Good evening everyone. Welcome. And I'll call this meeting to order at 7:01 p.m. Um, we will I wanted to first announce that there's interpreter services for anyone
who wants it or needs it. We can you can see Sully in the back right over there. I was looking for him. Um, and he will hook you up with the equipment. Thank you. Um, good evening.
On behalf of the school committee, I want to thank everyone for being here tonight. We know that many of our members, members of our community, care deeply about our schools, our students, and the people who serve them. Your
presence reflects the commitment, and we appreciate the engagement tonight and throughout this project budget season. We also want to acknowledge that this is a very difficult moment for our district. The proposed budget includes
reductions that affect members of our school community, including educators who work with our students every day. The people in the in this room care deeply about Chelsea students and schools,
and that passion is understandable. At the same time, the school committee has a responsibility to conduct the district's business in a way that allows all voices to be heard while ensuring the meeting can move forward. We ask
that everyone treat one another with respect, including speakers, staff, and members of the public. We will follow the rules for public comment and ask the remarks remain focused and respectful.
Veronica, can I get a roll call? >> Mr. Small, >> present. >> Miss Kleso. Miss Enriquez. Mr. Organ.
Mr. Organ. >> Yes. Miss Balderas, >> Dr. Neville, Miss Cabran >> Miss Hernandez >> present, >> Mr. Gomez Pereira. So we have seven members present and two
absent. >> Thank you. We will I will move the meeting over to spe special recognitions to Dr. Ala. >> Great. Um, we do have several
recognitions tonight in light of this being our regular school committee meeting. So, I'm going to go ahead and move over to the PO podium to um start. Good evening. Um, I have the pleasure of getting to recognize and I'm looking at
all of our boys basketball team tonight. Um, this team was one of our teams that made the playoffs this year. And I don't know how long it's been since a boys basketball team has made the playoffs, but it's been a while. And so, I just want to
shout out our Chelsea High School varsity boys basketball team. Um, we're so proud of you. I Every game that I went to this season was just amazing to watch. You guys played with spirit. You
are talented and you brought so much pride to the entire Chelsea community and the entire Chelsea community would come to the to the auditorium and watch you play and you built community through
your basketball. So, I just want to recognize you and so we're going to call you up by name uh and then if you can line up and then we will um take a group photo. So,
our first student is Alex Cruz. Is it okay? Yuriel Carpel. Okay.
Ruth Ephim. Gioto Omar Iman. Good job, Omar. Okay. H MUHAMMAD Roy P. Rosario, Jonathan Williams, Albertson, George, Matthew, Yakuza,
you see that? Sorry. DK Johnson, Matthew Marino. Caesar, am I saying how USA? Okay, thank you.
And then Kevin And then if we could have our coaches. Oh. Oh, we have a little honorable mention. What? Okay.
Okay. Well, hold on. We have Okay. Mo Ospen. Did we GET ANYTHING? ALL RIGHT, MO, HOW COULD WE FORGET YOU? CONGRATULATIONS. And we have a little
honorable mention, Lorenzo Castro, WHO IS AT EVERY PRACTICE on the ongo UM to to this is family. We're so proud of our our our basketball
team. And then we want I want to honor our coaches. And with this honor is we also want to honor our basketball coaches with the name strength and story award. Um, our coaches go above and beyond. And
when I know when the head coach Caesar Castro started the this journey, um, the team had not won very many games, but he said, "I'm going to build this team up." And he has built this
team. And this team is is family. They focus on academic academics. And this team would not have accomplished any any of the stuff that they've accomplished without the coaches and the volunteers. And there are many
that many people who invested in this team. And so our name shape and story award, our first one goes to Caesar Castro. Um, Armani Cheek.
>> Joseph Rivera, our JV coach. the twin. Oh, you're welcome. Terrence Kennedy, our freshman coach. Thank you. And then our volunteer coaches, Juan Carlos Sanchez,
OKAY. >> OKAY. Damian Strait, our SRO. >> And then we had other volunteer coaches. Thank you, Dave. And officer officer. >> Okay. Then we had some other volunteers that aren't here tonight. Kyle Kyle
brought and then Mike Lush and I believe that's everybody. White Caesar. Okay. All right. And then everyone, we went to a game and everyone kept asking, "What does EST stand for?"
And it sounds like East and I was like, "No, we're not in the East." And I I I I knew what it stood for, but it was on all the shirts and people kept inquiring, "What is EST?" And it's everybody shines together.
And and that's that's what this team is. Everybody shines together. And so we have a special award that says Chelsea Public Schools proudly recognizes Coach Caesar Castro
for the Everyone Shines Together Award. >> Thank you for your leadership. And it has a beautiful picture OF THIS TEAM. YOU'RE WELCOME. >> You're welcome. Two rows. Two rows. Two rows. Step up a little bit. Step up a little
bit. >> Paper. Back committee. We're still on the basketball awards. This year was an exceptional exceptional year for both our boys and our girls.
And we have two two girl basketball awards for honorable recognition in honor of being selected as GBL Allstar and in recognition of scoring a thousand career points with
Chelsea High School basketball. This is a testament to exceptional skill, teamwork, and commitment to excellence in athletics. This award goes to MONICA A double recognition. Okay.
Okay. And this Yes. Because there's a a couple Well, we have two two awards. Um, this other award again,
certificate of honorable recognition in honor of being selected as a GBL All-Star and in recognition of scoring a thousand career points with the Chelsea High School basketball team, Mo Osman. If we could get our thousand awardy
pictures over here, the two of them together, that would be amazing. Congratulations again. >> Yeah. Thousand. Oh, 2,000 together. Yes. Thank you. All right. Thank you. IF YOU CAN STAY UP HERE because we're going to do the all-star awards
in honor of being selected GBL Allstar with Chelsea High School basketball team, Jala Losa. In honor of being selected as GBL Allstar with Chelsea High School basketball, this award is presented to
Giovanni Rico. GIO Gio in honor of being selected as a GBL All-Star with Chelsea High School Winter Tracks, Kevin Molina and on an honor of being selected as GBL Allstar with Chelsea High School winter
track. Xavier Guusman in honor of being selected as a GBL All-Star with Chelsea High School winter track. Sonia S Lemon And then in honor of being selected as our all-star with Chelsea High School
winter track, Lily Serano, is it or Okay, this looks like an L. Make sure. Thank you, Lily. All right. And congratulations to all of our GBL Allstars.
Okay, our next group, and we're doing this tonight because a lot of our students will be performing in the musical in April during our school committee meeting. So, I wanted to make sure we acknowledged our group that was afforded the opportunity to go to
Disney World. Um, several months ago, actually at our veterans memorial, our veterans ceremony for the city, we had our Chelsea Canari singing and performing and our senator Sal Dominico
always stays and talks to the kids afterwards. and he asked them if they had been to Disney World um and that he told them encouraged them to apply to play at at Disney World. And
he said, "If you do this and you get accepted, I will make sure that I I pay I'll pay I'll cover your fees and cover all the costs." And we applied. Pete Papailio, thank you for
all your hard work. Pete applied and uh we we could not have done this without Pete and then we applied and we were like, "Oh, wow." They accepted our they they
granted us and said, "You definitely can come and and perform at Disney World." And so we contacted our senator's office and he's like, "All right, I will make sure I take care of it and I'm going down there with them." So, um, S, thank
you so much for all your support. I we we we can't thank you enough because without your financial support of this our we probably would not have gone to Disney World. So, thank you. and our kids had a amazing time. I want to
thank Shannon Chick, our jazz band director, CHS band director, um Dana Sheridan for our Canari. If you get a chance to see the
performance, the kids did an amazing job at Disney Springs. It was fantastic. Um, and so everyone in the background from our business office to Veronica who coordinated all of the paperwork to get
everything with Pete to Mr. De Lady, you know, someone has to drive all the instruments down and we couldn't have Mr. Papicilia go by himself. So, um, Adam Deady drove down with all the instruments and made sure they were
safely delivered and brought back. It was truly a team effort. But it was so worth it. And uh I just want to say congratulations to our Jasmine and Canari. They Yeah. Senator S, come say a few
words. And we have a trophy with Mickey. We're trying to decide where it should go, but you guys can we're going to um come up when we when we do your certificates and share the trophy with us. Senator S.
So, I just wanted to to be here tonight first to say congratulations to Canari and to the Jazz band and also Chelsea High School boys and girls basketball teams for all your efforts and your great season as well to our young people. Um, but I w I wanted to come to announce
two things that I that I wanted to share with all of you. Um, and you don't even know this yet. I told the kids in the back that so they know before you know. But um so two things. We are going to have the Canare and the Jazz Band play
their same program they played in Disney World at the state house in front of all the state senators and state representatives and the governor. And we invite all of Chelsea to be there to come. If you didn't see the program in Florida or if you didn't see them their practice here at the high school
before they they went to Florida, come to the state house and you will see their full performance at the state capital. So, they're going to do that in front of all of our representatives and senators and governor and hopefully all of you and Chelsea will be there to share that moment with them as well. And
second, yes, they deserve that. And second, uh, as the superintendent just mentioned, we got funding for their trip in Florida. So, I'm also going to announce that we are going to get $50,000
in the next two months, probably either either in April or May, but $50,000 will be coming to Chelsea High School to have your music program travel somewhere else next year as well, Disney or somewhere, wherever you choose to go. They're going to go on another another great trip
because we want we want to reward them for all their efforts, but we also want to show the rest of the country what Chelsea's made out of. Our Chelsea kids deserve it and Chelsea kids are going to shine on a national stage once again. And we're going to pay for it. So, you pick the
the location, you pick where you're going to go, and we'll pay for it and cover all the expenses for the band and wherever you want to go, we'll be there. And I'm going, too. So, you pick a good place. Pick a good place. But thank you very much for your support of of the the programs. You know, our kids in the
classroom do an amazing job, but it's the outside the classroom activities as well that make the child whole through sports, through our arts, through, you know, I call, you know, our arts programs are sport of the arts. You know, they they really they all come
together and do these activities outside of school, take time away from their schedule, and they excel. So we deserve we we want to make sure we show them how much we appreciate them and do that by not just words but by actions as well and and this is how we do that. We make
opportunities for these kids and u it was great to be there in Disney World seeing all the kids there. Um and it was a moment that and I said to them that memories last forever. We're creating memories every single day in this school and in Chelsea High School. So thank you very much everyone for your support.
Thank you to our superintendent and to all the teachers that made this happen because without all their efforts, this would not have happened for the kids. So, thank you to all of you. >> Okay, we're going somewhere. We just don't know where. Thank you, Senator
South. Thank you. Okay, so we'd like to recognize I know a lot of our students are not here tonight because they were performing at the Civics B. So, we have a We have a lot of kids missing. Um, we have Alex Chang,
but I still want to shout out all their names. Um, Alina Rivera. >> Yay! family. No more ar help me out. >> Abada
arbasa. Just want to make sure I get it right. Growing up, no one could say my name, so I understand. Um, Natalia Barona, Ronnie Padilla, Carla Almaya, Lukan Roat,
Jaso, Alexander Soundall, Nathan Plata, Darlene Mendula, Jamina Lopez, Jen Jen Jen Carlo, Karansa, Miguel Vendosa,
Robert Masterson Jr., >> Kimberly Romero, And now that they're so popular, they're they're performing everywhere. Zacharia Mubaten, David Vesta, Vladimir Hernandez, Machado,
Daniel Pan, Manuel Rodriguez, Thank you, >> Amy Hernandez. And here comes the trophy that we're gonna figure out where to put it. Antony Velasquez.
Claudia Oxburg. Immano Vega Joshu Cardova Alon Dana Sheridan OUR TEACHER CANARI WHO IS FIRST YEAR DOING a fabulous job with Pentar.
And the amazing Shannon Chick WHO the sound the sound of the jazz band and Canari together is is just you would never know that they were high school students.
And of course, Peter Papiccilia Papelio, we didn't know this, but uh Pete knows all things about Disney. Next to next to S, our senator, the two of them together were giving G gave everybody hints on
where to go, what to do. And Pete, when Pete planned, he super detailed and all the things that came to the superintendent's office about X Y and Z and double XX Y and Z and Veronica I
cannot thank you enough because I KNOW >> YES uh Veronica and made this happen with Pete between the two of them together because this was we got they we got accepted and
within months the the planning had to take place and SA's office was ex extraord It was amazing. Um, all of the shirts that you see were designed by SA's staff. I don't know who on your staff designed the t-shirts, Senator,
but they're amazing. And um, yes. And so we we're excited to uh, Chelsea High School 27. We don't know where yet, but we'll we'll we'll figure it out. So, thank you to everyone. if we could get just a group
picture with the students and teachers and then and s you need to come up. Senator South. >> Yes, it truly is a a group effort and I know um S is the one that planted the seed.
If we could get pictures with S and the kids and then school committee will join. Love you. Love you. >> I love you. We'll move on now to um the next item. Can I get a motion for approval of the
minutes of the last regular meeting on February 5th, 2026 and the special meeting on March 3rd, 2026, the public hearing on March 17th,
2026 and the regular meeting on March 19th, 2026. >> I'll make a motion to approve those minutes. >> I second. Thank you. We'll now move on to the next item which
is public comment and I will make I will read out the guidelines for the public comment. Before the beginning of the public comment, I want to review the guidelines so that we can ensure everyone has the opportunity to be heard and that the meeting proceeds
respectfully in an orderly manner. Signups for public comments are closed at the time at this moment. If you signed uh prior to the start of the meeting, your name will be called in the order received. Each speaker will have
two minutes to address the school committee. When your name is called, please come to the microphone. State your name and begin your remarks. When the two minutes have ended, we ask that you please conclude your comments so
that we may move to the next speaker. We understand the people feel strongly about the issues before us tonight. However, we expect all speakers and members of the audience to remain respectful and professional. Personal
attacks, profanity, threats, or disruptive behavior will not be tolerated. Anyone who is disrespectful or disruptive may be asked to leave the meeting so that we can maintain a safe and productive environment for everyone.
