School Committee: February 13, 2025

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

0:26 everybody Mike I’m G to make you host

0:45 okay I’m going to call us to order at 501 welcome our school committee meeting budget workshop for FY 26 to everyone for taking time to join us to welcome everyone in the audience um we have the first item on the schedule is on the agenda is schedule bills we do not actually have that um available so we’re going to um able that to our next meeting so we’re going to move right into the um budget Workshop um so turn this over to superintend John M um so I just want to say good evening uh we are here to present our proposed FY 26 school budget I want to first thank our leadership team who has collaborated provided input and who

1:32 worked hard to help develop this fiscally responsible budget you will find that everyone was mindful in their approach and work to ensure that they have the necessary resources required to operate the Departments and or buildings efficiently and effectively I’d like to recognize and thank our principes Marblehead high school principal Michelle head high school principal Michelle Carlson veterans Middle School principal Matt Fox Village School principal Scott Williams Brown School principal Mary Maxfield and Glover school principal Frank wski I’d like to also thank our directors director of Technology Steve PCH director of facilities Todd Bloodgood athletic director Ken wheeler our food service director who’s John Constantino who’s joining us online and

2:17 Meco director Kia Johnson together with our principles and directors we have our Central admin team for whom I’m truly grateful thank you to our assistant superintendent of student services Lisa Maria poo and assistant director of student services Victoria Ryan thank thank you to our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning Julia Ferrera and our assistant superintendent of finance and operations Mike piffling and our assistant director Finance christen morela this whole team has worked diligently to create a budget that is level service and will allow us to operate as a district while remaining fiscally responsible I also want to thank the budget subcommittee for their work in the budget process most of our team is new to Marblehead head so helping to team is new to Marblehead so helping to provide some historical perspective and information and Direction with much appreciated

3:02 I would be remiss if I did not also take a moment to thank Alicia Benjamin and her team as well as stasher keer Al gby Molly tis Ain Nunan and Dan Fox all of whom Have Been instrumental in the collaboration and ongoing communication between the schools in the town so that we can move forward in a proactive transparent and planful manner it is this newly forged relationship that has fostered communication and collaboration and allowed us to establish this level service operational budget that is reasonable affordable and appropriate to meet the needs of our students while also meeting the contractual contractual obligations of our staff we’re confident that this operational budget as proposed will not require an override for FY 26 dep pending High School roof project is a

3:48 separate from this school operating budget proposal and we touch upon briefly tonight but in much further detail as we move toward the Spring Town Meeting each school committee member has a copy of the entire budget book that outlines the proposal budget line items then inform the total operational budget request this information will also be posted on our website along with the slide presentation that I will begin momentarily this presentation provides an overview of budgetary needs of the district and the money being requested as a part of a level service budget I would appreciate it if we could hold questions from the committee in person’s done presenting their portion thank you um so we’re going to have the U Pull the budget um just want to mention just to start for a second John that we are

4:35 going to deviate um just so everyone knows um the agenda from what was posted um and the order will be taken out of just want yes thank you we created we created the budget slides we going to pull up in a second and it may not be in exact order as an agenda so I apologize for that um so once this is up I will I will uh start the slides and how this will go is I’ll start the slides and we pass it off and then um we’re just going to kind of tumble down and introduce the next person who’s going to present their sections of the proposed budget good all right so this first slide is Marblehead head right so this first slide is Marblehead Public Schools FY 26 superintendent proposed budget um robu the inter superintendent schools Mike piing assistant superintendent of finance and

5:20 operations Julia fera our assistant superintendent teaching and learning Lisa Maria Palo our assistant superintendent student services and our NPS leadership team inclusive of the principles and directors that I just introduced a short while ago the second slide is our mission vision and core values which I won’t go through and read this is part of our who we are in Marblehead but I will share the values because I think they’re important uh the student achievement is one of our core values personal growth Partnerships and collaboration School culture and resources obviously those values are everything that we um work on in order to make sure that students are getting what they need and that’s what’s encompassed in our ongoing operational budget here in Marblehead f uh the next slide is our fiscal year

6:06 2026 FY 26 educational priorities this outlines um sort of some of our overing educational priorities that will be met with the with the proposed budget um and these priorities that to meet our academic and social emotional needs of all students uh we’re going to cultivate a sense of belonging and allowance for student staff parent and Community input use a multi-tiered system of supports mtss to promote students success align strategies with our current District plan for Success which will also morph into our district Improvement plan which I’ve started to work on and our individual School Improvement plans we will utilize datab based decision- making aligned with curriculum we will ensure culturally responsive teaching practices are in place we’ll challenge students with rigorous instruction while

6:53 providing appropriate levels of support for all within safe learning environments we’ll enhance and reimagine special education programming and service deliv to meet students individual needs those are overarching educational priorities there are more but those are the main areas want to share and then in regard to our budget development so our overarching goal when we’re developing a budget is to develop a fiscally responsible level Services budget incorporating feedback and input from administrative stakeholders providing a clear understanding of what is required to educate Marblehead head is required to educate Marblehead students some of what has been put in place to develop this budget is administrators identified resources and services required to provide high quality education to students they ensure that appropriate Staffing levels

7:38 and programs are in place to support students social emotional and Behavioral Health in conjunction with rigorous academics they identified areas of Staffing efficiencies in attrition identifi and manage revenue streams outside of the local operation budget like federal and state grant opportunities user fees Etc we establish meaningful Communication in collaboration with Town officials the finance committee and select board we continue collaboration with our PTO our PCOS and our Community Partners who’s ongoing a generous support to our students and staff is

8:14 invaluable some of our 26 FY 26 budget assumptions um are outlined here so during the FY 26 budget development the following assumptions were made with regard to salaries supplies contracted Services utilities curriculum and special education on addition obligations um we increase all salary steps Lanes as indicated by the settled collective bargaining agreements for FY 26 the school year 2526 we increase non-representative employees by a 2% cost of living adjustment or pup we increased Supply and contracted service lines by 2% unless otherwise specified principles directors in Department um were permitted to increase and decrease individual Lines within the budgets provided the net increase did not exceed 2%

9:00 2% 2% and they did a really nice job of doing that which I appreciate and M appreciates we increased the utilities by 4% knowing what you know what um what utilities cost these days that’s a that’s a a decision that we made to hopefully make sure we have enough money to cover the utilities for the uping school year we also did a $200,000 investment in curriculum refresh cycle this is something that we never really had in the budget uh so to speak we’ve always kind of done on the you know on the back end and say what do we need uh it’s clear that we need to refresh our curriculum in an ongoing way so this is a good way to start that um going to this upcoming school year we also increased the special education out of district tuitions and transportation to align with the known expenses approved

9:45 increases so this the the budget in in this area is increased from last year mainly in in a lot of areas because there was students and services that were not necessarily properly identified in the previous budget so there’s some increases there that um that we had to adjust but that’s that’s why that reason and you know obviously increase special education on addition of tuitions in general um caus that increase in those areas um um so I think it’s important to kind of outline what level services are so how do we Define that so there’s three areas there’s three ways that we can develop a budget and those are Level funded level service and increased services so first level funded is basically same funding as the previous

10:32 year which typically indicates the need to reduce staff or services in order to meet you know meet the the level funding level Services provides all the services and Staffing and supplies as the previous year typically this includes salary increases um based on that on the commitments of CBA and contractual Services increase increased Services would provide funds above and beyond what is needed for level service this allows for increase in services and our staffing and as I mentioned at the beginning and several times throughout this presentation we are seeking a level Services budget which means and I just want to be clear that that provides all the services Staffing supplies as we did previously inclusive the salary increases that are contractually

11:18 obligated and the contracted service increases so uh we are confident that the level Services budget will allow us to move forward with this budget and provide all the services necessary to educate our students and make sure our students and staff are are have the resources they need and uh safety issues that are have been outlined in all the schools um so this next slide is what everybody’s been waiting for I think um so leading up to this slide FY 26 proposed budget FY 26 level Services budget request is 49 million1

12:00 12,285 all right current fy2 5 adopted budget is 46 m75 n,1 so the increase of the level Services budget is a 2,361 1174 increase over the current budget so let me just repeat that we’re looking for 49,1 12,285 per budget that’s an increase of 2,361 se4 over our current operational operation budget which represents a 5.05% increase so anyone people taking photos which you’re more than welcome to do but I just want to let you know too this is all online too the presentation is

12:48 linked to it will be it’s usually within a few minutes of starting the meeting it gets l so so TP I’ll just speak that typically when when we present a budget we present school committee as as the governing body first and then it’s shared with the public on thereafter so that um they’re not you know they’re seeing at the same time or before the public do so um that’s that’s why but it will be linked and it’ll be shared on the L uh so that’s kind of where I’m going to stop with the slides I’m going to turn it over but before I do is are there any questions at this juncture with the meeting on the school committee can you just um where is been Comming this they’ve been they’ve seen this or they’ve been involved in they’ve been in all the discussions meeting up to and in helping to develop this uh there’s been a lot of conversation with Mike and myself and um and the fincom folks

