School Committee: June 10, 2020

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.

5:34 hey i just um made you a co-host hey david good evening how are you doing fine i was tempted to zoom in from outdoors but

5:53 it’s so nice outside but it may be dark by the time the meeting’s over yeah it probably will be but it still is getting lighter later that’s the nice thing oh absolutely yeah it’s nice and light for quite some time until the end of june it just keeps getting lighter and lighter so yep nice haircut david well thank you i it was official i i go close to someone at work and of course they’ve been closed so then i had to make an appointment and i got backed up two weeks out and i was kind of hesitant to get rid of my high school haircut but um it was

6:39 it was it was he’s like wow

6:45 you know it needed needed to go yeah needed to go well you look very professional someone someone at work took a before i was leaving because it was like a 10 30 thing so i left for an hour and someone said wait let me take a before and then i’ll share it it’s pretty funny to see the before and after but

7:12 one of my brothers did that same thing and he said he’s got a little daughter who’s like two and he said that she just when he walked back in she just looked at him and like didn’t know what to do well it’s kind of neat we we took a photo ryan’s hair is in longer mode and so we did this side by side thing to for me versus ryan too and um

7:41 there’s a picture of my mom from years ago too when she was sitting in an adirondack chair she always had short hair but my hair was almost as long as my mother’s and i look a lot like my mother in the photo

7:57 it’s good we’re moving on we can get our haircuts and everything’s gonna get back to normal i sure do hope so megan um megan um lisa isn’t gonna be here tonight and since sarah’s not here can you and i work together to do minutes yes i’m glad you mentioned that me too i almost forgot it was on my mind all afternoon

9:36 can you hear my children arguing in the background i can hear little voices it’s that time yeah

10:46 we just waiting on bill yeah he’s having a little bit of connectivity issues he just texted me okay

10:55 oh here he is speak of the devil sorry sorry finishing my dinner kind of a crazy day yes i would agree with that up here all right i’m on i i made it sarah good thanks bill i saw glad you’re here

12:11 yeah yeah um lisa’s not gonna be here tonight so you’ll have to take minutes okay can you record it and then make sure you get me the recording it’s definitely recording yep all right because that i think that will be the easiest way for me to take care of it sounds good okay thanks is there is there any way you can give me the capability to record um um [Music] no it’s not allowing me to are you on a chromebook i am that’s why okay that’s good to know that that’s a limitation of it yeah i didn’t know

12:57 all right if you just send it to me tonight i’ll try to work on it oh like you can get it done as soon as possible yep definitely it has to kind of like put itself into my computer afterwards um so depending on what time it finishes doing that um i’ll send it off either tonight or tomorrow morning first thing okay thank you should we get started i don’t see anybody else in the waiting room yeah sure it’s we’ve got a little lull we can uh get started so i will call to order at 704

13:45 so tonight’s meeting only has a couple of things on the agenda it’s a it’s a follow-up to the conversation that the budget subcommittee had last friday um and so we needed to just make a couple of decisions as a full committee so that the budget subcommittee has a good idea of how to handle their next meeting come this this friday um so i’m not sure bill or megan or sarah who wants to speak about that meeting and the first item on our list is the fy21 capital outlay or capital or class i will come on facilities too unless bill wants to take it oh that’s fine i think that might be

14:30 better for you and megan to at least give the general because i i got shut out of that last few minutes of the meeting where where there was some uh suggestions on how to move forward okay so i don’t i don’t know if anybody needs an update on how we came to the items that are on the list

15:07 excuse me i do have i can show a screenshot of the uh final priority list that the supervisor would be really great all right i made you i’ll do that while you talk yes i need you a call host so you should be able to do that bill so the facilities committee which is comprised of um michelle todd myself um jen and we were joined by justine george who um you guys heard from the other day or other night who does facilities management um and and various aspects of that professionally um and john maretti was part of it at one point um

15:52 so what we did is we did a walkthrough of every building and when we each walk through the principles each building would join us and kind of give us a breakdown of what goes on in their building and then from that we developed our a large list we made our priorities and um and kind of went from there so for us the committee the the biggest thing we were concerned about is the capital facilities needs assessment because we think that that’s the best way we keep hearing from the town that we don’t maintain our buildings um into a certain and they’re correct um and i don’t think it’s any fault of our own other than we just haven’t been able to at this point budget-wise um

16:37 um um to maintain them to the level that we would all hope to we we do do maintenance um so we want this to kind of what that that study will do will give us a very clear comprehensive assessment of every building all the systems the lifespan when we should be looking at prioritizing um updating various systems and things like that and i think that information will be very helpful in determining a facility’s plan moving forward as well as if we need to come up with information for future capital as future override information we’ll have really concrete data points so that was that was one item and safety was a big big concern um

17:24 coffin the front doors don’t close on their own you have to really work at it to get it and they don’t always latch very often um i’ve just walked literally right into the building if i’m picking up one of my kids early um so it’s a huge issue and then dan bauer at the high school that was very concerned about the setup that we currently have with how visitors enter the building at the high school he referenced how many other high schools are doing it now and i guess swan scott is using a system that he thinks will work very well for marblehead high school and increase safety there so of course we want safety to be a priority for our students so we we went with his suggestion on that um the middle school floor you know you see here sand repeat and we finished both gym floor i i can’t remember if

18:12 that covered both gym floors or both or just the one so i’ll have to defer to janice or bill if they remember that and then the library carpet um the issue with the library carpet is it’s buckled in areas and in dipping and sagging in others um there’s also some outlets that come up through the floor right now where the electrical um is involved with the carbon carpet area and then glover school interior painting it’s it’s just it’s taken a beating because of the budget things when we built the school they they weren’t as resilient some of the surfaces um as i think that what we’re expecting in the new school so they’ve just taken a beating the school is looking very rough and we want to

18:59 keep our investment in new property and keep it up to date so that’s kind of the breakdown of where we are so on at our last meeting we talked about with fincom what we want to do with that with the capital s as well as this additional surplus that we found and i had put forth the idea um what if we take the capital at what this is only one option what if we reduce our capital or take it away to save the town something outlay for this single year and instead pre-pa purchased or or enter into contracts to fix this thing with some of our surplus before july 1. therefore saving the town money and also getting us what we need so that was that was one

19:46 option um there are other options of what to do i think jason at last i understood it had prioritized that he couldn’t meet all these needs as had been previously thought because of because of the financial situation we’re in right now and he thought at best we were looking at around 80 000 but then there was there was the talk of do we take it off line all together and use some of our surplus so there’s a there’s a lot to talk about here but that’s kind of where we’ve come out and if there’s anything else to add megan no i think i think that you know really was the crux of this piece of the conversation on friday is you know take that off off the towns um off the town’s

20:32 list of financial responsibilities for next year we do have the surplus it makes financial sense to use a one-time surplus for a one-time expense like these um capital outlays i will say my only concern with covering all 177 of it from surplus is michelle has cautioned us repeatedly that we can’t assume that no extra bills will come in that that some bills because of the way we account for purchase orders in this fiscal year they’re changing it for next year um we have to be prepared for that so i want to defer to michelle on what she thinks we need to safely leave ourselves for wiggle room so that we don’t

21:18 get into a situation but if she feels safe with this number then i would defer to her um sarah my um my perception from that conversation on friday was that the town wasn’t expecting us to utilize the full 200 or whatever it is surplus for these capital outlays they were expecting us to use a portion of it did you take that same well but i what i understood is we were going to talk about it as a committee and then come back at with what our committee had agreed upon and run it by them first and and get some of their feedback but that we they wanted us as a committee first to come come up with what we thought was best and then and then just circle back yeah i agree with that piece but i i guess i left there feeling like they weren’t expecting us to spend it all

22:03 all all uh and i did not get that impression um maybe bill bill or michelle can speak to that but that was not my impression or michelle or michelle go ahead unmute yourself

22:28 uh like i said i i was i missed the end of the conversation but uh i what what my understanding was is that the number was eighty one thousand dollars that jason had uh had uh pennsylvania as a reduced number for the schools and that included not just these items on this list but the two the two vehicles that we have requested which are on a a separate list and that was the

23:08 first of a three year school bus lease for a new yellow bus and then a pickup truck so um those items are up for discussion as well uh and then in addition to that i kind of had the same impression that megan did that they’d like to see uh what what the committee would uh like to do with the capital uh but to get a sense they that they were looking to see some of that 225 000 that that was uh identified

23:55 as an approximation additional uh come back to the town the uh the one thing that i would say just at this point then and i would ask michelle to weigh in is you know i’m thinking mac just as a safety valve at 225 you know i’d like to see a safety valve of 35 to 50 000 just in case there are unknowns that for this year that we weren’t aware of no invoices out there that for things that uh you know were were either received or ordered without going through the purchase order process

24:43 no bill my my i understand it’s also that if we decide to go forth with the buses and the trucks because those are leases they have to go through town meeting under that warren article because those leases need to be approved by town meeting how meeting would approve the lease uh the funding source can be identified so it could be the funding source could be uh you know current year funds or from the fy 21 budget which we probably do you know we would probably have to purchase some supplies equal to that first year lease and then just pay the first year at least from fbi 21. you know as long as it’s done prior to june 30th uh

