Speaker 1: Here, Ms. Here. Ms. Brune. Here is Ms. Gomes online here and I will need you to say present, participating remotely present and participating Virtually you and I am here. So we'll now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and a Moment's silence. I allegiance Speaker 2: Defense sitting with the flag of the United States of America and to the republics for which it stands, one Nation under God, Invis with liberty and I justice for all. Speaker 1: We take that moment of silence
to honor our troops serving us herein. Do we have any announcements? I'll move to public speak. Public speak is scheduled for a period of 15 minutes. Each speaker will be commended the next time, about three minutes. During this time they can speak about topics within the scope of responsibility. All remarks will be addressed for chair. Public Speak is not a time for debate or response and we don't have any, anyone in the room seeking public speak. Ms. VI has her, I didn't receive any emails. So we have one person on line? Yes. Okay. Ms. Vickers, just have three minutes. I sure I
Okay. Speaker 3: Hi. Thank you. B Brinley Vickers Precinct eight. I realize that this is on the agenda later, but I'm not sure how long I can stay tonight. So I thought I would mention it now. You are discussing memorial later and the feasibility. And I just wanted to point out that there have been of late a lot of questions that get posted on social media and I'm doing the best that I can when I notice them to give information. But it would be really helpful if the actual website
for the Memorial School Building Committee could be updated because that would be a lot easier than me going back in in time and trying to find through agenda items. The, like for instance, tonight's conversation and the slide deck could be on that page and the project schedule could have some stuff in it. I know they, it all says that it's currently in development and I just thought then in an effort for helping the public be informed that we could potentially work to update that. I realize it's a lot of work, but it would be very
helpful and thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. ERs. Okay. And anyone else speaking public, speak online? No, nobody in the room. So, we'll now close public speak and then we'll go to updates from feature teacher representative. Ah, Speaker 4: Thank you Madam Chair. I just wanted to very briefly take my moment to give a shout out to the NA Education Foundation in this season of giving. I was reminded recently of the many good works that they do and specifically the grants that they give out to teachers. Luke steer reminded me that this past summer he was able to go down to Philadelphia and attend the American Library
Association's meeting down a convention down there and was able to come back with a number of skills and resources that he was able to share with the other libraries in the district. So just wanna thank you to the Native Education Foundation for all the good work that they do and encourage more teachers to sign up and try to get some of the grants. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Do we have our student rep online? No. Okay. So if they show up later, we'll ask them if they have anything to speak on. Ms. Holmes, do you wish to give an update about Meco?
Speaker 5: The only update I have is that Meco will be having their 60th anniversary in March 24th. Speaker 1: That's exciting. Thank you. Sure, go ahead. Speaker 6: I, I forgot an announcement. For those who haven't followed Natick school committee on Instagram, it's one of the hottest Instagram accounts out there. I highly recommend in the week that has existed. We have tens of followers already and the things like the agenda are, you know, community events will all be posted there. Almost a hundred. Just
Speaker 1: Wanna thank you Mr. Brand for doing that because it was so nice to see the agenda just pop up in Instagram. See that into my feed. So you doing something right. Thank you so much. Speaker 6: Whoever is running that account rate work, Speaker 1: They know they know what they're doing. Yeah, I know it. I know it's announcements, but Speaker 7: I just want us to be aware that there's a whole swath of this community that does not Instagram, myself included. So as we develop these tools, I just wanna make sure that we're not letting others like Speaker 1: Agree completely.
They should compliment what we're already doing. Yeah. Not replacing anything. Yeah. Thanks Ms. Als. Okay, so we're gonna move to the challenge report for our first agenda item. Oh. So we have Andy hired here from the Rotary Club and he bring us very generous donations. Speaker 8: Good evening. I'm assuming this is working. There's no button to push. Well thank you. It's always an honor to come and tell you a little bit about what the Rotary Club is up to. Our club started in February of 1927. So in a few months we will be celebrating our 100th year
of being a club and we're very proud of that and we're gonna have a big celebration, a community-wide celebration and you guys will hear more about that. This also happens to be closing in on our 20th year of giving out these little books to the third graders and time has flown, but I always like to take the opportunity to do a little commercial to tell you what the Rotary Club is and maybe even for the folks watching at home. We meet currently here in this space on Tuesdays at 1215 and includes lunch and a guest speaker. The motto of the Rotary Club is service above self.
And that simple little phrase oftentimes resonates with people and if you find it resonating with you, you might be a Rotarian and if you are, we'd invite you to come to have a free lunch with us and to get to know what we do, we pack a lot of service projects in the course of the year. A lot of money is raised and a lot of money is distributed. And I would say that probably the bulk of the money that is distributed goes to the students in the Natick public school system. There really are three specific programs. One of 'em is one that we call Make a Difference and we work with your counselors like Melissa McDonald
and she sometimes gets in touch with us and says there are some students who would benefit from a small amount of money to help 'em feel connected with their peers. And our goal is to have that money available, distributed anonymously to help kids. It can be as simple as guitar lessons or summer camp or some requests for gift cards to buy winter clothes and gloves. Just so that the, these kids who have been identified can have what they need to feel connected with their peers. It was primarily a middle school project,
but it has expanded with partnership with the Natick Service Council to elementary school kids and high school high school kids as well. So these little, these little, these little lots of money are available for kids, for families. And we're, we've been doing that for a while. We're really proud of that. We also give a scholarship to a, a senior graduating and it's a $10,000 scholarship for tuition. And we get some of the most remarkable applications. We've included an essay in the past year, which has really been fascinating
and it's helped us kind of pare down 'cause we get a amount of applications. So the essay has helped pare that down a little bit and it's not enough to pay for college, but it's, it's not a bad little sum of money to be, to be so somebody that's chosen. And the reason I'm here tonight is we give out these dictionaries to the third graders. I'll just pass it around if you'd like to take a look at it. The first two thirds of the book is a traditional dictionary. The last third is really, I guess I'd describe it as an almanac. It has the periodic table. It has information about all the states, all the presidents.
It has the world's longest word. It's 1900 letters long. It's a protein. There's a list there of super long words like the one from a Mary Poppins that the kids love to read. And the, we've already given them out. We go to each of the schools and we've already been to all four of the schools. Inside the cover is a sticker that has the kids' name and their school. 'cause third graders don't oftentimes have things with their name on it. So that, that is something that I think helps provide a sense of ownership. And I am told that once the kids dig into these books,
there's so much enthusiasm that the teachers sometimes have to ask them to stop and to put them aside so that we can get onto other things. But we get, we get the, the loveliest thank you notes from the kids. And the hilarious part is they will try to use these big words they find in the dictionary as part of their thank you notes. So we've, we've really got some great ones. So this is a project that we've done now for 19 years and it is something that I feel as long as kids have a book that they can open and not a screen to look at in third grade, I hope that this will be something that will continue to be useful.
I dread the day that we're told that, oh no, that's all online and they're looking at us screens. So hopefully that won't happen. But anyway, it's our pleasure to help serve the town of Natick and, and particularly the kids. One of the fundraising things that we do in the around on Father's Day, as a matter of fact is our tour genetic Bike ride, which is a great community event on the town Common. It's not an expensive family event, it's one of our biggest fundraisers. So we always invite you to spread the word and have kids participate in that. 'cause a lot of the money just goes right back to the, the kids in the school.
So anyway, if there are any questions I'd be happy to answer 'em. But once again, you know, thank you for the opportunity to serve and I, I gotta tell you, the smile on these kids' faces absolutely makes it all worth, it's, Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun. Thank you very much Mr. Meyer. We really appreciate the donation and I can attest that I have three children who still have their dictionaries that they're in seventh grade country so they've had for seven years. So great. We really appreciate the dictionaries and, and all the ways in which you and the Rotary Club serve our students. We're thank you all. Any questions or comments? You wanna vote now? Yeah. Yeah.
Did anyone have any comments? What was the word for Mary Poppins? Yes. Sometimes they try to do it backwards. Some of these kids are move to accept the donation as presented tonight. The Rotary Club. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone? Outstanding. Thank you very much. That's, we really appreciate you. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks all and have a good night. Dr. McKen. We can just give that to, that's a library. Actually I don't need that copy. If you wanna still leave. Okay. Speaker 9: I just really wanna thank the Rotary Club for the gift. As a member of the public for those dictionaries. I still have my third grade dictionary
and I came from a family where the, your parents wouldn't buy you a dictionary and I felt like I had the world at my fingertips and it changes lives. The gift of words. So I just had to add my thank you 'cause I really do still have that dictionary and I treasure it. So Thank you. Natick Rotary. Speaker 1: Thank you. Alright, well move things over to Dr. Oh wait sec. I'll do the consent. Yeah, yeah, let's do the consent agenda. Move approval of the consent agenda. Second. All in favor? Anyone opposed? AB sustain. All right. Consent agenda's approved. 6 0 0.
Now we'll move to the Excellent. Good evening. We'll start with a brief update on Keith Tech and MS. Be will do that. Speaker 10: Great. So I brought to you recently an update on the CT policy for our middle schools. I'm now share with you an update that we received from KE Tech, which is their new policy for admissions for KE tech. The state and DSI has implemented new requirements for how students are accepted to KE tech.
So Dr. Stash received a letter from Mr. Evans who is the superintendent of KE tech on how their new policy for admissions will impact native public schools for the class of 2030, which will be the incoming ninth grade class. They will be accepting 233 students. Of that 17 of those seats will be allocated to Natick Public Schools. The current ninth grade class actually has 16 students from Natick. So we have one more seat that's allocated.
The difference is that it's a full lottery for students. So we have 17 seats that are assigned to Natick but it's a full lottery. That said, there is also a weighted component to that lottery. So students will have one lottery piece but they have three additional ways to add to that lottery. So based on their attendance, based on their discipline record and then based on their interest in ke tech,
in evoke tech school, they have additional opportunities for their name to be drawn in the lottery. So for students who have Fewer than 27 unexcused full day absences, they have one more entry into the weighted lottery for students who have not been suspended. And this is all within 270 school days prior to the application date who have not been suspended. And for students who show interest and in showing interest in A CTE, that is
a non-evaluative interview with a CT educator. We don't have CTE educators in Natick so that doesn't really apply to them. But they can show by submission of an audio or video presentation, a personal essay or a letter of recommendation from a non-family member. So any one of those three things can be submitted as another weighted piece of the lottery. So they have four ways to add to their, the weight of their lottery application.
