Speaker 1: Well welcome everybody to the Natick School Committee. It is Monday, January 26th and we are opening our meeting with roll call. And as this is a fully virtual meeting, please also state that you are present and participating remotely. So, Mr. Brand, Speaker 2: I'm present participating remotely. Speaker 1: Ms. Bruell Speaker 3: Here participating remotely. Speaker 1: Dr. Fugman Speaker 3: Here participating remotely Speaker 1: And I am here and participating remotely. So I am going to, for any members of the public that are there, we are going to make a motion
to go into executive session and then we'll return at six 30. So I move to move to executive session for the purpose of protecting security. If an open meeting would jeopardize security and I do declare that it would Speaker 2: Second. Speaker 1: So, roll call, vote. Mr. Brand. Yes. Ms. Brunell? Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: Dr. Fugman? Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: And I'm a yes. So we'll now move to executive session and we will rejoin the open meeting at six 30. So welcome back. So before we went to executive session,
we had done roll call. So we'll now do the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence. So I pledge allegiance to the flag. The flag of Speaker 3: The United of the United, United States of America. And two Republic stands. Speaker 4: One Nation. Speaker 1: Nation, indivisible Speaker 3: With Speaker 1: Liberty. Liberty, justice. Speaker 3: Justice, justice. Speaker 1: Thank you. And we take that moment of silence to honor our troops who serve us here and abroad. So we'll go to announcements, Dr. Bash.
Speaker 4: Thank you. So before we begin today's meeting, I just wanted to recognize and thank our very busy department of public works, DPW and custodial teams following today's school closure due to the winter storm, these teams have been working around the clock. I know you know this, you've probably seen them in and around town, roadways, parking lots, sidewalks. They've made tremendous growth and movement there. But with the additional snow coming in tonight or continuing, their work has not slowed and their stamina is essential
for the safety of our community. So earlier today, I call the two hour delay for tomorrow morning. So that's for all staff and schools. People are kind of asking what that means. It just means instead of coming in at 8 0 5, you come in at 10 0 5. If it's eight 30, it's 10 30. So it depends on the start time for the school and school leaders are sending out messages around that. We do have strategic forums starting tomorrow. Luckily there's only one that we have to reschedule and it's with students and so everything else will remain as planned and and will not be interrupted. So that's the announcement. Announcement regarding a delay.
And thank you to DPW and custodians. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. Sash. And yes, thank you to everybody who's helped to move the mountains of snow that are out there. So we do really appreciate your work in keeping everybody safe. Any other announcements? Okay, so we'll now go to public speak. 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 and 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. I did not receive any requests for public speak via email. Is there anybody online who would like to do public speak? If there is, please raise your virtual hand. I don't see anybody. Linda, do you see anybody? I Speaker 5: Do not. At least, no. Speaker 1: Okay. All right. We'll now close public speak and move to updates from our teacher representative. Do we have anyone online who would like to give a teacher?
Speaker 5: Shayla's Here. Speaker 1: Okay, Shayla, welcome. Speaker 6: Hi. Thanks Elise. My name, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Shayla Billion. I am the other co-president of our teachers union with Jefferson Wood. I'm a second grade teacher at Memorial. Nothing to share today. Hello? Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Thank you for joining us today. Student reps, either of you, would you like to share something? Yes, Anthony should be able to unmute yourself, I think. Speaker 5: Oh, hold on. Okay. Okay. He's all set. Speaker 7: All right. That works. Okay. So Anthony, no, no problem at all. Hope everyone's staying safe. And other than midterms that happened last week, something
that's coming up that's pretty cool for Native high school is the high school team will be going to WGBH studios this weekend in the high school quiz show tournament and it will be on WGBH website and their YouTube channel soon. So that's pretty cool. And the flower drive for hosted by the mid student council is coming up in the coming weeks in preparation for Valentine's Day. Yep. That's all. Thank Speaker 1: You. Great. Thank you. Thank you for that update. Anything from you, Nathan? Nothing. No. Okay. Super. Thank you. So we'll move on to our METCO representative MS films.
Did you have anything you wanted to share tonight? Good afternoon everyone. No updates at this time. Okay, thank you. All right, so we'll move to the consent agenda. Speaker 8: Elise, I'd like to pull the student council trip out of the consent agenda. Speaker 1: Okay. So do we have a move Speaker 8: Approval Speaker 9: On the remainder of the consent agenda? Speaker 1: Second. Okay. And we'll do a roll call. So Mr. Brand? Speaker 8: Yes. Speaker 1: Dr. Fugman? Yes. Ms. Brunell? Speaker 8: Yes. Speaker 1: Lathers? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes.
And I am a yes. Okay. Ms. Brunel, did you wanna speak to this agenda item you pulled out? Speaker 8: Well, first my motion is to approve the trip to the, or the MASS. I don't have it pulled up in front of me, but to approve the trip. Second. And I just wanted to give us a moment to learn a little bit more about it. If, if that's not tonight, if that's in the, in the, in a future meeting, I would just love to hear about what the student experience is like there. Who goes, you know, what,
what the opportunity is. Speaker 1: Is there anybody from the high school who could speak to this trip a little bit? If not tonight, we could put it on a future agenda item. Yes, principal blocker. Speaker 9: Hi, good evening everybody. So the opportunity to go on that trip is for students who are part of the student council, they are elected by their peers to be part of that group. And Maryanne Ette and Emily Tobin, who are the advisors for the group? The English, they're the English department head and an English teacher as well. They take a small group of students.
In terms of which students go, I'd have to check with them to see exactly, I believe it is the officers of the group, but I'd have to check with them. But they go and are with student council leaders from across the area and they learn about leadership strategies and governance of student organizations and things like that. Speaker 1: Thank you. Any questions from the committee on that? Speaker 8: Just a little bit more specifically? I'd love to know if it's the, if it's the class reps that go or if this is the training. 'cause MASC has really stepped up the training for students.
They created a student handbook in terms of how to participate on the school committee. So I was curious if this is more for the reps and the overall student body or if it's open to any of the elected officials. And if this is, if this is part of the training that school committee students who are on the school committee receive. Speaker 9: So I see there are two others with hands up. So I'll, I can defer to them if, if they would like to talk first and then I can jump in. Speaker 1: Okay. Anthony, did you wanna speak to that? Speaker 7: Sure. I can go into a little bit about who goes.
So last year we had Ava bars and Jessica Luo, they're two of our senior officers in the student council. I unfortunately didn't have the opportunity to go last year because I'm conflicted with some other things. But maybe Nathan has some ideas on who's going this year. I believe there's a good mix of some underclassmen as well. But from what I heard from Ava and Jessica about the experience last year was that the training was really helpful for them in helping them become really good leaders in our student council. And yeah, they've really become good leaders of our group
and I think the training has had a good deal to deal with that. Speaker 1: Thanks Anthony. Nathan? Speaker 10: Yeah, right now we are having some conversations with Ms. Sled, Ms. Tobin about that. We haven't made a firm decision on who's going, but most likely I think it will be a mix of most upperclassmen, but we have not made a firm decision on it yet. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 11: Okay, Lisa, I have a quick, since we're talking about it, I, I mean I'll definitely approve it, but I'm just curious why it looks like it's going to Hyannis. I thought that we on school committee only has to approve
out of state trips, so I'm wondering why it's even on the agenda, but I mean, I'm glad that they're going and I'm excited to support it. I'm just curious why? Well, Speaker 1: To approve overnight trips and I think it's an Speaker 11: Overnight trip. Oh, overnight trips as well as well. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Ms. Collins? Speaker 9: Yeah, I would like to encourage whoever Speaker 5: Needs to be encouraged that the reps to the school committee be given priority on this because it is run by the Mass Association of School Committees to encourage and, and empower our student reps.
So I would like to see that happen if at all possible. Thank you. But I'm still gonna support it. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Collins, principal Blocker. Speaker 9: I'm happy to pass that along to the advisors and I'm sure they'd find that feedback valuable. And we can see going forward, I know part of the elections each year for the new student council as part of when they choose who the rep for the school committee will be as part of that process. So it may be, I don't know if the two folks who are sitting on tonight, if they are interested in going or have expressed interest, but we can certainly talk offline
with them about encouraging them to go and then check with Miss Ula and Ms. Tobin to see if how their process is going for deciding who would be on the trip. Speaker 1: Sure. Thank you. Yeah, and I, I, I think too that it would be helpful, this is my opinion, if, if people who were thinking that they might want to be a rep to the school committee one day also would receive priority, since it is offered by the Association of School Committees and it's, you know, I think it's a, a really great opportunity to, to learn what school committee is about
and meet other people who are already involved in school committee works. So if, if people who had that leaning or interest had that opportunity, I think that would be a really wonderful thing to offer them. Speaker 9: Absolutely. So Speaker 1: Thank you. Any other comments or questions before we vote in this matter? Okay. So we'll do a roll call vote. Mr. Brand? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Speaker 5: Yes. Speaker 1: Ms. Collins? Speaker 5: Yes. Speaker 1: Ms. Lathers? Speaker 5: Yes. Speaker 1: And I am a yes. So the matter is approved. Okay. So as promised, we'll now move to subcommittee
updates and I will turn things over to Mr. Brand to tell us about policy subcommittee work. Speaker 2: I know we've been waiting forever for these discussions. I know you're excited. Speaker 1: I am. I'm really excited. Speaker 2: Okay, good. So why don't we, sue, do you want to cover the two first reads and then we can talk a little bit about the other stuff that we're working on? Speaker 12: Sure. So we shared with you actually quite a while ago a memo that outlines some recommended policy changes related to raffles and games of Chance.
It impacts three policies, G-B-E-B-C gifts two and solicitations by staff JJE student fundraising activities and KBE relations with parent booster organizations. So we've given you red line versions of each of these under recommendations by our attorneys as well as attorney Kelly Gonzalez. And many of these also we have checked against the policies on the
mask website. And basically just making sure that we, our policies align with the regulations around games of chance so that we are abiding by the laws and the regulations that govern raffles and that our PTOs and booster organizations are applying for permits if they're going to do any of these raffles as well as any other student fundraising.
If they are doing any of those as well, you have to pull a permit. I've actually had quite a few conversations with our PTOs in the past few weeks around this to make sure that we are following those regulations and that they're pulling permits if they're doing their spring auction. So an auction is fine, but if there is any sort of raffle where there's money exchanging hands for a chance to win something of value, they have to pull a permit. So you'll see that there are these three policies.
If there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Speaker 2: And this, this is the first, our first read. We're not taking action on any of these tonight. Katherine, were you raising your Speaker 8: Hand? Yep. Ms. Brunell. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm trying to thank you. So I, the PCC, we don't have a rep to that anymore. Has this been shared directly with the PCC? Speaker 12: It has and I've met with them on it as well. And they've also had someone from a nonprofit come in and provide them with overview. Speaker 8: Excellent. Thank you Ms. Collins. Speaker 5: So this only entails when money exchange
changes hands, right? I mean that's what I recall, correct. So if we put everybody's name, name in a pot and pull one name doesn't matter. Correct. We do squares for a football for the Super Bowl. Say it matters. Speaker 12: Correct. Speaker 5: Okay. So there are still things that the he TC or the PTOs would do where it is chance to the participant, but they didn't have to pay for that chance. Speaker 12: Correct. Speaker 5: Great, thank you. Speaker 12: You're welcome. Speaker 1: I do see
some questions from the public. Do we have any other questions from the committee before we take public questions? Dr. Fugman? Speaker 11: I have a quick one. I know our norm is to wait to have first read now and then later, but any risks of us not proving it? In other words, are there any upcoming events that we need to make sure this policy covers? Or are we good with waiting? Speaker 12: It's actually the law. So we have to abide by the law regardless of whether or not it's in our policy. And that's what I have been guiding the PTOs to do.
So I've had multiple conversations and guided them to the Natick Town website, where the permit information is and where it outlines what they need to do. So anytime it's come across my desk, I've directed them to that website. It's really a fairly easy process where the permit costs $25, it's good for a year, they just have to fill it out and submit it to the town. But the town website is pretty clear and outlines the law. So it's not just about our policy.
The policy really is just protecting them and making it clear that they need to do this. But it really is a law that they are required to follow. Well, Speaker 11: People are following the law no matter what, but we wanna make sure our policies reflect aligned. Correct. Thanks Speaker 1: Dr. Bash. Speaker 4: Yeah, I would only add to what Ms. Bel said that what we have, the few things we've been able to intercept, this is already how we're operating and we did brief our ADCO on this as well. So when and if they ever hear anything we kind of intercept it quickly.
But there's a bit of a learning curve, but it's already how we're operating. Speaker 1: Okay. All right. We'll move to members of the public. Ms. Vickers. Can we, yeah, Speaker 13: Go ahead. Yes, thank you. Brinley Vickers, I, I'm sorry I missed the very first moment of this, but will this apply to Boosters Clubs as well? Is this just for when you are on campus and on property or will this also apply to a Booster's club activity? Speaker 12: It's boost, it's booster clubs as well because it is actually a law.
Speaker 13: Okay. So, okay. Is this in the agenda well enough for me to get at it and understand it? Speaker 12: Yes. And you can also go to the NA Town of Natick website and if you just search for raffle permit, you'll find information about the law there and how you find the permit. Speaker 13: Okay, thank you so very much. Speaker 12: You're welcome. Speaker 1: All right. So I am presuming then that these will come back to us for a vote at our next meeting. Speaker 12: Correct. Speaker 1: Okay, Speaker 2: Super. Now we have more Speaker 1: For the next meeting.
Speaker 2: We have another first read and then we have a couple Wait, there's more. Yeah, well just wait everyone look under your seats. There's a surprise, another policy. Speaker 1: Well thank you guys for doing the work on this. We, we appreciate it. Speaker 12: So the next policy is about service Animals in school and Ms. Miller is here to speak to that. Speaker 14: Hey everyone. So tonight we're gonna talk about the file IMGA, which is Service Animals in Schools. This is a, I believe, a first read. So you'll see there's the, our previous red line version you may have.
But also it looks like what's showing now is the draft of what we are proposing for the updated version that we did go through with our legal counsel as well. So really this is kind of a standard language around this policy that many districts are using. You'll see some highlighted information where I added some informa, some clarity around some things that we've learned in Natick in particular, we have some, this year we have a new service animal at one of our schools and it's just helped us kind of learn more about our practice and policy and procedures.
I anticipate that when school committee does approve this, we will also have some sort of accompanying practice and procedure guidelines so that the central office can be involved with the building to help facilitate any new service animal that might come into the district. But I'm happy to answer any questions or clarify anything. I, I will say, just to back up, I apologize, the, this policy compared to our previous policy really does go into a lot more around
what constitutes a service animal. How a service animal is a, a service animal is accessible in school, what does the vetting process look like? There's just a lot greater detail into the overall process written into the policy. So I think that would, it provides more clarity to anyone who might be seeking out the use of a service animal in school. Speaker 2: I would encourage everybody that we spent a lot of time talking about this one and you know, Aaron and team spent a lot of time working on it. It, it's, it's a, an important one for everybody to really read through. I, I don't think it's controversial in my opinion,
but I think you should take a look Speaker 14: And of course, thank thank you Mr. Brand. I mean there are a lot of legal aspects to it that we have to follow. Similar to what Sue is saying, there's a lot of pieces to equitable access for service animals and what that means when students have, for example, if a student, a peer, a classmate has an allergy, that doesn't mean that the student with the service animal has to necessarily move that class. It might mean that the student who has the allergy has the right to move class. So there are certain rights to those, to the student with the service animal.
