This government meeting is brought to you by Eastworks and our local cable subscribers. Uh welcome everybody to the public meeting for the East Hampton School Committee. We are going to begin with a regular session and a brief 20 to 30
minute agenda. We are then going to move into our public hearing for our budget for FY27. Um so we're going to kick off by roll calling in. Um Mayor Salem Derby actually has a conflict. There's currently a rules and regulations
subcommittee meeting taking place downstairs. He needs to attend that. So uh we will miss his presence with us. But as we roll out our budget hearing, please understand that the mayor has broken from recent tradition and has joined us in every single one of our finance subcommittee meetings this
season. So he is really wellversed in what it is that we're proposing tonight. So we're going to move on. Bonnie Atkins >> present. >> Eric Aette >> here. >> Megan Harvey >> here. >> Sam Hunter >> here. >> Linda Marque >> here. >> Laura Scott present. >> We are going to move on to the finance
consent agenda. I would entertain a motion to approve the school payroll dated March 19th, 2026 in the amount of $698,35829. And additionally, a motion to approve the accounts payable authorization for payment dated March 19th, 2026 in the
amount of $378,771. >> Uh, so moved. >> Thank you, Sam. Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Linda. All those in favor? >> I opposed. Thank you, Eric. Motion carries >> and I will entertain a motion to approve
the minutes of the March 10th, 2026 meeting. >> Uh, so moved. >> Thank you, Sam. Can I have a That's okay. Can I have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Linda. All those in favor? >> I opposed extensions. Motion carries. Move on to announcements. Eric,
>> we have no announcements for gifts, but we do have Walter Baker back with us with some information. >> Hello, Walter. So last Thursday um the East Hampton High School and the student council hosted our first mobile polar plunge with um the Special Olympics in
Massachusetts. They came and brought this like huge 30ft water tank to the school and parked it in the front row of the parking lot and we had like I don't even know how many like 70 people um signed up to plunge and they went in the water and I think most of the entire
student body was outside watching so that was pretty great. Um, and then I'm not sure if this was shared last time, but we were also recognized at the um Massachusetts Association of Student Council state conference at the beginning of the month for being the second highest um fundraiser for Special
Olympics um in the state with over $15,000 raised. Um we also recognized our top individual fundraiser from East Hampton uh high school's mobile polar plunge um who was actually representing
um the unified botchi team and um uh Miss Smith's life skill program um that was Cole Fitzgiven and uh he raised $860 alone uh for the cause. We have a kids night out this week, April 10th from
6:00 to 9:00. Um last time at our kids night out we had uh almost a hundred kids. I think there was 97 there. Um and so we are really asking that anybody um who plans on attending pre-registers their kids online. Um and you can sign
up for the uh to be added to the email list and uh we send out emails like a week or two weeks in advance um with the link to sign up for that. And all payments are cash or check at the door. Um the online is just really to reserve
your spot. Um and then in on April 10th uh we are going to have a uh pep rally that's um designed to like celebrate the launch of our unified basketball program in the fall. And so we'll be working with the athletic director and the life
skills teacher um to get that going. >> Um I asked Walter to speed through that which is why he was at 2.0 Oh, in case everybody's on. Thank you, Walter. Appreciate you. Um, >> did you decide to keep these on?
>> No, we did not make a conscious decision. I don't know which remotes control it. Good luck to you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Hey, >> for the kids night out. Yeah, I heard an April 10th mentioned twice. >> Did I? >> So, that's okay. So, >> March 27th,
>> but the next kids night out you said is this week. So, it's not April 10th. Did I say April 10th? It's March 27th. >> It's because I told you to go so fast. >> April 10th is the pepper. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for that clarification. All right, I'm going to do things a little bit out of order. We're going to skip to
the new business out of state field trip request because perhaps we have some interested parties attending who'd like to hear how this turns out. Um, EHS is requesting permission for David Borugard and the EHS student council to attend the 2026 Vision National Conference for Student Council leaders being held at
Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire. The conference is being held June 22nd through June 24th. The student council members will engage with student council leaders from across the country for the purpose of participating in hands-on leadership workshops, team building activities, and collaboration to strengthen student voice and school
culture. funding will be the student activities account and additional fundraising. Uh I will entertain a motion to approve the outofstate field trip request from EHS for the EHS student council to attend the 2026 Vision National Conference in Dair, New Hampshire from June 21 to the 24th.
>> So moved. >> Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Linda. Does anyone have questions or comments before we vote? >> That sounds awesome. >> Have fun. >> Sounds great. >> You going? >> Yeah. >> Awesome. All those in favor?
>> I opposed. Abstensions. Motion carries. >> Okay. At this time, we would invite public comment. If anyone joining us tonight or joining us remotely has thoughts they would like to share, uh, now is the time to do so by either stepping to the podium or raising your
virtual hand. Seeing none, that was a fake out. Thank you, Silus. Uh seeing none, we are going to close public comment and move on to our district showcase. Would you like to introduce them?
>> All right. This evening we have Amy Pace representing um EHS and we have some amazing talented entertainers here from EHS and MBS.
>> Do we need a minute? Cuz I can do one other thing first. It would be great if you did. Our Annie has not arrived yet. >> Okay. So, we're going to switch gears um and go quickly to our superintendent goal update. >> All right. Great. Um if you look at we had our super um our budget presentation
earlier this um this month and you'll hear from us about the budget later on. Um focusing on goal one um our um we're working in we're in the middle of our school improvement planning process and Dr. Dr. Pasquini Torquia will be presenting the school improvement goals
at our upcoming school council meeting. Um at our next school committee meeting, we're going to talk a little bit about this tonight. Um I will give you a brief highlight of some of the things that we're anticipating changing at the middle school. Um we took a look at data
collected throughout the year, student voice, we um parent our listening sessions, our assessment data, teacher feedback, and we have a proposal um that we're really excited about. Um and it's part of the strategic planning process,
but I think it will um it will fundamentally shift instructional practices and the way we operate our middle school. So very much looking forward to that work. Um but again that I think it just highlights the strategic data planning and making decisions that
are student centered based on data. So just really wanted to highlight that and more to come at our upcoming um school committee meeting. The second goal we have our first strategic planning committee meeting on March 31st. We have about 25 people. we were going to um do
a lottery and pick individuals, but I I thought, you know what, the more voices we can have in this process that people committed and willing to share, bring them all in. So, we decided to welcome everybody to the table, um a great um crosscutting um group of teachers,
administrators, students, and um community members are participating. So, we're going to um we've decided to shift from a strategic planning process to um sort of a district improvement strategy because the strategic planning process
is very cumbersome. We need to get something sort of on the ground and moving for next year. Um and we'll refine those every year because I think it makes it more adaptable and um actionoriented if you do it that way. So, that's something that I took from my NIST planning group. So, that's the way
we're going to move forward with that. Um, we're still working on our parent square. Um, you know, we're getting some feedback around the frequency of our posts and we're trying to find the sweet spot for that right now. Um, assistant principal um update. We hired two new
assistant principles for Mountain View. We have Alex Freriedman who's coming to us from Dugen Academy in Springfield um and Rachel Breton who has been a longtime um EPSG um teacher. So, we're really excited for that. And the last sort of part of that is we've posted for
a dean of students position that is a student centered um a family focused position that will help cultivate um student culture really kind of you know the person the the initial responder to help strengthen our MTSS process. I'm really excited about that. That position
is posted now. Um we've done a lot of work around our bully bullying policy and procedures. We received feedback from the MVS school council and the EHS school council. They uh the the members of those teams spent a lot of time digging into our policy to help us refine it. They gave us extensive
feedback. We are very grateful. It'll be posted on the website tomorrow with um for public comment. We'd also like to receive additional feedback on our draft before, you know, we we propose it to the school committee. So, really excited about that. It'll be a two-year plan. Um
but it has extensive reision revisions this time. Um and just a quick note about a partnership expansion. We were able to have Head Start come and tour. They toured both EHS and MVS and we have plans in place to launch um Head Start
in our school back welcome them back into our schools for 2728 at MVS. Oh my god. >> Uh yeah, thank you. So excited. >> We're very very excited about that and so are they. Um it it was such a great meeting. We also are in the final stages of approval for the preschool itinerant
grant. So that'll help us, you know, really bring in some money to help make this the best partnership it could be and to strengthen those services and support for our our earliest learners. So we're super excited about that and >> touch every kid we can. >> Yep. >> Yeah.
