Finance Committee: February 16, 2024

Transcript captured from YouTube auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:11 all right so you should have all gotten the notification about the live

0:43 Alec did it just kick you guys out yeah sorry I when I did you just get the notification that the live stream is happening too yeah I it says it’s live streaming yep all right I think that when I started that it kicked everybody out for some reason I apologize I think it looks like else is siding back in though

1:35 all right we’re just waiting um on Jen we don’t have for till she’s here so I um just need to give her another minute Works um Teresa are you gonna be um um screen sharing I made Alec and Michelle a co-host and I’m happy to make you one as well if you believe if you want to be able to screen share I don’t think you have to make me a co-host just do multiple screen sharers right um Stephen has we usually Stephen has a lot of extra security things BEC on on the one that I set up I

2:22 think oh okay um because of you know the zoom bombing and the different stuff like that okay okay so I made you one just in case okay that’s great yes okay we’re still just waiting on Jen um I can’t start till she’s here I’ll shoot her a text well good Friday morning everyone nice to see you all

2:55 morning especially early for Michelle it’s okay we had school committee last night no I know it still doesn’t mean you should be up till quarter after 1 but that’s okay that’s okay well I figured I’m like you know some of these people are early morning people and they probably want to look at these documents in advance so yeah it was great thank you that’s why that’s why I did I’m like I could have sent them at 8 am but then you guys wouldn’t have time to look at them so I was looking at them at in the middle of the night so I will own to that that’s what I figured cuz I debated because normally I wouldn’t send it out till 7 or 8 but I’m like you know what some of these people actually probably want to look at so yeah and Michelle before we start the meeting um I wanted to say I think this is our first meeting since you announced that you were

3:40 leaving and I wanted to say just as a finance Committee Member I’ve been so impressed with the leadership and the knowledge and the professionalism that you brought to this position and as a parent with kids in the district I so appreciate how you have you stepped in and took you know leadership of the district you’ve gone above and beyond and I just wanted to to recognize that and thank you um Manchester will be lucky to have you so thank you for everything thank you thank you very much all right so I see Jen’s on now so I oh I did see her is she gone oh no she’s here okay um so I will call us to order at 8:34 um and open for public comment if anybody has any public comment just raise your

4:26 raise your raise your hand don’t see anything so Michelle can you just take us through an fy2 24 update sure so there’s not too much in terms of fy2 24 um I did also because there were there were some questions about f23 close and whatnot so I included um a copy of the memo that we had sent to school committee back in October and um also included the October memo which was the fy4 for first quarter update um I believe we might have actually already reviewed that with this group I’m not positive but I want wanted to make sure you have that right now fy4 um we have a lot of unanticipated expenses this year um a lot of those in

5:11 terms of salaries with the payout of Dr Bucky and then all of a sudden um a lot of our vacancies where we’re paying some interim salaries for so a lot of that is going to come from our unemployment compensation line which we had increased significantly last year we had increased it from um I believe it was 100,000 to $420,000 so in the end when we had all of our Cuts last year we ended up only laying off a a couple of people that were actual layoffs at the end of the year the rest of the staff um sought other jobs by by the time the end of the school year you know came about so we did not have to pay the unemployment compensation for them that we had budgeted so we did have a little bit of a cushion rather for unanticipated

5:56 of of a cushion rather for unanticipated salary costs and whatnot um I will be doing an analysis of that and doing a projection through through the end of the year hopefully within the next week or so um I’m hoping next week’s a school vacation week things will quiet down um we have our level Services budget done we have most of our Cuts done to get to our reduced services so I’m really hoping to focus on um really wrapping up fy2 24 and doing a great projection through the end of the year in addition to some other projects that I’m working on so really I’m I’m in the final stages um of of trying to tie up a lot of lot of loose ends with nice neat bows and leave them in great shape to um pass on to Mary Deli who will be the business consultant coming in um taking over during the transition time

6:43 so fy2 24 we are monitoring um school committee will actually see some budget transfer requests at one of the upcoming meetings to um allocate some of that unemployment compensation appropriation to the various budget lines that we will we will need um so you will you know that that will be coming and um just stay tuned in that in terms of the out of District placements we’re not doing before we get to that agenda item Michelle I just want to see if anybody has any questions on the FY 24 update okay well I didn’t know if you wanted me to touch on the fy2 24 piece of that oh okay yes no absolutely I just I saw that as the next item go for it yeah okay um I just wanted to let you know that you

7:29 know this year we’re we’re not doing too bad we are um roughly $200,000 short um in our transportation and $200,000 short in our tuitions but we did have the prepayment of 539,000 um so really that’s an insurance cushion that we had started the year off with and that’s something that I’m I’m hoping we can also do this year not so positive and confident that we’ll be able to do that at the end of this year but um hopefully my projection in the next couple weeks will give us an indication of where we are um in terms of that but um so so far this year we’re holding our own we don’t need to dip into too much of our

8:16 reserves however I do want to say that the outof district placements can change in a day’s notice um just last week we had finalized a placement that was a substantial residential placement costing almost $100,000 we had it on our radar um but it did come to fruition within the past couple of weeks so we do have that we did actually budget for it but it was still you know un how should I put it it was not 100% certain so that actually came to fruition so that is is happening and moving forward into our FY 24 as well as our fy2 budget um but a bigger piece with the outer district is the transportation um every day we’re getting

9:02 you know this child’s being put on a 45-day evaluation we need to transport that child Transportation costs have skyrocketed we used to just a few years ago when I started we used to budget roughly in the5 to $600,000 range now we’re up in this year we’re estimating it’s going to cost 1.1 million next year two million um we only budgeted 880,000 this year so we are you know our costs are exceeding our appropriation like I said that prepayment is going to help offset some of those costs at this point um while the prepayment is specifically tuition it will release some tuition funds that we can apply towards the transportation budget so it is it is a very variable unknown cost that could

9:48 impact Us in different ways on a daily basis almost every week I’m seeing a new Transportation request come through and they’re significant we put it out to all of our vendors um to see who can do it never mind who can do it on the lowest and oftentimes will receive one bid back for it so and sometimes they’re for $500 a day which is absolutely insane so we’re paying thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in transportation that we haven’t had that you know that level of a cost before so really that’s fy2 24 in a nutshell until um I do a formal projection which will be with the second quarter year to date financial report I will share that with school committee as well as the binom Liaisons um as soon as

10:33 ready so if there any questions on that um I had a few questions but if anyone fincom wants to go

10:45 first um so that’s very helpful um I guess if we’re talking about the fiscal year 24 update projection um I definitely am very interested in seeing as of call it February 15th now however you run your your books to close every two weeks or every month I’m not sure exactly how you do it but where do you think you’re going to land on the actual side of fiscal year 24 and and show us side by side versus where you landed in 23 um and and Molly earlier this week so um thanks again Michelle for sharing the like closing memos and whatnot I think Molly had realized that that was available and and spent some time the other night to put it into um an Excel doc

11:32 um so maybe um has maybe put in a format that you’d be able to kind of Leverage because I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now too um and um I know I have some thoughts about that but you know that my my biggest takeaway is as I said in the email when I when we when I reached out to set up this meeting is um you know there was a large Surplus um as I mentioned widely reported around town and there’s a lot of people that talk about it um last year right so you know I I don’t know where we would have been if we projected last year’s end as of February right um you know I don’t know that we were expecting that so I’m trying to make sure we have a good understanding of where 24 ends as of

