Speaker 1: Welcome to the Natick School Committee meeting. It's March 3rd, 6:00 PM We'll start with roll call Ms. Blathers. Here. Mr. Brat. Present Ms. Collins. Aye. Ms. Brunell here and I'm a yes. And we're gonna be making a motion to go into executive session. So I'd like to make that motion to discuss or propose a motion to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body on the chair. So declares EAN units A
and B, administrative assistance, food service, paraprofessionals and custodial and maintenance. And I do declare second. And we'll have a roll call. Vote Ms. Flats. Yes. Mr. Brand? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. Ms. Brunell? Yes. And I'm a yes. So we'll now enter executive session planning to return at 6:35 PM Okay. Welcome back everybody. We've just returned from executive session and prior. So you are joining the March 3rd meeting of the Natick School Committee.
It's now 6:40 PM and we are back in open session. Prior to executive session we did roll call. So we will now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence. Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Speaker 3: Might I suggest we take things out of order and share good news. Speaker 1: So if we could just Speaker 3: After announcements and such, Speaker 1: I will take that into consideration. Thank you. So thank you
for that moment of silence. We take it to honor our troops who have served on our behalf. So now we can go to, actually should we do, let's do public speak. Is there anybody here for public speak? Nobody. And Mr. Fugman is not here today, which is why I'm sitting in the chair, the chair's chair today. And I did not hear of any notifications for public speak from him either. So there is somebody online. Okay. So public speak is scheduled for a period of 15 minutes. Each speaker will be permitted a maximum of three minutes during which time they can speak about topics within the scope of responsibility of the school committee.
All remarks will be addressed through the school committee chair. Public speak is not a time for debate or response to comments by the school committee. Mr. Brand, do you mind timing? Speaker 4: I don't mind timing. Okay. Speaker 1: If you're able to, are you allowed? Oh, Speaker 4: Can you count that one? Speaker 1: Okay, I'll Speaker 4: Take care of it. Who's cohost? Speaker 1: The who is it? Who's online? Mr. Ostro. Oh, Mr. Ostroff. Okay. When you're ready. Mr. Ostroff, you have three minutes and if you could please identify yourself and your relationship to Natick. Speaker 5: Thank you. Madam Chair of Josh Ostroff. I am an timed member and have served in other capacities. I live on Erlandson Road in Natick
and my relationship is one of a deep affection after 38 or so years. Anyway, I am here in my capacity is a member of the board of yes re Natick. And I had two things I wanted to share with the community and, and the committee. A couple of events relating to the upcoming election. Yes, re Natick is hosting a candidate forum a week from tonight on March 10th, which will be moderated by the editors of the Natick Report. Bob and Deborah Brown. All candidates for select board and school committee have been invited to participate
and we will be taking questions in advance and I'll provide more information about that in a moment for, for the candidates. In addition, we for the first time this year are providing information about all candidates on the ballot. There are about 80 or so people who are currently on the ballot and there may may be more write in candidates about a little under half so far have provided information about their candidacies, their name, their address, and a about a 200 word statement. And this is also available at our website.
Yes, for natick.org. We're happy to do this so that voters can be better informed about their choices in the March 25th election. And, and that's just something we wanna do consistent with our mission to encourage civic engagement and provide good information to the public. Yesterday, NA is not endorsing candidates in the upcoming election. So I just wanted to make that announcement. And in that spirit thank all members of the school committee for their volunteer service and acknowledge the good work of our town staff. I know that there's no questions and I know that Mr. Brand is probably getting close to that three minute mark
so I just will sign off and thank you again for the opportunity to present to the committee. Have a good night. Thank you for your work. Speaker 1: Thank you. Is anyone else present for public speak? Okay, we'll close public speak and now we'll move to announcements. Hi, good evening Speaker 6: Everybody. I just wanted to circle back with a little update on the way we've communicated the application process that we mentioned at our last meeting. For those in the community who could be interested in a position on the school building
committee for memorial project during the eligibility phase. So just in case people wanna look beyond the kind of QR code we shared last time and it was posted with our agenda last Tuesday, it was posted on the Natick Town website so you can easily access it there. Last Wednesday it was posted on Natick Public School's, Facebook and that where with a tag to the town. So you could find it in social media. Thursday, February 27th. It was added to all of the NPS, the NPS main page of our website as well as all the school websites. On Friday of last week, it was emailed out in all
of the elementary school principals letters. And then just today a separate email went to all families from the communications department and then an email went out to all of our PTO leads to have them consider sending it out through the PTO channels, which already Memorial responded back and said yes and Instagram has a post. Now there's one other piece which is the middle school and high school newsletters, which will happen this Friday. So that's the announcement on. So I think that's a very wide and thorough outreach. So I really hope you can find it. If you can't always just find me and I will send you the link directly.
I have no problem with that. Happy to help. The second announcement I'll make as I did last time, we're in the process of meeting with the education subcommittee fin com and there's another meeting this Wednesday that we'll be participating in from five to seven. And then we anticipate another one next week that hasn't been locked in yet, but we anticipate one. So that's the update we have for the committee and the public. Speaker 4: Okay, Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell. Speaker 7: So just, I wanted to announce to the committee just like look at the schedule for this week and this is when you want me to make this announcement, right?
Yeah. Okay. So I just wanted to make sure I was in the right category. So we, you know, given that it's budget season, there are lots of opportunities to talk to school committee members about the budget addition in as well as Dr. Stash. So this coming Wednesday at 8:00 PM there will be a PTO virtual meeting that the PCC and Julie have organized. So there'll be school committee members in attendance. Dr. Stash and her team will be presenting. That will be this Wednesday and again next Wednesday the 13th I believe.
Or maybe that's a Thursday. That's a Thursday. Yeah. So this Wednesday the fifth and next Thursday the 13th, we will also be at the Lilja school council meeting. Matt Brand will be there. And that is again Wednesday. Ms. Collins will be at the school council meeting for Ben at Behe. Julie will be at the school council meeting at On Wilson on Thursday. And then brought to you by special with a special bit of work by Linda. Thank you for setting this up for us. We will be meeting at the Natick Senior
and community, the NA Natick Community Center. How do you say it? Natick Senior and Community Center. Community Senior Center. Community Senior Center. Yeah. That's why the CSC. So Natick Community and Senior center this Friday from one to two 30, Dr. SP and team and school community members will be there at a table. Not to make a formal presentation, but just to take any questions that residents may have about the FY 26 budget. And then finally, next Tuesday or two Tuesdays from now the 18th of March, the school committee will have its first office hours
that we are bringing back. So office hours will be that Tuesday night and we will get that information out. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Any other announcements? Okay. Alright, so let's go to teacher updates. Speaker 8: Thank you Madam Chair. I have nothing to say at this particular time. Okay. Speaker 1: Is our METCO representative online tonight? See? Okay. Alright. If Tamika joins later, we can ask her if she has an update and then neither of our student representatives could make it today, but Anthony did share some
updates that I will read now. So the first announcement is that on March 6th to seventh is the M-C-A-S-E-L-A March retest. And March 11th and 12th is the MCAS math March retest. March 20th is equity co-op day at Natick High School and students and Clubs will create lessons teaching other Natick high students about equity. The theme for this year is Community in Celebration on April 9th, a polar plunge to support the Special Olympics will be at the faculty parking lot at Natick High School. Registration can be found by using this link.
Who's doing this? This sounds very interesting. Oh wow. Oh my goodness. There's some two challenges. Okay. Additional information can be found by contacting Mr. De Antonio. Sidney Chandler or Bethany Lauren. Is that how you pronounce her name? Okay. Larin. Okay, Larin. Thank you. And their final announcement is the class of 2028 is hosting a Chipotle fundraiser on Saturday, March 15th from five to 9:00 PM 25% of sales using the code, I won't read it here
but we can post it for you. During that time period will be donated to Natick High School's class of 2028. So thank you Anthony, Speaker 9: If I could just add to the polar plunge to benefit Special Olympics. They have already raised over $3,000 and as a result, Mrs. Cohen, Mrs. Kearney and Mrs. Blocker have all agreed to do the plunge and if they raise $6,000, Mrs. Miller, myself and Dr. Stash will be doing the plunge.
Speaker 1: Oh my doing gosh. Speaker 2: Wants to volunteer the whole school. The whole school. What's the date of the, Speaker 1: The date is April 9th in the parking lot. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 2: We're okay with it. Speaker 9: It's not so much about the polar, it's about the fact that it's the administrators. Right. Speaker 1: But Anthony did provide a link for donations, so we'll figure out how to get that posted if anyone from the public would like to see somebody do a polar plunge in April. So thank you. Okay. Alright.
So we can move on to the consent agenda. Speaker 10: Would you like a motion? Speaker 1: Yes, I would Speaker 6: Motion Speaker 10: To approve the consent agenda. Speaker 4: Second. Speaker 1: All in favor? Okay. Alright. And then let's move on to the superintendent's report. Speaker 6: Ms. Baldoni, are you okay if I start with budgets today? Great. So we're gonna start with our budget presentations today, which we have a few guests. I'm gonna let Mr. Gillis lead this portion as he kind of ha is I think guiding the deck. And then we can introduce our guests who are going to speak. But the, basically, as it says on the agenda, we're gonna cover user fees, recommendations, options,
and review, as well as grants and other funding sources. Speaker 11: All right. Good evening everybody. This will first we'll go over the recommendations for school user fees and options and review. This is not a typical review of of user fees, it's a little bit more of an in-depth look, but trying to keep it so simple enough so everybody can, can follow along. So first thing we have is what was in the budget book where we said we were gonna save about $215,000 worth of offsets and diving in, you see the, a little red line in a cross out
for the athletic user fee increase of $25. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of go in order, but that, that that'll change just a little bit. So transportation fees here we have like a section of laws, so the hyperlink that's right up there, if you wanted to type in any of the laws, you could see all the laws regarding school transportation. We cannot charge for students in grades K to six, living two miles or more from school for special ed, transportation, homeless, vocational transportation,
or people that actually qualify for free or reduced lunch. I know we don't charge for lunch right now because the state of Massachusetts has made up the difference and we don't charge for fully reimbursable meals, but we, those, these are all things that we're not allowed to charge for. You know, by law, by regulation we do charge for kids in grades seven to 12 or K six that live less than two miles from school. That's been the law for a a a long period of time. I know not a whole lot of people would have their, their elementary age kids walking two miles of school in,
in, in a lot of circumstances. So we have a bus fee and we compare it to the, we did a survey to compare it and come up with like salary average. And if you wanted to click on the hyperlink again that's like the greenish blue underlined link there. You could see all, all the surveys that we did. But basically since our bus fee hasn't increased in quite some time, we're about 37% below the user average and 42% below the family cap limit. So the the last fee increase I'm told was sometime prior to 2019.