25:30 uh uh as i understand that as michelle and i talked about that today that process is not an issue okay and then

25:43 the town was asking us was going to give us 81 or roughly and then we could do a portion of the remaining out of our 225 surplus or was it that they wanted the 81 that they were going to give us to go away completely and we could and they wanted us to only use a portion of the 225. the latter was my understanding sarah yeah and the 81 by the way is is the total yeah combination of this list plus the two vehicle lists david you’ve got your hand up

26:21 right so historically on the town meeting warrant there are two articles one’s for equipment and one’s for buildings and now i’m hearing that it’s a total for the buildings and the vehicles and that adds a different twist into this but given that we are looking at pursuing a lease a capital equipment lease rather than the purchase that will bring the cost down significantly um versus how we’ve done it previously so i think we might be able to make things work there because as you said

27:07 bill we just need to make sure we’re paying for the first year of the lease and then we have a commitment of course to pay that in future years but um we don’t need the full capital cost to purchase the vehicle up front right and that oracle warrant was going to be written for many of the vehicles on that list okay

27:38 this is what you do for your day job um would do you often recommend that it’s better to do the lease or to do the full buyout

27:49 well i mean essentially as we all make those decisions it’s the cost of money i mean if you can at the time of acquisition just buy the vehicle it’s certainly more cost effective up front but the thing at least in my day job is by doing a lease it gives you a predictable expense over a period of time instead of in this example where you would ask for let’s let’s say the pickup truck is 45 000. you’d ask for 45 000 in one year and then five years later you ask for another 45 000. it helps it

28:35 helps in stabilizing your rates or in this case stabilizing your budget where you have a fixed amount that might be you know seven thousand dollars a year for five years as opposed to this can i get the money to buy the vehicle this year then for five years you don’t have any expenses and then you have to ask for or request funding um when that vehicle needs to be replaced and as we all know the cost of money right now is is very low historically and um it does add money to the acquisition but it just helps stabilize rates and in this case it would help stabilize our budget if you just had i think

29:21 it’s a good question sarah a a fixed amount over the term of the lease and then it helps you also decide when you go to replace that vehicle is the vehicle suitable to keep it in your fleet and keep using it as a bus or should we replace it and then at least you still have that money in your budget and let’s say five years from now the new bus is now eight thousand dollars a month instead of seven thousand you you just don’t incur those those big swings and expenses so it’s it’s definitely a good opportunity and a lot of municipalities do it if you don’t if you can’t spend the capital right up front yeah

30:06 just a couple more benefits dave in the public sector with the public schools these leases are always leased to own and right now interest rates are very very low so the cost of money becomes much less of an issue uh and so after three years for example we’ll own that yellow bus and the the other benefit to that is typically our public our public school vehicles even the big yellow buses uh the life expectancy that that we have for those vehicles go well beyond the length of the lease terms

30:52 so three years we’ll own that bus and you know based on comparat based on our current comparisons you know we’ll we’ll be able to operate that bus for the next six to seven years right once it’s owned so good point instead of doing the typical three year 36 000 miles which is a net lease as opposed to the the uh equity lease where you own the vehicle at the end of the term so yeah good point bill yep

31:30 so bill do you know how much that cost was within our within that capital outlay and

31:40 i believe it was forty thousand dollars michelle michelle do you know yeah it was just right about forty 000. one was i believe 1617 for the pickup and the bus was 22 23 000. yeah all right all right so that leaves us 40 000 left which concerns me because right now i would say from a facility standpoint um the the safety items are a must and the capital needs assessment for me is a must because how do we build any data that we need for next year moving forward without that um and that’s you know 9275 and what we have to play with is 40.

32:33 just we talked to todd i talked to talk about the two vehicles and his priority would be the bus because the bus we can also use that additional bus what what we would be able to do with the new yellow bus is we’ll be able to keep the three buses we currently have even though uh two of them have a hundred thousand miles we will be able to keep those in service and we’ll be able to use them uh we’ll be able to use at least one of them which we use now for uh extracurricular activities field trips uh but mostly athletic trips after school hours

33:20 so we’ll have an additional yellow bus we can use for those trips which we will see a savings from our certainly from our athletic transportation line by doing that uh we haven’t calculated you know how many trips that might be and what a savings might be but uh that definitely uh will be an added benefit to having the additional bus uh todd said that would be his preference over the pickup truck and if we had to wait on the pickup truck i know you’ve heard this before but he did he said we could go one more year without the pickup truck just keep that in mind so that’s that would give you uh

34:09 another another 17 000 to put back to the building based list and then i just wanted you to note that

34:22 after after march 25th uh todd had received a much more clear estimate on the library carpet well that i won’t get down to that point anyway but one other point i wanted to make is with our custodians having been backing school full-time uh for the last two and a half weeks there is a lot of interior painting going on in all of our buildings uh so again next at the bottom of the list so i’m not sure that’s going to have an impact now that i really think that through

35:02 so bill you sent us um you sent us something about those coffin doors yes um i just wasn’t clear from that because can you just explain that a little bit michelle could probably explain it better to me i i had a conversation with todd about uh about two and a half hours ago on my way home and uh and he

35:32 so so those doors to replace would have to be custom doors no they’re not a standard school size entry doors because of the uh architectural design of that front entryway and what he’s hearing from some vendors who have been willing to come out and take a look is that they’ll do they’ll they would take on the job but because of of the way that they have to customize the doors to fit in that frame they would not guarantee parts of the assembly like hinges i don’t quite fully understand that michelle maybe you understand that better uh

36:19 but he did uh uh earlier this afternoon after he sent that email he he did get a response from a company that said they’d be willing to do the work as was described in todd’s message to them uh they have been out to look at it and todd they said they would forward an estimate to him todd was hoping that he would have gotten it by um [Music] would have gotten it by the end of the day but he would he said extend it to me but i haven’t seen it

37:00 did they give him any kind of a ballpark you did not tell me that okay i mean that’s what i was gonna ask like is that twenty thousand dollars still a valid go ahead go ahead so just a couple things i wanted to mention sarah fox you can jump in here if you if you agree or don’t agree i think first of all i thought the glover school interior painting line item bill was really not just glover i thought it included some other painting i maybe i was incorrect in that but i thought there were some other areas that that would cover no that was just i i marked for glover okay i recall i think the other question

37:46 that i had that wasn’t clear to me is the description of what dan bauer was looking for um for the high school replacing financial doors was actually a bigger scope than just the front entry doors was my understanding that this was a security issue and that it was going to also be um so that the front entrance would be would be the main entrance for all people coming in the building students and guests and so it would no longer be over to the side because they have a site issue there and so it would also include a debt like a security desk and a security um you know project if you will for the atrium so i just wasn’t sure if that 30 000 was

38:33 was enough based on what he described because somebody is going to have to be sitting there that’s the whole point to let people in the people the front door versus the side door so that was just an observation that um i had that i don’t know how accurate that number is so i would agree that it wasn’t a replacement per se of the front entry doors but dan was asking us to provide kind of a build out with some type of check-in desk where you would check in and have your id scanned and um you would it was more to facilitate almost like a not a kiosk um kind of like schools now are built with man traps that that

39:18 that type of thing but it was also the doors because the doors are actually the doors are 20 years old as well so i’m going to um just make a comment that um and if if this is not the appropriate time we could we could talk about it but we’re talking about the capital outlay but we’re also talking about the use of the um surplus right so it’s sort of two kind of things in there if i’m not mistaken so one thing i just wanted to throw out to you bill and to the committee is and if i’m wrong please correct me that um we had sent out a district-wide messenger i think this week regarding um school lunches that the lunch program will be ending on june 18th is that correct

40:05 that’s correct so i just wonder whether when i saw that you know is that something that we want to consider running um through june or through the summer if we have families in need you know is that something that we should i think we should maybe consider uh extending that program

40:29 and using this surplus towards that well i don’t i mean yes i guess i mean i don’t know where else ever come i think that we could ask michelle about that but we’re running a deficit i think actually in the revolving fund and you know i’m just throwing it out there it just you know i saw that and i saw that we were referring parents and families to food pantries on the north shore and so i just wonder if it’s something that this committee would want to consider yeah yeah the only information i have jan relative to that is my understanding is that there’s a resource list that was sent out and it was more than just food pantries

41:14 there were other opportunities for for assistance and uh you know what they all are i’m not sure okay i just thought you know i just thought it was you know i know it ended on the last day of school but even if we wanted to extend it through the fiscal year to june 30th i don’t know i just thought it would be something folks might want to consider michelle do you would you have a ballpark around if we if we did it through the end of june because that seems like i mean obviously we can have a larger budget conversation but the it seems like it would have to for tonight’s purposes be for fy20 well that is fy20 right so that’s really

