##VIDEO ID:https://videoplayer.telvue.com/player/994DtmGEsi0VDYK3jJI2BJ72GfgNIpU2/media/931207?autostart=false&showtabssearch=true&fullscreen=false## <v Speaker 1>Welcome everyone.</v> Good evening. This is a joint meeting of the Neg School Committee as well as the select board and the financial committee. My name is Shai Fugman. I'm the chair of the school committee and I'm gonna open our school committee meeting at 6 0 4 with roll call. Ms. SLAs. Yes, Mr. Brand Present. Ms. Brunell <v Speaker 2>Here</v> <v Speaker 1>And I don't see any of the other member.</v> Oh, sorry. And Ms. Collins, <v Speaker 2>The obvious in front of you here.</v> <v Speaker 1>Great. We're gonna postpone the Pledge of Allegiance,</v> a moment of silence to allow the other boards to open their meeting and then we'll return to the Pledge of Allegiance. <v Speaker 2>I'm Catherine Coughlin and I'm opening the select board</v> meeting effective 6 0 5. We don't do roll call as a matter of course, so I will turn it over to the finance committee chair. <v Speaker 3>Good evening, I'm Todd Gillen Warner, chair</v> of the Natick Finance Committee. I'm gonna open the meeting at 6 0 5 and I'll just take attendance. We've got a 15 member board, so I'll just jot it down on my own. So it's a good table. Thank you. <v Speaker 1>So with that I'd like to ask everyone to stand up</v> for the pledge of all moment of silence and invite our special guests from the Cub Scouts to say the Pledge of Allegiance. <v Speaker 4>I pledge allegiance to the flag</v> of the United States of America and to republic for which it stands, one mission under God, indivisible for liberty and justice for all. <v Speaker 1>Thank you to the Cub Scouts for that beautiful rendition</v> of the Pledge of Allegiance and for visiting us today. And also thank you all for standing on a moment of silence to honor those of sacrifice for our nation. So as I said before, this is a joint meeting of the school committee, the select board and the and fin com with a purpose of have of presenting the FY 26 budget, as is the usual process every year. February 1st is when the budget is due from the town administration and from the school administration. We now have it those core watching us can see the big heavy books that we have for the budget. Tonight what we're gonna do is have the town administrator and his team present the town administrator, administrator's preliminary budget and then the school superintendent do the same with the school preliminary budget. It'll be a presentation for us to get a sense of the budget. We'll take a few process questions, but the goal tonight really is to begin the process of the bud begin the project, the budget process. At the end of the presentations, each one of the boards will briefly talk about what is each of our processes moving forward. We, none of the boards, none of us have seen the budget yet. It just came out literally today. So all of us will be digging through the numbers, through the data, through the narrative and discussing them in our subsequent meetings. So with that, yeah, public <v Speaker 5>Speak Mr.</v> Chair. <v Speaker 1>Should we do now? Yeah, for the school we</v> <v Speaker 5>Take care of all three boards at</v> <v Speaker 1>The same time.</v> Oh, okay. So I'll start with the, the school committee's public speak. Public speak is scheduled for a period of 15 minutes. Each speaker will be permitted maximum three minutes during which time they can speak about topics and scope responsibility of the school committee. All remarks will be addressed with school committee chair. Public speak is not a time for debate or response to comments by the school committee. Is anyone here for the school committee's public speak? I don't see anyone online. No one sign up and I don't see anyone in the public. So pass it on to the select board. <v Speaker 2>Thank you. Any individual may raise an issue</v> that is not included on tonight's agenda and it will be taken under advisement by the board. There'll be no opportunity for debate during this portion of the meeting. Due to requirements of open meeting law, this section of the agenda is limited to 10 minutes and any individual addressing the board during this section of the agenda shall be limited to three minutes while the select board endeavors to ensure that all interested parties have, excuse me, have the opportunity to address the select board. Due to time constraints that may not be possible. In cases where there is intense public interest in a particular topic, the board may schedule a future meeting to allow for further public input. Is there anyone here for select board public speak? Seeing none, I will hand it over to our finance committee chair. <v Speaker 3>Good evening. The finance committee operates under the</v> same rules as the select board. We have allocate 10 minutes at three minutes per person. Anybody here this evening for finance committee, public speak, seeing none in the room and seeing none online. Thank you. <v Speaker 1>So with that, I think we'll start</v> with the town administrator. <v Speaker 6>Sure. Thank you. And thank you</v> for having us this evening for this joint meeting. This is the, I think third year we've done this joint meeting with the finance committee, the school committee, and the select board where it's an opportunity really for town and school administrations to provide a high level overview of the budget, the budget process. There's a lot of information in these books, so I'll just wave them for the people viewing from home. That's the school book budget book. And here's the larger town one together they compile the budget for the town for FY 26. This is obviously a very unique year in that we're dialoguing about a potential override. So some of what you're gonna see tonight just really provides the sort of framework by which to read the budget books both school and town. And you'll see a presentation both from the school administration as well and how the budgets were formed with that in mind. And we really just wanna make sure that today is about that high level overview, some of those key budget drivers and also how to read the budget books so that as the boards and committee members and the general public dive into the detail in these books, there's an understanding as to how it's been formulated, how to read it, how to understand the details. We are not gonna get to all the details tonight, but we just wanna be able to provide that high level overview so that when we go to the meetings in the coming weeks and months ahead with the finance committee and the subcommittees of the finance committee and with the school committee and with the select board, there's that foundation that we've all heard at this meeting tonight about how to understand the budget and how the budget formed. So I have with me tonight from the town administration, John Townsend and him, his team, Gloria and Tiana are both here as as well as John Marshall to provide the high level overview from Mr. Townsend. I'm gonna have him give sort of the finance team portions of it and then I'll step back in for the final couple slides to sort of round out the, the, the presentation and then we'll pass it over to Superintendent Bash and her team to really take us through these similar type presentation for the school department and then go from there. From the leads, from the chairs. John. <v Speaker 7>Thank you Mr. Erickson. Yep. Thank you.</v> John Townsend, deputy town administrator and director of finance for the town of Natick. Just a couple of thank yous. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you for actually meeting as one tonight. Definitely a good way to do this. Saves us a lot. With regards to preparations. I'd like to thank my team Gloria Wong, who is responsible for both the presentation as well as this lovely book. We started working on this back in August, so it has been rather a long time putting this together so we're very happy that it finally came out and we're able to present that to you tonight. And finally, I'd like to thank tn. We also are part of the finance team that provides a lot of support in fact checking and everything else with regards to our book. Thank you tn. Thank you Gloria. And then finally also like to thank all the department heads from the town of Natick who spent hours with regards to putting their budgets together. Thank you very much for making this possible. As Mr. Erickson stated, we are gonna be spending some time tonight to talk about the budget. I know we have been talking a lot about the override, but tonight we wanna sort of focus on what actually is the alternative to an override, what is in this budget. So we are gonna stay fairly high level but we'll have time later on to of course discuss this in far more detail and we look forward to that. So why don't we head on to the next, the first slide just to sort of give you an overview of what we're gonna sort of cover tonight. Budget principles is talk to you a little bit about how we put this together. General fund go over their revenues, expenses gonna brief, take a brief stop in the enterprise funds. They're important, important part of the town. We'll just have a slide on them. And then finally, as Mr. Erickson said, he'll take over with regards to the impact of the override and some next steps going forward in this whole process. So go to the next slide here. So we'll take just a brief look at our sort of budget goals, which are fairly standard and set out by actually our town policies. First of all, we do need to present a balanced budget. This is provided by our charter and bylaw and DOR and everybody else. I will have to say that during that this year was somewhat of a challenge but we did make it. This is a balanced budget. We'll be presenting for you and we'll be presenting to town meeting in April. Of course, one of the focuses that we always use in creating a budget is we want to maintain our core services. Once again, trying to improve operational efficiencies. Mr. Harrison talked about that and a couple of other presentations. Unfortunately this year we have no new initiatives and also limited capital investment but we did make sure we tried as much as possible to maintain our core services. Support staffing, this is sort of a very important subject matter for us. Obviously 80% of our budget does go towards staffing and as you probably know, both the town of NA 'cause a lot of municipalities around the state are having a hard time recruiting, hiring and keeping those folks working in the municipalities. This is just not one of the areas that people seem to be going into a lot these days. So making certain that we can maintain those staff that we get and train are very important to us. And then finally, long-term fiscal health. This is not just about FY 26, this is about FY 27, 28, 29, and 30 as well. So let's keep this in mind when we sort of go through this budget and consider our options. So we'll go through the next slide here. I'm gonna first start off with a review, a quick overview with regards to our revenues. Projected revenues for FY 26 200 $2,374,750. That's up 2.96 versus our prior year projections for FY 25 starting with a tax levy 1 49 9 51 9 9 9 3% increase. The one thing I would like to note with regards to our tax levy is the new growth number. That is our, our forecast number, 1.1 million that we did stick with with regards to our budget as well. I am fairly confident that we will actually pull in a little bit more than that. We've been talking to the assessor with regards to that but we felt it sort of prudent to wait until the fall to actually take a look at that number. And then the fall town meeting as we have in the past couple of years allocate those funds. State aid $19,617,247 we're projecting a 3.3% increase in state aid. Looking at the governor's budget actually was slightly under that I think it was what, $28,000 under that. So the projection is actually fairly close to what we're seeing currently. We usually do a little better as we go through the house in the Senate. Therefore we're fairly confident we will meet that target and hopefully exceed exceeded just a little bit. Local receipts two 20 20,484,500 2311 projecting 11.3% increase as you've probably heard me state previously, FY 26 is where we feel that we're finally going to sort of make up where the lost time with regards to covid and we think that our revenues coming in for FY 26 will be strong. However, we do look for this to start leveling out a little bit. Once again keeping that idea about what their fiscal future holds for us. Something to make sure we keep track of indirects slightly down from last year. 6% down to 5% the indirects. These are of course those portions of funds that the enterprise funds paid to the town for services provided to them were probably overly affected by inflation for the past couple of years. So it's actually good to see that coming down a little bit for the enterprise funds. Free cash operational $6.5 million. This is of concern to us and Ashley is one of our problems that we're gonna have to be taking a look at. Have a couple more slides to talk about free cash. So we'll move right along to the overlay surplus. Overlay surplus is currently at $500,000. We're working with the board of assessors to find out exactly where we're gonna land on that. We'll probably have an updated number a little further along in our process probably in April. And then finally other available funds at $167,736 down down 94.3%. That of course is where our APA funding was held and unfortunately it has all gone away. Total general fund revenues $202,374,750. Overall 3% increase projected. Let's move on to our next slide As promised, I know you're waiting for this. We have our free cash spending plan. We have shown this previous lease. You're probably fairly well familiar with it. Starting off with the $6.5 million number for operations, we do a committee $250,000 towards our opep trust fund. 400,200 $50,000 dedicated for capital free cash reserve at 168,033. Unfortunately that's significantly below what our management principles say that we should be holding but unfortunately we have had use a lot of free cash in our operational side of things. And then finally committing another $270,000 towards the overlay for a total of $7,838,033, which is our free cash number for FY 20 to use an FY 26. So moving along, I'll just show you the sort of breakdown on free cash. The only thing I really have to say about this is 79% for FY 26 is being used and operations and approximately 16% is being used for cap capital, capital funding, oped reserves and one time town meeting articles. I will have to say that that should actually be flipped. Should be 16% used for operational use and 79% used for capital. That's the sort of situation that we're in that we do have to address as we move along. Can move on to our next slide. We're gonna talk about expenses. Expenses $202,374,750 or 3.23% versus FY 25 projections. Starting off of course with the Natick public schools at $92,714,346 increase from over the FY 25 appropriation of 6.8%. Keith Tech 1.4 million. This is one of those numbers that we don't actually have yet. Talking to Superintendent Evans, we do feel that there's not gonna be a significant increase in students over there as we feel pretty confident that that number is gonna probably be pretty solid. But we are waiting for that to come in. Moving down a little bit further to $20,050,245 for a public safety that's down 0.6%, a negative 0.6%. We're talking a little bit more about that in the upcoming slides. Overall, the general expense expenditure is $202,374,750 up 3.2%. Move on to our next slide. I'm just gonna talk a little bit more about town expenses. So the town expenses, which the, the town department's $46,829,297. Basically it is a negative 1.15% decrease from FY 25 5 5 funding. And what I would like to do in this particular is I wanna talk a little bit about how we sort of arrived at our budget for the town. Took a little bit of a different tack on it this year so I'd just like to go over that a little bit. I don't want to go on to our next slide here. Oh sorry, that is up there and I am a little behind here. Alright, so this is a little bit of a dense slide. I don't want you to get too, too worried about it. I'm not gonna sit there and go line by line through this. But what I want to use this particular slide that that basically shows the town and the shared depart level cuts, we'll go over just a little bit on how we sort of arrived at these cuts going forward. And we, I say we started back in August. We took a little bit of different approach towards developing our budget this year as opposed to previous years. Oftentimes we would've started with our previous year budget added interface costs and that's off the way way we'd go this year. In order to provide us with maybe a little bit of a better look at things, we actually conducted a budget deviation analyst analysis elevating evaluating five years average actuals and individual expense trends. I had to read that because I'm not a mathematician, but Gloria is the one who sort of developed this sort of approach towards our budget, towards a budget, especially doing the initial analysis of the spend on it. What that basically means that we're able to sort of go through five years worth of data and basically exclude many of the one-time expenses from previous years that had been left in adjust for cyclical schedule spending. Oftentimes you have like licenses which are renewed every five years. We don't need to budget that every year. We only need to budget that every five years and therefore we corrected those sort of things. And at the end of the day in going through the sort of line by line analysis of the entire town budget, we to come up with about $760,000 in savings. Now those particular savings are, are sort of shown in the first column there unfortunately, fortunately I can't see that too well. But the budget and permanent cuts, that's what represented that particular line. These are the cuts that are going to be permanent. They're not gonna be coming back, we're not gonna put them back in if we do receive an override. And one of the other things I would like to mount to note, if you look right down at the bottom of the chart there, it's sort of hard to see, at least hard to see for me. Debt service, debt service, $583,606 a reduction in our debt service payments. That basically comes from not, we were having several projects which are falling off of our debt service. We're reinvesting those monies in actual operations not going back into capital like we would usually do on this. And the fact of the matter is we are not gonna go out for any permanent borrowing for FY 26, therefore we have some savings. Unfortunately these aren't really the type of savings you want to have, but it's necessary just due to the situation we're currently in. So the, the budget permanent cuts amount to $1,426,539 and when you take a look at their budget book, they're actually set on a separate chart and those are the ones that you'll see first up. Now after going through and getting the $1.4 million in cuts, unfortunately that was not sufficient in order to meet our obligations to cut in order to fit in with within the projected budget. So we did have to then look at our staffing. Staffing as I mentioned, 80, about 80% of our total, our total cost drivers. And therefore in order to get additional funding, we did have to look there. So one of the things we'd always sort of wanted to take a look at, but it was very difficult to do, is we wanted to look at our vacancies. Just the fact that we, you know, have fairly large number of employees but we also have some 24 hour operations. We do have vacancies, we maintain vacancies, we have to do this because of relief factors for a number of different reasons. But the question was always do we always have to do, we always have to budget for those every year even though we know we're not gonna fill them. Always difficult to assess that. But one of the things we did this year is that clear gov actually has a personnel management module that basically allows the those, the analysis of the spending on the personnel side of things to account for such things as you know, overtime, step increases, any increases from the CBAs, all those various different costs, they're sometimes very hard to track. So taking that, that additional software we had and actually giving it to the department heads who are the folks who actually work day to day with their staff, have that additional knowledge, were able to identify, you know, what vacancies we could actually safely not fund for FY 26 but still minimize the amount of impact on the services provided. Now I do say minimize there will be some impact with regards to the services and we'll talk more about that when especially we get into the finance committee and the department heads can sort of talk a little bit more about their experience with regards to the budgeting process. But what that ended up in is we identified seven FTEs vacant, currently vacant FTEs that we did not feel we needed to fund for FY 26 and we could still provide the services necessary for the town to operate And those savings, once again, I can't quite see that up there 'cause it's small savings of $1,185,149. So the total cuts for both the town and the shared department level expenditures 2,000,600, $11,688. So we're gonna move right along To the next slide. Once again we talked about shared expenses. Let's get down, let's look at what shared expenses are for the projected are for net for FY 26 50 $8,933,074. This is up 3.56% over FY 25. So shared expenses, basically fringe benefits, those are the benefits we provide to our employees. The health insurance, the fica, the number of different insurance programs. Debt service at 24% and retirement 25%. And of course facilities which is both shared by the schools and the town at 8%. So looking at the fringe benefit, those employee benefits, $23,588,224, 6.8% increase. Now the largest share of that of course is from our insurance rates. Active plans we've projected to be up at 7.5%. Now we don't quite have that number just yet. We do expect we'll probably have it in some, I'm looking at John Marshall, but I think we're probably gonna have it sometime in the couple of weeks, next couple of weeks. So towards the end of February we will receive what those actual rates are. Hopefully it's gonna be below 7.5% so we're gonna have some savings there. But when we do get that, we will actually redo all the numbers with regards to our healthcare. And then we'll be adjusting also our health insurance plan count, which we have the school up slightly and the town down 3.4%. We'll redo all those numbers and hopefully I'll have a little good news there. Of the, on the health insurance size, ope, our senior plans 7.3%, that actually is what the increase was that went into effect January 1st. So that actually is a hard number that we know that we're going to incur. Debt service 14,356,524 $27 down 3.9% as we sort of already discussed retirement, $14,874,240 up 7.5%. So the annual sort of assessment that we get with regards to our retirement is usually 4%. Now as you'll call back in the fall town meeting we did the town meeting, did approve a cola for the retirees that actually pushed the retirement assessment up this year to a 7.5% increase over FY 25 property liability insurance at 1,000,200 26,075 bucks up 81 8 0.1%. Unfortunately that keeps going up. I think you're probably pretty much familiar with the insurance problems around the country. We also are experiencing that. And then finally, the reserve fund, $200,000, that's the reserve fund that is overseen by the finance committee. So the total for shared expenses, $58,933,074 for a 3.6% increase. So as promised, we do have a balanced budget, bottom line is zero. And then finally, as promised as well enterprise funds, just a quick look through them, water and sewer enterprise fund total expenses of 21,066,522 3.7% increase total revenues at 21,000 406 934 are projected. The expense drivers here have been our sewer, the sewer assessment from the MWRA and continuing capital costs to improve our infrastructure. And then finally, PFAS continues to be a source of concern that needs to be dealt with by the water and sewer enterprise fund, a golf course, some more good news, total expenses of 1,000,090 $7,850, 4.87% increase on the expenses driven by, as you probably have felt an increase in electricity, they do have a land lease that is actually tied to a, an indicator that reflects inflation. So that's been sort of tough on them with regards to that particular expenditure. And then some personnel adjustments there were, there were necessary total revenues. However, 1.25 to $6 million. Very happy to report once again that they are self sufficiently will not need any subsidies from the town. So that pretty much wraps it up for my portion of the presentation. Look forward to interacting with all of you in the future and having some dialogue with regards to the FY 26 budget. Thank you very much. <v Speaker 6>Thank you John. What I'd like to do is go</v> through the next couple slides on the town side and then I'm gonna ask Melissa and the the school team to really run through the school side of really similar types of detail. You'll see that what John presented was really town specific and shared services specific. That's why we obviously wanna make sure the school department can provide a more school specific sort of dialogue with regards to the budget for FY 26. But the slide that's in front of you is actually an override impact on budget slide. And I wanted, we wanted to provide this detail primarily because it just shows where should an override be one first put on the ballot by the select board, but then two voted on by the members of the public where those funds would come back into the budget. 