Friday, April 17th. We'll call this meeting to order. If the assistant clerk could please call the role. >> Councelor, >> present. Councelor >> present. Councelor >> present. >> Anyone recording the meeting? Seeing none, we will wave the reading of the announcement of open meeting recordings.
Uh, first item, reading of minutes, prior meetings. We have no prior meeting minutes. Second item on the agenda is the Gardener Public School FY 2027 budget presentation. Dr. >> Hi. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Um, uh, this presentation that we're
going to be going over is not just about money, it's about kids. And so, we're going to be presenting a bunch of information about how student needs is really what drives our budget, um, and what the needs of Gardener Public Schools is. Um, so first off, just enrollment trends. As you can see, over the past
few years, um, we had steady increases in enrollment. We went from FY21 to FY24. where we went from 2200 students up to over 2500 students. Um, this year was our first decline. Um, there's 15,000 students, by the way, missing in Massachusetts that are no longer in
public schools. 85% of schools are on what's called held harmless because they went down in population. So, a lot of school districts are facing this, but we luckily over this past several years had increases in our enrollment unlike most other schools because they've been on a
steady decline. our enrollment trends. This is really about high need students. High needs are students with disabilities, students um English language learners, and low-income students. The reason they're considered high needs, the state says students in these categories are high
needs because they need more. They need more services, they need more support to succeed. Um typically when they need more, it means more resources, which means more money. Um and as you can see when you look at the high needs it went from 1,400 in
2021 to over 1,700 students. 300 students um more low income went from 1,254 um with a more than it's about 250 increase in students. Our students with disabilities went up 100 that's 20% 100
students that's a lot of services and a lot of support and our English language learners more than doubled. Now I want to talk a little bit about the performance of Garden Public Schools. So first I want to talk about the high school. This is a scatter plot
which for those of you who love math I I love this kind of stuff. Um but this is 222 um high schools in the district excluding vocational schools. Um this is this is all of our districts and
what every year DESIE gives us a percentile rank. The percentile rank is an accountability percentile and it's based on MCCAST scores, dropout rate, graduation rate, chronic absenteeism, advanced um uh coursework participation and engagement of students who otherwise
would have dropped out of school. We're all ranked from one to 99. High needs is what I just described before. Students with disabilities, English language learners, and um uh English language learners and students from low-income families.
When you look at high needs, this is the scatter plot on the x-axis, the horizontal axis. This is the accountability. The further we are to the right, the higher you are in your percentile rank. Further to the left, the lower.
on the y axis, the higher up you go, um that's the a higher percentage of um high need students. And if you look at that little orange dot there at the center of the red um axis, um that's gardener high school. We're at the 45th
percentile. And if you notice that red line going across, there are no schools that have more a higher percentage or an equal percentage of high need students that is doing better than us. You can see that upper right hand corner is totally clear. No one with as many high
need students as us is doing better. We have some they're all the the ones that are higher or equal are doing lower. We have a lot of schools in the lower lefthand corner um that have lower percentages of high need students that aren't doing as well as us. And then to
the right you'll see as the as the percentage of low of high need students goes down, their percentile rank goes up, which kind of makes sense, right? They have fewer kids with um struggles in terms of engaging in um in classroom exercises.
So we're doing really well. compared to the state. We're an outlier. In terms of the rest of our our whole district, um we do the this um STAR math and STAR ELA. STAR is our what we call our universal screener. We do it three
times a year checking on where kids are for uh reading comprehension and math. The gray lines are where we um what we did last year was our first year of instituting this. Um and you'll see the is it turquoise? I think that's
turquoise. Um, that's the line from this year. Both ELA and in math, we've greatly improved. Dibbles is our reading, that's kindergarten through fourth grade, our reading scores are accelerating as well.
We have a lot of systems put in place to make sure that we're not only having growth, but that we'll have sustained growth. So, our MTF system, which I talk a lot about, our multi-tered system of supports, this is what drives what we do. Having systems makes us run efficiently and effectively and can have
a sustained improvements. So what do we do when we're creating the budget? Well, we look at those needs. We look at what we're doing and how our systems are working, what our programs need, what our students need. And the first thing we do is principles and directors all say, "Here's what we need
about our school. This is what I need for my kids to maintain um performance and again sustain growth." principles, directors, they all put together their budgets and they have to make cuts before knowing what the budget is. We make
about a million dollars in cuts each year um at each one of the schools. And then they have to list out what are their needs, what are things that they need to sustain improvements that we don't yet have. And then we put together this big list that's then submitted to
um the central office administration. We kind of go over this and we talk about it and then we get together as a collaborative. So we all get together in a room in our professional development room, all directors, all the principles. We talk about what is it the district needs. And so this might be mean that
some position that we don't even have yet. We say that might be the most important position that we need to put in first. So after we make all the a million dollars in cuts, we say what's the most important position? What's the next most important position? And we do this as a whole district. So the high
school understands that the most important position might be a school counselor at the elementary school. And so we all talk about that. We decide how do we then rebuild the budget. So it's again the most effective budget to support our students. Some of these
conversations we stay collaborative, some of them are heated um because we're all very passionate about what we do. But we come out with the best budget that we can have um and the best resources that we can have and we know what'sever at the top is the least
important in an allimportant system. Um and then we present to the school committee and we're here with you actually. Now this part I hope is not heated. So um and with that we've now put together this budget. turn things over to
director of finance and operations, Mark Hawk. >> On my screen, it's not as small as this. So, looking at it now, I realize how small this really is. But um this might make move presentation a little shorter
because I'm sure they're going to go over the same um sort of things on this is just the the chapter 70. Chapter 70 is where we get majority of our money from the state. um so-called because that's the section of the law that contains the um the school aid formula.
So the number one in the top left the uh light blue and H number 32 million that was what we received in FY26. So then you see foundation aid I'm just going down to number two. So for FY27 our
foundation aid number is 46.5 million. The required district contribution is 13.487. uh you subtract that from the foundation budget and you have the foundation aid which is what the state gives us of uh 33 million. That's an increase of
$643,719 over the previous year. The next number is the minimum aid number. If that number was larger than our increase, we would be a minimum aid community. So that number was $75 per pupil. The house budget just came out when it went up to
$160 because a lot of school districts complained. So they increased the minimum aid. So if we were a minimum aid community, that number would be 394,000. Um so still we're just above being a minimum aid community >> and then those numbers are put into the
comparison to FY26 on the right. So that's just explaining where the numbers come from. Getting a little deeper on the next slide contribution. There's a few things I want to point out on this slide. Again, starting with number one, 2024 equalized valuation. This is the
aggregate total of all the taxable property within the city of Gardner. And notice that's 2024. So this lags behind. We're looking at FY27 budget using 2024 numbers. Uniform property percentage is just that the number might change
slightly year to year, but it's the same number for every uh school district across the state each year. You multiply those two and you come up with the local effort for the property wealth. So, this is the formula that the state says out of all your taxes coming in from
property taxes, $7,696,531 should be going to the schools. Then number four, 2023 income. This comes from the DOR and again it lags behind. So there is a a little bit of a predictor here where if you're paying attention, you can see that if the
current economy is going down in a couple years, this is going to start declining. And if the current economy is rich in a couple years, it's going to be start going up more. Again, you have another uniform income percentage that it's multiplied by. So the local effort from income 9.25 million. You combine
those two for this is what the state says we should be spending on the school 16,951,631. They call that the target. And then uh over on the right hand side is the uh required contribution. the
municipal revenue growth factor again supplied by DO. So it comes up with the preliminary contribution of 14.274 million. If there's a shortfall from the target going down to number 21 on the right side, which there is, it's a 5.39%
shortfall from the target, there's a add. If the shortfall is between 2 1/2 and 7 1/2, it's a 1%. If it's over 7 and 1/2, it's a 2%. So they add 1% of the previous year's required local contribution or another $135,000
to come up with $14,410,244 is their city of Gardner's required contribution. So if I could just say so that little um increment um of of 135,000 that's like to me it's it's like a credit card payment. So, they're
trying to get us up to what the what the recommended aid is, right, for the for the schools. And so, they have this little tack on. It's a small amount of money that will take years to get up to that level that they were that they were
actually expecting you to put forward to the schools. Just wanted to mention that. So 14,410,000 goes to Gardener schools, but not Gardner public schools because we're fortunate to have two schools, Monty Tech and Gardener. So you see the split.