We appreciate your cooperation and your participation in this important discussion. Thank you. Speaker is Jillian Barnes. >> We'll move on then to Eileen Erazo. Give me one second. It's loading.
>> The microphone's on. I don't know if it's on. >> Can you guys hear me? Okay. >> Okay. Um, good evening members of the school committee. My name is Eileen Hera Eraso and I'm a senior at Chelsea High School. I'm here today because our student, staff, and community deserve better. The reality is that this budget
process has fallen short and has been upsetting. The committee had time to readjust priorities before the city added $2 million. Yet, we're still looking at a plan that does not fully meet the needs of our schools. And let's be honest, $2 million while it is helpful and I am thankful that the city
of Chelsea gave us the extra $2 million it but it still isn't enough to fix the gaps that we're facing. This is not just about numbers on a page. This is about real people, real students who rely on support systems every single day. And one of the most concerning decisions is this. You brought many staff members
back. But the counselor, but not the counselor who helped save a student's life. That is just not a staffing choice. That is a statement about priorities. How can a district say it supports students well-being while letting go of someone who made that kind of impact? It shouldn't matter based on how long someone has been here. Miss
Karina Lawrence has significantly impacted the lives of nearly all of her students during her three years here. Mental health support is not optional. It is essential. Students need trusted adults in their buildings, especially those who have proven they can make a life-changing difference. Voting yes on
this budget sends the message that this is acceptable and that these cuts and choices are okay. They are not. I urge you to vote no on this budget. Take a stand, go back, push harder, and advocate at the state level for the funding our district truly needs. Our students deserve a budget that reflects
their value, their safety, and their future. Thank you. >> Next speaker, Vanessa Mendoza Merc. Can I please ask that you try to speak straight into the mic only because it seems to be echoing? >> Yeah, >> it's it's >> Does that sound fine?
>> Does that sound okay? C >> can we close the doors partially? Not all the way. I know the doors can be closed completely, but partially so that maybe that'll give us a little bit of better reception here. Not all the way,
please. They need to be It needs to be left a little bit of jar. Can you open it a little bit? It can't It can't be closed all the way. >> Thank you. I'm sorry. It's just rules of the meeting. Thank you.
>> Good evening. My name is Vanessa Mendoza Marcado. I am a multilingual educator at the Kelly School, the vice president of the Chelsea teachers union, a Chelsea resident, a CPS grad, a future parent, and I'm here tonight to urge the committee to vote no on the budget. We heard from community members last week
that they are looking to see changes to the budget. We know we received the additional $2 million from the city. We are appreciative of that additional monies, but we know that we can do better for our students. 57.5 positions is about a whole school worth of student
staff studentf facing staff positions. We know that our students are here. We know that our students are are learning. We know that our students need our positions because we are here to help them. In my 10 years of working in this district, we have never seen budget cuts this this large. We know that the times
are hard. We know that we have limited funds, but we can do a lot with the funds we have right now. If the committee votes to pass this budget, I cannot in good faith believe that we are working to do what's best for our students. We heard from family members. We heard from students. We heard from
staff. I know it's hard. I know we don't want to cut positions. I don't want to see them. I know we're going to see positions being cut, but we need to make sure that they're fair and proportional. And that's all we have been saying. We're not saying to cut all of your administrators. We're not saying to cut all central office staff. We're saying
to look at our contracted services, to look at where we're using our monies right now, curriculum, um, materials, and all these other things. Please make the right choice tonight. Thank you. Next speaker, Nadia Deiea.
Hello, my name is Nadia De Vijetta and over the last several meetings I've noticed a common theme in which everyone that is not everyone the majority of the people that are sitting here have taken in a personal attack comments that have
been made and I think by taken the request of transparency and equaleness and just to listen to the people takes away from what is really at stake here. Um, with all due respect, this isn't about any of you guys. This
is about the children. Um, and ultimately every single parent, every single teacher, and every single student that spoke cares about the future of our children. So, I'm just here to remind you guys that you guys don't have a loyalty to anybody other than your constituents. Your constituents are
telling you, please vote no. I've lost faith in the administration based on comments that I've heard that are very disappointing. Again, making it about them, not about the students. So, this is my last ditch effort in not losing faith in my school committee. As a
constituent, I ask you to vote no. I ask you to remember where your loyalty stands. And I ask you to reconsider whatever preconceived decision you came into tonight and wrote no and just simply request for them to take a second look. That is not saying anything bad
about you guys. It's simply saying we listen to our constituents. Thank you. >> Next speaker, Olivia Lavine. Olivia Lavine. >> Hi, my name is Olivia Lavine and I'm a junior at Chelsea High School. I'm writing to express my deep concerns
regarding the recent faculty changes, specifically involving Karina Lawrence and Taylor Trip, my Portuguese teacher. Miss Lawrence has been instrumental in my ability to continue attending Chelsea High School following a violent attack I experienced on campus. her compassion
and support for students struggling with mental health and are unmatched. I would like an explanation as to why she will not be returning next year. Furthermore, as a child of Portuguese immigrants, I was eager to take Portuguese language
classes, I have recently learned that Taylor trip will no longer be here at Chelsea High School next year. This will be emotionally disruptive to the kids that he has now and the kids that want to take his class next year. And for the kids who've had had a
relationship with him and for you guys to for you guys wanting to get rid of a language class, why didn't you get rid of French? The students and parents and commu and community members that p that presented today are committed to the future of these children. Please let us
know what steps we need to take to ensure that these essential educators remain at our school. Thank you. Next speaker is Zachary Ryan that okay? Uh good evening. Uh, first off, I'd like to start off with an apology to you, Dr. Abda. On last
Tuesday's meeting, I addressed you by your first name. It did not include your title. I apologize. I meant no disrespect. Now, to the committee as a whole, I will express what Nadia just said. You don't owe an allegiance to the school board.
It's to your constituency. It's the kids here. It's the parents here. Again, we're just saying say no. There's nothing wrong with saying no and taking a bit more time. I think we can all agree that this has been a rushed process from the beginning. Yes, it was because of storms. Yes, there were other
issues with, you know, people showing up. Some of them were bad issues. Some of them were good issues, but people are showing up. Say no. Let's take another week. Let's take a look at this. Next, I would like to say to you that I would like to express my feelings as Nadia
did. We're not being personal. We're looking for accountability. We're looking for you to be transparent when we ask a question. Tell us, guide us. That's what we're asking. This is you're part of the education system in this city. When we're asking for help, give
it to us. Show us where to go. Don't say, "I took that personally. I don't know how to respond." Say, "This is where I think you're looking for." People here are getting frustrated. And frustration can sometimes, well, a lot of times be taken as anger. People are
upset, but I think the the kids here are definitely upset, but I think a lot of the adults are frustrated. We're not getting the answers that we want. There's no problem saying, "No, let's take another week. Let's look and see what we can do. Nobody wants to see job cuts at the highest end, at the lowest
end. We'd love to stay where we were." But the first meeting I went to with you guys was back in February. And the first thing you guys did, the first thing I saw, second thing I saw was that we increased diversity and we hired all these teachers and you guys were so proud of that. Yet you knew two weeks
later you were going to get rid of 75 people. I would just say vote no and give it another week. THANK Robert Masterson. Good afternoon once again. My name is Robert Masterson and I would like to say my piece on teachers being cut from this
district. Teacher retention has already has been an everpresent issue in this district and this cut will just make it worse. The thought that teachers now have to live with the idea that their jobs aren't secure is what can cause them to leave this district. They already put their 110% into teaching all the students in this district. And to
think that any any of them at any time that they can be fired makes me not even want to try anymore. Teachers are the backbone of this district and have always cared for us. Their position shouldn't be cut. They shouldn't live with the idea that at the drop of a dime, their livelihoods are completely over without a second
thought. Once again, none of our teachers are a statistic and should be treated as such. Thank you. Next speaker, Ludis Aras. We'll move on to the next speaker. Zida, >> I just want to ask that people speak a little bit slower and closer to the mic. I'm having a hard time hearing. And
also, I know that there's an interpreter in the room. They're doing consecutive interpretation. So, the faster you go, the harder it is for them to interpret. Um, not to cut into your time, but just be conscious of people with disabilities and also people that need interpretation. Thank you.
>> Can you hear me? Okay. >> All right. Good evening. My name is Sa is Matula and I'm a parent of a Chelsea school student. I'm here because a budget is a moral document. It tells us what this district truly values and I'm disappointed. Dr. No beta, you can set
an example every year, not just last year. I believe an admirable leadership quality is to set an example every day, even if that makes even even if that means making hard decisions, just as you have asked every principal to make theirs. The people principles have had
to fire also work late nights and have to be told to go home. And to Anna Ernnandez, no one, absolutely no one thinks that cutting top administrative salaries will magically solve the financial problem. We believe that we should prioritize student facing
positions. The counselors, teachers, tutors, par profofessionals. These are the actual people who know the students names, a value you so proudly claim to uphold. I would take a Mrs. Lawrence, someone who actually saves lives, plus a student facing part-timer over your
average $159,000 administrative in your cabinet. We've heard the argument that we need this administrative roles to advocate for money from Lucia Ernnandez. But let me remind Mrs. Ernnandez that advocacy didn't come from Dr. Abda's a cabinet.
It came from the community, the students, and the teachers. I am disheartened and concerned that our advocacy is being dismissed as attacks. If you feel defensive, I'm sorry. But in times like this, I prioritize facts over feelings. Behavior like clapping
aggressively while an educator was speaking at one of the budget hearings perpetuates the us versus them dynamic. By proposing a budget that ignores the concerns of this community, you are showing us exactly what type of leaders you are. That goes for every school committee member voting on this budget
tonight. Going along to get along is not leadership. Feelings are not facts. The fact is our students need mentors, not more administrators. Thank you. >> Next speaker, Juliana Hassel.
Juliana Hassim. >> Next speaker, Kellyanne Curley. >> Good evening. My name is Kellyanne Curley. I am the interim VP of the Chelsea Teachers Union and a multilingual educator at the ELC. I spend most of my day uh in kindergarten. As a language teacher, I teach many
lessons on many topics. One of the most common and necessary is sharing. If you are at activity time playing in the block area with three other friends, you share the blocks. It's not really an option. We teach young children how to ask for what they need and we teach
their peers to listen with empathy. If someone does not have blocks, you give them some. If you cannot do that, we scaffold some language and you try again. If that does not work, the block area is no longer an option. You make a new choice. You're not ready for block area. We also teach students about
justice. It's in the mass history and social science frameworks for kindergarten. We use a pretty cool and free curriculum called discovering justice. We ask prompts like the students share the blocks on the carpet. Is this justice? Lily tripped on the sidewalk and no one helped her. Is this
justice? Why not for our students? I ask the budget cuts are not proportional. Is this justice? Why not? The students need support and they didn't get enough. Is this justice? Why not? I understand that central office administrators work hard.
We work hard, too. You've said that we don't understand all that you do, and we do. We've asked you to make cuts in other places as well. It often feels like you do not understand educators, families, and students. We hear it in your words, "Language is important."
Sometimes you ask us to work together. Sometimes you say we can never understand. Sometimes you talk about us as if we are not still listening. Sometimes you are you say we are attacking and call us combative when all we are asking is to please share the blocks.
Next speaker Katie Lee. Hi, my name is Katie Lee and I am a speech therapist at Chelsea High School. I'm disheartened to see that we sit here tonight with a budget that I still strongly believe will hurt our students for years to come. I'm very thankful to the city of Chelsea for hearing our
advocacy and committing additional funds. And I'm glad that the superintendent chose to use that money to restore student facing positions. On the other hand, it's very disappointing to see that the district has made so little movement toward repprioritizing and making this budget more balanced. We
hear you saying that students are your priority, but it's honestly hard to fully trust in that when the actions taken during this budget cycle do not say the same thing. To do the right thing for our students means to take a hard, critical look at all of our spending and make cuts furthest away
from students first. Last week, we saw an incredible testament to the power of public education. So many students spoke clearly, eloquently, and bravely to advocate for what they need and what they deserve. As always, these kids make
me so proud to be a Chelsea educator. But when so many of the systems in our country are actively working against our students right now, I really would have hoped that our school district and our school committee could stand up and work harder to ensure that our system works for our students. I urge the school
committee to vote no on this budget. Our students deserve so much better than this. Next speaker, Nyla Caravayo Diaz. Next speaker, Anna Vaneras. Next speaker, Manal. I don't have a last name, just Manal.