13:35 around Alicia in Alicia y um was making short like I mentioned the beginning there’s a lot of collaboration to make sure that they’re they’re giving us the numbers that make sense to make sure that our budget is going to work with the town and uh that’s that’s where we came up the 49,1 12,285 based on what the town and that ANF Bo so at this time is it your s your opinion that that between the finance committee and the town I guess Finance director account or whatever are I don’t want to say comfortable comfortable with this number or obviously not expecting you to say yes they’re going vote for this but there is a comfort U there’s definitely a comfort level I think we’ve had many conversations uh we arrived at this number based upon those conversations those coll that collaboration so yes I feel very comfortable this number is accurate this

14:21 this number is uh required and requested because this is what we need to operate the district and it’s my understanding the town side is is on board with this and in line with uh with this number and as we move forward um you know I think that they will uh they will a that and as we move towards town media I’m very confident that this is the number that will still be on there hopefully it’s really important to note um because we are different boards and different entities that this a lot of this data is coming from the state of the town of herd last week and that was really what every one on our board was waiting for customarily and procedurally what happens first is the state of the Town happens and that’s when the town was able to say what their certified free cashes where they s sit

15:07 financially um where everything came in versus the the budgeted projections and up in up until the state of the Town what we had been told to earmark as we went through the budgeting process through through bargaining if you will was about a million dollars is what we thought we would uh materialize correct Mike yeah I think this just C keys or thater there uh was Pro 1.2 million I think it was 2.2 to 2.4 was projection for total townwide split split coming yeah half coming to the schools and and what happened was um and and people can go back and watch the state of the town because I’m I’m really very high level summarizing this but um Revenue came in

15:53 at the city of the Town much higher than had been originally forecasted going back several months ago and because so much more free cash had been certified the town was comfortable using a higher number of free cash because they were still able to meet what they were hoping to for their their reserves um so the town had made a fiscal plan a couple years ago to kind of stabilize things of what would be going into what reserve them at what levels and they can maintain that while still utilizing more free cash this year and not creating you know this dangerous lines of free cash and what we were seeing in years past looking at Molly because did I anything up that Molly okay so that’s kind of where we have this new number from is that it came out of the state of the town was there’s

16:38 more Revenue available townwide which they about a 50-50 split there’s more Revenue available to schools thank you so thank for that clarification I think it’s important again the collaboration’s been huge and in in being able to get to that number um Mike and I are very comfortable that that that’s the number that we need and that’s a number of that Town’s comfortable with so to your point yes we can definitely forward and I think um you know the part this this question is like oh we need an override don’t need an override this this allows us to not be asking for an override at this juncture as long as As We moves forward as requested um we’re very comfortable that we can operate the budget change any other questions from the committee thanks no I just wanna I want to make it clear the directive from the school committee was always to present

17:26 what needed to educate our students what to give the level of Education that we used to giving in Marblehead Head we weren’t used to giving in Marblehead we weren’t trying to back into a number to avoid an override or to achieve an override we we start the budgeting process by asking um our team to present to us what it takes to educate our shs appropriately so any any information out there about us backing into mem I just want to make sure that we start the process what do we need how does that align with what the town has able been able to allocate us is there a Delta if so what or not extense right and and I’ll just take one more second um as a superintendent it’s always my intention to ask the town what we ask the town for the monies that we

18:13 need to educate the students and in uh not um look at other situations where you know you might inflate a number or anything like that we look at what is it going to cost Mike did a really nice job of analyzing the contractual obligations and saying to me this is the number that we need and I said that’s Blossom and then the town basically said we have we have everything you just said boxes around the extra numbers and it came together nicely so I will always operate under that um assumption that we’re going to ask for what we need to educate the students at the level that we need to and it it it’s worked out really well so far this year so I appreciate um I appreciate that we’re at at this point um I’m going to turn it over to Mike piffling our assistant superintendent of

18:59 um Finance oper kind of go through the next few slides in a little bit more detail mik great thank you superintendent um so the the next slide here this really represents how we allocate our budget by inment uh as you can see about 75% of three quarters of that high is allocated directly to the school that goes to salaries supplies um nothing really operational it’s more uh student driven student focused so about 75% goes to school schools then you you add in what teaching and learning the majority of the teaching and learning budget also goes directly into the schools that’s for educational materials curriculum um Staffing a little bit of Staffing to help about that curriculum and help

19:45 teachers with the curriculum um another good chunk of that is student services that again is directly to the students these are students who require additional special Educational Services above the regular day um so as you can see about 85% of our budget right out of the gun is directly related to Student Learning teaching and learning um the other pieces of the budget that kind of roll in it is our technology which is the backbone to teachers uh students learning our networking our um our infrastructure for the technology uh devices and uh access to the RO the um

20:28 ter all those kids who are watching the present ni just

20:35 said um you know another piece of this is transportation it’s to and from so that’s again directly to to students um the other the other pieces involved for facilities making sure our buildings are are clean that they’re um say um functioning in the right manner their heating systems are working their roofing system things are designed and working as they should um that our Landscaping isable when you drive into a building feel like you’re coming to a place where you want to be um and then there’s there’s a couple other pieces utilities is a big piece not a big piece of it it’s $2 million of our budget utilities

21:21 to keep the lights on heat building’s heated and cooled uh water and uh telephone and then there’s the central Administration um portion of the budget to um kind of lead the district so that’s the allocation by Department any questions on that sorry Mike the transportation for special education is embedded in special educ it’s in the student services number correct yes that’s in the student services piece of the five so this is when you that because I don’t want people to see that three because we talk a lot about the volatility of student service transportation in our budget I don’t want people to see that $300,000 number and see that’s so that is in town by far not that is in town Athletics um getting kids to and from school in the morning

22:07 in the afternoon but them doing the Athletics the Performing Arts F Arts deal trips things and kudos to our transportation department great um I’ve never been in the district but we had our own big buses able to support our families and our students to go on some of these field trips because I can tell you right now when the bus companies are charging for field trip is robbery um in what we’re doing is just um on staff salaries who are initially here between s and three anyway so they’re already on the clock um really we’re just paying for fuel to get them to where they need to go so kudos to uh our facilities group Todd and actually does the work facil Transportation um in our in our

22:55 drivers he knows better than I know I can get my digs and SP this morning probably half no Visa certainly

23:13 isable isable pleas was the uh the next slide this really breaks it up by um Jessie calls um our operation codes our codes of um how we spend our money so it’s this is the same part of money just looked at it in the different lens uh as you can see 80% 79.5 s% of our budget is in salaries because we are student driven the majority of our money goes to salaries as it should um but it’s about 80% of our budget um 3.4% of our budget goes to supplies 3.9% of our budget goes to utilities uh 5.25% of our budget goes to contracted Services um and just really quick when I

23:59 have principal pson secretary’s calling me up saying is this a supply or contractor service I always say if you could put your hands on it’s tangible it’s a supply if you can’t touch it it’s a contracted service mean somebody’s providing services for you uh it’s a software something you can’t physically touch it’s a contracted service we don’t own it we will never own it um but we actually contract with somebody to provide a service um uh our tuition’s 7% and then all other expenses uh less than a third of a percent so that is the buckets that we use to um to kind of identify where the money’s going by by

24:43 TCH all right and then uh I think this is my last slide uh this slide here talks about outside of the budget outside of that $49 Million number that mentioned go this is money that we we bring in home revolving accounts uh they come in from a b variety of fores they come in from our school lunch program uh this used to be that parents paid for or students paid for their lunches uh most of the school lunch Revenue right now is federal and state reimbursements um because every kid’s free breakfast is lunch every day um at least their first meal um user fees you know I think the commune is very familiar with using fees uh they were increased last year to help offsets with the budget these are Athletics um after school

25:39 groups um we do have a we you know we have some other those are the big ones the the next biggest one I should say is a circuit breaker so circuit breaker is um the state helping us with our hard of District tuitions so when we have students who go out of District um or if they’re in District and their cost are over $50,000 that’s the roundabout number right now anything above that $50,000 threshold that number moves every year by the way so 50,000 it’s just the ballmark number this year but any above that 50,000 the state reimburses us the year later at 75% on the dollar so if we spend $60,000 on a student on their education um the state gives us back 75% of that $10,000 dealt we75 $60,000

26:26 $60,000 $60,000 Place been doing those too long there’s no almost 6 there’s a substantial here in circuit sorry EXC it looks like there’s a substantial increase in circuit um so that is a reimbursement from last year so what that 1563 was FY 24s we have to file a claim with the state and they review the claim uh we’re getting ready to submit this year’s extraordinary relief claim and then we’ll will submit the final claim for fy2 um that number they they look at that 50,000 off every student and then they give you the the 75% of the Delta so this is actually last year’s number um I can’t you know I I was just coming in as that was being finalized the

27:11 sentence so I can’t really speak till last year’s um see was it was 1.4 last year um now my I always asked about this one because people often think about you know the the issue we had in 2019 with special education funding but what I feel a lot of people L be really in it don’t realize that what triggered that was circuit breaker was projected to come in at XYZ and then it didn’t came in drastically lower and gotta find that Mone and that kind of created this Cascade effect are we confident with these projections as well as my next question will be what is our percent Reliance on the circuit breaker

