School Committee: March 31, 2022

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

0:45 is there anyone from an mhtv that needs me to allow them to record i don’t i don’t see anyone from mhtv and i don’t have anyone raising their hands so we are live on youtube so that piece is up and running and i will call this meeting to order at 701 pm

1:20 first up is a statement for myself uh it’s been two weeks since we were rocked by the tragic death of james velante we continue to extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends i also want to acknowledge the loss this has been for so many in our tight-knit community the ripple effects of a life boldly lived have left very few of us untouched i want to thank everyone in the marblehead public schools who has offered support during this difficult time first and foremost our district support staff administration and teachers it is an incredibly difficult job to support others grief well you yourself are grieving and you have all done this with grace i also want to thank other communities and individuals who brought therapy dogs to the high school

2:05 restaurants and others who donated food to those supporting our students the pco area schools who brought the high school teachers breakfast and other treats this week and last and the um the ymca for allowing our students to use their facilities free of charge this past weekend no one should grieve alone and all of these offerings of support have allowed people to be together in community to start the healing process i hope i have not forgotten anyone in this list that i apologize if i have i think to many this has felt like the cruelest loss in a long stream of losses over the last two years there’s been a feeling of existential exhaustion as we have tried to find ways to process and move forward i lamented to a friend that i don’t know how to help kids thrive when bad things keep happening

2:51 keep happening keep happening but she reminded me the resilience is paramount and our kids will continue to build and rely on it she then reminded me of the tree that has grown up and through a jagged chain-link fence not at invented places but it’s branches reaching for the sky beautifully perfect and strong i’ll leave you with that image of comfort and growth as well as with the encouragement to continue to support one another and reach out if you also need support with that i will officially open our budget public hearing on the fy 23 school budget at 703 pm the budget process is a long one uh it’s

3:37 the task of the superintendent and his administration to bring forward a budget to the school committee the budget technically remains the superintendents until it is voted by the school committee although the school committee has a very solid working knowledge of the budget it currently remains in the hands of the superintendent tonight we move one very important step closer to the school committee budget vote the budget hearing is for the superintendent to present his budget to the community and for the community to weigh in and ask questions the superintendent and his and his administration will address these questions and comments as needed the school committee is here to listen to community feedback and we will deliberate and vote the budget at our next meeting next week thursday april 7th we welcome feedback during the coming week as well

4:23 after the approval of the budget it officially becomes the school committee’s budget to continue to communicate to the public john take it away thank you sarah um thank you for the kind statement uh to begin it has been a really difficult two weeks um i want to thank members of the leadership team who are here this evening i will go through the budget presentation and then we will open it up for questions or input and if there are questions specific to a department or school i will um make them available to answer that question

5:19 nope nope are you sharing it on your from your computer i am

5:52 what toss yes it’s slide show all right it’s my pleasure tonight to present the fy 23 uh operating budget slide please

6:15 stealing a phrase from bill mccaldiff this has been an iterative process and it continues to be as you’ll hear later on things changed even as recently as today at our facility sub committee meeting this process this year started earlier i was looking at the tracking sheet and it was a december date and as i said at that december meeting this budget is not a holiday wish list these are needs of the public schools in order for us to provide an exemplary education different for the fy 23 budget process this year were public listening sessions where we hosted two opportunities prior to launching the budget request for the public to provide input

7:02 it has been continuously evolving under two different account administrators with the budget subcommittee with the finance joint budget subcommittee and it has undergone multiple reviews the leadership team has been asked to present in a workshop format to the school committee they took your feedback made adjustments to requests again the budget subcommittee the joint and then at numerous school committee meetings the budget has been discussed so this is open honest as transparent as a budget has ever been perhaps presented in marblehead um all of the budget requests that you will see are uh connected to our strategic plan and maybe that’s an omission on my part that i don’t just

7:47 blatantly call it a strategic plan but our planning for success document is a five-year roadmap for the district and so this budget is aligned and you saw that at uh the workshops when principals and directors presented that they aligned to uh the objectives of the district and so from the original proposed uh to the final approval which sarah indicated you guys will do next week you will see the budget that i am proposing to see we started back in october november next slide please

8:31 with our budget directives and certainly top of the budget directives are to meet our contractual obligations step lanes um we were looking to revise the paraprofessional and tutor contracts since we’re going into collective bargaining next year with all of our unions we will look at the tutors and paraprofessionals then we do have the stipend review committee that is up in meeting

8:58 it meets every thursday looking at athletic stipends co-curricular stipends teacher leaders and so that work is ongoing at one point we were talking about an extension of the school day and again going into collective gardening next year it is probably better during that conversation than as part of the 2023 budget process consider offering full day kindergarten which is reflected in this budget special education you see reflected in this budget we had a transportation audit in a review of our services which will be presented at the seventh meeting uh technology is heavily addressed in the fy 23 budget including the addition of an integration specialist curriculum is addressed in the fy 23 budget

9:45 curriculum coaches or specialist positions part of that is exploring the stipend work we currently spend 175 thousand dollars on teacher leaders those are about uh 5 5600 and their primary purpose is curriculum work and so we’re going to do some work over the summer with the teacher leaders doing some training to have them more involved in curriculum work review our social studies and science curricula and develop a k-12 steam curriculum and you see that reflected in the budget the addition of positions and the requests for resources for steam central office the sheriff assistant principal for brown and glover that is

10:32 reflected in this budget and then facilities maintenance uh again i said we had a facility subcommittee meeting today and i’m confident that uh facilities maintenance is also will be reflected in the capital ask and or the operating budget for fy23 next slide please as i said our strategic plan the nps success plan is a five-year plan outlook that was an inclusive process as well engaging the community and all of our stakeholder groups and so each of the budget requests in fy 23 are aligned to the strategic plan the initiatives the objectives i reached out to dr uh gilbert today who facilitated our

11:18 strategic planning process to make sure that we had not missed anything in terms of the budgeting process and alignment and she says she’s not sure how you could forecast a five-year budget through the strategic plan and that the action plans at each year are what drive the budget request and we have identified those in the fy 23 budget next slide please

11:48 so you see before you the uh tracking sheet and that is up to date including the security cameras as the last thing uh that was a change to the overall budget excitement and so as you’ve heard throughout the process uh we have categories of requests in this budget and so safety uh is the primary category uh the one-time cost for safety um 343 000 and then the recurring costs are 32 000. later on in this presentation all of these requests are broken down in uh slides that are called what and the what is the request and why why we’re asking

12:33 for it and why it’s essential to efficient operations for an exemplary education next slide please so technology update there the town has included to put the purchase of the smart panels for the four schools we’re fortunate to have the smart panels at the brown school because stephen quite a tech was hired just in the negative time as that technology was being uh installed in this building and so that will be a town warrant article for the purchase of the smart panels the one-time costs in technology are 21 000 with 35 000 in recurring costs and again in those what and why slides are detailed explanations of that next slide please

