okay good evening and welcome everyone uh this is the April 7th 2025 meeting of the school committee call the meeting to order 5:35 this meeting is being both audio and video recorded and uh if we could start off
today with a roll call uh Emanuel if you could start us off please manuel Garcia student representative heather Brown director of curriculum william Strawther Amy Antella Rochella Gregory Thompson Gordon Smith Superintendent of Schools Sarah Trullia Pamela Blair Assistant
Superintendent for Business samantha Velasquez secretary okay thank you all we have minutes for approval i'd take a motion please move to approve the March 24th 2025 executive session meeting minutes motion made by Sarah second by William
discussion all in favor say I i those opposed nay that motion carries 5 to zero one more please move to approve the March 24th 2025 regular session meeting minutes motion made by Sarah second second by Antella discussion all in
favor say I i i those opposed nay that carries five to zero samantha thank you for those committee and subcommittee communications emanuel would you like to start with that please too only thing I have is that on April 23rd the high
school is participating in a school versus school uh competition sponsored by Chick-fil-A uh the idea is to have the most mobile orders and there's nine different high schools um participating in this fundraiser the idea is to get the most mobile orders out of all of them and the winner of that fundraiser
will get a donation of $2,500 to their school along with lunch for all students and staff wow wow and that's during break so it's not going to inundate the the Okay
great thank you William nothing to report okay Amy just wanted to quickly share that I was able to attend um one of the music in our schools assemblies held at the high school um last week in the evening and I just wanted to recognize what a tremendous job the music educators did not only on
organizing that performance but just in general it was fantastic excellent thank you Anton nothing at this time sarah not today okay we will move along then thank you this is an opportunity for visitors to address the committee if there's anyone who wishes to address the
committee now would be the time to do so seeing none we will continue on you have someone online no I was just making sure okay okay we have a recognition of the 2025 ELPS Pioneer Valley Excellent and
Teaching Award winners okay so we have I believe three of our award winners here um if we can stand up uh we have one who is currently on leave so we have four winners um for the excellence in
teaching uh award awards that uh the Grins Foundation and the Davis Foundation along with other sponsors put on every year and East Long Meadow is able to nominate and award um four one
of whom is in their first three years of teaching or in the field of education and three of whom are veteran teachers and so this year uh we have Bethany Mian who is our want to stand up Bethany the counselor at uh the high
school and she is in her third year in education and has uh moved roles originally started as our um graduation coach and counselor and now has moved into more of the guidance counseling position here are some of the things
that um Bethy's colleagues say about her bethany has always taken a student- centered approach first as a graduation coach and now as a school counselor she is phenomenal at building relationships with her students and her efforts can be credited with getting numerous atrisisk
students to graduate over the last two years beyond just her work as a counselor her ideas helped create systems of support at ELHS and have helped move the school forward in supporting all students such as the credit recovery program that now exists
at the high school so Bethany congratulations um of our veteran award winners our first one is Carrie Lorenzo one of our teachers at Mountain View and what her colleagues say about her is Carrie exemplifies dedication and
resilience having committed many years even though she's only 29 years old of service to education through the many years of change she has tremendous collaboration skills and works well with the the grade three team at Mountain View and makes sure
that her students across the grade level are receiving an equitable education with rigor and high expectations carrie consistently demonstrates creativity and adaptability in the classroom she incorporates innovative teaching strategies in her classroom ensuring
that the content is engaging accessible and relevant to students real world experiences carrie Lorenzo um next up we have Karen Perkins from Birchland Park Middle School karen is one of our PE teachers at
Birchland Park Middle School and her colleagues say this about her karen is the first person to make sure that every student is comfortable in a PE setting and this can be extremely challenging when you are at a middle school in a middle school setting she constantly
builds healthy relationships with all of her students and she has even revamped the entire eighth grade PE curriculum karen models lifelong learning through professional development she is always enrolled in a class to promote her teaching and content and strategy her
teaching content and strategies she doesn't just show up every day she shows up but with enthusiasm to tackle each and every day karen is everything I would want in an educator if I were in a position of hiring educators that was from one of
your colleagues not me and not able to be with us here tonight but our fourth winner uh is Nicole Moresy who is a special educator at Birchland Park Middle School and her colleagues say this about her nicole is knowledgeable organized and passionate
about her role as a special education teacher she establishes meaningful relationships with her students and families she uses data to drive her instruction and meticulously writes and reflects on students individual education plans nicole always goes above
and beyond in her daily responsibilities both inside the classroom and outside as well she goes above and beyond for all her students no matter what the circumstance may be and her professionalism is like no other that's Nicole Moresy so I'd like to give a
another round of applause for Bethany Carrie Karen and Nicole not only are they recognized here at school committee but they also will be recognized with a banquet on May 13th that takes place at the Log Cabin um and
that's not only a fantastic banquet but there are a lot of prizes that come with that which will be presented that evening the reminder is here so I think we're getting some good sound bites into possibly the paper and we did send out a
I don't know if you received it we did send out a um media u news release oh and you would like to do a photo can we recess for five seconds to do a photo can we We're missing one person though
but uh we would like to do Okay where would you like to stay Jess wherever you would like um not really that would be fantastic yeah okay all right you want to do it over Spartan Square
right here okay right in front trying to give you some yes you want to do the We're not in it right we don't want to be in your picture we're good
i get one where nobody's blurry perfect thank you all very much and congratulations vote on the vote you're welcome trying to get your attention yeah I missed that thank you great excellent uh great to celebrate uh
