fleet will go partially electric but to ensure that that would be a success I did have to structure our the first year of our contract to have backup buses buses for
diesel as well as diesel buses for our outlying towns like Province toown mashby and our Sports transfer ation um so it was an interesting bidding process I structured the bid so that you could bid on it with just a diesel price or
some combination of renewable energy um I had probably about four vendors um take bid specs and I had one respondent and that was Mercedes Cab Company Cape destinations great thank you
um this again this just details our c c cost category history uh where we are now um as you can see due to collective bargaining um negotiations which we were able to settle all five of our units um we have a 5.46% increase in salaries a
slight decrease in benefits and this is really I want to point out costs did not go down but in that benefit category is our OPB contribution um I will get to the slide at the end of the presentation
but but where we are now uh recognizing how large this budget increase was we knew that we could not fund OPB at the level that we previously had been funding OPB we have a funding schedule where we've been trying to dedicate
$300,000 per year um to OPB we are about two years ahead of our um funding schedule because of positive returns um but in the current year FY 25 as well as FY 26 we know that we are not able to
make that full contribution if we did this budget would be over 8% um and out of acknowledgement of what the budget increase was we've decided at least for this next year for FY 26 to dial back that number and Aaron
do you have a I'm sorry you referred to and I I think I recall there's a opep slide in the back of the deck yes okay so I'll reserve my question for then Joanne please mine was the was this it was about opab so I'll wait to okay yeah it's my favorite topic kind of an opep
junkie excuse me but I do just want to make knowledge um acknowledge that um of course capod Municipal Health Group it was a somewhat advantageous increase of 6.5% um but really that that decreases because of our dialing back
OPB uh materials and services increasing by 11.89% really um we have seen um inflation across the board in all of our shops the cost of food for our culinary shop the cost of um pipes and plumbing
fixtures and in some of our construction shops really we are paying significantly more than we did before for supplies um so some of those categories have increased and of course you see Transportation it's a blended 19.45% part of that is that our 177%
increase but another acknowledgement is um having to provide private transportation for at least one student um and overall building insurances have significantly increased um okay the allocation of resources um
again you can see that salaries and benefits make up 78% of our overall budget with materials and services and capital being another 10 and miscellaneous being the remaining 10 uh this is our Capital debt schedule
we um for FY 26 uh we are in our seventh year of our bond payment um I didn't think we'd get here this quick but uh I can't believe it's seven years in um and the total principal and interest um because it was
a fixed um 20-year principal declining interest we are um we have a total assessment this year of 5,558 th000 we take that and we add it on to your assessment um or I'm sorry this is your Capital assessment for chadam is
$63,750 124,125 increase for the town of chatt um different in other towns but chadam was a 3% increase uh this is the sum total uh Chad's assessment
587,589 and lastly OPB and I'm sorry this got a bit cut off um but we have been Cape cotch has been a member of the Plymouth County OPB trust since 2015 um it is a fantastic arrangement for us we had uh
our most uh recent Actuarial um audit was uh we have a liability of 1 7,510 th000 um as you can see the balance in our OPB as of June 30th was 3,1
52,000 um we are funding 75,000 in FY 26 from for OPB again that's down from the 300,000 that we've been trying to maintain um that puts us at a net um funding of I believe 19% so our opep
liability is funded at 19% which um it doesn't seem like much but that's a very um it's a very advantageous number it's a very um it we are making very good progress in our opep um or opep liability and that is the end of my
formal presentation Andy please I have a curiosity question yes what are the most populous take Tech segments of the school this year we just placed our freshmen this year our top three shops
were Plumbing HVAC and electrical um by far um there those numbers were incredibly High um healthtech was also very popular um but certainly a recognition of our construction trades
um and those shops are really full to capacity Marine technology Marine very popular very okay just I was curious thank you yeah JY still have a question on opep thank you Aon can can you just um
sketch out briefly kind of the funding strategy relative to EUR opab obligation is there are a number of years you've targeted to Dees the obligation or how's it how's it work other than aiming for 300 sure um off the top of my head I
believe we will be fully funded by 2039 um that is the plan right now our current funding schedule had been to contribute $300,000 per um budgetary cycle uh when the Barnstable County
Retirement Association um assessment is phased out when we become fully funded for barnable County the plan then calls for that contribution to be shifted to opep um so in those latter years we will be funding somewhere around a million
dollars a year hopefully if the plan stays um in the trajectory that we're going okay that's helpful thank you and uh relative to your student population of 681 uh what was the design capacity for the it was
650 with an 85% capacity so it was designed for 650 essentially we could be north of 700 if we in numbers um if we wanted to be but we get very tight in some of our academic classrooms and then
there's issues with student to teach ratios in some of those shop areas um so where we are we are we're busting at the seams at 680 and with the demand that you note in the Building Trades do some of these kids who may have selected a trade not
get into that and have to divert into XY or Z absolutely um the exploratory process you you choose your your top six shops um you are placed based upon how you perform really in your freshman year from the time you step in the door until
we get done with exploratory as you Pro as the students progress through each shop they're essentially graded on their behavior their attendance their their um uh their work ethic um and that score allows them the privilege of typically
getting into their first choice jop um some students do not get into their first some don't even get into their third um but each student is placed and then we counsel them um if there's the ability to make some movement in the
future if if shop space allows okay that's helpful thank you further questions for Aaron go good Tommy Eric anything from you guys online yes all set all set thanks no
raised hands Tracy is on oh hi Tracy uh okay there being none Aon thank you very much a thoughtful and comprehensive presentation thank you for having appr thank you okay Carrie thank you Mr chair um so um we
now have monoy Regional School District presenting the budget is Michael McMillan the business manager and Scott Carpenter the superintendent of the schools their draft assessment for chadam for FY 2026 is 11,217
418 which includes Deb service and this is an increase of $98,400 budget assessment approved for FY 2025 welcome gentlemen good afternoon thank you for having us thank you for popping
over uh so this we present the budget and you'll see some of similar themes that they were presented by the previous presenter this budget comes to you against the background of you know the end of federal funding after the end you know coming out of covid you know High
inflation for the last few years and although it's come down prices haven't come down and the growing needs and the cost of supplying those needs for students that's happening across the country and we're also seeing on the cape particularly the tightening job
market is driving up the cost of recruiting and retaining staff and these factors are influencing a lot of you'll see presented to you today and so you know the onepage summary is that we are presenting a budget here with a
6.86% increase on last year's budget with 49 just over 49.7 million and the way the assessment breaks down that's an increase for chattam of 88.8% a little over
$98,000 and a 5.4% increase for harage 1. $6 million so that's it I can stop there if you like or I've got another few slides to go through uh so the way so the way I've seed I'm actually going to focus a little bit on
the assessment first and just explain how we got to where we are and then I'll talk more about the budget in detail and what's driving some of those costs this just puts the budget in context so this is a more significant increase than we've seen a really since
