##VIDEO ID:LFfOEJFgmRs## e great good evening everybody um welcome to the swamp school committee regular session and Joint meeting with the select board and the finance committee uh today is Thursday January 23rd it is 6: p.m we are coming to you from swans High School um room b129 um I call this meeting of the school committee into order uh Mariel uh call the select board into order great and from the finance committee does not have AUM okay so we'll wait you guys can hang out enjoy all right um before we uh do the Pledge of Allegiance if I could as we stand stand if you are so able we have just a quick moment of silence for uh swampit High School longtime coach and athletic director uh Mr Frank de fiz just a quick moment of silence please could all stand thank you very much now if we could just say the Pledge to the flag the United States of America and to the stands na indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right um welcome everybody um we have some uh regular business to conduct first before we get into um the FY 26 recommended budget presentation um we'll let everyone introduce themselves as we go forward but from the school committee side again my name is Kine Pastor I'm the chair the current chair of the school committee if I could just ask anybody to go just introduce yourselves please suzan Amy O Conor John jantis Pam angelakis Cheryl har Stella Jason kishman Karen Marshall he uh Sam great thank you very very much all right um anything for the love of learning today no not tonight okay great thank you um committee comments uh Karen anything nope I'm ready to just get into it great Suzanne same Amy I just have a quick thing I want to say thank you to the uh the head of the teachers union uh and the head of the uh esps and the head of the tutors as well as our superintendent for agreeing to participate in interest based bargain I think it is a game Cher for our district uh in terms of actually getting things accomplished so I want to thank everybody for for doing that great thank you John just very quickly glad everyone's here tonight to to hear the presentation great um I really have nothing to add to General committee comment um I'll I'll add a few comments as we go forward yeah thank you very much I always forget Noel you're up uh nothing too crazy it's midterms week at the high school It's relatively new but it's verying great excellent and thank you again for coming Sam all right thank you very much College updates no I'm still it won't be till like March April seems like forever all right um we we're all invaded breath for both Noel and Sam and Sam all right um reports and discussions so my superintendence report is really in two categories tonight obviously the budget um in in with the director of um the assistant superintendent of finance and operations uh but prior to that we do have a couple of presentations from our facilities director um Max Casper uh The UU um license agreement that we've been talking about for weeks in terms of getting 45 parking spaces for the swamp Scot Elementary School to alleviate the parking situation so that um parents who volunteer or people that are there for meetings will have plenty of parking and then um a swamp Scot elementary school project update a close out project update so I'll let you take it away Max thank you superintendent angelakis um yeah I'm going to start off uh discussing the license agreement with The UU uh this is something we've been negotiating uh with a a small contingent from The UU board and we really have to say you know thank you to Evan Katz and Tom Billings they were really uh awesome um to negotiate with and and work through and and really were collaborative and we really appreciated uh that the process with them uh we feel as though The UU is being a really great neighbor in in their um agreement here and I know the the board has the agreement I'm not going to run through the whole thing um but if you have any questions it is a license agreement so it is it is revocable um but there is uh very little that the town is giving in return uh we will be obligated to do snow removal uh in the easement and license area we were already doing it in the easement area so it's a little bit additional uh for the parking spaces the license really covers the the parking spaces that are adjacent to the easement if you know the uyu lot there's really like three sections this we refer to as the lower lot the closest to the wetlands in the field at the school so when you exit through the easement onto the easement from the school property that's the that's the lower lot so it's about 45 spots it'll for staff um and it's it's really needed at the school um we've known you know since the project was formulated that the parking was going to be really tight on the site um swamp Scott's a dense Community we didn't have the ability to put hundreds of parking spots on the site so we really had to maximize the the programming on the site um we've been using the the middle school but you as it gets colder and the teachers um aren't aren't loving that concept um so having this parking lot right adjacent is is a huge benefit and will you know decrease the congestion on the site it'll free up visitor parking and additional parking on the site for visitors because you know the parking for the teachers is one thing that's been challenging but another thing is we fill the lot and then anybody that comes during the day has nowhere to go either and they're they're driving around and parking in the neighborhood so it really is going to provide relief across the board um and we're really happy to get to to the finish line here um we've had a couple snowstorms uh we were trying to get it done before the snow but um nothing major you know with with a with a big snowstorm it would really really be challenging with our current parking Arrangements but the storms considerately happened on weekends yes we were lucky thank you for lettering that I appreciate that yes yes so really the timing couldn't be any better and I'm happy to answer answer any questions of course uh Town Council did negotiate it with the uu's council so it's fully vetted by Town Council so how many parking spaces does this bring us to now in in The UU or or total total um there's about 80 it depends on how you count them on the site but let's say 80 to 90 and this is 45 so about 135 40 total 140 total and how much does that free up for the parents because I know that the school committee heard about that a couple of times sorry well I mean if you if you think of we will now be able to park 45 staff on the in the in the U lot each day the it's important to note that this is The UU parking is not for community and and parent parking it's for staff parking um but that will free up con considerable parking on site so we will no longer have the perimeter of the site parked by staff so all of those would be freed up and we would anticipate all the visitor parking uh EV parking you know not to be fall on a daily basis awesome thank you you're welcome um Lori are you you must be very excited about this change this is a big win for everybody yeah especially obviously our staff and our teachers Max and I wanted to do a big celebration um it means a lot to us it really does great great um and thanks to Max and superintendent angelakis and definitely Tom Billings and Evan Catz they were unbelievable during this great well thank you thank you Max obviously superintendent thank you for all your hard work um anyone have any questions about this particular topic all right great continue on would you would you like to vote on it now or I think vote on it now yes I don't think I can wait another second um all right sorry about that um then can someone please make a motion to accept the UGL licensing agreement I'll make a motion someone second please I'll second all in favor any opposed it passes unanimously yay just don't ask for blue arches we're just about done on the blue notches and I I should mention there was a coral area agreement that the select board um approved last night which was related to the insurance uh coverage so thank you to the select board for also uh taking that in their agenda and and moving that forward great so can I just ask a clarifying question on behalf of SCS staff when yeah they allow to um the The UU is meeting on Monday night uh their board so we expect them to approve it on Monday night uh so we're we have some insurance documents to get in order uh but we expect it will be at some point next week okay thank you great it's great news yeah it is very great news okay okay and I have one short presentation as well about the uh elementary school that I am going to bring up now okay sorry I'm just trying Joe I can get that bigger right oh hold on oh I see what's happening there you go I'm sorry this is not the right thing sorry bear with me just trying to get the right presentation up here Max take your time thank you Mr chair if it's okay with you there is a quum of finance committee still the break with them start so while Max we're waiting um from the finance committee would you like to call yourselves to order Finance committee's meeting is called to order okay thank you motion motion second all in favor thank you thank you Amy for keeping this going they want to oh did I okay okay thank you again this is a short presentation um it was such a whirlwind at the end of the summer opening of the school year we really never had a chance to kind of take a breath and give an update on the the close out of the elementary school project so you know now that we're you know many months into the year and really still at the tail end of the project close out um wanted to take the opportunity to um walk through that and give you an update on that so this is a really awesome picture this is a real picture of the front of the building this is not a rendering there was a professional photographs taken uh by LBA uh there throughout this presentation so I mean it's it's something so just wanted to uh highlight a few things about about the project um I think one of the things we should be most proud of is the is the schedule and I look back at the the dates for the presentation and I highlighted some here uh the Stanley school was demolished in September 2022 rgc CTA broke round in December of 22 the ceremony was actually in December um and we had substantial completion less than two years later on August 9th 2024 and convocation was held at SCS on August 26 2024 and school started 2 days later um remarkable timeline um we also simultaneously had a roadway improvements project we rebuilt Whitman Road entirely at the tail end of the project added sidewalks brand new on Whitman Road did multiple Ada pedestrian ramps all with the help of the DPW Community Development it was really a partnership project um and changed Orchard Road to a oneway uh to allow for proper traffic flows all gearing up for the traffic on that first day of school for pickup and drop off and the first day didn't go great but then it got a lot better and it really was that that engineering and that implementation um and the traffic today is is is really good um you know it's still a lot but it's a really short period of time the the speed spe with which they clear out at pickup is is unbelievable now um what is it l 15 minutes if if that if yeah and you know with the middle school right right next door to have no um conflict with those two sort of large populations entering and exiting very close proximity we really credit that to the the structuring of the school day which which was thought out and the middle school starts about a half an hour later and dismisses a half an hour later uh so that all went pretty well um so you wanted to highlight that as well as the sustainability of the of the project this is really something the the town should be proud of uh it's a lead gold building we're still getting the final certification uh with msba you're required to be lead silver and we're lead gold um and that that's really it's really something uh as most people know it's a fully electric building uh that is from a climate perspective it's really it's really great that's what that's what climate leadership is really all about these days is is electrifying um and decreasing your energy usage there's not a gas line to the building so we have a backup generator that runs off of diesel fuel that keeps the building going if we were to have an outage but there's no fossil fuel usage in the building on a day-to-day basis uh and with that we have geothermal HVAC system uh big sections of the building are heated and cooled through an geothermal HVAC system there's over 80 Wells out in the in the front of the building that power that that system so that's it's pretty great and really the most important thing um and this isn't isn't my side of it so much but it it is the the most important the educ educational spaces are awesome I mean this picture here again this is a real picture of one of the Swing spaces um I think the kindergarten classrooms are the things that whenever I see those the size the bathroom in the in the room um I've been in Hadley a lot recently uh and to think that our kids were there a year ago and they're here today uh it's astounding it's it's really something else and really it's a it's a thank you to the community and the neighborhood um the community really got behind this project when you know the votes happened it wasn't even close right it was really well supported and this is after a failed vote you know 10 years ago now um and that that's amazing and the neighborhood you know the neighborhood not everyone in the neighborhood always supported this project but they they were burdened by it and and they they ended up being good neighbors and they worked through us and it wasn't easy they put up with a lot of things um but ultimately we were able to partner with most of the neighbors and and work with them and and mitigate the impact on them uh and get through it and and we really do you know owe them a thank you because without their participation we wouldn't have got through it and you know we bled AED ledge uh for for months on end there was there was really a lot of impact to the people that liveed right around the school um and that needs to be acknowledged finally um I wanted to point out some fin oh I'm sorry before I get to my final slide I did want to talk a little bit about some ongoing items like this is not this is not over um the punch list is still going on this was at the end of the project we had over 5,000 items that the G and subcontractors were responsible to close out we're down to 27 um that's a lot less um we're still commissioning uh we're in final stages of commissioning commissioning is a is a wide ranging word it's the envelope of the building it's a lot of things at this point it's mostly like the final HVAC things we're still working through HVAC items getting final balancing uh working through issues with the commissioning and we're moving into a post oy commissioning phase uh with the commission agent that they'll be with us for a year kind of watching how this building is operated and we have warranty items uh it's just sort of part of such a big construction project there's things that come up um you know every week almost every day there's something that we're we're finding that we need to address uh luckily you know the contractor is responsible for a year for basically everything um that is not sort of caused by our our misuse um or regular use use uh in the HVAC system it's important to note has a 2-year warranty so for two years uh we have the the the uh subcontractor to kind of work through issues with the HVAC system and I think that's really important um we've been working through issues with parking and snow removal parking is going to get a lot better uh because of the last agenda item uh snow removal you know we've had a couple storms now um it's getting better uh there's certainly some some learning curves uh We've we've been really concerned about the the plowing how how to plow the site but Garrett's been doing a really really great job and the dpw's been uh collaborating and helping us with the sanding but you know we know we're still working through some things most of the you know the front of the building is southerly facing so we don't get sun um so it's a little bit tricky with the with the walkways and uh this last storm was particularly hard with the rain followed by the snow followed by the you know freezing cold so the icing issues but but again it's we're working through that as well as while I take a breath I just think it's important to acknowledge Max in this process gett and it's very important that you receive some credit you were one of the most responsive teammates I've ever worked with um to that punchless alone but even on a day superintendent angelakis told me that Max was on site at SMS and shs and you know snow marule our snow rule needs I have to you know talk to Garrett that day max suddenly showed up and I was like I thought you were busy all day he still makes time for us no matter what is on his plate and I think everyone should know that but he is an unbelievable teammate and so committed to se sces so thank you thank you Lori it's kind um yeah so just the last few sort of ongo issues that we're we're working through um National Grid and utility cost is still a developing item National Grid is is still actually kind of working out some final issues with one of the Transformers in the metering so we haven't got um the true costs on on half of our electricity usage yet so that's something that we're still kind of that is still developing and then we have some upcoming solar projects uh that we're really excited about there's one that we're under contract with already with kigle to put uh solar on the roof of the building it was slowed down a little bit by a National Grid study uh of their infrastructure we expecting that to to kick off in the spring and then there's a larger uh project that we're considering that may be um at town meeting for Capital uh for the parking lot solar um which would be both of those would cut into the electric cost of the building substantially uh so all of those things the commissioning