School Committee: March 27, 2024

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

0:00 You could ask for audience participation on the sales Horizon. All right, so I have called us to order and I wanna thank the League of Women Voters and the moderator, um, Elizabeth Foster Nolan, who have given up their time to help not only organize, but come and moderate tonight. I’m just gonna give everybody a reminder that the topics of, um, personnel issues and anything that would be deemed confidential, uh, via executive session or for other reasons, um, we cannot talk about. Without further ado, Ms. Foster? No. Oh, um, good evening. I’m Catherine Redmond, representing the League of Women Voters, and on their behalf, I want to thank the school committee for hosting us for this forum

0:46 during what I know we all know is a very, very busy time of year. So we appreciate it. And it was a great pleasure that I introduced Elizabeth Foster Nolan, who you’ve talked to already, um, who comes to us from as a co-chairman of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters and is a very experienced moderator. So, Elizabeth, Thank you, Catherine. I appreciate it. And thank you to the way Mar Marblehead school committee for, um, allowing me to be here and to moderate this forum. And I thank the Marble Head League of Women Voters for inviting me. So, my name is Elizabeth Foster Nolan. I am one of the co-presidents of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. I have been with the League of Women Voters for over 14 years, and I’ve served as co-president

1:33 or President since July of 2020. Yay. Good time to join, be Co-president. Um, but, um, and I was trained as a moderator by the League of Women Voters and have moderated candidate forums for cities, for towns, as well as a couple of congressional races. My professional career, just to give you some background, started as a social worker working in group homes and working in community apartments. I then made a pivot. I went to law school. Might not see the connection there, but, um, I graduated from law school in, uh, Pittsburgh in 1990. I practiced law, um, for many years until I decided I wanted to shift my focus back. And I wanted to work with associates more to help them become the best associate that they could be.

2:20 So I took the first job as the Professional Development Director for a mid-size law firm in Boston. And that’s when I officially became a recovering lawyer. Takes a while to get over that, but I am a recovering lawyer. I do not practice. I have not practiced for probably 20 years, but once a lawyer, they say always a lawyer, you cannot escape. Um, again, thank you for agreeing to participate this evening. Um, the League of Women Voters is a non-partisan organization. We do not support or oppose any political party or candidate at any level of government. The league also encourages informed and active participation in government at all age, all levels. And that is what we are hoping is going to happen tonight. Education for people about the way the

3:07 Marblehead School Committee. So I live in Weymouth. I do not vote in Marblehead. Um, I am blessed to be in the town of, uh, where Abigail Smith Adams was born and was courted by John Adams. She’s not from Quincy, she’s from Weymouth. I just like to make that very clear for people. He came to Weymouth. Um, I really have no direct connection to Marblehead. However, I have very fond memories because as a child, and I’m dating myself here, I used to be in the boat with my dad as we were towing the, the turnabouts up to Marblehead for Marblehead Race Week. So we’re going a little far back, but I do have fond memories of of doing that. Um, so I also really just now want to go through briefly the process.

3:53 How did this all come together? Um, questions for the school committee were sent directly to the league. Uh, the information about this form was publicized in the Marblehead current Marblehead Weekly news, the school committee website, as well as the League of Women Voters of Marblehead Facebook page. The deadline to submit questions was March 22nd. Well, we received over 50 questions. As you can imagine, we had several questions that were either the same or they were similar. So a small group of Marblehead League members reviewed all questions and categorize them into topic areas. We took the same similar questions and combined them into one or two questions.

4:40 So if you sent in a question, you are not gonna see your exact same question. But we did incorporate those questions into all of the questions that we are gonna be asking this evening. Um, and then some of the questions we will ask for response from each of the members, and I will let you know that it’ll be a quick response, but I will let you know that, um, I may be doing some follow up questions if there are things that we would like to get a little more clarification on. And then, um, also we will, when we do ask questions, I will ask if people want to take that question. And we’ll ask for two of you to then answer that. We’re not gonna do everything with all five of you. ‘cause we’d be here till midnight and you guys would be having to, you know, do your business meeting really,

5:27 really late, which we know that that’s not gonna work out well. But, um, for the public school committee members did not receive these questions in advance. They did receive the categories for the questions, but that was it. So these que the questions they’re hearing tonight or the first time, um, that they will be hearing them. Um, all participants on Zoom, um, will be muted or are muted already. And I look forward to an informative evening. Um, so we will start with questions related to the interim superintendent search and retention of leadership in the Marvel Head Schools. I will direct the first question to the chairperson, Ms. Fox, if there’s someone else who should answer the question, please defer to

6:13 that school committee member. So here we go. In specific detail, could you please lay out the scope and timing of the interim superintendent search as outlined by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, which will be aiding you in the process? Okay. So the, um, the advertisement, which is our language that we developed that kind of highlights Marblehead, um, what size town we are, what’s our budget, um, where are we geographically located, what are the programs or initiatives we have going on that was released to, um, the Mass Association of School Committees about four weeks ago. They took the job description

6:59 for superintendent right from Desi because it’s pretty prescriptive about what it is. And they put it out on all their platforms, on their website at weekly, um, school spring, all, all the places they have, um, access to. And they’re in the process of compiling those resumes. The posting will be open until, I think it belie, uh, I believe it reads April 12th or filled. Um, so on April 12th, they’ll take those resumes, they’ll compile them, um, in the packets the way they do. And we will be meeting that, that following week is school vacation week. So we will be posting a meeting the beginning of the week. We come back. Um, looking at my dates here, just

7:46 so I can give you the 20 seconds. I think it’s the 22nd. Um, we will be, we will be meeting, um, I believe on the 22nd that I have to confirm that date. We, um, but we, I believe we’ll be meeting on the 27th or 22nd. It will be a public meeting. Um, we’ll have looked through those resumes. We’ll decide who we wanna bring forward for public interviews. Um, and then we’ll conduct all the interviews in public. It will be, there will also be an opportunity for lots of public feedback during that period. Um, when we do a full superintendent church, they do an entire day in district. That’s for a, uh, like a three year position. This is a one year interim position. So it’s somewhat tru truncated. There wouldn’t be, you know, that 14 hour day in district.

8:31 But we will be organizing a time, um, for the public to come and ask questions of the candidates as well as staff, and then give feedback via either a written form and also there will be a Google, um, form that people will be able to give feedback on. The school committee will get that feedback. We’ll look at that. We’ll combine, you know, that with our own results from our interview. Um, the next step from there would be to call references. And, um, if at that point we, we know that we wanna take action, we can take action at that point. Or we could do a second round of interviews if whatever we, if deemed to be next,

9:16 it says detailed enough. Yep. That, I believe that is detailed. Thank you. And you actually answered my next question, so I’m gonna skip, okay. My third question, which I would actually like each of you to answer this one, um, with a brief, uh, sentence or two, what are the top two qualities you are looking for in an interim superintendent? And I will start here with Mr. Williams. Okay. Um, I think they need to have, uh, good communication and teamwork skills, right. To work with, with everyone that, that we need to. And, um, I’d also like to see someone who has a really good strategic background who can kind of lay a good path for what is possible, where we want to go, and then help us with the steps to get there. Great. Thank you Mr. Otto.

10:02 I think, um, one thing I’d look for is somebody who’s quick to think on their feet. ‘cause I think a superintendent makes a lot of decisions in the course of a day. And I also think they have to, as Al said, uh, good communication skills to be able to translate what they’re doing to the public, to the teachers, to us. Thank you, Ms. Fox. Um, I have always, you know, been of the mindset that you hire for a personality. You can, you know, people can acquire skills to a certain extent, but, you know, a person’s leadership style is their leadership style, and that’s not gonna change. So, you know, for where we are as a district right now, I think a leadership style that really values the knowledge of our other administrators and of our staff and of our community members right now.

10:49 And is willing to have discussions instead of just definitively saying, it’s my decision. This is what I decide. I think it’s really important for someone to have that personality, to be able to identify the right idea, but not need to have the right idea if you know what I if, if that makes sense. And then also understand really what are the elements of any strategic plan, not necessarily a five year strategic plan, but what are the elements, you know, is it actionable? Are there timelines? Are there budget drivers? Because I think that’s, that’s a piece that we’ve sometimes been missing, um, in the eyes of the public and really need to be able to make these theoretical ideas actionable. Thank you. Um, I’m a little more, I think esoteric.

11:36 Um, I am looking for someone who has good judgment, which is not something sort of piggybacking on what Sarah’s talking about. Not something that we can teach or train. It’s something that’s innate, but it’s very important and critical to being a successful superintendent is having good judgment. And the second thing would be experience in personnel management. Having demonstrated experience that can be described in managing challenging personnel situations.

12:06 Ms. Do? So my first thing really would be that they have experience. Um, as a superintendent, if I could use that for both things that I think are important, um, I would, I think that is one big, giant, huge thing we have learned. Having that experience. Um, and, and not just a couple of years, but having, having a good solid chunk of experience. I also think similar, I guess to what Jen and Sarah said, my second piece would be something that’s more of a feeling about the person and their style when you’re asking situational questions and looking for a response from them. Those are my favorite kinds of questions to ask because that’s really how you get a feel for the type of person that, the type of leadership style they’re going to have, the type of judgment that they’re going to bring.

12:53 Um, so my goal would be to ask some of those pointed questions to ensure we have someone that’s going to be able to really kind of do all the things that everybody else said here. Thank you. Um, what specific strategies is the school committee using to attract, develop, mentor, and retain executive leadership in the Marblehead public schools? And for this, I’m not just talking about your superintendent search in for the interim superintendent, but for the other leadership positions that are key to running a a school.

13:29 Is That, is there someone, is this one for everybody? Every, A couple people will take. Who would like to begin? Alright. Um, so I think as, as we have turnover, um, you know, we seek to find out what’s going on. One big piece that I have heard and other people may be hearing different things is, um, the, what has felt like the last few years, constant need to reduce budgets and do layoffs, um, has been difficult for staff members here to each year be facing, okay, this is this round of cuts. And then what’s next year gonna be, um, for leadership to constantly kind of be making those decisions and being presented to that

14:15 and not having the capabilities to build in new strategic ways. Because we’re really just, okay, what can we get with along without this year? That’s been one, one administrator used the word demoralizing. That’s been really hard. So the more we can advocate and educate people about, um, funding, you know, I think it is, is helpful. And then, um, this next one’s gonna be uncomfortable and I apologize for that, but we’re hearing a lot of our administrators saying the vitriol that they’re receiving or hearing out in the public, um, you know, is, is hard for them to get work done Too. I’m just gonna, um, do as a follow up and also for the next person,

15:01 ‘cause we would like to hear from somebody else. Are there specific strategies that are being used to help with this leadership development? What, what issue that could become a vacuum?

