flag of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. On March 29th, 2025, Governor Mora Healey signed into law bodies to the H62
as amended by S2506, which contain the final form of the bill entitled an act to extending certain CO 19 measures adopted during the state of emergency act of interest to all government bodies in Massachusetts. The act extends until 2027 the authority for meetings of multiple member bodies to be held in an entirely remote or hybrid format. All
public bodies may hold fully remote or hybrid meetings without the physical presence of a quorum of the public body as long as the adequate alternative means of public access is also provided. Notice hereby given in accordance with chapters 20 of the access of 2009 section 17 through 20 of the Massachusetts general laws at a regular
meeting of the school committee will be held today May 12th, 2025 uh with a recording on the city's community access TV channel and being livereamed. Ms. Wilson, I noticed that you it was uh different than what was posted. What you
just read aloud is that are we going to be shifting our statement that we make um on our agendas? I read what was on the agenda. You did. Okay. Thank you.
Um so the we do have the absence of a vice chair uh this evening. Um so we do need to elect a vice chair prom. Uh each member will state their choice for that and the roll call tonight is starting with Mr. Eaza. Uh Miss Feliciano.
I know my name Mr. Shien. Mr. Sheen Deon Sheen. Deon Chin. Deon Shen. Mayor Garcia. Deon Chin. I think something's wrong
with his. We can't hear him. Can you hear me? Tess. Tess. I can hear you in zone, but they can't hear us in the room. One second, Mayor. We can I know you can hear us, but we can't hear you.
turned down. How though? How did it get turned down? Try again, mayor. It's not being used. How do you get turned down? Deon Sheen. Dr. Rivera Cologne. Deon Sheen. And Mr. Sheen. Devon Sheen.
Oh, and Miss Ky Williams, excuse me. I nominate Devon Sheen. We do have our student showcase up first and we have some students from Kelly School that I think are here. Uh yeah, somebody's going to Mr. Mogel is going to go out in the hallway. So today, from
what I understand, we're going to be uh hearing from some of our fifth grade students at Kelly um and their choir program. So, lot of musically themed Okay, we'll come back. Uh, Miss Feliciano, is there any
uh public comment? No. Moving on to student reports. Uh, hi, my name is Nicholas Rodriguez, the Holo Kai School Committee representative. About 150 students in AP classes had their exams this week and last week and their scores will be
reported in July. Um on Saturday, students from Holioai and Dean who earned the seal of bi literacy were honored at a ceremony at UMass. It was very nice. Um a team of seven staff and two students went to Tuscan Arizona to observe the innovative educational
practices of Sunnyside School District. Learning focused on student agency and the team is excited to bring back their findings to the north campus. Steven Santiago, a member of our wrestling team, was honored by the surprise squad and Western Mass News. He earned 100 match wins this season, and he was
honored by the whole school at our student versus staff volleyball game during our reach block. And some good news for the students, they won the volleyball game. Um, sophomores in the engineering and life sciences academy took part in Holio Medical Center's interactive stroke awareness and education event. Students learned how to
identify and respond to signs of a stroke and learned about medical careers from a first from a group of first responders and medical professionals. The community and global studies students tooured Holio's green infrastructure as part of an urban ecology field trip in partnership with
the Holio Department of Conservation and Sustainability. And finally, seniors will be presenting their capstone pro presentations as part of our annual capstone competition. This will be the first year students from all three high schoolmies participate.
Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? We're good. Okay. Now we have our student showcase. We're nice people. Don't be afraid. Okay. You actually hit my phone. You actually hit my phone
actually. They're all going to be jealous. All right. Right here. [Music] Hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Are you going to drop the beat or notever?
[Music] [Applause] I want to beever young. Do you really want to live forever? Forever and
ever. I want to be forever young forever. Forever and ever. [Music] [Music] and diamonds are forever. So
many songs we dream out of the blue. Let it come [Music] true. Forever young. I want to be forever
young. Do you really want to live forever [Applause] andever? I want to be forever young. You really want to live forever.
Forever and ever. [Applause] Maybe I should get some rest. I've been out here working all the days.
Blueberries and butterflies. You and me belong together like cold I see and warm weather and all the time We know that you and
me together like cold and warm weather lay and along Together we need you and me. You and
me [Music] [Applause] together and [Applause] together and on and on and
on and on and That was great. [Applause] And I don't know if Mr. Morris or their teacher wants to say anything if you want to introduce the group and the teacher or Hi everyone. You just heard
the Can you can you actually speak into the Make sure it's on and Yep. Okay. Thank you. You just heard the Kelly School fifth grade choir. They are currently rehearsing for their stepup day and these are two of the songs they will be singing. Wonderful. So I hope you enjoyed it. Thank
[Applause] Mrs. Wilson. Yes. I have a question and um how long has the choir been in existence at Kelly School? We started this group last year. Um we have been rehearsing since February. Wonderful.
Wonderful. And so I'm so happy that music um choirs are back. I sang in choir all the way from uh middle school. I don't think we had one in elementary school, but middle school through high school. Um and it's a really wonderful to hear all of your voices. It brings me
back to when I was in choir at your right around your age. So thank you so much. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Ms. Tensley Williams. Thank you guys. Um, I think they getting ready to leave, so
Mr. Morris, can you stay maybe with the teacher because we still have some questions or statements we'd like to make. Sorry. Yeah, I understand. Thank you. Um, you guys did a good job and I like what you said. Do you want to live forever? Now,
I'm not sure about wanting to live forever, but I love butterflies. And you said like butterflies on blueberries. I love it. It was very nice. And come again. Okay. We love you. Thank you. You're welcome, sweetheart. I think we're good. Thank you, Principal
Morris. Thanks to all the parents and family members who came to watch their children and guardians and nieces or nephews or just friends. We appreciate you. So, we are going to be moving on to our FY26 budget
presentation. But before we begin this, let's pull it up. Um, as you know, note from the presentation that you received, this is a quite lengthy document. So I am asking that if members have questions regarding this that they write them down
and periodically through the presentation we'll pause. We'll take questions on the slides that we saw then we'll move on. Once we take the questions and the slides we saw we're going to move on from those slides to new questions on new slides. So let's focus on the slides when we chunk them
out and then we'll move along that way. And Mr. Stoodto has assured me that we're not reviewing all 80 slides. I did only 79. So, I have uh Sean with me. Um, and in the spirit of holding true to my
promise, we're going to skip over the, uh, first four slides, uh, because you all know that, uh, our strategic priorities, our mission, our vision, and the point in presenting those ahead of this budget is that we we really believe
that, uh, the investments that we're making in this budget and throughout the budget development process was, it was guided through our uh, strategic priorities. priorities and our strategic plan. Um, so I'm going to go right to uh
slide six. Um, I first just want to make before before you start, I think it's important just to note and you can just introduce the members of your senior leadership team that are here because it's not often that we get some of them here and we uh appreciate the time that you're coming after the normal workday to uh come out here to the meeting in
person and thank you for doing that. So if you just want to introduce the members that are here along with Mr. Mangano. Thank you Devin. That was really rude of me. I I I'm just feeling a lot of pressure to get through this quickly. Um so yeah, I I I brought the majority
of our team here um just in case we get into some questions about their budgets. They are the experts in their budgets. I have uh Jackie Gashin uh currents uh newly appointed uh assistant superintendent. I have uh Jenny Malave,
our executive director of technology and data. I have Rebecca Thompson, our executive director of academics. I have Maryanne Courier, our uh chief of pupil services. Uh Beth Gage, chief of human resources. And uh Steven Mogel, who is
our executive director of DEI, family and community engagement and language access. So, I just wanted to start with uh showing some deep appreciation to the finance subcommittee. I know uh Jay's not here, but um he's been really steady
in meeting with uh Sean and the team and everybody that is on that uh finance subcommittee. Uh they've been kind of coming along through this budget development journey throughout the process. And I also want to thank the uh budget advisory committee that we we had
formed to provide us with some recommendations on you know some challenges that we may have in the budget. And I'm going to skip over right to slide eight and talk about some of the strategic investments. First and foremost like uh you know and I know uh
Mr. Wellan has mentioned many a times um you know this budget you're not we don't have any like layoffs that we're looking at or severe cuts to programming or anything like that. Um, we were really intentional in how we used our ESSER
funding and really intentional about uh how we're going to accelerate the priorities that are identified in our student opportunity act. And we have one more year of student opportunity act increases before we start seeing uh more
uh relatively flat revenues. But um you know we we just were really thoughtful in how we we use that funding so that we're avoiding you know uh increasing class sizes and uh layoffs like what you're seeing in other communities. Um
in this budget we've we've earmarked some funds for uh you know the new collective bargaining agreement that we're engaged in with with teachers. Um, and we've uh funded the increase to therapists based on the collective bargaining agreement as well. You can
see here we have a a staffing allocation. Principles are able to pretty much predict what their uh teaching allocations are going to be based on their enrollment. We try to stay within the uh target class sizes here. I do believe there's a typo there,
Sean, in the middle school one, right? Because I believe it goes up to 26. Yeah. So these actually these aren't our guidelines. These are when we look at the enrollment that we projected what we're seeing as average class sizes for next year. Now attendance will impact it, but the point is that we're well
within those guidelines. So like middle school goes up to 28 students, but right now based on our current enrollment, we're seeing it between 15 and 22. Perfect. Um we're we were able to fund art, music, and PE in every school. So,
I know how important um that was of of a priority over the last few years, making sure that we do have and continue to fund art, music, and PE teachers across the district. Um, one thing we did differently this year is there's a a
large port there's a portion of our budget uh that is based on student enrollment and the staff allocation. And then there's another portion of the budget where where it's uh principal discretionary funds and we have uh that's been
relatively flat over the years. This year we we actually increased it by 5.5%. So principles had a little bit more funding available to them to be able to uh think about how they're going to use that relative to their own school. Um, we continue to fund high quality
tier 1, two, and three programming uh to make sure we're meeting student needs uh both academically, behavior, and social emotionally. And uh we we also continue to invest in making sure we have strong math and English uh coaching at every
school. We didn't touch those allocations. Uh many of you have uh seen the retention work group and seen some of the data. Uh many of our teachers are in their first three year and we think it's so important to continue to build the momentum that we have in developing
our teachers and making sure that they, you know, uh that they have the tools and the professional learning necessary to uh execute highquality instruction at grade level and that they're supported by these these coaches. And we also continued to in invest in math and um
ELA intervention teachers as well which was another new investment that we made using ESSER and we were able to sustain that in this upcoming budget year. Next slide please. uh we continue to invest in social,
emotional and behavioral supports. Um we you know one of the things that's funded in here that uh we had a few discussions with the school committee is the new uh program that we would be under the opportunity academy umbrella um to