'cause the way the budget's formulated is assuming we don't have an override, we we had to do that for purposes of meeting the February 1st deadline and providing a budget for the public to review. But in the, in the budget book, you'll still see where those numbers would come back into the budget should an override be placed in the ballot and be voted on by the voters of an $8 million override. And I'll start at the top. The money's appropriated for the public schools, the roughly 2.8 million that's almost directly put back in there. It helps prevent the need for really the school department to cut up to 41 positions and they'll go into more detail on that front. But it, it brings their override budget with their budget with an override to 95.5 roughly million dollars or a 9.48% increase over FY 25. And I won't go through every single line, but you can see each line item here where they would be put back into a department budget. Each department is impacted. John mentioned the impacts of the cuts and the additional cuts. We have initial cuts, which many of those are not necessarily coming back with an override but many of them are. So the positions, as John mentioned, which are very real positions, those are, you know, just because we have some on the town side, it's a little bit more fluid because we're more of a 365 degree operation, 365 day operation. We have natural fluctuations in openings in the positions. We have a little bit more flexibility with positions. So that's why you'll see 0.5 positions or one position because sometimes it's, it's a full position but it only might be for part of a year or, or it just comes because we have natural turnover over the course of the year, which is a little bit different. Not exactly different but a little bit different from a school setting because you start a school year, you know what classes used to have, you have to have the staffing four, your classrooms, four your programs and you there's tend to be a little bit less fluidity than on the town site over the course of the 365 days. So we have a little bit more fluidity from that perspective. But those are very real positions that will have real impacts long term should they not be filled. So for example, the two positions in the fire department are actual firefighter positions. We just have over the last several years had many open positions because we've fully staffed and then some folks have moved on to other departments or they didn't make it through the academy or, or what have you. Similar with with the police department or with our custodians. Even just in the last several weeks we've had some people in the custodian staff either retire, which is an opening so you have to move through the union process to backfill that, which leads to a a portion of a position that's available over the course of a year. But those are very real positions. Long story short, the override impact really does allow for us to really preserve those seven positions on the town side. 41 positions on the school side along with many of the services that those positions and those departments provide. So on the townside you'll see things like an additional funding going into our fire department, into our public works department, into our information technology department. And even with it for example, that's not related at all to a position that's related to actual service, internal service, it's a shared service internally, but those are very real dollars that are going into preserving internal and external services to the community. All of that detail is in the budget book. I just wanna highlight it here because you can very real see where on this portion of the override, which is really the $4 million going into town and school budgets and shared service budgets where the money's going. And that's outlined in further detail in the book on the next slide. Okay, well previous to the next slide, the additional other $4 million will be going into helping to offset as John had previously present, presented the full use of free cash. So, okay, Gloria's getting up. Good, I'm glad she's reading my mind now. So free cash as noted, we were with no override, we are reliant on using 6.5 million of the 7.8 million in certified free cash to really help avoid even deeper cuts in town and school services. The ability for the override to come in and really allow us to bring that number back down to 2.5 million, which is the intent of the additional $4 million for free cash as part of the override is really to basically support our, our, our stabilization but really our capital programs. We're looking at a capital program of approximately $16 million for next year without an override. There's maybe $400,000 in stabilization funds or free cash funds that will go towards capital plus whatever funds we can find from past year's projects, which we tend to get anywhere from two to $4 million worth of closed out projects every couple years that we can put back into capital. But by no means is that allowing us to actually truly address our capital needs unless we can have that additional $4 million for the, for the purpose of lessening our reliance on free cash to support operations. As John mentioned in in the next slide after this one, we're relying far too heavily on on operate on free cash for operations. 79% it should actually be the inverse. It should be about 20 to to to 30% reliant on free cash if that for operations. And the bulk of the remainder of the free cash should really be going towards one-time expenses like capital in our opinion. So it's really important for us to keep that in mind as you look at where the override figures are coming and plugging back into our budget. 'cause a good chunk of it's going directly into departments but a good chunk of it's also giving us the ability to not rely on free cash for operational purposes and to allow us to fully to to keep up with our capital needs and our capital program. So final thoughts on the on on sort of this portion of the presentation before I, I pass it to the school department to run through their work. This is the initial preliminary budget as John mentioned, there's quite a few details that we're still pending. Healthcare costs are one, we are waiting for the consortium, we're part of the metro West Suburban Health Group. They vote on theirs later in February on the rates. Keef Tech is another retirement assessment is a third state aid. We're still tracking that even though we feel comfortable with the number. As John mentioned, it's still a concern this year. We know revenues at the state level are not like they were in years past so we still have to track that. What's interesting about state aid though is that sometimes we don't know their full numbers until August. So as we get more detail we'll definitely amend the budget but we might not know some of those details until after we get into the fiscal year, which means fall town meeting. You're gonna probably hear from us about those figures, but it's just something else that we're gonna be tracking over the next several weeks and months ahead. There's several public forums to be knowledgeable of as we talk more about both this budget as well as what would happen should there be an override. There's two coming up, one in February, February 11th and one on March 12th and there's gonna be ample other meetings with the finance committee, with the school committee, with the select board to review the details of this budget both with and without an override. So I encourage really everybody watching today who have questions to attend those meetings. You can also go to the town's website for the override where you can ask questions and really contact us. We can talk through the budget details with folks or come to a select board or school committee meeting. There are hard copies available. We have many more that are actually downstairs in the finance division office. We're printing more as well. So if people want them, please stop by the office and we can provide a copy. There will also be a copy posted in the select board's office in the Morse library, in the assessor's office and in the clerk's office for the next several days. So people can certainly review the budget books there and we just encourage everybody to get informed, get knowledgeable, ask questions, let us know what you think, let us know where you have questions so that we can help really everybody make an informed decision this year. It's really critical for this year especially. With that I'll pass it over to Dr. Bash to talk through school department. Excellent, <v Speaker 8>Thanks.</v> Thank you. Great to see everyone here and we're excited to roll out the plan, the budget plan for the school district and really we are providing more of a process overview as part of this joint meeting and as we move into, and you're very welcome to stay for that other section when we roll out the the school committee meeting afterwards, we're gonna go into more detail around budget drivers and some of the more detailed nuances of the, if the override were not to pass and what its impact is. But good to see everyone here. We started out the next slide please with our budget goal. Our goal is to balance fiscal responsibility, strategic reductions and budget neutral solutions while preserving high quality education and student facing positions. I can't think of a better way to open this meeting than to have the Cub scouts here. Thank you to open us up. That was awesome. The next one this year. This never works for me. You're welcome. I don't know why we'll figure that out. The next slide please. Linda, are you driving? Okay, great. We we, this year when we took a look at the the budget book, it's my first year here. It's Matt's Mr. Gillis's second year here. We thought it was a real opportunity to sort of listen and to revamp the budget book. And as part of that we actually asked the Massachusetts Association of School superintendents for some of their best exemplars, what they felt were really strong budget books. And we modeled ours after that. And part of that was to actually ask the school committee to deliberate and to consider the guidance priorities and values that they wanted us to consider when making this budget. And they're here. I'll kind of read what's in the blue or discuss what's in the blue. The first one highlights on our kind of asset here in the school district. And I found this through my entry plan as well as to being in the schools every single week. Our teachers, we wanna make sure we're hiring and developing and maintaining the very best educators to teach our kids. We wanna make sure we're measurably improving student achievement. That's all. Kids with a particular focus on math and literacy, special education and multilingual learner programs, ELL, English Language Learner programs need to be funded fully to meet the needs of every student. We also wanna work on district culture where every student feels safe and has a sense of belonging. We wanna support me or the superintendent and team to develop a strategic plan and a five year capital plan. Very informed by my entry plan, which I'm gonna present on February 24th here. And then lastly, making, making sure we're maintaining a robust, actually that's not the last one on my sheet. It is maintaining robust offering of school clubs and athletics and all sorts of other items that our kids are participating in beyond academics. And then lastly, developing a comprehensive long-term plan to include mainly for our elementary schools, but to include process in that eligibility phase of the MSBA, which people have heard about from Memorial. So that's the guidance we received from the school committee and infused it into our budget. Next slide please. Here are the basics of the school operating budget. The FY 25 appropriation was $87.2 million. The preliminary FY 26 budget figure we received from the town was 96 point 92.7 million, which is about a 6.29% increase. And that one assumes there would be no override. So we'd be running at $92.7 million there based on the override conversations we've been having and the number that's being considered, potentially it would be $95.5 million budget with a 9.48% increase. Those budget drivers for that 9.48% increase we're gonna go into in great detail in our next meeting and they're very much available in our 120 something page book. Part of this in developing this budget was to make sure we were fiscally responsible. I'll talk about that in a minute. And seeking alignment with district priorities. It is my first year here, but that's the first thing I did when meeting with all of the administrators, what we call the ADCO this summer, was to really take their school improvement plans from last year and lock in on what we were already working on to make sure we had a cohesive plan. And this budget reflects continuing work on that. We also aim to do some targeted expense reductions and those total to 1,000,004 that are off of our roll up for what would be leveled service. I'll talk about that in a minute. We engaged a lot of stakeholders involved, many people including district school leadership, the school committee and town officials. And we encouraged an open collaborative and transparent process. Next slide please to frame the budget. Oh, you can just throw the table in. Yeah, thanks. So the funds needed for level service and this was something that was created last May. And again, revisited by assistant superintendent Gillis in the fall was, is a $96.9 million budget. That's what it wanted to be at level service. We then implemented cuts of 1,000,004. So 1,400,000 reductions are off of that level service budget. And included in the $95.5 million that would be the, with an override number, the adjusted shortfall or the amount of the override if there were to be one. That shortfall is about 2.8 million to get down to the preliminary operating budget of the town of 92.7 million. So hopefully that makes sense of the numbers. And the next slide. So the school committee is used to seeing their budget categories in these nine on the left, what's called the function rollup admin instruction, health services, athletics and activities, transportation technology, facilities, benefits and equipment and tuitions. This year's budget book actually brings some longitudinal lens so we can see at least three years of actuals plus this year's appropriation as well as our recommended budget for the following year. And variances, we've also added FTEs on all of our documents this, this year. And you could see on the right the percent change. So how much that account, that function roll up account went up from last year to this year to our proposed budget. And then what percentage of the entire piece that budget is taking up. So that's just a relevant relative measure. I'm gonna have Mr. Gillis go through on the next slide. The what you should expect to see is very different in this budget. And if you haven't already received one, I know many of you have it, but if you haven't, Linda has them for you. So, and if for some reason we run out, we are printing more, we'll get you those. But make sure you check in with Linda before you leave and we'll get anybody who's on one of the three committees here can grab one of those books. So you can have it in, obviously it's posted online, but that way you can have it to take a look through. So if you wanna take us through our budget book changes. <v Speaker 9>Sure, sure. Thank you Dr. Sp.</v> The book has obviously expanded quite a bit and one of the first things after you get through like the table of contents you'll see is guidance from the school committee. We appreciate getting that guidance from the town's, you know, elected representatives to oversee the budget and the policy and the hiring of the superintendent. That's their function and they gave us some guidance. Say again? <v Speaker 10>Yeah,</v> <v Speaker 9>So yeah, that's the first, first bullet.</v> The added budget guidance from the school committee. I, I really feel that's worth your time. It's an expanded format. The budget's about 80 pages longer than last year. We didn't cover everything under the sun. If we did, it might've been four or 500 pages. And some questions that people may have might might've only been for one person. So we tried to cover most of the big things that that sort of jumped out at us. We provide a three year history by department. So you, when you, when you get through the, the school committee's categories that you saw in the slide above the, the line items underneath it will be there with a three year history. So you can kinda see where we're coming from, what the appropriations at, and then the dollar change and then some explanations for the, for the variations. There's a staffing overview that's on page 22 of the budget book that, that gives you a pretty good idea of who we are, where we're at. And then, you know, our list of staffing reductions and override analysis when you, when you get into that portion of it, the override no override portion of things. We had to reduce some staff this year, about 10, just, just recently, that aren't gonna be here for next year. They have jobs until the end of the year and that's part of our fiscal responsibility and constraint in recognizing the town's ability to pay. It's not something we we want to do, but it's something we, we try to balance with what it costs to maintain a level service program, which is why we're calling it a recommended budget. And it's recommended by the, the superintendent and the administration to the school committee because it's not level service most years usually trying to maintain the same level of services or grow we're, we're not growing this year. So in there you can also get into expanded details in the school department or the other budgets and additional funding sources or other funding sources as they're often called the grants revolving funds and external revenue. That's, that's around page one a hundred sort of runs through the, the rest of the book, the most of the revolving fees are down there, but a couple of them, like athletics are in the athletic, but, but budget section, like off the top of my head, the athletic general fund budget's about a million dollars and the revolving fund's about another half a million dollars for a $1.5 million program. So the, those are closed together. Same with the transportation fees and changes there, there are links to our school improvement plans to the town's capital plan, our, our submission and where things are coming out, which we can update the, the online budget file at, at the end. But we, we produced a budget slightly different than the towns in the sense that we're producing our recommended budget with the cautious optimism that the override passes. We didn't want to go through the exercise in great detail of reducing $2.8 million too early because it, it affects the way we, we provide services in the classroom for the rest of the year and people can make changes, you know, when, when bad news is coming, some people will take it upon themselves not to wait and see. And we really wanna let the process sort of, sort of play out because whatever we finalized, whether it would've been yesterday or today, what it, what exactly it'll look like next year isn't gonna be exactly the same. With that. We can go to the next slide. So we've got a timeline and we've been spending, you know, quite a bit of time on this process 'cause it's not a normal budget year. You've, you've heard about the override school committee has, has asked about it and voted earlier in December to I believe ask the select board to put the override on the warrant because that would be only, they can do that. We've had public forms starting in January. We, we will have another one in February and another one in March. We, we welcome people to come ask questions. There's usually two questions at a time or sometimes it could be three depending on how many people in the room. It's helpful to do that. On the slide here, it lists all the, all the meetings and things that are scheduled with just one for the fin com education subcommittee. We're looking forward to, to scheduling that soon and we'll, we'll revise it and that that's also one with a lot of, a lot of back and forth that we can do there as well. Next slide. So there's the link to the budget book and the budget drivers are really broken out sort of in the budget book by the, by the instructions. So actually if we could scroll back up to slide number six. So where you see that budget driver, if you go to, you know, any one of those sections in, in the book, although instruction's broken out from pre-K right through the high school, it includes special ed and, and teaching and learning, you know, 'cause that's our main business, right? There's a reason that 54% of our budget increase or 4.7 million is instruction. 'cause that's what we do. We deliver the curriculum to the kids. So we're glad that that's our largest budget driver and it should be. But if you wanted to see how or why, 'cause it'll vary from school to school. Staffing changes in schools contribute, contribute to to that as well as programs that are, that are being offered. And not every staff is exactly the same. I'm not sure if people are really familiar with the salary schedule, but you could be a, a bachelor's step one or a PhD step 25 and there's a different range. And so, you know, not every, not every school is gonna have staff at exactly the same step in salary schedule. So the, the the, the variance from one year to the next, you know, sometimes changes, but in the aggregate that's pretty close to where, where, where, where we should be. The other big changes that, that the drivers that come out there, transportation is a, is a bigger driver than usual. And that's partially because we're looking at having the subsidy being included in, in the entire budget. And it's a 5.3% increase just for the, the contract itself. And then the other one is tuitions. We got about a $2.7 million increase and we talked about in last year as well as this year, a $2 million one-time carryover of circuit breaker funds. So if we didn't have those things, those, those sort of one time changes, then our, our increase would would be more along the lines of way we would normally be. But when you build up a, a fund reserve and you don't have the money to do all the things you want to do, you sort of wind up depleting those fund reserves before you go to the taxpayers and ask for more money. And so that's kind of the summary of where we're at today. It's, there's a lot of detail in the budget book. Happy to take your questions, but definitely take a little time to, to read it and finish the sections. Most of the sections are two to four pages, so hopefully it's, you can get most of the answers you're looking for. If not, we're happy to, we're happy to provide details and we've got some forums and other meetings coming up for that. <v Speaker 1>Great. So first of all, I just want to thank Mr.