15:15 So for me, a strategy is, you know, to keep advocating for funding and to keep trying to have conversations with the public. You know, when we get, when we get things that seem a little bit more confrontational, to try to dig down to what, what is the concern? How can we address your concern? Is it something that’s actionable, um, or not? Because, you know, I think it’s really important until we get to a place as a community and it’s, it’s on all of us to help us get there where we can debate topics rather than personalities. Um, it’s gonna be really hard to, to maintain a leadership team. But someone else, I say Alice, Yeah, I would, I would agree with, with Sarah, particularly on the vi the vitriol part lately, I think

16:02 we have to, and I, I said something to this effect in one of our previous meetings, it’s okay to disagree. It’s okay to dislike the, any of the people that are sitting up here. It’s not okay to not be civil towards them and understand that they are the folks that your community members, um, you know, voted for. And that we need to find a way to work together and that we should be able to find a way to work together because we’re all grownups. We have fully developed Toronto lobes. We should be able to do that together for the betterment of our community and for the betterment of our children. Our, our children are seeing some of these things. There are children that watch these school committee meetings, there are children that may read the papers, they see these things. And I think we should really aim to emulate what we want

16:51 and expect out of our children. Um, you know, ourselves. I think another thing just ‘cause you had mentioned like what specific strategy. I think another strategy would be also, again, to look for experience. I think when you are, which is hard, um, I don’t think any of this is easy when you are looking to fill positions, whether it’s here in, in a public school system or in my corporate job. You have to, you have to, you have to really look for someone that has that experience that is, and someone that has that grit and determination to get through these difficult pieces. Um, and that, that’s not for everybody. And that’s okay. Um, I think that’s one of the strategies to look for as well. Similar to what I said about the superintendent search. Can I make we, are we not limited to two or I wasn’t? We,

17:37 We, we’ll give you, we will give you the floor. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, so make a couple comments. I think first to answer your question, in terms of the leadership development, we right now are in the process of recruiting and hiring interim positions, right? So we’re looking at an interim superintendent, probably an interim finance director. Um, so when we look at interim positions, it’s a little bit different than looking to recruit and strategize for the development of long-term, more permanent positions. Although what I see in the public school, um, world public education, which is not dissimilar to other industries, is a lot more faster turn turnover than some of us baby boomers maybe were used to. Um, so we really are looking at interim and hiring the most highly qualified, experienced people

18:22 who can hit the ground running and help us immediately, um, effectively, uh, effective July 1st. One of the things that I have noticed since I’ve served now and have served in the past and just as being a parent leader in Marblehead, uh, is that, and I’ve asked this question before, is we haven’t focused on succession planning. And I’ve asked this before of other superintendents that I’ve served under and that I’ve, uh, you know, have been a, you know, parent here in town with other superintendents. And I’ve always had sort of these responses like, well, we don’t do that and that’s not something we do in public education, which is more in the corporate private sector. But I think what we need to do, even with the interim positions that we’re gonna be looking for, looking to hire into, is

19:08 what is our plan for succession planning? Because that’s really how you go about putting together a development plan for your leadership team. Where are you going to get these folks from? Hopefully some will be coming from within, right? Whether it’s our, you know, our teachers and other staff that will hopefully, you know, move up and we have the ability to do that. We haven’t seen a lot of that in the recent past, but it would be great if we could do it. Um, and that focus on succession planning also is more long range in networking and finding contacts, um, having that part of your leadership team’s expectations or goals to be developing a network. So we have people we can go to when we do have an opening. So. Great. Thank, thank you. I appreciate, I appreciate that.

19:53 Um, so we are now gonna move on to, I think what must be your favorite topic this summer of year, which are some budget related questions. Um, so concerns have been raised by the Marble Head school community about the physical condition of the school buildings, including the possibility that there are mold issues, um, at the high school. What are the steps planned by the facility subcommittee to address the needed repairs and upkeep of all school buildings? So given that it’s a facility’s question, I would defer to the co-chairs or of the subcommittee, which is Sarah Fox and Allison Taylor on this one. Yeah. Um, so three years ago we worked on the facility strategic plan. It’s actually the only strategic plan our district

20:40 has had in my tenure here. Um, and we, we had brought a company in that made, um, recommendations of best practices and we have it and we try to follow it every year. The problem is money, as with everything, um, to be aligned with best practices for the number of facilities we own. Capital improvements should be in the one to $2 million range each year. A member of our facility subcommittee who does this in the professional and had said, you know, you’re probably in that one and a half to two before we even had this. And it, so it was, it was very good to know the professionals we have sitting on our committee are right, aligned with what the assessment came in at. And then what, each year when we go to the capital articles,

21:26 we’re usually given about two to $300,000. So that’s a 10% of what we really need. So you, we, we are right back in the game of prioritizing critical needs versus, you know, being proactive. We have this plan, we should be following this plan, but if the town as a whole doesn’t come up with a better way to fund, and this isn’t just on the school side, the town side has need of many, many needs too. Um, if we don’t, if we don’t fund these plans, they’re, the plans are only as good as the funding structure behind them. So for the immediacy, um, with the mold, we, um, are working right now to get in, um,

22:11 I almost said dental hygienist and that is not it. Um, some industrial hygienist, industrial hygienist, um, and, and do some additional mold testing on that. And ultimately we have to get the roof fixed. The roof is out to bid. It’s because of all the, the hoops you have to jump through once a public project is over a million dollars. There’s all these extra bid proposals you have to go through and need an OPM on board. We have started that process, but it is by no means a quick process. So ultimately the roof needs needs to be completely replaced. That’s been, um, approved at town meeting. We’re under the process through the bid process, but it’s, it’s much more complicated than just getting the

22:56 approval at town meeting, picking up the phone and starting the work. We really have to go through the steps of the process. May I have an error in the question? It said the possibility. Hold the document Right here. That, excuse me, sir. We’re not gonna be taking comments from the audience. Um, but I appreciate that, but we are really trying to do this. Talk to them after me that that’s fine. But again, I’d like you not to interrupt as we go through this. Um, and they addressed the mold issue. They did not say that it wasn’t there. Um, It was your, the question said possibility. That was my concern.

23:31 Did you wanna add as member? I, I, I think I would agree. Um, obviously aggressively trying to follow that plan and really trying to get more from the town to be able to do that on the townside. We all see town buildings that need things, um, as much as the schools do as Well. So, just as a follow up in terms of, um, when I was looking up the two of you, you, you, you are both on this facilities committee. Are there other members who are not on the school committee that may, it may be helpful for people to know who else is on this facilities committee so that they have an idea of who you’re working with? We have, um, a representative from the community. We have, um, the superintendent comes to our meetings, the assistant superintendent of finance and operation whose last day was last week came.

24:20 Um, the person who is filling her position in, in the interim position will be coming. Our director of facilities also comes. And from time to time we invite other members of the community to come, I’m sorry, and sit at the table with us. Not just attend members, for instance, a couple times, um, in the last year we’ve invited members of sustainable marblehead to come, um, when we’ve been talking about a sustainability issue, if there’s other issues that there may be a subject matter expert in our community or someone who’s approached us about something we’ve asked them to attend as well. So in, in terms of that, if there is somebody either watching or here tonight who has a, a real interest in this and would be interested in learning more about this,

25:06 or if you do need email me people who should they contact? Um, they can email either school committee@marbleheadschools.org and that goes to everybody. Or, um, all of our email addresses are our last name dot first name@marbleheadschools.org. And they’re on the website. And they’re on the website. Yeah. And the meetings are posted as well. Yeah, they could always, but if anybody is feels that they, you know, have some subject matter expertise, we we very much so would welcome that. Great. No, I think that that’s important to know so that people can understand that they can in fact get involved. Mm-Hmm. Um, and the easiest way to do it, um, which as you said is to email because, um, sometimes people can’t make all the meetings, but they do wanna be involved in the situation. Yeah. Um, thank you. Um, so in terms of your budget planning, um,

25:54 what are the target class sizes for budget development and staffing levels and what adjustments are made in years of increasing or declining enrollment?

26:07 Wants to take it? I mean maybe Go ahead Brian. Do you guys wanna switch? Well, yes. I mean, we try to keep the class sizes to 20 or less, but it depends now on the budget. That’s at the elementary level. That’s at the elementary level, sorry. Thank you. Uh, the others, the middle school and the high school have their own class sizes because of the CS number of subjects they offer in the teams they use. But yes, we want to try to keep the head count as low as we can in the elementary schools, but the budget’s gonna come into that because we’re going to have to start removing people so that’ll don’t bump those class sizes up. So in many of his presentations, principal Matt Fox, um, has talked about class sizes. He’s very good at giving, um, grided out data.

26:53 Um, he talks about 25 becoming, once they get to 25, especially like in a science class, that kind of is, starts to be a little bit of a tipping point. So he tries to keep those, you know, in the mid early 20, like that 22, 23 range. But they do tip over at the high school. It’s a little bit harder to pin down because of the schedule. Um, you may have, for instance, um, an AP class that has a more limited enrollment because, you know, that’s, that’s all the students that signed up for that you could have. Um, that’s a little bit more all over because of scheduling and fitting that in. But those recommendations come to us from the administration. Um, and we, you know, while we ask questions

27:39 and push back a bit, we do, you know, defer to them as the the subject matter experts in that. So in, are there specific adjustments that you have built into your budget or will be building it in if this is a year of increasing or decreasing enrollment for Marblehead? So you want me to take Yeah, yeah. So we have been seeing decreasing enrollment in Marblehead for consistently the last seven or eight years. Um, and without a doubt, I mean it, some years it declines a little less than others, but it has been a steadily dropping enrollment, which is not dissimilar to many other communities of our size, um, that have been seeing the same thing. One of the things that I’ve seen in regards to the budget,

28:26 well, class size is important, right? And we are in the elementary schools. We are not bumping up against 25 by any stretch. We, um, we have a little discrepancy between our two elementary schools, Glover’s 1516 and Brown is around 2021. Um, and the village schools around that level as well. Um, the high school actually, if you look at averages, which again to Sarah’s point, um, is not really accurate, but the average class size in the high school for most of the core subjects is between 17 and 18 students per class. So what, what we are seeing in terms of the budget, um, pressure I guess would be, would be the word, is the, the needs of our students. And I don’t think that class size necessarily

29:11 by itself reflects what is needed in the classroom in terms of the needs of our students, which have become more and more complex over the years, particularly post covid. Um, we are seeing students struggle emotionally, um, socially and certainly academically. And that’s both general education students and special education students. So it’s a complex answer to a sort of simple question. And the answer isn’t just class size, but also how do we, um, meet the needs of all of our students that are complex. Thank you. How do these factors, um, that you were talking about impact, how did the, these impact your decision to retain possession

29:56 of the coffin school and not turn it back over to the town? So I think there’s a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding as far as the coffin school or any school property really goes. People seem to think that you can sell a property re the amount sold and you, you got it, there you go and apply it to our budget. That absolutely is not at all allowable. That is not how this happens. The procedure is the school would deem it not needed for educational use. It goes to the town. It is no longer under us. We have no authority over that money. We cannot sell, we cannot rent. We can, we cannot glean any money from that. So that’s one piece I think that’s a lot

30:42 of misinformation out there. You know, I hear a lot, we hear a lot of, well you should make a deal with the town. It, it doesn’t work that way. The, the their Harding to national law, it is their asset. It is the town’s asset. It returns back into either the general fund or there’s another fund that they can return it to. Um, that’s somewhat like a, a revolving fund. Um, so that’s one piece. The next piece is like every town in city in uni, municipality, um, in Massachusetts right now, we are facing the uncertainty of what is going to happen with the new zoning, bylaw changes for the multifamily use. We are voting at town meeting on whether we will adopt zoning, bylaw changes that would increase

31:29 by 900 units in the town of Marblehead. So to give you an idea, we’re a town of just shy of 20,000. We had 900 units we hear a lot of, oh, but those won’t be kids. Don’t worry. The bylaw change that the state has put forward actually says in it that one of the priorities is for families housing for families. So if we’re, we don’t know the outcome of a vote that could add 900 units that have a priority designation for families, it would be grossly irresponsible for us to say we’re going to give up a property and potentially add 900 units that could have families. We have to see the outcome of this vote. Um, otherwise we have nowhere to, we have nowhere to go.

32:18 So, um, we really need to wait it out, see the, the outcome of this vote, make sure we’re being fiscally responsible as far as, you know, what we’re doing in planning for having a place to put potential students. If this passes, if it doesn’t pass, it’s a different conversation. Anyone else wanna add a add anything to that? I will. Uh, yeah, I’ll also add to that, um, that we also have the ELI school property currently being used temporarily by our local public library, um, as they’re doing their own, um, renovation project. And that pro that property will then be empty at some point, um, when the library moves out, um, into their nice new digs, which looks good coming down the street with the lights on at night now. Um, so we have that property as well, which we will

33:07 also need to figure out what we’re gonna do with that. One of the things that I have seen in other communities that have different, um, budgets than us, um, certainly, but that we’re also seeing our, um, current interim superintendent moving on to is early education center, right? So, and I’m not saying that’s, but there are, we see those out there in other communities where they, um, public school systems have established early education centers, which are revenue producing. They’re not revenue depleting. It’s actually our biggest revenue producer in our district right now. Our preschools, we have, um, it’s a five or six preschool classrooms right now. They’re our biggest revenue producer. So if we could expand that, meet the need that’s in the community,

33:52 ‘cause there’s wait lists at every preschool in town, we would be, we would be growing revenue And possibly could we become an early intervention center, which is also federally funded for students. So we would also be getting the neediest, the youngest learners, the little ones that have needs coming through. And we would be getting them earlier than we get. We see them now in, in kindergarten at age five or turning age six, maybe we could be bringing them in and educating them at age two or, or younger. So, um, again, that’s a, you know, a pipe dream out there, but it is a possibility. It’s something that we could look at, uh, what would be involved from an investment standpoint. And obviously the numbers would need, um, would need to work so that it would be revenue positive. Right. The point is it’s, it’s a very strategic, um,

34:38 decision and, and it takes a lot of thought down the line, what Domino’s gonna hit, what domino and I I see the, the, the push in the community to, for like a quick money grab if you will, but it might not be very, um, smart long-term investment for our town. Thank you. Um, is the school committee developing a fully funded budget? If so, when will this budget be available to the public? And then just to add a little bit more flavor, because there’s clearly a misunderstanding about the types of budgets that are being produced. If you could please explain what fully funded, what a fully funded budget includes. So that’s what I was going to answer with ev We keep hearing the term fully funded.