27:56 revolving fund so that I know last we we had worked towards trying to carry 100% year to year and then in the spirit of trying to work with the town last year we had agreed to kind of dip a little bit below that 100% carryover what are we projecting on a carryover so those are good questions um the first one the 1.5 number is based on last year’s ring when we submitted our claim last year we we filed the 30 students in our we believe that that number is going to be closer to high 40s High 4 so District plac students that we can claim doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to be out of District you know we could have a and I don’t want to identify any students but we could have any student

28:41 who’s got a on toone teacher a Ono one tutor a Ono one nurse uh any of those things can trigger their educational cost being above the threshold of $50,000 so it doesn’t necessarily have to be on a district we should be scrubbing our grids and everything to find kids in District who might be exceeding that number because his money back to us from the state so I feel comfortable that our plan this year will include more than the 30 highly more than the 40 I’m sorry hiring to the 40 so almost a third more students will probably be claimed this year than last year which means our our reimbursement go up by a third now I did not plan for that because I don’t have any it’s too early to even submit a claim or even looking at those numbers right now what I can say is that the state sets their budget the governor’s budget is already

29:30 out based on numbers provided by Des Desi Bas is that number on what they project the circuit breaker number is going to come in at less than 74 75% of that whatever um and they project the another to the state if all 300 districts file claims which they’re going to do and they come in higher than what Desi projected that 75% could drop and I think the the year you’re talking about I think two things happen once the claims came in higher than desie projected when the when the governor built the budget the budget’s built January it’s it’s released in January it’s probably built in September but it’s released in January we don’t even subit our claim until the fallowing July so there’s a there’s a time lapse there to understand it I think des’s gotten a lot better at projecting but I think the

30:16 other issue that year with the year The Big Year that happened there were some n9c cuts and those were midyear cuts to the state’s budget because the revenues weren’t coming in where they were supposed to so um I think the reimbursement that year was like 60% instead of 75 so I have not

30:35 seen I think I’ve only seen it under 70 once you know as the year was 60 most years has been a 75 Le recently um and you know there’s been a few years I’ve been closer to 70 but you know that’s that’s where I I think we’re good with that $1.5 million um what was the second ask you your question what is our carryover from your year because if it comes in lower for some reason because you know the states rely on federal grants which are available right now so that money’s got to come from somewhere um so if all of a sudden there was a change in the funding structure I want to know what we’re carrying over in circuit breaker because that’s really our safety net for our out of districts are we still projecting and carrying over 100% from last year 80% 7

31:23 like what number are we using to use as a revenue stream for this current year versus a carryer so great question um our projecting right now is that we currently carry one full year by which we allowed to do by Statute we can’t carry any more than one year but we’re allowed to carry one full year um so our projection right now is we will be carrying one full year $1.5 36 million through next year so there’s always we always try uh I know most districts try to do that now took a long time for districts to get to that to that one year mark um especially when you have years like n Cuts so in federal funding State funding coming down so yes we have that we have 1.53 million in reserves going into next year all right perfect I just I know that last year we had all as a group made a decision to use a little less I wanted to make sure we’re articulating why we aren’t as

32:10 comfortable using less this year because with that that a lot of the state grants depend in federal grants it’s a pass through we want to make sure we’re we we’re providing ourselves stability we’re at the one yeah can’t use anything less we have to have to use you can use less we can carry over less we can’t use less correct so so one one additional piece of the circuit breaker is also something called extraordinary release so when we look at our our expenditures where we play the break last year and what we think this year it’s 125% above last year we can find for Extraordinary Rel and that’s monies that circuit breaker is always in the rear uh inary relief will come to us

32:56 the monies will come to us um this year versus next year for past year so we’re going to file for that and we don’t know what that looks like yet but that’s extra that’s hopefully extra money that we can use to offset um partent here specially tuition that’s something we don’t know that number yet because it’s all it’s all you have to file it you have to claim it um the funding mechanism for it but there is some potential extra funding there that would help CER I think it’s important to not folks out there um that this Administration has really come in with a lot of experience uh past experience and you know sharp pencils and Shar R and his U been able to um access funds that we were entitled to to their maaps that had not been the case in the past I think it’s important to with that um so that’s important as

33:42 well that’s going to be money coming into the budget that we need perhaps we were not taking full advantage of than and just to wrap up on the slide um the other two accounts are user fees are Athletics and with that but also um call them user fees they’re not it’s it’s half day tuition cost kindergarten and prechool students um who are attending the full day so we State the town pick up the first half of the day with vard preschool um and um it’s it’s an option for the other

34:25 half I do I know why but can I just say one thing John you had said at the beginning you want us the sa questions to the end so I’d like to say the end of each section so that we can get through each section please don’t worry no I just I just don’t yeah um really quick so the questions come up a lot um over the last two weeks of what you know how much should we get in federal revenue federal grants and and what would be affected if our grants were so first let me say that our grants that we receive now have were approved a year ago so we should be okay for federal grants for at least another year that if the cuts ever got to education I’m not sure that they’re targeting education grants right now um I think there they’re targeting other grants but that’s I’m not an expert on federal or what’s going

35:11 through the mins in Washington DC um but these are the grants that we receive right now the first four are called Essa grants every student succeeds uh tle one two three and four um tle one is Julia is really the expert on on the EST grants it’s out of want for students uh uh improving students performance soci economic socio economic thank you uh title two is for Teacher professional development so we for most part we use that to pay our teacher our Mentor sens um title three is for our multilingual Learners El ml elll uh every three years they change the ACR um in entitle force is around school safety um and then the the really the

35:58 biggest Federal brand we get is the idea Grant which is the 240 Grant that’s for special education uh to make sure that we’re providing Services uh that are needed by students that’s about this $750,000 uh and then we get a small Grant also a special education grant for early childhood education so all total we’re looking at about 9,000 funding this year um that if all federal grants were were to go the worst case scario if all favor gr to go away that is a short fall that that need to come up with locally or uh identify programs that we have to make changes

36:36 to and I thought I just thr the slide in there um when we developed the budget obviously 80% of our budget of salaries so I thought it was important for people to see kind of where our our biggest group is our teaching group uh Unit A teachers licensed um destiny licensed professionals um we have 302 FTE we probably have closer to 310 employees but it’s 302 which is full-time equivalent you can see that the majority of our our staff are in the Master’s group Masters are Beyond I have a master’s degree um that’s one of the stipulations that required to have a master’s degree in teach unless you’re in your first five years or your grandfather you know grandfather later in your career um and uh about 60% of

37:22 our teachers are at the top step so the top step is is uh teachers get a step every year they start at step one when they start teaching they go to two three four when they get to whatever the top step is in that District they reach the top of their their steps and they only receive Poss increases so I just want to give you that quick slide to show you kind of where our Stu is I think I’ve now completed my slides any other questions for Michel I actually do have a quick question you could touch for a second on the Medicaid reimbursement um just some of the stuff they might be doing that I know very little about it but having gone through Ma um conference has been discussion about that in the past and that Medicaid reimbursement a lot of school committees don’t necess Max that out because it

38:08 doesn’t come directly to the school so what we’re doing about that and then we had conversations with the town side just to understand that that you know money do flow to General is this one to together I had I had as medic to so um yeah so statutorily um Medicaid reimbursement goes back to the town it is required that you give it back to the town um can you just give a little description of what where we get Medicaid reimbursement from just for the folks so these are students who require um any type of Medical Services while they’re in school that could be speech OT um PT nursing uh anything like that we can we can claim portion of the

38:54 services that we’re providing to them in school against U Medicaid uh um Lisa Marie group does does the file does the cleaning file um we do have a consultant that we work with leave phone over here we could share this uh we have a consultant that the town pays for to make sure that we’re cling all te’s and dotting all our eyes uh making sure that everybody that all the grids are all the services are on the grid that we submit uh all the salaries I do the salary portion Marie and her team doing the the portion around um who’s getting services and whatnot um but the town pays the consultant Fe and the town gets the full reimbursement um it’s it’s probably like a 10 to one the money they

39:41 get back is 10 times Al so there’s there benefit in using most districts all dist to actually do the F so I do want to give kudos to um my executive assistant Kathleen D and she does a lot of the leg work um with the Medicaid and it’s also heavily reliant on the staff members who are providing services to those students to do their they’re called random moments in time um so we’ve pushed really hard on that um to make sure as many of uh those random moments in time are being completed um so it’s reflecting all the hard work everybody’s doing and again it’s it’s sourcing funds

40:27 that we are so some some just districts I’ve been I’ve been around some people in my world in districts who are like I don’t put a whole lot of time or effort into Medicaid because we don’t get the money back and in my mind I think of we’re one town the town funds a large portion of our budget so anything we can do to bring Revenue back to the town will in turn it may not come directly back to the schools but it comes back to the schools in a round way so and I just I just want to say you know Lis Mar’s been a little monest because what happens is the random moment of time stud that folks have to fill out they’re supposed to fill out um I don’t think there was ever really solid directive that says oh when you get those this is what you do and in those random moment time studies need to be filled out by staff by principles by administrators by teachers by whoever gets them so that