support some 9th and tth graders in the upcoming school year. in that program. We intend on it being located at METAF. Um, we've had a mentoring program. I have uh plenty I myself am a mentor and I know uh many of our uh cabinet members
are mentors and we have others that uh are mentoring middle school students and we're investing in to uh strengthen that. you know, we we've been at it for a couple of years and we want to make sure that that's something that we just build into our normal practice and that
the mentees uh the mentors have the tools that they need to be effective mentors. And we're also uh considering uh we've funded in this budget uh you know we we have restorative justice practices and conflict resolution that's
led uh peer-led at the students. Uh we want to extend that to the middle schools. One thing that we saw this this year was um a lot of our peers at the high school are graduating out and we probably should have done a better job at um making sure that we have enough
freshman and sophomores interested in participating in Roots. Um, so we want to just start that at the middle school level and and get students interested in becoming members of Roots when they get to the high school, but starting to support uh a strong SC culture in the
school that that is uh is supported by many of our middle school students and we continue to invest uh in our guidance and adjustment counselors which we had increased over the years through the use of ESSER funds. Um this is the first year where you where you saw an increase
in the amount of funding we give to uh the city for admin costs. That was our commitment many years ago when we uh when we were talking about building a brand new middle school. One of the things that we committed to was to make sure that we uh we come up with a way to
fund $500,000 towards that bond payment. And the way we did it was through our uh admin agreement with the city. So, there's an increase there. Um, one thing that's new this upcoming year, and and I wouldn't I wouldn't want to say that it's
necessarily uh it's new to the budget for sure. So, we have um two resource officers, one at each high school, and those and that's what we've paid for traditionally, and they have a supervisor that supervises
them um and has supported throughout the process. Uh, one thing that we worked on with the current chief is, uh, to actually fund that third resource officer that's currently supervising, but to ensure that that person's on site
all the time, um, not just floating around um, and and doing other things, but where that that person is there when needed. And the thought behind that is that we got two big middle schools now. Um, we will next year. So, we have Sullivan and we have uh, PC. So, we're
trying to figure out a way, you know, with those three resource officers, you know, how could we create an environment where there's enough that where there's uh always a resource officer available. Uh they've been they've been very available. I mean, sometimes we call the
resource officer at dean when we need support at another school. Um and uh the same thing with the the with our um the supervisor. So, we're just codifying it. and I had some good conversations with the with the chief that we'd like to see
uh more of a presence in the middle school. Um so, uh in order to do that, we you know, we included that in in our budget. Next slide. And other strategic investments is uh continuing to invest in the
professional development opportunities throughout the year and stipens for mentor teachers. Uh right now we have about we have a 100% of our new teachers have an assigned mentor and uh they meet with that mentor or have met with that mentor throughout the year once a week
and I'm sure they've met outside of that you know dedicated time as well um helping support you know uh being a new teacher in Holio and getting so you know professional development can be a lot especially as a new teacher so those mentors have always made themselves
available to help uh make sure that when you come to Holy and your first year teaching you get all the support that you need in addition to other supports. Uh we we didn't touch our uh special ed inclusion uh teacher like ratio or anything like that. So we
maintain those as well as our English language development teacher and we've seen a lot of growth with uh particularly with our ELLL population. And um we've actually exited about 56 students this year so far and we know that more are to come once we um you
know once we go through the process of alt access testing. Um I know that this was something that was very uh near and dear to the school committee's heart. uh continuing to invest in family and community engagement and uh you know
over the last couple of years we've made sure that there is a family engagement coordinator at every school um and that we continued that investment for next year. Um they they have been critical in in supporting our attendance efforts uh
not just at the district level but at the school level with their uh attendance uh you know being a part of the attendance team meetings that happen and being a part of the uh district attendance task force as well that meets
once a month. And we continue to fund uh teacher development and recruitment and of course preschool As far as extended learning goes, um you know, much of the funding that we have for extended learning comes off of uh Title One and our 21st century program,
but there is a portion of it that comes out of the general fund this year in particular, we had to uh because I think 155,000 was funded on uh ESSER money and that funding is gone. you'll see an increase on the general fund um because we want to make make sure that we
continue to invest in summer school and after school programs and the enrichment that Kelly is is and vacationmies as well and this is where I'm going to Are there any questions on strategic investments? Mrs. Wilson,
thank you. Um, first of all, I'm excited that there's intervention in both math and ELA in every school. Um, for a while there was only ELA. So, um, I think it's important that we have it in both core areas. Um, for adjustment counselors,
I'm wondering, are are schools staffed to just manage emergency situations or are they staffed so that um, school adjustment counselors can have a case load and consistently be able to work with
students, not just be scheduled and then have to be pulled due to the, you know, daily um, events at school? Yeah, our our adjustment counselors do have a case load and and um you know that and you know they do support with
ongoing support that is needed but we you know one of the things that we did I want to say last year we increased the allocations um so that there is enough um I can't say that you know um you know we could always use more support when it comes to
that but but there there's definitely you know between the the counseling teams at every school uh you know they they divvy up who actually is managing the the case load and who's supporting on the floor.
Great. Any other questions? Mr. Zaza, I just have a couple of comments. I I um I applaud the kind of emphasis on uh social emotional skills and early literacy. I know how crucial they are
for actual success over time. And I have a question about the family and community engagement as to whether there is any kind of connection between between the um kind of the work of that particular
group and uh the development of those types of skills in the community. I think the social emotional skills are so important at the family level and I wonder if there is any connection at all being made or potentially being made. I just think that connection between
family engagement and social emotional skills in the family is is quite crucial. Yeah, I think um so a a good portion of the family engagement team is attendance, community
events and then whatever support is needed. But I want to like I want to stress the importance that um family engagement is not just solely rest on the family engagement coordinators. Um it rests on a lot of people in the
building. our teachers, our administrators, our front office staff. You know, oftent times there is, you know, one of the things that that we, you know, we want to roll out effectively throughout the district next year is um students having that one
person that they can go to in the building. Um and students that need a check-in and checkout. Sometimes sometimes that connection is going to be with that person. It could be a teacher. It could be somebody on the student support team. It's not always going to be your family engagement coordinator.
Um, but they're definitely, you know, they're they're definitely in it and try to support all of our family engagement efforts throughout, but it's it doesn't rest solely on their shoulders. Miss Tensley Williams. Um, Mr. Sto, you said the new teachers that come in, uh,
they're being mentored. Could you give me a couple of examples? Yeah. So, uh, every single new teacher, um, first year teacher in in Holio is assigned a mentor. We post a position and other teachers in the district, um,
have the opportunity to, uh, receive a stipen to to support that. And we we've built into the schedule that um one one day a week uh the the teachers are working with their mentor mentors and uh
in the first couple of months of school that support might just be you know what are the systems and structures in place in Holio like how do you do your your time? We we try to fit a lot into that new teacher induction program. our human resource department goes there and tries
to get you know all the questions answered that teachers have. But um the you know once you leave that and you know we want to make sure that that teachers have the support that they need and then as the year progresses the support that may be provided um by the
mentors looks a little different. So if as a district we're working on um the use of exemplars or you know planning and data meetings around priority standards that mentor if if a new teacher needs support with that they
might be providing some extra support in that. Um but it looks different throughout the year and I got to say this is our first year implementing it. Um there there's been a lot there's there's definitely a lot that we can tweak and adjust to make sure that that's a a rich relationship and that
the work that they're focusing on is the right work. Thank you very much. Any other questions regarding this section? Okay. For me to take over? All right. Yes. Um so for the sake of time, I'm only gonna touch on the highlights of
the upcoming slides. I'm not going to cover every um bullet on the slides, but if you have questions on any of them, obviously when we get to the end of that section, I'll ask for questions and you can ask about anything. Um but we still have 66 more slides. So, um balancing uh
the budget on the revenue side. So, uh not much has changed here. Um our transportation projection that we put in to the budget early, we were hoping it was a conservative estimate and we'd be able to bring it down um and that we would identify some cost-saving strategies to be able to do that. We have identified those cost-saving
strategies or some of uh some ways to reduce costs, but since we built that projection, we've seen increases in routes that have pushed the number even higher. So, we're using those strategies just to get back to the figure that we first put in. So, we've kept that transportation figure flat from the
initial projection to now. Um, one new element is the inclusion of carry forward funding to help balance the budget. Uh, we did this in FY25. We used $3 million of carry forward funding to help close the gap. Uh, and we're proposing for FY26 using two million. And this is based on our most current
projections of where we're going to end this current fiscal year and what we would have to roll over. You've seen this chart probably a gazillion times. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm flipping the wrong one. Uh, you've seen this chart a gazillion times, which shows the sort of impacts of student opportunity act on the Holio public
schools. You can see where so what you see here are bars that show the net school spending requirement for the Holio public schools. The larger portion of those bars is what we get in chapter 70 and the smaller portion is the local contribution requirement. Um this isn't our total budget because this is just
net school spending. So it doesn't include transportation but um it's the majority of our budget. And you can see where student opportunity act went into effect around FY22 and we started getting the phase in over six years. Um, we anticipate that running through FY27
and then we'll see our uh local increases and our our state funded increase increases start to flatten out in FY28. On the expense side, um most of the new money in this budget is going into salaries to maintain collective bargaining agreements or for anticipated collective bargaining agreements. As the
superintendent mentioned, um we are setting aside $1.2 2 million of school choice funding uh to support the program as well. That's I think we did about a million dollars in FY25. So, it's a little bit of an increase. Um but we have uh the funding in our school choice revolving fund to support that. And on
the supplies and services side, the majority of this increase is related to a couple grants um going away or at least when we developed this budget, we were in the final year of those grants. Now, we're pursuing them and we're hopeful that we'll get them for another year. Um but we were in the final year.