back at the very beginning of the district there was that big increase you see see back in fy16 was when the debt payments for the high school came online and so when the town District started paying for those you saw that big jump but otherwise we have hovered around
4% uh 3 to 4% and so this is a more in a significant increase uh when it comes to and then when it comes to the assessment so we have seen a u a generous a good increase in our state funding actually Chapter 70
however as our enrollment is not increasing our our Chapter 70 that's the state funding it's kind of doesn't seee huge increases we have a more significant increase in our transportation Revenue that's mostly just kind that's mostly
because Transportation revenue is made up of two the factors one is the money we believe we're going to receive next year and that's what we get the state tell the state gives us a number and and a piece which is the difference between that number and what we actually
received in a prior year and so in the prior year there was a significant Delta between the number we used in the budget it was early on in the state's budget to what we actually received a couple hundred thousand do whereas last year it was $199,000 and so that Delta drives up
our transportation Jan please thank you Mr chair and the uh revenue from the state does that uh include your circuit breaker is that still called the circuit breaker yes so it is still explain that to us and how much uh you have been
promised by the state and how much you're actually getting so yes so that circuit breaker actually doesn't reduce so the way just the way this Regional agreement structured we kind of we have a revenue which reduces the overall budget so when you
see this number of 49.7 million that's already net of circuit breaker so we've already factored in a certain amount of money from circuit breaker before we even finalize the budget so we assume so right now and I've got that number in a subsequent slide but certain amount of
money from circuit breaker and that's reduced how much we're budgeting for out of District special education costs and I do have a chart that will give you the exact number a little bit later in the budget in this presentation are you saying that the state is fulfilling its
obligation or it promise uh so it's it's close I don't it's not so I'm trying to remember I think we're about a little over 70% but under the student Opportunity Act they said they were also going to cover Transportation costs and they're not able to do that yet but they
are fulfilling their obligations under for the tuition costs okay and we are using that to offset the budget thank you so when we talk about this Revenue here so after we've settled the budget then there's other Revenue which is used
to reduce the assessments and that's what this other Revenue Vue that's like just shy of $5 million and really that's made up of the Chapter 70 funding which is the state's primary vehicle for supporting public education the other you know but there's a the other big ticket item here is our
excess and deficiency which I know you spoke about with a previous presenter so our excess and deficiency is the same thing you know it's a bit like the state the town's free cash and we have in recent years used around 800 well we've used $800,000 to offset the assessment
we've increased that to $1 million this year in recognition of these increased costs and the fact that a uh the assessments are already significantly increased on last year and then just as a visual representation of how the budget's funded so you can see heart assessment
does take up the bulk of the budget as they have the bulk of the students um and then the next slide shows how these have changed over recent years and so that gray block is harbage assessment the light blue is Chatham's
assessment the little yellow line that's excess and deficiency and the dark blue block is the state funding and so you can see that we actually seen a significant increase in the state funding really the highest since 2018 and that's helping to reduce the assessments although they're still going
up and it's just shows you a bit it's bit clearer to see when there's fewer years so this just goes back to 2021 so it's interesting so in 2021 and 22 chim's assessment actually went down based on enrollment and that's
really to do with how the relative enrollments of chattam and Har changed over those two years and then in 2023 we had the uh change to the regional agreement and that's when each Town took on responsibility for its own Elementary School and that's why you see that big
more significant increase for chattam while harch has actually went down that year and then since it's been much you know it's to some extent had the intended effect so it's had been more uh the percentage
increases have been more equal between the two towns harit was 4.3 that first year was chattam was 2.1 but since then it was 6.2 and 8.8 for a chatam compared to 4.9 and 5.4 for harage so that has we've
seen that Trend change since that change was made to the regional agreement and Michael can you Andy want to start with you I guess I'm trying to figure out int El how come the percentage increase differs so much between harch and chattam I know there other factors I'm
probably not taking into consideration but yeah I'm relying on you to tell me all right let me see how I can do okay so actually if I wonder if I can there's there's two things that really drive those differences now so it used to be all about enrollment so it was all about fluctuation in enrollment and it's all
relative so does it's only how your enrollment changes relative to how hares changes so if you both go down at the same it has less impact if one goes up a little and one comes down so this year actually and I've got a slide as well that will show that this you're the chattam foundation enrollment went up
slightly by like nine student uh by five students and Har is went down by four students so that Delta is really what makes the difference and because it's all relative and because we're talking about sure how we divy up the money you know that's changed from the previous
year small changes make a big difference the other the other thing is the actual elementary school budget so as the elementary school budget increases or decreases but waxes and wains then that also impacts you directly so for example if we've added a position or if or if somebody at the elementary school takes
on health insurance which they didn't have last year then that increases your budget because that's now directly assessed to you and because you know because there's like you know not that many people there one or two changes can can have a big proportionate
change so it's really actual costs and enrollment and how that impacts a the assessment I should say and then the minimum so the minimum local contribution so I wonder if I have let me see I'm going to just jump ahead a little bit here okay so let me I'm going
to because this is this slide if I can I've lost my I here it is okay so so so this okay so this is Chatham's minimum local contribution and foundational enrollment so that's what I was talking about when I was talking
about enrollment so Foundation enrollment is actually all the students who live in the town that go to public schools essentially not just the ones that come to monomo so the way the regional agreement is a lot of the calculations are based on Foundation enrollment not actual enrollment and it's how that number
changes so and you can see if you can just see from fy2 see the orange line just goes up a tiny bit and that makes a difference to the assessment so it's it's you know the regional agreement the for the formula is so complicated now
since we made these changes but it actually affects us in a number of different ways one is that the state uses this year's minimum loc sorry Foundation rollment plus a financial data about the town like the assessed value of the property and
a assessed income revenue and that calculates the minimum local contribution that the town has to make towards education and the way the regional agreement is structured that's the first thing that's assessed to you so essentially we assess to you the minimum contribution it says to harach
the minimum contribution and then we divide up the rest of the budget based on the formula so the state sets that minimum contribution and again because your foundation enrollment has increased where as theirs has gone down and other factors your minimum local contribution went up more than theirs did so it's a
it's a slightly smaller portion of the budget but you now own a slightly larger part of it I mean not as much as how but just it's the Delta it's all about the difference you know it's all about how much it's changed from year to year rather than absolutely and then I just want to chime
in and just give Joanne you know some additional information on it's not circuit it's we'll say it's related to circuit breaker but it's it's related to just out of District tuitions there's an additional driver in those out of district tuitions