We get 13487, Mont Tech gets 922 for a total of 14410. So I just wanted to make sure everyone realized that we we split with our two schools. On the next slide is the foundation budget. This is a very busy slide, so I'm just
going to say a few things. There's the the base components which is basically your student population. So there's uh preK, K, elementary, junior, middle, high school, and our 13 vocational students. Again, that's a the MVP program. So we we split that with
Morning Tech. They send us Tammy sends us a bill and we give them their portion of that. Now on the right is the incremental cost above the base. So these are where Mark was alluding to um the special ed students, the English
learners, um the low-inccome students. So there's an adder put on for those because as Dr. Pelro said, it's there's a higher cost. There's more services that are required for those. And then they break it out into the 11 different categories. Uh administration,
instructional leadership, so forth. Those are all the numbers going down the left side. Again, you add all those up and you come up with the the foundation budget of 45 46 million. It's even smaller on my sheet. And one thing I do want to draw
your attention to is in the bottom left, number 14, low income percentage. 67.35%. So 67.35% of our student body is considered low income. And that number has actually gone down. Last year I want to say it
was like 69 and change. So fewer students, that percentage goes down a little bit. If we were able to get over 70, it's not something I think we want to strive for, but if we could get over 70, it would mean roughly another million million and a half dollars. So there's this giant gap and
we're caught in this the largest um percentage group. All the other groups are 6%. So 0 to 5.99, 6 to um uh I think it's 12.99, whatever it is. It's with 6% in increments. For whatever reason, the
10th group is a 15% thing. So, we're falling in this huge gap and I they just kind of set it up that way. So, some schools wouldn't quite be able to get into that 11th group. My guess is that's where the majority of the schools fall. So, therefore, that made that category the
largest. So, those were all the the state slides and explanation of where the money is coming from. Now we get into what we have. So on the left the um new money chapter 70 as I said 643,000 the
required net school spending increased these are changes from 26 to 27 not total dollars. Required net school spending went up 825,000. Uh funding over net school spending um last year was 300,000. The mayor has uh committed 300,000. So it's a delta of
zero. So that gives us $1,468,720 in new money. And where does it go? On the right is the changes year-over-year. Salary 1.687 million. Expenses 1.868 million. Additions or cuts. Last year we
added just over 300,000. This year we cut 1.5 million. So the delta is 1.8 million in reductions. Non- net school spending. This is mainly transportation costs 896,000
indirect costs 949,000 and this is the most fluid number that has changed by about $250,000 over the past couple weeks. And then we had a deficit last year and we have to carry that over $474,000. So expenses are 2.262 million leaves us
a delta after cutting 1.8 million $793,669. So again, this just uh shows the pie chart of the funding between the the state and the city where about 70% state funded and then the breakdown and salaries the
uh this is FY25 through 27 and then it shows the change from 26 to 27. um the regular education, special education, these are all the way uh Desi breaks down the the salaries when we report on the end of the year report
on the expenses. You'll see a lot of negatives here because we try to reduce as much as possible. The two highlighted programs, other programs, which is out of district uh tuition and collaborative tuitions,
almost $1.1 million increase, and then transportation, which is mainly, and you'll see this in a moment, uh special education transportation, $767,000 increase. Those are the um three biggest expense drivers.
Out of dish replacement costs, which I uh just mentioned, these are the actual costs. So, you can see over the past couple years, it's skyrocketed. And there's these are mandated out of district placement costs. We don't really have much of a say in this.
The collaborative tuitions, same thing. It's like a ski jump. 1.15 million this year, 723,000 last year, 432 the prior year. It is skyrocketing >> part of that reason. So we put a lot of um we put a lot of resources into the
schools um for substantially separate programs. That's the last kind of step before a student goes to an out of district placement. Collaboratives are also out of district placements. We're just part of collaborations. So, it's a lower it's a
lower cost um per student. Um the problem has been we've had a lot of moveins who are already on out of district placement. So, if you move if somebody a family moves to us and their child is in an out of district placement, it's a stay put so they stay in that out of district placement. I
think we had 11 or 12 um uh this year um students who moved into the district and were already out of district place. The other thing is we're having trouble um filling some of the special ed positions as we are through the whole state. Um special education is one of those fields
that's a really high need field and we can't seem to maintain people in those positions because it's a tough job. Um and there's a shortage of people right now. So um everybody's kind of facing the same things including the collaborative um and other um outfit
placement places. And then the third cost driver that I mentioned the non-med school spending members the transportation uh again the special education transportation is uh really driving that the regular red transportation we did reach out to our
bus company and ask them are we able to do the routes if we moved it to 2 miles for everyone what would that do and because of the large population at the elementary school we would still need 10 buses and that's what we're running with and that's what this number represents
and because that number the increase does include the um bus monitors. We have bus monitors because several of buses are very full which causes behaviors which
requires a bus monitor on there. Um so we did try to see if we could reduce the number of buses even if we went to two miles and it would not. Um, no surprise here. Budgeted indirect
cost. Indirect cost. The uh main driver here is health insurance. In fact, it's probably 90% of this number. Second largest indirect cost is retirement, which pales in comparison to the way health insurance is going. So, just in the past couple of years, you can see
the uh past two years. That's 2.8 million, 2.7 million. um FY23 there's a small dip and that's the uh year that we changed the indirect cost agreement um but then cost skyrocketed right after
that. This is and just to let you know this is a total like we have never had 700,000 for indirect costs is a huge jump. Normally it was between like three and 500,000 is typically what you'd expect.
A $ 1.7 million jump in one year is obviously astronomical for us. So the funding cap as today this is just uh summing up uh the numbers of total funding 46.8 8 million. The uh budget of
38.9 million. Budgeted costs that don't apply. Again, transportation just over 4 million. The indirect cost of 12.7 million. And um that leaves us with a deficit of $793,669. Again, after cutting year-over-year 1.8
million, this fiscal year 1.5 million. Um that's about 18 positions. But wait, there's more bad news. >> Um, the other considerations are the federal grants. This is uh are just the consistent portion of the federal grants
we get. You can see there's about 20 positions that are contained in those grants and it's about $2 million. Title one, it says on the slide here that we're expecting a 10% cut. We uh recently received notice that it might be a 7%. But that is a reduction to the
state. The state disperses it to us. So what does that mean for us? Not sure. And then all the other titles and IDEAS, it's uh it's an odd climate in Washington. So those are just other considerations that we can't say yay or
nay for, but uh it's something that we're keeping in the back of our mind and on our radar. >> Yeah. What's it title one? They're they're saying right now about $75,000 in cut and those are mostly positions support positions in the schools.
So just a quick recap, demographics are changing. We need more more services and more supports in the schools. I wanted to put this slide up which is similar to the last slide again accountability on going from left to to right.