So any student from Nita who applies has that as part of the way it's weighted for their lottery application. Any questions Ms. Brune? Speaker 1: So the lottery is, I understand the weighted portion, but what you're saying is 17 names will be drawn out of a hat. I didn't realize there was that tight of a cap are okay. And is there ever any, if we had a lot of students that wanted to go to Keef Tech in one year,
is it only ever those 17 or are there, are there any other ways that the 233 spots, other spots are available to native students? Speaker 10: At this point? They're telling us that only 17 of those spots are for us. Speaker 1: And Speaker 10: Because of the way it's allocated, Framingham has the most, and you can see from that actually that chart shows. Yeah. How many students? The majority of the seats go to Framingham. We're pretty much in line with the other towns that are in district for Speaker 7: Collins. Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure. Do we track the number of students
that apply versus who was accepted? Speaker 10: We do. We keep track of all of them. Speaker 1: So how many students? I Speaker 10: Don't know the number off the top of my head right now, but I can definitely get that for Speaker 1: You. Okay. Speaker 10: Ms. Collins, Speaker 7: The waitings I assume are the same for all five districts sending schools? Speaker 10: Correct. Their application process is the same for any sending district Speaker 7: And it's 270 days Speaker 10: Prior to the application date. Speaker 7: So it's like a year and a half. Correct. Speaker 10: It includes seventh grade and eighth grade, Speaker 7: But the state considers anything over 18
the excessive absenteeism. So that's the why you get the year and a half, 27. Okay. Just wanted to be sure I was following. Thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Brunel. Okay se second question. Does this possibly thinking about the strategic plan here, if we had a, because my understanding is we can't offer certain programs to compete with our vtech school in-house. I might be wrong about that, but I've definitely heard school committee members speak about that at the conference. So we're to have say a bunch of students, I know the HVAC program for example,
is very popular at KE Tech. If we had a group of students that wanted to build a specific skill like that and there were only 17 spots available, could we offer something in Natick? So part of Speaker 10: The application process also they have to select their top three choices and if there are seats available, that also impacts their application. So if there are more seats available in say, say cosmetology as one of their top choices, then they may get in over someone who's going for HVAC
because there are fewer seats available. Speaker 1: I guess I'm just wondering Kinetic ever provide this as a career education pathway for our students. If we only have 17 spots available a year for a class of 800 kids or we have 400, 500 Speaker 10: Kids in the class, Speaker 1: I'll just weigh in. I think that that's a very important point that we should be bringing up. If interested in our forums and in our survey for the, for long-term work, I think there's probably, you know,
more demand than there is supply. Yeah, I have a question. So you, you said they, they could express like a video or a letter of interest. Will they still have the same opportunity to meet with one-on-one a counselor from Keith Tech to talk about what the school is like and students who are interested? I mean part of the current application processes, they get an interview with a key vet counselor and it kind of helps them understand if that's going to be a good place for them or not.
Well that's be part of the new process or is it strictly they'll just apply Possibly having never set footing tech to see what it's like. Speaker 10: I reviewed the application process and I did not see that in there but if I can review it again they, they do the, the tour and the visit and they meet with their own guidance counselors to go over that process. I don't know that they continued to have that interview but I can look into Speaker 7: That for you. Speaker 1: And then another, another question I have is when they,
when they apply or expressed the statement of interest, is it the student who has to apply? Because also the previous process was really focused on ensuring that this student had an interest in attending and that for example, parents didn't just fill out the application because they wanted that as an option for the student. Like there was a lot of focus on ensuring there was student voice. It it has to be the student has the student. Okay, great. Good. And I would be interested to know what the typical number of applicants are every year
because I see that this is not out of line with previous years freshman numbers, but I'm just curious. Speaker 10: I can get that for you easily. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Any other questions for anything? Speaker 7: I do Quick math in my head. So 17 per class freshmen, sophomores would be 7 68 students when that works. Okay. I never know what these days, there had been a point in which the, was it like 80 students? 'cause the entire thing was
bigger and there had been an effort. I was Chief Techs part to increase the number of students. Is that still part of their plan? Do you know or did they just figure out 233 divided by the five second schools proportionally Speaker 10: They did not indicate that that was their plan. Currently right now May has 10 12th graders, 23 11th graders, 13 10th graders and 16 ninth graders. So there was one larger group at 11th grade. In looking at the numbers, Holliston seems
to be fairly consistent at between 15 and 17 over the four years we've gone up and down a little bit but I think besides most of us seem to be around the teens area, so they haven't really indicated that they're trying to increase that number. And they've said that because they have to stay within that 230 or so range that we're gonna be staying under that 20 Speaker 7: Follow up. So it used to be that chief tech would panic if Natick hit
below 70 total students. This would ensure that Natick hits below 70 students. Okay. Unfortunately. Thank you. Speaker 1: Like I, I have one last question. Does, and this is really relevant, I'm just curious why Ashland's number is larger. Are they a larger school district than we are? Speaker 10: They are not, no. Speaker 1: So do we know how they decided to allocate more spots to Ashland versus Holliston Hopkins and Native na? Speaker 10: It may be based on the current incoming like the, their current ninth grade class, but they did not indicate to us how they made that decision.
Speaker 1: Okay. I guess actually we don't see I, I'm just seeing how many are there now. So I actually don't know how many are allocated to Ashland. Correct. Speaker 10: Yeah, they just told us what our number was. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 10: And again, this policy came from DSI and it's what they have to implement and all CTE high schools have to implement the same policy. They just have the option of whether or not they wait the admission or not. Speaker 1: Got it. Thank Speaker 7: You. I'm sorry there one other if that's okay. Speaker 1: Ms. Ms, Speaker 7: Were you able
to look into the post grad program? Speaker 10: Yes. It no longer exists. I Speaker 7: Say no longer exist. So if the students don't get in in the ninth grade, that's not an option anymore for kids to graduate from and then do a year, then they can do the evening program but they can do the cp. Okay. There is no longer that program. Okay, thank you. That's unfortunate it, although it was the best kept secret need. Thank you Ms. Appreciate it. Okay. Speaker 1: So we'll get back to the committee on some of the questions here and and probably can give them a copy of the actual policy.
Great. So we'll move to the next item, which we'll start. And then if Dr. Fugman has anything to add, 'cause he's been quite a partner to us, we're grateful for, for his assistance on the working group. The strategic plan has a landing page which we've linked in the agenda. We're actually going to create, I know or I understand the committee is eager to kind of hand out some of these flyers perhaps on New Year's Eve at other events. So we're gonna actually get some copies to you tomorrow. We'll figure out how to get them to you if they're picked up or we drop 'em off someplace. But this QR code, which you can see on the landing page
and I think Linda is likely to project, will bring anybody here which will kind of be updated with all the latest. So once we have the survey and the survey windows there, obviously we have a communication plan of how we're gonna kind of communicate and roll this out. So just to let everybody know, everybody know that's where to land if you wanna know what's going on with the strategic plan. We worked as a working group the other day with our partner TLA and took a look at the, I don't know, 123 questions on the survey. It's a branched survey. So no one group of people will have 123 questions,
but depending on what stakeholder you may choose to identify with, you would go down a series of roughly 2325 questions. So that's done. It's going into thought exchange, it's gonna be easily translatable into all of our languages. So thanks to Ms. Bel on that. So we're well underway with our survey. In addition today we met as a team because on December 19th was the due date for applications for people to become part of our steering committee, which is about, I think it's 36 members. Every cabinet member and principal are on it. That is something that's pretty traditional
on these committees. And then for Natick we have three school committee member slots, four high school student spots, six educator spots with two representing pre-K and elementary, two for middle school and two for high school. We have a designated spot for union leadership. I'm happy to to say Jefferson will do that. We're grateful to have you. We have six for caregivers, two for pre-K and elementary, two for middle school and two for high school. So a really robust committee. We're excited for this and we went through the applications.
We're going to be extending those to people tomorrow and we'll post the membership of this committee on this landing page on January 5th when we return. So lots of stuff underway behind the scenes to kind of mobilize this work and we're feeling very confident that we'll be ready to go. We after break anticipate a lot of communication around our forums, which anybody, there's no limit to how many people can go to these forums. There will be, if there's not already a Google forum on the landing page where people can kind of sign up and say I'm interested so
that they can get a calendar reminder. So I think we've taken all of the good ideas of the committee in hand and we've tried to operationalize it and we're underway. So we're happy to take any questions on that Dr. Fussman may wanna add, but that's where we are right now with the status update. Speaker 11: Go ahead. Yeah, I'll just add, well first of all e, everything that you said, yes it was, it's been a lot of great work the team to get everything started. The one thing I'll, I want to bring the committee's attention to is the various opportunities that we all have to promote
the strategic plan process. So I did send by email the outreach signup sheet that I think Ms. Brunell originally has signed up, has set up go. If you go there, you'll notice that I highlighted in yellow all of the different events in December and January. Actually one event in December, the New Year's Eve and January. Those are all opportunities where we can volunteer, continue to volunteer since we all volunteer anyway to promote the strategic plan. So as Dr. Scott said, we'll be at the new, sorry, the new New Year's Eve event at
the rail trail. So the spot's there for all of us to volunteer for the members of the public. You don't need to volunteer to man the table to a person at the table, but definitely stop by if you are attending that event. And then in January we have two in-person farmer's market events. We also were invited by Coffee with a purpose to speak at that event. Their call on January 5th. I'll also add what's not here is I'm actually meeting tomorrow with people at the senior center talk about how to engage to the aging council, council for the Aging,
to engage them as in the searching client process, including the forms in the survey. I've also reached out to seat A, I know others, Ms. Burn. I dunno if you wanna add, I know you've been engaging people so there's a lot of stuff happening already behind the scenes to get the word out and just encourage you all to help out. Speaker 1: Thank you. And I haven't signed up yet, so I will for sure. Thanks. Reminder Dr. Nixon. Ms. Breno, do we wanna set the date for the virtual coffee in January now based on, that's not a day that I can't do a Tuesday at 12, but are there committee members that can,
and that time is also arbitrary. That's something we made up. We we wanna keep that virtual coffee. I see shy nodding. Matt do we wanna do it at noon or do you wanna do it at six o'clock? Those were the two times we found people could meet virtually. So we didn't do the one in December, is that right? We haven't honestly done them for, you know, maybe 12 months. But we, when we first started, we did it. We would do one in the one at noon the next month we would do it at 6:00 PM Okay.
When the override happened, we just kind of channeled our energy towards the override. Right. Looking down the table, do we want to keep the Tuesday at noon slot or do we wanna move it to 6:00 PM But we don't know what day that would be either. Is that right? Right. Speaker 11: I mean if we're ambitious we can try to do two in January. One at 12th, one at six. So we have the whole month of January. I mean as soon as we're all back because I think the first activities begin that the survey begins end of January.
Yeah. So the first community forum is January 26th. So if you want to try to have two coffees, one virtual coffees, one at noon and one on sixth between January 5th and January 26th. Speaker 1: Yeah, 26th. Speaker 11: That's when the first forum starts. So, so the, they both would be focused on getting people to sign up for the forms and, and then the survey and just kind of get a sense of the rest of the process. Speaker 1: Do you think it's, should we replace that coffee with these virtual forums and try to just drive interest for people to go on the 26th and the 27th instead of taking another slot?
You know, like, or do you, would this be a a value add if we had a virtual coffee drive interest? Or should we just consider this the virtual coffee? This one? What's attendance like at the virtual coffees? Not, I mean under five it's, they've always been very good deep conversations but they're, yeah. But I would say let's do one take time that we think might be the most valuable. That would be my thought. Then use the rest, use our energy to try to get more people to the actual forum. Speaker 11: Yeah, I think Mr. Elli, you bring a good point
that it would be important to clarify that the virtual coffee is not a forum. Like we're not gathering information about the plan. Rather we would discuss the process and encourage people to attend. Well, but yeah, that sounds like a good idea to just try to start with one and stick with that. Speaker 1: So we, the largest participation we've had is four people and that was an coffee that was held at noon. So do you wanna try at noon time? Can anybody volunteer at that time? Speaker 7: Which day is it Speaker 1: On a Tuesday? It would be any Tuesday. Any Tuesday or Wednesday. I mean it really depends.
If we move it to a Wednesday, I could do it, Speaker 12: Move it to a Wednesday. I, I wish I could help. I can't do middle of the Speaker 1: Day. Speaker 7: I generally can. Speaker 1: Okay. Kathy, you wanna do a Wednesday with me? Sure. Speaker 7: Okay. Speaker 1: Let's say the Wednesday before the forms. That makes Speaker 7: Sense. The 21st. Speaker 1: You guys think that's enough time to the 21st? Speaker 7: Yeah, I think we should go one week before that. Speaker 1: Okay. The 14th. 14th done. Okay, Speaker 11: I'll just add the two of you. Speaker 1: Okay. And then for the farmer's market, is there a reason you're saying 10 to 12?