Hello, my name is Man Nebat and I'm a seventh grade at the WSDA Middle School. I'm here to talk about the cutback of half of the educators in my all in all schools across Chelsea. We're all sad to hear about what happened to our budget and what happened to some of our staffs in our school. I want to highlight that
all the staffs that have been impacted in this situation all are all human and have a family. Not only are you taking their job, you're taking their future. And while you we're talking about future, let's talk about the students future. I fear for my future as the
people that I say hi to every morning may be cut off one day because some people don't know how to maintain a budget. Day by day goes by, I see worried faces when I walk past teachers scared if they're going to be next. Usually teachers say good morning and smile while teachers used to do that all
the time, but now there's a budget. They look tired and stressed out. No teacher has to face these scary situations, but they have to because Chelsea doesn't have enough money. Why teachers? Can it be food or clothes? Teachers are a oneway path to our future and the staffs
are getting their jobs taken away little by little. I do not stand for this. I'm here to not here not to argue and choose sides but to show you the truth. And the truth is is that it it doesn't mean to call back teaches but to find another
solution. And I ask you to vote no. Next speaker Carrie Miller. Hi, I am Carrie Miller. I am a history teacher in the history lead at Chelsea High School. I am here today to speak on behalf of my students, many of whom bravely spoke to you last Tuesday here at Chelsea High School. These students
stood before hundreds of people and spoke confidently about what they believed was best for their education and their well-being. They were loud and clear. preserve studentf facing positions that make a direct impact on their lives. On Thursday, I joined the school committee meeting virtually and
was appalled by how members of our school committee and central office spoke about these same students. They dismissed their advocacy as attacks and made assumptions that they just don't understand. Advocating for your own education and well-being is not an attack and calling
it such dismisses it and disrespects the speaker. We should be celebrating the fact that hundreds of students had the courage to stand up before 500 plus people and speak up about what they care for. This kind of civic engagement should be celebrated, not discouraged or
diminished. Furthermore, assuming students and parents in this community don't understand shows yet again that you underestimate them and you need to do better. They understand exactly what is happening. school committee. I am here to remind you of who you are responsible
to represent. You have been elected to represent the interests and voices of your constituents, the very same students and parents you accused of attacking the superintendent. Your job is not to defend the superintendent's decisions. It is solely to represent the
people of this community. The people of this community made it clear what they want you to do. Vote no on this budget proposal. So now the question is, will you stand with your constituents or with central office? >> Next speaker, Britney Fix Given.
>> My name is Britney Fitzgiven. I have taught at Chelsea High School for 11 years. Students, families, and educators have shown up four times now to tell you this budget cannot be approved. And many have offered a clear solution. To quote one of our very brave seniors, Mary Burke, the previous superintendent, successfully handled an entire
educational system that had sixund more children, half the number of people in her cabinet. Ask yourself as to what the priority is, the education or the administration. And some have tried to silence these students. Of the four students who spoke up on March 12th, only one was called down to a meeting. Their parents were not contacted
beforehand. They are a minor. They feel the point of the meeting was to bully and intimidate them into not speaking. They were completely alone. I cannot imagine a scenario where it was deemed appropriate to call a young student down to a room alone with two adults and try to shame them for speaking up. To stingle that student out among the hundred others. Whatever the intention,
the student feels the goals was intimidation. And as a mom of soon to be three, I'd be outraged that my child was put through that and equally furious that the budget was being designed to protect the people who tried to scare my child. To quote that same student, Mary Burke, the previous superintendent, successfully handled an entire
educational system that had 600 more children and half the number of people in her cabinet. Ask yourself as to what is the priority, the education or the administration. You were elected to make decisions for the community. This is frankly an easy decision. You can protect the educators, which the community is begging you to do. You can
tell central office to make cuts to their own. Let me again repeat that student who could not be silenced. Mary Burke, the previous superintendent, successfully handled an entire educational system that had 600 more children and half the number of people in her cabinet. Ask yourself as to what is the priority, the education or the
administration. The students and community have spoken. Your constituents have spoken. And if you fail them, if you rubber stamp this budget that they have so universally rallied against simply to protect central office, the Chelsea community will remember and they will vote you out. Thank you.
Next speaker, Thomas Gordon. Good evening, members of the school committee, uh, Superintendent Dr. Aveda. My name is Thomas Gordinir, and I'm an ESL teacher here at the high school. I expect you've noticed that this meeting is not quite as packed as the one last week when 500 people came and 100 spoke.
I believe it's maybe even fewer than were at city hall uh this Monday when people came to thank the city council for giving us additional funds. I hope you look at this and instead of thinking it means that people have decided that in the last nine days they agree with the choices you're making or don't care anymore, you'll reflect that it means
they found speaking to you casting seeds on thorny ground. They'll plant their seeds elsewhere and I look forward to seeing what grows. To be clear, I hope they're wrong and I hope you'll vote no on this budget. However, I'm going to follow their example and spend my remaining time in a way I'm more sure
will be fruitful. I want to say thank you to city manager Maldis and the city council for listening to students and families and staff and giving more money to support educators in education. I want to say thank you to the community of Chelsea, which has always made me feel welcome, as it has so many others.
I hope that every year we get to know each other better. Thank you to all the educators of Chelsea Teachers Union, especially my colleagues at CHS. I'm proud to be fighting alongside all of you for the schools our students deserve, and I'm with you until we win. And thank you to the students of Chelsea above all those who have spoken up again
and again this month. Your passion and leadership are why I can't imagine being anywhere but here, working with anyone but you. I don't think you need any advice from me on this point. So, I'll just say I look forward to watching you turn what you witness tonight into fuel for what you do next. Thank you.
>> Next speaker, Mia Santa Maria. Next speaker, Linda Wallace. >> Hello. Okay. Good evening, school committee members. I'm Linda Wallace, a teacher at Brown Middle School. I've worked in Chelsea for nine years, but my story here began as a BEu freshman tutoring at the Intergenerational
Literacy Program. That's where my love for this community took root. In my first two years of teaching, I had 26 students and I was overwhelmed. I wanted to quit, but I didn't because I had support. PAR professionals, coaches, counselors, veteran teachers who helped
me find my footing. That support is the reason I'm still here. I'm sorry, but I didn't stay because of POC events at Chelsea Station, where I'm encouraged to view co-workers as family. It actually fills me with a sense of unease and distrust when superiors ask me to view colleagues as family. It doesn't build
community. It crosses boundaries. We're cutting nine classroom teachers in the elementary schools. Class sizes will jump from 20 to 25 or 26 students, the same number that almost broke me as a first and second year teacher. At the right, we're cutting four special education liaison, half of their entire
department. Teachers will have less support. We are setting them up to fail. Research shows most often teachers most often leave within their first five years. Chelsea already has a turnover rate 10% higher than surrounding districts. When we cut the positions
that help new teachers survive, we're not just losing positions, we're guaranteeing we'll lose even more teachers down the road. As this budget stands, many positions will be cut. Nearly all teacher and student facing. Meanwhile, central office sees no
corresponding reductions. At the last meeting, we came out in force, but the only changes made came from additional city funding, not from this committee. It does not feel like you've listened. I'm asking you to vote no on approving the current budget. I'm asking you to look again at the budget, reduce retired
consultants, and central office cabinet positions. These are hard choices, but they are the right choices. Thank you. >> The last speaker is Katherine Anderson. >> Good evening. My name is Katherine Anderson. Um, I respectfully encourage you to vote no on the FY27 budget for
Chelsea Public Schools. The budget as written does not represent the best we can do even given the extremely difficult circumstances of this year. Reviewing the impact of these reductions on our students makes this clear. Our elementary school classrooms will be at 25 to 27 kids. Every tutor across the elementary school has been eliminated.
The right is losing half of their sped department. Chelsea High is losing half of their MLES. Paraprofessional support is decreasing district-wide. These impacts are harrowing. I deeply understand that our enrollment decline has resulted in less funding for next year. As I've said throughout this process, we're not asking for a budget that's unbalanced. We're not asking for
a budget that eliminates every administrative position or every cabinet position. We're asking for a budget that looks everywhere but the classroom first. Throughout this budget cycle, we have asked for more transparency and greater community inclusion. We have raised concerns about consultants, outside PD, retired administrators, supplies, software, and yes, the number
of district administrators. When every department has been asked to reduce and each school lose multiple positions, it seems right to ask the same of a cabinet that last year earned a collective $1.4 4 million across eight positions. It's been difficult to have a real communitydirected conversation because the district has yet to make public a
line item budget that allows staff and community to understand how much we are spending, what is grant funded, what can be moved around, where we can make further adjustments. The budget presentation points out that parents weren't specific about which consultants to eliminate, what information have we given families that would let them be specific. All this information should
have been shared at the front of the budget cycle or even when we saw enrollment declining over the summer. Instead, the only commitment we have now after we've eliminated dozens of positions, the most in a single year in Chelsea history is a commitment to review our student software licenses in the weeks after the budget is passed. I recognize that the coming years will be
difficult. But we're working hard and hearing promising things at the state house. We also have to look internally and make our own hard decisions, not just look for external salvation. A no vote will let the staff members, students, parents, and voters know that this process was unacceptable and has resulted in a budget that is unacceptable for our learners. I hope
that you will have the moral courage to stand for our children in this way. Thank you. Veronica, is that everyone? Okay, at this moment we will close public comment and I will hand this back over to Dr. Ala for presentations.
Thank you everyone and thank you for being here tonight. Over the course of this budget season, there have been many questions about the roles and contributions of my leadership team. To provide clarity,
we are sharing a presentation that we routinely review every summer with our district leadership team. Its purpose is to clarify, clearly outline responsibilities and points of contact so that school leaders know exactly
where to go for support and guidance. I currently supervise 18 direct reports including 11 principles. The scope of this work has evolved significantly
over the past eight years. It is different than when my predecessor was here. Today, our focus includes building a more diverse workforce, strengthening communication with families and expanding opportunities
through extended learning areas that did not exist in its current form before. As a result, the structure of the cabinet has grown by two direct reports and another
position underneath a direct report. Equity, communication, and extended learning have been the focus of these three added positions over the last six years. As superintendent, I am responsible for
aligning the leadership structure to the needs and strategic direction of the district. The results of this work are evident. Over the past six years, graduation rates have increased by five percentage
points. In the past two years, two of our elementary schools, the Hooks and the Burkwoods, have been recognized by the Commonwealth of Schools of Recognition. We are also one of the fastest diversifying districts in the state and are no longer designated as a
district in needs of intervention. Overall, these outcomes reflect the strength, focus, and commitment of this team. Please note, following the reduction of several district level administrator
positions, members of my cabinet will be assuming additional responsibilities without additional compensation. Mr. Adam Dely will take on the responsibilities of the secondary STEM
director. Mr. Michael Sullivan will assume the web master duties following the elimination of that position. And Dr. Tamar Blake Cany will take on the full entire work
of the secondary literacy director. I am proud of the work underway and of the people leading it. By sharing this presentation, we hope to provide a clearer understanding of the scope, purpose, and impact of the work
carried out across our district. I'll go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Blake Cany. Okay, can you hear me? >> Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share my role as assistant superintendent and the work I am honored to do in service
of Chelsea students, staff, and families. My path to this position has both been personal and professional. I am a Jamaican immigrant and education created opportunities that transformed
my life. I began my 27year career as an urban elementary and middle school teacher and later served as a school leader for 12 years. 10 years in an elementary school and two years in a middle school. As principal, I had the
privilege of working alongside dedicated educators and families to help our underperforming school become a level one school in the city of Boston. And for six years, we have maintained that status. I also come to this role as a seven-year
breast cancer survivor. That experience gave me a second chance not only in life but in my purpose and it has deepened my commitment to making a meaningful impact through this work every single day.
I am truly humbled to work alongside the talented leaders and staff across Chelsea public schools. Together, we are focused on strengthening instruction, supporting our schools, and ensuring every student has the opportunity to
succeed. This evening, I will briefly highlight how my role helps align and support that work across the district. As the assistant superintendent who is the point person for our elementary schools, I work with our school leaders
where I provide mentoring, coaching and support them. We have ongoing conversations around how we are going to improve instruction. We made sure that we're in classrooms. We are consistently
looking at data and using that data to improve the practices of our teachers and also making sure that that data is informing how we are moving instruction daily in the classroom along with using that data to tell us
what professional development our teachers need. I also provide encouragement and feedback to our leaders and also gently hold them accountable.
As the supervisor for our multilingual education department, our work is three prongs. In the last three years, we have worked to transform that department where we have focused on our students
with limited interrupted formal education known as life. We have redesigned our dual language program that most people know as comminos and we've also done the same for um our foundation foundational program. We also
make sure that we adhere to all of the compliances that DESIE holds us to. Our seal of biiteracy graduation rate has doubled in the last three years. Last year, the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts was granted a million dollar grant. We applied for that grant and Chelsea Public School was awarded more than half of that grant for the entire Commonwealth. We have used that funding again to enhance our commun
program to provide professional development for our teachers and to also purchase curriculum. I also take delight in working with the coordinator for early college along with
our AVID and internship manager. Working with our early college um coordinator, we have increased the total number of students who are enrolled in our early college program, we continue to adhere and make sure there is
coherence and equity aligned with DESIE standards, making sure that all of our students are college and career ready. This school year, two Salem State classes were added during the daytime and 10th graders are now enrolled in our
early college program. For the last two years, I have assumed responsibility as the secondary humanities coordinator where I worked alongside the history coach and the history lead along with the literacy coach and literacy lead in emphasizing
the importance of giving our students opportunity to engage in critical thinking, strong reading and writing, analyzing different perspective, determine what professional development should be focused on, and so much
I also work with our school leaders to make sure that our culture and climate are conducive to teaching and learning and then reinforcing for our leaders that a positive culture equals academic success and that principles are
empowered to lead with clarity, compassion, and consistency. I also work with our data assessment coordinator to make sure again we adhere to all of the compliances of DESIE. I enjoy my work
thoroughly with our family liaison and making sure we work to strengthen and bridge the learning that is happening in the classroom to the learning that is happening at home and make sure we uh support our families in learning how to
advocate for their children. My last role is also to oversee all of the federal grants, making sure again we are in compliance with all of the federal guidelines and that these grants also help with the priorities of our
district. I also um worked with our budget managers during the auditing. In closure, I want to thank you for this opportunity to serve our vibrant community. Individually, we may be small droplets of water, but together we
become a powerful current flowing in the same direction, shaping possibilities and creating a stronger future for every single student that we serve. I now welcome my counterpart, Miss Martineelo.