41:13 the Medicaid money claimed in more random time so get filled out and submitted increase the the revenue so again you mentioned Jen about young people’s experience uh these experiences show that need to go after that bit moments of time so so I think that’s that’s worth poting out it’s not millions of dollars but it’s certainly it’s certainly dos didn’t you have a rough idea of what it is reimbursement is yeah yeah I can why don’t we keep moving up that so I I had a medic question as well Jen and I had gone to the same professional development on that um and what we learned in that was most districts was

41:59 like 9 % of districts rely on the r there’s two mechanisms apparent the random moment on time or the direct Bill and like 90 some odd percent it was like 98 it was a really high number du the random moment in time because the direct billing there was there was a multitude they said you know some of it was it’s very cumbersome you essentially need to bring someone on to handle that essentially they were that allowed District to get a lot of push back from staff as well um I’ll give an example if you have uh one of your therapists pick a specialty um they’re they’re working in the school setting not they don’t see it as working in the clinical settings so doing clinical notes is something that there they say you can push back now masc does come out and do a deeper training on

42:46 this we’ve had a lot going on the last year obviously we could do that but in the next year I would love Jenna I have talked about this before to have them come out and see you know what the cost benefit is you know if it’s that the district in the town needs to hire another full-time person to manage this but we could do the direct billing and it would bring in you know five fold 10 folds it’s another Revenue stream it might be something we want to look at it’s nothing for this fiscal year but it sounds like it is cumbersome but that the vast majority of districts are leaving a lot of money on the table is that something as we move through the future not right now that we can look at honing in on to to kind of regroup some of that I I think um I’ll answer that

43:32 question I think um it depends on you know what what the number is right so Mike’s going to pop the number and say this is basically what the reimbursement is so if it’s in the hundreds of thousands then it’s probably worth having looking at that and making sure because um you know to to make that money work if it’s in the you know under 100,000 and the 50 4S 50 60s you know may not be worth having someone you know spend the time eny money and that but I think um I agree it’s another Revenue source that we can maximize reability and whatever that takes to do that I would be willing to explore there yeah and it might not be possible there’s a reason why 90 some odd percent of districts are leaving money it’s it’s not an easy lift so it’s it wouldn’t be a flip a switch we can do this just one year but it might be worth if masc will

44:19 come in and do a presentation for free it might be worth part out some whatever that because we’re new all of students Services we are getting regular training and professional development through um UMass Medical that’s our vendor um and just this past week they’ve changed the platform they’ve changed a lot of the processes so we’re going be learning about all

44:49 that I’m sorry I still Qui question so Mike we still receive terms of Revenue sources Chapter 70 funds from the state is that correct yes correct yep plus 6 point so where was it I just didn’t my apologies if I missed it where was that reflected in your presentation it isn’t it’s in the workbook it is in the work um it’s not in I don’t believe we put it in the presentation but it is in the workbook um it doesn’t come directly schools yeah it go goes side so it comes through the so it would be it’s part of 49 so so if you think conceptually that like out of our budget the chapter 7 minut go back to town know that me for stand but it’s almost like an offset that they use to help F

45:35 fund our budget so for asking for 29 million there

45:43 7 that’s 7 that’s simp well thank you Mike I’m gonna talk about taking it from our staffing to our students so here is the district demographics um this this slide highlights we have 2564 students enrolled in Marblehead public schools um and it shows the enrollment by race and ethnicity for this current school year as well as um Title by that’s what desie um was a department of Elementary and secondary education um High needs encompasses English

46:18 Learners and note that en but it’s also a moment it’s a moment in time we have to remember any any demographic so was always a moment in time that 2564 change are the October one numbers but this is Turner so my slides this the slides going forward might slightly be the budget book with the projection with the current U so I just want to know because we get our enrollment reports every Monday I’ve been watching them for the last I I watched them last several years but we lost more than 1% of our student body since mid November it’s statistically relevant 1% is makes something statistically relevant um compared to

47:05 previous years in the same time period we typically would pick up two to three students in that November December January period as terms phased off at competing schools who are a trimester and instead l% of our student body so that is statistically relevant it will be interesting to see if those will come back in next year but it will affect our Chapter 70 money it will affect our funding as enroll of decreases we do continue to get a push back from the electorate um and and I’m meeting that our enrollment is down and our our staffing continues to stay stable if not time and in a simple answer to why is that and why does our is um student needs are much greater than they had

47:51 been previously based upon social emotional learning and a lot of people look at in terms of what they need for resources um as early as three or four years ago so some of that is answered by that but some of it is also you know declining enrollment is is across the state um and it’s it’s a trend that I think a lot of school districts are looking at so we we watch that closely we make sure that you know other ways that we keep kids in our school for high school rather lose them in E grade how do we tce students to come for elementary schools those are all things we talking about um so that we can kind of increase those enrollment numbers that’s that’s definitely I would agree snar that’s statistically statistically sorry um so this slide is

48:38 focusing on the areas um that we look at through office of teaching learning um superintendent R mentioned earlier um when we look at the um what our priorities are in alignment with those educational priorities um office of teaching learning focuses on meeting the academic conceptual emotional learning needs of all of our students um I’ve highlighted in three different categories um the main areas of focus for us as curriculum instruction um I’ve I’ve highlighted in bold the financial sources to support the curriculum we’ve been ryant over the last few years on federal funding um to bring in new curriculum to the district so we’re going to now that that funding has end in we’re looking to um increase that and I appreciate that the central Administration team has beening that as well earlier in presentation um so everything that we’re doing to ensure

49:23 all of our students have those opportunities within our multi-tier framework we the office works really closely with obviously our Central uh adven te the building principles the instructional coaches are part of this teaching and learning team um and we also lean heavily on our lead teachers and Educators to um help make sure that this is all happening directly positively impacting our students um so we’re focusing on assessment as um technology involves and we have new opportunities we are taking those opportunities to bring the best of the best to Marblehead head and I’m really proud best to Marblehead and I’m really proud of what we’ve done within our professional development we’ve um utilized some of our um Federal funding for professional development and then in this year’s budget we’re looking to um dedicate the funds in house more because

50:09 we do have such amazing instructional coaches and amazing Educators that we believe that we can serve um the professional learning of our staff um in house so we’re looking to dedicate some

50:23 funds what um I just thought do you have any details um I know I asked last year too but do you have details around mtss and what we’re doing for advanced Learners because I yet see much of that um since first grade and I I’m just wondering what more we’re doing or thinking about doing I realize shifts like that take time um and I’m not suggesting it’s the priority but I do think that it is some set of children who whose needs aren’t being okay thanks for bringing that up that connects to the assessment tools that we have so we’ve been able to um find the areas specifically our students need this important and also where students are surpassing our expectations for

51:09 grade level so that all connects to the how our assessment tools have strengthened and then we can connect it to instructional right yeah I guess I’m looking I’m I’m looking for what are the instructional you know what instructional items are going to be or will be put in place eventually for that uh I think I understand obviously ISL shows things dibles and mcast I guess to to some effect to some extent as well but then what are we do and I know I asked this a couple years ago during you know we’re talking about mcast and when we were we were talkinging about this last year for budget so I just really be interested in hearing more about that

51:56 transition absolutely awesome um so to our next slide these are recent updates um that we’ve been doing the last years um proud of the work that we’re doing within the given operational budget um of course Mike mentioned we do have um some title grants that support our work we’ve implemented the new literacy program W wisdom and our implementation of wayfinder that’s the new social emotional learning curriculum is going very well and I want to thank the committee for approving that um we’ve had just a great success um successful start with that um this year I mentioned curriculum review to be more specific we are in the midst of a curriculum review process for our science curriculum and our English language Learners um the English language learner curricul review was a mandate from desie after they did their tiered Focus monitoring review last year so we’re meeting all of our

52:42 obligations there and the meeting I was at before this is our science curriculum review uh committee and it’s a great team of science Educators um and instructional coaches coming together to look at what we’re doing in science and how we can um explore new opportunities in some areas so it’s a it’s a k to6 group our K 12 group and we’re um really excited about the work there so we air marked $220,000 so far for our curricul riew so just want to note that um we’ve also updated um we integrated impass um and we’ve added ISL P at Village and so we’ve um dedicated some funds to continue um ensuring that we have the best assessment tools and as I mentioned we are um going to be focusing in on dedicating our financial resources to the professional learning of our Educators Within the district our

53:29 instructional coaches are have been doing amazing work and um with the support of our awesome principles U we really are proud of the work within professional learning for our

53:43 Educators any questions on it um so I I noticed that your you went down a substantial percentage in your instructional software I just want to make sure that is it that we’re no longer using programs or are we changing the funding because I know it took us many years to kind of we went from a place where um PTO were paying for that software and we worked really hard to make it that PTO were not paying for curriculum and I want to make sure we’re not balancing a budget by reverting back to it I doubt we are but I just you know that question will be looming out there because we did work early yeah so with one of our changes to a vendor um compilated a new program it did our okay