13:21 personnel uh we are proposing a significant addition uh to personnel everything from uh bus drivers custodians to an attendance clerk permanent subs in each of the buildings uh the math specialist uh position uh the steam teachers uh college and career assistant so groundskeeper maintenance that did not make the fy 22 budget the dei position and then also in there are the stipend increases for fy23 next slide

13:59 uh there are a number of curriculum asks that go everywhere from athletic contracted services increase to science supplies at the different schools i was at the veterans school today in the science lab and as you’ll see in the one y slides mr fox did a nice job of capturing some images of outdated equipment and they were doing a really interesting lab and he posed to the students he said how cool would it be to have centrifuges for this lab and of course every hand went up one eighth grader doesn’t want to have a centrifuge to work with and of course he said well that’s in the budget request so um it’s it’s gratifying to be out in the schools

14:45 and to see that these requests are student-facing and what our students need for an exemplary education next slide please just continue to ask in the curriculum bucket as we’ve come to call it and those one-time costs are 184 000 564 and the recurring costs of seventy thousand three forty on next slide we are proposing tuition-free kindergarten we’re uh one of fewer than 10 districts in the commonwealth that are still charging families for full day kindergarten and that would be a recurring cost of 375. next one student services town has proposed fund funding this at

15:31 the finance committee meeting on monday um and that was information that we got on monday that they would be able to uh cover the 848 000 as part of the fy23 budget next slide please so there you have like a single slide look at a glance i’m trying to provide the information in as many forms and again as it is an iterative process these numbers change and are ever evolving but this is each of the buckets and what is a one-time cost and what would be a recurring cost as we move into the next series of slides

16:21 are those what uh and why and i won’t read each of them to you these were posted 48 hours in advance of the meeting but it gives you an opportunity in narrative and sometimes in image of why these requests are being put forward so we have the assistant principal at round the permanent substitutes the transfer of a paraprofessional to a tutor position at the glover the steam teacher at glover school

17:00 brian had requested an increase of his teacher leaders and again those are the curriculum supports that each of the buildings has and he’s asked that to go from three to five so there is support for curriculum leadership in the request as for an increase in professional development

17:24 their software budget um an increase of twenty seven hundred dollars and then the addition of the two permanent substitutes

17:36 as we move to uh the village school they have asked for three permanent substitutes which makes sense because they have the three grades um the math tutor an increase of a math tutor position at village the steam teacher mandy has provided you a picture of the underutilized maker space that they have in the building some science supplies to be able to complete their science kits some world language supplies um some ela supplies i was talking to mandy during our instructional rounds this week and she said i sent people out to take these pictures and she said nothing is more emblematic than empty bookshelves of the need for those ela

18:22 supplies some fine arts supplies so they can update their music and art supplies village is asking for some library increases as well social studies materials at village instructional software and again i’m not going into the why but that information is available and i’m happy to circle back to it if there are questions specific to it um some new technology uh equipment at village moved to the middle school you can see that uh mr fox has taken a picture of uh some equipment uh the hot plate has mms from when the middle school was still located in the village school building and so

19:09 again a picture’s worth a thousand words um the middle school is also asking next slide links for some additions to their english supplies to make available to teachers and subscriptions and i do think it’s important as a side note in the public budget hearing to say the budget is also driven by teacher voice teachers have input with their principles before they come to meet with michelle and me to put forward budget requests and so through teachers and through teacher leaders building principles get input from faculty and staff about the needs so i really do believe this is a needs-based budget and i have

19:55 circled back to building principals and directors when questions are raised that maybe certain things are not included that people want of course in any budget there will be requests that aren’t put forward but in this budget i really do feel like teacher voices represent next slide some world language supplies and materials at the middle school fine arts supplies and equipment and mr uh fox has learned what a pug mill is and that if i’ve taken a takeaway from the fy 23 budget conversations i now know what a pug mill is for the art studio at the middle school next slide

20:41 slide slide engineering supplies some physical education equipment and some music equipment

20:53 we move on to the high school if there is one piece of the budget that says the request that really captures captures the need is a world cultures book at our high school that is over 20 years old that does not include major events like september 11 the wars in iraq and afghanistan and so that twenty thousand dollars request for social studies materials i think tells us this is a need space budget visual arts uh at the high school there are some materials that uh are still in our art studios from when the new high school and some people in town still

21:39 call it opened back in 2001. some wood shop equipment um dan has captured the dust collector and the need for that fourteen thousand six hundred ninety five dollar request again some science equipment at the high school

21:57 instructional software for the magic block you heard dan present uh the high school schedule and so this will be an important piece for him as he’s uh scheduling the magic block some audio visual equipment and that picture says it all for me the director of school counseling and that’s a critical position for dan and coming through the last two weeks the support staff at the high school and across the district um but certainly uh focused on the high school this last week um having uh this position i i would agree with him is critical since uh sorry uh the permanent substitutes uh

22:44 also at the high school the college and career assistant the attendance clerk which is something that the high school had previously and really does help the efficiency of the main office front desk monitor every time i go over to danvers high school or superintendents meeting there is that front desk person with the sign in software which is also in this budget that increases safety and security for the building he’s looking at operating line increases for multiple areas of the high school from student activities transportation uh to professional membership news and athletics

23:30 we move on to technology at the four schools we are very grateful that town is putting that in a capital article

23:42 the security cameras uh which because we cannot pinpoint the life expectancy of that will not go on a town warren article so that is in our operating budget for 355 000 i think it goes without too much explanation the value of these security features for this budget

24:06 the security card swipe system um the high school is asking for an additional access point for 8 000 the technology integration specialist again this is supports students and teachers as we invest in all of this enhancements to software and hardware and distance learning having someone to support teachers in the classroom for integrating this into curriculum and instruction is an important piece and we saw that this year with the integration specialist that was added in the fy 22 budget and fully support one for fy23 the steam cards we are going to have steam teachers so

24:53 we need some curricular uh materials and then the professional development for staff in order to implement those in the classroom the math specialist you can see that the math specialist that we added as part of the fy2 budget has been a tremendous value add as we have in math curricula and supporting teachers in implementing that so an additional math specialist to support curriculum uh in instruction um i’ll move quickly through these we continue to look for bus drivers and so we’ve put an additional bus driver in this budget in hopes that we can have all the buses

25:39 that we currently have in our fleet running the groundskeeper position uh some additional custodians uh that were also things that did not make the fy 22 budget um the out-of-district tuition piece which we have spoken about uh in terms of the town offering to fund that and the out of district transportation costs our director of equity and inclusion we’ve talked a good deal about that and i fully support that as a budget request for the f523 function our free full-day kindergarten we’ve discussed the visitor security software