</v> Erics and Mr. Townsend, Dr. Sp and Mr. Gillis and their teams. For all the work that you put bring together the budget for the town or the proposed budgets for the town and for your presentations. What the chairs of the boards agreed to do is we just want each of us will briefly talk about what comes next for each of our boards now that we have the budgets. And then we will have about a half an hour or so for questions and we'll go board by board. So just on behalf of the school committee, just to, I wanna just clarify this is the, the superintendent's proposed budget to the school committee. We have not viewed this yet. Our job now is to spend the next few weeks really digging through this, reviewing it, discussing it, and ultimately potentially with tweaks, approving it as so that it, it's the approved school committee budget. The way we're gonna be doing that is we're gonna have three meetings starting tonight. So those of you who want to stay for more, please do stay for more. We're gonna have a, as Dr. Pash said, a more more detailed presentation of the drivers of the budget. Then on the next two meetings, let's see February 24th and March 3rd, we're gonna continue the discussion of the budget. Again, I encourage everyone, as Mr. Eon said, join us for our meetings in person on Pegasus or Zoom, send us your questions and be part of the conversation. And then March 17th in particular, I wanna invite the public to join us in the public hearing that the school committee will be having on the budget. And we'll finalize our discussion then with the plan of voting for a budget on March 24th. So that's our plan. That's in addition to the forums that we have that were discussed on February 11th and March 12th that are in partnership with the town. But that's the school committee's pro process for engaging with the budget and ultimately voting for it. Well then I'll pass it to the chair of the SL board. <v Speaker 2>Thank you Shai. So going forward, opportunities</v> for public engagement on the budget and on the override before the select board this Wednesday, the override is on our agenda. We anticipate spending about an hour covering our budget and the override 'cause we also have a lot of other business to cover on the 12th, the 11th. I was gonna mention the public forum. Yes. Yeah, I was gonna mention the public forum. This will be at the community senior center from seven to eight 30 on Tuesday the 11th. And I anticipate we'll have Zoom capability. <v Speaker 6>It might not be Zoom, but we'll definitely have some way</v> for folks who are remote to interact. Okay. We're still working on figuring out how to functionally do that because of the technology limitations of the, the room and Pegasus. But there will be a way for some level of interaction for those who might not be able to attend in person. <v Speaker 2>And then the next night, Wednesday the 12th will hold a</v> special select board meeting. That's an off off cycle meeting where we will dedicate that to a discussion amongst the board about whether and to put the override on the ballot. That's the select board's responsibility. So, and we will open it to questions, that'll be the only agenda item for that night. And I anticipate that meeting being about two hours and there'll be an opportunity for people to discuss whether or not they think it should go on the ballot because that will be the narrow focus of that agenda meeting. Then on March 12th, there'll be a budget override meeting at Morse Library downstairs in the Lebowitz meeting Hall on the lower level from seven to eight 30. And after those two forums there, there will be, there's some political action committees in town. So I, I urge you to sign up for or to look, if you go to the front page of the, the Town website and scroll all the way to the bottom, all community events now are being posted. We have a community event in addition to public meetings or government meetings, right under that or other meetings. So author talks, heat pump, hot water heater, web webinar, things like that. But also the yes for Natick is holding a, which is a political action committee, is, is holding a public form. And so is the vote for Natick Future, which is also a public action committee. So I encourage you to participate, stay informed, submit questions to the select board and to the school committee through the website, through the town's website. And I'll turn it over to the FinCon for the next. <v Speaker 3>Thank you. Generally speaking, the finance committee</v> has a couple of different processes that all run parallel. Now that we have the two budgets, everybody's gonna sit down and go department by department, line by line and start taking notes, asking questions. Since we haven't seen this before. That's good to consume the first chunk of our time we have for budget related items, we have four separate subcommittees, education, student learning capital, department of public works, and then just kind of a general government catchall for everything else. The chairs of those subcommittees are working with the members to get all the scheduling criteria and kind of now that we have the budgets, we can balance some time and come up with how many meetings each one of these is going to have. Generally speaking, there's three or four meetings just in the subcommittee on education and learning. That's the schools, the Natick, public Schools, Keef Tech, and the two libraries. That generally is three or four dedicated meetings going department by department. Richard Popes the chair of that subcommittee. It's going to be setting that up. All of our meetings, no matter which budget we're gonna be hearing, are open, public, published in advance. We're gonna try and get a calendar out as quickly as we can. Just determine how many meetings all the subcommittees are gonna have. So that's the first kind of phase of what we do. After that, all the subcommittees have conducted all of their business. The full finance committee meets and gets reports from the subcommittees and discusses the budgets, all of the drivers, and will actually have another round of questions for the budget sponsors. So that's kind of the next phase. Now, each one of these both subcommittee and full committee meetings, we encourage public participation. There's really nothing better than an informed electorate. So we would really like people to attend the meetings, read the original documents, ask questions of the people that can get you either know the answers or can ask for and chase down the answers for you. So participation is a great way to at least get familiar and know how you want your local government to be run. So one of the challenges with the school committee budget is, as their chair just mentioned, they're also kind of reviewing and tweaking and tuning while we're trying to review and question. So we're kind of looking at a moving target. That's just the nature of it. It happens every year. It's kind of a race to whatever deadline we're going towards, usually town meeting. But this year it's also the override vote. So we're gonna try and coordinate our schedules and kind of get them interleave that as the school committee's done with a chunk of their budget, we're gonna pick it up over on the fi fin com side. That way we'd, there's no way we'll get through it all if we wait until, you know, they have their final votes. So we're gonna just work together and try and get everybody on the same page and the public engaged in participating. So that's pretty much our process and like I said, open public, please participate. <v Speaker 1>So we have school committee budget meetings,</v> select board budget meetings, fin come budget meetings. No one can say NA doesn't know how to have fun. With that, we'll open the floor to questions from the boards. We can alternate. We'll go one board at a time. Sure. And we'll go first. Any questions from the school committee? Mr. Brunell? <v Speaker 2>Thank you so much to everyone</v> for all the work that went into these books. Hundreds of pages. And thank you to the boards for being here. Just, you know, often our budgets are, you know, we're working with municipal money tax payers money, but sometimes the language is different between both budgets just slightly. So one question I had in the town presentation, there's language and a column that says budget slash permanent cuts that total $1.4 million. We, the school committee has also made $1.4 million in cuts. And I'm wondering if Dr. Sp or Dr. Or Mr. Gillis wanna weigh in, would, would you label that column budget slash permanent cuts for the school committee as well? Yeah, <v Speaker 8>They're ca they will carry over</v> and they will be permanent. <v Speaker 2>Okay. That's what, that's what I thought. Yes.</v> So at some point in the budget book it says not applicable, but I think you actually could say that that is applicable. And so the school in the, in the town budget book, it says NA for budgeted permanent cuts. And I think that at this point you could put $1.4 million. <v Speaker 8>Yes. It was voted on January 27th</v> by the school committee. Yeah, <v Speaker 2>Thank you.</v> Question from select board members, Ms. Pope, <v Speaker 11>Ditto to all of the hard work.</v> Thank you for putting all of this together and for all the people who've been working on it for some time, I usually don't play into overheard at the coffee shop. This was not heard at the coffee shop. But the point is, if, if someone were to say, listen, and I have heard this, you're gonna pay for this anyway. You are gonna pay for these services or these cuts that are gonna be made or have to be made sands and override anyway, what would you say, what should a lay person say to that? Because it's, it's a little, it's like half a dozen in one, half a dozen in the other. And so for folks who might be on the fence and say, well, you know, I don't see the need. And other people are saying, listen, you're gonna pay for this anyway. Where is our, our through line here or the, the midline to kind of speak to that with, with grace, but also information. Mr. Gillis, thank you. <v Speaker 8>We're gonna say the same thing,</v> but we'll as usual we'll partner with this one. I would direct people now that it's out to the budget book, which is very explicit. We have a section on the reductions, the 1.4 million, there's 215,000 in that of increased service fees. So that's paying for it. Everything else is literally a cut of whether it's people or expenses and the, and each one on ours say the position, say the FT and say the impact. So we even impact statement of every single reduction very transparently. Then the red section here is the override piece. So that's a different story. There's also fee increases there. That's the piece I think if people are saying we're gonna pay for it anyway, that's fee increases. I think it's $400,000 there on that side. So in this entire 1.4 plus 2.8 million, there's 600,000 that's shifted fees, that's it. Everything else is a cut. That will be in, you know, student facing. Once we get to that, no over, I vote if it were to happen. <v Speaker 9>So I'm in full agreement</v> with everything the superintendent said. And in the form of capital, it's kind of like that old FRA oil filter, comor commercial you can pay now to get your oil changed or you can pay a lot more when your, when your car breaks to get it fixed. When we delay capital projects and infrastructure, whether that be road maintenance or building maintenance, things of that nature, eventually it'll cost you a lot more to fix it. But before we continue with, with all of that, with what, what I would call more of a normal schedule, you want to give the taxpayers a chance to say, yes, I'm willing to pay more or no I'm not. And so that, that's where, where we're at at this point. At, at some point it, there's always a line and people could disagree where it is, but at some, at some point you kind of cross the line where it's not just an administrative decision or the elected board member's decision, it's do the voters really wanna have a significant, have a, have a significant change in the services and the town that they live in. And the prop proposition two and a half, that was kind of the whole purpose of it. So that spending can't run away from the taxpayers without them having a, a say at the ballot box. So again, like it, it's, it's a transfer from fees. So if somebody has a, a kid in sports pays for the bus, may do some other things. They could be paying potentially in fees pretty close to or or more or more than what they would've paid for their, their property value and then capital cost to get delayed down the road if something should have been fixed and it's delayed several years and then it can't be fixed, it has to be outright replaced, that'll cost more. So there, there kind of is this, this tough point where there is no do nothing option. It's pay and, and do what you've consistently done or not pay and choose to do less. But being aware that the less affects a lot of different folks in a lot of different ways. And so the impact statements in the budget, you know, I would say read them more than once. <v Speaker 6>Thank you. I'll I'll reiterate the, the capital.</v> Thanks Matt for bringing that up. 'cause it's exactly spot on. Deferred maintenance will cost more down the road. We're still digging out of some deferred maintenance from years of the capital program pre pandemic even. And especially during the pandemic being unfortunately underfunded. And we're seeing some very real needs coming down in the coming years with the town invested heavily to its credit in buildings like the town hall that we're in today, like the police and fire station, like school buildings about 20, 25 years ago that are all, a lot of those systems are coming to the end of their useful life. And in the next three to five years, we need to really tackle those. And if we don't then it's going to cost more if we don't have a robust capital program enough to at least do those, those maintenance, the regular maintenance and regular costs that are, that we know are coming to to, to fruition very real and impacts from the town. You know, cuts are also extremely real. They will, we will see increased overtime needs. We will see reductions in services. Our buildings won't be as clean. Our need to rely on mutual aid for services will increase. So it's going to have an impact for sure. It's just the, the, it's the, the capital program that I just want to make sure as Matt noted is, is a extremely important component of this as well. Thank you. And what's that? Roads and roads. Roads. I'll just say roads. I've been told by a member of the board to always mention roads when I say capital trash. So roads, trash, pickup <v Speaker 3>Roads. They</v> <v Speaker 4>Just</v> finance. Yes. <v Speaker 3>Okay. Any members of the finance committee</v> with the initial questions at this level or we all gonna wait for us to pull budgets apart? Julian, please. <v Speaker 12>I'll actually defer my, my questions.</v> I, I thank our chair, we're funneling our, our questions through him and I thank him for taking on that burden. I do have a couple of requests however that we've got everybody assembled here with the school department with regards to classification. There's been reclassifications of some positions and some functions, again, different hands at the rudder or at the wheel over the years. So that's to be expected. That said, it makes it somewhat difficult to track these things. It might not be possible to have a full apples to apples across years, but if we could at least have round fruit to round fruit comparisons, that'll help us some. Because there's some things here which previously were health and now they're instruction. These are major jumps. So if we have some ability to track across that, that would be really quite helpful. Also, some of the charts go back status quo, anti establish something of a baseline. 2019 is the last year we had pre insanity. Some of your items do go back that far, others don't with apologies for the request. But if for some of these things that go back to 2022, if those could be backed up a little bit further to 2019 so that we're actually, it's, you know, you're navigating out in the ocean, when was the last time you saw land, you know, 2019. So if we could have that be a consistent across, I I, I personally would find that quite helpful request on the general government side, a lot of the discussion in amongst the, the aspects being fluid, truly that's, but a lot of the units of measured being used here are people, FTE and the rest. If some of the units of measure can be function because when we're dealing with this larger population of employees and also of again to the issue of fluid and the DPW is a good example of working across different areas. But if we can break down some of those units into by function, that'll be quite helpful with that. And of both school and general government. If some of these things can be presented as trajectories, we've got some modeling but it's basically year to year. But if we can have some graphing on when things actually cross. I've had it suggested to me by some people that even with the override, the lines are never gonna meet anyway. So what are the trajectories we're dealing with? So that would be helpful. There's a comment that we're confident in the state's support. I'm not, I remember the last time the state tripped over itself and the nine C cuts came hard and we forget last year the state did implement nine C cuts. They just kept them away from municipalities this coming year. When you look at the governor's budget, the new tax increases she's seeking, I'm suspecting the nine seat cuts are gonna come hard and it's gonna hit municipalities this time. And lastly on an individual item, the transportation subsidy, the history to that is cynical and unfortunate, but it is the history of it and it serves a very important purpose and I'm not gonna be kind at looking at that aspect of it. So I'm gonna ask everybody to take a hard look at what the history on that was and where it's going forward. But knowing what ugliness brought it to be the way it has been, I would prefer to avoid that ugliness in the coming year. So those are my requests. Thank you very much. And again, apologies to our chair. <v Speaker 6>Thank you Julian,</v> <v Speaker 1>Any</v> other questions from the school committee? You've got one on Zoom, sorry. Oh that's ours. <v Speaker 6>That's</v> <v Speaker 1>Ms. Goeth.</v> <v Speaker 13>Hi. Thank you. So on the slide</v> that you have the override impact on the budget slide and you've got the cuts and the restorations, can you give us a sense of how much of that are actual individuals, like actual positions versus things or supplies or hours of operation, but how many jobs are reflected in restoring? <v Speaker 6>Sure. So this is the consolidated one</v> that includes also the, the school natick public schools. Yes. <v Speaker 13>But I was thinking of just on the municipal side since the</v> schools ones are understood. Yep, <v Speaker 6>Yep.</v> So, so the, the total for this town is seven positions. I believe there are 2.5 or roughly two plus in the fire department. So those are firefighters primarily. I believe one actually might be a sector captain position due to retirement that we'd be holding on filling right away. There would be 1.5 in public works. Those are most likely part of the, when I say most likely it's because of the fluidity of how the union contracts work. A position might be open but then you need to post it internally to let it fill. And so it might filter down to, in the case of like for example, public works would be a laborer. Typically somebody who's working in our trash recycling program or working in the field doing various maintenance on our roads and and other systems board of health, that's a 0.5% position, which is actually we have some supportive services there, such as like a part-time nurse and some other supportive services. So that would be likely in, in that that area town clerk board of registrar, that is a current actually assistant town clerk position that we would likely be augmenting this as 0.5 because we'd be augmenting some of the position depending on what happens with the override. So we wouldn't lose the entirety of the position per se, meaning the responsibilities of the position. So it's not just a direct, here's a it, it's just the functionality of how that department would be looked at should there not be an override Facilities management. That's a position, that's a custodian custodian position. We actually have multiple positions in that department open right now and so we're actively trying to figure out with the hiring freeze in place, we might still need to actually post one of those. 'cause we have about two and a half positions, well technically three, but two of them are part-time. So it's four positions total. Three full-time equivalent currently vacant. So we're looking to at least fill one of those because our buildings need the maintenance. Our school buildings need the maintenance, our town buildings need the maintenance. So this is where it's a little bit fluid through the time. So those are the primary positions when you read the budget book, it'll be in more detail in each of the departments like the schools. It's a little bit fluid in the sense that what we project today is the open positions. When we get to the actual time of the beginning of the fiscal year, it might shift a little bit based on the needs between the departments. <v Speaker 13>Okay, thank you.</v> <v Speaker 2>I'm gonna take a point of personal privilege</v> and just ask two questions for the select board to be clear in, Mr <v Speaker 4>Excuse me,</v> <v Speaker 3>They're working on getting you unmuted. Grace,</v> <v Speaker 4>Anyone else?</v> Cody, <v Speaker 14>Thank you for that.</v> I was unable to unmute. Can you see me all right? Can you hear me okay? Yep. Yes. Thank you everyone. To all the presenters, to everyone who put together all these budgets. I just had a, a clarifying question. I believe Mr. Townsend in his presentation mentioned a slide that specifically said the word or at least referenced permanent cuts, that these were permanent cuts that almost sounded like we were making them. But then later in Mr. Erickson's remarks referenced that if the override were approved, for example, these, these cuts would come back. So for example, the the two firefighters that were initially listed as permanent cuts, but then they're coming back. So I'm just trying to clarify, are we making permanent cuts with some of the process and we've done an evaluation of we no longer need this going forward. We're we're no longer going to fund something Or I guess really that's my, my clarification is have we made permanent cuts that are not coming back or is it temporary cuts that if the overrides approved will be funded? <v Speaker 6>Sure, I can answer that if that's okay. Madam chair.</v> Sorry Mr. Chair. 'cause it's the finance committee. Yes and yes, this is a short answer. We are making permanent cuts. None of those are the positions that were noted. The positions that were noted were the additional budget cuts, the permanent cuts were all cuts that are more related to non-salary budget lines. Basically. Some of them are services service related, some of them are supply related, some of them are, and again that detail is in the budget book. So you can see exactly what is being permanently cut. Then there are additional budget cuts. So the permanent cuts equal about 1.4 million going into FY 26 from FY 25. Then there's additional 1.1 million. That's where you start to see some of the positions. So firefighters, those are cuts that would happen should the, should we not have an override basically. There's also non positions in those cuts as well. And again, that detail by department is in the budget book. So the short answer is yes and yes. <v Speaker 14>Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 8>Grace, was that directed just to the town</v> or was it also directed to the schools? <v Speaker 14>I, I would definitely be interested in the</v> school's response as well. <v Speaker 8>Great. So on, I don't have the slide up here,</v> but it is page 24 in our budget book. And those are per, there's 1,000,004 of permanent reductions that's 10 eliminated positions which will then end as effective on June 30th of this year and not be brought in for to next year. There's 725,000 of expense reductions. Those range from professional development to digital programs, MA materials, transportation facilities, et cetera. And then there's 215,000 of increased fees. Those aren't a cut in expensive but they, but they do offset an expense reduction. So that makes up 1,000,004 that we would carry forward and would be permanent reductions off of our level service. <v Speaker 14>Thank you for that additional clarification. Sure.