54:31 perfect so um and some of it is so some of is in the school’s budget as well so we’ve also been dispersing in some areas there so okay and then science curriculum um it looks like you’re I’m happy to see that you’re looking at that I think the last thing we did was the B science kits but there were multiple areas where we still weren’t aligned with State Frameworks I think um technology this one are we with these curriculum reviews will we be looking at an outline over the next several years that shows us getting in line with any Frameworks yes we are in line with Frameworks we have some areas of growth of course that’s been looking at and how the curricular materials and the professional development can support all that so but

55:17 what we’re teaching does align with our um state standards as well as the national standards for science too so and that mainly was because one of the questions we with curriculum we’ve reached in the past is that’s a one-time expenditure for that one but one of the points we’ve made as an Administration and a committee is the need for curriculum reinvestment is not a one-time expense it may be signs this year but it will be something else next year and just for the public watching you do have a plan on uh each year what that that will be and it’s not that we’re bringing something into a reoccurring budget one time expense right thanks for bringing that up and I show have before so science it we have a five um curriculum review process cycle and so this is the year of science um we’ve added the English language

56:04 Learners because of the Des so that’s fine we we understand that and we have to meet that um but last year was our literacy soci social studies there before was that literacy math so we have the five-e cycle next year will be our languages our unified Arts our Allied Arts um and more like the Specialists and um media literacy and something that so yeah we have that five year cycle thank you in that $200,000 I mentioned the thing is is that’s that’s uh quick review I know that I know you’re just trying to make sure that everyone understands that that’s that’s purposefully put in there so that we don’t have that we have that it’s a plan for and we have an Administration that has a plan yes cor on how we’re going to keep our I mean some sometimes that curriculum you know maybe higher than the the 200,000 maybe it’s less somewhere that’s that’s in the ball

56:50 what we think it’s going to be so is doing a really nice job work with other teams to make sure where you we can can operate um efficiently and effectively when you sit you know so yeah I have a question where’s the steam are we bringing that into this curriculum the science curriculum yeah so steam is um we so science technology engineering right that’s built into the science curriculum that’s happening in the classrooms um except for uh vets in the high schools who have different um sections for engineering separate um and then the Arts and Music are happening in their classes as you know in kada 6 um and they a little bit different than thei art sortation so um we don’t right now we believe that the science instruction is happening and needs to happen in the classroom and not as a pull out especially at k6

57:40 level uh the only thing I would ask and this is again going to be rhetorical because I’m going to ask maybe for a deeper dive at a future school committee meeting um but I would I would like to understand at some point um the role of the lab Laboratories in the high school science um and where we are with the blocks and schle because um it’s my understanding um from where I sit that we do not have Labs on an ongoing basis and I think that that that’s the case we can address that for sure planful way okay thank you anything else for Julia special thank you everybody I’d like to introduce our assistant superintendent student services the wonderful Mr Mar thank you assistant supera for for everything I want to thank this school

58:27 committee for your support as um my team and myself have joined Mar public schools and we really appreciate that um and I just want to once again um I couldn’t do this work without my team Victoria Ryan my assistant director cathine gson my executive assistant or team chairs principles and um our special ed Department because it’s it’s a lot of work that um we’ve already been this school year so thank you um so the goals for special educ ation um are are honestly quite simple we’re looking at our targeted instruction to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our most vulnerable Learners um that we are identifying them through proper

59:12 assessments um and providing them what they need to be successful um and that is reflected within uh my budget our budget the way that we get there also is through very specific professional development whether it’s around program in uh we’re sending quite a few of our staff members out for example to for Orton gingham uh training and certification and that is the gold standard to supporting students who have um some form of obing disability um to Bringing uh Landmark Outreach into the district um to support our language based program so those are just a couple of examples um and also looking at our resources so I can confidently say that

59:58 the student service budget is I can account for every penny um within this budget we did a lot of work of assessing the current needs and what are the needs for their future um and part of our main work is reamping we call it are uh IND District programming um we have some excellent programs within districts um but we need to support them further to make sure that um we’re me in development of the needs of our students as well as best practices in place um we’re continuing to build vertical vertical alignment 3K through 12 and sometimes to 22 age 22 um of our services and our programs ensuring that they’re developments really appropriate

1:00:45 for our students and academically sound um and then most importantly it should actually be the top bullet highlighted um linking is fostering our relationship with our families and the community to make sure that we’re having communication strong understanding of the needs of students the um abilities of the school district um and that students feel happy safe and educated within our school district the next slide um is talking about our Auto District costs been overall projected for um our FY 26 tuitions is um 5, 125,000

1:01:31 865 um this increase reflects 277,7 56 or 5.7% increase over FY 25 um part of the increase is reflective of What’s called the OSD rate basically uh the state sets a rate um of our out of District placements and it increases by different percentages each year um and this year’s increase is uh

1:02:03 4.69% um we currently have 50 students in the N distri placement and next year we’re anticipating about 47 and again like superintendent Robo says this this is a moving Target um we have several students who are graduating and so that’s why you see some changes in those numbers as his superintendent um prefering stated about circuit breaker you know that reimburse m is reflected in within um our budget um and the offset for that is 1.5 million and we have several students who come into Marblehead head Public Schools tuition in so Marblehead Public Schools tuition in so they pay to come into our district to participate in our special education program um and so that is $100,000

1:02:49 offset for uh four different salaries um I just I just want to give the absolute biggest thank you you and your team because what you all walked into and what you have been able to do with that gaps that you have identified some huge um and many little and that the policies and processes that you have been able to get back I guess on track is really what I would say um for some of our most for you know our students that need that um is is just remarkable and I’m just I’m grateful for that and I just say it all the time thanks it it couldn’t be more

1:03:41 true so it’s no mystery that our biggest volatility in our budget is our out of District tuition and um transportation clubs it’s been this way in every district for for many years um just to kind of take a moment and look at a snapshot sitting in this room in January of 2019 I can recall there’s we had 20 uh 28 out students outplaced at that point for $2.7 million so we have increased our out of District placements in six years by 79% of the number of our students and we’ve increased the cost by 32% we’ve been here for about six months six months and a couple weeks and you’re

1:04:26 projecting to reduce in that already by 6% in one year that is no small feat and in that reductions like that first and foremost are best for our students because no student no family wants to put their child on a bus and send them to another town they want to be here with their Community they want to be here with their family their friends the kids they play soccer with um and so we’re it’s doing right by kids but it’s also bringing stability to our budget that then can be invested did inh house in our programs in general education in curriculum so I just I love data I love numbers so that’s why when I break down and look at six year 79% increase and in six months you’ve been you’re

1:05:14 projecting with real data a reduction of 6% that’s that is huge and I want to thank you and your entire team because this was no small fee and if we can get on it seems like I I see hope in getting on top of out of districts because once we do that we really can um find stability in our budget so I just thank you very very much um and look forward to seeing how this no pressure I just I just want to Echo Sarah so so um mentioned earlier like you know updating and revamping the programs and part of that process and I keep saying it’s probably like a good two-year process to really get those special programs where we want them to

1:06:01 be leis and our team have like started much more quickly than I anticipated in that in that trajectory what I will say is that once we get to that point where programs are solid resources are reallocated make sure programs up and running properly I I’m gonna go here I guarantee that you will see that number of Auto District um placements go down because we’re going to continue to bring kids back in District make sure they have programs that are solid so that we can educate our students with the like age peers in District as much as humanly possible without having to send them out um to different areas and I think previously there was some really solid special programming in the district I think we’ve kind of dissipated a little bit we’re in unly summaries um toolage and stuff we’re we’re getting

1:06:47 back to that and I guarantee you’re G to see that number come down which means that tuition’s going to come down be much better plac for the next couple years hands down it’s okay share that it’s what’s right doing right by kids no and thank you also for this communication that’s really been huge the newsletter and just all the um has made a significant difference so thank you you and the team thanate it one last question on this are the State numbers out I know you know typically the increase for out of District sits around the 3 4% couple years ago we saw 14% do we have an idea of what they’re projecting they’re going to allow for those private out pleas SP incre so it’s the 469 okay I’m sorry yes and also the

1:07:37 transportation is a 4% increase okay thank you okay I’m just gonna um l Mar has another commitment so if you guys are all set with questions for her I just make sure she didn’t excuse thankk so much everybody all right up next is our director get me um so start with goals and our goals really weol we three four goals one is participation and I said in the top provide safe enjoyable athletic programming for the benefit of as many thingss as possible um the second one is quality of competition we and that’s the second half of that bullet and that is we want

1:08:22 to compete at a really high level we want to improve we want to compete in the NEC we want to compete in the tournaments in all of our Sports the um and I say this to the kids all the time I said okay so we have pretty good participation and we have uh and we win a fair share there’s quite a few tokens down there well what’s left right what do what what am I doing here and um and then I say to him I say well why do we even have Athletics in school and I think that’s really the third goal is to create this culture of respect and teamwork and integrity and that’s really what been kind of my uh my Mantra since I started was to to pitch that to the kids and to pitch it to everyone that that I see we’ve done that

