##VIDEO ID:k3nxvnuVaVk## to access and watch inperson public participation will be taking place tonight in accordance with the chum school committee public participation policy anyone speaking tonight during the public input portion of this meeting has notified the superintendent's office of the desire to speak and provided with these guidelines P request written comments received no later than 12:00 p.m. on the day of this meeting will also be read and made a part of the record of the meeting during the second public input session so welcome to this meeting um our first order of business is to approve our minutes from our meeting on G January 21st okay I move that we approve the minutes of the regular school committee meeting of January 21 2025 second second okay anybody have any corrections on the minutes right all those in favor of approval I and want Obsession all right next up we'll hear from our CH high school student representative all right so the boys swim team recently won NBC and they're already up to fundraising their fundraiser will be on at uh on Thursday KJ Cafe from 11: to 1: p.m. um Lucas Farrell had his yearly wrestling match um this following Wednesday um against Austin Hill from chord wrestling um coach coach Chris Pon was very um happy with the attendance from the fans as there's a whole section filled up which he doesn't really see a lot at the wrestling meets and uh the O capella groups the Thursdays and the crescendos um recently competed at New England voices the crescendos actually finished second and they got a clinching spot um for semi-finals so congratulations to them and good luck to them and the chess club is hosting their qualifying practices on February 14th for the marac valley chess tournament on March 22nd at L High great thank you very much all right any good news to share we have one one piece of good news I wasn't sure if that was going to fall into the high school but um our teaching fellows for our International teaching fellows are here in the district um we have three between chumford high school and McCarthy Middle School this year there's a total of 22 of them I was actually just at your mass today looking at their poster presentations they'll be at our next meeting for you to you know meet little meet and greet and talk about their experiences so we're just happy to have them back again this year great anybody else have good news this year uh just wanted to give a a real shout out to the McCarthy drama group that had a wonderful production of Willie Wonka Jr that I got to see last weekend great work everybody great right I don't think we have any public comment we don't we're on to new business right into new business and um we have Christine Clancy at DPW director uh with us tonight um Christine comes quarterly to just share some of the highlights about the work that DPW uh does to maintain the schools and to uh respond to different service requests um so happy to have Christine here tonight to just review the the second quarter so thanks Christine sure thank you for having me tonight so this is the second quarter update to provide um on update on the school work orders uh and also I'll talk also about a new program that we're imple we've just started implementing as of two weeks ago new software upgrade that has some enhanced um abilities in terms of the tracking reporting um and it's really a great looking forward to using that enhanced program so for the second quarter uh we um again we so we report right now on all work orders that are completed by each location and by trade and we do track that um internally but also just want to provide you an update so I was last year um in the fall and provided an update for the first quarter which a lot of work happens over the summer so for the first quarter it was a total of 431 school work orders um and we do track a completion so about 83% of those were complete that first quarter or 346 um in terms of locations we have all the locations but then what we are tracking in terms of we track uh electrical HVAC Plumbing carpentry which could be related to windows and doors as well Roofing painting playground or sight site work delivery snow ice parking and then other general maintenance um and so to report on this quarter um I would say that it's actually similar to last quarter we have I guess a less less amount of work orders and actually an increased completion rate so for this quarter which is between October 1st 20 24 and at the end of the calendar year December 31st uh a total of 353 work orders were completed and 93 completion rate so I think it shows that we're we're getting to a lot of our work orders that are entered um and I'll get into some abilities in this new software in in a few minutes um the report uh is broken down by location so you can see by location um obviously most of our work orders are generated from the high school um our largest facility um and then all the way down to this building where we have you know probably the least amount of work orders uh we all we show the completion per location um and that varies anywhere from 79% which is here really it's because it's 14 work orders and just three are just not complete um and all way up towards 98% um looking at by trade and I think this is very helpful for us because this shows where we you know have um if we have any workload um issues or ongoing work um a lot of and also if you look at each quarter different um you know depends so we usually receive more Landscaping site playground work orders in the summer um now we're getting into you with the winter there's more um work winter like this Plumbing roof we see a lot so for the second quarter um we always have a lot of general maintenance work orders and that I think in terms of completion rate that's about 95% um if you look at uh roof water leaks that's actually our lease percentage that's 25% it's eight roof leaks across the district and a lot of that is because roof leaks are tricky roof leaks could be become a plumbing issue it could become it could be a roof issue I did look at those work orders specifically these eight um and sometimes this just a patch that we have to repair again also sometimes a leak appears we see a work order come in um and then we don't when we go out there we don't we have to kind of see more um have another rain event to really follow up on that leak so we do have those documented we don't close them out until we repair them so that's why for that category it shows that um it's 25% because those are usually longer uh more ongoing uh take more time to investigate um and also in terms of our trade so we have you know we have in-house electrician inhouse HVAC also we have on call with HVAC and plumbing that is that's really the largest amount of our work orders um you know so 72 total for plumbing 57 total for HVAC and 54 for electrical for this next quarter update but you'll see a lot of HVAC just because a lot of the winter months um so that is that's an update on the up on the for both locations and by trades but I also want to just provide an update on the software so I did talk to you in the first quarter about um an opportunity to enhance our software so with both the town and the school side we use this this work order system it previously was called School dude um owned by brightly Solutions that's now um really the new software is called asset Essentials so we completed training ear um mid January um that training was we have about 70 people across town um within the school system in town buildings that take this that took this training um the enhanced opportunities with this is that it has a mobile function so it's great whereas right before we had this opportunity um we were sometimes printing out work orders and giving them to our um technicians now we can just send them an alert they get it in their phone more real time and it's great because if they're in the South Row school and they see another alert maybe they can you know check it out before going on to their next work order so we do think that we'll see some improved efficiencies it also has some enhanced capabilities with um preventative