process that we're still wrapping up and heading into host stocky commissioning the warranty period the unknown surrounding some of the utility usage it does mean that we're we're a ways off from operating this building under normal conditions how we will kind of year in and year out um you know we don't have all of our service contracts in place because of the warranties um you know the things that we need to we do but it's you know it's not this isn't regular how we're kind of using this building today it's going to take probably two or three years before we kind of settle into the normal operation our our all of our service contracts fully in place all of our providers understanding all of the all of the utility costs and finally um this is a good slide um wanted to talk about some of the financial benefits that the town has reaped uh from the project and uh a lot of this was actually uh unanticipated when we kicked off the project and um a nice nice surprise some of these um the town received an additional msba reimbursement of over 5.3 million um this was about the timing of the project we we bid this project during an incredibly inflationary period in the entire economy and especially construction um we had a really Deep Ve process because of that timing coming out of the pandemic um and we were able you know with an a bumped up contingency to to get a bid that we could move forward and that was that was exciting um and luckily you know msba recognized this situation that we were in and they were adjusting their formulas at the time for the per per square footage reimbursement rate and a small group of towns and cities that had had bid projects in a certain time frame were given an adjustment to their reimbursement rate and it resulted in again over $5.3 million additional from our MSB reimbursement which was already you know you know roughly half of the um total project cost we have a national in Grid incentive this we were anticipating um because we were in a a program with National Grid from from an early stage the number kept growing as their program developed and as our building developed and ultimately us putting in the geothermal heat pumps really drove this uh incentive way up uh it comes in two phases one has already been received over $890,000 and then after we use the building for a year and and show the efficiency is being realized uh there'll be an additional payment from National Grid of 480,000 in sometime in 2026 then there's um upcoming anticipated reimbursements um these I should speak to one thing before I get into this because there's some some things going on at the federal level that kind of have the potential to impact some of these some less than other uh but there was an executive order uh signed um related to the IRA I actually spoke with our um consultant today energy Tax Savers who has been guiding us through this Ira direct pay process it's really like a tax return process which is not something that towns typically do but that's how direct pay works and it's for um geothermal solar projects um for us at least there's some other things but that's how it's going to impact us and what it I'm sorry I didn't really finish that thought but what the Tax Advisor said to us was they do not anticipate the what's going on at the federal level to impact any of our projects especially the geothermal because it's already in place um the rooftop solar if we're able to put it in place this year also is unlikely to be affected um it would really take an act of Congress to to actually pull back the IRA um and that's not what has happened it's just just an executive order um the solar canopy which is more in the future would be the one that has more risk we don't think it has a high level of risk but just because it it isn't happening imminently who knows what's going to happen you know with with Congress like they they could they could pull it back there's a lot of reasons why people think they ultimately won't uh but it's just something to be aware of so basically what all of these Ira reimbursement direct pay items boil down to is we get 25.5% back on any eligible costs associated with geothermal and solar projects that we do that we own so when we chose geothermal for this project this program didn't exist we did not know we were going to get this reimbursement it was it was the an incredibly pleasant surprise so we've gone through a uh a long process with our Engineers with our tax advisers to identify what the eligible costs are it ends up that we have about $9 million in eligible geothermal costs we'll get back about 25.5% of that comes out to 2.25 million we are on the cusp of filing that tax return um we've already pre-filed we could file as early as next week and that money could be realized as soon as 45 days after we we file so that's that's coming soon uh and then same same concept for both the rooftop solar and the potential future canopy solar 25.5% of the eligible project costs be 190,000 roughly for the rooftop solar 420,000 for the solar canopies um you know most of this again unanticipated you know it's not the same analysis right the msba money the geothermal those are things we had already bought that just we get money back it's it's really really great it's a little bit of a different story with the National Grid uh we kind of were in that program anticipating at least some of that money and you know the solar canopy hasn't hasn't even happened yet so while you know that will be part of the analysis as to whether or not the town wants to advance that project um but all in all this is a pretty astounding number you know the anticipated incentive reimbursements above what was expected from the original msba Grant is over 9.5 million um on a100 million project that the state already paid half of it's pretty awesome so I think it's really really good news fantasticness thank you Max you're welcome yeah yeah great um yeah I was going to say any questions go ahead um max it's a little bit uh sort of tangent to the to this but I know that you've had difficulty hiring over the last few years and because of your leadership we did a revamp of the contract and to a more accurate wage table has that had the intended impact that you were hoping for no actually I think it has we we're fully staffed with our custodians right now um and you know when when we're going out to shovel and snowblow to have the the full Staffing at each building is has been great so um I think we're at a a place with our staffing that's you know better than I've seen in years so I think I think there may be a connection there yes good well thanks for your leadership on that you're welcome just a quick question so max just going back to your reimbursement um discussion so I'm just curious are those something that are PID in lump sum payments or do we receive that money over a period of years you know how that works um are you talking about the IRA specifically well you mentioned a whole bunch of them but we can talk about the IR yeah I I can break it down it's different for each one uh the msba money has already been received um the National Grid money uh a portion of it more than half of it has already been received the other SE the other segment the 400,000 segment uh comes a year after um we start our post occupancy period so that'll be sometime in 2026 um and then the IRA reimbursements are all tied to a essentially a tax return where we're filing on a fiscal year basis you can file as a municipality either on a fiscal year basis or calendar year basis because of when we took occupancy of the building it was prudent to file on a on a fiscal year basis um and then again I think I said this earlier once you file um you you then get a tax return right just like just like you and I would and that should be a lumpsum payment from the federal government great Karen I don't know are we going to talk about like where that money goes or who uses it that was my I'm sure that's what everybody wants that was my question go ahead yeah I I mean I had heard that the msba money is for paying down debt correct y so that's sort of already spoken for but I haven't heard uses for the other other monies and I don't know if anybody has any answers to that you want me to answer either one um the National Grid money just comes in at like a miscellaneous receipt um to the town so it's just Revenue coming into the town no no restrictions on on use per se but you have to wait till it falls to free cash the IRA money um the federal government didn't have a lot of restrictions on but the state came in and put a lot of restrictions on it unfortunately and so that similar similar to the msba money can only be used for something onsite like a if we're going to do something onsite or to pay down debt as well for the specific project so um it is it's similar to the msba and that it's restricted to this building project specifically so that so that basically translates to the the pay down of the debt coming sooner than later yes which you know is good for the town signicant for tax right interest costs could it help pay for the canopy project or can it be used for like a is that the same project or is that a new project I sry that was L sorry um yeah we checked on that and because that's a new project and it's not part of the actual building they were not including that got thank you um that was my question as well Max thank you so much uh for all your hard work um it it's you know for someone who sat here 10 years ago and you know licking my wounds that the building is amazing um you there's always going to be something that has to get done right there's just a ton of Little Feet walking around there every day so thank you very much for all you do and thanks for the presentation thank you m thank you right all right um before I turn it over to the um superintendent for the finance and operations just a couple uh a couple points um before I start just because we have such a vast audience tonight um could I just ask um both boards the select board and the finance committee can you guys introduce your people on the board and the people on the committee just so everybody kind of puts a name to a face marelen you want to start yep so I'm marn Fletcher I'm the chair of the select board David grishman select board Doug Thompson select board sorry Danielle Leonard select board gin Cresta interim Town Administrator Katie Arrington fincom Eric Eric Schneider fincom vice vice chair I'm Naomi dban on the fincom also I'm J GTH on the finance committee I'm terara M Linsky on fincom Greg are you able to unmute yourself Greg McDonald fincom oh hey Greg how are you didn't see you there no worries I'm goad thank you all right um thank you so just a couple quick points just um you know the the greatest thing about tonight is all free boards are going to hear actual information we're not going to be playing you know telephone tag we're not going to be saying well Glenn said this or Amy said that or marn said this we're all going to hear it at the same time and and that's a plus for all concerned um we're all here for really one reason and that's for the love of this community we may agree we may dis we may agree to disagree and that's perfectly fine I do ask that we do so with the utmost respect to the speakers to the questioners to all three committees um I I think this is going to be a very powerful presentation um as far as questions go um we will let Miss Stella uh do the presentation um the school committee may or may not have some questions if anyone out there has a question uh either select board or finance committee um before you ask I think what we hear Cheryl say a lot to us is I'm going to get there in a couple minutes but feel free to stop and let's let's ask let's have these conversations um and then the last thing I want to ask just because there's so many people here can I ask everybody just to shut your phone off and just put it away if you do have a phone call you do have a text could you just please step out there's just a lot of people here it's really hard for us to hear up here and that would just be really um respectful I appreciate that um and with that Miss Stella U miss angelakis the floor is yours thank you very much I'm going to turn it over to the superintendent thank you so as a school committee knows we have a strategic plan that goes through 2026 that strategic plan has our priorities and our core work at its Center and so our priorities include family engagement family Partnerships mtss so these District goals are tied very closely to our strategic plan as I said that goes through FY 26 one of the first goals is to keep our part-time kindergarten AIDS there was a time where we didn't have Aids in those classrooms at all then we went to fulltime then we went back to halftime we fought to get the halftime back we want to maintain those halftimes the littles are coming in with um different a different skill set than they did years ago and having those part-time kindergarten AIDs that don't cost anything for health insurance is really important um and we're on a curriculum cycle where we purchase new programs for the curriculum in various stages and one of those goals this year is to purchase a new literacy program for grades 6 through 12 we had done K to five and now we need to complete that um cycle and do 6 through 12 we want to our goal is to add a co- teing model at the fourth grade we have co- teaching at middle school and at high school where we have a special educator and a general educator and that really is to the benefit of the students we want to strengthen our multi- systems of support system I did link this has been here for the last several years I did link what is mtss but basically it's a tiered model of instruction where you target using data what the kids need and then specifically there's whole group instruction and then there's tier two and tier three we target those kids that really need that instruction um we definitely need to reduce the class size in fifth grade uh from 2 to 26 currently to 2021 uh build our after dark and Pathways programs our Pathways programs are uh our CTE Career and Technical education programs and our after dark program is where our students come to swanscott high school and then they leave and go to Essex Northshore technical school to to um do CTE programs over there um one of the things that I'm most proud of is the fact that we've brought back these different Pathways for our students and these different programs and we need to build on them and maintain them expand our family engagement and partnership work this has been um a Cornerstone of Dr Bacon's work prior to her leaving and all of the buildings and the principles are working on this for example the family engagement that um was a goal goal for us this year was the principles reaching out to all new students either coming into the middle school or all new students coming into the district making phone calls home so that's really important work for us and then as I said earlier our core work or community of belonging opportunity for for all respect for diversity and equity for everyone is our core work but it also is our district strategy and again doing that Dei work within the buildings and embedding embedded embedding it into all of our instruction um is really important to us so those are the overarching goals to this budget that's being presented to you today so I thought it might be helpful just to step everyone through what our process is uh in the school department and our overall budget timeline budget instructions and a memo was sent out to the leadership team October 28th uh the school committee met on November 7th as a budg budget subcommittee of the whole to discuss their goals budgets were due back from our leadership team before Thanksgiving we have many meetings throughout November in December and we really work through um their budget requests ask questions um really think holistically as a team about the overall budget we presented draft uh budget numbers to again the budget subcommittee of the whole December 19th we had a tri chair meeting to over that initial Budget on the 23rd we continued to revise and look at our um budget throughout the end of December we had another budget subcommittee of the whole January 9th to present some revised numbers to them and then we had another Tri chair meeting January 10th and January 16th to again go through our revisions and and where the school budget stood the full budget book was sent out to the school committee on January 15th and then it was also distributed to members of the tri chair on January 20th and then CH can I just interrupt just so everybody knows and and it's a lot of enaculate here uh for those who are watching who may have not heard that a tri chair meeting is a meeting of the three chairs of the school committee the select board and the finance committee sorry to interrupted yeah no worries so next steps with our budget is this meeting tonight and then there's a uh potential vote in a public hearing of the budget um by the school committee on February 6th and then per the charter we must send the budget to the Town Administrator by February 15th can I just confirm I want to make sure that everybody has the budget book and not just the chairs that sounds like okay good do you guys have it finance committee okay just to take walk you through where we started with our budget and how we got to the 4 . 