26:25 which will be part of that front vestibule person that dan is requesting in his budget

26:33 some signature software uh forum for the uh hr department and a number of our departments our reliance on paper and pencil and triplicate forms and multiple handoffs on everything from time sheets to approvals um having some updates in technology and the ability to do these things online rather than paper and pencil will increase efficiency and has potential to reduce costs as well

27:08 the hr generalist position would support uh the hr position that we added as part of the fy 23 budget and then a request by the town in that we’re requesting a significant addition in the number of personnel in this budget that we would put the benefits costs as a request in the operating budget for fy23

27:37 so esser funding uh i think this was added later but uh often people have asked about well didn’t the schools get millions of dollars of funding if you see there at the bottom the total is 1.2 so that’s not exactly millions and a much of our esser funding went to just being able to keep the schools operating where we were at one point and i’m not telling you anything you don’t know spending ten thousand dollars a week on cleaning when we thought that that was necessary for ppe um each teacher got a laptop uh through this funding and so i just put that piece in there so people could see that is part of our funding sources for the district

28:23 district district next slide

28:30 questions or comments i’m going to jump past this slide because we added some addenda uh just because i thought that it was important for people to see there are other funds uh in the operating budget in terms of grants and revolvers in addition in addition to the capital requests that we made so next slide these were our capital requests and if it says town warrant article town has informed us that they will put these forward as uh warrant article requests with other town departments and so the fire alarm panel the roof of the high school the roof the middle school the boilers the hvac computer controls

29:17 there’s some question on the hvac units that we’re waiting to hear back if that is also included the next slide last two on this and the next slide are things that they have not indicated we do have a warrant article um for capital at the facilities subcommittee meeting today um there was conversation about rolling these remaining requests into the operating budget that would be a decision of the school committee and the facility subcommittee i anticipate will present that to the full school committee but there is a remaining uh balance or that has not been captured

30:04 uh of 586 407 whether we put that on the warrant or we put it as part of the operating budget but it was uh unanimous vote for the facility subcommittee today to put that forward as an operating uh request the next slide please uh and then uh the town has agreed to put a truck with a plow as part of a warranty through town next slide these are our grants i’m putting the figures in the fy 22 budget and working with michelle she is not anticipating any significant change in funding for any of the grants so you see our metco grant we have the idea special education

30:49 and the early childhood special education grant we have the various title grants title 1 at village the title 2a grant that helps our mentors and curriculum frameworks title 3 and title four we have some revolving funds uh the user fee revolving fund uh 220 000 i know there has been some conversation about user fees uh as part of the fy 23 budget that is not part of my presentations for intuition revolving the guidance revolving special education preschool and kindergarten tuition and then our building use and rental fees

31:39 is that it i think that’s the last slide exception we’ll go back to the questions we can

32:02 so so this will this will open it up for the public comment portion of the meeting uh so if you would like to comment or ask some questions of this budget you can use the raised hand function and i will ask that you say your full name and your address for the record as well jonathan letterman go ahead hi jonathan letterman uh united road um as a retired school committee member i sometimes get calls from parents teachers and other members of the community who are concerned about school related issues several weeks ago my phone started ringing with calls about your proposed

32:49 budget so i tried to take a look at it and zoomed into your last two joint income meetings what fincum told you very clearly was that your recurring budget ads beyond level services and your genuine needs were inadvisable that they would not support these ads they were polite but very insistent that you were putting the entire town’s budget at risk knowing what was coming in the following fiscal year next year’s budget is going to be a real problem for the entire town and they ask that you join them in focusing on next year or not this year you have chosen to ignore their guidance therefore i’m here today to address three issues first i’d like to ask you why you have not posted a full budget roll-up for public review what you have put online is a budget supplement not a budget it only shows new line items and increases over the

33:36 last year but not if they are at risk of the supplemental budget amount you’re proposing doesn’t pass its referendum for example there’s no line item in our superintendent’s cell for our superintendent’s salary or for that matter most of the line items from last year that are part of the more than 35 million foundational budget which items are in the foundational budget and which items are in the supplemental budget many of your new items could be supported the existing budget without a supplement this was always done during my more than a decade on the school committee and as recently as fiscal year 2020 we as your constituents have no reasonable way to assess the 46 million dollars you are proposing to spend and i believe as a result you are out of compliance with chapter 71 section 38n of the mass general laws which requires that you make a copy of your full budget

34:22 public no fewer than 48 hours before this hearing this is especially troubling because you didn’t publish the full budget last year either so we as a public are required to dig back through many previous years to even find out what you’re proposing to spend in the foundational budget this is the opposite of transparency second i’d like to ask you a question about our school funding what happens to our town budget if you choose to add benefits eligible but lower paid staff to our classrooms at twenty thousand dollars per year for each position do you realize that for these workers their salaries represent less than half of the actual cost of their positions and do you know that the other more than half of their cost comes in the form of benefits to retirement obligations but those are actually paid from the town budget not the school budget this is a large part of the reason why our finance committee

35:08 is so concerned about your proposed edition of administrators and especially so many lower paid but benefits eligible non-teaching staff when we add a teacher at 80 000 per year we pay benefits for just one person or their family and we gain a professional who directly teaches a classroom full of students but when for a lower paid but benefits eligible staff like attendance clerks and permanent substitute teachers of twenty thousand dollars a year each are added it is equivalent in salary but four times the cost and benefits of hiring a higher paid teacher but those costs hit the town budget not the school budget this completely derails our town budget putting at risk the funding necessary for non-school needs such as police fire highway and other town services and since you are adding aren’t since you aren’t adding class from teachers does

35:54 little to improve instruction for outcomes lastly i’d like to address your claim that anything less than your proposed budget addendum increases would be cutting bone that simply is not true if income has fully funded contractual increases for all existing staff and all existing line items it simply isn’t reasonable to propose new spending that doesn’t exist and then say cutting that same proposed new spending is a cut to the bone unfortunately i had no way to analyze your base budget as you have chosen not to publish it so instead i focused on your supplemental budget additions what you’ve decided to publish why have you decided that these new items are so essential to our schools how do you know i’d like to propose that one way to find out would be to do some benchmarking against other similar districts

36:40 districts districts using federal census data and a great tool provided for free by the massachusetts department of education called dart it is very easy to compare marblehead to other towns in terms of income and spending levels westford for example which ranks higher than we do is very similar to marblehead economically yet they spend two thousand less per student and rank significantly higher in all available measured academic outcomes this is just one example but a worthwhile place to start in terms of determining how other successful towns are spending their school dollars and why they’re seemingly able to do so much more with so much less shouldn’t we look at their budgets and see how they spend it so well and what they prioritize you could and should have done this earlier for years we have been aware of the declining school

