##VIDEO ID:NLYO7OWrxpU## e we're ready to start all right everybody we're going to call to order the regular meeting of the NBA Regional school committee and we will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance please join me if you would like United States Amer uh so we uh the next item on our agenda is public comment um I wonder if there's anybody in the gallery a public comment to share all right there is one public comment that I was asked to read because the commenter um our neighbor from Stow Christine Lorenzo is not able to attend for um her family is feeling a bit ill tonight so we appreciate her staying home and we wanted to read the following in her step uh the meeting materials will reflect the longer version of this statement so she wanted to be right into the record quote over 100 District parents and caregivers are in support of keeping four classrooms next year for the third grade at Center School please review the detailed document in the meeting materials we ask the school committee to place foundational Elementary classrooms as a priority in the budget all right so uh that is uh all we have for public comments so we're going to move on next to the consent agenda and I'll turn to Amy maybe for sure I move to approve the J AR 29th 2025 consent agenda I'll second that do we have any comments discussion all those in favor any oppos all right moving on uh the next item is the school committee chairperson update but there is nothing beyond the agenda that I have to share so we will next go to our student representative report and I see that Ryan m is here with us hi Ryan I I don't know if you guys plan on like talking about our meeting later today but uh I can talk about that a little bit um um so um m the m boy Dr boy and superintendent Downing they came down to n Shela met with uh our student council just to kind of talk about like furthering the relationship between the students and the committee so we first kind of we've developed like a more a system to start meeting a little more frequently so we decided we were to meet with three times one in um one like a little bit earlier in the fall and then before uh we break out for December and then one later so we're those meetings we just kind of talk about go different goals and how we were going to um like connect ideas so when we started talking today um something that came up a lot was how useful you guys were and kind of pointing Us in the right direction for each of our issues cuz a couple of the other goals there had like specific questions and then um you guys from the school committee were able to say that that's Dr Boon's job talking to her about that that's superintendent Down's job talk to about that so it was like it was helpful kind of like directing each other like in that um Essence and then AA and I also we with our delegate assembly for the Massachusetts Association of student Representatives um we both applied for director positions and um got them so there's like there's about seven or eight of us so I'm the director of resources and she's the director of communications so we each have our own like subcommittee who out work with us and so like it's a whole different like it's basically the whole message behind it was to increase the student representative um between different school districts so we got a meet and kind of see what other committees and other school districts are doing and so like the director of resources is what I do is I do a lot of like the material that's being sent out like the the actual exchange of what's kind of going on and Ava helps like we actually work closer together out of the directors so Ava like helps publicize a lot of what we do on like she runs the Instagram or Discord so that's like kind of the big thing that's been going on um the last like week or so was midterms weeks so a lot of like school was very centered on that um so not like too much other activities I we have hockey and basketball have games today and H and basketball had game yesterday so all you got for you guys you have any questions about that meeting or anything else fantastic thanks Ryan any uh any questions or anything you to say Amy and I were really um happy to meet with you just so that the committee knows this is one of the goals that we set for the communication subcommittee to to further the policy that is the letters jib jib thank you um which is the that the school committee will interface with the student council on a somewhat regular basis and so the communication subcommittee it organized um and the chair of the communications and the chair of the school committee and the superintendent will visit with the principal Dr Boon thank you for your time and the stuco and it was a really productive conversation just setting the parameters so um we don't look to disappoint but we do want to make sure we are guiding them and helping them understand what is within our purview and what is not and so the conversation was great we really did focus on the handbook which was cool so it was good right it was it was really great and um I think it's uh just beginning so I also want to just say on behalf of the school committee congratulations on your director directorship and I am so proud of you and and Ava for putting yourselves out there you know and and seeking more leadership opportunities than you representing Thea yep yeah putting Thea on the map as student leader organization so that's cool Ryan very awesome that's great I should probably also mention that as our senior representative AA will be representing nooba at District day at the capital at the invitation of Senator Kennedy so she'll be there as M's represent year so we think that's a great honor for our um school committee representatives to see governance go all the way the state heal yeah it's a great event I take kids every single year and it's really cool to watch I think this actually might be the first year it's no longer virtual so it had become virtual for a few years so having the kids all get to go back to the cathal school the governor will speak yeah so it'll be fun so awesome so great thanks Ryan um so as always if you have places to go feel free but if you want to stay we'd love to have you um so over now to the superintendent's report Madam chair thank you very much thank you to the committee this evening and for the public and for our guests that are here today um a few announcements before we get into the meet of today's meeting uh first in your packet is uh the second update from aset Valley collaborative is required you get four updates uh throughout the year from the collaborative this update summarizes the various programs within aspet has some costs uh of those programs in there and highlights uh some of the students that are in in those programs I would encourage you just to read that to become educator on the aspet valy collaborative and how they support all the member districts and even non-member districts that send students there um the next piece the Tri County Superintendent associate of legislative breakfast will be held on February 28th um and uh I I hear that we're going to be attending in Milford Madam chair I would really uh if you can uh represent our committee and join me I would appreciate that if not certainly we can find a representative from the committee to join me at that breakfast this is going to be one of those critical moments um we've been queuing up our conversations in the mass Massachusetts superintendent to engage with our legislators around the funding structures of our schools and how we need to be thinking about supporting budgets when Rising costs are outpacing um the funding of our school systems from on the state level and so uh the legislative platform for msas is uh nearly finalized and nearly public so I will be bringing that platform to the committee so you will know the points for which we are lobbying uh our state legislators uh on in this legislative session so uh more details to come on that uh but I do believe it's 9:00 in Milford location I can't remember so forgive me on that okay it's in Cal um there is a second breakfast uh the Wester County Superintendent association yes I get the pleasure of sitting on a couple of different round tables um Tri county is Worcester middle sex and norol counties and Worcester County is just Wester Worcester County Alone um and so we also have a legislative brunch that is for superintendent and legislators so I will be attending on our behalf on February 13th um and we'll be taking the same talking points uh to that event as well um I do know having engaged with all of our legislative Representatives that they all support um Educational Funding and and take our needs uh to the state house to debate with Senator Kennedy participating on the education committee directly um but there's many stakeholders to engage with and like anything in every budget season there's a lot of competition for our legislators Minds when it comes to making decisions around bu budgets um so we're going to talk more about that throughout the budget process tonight but I just wanted the committee and our community to understand that we are engaged and we're having conversations with the people that pull the purse strings for public education the last announcement that I have for tonight I want to reserve the honor to our assistant superintendent Miss Laur friend to present uh an announcement regarding our 8th grade math teacher Miss jacn masar turn it to assistant superintendent friend superintendent dy I would like to invite Miss Jaclyn macharia to the table to be recognized Jackie here she asked me if she should prepare anything so are you ready to perent I would say take you down friend I know you would so thank you for joining us this evening and thank you for to your colleagues for joining you as well miss Celia Sullivan colleague 8th grade colleague Miss Erica car colleague and of course principal OA um thank you for joining Miss Matari so I'm going to formally owledge you thank you so we have the privilege of recognizing one of ch's outstanding Educators this evening Miss Jacqueline macharia an e8th grade math teacher at the Luther Burbank Middle School the committee may recall that Miss macharia was previously honored as a Massachusetts level finalist for the presidential award for excellence in Mathematics and Science teaching this award is the nation's highest honor for educators in science technology engineering mathematics and computer science at the time time Miss macharia was recognized as as one of only three stem teachers recognized at the state level well on January 13th it was announced by the White House that Miss macharia has now been selected at the national level to receive this prestigious honor congratulations this honor uh and recognition was established in 1983 in his the highest award that a k through 12 math and science teacher can receive from the US government award e are selected through a rigorous process with a panel of distinguished mathematicians scientists and Educators both at the state and National levels evaluating nominations before making recommendations to the White House Office of Science and Technology policy teachers are chosen based on their excellence in the classroom and their dedication to advancing stem education as Miss machar's former principal I had the privilege of writing a recommendation on her behalf rather than paraphrasing that lengthy letter I would like to share a portion of it with the committee to truly capture miss maia's impact quote simply put Miss macharia is special she possesses those qualities any student colleague administrator parent or Community member can only hope for in an educator not only does she bring out the best in all those around her she demands the best known for pushing students to dimensions of thinking that to some may seem inconceivable to miss macharia it is just quote what we do in this m Maus classroom everyone can achieve and do so at High expectation no one ever forgets Miss mataria on any given day it is not uncommon for a student former student in reflection to stop by send a note extending thanks to miss macharia for her influence maybe not knowing it at the time but recognizing it at a future date for her unrelenting high expectations for helping students not only become a better math student but a better thinker that is a gift a gift for our students that has no bounds congratulations Miss macharia we are deeply grateful for your unwavering dedication may your life continue to shine brightly guiding and inspiring all those fortunate enough to learn from you to learn more about this achievement and accomplishment we encourage our community to read the White House Press release in the the superintendent report and in the common congratulations [Applause] it's not like a white house I don't know the thank you very you want to take a picture and with you too get back here and I do not want to photo bomb this thank you thank you Jackie before you go I just want to share with the committee just a little story so we were in here that day um doing some professional work and we were just about to start the meeting when the email came across to Jackie announcing that she would be repr representing Massachusetts at the White House and the room exploded Jackie had to leave the room she was so overwhelmed at the moment and you know Jackie we we all felt like we won when you when you stood up and you represented us and we cannot be more proud of you thank you and that's for all the kids that have come across your way thank you so thank you I appreciate it so thank you so much for being here we really appreciate the whole team coming in to support so um aome thanks for being here wonderful I'm a little cheer ey okay uh it's amazing to recognize good teachers and um you know the recognition of one is just evidence that there's so many more in our public schools and um yeah so all right guys moving on uh from that we have the updates on the agenda it says updates on strategic work and it says the FY 26 budget would you like to go into that now or do you want to save that for after the uh new business items Madam chair if we can move through the new business first I think it would warrant time afterwards um so if there's no objection with the committee we will um visit the budget conversation as we get to the finance and operations element of the budget see no objection we will continue on now um to the uh next item which is the program of studies presentation and Dr Boon is here to present to us I'll let up i' like to invite Dr Boon to come uh to the table and do the annual presentation of the program studies uh this program studies is an informational presentation uh to all of you um it does not require a vote but as um you know purveyors of the school district it's important for you to know the program and studies that is being executed our high school and with that I will give it to Dr boy thank you superintendent ding thank you um school committee for allowing me the opportunity to present the updates to our program of studies for the 2025 2026 school year pretty incredible um so you should have in your packet the change memo which I will be referring to uh and also happy to answer any questions that um any members may have um many of the changes were administrative in nature um such as updating the year and adding names of the members of the Administration address for nask um in our guidance section um and in several other areas um we amended the language around mcast um as a graduation requirement including in um language around competency determination in other areas you will still see mcass listed uh where students will take T in English Math and Science as is still a requirement under school committee policy um we added in uh a separate section for Innovation Pathways um as a general overview of the newly adopted um um Innovation Pathways um programming um and so that um providing families um with a a little bit of additional um information right at the beginning of the program of studies the one Department with where um there was pretty much um a large overhaul was in our applied arts department and that is directly related to the um the adoption of our um Innovation Pathways there were a lot of um course amendments shifts removing some courses adding some others to align with the vision um for our two currently adopted Pathways um which are business finance as well as um Advanced manufacturing and Engineering so you'll see programming and and coursework that really directly aligns to um those two Pathways um there is a section on the information pathway which is