I don't know when the commerce market happens. The farmers market, it starts at nine, goes to noon. 12. Oh I didn't put it there. Speaker 11: Oh, I don't know. Is it, is it just nine should Speaker 7: Nine to one I think or eight 30 to one. It runs to one. Speaker 1: Okay. Okay, great. Super. And then I think we have one, did you have any, any other items you want or should we talk about? That's what I, yeah, so we have our, our action item that we have to take today is to a point we with many members to the strategic plan steering committee. So I have heard by email from Ms.
Gomes who would like to participate and also from Dr. Fussman who would like to continue to participate. So is there anybody else? We have the third thought. Speaker 12: I won't have to fight anybody but, Speaker 1: Okay, so Mr. Brand Ms. Collins is three, Speaker 6: It's three these on votes. Speaker 1: I think its three including, yeah. Three it's three members. Yeah. So we can have two voting members and our METCO representative Speaker 7: If that wants to do it. I'm fine. Speaker 6: I was about to say the same thing. Speaker 11: Arm wrestle. Speaker 1: I was thinking rock, paper, scissors.
But it's the strategic plans. I think we actually not, I Speaker 7: Might have a better chance at rock, paper scissors than I do arm wrestling. So thank you for that vote. Speaker 6: I'm happy, I'm happy to do it. Speaker 1: Okay, super wonderful. So we need to vote on this or? Yes. Okay. So if we could have a motion then to appoint I move appointment of Ms. Gomes, Mr. Brand and Dr. Folkman to the strategic plan steering convention. Second. All in favor? Anyone against anyone? Abstaining.
Alright, so that's wonderful. 6 0, 0 representative. So thank you everybody for volunteering. Appreciate it. Excellent. That was swift. Okay, we're gonna move into the start of the FY 27 budget presentation and we'll start with with the data. Right. Great. I miss having all the other screens that I can see that. Okay. Oh the actual budget presentation. I was just taking something. So we're gonna start with the overview and then we'll move into two presentations tonight. One will be from the IT department with Dennis
and the other will be with the facilities department and that'll be Deborah. So you kind of get three different chunks. There we go. Here you can see really it's put in three parts. The first will be just to ground this year's budget and goals and priorities. Then we'll move forward and do really, you know, the case for level service recommendation which is a core piece that we'll start with. And then we'll go through the recommended FY 27 budget. As always we'll kinda get the dollars and the head count, the budget drivers an update on circuit breaker and then strategic allocations which is
what we're calling kind of investment where we ask add some things and then also propose some reductions that are all budget neutral and those are really strategic direction for the district. And then we'll give a further reduction for consideration for goals and priorities. This is different than last year as I think this will continue to be evolving based on where we are. The first is to stabilize the budget post override. We all think, you know, the override was a long time ago, but we're still kind of stabilizing and absorbing the reductions and settling that we'd like to create a space,
as I just said, for targeted strategic reallocation with a budget neutral impact. We had a taste of that last year. This will be this year's version. We wanna avoid the scale of cuts from the past two years. We're proud of those cuts and kind of where we are with the district for that. But we wanna avoid the student facing cuts and preserve services for students. You wanna do it? Yeah. Yeah. So if you recall last year as part of the budget book, the budget subcommittee drafted a set of guidance priorities and values At the time when we did it, we really fully expected that this was a two year set of goals.
We knew that it'd be two years to complete the strategic plan to get memorial feasibility study. So our recommendation is that there aren't any changes required to this for this year. I expect significant changes potentially are likely based on the strategic plan work. Jason wrapping up a lot of the work that's being done in math literacy and where that focus heads and then you know what plan, what comes out of the feasibility cer the feasibility process. I can see changes next year but I think at the time we really expected this to be consistent for two years. Thank you. This is just a sub. Were you gonna do this one or was I
Speaker 13: Still Speaker 1: Okay? Still me. Good. So we just wanted to kind of remind people, it's probably very easy for everyone here to remember this, but for the record, just the recent bus budget, fiscal responsibility over the last two years or so. So we've been proceeding, when I came the FY 24 reductions, the budget request was 84.5 million and the appropriation was 83.3 million. 1.3 million reductions made throughout that year. In FY 25 there were 793 was the actual reduction,
which was 11.5 positions including some goods and services in FY 26, which is this year 1.4 million. That included about half a million for FTEs and 10 people. And so then the expense reductions, the other part of that 1.4 million was in professional development digital program and then operational efficiencies. We also increased fees last year to the tune of $215,000. So there's a good story of kind of that reduction and and downsizing so to speak.
And we think that's a nice stable space to stay in and we've absorbed those fairly well. So this is really just a reminder to the committee and anyone watching. So we'd like to give the case or the basis for why level service is what we think is a smart recommendation. And here we go to Mr. Gillis. Speaker 13: Yes, thank you actually that that last slide was originally me but I was looking at the screen and we were one behind seeing it's always good to keep the superintendent on teamwork. Speaker 1: You're so honest. Speaker 13: So here's NA at a glance
and it looks a lot like what you would find on the DESI homepage slightly modified to this year. So we got about 5,225 students. That's our total one account. About 440 teachers eight schools gives us a 12 to one student teacher ratio. And I know some people might be thinking, hey wait, my kid's class is closer to 18, 19 20, 22 to one. Well when you factor in guidance counselors and small groups and all the staff that we have, that's how we get to a 12 to one. You you've got a a listing across there of high need students and some of those are English language learners,
economically disadvantaged students with disabilities and students with their first language is not English. There's a DESI pie chart down the bottom that should say 78% and if you add everything up it falls just short of a hundred 'cause that's DESI and when they do that Speaker 1: Roll, Speaker 13: But when they do that it's if people don't report what type of background they are or nationality or race, they leave it blank. So it's all in there but just sometimes the pie chart isn't always as as pretty as you would think. Next slide. We'll we'll hand it back to the superintendent.
Speaker 1: So in addition to that kind of at a glance and we have had the MA presentation so I'm not gonna kind of go through that again but we just want this chart is just to remind us that Natick do is high achieving. We achieve, we're really proud of our teachers and our students and the function of our schools. Our MCA scores are routinely outpace the state. We're do very, very well in our DAR dart districts in terms of accountability percentages, we're showing growth right now. Last year in MCAS we had growth of two points in our three
to eight ELA as well as in math. By three points in grade 10 are renaissance assessments that are showing the growth from last fall to this fall are also showing growth. That means kids are doing better in in terms of their proficiency levels at the start of this year versus last year. We also do a lot with advanced placement. There's been an increase from last year in the number of students taking AP exams going from 608 2 students to 6 88. That's a 14% increase. I don't think people see this every day an increase in the number of AP exams. So going from 1001 76 to 1,338,
another 14% increase in the number of tests, that's about 1.9 tests per kid if you did did it straight out. And then 94% of our students earn a score of three or higher on one of their exams. So this is, all of this is just is to not let us forget that while we continually are working to improve the district, our district is very high performing and does very, very well which we want to protect. Speaker 13: Right. So next slide is our enrollment trend. And you can see we're relatively stable
2021 we had 5,251 kids this year on October one. These are all October one snapshots, 5,225 kids. So it's really just a, a net decrease of 26 kids. We went up a little bit, it's been a a slight decline the last couple of years. We have reduced staff as talked about slightly in the last one. So we're always looking at our enrollment fairly carefully because students equal staff and students equal dollars. And then the results that you just heard about. So this is why we're pretty much gonna be
asking for a level services budget. And I know some people would immediately think, well if you have less kids, why don't you just immediately cut the staff? Well 'cause when they're spread out, we'll call it 75 kids approximately spread out amongst 13 grades doesn't always equate to reducing staff right away. So it's something that we tend to work in over time. And if we go to the next slide, Speaker 1: Yeah, this is just to say, and this is sort of the story we continue the same charts we used last year. If you attended an override forum, these are the same exact charts we just added that sixth year in.
So the story of enrollment is flat, like Matt said, the story of our selected student populations in terms of special education, our students with disabilities we're really flattening out there at about 18.4. It's nice to see that stability. And then for multilingual learners we continue to be on an increase. So this year we went from 5.3 to 5.4% and you can see up at the top right the number of students that have increased over six years. And as I described last year when we go went through the override, we need specialized services
and staff to support those students. And so again, we're not asking to increase but we're saying level services is supported by these numbers. And then the LA next slide please. This is just to summarize, we're strong, stable, and high performing district. I hope you're enjoying the Beetlejuice picture. That's our vibe here. While total en enrollment has remained flat, the number of students requiring those specialized supports have increased level service budget allows us to sustain programs, staffing and services that are working for our kids today. We're very grateful for the continued partnership of this committee. The trust of families staff and the whole Natick community.
So that hopefully gives you the case for why we're suggesting and recommending a level service budget. We'll go through that budget drivers and circuit breaker update and then we'll go through strategic allocations at a 30,000 foot view. Last year we did this as well and we didn't, we did it very close to the budget book so we don't kind of send any shock way through through the system. But we're gonna give you the highlights and then we'll give you a few comments on further reductions. I'm gonna frame it and then Mr. Giles is gonna go through. So here you see the level service level service, the definition which we put here
because we often have people asking, sometimes people say level funding and that would mean that whatever the dollars we had last year would be the dollars we had this year. But level service is different. Level service maintains current programs and staffing at the existing levels. So the levels we closed out FY 25 in it accounts for known cost increases, AKA inflation, it could include salaries or new bargain agreements, benefits, utility values. It does not add any new initiatives. Headcount or expand services. That's what level service is. Our level service budget is 100 million 659 12
and that's a 5.4% increase. I don't think that's the first time you're seeing that this year. That's what the level service is. We're gonna bring you through in kind of chunks of this presentation after Mr. Gillis goes through the drivers of that a hundred million dollars, we'll go through the strategic allocations, which I wanna note represent less than 1% movement inside the budget, $0 impact and a decrease to attrition of 1.6 FTE. And then we'll go through the further reductions for consideration. Speaker 13: Okay, so the next slide is our budget summary. And this does reflect level services
and the categories are what the school committees used at least the last few years. And I inherited an FY 24. So we break it out in salaries and then non salaries and then by kind of a roll up of, of sort major functions. And you can see administration 2.8% increase. We will have some details on that later instruction, a 5.4% increase athletics activities about almost an 11% increase. Transportation for salaries shows a 30% increase. But basically because we went from one staff person to one
and a half and we added a monitor 'cause the the vendor providing the service couldn't find somebody to do it. So we found this a staff person that we pay to ride the the van with the student. It, it cost us about the same either way it's just we gotta pay, we've gotta pay for the service one way or the other. Facilities an increase in, in staffing for overtime that we have been paying for in the past but we hadn't really been budgeting for. And then the non salary items listed below, you can see some things are up, some things are down. If you go down to the bottom
to tuitions you can see a 3% increase is it's fairly stable. Nice representative of the way our program's been running. We can get into some of the more details but again, like a 99 plus percent level services from 26 to 27, we're really not looking to change too much of what we've been doing. We're just looking to make some refinements. And then let's summarize those, those drivers on the, the next slide. So the first thing is the collective bargaining agreements. You know staffing is is about 80% of the budget and most
of our staff are in collective bargaining agreements and most are got a 3% raise. Couple of the, some of the powers early steps got a 4% raise. They're our lowest paid full-time, full day employees. And then unit B our administrators, we have like, like a a 2% raise. That's what we negotiated last year. We're in year one of three year contracts for all of our bargaining groups. So the non rep salary range is, is proposed at 3%. That's not set in stone. That's where we're starting at transportation,
we're in year three of a five year contract. Next year is an option year that the school committee can vote to opt into or not. So our regular administration transportation increase would be about 5.6% without any changes to user fees. You know, later we will recommend a $25 fee increase and that cuts that in in line item in particular almost in half to a 2.8% increase Special ed transportation, we're estimating a 6% increase. We're looking at possibly changing vendors
and it's one of our, our biggest vendors is accept collaborative and, and they're proposing changing their funding model and that could see a, a sharp increase to what we would have to pay. So we might have to consider alternatives and testing the market for more affordable services that can meet the same needs. The standards would still be the same. Safe, reliable transportation gets the kids to school on time no matter who's providing. Again, I talked about special ed tuitions 'cause that was good news. Vocational agricultural tuition, even though we may not be seeing much of a,
an increase in kids applying to Keef Tech, the vocab has been popular of late. And even just adjusting for two kids graduating and three coming in for next year, you know that that that's a significant increase in the tuition there. And I guess they also had a capital project that added to, added to that tuition. They do get to assess us when they build something per pupil, they can assess us and apportionment of the cost of that construction. So that's a summary there. Circuit breaker, I think just a quick refresher
for some folks on the committee. We, two years ago we used $2 million to stabilize the budget and we sort of depleted circuit breaker down to a few hundred thousand bucks and we went out for an override and with the the budget override we were hoping to restabilize circuit breaker and and I think we've been able to do that. So as you can see there from the bo purple box on the left, you know, looking at it last week we began the year with about almost a $1.4 million balance.