achievements thank you all for coming tonight okay we will move on now we have a discussion on the FYA budget development process okay so I'll start there um just to kind of recap so where did we start in the
budget process after updating all of the contractual obligations for FY26 as well as increasing the special ed budget lines the level services budget was an increase of a little over $3 million which was an 8.57% increase governor Healey Healey's
budget has an increase uh of minimum state aid from $60 per pupil to $75 per pupil this amount is then multiplied by the foundation enrollment uh which is 2,468 students bringing the total increase uh for East Long Meadow for
next year of only $185,100 that's only a 1.2% increase uh we are very very disappointed with that um the past 3 years the school department has requested on average a 3.93% increase for level services
recognizing that a $3 million increase was not possible the school committee began strategizing on how to reduce the budget request the first round of reductions uh were trying to utilize possible revenue sources that could offset the budget increase um as well as some positions
through attrition or reduction in class sizes those items are things like utilize uh $350,000 in school choice rollover freeze curriculum renewal for next year anou with the ELEA on contractual individual PD money anou
with the ELEA on counselor extra days uh reduce software licenses expand school choice uh voted for 20 additional positions uh slots for next year and that's 10 at the ninth grade and 10 at the sixth grade um utilize additional
existing school choice revenue increase athletic fees from $149 to $199 that is $822,500 that section there then in addition to that there were six positions that was through either
attrition or uh reduction in enrollment and that's another 200 no I'm so sorry 243,303 was the the three through attrition and then three additional positions totaled 224,966 those three items added up to
1,290,769 reduction that was round one just if I'm Oh sure so in the uh if for those who may have been watching uh the school committee meetings and the town council meetings uh we've been discussing budget development probably
since um early January um and actually started informal discussions with the town um in December uh and I have to say that everybody has been has come to these discussions as creative and collaborative as they can be um but we
did know as Miss Blair uh just said that you know asking for a $3 million increase um which uh was upwards of 8% given that over the last probably 10 years we average more last two years
we've averaged close to 4% but last 10 years we probably averaged somewhere just over 2% um so we worked from level one because all departments were asked to provide a level one budget towards the end of
January and that's where we reduced it from that 8% down to more uh of roughly 5% in terms of request uh and we've continued to work collaboratively with the town uh specifically the town manager and the um municipal finance
director and looked at different ways that we might be able to work within the budget not put too much of a strain on the town um but not necessarily go to the drastic levels of
um getting down closer to a 2% or a 2.5 5% um ultimately with some creativity and some um uh strategic planning town manager uh
was able to with the municipal director finance director's help look at possibly recommending a 2.5% increase to the school department budget as he put together his draft budget for the town council which was due April 1st
um the school committee in a pretty long both executive session and then um not as long open session because there wasn't a ton to say um did last time vote to meet that uh request of the
2.5% and continue to work at how do you get there because what that means is going from the 5% request at level one to reducing it further by about $894,811 unfortunately when you're
a basically human services industry most of your uh budget is centered in salary i think it's 83% so once you've done some of the things we did in level one
where there were six positions that were reduced in level one um but only two of those impacted individuals um who were in those positions or would
be in those positions going forward others were either retirement or long-term sub situations where at the end of the year the person would be leaving that ship unfortunately now we're in a
situation where we're looking at how do we reduce by $894,811 uh without impacting as much as possible the experience for our students you know roughly 200 students across the district
that's much more challenging um and it's probably going to be again some positions though not as many because we didn't have all that many retirements and in some cases there are retirement positions that you have to replace um
and but it will probably be close to another 14 positions some of which will be through attrition probably three or four uh and 10 of which may be school committee still has to vote on this and
I believe we're going back into executive session to continue to work through that um will be positions that where unfortunately there will be a reduction in force communication in the first round level one if you remember if you've been watching I know
we're um must see TV so people were probably watching in January or taping it and watching later just joking um that we didn't list the positions until after I had had the opportunity to
actually notify people and answer questions if possible we would like to do that again give you as any specifics as we can in this public forum and then uh in the executive session probably
they're going to have to make some decisions as to looking at the different recommendations which positions ultimately will have to be reduced that then between now and our budget hearing which will take place on April 28th will give me the opportunity to do
something that's challenging but needs to be done which is uh notify people and answer their questions because that's part of the job um without them necessarily having to hear in a public meeting on Monday April
7th that their position was reduced to make sure people understood Yes certainly unfortunate uh we are not the only district as you all know that are going through this uh we realize that it means um impact on people and
individuals first and foremost the students uh we're trying to minimize that of course but also staff members um and we're trying to minimize as much as we can um so we'll continue to do that work as Gordon mentioned uh those people will be notified and then we'll have
more of a detailed list at our next meeting anyone else have questions or comments from the committee we have anything else to discuss on the budget tonight no no other than uh you know that that there will be more positions
reduced probably going to be closer to Y okay okay uh I believe that is the last piece of business for our evening so if no one else has any other questions or comments I would
entertain a motion to adjourn open session still moved motion made by Antella second second by William any discussion all in favor say I i those opposed nay that motion carries five to zero thank you we are adjourned