and that's what what happens at the state level with the state has a an organization called the operational Services um group that uh or the op operational services division OSD so they're responsible every year for
setting the rate increase for these outof District placements so uh you know so the state you you know I've been a superintendent for a number of years and there have been years where the state didn't step up to that 75% level on
circuit breaker they've gotten a lot better lately and while they've gotten a lot better lately there there there has been some difference in what's going on at the operational services division so in 2024's
budget they uh they greenlighted a 12% increase across the board for out of District placements and school districts and school districts are still catching up with you know with that increase um you know so it doesn't you know so you
so we're we're still feeling the impacts of that 12% increase back in you back in 2024 you so you have you you've got a lot of things that that are going on there um you know so it's not just circuit breaker that that impacts those out of District costs but it's also you
know this other division of the state that's setting what the rate increases are and then anytime you have a child that's outplaced uh the outplacement can go and renegotiate the increase and say okay well uh we need you know this child's
going to need x amount more and uh and you can go appeal it to the operational services division uh but as our director of special Serv special education services would say uh she's never seen them say no to a request to increase that rate so you know so there's there's
a lot of different factors that that go in behind you know the these high expensive out of- District costs Beyond just circuit breaker yeah well they were notoriously uh not coming through with
what they had promised for a number of years and that can be uh really a big cost for any school system right because those out of those uh placements are expensive yeah District yeah so you can imagine you know that
that that increase has has been you know for a decade right around 3% then all of a sudden pal it's like a 12% um well somebody got through to yeah that was particular coming out of covid and the state has generally been very you know
SE part of its role is to protect the most vulnerable and those a lot of those students are the most vulnerable and the most needy of our students and the most costly to provide services for but yeah so a single place can be upwards of $300,000 a year so that can have a significant impact on our budget since
we're on the topic that has impacted our budget this year we've had a couple more students be placed in outof District residential placements than last year and just since since we're on the topic I have jumped ahead a little bit so this is you me to go back and I just note
that Eric's got his hand up Eric I'm not sure if the questions Germain to what we've been covering I just don't don't want to lose the opportunity if you to well it's about incoming and uh school choice and and where we're at so why don't why don't we continue and I'll
I'll I'll ask it later okay actually let me cover let me see if so since we're here right now we're kind of moved a ahead a little but this is so like I say after we've set the before we finalize the budget there is some Revenue which helps to reduce our costs and one of
those is our secet breaker Revenue so this chart shows those Revenue sources and how much we are budgeting for next year to reduce our budget so if you see the second from the bottom has circuit breaker so in 2023 we used $400,000 from
circuit breaker to reduce the cost of our outof district tuition for special education students and that go in was 524 582 and next year we're budgeting $815,000 so that's a significant increase now what that money is that
money is the state returns to us around 75% of certain costs that are that are eligible and each year we so we submit a claim to the state this year and they pay us that amount next year so we know
already how much we're getting next year and up until this year what we've done is we've just always budgeted what we're going to receive next what we're going to what we've already received this year to offset next year's a revenue sorry costs this year what we're doing is we're using the money we've already Reed
received we receive this year plus some of what we're going to receive next year so we're kind of Dipping into our reserves to help reduce the cost because we've seen this significant increase due to a couple more placements we have so next year's Revenue has always been a
little bit of our Reserve in case our cost went up this way we're using up some of this Reserve because we do have this single year spike in our costs there is additional so the state if your a costs go up as more than 25% from year to year there is additional Revenue a
reimbursement the state will offer and we will apply to that and hopefully that will also help to offset these costs what's also on here is school choice so school choice is the second from the top so you've title one and then school choice so school choice is
the money we receive from other districts through the state the state manages the program so they if students from other school districts come to Mono then we get money from the state to help offset the cost of those students and likewise students
from chattam and harage that attend other public school districts we send money out yes how much excuse me m uh thank you how much per student does the state send you for school choice now still 5,000 since 1993 yeah it does VAR that's
right that increase it all yeah it does vary a little bit based on so special education needs so if a student has an IEP then that does change the number so sometimes gets upwards of 6,000 but yeah and but so we have been a net benefit so
we benefit more from school choice than we pay out and that helps to offset our costs and we have built up a balance in our fund and we're spending that so we've been able to increase so we're actually using more than we'll receive next year because we have some funds available to help offset the budget and
we have we have a plan to modulate that in the next few years and that helped us to keep some of the position we lost we the funding we lost when the S funding from the state the federal funding as we came out of CO as that went away we were able to use these school choice funds to
kind of offset that reduction for a few years and so that's also going on we also ever since ever ever since I've come here to monoy have been very judicious in terms of how we operate school choice uh I would look at it that
if I I was once told by a superintendent with regard to school choice that you know let's say you set and say we want to have our class sizes at 18 but if they're only third or 15 students in the classroom there are three empty seats
and we can choose to have them be empty seats collecting dust or we can get $5,000 a piece to help offset the cost of the teacher and everything that's happening in the room alternatively we could go open up
school choice and take every application we get and fill empty classrooms but at $5,000 a piece the cost of that teacher teaching assistant the supplies aren't made up by $5,000 and it
ends up being a you know sort of a a money losing proposition for the school district which ends up getting passed on to the taxpayers so we want to make sure that we're sort of approaching school choice and have been you know since we've come together as monly approached
it as a free seat model like do we have you know do we have free seats to go and keep our class sizes at 18 but not add entire classrooms of school choice children that makes sense um Eric let me
turn it back to you to great thank you so that answered most of the questions I was going to have on school choice so that was good uh specifically for chadam elementary school is there anything different than happens there and is there a net um gain or negative for
school choice for for kids in that building so does anything different happen if if we're putting kids in in school choice into chatam Elementary no so so just and I guess maybe to further clarify Eric's good
question is if if it's a Harwich family that's coming over and choosing chadam Elementary there's not $5,000 that's exchanged it's it's if there's a Chad or a family that's coming from Brewster and school choicing to chatam Elementary
that there would be $5,000 coming you know coming to the district so uh so you know we do have you know we do have some you know some families from harwitch that choice over I'd say a disproportionate number often times or staff who are at chadam elementary
school and have you know want to have their children in the building that they're you know they're teaching and you know you'll you'll see that and the same thing vice versa that we'll have you know some you know some some staff that live in chadam but work at Harwich Elementary that want to have know for convenience factor having their children