We're gonna get 4,030,000 in revenue. We've got 3,600,000 plus in tuition expenses about 150 in salary expenses keep a reserve for special ed transportation for when if should that line item go over and it looks like we'll spend just over 3.9 million and carry over 1,000,005 so that that would show a slight growth. And then to help stabilize next year we start with 1,000,005. Our revenue is projected to decrease slightly because some of the kids that are in the program now appear
to be, not appear to be, they will be aging out and the kids that are on the watch list that we do budget for their programs will be cheaper than some of the kids aging out. So the sort of the, the crest in the, the bottom of the wave there comes and goes where we can get revenue. If somebody's only here for a couple of months and they don't cross the threshold of $53,000, we don't get any reimbursement for that particular kit. Doesn't mean we don't have the expense for the first two months, but it's not eligible for reimbursement. So our tuition expenses are expected to go up from last year
to this year from 3.6 to almost 3.9 million salary go up a little bit, same reserve and transportation expense. And then we'd be looking at about $1.23 million in circuit breaker carryover for FY 28. And the program seems to be stabilizing so that if we do have some move-ins or some shocks to it, circuit breaker would be able to carry us without having to go back to the voters right away
or even to the services that that we provide. And I think that's really kind of the main twofold purpose of the circuit breaker program is to, to provide some relief and stability for the entire education program for the, for the high cost to students. And then I'll pause there if there's any questions about circuit breaker or other drivers before we hand it back to the superintendent Speaker 11: Questions for the committee, Dr. Fon. So one of the specific drivers
is transportation, both regular and special ed it sounds like with special ed transportation, we're looking at other options as a way to control cost. I'm wondering to what extent, you know, I'm just looking at all the drivers, most of them we don't really have much control or want to change, but that one seems transportation in general seems like that's one where we may may want to consider. What are some options, especially since you did add once we,
when we signed that contract, you did add that optional year, the option of optional years, right? I'm wondering what kind of leverages or to what extent do you think necessarily going into the, the details of like who the competitors are or, but do we have options and is that, is transportation leverage we can play with to reduce costs? Speaker 13: So one of the things that we didn't bid out much of with the bid was these special ed out of districts because we're a member of except collaborative and that's who we had been doing business with. So you, you don't have to bid out collaborative services.
Collaborative is an extension of its members. So it's an extension of Natick and Wellesley and Holliston, Ashley and like the other towns that are part of it. Framingham, they're all part of the collaborative. So you're not required by law of bid it out and in theory you collaborate to pull your resources to get an economy of scale so that you would be cheaper or at least competitive with the market so that you could provide the services you needed. If the cost of the services go up significantly, then some
of the collaborative members are kind of forced to consider other options and, and we might be some of the folks in that situation so we can reach out to vendors as we have in the past because not all of our out of district services are provided by the collaborative. Sometimes they haven't been able to meet the demand or the need based on what they have available for staffing and vehicles. So we've, we've sought some alternatives so we're probably gonna be doing that yet again. Our our in town contract is, is very competitive and we we're not looking to change from that.
We changing some outta district runs that, you know, we'll, we'll be looking to see if we can find alternative pricing Speaker 11: And just your sense of the market. Do you think that Speaker 13: There are Yeah, because we have, we have time to give vendors a heads up and they have time to procure a vehicle and driver and, and we'll be ready to start for next, next year. We won't, we won't be calling them in August and seeing if, if they're ready next week, we'll, we'll we, we understand how the business works
and we'll try to make sure it works for them in for us. Speaker 11: Thanks Speaker 13: Okay's committee. Next slide. Speaker 1: So this is the side we previously showed. We're just showing that we're moving into a kind of a conversation around strategic reallocation. Again, I'm gonna do this kind of 30,000 feet and we'll frame it out for you as we move closer to releasing the budget book. Next slide. So these are the main categories. Big kind of think of these as like initiatives that might drive money changes. So communications, you all know that our communications director resigned in September.
That's been an open position and so we're gonna look at some realignment there of duties, some fee adjustments we have outlined some increases in fees across the board that we would recommend. Again, we'll do that when we come and actually present on fees. That's a future. We outline that as one of our January meetings. It cost sharing, that's Mr. Roche is gonna actually talk to you about that to today. So each of the people who kind of come in to present, they'll have a piece in their budget that, that show you what we're thinking about for strategic reallocation. So you'll start to get a feel for that today.
Adding a position in IT around risk management capacity. These are shared positions with the town. We have the need and we'd like to add an elementary therapeutic program expansion. Continue to think of this as break even. Money neutral, money impact overall, we've talked about a literacy audit that we're in the middle of. We're in the second year of it. We need to pay for that. That's gonna be about $300,000 next year. So that's not level service. That's an addition to add $300,000 of literacy curriculum that we definitely need. We have a plan that we'd like to propose and we'll have an elementary principal come in in late
January to present to the committee around a multi-tiered systems of support or MTSS elementary reorg phase one of that, I don't wanna call it a pilot, but it's kind of phase one rollout of that we want to expand. And we've had a conversation about that earlier today around college and career readiness support at the high school. And we think that's something that our kids definitely need. I think they're, they're doing it now, but we wanna ramp that up and then hopefully the committee will be happy about this. We have in the plan to work with a consultant on a high school schedule study that includes how the schedule actually works within the
school day, but also start and end times overall this impact will be neutral. So budget impact of zero and I talked about an estimate of a decrease of 1.6 FTE that we see through attrition and not through actually reducing positions where people are in them. And again, more detail to come. Okay. Next slide. Because of that 5.4%, we, you know, we just felt like from what we're kind of hearing, if there's an appetite of this committee to feel that going below a level service would be something to consider.
We wanted to let you know, it's not something we recommend, but we give you kind of a pointer as to where we think it would happen and we could get it from 5.4 to 4.9. That would be a decrease in three FTEs and another $480,000. Let's go to the next slide please. So, additional reductions of about 480,000 would require, would be required to limit the growth to 4.9% or under 5%. Those cuts would be on top again of $2 million of cuts made that were sum student facing over the last two years and were carried forward.
So even a 5.4% increase is on a lower base because we made those cuts. These reductions are not something we're recommending, we're just offering them to commit to the committee to think through. If that's where the, there are pressures, we would suggest an additional 130,000 in user fee increases beyond the 207,000 we already have included in strategic reallocation. You'll have that presentation later, but you know the number, there's 207,000 assumed as increased fees in the strategic reallocation money. We would see the need to eliminate another three student facing FTEs.
A shock I do not want in our system, and I bet we don't hear either. And then we would limit what we think is a very smart phase to, to re reorganize, to support multi-tiered systems of support. We'd have to reduce that for what's in the strategic reallocation assumption right now is $50,000. We'd have to reduce that to a budget neutral zero. So that would have an impact on our plan and we just wanted to give that to the committee to think through, especially if you are discussing this with others. And then if you have any questions, we're happy to answer questions from the committee.
Dr. Fon, Speaker 11: I don't really have a question. I have more of a comment just to get the conversation started. I appreciate the recommendations for further reductions just in looking at these three bullets, each one of 'em for really good reasons, concerns me and I can go through the reasons, but, but if, if we engage in conversation, but in general, I would say that to me the 5.4% increase versus 4.9, there's good reasons for why we need the 5.4. When you look at the difference, just for what it's worth, I would, I don't feel the appetite
for, for the reductions. Speaker 1: Other questions, Ms. Laers, you just, we've been going through these numbers previously in budget subcommittee and it's, there's isn't, there isn't space there. I mean all of these numbers are grounded in what, you know, what our contracts bore out and what we felt, you know, for fair wages and for what our students need. So I mean, I'm really grateful that all the numbers really do tie out and it's really easy to see the story and see it laid out. And I would really challenge the town if, if they're saying that, that it's not amenable.