Good even. Can you hear me? Okay, it's echoing. Good evening, everyone. My name is Michelle Martinelloo. I apologize. I have my voice has been in and out all week. Um, I am the assistant superintendent that is currently overseeing secondary schools. Uh, prior
to that, I was a principal at the right for eight years. Um, I also was an assistant principal for a number of years at the same school and a classroom teacher for over 10 years. Again, all at the right. Um, my family is from Chelsea. Both my mother and father
graduated from Chelsea High School. U, my grandparents, both sets, lived here, one on Admiral's Hill and the other in Prattville. Um, I have family still in the city and it is the city I love with all of my heart. Um, it's my home. That
being said, serving this community, having students like Olivia um and other students I've seen speak, I couldn't be more proud of you. I know it is not hard. It's so hard to get up here. I struggle with it. So, thank you for doing that. Um my main role, the one
that I hold nearest to my heart is direct principal mentoring and support. I currently work with all principles grades 5 to 12. um the Wright, the Brown, the Clark, Chelsea High School, Chelsea Opportunity Academy, and Chelsea Virtual Learning Academy. I work
directly with those principles, mentoring and coaching them. We have two principles at the secondary level in their first year. And I really see it as my role to make sure that I am supporting them in every single way possible so that they can be successful, their schools can be successful, their
staff and their students can be successful. Um I'm also responsible for instructional rounds. Um, at the secondary level, groups of staff and district staff walk around the building and we are observing rooms in a 5x5
structure and we use those results to go into the next portion which is helping us decide what our turnaround and uh, accelerated improvement plans are going to consist of. Those are required by the department of ed and those are very
strategic plans that are vetted by not only principles but also instructional leadership teams. I also am part of the DT staring committee. That's a shared role with Dr. Blake Kanty as well as Mr. Jady. I'm the DESIE and data
accountability lead. So we voted to get rid of the MCAPS. We had to come up with competency determination. Um I was one of the people on the team myself and Mr. Dely to submit that to the department of ed. We work on those types of things monthly. I'm also the
statewide system of support point. So that role is schools that are identified as underperforming. That is the support the state provides us. I see my role as making sure that what the state is having us do is aligned with our district priorities so it doesn't just become an exercise in compliance. Part
of that is also writing the district instructional improvement plan which is focused on secondary mathematics grades 5 through nine. Next bucket is student experience and climate. So I'm the primary support for uh grades 5 through 12 discipline as
well as the code of conduct. So we're we're revamping our entire um hand all of our handbooks and how we approach discipline. Um, I'm also in charge of attendance and chronic absenteeism. Moving into the community facing role,
safety and crisis response. I'm the primary support for community incidents. Um, that is probably the hardest role to my heart um that I have. Um, things happen in every community, but
when you know the students that the things are happening to, it makes that role extremely hard. Um, I'm I work directly with school safety, the school resource officers. I'm in charge of emergency preparedness, uh, districtwide safety protocols, run, hide, fight, um,
and mandating training oversight. So every year we need to train our staff as part of the necessary trainings that are required by the state of Massachusetts. I work with principles and department heads to make sure we get that done. I also oversee the health department, the athletics department, and the physical
education department. And coming to the stage now is my colleague Dr. Aaron Jennings. Hello everyone. Um I um affection called Dr. Jay by my students here in the district. I believe I have the best job on the cabinet um where I serve as chief
of staff and oversee department of wellness. Um I'm going to share the work that I do in two facets. Um one the work that I'm directly um responsible for. I actionize and move forward and that it goes as follows. I originally came to
the district in October 2020 as the district's um equity, diversity, and excellence officer. A job uh role I hold dear and near to my heart um where I was able to get to know the community in so many facets. Um in that role and even though my title has changed, I still
operate as that as that role and that role includes professional development across the entire district and schools along with coaching support and programming. I also have the great privilege of serving as the um point person facilitator for the Chelsea
Children's Cabinet. It is a cross- sector collaboration with um um representatives from the school department, state and local government officials, community based organizations, businesses, and universities. That sole purpose is to impact child wellbeing in the city of Chelsea.
Next on my roster, I have the great honor of of serving as the U main person liaison for university and community partnerships would include both local universities as well as foundations. again operationalizing on behalf of um children and families here in Chelsea. And I think a role that's near and dear
to my heart is the K12 and postgrad student mentorship. I don't know how it happened, but I kind of fell into that role where I am currently mentoring current students at the high school as well as I have mentees on my roster that graduated um from Chy High School in early as early as October as excuse me
as early as 2020. So I am yet still mentoring um alums u from the student and it's often over meals. Um so that's near and dear to my um heart. Also the work I do with student groups that give
me opportunity to mentor students with the um black student union as well as the superintendent student advisory council. Um again um close u mentorship and support for say students. The next I'm going to share about the navigator program, social work department and
school counseling department. These are programs departments that I have the great honor of supporting. Um and one is a navigator program which provides mentorship and guided supports for um students that need extra support um particularly those with chronicism and just need extra support to get um to and
through um high school and have a successful foundation in life. The next of the next part of my joy which I didn't share at the beginning, I'm actually a social worker. Um I did a very short stint as a school social worker but majority of my work was at the macro level working in communities
at university and building out programs for um school districts across St. Louis on helping them to operationalize their social work programs. So I get to um work with um Miss Pena who's director of social work support of social work and
under her department um she supervises the young parenting outreach workers obviously school social workers as well as MKV under social work department we're responsible for our district's initiatives as well as crisis and mental health oversight management. Then
lastly, um, school counseling department. Let me say, I should have said it earlier, these are just small examples of what state departments do. This is not the exhaustive list. I see one of my counselors in the audience like he does more than this and his colleagues. These are small examples of
what they do. Um so for counseling it is direct provision to school counselors academic advising and development career and postsecary planning as well as life social and emotional skills development which is oftentimes in the elementary schools teaching in the classrooms at
the middle school I'm even at the high school level small groups and support and everything. So this is the work that I do. Um the work that's under the wellness office. Again, I feel I have the best job. What's not on your screen, I get to also work across the entire cabinet and district. Next, I'm going to
call my um colleague Alden. >> Thank you, Dr. Jay. Um I am going to share a little bit about my background just because I have a hard time separating it from the work that I do. For those that don't know, um, I am born and raised Chelsea. Um, I've lived on Lewis Street, Crescent, Hooper Street,
back to Cresenav, over to Carol Street, back to Crescent again. And if you're wondering why so many different addresses, I would say if you know, you know. Um, so from that I learned at a very early age that education is extremely important and
that was the career and job that I wanted to do because I felt that I knew what Chelsea schools did for me and I wanted to make sure that I continued that because without the right teachers and the right administrators, we can do our students a major
disservice. It is life or death here in Chelsea. It is. And so the work that I do is near and dear to my heart. Um I got my first job actually while I was in college. I was on my own at 20 uh working full-time making pizzas and
substitute teaching while all my classes were on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Sland State College. Um my first job was a substitute. I worked in all the schools. Um my second job was a paraprofessional in the behavior class at the Burkowitz School. My third job was classroom
teacher. Then I left the district and realized I'm an urban educator. I had to come back. Um I ended up coming back as principal of the Burkowit school and then I um worked my way up to cabinet. Um some of the ro roles and responsibilities I have in the area of
supervision and programming. Um I think the the role that is most important to me is uh my oversight and supervision of the special education department. Um I work very closely with Cindy Rosenberg, Bridget Craig and the entire department
to ensure that we are doing the best that we can for our most vulnerable population. Um the other piece I supervise and work with uh Malik Hosin who will be talking uh to you. He that's probably the easiest part of my job because he does all the work. Um but I
hope that I'm a support and mentor and uh guide him in the work that he's doing with his department. Um, I also supervise um and have oversight over the aforementioned uh adult learning um and intergenerational literacy program and I work with Fallon EK who is an absolute
rockar in our district. I also oversee Danny Moika and the parent information center. Um a lot of what we do is not in isolation and we do have some shared work. So our accelerated improvement plans and our turnaround work um is I I
have a hand in that. Um I participate and facilitate in all instructional rounds. I also oversee Mark Martin and his work with the transition uh transitions from grades four to five and grades 8 to nine. In the realm of instructional leadership um I uh with
the honor of working with Dr. Blake Kanty. We oversee our curriculum leadership team. Um as Dr. Abda referred to earlier, due to uh this budget and the administrative cuts, I'll be taking on the secondary STEM coordinator responsibilities beginning next year, and I'm already starting to work with
some of those amazing uh math teachers at Chelsea High School. Um two pieces that we've been doing a lot of work um are two task forces that we've put together. This is just an uh both of these are great examples of getting people to work together, whether it's administrators, teachers, students,
families, parents. Um, we have a third grade promise task force, um, which I'm, uh, working with Dr. Blake Kanty and our humanities coordinator, Katie Schum, where we are, um, we have a really talented team of coaches, um, who are
working together to look at curriculum, assessment, intervention, staffing, and family engagement. to look at what we have in place, what we're missing so that we can our goal so that we can get all of our students as fluent readers
and fully literate by third grade. That's that third grade promise. the other task force that I'm working with and uh I facilitate that with Michael Sullivan um and we also have um some other cabinet members who attend um but we do have teachers, admin, our tech
department, parents and students um really learning about our um artificial intelligence and how that can um impact our schools. It's here. It's coming. We can't stop it. So, we need to figure out
how to learn as much as we can about it. Also, um we're working on creating guidance um as well as developing policy. Um also, uh I have a big part in looking at our instructional coaches and supporting them and figuring out ways
for them to have more coherence so we have shared messaging, shared pedagogical strategies so we can more efficiently support our teaching staff. Um lastly, um there are I will say as someone who went from parah to teacher to assistant principal, principal,
cabinet member, um and for those that don't know, I had left last year for a superintendency. Uh and it I learned very quickly I need to be back here. Um and so because of that, I I will say I've learned that each time I've taken
another step up that ladder, I've learned that there is so much more that I was not aware of. Um and so and some of it I I kind of refer to as the dirty diapers of the job. The compliance. I did not know this stuff existed even as a principal. Um but the level of
compliance that falls on us particularly through the state and our uh department of education. Um currently we have uh Felicia Paisley is in the office uh in the uh audience I'm sorry. Um we are currently going through an extremely rigorous process that DESIE puts us
through uh called integrated monitoring. So they look at all we have to know all of the civil rights laws. We have to know all of the special education laws. We have to have data that proves that we're in compliance with all of that. And it is grueling. And so I'm I serve
as point for that work. Um and I, you know, I support Felicia on the civil rights side and I support Cindy Rosenberg and her department on the special education side. So it takes a lot of time. Um also policy development in general and monitoring those policies. I've written quite a few
policies in in the last six years. Um they're all online. Um and lastly, there's a big part in data tracking and analysis. I I do enjoy that work very much. So I don't want to call that the dirty diapers. Um but that is also extremely timeconuming and we want to be
able to ensure that we have data that shows that we're getting return on investments on the initiatives that we are working with. Um, and we want to make sure that we're determining the correct focus areas based on the data that we have. Um, so I thank you for your time. And with that, I'll turn it
over to our CFO, Billy Joe Turner. >> Good. He left it on. I'm the chief financial and operations officer. I am a mother of four, so I have been on that side fighting too. I am a mother of a math teacher. I started my career in local public schools where I worked with
gay kids, pregnant girls. Um, I went to China and learned how to advocate for kids, too. I am focused on budgeting and maintenance of $156 million budget. I focus on the past year budget, reporting
on how we spent the money. I focus on the current year budget and make sure that we're spending it according to how it was intended. the government restricts us on how we can spend each dollar and that is my job. Um and then I also in one year work on the following
year's budget. So three years of budgeting in any given uh month. We also do in the business office financial risk management. We do forecasting, expense forecasting. We adhere to all the accounting principles and federal, state
and local compliance requirements. We also um manage the gifts and donations. Other oversight that the um business office has is all of the it would include all of your revenue, your chapter 70 grants, AMOX, private
revenue, all of your spending. That would include all of the rules that we have. We have um procurement rules where we have to go through a certain bidding process when it's government money. We also h uh manage accounts payable,
payroll. We manage all of our contracts in the district, vendor management, facilities, information technology, food service. We also deal with all departments because of all the financials that go through it. That would include special ed out of district
tuition and circuit breaker reimbursements, monitoring of revolving funds and student activity accounts. All of these have different rules. Um, transportation, we do the bids and vendor management. I serve as the audit
liaison for all annual audits. By the way, as the CFO, we have three outside audits every year. Everything we do is audited. We have financial statement audits by outside CPA firms. We have grant audits and we have um end of the
year reporting audits. I have to report to the government every dime we spend both general and the grant section and they come in and audit to make sure that I reported it accurately. So I am the audit liaison. I am also the financial
liaison between schools and all stakeholders including the city and the department of ed. I am also respons responsible for modernizing and making the financials efficient. We have worked with the HR office on a frontline implementation. We're working on
position control so that the budget system is um updated and can tell us this information instead of doing it manually. And we're exploring other modernization tools such as payroll encumbering updating budget software so that we can be as clear as possible with
the public. We I am also responsible for all financial state reporting which includes end of their reporting, circuit breaker reimbursements, maintenance of effort for special ed grants, Medicaid reimbursements, comparability
comparability reports for title one and all grant reporting. Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Christine Lee and I'm the director of HR. I come from a family of immigrants. My parents immigrated to the US in the
