WEBVTT

METADATA
Video-Count: 1
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=DMVoyWIYU88

NOTE
MEETING SECTIONS:

Part 1 (Video ID: DMVoyWIYU88):
- 00:05:58: Meeting Called to Order, Introductions of Members
- 00:08:31: Presentation Begins: Mission, Strategy, and Budget Timeline
- 00:12:26: Factors Influencing the 2027 Budget, Enrollment Decline
- 00:15:58: Expenditure Forecast Breakdown, City Contributions, Budget Shortfall
- 00:17:56: Balancing the Budget: Listening Sessions and Priorities
- 00:22:06: Balancing the Budget: School Based and District Cuts
- 00:23:18: District Wide Reductions and Individual School Cuts
- 00:29:57: Summary of Restored Positions After Additional Revenue
- 00:31:21: Public Comment 1: Budget Increase Despite Cuts Question
- 00:33:01: Public Comment 1: Grants, Student Reduction, Equity Concerns
- 00:35:11: Public Comment 1: Equity and Wellness Budget Question
- 00:36:14: Public Comment 2: Staff Increase Affecting Performance?
- 00:38:24: Public Comment 3: Clark and High School MLE Cuts
- 00:40:05: Public Comment 3: Teachers Without Licenses and Status
- 00:42:50: Public Comment 4: Teacher to Student Ratio, Classroom Forecast
- 00:48:22: Public Comment 5: Increased Healthcare Costs and State Support
- 00:50:54: Counselor Comments, Acknowledging Budget Difficulties
- 00:52:27: Meeting Adjourned, Thank You to Advocates and Participants


Part: 1

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It's like oh, it's been a uh Hello everyone. Calling the meeting to order. Um Well, now we have a couple of counselors uh uh walking in now and a couple that are running a little behind, but we have a quorum and I want to make sure that we got it started. Um so, uh we are here for a subcommittee on

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conference on the um schools department budget. Um I'll let uh the clerk call the roll of the members. Councilor Taylor. Here. Councilor Recupero. Here. I'm here. Councilor Hernandez Rivera. Present. Councilor Hines. Absent.

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Councilor Tenreiro Garcia. Absent. Councilor Tash. Here. Councilor Kelly Garcia. Councilor Santelises. Present. Councilor DeJesus. Present. Councilor Brown is absent and Councilor Robinson. Here. You have a quorum, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Um

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thank you um to the counselors for joining us. Um I see um school committee members uh Cabral and Carvajal. Welcome to you both. Um and our superintendent and staff. Um I know others are probably watching from

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home. I know my wife is certainly is uh cuz she had the kids tonight. So, um thank you everybody for joining us. Um with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Abeyta for a presentation. I see Councilor Recupero has a question. Um go ahead. All right. Uh if you want to step over

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I'm sure they'll be able to help you out. Um with that um I'll turn it over to Dr. Abeyta for a presentation. Welcome and thank you. Thank you, um President Jimenez Rivera.

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And um I have our chief financial officer here with us um Ms. Billy Joe Turner as well. So, um I'll go ahead and get started. So, our agenda for tonight is we'll go over our mission and strategy and then our

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budget development timeline. >> sorry to um I was just wondering, would you if there's any clarifying questions, would you want to take them as you're going or would you want to wait until I I see you have Q&A at the end, so that's probably how you intended to do this, right? Yeah, I mean

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it's up to you, to be honest. How would you prefer I I don't have a preference. I think if if members have like kind of like very quick clarifying questions, like I didn't understand the thing you just said, interrupt me, but if you have like kind of broader questions, let's hold those until the until the end.

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Thank you. Great. And then so, we'll go over our mission and strategy and then budget development timeline and then funding for public education, factors influencing um the 27 budget expenditure forecast and steps to

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balance the budget and then Q&A. Um as you know, our mission in Chelsea Public Schools is we are gateway system that welcomes and educates all students and families. And we also have a

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a motto that says that we will know our students by name, strength, and story. This here is our 5-year strategic plan. Um we gathered this data through many listening sessions with our community um

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several years ago and we did a qualitative analysis of what we heard and then we bucketed what we heard into these areas cuz these are the areas that popped with that qualitative analysis. And so uh our priorities are rigorous

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and culturally relevant instruction for all students. And then increase access and engaging and enriching opportunities for all students. And then recruit, support, and retain diverse and high-quality teachers and leaders. And then ensure efficient and effective