12:21 today um as we enter and build 25 um to make sure that we understand exactly what’s being requested and and where things compare to what’s currently going on um in ter terms of costs for the current year effectively right absolutely you usually about the March time frame is when I do that projection to the end of the year um and that’s usually when we start our additional projects and spending okay so um so that that’s typically right in align with with where we almost are right now so yes we will be having that done great and if I if I could ask just a follow up on that too should there be unencumbered funds at the end or that you would expect there to be any obviously I know a primary use would would be the the tuition the out of District tuition

13:07 prepayment any other you know thoughts on how that would be allocated I know it’s early but should we assume that that would primarily go to the the tuitions absolutely that that would be my recommendation unless there are some um burning projects within the district I mean right now we have a couple Capital needs that are absolutely essential um that we have to have funded with the FY 2 budget um one is the structural beam repair at the veteran school um so I’ve talked to Alicia about that and she she’s well aware of that but that’s something for example that we you know if if we’re projecting in Surplus we might be able to fit to this year rather than put it into next year’s capital budget um another thing is the

13:52 permanent fix for the heating system at Glover that’s another big ticket item that um we don’t have the funds to do the 100% repair we we we’ve allocated roughly I mean we’ve authorized $440,000 for a temporary repair that should get us through a year or so um however we really need to go forward with the permanent repair on that um on the heating system to Glover so that’s another issue that could be taken up if there are surplus funds there um also what we did last year we tried to um replace some of our it Hardware that was coming up in our replacement cycle so we we really try to to take a look at what we can do um last year we actually ran

14:37 into a situation where supply issues impacted us so you know the the April time frame we knew we had additional funds we tried to get some of our IT projects underway earlier than um the summer and we contracted for them the supplies did not come in before June 30th so that’s actually part of that cumbrance the $615,000 one-time expenses that Alicia did not allow after the fact so um there’s a couple hundred, in there that we were not able to actually use that we encumbered we’re trying to you know we tried to roll over into fy4 and um Alicia said well the goods weren’t received by June 30th so you can’t do that and really that that’s a great area it’s really the determination

15:25 of of the CFO or town accountant Finance director um to allow those or not and she did not allow so that’s fine that’s her rule but that’s not how Marblehead has operated in the past so while we encumbered that whole 615,000 we actually weren’t able to use that whole $615,000 so I just wanted to to mention that um so those projects we did contract for we weren’t able to do so we actually had to take them out of fy2 24 cost so we had anticipated taking them out of fy2 spring and then we weren’t able to so they didn’t R so I’m assuming that money goes back to free cash it will at the end of this year unused incumbrances go back to free cash so yes and I’m sorry is the difference um

16:12 between the prepaid sped and the um summary of um other purchases that you have identified is an additional Delta of 150k yes plus or minus that no that’s the time that’s the timing of regular operating bills for example our legal bills for June we don’t receive till July our unemployment bill for June we don’t receive till July so those are those types of bills that’s the 150,000 the tuition bills for June we don’t receive till July okay but there’s no issue with having those be allowed correct because the services were actually performed in performed in June thank you correct yeah it was a timing on the the goods when they were received and the actual Services okay good

16:57 yeah um and you know on looking through fiscal 23 actuals you know a large source of the um unencumbered funds is you can see it teacher salaries it’s parah salaries tutor salaries you know you know a lot of those positions were eliminated if for fiscal 24 but we have been hearing a lot that rates are not competitive and so the reason these positions are open is because you cannot attract people at the rate you’re paying so as you’re thinking about fiscal 25 I guess I’m moving a little bit to 25 are you able to account for this is this and is this also what you’re still seeing in fiscal 24 um we are seeing some vacancies in FY

17:45 24 not a ton um we we are having significant number of vacancies in the lower paying positions the Paris um there’s been a lot of turnovers with tutors cafeteria workers are next to impossible to um attract and retain um custodians we’ve had a vacancy or two um it seems like a a cycling door here in terms of custodial Staffing so we are seeing the vacancies they’re I want to say they’re revolving they’re not consistent as they were last year because we don’t have as many positions as we did last year um so a lot of those par positions were eliminated at the end of last year um we do have some par positions which we’ve seen a lot of

18:31 turnover we we get someone in the door they work for a few months and then they leave um the pay rates are part of it and unfortunately that is contractual in terms of our union pay rates so um we’re trying to bring a lot of our hourly workers in and um the lower paid employees in at like a step three or four where normally you know they started a step one or two so we are trying to accommodate that for example our power power professional pay scale actually starts below minimum wage so at this point we can’t hire anyone below minimum wage um legally we’re allowed to do that but we can’t even attract anybody so we are bringing them in at a little bit higher step right now but that’s really not a permanent solution

19:18 to what we need to do um so hopefully with our our Union negotiations this year we’ll be able to deal with some of those um lower paying rates and you know be able to attract a little bit and then um one other one other thing um Molly had done um I think this was more of a work in progress um summary that Molly had put together but she was looking at the circuit breaker um and trying to really understand what’s going on with it um and you know we talk about it every year right but I think it’s good to revisit um I think what happened for fiscal year 23 is you had a balance forward of about 900,000 you received Revenue about 1.2 and the policy was in place to spend the

20:06 900 and roll the the received forward is that still the policy as we’re in fiscal year 24 um the 1.2 is coming in and that’s what you’re planning on spending out of circuit breaker and then whatever comes in is kind of set up to pay the next year’s cost is that exactly that’s that’s our goal um that’s our plan right now so if if we were to receive just say half a million dollars more in out of District costs that we weren’t anticipating we would probably have to tap into that circuit breaker fund um right now we did we received 1.2 million we applied that to this year’s budget and that’s what we’re planning on spending um this year we received 1.4 million so we’re applying that 1.4 million to the next year’s budget um and

20:51 the projection for the year after that is 1.6 million so as our outof district tuition costs increase so does circuit breaker usually um however when we have students that are falling in the $45,000 range we’re not receiving any reimbursement for those right so it’s when we have a lot of private day or a lot of residential placements high cost residential that we’re getting the more the more Revenue in um I do want to mention that these past years have all been reimbursed at the 75% plus some of the transportation I’m hearing that that will not be the case next year year so our 1.6 million may not be um actually 1.6 million but that’s actually going to impact the FY

21:39 26 budget so um that’s not an FY 25 budget because we’ve already been um receiving the the piece that the 1.4 million that we’re anticipating applying to the fy2 budget so and if Molly you ever want to sit down and go over this you know in the next few weeks feel free absolutely um and Emma’s Emma’s your person she’s Deep In The Weeds on the um the circuit breaker reimbursement claim and all that and actually this this um file that you sent last night early this morning was perfect in terms of breaking down that’s exactly what I was hoping to understand and I think there’s a lot of confusion about you know the circuit breaker and funding sources at the Town level and I think this makes it really clear you know what is available you

22:25 know sources of funds and also where your estimates for next year are coming in so I really appreciate you putting this together thank you okay great so one thing I want to point out with the circuit breaker especially as we talk about how it has been coming in at 75 but there there is this um noise out there if you will that it is going to be decreased I think it’s really important that we talk about how we have moved towards this best practice of rolling over a year because you know in 2018 the thing that happened that led to the financial crisis is circuit breaker suddenly with very little notice came in drastically under what it was supposed to be and because

23:10 in Marblehead we weren’t into that best practice of rolling over a year at a time simply because we didn’t have the money to to do it um that all of a sudden when circuit breaker did not come in I remember sitting at the January meeting um other than the school committee Jen was there on the school committee I literally was the only one at those meetings then people weren’t paying attention to how we were getting here and um it didn’t come in and that’s really where the rubber hit the road of we all of a sudden had a gigantic deficit because we were hit such a heavy Reliance on circuit breaker and we weren’t rolling over that full year and then circuit breaker didn’t come in so it’s really important that we continue this best practice one question I have is you talked about the deficit