And then we have this as percentage of minimum net school spending. So whatever the minimum is. So, if we're on the x- axis, that zero line, which is the um the slightly thicker black line there, that means you're at 0% above or below minimum school spending. So, you're
right at 100. Few districts are slightly below, but you're really not supposed to go below. You have to be at at least. As you can see, if you look along that line, you can see Gardener High School is in the circle in orange there. We're
just barely above. We're at 101.3% of net school spending. We're at 45th percentile, which again, there's only one district doing better than us over to the right, and that's Hullbrook. They're a little better funded, but they have 51% high need students. That's the
only high school that's doing better than our high school that's funded like us. Now, part of the reason our high school's doing so well is because we get additional support.
Um, for example, we have the MVP program with Monty Tech. That's a that's a new program that's funded because of chapter 76 funding. Wonderful. We have early college that's funded from the state. Has nothing to do with the funding from the city. We get funding from the state which allows us to have students go to
the college for free. We had jumped in before that was even happening. But once it started exploding, we've been expanding that program which has really kept kids in gardener. We also have with Mount Wuset an automotive program for our 11th and 12th graders that go to the old Mackie building. We have
transportation. We bring them out there. We have all these kind of innovative programs. They're actually thinking of doing a chapter 74 program with Mon with Mont Wuset, the first one with a community college in the entire state. So, we're really excited about the innovations that we're doing to keep kids in gardener. If you remember back
in 20ou 2011, we had a dropout rate that was astronomical. Actually, in 2008, it was one in 10 students was dropping out of school. We had 150 students um leaving our district in 2011 when we were at 98%
minimum net school spending. And that number just kept climbing all the way up through 2018 to 300 students leaving our district because they didn't think we were they were getting the services they need. It took us a long time to turn the reputation of Gardener Public Schools
around and get it so people feel like they're getting what they need. Monte, for example, we used to complain all the time because the kids who were applying to Monte weren't applying to be in a vocation. They were applying and they were they planned to go to college. Over 90 students were applying typically any
year to Monty Tech. This year we had 46 students. Of those 46, 14 are honor students. Of all of those 46 students, only four don't intend to go onto a vocation. So the right population is now applying to our vocational school. And the ones that plan to go to college and
to um and to not be in a vocation, they're staying at gardener in gardener schools. These things are wonderful things. Now, this slide in and of itself shows you that on a shoestring we are we are doing this on the cheap. We're
101.3%. And we're doing all these great things. We talked a lot about should we even put the slide in because we don't want you to walk away saying oh you can do it on the cheap and let's just keep you at minimum net school spending everything's fine. The problem is this
these drivers the healthcare by going up the 1.2 2 million. The um actually it's gone up 62%. Which over the last three years is $3.1 million. That's $3.1 million. Now, the reason we were able to afford that is because we had jumps in enrollment.
Those jumps in enrollment came with kids with high needs. And instead of putting that money into more supports for students, I was putting that money into healthcare. So it's sucking away our resources which by the way in 2015 when they did the review of the foundation budget they said one of the biggest
drivers is healthcare and it's not accounting for that those big jumps. It doesn't account it only has a 4% um uh rate of inflation. We know inflation's been way over. So they need to review the the um foundation budget formula again. But they're going to find and
they're going to find the same things that were the drivers back in 2015 are the same drivers that we have now. These resources are required. We have to do them. But what do I do? I I wind up cutting things like maintenance. And you wind up with a school like Waterford.
Those are things we don't want. I I'm still down a maintenance person to take care of the buildings. I have to do that. So the problem is special education transportation up 220%. That's $1.4 million over three years. So in total that's 4.5 million just with these
two drivers alone. It's basically an unsustainable system fiscally because right now we have the resources we need. But we're in cutting mode now. Out of 215 districts that are listed again not including
vocational schools. We're 14th from the bottom. That's the sixth percentile of our funding of Gardenner public schools. We are low and this is the shortfall from target. Now before Mark had talked about the
state says they look at how much money you take in and then they say how much more money should be going towards the schools. And as you can see back in 2014 we were $2.3 million away from the target and we incrementally went up and
by 2021 we were less than $50,000. We were just about at what the state set as the target. Since that time, we're now at $2.7 million away from the target. $2.7 million away from the target in 5
years. Now, I'm not saying we need $2.7 million tomorrow, right? That would be ridiculous. That's not going to happen. It's not feasible. We're doing all we can in Gardener Public School. So, one of the things we
were able to do is we were able to reorganize Gardener Academy. We have now moved to the high school. We were able to do this this year for a couple reasons. The first reason, monetary. So, because we fixed up the windows and
the boiler, you have to wait 10 years um for that to um be um paid like 10 years from the >> we'll call it law. >> Amate the what? >> Okay, that um we had to wait 10 years which is July
2025. So, we now don't have to pay the state back any money. The second thing is Gardener High School is now prepared. Garner High School had been sending students to Gardner Academy because the kids weren't um able to perform in Gardener High School in the traditional model. So, we put them in a different
model. Well, now the last year they didn't send any students to Garner um Garner Academy. This year, we've increased our pro positive behavior interventions and support program, which very rarely are in high schools. That basically sets expectations, behavioral expectations throughout the school. They
hold them um they hold them account hold students accountable. Our referrals have gone down 90% in the last two years. It's been phenomenal at Gardener High School. So Gardener High School now with their tiered supports, mental health supports, as well as academic supports
that they have in place now, we can do a lot more with the kids that didn't make it before. We can do a lot more with them. And so I do believe this is a good time to have Gardener Academy moving into the high school again with those
additional supports in place. So, we were able to do that. One of the positions I cut was the MTSS administrator for the district. The reason I was able to cut that is she did such a good job training the MTSS administrators in the school. We have such a robust system now that just
operates, right, that I didn't need somebody to coordinate all the she essentially put herself out of her job. Um, we also were able to cut we were also able to cut a nurse that was a position that we hadn't filled. Um, so if you look at that from that reorg, I
was able to cut 11 positions, one a little over a million dollars. I'm never going to be able to do that again. I don't have any more appendages that I can say, okay, well, this is a little program over here that I can just kind of cut out because then the next step that we did was we looked at all
those positions. When I said we said, what are the most important to least important? There were an additional seven positions I was able to cut. We're on a shoestring budget and I'm looking at a string and I'm pulling this string out saying, "Okay, this was the string I could pull out without undermining the entire system."
So, I made 18 cuts. I say I we as a team made 18 cuts, cut one almost $1.5 million, and I can't cut more without undermining the entire system in any one school or multiple schools. So, I'm
where we are at $793,669 of a shortfall. Now, we've been able to luckily when we had ESSER come through, Esser was we had a crazy time with CO, we were able to be really smart with our money and unlike
other districts that had to pay money back, we actually used it wisely and we actually were able to build up those onetime monies in our school choice that we've been spending down so the city could start building back up. But the city hasn't been building back up and we need to start doing that.
What we've done is we've maintained that straight on to minimum debt school spending. We need to be moving up higher. So, I'm not asking again for $2.7 million next year. I'm not even asking for $793,669.
I would love it, but what I'm asking is that we start to do those incremental changes of not minimum plus the 300,000. By the way, the 300,000 above minimum school spending that we get, that was the agreement between the mayor and I, that's because we bring in Medicare
money. All my employees, and Judy Mack can speak to this very articulately, my school counselors, my school psychologists, they all submit for payments that the federal government then gives back to us and it goes to the city. So Mike was giving some of that money. We this year it was 467,000.