</v> <v Speaker 1>We're gonna do one more round of questions.</v> So this is the last opportunity for the school committee to ask a question at this meeting. We'll have plenty more time later tonight. But this, any more questions for the school committee Mr. Brunell? <v Speaker 2>I have two questions. Can I ask them both? Okay.</v> So the first is capital improvement projects. I see the difference between the override and not override is about $1.2 million if I were a voter and wanted to see what that $1.2 million was or is planned to be spent on. Is that in the town budget book? A list of those projects? <v Speaker 6>So the actual is actually closer to 3 million</v> because there's also funding going into the capital stabilization account that gets then used for capital. Yeah, so those are going directly to capital projects. We're still working on the exact projects. Part of it depends on what happens with the override because we have to prioritize the available resources going into town meeting. But we do have our five year capital program, which is on the town's website. It was published on January one. And you can see the full list of projects planned for this upcoming fiscal year. It's about $16 million worth of projects. Typically what happens is we publish that book on January one and then between then and the first town meeting of the year spring and then the fall town meeting, we figure out what is critical to go forward because all of them are critical but some are more critical than ours just based on what happens in that time. You know, we might have a vehicle that gets a little bit more impacted or we might realize we need to really tackle these roads for example. So that determines which one comes forward in the spring versus the fall at the spring we have been working and I'm looking at John Marshall to identify what key projects there are that must go forward this spring. So we are working to formulate that. That will come out as part of the town meeting review process with the FinCon about those projects. But they're primarily, spring is typically some of the vehicle uses. So it'll probably be like trash and recycling vehicles. Maybe if some police vehicles that would be this springtown meeting parks and open space. Some needs for our parks and open space. We tend to have a stewardship program for our parks and open space as well. So we do have some planned upgrades to some of our playgrounds for example. That's part of the capital program. Some of our facilities stewardship, the summer is a great time to do projects in our schools because school's not in session. If we don't get the capital, we won't be doing those projects in the schools. We'll probably just be doing basic maintenance. One of those projects actually is related to the Ben Hem project. I don't know if it's necessary for this summer or next summer, but we do need to put money towards the Behem project to help support the $2 million that, that our sustainability manager received for the complete replacement of the HVAC system through the federal grant. Yeah, we'd also need to do some upgrades that are part of our capital program for next year in Behe that would likely be impacted or ability to do some of that work. But we, we really need to know what the final dollar amount is that we're working with so that we can identify what those projects are. <v Speaker 3>Quick thing. Sure, yeah, just a quick plug for</v> the finance committee has a capital subcommittee. If the public would like to participate and learn more and have input on anything in the capital plan, there's going to be detailed capital meetings that as all of that evolves, it gets right down to, okay, here's a picture of the truck that's broken, this is the truck we wanna replace, this is what we wanna buy. It's down to that level of granularity and discussion and the public should participate because it's their dollars. So please participate. <v Speaker 2>That's helpful. 'cause there's a,</v> there's a stark difference in the capital plan without the override. <v Speaker 6>Huge, huge. Yeah.</v> It also is our ability to fund the, some of the debt services as well with an override. So it's not just direct money to the capital projects, which is ideal, but also our ability to fund. So one of the line items that gets pulled back in in the shared services is almost directly tied to yes health insurance but also to debt service, which is our ability to borrow for also supporting our capital program. <v Speaker 2>Thank you. And then through you</v> shy, my question is one that I know that I'm gonna get asked, so I'm just gonna selfishly ask it and have the administration answer it for me so I can repeat for you. So I do recognize this is a bit of a softball, but how can we say that we're not growing, if with the override our school budget will go up 9%? <v Speaker 9>Well, we can say we're not growing in the sense</v> that we're reducing the number of staff. Some of our programs might be growing a little bit due to individual student needs or programmatic changes and shifts. Like, you know, you've, you've heard the conversation about focusing on a, on a literacy audit. So every year we make some adjustments I think with where we're gonna focus some attention whether we need to by law or whether because we want to, because it's an area we we wanna focus on, but we won't be adding growth or new services. When many people vote for an override in some other communities, they, they're getting these additional things we're, we're trying to keep from losing more things, you know, in, in the simplest terms. <v Speaker 15>Alright,</v> <v Speaker 2>Thank you. Select board</v> questions Ms. Pope, <v Speaker 11>I know that there will be likely minor adjustments.</v> It seems like that'll be made to the town budget, but is this, for the most part it's ready to share with the public for our, you know, communities who wanna know what's going on, need more information, probably trust us to give them that information. Is this pretty much ready to share with those communities <v Speaker 6>In the preliminary budget's Public?</v> Yes. Okay. I believe it's been posted or it's being posted on our website already, along with the school. I believe both the school and the town budgets are both up on the website and we encourage anybody and everybody to, to get a copy. If you need a paper copy again, we'll have 'em. They're being posted tomorrow at the library in town hall. We have copies here for members tonight. There's some more downstairs if you need to grab one before you leave. Just i, I don't want to tell people to follow John out but follow John out and we will. We are also printing more like the school department as well. I think we slammed our print shop with all of our requests today so we can only print so money today. But we're gonna have more printed tomorrow by them. Okay, <v Speaker 1>Thank you.</v> And they're available on the NA Public Schools web then Natick, it's on the public website. School budget is on the NA Public schools website. <v Speaker 2>Ms. Pope, I think it go</v> Ms. Pope, you just asked a question, right? I <v Speaker 4>Mine's quick just to request based on,</v> <v Speaker 2>Okay,</v> <v Speaker 16>Could we request that the latest</v> that the override page also have the school budget so that people have a one stop to get all the information they need. <v Speaker 6>Our communications director's working on that. Yep.</v> <v Speaker 3>Jay's online. Yeah,</v> <v Speaker 2>Jay's online. He's,</v> <v Speaker 6>Thank you</v> <v Speaker 4>Mr.</v> Go. <v Speaker 3>All right. Any finance committee members in the room?</v> I don't see anybody with a raised hand online. Looks like we're gonna wait for subcommittee meetings. Thank you. <v Speaker 2>I'd like to just take a minute</v> and thank the school committee for allowing us to piggyback your meeting. I know you have a busy night of a full agenda and I'd like to, again, as has been stated multiple times, thank everyone involved in this effort. This was a herculean effort to put out two budgets and I know it took a lot of work. So I wanna thank everyone for that and thank the school committee, the select board, and the finance committee for its diligent work and making sure we get this information to the public. And best of luck over the next couple of weeks as we try to disseminate as much information as we can in various different forum. <v Speaker 4>Comment on my hand raised.</v> <v Speaker 2>I'm not sure we're</v> taking comments from the public tonight. <v Speaker 1>Yeah, if the question is for the school committee budget,</v> we will be discussing the budget later tonight. If you wanna stay, stick around <v Speaker 2>And if it's regarding the town</v> or town administration budget, we'll be doing that on Wednesday. <v Speaker 1>So with that I also wanna thank the select board, the</v> fin com and everyone else who's joining us tonight for being here for all your work. And we have exciting a few weeks ahead of us and I'll pass it on to the two chairs to close your meetings and we'll take a recess right after that. <v Speaker 2>I just wanna take a quick note.</v> The reason we didn't take public comment tonight is because again, the school committee has a full, we've already been here an hour and a half and they have a full agenda. So we wanna make sure that if anyone gets to speak, everyone gets to speak and that wouldn't be possible. So at this point for the select board, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. Moved by Mr. Sydney. Seconded by Ms. Wolf Logger. All in favor? Ms. Wolf Logger? Yes. Ms. Pope? Yes. Mr. Sydney? Yes. Mr. Evans. And I'm a Yes. This meeting is adjourned for the select board at 7:38 PM Thank you. <v Speaker 3>Alright. Rather than have a 15 person roll call,</v> we'll just declare that the fin comm meeting is adjourned at 7 38. And everybody pay attention to your fin income emails and we are, be diligently working on scheduling. Thank you. <v Speaker 1>And I'll call for a five minute recess</v> for this school committee meeting. We'll resume at 7 43. Members of the public are welcome to stay and participate in our conversation. Zoom the school committee meeting. Just a quick recap. We did roll call pledge of allegiance, a moment of silence before the joint session. We also did public speak. So the one thing we skipped is announcements. Thank you. Any announcements from anyone? If there are no announcements, we'll move to updates from our representatives starting with chair representative. Mr. Wood. <v Speaker 17>Thank you Mr. Chair. I have nothing to say at this time</v> <v Speaker 1>And I don't see any students, are they?</v> I don't think they're online, but I believe Ms. Sorry, didn't reach out and I believe Ms. Scott is here. Ms. Scott, any METCO updates? <v Speaker 18>There are no updates for this evening. Mr. Chair.</v> <v Speaker 1>Great, thank you. Thank you for joining us.</v> I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Anyone against any abstentions? The consent agenda is approved And will that, with that we'll move to the superintendent report. <v Speaker 2>Great.</v> <v Speaker 8>So we actually are gonna segue directly into the</v> more detailed version of the FI 26 recommendation. If we can bring that up. You'll see there's some slides that are shared between, and I'll just kind of skip over those unless people have questions. <v Speaker 4>Great.</v> <v Speaker 8>And next slide.</v> Okay, so here's the agenda. That agenda that we prepared. I already went through the goal and the guidance that we received from the school committee, so I won't go over those again, but kind of for posterity, we wanna make sure this one deck held it all. Next we'll go through budget development and recommended budget and overview of drivers. We're gonna go through a few budget unknowns and then the budget. Really more granular level the budget and FTE impacts if the override potential override were to pass or were to not pass. And then lastly, we'll kind of revisit that proposed timeline that we showed earlier. There's the goal that I've already read. And next slide is the committee guidance that we went over already in the prior meeting. This is, again, unless people want me to dwell on this, this is the town budget development that shows what the numbers would be if there were an override and what they would be if there was not. And this is the outline. I'm gonna just stay one more second on here because when you see the roll up, which is level service and to define level service, it means that we're delivering the same capacity of sort of services as we did previously. So it takes into account increases that we do to the same base of teachers, right? It takes into account inflation on the same base of services it we're delivering the same amount of professional development, buying the same number of cur amount of curriculum, buying the same amount of other expenses. So that's what level service means in terms of reductions below service level. That is what we just discussed in the prior meeting. 1 million, 400,000 that this body voted to ha give a directive for us to reduce of 1,000,004. Those are permanent reductions that will be carried forward into the future. Which brings us to adjusted service needs of 95.5 million. That's that number in our budget. That is, if the override were to happen, if not, we would be with the 92.7 million or that original budget from the town, which would represent a shortfall of 2.8 million, which is the amount of the school side of, of the override if it were to happen. Next slide. We're actually gonna go more deeply into this, but again, these are the actual changes in the change where there's that box in red. It shows like for administration for example, we'd be going up $95,018. That's a 2% change over the prior year. And it represents 1.1% of the total budget instruction is going up 7%. It represents 54.4% of the budget. That's how to read that chart. But we're gonna go into details on each one of those things in a minute. Mr. Gillis is gonna bring us through this section that will go through the thematic sort of budget drivers in this budget. <v Speaker 9>Thank you. So the first one you see here, we've got,</v> you know, three arrows up in, in one arrow going down. The first one is investing in our educators and instruction. And if we go back just to the, the page before where you see that budget driver, the, the majority of our expense increased to 54.4% is in, is in instruction. So that's where most of the, the new spending would be going. We, we call it an investment because it takes a little time for it to pay off. You know, going from kindergarten through the 12th grade when our kids graduate, it, it, it, it's a process and each year you only kind of get one shot at each year. So we view that as, as an important investment and the instruction as our main business. So expanding student services and access, you know, that would be some of the other changes that we have. That would be, some would be in in instruction and some others might be in the ancillary services. Operational cost and efficiencies, you know, that would be how tightly we we're sort of running things as closely to the budget as possible. And that sort of ties in with the last one with the cost reductions, which are highlighted out in the budget book in, in greater detail with our reductions from this year. But also in the budgets going forward is the principles and, and other budget managers or directors explain where, where they're going with things in there. If we go to the next slide, we do have the budget drivers. So again, that 4.7 million or 54.4% increase in instruction. You know, we have a contractual obligation for what we're gonna pay people. The majority of our staff are collect, you know, their salaries are collectively bargained. We're in a bargaining year. It's been a, it's been a good process working with the union thus far. And hopefully we're gonna have a, a settlement soon. I'm cautiously optimistic to say that publicly and we'll leave that there. There's always some shifting of no pressure. Jefferson, no <v Speaker 19>Pressure.</v> <v Speaker 9>The, there's some shifting of salaries from grants</v> and revolving funds and we did that at the end of last year. In, in June is sort of a, a cleanup when we have salaries for full-time equivalent positions in grants or revolving funds. There's a 9% surcharge to the retirement board. There's a Medicaid benefits assessment and then sometimes even a health insurance that gets charged off to that fund when they're in the general fund. We don't pay those expenses. So we shifted more full-time equivalent into the budget and we shifted contracted services into the grants and revolving funds as a way of avoiding those additional benefits related expenses and instructional materials offset, you know, we, it it varied sort of by school or by program, but the decreases between two point a half and 11%. Not everybody had as much to reduce as others. The principals and budget managers were sort of given targets. They all came pretty close to, to meeting what they needed to meet and understand that, you know, it, it's a reduction for this year as well as next year. And I, I appreciate them being good team players with that. And a reallocation of mental health services. I believe it was Julian from the fin com that asked about change and I can elaborate on that one. A few years ago we didn't have much in the budget for way of mental health services. I think with, with COVI it brought about some of those needs and they were dropped in the health services line item with the nurses. And that wasn't really a, a nurses relating expe expense. We, we, we hired a, a director of clinical psychological services in Dr. Art Ferguson. And so that budget is now moving into the psych psychological services and he'll, he'll manage that. And that's an, that's an example of an area where we can't always, you know, maintain cuts in perpetuity. So if, if it's like screening services that we do every other year, we, we don't necessarily wanna have a cut there and then leave it in in perpetuity. We might, might feel we, we have good enough information to delay it for a year. But then it, that's an example of something where it might have to have to come back in the future, right? It all of our services are large, largely related to how the kids are doing and how we, we want them to progress. So that sort of brings us into expanding student services to special education tuitions it talked about briefly in the last meeting, that's a $2.76 million increase, right? But the $2 million of that is largely because we don't have circuit breaker to carry over. And so that, that's kind of a onetime fund increase. But in the budget book, if you look at the pupils at the tuitions page, at the end of the, the end of the general fund budget section, you, you can kind of see the history of what we spent in 22, 23 and 24. And you'll see that what we spent on tuitions kept going down because we had a, a sort of better reimbursements from circuit breaker and we're able to have circuit breaker carry more of that. And same thing this year with the appropriation for 25, but we don't, we don't have as much of a carryover. So that, that's the, that's the, that's the bulk of that increase. There is some increase due to higher tuition, tuition rates and projected a few more students. Transportation also going up the contract for bus services up 3%. The school bus subsidy shifting off the Warren article list, potentially that's not finalized. Julian also raised that issue. It is, is reflected. So we, we have our cost for the buses as you can see on page 77 of the budget book. And it's, it's the one with the only little pink box right in it. So you can see the comparison where we have the cost of the buses, we subtract the user fees and then we subtract the warrant article and FI 26 when we're not subtracting the warrant article, that's the bulk of the increase for transportation, right? Operational cost and efficiencies. So staff reductions offset some higher legal costs. We have been bringing in some legal services for some training to, to help us with all the, all the different things that are going on technology, some investments in the network and infrastructure. Some of these, some of these things. You know, it's, it's a question of if you don't pay for it to sort of protect the system, you can pay a lot more to clean things up. And then facilities, you know, some reductions in custodial maintenance and utility costs. There was a little wiggle room there and next year there probably won't be. So they'll be fairly tight and they'll, the facilities department will be looking at options as well as what we do with rental fees. So last but not least, the cost reductions, we've talked about it before, but the 460,000 for 10 full-time equivalent staff were notified just towards the end of the last week. They have a job till the end of the year. Those positions are not planning to be coming back. And so those are the things that when was discussed about permanent reductions. That was one of the things that, that we, we definitely foresee is that expense reductions of $725,000. You know, when your budget's, you know, approximately 85% salaries. We don't have, we don't have a whole lot that we can reduce in non-salary expenses. And so we've kind of cut this as far as we could probably go with reductions to professional development, digital programs, adjustment and online resources and operational efficiencies and supplies and services. And, you know, at getting to that point and to keep kind of reducing things honestly didn't, didn't seem like it was gonna be a, a good way to proceed. We have some user fees that we've had for a while at $25 increase for athletics and a $25 increase for transportation. Small increases for a couple of other things. And then we didn't have to cut further into non salaried or salary positions because it's, it's an honest assessment that we're comfortable making that if the bus fee goes up 25 bucks, we don't, don't think that's gonna be what stops people from saying, I'm gonna take the bus or if the cost of a sports season goes up $25 for, I'm gonna call it a 12 week season, that that's gonna be enough to stop people from doing it. So, but some of the things we needed in the classroom or the, the staff that we think we need to have, we didn't want to go any further with that. And so that's why we're recommending those, those fee increases. And then budget unknowns. It was nice that I could actually, we have a good enough relationship that I could joke with the union about come coming to a, an agreement, but I, I do believe, we'll we will get there as, as well with the other groups. It's been a good experience, time consuming and sometimes labor intensive experience for some of us in negotiations. But it, we've got a good working relationship 'cause this is a good place to work with a lot of good people. And I, I think we're gonna, I think we're gonna get there that maybe we'll have our nu that have some of our numbers finalized. Chapter 70 state aid, the governor released her budget for us. It's just under $400,000. It's not a big increase. I think the state has some wiggle room, but last I saw they were sitting on about 8.9 million in the rainy day fund. So 1% of that would, would, if it were on a per pupil basis, would bring in another approximate four or $500,000 for, for Natick. And not just for Natick but for all the kids all over Massachusetts enrollment based needs. We always have those, sometimes we don't know exactly what they are or going to be because we don't always get to pick who's going to come here or which children are gonna have some sort of dramatic changes in their lives. But we believe we're, we're largely ready for what we've historically had to deal with in the last few years to be able to manage that with the budget that we've proposed. Next one is the reductions to level service. <v Speaker 8>Yeah, so I'm gonna go through this piece.