maintenance so before it was more of a manual import whereas we can actually program um preventative maintenance I guess in an easier fashion and it has sets more reminders um there's more Dash board functions so myself or um superintendent Lane can set up like he can go in and see well what's all the emergency work orders that popped up in this building so this different um analytics that potentially could be provided so I do think that you know for this year we have this reporting um in this fashion but next year there's maybe some enhanced opportunities with how to report uh work complete you do days you know days aged um and so happy to to see how uh we transition to this program we're in week three it's going pretty well um I haven't had any I think people are EAS can easily access the program um the staff love it because they can again see things on their mobile you can also upload photos so both the person requesting and en closing out a work order can upload photos and we can close work orders more real time whereas again that was something that was more manually done after the fact um and so a goal this year is really just to learn the software which we already doing a great job but just start this transition and then also this has an asset management function that school do didn't really have it was purely location based and just generating work orders over time we can actually tie some of the work orders to assets so how many times did we service a boiler and how and you can potentially put in labor hours cost and that's something for um Capital planning was is going to be very useful in the future so something to look forward to um probably we might start looking at just boilers for the next year but then we'll over the years we can work on um put in some more assets um I don't know there any particular questions whether our current reporting or the new system any questions work is always yeah I just want to make a comments the number the numbers look great I mean you know we've been at these reports for a while but 95% 94 those are those are great numbers yeah so we did I think also part of that was part of the transitioning because we wanted to purge the old system so we took all the old work orders and we moved into the new system and we really I think this past quarter did a really great job of going through and making sure we could Purge it and make sure everything was truly an outstanding work order so that's probably part of the the reporting to the 93% but still yeah we're we're busy um and U looking forward to this new software Marie do you have a question thank you I think it's just one fascinating but really this this report because one of the things I always have a hard time with is when we come up to the capital planning things you know we need to replace the elevator but then there's another thing that's just just as important as the elevator so now if you can tell that you know the elevator has been serviced 20 times and it cost us this amount of money versus what the other item it's going to be good yes over time I think it will take some time to get all have all the information imported um but we are going to try out just tracking or even just hours spent on potentially hours spent on a certain asset so yet that will be a useful tool in tool in the future pretty good anybody else questions or comments I just want one question on the the roofing ones are these roofs that we already are planning to work like I know we doing something at South roow we're doing something at McCarthy a little bit something yeah so I was looking at the particular work orders and a lot of them are actually in the high school and I know that roof is getting is getting older it's not in the immediate replacement but so I we're going we'll look at that um so I think it's roofs that are planned in the near future not in the current projects that we have um from the South Road or looking at the McCarthy um also I know the biome school and also like sometimes these leaks are really aren't anything and so we see a leak we kind of tag it as a roof leak it could be a it could be plumbing and so I do need to loop back around with the one at biome but looking at the ones at the high school they were associated with um older sections of the high school roof um so well and that is coming up CL that is in the near term I think in the next 5 years if I remember um so it's becoming an older older asset all right anything else any other questions all right well thank you very much thank you so much very much appreciate it you want a grum roll or something for the for the budget uh no we actually we'll shift into the uh second item on the agenda this evening which is the discussion of the uh the recommended budget for uh fiscal 26 I'm going to recap um a little bit of the information that we talked about previously at the tri board meeting back in December and then um as as I sat to talk Joanna we'll we'll pass around the U the documents which ultimately we'll be posted up to the website uh if not later on tonight uh tomorrow morning Jenny will Jenny will get that up uh for us but um just want to share again some highlights talk a little bit about um uh tribe Ward exactly where we're at approaching the budget process a couple of the things that I think you'll find um helpful is when it comes to the budget document we basically adopted a um a budget format which I think has worked very well um some some years ago so for consistency sake when you open up the budget itself the first 10 or so pages are really um some narrative and again I'm going to go through some of that narrative when I do the overview slides in a few minutes and then um starting on page seven it talks a little bit about Christine thanks again um talks a little bit about next year's budget page 10 has the summary level totals and as a reminder so tonight um you're actually just getting the budget I'm just going to kind of talk to you about what some of the highlights of the budget are what we use to formulate the budget and then when we come back the Tuesday after February break because we're off for two weeks we come back that Tuesday night and we actually have a public budget hearing so that'll be advertised and that's the evening where we actually kind of go Page by Page through the budget ask questions and get information things along those lines um so we'll start our budget review on page 11 and go right uh through the end after the regular what we call a category level detail of the budget is the staff salary book which ties out to the budget pages so as you're reading through it you have that and then we have some appendices at the back which people have found um have found helpful if there's an extra book Patrick could have one um Patrick We're going to include you we're going to give you a budget book follow I bet you've been dying for one of these things I want you to carry it under your shoulder when you're in school carry it around um so what we'll end up doing is I'm only joking by the way um you might just want to the the first appendix is the um some of the class enrollment data that we have from the district Joanna also puts together Grant revolving fund data for us um so you have all of that we'll actually do that uh Tuesday night the 25th when we reconvene again is go Page by Page and ultimately when you approve the individual pages feeds up to that summary level uh data and on page 10 you'll see that the recommendation uh before you and I'd worked with uh Tom maner Cohen and his staff on U budget for overall town but including the schools of 7565 million for next year it amounts to um a million um. 77 million increase for next year or 2.4% um with our local operating budget and again the slides that we'll review we'll kind of walk you through um how we got there um the slideshow that I'm sharing with you tonight is not in the budget book um so you can some of the charts certainly are but I'm just going to work off of the uh slide but uh for the members watching from home with regard to the current fiscal year budget that we're in fiscal 25 um we're in very solid shape so we