I mean the town came forward and voted for the override because they didn't want to lose the quality education that our schools are providing. And so we're doing the town disservice if we don't, if we don't make that happen. And I have a challenge with town to ask, you know, where is that money? We sell $14 million going to free cash. No, I know there's, you know, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of open, there's there's, we need to figure out where that money is and just make sure it's there Speaker 10: For the schools. Speaker 7: Any other Speaker 1: Committee? Ms. Collins,
Speaker 7: This is actually a question to you. So if we have questions on a particular change, would you prefer that we do it mean overview or when that budget more detailed budget is presented to us? Speaker 1: Give that to me. Yeah, Speaker 7: Anyone wants to answer it that edit the room Speaker 1: If there's a presentation coming. So for instance, fees will be its own presentation. So I think we'd rather wait on that. IT, Mr. Roche will be here today to do it. Literacy, curriculum adoption. We could answer right now MTSS elementary reorg,
we're actually gonna have someone come in and present to it. So I hate to say it kind of depends. Yeah. But I'm happy to take the question in if there's a presentation coming later. I can just say that. Speaker 7: Well I, two questions on facilities related stuff. Speaker 1: That presentation Speaker 7: Is today, is coming tonight. Yes. I would like to understand more about literacy, what it involves because it's been, it's been a serious question of this committee's, what are we doing to change over from where we've been in the past. Sure. Speaker 1: So I'll start and then I'm thinking Missoni might
wanna add in. So there will be a presentation on teaching and learning so that we can, it's good to hear where your, the committee is thinking so we can anticipate developing that presentation for you. But Ms. Baldoni can certainly give you an update on the literacy audit and where we are and then a description of that $300,000 and how it will be spent. Speaker 10: Sure. So the first part of this school year we piloted one curriculum at the K eight level and they just wrapped that up and all of the teachers who piloted actually
received rubric today with an opportunity to provide feedback on how that pilot went. And then they have been receiving training over the past two weeks for another pilot that will begin the second week of January, the week of the 12th. One curriculum 4K four, and then a second curriculum for grades five to eight either. And then partway through that they will give feedback on how that curriculum is going
and based on the feedback that we get this week on the first pilot and then midway through the second pilot, we'll make a determination if we need to pilot a third curriculum because we need to make sure that at the end of this we have a curriculum that we can roll out for the 26 27 school year that is considered a high quality instructional material. Which is the only thing that we are piloting. And you know, we are at the early elementary level, obviously regardless of the pilot we are implementing
science or reading, but we wanna make sure that whatever we are piloting also follows the framework of science of reading as well. But what we are piloting, we have quoted to ensure that that $300,000 would cover purchasing all of the materials and being able to train all of our educators in effectively implementing that curriculum in the first year of the rollout, Speaker 7: Which would be 26 27 school year. I this follow up is is more to give you an opportunity,
oh sorry, the follow up is is more to give you an opportunity to parents. So you said we're piloting piloted one program in the fall, we're piloting a second. What kind of, what word do you use guardrails? Do we have in place or do we anticipate needing to put in place for students who did really well under one curriculum but struggle under a second one so that we don't lose them for half a year or a year? Speaker 10: So our teach teachers are very skilled at identifying where kids may be struggling
and when we're seeing that we are pushing in and making sure that we're meeting their needs regardless of the curriculum. So if a kid is struggling, we're gonna make sure that we're not letting them fall. Speaker 7: What parents should know that what the curriculum that was used in the fall is not the curriculum that will be used beginning the middle of January. Correct? Speaker 10: Correct. So any parent who had a child, so not every teacher is piloting, right? So any child who was in a classroom where a pilot was happening, received a letter that their child was in the classroom and that was being piloted
and then they received a second letter this week saying that this is the new pilot is starting the week of the 12th and this is the curriculum. So they've received all of the information and can research. Speaker 7: Thank you. That's, I just wanted to make sure that we weren't changing something so that little Kathy goes home and says correct. Oh we're doing something different now, mom. Speaker 10: Yes. Thank you for that clarification. Now all parents have been notified and have been in the loop and have had the opportunity to talk with their classroom teachers or reach out to me or to Chris Cook, our director of curriculum instruction
to have any questions answered. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Brunel, what is the budget impact of the high school study schedule study or high school? What is the figure? Yeah, $30,000. Okay, thank you. Move on. Great closing that out. I'm sure you're gonna have a lot more on each of these bullets, don't worry. Including just now when Mr. Roche comes up and presents on the IT budget. Welcome. Speaker 14: Thank you Dennis Roche, chief Technology Officer. Wait for this flying deck. Okay, so each
and every year I present to you the technology budget. You're gonna see a lot of the same comment on the content that you see in the past. A lot of the slides we built an appendix so you can see are referred in the back as we come up. But I won't go through those unless you want me to those up. But the first thing I wanted to go through or how we're linking the technology budget to our district goals. So the four bullet points up there are the four broad categories I developed for the technology department linking to our goals and strategic plans,
implementing best practices for security. We're spending an awful lot of time in making sure that we're addressing the growing needs and security in today's goal. Both physical security and cybersecurity and those things are really critical to create a safe learning environment. So kids obviously thrive and IT supports SEO and their wellbeing continue process improvement. It isn't just a matter of buying something and implementing it. Often times we find out it's it some of the things
or gaps we find could just be a bad process that's not well-defined, not well trained. So we're spending an awful lot of our focus there as well. And that obviously demonstrates our leadership capacity but also builds a stronger team. Also, as we go through and identify gaps, we find a lot of opportunities to save money. So I'm hoping to share with you some of those things tonight when I present the budget numbers and all those things will free up resources that can go right back into instruction. In addition to that, the IT infrastructure and other new initiatives also lend itself to supporting SEL
and wellbeing and you know, everyone expects a safe to reliable infrastructure to work on even to have these public meetings like we are tonight. So those are the four basic goals and drivers. So if we go to the next slide, we'll talk about some of our variance drivers and strategic allocations. So the first thing we'll talk about a little bit is about their strategic allocation in it. I have a recommendation to hire an IT security analyst role and one of the main things I want to accomplish is we need to do more in-house and we can do this,
we have too much reliance on third party vendors. Third party vendors don't care as much about security as people who work in the environment care more about the environment, have a better sense of urgency. And a lot of these things in turn. And I'm talking about things that are also physical security issues and also cybersecurity issues because those are the two growing risks we see in the news every single day. So there's a link there to see a draft job description if you're curious in some of the details in that role that we're concerning creating. And I'll go through the numbers
and how we get to that strategic allocation on the next slide. On the bottom of this slide on the non-salary part of our budget expectation is that we have a safe, secure, reliable infrastructure and devices supporting teaching and learning. And we've done a good job of keeping those costs in line. Any control for fiscal 27, I think you're going to see a 3% decrease in the non salary part of the tech budget. For fiscal 27, my concerns really focus fiscal 28, there's about a $300,000 increase and equipment replacement
because in that year we're gonna be replacing devices at the elementary level. That was done about five or six years ago. So those are things we have to consider. And there's other labs that come later. So large part of my budget is based on devices and when they need to be replaced. So in the appendix you'll see as you've always seen, my annual report of devices and our device count has remained relatively flat. In fact it's gone down about 60 some odd devices this year and you know we peaked during COVID
and it's been coming steadily down and it's remained very stable since that time. So go to the next slide. So getting back to the strategic allocations, here's what we've done. So my position is a shared town school position of 40% paid by the town, 60% by the schools. And I have three people on my team who also have the same allocations as identified in the first bullet point here too. There's the budget, procure budget and procurement analyst. There's the data manager and a data administrator who also works
with the data manager. The three positions last spring. We also eliminated the IT assistant, IT director and I would like to use a portion of those funds. And the third bullet point to fund the IT security and risk management position that we talked about. So this is a cost neutral type allocation and it addresses the growing needs that we have regarding security. So the next slide is we're all at, I'm sorry, lemme walk you through this slide slowly. So the two charts, the the top chart is our level service
as we were talking about a little bit earlier. You'll notice the supply part of both these tables is exactly the same. So the only difference is really in the salary portion of the budget between these two charts. And the top chart, like I said, is level service the chart. The second chart down below is with the allocations I just spoke about in previous slides. So it incorporates myself, my three existing positions and the new IT security analyst and shared role town and school.
So it gets my FT key count down to 15 total. So that actually reduces my salary task by 8.2% and as I mentioned the nons salary portion has gone down 3%. If I walk you through the non-salary section briefly, the second line item under the non salary for equipment replacement at 4 73 7 25 is down about 125,000. So that's because when we're looking at the override,
I took a multi-year year of my budget overall and looked at what we could do to extend our dollars further. So we extended the life of a lot of our devices out to six years so we don't have to refresh them as often, but there comes a point in time where you have to, so in fiscal 28 that number goes up by about $300,000. So the good news is I'm looking five years out. So when you're looking that far out, you have time adjustments. So one of the first things I'll be doing after we get through this budget cycle is looking is whether those elementary devices are
still supportable going forward, which is one of the main drivers. Anytime I look at making recommendations to replace devices and if they're mandated because of that, that's one thing. If they're not, we'll look at other options. Do we have to upgrade them all? Is there a portion we can do? So I'm gonna go through this whole process before we get to the next budget site, I'll look at it. So the more time we have, the more we can absorb these types of bubbles and figure out other alternatives to that. But I just want to make you aware before we finish fiscal 27, I'm focused a year ahead
and rarely speaking do numbers go down And fiscal 27, I think we're in a good position budget wise and since we have an opportunity to to drive the budget down this year, let's take it. The other line item I wanna bring to your attention in the nons salary portion is the land win portion was the other one that up 56,044. When we hang on to technology just before it gets to be end of life, it gets to be more expensive. We have a fairly robust capital request for next year, just over a million dollars for tech
and that's gonna help drive some of those numbers back down a little bit when we do a refresh. So we're always balancing when something's end of life and how expensive is it to keep it. And we have to balance those two as we make these decisions. I could keep things longer but it might drive the operating budget up, budget up through the roof and that would be cost effective, make a lot of sense to, so we have to balance those two things out. So that's my presentation. The rest of the details are in the appendix. You'll see the inner report,
you'll see our sustainability plan that also identifies specific costs for fiscal 28 going forward that might track things up. You'll see a copy of the capital plan and you'll also see a copy of my staffing plans. Any questions I'd be happy to answer? Thank you Speaker 1: Mr. Roche. Questions for Mr. Roche? I see Ms. Brune and then Mr. Brand. Thank you. The salary budget, the hire, the IT security and analyst in one part. I see this is a 60 40 split with the town and the school budget. So can you walk me through the item
that's in your budget is the 60% of the school? Speaker 14: That is correct, Speaker 1: Yeah. And that number is, I've lost it. So 78, Speaker 14: Correct. Okay. It was, yeah, correct. Speaker 1: Okay. So I'm, I'm grateful that you are thinking strategically about that. I think it's important we share services like this. Just playing devil's advocate here. At one point we had a position like this that was grant funded. I think it was, I think it was similar. So could you just
Speaker 14: Slightly, slightly different, could Speaker 1: You just make the case for this position? 'cause every time we add a position we we need to that it, Speaker 14: Right? So the position we had before was someone who had law enforcement experience specifically it came from the FBI looking to do building assessments. So the, the difference in what I'm looking for now is a hands-on contributor who can actually work on various systems. I'm not gonna get into the details of those at a public meeting. Those are good executive session topics, but I'm looking for hands-on person
to contribute on physical security topics as well as cybersecurity initiatives that we have. The prior position was more strategic and not a hands on contributor. Speaker 1: And then just a quick follow up, is it common for school districts to have this position or is it, is this 60 40 split a good idea or is this like, you know how sometimes schools start to do everything and so I'm just, I just am pushing back a little bit like we have a police department for a reason. So I just, again, not that I don't agree with this, safety is a hundred percent on my mind all the time,
but I just wanna hear publicly why you're thinking a 60 40 split. Speaker 14: So, so I think having a split for this type of position makes a heck of a lot of sense. Again, I can't go into particular security initiatives but sometimes I have my town group do one type of project and the school group do another and then we share our experiences and we do just the reverse the following year. So there's a lot of good things that can happen and we don't have to limit ourselves to doing just one thing. We can do multiple things and I like the fact that we can get consistency across the board
'cause we can cross train more people on how to operate the various systems every time Talking about Speaker 1: This brand, Speaker 6: I mean you knew I had, I was gonna have, I'm wondering if you could guess what I'm gonna talk about. Yeah. So I would love to talk about that position as well. Yeah, one quick thing I I like bringing as much in-house as we can. My one pushback on that is the pen test, which I, I think is a really good thing to do from a third party.
Yep. This is a test that checks for vulnerabilities and so it's like who's watching the watcher? It's actually much safer to do when you're not when you, when if you have blind spots. But the, the job description to me, which is a a a really nice job description reads a bit more like a CSO position. And I'm concerned actually that the salary that's listed in the job description is like way too low.
And I'm not just for what the responsibility is and I wonder this, that salary based on that description looks to me to be like a junior position almost. And based on the numbers and what I see in the market, yeah this is a huge job and I, in my job I deal with cybersecurity stuff every day and if, and this position is like incredibly important to me and I'm concerned that with that salary listing we will not get
the experience people with the right experience. And I think that what the tasks here are actually very, that's what we should look be looking for. Yep. I think people will opt out because that salary feels too low and I don't know what your thoughts are on all that. Speaker 14: Well my thoughts are mixed. It's probably yours are too. We have to price it so we can afford it. This is people don't come to work in this environment for the money. You come because you wanna serve. Right.