And so what would that look like? So a $25 increase is, is on the left. If we go to the next slide, oh, $25 increase. If we go to the, the next slide is on the left and you can see that we take the number of, of payers and we multiply that and we have some folks on financial assistance and we multiply that and then we, you know, add in the late fees. And then every year we seem to have people that sign up for the bus and then figure out something else and they, they get a refund either just before the year starts or the first, the first few days of school.
And then, so the baseline revenue for this was about $420,000 with a $25 per user increase gets us to about almost 472,000. We don't expect there to be any change in ridership with a, with a $25 fee increase, if the override fails and all this information is kind of highlighted for you in red, we would have to basically double that fee increase to four fee priced to $450 to come up with a total of $250,000 in new revenue for,
you know, getting to school because, and I started with the, with the buses because that's the largest number of payers of any, any group we have that that, that we charge a fee. And so you can see it sort of listed out there again, but when, when you have a fee increase that much we, we, we reduce the number of riders 'cause some parents will just say, I'm not gonna pay that much. That's that, that, that, that when you have that sharp of a change, some people will vote with their feet and walk away or find, find another way to do it.
Right. So we have to try to take that into account. Next we have the athletic fee recommendations. So again, diving into the number of payers in the different sports we have. Oh, did that go? Speaker 2: No, Speaker 11: Why isn't that taken? Speaker 2: Alright, go ahead you. Speaker 11: So diving into diving into that, we have a sort of a a per user fee for athletic participants and, and we have a cap. And when I first looked at building the budget,
when I first looked at hi the history FY 24, we spent 493,000 FY 20. We took in 493,000 in user fees in that line item. And in FY 23 it was 495,000 in user fees. And this year is in progress and we've taken in probably 270, 200 80,000 somewhere around there. And I, I, I called Tim Collins, the athletic director and I said, so has the fee changed?
And he said, no, it hasn't changed in, in, in quite some time, probably before 2019. Do you have the same number of participants? Oh, maybe not exactly. I said you run the same number of teams. Yes. So I had put the $25 and calculated it kind of a, a, a quick way to, to get there. And then when I got all the participants and by sport and by team from Tim, I noticed that I had a a $43,000 worth of unlabeled revenue. And then digging into it, the transactions in the line items, at least for FY 24,
those were kind of gate receipts from tournaments and other, other things that got placed in the wrong place. So I think a i, it might have been consistently going back in time that that's where the things got posted, but it probably should have hit the rental income because you can't, you can't like charge the kids that way simply to make, to make up the difference. Right. Because it, it is not a straight line. So if we go to the next slide, Speaker 2: Good job. You did it. Speaker 11: Yeah, well yeah, a little quick. You too.
So if we go to the next slide, we can kind of see where we had a $25 increase and it's crossed, Speaker 4: Well Speaker 11: Wait a minute, $25 increase. And you can see where we crossed out that change because that, that's not exactly gonna happen, right? In order to make make up the same $50,000 in revenue, we'd have to have basically a $50 across the board increase for all the, for all the sports with the same categories to make it work because we just didn't have as many,
as many payers. If we go to the next slide, you know we're back, we're back to comparing the two of them. But the one, the slide to the right, like if the, we, we can break it out a different way. If we start to look at, if we start to look at the, the fees and the cost per sport in greater detail, We should probably charge some prices a little differently. So things like ski and hockey already had a, had a different price because we have a mountain rental or a ice rink rental and those, those are significant costs.
The football program and the swimming and diving also have rentals. I guess swimming used to not have a rental but last few years it does. And the football, the cost of the equipment has gone up fairly significantly is, and so there are a lot of other towns that have diff different fees for different levels of sports. There was a link to a fee survey on the prior slide and so the fees would have to go up anywhere between $200 to, to between $200 for the unified sports team or up to $750 for hockey and alpine ski.
And then the, the, the increases are there as well. Let's keep this moving. We'll take questions at the end. So then we have ASAP and Megan is here As well if we have questions. But in short there's a link to the budget book right up the top there and a, and a detailed memo from Megan with like funding analysis. But the program basically runs about 21, about 600, 633 kids from K to eight has 21 full-time staff and 78 part-time staff. We do provide financial assistance
'cause they are part of the Natick public schools. So they follow our policy and that that is approximately $300,000. And the fund, as you can see from FY 22, where we had a fund balance of about 400,000, we kind of actually are working our way back to that where it has gone up and then it's, it started to go down. So we've had, so we're recommending a 12% increase there and the rates are listed out whether it's two days, three days, four days or five days per week. And then, you know, we have, the first thing with our market
analysis was we have a wait list and we've had one for some time. And I guess we're a pretty good bargain because even with a 12% per DM fee increase, we're still 14 to 26% cheaper than Na Longfellow. The reason for the range is 'cause it's a different price for different days. Not everybody sets up their, their fees exactly the same way. And then 23 to 32% cheaper than the Natick YMCA. We're not looking for an increase in the before school care or the vacation weeks because we have open seats in those, in those programs. And with this, with this goal,
this is unrelated to the override. With this request unrelated to the override, we'd really like to be able to hire some more staff and expand the number of aftercare seats available. Getting staff is and being able to grow has been, has been a bit of a challenge the last few years and Megan can expand on that when we get to questions and we wanna reduce our expenses just a little bit. That was also part, part of the, the listing in the original budget. And then for folks at home or anybody else, this contact info who to contact
and program info on, on the links there as well. Next we have rental revolving, you know, the primary goal of a rental fund is to cover expenses, permit community access, and most, most importantly be ready for the next day of school. So one of the biggest expenses of, of the rental revolving fund is the custodial overtime because a lot of this stuff happens on weekends and sometimes on holidays or at nights and it's over and above their normal work duties. So we've got a fund balance history there and you can see where we start to struggle in FY 24.
The rental rates have not been updated since 2016. And I got that from the current rental manual, which is also hyperlinked there on pages 11 and 12. And we had different rates for weekdays and for weekends. And, and the effect of custodial rates sort of varied. Like tier one is for town municipal groups, tier two is for community and non-profit and tier three was all other. And yet we had basically different custodial overtime rates. So looking to bring that back into alignment with current rates.
And why isn't that changing? Speaker 12: Okay, Speaker 11: We're gonna bring that back in and you can kind of see here a, a a new table for a new application and proposal for rates where we go from $5 for the room fee to $50 for the room fee. If the park and recs group is gonna rent the courts, we should get more than five bucks an hour to help recover the cost of the lights, the heat, you know, toilet paper, hand soap thing, things like that. Right? And then the cus the custodial overtime hour is listed there
as well, right? So the new, rather the new hourly fee is there to go to $50 and people don't have to rent all four courts or at Kennedy all three courts. We, we could prorate it. Same with tier two, same with tier three. Tier three goes from a daily fee to an hourly fee. And though though those may seem sharp comparing Brookline, Needham, Wellesley and Framingham, we'd still be on the cheaper end of pretty much all of those communities from most of the spaces and most of the hourly rates. Next slide. So here's a summary of some smaller fee
rental options. So the, you can go, I'll go through 'em quickly. School lunch to increase the adult lunch price, which is not free, it's at $4 and 25 cents to move that to $5 and 50 cents. The adult lunches are not supposed to be subsidized by the program. It's just supposed to cover the cost of the cover, the cost of the food, preschool tuition would go up 7%. Kind of keep pace with the program, increases with the budget. The majority of, of that expense is, is pretty much tracks what's going on in our budget because it's the teachers in the paras in the program
and a little bit for supplies. We don't charge the kids that are special education, but they're regular ed. They call 'em peer models. They can be a fee for half day and full day. That's the full day price listed foreign student tuition. I, I couldn't find any activity with it the last few years. So the, the price hasn't been changed. I don't think we're gonna accept anybody. But between now and next year, who knows, it looks like we might as well update that to recover any, any costs for that. The North Star tuitions is an in-house special education program. We often have two students, sometimes three that
from neighboring towns that choose to send their student here. When we have seats available, instead of going to a collaborative or a private school, a lot of public schools do this with whatever program they have that might have seats available. So we look to recover a significant portion of those costs. And if the student has a one one-to-one requirement, we, we bill them separately for that. So if there's seats available in one of those rooms from elementary school through high school, then then we, we
we, we take that summer school extended school year. So there's the second half of the day summer school for e ESY is in the morning. The afternoons we've got summer enrichment going on. So this would be a price increase there from one 50 to 200. This would be to recover cost of the program that struggled to self fund. Next would be the high school parking fee. This tends to mirror what, what the cost of, of a bus pass is. So that would go up $50 and that would put $15,000 into the, the
student parking revolving fund if the override were to fail. And if the school committee did want to keep it mirroring the, the cost of, of the, of the bus pass, then that cost would be $450 and that would put up to $75,000 more in new revenue in that fund. And I guess we sell out. So we have 300 spaces and we, we've sold out this past year and I I'm told we've sold out other times in the past, just not every year. Laptop fees, no change.
It's also known as the Chromebook fee transcript fee to go from $2 to $3 cover our printing costs and software costs from mailing that hasn't been updated as far as anybody at the high school can remember for quite some time. And then summer enrichment program to go up $60 per week. And again, that, that could bring in about $66,000 based on a conservative estimate on participation. So next would be new fee options. These don't exist but people wanted to look at it. So we've got clubs at the high schools and middle schools
and we've got participants. Those are pretty good approximate numbers for the current participants. The clubs are a, are a kind of a casual program where people can come and go 'cause there's no fee. So kids get to try something out at no cost and then they get to pursue it a little more should they find they like it. Right. And there are kids that obviously participate in, in more than one club, it's pretty hard to have a fee for a hiking club if there's gonna be no hiking club that exists. So the kids kinda have to make it work. So the way to proceed with this is to have a blanket fee
that would cover options to all clubs throughout the year. And it could pull in, you know, probably close to a hundred thousand dollars if that's what the committee wanted to do. There are hyperlinks so that people could see the lists of the clubs there as well. And then I've sort of expected the question to come up compared to the override is compared at a $7 million override as voted by the select board a couple of weeks ago I put in three sample home prices up the top 600,780 move slide, whoop that didn't move.