have collective bargaining agreements in effect with all of our employ unions they actually expir this June 30th with the exception of the custodians the custodians are off cycle so they have one more year to go but our teachers our paraprofessional support staff um our secretaries and clerks and um Library individuals all are up this uh this coming June so we negotiations are beginning with all of those groups um when it comes regard to the Personnel lines and the non-personnel lines I really have no concerns over the current fiscal 25 uh budget we're in good shape on that uh Point as Joanna indicated last uh at the last meeting when she did the um or the last time she did a quarterly up date we'll likely have some surpluses again in the current year budget um sometime in March as we close the third quarter is typically when we bring some recommendations to you for onetime spending we don't want to use um surplus funds in the current year budget to do something that's going to be sustainable or require sustaining in the following year so that's when we've actually done some investments in some capital projects that we haven't been able to get to that's a good time to buy some equipment if we need to sometimes we bought you know curriculum materials things along those lines so that discussion we'll start to have in um in March um to let you know kind of what goes into the budget process Joanna and her staff in the business office Don of the assistant and um I really in the fall start uh individual meetings so we meet with individual schools we talk to the individual departments we get uh requests we verify staff that are needed for the current programs that we have uh programs that we would like to provide in the uh in the coming years and that really work gets underway right around the end of October and it runs right up until about Thanksgiving and then between Thanksgiving and the holidays is when we actually do our projections on budget we do our um different scenarios that that come into play um you recall we had a meeting with the tribal in December and talked a little bit about the total townwide um outlook on budgeting and certainly fiscal 26 and 27 are going to be um challenging years I know it's been talked about so I won't get like too deeply into that um but when we get into the budget a little bit later I'll touch on a couple of different areas that are going to uh to affect us but um I think the budget before you this evening that you're gonna have a few weeks to kind of read through as you do that if there's any questions that come up please let me know ahead of time I'm happy to provide you background information so that when we get together on the 25th we can have a good conversation um so please feel free to reach out ask anything you uh you need to um so that we can have that that hearing and kind of move through it before we get uh too deep into the budget itself this was some of the data that we shared at the triw meeting and again um we always try to Benchmark ourselves uh Statewide what's happening in education uh across the state what's happening in Chelmsford um we have different communities in the marac valley that we often compare with whether it be our neighbors like bker tuxbury North Andover um L tingbo uh things along those lines but the state actually each year comes up with what your 10 most comparable districts are based on your demographics based on the grade level configurations that you have um and they come up with some analysis and provide data with regard to where you stand with those individual districts so one of the things that always uh is talked about when we take a look at finances across the state is how much it actually is costing to educate a student in districts um or per pupil expenditures so the last year that we actually have published data from desie is fiscal 23 now if you recall we're in fiscal 25 so it does definitely have a year lag because we're still going through the audits at 24 they won't be able to post those until they're audited um we've always tried to be um kind of in the middle of the pack you know we haven't been a district that's been on the very top of the U the spending we haven't been a district that's been to the bottom uh most of our Trend data is typically in the middle um we will see that based on the fiscal 23 data we actually did fall to the um kind of the bottom third of districts with regard to uh per pupil spending uh in the in the state the state average is actually the third from the top at 20767 per child and in chumps for 23 we were 16,99 um and that's the IND District students that we have of the district it doesn't take into consideration students who might be in out of District placements those are the actual students who um are in the chord Public Schools classrooms at our eight Schools On Any Given uh day for education purposes has Newton been on our comps before they actually just going on this year yeah they just jumped in this year for the first time so every year the uh State takes a look at the data request the state to see who you're comparable with because they do take a look at special ed data they do take a look at your L population they take a look at your um overall because Newton's much larger they take a look at your overall uh demographics and Newton happened to come up in our mix this year we don't get to pick who they are U but I was a little surprised when uh when Newton came in interestingly enough uh Burlington used to be um on Burlington was on for a couple years and Burlington is a high spend District so they typically were at the top I was a little surprised to see Burlington fall off and then new was at it um we have no control over it it's just what we Benchmark to Statewide but um that was new this year um another area that we take a look at and you'll often hear is um you know how we're doing with regard to student staff ratios um again this one was a little surprising because again we've typically been middle of the pack on this particular group um does have a little bit to do with the different uh districts that the state are now saying are comparables and um this again can be deceiving so I want to throw it out there for people watching um we don't actually have 34 uh 13.4 students in a particular classroom what this is doing is just basically a district-wide benchmark it's taking all students in your district and all licensed staff members that are working with them and just really dividing that to come up with a ratio um Newton who's at the top who has the most favorable the lowest student teachers they don't have 11 kids in a class either you know like we don't have 13 but this is just a good indication of kind of overall Staffing wise and what it just says to me me uh and I think we'll we'll talk about this certainly this year and the years to come we're not overstaffed when it comes to um teaching or Support Services instruction Services we're providing and this is something that we actually tried to work on um having an attractive student teacher uh ratio and I think in the years to come certainly we'd like to see that uh drop and for us to start moving a little bit towards the uh the middle of the pack you'll also see the state average um obviously is is right in the middle of the pack at just under 12 students um so we're not drastically off but it certainly is a benchmark that communities use when they take a look at um spending um another area and again this will obviously come up as we're getting into negotiations with our employee groups um the fiscal 23 data on teacher salary is the last data that's been certified and again we typically um had been middle of the pack on this one and we did fall a little bit to the bottom third of districts in our comparables um our average teacher salary for fiscal 23 was 86,50 across the state it was about 4,000 higher at 89576 and you can see the range going up to almost $100,000 um across the state with our comparable districts a quick question on that yeah so it's average teacher salary so can that be varied based like is it possible that Newton just has a higher percentage of