>> And um and we'll give a little bit more on that, but I think there's some really great opportunities to take Head Start programming and what we have at um currently at MVS. So allowing more full day spots for families. So very very
excited about that work. So thank you to Sam and Bonnie for bringing that, you know, sort of back up for us. Appreciate it. >> That was a fire hose. >> Yeah, that that's unbelievable. Like one of these updates would be like, wow, that's really great. >> A year, right? >> And it's been two weeks in this.
>> What's our Annie update? >> Annie's Annie's here. >> She's okay. >> I see her. So, we're I'm gonna briefly just say, do we have a policy update tonight, Sam? >> We we don't. >> Okay. And finance, >> such a big one, but I'm gonna let them take >> You're about to see it in the budget
hearing. And CES, you want to give me the TLDDR and CES? >> CES. The TLDDR is that we have a new inter >> interim executive director at CES to take over until July 22nd. >> You may have heard of this before is taking over. You're stealing my fire
here. Um we are uh very lucky to have um uh our former uh interim superintendent Moren Vini taking over as the interim uh executive director at CES. She's super excited. She's been on the job since Monday. We have a meeting tomorrow night uh which will be her first meeting that
she's attending and her whole uh she's got a whole plan for how to kind of um get kind of pave the way for Dr. Bonner to take over in the middle of the summer. And uh I think it's a it's I'm very excited it kind of worked out as as well as it possibly could. >> She called me a few days ago. Larry,
you're not going to believe it. >> Yes. Well, she's she's also actually good segue. She's planning on coming to see Annie now that she'll be back in the area. So, uh we were just making plans for that the other day. So, >> great. >> Very cool. >> The smoothest meeting. >> So incredible. I know. >> Okay. So, we are now going to get back
to the highlight of this evening. Sorry to all the work that went into the budget book, but how can we compete with that? >> We can't. We can. >> A tough act to follow. >> So, back to our district showcase and our EHS and NBS students giving us a little preview of their Annie performance that kicks off next month,
April 9. Is that the first day? Thursday, April 9. Runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday with a mat on Sunday. Yes. >> And we very much appreciate you doing a little showcase for the MVS students. Thank you so much. That that means a lot. And I I think they really appreciate it as well. >> I think it's it'll it'll be good for
everybody. >> Yeah, true. >> All right. >> I'm so excited. >> This is where you're going to be. >> So, do you want me to get tissues now? >> I just need to take a picture of them. >> You're doing great. Yeah, you cry all
you want. >> And also, I'll cry. >> I can't wait. What scene is this? Becca love news. >> We might have something on >> that is a touch screen so be careful. Yeah, that's a sneaky one.
>> Do we can get to another chair? >> I think standing might be part of it. >> Okay. Oh, sorry. I I will give you all the information. I have something short to say >> for a moment. >> You're the talent. >> We're just making Caleb not have a
chair. Okay. Good evening, school committee, Superintendent Bulk, um, and members of the East Hampton community. Um, thank you for having the EHS drama join you for your meeting this evening. My name is Amy Pace and I'm the EHS drama
adviser and art teacher at East Hampton High School. I have with me a group of students who are part of our upcoming production of Annie. We are very excited to be opening this show in just over two weeks on Thursday, April 9th. Um, thank
you. I would like to thank you, school committee, for all of your support of our program over the years. As we navigate through these tricky times, please remember that while cuts to the arts are often some of the first to be
made, that we provide consistent, authentic opportunities for student presentation and performance. We have more than 60 EHS students involved in Annie as well as 12 Mountain View School students. They own this production. They
work hard because they want to and they are proud of it. Um, they are proud of the time and energy that they put into the production both on stage and behind the scenes. I would like to introduce you to some of the cast of Annie as they present a small
excerpt of our show. At this point in the story, Annie and billionaire Oliver Warbuk are joining President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during a cabinet meeting as they strategize how to pull the country
out of the Great Depression. Now, Oliver, since you speak for those few happy Americans who have any money left, I'd like to start with your views on this matter. Well, Mr. President, in the words of Calvin Culage, >> the business of this country is business,
>> right? And yes, for the good of you, me, Wall Street, and just the country, we've got to get my factories open and the workers back to work. According to my latest figures, there are now 15 million Americans out of work and nearly 50 American 50 million with no visible
means of support. >> Mr. President, if I may, unemployment is not our biggest problem. The dispatches from Germany are getting more and more disturbing by day. There could be war. >> True. Hell, people are starving in this country. >> Harold, I know that. But in in the long
run, you have to understand there are no long run for people who are starving. The trouble is it's all happening at once. The stock market is sick and that other nose guy. >> Sit down strikes, riots, floods, dust storms, and the FBI still hasn't caught out Kapone.
>> At least we can all agree on one thing. The situation is hopeless and getting worse. >> Henry, I'd like to see those figures. >> The sun's not tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar it's tomorrow. Quiet little. >> No, it's all right, dear. What were you
going to say? This is pretty country after all. >> It's our dunkers. >> I'm sorry. Just thinking about the sorrow till there's none.
When I'm stuck with a day that's gray and lonely, I just think up my chin and grit and say, "Oh, the sun will come out tomorrow." So you
got to hang on till tomorrow. Come tomorrow. Tomorrow. I love you tomorrow. You're always a day away.
>> Harold, stand up. >> What? >> You heard me. Stand up. Up. >> Now, Harold, sing. >> Sing. >> Yes. Sing like Annie. I've decided my administration is going to be any optimistic about the future. So sing. >> Really, Franklin? You know that.
>> Sing. >> The sun will come out. >> Louder. Harold. >> Tomorrow. That's your bottom dollar. that tomorrow >> there'll be sun clears away and the sorrow's
>> all over the present when I'm done with that day. That's great and lonely. I JUST THINK MY CHIN >> UP MY CHIN >> UP MY CHIN AND GRIN AND SAY EVERYBODY REPUBLICANS DO OVER SINK.
TOMORROW come tomorrow. Tomorrow I love you tomorrow. You're always a day. Tomorrow I love you.
You're always a day >> I'm so excited. I'm >> I cannot wait. >> Wicked stoked. >> Alex, you're sick. >> That was amazing, y'all. >> That was great. >> Are you pumped? Are you ready? What do you think? >> Yeah, I'm excited.
>> Yeah, >> we still have two weeks. >> I know, but I mean, a lot can happen in two weeks. >> A lot will happen in two weeks. >> It's going to be a great show. >> It's going to be great. I cannot wait. I can tell it's going to be funny. It was
so cool. Yes. Great. >> Take your bow. Right. >> We need a bow and a picture. >> Yes. Yes. >> I appreciate that. Yes. >> For the record in character
bows. Y'all are incredible. Thank you so much. >> We cannot wait for the show. Thank you. >> I don't know what that does. >> That was so good. Okay, our next meeting dates will be April 14th and April 28th.
And with that, we are going to open the public hearing on the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget. With a song, Julia question mark. >> That was good. >> Here it goes.
Guess we've lured everybody here with the musical performance and now they >> listen to the numbers. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Do we know? >> Oh, is it hers? Okay.