Three home value prices up the top there, $600,000 seven 80, which is the median home price and a in a, in a million dollar home. I, I know there's some people that didn't know they were millionaires out there, but that's, that's the value of their homes at this point. So it one bus fee and one sport fee, it could basically be a wash and depending on which sport it was, whether it's a typical high school sport or a, the, the football and and swim increase or the hockey alpine ski. Like if you look at,
if you're looking at those price increases, just for one, if you have one student that rides the bus and plays one sport and kind of quickly see how much just the fee increase would be if the override fails. And if you had two kids and they played two sports, the numbers are below in the tan. And if you, the, there's a hyperlink down the bottom if you wanted to take a look, if your house is worth a different number, a different has a different value on the town's webpage with all the, all the information about the override, their listed chart that, that shows home values,
I think going from 400,000 to a couple of million dollars. So with all of that, happy to take questions. I also have people that fortunately know their programs very well with Tim Collins and Josepha Blocker and Megan Rezi here for you. I'll turn it back to the chair. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Gillis questions from the committee, Ms. McDonough. Speaker 13: Okay, thank you. I'll start with my question about slide seven. I'm trying to just understand what you're proposing here.
So this is related to athletic fees and the family cap you are proposing. I didn't totally understand the bullets, but I don't have to, if the chart is two se it's going from 2 25 to 2 75 right? The the fee for playing in your average sport. Speaker 11: Correct. Okay. It would be a $50 increase instead of 25. Okay. Because of the fact that we, we couldn't charge all the fees that were in the, the, the, the account fidelity issue with all the fees that are in there and not matching actual users and some came from rental income.
Okay. It, it's a $50 increase instead of 25. So the, the fees were there if there's no change and the revenue, if the override passes and folks don't want to break out from the current breakdown into a more detailed breakdown where if the override fails, yeah we, we could always calculate and look at if we wanted to, to break things out differently, but to keep it as simple from one step to the next as possible. 'cause just adding one step you can see how much more fun this got. Yeah. Than, Speaker 13: Than So what is the, what is the family cap
that you're proposing? So right now it's 6 75. So I wasn't clear what the new family cap is. Speaker 11: So it, it'd still be three, three sports. So 2 75 times three is eight and a quarter. Speaker 13: Okay. So this, there's like the range in the fourth bullet that's not relevant. Speaker 11: The range. Oh Speaker 13: Yeah. Like in that bullet where it says family cap to 8 25 to 1353 sports. I didn't understand that. Speaker 11: So if you played, if you had three kids age 25 or you had kids that played three kids that did hockey
and skiing, it would be 1350 Speaker 13: Okay. Speaker 11: Would be the cab. Okay. So if you had, you know, one hockey and, and two other sports, it would be more than 8 25 but less than 1350. Okay. Okay. Is that accurate Tim? Speaker 13: Because if you have a hockey player, then you have a higher cap. Correct. Got it. Okay. So it's either 8 25 or 1350. Speaker 11: No, it could be in between because you could have, okay, two two folks at 2 75 and and one at four 50. Speaker 13: Okay. Speaker 11: So it, the caps are range but it's, you gotta pay for the first three sports.
Speaker 13: Is it a range right now? Speaker 11: Yeah, Speaker 13: It is a range. Speaker 7: Sorry Ms. Brunell, do we have the three cap sport? We don't have the three sport cap now? We do, yes. Oh, I've just always reached the limit so I've never looked into it. So, so what you're saying is I need to get my kids to do a cheap fall sport so they don't pay the extra for the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Got it. Cross country, come Speaker 13: Back. Okay, so it sounds like you are Speaker 11: I think, I think I'll let Tim expand on that one. Speaker 7: Do you want us to come up or Speaker 11: Do Yeah, actually
Speaker 13: It sounds like we have adjusted the family cap to what we are would now be charging for the, the single like the fee for one sport or same with the bus. You, you adjusted that. So it's, Speaker 11: They were both linear. Yeah. Speaker 13: Okay. So that, that makes sense to me now. Thank you. That's, I would just say I think the, I I might have more questions later 'cause there's a lot of information but just the middle, the sport, the activity fee would, I know we haven't done that in the past.
It seems particularly difficult to implement. I like the idea of it but I, I think clubs some meet really regularly, some don't meet, sometimes they're not held. I think we'd, it would be very challenging to implement those fees unless we could do it for only those that really require it. I just have to think about that a little more. Thanks. Which Speaker 14: One do you want? Speaker 11: New fee options. Okay. Speaker 1: Ms Brin. Oh, Ms. Ms. Lathers Speaker 11: A actually just on the new fee options, this is something that Jora and I talked with. Yeah, music and,
and theater performing arts in regards to all of these things. And I guess we did have a fee at least for theater a few years ago. Speaker 14: I think a while ago there was some fee attached to theater then I think the boosters came in and did a little bit more to generate some funding that way and then got rid of the fee. Some of our music groups are attached to coursework, so they're doing performances outside of school so it wouldn't be equitable to charge kids for things that are attached to coursework. But the larger plays and musicals do incur costs that are not
super far from what a typical athletic season might be. And they take about the same amount of time. And so we could break that down to how much it would be. But we, I I can see some level of parity between being in a large production and being, playing a sport for a season. I think it gets a little bit hairier when you talk about some of the music groups. And then the activity fee I agree would have some pragmatic challenges around you have a kid that wanders into a club with a friend one day to try it on and they're not really super active. We want them to do that. Right?
And then are we asking them if they've paid the fee? Right. It, it becomes, that becomes a little bit challenging to do with full fidelity because the, the list of who is quote unquote in a club is very fluid. So, Okay. Ms. Lathers? Yeah, Speaker 15: I think my question is answered 'cause it was around coursework stuff. Got it. But what you're saying makes sense. I mean I do, I would struggle with with attached to clubs where you want kids to try on different things, but I do agree that the musical is definitely a sport.
Speaker 11: So Apol apologies for late introductions. Megan Zi is our director of aftercare and Joseph Blocker is the high school principal and Tim Collins is our athletic director. Speaker 1: Do you still have it Ms. Brunell? Speaker 7: Thank you for this. Matt, thank you for all the market adjustments. I think that this is just good that we're doing this, especially in light of the FY 26 budget and questions that we are asking voters to consider. One question or just comment is with the athletic fees,
I have never been very comfortable charging the same amount for middle school sports that we charge for varsity sports. And so that's, I know that's nickel and diming here, but I would, I would like to see our middle school sport fee be less than what we charge our varsity and junior varsity athletes Speaker 11: And keep going. Speaker 7: So that's just a personal opinion. Speaker 11: So it, it's slightly reflected there because it is a little less intense. The salaries are still, you know, per the contract travel is a bit less, but there still is some, as we play some of the,
the neighboring towns, it's not just intramural. So we could do that, but when we lower for the, you know, 400 middle school students in order to make it balance, that means we'd raise the fee a little bit on the high school students. Speaker 7: I see. Speaker 11: So I, I can come up with another option if need be and, and discuss that with Tim and probably the middle school principals and GI Speaker 7: When we've thought about it before the, like the middle school sports don't seem to have as many events as the high school sports do. So you're paying the same amount
where a varsity athlete might get what, 12 games, the middle school might have six meets. So, you know what I mean? So in, I understand what you're saying about the tra I would definitely want it to cover the transportation fees, but I'm not gonna die on that mountain. But it's just something I think we should consider. Speaker 15: I was gonna add to that 'cause I think particularly like spring track Kennedy feels a little bit more like a club trying on a sport for size a little bit. I know a lot of folks, you know, you get kids doing cross country maybe for the first time. So in that same spirit of involvement, middle school sports often feel a little bit more like that.
You don't wanna put barriers in place. Speaker 1: I have a question. So it's regarding the, the ASAP presentation and the thought that this would allow us to expand the numbers of spaces we'd have in asap. In previous years, administration has told us that there wasn't actually any physical room to expand asap. And so that that's the reason we've not expanded. Has that changed? Speaker 14: I think that was maybe, maybe I poorly explained it because it's not about physical space, it's about staff. A hundred percent. Our principals are great about sharing
space and they could give us every classroom in their buildings, but we couldn't staff the program appropriately. Okay. So we could grow to up to approximately 50 additional seats if we were able to staff to that level. Right now we haven't been able to consistently, part of that is the nature of our part-time afternoon only, you know, workforce. So the fee increase would allow us to continue to invest in staff salaries and development
because it's absolutely our inability to staff that's limiting our growth. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you for that. And when you say 50 additional seats, is that across the district Speaker 14: Or, yes, that's spread across our six sites. Speaker 1: Okay, so around fewer than 10 spots at each school. Speaker 14: Exactly. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Laers, Speaker 15: If you did new, if you did introduce new fee options, would, how would that work? With family caps Speaker 11: For asap? Speaker 15: No, no, no. Back to the new fee options if you had club
or musical or how would those work into, just to think about how they'd work in a family caps, Speaker 1: Like would you add in the activity fees when Speaker 15: You have five musicals and jazz band and you've got, you know, and five sports and you know, think about Speaker 12: It Speaker 14: As a Speaker 15: Sport if Yeah, that's kind of the, just something to think about is what that caps would look like at the minute show that Kate Flat thinks theater is a sport. Speaker 11: Well it one of the you Speaker 15: Have not seen West Street. No, I know, I'm joking. Speaker 11: Two of the three plays sometimes have have cuts.