37:26 enrollments in marblehead yet you are proposing to add a new highly paid staff many several new highly paid staff who are not direct classroom teachers as well as 12 or more lower paid but benefit eligible staff will add just as much to the town budget in terms of benefits as they cost for the entire salary so just those staff alone at more than a million dollars annually to the town budget forever you need to go back to the drawing board and listen to the advice of our town’s financial experts our finance committee you need to do real benchmarking against other comparable towns to find out where money should be best spent and you need to publish a line item budget that shows that the best interests of our students families and community are being addressed it’s impossible to know what’s in the budget if you don’t publish it thank you

38:14 did you respond to any of that sure this part of this budget for me represents what’s in the best interest of marblehead and its students i’m i consult with other districts but our stakeholders have determined that these are what our students need and so that as the superintendent is what i’m bringing forward for the students and residents of marblehead and so we are completely transparent i can have michelle send mr letterman whatever documentation he is requesting but this budget puts marblehead first not other communities so i totally understand that and i appreciate your response the problem is

39:06 so i guess i appreciate your comments but i don’t understand where the lineup budget is it has to by law it’s supposed to be published 48 hours before this meeting and looking at all of the documents i came down to the admin building at winter road looking and they were very nice but they didn’t have it and the fact that that hasn’t been published every single year i was on the committee for 12 years and all the way through the late uh for the third you know from 20 20 13 from 2013 all the way through to 2020 we used to have a line on a budget we could look at individual line items so a lot of the items that you guys are talking about which are very important and i agree with you could belong in an existing budget but instead it’s really hard to tell what’s at risk what’s going to go on a referendum and what’s part of the base budget there are

39:52 lots of things that you have great ideas about and i would support and i think most members of the community support but there are other items that might not be supported and i think that there has to be a clear delineation about which items are going to make it onto the ballot and which items are we going to get regardless and that hasn’t happened and i think i really think you’re out of compliance with not publishing that budget it’s without being able to see i brought up the example of the superintendent’s salary not because i’m picking on that doesn’t matter superintendents should be paid what they’re what they’re worth but it’s not even in the budget that you presented and normally you would expect you’d see the baseline budget the previous year’s budget and what the growth is for all positions not just the superintendent you would look at principles you’d look at teachers you’d look at the step in lane increases and they’re just there in aggregates and it’s not clear where do they which budget are they in are they

40:39 they which budget are they in the supplemental or are they in the base so i just i think that that needs to happen in order to get support from the community one way or another people need to understand

40:53 and that by the way was supposed to happen 48 hours before this meeting can we address that isn’t this available yeah the uh detailed budget binder has been available on would you road since uh december 10 i think michelle can you speak to them

41:13 yes our budget binders have been available since they were distributed to the school committee we’ve had an office copy in the office i actually added some final budget documents to them a couple days ago so there is a copy in the superintendent’s office that the admin assistant has available um the actual line at a budget i do want to reply to that because we do not break down the salary actual lines in the budget because we do have line item autonomy and therefore until we actually know the person in each particular position that particular line item is going to fluctuate so we do not determine that so i don’t want to put out i mean obviously the superintendent line item is not going to change unless we have a change in that position but we do not put out the individual line items because those

42:00 are going to fluctuate based on what what school each teacher is assigned to um we still haven’t gone through our staffing if we have any staffing moves for next year um we certainly know we do not we are not laying off any staff but um we do not know the actual allocation so we do not put that out there so that we’re putting out information that we know is not going to be correct as of july 1. so we roll up the prior year salary budget and carry that forward and then show you all the changes from there in terms of the salaries in terms of every other line that’s not a salary line it is detailed in that document so therefore we’re just not allocating 35 million if you want the 35 million i do have a report it’s exactly what the fy 22 budget is and therefore the changes

42:46 are listed below that on the budget summary document so i give the line item but i’m going to tell you they’re going to change before i actually post it for the new fiscal year so i totally understand that and i know that you have a line on a budget yourself as the budget director for the schools but that document could have been released in its you know estimated form that’s what a budget is right so you could talk about grade one grade two grade three in each school for elementary schools you could talk about the village school grade one grade two grade three grade four five and six right i mean that’s normally how the budget document is done and obviously there are different positions of different salary levels but those are relatively an aggregate well-defined and those are part of the base budget so here tonight you’re talking about a whole bunch of new spending and some of

43:32 that new spending could go into the base budget some of it can go into the supplemental budget but it’s not clear where anything belongs so if i was to say to you look i think you have too many um helper people whatever you want to call them and i use that as an example because i don’t want to pick a one category to pick on in one place i could say well maybe you should maybe our books look i 100 agree we need textbooks that cover 911 at the high school that’s a no-brainer right so that could belong somewhere in our textbook budget but we don’t know what the heck textbook budget is because that hasn’t been published so there are a whole bunch of line items that deserve public scrutiny that aren’t available now your point about coming down to road i did kind of nobody had that so this was yesterday and you can you know

44:19 i was i spent a little bit of time down there and i said you have a copy of the budget binder and it didn’t seem like it was available and if it is available why leave it in a binder down there instead of just posting a pdf of it on the district website 48 hours in advance so everybody can take a look at it i i think that to me that is the budget that needs to be published not just a narrative about these are the things we want and these are the things that you know we’d like to have and these are things we need and are they going to be at risk if they go on the ballot are these going to be things we’ll find no matter what i think no matter what happens whether the referendum passes or not we ought to have textbooks for real world cultures at the high school to cover 911. i don’t think it should be a risk so absolutely just in response then i

45:05 just want to let you know right now the budget that we’re putting forward is the one with the referendum with the override and all of those new items are additions to the budget so if that does not pass at this time we are planning on cutting of those we do not have any built-in savings from the current year budget because we do not have any retirements known for next year that are going to result in any attrition savings so there are no necessarily no necessary um savings that we know we can we can reallocate to another place so right now pretty much on the chopping block if this override would is not to go forward all of these new item requests that are listed in the detail so you’re telling me that if the override doesn’t pass you’re going to cut textbooks to cover 911 from next year’s budget

45:51 yeah jonathan i think you need to you know we’re asking the same questions over and over so if you can if you have any new questions you can put them forward but you know i don’t i don’t want to have you okay i’ll i’ll rephrase it and then i’ll drop off and just watch so what you’re basically saying is that there is nothing in your existing budget that should be changed only the new things are at risk and everything else that’s in the baseline budget is basically flawless and it isn’t going to be adjusted in aggregate budget amount that’s the understanding right now we may have a little bit of fluctuation and a little bit of ability but there’s there’s not much wiggle room there okay thank you i would just like to clarify that the budget documents were available they’ve been in binder at major road which has been past practice and so