23:57 um we have with the outou of districts including the tuition and how much we rolled over so if we hadn’t done that prepayment right now is it true that we would be 739 roughly 730 to 740,000 deficit for what was projected in the line item out of districts for FY 24 and what was budgeted it really was that rollover that is made us able yeah say I was calculating it and like I apologize it was super late last night and unfortunately I had lost that sheet and then I had to rebuild it again um but I am estimating it to be roughly $500,000 just under 500 um but yes if we did not have that prepayment we would be dipping into either circuit breaker or somewhere else in the budget at this point um we are in you know February we have not

24:43 frozen the budget we haven’t Frozen the budget in a number of years now actually since covid because of all the vacancies um but typically prior to 2020 it was very common practice here to get into the fall October November sometimes December and freeze the budget so so we have not had to do that since 2020 um and I do you know I do want to give Acumen to the ability to prep these tuitions every year because this I believe this is the fourth year we’ve actually prepaid tuitions so um it is a great practice that we can do if we can continue doing it um we do need to identify the funds that we can prepay in June and have to

25:32 pay them no later than July 15 so um it is a practice that I I hope we can continue you know implementing and following because it it really is it’s an additional insurance policy and that way we do not need to tap into that one-year rooll over of circuit breaker that is best practice and then that 650,000 um that we had tried to you know stay on top of with our Tech Surplus that was ordered you’re saying that was order ordered and it was a procurement back order situation where we didn’t get those items yeah we some of some of the items we actually received right about June 30th and so Alicia allowed us to take the good cost that because it was goods and

26:18 services so we had to order the goods well we had to sign the contract um for a company to come in or procure the goods and install them so some of the goods were actually physically received by June 30th so Alicia let let us charge that piece to it she did not allow for the installation piece which actually occurred in July or August um and then other Goods actually were backordered were not received in time for June 30th were received in July or August and installed also in that time frame she would not allow us to incur that cost so okay even though the contract was for goods and services yes okay yeah so this is where written Financial practices I think would be really

27:04 helpful on the town side because if we had known this I don’t think we would have in our financial situation gone through with this it sounds like this was a a new unprecedented Marblehead Head was a a new unprecedented Marblehead practice which is fine it’s it’s her opportunity to do that but if we had notification and written practices on the town side of their financial practices I think you know this is not an insignificant cost and um I I think that you know the good thing is we’ll all benefit from it in free cash our projections for free cash next year were abysmal at best so now we have 650,000 that’s at least something um but but you know if we can just continue Alec if you can continue to just push for some written Financial practices on

27:49 the town side I think it would be helpful in guiding us yeah and the amount um that was unallowed was under 300,000 so it wasn’t the full 650 oh okay okay yeah but it wasn’t it was between two and 300,000 okay okay and then with respect to um my email that I had sent when you’re building fiscal year 25 I think you know you’ve got a draft budget that you’ve shared with us that to me is your request from the general fund right right that’s our our level Services request like to see a full budget that bud that forecasts you know as I tried to articulate in my

28:36 email at least what I last heard from the state of the town is the general fund you know what you’re going to get in a in a level funded or a balanced budget right it’s last plus 750,000 give or take right um if you could forecast all of your Grant and um revolving revenues and then kind of show the revenues like a full kind of p&l type presentation and then all of your costs and how you plan on spending all of those buckets um that’s something that I think would be helpful to understand and is just easier to articulate to people and and almost shut down a lot of um

29:22 questions that I’ve heard around town about um we need to see their full Financial picture we don’t know what’s going on the other side I think we can put it all together because I’ve got a bunch of tabs here from stuff Molly’s put together that has the pieces I just think why don’t we just put something together that has everything you know what I mean all so so Michelle the to that point the the files that you sent last night do these you have the the revolving funds the revenue you have the grants and the expenses does this constitute essentially what Alex is asking Alec is asking for is this everything yes um that that’s what I mean this is like bits and pieces of everything I mean there is the last document I sent

30:07 it’s I can’t remember a bud budget fund overview um really that’s where we put together the the mock p&l um unfortunately some of those numbers are really we back into because we don’t have the town’s revenues what does the town pay for us so what do we you know they C they receive a certain amount of Chapter 70 money for our behalf um really the rest of the Town Revenue that is allocated to the school department is a plug number because we don’t receive Revenue in our department the town receives revenue for us and that’s how they appropriate the money towards us um so yes it’s all different pieces I’m not sure I I don’t have an I can’t it’s hard for me to Envision exactly what you’re looking for but I guess what I’m saying

30:52 is like you know we just talked about circuit breaker right you’re going to get 1.6 million in your in your Revenue call it I know it’s not a profit and loss business but I’m just going to call right Y and then you’re going to say I’m not going to actually spend that this year right right you’re gonna have an explanation as to why how do I know what’s going on in any of your other federal grants or any of your other revolving accounts are there $1.6 million in other lines that are rolled over like that’s what I’m looking for is not saying there are I just don’t know because I don’t think we’ve ever reviewed it in that level of detail yep and that’s why I provide on a quarterly basis the um Grant and revolving report so you will see what the year ended with

31:37 last year you will see what the annual revenues were you’ll see what the annual expenditures are and I mean in terms of federal grants we only have roughly two and a half years to spend any or or just over two years to spend any Grant um if not 12 12 months so we do that but um no you’re absolutely right and I mean like like our um preschool kindergarten revolving fund we try to keep one year of Revenue in that as well it’s not as tight of a guideline of circuit breaker because circuit breaker under law were allowed to carry over up to one year of Revenue um that is a maximum by law by Statute um but that is also a great practice it’s a best practice and that’s what we’re trying to do with all of our other revolving funds as well we’re not

32:24 quite that goal but but the general public doesn’t understand that they see us having revolving funds they see us as having hundreds of thousands of dollars in these buckets and really we’re just trying to follow best practices and and you know so it sounds like outside of the circuit breaker generally these revenue streams again I it’s weird calling it Revenue but we’ll call it that are spent right yes so let’s just show that and let’s make it simple and put everything together and then show the types of costs that the school bears from both the general fund and the other side of the books effectively and not only do it on a final fiscal year 23 in a nice format but then this is where we

33:10 think we’re going to land for fiscal 24 and then we’ve now budgeted each of these line items and we document why these revenues are changing like you know you know what you think circuit breaker is going to be is 1.6 but you could have a note that you know it might come down because of the 75% we’re hearing stuff like that to give the picture of what’s going on um to make so we can understand I think I think that’s what I’m hearing and and in speaking with um Alicia about this I I asked her about it because she’s been other places and she said in certain towns she’s been in all of the Departments would have full picture pnls like that and then in other towns more like Marblehead I just think if if some towns are doing it that way then I think we have all the pieces let’s just put it in in a format that’s

33:57 easier to walk people through um and easier to digest and identify what’s really driving the biggest challenges on the school budget absolutely so yeah I mean I will gladly I meeting with alici I’m meeting with Alicia um next week um I will certainly ask her to see if there’s you know she has any formats that she would recommend or share I did talk to her about the p&l statement and she said but that’s not really what you do and I I know that but um trying to get this information out there so I I think I mean I Molly correct me if I’m wrong but we’re pretty close on like accumulating all the different data points so we could help the format too okay because we we just