in that building Andy I think I I take it from the positive number there the the regional district is still considered to be relatively attractive versus other districts on the cape yeah
I we'd like to we we'd like to think so I I I think I I think in some level we you know just the fact that we have more families are wanting to come here then are you know then are leaving us is is a barometer of
that I I do think that you know one of the things that Michael alluded to is we're also we're also trying to take a long-term look at school choice too because you know if we if you if we go back over the last decade you know of us
being Monomoy uh 10 you know 12 years ago there were nine sections of kindergarten you know so three in adom six in you know six in Harwich so so there were nine sections that might have free seats you know today you know we
have I believe one section of kindergarten this year at chadam elementary four at Harwich Elementary so we have a lot fewer classrooms that potentially have free seat seats so if we kind of move that forward another 10
years there are going to be less children coming in through school choice and we can't we can't count on every year having you know uh you know over well over a million dollars to offset
costs if if there's just fewer children that are coming in simply because there are fewer children on Cape Cod you know so it's you so we have to we have to keep that in mind and again our our sort of thinking longterm at at what that
looks like and how do we have to respond budgetarily to go and have you know have things be you know assessment wise smooth for the towns over the years thank you I think also with the you know with the new school you know the renovation at noset the new build at the
high school and in Dy as well we're we Fierce competition to keep the numbers G please thank you Mr chair um for the elementary school kids tuition into either chadam or harch does TH do those
$5,000 credit the assessments for each town or does it credit the so it does actually we this great question so we actually we have in the regional agreement it says that we use the district enrollment to split up the a school choice so it's not based on
individual students but the sort of relative enrollment of each place so everybody each both the both elementary schools and the district overall the budget is reduced by a portion of the school choice Revenue thank you all right I'm going to go back to
where we were so we've kind of we might have hit a few of these points now already so so where we were just where we where we were we were talking about revenue and I just wanted to talk about excess and deficiency a little bit because that's one of the numbers that helps to reduce the assessments and we talked about so uh We've not actually
had certified yet and Auditors are flat out at the moment there's hardly any of them left so it's harder to get stuff done in time and so we've waiting for a excess and deficiency to be certified but it's been estimated at around 2.5 million so relatively close to where
it's been the last few years despite us bad budgeting $800,000 from it so the way the way the law works is that we are only allowed to keep a balance in our existant efficiency of 5% of our operating budget and anything over that has to be included in reducing the
assessment so return to the towns as it is so we we actually a little over that 5% but not a million over we're actually going you know we'll be at closer to 3% after if we take that million dollars out but before we add anything else
that's got left over from this year so you know this is so this will help this million dollars help to reduce the assessments and then just also on the the regional agreement assessment methodology so if we were still using
the old method by my calculations your assessment would be $1.3 million less than it is this year because you're now solely responsible for the elementary school we already talked about this slide I was just maybe I can just Compare the chatam numbers which are on
the right and the blue line is the minimum low contribution and the orange line is the foundation enrollment so if you look at the har one you can just see let me see I can actually focus in here you can see their number actually went down ever so slightly but yours went up ever so
slightly so here's yours over here and that does so they use the current years foundation rment and in the regional agreement we use an average of three years of foundation rment in some places the other thing and I don't really have the numbers for this here but another factor in all this is that
now within the regional agreement we do grade breakdowns of foundational in order to oh sorry in order to break up some of the costs so it's shift so the grades 5 through 12 help to determine the assessment relating to the district
costs whereas enrollment from prek to four helps determine so as you so if there's shifts there so if you happen to have a big class moving from four to five or vice versa that also impacts a the assessment breakdown so that's kind of everything I was going to well not everything I'm going to say but that's everything I was
going to say say about the assessment the next few slides are kind of focus on the budget itself like what are the what are driving those costs so this is a you saw Aon provided a similar chart for the upper Tech upper
Kap Cod Tech on their costs so this is just a breakdown of the district's costs by Major account the major account is a categorization that the state gives us which is handy because because then we are we can compare to other districts and so on and it's consistent so you can
see teachers is that blue portion the blue segment that's you know by far a the biggest part of our budget and then benefits and fixed charges so between teachers and benefits and fixed charges alone you're at a 50% of the
budget the other sort of significant pieces pupil services and that includes Transportation uh other then programs with other school districts that includes out of District tuition and also the school choice payments we make out for students attend other districts
operations and maintenance is 10% is 9% and so those are the biggest things I think this is just this is sort of for Interest really is looking back 10 years to go to see how the proportions have changed often it's hard when you're just looking one year to the next it's hard
to Neally see long-term trends so you can see actually uh so benefits and fixed charges have gone up significantly retirement is actually less now than it was 10 years ago and that's because the cost of the high school debt has gone
down uh the teachers have gone down slightly that's because classrooms we have fewer classes but we have pupil Services um and other teaching Services which is just 5% here and if I jump forward there it's
actually now 8% and that includes instructional assistants and other Specialists who support students particularly with special educational needs and we've seen it increase in those needs uh and then benefits obviously has G up sign you know and it's taken up a bigger part of our
budget it's interesting how similar it is you know 10 years things have changed but a lot stays the same so year to year though this is how those major account account budgets have changed from fy2 to FY
26 the big so then the change is the column on the right and the red is a increase green is a reduction and the intensity of the color tells you how the magnitude of the change so the biggest increases are in
teachers and in benefits and fixed charges they the biggest increases because they're the biggest portions of our budget I think the other kind of notable increases are in other teaching services and that's really getting around instructional Ser any instructional assistants and
Specialists also so P Services which includes transportation and we have seen that you know came up earlier we've seen a greater demand for transportation services those out District students who are attending uh schools outside the district if they are day students we
have to transport them there and that is increasingly increasingly expensive and and you know both we need more we need more of them and they're able to charge us quite a lot of money for it because there's not that many providers so we're always trying to find
people to do it and uh that drives up the costs Michael Yes of the 741 th000 respective teachers uh are those just step increases essentially rather than new positions so is a so it's a combination of things so is the majority
of it is Step increases and contract so as step increases uh cont column changes so it's the teacher grid if you've got more uh degrees or qualifications you can increase your rate turnover so one of the other things that we've found is