I do them all. >> All right. >> Good evening, school committee members. Um, very delighted to present our 27 operating budget to all of you this evening. Um Julia, sorry Franks, myself
and um the entire district is very grateful for your time, attention and all of the work that was spent in subcommittee meetings and really asking important questions and helping us to you know create a budget that we think
is both fiscally responsible and reflective of the work that we need to do moving ahead. So, um you can find more detailed information um about our budget. We're excited that we have launched um clear gov a new platform for
our district budget book. Um it is interactive. You can um search, it's exportable, everybody has access. It's not something that you have to you know download and um you know or come here to take a look at. it is um what we you
know would call very clear and transparent. So we're excited about those shifts to the budget process. Um and when you um you can click on this link. It is also on our website as well. Um we we designed the um platform for
and we implemented the platform to increase transparency reporting and it allows it to both be searchable and translatable into multiple languages. Um, we've worked very strategically on our mission and vision throughout the year from listening sessions. We refined
our exist our previous mission and vision to really center it around student experience, student voice, belonging and instruction. Um, which kind of leads us to our core values. Can we just direct the public who may either watch this later or following along now just to tell them they can locate that
link and follow along with us in that budget book. It's right on the district website. >> It is. Yes. on the school committee page. Yep. >> Um it is there as well. >> Okay. Um our core values um based on all of the um you know our our surveys, our
listening sessions and our feedback, we settled on these core values this year and really proud of that work. And you know our budget represents our core values. So when we're publishing a budget and we're taking a look at our budgetary decisions, it has to align
with our core values. And I think that is something you will see throughout our budget presentation this evening. You know, it is our values while also being fiscally responsible as well. Um we we introduced the district snapshot last
year. Um and here it is for this year. And we're going to talk a little bit about those changes for 27 um in just a bit. We have um 1340 learners. Um we still have a 11:1 teacher to student ratio. Um ninetime we the people
champions. Um and then we have some of our you know just student demographic information there. Um and there was a question about the students with disabilities. Last year we were at 31.6 six and this year we are at 29. And just
taking a look at, you know, why, you know, there was a decrease. Um we took a look at some data and um since the beginning of the school year, we've had 22 students enter Eastampton Public Schools. So this data is um of October
1st. So since October 1st, we have we've had 22 students enter the school with IEPs. So um that number will probably level out. So we saw um our 12th grade stu 12th grade students exit dropped in
numbers but when we have you know new incoming students with our churn you know we saw students with this 22 students enter there we also um our Smith vocational program um our students um students with IEPs they actually you
know they exit um Eastampton public schools so that is part of the reason as well and we also had some students students during their reeval three-year re-evaluation process no longer qualified and that speaks to our strengthening our MTSSU um our MTSS
process. So just wanted to talk a little bit about that sort of dip and it's a little bit different than the trend that we see across the state. >> Um we had we were asked to present a level service budget and just you know
quickly what is that? It means that we don't add anything new to our budget. We are creating a budget that simply maintains what we have in place and what families can expect. Um even, you know, with doing a level service budget, you
know, there are unanticipated cost increase that we see. Um and we'll talk a little bit about that. Um Julia will go into detail about where those increases were and how they impacted the budget. Things like transportation. um special education tuition costs. Um but
I think you know what what this excites me about that is the opportunity for innovation to occur and you know as I um stepped into this role and I again remember at my interview you know we talked a lot about being innovative and
thinking about the system and I think that budget is reflective of you know the innovative um sort of um decisions that we're making as a leadership team and with educators. and with the community and students.
The budget is designed to do three things. Um sustain level services that the students and families rely on. So really important part, right? We committed to the f to the families of this community to do certain things and
this budget allows us to maintain what you know what we expected and what our kids deserve in the district. um and to really manage those rising costs responsibly. So you know we we proposed in the beginning some new asks and you
know just taking a look at the numbers we thought you know we had to you know be innovative in how we reallocate positions and we'll talk about that in a little bit. Um and this you know these were done strategically to help us meet our long-term priorities. So we are we
are definitely thinking about you know what's going to happen in the next 3 to 5 years with any decision that we're making in our budget. Me um first off I just really want to thank um everybody who was involved in the
budget development process. Um I've been here just over a year and when I stepped in last year most of this process had been completed already. So, this was really my first rodeo doing that with the East Hampton Public Schools community and um everybody was really
great about answering questions about me deciphering information. So, I just really wanted to thank everybody that was involved in that budget process, everybody from right the city auditor to the mayor's office to the finance committee, right to the principles, directors, right? So, the the budget
building process really is a a team effort. So, even though Michelle and I are the ones standing here, right, we're just the ones who have put together all of this information and all the hard work that's done by a lot of other people. Um, to give you a little bit of an idea of the budget process for us, the budget process usually starts
midfall where we start having conversations like once school is open and things have settled in like the minute kids start the school year, we immediately start thinking about the next school year, right? So, in that fall, we start having conversations with district leadership, with school leaders, right? with the leadership
team, with principles, with directors about what are we doing now, what do we anticipate our needs are in the future, and we start having those conversations. So, especially with Michelle developing her entry plan and getting to know the district, right, starts developing ideas of sort of where do we want to go from here, right? So, those conversations
start really early in the fall. Um, by mid-inter, right, we're crunching numbers. We're looking at what's happened in the prior year, what's happening in the current year, and anticipating what's happening in the next year. So business managers like me often live in three fiscal years at a time. I'm looking at the past. I'm
managing what's going on currently and I'm looking at the future. And we're using all of that information to really make data informed decisions about what's best for students and families in our district. Okay? And then by early spring by now, right, we've compiled all of that information. We've made
decisions, sometimes tough decisions, but strategic decisions to continue to provide, right, services for our families and our students. So, uh, major cost drivers in the FY27 budget. Um, surprising nobody, this
slide is very, very similar to the slide in last year's budget presentation because a lot of the circumstances that are driving our budget are the same. Um, FY27 is year three of our current collective bargaining agreements that in a lot of our bargaining agreements had the largest increase. Right? So about
736,000 of our increase is in personnel cost increases just for our employees that are covered by our collective bargaining agreements. In FY27, 62.58% of our um East Hampton Education Association teachers will be in the top
three steps of their lane. Okay, that means that we have a very highly qualified teaching staff. We have a lot of teaching staff that have been here for a long time and that says great things about our district that we have longevity in our teaching staff and when people come to work for us they
generally tend to stay around right that's great for our students it provides stability right but there's a cost to that right and that's something that is reflected in our budget also in FY27 we've added a new lane in the teacher salary scale there's now a master's plus six-year doctoral lane
that we have several staff members that are moving into right which is great to recognize is the hard work that they've done, right? But that um is is an impact that we need to be aware of as we're prepping the budget, right? Um chapter 70 funding, right, is fairly flat. Um
the state budget is still in the middle of its process, so we don't know where those numbers are going to land, but as of right now, the chapter 70 increase from FY26 to FY27 is only 114,000, right? Based on the governor's budget proposal, right? We won't know where
that settles until it sort of winds its way through their process, right? But that's something we are keeping an eye on. Um, LPC tuition increases we assume is going to be about a 5% increase. They have not published their numbers yet, but that's a projection. Um, our outofd district tuition, right, the rate set by OSD is 3% for those. Uh, regular
transportation increase is going to be 3%, we have a contract um that I will be coming to you later on a vote to extend our contract for another year with them. Um, special education transportation, we need to negotiate a new contract. So, we're anticipating a slightly higher increase because it will be a new
contract year for that. And as I'm sure you are all hearing in the news, utility costs may be volatile, right, for the rest of the year having to do with um changes in the energy markets at the moment, right? So, these are all costs that we do our best to predict, right, but can be unpredictable.
So, our proposed budget for FY27 includes a total of $24.9 million from the local appropriation. Our current year budget for FY26 is 22 just shy of 22.8 million. So, for our budget increase, that's a $2.1 million increase
year-over-year. Uh, which represents a 9.54% increase. Um, so just for the public's information, when we talk about the city appropriation, I just want to remind the public that that city appropriation
includes a combination of state aid and money from local taxpayers. So baked into that 24.9 million is the chapter 7 aid that we predict to be about 9.2 million, which means that the ask on the city budget from the city taxpayers is
about 15.7 million. Right? that our budget is not fully funded by the city because the state provides revenue to the city to fund our budget. >> Can we put just an extra point on that because this is often confusing for the public. Y what Julia is saying is chapter 70 is one revenue stream where
the city qualifies for that money because of the school district but it doesn't go directly to our coffers. It goes to the general city coffers first. >> Right. And the idea is that cities use that as part of their their budget to fund school operations. >> Thank you for making that point, Julia. >> Absolutely.
So again, these are our budget estimates are based on projections on our assumptions of what is going to happen, right? And a lot of these are expenses that we don't have control over, right? So they're short from doing things like we're hearing about in other communities doing cuts or layoffs or changing
programming, right? This is the kind of increase that it costs to keep doing the things that we've been doing. Um little bit of sort of history for you, right? So the the chart that's showing on the screen shows what our budget has been in the past five fiscal
years and what we're projecting for the next year. Um yet we see that there's sort of a spike in FY26 of our increase. And one thing to keep in mind is that FY26 was the first year that we haven't had any pandemic era funding left.