35:24 There seems to be no clarity what fully funded means to some people when they say it. And I say, tell me more about that. What I hear is no more cuts. And then I say that someone else may say, no, no, no, fully funded is everything we need. Get us up to par on our needs. And then another person says, no fully funded is getting us ahead. So we can be, you know, the, the, the home, the, the, the best district. You know, not just what we need but what puts us So we don’t have a definition. We hear what the public is saying. We don’t know. ‘cause everyone has their own interpretation of fully funded. So that really hasn’t been made clear. Um, we have a budget, um, deliberation posted at the end of this at we have an

36:09 additional business meeting at the end of this. We hosted our budget forum. I was very happy to get a lot of feedback. There’s been years that at our budget hearings we’ve had one or two people if that. So it was really, really great to see so many people invested. So many people take time outta their busy schedules show up and speak. Um, we did not get time to deliberate at the end of that. So we will, we will get to deliberate and see what next steps are for us. ‘cause we, it, none of us can answer that ‘cause we only have connect through the will of the committee and we don’t know what the will of the committee is. Yeah. So, So stick around if you wanna know more about the, the budget process. And did you wanna add any discussion about fully funded? Either of you

36:54 Have. I did, but I don’t want to. Anyone Else? No, I would, I was gonna say the same exact thing as Sarah is that everybody, you know, one person may think a librarian and sports is fully funded and another person may think AP Latin is fully funded and there’s no, I’m not suggesting there’s one or the other. Everybody is going to have their own opinion on that. So it’s very hard to understand what that means, uh, and to actually put any type of numbers towards that. So yeah, so I’d like to just, I’ll make a quick comment that, um, I, um, there’s been some comments but we’ve actually got some, some feedback from folks, um, at the hearing but also in, in emails that we, you know, we responded to what the town told us to do in preparing a level funded budget

37:41 and a level services budget, which is the, which are the two budgets that we have, um, been discussing. Um, and uh, I feel that we have, um, in the spirit of, uh, working together with the town side of the finance com committee, uh, and the finance director here in town, that is the appropriate thing to do is to, is to provide what they are asking for so they can help particularly the finance committee be the watchdog, um, that they are tasked to be. Um, so we had discussions around that. Those two budgets that they asked us to produce, which the townside produced as well, were based on very specific projections that the finance director, um, tabulated for the coming fiscal year. So it was based on what the reality

38:27 of our projected revenues are in marblehead, which is how budgets are developed based on how much you expect to have in the next year. And so that’s what we did. And there can be discussion between the two, right? And one budget. The reduced services budget has cuts. The, the, um, the level services budget is the same level of service that we would provide this coming year that we’re doing this year. Two, to go forward with a third budget, I guess would be the case of a fully funded budget, which again, would require some deliberation on exactly what that consists of. Primarily probably coming from our administration and our superintendent, I think would not, well I would aspire to wanna be able to do that, I would argue is probably not the most prudent thing

39:14 to do in the current financial situation we’re in. That’s just the reality of it. And that we need to have time to build a strategic plan and to work with the town on the funding source, whatever that may end up being to provide an aspirational, fully funded budget for the schools and for the town because the town needs that too. Thank you. That’s not my job. Thank you. Um, the next question, um, is related to the, um, a report that was recently issued, the comprehensive investigations and counseling report concerning the GL Glover school restrain issue has been released to the public and is available currently on, uh, the website.

40:00 Um, do you have any comments on the report? On the report and its recommendations? We’re treading very close to personnel. I wanna be cautious. That’s fine. Just in terms of generally speaking, um, I obviously all of you have had time to read it. Um, is there anything that you can say, and I do not wanna go into personnel issues, that’s not what I’m looking at, but in terms of the actual recommendations, I think there were things that were non-personnel related. So I think that is, if, if you want a direction for my question Okay. Would be in terms of non-personnel related recommendations that came from this report, do you have any comments on

40:46 that in terms of how you feel about that for the next, for next steps, given that this was a significant report that was done? Yes. You want me to answer ahead? Go ahead, Brian. What the interim superintendent has already started working with the staff. They’re doing a lot of training, they’re following the guidelines. They brought in a special, um, trainer to make sure that we follow all the guidelines from the state. So that has already started and that’s the first step to fixing this.

41:17 Uh, so we haven’t seen anything more than what’s in that report as anyone who’s read it knows, uh, there was a lot of lack. Um, we don’t see the CIC recommendations. Jen and I sit in the policy subcommittee and, and we have certainly shared that we would be looking into if any policies that we can draft to ensure not only that teachers are trained, but that they are retrained so that they can feel comfortable. I I hesitate to say if anybody even signs up to be trained at this point because, uh, it, it’s, I feel like it’s, it’s become that big of a thing. Um, so anything that we can put into play on the policy side

42:03 to ensure that training or retraining will happen at a certain, um, cadence, et cetera, I think would be really important. I think that if you, if one reads, um, the report, it does tell a story and I don’t wanna cross the line so I Don’t cross the line. No, understand IAnd and I did not expect any of you to cross the line. ‘cause there are, there are things that you can and cannot speak About. Yeah, I I just wanna make it clear, we have, um, read and seen no more than what’s in that report. So there was some, um, I would call them pretty common sense recommendations in there. Um, best that I would say are best practice, um, I’ll give you an example of having debrief debriefs. I’m not sure if that was the exact word used.

42:49 Yes, it’s, um, afterwards, um, all their recommendations as far as policy all seem very clear to be best practice. I don’t think that there will be any problem establishing formalized policies, but I know that as an individual, and I’m assuming others have done the same, we have all conveyed that we expect those best practices to start being actionable immediately, not waiting for the three readings and the policies to be, to catch up. Great. Thank you. And you haven’t had a lot of time to digest this, but it is a very important issue to the Marblehead school community, which is why we felt it was important that we ask about this. Yes. I think also, just to add one other thing, I I think, um,

43:36 it’s not just about the policies. It’s about ensuring that they’re being followed, ensuring that the best practices are being followed. We can have all of the best, whether we’re talking about this situation or again, corporate life, home life, whatever. You can have best policies and rules in place. If they’re not enforced, um, that’s, you know, that, that’s when it becomes a problem. So that’s something to Watch out. Thank you. Anyone else? Great. So, um, our next questions, um, are gonna talk about some school policy issues. Um, and this first one I’m not, if we can get a couple of, um, actually if all of you could, um, answer this one. We’ll start, um, many people believe there’s nothing wrong with a parent deciding a certain book

44:23 is not right for their child. However, many also believe that one parent should not be allowed to decide a book is not right for all children. Do you agree with this? Why or why not?

44:37 I’ll take that. Um, we have a, um, policy for, and I don’t know the policy, which I should, I apologize. Um, for, um, material that is, um, that someone has an issue with in the, in the, um, in the, in the school district. And we’ve had this policy for quite some, for quite a while, but apparently didn’t have really a procedure to back it up as to what the procedure or process is. If someone has a question about material, and it isn’t just necessarily a book, it can be any material that’s part of our curriculum in our school district. It could be a video or it could be an article or it could be a period article or a book. Um, and so we have a process for that. And it typical of all of our chain of command policies, you know, it starts at the classroom level and it goes to the building level and to the superintendent

45:24 and would finally potentially come to the school committee. To my knowledge, since I’ve been on the committee, there have no, there have been no ca issues that have come to the school committee. I do not know if there have been any in any of the buildings. ‘cause I wouldn’t necessarily hear about that. And I don’t know of any in the past. But again, I wouldn’t necessarily know about that. So we have a process and we have a policy and one of the things that I I think is very important and to, to Allison’s point is that we have policies for a reason. We’re not the only ones that have this policy. Most all school districts in Massachusetts have the same policy and they’re there for a reason and we need to follow them. And when we do generally, um, you know, it, the it the right result ends up. I’m gonna just ask you specifically, do you agree with

46:11 that statement that I that was the preface that, and I’ll reread it. Many people, Sorry. That’s okay. Many people believe there is nothing wrong with a parent deciding a certain book is not right for their child. However, many also believe that one parent should not be allowed to decide a book is not right for all children. Do you believe is, do you agree, why or why not? I, I agree with that. I would agree with that as well. And that’s, that’s not what happens Here. So yeah, that’s why we have this policy, right?

46:40 I I agree with it’s okay for a parent to raise that concern. Absolutely. Um, but I’m not, I don’t agree with the second part of that where, you know, that then can create a change that may or may not be appropriate. I think it’s important that we’re open to hearing about it, what their parent’s concern is, it’s reviewed properly. Um, and then we move, you know, we move forward based on, on our following our processes. Thank You. I I believe we already follow that process. If a parent objects to the material that’s being presented in the classroom, they have the right to have their child not be exposed to that. But I also agree, um, one parent should not have the right to dictate what the curriculum’s gonna do for the rest of the students.

47:23 I would agree. And I would just add, um, by the way, it’s policy IJLA only because Thank you. It was, came through a document to me today. Um, we’ve, we’ve had probably a handful of people email us concerns about a book and we respond back to, I always respond back to ‘em, I have the email right here, you know, attached police c apology, uh, policy, IJ la a, please follow the process if this is a concern for you. It, it’s not for me to tell someone it’s a concern or not a concern. Follow the policy. Um, and so we did have a parent come forward this year. Yeah, we did actually at a school committee meeting. I, I was wrong, I apologize. But we, we’ve never actually had, we’ve never actually had someone file the paperwork to the point of it coming in front of us or a book actually being banned.

48:10 Right. Um, so that thankfully has not been an issue. They’ve been able to work it out as they should with the building level and whatever. They’re, I actually don’t know what the resolution they come to is because that doesn’t rise to us. Whatever they work out with the building level is what they work out. Great. Thank you. And I did hear you at the, at the end, Allison, you did chime in. I just wanna make sure that you Were heard. Yeah, no, I’m good. Okay. Yeah, I said thank you. Um, and now a couple people can take this question, this next question. Um, so we’re gonna move to an alternate reality. There are no budget issues, Fully funded schools, there Are no budget issues. Everybody gets what they want at home, At home and Here. Yes, at home and here. But more importantly, right now for here. So if there were no budget issues, how important would it be

48:57 for Marblehead Public Schools to have a diversity, equity and inclusion staff person as a resource? Please explain.