70s. Um my dad often tells the story. It was very difficult to earn money after the Korean War. The Korean economy was very bad. So they came very young to this country to chase the American dream
and work very hard to provide. And I remember when I was hired in my interview, um the hiring committee asked me why Chelsea and I told them that, you know, coming from an immigrant family, I
connect with this community because I know firsthand how hard you have to work to make it here. And I know the importance of family and the value of education that this community has. And so that's one of the big reasons why I chose to come here and why
So my role requires many different facets of personnel. Um one bucket is around hiring and staffing. We manage all the hiring processes. So um posting positions, onboarding staff, making sure
that all the paperwork, all these logistics of bringing in people is smooth. We recruit, we go out and try to find great candidates for our students. We are also very uh committed to
diversifying the workforce. This is something that Dr. Beta had asked me to uh support with and I gladly accepted. I some of you might have been at the school committee presentation where I shared about the diversity work that we
are very proud of. Our principles have done an amazing job recruiting and hiring amazing diverse staff. And you know, one of the reasons why it's so important to me personally is, you know, I did not have a uh an instructor who
looked like me until college. And I think a lot of our students um face similar uh situations, but that's something we have improved greatly and we're very proud of it as a district. Um we also manage all of our substitutes um and we partner with
to support that. In terms of operations, we manage a leave of absences, making sure that all these are um accounted for and covered and those folks who are on leave are supported in the things that they may need during that time. We also
support with tuition reimbursement. Chelsea is a very uh fortunate community. When I was working in Boston, I I did not see this benefit. Um but essentially we offer a college masters if you're trying to advance your
education we support that and so that's a part that we manage. We also work closely with city HR to manage all the benefits that our employees receive such as health insurance, dental and so forth. There are five different units in
Chelsea and so I'm the point person to working with the various um unions to ensure that we have um good relationships and we are working together on behalf of our staff and if there are issues that come up
that regards in regards to our staff um I also support with those issues both with the principles and managers but also directly Um, we have done a great deal to improve our systems over the years. I remember
when I first filled out my application, it was a triplicate copy. And I was told to press down really hard so that all three copies could have the same amount of ink. And so I'm proud to have
modernized some of these systems. And we now have electronic hiring processes. And We also are working hard to coordinate our um absence management so that everything with payroll and what employees see for their balances all of
that is funneled through a software called frontline. We're very part of that advancement. Um I also oversee the evaluations technical procedures that are on teach point which all of our uh teachers
utilize and administrators. I am also very proud of the work that we have done to retain and develop staff especially through our teacher pathway program which we launched in 2019 when I came. Um it was something that was
already beginning and I had the privilege of just growing it and seeing just we have raised uh through grants primarily through Desi over 700 700,000 in scholarships that have gone directly
to professionals, high school graduates, uh current teachers who are seeking to grow in their profession through um through our pathways program. And we have several different arms starting from high school all the way to administrators because we truly want to
uh have staff uh from hired to retire. We want to develop and have opportunities for folks to grow and support that work. We have uh supported our pair professionals to obtain certification so that they can uh be
hired as a pair professional and grow into becoming a teacher. We've also supported our lensure preparation programs which I have noticed some of you have attended and we're really proud of the work that we've done to support educators in that. We also have many
partnerships with universities as we are developing our pathways program and different pip path pipelines. And so that is some of the work that we also do in my department. And lastly, I work
closely with Nazina and Christina to oversee the teacher and administrator mentoring. So with that said, I'm happy to introduce Mr. Svin. Good evening everyone. My name is Michael Sullivan and I'm the
communications director. In my role, I report to the superintendent to execute central office communications for Chelsea public schools school-aged families and residents. I also support our departments, our district leadership and schools with various communications
needs. My role supports uh the superintendent, our schools and departments in various instances such as emergencies and crisis communications. We've worked to develop systems where responses can be both as immediate as possible and as comprehensive as
possible. Examples of this include when there are community instances that affect our schools, when our emergency procedures such as lockdowns are initiated, or anything that may affect the operation of school such as cancellations due to weather. I'm the district point of contact for Parents
Square, our schooltoome communications platform. I work hand inand and I'm extremely grateful for for the support of our technology services department for integration with our student information system in this area. I work to support and train administrators so
they in turn can support educators and school-based staff. I am also the point of contact for administration administrators for any support needs and strategize with them on uses of the platform. I am grateful for our family liaison team, our school-based clerks,
and all our educators for the support with this work. I also support the district social media management on our district Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube accounts. Responsibilities include content creation such as graphic design, boat photography, videography,
and even live streaming, which we have started to expand this year to give families additional access to to school-based events. Um, this is another area in particular with our live streaming efforts that I'm incredibly grateful for our collaboration with technology services,
performing and visual arts, as well as Chelsea Community Cable. In a media relations capacity, I write and disseminate press releases about the district, students, educators, and schools, as well as pitch stories to outlets. Over the past few years, we've had so many wonderful stories about
students and educators featured on Channel 5, Channel 4, in the Chelsea Record, Al Planeta, the Boston Globe, among others. And moving forward, as Dr. Abda mentioned, I will also assume responsibility of content management on our district website. Um,
and lastly, I'd like to say it's not lost on me the the privilege that I have to stand before you. I started in Chelsea six years ago in a split role with the city manager's office and the school department that enabled me to learn as much as I possibly could about this amazing and wonderful community.
And it was a the biggest privilege in 20 at the start of 2023 to move to the school department full-time. My wife is a fourth grade teacher. I see the around the clock work that she does. I know of all the wonderful and amazing things that our educators, our administrators, and our schools do for students and
families every day. And it is a privilege of mine to stand here before you and do my do my part to support and serve this wonderful community. So at this point I'll introduce Mr. Malik House. Hi everyone. Uh it's pleasure to be here with you all. Um I will my name is
Malikoshan. I am the officer of innovation, access and opportunity for Chelsea public schools. Uh proud member of Chelsea public schools. um and a proud member of our of our cabinet team uh as well. Uh it is an absolute pleasure to serve our community and
support our students, our staff and our family public schools. And I will say I will challenge Dr. Jay for considering myself to have the luckiest team on cabinet because my job is to actually create programming and design programming that directly supports students and staff uh and families
across the district. I hold two major roles. You'll see them both up there. uh my first job and I came here four years ago. Dr. Beta had the wonderful idea of creating a focus on building out extended learning. So I took that job when I first came here four years ago. I was a coordinator of extended learning. Uh my second role is overseeing uh the
CHS school reimagination project. That is my absolute uh passion and and and labor of love to be able to do that. Again, uh really looking to design a a high school that supports all of our students, our staff, and our community for the next 10 years and beyond. Um so
I started here four years ago. Um it wasn't much in the way when I started in in in regards to extended learning. U and I'm very proud to say that over the past four years we have built uh what has become the model of outside of school time programming that is vacation schools that is summer school that is
after school that has become the model for uh uh the commonwealth across ac for districts across the commonwealth. Uh so what have I done? What have we done as far as as far as the department is concerned? uh we had to create and design systems and operations and budget and management that oversees this
expansive programming. Uh we designed uh really wonderful enrichment summer school programming. Notice we don't call call it summer school because we designed summer school programming to support all of our kids from K through 12. Uh again, we I another passion of mine is our accelerationmies and and our vacation schools, which are just it's
just wonderful to see kids come to school during vacation and see staff that get so excited about being able to work with students in a wonderful uh enriching manner. Um I oversee our after school programming. I will say I see a lot of a lot of faces that I know here.
Uh we have a a ton of staff that that work in our after school programming. I think I see like four or five supervisors uh here as well. And you all know how much I love getting to work with you guys as much as I as I possibly can. Uh so I oversee reach in our new Twilight School as well as Level Up. We're always on the prowl for
redesigning programming to support our students. Uh I oversee and design our student employment and internship programming. So I actually worked alongside with the the city has been nice enough to donate uh uh ARPA ORPA funds for us over the past couple years for us to be able to support up to 30 40
students that actually work throughout the school year, which is just great. Um, I write grants. I write a lot of grants over the past four years. I have written $3.6 million of grants uh that go directly to supporting our programming. These are all the numbers that I'm really proud about. I've been
recently having to do some SOA reporting uh for the dollars that we received from the state. Um, I'm not going to give you the approximate. I'm going to give you the exact We've had 2,980 students that have participated in extended learning uh over the past year. That is more than half of the district that participates
in our program. We have hired 4555 staff members in our programming. It is an absolute pleasure for me to come and build programming and work alongside the teachers as well as the students that help design our programming. Uh those are numbers that
I'm really proud about. Uh the high school ra um high school reimagination project. For those of you who are high schooler, you see me around the building all the time running around uh because we take that job really serious as well. I the project manager and the grant manager for the for the uh for the the
high school reimagination in partnership with the bar foundation. We are I'm going to say this here if that's okay. Uh we have just finished or we are finishing year three of a bar foundation grant. Um I am proud to say that we are being awarded a second year from the bar foundation grant. We don't have the
exact dollars. I expect it to be a decent amount. uh something that we will be proud of that is representative not my work but of of the work that we have done as a team at the high school. Again, it's great to work alongside the kids. It's great to learn work alongside the staff. It's great to work alongside the administration for that. High school
is my passion and it's it's it's what's getting me going in the morning. I oversee all aspects of the reimagination, school operations, pathway design, instruction, and grants. Um and then finally, the other thing that I really love to do is how do we bring partners uh into our community? Um, I am I'm a Lawrence guy, so I know
what it means to work in an underserved um community. Lawrence has a lot going for it. So doesn't Chelsea. The one thing that Chelsea doesn't have is a subway stop. And our kids see the city of Boston on a regular basis and we can't get they can't get there. And so
over the past four years, my focus has been really looking a and and working alongside partnerships that build reciprocal relationships to ensure that not only we can get our kids there, but how do we get our partners here? Museum of Science has been a labor of love.
Every student K through 8th grade touches touches um engineering programming that is designed by the Museum of Science. A lot of these programs start in extended learning. They come they they run as pilots and what we try to do is expand that uh not from just from not those just pilots
after school and summer but how do we expand it to the regular school day? Junior achievement is one of our partners. We have we have multiple programs through about five or six different schools summer school vacation school and they will be one of our partners as we design a business business pathway for the high schools part of the reimagination four kids
only. When I got here there were 40 students that were that that participated in FKO. We up to 240 students that is and that is part of that grant dollars that we cover the cost of those students for those families. Mass Art, arts for humanities. These are some of the partners that we're working with in regards to the
high school redesign. Uh digital ready STEM pathways. We start an electric electricity course here. We have 25 kids that are taking electricity course paid. It is wonderful. When I ask them, how do you like the class? They all raise their hands. They're showing up nine hours a nine hours a week that is part of the redesign Boston Children's course.
There's nothing more that I love to see than 40 of our students go and sing at the MLK Day concert every year for the past four years. Best part of that is we get two free tickets for their parents. We we coach bust their parents to see their can sing at Symphony Hall. Uh MIT
Museum, we're working on that. We got a couple surprises. I know COA is actually doing some stuff with the MIT Museum. Shout out to Ron in in the uh in the in the audience. Uh soccer without borders. We have 240 students that are participating participating in soccer without borders. There will be a bit of a surprise coming our way uh in regards
to the World Cup. I don't want to let that out of the bag, but just keep your eye on the TV. You might see some of our kids. I just throw that out there. Play ball Foundation. We've been granted $30,000 per year for the last two years. That has covered the expansion of our middle schools. Um Maya, I'm going to ask you, we have a ton of middle school
kids playing in murals. It's we have a ton of kids playing inter in murals, right? And it's great to see um that that that their funding covers that expansion where we're able to actually run programming from September all the way through June, four days a week. Uh Levita Scholars, I oversee that. City of Chelsea and Chelsea Recreation is a
pleasure to work alongside Charlie and Chelsea Recreation and expand our programming. Uh, I mentioned the city of Chelsea because I'm also the very proud host of Chelsea Day and all amongst amongst other things that is by the way that work is designed to make sure that our kids our kids and our staff are put
on that platform so they can be celebrated. Girls on the run, I think we're up to about 140 girls just at the complex alone that are running after school. We started a middle school program. Boston Debate League, we have two teams at CHS in the Boston Debate League. We have an English and a Spanish
team and our kids win awards. You should be proud. CPD, I'm helping to build build a base in Holland Lacrosse. We have about 40 kids in Chelsea that are playing lacrosse right now. And that started in December. Um, I think that's it. Last but I I was last but not least, but I hope I didn't I hope I kept you
guys with the the lids open. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Dr. Bennett. >> Hello. Thank you team. Um, now we can move on to our indicators of success. I'd like to call Dr. Tamar Blakey back
up to the podium. We're going to go to the indicators of success. Thank you. Now, uh just a reminder that our indicators of success holds the district accountable um to our students and to our families
as we look at our priorities in our strategic plan. Tonight, I'm going to cover our daily attendance, graduation rate for last school year 2425, our high school dropout rate, our
mobility rate, and then Last data I will cover is our high school failing grades. In terms of our daily attendance rate, preK through 8th grade daily attendance is strong at an average of 92%.