teachers at their higher steps than we might have at the moment and therefore it looks like they get a higher salary but it might just be more of them happen to be there yes it's in individual District by District so you just can't tell what it means in any Town based on number of teachers at AT that average level yeah I mean again these are averages when you take a look at like again my read on this is when you look at like the 10 different communities um it's going to be a little bit all over the place and we typically have tended to be more in the middle of the pack um and making a little bit of progress um as we've talked about again I'm sure we'll talk about negotiations our um entry point for teachers really steps one through five or six are very attractive you know we're actually either number one or number two in our comparable districts when we take a look at the greater marac Valley because when you do look at teacher salaries you're typically looking more at your immediate um counterparts because people aren't likely to travel more than a half an hour you know 45 minutes to work so some of these districts like someone is not going to probably drive from L to Franklin uh you know to work it's it's just highly unlikely um so our pool for that is typically the meramac valley unities that are directly adjacent to us and we do know that we're number one and number two at the very low end of the pay scale we're very attractive we've done in negotiations what we call like an add drop in a couple of contracts so we've added a step on the top and we've taken a step off on the bottom to make that entry a little bit higher that certainly helped us for recruiting purposes um it takes a little bit of time for those teachers to kind of work their way up the system and what we do see is typically we fall a little bit short on the high end of the scale so on the top of the teacher scale is is where we kind of move to the middle of the pack but because we're moving to the middle of the pack and some of the other districts are obviously above us on the top step in most districts the vast majority of their staff are on the top step like for us over half of our staff is on top step and if half of our staff on top step are only in the middle of the pack salary-wise and you do a full averaging we're then kind of moving down towards the bottom where other districts if they happen to be paying higher higher than us the bulk of their staff are on top step um their averages are just going to come out higher um so that's that's a lot of times why that happens it's just a data point again to kind of look at always give the complete picture it's not as though ours our salaries are falling it it's the whole mix of it's the distribution of staff on your salary grd right in addition to the years of service right because most that's what I'm saying the years of service could make a difference on Newton might just have a lot of teachers at a certain Lev veteran teachers yes and also um degrees as well because there were different contracts that have different degree columns and you also typically receive additional funding if you not funding additional compensation if you're in a higher degree Lane um those aren't always apples to Apple comparisons either and and they have a much larger staff it's well right but they have many more kids you know so that's you have to kind of take a look at all the different data points together and again I don't ever say we need to be you know at this particular point I think this is just good information because you hear about it in public you may hear about it kind of talked about and just for comparison purposes you want to kind of get a sense for like where you're stacking up compared to your comparable districts and again I don't think chumford has always um kind of obviously shot for the top but we've been kind of in the middle of the band we're in the middle of the band when it comes to overall spending which I'll show you in a minute um you know it's just something for us to be cognizant of because I know again it'll it'll come up in our um in our discussions um so here's here's a number this actually uh kind of makes a lot of sense when it comes to net School spending so you'll hear net School spending being we talked a lot about because it ties directly to Chapter 70 State a that you receive but um all districts in the state are required to basically uh meet net School spending which is the minimum amount of money the state indicates is required to provide what they term an adequate education so if all uh school systems have to hit that kind of floor um the kind of the competition if you want to call it or the data point really then becomes how much are you spending above that floor how much are you spend spending above the minimum and in chelmsford's uh stake again fiscal 23 was the last year that was certified we spent 33.6% more than the minimum um sometimes you know if you just heard that number uh out there and you didn't have contacts you might say well that's that's great well 33.6% is actually um slightly higher than the state average so we're a little bit over the state average but it's right in the middle of the comps for our districts so it's not you know Marshfield was actually low at only 13.7% um all the way up to you know Newton again is an outlier but even if you look at like an Andover which we're a little bit more compared to sometimes just because of proximity they're 63.9% um so again that's just significant context to have as we um kind of take a look at this um we take a look at the budget situation and keep an eye on tracking for funding for uh for future years um this is a slide that we shared at the tri board meeting just to give you a sense of exactly what are the budget drivers for the school Department budget um so we were looking for our kind of fixed cost for what we term like a level service budget for next year of being at about three and a half million um that would provide funding to set aside for negotiations because one of the things that we have to do in the school department budget is actually budget what anticipated raises would be if we're going to have a um contract negotiations and salary increases we need to have that in our budget so that when we settle contracts we can actually uh Implement them um it's a little bit different on the town side side where uh they can negotiate contracts then go to town meeting to have a contract funded we actually have to include that money as a line item in our budget or the money has to be there somewhere for that we talked a little bit about how we have salary scales and we have steps so um those have already been negotiated if a teacher is currently on step three we know next year that they're moving regardless of the contract to step four and there's a cost for moving steps so that's about an $800,000 cost which is not insignificant that's a a significant cost for us that's already built in we then On Any Given year have individuals that do move uh between our lanes so again a lane would be a bachelor's degree to maybe a master's degree or master's degree to a master's plus 60 credits or a doctorate something along those lines so those are called Lane changes so that also uh equates to but another $150,000 of costs and then lastly in our contract we have some employees who qualify for a retirement incentive so if they actually tell us ahead of time that they're going to be retiring at the end of the year they're uh they receive a a retirement incentive at the end of June that number fluctuates each year based on retirements we actually don't have a significant number of retirements this coming year um but that was at the time when we're putting this together about 130 and I do believe it's actually come down a little bit um when we put the final budget document together so that's a pretty significant chunk of money about $2 and A5 million dollars just on the Personnel side of the budget and then we have uh slightly less than that on the non-personnel we know we are in a fixed Transportation contract for our big buses uh that has a a year of increases