</v> This is I think on page 24 of the budget book for those of you who are following along. 'cause this is just a summary, but we talked about this and Grace had the question coming in from the fin com about whether these were permanent reductions. Here they are 1,000,004 of permanent reductions. You can see there's 10 FTEs worth about 460,000. And really those range across different schools, across different roles. And the expense side, it's again going across many different areas. Professional development, some different digital programs or tutoring supplies, transportation facilities. And then those fees that Mr. Gillis already talked about, the format of the budget reductions in the book. So I know this is the first day the school committee is seeing this, but each one of these lays out the really detailed impact statement on each of those cuts. These were not made lightly just to review for, you know, in case, especially for the listeners I think too, these were first, I'm new here, so I kind of came to the cabinet to say we need to do this, what do we think it's gonna look like? And after that, which took us a long time, it was, it was painful. We then went to the principals and talked to them and we did preview this with our, our partners with labor just to be honest and transparent with what we were needing to do. So this was something that was not done lightly and we kind of, we hope this is very laser focused and, and makes the least impact on students with these million four. The next page, this is a suggestion you're gonna read about in this budget book, which is what we're calling a budget neutral reorg reorganization. It would only occur if we were to receive the override and it essentially reallocates resources to align with district priorities and enhance instructional cohesion. So this idea of really driving a, an instructional vision through the entire organization to improve outcomes for kids and just to get more aligned, this is reducing five personalized learning coach roles and evolving those positions. We're really naming it as an evolution to the work. They started very talented folks to focus on curriculum implementation. We talked about the literacy audit that we have underway. This is part of that database decision making as well as support from multilingual learners. Last time we had the team from the EL department come in and talk about the fact that we've crossed that threshold of 5%, which is very significant to the state. It's when we need to start an elpac. So now that we're there, it's time we have some more significant focus on the multilingual learners in, in an actual position. And then financial transparency, that's a net impact of down one FTE and its budget neutral. Again, the focus areas are curriculum, data-driven decision making and MLS as well as financial operations. The last kind of couple slides go through what would happen with, if the override were not to pass. You saw in the earlier presentation that would be $2.8 million of additional cuts. The, this is the FTE side of that there would be 12 teacher cuts. Again, the impact statements are all in the book. So I'm not gonna review that right now. I think that might be better to kind of digest and we would be very happy to welcome questions from the committee at our next meeting related to any of those pieces. But I think a deeper read on the impact statements would be great. Interventionists 32.6 are all of our interventionists. Some of them work part-time, which is why you see it's, it's more than 32.6 people. They're really mostly in our elementary schools. It's very important to note here that they are providing targeted instruction for general education students. This is trying to make sure we're catching people early, we're intervening, making sure they're on standard and on grade level with that reduction. I said it was mostly in the elementary schools. We would plan on adding some K to one paras just because they're be needed in those classrooms for ratios of students. And that would be 19 FTEs added. So it's a net impact of 13.6. You could see the personalized learning coaches there and adding two FTEs. So which would hinder our ability to execute that reorg. We talked about just a second ago, two literacy coaches. Right now we have one at each school and we would be eliminating two of those positions. Two special education paras and two more library paras for that subtotal comes to 36.6. If you look to the right, we continue two admin assistants, two folks from the info IT department, an executive function tutor, assistive technology assistant, and the assistant director of athletics for a total of 41 positions and about $2.1 million. That's just the headcount. So when you look at the plan to reduce $1.4 million, which was previously said, which are permanent reductions, those were really framed as low impact to students as little student facing as we could. But there's no longer, once we get to the the no override scenario, it cuts much deeper and it is student facing. I would not paint it a different way. On the next slide you can see the impact for expenses and fees. So the service fees would increase about $480,000. Those would include everything from athletic to transportation to field trips. That analysis we would need to do, you know, if that, if the override weren't to pass. But for 480,000 is targeted for service fee increases. And then additional expense reductions. You see this list is very small 'cause there's not much else to dig in. High quality instructional materials of $175,000. And then additional professional development, which was already cut previously for another quarter of a million dollars. That brings us to a total of 2.8 million. This was also done in the same collaborative manner where it started with the cabinet and then it moved into the principles and it took us a while. And so again, this was a very collaborative lead designed scenario. The last chart here keep going, goes through the override or staffing assumptions. So the blue are the reductions in positions if the override were to pass, so there's that 1.4 million. I talked about having 10 FTEs, you could see that on the bottom right you see 11 because one of them is related to the neutral reorganization, which I said was one position. So that's where we come up with 1110 permanently done through that million dollars, 1.4 million and then one for the reorg. And you could see where they are based on the narrative I've already given, it's literally, you could crosswalk it and see where the positions go down. If the override were not to pass, we would have 51 decrease overall because it includes the 11 from before and another 41 actually that. So there's one off there. I have to find that that's what you were saying earlier. Gotcha. So again, you could start to see where those are and, and you can crosswalk crosswalk those directly to the narrative in the budget book and to the narrative. I just went through. That's, that's what we have for you in terms of detail today. Before you read the big details in the budget book, the, we already went through the meeting timeline, so I'm not gonna go through that right now. But what I do wanna mention and then take of course questions as you consider this and think it through, we'd like input from you on what you wanna hear in the next two meetings. Our plan is to bring forth members of our teams to kind of go through the teaching and learning side, special education, the variances and changes there, and then a highlight of kind of what's happening in elementary, middle, and high school. So we'd bring that narrative in related mainly to an instruction umbrella in our next meeting. And then on the following meeting, which is early in March, we would go through the revolving and grant accounts as well as a fees analysis and recommendation, which we could discuss. We can't do that next week because, or the next meeting because the athletic director is not able to come that day. So we'd like to do that the next one. And of course we're happy to bring anything else that you wanna highlight. We, I do wanna remind the committee that we already did it prev if you want him to come back. I'm sure he would. But we did do that already. <v Speaker 1>Great. Before I open up to questions, I just wanna,</v> again thank Dr. Sp, Mr. Gillis, Ms. Maloni, and the rest of the team because I know it not only a lot of labor, a lot of work, but there was emotional work because I'm serious 'cause I, because you had to make very difficult decisions and you still are making difficult decisions to present to us. Obviously the decision lies at the end with the school committee, but the recommendations that you're making are and are, are difficult to make. I very much appreciate the fact that this process was guided by the overall, the principles and the values of the school committee as we understand them being the values and principles of the community. And those I, as I've said before, are really the balance between fiscal responsibility and our fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers with the mission of providing the best and high quality education to, to every one of our students. And that's much easier said than done. So thank you. And will that open up the questions Ms. Collins? <v Speaker 20>Thank you. Yes. That's why I couldn't tick</v> and tie, so I just wanna give you an opportunity to the budget neutral reorg, which you say is only if the override passes. Can you explain philosophically why that's the case and why those changes wouldn't be made regardless? <v Speaker 8>Yeah, I mean, I think it's a hard decision,</v> but ultimately with we, there's just not enough money. We can't dig deeper, honestly, that's the right answer. So where the first, with the override passing, it would be cutting, eliminating five PL coaches and adding four additional people. In this scenario, it would be reducing those five and adding only two. So it just, again, the whole system is compromised, you know, compromising on that if it were to happen. And we'd have to do that too in this plan. <v Speaker 20>Okay. So this backwards way of asking it,</v> but I'll try right now, you've got two admins slated to go in the 1.4. <v Speaker 8>Are you talking administrative assistants? Yes. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 20>One of those is</v> part of the reorg. So would that, <v Speaker 8>No, they're not part of the reorg.</v> The reorg would be to eliminate five PL coaches and then add, they're not, not admin assistants at all. <v Speaker 20>We're not adding, but part of the reduced admin assistant</v> <v Speaker 8>Yes. Would</v> <v Speaker 20>Factor into the reorg as it was explained to me.</v> <v Speaker 8>I don't think so,</v> <v Speaker 20>Because</v> otherwise the 11 doesn't match the 10 you've explained <v Speaker 8>The 11 is a net D, it's 10 that are done,</v> which include the admin assistants. The one reduction is five down for PL coaches and additional four for multilingual data for curriculum and instruction. And a business analyst for finance. <v Speaker 20>Right. But if you look at page 22,</v> it says 11 and if you look at 26 it says 10. <v Speaker 4>So</v> <v Speaker 20>I I, sorry, but this the way my brain works</v> and I can't move on until I understand. <v Speaker 8>Are you looking at the administration line</v> here for the plus three? <v Speaker 20>No, I'm looking at the clerk secretary line,</v> but in the explanation <v Speaker 8>There's two, there's two</v> of admin assistants in each, but those are independent of the budget neutral reorg. <v Speaker 20>Okay. But on page 26,</v> there's only one admin assistant explained. <v Speaker 8>Okay. I think I can explain this</v> because the person I'm sure, <v Speaker 20>I just don't understand.</v> <v Speaker 8>It took me a while to get what you were asking.</v> The one that's named data specialist is in that union. So here that position, which isn't called admin assistant, is in that union. <v Speaker 20>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 8>Does that make sense?</v> Now I understand your question. There's your two. One says admin assistant, that's A one FTE, and this says data specialist one FTE. They're both in the same union. <v Speaker 20>Okay. I remember that.</v> <v Speaker 8>I can talk to you offline where we don't get into</v> people. No, <v Speaker 20>I,</v> <v Speaker 1>Any Ms.</v> Brunell, <v Speaker 2>I have several, so I can take him in a piece.</v> But one thing I want to just highlight is, Mr. Gillis, you just said this is a really good place to work. Really happy to hear you say that. One impact that I know is happening in other towns and districts is when overrides do not pass, it becomes a really difficult place to work because everybody's workload goes up tremendously. Like you've just talked about that instead of adding the, being able to restructure the way that you need to, to organize the reorganize, the whole school system to be as efficient and channeling towards the priorities that we've set, everyone's doing more work. Right? And so not, it's sort of like in the same way with a capital project, with deferred maintenance, you have like compounding stress, which then you start to lose good people. So I wanna just, like, there's no way to put that in a chart. There's no way to, to show that. But I, I think that it's really important that we highlight that we have really good people that work in this district. And I for one, don't wanna see us lose people because they don't feel like our town supports 'em. That's just a comment. My question, I'm really interested in this. On page 41 of the, it's of the town. So this is just maybe a place to, like a question to ask the town. Page 41 of the town budget book. Have that book? Yeah. Okay. I noticed that the, with the override, the transportation subsidy comes back. So that was new to me tonight. So it's on page 41 of the town book. And they list with the override passing Natick public schools would go up by 2.3 million. And then a couple lines later it says the budget transportation fee. So that would total 2.7 million, which is what we're talking about that 2.8. I mean, I'm sure it's like when you add up all the tens, right? You get to two point. Yeah. But I am, I'm, this is the first I'm hearing about tonight. I think we should be in communication with our town partners about that. It <v Speaker 21>Doesn't change the amount, the 2.7,</v> <v Speaker 2>It doesn't, but it would change it on our end</v> because of what we're budgeting, I believe. Okay. And then I'm also interested in hearing, I thank you for putting the capital plan in our, in our budget book, a couple meetings. Now, Mr. Erickson has spoken about the Behe fire project or the fire panel project. Can you point that to that? Is that in this book or is that in the five year capital plan? And what does that mean to parents at Behem? 'cause we're talking about fire panels, which I think is concerning. So <v Speaker 9>That's a, generally all buildings have a,</v> have a fire alarm panel and a, it's a building code related thing. And they tend to have 20, 25 year useful lives. And so the Behe building's, I believe 20 plus years old. And it's getting to the end of its useful life in the sense that sometimes you can't get parts for it. And you need to have a functioning fire alarm in, in public buildings, especially schools. And in a temporary pinch, you wind up having a, a, you know, a fire person there while the thing's being worked on. But for the most part, it's just one of those things you, you have to do. So I believe it's the town DPW had requested it, it's in the, it's in their budget. And it's one of the things that, you know, with $16 million of requests, some things just are more of a priority than others. So being able to keep the school open without additional costs was one of those things where it probably, that's probably how it got to the top of the list. Okay. Right. Like if, if the boiler was broken and we couldn't eat to school either, that would move to the, the, the top of the list, right? Yeah. So the, in the town capital plan pages 15 and 16 are all the requests from all the town departments. Most of them I don't think will be going forward because of that 16 million. You, you heard from the town administrator that they were gonna spend a, a fraction of that on the capital items. So less there was happened to be a dedicated funding source. They probably weren't, most things weren't going forward for the, the most part. And that's not just the schools, but technology, police, fire, DPW, all the library, all the departments that submit requests. <v Speaker 13>Okay. Thank you for the clarity.</v> <v Speaker 1>Any other questions? Yeah, Ms. Fathers,</v> <v Speaker 13>Just really quick one, I noticed,</v> so when you add up the total, I don't know the total step, it's 800 and some odd. But, and maybe this is just a misunderstanding of what I was seeing in Jamie's presentation earlier of the shared expense line. And maybe I'm just misunderstanding. The health insurance plan count has a school plan count of 1,029. <v Speaker 9>So FTEs are full-time equivalent.</v> And so if you're eligible at, for health insurance in Massachusetts, if you're a 0.5 <v Speaker 13>Got it.</v> <v Speaker 9>I I noticed that as well.</v> So I've asked the town for a list of all of our staff that are being charged, the business office and the HR office will be going over it this week to make sure that it, it's accurate and that we're not paying insurance for anybody that doesn't work here anymore. <v Speaker 13>Good to check. Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 1>Any other Ms. McDonald?</v> <v Speaker 21>So I had a question.</v> First of all, I wanted to thank you for the slide that talked about the evolving positions and particularly the data position, because I just think that we have needed that for years and the service that it can provide, not just to instruction and looking at data, but just data on class sizes and facilities and enrollment and just, there's, oh, I'm sorry. Okay. <v Speaker 22>Oh, you want me to start over? So maybe I'll say it better</v> this time, but thank you for the slide that recognizes the importance of a data position in the district. I think we have needed that for years. And it doesn't just provide data on curriculum, it provides, can provide data on all sorts of things in the district. And we, we desperately need that. So, and I think it'll just be a lot more obvious about how we're making decisions based on data. And I also think adding in a finance person or budget analyst, I, I think last year we reduced a position and I, I just think that, I'm sure that we are really feeling it. And I don't think when you have a district of this size managing this type of budget with the amount of questions that come in about this budget, that like you can have a department that's the size that it is right now. So thank you for that. The, I have a question about, I do have a question about field trips and a question about some of the positions that we're proposing to cut. So my concern is that I feel like having the, and this is just for the committee to consider and for the administration to consider, but I feel like the, that piece has been in our budget just for the past two years. It's a holdover from a philosophy that I don't think we really ascribe to in that the district should control field trips and therefore we should pay for them. And I, I am worried about keeping that in our budget at the expense of some positions. And I know you've firmly vetted those 10 positions that you're proposing to eliminate, but I'm, I'm worried about that because I'm not sure that we should be our PTOs. Of course we're very grateful for that. But it just comes from a, a discussion that I really don't think is relevant anymore. And I think talking to the PTOs about the impact of that and what can be done to support families who may not be able to afford a field trip, which we would do anyway, I just think that's something we should look into. 'cause it's $80,000. The other thing I just wanted to point out in just the, I was reading the rationale for the reduction of the two library paras at the middle school. And just for context, which I'm sure maybe everyone knows, but we never had actually certified librarians at the elementary level. So the purpose in replacing and eliminating the paras at the elementary level was to replace them with certified librarians. And I feel like at the middle and high school, the librarians serve a different purpose in that they're providing supports to students throughout the day. And students have more ability to go in and out of the library versus at the elementary school when they were just coming in for like, for one special. And it was really important to have a certified librarian. So I felt like the rationale in the budget was just, it talked about the elimination of paras at the elementary level, but that was because we were replacing them with certified. And I think we kept some paras for another year, which I very much believe was not the way to go because of the structure of the elementary school. But I just wanna point that out and think about that. And certainly in the no override scenario where we are eliminating more library support is be particularly devastating at the high school where I know a lot of students who don't want to go to lunch, don't wanna deal with the cafeteria, go to the library. So that's obviously in addition to the teachers too. But I'm just thinking about that and I would hope that the committee would think about that with me. That's all I have for right now. <v Speaker 1>Great. Anyone else in the committee have any questions?</v> I see there's a hand, oh, sorry. Ms. Brunell. Oh, and Ms. Sorry. Ms. Ms. Brunell. <v Speaker 13>Thank you. Yeah, so just following up on that,</v> what is the budget allocation to those two library paraprofessionals that were cut? Do we know approximately? <v Speaker 8>Are you talking about the override</v> or the No, the ones that already down we're jumping between the pages. I feel like a <v Speaker 13>Little bit.</v> So the, the one that the <v Speaker 8>The</v> <v Speaker 13>1.4 million, the 1.4 million,</v> <v Speaker 8>We have to look it up.</v> <v Speaker 13>Okay. 'cause I think that that was a nuance that I</v> was unaware of was that, I guess I, yeah, I I didn't really realize that the staffing of the middle school libraries was very different than the staffing of the elementary school libraries. I, so I hadn't really considered that. And I think that's a really interesting point. <v Speaker 8>60. The assumption in there for two,</v> the assumption is 60,000 total. <v Speaker 13>And you said we had 70 in field trips. 80. 80.</v> <v Speaker 8>Well let me clarify. It's a hundred thousand,</v> but we reserve 20,000 for scholarship. So total it's a hundred. <v Speaker 13>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Ms. Burnell,</v> <v Speaker 2>Well I wanna circle back to question Dr.