79% increase the initial budget requests that came back from our leadership team were an 8.98% increase over um fy2 or $2.9 million um the superintendent myself and leadership team we all met we went through that and we were able to reduce that down to a 7.52% over FY 24 or a $2.4 million increase then we really looked at our revolving funds uh last year we made a considered effort to look at all of our fees across the district and see where it made sense to increase those fees so we did for athletics um building use and then our extended day program while the fees we don't set the fees our enrollment has increased significantly so we're seeing a much higher level of Revenue come through our extended day program so we were able to take some of the expenditures that were in our operating budget and move move them into a revolving fund um which got us to the 7.4% uh we continue to revise this budget the second draft was um recommended by the superintendent and the school committee which had further reductions and then was presented to tr chair on January 13th with a 4.79% increase or 1.55 million increase over fy2 as we went through this process we really look at everything class sizes what are our student requirements um how can we gain efficiencies with our budget where can we make reductions or share resources so one of one of the things that we did look at was the physical education offerings at the high school and I we knew that that was something that we wanted to try and expand and so in meeting with the leadership team we found a way to actually utilize some of our resources um at the element school to come up to the high school teach one class a week and expand some of our offerings which allowed us to use some of our additional staff without having to add an additional FTE here but still meet some of the needs that we're looking to meet the technology department also has some upcoming restructuring for FY 26 which helps us see some budget savings as well um we had a large number of budget requests that we considered but we just you know really couldn't fund this year when we when we looked at everything one was a request for a psychologist at the high school really dug into this a lot looked at our current students case loads and at this time it just didn't support a full um additional psychologist um however if student needs change or case loads Chang this is something that we will have to reassess in the future um there was a request to take a 0.5 math tutor and make them a 1.0 at the elementary school and we kept that at a05 um there was a lot of discussion around adding a health teacher at the middle school that I know that was something that was the school committee priority um it something that was discussed last year we discussed it again this year um but uh the principal Mr kishman has been working through a pilot program at the middle school trying to see if there's a way to integrate some health programming with our current staff and um after a lot of discussion we initially added this in um Mr kalishman really felt strongly about seeing this program through for another fiscal year to see if this makes sense is this meeting the needs that we're looking to meet as far as offering Health at the middle school and if it's not then potentially we might be coming back in FY 27 in asking to add that health teacher but we just felt he he truly felt that at this point he wanted to see that through um you know as um max mentioned earlier there was you know a lot of traffic concerns with the new elementary school um and there was a lot to work out in the first year overall but traffic for sure um I think the team at elementary school has done a fantastic job they've really worked through those issu issues in conjunction with Max and others and they really have a good system and things are running much better now and so initially we had added an additional bus as a courtesy to help mitigate some of those issues but now we're in a really good place and we don't really need that extra bus and we're not we're not a in the luxury of being able to provide um a bus that isn't mandated so we are um reducing by one bus at the element school and going back to what the district has always done which is provide transportation for mandated students there was a request to add our we have a part a 0. five career counselor here at the high school as part of the Innovative Pathways um as well as um they lot consum consumables within that program as the superintendent angelakis mentioned this is a key area and something that we do want to focus on however we did receive confirmation from the state that they will we will get the same Innovative Pathways Grant next year provided the state budget holds true which they feel fairly confident in and so instead of moving that into the budget this year we're going to again um fund that through the Grant and then there was a few assumptions that were made with this budget as well uh we have some student device Replacements that we have to replace next year uh we did put in a count Capital request to fund that and so we're assuming that will be funded through Capital um I'm sure some of you know this I don't know if everybody knows this but last year there's a lot of discussion around the increased cost at the elementary school for utilities and functioning and so because it was something that was difficult to manage within our budget and knowing that eventually solar rooftop hopefully canopy um would be coming on line and and these utility costs would be um significantly reduced um the the town funded U it sits in our budget as a reserve fund but they funded through free cash $200,000 to offset our utilities at the elementary school um because we don't have solar up and running at this point this budget does assume that that same process will happen this year and then two years ago in FY 24 um we were hit with a 14% um it's called an operational services division rate increase to our out of District's tuitions which was just causing a lot of budget issues so the town created a special education Reserve fund put money in that Reserve fund we reduced our budget last year same thing we reduced our out of District tuitions some of that money went into the special education Reserve fund so this budget assumes that that that practice will happen again this year Cheryl um I mean I think looking at these it shows how deep we dig when we're looking for efficiencies and we're trying to be creative and not just put everything in the budget even when we think we might need them um but I'm wondering so we're at what 4.7 um do we know what other districts are asking for what they're requesting for their budgets I mean we know this isn't just a swamp Scott issue right yeah so um in fact my list serve has sent out a kind of survey um trying to understand what other districts are asking for and so um through that um the districts that have reported the average increase is uh 5.19% for FY 26 for other districts across massach suets and I think it was just last week The Saga Su committee approved their budget a 7.4% increase which is $2.5 million so to your point this isn't something that just swamp Scott is having to deal with thank you superintendent I know that you really dug into this and I appreciate um all that all that you are making work one of the concerns that I have is uh the multi-tiered systems of support and you know Martha and I we've talked a little bit about this I mean we've all been talking about this it it concerns me when we those things that we are are choosing not to fund like therapists or the math tutors uh those are really all what fit what fit that goal well I will say this and I've said it at the Tri chair meetings um one of the things about education is I can sit here and say to you today we don't need that high school psychologist and come September we might need it and we're going to put the kids first and we're going to do what we need to do but in terms specifically of the multi-tiered systems of support we're not throwing bodies at it anymore we are looking at it differently um there are some internal things going on um that and decisions that need to be made hard decisions in order to give it a try to make that mtss system work better um at both the middle and high school and those conversations are upcoming but we're not throwing bodies at it right now we're going to work with in what we have um and we have one more kind of level to push to see if we can strengthen this program without throwing bodies at it but I I did say it tried here you know the thing about education is if something happens and kids come in and we need it and we don't have the capacity because case loads are too high um then we're going to provide it for our kids but one of the things that Martha and her team and our team is really good at is analyzing those case loads I mean the day I walked on this into this role Suzanne was pushing data data data data and I think we finally have have that data you know driven decision making down path yeah I just want to make sure you know as I looked through and see the the goals for each of the three building leaders they all hit that and I just want to make sure that the school committee is not hamstringing the goals not right now but I I will say I had written the district goals and then the building leaders wrote their goals so when I read through them I thought wow we are exactly on track it was a proud moment for me like we're exactly where we should be so um yeah we're all on the same page but you know come to you and said we've had to make decisions I think like in the back of my mind I hear Craig Harris here two years ago talking about preventative spending on things like uh social emotional welfare and how that how much cheaper that is than responsive spending or reactive spending so I think it's a good time to shout out how closely I'm working with the health department on the general government side and and bringing those programs in we actually just scheduled another meeting for next week we've been meeting very frequently about using the funds to benefit the kids in the absence of our mindfulness class that was taken away and other things so um I I do need to shout out to Nia and Jeff they've been um we've had several meetings and we're working together really closely to use those Town funds to benefit the kids at the school in this area so just before you continue Ju Just to let everybody know um really my colleagues on the other two boards um I just want to go back to the the health teacher at at the middle school and then when uh Mella says there was a long debate there was a very long debate um we when you sit up here as a school Community member you you have to put your full faith in service of the people who are doing the job they're in there every day they have the degrees they have the knowledge and they have the skill so as much as we all it fairly unanimous wanted that instructor after hearing from the superintendent after um hearing from Mr kesman we we grudgingly I think agreed to give it one more year but as the superintendent said September 5ifth that could change and and that's really how we do these debates we we always have to put the kids first with the knowledge that if something happens we have to fix it so thank you call yours and so the um the school committee votes the school budget by cost center and so we always have to show our budget and how it relates by cost center because that is um how how they vote the budget um and the the big caveat that I want to point out here is that um we are in the middle of negotiations for our teachers esps and tutors and because we're in the middle of the negotiations their salaries sit in our Administration cost center which typically they would be spread out amongst all the cost centers and so when you're looking at the dollar change and the percent increases outside of facilities um they are very skewed and don't really tell a true picture but we do have to present this and show this because that is the way that the school committee uh votes the budget um it's not only just the those three units which make up probably close to 90% of our staff um the other thing that sits in there every year are unanticipated Lane changes because we do have unanticipated Lane changes that occur as well as all of our non CBA employee raises um also sit within that cost center because there are no guaranteed increases for anyone that is a non CBA employee Miss s just interrupt one second can you just explain just in case folks don't know um what an un unanticipated Lane changes and then probably start from if you could spend 30 seconds what a lane change is can I just ch into what you were saying a minute ago because I think that's important and I want to emphasize that that the nonunion personnel's contracts do not say an FY 26 this is your salary and FY 27 that's your salary and if they're not articulated in those contracts they're negotiated annually and I just wanted to make that a bit clearer so uh Lane change is um when a teacher uh gets cont gets credits course credits they take classes and once they get so many credits um 15 30 45 so on they move into the next Lane um and so there's you know uh compensation increases when you move and you get continual education As you move through those LAN lanes and so right now some of those um Lane changes we don't get notified for the potential of them until February which obviously is long after we've um created the budget so every year I go through look at the ones that came through after and just try to analyze it and create what I think might be the lane changes that end up occurring that we don't know about um so that's just kind of what the explanation is for uning changes the facilities cost center um looks like it's decreasing but again that's really because we assume $200,000 will not be sitting in this budget and will be funded elsewhere so that's that's the vast majority of that um decrease the expenses at Clark have been budgeted a bit lower because um from our understanding there'll be some Town departments utilizing and Clark and then uh Max was able to negotiate a much more favorable cleaning contract um for the district and so we're seeing some cost savings there um and then lastly special education cost Cent are similar we're assuming $400,000 of our tuition is going to be funded through the special education Reserve fund and then this year um the operational services division rate again which is the rate that they set that the AO District tuitions can increase did come in uh a bit more in line with previous fiscal years at a 3.67% increase Cheryl Cas ask I um you know special ification is near and dear to my heart um uh do we have any historical average rate for a district tuition the last couple years where you see it's going uh you know we had the anomaly of the 14% right we think it's going going to go in the next several years and kind of where we're at compared to others so um to your point FY 24 was the 14% increase um which was just astronomical um and unfortunate because that 14% is now built into the budget we just keep going up from there um last year it was like 4.7 I want to say this year it's 3.67 what's interesting is I actually did look back because I was curious about this myself um having not been in school finance my whole career when I looked back to fy1 and averaged the rate it the average was 2.88% since FY 24 the average has been 7.45% um so to your question average increase increase right okay so to your point Glenn it looks like it's starting to tick back down but I don't think we'll see the low levels that we were seeing in fy1 12 13 which was more like mid like one point something right right and and I just know from me at that time with um a child AO District the auto district schools were always saying we don't have the cash we we can't touch infrastructure we can't do programs so that's why I was I'm always so curious about about all this and and remember when we talked about the 14% we literally sat here and what do we do about this right okay thank you so while we've been talking about the town appropriation to the budget there are many other sources that also fund our school budget um there are costs obviously that sit inside the town budget that for health insurance pension Etc um well I don't have those numbers to incorporate in this slide um the town appropriation like I mentioned before is 33.9 million uh we have Capital articles that we've requested for technology in the amount of 515,000 our Nahant uh revolving fund supports $1.8 million of our budget uh like I discussed earlier we have revolving funds where we offset costs to um the amount of 582,000 and then uh we do receive grants which help fund uh positions and expenses for the school and that's $831,000 the 200,000 for the utilities the 400,000 from the special education reserve and then the use of 2.1 million a circuit breaker means our total budget including all sources is 40 million $423,500 I do want to talk a little bit about about the reserve fund we do participate in the Medicaid Program those receipts do go directly into that Reserve fund I think you know we're still in our infancy of that um but I do anticipate about 70,000 plus a year in Medicaid reimbursements coming into that um our current balance um when I was looking at it looks to be we just received a Medicaid payment today a actually is like $28,000 so including that U the special education Reserve balance is $471,000 and uh just for everyone's information the special education Reserve fund can only have uh has a limit on how much money can go into that and it's 2% of our net School spending that's set by desie so the maximum that we could have in that Reserve fund would be 712 ,000 as I mentioned before we do have a lot of outside funding that we use to support our budget and we have our revolving fund can I for a quick second oh sure um back to the that circuit breaker um and spending that down so that there's a balance of $450,000 you know this it is it is now a decent time or should we wait to sort of talk about philosophically what does that do for our budget you can wait if you so desire whatever your comtable yeah we can wait okay yeah um so we have 5.8 million between grants Town Capital circuit breaker and revolving funds that help support our budget as you can see um we'll be charging off more expenditures to the athletic revolving funds um actually I forgot to mention we were talking about fees our prek tuition as well went up slightly last year that was another area we raised the fees in so again this all helps to support um or help soften how much we're asking from the town appropriation and as you can see that it it has grown over fy2 I do want to point out in FY 23 and FY 24 you see grants of much higher amounts than we have today and that is the S funds um which we no longer have they're fully expended um and we don't have them to help offset our budget anymore just a question on the grants so is the amount that you're anticipating year 26 is that in line with