1:09:09 a number of different ways um started the captain’s leadership counsel which we met five times uh and talking about things like um uh the thermometer and the thermostat are you a thermometer you just go with the flow or you a thermostat where you actually regulate right that’s leadership and those type of things we’ve also had um the NC leadership conference we had 12 students go we have a female leadership conference coming up in March and then Michelle also um we’re working on a leadership conference in uh April out in wiester so the the third the third form

1:09:55 of this is is that culture that culture respect and integrity so uh as far as the goals go that that pretty much sums it up uh next slide here is student participation and you can see I mentioned that we’ve done a you do a pretty good job there we have almost 1500 registrations that’s an estimate for this year uh have not seen um you know it’s right about in line in the first in the fall in the winter with where we were last year right and I anticipate spring will be similar this is a pretty good summary of the department the athletic department of Marblehead Public Schools serves 900 student athletes from both Marblehead high school and Marblehead veterans Middle School support 70 teams across 32

1:10:42 Sports it’s made possible by a dedicated team of 98 paid coaches 26 volunteer coaches each year the department organizes and oversees over a thousand events managing officials Logistics and coordinating transportation for all athletes and I want to point out when I say the athletic department I’m talking about me and Mark tarmy and I I got to get a lot of credit to Mark Tommy he SC he schedules hundreds and hundreds of buses and schedules every every day every week uh down there and it’s a constantly changing uh process and then our coaches we have over you know almost 130 coaches that really make the program they’re with our student

1:11:28 athletes you know a lot of times more than teachers are and they’re teachers too A lot of them right I mean they’re spending between 10 and 15 but some of them you know going to seminars trying to improve their you know their coaching philosophies and things like that so um countless hours and they really make the athletic department so when I say athletic department that’s what I’m talking about um in addition to the teachers that write down that are down there now running the class clock and the book for the games for the freshman game the JV game and the varsity game that are going on today and that happens almost you know three days a week anyway

1:12:10 down the next slide is the current user fees and you can see this was a pretty significant increase I believe it was someplace around Max was around 2 800 last year and we’re up around 2016 uh and like I said we haven’t had a significant drop in first two uh first two

1:12:39 question are you seeing um more Reliance and students need need to access extra supports for the user

1:12:50 fees um well it’s hard for me to say because I don’t know how many of them were before that the only registrations that I’ve done have been with these user things okay um but it’s not overly that okay and then are you in might person working to give us a recommendation on our user fee adjustments for this year typically we move them at the same right as uh col up if you will but we did such a big jump last year I don’t know if we would if if your budgeting relies on Us increasing them further or if you relies ability uh no we’re looking at since was such a big increase last year and we’re confident that us fees well

1:13:36 will one fun to so we’re not the J at all um and just to speak to um we don’t have a whole hour re I don’t love numbers but that’s really start to press that Stu so so I’m I’m excited that you know us increased and the participation would really change that much and there’s not a lot of people looking for the W so I think that’s a good thing um you know and obviously we always look at that we’ll look at that next year do it makes sense you know I think part of the issue is my understanding it wasn’t um increased incrementally had a big jump so what I typically do things like this I would do like small increments so we will look at that again next year we did talk about this year we said you know we F stronger that we leave okay thank you for that

1:14:23 information was a concern can’t I just want to say first of all thank you for your leadership really glad to have you on the team this is the first time in my five years ony that I’ve had you talk about voice um and priories which is fantastic um and what we stand for and you know we always have had I think a pretty high level of streaming participation which is great um and these are Are Scholastic we’re talking about right so competitive supports I school is there any yeah I wonder about for students that maybe are not necessarily looking to do a competitive athletic um event but we want to encourage you know athleticism and and health is there any talk or thought maybe going for on more maybe inter murals or you know other kinds of things

1:15:11 that we can do promote um activity there’s the challenge there is space uh and you know gym space particularly in the winter time but one of the things and that kind of gets into the the connection with the Youth Sports is trying to make make sure that from when they’re really little that the funnel doesn’t get too small too soon and we see that with some sports where some sports we have a lot of kids come out as freshman and try out and and then we’re saying what do we do if we can’t take everyone where where do they go to continue to play and that’s a challenge but then the other side is how do we make sure that there are us sports that aren’t doing that when they’re in fourth grade or fifth grade or sixth grade

1:15:58 but the uh one thing that has happened is we do see that there are some CLS and they’ll do a pickle ball or things like that a lot of times that’s you don’t do that and that’s how no it’s in CL of student I mean the other thing too is just having have student go through and it’s not necessarily you know an athlete um she did do winter track and so there are some things that you know I think would great make sure we encourage you know students that well we and if you look at the te number of teams we have an extensive number of teams because we have a lot of JB teams and a lot of freshman teams and I’ll say we have a lot more than most schools do which is what drives all that

1:16:44 participation um and even if even if maybe they don’t finish their career in High School playing Athletics they might play for two years or three years say hey I’m you know I’m pretty good I like it but you I’m not going to compete at that level so uh but that’s good for life lessons to go on and continue have well part of the question but if I’m here in Marblehead head long enough that you here in Marblehead long enough that you know Unified sports would be um a bigger thing we have it already for basketball yeah so I I’m I’m a huge proponent yeah I’m huge proponent making sure that we grow those programs and uh that’s that’s a passion of mine and they all work with Kent and his team to to expand those things anywhere we can again gym time and stuff like that but I think when we have student athletes that

1:17:30 can benefit from from that regardless of their ability that’s that’s what inclusion and belongs all about so I just share I think we also want to do a shout out to all of the um the all sports foundation and all of the you could name them all all huge part of how we’re able to have the extensive participation and support um from a budget standpoint as well was big thanking and and that’s a good point and I I would be remissed if I didn’t mention them because they uh I I talk with them all the time and they’re always asking me what do we need and where do we need to go what’s our next priority and there are a lot so it’s I mean we always think of boosters we think of Muffy and all the great work

1:18:15 they’ve done with the big tick items which are huge but there’s almost every single sport has booster club and are just huge supporters financially and volunteer wise and also we would have this extensive U participation without the coaches and Vols just that’s a big one and I think the community needs to understand just how professional they are and what they do it’s not we have wonderful Youth Sports and a lot of people that contribute but this is this is at a whole another level we have some some really good coaches that I would you know put our coaching staffs up against any other school and you know one thing I’ll just later bit that I’d like to see too is um maybe it’s just been all that seeing is um you know definitely some focus on when we do have

1:19:02 students matriculating to College athletics D or whatever level it is that we just you know we highlighted we talko but I mean I know we’ve had kind of the when they’re doing their picking what school they’re going to go to but really maybe they just do some reporting at the end of the year on that because it’s you know we do we have talked about Signing Day in springing on to plenty conf put that all together I just want to thank you and acknowledge a lot has happened in in the time you’ve been here in in the spirit of team building positive sportsmanship um I know you’re working with captains and in program programs in a new way um and that’s really positive because it’s not it’s not we’ve talked about this a million times before it’s

1:19:48 not always academic I get to get every kid in the door a lot of kids it’s sports or theater or extrac curriculums that get them excited to get them any say and taking that to the next level by doing those leadership programs and with the captain and making it really a positive to you building experience I just the revenue from booster clubs that reflected in here with they all said l or that would be in fundraises and that’s in here I just didn’t see that fundrais another right that might not be in here yet but in we you typically have like

1:20:52 you so uh this is my going into my fifth year here to start so now we’ve kind of done a whole uh revamp on technology through desp we’ve brought day through 12 U new devices Pro one to one u a through eight and theyve been able to instill a network that is stable and reliable for all our students and staff distri Improvement plan is to continue the process and review and um so a lot of our goals are stemming from

1:21:37 um continuing the process of reviewing what we have and spanding on that um areas that we uh a couple years ago the town invested in the smart panels for all of our classrooms um over the last three years we’ve provided teacher uh trainings for the the smart panels moving forward it’s a something that I try to build into our budget every year uh unfortunately one of our trainings this year got cancelled because of uh moving one of the uh professional development days but we’ll be looking to you know hopefully add that in for next year to to Contin continue process um cyber security awareness so as all of you know uh We’ve uh applied

1:22:23 for a cber security Grant over the last few years we’ve been a to get it the last two years just last week we got notified that we uh will receive the grant again going forward for the next year um that is uh a great platform for our staff to be able to learn and help protect themselves and the district from outside threats um also working with um Michelle the the principal for the high school we’re talking about how to add that in for uh the students of the high school as well to have some additional training uh through their dur k um looking at uh our school security system uh

1:23:11 We’ve Come you know 360 from where we were when I came back here five years ago you know we didn’t have cameras at some of our buildings we’ve upgraded all the systems are all tied together um we have uh pretty much pretty much every area that’s important for us to be able to to watch and secure uh be uh be a part of that system uh our security access controls so that’s another area where some of our buildings we didn’t have any uh access current swipes or anything to to get in through the doors uh all of our buildings can continue to to have that um work continuously

