all right at this time I will call to order the regularly scheduled meeting of the Sunderland select board and the finance committee do you guys have Quorum today yes beautiful wonderful all in person look at this all in person everything amazing all right so we are both uh called the order at
632 p.m. I'm having is the the a being funky yeah me not respond oh there it goes can you on the video right click on the little
yeah pardon us one second take a look at all these sorry I'm just going to power cycle the owl that usually works okay might have to give it a minute so the apple is notle yeah I just I just turned it off and back on again you
might need to give it another minute apologize for this guys sometimes it works perfectly did do we need to turn it back on again I already lights on the lights went off
oh comes that sounds like a good sound all right USB device not recognized malfunction do we have audio or no audio
or video no audio or video Che my microphone can you click on the top ver say speakers click on the speaker drop that down it's not showing the owl at all is it no no we have Morgan we have we have Morgan
we've got yeah we've got um we have fcap so I say we just go ahead with we got just participant that's all is that Crystal trying to Jo us is that you or that'd be somebody else right can you see who that is probably be me oh
okay it's just me all right all right just are you on to yeah I'm just loging on so when I do the PowerPoint you'll be able to see it on the screen gotcha okay that shouldn't be affected by our camera networking those so that should be fine okay beautiful well we're just going to get started sorry about that everybody
really apologize all right our first order of business is to approve the minutes from the select board and finance committee meeting from 1:27 2025 I entertain a motion make a motion we approve the minutes from January 27th 2025 all right I will second that we
have a motion made and seconded to approve the minutes from our last meeting on 1 127 2025 all those in favor i i two nothing thank you very much all righty so our first order of new business today is going to be to uh review the budget request from Frontier so thank you for
joining us Darius um would you like to start with Elementary or Frontier um excuse me sorry Elementary was not on the agenda so I don't believe we can discuss this elementary school so it's with
Frontier region which is my understanding is it's both of them am I you correct there yes 38 and now the new business is to discuss scheduling schools plural so I assume that's County Tech and some well
Franklin County Tech also is available tonight and but it was not in the agenda correct and my concern is in violation of meeting law and yeah it was reason yeah not anticipated
to have the elementary school we had been working with Darius on Frontier on the frontier budget um but then they were able to do it my concern is I do not want to be involved in any violation of Po meting laws and my interpretation
was only Frontiers going to be discuss today I think you are correct I I'm I'm sorry to say that it I had hoped we could do it under the unanticipated because we had um short
notice and that's your decision to make the select boards on um whether you're willing to take an open meeting law potential risk and do it under the um unanticipated which you have the right
to do you an opinion on that Dan um I don't know I mean I'm not sure about the anticipated I mean would it really hurt schedule if we waited no it's just we'd have to ask I'm sorry that we'd
have to ask them to come back and I don't think darias would be able to come back um it's their job to request to be on the agenda it's not your job to request it's on it is their responsibility to request to be on the agenda well it's a combination and it
depends last year we' never had I understand a frontier present to the board it doesn't always happen and sometimes we have to go to the hearings to get information this is a much more advantageous uh setting to get all your
questions answered and if we are unable to talk about the elementary school tonight we'll have to go to the hearing uh next week and then follow up with more questions for the areas after that
I think it's not my decision make I think it'd be unfortunate to not let them present if that means we don't ask questions in this meeting and we aren't going to be taking any action um it's up for the select board but I would hope as you said we don't always get a live presentation I think it' be great they
spent their time and they're here could find a way to have one so my feeling on it is sort of in the same vein there which is that if we don't let them present we are the ones who suffer our our ability to make decisions is the is the that's the the the bottom line is
that we don't end up having the information we need if this was a month ago and we could tell them come back in two weeks that would probably be a different case so we shouldn't be manipulated by their action I can't be a part of this if you are going to allow discussions tonight I will be resigning
from the finance committee and I will be leaving that is entirely your prerogative yes thank you have a good day all right let's move ahead with the elementary SCH okay so I was trying to get into Zoom but it's just sort of sitting here I'm
not sure if you have to let me I'm not sure I don't believe you can I think the zoom we use through the owl that's not functioning anything funky you went this is the wrong one I need this one I
think you all have print out copies anywh El for the sake of the public so I can go do it without sharing them but that's the the other good the other reason to move ahead is that the public would be able to view the so if you can do it on screen
that would be great go yeah I don't know that we can get the that going I just clicked on the link from the website I'm not sure if that's correct see you should show when you do that you should come in as a participant and that's not working and I
think that's no I didn't U no from that end accept there might be a waiting link on there it's supposed to have a like a waiting room thing right here under here that if you had a waiting thing is probably something that needed to be clicked yeah check the H Tools H tools
see somebody there ah shoot this is all um I'm going to end the record end the thing and come back in because maybe it'll work and maybe if you join and we have an agenda on
here from some other previous videoo because this should have the link right in the bottom of it so if you enable you want to look that before you go ahead enable people to join or enable participants he's
trying to connect to that yeah I think it should already set up to make them to force them to go into the waiting room we do that because otherwise people can zoom bomb us um yeah so yeah I'm I'm really sorry about our technology issues um we we have the
information in front of us I think we're going to have to move forward without the aid of our technology do you have information you need me to um well I'm I'll wait I'm not they go
first so okay all right so uh you have the full narrative and let me introduce myself first because I don't think I know everybody on the committee um we may have met briefly but I'm shelle P I've been uh the Director of Business Administration with Frontier and Union
38 since 2019 um so Darius and I will tag team here to present to Sunderland and Frontier to you um so the full narrative I'm not going to read through this whole thing you all are capable of reading I'm sort
of going to highlight some components and then really jump into the budget conversation where it impacts the town finances um but there's a timeline included in here for you so you can see in January we presented the preliminary budget the conversations at the school level and at the administrative level in
the central office actually go back to October we start this process early in the fall to make sure that we're getting a jump start starting to look at what all those numbers are going to plan out to be uh at the last last school committee meeting a budget was decided to move forward to public hearing which
is the number um that you're seeing this evening we will have our public hearing on March 11th and then uh the school committee will deliberate and then hopefully vote on March 22nd for to town meeting which do I have that date right April 25th is that your town meeting
date yes that's the last right okay um so one thing I want to highlight in the budget development process is that we start with level servic is when we build the budget taking a student centered needs-based approach and looking at all of the numbers and we have the goal of
being as fiscally responsible as we can taking into consideration the impact at the elementary level as well as what the assessment is going to be Frontier so a lot of those conversations we're having with both School committees you know we might say at the frontier school committee suland budget is looking
really high for the elementary school is there anything we can do on Frontier done and vice versa if Frontiers look really high we will work because we know that the school budgets make up at least 60% of the town's overall budget um so we're really focusing on being fiscally
responsible taking all the pieces into account and making sure that we're meeting the needs of of the student population I did give you the expense categories I think it's good information just for you all to have so you can know what the classifications are that's on page five and page six of the report
those are set by desie and they're the primary function codes that we expense out uh in the full budget enrollment just to give you a quick comment there you can see that we've had a significant decrease in enrollment since 2020 uh the
first big drop off was right after covid we did see reduction in Resident enrollment as well as school choice enrollment currently in the in this year we're at 175 students about 80% of that comes from uh resident students and the
other 20 % from school choice uh there is a negative impact to the town directly when our enrollment is stagnant or in Decline uh because part of the Chapter 70 formula takes into account your enrollment and if you are in stagnant or declining enrollment they
consider you to be enoll harmless for Chapter 70 formula even though they've implemented some changes in the student Opportunity Act and how they calculate it if your enrollment is dropping or Remains the Same year to year only going to receive a minimum per pupil increase
so next year the governor's preliminary budget has a $75 per pupil minimum increase and it is less than $11,000 in Revenue growth for the town of suland that's a significant uh Gap when you look at what our total budget presented
is today historically suland Elementary School's budget has been um budget increases have been more uh sporadic and have had more change than some of the other elementary schools in the district uh in 2020 there was an override that
the budget increase that year was almost 14% And the primary driver of the override was the school budget since then we've fluctuated between 2.75 and 6.63 the average increase being 5.27
over those six budget Cycles um last year we came in or the current year fiscal year 25 the budget was 5.05% % increase over fy4 but I did just want to make a note that 1% of that was because of our transportation contract adjustment we had put that out for
negotiation last year we saw a significant Market adjustment otherwise our level service and new requests would have been around 4% any questions so far and I'm talking a little bit fast I know you have a big agenda so just stop me if something comes
up um so level Services what does that mean specifically for Sunland Elementary for FY 26 so we are looking at a 4.33% increase over fiscal year 25 just over $150,000 the primary driver is salary
and wage growth which totals almost 3% of that 4.13 uh that includes placeholders for teachers and instructional assistance because we are in negotiations for both contracts it includes a placeholder for school-based staff uh and central office
employees if you're wondering what page I'm on um it is Page seven I'm at 7.1 of the report um other notable increases include a $22,000 increase to our out of District placement cost so that is a
resident student whose uh needs are Beyond those that can be met at the elementary school so they are in a um whether it's a private or a collaborative placement I don't have that specific in front of me but they are at another school so that their needs can be met we are seeing a growth
in that um tuition cost to send that student out of District next year and then there was also a $22,000 adjustment to our revolving funds so part of the budget process is looking at um our revolving funds and our grants to make sure that the expenses we paid from the
prior year can continue to be placed on those funds uh revolving funds for the elementary school include Early Childhood special education school choice and school lunch uh and we did make an adjustment based on what we anticipate for Revenue coming in and