46:38 people that wanted them could have access to oh just one other thing can you just reiterate um just to answer jonathan’s question about the benefits piece because that was a good presentation for new employees because we are covering that we’re not expecting the town to come that’s great um i know i have julia fiera’s uh panda but i’m not sure somebody put it down or julia if you lowered it

47:08 um really quick i just want to confirm and i think john just did confirm this but i just because this this is such a procedural thing um i just want to confirm the the budget books we received is what if someone went to widget road they would look at but correct like that the no difference like what we have if someone goes there is what they get no difference whatsoever that is true yes the only thing that has been added to there is the budget documents that were published on the website but yes okay

47:50 hi all um i was just really curious to tune in i wasn’t actually planning on on speaking tonight but i um and i don’t want to get into to to the minutia and i don’t know enough about the details of this year’s budget to to even be able to do that but just bringing it back up to oh and i’m sorry sarah i didn’t i didn’t um meredith tedford 40 locust street um

48:14 i just want like bringing it up to 50 000 feet um i i appreciate that there is even a discussion around bringing an override and and you know for for those of you who are on the committee you know when i was on the committee a number of years ago that was we were we were trying to have these conversations back then so it’s obvious that some of these needs have been you know long overdue and ongoing and and i appreciate the effort that is being made to really advocate for what um teachers and principals are asking for and i think that’s really important for the public to understand that these are not new requests in any way they’re things that

49:00 have been deferred for many years so you know i i’m personally very appreciative that the committee is willing to even have the conversation but that said from from you know a sky-high view there is still the very real issue that jonathan highlighted which is this disconnect between the town’s ability to actually continue to fund some of these auxiliary costs related to some of the override requests um and that that conflict is only getting worse so i think it might be helpful especially for a lot of people watching who haven’t maybe been following closely um some of the subcommittee meetings can you kind of explain or clarify a little bit your plan moving forward to address this difference

49:47 difference difference for both you know next year’s budget and ongoing when it will get worse on the town side if there’s not some big changes in the town budget overall

50:04 yep i think the town is been very transparent and clear that they are going for an override next year there’s not a way around that to address the structural difficulties or disconnect or challenges in town and so the interim town manager has repeatedly told me that the interviewing committee for the new town managers making it very clear that the structural challenges in town will be one of the first uh issues that he or she faces and i think the outgoing town administrator was very clear that if not this year then definitely next year and so those will continue to be collaborative conversations with the town and the school department

50:50 school department the school department is prepared to move forward this year and not wait another year for our children to have the exemplary education that they deserve and in an ideal world yes um we would be doing this together um but we have put these needs forward and i’m not sure how we say we’ve we’ve made these known and i would agree meredith has pointed out that these have been known some of them i go back to matt fox asking for a reading teacher last year and was giddy because after eight years he finally got it that we’re putting these things forward and to say them to our students and our teachers but not this year

51:37 so that’s why the school department and under my recommendation is moving forward this year with the budget requests that will be thank you meredith nancy smith

51:55 um hi um i just have one quick question can you just sit here can you hear me yeah can you state your address really quickly thank you yeah um i just have a question about um how you how you handle your school lunch program i know it’s kind of all part of the budget but the school lunch program should really kind of be running itself so there shouldn’t be that should be something that should be kind of like a release and you should be able to be you know taking like indirect costs against them for shared costs how are you managing that program that’s a great question nancy i’m glad that you post it for the last two years the lunch program has been

52:42 under federal funding that during the pandemic they have been supporting school lunch programs but i’m gonna ask michelle uh for historical information on the lunch program figures so the school lunch yep the school lunch program is a federal program um we we can only spend those funds obviously on certain things um we do charge indirect costs to it the only thing that that fund does not is not able to um absorb is the director the food service director’s salary so that is a line item within our operating budget other than that it is a self-sustaining fund um it does cover the benefit costs of our employees and what not in the retirement costs of our employees so it is self-sustaining um

53:28 we do not necessarily charge like any of my time the the business office clerk’s time to it we certainly could but honestly that um fund has run very close to breaking even it is not a fund that makes a lot of surplus plus revenues at the end of the year so that’s why we absorb the food service director’s salary within the operating budget um how do you market it to get more kids to participate in the program because i think that’s a big big issue for reimbursement um i used to audit for jesse so i know all about like the school lunch and how to run it like a business and everything and we would go out and train them so i’m trying to find ways where you can alleviate

54:15 alleviate alleviate some of this burden by teaching these directors how to run it like a business so even if it does break even great that’s what you want it’s basically covering running the program so it requires you know a lot of um effort in how you market it the type of food you buy what you do i’ve dealt with a lot of

54:43 food service directors like in the milton public schools she was wonderful she’d get fresh fish every day the kids were eating fresh fish and it and she was running it really very well so that it was um it was really bringing in revenue to cover everything they were able to you know build reimbursement for everything so that’s that’s something you know you can look at as a way to generate and really offset costs because i know in the past the school department has had trouble in marblehead with the school lunch running in the red and it’s been you know it’s been a rough one so i think that’s something if you reach out to dessie um

55:29 they could come out and you know do training show them how to procure things um how to market it and things like that and going to a lot of the trainings you yourself could go to those trainings as well absolutely we are actually looking at um closing this year with a surplus balance so we are actually doing really well um but we do we always look to continue to how to increase participation and that’s something that will be ongoing and we’re actually searching for a new food service director right now so that will be part of our interview process and um you know set up for the new year so absolutely so thank you for your time thank you i’m not sure if it’s written in the context of the public budget hearing but since michelle opened the door uh nancy we can take this offline but we are

56:14 looking for a new food service director and you might be a really good volunteer on the search committee so if you’re interested in that please reach out to my office and nancy can i just get you to give us your address for the record

56:32 uh 55 commercial streets sorry i’m sorry i should have said that first thank you very much sarah um and i know when when we were it’s hard to talk about it because you know we’ve had the federal lunch program for the last two years but going be back before that the last few years um kind of embarrassed to say those numbers are still stuck in my head i don’t quite know why but um we always self-funded that with the exception of like michelle said the food service director and there was always a tiny line item like eight thousand dollars for those were the students at the end of the year had unplayed balances which we would have to zero out but um and that’s going back two or three four years prior to that it was always level funded and again i’m a little embarrassed that i still know

57:17 that eight thousand dollar figure in my in my mind from all the way back then but um but it in the scope of things that’s pretty pretty self-funded i would say thank you nancy jessica benedetto

57:37 hi uh jessica benedetto ate bradley road i similarly to mr letterman’s comment i am a little confused about uh the budget on hearing this presentation and again i want to specifically refer to um busing as an item within the budget i know that part of the budget was to ask for an additional bus driver and it seems like from the presentation that that additional bus driver is part of the additional ass that we’re looking at doing an override for however the bus driver position was part of the budget from last year so it’s really not additional we’re already down one bus driver and it looks like we’re