</v> Sp asked the committee about how to spend the next couple of meetings. One thing I would like to do, obviously we, I think we'll have more questions about the budget as people read through it. So I, in the past we've done sort of very segmented budget presentations from each department. I wonder if this year, because we have about two meetings left, if we could do more like a, a fin com esque type meeting where we look at the numbers and just like have an open discussion about the full budget. <v Speaker 8>Just keep in mind it would be helpful</v> and strategic to bring certain people here to assist with that. If you might wanna hear from Aaron Miller, let's say for special ed or anything like that to the extent you kind of know a little bit about where those, or have some time to throw those at us early. Yeah. So we can make sure we reserve people's time. Yeah. But otherwise, yeah, <v Speaker 1>I'm wondering if it makes sense to have that</v> but split into two broad categories, like the first meeting, any question around special ed and something else, you know, so that Aaron Miller can come Yeah. In the second same idea but bigger, you know. Yeah. Does that make sense? <v Speaker 2>Yeah. And maybe like the fin income,</v> we could submit questions to you so that you had time to, you know, prepare for the questions and then maybe even FinCon could tune in, right? Because maybe some of the questions will be similar and then we're just making ourselves more efficient. Okay. So that's one, one thing. And then I, I wanna circle back to a comment that Mr. Rooney made tonight in the full meeting. Not Mr. Rooney. Apologies. Johnson. Julian, what is Julian? Munich? Munich. Thank you Mr. Munich's question. He asked our, the administration to provide data back to 2019 for some categories. And I, I, I mean you guys know, like I go down rabbit holes and I have been down many a rabbit hole around budgets and what makes a budget excellent And the national award is given when budgets have three years of prior years of budget, the current year and the next fiscal year. And eventually a target. Once we have a more robust staff, maybe we'll be able to provide projections for three years out. But I have never seen a budget never that is awarded, that is well done, that goes back five or six years. So I am looking at the Wellesley Public Schools, which is one of two school districts that have won the National Meritorious Budget Award. I'm looking at Cambridge Public Schools, I'm looking at Reding, I'm looking at Springfield, all of whom have enormous budgetary staffs. We have Mr. Gillis. And so I just, as a school committee member, I would like to not allow that to happen. And I don't want to put you in a place, but I think as a school committee we could say it is appropriate that our staff provides three years of previous information to you. <v Speaker 9>I, I appreciate the support</v> and I think the committee's come to know that I'm not too shy. You know, I can't get a, in a report format the data before FY 22 because the general ledger accounting system only allows access for three years. In some cases I could go in in an individual line item and see a little bit more data, but I'm not gonna be copying down data from 21 or 20. 'cause I don't even think I can see 19 by, by hand or keying it in to a spreadsheet to create something like that. Because I don't think it's gonna make any difference what, what we did five years ago doesn't really dramatically affect what, what we should do today. Because, you know, five years ago, that's a third of our students who aren't here anymore. <v Speaker 20>I agree. Ms. Collins</v> and a third who are brand new and we need to worry about what do we need to do for the students in front of us who may or may not be similar to those in 19. But yeah, I was gonna point out that the GL just doesn't support that. So I absolutely agree that we should not be pushing that. One thing I would like to get a better understanding of, we're making some cuts to instructional materials. I get Moodle, I mean Moodle was supposed to have died how many years ago. Just keep it, it just keeps living. It's like this weird virus. But I would like to understand what kinds of things we can't do. For example, I don't wanna be in a position of approving a budget that will not allow us to continue to implement curriculums that we're in process of or evaluate materials for like the literacy. Because the last literacy audit, as good as it was happened right before the world shut down. And so I wanna, I wanna really understand what we're being asked to not fund. <v Speaker 8>I'm sure Ms. Bebo has plenty to say on this</v> and I'm gonna pass it over to her if she wants to after I have the same exact concern. Like, you know, the conversation, just to detour one second. Going back to 2019, the very best people who are experts, I hope humble experts in education who have a lot of experience in it. We just came up with 2.8 plus $1.4 million of cuts for this district. We didn't, we looked at trends, we looked at where things were. We don't have to look at two, 2019 to decide where we would make those cuts. We're looking at our current programming and our current students and I think that's a, an exercise that is very painful and most districts don't ever have to do. So we're having to do it right now. So I feel like that's, I just wanna make the bridge to kind of that having longitudinal data doesn't always inform where we should be. And we just did this massive collaborative exercise that I think is from a lot of people who are in it every day. And I think should hold a lot of weight versus trends. Okay. In terms we have the same concern with HQIM. I wouldn't even say I'm concerned just as much about the professional development that we're needing to cut. Because having launched a lot of high quality instructional materials previously in my career, it's not just buying them. It is a massive effort. Whether it's social emotional, whether it's math curricular, whether it's, you know, literacy based materials. It's a huge investment of our teachers to learn it, to get it and to feel comfortable and confident to have time to collaborate. So it's not just that purchase of it, I just put it on, I put it on the pd, I see you shaking your head, you, you know this, I'm great. I'm saying it for people to hear. So I'm very worried about that number. I guess I'm gonna, I would say that that number's there so we didn't have to cut more people, frankly. Yeah. I'm telling you what, you know, I think I, <v Speaker 20>I get that, but I just wanna be very upfront.</v> Most not so much even. I mean I would like to know as a committee member, and I think this committee should know, but I also want people in the public to know, you know, the new math curriculum that we just put in, if we don't have pd, you know, how effective can our, can we expect our teachers to be, we expect them to be very capable. And I know they're working their backsides off, but we also have to support them in that. And that's what I'm trying to understand where trade offs are. <v Speaker 8>We weren't able to find a better</v> suggestion even in the environment of desiring. And you'll hear about this when I present the entry plan, high quality curricular materials up across all grades and all curricula. I'd also add like, that's kind of part of why we're suggesting to hire a director of curriculum and instruction because that person, I call it like product PD or what the maker of a PD of a curriculum would offer versus like our own staff learning from one another. That's the best PD when our own staff who are lifting curriculum after that kind of product based PD are actually doing the work to kind of lift it in the classroom. So I wanna just name that there's this collaborative work that people can do that's time and could be very well supported by a director of, of curriculum instruction. I also wanna mention a, there's, I've learned through this process that there's a little bit of a misunderstanding from general public around what PD is. You don't just buy PD one year and then you just use it forever. You have consumables, like kids have workbooks. There's other ways we're spending money on the annual basis for, for curriculum and materials even after we purchase a high quality curriculum material as a base. But do you wanna expand on any of that? <v Speaker 23>So we've had the opportunity with a lot of our resources</v> to purchase digital licenses, which brings our cost down significantly. So for much of our five through 12, we have digital resources, which is a lower cost bracket. And at the elementary level, the greatest cost that we have right now with our math curriculum is the workbooks. And we don't buy the workbooks for all grade levels because they, like, our kindergarten doesn't use all of the pages. So we find it's easier to print out what we need. And the workbooks can be confusing for the kids because they can't actually read the page numbers to know where page 52 is yet. So it's easier if they just have the printouts of the sheets. And then because we are going through the audit, we'll be in a place where we will be working to pilot materials over the next year. And with that comes the opportunity to really negotiate. And I drive a really hard bargain and I've developed some really strong relationships. But through that process there's also grant opportunities and I intend to take advantage of that. We also have our literacy and our math coaches who participate in professional development and when we can have them become the in-house experts where they can push into classrooms and to provide the on the ground professional development that we need. And then beyond that, we'll just have Mr. Wood go around to every class and teach everybody how to do everything. So <v Speaker 22>I think we'll be fine.</v> Ms. McDonald, do you have a question or comment? I had a question. So the chart on page 77, the transportation where it shows us the potential fee increases and the revenue from that, is there a similar one that you created for the athletics? I'm sure you'll present that when we get to the fees, but I just thought that chart was really helpful. <v Speaker 9>There are charts in the athletics,</v> <v Speaker 22>The same thing with the fee.</v> I think I saw possible fee increase like that. <v Speaker 9>Let me get to that, that page there.</v> There'll also be, when we, when we talk about the fees, there'll be a little more background with athletics, like comparison to other communities, you know? Okay. There are only so many things you can kind of roll up into the, into the book. <v Speaker 22>Oh, okay. Okay, great. So I'll just find it in the book.</v> I, so I heard John Townsend say, I thought when he was talking about unknown things, that there may be additional revenues, things that come in under budget, healthcare costs, those sorts of things. I felt like I heard him say that. So do we have a plan, sort of an agreement with the town to continue going back and forth about these things and to discuss any revenues that might come in that are unanticipated or costs that might come in below anticipation? <v Speaker 9>Well,</v> <v Speaker 22>What, I know you're in touch with them,</v> but I just wanna make sure that that is out there. 'cause I feel like that's what I heard him say today. <v Speaker 9>Well, I think that's part of how they always,</v> there's two ways they get money into free cash and it's underspending the appropriations a little bit. And then when they budget, I'm gonna call it a hundred dollars for revenue, and then they get, whether it's 102 or $142, that extra money goes into free cash. Right. So they, they're expecting to always get some, because they, they're I guess under advice or restrictions from the, the State Department of Revenue who approve some of their, their budgets when they, when they get the tax rates approved as to how much they can plan. So they, they can't plan for like a, an increase that, that is highly unlikely and then overspend and then sort of blow the, the tax rate out of the water and then sort of force themselves into a bad position. Like the, the state sort of manages them to a certain extent with, with their revenue budgets and the expense side. Yeah. Hopefully not everybody in, historically, not everybody is spending every dollar down. So like with the school department, you know, on, in July closing out the year, we had turned back about $8,000 to the town or something to that effect. We had about $900,000 of money encumbered after we've paid out all the bills. Some of those encumbrances didn't come to pass. We turned back like $170,000 to the town. Right. <v Speaker 22>I was thinking more like this budget, the FY 26,</v> like if there are estimates on healthcare or other things don't come to pass. <v Speaker 9>So I mean, I, I can,</v> we haven't talked too much about this year and how things are gonna end yet. 'cause we've been focused more on building the, the budget for next year. But I, you know, I I expect we'll end somewhat tighter. And I think that'll be the similar way across other departments as everybody's been tightening their belt. I don't see a lot of, I don't see a big increase in unspent appropriations, especially if people are tightening their belt this year and expect to be next year. They're gonna try and prepare to make sure they have what they need on hand to maintain their level of services. <v Speaker 1>I have a quick question related to that. Sorry.</v> Not related to that. So the first question you are you done, I'm, I'm trying to understand, so obviously I'm looking forward to digging deeper into all this, but I'm also trying to understand, are there specific decision points that the school committee needs to make in terms of the transportation and activity fees? So on page 77 you have a se you know, a table at the bottom with recommended fee increases. So you're recommending $25 increase, but is that part of the decision making that we need to make? Is figuring that out? <v Speaker 9>Yeah. So the, the $25 is part of the recommended budget.</v> If the override does not pass, you would see kind of the difference here across on page 77, the charts in yellow. Yeah. Regular education fee increase options for the school committee. So as the fee goes up, there's, there's an estimate taken for a reduction in number of folks that are gonna pay just a little bit because it's not always linear Yeah. To, to get there. So, you know, if the fee were to go from $225 to $400, it's not a straight increase. 'cause there'll be fewer people, participants start <v Speaker 1>Driving.</v> <v Speaker 9>Some people will, will say, I'm not gonna pay that.</v> And then try another way and maybe it works. And, and over time things equalize again when, when committees have to sort of, I'll call it more than modestly raise a fee, but initially it's, it's just like when folks go to the grocery store and they go, well the bacon used to be $6 and now it's 10, so I'm not gonna buy bacon this week. Yeah. And they, they, they make that decision. And so it's sort of reflected in here that we can't just sort of triple the bus fee and, and make all of our problems go away. Yeah. <v Speaker 1>But that is something that, that's a,</v> a lever that we have. <v Speaker 9>It is. And, but</v> <v Speaker 1>We just need to be careful with it because we can make</v> assumptions that simply increasing it. <v Speaker 9>That that it's always gonna be that.</v> And, and I recognize it's not, not popular since 2001. I've been in the, been in the field and school committees have never liked adding fees or raising fees. I've seen them add them and then remove them a few years later. It in, you know, it's, it's, it is a way to supplement, but it's, it's not a way to run a public school. There's an old adage, it takes the public outta public education when you have to keep paying fees to do things. And, and the the optional things that, like riding the bus to school not required, you know, like playing sports or being in a club or activity, you know, not required eating lunch, not required. Right. But there, there are fees for those things, but at some point it, it becomes, it, it, it diminishes the quality of the overall program. Like children are just like adults in the sense that they want something to look forward to every day. And if for some reason it becomes less available to them, we believe or at, you know, I, the superintendent and Sue can chime in that it diminishes their enthusiasm or their enjoyment for being in school for the whole day. And that affects everything <v Speaker 1>Else.</v> Yep. Ms. Collins. <v Speaker 20>Yeah, I wanna follow up on what Ms. McDonough asked.</v> I heard your answer to talk about the FY 25 budget. I thought her question was, if the health insurance budget comes in less than the $20,326,097 in the town administrator's proposed budget, do we have a plan for dividing any savings there? But I might have misunderstood, but either, either way I'd like that answer. FY 25 stop in the FY 26. That's the proposed amount. The 20 million 326 0 7 0 97. <v Speaker 8>So can I recap a little, I'm gonna loop the conversation.</v> So I think what I heard was a question around today in the presentation from the town, we heard about some things that are still, they're still waiting on and that there's some timing kind of movement. I, I think, I think that was mentioned several times today. So the question is, if there's ongoing sort of conversation, if some of that shows an upside, is there a plan for how this might affect the number that we've already been given? I think there answer at this point is we've all been rushing to complete the budget book is no, but it, it doesn't mean it's not there. It just means it hasn't yet been discussed, at least with us. So that's how I would answer that. <v Speaker 20>Okay. I would like it if you made that.</v> <v Speaker 8>Yeah, I got that clear. I</v> <v Speaker 20>Mean receipt, they, they tend to wanna throw 60 to 70%</v> of the cuts on the school side. So I don't, I wanna make sure that we're getting our quote unquote fair share of any savings. <v Speaker 1>Any question you wanna have? Another question?</v> <v Speaker 2>Well, it's not a question, but it, i,</v> I don't wanna vote on anything tonight, but I would like to ask you to put an agenda item on for the next meeting about the direction the school committee gives to the superintendent about the years of data that are available in presentations. And that motion might read to direct the superintendent of native public schools to provide three years of data, the current year data and the next fiscal year projections for all budget presentations. <v Speaker 1>Make</v> <v Speaker 24>A friendly amendment, three years of action data,</v> <v Speaker 2>Three years of act.</v> That's better actual data. So that's just what I might move at another meeting. Another meeting. Is <v Speaker 24>That when that can</v> <v Speaker 1>Occur, I mean technically we is there</v> <v Speaker 2>We could, I just, I mean we don't,</v> <v Speaker 1>I mean we can discuss it tonight and voting.</v> Well, I mean I guess we did discuss it tonight. Yeah. Yeah. Ms. Go <v Speaker 13>And I don't know if you would take this friendly amended</v> amendment two, but also to direct the superintendent not to provide any more like financial analysis without having that approved by the school committee. <v Speaker 2>I mean, that is what we would do</v> with a subcommittee to be frank. You know, like we would, when we refer things to the policy subcommittee, we do so with like parameters. <v Speaker 1>I would change it to the positive, which is</v> any additional analysis has to be approved by the school committee <v Speaker 13>That, that works for me.</v> <v Speaker 1>We're just being so friendly.</v> I'm making more friendly amendments. But yeah, I mean we can, there's no reason why we, I mean we're gonna keep this agenda item every meeting the budget. So that motion, I don't think we need a spec, a special agenda item for that. <v Speaker 20>Yeah. I just, the reason I would like</v> to vote on it tonight is I do not want the superintendent or the assistant superintendents to worry that we're going to come back at a later date and say, no, go back to 2019. I, I would like to give them some direction in that or some support or whatever the word is. <v Speaker 1>Ms. Goeth.</v> <v Speaker 13>So I have a, a curiosity about</v> how many questions we've received so far from the finance committee in advance of this presentation. <v Speaker 8>He left 52.</v> <v Speaker 13>52. So</v> <v Speaker 8>She doesn't</v> <v Speaker 2>Check to read. I,</v> <v Speaker 8>I, I don't know.</v> I have, I have a file with 52 questions I'd be happy to share with you that I painstakingly sort of, and those represent both for the town and for the schools. I wrote a memo that Linda has either sent out or will send out later today with the school side answers. Not all those questions were applicable to the schools. So some portion of those 52 could be a little bit more plus or minus. 'cause I trust you Todd. Yeah. So that was the thing I'm thinking about in terms of the analysis question. I appreciate it. But let's keeping in mind that we did just go through many cycles from the fin comm and now we're gonna prepare for meetings with them so we can discuss that. But we do have questions coming in from the public that have actually created analysis that we may wanna keep open. So maybe making some boundaries for that, depending on how we wanna serve the public as they ask questions. Where some of them, if they were really cumbersome, we're just like, that doesn't exist. But if it was reasonable for us to do that, we did do it because we wanna make sure we're extremely forthcoming. But we've done a lot of analysis to answer all of all of those questions too, which is over 60 at this point that I'm guessing at that over 60 that we've put in kind of batches through the town website and then the 52 ish <v Speaker 20>In addition to the</v> <v Speaker 8>52.</v> Yes. Yes. There's well over a hundred questions, well over a hundred questions that we've fielded either from the public or the fin com at this point. <v Speaker 1>Yes, I, I am a little bit concerned about that motion</v> because an analysis can be a five minute analysis, it can be a three hour analysis or it can be 40 hour analysis. And we are trying to, we are encouraging the public to ask their questions and we're not meeting for another three weeks. So I'm just, I don't wanna slow down, like to your point, I feel like there should be some sort of parameter where it's like you get a question, it takes 10 minutes of analysis, you go ahead with it. If it's 40 hours, that's when it comes back to us. So I don't know how to frame it, how to frame a motion around that, how, but I want to provide some flexibility so that, I <v Speaker 13>Mean I could remove that from that motion,</v> but I do wanna discuss that. 'cause I'm quite concerned that there has been hours and hours and hours and hours of analysis being done and questions from, you know, other boards and from the public. And I think, well that's all really valuable. There's gotta be a point at which all the analyses have been done. Right. And we have this incredible book here, which is like no school committee budget book I've ever seen that has data laid out with three years. I mean, it's just incredible. So there's so much information here. I feel like the onus should be on, you know, people outside the school committee to really read this book and understand it before asking for additional information. <v Speaker 1>Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, Dr. As Dr.</v> Sp likes to remind us, this team actually has schools to run and the schools have kids in them like all the time. Well, not all the time, but most of the time. So there is no, but I mean, I'm being facetious, but the reality is there's work to be done other than answering questions to the public. I just wanna draw the right balance. We're not cutting down, we're not shutting down the audience, the public, we're just trying to control the volume because we also want this team to work with our kids. <v Speaker 22>I don't, I don't have an idea for a motion,</v> but I would say we should probably go ahead. I, you reminded me we're not meeting for three weeks, so she probably go ahead with Catherine's motion about the budget books going back to 22, that that is sufficient analysis that's already been provided. And then I'm not sure what to do about the other piece of additional questions coming in other than perhaps there's a consult of exactly how long it's gonna take based on a specific question and you determine maybe you can answer it or someone else can answer it. I don't know. <v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean the two of us as chair and vice chair</v> and you know, obviously we meet regularly with Dr. Sp and can consult, you know, there's a big analysis we can say, you know what, that's, we think that's too much. Yeah. <v Speaker 8>Can I offer? Sure.