we have special education uh contract that has increases built into it as well as from time to time we have to add a vehicle based on the number of students we may have that need to be transported um we have AO District tuition so in addition to the kids who actually are educated within the schools we have kids that have to go outside the district to either uh like Val collaborative is our collaborative they may need to go to a private school or a public Day School um so we have those costs Associated within the budget we have um utility costs which are increasing I know in my home you know my heating my electric is going up it's the same is going to happen for us but obviously to a higher level just because of the squ footage of the spaces that we have to heat and light um and then there were just different uh increases in um just general contracted services that we have in the uh in the budget which equated to about um $3.5 million so that was a number that didn't overly change you know about that three and a half million is what we were looking for for uh to try to make the budget work and in our discussion with the uh School uh principles and the admin SE early on we said listen we know that this is going to be a very lean budget year in years past we've been able to um add some positions add some programming really specifically around special education to meet some of the student needs that we have um we're not really going to have the luxury to do uh a lot of that this year so we really need to look at what we have and make sure that we're um really spending the money wisely that if there is a need that that comes up that we need to fund um we need to find ways to do tradeoffs within our budgets so if we have to add something we have to take something out um so basically in the budget that that is um is what we've done um in the budget document itself we have um what we know for next year so we know we already have salary schedules that are in effect now that are going to be there for next year so we have budgeted you know everyone advancing steps and Lanes as we talked about previously because we know that that's there for the base and if we negotiate a new contract increase that contract increase is going to go on top of the steps and Lane so we've already accounted for that and the handful of teacher vacancies that we have we've assumed savings from lot mostly a teacher would retire close to or at top step and they'd be replaced by someone um at a lesser step so we have found averaging step three has worked for us for Budget planning purposes it's aggressive U but I think that's what we've done it's again it has worked worked and this budget takes that into consideration the only two new kind of Staffing scenarios that we have uh built into the budget and these again fall into the realm of trade-offs um as you know over the last three years we've been implementing a language-based um special education program at the middle school level we didn't have one previously we had a cohort of students who really required some very intensive specialized reading services and support around Ela to be able to access curriculum and make progress um so three years ago we added a fifth grade classroom to Parker we then have those kids moved up to sixth but we had a new cohort coming in so we had to add them um this past year we added a seventh grade at McCarthy so we do need to add a language based teacher at McCarthy in the eth grade because we have the cohort continuing and this is actually going to be the last year that we have to add a teacher because now we're going to have a teacher at each of the grade levels we're going to have one of five six seven eight so we have to do that we had to try to find a way to uh fund that and we happen to have a again this is at McCarthy we have a a reading teacher uh who's going to be retiring at the end of the year um so our recommendation is to basically uh that would be a trade we would not fill the reading position at the mcarthy middle school instead we would hire a reading language based uh position which is also at McCarthy I uh number one would want to tell you that not just do it on my own without telling you but at the same time those funding sources are on two different sections of the budget so um when we come to the budget you're going to see a reduction in general reading teachers and you're going to see an addition in special education reading teachers uh but they fall in two different areas of the budget but that's basically just a tradeoff it's net neutral to the budget it's net neutral to FTE McCarthy the other request for them is um they actually we we talked about this a year ago and and weren't able to do it this particular year they would like to add a an additional supervisor of students position or an addition student support position to help with um uh student supervision both throughing the hallways bathrooms cafeteria things along those lines um we have now by doing this Middle School model I do think it's working well at five six seven and eight um but we do now have all the seventh and eighth grade students which is typically because of age tend to be a little bit more rang buun than the uh you know fifth and sixth and even the elementary kids we could use a little bit more supervision with the uh with the students um they're willing to um add that additional supervisor students position which would give them two and what they propose is kind of doing a looping almost having someone work primarily with seventh another work with eth and then kind of loop out with the students but they would fund that by reducing a copy clerk position in their school and then also uh a lunch and recess Aid position in this school um in your packet you have a memo from the principal with the rationale for this um part of the rationale obviously we're concerned about time and if a student's at lunch in recess or whatnot then supervisor of students position would actually be in the cafeteria or on the playground at the time the same time the lunch and recess said was there and um they actually have not been able to fill uh one of the positions they have an open L recsa position so uh they had actually just kind of repurposed that portion of the funding uh to be able to account for this so again uh overall it's two FTE going down to one FTE but the one FTE costs more than the two fdes so that's been balanced and accounted for in the uh in the budget those are the only two significant Staffing changes um that you see in the budget um obviously we've gone through uh and you're going to see little tweaks um here and there within the budget with line items but those are the kind of the big ones in the way we've been able to uh basically address the three and a half million that we were looking for uh budget-wise and make uh make the budget work is dealing with this on the revenue side so if we actually work from the bottom up um we know in working with the town manager that the local budget increase the 2.4% amounts to 1.77 million um we had a valley collaborative board of directors meeting in January and their revenue is again uh looking strong for the year um they're going to be recommending returning funds back to member districts of which we are one so we're going to um anticipate an additional Revenue offset from Valley collaborative for next year for $300,000 I think that's a safe bet I'm comfortable budgeting with that um that certainly helped us um another big one is um circuit breaker so circuit breaker is our reimbursement account for special education expenses reimbursements were actually um higher this year than the prior year um and in this budget you're going to when we get to the special ed AO District tuition page you're going to see that we've allocated a little bit more than a million dollars of additional circuit breaker funding um so it looks as a revenue offset you're going to see the costs going up but you're going to see the um the offset is obviously a little over a million dollars higher which uh negates the overall reduction that we would have had to have uh made so that was another