Right? So in FY22, 23, 24 and 25, we had SR1, SR 2, SR3, CVRF, right? The emergency connect connectivity funds, right? So there are lots of monies coming from the state and federal governments that districts used to support their budgets in FY22, 23, 24,
and in some cases 25. And so a lot of districts were able to keep their asks pretty low in those years because they had other money that they could rely on to provide things, right? And so FY26 is the first year that we didn't have any of that money that we could spend. And
same thing with FY27, right? You can see in FY27 that there that number 9.54 is actually back towards what our our ask was in FY25 and would have been what our asks were in 24 and 23 if we didn't have CO funds. Right? Just to give you a
little perspective, in FY22 we spent $937,000 of CO funds. In 23 it was almost 800,000 and in FY24 it was 600,000. So if you add those monies into what we spent out of the general fund budget, the
increases are put into perspective when you know that we had $2.4 million that we could spend in those three years to support school operations. So, uh, a lot of communities around us have been talking about how their staffing levels are changing in their budget process and we've had a lot of
tough conversations and thought really creatively about how to use the people we already have and how to keep the people that we have. And so, what you see on this slide are the proposed staffing changes, right? Um, so at Mountain View, right, we have four administrators currently at Mountain
View. We have three retirements of principles there. We are consolidating those positions and moving to um three administrators, right? One principal and two assistant principles and then a dean of students position. Um we have an L perah. We're going to be converting that position hopefully to an LT teacher
position. Um we're going to reallocate two teaching positions within the current teaching staff there to add right some new subjects. Michelle will talk about this in a little bit. Um and then we had two we had a special ed coordinator that was split between the
high school and the middle school that position now uh we so we did some shuffling. So you can see at the bottom line we've added 02. It's because we had 2.5 positions that we've converted to 6 positions which was what we had to do to make sure that those positions stayed
benefit eligible so that people were willing to come and take those positions. And so, um, as as a district, I think Michelle and I are both really proud that we've been able to figure out a way to maintain all of our current teaching staff and all of our staff because I know we've heard a lot of
anxiety, >> right, from our staff and from neighboring communities about the budget process. So, what you'll see on this screen is a summary of what our what we anticipate our operating budget for FY27 looking like, including all funding sources. So the first column that local
appropriation is really what we are asking for from city council as a department of the city. As a school department we have several other sources of district generated revenue. Right? So revenue that we bring in as a district to support our operations including
school choice circuit breaker food service the athletic revolving account bus revolving and grants. Um so one of the first decisions that the finance subcommittee meeting subcommittee met was to look at our revenue from circuit breaker and school choice those are two pots of money that we have access to and
determine that we wanted to keep the offsets and the use of those funds the same from FY26 to FY27. So, we're using those funding sources the same way next year that we have planned to use them this year, which we think is sort of fiscally responsible for us and allows
us some cushion, right, to deal with unexpected um expenses that may come up, right? So, school choice revenue is brought in when students who reside in other communities choose to attend school in East Hampton public schools. Circuit breaker is a reimbursement
program um managed by DESIE that provides reimbursement for um eligible special education costs. So essentially we spend it in year 1, we get the money in year two and we can use that money in either year two or year three. So the idea is
>> and not every student qualifies, right? They have to meet a minimum threshold of costs. >> Yeah. I don't think there's any volume. I'm not sure that there's any volume going to anyone. I'm getting some >> Oh, it's because Eric shut the mic off. the microphone. >> It's not plugged in.
>> It's still recording on the East Media. >> Also, why is that one That one's on. Yeah, it is. >> And I'm not seeing ECM to media yelling at me. Maybe I am. Hold on. Nope. Tim from E Medium. Pardon me. Just one moment. >> Can you please unmute the laptop on the
table in front of you? I don't think folks at home can hear. >> Can someone >> I think we're good. Let us know now that we've made that change. >> I'm going to ask June text. >> God bless Jean. >> Uhhuh.
>> I think the very worst case scenario is that this gets recorded locally. >> Yeah, this is there's a backup. >> There's a backup to the backup. >> Yeah, there's >> so that you can go back and watch these >> for this first part. We're not gonna make you do the entire like >> almost no
sound >> little tap dance, little jazz hands. >> And the only additional person on the call is Jean, but that might be Did everybody else leave because there was no sound? >> They sure did. >> I wonder if that's fine. >> I did get that message from >> Never saw anybody else on.
>> Okay. I thought Okay. >> A there were a couple of people, but not a huge Okay, it's fine. >> Blame it on me. Thank you. >> Carrying right along. Uh so our food service program is completely self-funded now um with a combination of
reimbursements from the national school lunch program and the universal free meals program through the state. Right? So that program is run by um proceeds from that program. Right? So we do not actually budget anything to support our food service program. Um our athletic
revolving fund, right? They bring in money every year through um ticket sales, donations, and um student fees. And those funds are used to um make sure that we can offer not just athletic events, but make sure that those athletic events are safe, right? Because
every event that we host, we need to have officials, right? We need to have EMTs, we need to have security, we need to have, you know, ambulances, right? Especially for our contact sports, right? And all of that can't be funded through student fees, right? So that's why we charge um for tickets to see
games, right, to continue supporting those programs. Um our bus revolving fund, right, we have a fill the bus program here. And so if we have a bus that is going on the way to a school and isn't full, we allow families who don't qualify for free transportation to buy bus passes. And so the revenue from
those bus passes we use to help pay part of the cost of busing. >> Sorry, hold for a second. We still can't hear. >> I just texted Tim what that error message says. Hello. >> Microphone not found.
>> This is perfect timing for the microphone to not be found. Were they able to hear the first part of our meeting? >> I plugged everything. >> No, I think Eric, did you unplug and replplug the USB? >> I plugged everything. >> Okay, folks at home are going to take a 5m minute recess. Okay, >> they can't hear that. >> Plugged it into that I plugged it into
the TV. >> Mine that there's a fiveminute recess. >> Hold on one second. Okay, >> thanks everyone for fixing that. >> Thank you for letting us know. >> Okay, everybody. Does anybody need to take a bathroom break or we good? We're good. Excellent. Perfect. Wonderful.
Thanks everyone for hanging out. >> Going to cut that out into >> Okay. Welcome >> now. >> Welcome back to the public. We have fixed a plug that somebody kicked and unplugged. And see, we are back with all the sound. Julia, sorry, Franks, take it away. Apologies for the interruption. All
right. Uh the last column on this sheet is is labeled grants. Um please keep in mind that this amount does not include every grant that the district gets because a lot of grants that we get are very specific. They're only for certain things. They're only for one year. Right? So the grants that we include on
this chart are grants where we are reasonably sure that we are going to get an award and we are going to continue to use it in the way that we've been using it. So, the two grants that are in here um are a title one grant that we use for reading intervention staff at um MVS and
um the idea special education grant that we use to fund out of district tuitions, right? So because there's volatility in the administration, we don't know if we're going to get title 2, title 4, and those things we use to provide professional development, to provide coaching, things like that. They're
they're not required to keep our budget afloat, and therefore we don't reflect them in this dollar amount. In the budget book that is publicly available, there is more information about our grants. Um, in that book, there's a list of all the grant awards that we've received so far in FY26 and what those
grants are being used for. But again, we don't know yeartoear what grants are going to be made available either by the federal or the state government. So we don't count on those in our budgeting process. Um on this side is a a graphic that is included in the budget book. One of the
things I'm really excited about about the budget book is it has some very nice graphics that I think really help explain how our money is used in the district. So this graph um the different columns of it are um what what are called the desi functional areas. So at
the end of the year I have to report out how every dollar is spent in the district uh in these cost categories that are identified by desi. So the vast majority of our um money is spent on what they call instructional costs, right? So that's everything from
teachers to paraprofessionals to textbooks, materials, c basically anything that winds up in a classroom is in that instructional category. Um our second largest category is tuitions and our third largest category is
transportation. So 86.1% of our budget is spent on things that directly impact students every day. And so I I like this graphic because I think it helps show right that we're we're trying our best to make sure that our resources are being used as efficiently
as possible to provide resources directly to students in their classrooms. The other categories reflected on here are operations and maintenance, administration, student services, and fixed costs. Right? that represents about 14% of our budget.
Um, this next graphic is same budget numbers but sorted into some different categories. So, these are the same categories that I present to the school committee in our quarterly reports, right? Because I think you guys are sort of used to seeing those numbers, right? So, we see that 68% of our budget is on
personnel, right? Most of our money goes towards providing people because that's what makes schools work. Everybody from our custodians to our clerical staff to our teachers to our paraprofessionals, everybody that is in our buildings is what makes our buildings successful.