I also wanna say it constitutes what a service animal is and a service animal is not. So a service animal has specific functions that might be, you know, whether it's it's for a student with a seizure disorder or a student with, it's with, you know, a a see a seeing eye dog. It's not necessarily it clarifies versus an emotional support animal. That's a different thing. So I do think there are a lot of legalities in there that I'm happy to answer for anybody or help answer and get clarification on. But I do agree it is one that is,
is pretty in depth in a lot of different places. Speaker 1: Questions from the committee? I have a question. Do we have, like how many service animals are typically in the schools in a given year? In our schools? Speaker 14: Schools right now we have one. Speaker 1: One, thank you. Speaker 14: And a service animal in Massachusetts, just for clarity is, is a dog or a miniature horse That is what constitutes a service animal and in our case it's a dog. Speaker 1: That is fascinating. I'm gonna have to read up more on that. Speaker 2: Would you like us to proceed with the next? Speaker 1: I think so. Yep. I don't see any questions here,
so let's move on to the next one. Speaker 2: Okay. So maybe Ms. Malone, I'll start, I'll set the table for this one. You give up. So the, the next thing on the agenda, I'll, I'm gonna, I'll do a, a two for one thing. The next thing on the agenda is the hosting update. So we've talked for a while about improving the way our policies are, are hosted with the primary goal now of having them being, having an easier time finding the kinds of policies and the kinds of content that people are looking for on the website. So the idea right now, if you go
to nat ps.org and you find where the policy manual is, it's a series of separate PDF files that you have to click on each letter assuming you know what the letters are, although I think it now says at least it's like section A foundations and basic commitments, section B school board governance and operations and so forth. But then you have to, it's not always clear which one you're looking for. So we wanted to, IM improve that. And so given the, the all the other things that are going on with, with Ms. Pavon and, and Dennis Roach came up with, at the very least
an intermittent step that will improve that at no cost if it doesn't end up being the ultimate solution that we want. It doesn't preclude us from continuing to refine, but in the, you know, we are trying to prioritize and this is an, this should be an improvement. So with that setting of the table, Ms. Balbo, do you wanna add more context? Speaker 12: Sure. So our plan, and it's actually well underway, is to take each policy and it will be saved individually into a Google doc
that will then be uploaded to the website so that there'll be an index that will buy each section, have the title that will have a link that you can click on and I'll take you right to that policy. So you'll see the title of games of chance, or that's not the title, sorry, service Animals in school with the the letters. And you'll click on that and I'll take you right to that policy. And it will also, we will date each policy
by when it was approved by the school committee. So we have a lot of policies at the moment that do not have any dates on them. So we're actually doing a review of every policy and identifying which ones do not have dates. And then in policy subcommittee we'll be going through sections of PO of the policy manual and reviewing them by what we feel are the priorities that need to be addressed. And bringing them to you to say, this policy looks great as is. Are you comfortable with it? Do you see any issues with it? Can we approve it as is and then date it?
And then coming up with a three year hopefully cycle of reviewing policies as long as there aren't changes that need to be made in the interim, but our website would then be organized so that it will be easy for you to find policies, there'll be an index easy to, to click on the title and go right to that policy. Speaker 2: So, and somebody could just search for service animals and you'd be able to find as opposed now, which you wouldn't be able to do that. So, and to Sue's point, I think we talked about, we're gonna start was the two
basically this policy subcommittee for everybody who hasn't heard about this, there are like two types, two categories of policy that we, we look at like the acute changes that need to happen 'cause state law changes or we know whatever it is. And those are typically what we hear about here. And then maintenance, so this, this rotation and we've talked about it in in the full committee here as well. I believe we're starting with I and J, is that what we talked about? So correct. We're gonna start doing just a maintenance pass of every policy that's in Group I and Group J
and make sure that they're all up to date. And so then we'll bring that. So we'll stamp everything. So over time every policy will will be cycled through even if there aren't any changes, we'll make sure everything's up to date. So that is sort of next on our agenda, including it IT in addition to whatever other acute changes are necessary. That was a lot. That's a lot. Speaker 1: That is a lot. And that's a lot of work you're doing for us. So thank you. Any questions from anybody on the committee? Questions or comments? So I have a question. Are they are, are they going to,
so when we link directly to them, will they be like an HTML format or will they be Speaker 12: A-P-D-F-H-T-M-L-H-T-M-L. Speaker 1: Okay. And then if you wanted to download one, because I think currently they're PDS, right? Is there an option that a person, if a person wanted to download a policy, you could download it as a PDF? Speaker 12: I believe so, yeah. So we've been working with Dennis on what is the best way to do it and the HTML is the best way to do it for a whole host of reasons, including translation and PDF is not, but yes, they could download it.
They should be able to download it as a PDF very similar to all many of the other aspects of our website that makes it accessible for people with vision issues. It also allows for text to speech and translation. But yes, they, they would be able to download it Speaker 2: And you can always nerd tip, you can always print to PDF. Meaning if you go to any page and you go to print one of, instead of choosing a printer, you can choose PDF and you'll get a file of the page. Anything. Okay,
Speaker 1: Great. No, that's super helpful. Thank you Ms. Brunell. Speaker 8: Thanks. This is a great step, I think in the right direction. Thank you for the work that you're doing about it. I'm curious about the decision to go in-house versus the policy services that are available. Matt, you talked about it as maybe, you know, like a intermediate intermediary step if we were to decide to do more, but all of the work that you're doing now is something that's an outside service would do. So it it's an,
it seems like it's a heavy lift on our administrators to do something intermediary before and I would love to hear Speaker 12: We were able, yeah, okay, go ahead. Yeah, we were actually able to convert an entire section of the policy manual today in a couple of hours, which was great. But the, we did some work around the cost of going through mask in their policy management and the cost is pretty extensive and it requires a significant lift on our end
as well in terms of going through the policies, updating them. So a lot of the work that we're, that we would already be doing of coming to you with updates and, and changes and dating. And so it's a full policy review regardless. So a lot of this work would have to be done before we could go to mask with the policy manual. Speaker 2: And we, we discussed this in the policy subcommittee and it was a, the, the goal like I said before was discoverability. That's the problem that we're initially trying to solve here. And, and so the thought from the administration was
that it was not actually that heavy a lift to, to get everything converted at well at, at $0 other than the cost is time, but it's not a great amount of time. And if it actually ends up solving the problem that we're looking for, that's great. And if it doesn't like anything else, the same thing with policies, then we'll just revisit and it still won't be wasted work because we will have done all of this, this conversion work. Speaker 8: Okay, that's great. I mean, when I, when I looked into it a few years ago, the cost was between five and $7,000.
So not insignificant. Maybe it's gone up a lot. I think that this is a great first step. The other piece that I'm think is something we should look long-term, like the, the searchability is definitely like number one priority, but also then the updating of the policies because everybody comes at this with good intention and you know, like as Sue just mentioned, we have policies on the, you know, in the book that don't have the date because school committee members change and Right, like there's just like it's a school committee ham policy book is so hard
to keep consistent because of all the changes that happened. Dave Margo literally like, did Miracle work in 2002? Or maybe it was 2012, I forget it was, there's a two in that number, but like we haven't followed through on that. So if this, this is a great start. I would just like us to be open to receiving some help if this is something that we think we could, we can't fulfill on Speaker 1: Ms. Pon. Speaker 12: Yeah, no, I completely agree with you Ms. Brunell. I think that we have developed a procedure for
what do we do if we want to bring a policy to the policy subcommittee and what are the steps we need to do to prepare a red line version, write a memo, all of that. And then what are the action steps that we take? Once a policy has been approved by a school committee and we've actually approved quite a few policies this year and it includes dating that policy and distribution to everyone. The place that we're getting stuck is actually updating it on our website and updating it in the online policy.
And so that's something that we need to fix and we need to fix it pretty quickly because for example, the CTE policy needs to be submitted to DESI and it has to, with that submission, I have to have a link to our policy online. So that's one of the reasons selfishly that we're updating policies, the I policies first, because that has to be submitted by February 2nd. So that was the task today. But when, because that's happening and it's as part of the policy subcommittee,
when those policies get updated, I'm automatically updating the date and date stamping it before it goes to distribution. It's automatically happening and we're cataloging that. So that's how we are actually updating it. It's becoming one of the tasks that Linda and I do before it gets distributed. So it's sort of becoming an administrative process and we have a process task list that happens. So I think yes, absolutely open to o other ways to, to make this happen,
but we need to start with something on our end to make sure that we're dating those things a hundred percent. And so this is what we're trying for right now to make sure that everything is clear and dated and we're following a process and it's been working on our end. Speaker 1: Ms. Collins? Speaker 5: Yeah, I just wanna point out that a decision made by this committee a couple of years ago actually gets in the way of updating policies because the committee wanted to direct the policy subcommittee on which policies to update that left a whole host of, of policies
that need to be updated in terms of date and reviewed and make sure there's, they're still up to date that fall outside of that directive. So I just think we need to put some thought into really what, what kind of control does the committee want before the policy subcommittee considers a a policy. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Thompson. I just, so my recollection is that the policy subcommittee was gonna bring forth proposed policies to work on just like we've talked about and that this, the committee was gonna agree to that, you know, or ag agree with the priorities so
that we were all on the same page as opposed to the committee requesting policies, certain policies Speaker 5: That works for sections, but it doesn't work for changes. So if you say, okay, look at all of everything in INJ and then bristle when changed, proposals are brought back, not because you didn't like the changes, but because you didn't tell us on the policy subcommittee to look at this specific thing for this specific specific question. So that's, I just want us to be open to the fact that you,
we may get some things before us that we, the policy subcommittee was not specifically directed to look at in an effort to keep the full committee in the policy manual up to date. That's all I'm gonna say. Speaker 1: Dr. Stash, I see your hand up. Yeah. And then Ms. Grinnell, Speaker 4: Thank you. So I appreciate the work. I, I was at first more comfortable with putting things on the MASC website, but I became convinced after listening to the committee and listening to Dennis about the work that had to be done in general and you know, their great confidence in being able to do it.
And so I'm supportive of this, but I also see it as kind of a first step to reflect upon, as everybody has said here today, I also see that there's like two streams of work. There's what I'll call episodic or things that come up. We didn't know this Games of Chance had to be looked at until our lawyer wrote to us and said, you should look at this. And the, and so we have a tickler where we sort of keep things like that that might come from the community, might come from school committee members, might come from our lawyer or just our own observation of policy intersecting with practice. And so we might, if the committee would like us to kind of formalize all the different avenues
so people know how that can be done. But it does kind of go into the subcommittee for consideration before it's even something that gets worked upon. And then there's the second, so that's the episodic stream I'm calling it. And then there's the proactive, which I think Mr. Brand referred to. I think that by the end of this year we could have an approach to how we might do that over a series of years. But it hasn't been, to be honest, we've had an extremely busy fall in terms of policy on the episodic side we've had CTE, we've had this competency determination, we have this Animals in Schools one, so we've had kind
of a flood and there's others actually that we've done this fall. So it's been busy, but that has always been on our mind as a, as a subcommittee to think through this year how we handle the forward thinking of doing this in some stages. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. Smash. Ms. Brunell, I'm gonna, no comment. Okay. Any other comments from the committee? So I'll just, I'll, I just have one, one thought for the committee's consideration maybe Mr. Brand. I, I feel like you've,
you guys have been bringing things to us proactively. I think it's been working well, but if you have any proposed changes to how you think the subcommittee should interact with the committee, you know, I would welcome you bringing that forward for discussion on a future agenda. So Speaker 2: I, I think when we, when we know to what Dr. Sp was, was saying to, I say before when we know what we're going to be working on in, in a far enough in advance, I, I think what we've done before and what we will continue to do is bring it to the, as part of this update, we, for instance,
when we have our next schedule meeting, we like to announce what we're gonna be, what we're gonna be talking about at that meeting so everybody knows 'cause you know, so people can come if they wanna come at any time because it is our norm for members of the school committee. If there's a policy that there anyone who's particularly interested in then that you should certainly bring that up and so that we can consider it. But sort of like everybody has said, it's always a balance, right? We have, we try to keep our policy subcommittee meetings to an hour tight so that the administrators can get back to their o This is not a full-time job for anybody in the central office.
So we want to be cognizant of that. So we try to be really efficient and so if they come to us and they say that there's this really, the, the service animals policy, there's something that we have to address right now that's probably gonna take priority. So we will continue to communicate when we have policies that we know that we're gonna, we're gonna tackle like we we're gonna, like today we're gonna announce that we're gonna look as a maintenance view of INJ next. So if people have other suggestions, that's great and we'll just continue doing what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Great, thank you. Alright. And we'll look forward to voting on the two policies that were discussed at our next meeting. So thank you again and I'm going to turn things over to Dr. Bash for superintendent's report and or finance, whichever order you think we should go in Speaker 4: As we usually do because we have some guests here. I'm thinking we should go through the budget presentations from our guests first, if that's fine. Okay, excellent. So this is I think our third meeting, maybe fourth on budget. And we're kind of coming to the close.
So I'm excited to have the high school, we'll have the high school and then the preschool go. The athletics department, we're actually gonna put on the February 9th, we still do have time and that's when we're going to be ready for that. So although that's here, we're gonna push it off until the ninth. But let's start with principal blocker. Speaker 9: Greg, good evening. I believe that Ms. McGrath has slides that we can show during this. Speaker 4: I actually made you a co-host Josea. Oh, Speaker 9: Okay. Here. Yeah. Perfect. Okay, so I will do that. Now we get to do the thing that we used to do during COVID
where the screen doesn't do the things you're supposed to do. All right. For whatever reason I'm having trouble getting mine to share onto the screen. Speaker 15: Want me to put it up Josepha and then you Speaker 9: Talk through can That would be amazing. My zoom is doing something weird here. Alright, Speaker 15: Gimme a second. Speaker 9: Okay, thank you. Perfect. So if we can go, yeah, go to the start for tonight. Thank you. Okay, so talking about tonight specifically about the strategic reallocation that we're hoping to, that we'll go into the budget for the coming year. So if we could go to the next slide for that.
So our goals really are, are targeted towards these two strategic objectives. Number two, relationship building and community engagement. And then strategic objective three, instructional excellence and support systems. And we have three main objectives in terms of presenting the strategic improvements. One, a schedule for the high school that meets all students' needs. Two implementation of new DS E graduation requirements. And then three greater engagement of all students in our building. So the first one, the goal around a schedule that meets all students' needs. So our larger goal is to engage in a collaborative process
to explore different scheduling models and assess which model would best meet the needs of our students while preserving the key benefits of our current schedule. And we would wanna make sure that the depth and breadth of our current program, the post-secondary pathways, including some of the dual enrollment options we already have, as well as our developmental guidance curriculum, which is a pretty monumental thing that not all high schools have. That we have that the guidance seminar model that allows us to do a lot of direct instruction to kids from their guidance counselor. We feel like that's really a value and we wanna preserve that.