expenses coming out so for example if the Early Childhood account expenses are exceeding Revenue there becomes a point where our Surplus and our fund balance gets diminished so much that even though we can't reduce the staff we have to find another funding source for it so
$22,000 in wages was placed onto the general fund to account for the deficit in the revolving fund account um the other thing that I want to mention is we have used almost $65,000 in rural Aid to offset the
general fund the the first presentation to the school committee was $65,000 higher uh than the 4.33% increase at that point um rural Aid numbers had just come out but when we built the first draft we didn't necessarily know what that concrete
number was going to be for Rural Aid the intention of rural Aid is to help schools that are not receiving a significant amount in student Opportunity Act adjustment uh for Chapter 70 offset the budget so that is exactly what we're going to use it here for otherwise we would be looking at an
additional $65,000 um rural 8 is subject to State appropriation it's also subject to 9C cuts and if the town's revenue is not as high as anticipated is something that could fluctuate so it's not best
practice to use a grant that you can't rely on year to year or a funding source that you can't rely year to year um but we do have the funds available and it it is most Fally responsible to apply that 2% to help reduce the budget and we're
we're and we're applying this year's um rur funds so we're not using year of so so be kind of year in the rear spending so that we're going to save from this year we'll apply it to next year so if there was n9c cuts it would be medor
Cuts gotcha thank you uh the other thing I want to mention in level Services is that Sunderland faces a sick buyback obligation so that is a contractual obligation in the teacher contract upon retirement there is an obligation to pay sick buyback at
retirement based on years of service and Longevity uh we have two staff that have to be paid out in fiscal year 26 this has been um something that's been up for discussion with school committee and select board for at least I believe four if not five of the last budget Cycles um
typically Sunderland has been fortunate enough to not have to include this in the budget and the select board has approved using other funds such as you know arpa or a separate warrant article I think has happened in the past um so that is a $60,000 expense that would be
added into the budget uh our school committee would like to request that it is funded separately from the budget so as not to inflate it we do not know of any retirees for f year 27 to put it in as a permanent expense would mean that
some years we need it and some years we don't um and if we didn't be it then we would be over inflated and you know be asking for more money from our taxpayers than we need to so that's the um background of why we request it separately we also recognize that it's
still an expense of the town it's not taking it away you we're still asking the town to fund it we're just not including it in the general f budget otherwise we would be at between the rural Aid and the sick buyback another 4% budget increase so our level Services
which is where we did start in January we be about 8 and a half% that all Mak sense all right so uh getting into new requests now so we we were just talking about level Services we are looking to add one new instructional assist assist
to staff uh that is based on student needs as outlined and IEP requirements uh we are mandated and obligated to meet student needs based on their IEP and we will have a student who needs new support next year we looked closely with
um the principal at the existing students to see if there was anyone maybe aging out in sixth grade or anyone whose Services would be dropping off next year to see if we could swap unfortunately that's not an option at this time so we are requesting funding
of $30,000 to add an instructional system um and then again you know trying to look at holistically what the impact is to the town with our budgets we just wanted to acknowledge that it could also mean increased cost and benefits for you all we know every you know employee
that's over half time is eligible for benefits which could increase your labor burden and then um non-salary increases are very minimal we are requesting $88,000 to fund uh increase the building maintenance repair line and increase the
general supply line the building maintenance repair request is 5,000 General rep supplies is 3,000 um the 5,000 is really just for us to continue to be able to handle deferred maintenance um the building is aging
things that are not a capital requests that we can handle internally we want to do that if we can um we have been fortunate to increase our overall budget for that slightly over the years and this would bring it up to I believe $440,000 and then the General Supply
increase is just due to um inflation everything is costing more from you know paper to classroom supplies to markers copies all those things um so the to Total new funding request is 38,000 which adds
1.10% to the overall increase bringing our total general fund estest to 5.43 or $188,900 over fiscal year 25 operating expenses outlined in the budget include school-based costs so
anything that's direct teaching and learning at the school as well as any school-based administrative staff and central office expenses I gave you some pie charts in there which is really just to highlight that the majority of our budget does go directly to instruction and teaching and
learning uh you'll see see that almost uh 80% of the budget is for expenses related to educating the students of Resident and surrounding towns uh salaries and wages same concept about 80% is paid directly to instructional
staff and other expenses you can see on page nine are more evenly spread out with the highest being um and this is non-salary based with the highest being instruction so that supplies and materials um things like of that nature for the classroom as well as operations
and maintenance and then student services includes the bus contract so that's why that a little B has a question quick question for you J um on the top graph you have benefits at 43,000 I'm assuming that doesn't include health insurance benefit that's that's like it's central office central office
okay that's that's why I thought I was like wow man we're getting off real cheap there really good point the the only other expense in the budget for benefits um would be if there was a sick buyback included which it's not or it would be 60,000 higher um that falls
into that category and then um there is some insurance uh that then gets as a benefit in his administrative contract that's included there but that 43 is primarily central office cost share just sunderland's portion of the cost share gotcha and also each of those categories
are set by desie those are the earlier in the document she explained so it's not like we can move stuff around to manipulate graphs it comes directly from what say we have to categorize each category yeah I just want to make sure that myself and everyone else is keeping in mind that this pie there's another
smaller pie next to it that is our health insurance also um so yeah quick sh and student service I should know this a lot of the programs we buy for all four just like Sora or you know
licenses how do we divide those up do we buy them individual um so all of those would be classified as um instructional or curriculum expenditures and it depends if it's a five-way or four-way split so if only the elementary schools are using it the cost share is based on the
current year enrollment and split out the four ways if it is something that Frontier also uses like um our school or parents Square that's um a different percentage based on the 5way current enrollment cost share enrollment percent
yep okay they changes every year yes little bit yeah slightly is the is the toal number of employees the same this year as last year with just the instructional assistant being added just be adding the one yes okay because there's two retirements and
then two new is that also Happ say that again two retirements and then two new we have to replace the retire so it's same plus one so that's s of one of the questions is the potential savings going from a end of career teacher to a new
teacher accounted for in here absolutely okay whenever we can we we take advantage of those savings the hard part is if you have you know say it is a $20,000 swing because it really could be if you have somebody at the most educated column at the highest step and we're higher in you
know middle of the road it could be a $20,000 savings but we just added back in expenses from other things like the revolving fund adjustment for example so you don't really see the savings when it comes out in the line okay but we absolutely take that
um aren't we dropping down one classroom next year we're graduating two sixth grade classes and we're only going to have one compar to I'm sorry that was going to be one of my questions is how many sections per grade do we current are we looking at
for cycle I think there are three grades that have one classroom and the rest all have two first grade should be two first grade will be two second grade will be second grade will be two third grade will be one will it be fifth grade next year oh
yeah oh yeah kindergarten one yeah yeah yeah so we have 14 grade level teachers currently including prek and they will be that'll be the same count for next year same grade level teachers okay so not every grade has two
sections but most of them do how do you think about can't control it lot has to do with native population but right in that middle ground between one and two sections do you think that's going to settle in on two or one is it going to go back and forth for the for
simple future the next three or four years a little bit right so the younger grades obviously we don't want to see um you know grades you know numbers getting above 24 um that kind of thing so when and that's
what happened with the kindergarten classes year we got about 25 we end up having to split that um so and it'll be that way moving forward if we were to lose you know some students in any grade level and fell lower where we could combine classes that's what we look at
from year to year we've done that in the past um combining sections this does this feel like that one 12 one2 thing is about the same as been for the last few years we're right at that c
yeah num The Edge right those class numbers are you know if you have we have 21 in one class which has one section right so that's right on that you get a couple kids mov also that becomes a very especially it's and also when you look at numbers of classes it's not just the number itself but it's the needs in that
class so if you have you know 24 with a couple of um High need students that can feel like 30 you know um and by Versa you have about 25 kids in class and it's running smoothly because it's it's the needs aren't as high well in higher grades it's a little easier lower grades it's harder
yeah it's a lot easier for a school district that is trying to tide between six and seven fifth grades to manage that than it is for one that's trying to side between one and two because that's a world of a difference so yeah we're almost always every year
talking about the kindergarten class though it seems we you know can't predict that but it the conversation comes up here what do we do at this point you know it's it's March and we know a little bit but not quite enough yet but with town meeting in April we have to make some decisions so that's
definitely part of the conversation the other thing that is challenging is um now we have the conversation about school choice as well because you want to make sure that you're not having too much school choice that you're having to
add staff just for the sake of bringing in school choice students um but if you get to a point where you reduce this class size so much to one that you can't take any school choice then you're losing Revenue that's helping pay for some of your instructional assistance
you know so you're really having a look at the composition of your staff and we do have those conversations one was also the we try to help school choice siblings and that can be complicated too
you want to do here you have a kid there nice know keep com from the same and the kindergarten dictates really the next 6 years we don't have six people question on the I position not about that position in particular but
just thinking about some of these Trends you know what is the trajectory looking like on oneon-one needs like is this IA cool let's assume a steady state of students in classes is that going to continue to grow how like how do we think about we're seeing a greater need of special
education supports in the elementary schools at the younger level um and you know Co can throw that in there and the disregulation that that came out of there um the idea is that early intervention with um the one ones and