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systems and operations. And then last was and not but it's still a priority and I hate to I don't want to say last cuz it's very important is that we engage parents and community organizations in shared decision-making to improve teaching and

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learning. And then at the base are our values. We value equity. We value instruction. We value safety. We value relationships. We value support. And we value respect and integrity. The the again these this strategic plan

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guides the work that we do. It also guides the decisions that we make. And then here it was our our budget development timeline for this budget. We receive enrollment numbers in October. We report them to DESE and that DESE

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then says to us this is what your budget is going to be based on and as everybody knows we were uh shy of in enrollment and that is why we had part of the reasons why we had a budget shortfall. And then expenses we

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update existing costs for inflation. Then in January we get the governor's budget. We review the governor's budget and the revenue. And then starting in January through March we balance and make critical decisions based on

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feedback. And then at the end of March um the budget is approved and voted on. So the factors that were influencing that influenced this year's budget were many. One of them being a decline in

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enrollment by 350 students. And of course we've had the expiration of SR dollars. And then student opportunity act funding was offset by enrollment reductions. Um rising salary expenditures, increasing charter tuition obligations

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and I'm sure you guys feel that too. Escalating health insurance costs, higher transportation expenses and growing special education tuition costs. So a lot of increases here.

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So if you look here when we do we we we look at enrollment trends you can see where we have declined significantly from school year 24 to 25. And

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I put next year's enrollment projections on this slide for a reason because I also wanted make it known that we're also expecting numbers to still decline next year as well. Part of the decline is it's

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multifaceted. One is we're just families are getting smaller. People are not having children. I mean the the people are having children later in life. So even without everything happening in this world we were

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projecting our enrollment numbers were projecting to drop a little bit. But not as much as they have. So based on our enrollment projections even for next year we're looking at about 240

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students less for next year as well. So we'll be watching those very closely as we prepare even for the following year. Uh so and and I want to make it very clear that this isn't just an issue for Chelsea. This is happening nationwide. I

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was just on a call the other night with superintendents across the nation and my partner my buddy partner superintendent was from New Jersey. Same thing. And it's we're we're losing this is a phenomenon that's happening across the nation. Enrollment numbers are

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declining. Uh and of course enrollment numbers in gateway cities and districts in Massachusetts have also declined. So you can see here Chelsea we had 350 but you can look at the changes.

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Framingham had less 544 students less. Lynn 435. Everett 339. Marlborough 337. And Holyoke 184. And then the overall state of Massachusetts lost 15,442

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students this year. That is a lot of students for Massachusetts to lose. Um and and I I put this in here for the context of the broader context to for everyone to know Chelsea isn't alone in this. And

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we got hit a little harder based on our demographics and based on our all the immigrants that do come to Chelsea. But again every district every superintendent that I talked to even nationwide is experiencing this right

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now. It's it's rare to see a super a superintendent that's not experiencing budget shortfalls. So here's the breakdown. Oops. For

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uh the fiscal year 27. Salaries, employee benefits facilities info technology professional development, special education, supplies, books, equipment, transportation, and utilities. Utilities

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have gone up significantly uh this uh least right now as well. And then our baseline expenditure forecast you can see the staffing costs just to the normal costs

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of uh steps and increase that's 6.9 million. Health care is in the range of 1.9 million. Special education tuition 2.8 million. Transportation

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about 500,000. And then utilities insurance we level funded it but we also know that it there it's increasing. So you could the shortfall before revenue alone was

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about 13 million when you we we start doing the numbers without having all the numbers. And then we got the governor's budget and then above the city's contribution and we just want to say thank you. For

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first it was 2 million and then it was another 2 million above and beyond. was 4 million. So that brought us down to the overall budget shortfall of 6.6 million. So that's the gap for us. After the 4 million, after everything

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the gap was 6.6 million. And so we had to figure out a way to balance this budget. Just so you know staffing is 80% of a school department's budget. About and then the rest of the 20% goes to

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administration, school leadership, and instruction facilities and pupil services. So we don't have a lot of wiggle room. And we did have uh multiple listening sessions. And in those listening sessions we

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always ask and and we've done this for years now what's important to keep, what do we protect and what areas can we do potentially without? And so from educators we heard that we need to keep positions closest to

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children. We need to um keep special education staff, mental health supports. From parents we heard that pre-K was important. Parents were extended learning family liaisons who serve families,

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special education support. Again positions closest to children, mental health supports, positions closest to children. Our Caminos program. And again positions closest to children which I agree with.