So, one of them is turnaround. We had a $750,000 turnaround grant for FY25. Uh we weren't sure if that was going to continue post receiverhip. Um and then the other one is bar funding. We had a bar grant at the high school. We were in the final year of a three-year um
commitment. We're in conversations with bar around renewing it. Um but those are sort of two big pieces on the supply side where we've had to shift some expenditures from grants to the general fund. um mostly curriculum is uh from the turnaround grant is what we funded that we've shifted to the general fund
and you'll see that when we get to the academics budget that'll explain majority of the increase there out of district tuition is going up um about 687,000. This is lower than when we last presented this to you and that's because this is where we apply the carry forward funding. So, this has
come down about $2 million from when we last presented this um because that portion of funding has shifted over to carry forward uh projected for next year. And then we're going to talk about how we fund out of district tuition. We fund it from about four different revenue sources. We there's a slide that
kind of shows how that budget that uh puzzle comes together to build the out of district budget. So, I'll explain what revenue sources are going up and which ones are going down that gets us to that increase. Um that comes up in a few slides. Transportation costs again continuing to
go up. What we projected about 10.3% this is uh funded by this the city. Um this was one of the major topics of the budget advisory groups work and figuring out how we handle this challenge going forward. Um the reason for this increase just as a reminder is we have to fund
charter transportation. That's an assessment that comes to us. uh we have about 5% rate increases in our our two major transportation providers for van transportation for bus transportation and then we've seen an increase in routes for um special education students
out of district. Uh we've seen rate increases and some route increases for McKini Vento um and we've seen an increase in foster routes as well. So we are exploring a number of strategies to try to reduce these costs. Uh the obvious one is we're looking for just efficiencies wherever we can find
them. for next year with the consolidation of METAF and STEM into PEC that will produce some natural efficiencies that will help uh find some savings. Um just having one school instead of two it's you can have a better economy of scale in building
those routes. Um we are eval evaluating other opportunities to convert possibly van routes into mini buses. We did that in FY25 where we had eight vans going to a couple different out of district schools that were located very close together. We converted those to a few
minibuses and that saved somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000. Um we have hired a consultant to look at our transportation system and recommend best practices and and looking to see if there's any efficiencies that we are not seeing. We're looking every um every month. We review our invoices very
closely. We work with our providers to see what we can do to um have a more efficient system, but we have brought in some outside expertise as well to have an independent look at that. Um we'll have a report at the end of the month and we'll certainly share that with all of you. Uh one thing we have been talking about is uh possibly piloting
some in-house routes where we would do a few routes. This is a big shift that we if we were to do it, but um there are a few lowhanging fruit type routes where we spend a lot um and if we were to have the flexibility to do it oursel, we could save quite a bit of money in just
a small number of roots. So, um it's something that we would have to make a decision on soon if we're going to do it for the fall. Uh but we could do it again if we start small. There's some big savings we could have right away. Um and then all of this sort of falls under uh the superintendent's recommendation
to create a transportation task force. So, it would be a group that would include some school committee representation, some city council representation, and others um to look at some of the some of these uh excuse me, strategies um and look at the report that we're going to get from the consultant and anything else. um you
know uh work with some of our professional organizations like the Mass Association of Pupil Transportation and some other groups um and see what we can do to lower these costs. Yeah. And I've I've had conversations with um the mayor and what's being
recommended from the the budget advisory group is to take a look at every possible scenario around saving money in transportation. So there, you know, one of the things that I'm looking to do is there there are some some changes that
we can make that are uh that may be controversial in nature, but I want to get ahead of those issues now and not sit here in September and and and and hear from some of the the issues that that those those changes may impact. So,
I'm definitely looking forward to have this workg group take a look at some of those so that we're making an informed decision for next year and know what those, you know, what those touch points are, what those sticky situations are. Um, all in alignment with our policy, but we want to make sure that we we just
get ahead of that and upfront instead of wait until September or October. We're doing all questions between each section just to Yeah, I've got a couple more slides and then I'll I'll turn over for questions. Um, so this is just some things that we've done previously to reduce
costs. So all of that brings us to the gap. When we uh last presented the budget to you, we had a gap of about a million5 and that didn't include any new initiatives and it didn't include um expenditures coming off of grants that
were expiring like turnaround or bar. Um and it also didn't include some additional positions that came out of school budget hearings. we were sort of in the middle of school budget hearings. And so when we do that, we look at the numbers with principles. We look at certain allocations of staffing where
the enrollment, you know, might warrant an increase, it might not. Um, and inevitably there's some increased staffing that comes out of those school budget hearings to make sure that we're we're staffed appropriately at each school. Counselor is a good example. You know, there was a discussion around counseling where um we ended up adding
an extra counselor back in um to the school allocations based on those conversations. So um so some of those additional positions also impacted the gap. Um so that increased it and then ultimately what we did to close the gap uh to where it is today is allocate the
$2 million of carry forward. Um and then a combination of 1.5 million in cabinet level budget reductions or cost avoidance type things like not like a grant going away, not you know not continuing those expenditures anymore for certain certain activities that were
funded on the grant. Um, and then some of it's just efficiencies that I'll I'm going to highlight some of those on the next slide and then after this section we'll turn over for questions. Um, so I'm just going to go over some of the the larger reductions that we've built in for next year. Um, in academics we
are removing about 173,000 related to an assessment software. Uh, this was a a nice efficiency. We actually eliminated it for FY25, but we kept the money in because we needed funds to use some existing software that we have to build out some of these assessments. Um, and
we use that money in FY20 uh 25 to build those assessments. And now we have them and we own them and we don't have to pay for them anymore. And we can eliminate this recurring cost. So by doing that, we can eliminate a recurring cost of about 170,000 um through that sort of one-time transition year. Uh, in the
assistant superintendent's budget, there is a proposed reduction of an executive director of school leadership. So, we currently have two. This would bring us down to one. There are also three uh district-wide behavior support positions that sort of float between schools um and and uh throughout the district. Uh
these were funded on a grant. So, we're proposing to eliminate those positions. Those folks would go into the schools into either teaching positions or other um professional staff positions in the schools. in language access. This is another really positive one where in FY25 we added a fifth uh translator to
our language access team and we we knew there was going to be some reduction in our need for contracted service vendors and what we would have to basically contract out. Um we didn't realize it was going to be such a a large savings. So our language access um coordinator proposed this reduction based on um what
her team can handle versus what needs to be contracted out. And so we're going to provide the same level of service just for $120,000 less because of the addition of that position. Um in nursing, we're uh planning to go down one registered nurse based on our assessment um of the
nursing needs across the district. In operations, we had two managerial positions. We had a director of facilities and maintenance, and we had a maintenance administrator. The maintenance administrator focused more on capital projects and facility projects. um due to a staff transition, we have an opportunity to merge those
two positions into one. And that's what we're proposing for next year. Uh in the superintendent budget, because we're exiting receiverhip, we no longer have to fund a receiverhip contract. We can fund a salaried superintendent position, um which is less expensive. In pupil services, we're
proposing the elimination of a occupational therapy assistant which is current currently vacant and the demand for the services are not there to support that position staying in technology because we used ESSER to uh replenish all of our devices both student and staff devices uh for this
year. We really don't have a need for ongoing computer replacements to this scale. There'll be some smaller ongoing computer replacements but this was for sort of a full uh phased replacement. Um, this might come back in a couple years where we might have to slowly start to phase this back in when our
current devices reach the end of their life. Um, but that'll probably be FY28 in that range and we'll we're going to bring it back in thoughtfully. It won't all come back all at once. Um, in strategy and turnaround, we're proposing a 0.15 FTE reduction to
the um, chief of strategy and turnaround. um she oversees a few different departments. So the reduction there would be spread across a few different departments, but um that would be a reduction to a cabinet uh position in cabinet and directors. The um baseline increase that was being
proposed was a 3% increase to non-bargaining staff. Um the superintendent capped that at 1.5% for um cabinet leaders and directors. So by capping it at a lower rate, that reduced 60,000 out of our original level services projection. Um, and then all
the other cabinet departments, we have a long list of smaller reductions. Um, but they all total up to about 339,000. So, I will stop there and see if there's any questions. So, are you not covering the rest of the slides?
No, I'm going to cover those unless you tell me not to, but this this was my stopping point. Nope. Cover those until we get to the next on the agenda with the budget assumptions. So, Okay. You want to keep going? All right. Um, so you've seen this chart on the revenue side. This, um, has not
changed. One key I just want to point out is that we built this budget based on the governor's budget. Um, it changes throughout the process. It will change between the House and the Senate and what's f voted and then actuals next year will be different from what was
voted. Um, so every fall we do a true up with our budget with the city um to get basically the numbers to align with whatever the final budget was that was voted. I wanted to point this out because um I believe the mayor's budget is going to be based on the senate's
version of the of of the budget. And so between now and when this comes back to you, we may have to make an adjustment to make sure this aligns with what the mayor is proposing. Um it doesn't impact our total net school spending target, but it does impact well it could it. So
the biggest difference is that between the governor's budget and the senator the senate's budget is that the estimate around charter tuition reimbursement dropped pretty significantly. That reduces our net school spending target. So there is an impact um and I have a sheet I'll share with you before you
leave that kind of walks through the comparison between our budget and the Senate budget um and what that impact would be. So that might be something that changes after we talk with the mayor. Um on the expenditure side, the primary change from what you've seen
previously is that out of district tuition line. Um so again, that came down $2 million because we implemented the carry forward funding that comes out of the regular general fund budget and so that brought it down to a 12.2% increase. Um the other changes are
related to those reductions that we just talked about um or the new initiatives um like the opportunity academy expansion and things like that are reflected in the numbers. Now these are just some additional summaries different ways to look at the same information that I've presented to you.
Yeah, I think this one is important in that um when we when we actually go to city council um they they solely look at our uh school department appropriation and in our budget and I explain this every year. I just want to remind
everybody in our budget as we're presenting the numbers we include some lines the the majority of it is is is really fringe benefits. So included in the numbers that we share is um you know fringe benefits and uh transportation
and other things. And um what we what we try to articulate here is that the total number that we we see in our budget book includes some items that the city might have in another budget because they budget for um benefits in a completely
separate section. Uh but I think it's important for everybody in the community to know how much of th those uh fringe benefits actually are attributable to the schools and included in net school spending. Yeah. So it's the two lines at the bottom. It's insurance and benefits.
So, it's primarily health insurance, but it also includes Medicare um life insurance, dental insurance, and the retirement line, which is our um pension assessment are the two that are budgeted not within the school function on this on the city
side. And this is sort of how the city budget takes our information, what it'll look like. So, that's why this number is lower because it doesn't include the health insurance, doesn't include the pension. They break our operating budget into personnel services and expenses and then the the assessments on the cherry
sheet from the state separately and I'll stop. I saw Mr. Wellahan had his hand up first first. Thank you. Um sorry that I was late. Um just want to thank John for his um hard
work and uh thank Mr. and his team for their efforts in um presenting uh the budget. I think it's a fair budget. Um other towns are having a lot of worst uh case scenarios in terms of layoffs and
budget deficits. So I think Hoyok is has done a great job um um with their finances. Um just want to go back to the transportation issue. It keeps coming up. I know we discussed this in finance committee every meeting it seems just
trying to get ahead of the curve on that. I know the budget um uh committee that Mr. STO put together we've talked about just um trying to kind of rein in those costs. I know uh he kind of said tonight that the numbers even went up
which was sort of a little uh disheartening. Um so again um having a uh hiring a consultant to come in to review our practices that's going to be um important and I know the city council
is um they're vested in this process too because of the because the money is going to um going to be coming from their their budget. So again it's something that we're addressing. Other other cities are are trying to get ahead of the curve too. I know um we've talked
about having uh running our own buses or or vans. I mean I know um Mr. Kmore has been promoting um converting our fleet to uh um electric buses. So we've been
talking about that. So again, even though the number has been going up, we're we're trying to get ahead of the curve and looking for ways to to solve the issue. Okay. If if we ever go back to $4 a gallon in in gas, it's going to be worse. Okay. Thank you,
Miss Wilson. So, I have a couple questions. First, um on the in-house transportation pilot, um where what type of vehicles and who is going to be driving? So, we would have to likely lease some type of school transportation vehicle, a
7D certified vehicle. So, it'd be similar to a van. Um, and we would have to hire a driver or mult or multiple drivers, but it would be those costs are costs that are currently in our transportation budget. So, we would be using funds set
aside for those vans to make those upfront costs. So, there's not a request for additional funding. Um, it's sort of it's in the transportation budget now. Yeah. We would we have to you know there has to be a whole cost analysis to this cuz when you own your own fleet if your
transmission goes you have to replace the transmission. So um when you have your own fleet you got to pay for gas. So we got to start like so a whole analysis on what this would cost. Uh but Sean's pretty confident that, you know,
with starting small, we'd be able to eliminate some right now some um some vans, more vans than we would actually be paying for and maintaining. And my second question is around the uh 3.0 behaviorist positions that are being
um eliminated. I'd like to understand the rationale behind this um you know removal of these positions. I think um in my mind um I need to better understand this to support this decision based upon our students social
emotional needs are just everinccreasing. Um I don't think our population has changed drastically. So I'm trying to understand um where why are we eliminating these positions? Yeah, we had a dean one of them is a
dean on special assignment. Um, and the thought behind that was this dean was going to kind of float around to take a look at, you know, uh, school cultures and systems that they have in place. Um, that this was prior to us doing all the
work that we did around MTSS. Um, and I think that because we did all of that work, uh, that that dean on special assignment is no longer needed. We can slide them into an existing role. So um and I I just want to name like So that's one the that's one right and then the
other two are uh behavior interventionists that would do similar they would serve a similar role like if they're needed to support at you know Lawrence we would send them to Lawrence. If they're needed to support at another school they would they would support at
that other school. What we've seen with these staffing shortages is that those positions never last. you know, they they were doing that work for a couple months and then they ended up filling like just kind of filling existing roles, not filling existing roles in the
school, but we've permanently placed them in the schools that we felt they needed needed the most support. Um and in that work, you know, we're we're confident that with our, you know, uh with our director of SEAL and with the
work that we invested in MTSS and the EDSU and all the support positions that we have, we'd be able to uh support the schools in the same way. there's some uh there's some things that we need to consider um in in that uh you know one
of these positions was providing restraint training across the district right um so we need to work through like how we're going to continue to devel that professional learning um but it'll be outside of the school day it won't be
you know uh you know it won't be part of somebody's full-time job we'd probably stipen that that work help. I don't feel that's sufficient. I I feel as though I need to have data as to how
their time is being used because I because I feel as though there still is a need for these positions. I feel as though just saying that they've been placed in jobs where we have vacancies is not sufficient information as to the
rationale behind why we created them. what is the intent of the role? And so my question, you know, it'd be it's nice that we can pull them to then go to other schools that are in need, but it's not then meeting the district need.