whatnot will get it so that um you know students will you develop skills a one to one um but that's not always the case and sometimes we're using a one to one to hold that student in District um by being able to provide the services that we can do without the outplacement as
soon as you so you you get a one to one you're around $30,000 um you out go out service you're starting at 50 and going to 150 to you know High you know you're talking about Transportation cost of $300 a day um
when you um out place a student so sometimes when you doing that one to one it's just the naal C trying to keep the student in District with their you know their Community they and doing that kind of thing so um it all depends on the needs you know and some of them um early intervention can work on skills to get
out and there's others that you may have a one to one with entire experience yeah that that makes sense that that's not surprising at all and I think there's a lot of good things that come from that investment you know how do we how do we all collectively think about the impact that has on your strategic planning within your budget
and then our planning within our budget like how is there a is there a not from you but like from the state is there a plan of like hey we see this trend we understand this it's going to be destabilizing on budgets and how do we try to address
it um so I mean the state does it does things called circuit breaker which um gives you funding after a certain threshold that you're spending on a child so if Le suddenly put a child out um it cost $100,000 we're going get a certain percentage above
$4,000 um we get a certain percentage back and that ships as the year goes on on the demands from schools so there is some bailout money um but still special education is very expensive um and it's um it's running a good portion of our
budgets and we're our trend is to do more and more of that in District or in school than it's cheaper to do it in schools and you know across the district and also at Frontier we put we create a lot of special education programs that are also web generating um cuz we take
in students if you only have one student you can't really build a program you have a couple you build a program you save money um the other thing is that I mean in the trends in education is we're identifying earlier and getting interventions earlier and so um that's a good thing you know um and that means
that with those early interventions the cost will go down as a child gets over many cases not in all cases um and so that's the the hope there but there is no there's no plan from there's no bailout coming from the state to look at
special education costs and how they're going to help local communities is all part of this you know very elaborate formula and not to soap box but the amount of money that the towns get for Education versus 20 30 40 years ago we were getting something like
70 or 80% of our money from the state and federal level and now we're over like 20% something like that and so it's it's not just a increase in needs it's also that every level other than local level has been pulling money out of the school systems for my entire life and
that that's where we are and that's you know um but also and not to you know not to disparage the the the school systems the past but I think a lot of students are getting services that would have just gotten missed before and managed to make it all the way through school
without success because they were not getting those services so the increase in Services isn't just needs driven is also identifying that students need identifying those needs and getting them the services um so yeah there's a lot of qu factors so good job on spending more
money as well I well the other the other good news we got from Natalie bla last week is they are going to reopen um the the formula the age old Chapter 70 formula um and they're worked up the
courage to crack that nut and it might make a world of difference if there's money to back it up I mean they can just do it easily just double it and then they just be done and no no discussions no talks just also I think that they are making attempts the the student Opportunity Act and the change in the
formula as it exists right now was supposed to help increase special education costs make some changes but the problem is is there's so many districts like ours where enrollment is stagnant or declining and you're only seeing the
minimum per pup the schools that were already receiving the most Chapter 70 funding money are now getting more versus you know the smaller little towns like us another point I just want to make is that from my perspective it's also it's not just about the money in
terms of having the Ia it's also about the experience for those students being able to be in their school with their neighbors kids and being able to be with the be with their community and not be feel like they're being shipped away and also the the that students experience with traveling to whatever District we
send them to is more of that student's time out of school out of home and so it's not just money it's also about trying to keep our community whole as much as possible as well so it's hard to predict too when you don't know who you're going to have for movein you know mid year over the summer and then also
you know anyone who's receiving um reach Services you know on three that once they hit three and become eligible for preschool then they become part of your program and you're obligated to provide those services to them and we're also of that happens like January February March
as kids start to hit 3 years old we see changes and we also have a town that's very heavily apartment complex driven and so there's a lot of people who move in and out end of the summer beginning of September and so there's every year there's a swing where we don't know what's going to happen with we could
have five families decide to move into Cliffside you know in August and we don't know that or they could or we could have a whole bunch of students who move out of District in the middle of the summer because Department complex is raises their rates by $100 a month or something like that you know that uncertainty that does not necessarily
exist in a normal housing market in a town like ours that is so heavily apartment complex driven um is really hard for them to account for so um obviously we haven't had our public hearing yet and so we're looking for feedback on that and so you can you
know send us a note you send School commity members a note um you concerns or additional questions and then um we have a public hearing and then we vote the budget later on so there's still a lot of time in this budget process to a feedback as you guys are working through the other budgets in the town about um
you know what you need to do and that kind of thing so open to hear when your public hearing what's the date the 11 [Music] 117 okay said earlier 327 okay all right well thank
you very much um but we'll shift over to the font tier one so we can try of keep everything moving along all right so that's that that's that even bigger
[Music] right I'm just getting these budget oh sorry is this your phone here yeah sor um no I was just wondering if it might be okay to take Tech first well that be
just as long it's be just as long yeah all right all right so Frontier um lot of the same information at the top so I'm not going to go through that about the budget process um March 6th is our no
I'm sorry March 4th is our public hearing coming up and then on the six we will hope to adopt the budget hopefully uh I did give you some historical information Frontiers average budget growth over 5 years has been 2.65% annually so uh again Frontier aims to
keep as low as possible um in the current year I I do want to talk about some of the most significant expenses that are included in the budget we are presenting a budget increase of 2.32% over fiscal year 25 um it's just
over 3 ,000 one of the most significant drivers is the increase to our health insurance um and I am on part four on page five the health insurance uh we're part of Hampshire County Group Insurance trust we're seeing an increase of 18 to
20% depending on the plan that employees are on so that is a significant driving Factor um the other increase is primarily uh for wages instructional assistance teachers and school based staff as central office and then you can see some other minor adjustments there
as well quick question on that um and correct me if I'm wrong my understanding is that the frontier insurance is through the Deerfield is negotiated by Deerfield and is is their employees and the Deerfield plan is that correct there separate group okay the question on that is we're having a similar increase of
19.9% or 19.8% a really really high increase um we are looking at ways of coming up with some adjustments to our heal plan to that we can present to our collective bargaining units to try to find a middle ground there where we can save some
money and come in maybe a 10% increase something like that is there any plan on your guys' end to do that or is you are you pretty with you talking about incentives not to take the insurance um that's one of the things we're talking about we're also talking about um possibly adding a hospital deductible or something like that there a u adding a
250 750 deductible um there's no deductibles on the plan now I think for um Hampshire County already has that Hampshire County does not have any deductible plans so it doesn't have the 250 750 um not the plans that we're part
of so a part of the trust part of the trust too right um so we only offered HMO and a poo there's no deductible at all on those two plans uh we already have it Frontier in the
teacher contract that there's a buyout if you don't take our insurance you get a stien instead um so that does already exist and if we were to change that you know everything has to be collectively bargained as you said um and with the trust I know that the trust is looking
at um offering a high deductible plan they're also offering are looking at increasing um co-pays for some of the glp1 drugs because that's one of the biggest drivers right now on the health insurance cost is the weight loss drugs um but those are things that will have
to be bargained by every every single unit that's a member of the trust it it's not just you know Frontier can't just go and and change the benefits without being part of that system and what will happen is essentially if our
bargaining units didn't want to go with the changes that the trust puts in place you're basically kicked out and you have to go find Insurance elsewhere okay so I don't foresee any way to bring this cost down in the near future okay that's a fair
answer I just had to ask you know yeah all right sorry go ahead no and I wonder how that would impact um teachers it is stated in the contract what the town's contribution is right so they would have to the teachers well and
just just for Contex one of the things that we're thinking is is that the the 20% increase doesn't just hit the town it also means that the staff members have to also take their whatever percentage they're paying goes up by 20% also so so it's not just the town trying to save money it's us trying to find a product that works both for us and for
our our members because you know I mean I no no one wants to have a 20% increase in in that line item um so just you know food for thought if if it's not possible no problem um just you know any way we can try to save money for the town and also for the teachers and for IAS and support
staff and whatnot you know and this is totally off topic but I personally have a little bit of concern about us going to high deductible plans given the amount of young staff that we have that are Paras especially um that maybe would get on a high deductible plan and don't
realize what that means and you know they've got to make a personal decision but um I just think we have to find the right balance in all of it and I think everyone in this area is doing exactly what you guys are hoping to do and having those conversations of how to
bring cost down because it's going to hit personal pockets and budgets significantly extra zero on the end of that 20% that you know little higher than we can um sorry to derail the conversation but that was a good
question um okay so let's get through here I gave you the the classifications of expenses if you have specific questions to take time I'm not going to go through all of those um but what I did want to say is that about 50% of the budget is dedicated to instruction
teaching and learning whether that's salaries and wages or other expenses uh benefits is the next highest driver for Frontier because um Frontier has it Benefit Plan separate from the Townes um and then central office falls
under insurance as well um so gave you some charts there on page seven uh eight nine uh nine talks about revenues which I do want to get into a little bit more but basically the bottom line with
expenditures much like the elementary school is that the majority of the budget goes to salaries and wages uh and the majority of those expenses are also for providing teaching learning services so just a quick question on the I'm looking at the the elementary and