what it was historically the 831 yes um thereabouts um I do want to caveat on that I will say that this CES later um a few days ago before after all this was set we did receive a notification from desie that our Title One funding which as you can see supports a number of math interventionists um is we're is being cut by 105,000 so that is actually not reflected in that 831 so I say it it is but it isn't it it is but now we just found out our Title One funding being cut and is that because they're cutting Title One funding or is that because we don't have they don't deem us to have the need it's the student population okay so they don't de us to have the need and the the problem is is we're we're we're like right on the cusp too as well there's some districts that clearly it you know they they have us in red yellow we're in yellow not in Red so I am hoping that perhaps that that will change like I said we just received that notification there's I think 60 or other so other districts that also have significant reductions to their title funding um so I'm hoping that that potentially might change over the coming months but as of right now they're telling us that it'll be cut by 100 so it could possibly change based on what happens in the government in our state government with the budget yeah no yeah or they look at us and see that we're on the cusp and decide that we don't deserve to have that full like that level of reduction to title one is that something that we can plead to our I don't imagine we're the only one on a cusp yeah and I I need to reach out to my colleagues as Cheryl said this just happened a few days ago and if we're noisy enough I'm hopeful that I I can just add that on the uh Emma uh Ms Association School committees group that I am on um there were of my little group there were eight other towns that in our challenge uh some Far significantly more than $105,000 and uh the masc was very clear that they are going to reach out to uh state government and find out the how's the wise and and how to make it a little bit more Equitable because all all of those towns and representes I spoke to are like us yellowish one or two students can push us in One Direction and there there's a lot of play coming from that but they're in the same boat they're making the same presentation that you're making now that kind of just in case wear down X dollar do do we know in um Jenny armen's District how many towns are facing this I do not um an m and masc the Association for superintendent work so closely together to advocate for what we need so I'm sure this is going they're going to be double teaming so I I'll pay attention I was told that okay good so this just highlights some of the positions that we do fund outside of the appropriation uh 27.3 FTE uh we fund through a mixture of the preschool revolving hunt revolving and the title funds this slide just gives everyone a overview of our circuit breaker funds where we've been and and where we are today um as you can see in FY 23 uh the light blue bar is the balance that we had going into that fiscal year um as we talked about FY 24 was a very difficult year and that's when we instituted the special education Reserve fund which did require the school district to reduce their circuit breaker balance down to 450 if we wanted to access that Reserve fund and so you can see that not only did we use um some of our circuit breaker balance but we actually ended up utilizing 109,000 $317 of the special education Reserve fund and FY 24 for our AO District tuitions so now year over year pretty much what we bring in in circuit breaker Revenue do is what we're going to spend so in the past we for a few years we were running with um with our circuit breaker at 100% so whatever money we came in we held for the following year whereas now we are spending down before accessing that fund is um what would this do to our budget if that were fully funded would we be asking for Less yes do you know by how much maybe calculate for the next time um you would probably be able to meet the financial guideline in fact I know you would I do want to just remind the committee that when that agreement for this special education stabilization fund was developed it was developed in mind that we were going to revisit it annually and that just hasn't happened so you know with all everything going on we haven't sat back down and talked about it and so we could and I I would think that that would be something that would continue to be Revisited I mean like when we think about the money coming in for example from uh uh National Grid I know that we can't take that and and put it into our circuit breaker because that can only come from the government but it seems to me that there if there were like a reset where for a year we didn't have to go into that then that the following year we would be balanced out so you know like it it's it doesn't surprise me as I look at this and our circuit breaker funding where we have gone well over our ask happen to be those years when our circuit breaker has run down pretty significantly now I will say there's proba but I don't know if that's the causality because there were also things like the the ESR grants that that carried us um but I I I'd like to kind of see so what I will say though is that if hypothetically and we didn't even have it available to us but hypothetically if we had had the full balance that we could have carried forward going into FY 24 the town would not have created a special education Reserve fund right and so we would have had to pay for the 109 and still keep chipping away at our circuit breaker balance to offset that 14% increase so so what I'm saying is is let's just say we carried the full amount from 23 into 24 say we had it and we could carry it all the way into 24 that 14% tuition increase would have significantly depleted our circuit breaker balance going into 25 and so I did actually model this out and if that hypothetical did occur by you could have probably stayed within you could have stayed within the guideline for 24 for 25 for 26 you probably would have been about 3.1% and then in FY 27 would be coming right back asking for a similar budget increase because we would have we would have depleted it um so it it's so a cliff was going to come because of that rate increase it doesn't it doesn't matter Source it just it feels and I know that we're not going to litigate this here but it feels disingenuous to be putting money into a Reserve fund which is theoretically a reserve as opposed to putting it into a reserve fund where you know you're going to spend it exactly can I I just want to let me stop the proceedings um do anyone out there do you need a just a definition of what a circuit breaker actually is I was just going to ask absolutely I think there's a lot of people in here who are not foll to me Martha would you mind sure just introduce yourself if you don't I'm Martha ran the assistant superintendent of student services so each year um we file a report to the state and document all the tuitions that were paid out during the current fiscal year and the town the state we the town owns the first right this year the special education tuitions yes this is all out of District tuitions we the threshold this year I think is 52,000 the first 52,000 we spend on any student and any out of District placement We Own 100% of that anything we spend over that usually we get about 70% back on anything you spend over the 51,000 but it's in a rear so it's not the year that we spent it it comes back the year after and the idea that this why did they do this I mean first of all obviously the cost um is um very very high and can range you know from $55,000 to a $400,000 placement you know that that is pretty close to what the range is I just want want just people to understand that that you know again we're in the business of we have to teach every student from is if they're special education student from age three to age 22 so that range can be as Martha said just want to make sure everyone understands 50k up to $400,000 per year per year for a specific student correct go the reason um the best financial practice was to keep one year in AAR always at the school Department's um in our control um is because the some you know a cost of one if one student moves into the district or during that school year and let's say two do and they're both at a cost of over $400,000 that we are not going back to another board to ask for that money or back to a town meeting to do that because that is I was really violating the privacy of that family and it's to protect people and to also never pit education which is a mandated cost we are going to do it is a federal law and state law against General Ed um our general Ed expenditures work which are as important as well obviously we're in we are in teaching and learning and education but that is why if anybody that you know that that's the that's the reason you do it so right now we we're not doing that we're keeping a smaller amount which theoretically that smaller amount could be cleared by one student and then you'd have to go back and ask um and this is the only kind of money that we can actually hold on to for a year as opposed to other money some revolving funds you can hold but this money yes you have you do have to spend it though that next year and only on special loation yes and it's called circuit breaker why well because you hit you hit it I I don't know the exact C why they named it that but really I think it's because it's an ironic term you hit the threshold and then you know triggers and you get the money triggers the circuit Bas it's a little misleading we got it the government name yes but it was really to protect um a school district from those really high cost um out of District placements great so that we were not laying off first grade teachers to pay for that cost yes that is not what anybody wants to do thank you Martha you're welcome um so this next slide um details out our total compass station for all of our staff historically from FY 23 to FY 26 um as you can see FY 24 and 25 had very modest compensation increases to our budget and that was purely because of the um reductions that we made to our staffing and in FY 26 while we're only adding a 0.2 FTE over FY 25 our total compensation is increasing 5.7% what I will say is that 74% of that compensation is teachers and as we talked about before it's not that they're getting a 5.7% cola I don't want anyone to think anyone is getting that it's purely because of the way teacher salary grids work in Massachusetts and it's across every District it's not unique to Swampscott teacher grids have the lanes and steps and so as I mentioned before you gain a lane when you get so many course credits and then for every year you're in the district you move up a step until you're at the top step um and so and then you have a cola so some of our teachers just get colas some of our teachers just get a step in a cola and some of our teachers in any given budget could get a lane change a step and a cola so that's why it's a 5.7% increase because you have some that are just getting a cola and some in those other mixes as well too but also significantly more because there's not anybody being laid off as there have been in the past few years correct and so this is truly more so indicative of what our compensation looks like in a school department year over year so high fives would be a normal increase call a question uh yeah I'm sorry who yeah go I'm sorry so at the beginning of the presentation you mentioned that the you have the some amounts put away in the salary Reserve in the administrative um cost center we just pass him the pass him the is this better yes thank you so uh in the beginning you said you have uh money in the Reserve in the administrative cost center um is this 5.7 increase inclusive of that or this is all every single compensation line that we have in our appropriate budget so it's inclusive of that stipend anything we pay anybody as it relates to compensation is part of this then the so the the steps and Lanes is that essentially a proxy for you know um Merit you know if you have certificates well not Merit person a step has nothing to do with Merit it's just purely your a service in the district Elaine it's not Merit it's educational whether you ex you whether you have received additional course credits that you you know and they they there's all there's a whole process but it's it's educ it's additional education that they've received and then the district uses that additional education in placing students so if there's do you look at what credits and what degrees a teacher has in assigning them classrooms or teachers no because we have all highly qualified staff everybody's highly qualified but for example I left the class from 2005 but I received I went for two master's degrees to move over on that wage table so I had a masters in computers and Communications and I had Masters in educational leadership so those enhanced my skills but we don't look at a certain master's degree and say okay you can teach a physics class they have to have those credentials in order to teach those so it has nothing to do with Merit it's just about advancing their educational degrees but let's say you have like a reading specialist specialization would you then get more students that need help reading versus if you specialize more in get more certificates in math and then you might have more kids that need math help I mean I don't know how it works well they they they usually so they would get a license as a reading specialist and those reading Specialists would be the kid the the teacher that would be teaching say the the um interventionist would be a reading interventionist but for a general education teacher say at the elementary level they all are highly qualified so those spe specific credits that they continue to get don't necessarily translate into where the students are placed in their classrooms can you just maybe explain a little bit more what the words highly qualified highly qualified is um I don't know Leisa you want to take it yeah and in it's almost like they have their specialty in what they need in order to teach the students that are in front of them but so I think if I hear hear what you're asking if I went back to school and got a M's in math would I then become the math specialist and the answer to that is only if I decided that that's what the career the path that I wanted to go in you might very well just stay in the classroom where you are and you're you're bringing that expertise to all of your kids to all of your peers you know as you do professional development um but not necessarily this the the in education am I am I on the right path in education they just because you have that degree doesn't mean that you're then sort of plucked out and moved into to be a specialist because that's its own career path whatever courses they take to move on the wage table have to relate to their field of practice I guess that's the best General way to say general education yeah great okay so so you you can't take archery if you're a math teacher right yeah yeah so you the district does get something more from the student from the teachers that more skills more education more um specialty you know there's um differentiated instruction there's all kinds of things they take that relate to their instructional practice within the classroom generally and then you earlier mentioned you have a datadriven approach do you see a difference in the data between different teachers that have different certifications we have haven't gone that far to really analyze it um we do see a difference um in utilizing the data the I ready um has been really helpful in a lot of our placements and services that we're providing kids but um we haven't dug that deep thanks great questions go please yeah can of course um 5.7% increase take into account any differences in the contract that may be signed when the contract is up yes yes yes we so one thing that um I always like to highlight um because again it relates to our budget increase and in in the previous slide you know 81% of the school's budget is compensation um and 19% of that is expenses um which is fairly typical for a school district we're in the business of people and students and so the vast majority of our budget resources uh goes towards the people that we have here in this District I'm going to go through um throughout this presentation some Desi data uh I think a lot of people often like to look at this information there's a couple caveats I do want to say uh the peer groups that are utilized throughout this presentation were the original ones that we had during bargaining we have just recently met with our bargaining team and there are a few adjustments not whole wholesale adjustments but there are a few communities that have changed so I just do want to caveat that as well as this is directly from the desie website anyone can obtain this information themselves uh the most recent information we do have is 2023 um from desie we probably won't receive the 2024 information until July um and so one of the metrics that we look at is average teacher pay in our district that's compared to our comparables and as you can see swamp Scott is um just right kind of in line with the average overall can I just emphasize what you said because I think it's important um this is 20123 so marble head's newly negotiated contract figures are not in here anybody that has just settled a contract recently that's been in the news they're not on this list because the Desy data gets posted at a later date I just want to really emphasize that and actually and there are several districts on here just that from some of the information that have come our way that that have settled yes so this is this is old but this is available on Desi this is what's available but if we know what they are if we know what those numbers are um why not use those to reflect what the uh what the average should be well we don't know all of them right we don't know all of them that's the thing so these were the districts that we used in our last bargaining session in 2022 and so that was that's the most recent data on desie and so to put say Marvel