You're taking a resource from a school to move to a different school for a oneoff. So, I am still very concerned about um the behavior positions being elim behaviorist positions being eliminated. Unless anyone has other data
they want to share with me that we're not having issues in our school and that we can eliminate these jobs. I'm not suggesting that we don't have issues. I'm suggesting that with with the investments that we've made in strong MTSS systems and the support that we're
providing from central office that we'll be able to provide uh the same level of service to schools right now around school culture and behavior that we have in the past when these positions were were floating around. So I'd be looking at if anybody from my our team wants to
just elaborate on on that um feel free to come up. So, I'd be looking at data this time next year as to what it was this year and what it is next year to determine if this was the right decision because this
is because I don't see because I'm not privy to the understanding the data to being shared the data I should say as to why this these decisions are made but I'd be looking at um you know better understanding it. Yeah, I mean, we're happy to share any
data, Miss Wilson. Um, I think it would be hard to look at data next year and say that these positions were the reason if the data went up or down. Um, we, you know, as I said, there's a lot of, we've added
additional counselors. We've added to our student support teams. you know, our director of social emotional learning now has, you know, a few years under her belt in Holio public schools and supporting counselors um and our our ed
like like there's just so many support that we we believe this was a a very smart investment three years ago when we made it and when we had Esser and um right now we feel really good about being able to continue to move on that trajectory and and move the work forward
without those positions. And and I will name like you know um if we if we had esser if we if we had more esser money or if we didn't have to make cuts that we wouldn't even be having this conversation and in a couple of years you know there there's other
things that we're going to have to look at um because we're we're going to be looking at frat flat revenue when student opportunity act is no longer increasing. It's just going to be flat and we're going to have to look at everything every single year. Um, I don't, some of you have been here a lot
longer. You know, the days before COVID, the days before ESSER, the days before Student Opportunity Act, we had to make cuts every single year. I mean, my first five years in Holio, we we averaged $4 million cuts a year. Um, so this is one
that that we felt strongly we we would be able to move forward without impacting students. Are you set, Miss Wilson? Miss Tensley Williams, Sean, um, back to counselors. Say we have an emergency. Do
we have enough counselors? Um, because you said you hired one, but how many do we have per school? Yeah. So, so we budget um both guidance and adjustment counselors and uh there's a dedicated allocation per school outside of any
sub-searate programming. So subsequent programs have their own staffing um of counselors and then in addition to that there's a allocation for every school. Um so with the additional one that we um added we we're averaging about one counselor for every hundred students um
throughout the district. Um and that's pretty consistent from school to school. And so when we look at the counselor case loads with the principles, we also um look at it with our student support team and with our director of people services um because part of the counselor's case load could be servicing
IEPs. And so we want to make sure that we understand how much of their time is sort of committed to IEPs and how much is free to to handle daily things that pop up. Um so that was one of the reasons, for example, why we added that additional counselor um to our school. So I, you know, based on our discussions
with principles and with our pupil services team, I feel like our counselor allocation is strong. Do they come from other schools and we have our own? They're all our employees. Yeah, they're all and they're all except for maybe one next year dedicated to a school. Um, they're not hopping from school to
school. Thank you, Mr. Colmore. Yeah. Uh, just a question here. when writing grants or grants coming in for us. Uh is there a
transportation component in there that we try to ask for more money for transportation because it went up? We don't we don't fund transportation on grants, but we do get
some reimbursement for types of transportation. Mckin Vento is one of those types of transportation. So when we complete our end of year report and we report to the state how much we spent on Mckin Vento, the city gets a a
portion of that reimbured. Same thing with foster care. But currently we, you know, we don't most of the grants that we have kind of the same rules around net school spending would apply. they wouldn't allow us to provide to include transportation to and from school as
part of that would that would be considered supplanting if you've ever heard that. Um you know uh the any transportation that we do have on grants is supplemental. So it could be transportation to enrichment programs or
um things that aren't, you know, just normal to and from school. It could be field trips, stuff like that. Thank you. Any other questions? I have a couple. Um, so as far as bus routes, not talking
about what this consultant's doing, but who does all the bus routes? So, we have a transportation manager um who works for the district who develops the bus routes independently from the bus company. Yep. Yeah. We pay for I won't say they have no say, but we have our own route building software. Um, and if
we need route changes or things like that throughout the year, comes from our transportation department. And how often is that is it calibrated to look for economic efficiencies in the route building? It's at least once every year when we're building the routes. So like right um
this past week we looked at what next year the model for next year with the middle schools consolidating. That's um why the superintendent brought up that there's some you know there's some sticky issues. is if we were to go with the most efficient route and follow our policies, there's going to be some impacts to folks who currently have
busing that wouldn't have busing um under the new scenario next year. So, we want to get ahead of that and talk through those issues. But um every sort of every spring this time of the year, she's rebuilding those routes. Yeah. And and Mr. Sheen, that's that's different than three years ago or four years ago,
we did have the vendor doing those routes. And part of the efficiencies that we realized was bringing that routing in house. We definitely realized some savings in in bringing the routing in house and not just the vendor working and and telling us what the routes were
going to be. So what's the balance when doing the routes of economic efficiency based on student efficiency on the routes? It's probably a balance of economic efficiency and like family satisfaction, I would say, is probably the trade-offs, right? So, the more if
you're completely efficient to the cost, you're going to have more disruption um and probably upset families with students having to walk than maybe had v uh bus routes before. Um I would say we haven't seen a lot of creep in our bus routes since I've been here. In fact, I
think we've I think my first year we reduced a couple that was already in in works before I started. Um, and the only increase we had, we increased one uh minibus this past year, but it was because we got rid of eight um or or 60, I can't remember what the exact number
was, um, vans and we converted them to mini buses. So, we did increase on the minibus side as a result, but it's because we eliminated numerous van routes. And the current bus contract, when does that expire? So, it's a 5-year contract and FY24 was the first year. year. So
FY28 would be the the final year of the first five and then there's an option to renew for an additional five. Okay. And when that was So it was FY24 you said? Yeah. How many bids were submitted?