That's why I come here too. It's not the salary that drops me, it's getting the work done, getting comes accomplished. I know there's other communities seeking the same type of resource as well. So we're gonna have to compete for those resources but we get that. Sure. But I think we also have to be mindful what we can afford. Speaker 6: Yeah. And I a hundred percent I of course understand that landscape. I am and I know you'll do a, a good job of hiring should this position be be filled. I'm, this is a lot of eggs to put in a basket
that I'm hoping like that it has to be somebody who is really sharp. Speaker 14: But the other thing I'll also mention is we shouldn't have the expectation that one position's gonna do it all. Yeah. What I'm trying to do is add more depth to the team and this will handle the digital aspects of physical security and cybersecurity and these other things may grow. So I don't expect anyone in any position we hire do a hundred percent of the job description out of the gate. Right. They're gonna do a portion of it and there'll be some that they'll, they'll know like the back of their hand.
There's others that'll be developed doing the time. Speaker 6: Yeah. So if, if I add one more quick comment, is that right? Speaker 1: Sure, go Speaker 6: Ahead. Just a quick one, one suggestion maybe to add to the required qualifications, strong communication skills, particularly with people who are not technical. Yep. We deal with this in my job constantly and if you're not a good salesperson when it comes to like what it is and we, we do trainings and all these things, if the people responsible for that don't know how to communicate, then this is a crowdsource implementation.
Right. It so that's how we encourage that. I mean that usually should go without saying but it Yep, Speaker 14: Totally Speaker 6: Agree. Okay, good. Thank you. Speaker 7: Welcome Speaker 1: Ms. Collins. Thank you. Speaker 7: So this 60 40 split came because of a vote that we took. Are we currently charging 40% of the count? Speaker 1: That's part of what this is. So we are now in this budget and Dennis did a good job working Speaker 7: With in the 27 budget. But Speaker 1: In the 26 budget? No, in the 26 Speaker 7: Budget? No, no. Speaker 1: Okay. For three positions we are carrying the whole thing.
Okay. And so we're moving, you can see that minus 1.2 at the top is 0.4 times three. I do wanna just clarify, I'm sure it's clear to many of us in here, but it's worth noting that the $78,000 that Mr Brand was kind of talking about that line is really a salary of one 30. Okay. And that's the 60% is the 78 in case others were not clear on that. But you have it right Ms. Collins. Okay, Speaker 7: So what is the process? Like? Who does what to charge? No, not in, not who does what to charge the town? 40%.
Speaker 1: My understanding is that the 40% now is going to, well 40% of Mr Roach's salary is covered in the budget. So there's no charging, it's literally I have the headcount but they have 0.4, his salary, I have 0.6 and going forward in FY 27, that will be the same arrangement with these other three positions. So it's a, we are calling it cost sharing that we have a benefit of 110 and a half thousand dollars. Speaker 7: I guess my concern is that for example the treasure collector's office is generally months behind in posting checks.
I couldn't even venture guess of how far behind they are in reconcile. And a lot of when we get financial information, a lot of it is, well this is only through or only represents x. I want to make sure that whatever we're doing, we have it clearly spelled out who is charging what to who. So that it's not something that gets, that falls off somebody's table and gee I thought you were doing it. I thought he was doing it. Yeah. Speaker 1: I appreciate, I see both of them wanting to answer. 'cause now I'm understanding your question better is, which is, and I have the same question.
Are these charged like at the same time in that fraction or is there a reconciling charge later? That's really what we're asking. Speaker 13: So I mean first year we, we did a journal entry 'cause we did this after the budget already started second year. It's just a straight payroll allocation. So every, every paycheck 60, you know Dennis, since you know he's the one that we're doing this with now, he gets his full paycheck. 60% hits our budget, 40% of the expense hits the town's budget every time there's two account numbers for one person.
It's, it's not a challenge or problem, it just needs to be set up Correct. And it has been so we think it can be town agrees to this. And, and just a little background as to how we got here. When, when the IT town position became vacant and the town approached the school department about sharing the position in the 60 40 split, you know, we agreed as long as we weren't gonna feel like we were losing anything
and we had faith in in in Dennis to, to do that and to work with the town of share since we do share services from other and it's worked out. And as, as it's evolved, Dennis and I'll let him expand on it, basically found the town was a little bit short staffed with how many town staff are there? Three, four. Speaker 14: There's four now. There was three. Speaker 13: There was three. Yeah. The, the school staff were helping to pick up some slack and that was something that was discussed with, with me and Bella at the time. And we said, you know, we didn't enter this just to say no,
we're, we're trying to partner And it took a little while but now I'll defer to Dennis. But it seems fairly consistent that those three staff that were used to be all school staff are spending about 40% of their time doing town work. And we haven't noticed a significant difference. 'cause I think they've found some efficiencies in how to get things done when you have one person looking at how to go about things as opposed to two people who might want to go in different directions. And with that, I'll, I'll defer to Dennis. Yeah,
Speaker 14: I, I think one of the biggest efficiencies I found personally is we spend no time debating approaches on what we're gonna solve. We focus all our energy to solving a problem, problem and getting things done. And that's really refreshing because it hasn't been that way when we've had our own ways of going above things. What I did confirm is all the employees we're talking about are in my town budget. Both that 40%, they're also on the school side, 60% of the IT security analysts
and both budget requests. So it's going through the budget cycle on both sides at the same time. So my hope Mike like yours that it's done the same on both sides with that application. Speaker 7: Yeah. But I got a little worried by something Ms. Phyllis just said of if the town agrees to this, is there flex in this possibility? Speaker 1: Well my understanding right now is that they have agreed to it, but we'll see it's gotta go through the cycle and then I think we'd have to reconsider if it, if we would have to take on 40% it would, it would displace something else.
If we wanna go budget neutral on strategic allocation, I do wanna commend Mr. Roach for finding $160,000 towards that strategic allocation. This is where we can start to understand like that. For those of you who aren't accounting minded, if we're gonna need to spend 300,000 in new literacy materials, 160 of that is coming from this plan. So I just wanna help people 'cause this might be a new way of looking at this budget. So the short answer is if we don't find that through these parallel processes through the town and through the school budgets, if something doesn't plan
as we think it's going to, based on a lot of conversations Mr. Roach had, we'd have to reconsider whether we would hire this as just a school budget. I'd be very worried about that because I think we have this 40 60 split and that's, I think Mr. Roach does a good job managing the workload split. But the budget should reflect it and the, and the actual should reflect it as well. I would never wanna go below 60% frankly. For what it's worth. That wasn't asked of me, but I'd weigh in here with that. We need it. Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I Dennis, you know the, I always sit here kind of black jot when you present because half of it I don't understand at all.
The other half I really, really appreciate. Speaker 14: Thank you for that Speaker 7: Ms. Speaker 1: So we've created sort of a, another section of the shared budget shared services without calling it shared services. Is that correct? Yeah, this is like a shared services 2.0. So as long as everybody's in communication, we're talking about it. Okay. I have one more question about the, the devices. I've been working a lot on my ability to do ratios because of my sixth grader and math. And so the ratios that I see between our devices
and our elementary populations might be a little off. And I'm wondering why if that's something that just is school choice, like user, some schools have different and they might not be that off, but you mean at the elementary school level? Is that what you're asking for Ex Yes. For example, you know we have schools that are, you know, 500, 494 kids in enrollment and they have different numbers of Chromebooks at those schools. Speaker 14: So, so the way we allocate devices grades five through 12
or one to one, but at the elementary level down to pre-K we have classroom sets. So it, it's depending on grade level, not necessarily enrollment. So each class at grades three and four have 15 Chromebooks per classroom. And at the younger grades there are less amounts than that. So they're, they're not tied, it's not a one-to-one and the ratios depending on class size are gonna be slightly different. So, and it, again, it's based on
what we think we can afford district wide and we maintained that since our initial deployment of elementary devices as well. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Yeah, I had a question, it's kind of looping back to this is the, is there one person who can meet the needs of this new role for schools and for the town? So I'm glad to hear that there's been some discussion of that on the townside, but I imagine there's some pretty significant differences in the needs on the school side versus the townside.
Speaker 14: There always are. Yeah. Speaker 1: So is is it ideal to have one person who can do both or are those two different sort of niche skill sets where it'd be more ideal to have two people? Speaker 14: I, I see a lot of opportunities to align our efforts and it makes it up a lot easier to standardize tools whenever we can for cross training and adding depth. Right. I had a situation just not that long ago, I had one of my school technical people out. I was sending some of my town IT
people to help out a school. Right. Because something was upsetting. It wasn't something they account for. So we're getting to the point where we're, we're bringing up the skill sets of both sides to help each other out and not making those lines so far. And that's something I gauge on a daily basis, depending what the needs are. Speaker 1: Okay. So then maybe I have a question for Dr. Stash. Do you anticipate bringing us a presentation in executive session about security and security needs before the end of the budget cycle? It the committee wants it? We certainly can.
That would be the right thing to kind of demonstrate the story of why we are asking for this position. And I agree with Mr. Roach it shouldn't be here. So if the committee would like that, we'd be happy to, it looks like we would really like that. So, and perhaps there should be a joint meeting with the select board. I mean if that would provide efficiency, they would also like to have that discussion. I'd like to talk to, I mean that's your choice. I wanna just, I wanna scope out for our side what that story would be for the schools. Sure. And and I think Mr. Roach would that should then
as a partner to the town and his role, bring that up with Mr. Erickson. Yeah. Where that we could see if there was need there. Yeah. And I'm actually thinking that perhaps our security needs are not something we'd necessarily wanna share with the select board in terms of details of that. Yeah. So, okay. That seems like a good way forward. Thank you. Any other que Oh Ms. Flats. I'm, you know, if the more, if the committee wants more information, but when I look at it's a town of 5,000 students and a thousand staff using devices that are, you know,
probably not all the users are trying to be secure. Like I can't imagine you haven't had this need already. So I need no further justification for this role. Thank you. Thank you so much Mr. Ro. Thank you very much. Next we'll have Deborah come up to do the facility side and just, I'd like to ask the committee, this is the first time we've kind of presented it in this format. So it, you know, if the, if the chair's okay with this. I'd love to get feedback on whether this format or presentation is working. 'cause you're gonna see it sort of templated at the end of the, our piece today. Okay. As she's getting it, I will say in this piece
to my understanding and Mr. Gillis can confirm you won't see a piece on strategic allocation because there aren't any that relate to facilities. You'll just see level service to be outta here. 2 45, 9 9. Maybe he should cut out. Hello Deborah Shots, director of facility. Mr. Speaker 2: Next slide. Speaker 1: So the budget enlightenment to goals from facilities Speaker 2: Is Speaker 1: Number one, we're supporting the bridge plan and Speaker 2: Goals by ensuring safe, reliable, and well maintain learning environments, prioritizes budgeted events entirety, repairs,
minimize constructional construction Speaker 1: Funding, custodial services help Speaker 2: Support safe, clean, healthy learning environments Speaker 1: And well maintained facilities directly Speaker 2: To reach the group Speaker 1: Focus, attendance and Speaker 2: Overall outcomes. Speaker 1: So here on the next slide we have our budget request in history. This is divided by salaries and non salaries. We'll get more in depth about a little bit of the variances in between sides. But on the non-salary side we have custodial supplies, Speaker 2: Heat, electricity, Speaker 1: Telephone, general maintenance, glass roof
Speaker 2: Painting, plumbing, electrical repair, Speaker 1: HVAC, boilers, vehicles, alarms. And if you go to the right side of it, you can see all the variances. So we do have a variance of a non-salary total of 5.7 increase. And if we do include the salary total, this 10.7 increase. So for custodial supplies we are requesting an 11.1% increase, which is 25,000 due to inflation in tariffs significantly impacting cleaning product Speaker 2: Supplies.