But we also know that over time we have questions about whether the 80 minute block is really the best length for our students. There are some additional questions about how we might use our schedule to maximize the use of our current building space. How we would allow our current schedule to potentially enable us to engage in further dual enrollment option O opportunities, especially for students like our multilingual learners who have requested some opportunities to dual enroll with some career building options. And then also really looking at nine 90 in terms of
how we are using our time and our schedule. So that is the first thing we really wanted to think about in the strategic reallocation. So we can go onto the next slide now. Okay. So the next thing and as we go into this, before I start talking about what DESI has proposed in terms of new graduation requirements, I wanna just stress that this is sort of continuum of what we've talked about in these meetings prior around cd, which is that we always knew that as we were marching through these various competency determination plans, that eventually the state would renews release new ones.
And so once again we are in the position of receiving new guidance. We had talked as when I came to the committee last around the competency determination requirements that we passed in November and then two weeks later we heard from DESI again. So we have a framework now for what they are proposing going forward. They're hoping to solidify it by June. And so as you'll see what they are proposing is a pretty lofty goal in terms of graduation requirements. Everything that they're proposing has merit and value,
but it will be a big lift for us to implement. So we can go forward with the next one. So the new graduation requirements that DESI is proposing, they have not, I will say at the outset they have not proposed this with a particular graduating class in mind, nor have they talked us through some of the particulars around implementation. But this is the overall set of requirements that they are saying will be new grad requirements. So for coursework, a rigorous course of study that aligns
with the admissions requirements for higher education, I'll say the one thing that separates Natick High School from that general requirement is specifically adding algebra two to our list. We have a four year math requirement, but we do not specifically require algebra two. And some students, most of our students do take it. Some choose to take extra computer science or alternative math classes instead. So that would be one change. The next would be these specific end of course assessments that are not mcm. CAS you might remember was a few times
during high school this, this sounds like it could be a little bit different. We're not sure what that'll look like yet. Also capstones and portfolios that are designed by the state but administered and scored locally. Career and academic plans are a my cap plan that is sort of a, a wholly contained plan that each student develops. While most of our students do obviously engage in a lot of post-secondary planning, those individual plans per se are not something we've had them engage in yet. Completing the FAFSA or fafsa. That is something that many of our students do again but we don't require it for graduation.
Financial literacy courses, I know that's something again of a huge value and many of our students avail themselves of it. It is not currently a graduation requirement. And then additional seals of distinction that kids could earn. So right now the seal of biliteracy is something that the state requires or not, doesn't require rather, but allow students to earn. But they are proposing that there may be additional ones that kids could earn. So again, a lot here that is new. Every time I present this to a new group, I stress that we should all breathe. I think that when anybody looks at a lot, there's a lot
that's new here, but all of it is positive and that what they're really doing is saying when kids leave they should be really working against the idea of applying to college if they haven't already, because they will have done the maths or fafsa, they would've already done a career plan, they would've. So they really are looking to set up post-secondary education for every single kid as a choice. And I commend them for that. I think that the implementation is gonna be the the thing that we have to work on. So, so then our general needs in
order to do this, we have looked into what it took to track CD with just tracking specific courses and specific exams and whether kids have met them and then remediation plans for those things. Now we would be tracking the scores obviously on all the end of course assessments depending on how many there would be the portfolios really tracking all the completion and implementation, the career plans, the fafsa, the FAFSA or the opt-out, the financial literacy course requirements. And then also for each seal of distinction they propose who can earn them and ensuring that they have earned them if they want them.
And then ensuring that all the diplomas get tracked properly. So that's the general sort of administrative oversight that would need to go into this. But then in addition there is, you know, it took us a while to on ramp into how to run MCAS so that it was effective and the most ideal testing environment for our kids. So depending on what those assessments look like, I can imagine we will have to do it potentially in multiple classes. We don't know yet what that'll look like. The capstones designing that process so that all students can successfully complete it. We would be needing to design and implement a My CAP program
and then also figuring out how to embed financial literacy curriculum into current coursework. So that is our second goal is really figuring out how we would embrace that process and looking at resources needed to do that well and so that we can use it to really move our students to the next level. And then the last one, which sort of goes hand in hand with that is really providing each student the necessary opportunities to allow for successful graduation and post-secondary planning. So increasing post-secondary options for targeted groups
of kids like ML students, students with disabilities, students interested in trades, increasing tiers one, two, and three. Social emotional and behavioral support around how we get our MTSS system to look at attendance, mental health and bolster caregiver engagement. And then also looking at how we might expand access for early college programs is another sort of key need that we were zeroing in on when we thought about strategic reallocation. So our proposal for addressing these needs is one, a one-time cost to engage a consultant
to help us develop a schedule for next year. There are a lot of different ideas and we wanna make sure we hear all constituents in a meaningful way during that process. And then the really the second and third go hand in hand together we have the opportunity due to retirement to transition to the next stage of leadership in our guidance department. And we were tr hoping to make that department head position and administrator of counseling so that that person could really be part of the leadership of this transition to this next stage of post-secondary planning that will be required
for the DSI graduation requirements. But that is also benefits our students in the long run in terms of looking at how to best engage all kids in our building. And then also dovetailing off that most schools our size have a full-time college and career counselor who really does do the implementation of a lot of the post-secondary planning. Does solicit and engage community partners to allow for more post-secondary exploration and job opportunities is a person who can go out and look at possible dual enrollment programs
and really engage in terms of creating those and has the bandwidth to really think about what all those endeavors could be that would sum up to a media post-secondary planning process for students who may or may not be looking at colleges the next step. That person would also be really instrumental in engaging the planning and tracking process for this, these new requirements that are on the horizon to make sure that we really are making sure every single student can meet those goals. So we would be looking at those two things working, those two cost increases, really working in concert
to address myriad needs. And this is sort of the overall breakdown that bumping up that the current department head position into a unit B would be an increase there a little bit. And then adding the 1.0 for the college and career counselor there. And then the one time cost of the 3,600 and then where that generally fits in our overall budget is on the last slide and it would be an additional 118 and change going into the salary areas for guidance,
psych testing and then a one-time extra expense in our text and instructional materials. Speaker 1: Okay. Questions from the committee? Thank you very much. Yeah, just blocker Ms. Lathers Speaker 16: Nothing but great joy. Looking at the scheduling options, I mean I feel like I did a broken record about this one and I feel like looking at all the needs, it's great. And then, oh the, the question I had on the guidance, how does the dedicated college career counselor intersect with their, with like the guidance counselors in general? I mean my kids have a great guidance counselor.
It's been a journey, it's senior year with two very different kids and so you know, it's done a great job. Like how does that intersection work for most kids? Speaker 9: That's a great question. So the, when there is a general college and career counselor, what that person does is they really are looking at overall resourcing and opportunities. So planning field trips to trade organizations, liaising with local colleges to try to facilitate early college opportunities. They are going out in the community and trying to solicit business partners that might employ students that haven't gotten their first job. They can be somebody who does like, like workshops
with kids on their resumes or on their cover letters and like has meetings with kids in addition to their regular guidance counselor. And really does plug us into, right now for example, our guidance admin assistants are the ones that liaise with the local college reps to have them come in in schools that have a full-time college and career counselor. That person is building relationships with those college reps rather than having it be done in an administrative way. And so there is a lot more sort of overall planning with the department head around the career aspect of college
and career in addition to what is happening with the individual student, with their guidance counselor one-on-one and then that person can be referred to as an additional resource. The other thing is that when we move and look at all those things that now will have to be tracked and monitored and planned for and designed, we're gonna need somebody who can help us design a real meaningful capstone project when the department head really sits down with me and envisions what those capstones could mean for our kids and really thinks about what those career plans could be for our kids. Having some boots on the ground who can go out
and make options that kids can use as part of those plans is gonna be really important. So having somebody who has that as their main role will be essential to all of that working. Well. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 9: Yeah. Ms. Collins, Speaker 5: Thank you and thank you GI I've, under the heading of Girls Talk, you hear things, will this review of the schedule include review of CDS, which have always understood was a problem be one of the reasons we did it and did PRIs was because we didn't have room for the, to hold the classes and
and will it all be considered here? Speaker 9: I would imagine that, I would imagine that if we were gonna examine our schedule, everything would be open to conversation. I don't know that we as of that I will find extra space in our building tomorrow. I think those current really, those current restrictions and constraints still exist maybe even more than the last time it was spoken about. But, and CDS has come to serve a great many functions that are positive for a lot of kids and then some kids use the time well and some don't.
And I think that, I imagine that all of that would come out during stakeholder engagement for the design process. Speaker 5: Okay. I know you can't like find new space or you would've done so long ago, but I just want, I'm hoping that we can be left with a plan with, if you had additional space, this would be my next suggestion. Speaker 9: Yeah, Speaker 5: Yeah. Kind of approach on, on the output of this review that's otherwise, I know it's hard to try and build a house on a land that keeps moving. So I appreciate that as long as Dei Desi wants
to move the land, we have to do it. But, so I appreciate the efforts. Thank you. Yeah, Speaker 9: Yeah, of course. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: Thank you. Thank you Josepha, thanks for being with us. I feel like you've come often this year, so thank you for the time on these Monday nights. So just a couple of questions. I'm, I'm confused to be honest about what's required and what's not yet. Is it the sense that nothing is yet, nothing's been decided by Dessi or the state? Speaker 9: So the way that they have framed it for us, and I see that Melissa has her hand up, I think she's on the committee that is going to be finalizing this with the state, is they've proposed this as a draft that they will are going
to now work on with superintendents and finalize in June. But I'll defer to Melissa 'cause I see her hand up as well. Speaker 4: Yeah, you have it right Josepha. So I was invited by the commissioner and the secretary of education. I just haven't had a chance to mention that here yet. To participate on a group of superintendents, it's called the LEA advisory group. I actually went to their inaugural meeting today and they asked a lot of questions. It's it, you did such a great job, Josea framing the report, which is a public report, I'm happy to email it to the committee, but you really did show all the seven pieces today.
We kind of went through them and they're actually asking for a lot of input from the field. We had tiny, tiny little, you know, districts as well as huge ones as well as medium size with, and all of them we're advocating for flexibility for localized implementation. So my feeling, I think there's some acknowledgement that there's gonna need to be a really intentional rollout of this. I don't think it's gonna be like snap your fingers and this thing has to be implemented right away. But I'm, I think Joseph's plan here with the focus on the counseling department is spot on.
Not only for just, I would want that regardless of the new requirements because I think as we, as we think about how we serve our kids, all of our kids, we need to make sure we're really attending and innovating for them around things that may not look kind of like what the typical student does. And so that's what excites me about this is starting to just think differently maybe around kind of how we support the kids through that journey. So I think this is all really nicely timed. The high school study also is nicely timed with a lot of the other work we're doing in
the district in terms of space. So in terms of this, josepha framed it really well. She's right, the report's coming out in June, but I don't think it's gonna be like now you have to implement this next year. I think it's gonna be a bit of a time d rollout, but it was my first meeting. I have I think five or six more and I'm happy to update the committee as those rollout. Speaker 8: Okay. If I may, Melissa just ever at least just a couple more questions. Yep, go ahead. So the proposal of the full-time college and career counselor, I'll be honest, I was kind of surprised 'cause I thought that that's what all of our
guidance counselors were and I hope that's what they all are. So I, I guess what I'm, what I wanna say is that in this, while I support this position, because I know how much work and like what you're saying, like the tracking they're gonna have to do, I would hope that this wouldn't just lie with one person for 400 graduating seniors and I see you not hot, you know, nodding your head. In my experience with, with families, there are some kids that know about opportunities at the high school and not everyone. And so there are some kids that will end up on that amazing like internship
where you do classes on the blue days and you do your internship on the red and then you get to like January and some kids have never even heard of it. Right. And like that, it's been an amazing opportunity for some of the students that really wanna have that real life experience. So I am hoping that our, that we can just really integrate everything that you've talked about tonight into all of our guidance department. And I'm, you know, I know that that's, I know, I know that that's always the goal. I'm not saying that it, it's not, it doesn't happen always,
but I just have seen there's times where I think we're missing students. And then one thing about the sleep schedule or sorry, the, the schedule there, you know, that there was extensive research done at some point. And so I hope that that committee will use the work that's already been done if it's helpful and throw it out if it's not. I'm curious if, if there are consultants, like are we gonna go out to bid for these consultants? Okay, great. Yes. Okay. That's great. I'm, I'm really interested to see what happens it
before it was always framed around sleep for students and so I see you framing it around something else, which I appreciate because it's like in, in the school system. I'd love, I, I can't wait to find out more. I have one more question about the actual budget line items on slide 10. Well two questions on this slide. I see that we're going down to teachers in the high school in terms of FTE and I was curious if you could speak to that. Speaker 9: So my understanding with that, we are, we are level funded in terms of our teachers. We are not cutting teachers. I think through some of the cleanup that Matt and Jackie have been doing
to make our documentation line up with reality. There are people who maybe were classified in the high school who are now classified at the district or vice versa. So for example, the K to 12 music director for the district also teaches two classes in my building. I don't know how he was classified before, but this budget is intended to represent level service, not any decrease in staff. And then through strategic reallocation we are recommending these additions. Speaker 8: Okay. And that may indeed be the answer for the, my last question is three lines up from the bottom, bottom,
bottom, there's a line item that's $64,000 for FY 27 and it is an addition of two staff, Speaker 9: But it's the same thing. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Speaker 8: Okay. So it's just like staff put like putting them in the right location. Speaker 9: Matt has pinky swore to me that all of this, that all of the movement indicated has to do with simply moving people between buckets and that everybody who currently has positions at the high school, those positions will continue to exist into the future. Speaker 8: Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Did you wanna speak to that Mr.
Phyllis? Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean I was just gonna ask principal blocker. So have you, have you lost any positions or reduced any services this year? Speaker 9: We only, we did not do anything in the middle of the year. We only did things that we did last year at the end of the year. Speaker 15: So the the, the budget is, is built off of what we're doing this year. Yeah. And if some people needed to be charged to district wide accounts or shared between other schools, you know, it reflects that. But we really haven't reduced staff in any way for the high school or services.
Speaker 9: Ms. Lathers. Speaker 16: Hi. It's funny 'cause I was thinking of a follow up then I didn't ask it and then Catherine asked questions and so one thing I just wanna ask note is the conversion of having the guidance head to an administrative position. I feel really fortunate. I mean I don't know if people out there like by name you get the same C counselor for all of your, your entire family, which I think is fabulous. I wish spec, I said I wish special ed would take kind of a similar approach to things. And we've have felt very fortunate.