the frontier who one here um and an elementary looks like the percentages for for education and instruction are much higher is that because you're having benefits are actually included in this one versus not this one benefits are the 3 million that's listed as
benefits those are true benefit cost so apples and oranges we really can't compare them at all that that's kind of what my assumption was but I wanted to just point that out okay okay um I know the assessment is really where everyone wants to get at
but Are there specific general fund questions line item questions specific expense account questions before I start talking about i' ask AAL question just to introduce I'm Dyan for I just joined the finance committee I
remember D said think we've exchanged emails that that but anyway um general question um if I look at this uh Frontier general fund budget increase at 2.3 2.32% if I strip out the insurance for a
moment it's about 1% increase right I'm doing that because at the elementary school level we have stripped out the insurance right and at the elementary school level I think you said it was about 82% um and then uh there was a couple of deductions from that for um sick pay and
then the rural Aid so the sick pay is kind of different I think putting that aside makes sense so you basically have 1% Baseline non-insurance increase at Frontier that's say about 6 and a half Baseline at the elementary school like that's a big difference obviously how do how do we think about
what's driving the differences if steps and wages should be comparable and inflation of pencils and paper should be comparable so a couple of things happen uh one is that Frontier has the ability to fund more of their expenditures with
other funding sources and uh I talked about rade with suland Frontier also receives R Aid and that amount is um just over $100,000 so we've applied that to the budget already um there may be other Personnel changes that we take into account as well that helps offset
some of the col it increase um and they could also just have capacity to throw an expense on school choice or an expense on our special education revolving accounts we have really strong special education programs at Frontier where we bring in a significant number
of students from surrounding school districts um so we're able to help offset the budget there I would also say that there's probably an element having do with our previous conversation about being on that cusp of one or two classes Frontier because it's four towns instead of one has that advantage of it's six or
seven sections of History 101 or whatever it is I'm making numbers up but like it's a bigger School of students so individual fluctuations are less relevant we also tend to not have some of the other adjustments that the elementary school has which there isn't
a significant amount this year but you know typically um our electricity line for example it you know maybe it's 50,000 and we spend between 40 and 45 so I know based on prior year history I have a little bit of wgel room in
certain expense accounts Frontier functions like a u municipality so any excess budget gos into overal Aid so we have to make sure that we have savings to cover you know major things that may happen in the building um or out of
District placements that we didn't plan for so the elementary schools the budget at the end of the year the amount that's still left tends to be very little and you know we may paint the gymnasium if we have enough money left whereas Frontier you know it really is our cash
just like the town has free cash and has some buffer in their budgets as well so there were a lot of things discussed um Keith jump in and remind me if I'm remembering this wrong but Keith sits on the budget subcommittee for for Frontier um we discuss that certain
expense accounts are out of balance and that we do need to increase for supplies and materials um or what were some of the other things that we were talking about I don't have it in front of me um minor things though that might add up to $30,000 and the committee said well you
know last year we had 8,000 left in electricity or 5,000 left in heat let's find a way to continue to cover that rather than increasing the budget we also had the conversation about um using an additional $100,000 of school choice
money so that's taken account for here otherwise that would be you know another 1% added back in so we do the best that we can at the subcommittee and then the full committee level to make the frontier budget as conservative as
possible thank you does that that helps there's a lot here so yeah it's a lot for sure it also looks like there's a few categories where the budget went way down um you know um a
transportation you know so that's see that's where you'll see we're using rural Aid to help offet so it's not a decrease in transportation cost or I'm sorry we're using school choice on that line we basically just said let's bring our budget down as low as we possibly
can we know we're going to have X Revenue in school choice we're going to take another $100,000 of our school choice funds to help offset the budget which could be in the long run years from now problematic if your school choice numbers decrease your revenue is
decreasing and you're going to have to throw things back on your general fund if you can't make Cuts right now now based on what we know and what we have known for several years with our school choice numbers and what we're predicting we're not going to see that decrease in the very near future so while it's
presenting in this this sheet that the expense went down we're just supplementing it with another funding source and the big difference with the elementary schools is if the school choice numbers go down our local population is not going to explode at the same number we'll see it coming because it's coming up in the elementary
schools there's no surprises in numbers coming up you get in in in the full picture of things so whereas the elementary schools we don't know if they're one or two sections Frontier you have a little bit more I know what the fifth grade looks like coming up from all four towns same thing
with that next category below transportation is Food Services that's down if you're looking at the line by line budget you'll see this um I don't know if you printed that back here or not you just print the report line by line we still have a food service
director the 23,000 that we moved we just moved to the school lunch revolving fund because that fund has adequate resources to help pay for that budget part of that has to do with Co and how school lunch is now funded we've been able to build up reserves so that we can
afford to pay that portion of the food service director not all of the schools can do that you know Conway for example their school launch program was in a deficit for years and we were having to supplement so Frontier just happens to be in a position where it can make some of those choices and that was a
conversation had at the sub committee level after seeing what the first round of Assessments looked like Sunderland in particular was almost at 11% I know we're still talking about a high number at N9 and a half or wherever it lands um but getting it under 10 felt like
something that we as a committee and as a school could do to try to help support the town Sunderland doesn't recoup the full $100,000 they only recoup their portion um of the cost Shar but it still helps to bring that total assessment down
anything else before assessments let's have the hard conversation yeah so the bottom line is that we have very little new Revenue growth the new Revenue growth in Chapter 70 is $35,000 and we're talking about
throwing our budget by 300,000 so that means that our towns are picking up um unless we have supplemental funds our towns are picking up the full difference uh there are several portions of the Chapter 70 formula I am not an expert at Chapter 70 but what I can explain to you
is that um there's a couple different components so Chapter 70 includes um Revenue that's paid directly to Frontier that help offset the budget and then there's the required number Town contribution um that is a portion of the assessment and of the formula that we
cannot touch if the state says the town can afford to pay more then the town pays more I can look at the enrollment numbers and make sure that those are accurate make sure that the foundation budget looks okay um I can tell you that you know Frontier has also been in
declining enrollment so we're not seeing huge growth there um and if one of our member towns has a significant shift in what they can afford to pay it means that the other towns are going to pay more for example um Conway according to the state required contribution in the
formula of Chapter 70 they cannot pay nearly as much as they have in Prior years so someone has to pick up that stock so the other towns do based on their proportion of the formula calculation and because it also goes to wealth of the town and personal wealth
in a town if you're in Conway and you have two millionaires move out of town that can adjust with the regional budget assessment yeah I had a lot of questions so resident enrollment they also had a decline in Resident enrollment um personal income of your
taxpayers and the um property values and it's not based on your assessment of the property values it's based on what the state says homes are worth so bottom line is a lot of it is out of our control when it comes to that portion of the and what we don't know
when we're developing the budget that's where these conversations are important we don't know if you got moreeven right unless we go through know we can probably go through your Sherry sheets and go through but we don't know four all four towns if you had a good year in you know in getting more money state is
it money in Money out or is it enrollment in the balance there so that's where the communication talking with us what's going on okay um so on page
11 top of page 11 it starts um the second component of the Chapter 70 formula the amount that each M Town can it's not necessarily a chart um but it shows you that member Town contribution and you can see in that in that data
that uh Conway is down 225,000 according to what the state says that they can pay Deerfield is up 78,000 Sunderland is up 92,000 and weightly is up 40,000 from prior
year um so we take other factors into consideration when building our budget for Revenue so Transportation reimbursement our own excess and deficiency which uh the school committee does vote to apply to 200,000 in excess and efficiency to the budget we look at
Grant and revolving funds which we've talked about a little bit such as Choice special education all of those are taken into consideration so the member town is based on I'm sorry the member Town assessment is based on our regional agreement it's the state required contribution plus any additional to fund
the budget plus Capital assessment and Debt Service uh to come up with the total assessment it's based on a 5-year rolling enrollment cost share percentage that is in the regional agreement it just so happens that Sunderland dropped
off a class that was really small and added a class that was really big in the five-year rolling enrollment so that shift is was 18 students in the POS year percentage it makes a big difference um especially when your other towns may be going down in a
moment although we're relatively I mean we're the same as we were 21 so we're also pretty stable yeah 20 was 18 lower though and to 20 was 96 people 96 students and so we lost 96 students and
we added on 114 which makes a pretty big swing for us big swing but it should stay relatively stable for the next few years um I don't I don't think that uping class information huge for
really so there'll be there could be some swing in that again um let's see all right so ages 14 uh and 15 outline what the assessment
for each of the towns look like uh looking at sundland in particular the state minimum requirement is up 92,000 compared to the prior year the operating budget is up 112,000 and then Transportation almost 18,000 for a total
of $ 22,43 which is a 99.39% increase over FY 25 uh there is no Capital assessment and there is no debt assessment for the newcoming year um any Capital needs will
be funded through existing School funds um so if we have additional school choice if we have additional rural Aid we have a building use fund that has some significant um availab of of money so uh we are looking at a couple of
projects with the budget subcommittee but the towns will not be assessed for those next year and Frontier currently has no debt um just as a reminder we did pay off um $930,000 in Fond anticipation notes last year with school funds without having to
access the towns for um track project agback flooring some other things that have been done over the last five years the town's only ended up paying um interest payments um over previous years and Frontier paid off entir so we no de