34:45 live in Excel at least I do for my daily unfortunately um I hear you it’s a lot easier to like present things and move stuff around than a PDF of course so absolutely be more than happy to work with you on that yeah so hang on Molly one second I have several questions looks like we’ve maybe moved on to fy2 I still have questions on FY 24 um but on this topic that you’re discussing around this the grants because I do have questions about the grants as well um and I’m a simple person I’m not an accountant like Alec oral whatever but it seems to me that we have two different sets of reporting for for the funding side one is the report the budget that shows our appropri ation expected appropriation from town the

35:31 other are other sources of funds but it seems to me that all the expenses are in the budget that unless you’re shaking your head Molly like in other words some of our expenses are paid for out of our grants but when I look at our the projected budget and maybe I’m wrong those Paras those T some of those people that are Title One tutors that are paid out of the grant the expense is in the budget that’s just showing the appropriation from town unless I’m wrong I this was actually my next question and because a lot of those like having gone through the statements closely they’re not but I guess my my question to Michelle is as an example for school lunch this is a revolving fund you know or the metco program right those expenses don’t show up other than the

36:18 food service director don’t show up in the general funds right the general funding it you know separate expenses but that said certain line items I think can supplement expenses that might typically be covered by the general fund so it’s an example the building rent revolving fund right so that can that can supplement what the general fund would normally pay so I thought like so to that point Jen could we get an understanding of which of the grants and which of the revolving funds can supplement general fund line items and that okay I just let me just clarify this okay because I I’m just trying to

37:04 understand this I’m looking at the expend so the expenditure report shows all the expenses right like I’m looking at you know par tutor lines all that stuff that I thought rolls up so I guess our total budget is inclusive of grants in there I guess it okay so I understand like I’m looking at our expenditure report through nine this one was through 93023 I mean we’ve got every cost in there unless there are Grant costs that aren’t in there but then where are those expenses shown the grants and revolving are at the are the supplemental pages on that budget report for Revenue right but we’re but but not for like not for line item

37:53 expenses yeah no I I we our financial system is not very conducive to producing reports especially for Grants and revolving funds that’s why we put them in Excel because there’s not a nice neat report that will give you revenues and expenses out of the grants we could give you many reports that roll up to it um but the current system does not show when I look so let me just ask a question all right so when I’m looking at I I guess that the the but so when you roll those up under the expense report which is how we report our fiscal year fiscal year and closing fiscal year it gets a grand total and what is that number inclusive of I guess that’s where I’m I guess I’m getting confused is that inclusive of all grants or is that just the town appropriation like

38:40 are we looking at expenses against the town appropriation that those expenses are coming from somewhere else being paid from I need to know what report you’re looking at I’m assuming you’re looking at the Excel Pages for Grants and revolving I am looking at so I’m looking at the Town marad school department expenditure report say 7123 to 93023 MH so that rolls up and it it looks like it’s annualized right because you got unencumbered is a grand total of 39. 382 million that is general fund only okay but the expenses in there like I see tutor expenses I so yep those are all general fund okay those those are not I see like food service salary okay okay that is

39:26 the food service director is budgeted under the general fund every other Food Service cost is is under the Food Service revolving fund okay okay yeah and and this Jen like this is exactly what I’m saying is all we’ve been reviewing is the request from the general fund right um I want to see your forecasted expenses for everything and then how all of your Revenue sources pay for them um it seems like most are just in and out when it comes to the quote unquote other side right the grants and the revolving circuit breaker there’s an explanation as to why there’s a year that rolls over best practices right um so let’s just try to put that together

40:11 um I know that you know that lovely desie reporting which you can just go to right Michelle it actually breaks stuff down between general fund and spent um 23 is now up there um the the confusion on that if anybody’s looking at the totals is a lot of the general fund spent on the school is actually sitting in the townside and insurance and stuff like that so it’s really hard to line everything up but I think we can do our best and I can work with Alicia that that would be a lot of that would be worka to to just get the full picture because I think that’s what people are are looking for and um more than more importantly that’s what we’re looking for to be able to articulate exactly what’s going on you know what I mean um

40:56 and so is this a question of just correlating the actual expense when you do the expense roll up versus where the funds are coming from in terms of general fund versus um grants and is is that what you’re is that what the confusion is Jen is that yeah well I also had some questions on on the grants too which yeah so in other words it seems like we’re I don’t know like when we present our budget right we talking about level Services level funded going from 44 million to 46 million is that inclusive of the grants and the expenses with those grants or those those are exclusive okay so I guess that that’s the question and

41:42 then so then I did have questions on the grants because a lot of these grants do seem to carry forward so I guess there’s multiple grants that were doing that whether it’s Title One idea Medco like we we are doing that same practice where we’re carrying forward um the balance from from the previous year we had been um like I mentioned we have just over two years to spend a fedal grant um you have 27 months to spend it um primarily we when I arrived a lot of our title grants were not spent in the year that they were awarded they were spent the year after typically um we’ve actually had to start spending current year funds so um and for example our 240 idea grant

42:29 our big special ed Grant we do usually spend most of that within the year it is received um our Medco Grant has to be spent in the year it is received unless um they allow for a carryover which they have allowed a small carryover the past two years so it it’s different rules regarding each specific Grant um primarily we try to allocate a fiscal 24 Grant to fiscal 24 expens expenses sometimes we don’t and sometimes that little buffer of a roll over will allow us um a little bit of of wiggle room in terms of unanticipated expenses because a lot of title grants or special ed grants like we’re showing hang on a second Al we’re showing like FY 23 I’m

43:16 just KN that the idea Grant FY 23 which I think is closed showed a recur a settled balance of 163,000 correct and that’s that’s our big special ed Grant um and it also should be noted that um our FY 24 Grant it is actually a great practice to have a small buffer to carry over because you can’t spend your fy2 24 Grant until it’s approved so in order to start the school year it’s really good to have a little bit of those funds in hand um while we don’t want to carry over the entire year because and then they start questioning why you’re not using it um it is helpful to have a little bit of of a carryover yeah that just seemed High because the previous it was for 4,300 the year before 21,000 the

44:01 year before so yeah that’s that’s our grant that covers Transportation roughly half of the grant covers Transportation the other half of it for special ed the other half of it covers contracted services for special ed actually student services um cont this is this is why these questions that is Raising like this is this is what I’m looking to understand as well um because what can’t H right we’re looking at budget of 44.8 last year to 47.8 we’re talking 6% like that’s not the reality we’re in in Marblehead like that’s just not right so if we’re building reserves on the other side of the revenue and just saying you know our costs are increasing

44:48 on uh and we just all of those increases we ask the town to cover like that’s what people are are saying might be happening so we need to show what’s happening and and you know I I don’t know what I just heard about the idea were you saying that was the carryover Jen well that’s what it says on the report it says f23 I see what came in was around $760,000 in fisc year 23 so like would be how much of that was spent on every single line of of what right all I’m telling you is what for the roll up what I’m looking at what she provided what Michelle provided us is the the total award 76955 balance FY 23 which is now closed of 162

45:33 869 and that’s I just heard what okay that’s helpful and what what Michelle just said that you know for whatever reason there was that balance like we need to understand what all of that is and why right on every line like I don’t care if it’s the title uh for $110,000 like and I’m saying this to all the all the uh uh budgets we’re reviewing on the town side too like the reality of Marblehead is that the budget’s growing at less than 2% to balance right now right so we can’t not be looking at everything is the point well the other like example I mean just I’m just these were on my left so I just want to go through like school lunch which I know school lunch is a revolving fund and I know you you know there’s only only certain expenses I understand that but