</v> So I think about this a a little bit, like when there's no record, like literally if there's no record, which is kind of public records talk, but when there's no record, if we're thinking to someti at some points, we're like that Ana, I think I wrote it in one of the fin income questions. I'm like, that analysis does not exist. Like we weren't gonna be able to go back to Munis to even get it. And the numbers that they were posing in terms of the percent increases, we didn't have the source data from where they were getting. It's really, we had to just say that doesn't exist. But we offered kind of a supplemental of information that we did have that I hope would get close to where the spirit of the question. So to me it's, I'm happy to make a process where we'd go over anything where there was a question that hadn't, we didn't have a record and we could kind of discuss it because we, oh, I wanna be clear like we want to be, especially as we kind of go down the road towards this override, we wanna be open, we wanna be sharing, we wanna be providing absolutely everything we can. I agree that we should read the book books now that they're out. So that would be where I would put that. And I think we meet frequently enough on those questions that we, we very readily be able to have those conversations. And if I can add one more thing to the proposed, the so many idea of a proposed motion that Catherine started with, it was actually really compelling to me that she had some source documents that show that this is best practice. And I think that would be a great thing to share with our colleagues just so that they understand we aren't just not wanting to create that additional work that, that they may find valuable, but that there's some actual best practice in this rooted in schools, <v Speaker 25>Mr Brand.</v> So I, I guess maybe it's vague, maybe it is that the school committee says if we want, we trust the administration to prioritize the things that need to get answered and come back to the chair if there's ambiguity that the public should know that it's possible that not every single question gets answered that like it's just not possible to do that. And as a school community member, I'm okay with you all making those choices. Like when I, I'm at my job, I don't have everybody on my team come to me with every single thing that everybody asks and record. Like I trust them to do their jobs. And I think if everybody has that understanding that if there's something that Mr. Gillis thinks is really important to do the work on that he would go speak to Dr. Bash. And if she thinks that it's, you know, something's gonna have to get deprioritized in order to do that, then that maybe that's a conversation with the chair. And, but otherwise, like I I, I don't feel obligated to to, when every single person says jump, everybody says how high, like I just, we want everybody to have as much information as possible, but it's not possible to do it all. And so I guess what I, to sort of summarize all that, I would just say, I think it's okay to say no. Use your best judgment. That's what I would like. <v Speaker 1>So it sounds like you're saying is Dr. Sp and Mr.</v> Gillis we're giving you a general do your best. Yeah. <v Speaker 25>And that to be clear judgment</v> that is separate from Catherine's motion, which I think we should deal with separately and vote on separately as like guardrails. But everything else I would just sort of defer to the professionals to, I trust that Dr. Spa will come to you and say we're thinking we should do this. What do you think? And then just <v Speaker 8>Add, yeah, I mean honestly I think I appreciate that</v> and I think we've been managing that where, like I said, it's the first time I really thought about it from that angle, but when creating that work would just be too cumbersome. We're like, that record doesn't exist and here's what we would offer. So unless that becomes a problem, which we would commit to letting you know, and we appreciate the backing, we can leave it there. Depends on what you wanna do. <v Speaker 1>And I'll just reiterate the call for anyone watching us</v> before you ask questions, look at the budget book because you all worked so hard to put all the answers in the first place here. And a lot of questions that I've heard are probably already answered here in the budget book. Yeah. Ms. Brunell, <v Speaker 2>I, I'm willing to make that motion tonight.</v> And I would also be willing to write a memo to the fin com to explain the exemplars that I spoke about and also to hopefully invite them into a process because the, so the budget working group subcommittee met on Friday with Dr. Stash and Mr. Gillis. And we do have a plan this summer to look at the budget timeline, for example, Mr. Gillenwater spoke tonight about how both committees are trying to dive in at the same time and they have to wait for us to get things done this summer. We would like to triage that better and move to a place where working with the fin com, we have adjusted our budget timeline and taken input from the FinCon much earlier in the process, then do our things and then let them do their things. So like this memo could be the start of building that relationship with the FinCon. Is that, <v Speaker 1>Yeah, I was actually thinking maybe not</v> maybe a memos or idea. 'cause in the motion I wanted to like give some rationale because one of the reasons why we're asking them not to look beyond 2022 is because they can't 'cause the data isn't there. So that's part of the rationale. It's not like where we don't want them to, it's just there's limits to, in terms of what data exists. So yeah, having some rationale might help. <v Speaker 2>So should I make the motion?</v> <v Speaker 1>Sure. Yep.</v> <v Speaker 2>Move to direct the superintendent of Natick public schools</v> to provide three prior years of actual data, the current year data, the next fiscal year projections of data for all budget presentations. Second, <v Speaker 1>Any discussion?</v> <v Speaker 2>Put your finger on your nose if you heard the word data.</v> <v Speaker 1>I didn't hear it. I'm just kidding. Any, no discussion.</v> All those in favor? Any abstentions? Anyone against the motion passes? Somebody online? Any, yeah. Any other discussion before we go on online? Mr. Gates? Thank you for your patience. I think, yeah, there you go. <v Speaker 26>Thank you. Just thank you.</v> I'm sorry, I'm I'm gonna turn it down and getting feedback. Lemme just do this. Sorry about that. Is that better? <v Speaker 1>No. Okay. We can still hear the echo.</v> <v Speaker 26>Lemme see. Go back</v> and see if it, anyway, I apologize for the echo. The, the question I had on the 41 FTEs is the, is the total amount on 2.8 million or 2.1 million? <v Speaker 8>Let me make sure I understood it.</v> For the 41 FTEs, that would happen if the override didn't pass, right? The total, did you say 2.1 or 2.5? <v Speaker 26>2.1 or 2.8.</v> <v Speaker 8>2.1 or 2.8. Got it.</v> For the FTEs it's 2.1 2,070,000. <v Speaker 26>Okay. And</v> and of the 41 are, how many are town employees? <v Speaker 8>How many are town employees? Zero. They're all school.</v> I mean, they're town and school, but they're school department. <v Speaker 26>I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So the none</v> of the 41 are currently employed? <v Speaker 8>Oh yeah. Yes, they're all employed.</v> <v Speaker 26>No, that, that was my question. I'm sorry. Are</v> <v Speaker 8>You asking if they're open positions?</v> <v Speaker 26>Yes. And they're they're</v> <v Speaker 8>All real?</v> No, they're all existing positions with people in them. <v Speaker 26>Okay. And, and so most</v> of them unionized. <v Speaker 1>I</v> <v Speaker 8>Don't want I the great majority</v> and I could probably give you that answer if I went through it, but the <v Speaker 26>No, it it, it's okay.</v> You don't have, you don't have to answer it right now. I was just trying to get an idea. And so if they were severed or laid off, they would've access to COBRA and severance? Yes. And then depending upon what their retirement benefits are, they'd have access to the retirement benefits and things like that. You'll answer that. <v Speaker 8>I'm gonna let Mr. Gillis answer that. Can you repeat</v> <v Speaker 9>The question?</v> So I I I'll see if I can repeat the question and, and Mr. Gates, you can let me know if I, if I got it correct. So with these employees, that would be potentially laid off if there's no override, you're asking if most of them are union? The answer is yes. Most of the positions are, are union positions. And would they have access to COBRA benefits by law? Yes. Would they have any access to any severance pay? Potentially, depending on what's in their, their contract. And if they're not school year employees and they had sick time, they, I mean, sorry, vacation, unpaid vacation time. We'd, we'd, we'd pay that out. They'd also be eligible for, for unemployment benefits, which the town is a PayGo system as far as I know. So did I miss anything with your question? <v Speaker 26>No, that that's, that was it.</v> And then the other would be within the shared services budget, there would be their retiree benefits and their opep benefits if they qualified for those. Is that correct? <v Speaker 9>So yes, if they were eligible for retirement</v> and they wanted to take exercise, their retirement benefit, of course they could do that. And if not, they could leave their money on account until they wanted to take their money for retirement or until they got another job and transfer the time and service the funds in the service over to another employer. <v Speaker 26>Thank thanks for, for all that.</v> What I, what I'm trying to do is given the fact that there are the three, there's the Natick public schools, the town, and then the shared services, I'm just trying to be able to kind of align what's what with, when we start talking about adding or reducing employees, just to get an idea of what effect that has because it's going to have an effect not just on the school or the town for in terms of if people from the school are being let go or people from the town are being let go. It also shows up in your shared services as well with the, with those benefits. It it does. Is <v Speaker 9>That correct?</v> It does. There, there's not always a straight line simple reduction. Sometimes there's an added cost and there's a net to the reduction to, to when employees leave service whether voluntarily or involuntarily. That's, <v Speaker 26>That's, well thank, thank you for taking the time and I,</v> and I do plan on looking at a lot more detail and I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to do more for tonight, but I will be listening in in the future and have be a little more educated about everything at that time. But thank you for, for taking the questions tonight. <v Speaker 27>Appreciate</v> <v Speaker 1>The question. Yeah, thank you.</v> Yeah, we'll, we'll definitely have more time for more opportunities for community engagement. I just wanted to close, is there any, any other questions or comments about the budget? So I know I, I already made some opening remarks, but my closing remarks just for tonight about the budget. I just wanted to point out how careful the budget was built in terms of navigating through the potential override and potential cuts. What is here is neither a scorch earth kind of approach of scaring people. There's no scare tactics in here, but we're also not sugarcoating the reality. I really appreciate the impact statements that you're making. We're being very realistic and we're being very honest and open with the public about the true cost of a override passing or not passing or failing to pass. And I think that's really important and I encourage all community members to look at those impact statements. We already heard from the positions that are eliminated out of the 1.4 chil, you know, parents talking about the children, their children having special connections with certain people. I always say if you go to any school, any one of our eight schools, you're not gonna see a single adult doing nothing. Everyone is engaged, everyone is working hard and as you've all mentioned, the cuts you already made are painful cuts, but you've made absolutely every effort to not impact the quality of education and you've taken it as far as you can and beyond that, it's gonna impact the quality of education and I think the impact statements make a good rationale for that. So I just appreciate that very realistic and that right balance between not sugar coating and not using scare tactics, either the right balance. With that, we can move on to the next item. <v Speaker 27>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 8>I think the next item, Ms.</v> Albo is going to bring us through the next iteration of the 20 25, 26 school calendar. And we have a hard copy. Is it just one page? Yeah, <v Speaker 27>There's a, yeah.</v> Can I take hand <v Speaker 8>Back? I'll do it at the end.</v> <v Speaker 27>I did notice the typo.</v> So I made a handwritten edit on a copy that you have that, so I made adjustments to this and removed all of the non day off observances off the front page of the calendar. So the only thing that's on there are actual days off. And on the back you will notice all of these observances. Oh, sorry. <v Speaker 23>Yeah, so the front page,</v> the actual calendar only has the days off and the back has religious observances that don't necessarily have days off, <v Speaker 27>But some do.</v> <v Speaker 23>Some do because the day off is just one</v> of the days that's observed. But I also wanted to make sure that it was very clear so that our educators are clear that that counts as one of the days that falls under the school committee policy for not assigning homework or assessments during religious observances. We did look at some other districts and their calendars and they do have some, have a statement above the religious observances. I didn't feel that I was qualified to write a statement on your behalf if you wanted to. I'm happy to add that in. But November 18th is colored in as an earlier release day. It's actually the 19th. Sorry, <v Speaker 1>I have a minor.</v> Can I give you a minor edit? Yes, please. So on the, the second side. Oh please. <v Speaker 23>Yep.</v> <v Speaker 1>I would recommend for September 22nd</v> and October 1st to write evening of and for both. <v Speaker 23>Yep.</v> <v Speaker 1>Just so people know</v> that it's October 2nd is Yom Kippur the October 1st? It's the evening of October 1st. I might just make it a little bit clearer. Clearer <v Speaker 23>Evening of</v> <v Speaker 1>September 22nd evening of October 1st.</v> <v Speaker 4>Yep.</v> <v Speaker 22>Can I ask you a question about that?</v> Because here I will wade into what I do not know, but like why it looks like Yom Kippur is on the second. <v Speaker 1>Yeah, so</v> <v Speaker 22>So wouldn't we just say Yom Kippur is on</v> the second back here? <v Speaker 1>Well, I think this list is all the days that</v> <v Speaker 23>The religious observance occurs, but the school's open</v> and it starts on October 1st at sundown, which is why he's saying that Yeah, <v Speaker 1>October 2nd is red</v> because it, it's the schools are closed October 1st. It's the observances in the evening. Okay. <v Speaker 25>But the school is open</v> <v Speaker 23>And we don't want them</v> to be giving assignments on October 1st. If students are going to be observing <v Speaker 22>That, it just looks like a little weird to me</v> because it looks like we have the day wrong on the backside. <v Speaker 2>Would it be October 1st and second? It</v> <v Speaker 23>Should say evening of October 1st</v> through October 2nd is what it should say. It's wrong on the back. <v Speaker 25>Oh,</v> <v Speaker 23>Right, yeah,</v> <v Speaker 22>Yeah, because it's, yeah, I just, I don't know.</v> <v Speaker 2>I think you would have the same, I</v> <v Speaker 22>Like, I like the statement on the front.</v> I think it's more clear that says Jewish and Muslim holidays be unless <v Speaker 25>Oh, I see. I</v> <v Speaker 22>Didn't even see that because I don't want then this</v> to be interpreted that, that teachers cannot give homework on September 30th. Right. So which is what might happen with the same way Rosh Hashanah is written. Like they might not be able to, they would not give homework on the 21st. So it, it, I just think it's confusing. <v Speaker 25>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 22>I I am happy to work through a solution,</v> but I, I think it's a little confusing here, but I appreciate what you were trying to do with the chart. <v Speaker 2>Should I,</v> <v Speaker 1>Sorry, Ms. Brita,</v> <v Speaker 2>I think if you, if you add October 2nd</v> and you take the suggestion for the evening, it would be more clear. I also think our committee should write a statement of something about like religious and cultural, not just observances, but significant dates in all of our students' lives or you know, fa students and families lives. I know e the eids, they would, that would also apply. The evening would apply for those. And I think that we should have an internal, and I not sure if this is in our purview, but I think that we should have an internal document that is, makes it very clear to teachers when homework and tests cannot happen. Because that is just I, and I think it needs to be a color coded chart. I think, yeah, I think everybody just needs to be on the same, <v Speaker 23>And I think the, the P school committee policy should be</v> attached to that with the chart. <v Speaker 2>A hundred percent. And yeah. So</v> <v Speaker 1>Mr. Wood,</v> <v Speaker 17>Thank you.</v> I, I just wanna clarify, I think it's standard practice at all the schools. I know the ones that I know of for the administration to remind teachers, I just remind her, you know, at the end of the week there is, you know, a religious holiday on, you know, on Friday, please don't schedule any homework on Thursday or something like that. So I, I do think that it's relatively standard practice to have those reminders going out at the buildings. <v Speaker 1>Mr. Brand,</v> <v Speaker 25>I'm very wary to open up a can of worms.</v> Oh, here you go. I hope it's not a can of worms other than homework. How do we feel about also encouraging no athletic practices on those nights or games? I like, I, I hear stories all the time about, you know, I, there's a practice for something on the night before Yom Kippur for, for example, and a student feels, or an athlete feels like, well now I have to make a choice. And even though the coach says it's okay to miss, there's this pressure. Right? And so I wonder if we could bundle it in hopefully not a can. Orange, <v Speaker 1>Miss Bob, Catherine</v> <v Speaker 23>Nutter.</v> <v Speaker 1>Oh,</v> <v Speaker 23>Sorry.</v> <v Speaker 2>I, I would say we feel very strongly about it</v> because it's in our policy. Yeah. <v Speaker 25>To not have to</v> <v Speaker 2>Not have athletic</v> events on the night before. The, so while that may have not been re have been enforced, it was something we deliberately wrote in the policy. Sue, am I, <v Speaker 1>Can I make a quick recommendation?</v> So we were talking about making a statement here. I'm wondering if whoever write, and I don't know if someone wants to volunteer to write the statement, but the statement should reference the policies like more than just we, we think it's nice. It's like according, you know, school committee policies that indicate that during these evenings there will be no blah, blah blah. No homework, no assignments, no for the parents to know Ms. Bodi. <v Speaker 23>So I am happy to share with you the other districts</v> that we found. I think the priority right now needs to be that we actually vote on that calendar piece of it so that we can start the planning process for next year and then pull the rest of it together in terms of the, the appearance of it in terms of what we're going to put for religious obs, observances and days of significance and a statement. But if people are okay with the calendar, if we could move forward with that, <v Speaker 1>Ms. Collins and Ms.</v> Cor <v Speaker 20>Have we determined at the administrative level, at least</v> what, I mean, I know that you don't wanna call it snow day and I get that and I appreciate that although I have become quite the weather weenie that there's not five working days in the fiscal year and how we would handle that vis-a-vis the contracts that state employees will work five days. <v Speaker 9>Sorry, I was tied up with my child for a moment.</v> Can you repeat? I missed the beginning of the question. <v Speaker 1>I hope he's watching</v> <v Speaker 23>June.</v> He told me he would figure it out, which is why I am tossing this one to him. <v Speaker 20>I get that June 25th is the last day of school</v> if there are five snow days. Now we have been thankful that we haven't had five snow days in quite some time. Right. But a couple of the contracts state that employees will work five days after the last teacher day. There aren't five days left in the fiscal year after that. So have we thought about from an administrative point of view how we might handle that? And I don't need to know necessarily what the answer is as long as you've got a plan. <v Speaker 9>So the short plan would be,</v> we would probably start asking people if we were getting close to that five snow days, we'd start asking people to work from home on what they could do to prepare for the summer so that we could, we could get through that. It's not like five snow days generally happen all at once. They sort of start to build and then we would be talking to the principals and the these folks in unit B that generally would be working or, or some of the teachers because they under, <v Speaker 20>It's not the A and b contracts that have this.</v> <v Speaker 23>Right. So that's what we do with</v> our admin assistants anyway, that they, we can make a plan with the full year ones. We make a plan with them that if they don't want to take the day as a day off, that they can work with their supervisor to determine what work they'll do from home on a snow day. And we can do that with our school year positions as well as some of our other school year people. <v Speaker 20>I think we need to think through contract language.</v> <v Speaker 8>I think you're right. I think it's a great solution,</v> but it's, it should be in contract language. Yeah. <v Speaker 20>Okay. That's</v> <v Speaker 1>I, Ms. Goeth and then Ms. Brunell.</v> <v Speaker 13>So I, I would be happy to just approve the front part</v> of the calendar that has the actual days of school closure and then perhaps we can, you know, follow up <v Speaker 1>The,</v> <v Speaker 13>The, with the other part of it</v> to make all of the clarifications. 'cause this is, it's only the front part that really needs to be voted. <v Speaker 1>So, Ms. Bruno, oh, sorry. Are you done? Yep.</v> <v Speaker 2>I just wanna say I'm wrong.</v> So policy JHA actually does not have the athletics in it, even though we talked ad nauseum about it. It's actually, the language is not in there. <v Speaker 23>It's just homework and assessments. Right?</v> <v Speaker 2>Yeah. So I'm wrong.</v> And that is something that the policy subcommittee should take on. <v Speaker 13>Does it list the holidays?</v> <v Speaker 2>It does not. And we were very careful not to do that</v> because we thought it could change. It's called, it was move. We changed the name of the policy. This was like four years ago. Just in case my kids are watching and I'm saying that I'm wrong. <v Speaker 1>Any other questions about the front part of the calendar?</v> Any interest in any, does anyone wanna make a motion to approve the front part of the, <v Speaker 22>I'm sorry, I have to ask one more question.