pending um uh Grant approval so we're getting that in preparation um there are two courses um I'm proud to um indicate and they have a little middle middle sex Community College logo two courses for dual or enur concurrent enrollment have been approved by middle sex um Community College so we have that um kind of burgeoning partnership um with middle sex and we're going to continue to expand um and explore other areas for our students to have dual enrollment opportunities so excited about that and and the the changes in our um applied Arts go over two pages of the change memo so there was quite a lot there um many of the courses were revised and or um created uh during summer Academy so I thank you to our superintendent assistant superintendent friend for that support uh and then one um additional exciting offering that advanced course workor is um we are beginning a partnership with Project Lead the Way so we're very excited about that um in English um We are continuing to hold off on offering our world Humanities as English um continues to look at its um its course trajectory uh it's a dual um kind of co- talk class between social studies and English um so that will not be offered for next year as we continue um to look at our course offerings we amended some course titles to better reflect the experience within um within the courses for our students and then there were two classes that were removed um propaganda and censorship uh senior elective and English comp 101 the um propaganda and censorship was removed for low enrollment students just were not signing up for the class and then same thing with the comp 101 and that also was a dual enrollment with Quin sigan Community College um and that relationship proved to be a little more challenging for the high school to maintain because of increased costs to participate in the program from Quin Sig they have increased their fees pretty exorbitantly um and then also set a limit on the number of students who could take the class so we're feeling that um a partnership with middle sex is um more beneficial for us at this juncture um no changes to elll um in fine and Performing Arts there were some revisions to course descriptions to be more in inclusive um music production too as um Mr McCarthy continues to expand that Pro programming and offering students different avenues for um for creativity um behind the curtains not in front of the curtains um and then we are beginning an exploration of some of our electives and you'll see this in science as well moving to every other day for us um for a year instead of semester based to open up student ability to take those classes in particular students um on who are perhaps receiving services and that those services are every other day so we're looking and starting um starting every other day for a year in music as well as some science um science electives and taking a look we'll be looking at the data and then perhaps expanding that but starting first in music and in science um adding in a technical theater class as well um students have expressed in interest in technical theater um in math the one change is to change sequence um for our honors level and accelerated level 9th and 10th grade um the course progression so starting geometry in 9th grade and then Algebra 2 in 10th Grade that will 100% allow for a smoother transition into pre-calculus in the 11th grade um we're seeing gaps um it's too long a time from Algebra 2 in 9th grade to pre-calculus in 11th grade with geometry in the middle bless youah um there are gaps in students knowledge they they don't retain they're not retaining and so um changing up the sequence um will um afford our students a better experience in in pre-calculus um in our science um some slight changes related to mcast students will take instead of um must and then removing our AP and honors chemistry from the grade 12 course sequence we're just generally not seeing that this is a course sequence that students follow obviously if there are any um students who move in who might need this obviously exceptions to the rule but as a um you know as a just generally it's it's not a course sequence that um students follow um in our two-year biology class um we're shifting that to be a two-year caught sequence for biology and physical science um in our honors biology and honors chemistry a shift from five to six credits um our Discovery um after kind of looking at study hall numbers is the five credit classes create this weird blip in a student schedule that block them out of electives um and create a weird like a five-day a week study hall because those two additional classes that's the the um the labs meet two out of the eight days so it does that follows no pattern and and creates barriers in student schedules um and the additional lab time is definitely something um that is that is valued and then here's that change science semester electives to every every other day for a year those are junior senior electives um and again we're going to monitor this um and the intent and um is that it'll um it'll increase student access to those classes um and if we think about it music and science could Nest nicely together where before there have been barriers to participation so we're really trying to remove barriers um this could flow into um additional courses additional subject areas like social studies but right now the US government in politics Will we offered first semester we'll take a look at how those every other day courses work in those other in music and in science um in our special education department um we're removing the math standards grades 9 10 class and moving over to a co-taught model for grades 9 and 10 um instead of more of a a sub separate a subpar class our transition to Independent Living that's our till class um based on the the subject nature of the class um The Proposal is to change to a past fail and then offer that class every other day for the year instead of a semester also nesting nicely in with science um as well as music uh and then uh amending mcast language uh from uh our special education programming uh descriptions there are no changes in Wellness at this juncture and then for World Language removing um the college preparatory level in our French German and Spanish four it does reflect how the courses are currently run the levels are collapsed at Advanced course at the the um level four um for French German and Spanish so the college preparatory designation does not make sense um adding adding in honors and honors LEL for French and German one which brings that those two uh courses um and languages in line with what's happening in Spanish and then um adding in German for Heritage speakers which was a very successful pilot this year uh at the end of the program of studies we're adding in um a course for our Innovation Pathways it's called Pathways to success career exploration and preparation this is our Capstone project and internship course that is required for the Innovation Pathways and then our EMT course description um the changes there reflect uh a change in how the program is organized and being run with the EMR course first then the EMT course in partnership with Harvard um for um year one um so it reflects those changes in our em course work uh and those are the changes to the program of studies thanks Dr Boon that is a sizable amount of work no doubt and I want to just um take a moment to um offer my gratitude deep gratitude to all my department chairs for their hard work in um very thoughtfully and thoroughly we went through a really a rigorous collaborative process and it would not have been done without their hard work and the teachers in their department so it was really a lift fantastic um I have a couple of questions but anybody else have any questions uh first just to col it was wonderful reading this and seeing the breadth and depth of the program seems like a lot of great offerings uh and as a tech guy I particularly appreciate that uh I do think there might be a small uh little error in the prerequisites for AP Computer science a in the chart on page 20 because it doesn't seem to make sense if you catch anything like that please let me know because um my secretary Mara and I will be making those edits so can you point me in that so page 20 Page 20 it's near the middle a computer science a it says engineering drawing part one as the requirement and the description seems to be talking about other classes okay thank you for catching that what sh said about the bread of the courses it's really exciting I have a question about the switch with the math um courses geometry first in Algebra 2 what happens with algebra 1 students who would still be recommended for Algebra 1 will still take algebra one right now the course switch is only those students who in ninth grade would be um a Rec recommended to take geometry the switch will be or sorry Algebra 2 the switch will be they'll take geometry and then move to Algebra 2 students taking Algebra 1 will take Algebra 1 then geometry and then Algebra 2 you I I'm sorry I I feel very dense right now um the chain or currently kids right now they take they might take Algebra 1 in 8th grade and then they freshman you they were taking Algebra 2 right yes and so the switches any student recommended currently who um any student recommended to take Algebra 2 they'd be taking geometry instead of Algebra 2 so that the it the sequencing just makes more sense because there's um a loss of learning is what um Mr Melbourne and members of my math department have have seen from taking Algebra 2 in freshman year those students who are potentially who are recommended for it then switching over to Geometry which is different is different um and I'm not a math person but then switching back to Algebra 2 or sort to um to preal there's there's a lot of reteaching that has to take place whereas the other sequencing the time is closer so there's less there's less of a a a learning loss if you will yeah okay that makes sense do you just want to get Algebra 2 closer to pre-cal yes that's the short answer I should have said that yeah that's yeah um I had a couple of questions one can you just re explain the middle sex partnership what courses and who teaches them and where do they take them I'm glad you asked that so if you take this is by the way an awesome opportunity for our kids um it does have some complexities to it though especially with scheduling that rotates that's what I'm wondering I might have printed the wrong version of this so I'm going to say Tech Essentials for the mod world is one course that um has been approved for Middle sex Community College um credit dual enrollment or concurrent enrollment and the way that that um the way that middle sex Community College kind of runs their approval for dual enrollment is that our our staff um and in this case um Bridget Hanigan and stabos and andreopoulos needed to um share our our s syllabi the syllabus for for the classes that we were considering as well as um the curriculum guide um teachers had to submit their um their resumés for a consideration and then middle sex Community College it's by department so their department head along with um someone in more their like central office equivalent um took a look at credentials at the course description um and took a look at their own courses to see if there was a match um and then they give approval and what's the beautiful thing about it is that our teachers will be teaching those courses for dual enrollment Credit in our school day so um a barrier that we saw with other Partnerships was they required their staff to come in and with a rotating schedule that often doesn't work or there's a a requirement that their staff they're not even in consideration that our staff um would be qualified um the tech Essentials for the modern world I believe it's that one was also is really wonderful is that is one of not only one of the foundational classes for our Innovation Pathways our ninth so our nth graders in Innovation Pathways will be able to take that class and earn dual enrollment credits as nth grader because what we're offering even at the nth grade is as robust if not more than what they're offering at msex um which is is pretty cool so it is um it's a process that is multistepped but but fairly straightforward I will say that it does vary Department to Department um we looked at uh attempting to get our accounting class we have a um an articulation agreement um with um with quinsig uh of that and we're we were looking to get dual enrollment credit um but we don't have a staff member who has a masters in accounting so they will often look at at credentials but the two that we have approved are 100% approved our students can take them um there is it will work there's a small there's a if they want do moment credit I don't think the accuplacer is a requirement any longer and our staff teach them um and a student who takes the class does not have to be dual enrolled they can take the class just to take the class and that was um another issue with the comp 101 every single student had to be duel take it for dual enrollment even if they didn't want to and so this case students have options who goes to middle sex yes yeah fantastic any other questions on the program yeah um I have some questions about the science um changes to the science um program of studies so looks like one of the changes is eliminating AP Chemistry no oh did I misunder understand so um if you look at the the the chart basically chemistry is a a a an typically an 11th grade class and so it's just removing it from the 12th grade typical trajectory because most of our stud students even students who move in they're not taking it in 12th grade there if there is an exception a student H you know from a move someone who moves in from another school or another District or another state um and wants to take EP chemistry or honors chemistry senior year they haven't had the ability to we make those individual decisions but as a sort of a general rule of trajectory the students typical pathway it we're not seeing that any student take chemistry in 12th grade got it right so not not removing it at all I was drawn to the red AP Chemistry but now I see no it's in the senior only on the junior um my other question is um were there any changes to the pre prerequisites um for the science classes um because not that I'm aware of okay no I don't think I don't think m here brought forward any changes to prerequisites I'll follow up with you separately on that because it's a pretty specific question I thought I noticed a change but it's not highlighted happy um the last question I have is this partnership with middle SE will that open up opportunities for um seniors who their schedule limits what AP classes they are able to take um like would that allow student who couldn't take AP an AP language class because it complexs with an AP science or math class to to take advantage of doing that through middle sex or is that no no it's it's course specific um and we wouldn't look to get dual enrollment for AP classes we those get college credits depending on how a student does so we're looking in other areas for advanced coursework um for for um more students so I I I'll give you an example um our and I I this is one I one idea but one idea we are exploring through our English Department is potentially our American class right all of our Juniors take American Li is there an opportunity for dual enrollment partnership we don't know um we haven't gone through the steps yet but could there be an opportunity for an American to be a duel moment for an examp as an example um we're looking at um potentially um I'm not sure if uh statistics maybe one so we we had it uh an early meeting with Bridget Hanigan who went through the approval process for those the two classes in um in the applied Arts area um the other department heads um and myself sat with her and walked you she walked us through the process that she went through um she and stavos so we are um we now making steps to to reach out to the um their respective department heads um with within middle sex um to start that dialogue any other questions on the program St I have one final question and it has to do with the gra the mcast component can you guys help us understand where we're heading and this is a very big question so maybe it's for another meeting but can you help us understand the graduation requirement mcast and what we're going to do with that so right right now all of our um graduates our future graduates in the class of 2025 have all taken mcast which was a graduation requirement by this the state at at the