Right? So most of our budget goes towards personnel and then um tuition, transportation, everything else and utilities. So this is the the same data, right, but in a a different version again, right? to sort of see that really the bulk of
our money is going towards people and most of those people are providing services directly to students. >> All right. Um and I had mentioned a little bit about this right and you know it's kind of it's a little we want to make sure that our budget represents our
priorities and you know we are developing our district strategy um for improvement and that is sort of a work in progress but one thing when I entered was abundantly clear that we had to really work on our middle school and um
I think our budget represents that you know the desire from both, you know, our administrators, our leaders, and our community to make some changes to our middle school. Um, and you know, that will be something that comes out in the strategic planning process. Um, and so
we're launching sort of an in a little bit of an insight into um transforming the middle school experience, which will be one of our strategic priorities. So, um, I we're going to go much deeper into this at our next meeting. We're going to
talk about the data that that we collected and all the information that helped inform the decisions, but we have to talk a little bit about it because it has budgetary implications for us. So, we we highlighted some of those leadership changes. Um, you know, we
thought really long and hard about what it looks like to bring the community together when we're talking about um MVS and we're talking about how do we create a cohesive school culture. um that that really resonated with me in some of the changes. So we did make those strategic
structural changes and moving from a head of school three principles to a principal, two assistant principles and a studentf facing dean of student positions. Um which was some cost savings which allowed us to do a couple of other things. Um, and if we're really
talking about strengthening the middle school experience, something I heard very loud and very clear from families and from students during our student summit was that they want world languages. Um, and we are going to be posting a position. This is a
reallocated position. So, this is not a new position. This is a reallocation to offer Spanish for our middle school students. Um, we're taking a look at, you know, what does it mean to be college and career ready and what experiences do kids need at our middle
school? Um, it it is the experience of a world language. We have visions for um expansion of world languages um in the future, which I'm excited about, but for this upcoming year, that that is an allocation. And then we're going to be adding again, not adding, sorry,
reallocating a position um from middle school. Uh we have a middle school steam teacher but the steam teacher spread kind of thin. She is teaching some third grade, fifth grade. We alternate so everybody gets a little STEM experience
but we know that we need projectbased engaging hands-on real world application for our students. So we are um transfer we are going to have a dedicated middle school steam teacher and a dedicated elementary steam teacher. It's very
important for our students to get, you know, arts, more arts experience, more hands-on. Um, and again, it these are reallocated positions. So, we we looked at our numbers. We're not, you know, trying to overload our numbers in our classrooms, but we found some areas
where we could shift some educators. We took a look at um I'm really excited about this. um Department of Elementary and Secondary Education came out with their vision of a graduate and what they also did is they are putting out some
recommendations for graduation and we took a look at those and we said okay we know what the expectation is for us right our eagles and our learning expectations and how do they mirror some what we know to be true um or recommendations from DESIE about what
kids need to have in order to graduate and again these are recommendations ations at the time, but it is based on research. It is based on best practices and whether the state decides to make them graduation requirements. We know that these experiences are what our kids
need for college and career. So if you this is a little bit hard to read, but there is what happens in our coursework. the demon how they demonstrate mastery of what they know. And in this third sort of maroon bucket is prepared for what's next and looking at prepared for
college career and civic readiness which launches us into what we're calling our compass lab. And this is our innovation for middle school change. And we are so excited to be launching um it this we're going to just call it you know exactly
we will when we launch it to students it will you know we're going to we're going to work this a little bit you know but um digital literacy lab for kids and what is that and when we present this more fully at our upcoming meeting we
we're going to have like a syllabus for you to take a look at because I think that's really important. Um, this isn't to teach kids how to use technology. The purpose of this class is to h how to do conduct research, right? How to know it
is authentic, how to be a good digital citizen, what what is your digital footprint look like? What is an algorithm and why does it show up on your page and how do you like what marketing are you getting? And how to be critical consumers? um because that is
very civic f focused. All of these courses are really geared towards civic engagement because we need that more now than ever. Our next for seventh grade, they're going to be taking a course and these are core courses where students will be graded for their work. These
aren't elect these are core because at its core it is what our kids need. They're in our Massachusetts state frameworks. Um we are you know we are going we're focusing on going deeper into our curriculum frameworks and what does financial literacy mean? Right?
Kids need to understand how to make you know those real life decisions. What is credit? How to save their money? How to make your money work for you? Why do prices go up? What is supply and demand? What does that mean for a student? And how do you make decisions based on needs
and wants? And we heard this time and time again, not only from our community, but from our students as well. That student summit that we had was so powerful. And I think it's so important that we prepare kids for their future and so they can make wise decisions. And
this will help them in college, career, and life. And we know that this starts in middle school. We can't just start everything in 9th grade. We need to prepare them for high school. And these are the tools. Civics's lab. We're going to have students doing they do right now the civic action project but what it
does is they kind of you know they pause social studies right now and they do the civic action project but it is such a powerful capstone project for students. They investigate sort of an issue that's happening within the community and then
they they advocate for change. But imagine that spread over the course of a year. Imagine they're learning about what rank choice voting means in East Hampton. Imagine they're looking at East Hampton data and the power in harnessing
their voice. And this is all to prepare them for high school. We have a very powerful we the people civics program at the high school. How are we preparing our students for that? So these are three core courses that are going to be embedded. Every student will have access
to them. you don't cho choose to go into them. They're going to be hands-on. They're going to be real world and we we are excited, so excited for this to happen in our school and we'll talk more about this in our next meeting, but I wanted to give you a little sense of um
what we are doing within our existing budget for innovative practices like FDR style. >> All right, that is our budget presentation. Wanted to give you a little sprinkle about what's more to come. >> Heard that part.
>> Okay, it's so good. >> We're just blown away. >> Sam, did you get that part about the get the compass? Do you want me to take a photo and send that to you? >> Excellent. Thank you. >> And we're going to dive in even deeper at our next table >> at our next meeting. Um, and I did want
to say, you know, thank you all so much for your support on the budget. it, you know, um Julia talked a little bit about how, you know, this was truly a process, but you know, and we tried to engage everyone in the process. We've been talking to the middle school. We've been
talking at our um Mountain View Elementary leadership team. This, you know, these are um things we're really excited for and that the district is committed to doing. So, there is no there is no hesitancy here. I think everybody is excited for the change and
I'm so excited to lead it and very grateful for your support on all of this because it is what we truly believe our students deserve and you know I'm ready to produce some data to show that this is what our kids need. >> Anybody have questions? Sam, do you want
to start? >> Sure. I have a few questions. Um, first of all, I'm super excited about the middle school uh vision and I'm really glad that we're we you know, I've I've heard little bits and pieces of it and I'm just so excited to start really putting it together and really kind of
seeing um what this is going to look like and and as somebody who's been I've been involved in one way or another in the schools for the last 10 12 years now and um I've I it's just really amazing to see the the ship kind of slowly
turning in that time and um it's just like giving me chills. Like stick with stick with tough stuff is I guess my message to everybody because it's worth it. >> Um I have a question. So um I I appreciate the first of all I I hadn't
realized until you showed the the uh the chart with the um the previous increases. This is like our third consecutive year with almost a 10% increase. Um I I'm really concern are we our employees got hit hard with that health insurance increase earlier this
year. Uh to what extent are we considering that in this budget or can can we just not really do that because I don't you know there's kind of a lot of speculation about health insurance in particular right now and kind of how that might affect our >> So the health insurance costs for all
city employees including school department employees are housed in the city budget. >> Okay. >> Right. So, I'm sure this is a a discussion that's going to come up with the city um finance committee. >> Okay. >> Right. I'm sure it's conversations that the mayor is having with HR director, right? With department directors, but
there the the only like benefit that is in our budget is a line item for what we pay for Medicaid processing. >> Okay. >> And for our student accident insurance related to athletics, right? All other employee benefits are on the are the city budget. that will affect the city
side, but it won't affect our budget directly. >> Not directly, >> unless something the city can't put as much money into the school. >> We're in the third year of a contract. We're going to begin negotiations the end of this year >> and I will absolutely be the elephant in the room sitting right in the middle of the room.
>> Yep. >> So >> that everybody's going to be working. >> I just that's helpful. I appreciate that. Well, and you know, it's knowing that that is weighing heavy on the city in terms of looking at their budget because they have to balance their budget across all departments, including our department, which is why we said we need to try to accomplish the goals that
we want to accomplish without asking for ads. So, how can we do that knowing that, right, the city is going to be dealing with that issue? >> Yeah. >> Yep. >> Can I add one thing on um because I had a note about the historical budget increases? So that's the past 5 years and we've worked I I've been present for
what four of them. Not not quite all of them. Maybe all of them. I don't know. Time is funny. But we've worked incredibly hard to like get to the point where we were brave enough to even ask for that. And if you go back like 10 and 15 years, >> you can see 0% increase.