58:24 trying to pay them more which i i applaud that’s a really positive thing however um it doesn’t seem like that’s an additional ask if we were down a bus driver from last year as a parent that was part of the pay to ride program for elementary school students this year i can give you my feedback for free without having to pay for an audit i can tell you that a busing system which is by the way required from the state for students who are more than two miles from school a busing system that takes kids all the way around marblehead neck before going to old town before getting

59:09 them to their house which takes more than an hour to get one and a half miles from village school to our residence i can tell you that that is not an efficient system and adding one additional bus driver that we’re short hopefully will remedy that system but it will not do anything to actually improve the number of students that we bus in this town and it won’t do anything to try to bus any students beyond grade six that are not mandated by the state to be bussed i’ve spoken to several members of this community including older people that grew up in marblehead who have told me that students used to be bus to middle

59:56 school and high school if they lived two miles or more from school and that is something that was cut out of previous budgets and that’s something that we need to think about bringing back for families in this town with working parents to decrease the number of uh single use cars that are idling during school pickup and drop-off times this will help the environment it will help working families and this should be something that is prioritized in our budget

1:00:30 do you want to address the bus driver piece yeah i saw michelle unmuted so i’ll have the show thank you um so we do currently have two vacant dress bus driver positions um one full time and one part time in this current budget we also are asking for an additional ad for next year so the bus drivers in the current year budget request that remain vacant would help alleviate the current busing situation and the length of time right now we only have two bus drivers in the afternoon sometimes some parents may have noticed that we’ve had to double up on some of our bus runs which is not convenient it takes a long time for a short number of kids to make at home after school the additional bus driver for next

1:01:17 year’s budget for the fy 23 would be for the pay to write program specifically so we can expand that program so that is why you see a vacancy this year and you also see an ad for next year

1:01:30 thank you michelle thank you jessica uh jeff st george hi good evening everybody jeff st george 29 west shore drive i’ll be quick as possible so you know as a special education parent um you know our concern is the lack of new special education personnel professional development in the absence of its specific mention in our strategic objectives just it just seems pretty glaring considering the out of district tuition spending my biggest concern is that i feel like our team chairs caseloads are too large our specialists have too many students and inclusion does not exist with kids

1:02:15 with complex ieps you know as we push forward with our dei efforts which i fully support um is the the challenge with student challenges get left behind in these discussions you know a special education parent i feel like many academic and therapeutic programs are available exist that can help kids in this district and keep kids in healthy peer groups the idea of an override for special education parents had always meant that these programs and additions could finally implemented and our children could finally feel like all other students i would implore you to re-examine your ask for the student services portion of the budget

1:03:01 i would ask that our district finally worked towards the long-promised modern cotaught model the model would save our district money in the long term and bring us closer to meeting our equity goals while i fully support dei coordinator i struggle with the budget allocation to that if we’re not supporting the uh special education support you know as an example um seriously we’re involved in the district heavily we all know that dan bauer is a proven successful administrator despite his underfunding our high school turns out some of the best and brightest students in the state

1:03:49 when dan bauer needs curriculum coaches i’m concerned why we didn’t provide them i think this should be a district priority you know i ask that we fund the curriculum coaches position as part of the fy 23 funding thank you jeff john did you have anything to add on that or can i mention the next person um i would want to give paula donnelly an opportunity if she has anything that she would like to do in terms of the requests put forward by the special services department sure um thank you so um thank you jeff for the the feedback it’s not um certainly it it can often feel that

1:04:35 staffing is a major issue and i know that many of the the headlines for the year have been the challenges with finding people to fill open positions but one of the things that i’ve been looking at this year and what i would want to point out is that on balance across the district we do have incredibly favorable teacher-to-student ratios so just for teachers tutors and paraprofessionals across the district we have a 5.1 student-to-staff ratio just for special education students when you add in all of our related service providers that ratio is 3.7 students to every special education staff member um so the i feel that we have a wealth like

1:05:21 an embarrassment of riches in some ways when you just look at the numbers of the highly qualified incredibly talented staff i think where it can feel inefficient and feel overwhelming is when it gets into looking at schedules and looking at how we’re allocating staff across the buildings and across the course of their day so you know i do certainly agree that we want to promote as much co-teaching as possible we do want to continue to ensure that we’re maximizing all of the authentic genuine inclusive opportunities that we can for kids with complex needs so a lot of the funding around professional development would be grant funded that’s why it’s not a particular line item in this budget that’s why it wasn’t an ask

1:06:07 ask ask for me kind of knowing that you know there are certainly there are always going to be fiscal challenges but i do feel that in terms of purely the number of staff that we’ve got a ton of really great people and we want to continue to look at how we use those people effectively and efficiently thank you thank you and it certainly wasn’t a comment about the ability or professionalism of our staff no certainly not and i didn’t trust me i i’m well aware of how how well they do for my daughters so um that was not the intent at all i just want to make sure that we’re supporting children as much as possible um you know again i love the dei efforts

1:06:53 i just want to make sure we’re allocating funds where they are most needed yep and i think that a huge thing to remember is that disability is part of any dei initiative so supporting dei does mean supporting students with disabilities as well sure so can we talk about um i know mr bauer had asked for a couple curriculum support coaches at the high school which i didn’t see on the budget did we was there a decision made on that or it’s just not seeing it um i think that emily had met with dan bauer last week and talked about reintroducing curriculum liaisons rather than two director or coordinator positions

1:07:38 but the dei piece was voted by the committee and david had brought up a stipend that isn’t reflected in this budget i assume that after the public budget hearing um if there are changes that are going to be proposed by the committee they would take it up before their vote on the april 7th meeting that’s correct okay thank you all appreciate all your help thank you jeff thank you paula kim day

1:08:12 uh kim day 18 liberty road um i also want to thank you all for taking a look at this budget and being willing to put forth potentially an override this year because as meredith mentioned earlier there are a lot of items on here that have been needs for several several years and so i am encouraged to see that some of these asks are being incorporated you may have just answered my question dr bucky with relation to the curriculum directors at the high school i think that when i started to dig into this proposed budget while i’m encouraged by a lot of the items i questioned some of the others and why there were priorities given to things such as the dei

1:08:58 position over the curriculum directors at the high school i mean that has been it used to be positions that were held at the high school and then they were cut from the budget when we had to make um tough calls and and you know make some cuts um and they have not been brought back and every year the answer is you know this just isn’t the year so while i also fully support dei i i wonder why we didn’t evaluate looking into having um a consultant in that role and instead of hiring like a full-time position where as jonathan letterman indicated there would you know the town would then be taking on the benefits that would and the insurance that would have to cover that individual and what why can’t we do