I don't consistently hear that every family has that same experience. And so I just, my question is around how, and the other thing I've noted is that guidance is one of the few areas it doesn't report out at these, you know, we hear about a lot of the departments in these meetings. We don't consistently hear about guidance. And so it's just both kind of a question, a comment of making sure that without a department head that there is adequate like coaching assessment, et cetera of the guidance counselors for standards
of their practices, student facing roles. 'cause it sounds like this administrative position is not as much of a student facing role. And so how does that, you know, coaching professional practice happen for those positions in this new model? Speaker 9: So just to clarify, that person would absolutely be coaching and overseeing the department, evaluating the staff, doing the pd, doing the PLC meetings. This would simply give them a little bit, they would still have a very small caseload. They would not have, right now our guidance department head has 80 students, which is, which is commensurate with the role that a TE department head
of a teaching subject would have in the classroom. Since this department has very unique needs and very unique pieces of of work in the high school, we felt like it warranted bumping it up to an administrator as opposed to having it be only a department head. So to have that person have more leadership training would allow that person potentially to do a little bit more oversight on the things that you're mentioning. We're also doing a guidance review process that was part of our SIP this year under goal three.
And so right now the mass Association of school counselors is actively engaged with us doing a full review of the guidance department and we'll have that information in late June to present to whomever we hire as the next head of that department. Whether we get this all reallocation to allow for it to be a unit B member versus a department head. Either way it will inform the work that that person does going forward in terms of supervising coaching and evaluating the members of that department. Speaker 16: And we'll have some kind of caseload but smaller. Yep.
Speaker 9: It'll have any kind of caseload that's Speaker 16: Smaller. I think I either I missed that or Speaker 9: No, no, no worries. I don't know if I even said that but that was when I met with guidance department and I said, what do you think your needs for the future? Are they all agreed that they thought that person should have more time to devote to the management of the department and the needs of the school and should still have some caseload to keep them connected to the student experience. And so both of those went into thinking about the roles. Speaker 16: No, that, that's great. Thank you. Speaker 9: Yeah, I see Ms. Collins Speaker 5: Quickly, Sue, didn't you say during negotiations
that in order to really be in a position to evaluate that we, these should be unit B met members rather than unit A members evaluating members? I sure just saying people. I sure did, yes. Speaker 9: Okay. I sure did. Speaker 5: So this follows on the changes that we made during that time of moving some people to unit B. Yep. Okay, thank you. I just, I thought it did but I just wanna be sure. Yep. Speaker 9: It's a similar, similar type of role doing a similar type of move. Speaker 5: Great, thank you. Speaker 9: Yeah. Speaker 1: And I had a question about the, I think it's, I think it's about everything but in in the
schedule consultation work that's gonna be done next year, I assume that that's going to also take into account these new requirements from desi. Speaker 9: Yep. Speaker 1: Is there a poss will, will we be re, will we be evaluating whether or not we have enough hours in the school day to do all the things that we need to do? Speaker 9: Yes. So you're asking like some of the, the tougher questions with some of this, right? The nine 90, the how many hours are in the day and then how we work with the union around the fact that that changes their day. Anything that changes the footprint
of their day probably would be collectively bargained. Right? So we would be in a space where we would be talking to them about that. I imagine that that would happen no matter what we changed or how we had to change it. So I think that we would need to work with the union collaboratively on it. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 9: Yeah. Okay. Speaker 1: And then just a sec, I see Dr. Sp have your hand, but I just had a second question about that. So in terms of space, I think it would be really helpful for the committee if in looking at the schedule, if space is a driver of the schedule, then I think
that's something that really needs to be flagged up to us so that we're really aware that that's a major limitation to what we consider to be the best quality education we want to have. If, if that ends up being the case, I mean it sounded from what Ms. Collins said earlier that there was some discussion about that in the past that I was not privy to. So I, I just would like to make sure that that is like, that you're aware that's something we'd really like to know about. Especially as we're planning, you know, looking at elementary schools and space
and reuse of other spaces in town. Speaker 9: I think there are a number of things that are sort of merging together in this conversation. And I see Dr. Bash so I won't get a heard of her because I know she probably has some thoughts on it too. Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you're right, a lot is converging and that's what happens when we talk about looking at a high school schedule. It's kind of like the schedule for the district. So two points I'll make. One is we're soon to kind of come out with a baseline of where we are with some of these converging things around space is one of them I would say now
and feel very comfortable saying now that space absolutely does affect our, our cal, our schedule at the high school. But giving some more details or almost scenarios to help understand that for people on the committee who have kids in the high school, they're probably very aware of it, but for some people who maybe don't, we can illustrate that through a couple of schedules, redacted name schedules. But yes, so the other piece is with this, with the work around the new requirements for graduation, the devil's sort of in the details and I think that they're gonna have to yield some flexibility
because all of the different unions and setups and collective bargaining agreements are gonna have to be kind of be navigated differently. And so I wouldn't wanna think that just because we have, let's say a graduation requirement for financial literacy that it becomes an add to the school day. I don't wanna send that message here because there's probably innovative way I took that one 'cause it's easy but like there's ways to innovate around that. And so we're gonna learn more as we go through this and we get the the next round of recommendations. But even if the graduation council wasn't setting these new
requirements, I think this community has been asking and in fact this school committee ever since I've been here have been kind of wanting to take another look at the schedule. And so when Josefa and I originally decided to put this on here, it was almost independent of that and it was more listening to kind of where the community has been around this topic. Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Any other questions from the committee or comments on the high school budget? Okay, thank you very much Principal Blocker. I appreciate you being here today. You Speaker 4: Thanks Josea. Speaker 1: Take care. Speaker 4: Great. So we're gonna go all the way from our high schoolers
to our preschoolers and we're going to have co comb bring us through the preschool story and budget. Welcome. I should mention that Corey is a finalist in our director search. So we're very excited about that. Speaker 17: Thanks Dr. Bash. I, oh look, I was just about to say I don't, it doesn't look like I'm sharing options but Matt thank you. It's lovely to listen to that. I feel like this is much simpler. So I'll talk through a little bit on the alignment in terms of the budget, some
of the reallocation changes just briefly after I talk a little bit about the, the budget history. So, so before I get into really the alignment to goals and it's, our budget is really aligned pretty transparently and directly to all of the goals both in the school improvement plan, which are also aligned to the district goal. But I, I just wanna take a minute to really talk about the required nature of an integrated preschool in that the, the state, and this may be very familiar to everybody on this call,
but the district is required to provide preschool services to all eligible students with disabilities. And that is really driven through IDEA federally and also mass special ed regulations. So the provision of servicing at the preschool level is really in response to, to that those mandates. The Natick integration degraded preschool, we also provide our child find obligations. We're able to fulfill those deliver IEP services for any students between the ages of three to five
that don't yet fall under that compulsory education but are still caught within that net of three to 22 years. In terms of our responsibility, in terms of special education and the opportunity to be able to offer these services within in an integrated inclusive setting really provides us the opportunity to provide least restrictive services in a least restrictive environment. So it supports things like early identification and intervention. And when we're talking about budget in a pre-K to 12 system, certainly early intervention can be key to reducing the need
for more in intensive and potentially more costly supports later in a student's educational trajectory. So just a note about that, I would say that in terms of alignment, the preschool program is really serving as the district's earliest foundational tier one program within that larger pre-K to 12 MTSS framework that's well represented within this strategic objectives and also the preschool school improvement plan. Our budget really is strictly aligned
to really staffing training materials that support both that core instruction tier one as well as tiered interventions and certainly woven into that as well with the nature of the population would be the specialized supports that are provided almost exclusively in an inclusive environment in the context of the integrated preschool. And that really again affords those supports to all learners. So that really directly relates to that strengthening of the tier one systems across the continuum of students.
That's very evident in the district goals as well. And I would just say that sort of, that's encapsulated in that third bullet. But I would just note that the B, the budget allocations that support the preschool is unique to some of the other programs in the district in that that preschool budget is really supported through a combination of the general fund appropriations and then that tuition revenue as well as you know, a federal entitlement grant. But that blended model really ensures
that we are able to provide the required services for students with disabilities but also to sustain optional programming that really expands access for other kids between the ages of three and five and Natick while also allowing us to maintain those staffing ratios that are mandated by the federal government and also the state of Massachusetts. So just looking quickly, I made a quick note on this first line in terms of our fiscal year, the 26th enrollment, typically that enrollment number is taken in October,
but preschool is a little bit unique in terms of thinking about our population in that as we move from September through June, our population invariably will grow across the year. So I just wanted to make sure that I was presenting that accurately here. If we look at our fiscal year, just as we've moved through this year while we started at 1 29, our population currently is 137 students that we're servicing in the preschool. And just to give you a sense of our continued growth as we move through June,
we're anticipating another potential 14 initial evaluations that are coming to us from early intervention. And just to clarify, it's really a projected because a portion of those students could or could not be assessed out of early intervention due to meeting of the goals between now and the end of the year. But we have to sort of plan for the fact that we could receive that many students between now and June. So based on that modeling, you know, I would estimate in my conversations with Matt as well
that we're estimating about 140 for next year as well. Looking historically we hit about a hundred and thirty six, a hundred and thirty seven by the end of last year. And right now we're pacing just a little bit ahead of that based on the initial evaluations that are still out there to come to us In terms of our budget driver, I'll just say that preschool is a service-based program and so the bargain salaries are really the primary driver of all costs. The biggest bulk of our budget really goes directly
to the salaries that are part of the bargained agreements to the staffing that provides the servicing within the context of pre-K. We were fortunate in that from FY 25 to 26, sort of a, a loss of staff, which is unfortunate, but allowed us to really moderate that overall increase based on the new hires. So we're coming in slightly lower than recent years based on that opportunity to hire some new staff. And just as I said
before, like one of the primary budget drivers is just maintaining staffing that aligns with those regulations. We currently maintain a required adult to student ratio that's aligned with DSI requirements and that's two adults for every 15 students in a class that allows us to optimally place students that require specialized instruction within the context of the number of classes that we currently have available to us. Staffing, obviously one of the drivers is that we are required to hire staffing
that has DSI licensure at this point in the context of pre-K that requires actually dual certified both early childhood and special education certified staff in all of our classrooms. So that's one of the things that sort of outpaces in terms of hiring, they require that dual certification. And then last but not least, making sure that we're continuing and in line with best practice is to service students both with or without disabilities in a least restrictive environment, which for the vast majority of our classrooms
is a fully included environment. You'll note at the very bottom there's like a very small 2% increase for non-salary expenses. You know, I think Matt was very mindful in his guidance about making sure that we are minimizing that while still keeping pace with the cost of materials. So you'll see the, the strategic reallocation is really just aligned with change from additional tuition that we'll get to in just a minute that will offset
that teacher salary item. Just lowering the total increase of the program, we again, we have that sort of opportunity to pull from the general budget but also our tuition funds and so being able to talk a little bit about projected tuition allows us to sort of bring that overall increase from a 4.2 to a 3.2% increase. Matt, did I miss anything? Speaker 15: No, I think you're doing great 'cause this is a little bit more complex than, than
what some other folks have to deal with with their first budget. I just say that if we go back up, up one slide, you know the staffing is still level 22 and a half and 22 and a half, so we didn't lose staff. There was staff turnover, which sometimes when somebody leaves, if they were at the top of the salary schedule and we hire somebody a little bit lower, it makes it a, a more modest increase for our budget. So again, we're still looking at the same level of services we're providing this year as we did last year.
And, and in this case same for same for next year, both with the general fund and with the, with the revolving. But Corey will, Corey will pick that back up in a second. Speaker 17: Thanks. So you'll see here that for the fiscal year 27, we have an estimated 86 tuition payers and that's about level to this year and that includes 48 full-time. The remaining of those payers are within the context of our halftime program. And then the number of staff is really that 9.7 FTE
that's paid from that revolving fund, but that's less than one third of our staff that comes out of that. So the remaining is coming out from the general fund. So we initially talked about a 5.5% increase in terms of tuition. That was the earliest estimated budget increase. Again, most of the program costs are really tied to the contracts. And so that 5.5 was the starting point to look at the increase in line
with the collective bargaining increases. The administration really recommended that 7.5% increase as part of that increase to, I'm sorry to absorb a strategic reallocation allowing for, sorry Matt. Speaker 15: Well that's okay. So the strategic reallocation plan, which folks will see in in greater detail when the full budget comes out, goes over a fair number of pluses and minuses. Like we just saw at the high school where we were adding some things in other places we're,
we're reducing some general fund expenses via user fee offsets. And so coming up with the $207,000 that we have built in there and fee fee increases helps us balance the total strategic reallocation and, and that that the superintendent will, will opine on in, in probably some really great detail. But it, it's basically to make sure the district is moving forward and more focused in in the right directions. We're sort of refining things and sharpening our focus
and it's a little bit cumbersome sometimes when you're looking at, at revolving funds and revenues, but the whole purpose that we have revolving funds is because the programs are optional and not required by loss. So we, we can charge a fee whereas like for the special education students in the program, there's no fee. So it's, it's the peer models that, that get a fee. And I guess while I'm, while I'm rolling, I, I'll keep going. If we go to the, the next slide, taking into account
how, how we stack up with the other programs we would go to in town, like with Judy Gordon and face this year's price, we're still competitive with that. We're fairly competitive with our neighbors who sometimes do things a little bit differently. And so that's why we're recommending 2% above what would be level service and no change. That's why we're re recommending seven and a half. And with that I'll, I'll turn it back over to Corey. Speaker 17: Thanks, I appreciate that. Right. So you'll see in terms of these numbers, we're well in line
with our local private preschools, Judy Gorney, Geor, Judy Gordon, and Face being the preschools in town that really operate along the same hours that we do servicing kind of a similar day. The preschools that fall below Natick line speak to really surrounding towns and their integrated preschools. But as Matt said, the programming differs from preschool to preschool and some of these offer fewer days, shorter week or only the option of like a three day
for example, rather than a four or five day week for students. So considering all the configurations among these, and these are last year's numbers as well, many of which may potentially be increasing for this year. Also, we are well aligned with our surrounding integrated preschools as well. So this is just to say that like, like I just said on the slide before, we still remain significantly below both our private preschools that are located within Natick
and also surrounding integrated preschools in comparison to the local private preschools that offer a similar day in servicing as we do for your community peers. We're roughly 13 to 28% below those local private market schools that are within Natick. And you know, Matt spoke to this before, it's a very delicate balance within the context of an integrated preschool because you want to maintain budgetary balance between that revolving fund without having
to pull too much from the general fund will offer, while also maintaining a competitive price so that we're able to attract quality model community peers to be able to offer a rich inclusion environment for some of our students on IEPs. Additionally, making it accessible for families who may not qualify for some of the subsidy programs available at some of the private preschools in town. And also sort of maintaining a certain level
where we're still able to cover costs without making a profit, but enough to, you know, offer a balanced side to the, to the budget. So I think that, you know, we, we work to sort of strike that balance. Speaker 1: Thank you. Are we ready for questions? Speaker 17: I am ready for any questions I guess. Speaker 1: Okay. No, thank you. Great presentation. Appreciate it. Questions from the committee and I see Ms. Brunell. Speaker 8: Thank you. Just quick, oh, like big picture, the general fund budget
that's presented here has it at $1.5 million and then the revenue that's listed is around $860,000. So is that a subtraction from the general fund? So it's six, $640,000 that comes out of the, our operating budget that we ask or it's in addition to, Speaker 15: And if I take that one Speaker 17: Please. So, Speaker 15: So if there was no revolving fund then, then yes it would be a subtraction, but last year the, the revolving fund budgeted for,
you know, about 9.7 staff and that that's what we're paying out of it this year. So it, it really is that part's supposed to take care of itself. So we would have a significantly smaller program without the revolving fund. So it's new revenue over and above level service that can lower our general fund operating budget. Otherwise, if the, if the, if the revenue is, is, is gonna be less than or not increasing, then our budget goes up more. If it, if the revenue goes up enough to keep level service,
then the allocation stays about the same. If the revenue goes up a little bit more than our general fund expenses are going up, we can start to reduce the general fund expenditures. So Did, did, hopefully that answers the question and I just wanna check and make sure that made sense. Speaker 8: I think I got it. So we, the preschool is $2.3 million then all Speaker 5: In Yeah, that's Speaker 15: What, that's what it cost to run the program? Correct. Speaker 8: Okay, thank you. I just wanted to have that in my head and I think we'll talk about fees in the, in another part, but I think you did a great job tonight presenting a a,
a budget that is complicated as Matt called it. And I'm grateful that we can do this for our students and I love how you called them our tier one, the very start of our tier one. I thought that was excellent. Speaker 1: Any other questions from the committee? I do see some members of the public wishing to speak, but we'll take committee questions first. Okay. So we'll go to the public. I see Dr. McKenzie Speaker 18: Briefly. Can, can you tell me within the budget if there are scholarship or grant monies available to families who may not be able to afford the total cost of preschool?