that it used to be you know I would budget a person's salary and if they retired or left we'd have a Bo we'd have our savings because he'd be replaced with someone who's more junior or he had less experience increasingly what I'm finding is somebody leaves and they're replaced by somebody who is more
expensive because there's not as many people available and young people available to take the job so when somebody retires we're not necessarily saving money so that's driven up our costs so it's those column changes turnover costs contract changes there
are some additional there is well there's a I think overall in teaching an increase in one uh is there even no actually no so there's actually slight reduction but I'll show you that in a minute as well I think that that shift that Michael was
talking about where it's you know we used to be able to see a senior person retiring and us bringing in somebody low on the salary skill is is sort of a factor that's you know that's caused because of the change in the housing
market here you know that you know it's young folks that we'd love to get that teacher fresh out of teacher in college and have them grow through the system but oftentimes they come here and it's like okay where where am I going to find a place to live on that starting on that
starting teacher salary so at least last time when we went through contract negotiations we wanted to make sure that we you had our salary increases so that we could have people afford to live in our towns and and stay here but we still you know we're still finding the
challenge that you know that often times it might be a veteran teacher off Cape who may have inherited a family home here and it's like okay well sure I can go change my career you know come down you know come town you know you know
live in one of the cape towns and teach at monoy um but it doesn't it's not this windfall that that often times you'd see you see in retirement and it's sort of compounded where when we do get that young you know that young teacher and you know they
meet somebody and they're ready to set down Roots oftentimes they're making this decision saying okay we can't figure out how to go get that first home and you know so you end up having folks that you know we we started to sort of groom and train and everything and
they're heading back off Cape where it might be cheaper and then potentially seeing them replaced by yeah somebody even more expensive so it's it it it's a challenge on how that's playing how that's playing out but it's all sort of related to
bigger conversations we've all been having on you know the cost of housing here and how do we make it so people that you know work in our police departments fire departments DPW and our schools can afford to be here too just that's helpful thank you a
serious issue to be sure Barbara thank you Mr chair um have you had any trouble replacing teacher vacancies or filling teacher vacancies rather I I'd say I would say yes and and it really depends
on the on the the field you know so you know so I I would say you know even when I was off Cape uh you know I would I would sometimes joke that it's really easy to go hire an English teacher there's you know a lot of people that will get a college degree and say hey I
can go off and teach English science teacher more challenging you know a chemistry teacher or a physics teacher within science really challenging you know so you know so we see we see certain disciplines that I think there are fewer people that are heading off
into that and just the further you get out on the cape the more challenging it is you know sort of your applicant pool seems to keep getting smaller and smaller for that cooh thank you so just two other lines I just
wanted to highlight here one is uh the debt and retirement Service uh which is really there's just two projects in there one is payment on the high school the ongoing debt payments for the high school construction and the other is an estimate of the first payment on the
middle school project to do something around deciding and the rest of the scope of that project whatever ends up being so the reason it's actually a reduction is because we restructured the high school loan this year we went back out to borrowing and got a better rate
and so we were able to reduce our costs a little a and the way it's structured they go down year toe anyway so and we' already budgeted for this year some of those costs related to the middle school project so they're already reflected in the budget and it's really just that
savings from the high school that's in there so that's why there's actually a reduction just since we're on that point wherever we end up with an article for the middle school debt it will not impact the budget because we've already included an estimate of what our first payment will
be and then the other line just that reduction around that very top line acquisition Improvement and replacement of fixed assets that's just you know this year the uh the number of projects we have going are slightly reduced as we're focused on the middle school
that's paid for by debt rather than out of the operating budget which is that line and some of the costs that we some of our other project costs are related to in under operations and maintenance so we're replacing some flooring I think that's an operations and REM maintenance
rather than acquisition of fixed assets only thing in there is a new vehicle yeah Andy please um let me see if I understood correctly you're saying that the middle school project the debt and retirement service for that is already
factored into the FI 26 budget yes but you don't have a project cost yet do you no but we've we spoke to we've worked with our financial advisors to we've budgeted $300,000 for our first payment in FY 26 and we'll be able to structure
it so they were that was one of the scenarios we worked with them on for one scope okay so it's I would call it a rough estimate yes exactly right thank you uh you have me confused there for a sec Michael not
to go too far a field but just sort of from a comprehensive perspective is the intentionality of the working group around the middle school repair yeah project is that a comprehensive envelope review is it
strictly the sighting is you know there's you know articles about air quality and leaks and how how was the district thinking about addressing this issue so so it it's a I would say it's a very comprehensive envelope uh project
so it it began I I I think conversations that we had with you going back five years we were sort of warning at some point at some point we're going to need to replace the roof you know we know that the roof was you know was pushing
30 years old and you know so had been had been planning for that to be the first capital project and then in recent years it's pretty clear that we were able to do some Patchwork on the roof to
get us by in the short term but uh metaphorically there's when it comes to the siding there's too many holes in the Dyke to go and have that be the the the project that's that's out further in the future so uh so the the
building committee Middle School building renovation committee uh met uh they uh you know the to make a long story short the I I think fundamentally what's challenging with the with the siding is
when the building was expanded with the fifth grade what was the Middle School wing and resite it all the way around the contractor didn't flash beneath the Windows using sort of modern approaches
so that when water gets behind the siding and comes down along to the base of that window it sits and and that has caused areas of the sighting to prematurely age now
granted they're almost 30 years old anyway on a wood building so so at some point it was going to need to get refinished but it's it has sort of increased the pace that we need to address it so so the uh the vote was uh
at the building renovation committee to expand the project to do it right not just do siding and not fix what's fundamentally wrong you know so the Sills underneath the window and the only way to go and address that is to take out the window if you're going to take
out a 27y old window it would make a lot of sense to go correct you know correct the header board put modern flashing on it and put back in a modern window window that's triple paining instead of double pain that it will have better you
know better insulation factor and not be back here in a few years you for you know for a window project too so so the the scope expanded to sighting and windows and we are also in you we've
been accepted into the state's uh School uh uh business authorities accelerator repairs program for a roof project you know so that you know we're working through that process we don't have a any quotes on what the new roof will be but
you can imagine it sighting roof windows so it's in the end it would be the whole envelope that does get you know that does get you know you know get updated and would have that building ready for the next you know 30 50