I can get you that answer. I want to say it was three or four. Uh but I can get Yeah, it was three and we went with the lowest bid. Okay. And if if you guys recall, um we actually when we first received the bids, we were looking at like uh I
want to say a 21% increase and um working with folks on the city and the chief procurement officer at the city, we decided to rebid the routes or to rebid the contract and change some of the specs. So, you know, we we asked the
vendors like, "Why why is this going up 22%." And they said, "Well, because in your bid specs, you're requiring all brand new vehicles and you're requiring that no vehicle be, you know, have uh more than 75,000 miles and you're you got all these things that are in your
bid specs that are expensive." So, we went back, sharpened our pencil, worked with a consultant, and said, "Okay, what do we need and how could we write these bid specs differently that will make the bid more competitive?" And in doing so, um, we were able to, uh, save, I want to
say, $700,000 that year, which is a $700,000 in, uh, savings every year, uh, in doing so. And I would hope as we move forward with talking about transportation and costs
that we explore opportunities to possibly be innovative and look towards our neighboring communities to do multidist uh bidding for buses and to incorporate other districts that may be able to be aligned with our school start
and end times to have larger contracts to there are 66 major bus companies that serve Massachusetts and the fact that it's usually just the same names all the time. Um, there's people out there that I think could help with that. And I think if we had more communities
involved and I would task you as being superintendent with your network of superintendents to really think differently and to bid this out as a regional type of uh program rather than just city by city and all of us having to do a million different transportation
companies. Um, the other item I want to talk about that was a cut, which I'm glad it's a cut. Um, the 122,000 for transitioning to a salaried superintendent position for receiverhip. Now, I understand what that is is that we get a bill from the state that covers
the receiver salary and plus this 122,000. Um, the bill that we get, I assume that that also includes fringe benefits, the current bill. Yeah. So, it includes everything. Yeah. So, um, and obviously we're going to be taking on the cost of fringe and salary. So, what
does this other 122 count for that the state gets? Um, I So, they use a flat ratio for fringe. So, it's essentially like a 50% on top of whatever um wages are. So, it's sort of a flat fringe rate. um that
includes things like retirement, it includes the health insurance, it would include any other fringe benefits that they offer, but it's it's not an actual like number that they calculate. They're just taking almost like an indirect cost amount. Yeah. And I'll name that like our current
fringe benefit budget, if you look at it from year to year, it's not changing. Yeah. From one year to the next. We so we work with the city to um hey what is it that is our share of active health insurance um and you know we need to see
the data to support that number because that once we give that funding over to the city we don't we don't have an opportunity to access that if we spend less. Where that happens is on the end of year report because on the end of year report we can't just report what
what we estimated for active health insurance. We actually have to pull the details and Sean works. Um we're able to go into our payroll system and take a look at who has an active plan and what the cost is and and and like and then true that up on the end of year report
and then it affects our budget for the upcoming year. So fringe benefits is flat whether this change was happening or not. Like that that was going to be the number. Yeah. And I'm not concerned with the our fringe benefits, but I guess I just I think that the state was
theoretically overcharging us because they were profiting off of us and not doing a charge for actual benefits that were being delivered. Yeah. I I don't know what the arrangements were about. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, they profited over a million dollars over the 10 years probably. And I know the salaries gone
up and it's changed, but I think a million's probably a good round number. They probably profited off of that yearly um on the backs of Hyok who struggled with budgets when we've talked about this. An extra 15 even say 100,000 a year would have been nice. So, uh
moving on to budget assumptions. All right. And I will just say because it was brought up and I know there was a question, um, electric school buses, we had that electric school bus grant for now still exists. Um, and the latest update is that we could potentially see
those electric buses in January of 2026. Um, if all goes well and there's no hiccups along the way. Um, so that's 19 electric school buses that would come in to support our fleet and replace diesel buses. James. Yeah, I think on so on these
budget assumptions as Sean alluded, we're using the governor's budget. So, um these assump this this assumes that um we're you know that the state budget once finalized is going to be consistent with the governor's budget. After the year end, we'll have to make some
adjustments. And then it it also assumes that the city's going to meet their net school spending requirement. All all indications are that you know all conversations we've had with the mayor and with the auditor is that that's going to be the case. Um we we are
building in what we estimated for sec circuit breaker and and we're assuming that none of that's going to get cut and also that no other federal funding is going to get cut significantly and that our - applications are going to be approved. Um these are all general
assumptions that we assume every year and uh we also have to make an assessment uh an in a assumption on enrollment. What the way we develop the budget is we take you know October 1's enrollment and we take January 31st or
January 1 enrollment and we do an average and we have conversations with principles um about you know students aging out, students leaving, things like that. I think the most unpredictable enrollment is probably in uh preK and K, right? Because those students aren't
here right now. Uh but we're, you know, we're assuming that the numbers that we have in the budget are are going to be consistent next year. And if they're not, we have to make adjustments. Uh loss time, we're assuming 2 million, which is pretty consistent with uh last year. And uh we're assuming the carry
forward of $2 million. I know that there's a divider in there. I don't know if we have any questions on any questions on any of that on the budget assumptions and 26 budget. Yeah. And then uh now we
can dive into the budget. I think we can summarize the next three slides with um us trying to articulate that we're funded at net school spending um and that the majority of our budget is funded by the state. So 88% and then 11
and a half is funded locally by local taxes. And then um you know a few slides later there's just a comparison about where we are relative to net school spending. So we're in third in terms of the amount of funding that is funded by
the local contribution versus the uh state aid. Um and we usually bounce anywhere between second and third. like I don't know why Springfield and Holio trade paid uh trade places almost every year but that's where we're at. Um and
uh you know we the we if we the average school district in Massachusetts if you take every single district and take the average they're funded I I want to say like 27% or 24% above net school spending and that's a lot of money. I'm
not implying that the city should do that. I'm just uh trying to provide some context relative to Holio, but we can jump right into um the overall budget on slide 34 and I'll kick it back to Sean. Thank you. So, um again, I'm going to
just touch on the highlights on these slides. If you have questions, feel free to to ask them when we get to the end on other things I don't specifically cover, but I'm going to point out the the most impactful pieces of each one. Um, so this is just a pie chart of our um, our budget and it shows you how much of the
budget goes towards schools versus other departments. Um, and even those other departments, I would say a vast majority of them you might consider school funding like academics. There's assessments in there. There's curriculum in there. There's curriculum leaders that are part of that academics budget.
Um, same thing with family and community engagement. That's are, you know, the teams that support community engagement in the school. So, um this is how we manage the supervision of the budget in terms of um cabinet leaders and the budgets they manage. But, uh there's really more that goes into the schools.
Another great example is finance and operation includes all of our utilities. So, like although it's managed in finance uh and operations cost center, like those are really school costs. It's not like that doesn't represent, you know, what's in central office costs.
Uh so you can see the comparison of 25 to 26. I'm not going to touch on all these now because they're going to come up again later and I'll cover them when they pop up. Uh so this is just an overall summary of some of the key changes. Again, these are going to be discussed on the upcoming slides. So I'm
going to keep going. So the first cost center is um essentially the assistant superintendent and the departments that the assistant superintendent oversees which are academics, people's services and school leadership. Um this is the breakdown of funding between those three areas and as
you might imagine people services which includes out of district tuition is the largest of the group. Um here's a breakdown of those changes. So, in academics, the $311,000 increase from 25 to 26 that is
related to the turnaround funding going away and bringing over uh curriculum materials and some softwares and subscriptions into the general fund because they're they're needed um expenditures. The increase would have been greater, but it was offset by that AET software reduction that I mentioned
earlier. Uh and you'll see that on a coming slide. Pupil services going up 976,000. The biggest piece here about $700,000 that increase is the out of district tuition um going up the 5% roughly rate increases for out of district schools.
Um and then the the way we fund out of district tuition and that makeup changing having less carryover funding um for next year increase the general fund share and again there's going to be a slide that charts it out for you over a few years. So I will uh talk about that more then. And then in the office
of school leadership that's where we have the reduction of the Zel. So you'll see that budget going down um basically for the value of that position. Overall uh in underneath the assistant superintendent, we're projecting a 5.4 FTE reduction. It's the the Zel
position. It's the vacant occupational therapist position that I mentioned in the reduction screen. Um the three behaviorists and then a reduction in some clerical time that's funded on a grant for people services. This more or less says what I just
said. So now we're going to talk about those departments a little bit more. We're still underneath the assistant superintendent umbrella. This is the only department that's kind of like this. But um so this is just a breakdown of all the different sort of smaller departments that fall under academics. Um I want to be very
um I just want to highlight that art it looks small. It's because art we fund the positions in the schools. there's not a lot of costs that are held centrally. Um, schools budget most of the consumables and the supplies. Um, music by comparison looks larger. It's
because we budget centrally like equipment replacement for musical instruments and things like that are budgeted centrally. So, it looks larger um by comparison. But, um, if you have any questions on our total investment in art, we can get you that number. It's a larger number. Here's a breakdown of those
changes. So in the academics section that's sort of uh it's our executive director of um our academics and some of the curriculum leaders are in that budget that reduction there is the assessment software of 154,000 offset by
some other things moving up and down. Um down below the two areas or three areas that were impacted the most by the turnaround grant going away or anticipated to go away is extended learning. Uh there was a large portion of our summer and after school programs that was funded on turnaround. Um so
we've brought a portion of that back into the general fund because we're going to maintain those programs. Um and then math and science curriculum materials for both of those departments were funded on turnaround. We've brought uh the ones that we need to continue. We've brought those back into uh the
general fund budget. We didn't bring everything from turnaround. We went through when we went through our budget process and our hearings. We looked at everything that was funded on turnaround and we asked our department heads like which ones are essential to continue and so we've only brought the ones that were essential into the general fund budget. Other ones uh were
discontinued. We got a musical instruments playing here. The picture relates you know it's probably the only one I nailed but um no change in FT and this says sort of what I just said. All right. All right. So, now
we're on people services. There's a few different components of people services. The largest portion being out of district tuition. Um, but it also uh that budget oversees psychologists, related services, which are like specialist positions, our education team
leaders, um, some summer services and other services like tutoring and things like that. So you can see the changes of that $976,000 change 700,000 when it was in the out of district tuition. Um many of the other increases are just related to
our projections of salary increases and things like that for next year. Um there is also in the related services section um and a reduction of the occup the vacant occupational therapist position. So when you look at the FTE below the net reduction of 1.4 four, it's that
vacant occupational therapist position. And point4 is the reduction in the clerical support which was from a grant. And then there was a little bit of a shift um between the general fund and our IDA grant of some salaries, but it was a shift, not a reduction or increase. So this is that puzzly chart
that I was talking about. Um so this shows how we fund out of district tuition. There's four major funding sources. So the blue is our general fund. Red is circuit breaker which is a state reimbursement for special education costs when they exceed a certain threshold. Yellow is our IDA
grant. And then green is sort of a catch-all for other. And mostly what other means is either ESSER or which has gone away now or using carry forward uh falls into that other bucket. And then the numbers in the blue are how many out of dish placements we're expecting. So,
we're not expecting a big increase for next year, uh, based on our our work with the people services department. Um, we are projecting the carry forward, that green bar to go down. Um, because we're going from 3 million to 2 million in terms of how much is expected to be
able to support the FY26 budget. IDA, we're assuming the same level of funding for OB district tuition on IDA circuit breaker. We're actually getting a little bit more funding or we anticipate having a little bit more funding um that we're going to roll over from this year to next year to support out of district
tuition. And so the net result is sort of a ma I wouldn't say modest, but about a $700,000 increase in the general fund budget. And then the last um leg underneath the assistant superintendent is the school leadership. Uh this is the assistant superintendent. The edils uh
some uh student support positions. This reduction is entirely just that one position. Um and then there's actually a topo versus 2026 and the total that should be a total of three not four. Um the other three positions are those behaviorist positions that we discussed
earlier. All right. So now we're moving to a different uh cabinet leader. We're moving to family and community engagement under Mr. Mogel who's here tonight. Um so Mr. Moguel oversees two sort of subd departments which is family and community engagement more broadly but also our language access team which
handles all the interpretations and translations. So family and community engagement has sort of a modest increase just related to salaries projected to go up. Um where we see the big reduction that we talked about earlier is in language access going down 130,000 again
related to that fifth uh translator that we hired for this year that's allowing us to reduce our contracted costs for um for going forward. Um and there is one reduction uh overall which is face. So we fund our face team on title one and
uh because we have two middle schools going to one uh there's one fewer face position needed for next year. Next is uh my department finance and operations. So um two pieces here are the business office and operations which includes maintenance, utilities and
facilities. Uh for the business office an increase of about 3.62%. Uh this is mostly related to um we did a sort of an update of how we apply indirect costs. Whenever we have grants, there's a small portion of indirect costs that we can apply to offset administrative costs.