time um they were 10th graders um and I can happily report that every single um senior has passed mcast so we're not um worried about that um my understanding is that mcast still lives in the school committee policy as a graduation requirement so all of our um all of our seniors are are in really good shape um to to to graduate the shift in language in at the beginning of the program of studies referenced um competency determination um which comes from the change in the law and um School Lo local districts um identify what those competency determinations are and right now it's outlining um all of coursework that's required um as well as mcast that's our local competency determination all of our seniors have met that Madam chairman please um so this is um something that we're discussing in superintendent circles as well and engaging with the governor's office govern office is announce the forming the commission that is going to be looking at competency determination for Statewide competencies we don't want to get in the scenario where school districts are competing over whose uh composite determinations are are U to than others and so we know we need to develop a Statewide standard for competency determination so that being said when we look up policy ikf our current policy in that policy it does reference that a passing score on mcast is required so that still stands even though the law was removed because we adopted that into the policy so that still stands for us and as Bo and said our all of our students have met that so that gives us a little bit of breathing room uh I spoken with Miss bessels I'm going to bring this topic to the policy subcommittee as an informational topic um but it is something that we're going to want to uh U come back to this committee with a recommendation for how we phrase that policy for the future and at the same time we're watching the state so we may find ourselves in a place where we have lack of a better ter make placeholder policy while that law is being developed Alita would you put this in the parking lot competency determination just so we don't not that you would forget Kirk it's a big one but just so I don't forget um I'll be joining policy subcommittee on the 5th six the 6th of February to begin the conversation uh we won't come out of that meeting with a recommendation it's going to be a time to sort of set down the work that's in front of us and what we need to do um I I do have to say our ikf policy is well written and flushes out all the courses so we're in a much better place than other school systems across the state that are looking to add pieces of their policy now because we have to demonstrate that students um are meeting the standards in critical courses that were the equivalent courses to what was required on those encast tests that they were required to pass under legislation before the law was changed so we stand in a good position so I don't think this is going to be a controversial topic for us but it is work that will need to be done so we have it defined okay thank you may I ask a question is the requirements still so all of our students will still take U the biology and English and math and our policy states that they must pass those three uh get a passing grade on each of those three ncast not it says specifically a passing score on the doesn't designate right so a what a proficient score is that the right term no a passing score is not proficient a passing score is anything that's above the warning category so in the needs Improvement category that is considered a passing score so what is clarify what is what is the correct language for that in our policy the passing score on mcast so mcast lives in our policy so in other words even though the voters right voted mcast requirement out of the legislation in November it still exists in the MOBA Regional School District because it's cified in our policy so my question is if that is the case that that is written into our policy going forward do we need to have that clearly stated somewhere front and center where everybody knows that kids from the nooba perspective passing the mcast has not gone away just because the law changed correct and we'll be updating our community Through the comment of that effect so this this is an informational update for our community that we'll be giving as a followup is it and to the community updates does this does this get the new program of studies get shared out with families at the end of each year with like the summary of the changes and stuff awesome thank you and with course selection about to get underway this is the main tool our aim is to have this um on our website and email families on Friday by Friday um take a look at the the correction that shandor identified I want to make sure that that we take care of that and then we do um print about 300 copies every single eighth grader gets a hard copy to bring home to their families um and then there are a few extras we leave um in each Middle School um and our our counselors have hard copies as well um we have a few extra for any new families um come in students transfer we like to have a few of those so wonderful thanks for all that hard work we appreciate it Dr thanks every here all right guys our next matter of business is going to ask for um a vote from you because we have a couple of changes on our dear J advisory and Jackie is going to give us a little bit of background and then we'll share with you what we need your vote on thank you so in June of 2024 we appointed an Advisory Board of 11 members to continue to support the district and school committee's work and commitment to diversity Equity inclusion and belonging and the nature of that group is ever evolving and it is a it's a really important uh commitment and individuals who are appointed who recognize that they may not always be able to meet that commitment have since um step down from their position um as a Advisory Board they're required to maintain um a particular number of members in compliance with open meeting law so we have three individuals who have stepped forward to fill vacancies and I can tell you who those people are if you would like do you mind to get the court for a moment and I'll just plug this already up there oh the can you refresh that for me oh no it's refresh never mind so any um names that are crossed off are people who have a withdraw on their um their position and then three individuals um it's actually um Chev so it's s h e r v o n s h e r v o n yep can you just scroll up for me alen just that you can see that there a couple higher up so anyone with their name struck out has um is no longer participating and then the three members at the bottom the three individuals have put their names forward uh for consideration and appointment by the school committee this evening so we'll be looking to seek your approval for these for these people to parents slash former parents or current parents um past parents and then uh a former student of the school district which one is the former student oh do you guys have any questions before we make a motion just I don't see Lancaster representation is there anything we can do about that I would say that anyone who is interested in being considered should put their name forward and reach out to me and or Leah especially because it is the end of January and we'll be looking for appointing members in June of this year for next year's continued work so yes and so we had a a rather lengthy conversation with dear J about what is the right size and they were confident that the original 11 was the right size to do the work to manage the subcommittee work etc so as you guys can you can do math uh we have four who have stepped down three who have stepped up and so therefore we have one vacancy and perhaps our Lancaster reps can spread the word that we we could use some Lancaster representation although I am of the mind that this work doesn't necessarily need that to be legitimate but it's always good to have representation I wonder if there more questions all right so Jackie you want to make a motion to appoint these new members yeah I motion to approve the appointment of three new Advisory board members to Dear J Chevron Lori and Owen I second that any further discussion all those in favor very good anybody opposed anybody obain did you vote yet I did vote Yes fantastic thank you all right everybody thanks for that and please note to the community that we do have one vacancy still on dear J if anybody is interested uh anybody from Lancaster especially please let me know or let uh Dr Jackie rer know or uh either or all right so moving on the agenda to the next item here our favorite I'm going to hand it over to Amy vessels because we have a first policy reading and I think as always guys the way to do this is to explain to Amy anything well first of all Amy's going to give us a summary of anything that was substantive and then you guys can um provide your thoughts and um she will go back to the sub Community to manage it I don't have anything to say this time fantastic nothing substantive nothing that we no nothing that we hash any uh commentary on the redline versions go for it Scott so one should be relatively uncontroversial the other one's going to be a little bit more involved um so jic is a f is and Frank a is an Apple so I actually looked at the masteral laws that this is referenced to and the first one is actually a definition of hazing we don't have a definition of hazing and I think we should include include it thank you anything else that you want to just that just on that one that's the only thing I want okay the other one is jih so this one to had me a little more concerned as far as like due process and the like um so um with respect to like searches by staff I don't think it says anything about what staff can make searches like there a certain level of staff that needs to be you know only principles can do it or you know like who gets to make the decision of who does a search and you know I you know if I think of like you know the judicial system if you want to do a search you need to get a warrant I don't you know I don't know what the equivalent of a warrant would be in a School's district like if you need the superintended to sign off when you're doing a search I just feel like there should be more due process before searches are conducted so as a Supreme Court case that articulates that all searches must be quote reasonable that is the equivalent which is you know we could debate that um but the who is a much more important question and I wonder if the superintendent has any opinions on that I think what we do on Mr Pal's question is just get direct legal guidance on that I think that's the way to handle you you know your question because it would be who is the designated School official that would do that any school official would fall under those protections but I think Mr pal is speaking to our local procedure on that so um I don't have an opinion who it should be I just think it should be more clear about who is allowed to and who is not allowed to yeah we'll confer with legal counsil on that and and bring that back to the group um we'll look to bring that back if I an expeditious might be able to do that for the Monday meeting so Jackie could we also so the way if we if you're going to go to that length to consult I think it would be good for you'd ask the the first top section of searches by staff it specifically referenced school lockers and that would be I think part of like is it only the lockers that were it also represents automob but backpacks Pockets yeah bags uh right and so like this this is a good point of how policy what is the spirit of policy and then from an oper implementational standpoint like what would that look like so I would I would want it to be more clear I guess if we're going to get legal counsel as to what falls under property thank you I have another thought about with that same policy further down where it says um that number one under the interrogations um where law enforcement officials questioning students during the school day and it says the School principal or desn't he will be present when possible and I I'm not comfortable with that I feel like that should be there I I guess you could say if if the student is 18 but if the vast majority of our students are minors and I don't feel comfortable with that potential of them being interrogated without another adult there I would feel more comfortable if it said a pres a principal or their designate will be present in the story I actually have more a bigger concern with this particular item which is we should be taking all efforts to not have interrogations take place during school hours like I would say only under an emergency circumstances like there's a bomb thread or something like that that you have an interrogation otherwise there's no reason for law enforcement to be conducting interrogations during school hours so I don't know what if anything we can put in the policy around this but I'm very concerned with the school being the represent for students during an interrogation I I I think we should go to all efforts possible to for the school not to be the representative of students I wonder too how this crosswalks with the um the SRO contract correct because we did a lot of work on this last year somebody on this committee was very adamant about one provision in that SRO agreement but we we worked it out you worked it out no we didn't no this is the P this is this reflects excuse me I didn't recognize I'm sorry go for it go for this policy right here is a mirror image of what is in the SRO and I concur with my colleague Miss Park and my colleague Stow that I don't believe under any circumstance I don't care if they're 18 or not it says right there schools have legal custody of the students now I don't know if that that the school actually reaches the level of what's considered legal custody of Comm of Massachusetts but assuming we we operate in the same realm as legal custody I think it's imperative on us to to to look very carefully at this provision I don't think any student under any circumstance should be questioned by police absent their parent and or legal representation and with all due respect of I see Dr Point's left as an attorney I don't want a school administrator uh advocating for my child I would want the parent or their their principal I know this will cause some wrinkles with the with the SRO and the chief of police in Bolton but we did talk we talked about this a long time during when we do the SRO and I left it that this is now the matter of public record parents should be aware that if their child is is in the school and the police officer wishes to interrogate excuse me interrogate them that our policy is that they can be interrogated absent parent being present and legal counsel so all right so we're going to clearly bring this entire thing to legal counsel and ask their opinion yeah yes and I'm going to be an opportunist if you don't mind um so I didn't prepare notes on this so I will speak minimally so I don't overp speak a message is going to be going out to our community on Friday it just so happens I received legal Guidance just this afternoon from our attorneys uh regarding uh the presence of ice officials uh if they were to enter into campus in order to interview detain an individual whether it be student or staff and what is clear is that they do not have the authority to do that if that under fura uh we protect the Student Records or the employee records and that we are the custodians to that so our staff have been informed at the buildings that if any law enforcement official local to Federal uh were to approach the building Au those requests that we do not provide them that access and that they are to refer that to the superintendent's office because the only examples that our attorneys have advised us where that would be allowed is if a Judicial warrant were PR presented um and that's where things get a little Wiggly because um not all warrants are judicial warrants which is why they would need to be forwarded to us so that our attorneys could review them so this is a Hot Topic um and we'll be taking it to our attorneys to give guidance on this policy as well Jesse is also putting a presentation out for school committee members on Friday at 10:00 a.m. for anyone who's interested in attending at a zoom okay Madam chairman before you move on and not to belabor the point but I asked this question rhetorically because you raised the issue of perhaps having our legal councel look at this policy just looking at the interrogation by police