years I'm reminded of the cautionary tale of the person who doesn't compl that his roof leaks unless it's raining um do you anticipate that the timing of the prospective roof project will be within a couple of years rather than redoing all the sting redoing all the
windows and still having a leaking roof so so I at at the at this moment in time and again uh we don't have noticeable Ro roof leaks so we've we've been we've been patching the roof but we also know
that it it needs to get replaced soon uh as some might have noticed at I think it was town meeting a year and a half ago where conveniently uh the wind blew just the right direction and a little leak happened in the middle of town meeting
um you know so we don't want to see that happening during town meeting we definitely don't want to see it happen in the other 364 days of the year you know we want to have the building you know building as watertight as we can because it all relates to mold you know mold can't grow if water can't get in
the building you know so uh you know so to that end we have been doing air tests uh we actually did one and published the results where we sampled essentially every fourth office and classroom around you know around the entire School uh
long and short of that report is that the bulk of those classrooms and offices that were sampled were were well within the results that we had with the out with the outside samples you know we also sampled this room uh the
selectboard room in chadam both libraries at at both community centers and uh and the you know the readings were very similar to what other Town buildings and our other school buildings were we had three rooms that were a little elevated and you know we're going
to go look into what and why there's a team there today doing more air sampling through the next quarter of the building um you know we do think that we just need to do some you some deep cleaning when it comes to the smaller gymnasium
at the middle school and an art room I do think we had sort of an anomaly in the library where you know where the reading was off the charts I I I think we were was it a couple nights ago we were at the select board meeting I I let
the select board know that we had closed the library this week because the the readings were so high but uh it's also enti possible that uh unbeknownst to me that when they were taking the air samples there were also books on a shelf
about a foot and a half away from where the air samples were even taking that had been wet that were getting disposed of and you know it just could be that the reading was sort of an anomaly so we'll find out today when they are back in testing if we see something that's
much lower and much more like every other library that as we tested all of our libraries Plus both Town libraries and then you know the number wasn't anything near those so we're just trying to make sure and we have a deep cleaning process going on at the library so we'll
retest at the end of this vacation week and if the numbers are back down i' feel comfortable in opening the library back up but I think long and short that I think the building from what we're seeing from the air quality test so far does not seem to be you know sort of an
indoor air issue son this really abnormal result for the library okay that's very helpful thank you Michael back to you so I would like to reassure you despite you know everything else that's going on that we are still very much focused on the teaching and learning that's going on in
the building and ensuring that the students get all the you know the learning the services that they need to ensure their academic and social wellness and be a success we have the worker under the portrait The Graduate and the Strategic plan and of course
that does have some dollar signs attached to it as well so with that in mind the principles and administration team have put together a number of items which they are hoping that we'll be able to fund in this budget to help to improve that education and continue to
deliver and meet the needs of our students uh and then you had mentioned about positions so this does in my next slide I'll show you how there is some offsetting position reductions but we are looking to hopefully add uh English
language teacher at the high school because we've seen a significant increase in the number of students with English language needs and then like and then also adding a district level a districtwide English language position to both help coordinate all the English language learning that's going on in
District but also to be able to Target where we see you know significant increases so in the last couple of years we've seen an increase in an elementary school and in this year we're seeing a Bigg increase in the high school and we really need a position that can respond to those sorts of
changes we also down here at the bottom of the slide is our plans to introduce a language Rich prek program in chattam elementary school so which brings me on to you know some of the discussions you may be aware of around the preschool
program so right now we have right now we have an integrated special education preschool program so that's around students with special education needs plus peer models who are also part of that program we have a small program here in chattam elementary school and a
bigger program at harit elementary school based in the numbers next year we'll be consolidating that program entirely at harbit elementary school because there's so few chatam Elementary School students who have been chatam elementary chatam students who have been
deemed eligible for that program so with that program moving over to harch elementary school is's an opportunity for us to have a new and a different type of program here at chattam which will also will be districtwide but will serve a a different type of need to meet the need a language needs of students in
the district and so there's an addition for that and I'm just going to jump ahead and I'll come back to the slide but offsetting those Staffing changes we are looking to make some reductions so we're reducing driven by enrollment we're ring two classroom teachers one at
harit elementary school and one at the middle school and then we're also because of that change that I talked about with the preschool the integrated special education preschool all moving to harch there's still even with that there's a a fewer teachers required and
so we're making a reduction on that I should say there's a typo in this slide actually there's two typos but actually there so the then the it says reduced 1.5 FTE that's actually should be reduced 2.0 FTE integrated prek positions and the total savings is
$411,000 so that four reduction offsets the four increase Jan please oh which foreign languages do you teach at the school at the high school we teach uh Spanish French Latin and mandrin oh you're still teaching Latin
huh still have Latin it's very popular yeah good okay thank you Barbara thank you Mr chair um do your teachers know about and apply for the Cap Cod 5 minig grants yes they do yeah we do we got a lot of great any
mileage out of that some great programs so the other just a couple of things I want to highlight in this some of these are small items of5 $7,000 and there's obviously some larger ones so that so as well as those things I've already mentioned the top one here is our elementary math curriculum so we
introdu a new math curriculum at the a two elementary schools which will have professional development costs but also material costs which are assessed to both towns and then we we also have me so one of the things I mentioned earlier is about the growing in diverse needs of
our students so we are seeing although enrollment is going down we are seeing some of the needs of our students growing and so we are a lot of professional development in this budget to provide our staff the training and development that they need so they've got the skills and capacities and capabilities to meet the needs of our
students and so there's a few lines in here around professional development all right and then I just you know I've already mentioned some of this already but we do have we continue to have some facility related projects we continue to replace carpet here in
chattam and at the middle school we're buying looking to buy a new facilities vehicle we contribute we have a stabilization a capital stabilization fund so we ever have a disaster in the middle of the year then we have a fund that we can draw in for that and then as I mentioned we have the money that we've
the budgeted for the high school construction and for the middle school project and then can I just a summary of things are driving up our I'm sorry you just skip back to the last one I think Joan has a question as do I yes before we leave this uh what is restorative
justice professional development so so these days we have an approach where we're trying to do uh the best we can when it comes to uh supporting teachers and at the same time
supporting students to keep them uh in school and to have students who let's say make poor decisions uh not just get what as a former High School uh teacher and former High School principal