1:09:44 what potentially other towns are doing um to get that dei instruction incorporated into the schools by working with other surrounding communities and collectively hiring a consultant to to get some of those initiatives started into the school so um i guess you know i just i just want to make sure that the school department and the school committee is being really really thoughtful about these asks not that you haven’t done a ton of work to this to date but i think i’m just really anticipating the uphill battle that you’re going to have in convincing voters as to why we need to support this override if in fact that’s what you end up having it takes to town meeting in may thank you thank you kim uh julia

1:10:35 hi thank you um sarah i as an employee i was wondering if this would be an appropriate time i’d like to comment on the diversity equity and i believe this would be appropriate okay thank you um so hello i’m julia ferreira a member of our district’s diversity equity and inclusion team and i’m here here in regards to the proposed budget item for dei director as outlined in our plan for success we want to promote equity and ensure inclusion by acknowledging and abetting all forms of diversity throughout the district we’ve made great strides to promote equity and ensure inclusion through the work we’ve done and the professional learning opportunities we’ve offered this year however there’s more work to do as evidenced by the recent incidents in our

1:11:21 schools in our society i believe the real work that is happening at the school level is progressing because of the relationships our team has with our students and staff most recently we successfully established school-based dei teams to help build capacity yet i fully acknowledge that there is much more work to do much more work ahead of us if the dei director’s position is approved i envision working with a colleague who has established relationships within our community as well as deep subject matter knowledge who will promote inclusion and equity inside and outside the classroom in order to advance our mission thank you thank you julie um emily d

1:12:07 hi everyone emily dewitt um 154 atlantic ave thank you very much for having um a hearing forum tonight that that both takes questions and answers them we really appreciate that i think a lot of things that are our concern have been covered i just if i could lend my voice to the chorus echoing the need for dan bauer’s request for curriculum support um i would like to do that now um i you know the curriculum support is to me a priority in this budget um and i’m not trying to slight any other budget priority but at this time i find

1:12:53 it is an ass that keeps being brought forward year after year and the need is very high and um i just wanted to voice that that is a priority for our family i know it’s a priority for many other families and i just saw a line through it on the budget that was published and i didn’t know if that line meant that it says these will be further defined for a future budget but i wasn’t clear on that exactly if that was just totally taken off the table the slides at the end of your show went sort of quickly there at the end and i i didn’t catch if i missed something or if that’s just totally taken out of the budget um so thank you for clarifying yeah um

1:13:39 as i indicated emily met with dan bauer and the need for two directors um he thinks that he can fill that with existing personnel that already have established relationships within the building are known as colleagues to do some curriculum work rather than teach five classes maybe they teach three and so um there would be a revised budget pass for that that would be brought forward so the line through the amount on the on the budget proposal is just meant to indicate that it’s not off the table it’s just being refined okay thank you thank you emily uh jim day you have your hand raised again

1:14:25 did you meet me i just kept it up because i don’t think anybody answered my question related to did you look into um filling that position for a dei coordinator by working with other school direct districts or by hiring a consultant versus a full-time employee and can you explain a little bit more about like what that role actually is and how they are going to be incorporated on a day-to-day basis and be student-facing or working with the teachers like how is that position going to work exactly yeah we did we explored several models and we thought bringing a director on board was the best choice for our district and we as uh julia

1:15:13 indicated we’ve had ongoing uh dei work um at the district level and then at school-based teams and having someone come in um as a director to support uh this work i will um ask dan murphy who is on the dei team to talk a little bit about their efforts and why we decided as a director position as opposed to making it something less or not as important as a director-level position

1:15:47 um great i i’m happy to i also want to i see one of my colleagues on the dei team maggie dobin’s hand up too so i’m sure she’s going to have some thoughts on this because this has been actually the this position was the topic of our last meeting together and i think um it was julia that said this position really our vision for it is grounded in relationships and so as you talk about student-facing work a consultant cannot provide that consultants come in and they provide the professional development to the adults and then the adults are trusted to carry out that work during the academic day and the adults on the dei team we all have our own roles and responsibilities

1:16:33 during the academic day so we we really are looking for someone to join our team and be part of our team and then be able to operationalize what we envision for students and for that collaborative partnership in the classroom for teachers that support to come to the student level so i’m gonna i’m gonna let maggie talk a little bit about that as well because we’ve we just talked about this together as a team that why your hand is up maggie that was why my hand was up okay and i i mimic all of the things that uh both julia and anand have mentioned here i also want to say that something that a consultant can’t do is

1:17:18 know the culture and climate of our district and knowing marblehead and being intimately connected with our students and our faculty is something that makes that position unique to having an in-house person you cannot achieve that as a consultant who’s seeing things at a distance who’s traveling between districts it’s just not feasible to do that with a plan for success written as it is with dei as an important component the only way we can achieve this successfully and to the highest level of success is to have somebody who can oversee all of that and many people have addressed looking at curriculum consultants and coaches tonight and that is also something that would be

1:18:05 part of the job of a dei person would be looking at the curriculum the scope and sequence pre-k to 12 and making sure that the curriculum choices we’re making are diverse or inclusive are equitable that they would be overseeing all of that and helping teachers then get that new curriculum and understand how to implement it at the classroom level so this is a very student-facing position i think and probably one that’s going to bring people into many classrooms getting to know and support our students and as paula also mentioned inclusion is a huge part of dei work it’s one of the three initials of dei um and so i don’t want that to be overlooked that it’s just about

1:18:52 wraiths and lgbtq issues which i think is a misnomer about what dei does i appreciate that i haven’t heard that level of detail before and that context is helpful so thank you um maggie can you just talk a little bit about how dei and sel come together because i know we are talking about that and what that can do for our district also yeah i mean i think in order to have a really successful dei program it needs to be systemic and again that’s something that an in-house dei person can work on it’s not something that’s separate from it is infused and part of the fabric of

1:19:38 who we are sel is part of dei in order to have effective dei work you have to be empathetic empathy is one of castle’s five core competencies so if you don’t understand sel then you bei can never happen it’s about being self-aware and recognizing um who you are as as a person and what you bring to your classroom and what you know i’m also a parent um those are all the things that we we’re worried about our children right now um and and these this language i think are buzzwords in the educational community but i also heard someone say tonight um

1:20:24 you know why are we doing this we are the last district in this immediate area to look at a dei position and yet we’re marblehead we should we should be cutting edge that’s what everyone here is saying tonight we want to be at the top and we’re lacking something that’s bringing us to the top that has potential to make us better and so to me it seems like a very essential component of making a better educational program for our children um and i do think there’s a big infusion a big braiding of sel and dei it is impossible to have a successful successful program of either one without interweaving them thank you maggie nancy smith you have your hand back up

1:21:17 hi um this is my 65 commercial street um i just have talking about this dei person um maggie giving a little bit more detail about it i i’m seeing um a little bit more of the um necessity of it but at the same time what i’m concerned about you know in today’s world is the bullying that goes on um with a lot of our children now in their identity and this new culture of how they’re identifying themselves that’s non-binary and different things and i think will this position address that as well will that