portion of this policy I will ask it rhetorically you may respond if you so choose but why do we need uh the advice and consent of legal councel on this particular issue the right to councel is a fundamentally protected constitutional right with all due respect I don't need our legal our attorneys charging the district to tell me that we all know that um if it's the will of this committee that if the because we have a police officer we we we pay a police officer to be an high school so if it's the will I mean if it's the will of this committee that when it comes to criminal investigations and criminal interrogations if the will of this committee is that no child in the district no matter what their age is will be interrogated by a police officer absent the presence of their attorney excuse me absent the presence of their parent or their attorney so I've been clamoring for this since the SRO but this is the policy and this reflects what's in the SRO yes so I know you said it's but I will just say that my inclination is to ask the question only because I don't know what I don't know and working in a school and having been involved in scenarios of the sort I don't want to tie hands in a way that is through my own ignorance so that's why I would look to ask just to make sure there isn't something that I'm missing especially in in this time of you know grave threat so um I would ask I would think that the committee would want to get legal council's opinion on this policy and if this policy has been this is what masd says it should be and I want to know why may I mam chair please I think the conversation with council is more than that it's not a review of the policy it's a review of the questions that this committee brought up regarding the policy that is the discussion for the attorney so thank you for attorney gleon to put his point into the record because because that is what we will search for validation on from our legal council so that we are on strong footing moving forward I just because I thought long about that too about the piece about the effort made to contact the students parents or guardian and my first thought was that the parent must be informed before a child is involved in anything and then as I thought about it I thought okay well what's the reason why an interrogation must might be happening and that is we're at an emergency if that is happening so then if we are at an emergency level how do we do do our best to make sure that those that are responding can do their job and protect our children at the same time which is why I landed on an adult you know principal or their design because it saves the time but in in bigger scheme of things right it really should be apparent okay so I think we we know what to do anything else in the first reading Sean uh I I just throw out their policy ecaf the one about security cameras seems kind of related in terms of providing law enforcement access to stuff and so what what are the letter Sean is that today or was that a previous it it's a current policy I believe that's not in the first reading correct we haven't passed it because we haven't talked about it again we got some more confirmation from legal council and we haven't discussed it yet it's not on the agenda well what I'm just saying is that in in discussing this one we should make sure that the policies make sense philosophically with each other that's all and that's on the list of things that Kirk was going to have to get back he got back to me about and we need to meeting again talk about okay we did we did get that back and we didn't discuss that but it's on the agenda right now so I'm not trying to discuss it now I'm just saying if we're seeking legal counsel we should Loop that into the same conversation okay got Jack yeah and part of the same conversation is that interrogation is kind of a very particular word but there are situations and scenarios where schools are in a a unique position to maintain the health and safety of children who are being received in unsafe situations in the Department of Children and Families certainly is responsible for that but I could see situations where there may be some interaction with law enforcement and want to make sure that that wouldn't be a barrier that a parent has to be present especially if that parent could be a perpetrator got it any other things on the first reading sh I just have one um it's policy jic which is student discipline okay and in that policy it talks about each principle shall include prohibited actions in the student handbook um and I am going to I know that there's resistance in not wanting to rewrite policies that nasc has written but I really think that kids do not do prohibited actions you know the kids that are acting out behaviorally are doing so because they are unable to make better choices so that telling children what to not do does not tell them what to do and kids that are having trouble making good choices behaviorally need to be told what things are okay to do so my plug for that is tell students what to do tell them what you want them to do you we may have to legally put in the prohibitions as well but rather than telling them what not to do and then let them guess about what it is that you really do want them to do which is what kids who are behav really struggling often are doing let's just tell them what we want all right so that's something that you guys can discuss at policy yeah can I just throw something on there for that there's some like the formatting is funky on that one we didn't do all the switching for um certain like pronoun use and then also making sure that we're keeping the statement around who are the protected classes like rist ethnicity making sure that the that statement at the bottom for the reporting is consistent with another policy where we talk about um I can't remember off the top of my head but there was a particular policy where it we went we just recently went over it and and updated it with more information about just protected classes I can't remember which policy we did but that we also got clarification on that recently that that's being inverted back to the 2020 version I think that's what you're talking about maybe yeah we can talk about that yeah okay anything else that policy needs to consider all right as always guys thank you a gazillion times for taking all of that on we're going to move the agenda now to the next item um jumping over to finance and operations and if there is no objection from the committee I'm going to ask the end be actually moved to the the third item on finance and operations and we're going to start with the oper the December operating budget report and then move on to the budget update finishing with the ending see no objection let's do that and I will turn it over to Kirk and Ross great I'd just like to introduce Ross McCaron finance and operations director to go over the operating report uh thank you everyone I know that we have uh more to come with regards to finance and operations so I'll be brief with the operating report from December uh just to note um the salary uh differentials that we have within our schools make up a majority of that Surplus that you see below is the footnote number two um also we we've signaled this to the school committee before that we likely will need to use circuit breaker I don't see a position where we do not uh use additional circuit breaker during this school year uh to offset the cost that we're seeing um and a couple other things to note um facilities uh obviously the the Winter's really here um we've had snow removal happening things like that but you never know what happens with the rest of the the year whether temperatures climb or go back down or we get more snow or not um but that's a project projection obviously also the projection in the substitute line is noticeable because it is negative um if you recall from the budget Workshop we've uh made some adjustments for the FY 26 budget that match um our substitute usage more tightly um over the last few years now that we're a little bit further away from Co so so I think our projecting is better for FY 26 with regards to that so uh this was reviewed with budget and warrant subcommittee already um and other than that I don't have anything else all right so I feel like we're heading now to the main event which is our budget update and Kirk has a good deal to share with us here we do Madam chair thank you very much um and mren are you going to I'm going to use the clicker as soon as Masterson gets it to the thank you well since our last meeting we would like to update the committee on new information that we have been able to obtain since we last met when we met two weeks ago uh we painted a a forecast of that included all asks if we had all asks in terms of what we would need to execute the program here they are knowing and recognizing right from the beginning the affordability of those asks was not realistic and so we are now at at the point of whittling back from that number uh so we can get to a budget number that is palatable for our towns while also maintaining a highquality educational program for our students and so what we're going to paint a picture for you tonight is the new information uh that we have along with some of the thoughts we have on how to reach those Target numbers and I will hand it over to Mr mcaren uh so he can walk us through through those elements thank you superintendent ding so for those of you who've been on the committee for multiple years we're going to follow a similar format that we do um as we always present our budget updates post budget Workshop uh to superintendent's down Downing Point there's always work to do after the budget Workshop as we start to get in not only the governor's budget uh but we start to think about uh where where do we need to be fiscally with our Our member towns so we'll talk about the timeline review what happened at the budget Workshop talk about Governor's budget impact then look at some other reductions um and there's a topic on excess and deficiency appropriation as well as we'll provide a summary of where we're at and then as we always do what are our still remaining unresolved factors uh moving forward to budget update number two so here we are our yellow is um where we are tonight uh we did receive the governor's uh proposed budget Chapter 70 and all those required local contributions from Des last week so those are are part of this today um the other piece you can see is that we're coming closer to focus on the next updates as well as our joint fin common advisory meeting with the towns and the budget hearing which is prior to the scheduled school committee vote on the 12th of March so in a review of where we ended our budget workshop two weeks ago the following Figures were the proposed operating budget and Associated assessments to the member Towns at that time uh as we've mentioned we did not not have the governor's proposed budget with State aidid or the confirmed Foundation enrollment which impacts our assessment to our towns um and we have done the adjustments for this evening these were the unresolved factors we ended our last meeting on at the budget Workshop um so just in brief we have received the governor's proposed budget with all those pieces we've updated our our foundation enrollment and therefore our 5year rolling average for assessment and then also the minimum local contributions uh insurance and benefits um I did receive the rate ranges uh from our representative from the Maya trust and for the trust for health insurance the rate range is 99.9% to 19.9% for active health insurance uh for FY 26 we will get our final rate for the district in the next couple of weeks I anticipate having that by the next budget update um but I do want to remind the committee that we we plug that number at 12% uh that's higher than we had estimated in every any other previous budget workshops and we're now hearing that that would be on the low end of the rate range um for my colleagues from other districts and even Our Town members um who are also in the trust or in other methods they're they're hearing the same thing um so there's a couple of factors at play um but obviously we we will receive that in the next couple of weeks uh the excess and deficiency certification we don't have that certification yet from the do um as the committee remembers we did switch um um our auditing firm this year they prepared it back prior to the deadline we're in the queue Department of Revenue asked some questions with our new Auditors that we reviewed together sent back the answers and now we're just waiting for our final update from them so into the governor's proposed budget and talking about the impact so I just want to do a quick review of how the regional agreement works with regards to the budget so each year desie puts out uh with the foundation enrollment a required net School spending amount for every single School District um I am not aware of any school district that operates within their net School spending requirement uh so part of that is the required contribution that each Town needs to provide that's a calculation that's done by the state relative to all sorts of factors um may have heard the valuation uh Factor brought up before uh two of Our member towns are at the Max uh Landcaster is steadily increasing and you'll see the result of that on their minimum contribution that's happening for FY 26 So based on those required contributions if there's any gap between those contributions what the state sets for for minimum uh net School spending that's where Chapter 70 comes into play so those to totals add up to that net School spending we also have our estimated revenues from things like our regional transportation reimbursement our Medicaid receipts Charter School reimbursement uh our investment income that we received as we um you know we keep our our um assessment in the municipal trust so there's other things that add into uh what could help out with offsetting the budget with the revenue the remainder is the variable assessment and that's language that's agreed upon within the regional agreement and so each time that the budget changes uh we see a change in the assessment so just to give you an update these are the foundation enrollments confirmed by desie last week we were not too far off on our estimates um plugged in from our October one date of O uh of this uh school year uh and you can see the change in the operating assessment though uh so Bolton has gone up just a little bit based on their 5year rolling average uh Lancaster is almost three times as much as uh Lan or Bolton's increase and Stow is down um you can just look at the the the data on Stow just to see so back in FY 23 they had 1124 students in the system now there's 1,6 so here's a just a quick chart on the the changes to the required contributions as dictated by desie um so Bolton has gone up just over 370,000 lancasters has gone up 560,000 and stow's contribution has gone up uh just over 990,000 our Chapter 70 State 8 has gone up over 450,000 uh you'll note that over 230 school districts and we're one of them uh received the minimum uh per pupil increase this year which was $75 per student if you do quick math on our foundation enrollment in $75 this is more increase the reason for that is that the fy2 number that we have in the budget was the governor's released Chapter 70 Budget on the cherry sheet last year at this time during the course of it going through the house the Senate um and the final budget which is not confirmed until July and August that number did increase um but again we're working from budget projection to um where we are today with the budget projection from the governor so the reality is really from um projected to now is $453,000 so along with funding comes cost uh when we receive our Bud our budget from the governor so we are responsible for two things that are dictated by the state based on enrollment and school choice uh in other districts so these are students from Lancaster Bolton and Stow that might attend schools and other uh might school and other Public Schools we've talked about this during the school choice um process in the spring I won't belabor that point also our charter school students that attend uh they also we receive an assessment to pay for that as well and you can see the increases here so while the increase in revenue from projected at the workshop to now um has increased we also have to look at the fact that our expenses increase so these numbers actually increase the operating budget to the number you see before you so it's actually up just a little bit as of