42:01 neat to extend it until right the last day of school but the last day of the fiscal year yeah through the end of the year would only be um probably a few thousand dollars more because we would not have full staff um so it’s not every single cafeteria staff that is running that program it’s it’s i believe it’s about eight of them all together um and that would probably be reduced even more so it’d be a few thousand to extend it through the end of june um but then it does become a staffing issue through the whole summer we are actually having difficulty getting all of our staff into the kitchens this week and next week to clean um the availability is just not there or the willingness so i don’t know the willingness of the staff to continue through the end of june or through the end of the summer but i think the the willingness through the end of the month

42:47 would be um more so positive than than the full summer michelle a few thousand per week or a few thousand total in total because they’re working through june 18th anyways okay so david do you have your hand up let me ask you a quick question oh yeah hold on david bill’s going to say something michelle am i i think i think i remember that you had asked your the estimate or the approximation of the cost of of running food service was uh eight thousand dollars a month for paying all of our employees yes for the payroll pcs for the payroll piece so uh

43:34 if we did extend it till june 30th that’s eight additional days if you don’t you divide the 8 000 cost by 20 days in a month you know approximately uh that comes out to 400 a day so uh you know it with if the full staff was on we were paying all salaries it would be 3 200 uh it’s probably

44:07 you know it’s less than that i i thought richard said that all in that program just to run that was it was about three hundred dollars a day but i’m not sure it might even be less yeah no most likely basketball park to me that’s a number that if the committee you know wasn’t going to do that providing richard could get you know the staff he would need uh it’s you know i’d be happy to talk to him about that and uh get that word out i think that’s a cost that we could absorb frankly i think that’s the greatest idea anything that we can do to help um those help families

44:53 help families help families for as long as we can i i would slowly support thanks for um putting that idea forward yeah that i i agree that’s an excellent idea jen um sarah the other thing i meant to ask are we doing public comment tonight or no i just wasn’t sure it was not on the agenda we just we have those two items and then the possibility of if we decide we need to go into executive session at the end okay let’s ask one more question about the um yeah and david i know you’ve got a question too oh sorry go ahead david no if we want to close out um i i agree with jen and i think it’s been great that everything we’ve been doing in the food

45:40 services but just getting back to the agenda item on capital equipment and vehicles my thought was seems like we need we need the school bus we’ve identified what that cost is and that we need to work on replacing the front entry doors to jed’s comment need to work through what the design and cost will be and we’re waiting for estimates to come in coffin so coffin so the bus and the doors might be a little bit over maybe we can go back to the town and get that to work but i also agree that we need to do the

46:27 capital facilities needs assessment but if we leave that out of the equation right now and we see where we go with covid19 [Music] and if things continue to get positive and we move back to a sense of normalcy that we we may with a with a 40 million 41 million dollar budget we we may have the flexibility in the fall to do a capital needs assessment so i’m just going to come out right now and say i agree that safety and security should be first and foremost

47:15 and i’d like to see us address the doors the high school and coffin school and i think we need to have a school bus and as bill said it will help reduce costs potentially for transportation for extracurricular activities and i think the committee should move forward with the recommendation and work to get an agreement with the town on a number that will support replacing the doors and um getting us the new school bus that’s my that’s my recommendation at this point

47:54 yeah well my question so i had questions still about the lunch piece um can i just yeah what do you want or do you want to focus on what david said because i can always circle back to that um you know what it’s probably out there we can come back to lunch piece i think discuss david’s suggestion and then we’ll kind of circle back okay so just so i know what david did we leave out i was trying to take notes on this what did you not want to put in there or did was there everything on there well it’s not what i don’t want to it’s based on what we’re hearing based on the fiscal situation that the district is in so we all recognize it would be nice to do the carpet for 9900 bucks paint glover i totally agree

48:40 totally agree totally agree and pre-covered we were rolling right along to get these things done so i my recommendation was the doors at coffin the doors at the high school and the bus and then as a committee we would need to work with michelle and the new superintendent to see how the budget goes once we’re into fy 21 and if there’s any forecast of the opportunity to do the needs assessment which i think is critical as well it’s it’s a tough one but safety and security needs to trump that i think based on what you and sarah have told me about and told the committee about those

49:27 entry ways i just think that should be the priority so the two doors and the bus

49:38 maybe i need some help here are we looking at a number and then backing in these items are we looking at items and saying that’s what we think we need i’m looking at twenty thousand dollars for coffin estimated thirty thousand for high school estimated and i can’t um the capital lease on the bus was again bill or michelle what was that number

50:04 uh forty thousand dollars approximately forty so we’d be at ninety thousand we’d be about ten thousand dollars over the ask of what the town is looking for us to come to but maybe we can make that work and then not use any of our surplus well so the surplus i agree if there’s an opportunity but i thinking of looking at the calendar what i’m concerned about is like i know with from what i understand michelle you can correct me from when ken did these is it if it’s over twenty thousand dollars we need to post it in the paper and take the lowest bid and if it’s under twenty thousand dollars we can

50:50 award it is twenty thousand dollars the threshold twenty five thousand twenty five okay so we it’s hard jen i think to um with three weeks to go could we get it out to the street and have a vendor respond and i don’t know what the mechanisms in order to be able to use monies from fy20 and how the the massachusetts general laws are related to that but you know if we could sneak it in in three weeks and post you know the bid in the paper in two weeks and and we could get bids back to yeah maybe we could use some of the surplus as well but i i just don’t know

51:36 with the calendar if we have enough time to get that done so can i ask michelle can i ask what will sound like a um maybe redundant question but is a capital needs assessment a capital outlay um um yes and no but because of the dollar figure it definitely would have to go out to bid well the reason i asked that is because so i’m just trying to understand kind of the accounting on this right so we are able to use surplus dollars for very limited things from one fiscal year to another one of which is the prepayment of tuition for out of district placement which i think we’ve talked about already doing that right so if we were to use additional dollars um surplus dollars to pay additional prepaid tuition um does that

52:23 like do these items they’re on our capital outlay request i know it’s a separate warrant ask but does that is that not allowable to come out of an operating budget it certainly could it i i don’t know if there’s any bylaw for the town that would um preclude them from coming out of the operating budget um but what i’m saying is we use you know we use additional surplus dollars for additional out of district placements and we move the out of district placement costs for our line item in our fy 21 budget over to these hard costs or some of these are costs to free up some of yeah the cost for this you could absolutely do that there’s nothing in mass general law that would prevent prevent that from occurring

53:09 so we wouldn’t have that sort of time crunch trying to get contracts done that it would really be an fy21 we could start the process after july first and go that way correct and michelle i mean i i i’m in agreement with the thought process here that we would just have to put an asterix that this is a a one-time ask so that next year that money wouldn’t carry forward in the budget um um correct but we also will as we have a discussion on friday with the subcommittee or with the town um a lot of these costs that we’re prepaying may may be recurring and showing up in the

53:54 fy 22 budget and um so the fy 22 budget is going to really need to stand alone and not necessarily be a rollover of fy21 because of the unique situation that we’re in where we’re preaching i also think we were talking about that anyway yes you know whether we talk about if we want to get into semantics of a zero-based needs-based a value-based whatever it is that um we were going to hopefully begin that exercise and in this at the start of the new fiscal year correct yes

54:28 so so how about we we approach the committee with with the articles that are going to be on the town warrant for our capital equipment and then we have identified it seems like what you’re saying jen is next in line below and the rest of the committees can chime in here then the the fourth item would would be the needs assessment and is there a way we can

55:03 use the surplus in our budget to help um pay for the capital needs assessment i think that’s what you’re saying which is a one-time cost and it would be a one-time cost out of that 225 bills reserve 50 out of it so we’re down to 175 use 50 of it for a capital assessment um depending on how much we end up using or don’t use you know still turn 100 130 back to the town somewhere in that in that range i think that’s the that’s the order of priority it seems like is get the doors done by what we can do and is there a way we can use the surplus to to help fund the capital needs assessment and that assumes

55:52 we have the 80 000 or whatever right so at that point would we be better off going back to the town this friday and saying we would like to earmark we would like to put another 100 000 or x amount of money to pre-pay tuition freeing up x amount of money in fy 21 to address our capital and fleet peace and then that way

56:23 we aren’t necessarily since we don’t have hard costs we just have these estimates it sort of takes the what everything is earmarked for out of the equation right now am i making sense yes but one concern and i brought this up several times in the budget meeting on friday is as we currently figure out the budget that is agreed upon as a starting point from the town is fit the current fiscal year’s budget plus cola increases equals what the the town offers so what we’re doing is we’re taking but right now we know for sure we’re taking

57:11 200 000 in pre-paying and taking it off our books and now we’re saying maybe another hundred thousand so when we do that rollover next year our base is already two to three hundred thousand less than it costs to run our school system but that’s what michelle i think was saying is that that come fy 22 conversations that you know that 200 plus x has to be an additional ad immediately that and that i asked i asked and michelle and bill were on the call as well as megan i asked a couple times if that could be guaranteed to come back in and the town was um ben spoke on this and he said you know we always want to work together and the town always wants to help the