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From our educators we heard that what we could do without consultants for professional development. And one thing I explained to everyone is when we had a lot of money coming in we did hire consultants. And now we have not a lot

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of money coming in we're not going to hire professional development consultants. That's just how it works. Uh reduce they said reduce district administration and contracted services. And then from parents they asked questions about is transportation

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necessary cuz Chelsea because Chelsea's so small. And then uh consultants but they weren't specific. And again these were patterns if if you if it's if it was a one-off it didn't make the list but if it was something we heard continuously then it made the list of

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what we heard. As this is again, it's a qualitative analysis. And this slide just demonstrates increases in school-based positions. So in 2021,

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we were we received a lot of money from our SR funds from COVID relief. We also had student opportunity act dollars coming in. And so we invested in our our workforce. We invested in educators. So you can see

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with the funding that we have received over the last five years, we increased the educator workforce total by 38%. So

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we added a total of 239 positions. Actually, 239.4 positions, which is an increase, huge increase of 38%. We also, and that's not on this slide, this anecdote, increased teacher salary

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by 27% over the last the last two contracts that we negotiated. And then in the district, we added that and that's meaning like the the people that work at the district level, central office, we added 12

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positions, which is a 20% increase over the last five years. And then here's just another way of telling the story that I just shared. You can see the the bar, the light blue lighter blue bar is teachers, the darker

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blue bar is paras, the orange are our clerks, and then the kind of like greenish is admin and administrative. So that's just another way to share all the data in the other in the previous slides.

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So we had to find a way to balance the budget. We had a $6.6 million shortfall. And this is just kind of like you got to it's like a teeter-totter. So I'm going to go ahead and turn this over

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to Billy Joe now. So this slide is a summary of how we balanced the budget. As we said, we had a $13 million increase just to level fund the current operations. The $13 million we collected, the $6.4 million

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in additional revenue, the $6.6 million deficit that was remaining was closed by asking each school to cut about four positions. That was $4.8 million from the school-based staff. The district

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level staff, we cut $1.76 million after reviewing any unnecessary positions. Oh, sorry. It's the one before that. Okay. Um the one right before. Okay, I'll just go with you. Okay, so

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this one is the district-wide reductions that we have um that we decided to go with. We did reduce mentor and lead stipends, anything that was not a necessity. Sped out of district tuition, we did reduce that as we updated our student profiles. The wellness and

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equity contracted services, we cut a hundred grand from that. Extended time, we cut a hundred grand from the extended time contracted service line. 50,000 for human resources, 362,000 for buildings and grounds.

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And we also went into staffing. We did cut a human resource specialist, a budget administrator, a principal clerk in the business office, a technology webmaster, and two administrative directors.

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We did cut retired administrative support after we did the listening sessions. And these are the individual schools we thought you might want to see some of the the cuts that were made at the schools.

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The principals were allowed to make these decisions with their school site councils. The superintendent allowed each school district I mean each school to work with their own teams to make these decisions. At the ELC, they cut two paraprofessionals, but then they

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reinstated after we did get the influx of money from the city. They did reinstate um their paraprofessionals. We had six cut and they reinstated two. So the overall cut for paraprofessionals was four.

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Thank you. The Sokolowski budget reductions, we had digital literacy coaches cut. They did share these positions, so some of the slides you'll see different variations of prorated percentages. They we cut the digital literacy coach, a tech

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specialist teacher, paras funded by the special ed budget. We reinstated MLE MLE teacher cut. We continued on with the interventionist, grade two teachers, grade three teachers, grade four teachers. The librarian was a shared

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position, it was cut, but it was reinstated once the city generously gave us that money. Um the tutor, we did this is 0.75 just so you know, one tutor, we're using that as a 0.25 equivalent. So this is three

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tutors. The Kelly budget reductions include a digital literacy coach, again that one was shared, a technology specialist. The librarian was reinstated. We cut two tutors at this school. The MLE teachers,

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we cut three, but we reinstated two. Um paraprofessionals, we cut two, and we also cut an imagine imagine learning platform, I'm sorry, imagine learning platform contracted service amount. The Berkowitz budget reductions include