right now but as you're aware we're going to walk back some of the these costs um tonight so here's sort of the impact to total revenue um from the governor's budget so our chapter 78 we have an increase um in Regional Transportation and our Charter School reimbursement again though you can see the difference between the increase in cost on Charter and uh the charter reimbursement don't exactly match so there's some onus on the operating budget so the result that we have here is again there's a small uptick in the operating budget but if you track from the budget Workshop to this slide uh the actual uh assessments to the towns decreased because more Revenue came in um from Chapter 70 so the next thing we look at After we receive that are there any other plac we can look at for non-salary reductions and any potential offsets within the budget again offsets are using really quickly I feel like it might be important to let people ask questions about all those mechanics sure before we start moving into the absolutely iation I think that's right especially because so many of us are relatively new to the process so Ross just walked us through how he builds his budget um are there any questions around variable assessment minimum local contribution for the veterans here maybe not but anybody and it will remind the committee but also the public out there on our finance and operations public page there's a video that explains um how the budget is built um through the regional agreement and has these factors in it as well it's it's an excellent tutorial anyone okay all right you were on a roll R sorry interrupted go ahead no that's I I appreciate the pause uh I aware there's new members on the committee so thank you okay so the first thing we look at is our non salary reductions so I met with each one of the principles talked with our departments and looked at what possible places you know can we look at as you know just next steps um without major reductions per se to our operating non-salary budgets um the committee is aware when we run our per pupil um we really don't increase a whole lot because our population is re our re enrollment is rather steady um those levers and those sort of Standards work really well for our K to8 and I will say that the department heads and I said at the workshop were very sort of straightforward this year with their requests they're not looking for a lot of additions as you're aware there the AP Chemistry textbooks at the high school but that's essentially it um so the first place we took a look at was teaching and learning and our amazing assistant uh superintendent Laur friend brought forth um some reductions to professional development and instructional software these aren't major pieces um that impact the overall operation of the teaching and learning department and the work that they do to support learning and teaching across the district um but there were some small areas where we can do some programs and things like like that uh within technology we're pulling a reduction to computer hardware of $50,000 uh we do have some additional e- rate money that we have to use now um we can't roll it to next year so what we'll do is we'll pre purchase the staff laptop Replacements according to our replenishment cycle uh this year so that they're ready to go for next year um and again we'll you'll there's that reduction uh to computer hardware it'll still be purch purchase just a different Source that's available now that we can no longer move forward with into FY 26 um so with regards to facilities we took a look at the new vehicle proposal for the van um we did reach out to uh the dealership to talk about what a lease structure would look like um it's not uh you know inexpensive to to do a a a 36-month lease however um it does reduce the impact of the operating budget this year year uh for FY 26 so that's been removed uh as we would pursue a lease uh so some school based non-salary reductions um and again sitting with the principles so for the high school some minor changes to their contracted Services line through the main office along with office supplies and paper um I really could not look at their Department budgets to look anywhere uh where we felt like there was any sort of major changes we could make um at this point uh within Burbank you're aware that there were requests uh for some larger musical instruments that are are at their end so I talked to Mr OA um we'll see what maybe he could be done some other way um and pursue that uh but those were removed uh as well as some of the requests for some power tools um and we'll go from there uh Center had again was really to the per pupil amount there wasn't a lot of Leverage there we did look at the 504 plan line which apply you know where we have money for uh necessary accommodations there's been some students that have shifted to IEPs so those are now um absorbed by the special education budget so therefore that would not be necessary within the 504 line uh at the hail Middle School we looked at uh The Talented youth uh subscription is not always needed um so without that definitely being needed that was removed uh there were some repair requests that were taken out uh the engineering supplies were leveled to the other middle schools and there was also an additional membership within the PD line but we've held pretty tight on all professional development with the exception of $2,500 per building K to8 all coming out of the teaching and learning budget so uh that was removed as well Mary rollinson uh we removed the purchase of one of the tables requested and the music festival cost that was in there I spoke with Mr McCarthy it's not necessary because the way that they're structuring that great Road music festival um so we're moving forward there and then over at Sawyer again just a small supply cost decrease I do want to note for our non-salary site based our school-based budgets our total budget proposed now for FY 26 is only $7,000 over uh what was voted for for this year and that does include $20,000 for the AP textbooks so with the exception of that we've reduce the non-salary budgets at the school-based level while maintaining the right amount of supplies and materials for our students in order to execute our educational program so here's the summary slide um of our non-salary reductions for teaching and learning technology facilities in our schools uh the total reduction to the budget is about $174,000 so the next place that we look is our offsets so the school committee is aware that we maintain revolving accounts for um several things we provide the revolving account update October uh actually it was November this year um so what we've taken a look at is a couple of things so we're going to be getting more school T school choice tuition in uh for FY 26 it looks to be about 260,000 instead of the 165 that we received this year so what we've done is we've increased our offset to the health insurance line by another $100,000 we're running an Extended Learning balance um and and while I would not spend it all completely because you do want to have maintained some level of a balance um we do feel like we can use some of that to offset a teaching and learning item uh this year uh there's a school choice balance because we backed away from using it when it was becoming sort of almost obsolete but we still were able to maintain and build up a balance um going back as far as uh like fy1 1819 so where we remain right now is we feel like we can again and pull some of that money to offset the health insurance and again I would caution it's a one-time use of something that's reoccurring so that's just something to to keep a keep an eye on uh the other piece is we feel like based on the projections for where tuitions are at right now and some news from the governor's budget and some news from our regional Association uh Representatives that the circuit breaker is going to be better funded particularly around Transportation we've talked about that it used to be 75% it backed down to about 58 and then it was 44% this year so knowing that there's uh work to be done there and our costs are up this year we feel like we can increase that another 200,000 so that would make the total circuit breaker offset for FY 262 million um but the total additional offset that we've added to the budget uh as of tonight is another $500,000 uh let's hold our questions in can pause right after this so just this is just a summary so our total non-salary reductions is 174,000 with the offset total so really the budget reduction ends up being just over $670,000 um do you want me to cover this slide or you want me to pause right where I was one more one more sure so here's the impact of the operating budget and the assessments again this is where we're starting to see uh how you obviously bring down the operating budget and therefore uh bring down the assessments to the towns and I can pause right there okay question you go back a couple slides where you talk about school choice yes so as I understand the mechanics of school choice is we charge students coming into the district $5,000 a year for coming to the district and we put that into a fund a school choice fund correct and so looks like here you're taking $100,000 out of that fund to fund the budget as a revenue Source where's the other $100,000 coming for you got two school choice lines here yep so the increase so our fy2 tuition in as set by the state base and the number of students and the state level and there's also a special education increment that could get built into that so it's not always a straight $5,000 per so but to your point Mr poell so our because we've increased slots we now have more of that tuition in coming in so you're going to take all the tuition in and put it into the school choice fund but now you're taking 200,000 out is that the key thing that's actually happening here so there's two things happening one is that we last year don't well this the current budget of the $165,000 that we have coming into school choice this year we're using $150,000 of it the offset health insurance next year when that raises to over 250,000 we're going to use 250,000 we had already put $150,000 offset in the budget you saw on the workshop so this extra100 ,000 increases it to 250,000 okay the other piece is there was a balance so as the school district got further away and less students were from the last time we approved school choice there was less students there we stopped using as much of it and what happened is that balance stayed now that we have more coming in and this would be I'm noting it tonight using a balance from a revolving is using onetime fund for an ongoing situation and I'm I'm being clear with that right so 100 thou the first 100,000 you think is recurring because if school choice second 100,000 we're going to have to find that again next year it it would have to either be from another source or we would have to see something happen with our health insurance or another lever would have to be adjusted within the budget correct go also remember the school choice we have two years in a row reopen school choice so we've grown the number of collections that we've had in school choice we'll be visiting that conversation again in April and you'll get my recommendation on the number of seats that we'll owe so what we'll be bringing in for school choice tuition next year will increase assuming the seats that we're going to be opening up will increase our overall enrollment to CH school choice because our goal was to be to to manage that and responsibly grow that to at least the point that we offset what we're paying for school choice out and so we're on the pathway to do that and we're still on the pathway to do that with this methodology uh so again before I turn it uh over to superintendent Downing for the next section I would just say you know non-salary uh costs are always at play as we receive feedback from the school committee about the direction of the budget we continue to go back in just because there's non-salary uh reductions presented tonight doesn't mean that that could be the final extent however like I've said I think we're we're budgeting pretty tightly at this point um especially within our schools so uh I just want to make a note of that and I'll turn it over to superintendent toy okay so I get to talk about the difficult part and that's the salary reduction of employees in the school system um we don't take this lightly because when we're talking about salaries we're talking about people um we're going to start in the places with that are the new requests because those are positions that don't aren't being held currently um because they haven't been hired for but they are those requests are there for a reason and as we look at these things I'll explain those reasons as we go go through so looking at the requested new positions that are were in the budget the first position was the float LPM that was presented by our nurse leader and director of health and and safety um and as a position we removed from the budget we're exploring some potential alternatives for that in the the future but we pull that position out um we pulled the senior Technology support increase which is a job responsibility increase so we're going to continue to have to meet the requirements of those the the the the activities haven't gone away the activities still have to happen but they're going to have to be shared amongst the tech technology team in order to to um meet their goals uh the M secretary that was requested to bring some balance uh was pulled back the building operator for facilities the academic tutors that assistant superintend spoke about you'll see here the new kindergarten section for Mary rollinson along with the instructional assistant there we are current I want to talk about this with a little bit of detail we are currently in our Kindergarten roundup as I shared with you um and uh our early childhood director Kristen Ryan uh met with me the other day and they've done a thorough collection of the census of our current preschool students and Gathering of anticipated enrollment we are down significantly in anticipated kindergarten students so to date we have 42 students enrolled for kindergarten for next year for for Mary rollinson Elementary that was as of today and that's with all names on the ensus counted for for any notifications that were given to us that were not on the census and students that are enrolled in our preschools so we would need to have 25 more students in Lancaster come forward before the start of the new year to Warrant a fourth classroom this is lower uh by about 10 students than the number we were at for l last year and we ended up with three sections of kindergarten in in Lancaster so we feel at this time um we can safely pull those two positions because they were new requests since we have three sections of kindergarten in Lancaster currently we also requested a section uh fifth grade section at M because they sit right on the threshold of our class siiz um policy of 24 P per classroom and they currently in the fourth grade have two classrooms of 24 and one classroom of 25 that's today and so it would be exactly the same conditions at that grade level next year uh we also asked for uh uh the fifth grade section at Center is an identical scenario to Lancaster identical and those classroom those grade levels started the year right at the threshold but they picked up one or two students that took them to that 73 Mark the SLP which is speech language pathologist forget the acronym there the speech language pathologist position uh we're pulling back a portion of that position um our director of student services R Dean and I met the other day and we uh did some examination could we deliver the IEPs and anticip IPS from kinder um prek evaluations uh that are on our Horizon could we execute that by increasing one of our part-time employees to full-time and that's the Delta that you see we can so we've kept 4/10 but are returning 6/10 in that ask to ensure that we can still deliver the speech language pathologist uh positions and then uh you'll see the insurance place fer effect by removing those positions uh we would be able to remove that estimated dollar amount out of the budget um and that is a proportional um uh amount based upon what our usage rates are in the district is correct Mr moan correct okay so before I go to the next set of positions I want to pause at new positions and ask if the committee has any questions okay well I I will go on the record here as saying public comment this evening stated that these class sizes are not great