Grades 9 through 12. Um we're still working on improving our students attendance. The district yeartoate daily attendance rate is strong at 90%. Our four-year graduation rate the last
school year was at 70%. And this is an ongoing conversation that we have at cabinet around how we're going to increase that number. Our high school dropout rate as of October
1st, our enrollment was 1,683 students. The number of students who dropped out is 53. Um, so far we're at 3.15. When compared to the previous year, 2425
is the difference of 15 less students dropping out. As for our mobility rate at the ELC, we had five students in in the month of February, five students out. At the elementary level, we had 11
students in, 13 students out. At the middle school level, we had 10 students in, three students out. At the high school level, we had 11 students in, 10 students out. At the district level for
the month of February, we had 37 students in, 31 students out. So, we were able to retain six students. Cumulatively thus far we've had 389
students from September through February who have been in the district and we have 252 students who left that is a difference of 137 for our high school failing grades.
Grade nine total number of students for the second quarter 391 students. Grade nine, one failing grade 68.
Two failing grades 39. Three failing grades 32. Four or more failing grades 31. Total percentage
43%. At the ninth grade for the second quarter for our 10th grade. Second quarter failure rate 335 students.
One failing grade, 58 students. Two failing grades, 55 students. Three failing grades, 23 students. Four or more failing grades, 11
students. And the total percentage is 43%. We do acknowledge as a school district that we do have a great or tremendous amount of work to improve the outcome of
our students. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share out our indicators of success for the month of February. Does the committee have any questions on these reports? >> No.
>> Okay. Thank you. >> And I just have two more reports um as we track our personnel hires and changes and our demographic data. Again, this demographic data is what we report
to the Office of Civil Rights as well. Um, these are the categories. So, we've hired 30% Caucasian this past month, 70% Hispanic, 20% black, and 0% AsianPacific Islander.
And then in the next report is our enrollment report. and we are holding steady at 5,785 students. And I'd like to commend these reports for the record.
That completes my report for the night. If we can have our student student reps share All righty. Um, good evening Dr. Obera, Chairwoman Hernandez, school committee members, and everyone here tonight. I'll be giving an update about senior life
and the transition into the last quarter. First and foremost, I want to acknowledge I hear the voices of our students and the concerns of our staff. Your perspectives matter and there are what shape our community. It's important to remember that we are strong not as individuals alone, but as a united
community. Together, we will move forward, support one another, and continue to grow. Our senior class has reached an exciting and meaningful milestone. The majority of seniors have now received their college decisions, and many are working with counselors and adviserss to determine which path best
aligns with their goals, passions, and futures. With May 1st approaching, which is a deadline for seniors to commit to a college by submitting their enrollment deposit, students are carefully reviewing financial aid packages, visiting campuses, and weighing their options to ensure they're headed to
great colleges. At the same time, we're approaching AP exam seasons. Many of our students that are taking AP classes have already taken their AP mock exams, reviewed their scores, and created a study guide to better the chances of getting high scores that can be used as college credit for when students go to
college. I'm wishing all the students the best during AP exam season. As we approach the end of quarter 3, students across all grade levels are focused on maintaining and improving their academic performance. Seniors especially are ensuring they have met all graduation requirements and are staying in track in
order to graduate. As we continue through this busy and important time of the year, I want to leave you with this. Whether you're making big life decisions, preparing for exams, or simply trying to stay on track, keep pushing, stay forward, and remember that you're capable of achieving great things. We're stronger together, and the
future ahead of us is full of possibility. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um we will move on to new business at this moment um for the committee. >> Can I make a a motion for committee reports the enclosure please?
>> Can I make a motion to commend the committee reports to the record please? We will move on to new business. Um we will start with the first item so the committee members know you'll all have a chance to ask your questions before we
vote for the budget. Um first item is consideration and action to forgo school choice for the 2026 2027 school year. Can I get a roll call? Veronica.
>> Veronica, can you clarify the yes or no vote for the committee? >> Yes. So, superintendent is recommending that we forego, which means we are looking to not accept um students from out of district. So, to vote yes, you're
technically voting no. So, a yes vote would mean we would forego school choice. We vote yes to forgo. Right. I'm sorry it's difficult to hear. Okay. Thank you. Vera, can we do a roll call, please?
Mr. Small. >> Yes. >> Miss Kleso. >> Yes. Miss Enriquez. >> Mr. Orian. Sorry, Mr. Orian.
>> Yes, >> Miss Valdz. >> Dr. Neville, >> Miss Cabra, >> yes, >> Miss Hernandez. >> Yes, >> Mr. Gomez Pereira. >> That's nine in the affirmative. >> Nine in the affirmative. Motion passes.
We'll now move on to the second item, which is the budget. And at this moment, um, please raise your hand. anyone on the school committee that would like to ask some questions and I will call on who has questions they'd like to ask anyone
>> so I just wanted to ask uh about the I'm seeing like a magic people hear me >> cool um there seems to be like a magic number in the budget book specifically when it comes to the ELC and that number for classroom teachers is I'm wondering
if you could um just elaborate a little bit on the reductions there from 23 for some of the schools to 20 just so that parents understand why 20 be a careful number for our forecasted students and what we
currently have in terms of student enrollment and what how that impacts how that number impacts or supports the students that are forecasted to have uh next year. So is it that the elementary or the ELC? >> Sorry, not the ELC, the Mary Se.
>> Okay. Yeah. So there were cuts at grade levels two, three, and four, one at each grade level at the entire complex. And so that was a decision that the principles, the four principles sat down
together. I know a couple were here. I know um Mr. Stepppo was here, Lisa um Limew Weaver is here. And actually I may ask um Miss Liny Rer to come up because she was more a part of that discussion. But the reason why they chose to
cut at the at grades 2, three, and four because right now we have smaller class sizes of lower 20s and even uh upper teens. And so with enrollment projections projected to be lower next year, um we could technically collapse
classes right now. I know the Hooks Elementary did collapse um a class or two and so that was the decision that our principal at all four schools made. Um Lisa, you were part of that conversation. I would love to for you to
share a little bit more insight into that decision. Hi, I'm Lisa Lime. I'm the principal at the Kelly School. Um, just to clarify, the the cuts were reductions at grade levels were actually three of the four schools at the complex. Um, as you've
heard, the the enrollment shifts across the district schools have been, you know, more at some grade levels. Um, it's also been a little bit uneven across schools. And so um at the complex I think the the greatest reductions were at uh Soo Burko and um and Hooks the
Kelly school because of the Camino's program and the number of families who do um have interest in enrolling in that um class size did not drop so much this year. So the structural um changes of losing a one class per grade level um or at the other three schools um that was a
lot of hard conversation because obviously no cut is an easy one. Um but that one was one that sort of looking at it structurally and going if we have classes that are very small numbers you know being able to kind of consolidate um makes sense on that level. What it
also um what it also does mean um is that at all four schools uh we're pretty much going to five classes per grade level. When you said the magic number is 20, that's why. Four grade levels, five classes per
um I think that one of the things that um I know I've heard the most and um that the the public is um struggling with the most is um just the level of detail that's that's being presented. And um
you know, I know that I've had um some conversations with with folks in the district about providing a little more detail in certain um line items in the budget book and stuff like that. Um, one thing I am interested in is in Billy Joe's presentation, she alluded to um,
you know, updating our our budget software. And I know that we when we were talking, we were also talking about maybe that would impact the way that the the budget is presented in the future. And I'm curious if we might be looking towards having a greater deal of um like
detail in future budget books and um if you can just speak a little bit more to that because that's one of my real main concerns is that I feel like I'm not um when you know parents and friends have have
um come to me with with questions I've often felt like I couldn't really answer those questions because it wasn't really broken down like I don't know where those consultants are or where those contracts are or you know where's you
know where where it is and stuff. >> I I can answer and I'm going to ask Billy Joe to come up. So one thing that's was difficult for even me when I came here is we actually use Munus and it's tied to the city. Um, coming from Boston, we had a completely different
software and it was very much I you get line item by line item in one sheet. So I would ask my administrative assistant when I was a principal and and ask her can you write can you um print out a crystal report for me and you get
everything and it's actually tied to HR. Our current system does not do that. So in Boston, you could we would meet in in our probable or meetings. We'd have everything done together, including staffing plus budget all at the same
time. The systems speak to each other. And unfortunately, we don't have that kind of system um right now. And I know our city manager is sitting here and he is listening, but our our systems don't
talk to each other. And we're we are dependent on the city structures as a whole. And I know that's something that our city manager is I know looking at as well. We're looking for more efficiencies and we we don't we're
limited by the the system that we're currently using as well. Um and I am used to being able to have everything a lot more transparent line by line. We do our best, but it's not the best system. Okay. Hi. So, I hear two questions. One
is um the budget. I did stop by and speak to the city CFO today. Prior to the new CFO, I started a conversation with the previous CFO when I was shocked by the $156 million budget being in a a
Google doc. So, there were tables. So, we have been trying to convert a Google doc into $156 million budget. Um, I did talk to the previous CFO and the current CFO. The city did implement a budget
program called Open Gov. they are not certain they want to continue with it. We're going to try it for another year. I'm going to see if I can join in. So, we are trying to join with the city to do a budget package. And the other
question was asking about contracted services in this district. Each page has salaries and then there would be an other expense line or a school expense line. That is where you would find your contracted service um information.
Mr. Gomez Pereira, >> thank you. Um, I had a question more so about process. Um, upon reading the budget book, um, I'm seeing a line continued or a couple of lines that are repeated in the different sections. I'll
read it out loud. Both district and school leaders have been tasked with reviewing their own staffing uh, to offer suggestions. since the tables will reflect the full-time equivalency changes suggested by the school leaders and school site councils. Um, I'm interested in understanding or sort of
allowing Yeah, just a little bit more of an elaboration on how school site councils have played a role in determining reductions um and what opportunities what other future opportunities exist for families and other school committee members to show
up to these um school site councils to hear directly from constituents. So every school has a school site council and this is actually um mandated by law and uh we receive certain title one funds and every school in Chelsea is
a title one school. So this is this is an advisory body. Um, school site councils again are their advisory that brings parents, staff and students together and um and community members to support school improvement and
transparency. Um principles and this um every year with school site councils they have to post their meetings just like we do. It is an official meeting. Um, I know principles did thing do things a little
differently at every school, but the common themes as I spoke with principles that they did for this budget season um surveyed their staff, they >> Hello. Okay. >> So, they have surveys. Um I know um
principles surveyed all the staff and then with the school side councils they had conversations of what we acknowledging that we're in a tough budget season, what do you recommend to keep and what can we basically
unfortunately what what should we can we do without and those were um conversations that happened at every school. I know um we have a couple principles here. Um Margot, I don't know if you want to share a little bit about
your process. I know I already talked to Lisa, asked Lisa to come. I know we're you're completely being put on the spot right now, but I I would I would love for people to from a principal's perspective as well.
I'll call you next time. There you go. >> Thank you. Sorry. Um I think one of the first things we did, we serve I sent a survey out to my staff just asking for their feedback about what their
priorities were. Um, I mean, I had some sense of what they were going to say anyway because I feel I have a lot of open communication with my staff and we do a lot of meeting and talking about things with my amongst my leadership team, the coaches and teacher leaders. Uh, but I still felt I wanted to get a
big picture idea of how the paras felt, how the teachers felt, how the different coaches felt, and all the different layers in the school. And they submitted that feedback to me just to give me an idea of where their heads were at. Um, I then also shared at my staff meeting
what my own priorities were and and I felt that we were fairly aligned. Um, but we also talked about how uh all cuts would be painful. No matter what the cut, it was going to be a loss for the school, but that I had to think about
what was going to have um the least impact on the school as a whole and so that the school could function. I then also did a survey with my um school site council for the parents to be able to give me feedback there and I considered
that as well as I was looking over my uh proposed cuts. I actually made a few adjustments to the order of my cuts in terms of preference based on the feedback that I received from the families and from my staff. Um
and then finally, um you know, I submitted it to the superintendent. Of course, she asked me questions and I gave her my rationale. Um I once the budget became public, I also then shared with my school site council my decision-making process and about where
why I landed where I landed. Um because, you know, they're just titles on a paper to somebody, but they don't know how they're these staff are being utilized in my school. So how one role could be utilized at my school might look different at another school. So I wanted the parents to understand why I made the
decisions that I made, how I thought I could mitigate the negative impact of making those cuts um and basically where we would be able to distribute that work and um so that children would be minimally impact to the best of my ability.