46:20 it looks what on here is at FY 23 we ended with a balance of 564 th000 in the school lunch so yeah like school lunch is is an interesting issue because since the state or during Co the federal government was paying for all student meals um in the past year actually two years the state has now picked up the additional cost so the federal government pays us for a portion the state government pays us for the rest of the portion so now meals are free for everybody um this has actually created an issue in um just about every school district I know unless you have uh contracted provider running your system um because they if you have a contractor in a company a food service company they

47:07 charges are based on your Revenue um so if you own your own or you run your own food service department almost every school district is running into this the revenue is coming in higher than our expenses so there is the state is actually addressing this and recommending that we do a lot of kitchen upgrades a lot of Maintenance which is ex what we’re doing we have not to go off on another tangent but we have replaced some of our Walkin freezers at Village School we are addressing some issues at the veteran school um we’re looking to um replace some some items at the Glover School kitchen so we are doing that now but that created a larger than anticipated Surplus in that fund that is continuing because the revenue is coming in higher

47:53 than our expenses in addition we are not able to attract staff and maintain staff um with that budget you probably could increase pay couldn’t you it’s unfortunately it’s a union so without we’re in the process of of pro probably most likely doing away with that Union um but right now it’s a union and we’re not allowed to increase the pay rates so there okay I mean you could open moving his salary possibly into that yes out of the operational budget exactly we are so we’re we’re making that change right now um so that will absorb a little bit of that cost or add additional cost to that fund but that fund is one very specific that can only

48:38 be used for food service operations and Food Service staff um we can’t use it for anything else so we are creating a surplus but um the state is is I mean can you get creative and like try to carve out part of the utilities come out of that I don’t know like no this’s very string what Jen what Jen just said I appreciate and I appreciate the answer to that because Marblehead needs to get creative across the board not just the schools right the point is maybe not for the school lunch but is there anything being asked for from the general fund right now in this fiscal year 25 level services that can be paid for out of any of these accounts that have rollovers if

49:25 not prove it you know I mean and if so let’s let’s use the funds because 6% is not happening right no we we know that and that is that’s part of our um whole process in addition to cutting roughly you know just over $2 million out of our our ask we are looking at every single fund we have available to us and including grants that we don’t currently have and looking to apply for them so yes we going that’s all we’re asking is that when we’re building the budget let’s build these are our total costs these are all of our Revenue sources and this is our full picture effectively absolutely I was excited about getting the health insurance over and I think at some point Alicia said it still will I don’t know if they’re ready to do

50:12 that this year but I’d really like to see the full C like people need to understand the full cost of the school is a lot more than 50% right it’s probably closer to 65 I would say and and to really address the challenges both Town side and school side I feel like the full picture on both is what we need to be really articulating and and trying to make sense of because I know there’s a lot of moving pieces especially when there’s things that come in and you can’t spend them in a certain time frame and you have this long to spend them there’s a lot of different things so to to break it down by line we got to start somewhere um because the challenges are are hard um in this structural deficit that we’re in back I to that end I think it will be important when looking at these grants to to look

51:00 at the timing of them as well as what we legally can do with them because unlike the Cherry sheets and things like that and our other revenue streams these grants don’t run always um and seldom run July one to June 30th and it’s important or just one year it’s important for people to truly understand we may have $400,000 in a grant but that Grant may be expected to carry us for that line item for 18 months and um um we’ve done this before where we start um really digging in to save us this year and then next year we’re in a financial crisis so I just if the directive is dig in as much as we can now or you know push the back I want to push back and I don’t think we should be pushing the boundaries on on any of what we can

51:46 can and can’t use things for I don’t think we’re asking any to push the boundaries Sarah but I do think it’s I think to Alex’s Point like when we have these balances that seem to be carrying over we I understand this is balance right between best practice you want to have you know enough to keep in reserves but you also have to the reality is to to continue to dep depend on an appropriation from the general fund um isn’t going to be there we’re we’re going to have to figure this out like we’re gonna have to find a balance I understand we do need to find a balance um and and you know we talked about this last night how we had really tried to start weaning ourselves off of the Reliance on the kindergarten tuition revolv fund to be in line with really what every other town in the in the

52:32 state is doing and best practice there and we’re now re we we had we had made some gains on that and we’re now reversing that um March towards that um and we have to that’s okay but I do want to be cognizant of yes we we really have to buckle down and do this but we also have to be mindful of the reason we’ve been trying to implement some of these best practices and what they what what Financial crisises we’re trying to fix through fix implementing those those best practices and and just be mindful we have to do both we have to answer we have to provide data but we have to be mindful of why we’ve started implementing these best practices and while we’re talking about how great it is that we are safer now and we’re not you know shutting down budgets on

53:19 October one we’re not having these massive layoff meetings that we had in 2019 of what do we have to cut we’re not buying paper print your stuff at home because of this best practice that we have implemented so I just I want to be really mindful yes we have a very serious financial situation we need to fix but we cannot get back to to poor financial practices robbing Peter to pay Paul because it’s pay now or pay later folks and we really have to continue best financial practices in some of these rollovers then one other thing um and appreciate that and and I hear where you’re coming from because if you’re building a reserve and then you know that was your goal and then and then now times are tough and then you’re just

54:05 emptying the reserve that’s not the best practice to to live by either so I I hear where you’re coming from but I’m I’m with Jen and you Sarah like there has to be a balance here and I I just personally don’t even know all the information I think we’ve got the circuit breaker figured out now thank you Molly and and Michelle probably articulated it that way and I just didn’t get it last year right but between you know look reviewing data over and over it it helps to to build um the understanding now I just want to look at the full picture um one other thing I wanted to talk about that Molly had brought up um a couple weeks back and I’ll let you kind of articulate it better than me Molly but um breaking

54:52 this and it is broken down but really highlighting the what’s causing the challenge for the school right and splitting special education from general education in terms of presentation of the budget um because I’m looking at amended fiscal year 23 budget vers expended in 23 um and the school level spending right had you had $2 million unspent I think we talked about most of that was um unfilled positions that in fiscal year 24 a lot of those aren’t in there anymore right because the overd didn’t pass um but you look at the outof district in transportation and you see a significant a million dollar deficit or so um and to me what that’s saying is that the outof district stuff as that

55:38 goes up it’s taking away from what you have available for your regular general education right and and has the committee considered some sort of you know plan or um you know whe whether there’s an override being considered to address specific specifically special education is my

56:05 question anyone want to take that oh I I want can I just say one thing Sarah you can talk the finance of this what I want to make sure we don’t get to is hitting special ed against gen Ed um even just for the visual for people because that is UN iCal I get what you’re saying financially we should be very clear and open I just want to be be careful and thoughtful of how you do this how you think about this as a committee so I think um well mckinness yeah I was um very that I concur very very good point however um from a financial standpoint it is without a doubt you know one of the main pressure points that we have and I think where

56:52 from uh school committee position um Al and a fincom position um you know the administration is an operational responsibility of the superintendent and the superintendent’s team right um which includes the administration of special education services to students and you know going back to which I think was Ground Zero which was 2018 when we had 14 unexpected um outof District placements that year which is what threw us into this um situation will threw us into the situation in 2019 has been carrying forward it seems that in the last year or two it has been you know even more exponential and you know from where my seat is it’s an Administration an operational area of responsibility as

57:39 well to be trying to understand what’s you know what are what what can we do in District I mean one thing that jumped out at me in this report is we you know because it is listed by you know by school and we have um 12 students I believe 12 students attending Landmark um you know is there from an from an operational standpoint or administrative standpoint something we can do that we can invest in to try to mitigate that um for that particular cohort of students or potential students um that could but again that’s that’s operational and we don’t you know that’s that’s out of our purview but I because I even you know because I look at that mean it’s the it’s out of district and it’s Transportation I mean one thing I was thinking is do we consider bringing in the transportation in House Michelle