um so I just want to voice that concern that we are in a situation right now where our fifth grade teams at two of our schools are going to have class sizes of 24 and 25 we have a third grade classroom where the same is true at Center School at least and I know that you know this is happening in multiple areas of our school district and so the funding is a problem I want everybody listening to know that this is not something that anybody at this table is happy about all of us want our class sizes to be 17 children and fewer maybe um so nobody in this room wants this to be this way and I'm sure that no educator in nooba also wants it to be this way so we have a problem that is I would argue on the revenue side of things where the state is not doing its job I think Ross you said transportation is being reimbursed at 45% well for special education transportation that qualifies under circuit breaker uh it previously used to be 75% it was reduced to I think 58% and this year we're only receiving 44% uh of eligible costs so these are this is the line item that's escalating in cost correct on top of it so correct it's incredibly frustrating for all of us and I really do hope that our legislators see and hear that the burden cannot continue to be placed upon localities such as ours where from an outside perspective you might think that these towns are affluent but but at a certain point the bank breaks so and especially on homes where there are fixed incomes and so I want to just make sure everybody he is that I think I speak for us all when and you know you guys are nodding your heads that this is not ideal and that class sizes of 24 25 at a higher rate than normal is not what we want and so that said I know that Kirk you're going to now enter into an area where you're going to share with us where we have to make additional Cuts because it's not you you haven't even gotten us down to a number that the towns can accept yeah all right so I just wanted to lay that groundwork and maybe I'll express some future frustration after you finish the next so thank you um I I want to amplify a point that you make and that is you know being the coin person that oversees the educational program of our school district the last thing I want to have our classrooms in the 24 25 Ranch it's the last thing I want it's the thing we try to protect the most we are faced with a scenario where we're put being put into a place of no choice and it's not that it's anyone's fault there are conditions that are afloat here that we are trying to navigate to get through these times and that's what's critical to understand right now as we as we go through this process so we know to get to that place we're going to have to make some reductions in our school district there are going to be painful reductions and these are the kind of reductions that are going to impact our ability to an advance forward our strategic agenda and the Strategic plan so it's with that happy note that I would like to take us into the administrative salary updates we're going to begin this is actually a celebration for an individual and it demonstrated to us this is a place where we can uh pause and that is reducing our curriculum director uh by one position um I'm pleased on one side to announce uh that Laura Padington our director for uh Ela and social studies um have has approached assistant superintendent friend and I uh long before we were in this predicament and said I really enjoy our work in teaching and learning my heart lives inside a classroom with kids and she says that's that's where uh her peace and happiness lives in education so when the opportunity affords she would like to to take advantage of that opportunity It Is by coincidence um that one of our tremendous 8th grade social studies teachers will be retiring at the conclusion of this year and so uh I'm announcing that Laur excuse me Laura Padington LP as we call her uh will be the social studies teacher at Florence Sawyer beginning next year so we made a difficult decision that with um her knowing we were making that move we went back and said well then we are not going to fill that position for next year because I think when we're looking at the reductions we have to make we got to begin in the central office first and so um the teaching and learning team is going to have to sort of carry the weight of the things that that Laura carried as she was in her position as director and will continue to be with Vigor up until and I just knowing Laura who she is she will always have her eye in the teaching and learning department and offer assistance where needed if I know her in any way at all um but uh we recognize that we're going to have to sort of lock arms and and help carry that weight um we were tremendously successful in Laing our literacy curriculum this year and so H having reached that hurdle in our strategic work was a major achievement and so now we're going to look to to our employees on across the district to keep that momentum going the second piece um this will tell you a little bit about the people who we work with as we sat down you can tell that since our last meeting I've had some interesting and difficult conversations with with people in our school system and they will continue to happen over the coming weeks um presented with the need to reduce another position in our Leadership Council uh we met with our principales assistant principles directors and collectively agreed that rather than having to reduce another person's position and sty the work and the momentum that we have in our departments that we all agreed to take a 0% salary increase for next year uh in an effort to help us move along in the budget so the Leadership Council will be taking a 0% increase on their salaries for next year and you can see that's to the tunea $28,000 which is the equivalent of two positions essentially okay Mr W sure so again as we make changes to the budget we present the change to the operating and the assessments uh so nothing really to discuss other than that this just tracks how the changes impact uh the budget and the assessments uh from sort of category to category and now is where it gets really hard so as you can see the percentage increase of the operating budget still leaves us at an 8% increase in order for us to get to approximate the target of a 5% operational increase we are looking to an additional 18 unspecified positions across our school system that we were going to have to reduce this 18 reflected here is a reflection of what uh uh Unit A Unit C and non rep positions would all be included to get to that marker and the estimated health insurance reductions that would come to that um those 18 positions are unspecified today not because we don't know the areas that we have to look at it's that we need uh the time and to show our employees the respect that they deserve to have the kind of professional conversations we need to have with them we also have um some announced retirements that have come to us in recent weeks they're typical at this time of year after the first of the year and so we will make every effort in the world for any employees that are impacted by those reductions in retaining them in our school system keeping them in employed through those places but I can't guarantee that's going to be for everybody so um beginning tomorrow uh we're meeting with um all of our principles together with our cabinet team and we're going to be getting into uh the prioritization of where those are what I can lead you to um that we would look to is the best practices that we put into play is the starting point for that so as we have classied standards of no more than 22 at K to2 and no more than 24 um uh three and up we now will take a literal interpretation of our current enrollment to look at those class siiz standards so we'll be going back into our enrollment documents removing the projected enrollment increases because those projected enrollment increases if you remember October 1 to October 1 and so we're considered past October 1 now and typically don't receive a lot of new students in the springtime so we'll be taking the little interpretation of those standards and when we come back to the committee we'll show you what the impact of that is so that will be certainly I think point to and indicate um other positions but we're going to have to look at the elementary level the Middle School level and uh the high school level uh in terms of those reductions uh I will also o call out as well what we have discussed before as a committee and what was brought up in the first Workshop is looking at our Middle School class sizes is there a way of looking at that reframing that and also looking at some Cross School uh positions to optimize um FTE in those areas and that's a possibility of doing that as well so that's not new news it's just to sort of amplify where we begin and and once we're there we're still not going to be there and we're going to have to reduce positions and what those are yet um I'm not prepared to say today but when we come back together as a committee on February 12th 12th um we will be bringing the specificities of that to you um I also want this committee the public and all of our employees out there to know that I've engaged with our uh association's leadership um both for unit a and Unit C and look forward to some engaging conversations because it's critically important that they be at the table talking with us and recognize uh the work that we have in front of us so with the reduction of 18 unspecified positions and the health Assurance adjustment that comes with that you would see that that brings the budget to just under $70 million which is an operational increase of 5.1 5% over last year and you can see the um increases for each of our towns it's at this point that I would like to share with the committee and all of our residents uh that Mr M carar and I sat down with the three town administrators this past Tuesday and went over these numbers in the presentation with them so that they are perfectly clear on um what the expectations are and where we are today uh the feedback that we' got and you would predict this looking at the numbers is that the town stove feels secure in moving forward and the towns of Bolton and Lancaster are going to have bigger challenges and they're challenges that we share together but I can't emphasize more these deep cuts are going to impact teaching and learning in the school system they're going to have an impact and it's we have to to get together and problem solve the degree of impact and minimize that as much as possible um so Mr moan next slide um a slide uh that we added to this presentation today that may not have been in the slide deck that was posted yesterday but I believe it's updated and posted to the meeting materials now is this particular slide because I want to illustrate at sort of the gravity of the drivers of the situation that we find ourselves in so as our community is having dialogues about this they just understand the why behind it and I'm also going to implore everyone in our community that no one is to blame here this is the cost to educate and each and every child in our towns deserves the education which is going to help them the most and for some of those children who weren't afforded the same privilege opportunity and gifts that others have require education that is very costly and this is our moral mandate our moral obligation to provide them that education and it's costly so as we look to the challenge we have here you can see that this budget would be a $3.4 million increase over last year's budget and when you look just at three lines special education services that are non-salary that's transportation and tuition insur projected insurance benefits increases which could increase if um we come in higher than 12% along with the increase in Charter School tuitions brings us to $3 million so I ask everybody to to let that land on on your ears for a minute that of the the $3.4 million increase that we're going to be seeing in our budget 3 million of it comes from mandates and elements for which are not under our control so it's in that way that we have to be thoughtful and creative and it's the why behind why we are working so hard to advocate for our students and for our Educators at the state house to look for ways to to address these issues now um to put a more positive light on a a message that feels Doom and Gloom is that there is conversation out there that recognizes this problem and currently there's an fy2 supplemental budget $150 million education a mark and that set a supplemental budget for this school year that is currently under consideration and um we don't know what type of relief that would bring specifically to us but if we were to get additional funding uh through circuit breaker channels for instance and and transportation reimbursement this year we would be able to apply it to our current budget thus taking some pressures off of the circuit breaker offsets were're currently applying Mr mcaren save me if I get off the rails here um so correct so it the supplemental budget if you see or hear anything about the current fy2 supplemental budget out there it does not solve our budget issues for next year it helps us now and it helps us in those accounts so that we might have some potential leverage for offsets in future budgets but it doesn't solve the budget issue and the second piece around this is that we've only heard from the governor we have not yet heard from the house or the Senate on their budget proposals and those are the representatives that interface the most with school district officials and that's why it's going to be critically important that our legislative breakfast this year um bring forward the criticality of looking at State funding formulas differently to help us address these increased costs uh to educate our students at ways that don't fall on the shoulders of local citizens as much and I've I've had this conversation with manying folks that you know uh you're paying it whether you're paying it through the state house or paying it locally you're still paying it um but yes but those formula those funding formulas are fundamental structures that give us the ability to understand how to craft and build our budgets thus making heavy swings in tuition costs more palatable over time so this is something that we have to work on not to mention some of these numbers are simply due to changes in enrollment that can happen when when uh new families come to us that need those services so um I think it's critically important Mr moar if you can go back to the I think this is the slide that I think is critically important for all of us to understand and all of us to talk to is no matter how many Cuts we make to the classroom in our school system we cannot solve that problem and so we need to think long and hard about how far we're willing to go to fund our school system and I'm calling on on this committee calling on our residents um to to support our efforts in bringing forth um a responsible budget the question might be asked are we going to be able to deliver a high quality educational program and that is we're going to make every effort to do that but we are going to have to do some things differently to make it happen and we've worked really really hard these past three years building off of a strategic plan um to bring in multitude systems of support common um um um Diagnostic and and indicator assessments to our students bringing in the PLC so our educators are able to build collaborative practices not to mention all the hard work not to mention the hundreds and thousands of dollars of grants that our teaching and learning office has brought to the school system that has augmented our budgets already so we have turned over every stone we have looked to every funding source possible that we can get to to fund the program that our students deserve and it's up to us to make sure that we bring a budget forward that educates these children in the way that we are morally and ethically responsible to do so with that I'll take some questions and before we move on to end question go ahead Robin so with regards to the transportation that was obviously like a big number that stood out yeah and if I understood correctly from our last conversation there was changes because we were changing providers and we were going to be paying a certain amount per yes per trip and now something happened with that and now we're with another provider who's giving us a huge you know a big jump on cter so are we still looking or are we just kind are we already locked and loaded it