Thank you. Speaker 15: Good question. So with all of our programs and all of our user fees, we do have a financial assistance policy and application and folks that qualify, they can get a reduced fee or possibly up to free depending on what their financial status is. Speaker 18: That's great, thank you very much. Speaker 1: Any other questions, Ms. Collins? Speaker 5: I thought I understood it and then you answered Dr. Mackenzie's question and now I'm confused. So round numbers, if the fee were $15,000 and my family qualified for partial reduction, does
that mean more of that $15,000 or some of that $15,000 is an increase to the budget? Speaker 15: No, it's, it, it would be absorbed by the budget because the number of fee payers is, and the tuition assistance has already been sort of baked in with where, where, where we're at this year versus prior years and then projection for next year. So we, Speaker 5: Okay, so my, Speaker 15: So we've always had Speaker 5: Go ahead revolving account might be smaller because I wouldn't be getting that new income, but the budget piece would be the same
and hopefully the revolving accounts, I know the revolving accounts got some cushion added to cover, things like that. Correct. Speaker 15: That that's why we try to start out with a decent beginning balance, right? Because we're always estimating revenue. We don't know exactly how many fee payers we're gonna have or exactly what they're gonna have to pay in, in that presentation and, and list on, I think slide seven, you know, there is a breakdown of the different types of fee payers and there's one that's kind of modified, that's listed in italics is 8,000. So some of the kids would, would qualify
for part-time special education services. I'll give it a, an example is an hour of reading or an hour of OTPT, but they wouldn't qualify for full services. So they get a discounted price based on the amount of time they have. And for folks that are on financial assistance, they could be paying half or, or paying nothing. So we've kind of got that historically figured out based on past practice for the number of folks in town. And when estimating revenues, we tend to round down slightly when, when we're doing head counts,
Speaker 5: Right? So the 1.5 million wouldn't change, it would be the 800,000, which might Speaker 15: Be Speaker 5: A little less going into the following year. The Speaker 15: Projected balance, you know, will, will, will likely be higher or lower. Things don't, don't go exactly as planned, but you usually it, it works out. Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you Ms. Brunell. Speaker 8: Yeah, I just have one more question. I keep thinking about all of these presentations tonight in light of the strategic plan that's about to happen. So what happens if in the strategic plan parents tell us, sorry, can you guys hear me? What happens in the strategic plan if parents,
if we hear from the community that full day preschool is wanted where like how do we do this? Speaker 4: I can take that. I mean we're, I I think we're anticipating hundreds of data points that we may hear either through the survey or through speaking. And so really the strategic plan steering committee's job is to kind of distill those down in some bucketed themes. So, but that's not to say that the facilitators of these sessions aren't gonna pass along some pieces that we can also consider that may not become the big buckets. And it's a question I have myself.
I think we've increased, we have a robust amount of full day pre-K compared to many of our neighbors. We should look at what the research says, we should look at what parents want, we should look at what we can staff, we should look at the spacing that we have. So I think it would be an analytical approach, which is how we should do anything this important. But we would listen and so we, we welcome any of that feedback, but I won't be surprised if we, if we get people who come in with that opinion, we'll see, we'll see if it rises up to the top to become a theme or if it becomes something that we can have on a list to consider as we do all
of our other work. You're muted. Speaker 8: Oh, I just said thank you. I just keep looking at these numbers though and I'm like, oh boy, I don't know what else can change. It's all expensive. It's all like, we are doing a lot with a budget and I am just expressing, just to respond to that, Speaker 4: Just to respond to that and I should have said it, you know, earlier, is that, you know, the obligation of a district, the reason we have integrated preschool is to meet the needs in an inclusive setting of students who need that early intervention.
And so it isn't necessarily just to meet all the demand that's out there for any sort of preschool. It's intended to deliver what our kids who need early intervention need and to give them a community p peer to make sure it's inclusive. So a, a class of 15 would have, I think it's eight to seven, so eight community peers to seven students on an IEP. And so that really is the goal of the, that we're trying to solve in that we're not trying to be everyone's preschool provider. Speaker 1: Thank you. I see no other questions. So thank you so much. Appreciate your presentation today. Speaker 4: Thank you so much Corey.
So we'll actually move over to user fees. It's sure to be a big one and Mr. Gillis is going to bring us through that. I think Ms. Blocker's still here in case we need her. So I don't know where you wanna put that Mr. Gillis, if we can get her earlier in it, that would be great. Speaker 15: Yep, I can, I can proceed in a second. Just need to move one thing so the share works easy. All right. Can folks see my screen? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 15: Switch to slideshow. All right, so this is
gonna, did it freeze? It's not letting me toggle between the pages here. There we go. All right. So the reason we have user fees is to offset expenses for the all the services that are not legally required, but what I wanna say are really commonly expected, right? I mean we've had a preschool program for, for a while. People expect that to happen. We've had athletic high school athletic program, transportation before and after school care. These are things that if we didn't have them all, we'd have,
we'd be having a different meeting and there'd be different things on the agenda. Largely they're expected to happen and they're not required by law, but they're kind of required by the community. And so the, the school department basically pays the majority and we have, you know, user fee to offset the expenses. So I'm gonna try and tie some of these out to our objectives. Like transportation would be, you know, ba sort of psychological and safety. We, we basically want the kids to safely get to school
and for instructional excellence, objective three, well you can't really educate them if they're not there on time. So we try to get 'em there safely and on time and have it be really invisible and it's almost automatic once we get the year going for athletics, it's definitely part of the community and school spirit and it's, it's leadership building, not just for the staff but also for the students before and after school care. Definitely part of psychological safety and community and relationship building. Then preschool also again, instructional excellence and,
and a little bit of community building. And we have some, some other programs, some smaller ones. We got North Star Elementary special education program that we charge tuition for when we have extra seats and when the, the sending community actually has a student that's a good match for our program. We've got a high school parking fee and we've got summer enrichment. So the goal with our overall budget was to come up with $207,000 in fee adjustments. It would be reasonable, modest and arguably least impactful, least impactful to most
of the people participating. So the first one in short is a bus fee increase. Sue's gonna talk about that a little bit. I'm rounding things off here to round number of dollars at $25 per hour. That would be about a $52,000 increase. We increased the fee by $25 last year and we actually had more riders than the year before, even though we're down about 75 students from the year before. So that fee didn't really dissuade anybody from, from riding. And it's also modestly priced compared to some other things. Athletic fee increase at $25, $50
or a hundred dollars depending on the sport. Tim's gonna talk about that in greater detail. I'm happy to take questions at the end of this for asap. That's our afterschool activity program, you know, still working on finalizing the price with that budget. But just like we did with with with the pre-K program where we said level service was five and a half, we, we added 2% to that for asap we're gonna add 3% and that would be about $75,000. And that's a much bigger program than our, than our pre-K program.
pre-K you just heard and just talked about around that down to $15,000 North star tuitions, you know, we get, you know, 1, 2, 3 kids approximately where we've got open seats that are a good match and we, we take them in. So that would be rounded down to 5,000, but it'll be 5,200 bucks. So that would get us 208,000 just over the $207,000 estimate. Like I just explained before, it's a little bit hard to get the fees exactly because we don't know exactly how many users, users
or payers we're gonna have. It's hard to predict that with the pre-K program. It's hard to predict how many kids are gonna be on certain teams. It's hard to predict how many kids are gonna ride the bus. So we, we do it based on sort of historical participation and then a, a slightly conservative estimate to make sure that we're not overestimating the revenue and run into a a problem. So the bus fees are going up by $25 and they're really about 20, almost 21% of the budget for the regular school bus.
It it, it runs about a a $2.6 million program and the fees take in 500, 500 some odd thousand. I've got it on a slide below. So, and, and with any of the fees we're gonna, the, the family cap will go up commensurate with the, with the fee. So going up from 225 per rider to two 50, you know, our, our our family cap would go up as well. Athletic fees a little bit more broken down here for folks. You know the total athletic program is about two thirds funded by the general fund and about one third funded
by by the user fees. And so these are the, these are the fees that would change. Athletic user fee for high school sports is currently 2 75 that would go to $300. Alpine ski and the hockey fee, the mountain rental lift tickets, the race race ticket and you know, ice rentals are, are pretty expensive. Football, swimming and diving. The cost of the football equipment or the pool rental makes that sport more expensive. Unified sports teams, not sure exactly sure when they started, but they did not go up last year.
I believe there were no fee increases, you know, since FY 16 if unified started after FY 16, apologies to that program. I didn't have the history middle school sports. It Speaker 14: Did start in FY 16. Matt, that's a good, good call. Ffy 16 is when we started unified. Speaker 15: I I I couldn't find a record to pin that down. That's Speaker 14: A, that was a good estimate. Speaker 15: So, and then middle school sports going from two 50 to 2 75. That was something that the committee didn't, didn't wanna increase last year but sort of evenly distributing it to try to try to make up the difference.
Athletics presentation's coming on February 9th. ASAP fees again, so that's a, we're looking at 3% above level service that's gonna be somewhere between eight and 10%. We're still working on finalizing that budget. That's a self-funding program. So we pay the health insurance directly for those folks out of that. And we're working on finalizing everybody that's got health insurance so we have the right counts and make the right estimates. The pre-K tuition, which we just talked about, this chart looks a little bit familiar. You can see there where we're at.
And then the North star tuition and Erin's here, she can expand on it. You know, we'd be increasing the tuition from 42,400 to 45,000. Even. A lot of the collaborative tuitions are in the $60,000 price range and a lot of private school tuitions go $75,000 and up. So when a public school is running a decent program and they're more affordable and they've got seats open, it's one of the things we like to do. Not just for ourselves but also so should, and you know, there'd be another opening in nearby town somewhere else.
We, we can participate in that. So that's kind of the summary there. And, Speaker 14: And Matt if I could, I just wanna clarify, we're calling it North star tuition because that is the name of the line item. Line item. But it actually is for all of our programs in district. So it's not just our North Star program. There could be programs at any of our access programs or our Compass programs or our therapeutic learning center that other schools might send us a referral and we would consider. So it's all of our so specialized programs across the district that aren't considered.
Speaker 15: And so basically, Erin, just so you can answer the question for everybody, 'cause you know it far better than I do, we look for students that would be a good match where the tuition would largely cover it. But if some student would also be a good match, but they needed a one-to-one per their program, we would invoice them additionally so that they paid for their, their one-to-one in addition to the space for the open seat. Is that accurate? Speaker 14: That is correct. And if there was any, any other exorbitant equipment or anything like that, we would work with the district to see who would be responsible for that.
So anything that would be if, like I say specialized equipment or adaptive, you know, materials that the student might require or support they might need. We work with the district to work out a financial agreement that is agreeable to all parties. So that student it, that's funded through the, the sending district. Speaker 15: Right? So here's kind of the, the rest of the, the fees and the smaller ones, foreign student tuition. We haven't accepted or had one since I've been here. But I, you know, our per pupil cost is, is, is is over
that amount and typically that's kind of the default. So if the committee was interested in raising it, just in case we, we get one, it's nice to have a more current tuition. The NHS parking fee, I guess historically has largely been the same amount as the bus fee, but we didn't change that last year. So we have a, a request from the principal who can answer some questions on why that would be no change to the lap laptop maintenance fee, no change to the transcript fee, but summer enrichment would look to increase that from 300
to three 15 because we, we just barely broke even this year in the last couple of years. The program struggled. So this, this, this would be needed to help keep that program afloat. And that was kind of the last slide. So I'll take questions at this point. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Gillis. I see Mr. Brand and then Ms. Brunell Speaker 2: Lower my hand. Thank you for the presentation. I I I don't wanna say I'm a fan of fee increases. I understand fee increases
and I, I think these are, we went a long time without doing a lot of increasing and I think this is a nice way to stage things. There's one that I'm concerned with and I will preemptively call out my own bias on it. And that is the hockey alpine skiing fee. And I, I understand that it's the same 20% as as it's a a hundred extra. So I think what was the unif, what was the unified sports went up is proposed to go up 20% as well. That's $25 change versus the alpine and hockey
and what I, what I'll say it was a hundred dollars. What I'll say about that, as I understand that the, those sports are expensive. As a parent of somebody who plays on the JV hockey team for the girls, you family spend a lot of money that's not part of the fee right. On equipment on, you know, skates and skis and you know, all this stuff. And it is, there is a shortage, particularly as it relates to hockey. There is a shortage of rink time and it's expensive. But I will say like for the JV girls team, their home ice
is like a 50 minute bus ride. So they have to travel really far to get ice and that's not fun. They've had two games canceled because of weather in this time of the year. Of course that happens that will not get rescheduled. So it, it feels like a, a huge expense for families and there's a lot of, a lot of people who play. And so, I don't know, I didn't do the math in my, in my head yet of like if there was a way to increase it because that would be, you know, fair and equitable like everything else. But perhaps not quite as drastically.