49:08 I mean, I’ll dive in first. That’s fine. It’s a very deep hole. Um, I think that it would need to be outlined very clearly. I think there are a lot of misconceptions for everybody. Um, and even myself included potentially, I, I’m not ex excluding myself from that group. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what DEI is, um, in general and what its purpose is for, I think before that is considered, there would need to be an outline of specifically what, what the measurable goals would be. Um, which is I think something that we had requested the last time this, this came up, I think a couple years ago. Um, because before, you know, you have to be able

49:54 to measurable something and, and measure its success. Um, you need to be able to measure whether removing a RESO recess is, is, is a positive effect on children or not. And I think it would be the same here. We would need to have a very scripted understanding of what this role would do, um, for our teachers to support our teachers and to support the students, um, and understand what the measurable goals would be for that before I could consider adding something else. And I also think that, you know, I would probably wanna bring a librarian back first. Someone else would like to answer that. Yeah, I would, I would definitely add the position. Um, you know, we, we are, we’re still, if you look at our,

50:41 our demographics, we’re still a pretty homogenous, uh, society in Marblehead. And I think that understanding and working on racism is something that is important and it’s something that’s lifelong learning. You know, you just don’t get trained and, and then everything’s fine. So, um, I think if we can raise kids, students as part of their education and understanding what inclusive means and uh, how they could maybe be more open to different perspectives and, and people, I think that’s a, a real benefit that we can provide. I, I would add, I think that there are plenty of op I think we do have, having a child in the school system now, I know there are plenty of opportunities where those things are taught. Now I don’t want anyone thinking that that isn’t an important part

51:26 or portions, modules, whatever you wanna call them of, whether it’s in gym class, whether it’s in their homeroom class, um, those types of things from, you know, whether it’s in inclusion, uh, or whether we’re talking about racism in particular. There are a lot of things done in our schools today. And I think if you listen to our budget forum, I’m not sure how many weeks back it was, each of our principals discussed what they’re doing as, you know, as it relates to DEI in their schools. Sarah, Did you wanna start? Um, yes. So I wanna start off by noting that, um, the progressions come a little bit further in, in more development. That, uh, a lot of places don’t just refer to it as diversity, equity, and inclusion,

52:12 but we talk about belonging too because it really, it all works. Two, we want all of our students and our staff to feel like they belong in our community. So I think that’s really important to start with. Um, for example, the curriculum, um, wit and wisdom that we chose. One of the, one of the drivers on that was, you know, it’s not just the homogenous look of stories or students in in that curriculum. Um, we wanna, we want to, we wanna as a district provide more windows and mirrors, um, for, for our students to feel like they belong, but also get to know things that might be different from what they see every day. So I do think that is important,

52:59 but I also wanna caution us that I think it’s really easy for our community being so homogenous as, as Al said, to say, okay, we can add a DEI director and check that box. We are like, we’re doing it, we’re getting it done. I think we really have to look at what’s, what’s actually happening. You know, there hasn’t been a school year since my kids’ have been in the district where we haven’t gotten a horrific email saying that there was a swastika carved in somewhere. You know what I mean? Like, so we can, we can have these positions, but we need to be not just looking at filling a position and thinking that’s gonna fix everything because there’s a lot more that needs to happen.

53:44 Um, it’s a bigger conversation in our, in our town and our district. What is going on? Why is it going on? And how can we do better to really make that belonging happen? Thank you. If there are no other comments, I’ll move on to my, I agree. I don’t follow up. Might follow up on this one, which is, how important is the Medco program to the DEI and DEIB, um, work in Marblehead Public Schools?

54:14 I think it’s important. I also think that we can’t just say we, we again, it sometimes feels like, you know, for many, for many of the past years when we talked about how can we add to our inclusion in Marblehead, the answer we were often hearing was, well, we can increase our macro enrollment. That is, that is not the only way to increase diversity. Diversity is not just racial diversity. Diversity is racial diversity, it’s economic diversity, it’s religious, it’s what you identify as. And I, I think the METCO program sometimes in our town becomes this crutch of, again, kind of like, you know, get, get the DEI director check. We filled that box to we incr,

55:02 we increased our Met co-enrollment. So check, we fill, we have to be doing better than just checking boxes of programs. Um, I think that, you know, there’s a lot of good things and we definitely want to encourage that, but we, we can’t just say we did that and now we’re done. We don’t need to do anything else. ‘cause I think there’s, there’s more that we can and should be doing.

55:26 Good. Yes, the Medco program is a wonderful program and it exposes children, both sides. However, I’ve noticed over the years, METCO has been changing the way they do business with the schools. Um, used to be we had some choice in the students that came in. We saw more records. Now they basically give us paperwork and say, here are your 10 students this year. I think that’s, um, not good because we need to see their school records. We need to see how they did in their classrooms, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are. We don’t get that anymore until it’s too late. So I think it’s important if we’re gonna keep with the Medco program, we work with them to get better information on the students coming into our schools. So we’re not caught by surprise when somebody shows

56:12 up at the door. And I think what you’re re correct me if I’m wrong. I think what Brian’s referring to is if we don’t know the services a student might need, then we are not giving them possibly an appropriate placement and we’re not meeting their needs as best we could. So if we don’t, we just need proper documentation so that we’re making sure we’re meeting the needs of all of our students. ‘cause that’s really a shame for them. If we spend two or three months catching up to speed on that, that lack of documentation, and, and then, um, that student misses out and that’s not right. I can give you an example. We had a student come in and it was three months before we found out they had an intensive IEP. So for three months we failed to support the IEP. So that’s the kind of information we really need. As Sarah pointed out, if we’re going

56:59 to bring the students in and make them successful, we have to know everything we can about the student. Great. Thank you. Um, one of the last things that I’m gonna ask about, uh, the budget, so you can breathe, um, until eight 30. Um, but we all know funding for schools is an ongoing issue. There isn’t a year that school committees don’t face. How are we going to fund our schools this year, um, and do the best for our student population. Um, what proactive steps are you as a committee or are your administrators, what are they doing to hopefully help to alleviate this issue in upcoming years?

57:47 Can can you say that again actually? Yeah. I’m trying To follow that. So basically what I’m asking about is, everybody sees this issue every year. It comes to you, you get the money from, you know, here’s, here’s your money, here are your services. Well, they don’t match. We’re gonna have a deficit here. Um, are there proactive steps that the school committee and or administrators who are in charge of a variety of things relating to the budget? Are there proactive steps they are taking outside of the norm? And I guess I’ll say thinking outside the box to help alleviate this for next year, for the year after. I feel bad. I keep taking questions. If someone else wants to jump in, you can. Otherwise It might, I don’t know if I’m gonna answer if this is the answer that you’re looking for, so I apologize. But, um, I think for me, one of the things that I,

58:33 that I’ve been asking for, this is my second year asking for it. I would really like us to separate our healthcare from the town. That is a gigantic expense. Um, that is, that I think would, um, you know, kind of give us that final separation to understand exactly what, rather than lumping that in with the town, understand exactly what our budgeting needs are. That’s kind of one of the last pieces that we have. Um, and I, I do think that that’s an important piece, um, for us to take back. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll respond to that too. I, you know, I, I’ve been around for a few years in this process, and I have to say last year there was tremendous steps forward in, in reporting

59:20 and providing information, um, on the budget, just the details of the budget. And this year, I think we did an even quantum leap ahead in terms of the level of transparency and detail in our budget. Without a doubt, our administration did a very, very, um, um, stellar job. But the, all the administrators, our finance director, um, assistant superintendent of finance, and our interim superintendent, a tremendous amount of detail as well as a staff sort of staff accountability report, which I have been asking for since last year, which we did get last week. Um, so it we’re, we’re, we’re providing a tremendous amount of detail, which is very, very helpful to try to understand how we can take the resources we have. And really that’s the administration’s responsibility

1:00:07 and allocate the resources in the most effective way for our students to, to deliver the education that they deserve and need with the resources we have. Um, and to your point, it’s, it’s never enough. But the more detail we have on the building level and the classroom level, um, which we like we do this year, has been very helpful in us being able to develop this budget. I will also say I, a staff standpoint and, and teacher and faculty standpoint, I, you know, we heard loud and clearly, clearly loudly and clearly last week at our budget hearing. Um, and I’ve been through many budget hearings, um, and I’ve never seen the kind of, um, support and demand by the staff for funding that we did last week.

1:00:53 So I feel that it’s not just the administration, but it’s also our, our teachers and our student facing staff that have come forward and talked in excruciating and painful detail about their challenges that they have, um, with the students trying to deliver with limited resources. And as, as difficult as that was to hear, um, it is the truth and it is what we need to be able to work with the town and explain to the PE people of Marblehead what it costs to educate our students and to request that of, of the funding from the town. Yeah, I think that that is one of the biggest pieces here that is sometimes forgotten. It’s not the five of us sitting here on top of a, you know,

1:01:40 bucket of gold coins. We have to get this passed at town meeting, and then it also has to pass at the ballot box, which has not happened previously. And what the community has shared with us that they want in order for more of the community to support a, a budget is this exact detail. And so I’m very hopeful that moving forward, since we have provided an, an online document that people can go a whole binder with line by line by line detail. You don’t have to go to Widget Road and look at a paper copy. I think that that progress is tremendous and shouldn’t be discounted. And I think the additional staff accountability report, which is something we’ve been asking for, um, all year

1:02:25 as well, is, is something that the community is really looking for to understand, okay, this is where the money is going. Um, it’s not fiscal irresponsibility and that type of thing, which are some things that we, we hear routinely. And I, for me, the elephant in the room is, you know, this is not a unique marblehead issue. I mean, there’s a Great Globe article a couple weeks ago. The, the funding of our schools, particularly in Massachusetts with all the mandates were under to, to reach certain hours to pay for X, Y, z this way, um, has far outpaced the rise of, um, funding, whether that be the state funding, municipal funding, um,

1:03:13 we just can’t, it, it, we can’t keep up. Um, and so I have started to try to look into how can I lobby for better funding at the state level because this is not a marblehead issue. The every town in the Commonwealth is facing this. And ultimately the municipality schools rise even when they come in flush, which quite frankly, we’re not coming in flush. Um, even when you were flushed the year before, schools are rising at, you know, five, maybe 6%, some maybe in the four range each year. Prop two and a half. It’s two and a half percent plus you have to do the increases in inflation and everything else on the townside. Then you add the additional, um,

1:03:58 special education at a district. Our transportation for everyone in the state has absolutely skyrocketed. Sometimes in out of district placement, your tuition, your transportation costs could outpace the tuition costs. These are things, you know, the state is making some changes and has made some changes to try to get us there with the Student Opportunity Act. But just that as an example, we had our, um, assistant superintendent, the student that the Student Opportunity Act had a plan, had to be sent in by, um, the, the last day of the month. We just voted on on it to approve it. She did this bulk of work to, to produce it. We get $0 zero because of our demographics in Marblehead, we get zero. So I can see where it’s really working for some municipalities not working for us.

1:04:45 So we really have to, as a community, as not just five of us here or a leadership team, really be lobbying writing to people at the state level. Because until that changes every year, we’ll be chasing our tail. It’s just, it is a hill that we can’t climb. And quite frankly, our, we can’t expect the taxpayers of, of any municipality to, to sustain this. The, the state funding structure really has to be readdressed. You know? Can I, Mr. Williams, I think had his hand up. I’d like to, yeah. I think, You know, so we are very, it’s been very proactive this year, I think, around the amount of detail we have. But I think we need to be more proactive on getting that shared with people who aren’t currently interested in it. Right? I think there’s a lot of people in this town

1:05:30 who will vote up, will, will go to vote, not vote for an override, and not looked at a shred of evidence or data supporting their decision, right? So I think we need to be proactive, like, so Sarah was talking about being proactive with the state. I think we need to be more proactive with our own community around, you know, communicating in a way that someone who may not normally be concerned about the details, right? The people who aren’t attending these meetings and dialing in. How do we get the message to them, uh, around what, you know, a reduced budget really means to the, to the students and the services in this town. Can I, I wanted one more thing to say too. Um, so that being said, the question was about the administration and they have done a tremendous job. Um, but what I will say, and what I’ve learned is that our budget has a lot of moving parts.

1:06:16 We have the largest portion is the appropriation from town meeting. We have grants, we have federal grants, we have state grants, we have all different, um, different sources of funding. And one of the things that is a challenge to me, um, is to understand, are we, are we doing everything by best practice? Are we maximizing all of the opportunity finding opportunities that are out there? Probably we could say no, we’re prob we may not be. And one of the things that I want am looking into is to see if we could bring in the state auditor and have her audit the school committee, um, or at least the school district and have her take a look or her, her department, take a look at, um, all of the different areas. ‘cause an audit, a state audit includes not just a financial

1:07:02 audit, but practices and programs and systems to see, um, on a, on a higher level where we might be missing some things where we may have the ability to improve our, our finances. I’ve done a little research on it. I, I think, um, what I’ve initially heard is that we can’t request that. It may have to be the select board that requests that. So we’ll be stay tuned. We’ll be chatting with the select board on that. And I think also we have asked for a special education audit as well. Um, and that is something you, we’ve been asking for that for a year, so it fi it’s finally gone out. So that, that I think will be a great add as well. Yeah.