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a reading teacher that was reinstated, an MLE teacher, a digital literacy coach that was shared, a tech specialist teacher. The paras funded by the special ed budget, which is a one-on-one para when a para is assigned to

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a student specifically. The grade two, three, and four teachers were cut. The librarian was added back, and four tutors were cut at this school. And by the way, we can reinstate those as we see different

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funding come coming through, so we have promised the schools that. Um at the Hook School, we cut the shared digital literacy coach, the technology specialist, the grade two, three, and four teachers. We cut a reading specialist, but it was

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reinstated. The interventionist um was added. They did that when they were making their cuts, they needed an interventionist added. A para for the special ed one-on-one budget was cut. A 0.25 librarian was added back, and four tutors were

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cut from the school as well. The Clark School budget reductions included three foundation teachers, but with the one MLE interventionist added back, they're converting a foundational MLE teacher to an interventionist.

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They also included history teacher, content literacy coach, and two paraprofessionals. Um sorry, one content literacy coach was added back with the additional revenue. The WSTA budget reductions included

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learning center teachers, one. A learning center para was reinstated. A library para professional was cut. One classroom para was cut, but reinstated. The special ed teachers, they're also

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called liaisons on the budget, they were four cut at this school. We added two interventionists. And we cut a 0.5 instructional coach that was shared between the other elementary schools. The Brown School budget reductions

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include the SLIFE teacher, one. An MLE teacher was reinstated after the additional revenue was given. We cut an MLE teacher, a sped liaison, a history teacher. One of our unified art

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teachers, college readiness, was cut, but then reinstated. And we had a shared MLE coach that was added to this school. The Chelsea High School budget reduction was more than the other um schools, and

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we had two English teachers cut, two math teachers, two science teachers, eight MLE teachers, one counselor, only one was reduced. Um and then we added back the social worker, it was cut, but

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we did get to reinstate that as well. And one history teacher was cut at the high school as well. CBLA budget reductions, we had one special ed teacher reduced. The other reductions, the MLE teacher 0.5, the special ed teacher, and the para were

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all reinstated thanks to the additional revenue. And the COA budget reduction was reinstated. We did cut an assistant principal, but that was reinstated. Um we are happy to say that the summary of restored positions include five

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paras, seven MLE teachers, three interventionists, um 0.5 special ed teachers, two reading specialists, two coaches were restored, one librarian, and I know I said that multiple times, but again these were

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shared positions, unified arts teacher restored, one, social worker restored, one, counselors restored at the high school, one, and one assistant principal. One thing I want to clarify that I did I think I might have missed somewhere along the line when we had the

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$6.6 million in reductions, the schools cut 4.8, we cut 1.7 at Central. That was because last year, knowing that we were going into the tough budget year, we cut an additional 1.3 at Central Office. We did not ask the

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schools to cut last year. So, I just want to point out that between the 1.7 at Central this year and the 1.3 last year, we did have 3 million in cuts at the Central Office this year. And And just to reiterate, this slide is what

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is what the $2 million impact was. Yes. Yes. There you go. Thank you so much. We'll now open for questions. We'll start with Counselor Rokobauer. Just I'll be looking around for any raised hands to add to the queue.

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I heard what you said about cutting and cutting. So, if you cut how did the budget increase $6 million? You had cut 2026 as $150 million, now it's $156 million. So, I my math tells me if you cut, you go down. You don't go

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up. If I go to the store and I buy something it costs a dollar, right? And then I go back to the store and they say, "Well, it's 50 cents." Then I cut. If I go to the store and it's a dollar and then I go back and it's a dollar 50, then I cut anything?

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Right. So, how how did you It doesn't make any sense to me. You're right. So, this is what we do. We take your existing budget and we cost it out saying if we change nothing, this is what it would cost. So, when we say on

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um slide 10 that our budget increased by 13 million, we knew we could not do that. What we were saying is it would cost 13 million to do the raises, the step increases, the utility, the insurance, the unemployment, all of the things that would change. So, we just

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said in order to maintain the current operations would cost us 13 million. Then we got the $6.4 million in additional revenue. That left us with the 6.6 and you're right, that's when we had to do the cuts. So, we we only increased just to show what it

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would cost to continue as is. Wow. Can I continue or do I got a time limit? You do. Do we We don't have It's a subcommittee, so no time, but you can talk. I understand what you're going what you what what what you're saying, right?