significant um area of additional Revenue that's included within this budget um we have a school nutrition uh director position which is in the local budget um that we actually talked about this briefly at tri board um that position is eligible to be paid for out of the school U nutrition revolving fund so uh we're going to change the funding source for that so we're going to recommend removing the 1.0 FTE and that salary and shifting that 1.0 FTE and salary to the revolving fund so it basically has a little over $100,000 um net impact reduction to the local operating budget and then I'm sorry can I just ask a question what funds the school nutrition revolving fund now that students are not paying for um it's reimbursements from the um state and federal government for food so it used to be three poot you used to be able to kind of pay for meal uh breakfast lunch things along those uh and we always got a state and a federal reimbursement now it's basically just all state and federal reimbursement we don't do we actually take in any money for snacks and things yes oh go ahead and speak to them if you like I don't think it's significant though right so if a student maybe they wanted an extra slice of pizza that we charge for an extra bag of chips or a extra you know ice cream bar those we collect uh funds at the register but the um Reg regular breakfast and regular lunch is at no cost to families got it I guess I'm just trying to figure out how we have an extra 110,000 for that line now that we didn't previously have if I imagine costs aren't going up very much since we're only having a few things at Cost anyway things in the Food Service revolving fund used to be much tighter than they are now got it so um and again Joanna can talk more to this than than I can but um during Co um when the reimburse ments were coming in and um really just you want to address this coming in at a higher rate than we were expending we've actually built up a pretty good cushion in the Food Service revolving fund um you know could we have actually offset it last year yes it's just been something that we haven't done that position was always part of the local budget um there could be a time in the future where if the reimbursements don't continue if the state ever went back to not giving you a higher reimbursement and we had to go back to charging meals um we may see a participation drop we may see the revenue at the end of the year and that fund um go down or get to the point where we can't sustain it but for right now we actually do have a healthy balance in that account we can sustain it uh and just given the tightness of budgeting we felt that that was appropriate yeah that's fun I just want to make sure it wasn't like we were going to start finding like ways to charge for food even though the state's covering it and things oh no no it's it's from the fund but do you want to maybe just talk about the the kind of extraordinary reimbursement we've gotten and how that has all dat played up sure so like the superintendent said back and during Co um the reimbursements started to grow then and our staffing model was pretty small then remember families would just come and pick up their food and this and that so that's when the res Reserve kind of started to build and we really weren't purchasing um any Capital Equipment or that for the kitchens at that time because um we were doing everything out of the high school so that's when the reserve really started to build and then once everybody came back uh participation just really soared and then um so we staffed back up um and and then you know with the millionaires tax and everything the governor um did the state reimbursement rate um much higher so those combination of things over the past five years have caused our Reserve to grow so now we're implementing plans to um utilize them within the guidelines um still keep some Reserve available as a superintendent said if um if things change because if the state funding goes away and we have you know decreases back to how it used to be participation will likely decrease because it would be at some cost to families and we'll um adjust as we need to thank you and at the very top of this page um as a way to kind of close the gap as well um you will see when we get to that page of the budget book about it um qu a million dollar $225,000 reduction in the number of uh tutors that we're supporting through the local budget so uh we have always had kind of interventionists or tutors through the title one Grant and that's been uh kind of very targeted to a specific schools specific needs um and then some years ago I want to say three or four years ago um probably right as we're kind entering Co um we wanted to supplement some of those uh positions and have additional tutors uh in the building so we actually funded in the local budget tutoring positions these are you know part-time um positions within the schools tutors might go in uh three four days a week work small group with uh students classroom teachers and whatnot um the last year's budget actually accounted for um 18 uh tutors uh as you know from the and we've talked about this in previous meetings but as you know from some of the reporting we haven't been able to fully staff the 18 uh positions it's been very challenging for us to be able to um hire tutors and interventionist not only in our school system but other school system typically um you know we look for certified licensed teachers um oftentimes this is a pool of people you would hire if you had an opening so if you have a long-term sub opening if you have a permanent opening sometimes people are kind of waiting as tutors to then jump into a more permanent job so we've had some difficulty actually hiring the 18 we actually increased the rate last year if you recall this right the beginning of the school year to be a little bit more attractive again we still have some openings uh among the tutors and the recommendation is basically to cut uh the equivalent of 12 um you know FTE but they are part-time FTE and leave uh six tutor positions in the budget that we can allocate based specifically on Need for next year I think it makes um sense that we'd be able to hire and find six good competent uh tutors as needed be able to take a look at the title one funding that we actually receive because that sometimes can change year- toe or even which schools are targeted which can receive it which can't but it would still give us a little bit of flexibility in the budget to be able to allocate some tutors where we need to um but we do need to make that reduction you know first because we really got to make this budget come together and make the number um work um this is an additional Service as opposed to a core Service uh that we have in the in the schools and again we have been hamstringing a little bit in actually hiring for these positions so we do have um some that are open or even during the course of the year might be short term you might start as a tutor but then when something opens up full-time you jump into the open roll so it's not going to be um too too impactful to actual people um it isn't a situation where if we were to lay someone off we then have to almost assume some kind of an extra say unemployment cost um so I think this is going to be doable for us still allow us to have some flexibility with the six remaining but basically for budgeting purposes reducing um 12 of the tutors and that um you know in a long again there's some other small tweaks here and there but that basically um gets us to the three and a half million of um General operating you're not going to see um bless you um really new new um positions in the budget other than those uh two that I flagged early on it's a very straightforward budget uh again we kept the format the same um we made notes on the different pages for you just any of the major changes happened so that you can you know kind of follow along and what I'd ask is that um you know again over the next couple weeks as you review this we'll be emailing this out to the uh to meeting reps we always invite them to come to um the budget process it's it's