We're getting 300 of that, 300,000 of that money. So that's our above minimum net school spending money that we're getting right now. I'm asking that can you do another 400,000 above that? Can you do 300,000 this year? Then the next year add another 300,000. That's how you
start to build up enough so we're funded the way that we need to fund rather than using one-time monies to support to supplement the budget and make it so we can operate effectively. We're going in the right direction, but you don't want this to be undermined. When I first started as superintendent in 2018, I was
getting calls three to four times a week from parents. Everything from the playground's unsafe, the um my child's not getting what they need. They're clearing my classroom 11 times um this they cleared my classroom 11 times this week. My kids not
learning. And that was because we didn't have the supports in the classroom, which by the way during the S SOA, the um student opportunity act. We had a huge meeting of 50 staff, employees, students, and parents all come in. We all looked at data and said, "What do we need? We need more supports in the elementary school." A bunch of those
supports went into the elementary school. I'm not getting those calls anymore. Parents are happy with what's happening in the schools. Not every parents, I will admit, but most parents are very happy. I get very few phone calls. I might deal with one a month. That's totally different than the way it
was. If we don't start funding the schools in the way they're supposed to be funded, we're going to wind up right back there again. So, I'm asking you to do what you can to defay this $793,000 cost. Whatever you can. And that's our
presentation. Um, just to add a couple uh other highlights to that, Mr. Chairman. Uh, so the superintendent mentioned health insurance costs. That's something that's across the city as a whole. Uh in since 2019 to where we are today, health insurance costs have ended gone up $5.5 million in change. Uh a
couple years ago, we saw a 20% increase in our health insurance rates here in the city. Uh based off of how claims are going, uh last year we saw another 12% on top of that. This year, we've already been instructed that for uh fiscal 27, we're looking at a 12.5% increase in addition on top of that. That's not
something that's unique to Gardner. That's something that we're seeing in a lot of municipalities across the state right now. uh and it's a larger discussion that we've been having. There is a presentation that I gave on that uh that is available on the city's YouTube um and it's about an hour long so we won't go into that here. Uh but if there's any information that you have on
that uh all of that information is available on the city's website. The drivers tend to be really uh people who put off elective surgeries uh excuse me surgeries and procedures and screenings during the co shutdown. Then we nor you can expect you're going to get a couple
of those a year. Now, we're doubling up on those since that time frame. We're still catching up on that. We're also seeing the result of people not taking those uh visits, preventative screenings, and treatments back then, leading to a much larger diagnosis now, which leads to higher cost of care,
prescriptions, and things of that matter. And the prescription costs are through the roof. There's one city employee who annually does require an injection uh for the diagnosis that they have, and that one injection cost $700,000 a year. Uh so, it's things like that that are driving our costs up. And again, that's not unique to Gardner.
across the board. So when you see things like the uh out of district placement costs that have gone up substantially over the course of uh you know the last 5 years, health insurance going up by over 5 million over the last 5 years, things of that nature, things are just starting to hit the point where things are getting tighter here. Uh the
superintendent mentioned that we are one of the 85% of school districts that's being in uh what's called uh hold harmless stats. That means we can never get lower than we got last year in chapter 70. But when your uh aid is based off of x number of dollars per student in the district and the number
of students in the district goes down, that also means that you know typically but for that whole harmless clause, our numbers would go down. But because that's in there, we're at least where we were last year with that and with the student opportunity act and it's last year we have a little bit above that. That's at $600,000 and change. Uh so
where we were seeing increases in the million plus in the last couple years where our school enrollment is just down, that's where we're seeing a lot of the revenue shortfalls that we're seeing right now. Um it's one of the reasons why we're focusing on the uh the housing growth and everything else that we've put a more concerted effort into in the
city recently to try to uh see why we're losing our students that we're losing. But again, it's not unique to Gardens. It's 85% of school districts across Massachusetts on that one. So, just to add some color to some of the numbers that were uh presented in this uh presentation, uh being able to be back
over uh minimum net school spending at all, which is something that we took a break from for while costs were increasing um is a move in the right direction as the superintendent said, and we'll do everything we can to try to keep that trend going while still dealing with all the other increases that we're seeing across the board. Thank you.
>> Questions? >> I don't at this time. No. >> Okay. Um, yeah, I guess with with cost increases, I get it. And and I and I also know that as we have meetings with other departments, there's going to be demands for for
money. Um, I think that's one thing I'm going to say is that we don't have any control over that. That it's the mayor's budget and he gets to make some of those decisions. Sorry, mayor. >> Understood, counselor. But the other thing is I think it's
important to have as we go into some of this is to have a long-term view of of where we are and where we're going and what can we do and how do we together work through this? And by together I mean the school department, the police department, the fire department, the DPW, city government, how can we how can
we cover our our bases? Some of this is driven by uh school age population or enrollment. And what I'm hearing, you know, on like national news is is that or or lo somewhat local news is that
Massachusetts is seeing a decrease in student population. So if that trend continues, is that is that a trend that's going to continue or is that is it just an up and normal up and down? No. So we're we're seeing
the a big bubble in our in our lower grades. we had to add, you know, for we we one of the things we cut was a first grade um uh classroom because we need a preschool classroom. Preschool is where um it's actually focused on students
with special needs. Um and they needed so much more. Right now they're starting out and if you start out in preschool with a gap going into kindergarten, >> especially students with special needs, it becomes a bigger gap. our numbers down in the younger grades, those
classes are all like solidly full. The middle school, I want to say sixth and seventh grade are a little smaller. So, that bubble is just going to keep going up. I expect us to be um pretty steady now, not go going on the decline. We've we as everybody else was declining, we
went on this big incline and now I think we're just kind of settling off. I don't think we're going to continue to see a decrease in enrollment, >> right? And and I realize it that it goes >> not right but it's also not going to be an increase. What jumped our what what I said before was you know we did have these big jumps in enrollment which
helped with a lot of you know with the healthcare and things like that because we got these big jumps but I also had a bunch of kids come to my district who have high needs and I need to also put money into them and so this was sucking away those resources making us squeeze
the tube of toothpaste with a dowel. now. Um, and that's the that's the hard part that I that I see. So, I I hear what you're saying and I we're trying to do our part. Cutting 1.5 million from the budget is is me trying to us trying to do the right thing and make sure we
have the lowest cost we can, but we're supplementing the budget with these one-time monies. And it's um it's not a way to sustain. >> You can't you can't sustain that. >> Yeah. And I can't keep cutting. like we're g we're what's going to happen is if we don't start funding differently, we're going to go backwards and you're
going to start getting calls that the school isn't doing it and I'm going to get those calls too. Nobody wants that. >> So So you're basically figuring that enrollment enrollment is going to kind of go up and down a little bit. >> Yeah. And and I understand that because I graduated I sound like an old man but
I am. I graduated guy high school in a class of 298 students. There were,200 students at the Elm Street School when I graduated. >> Yeah. >> And we that's why we built a new high school because we were overcrowded and I believe the high school was built for 900 >> which didn't make sense but that's where
the enrollments were going. Okay. >> And and now I think we have less than that in >> we have we have um 850 or so kids at the at the high school >> including eighth grade. >> Including eighth grade. Yeah. >> Right. So it there's going to be a fluctuation and how do we >> Well, I can Yeah, I can tell you the the
elementary schools overenrolled. They have about 1100 students there. They were built for 900 >> and and and I must say when I went through school, there were two grades per class >> until I think my sister went through. So four years later, they added a second first grade and then a second second
grade. Put them all in a multi-purpose room with a divider down the middle and that's what it was. And and our issue is even if it goes down, let's say we go down 10 students next year, right? Well, that changes our funding and it's per pupil. The problem is I have the same number of build like most of our cost uh
I don't want to say most of our most of our cost is teachers, but it's not as simple as okay, I have 10 students less so I can cut a teacher. It doesn't quite work. >> That would be one one student per grade. >> Exactly. So it's it's never that it's never that simple. And that's why being
at minimum net school spending makes it so difficult for us. Um indirect cost uh is it primarily health insurance is driving that? >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Okay. And which we understand federal grants. I understand
what's going on in Washington. And that's that's being on the Monte School Board. That's the conversation. You know, we you just go forward until something happens. We can't predict that. That's a tough one. Um, golf, I did see that you
have are moving it to the high school. >> I just I just want to say I like the program. I like the concept of it that there are kids that just aren't quite making it and and need extra attention. Um,
if if the need is going away, that's a good thing. If the need is still there, then I then I hope >> the need continues to be addressed because I think it's a great >> I go back to when it was a prospect and you know people were were kind of crabbing well you know the kids go out
at lunchtime and they have a small well >> 17 18 19 year old students >> I don't like it. >> Yeah. >> If you're trying to keep them in there a few things you have to >> Yep. >> forunately we're not we're not even dealing with that problem anymore. But the reason it's going to still be
necessary is when you look at our elementary schools, we have what's called project support. And for a lot of kids who have like some behavioral issues, especially when they're younger and they're they haven't really um grown um to learn how to deal with their emotions and they still become disregulated, they have those subsparate
rooms. In some ways, this is like having a project support to support those few students. It's under well under 5% of the population, which is what's typical in what we would call a tier three program. Okay. All right. Thank you. >> So, yeah, we'll we'll continue with that need because I I see it as we shape the
need of that school to the kids. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> The special service transportation cost, is that driven primarily by numbers of students? >> Yeah. That increase? >> Yeah. Yep. >> Yep. And it's and we're kind of at the
mercy of the of the um transport like right now they're looking this I know the state's been looking at transportation companies because of uh you know we typically get one bid you know it's astronomical and we don't have a lot of choices there. >> All right. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you. Do not sit there. >> Thank you, Paul. >> Yep. >> No problem. Thanks. >> Thanks for having us. >> Don't worry, I'm on That's okay. Tammy, you sit there.