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Here's something else. I've been going through your book here, right? I read it and there's many things there. You get so many grants, so many days, federal grants, and all this kind of stuff in there, right? Then the part that I don't understand is

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we we keep talking about reduction of students. You're going to see that more because for one, it's too expensive to live in this state, for two, you're competing with other schools. You got charter schools now. So, kids from this city don't go to your school.

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For one, they go to the charter schools. So, as you children decrease, your budget increases. It should decrease because you have less to manage. I My belief is the more you have, the more you need. The less you have, the less you should

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reduce because you have less. That's common sense. But from what I see in your budget, it increased instead of decreasing. You keep stressing to us, "Well, we lost 250 students." Yeah. So, if you lost 250 students, you

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should have had less because you don't have that many students. So, I understand what you're trying to say that everything goes up. Yes, everything goes up even for the taxpayer of this city. One of these days when you come back, they ain't going to have no money for you. And what are you

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going to do? You know, there's an old saying, "You keep killing the parents, then what good is the kids?" If they can't afford to send to live here, their kids can't go to school. So, it has to be even a bigger reduction that you're saying. You know what I mean? Sometimes you have to do more. I

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know, I had 13 children. Sometimes I couldn't feed my kids. So, I had to do less. So, it's the same thing with anything, any of us, it's the same thing. So, if you keep coming back, we gave you all this money, right? Eventually the city ain't going to have no money to give

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you. And what are you going to do then? That is the question. Like here, there's something here I don't understand. You got a million dollars, 991,000 for equity and wellness. What is that? What What do we need a million dollars for that? What What that is incumbent? What is that? What it consist of? In your

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book it says equity and wellness. 2026, 1,123,709. 2027, 991,217. So, what is that? Is that Are those counselors? What do they do? Yes. We need Why Why do we need so many counselors that are worth a million

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dollars? Counselor, you asked like three questions. Can we give them a chance to answer? Oh my Thank you. Sure. So, the equity and wellness budget includes all all of our mental health. So, we have social workers on that budget line and in those budgets, so it's staffing.

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Social workers, counselors. We have we we are fortunate to have social workers in all of our buildings. And so, we have a cadre of 17 social workers. We have 17 counselors. And one thing that we heard from students, that we heard from

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educators, is to keep the mental health supports. So, that is where the mental health lives in equity and wellness. I I And and the staff. I understand what you're Also, I have other counselors in line to ask a quick question. >> Make it quick, please. I understand what

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you're saying, you know, but sometimes, right? You have to do with less to achieve more. Cuz if you keep achieving with more, you're going to end up with less. Thank you. Yes. Uh Counselor Tash and Counselor Sanagate

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after. Thank you. Uh so, my question is there during the period of 2021 and 2026 when we acquired all these new staff, you know, for multiple purposes as you stated,

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how did this increase in staff affect the performance of students throughout those years? Did they Did students' performance Absolutely, it increased. We have uh right now our elementary schools are extremely strong that we have two

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schools that were recognized by the Commonwealth as uh Commonwealth schools, Berkowitz and we have the Hook School. They were recognized for their growth outperforming urban districts in general

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and charter schools. And and that was last year and the year before. Um Berkowitz is knocking it out of the ballpark, uh doing an amazing job. We've also increased our graduation rates. And

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we are no longer a district overall in need of intervention. We are a district that is making moderate progress. That's how we measure ourselves. Our graduation rates have increased. We're seeing the growth in the elementary schools and we

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will see the growth in secondary. It The growth that we have in the elementary schools right after COVID, we adopted high-quality instructional materials. And it was the elementary schools that were first adopters. And then we then

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what we did is we adopted in the middle and the high school. They were our second adopters. We will see that growth as we progress. And And this take this type of work takes time, but I will say all of our indicators are are trajecting

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in the right direction. Um Counselor Sanagate and then Counselor Garcia. Hi. I just had a couple of questions. Uh two things that jumped out at me. Um The Clark School budget and the foundational teachers, three being cut,

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and then the high school, eight MLE teachers. Those numbers just seem so large for the population, so I was just trying to understand how you can do that without affect adversely affecting um student need.

