[Music] All right. Good evening, everyone. Today is Tuesday, April 15th, and the time is 6:37 p.m. And I'd like to call this
meeting to order. First on our agenda is the consent agenda. First is the budget hearing minute. Wow. Budget hearing minutes from March 25th, 2025. Any questions or comments on the minutes?
Not this time. All right. Hearing none, I will take the motion. Make a motion to accept budget hearing minutes March 25th, 2025. Can I have a second? Second. All those in favor? I next is school committee meeting
minutes from March 25th. Any questions or comments on those minutes? Hearing none, I'll take the motion. Uh to approve. Yeah. So move. Can I have a second? Second.
All those in favor? I All right. Next is budget forum minutes from April 1st. Questions or comments on those hearing? None. I'll take the motion. I'll make the motion to approve the budget for budget foreign minutes
from April 1st. Can I have a second? Second. All those in favor? I. Next, we have warrants 596 and 62. They've gone around for signature. Uh questions or comments on those?
No, they look good. Thank you. Make a motion to accept uh warrants 59, 61, and 62. Oh, 61. Sorry. It's six. I think it's six. 59, 6, and 62 is what we have on the Was it
59? What's this one? Oh, so this one in the folder says 61. Our agenda says six. I didn't actually look at the top when I signed it. I don't know which one it is. Oh, somebody deleted. It is 61 though. 61. Okay. Yes. 61. 59. 61 and 62.
Correct. Yep. Um motion. Yes. Yes. Can I have a second? Second. All those in favor? I. All right. Oh, I Okay. Next. Visitors comments. Any citizen wishing to speak before the committee must sign in with
the administrative assistant prior to the opening of the regular session of the school committee. The visitor will identify themselves by name and address and shall speak for no longer than 3 minutes. For anyone unable to sign in ahead of time, we ask that you clearly state your name and address so that this information can be included in the record of the
meeting. Seeing no visitors, moving right along. Cole is not here. There is a student report in your notes you guys can take a look at if you're interested. If you want me to read it out, I can do that. But it is in your folder of some activities at the high school. Okay.
Thank you. Mine is a lot. Yeah. Mr. Dorman attended a nice student government day with some of our students in Boston. Oh, nice. Friday, the first Friday in April is unless it's Good Friday is always student government day. We had uh a delegate and an alternate to
the general courts of the house and they participated in a mock session uh committee hearing first and then a house session um on restriction. The the proposed bill for them was on uh restrictions for social media use. So
having an age limit uh the students did not vote in favor of that surprise but they really enjoyed the day. Awesome. Who went? Um, it was Faith Ramos. She was the delegate and Anthony Santiago was the ultimate. Awesome.
Excellent. It's nice to see the kids doing that. They've been doing it for a long time. I was uh I was a runnerup alternate. Patrick Sullivan went uh and I I didn't get to go because he went, but I've been taking students since 2007.
Yeah, it's a it's a good thing we've always been sort of a part of which is great. Um, all right. Next we have new business. First is a donation to East Meadow from Liz Lefond. So you are up, Liz. Oh, I
am. Um, gosh, I wasn't expecting that. So anyway, um, having been around schools most of my adult life, all of my adult life, and then in school prior to that,
um, one thing that always struck me was this time of year. um and schools that um tend to run out of paper. Um, and I did just kind of pick up on a quick we're moving this from here because we've got to get you know
the remaining like eight cartons of paper that we have in the school. And I thought um I remember visiting the schools when I was in Holio. And um whenever I visited I always brought a few reams of paper and I was always like
people were very grateful to see paper especially if it was colored paper. Um, so I just thought I wished I could do more, but I made a small donation to the school to sort of get them through the end of the year with paper. Um, also,
you know, with my own grandsons, I like to get them away from the screen and onto paper. So, I don't care what kind of paper they buy, but um, I love to see kids using it. Awesome. Thank you very much. That's super generous. Well,
when I hit the lottery, I've been saying that for a long time. Um, that's uh that's wonderful, Liz. Really, I I sincerely appreciate it. Thank you. Um, can I have the motion to
accept the donation? Make a motion to accept the donation from Liz Leond. May I have a second? A second. All those in favor? I. Again, thanks very much, Liz. I'll abstain from that. Jenny, you're you're everybody, the kids, the staff, whoever needs it.