Um, those were mostly going to apply to finance. Previously, we've kind of realigned it so that there's a portion supporting finance, there's a portion supporting human resources, there's some offsetting facility costs. We've sort of spread it out a little bit more. Um, and we'll keep that methodology consistent um, going forward. Um, so you'll see,
you know, when we get to human resources and facilities, you'll see an offset there. And then in operations, there's a net reduction uh which is due to that maintenance administrator position that I mentioned that we're merging two positions into one and we'll just have one director overseeing the department. The net FTE reduction is
that one maintenance position uh going away. The next department is transportation and strategy which oversees transportation. This is the one that looks the most like Pac-Man. Um, and communications and then enrollment and uh the enrollment center and Mckin Vento. So that's all underneath um
transportation strategy. So communications and strategy and and the enrollment center not much going on there uh related to the budget. Transportation is the big increase. Um the FTE reduction that we noted before is sort of spread across all three of
these departments. Um in sort of proport uh her support of those departments. Um but really the big increase here is the the transportation human resources. So there's no FT changes in human resources. The budget was pretty flat. A
small small increase for compensation. The reason there's just the reduction is because of the indirect costs that I mentioned earlier. We're now offsetting some of the human resources budget with indirect costs going forward. Technology and data system. So there's a three and a half% increase. Um
that's driven by two things. One uh we did a sort of a review of all of our um positions throughout the district. one of the positions in the technology department when we evaluated it, it was lower than where it should have been on our compensation scale. Um, so this year
we brought those positions up to where they should be. Um, they're not like manager, director. There there are positions that we really needed to make sure that they're funded equitably throughout the district. Um, and then the other big increase there was software and just subscriptions that go
up from year to year. But no FTE change in this area. Superintendent school committee. This is your budget and your budget. Um, school committee is winning. There's a few more of us. So, I'm just
saying I think the exit receiverhip was to change this chart. Um, so superintendent is going down uh $79,000. again what was originally budgeted for FY25 um compared to what we'll have next year with a salary position um reduced
that cost quite a bit school committee the only increase was really just aligning when we created the support position for the school committee was based on estimated hours and estimated salary we didn't have actuals now we have actuals so it's just adjusting it to be reflective of what we currently
have um and there is technically an FTE increase because now we have the the superintendent position one of the rare instances where we add FTE but reduce cost and that brings us to the schools. So, um there's a few different things
that are part of the school budget or sort of the school high level category. Um so we have it in bands between elementary schools, middle school and high school. It also includes transitions which is our 18 to 22 year old program, our athletic department, nursing, uh retired teacher health
insurance which is an assessment from the state and then other state assessments like charter and choice um costs. So this is how those are changing. So at the elementary school um the increase of 2.44% um it probably would have been greater.
One change we did make in the staffing allocation methodology was prior to this year we were um guaranteeing three classroom teacher positions in grades three through five regardless of enrollment. Um we made a change going forward that the board were going to
make all allocations enrollment based. Um we did that for a few things. One, there were some schools that couldn't fill those three positions and so they end up having to go with two uh because they just kind of fill the third. Um and so we we did it a for fairness. Um, and then it also just sort of it it kind of
distributed the FTE more equitably across schools based on enrollment. So, we've made that change. We've talked about it with principles. And so, the impact of that is it's reduced um about eight classroom teaching positions where we had three guaranteed. Now, there's some grades that might only have two um
going forward. And again, no no teachers are losing their jobs so that they'll fill other positions in the district. um middle school, so 3.1%. Again, this one also probably would have been higher, but because we were able to
consolidate STEM and metaf into PEC. Um there were some efficiencies like we had four expert teachers before, now we're only going to have two. We had four interventionists before, now we're only going to have two. Um some administrative cost savings as well as a result. So um so again, that increase
would have been greater, but there were some offsets that brought it down. And then the high school had a little bit larger than typical increase. That's where Opportunity Academy um primarily lives, the expansion of Opportunity Academy. It's also where the bar funding, because the bar grant went
away, those costs have been brought into the general fund. Um what are probably the two biggest reasons for that increase. And I think that's all I'll cover there unless there's we get questions. Yeah, I think that the next few slides we can skip. They're
allformational. It's like enrollment and and major cost driver pie charts or bar charts. So we can take questions. Miss Tensley Williams. Sean, I have a quick question. Um the instruments are
they rented or um do we purchase the uh instruments musical one? I'd like to call on Rebecca Thompson to answer that question if the committee's okay with it. There we go. We do purchase the instruments for the district. Um, we
were able to make a large investment because of ESSER and it helped us to to really make an investment in the music program in that way. Um, and we collaborate with the community music school to en ensure that we're able to do that. Thank you.
Any other questions? Can you just tell me more about this athletic trainer position? Yeah, so um and I might call on Beth Gage to talk to about that one, but um we reclassified the trainer position um and brought the salary up. So that's the biggest reason
that sal that the section went up was reclassifying that position. We we had posted it and we couldn't find I believe we couldn't find anyone to fill it. Yeah, we we've been without an athletic trainer for the years. So, we've been contracting out for that. Um, so we we did agree that
after several attempts to recruit an athletic trainer that we had to re-evaluate the salary and be more competitive. So, has one been hired yet? Not at this time. How long has it been posted with the higher salary?
I will have to check on that. More than a month. Uh, usually we do rounds of two weeks. um just to refresh the posting and get it at the top of the list, but I can see how many times it how many iterations of that they have done. Has
there been an athletic trainer hired that's been an employee of the district since August? No. No. Other than the the athletic manager has been performing some like so we're doing a split where the athletic manager who is certified as
an athletic trainer is supporting um I don't know if it's for home games or for away games but one of the two. And then um the and then the vendors providing those services for the times that um our athletic manager can't cover that. And
what are we paying out to a vendor? It's an hourly rate, right? Beth, do you know? We don't. Yeah, we can get that. I'd like to know how much we're paying and how many hours they've been utilized since we started hiring them. Okay. Any
other Okay, final thoughts? Yeah, I think I mean we can skip. So I I think final thoughts is that you know uh for the most part this you know despite what we had initially thought in um
December um after going through all of the budget hearings and with the principles and going through all of the budget hearings with those that manage a budget we feel pretty strongly that you know we we have what we need for next year. There were no major reductions. We
didn't touch class sizes. We didn't, you know, do any layoffs or anything like that and everything that we have in the budget is aligned to um not just our our priorities. Um but the the goal the priorities that the school committee set at the beginning uh of the capacity
building plan process um you know we've been able to make investments in schools. I'm really excited for uh the the new school that we have um being built right now for next year. There are some uncertainties um you know the the
rising costs in transportation I like we know this has been an issue for many many years we were able to avoid a 22% increase but it was still uh you know a 12% increase in that first year and a 5%
increase in rates for the duration of the contract. So that continues to be an issue that we got to work together and and tackle because we know that um you know this actually impacts uh the city's
budget and their ability to provide other services that are that our residents in Holio deserve. Um so we we got to work together and do anything that we can and obviously the you know the there's a lot going on at the federal government. So, uh, seems like
once a week we find out something new and, um, you know, we're we're going to keep our ears to the ground and and, you know, keep anything, uh, you know, anything that we hear at the federal level in terms of cuts or anything like that. Uh, we're going to make sure that
we keep this committee apprised to any impact that um that uh would would be that the that would be had on the the budget itself. Um on the last slide that is in your
packet, we've included uh uh budget cost centers. So um one of the things you know the ones that were voted on this year as part of the capacity building plan a slight difference uh for next year in that uh the now pupil services
will be under the assistant superintendent. So um you know we you know we just included those two comparisons and that's the last slide on slide 79. I am interested in engaging to start talking about next year. I know that the school committee voted to
approve a process of budget transfers and the cost centers that we were going to manage the budget to. Um but so we have next year what we're proposing but I do I know that there's going to be some discussion in subcommittee around that for next year because uh what we agreed to this year around transfers and
cost centers was for this year during the capacity building plan. But we got to start thinking about next year so that we can organize our budget in that way and make sure that you know we keep the committee apprised to all the uh movement in the budget throughout the year.
But I, you know, want to reinforce my gratitude towards Mr. Wellahan and the entire finance subcommittee because um they've been working really closely with us and the budget advisory uh committee made some great recommendations that, you know, we can work towards. But
overall um I've, you know, I've been in I've been in school budgets for, you know, too long and there's been times where people leave crying. Um and uh this wasn't one of those years. Principles are really happy with what
they've been allocated and what they're able to do with those resources on behalf of students. Um and we've kind of made some adjustments in in district-wide budgets, but those were necessary because we're going to always strive every year, even when when revenues tight, we're going to strive to
keep the cuts away from the classroom. That's kind of Sean's mission. Sean's like main focus is how can we deal with these with less resources in a way that doesn't impact what's going on in the classroom and doesn't impact uh the things that matter most. So um that's
our presentation for today Mr. Wellahan. Thank you. Yeah. Um I just want to touch on the matter that we didn't really um we kind of we kind of glossed over um the capital um improvements that we've
done um throughout the district uh um using the federal money. I know. Uh just want to thank Sean and the facility manager also Sean. Sean Sean and Sean. Two Sean. Two Sean. Um just want to
thank them for their uh success um in terms of getting our facilities upgraded. Anything from playground equipment, the roofs, the windows, the doors. We've seen it all in the spreadsheets. Um we now have a capital
plan moving forward. Yes. Um for that that's something that was lacking and that'll be in our budget document. So um that was lacking really in the citywide too and now through the schools. So we had that moving forward. Um I think the
the plan um will be submitted to the uh full committee coming up. So again uh just want to thank uh Mr. stood to his team and Sean um for the budget that we're presenting. Thank you.
Any other question? Can I ask a clarifying question? Um so will this go to finance for a recommendation? Yep. I have notes here that I was going to go over. Um so I spoke with Dr. Rivera Cologne and she will have actually have a letter from the commissioner uh
indicating that the school committee can vote on the budget and approve the budget prior to July 1st. With that um in a moment I let me go through this and then I'll look for a motion. There'll be a motion to send this to the finance committee. This will go to the finance
committee. uh and the finance committee will then at some point prior to the next prior to when we vote on the budget we'll make a recommendation on the final budget to the school committee. So at this time I will entertain a motion to
refer this presentation to the finance committee. Moved by Mr. Zaza, seconded by Mr. Colmore. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Miss Feliciano. Mr. Zaza. Yes. Mr. Wellahan. Yes. Mr.
Colomar. Yes. Miss. Yes. Dr. River Cologne. Yes. Mr. Sheen. Yes. Miss Lefave. Yes. And Miss Sensey Williams. See. Joshua. Yes. Oh, mayor. Back on. Okay.
Sorry. She didn't realize you were back on. I didn't realize you were back on. Sorry. Um. No. No. I understand. Mayor. Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Thank you to Sean and the staff that came out tonight. Thank you
everyone. And uh the next part of the superintendent report is the Q3 update and uh progress towards go the district benchmarks and goals. Um I've included a lot of information. And I know that part of what the school committee is going to
be doing is uh providing input on the superintendent's evaluation process that the commissioner has to do by July 1. Um and I know that that's probably coming up later, but included in there is a complete write up. You can see um you
know we have uh quarterly data retreats with our team to look at data like DNA star dibbles. Um we we've engaged in a uh attendance root cause analysis constantly collecting data as we walk through classrooms. Um we have quarterly
SIP school improvement plan reviews that we do uh all in support and and supporting our principles and our school leaders and our instructional leaders on on making sure that uh we have quality instruction in classrooms. Our edsols are are having weekly coaching coaching
sessions with each principal supporting them around instruction. Uh and we on a quarterly basis report all of you to all of you um how we're doing relative to the uh benchmarks that we set. There were 15 set. We have about 11 of them on
track and four off track. Um many strengths to name. Um it's all in there. I think the one that I want to lift most is the support for our um early literacy curriculum throughout the district and the work that's going on. Now, I visited
a classroom in Morgan this morning to view uh the high dosage tutoring that's going on with uh with the Davis Foundation and Ignite Reading. And they were there to to just see it in action. And it's it's just a beautiful sight to see all our first graders uh um at
Morgan, not all, but like the majority of that of that classroom was engaging in tutoring and they're reading like they are reading. Um, and we've seen, you know, I'm not ready to share the progress of that Ignite reading, but the
early indicators that we're seeing right now, some kids are are making leaps from like uh kindergarten level all the way to second grade. Um, and it's just amazing to see. That's just a portion of the early literacy work that we've been working on over the past three years.