It feels like a very big jump for a group that already spends a ton of money for their, for their kids to play, you know, participate in these activities. So I just wanted to, and then if we, if if if financially doesn't make sense to, to do less than that, you know, people will, will deal. But I I have a sneaking suspicion that that jump is going to catch some people off guard. And there is, I will also say there is a shortage, there's often a shortage of, of girls who play JV hockey
and every year as, as a matter of fact we call up their eighth graders who get wavered into playing on the JV team 'cause there's not enough and that number might scare some other people away. So I don't, there's nothing to answer. I just feel like I wanted to say that Speaker 15: Appreciate the feedback. It wasn't so much the percentage of the change, it was the kind of the cost of the, the rentals that, you know, for the, for the rink or for the lift passes, the pool or the cost of like football equipment that, you know,
separates those, those, those prices. That's, that's more the driver. I just put the, the dollars and the percentages so everybody can, can see what it is. Speaker 2: No, for sure. Yeah. It just, it it just is, it's challenging if you have multiple kids who are playing that, I mean there's a cap, right? But the, it it's a that's a tough pill to swallow for what amounts to just a couple of months of activity. Speaker 15: Yeah, it's it's one season, it's 12, 13 weeks. I I get it.
It it is, you know, re it is reasonably cheaper to do it through school than it is to do it Speaker 2: A hundred percent. Yep, I get it. Speaker 15: So I mean I, you know, if we were to lower it then I in this time to do that, we'd still have to make up some of the difference some other way. Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know what the solution is. Speaker 15: I'll defer to the rest of the, the committee. Speaker 2: Elise, you're muted. Speaker 15: Okay, for a second. Speaker 1: Sorry. Just checking to see that, that you're com completed your line of questioning Mr. Pr. Speaker 2: Yes. Thank you. Speaker 1: Right, Ms. Brunell.
Speaker 8: Okay, so just quick start, big picture and then I'll go smaller the big picture just because the way this is being presented with the variance, sort of like how we did the, the override last year, while there's negative signs in front of each of these, it's negative in the sense that it will be coming, it's actually raising revenue for the schools, right? Like it's, these are all prices that will be going up. I just want, like sometimes math is hard to read. I know you're like, this is why you're the, the,
you're in the job that you're in, but for the general public and for the average person, like even though it says negative $207,000, it's like we're actually raising that money. Right? Speaker 15: So it would, Speaker 8: I think your trying to make it clear, Speaker 15: We would lower the budget by $207,000. Yeah, because, because we're increasing fees that, that's right. Speaker 8: Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I am appreciate that Ms. That Erin Miller that you, that you pointed out that the North star line item is for all of our programs specialized programs
and I would encourage us to change that language at some point in the budget book. I don't know if this is the year to do it, but I think that we should be explicit about that and I'm, I'm grateful that Natick is open to doing that if we are the right fit for a student. My last question or state thing, this relates to what Matt was saying, I'm, fees are hard, right? Like it's not, nobody wants to raise fees. I am more comfortable with the fees reflecting the actual experience or the cost of the experience for the students. So I am given what I know hockey costs, I think
that we need to and, and swimming, like I think unfortunately we have to cover those costs. I'm less comfortable with the middle school increase because I think the middle school fee has been long inflated and I would rather us not increase that for another year and keep it at 250. Again, I don't know what that offset means. If we have to do it to get to the 2 0 7 or if there's nowhere else to, to find room in the budget, then I will say I will support this. But I think it's a lot to ask middle school families to pay almost what a varsity athlete has to pay for other sports.
Speaker 15: Yeah. So in, in the appendix, and you'll see this more in the athletics budget that that's coming out at our next meeting. You know, we, we've got our, our ice rental about eight, you know, about $86,000. We've got ski lift passes and pool rental. You know, it, it's, I think we've got maybe 48 kids that ski i the ice rental. I think we've got 97 96 kids that, that, that pay for hockey. I, we, we've got 40 something kids that, that rent the pool.
So the, the the pay a fee and, and help contribute to renting the pool. So, you know, that was kind of the, the driver for differentiating those, those fees. You know, I, I can get the, the dollar amounts. I just, I'll I'll I'll pull that up after like I'm, we're done with questions here because I wanna be able to go, go through the slides if people have questions about them. Speaker 1: Ms. Lathers, Speaker 16: I, before I ask my question, I know on the agenda was the athletics presentation, but there was no PowerPoint associated with it.
So are we not covering that tonight? Did I miss that? Yeah, Speaker 15: Not, not tonight. Speaker 16: Yeah, I mentioned we're gonna do that next week. Okay. Or next two weeks from now. Okay. Because I mean, that's something I've been asking for for a long time and I just, you know, Matt's comments kind of raised me, you know, if the girls JV team is getting on a bus for 50 minutes to get ice time, is the boys JVs team getting on a bus for 50 minutes to get ice time? Like do we have equity across our sports and genders? Speaker 15: We'll make sure we bring that answer, but I I don't have all those details.
Speaker 16: Yeah, that's, I mean that's what that brings it up is, you know, yeah, that's fair in general. And I also, I mean I do concur with Cath on the middle school side of things. Like, and I don't know, I know there's a lot of fundraising and boosters at the high school level and maybe it's an opportunity to try to get the community to bring some of that fundraising into the middle school because it would be really unfortunate for a middle school students not to have the opportunity to try some things out who may not have otherwise tried it out and probably the fees. So I I, that is a concern that I have as well. So the
Speaker 8: JV hockey team has chosen to, the girls team has chosen to be a part of a league on the South shore because it's a good league for them to be in. Just so you, just so everyone knows that's Speaker 2: I and that's where their games are not, they do practice at the chase Okay. At five in the morning, but they, that's when they practice Speaker 16: Just, but that's been a question I'd had in general. So for when we get to the athletics is, you know, we've had people come across with softball and baseball and different concerns. And so for a long time I just, when you do get to athletics of knowing, you know, what fields are being used for
what teams and what the athlete to coach ratio ratio is and what the actual costs that are being carried in these different sports. Like, I just think that is something that I think is really important. 'cause I'd never seen anything about it. So, Speaker 1: Dr. Fugman, Speaker 11: I have a question that I'm almost, well, I am embarrassed to ask because I feel like after being on the committee for so long, I should know the answer. The context for my question is as I'm hearing this conversation about increasing fees for, you know, this four versus that board or this age versus the other age, for me it comes down to, and, and I see Dr.
McKenzie's raising her hand and she might have a similar thought that, I won't assume what she's gonna ask, but for me it's, it's initial affordability. So some sports cost more to participate in in others. And I get that the question, is there ever a time, is there ever a real, a situation which a student wants to participate in a sport and can't participate because they can't afford it? And so the question is, is there some sort of financial support process for students who just can't afford, because to me that's what it's about.
It's affordability. I mean, depending on the family situation, you know, a 300 fee might be a lot for another family, 600 might be not as much. So how do we make sure that every student gets to participate? Because these are all, even though they're extracurricular and not required by the curriculum, all these activities are provided by the school, by our schools, plural. And if we're talking about sense of belonging to say, you know, certain students can participate while others can't because of affordability. Feels like we're making that distinction as a distinction that I, I'd rather us not make anyway.
So the question, that's the context, but the question is, and I feel like I should know this, but what kind of supports do you provide to a student who wants to do any athletic activity and can't, can't 'cause they can't afford it? Speaker 15: So the, the first one is we do have financial assistance, application and policy for all of our fees, whether it's the bus fees or athletics. So that applies to hockey, you know, field trips, you know, everything all the way through. I'm gonna say hockey's probably our hockey and downhill ski are our most expensive individual user fee for any one thing.
So, and, and we do have kids that, that, that qualify in, in most sports because it depends on, you know, how many kids are going out for the team and what their family's financial status is for a reduced fee or, or free participation. So, you know, we, we do have that available and it does, does get exercised and those kids are obviously counted as, as part of the team, but they're not, not counted as, as part of the estimated users, you know, fee payers
that we're gonna estimate to get for next year. So it is, it is taken into consideration and, and that, that is something I check with the, the folks in the athletic office to make sure we have it right. Speaker 5: Thanks Ms. Collins. Thank you. Just to be clear, Mr. Gillis, the reason that football is in there is because we get notification that we have to change equipment, for instance, helmets
that we can't budget for. Am I correct? Speaker 15: Yes. So football is one of the few sports where we provide most of the equipment except for maybe the kids cleats. Almost all the other sports kids come with their own equipment. Like we provide the uniforms, but I, I mean, helmet can cost ar around $500 if it's a, if it's a custom fit, because it happens to be a really big kid can cost a thousand bucks. And then there's shoulder pads, you know, the hip pads, all that stuff that, that goes into it that, that we provide.
So it costs more than the other sports and, and basketball, football running like baseball, I think we do provide some equipment, but a lot of the kids have their own bat and their own glove, you know, so it's, it's different and it costs, it costs more to run. And yes, there are standards so that equipment, you know, has to be reconditioned and tested for safety standards. And if it doesn't meet it, we have to replace it. And that, that's something that's kind of league standard. It is been around since I've been in the field for,
you know, 25 years. Tim, Tim can elaborate on it more, but it, it's, it's always been why football kind of costs a little more to run than other programs. Speaker 5: Okay. So football, it's equipment, but swimming and diving, skiing and hockey is access. Speaker 15: Yeah, it's, it is, I call it a rental. Yeah. Because we don't have the facility, we have to go somewhere else and pay a fee to get to the facility where we're not paying a fee to use our own fields or our own gym. Speaker 5: Okay. And this covers the cost of buses to the South Shore, for example. Speaker 15: We, so it built into each, you know, athletic user fee
does, you know, include some, some amount for, for bus rides to, to games. And the, the JV hockey league on the South Shore down there in Kingston has been a fairly successful league for a number of years because not every, not all communities run a JV team every year. Some years they have enough for a team, some years they don't. And so it, it kind of pulls a consistent place and competition for kids to to, to play and get better so they can become varsity players.
But Speaker 5: The last part, the last question is part of our obligation is to get our kids to like, I think it's the girls feel hockey team that practices over at Kennedy. Speaker 15: Yeah. And, and we do Speaker 5: And we get them there and back. Speaker 15: We get them there and sometimes we drive with the school vehicle and I think sometimes we, we, we bus students to different, different places for their practices. So I, again, that's something that I, I would have to refer to Tim on for specifics, but I'm pretty sure we do both. Speaker 5: Okay, thank you. Speaker 1: Sorry, I do see some members of the public,
so I just wanna check if there are any other questions from the committee before we move to questions from the members of the public. Okay. Alright. Seeing none, Dr. McKenzie, if you want to unmute and ask your question. Speaker 18: Yes. First, thank you so much. I think the question of fees is always really difficult and it's probably an art to come out with a, a system that it's fair and honors the goals of the committee and upholds belonging. And I thank Dr. Fugman for his question. And building on that a little, I just think also the Natick service council works with the Rotary Club and the Rotary Club does have funds available
to provide scholarships for athletes for NA high school kids. And I don't know how well that is known, but it maybe augments a little bit what might be available through the district. And I think it, they do more, they, they actually do a lot for scholarships and for kids and they do it for camps. So I just wanted to make people aware of that and inspired by Kate Flats. I have another equity question and you probably can't answer that question now, but I wonder if you have any way to figure out the money that we spend providing equipment to the football team,
which I assume is predominantly male students compared to the money, the district money we spend providing equipment and other supplies for our female athletes. I, I don't think you can answer that right now, but I, I just wanted to bring that up. My other concern I think is sustainability is one of your goals. And I know some years back we tried to bring out that with the difference in the fee between the parking fee and the bus fee. So we could incentivize people
who did not take the bus to school. And I just wonder, is there room to be more creative here so we can incentivize people who don't drive their car to school? And I know practically it's needed and it's a very difficult thing to do, but maybe if you drive a sibling to car to school, you get a cheaper parking permit. Or maybe we incentivize kids who can ride their bikes to school. I think it's just something that's worth thinking about. My last comment has to do with asap because I think ASAP is really important. And unlike the preschool, which is like a mandated thing,
it doesn't have the same level of mandatory this, but yet there's never enough room, there is never enough room in that program for people who want it. And are there also grants available for the ASAP program? And I hope, again, you don't have to answer this now, but there are plans to expand asap, ASAP opportunities for families in the future. That's all that I wanted to say and if you can respond to any of that, it's much appreciated. Thank you. Speaker 15: Well, I can, but I also see the superintendent has her
hand raised, so I, I'll I I'll let her go first and then I'll follow, Speaker 4: I mean I have, there's others in line, I don't wanna jump forward, but I, what I can say is there's ano two main things. One is, I think Matt and I have been talking about this for a while. It just, the man's gotta finish the budget. But once we get through the budget, which is gonna go through March, we have a memo envisioned where we're very transparent about the process and the programs covered by financial aid, financial assistance so that we can make sure
that everybody knows about it and that we're very forthcoming about how it goes and how people can apply. This has come up even earlier this year when Josea and team asked us about how that would apply to AP testing. So the same thing applies every single place, but I think some transparency or just sharing about the scope of that and and per anonymous per numbers or level of participation we will have forthcoming in the spring. I'm making that commitment. I just think we gotta get Matt through the budget budget first. But that, that's brought up,
been brought up a few times today. So just letting you know it's coming. That's number one. Number two, I'm also hearing a lot of things around equity and I deeply appreciated, it's part of the reason I do this work and why I wanted to come here, but I don't want to under emphasize the amount of work it actually takes to actually do a good equity audit. 'cause that's what we're talking about. Even if it's just a sliver of a question around athletics, it could be an equity audit on the whole district, it could be a sliver around one process. In my opinion, having run a lot of this work previously in my other district, it really takes a good research-based
structure for doing that work. And we have to give care to it. So I wanna name how much I appreciate the questions, how deeply I value that work. It's part of my moral imperative for doing this work, but I ask for the grace of the committee for us to actually do that in a deeper way. And not just with one piece of data or two pieces of data, but really a systemic look at certain questions we're having. I think these will also come out of the strategic plan and by no means am I minimizing the relevance of the questions here, they're excellent, but I wanna be able to, to go about it in a systematized way.
Speaker 18: Thank you. I don't think you're minimizing them at all and I'm really heartened by the seriousness with which you are taking them. Speaker 4: Thank you Dr. McKenzie. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: Thank you. I just wanted to go back to that middle school fee raise. I don't know how much pressure that's gonna put on you Matt, and the beautiful numbers that you've already worked out. And we can take that, we could bring this up. I don't think we're voting fees tonight, we're not voting the budget obviously, but it's just something for us to consider. And I also really wanna applaud you for slide 10 in this because I, that is again, like much like the METCO memo,
this is the first time I've ever seen this kind of clarity around our athletics budget. And I know we will get more clarity around equity and those things, but we are definitely moving in the right direction and I think it's important for us to understand that like this, just like this breakdown of general fund revolving and student, can you ex what's the student line? The student column. Speaker 15: So student line is, is what the teams fundraise for, like their own uniforms and, and basically they're on an every other year cycle.
The kids raise money to replace their uniforms and they pay a significant portion of it or maybe all of it and it, or if they've got some leftover, maybe they get some practice shirts or something, I don't know. But that's when the kids are out raising money as teams is sort of a camaraderie and, and team activity outside of, outside of the season. That's where the money goes. It goes into this teams fund and it's really like a trust fund. So the district doesn't just choose to spend it on other things.