57:57 schools as they can however there could be no agreement right now that that would happen they would do the best they could but there’s no agreement and i have to say i’m very cautious uh with i’m just cautious as well i’ll leave it at that yeah no i can’t understand that that were um i don’t think the town would ever say we have the money and we’re not going to give it to you we just know we’re in a really bad financial spot and it’s only going to get worse and i just want to make sure that we’re setting the schools up for success next year that we we’re not starting in the deficit so as much as i want to use this money to prepay i just wanted to be clear in the conversation

58:43 that that money in my in my mindset will have to somehow come back in so that we know we’re starting from a point that we can fund our special education costs yep no i think that’s that i think that’s a valid concern i think you know i obviously wasn’t in that conversation my guess would be that that the thinking on the hesitancy of it is that we don’t know like if the town doesn’t have it next year like if we’re if the situation generally speaking is worse than right now that’s where we’re at and that’s kind of where we’re at anyways then david go ahead right i mean we i’ve recent stories in the last week you know what the legislature is going

59:30 to do what the state funding is going to be i i agree with your comment there sarah but given the situation that we’re in now unfortunately pre-coveted we might have had a little bit more forward opportunity to look a few years down the road but kovid’s thrown a real curve into things and whether or not you know how what’s going to affect the the funding from the state and and everything else and and i think that’s a good point but we’re we are being very short-term here right now for sure we’re trying to look at our our short-term needs and to your point um

1:00:16 when we get to the budget cycle in december and we understand where things are that this could result in a shortfall for fy fy 22. i don’t i don’t disagree with that um and and i think jen sorry and i’ll stop and i think in any opportunity this this would this has never happened as far as i know where there’s ever been money that’s been turned back at the end of the year and we all know that money goes to free cash and we all know that marblehead uses free cash to offset the tax rate and free cash has continued to be pinched as you know budgets increase in eighty percent of

1:01:02 seventy to eighty percent of our expenses our wages and fringes and health care and we’re challenged by the reduction in fringe benefits and all those things so free cash whatever we use up doesn’t come back to us in subsequent years so you’re right it creates a cascade of challenges and we need to all recognize that and we’re trying to close the gap this year as we did at our budget hearing which i think um i’m really happy to hear when you look at the news stories that are out there in brookline laying off 75 teachers franklin 103 teachers it was in the news this morning when i woke up

1:01:48 i mean 103 teachers at a school like in franklin where they just built a new high school three years ago um it’s devastating and um these are challenging times and we didn’t need to go to that extent and we’re we’re on the fringes now of trying to go forward with what we wanted to do pre-covid and um

1:02:16 i think we i think we’re close and we can still do if we can still do some things that we want we’ve set money aside for uh covid expenses that we haven’t anticipated and um we need to just be cognizant of the decisions that we make tonight and i agree i agree with everybody next next year will be will be a challenge depending on what happens with with state funding for sure jen hold on sarah i think jen was trying to say something and then and then i know your hand is raised um okay i thought megan has been cut off a couple times though you guys can you can come back to me finish this and then come back um so i just want to you know sort of make a you know a statement or

1:03:02 sort of state my opinion here and that is that uh we were appropriated a sum of money last year at town meeting 39.6 million dollars and we have not spent oh we have not overspent that we have understood that we were i don’t know how we want to put this we were the um unfortunate recipients i guess of a surplus given you know this national global situation that not every part of every municipality did right school shut down and it was a unique situation that we shut our buildings down and we therefore crewed a surplus in a budget to which we were appropriated by town meeting so i just think it’s important that we think about

1:03:49 because we are the school committee you know really what is the best use of the funds that we were appropriated

1:03:59 for the purposes of our schools and you know are we that we maximize our opportunity to secure what it is that we believe we need for our students and i’ll leave it at that

1:04:21 so i just i guess if we’re just thinking about how we close off this piece of the agenda because i think i just want to be 100 sure that i am you know both sarah and i are clear on what we’re deciding here so that we can carry that forward to our conversation on friday and so just humor me i think what we’re hearing is we will spend of the 200 approximately additional surplus we will use 20 000 for the coffin school doors thirty thousand for the high school doors and twenty three thousand for the bus

1:05:03 absolutely you could find other things too megan so i was gonna talk yeah so yeah so um thank you for giving me that minute two of my kids ran in the room and i wanted to let mac get them out before i unmuted myself um but so when we walked into the meeting on friday my understanding it was justin what had come had noted that he believed investment in our facilities and capital needs are important and that’s why he had he was saying he felt they could fund 80 or 81 it was it was one of those two um and bill and michelle announced we had

1:05:51 this 225 000 much to everyone’s shock so then the conversation went to what what could how could we use this money to possibly pay and and take that 81 000 he was offering off the table or or reduce it so in my mind you take the 225 the 80 we you know you deduct the the 50 that we want to leave ourselves for wiggle room for safety and then from that you take off the 20 for coffin the 30 for marblehead high school stores 23 is it for the bus and then i was adding in the capital needs assessment because i feel that is to me a must

1:06:37 and what you’re left with is a delta in the positive variance going back to the town of a hundred and fifty seven thousand two hundred and fifty so in my mind he was offering 80. we threw in another 225. when you get when you work the numbers out we can get more than 80 but less than 225. you know what i mean we add in that capital needs assessment the doors in the bus and the town wins and we win they they walk away with a savings of 157 000 plus from what they walked into the meeting from we’re happy we feel our needs we feel we’re providing what we need for the schools in the time of colder we obviously need more than this but we do you know

1:07:24 we do have to deal with some facts of our situation and in my mind we’re still offering the town a surplus um now again some oh and in that number i i estimated 5 000 to carry school lunches through to be conservative till the end so that 157 includes 5 thousand school lunches all right you know i think overall i would argue that i would i would second that i’m completely lost as well i i’m lost on the math because i come up with you just gave throughout 447 000 in costs so i’m just trying to understand no so i took 225 and added the 80 to it because that’s the that’s the delta between they were offering 80 we said we had a

1:08:11 surplus of 225 so you add what they were offering our surplus and that’s your starting point i guess i don’t understand that starting point yeah michelle can you can can michelle just kind of weigh into to like if she sort of thinks because i think that’s a real it’s an interesting statement sarah

1:08:31 i think i can summarize it okay yeah please help bill no i and sarah interrupt me but i believe what sarah is saying is that uh given having a bit of a safety net of 50 000 so we so the 225 becomes 175. the 81 000 that was going to be in the capital that comes off of capital so that’s 81 000 that the town can decide to do with so she’s adding the 81 to the 175 and that gets you the 256 000 she’s then subtracting the uh

1:09:17 twenty thousand dollars for the coffin doors thirty thousand for the high school doors twenty three thousand dollars for the bus and forty two thousand i rounded it to forty two thousand for the assessment if i’m right that comes to a hundred and fifteen no uh 30 23 yeah 115 000. 141. so i can you just bill your i’m sure 115 so what sarah’s saying is there’s 175 so of that 256 that is funds that theoretical theoretically are available now

1:10:08 115 is spent on those four items for the schools that leaves a balance of 141 000 that then uh would go back to the town the the difference though sarah and then i’ll just add this the 81 000 81 000 of the 141 the town can use right away they can use for fy 21. so the balance of that 60 000 would go back to the general fund to be included in the uh in the certified free cash balance available for fy22 yes

1:10:55 exactly so essentially if we all had money at that table that we were trading back and forth which obviously we didn’t the town was walking in thinking this was going to party was going to cost them 81 000 and they wind up looking home with we get what we want and they walk home with 140 in their pocket does that make sense can i just ask a question if that’s the case then why are we adding eighty one thousand dollars to them again again so because they were going to spend that money and now they don’t need to now they can use that for other things oh no no but back up for a second then you’re saying we’re not getting anything from the town for the capital outlay and you added 81 000 to 220 225 000.