But, um, definitely that's a a bright spot that I want to lift. You know, I created a video the other day with Rebecca just highlighting the Prism grant, highlighting our early literacy work and and some of the bright and you know that those are some really bright
spots that not only we can see now, but um the impact that that's going to have on on a child when they're in fifth and sixth and seventh grade. Um, you know, I'm I'm really optimistic and and I want to make sure that, you know, I'll keep I'll be keeping a close eye on what's
going on um and with with some of our youngest learners because we're really excited about that. The middle school project is going well on on track under budget. Um, you know, we're excited for the ribbon cutting and uh we're excited to get some of the schools uh teachers
to be able to go take a look at the school. the work that we did around MTSS has contributed to uh a dip in referrals and suspensions. Um and the mentor the teacher mentor program is working. Um some things that we're slightly behind
is uh you know uh around early literacy is fully implementing those and delivering those high quality lessons. I think we set a benchmark of about 8% fully and right now we're, you know, uh uh 45 fully, 26 partially. Uh but we're
making progress every quarter. Um learner variability continues to be an area that we need to focus on for next year. uh we set out to make sure that um you know the the learner variability and the appropriate scaffolds were a part of
weekly planning and data meetings and that's an area where we fell behind. But we know we recognize that you know uh we couldn't just do everything all at once. That was one of the things that uh requires more attention next year, but we feel like we're in a good place and we have a good foundation to build off
of. um attendance and chronic absenteeism. Although we've seen uh 2.7% decrease in chronic absenteeism from um this point last year when the Q3 update was written, it's still still not where
we'd like to be. Um but uh despite all of our efforts, you know, our sharing of weekly data, uh attendance data and best practices, the work that the attendance task force is doing, I've been a part of the attendance task force like since I've been here and I I'm I'm really
optimistic about the work that they're doing now. They come together on a monthly basis and each school is able to uh share a problem of practice similar to how we do our quarterly SIP review. So, one one week we might hear from Sullivan, another week we might hear
from Dean, and they're all there listening and providing input and and like asking questions like, "Oh, you're that's what you're doing." Like, "We want to implement that back at our school." Um, and it's just been, you know, uh it's been fun to watch in terms of um how much more effective that task
force is compared to previous years and and the work that they were doing. Um and uh we set out to uh you know one of them was to have a a collective bar a teacher contract by June 30th. I'm not sure that's one that you know based on
our timeline seems to be slightly behind. Um in terms of our the superintendent goals, you can see in there uh you know um the communications one I believe is on track um with all the updates, the
quarterly updates, the letters to stakeholders um the short videos around instruction um and and just my overall emails to the school committee on on things that I normally hadn't uh communicated in the past. I I've tried to make an effort to
continue to build that that communication and and then in the community just make sure that we're pushing out and highlighting all the important work around instruction um so that people know what's going on. And uh for the student learning goals, you can
see the early literacy one. Um our middle school target, our middle school middle of the year data um ex definitely exceeded its target. We're almost at where we set for the end of the year, but none of the end of year data is in,
you know, um right now the windows still open and and we won't have the end of year star data in that from beginning of the year to middle of year. We, you know, we didn't kind of hit the halfway point, but we did see some progress. So, you can see that some of those are are
partially met. Um and then in terms of the district improvement goals, uh you can see that two of them are partially met and then two of them are uh are met based on my self assessment and the work that we've that that we've been doing. So all that information is in there and
I'll entertain any questions. Any questions, Mr. Colmore? Alamar, is your mic on? And uh I think we have to emphasize more in getting our parents involved
in their child. Whe whether it be in the music program, which is wonderful, a wonderful thing all year long, we've had schools coming in here and playing instruments
and things like this. It's wonderful. And this these are things that we really need to emphasize in our schools and athletics also. Uh we have to instill in
our students, choose a choose a sport during the course of the your school year to try out for a team. See if you like it. Talk to coach
about your potential in playing different sports. And not only that, but we have to look at the budget for sports to make sure that we don't start cutting and cutting
and MIAA says you have to uh change the curriculum in in your sports program to get to these things. And the last thing I want to talk about
is an after after school programs pertaining to athletic teams that you started Dr. quite a while ago. It's been working wonderful about our basketball, our
soccer, our things like that that have really come along and it's proven it's proven here in in our school systems because we're having championship uh
teams. And this is what we really have to stress about is get the parents involved whether it's coming to school or coming to uh these athletic programs
or music programs or things like this. Let's start emphasizing on those things. Yeah. And I think it's an important thing to note uh as the school committee looks to craft goals for the superintendent next year. It may be a thought of this of us to have a goal around parent and community engagement,
some of those aspects of it. But just some next steps on the superintendent's Q3 report and his goals and evaluation. Um so as you all know at the last meeting we approved an evaluation calendar that we have to fill out uh for
the superintendent. So um we have some hard copies here. However, there is a error uh in this. Something didn't print for some reason that and we don't know why Irene and I are trying to figure that out, but an aspect of it didn't print. So, I'm going to pass these out
and give a brief explanation um on this. This is a modified form from the um DESI approved superintendent rubric and it's modified for a couple reasons that the full superintendent
evaluation has four standards that the superintendent would be evaluated on with goals and meeting goals. Um, but the commissioner is in charge of the evaluating the receiver on the district improvement goals and the benchmarks
that the receiver set forward. So, it's a little bit different than being super. Yeah, I'm talking. We'll get right back over to you once I'm done talking explaining this. So, then um what we are going to be focused on are the goals that the school committee established. So there were six goals, a professional
practice goal, a student learning goal, and four district improvement goals that we had approved with the superintendent on there. So you'll see that um on page two of this document that you received
or it listed out all of the receivers's goals. So from all of the information that the receiver provided to everyone, it's our job to go through and rate him on the goals. Now what is missing at the top um in the little blue chart if you can
see where it's blue there are three boxes without words in it and that's what didn't get printed. Now we will get another copy to everyone but what didn't get printed if you look on page one it would say did not meet some progress and and significant progress.
So it's just those words missing that are there. So but you'll get another copy of that. So what your job to do is to fill out page two and go through page two filling out using the data. So and you have to evaluate if you believe that some progress has been made, if they've
met the goal, if they've exceeded the goal by the data that the receiver has sent to everyone. And then once you're done, you go back to page one and you do overall ratings for each one. Now for category for professional practice and student learning goal, it's pretty easy
because there's only one in each one. But for district improvement goals, there's four. So you have to evaluate what one you'll place there. Then each member needs to provide written feedback and comments and that's on the third page
for feedback. The preference is to get this done electronically if you can because the uh leadership and accountability committee has a very quick turnaround to get this turned around for the full school committee for our September not September for our
June 9th meeting. And so we'll be presenting these that were that the leadership committee aggregates at the June 9th meeting. Miss Feliciano, at the last meeting there was a date we gave out for when these are all due. I believe it was the 22nd. Is that Yeah.
So the 22nd they're all due back in so the leadership and accountability committee can do their job on the 20 28th at 4:00. So we need these by the 22nd. If they are not submitted by the 22nd, they will not be part of
the official record. And that's what this committee voted on. Um with that all of your documents are public documents. Everything you put in here, you write in here will be submitted along with the aggregated comments and
ratings to the super to the receiver and to the acting commissioner. Miss Tenzy Williams, did you have a question? I was not trying to cut you off. I just wanted you to know I had a question. But you know what? It's all set. Okay. Mr. Wellan, I'm not
cutting you off either. Um, are we going to receive this electronically? Yep. Okay. Electronically, it actually looks perfect. So, it can be right now. She's sending electronically everything is there when it was printed. For some reason, those three boxes disappeared. I
had May 23rd written down for the survey deadline, but you're saying the 22nd. So, um, is there any other support that Mr. Sodto is going to be sending us no everything we have to evaluate them on
the six goals are in the packet or within the meeting packet now we're within the meeting packet from the February meeting right we received some information February meeting so it's all there with the progress okay towards each goal so the February meeting and
yeah but it so it's cumulative so if you look at the information from that went out in today's meeting it would it's cumulative of the February information so it's so today's meeting Yeah. So, today is the most updated information with it. Thank you.
And then when we look towards doing this next year, it'll be a much more it'll be the larger process. And you have the entire packet. I believe Miss Feliciano sent it out to everyone with the model language. So, are you good?
Yeah. I I wonder if if Moguel can answer uh Mr. Colmore's question around family engagement efforts. Yeah, sure. Uh, good afternoon or good evening everyone. Hope everyone's well. Um, so one of the things that I think it's really important to note is that some of the work around family engagement that's
really starting to be codified this year is how do we have the opportunity to engage with families at not high intense times, right? Unfortunately, sometimes we fall into a pattern in our schools where we we're reaching out to families when things are happening. And so, like a a huge shout out to uh Mrs. Mrs.
Thompson's academic team which is uh I want to give a quick plug to our rocket into reading. Hope you all can attend. It's going to be this Thursday at the library and that's a unique opportunity something we haven't done in many years. First big thing we're doing is trying to get every kid to second kid a library card. And so we've sent out library applications. We're going to have a big
evening. They're going to receive a free book. They're going to have an opportunity to learn about different oral C skills. Um I think that's really important. Those are things that that we're trying to bring back, right? Finding different opportunities to engage with families, not when something is going wrong. Another shout out I want to talk about a little bit of our attendance celebrations. I would
encourage you to come to those. I'm going to give you make sure Mr. Sto sends a personal invite in quarter 4. Um and so this year what we've done is we reorganized that to not only celebrate students um beyond perfect attendance, right? We all miss days of work, right? Also most improve attendance, but we've
also created a community dinner. And so what happens is schools are celebrating with students and they're sitting with their principal and staff members and having a community dinner. Quarter four, it's a little bit we unfortunately I'm giving out a little bit of a secret. We're gonna have ice cream truck for our students in quarter four which they're
going to be excited about. Um so we're trying to find different ways and if you've been to the tendance celebrations you'll see that this year has been standing room only. Um it's been extremely packed. The other nice thing um that's really been sort of a nuance. We're really trying to also push the celebration of our high school students.