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So, what we do is we look at the kids the students that are sitting in front of us, and we look at the program, and based on the students that are sitting in front of us, that's how we determine what the need would be. Um

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if you look at the high school, the the high school, there were substantial cuts in the MLE department. >> Yes. And that's one thing to understand about Chelsea High School. I don't know that everybody understands that. When

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the Rennie Center at Brown University did did some research about where, and this was two I want to say two and a half years where in Massachusetts do newcomers come to? And what they found is that there were 14

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high schools in the state of Massachusetts where undocumented students are coming, where students who are sponsored, where MLEs land. Chelsea High School was one of 14 of those high schools where the majority of students landed.

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And so in light of what is happening in our political national political community we are being impacted by that. And so, because the students didn't come, we

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don't have the number of English language learners, the newcomers that we used to have. And so, those classes are very small right now. We've actually collapsed. So, that's why you see the -8 MLE, which is multilingual

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educator. I have a one minute question. I was wondering um what the effect of teachers who were not licensed or certified had on the cuts

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and if some of the teachers who did have status are going into other positions just in terms of how things are being shifted. Yeah, that the Thank you for asking that. >> can we just clarify what having status means in this context for the people watching? >> Sure.

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Um if you If a teacher has status, it basically means that they've been in Chelsea for three or more years and that they are permanent. And so, what ends up happening is we have teachers who are not certified on

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waiver. And that was actually about 60 this year and the and the amount of 60. We gave warning We We started giving educators heads-up early in the year saying, "Hey, you're not licensed. We need you to get your license because we don't want to

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have to let We don't We don't want to have to let you go because of licensure reasons. And so, at the beginning of the year it was about 90, actually. And now it When we actually sent the letters, it was about 60. And

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so, 60 teachers got a letter saying, "Sorry, we can't renew you because you're not licensed in the area that you're teaching in." Now, if they're licensed in another area and they were in in in good status, then it's like we we will try to put you

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somewhere else. For teachers who have status, who are permanent, we found teaching positions for them through natural attrition or what have you. So, all of our professional status

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teachers um have have positions. Thank you. Counselor Garcia. Good evening, everyone. First and foremost, Almy and central office team, thank you so much for putting in countless of hours in preparing for for this budget season. I know it was

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it's been probably the most challenging one um for you all. And to the school committee members who are here present and watching at home as well, thank you for your dedication. For the students that are in the room, thank you for showing up countless of meetings. I know it's a school night, so want to shout you out as well. I have one comment and

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one follow-up question. Um I'm looking at the list of restored positions and I just What I see here is um a list of positions that were that stemmed from countless of listening

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sessions and budget hearings and student advocacy. And so, I want to shout you out because what I see here is five paraprofessional positions restored. That speaks to supporting our neurodivergent students.

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What I see here is coach a coach position restored, right? We're talking here about an arts teacher, an assistant principal, many positions here that support our students across the board in different fields, whether it be sports,

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whether it be arts, mental health. And so, I want to thank you publicly for that. Um given the the fact that we have lost about 350 students across the district, I'd like to know what is the new teacher

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to student ratio based on these new positions that were added and tell us a little bit about the the classroom forecast for next year and what should we be expecting within our school buildings? Sure. So, what you'll see is

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you'll probably see at the elementary we're looking at about 23 to to one in a classroom, 23, 24. And then there's a lot of still supports and push-ins. So, we all It's interesting when the

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elementary principals got together and I and I asked them this question cuz if you'll see I'm going to give you an example. If you look here at the Hooks, for example, they ins- instead like they cut one reading specialist,

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but they have three more reading specialists. So, it's So, what people don't realize is that we had four reading specialists. We have math interventionists. And so, the principals are very excited because we have a cadre of reading

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specialists and interventionists that will still continue to push into these classrooms. And so, we're looking about at the elementary maybe the average class size of about 23. Um I won't know until we actually get the numbers. And

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if we're projected to have less numbers in again, then it could be lower. I And I I I say this to in October, around the end of September beginning October, once we have the actual student bodies in the

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classroom, we take account. And if, for example, we find out that we have more kids, let's say at the Brown and the EL department, then we have to go back and adjust that. And so, it's clouds up It's

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It's we We also know that these are These are projections. And we do our best guess, but we can't control immigration patterns, um housing, like when we got it, you know, when we had 100 uh students housed at the Soldiers

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Home. Those are the things that we have no control of. So, when when that happens, then in October, we do look at class we we call it class size adjustments and principals have to submit their class sizes to us and they

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will make a request, Almy, I have 27 students in this class. It's huge. Can I And I'll say, "Do you want a para or would you rather split it? You tell me." And often times they'll say we'd rather have a paraprofessional rather than split it or what have you.