Very welcome. I wish it could have been more. Next is the transfer of funds from teacher salary cost center to a substitute teacher cost center. So, this the sublines uh have been hit uh pretty
hard this year. Uh we've had a few um leaves of absence um in addition to just the the demands on staffing have caused a number of absences in in both buildings uh particularly in at the
junior senior high school and in our nursing department. Um so in your this I would normally reference in my report but in the budget um monthly update on page two starts at the bottom starts the subbing lines and it's finishes at the
top of page three and you can see the status of the two schools in the nursing department. Um and so that right now puts us at uh with our last payroll $537 deficit. Um and so we're going to
need to be able to cover our sub lines for the remainder of the year. Um doing an estimate taking average um payroll amount for subbing. I projected um probably about $12,000 to cover us for the remainder of the school
year is what I would propose. Uh the committee transfer from the um teaching salary line to the substitute lines. Um we have had a few unfilled positions um from the in the teaching positions this
year. Um so that's where I the surplus exists to be able to make that transfer and that shouldn't cause us any problems because of those unfilled positions. Correct. No, we've been these have been things we've been monitoring all school year. Excellent. Any additional
questions for Todd? Nope. Makes sense. An exceptionally hard uh flu season this year. Well, tough stretch. Uh hearing no additional questions, I
will take the motion for the funds transfer. I'll make the motion for the transfer of funds from teacher salary cost center to substitute teacher cost center. I'll second. All those in favor? I. Okay. standing wings, but uh business is
our fiscal year 26 budget. Go ahead. I put in the folder um both digitally and one copy uh the motion for the committee. That's why I said the copies, but we've
got it right here. I did put it. But anyway, is the copy of the motion in here? I saw it this morning. Yeah, it's in here. Yeah, somebody just picked it up somewhere. It's fine. We have it on there. Yep. Um any questions about this
um before we vote on it? Anything adjusted or anything at all? So nothing is adjusted from our meeting last two weeks ago on the first. Um so the two parts of the motion, one is the
actual town allocation and then the other is our total operating budget which is our projection and grants um our revolving offsets. Uh that gives us our total operating budget. So do we have to make two motions? Yes, please. Okay.
All right. So do I read it and then or can I make a motion? I was going to let the financial genius here at the table, but I always envy people who understand numbers better than me. I have to work so hard at it.
Go ahead, someone. Oh. Uh, make a motion to approve the proposed fiscal year 26 Graanby public schools school operating budget of 10 million $618,920 to submit to the town of Graanby and preparation for the annual
town meeting. Second. All those in favor? I I uh just a note on the second motion. Is that supposed to be 12,000 or 12 million? It's 12 million. Okay. 12 43 or
430. 430. So make the motion. Sure. I can make the motion to approve the proposed FY26 Graanby schools total operating budget of 12,450,430. Second. All those in favor? I. Awesome.
Okay. All right. So, we're going to break for um subcommittees. We've got budget and policy. It's quarter to uh 6:48. Do we think a half an hour is enough time? Is that enough time for you guys?
You think we can touch base after a half hour and see what you think? Sure. All right. So, we'll break and then we'll be back after. Okay. uh policy. You want to give us an update? So, I will admit to not having gone through and done the side to
side review. Um we got a bit sidetracked when we talked about competency determination, uh which will be coming back to us in the future. Um nothing we talked about in any detail today. Um we did get
through the first few policies. I'm going to go ahead and do that sideby-side comparison and we will whip right through it at our next meeting. How does that sound? Sounds fantastic. Great. All right. Um, budget. Yep. We uh covered the overview of the
budget forum and budget hearing and uh talked about how grateful we were to the town for working with us this budgetary cycle and they uh really did a lot to support us to fill those gaps and uh was very symbiotic and we were appreciative of it. So, we're going into our annual
town meeting in a good spot and um yeah, that's what we discussed. Anything to add? Nope. All right, moving right along. Mary Jane. Okay. Um I met with Joanne um the chair of the Graanby Cultural Council to discuss how we can
strengthen our partnerships and create opportunities for community engagement. The cultural council has agreed to move forward with uh with us on the idea of hosting the art show at our art site at the high school. that's going to be held on May 15th. Um, they would like to work with us to also Oh, sorry. They're also
going to give us a uh cash prizes for our students and and and we can we're working together to see what that looks like as far as who's going to be voting and things like that. So, I'll be meeting with her again um later in the week to talk about that. And additionally, the council would like to work with us regarding the possibility of the school hosting a sculpture event.