so the 9.3 now9 would be the total assessment based on the budget that's being presented at the public hearing ask a question about one couple Pages backal page number this is but the Chapter 70 formula The Columns 2 and three
8667 what is that tell oh I'm sorry enrollment down they went from 86 to 67 that's a lot yeah so that's also based on how does that track with the cost sharing table that's
average so the cost sharing is based on a fiveyear rolling average so it'll it'll have an effect on that but it's not going to be it's it's not year to year 63 versus 67 I know what that is so I can tell you that um the Chapter 70
formula takes into account certain percentages of student population for low income for special needs for out a district pement so you might actually have 63 students in the school and then they factor in those other components of
the foundation budget which we could have a whole another conversation about sometime if you want to look at that and then it adds some additional money to help fund your speci that's what I was struggling with I was expecting it to be it's a great question and so we really think we think
that Conway's numberers shifted that dramatically in one year count Contra to all the other trajectories of the schools in terms of their ability I mean I guess the the student count it's a big change and their income personal income dropped you said
dramatically what we had heard from select for had said that they had some residents that were in a much higher tax that's a big I've gone to the Chapter 70 workshops it's less about the students more about the value of the
homes and the income of the resents I know this is a little bit of a a side but I'm really curious to see what happens to leverett's assessment after the kid family no longer is a giant Financial anchor in the top of that mountain um but yeah one one family
I mean if Jeff fos moves into sundland tomorrow we don't get any money left from this state we like our formula goes entirely to the ground and I know this is soap boxing but it's a real concern when our ability to collect taxes is not dependent on somebody's income but our
ability to pay for school Services apparently is and I'll need someone to explain that one to me at some point because still doesn't make any sense to me so somebody moves into the same house who makes much less money still the same house unless the
house could be I understand but if you if you assume that there's some relationship between real Val and at least it's Chapter 70 does include the income no I hear you I'm saying he's pointing out there disconnect there because
there's no mechanism for that to actually filter into the if we could that would be a whole different thing but that's a that's a conversation for people with much more time than us so it sounds so sounds like um this
is just a bad year for sundland um nothing we can do about that not your guys's fault that more students decided to attend from Sunderland and some students decided not to attend from other other towns really nothing we can do about that um is it
going to be hard to absorb of course but again not your guys fault so you know thank you for bringing us the budget um and just so you aware we we're being hit on all fronts yeah everywhere I mean
it's not just the health insurance and the school and Sunderland um Elementary it's we had problem with our Capital stabilization account we've had um some other issues so it's this is going to be
a very tough budget for us to meet so if you think of anything please call thank you there any any other questions for Shel or Darius while they're here thank you both for your time we
know how much work goes into this and we really appreciate it and we will uh talk to you all soon and I will see you guys on Thursday all righty Franklin Tech thank you so much for being patient we appreciate it no problem um if you can log back in I
think I can get on so if you go back on there I think I can work the magic to get on there so it timed out after 40 minutes but I think I can get on the button I don't think you pressed yet go ahead and maximize this
one we should be still oh this is there you can close this one out um and then of my students P this up go to home PR start again that main screen pops
up get don't worry about that we don't have audio something the room he doesn't need audio okay expanded now should have that little side bar that's I think that's participant
participants now I'm going to log in so mine should pop up and a second and once I open the link see if I pop up here then someone's going to have to let me in I did it a minute ago by the way oh
shoot um where are you not yet pop up it's waiting um I wonder if you go to the videoos off I don't know if that makes a difference on the bottom left yeah our uh our owl isn't working
our little eyeball here it shouldn't make a difference yeah it shouldn't for that one more time here should I be recording it already is it's fine well it turned off at one point well no it didn't yeah no it's definitely the recording it's just
recording nothing um going to log out L one one more time I'm sorry check host tools probably host tools let's see enable I don't think it's going to matter but enable you got you got waiting room waiting room yeah get
rid of that un enabled waiting room I don't think it's going to make a difference yeah but waiting room should make people show up yeah should show off so just I don't know just fre to try it I don't think it's do we have an HDMI cord we can just
toss him up but they said before I came that they hook me up to the big screen so we also have the the the white board should be able to be connected to automatically can you do it
wirelessly okay we got more in here you can help us if you get HTML code then I'm all set Mone so can I have a second before you guys finish the technology um our the finance committee would like to adjourn it's part of this meeting because one of
our finance committee members has to leave so we will no longer have um form we will still to what we St as citizens of Sunderland to ask questions if we have any but our finance committee meeting has to so can I have a motion you want me to look back there I
think there's ATM there only the one that's on here I'm I think that KN total overhaul anyway we'll be up and running in no time yes thank you thank you that do it plug it in here
right member so now well now go back you got H yeah unfortun this don't have anything on that TV this is the only four that was on that one unfortunately um can
we that one uh had that could get it up and run uh any CH a bunch of cords down in my a if that if that other end hooks into that TV it can then I can hook into the HDML yeah unfortunately what what the end that we have hooks into the little
computer back here okay and the this TV only has HDMI Also let's um can you is it possible for you to email your presentation to Y um Becky and then Becky can share that should
that's our only option I think that's where we're at how do I share so he's going to email you the presentation and then I will all let me just email to you real quick all right so I still don't know why this didn't work I I think I'm going to have to
fiddle around with the owl at some point but so I email you a pdf version of it last name is first you should be able to cast directly to
the TV from your okay if I can get an email address uh town to ad e Des to the left there's there were a bunch of cords right I'm yeah my executive assistant called
and indicated that you guys had the HTML court so it might be that well I I think I I told her we would try to hook it up I Nathaniel would try to do it but I didn't we don't have well we don't have the right end we
have one end but not the other I have a dongle I have a couple my I got the dongle right here that's not the issue yeah you got the D covered right got that pot covered now you emailed me
y um there they go and my emails acting czy I got Town admin at Town of suland you got it that's it um I don't see anything yet J is how big
file let's go a big PDF right it's only a two Meg two Meg a big deal so it's not too too B come on [Music] is there another email I can send it to no this is the one we
need um it's been my it's Outlook and it's been acting a little crazy see 54 walk he's got HML yeah see I don't see oh you got another I'm going to see
if I got all kinds of Doles I got one that fits that too if this works go size HDMI one sound somewhat optimistic why don't I see your email now I don't know I just checked mine and
said it sent here come try this uhmi if you don't mind I would look for a typ Emil do what I would look for a typo Emil have make a typo that they made email show it
doesn't all right look at that magic my computer but this doesn't even all right did you just let's take about 15 minutes and I'll be out of you here and I'll take whatever questions
you have um I'm Rick Martin I'm the school super of Ben Frank County Technical School I've been at the school for 18 years this is um Jim botus he's been on our school committee for as long as I've been at the school if not longer um right about 18 20 years long
representation from the town of Sunland so he represents you when we're at our school committee meetings we have 24 members on our school committee the 19 member to 560 square miles territory so what I wanted to show you is the budget book
and how it impacts theana suland so I'm going to start right each when you get this budget book when it's voted on on March 11th by our school pade we'll send these right out to you these are all going to be clickable you can get to whatever you want within the budget I we
start with the um with the sources of funding here and I'm going to start with the assessment to the the towns let's get kind of right to it right so right now you see this is our our assessment to the towns we've been averaging about
a 3% increase and this year it went to 5.5% I'm going to show you the reason for that in just a minute when you click the assessment to the towns in the chart right here and we aaging the 3% for 10 years
and we went to 5.5 this will explain a paragraph of what's going on with the town what's going on with the increase fgts is seing a 5.5% assessment to the town for the FY 26 budget dueing large part to
enrollment growth um increas in costs associated with vocational stock such as steel copper wire that kind of stuff um and a lot I'm not going to meute everything to it but that's just some of the stuff when you are navigating through this um document you go back to the source of the funding you click it
it'll bring you right back to where we are how we per pupil cost right here you press the per pupil cost I scroll down the thas sunon right here it's highlighted in yellow for you and you see this is our enrollment Trend
we had six students nine students nine students nine students is what our current assessment is and that you can see it's about $1,852 per pupil which is kind of um actually is lower than most of our
member t for people because our enrollment has a slight um growth to it our average per people is 12489 again as explained earlier in the last presentation these numbers are set
by the state to us um what are we looking at for the following year and how does IT project out right now we have two seniors from the time of Tel they'll graduate we have five applications so in the that 9 next year might move to 12 but we
don't know who's going to actually show up yet but that's I just like to give you a yearout idea of where we're going to be at and when I look at that accept to the towns and I go back to where we are
on our town chart Trends I just gave you those I'm going to just go down here to kind of talking a little bit about that assessment to the Town piece when I was talking about the increase of 5.5% this is a graph when you see the
orange line that's a town minimum contribution you can see how it's slowly going up and way up in these last few years um Chapter 70 was keeping Pace with it you see this dip here Chapter 70 stopped keeping Pace with the minimum
contribution now causing the towns to pay more and giving the schools less that's what that basically say says and this has gone on since they changed governance so you can look at the trend over the last couple years at the same
breath you can see the red the green line above net School spending now we've been pretty much pretty low there for the most part now if you're in hold Harless there are school districts in the millions and
just in our Franklin County area some 500,000 maybe at the lower end but this I'll hold Harless we ought to hold Harless but if we look at what we we're doing our assessment to the town above net School spending right now if we were
to not change a thing and we were to just keep it at a 5.5% we would be $179,000 above that red line if we were go back to what we did previously the last 10 years and went to 3% we would
only be $5,000 above the line why is that important because when we do Trends I do them in 10e Cycles if we just go 3% even the year after we out of our enrollment will drop below that red line to the extent of