1:22:04 be part of it because that too um i think involves educating the students on inclusion and acceptance and diversity and understanding because when they head off to college especially at the high school level they’re going to be thrust into a lot of diversity in the college level and they the college level university they deal with this all the time and address it so that’s where um that’s where i’d like to see how that is going to be and you know starting in the middle school elementary um because i’m seeing

1:22:53 these kids really um at a younger age um [Music] being very very um [Music] angry i guess is the word and very mean um more so than you know when i was a kid growing up and i think that’s that’s where i’m asking is this going to be part of this dei you know team is just going to be addressed um as well because i think that’s a major major component that’s going to filter into that as well

1:23:32 that will be a critical piece of it is a piece of the dei work being done across the district now to make sure that our schools are safe and welcoming for all students and that they’re free of bullying and harassment um but the director position would be a critical piece of that at the district level and then as maggie so stupidly pointed out getting into the classroom because we do see it as a stupid facing position as well

1:24:01 he’s got her head and i if i can just add to that i can mimic what dr bucky is saying and yes and that is again thank you nancy for bringing that up because that is the sel piece of dei you just outlined it if we don’t learn to be self-aware and we don’t learn to develop empathy in our youngest children they don’t grow up to have that and what a shame that right now i actually had to leave one event hosted by marblehead to be here tonight because right now just ending was an lgbtq event that was intended to help boost the empathy of our town and understand our student body and how we can best support them

1:24:48 and another thing that a dei person would do would be make sure that there’s not conflict in all the areas of our school that we want for our faculty and staff and families to be a part of the fact that i had to decide is an issue in and of itself thank you mike i don’t think i see you any other thing correct i do not see any other hands as well um so i would like to thank everyone who has attended tonight and thank you dr bucky for the explanation of all of the additions to the budget and where it’s at this year um again we will be meeting next week for a regularly scheduled uh school committee meeting at which point we will

1:25:33 deliberate and a vote on this budget will be on the agenda um so you know we encourage people to continue to reach out this week uh via email um you know or i know dr bucky there was a few emails you were answering today about meeting with people so you know um people are encouraged to reach out to us as we would like to hear um from everyone um i actually have one more hand up now um alexis singer hi thank you sorry i couldn’t get it to raise um two things first of all i just wanted to say thanks for the update on the high school and the like taking a look at the curriculum requests there uh having a high schooler uh sorry alexis singer 22 avenue having a high schooler and

1:26:19 also a village student and i really appreciate taking a look at that again and just wanted a quick question i wanted to see if there if some can just clarify the social studies curriculum at the village school i guess specifically k through 6. um that curriculum is not in this um budget request is can someone just verify that for me that is correct okay um and is there is is that in your under any potential discussion or is that something that’s being pushed off for a later date i’ll let nan speak to that that’s a great question um the work that we’re doing at this time aligned to our plan for success

1:27:04 this year is dedicated for teachers to be going through their scope developing a scope and sequence the district of marblehead does not currently have one so we are constructing one at this time we are almost there where we now will be able to say marvel head has a k through 12 scope and sequence which is an enormous amount of work that the teachers and building leaders have done in small teams throughout this year next year’s work is looking at that scope and sequence and aligning where we are expected to be by the state standards and then looking at our materials and what we need to align to that instruction so next year through the plan for success

1:27:50 we’ll be developing those curriculum maps and aligning the materials and so maybe by the budget time next year maybe we’ll have a sense of whether that is a priority it will depend on other alignments and pieces that are either in place or not in place but it’s definitely going to be coming down the road in the meantime we are um using teacher we’re developing teacher created materials that are aligned to the scope and sequence so that we are filling we’re back filling a gap that’s been in the district um for a bit but next year going into it um we will have resources for teachers

1:28:36 to use to um that are will be aligned to the scope and sequence and then we’re also looking at piloting a program right now that’s being offered through deci um for fifth sixth and seventh grade so teachers are looking at that proposal at this time to see if that we can get some teams and um jesse to approve us that is an application process but we are in the process of applying for that to look at that curriculum and be able to pilot that so um it is a good question i think since i’ve been here we have made some really tremendous shifts in in the materials and resources that we’ve provided our staff and they’ve done a tremendous job k through

1:29:24 12 adopting a new math program we are implementing a new writing program we have a new data assessment so now we’re having data chats and conversations about using data to drive instruction to bring forward an entire new curriculum and ask for that in this budget to be implemented for next year i feel would be disingenuous to our teachers who have just endured two years of a pandemic and have made many shifts in instruction and in curriculum and materials and expectations um i just don’t think we have the bandwidth uh to do that well so um and it’s not completely aligned yet to the plan that we’re putting forward for the district that will carry

1:30:10 us for many years okay thank you i know i appreciate that explanation and i understand the part of the creating the scope and sequence first and i think just obviously this falls into all of the other concepts that you guys have discussed tonight and it would be yeah great to have that aligned with the other you know programs that you’re trying to pull together and to make this a complete so thank you thanks for the update on that thank you alexa emily dwight i see your hand is raised again hi yes um thank you for taking one last question i don’t mean this in any way to be flippant i’m just trying to figure out why the ask is happening particularly at this moment for a dei director

1:30:57 but i think the case has been made clear repeatedly this evening of the need for this work in the district and i think maggie was very articulate when she said many area surrounding districts have this and as is often pointed out this is marble bed and we are different and to make it a binary choice of no dei director or curriculum coordinators i don’t see it that way i think that it is important work if we see some of the incidents that have occurred in the district over the last couple months principals putting out messages of things that aren’t inclusive that aren’t respectful of diversity that don’t make safe and welcoming schools i’m not sure how

1:31:43 how how we could question the need for such a position in the district and not to diminish it to the role of a consultant

1:31:56 so it’s being put above curriculum that is not correct it’s not a binary choice between curriculum or d okay thank you let’s see so the di director also does curriculum i don’t know if that was said before but that’s part of the sorry that’s part of the responsibility to make sure that our curriculum is um you know includes everything you should do so that is a huge part so it’s not like we’re saying one or the other and we’re also talking about adding back in the curriculum directors at the high school but just in the way a different way that dan bauer actually suggested so

1:32:42 i just want to get that clear it’s all pretty

1:32:47 exactly sorry exactly sorry all right i do not see any further hands raised so i will close our budget public hearing at 8 33 pm and i will just one more time remind everyone that we will be back next week uh at the same time and i believe we’re pulling off a hybrid meeting again hopefully um and this that would be when the school equity debates the budget discusses it and hopefully votes on it so thank you for your time tonight everyone and i will adjourn us also at 8 33 pm