1:07:43 You Good? Um, couldn’t quite tell if you had another nugget to add or not. Well, I always, always have another nugget. I always have another nugget, then I’ll give you a minute. Okay. Um, really, you know, to talk, we, we were talking about how do we get the information out there. Last, last year when we were trying to pass an override, I can be really honest, it was six people around someone’s kitchen table with a defrosted coffee cake that was delicious, but not gonna fix our, our town’s problems. And those people worked incredibly, incredibly hard. And some people came in the last couple weeks and, and, you know, did a little bit. But it’s, it takes more than six volunteers working incredibly hard. And, you know, I’ve seen this convalescing,

1:08:28 I’ve seen it come, I’ve seen a lot of convalescing, you know, to get us out. Um, I, I hope that people can kind of come together and realize that we are, we’re funding education. This is about kids. It’s not personality politics for adults, and really come together and fund the schools we want to see funded and let the, I don’t like that adult.

1:08:56 All right. I don’t like that. You got your minute. Thank you. So, um, moving along to, again, another policy question, and, um, since the flag policy is not yet established, we understand you are working on a pol a flag policy, but we all know the process it has to go through. Um, while you were working on that, uh, would you consider assigning decisions as to what is appropriate at their particular schools to principals and administrators? Why or why not? Is that one for all of us? I would say we can do a two minute for all of you.

1:09:38 I want someone who’s been working on our policy around, Yeah, maybe the policy subcommittee should go forward on that. It hasn’t come before the committee yet. Right. Okay. Why don’t you go ahead. Um, so that it, it’s under construction what that, that policy is going to be. Uh, I think we, we were hoping to have a more permanent, um, solution available for us now that the town has come out with their policy as well. Um, I think we’re looking to move forward with ours. It is our responsibility as the, the policy committee to set that policy, um, that that is the law and how that works. So I’m not sure how we would then transition that to, um, building personnel.

1:10:24 I suppose we could write that into the policy. Um, but I think we’re really looking to, um, you know, work with, like the town has done, um, and, and work towards that end. So you’re looking at an overarching policy that will cover all public school buildings? Yes. Okay. And time timing wise, I think people are, would be curious, uh, in terms of when would that maybe come out of the policy subcommittee to come before the school committee for a first reading, if you have it and if you don’t have that timeline. ‘cause but it’s budget season I understand that, but just I think It’s before the end of the school year, I think is realistic. And I will say too, that, um, I do the answer to your question is yes. Um, I do think it is within the realm to look at a, um, designee, which is similar to the town policy, um,

1:11:11 which most municipalities or whatever version of government is, is looking at these where you set a policy around what the speech is, which generally is that it’s it’s government speech, and then the decision could be either by the board or it could be a designee of the board. And probably the policies tend to be pretty general. And then the committee on a year to year basis can determine who the designee is. And it, it could be something you would review on an annual basis. Right. Uh, under your policy or as, or as needed. Okay. I just wanna reiterate this. When we started this, it was because of this SJC case that came out and that all these municipalities were doing this and that, that that was where we ended. And we got a lot of pushback. People in the community saying, no, you’re wrong.

1:11:57 It’s legally, I’m, I’m an attorney. That’s legally not right. So it was really actually great to hear that the town’s attorney came and said the exact verbatim same thing that we had been told on why we needed this. And it looks, from what I’m hearing, that we’re gonna adopt very similar, if not the same policy as the town. And there was no pushback on that. So I think we’re pretty aligned. I just, I think that speaks to the personality politics a little bit, that it’s the same message, just two different boards. Right. I think also it’s, it’s important to note, someone had asked us what our flag policy was. It had been escalated to administration. And administration had asked us what our flag policy was, and we did not have one. So we had to do this. That that’s just by law when someone asks us what our policy is, if we don’t have one,

1:12:42 we have to implement one. Um, so I think that that distinction is, is lost as well. And also that we will be, we go by advice of attorney of of counsel. Advice of counsel. Has MASC issued a a a A flag policy for Massachusetts Public Schools? No, I don’t think yet. Okay. I’m just curious. I’ve asked No, Because that’s usually where all the policies come from. Yeah, they, and they, and they may, it’s, it’s new. I mean, it’s new this year and they, so they, they haven’t Yet. They haven’t yet. Okay. So stay tuned. End of year there will be, um, a first reading and followed by the second and third reading where people have opportunity to comment. Um, I think once we get through town meeting And once you get through town meeting, et cetera. And We also have public comment, um, on our agenda at the subcommittee meetings as well. So there’s also the opportunity there too. So Check out subcommittee meetings as well as the regular school committee meetings.

1:13:29 If you wanna have input earlier on, I would suggest you go to the subcommittee meetings to have public comment there as they’re formulating the entire process. Lots of fun. So next, um, one of the things that has come up, um, and, uh, will the school committee perform a self-evaluation as is described in your policies? So because of the turmoil at the beginning of this year, we didn’t set school committee policies. Um, I know that in my time here, we, or not policies, um, goals as a school committee. So we wouldn’t have anything to evaluate on this year just because we were busy trying to get people into some positions. But I absolutely do think we should go back to that practice and, and we’ll, um, encourage that.

1:14:17 I know we’ve done this once in my time here. We’ve, where we set goals and then evaluated on the goals. And it was, it was really good because at the end of the year, I, we had set three goals. It was, um, for that we would have a strategic plan, that we would have a facility strategic plan, and that we would, you know, address some of the budget concerns. And at the end of the year, the only thing we had was the facility strategic plan. So it really was eye-opening to say, we set off with these three goals, we’ve only accomplished one. Let’s try to do better. So I do think that there’s a lot of value in that process. Um, but we, to be honest, at the beginning of the year, we were, we were, all of our meetings really surrounded about getting, um, in an interim superintendent. So we did not set those goals. So as a follow up to that, um, while you didn’t,

1:15:03 while you weren’t able to establish the goals for this year Mm-Hmm. And what I’m hearing is you are going to establish them Yeah. For beginning next year, it’ll Be a part of our retreat. And then what will the process be for the public to provide input into the, the goals as well as the self-evaluation that is being done? How are you gonna be able to bring in the public? Because as you are more than aware, as is the community, there has been a lot of controversy this year. And by establishing goals, discussing those goals with the community, as well as the evaluation with the community, that can go a long way into a lot of understanding of what is happening. So I’m curious as to how are you gonna get

1:15:51 that public input in a productive way to help you establish goals and to help you with your self evaluation. Brian might have a thought On that. Brian’s been working on some communication proposals. Yes. We’re, we’re trying to figure out a very, um, solid, uh, communications plan. Uh, first part of that, we hope to put out a survey, um, after this meeting next week sometime, about how people felt about this type of meeting, how they felt about the communication with the school committee meeting we had a couple weeks ago. Um, we’re asking if we should put out newsletters. Uh, we would actually go into the, the, our webpage as well as the newspaper. We’ll give it to the newspaper, our weekly, uh, a monthly newsletter if that’s how frequent we’re gonna do it. So we are looking at different ways of evaluating our, um,

1:16:41 communications anyway, by canvassing the public to see how they feel about how we’re doing. Um, I think we ought to grade ourselves. I think it’s a good idea. I think somebody already did that for us once. Yeah. And I think we should have those topics as part of our evaluation. How do we do against the report card that we got? I think there’s a lot of things that we could do to improve that communications out there. Bring that up. Other comments about, yeah, I think, um, to, to Brian’s point, so we had, we had one, um, session. It was a little bit more of a dialogue necessarily than tonight is more of a, you know, moderated one. But I think that if, and I think they’re great. I I, I, I could talk all night about school committee stuff, um, but as we go forward and work with the community on how best to communicate is,

1:17:30 I hope we do more of, frankly, the more dialogue type of forum. And one ought to be the evaluation of the school committee when we are, you know, probably at the end of the year after we’ve set our goals, before we evaluate ourselves or when we evaluate ourselves to have the community have that opportunity to do that. So I think that would be the topic of eight and evening and or Thankfully, MISC has a lot of, um, trainings in, in different things they can do. Um, this is something we would normally work at, at, at a retreat. Mm-Hmm. And our retreat, we usually have the attorney come in and do a training. And then MASC, we also could focus with MASC potentially, uh, as looking at this as part of what they bring to us. Um, we have some other high level things we need to do

1:18:17 with them, but it’s definitely something that we could discuss with them. Um, have you thought about, in addition to, obviously the resources you have with MASC, um, looking at similar communities as to how they are doing this and how they’re getting the most bang for their buck from community members, you know, do you have, is that something that you have used previously or would consider using Again, to get this information, um, out to people and get good feedback from the community to, you know, move things forward? I, I, I would say that reaching out to other communities, um, and seeing how they do it best to get the most bang for their buck would be a beneficial initiative on this front as well as a multitude of other fronts. Um, so I, you know, that would be something I’d, I’d greatly look into.

1:19:03 Yeah. ‘cause I presume like every school district you have your cohorts. Yeah. So you wanna go look at your cohorts and connect with your cohorts in terms of what has worked for them. ‘cause everybody’s gone through difficult times with budgets, issues that are before the school committee. Um, so I’m just curious if you know, you have those people in place or is that something you would be searching out to do as you’re establishing those goals? I think we would probably be looking to search those out. And to me, that falls under what I call benchmarking, which is not something we’ve been doing a lot of. And I think it’s something not, I think it is something that will be important to me with a new interim superintendent is looking at benchmarking other school districts and their all in all aspects of how they deliver their services to their students up to

1:19:51 and including their school committees. And, um, vis-a-vis Marblehead in our district, the cohorts that Desi provides us. Um, while they’re important, and I think we should look at them, are not necessarily, um, exactly the ones also that I would wanna look at. There are a couple of other school districts that I think are a little bit more, to me, aspirational, to use tonight’s word, um, that are, that are sort of demographically very similar to Marblehead, but are not a cohort of ours and have, frankly, better results, um, from a financial standpoint. And, uh, more importantly, uh, an act, uh, student achievement standpoint. Those are the communities I would want. I would want to have our administration work with us on benchmarking, and that would include benchmarking, everything,

1:20:36 MC CA scores, staffing, you know, budget, um, appropriation and certainly school committee, um, effectiveness. All right. Thank you. We’re getting near the end so you can go onto your business. You’re really good at time. Yeah. You, so you can go onto your business meeting, which I know you’re very excited for. Um, I would like to take this opportunity, and we’re gonna keep you to a minute each. If there is one thing you would like to have the opportunity to address this evening that you have not, and we’re gonna keep it to a quick one minute. So I’m gonna start with Mr. Williams. I know why this seat was empty when I got here. Exactly. I Mean, I need to get to these meetings earlier. Um, I guess one thing I haven’t heard is I’d like to see us

1:21:22 as a team work a little bit better, be a more high functioning team and earn the respect of, you know, the, the town that we serve, you know, and what I mean by that is, you know, it’s just respecting different opinions, uh, you know, trying to work towards consensus, being open to different viewpoints. Um, you know, so it, and I’m not saying this is us, but like, you know, a team where you have like, you are voting and you have like a three to two or a four to one vote, right? There’s three people in those two scenarios that didn’t get what they want perhaps. Right. But to me that’s like, they should make their case, the others should listen. But once a vote has been made, we need to move forward as a committee. All five of us support what happened. Right. Not, well, I, I didn’t agree. You know, that’s, that’s some of the things I mean

1:22:08 by a high respecting team and involving the community, you know, doing some of the things, acting on some of the things we’ve talked about today. Thank you, Mr. Ott. I think one thing, uh, we really should have done was the retreat. And everything was so hitting us at once that we’re unable to schedule one because that is the place where we’ll start setting up the goals, how we’re gonna work together, um, how we can evaluate ourselves. Those are the things you do at a retreat. And unfortunately we didn’t have one. So I think what I’d like to see as soon as we get out at the end of the school years to stop playing that retreat right away. Thank you, Ms. Fox. I want us to revisit a strategic plan. Um, we haven’t had a true strategic plan,

1:22:54 um, with benchmarks and budget drivers and timelines. And I think it’s really hard for our administrators, us as a committee and the town as a whole to endorse the work we’re doing and support it financially without having that document to go back to that says, you have a plan, would this cost you this year? Would this cost you next year? Would this cost you the year after that? And knowing that we’re benchmarking ourself on that, I think that that, um, is, is something I pushed really hard for. And I, and I think any functional business or committee or department really needs to have that. And it needs to be a living document. You can’t, you can’t just produce it, praise it

1:23:41 and put it up on the shelf. We really just have to keep going back to it, evaluating and pivot when needed. Thank you. So one of the things that I’d like to see us concentrate on more, which I think gets lost in the saw sometimes, is the achievements of our students and focusing and highlighting our student achievement. And that isn’t just academic, which is of course important, but it is the arts, it’s music, it’s performance, it’s athletics. It is the whole student of mar in Marblehead and what’s, you know, and let’s celebrate that. Let’s celebrate the achievements. ‘cause I think, I don’t know how much we have necessarily done that. And I’d like to do, um, more of that and, and focus on that. And also to focus on

1:24:29 the climate and the culture. And I’ve talked about this before, and we did talk about it a little bit tonight, but to try to be focused on the culture in each of our buildings that celebrates success and achievement individually, whatever that looks like in that individual student, that we celebrate that student. And that’s what I would like to see. Thank you, Allison. Um, I think it’s unfortunate that Al feels we don’t respect each other when we disagree. I, I think that we do a good job of that. Um, but I, I would say communication, uh, would be the one thing that I would want to talk about more. I think we need to communicate more often and more thoroughly so that the fact, so we don’t have people asking these, these questions.