>> How we doing? >> Oh, and Mr. Chairman, before we get started, I just want to put down for the record that I am the gardener, one of the two gardener representatives on the Monte School Board. >> Welcome. You have yours?
>> I do. >> Feel free. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. >> Feels a little uh My name's Tom Brown. I'm superintendent at Monty Techch. Uh, and I'm joined by Tammy Crockett, who I
consistently say is the best business manager. I've I've gone from from Central Mass to Massachusetts. I think I'm up to about the Northeast now. Best business manager. So, um, we're we're blessed to have them. Um, I'm going to give a quick presentation. Uh, of course
excluding company or you know company not excluding. Um, so, uh, I'll just kind of do a quick presentation on, um, the I'll start off with this, uh, packet, uh, to give an update on some of the things that have been happening at Monty Tech, some of
the focus points that we have. Uh, then I'll turn it over to Tammy and she'll go through the specific, uh, budget. Um, but very quickly, first uh, slide just gives you a quick introduction to, you know, what who who's at Monty Techch and and what's who's who's part of Monty Techch. Um, as you can see from the the
demographics, uh, Monte Techch does have a very good, uh, in terms of the diversity, in terms of different English learners, low-income students, high need students, a large percentage of our, uh, students fall into that category as well. Um, then you can see the, uh, 18 cities and towns that we have. Um, and
similar to um, what you've been discussing, you know, the overall enrollment of 1403 is lower than our typical enrollment. Um but a lot of that is we're having some of the same issues that uh all the other districts are having as well. Um you can see all our programs uh in the following slide um
that goes over the last one that we added was uh veterary science. Um so we've been pretty consistent with all that. Um we fully get one of the things we always like to make sure that we share uh is that we understand that the
chapter 70 formula is very challenging that more and more it's putting the board burden on the cities and towns taking it away from the states. Um we see that as our responsibility to make sure that we are squeezing everything we can out of every dollar um and trying to
be as uh cautious with our spending and support our spending with ways that don't affect uh city and town assessments. So you can see this is a list of all the regional vocational schools uh Monty all the way down to the 24th in terms of uh per pupil expenditures. Again we're trying to
squeeze everything we can out of every dollar that we we have. Um, one of the ways we are able to do that is, um, the following slide, uh, we are really dedicated to looking for grants. Um, finding those competitive grants, finding what we can use from them. Uh,
you can see for FY25 last year, uh, obviously a record-breaking year for grants, $3.6 million. Uh, we brought in, we have an amazing Katie Whitaker, amazing grant writer. she doesn't feel she can't write those grants without our amazing instructors um uh administrative
team and everything else that can can build into that. You can see some of the different topics uh that those uh grants fell under and everything else that helped supported our students and in some cases you know like the young adults with disabilities grant that wasn't even really for our students. It was for um young stu young folks from 18
to 23. Um we just provided the training to them because we believe that everybody deserves good workforce training. So that was a after school program. Um that also allows us then to purchase a lot of equipment um that we get through these grants. Uh so you know some of it so for instance the
cosmetology um the new chairs for the cosmetology salon uh that's through the Perkins grant federal grant. Um we share the same concerns that uh Dr. Pelgrino and Mark shared about TURD's federal monies and making sure that they're always there. Perkins is a big piece for us. um skills capital grant allowed us
to get some stuff for kitchen and everything else. Auto body spray booth uh the folks who may have been here uh last year know that that was a struggle for us. We originally were we we were working off the original spray booth um in our auto body program. Um and we went
out to bid and realized oops this is a lot more money than we thought it was going to be. We did have some grant money and everything else. We did have some donation money but we knew it wasn't ready to go. So, we went out and we found more grants um that allowed us to do that. So, we were able to finally replace our spray booth and auto body um
simulators. Again, that's that's through a donation as well. Um an anonymous donation that allowed us to get those and those have become a huge element of our instruction um for heavy equipment as you know that is a very huge need in in trades if you if you aren't aware of that. Um and we're looking to expand
that even more as we go down the road. Um the next slide talks about MVP Academy a little bit. Uh Dr. Billo talked about it a little bit. We are so proud. Um don't want to assume that folks know what it is, but very quickly um a few years ago we partnered with
Gardener Public Schools, Naransit um and Pittsburgh uh public schools to create MVP Academy, a satellite campus about a mile down the road from Monty Techch. Uh we opened up two programs, house carpentry and electrical. We're opening
plumbing uh next fall. Um and what this allows us to do is allow workforce training to students from those three districts, but they all stay enrolled in their home district. So the chapter 70 money is staying in Gardener in Fitsburg
in Naraganset, but they're getting the same workforce training or similar workforce training that we offer. You go by the awe awe dwe schedule. Our buses go through your towns. They literally just pick the kids up who are gardener students. They get on the bar bus and they come to school or they drive to
school if they need to do that. Um truly what we're most proud of is not just the fact that this is now offering workforce training to um what will be eventually when we finish up plumbing up to 120 students getting access to it without affecting the budgets because chapter 70
money stays behind. But truly the state has looked at this and they really see this as a model and they're really encouraging um districts uh both comprehensive and vocational to build up on this and one of the ways we know that is as you saw here um go Lieutenant Governor Driscoll came out during STEM
week talked about the value of the program and then also shared at that that again more grant money fortunately $500,000 in skills capital grant money coming to us to help support the start of that plumbing program. uh in the North Central Mass Chamber took a look at us and said, "Listen, the work that
you've done converting an old warehouse, an empty warehouse into a a modern workforce, uh training center, uh we received the community enhancement award for that." So, we were very pleased. Um, one thing we're making sure in all our presentations that you're aware of, uh,
and Tammy will speak a little more into the actual budget process. Uh last spring, right around this time, uh folks came out to our track uh and they reviewed it and they deemed it um unsafe. And so we spent the rest of the season having all our spring track uh
meets at um away fields or away um tracks. Uh we took a look at that. We started deciding what do we want to do? How do we replace this? Um as we did that, we said, listen, if we're if we're adjusting the track, we probably should address the field. And and even more so, if you ever been to
Monty Tech, those are the original bleachers uh that were built way back in the 60s and 70s. Um when we presented this to uh Templeton, they pointed out that their bleaches were built at the same time that our bleachers were built. They replaced their bleachers 10 years
ago. So clearly, it's time to get our bleachers uh uh get get them replaced and fixed. Uh we're going to be using a taxexempt uh lease. Again, Tam, we'll talk a little bit more about this um for this process. We have gone out to bid. We have identified um construction
partners and now we're looking at the next steps of uh getting the actual project going and determining exactly specifically what's going to happen on some of these few things. Um so, we'll talk a little bit more with that. Uh we did have our new uh lottery uh that happened last month, end of last month.