>> Sorry this since I was I wasn't expected to speak I would have had to. >> Thank you Margo. Are you all done? Mr. Gome got okay, do you have a question? >> No, we're going to save the comments for
at the end of the after we Right now it's just questions. We'll do the comments at the end. Hi. Um, yes. I, uh, I have a pretty specific question, but I think that, um, its answer might help to clarify some
misinformation. Um, a real point of pride that I think a lot of us have is due to funds during student opportunity act esser ARPA funding. Uh, we were able to get our studenttoteer ratio to around 13 or 14
um educators or or rather students for each educator. Um, but that of course is slightly different than classroom size. We've heard from folks uh during public hearing, public comment, um a worry and a fear, rightfully so, around class
sizes that are 25, 35. One student who I hope is exaggerating said 50 students in their classroom. That's not true. Um and so I'd love an opportunity for folks uh Dr. Beta or someone from your team to share like what is a more accurate
number? What is our largest class size? Um, and could you just offer more clarity? I think that could help clear up some misinformation. >> Sure. Largest class size actually at the high school is banned clearly because it's a band. Um, next would be
u many of our AP courses because many of our students are engaged in AP and and those are historically our larger class sizes. And so if you look down the list of of all the class sizes at the high school, it varies. Um but the ones that
did stand out the most was were band and AP. Um and class sizes at the elementarymentaries. Uh I looked at all the schools as of this last week. It varies from in like 19 18 to 24.
Um, not very many in the high 20s at all right now. It used to be that it was all 25 at I I believe several years ago. I remember when I got here, but we have basically
kept it pretty low right now. Um, one thing that I will say is if our projections are not accurate in the fall, we do class size reviews. That class size review happens in September
and we review all of the classes and if we see classes that are extremely large then we we look at that school and say okay we need to add an FTE at that school. Um and so that's the way we we
balance because we we're not our class size enrollments are not the projections are not per perfect. no one can make a projection and unfortunately last year our enrollment uh projections were off because we can have anticipated losing
so many students. So every September we review class sizes. That's our process. We go through and if if again if if they're fairly large, we we will add we will look to add an FTE at that specific school.
Any other questions? Sarah Um, another thing that I kind of maybe alluded to but maybe didn't ask directly enough um in last week's meeting was I mean we've we've spoken a lot about how um you know principles had the autonomy
to do the the cuts at the school level and everything but um other questions are you know what about the the cuts that the principles were asked to make right like how how um
sorry like the the the number that they were asked to make and how that those numbers were distributed across schools and the number the the the amounts of cuts that you know um department heads were asked to make. I it seems I think
to be relatively uniform where departments were asked to make like exactly $100,000 of cuts in schools relatively. similar numbers of cuts. And so I'm curious, you know, how you can speak to that decision. Um the idea of
like just making uniform cuts where everyone has the same amount of cut versus like, you know, looking into well, which ones are are needs and and you know, how are how are these strategic cuts based on like student outcomes and things like that, you know?
There was Can everyone Okay. There was baseline for every school except for there we do have some exceptions at the smaller schools because they are smaller and then at the high school it is considerably larger and we we did lose
more students at the high school. Um partly because of the fact that we service so many newcomers at the high school. Um we are one of Chelsea High School is one of 14 schools in the state
that is a hub for newcomers. And so we got hit very hard at Chelsea High School with our multilingual um learner population not coming. And so why there were more ended up being more
cuts at the high school, but there was a baseline. And then it was let's look at how big or how small the school is and then enrollment on top of the the loss of students as well. With departments, there is also there
was also a baseline. Um special ed for example is our largest department and so special education. So we we took a look at special ed and the the problem with that is there's so much compliance in
special education. So you can't just cut compliance areas and and so ML is the same way. We have three people in the MLE department and you it's compliance based so it's really hard to do that. So we looked at areas where we could cut
like buildings and grounds. We're no longer building we don't have the money. Um, we looked at the budget office. We looked at the HR. Where were the areas that we could we could target? >> Thank you so much. Um, I just have a
very brief question. Um, Dr. beta. So in the event that additional state funds become available in the summer, how will we proceed with the considerations of like site site council and all the feedback that we've gotten? How would these funds be equally or equitably
distributed in the event that we get additional funds in the summer? >> Um thank you. We have the principles when they submitted their reductions lists, they had to submit them in in rank
order. And so we would go back to that list and say, "Okay, what are we what is a priority for you at every school level?" I tried not to dictate and the cuts at the schools um and and
where they were coming from. Having been a principal in Boston where we were asked to cut in 2009 or 2008 when it was that the economy was just so horrible. Um,
I remember being asked to to cut positions and not I wasn't really asked. They told us what we were to to cut. And I remember being a little like being upset about that because
I was closest to the work and I didn't get I didn't get that opportunity. And so again, I would I would put that back to the principles and to the schools and say, "What position are you looking to reinstate?" And that wouldn't be a it's
not a decision that I make as superintendent. I just want to verify um and obviously we know that I have uh well two in um one of the schools. So I know the process for school site council um
information and the data um request there. So, um, while there's some administrators that can potentially attest, um, because there seems to be a lag in,
um, information potentially as far as when the process of the data gathering seems to be um, to begin with. Um and we mentioned school site council. Um
and at least at the burkowitz obviously that's where the kids go. Um the school site council um info session starts to go out in um September, right? That's when they say parent uh parent square
message like hey just letting you guys know we're going to start a letter of interest if anyone wants to you know go out then letting you know that um essentially this is going to be taking place. This is the purpose of it
and this is the data that we collect. Um an teacher, principal um and parents then are welcome to join and can discuss these topics
that happens. It's posted and I also receive the information in the children's backpack. I also know that it's posted on the um parent square and it goes out districtwide and then it also happens to
be posted on Chelsea public schools website and you know some of the schools have um you know their own independent um social media accounts. Is that the same for every other school?
I know that the school site council postings are the same, but one would assume because it seems to be that members of the um audience and even some teachers I you know some people have their own families, educators um here as
well have been going from school to just go back home to get their own lives going as well. um seemed to to feel like the budget process was during this time. So um it wasn't just the hearings that
we had um as far as the collection of the information um in the in the sessions. So, I just want to know how much um how much uh like how what how do you
feel that we could have potentially improve um more of this or or to unify that uh per se? >> Yeah, I Yeah. No, I app I appreciate your question. I I think this is even
more going to be more important in the future because we're looking at another budget shortfall next year. And and I I'm I'm very grateful for the $2 million that our city gave us to help us this year,
but I'm also concerned about the future because we are already looking at enrollment and five years out our enrollment is is declining. So as as a result of that, our our systems have to improve so that our community feels that
the process is more transparent, is more inclusive. And so I do believe that there are areas that we we can definitely improve and making sure that we have the same same transparency at every school. Here are some things that
to happen at every school, not just one. And um that's something that I can we can work with our administrators on. I believe for the most part it it was there were similarities for sure. I think uh every principal I
know for a fact did a survey. They they had their school site council meetings. They asked school site council what you know what's working? What do we you know in this time? what do we keep? But I think we can always do a better job of making sure we're getting out to
families that this is happening, communicating more um more frequently about, you know, making sure that the word is so that we get more involvement as well. Are there any other questions from this
from the committee? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to the vote consideration and action to accept and adopt the Is it based only on the budget? >> Uh good evening everyone. Uh my name is
Maida Balderas and um I wanted to say thank you so much for everyone who has spoke and uh like you say we are here to hear your voices and we are here to represent you and uh one of the things
that I was very clarified and I us um um meeting we need to be more clear about the budget specifically. We serve different backgrounds. Not everybody has the same level of
knowledge. So some people are they don't understand sometimes when they have different science. Uh and I just want to let them know that I mean we working very hard. We hear you. And also I let them know that we need to be more
outreach to let people know what we are doing. So people are seeing more transparency and and the presentation that they did with their office. I request it because I think people need
who is working and who is doing what they're doing because sometimes we see people but we don't know what is what their jobs title or what they're doing. And I think it's very important like the teachers know what they're doing. Um the par profofessionals know what they're
doing. everybody knows what they're doing. So, I really appreciate every single one of you and um and I'm very very proud because this is what we need. We need to hear your voices. This is my
third year and last year I didn't see that many people. The the year before I didn't see that many people coming up. But I mean I think if we work together and we prepare to the next budget I think we we can make a difference and
especially you know by clarify and be more specific with the information that we give because sometimes people they can give information that is wrong and and that's not what we want. And we also publish every single information that
goes to the city page. you can find every single thing that goes on in the meetings. If you don't see the meetings, you can go back to Chelsea Cable 3 and and see what's going on. And I just want to say thank you so much and um I
appreciate the team. Uh we know that we are here for the students, for staff, for teachers, and we know that we need to um improve more. Um but we know that sometimes there are things that they don't go our favor like you know the
budget uh but we have to keep ourselves positive. We have to keep praying because things are getting worse and we know it's not only Chelsea it's everywhere. So thank you so much for your voices. Thank you so much for the supporting and uh we here for you and
even though sometimes we we you don't you don't you don't hear us so we don't supposed to think about you we know that we are working very hard and sometimes there are very very hard decisions. Thank you. >> Does anyone else miss amus?
>> Thank you. I had a question and I had a comment. Uh my question is about the um site councils. Um I would like to know since I didn't ask this question before and I didn't
participate on those uh at those meetings when when we are referring to the site councils how many parents are coming to those meeting and are we talking about every site council
from every school? I know I remember that there were meetings going on at every uh schools. Uh but I would like to know how many parents are we talking about?
Every school has a school site council. Um there are uh parents and staff and and an administrator obviously on school site council. Um Marggo Lisa, what are the size of your school site councils? I
know they vary and Ron too. Katie, you're here. You can share. Right. >> Since you couldn't hear what Margaret said, we just did a quick straw poll of the principal sitting nearby. Um the school site council, the elected
representatives, um it's in balance with the number of staff because it is a a legally required body under Mass General law. So most of the councils have probably somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five to six parents who are elected, similar number of staff, but
those are open public meetings. Um and sounds like many of us have had in the neighborhood of 5 to 10 to 15 parents depending on the meeting um throughout the season. >> That is that about right everybody? >> Thank you. Um and that's where um
my concern is is coming up. um thinking about when when we prepare the um the presentation for the um for the budget,
we are referring like we hear um the parents, the community um at each meeting and when we are talking about
transparency in the process, the way that I see it that I start thinking and realizing how we did the presentation to the community and I hear you um Dr.
uh saying that we had a lot to um to learn in the process because the way that I see it um for me it's been a lot that I had to
learn uh in this process when we are talking about community involvement um we are talking about that are We hear
students, parents, teachers at all of those meetings. Okay. At those meetings, um what about the community in terms of the community at
large? Sometimes I remember year um prior to every year we have to talk about the budget. Uh there's always something about the budget. Um and I remember having different different meetings in different uh organizations.
Um and I think this year we didn't we didn't do it. We didn't have those those meetings. Um but it is important for us coming coming further
um to do it different to do it better because we already mentioned we hear the community, we heard the parent, we heard the teacher and I know that at this the decisions uh about different cuts um in different
school were based on whatever the principle um whatever the principal has the the uh the responsibility principles uh to decide
what um programs or teachers will be more um I don't want to say important but I it is uh everybody's important. Students,
teachers, administrators are important in this process. Um and I really appreciate how the community came together. Um parents, teachers all together here.
uh seeing the youth the leadership of the youth their uh in um I want to say how they came together in the remarkable
uh way that they present to us what they were looking for what were the their expectation this is my comment um that I want to let you know that I've been in the community. I've been and here as a
school committee member, but I also I had been in the other side as a community person. I I had already before I was the the school committee member. I was a community organizer that I work with youth, young mothers and families.
And I know what are the challenges and the struggles that are um immigrants, families and and immigrant students face in this community, especially when we don't know the language, especially when we don't have
the resources. I'm talking about uh lack of resources that affect our students educations, the housing, the mental health, all of that. um it really ha in has some uh influence in the education
of our children our student. So whatever is the decision that we going to make to tonight, I want to make sure that I um I assure you that I'm making my decision based on what I have seen, what I had
here and based on my belief or what are the needs of the our students. We're talking about that uh it is important we are here for our student for the education quality education you teachers are are part of the quality educations
our students so this is like a combination students teachers administrator and that's the reason that we have to see the budget in that way teachers administrator students and
community so we are here for one reason we are here for the education and for the best education. So, we're going to try to do our best. It hasn't been like a really an easy decision, but I going to make my decision based on what I what
I believe that is right. It's not what it's um it is not about pressure because it's a lot of a lot of letters that we as a school committee member we have received comments but it's not about me it's not about you
it's about the students it's about the educational student so thank you >> thank you Mr. Enriquez. Um, anybody else have a comment they'd like to make at this point? Mr. Small. >> Good evening, everybody. Um, I echo the
sentiments of gratitude uh for the combined thousands of hours that folks in the audience have committed to being here and voicing your concerns. Everyone up here on the stage has either been uh hired or elected uh to be here as well
as paid to be here. the folks in this room who are volunteering your time to voice your concerns, speak on behalf of your community, whatever that means. Parents, teachers, students, community members, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We cannot be more gracious. There are cities all across
this country and around the world that have zero engagement. Um, and so I'm grateful to live in a city where we understand the importance of civic engagement. To me, there is a clear and present enemy And there are clear and present forces
that are causing us to grapple with these hard decisions. When I say that, I'll be explicit in saying the federal agents and ICE officials who have pushed families out of this city, the dire constraints financially,
socioeconomically that have pushed people out of the great city of Chelsea are the enemy. And part of what's causing this year to be so incredibly challenging, we don't have a ton of time. And so I prepared some remarks that I'll read um for
brevity, but I wanted to start by saying that in times of crisis, leaders must move at what I call the speed of trust. The speed of trust. And this year, in my very first year on school committee, I don't believe that we've met that standard. I don't believe that our
process has allowed the public to feel fully or authentically represented. And because I believe that the process must be as sound as the policy, um, I may vote tonight as present. To vote present
is something that folks might not have heard of before. So, I want to offer some clarity to the folks in the room and online. To vote present is to formally acknowledge this matter without casting a yes or no vote. It is a signal that while I am here and engaged, I cannot support a process that requires
more transparency before a trusted vote can be made. Um, I say that, however, I want to be clear. Um, while I've struggled with the process so far, I do believe that we have a really strong leader in Superintendent Dr. Aveda. In fact, I believe that we have
one of the strongest education leaders in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She has committed to earlier and more transparent processes moving forward. And this school committee's job is to hold her and her team accountable to the needs that we've heard over and over and over again. Um I hope as this committee
works to earn your trust, we can also find a way to pour more trust into Dr. Beta's leadership and the leadership of this district. And I'll end by saying the challenges facing our students and educators are significant. They are really heavy
caused many of us to be deeply deeply deeply impacted. Um and they also do not end after tonight's vote or this school year. Uh and to meet the moment we have to do a lot of work as a community to mend the fractured trust between this
district, this school committee and the community at large. We will rely on you to continue to hold us accountable as you have during this year's process so that the future budget cycles are more transparent. Um, and if you have any questions after tonight, I hope that
you'll reach out to your elected officials district by district um or any member of this school committee uh to continue the conversation year round. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Mr. small. Are there any other comments?