an open process and when we go Page by page please feel free to ask questions and if you have information ahead of time you'd like let me know but I do think that uh you know in the end I think this is a um it's a responsible budget it maintains the U the Integrity of the programs and services we're currently operating this year um next year with really um the minimal amount of impact that we could um I think it puts us in a in a good position to continue some of the momentum on our priority areas um and again taking a hard look um as we get through the end of this year and even into next year of where some of our specialized programs uh fall you know are there areas of additional kind of need and support with that group because if you if you do look and what I will do for a future meeting for you um you have actually seen uh special education uh population growing so with a growing special education population often times students need to be serviced um not only just in the general classroom or support in the general classroom but they need some of these sub separate programs that we have whether it be the language based or it be an ASD program for autism those numbers are certainly still present and increasing and that's something that we can't lose sight of um we really need to make sure we're continuing to service those uh kids and families well um but again I I submit this to you as a uh budget recommendation um open to you know any thoughts you have over the next couple of weeks please you know pass them along and you certainly can ask questions at night too but if there's something I can do leg work on ahead of time I'm happy to try to help when are we scheduled to have that meeting where we're going it's our regular meeting on Tuesday the 25th okay so um we keep the agenda fairly light I know we have just a u I think a presentation that evening there's not typically a lot of agenda items and we just we go Page by Page through the budget so we're off for February break so kind of gives you an extra week as well and I think it's Tuesday the 25th it's the Tuesday we come back thank you any other questions or can I ask a very big I'm not going to bother you with my line by line questions tonight but I do have one very big question big picture question sorry this is just my first time seeing this from start to finish um what relationship does our budget have to the Community Education budget um because I don't see like those staff reflected on here but I do see a couple of offsets around um you know um facilities and stuff so I was just curious so the Community Education Program is a program under the opes of the chood public schools right so um they're our employees they work with us they are completely funded through a evolving fund so if you think about it like we talked a little bit about the Food Services Group so with the exception of the Food Services director everyone who works for the food services department and all of the costs associated with like buying the food transporting the food all is managed through the Food Service revolving fund for comment it's the same thing so they have a revolving fund that pays all the salaries all of the benefits for anyone who's benefit eligible any of the expenses for the program and the revenue that they take in basically is then paid out um to to compensate for those employees we don't have them listed like individually within our budget and their program budgets aren't here because they're not actually approved by the school committee that their budget does not go forward to Lake toown meeting in April so what the school committee is charged with is is appropriating a local operating budget which is the U the number that's before you today and that's what actually goes on town meeting floor but at the very back of the budget book one of The appendices is it C Joanna the last one the last one um those are listing of all of the um the revolving funds that we have and they're included as um child care so you can see uh like the estimated balance at the end of the year for them uh is listed at a mill just under 2 million a million 96 um so it's that particular fund the fund code 507 that would pay for all of the again salaries wages any expenses associated with that program okay thank you um and just you know while you're there on this one at the very top of that page uh is the food nutrition account the calf uh revolving fund and you can see that's actually estimated to have a balance of 4.2 million at the end of the year so to take $100,000 out is not going to um impact their programming okay and so you mentioned child care but the like let's say evening programming offered by Community Education would be under adult education is that correct yeah um line 506 506 M okay thank you right any other questions just um one thing maybe for a future session I would like to talk about what the you know we should probably start planning for f like what's our portion of money that comes from federal government title one all that stuff there some new executive orders coming out this week so um yeah I sent Dennis an an email asking for that at some point too I don't know how we might be affected right I don't think it'll obviously affect this year but next year it's there's going to be anyway I would just like to know what our federal is it is it in the grant section um it's in the grant section and it's also in our quarterly reporting um I put the very small I put and so it's there's not that many but it's a it's a lot of money and the other thing that's Federal is what we just talked about is the um a portion of the school nutrition um that meal reimbursement comes from the US USDA which is federal so those are the big um Federal items all right thank you you I'm just thinking out loud here John when we do like the um third quarter report do you think we could just kind of call out the the federal would that be okay with you I just want to plan right if something does go missing we just need to know what those look like um and we do have to plan we've done this before so I think we're definitely fine for the current year that we're in so if we do that with the third quarter report it like the April time frame and we can do a special call out for the federal grants I'm thinking ahead yeah so when we look on appendix C and we there are it's designated as either federal or state and actually in appendix C there happens to be two years worth of grants in this appendix oh okay um and then in the final one we'll just put one year but right um it does say Federal so Title One 2 a title three title four those are the main for federal that's good and then and special ed um the 240 Grant idea that's Federal and um Early Childhood that's Federal so those are the big six and USDA School nutrition thank you anything else um just to re with reiterate what the superintendent said you know if if everybody got kind of looks through the pages and writes down questions um and just you make an appointment come in ask the questions um you know get get those answers and then we meet together as a group then we'll all kind of be on the same page so I know you'll be available oh yeah I bre and all this stuff yeah no we definitely individually I'm happy to meet with you and again if you want to send stuff ahead of time that's great if not we can work on the Fly I just hate something to come up that night that I just I'm not prepared for and then have it hold up your deliver ation at all all right well thank you thank you all right nice job it's always J's favorite thing so we'll get it is I do like you really eat the budge I do enjoy budgeting um so I'll either get that posted later on tonight or tomorrow morning uh to the packet and then we'll have it up on Joanna's page on the website as well just for the viewing audience okay and then uh the last thing for me tonight is just the approval of two uh field trip and travel requests the first one is uh chood High School students who qualify for Deca to go to the Mass State Career Development conference in Boston February 27th through March 1st and the second is a year from now this is