The kids that don't make it, there's usually one where it's open and nobody's turned away, but sometimes there are kids that try out and don't make it. Do I have that right? Oh Speaker 1: Yeah. Yep. Ms. Collins. Yes. Sorry, Mr. Mr. Gilis, did you have more to say? Okay, go ahead. Speaker 3: Oh, sorry. I just wanted to get Ms. Re's thoughts on, so raising the fee would allow us to raise more money towards salaries. That only works if we can hire the people. However, I don't know
your market anymore. I know we made some changes to make it a more attractive position to people. How is that working? Are are, in other words, I I don't wanna say use the word comfortable, but are, are you, for lack of a better term, comfortable that if we raise the fee we could expand the program and not just charge more for the same people because we don't have any buddy to be in with those kids? Speaker 14: Yeah, that's a great question and I would agree that yes, it's not a one-to-one. We need to increase tuition, not just for the hope
of expanding the program, which would be a hope, but to continue our, to cover our costs because we have not been able to sufficiently staff the program to our physical capacity. So we could hold approximately 500 children a day. Right now on our biggest afternoon we have four 50. We can't get to that next level because every time I try to inch up with enrollment, we lose three staff or we lose a paraprofessional and we have to pull folks out of ratio to support a student. So those lower enrollment numbers
by definition reduce our revenue. So we brought in $200,000 less this year. We anticipate doing so at the end of FY 25 because of that cap I've had to set on enrollment. So that is the, that is the other reason we need to increase tuition. Speaker 3: So looked at from the other side to say it possibly a little differently without increasing the fee, we cannot increase our offerings. So the parents who are searching for childcare afterschool childcare, which Speaker 11: We have a wait list. Speaker 3: Yes, you're Speaker 14: Difficult. Absolutely right. We,
Speaker 3: We would be limi we would not even be able potentially to staff what we're currently staffing that's throwing more parents back into the market. Speaker 14: That's perfectly stated. Okay. Our only hope of increasing capacity is this tuition increase. Absolutely. Speaker 11: Right. We, we've had job openings the, the last few years and we haven't been able to staff it. So, you know, the only lever we really kind of have is to see if we can pay people some more money and get some people to come work for us so we can have some more students go to aftercare in their own school
or at least stay in the, the school system. Speaker 3: Thank you. And I just wanna say, Mr. Gillis, I think that the final slide in your presentation is very powerful and I hope that people read it and, and appreciate that we are in such a budget situation that it's don't pass the override then these fees have to go in and you may be paying more or at least what you would've passed paid under the override and we would have fewer offerings that way. So I just hope that people pay attention to it. Thank you.
Speaker 11: Good summary. Speaker 1: Okay, any final questions? Somebody? Okay, super. So if you could just please identify yourself and ask your question. Is it Ms. Doran? Do Yeah, Ms. Doran. Speaker 16: Oh, sorry, I did not hear you say my name. I was waiting. I wanna speak, I just have a quick comment pertaining to the same slide that Ms. Collins spoke about. So I realize you're presenting this and it's, it's most enlightening and informative, but you're presenting this information to the school committee. But when you say, so if the override passes,
one would, in this, you know, assessment bracket would pay however many hundred and if it doesn't pass, you could see increases in the bus fee and sports fee and it would be a wash that only applies to those people who have students in the school system and of course who, who would be accessing the buses and sports and many of us don't and all taxpayers help to fund the school system. So I would just ask that you perhaps be more sensitive to those of us listening or Yeah, because it, it didn't really hit me right. It would not be a wash for me.
I'm trying to weigh and I have been trying to weigh all the information. It's a really tough situation for many of us and it doesn't seem like there's a win-win, but when I hear it's a wash and I'm thinking not for everyone. So that's just my comment and thank you for this presentation. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you Mr. Gillis, Ms. Blocker and Mr. Collins and Ms. Kazie appreciate you coming here to speak to us tonight. So Speaker 13: What is the, what do you need us to do? Speaker 6: We see these as we really part
of the override and no override plan in our budget book. We said we were gonna have two 15 in our regular No over I plan, sorry, over I plan and another 480. So we're trying to show what it would make up. Okay. Okay. And if you have feedback for us to adjust this plan, which is the basis for the plan in the budget book, which we didn't go and identify where those fees were. Okay. So if you go and look at the red section in the budget book that says there'll be fee increases of about 480,000. Okay. This is the recommendation that is aligned to that. Okay. And so, I mean, Matt, you can expand if you want to,
but this is, this was really our plan to kind of make the alignment and give that transparency. It took us some time to do the analysis. Speaker 13: Does that also include, so everything else I feel like has been what we talked about already and this, the whole analysis has been helpful. The only thing that struck me as new was the, the activity, the clubs, the music, the theater as a new recommendation. So is that something you want feedback on or would we vote that at a later time? Speaker 6: So, so the two things I heard today was the potential
or the thought just thrown out there about considering certain, let's say music, theater, art, big production items like as a sport. Yeah. I also heard potential recommendation to make a different fee for middle school sports. Those could wash, I mean I think we could ask Mr. Mr. Gillis to take those suggestions back and come back with another layer to this. I, I don't think we are asking for a vote today because we see the vote as the actual budget vote and any caveats you wanna put forth related to fees I think would be appropriate to do then.
Speaker 11: Yeah. So I definitely realized that that was a lot of information. Did not expect you to vote today and you don't have to, but it is expected to be part of the budget is setting fees. Although your probably least popular task is still with the school committee. So wanted to put options out there and, and get some feedback. Appreciate the feedback and, and from the community. Apologies if it seemed, I don't know, a little cold, for lack of a better better way to say it was trying to just be matter of fact for how it would impact students.
We are aware of the stress the override puts on people in the community. Not everybody's it got the same ability to add to their tax bill. Speaker 15: This lathers, just two quick comments. The, I mean, musical is like a sport, but I don't, I mean I I wasn't suggesting that it'd be treated like a sport from a fee perspective where I might be or feather from a, but because from a cost perspective, I think it's very different 'cause it doesn't have the transportation and I think, so I don't know what the cost, I think the costs are very different. Just I think there is appropriate for some
of these big ones I can see paying some kind of fee. But I would be very sensitive to the fact that I do believe that they did a lot of work to get the boosters to get rid of the fees before. And that's a very active, so I think getting feedback from the parent side of those organizations to under, to understand that would be very important. Speaker 11: So I mean that's why the, the recommended fees were were 50 or 40 bucks. The, the total cost of the programs a fraction of, of what the high school athletics is like. There aren't, well with the musical or the plays, they gotta pay to rent to play,
but basically their, their, their ticket sales tend to tend, tend to make that up. They don't have referees, they don't have as much travel. So it, it's a different, different cost altogether. And so offsetting the cost of it is, it would be, would be the consideration not trying to turn it into a, a money maker for the Speaker 15: Problem. And I know particular the student run is like they, they have a business manager, they intend to make it self-funded through it. It's part of the program to make it self-funded
through their ticket sales and stuff. I think that's part of the expectation that they're able to do that. I might not be accurate there. So those are just the things to navigate, I think on that side. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 6: Great. So we'll move on to the second piece of the budget. Thank you all for coming and helping with the questions very much and for your hard work and helping Matt to prepare the analysis. Speaker 11: Yes, I definitely appreciate it. So in the budget book on page one 14 of the PDF is the summary of federal grants. And you can see we get around $1.8 million in federal grants. And they're listed, they're listed out there. And if you took some time to scroll through it,
you could see the way we've spent the money the last few years and what we spend it on based on the, the general grant categories. We can pay staff contracted services, supplies, sometimes a few other things and benefits to go with the staff. We, we've generally moved away from trying to fund too much of the staff so that we don't have much, much to of a way to pay in benefits. We do fund some stipends for extra work out of the grants that, that's about the bulk of what we pay for staff. So Title I is basically remedial reading and writing.
Title II is professional development. Title III is for, is for EL title four. Go ahead. So what's, what's title four? This? Speaker 15: It's Speaker 1: The OS title Speaker 15: Four is Support Speaker 1: For All Learners. Yeah, just to orient everyone, we're actually looking there. There's no link document in Novus. So we're looking in the school committee or the school budget book pages one 11 and one 12 actually in the books that we have printed. And Speaker 11: If you're at, at, at home and you wanted to check the budget book,
Natick Public Schools FY 26 budget, click on the link. It's page one 14 in the PDF and one is where it begins for the federal grants and IDEA our, our biggest federal grant is for the Individual Education Act in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. And that that's for our special education program, IDEA 2 62 is for professional development and sort of focused at the preschool level. And then we've got a few state grants on the following page
where we basically expect to take in about $550,000 next year. I mean, this year we, at the time the grant that the budget book was, was produced just about a, a little more than a month ago, we had received 643,000. We'd applied for 1,000,032 in competitive grants and we did wind up getting some more of those. We'll update that a little, a little bit later. His money was still coming in as much as last week. Was it Thursday, Friday?
Speaker 4: Yes. Speaker 11: So we're still, this is the joy of working with the state at times. So, you know, the, the school year's more than half done and we're still getting grants. We, we, we'll take what we can get whenever we can find alignment that goes along with what we're already doing. But the main one that we get there is metco. We expect that to stay the same program's over 60 years. Old states never not funded it. When things don't go well, they don't, they don't do much of an increase and then they run supplemental appropriations throughout the year as the state's revenue comes in, they tend to give a little more.
So that's not a, not a rare thing. So that's kind of the grant summary. And then, you know, right after that would be our summary of the, the five year capital plan with some other, other links. I know not everybody gets through the entire budget book, but it is sectioned out for your interests. So table of contents, if you're interested in anything in particular, then you can, should be able to get to the page and get there. I'll take any questions about grants if folks have any, but that's where to find the information and the summaries.
Speaker 15: Ms. Lathers, do you have any concerns about any of the federal grants going away? Speaker 11: I, I don't, but you know, the news cycle has kind of gone from daily to like, between meals, right? And I, I think some people know how to count their votes and saying I'm gonna do away with the Department of Education isn't like saying I'm gonna do away with all the funding. The funding. The department could become very small where they just send the money to the 50 states to keep up with some of the programs.