1:11:51 another way to look at it is uh if we uh identify right now a uh conservative 175 thousand dollar surplus what we’re really saying is we want to spend from the surplus to 115 000 that leaves 60 000 that reverts back to the town and then the town has the use jason can reallocate that 81 000 that’s in capital right now uh for town meeting he has the ability now to use that

1:12:36 to either not spend it or reallocate it to you know additional uh fy21 town okay we have a hundred and eighty seven hundred and seventy seven thousand in our capital outlet not including the bus so right so we’d still be in in sarah’s thing we’re not covering everything right yeah we’re definitely not asking for the whole 777. in my suggestion we are asking for both sets of doors in a facilities assessment and we were forgoing painting and the vet floors but like we’re not really forgoing painting because there’s a lot of painting that’s going on currently

1:13:19 how much a glover i can’t speak to but bottom line under this plan uh is that what would be reverting back to the town once the fy 20 budget is closed out would be anywhere from conservatively sixty thousand dollars to a hundred and ten thousand dollars because perhaps that 225 estimate holds you know there are no surprises and so so it could be up to that and who knows maybe it’s a little more we just you know but uh so that’s that’s one way to approach it okay so that that definitely makes more

1:14:06 sense sorry sarah i just um i get it surprisingly sarah i was i was following you i i still don’t get it so if we’re gonna vote i don’t think i can because i don’t get it well i think my my one concern here too because then we’re basically putting those numbers the 20 000 and 30 000 into our budget for this year right because we’ll prepay and then we’ll we’ll use these will come out of our budget that’s what we talked about right michelle yeah i i will tell you like my concern with my concern the concern i have looking forward to kind of playing beyond fy 21 is that these capital expen these capital expenditures are one-time expenses and for surpluses

1:14:53 for surpluses for surpluses i think that’s that’s how surpluses should be used you pay one-time expenses not recurring and so in being able to uh accomplish some of these uh some of these items uh we understand what the public bidding threshold is and and there is not enough time to advertise in the central register give vendors enough time to respond and then have bids open prior to june 30th it just is right however so what my suggestion would be if we go down this road is

1:15:40 we know of two items that are currently in our fy 21 budget uh that are one-time expenses and that’s the go math uh the go math online resource because we we assume there will be a new program in place for fy21 and that’ll be a different funding source and then the re the uh foss science kids so if i’m if i i just don’t have that in front of me now but i believe that’s approximately 65 000 and michelle might be able to look that up so sixty five thousand dollars to me right there is

1:16:25 there is there is uh the budget is protected from uh the the uh what you talked about earlier you know having the base and rolling it forward uh because theoretically those expenditures won’t be in the fy 22 budget because they’re one-time expenses uh so if we can going through you know come up with another 40 000 or so and we have to go through the line but there are things like uh yeah we have to so that would be my concern right now i think there’s

1:17:11 exposure of about forty thousand dollars well we can reduce that exposure by twenty thousand because the front entry doors that cough and don’t need to go out to the bid threshold yep absolutely that’s exactly correct good good point so so the exposure’s about twenty thousand dollars yeah which that’s much more acceptable than 115.

1:17:38 so that’s my only concern but i think that sounds like a really good solution to that concern

1:17:47 do you think um michelle because we did get an estimate already on the capital needs assessment and so do we already have the paperwork written up for that to go out to bid and do you think it’s possible we could get that out to bid and maybe get some answers back i mean it’s tight time-wise but it’s a possibility we definitely could not on the high school because we don’t have a scope ready yeah i don’t think we could because of the bidding timelines i would have to have it posted to the central register by tomorrow but we’d also have to put it in a newspaper and usually you have to do that a week in advance so it would not show up in a newspaper until next week and then you have to have two weeks from the date it shows up

1:18:33 in the newspaper to open them and then um and then award the contract before june 30th didn’t we talk a little while ago about using these in the fy 21 budget if we use the that equal amount of dollars to prepay district out of district tuition so that’s i think what i asked yes so that’s what bill is talking about correct so that instead of prepaying tuition we would buy supplies and then earmark so that there would actually be an earmark so that we’re not lowering our threshold is that i’m ex am i understanding that correct

1:19:17 yes yes does that make sense jen

1:19:27 i agree with jen um i you know there’s there seems to be lots of options and i’ll just i’m gonna go back to the item that’s still on the screen um coffin school entry doors high school entry doors and capital needs assessment

1:19:53 so i think we’re in agreement if the committee differs and the school bus those are the three priority items four and i or four those are the right those are the four priority items so at a minimum we’re we’re going through a lot of conjecture and speculation about the mechanisms of funding and i’d like to leave that to michelle and town finance if if we if we gave her a um a vote or a directive that the priority of the committee is to fund the coffin school the high school doors the needs assessment and the school buses and what is the best way to do that with the

1:20:38 with the with the capital equipment articles the the facilities article and also based on using the surplus to jen’s point what’s the best way we can pay that forward and go from there i think our objective should be to identify what the priorities are because i don’t think we’re going to come up with the answers tonight about the best way to fund them but if we can at least as bill when he presented this couple months ago we prioritize these things so tonight we can prioritize those as the four items and within the the mechanisms of of funding and budgets what’s what’s the best way we can we can bring that

1:21:24 forward to the town to fund them keep in mind that these priorities keep in mind that this capital outlay request was there was a much longer list from the facility subcommittee or prioritized so then we’re criteria yeah i mean i don’t i don’t disagree with i i i’m in full agreement and that and that was pre-march pre-march 13th pre-coveted when when so now we have an opportunity when all of this hits the town i don’t just i don’t disagree with you at all and it’s a different landscape

1:22:05 here’s a different landscape now with 2019 and i think i think it’s irresponsible to suggest that we should just press on this is the budget we were given and we should spend every last dollar of it and figure out how to do it and not be cooperative in the same challenges i have no idea what the challenges of the town are because i haven’t sat in and there hasn’t been anything written about the challenges that police fire um public works park and rack every other department is going through i’m only hearing what sarah and megan have participated in and what the ask has been for the school committee for us to be a team player here and i don’t disagree with you jen it was voted at

1:22:50 town meeting and we should be able to spend every last dollar of that money all i’m saying is let’s be a team player here identify what our priorities are and have this meeting on friday and and see what’s available to us and if we can spend some of that surplus let’s spend it i agree but i want to be a team player i want to work together with the town we’re in dire straits here it’s not it’s not a normal year where we just have two hundred thousand dollars left and we’re trying to figure out how to spend it it’s you know there’s so many challenges that we up and so many unknowns that we don’t even know about well um that also goes to the you know we will have unknowns as well which right

1:23:36 yep and we talked about those the other night at our budget hearing where where we’re funding 235 000 and we have 1.8 million dollars in the cares act and we have a hundred thousand dollars that’s coming directly to the schools so yeah i don’t i agree but i think the objective tonight and i’ll stop should be what are the priorities i’ve said it it’s the doors it’s the needs assessment and it’s the bus and now let’s go back and let them figure out how to make that happen as a priority that’s my recommendation as the um has did did the financing did or jason talk about now i don’t think any specifics of what

1:24:21 they’re looking that they’re where they’re seeing if any deficits in next year’s budget for them

1:24:29 yeah 1.6 million dollars well that’s yeah that’s town wide but um and we took off ours i mean i’m just saying i guess you did i mean you didn’t they don’t talk about the town side because they’re not probably there yet but i understand i did get the sense that they were hoping and that we were hoping from [Music] i guess the the agenda and what we’re the reason why we’re meeting tonight is that we would have a consensus from our committee of how we’re funding these things um [Music] well i guess that was just my takeaway that we that we were supposed to have a consensus of how we wanted to do it was it through the surplus was it through

1:25:15 i mean michelle and bill correct me if i’m wrong but that was my understanding was they wanted us to at least have a consensus and a suggestion from the school committee of how we wanted to fund this and they and then they’ll weigh in right but i think i think that’s unless i’m totally misunderstanding this conversation i think that’s then what we’ve done right with those four priorities and that we’re funding them through the surplus now the question is what’s the logistics around that i haven’t agreed i think we need to have the attorneys but for whatever it’s worth sorry john i haven’t agreed that those are the four priorities okay so those are the ones that we’ve talked about you know that was the recommendation on the table anyway but you know paying for them through the surplus but the logistics of that

1:26:01 whether you know we need to sort out with michelle bill and uh to me i don’t know the answer to that to me it sounds to me to add to that so because of talking about these four things um as and then to pay for them through the surplus but but knowing that that’s going to be impossible to go out to bid for these if if it means that bill and michelle need to look to find one-time expenses from for fy 21 that we can flip-flop so that we’re not decreasing the threshold of where we stand right now with that 40.5

1:26:48 or so or so right i don’t know that that’s necessarily something that me as a committee need to figure out like that stuff that i think you know bill and michelle you know like i said those logistics the directive the directive that instead of us lowering our threshold lowering our ask in order to um pay pay prepay on things that we’re go we’re going to try to flip-flop some expenses so that it’s covered and so that we’re still turning the town money but also covering our own expenses correctly

1:27:32 so there is one more one-time expense i wanted to suggest um that we could use this money for additionally use this money for and it came up a lot at the budget hearing the idea of a platform with google blackboard that will allow during distance learning or a week on week off type of format for there to be much more engagement between the distance learning students their current same classmates and the teacher um i’ve had the opportunity to watch a few informational videos of how google blackboard works and it seems to be a really great platform our educators would definitely want to look at it first and vet that out but if if we were to choose to do that and we were to look into the price of a one-year

1:28:18 subscription if we bought it before june 28 out of this surplus we would actually be covered through the full the full calendar school year next year still and that would be that would take some pressure off some of the items we were talking about at the at the um hearing the other night that are possibilities that we might have to find in our budget and it would it would and it would i think give our educators and our students a tool to be much more successful in their outcomes with distance learning and integrating that to have the class being in at one time or another so so bill do you want to weigh in on that

1:29:05 because i know i think you know you were mentioning that earlier today when we were chatting um and is that something sort of the idea of that and where that would fall in fy 21 and then is that something like with the foster kids and the and the math curriculum that could fall underneath that one-time expense piece when you guys are looking at this tomorrow yep so i have two two uh two thoughts and they’re both separate so to to uh sarah’s thought about the platform so right now there is there’s no line there’s no