The, it's the kids' money, just like student activities. We're just the trustee and the holder and the athletic department and Tim help guide them to making decisions about what, what they're gonna help pay to replace. Speaker 8: So that's all of the teams pooled into one spot. Like for example, you're out, you see them out in front of Roche brothers or stop and shop collecting money, like all of that 20 or Natick days. Yeah, that's all $20,000. They've, Speaker 15: They've got a breakdown as to what team has collected what, but that all, yeah, that money kind of goes into, goes in, goes into that and,
and they're on sort of like a replacement cycle Okay. For the uniforms and, and that's what that's for. So the, the kids participate and contribute sort of directly as do the fee payers, the parents and then, you know, the, the taxpayers, you know, pay like the other two thirds approximately in round numbers. Yeah. But you know, part of the reason, you know, we weren't really gonna be ready for athletics today is because we know there's a lot of questions and so this, this is helpful to help him get,
get more ready with, with kind of the nuances of, of, of the, the program. Speaker 8: Okay. And I know we spent a lot of time on athletics today, but I just, I wanna note that this whole, there were many other fees here, so I want to thank you for carefully following all of the fees in the district because we can't go back to a system where we don't look at everything. The summer enrichment fee I wanted to call out, this was a question I asked in the budget subcommittee because that was a, a bigger increase that that was a change in programming from last year to this year
where you used to be able to pay for like maybe $50 a class and just take like one hour of a class. And this year you shifted it to this the, you know, you are, if you were participating in the summer enrichment, you paid the for the whole week. And it sounds like that was acceptable by people and because people still came to the program and you created a situation where you self-funded a program that had been running in the red because of your careful attention to fees. So I just wanna compliment you and the staff on figuring things out Speaker 15: With Speaker 8: This detail. Speaker 15: You can share that compliment with Sue
and Erin who basically run the program. Okay. Speaker 1: And then I see Ms. Vickers, Speaker 13: Thank you so very much. I will be quick with this. As a sports parent, I'm very appreciative of this conversation. I think it's long overdue to have these, this athletic conversation in depth. I'm looking forward to it being more, I will say as somebody whose kids have been athletes through all of school, I completely
would like to support what Ms. Brunel is talking about with the middle school. I think that it's critical and as a parent who talks to lots of other parents, I can say it is the one thing that is consistent among all of the parents talking about the middle school fees of athletics versus the, the high school fees and the value for the money. Not as the complaint that they don't want. But, and this isn't about the coaches, this is more about the whole picture. The second thing I can say is around Mr. Kirkman's conversation for how to help kids who,
who can't afford it. As I am a member of one of the boosters clubs for one of the athletic teams at this high school. I can say we do, when there is a request for a student who wants to be on our team, we are usually the ones who get that request to fill that need and to pay for that student. I'm not sure how it works with other boosters clubs and other teams, but there is definitely also outside help for a lot of the teams to help for that. But the question that we always have when we're having conversations is we have no idea if that information is getting out to parents.
So a parent and a student needs to know to ask those questions for help. You know, we have, we are hoping that the coaches notice when a kid needs sneakers that can't afford to get them. So I would say it's the same thing with scholarships around all of the sports. It's a matter of are we doing enough of a job to get the information out to know that there is help for that. And I appreciate this conversation again and I look forward to further conversation around the equity. Thank you so much Dr. Stash for making that comment. I do think it is where we need to be and I look forward to a, a thorough conversation about
that moving forward. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Vickers. Okay. Thank you so much for all the budget present presentations. We are moving forward with our understanding of fiscal year 27. So thank you. Speaker 12: I think we got one more. Speaker 4: We actually have two more. We can move them to February 9th if the committee would like to do so. I do already want to just recommend based on the feedback and the pithy conversation that you know, Mr. Gilli and I will kind of go back and take a look and might come back with some incorporated feedback for the February 9th meeting because we do have some time.
I think he alluded to that, but I'm just naming it here. So we have transportation with I think, which I think would go quite quickly and we have the non rep memo. Would you like to go over the, I think the rest of the meeting, you know, I don't think it's gonna be as long as this portion, but it's really up to you Ms. Goeth. Speaker 1: No, let's continue. Yep. Speaker 4: Okay. Sue, do you wanna go through transportation? Speaker 12: I sure will. Let me just share my screen. Okay. And since Speaker 8: We're Can I just, sorry, really quick, since we're running short on time, is it possibility just to assume that all the members have read the presentation
and then we can move quickly to questions? Speaker 12: I would hope I totally agree with that. Speaker 1: If anyone on the committee isn't comfortable with that, could you just raise your hand? Okay. I think we can take that approach. Speaker 12: Great. Any questions cut down on that presentation? This is great 'cause it's the first time I've presented on transportation, so this makes it easy for me. Speaker 1: Questions from the committee? Speaker 8: Elise? I have my hand up. Speaker 1: Okay. Oh sorry, I thought that was from before. Okay, Ms. Brunell and then Mr. Brand. Speaker 8: Okay. I've never served on FinCon. I'm putting my FinCon hat on though.
If I saw that 30% increase in the transportation coordinator salary, I would just like to know why that is so high, Speaker 12: Mr. Gillis, can you Speaker 15: Sure. Because we go from one staff to 1.5 and the in the increase is for the, is for the monitor. We have a out of district vendor that couldn't provide the monitor and that's the way we usually try to do it and they weren't able to. So we went and hired somebody instead of paying them, instead of paying the vendor, we pay the employee, we hired an employee. And so that's, that's why that that, you know, if you,
if you look at it, if you can zoom in and look at it a little more closely, you'll see the staffings going from 1.0 to 1.5 because that's what we needed to do for not a district van ride. The, the student needed a, a monitor for safety reasons Speaker 8: And the presumption is they're not gonna be able to provide that next year either Speaker 15: At the moment. And if they do then we can, you know, we would just, that would really just come out of the transportation special ed transportation line item. So we're really just moving the money from, you know, salaries to services. Speaker 8: I see, thank you. We, Speaker 15: We have to provide it one way or the other.
Speaker 8: Okay. That makes sense. Thank you Speaker 1: Mr. Brand. Speaker 2: I, I will hold my thoughts. I'm good. Speaker 1: Okay, any other questions from the committee? Okay, thank you so much Ms. Aloni. Speaker 12: Thank you. Speaker 4: That was the fastest budgeted presentation ever. Speaker 12: That was fantastic. Speaker 4: Woo. Good job team. Okay, so the non re memo, I actually prepared kind of just a little bit of framing for it and then because it is lengthy so I'm just gonna kind of go through that. So in the framing of it historically,
as the committee will know, the non-res schedule has come to you late in the spring, usually may, June, several iterations at times and that's well after the operating budget has already been voted. So for FY 27, we are intentionally bringing this forward earlier and aligning it with our budget submission. That's a change in practice. The reason straightforward compensation decisions, organizational structure and financial impact should be reviewed together, not retroactively. This improves transparency and creates a more predictable process. So we hope this is a welcome change for the committee. There's a few items I'd like to highlight out
of this six pages that I hope you've already read. First, the general approach, the FY 27 non rep budget assumes a 3% COLA for non rep. That's level service for non-represented staff. Most salary bans increased by 2% with the 2% cola applied to most roles. So much of this should be fairly unremarkable in terms of the increases the committee's role is to the approval of those salary schedule and the structure of the bands and any adjustments within those approved bands are handled
administratively and are limited, targeted and tied to documented responsibilities rather than big broad increases. Second, the organizational alignment work, several title adjustments reflected how the central office is now operating in practice. You might remember in my entry plan, one of the first theme was around central office cohesion. And so I think we're in year two of kind of finalizing that and trying to land the plane. There's these are refinements and not new layers, not performance based, not increases in staffing. In fact it decrease in staffing
and the intent is clear authority, clear accountability and stronger alignment across departments. And third, the communications reorganization. So the director of communications role was vacated earlier this year in September and the work was absorbed successfully to the credit of many cabinet members. The FY 27 budget formalizes that structure by eliminating the standalone role, consolidating communications and the human resources function and creating instead a chief people and communications officer position.
So we would go down, we would eliminate the director of hr, eliminate the director of communications and make one standalone role. All increases above the general Kohler are fully offset through position eliminations. So this budget is more than a neutral overall result. It actually is a net savings of around $106,000. Finally, there's two items that do require school committee action. The approval of the FY 27 non-res salary schedule as presented and approval of the appointment that's recommended inside of this of an assistant superintendent of student services, which reflects the scope
and cabinet level responsibilities of that role. The shared, it's also the, the norm in our dart to have a position at the assistant superintendent role for this important position. Shared technology positions within the town are not before you tonight as those will come forward as a joint proposal. Jamie sort of referenced it earlier, but I'll come to you with that before March and I can just stop there and take any questions. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. Stash. Questions from the committee? No questions. So you would like a vote from us? I, Speaker 4: Yes. And it can be alongside your formal budget vote,
but we are releasing this as a proposal in our budget book that's coming out on Monday. But I, I don't know that it has to be voted tonight. It just would have to be voted alongside the budget to sync the two, Speaker 5: Let's say. We've always voted it separately. Yeah. So the timing is less important than the action. Speaker 4: Gotcha. Speaker 8: Why have we always voted it separately though, Kathy be, I think we've voted it separately because it's come after the budget. Speaker 5: Yeah, but it's another, it's, think of it like contracts. This sets up the ranges in which Dr.
Stash can, can move people's salary. So it's like contracts in that way, but they are at will employees. We just do it as a whole bunch. Speaker 4: That makes sense. Speaker 1: So we we're, if we vote this today, we're just doing it early. 'cause we usually do it after we vote the, Speaker 5: Well usually we see this in like the end of April, beginning of May. Yeah. And this committee wanted, I think at least I'm supportive of seeing it now because it's when we're making all the big budget decisions. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Question from Ms. SLAs Speaker 16: Unless I'm missing something.
I feel like somehow this memo did not get attached to the public agenda, which Linda, can you miss something? Speaker 4: Yeah, I know LY had a lot of trouble with it on granite, so I just, Speaker 16: I just think that's a case for not voting on it since it wasn't attached to the public agenda. I feel like it should be. Yeah. Sorry I Speaker 4: Had a hard time with Speaker 16: Granicus today but that was my only, my, my input is that it's hard for me to vote on something that wasn't made available to the public before the meeting. So I might wanna vote on it next time. Speaker 1: I Speaker 5: Think that's reasonable.
It it, as I said, the timing is less important than that. It's a separate vote. Speaker 16: Exactly. It's not urgent. And so I just think for best practice, Speaker 1: So that's on the non rep scheduled portion of it, Dr. Spacher are both of these items, they're both together, right? You don't need us to vote them separately? We can vote them together at the next meeting. Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's fair. I I just please understand that we're gonna have it as our proposal in the budget book, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't be voted. Next time we can put, bring that forward. Speaker 1: Okay. Is anyone uncomfortable with
voting on this at our next meeting? Doesn't look like it. Okay. Thank you Dr. Bash. We'll do that at the next meeting. Speaker 8: I don't have any questions about it but I just, I think it's great that you're moving ahead with these strategic changes in the central office and that you're aligning them to every, the budget you're aligning them to what you're seeing people's capacity. Yeah, I think it's fantastic. Speaker 4: Thank you. We were so pleased to be able to do that also with net savings. I mean this is kind of the story next when we come back. That concludes. Thank you. Unless somebody else has something to say when I, you know,
thoughts on wrapping it up as we move to kind of the last presentation before we move into kind of more public hearings and things, you'll have heard at least the last of from us, unless there's something else we didn't present on that you're interested in hearing and please get that, that to me sooner rather than later so we can have it ready for you. We'll bring athletics next time. We'll bring the non rep again and I think we'll just give a summary of the strategic allocations, which you've heard kind of piecemeal over the last four meetings. So I'll bring kind of the synthesis of that together. But do know it's budget neutral has ups, it has downs,
it moves less than 1% and it's all, as Ms. Brune said, very strategically aligned or intended to be so. But that covers the pieces we had for budget this evening. Speaker 1: Great, thank you. Do we want to go to the calendar? I know that that's something that I think that the, let's go there. I think the pieces that we absolutely have to get done today, I think we need to vote on the calendar. Yep. And yeah, let's go there Speaker 4: Ms. Bel. Speaker 12: Sure. So I made the edits that were requested. So we, based on the conversation
that we had at our last meeting, we removed the second EID holiday, which was in May and added December 23rd as an early release day for all students, which shifted the last day of school on all four options. So the on option A, which has staff coming back on August 24th and students coming back on August 26th, which is a Wednesday. So kids would come back on Wednesday the 26th
and come back for the 26th, 27th, 28th and then have the weekend, the last day of school would be June 11th. And if we have five snow days, the last day of school would be June 21st. Option B has staff coming back on FRI Thursday the 27th, Friday the 28th of August, first day for students, August 31st. So kids would come back for a full week, five full days Monday through Friday last day of school being June 16th with five snow days it would put us at June 24th.
Option C has the same start date for students and same end dates for students. The difference being that staff would come back on Wednesday the 26th, then 20 Thursday the 27th and have Friday the 28th off. And then option D has us doing our traditional start of the Wednesday before Labor Day, August 31st and September, Monday, August 31st and September 1st with students coming back on Wednesday the second last day of school being June 22nd
with five snow days, June 29th. We met with the union this past week again, and I don't wanna speak for Shayla, but they did have their executive board meeting and they ran this by them as well and their executive board was in agreement that option A was their reference. And I know that at, at our last meeting, I believe that the committee felt that way as well. Speaker 1: Thank you. So I see some hands up.
And then I also just wanna acknowledge too that we did get a few letters from the public on this topic, but they were pretty evenly distributed between favoring the different start dates so that we really didn't get a strong steer in one direction from the public was my, what I saw from the emails that I received. So Mr. Brand and then Dr. Fesman, Speaker 2: I'm, I can't wear a glass when I'm talking. I am supportive of option A and now I do have to put 'em on again. One thing I think is a, just a visual correction
on in the spreadsheet that has A, B, C, and D on the, if I'm reading it right on the, on the picture, not on the, not on the list, on in June for like for option A the 11th and the 21st are circled, but I think the first and last, the last day of school is the 14th without any snow days. So the circle might be in the wrong place and the circle is in the wrong place in on the end of the end of the year for B and D as well. I think it looks right for C. So just, just to make sure that it, if I'm reading it right,
but otherwise I like a and in particular is like we, we, I, one of the pieces of feedback we got was a preference to start on a Monday, forget what the date was, but I hadn't considered before the previous meeting. But what I like it, I like the idea of starting on a Wednesday, particularly for the kindergartners. I like that idea of that, you know, we do the half, half of a kindergarten class on Wednesday, the other half on Thursday, everybody on Friday
and then there's a, a break and if you start on a Monday that's, it can be, I, I'm nervous, that's quite overwhelming for, for kindergartners and for and for their teachers. So I like the idea of a Wednesday. And so the 26th for me as a start date makes the most sense and gets everybody out in plenty of time for whatever their summer activities are. So Speaker 1: Thank Speaker 2: You. That's it. Speaker 1: Dr. Fen. Speaker 11: Yeah, so I felt I needed to redeem myself from last time 'cause I didn't have anything productive to say but, so I did go and socialize a calendar with different families I know
and I intentionally try to do it with different families, different ages. The one consensus was whatever you do vote on it, people want to know what it is. And people said, whatever you do, we need to know, we'll plan around it. You know, we, but in general I would say plan option A was the one that people preferred. The idea of starting in general, starting on the earlier side in August in order to end on the earlier side in June was preferred for various reasons. People had different reasons including the three day
weekend, I mean the three day week as a, as a slow way of transitioning students back. But also weather-wise, June gets really warm and so the fewer days in June the better. I mean these are all reasons people gave but in general I would say option A was definitely the one that came across as the preferred one. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Aloni. Speaker 12: I just recounted the dates and because we removed Eid in May, it actually does put the last day of school at June 11th and I think it was just a typo that it said June 14th down below.