58:26 You’ thought about that I mean it’s probably impossible to do I don’t know like you know do we hire our own Vans and buy our own Vans and hire own I don’t know but it’s the pressure is in unbelievable on in this one particular area it is the you know it’s a budget yeah I hear what you’re saying um but it’s how do we address it operationally before we start asking for you know money to solve the problem solely yeah now we do have a new leader coming you know a new inter coming in we I’m you know very experienced professional in this area very interested to see what you know what Teresa you know what what uh Miss Bell’s had you know just I know she’s coming to right but she may have some you know some thoughts um from an

59:11 operational standpoint because we are um you know we are in a position where we’re we’re having to um I think really look at you know how how are we serving these these students with the I think that’s right on jent but I also think eight years ago when I was here we were having this conversation about landmark and the U Marblehead public schools and so what would be good for your point all of your point here is to look at that one example o over time how what percentage of students you know Landmark because I feel like I don’t know if that’s a huge increase or if that’s how it’s been the last eight years Etc one single institution has most number of our students well that’s proximity it’s proximity and it’s an awareness

59:59 um from F families um but we also have a lot of language base in our district so you’re right that should be but I would like to see over time what has that been a big change or is this a constant because it was it was a constant the four years I was here with this conversation so that’s a good example to use so as someone who’s been here for the last five years watching these Trends and I think it’s important to look at Landmark and Windam Woods both service our um both of those are specialized institutions that service our language based program so it’s not just the landmark it’s landmark and Windam Woods that’s their specialty for both of them the landmark has far more students than they do but it’s it’s what I’m saying is it’s actually more than just 12 at Landmark it’s when we look at because I would like to look at by category

1:00:45 because that really will show us where the fracture points are in what we’re in our district you know is it language based is it therapeutic is it this is it that and this is something something I had really pushed for last year and the administration at the time gave us a lot of push back I really wanted to look at where are out placements by area as not geographical area but like um things like need area area of need need I wanted to look at that and grade level you know is it that we’re doing okay until this grade level for language base and then we’re seeing uh a massive outplacement at that point because I think that data really will show us where we need to make the

1:01:32 Investments now and you and we we all as a community need to be aware you will not see a return on your investment in year one financially you will in outcomes for kids and that’s important for us to understand that outcomes for kids don’t always equal an outcome financially that we want um but because we our priority is kids um but if we can look at what by by subset what is where are we losing the kids and at what point because it may be an I don’t want anybody to quote that this is where the problem is I literally am just making up a theoretical it could be that you know language based the rubber hits the road in third grade because you know in fourth grade is when you stop reading or learning to read and you start

1:02:17 reading to learn it might be that that’s where and then that will give us a a place to zero in but that wasn’t that was being asked for and that data was we had a tremendous amount of push back on on zeroing in and I know that you know one of the things that was cited was we’ll be outing kids and who they are nope we’re not we’re not looking at who the kids are we really want to know what where where are we not meeting the needs of our student because you know it’s pretty well known that we have had a significant increase in certain areas in the last last three to four years when you look at them I mean if you’re if we one of us that follows these sheets every year and we look at them you can see certain areas

1:03:04 are growing at a much higher rate than they did in the past or than they do in other areas so I think you know I’m really excited that um Miss Bell’s you know she it looks like she does a lot of these audits as well so I think that was a really good choice on Teresa’s part and I think that will serve us really well because although we’re we’re in the process of getting the audits we’ll have someone in house that can really look at that um I know she just started yesterday but um you know she may have we’re in the middle of budget season so I’m hoping she’ll get a chance to look at as well what we’re budgeting for special education if it matches our grids and if it matches what we really should be providing because I think that’s one thing that really came out in that that December meeting um as Dr mcginness has really started to dig

1:03:50 in and and look at stuff and Michelle’s looking at the numbers that I’m not sure everything has lined up so there’s a lot of work that’s being done in our district right now like a tremendous amount and we are identifying some significant holes that may have been leading to some of this stuff and this you know I do just want to acknowledge there’s a ton of work that’s being done to identify this stuff um that we’ve been asking for for a couple years now and it just hopefully it will be in line for when we release our budget books in the next couple weeks but you know this isn’t the first time asked for this it just needs to be noted we’ve been asking for this for a couple of years and it’s happening now and I’m really grateful it’s happening now because at the end of the day yes it will help our budget but it will help

1:04:36 kids and that’s really what this is about it will help kids learn more effectively yep and Jen I mean excuse me Sarah just to that point um agreed it should be out there this information uh it won’t be for February 28th um just to let you know this is an ongoing process simply because because next week is school vacation and she started yesterday so to get that level of detail but she’s on it we’re meeting this afternoon to go through that um it won’t be in a presentation on the 28th but it will be go as much as we can get going forward thank you fa and it’s also a structural thing right and it’s a so you want every child what their individual needs are based on the data um and their experience here well when there’s nobody

1:05:22 at the top right now for a period of months two that likely will increase a little more Exodus than we would ever you know want and so that’s one outcome but the other is systematically how are we monitoring our language based program for example because that’s the one we’re using um the effectiveness what data are we using for that so that we can actually share the good stuff that’s happening with families to let them understand that we can support children more or not depending upon what the data is but I you know all that internal structure you know needs to be there and I don’t know that from my three months so far but I think that’s an important part of this as well monitoring our programs internally evaluating annually you know that kind of stuff where kids outcomes

1:06:10 are um and as we make cuts and identify where those cuts are going to be moving forward you know we may not have a lot of kids in a specific program and that may justify a cut in that program but it may also if we look at Digger deeper we may have a lot of outplay ments in that same type of pro program so how do you justify I don’t I I can cut because I don’t have these kids here I’ll use language based I can cut language based because I don’t have kids in that wait we got a ton out and if we cut are we just going to keep hemorrhaging more so when where we keep it this is a really hard Balancing Act and where so much in a budget is just simple arithmetic this stuff really isn’t um yes there’s numbers but it’s okay I can cut this program because we only have three kids

1:06:56 in it now now but the minute I cut it we have even you know it’s but then there’s always the cost Effectiveness consideration of whether these are all out out of District placements what’s the cost effectiveness of creating a position in District that can cover some of this because you automatically eliminate the transportation costs if you can have and I’ve mentioned this before so um yeah I mean say Pat I mean it’s a pretty it like these can be extremely intensive resource intensive needs of students placements I’m very out yeah I don’t pretend to understand the details and

1:07:42 and like we’re we’re Finance we’re the finance team we look at numbers we try to figure out what’s you know try to do our best at at having everything fit together and uh and and oftentimes you know you you and the and the administration are tasked with um evaluating the um Effectiveness and and appropriateness of um programs for the for the school district um we’re just looking at options and and I don’t pretend to know the details and again it’s not something again you don’t want to be in a position if you brought

1:08:28 a service in District that would um inappropriately identify an individual student as having a um you know and a special need for for lack of any other description so okay thank you that’s beneficial to me in my thinking too I’ll I’ll try out to just for frame of reference we talk about landmark and these programs and how much they cost landmark’s enti entire enrollment for grade two through 12 the entire school is 165 so there’s a lot of P the Personnel to

1:09:14 student ratio in some of these programs is astronomical you’re running an entire school on two campuses for 165 kids grade two through 12 so that’s not just our kids that’s all kids they serveice so it’s just there’s some of these programs require you know by the time you get all the sub Specialties six seven eight adults in all the sub Specialties to one child so it’s just they’re very complex I have a a quick question um it’s just a data point so you know like the desie per pupil spending report Michelle that you can just get off the website it says Marblehead has