1:29:50 money specifically identified to do that and so what i would suggest is uh i by the way i i think that’s a good idea but we need to get some input from staff uh desi is doing a survey of these different platforms and the staff you know we want the opportunity to take a look at them uh that’s that’s gonna say take some time but that definitely could be something that is done as part of the reopening plan and i’ve heard some estimates that these platforms might cost on average 10 to 12 to 14 dollars for the year so

1:30:40 on monday night i talked about the fact that in the fy21 budget there is currently two 162 dollars budgeted for technology devices and there are some you know that money’s some of that money has been identified in terms of how many of this that that and the other thing i think given the circumstances if the district is going to purchase you know that either it comes from that part of money or it comes from you know the unanticipated expenses line or you know it comes from perhaps uh

1:31:25 uh uh you know we still have to hire new staff we have retirements we have resignations we have to fill positions you know there very well could easily be 10 12 14 000 in salary savings from those hires so i think there’s a way in the fy 21 budget to pay for that so in terms of the capital though so i’m not sure that helps the situation however what again what i’m hearing from what i’m hearing a quick summary of the capital piece there are there are four items totaling 115 000 that has been discussed now all of you may not agree that those are the priorities that’s something that the

1:32:11 committee will have to uh hopefully uh you know either come to consensus or take a vote on that i think given um i think that’s not an unreasonable plan to bring forward uh and discuss with the liaisons friday you know that in the end leaves a range this range of sixty to a hundred and ten thousand dollars uh that reverts back to the town when fy 20 books are closed i don’t think that’s unreasonable at all as a matter of fact you know i think that that’s very reasonable and uh you know as we’ve gone through this process there uh

1:32:57 there uh there uh there’s been reasonable agreement that has been made through this you know last friday there was an agreement to use the original 200 000 surplus you know that was confirmed to prepay expenses you know that helped the town side it helped us because we don’t have to take that 200 000 from somewhere already identified in the fy 21 budget and then you know i think this capital piece uh you know that was a very positive conversation we had uh by bringing forth a plan like this it does allow

1:33:44 uh jason and his staff to uh reallocate for fy21 negative 000 which i think is going to be very helpful to the town side so i see a lot of benefit to this plan and i i personally don’t think it’s unreasonable and uh you know it’s it’s kind of a win-win uh and i do agree that you know the town budget is a collaborative project process the town that the school committee absolutely has the authority to spend every last nickel uh i think given the times we’re in and the way this process has has developed uh my own personal

1:34:30 opinion and my recommendation would be that a plan such as this that allows some money to revert back to the town side uh is a good plan and i have a sense it will you know it will be met with uh uh met positively but so that’s my two cents on those two items

1:34:59 so megan and sarah you know obviously i think you know jen is not is not completely on board with some of the things that we’re talking about um it seems as though possibly we need to take a vote on this um jen i don’t know if maybe you want to say something no i just want to make sure i understand because i also got lost in the numbers so that’s all if i could i guess you know what i just yeah i i just wanted to if we are going to take a vote i just maybe we need to clarify yeah so so okay so clarify with the numbers so like right so right now what we are going

1:35:45 what we are asking megan and sarah to bring to the their meeting on friday is that we would like to use or we would like to find a way to pay for the coffin school entry doors the high school entry doors the capital needs assessment and the school bus and that we can take those four as the priorities to find out how to take them off of the take them out of the surplus or flip-flop things around club one time expenses around to cover those out of our budget so that it frees up that money for the town

1:36:35 okay right and then any remaining surplus which would be anywhere between 60 and 100 000 would go back to the town correct okay all right and that also means going back to michelle that if i don’t know how this works logistically but michelle you had talked about and so would you build it concerns if we do have some unforeseen bills that come in or costs to come in that you wanted to have is that all done yes after after july first okay so this is that that’s that range that’s 60 to 110 000 if we’re we’re budgeting fifty thousand dollars for those unanticipated expenses so if all fifty of that is taken in the unanticipated expenses then that leaves us turning over sixty thousand to the town but if

1:37:20 any where if none of it then we’d turn over 110 000 to the town at the end of the fiscal year and or anywhere in between okay sarah could we could we ask michelle if she agrees with what i said absolutely in terms of that 50 000 that range yeah absolutely i would feel comfortable i mean obviously in the next couple weeks um as we get closer to the end of june you know the the confidence will go up as i’m i’m monitoring all the the statements that are coming in and whatnot so yeah i think 50 000 is a very good comfortable number okay thanks michelle so so go ahead jim well i’m just trying so so

1:38:07 go ahead jim well i’m just trying so the idea would be would go ahead we would figure it out this would go into our budget and then i imagine that um at some point there’s a reconciliation of the numbers i would think at some point yep so again jen uh that’s a good question we have what we have planned for the next school committee meeting is and we’ll get it out we’re hoping to get it out at the beginning of next week we’ll do a revised line item budget that reflects all of the changes that we’ve made through our budget adjustment tracking sheet so that all the line items will uh now line up to that bottom line of

1:38:54 40 million 521 000 does that help what you were asking yeah yeah sarah yeah sarah i can’t tell if i’m talking you aren’t you’re good it’s weird because i don’t get my little green highlight anyway

1:39:13 go um go um so my one other thing and i don’t know if we wanted to formally take a vote on prioritizing these few items before we move on to further discussion about the budget or just keep going what do you prefer no let’s wrap this up yeah that’s right i think yeah and i think it sounds i don’t know that we need a vote it sounds to me like we’re in consensus with these four items moving forward to friday okay then are you okay with it now that we’ve gone through the numbers again yeah jen yeah jen you’re muted okay all right yeah i mean if we all have consensus then i think trying to get hand signals yes so i you know

1:39:58 sarah you know i feel comfortable that we’ve got the information we need to go ahead with friday if you do okay i do i think the only um variable may be i think jason was gonna look at look into um what the rules on the the lease was and whether or not that might need to but again it’s just moving money from pots um i think we’ve we’ve outlined what we want to fund and they’ll figure out what pots everything needs to come from

1:40:29 um so speaking of the budget as a follow-up to the hearing one one thing that i just want to make sure is i think bill was going to reach out to michelle and ask her to kind of estimate if she could and again it’s you know i know you don’t have a crystal ball but what impacts may be if we’re to be conservative on the k in pre-k tuition um my my only concerns with the numbers we’re playing with is given what’s going on with covid and that p that homeowner or that families are in the same financial crisis that the towns and the state and the federal government are is that we very likely will see a reduction in in their spending um for that and then that we potentially could

1:41:16 see a reduction in circuit breaker when we started i think they were saying that they were going to give us 75 which was more than we’ve seen ever and and you and bill had decided to be conservative and use the number of 70. and now i i my sense is that my question is is 70 conservative enough um i just want to make sure that if we’re making adjustments to other line items to balance things out that we’re talking about that as a group now so in terms of the k revenue michelle and i have had a conversation today we’re looking at some numbers uh we really don’t have anything concrete to share tonight but we’re we’re crunching some numbers and uh

1:42:02 and uh and uh and we’ll have much more to report you know next thursday night uh in terms of circuit breaker you know i’m hearing different things uh i think at this point now you know we can we can adjust it but it has to come from some other line item i’m not sure where that is that is uh there are there may be some uh possibilities uh that we’re looking at we just uh you know one of the things that we just uh i just heard right near i forget was wednesday i think was wednesday last week possibly thursday we have a late retirement

1:42:51 so we have a k teacher who’s retiring so uh

1:42:58 so a recommendation i have for uh tonight is to let me see here we go so if you can see this so that k retirement will save us thirty thousand dollars in salary for the replacement so i am i i didn’t put this on the adjustment sheet uh but what i’m looking at what this looks to me now is we take that savings and we reallocate that salary savings to the uh unanticipated

1:43:43 budget line so that line would is now up to 165 699 and when we combine that with you know based on the whole kind of plethora of uh of unknowns that were talked about uh monday night from from equipment to special education you know lack of revenue to uh you know possibly some cleaning issues or disinfecting issues so we now have uh what this means is that there’s 165

1:44:31 000 in this line uh you know there’s approximately a hundred thousand dollars we we should have more information on what that number is going to be our cares money so that’s 265 000 uh eric has uh has been developing his idea grant we know the grant money the federal grant monies uh we don’t anticipate any changes there so he is budgeting uh using some of the grant money to budget for uh you know compensatory services that may be required uh to the tune of twenty to twenty five thousand dollars so

1:45:17 you know there’s 290 000 and then uh we also remember have the 250 000 in the special ed reserve that could be used for unknown special education costs so you know we have that that more closely aligns to the circuit breaker issue sarah but uh you know overall that puts us you know somewhere in the vicinity of 500 000 of different resources that that we can use and uh you know we have again i can’t stress this enough the technology piece you know it may be that for fy 21 priorities get changed to meet our immediate needs

1:46:04 immediate needs immediate needs so we have that money available too based on that so uh you know if there’s a way to uh by next week getting to uh if something comes up where we can uh increase the covert line even more um you know i feel pretty comfortable with that uh as as kind of a catch-all