So it actually is the 11th. Speaker 2: So would the other, would the other circle post no days have to move up or No, because there's a holiday. Speaker 12: I thought I fixed them all so I'll double check them. But Speaker 2: No, I think you're right because there's a holiday on the 18th so of June. So it would be the 21st. That would make sense. Correct. Cool. Okay. Thanks. Speaker 5: 19th, right 19th on the Saturday. The 19th is a Saturday. Saturday. I first realized that. I remembered that now. Yeah. Speaker 1: Any other thoughts or comments
before we entertain a motion? Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: Back to the strategic plan. Are there gonna be questions that will give us guidance for future calendars in the strategic plan or because this year we're lucking out with, I say lucking out in the sense that we can end on June 11th because the holidays are following, many of them are falling on the weekends. Or will they be Speaker 4: I could answer that. Speaker 8: The question Yeah, Speaker 4: There's, I don't believe there's, they have not shared with us the questions they're going to be asking. It's intended to be, to seek seeking a voice. Right.
And so if people raise that up and it becomes a theme, then it will come to us. But I don't think they're asking guiding questions about that. There are some, the questions in the survey are more bucketed, so could a lot of room to explain. So I think in the sur I'm not sure what will come up, but if, if that's compelling to people then they'll bring it up, I hope. Speaker 8: Okay, that's good. 'cause I know that's always been a conversation we've had here. How about November, the voting day, the election day. Did you decide to keep students in school? Speaker 4: Yes. Speaker 8: Okay. I think that's great. I'm, I also spoke to the people at Parks and Recs
and they, while the Cal calendar changes with this Labor Day College students do not go back any earlier or any later. So really Parks and recs, one of our partners in towns that helps runs these programs for students, they have to end their program when college students go back. So that's another compelling reason to me to go to for option A. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Brunell, does anyone have, it feels like we're leaning towards option A with option B is kind of a second. Speaker 5: Would you like a motion? Speaker 1: I would like a motion unless somebody has Yep.
I would like a motion Speaker 5: Move to, what's the word moved at the calendar for the 27 20, no, 26. 27 school year. The option A is printed with the adjustments that were made. Second. Second. Speaker 1: Any discussion on that before we vote? Speaker 5: I think we've discussed it. Okay. Speaker 1: Have to ask Ms. Collins. Alright, we'll vote Ms. Brunell. Speaker 8: Yes. Speaker 1: Mr. Brand? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: Dr. Fugman? Yes. Ms. Lathers? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes.
And I am a yes. So we have approved that and the Speaker 2: Moms will be so happy Speaker 1: They will. Mr. Brand, do you mind posting that? I Speaker 8: Think all parents will be happy Speaker 1: On our Instagram account. Speaker 2: I will post it on the Instagram account. Thank you. Thank We'll get pens of views. Speaker 1: Super. Thank you. Speaker 4: The penguins. Penguins were cute on there. I think it was a penguin Speaker 2: Snowman. Speaker 4: Snowman snow person. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So Dr. Sp looks like we have left, we've got
strategic plan update and MSBA update. Speaker 4: I can do both of those in. I can do one in one minute and one in minute and a half I think. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 8: I feel like this is a betting game. Can you do it in 45 seconds please? Speaker 4: You'll laugh. 'cause in my old cabinet we used to do over, under bets on the cabinet. Not bets with money. Not at all. I was gonna Speaker 2: Say we, we didn't have to worry about whether we had a permit. Speaker 4: There were no games of chance. Okay. Strategic plan update is simply to say we wanna thank the committee for your great work in getting the word out. We are excited about that. Thanks to the communications department, Jackie
and everybody for getting a lot of social media push. We think it's out right? But we wanna clarify clearly we did not hold it today because we were closed. Tomorrow is running. We said earlier, tomorrow's running as usual. However, the student section, which was supposed to run in the morning, Josepha is helping us to reorganize. It'll be no impact on students. They're in school anyway. And so the whole day tomorrow runs as planned. They, they start at 10, they move on. Our ADCO instead of going at 10 is 10 30. So there's no adjustment to tomorrow. And then the next day we're running our day one. So we, and we've already communicated
that and calendared it. So we anticipate seeing this close out, these forums section of it close out just as we had anticipated this week. And that the only what if is in case we have the student section go till next week. But that I don't see as a problem whatsoever. And then the survey will open and we'll do the same push on the communication with that. So a lot of really good order. We're Speaker 19: Gonna also, we're gonna do reminders, but I also am very aware that people get communication fatigue. So we're trying to be pretty mindful about when
and how often we're sending reminders so that they're actually red. Speaker 4: Yeah. Okay. Do you want me to move on to the MSBA and then, okay. So I'm just excited that we had a school building committee meeting, I think it was late last week and we went through the draft of the owner's project manual request for services. That's really O-P-M-R-F-S for those of you who like acronyms. And it's about to roll out. So Mr. Gillis is doing the edits based on the feedback of the team and it will be posted, the MSBA got back to us. If you recall, there were three possible meeting times based
on when we submitted and it was first come first serve. The first two meetings are full, so we're guaranteed to have the June session. No big deal. So just so you know, we'll be heard in the panel. I think it's June 1st, it's, it's in June. So we'll let you know more. I think we have plenty of time before February 9th to give you kind of almost a presentation on the dates that, so you know, when it's getting posted and the team that's going to be reviewing the bids and how that process will work. But just know so far that the team met agreed upon the edits to that document and it was, that's as it went quite smoothly, Ms.
Brunell might have an additional update. Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell. Speaker 8: Yeah. Well I just wanted to add that we are going to do the, a tour of Kennedy Middle School on February 2nd as a building school as a Memorial building school committee. And I, Mr. Myer mentioned that as a possibility of doing that as a joint meeting with the school committee Speaker 1: If he did write to me about that. Yes, I was gonna bring that Speaker 8: Up. Yep. Okay, good. So if, if more than four people wanna come, we would need to post it. But there is gonna be a walkthrough with Bill Sprat sort of giving lessons learned both ways, lessons
of things like we definitely wanna do again and things that we would rethink. So I think we should find out tonight if we want more than four people. Before you do that, I just wanna really give Mr. Gillis a shout out because the RFS is an arduous document and he had a lot of people giving lots of opinions as he, as he told us more opinions than he is ever received in any other building project before. So he really did a great job listening to a bunch of of different voices and I think people walked out of that room for the first time and that meeting feeling like they were part of something
and that they could start to see this building project coming together. So I really wanna thank the administration for that. Speaker 1: Yeah. So just to follow up on that, Mr. Miler did write to me and he did offer that anyone from the school committee could join the Kennedy Middle School tour tour on February 2nd. I think it starts at 6:30 PM and as Ms. Brunell said, if there's more than four or more people who'd like to attend that, we would just post it as a school committee meeting and we would open the meeting you open session and then go on the tour and we'd have all the, all the regular,
we wouldn't have been of the regular parts of the meeting. It would just be convenient so that we would be not be breaking up a meeting law by having a quorum. So if you guys, I don't have to tell me tonight, but if you wanna let me know by tomorrow, I can have the meeting posted and I'll send all the information about where it will be and what time, et cetera. Ms. Lathers, do you have a question? Speaker 16: I was curious, I wasn't able to find when I looked back the agenda was the meeting recorded? The Morrow School Building Committee meeting? Speaker 8: It was, we recorded, it was on Pegasus and we recorded it on Zoom using all the fancy new equipment
in the build in the room. Nice. Speaker 16: I couldn't find, I get, oh, I'll look at Pegasus then. I couldn't find, okay. Speaker 8: I don't know if it's, if it's posted anywhere. We were successful in posting the first couple of minutes and so we are making slow progress, but at least progress is progress. Speaker 16: I'll look again then we Speaker 8: Are in tier two intervention, but we're working hard on that. Speaker 1: Tier two or three. Speaker 8: Two, Melissa, come on. Speaker 16: Thank you. Speaker 1: All right. So I just have a couple of very short agenda items. So meetings, the joint select board
school committee fin com meeting will be February 4th. So I believe Linda has already posted that. So we will just join the select board meeting for the one hour where we'll talk about the joint discussion of the budget presentation. Does anyone have any questions about that? Okay. And then the second one is just circling and I'm, I'm not sure if we'll discuss this tonight. Maybe, maybe there, maybe there's nothing to discuss. Maybe we'll push it forward to a meeting. But just wanted to circle back to the conversation we had at our last meeting about the field design plans and the memo that we voted to support
from Mr. Erickson and Dr. Stash about moving forward this two-pronged approach to one, studying and generating a report about turf fields with the subcommittee to which we appointed Mr. Brand and the second prong, which was to work with the town administrator and have the town administrator take more of a lead in continuing the field design process. So I I there's been some question about confirming that the school committee voted to support both
of those actions in our vote at the last meeting. So I just wanted to bring this up here. I, I think we did, but just wanted to give everyone a chance to weigh in, in case we need to take another vote. And if we do, I would suggest we do it at the next meeting so we can invite Mr. Erickson to come and answer any questions that people have. Is that confusing? Speaker 16: I think we did vote Speaker 11: To support both with the caveat. That was my recollection. That is my recollection. Speaker 1: And the, so the next steps, so just add some flavor. That was my, my understanding too. But the next step would be for, for the work to start
and for Mr. Erickson to assign somebody on the townside to kind of pick up this work. It would likely be Mr. Goodine who has expertise in this area who would then carry forward the, the design work for the field and engaging other town experts as needed to do some of these environmental surveys, et cetera. And then we would get feedback at regular intervals. It would come back to us and any decisions that were made would be in our remit about any actions to be taken or budget decisions
to be made. So if nobody thinks Speaker 8: I recorded us, I've, I've been using the vote tracker that you created, Elise. So I did record that we voted to approve the field committee Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 8: At the last meeting. Speaker 1: Yep. And the field design work working with the town, Speaker 8: It's what I wrote was approve field committee in this memo with a recommendation to add somebody from the sustainability to the committee. Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Speaker 8: So it was, we, we approved the memo basically. Speaker 1: We did approve, yeah. Okay. So I'm not seeing anyone who feels like we need
to discuss this again. So I will just communicate back then to Mr. Evans on the select board and then Mr. Erickson that we are, don't feel like we need to take any additional votes and we can just move forward with the actions described in the memo. Okay. Great. I think that's, that's our agenda. Ms. Flas? Yes. Speaker 16: Sorry it is getting late. So does that mean on that, that they're moving forward as described in the memo with the group as specified and not adding a sustainability member? Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Okay.
I think that that's up to the, that committee, so I'm not, yeah, so the, the field, the turf study report committee, Mr. Brand, I don't know if you guys have any, had any meetings yet. Could you give us an Not Speaker 2: Yet. We have not had any meetings yet. The meetings will be posted though. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So once I, I think, I hope that it's possible that it'll be next. The first meeting will be next week and but it will be posted like other meetings. Speaker 1: Yeah. And then the, the field design work
will get started in parallel, but obviously we'll not be able to proceed to an actual design of either a grass or a turf field until the field, the turf field study Committee reports out and can, can weigh in on that decision so that we know what our options are and what the best option might be. So they're, they're happening in parallel, but the design work will not be triggered to choose a type of field until the report is ready, if that makes sense.
So I'm seeing one member of the public in, in, do you have a short comment, Dr. Mackenzie? Speaker 18: I do. Just by way of information, Jillian Wilson Martin is unable to be the sustainability person to serve on that committee. And she had suggested Claire and Claire can't do it because she will be involved eventually in the permitting if the field is needed for permitting. So just as far as what I know as an update, they need more work to, to find a sustainability person.
Thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay. I think we have one. Oh yeah, Ms. Lathers, Speaker 16: I mean just, we have a net zero committee that's been appointed by the select board. So I mean that works closely with Jillian, so I dunno why they wouldn't pull from that. I think there are plenty of options, but that's, Speaker 1: Yeah. And the, in the communication that I've seen, it sounds like they want to have maximum flexibility in having the committee pull in the experts that they feel are necessary when they feel they're needed as opposed to appointing like additional members upfront.
So it may be, I think they're having their first meeting this week. Is that right Mr. Brand Speaker 2: Not scheduled yet, but not Speaker 1: Scheduled. Right. Speaker 16: And do they add Board of Health on there? 'cause that was with their suggestions. Speaker 2: I think that the recommendation is similar to sustainability and that it's gonna be pe bring in the town. Employees are are pretty busy and Mr. Erickson suggested bringing in people as needed. Speaker 16: But I thought Board of Health was on the memo Speaker 2: That might have, so it, that the memo was a recommendation and I believe that there's been, it's not finalized yet.
Okay. But I think there's gonna be somebody from the Board of Health, but I'm not positive yet. Speaker 16: Okay. Because that, I mean, I've said my piece on it, I feel like Board of Health is no more relevant than others. So, but I already said my piece, so there you go. Speaker 1: Yeah. Mr. Evans did send an email that I saw in response that, that talked about the intention of the committee being to involve the expertise that was needed and would not be limited in any way. And that the committee could invite whoever they wanted in to speak to them and, and give them information.
So Ms. Laz, you still have your hand up? Did you have another question or comment? Nope. All set. Okay. Alright. And last I see Ms. Vickers, if you have very short comment, that would be great. We're getting ready to wrap up here Speaker 13: Very quick. What is the official name of this committee? I'm not seeing it listed yet on the, on the town website. And I'd like to write it down. Speaker 1: I don't know. In, in the memo. Was it, what was it in the memo? I don't have the memo in front of me. Speaker 4: It doesn't have the name. It just says it, it Speaker 13: Doesn't have the name. So how do we sign up for updates to get
to know when you guys are meeting? Speaker 1: So what I would suggest that you and I would, you could please copy me on it. I'll, I'll write to Mr. Evans as well to ask if there's an official name yet for the committee. Speaker 13: Thank you. I Speaker 2: Believe, I believe the first meeting will probably be next Monday. It's just not, the time is not finalized yet. So as soon as it, that would have to be posted by Thursday of this week. So once that hap once that happens, it should be prescribable. Speaker 4: Can I clarify that? If, if Ms. Vickers was talking about the committee that you're on, Mr.
Brand? It it's the artificial turf study group slash committee. Speaker 13: Thank you. Speaker 1: Alright, I think we need one last motion. Speaker 13: Move to adjourn. Speaker 2: Second. Speaker 1: Okay. Do roll call Mr. Brand? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Yes. Ms. Brunell? Yes. Lathers? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. I a Yes. Thank you everybody. We're adjourned.