1:10:24 148.16156210 so yes I believe that includes all of Charter and then a little bit yeah no because I was comparing it to like some some of the published comparable districts um I know that’s always up for a debate what the comparable districts are but I just kind of find what’s published in the paper and it seem like Marblehead head was a lot and it seem like Marblehead was a lot higher but maybe Lindfield for example doesn’t have a school like that again I I totally hear Teresa and I and I appreciate um I I have to be careful when I’m talking talking about numbers and splitting things because I I truthfully am like Pat saying just thinking about it from a a number standpoint um but I would be interested in understanding from a number standpoint how Marblehead compares to its surrounding communities with its

1:11:11 outof District placements more so to to be able to articulate the pressure of this large cost on the budget and why Marblehead may be the same or different than other area other towns in the in the uh Northshore effectively great I think we can get that for you for sure I but I just can’t promise it for the 28th that’s all I wanted but definitely I think that’s a great I tried to do it in the per pupil report but um if marblehead’s 148 and lindfield’s 41 then there’s clearly some sort of discrepancy in the data there so yeah lynfield does not have a charter school within their town I believe their charter school is actually in Malden it’s the Mystic Valley Charter gotcha so so where we have one right in

1:11:57 town we have a lot of students attending the Marblehead Head Charter School in fact the Marblehead Charter School in fact Alan we are we just um for a very nominal fee of 2,000 a year partnering with a organization called arcx arc Arc wait minut axed and in there I bet you I haven’t played yet because we just signed on um and we have 12 different comperable districts I can look into out of District I’ll look at that this weekend and it’s a great doent a a great platform for us to look at a lot of these comparables that we haven’t had access to and it’s better than desie because they have outlined uh various things including collective bargaining all of that kind of stuff so it’s it’s a fantastic site so per I will look into

1:12:42 that awesome C can I just ask a question about the charter are you saying that there are outof district Charter um Charter choice for lack of a better term um students that are rolling into

1:13:04 um into the desie numbers is that what you’re thinking oh so desie Desi breaks down in District pupils versus out of District I I’m I don’t know for sure but because marblehead’s numers so much higher on the out of District than um the outof district PDF that Michelle shared I’m assuming the Gap might be the charter um it sounds yes it is I dove into that figure last year um when we started doing this really looking at the per pupil expenses and how it impacted and compared to our numbers and it does it does include all the charter students so I was able to confirm that last year Charter students that are out of District placements or all Charter students any any Marblehead student living in Marblehead residing in the

1:13:50 town attending the charter school counts is an out of District because they opted not to the district is the Marblehead Public Schools they are they don’t attend Marblehead Public Schools instead they it’s the way they’re tagging them well I think it’s because it’s a public school so any students from Marblehead that go to private school they’re not counted in anything but because no they are they are out of District placements are as well as as included in that I mean we have probably hundreds of kids that go to private school um or maybe not a private school but but one of our our special education placements that’s included in there yes special education in other words I’m sure the reason why they include charter school I’m going to assume Alex because charter school is a public school so right so not but the charter school doesn’t

1:14:37 roll up into our budget it it’s a line item and it’s we pay into the state and the state reimbursement funds and it’s so it’s a net effect on the um Levy and the available funds for the town because it but it’s it’s through oh shoot I forget what it’s called um yes through the it’s through the cherry sheet assessment those students those students are considered public school students yeah no count P I was just I literally off to the side of the Desy report I did percentage of FTE that are out of district and I was comparing to the comparable districts and marblehead’s at 5% but lindfield’s at 1% and I was trying to understand the Gap

1:15:24 in that data yeah just because really oversimplify it if public money pays for a student to go to anything that is not one of our five buildings it counts as an out of District so if our public money is sending them to Landmark or if our public Marblehead money is sending them to Marblehead Charter it counts as an out of district and since Marblehead citizens pay out of our Levy to send kids to Marblehead Charter it counts as an outer District yeah and all I’m trying to do is say like let’s remove the data that isn’t really helpful and say you know every town is facing uh the special education challenge you can Google it and it’s all over the place if there’s a data point to say not only that but

1:16:11 marble head’s current enrollment shows that the special education outplacement is higher than the other towns then it’s even more of a challenge for Marblehead than those towns is all I’m trying to strictly from a financial perspective wait the money we spent to send those kids to Charter the money we write on the from the tax levy or whatever or from the Cherry sheets to go to Charter counts as out of District right right as a fund to us so when we look at our per student spending part of that per student spending is going to the charter school right so it’s not coming all to RI buildings does that affect our reur that’s not true we don’t we don’t account for that in our budget Sarah in the not in our

1:16:57 budget in the desie number yeah yeah it does use the uh I think the the map people spending it counts towards that because it counts as it out of District on their on their tally sheet so you hear people say our out of District spending is higher than lynfield well we have a charter school and we spend a however many hundreds of thousands to send kids to the charter school and that counts in that figure so when you look at our student spending it’s not really what we’re spending to educate kids in the mar Public Schools it is skewed to a certain extent in the five building Public Schools is what you’re saying yeah even with our out of districts because people never count the charter and any Town who has a charter

1:17:45 in their town that that out of that per student spending it’s part of it so I think it’s really important for people to understand that is it you know does it account for millions and millions no but is it a significant number that does affect our reporting of our per student spending when you look at the Desi site yeah it

1:18:12 yep so we’ jumped around a little I think we’ve covered out of District tuition and related costs for FY 25 planning um I am hoping that you we can get some guidance in this conversation we have done our budget books um in the past last year you guys were really happy with our process we were we were planning on doing that plus a few improvements to do some additional um dives into things one of the concerns is you know we are given a directive of what to use for our placeholder this came up at our meeting last night what are we using as your Cola um and we were given that directive from the town now the town doesn’t was Michelle I’m gonna let you speak to this because I I don’t

1:18:57 know how we’re hearing from you guys you want transparency and we’re hearing from the town but not that so Michelle if you can just talk to about that yeah I mean so it’s it’s kind of a a sticky situation as we go into contract negotiations um we have put a very Nal a minimal amount into our Cola budget for FY 25 um in accordance with the town guidance um that number has been public we have um we don’t want to go into bargaining saying we’re not going in with good faith but we have limited funds so in any

1:19:42 situation we have a very small pool of funds for colas um however our negotiations are going to Encompass a whole bunch of other things and by reading the newspapers these days you can imagine how negotiation is when the MTA is involved at this point um we certainly don’t want to fall in line with where wuin was or where Newton was um and we don’t have funding you know similar to those communities so certainly we can’t give the same amount of increases that other districts are seeing but um we’re trying to be as transparent as po possible with in our budget but yet we’re being criticized because um we’re

1:20:28 trying to be transparent with what’s in our budget which is very minimal for any negotiations so we’re trying to to make everyone happy but it’s really difficult at this point and can I add one thing just by point of comparison because you guys are asking all this comparison all right don’t look at my messy screen don’t judge can you see this chart here this bar graph so these are comparison districts Lind Swampscott they’re from the dart districts plus we added swamp Scott and a couple others that weren’t there so Marblehead over the last three years the cola comparison is 1.3% at the bottom here and these are just some other districts just to give a point of

1:21:12 reference okay I’ll close my screen now just wanted to share that that tidbit around Cola so you know in the budget book before you could see you could you could see our salaries um you know blub oh shoot someone’s um I’m getting feedback from someone’s I can’t are you guys getting that same feedback okay