Everyone loves to celebrate elementary students but what about our 17 year olds and 18 year olds? And what we've seen is that the introduction of having OA there, Opportunity Academy, as well as our transitions, we're starting to see more high school students be excited about being celebrated um and giving them quick shout outs like, "Hey, you have wrestling practice, but you're
here." Um and so we're trying to find different ways to celebrate kids. The the simple pattern is this. When our students are celebrated, parents show up. That's what we saw today. Oh, my kids going to be in this. I'm going to show up for that. So, how many times can we pair the celebration of a student or
a small student performance with trying to bring parents in for something else? That's the key that we're starting to figure out. I think we need to be more strategic about that next year, but that's something we're starting to do. We're starting to see more of that. The other piece too that I just want to also don't want to be labor what I want to say. One of the things that we've really
tried to do with our face department, um, and I had a meeting today that's a good example of that. We're really trying to reshape ourselves in customer service. I think sometimes we forget about that, right? Parents have to want to bring their kids to school. And so we have to address it from a customer service standpoint. And sometimes that's
saying, okay, what's happened in the past that we need to address? What's the harm that we need to repair? And let's fix that. Right? Sometimes parents show up, they see us as a system, and we have to remind them that might have happened to you 30 years ago. We're a different system now. Right? And so those are some of the things we're doing. You're going to see some more things, but I would
absolutely encourage you to come to Rocket into Reading at the library. Uh that'll be from 5 to 7. Free pizza for the kids first. So I just want to say that. So, please feed yourself something else. A and other opportunities that we're going to be having, attendance celebration. We'll be inviting you to that as well as a lot of our step-up
ceremonies, field days. There's a lot of different opportunities that we make with kids and we just need to emphasize that and remind folks of that. All set. Okay. Mr. Rollan, what's the time for that? 5 to 5 to 7 Thursday. 5 to 7. Yeah. And even if it rains, we
have an indoor um plan. And also a huge shout out to Miss Rosaza and Miss Espinosa Muffson. They're part of the academic team. They are leading this work. I want to absolutely say that. So I want to give them a huge shout out. Thank you. Um moving on
uh to ratification of the interim superintendent's contract. I'll entertain a motion to ratify the contract of the assistant. I'll make a motion to ratify the Superintendent. Make a motion to ratify the contract for the interim superintendent. Moved by Miss Wilson, seconded by Miss Tensley
Williams. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Maza. Yes. Mr. Willahan. Yes. Yes. Miss Wilson. Yes. Mr. Mayor Garcia. Yeah. Dr. Rivera.
Yes. Yes, Mr. Fave. Yes, Missy Williams. C. Motion passes. Congratulations, Mr. Stoodto. Thank you. [Applause] We would have had a nice document here to sign tonight, but since both the two
out of three of the signators on that are sitting on Zoom, um, moving on to new business, entertain a motion the school committee vote to accept the out ofstate field trip to High Meadows, uh, Graanby, Connecticut. I'd like to make a motion to take these as a package. Is there a second?
Second. Any discussion on any of these trips or questions? I do have one to be the last one. So on the one for Morgan School for Connecticut Science Museum, is that
really that's not really a May 1 trip, right? Yeah. I mean that this actually wasn't even Yeah, we had had conversations about taking it because the the trip had already passed. Um so it just didn't get
removed. And so is it May 1st or May 23rd? May the agenda says May 23rd, right? that the there was one that already happened and I thought we had removed it. Irene, I don't know. It came into a PDF and so I cannot remove a PDF without an Adobe license. I tried
removing it. So, we did discuss about them being separated just in case this happens again. Yeah. So, there is one in your packet that already happened and um my apologies. I don't I don't know how it ended up. I'd like to make a motion to amend. Um Well, it's not listed on the one. Oh, it's not listed then. Never
mind. Okay. Uh all those uh roll call please Mr. Mr. Willahan. Yes. Mr. Kawar. Yes. Miss Wilson. Yes. U Garcia.
Yeah. Dr. Rivera Cologne. Yes. Mr. Sheen. Yes. Um Miss Lefave. Yes. Stancy Williams C. Motion passes. Entertain a motion to refer the budget transfer for review to the finance and operations subcommittee.
Second. I want to make the mot. Oh, I'll make the motion to refer the budget transferred for the review to the finance and operations submitted by M. Wilson, seconded by Mr. Colmore. Roll call. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Isaza. Mr. Willahan. Yes. Mr. Yes. Miss Wilson.
Yes. Mayor Garcia. Yes. Dr. Rivera Cologne. Yes. Mr. Chen, yes. Um, Miss Lefave, yes. Miss Tens, see I will uh entertain a motion to refer to
the an order to the joint uh city council school committee meeting introduced by Mr. Wellahan to have the superintendent police department discuss school resource officers for the new Peek Middle School. moved. Moved by Mr. Colommore. Is there a second? Seconded by Mr. Isaza. Any
discussion, Mr. Wellahan? Thank you. Yeah. Um, real quick, I I know our new police chief, uh, Mr. Keen, and he was discussing the, um, lack of officers. Um, recently, uh, I think was
in front of the finance committee. I know um he brought up the fact that he might not have enough officers to support the school system in terms of the um resource officers. So um I'm not sure what conversations he's had with um
Mr. Sodto, but I just like to um discuss that process and you know um his um his numbers going forward. Um I'm kind of concerned that you know um uh Pekka is being brought online. There's a there's
a doubt whether he can he can um supply the school with uh enough officers. So um I just like to um talk about that. Thank you. Any other discussion on referring this to committee? Roll call, please.
Yes. Yes. Garcia. Yes. Dr. Cologne. Yes. Yes. Yes. See. Motion passes. An order filed by
Mr. Wellahan that the school committee send a letter of recommen recognition to athletic director Melie Martin and a letter of recognition to the Pioner Valley Excellence and Teaching Awards. Um that the letter be sent. Someone want to move that motion? moved by Mr. Colmore. Is there a second?
Second by Mr. Isaza. Any discussion? Mr. Wellahan. Thank you. Yeah. Um I just want to um thank Mrs. Miss Martin for her uh uh efforts and her knowledge and her skills. And I just
um just want to um make sure that she's getting the uh u accolades for the award. I'm not sure. Um maybe we can have her um zoom in maybe and we can we can thank her in person and if we have
any um questions for her um she might want to do that. Thank you. Roll call, please. Mr. Mr. Wellahan. Yes. Mr. Colmore. Yes. Miss Wilson. Yes.
Mayor Garcia. Yes. Dr. Rivera Cologne, yes. Yes. Miss Lefave, yes. Miss Nancy Williams, C. Motion passes. Uh, entertain a motion that the school can commote to accept and approve the
meeting minutes to the February 27th, 2025 finance and operations meeting. So moved. There second. Second. Moved by Miss Wilson. Uh, seconded by Miss Tensley Williams. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Willahan. Yes. Yes. Miss Wilson.
Yes, Mayor Garcia. Yes, Dr. Cologne. Yes, yes, Miss Leave. Yes. Andy Williams. C. Motion passes. Moving on to committee reports. If you don't have a report,
saying no report is an acceptable answer. Um, you don't just have to report if there's nothing going on. Uh, policy and governance, no report. Finance and operations. I have a report real quick. Yeah. Um, thank you. Yeah, the committee's
um be meeting on May 22nd at 5:30. There'll be an um agenda posted soon and um I know um there's a budget transfer that we have to discuss and more work on the budget. Thank
you. May 22nd at 5:30. Thank you. Thank you. uh joint city council school committee report. Yes. Yeah. I met with uh excuse me, city
councelor Kevin Jordane and uh we're going to get together shortly and set up a meeting for June. Okay. And we will notify everyone. Thank you. Uh local control subcommittee report leadership accountability
measurement. Jet said our next meeting was mentioned before is the uh 28th at 4 o'clock at central office. Ongoing business and I'm going to turn things over to um Dr. Rivera Cologne uh just because I don't think
what's here is clear. I think she has an appointment. So yes, I'm going to actually let Anthony give the update and then I'll do the appointment. Yeah. So the you know right now we're putting a process together. So we the
legal service request for proposals was emailed to all attorneys that are members of the Massachusetts Council of School Attorneys um except for ones that uh were departments of municipalities. Proposals are going to be due May by May
22nd and uh will be reviewed by the school committee or an appointed review committee. Um the reviewers will ultimately select an attorney they recommend for interviews which are tenatively scheduled right now for June 9th. Um and ultimately the school
committee will make the final decision. So we are looking um for uh the vice chair to appoint members to that ad hoc committee. Dr. River and I tal Yes. And I talked to Mr.
to include in that ad hoc committee Sean and Beth to support us to that work. So the appointment would be Mr. Sheen and Mr. Isasa for the ad hoc committee for
pairing down the RFPs for the legal council. Okay. So the four members are Beth Gage, Shawn Mangano, Orlando Isaza, Devon Shien. Is that Are you making that motion, Dr. Rivera? Cologne.
Yes. Okay. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Miss Wilson. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Zaza, yes. Mr. Willingham, yes. Mr. Gomor, yes. Miss Wilson. Yes. Yes. Mayor
Garcia. Yes. Dr. Rivera Cologne. Yes. Mr. Ch. Yes. Miss Lefave. Yes. And Miss Ty Williams. Senorita. Motion passes. And just one little bit of clarification. So the goal is that the
committee narrows down. It may be more than one could be one to three. And talking to the vice chair, the plan is to do interviews on June 9th at 5 o'clock. So the whole school committee does the interviews of the council and then vote that night.
June Monday, it's 1 hour before a regular scheduled meeting. So then that will give ample time for the contracting process to begin to be prepared for August. Um, thank you, Mr. Sheen. Thank you.
We've already taken care of the evaluation tool. Moving on to announcements. You'll see the announcements in your packet. I have a couple other that I was asked to mention. Um, one of which is a reminder that tomorrow um is the state of the city address at 6:00 at city council
chambers. Um, and the mayor asks that uh everyone attend that if they can. Um and that the budget hearing that the um superintendent, business uh manager and the committee that at least the
subcommittee attends on the um on the city budget is the 19th of May at city council chambers. I'm assuming it starts at 6, but you know how those run like you don't know when you'll be called. So it's kind of just a kind of camp out,
bring a meal, wait. We are last on the list, just so you know. So if it starts at 6 and there's a few other departments like 2:30 in the morning, I'd count. So uh Mr. Wellahan,
thank you. Yeah. Um I know there's a ceremony for um Memorial Day on um Monday, May 26. Um I'm not sure whether there's going to be a formal invitation from the mayor's
office. Usually that happens. Um I just read it um in the paper. Not sure what time it starts. I don't know if the mayor has a has a starting time. Usually it's like around 11 o'clock or so. So um everyone 10 a.m. How how long? 10. 10
doors open. 10 o'clock. Okay. So everyone's um uh invited to show up and I usually save uh a couple donuts for Mr. Commore. Any other announcements? Okay, moving
on. Um, I will now entertain a motion to uh enter executive session for the purposes of collective bargaining with the Hoyok teachers association because an open meeting will be cause a detrimental effect to our bargaining position um and not to return to open
session. Moved by Mr. Zaza, seconded by Miss Wilson. Roll call, please. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um, Dr. Rivera Cologne. Yes. Mr. Sheen,
yes. M. Lefave. Yes. Sensei Williams. See. in executive session. Roll call, please. We can do the roll call and take a recess. Mayor Garcia. Yes. Here. Dr. Bone.
Yes. Mr. Sheen, present. Miss Lefave. Missy Williams. Ai. Mr. Isaza. Mr. Willahan. Here. Mr. Colomar yes and Miss Wilson present. It is currently 8:20. We
will take a brief recess until 8:24.