about $179,000 that means the towns no matter what required by law have to pay anything below that line so we're trying to avoid that from happening which is why our um assessment to the towns went
from 3% to 5.5% and I can accurately predict the following year we need to be at 6.5% to stay out of that red line if we do nothing and maintain a 3% increase we'll have a $400,000 hole the following year and
$800,000 after that that the town required by law will have to pay so we're trying to project that out that's where we currently are and let's did change the chapter 74 formula I mean the Chapter 70 formula which we heard they might do if they do that this kind of
goes away but this is why they need to do something because if you're doing really good by your towns it only gone with a 3% increase for 10 straight years the top the state wants to take the money from it so it's almost you know they're not
really rewarding us for being conservative in our estimates all these years so I go back to the um to the source how we get our money Debt Service is uh $27,000 from our windows and doors project um we
had a Windows Doors Paving um project 9 years ago we in year nine are the 15year bond that's 27,000 that will change every two years based on the equalized valuation formula and how does it affect the town of sun that's what we're here
for so I'm going to click on here debt assessment to towns scroll to sundland it's about $657 a year that's shurn one down one down sorry one down from there we'll
take 6 million sorry 12,000 oh darn $362 sorry about that you're 12,000 and if you can see the different times what they have to pay is totally based on that equalized valuation formula that they dictate within the bond if I go
back to sources of funding I look at Chapter 70 here's what wasn't good for every school district they somehow tweaked the formula of Chapter 70 and you can see here we have gone up
$500,000 $500,000 30,000 and then this last one 200,000 even though our enrollment went up the previous year by seven um by 17 and this year by 19 we're still not getting that
per pupil it's crazy this is the first time we've ever experienced this business manager been in the district for 24 years he's never seen anything like it so they've changed the formula they taken the money from those students who are increased in enrollment and
giving it to the ones who don't increase enrollment so they changed the formula completely negative impacts a school like us as you can see so the chapter 7 formula is not good everything that you want to read about it and get explained you can see that number
6198 right you go to Chapter 70 Cherry sheet this is how you find your information for Frontier or whatever other school district you want to look up this is a resource for you you go down to the cherry sheet you click it it
will bring you to an external Department of Revenue sheet right here you take that Department of Revenue sheet you go to all Regional Schools you click down here you can go to your school but I'm going to go to Franklin County Tech I'm
press submit and that gives you the numbers we had in our budget the 6198 is right there our regional transportation number only went up a little even though we're the largest geographical um School District in the entire state by far almost twice we more
than twice as big as the one that's in number two geographically so our school busers have to go all over the place so there's 882 so these numbers you're seeing here are reflected exactly in our budget as you see here so there's
our regional transportation we just saw taken up so we took some hits in Chapter 70 in Regional Transportation on that ended our non-member towns have made up the difference these are people who you're paying $112,000 right
approximately um no you're no you're paying 18 18 18,000 if you're a non-member town you're starting in around 24 25 if you don't have special education you got special education you going up from there so it's more expensive and you're not guaranteed a
slot as you are if you're a member town and you're a qualified student so your non-member town everything that's explained is right there in the paragraph it will explain it for you I'm not going to dive into all the guidelines but you want to CLI external links and learn more about non-member towns that's in the
budget and then I go down to State uh transportation we just went over that the tuition from our free employ program that's one of a self-contained program to take kids with high needs um we're going to pull about $50,000 out of that account because we had a few more
students we went from eight to 12 students in that specialized type of program other revenues is our Surplus equipment we happen to have a lot of that due to a vocational shop we got different old equipment that goes out for Surplus and what have you so we take
25,000 out of that excess in deficiencies is the town's fee cash so like we have free cash we have what we call excess and deficiencies and money that's unspent from the previous year's budget that gets certified every year by the state we don't have control of that
so what happens is 657 th000 it looks like it's gone up a bit click on excess and deficiencies it will have a whole paragraph explaining what it is but if you want to know where we got the numbers from which is important because you want you want to have as much transparency you can do this for your
own School District as well I go to Franken County t and certification same kind of a process we just went through I select the jurisdiction I go down to Franklin County Tech I click on that I go to the year 2025 I click on that I look at
preview and in that record you see down here is at 65726 so that's that excess and deficiency it's very important to be transparent when you're dealing with the taxpayers money then we have going back to how we receive our money that kind of
sums it up for a61 million budget how we spend our money we're an HR industry has said in the last report 80% to spend on like salaries and teachers and we're probably not much different we looked at District leadership and administration
went up contractually about 20 something th000 the biggest increase is instructional Services when you see instruction Services here we had to add more teachers to meet the needs of the shop we had two electrical instructors
that went to three two copper new instructors because we built an outside house project every year that went to four you know so we just keep adding but you know depending on the interest so that's the driver there is and that's the biggest driver outside of what you already heard earlier from the increase
in insurance is an accurate number that Prov earlier 18 to 20% when we look at that increase you can see that rate down in retirement not Insurance active employees you'll see a $200,000 increase right there in
that one shot so what's helped in what does help us again is when we pull on that to revolving we are one other thing you're going to see here is you see this Capital stabilization number the previous two
years we were at 750 we came new last year explained that we had a um a seam in $5 million a project that had a bond of a 15-year life that expired just a few years ago we knew that was going to happen so we took that money that we
paid in average of $500,000 a year loaded into the capital stabilization so we didn't have to burden the towns with another 15 to 20 year bond to pay for the feasibility study as part of our msba project which we are now involved in we are currently in the design phase
at the time this the feasibility study is about 1.6 something million dollars um and so that covered us off without having a long-term bond out to our towns and this year we're down to $238,000 but that's just to keep the
school running we had main switch gear that went during the school year if we didn't already have purchased an additional backup about $100,000 we would have been out of school for a month or two while Federal Pacific which doesn't exist anymore would have to build we would have to refurbish one
build so we had that done already no one that we have 11 of those switch gears about to go soon as we put that one in another one went but we already had the backup so we put that in at any time we could be out of school a month or two so we need some money in these type of pockets not to mention our major
Plumbing issues that we had you know our school building looks great on the outside but the reason why we were awarded um to move forward with the MSP they came into our building and put us right to the top of the list the thing was just falling AP so it's a 50y old plus building and that's what's going to
happen so that pretty much balances our budget out I'm going to just show enrollment then I'll take whatever questions you have um so the so the budget book is pretty self every line item that we spend money on you're going to be able I mean the other thing that's important is
our grants everything we did with Essa money Perkins money entitlement money is all in here for you to look how we spend our Title One title two title three title four money our Perkins money our essm money how we spent it it was always
spent on stuff we need so we weren't in a bind by the time they closed out the Essa funds we weren't in a hole because we didn't spend it on salaries to the extent that we were worried about that being oh geez it's going to end now what do we do well we knew it was going to end so we didn't go there any salaries
we did spend it on we could roll it into a grant that we already knew about so you know we weren't in bad shape there the other thing that we're able to do you see we have a new Aviation program that just came online this year um and that's an aviation maintenance uh
technician program that's part of a competitive grant that we received so it didn't come from the tax payers in that respect and um that was 4.2 million or something around that so we now have a 12,000 foot hanger we have eight aircraft um we had kids involved in that
particular program and it's right on the boundary line between Franklin County Tech and the airport so um that program is just about to take off I had to put that in [Music] out myself um we also with our own
funding without going out to the towns put a 4,800 foot veternary science building out there now this is one of the towns that about 10 years ago was hit by a few students going to Smith that cross Transportation wise around $3 to $50,000 per student not to mention
that out of District cost at $330,000 a student when they could just pay 18 and go to check so we put in a vetenary science program got a new stateof the artart veterinary science um Clinic we're real excited about and how do we
get all that funding well this is our competitive Grant List since 2014 and we have brought in just over $9 million that isn't you know that's all competitive this is a compe these AR the entitlement grants the entitlement grants anybody gets so this is a little
bit different our each line out of our entire budget is exposed here for a four or 5e trend so you can see how every dollar is spent anything that's highlighted is just going to give you more of explanation so if you see school leadership building you click that on it
will take you to that paragraph again give you a little bit more information or any individual line out that's out of whack in the previous year we wanted to point you to that so we would highlight it in there so there's our entire line item budget that you're going to have when you receive it not to
mention if you can if you guys have insomia St night take this budget out right it's a great way to uh put yourself to sleep so our enrollment Trends uh right here this is how we can do our enrollment Trends we look at where
everybody is in grades K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7even all the way up so I can accurately predict out where we're going to be 3 five 10 years out where do I get those numbers from you too can find the same numbers for your time in the D state reports enrollment you just click that
on there's all your towns the entire State there's kindergarten up top all the way through add them up and you can find out who's in every single grade level very easy to do and that's how we kind of do some of our projections so this budget books a guide not just for Franklin County Tech but for you to look
at your own schools and your own budgets um our enrollment projections here's what it looks like for the next 10 years 8 years or so we're right in the middle here we're in that 2024 25 this blue line is all the available eth graders in
Franklin County 617 down here the orange line is how many students enrolled out of those eighth graders 180 for a catchment of about 29% that's less
students percentage wise than we took back in 20156 when we only had 132 how's that possible well we had 662 in the catchman area out of that 13 2 we had 150 apps so
18 kids weren't qualified to get in when we did the 180 we had 296 apps jez so you can see the difference is we have big beli that if you build it that the kids can get interested in they will come right so there's our enrollment now