1:46:34 but we are looking at the k because we just want to uh we’re just doing some more accounting of you know where we started the year and where we’re going to end up this year you know them whether they’re whether we ex we uh anticipate there being a balance you know in that fund there was a pretty strong balance in that fund to stop the year about 90 000 so so we are talking about that and if we can you know we’ll have some more on that next week

1:47:14 okay thank you i just want to um just a kind of a point of order we have kind of bridged we closed our capital discussion we’re bridged into the fy 21 budget discussion now just to make sure that everybody’s on the same page um so i know bill when we had chatted earlier the kindergarten full day piece was something that you wanted to talk about and then we also need to have the um the cola conversation as well so i think bill you want to talk about that or you want sarah or sarah megan no no so so in terms of the k tuition and the revenue piece that came up uh uh as a question i just talked about it you’re all set there yep and then and then i did want

1:48:01 to update the committee on the recent retirement yeah those two so that just leaves the cola yep so kind of if we want to move to that i think that really goes back to the committee for further discussion it seemed to me that after last thursday’s uh school committee meeting uh there were uh you know members had different thoughts about that and um so that’s why we’re you know yeah so megan or sarah do you guys either if you want to update from that meeting

1:48:43 um i i can um and sarah feel free to add anything um i think you know this did come up on friday um i’m not gonna speak for jason but what i took away from that was a very strong suggestion for us not to do this um if you think if we look at what’s happening on the you know from the town side um there are no colas going out jason’s taking a pay cut as he told us on friday um so i just you know there was a strong suggestion to you know at least reconsider or chat about it as a committee sarah feel free to add anything so i think um so the town also clarified that they are not giving cola increases to

1:49:29 any non-union personnel their administrative assistants their part-time employees no one we did decide as a school committee that there were some employees whether they were young union or non-union that we and i think we voted unanimously on this that we were not willing to take away their coalits on um we talked about this last week and um so i guess we left at the 425 israel clarification is reflective of administration um cola increases not all not all non-union correct

1:50:22 so basically what you’re looking for from the full committee megan and sarah is the consensus to move forward that that is one of the ways for the the final way in which we will get to the 40.5

1:50:40 yeah and i mean personally it’s not something you know that we want to do at all you know it’s heartbreaking and it’s heartbreaking for everyone across the town too so you know it’s not something that we’ve come to lightly in any way i think it’s you know i think it’s again it’s like you said megan it’s unfortunate i think it’s a reality of where we’re at um as a just you know as where the where funding sources are at um and i think

1:51:25 from what i’m understanding you know those administrators particularly the principals were concerned about their of their other non-union staff and that you know that they themselves were willing to take take that for the team but then if we could spare their their the lower wage employees that that was really important and i think that’s what we’ve done um and i think hopefully yeah i just wanted to make a clarification oh okay never mind bill had texted me a clarification but he took it back i think we lost him i’m not sure okay he’ll hopefully they’ll re-enter if he needs to okay sorry but he took it back so i’m good okay i’m here

1:52:11 i’m here i’m here okay um bill correct me if i’m wrong because i i feel like i’m speaking for you a little bit on this um as far as what the principles your conversations with the principles and that they were most concerned about the lower paid staff and non-union than they were sort of with their their own situation yeah um yeah um yeah i i don’t remember this being part of the regular meeting conversation last week sorry i i may have been i’m but i’m not sure

1:52:58 i think where we are what was recommended was that uh that our our administrators um you know will will not be uh you know that forty three thousand dollars is it to our administrative team right

1:53:28 jenner david any other thoughts well you know i it’s very hard for me to support this really i think it’s hard for all of us to support it very hard for me to support this

1:53:46 i really i don’t know that i can but that i’m one person i guess i just tried and we just we just voted we didn’t vote we decided you know 15 minutes ago that we we you know we have a surplus that we’re going to provide anywhere from 50 to 110 000 back to the town so you know i think we’re

1:54:11 doing that you know out of a spirit of you know trying to work together as a team and as well as um advocating for the area of this town that we’re supposed to be advocating for which is the school department our admin and our and our staff and you know i mean it’s been a long year for 14 15 16 months and you know our administrators have worked and our teachers certainly and our staff but our and our administrators have worked above and beyond um over the last 15 months for this school district and i global pandemic notwithstanding i understand that it’s just very um difficult for me to support this

1:54:57 portion i mean just i’m trying to weigh everything you know and to say that we’re gonna you know give a surplus fund back to the town that was appropriated to us in town meeting

1:55:12 and we have not made any cuts you know we’ve been able to go through bill and michelle we’ve been able to procure a significant savings through attrition and how we’ve managed and cleaning up our salary lines no one’s lost their job you know we’ve had a couple of positions that we are going to be able to um not fill the vacancies but this for me is very difficult and i’m not comfortable i’ll have to say that i’m not comfortable as well

1:55:56 nobody knew that this was coming and from everything

1:56:02 heard everybody’s worked very hard to deliver the best education possible um we heard bill talk about the budget development for next year being a team effort and we all know that it was a team effort to get through this year whether it was the graduation of the high school students or kids moving on from vets up to the heist everything that was done it’s a it’s a it’s tough decision to uh to support and um and um if we were in any other situation

1:56:48 i wouldn’t support it but it seems like um having been on the fincom there are there is the town side that has decided there are administrators that are not going to get their raises and um i can’t see how we can go forward and um um not do that um if there’s an opportunity to make up for it at some point i don’t you know post 2009 however it happens but yeah it’s a difficult decision i i agree i agree

1:57:36 but it’s it’s part of the reality of what we’re in right now

1:57:55 bible do you have a recommendation one way or another or any insight to opera

1:58:03 so this is it really is a complicated issue um you know there are there are a number of considerations um you know it’s easy for me to say this it’s easy for me to take a position one one would argue but uh when all is said and done and given the process that we’ve gone through and again you know it’s been a collaborative effort both on the school side and on the town side i just think that uh unfortunately you know no one ever wants to have to recommend this no one ever wants to have to vote

1:58:46 and you know i can attest to how hard and how dedicated you know our administrators are uh and and i think people see that um but just trying to be as objective as i possibly can you know uh you would hear the same conversation on the town side as well

1:59:14 and so and so you know i just think that’s an important consideration also

1:59:26 and i guess i’m recommending it i put it on the sheet you know um so i’ll i’ll take that stand

1:59:52 and i would say that if things change and

2:00:03 we’re in april and and things don’t play out as negatively as we thought it’s always the uh prerogative of the committee to um make those exempt employees whole but it’s it’s hard to commit to that at this point given given the unknowns and um

2:00:23 i i agree i think we need to uh move forward with this it’s a tough decision but um

2:00:30 for it as a town is is the best way to do this the town has we it’s it’s always been the way we we’ve done a lot of things and um i i don’t think there’s ever been a year when somebody’s gotten a raise on the town side and nod on the schools or vice versa so i

2:00:53 you know we hear a lot in this town about this is how we always do it this is how it’s always been done um this is a unique year obviously for a lot in a lot of ways i think that we did out we are doing our um fair share in what in what we’re going forward with in terms of our capital ask and our surplus and i cannot support this vote i will be voting now our our biggest and most important asset is our staff and our administrators

2:01:36 on the school side i i agree john on the town fire fire police municipal i’m speaking about you know marblehead marblehead is the town that it is and i’ll disagree with you marblehead is the town that it is because we work collaboratively and um we have david we were we were in a 700 000 hole last year jen and the town met us halfway to fund 350 000 of the 700 000. david i don’t want to rehash history i did it for 11 years in the finance committee

2:02:11 again we can disagree we can now you’re just talking about you know just because we’ve always done it this way well it served the town well in 2005 the last time we had the override we sat down as a school committee with larry d.g marino rob dana amy drinker everybody at the table and we figured out what the ask was going to be for the override and the override is coming we know it and we’re going to do the same thing and we will work collaboratively and we’re not going to do it on our own so that that’s the challenge for for me is i i think marblehead has worked well together and it’s unfortunate that we’re at this crossroads where we’re making decisions about people’s pay and salary

2:02:58 and salary and salary and um it’s it is it’s a different if it’s a difficult decision but i i will have to uh support the the forty two thousand dollars and i’d be the first one to say if there’s an opportunity in 2021 where things go to the positive that we we could we can fund those if the money’s there but if it’s not then then we can’t and we’ll have to figure it out with the fy 22 budget process now let me ask this bill has there’s a discussion i think i i heard the number that the town is is realizing an 82 or 80 something

2:03:43 thousand dollar savings from foregoing their coal increases for their non-union has there been a discussion about since we do have this extra money that they weren’t anticipating of using somehow figuring out a mechanism in which we can help the town make their non-union people somewhat whole if not all whole and maybe their union and our administrator don’t get 2.5 but maybe they get one and we can help them make their their people more whole and and we can do the same for ours is is that even a possibility or a talking point i don’t know sarah there’s

2:04:30 a lot of moving parts to that uh you you have to get a lot of different groups to agree um i haven’t had that specific discussion with anyone well it wouldn’t be up i mean it would be up to them to decide you know if we give back yes exactly