heads in there but not the other ones in there would kind of skew what we're looking at I would offer that one data is spous two to three data is offers a trend if we know three data points we should perhaps add them in there okay yeah good feedback I I I feel obliged to say Tara that um the that 5.7 estim is our our best guess yes based on our history based on data um but I think if you look at any town around us you'll see pretty quickly that there are lots of towns that came into negotiations with numbers that were wildly outside of what the budgets were um and they all belong to the same Union I think that's important to remember and and part of the um I don't want to get too far off topic but you know with an excess Levy capacity like we have of $8 million we are um that is the number one tool that uh is being discussed throughout Massachusetts for raises and compensation Doug Doug Doug I'm sorry yeah just I want to clarify here um because I think I've just heard two different things the 5.7 is not there's many things Incorporated in that 5.7% right there's lanes and steps and raises and everything else right so just to be clear for everyone listening that's yes uh not one thing or the other it's a whole bunch of things inside Cork and a whole bunch of non CBA employees as well too excuse me and and it's not just employees governed by CBA it has all our employees non union as well non unions crossing guard security monitors I just want to step back to your comment really quickly the reason why we can't reproduce this same average teacher pck while we may have we may be able to pull contracts for communities that have their grids we have no idea where all those teachers fall on those grids and that's why desie desie calculates this information based off reports that um myself and my counter Parts counterparts file with them they culminate all the information and they produce this but we don't have access to how districts are paying all of their employees so you can we can look at a salary grid and see where you know I'm going to just say a bachelor step one is but what we don't have is by District how I'm just going to say IP switch where all their teachers are on their salary grid so if they have a particularly young staff it could be skewed in One Direction particularly uh older staff or some not older but some who's been in the district a longer time it's going to skew higher so this next Gra depicts um the Staffing here at uh swamp public schools and Compares um fy20 through our budget FY 26 um since fy20 we have reduced our FTE by 29.6 um as you can see there was a significant uptick um in 22 23 again Co Esser funds um um and as those funds have dropped off and as I mentioned earlier in the compensation graphs you can see how our FTE and the reduction in FTE um helped to soften our compensation um increases from 23 to 25 and now that we're in a steady state um that's why we're seeing that 5% per increase this next graph shows our enrollment in and out of District um in 2020 and through the pandemic you can see that our enrollment uh was decreasing the great news is is for the last couple years our enrollment has started to tick up ever so slightly which is really good for the district and um hopefully we'll continue to see that that Trend can I just uh superintendent can you just talk a little bit about um our trends for total enrollment and F and children who are coming back from an A of District placement a private placement and how that's gone since we've kind of come out of the pandem um I would say Middle School sees a lot of kids returning from um the charter school we've seen a lot of kids come back from the charter school private schools um St Mary's St John's the prep so um yeah we've had a steady stream of kids returning not to mention uh kids moving into the district I you know Lori will tell you that during the winter break we had five new elementary students enroll at swans Scot elementary school so I I do think uh they're spread out I do anticipate remember that building was built for 900 students we at 737 I think right now 7:37 right now so I do anticipate that continuing to tick up if I I'm proud of the fact that we're trending upward because there was a time where and certainly during the pandemic we lost a lot because we were closing right you know we were told we could have 11 kids in a class no 11 bodies in a classroom with the teachers whereas some of the private schools were staying open and people were leaving us and jumping ship and every family circumstance is different so it's nice to see um students coming back and uh students enrolling so yeah pleased with that thank you I just have a quick followup on what in and out of District means so like how many kids are being educated in swamp Scott schools of this 2129 oh how many people are we paying for because some of the out of districts are special ed so they're in physically in a different spot but we're paying for it as opposed to a kid who goes to St John's that we're not paying for right so the 2129 is what we're paying for whether they're in an out of District placement or in we're educating them within the district okay yes so they're all we have 2,141 students currently okay today today so it's even gone up for right in District in District are we sure in in District so that's a that's that in that includes students who are out of District that are are those are also our students they just may not be physically here but they're in but they are our students it does not include students who are private school homeschooled or in Charter right right so this 2129 is dated is actually 20 it's well it's the O It's the October one number okay so from October 1 we've gone from 2129 to 2143 okay and for Tara your question we call them out of District but they're still our kids so they're within this total they're just not physically here got it no it comes it just becomes more relevant in the next slide where you're showing the FTE going down and the the enrollment going up and I just I just want to be able to understand app the are are teaching yep um so um thank you for leading me into the next slide uh which really just takes our enrollment and then plots our FTE in the green line um so you can see the enrollment um dipping down um and we you know our FTS at that point were were quite above our um enrollment uh graphs as you WP if you as you map them together um and then you see this steep decline in our FTS as our enrollment is increasing I just want to emphasize in 22 and 23 again we were using Esra funds for positions that were needed during the pandemic knowing full well that we would have to reduce them so I don't you know want to think we were just you know the enrollment was down they were definite needs particularly in the mental health Arena that we were trying to fill with those additional FTE so uh one question and one comment I guess on this slide um a question is the enrollment data is as of October 1st is the FTE data as of the same cutoff date yes and so has that changed or is that pretty I mean that doesn't change as much as the moment right um what at any given day our ft can go up and down to be quite Frank with you um so it is consistently changing but typically overall um there's not we're not seeing we won't we wouldn't see large swings in our FTE from October to the end of school year um but it it certainly can change I mean it's it's because it's based off student needs so you know if we have a new IEP and that IEP calls for one to one to sport then that's going to change our FTE account and so it FTE do become quite hard to predict um but um we're still again budgeting for next year at just a02 above so we do try to manage them as best as possible and do you anything to add to that no okay great Eric did you have another question yeah and then I guess the comment is just that the decline in FTE just looks so steep in this chart because you have different scales on each side right and if you had the same scale it would flatter right if you use if you just used you know like the like this the the scale for the well you wouldn't be able to see the line if I used the same scale right but what what um like the bottom the lowest FTE count is towards the bottom of the axis right but the lowest part of the enrollment is not towards the bottom so it's like less stretched you think this is too dramatic yeah yeah and I'm proud of the fact we went from 389 to 349.88 and 2150 I think for 2025 is that in District or out of District or what is the in District number that the FTE are teaching to uh there's there's approximately 35 to 40 students out of district is that included in this bar chart yes yes okay um so this next slide just walks everyone through kind of the history between our state aid and uh assessments um I'm really pleased to report that our state aid since um fy20 has certainly uh gone up as well as um our assessments you can see um we're historically going up until FY 23 and now since then have started to decline so overall we're seeing a general increase in state aid uh historically and then a general decrease in the uh assessments do you want to explain what the assessments are sure so the assessments are there's three types of Assessments two are that come through on the state from the state um which is choice and Charter School assessments that they charge us which gets netted against the state aid and then the third assessment is this assessment to Essex Northshore so those are the kids that we send to Essex Northshore that's a you actually can see that as a line item in the budget when the budget's voted um and that's a direct assessment charge directly to the town could we just just for the audience Essex Northshore is what there is um a vocational school that our kids um can apply to to go and attend a vocational school um I think the next slide shows the assessment a little bit better yeah I also do just want to quickly uh point out today we did receive the pimary cherry sheet information um for the Governor's budget and now granted still has many iterations to go through I think it's typically finalized in May time frame is um last year our um net state aid number actually held all the way through which was great um based off the governor's budget our net state aid is increasing $446,000 for the schools this year which hopefully will um hold through the house C and conference committee and she's using um it's partly the student Opportunity Act trust which funds the Chapter 70 it's anticipated state revenue and then they actually have Surplus fair share revenues that they're using to fund this increase which is the millionaires tax it seems like the um assessment for Essex is high based on the number of kids that we've sent there over the last few years which I know is significantly less than in years past is I also know that they raised their fees pretty significantly um I can tell you in FY 23 we had 29 students attending Essex Northshore in FY 24 we had 23 and in f125 we had 20 so it's decreasing at a steady Pace I guess you say yes so the next slide kind of details out those three different assessments School Choice Charter School uh Essex Northshore as you can see actually Essex Northshore has been decreasing since FY 23 um overall school choice has um increased a little bit and then the charter school assessment has also uh decreased as well which kind of goes to that point of some of the kids coming back can I ask Amy if you know how much the um uh Essex is charging us per student that I can actually answer that I spoke to the finance director they that won't the preliminary numbers for the charges won't won't be coming out until February 13th when they meet um so we won't even know preliminary numbers from them but last year to this year oh last year I don't know the exact rate I'll see if I can find but to your point Amy in fy22 if you look at the Essex noore assessment we had 36 kids there and it's almost it's less than the Foy 23 at 29 so they started to increase their fees you could say there but also if they do any kind of project right they build something or fix something that gets passed to the member districts right I don't know I mean there I know that there's a school um a school committee member that represents swamp Scott but I don't know who that is or or they're not a part of School Committee Member it's a Committee Member I mean a I mean a town member yeah but they're a member of the Essex school committee oh yeah Tech keep yeah yeah we we do have a representative on the Essex Tech uh school committee who's that that that was Greg McDonald from the Greg McDonald Finance Committee Member I know that because my wife was on the Essex tech school committee for about six or eight years than so thank you that voice in the sky man behind the curtain um I also want to say that for fway 26 our enrollment um that the asex NorthShore assessment will be based off went down by three students um so I do think that the assessment for 26 could stay fairly consistent um or a very modest increase or dip possibly and I'm going to going to go out in a limb and say I'd like to say that their enrollment is decreasing because of the programs we're offering within the district when you can do an after do program and do your academics here at swam Scot high school and then get bust over to Essex Northshore that's great but also our Innovative Pathways when you could do Advanced man manufacturing here um and get those Career and Technical educations I like to believe there's a correlation maybe I'm in my polyana little world but I definitely see I'm going to go with it I'm definitely going to go with that's probably true so one other metric that we look at that desie also does uh put out which we do have uh FY 24 information but it's only uh based off budget not actuals is our net School spending and how we compare to again our comparable communities um as you can see in fy20 uh swamp Scott net School spending was above the average of our peer communities and it has now for 24 which is the most recent information got dipped below U the average and for those of you that might not know what makes up this number it's uh two things one is the Chapter 70 Aid and then the required local contribution so those two things make up what is the net School spending which is the minimum amount of money that must be sent spent in a school district and then the local um required local contribution is uh based off the ability of the community to raise tax revenue their property values and then the income uh values in that specific Community as well the maximum local contribution is 82.5 82 and a half% um that's the max that the state will make a local community contribute to a school budget in swamps got the local contribution is 80% 80 80 80 so so if we look at this having gone from 53 to 36% and IP switch going from 52 to 77 what is that what does that tell us I mean because it's not it's not if we're looking at this especially compared to the next page where we're talking about per pupil spending doesn't mean that they're spending more it's there it's the percent above what they're required and so it's all based off what is that that specific Community required to contribute and then how much is that specific Community contributing above it so are you are you giving that the least amount or uh the least expected or are you spending more on the kids it it is it depends on the socioeconomics of that community so according to the state we are under spending we're over spending by 36% okay so we're above the required percent by 36% over spending less than other people right correct we don't know what say that again we don't know what they're said somebody just said something Naomi said we're not overspending as much as other districts can you look at this chart hi Naomi but but what ter said but we don't know what their Baseline is correct right right that's I don't love this I never but the department of Governor does and they are I guess we're trying to find the meaning in the in this statistic in this number it's you know it again it's just one of many numbers that desie puts out there different ways of looking at the information right EXA right got it um and so another number that desie puts out there that often people talk about is per pupil expenditures and so we compare swamp Scot's for pupil expenditures for in and out of District students as compared to the average again we're slightly above the average overall per pupil expenditure does take into account all sources of spending so it's not just the school appropriation it's not just School revolving funds what's also factored in here is the school expenditures that sit on the town budget as well too so it's all wherever the money is coming from to educate our students now you me to your point when I look at this chart this is more important to me than the net School spending because there is so much that goes into that net School spending you know every town is completely different and even though every town is completely different looking at this to me this is just me talking this is a little bit more of a matrix that I look at but that's just me go ahead so I'd like so could we go back to this swamp's got an IP which which both started out at about the same 53 52% we started out at very similar numbers 17 to8 we've grown they've they've grown a little bit more than us but not well two more than a that's why they don't correlate Amy like net School spending and per pup don't they don't match in any way well form why is desie providing this then I Amy SAR are you gonna say something oh I just had a question for Char this doesn't include capital or it does include Capital so there's uh so there's three categories that are not part of the calculation um if we spent money on recreation activities which we don't as a school district uh Debt Service and uh fixed assets IE Capital so so that means if we're moving line items out of the budget such as computers etc and we're putting them over into Capital that's not included in this number correct okay thank you yeah because had wouldn't be able to tease that out so if we had well because it's it's a fixed asset that Serv we had so if we had a half a million dollars going into technology