1:25:14 These are, you know, some of these questions we’ve received multitude of times and have the answers to these questions in a place where individuals can go and find them even so that, you know, I don’t know. And someone had forwarded an FAQ that another school committee had done, um, on, on their, I think that that was something specific to collective bargaining that someone sent, but we could have something such as that. Um, so that people can go and if they have questions, they’re not reading an op-ed, they’re not reading an article, they’re not talking to their neighbor, they’re going to the actual school committee website and reading the response similar to what we’ve said today, so that people can have that. I think that would, um, that would be another way to have even more transparency, um, consistently. Great. Well, guess what, we’re at the last question,

1:26:00 and this is gonna be for all of you. And we’re gonna start, I Thought that was the last question. I Thought that was the last One. No, we’re getting to the last question. Sorry. Um, so this is for all of you, and I’ll, we’ll start in the reverse order. So Allison, you’ll be on the, the first. Um, we would like to ask each of you to let us know one thing you are taking away from tonight’s forum, as well as previous school committee meetings that you have had with the public that you believe will help the community and school committee move forward and contribute to rebuilding trust and positive relationships within the Marblehead School community. My answer would be the same communication. Um, I, I think that that is critical communication and, and the level of information provided in that communication.

1:26:48 Not, you know, fluffy types of communication are good from time to time, but I think we’re at a point where we need to dig deep and, and give the detail of that communication to the extent that we can, of course, because there’s always gonna be subjects we can’t that are executive session only. But I think providing that more proactively, you know, things like what we’ve done with the budget has provided a whole giant window for people. Um, but I think even more communication about what is happening in the written form so that someone doesn’t have to watch the meeting, they don’t need to read the minutes. They can very easily and succinctly see, um, what is happening. And that should include, you know, what Jen said, the celebrations that we have For us. Right, Jen? Yeah, I would, my takeaway has been, um, how much I know I love this town,

1:27:34 and I know everybody else loves this town, and I know that, you know, we have dozens of people here. We got hundreds of people on Zoom, and everybody here does care about this town and about our schools. I know they do. And we’ve been through, um, some challenging times. Um, and I, I know that, you know, we’ve, we’ve been pushed to, um, you know, by the community to provide answers and to provide insight. I hope we have, I hope we’ve provided some transparency. Um, and please, you know, stay. Please keep it up. I mean, it’s, you know, I actually like doing this stuff. Um, and I appreciate, um, I appreciate the input from the community and, and I, and I do thank you because I know you do all you care and you care about our students and you care about our staff, Sarah, To keep having conversations.

1:28:22 I think there’s a real danger, whether it’s in Marblehead, whether it’s just in our schools, whether it’s at the national level, when people stop wanting to have conversations with someone that they feel they’re in opposition to. I think that once we can all have a conversation and say, listen, I have a real problem with this action you took, or this thing that you said. Can we talk about that though? I wanna hear what was behind that. I want to talk about it. Versus just saying, what you did is horrible. I’m done here. I think that’s what we see in our world. I think that’s what our kids see. I think that’s probably a lot of what we see with the social emotional stuff. Where we’re seeing with our kids is this is what the world they’re growing up in is a world where you’re right or you’re wrong, and there’s no middle ground.

1:29:08 And I think it’s really important that we be able to have conversations even when they’re a tough conversation. Um, because, you know, that’s what we did here tonight, and I hope we gave people some more information. And I’ve had lots of great opportunities when people will email, um, I always give them the opportunity to have a conversation if they want. Um, I’ve found in those conversations, a lot happens. Um, someone always has a good point of view that they’re bringing to us. And you know, if you can, if you can each listen to each other a little bit, I think at the end of the day in our specific situation, everyone’s coming to the table hoping for what’s best for their student or or their kid. We might just not have that, the same idea of what that is, but we really need to be able to have that conversation.

1:29:54 Thank you. I think to improve our image and trust in the school committee, we really have to focus on communication. Because the only place people are getting information at this point is from friends, from newspapers, from, uh, letters. You just click on that whatever code it is, and it sends out a letter to us. So we really need to get the word out what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, invite feedback in that newsletter saying, you know, if you have a question about this policy, we’re working on this procedure or budget or anything like that, send us this question. We’ll get it out to the school committee and we’ll be able to address it at an opportunity. But without giving out the information from the school committee, people are reading and hearing what they want to hear.

1:30:39 And we’ll wrap it up with you. Yeah, Mr. Williams. Thank You. Um, what I got specifically from tonight was the whole self-evaluation question. I thought that was a very good question, and I’m a little embarrassed. I hadn’t got that policy I was trying to fever, so see if I could find it. Um, I have a copy here if, Um, but I, I’d like it to be more, uh, it has, part of it has to be self, but part of it should be community evaluation, and it shouldn’t be, you know, a letter to the editors, you know, that’s not, it’s good, it was good feedback, but I’m, I want an evaluation process where we’re working with the community, setting specific goals that are important to all of us, and then we evaluate how we’re doing versus that. So that’s something I really took away from tonight that I’d like to follow up on.

1:31:25 Great. Um, one of the things I heard, especially at this last, this last question was profe professional, respectful communication among the school committee, among the school community, and among the residents. Does that resonate with you in terms Of, that’s, that is the perfect summation. That’s a wrap. Okay. Um, so I do, I really wanna thank you for allowing this to happen this evening as part of your school committee meeting, um, and for answering questions from your constituents. I also want to thank those who did send in questions, um, for an outsider outside of Marblehead, um, the clear caring about your community

1:32:12 and about your schools, which we all know, not everybody has a child in the school system, but everybody is impacted by the schools. Um, there was a real sense of caring concern and wanting to understand what was going on, and there was also a sense of wanting to move forward. So what I hope has been accomplished a little bit this evening is that this is a, moving forward, what you’re continuing to do is, again, with communication, um, and the respect for the opinions of your constituents. Um, but it has, it has shown me as someone who is not from here, that, you know, like so many communities, people wanna do what’s best for the children in the community, for the students, as well as everybody who’s sitting around them.

1:32:58 So I thank you. Um, and we had excellent questions, great answers. And so with that, I’m gonna turn this back over to the chair. Thank, Thank you. Thank, I’m actually gonna give us a couple minute recess to use the restrooms, and then we’ll get back to our business meeting. Thank you. You Take five minutes Back in the session at 8 43. Are we, um, Frank, are we back live? Okay. So I have on here that we’re gonna have a FY 25 budget discussion. We had our budget hearing the other night, and we heard a lot from the public. Some other people have followed up since then as well. And we really hadn’t gotten any opportunity to deliberate

1:33:44 as a committee to decide what are next steps. So, um, this, this is just to hear the committee’s thoughts on what are the appropriate next steps, um, given what we heard and how we want to proceed.

1:33:59 So I’m opening it up for discussion.

1:34:04 Um, I can start calling on people.

1:34:11 All right. So I’ll jump in. Um, I, you know, we have produced two budgets. Um, the, the level services, which by common budget practice practices is where you, you always should start. You can you start there, and then you can build or you can deduct, but you need to start knowing what it costs to fund what you have. So that’s where we started with level services. Um, then the town came back after the revenue projections and said, this is the budget allocation to come in balanced. And we, um, were then, then tasked at producing a budget that what does edu to show what education in Marblehead would look like

1:34:57 with the current balance, with the current revenue projections. Um, we had a recent meeting with FinCon. We talked about looking at, um, our, some of our revolving funds. Um, it’s important for people to understand that when a revolving fund is established at town meeting, it is established for a purpose. For instance, um, if there’s the kindergarten tuition revolving fund, money comes into that, obviously from kindergarten tuition and the, and then that money can be used to offset the second half of the day in the kindergarten program. So if free kindergarten goes up till 1140 or 1240, then the expenses incurred

1:35:42 by the district from 1240 to 2 25, only that portion can be charged to the kindergarten revolving fund. So just to give an example of how the, the various funds work. So for instance, if we have a balance, uh, in the kindergarten revolving fund, but we’re maxing out what we’re charging it to for that 1240 to 2 25 portion, we can’t go beyond that and reallocate that to something else because that’s not what the evolving fund was established for. And we don’t have the, I’m Gonna make one comment here though, ‘cause I, I had a conversation with the finance, um, director, Mary Deley, um, had to do that one-on-one because we didn’t post a meeting. So I can talk about it here. So she did, she did. Mary is gonna do, um, a bit of a deeper dive into that because she does think that we’re not charging all

1:36:30 of those costs to that revolving fund. So she does think there’s some ability there to, and we should be, if we’re not, we should be right. Correct. She’s not sure that that’s a hundred percent being charged properly. So there may, there, there’s some room there for going towards that revolving fund to, to bring into the budget. Yeah. So I just, my my point with that one is once we establish that maximum allowable amount, that is the maximum allowable amount. We can’t dip in for another a hundred thousand to balance our tech renewal program or another a hundred thousand to fund something at the high school. It has to be allocated to the item that the revolving fund was established for. So that’s one piece. Then we have our circuit breaker. You know, we were, if you look back to 2000 17, 18, 19,

1:37:15 what got us into the financial crisis was each year we were relying on a hundred percent of what we were projecting to come in from circuit breaker. We were never looking at Karen carrying a balance in arrear. We were, we were expending that whole thing. And the best practice is that you carry a hundred percent. Um, a prime example of why that’s best practice is in 2018 to 19, we had an increase of how many students, Jen, I’m sorry, what was The question? Um, how many students did we jump in 18 to 19 for special Education? Um, we had, um, I think it was 18 unexpected students. So 18 out of district exp uh, students that came in that were not, we were, we were unaware were coming in.

1:38:02 We coupled that with the perfect storm of that was the year that the state came back and said, typically we, we, we budget, um, circuit breaker reimbursement at the rate of 70%. That was the year the state came back and said, well, can’t make 70%. So we had more going out, less coming in than the projections. And then, you know, you hit a big delta there. So if we had been using the best practice of carrying over one year in arrears than we wouldn’t, that wouldn’t have happened. So we have spent four years now through Michelle Crest’s, five years through Michelle Crest’s leadership, um, right from the get go, she said the best practice is to get to a point of carrying over a hundred. So we had to do a slow ween on that, if you will.