>> Yeah, that's what I remember. 0% increases. I mean, it's not that we're always playing catch-up on that, but like just the the trajectory in this district of investing in over and over and over again in level services. It's just really like heartening to see,
particularly in this climate, in any climate. And the last piece of that was the third year of the contract where we were trying to pull the last of our staff groups up to being competitive with our neighboring districts and find a way to try to maintain and protect that without ever overpromising and then
having to revert to reductions in force which are not only terrible for morale but also end up costing the city and the school department more money in the >> also like has a really direct impact on the students too. Like that's >> it's it's all of it. That's your recipe for starting to drink. >> Um, one more. Well,
>> yeah, of course. >> I have another question about Spanish. So, if we're which is super exciting. I love starting Spanish in the middle school. Um, again, I remember talking about this 10 years ago. So, like this is uh huge and really exciting. Um, is
that going to potentially change the readiness that our ninth graders have for high school Spanish? >> Yes. >> So, they'll be starting at a higher level. It will still be an elective, so they'll still have to start um high school with the intro to Spanish. However,
>> um we will be able to accelerate the curriculum because students have experience. >> Okay, cool. >> Um so, you know, when we're thinking about, you know, offering AP courses, what does that look like? So, we will be able that intro course can get a little bit deeper.
>> That's awesome. Yeah, that is great. That's really >> and it just like students a large percentage of our high school students aren't scoring ideally where we'd like them to be especially as they so if they're base understanding of like let's just say vocabulary if you spend two two years alone in middle school level
learning vocabulary that's already a foundation you don't have to spend until you know April just getting your basic voca you can move right into verb conjugation and like complex language >> that's super cool excited about that >> I mean I'm excited for thinking about the future for language for the
district. >> Um, and I um I would like to enroll my father in the digital literacy lab. I think that is something that >> maybe we'll partner with. >> I I was thinking I was like, is there a way that we can like build on that in some capacity? Maybe not this year, but
like this these are skills that I think everybody needs and uh they're skills that have changed in the last 10 20 years. >> So we teach these kids and then we send them to the ECOA again. >> Yeah. Or they come home and teach us how it's supposed to work. So, yes. >> Well, I appreciate um all the work that you all have done and um I I really
recommend to the public, you know, if you please read the whole budget book, like it's actually really readable and accessible and um I learned a lot um that I that was very easy to kind of take in and um I just uh I appreciate all the hard work that's gone into this.
>> Thanks. >> Yeah, it's exciting. >> Linda, do you have anything? >> Pastor Gay, >> I don't have questions. But I just appreciate the creativity. I think especially with the administration and the structure of it at the middle school and and elementary school combined, I think it's going to make a huge
difference and it allows you to allocate those funds to these types of things that we can we can do without having to ask for for a lot more money. >> Can I get your personal take on the middle school proposal being that you're a middle school teacher in your real life? I have a fourth grader who's going into
I think that the civics part and I think when you talk to families or when you hear about people talking about public school all the time, it's like what and even where I work in the district, it's constantly real life applications. How can we make this? What's the how and the why? Why are we learning this? Why do we need this? And so kind of always
connecting it to elements of future life makes kids buy into it. Especially and historically when you get into middle school, sixth grade is the drop off where you you you know when you're in elementary school, you just want to make your teachers happy and then you get to middle school and you're just constantly
peer oriented. You're just worried about your peers and the education part. If you think back any adult thinks back of middle school memories, it's all peer related stuff. It's not the academics. But if you make the academics this type of academic where they are connecting to real life things and understanding what's going on and kids today have more
access to the news and what's happening around them and take all these different factors then they they'll buy into it and then they'll come up with projects and they'll it'll just grow from here. But this is an awesome base to start with. >> Yeah. I'm thinking, you know, what can we do right in the financial literacy piece like stock market challenging
partner with junior achievement and our our local banks and how do we get everybody a checking account and how like what how do we really you know thinking and you know making college career life decisions, right? How you know what is the right path for you? Like a super nerdy deep dive on this is
like the last time we had a nationwide heavy investment in public education was post World War II in the early 1950s. And at that time they reinvented public school curriculum to include things like keyboarding, sewing, home economics, auto shop. They asked themselves these same series of questions like what are
kids coming out of high school? What are the skills they're lacking? What are these real life skills that we need to start bringing? We haven't gone back and reflected in that way in 70 years. Yeah. >> And this is so so exciting that like everybody has been talking about this
and yet nobody is really pulling the trigger and with this leadership it's like we're finally that like we've been talking in circles about this for a decade in this district. >> And I think like you said most schools they dip their toe into this in the year they do some type of economical we're
going to make a food truck. We're going to do a stock market thing and it's a twoe thing and then it's back to the >> the curriculum that they're doing before. And so this is like this is not just a dip. This is immersion into all these >> or it's not thoughtfully planned for and so it can't sustain. It'll be the first
thing getting cut the next year when things are a little tight or you know. Yeah. >> And if I'm taking 15 minutes from ELA and math, >> right? I need to have a course that teaches you rigorous um standards aligned instruction >> and is practicing those ELA and math
skills reinforcing real world applications. >> Absolutely. And you know in the middle school presentation we'll talk about the standards that are going to be embedded and taught into those into the courses and they will support ELA um humanities. the digital literacy
>> and just last I the wisdom in this also is I think that we look at our we the people program and we are >> we're spoiled to think that it's just regular like we just win championships but to understand and have the knowhow to say we need to start building foundation lower than that because if we get these kids psyched up and we get
them into this civics they're going to be even more prepared which is I mean I can't even think about more prepared but I also think about you know Kelly Brown it's not going to be there forever so it's like building this foundation before. Although if she could stay for another six years, my son's in fourth grade.
But I think that I think it's just a smart thinking ahead with not just what you have, but what do we have and how can we now start to build backwards to get it so that we continue and sustain it >> which is also building it forward because then all of these kids are better prepared for post high school
graduation. Correct. I actually did have that question when you were presenting that. Are we prepared to expand we the people in the high school at some point perhaps? I mean a team so a certain size or to offer I mean we'll have to see
some more finish. Yeah. >> Yeah. Just because I anticipate that we're going to get a lot of kids who are now a lot more interested in that. >> They you know a lot more and so just that I feel is going to flow on up into
the high school. And that was why I thought we were doing that. I'm like, "Oh, we're going to get a lot of kids that are ready for this." Now, >> it's a good thing Kelly Brown has been recruiting apprentices for the past couple years. You have one and then we'll get to Megan. >> Um, well, I already went, so you can go back. Go ahead. It's fine. >> Well, okay. So, I also took some notes
on the budget book that I uh was going to ask about. Um, so one of the uh questions that I one of the things that I noticed through reading through the budget is that and I think this is true in many districts but in our district especially our our administrative um
structure and like our central office structure is like very very thin. We don't have any extra like I looked at like our IT department and it's what like three people who do it I it for the whole district you know but and I know like when I lose my password to my East
Hampton um school committee account I have to like call Justin and like it's hard to get him because he's always he's busy resetting everybody else's passwords. So like you know this is um and he and he's great and I appreciate it but like it's it's um we are so >> redundancies. Yeah. I just want to point
out like you see a lot of like especially online people will say like oh you know cut the fat like you know cut it there's nothing guys like it's it's been like we're really so I appreciate everything that everybody who works here does and I just wanted the public to realize like a very thin
structure of um of folks kind of at the central office level. >> Can I So I I really appreciate you pointing that out. So, this is the fifth school district that I've worked in in my 21 years in education. And this is
probably the leanest, meanest central office staff I've seen. >> Yeah. >> And um knowing that and knowing the big things that both Michelle and I want to accomplish >> and not having the people to do it cuz people are so expensive, right? That's
why I said, "Okay, clear gov. Let's implement this software. It costs $10,000, which sounds like a lot, but the the number of hours and labor time that that saved that then gives us time to do these other projects to tackle other
things, like I think that's what's going to help move the district forward. And knowing that, you know, so we're we're looking at every cost. We're looking at every line item. I mean, the the finance subcommittee has heard this already, but we renegotiated our copier contract, >> right? And we are saving $80,000
over the next five years, right? And so this savings from that copier contract is what's going to pay for that software system. >> And can we say too now, Mayor Derby is also saying, "Oh, hey, so this programming that you have, maybe we could realign and actually save the school department and the city money by
like like these types of things." So the the partnership, the collaboration, the ambition >> to like create great things. You don't need to be swimming in money to make excellent impact in education. >> You do need to be willing to make some small strategic investments.