I I just don't see the individuals, the IDEA grant going away when it's federal law for free and appropriate public education for people with disabilities and special needs. I don't see it. Everybody has got a need for at least some of the needs for the federal programs. It would be pretty unpopular. But the same time there's a whole lot of other things going on with the world not, and our country, and alls I can say is we're, we're trying
to make sure we submit our claims in a nice, timely manner. So in case things change, we've already received the money that, that they've awarded us. Speaker 1: I will say that is a question that we're getting very frequently from the public. So thank you for sharing that perspective, Mr. Gillis. Speaker 11: That, that's just my analysis from, from being in the business 25 years. But it's sometimes hard to read all the political tea leaves. Speaker 1: Other questions? I have another question
just that I feel I, I am hearing a lot from the public as well. So on the five-year capital plan there's an amount sort of penciled in there for the Memorial School project. What is the timeline where that number would become more certain? I do think the public has asked that question several times and maybe we can just take a moment to answer that. Speaker 11: Sure. So we're in, in the nine month eligibility phase and that ends right around Halloween for us. And then we would have to vote to, if we get invited and hopefully we will get invited
to the feasibility study phase where we would look at a bunch of options, select one, we would also hire a, an owner's project manager, manager and an architect and, and design about 20, 25% of the project have a nice schematic design and floor plan layout. And our program all explains as to what we're gonna build. And then we would get cost estimates actually to bring back to the voters to vote to project number. So that's a solid two years out from,
from today may, maybe a little, a little more because they give you a, a timeframe and it doesn't have to be exactly that. So you can finish a little early or you can ask for a, some grace. And, and they've always been good in, in my experience, about moving people another month where need be if, if they had a, you know, a relatively decent reason. 'cause they can't process everything all at once. They, they, they're always kind of ongoing with these things. But we would, we would get that, get that number to vote on probably about two years from now, plus
or minus a month or two. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you Ms. Flas Speaker 15: On that same, the total cost Kennedy was what, one 10? I think Speaker 11: I, I'd have, I'd have to look, but it, it, I think the construction costs were in the high seventies and then we had architects fees and OPM costs and we wound up with four point something million after it was all said and done that we didn't spend. Or the 1.8 million that the town just got is in its final payment from MSBA in December. They hold back 5% until they've audited the
audited the construction. Speaker 15: So where do we come with 1 4 70 and 70? 1 41 40? When I was just looking, I was just re-looking at that and there's two chunks of 70 million. What is that? Speaker 11: Two chunks of 79. Totally Speaker 15: Reading it wrong and having case add everything. The last column is extended and Oh, the last one's extended. Okay, sorry. Poof. It was like, whoa, look at that. Speaker 13: It is true that the construction costs are likely to be like double or triple
or something much, much higher than when Kennedy was built. So I'm not looking at what you're looking at, but that is very true in terms of 'cause Right. I remember right after Kennedy was funded, they started to see an increase in construction costs, which could be even more now. Depends, we don't know. Speaker 11: Yeah, I Speaker 13: Mean, so I just wanted to share that piece that drives so much of the cost. Speaker 11: Construction costs tend to go up between four and 6%, maybe even as high as 7% in typical years
with the cost of inflation for materials and then for labor, 'cause Massachusetts is a prevailing wage state, so it goes off of settled collective bargaining agreements, most of which don't necessarily go backwards. And since the pandemic, the inflation that's happened to us in our lives has happened the, the same to construction and in some cases more so with materials coming from overseas. So yeah, it, it, you know, on a square footage amounts
the elementary, the Memorial Elementary School might cost more than than the Kennedy Middle School to, to construct. Although I expect it'll be a much smaller building. 'cause it will be for one elementary school, not, not a middle school that covers two elementary schools or two plus elementary schools. Speaker 15: Yes, Ms. Brunell. Speaker 7: So just back to grants, I really appreciated a, a couple meetings ago you spoke about the cost savings that happens when you move salaried positions off a grant. And I think I, that's what I'm seeing in the IDA grant for FY 25 and FY 26 because then you don't have to charge benefits
right off the grant. Correct? Speaker 11: Yep. There's a re retirement surcharge of 9% even though the employee is paying it, the employer has to pay. Yeah. And then there's a Medicaid medicare charge that we also have to pay over and above what, what the employee pays. So it costs us about 10.5% to run full-time staff. Yeah. And that, that's not even the health insurance off of a grant. So closing out FY 24 things were tight, moved tuitions to the grant to,
and put the staff back into the budget so that it would be simpler and, you know, our budget dollars would go a little farther. Speaker 7: So I just wanted to call that out as the savvy budgeting that's happening by your department. And just thank you for having that eagle eye on that because that is just best practice and is like, literally just like the low hanging fruit of things that you can do when you stay up to date on your trade. So thank you. Speaker 11: Welcome. Speaker 4: Okay, Speaker 1: Ms. Collins, Speaker 3: I know I sound like a broken record,
but how are we doing vis-a-vis getting things posted in a timely manner that allows you to keep tabs on all of this Speaker 11: Posting jobs or posting revenues? Speaker 3: No, post it in in unis. I know we're very efficient in posting jobs. Okay. Speaker 11: Well I just want it to be clear we've, we're making some progress, but they usually it helps when I remind them Speaker 3: Is there anything that we need to do? Speaker 11: I'll leave my answer at that. Speaker 3: Okay, fair enough. Speaker 4: Okay,
Speaker 1: Thank you. So just before we move on to the, the next agenda item on the superintendent's report, I just want to move to our action items. So earlier, earlier tonight in executive session, we voted on two items that we will need to vote again in executive session or in open session. So I'm looking for a motion first on the second item Speaker 3: And I'm getting my pages. Speaker 1: These are both related to conclusion of negotiations for our EAN unit A and B contracts. So Ms. Collins, yes. Speaker 3: Move to approve the contract
as outlined in the memorandum of understanding between the school committee and the EAN units A and B second. Speaker 1: All in favor? Speaker 4: Okay, Speaker 1: Thank you. And this the second item and then we can speak to both of them. Ms. Collins Speaker 3: Move to approve the press release as developed with a couple of minor edits that were discussed earlier for release to the public about the settled contracts.
Second, Speaker 1: All in favor pass unanimously. So I think I just, we, I think we wanna take a moment here just to celebrate this enormous piece of work here. Amazing. Speaker 3: And thank our partners. Yeah, I really wanna thank our partners. Speaker 1: Yes, our union partners we're just incredible. We, we do interest based bargaining in Natick and if, if anyone isn't familiar with that process, it's an extremely collaborative process in which we work very closely with our teachers and our union partners and we take a very careful,
thoughtful approach to every topic. And we are really lucky in Natick to, to be able to work with the a a n and thank you Mr. Wood for being part of that process. And to everyone else who was as well. Thank you Speaker 17: Actually, Matt. Speaker 8: Thank you Madam Chair. If I may, I just want to reiterate what Ms. Gar, Ms. Gareth is saying about the collaborative process. And I also just want to add one of the, one of the attractions to the in space bargaining process that I've come to really appreciate over the last few contracts is that both sides, because we discuss the issues rather than take firm stands,
we are able to understand and appreciate the decision making, the reasons why certain things might be prioritized one way. And I think that I have certainly come to appreciate the work that the school committee does in a far richer way than I would've otherwise. And I think that the members of the school committee who have participated have also come to learn much more about the day-to-day ins and outs, workings of the, the classrooms that they oversee. So I think it's a, it's a educational experience as well. And for that I'm very much appreciative
for my partners on this committee and in administration. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you everybody. Okay. Back to any, does anyone else have anything else they'd like to add or, yes, Ms. Collins, Speaker 3: Just quickly, Ms. Goeth and Mr. Woods spoke of interspace bargaining, which when I first joined the committee I thought was inter interspace bargaining and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't find it. And it takes longer, there's no question that it takes a long time to come to that understanding to, you know, really understand where the other person is coming from.
But I think through it we managed to be fairly creative and what we finally settled on and I do have a greater appreciation for what goes on in the classroom. And unlike many of our counterparts elsewhere in the state, we have a great working relationship. And working is the part that's important. Great. Is good too. But it, it works. We get where we wanna be, we get where everybody wants to go and so thank you. Speaker 6: Alright, Speaker 1: Back to our agenda.
Speaker 6: Great. Excellent. We're, I'm excited about this. We're going to have assistant superintendent Sue Baldoni and Sandy Lemon. It really go over a really comprehensive presentation, quite a bit of data around literacy. So I'll let them explain the objectives, but it's a nice mid-year update on literacy for the district. Speaker 9: Great, thank you. So I've been promising you since the start of the year that I was going to come back and give you a mid-year update. So I'm excited to do that. I'm also very excited to bring Sandy Lemon to the table. Sandy is one of our personalized learning coaches
and Sandy also has long been a literacy instructor in the district, serving both as an language arts teacher at the middle school level, a literacy coach, and now a personalized learning coach. She has immense knowledge around the data and analyzing the data to inform instruction and is a master around the renaissance assessments that we give. She has, not only has she done a lot of analysis in her previous positions, but she's doing a lot of this analysis work to support us at central office as well as to do a lot
of coaching in the district. She works at the high school and at lilja and supporting the teams there around data literacy and using the Renaissance for that. So I hope you enjoy what she brings to the table tonight as much as I do. So our goals for today are to provide you a mid-year update of student growth and we're we'll be comparing this year from fall to winter to last year is fall to winter. And we're also going to talk about the screeners that we use to identify markers of dyslexia.
We know that that's a concern for a lot of parents. And we're also going to provide you with an update for the literacy audit that we're conducting pre-K to 12. So I'm gonna kick it over to Sandy. You just want to make Speaker 18: Sure the green light was already on. Perfect. So I think I'm good to go. Super. Good evening. It's good to see you all. The first slide here is student growth percentile. Student growth percentile is a measurement that compares our students to like peers nationally from one sort
of similar screening time to another. The growth bans we're looking, we're targeting anything above 50. Typical growth is 35 to 65, but when you dig into what a student growth percentile is, anything above 50 means you're gaining ground. The metric goes to 99, the red represents last year's student growth percentile by grade. And the blue is this year. The next slide is showing where all of our students, these are students that take the star reading
and we'll get into that a a little bit when we talk about early literacy in the latter portions of the presentation. These are students who are taking this star reading assessment. The, the darkest green is exceeding the sort of middle green is meeting, the red is partially meeting and then it's very hard to see the little bottom red dark, the darkest red tho those are students who are not meeting. Taking that slide
and extrapolating it out was a lot of data. So we split it into two slides. One that divides between those that are exceeding in meeting with the, that last year and, and this year. So last year is in green, no, yes, yes, yes. Sorry. Last year is in green and this year is in blue. Of note, just visually you'll see that our, this year Speaker 9: Is light green. Last year is light green. This year is dark green for
Speaker 18: Exceeding. Yes. Sorry. You're right. Yeah, the first grade appears to be a lot lower and that's because this is the star reading. We have other screeners that we use with our early learners that Sue will speak to a little bit later, including an early literacy reading component. This is the star reading. So this is readers that are about third grade reading level and a and Speaker 9: Above. So, so typically what happens is we start our kids at kindergarten and first grade with the early literacy screener.