not have a vacation day at home uh with a suspension but instead you have some productive consequence so uh and the state the state has actually been pushing very much for that it's you know the state really wants to see you of
school suspension is like the last thing you go to but in order to really bolster our programs uh we've been putting a big focus on the concept of restorative justice that you know that we you know that if you if you've breached a norm
within a classroom or the school that you know that you sort of pause have a conversation about it and you know hopefully you know hopefully build a culture where it doesn't happen again we actually have a presentation that's going to be happening before the school
committee tonight just on the data of of putting this restorative justice Approach at the high school and how much the discipline uh referrals that are dropping by addressing it from a restorative you know standpoint first as
opposed to oh you made a mistake detention or suspension so it's it's so the the professional development is you know is taking the the position that we added where it's somebody that's working
with students in you know with that sort of approach so we added a position this past year uh you know with the school committee's support uh and and now it's taking that philosophy and really doing professional embed development to embed
that approach in the classroom teachers with the classroom teachers I think that's excellent thank you my just another question on the last slide if we could please um under the renegotiated uh District agreement uh
excuse me agreement town of chadam has Carriage of capital spending at chadam Elementary yes so that 40K for the carpet is on us yes and that's included in the assessment already that's already reflected thank
you so yeah just some other right spots I guess in the budget that's driving up those costs uh we can continue to struggle with our property insurance it generally goes up like 15% a year we don't seem to be able to do much about that uh those budget requests we've
talked about staff when we've talked about insurance so I mean it's a sign of times when we talk about only 6.5% but we had originally budgeted for a 10% increase so 6.5 was good news we continue to see our building maintenance
cost go up a lot does not as we had some significant jumps over the last couple of years we might be leveling off now hopefully but just you know the cost of Maintenance the you know the contract Services their rates go up every year and so that's reflected and then at that
out of District tuition which we've already talked about so we've seen the number of placements and the cost of those placements increase so this is the slide I've already shown you so we jumped ahead and we saw this this is and we are drawing in a couple of sources to increase the amount of money available to offset the
budget and I just you know just as we almost come to the end I've just got a few more slides but just looking at enrollment what we see happening over the next few years is we see enrollment going continuing to go down so what this chart shows you is going back to
fy16 the enrollment at each of our schools so the blue boxs at the bottom is chattam then orange is hartch gray is the middle school and yellow is the high school and uh the dotted box
groups together those FY 27 and Beyond projections I mean FY 26 is also really a projection but that's what we're expecting for next year and so if you look at fy2 you can see that we were at 739 right now at the at the high school which is the highest that enrollments
ever been at the high school so we've seen this big bubble kind of coming up through the school and we're now the highest we've been but we are expecting we look at the numbers of students coming up behind them because while that's the highest that's been this number down here oh Sor you can't see but the number at the middle school was
395 which is the lowest that's been and that's the numbers that are coming up to replace those outgoing high school students over the next few years so we see the high school enrollment going down Middle School going down harit and chattam staying relatively stable but that's that's really a virtue of the
numbers we have we don't really know what prek and kindergarten is going to look like I mean we have some sense of it for next year but even then kindergarten there's still variations and our expectations and what we actually get and then two or three years out as anybody's guess we do look at the
birth rate birth data from five years ago from mon from harit and chatam but you know especially when you have so much movement going on that's not always super reliable but we do see en rment and so that's why we have some comfort you know although we've increased the reason it comes after this slide is though we are dipping into some of those
reserves we are confident that we're going to see some of our costs go down as our enrollment goes down over the next few years so Michael as you as you look at that I mean you just made a reference to you some of the costs go down what I mean sorry
yeah how do you I mean what do you think about this what you know as as an educator as a finance officer what challenges does it present to you what opportunities does it present to you what keeps you up at night when you look at these Trends yeah so that's a great that so yeah that's a good question in a
long conversation probably but I mean I think so so so we are seeing this trend so we are seeing that so if we had fewer students if you know and that doesn't it doesn't go down like this it sort of steps down you get to a point where you need a couple less classroom teachers
and you do have a saving and we are seeing that this year even we're able to reduce harit in the middle school but at the same time we are seeing an increase in the needs of those students so we do need more English language teachers more spe our special education costs have G up in all variety of ways but I do so I
do think that I mean the difference between servicing 739 students at the high school 620 I mean that's 100 for your students I feel that's definitely going to impact on the number of staff that we need in that building I mean this is I mean I'm just this is just talk right so freelancing I get it yeah
so what it'll actually look like when we get there I don't know but it does I mean you know right now the high school Pell they're bursting at the seams so we're using flexible spaces or currently classrooms that won't be the case in three years time if these these projections bear out the things that so
that kind of makes me comfortable where we are in terms of our costs it does make me nervous in terms of our budget our Revenue because as the superintendent mentioned our school choice revenue is going to go down and that is a part of our budget it will impact our Chapter 70 the money we get from the state although the Chapter 70
has this line in it right now that you're held harmless so your money never goes down so it doesn't go up as much as it would if your enrollment was increasing but it never goes lower you have a per pupil minimum increase of like 30 or $60 per student so you always get a little bit of a bump so it doesn't
actually go down so and if your enrollment is going down this much then that helps to you know offset that that actually is a positive trend so I think we'll be able to meet the needs of our students I think we'll be in terms of opportunities you know maybe we'll be able to you know Flex our staff to meet
our students more wiely it does in some ways it'll be harder to uh um you know you'll be if there's fewer students it's harder to continue to justify the same level of Staffing so there's lots of questions tasks and pressures will push
in one way or another I I think from a superintendent standpoint this is where I make a business manager go gray and lose his hair um you know I no only here um I I I think you know like I I would have a a saying that it's it's far more
challenging to go operate in a situation where you're seeing you know decline you know you know decline in enrollment you know and decline in Staffing paralleled with at the same time we have we have lofty and important things important work that we've
identified in the Strategic plan you know yeah and I think one of the you know one of the things that we you know Robin and I Robin M our assistant superintendent and I and the high school principal Middle School principal were visiting schools and will'll continue to
visit other schools but we visited two schools in Rhode Island that are actually slightly smaller than our High School uh but offer a pretty robust uh career path within a high school and and
again it's not it's not wanting to replace what's happening over at over at Cape Tech but we have students every year who either choose not to go to Cape Tech or don't get into Cape Tech because their enrollments full yet want some