>> Exactly. Right. >> So that you can leverage the staff that you do have and free them up from instead of managing 700 spreadsheets to come up with a static budget book that nobody read. >> Right. To then create a document that is hopefully more legible, more readable,
more engaging. Right. And do it like >> what? 3 days. Yeah. >> Right. Of work it took me to put together that budget work. It took me the whole first month I was here last year to put together last year's budget book. >> Yeah. No, and I I think that's awesome. And the budget book is a really good
example actually of like smart investments in in the right places. I will say though, like as far as um personnel goes, we've been trying to find a way to hire another custodian for several years now. And I'm uh I just want to put it out there in the public
that like this is something if we could if we could add another position. And I know we don't talk a whole lot about custodians, but um we really would benefit from figuring out a way to to better manage that workload. And they've been asking for another person for a
very very long time now. So that's just one thing I want to keep in mind. >> You know, things like that are helpful for us, you know, as we think about the subsequent year. I mean, I I think about, you know, there's a couple areas that we really need to focus on. um some
maybe some very strategic hiring. >> Yeah. So, that was just like the one I just I've seen it every single year for a while now and I feel bad for them because they don't um they don't generally get to come in here and present about what they do. You know, >> they may have a creative solution in sitting down with this new central
office leadership and saying maybe the solution isn't another maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but like what are the what are the problems? How can we draw can we share resources on the city side? Is there work you know groundskeeping stuff like >> So, I just wanted to highlight that we've had a hard snow winter. I know they've been working hard. >> I think on that point, it's really important that we talk about it now.
While we have a relatively new high school and a brand new middle school, elementary school situation, like the if we maintain them now, they're state-of-the-art facilities >> for a much longer period of time. We don't end up with a White Brook situation again. Yeah. >> I mean that we take care of what we have
now. We maintain it and then we can >> but I think we're headed in the right direction and um >> this the um the feeling is so different here. >> Yeah. >> You're good. >> I'm good. Megan, >> um I will try not to repeat what other people have said because I just all of
it is um great points and I'm just so appreciative of how the process went and the way it like I my note to myself here is like I'm really proud of this budget to put forward but I also feel a little bit like I mean we we worked on it but you all have worked like it's more it
feels more like a huge privilege to get to watch your brains >> figure this out and like see >> does it feel like the first year I didn't have to I yeah like what thank you for thanking us but like >> yeah we didn't do anything this year. >> Um it just it's so cool to be a part of
it and like ride your coattails and see what you're you're doing on this. Um I did have a couple of questions that I think we answered in subcommittee but I just wanted to like make sure that we like answered them here so that everyone heard it. My two big questions are um can you speak a little bit more to the
decision to change from four admin to three admin and whether or not that was like a costdriven decision-m or like a strategic best practices type decision. >> Yeah. So um there's a couple things right I talked extensively to Dr.
Pascini Torquia. What do we really need? And um two things really stood out was we need a way to make Mountain View a more cohesive. You know, you're bringing in four you brought in four different or three different schools into the you
know into one place. What does that look like and what are the structures? So we had just sort of taken what we had and put it into Mountain View. Right. >> Right. And is that the most effective way? Um, in, you know, really leaning on
Jill and even consulting with the principles, you know, what is going to work? Talking to some teachers and they said, you know, having grade level kind of you you don't know who's doing what pieces. Um, we have prek to 2, we have 3
to 5. And even for kids, it's a little confusing. Who is my principal? And then what does the head of schools like? what are the roles and responsibilities for that? So, I think you know making this shift uh to a principal makes sense to
anybody, right? You're like, "Oh, this is the person that's in charge of the school." Assistant principles report to the principal and then um and you know looking at what other schools have for numbers and number of administrators.
Okay, there is usually some sort of 300 to1 ratio. So we looked at our numbers. Okay, 300 to1 means three administrators for the school. Um we haven't clearly articulated what each individual is
going to do. Um but thinking about you know we we will get create we we're going to rely on their strengths. I want to talk to them um and really find out where they see themselves. um that they you know have experience in middle school and elementary but you know I I
want to we have to build a culture that it is mountain view school >> and we are all we know we all have to be rowing in the same direction their experience of kids art is different in elementary and in middle school um but
we all need to be sort of having the same sort of set expectations and structures within the school and then the dean of students position is something that um we I've seen work really well in other districts. It is
the person who is responsible for building um the school culture, responding to classrooms, building those relationships with staff and students, you know, and then it's consistent expectations for behavior are sort of
set by that one person informed by the administrators, right? they're a team, but when one person sort of gets to know and rolls that information up, it makes things um a lot more um it feels more cohesive too. And we, you know, we have
to build some structures. How do we operate? You know, what are the expectations for students? What are you know what are our you know, sort of um what what are our values as a school community and building those with that team. I'm really excited about that.
Thank you. I think that's really helpful to just highlight that it's really based on best practices and you know what's going to work for us. Um the other thing you you sort of mentioned all of this in the and it's definitely in the budget book, but just one of the things that we've come up against in the past is
like um questions around class sizes. Um and we're doing some reallocation, creative strategic reallocation. Um and my understanding based on all the work we've done is that class sizes really are not changing at any of the levels. So, we had a really big fifth grade
class this year, which is going to sixth grade, but we also had a sixth grade class. So, um we're looking at um a reduction in fifth grade for a reallocation. So, that's where we're that one of the positions will come. Um it doesn't necessarily have to be a
fifth grade teacher. We're going to we're still looking at staffing, but it we're looking at class sizes in that fifth grade. So, the fourth grade going to fifth grade is smaller. So the class sizes there will be you know we're our average is 21 to 23. Um so we're still
keeping it you know small class sizes but you know the re there's re there's a lot of research around class sizes too and I know we like small class sizes in East Hampton but there you know we're also looking at highquality instructional materials. It's the
quality of the teaching um that is that yield in those relationships and that sense of belonging that really yields the highest impact right it is the quality of the teaching not necessarily the do we want big class sizes absolutely not we're looking at you know
the prek to 2 keeping those really you know our our our class sizes smaller because you know little people need a lot more yeah >> yeah perfect thank you I just again um I hope that there are prior are uh school committee members who have you know
what's the word like cycled off of school committee in the past 10 years who are watching and seeing that things that they've advocated for are appearing like this is a shared pride um and one of the ones that I always think back to Ben um who was really insistent and a
great advocate for like giving real voice to students and I just love how much of this middle school rethinking came from what the middle schoolers ers themselves are saying to you >> the student summit was just incredible. The number of students who said tax they
want to learn about taxes. I I can't >> I found that so interesting. I can't even tell you the number of sticky notes that I plucked off that said taxes on it. I'm like, you know, they hear us talking >> conversations at home that we're nervous >> and stressful, right? Like they want to know what what is this thing that my
parents are talking about part of the curriculum in fifth and fourth grade where they learn about the revolution, they learn about being about taxes, taxes, taxes, and then they'd hear their parents about taxes. They're like, "What? What's happening?" >> Yes. >> And we think that they're just like playing Roblox and like >> Yeah. and they're like, "This is
$14.99." I'm like, "Oh, but no, it's not. There are taxes on top of that, and it's if it's prepared, there's even more." So, kids need to learn about that. >> I really want to say like one of the things that um happens, right, is we >> we read all the sort of popular culture
about the work on teens in particular and like people kind of freak out about telephones >> and, you know, the use of cell phones and screens and all that stuff. But anecdotally, I have to say these are some of the biggest issues that come up
in teen life. >> Yep. >> Much bigger than the phone >> into your 20s. >> Yes. And we have to remember that in education, education is not separate from the development of a human being.
>> We're actually by putting this in where you're wanting to put it. we are affecting the actual development of a child of you know a human being and how significant that is um to literally
be um sort of paving a way to reduce social anxieties because you have knowledge >> is extraordinary and I mean as a therapist I have had to say look this is beyond the scope of my practice I'm not
a great educ indicator around finances, but let's pull out a budget >> and let's try to make your budget >> to a teen because they have no concept of how they're going to function in the
world. I mean, how many kids don't have access to a checking account, a debit card, have no understanding of these things? Um, and when you give them that knowledge, they have a way forward.