And when they become more competent readers, they phase out of the early literacy screener and they move into the star reading assessment. So it's probably around mid to end of first grade that most of our first graders are moving into the star as assess reading assessment and out of the early literacy. So we have this wonky period where some of our first graders are still in the early literacy, but we have some who are in the star reading. So it's a tough year to really gauge overall all the kids
because some are, have really, you know, moved beyond it. So we might even give some kids the early literacy, but then we have to go back and test them again because they've, they've mastered that and, and we need to move them on. So it's sort of a, a a range of, of learners at this point. But then we, we have some second graders who are still sort of at that point where they haven't mastered all the skills and they're still at the beginning of the year taking their early literacy. Speaker 18: It's fluid, it's fluid. The next page is the partially meeting and the not meeting
and the lighter yellow is last year, the sort of darker yellow is this year. And then the same thing with the lighter red and the, the darker red. You'll notice that the numbers are fewer, which is desirable. We, we also took the, the data and looked at some of our subgroups. So that's this slide, which again was a lot of data across a, a number of subgroups.
So it is exceeding in meeting is, is this slide comparing last year to this year. And then the, the next slide is the partially and the, the not meeting by subgroup. Another one of our groups are our multilingual learners. Speaker 9: And a couple of weeks ago, sorry to jump in Sandy, but a couple of weeks ago you heard from Caitlin O'Neill, our K eight director of multilingual learners. And we did consult with her. We try to work very closely with our special education team
and our multilingual learner team. And so we worked with her very closely when analyzing this data. So when we looked at this, we were like, whoa, why is ninth grade all red? This is a concern. What's happening and why does first grade look like this? So we did consult with her and, and Sandy will share with you, we put a couple of points on here, but we didn't wanna overload the slide with lots of information. But Sandy did have some information to share with you that we consulted with Kaitlyn on. Speaker 18: So when you look at this set of data, you, you're kind
of splitting it into third. So if you look at first, second, and third grade, those are our early literacy learners. And if you're a multilingual learner, you're learning literacy alongside your peers At the same time, everybody's working in kindergarten on their sounds and their letters. It's in, in some ways easier to receive the, the literacy instruction that you need at the younger levels. As you move into four or five and six, you'll notice that things have shifted for a couple of reasons.
One, they're now starting at a, a different point, but they have to go back and learn the early literacy that's now not being taught and supported in the centers that the teachers set up and the instruction that the teachers provide our earliest literacy learners across the board. So they're kind of doing double times. So that middle range it becomes more challenging because they're now trying to learn the language, trying to understand the content and trying to figure out letters, sounds
and phonics all at the same time, whereas their peers have already learned that. So you're seeing sort of a, a shift in that middle band. Caitlin would also say that district wide, there are a number of newcomers in these grade bands. F for whatever recent, recent newcomers and then our 7, 8, 9, we don't do star past ninth grade. So our, our data stops at ninth grade. But you can only, ima imagine the challenges
that are compounded by high school now not knowing the content, not knowing the language, not knowing the early literacy that they need in order to be able to navigate their world. So certainly challenges there. Speaker 9: Couple of other things that we discovered was that for our ninth graders we have a lot of dual identified students. So students who are EL students as well as special education students in ninth grade. So that's, you know, they have multiple factors happening here that we're trying
to target at the same time. And another piece that we've discovered is that a lot of our students who are coming into us in some of those middle, upper middle school levels are coming to us from bilingual programs in other districts. And so they might have a lot of the social language but they don't have the content or the literacy skills. So they might come to us and be able to speak the the language, but when it comes to reading and writing and the content, they're struggling there. So that's the piece that we're finding is, is a,
is a barrier for them. So you know for Caitlyn is the person who from from K to eight, is doing a lot of the assessments to identify what weed a level they are when they come in. These are the things that she's finding when, when students are moving into the district. Speaker 18: The next slide is our SPED subgroup. And Sue and I were remarking that it sort of looks like a bell curve kind of turn. Yeah, you right that this type of
presentation of data is not unusual. It's a range we are seeing kids catching up of note would be that fifth grade banned, if you remember they were in kindergarten during covid. So that's just kind of an interesting note. Speaker 9: And again, those ninth graders are, some of those students are our dual identified, that's right EL special education students that we need to, to keep in mind. And our first graders, you know, tend to be the students
who they're all developing those skills at the same time. And we're just, as they're starting to develop those skills is we're they're developing them and it's towards the end of first grade, beginning of second grade that we're starting to see some of the challenges and we're starting to flag them for issues with, with potential disabilities. Speaker 18: So the next slide is, some of you went back. Yep. Okay. Yep. Some of our key findings that in grades 1, 2, 8, and nine, so sort of be there, our bookends,
we have significant growth from last year to this year. Students in four, six and seven are consistent and we're seeing a dip in grades three and five. Again information for us to investigate. More than 88% of our students are proficient this year, which is up 6% from last year. And we do continue to see achievement gaps in our subgroup data. Speaker 9: Okay. Moving into early literacy. So in early literacy, again as I mentioned, we start with the early literacy assessment.
We, some of our students do the star reading, we also do what we call cbms, which is curriculum based measures. So that's when we're, we're digging in and we're doing some very specific targeted assessments that look at very specific skills that will help us flag specific skills that may indicate their indicators that will help us look at flags for dyslexia. And so this first slide is going to show us early literacy student
growth percentiles. And you'll see that there's only one graph for kindergarten here. And that is because last year we were experimenting with what was the best time to assess kindergartners because it felt like we were assessing them too early and maybe getting some skew data as they were just a a like getting adjusted to school. So we sort of extended the window but did it a little bit earlier this year, which is why you see this year's data but not last year's data. And though the abbreviation here of HGTG
and LG stand for high growth, which is students who are at or above 66 percentile for student growth. TG is typical growth which is between 35 and 65 and low growth is below 35. And then you'll see our proficiency. So we we're definitely above in our higher end, which is, which is great. So our below went from 66 kids last year to 44. So below went from 66 to 44. We have a few more kids in
in the partially meeting and then fewer kids in the 25th to 40th percentile. But we have more kids in the 40th and above. So we're making progress there. So key findings here is that, you know, we're showing higher proficiency as compared to last year. We are seeing that the current growth by grade doesn't necessarily match our proficiency data. So we need to do some more investigation. And I already talked about the transition from the early literacy to the star reading. So I will make sure that you get the links in here
because I think you have a PDF of this. But there is information about the early literacy screeners in Massachusetts and what the expectation is and how they're used to help flag for dyslexia. It also gives you some information on what curriculum-based measures are and what star, star early literacy is. I thought that that would be important information as we know, community members are often asking those questions. But Massachusetts does provide us with specific guidelines around screening for dyslexia. And the expectation is that we do start in preschool, which we do. We actually screened our preschoolers in the fall
and we will screen them again in the spring. We have to screen them twice a year. And the renaissance screeners are DESI approved for this purpose. When students are flagged under the cbms, then we triangulate that DA data along with what we see as happening in the classroom. Or if we, we think maybe the screener wasn't accurate, we might reach, have them retake the screener. 'cause sometimes kids lose their focus or something else is more exciting at this moment in time. Something shiny went by. You know, there are things if,
if we see something on the assessment that just doesn't match who the kid is that we typically see, we will rescreen them. And if the results are consistent then we know that they're consistent. But if we see that kids are flagged with some of these markers, then we communicate with the parents, we write specific goals and we provide intervention and we track their progress. If students don't respond to the intervention, then the team meets and they make some determination and communicate with the parents and likely would make a referral for special education if they felt that that was warranted. I think it's important for families to understand
that we don't diagnose dyslexia, but we do would make a a, if the special education evaluation showed a disability, it would fall under a disability of specific learning disability under a reading. Regardless of whether this child has a disability of dyslexia or a disability of specific learning disability. In reading we look at the student and what the student needs. Just because a child has a disability of dyslexia doesn't, it's not like a a an if then.
So just because you have disability of dyslexia doesn't mean you automatically get A, B and C. It's this is how your disability is presenting itself and this is how we're going to intervene and these are the services you're going to get. And it's a team decision. I think that's an important thing to be thinking about because not every kid presents the same way and not every kid needs the exact same intervention or the exact same service. So we look at each individual child and we work collaboratively with the team, which includes the parents. So that's one important
piece to be thinking about. The other thing I wanted to share is that we did pull numbers of our IEPs and students who have an IEP based on a specific learning disability of reading. We have 191 in the district of, of those, well it could be that some of those also have, because you could have an IEP with an SLD of dyslexia of of reading and also have an outside diagnosis of dyslexia.
So officially outside diagnosis of dyslexia, we have 32 students in the district who have been provided with that diagnosis from an outside provider. Moving into our literacy audit year one of two, we have established our curriculum council, our PK to 12 WI curriculum council, which has educators, coaches, administrators. We've met, we had a full day meeting, we reviewed all of our standards by grade. We wanna make sure that we're aligned vertically.
We began developing surveys for students, for staff and for families. We'll be finalizing those surveys in the coming weeks. On Wednesday night, I am hosting a meeting with members of the parent curriculum council. So we have about 10 to 12 parents who have, who volunteered to be on the parent council. I'll be meeting with them to review what the DSI process is, what our goals are through this audit. And then I'll be sharing with them what the school-based council came up with for questions so far
for the family survey and asking them to help me finalize what that survey should look like. I wanna make sure that their voice is involved with that. And then we'll be sending that survey out to all the families in the district. So we'll be sending surveys out to everyone in the next few weeks. Then we'll be bringing everyone together to analyze the results of the survey. We'll also be using the data that we shared today as well as additional data that we have analyzing that data. And through all of that we'll be developing a vision for literacy for the native public schools.
From there, once we have our vision, we'll be able to start talking about with our vision in mind, what do we want our curriculum to to look like in order to meet our vision? What does our curriculum need to look like to get there? So we'll be developing our vision over the next two months, then we'll start looking at curriculum materials. There are rubrics that we'll use. We'll establish our priorities and from there we'll identify multiple curriculums to really dig through.
Our goal would be to, I narrow like three to five for each level. High school is really hard to do but there are some out there. So we'll see what we can find. But our goal would be to sort of do a road show and leave them at each school for a period of time so that every teacher has the opportunity to look through them, give their feedback on them. And then we are narrowed it down to two to three for our pilot phase, which would start in the fall. And through that pilot phase we'll gather feedback from our stakeholders, including any teacher who opts into our pilot.