through Capital Improvements that would not appear on the net School spending so any of our historical technology or facilities Capital requests are not part of a per puple calculation so building a new elementary school didn't help our that did not Factor into this huh people would be we would be the leaders well I mean but I but I ask this because I do remember that a year or two it must be last year because it was you I'd never even heard of net School spending before that you did bring this to us as an important data point and so I just want to I don't I I just struggle with it I struggle to understand but but trust that as a math person I think people look at that number as right or wrong as how much the community is investing I I think that's how people look at it I don't know that it really tells you that but I think that's how people look at it David yeah just quick question um I'm looking at slide 20 as well as slide 13 specifically Lindfield so when you look at lindfield's per pupil expenditure for 23 it's it's 19,605 um but when you looking at the average teacher pay their average teacher pay seems to be the the highest of all of our comp communities so H how does how does that can you help make sense of that for me and for the public um not um having ever gone through lindfield's budget and not really knowing what they spend their money on um perhaps I don't know what their FTE look like on 13 they have 152 teacher FTS we have 187 so I would say that that's how that correlates say that one more time they have 152 te and we have 187 so they have far less teachers than we do so despite that their pay might be much higher but they could could have larger larger class sizes potentially perhaps I don't know what they're I'd have to look at their enrollment too I don't know their enrollment off the top my they're pretty comfortable we know that it just it just stood out me as although they're that's just teacher cost on 13 right 20 is not just teacher cost no it's all cost two different numbers right right but the but but if but if you're what was I think trying to say is how come if your teacher pay so much higher in lynfield but they're per pupil so much less than ours what how does that correlate if they have 30 less teachers than us and teachers drive a lot of our uh per pupil and overall expenditures that that is why you might see that differential or they have other things that are off out of the category that you said are not included in the per pupil you know might be mix in a little bit of apples and oranges I mean 30 30 less teachers is a fairly significant uh differential and would make a significant difference in how much they're spending per student9 students how many I'm sorry what was there 219 2195 is there uh FY 23 District enrollment and then it sub breaks out that 565 of those students are at the high school I mean I it's worth noting that we recognize that they are a a like District that this is what we agreed to with our teachers in terms of how we compare ourselves they're really similar size they're similar in makeup you know for the kind of towns that they are they're towns they're not cities um help me out what like the other categories that we that we came together to choose these 10 I think the bottom line it's a great question and that's what makes this so difficult is that every district is a little different every every district has a different makeup every district has know different philosophies not only about education funding and you know what when we were deal talking with the Union the last time again some of these towns have changed it's the best of the closest we can possibly be there're always there's always going to be D districts that are we compare ourselves to but nothing's identically the same go ahead can you okay um moving on uh there's some a few slides here that just give a summary of the budget by location um we always historically include this information uh this still has the same caveats as the previous slides and that um because raises are sitting in a districtwide line then you won't these budget increases are skewed um because the raises are not sitting in the locations with which these individuals work true so I won't really go into the overall increase because I I don't believe that it's a helpful metric to to discuss but I'll just give some highlights as far as what's in the elementary school budget for this year uh we did add a special education teacher mid year um and that teacher is remaining in 26 um the current uh leadership and administration the elementary school is one principal and one and a half assistant principls uh next year this budget is moving to a model of one principal one assistant principal and one special education administrator um there were some additional support staff that we did need this year uh that will remain in 26 provided those student needs continue um we added a building based sub as well to the elementary school um and then there was a restructuring of the nursing staff and um we know we we now have a lead nurse uh that's a districtwide employee a little bit off topic how many nurses are at the elementary school two two Eric yeah hi a question on the elementary school you know have you seen any you know consolidation or efficiency from bringing the three schools together as compared to you know just cost in you know I mean two nurses are less than three and things like that I mean I would say the one of the biggest um is the consolidation of administration right when we had U multiple separate uh elementary schools there has been some efficiencies with support staff um maybe not exactly to the extent that we had initially thought um and we did have to add a few uh throughout this year but as you can see with our FTE it we're still kind of staying in line with the reductions that we had budgeted uh for 25 so it's it's more so shifting um like we had an elll uh teacher at the middle school and half of that person shifted to the elementary school so some of it is also just shifting Personnel in within the district as well too but there are also more kids with who are on IEPs than there were a few years ago so yes there are more and I guess the question is would there be even more if there were three buildings versus one um I would just say that we have improved programming by bringing everyone together in equity you do remember like Stanley Elementary School was at 5% low soci economic in within a half a mile of a school that was at 25 services for Title One go by that school now we can have all the services um in that one building so certainly there are students who at Stanley who might need reading services but they were really Consolidated at Clark hadly so brought things together is there anything that suggest that by bringing through facilities together we're getting synergies I know that um certainly I heard from the Energy Efficiency side that's a vast Improvement but be curious to know what it was compared to three sort of Aging buildings to a brand new Fantastic building at a at a larg scale yeah I I think I mean that that's a great question and it actually I think I spoke to it a little bit in in my presentation that we're not we're not really running the building yet as we will long term like utility costs are a perfect example we don't we haven't even got all of our utility bills like accurately measured by National Grid at this point uh and we also haven't run the building um as we will like electrically wise um yet just because of the commissioning status of of the building so that you know that's it's a developing situation you know we we did a lot of analysis to this question in the planning of the building um and there are efficiencies uh electricity is is not inexpensive either um so you running a fully electric building is going to be expensive also like this building has air conditioning right none of the other elementary schools had air conditioning that's a that's a big factor but that's a big thing to have for our our students and staff uh this building's well ventilated the other buildings weren't always as well ventilated so there there's a lot of factors that go into it no I think it's I think it's very assuring that there's a path towards that and then let's just not forget that aging facilities they become more expensive as well because prevent maintenance quickly turns to corrective maintenance so yeah thanks I wasn't looking at the clock but Amy was byebye it's midterms thank you guys midterm Ste have a good night should I usually watch my clock more carefully for you both midterm yes good luck there because I'm sure you understood every business yeah so just to go through some of the highlights at the middle school we did um this budget does add a fifth grade teacher at the middle school we are seeing some um expenses go down as a result of the cleaning contract as well I just talked about shifting some of the ell resources over to uh the elementary school based off student needs um there was a small reduction in support staff at the middle school um and then we talked about the health teacher uh not being funded this year um but a potential ad for fy2 and then as we roll into the high school this budget does add uh 1.0 math teacher to the high school it includes an addition of $10,000 in funding for the robotics program which has uh really become quite uh popular but expensive as well too um we are offsetting some of our costs in the High School uh more with the athletic revolving fund um we talked about the physical education offerings that will be increased at the high school as well and then you know again our career Pathways Grant will be funding the uh 0.5 career counselor as well as their consumables at the high school can I ask a question about that um I saw earlier when we were looking at Grants that the grant for um The Innovation Pathways is going by half it started out at one did it start yeah it started out at 125 it's gone it's down to but we're getting the 50 it's down to 50 so the fact that we even getting 50 we're grateful for so if we start another Innovation pathway which I I think there's been discussion of the technology has been or the banking or I well financial literacy right now and advanced manufacturing we have been talking about for years bringing in um technology but with the absence of Dr bacon and the director of teaching and learning right now we won't be doing that so by going from 150,000 to 50 we are assuming that cost now we are assuming some cost in terms of just some cost in terms of materials I mean I know that there was a huge startup cost for like all of those we're not what I'm afraid of is if that 50,000 goes away then we're going to be what I was going to ask that's that's when we're going to be supporting that think that that's going away or because there's so much um stuff that they use to build and to oh my gosh just look at social media and what he's posting and what is being created are just blown away so that's Mo so that 50 Grand gr is mostly for materials in the five and the career counselor career counselor okay MH but the the the teacher in that class has always been on our that that was not a um a subsized was it the first year I don't think it was the first year there was so much start I just I get scared about these things you know it was it was like kindergarten you know that they they gave us the startup cost and then that was done when it became full day yeah yeah let turn over to M Raymond do you want to hit I don't have a do you want to just go to the next slide I the oh you got it up okay um so special education major cost drivers um I am fortunate that cherl and I work very closely together because our numbers are constantly changing about um what the costs are and we do freeze them at one point I have to say this is what the actuals are and what um are possible projections and that continues after the budget is um developed and finalized hence why you have circuit breaker because the it's not a um number that's fixed um our transportation costs are still highly volatile um there's a real shortage of bus drivers across the state one route for one child and I have this currently um is $425 a day say that again one route transporting one student can cost at a high end of $425 $5 a day so that that that's just that's something across the state um that is not that that does not get covered or does get covered through there's some recovery sometimes through mckin vento which is through foster care and homeless Transportation sometimes we get do recoup them some funding but it's not it's not a one to one a it's not one to one so and we incur the cost now and it's also not a predictable cost is there any just could we get just a couple more pages to go there any questions out there I'm just I'm just not understanding the number I understand there's a range and this is the way highend the 425 day but is there an example certainly without names but how would it cost $425 to transport one student for one day that costs $425 oh how would that occur would it occur so gently yeah I know I know students there are um students who could be um in an out District placement students who would be in a foster care placement um students who are homeless um across and can be upwards of an hour away and we have to provide transportation you know remember that's going there and back and it's going twice and you think about the time of day not many people want to work from 6:00 to 8:30 in the morning 68 am because that's sometimes how soon you have to get out to get that student back to Swampscott um or in the afternoon traffic so that is just the running market rate I I mean and as you've been pointing out in negotiations there are no bus drivers no um there a real there's a real um I mean there's days where we didn't we don't have one of our large buses shows up because there's there's not a bus driver so when there's no bus drivers and that's a societal thing like how much are we valuing people who we put the care of our children you know in so I think it's something that's a reckoning that's probably going to happen um but it Mo often times for transportation we do get some shared costs so we do participate in a contract with seam collaborative and so that's where all different towns on the NorthShore collaborate and work together to transport students so students say from Salem or Marblehead or Lynn may go together on a van to a school and and that's very helpful for districts um but we have no idea um if or when or how that's happening the only time I know that I get a cost share is when the invoice shows up there's no prediction there's no you have no idea because we're not allowed to actually know who that other student is in that other town because these are all confidential um information so it's very unpredictable we I have a best we what we do is we look at historical costs I mean that's all you can really do in special education so but one student could change the Factor by 50,000 unexpectedly so that just happen for for the newer finance committee members could you just explain the homeless foster care and how they stay in Swampscott sure so if a student is enrolled in Swampscott and becomes homeless um and they may be um placed at they may move to a hotel or shelter that could be 45 minutes or an hour away we are required um under the homeless law we are required to transport we do share that transportation cost with the district where the student is actually currently now residing but they have a right to come back to our school and that's to protect that when somebody a child is going through such insecurity we want to have something that's permanent so it's in the best interest of the child to stay at least with their home base of school the same thing can happen with foster care if a student has a DCF placement um they can be and that is very difficult it's very hard for um DCF to find um places for students who may need a short-term placement to live and I've had students plac as far away as hail and that cost is not shared foster care is on entirely un swamp but again when a student is facing such a hard um issue where they've left their home we're the one stable Factor the state want you know the guidance is they stay in their home District so and and that's an unpredictable cost I don't you know that can happen tomorrow and I wouldn't know you know and we do it is that is that choice at all are they required to to stay in their home District or can that family say if we're in holl a little you do you do have the student has a right to enroll in the town that they are actually living in or stay in the town stay in the school district that they were last enrolled in okay I will say of most often unless we're in I think I've had a student place like in Framingham before sometimes it becomes prohibitive right I mean you know you don't want a child on the on his van for an hour and a half um and do we hold any responsibility if they are in our district they go into foster care they go to havil do we does does that and they choose to go to hail does havil pick up those costs or do we anything still bear on us um this if the student enrolled and they were a student who could be in an in District program then they would stay if a student actually moves before April 1 and we were they were in a out of District placement we actually incur that cost for that school year if it's after April one we include it for that school year and the next school year and that helps predictability for addition for you know so if a student moves in to Swampscott um after April 1 let's say in a residential placement that cost $400,000 that's that town has to still incur that cost that same year so there's a lot of things that are unpredictable that is why you know for special ed especially yeah circuit breaker right so just back to Nai to our initial question yes that can happen it does happen I got it so Martha aside from the cost separating the cost you have more of a a really this is a dynamic challenge it sounds like is there anything that any suggestions you you you would like to find other ways to help support that because it sounds like it's a day-to-day Challenge and it's probably tearing your hair out to try to