</v> Sure. Do we have in our motion or whatever for the calendar that we have the two holidays where we do not have a day off, which is Lunar New Year and eat all fitter, eat all. Ha Is that just, was that in just in the motion last year or the year before? Like, I just wanna know how, because the, the chart on the back, which I know we're not approving, brings up a lot of questions about all these other holidays. Like we don't have Hanukkah and Christmas isn't on here, but we've never really like acknowledged Hanukkah except, you know, so now I'm confused about what we actually wanted to do. So, but it seems like it's not in our policy to name the holidays. So we've just been, we just named them for the ones that are the day off. But we've just chosen specific other ones to recognize. And that impacts what, when teachers can assign homework. <v Speaker 1>So are you saying it's better to not mention the non,</v> <v Speaker 22>Well, I'm just now confused because</v> <v Speaker 23>Can</v> <v Speaker 22>I, I'm happy to approve this and,</v> but I think it has to be revisited. <v Speaker 2>Yeah. So one thing that we did with JAH,</v> we titled it Observance of Religious Holidays specifically so that the, the dates could be mentioned in future calendars because you don't wanna have to go back to the policy and continue to add religious observances. So you are exactly right that the intent of this policy, that this, our committee could change that, but the intent at the time was to create a blanket policy that then could be, could point to the calendar and the calendar would make it clear that the days off or the homework then were about these specific holidays. <v Speaker 1>Are you asking about the policy</v> or about the just literally the second page. <v Speaker 22>I just think we have to</v> recognize them if then we are going to tell teachers that they cannot do homework on the day before. But we can't do that for like, you know, the, all the ones on the back. Right. Like, so we have to have a discussion about that in the future. I'm happy to, but, <v Speaker 1>But happy</v> <v Speaker 22>To approve the thing on the front.</v> <v Speaker 1>But you're saying discussing which holidays we</v> mentioned the second page is that <v Speaker 22>I think we have to be clear about that.</v> <v Speaker 23>I would agree. Because if you have Hanukkah on there</v> and say you can't assign any assignments during Hanukkah, that's an eight day <v Speaker 22>Never recognized Hanukkah.</v> <v Speaker 23>No, we never have. And so when my admin assistant</v> and I were working on this, we were just listing all of the holidays not knowing which ones we were supposed to put on there or not. Okay. So this wasn't work on that. This was, yeah. So we can work on, I think you need to decide which ones need to be listed. <v Speaker 1>Sorry, what? Did you just volunteer?</v> I did volunteer to work on this chart. And would the statement too Yeah. The calendar work. Can I, can we throw the statement too? I <v Speaker 13>Don't wanna do the statement.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. You'll, you'll Ms.</v> Go and then Ms. Collins. <v Speaker 13>So I think, I think we used to use this calendar as like</v> a document that did two things, right? We tried to make it all in one, which previously we voted it, it had the days of closure, it had the additional religious observances on here where we were telling people through this same calendar that the night before those holidays, there were be no homework assigned. And that was really confusing for families right. To try to figure out which day was the day off and why those other days were in there at all. So maybe we just need to actually have two calendars. We need to have one that's the days of school and one that's related to the homework policy. And then we'll just restate the days on the days of closure on the homework policy one. Because you're right, we only voted those two additional days for the homework policy. Yep. Yeah. <v Speaker 1>Oh good. So shall we, I'll take a motion</v> to approve the first calendar, which is just a front page, which is the actual days off slash half days <v Speaker 13>Second.</v> <v Speaker 1>I was so moved. So</v> <v Speaker 13>Moved. Yeah,</v> <v Speaker 1>Second.</v> Okay. You can, somebody can decide. Moved by. Yeah. Mr. Wood. <v Speaker 17>Thank you. Sorry, I I just, I have a, a a concern</v> that I just wanna share and I just wanna make sure that it's, it it's taken into account if, if need be, if I understand correctly, the idea of having athletics also conform to the same concerns for religious and cultural observances. I'm, I'm just thinking about the, the possibility of like, does that mean for all teams on any one of these dates, regardless of the religious and cultural observances by the individual players on those, or participants on those sports teams? And I, I guess what I'm, I'm I'm thinking about is the possibility of a tournament that is not in control of, you know, the Natick schools or the Natick coaches, if an entire team has to forfeit the opportunity to play in such an event because of the policy that no one can participate if it happens to fall on one of these dates. So I, I guess I just, I I want to throw that out there as a, as a potential concern that you may want to take into account when you're working on that statement. <v Speaker 1>Did you wanna add to that?</v> <v Speaker 9>Yeah, so with a, a previous employer with a, a kind</v> of a sizable Jewish community, the athletic director, you know, as far as I recall and understood it would, would take trying not to schedule games on those days whenever practical so that people could honor their religious observance. But for like playoffs and things that are scheduled by the league that you don't have a choice for, because it's a tight calendar at the end of the season kind of is what it is. And people just have had to accept the way schedules work and they don't always work for, ideally for religious observance. So to Jefferson's point, you know, it's, it's nice not to box them out and let judgment work it as well as possible. <v Speaker 1>Mr Brand and Ms. Collins</v> <v Speaker 25>And the policy subcommittee is happy to take this up.</v> I so, but I'll just say real quickly, my instinct is that what we would do is probably propose not having practices, but the things that are not solely within our control scheduled, things that involve other people, other districts, we can't really change those. But certainly football practice that's just natick is probably something that we don't need to do that day. <v Speaker 1>We can</v> <v Speaker 25>In practice is important By the way.</v> <v Speaker 1>So Ms. Collins agrees.</v> So it sounds like just action steps. So we have a motion to avoid the front part of the calendar and we have this policy subcommittee volunteering to look into adding athletics in some way, some into the policy. And we have Ms. McDonough volunteering to think through the second page holidays but not statement and we're still fig trying to figure out who's gonna write the statement. We figure it out, we'll figure out, oh we did. Okay. Okay. We, we'll leave that as an open, open position at this point. Any further discussion about the motion, which is to approve the front of the calendar with no discussion, we'll go for a vote. All those in favor? Anyone against any abstentions? The motion passes Good. In speaking of a policy subcommittee, I believe that is up next <v Speaker 25>My time to shine. Yeah,</v> <v Speaker 1>This is it.</v> <v Speaker 25>Let, let me just put my glasses so I can look smarter.</v> Alright, don't helping. No, it doesn't help me. It's not helping at all. So last meeting, we just very briefly covered the policy updates for BEDH tonight. It's my opinion that this would be a, this would be technically the first reading that we wouldn't vote on it, but I figured that I would just, I dunno if everybody had a chance to look, I figured I would just quickly highlight the things that are different about it. Most of them are sort of very subtle administrative things. So, so for instance, if you were to look at the existing policy clause number three or speakers must be in their remarks by stating their name, town or city of residence and affiliation. The proposed change is to just add the words if applicable. Not everybody has an affiliation. The biggest change is in clause four, where it currently reads the beginning, I won't read the whole thing. Public speak shall concern items that are not on the school committee's agenda. The proposed change is to change it to public speak may concern items that are not on the school committee's agenda. The, just so we're clear about this, the implication there is that public speak could be an opportunity for people to talk about anything, even things that are on the agenda. O other than that, there's, there was a math problem in clause five that's fixed in I noticed that, yeah. The, the old clause six large groups addressing the same topics that is gone. The new clause six is about speakers not being able to assign their time to another speaker. The, the other change aside from the number is, is to change it from four eight hours of notice to two business days. So, and then the, there's a new clause eight, which is just a sort of procedural thing. So those are the, the changes. Again, the most substantive change is the ability for people who are participating in public speak to speak on agenda items. So you don't necessarily have to hang around for a whole meeting if you want to say something about something that's on the agenda, but all the rest is the same. Did I miss anything on that particular policy? Yeah. <v Speaker 20>On, on clause on six,</v> no assignment of time. But if there's a, a need of an individual to extend the time that they have to five minutes if, if they have a related disability that would prevent them from getting it done in three. We're not all Joe Joe Zuzu <v Speaker 25>And that speaker has to, that person,</v> if they require an accommodation, they're the one that needs to get in touch to at least two business days in advance. <v Speaker 1>What can I ask? Why is that?</v> Why do, why do we need two days in advance? <v Speaker 23>So we talked about someone</v> who may need some assistive technology and in order to do that, 48 hours could be a Saturday and we might not have enough time to get our assistive technology person or one of our tech people to get the equipment available to them. So if we have it two business days, it means it would happen on Thursday, which gives us enough time to be able to get equipment in here and in place if that person were to need it. <v Speaker 1>So I guess my question was why do we need two days at all?</v> And and what you're saying is they need two days, two business days. If they require <v Speaker 25>The, that's right. The</v> <v Speaker 1>School department to provide.</v> So for example, if I have my own a C device, I can just show up, right? <v Speaker 25>So let's, why don't we read, read it so everybody knows.</v> Everybody doesn't have it in front of them. Maybe I'm just <v Speaker 1>Not reading it.</v> <v Speaker 25>Speakers may not assign their time to another speaker</v> and in general, extensions of time will not be permitted. However, speakers who require reasonable accommodations on the basis of a speech related disability or who require language interpretation services may be allotted a total of five minutes to present their material. Speakers must notify the school committee by telephone or email at least two business days in advance of the meeting if they wish to request an extension of time for one of these reasons. <v Speaker 1>So I guess I would, my recommendation is</v> to change in advance of the meeting. So they need at least two business days in advance of the meeting if they need accommodations to be provided by the town or by the school department. 'cause I might have a, this ability that requires me, that necessitates me to have five minutes, but I don't need anything from the town. I, I mean from the school department, I can just bring my own AC device for example. <v Speaker 20>But this is an extension of time for one of these reasons,</v> not because of equipment. Right? Because otherwise when you're calculating how many people can speak if the last person to speak needs an extension of time, that screws up the plan of 15 minutes, <v Speaker 25>Which is clause one.</v> Yeah. That public speak will be 15 minutes. Right. I <v Speaker 13>Ms.</v> Father's mic. Even with two days notice, it would still screw it up because you're still saying that you can have five speakers. So I don't, it doesn't fix it. <v Speaker 25>It's, it, it, so it,</v> <v Speaker 20>Whoops.</v> <v Speaker 25>So it's the,</v> that clause number five, assuming that five or fewer speakers sign up to engage in public speak, each speaker will be allowed three minutes. If six or more speakers sign up, then each speaker will be allotted allowed two minutes. It, what we could potentially do is a, if there's somebody who requires five minutes, then that, I mean we don't, it's, I think it's implied in number five that we don't have to have five speakers. So, but that clause one is that it's a 15 minute, <v Speaker 13>But if there's five speakers</v> and one requires five minutes, there's no con I mean <v Speaker 25>Then there can't be, this is, I think the, I think the</v> point here is that if the person who needs five minutes has given two business days of notice, then there wouldn't be four other speakers. If we wouldn't have, that would be five minutes and it would leave 10 minutes for everybody else. <v Speaker 1>Ms. Brunell,</v> <v Speaker 2>I am, I'm quite certain</v> that this was not your intention, but I wanna be careful about having a requirement for somebody with a disability that people without that disability don't have. So if the, if my disability requires that I potentially speak slower because I speak through a device, I think that our committee should be able to accommodate that five minutes in real time. <v Speaker 13>Agreed.</v> <v Speaker 1>Ms. Goeth. But</v> <v Speaker 13>This is not for them to be accepted for public speak.</v> This is for them to get accommodations from us Right. To speak. <v Speaker 2>But the accommodation is the fi the extra minutes.</v> Because to Chi's point, they could bring their own device. So the accommodation we're giving them is an extra two minutes. <v Speaker 13>Right.</v> <v Speaker 2>I understand.</v> If, if I, I I can understand needing, if we have to bring an interpreter or, or they need a, to your point about the assistive technology, I could understand saying like we need 48 hours to have that material here, but to have two extra minutes if I'm using a device to speak, I don't think we need two hour, two days of advance notice. <v Speaker 25>So maybe we, there are two separate things and,</v> and one of them can be, so there are two, clause six actually covers two things, which is for the first sentence, which is that speakers may not assign their time to another speaker. Right. There's a separate thing about accommodation. So if you need and may, so maybe that is part of the confusion is decoupling those, so that clause six alone is that speakers may not assign their time to somebody else. <v Speaker 1>Yeah. And my recommendation is if you,</v> if you're gonna decouple it that the number seven or whatever, six BB, any speaker who requires accommodations needs to re to request those accommodations to business days in advance. <v Speaker 13>Accommodations to minutes.</v> <v Speaker 1>The, the five minutes shouldn't be, you know,</v> I, I agree with Mr. Burn. Like I, we don't, <v Speaker 25>We can just decouple them for the next reading.</v> Why don't we do that? <v Speaker 1>Ms.</v> <v Speaker 13>Flas is there, is there some some hard</v> and face that it can't be 17 minutes of like, it's 15 minutes is the guidelines. That seems very, would be very confusing if suddenly someone requires an accommodation takes five minutes. So you have four other speakers and you tell one of them they can't, that just seems like it creates a little bit of mayhem. I don't, I just didn't know whether the, like is there something governing that 15 minutes being, I mean it seems very exceptional. It seems like a very exceptional circumstance where we happen to have someone who requires five minutes and there happens to be four other people who also wanna speak. I would say we just go 17 minutes at that point. But am I missing something? <v Speaker 25>I mean, I, I think that the, I the</v> FinCon does 10 minutes of public speak, <v Speaker 28>It doesn't come up.</v> <v Speaker 25>FinCon does 10 minutes.</v> <v Speaker 28>We've probably in my,</v> in my time, I mean since you were on FinCon, how many <v Speaker 25>Zero people, so from</v> <v Speaker 1>Now on, every school committee member should go</v> to FinCon. That's, <v Speaker 25>We're gonna exercise that. We</v> <v Speaker 28>Have 15 members if you want</v> <v Speaker 25>To get That's right. No, thanks.</v> <v Speaker 13>So</v> <v Speaker 25>The select board I think also does,</v> I don't think there's anything that governs from a Massachusetts like general law that has to be 15 minutes. We actually are, the select board I think does 10 minutes and FinCon has 10 minutes. That is often unused. But I, I mean I suspect that at the discretion we, we could perhaps add that to the decoupled clause that in the event of an extended time, then public speak period of time at the discretion of the chair would be extended by the, the same amount of time. Something like that. So like as, as an exception, like as in the same way we would make an exception for somebody who needs an accommodation. We would make an exception for the public speak block. I don't think it's a too complicated. Yeah. Ms. Brunell. <v Speaker 2>Okay, I wanna preface this with a, I can live with this.</v> This is on a different item. So I think we, it's same, same policy, but I can live with the language in this policy, but I would prefer to see the language, the highlight of the change more obvious. So I would prefer to see language like, this is for number three, I think. Sorry, I'm flipping back two. <v Speaker 25>I think you're gonna say four.</v> <v Speaker 2>Nope, not number three. This is for number four. Yes.</v> Thank you Matt. I would prefer it to say something like, individuals may address topics on the agenda or items within the scope of the responsibility of school committee or something like that. I'd just rather to speak about it in the positive rather than how it's phrased now. I think it's phrased in a way that's like kind of lawyer jump, lawyer jargon. And I think it would be easier for the public to hear if it was phrased in the affirmative. Can you just repeat that? I would, and I'm pulling this from a different committee's policy, but it says individuals may address topics on the agenda or items within the scope of responsibility of the school committee. <v Speaker 25>Just more explicit. It</v> <v Speaker 2>Just, yeah. Especially</v> <v Speaker 1>One or the other. Right?</v> <v Speaker 2>Instead of saying may concern</v> items that are not on the school committee agenda. So that's one request I have. I also, there's an, there's language that I wonder if you and I can send this in an email again under number four, I like the strength of this language. I'm about to read comments and complaints regarding school personnel apart from the superintendent or from school personnel or students are generally prohibited unless those comments and complaints concern matters within the scope of the school committee authority. So I, again, that's from another same thing that's number four says. But I just like that it says it a little bit stronger. <v Speaker 1>I also think it should say complaints against</v> the chair. Strictly <v Speaker 25>Prohibited. Ah, quickly</v> <v Speaker 1>Prohibited by anyone.</v> I'm just kidding Miss. Sorry Miss Ella, you done? <v Speaker 2>I am, yeah. So happy to send that.</v> If the policy subcommittee is taking comments back, I could just send it. Yeah. <v Speaker 1>The Ms. Collins and Ms Corset. The</v> <v Speaker 20>First part, Catherine,</v> would it be be within what you're thinking to say public speak must concern items which are within the scope of the school committee's authority, which which may not be on, may or may not be on the school committee agenda. <v Speaker 2>Yes.</v> <v Speaker 20>Okay. The second part, Sue, I</v> keep me here. I think that's part of what the A CLU said you shouldn't do it, but I don't think we can prohibit it under the case where we were taken to court and that's correct. Yeah, that's, I think that's why we ended up with the language and other people may because they weren't taken to court. <v Speaker 2>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Ms. Goeth,</v> <v Speaker 22>That was a, I was gonna say</v> <v Speaker 1>The same thing.</v> Oh, okay. I, by the way, did Mr. Wa Yes, <v Speaker 25>Yes he did.</v> <v Speaker 20>Several times.</v> <v Speaker 1>Several times. Good.</v> <v Speaker 25>That's the use of the word. May. May,</v> <v Speaker 2>Oh yeah.</v> Yeah. <v Speaker 22>Got his</v> <v Speaker 20>Prints all over it.</v> <v Speaker 22>I have a question. I should have known.</v> Does this change anything about comments during the meeting on agenda? <v Speaker 25>It does not. It</v> <v Speaker 22>Doesn't. Okay.</v> Did we talk about that? Did or <v Speaker 25>You just decided not to do it?</v> So we decided not to have that because it's not, it. It's, those are already the discretion of the chair. Oh, okay. So it's more of a norm and a practice rather than a policy. <v Speaker 23>Okay. And when we wrote it in</v> and Andy looked at it, he said, you're opening yourself up to some difficulty and some challenges. So I would remove it <v Speaker 25>And it wasn't necessary.</v> We just talked about it and it wasn't, we decided it's not necessary. Okay. <v Speaker 22>All right. That's helpful. Yeah, I liked</v> Catherine's suggestion on number four just 'cause when I read this I was like, oh, we're not changing anything. But you are suggesting that we do change it. So we just maybe would wanna make that clear to folks more clear to folks. It could be on the agenda or not on the agenda. Yeah. <v Speaker 1>Any other questions or comments? Yeah, Ms. Brunell,</v> <v Speaker 2>Sorry.</v> And then there's just references and I can send those too. I was wondering if you would consider adding the references to, you know, MGL 30 A. There's like Massachusetts general law and definitions of school committee meetings, executive sessions and notifications. <v Speaker 25>There is a reference to MGL L 30 A on the bottom. Oh,</v> <v Speaker 2>Perfect.</v> Okay. I didn't see it. Section <v Speaker 20>18 to 25 are already on the bottom. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Oh, those are some of my favorites. Yeah,</v> <v Speaker 25>It's great reading. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 20>26 it starts to get a little watery, but</v> <v Speaker 25>I use that.</v> So my instinct, my note. Tell me if like, I don't think we bring this back to the policy subcommittee. I think we've, this is the point of like we've done this and then we, I think for the next meeting this, these changes can be, I can work with ms. We can get, and then we'll just <v Speaker 1>Vote.</v> <v Speaker 25>Yeah</v> <v Speaker 1>If we're ready.</v> Any other comments before we close? <v Speaker 25>We have one more policy. Oh,</v> <v Speaker 1>Go ahead.</v> <v Speaker 25>I, IE healed to Ms. Balone.</v> <v Speaker 23>Lucky me. So we had on our agenda</v> to talk about the Title IX policy, which is the sexual harassment policy. And given that recent changes, we need to revert back to our current policy and not make any changes. So we are status quo and our current Title IX policy, sexual harassment policy is accurate up to date and what we should stick with <v Speaker 20>And you will not be seeing it on a future</v> agenda anytime soon. <v Speaker 1>Okay. See we're</v> <v Speaker 20>Doing your best to cut your meeting agendas down.</v> <v Speaker 1>Thank you. Appreciate it. With that, I think</v> that's the last, that was the last item. I'll take a motion to adjourn. So <v Speaker 25>Moved.</v> <v Speaker 1>All those in favor? Any abstentions? Anyone against?</v> So that's our meeting for tonight. Goodnight everyone and thank you for watching. I.