We would visit other districts who are implementing these curriculum materials and get feedback from them similar to what we did with the math curriculum and what we have other districts actually doing. Visiting us to learn about our implementation and then hopefully come back to you mid-year, next year to let you know what we're hoping to adopt moving forward and come up with an implementation and a professional development plan. My last slide here is just to share with you that our focus continues to be on
research-based method of teaching, phonics, phonemic awareness, phonics fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. And that, you know, when we talk about science of reading, it's not a box curriculum but it's an evidence-based approach to reading instruction. And I know you all know that, but just for our community to know that this is an important piece of what we do in the classrooms and that our teachers care deeply about making sure that our students are learning to read with this important approach because I know people hear things
and worry about what we're doing. So this is an important aspect of what we're doing every day. So we're open to questions. Yeah, Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Questions from the committee, Mr. Brand? Speaker 10: Thank you for the presentation and the all, all of the data here is great. I find myself immediately trying to not overanalyze because it feels like this is a puzzle with so many different variables and I, I think in particular the sort of individualized learning is, is so challenging.
But I'm curious about, I guess subjective instinct related to trends and in particular sort of the thing that struck me was like the different, the dips and the inconsistency across grades. Yeah. So do we, is is that, do we think that that is like a cohort thing, the group of people, the collective individuals versus the practice? Because I would assume the practice is consistent but it's still too new to really know what tr So I'm, I'm finding myself looking for trends which I do in data,
but it feels like that might not be healthy right now. Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm doing the same to be honest with you. And I did not dig into The subgroups of each of those grades because that is an area that I am very concerned about. You know when I looked at the data in Dr. SP's entry findings and we know that there are significant discrepancies with our subgroup data, that's always something that I think
about and worry about. And that also concerns me. I also didn't look at the chronic absenteeism data compared to some of that and that or against individual schools. We were looking at the overall district. I think there's a story to be told any way you look at the data or any way you manipulate the data, you could find a reason or a story to go along with it. And I'm very similar to you and I like to overanalyze it and I had to walk away from it several times
in order not to do that. But I, I think there's many stories to be told here and I'm not sure which is the, that most accurate one. Speaker 10: I have one more. Can Speaker 6: I just add to that? 'cause I, unless you wanna go. No, no, Speaker 10: No. I have a a second one. Speaker 6: I always find with having been trained by data wise, I always like it's, it's called being like high on the ladder of inference, which we're all naming. It's a fair thing. So I think this bears more analysis and to me that mid-year check-in, that's a one year over year comparison. The data I kind of focus on is that we're six points higher than the prior year, which is really important
'cause it shows like that's a very positive marker. We hope it lasts right when we do the end of year to the end of year. And I would also focus on all of the SGPs are this year are greater than 50%, which is good. And Sandy kind of said that 50% is, if you're be over 50%, you're kind of outpacing 50% of the kids. So that's good. I'd love 'em to be over 60%. We'll get there. And then I think it does bear some more like longitudinal analysis to get to the cohort effects. I think you're bringing up a really great point
and the data isn't here to make the conclusion yet, which you also pretty much said. But we wanna dig deeper. Speaker 10: So the, the quick follow up and, and there might be no answer to this. I, I was looking at slide five and there are a couple of issues for me. One is that I'm terrible at colors. Speaker 18: Yes. Speaker 10: But I, but I think, so I think the, the third and fourth grade I, what I was looking at was the, the rough number, which I think is the light green of exceeding in 23, 24 and how, who would be, I think if I understand correctly, the the 24 25 people in fourth grade.
Right? So the light green ba basically what I'm looking at is the number of people who went from exceeding in 23, 24 dropped in 24, 25. But I would have thought that that would mean that the number of meeting they would've moved if they, if they are no longer exceeding in 23, in 24, 25 after having been exceeding in 23, 24, they would've gone into meeting in in 24, 25. But the, that looks to me at a very quick glance, like the only bar set of bars from one year to the next
that are not following that pattern. Now it's possible people left the dish. I mean I, I I don't know but those, that pattern is the only one that looks a little bit different. And I'm just curious and we don't need to answer now that one is the slightly different without the raw numbers it's sort of hard to know. Speaker 18: Sure. Speaker 10: And it might not be no explanation, but it was, it struck me as a little interesting. Speaker 18: Yeah, you're a data guy like I am, my initial response is yes and no. So yes, those kids are traveling from third to fourth grade,
but you're now encountering an entirely new curricula and new expectations based on the renaissance trajectory of, of proficient reading. So as the year goes through it's, it's actually harder to achieve proficiency because you should have been learning every day that you've been in school. So when you, when you look at that, you're, you're seeing the rest of, and this is only from fall to winter of third grade
and fall to winter of fourth grade. So you're only seeing half of the dataset. You're not seeing where they ended up last year and you're also not seeing where they will end up. That's right at the end of this year. So I hear you in your want to follow those students and there are other ways and other ways we have access to data to look at them longitudinally by standard. Yep. Speaker 9: So, so we can absolutely do that. We can bring that back when we come back with the end of year review, which I think would be
important, number one. Number two, I think it would be important to tell a better story around the cohorts of kids. And the other thing that I would say is when thinking about the fourth grade, you know, we couldn't put all of them in Mr. Woods' class so you know, well you could maybe they all couldn't get that amazing teacher. So Speaker 18: Clearly there should be some redistricting. Yes. Much more global. Global districting. Speaker 15: Ms. Lathers, a lot of my questions overlap with Matt 'cause I think we come from the same brain,
the same engineering DNA and I will say Mr. Woods still is the gold standard of teaching in my household. So you know the, I had, so I am, I was going through the data fast when you were talking, so we are a hundred percent clear on those same slides. Five and six are the ones that we're jumping on. Me too that in 20, it's the, the fourth grade line for example is the light green is their third grade performance and the dark green is their fourth grade performance. It is not last year's fourth graders. This year's fourth Speaker 18: Graders. Correct. Okay. Speaker 15: Just make sure level said
and then you're, I'm seeing it based on at and it's probably, I'm sure there's just lots of move-ins and moves out, et cetera. But I was just kind of roughly tabulating. 'cause these aren't percentages like the other ones are, they're actual student counts I think rather than being the percentages. And then as I was like roughly doing the student counts and then looking at the current enrollment, the numbers, there seemed to be a couple dozen off in most grades it felt like, but it might not be. I was just, and they're not exact numbers. That's probably Speaker 6: 'cause being absent that often happens. You're just testing percentages aren't a hundred all
Speaker 15: The time. So I think it's just good to know like if we have, what are the testing? 'cause there're gonna be testing gaps and I think there's whatever other reasons. Yeah. And Speaker 9: You're gonna see that at the middle school level. We had some challenges in the Oh yeah. With the testing in the fall. Yeah. Where we had glitches with the system. So not every kid was tested in the fall, which threw everything off too. Speaker 18: It's a screening window of two weeks. Speaker 15: Exactly. But just as part to getting the denominators right and knowing what, and I mean good point, just to the hygiene also making sure that we know like is there a subgroup
that is actually not testing because they're, you know, if it's, if it falls into the same vulnerable groups, like it'd be good to know kids that didn't get accounted for what cohorts Speaker 9: They found. And I always go back to this is one data point, right. And it's not the end all be all of what we see with a kid. Right. Speaker 15: A hundred percent. I would just think that if the, the set of kids that didn't get testing would hopefully fall under the same, like they're not all the special ed kids or No. Like the Absolutely not. Yeah. But it's just a good measure of hygiene Speaker 18: On the data and lot lots of teachers will have their students take it, for example,
in a two week screening window. They might be taking it in the second week, not the first week. And then if you have absences, but then if you come the following week, they'll have you make it up. So there is data on that student in particular. It just doesn't show up in Renaissances. Speaker 15: Absolutely. It's just good to know. I don't, I just can't help tying out my new narrators. The teachers Speaker 18: Keep track of that, so, so don't worry they get scooped up during the next screening. Speaker 15: And then my only other one quick question just on the, as you're going through the audit, completely appreciate a lot, there's a lot of curriculums that are in use.
You know, we've seen the increase in ARN Gillingham and I mean I have, I have sixth grade in 11th grade dyslexic. So I've seen a lot of ch positive changes over, you know, that period of time as you're doing the audit. Are you, no. Like are you identifying any, like looking to see if there's teachers that, you know, user own materials or using, you know, curriculum that maybe don't align to where we wanna be. And just trying to remediate that in pointed ways as you go through this. Not in any kind of wholesale change, but just these are questions I've gotten asked, you know, and I've had like
Speaker 9: Right now are using Speaker 15: Yeah. Are that, that I, I've, yes. I mean I've heard anecdotally, which might just be anecdotally. So you know, as you're doing the audit of materials that, that teachers are using, is that just a question that's kind of being asked? Speaker 9: Well, I work very closely with the department heads at the middle school and the high school. So we're constantly auditing what's happening in the classrooms and making sure that it's aligned and that we're using consistent materials. So if that's happening, I would hope
that someone would share that with me and at the elementary level. Okay. Our coaches are, are checking in and following that and I meet with them regularly. So hopefully that would be shared with me as well. So if it's not, I'd welcome a conversation. Great. Speaker 15: These are just questions that have come to me. Thank you. Speaker 9: I can't have eyes everywhere Speaker 3: Ms. Collins, you're a mother so we already know what you do. Speaker 9: Well my kids know I do. But Speaker 3: You're unfortunately getting three geeks in a row here. Love it as you go. And I'm not asking for anything tonight
and I understand why we present things with percentages and and stuff because it, it makes sense. But you know, when you talk about averages, you get that grilled cheese that's raw on one side and burned on the other. So I just wanna make sure that as we go through the audit, we are doing that longitudinal look to make sure that we are not, that somebody isn't hiding in our data. Don't worry. So I'm not saying, I, I thank you for presenting what you have and I understand why when you're presenting to a group you kind of need to reduce it.