here's what we can't for that look at that catchment area enrollment that was based on that other chart I just showed you that drops down down to 525 of the Year 2013 3 34 so we'll be back down to about 165 if we take the same percentage
of kids that's how we can accurately predict where we would be and that helps our staffing numbers as we project out so we're not having those drastic Cuts all in one year if I see this coming down the pipe we'll slowly refine our practices to get them to where they need
to be our total enrollment right now we have 591 in M we predict we we predict about 603 based on current applications and who's graduating so that's a pretty accurate number like I did for the town
of suland I was able to say you're probably going to get 12 next year so we can get a pretty good idea our overall enrollment included IND district and out of District we're currently at 643 for grades 9 through 12 and we'll be at 658 in that vicinity for next year again
all the more reason why they are looking at getting us a new building project because we had to get rid of our Assembly Hall we no longer have it we have that as four classroom with the modu type of build outs we had a you know we have divided up our shots to
have our related class to fit the enrollment so we're really busting at the scenes as well and that projection is not going to go down I just showed you where we might be eight or 10 years and with that I'll take any questions you might
have so that was a quick 18 20 minutes I thought I was 15 that's sorry that was great no I mean this is a ton of information I really appreciate you putting it together I look forward to pouring over the information down the line when we get it yeah yeah
same get we'll get all this once you guys figure out the email and everything right yes oh yeah y you you'll get all of that as well and so that's kind of the overall report so yes I just had a question about all the potential msba
project yes how um I assume that would be a capital assessment to all the towns yeah the way it's going to work is we're in the design phase they're going to tell us are we going to have a renovation of the curent facilities they
have to detect that is that a safe and economically beneficial thing to do do we have a renovation plus an addition or do we just do a new core building that's the process we're currently in once we figure out that
process they're going to give us what that design is going to be by this time next year I intend to come back um and and have some a lot more information if not um we potentially could even have a a cost associated with
that but I think that would be a little early but it's coming along pretty fast so we would know a little bit more about that but we'll definitely have an idea which track we're going to be on in a year from now what we're actually going to be doing and we might even have a um a cost that would be
associated with that over the longterm part of the project what's that would be a districtwide vote the same day same hour be like a two or three hour window and then that has to pass by a um a majority of um the 19 member tal so
really if 10 tals voted down and 8 tal voted through it doesn't it just it doesn't make a difference about the number of it's just the total number of who votes so if there 4,000 people through those 19 P those 19 towns
who voted we all we would need was 2,1 votes that's the way that would actually work um when we did our Windows Doors project uh nine years ago and nine out of the 15 years we had um 74% with most of them in the80s so it
depends on where we're at what's the typical split on the school project on the capital project between the state and well the um for us it might be around 65% would be reimbursed directly back to the towns mhm and then
um and the towns would have to pick up 35 pick up about the 35% right that's generally the way that would work so you've mentioned adding Veterinary Tech and that you're in the process of adding the aviation program yeah
um current do you have anything in the in the future do you have any programs that you are looking to add down the line any any growth in that respect in terms of right now the only thing we're looking to do is maybe U refine a vetenary science animal science project
to include more of the larger animals and get that involved so maybe a future Bond down the road is part of maybe the msba project to expand upon that so it'll be you know more availability for students in this area year not to choose a subject within the agricultural field
from another school district that will cost our towns four or five times as much so we're trying to plan for that okay and you're looking to get some cows yeah well we have we have four beef cows so we're vo on our way yeah but no
big gloves for counting oh yeah yeah exactly yeah wow grow up on a daily oh okay so you know your stuff yeah any other questions from the last M year what the now this is great thank you very much to go through the document
are super helpful and then and then when you go through the docum if you have any questions I would love to have anyone just you know call and come over for a visit and I will walk you through the budget and walk you through the school okay take thank you very much Mr Martin
thanks Jim good to see you all righty so I believe our last budget presentation is the selectboard budget presentation is it I correct on that yes wonderful get my share that I got it here somewhere
yep that's in there thank you very much have a great one all right is it called is it the one that says accountant budget I think it's the TA or the select selectboard ta SBN
ta uh budget or t expenses FY 26 is the one all righty so it looks like that's this one right one page y it's that way no that's not it it's got orange on the top and then
Green in the bottom it's in the SharePoint in the in they don't get SharePoint you don't have Sho Point never mind sorry about [Music] that and I found out from my it guys how
to make you a SharePoint but I haven't gotten that they're going to have do it basically but we'll get you I promise next year I'll be SharePoint from beginning to end so it looks like um moderator selectboard Town Administrator SBO
assistant for more resource admin salary all of those are showing a Zer um z% 0% increase um I think the caveat on that though is that percentage can't be right cuz yours well with the
2.5 is what the Personnel is recommending by it's not official yet and select board hasn't adopted it yet gotta okay so what do you mean it's not official I mean till the select board adopts it you okay but we voted it the person it's your recommendation and then
we have to so I just wanted to make sure I thought we voted that yeah yeah no I I just meant it wasn't okay so so the the the numbers you have in here in blue are 2.5% above the other numbers pending that
discussion is that correct they are not increased they're not they are not they are what they were I have not increased okay I'm sorry I was looking at the the actual rather than the the 25 reest I'm sorry yeah so they're the same all the way down you're right my
bad I'm right so what's the found I'm sorry you I apologize I can't get this one to come up here it is that's all we got here it is
thought I sent it in the last one but I'll send it right now okay so that's in Chumps the the audit so the the problem you you'll
Tech the phes it's the technology seemed to be unaccounted for in a lot of ways last year um okay so looks like the the grant writing consultant line item and the professional development line item both
are going down by about $3,500 looks like the audit line item um it says here for 4ye 23 the audit is due still for some reason it was not paid um so we're doubling up on that this year 27 instead of
135 um and then there's an increase in the technology line item from 20 or 343 or sorry no 28 up to 388 so a $10,800 increase there and that's what we were just saying is because our technology um was kind of all over the
place right we saw we had experience with that yep if we add a zero in there it'll work next time um all right and then there's a line in here about all Department foil bills now being paid by Ma oh right cuz we had a discussion about that
previously where different departments their phone bills were being paid out of different budgets and so we're we're pulling them all together and Jeff told me there was going to be a dramatic savings um I reviewed the numbers with
mail I'm not seeing a savings okay it's going from 40 no it's going from if if in context of that and I I'm trying to remember a conversation from like a year ago I believe the the the savings was not based on our previous year costs
but that the the cost of the system that we had was going up dramatically and that this new system is more than our old system had been but is more less than what the old system was going up to that makes a lot more sense so yes it's definitely still increase but it's
not an it's not as much of an increase as what we wereing getting the old system yeah um yes that makes so much more sense and then everything else looks pretty straightforward down the
line um select Board General expenses oh that's everything yeah okay so can you can since I don't have the can you say what was the total percent increase so the total increase um across the board is
12% uh yes a 12% increase of a total of $3,835 um for a 12% increase um with the asteris of a lot of that is not majority
of that is not new money the majority of that is money being moved from one dep Department's line item to another department line item um and the the the big caveat of that being the 13,500 additional for the audit um that's money that we should have paid
in the previous year and didn't this audit technology in telephone basically yeah and the telephone is again not something that we were already paying we're just paying it out of other other Department's line
items um the audit is a one-year thing because apparently we missed it two years ago it it was supposed to be paid out of arpa funds but it wasn't gotcha um and then the technology is just technology get more expensive every
year I don't have any questions from my end Dan do you have any questions no any questions from Finance team I know you guys aren't to get so we'll some questions or questions we have any but I guess I just want to make sure that the savings for the phone or the the
reallocation from the phone in here we see going out wherever it was because I don't remember I'm not sure which budgets if we've already linked them I don't remember seeing anybody else saying hey we start because our phone thing got moved over so I just want to make sure that that does happen yeah okay yeah makes sense all right so yeah
we we will uh make sure you get access to the information um and any questions obviously you can bring up and we will have more finance committee meetings also where if in a future one you have questions you want on the record you're more welcome to bring it up we know who to ask exactly wonderful all right so so just to check in with the schedule we're
meeting again um two week join me on March 10th that that assuming that's two weeks from today then yes okay y that is correct um and that's actually something we'll get that in a second um so no more questions about this particular budget
from anyone at least not right the second and I will answer all your questions we never had a chance to look yes no we'll we'll shelf that one for now um so that should be our our last item of new business uh for today unless I'm missing some oh no we discuss
scheduling schools and other departments so we had the schools come in today they like Gang Busters but unfortunately it caused us a finance Committee Member oh um yeah I mean is there any not that I'm looking for problems
but if there's any official Complaint um do we need to schedule them again I think there was no actual vote taken um so seot we the purpose I think the reason the most important reason to
move ahead was to get that information because I don't think we could have gotten it from varus's availability he really and I didn't even have confirmation they could come until today y I think they no I they sent an email late on
Friday purely informational stuff we could have also pushed them off until public comment and technically they could have sat here here and give us that entire Spiel under public comment and it really effectively wouldn't have been any different I mean and I'm the way that actually it was new business it was budget request with Frontier region
it actually doesn't say Frontier Regional it doesn't say sces it doesn't say no the only one that's completely not on there was Tech that one was yesly but it was last minute and and they they originally had been scheduled there but they I hadn't heard from them until
today so so I guess the moral of the story is schedule everybody put everything on the agenda and then to say not here yeah yeah y so that's just something to whether they can make kind of a good practice for the fure yep um who else do we have it could who else do