1:38:49 And we finally, this is the first year we achieved the, the best practice of having a hundred percent of last year’s in there, which we’ll spend in the coming fiscal year. And then we’ll roll over again. Um, and so it’s very hard to say we finally hit financial best practice and now we’re gonna go backwards and go deeper into that. So we did talk to fin com about that. Um, and I was, I was very pleased with their response to that. Um, so we are, we are continuing to look at those reserve funds to see what else we can do, how much we can shave off, off, um, what would normally be in the operating budget. There Are a couple more just so I don’t know if you would, so yeah, so, so folks, so for the committee to know

1:39:35 as well, ‘cause I spoke to Mary about this. So one was the kindergarten and pre-K, kindergarten and pre-K revolving accounts. Both of those. The other was food service. Um, we have accumulated a pretty large balance in the food service budget. Um, which is because, um, the government’s reimbursing all students for breakfast and lunch. So it is accumulating at, um, we have a, I guess a pretty good participation rate. So we’re getting reimbursed, um, which is good. The food service is limited to, um, to food service. So one thing is we’re challenged with being able to attract workers at the pay scale. So that’s something that we need to look at with the contract. Um, the other thing, so there may be some things that we can do with food service revolving fund. One thing we are planning to do next year, uh,

1:40:23 for fiscal year 25 is to put the food service director salary, which is the single biggest salary into that revolving fund. Single bi biggest salary in for in the food service department. Food service in the food service. Not, sorry, sorry, yeah. In the food service department, um, into that revolving fund for FY 25, but she’s also married looking at doing it for f FY 24. So that would free up, uh, that salary line for FY 24. Um, the other is the building rental. Um, she had a couple of interesting ideas that she, um, was wondering whether the part of the building rental could dip into the town utility reserve. That was a question to ask because those utility, in other words, we’re carrying all the utilities even for these outside sources. But the building rental, um, revolving fund could

1:41:10 possibly have also some other, um, um, funds released to it. And um, so that was it. The other interesting thing she talked about in other communities that Mary has worked in, that um, some towns and municipalities have in their town budget certain items that are considered accommodated costs or shared costs that are taken out of operating budgets. And they’re standalone, um, costs that are funded by town meeting, which include utilities for all municipal buildings, special education tuition, health insurance. And there are a couple of other things. So again, that’s something which I’ve also talked about with finance committee, where the special education, particularly the out of district, um, tuition should be its own standalone item for the town

1:41:58 to fund, which obviously we’d need to have some oversight or what have you, but to, to have that in our operating budget is challenging because when we do get these unexpected, um, mandated costs, we’re constantly trying to find it within our budget. So that’s, uh, I think a longer term sort of discussion. Um, so that was Mary’s sort of revolving fund. Okay. Update. So we, it’s important for us all to know we are looking at those options. We also have asked, you know, the town via fin com to look at what else, what, what they can do to meet us. Um, for instance, the on the town side there was $1.3 million in the, um,

1:42:43 health insurance line that was budgeted at a surplus knowing. So there’s two areas that free our, that customarily feed our free cash. We overestimate what health insurance is gonna cost us knowing that that will provide a buffer that will then f feed free cash. And we underestimate our revenue stream knowing that when the revenue stream comes in higher than what we estimated, that will feed free cash. Those are the two feeders to free cash. So part of the process that started a couple years ago is to bring those both back closer to what the real costs or revenue stream is and wean us off this constant reliance on free cash. That was like a town wide practice that was implemented a few years ago. So for this year, from the health insurance

1:43:31 line, the, the over estimate, they have pulled 1.3 million out of that health insurance line. And as, um, one of the FinCon members has coined the phrase now geographically relocated it to their salary lines. In the townside one request we’ve had is if we’re take, so if, if we know that we’re over 50% of the health insurance costs because we’re the bulk of the employees, if we, if, if we took that overestimation of 1.3 million and moved it to just the town salary lines, what we’re asking is, can we split that? Because if we’re half of the, the line item, can we get half of that? So can we mi geographically migrate six 50 of that

1:44:18 to the school budget and the town get six 50? Um, I haven’t gotten promising

1:44:27 response to that yet. It’s an ongoing conversation. Um, I I think it’s a reasonable ask, but the point is we’re still having these conversations to figure out, okay, where can we relocate things within our revolving funds? And it’s really important for us to also be mindful about using one time keep funding sources for reoccurring costs. I know there’s a big push in the townside to do that this year to get us through one more year. That was very clearly explained to me in the FinCon meeting last week. I still, as a budgeting practice have a lot of problems with taking a one time revenue stream or,

1:45:13 or source and applying it to what we know is going to be a problem next year and next year and next year and moving forward. Um, that being said, you know, we are hearing from some members of the community saying, we don’t want you to go for an override fig figure it out this year. Whatever you need to do, figure it out this year. We’re also hearing from a lot of people that are saying, give us the option on the ballot. Let us advocate for, let us fight for no more cuts. It’s really, you know, we have to decide where, where we stand. We can’t, we can’t keep, you know, TA talking about all these plans. We have to figure out what is the path so that our administration can give us all the data we

1:45:59 need to then vote on. ‘cause we have to vote our budget soon. Um, we did get some clarification today that there’s been a lot of am ambiguity. I think for years in the town we got some very, very crystal clear clarification today, um, by law the school committee has this sole authority to vote its budget. The budget we vote is the budget that gets voted at town meeting people can amend that. They can do what they want. People can recommend they don’t adopt this, but only the school committee can determine the number that goes to the floor of town meeting. That’s it. By that you mean not fin Even if it’s different from FinCon. FinCon has the absolute right to vote and say, we don’t recommend your budget.

1:46:46 Right. They absolutely have that. Right? Right. But we determine the number, the number cannot be assigned. Um, so we just have to decide what, what this is so that we can go back, um, to Theresa and say to her, if we need more information on any one particular thing so that we can vote our budget. Because I have more questions on all of these versions and I’m not gonna task our administration on answering my questions to all, all these versions until we kind of decide where we’re going with this. So I’d like to hear where everyone is. Well I’m not sure how we can calculate out an override at this point. I mean, are we talking about just restoring the $2.3 million we’re chopping off the budget?

1:47:31 I don’t think so. I, I’ve been in the district a long time now and every year they ask us as principals, tell me what you really want. Take the time, visualize and give us budget you really want. So as principals, we did that. We spent a lot of time coming up with a budget we thought was reasonable for our buildings and guess what? Never happened. Okay. Never made it on the budget. So I don’t know how you calculate at this point in time an override. I really don’t. How much do you really need? Because I think the budget’s been flat, the spending budget’s been flat for years. I mean, salary goes up every year. That’s contractual. The insurance goes up with it. But our spending budget every year is frozen almost to

1:48:16 what we had last year and the year before that. So the money we really need to put back into budget is in that spot because we can’t buy the programs we need to make our school children learn the greatest way. For example, wit wisdom, that’s an excellent pro uh, program that came in. I got a tutorial on it, I saw it in action. It’s amazing. $400,000 we paid for that, but that came outta ARPA funds and ARPA goes away next year. So what are we gonna do? We need social studies programs. We need to look at our science programs. Where are we gonna find the money if our budget’s always this short? So we need to build it up enough so that when we ask for $400,000, maybe not that much for social studies, whatever,

1:49:02 but that kind of money we can actually justify it and get it in the next budget. But we can’t do that now because our budgets always dollar short. And I don’t know how we’re going to address that at this point. You know, we’ve only got a couple weeks left before we have to put it up. So. Well, one thing, Brian, we so just sort of boiling it down. I mean we have, we have a level funded budget, which has reduced services and cuts. We have a level services budget, which is a 5.7% increase. Um, which brings us to the same level of service that we provided this year, which does include curriculum development. So I think it would be, you know, I think it to that point it would be helpful. Well, Theresa’s on here or we could have her come at our next meeting, um, or Julia Ferrera

1:49:47 and talk about what is in the level services budget for curriculum development and, and, and it, you know, and what might be missing. ‘cause one thing we can consider is we can consider the level services budget as a budget to vote. What happens if we propose that? ‘cause then we would need an override for that particular proposal, right? No, no. Okay. So, um, you could do it as an override. You could do it in, um, in the, the, just the budget allocation now to, to put a pin in the false narrative that we’re asking other departments to cut. That is not at all what the mechanism is here. So I’m gonna use round numbers. They’re not our exact numbers. I’m using round numbers just to make it easier.

1:50:32 If our budget at town meeting is a hundred million dollars and we have our projections over the next five years of what we believe to be projecting with free cash each year. I believe the projection for next year is 6.4. I’m gonna use 6.5. We’re gonna make this easy. So it’s a hundred million dollars we’re projecting to out of that FY 25 budget yield $6.5 million in free cash. That means we’re passing a hundred million dollars budget, but we’re planning to spend 93.5 million. So if we increase the budget we want by 1 million, if we are able with our revolving funds to fix some stuff and everything, I, I don’t know what the exact numbers are, so I’m just,

1:51:18 don’t quote me on the numbers. If we increased our ask by 1 million, we’re not cutting any other department. What we’re saying is, instead of projecting to spend 93.5 of the a hundred in yielding 6.5 for free cash, we’re expecting to spend 94.5 in yield 5.5 for, for free cash. Yes. That does end, you know, with less free cash next year, which we know our declining free cash is a perpetual problem. It doesn’t cut a department. Now it does bring us quicker to, this town has to come to terms with the fact that we need a town wide override. We cannot sustain the level of spending for schools, for park and rec for anybody. It’s not sustainable. It does bring us there quicker, folks.

1:52:04 I mean the math is the math, but we can pass the budget we need without cutting other department. We’re not, no one on this committee is saying cut another department. We’re saying lessen the yield Up Theresa. Oh sorry. Well, Theresa has her hand up so I just thought maybe or Dr. McGinnis I should say. Okay. Yeah, I know. If you have to un you might have to unmute her. Mute her.

1:52:30 Great. I couldn’t unmute. I was stuck. No, no, you’re good. Um, I just wanted to let you know that uh, the professional development to continue implementation of wit and wisdom is in the level services budget that we did. Um, so just to answer Brian’s question on that, Is there any other curriculum in there? Do you know offhand, Teresa or, I don’t know. Julia Is on too. Yeah, there is some. I know they need more math and social studies. Um, I don’t know to what extent, but I can find that out in a couple minutes. Okay, thank you. Um, and you said it’s in the level service, is it in the level funded as well or is all my understanding is cut all? Yeah, it was cut. It was cut for level funded. It’s in level services. So we 400,000 curriculum. Okay. Just to be clear, it’s level services and reduced services. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So, but, so in the reduced services,

1:53:17 this brand new wonderful $400,000 curriculum, we don’t, we sta we, we hit pause I guess on the professional development for that. No. So no, it’s Already gone. No, you don’t hit pause. It just like anything, it takes, um, continuous nurturing, ongoing professional development to support the teachers and the system, all that kind of stuff. Year two implementation. So it’s not that it stops, is that it, it continues in the way it is planned to continue in implementation. It just doesn’t cost anything anymore. No. So, but in, in the reduced services budget, is, is that affected

1:53:53 In the reduced services? No, it’s not enough. It’s better to have the support, the professional development from the company. Right. Okay. So that in the reduced services budget, that was cut out. Okay. Money for professional development in that regard. Yeah. Got it. Okay. However, arpa um, the town did give us some funding to support some of that professional development. So I don’t wanna say all you know Julia, what she did is took, because we were trying to stay far away from teachers in the classroom, we took more at the central office, uh, level in terms of pd. So it’s a matter of which bucket of PD you put it in. Oh, Julia, you’re right there. You can talk further to it. But we do have ARPA funds.

1:54:39 I tried to unmute Julia. Julia, is she not unmuted? There we go. Well said. Dr. McGinnis. I completely agree. Thank you for giving me the chance to, but I have nothing to add ‘cause you answered that so well. So thank you. Thank you. Um, so The scenario you were discussing with the $1 million from free cash, who authorizes that moving to the school committee’s budget? Well, it’s not, we’re not moving current free cash. We’re not moving it. We’re, we are not moving anything where if we, if we spend more, if we get closer to spending what we actually budgeted less money comes in next year. So it’s not, we’re not borrowing more for free cash, although we could. ‘cause there is, I think the Answer is town meeting approves that now. That’s What’s voted town meeting.