>> Can I highlight one thing you said because this struck me earlier and I forgot that I think what you're talking about is that that we're equipping these kids, right? But you're touching particularly on hitting this in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade means you're equipping these young people before they
can be accountable for it. So rather than it becoming fraught with anxiety and shame and confusion and fear, they're gaining the equipment and the knowledge before they can be expected in the society to deliver on it. >> They're you know
>> that changes like like you're saying that changes how a child develops and experiences the world, their confidence in moving through that world. >> Yeah. Yeah. And like literally their brain changes like knowledge and the plasticity of the brain. What we now understand in terms of development, this
does transform the possibility. >> It'll make their 20s a lot less rocky. >> I I I do have a question about that though. I know several people, young people who because of how they process,
because of their differences or whatever, cannot math. I mean they just can't math. No, they can't. There are many students that people that I know have a difficulty adding numbers together. They do not understand
concepts of money. I know several people who are special, you know, were in special ed or whatever. How will this be adapted to deal with the students who do have difficulties in those areas? >> Yeah. So actually we're having a planning meeting to talk about these
three courses and we invited our BCBA to the meeting because we wanted to have a seat at the table. We want to talk about you know our students with neuro neurodeiverse students and how they engage with the curriculum. So really you know we brought in our school adjustment counselor. So embedded in
these courses is going to be the the the MYAP work um which is college and career planning. So we're talking about we you know we we're going to bring um that the path the middle school pathways policy back forward and you know you'll see
these embedded and that really outlines you know we care about how students will access. So the part of the planning piece is very intentional and we will make sure that the right people are in the right room. We, you know, we're bringing in Antaly or health teacher to
the conversation because, >> you know, they will know how, right? Bringing the experts >> and we don't, it's, this isn't new to us either. We do this right now in the life skills program at the high school. We do this kind of instruction. >> Absolutely. >> That's awesome. >> Yeah.
>> Uh, would you do you have anything else to say, Lori? Um, I just wanted to also say, so I was on the finance subcommittee and like Megan had said, like I was blown away by just the capacity of both
of you to truly educate someone like me who is new on the finance committee. I felt like I could ask any question about the entire budget um and it would be answered and I would understand it in the context in which it was delivered.
That allows for a certain kind of transparency for our community and responsibility and accountability about our money that is really significant. So I thank you both. >> Julia is a great right. So I think her
educator experience it really shines right. She is takes every opportunity for a teaching moment. So, thank you. >> Amazing. >> Well, do you have any thoughts? >> I mean, I'm just kind of like blown away. It's really >> crazy. All of like the parts um and
seeing it come together is great. >> And this expansion in the middle school is really cool. I mean, >> what would you have thought if that was if that was available to you in sixth, seventh, and eth? Um I feel like um down the road after these are implemented for a little bit, it's
going to change kind of like uh the programming in the high school. I mean just because of how how much more prepared um students are entering high school. And this is something that we work on all the time in like our student council and stuff with like >> you know how how are we better preparing
people? like what can we do to prevent somebody from not knowing something when they get there so that we don't have to react to um fix something and like I think this is doing a really great job at that. >> Well said. Thank you, Walter. >> It's awesome. >> Thank you to to the mayor for >> Yes.
>> that again slogging through a rules and regulations meeting downstairs. Um Yes. >> Who knows the ins and outs of all of this. >> That's right. and was engaged from the beginning, attended every finance committee meeting, was very supportive, asked a lot of questions, has the utmost respect for our team, as do we. Um, and
it just you can feel it's like >> teamwork. >> You can feel it coming together, and it's >> and I know that it's exciting for the two of you, but as like the old dog that's been here since the beginning of time, it I didn't think we'd ever be here. I didn't I didn't think this was
possible for us. And it's really >> it's really incredible. And I say this as someone whose own kids won't directly benefit. I couldn't be happier. Like this is we all plant these trees even though we're not going to be here to sit under them. It's this is incredible. It's really great. >> I can't wait.
>> Yeah. Anyone else? >> Okay. >> I just want to say that this presentation will be posted to the um school committee website tomorrow. Great. So that um people if they want to go back and look at this presentation, right, can look at this as well as the full budget book
>> because the bud Yeah. So people should understand the budget book is a separate document that really goes along with this. And then this was a presentation kind of to make it a bit more palatable if you just wanted to cruise through. But the budget book is budget book is super readable. >> Yeah. >> There's no fat in the budget book either. Just a lot of it's just a nice
narrative that you can understand and all the data is right there in a way that you can access. >> Very well presented. Yeah. It was the first time that I read a budget book >> and it didn't look so dry that my eyes wanted to bleed while I >> desy coded spreadsheets,
>> you know. And I really do think that Bonnie and someone spoke about putting it in context. >> Yes. because money is like here and we think of money here and then we think of well what are the services we're providing and having that contextual
reference makes all the difference I think to most everyone >> right >> yeah right so I I really appreciate that I sat here went this is really interesting rather than well we got this amount of money and we got this amount of money and we give this one this >> it was a good good um example of like
accessible information like because the I feel I feel like there's there were um we talked at we went to charting the course this weekend uh which is like the school committee orientation and they were talking about like the sorts of graphs and things that you expect to find in a budget book and um so I was
thinking about just like how well chosen the info like the the way that you present the information and kind of what you chose to present and how was >> but it doesn't feel gimmicky it's accessible but it's not gimmicky >> no it was just really well well done so thank you for that >> I think we should be mindful too that
this is not the type of meeting that most of our neighbors are having >> as they're discussing their budgets. >> Um my heart goes out to all of those communities that are really really struggling that are talking about significant reductions of force and reductions of programming. Um we are not
here to brag or to gloat. We are grateful. Um there are a number of reasons that led us to be here and and I have a lot of gratitude and appreciation for that and the only reason we're staying here is because of the people in leadership who are able to guide us there who can take two things and
balance them at once which is to take your values of your district and an incredibly tight fiscal responsibility and to marry those two things together to deliver an effective product is incredibly difficult and I don't think a lot of people can do that and all the flowers to our leadership team. They're
incredible, incredible talents and we're we're very grateful to have them. >> I get you. >> Thanks for that flower shout out, Laura. >> You're welcome. Bouquets of the Valley on Cottage Street, everybody. That's probably illegal. I just said that all of the other flower shops in Eastampton and
>> they're all wonderful. Um, anybody else have questions, comments? >> No. >> Okay. >> Excellent. >> This was the last item on our agenda. >> Is there a chance for a public speak? So, what I would say is if anyone joining us would like to share any
public comments relevant to the budget or quite frankly anything in the district, we'd love to hear from anyone. Don't see anyone in the room. We have a couple people joining us virtually. Apparently, that budget book was so clear. They don't have any questions at the forefront at the moment.
>> Give them a minute. I want I'm hoping some of them will jump in and tell us what they're excited about. I don't think you're going to manifest that today. You better message me. >> So, yes, it's I'm manifesting it the you know, >> seeing none. >> There are other opportunities. You can always email.
>> Well, this is step one, so to be clear to the public. So, this is um tonight we are going to vote before we adjourn tonight, which thank you because I was just about to adjourn without even voting on this. So, tonight we are going to take a vote on this budget proposal.
Um, in the event that it passes, we are going to forward this proposal to the city council where it will consider this um, I'm sorry, it's going to the mayor first who is then going to put take this into consideration along with all other city departments, create the mayor's final
budget proposal that they will then bring to city council. So, that meeting we expect to be in May. We don't have a date yet, but this is step one for us because we as a city department are the only ones that operate differently um with its own elected oversight body.
>> Yeah. >> Okay. So, I would entertain a motion to approve the budget proposal as presented by Superintendent Bal and Julius Franks tonight. >> I would love to so move that one. >> Can I get a second?
>> I'll second it. >> Thank you, Bonnie. Uh all those in favor? I >> I >> opposed. Abstensions. >> I >> Let's be Let's abstain to be on the safe side. >> It's going to pass. >> Eric has a member of immediate family
who is uh who works in our district, so we don't like to um he's not allowed to weigh in on matters that could benefit him financially. >> Thank you. >> All right. So, that budget passes. Thank you so much. This is step one out of four steps, but we're going to now shepherd it to the mayor and the mayor
will take it to city council and we will see how this all shakes out by the end of May. If no one has anything further, I would entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> Uh motion to adjurnn. >> Thank you, Sam. Can I get a second? Second. Thank you, Linda. We are going to roll call out my list so I don't
forget anybody. Bonnie, >> have a great night. Eric, >> good night. >> Megan, >> good night. >> Sam, >> good night. Linda, >> good night. >> Uh, good night East Hampton. We will see you in April. >> That was just Michelle and Julia.
Really? Seriously. So good.