Uh if you weren't aware, uh the state u board of ed did pass that all regional vocationals would just have to go to a lottery process. Um in that lottery process, you could add additional ways for students to get their names in. Right now, any student who applies,
fills out an application, and submits it, a complete application is automatic in automatically in the lottery. Um the state gave a couple options that that districts could use to expand the opportunities for kids. Uh most districts really focused on the same one we did which was attendance. We really
believe with our awe bw week schedule um that you really need a student who is consistent with their attendance. Um so any student who had fewer than 27 absences during their entire seventh grade and half of their eighth grade got their name into the lottery one
additional time. other opportunities like uh the example I give was uh discipline moved the state moved it away from just suspensions and they said that any student who applied who had not committed a felony admitted guilt or
were found guilty could get an additional time in these are 13 and 14y old kids. We can't find out who's going to have a felony or anything like that because they're minors and everything else. Um so we just decided that's a waste of time. So, we didn't do all the opport opportunities that the state offered, but we're very happy with what
we did and the lottery process went well. You can see there on the bottom left, uh those where we the school committee did vote for 365 students for our incoming freshman class. And as you can see, Gardner has 39 of those spots. so important that the lottery kept those
quotas because that allows the mayor and you city council to have an idea of how much how many students will be going to Monty Tech every year because that number stays consistent. Um very quickly I'm not going to go through the whole thing but the next table shows uh the postgraduate plans of
our most recent class of 2025. Um, one of the reasons that we show this is we want to make sure that everybody understands because some people get concerned and say, "Well, wait, there's kids going to Monty Tech, a vocational school, and they're going to college. Oh my god, that's horrible. That shouldn't be happening."
>> That is the 1950s view of vocational education. We have v we have programs where kids have to go on to college if they want to succeed. The very first one, I'll give you an example. As I said, we added veterary science and animal science on on this chart. When
those students graduate, they have their vette, I'm sorry, their vet assistant. They can go work for a veterary clinic, they are not be getting paid a whole lot of money. For them to get paid true money, they need to go on to college, become veterary technicians. Now, they're going to get paid good money.
Same thing with our health occupation students. They graduate, they have their CNA, they can go work. They're not going to get paid a whole lot unless they go on and get their get their full lensure. So you'll see any of the colors that are blue are are are shops that we expect
the kids to go on to college. Green it could go either way and then the orange you'll see are mostly the construction trades where you would expect them to go right into the uh the trade. So there was that's there. Um I'm not going to go through the whole chart but want to make sure you are aware I'm sure you are hopefully that we do have a full
complement of uh kiting education at night. Um we have become the the the hub for what's called CTI, the career technical initiative. Um this is a program supported by the state that offers free workforce training to adults
who are looking for a new pathway. Um they apply, we work with Mass Hire um and some of the other agencies to have these students come in. Their training is fully paid for and in some cases the kids even get I call them kids, they're adults. uh they get paid stipens um even
during the training itself. Uh you see we've had huge graduation rates um and numbers of people who go on to workforce training through those different uh initiatives. Really appreciative of our continuing ed. Another thing very appreciative of is our you can see our our numbers for co-op have continued to
go up. This is the opportunity where students instead of going into shop during their senior year, they go out and they are in the workforce, getting paid a salary, learning real world trade. Uh you can see our numbers have been going out significantly and that's because our community partners continue
to allow and give these kids these great opportunities and we're really thankful for that. Um as always, we continue to try and uh support our cities and towns. We've been able to do some nice projects for Gardner off and on, but we always say if something comes up that we can fix, I don't know if we can do all the
work on the city hall. Um, but I I put uh Brian Williams name in the bottom right corner. He is our vocational director. Reach out and we will see what we can do because we love doing out the kids love doing outside projects and supporting our towns. And that's just some examples. And then one last thing we just wanted to show is
it's not just about supporting with construction projects and everything else. You know, last fall when the issues came up about food insecurities and everything else, we made sure to provide lists of all the local um pantries that were available to families. We have our own pantry that we
call the Nook. It's a very confidential pantry. If a student needs help to get um access to food products um for hygiene products, they can go to a counselor. It's all done quietly. So, it's there's no embarrassment to it. and we're just really proud of what we do um
to support those families as well. And that's just a quick update. Hopefully I got through it fast enough for you. You've been here for a while. Um and I'll turn it over to Tammy. >> Okay. And thanks to Mark. My presentation's going to be a lot shorter because he went through a lot of the
finances that I won't have to duplicate. So I'm starting on the slide that starts with FY27 foundation budget rates. Uh, so I have some arrows next to the ones that really pertain to Monty Tech. So
the first one is the vocational category because all of our students are classified as vocational. So what the state does is they assign rates for each of these um spending categories per pupil. So when you go all the way to the
right, vocational outside of special education is the most expensive education model. Um so the students where our base rate is the $18,46.96. Now when you look below it, you see the
high school rate which is 12 238. So the difference between those two numbers, the just shy of six grand is what Monty Tech builds gardener for the MVP students.
>> So that's how that works. The students who come to MVP on Gardener's Foundation budget get classified as vocational students. So each one of those take in the 18,000 as opposed to what they would get that
12,000. So that's the amount we build per pupil. I think it's kind of a nice way to show you how that works. Uh the next piece for us is the special ed in district. Um so there's an additional
bump to those students. Um also the EL students vocational there's an additional bump for those and we are in lowincome group six which is the 30 to 36%
and so you get the additional 6,000 for students classified in those. So the next slide as Mark showed you gardener's foundation budget is Monty tax. So the row column seven is vocational. That's
our 1465. So I'd like to remind you that's our foundation enrollment. So what that means for Monty Tech is the students who live in our 18 cities and towns who actually are enrolled and come to Monty
Tech. the students that live in our 18 cities and towns that go to other vocational schools under the school choice program. And also we have a chapter 74 approved practical nurse
program. So the students that live in our cities and towns um that are in that program make up the 1465. Then you can see as Mark explained to you the incremental costs above base for
those other categories. So it comes from Monty Tech. Our foundation budget for FY27 is the 31714,794 which works out to be 21,648
per student. The next slide just tells you a little bit about what was happening with the governor's uh budget, but again, we're kind of moving uh in the state now to the house ways and means budget. So, as that goes
through, you know, we might see changes. As Mark pointed out, the minimum aid in the governor's budget was 75 per pupil, but it's up to 160 in the house. So I hope that sticks or gets better because
u moving on to the next slide. We are Monty Tech is one of those districts that's considered hold harmless. So our chapter 70 projections for FY27
is not increased by more than the minimum aid which again we're using the governor's numbers cuz that's what we have really right now which is the 75 per pupil. You can see that um with the
minimum aid we'd be getting 109,875 as an increase for our chapter 70. So that is what our projected chapter 70 is right now. That's the 18 million 8706. Moving to the next slide again that's
the comparison from 26 to 27. I think this is an important slide to point out to our communities because you can see our net school spending requirement goes up 87,438. Our chapter 70 only goes up by a just
shy of 110,000. So, the burden of that increase, you can already tell, is placed on the districts by the required district contribution for all 18 of our cities, just shy of 700,000.