1:55:24 Yeah, I figured someone had to approve. It’s not a separate vote, it’s just the vote for our budget. Yeah. Okay. Town meeting approves all appropriations for the budgets. Yeah. Um, so I have to be honest, I I think we should absolutely scrub our revolving funds, our grants as much as we can. We should continue to look at our fees. Not, not more than we are right now. ‘cause it’s already Yeah. A lot. Um, but we should, we should be looking at all the other ways we have within our district to fund this. But that being said, I’m not, I, I gotta tell you, I’m not voting a budget that cuts more people again this year. I’m just not. I’m not. And maybe I’m the only one I’m not doing it.

1:56:09 So the other thing I will mention too is that Mary is working, um, with Emma, who’s our, um, assistant business manager to really try to sharpen what may be left over at the end of the year. So if there are any projected surpluses, one may be the food service salary director salary, which is moving over. So last year there was an unexpected $1.3 million surplus. Um, so again, any projected surplus could be used to offset costs for next year. So that would reduce, potentially reduce the voted budget, but also the voted the, um, costs associated. So that’s another, um, opportunity for, um, revenue source. And they’re looking, working on those projections right now. So that hopefully at our, our,

1:56:56 our next meeting was supposed to be Thursday. It’s getting moved to earlier in the week. So they’re supposed to have our, that for us. ‘cause that’s a factor too. We are looking at every possible way within our own books to, to balance this. And then we just have to, we have to figure out what we’re gonna do with the other portion. There’s hand us up again, Theresa. Go for it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you Jen for pointing out our conversation yesterday with Mary. And just for point of clarification, some of the thinking we were doing was around instead of a hundred percent in the reserves, which she credited, um, Michelle Cresta for building up in the last four years. And recognizing that is best practice, perhaps we move it to 75% this one year in these tough times while we don’t

1:57:42 have any override while we are so tight on our budget. And um, that would alleviate some of that, that pain for cutting teachers. So that, that is one area. And I forgot the other one. Forgive me. Well, keep in mind she also mentioned that if we use, um, any portion of the circuit breaker for revolving fund and we do have additional needs, there is a stabilization fund, special education stabilization fund that was funded in 20 19, 200 $50,000 that has not been used. So there is, um, yeah, that is a Fall. And the other um, a little bit of a, just an acknowledgement is while as whereas last year there was 1.3 million at the end of the year, there will be nowhere close to that at the end

1:58:27 of this year because we’re incurring a lot different expenses this year. Um, so we don’t know that number as you said, and Emma, Emma on that so that we will have it for you next Week. And that wasn’t anomaly last year for sure. That was very Unexpected. Yeah. So it’s not near that. But there could be, and again that is, you know, do we give that back to the town and then does it get reappropriated? How, how does that work? Yeah, Well I would argue probably not. I’d be very concerned about doing a one year moving of that revolving fund 15 I think I said say 15% and move the rest over to the budget and then next year we’ll get it back. That never happens. My experience is once you move it, you lose it. No, I You’re talking about the circuit breaker?

1:59:12 Yeah, no, the suggestion, I mean, I don’t know if I understood you correctly, would be to take up to maybe 15% of it and put it in our operating budget and keep 85% of It. Oh, keep, I I had it Backwards in the revolving budget. Oh, okay. Yeah. Sorry. And actually Theresa said 75% so 25. 25. 25. So well, whatever. Not Hundred percent. Five states because Correct. Michelle made a strong argument Yes. Not to touch that. Yes. Because every year we run out if we don’t Yeah, I don’t like I don’t, She did. And I, I am not, there are other revolving funds and I I I can, I can make an argument for circuit breaker. I I just cannot, especially, we’ve had some turmoil in, you know, special education this year. Um, we don’t know if that will incur more outta districts or not.

1:59:57 And I think it’s not a good year for us to divert from best practice. That’s my 2 cents. But to what Brian, I think was also speaking to, and I I hope I interpreted this correctly, is once something’s gone from our budget, it never, I have, I people don’t. Well Sarah, in the case of the circuit breaker, it gets replenished with the, I’m not the next year circuit breaker. And then that doesn’t, You have to let me finish what I’m saying before you can comment. Um, I’m not talking about the circuit breaker. I’m saying once we take something off of our line item budget, that we present the town and we bring our number to say, say, say what we’re producing for level services is 48 and we bring it down to 47. 47 is our starting point next year. I have never been witness to a conversation where they say,

2:00:45 okay, you got created the year before. We’ll bring you back up to that 48. ‘cause we know that’s what it really costs and you came to the table and were creative. We’ll bring you back up to that 48 and we’ll start you from there. I’d never seen that. I agree with you. I remember at a school committee meeting, the head of fin comm said, you cut your budget by 20%, I’ll give it back to you the next year. Did not. Well first Of all, FY 23, FY 24 and even FY 25 reduced services are all higher each year than they were the year before. So it’s never been less than the year before. It’s just reduced services because the costs going up are so much higher, are higher than what even this incremental increase is. I understand that. So I’m not sure I understand what that means. In other words, The level of services never Comes back. Okay. Alright then. That’s alright. That’s different.

2:01:30 The level of services. So, so what you had cut has not come back and it doesn’t in this one either. It doesn’t In the Yeah, and that’s what I, I mean last year we, we lost a librarian. We have a school in our system in one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts that doesn’t have a librarian. And we’re looking at budgets that don’t even bring that back. Right. Including level services doesn’t bring that back. Yeah. I mean I just, or an assistant principal. Okay. Yep. So if we change, may I, I’m sorry, may I speak? Go for it. Of course. Yeah. If we, um, change anything that you have given us as a directive, like if it’s not 2.3, you know, if that changes, um, what the principals and I have been working on per your quest, Sarah, is prioritizing.

2:02:17 And what we looked at was what we have as preliminary or proposed cuts this year. We looked at last year’s list of 33 that were cut and we also looked at what we had done early on when I came in November and December, which was more aspirational. So we took all three lists this week and are prioritizing them to, if we had a 200,000 or 500,000 whatever, what would be most important to bring back? That’s just, you Know, can you provide us with that list before our next meeting? Yes, Thank you. Okay. Because I think That will be the finance subcommittee, Jen and you Sarah. Right. And so Sarah, it sounds like you’re recommending the level services budget is what I thought I heard. I just wanna verify

2:03:04 And then I’d to know what I need to see. I need this prioritized list from Theresa because I need to see how much we, we can move, um, into other areas and you know, i I in what our funding mechanism, what the will of the committees is gonna be for a funding mechanism. If it’s, if it’s that we try to do it without an override, then there’s one path and there’s one, you know, cap. If we try to do it with it in override, well you know, in that situation, if you’re going for an override for 2.2 million, but if you did it for 2.5, you could add back, uh, the librarian and vice principal. Vice principal princip, well that would include the assistant principal or say this team prioritize. And again, I don’t have this information.

2:03:50 Prioritize curriculum coaches and that was gonna be, you know, one 60. If there’s one or two small things that our administrators are telling us will make a big difference in the delivery of education. If we’re going for an override, then I would, I would look at those. Yeah. I don’t even know if that’s the direction we’re going yet. Um, so I think we really have to decide what direction we may be taking and then once we decide that direction, go back to our administrators and really use their recommendations and their subject matter expertise in this.

2:04:25 Theresa is your hand still up or new? No. Okay. Um, so I think that list Would be, we’re really talking about back to three budgets then. Well, I don’t know. I’m not budget And it’s not a fully funded because I understand that exactly. But it’s more, it’s it’s extra. Right. Versus the level level services you’re talking about. I’m not, if we did do it. Yeah. It sounds like I’m, I’m trying to willow down right. All the, the options here, right. Um, and what you’re talking about would be an override. Well, I don’t know that, I don’t know that I don’t want, If we, if we added A elabor, I guess the first question is, is there is the will of the committee that we’re just going for level services or I’m sorry, um, reduced services. ‘cause if that’s the will of the committee, the all, all the other discussions are mute, don’t matter, they don’t matter. And so it’s all just dragging along time.

2:05:11 So I would, I guess, you know, I’d like to hear if the will of the committee is level, um, or reduced services as proposed. Not, it is not My will not mine. No. Alan awkward staring at you. No, no. I’m trying to just Document. So, so zero will for this committee for, um, the reduced services. So that’s one off the table. The next discussion is, is it a hybrid or is it just straight going with the, um, level serviced? I’d like some more data i’d I’m comfortable with level services. Right. What is it? I’d like to see that list. I’d like to see the prioritized list. Yep. Okay.

2:05:56 So that would be above level services. Not necessarily. I, I, they reprioritized it reprioritize, so I don’t know, maybe they prioritize bringing something back from last year over. I, I don’t know what’s on that list. So I would like to see that list. Well, is the number gonna change? I mean Teresa, do you anticipate it’s gonna be more? Yeah, it’s gonna be more And maybe I, I dunno, I wanna make sure my understanding is correct Sarah. So please correct me if I’m wrong here. So what we have provided you per your request was level services and reduced services. And the differential between the two is the 2.3. Right. What we have done is just because we have all of these other important, as you all know and you’ve all agreed, thank you. Um, we have pri prioritized that long list on those three examples that I gave you.

2:06:42 Um, and so that’s somewhere in between right between level services and 2.3 million less or reduced services and it’s a, a list where you can cut off at, you know, whatever priorities you, you wanted to, if we had a hundred thousand more, here’s where you’d have to stop if we had 500,000. You know, that’s, that’s what I think that’s what you guys are asking is you’d like to look at Yeah. That list and make that determination. Yeah. So we as a committee just said unanimously, we are not supportive of reduced services to the level that as presented. I think we’re all, we all want to see the, the list and then we may decide to own, to go with the original list presented for level services

2:07:30 or with more data. We may do something else, but I think we need that list for our meeting Monday night to really be able to determine what next steps are. Am I off? Okay. And I can get you that one of our principals is out all week for a family situation. So that’s, but I can get you at Monday For sure. Okay, so is everyone good with that? Yeah, I’m still, and I, I could learn more, but I’m just confused as to with Moore, when does the Moore definitely scream, override and when does the Moore Moore say, Well we have to see what, what Mary gets from scrubbing our revolving Fund? Well, but it, but it should be a number right? On the No, it’ll be on the floor of town meeting. So if we go with a number that, uh, town meeting doesn’t approve and we want to,

2:08:17 and we still want that number, then we have, we have place then bring that override back to life for override if we choose to do that. Okay. Okay. That night, Mm-Hmm Mm-Hmm. Ask the tree guy from 2019, he got his trees. Yeah. Unless we’re able to, you know, scrub enough from our side, have a conversation with the townside and if we come perhaps come to an agreement, then we would be on the floor of town meeting with an agreed upon balance budget. And that would, that would be, And I think that that would face, I would assume no opposition. Like if we’re able to scrub enough and the town’s able to move enough, you know, but it Still could, I mean, someone still put him In there. It still could, but I’m telling you I’m, I I emphatically am telling you, I I am not approving something that has further cuts to our staffs

2:09:02 and our students. I’m just not Just the, the last thing for me I think is just the deadlines. Right. Obviously town meeting. Yeah. We back up. So when do we have to make this decision by? What’s your best guess right now? Um, what is, what is more functional or what’s legal by legal? We have to do it by town meeting. We can, you can vote it now or before. I don’t know. I’m not recommending that. I’m just saying you’re asking what is legal. Um, you can do it right there. But, um, I would like us to have this buttoned up soon. So we’re gonna meet on Monday night. Theresa’s gonna have that data for us. We’ll have a pretty robust conversation around that. We may leave that meeting, um, we vote with a vote or we may need another meeting after that. Um, but I think Monday night when we get

2:09:48 that data will be a, a big night. Yep. Oh, oh. Hand again? No hand. Okay. Um, so Monday night we’ll be meeting at 7:00 PM I believe it will be here. I have to double check with Lisa that there’s not, that this space is not rented out to someone else. Um, if not, you know, I I will find us a space, but I’ll, I’ll send out an email and the meeting will be posted, um, tomorrow.

2:10:19 Great. All right. Is that the item done? Yeah. So I will adjourn us at nine 20.