Now I'm on for the sake of transparency. I would like to just remind everyone here that we do owe our loyalty to one one individual or individuals and that is
the student bodies. So that does not mean any union agency, political party or anything that's not the students. Why
do I say that? Because the school committee or the schools are a nonpartisan team, right? And our creed here in
Chelsea is we welcome and we educate all. And the one thing that I have repeated time and time again through every single meeting is we represent multiple units.
And when I work with every single unit, I represent every single contractual unit. Not one staff member is more valuable or invaluable than the
next. All of the decisions on the table have been very very hard fine combed and trust and believe that we have discussed them. We have
listened. we have, you know, had our our our candid conversations and, you know, we are doing our work. Um, so thank you for your input, for
coming out, for trying to hold us accountable, for bringing up all of the conversations, for holding us to a certain level of expectations. Um, it's appreciated. So, Thank you very much. Any anyone else
have a comment? >> Yes, of course. Start back. >> Okay, we're here. Um, hi everyone. I know it's been a long night. Um, I just want to acknowledge uh that I was unable to attend the meetings on the 17th due to scheduling issues and I just want to thank everyone for showing up during
those meetings. Um, teachers, parents, students, and also my colleagues on school committee. Um I also wanted to extend my thanks to uh first and foremost to teachers, students and families that showed up for um you know exercising their voice,
exercising their voice in this democracy, sharing your priorities um that is essential to a functioning democracy. It's um and if this process has inspired passion in you I would this is more so directed towards students and family members. I hope you see yourself
in these seats in the future. um know that some of the seats uh that you see here today or some of the people you see here on the school committee um run uncontested, right? This is just people just sign up and if you don't have anyone running against you, you win that
election. Same thing is true for city council. We should not just be looking at school committee but also city council seats as well because we work in tandem. Um so there's that. Then I also wanted to thank uh our city council president Roberto Himenez Rivera and my
colleague school uh committee member Dr. uh Sarah Neville um Himenez and Fidel Maltz or city manager for um securing an additional 2 million to support 10 plus positions. Some notes on the process. Um
there is uh a lot of demand for mental health support. Our budget uh book states that the cuts were made from a school leadership uh from school leadership recommendations in addition
to school site council input. Um what I can commit to as a district 3 school committee member is being available to talk to constituents. Um, so I'm hoping to see some of you all, whether that's educators, families, students at school site councils in the upcoming months to
increase transparency and accessibility. Um, those were themes that came about. Um, I did I mentioned that I wasn't here during the meetings last week, but I was listening to all of your comments, the 4-hour meetings um, on YouTube. So, I was informed and talking to my
colleagues as these events were um, transpiring. So, I did hear your comments. Um, other things I want to sort of make myself available for the summer, like just one-on-one meetings or group meetings. You could frame it as
like office hours or just like community conversations. So, I'm looking forward to that. And, uh, the advocacy doesn't end here. Um, we had our a member of our state delegation here earlier tonight and all of these comments, all of this
passion, all of this passion can also be shared with Senator Sal D. Dominico and our representative Judith Garcia. I don't know if she's here, but that's another person that you can share this with in addition to um our federal delegation.
Uh, so Aana Presley um what's his name? Oh my gosh, Marky and Warren. So these are all people that we should be engaging in this process, right? Because this is an urgent and critical issue. And I would also just encourage people to take a multi-pronged
sort of perspective to this. Um this isn't just a singular issue. It's not just schools. I'm thinking about development in our community. Someone mentioned um gentrification being a thing. With increased housing, we do have more property taxes coming into the city which would in turn help support
our budget. Um the same thing is true for uh commercial property taxes. This is coming from someone who is a planner, right? So I come from a background in urban planning and organizing. So this is I'm thinking holistically here, right? How do we get creative with funding our schools and the services
that we need for our community to thrive? Um yeah, keep showing up and I look forward to continuing to working with all of you in the next year. Hello everyone. My name is Kathy Gabrell. I'm the atlarge school committee member. I want to um first
name this work takes courage. Um and I want to thank all the young people in our community. You are the future leaders that our community needs and deserves. And I want to thank um all of our students for using your voice throughout this budget process. I'm also
grateful for our families and teachers who have shared their testimonies. I see some of my former teachers in the crowd, Mr. Milmore, Mr. Schmidt, and Mr. Romero. Um, and even some of my peers from BEu as well. So, I want to thank you all for your efforts. Um, and again,
thank you to our central office staff for developing this budget. And to my school committee colleagues, um, your questions are essential in this process. And I want to thank you all for your thoughtfulness. This budget represents one of the hardest decisions I've had to make as our community faces a budget
shortfall and a loss of dollars at the state and federal level. I will be voting in recognition of our responsibility to maintain the district's fiscal health in a very difficult environment. Next year is going to be a tough year in education locally and nationally. I hope we can
continue to face this challenge together. I know the challenges we faced will prepare us for the challenges that come. I'm committed to exploring possibilities to increase accessibility and community engagement for future budget seasons. I
want to thank everybody here tonight and thank you so much for the time. >> Thank you to all my I'm sorry, Dr. Neville. >> Hello. Okay, thank you everyone. I know it's
late. Um, this has been a really really difficult process. Um, it hasn't been I mean it's been a little bit difficult for me, but it hasn't really been so difficult for me the way it has been for the students whose education is going to be affected, the families who are
worrying about these students. Um, but in particular the educators who have to worry about their jobs being cut. And I want to acknowledge, you know, who is being affected the most and really um center that. And there's a lot of grief
and pain um in this room and there has been in this room over the weeks and in city hall as we've had these meetings. And I want to validate that grief and pain um and you know say it's my job as a school committee member to listen to
it. And um you know I I accept that and um you know you shouldn't have to feel bad for voicing your pain in a in a in a you know way that's difficult for someone like me to hear. Um there's no way to make this a a painless budget. Um
but I do want the district and the school committee to rise to the challenge next year of responding to these increased demands for transparency. Um, one of the main unresolved things that I'm hearing is people telling me,
you know, it is not clear to us if everything has been done to preserve as many studentf facing positions as possible. Um, it's not so much like we need to save every single studentf facing position. It's just we don't know
if we've explored every avenue. And um as somebody who's spent a long time looking at this budget book and um have had multiple meetings, you know, about this budget book, um it's also still not
clear to me um you know, where these um where these potential places are for to to be able to um to you know, cut instead of studentf facing positions that because the budget book isn't written in that level of detail. detail
and I've raised that as a concern and um I'm a little bit you know it's unfortunate that maybe I I won't ascribe why but for whatever it is the budget book that we have in front of us does not have that level of detail. Um, I
mean, maybe maybe the district did look very closely at every single one of those things, but um, unfortunately when the public has demanded that level of information, um, it hasn't really um, been provided yet in the budget book. And that's where I want us in the future
to rise to this challenge of gaining the public's trust in our processes and our budgeting. Um I don't think like it's not some people probably think like you know we're we're never gonna um make everyone happy. So you know but I think that we we do have to try. Um this isn't
our money. This isn't our budget. This is the the people's tax the taxpayers budget. Public schools are different than private schools and charter schools because we have democratic oversight over over this. Right. We're we're
governed by elected officials who are accountable to the community. And that's really important. That's our job to provide that transparency and listening to community concerns and um and to, you know, help with with civic engagement and everything. And these tensions and these fights, this is what we signed up
for. This is the way the democratic system is designed to work with. We're getting feedback, the community is watching, and we're all held accountable. Um, I also want to name that something that's also really making
me mad or or heartsick, as my 5-year-old has been saying lately, is that the root causes of these issues are are outside of our control to the tune of millions of dollars. And here in this room, we're having some disagreements about where
smaller amounts of money are, whether something's a couple hundred here or there. But the state funding formula is what's underfunding us by millions of dollars because of racist and classist systems that see communities like Chelsea as afterthoughts instead and and
objects of charity instead of top priorities. And we've lost, you know, tens of millions of dollars due to inflation in this formula that doesn't work, that doesn't account for the costs of educating marginalized kids. We've lost these nine mill million dollars due
to en enrollment drops that were caused by the racist and xenophobic border policy by this administration. And and I I it really just sucks that we have to deal with these problems as we that that are caused outside of
our control. But but that doesn't mean that we're not, you know, we school committee members, it's still we're still accountable for this. So I want to thank the public for all of your energy and your fight. and please continue to bring that energy towards fighting these root causes and you know we continue to
work together at the state level and I'm so excited to see the way that um community members who have never been involved in state advocacy before have are you know joining and and to to fight that fight. Um, and I I challenge, you know, us as a school committee to use
this bad situation as an opportunity to improve our processes and hold ourselves to higher standards of community engagement and transparency and accessibility in um the future and take on our responsibility to work towards, you know, healing some of the this this
this discord um that that we've heard. Thank you, Dr. Neville. I believe everyone has has made their comments. I as chair always end up being the last one. low. Um I want to echo
everything that my colleagues have said and if one positive thing I have found has come out of this very bad year budget-wise has been the positive the positivity in all the
children all the kids coming out along with the parents which we don't get to see very often. Our school committee members, our school committee meetings are usually empty. Usually it's the committee, Katherine Anderson and and
the and the and the cabinet and a and maybe one or two other people. That's it. Last year when our budget was great and we didn't have to cut anyone, we didn't have masses coming out thanking
and saying great things to hear the great news that came out. It was only when something is happening that they need to voice their you need to voice your opinion on. And this has been great this time around and that it's I'm very
happy that we had to move the meetings here and that we had so many people come and say I want to I want to make my comments. This is what we we signed up for. This is what we wanted to do. When I hear that that um that this is our
responsibility or that we don't care, that hurts when I hear that we don't care because we do care. There are some things that are out of our hands right now to change. But you know what? Everything that we've heard this time around is going to contribute to making
this better. And next year, unfortunately, we're seeing more negativity coming um budget in the budget, but I think we will be better prepared and that we have heard that you want to see better
things. You've given suggestions. you've told us and that helps us as as a unit and it helps Dr. Ala and it helps the principles and it'll help us be better and maybe we can we need to
move on like Dr. Neville said, "It's time to go to the state house. It's time to move more where we can get the money where they're not giving it to us, where it's being taken away from Chelsea. I've lived in Chelsea since I was four years
old. I haven't left. I love Chelsea. So, I am very committed to your kids, to the teachers, to the staff, to everything that's making our school district run.
So please know that this is not an easy task for us either and we find ourselves in this situation which we never wanted to see ourselves in. But I thank you so much for all of you coming and being here to let us know
what you need, what you want. And with that, we'll move on to the worst part of this consideration and action to accept and adopt the recommendation of the school superintendent and approve the following
light line item amounts for the general fund for the 2026 2027 school budget totaling 156,24 48,491. Do you want to explain anything or talk
about anything, Dr. Alena, at this? I mean, I don't know if there's anything else that can I get a roll call, Veronica, Mr. Mr. Small, >> I'd like to register my vote as present. Miss Kovas Caravo. >> Yes.
>> Miss Enriquez. >> Yes. >> Mr. Organ. >> No. >> Miss Balderas. Dr. Neville. >> Miss Cabal.
>> Yes. >> Miss Hernandez. >> Yes. >> Mr. Gomez Pereira. Sorry, that's five in the affirmative, three present, and one no. Five in the affirmative, three present.
Motion passes. Next item, the Chelsea School Committee moves to accept the Chelsea Public School calendar for school year 2026 2027. >> Why? >> Madame Chair, can you repeat the the
last question, please? The Chelsea School Committee moves to accept the Chelsea Public Schools calendar for school year 2026 2027. Lana, can I get a roll call? Mr. Small,
>> yes. >> Miss Kovas Carabio, >> yes. >> Miss Enriquez, >> Mr. Orian, >> yes. >> Miss Balderas, >> Dr. Neville. Miss Cabrell, >> yes. Miss Hernandez,
>> yes. >> Mr. Gomez Perea, >> yes. >> That's nine in the affirmative. >> Nine in the affirmative. Motion carries. >> Next item is announcements. Does anybody and anyone has any further comments?
At this moment, I would ask for a motion to adjourn. >> I second that motion. >> Thank you.