Normally, foundation budget and required net school spending are the same numbers. So, we just talked about the foundation budget. In Monty Tech's case for FY27, you'll see those numbers are different
and that's because we are a hold harmless district. So the state basically says if we're going to give you more chapter 70 money than the formula calculates for you, we expect you will spend it on your net school
spending. So that's why our required net school spending is uh 31797852 versus the foundation budget of 31714. And again, required med school spending, I just like to remind you, I I think as
Mark did, it's the minimum amount you have to spend on students at your school that cannot count transportation, debt service, capital items, school lunch. Those items, those are above and
beyond. Um Mark talked about the uh calculation for cities individually, which is great. That will allow me to skip the gardener piece. But this slide I just have in there is just how the state comes up with the formula. They
start with the statewide foundation budget 15.83 billion. Then they take from that what did the legislature put in the state budget for chapter 70. That's the 7.6 billion. So the rest the
difference has to come from reli required local contributions. So that's the 9.34. From that required local contribution of 9.34 billion, the state wants half to
come from income of the citizens and half to come from property wealth of the town. So that's how they come up with those um property and income formulas. the 1.589
97% for income and 3309% for property. Those are the same for every community in the Commonwealth despite the numbers that go under it. So again, next slide is gardeners. Mark
went through that so I don't have to go through that again. The slide after that is gardener's required and how how it's a portion to gardener public and Monty Tech. Again, Mark went through that. So, you can see
from Monty Tech, your required minimum is 92288, which is an increase of about 3600 for FY27. The next line is an aortionment of required locals for all 18 of our cities
and towns. So you can just kind of get a feel for how it worked out for all of our communities. So Gardner the foundation enrollment went from 157 to 147 which is a decline of 10 students in
the required I mean in the foundation enrollment. Um but based on the formula the required minimum goes up by about 3600. You can see how it happens for all the other communities. The next slide
that's titled FY27 budget summary. This is how our budget breaks down and how it compares to our current year. So our net school spending again calculated by the state 31,797852 or an increase of about 87,000.
The next category is our transportation 2.6. That's the 32 school buses and vans that go to and from Monty Tech each day. This is the final year of a five-year
bus bid. So, we did the three-year bid and we took advantage of the two additional years. Um, so I do have to go out to bid again next year for transportation. So, I anticipate it's going to look a lot differently. I only
hope gas rates come down before I have to go out to bid in the fall. Otherwise, it's going to be even more atrocious than it is. But um so we've been fortunate it's kind of m maintained in check a little bit the above net school
spending. So for FY27 our above net school spending of 910,000 that's 2.8% above. This is one of the highest net schools above net school spendings we've
proposed in several years. The reason for that is, as Superintendent Brown told you, this field renovation we're doing, it's 3.6 million. We are doing it through a tax
exempt lease. So that is that funding is built into our net school spending. It is not a capital uh like a debt or bond. It's not a debt service. we are building that into our
required or into our net school spending. So that bond pay uh excuse me tilt payment of 400,000 a year is built in to this which which is kind of the cause for that increase. But you can see what our school
committee did was they decreased our capital budget. We try to keep our capital total capital spending within that four to $500,000 range each year. Um so they cut it by
almost the exact same amount we went up for the field spending so that our communities wouldn't see a large spike in their assessments for this year. So with that said, that gives us our total proposed budget of FY27
of 35,51660. This is a 2.53% total increase over 26 or 875,000. You can see that's largely um driven by our required net school spending
increase of 87,000. The next component shows you our revenue offset chapter 70 of the 18872680. So the first piece required minimum contribution that's the first component
of a community's assessment. So that's all 18 at 12.9 mil. This next piece going down is the second component of our community assessments. So that's our transportation and other which
represents our transportation and our above net school spending. That's what's the 3.5. From that we subtract out our estimated transportation aid from our charity sheet numbers which is the 2 million.
And then we also have a regional transportation reimbursement fund. What this is is it's a special revenue fund that when we receive additional transportation state transportation aid
and from the state that we did not use to budget to offset assessments. we the school committee votes to put that into this fund and then what we do with it is we use it to reduce our community assessments the following year for
transportation. So you can see in 26 we have 200,000 we're using that's the amount we received in FY25 that was above what we budgeted to receive. So the money we have proposed
to offset FY27 assessment 100,000 that's what we anticipate our final transportation money will be above the 2 million that we have budgeted in FY26
to be used to offset your FY27 transportation money. The next piece is our excess and efficiency account. This is similar to the the city's free cash.
It's derived the same way. It has to also get certified by the department of revenue. Um and we can use it to offset assessments with. So we are using 300,000 from our certified excess and
deficiency account to offset this component of assessments. You'll see on the next slide it has our certified number. So that puts the second piece of our total assessments to our communities 1 million43808.
The third component of our community assessments are is our capital budget. So for 27 it's 200,000. We're using EMD um 200,000 to offset that. So we will
have no assessment to our communities for FY27 for capital. The fourth component if we had it which we do not would be debt service. So we don't have debt service. So that's not applicable for FY27. So it
leaves all assessments to all our communities of 13,968980 a 6% increase. So the next slide as I said our certified excess and deficiency balance
is 1,212,910 of which we're using 500,000 of to reduce community assessments. As a regional school district, we're allowed to have up to 5% in this account of the operating budget. So, we're we're below
that or about 4.5. We also have a stabil a capital stabilization account which we put small amounts into each year to be used. We're we're planning to use it for mid range
capital expenditure. As I told you at the start, we like to keep our capital um portion of our assessments to about 400,000 each year. We can't possibly just have a capital expenditure that meets that each year. So, we're slowly
building this up, especially this one. We're anticipating we're currently having um an engineering study done of our electrical main gear at the school. I I joke, it's not really a funny joke,
that the school was built around our electrical main gear. And with the addition of all technology, the new equipment, electrical needs, we know we're going to have to make start making upgrades to that and we anticipate that will be
upwards of approximately a million if not more. So, we are funding the stabilization account of county cheer to hopefully use what's in there to help offset our our uh community assessments.
Uh we also have our OPED account which we put small amounts in there each year. You'll see in a minute just to satisfy a requirement to say we're doing it much like your OEP the city's OPE requirement. this we will never fund
this fully which our oped liability is about 50 million so we have 77,000 in there right now the next slide is our spending by function and it'll give you um from FY24
through proposed FY27 so again some of our largest um expenditures again is in teaching instruction instructional. So in that function 2000 category also you see the
large increase to um function 3510 which is athletic services. That increase is because of the athletic field being put into this section. The tel um much like um all schools,
municipalities etc. health insurance and benefits are incredibly high. Our employee benefits as well as our retired employee benefits equal about 6 million per year out of
our budget. We are selfinsured. So we saw a 12% increase in FY26. I currently have a 7% increase budgeted, but I fear that might be woefully low um
considering what's happening here. Um so we may have to make some adjustments to move some funds around to anticipate. Our our plans run from December 1st to November 30th. So even if it's a larger
increase than anticipated, we only have to absorb half of it of unanticipated increases in a fiscal year um because of the way our plans run. So even if we have a 12 or 15% increase
above the seven I've I've budgeted for, only half of it affects FY27. So, it's not as large of unanticipated as expected. And as I talked to you about our transfer to OPED, you can see what
putting 10,000 in there and our transfer into stabilization is 40,000. So, that brings the 35 516. The next slide is a snapshot of our
student enrollment from all our cities and towns. So two two reasons why this is important. So you can see the foundation enrollment and you can see the school attending children numbers. I get that from um each district annually.