we have to meet still I think with those three you know the school's showing up I think we're done okay but we want to go back through and have discussions I just thinking about in terms of who we would have come in it sounds like we don't need to have any more else come in in two weeks we
can just deliberate so that's good um that brings up my next question which is what are we doing next Monday because Monday is the town caucus and so that would be happening in this building at approximately the same time that we
would be meeting here this is not for you guys this is for us do why would that schedule at the same time why would they schedule that at the same time it's been Mondays every talk has been Mondays for a long time it's of been done in 15 minutes no I know it's quick
so it might not be in the way of your my understanding is in the past what we've done is we've just started the tboard me meeting when that's done okay um okay what time is the caucus at is it at 6 is it 6 I think if we say we either we
either say 6:30 still and roll the dice and probably be fine or we could say 6:45 and give ourselves a little extra time um I think honestly I think you're right that it's been like 15 minutes most when he runs it it's like yeah um I would be Comfort let's just let's
just keep 6:30 and worst case scenario we're a little late to start but we're all in the room ready so everybody's ready and and we just start because of Technology yeah I got a question you know it went longer but of
all the ones when we do our deliberations in two weeks we we could put all these three on there right I mean all the budget stuff that we talked about tonight will be available to talk about in two weeks right do we want to spend some time in two weeks talking about the revenue
picture yes yes what we would be doing and the whole and we'll have all the budgets in so we'll have complete on both sides is and we'll know what the what the big number in the
middle is because there's going to be a big number in the middle yeah so I mean that's one of my questions like you know this is my first year doing this but just looking at some of the drivers here and not having seen the but just kind of wildly guessing at them like this doesn't look great uh correct you know
it's not a great certainly like does it seem like we're heading towards an override or are we don't know yet um I try to avoid using the override language until we're sure we need one right because it just gets everyone worried um that being said there's a pretty big gap between at least from my preliminary
understanding there a pretty big gap between our revenue and our our expenses this year I mean all three of those schools came in higher than they have ever yeah well not ever but like Tech every time we have to other pay more like I every time I turn around it's
somebody else saying oh yeah another $200,000 this year another $200,000 this year and we have about we have about $200,000 to play with from from uh po two and a half I think 260,000 or something like that is our is our all in number on no it's under 200 it's under
200 oh right because yeah know I'm thinking total budget numbers not our Revenue numbers cuz there's so much other stuff new well when we get new growth it does end up being like 250 with the new growth we had the other thing impacting
the revenue is the our valuations this year Dro by5 million doll because of a a pellet Court housing issue um with the apartment
czes so and that was going to happen at some point in time but it happened this year too so that $4 million drop in valuations means the corresponding taxes that eats up a good chunk of our new growth if not all of our new
growth for the year yeah yeah um yeah it Aid up the new growth is there a way Becky that for when we come back in two weeks you could gather some preliminary you know ideas of how the other Town administrators are seeing things come
helpful to know where Sunderland is different not that every Town's going to be the same every town has different drivers and like that App Court thing is obviously pretty unique but right you know it just be helpful to contextualize some of these shifts on either side obviously like Frontier we saw very
disperate assessments due to the formula y um you know Al with Frank Tech we one on that side right like we pay less per person than dear field you know right and I'm not looking
for that comparison at that level of detail I mean more like 30,000 foot like Revenue expenses like what are how are other people starting to look at things I don't know if the select board talk and you guys yeah the short answer is that every town deals with a handful of
problems and my understanding is and I haven't talked too much to them but my understanding is other towns in the area are like yeah this one hit this year but this one didn't hit this year and we're in a position where all of them hit this year like pick a thing that could possibly go wrong this year but wise and it happened we're the only town with
increased numbers for for FR for Frontier everyone else is down going they FL down like 35 people over the 5year thing everyone else is down like 16 18 we're up by 18 students so you know uh conways just paying $200,000 less this year than they paid last year
we're paying $250,000 more um and I know that this is probably just soap boxing but um there's also when you look at the income of the four towns that go into Frontier Sunderland is about $20,000 a year 20,000 per capita less average
income than our other towns and that's largely driven by apartment complexes and whatnot um we're also the only town in these four towns that has um sectors of our town qualifying based on both ethnicity and on income for State like
clation in terms of being low-income or being minority driven areas we are very much very much a different than the other three towns are in that respect um and that's something that's never really talked about or brought up in terms of the different demographics those three towns have a very very similar
demographics in terms of age in terms of ethnicity in terms of income and things like that and if you take our home owning population in Sunderland as a separate group we look very much like that but we have this giant population that's not part of that um you know and
so anyways just I'm again so how much do we have any wiggle room with the not not with the schools but with like South County Senior Center ambulance like or are we stuck well EMS was the
only Department we've talked to that had 17% reduction I mean EMS was not a problem for us South County Senior Center came in a pretty substantial chunk right right so that's what I'm saying you know again it's compared to
but I'm like how do we you know um Deerfield has a much they have a they're like 50% of South um South County Senior Center and they approved it and they approved the and
they're giving 5 and a half% Col step col to everyone in their house okay well that's and they and so that's driving EMS and South County Senior
Center okay I mean the Personnel commit we're not we're not 5 and a half% but we're at 2 and a half% plus steps which gets to be more like 3 and a half% probably yeah you know on average so it's not but it's only for a few people right it's 10
people well no the steps you're only getting steps that it ends up being like three people no no the the one the the $ one dollar thing is only three people but the everybody got steps ABCD oh okay there's the 75 cents
58 cents like okay I have to but there's three people that have there's three people that have a market adjustment and then there's everybody who gets a step and then everybody gets 2 and a half% okay so there's a a step you know
what I mean so I'm a big I'm like can I just tell me the whole percent but I don't know it isn't shown on yet and I can look at that you if you want to make sure that you you send this I saw that you sent it today yeah but I did not separate out I did not give the
50s and the 70 to everybody I didn't get that so I will think that no c yeah the ABC D categories I brought the number down and it's going to go back up because it's I just have one clarifying question I want to make sure maybe I
heard this wrong I think on Chapter 70 I heard um Tech say that the formula is hurting schools that are having the enrollment increases anding the money to decreases but the elementary school said
that the formula is taking away the money from the schools that don't have increases and giving to ones that do have increases so remember both of those I I think both are actually true if you take the context that you want and leave the other context you don't want okay because the actual underlying formula
found underlying St formula I believe believe has changed to minorly favor schools that have have lowering enrollment which is what which is what tech was talking about the other side of what Frontier was talking about
is the some opportunities act some there some act that just got passed last year that gives more money specifically to schools that have increasing enrollment to help out for in City Boston schools that kind
of thing and that's the money that's that the other schools so they're both talking about this is going this way this is going that way um and to be honest they're both IGN intentionally ignoring the other one to make their situation look worse to us well summary as it
always is the money's going east yes almost always is Massachusetts yes um but unfortunately so is the so is the population for the state state in general has decreasing population Mass has lower population numbers year over year but if you look at that by region
it's western Mass is shrinking and eastern Mass is just like any like any urban center is just continuing to grow um and so it's it's hard to and another thing that that um Mr Martin was talking about is um that that's fine in Dandy when you
have a million students in like 25 square miles in Boston but if you have a school like Tech that covers I don't remember how many many one towns so all the towns in Western you know the entirety of Frank County
it's a huge difference in transportation expenses and and you know other regionals so is it the biggest District because Berkshire doesn't have its own Tech schol that covers the whole thing I was going to say there's no way burshire county is a lot bigger yeah no they don't have they don't have a single Tech that covers their whole whole their
whole County unfortunately I was just confused I'm like I've seen the counties W County's bigger Berkshire County's bigger Franklin County's big I'll give you but y but it's cuz we have no and we are really very lucky that
we're a member town of tech um because we pay 18,000 straight across the board as opposed to starting at 23 but then oh you have special Educational Services and more and more and more and more um just the students we have that
are enrolled right now would be $100,000 more expensive if we weren a member town so when do we see the other thing that comes up is when do we see school CH Choice money because that's not in the school budget that's like how it is it it'll be in our Revenue budget okay so it's like net
like we sent this many people to Smith and this many people to pbpa or whatever and then got as many oh no I was only talking about the dollar amount so Choice money is not part of our budget yeah that that that's entirely go straight to the schools it's it you'll
see it on the revenue side you're talking about sending money but when we send money when we pay for kids that's different than school it comes out of the church it's on the recap so you can you can sa the money on the Recaps they take the money they take what so that's already
in these budgets yeah and I I I don't want to say this is true for this year but in years past they've said that we as a district take more kids in than we send out in general like we we we have a school that has a really good special needs program and we end up get bringing in more dollars from that than we send
out yeah I I was I was just curious if there was going to be another hit that wasn't part of No No in fact when you look at this um very few instructural assistants are paid for out of General budget funds most of the structural assistants are paid for out of school choice money or other revolving funds
like that um so yeah a lot of that stuff is smokes and mirrors and six of one and half dozen other and all that kind of stuff so the health insurance issue will hit harder at Frontier because they're going to stick at straight 20 and then
we might not be able to get let's hope we can get negotiations done yep all righty uh that's all of our new business today um under old business we have selectboard updates I don't have anything nothing from Dan wonderful we keep it nice and short and sweet um Town Ministry updates Becky anything that you
haven't already covered no wonderful even better nice and short and sweet um we've all been here long enough so at this time um I would entertain a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn seconded we have a motion made in seconded to adjourn all in favor i i two nothing thank you very much Becky time is
8:38 and we can all go home and I'm