support these kids I just want I want to shout out to Martha that she keeps a very detailed in forgive me if you already said it a very detailed spreadsheet on predicting the outof district placements and she is more often than not dead on so she keeps a running spreadsheet of what is the percentage of likelihood that this student is going to go out of district and she manages that that budget so tightly and is typically very spot-on so as unpredictability as it is I've watched Maur over the last 11 years tighten it up as best we could beyond that I don't I don't know what we do I think the only part you don't know is um if someone moves here like you know I that that I have zero control of but I do obviously we have a very good handle on the students that are in District who I think are at risk um and that's why invest you know we're investing in programs in right but so if we had a stable the reserve fund that was fully funded to that 700 12,000 and then we were allowed to keep our circuit breaker higher maybe double what it is now that would give us a lot of certainty right that would give stability to that system I don't know how to do that but if there's money out there from National Grid or here or there maybe there's a way to do that you just never one we're going to be spending the money that's the law somewhere right we would never want to like I said say oh we're not going to be offering physics at the high school like that that's why that money is set it's not to pull away from other children but it's required that's why you have circuit breaker but is it really more just what I heard originally was having a consistent like transportation system that's adaptable to a dynamic problem I realize there's money associated with it we're going to spend it regardless is it more reassuring to have a dependable and flexible transportation system when it changes so that you are not having to jump through a spreadsheet so so do we build our own I'm just saying how do we acheve you couldn't you know build like there's so many things that go into Transportation you have to have dispatch that would be working from 8 to 6 they have GPS's on all the Vans the driver calls out six so we have a com we we contract with it we're too tiny there are some school districts that do have but they're huge we we don't and even the big ones have to contract out too for transportation because there's just not um they're not capable I mean it's more of we have a company I go there first if I can't find it there I go and we put out for bids to other companies um but it's a suppi demand issue we have to do it um and if you get a really um student who's very far away it can be upwards of that and and really it's you know we're not you know we're not paying it's not a job that people want everybody it sounds like it's having this in in the surrounding districts and maybe solution is we just get into a stronger consorti amongst everybody we we we do we already are in one there's another collaborative another Consortium the noal education Consortium is talking about regionalizing Transportation so there's already one collaborative that does that and there's another one in and we're lucky we belong to it actually other districts on don't so that is actually a real high cost savings they're working on that now we've been working on it I'm on the board probably been working on it for the last years yeah that would be great I mean volume for transation company is that's the name of the game for their profits and more ility yep yep so we're lucky that we actually are one of the districts on short that does belong to a collaborative um there's an application shortage for special education positions um which really means at times where we have to hire very experienced staff it'll be a higher cost we really have to invest in professional development for our newer staff um that's very it's critical for our students um special education but also general education there's been a lot of research and education um in the field how the brain works and how you know how we provide instruction what is specialized instruction look like um how do we assess our assessment tools have become so sensitive to be able to pick up dyslexia to even with just one subtest um that you know that requires an investment in testing and investment in curriculum and an investment in um professional development so our students with disabilities up until the pandemic we actually were trending a little below the state um how many students had been identified you know around 19% um we are over the state now um and that's a couple of reasons there aren't more students with disabilities living in swamp Scott versus other towns but we are small and we did we um have students who definitely were impacted by um covid in terms of covid learning loss and it also in um mental health we were able to um utilize as fun which I actually am very proud of there were some districts who actually did not figure out ways to spend their estra funds but um we spent them we immediately deployed and figured out exactly where they needed to go but those students are still here and Co learning loss is not gone especially in the area of math um that that really is still present um but the funds are gone um the way out of this is a which I know we've talked about is a strong multi-tier system supports which has a lot of factors in play to develop it um it's looking at your schedule it's making sure you have in um intervention teachers it's ensuring that we're giving um Universal assessments which we are Dr bacon actually brought us I ready which has been a real critical development for us to be able to implement um an mtss system um but it's a lot of work to do it um but you want to be able to have it because though that type of service is more Flex able um and requires progress moning and it's not as labor intensive and cost and costly as special education so we know the way out but it's not a quick way out um and so we are we are on top of that it's one of the goals of the student Opportunity Act um for swans um you can kind of see this by um grade level our elementary school we're about 18.5% um Middle School is at 25.7 that is a real number in that there are more students in our Middle School who have been identified but it's also there's a dep little bit of a depression in the um enrollment right your enrollment used to be around 700 and it's about 600 and then the high school is at 20% that's where we would like it to be um so again we're going to really work hard to in invest in a strong mtss system um so if if the theory is the theory that if there were 700 kids in the school that it would be probably it would drop that down but there is also a real number where the number is higher okay so it's both may not be 25% is probably a little high because of the depr you know there are students who are in private schools at Shore yeah um and at um at um Charters okay Martha Could you um just describe kind of what disability means is that people with IEPs plus XYZ so these are students on IEPs so students with disabilities um who have who also require specialized instruction there are also students who have disabilities who do not require specialized instruction but may require an accommodation and those students will be on a 504 plan they are not captured in this number are they captured in the bar chart they are not captured there either no so the bar chart is just kids just students with I okay just students with IVs and English language Learners they are not captured there though there are students who are English language Learners and also may have a disability so they're they could be captured in that way but not okay but no because obviously being um the English we're about 5% of our students are English language Learners I know one thing you guys were talking about lynfield one thing I was thinking in my head is that our soci economic state is far different than lynfield we are about 20 to 23% low social economic they're about 10 which brings some funds in although now we're hovering on this little percentage number that that unfortunately the way the formula must be but probably what really brings the funds in is the mall be yeah have a mall um any I think that is me right that's it any questions about special education I I would say we are pretty good about the predicting end it's just there's volatility thank you Martha all right and so then just to wrap up the budget highlights to go through the district and preschool um you know the large increases as we talked about before um but some of the other budget drivers there is the lead nurse is now considered a district wide position um we also um have reallocated our substitute costs to the actual building levels um as well as um there's some support staff at the preschool uh that will be moving basically up to the kindergart level as that class moves up um as well so I'm going to turn it over to the superintendent so I have the summary slide and the last slide so um basically the realities of our district we continue to look for ways to um offset our expenses by increasing you know our fees as was spoken about earlier in the presentation um athletic fees um but the whole building rental revamp um and one of the things on the second bullet I want to talk about is as we looked historically through what were the budget increases that the school department um worked within throughout the last five or six years and when we were staying within the guidance of the 2% plus new growth and it was it's interesting that when the years that we did that we also had the Esser funds and so yes it might look like we we're at 2.8% or 2.6% but those Esra funds really carried us through those years of our budget requests um and that Esser money ended in FY 24 and that was the last year that we used um $400,000 for that um we are looking at creative ways and and we Tred to share that with you of sharing employees from our elementary school to our high school instead of trying to add FTE and in the collective bargaining agreement for teachers it does allow for a teacher to add an additional Point too um if if they accept it so you know looking at creative ways about sharing staff cross levels and potentially adding a point 2 instead of instead of adding an FTE are some of the ways that we look to um be creative within I do want to emphasize our enrollment is increasing ever so slightly and our FTE count is holding steady though Eric your point is very well taken that you know have we added esps have we added tutors because of the student needs and that's something I'm interested in looking at um with special education costs uh increasing by 3.67% the tuitions that's already above the guidance of the Town um Financial policy and so it's very hard to stay within that um one of the things that Cheryl and I have done along with school committee is every day you pick up the paper and you look at districts like Marblehead North andova Brooklyn lynfield and Brockton and there have been significant significant budget deficits payroll issues student restraint issues and law suits and I've said to the committee this in my last year that I'm really proud to be handling over a well-oiled machine it wasn't a well-oiled machine 11 years ago when I came in here and I certainly didn't have the team I have here and I'm really proud of I know this budget 4.79 is above the guidance but I'm proud of the work that we've done we're not hiding anything everything is transparent as transparent can be we have a big bucket of money in that administrative cost center but we've tried to explain to you what that encompasses to the best of our predictability um and we get hit every day with you know up until what was it yesterday's leadership team meeting we thought the tuition rate was 3.42% and then we found an email that said it was 3.67% and then we got the email that said we're down $115,000 in Title One grant funding like when we say it's so fluid it really is fluid um and then we have the students that come in yes five kids came in during the holiday break and what were those student needs only we know and so that changes everything what we're presenting to you right now could change tomorrow and I know it doesn't make business people in the business world or in the private sector feel comfortable but that's the reality we live in and we're not here about you know making up stories we're here about kids and whatever their needs are we're going to service them and if we need a psychologist at the high school come next November I'm going to counsel Jason to get that count that psychologist and we'll Rob P to PayPal within the district and try to fund it but if those kids need it they're going to get it and I'll just say one final thing and I know I've said it in chy chair is I my probably one of the proudest things is building in these other path ways for kids maryi Ellen I'll never forget the question you asked me that tried share you asked us what makes a great school district and my answer is what my answer was that day it is creating a school district that doesn't just meet the needs of the college track kids it's a school district that meets the needs of every student whether they're going to be a plumber or an electrician or a cosmetology student it's meeting all of those needs and building programs within the district to keep our out of District kids within the district if we can come up with a cohort so that was very offs script and I apologize but it was heartfelt and um that concludes my presentation great um so let's kind of start with this from anyone from the finance committee do you have any questions we we kind of asked them along the way great thank you that was good that's thinking um same thing marelen uh select board anything that um you have questions on for right now um I think for you know this is a lot of information come out it is and it takes a while to really absorb it um you know some of the questions that were asked about lynfield the comparison that was very interesting the comments that are coming from the possibilities of what's going to happen with the cherry sheet it's going to come out of the St those are those are um those are big questions out there and then just seeing what we can do and I think that it's really important for the school committee to understand that this select board and the finance committee or your major fiary committees and we have to look at numbers for now and for the future and what is sustainable so I really appreciate your hard work and you know your collaboration over the years I've worked very closely with Pam and with Cheryl and with Martha and um you know I just think it's going to take a little time for us to look at things so but I I really appreciate your hard work sure thank Youk you um anyone else from the SE board okay go ahead well I want I certainly want to Echo what Mar Ellen said uh this is extremely helpful and it's been great to all get together um and uh really read through this uh together um I I do feel like there are a couple things here that are kind of The Perennial like kind of uh mechanics here in terms of the the special ad Reserve fund and you know at this point like what is what I'm still not clear exactly why it really makes sense to have a Special Reserve fund as opposed to just assume we're going to have the costs and just build it in yeah your percentage is going to go up a little bit but it's just I don't see like there's a huge advantage to putting it one place or the other M am I missing anything NOP no okay we would prefer that yeah I think I think the the board here committee would prefer that um and the idea of having a reserve fund really came back from the days when it would have been a reserve fund when it is an emergency and that and those monies weren't accounted for but but what it's become is a fund that we know we're going to tap into it's sort of like uh free cash as we know every year we're going to use free cash to balance next year's budget so is so can we really say we don't use free cash to to balance the budget um this is sort of like is it really a a stabilization fund if we're if we're going into every year using it um and and along with that you know the idea that we have to spend down those um those reserves on our side um is is anxiety-provoking and it's difficult to swallow at a time when we see all sorts of Reserve accounts being built up on the town side um for good reason because you know you know you don't know what what's going to come our way and um it it feels as though the um the reserves that are being set up for uh the schools aren't really reserves they're just a way to move the budget to make it look like there's less money being spent if you don't mind may just Amy you want to comment on it is there anything that just in the interest of everyone being on the same page here is there any particular reason from the town side or anything that we prefer it this way yeah so we built the um I have two collecting them so when Caryl and I worked on uh creating this Reserve fund it was with the intention of it being a reserve and having the Medicaid reimbursements building up that Reserve year over year and you know hopefully you know also you know influxes of free cash or other Town funds to continue bringing it up and it is supposed to be therefore you know having forbid another 14% increase year where you know that can't really be absorbed so much like the town stabilization funds it's supposed to incrementally soften that low so that everyone's just not getting knocked out of their seats at once I also just want to add to when that was initially created at the time there was a potential that that 14% might not come to fruition right and so and there was a lot of um people pushing legislators to not have that come to fruition and I and so at that point because it was a bit of unknown um at that time it made a lot of sense then to take that 14% increase effectively put it in the reserve to get out of our budget in the event that it didn't happen it wasn't built into the budget and I I also want to say that out of the 510,000 that the town has appropriated to the special education Reserve thus far we have used 109 of it they do anticipate using some