1:23:57 looking at different areas of all the buildings that might not have something that we want to add and so we look at that every year and and trying to add things uh where it makes the most sense uh part of our five-year uh replacement schedule this next year coming up would be the first year where one of our large Investments that we were able to use our funds previously for um is going to be coming up for us to be part of our replacing schedule with which would be our wireless access system so all the access points throughout all five classrooms and throughout the district uh will be off their warranty doesn’t mean they’re going to stop working but it just means that we need to plan for that next step

1:24:44 which uh sometimes is just a purchasing a new license and sometimes that cost can be outweighed by just purchasing a new device that comes with another fiveyear uh warranty and license so um been working with that and been in the plans for uh many years now that you know part of our replacement uh cycle of what what’s coming up is needed um this slide here is more of an overview of what we have in the district so as I mentioned before um you know we’re one: one k through rate and then we have devices in every classroom of the high school that are more or less longer um and on top of that we have additional

1:25:30 devices for when we have to do mcast testing and such um so as I mentioned before uh K an iPad um for each of the classrooms for students use grades three we kind of uh switch over and transition from the iPads which they have access to some it’s not one: one for the third grade but they have access to some still and they start migrating into the home books which is getting them ready for that first year of encest that would be taking you know at the end of the school year so that’s that kind of first transition and then uh you know Village School the middle school it’s all Chromebooks every classroom has their

1:26:15 own set of Chromebooks um and as I said at the high school we have a BYOD for all the students I think that’s important to say because they many different districts that force you to buy a specific device I don’t really agree with that I think every parent can decide which device that they want their child to use that they feel is the best for them a lot of our Education and Training these days is all online and the device doesn’t really matter uh as far as what um what we’re teaching what they need to be able to do for classes

1:26:57 um the last number there it’s a large number 23736 so that’s a snapshot of the last 30 days and how many devices have connected onto our Network um so whether that’s our own devices students bringing their own devices um you know and when we built the system that we had we’re really looking at that in a three to one where a student might have three devices that might be you know their laptop could be an iPad could be their cell phone it could be their Apple watch so like all those different devices that they might have that it’s allowing them to be connected and for all that technology to work

1:27:43 mistake uh where you risk brought in your own device and affecting the system so that that the BYOD network is completely separated from our internal Network that are Staffing the the internal devices that we use uh so they’re it’s completely separated um but I I just like to also point out to that um I have a wonderful staff and I have three and a half technicians that are out um in the classrooms every single day building to building um I have a network Baner Frank who’s always running around supporting not just classrooms as well but really getting making sure that our network is stable that we’re patching everything that we

1:28:29 need to be patching and running upgrades as well and we have our dat person Kae who is helping to get all of our reports that you’re getting on you know every Monday doing the state reporting which we get a lot of our funding from and really working hard to making sure that all the data that we have is

1:28:54 accurate questions for Stephen thank you yes so we’re done yes okay so it looks like in terms of students we’re not using we’re using Chromebooks and iPads not laptops and desktops it depends on the environment so if you’re in the high school um there’s a couple different Labs that have desktops in them um if you’re a teacher we had that first uh refresh of their laptops this year so in general just by every new every teacher has a new laptop that we’ve been migrating them starting from last summer where we offered to the staff if they wanted to leave their um laptop here for the

1:29:39 summer that we would get it migrated into their new laptop and we’re giving them back to now they came back at the beginning of school year anybody else who was interested in having it done kind of M gear uh they’ve been working one-on-one with the staff to to make that happen yeah I was just trying to record Soxs there’s about a thousand laptops and desktops I didn’t think about Labs there are Labs at the middle school the high school uh there’s an older Lab at the The Village School um so that there is sometimes an abundance in some areas where you know if you’re looking at this too um we’re one to one in every one of our you know K TOA classrooms um those carts also have additional looners on them because kids

1:30:25 going to break and you know we don’t want them to be without them we’re waiting for a device while we’re trying to get one repair to replace so there’s a couple spares on each of those carts as well and we have quite a bit of carts because we have many classrooms across the set probably some teachers in the room but are they still Apple devices or we window all thees are on Windows devices yeah okay well that’s that’s been have changed in over the last couple years hasn’t it uh but just this just’s been primarily PC um there there are a few apples across the district but primarily yeah teacher threaten me that you’re not taking away my Apple device and I can understand passion that the last question I know this

1:31:11 is a small our budget but when we replace a door right to a classroom that now has technology associated with it how do we decide whether that’s an IT expense or a facilities expense yeah I I think it’s become in a in a way a gray a and I think we both kind of share um in in a lot of that so um you know we have added card access um to uh the doors of the buildings and if the door breaks Todd is repairing the door or having his guy repair the door if the Cent access stops working then I’m kind of on that that hook so yeah the reason I just again small but you know for people that are data WS they

1:31:58 like you know the data in the right category they want to make sure we’re not over or understating our it expenditure is Rel to the district that’s why I asked

1:32:12 that so um I just have one to the specific I know we didn’t go over the specific numbers but your line items even you have like it Hardware expense and then you have it equipment I was just curious what the difference was between those two line

1:32:33 so in general it Hardware versus it equipment Hardware is going to

1:32:42 be and I know one of the lines that was in here was no fing one so like it Hardware you can see has zero yeah for the request and it has and it hasn’t for like the last short period of time some of that I think was the um previous years’s uh the laptops the staff that that’s where that funding was put um and then obviously the it equipment that’s going to be kind of like the the other things that we’re talking about like cameras um laptops other like the actual all right thanks thanks

1:33:26 you’ve done a lot I mean when you came in and we didn’t we had no we Tech we were relying on PTO for laptops and iPads and I mean what you have done is nothing short of amazing so thank you very much but I also want to highlight you’ve done a lot as far as school safety goes um access cards cameras when we when we would look at video footage from like five years ago if there had been I remember seeing something in some meeting has there been vandalism somewhere and you couldn’t tell if it was a child a man you you there was no Discerning who it was and now you can tell if the person has red shoes on or orange shoes like it we’ve done a lot as far as security goes so thank you looking at moving into the

1:34:15 future is there a plan to be able particularly at the high school where we do let some students in the nice weather go outside to eat for students to be able to scan themselves in and out so we’re accounting for where everybody Iselle like dear God no um so that we’re really accounting for where everybody is at every time is that something we’re looking towards and then I have a question about ask uh that’s I think more of an operational thing with the high school and how they want their students to be uh in and out of their their vill so fair enough whatever whatever that drives from their end and I will obviously work with them to make things s and we have the technology we wouldn’t need a technology upgrade per se I’m sure there are many different technology

1:35:00 things that we have to come into play with that but and then Aspen it’s like you know we Aspen can be a lot um is that you know we we’re just moving than God away from soft right toward to munist is the next migration of better software we might want to look at as been in the future or is that we’re good with us again I think that’s a larger kind question because Aspen isn’t just one Department it’s many different departments um you know it’s uh A system that I’ve gone through migrations from one sis to another um it does a lot for us I don’t see a specific need but obviously if

1:35:45 obviously if obviously if um if whatever the department is or the the schools are that decide that uh they need something that it can’t do for us then you know that’s a district discussion that thank you um question is do we want to take a break Chad’s on this side before we go Chad are you the last

1:36:18 one would like to take break I would like to take a quick recess let’s take a five minute recess or let’s

1:36:39 message Mary the CL drops Jen has the best got some just like I can’t these are like the best things they literally just melt honey I don’t know have I just

1:52:03 back to order at 1852 652 yeah right right um next up is uh Todd Bloodgood our facilities director Todd’s going to share his goals for facilities Department his time thank very much and yeah so pills maintenance what we’re striving to do to get to the point you know this effici and have you know everything optim workinger trying to stream main operations of it sucess that we putting in place through

1:52:46 that and any equipped our site um and the angle of that minimize any downtime sort of equipment that are in the schools even if you check it once a

1:53:07 month usually that’s but we address it immediately they here ourselves so we call in our

1:53:22 here safety security very very important and and I get Steve and I work together all time about that and U we talk about well regular safety expect that that go around all the doors all the exterior doors simple little things like boiled and closing properly uh a long way and uh also D showing around the district see over makes it all allloy great that in there uh emergency resps protocols that uh building has their own but we go through uh general ones with all of

1:54:09 theal and bus drivers make sure that they’re all up to date on anything because they do go to different buildings so they need to know generally and then within the schools when they do the training all all the principal incl in any of these trainings would be wonderful because they are throughout so the access cards that that has been huge makes feel much better and with the uh when they get in the building anyone who comes in a building they have to get signed in if they do not have their license we have foro that it’s already go get it we scan

1:54:59 it we we really tiped up on all that and it’s been great the police department helps us with that

1:55:11 all U we also have we have many things that the Poli department and assisting having so if there is emergency uh it’s easier for them to do what they need it’s not every one of these officers or even say safe officer would know there when or what and so leave any they ask help of course um with did cleanliness we we finally got back full on uh all of our custodians which certainly helped we had so definitely prop likewise just like

1:55:58 everybody we you know people around I think we’re just AG we’ve had a tough week with illnesses it’s been a tough week with illnesses people aren’t flopping like [Laughter] flies our bus drivers to our cup coding to our