the uh interested students in roll in Spanish at the high school uh to go to the um El Al Maria uh Spain and this is the exchange program trip okay okay I move um that we approve the field trip by chelsford High School qualifying Deca students um Mass State Career Development conference which is for February 27th through March 1st 2025 in Boston Mass second okay any questions right all those in favor I 5 z i moveed that we approve the chelsford high school interested enrollment students who are interested and enrolled in the Spanish program cultural Exchange program for April 17th through the 27th 202 26 in alia Spain second I'll send some kids to Spain I'll second that any questions daydreaming about going to scho do we have a students going anywhere this year or well the students we have the well the French students are doing that um experience so they're going in um April um the high school French students didn't they go this fall we had some we had some already they came to us oh they came to us and then no some went no the students from France came to us and then our students are going to France we have eighth graders last year go to France they well no the eighth graders go to graders go to Quebec Quebec no I know a kid who's a freshman now who went to France as part of this whole program no they we definitely don't have middle school kids going to France our middle school kids go go to Quebec I it might have been a family trip but we only send high school kids to the over okay1 all right they do go to Quebec no I I know of a particular kid who went because last year they had someone from France come in but maybe his family arranged that visit privately and described it as an exchange but their end may have been private their on trip and their child was on we did have some EXT we had some of our families help out and take some of the French students when they came um who maybe didn't have children associated with the program so maybe there was just some kind of like friendly reciprocal type thing but it wasn't sponsored through the school syst yeah no the the kids from France came through the schools but maybe their son going to France they did on their own and we like alternate SP Spain and France really okay confusion but we that's our goal so that it's not um you know over burden or students are trying to go to both pieces it gets it so that at least it's like twice during their High School career rather than asking every year to go it's a lot that's a burden not parent didn't we approve something last year about going to somewhere in Latin America I want to say Argentina was it Argentina okay Costa Rica they went toost R some they exchange like there The Exchange but then they might just be a a trip as well yes yeah my girls went to Costa Rica last year it's all coming back to all right any other questions all right we'll take a vote all those in favor I 5 Z we get to the vot eventually I knew that all right uh any leas on reports I have one no Mar okay so MIA Center School uh the PTO meeting it was January 22nd this they are doing extremely well they of course always say and it's true that you know there's not enough volunteers sometimes to run everything but um they've got their uh Taste of chord out right now say you can go to that website tast of chumford website and you can buy tickets for that and they also have uh they started planning fourth grade activities um they reported on their dining to donate the winter gift trap they reviewed their entire budget they were in a very good position on that and they're looking for uh high schoolers who are graduating to please apply for the central school scholarship it's $11,000 they went up on amount so it's a good amount and they should consider doing it any other Le on reports I was able to go to South Rose PTO meeting last night um they've had a few really hugely successful community events lately crafternoon a movie night night family engagement night with um significant discussions um so they're all very excited about the success of these events um um we had a dialogue about continued interest in a district-wide policy around devices broadly um and they also I guess this is a little bit of good news they won a boxtp sweep Stakes worth $20,000 um to go to S row to help with whatever um mutually agreed upon expenses so they're really excited about that it's as simple as somebody's grandmother scanned box tops and was like instantly entered into the sweep stakes and we're just told the school that you supported just won $20,000 pretty good um so yeah a little bit of good news great anybody else Harington is tomorrow so we haven't had a meeting but I know the CRP bars um building project is rolling along we officially got our official oky do on the feasibility and so the RP is getting ready we did yeah so we got the uh sign Fe today we got the signed feasibility study agreement back from the msba today so that's excellent um we've been working behind the scenes on the request for services that has to go out to procure the owner's project manager or the OPM bless you um we actually got that finalized today there's been a lot of work on that the last couple of weeks but the that was finalized today and it's actually being advertised tomorrow so it's in the L sun it's in the central register tomorrow so interested uh firms who would like to potentially serve as ropm can pull the um specs tomorrow and then they have a three-week turnaround we're going to be doing a site walk on Monday just to show them the school a little bit to talk a little bit about the project so that's very exciting so when that closes at the end of uh February we'll take march to do the review of the applications um ultimately select and negotiate with a firm that will go back to the school building committee sometime early April April I would say it then goes to the msba for approval the first week in May and then we have an OPM on board once the PM is on board then we can do the next key step which is the designer so between the end of May and the summer we'll work to do a similar type process the request for services we'll get a designer on board to really be able to hit the ground running uh when we get back to school in the fall and then next school year is going to be busy so right from September to June is going to be a lot of work to take a look at Community meetings Community input what we' like to see really fully vetting those three options um cost estimates going out to look at other districts who have opened up new schools recently to figure out what's working for them what's not working for them um next year is going to be very busy but um key step is getting that OPM on board so that's going to be advertised tomorrow so moving along great yep all right uh anyone have any new items that would like anything I would like to um I just wanted to share I've received several emails from members of our community that are very concerned that um we show we put out a show of support for Trans identifying young people that are part of our school system um given some climate issues about that nationally um and I just wanted to first of all bring up the topic um because I think it is important that we are monitoring the sense of safety that students in our school Community feel um I also wanted to note I spent some time looking through our own policies and our family and student handbook and I just wanted to remind members of our community um that are trans identifying or somebody that they love is trans identifying that we do have some really clear and really supportive guidelines in our school and family handbook um that is guiding what happens in our schools this year um and um I hope that we as a school committee can stay um closely monitoring if needs arise in the coming months for that and other vulnerable populations in our community great right anybody else have anything I just second that because I know we've heard from people right great all right uh no extra public comment that I saw no no email so I will take a motion to adjourn I make a motion to adjourn I'll second I'll give it to all those in favor I 5 zero