of it this year as well I don't know what that number will look like but where it's not like we're using the full amount every year because Martha does have wonderful spreadsheets but there's a portion of those spreadsheets that's 95% anticipated and so when we're looking at tuitions there are some that might not happen or could happen in December versus September and so we budget what we think but that that fluctuates and so there is variability in what we know and what we think is going to happen and that's that's one of the reasons that at the end of the day when we go to town meeting there's one number that's why there's never a debate about a school budget on a town meeting but there was what there was pres company excluded but that so we present one number we don't get into someone standing in the audience and saying well can I see line item 172 of the second grade teacher who you know made my child cry that's why that's why it doesn't work that way it's one number at the end of the day um but Doug it's a great question that you asked I just have a question just so just so everybody understands there's a reserve fund and you're not you didn't deplete the reserve fund you just used x amount whereas Karen's suggestion of just taking all that and putting it into the budget that would have been used in the budget no that's not what she was saying no I'm asking no I meant just asking well in the old style it would have been in circuit breaker correct where it could it would it can stay and can prepay I mean there's different things you can do it's like a unique sort of fund you can prepay the next year and it was you know best practice to do that when we to do the reserve fund we were forced to pay that down to that low level and so now we don't have we don't have that ability anymore and I don't know that we're completely against a reserve fund because that sounds like a great idea because if you do have a crazy wild year you have something to fall back on but what's happening right now is we're dipping into it every year when we basically know we're going to need it I guess I mean I mean look we put $200,000 into it last year with a wink wink nod nod we're going to come and get it at the end of the year I also do want to um just to kind of give a little bit more information on circuit breaker balance historically you can never look at it from a dollar perspective and say what was what did we on average hold as a circuit breaker balance because our circuit breaker Revenue varies year to year per the methodology for circuit breaker and and so what you really should look at which I did look at was what percent of the balance have we historically kept in circuit breaker and it was 74% historically going back to 2012 so historically the district up until as of a few fiscal years kept 74% of our allowable balance to carry forward to offset um tuitions if needed so just make sure I'm at this point that would be 74 74% of 2 million correct again just to reiterate anything in a circuit breaker can only go one way and that's for special education that's that's how the state sets it up the the state sets it up that way to protect districts s yeah I have another question just again about the Collective barting Agreement that's coming up could you just give us a timeline and kind of how this budget figures into that versus when town meeting happens and just to kind of a timeline on who the players are this is my first year yeah okay i' letol take that so we've just started negotiations with there's three units there's the main teacher unit and then there's two smaller units smaller as in number of people that's the uh esps and the T ERS um in a perfect world I think when we were talking as a as a group um the sea and us I would love to say we would come to a meeting of the Minds come May that's about as far as I'm going to go I think with that I don't want to a jinx anything or or be there's there's many things that play as you know we're we've all read we've all watched news there's many things at play here that we don't know what's going to happen you know as Amy said with the interest based bargaining there's a there's great conversations there's open conversations there's open dialogue but we're not only after three meetings we're not to the point of even guessing I think we have a really good idea where we're going to end up we hope at the end of the day it's just way way too early and there's many many pushes and pulls and where this has going to but both sides have committed to two things meeting every week and targeting our goal of May to get it done right so we do meet every Wednesday I I think that it's important for everyone to be prepared and this is the hard thing I know when you're talking to especially finance committee you know which is you know you're in charge of the money and it doesn't help to hear something like this but uh we have an idea of where we think this is going to go and like Martha you know have some best guesses but uh if you open up any newspaper you'll see where things have gone off the rails and we are very hopeful um especially with relationships that have been formed by our superintendent over the decade um that we are not headed in that direction but you know there are um we are working with um you know our pair professionals don't have a living wage and you if you look up PA Professionals in every District you'll see this is a big issue right now um like I don't want to I don't want to compare them to bus drivers but like the bus drivers it's a job that is nearly impossible to hire for right now um because they're not the pay isn't appropriate it um and the uh I think people need I think the town needs to be prepared for um for anything and that's scary uh it's scary for us as school committee members uh but we also are reading every um every newspaper that there is trying to figure out what's happening in other district and talking to our peers and and they're talking to their peers trying to trying to figure out what's what's happening but this is a title change in education um that I think it was you Martha that was talking before about you know this is this is a title change and and and teachers right now are in the position unlike 10 years ago when I think Jason spoke about it really well during um his interviews when you had to had to cut a teacher you knew that when the money came back that you could hire a new teacher whereas now when you have to lay off a teacher that teacher probably hasn't gone on to teaching they've probably gone on to the private sector so they're not replaceable and we have open positions especially open positions when you're not offering a living wage and when I say that I mean like you know $32,000 a year yeah it it it Tera we we just oh know in theory by the time town meeting happens there will be some kind of resolution we hope we hope so okay that that's the goal everybody everyone in that room has agreed that if at all possible by you know the regular town meeting we will have an understanding but as you everyone in here has watched the news we don't know but that's the goal so importantly teacher contracts do not go to town meeting for a vote um they are ratified by the school committee but but there are conversations happening all the time uh particularly at the tri chair meeting so that nobody's in the dark about expectations so it's not like you're going to all of a sudden one day hear about it sure okay anything else from anyone hello so I just had a comment I just want to thank Cheryl for a really informative enlightening educational presentation it was wonderful and it was really um not too simplistic and certainly um answered a lot of questions that I think people had um so really well done and just thanks to you and this is the first time I think I've ever seen these three groups collaborate at this level um and it's refreshing and I think we're off to a great start so thank you all for inviting us and sure um again thank you for the information because it was really great thank you well done for coming um if he depend well I mean I so I would like to say I really agree with you and I'm really happy that that we're all sitting here it's it's um it's hard to swallow though that we were in a you know a town meeting in May talking about a financial Summit that never happened so I feel like we're really late in the game to be talking about our concerns about excess Levy capacity capacity um and which is going to come into play for the teachers I can tell you that categorically um and and it's you know when we talk about what our what our budget is and what our ask is for you know there was a lot of talk last year about a reset that that conversation hasn't happened this year and it's it's disappointing because Eric Hartman stood up at town meeting two years ago and said that he questions whether or not not the town um Pol the financial policy can sustain um services and I don't know if the answer is yes or no but I do know that we didn't have the conversation again and that's disappointing um I I'm just going to reiterate what you said too I think this is great I think um it's great to have all three boards together it's great to have a tri chair meetings it's great to see everybody um I and I see all the wheels turning is to how we can accomplish these goals we also know we're not the only folks you're dealing with here right you have other contracts you have other units you have other things that you have to deal with other than the school department so I know I appreciate the three hours you guys have spent uh we're here to answer any question you had there's no such thing as a as a bad question if something comes up let you know let Cheryl and him myself know let us all know and we'll try to do our best to to get you those answers well can we funnel their questions sure okay so so just I I will make sure that I will any questions you have to the amount of emails that were coming in today um right um so just please send them to me and I'll burst them out and we'll we'll get an answer for you yeah because more than likely the questions you have I guarantee you one or five of us have those ident the same questions um so when scheduled for our first budget hearing the public hearing is February 6th okay that's the next meeting all right so with that um oh uh we'll get there okay um um marel if you want to dissolve your or you can stay you guys can stay it's completely up to you we have other business to do second second all in favor I um finance committee um motion to adjourn sove second all right all in favor in great you guys can stay not stay it's fine we're going to wrap thank you so much again leadership team can go if you want when is the public com coming up good job I didn't want to keep saying thank you making it all just last long because it is almost nice really clear gummy so not in this again less formal and yeah okay all right um yeah we have no sub going stay going to go get out like we got to get on that's it it's over all right um for those who are staying thank you um we have no uh we're having a little technology issue on the policy update so we're going to do that uh next time not you not you no right the cell phone thing will eventually away um so we have um public comment and if uh if anyone's here if you could just sign in I don't think we have a sign to we write it down Mar are you gonna come down all right um so Jess let me just read this um if someone has something to say in public comment to the school committee um we we all lot like 15 minutes what two 15 three minutes to to chat on public comment for person sorry my brain's a little fried here okay 15 minutes over there we a lot 15 minutes public comment and allows each I've had way not enough chocolate go ahead all right hi folks uh Mara La Road um so I just wanted to come to speak tonight on this important issue um I want to just remind everybody on these three really important boards about um our magnificent students that are behind all of these dollars um and I think that that's just um kind of the point that I want to push to make folks realize that there's things that our students come to school for well beyond physics uh and chemistry right they're coming here uh they're coming here for athletics they're coming here for bands they're coming here for chorus they're coming for theater um it's so thrilling to watch um big blue news you know Mr jette's crowd um it was wonderful even during Thanksgiving to see some of the students um at Fenway it was just wonderful um you know when you're around as long as many of us have been you just see kids grow up and to see them um you know standing up and becoming adults and having opportunities to district is creating opportunities for our students and that just leads to so many important moments for them to build upon later on and so um I just want everybody to keep in mind that those dollars that are so important for us support our students um in all of those ways uh robotics Sam's already gone but I dug up my robotics pin for him uh it's um as you know one of my favorite um programs that happens at the high school that Services um every learner um you know it's well beyond robotics it it create you know it taps our students who are creative it taps our students who are organized you know it just um it's a great program but obviously we know it's an expensive program uh so we're going to be you know kind of pursuing some some ways to help financially support that a little bit further um I just wanted to also point out that our superpower has always been our small class sizes I do not want to see us lose that we have it times um our freshman again 30 in a math class it's just too much um it's just too much especially when Miss Raymond was speaking about you know math is still we're still lagging um if we can also uh just the back to the title one I think we all need to do better or the district needs to do better about pointing out the changes financially so I think parents need to realize okay with if those forms are not getting filled out we're not getting dollars how can we go about that better so that we're maybe we have families out there that are meeting that threshold but where we have um you know all of our meals are provided now by the state people don't feel like they need to fill that form out any longer and that's affecting our you know our fed dollars um that needs to be people need to know that we need to teach people that um okay and then going back to the capital all those computers they need maintenance right so that's hitting our budget so that's something certainly to keep in mind um in wrapping I just want to make sure we don't go back to no nurses in our schools eventually um we can't we can't we can't we can't for 100,000 reasons but we've been there we have we've been there for multiple years um closures of libraries and all of our buildings um that was a really unfortunate terrible time in our swamp Scot history and Miss angelakis I really do give you full credit for you know being a PIN to turn that all around um and I know good work will continue but um dollars keep us all going so we could kind of think about ways that the town and the school could do a better job collaborating that's important it needs to happen you just reiterated my entire tenure like I just relived my whole day okay if it wasn't so late I no didn't need to drink of water half hour for you um but if we could just remember that there are students behind all of these dollars and I think that's the most important thing thank you thank you um I see anyone else here is there anyone on line hold on one sec as we check the technology anyone raise your hand online don't be shy feel free we love the chat I don't see anyone okay um next on our agenda is um couple donations Suzanne would you like to read them no okay do you see my computer open all right here we go we have two donations tonight um the first is from Peter and Rebeca spellos they live in swamp Scott um so the source of funding is from the spellos family um $8,000 and I'd like to read the description um the purpose and the conditions of the donations are as follows students of color Alliance $1,000 robotics $1,000 genders and sexuality Alliance $11,000 unified Discovery club uh Emily bordon $1,000 the band at shs another $1,000 drama club at shs ,000 and Chorus at H shs $1,000 film and TV Club $1,000 again that's $88,000 donation from Peter and Rebecca spellos heartfelt thank you that is incredibly generous of of your family um we really appreciate that can someone do I some please make a motion to aove I'll make a motion oh thank you so second all those in favor uh uh it is unanimous again to to Peter and Rebecca thank you so much it's Inc incredibly generous wow there go back thank you uh next uh I'm going to butcher the name so I'm going to apologize in advance maxos exactly um this is for a manufacturing teacher at shs um Peter Paul maxos Paul maxos maxos the owner of motive design firm in Boston um it's incredible um the donation is $479.99 it's for a snapmaker j1s 3D printer you got to check out the printer it is wow it is really pretty cool um just to read the description um it's a new 3D printer has been donated by The Motif design firm for use swamp High School's Advanced manufacturing program motive design firm did not use the specific machine and generously donated it to the program um again very generous this just shows our population in this town is just so invested in our community so can someone please make a motion to approve I'll make a motion someone second second all those in favor and it is passes I just want to say uh Paul maxos continues to be gener not only in gifts like this but he has been a very active supporter of um the the uh the program in in general he is a mentor he has made presentations here has had kids to his company uh and is a a an asset to the program thank you all right and then lastly um there's really only one thing on the consent agenda so um I'd like to have someone make a motion to approve the regular session minutes of January 9th 2025 I'll make the motion someone second all those in favor I that passes unanimously and can I'll make a motion to adjourn thank you all those in favor and we are out