with that person like are we still trying to look for other options for those we are we are looking for other options um I'm looking at Mr de Manch right now because this is something that that we talk about I don't know I I think I knock on your door daily to ask any changes um I actually have a board meeting at ABC on Friday this is our agenda and so we will be discussing uh these points and we're looking closely at what are our other options for transportation so we'll be coming back to the committee on the 12th with any new findings that we have there um so right now this is the boat that we're in so in a process where the low bidder was not able to deliver the services we had to go to the second bidder and the second bidder was at a much higher cost um by state law we are obligated to take that bid um as we were so um but we are constantly re-evaluating that uh Mr Manch myself Mr mcaren Met specifically with the ABC collaborative they act as our agent in the collaborative process for bidding uh to do a close examination of all of our routes for efficiencies and transportation and to make uh to make sure we're we're maximizing every nickel out of that so we are and we will update the committee if there's any Improvement in that area any other questions I a quick question I'm a direct to the superintendent um could maybe you can enlight me because every year we get to this time of year we hear about what you know our budget constraints are and you know we hear members of this committee talk about and superintendent as well talk about you know the need to petition our state legislature for more funding so if you could enlighten me cuz you know I'm not one of these attendees at these legislative breakfasts and I'm not interfacing with my local legislators probably as much as I should explain to me when you have these conversations or when they present themselves before superintendant and Educators I don't think any legislator in the Comm of massachusett would suggest that there there shouldn't be more funding for schools okay so in that vein do they do the legislators or does anybody that you know interfaces with this District ever present any alternatives with regards to the state budget like if we need more money for Education we can take it from someplace do they ever I'm sorry I didn't interrupt you did they ever because I sit here and I got a million scathingly brilliant ideas of going around in my head but nobody listens to me so um I'm just wondering what our legislator is saying because I I can think of a number of areas where we could fund education but I'd like to see what they have to say yeah I'll tell you an area that I'm thinking about and I have had some conversations with our local Representatives about and that is what was the quote unquote millionaires tax that came into play two years ago uh last year in the governor's budget and and please I don't have the numbers in front of me so these are just rounded estimates from those conversations is that approximately 1 1.4 1.5 billion was applied to Educational Funding um but receipts came came in at 2.4 and so then that's left to Ways and Means to distribute based upon whatever advocacy is happening in their towns locally so the supplemental budget that's coming forward I think is a product of some of that as well um and so as we look at that um I will also say and you're going to hear from assistant superintendent friend about a grant uh to close the evening that a lot of the funding sources that are coming from the state level to school systems are being put out through the forms of competitive grants and so school systems are having having to essentially sword fight with each other to chase those dollars down and striking the right balance of grant-funded initiatives to the schools and structural funding to the school systems is a very tricky thing to do and for every representative in the state house I'm willing to bet there's a different opinion on the percentages on which they do that so um I'm I'm grateful that we have some Representatives that are on the educational subcommittee that can take that behind closed doors as they build their budgets um I do think our advocacy helps U the $30 limit was increased to $104 for C circuit breaker last year um Mass was advoca ating for 110 we've advocated on the platform two years in a row not that I would tell you what the new platform is but I can tell you what the last two years was is funding circuit breaker and transportation at 90% reimbursement rates as opposed to 75 so these are the moves that we're trying to make uh to help our to motivate our state legislators to to get those actual changes made so it is what we have to do and we just have to continue to voice our case to get to the places we need to get to Mr mcaren made a point earlier tonight however those decisions won't be made by the time this committee is bound by the regional agreement to pass a budget they come after that and so the advocacy and the work that we can do while addressed in a budget in a single year then comes into the budget the next year in the form of Revenue and that revenue is then turned back in the form of D end D to which then we have been applying to the budget as an offs so I'm sorry I went on a tangent there attorney gon but I hope I address some of your well that uh cues up the next conversation and uh we are going to flow into our end appropriation yeah uh just so as a primer um our excess and deficiency or end f fund uh essentially is the same as a Town's free cash so at the end of a fiscal year we close our books and if we have Surplus operating budget uh that goes to our excess and deficiency fund if we have excess Revenue um over what was necessary to run the school district that goes to our excess and deficiency fund typically that fund holds a balance so when you put those three things together we submit that to the Department of Revenue the work they're doing right now that we're waiting on is our certification of that we can't use any of the certification uh the certified balance as an appropriation to the next budget until it is properly certified uh the other piece uh that I would add on that is legislatively we cannot as an administrative team make changes uh to the amount of end being used during the year it's part of the vote of the budget uh which is approved by the school committee and therefore gets the school committee's approval of the appropriation so the uh proposed budget still holds the appropriation is a revenue Source at $1.4 million same as last year uh we know that uh any reductions in Staffing um and if as Mr superintendent Downing said if we were able to move people into where there might be a retirement uh there's less of a realization on the cost differential uh through attrition therefore we can predict that uh our overall Surplus at the end of FY 26 will be lower than it will be at the end of fy2 if you know back at the December operating report that I presented earlier the majority of that Surplus is due to the salary differentials through attrition that happens within our buildings another piece is obviously we want to maintain a healthy balance to just protect the district uh you know just as a free cash does for towns just as a savings account does for a family uh unforseen onetime costs can come up uh the other piece is that it does support our credit rating and we are do in the process uh you know of building a new high school and this supports the credit rating through Moody's or any other agency that we would use through our uh our uh financial advisors so it's helpful uh this is one of the things that they look at uh what percent uh it contributes to I do not know but it is a factor on our credit rating so just from historicals uh to add to the discussion so when it says fiscal year that's the the voted budget um so for the voted budget this year uh we had a certified end balance of $2.4 million uh through the Department of Revenue which was 3.7% of the the budget uh there is a statutory cap of 5% you cannot go over 5% so a school district couldn't square away 15% of its of its budget uh you have to either turn that back uh or start to appropriate it or use it uh so the appropriated budget amount is what was voted by the school committee and that's what the remaining balance is so you can see the variability from year to year um while our percent of budget um has stayed relatively stable between that two and where we are at right now of a higher 3.7% you can see what happens with the remaining balance when you rely on an appropriated budget amount uh that is steady uh and there's variability on what you can turn back to your excess and deficiency fund what you have is this sort of uh Highwire Act of fluctuating between being able to maintain a balance or get really close to not having a balance at all so it's it's a fiscal lever uh but it has to obviously be discussed and used appropriately so I present this just for the information for the school committee tonight and this is actually a budget item that we're going to take up at the end here so if you have questions about the appropriateness of these levels just hold it um but I think that what they're saying is that they're looking to use 1.4 in this next go around again that's correct and relative to that proposal the rationale is thus I want to amplify Mr mcan's point is that the significant portion of what return returns to endr are salary savings from employees who have retired to left of the district and we hire employees at lower rates coming in if the employees leaving us are filled with employees who currently work for us due to the reductions I described before you don't actualize the same degree in those savings so it's for that reason that we're not um recommending any increase to Indie this last go around we B 1.4 what do you think they're going to certify I think it'll be around the same based on the work that we did with our um our new auditing firm and what was submitted I think it'll be approximately the same and so you think that after we borrow again we'll still have about a million dollars in there yeah and I would use the term appropriate not not borrow um but yes we would our our current recommendation is to not change that from what we're doing this year not change but it's actually going up 200,000 no that's fy2 the recommendation for 26 is still 1.4 this is just a historical data because we don't have the certified figure yet Mr Powell so that's why I didn't include that for FY 26 good question yeah I I just feel like this uh warrants some discussion among the school committee um in terms of the recommendation on how much end to use in a year where we're proposing 18 um elimination of 18 full-time equivalent positions and um I personally feel that this you know I'm looking at the remaining balances and prior years much lower than what we're proposing for this year but but this is specific to this budget not as a a protocol discussion you you argue I I'm just saying that I think some I'm curious if anybody else agrees with me that of all the years that I've been on school committee maybe this is the year that um we would consider using a little bit more end to either um make it make the potential cuts um less to reduce the amount of positions that we're looking at putting um or reduce the impact to Town's operating assessments so I'm just throwing that out there you know I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't well if you all are satisfied with the budget presentation not satisfied obviously none of us are satisfied but but if you have exhausted all of your questions about this budget presentation we can actually move to the next agenda item we actually have a couple more S I actually think that's premature because her what the protocol discussion is different from what am's talking about yeah I'm talking about use of end this year for a specific purpose well that discussion is separate here's what I would think about here's what I think about the discussion that we're going to have I would argue that we shouldn't be using end at all um because end is for all intents and purposes to the Layman a rainy day account and so appropriating any end at all is bad practice uh well it's not bad practice it's it's worked for us because at the end of every fiscal year we actually unpend and we can replenish but ideally we would not have to replenish because we didn't I'm saying borrow but I guess we didn't appropriate any of D and I don't think we should spend D and ever but if you look at our 5ye history we have been I agree but remember that we used to talk about the hamster wheel and how we got to get off we have to get off of this it's almost like because if let's say that we could you go to the fiveyear let's say that in 2023 we had um you know a major Capital failure at the high school that needed to be dealt with quickly and we only had $37,000 to deal with it I think that we need to I recognize that the towns need help um apparently so I recognize that us digging into our and would rescue them but that's not good budgeting can I can I make a distin before it and then I want would like to open this discussion up I I want to be clear that I'm I'm it's not just about rescuing towns I look at the budget that is proposed and the um staff reductions are worth $1.6 million and we have and fund with a remaining balance that's much more than it has been in previous years that's what I'm saying but what's the impact to the credits rating you spoke to if you if you start burning that down 37,000 what's the impact to how it's going to affect the high school and I I can't cite a specific change to it however it's one of the factors that's get that gets considered in our credit rating review by movies and it would be by standards of board and everybody else I think too the one thing you need to keep on the table is that end should not be used for operational costs so if we were to if we were to maintain staff with this remaining balance for this coming year that would be then gone and we would have to just have this whole exercise happen again the following year so end is really just for one time emergency expense it can't be for operational cost and I mean maybe you could maybe you could get one out of it but so I I'm going to go to Kirk first and then I'll work on this I want to illustrate that point so hypothetically speaking we move forward with this plan and we don't have the actualized savings of retired employees with new employees coming in and and we let's just assume these are the numbers of what FY 26 would be and if increase that to say 2 million that leaves a balance of 444,000 and if you only return 4 to 500,000 next year because you don't have the salary savings we'll be sitting here next year but our certified end balances are going to be more like 800 900,000 as that's a fiscal cliff that is we should avoid at all cost because that's when you get into extremely Draconian cuts and what we're trying to do by recommending not to use endd is to preserve it's so we have to manage that end account in in a way to where we have like projected reason the we would only want to put in to offset with end what we reasonbly less than what we would reasonably expect to get back into it so that account can grow and it's got to grow to those levels for the reasons that you talk about and using those funds for operational salary offsets and such is is um it's not a recomendable no I wonder sh did you have a question well I I had hypothetical which was basically the one you just outlined I think the only uh thing is if I'm understanding the proposed budget there it's a lot leaner uh so if they unexpected costs it's likely to have less excess cash at the end even without the salary aspect of it if that's correct so we're sort of setting oursel up for not having any end funds for the following Year's budget and that's that sort of cff you were talking about a Scot well I I was just going the following the logic you're outlining it seemed that using the same amount is actually still not the most responsible course of action we should actually be reducing it and to Leah's point I mean sounds like Leah is advocating a strategy where we actually get to a 5% balance then to the extent that we have any excesses at the end of the year they get just they just get turned back to the town I think there's lots of mechanisms you can do with that um Mr pal as those budgets are appropriated to the the school system um I uh I would like to meet the superintendents of these school systems but as I approach these are the Phantom stories you hear at conferences sometimes of some