Speaker 1: While efficiency measures remain in place, they are no longer fully offset current pricing versus, so for example, the cost of a case of hand soap increased from $27 and 50 cents a fiscal year, 2023 to $30 and 3 cents a fiscal year 24 To $43 zero two in fiscal year 25. And currently in fiscal year 26, the same case costs six to $3 and 56 cents. Additionally, new legal requirements now mandate mandate
that provision of feminine hygiene products in middle schools that we have then. So that is expanding a service previously required only at the high school level. For general maintenance, we are requesting a 41.5% increase, which is $73,543. This increase is driven by rising material and service costs in preventative maintenance contracts, increased facility workload, and the addition of a maintenance team effort to address deferred work. This includes, for example,
new preventative maintenance costs, contracts like the UUPS system and critical repairs including gym repairs across all schools. Just to make it a little bit more clear, we are requesting separately on the salary side and another maintenance technician to address work. So having the availability in the budget will help this person address all of the issues. So for roofs we are requesting a 200% increase, which is $20,000.
This is to address failing seams, deteriorating flashing, active leak risks. And this funding will allow for timely repairs to prevent water intrusion, protect interior space and and building assistance and avoid more costly emergency repairs. In the future. For electrical repairs, we are requesting a hundred percent increase, which is $40,000. This is to support the addition of electrical loads to emergency generators and to complete lighting upgrades to LED. This funding will improve emergency power reliability,
ensure critical systems remain operational during out rate outages, enhance life safety and reduce long-term energy and maintenance costs through more efficient lighting. For HVAC, we are requesting a 13.7 increase, which is $15,000. This increase is to add preventative maintenance contracts for existing units. These contracts will improve reliability, extend equipment life, support indoor air quality, and reduce the risk of unexpected failures and adverse costs. Another variance is painting. We are requesting a 300% increase, which is $9,000.
This increase is to address damaged walls in high surface, high wear surface areas throughout facilities. The current allocation of $3,000 is insufficient to address all of the levels of damage and deferred painting that we do have. And that is required to maintain safely while maintained learning environments. For heat, we are requesting a decrease or of 11.1%. This is $54,850. This projection is based on historical usage data and we are, while we are anticipating a mild winter,
we do not expect significant increases for supplies. Though it is possible to have some fluctuations in demand in delivery may occur. So here we have the salary increase. Matt will explain this. Speaker 13: So in there you saw 130,000 and didn't get a chance to update this, but it, it's not that complex. So there's about $30,000 in land facilities and natural resources that gets charged to our facilities rental revolving fund prior agreement. And yet we have no fee for that.
So that's something we've been doing for a bit of time that we've just wound up paying for by charging it off to the general fund. When the students have a music or drama program and they're using the facilities on nights and weekends for the plays and the performances, we don't have gate receipts. So there's no offsetting fee for that. And so we, it's over time that needs to be budgeted for, whether it's in the, the town's budget or the school's budget, we'd been absorbing that via revolving funds.
So we should arguably put that into our, our revolving fund. I mean our general fund instead of just picking it up at the end of the year. And then last but not least, some of the athletic events that we regularly schedule, we're not looking to change the number of athletic events or plays. The performances. We're fairly consistent. We're fairly well regulated with the number of games in each season and the school year. The school year. And we have our seasons, so we're not really looking to change anything,
but we are looking to stabilize the budget for that. And so that 130,000 is, is really like a, you know, if we didn't have it, we'd be looking at like a 5.27% increase instead of 5.4. But it's, it's level services because we've been doing it all along, we just haven't budgeted for it appropriately. Whether you folks feel that's the school department or the, the town doesn't really matter. Put a significant portion of it into the, into the school budget. And when we, when the town gets to their budget,
I'm sure we'll, we'll iron out the, the differences. Speaker 7: Just to be clear, Speaker 1: All of the other salaries for Speaker 7: Facilities are considered Speaker 13: Right. We don't, we don't hire them or negotiate the contract or schedule them work in our buildings, but the town provides. So just trying to balance the, the difference that hadn't been working well the last couple of years. Speaker 1: Any questions? Speaker 7: Questions from the committee? Ms. Collins? We haven't been, we've been doing it all along
but we haven't budgeted for it. So how are we paying then? It had to come from somewhere Speaker 13: Clean up journal entries at the end of the year or you know, with facilities rental revolving it was overspent and so that when any of the revolving funds of the grants are overspent, it subtracts what the town has the ability to appropriate from its free cash. So we as as trying to be a good partner with the town and town finance, we don't, we don't want to have negative funds whenever we can foresee it and help it.
And so that the town kind of knows what it's working with sort of earlier on and it's kind of fair to budget for it if you know it's gonna be an expense. So again, whether you think the school should budget for it or the town I'm, you know, it's, we're getting the services in the town hadn't budgeted for it. So putting it into the school budget, Speaker 7: If it was hitting the revolving account, why do we need to budget for it in our budget? Speaker 13: Well it was hitting the revolving account, but some of those expenses, there's no fee to offset it.
'cause we didn't charge a fee for cleaning up the fields on on weekends, whether we were using them or not. We don't charge a fee for the, you know, plays and the musical performances. There's no user fee for, for that. The revolving fund for that. And then athletics that would, you know, change what we would charge the, the fee for. So just making sure Speaker 7: We include it wasn't clear my Speaker 13: Question. Okay. I, I Speaker 7: Apologize. I'm trying to understand. We didn't have money going into the reality account.
I get that 'cause we weren't charging fees for certain things. But you're saying we were charging against the revolving account. So why is the answer to charging against the revolving account putting money in our budget instead of, Speaker 13: If we're gonna have the expense, we have three options to pay for it. We can charge a user fee, we can put it in our budget. The town facilities can put it in their budget Speaker 7: Right now. Right now the salaries are in the shared services budget Speaker 13: On the town facility side.
Correct? Right. Speaker 7: The why is it the overtime with the salaries, Speaker 13: They do have an overtime line. I I can't explain why it doesn't cover all the overtime that's needed. Speaker 1: So can I just clarify, so Ms. Collins, are you asking, just so I understand your question, are you asking why just this overtime amount is being charged for our school budget when the actual salaries that the people are in the town budget? Yeah. Right. Why Speaker 7: We're not keeping the overtime and the salaries together in a budget Speaker 1: Because it's the same person doing the same
job for the same reason. Is that right? Speaker 13: Yeah, largely other than they would say it's, it's overtime work because it's beyond their 40 hours. Speaker 1: So, so how much of that is for things like athletic activities or you know, like school related functions versus, you know, renting the space to a non for a non-school activity? Speaker 13: I, I think, I think almost all of it is just
because things were charged to rental revolving that when there was no fee, it'ss not a rental really it's just charged to the wrong fund and error because we don't, we don't, when I say it, it's an error we don't rent from ourselves. The high school doesn't doesn't charge a fee to, to use the auditorium, the kids to use the auditorium on the weekend or charge a fee for, you know, the basketball team to use the gym. Whether they play on Wednesday night or on a weekend. Speaker 1: Yeah. So I guess my question is why wouldn't it then go
into those budgets, like into the budget for athletics if there's additional overtime needed to support their activities? Speaker 13: Well, I I put it in custodial 'cause that's, that's the function that we would report it back to the state because it's a custodial service, not an athletic endeavor. The, you know, the town might say, well we're there to cover the athletic event or to cover the, the theater performance. But it's, it's really still a custodial service that's, that's happening. Not a athletic service. Speaker 7: I just have one last
Speaker 1: Question. Yeah, that's fine. Based on our previous conversations. Just wanna clarify the last thing I heard you're talking about there's a difference between, you know, what you need to spend and how you pay for it. So this is custodial costs that's needed to cover all of the overtime. My understanding that is if it is overtime custodial cap overtime, custodial hours associated with a non-school function, like a someone rented for performance, then it would go to the rental revolving fund. Right. And, and and if it was from,
and if it was for an overtime basketball game, it could come out of the athletic fees revolving fund. But other school activities like debate or performances don't have their own fees. So it would have to come outta the general phone. Speaker 13: Correct. Ultimately, even though it might be charged somewhere else in, in error. 'cause the town doesn't have the access to charge our general fund, but it still needs to be paid for. Like, I'm not denying that, that we don't need custodial services to open the building, you know, after it would normally be closed for custodians
to stay late or to come in on weekends. But it's, it's still a custodial service. It's not, they could be in to clean the building for athletics and for the theater. Like sometimes we have more than one. Th obviously we have more than one thing going on in the building on Saturdays. Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell, I think it's good we're having this conversation. I I think that as long as we can absorb this in our facilities budget the way that you have so well here, I think I can support that. I think if there are cuts proposed then I think we need
to bring this back into the conversation about cuts because we shouldn't be charging ourselves something to Kathy's point that's already in shared services while we're cutting other things out of the school budget. Yeah, thank, yeah, I, I guess I see this in a few phases so I'm happy that we're talking about it. I'm happy we sort of isolated the amount in one place. I hear the conversation about where it might be booked. I think of myself as maybe the custodian doing that over time and holding onto a bunch of different account numbers that I have to think about
and maybe get approved. So I just wanna make sure that we clean up the process before we make it more complicated for the human beings doing it. I'd also say that I agree with the, what Ms. Bruell just said with if there's cuts we need to reconsider this. And I also think, you know, the temperature of the town go with the schools at a 5.4. That really could be a 5.2 something we need to make this part of our narrative because this, this isn't something that sat in the general ledger before or the local budget.
It sat in the revolving yet it was still happening. And so, and it is level service. It just wasn't on the appropriation side, it was on the revolving. So I think it's important that we make note of that, that that there's about a, a little bit of difference there between 5.2 something and 5.4 that is based on this Ms. Grinnell. And the reason that we're taking it out of the revolving is because there were times where the revolving would go into the red, which then would hit free cash. Yeah.
Speaker 13: So if, if the revolving fund is negative, there's, there's two options. You can sort of leave it negative and it reduces free cash or if there's money in the general fund at the end of the year or there's going to be money in the general fund at the end of the year, we would general entry it out so it didn't reduce the free cash. Right. So that you were, we're trying to give clean financials back to the town to make it easier and quicker to turn over and start the next si. Speaker 1: Ms. Collins, Speaker 7: This is something I thought of
after our subcommittee meeting. Is it a coincidence that this is 130,000 and the fee amount that we'll be discussing later is 130,000? Speaker 13: Largely it's a coincidence not by design. Speaker 7: Okay. I didn't know if one was originally offsetting the other. And I think Dr. Sp your point is very important that the town seems to be bristling at the 5.4 for level service, but it's not, it's not our 5.4 in the sense of it's it was always
and and I'm sorry. You know, it's gonna reduce free cash. Yeah, we have that problem. Not enough free cash. Sorry. Speaker 1: Any other questions on this topic? I have one general Ms. Bruno, one quick general question. Do you feel like you have a good sense of the rubric as to what gets charged to the school budget and what's in shared services? Is that like, I know you're newish here, but is that a conversation that you think we should be having? I guess I should ask this through the chair. I I'm not saying for this budget cycle, but is there ever like a moment where we need to step back
and take a 10,000, do 10,000 view of how this stuff gets split up? In general? It's very clear who, who pays what. If you would like to see like the, the townside budget as well as I could share. But we have our separate maintenance budget, we have our separate custodial budget, we have our separate salaries except for this one that we're requesting now. It's all verys separate and very clear and all projects or maintenance that is done is always allocated to sustainability.