1:21:41 um I everything’s playing twice for me I just don’t know if it is for you guys um so the the piece that’s unclear to me is we’ve always done the where we you know we we’ve published where we’re at and or where we were budgeted for FY 24 and where were budgeted for FY 25 for a salary and so I assumed you guys wanted that level of detail it’s what what has served us well but now we’re kind of being told don’t do that because that’s not good so just give us some guidance and we’ll go we’ll do whatever you want but we just need do you want the information or no um I’m not sure I understand the question same I guess I would ask you

1:22:27 know this isn’t the first um budget cycle where you’ve been entering negotiations so historically what’s been the approach when you’re building a budget knowing that a negotiation coming up um is that what you’re talking about um in your requested budget putting a estimated Cola adjustment on all the positions that receive Cola adjustments um and at what percentage to do that um not knowing what percentage it’s going to be am I clear or am I understanding clearly what you’re asking I would ask Michelle like you know three four years ago um whenever the last time this was negotiated um what what was the practice then um in terms of three years ago we

1:23:12 actually were able to settle it pretty much within a few hours so we knew our number before we finalized our budget um prior to that I’m not sure what happens but Alicia has um basically told me we need to be really confidential really quiet have this wrapped up it can’t be public um but obviously it it’s we don’t have the funding available to really put in there what we we think we need um so it’s a conflict that we’re we’re trying to deal with and give you what got guys what you need when do you expect it to be wrapped up this year maybe I missed that sorry if I did I don’t know our first negotiation session is um in March and I do not expect it to be over really quick just given the

1:23:58 context of the MTA and their playbook out there right now yeah the negotiations um Statewide are you know I I don’t know that that will necessarily be an indicator of where will be but if you just look Statewide negotiations aren’t going quickly um right so certainly not before the budget if you put a higher number in right but just just a higher number compared to any number that’s in there now right but you’re still getting 750 right so wouldn’t that just mean the presentation is that you’d have more positions taken back and you don’t know what that number is going to be no matter what so I guess use your best

1:24:45 judgment I don’t I don’t know if M they’re telling us not to not to show what our increas is for our staff lines if we come to you with a budget presentation that show that refuses to tell you what our projected staff line increas is I have to assume there’s going to be push back on not TR not being transparent but Alicia is asking us not to show what we’re budgeting at for for a staffing so I mean in my view you know on the town side they’re going through this with police and fire and all the other unions so I would follow the direction that Alicia gives you but if you even if you increase your Staffing line you know it’s such a large show it at a at a higher enough level we don’t know what step increas is what’s

1:25:33 new positions positions out you know just don’t tell us what you’re assuming the cola increase is you just in the past we were criticized when we gave you like our line item and it didn’t say line by line what was changing we were you guys didn’t like the rollup two years ago you really did not like that big roll up this Staffing went from this to this without any explan granular explanation of what was rolled up into that so last year though what you provided I mean I wasn’t a part of this group last year I think it’s in my view it’s fine if you do what you did last year yep and that’s what we wanted to do we’re being told not to do that that’s too much information too granular okay

1:26:18 yeah so we’ll do whatever you want but it’s really hard we want to release these budget books the school committee really wants to information um and you know we want to see it at the granular level but I’m fine with the the presentation last year I thought it was line by line we could see all the positions that rolled up in salaries and yeah and as I articulated in my email and I think Pat had some some comments about like you know what what positions are currently filled which ones are not things like that I think it helps with those questions too I I think I I’m sorry I’m still not following like are youting that they wanted one line for all of salaries and that’s it essentially yeah that that’s what that’s what the guidance has been I guess I’ll have to talk and see what’s

1:27:05 going on with that guidance so yeah so that’s where it’s hard we can’t be transparent which last year we were exceptionally transparent and we wanted that again but we can’t give you transparency if we aren’t allowed to tell you what we’re budgeting it both well I okay I I I’m lost but I I am too because we’ve been doing all of our reductions based on those numbers so it yeah I don’t know I mean we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do I don’t I guess I don’t understand I’m really lost it it sounds like H it’s it sounds like you’ll do you you’re doing your reduction estimates to reach your

1:27:51 reduced Services budget yeah and you’re doing it by positions which is the right way to do it um you’re just and and you’re going to show a net Delta but you don’t have to show the individual U positions cost our salary is that um Sarah we’re basing we’re doing that to make that number of I I know that you’re doing it internally okay yeah and and you know my comments were in for transparency to um understand for the public to understand what’s going on and the and

1:28:38 the result and the impact of having

1:28:44 um uh reductions in staff

1:28:52 um can you do that without I internally you have to do it with projected numbers okay but you’re saying you’re are you getting this direction from Alicia that you can’t I mean I have to talk to Alicia I mean yeah yeah I don’t know what’s going on yeah I I also need to meet with Alicia to see how she recommends we put this into our budget because in the past we have allocated every single position out there and every single item um I’m not sure how the town does that whether they just have a salary Reserve number and they have multiple unions that they’re negotiating with where we have mea covers all of our unions so um it it’s a

1:29:38 little trickier for the schools to try to be transparent but to do what we need to do at the same time so I have what I need you guys said you want it the same way as last year that’s what we wanted to do so let’s do it that way we’ve decided and that’s it okay that works for me transparency is served as well I um I have a stop so I don’t know if there’s is this going on or well not know if you need to leave we lose cormel and well how long were we scheduled to no I mean I think I think I’m good on my end I don’t know about the rest of the fin yeah okay well I I just want to follow up it so if we had the

1:30:27 positions positions comparative fiscal 24 to fiscal 25 without the last column that’s the actual um salary would that meet the um expectation of not dis non-disclosure about and just a roll up of the total salary at the end I guess we need some we like Alex said we we should need some clarification from Alicia as to what what and why here okay but I think we should just proceed with the budget books as planned

1:31:12 yeah um okay so um that I will adjourn us then at do we have another meeting scheduled or do we want to wait till after the our budget Workshop yeah I think we want to do another one um obviously I don’t think you guys would want to meet next week because of the vacation right um our budget Workshop scheduled for Wednesday February 28th 5m and you’ve got the financial Forum I mean we’re gonna probably realistically be approving your budget the first Monday in April April 1 um I have you slotted for March 25th but we always have that extra night before the warrant um so I think you know if we wanted to meet next the first week of March or the last week of February whatever you guys

1:32:00 can we um pencil in March 6 so that we can maybe meet in person too um we’ll do it as a hybrid March 6 at 4M yeah that I can do that um I’ll let you know if I have a conflict but usually if with that much as much advanced notice I don’t and I’ll coordinate with Pat and Molly to make sure we I have a conflict but if you’re okay with you know Michelle on that day I can’t I I have a conflict I can’t change on the could we either do it a little early or have a hard stop for five o’clock just because I’m flying out early the next morning um yeah we can have hard stops I think this was we had to get a lot we had a lot of info yeah did you say March

1:32:46 4th March 6 March 6 um currently available all day okay we’ll we’ll pencil that in for 4M as a high h meeting and we’ll probably have some followups um in an email based on this conversation um and we won’t hit you with the day before we’ll try to get them out next week so you have some time to think about them so you will have seen our budget book by then too I don’t know if you’ll be able to attend but at least you’ll yeah well we’ll try to um dial into the uh to watch your meetings as well yeah so and so what we tried to do today we started off just doing highlevel um process of of how to how to go forward um we went into a whole lot of detail um do you guys have enough

1:33:34 from us as for process I’m hoping you do I think so yeah we’ll summarize in a follow-up email yeah yeah okay all right thank you awesome

1:33:47 okay3 thank you everyone thank you thank you oh Sarah