methodologies would be when you reach those 5% thresholds and you're anticipating end certifying above that well then you spend that amount and apply it to things like your oped accounts for instance to increase your oped balances so there's other there's different ways that people can use that strategy when you hit the 5% threshold um we're trying to walk a really really really really fine line right now of avoiding the catastrophic event while also that's in front of us while also building long-term stability and that is a very difficult trick to pull off no I mean I I grateful that we have leadership that is walking that line and doing a really good job of it I just one I wanted to bring that observation into the discussion in case others were looking at the situation through that lens yes and that's that's an important lens to think of and the the equivalent for towns as the free cash accounts and and towns that have really managed their free cash well and how they apply their free cash to onetime expenses and not use them as operational offsets find them themselves in healthier positions all right so you said you had a couple more slides so as we've reviewed throughout the evening uh so the total uh reductions presented that includes our offsets um would put us at a reduction from the budget Workshop of just almost 3.6 million so $3.5 million um and again we've just categorized the reductions this evening uh to show you exactly what they the the total sum is here so some unresolved factors uh again we're waiting on our final rates um and again our range signal was not um near what it has been uh so we'll find out more in the next couple of weeks uh again we're still waiting for our excess uh and deficiency certification so we can uh move forward with an appropriation and then uh assistant superintendent friend has some good news news on the prison Grant um so some auspicious news some unknown news um but we learned this week um that the hly Gris School administration announced that 15 school districts in the Commonwealth would be funded through literacy launch which is the prison one Grant and Nisha was one of 15 we're super proud um um of of being able to walk through this St um I'd like to commend our our teacher teams we went through four rounds of interviews um as a district it was a very competitive process and so um I'd like to extend a thank you to Laura Padington uh as well as our building principles and our teachers for participating in that alongside me the prism Grant um just to provide a little bit of information with more information to come once once we're made aware as provide information to us it will provide substantial funding and intensive support to participating school districts over multiple years and they have indicated that that is up to five years of funding uh to support k to3 early literacy um so participating districts um as it's written as it's been stated as it's been stated in the press release will receive substantial funding and intens support as part of this partnership we're waiting more information from desie um right now and hope to have more information in the coming weeks that is that is what has been predicted at the next school committee I will provide a request for the school committee to approve the beginning phase of this partnership which is in the amount of a $30,000 Grant to be used for substantive planning um which will Mark the first step in the process so we're awaiting more information but this is really good news um and again auspicious news unknown news in terms we don't have any defendable amounts of funding that's promised that the the language is such repeated from the governor and from the acting commissioner that it's substantial funding over the course of five years thank um I I will add the accolades to the the reason why the teaching and learning team was so successful is because they have a leader at the home uh that just commands a a high degree of respect and professional integrity and and desie recognized that so and that is our assistant superintendent La friend and and and her team would be the first group of people to tell you all that so I'm speaking on behalf of your team as well thanks what I will tell the committee is um to throw the wet blanket on it this doesn't help our budget issue because the development of this will come after we've closed a budget however what it has the potential to help is the cost of some materials and some positions we don't know what that will look like yet so we're engaged we're going to be on it we're going to be pressing uh acting commissioner Russell Johnson's office on a regular basis um uh to get as much as information we can and um assistant superintendent are we going to be bringing this grant forward the next meeting at the next meeting so she'll describe Morty in the next meeting um for for approval of that Grant so let's consider this the first pass at that so then you'll get those Grant materials through the consent agenda at the next meeting well we thank you for that good news at the end there congratulations and we appreciate all that hard work uh Amy yeah and you might be addressing this with your next statement but can you help us understand the timing here because we're we're going to be taking a um and there are unspecified um cuts in the proposed budget so like when will we learn more about yes will we be required to vote on that budget before we know the details we go back to the calendar of activities at the very beginning of the presentation thank you Miss Cen all right to miss Cohen's uh question um you know I sometimes overp speak I'm not I'm going to let uh stay out of Mr mcan's Lane here and let Mr mcaren explain our next iterations so to uh just a question about next step so at the next um budget update in two weeks on the 12th uh again we'll have some more definitive news our health insurance and we'll bring more specificity with regards to what reductions may look like again you you will understand where we need to make the cuts at the next school committee meeting and as I said during the non-salary portion we go back to it again um we take a look at things again we start asking ourselves the questions and and what you know what is absolutely necessary um and at the same time we still need to move the educational program along and and it's not just the the staff that do that but supplies materials and and everything else that goes along with operating a a high functioning School District so uh we'll continue to look at it uh budget war will give its review um we will bring the budget to the town base fincom and advisories and that try sort of like joint meeting um and then we will bring forward another update um once we're through that the public hearing happens on March 5th uh and then and that will be the final update and you will have uh a chance to vote on the budget on March 12th so there's a lot of work there but it's a short amount of time um so I can't stress that enough so we're going to we're going to this is a daily all day type work right now um and and we're we're proud to do it and it's it's it's very worthwhile for our students and obviously our staff too and our families so I I want the committee and the communities to also know that scheduled activities that are not on the calendar but are just operational work that we do as we'll be engaging as we regularly do with our town administrators on the budget cycle but we also will be reaching out to the chairs of both our finance and advisory committees as well as the chairs of our select boards um to to have some discussions and to understand how we can navigate uh this particular year through those Town processes can you quickly and this is um getting back into the weeds here can you just very quickly illuminate why the stone number is so much lower than the other numbers m in like a nutshell so in a nutshell the way the formula works is um so stow's minimum local contribution right uh is not going to move a significant amount um because their sort of foundation enrollment has decreased over time uh their uh valuation is Capp so there's not a lot of room there um for that to be applied then on top of that the variable assessment that's through that five-year rolling average their five-year rolling average while it's still um higher than the rest has continued to go down um and then so when you do the variable assessment of what's left um after all these factors are applied what ends up on Stow um is lower because excuse me the increase is lower because they're sort of Bena right so it's it's a combination of them that they're being capped and their minimal not increasing along with uh the fact that their enroll is decreasing so it's a compounding factor and the opposite is true about Lancaster correct okay Bolton's kind of in the middle there can I just yeah a little comment cuz I think you this kind of sck to my stomach about the cost increases and what that means to a lot of families um in terms of you know where our taxes are going to land and and what the costs are going to be to us and at the same time I'm really thinking about is it okay for us or is it okay period to are we satisfied with what is the minimum that we can do for our kids CU what is the minimum that we need to have in order to make this happen because I feel like our kids deserve more than the minimum and so I'm feeling kind of conflicting feelings here and I just kind of want to throw that out to people to think about at the you know while we're while you're thinking oh my God how am I going to pay for this at the same time what do we owe to our kids thanks Shar all right everybody uh that's going to be the budget update for tonight and I know that we are at 901 there is only really one item left on our agenda and it's an important item but a short a short item can I get a thumbs up just for a few more minutes okay and so um I'm going to te it up and then Scott's going to give you a brief explanation ultimately on the agenda it says Target balance protocol discussion budget and warrant is in the midst of a conversation regarding whether or not the school committee should establish a protocol regarding how we use end what end appropriation looks like you know all the philosophy and the action behind it and so as budget and warrant was getting under way in this conversation I said hit pause because we really need to put it to the full committee because all the subcommittees work at the will of the full committee and so Scott do you want to add to that at all just we we think we should have a more systematic approach to how we use end so we should have some documentation saying here's what our objectives are with respect to end rather than the rather adhawk approach we've been using up to this point and so that's really what we're looking to do is just come up with some sort of process you know kind of like we did for opep in terms of saying you know here's how we're going to get to a higher opep balance you know we have other protocols we think what we should have a protocol around em so it's a more systemic approach to how we use end and what our objectives are with respect e rather than the current ad hoc approach we've been using so you know any I think the next step looks like we probably talk about it some more some different approaches we could take and then get some feedback from the community what what their preferences might look like as far as what different approaches are more favorable than others and Kirk this is something that you you know obviously this is not your top priority at this moment in time you're busy um over the next few months though do you imagine this being something you could get behind and partner without question and I'll say this that I would not recommend a policy or a protocol I would recomend I but crafting a recommendation from the budget warrant subcommittee which is where that I think that dialogue can drill down on a recommendation on how we approach the usage of IND in the school system and bring that back to the committee as as sort of our commitment to um that us I think it's well within bounds and I think it would it would help us it would give us solid footing year-over-year in the budget process and give us documentation to fall back upon when residents are asking about why isn't end being utilized more and we would have a rationale we would have an approach that would be a foundational document to help you all have the talking points um to explain that to folks can I get a thumbs up or a thumbs down if you're okay with budget warrant going forward with this conversation I don't think we really need a motion we have one not so much Joe did you want to weigh in no I was just uh echoing super sentiments I agree with him wholehearted all right well I'm sorry well I mean the idea was that I think I'm I think I might might well I don't know if anyone articulate it but I mean I would be I probably take it a step further I wouldn't want to see any restriction on D and I would think that only the administration to their discretion how they use it and I C with you that um um I think that you know historically speaking since we've been on on the committee our end but our end balance has been ptry and pathetic and I would love to see us get to the point where we had reached the 5% threshold so just a point a clarification on end um I appreciate that attorney gleon myself nor Mr ment has the authority to use end it has to be an appropriation made by the school committee so in the voting of the school budget when we have an end recommendation you are authorizing us to use that that so we can't make a move with end without the approval of school committee well I'm glad to see that the committee there's some consensus on the committee to give budget and warrant The Authority they need to converse about this we'll look forward to you guys bringing it back to us when you're ready and have something to share all right all right everybody uh the mood is somber and I apologize for that are there any subcommittee or advisory reports before we wrap anything that needs to come forward I mean my report kind of got wrapped up with other people's reports but the communication subcommittee did meet at the school student council there's so many councils and committees it very confusing um but so we are well working on our goal and making progress it's awesome uh if you guys notice the planning calendar which Alita has so kindly brought up our next meeting is going to be oh February back going to be in the conference room February 12th so we're going to cuz we flipped a couple uh the next one is in person again so can't wait to see me I bet um so February 12th we do have I want to say school committee goal checkin no I moved it remember guys we're on a two-year cycle for our goals just like um the superintendent is and so that is not upcoming but just keep in mind if your sub commmittee is making progress toward those goals CU it's something we'll check in on in May but is there anything that you want to see added to the February 12th budget we're going to be voting on The District or seeing a proposed District calendar for just one year or two it's the same one but it's up there it's the same we are bringing just one and I know our practice has been to it's problematic to bring two count in a row for reasons of we've had to do a lot of changing and some other things so we'll be happy to discuss that when we bring the calendar and then I put the vote on the 26th yeah is that okay y anything else that you guys see or it's going to be a short meeting super short I promise PA since got Comm work cut out for us let me know if you can get to it yeah I we're going to have the meeting on six so we should have some to bring but it probably won't be as we're getting it's getting little down I will I will need to speak to comprehensive determination at the next meeting uh new is that new we'll start in policy subcommittee um in Miss vessels I'm certain we'll give an update to that but I think I'll want to bring some more specifics for that because we'll queue up a communication in the commment at the end of that week around competency determinations and and what that means in NOA that'll go out in the common on the 14th any other things you want to throw out there guys keep in mind March we have three meetings because one of them is the hearing which there'll be an update then the hearing and then the hearing is for the public to come and talk with us all right um so if there's nothing further everyone I'm going to move to adjourn second all in favor and opposed wonderful thank you everybody have a great night e