Alright, Ms. Collins, last question. Speaker 7: Yes, no, it's a comment. Okay. I, I think that Ms. Nce point is important because if we're, we've consolidated facilities and yet we still carry maintenance costs in our budget, why they were there when the custodians were a part of us and the school committee then didn't want to get rid of a funding source. The combined department could say, oh well we can't afford that paint or the fix that window. But I think it's something that we should look at more holistically and say, does this continue to make sense?
Speaker 1: Thank you. Sounds, thank you so much. Appreciate it. So I just wanna take a little pause before we move on to our next agenda item. 'cause we have 20 minutes left before we're gonna need to leave this room. I think Linda, we do need to leave at nine. I'm just asking, oh, did you have any new information in the library? Do we, we need to leave here at nine. Somebody had mentioned could we later Okay. But I'm not, hold on that, so I don't Alright, I I think we should go on, on the premise that we need to leave at nine. Yes. So, so right. What we have left is we need to do a vote on rental fees that we haven't heard about yet.
There's a number of policies that we should review and then this post update Speaker 6: That's part of the policy set committee update, which we could, I am happy to punt to the next meeting. Okay. If that's easier. If we can't the whole chunk of policies. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. Are there any policies that we really do need to address today? No. Okay. Alright, so let's, let's finish up with the budget items and then if we have time to get started the policy we go. Okay. Okay. Are you, we also have M-S-D-A-M and MSD. Yeah.
So when you say complete that, that completes the budget section of today's meeting. Thank you for your patience with that. I don't know how you wanna gather feedback or if there isn't even is any related to the format we did today. I'm happy to receive that individually or any, any way we need to. But we're, the point is we're happy to make changes for what the committee would like. Okay. I have a suggestion. Why don't we use the, the feedback form request. Great idea for the committee. So if, if anybody wants to give feedback on the format of these budget presentations, please use that Google Doc to send information directly to Melissa or Dr.
Stash. Yeah, thank you. I'll send that out to people. Thank you. Great. So the next one, do you wanna move to that vote for rental fees? Yes. Mr. Gillis, do you wanna give a brief explanation of that? Speaker 13: Sure. So the budget subcommittee met last week, I can't remember whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday. And we did discuss the rental room rental fee for the rec department. And there's a copy of the chart that was voted in the budget presentation last year where the room fees prior
to July 1st, 2025 were $5 for any town department that rented the space. And the change that got voted was to increase the fees for the gyms to high school, Kennedy and elementary school, one to $50 for the four courts at the high school, $40 for the three courts at Kennedy and $25 for single court, elementary gym. And then everything else basically fell to $0. And the renting, the, the, the kitchen almost never happens. So that was lowered and you can't really access one
of our kitchens without our kitchen staff in there to help use the equipment and show folks how to use the equipment. So it really doesn't happen that much. And we, we get those fees by comparing what's going on in neighboring towns. Framingham, Needham, Newton, and Wellesley, were kind of like the four that we, we looked at and the town. We didn't make a decision until April and the time left. The problem Speaker 15: They had. Your attention please. The library will be closing shortly at nine o'clock. Please begin to gather your materials and have your items checked out. Speaker 13: La last call from the library was just, was just there
for the folks at home that were listening. So I'm gonna try and speed this along. So the summary was that the town doesn't charge the school department room user fees in other places or, or for the fields. And so the subcommittee really considered whether or not we should remove the room user fee, which hasn't been paid yet this year 'cause we tabled it because of the late notice. And so there is a motion to rescind our draft motion to rescind a rental fee for town of native departments
for FY 26. And we did talk about keeping the custodial rental fee, which as far as I know, they, they have been paying because they have to pay the overtime for the custodians whenever they're having any of their, their programs anywhere else. So they, and they understand that it's additional cost at times. So I, I would at this point turn it over to Kate, Kathy, Catherine for their thoughts. Speaker 1: I just looked up our memo and the fees that we presented to the committee last year. And I just wanted to reinforce what Mr. Gillis is saying.
We, last year when we voted this group one was our recreation and town usage. And we specifically listed in the memo and the vote last year was for only when the town was giving was getting revenue, that's when we were gonna increase the fee for group one. Because I kept thinking back when this came up this year, what were we thinking? Why, why were we suddenly charging the town money after not having charged 'em for so long? And the thought process at the time is that we were gonna do that only when they were receiving revenue for a program that they were running. Well, when it went into practice, we realized
that we were actually charging programs that are valuable additions to all of our students. And that that was really gonna pass the fees on to this, you know, to Arrowhead users or sergeant center camps or wood trail users. All of that was just gonna get passed right onto our family. So I thought Dr. Bash and Mr. Gillis did a great job slowing us down, slowing our vote down this year. And there's a, we have a motion now based on our work in the subcommittee subcommittee to redefine that group one
and just not to go back to our original practice of not charging the town for things even when they are making revenue. Speaker 7: Ms. Collins, one of the things we discussed on front committee too was this is not a profit center for us. All we were trying to do was recoup fees. So it's not like we were charging money so that we could, you know, have a wine center sell without the H in it. So I just need to be clear that yes, we were charging but not to be profitable. Speaker 1: I think it's too late for that joke. Can I make the motion
Speaker 7: Absolutely move Speaker 1: To resend the room rental fee for town NAIC town departments, also known as tier one renters for FY 26, the fees for custodial overtime will remain in place as voted in April, 2025. Speaker 7: Second. All in favor? Anyone against? So that Speaker 1: Passes Speaker 7: 6 0 0. Thank you. Would you like me to move? Ms? Okay, great. Speaker 1: We'll do a brief, very brief update on MSBA. Part of this is because the school building committee has not yet met since we
received notice on December 12th that we were invited formally into the feasibility phase of our project with Memorial. This deck is gonna kind of be formatted the same way we did for the eligibility one. So we'll keep the same deck as we update on feasibility and we'll just kind of give it another date each time. So to orient people on the phase three for feasibility, the first piece of it is to hire the owner's project manager that that's actually hiring them. That'll last from now until the summer, early summer June. I'll give you a timeline on that.
Then we move forward to 2, 3, 4, and five. Participating in the MSBA designer selection process to hire the architect, starting the preliminary design program to explore options, preferred schematic option and then the approval to proceed with the preferred schematic design. So there's a lot ahead of us and I'm trying to chunk it so that we can kind of absorb it, especially since many of us are new to this process. Next slide please Actually go to down. So same kind of format for seeing the timing. This is just bracketed, the SBC, the school building committee has to do the dates inside of it.
So the first one is on December 12th, we were invited into feasibility. Great meeting. Very grateful for that. We're grateful to for the support, vocal support in the meeting and as well as behind the scenes of Karen Ska and David Linsky for that. So from there we go to the end, which is deliverable of hiring the OPM. There's two different, there's really three different MSBA panel reviews where the MSBA reviews that process one is in April and we were like, there's no way we can make that date given the meetings that we have planned with the SBC.
There's two more and they're on a rolling basis. The first one is on May 4th, the second is on June 1st. We, it, what determines which one we get into is when the, we submit to the MSBA, which will be the SBC, the school building committee. They submit the owner's project man manager, RFS or request for services. Once that enters in and the MSBA receives, it starts the timeline of which meeting we get put into and it's first come, first served. Okay. So in between those two pieces,
the school building committee will draft the, the RFS, then that goes through a bit of a dance with the MSBA to make sure that they agree with what gets drafted by our team. Those dates will be decided by the school building committee, but I know they're trying, they're, we're trying to get extra meetings on right now to get, make sure that happens. After that. The O-P-M-R-F-S, sorry for all the acronyms, they're listed on the bottom. So the owner's project manager request for services is made available to potential OPMs. It is, it is published in an advertising, what is it called? Advertising
Speaker 13: In the register, central register. Speaker 1: The intention is to hold that for, we would recommend from the district side three weeks. 'cause sometimes there's some questions that go back and forth after that. Once the proposals are received by the school building committee, they would create a process for reviewing that which follows procurement law. There's then a determination of the OPM recommendation that goes to the MSBA. So there's a, there's a lot for the school building committee to be doing now that this process is launched. And the purpose of today is really just to celebrate the fact that we are invited in and to give you the committee a feel for
what the school building committee will be working on and sort of some date bracketing. Thank you. Any questions from the committee? Yeah, congratulations. That's great news. I did wanna follow up on the, the question we had during public speak about a website. Is there a website in progress or, so we have a landing page with lots of books. I appreciated the question and it's interesting and I promise this was planned ahead of time. We actually have a meeting tomorrow to discuss this as people will remember, our communications person resigned in September. So these, all of these duties have
been absorbed by other people. We're very short staffed in this area, but we're meeting tomorrow to make a plan because we're anticipating the need to populate more information there. And honestly, I wanna ask the school building committee for some help here. I think there's probably some talent on that committee and some ideas of how they would like to be portrayed. And so that's something I'll ask the chair to put on the next agenda. Great, thank you Ms. Laers. Just quick follow up question of is there a plan, I know that there's a conversation that there's one member of the building committee resigned and is that member gonna be replaced? I know this is goes on for a long time, so no. Be attrition.
So I just feel like starting with a full deck makes sense. My recommendation is that the committee needs to put that request probably to the chair. I I have mentioned it several times. Okay. And then the second question is, can we make sure that the, the meetings I've, I've asked that they're recorded, the ones that are coming up, I know I've asked and I think one of them was somewhere where it can be recorded, but can we make it a practice that they get recorded? So that is the conversation I had with the chair of the building committee co like a couple months ago.
And so I think that there was some discussion going to be had amongst that committee to make sure that all members of that committee were comfortable having recorded the meetings. I don't know if that's happened yet. We had that right, that that came up at the last meeting. Is that him? You know, I'm not remembering that. But what I will say is it has moved around is there's been tours of different buildings and that might have complicated it, but I hear it and I'll relay that over. I don't remember Catherine, I'd have to go look at five minutes. I feel probably remembering better. I, yeah, I feel like he's brought that up at the, at the end and there wasn't much discussion. People thought it was okay, but I, yeah, I agree.
I think especially as we build towards a vote, the more transparent we are. I a hundred percent agree. And I also support what Kate's saying about having a full deck. There are members of the public that are consistently coming, that are qualified, like very highly would add a lot if they wanted to apply. So I don't know if we need, you're saying that we need to make a formal request for from this committee. What I'm saying is that I've heard the committee and I've relayed it and I haven't gotten anywhere. Yeah, I mean, I mean the recordings are,
I consistently have people coming to me after each of those meetings with concerns and I've repeatedly wanted to go back and look and haven't there's any mechanisms to it. Yeah, no, I'll, I'll follow up with Mr. Miler and see if there's some updated information that we can share about that upcoming meeting. Okay. So Mr. Brand, you're okay moving all four of these items to the next Speaker 6: I am Speaker 1: Or Yes. Anything you want to, we could squeeze in. You wanna do C? No. Can you just do letter C? Speaker 6: Yeah, I can just briefly say that the budget transfer authority, that's the policy.
DBJ, we talked about it at our last policy subcommittee meeting and voted to refer it to the, to the budget subcommittee as essentially that subcommittee would be the stakeholder of that particular policy. And before we take it up on the policy subcommittee, we thought it better for the stakeholder to weigh in on what they would like, similar, what we've done with every other policy and the stakeholder association. So that was with the discussion on that, at that meeting. And I can, the rest of these things are not urgent and we can do it at the next meeting, their first readings largely
and some procedural things which can wait second. Speaker 1: All in favor? All right, we are adjourned. Thank you everybody.