We for school attending children we use grades 1 through 12 not prek or K because um they weren't fully established when the district agreement was signed. So that's why we use grades 1 through 12.
The percentages we derive from these numbers which are on the next slide are used for your assessment calculations. So you can see gardener represents 10.03%
of our transportation and operating. So that's the aortionment you get for our that transportation and operating piece of the assessment. Gardener represents 10.77% of that's your school attend attending
children number as well as how it works out for our capital piece that also becomes the quota number for gardener for the freshman class. So when we when our school committee votes to accept 365
students, gardener gets 10.77% of that class. That's where the 39 students come into play for your freshman quarter. The next slide that's entitled community
assessments goes through the process I went through for Gardener with all our towns. So you can see gardener's foundation enrollment 147 the foundation budget that's the 147
times the $21,000 figure we talked about at the start when you saw our foundation budget. The required minimum contribution as calculated by the state. the transportation and operating of 104
is gardener's 10% piece of that. Um we have no capital assessment this year and no debt service. So that's what brings us to gardener's proposed assessment for FY27 1,27,625
which is an increase of 7,767 from the current year. And the final slide shows you how that breaks out from the current year um component over component. So about half
of your $7,700 increase came from the required contribution and about the other half or 35 3600 came from the difference in the bump and decrease in the trans um
operating in capital piece. So it works out to be about $6,991 per pupil gardener pays Monty T from your tax base the students at Monty Tech even shortened it's still long I'm sorry
questions I don't have them right now very good job >> thank So, yeah, I I have heard this presentation before. >> Yes. >> And I've been involved in some of this work. Yes. >> Um, >> I just want to point something out on in
this packet. >> Yep. >> The next to the last page, foundation enrollment history. If you look at gardener and go back u back in 2018 um we had 195 students at Monty Techch
and now we're down to 147 and you can see where the the enrollment in at Monte has decreased. That has affected us from a budgetary standpoint because we're being asked to support less of the Monty Tech budget, a
smaller share of the Monte budget. If you go to the last page, you can see what the assessment history is. And even though Monty Tech's budget has been increasing year-over-year, our assessment, our share of it has been going down.
>> Um, that's been good for us. I I would just say going forward it's not going to continue because I expect we're at at a figure of 140 something students that's going to be fairly static. >> Yes. >> And then as costs go up, we're going to be paying more. But you know, as long as
we get a benefit for a while, we'll take it. >> Otherwise, that is great. Thank you. >> What drives that enrollment number of partner? >> It could be a couple factors. Um, one is could be the um PN program, which is
very fluid in terms of the number of fields that's going to have that. Um, Harvard never fills its slots. So what happens is those slots get doled out um by what would used to be the the full weight list of students and gardener very often would have students that
would get in that way. So it's be be above and beyond um the quota that that we had. Uh and some of it's just students that start out with us and then move on. So >> I don't have any other questions. >> Thank you so much.
>> Thanks. Now for the longest presentation of all. >> Thank you for bearing with us. All right. Next up on the agenda is item 11 1794 with the communication from the mayor regarding the January, February, and March 2026 report regarding youth
community youth center. We've heard January and February. Mr. March. >> Uh thank you. So um I I did briefly touch on the March report in our last meeting. Um, so the the very start of this report is just a big thanks to uh John Zotnik, our state representative,
for um securing that funding for the f the next year. $100,000 is coming from the state next year. Um, I feel like I should be talking about budget now that I've been um but uh the exciting news from the March report is our membership update.
So um in membership uh over the last um o over the last few months um we we've seen big increases in registered members um and also unique visitors. In December we saw 37 unique visitors each day. And I and I should say unique member
visitors. These are people who have signed up for the program, not guests that are coming in to just check it out. Um we had 37 unique visitors that month um over the course of the whole month. In January, that number went down to 36. It was a very, it was a very tough month in January. We a lot of the people who
normally walk to the youth center um weren't walking because we were getting snow. We, you know, it was it was it was a tough winter for us. It was very cold for them to walk. Um February, we saw our unique visitor count though jump up to 45, which is a huge improvement over
um over January. That was uh nine more members attending. And then in March, we saw our unique visitor count jump to 55 unique visitors. um which ended up giving us a higher average members per day. I think in in March it was like 20 I mean in February it was like 21 or 22
and in March we jumped up to 24 to 25 members a day. Uh I put 24 cuz I rounded down but um it was a uh it was a great month for us as far as membership. We we had um we we were utilizing spaces that we don't normally get to utilize like our podcast studio really started taking
off again. Um we actually uh our 3D printing club is getting ready to take off. Um we we've got we've got some some great stuff going with that. But we also had an event in um in February. Uh is this is this No, in March we this was our event. I'm forgetting we're in April
now. Um in in fe March we had this uh board game event that we had the police attend and we had Luck attend and uh they hosted board games for the kids and it was very well attended. Um the uh there's actually a picture in the report that shows the police there ended up being more police than kids at one
point. They brought in the whole force. It felt like it was great. Uh went very well. And then um this month we are excited to be open during April vacation. Um I did put in a survey um with parents to see uh if there would be any interest because February vacation
was was uh was a low count for us, but uh through uh through April vacation, it seems like we're going to um we're going to have a good number of students attending. On Wednesday, we're going to be part of the keep gardener beautiful event. We're going to be cleaning up the Elm Street property. Um the playground in the back and the front yard. We're
going to be picking up trash. We're going to be just trying to beautify. You had mentioned raking earlier. Maybe that's something we can take care of while we're making gardener beautiful that day. Um so we're going to be uh we're going to be doing that on Wednesday over April Vacation, which is next week. And then on Friday, we're going to be doing a crafting event from
3 to 6:00 p.m. So um so March was a very exciting uh month and I can't wait to give you a report on April as well because we're just seeing some good things out of the youth center. a lot of lot of new kids showing up. Um we actually did just hire um a couple new youth change makers. We work closely
with Project Heel. As you may know, the uh the Gardener Community Youth Center started uh as a um as a collaboration between the city and um the Project Heel um the students that were part of Project Heel called Youth Changemakers. They wanted a teen center. So we we
collaborated with them to make this happen. and they uh the youth change makers are now just hiring three new um teens to work with us. So um we just went through that process and and they're great kids and we're looking forward to seeing what they can do to help improve our program. >> Uh for those of you who may not be
familiar with the heel collaborative, it's a uh collaborative uh working group of all the area nonprofits in the greater gardener community. So in gardener and the community surrounding gardener and how they can better collaborate with each other to better have an impact in the services that they provide in terms of uh if they provide
something similar they can work with each other. If they provide something complimentary with each other they know who to refer people to. Uh it's a group that does meet on a monthly basis and uh does have some funding which is where this uh youth change maker uh program comes into play as a way to empower uh
young individuals in the city on how they can make a difference in the community. So that's the program that uh we've been able to really have a strong partnership with not only with this but in our health department and various other aspects of the city. Uh it's been a really strong partner that we've had. >> Yeah. And uh this particular group of students the youth change is funded by
the Winington CAC as part of that collaborative and um and Miranda Jennings um does an awesome job managing that program and she helped us um you know hire these new members. So yeah, we're excited. Any questions for us? Not
only just >> good news. >> Thank you. Thank you. Council questions, concerns, comments. >> Do we have to do we have to move that off agenda? >> Uh, we did should move that to >> question. Do you want Okay. Yes, please.
So, I uh item 11794. I move that be referred to city council for placing on file. >> Second. >> Motion by councelor Brook. Second by councelor Harden to move to refer to city council to be placed on file. All
in favor? >> I opposed. Motion carries. Councelor questions, comments, remarks. >> No. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> A second. >> Motion by councelor Brooks, second sign by councelor Harton to adjurnn. All in
favor? >> I opposed. Motion carries.