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So, they figure it out. Um So, it just So, we do have that safety net in October to to go through if if a classroom is really high. I know when I was a principal, I had one second grade at um in my school at 28 was my um

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sheltered English immersion second grade. And the teacher, rather than she was like, "Almy, I'll take more kids." And she She also took the stipend that came with it. I was like, "Great. You have 28 students? Are you sure?" But she had a para in there who was very competent.

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And then can you just speak to um the classroom sizes for the middle schools and the high schools? >> Yeah, the middle schools are actually smaller right now. Um so, we're again we're looking probably at about I would say 20 to 25.

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It just depends on the subject area. The high school, same thing, but we do have and I always say this in our AP classes are always packed um because they're they're they're in high demand. And And

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so, those are often times our larger class size our larger class sizes at the high school. Counselor DeJesus. Um anybody else, let me know. My question is brief. Um I'm wondering with the increased in health care costs, if

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um these conversations um have come across on the state level with regards to how we can get cuz I'm assuming this is just going to continue to Yeah. rise. And so, I'm wondering what type of conversations you've been having or what you've heard from other communities.

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>> I'm going to let Billy Joe take that. So, I understand your question. Are you asking if other communities are facing the um significant increases to health care cost? >> Um I'm sure No, I So, I'm sure that's the case across the state, but I'm more um interested in learning what type of aid

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or conversation the state is talking about to support communities in in making sure they don't fall behind. From my understanding, the Student Opportunity Act was the um way they were addressing the health care cost. We weren't getting reimbursed um

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adequately enough. And from what I understand, this is the final, you know, time right now. They're not giving us any additional increases in the near future. So, at this point we actually have brought been brought up to where we're going to be brought up to until

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further lawsuits and other successful endeavors happen. Gotcha. All right, thank you. I have a quick follow-up to that and I don't know if you necessarily have the answer. I'm curious, do you think

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that we are that the gap has closed between where we are now given the increases since the beginning of SOA, right? Like both the amount that we're getting has gone up, but also the costs have gone up. Do you Do you Do you think the gap is narrower now or even larger? I can

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share. I feel like even though we've been so fortunate to have SOA dollars because a caught inflation has gone up in so many other areas, we're not seeing the impact of the student opportunity act that we we hoped that we would see because the

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expenses are so high. Makes sense. Thank you. Any other questions? Um Sure, I can do Oh, yeah, go ahead, please. I just wanted to point out this I do think that the student opportunity act addressed things like the special ed and the health care, but things like the

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outrageous cost for utilities right now due to the war, things like that are not being addressed. So, even when we see so many savings, we're getting slammed in so many other ways. And like I said, utilities being one of them. And you know, it was implemented 6 years 7 years

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ago at this point, so there's only so much, you know, forward looking. It's a lot of it is estimation, so I understand, but just just shows that there's a lot of room for still much needed growth. Um counselors that have not spoken, do you have any I have a comment that I would just like to make and then

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see no other questions. Great. Um So, I think there's been a lot of conversations about kind of what is driving these cuts, right? And I think to me the the thing that I want to communicate is that to me these cuts are not about fewer students, right? To me these cuts

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are about less dollars because of fewer students, right? I think we're still behind communities that have resources. We wish that we were able to fund at the level that those communities are able to, but it's our financial circumstances that prevent us from giving that level

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of of resources to our students. You know, we know that if we could fund like the Wellesleys and the Readings of the world, we would do so because we care about our students. Um so, I just want to say I'm glad that the city was able to help to cushion the blow um of of this decrease. Um I want to thank the advocates uh

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in the community. I know many people have been fighting and and have fought and will continue to fight. I know many of the counselors here, many of the school committee members uh have helped make this happen and get us to be able to close the gap, um which we have done a good job of, but there's still more to

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be done and we are still fighting. I know many of us um are still fighting at the state level to get additional funding there. Um so, I'm hopeful that that will help to kind of continue to chip away at the 6 millions that are still there. Um so, just wanted to thank thank you for the work that you've been

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doing and thank all the advocates for um continuing to push um both here and everywhere. Thank you. All right, seeing no further questions. Um unless I don't know if you have any other statements. If not, we can close the meeting. All right. Thank you. Of course. Thank

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you all so much. Meeting adjourned.