The cultural council gives away grants and they have a local artist that is creating a sculpture. um who is interested in uh displaying it in the town and uh they'd like to have a little get together to have a reveal type thing. We'll have to take a look at it
and then bring in some food trucks and and things like that to really make it more community based. So, I'm going to be working with her pretty closely in the next couple of months to see how we can um do things like that with them. I also wanted to let you know families know that Graanby Public Schools will have a summer program for four weeks in
the summer at no cost to families from 9 to 12 for students in grades 2 through 5. It starts on July 7th and it goes to July 31st. The program is outdoors all around us and each week will be a unit based on themes. If you have interested um please contact East Meadow and
they'll put you in touch with um the person at the collaborative to give you that information. They've been putting that information in their u newsletter as well. So you can visit their newsletter if you're interested in the the summer camp. As we enter the end end of the
year, I wanted to give you a copy of the activities planned for students um in case you guys can attend them. I gave you the links. So take a look at those. I want to also remind you that graduation is June 7th at 10:00. So those are some that information for you. Had our accountability status was
recently released. Uh Graanby public schools accountability data indicates that we've made substantial progress towards our goals and our targets and our leadership team has begun diving into the data to determine our next steps. That will help us um celebrate what we're doing well and and help us
identify areas we need to improve on. And this data will also help us determine some of our professional development and possible interventions for our students in in the coming um months and into next year. And then we also have some good news at the legislation. And it's not all bad news,
but there is some good news. The House Ways and Means Committee is expected to release its budget um tomorrow. Um and as we know that we've been all advocating for additional funding with chapter 70 and um other ways to uh change that formula, but it was noted
that um the House Ways and Means budget will sustain sustain universal free free lunch meals next year. So that's uh something we were concerned with. So, they're going to have that and as well as continuing to fund the student opportunity act. Chapter 70 um still
looks a little iffy and there's too much uncertainty on that right now, but you know um we'll see what that looks like. Um that's all that I have right now, but just suffice to say that we're looking to create more opportunities for community engagement at the school in the next few months. Excellent. Any
questions for Mary Jane? Todd, I have a couple of quick comments. I love um working with the Graanby Cultural Council um and any way we can work with any other group in Graanby um to to um get them into our schools.
Let's see what's happening here, right? That's always good. Um I'd love to I'm going to go on to Desessie. Now, this is something I actually can do with some if Desi has the updated numbers up there, which I'm sure they don't, do they?
Accountability. Love I'd love to look at that and see. Oh, sure. It's available on if you go to our district profiles. I will do that. Um and we're expecting um on the whole harmless the governor's
budget um included $75 per student, but we would likely be expecting that to be probably doubled. Yes, that's what we've seen in the past few years. We have seen it doubled. I don't I can't project whether the house ws and means will go up that
much but um any increase in the chapter 7 is going to be any increase will be helpful and I did read an article yesterday in um maybe it was state house news um that the fair share act revenue has
come in much higher than predicted. Oh, good. Which is a good thing for schools as well and communities because money comes into communities for roads and bridges and such. Go ahead and write that.
Um, so I've given you the um budget update for uh through March. Um, I don't know if anyone has any questions. We talked a little bit about the sublines already and and their impact. Um there isn't there aren't any areas right now
that I'm concerned about u monitoring um our major lines as we progress. Um we had a relatively mild winter. So we have a little bit of savings um in that area that we can use because we had some
extra um repair cost to to East Meadow particularly at the beginning of the year. Um the newer building is in some ways costing us more than the other building. So, it's a little frustrating. We're not we didn't anticipate budgeting some of these repairs. Um, so I think
we'll be able to use that. So, I'll be monitoring that and probably bring that back to the committee's uh attention in May. Uh, anything on the kitchen? So, that would be my next thing. See that? See how good we are? See, see that, Todd? Like Saco. That's right. He's
twice today. I love it. Uh so uh Mary Jane and I are having a virtual meeting with the contractor uh who won the bid um and the architect and the engineer. So our introductory meeting to kick off uh the project. We have our contract
signed. So we are ready to proceed. Um we'll find out what their timetable is to get started. Our goal was to have them start June 23rd. So the students will have been done for just about a week at that point. um and so then they can get right in um and get started on
that. And we've already identified and I may have brought this to the committee's attention that we'd be doing our extended year programming in at East Meadow uh so we wouldn't have any disruption of services um and make sure the building uh is ready to go.
Excellent. Awesome. That's all that I have for this week. Liz CES, anything from CES? Uh, nothing from CES. You know, I couldn't get to the last meeting. No problem. Um, we just have have it live there all the time for
standing reports. So, yeah, I I do have the next meeting on my calendar. Excellent. Um, any before we vote to enter into executive session. All right. Hearing nothing, we'll vote to enter into executive session under Massachusetts General Law
Chapter 3A section 21 part A3 to con to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union personnel. The committee will not return to open session. Jenny, could you do a roll call
vote, please? Yes. Miss Lefond, yes. Mr. Balky, I. Mr. Durham, I. And Miss Bartos, I. Thanks everybody. Have a great night.