sort of career pathway and we want to make sure that we're doing right by kids and that we're preparing them for for their Futures you know so you know so we're engaged in conversations on okay this is what we've been doing for the
last 12 years of of as Monomoy now how can we overlay on top of that you know some career clusters where students let's say want to go uh get an experience with uh Finance and Accounting and how do we how do we put
that in at a time where things are shrinking and and you know looking at models out there that you know that other schools you have been able to do that how can we learn from them and I think what you know what you to jump on is some things that Michael has said I think a couple
times in this I think what we're also seeing and we've seen this across the 12 years that we've been together as Monomoy the needs of our children continue to increase while the enrollments declining you so you know we
could go back and pull the numbers for you but if you look at how many of our families were frame Ru lunch 12 years ago how many were how many of our families were economically challenged then versus now it's
increased substantially if you look at at the number of students that are in our district that are English language Learners or that don't have English as first language at home over the 12 years it's increased substantially to the point that you in this Pres presentation
it's us adding to English language teachers and also also trying to focus on adding a program at the preschool level that can better support students to be kindergarten ready that's a language Rich preschool just knowing
that there are families out there who haven't been accessing the preschool opportunities that we've made available and and I I I I really am so proud of our two towns to have those vouchers available but there's still kids that
are showing up at preschool I mean showing up in kindergarten without that preschool experience to help and we want to find a way to go you identify who those families are and better support them to have their children kindergarten ready so hence the program at chadam
elementary school I appreciate that I mean it's obviously a trend over the last deck at even Elite liberal arts uh institutions having a slightly more career perspective at least in some parts of their of their curriculum so good for you guys for thinking of that
yeah and I say tongue and cheek you know my daughter is in her junior year at the business school at the University of Georgia you know who she has occasionally in her first you know year there been it's like okay Dad how come you know like accounting was like a really challenging class for me it would
have been nice if we had an accounting class at the high school so I could have had a you little I'm like yep I I hear you I hear you we're working on it we're thinking about it that's good that's helpful thank you so the the last couple of Sayes actually are just uh kind of
reality check slide so this just Compares our expenditure to other school districts just to make sure that we're just to get a sense of where we are that we're in the right ballpark so what this chart shows is the per pupil cost per pupil expenditure for all districts in
the state so it starts with the lowest on the far left and it's their ordered until you get to the highest on the right so it's a state calculation so there's some things in there and some things not in there so it's not as simple just taking our budget and divid them by the number of staff students but
it does give you a nice way to compare States districts and get a sense of where we are so in this so unfortunately the most recent data you can get is for FY 23 FY 24 is not out yet but this shows you so we are right now ranked
121st from the most expensive to the lowest out of 390 reporting districts and so that you can see it's actually the red line you can just about make out in about 2third of the way up the slide and it's labeled there and you can see some of the districts around us so I
have I put noset so noset sign a little bit higher I mean that's partly because NOS it's only the middle school and the high school and that's part of the reason although it's mixed because middle and high school is normally more expensive actually in no's case if you added in Orleans and Brewster they would
probably be you know because they're relatively small per pupil cost is also high so that wouldn't might not make that much difference whereas harit Elementary School the pair pupil cost is probably a little lower because it's so big for an elementary school you can see Dennis Yarmouth is a little lower than us and then the state is a little
further over not quite halfway up and if you go back a this is 22 so we're kind of over 114th out of 398 in 22 to so you can see we're kind of around the same place and even if you go back to fy14 We
Were still in that sort of similar neck of the woods really the big change there is dy has kind of drifted past us to go lower pair pup but that just gives you a sense of where we are and a as we hear a lot of districts this year and also last
year when we didn't have as as big an increase they we've seen increases of a similar percentage to us so I think I don't envisage US changing that much on this slide next year so that's that's our budget budget request at the moment so coming up we so
we do have there's this there's a small change to the foundation enrollment that I'm just working out with the state right now because that thing I mentioned earlier we we now need the grade breakdown so I kind of have to work that out and check against the state's numbers and we're out by a really small
amount so I'm just fixing that so as we fix that that also we will get more information from the state about what their budget looks like the next phase in the state budget I mean at some point you just have to draw a line because obviously their state not often their the state budget is finalized after we need to finalize our budget but if if we
get more updates in the next CLE next month or so I'll update the budget and we will continue to present to yourselves I think we might be coming back to talk about one of our our articles to the fincom and to the sight boards and then the school vote on the budget takes place on March 13th and
that's when we have our final budget number which unless there's a major change we'll be quite close to what we have now if not exactly terrific well thank you both very much questions further questions additional questions comments observations nothing of the
sort okay really comprehensive um really appreciate the effort oh I'm sorry Eric sorry about that um no worries I assume have you have you already presented to Hart and how is the reception um either with the select board or the finance
committee or both uh we haven't Pres presented yet in harwitch uh but I've been there for a couple different conversations that were probably more along the lines of uh how to deal with
the middle school and let's just say there there may be some foreshadowing of what what Michael and I might hear um when we present the budget there Al said Eric all set yes thanks okay thank you all
right terrific thank you very much really appreciate it a lot of work goes into that and uh we're grateful for it thank you thank you very much all right so next um on the agenda at least the scheduling a report to the select board just a bit of an update
wow sorry bit of an update um was able to Cobble together enough energy yesterday to to get probably half the report done um my goal is to finish it
tomorrow and get it to you guys it might be Saturday morning um it obviously encompasses everything we've spoken about and kind of the directionality and the like but I want you all to take a critical eye to it um I think from a process perspective to
the extent you've got comments on the draft we can't obviously wait until Tuesday to exchange conversations around that but if you have ideas or if I'm you know out outside the lines or something just send me an email or pick up the phone we won't have deliberations but I'll I'll take the observations under
advisement and if there's enough energy around that amongst different members of the committee then I'll obviously incorporate the changes but I'm trying to adhere pretty well to to what my instructions have been um and then I guess that was it I had something else in my mind but it's
probably drifted away um so I guess we'll take a motion to adjourn oh Barbara please happy birthday Mr chair thank you thanks Barbara did you bake me a cake how about some
cupcakes well thank you it's very kind um that might be another reason why I may not be able get the report done by tomorrow morning uh okay I'll take a motion to adjourn please so moved back all right thank you Tommy yes Barbara yes Joan yes
Andy yes Kristen yes Eric yes chair wants to go to his birthday party yes please all right thank you guys appreciate it car thank you
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