But as you are doing the work, I just wanna encourage you to be sure that you we're not letting somebody slip through because they happen to be sitting next to Julie and she's a really good reader and Kelly's, you know okay but not as good. But when you average it, Julie pulls all the weight. Could you do? Thank you. But thanks for the midyear look in. Speaker 1: Other questions from the committee? If not, I have one. So this is the slide nine, which is looking at the subgroups. So I was just curious, I'm not looking for like
hard numbers, but I'm just curious, when we have EL learners or ML learners coming into the district, are they coming in equally at all grades or are we getting more in like younger grades versus older Speaker 9: Grades? It's all over the place. Speaker 1: All over the place. Speaker 3: There's Speaker 9: No rhyme or reason or consistency. It's, and it's all buildings except for the most part. Except for memorial. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. That, that explains it then. 'cause it kind of looks, when you look at that graph, it looks like students are making less progress over time. But I guess if people are coming in at all grade levels then
they're all coming at a different starting points too. Okay. And then, Speaker 9: And a lot of the ones who have come in are newcomers, meaning they've come in from another country with zero language and that brings those numbers way down. Okay. Speaker 1: Super helpful. And then one other question. You mentioned students coming from other districts where they have bilingual programs. You don't mean like immersion programs, you're meaning special like English language learner programs that Speaker 9: No, I mean, I mean both. Okay. So for example, Framingham has bilingual programs. So Barberry for example,
if a student is an EL learner and goes to Barberry, they're learning both languages at the same time. Right? So they may be a native Spanish speaker and they are in the bilingual program. So they're doing well in the Spanish, they're learning the English. So when they get to us, Speaker 3: The, Speaker 9: The students who are, who are native English speakers already have the English language and they're learning the Spanish and it's sort of the opposite. So they haven't gained the English skills that they need in the bilingual Speaker 1: Program. I get it. Totally. No, that was just a curiosity of mine.
Yeah. So thank you for clearing that up. Yeah. Speaker 12: Catherine. Speaker 1: Oh, I wanna add Speaker 6: One. Speaker 1: Oh she's, oh, oh sure. Go ahead. I can, I actually can't read that. Yeah, it's Catherine. Catherine Brunell. Yeah. Oh, Catherine, Ms. Brunell, Speaker 12: She's, she has to do it. She has to do it. Speaker 1: She's Catherine. Are you able to unmute yourself? Okay. Let us know when you're, when you're able to unmute yourself and we'll come back to you if you want to add something. Speaker 6: Yeah. Can she can't unmute herself? Do you wanna try? Speaker 12: You already did that. Oh, I didn't get through. I didn't go through just
Speaker 7: Oh there we go. Thank you so much. Alright. There go. Can you hear me? Yep. Speaker 1: Can hear you? Yes. Speaker 7: Okay. Did I see correctly on that slide? One of the last slides that the pilot of the literacy programs will be the 25, 26 school year? Speaker 1: Next year? Yeah, Speaker 9: It will be during the 25 26 school year. Speaker 7: Okay, let's go. That's all. That's my only reaction. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thanks Catherine. Speaker 6: I love that. I feel like we should end there, but I want just one more piece. Speaker 1: So Speaker 6: The benchmarks that Sandy
and Sue presented today are just that they're benchmarks, they're not always presented. And I appreciate the deep analytical dive and how much data we've been throwing at you. We want that feedback. They're, I always think of these much more as internally used by teachers, by principals. Especially if you really think back to the S sips. If we were, I, I wouldn't expect everybody to remember exactly what every single school's school improvement plan was, but you may recall that most of them were about an identified group of low performing students. This is what they're using that for. They're going to look at where the kids are,
they're trying to make sure they're on track. They're having deep talks during RTI meetings or any other sessions to make sure the kids are getting what they need. And so while this is definitely a holistic report where we can look kind of, we can get detailed on that bigger level. It's a lot more specific in terms of how the teachers are using it. So I just wanna frame the purpose of this is not so much to look at it the way we're looking at it today. Even though that can be a powerful kind of like are we on track ish is always important. And then the other piece, I just wanna commit to the committee that we will come back with kind of an update on our ML numbers, especially since we move
that 5.3 over that to kind of show where those dynamics and where the growth happened happened and where the numbers are at the end of the year. Speaker 1: Okay. Great. Thank you. So I just wanna circle back to, and thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I just wanna circle back. I, I understand that Ms. Scott is now online. I don't know if you wanted to share any updates Tamika? Speaker 19: Yes. Thank you. There are no updates. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Glad you could join us today. Sorry we didn't get to you in the first round. That's okay. Okay, so I think we're onto our last agenda item,
which is a discussion on the override updates and discussions. So earlier we had just in the announcements portion, we had some listing of upcoming dates for engagement sessions to engage with the school committee on the topic of the budget. And that can also include the override. But we also wanted to have a larger discussion here about what we as a school committee can do and what we are doing. We know what we are doing, what else can we do in the next three weeks between now and the election? What should we be doing? So I wanna do a bit of a brainstorming and I also don't know if you had
wanted to give us any updates. Speaker 6: I don't there, I actually got caught up a little early on the memo so you kind of got one a little bit quicker than before. So we're completely caught up. Maybe there'll be one more, but that's what I've been updating people on. I think Catherine did a great job updating on all the different events we've been doing. So I don't have anything additional unless somebody has a question for me. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you Ms. Lathers, did Speaker 15: We talk about voting on our position? Did we already do Speaker 1: That? We did talk about it. I think we'd have to circle back with Shai to see if there's a plan in place to have a vote. Yeah, we
Speaker 15: Had, I guess I had the question of what's appropriate to put out or respond to on social media. And I'm, my answer generally is don't write anything because of open meetings. So I tend to never write anything out there. And so I just didn't know whether someone commented to me that if we had already taken a vote as a committee we would be freer. 'cause we wouldn't be deliberating 'cause we'd already have taken a vote. 'cause there's a lot of activity out Speaker 1: There. Yeah, well we have voted on the preliminary budget number. Right. And that was used to base the override number on. So I suppose we have voted
on our portion of the override. Speaker 15: But a, but the committee could be saying, well we don't care how you come the money, we want you to get the money in town. It doesn't necessarily mean a stance on the override, I guess. Hmm, Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. So if they were to rob a bank and give us the money, we haven't, let's go with win lotto. Win the lotto. Okay. Win the lotto. All right. I've been all doom and gloom today. Sorry guys. Ms. Collins. Speaker 3: No, I was just gonna say we, we took, we, we didn't specify the source but to my way of thinking
and the way I've been approaching it with people is there's really only one source in part because even if you know town meeting was to pull rabbits out of hats, it would be too late for the school department. The plan, as I understand it, and I guess I can pose this as a question, Dr. Spa, you had said at an earlier time that your intention was to notify affected staff the week after the, or very soon after the override. Is that still your plan? Speaker 6: Yeah. I wanted to clarify what affected staff is.
It's kind of the same process we use for the 10 positions we eliminated, we would know which exact positions were eliminated, do that communication and then we would move with the union to go through bumping bump rights. Right. Speaker 3: But all I'm saying is town meeting isn't until after April vacation. Yep. Things would be in motion on the school department side much earlier than that. So I've been telling people that waiting for town meeting pull a rabbit out of their, but is really not a practical solution. So to my, I've been also saying there's only one way for us
to fund the number that we wanted, that we believe we need. Speaker 6: Can I just because I didn't say it. I wanna clarify in case people weren't listening the last time I said it. I certainly am not saying that in any way to be difficult or obstinate, this really has to do with the hiring cycle for teachers and doing right by our fabulous educators. We hope they don't end up, we don't have the funding for them. We hope that is not the case. But if it is, they deserve every right to find a position in the hiring cycle for teachers. And that is the only reason.
And while of course we'd love the funding to come later, if it does, those people will have, will have to tell them ahead of time and they could very likely be gone to other districts, Speaker 1: Mr. Brand. Speaker 10: So given that we've now talked about maybe taking a position as a committee, I'm wary to do anything like on social media out and certainly as individuals we all have our own, you know, opinions and our own vote and that's great. But I think for now and may if I would love to take a position as the school committee at perhaps our next meeting.
But until we do that, I think we as a committee should stick to the school council meetings and the community seniors in the senior center and the PTO meetings and walking around town at the coffee shops and having conversations with about objective information that we all have. 'cause I think the more, the more people know, the more likely they are. And this is not me putting judgment on anybody, right. We live in a democracy, but the more information that people have, the more likely they are to vote at all.
And that is a good thing. So I think for now, my hope is that at our next meeting, that we could take a position, I guess is what my, my way of saying it as a committee. And then I think things can be different because we have then made a public statement and we would not be deliberating subsequently. That's where I stand. Speaker 1: Okay. Then we're down to a week. Speaker 13: Yeah, I mean you can all, I think you could vote right now if you wanted to. I mean, override update is on the, we could, you know, so someone could just make a motion. I mean we don't have Shai and Catherine, but that's, I think it's online so we could vote.
And my understanding is it doesn't have to be listed as an action item. As long as the override is on the agenda, anyone can make a motion. So that would give us more time if the committee feels like we need to be able to, need to do that to, to speak out in favor of it, then Speaker 1: I see that. Ms. Brunel, I see you have your hand up. Do you have a motion prepared Ms. Brune? I know that's something that you were working on. Speaker 7: Yes. Well, okay, so I, let me, I'm pulling it up right now. Gimme one second. I'm Speaker 1: Seeing like there's, it seems to be a general sense on the committee that we're willing
to hear a motion, I think. Speaker 7: Yep. Yep. Just gimme one second. Okay. So move to support the ballot override question that reads, shall the town of Natick be allowed to assess an additional $7 million in real estate and personal property taxes for the purpose of funding the operating and capital budgets of the town and the of the public schools for the fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2025. Second. Speaker 1: Any discussion on that? And Linda, we'll make sure we get that sent over to you. So we have the, if you don't mind just sending that
to Linda when you get a chance, Catherine. Sure. Any, any discussion of the motion? Okay. Oh, Julie looked like you wanted to discuss. Speaker 13: Well, I mean, I only wanna discuss in that, that the committee should support this. And then we, once we vote, we should be out there talking to people and doing, there's ma many presentations that you know I've started using and sharing that you've given at community forums to share with people taking slides, objective information that shows the impact of the schools.
So if we can share those, I think that would be very helpful because it will be a very close vote. Speaker 1: Okay. All right. Are we ready to vote? We'll do a roll call vote since Ms. Brunell is remote. So Ms. Lathers? Yes. Mr. Brand? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. Ms. McDonough? Yes. Ms. Brunell? Yes. And I'm a yes. So that's six. Yes. The motion passes. Okay. So now we can get busy and feel free to support this loud and proud.
Okay. I think we only need one last motion. Adjourn. Speaker 10: Second move to adjourn. Speaker 1: Excuse me. Okay. And we'll do roll call vote. Ms. PLAs? Yes. Ms. Brand? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. Ms. McDonough? Yes. Ms. Brunell for adjournment? I'm a yes. Okay, we'll do we'll. We'll say five. Five. Yes. One of just five. Yes. Motion passes. We are now adjourned. Thank you everybody.