2:04:56 because the town has to if we’re able to facilitate the town not having to could we work together and try to make all of our employees whole is that that was in the answer may be that no it’s not possible but i just thought that if there’s a way if we’re looking at this as one town that that everybody becomes whole and the answer may be that there’s not yeah i am i mean sarah i think i i think you know any way that we can work together i you know i agree with that i think just and i’m not saying yes or no and either way i just purely from a budgeting perspective i think you typically wouldn’t want and we’re not in a typical situation so i understand that but typically you wouldn’t want to fund an ongoing expense with a one-time surplus right because a cost of low cost of living adjustment

2:05:41 living adjustment living adjustment carries over every year and then you know impacts that salary now that’s just actually clarification it doesn’t because the they don’t have contractual ones who’s voted every year at time meeting for the non-union right but when you increase their salary when you increase it again the next year it’s based on that new base salary that yes that’s that is true yeah you’re right but yeah my point was we’re not talking you know millions of dollars here we’re actually talking a very in the scheme of things drop in the bucket but i i do understand the point of what where the reasoning came from for all of this but

2:06:28 we’re not talking i just want to be clear that on neither side are we talking millions of dollars of recoup savings so bill in your opinion do we need to take a vote on this

2:06:55 i think it would be beneficial only because there were questions about this particular line more much more than others and uh given that um given that uh the school committee you know determine salary and benefits or uh for you know certainly administrators who are on individual employment contracts uh and then through the budget process you determine that for others um i think it’s pretty clear where we’re

2:07:41 going but i mean i don’t think there’s a formal i’m i’m sorry jim i’m just i’m curious why we need a formal vote i guess i don’t i don’t think we do because you will vote a budget number which includes this that’s why i don’t even need a formal vote i think and we just kind of know that we’re not all exactly in consensus um and i think you know sarah’s point is hopefully heard and and i’m prepared to make a vote what i’m preparing i’m prepared to vote i understand i think we all are um i think right the logistics of this like why logistically you do not need to vote

2:08:28 everybody this has been discussed thoroughly uh every member has uh provided their input and i agree your case i agree that’s part of the minutes and then ultimately you will vote the bottom you we will vote the budget next week so in voting and the budget that we vote next week includes this 40 000 that’s correct just just to megan’s point when she was talking about how this builds a base we do have to acknowledge and appreciate that by doing this we are affecting the long-term base of our administrators and as we negotiate to renew their contracts

2:09:13 in the future that we should bring into effect that we put a one-year freeze on this and therefore affected their long-term base that’s all i’d ask is that we keep that in mind yeah i agree we can’t lose sight of that for sure yeah yeah and i think it makes it so that we we are hopeful that in the future you know even if it isn’t you know this year or next year that at some point we can make each one of them whole for this well i don’t think we should be talking about fy 22 at this point i think i could only be talking about fy21 all right all right so i think that’s what you sarah yes sarah megan i think that’s what you guys need for your meeting on friday correct

2:10:04 yeah i believe so do we still have a need for executive session that i don’t believe we do bill no no we do not all right supposed to have been an executive session

2:10:20 put on the agenda as a placeholder was so this wasn’t the subject of executive session all right no not this particular no i didn’t think so this was not um can we i would like to make a motion just because 41 people have that through this and we had i think noted on monday that there would be an option for public comment at future at tonight’s meeting um i’d like to make a motion to open it up to public comment if anybody has one to make

2:10:52 okay so there’s a motion second all right

2:11:02 um okay i’ll take a roll call uh david harris before you do that can i just make a comment before we i want to make a comment really to bill and to the rest of the committee before we vote this um we we did have the long budget hearing the other night um and a lot of folks stuck there stuck there through the end i’ve had a number of conversations um since then i’ve heard from a number of parents and i just think what i’m hearing i don’t know about other school community members that um parents are looking for um us to well or the school district not the committee the school administration to be really um starting you know now basically trying to put together at the very least a task force or a group of folks to really start to formulate the re-entry

2:11:48 plan and the in the how we’re going to reopen the schools knowing that we are still waiting for deci but i’m just throwing that out to you bill because i know you know we’re in the midst of a transition now but i’m strongly i guess asking um you and your and your team to consider um doing that sooner rather than later that’s all i want to say that before we open it so you’re muted oh i am no bill is no bell’s muted yes so so i intend to present next thursday night a plan that uh that will provide an organizational structure

2:12:35 to stop moving forward uh and part of that plan will to will be to uh reach out to the community for some participation on the various uh subgroups by uh uh that that we’re finalizing identify identifying that would make up different components and key pieces that will be responsible that will be part of the reopening plan so uh so i think that that’s something that uh you know that is something where we we hope to accomplish and have in place uh

2:13:23 you know starting starting that process by the end of next week that’s great i really appreciate that and can i go a step further and request that um when we when we start reaching out to um folks beyond the administration that we really are looking for is the motion the motion uh excuse me the motion is for public comment it is david and i want to make some questions the motion is for public comment no point of order i’m sorry the motion is for public comment jen i i don’t disagree with everything that you’re saying but we have a motion on the floor for public comment john and i think ma’am maybe you can make this offline i know megan and i were talking about it earlier today so we have a full agenda that we can take up at the meeting next week and we can have it on the agenda

2:14:08 for discussion but the motion is for public comment and i was just trying to make uh not for re-entry plan discussions and conjecture and speculation about things that bill hasn’t even had an opportunity to share with us other than emails that have come from desi in the last since friday night at seven o’clock so i’ll i’ll move for a vote um david david harris yes public comment sarah gold yes megan taylor yes jen schaffner yeah yes sarah fox yes but just for clarification i meant public comment at some point i didn’t mean to shut the meeting down

2:14:53 well we had a motion on the table so um we sort of needed to follow through on that and it’s discussion i wasn’t i and i wasn’t trying to shut the meeting down sarah the the comment on to other agendas it’s okay if anybody would like to make public comment can you please put your name and address in the chat right now

2:15:47 hi all can you hear me yep you’re probably getting sick of hearing from me by now but um i just um i really appreciate the difficult spot that all of you are in um and having been in the same spot in many years past and for many years i know how challenging it is to make these tough decisions i guess all of these tough decisions in my mind are continue to be downstream solutions to a problem and i i and many many others are still waiting for upstream solutions to these problems that revolve around big picture thinking and planning and considerations so that

2:16:33 every single year you don’t all have to repeat next year next year down the road in the future maybe later i think people are tired of hearing that and there is no question that this year is an extraordinary exceptional year but if we had been doing the work i don’t think we’d once again be in this tighter bind as we’re in so you know i am once again going to be a broken record and continue to please think upstream solution and bigger picture so we are not deaf by a thousand cuts to a budget every single year thanks

2:17:23 hi i am yeah no i i mean i just uh i just was taking in what meredith is saying and i i do have to say i i mean this has been a really difficult year um for many people it’s not a lot i i mean personally i know people in this town are losing jobs and taking pay cuts left and right um but i do know that there’s a lot of strength in our community and i was really um happy that to hear feel that you were working on something for uh the technology piece and i i do really believe that there’s a lot of goodwill in our town and i know we we

2:18:09 live in a town that we have access and resources that would be free to us that are people who could step up who work who have expertise in software and technology um and other areas like you know like jeff the other night and i i think putting out a call and and you know in in you guys deciding and vetting the right people to you know who could you know and i’m not saying it even has to be a long-term long-term operation but who would be willing to volunteer their time in an advisory capacity for our public schools in town um you know i think why would we you know that’s a great resource that we should really tap into and i know i’ve i’ve

2:18:55 said that to you all before and i and i appreciate um bill that you you know you’ve got something going on with that thanks aaron thanks aaron all right um that is all that i have in public oh i’ve got one more coming in at the last second um jennifer eaton hi i’m sorry i just had one really quick thing i wanted to um mention if you guys just haven’t thought about it i listened in the other night and um i saw with the new standards that came out i know they’re maybe just for summer but i’m not sure if they carry into fall

2:19:40 um with like the cleaning procedures and i think jeff sort of mentioned them um when with his comment the other night but i’m just concerned because working for partners healthcare um we can’t even source like wipes and masks and you know those type of ppe you know products easily you know or i know that the cost and like the availability of them has been difficult and that’s for a multi-million dollar health care company so i didn’t know how much thought or guidance there’s been if any you know for the schools in terms of like availability you know in terms of your budget and you know how that’s going to play into

2:20:27 things for when the kids do go back to school you know in terms of like i know it said there had to be disposable masks and cleaning solutions because i know even for us like the wipes we used to have like the two minute wipes and now we’re down to the five minute wipes and you know they’re now in the hallway not at every bedside so you know just thinking of that and you’re buying power and you know even getting the wipes i know you can’t even find them in the stores so you know just the thought process behind you know sourcing those materials and the cost you know how that fits into your budget just want to put that out there so thanks thanks jen all right that is everybody who has been in the chat

2:21:14 for public comment so i will adjourn us at 9 12 p.m thanks everybody thanks thanks thank you thanks bill