1:56:30 that um and usually the last works this year or this stretch that they be all up so they need they’re encourage to uh wear masks especially the drivers can’t really force them to but I encourage them to just because Le dat I see unit small unit the spe they don’t want that to

1:57:05 get we have uh good habits that we encourage and we we try to put up signage finders where we can or things like that especially younger students wash your hands sanitizer things like that that follows that right we have that and certainly they they bring up right there’s any sort of spills we need to know right away so they can address it way personal spaces on some of these uhum closets need some more

1:57:52 work the uh we recognize in even the word we always say thank you we appreciate the custodians maintenance people bus drivers without them the buildings would and been doing a b job of the place clear ice with snow we’ve been working really

1:58:23 proess question I want want to just commend you for your dedication and your commitment to the cause I think we all know that you’re out there at before the butt cracking on um watching and making sure that that the areas get plowed determining what needs to be done first where thing where we need more solve all of those things come into having a safe um you know the physical environment for our children and that is very important I think you know we talk about their education of course but they wouldn’t be able to get an education if they didn’t have safe access um and I know I have have heard from John on countless occasions and I know I’ve seen you myself at that hour and I just want to take the opportunity to commend you

1:59:10 for that because it’s it’s a lot there’s a lot of spaces and you also have to contend with town roads that may look different from school areas um at times so I I just want to say that that is is very valued for you and your team and please make sure to pass that feedback W town on our parking very his job salt here yes early enough so that it works we have as best as possible clear and I could say you know sorry before but um just in terms of clean up everything

1:59:56 in ongoing communication our first text 30 or 20 um he’s very good about telling me where are we and feel very comfortable um and I need to have that level of comfort um as a superintendent deciding where we are’s been done a nice job he’s collaborating town in a good way I feel really confident he tells me school parking lots everything ready to go is ready to go um my superintendent tries to drive around make sure you’re telling me is is accurate and um you know so

2:00:30 I also appreciate the culture and encouraging good habits and the you know I think sometimes we forget that how how far positive reinforcement not just for children but for grown-ups alike um and so I I love to see that and I also love your comment about how it’s it’s a work in progress um because to me that identifies that your team is working really hard you identify there’s areas that you can perhaps improve or even do a little better um but that you know knowing that everybody’s working really hard and I will say they’re probably one of most friendly groups of people um ever you know when I walk in if someone’s at practically the other side of the cafeteria they’ll say hi and and I just

2:01:19 I love that so then they do St Pride build they also do look out for the

2:01:36 students just have a quick question are all the buses that we use including the Boston buses have cameras inside all the buses are our large three of out of our four large buses have cameras our two smaller ones do not the other larger one does not yet mik and I been working on that getting them in every mon because unfortunately you need it and even Boston mus they have PS they show the driver’s forehead or they show the visor and we encourage them to put it where we can see things please so in our contract with the with nrt for Boston buses they they’re

2:02:23 required to have in the in the buses um I know my experience with an over the last 12 years uh it’s hitter is whether they have tape in them whether the tape’s corrupted whether the video as Todd says it’s point you get the the driver and the driver puts the sun shade down so you can’t see anything El on um I think when I think school districts have written rfps now for bus services that require uh four cameras inside the bus one at the driver one at the back forward one middle one point0 at the exit of the bus coming out we we’ve we’ve written our rfps moving forward that there’s better coverage within the bus before they were give you one angle from the drivers or the driver had you we all know that the good stuff doesn’t happen at the back of the bus so it

2:03:16 does the best behavior not in the back of the bu so RPS are now written but the RP we’re working on for Boston I believe we’re in the year four of that so when we go out to bid on that again uh there will be some camera requirements as far as placement of the cameras how many head cameras we have um what type of DVR choosing uh I know nrt has gotten better about um putting in DVRs that they can access remotely it used to be you had to wait for the bus to come back to the terminal before they could pull the tape so it was 8 9:00 at night before they even had the tape then they’d have to wait for somebody could actually read the tape which came in at 6: in the morning so there were a lot of times to not getting the quickest turn around on camera

2:04:03 F I’m sorry Jen I I do have a question yeah goad so at the end of a lot of these departments are you know above and beyond right not just level Services I’m just curious what the process is like it’s good information what are we just saying at this moment it’s that’s all it is and we’re requesting just a level services Services across the board yes yeah but if you want you know so maintenance if we want to have our own ground screw right that’s an additional that’s above level right so it’s provided in the packet I’m just curious what we going to process that to see if we want to promote as we deliberate at at our next C that be for us to deliberate we will deliberate how this is the presentation of the request and then we deliberate how we want to

2:04:49 spend actually spend or or allocate money there’s been years where we advocated for adding something like that or so that that was Todd’s request to bring on its own landscape Department it is not included in the levels right understood but I guess now would be the time if you had questions around those requests before we process right so one question might be you’re talking about a piece of equipment that might be $80,000 oh no not one that would Beal fully equipped okay or for a clue of say four to be able to go out uh trailers en Clos trailers uh all the mowers all the uh you know speed whackers the blowers are and um majority those priced up as battery

2:05:35 power so that you know we’re not yeah my my question about it would be what what crosses the threshold that would be a capital it looks like we shouldn’t have Capital items on this is that not a capital request because it’s different items or they aggregated because they’re all towards the same purpose and it would be a capital public exps so I I think we have to walk that line where the town now provides those services and we need to work with the town and have the conversations with the town if the wants us to go down that road the town already funds all that equipment and all those Personnel in another budget so do we want to duplicate services do we want to have them split that budget so that we get part of the money and we hire our own group um because they already have it’s under Wen park right now um and Wen Park

2:06:23 is not a town Department it’s a t commission yeah so they have their own board it’s it’s a it’s a lot more nuanced than that this has been a request for a few years now park and rock has been a great or R par um has been a great partner but they’re actually not budgeted to take care of us it’s it’s they do it to be a partner in the community they get to us you know as best they can they asked the principals you know let us know when you have those big days that you have meeting a graduation and they try to of but um it’s been it’s been an ongoing conversation between us and Them of they’re not actually funded to take care of the grounds schools um but there’s larger Town conversations happening about grounds keeping on a full Town

2:07:09 level I think that we’ll see emerge over the next year or so um particularly as we look at these you know various commissions that are that are looking at Town things okay thanks so I I wanted to point out where 10% increase in base salaries for facilities just when people see that it’s not that we’re increasing our head count by 10% that’s um due to the we this was one of the units we saw more significant increase through contract negotiations and that’s what’s reflective in that so because it’s not broken down that that’s not head count that’s you know and I think the other part to mention in that is that 10% was based on last year’s

2:07:54 budget yeah not what we landed in negotiations so last year’s budget isn’t what that I’m sorry this year budget approved budget is not what we’re going to land at this year never mind next year yeah so that’s essentially two years worth of gr so that when you see that larg number it’s not that we’re increasing our head count it’s it’s that’s reflective of our margain um it gives me my next question and this is one I should have really asked Stephen as well a lot of work happens in facilities as well as technology in those what would traditionally be a February and an April break when students aren’t in here that obviously can’t happen this year so those will get pushed off a little bit my concern is the pushing off of that work because of the way our fiscal year ends is there going to be any major numbers that don’t

2:08:43 get to get expended this fiscal year and then perhaps we could be in a in a turnback situation because we do get you know some of our outside vendors and things like that to come in in those weeks and are we proactively address that I think we were able to do a lot of that stuff during the stoppage so we would and then again working with Mike and Steve of course okay some of our larger uh scheduled start day after get over over yeah I think the biggest one is clever School the hvbc on the roof okay uh because it’s not just a roof project it actually gets into interior spaces we did delay that till June normally we would have tried to do that are we going to have a problem with a roll over of a pistol year no because it’s Capital funds they’re allowed to

2:09:29 roll for I just want that’s the we’re not going to turn back money we could be get we didn’t we didn’t want them in the class the children exactly that makes sense that makes

2:09:47 sense so I see we estimated a 2% increase for a lot of items I’m not you’re the expert I’m not but what I’m a little bit worried about from a budget perspective seems low right if gas is only 2% higher in a year than it is now I’d be ecstatic about that so I guess I’m just do we what benchmarks do we use to just and I know it’s Crystal balling a little bit but do we use guidance from a service or something to take to come up with 2% estimate I so so utilities are we we put a 4% of I know we yeah do that gasoline if you’re talking about gasoline or you talking about natural gas talk about fuel vehicles like that not big numbers but we also we don’t buy

2:10:34 that at the P that’s a transfer the town DPW buys it at um okay at non uh what do they call pre-tax rate so pay taxes on it on the fuel so that increase was just for fuel cost not not for there’s no federal or state taxes put on it we bring our bus right up to the highway department and they have the pumps right there thank you yeah but supplies have you to your point there there’s smaller numbers here but districtwide I think we’re going to see larger than

2:11:18 sub that’s sub that’s where have to keep a very close ey on what will’ll never say we’re not going to face somewhere but you know that’s s might

2:11:35 I know smack me around like that but you know we just set to keep very close and that that’s also where a lot of the uh when you do your that helps save money as well without breakdowns you can’t always anticipate when something’s going to breakdown but you do your best make sure you do everything you can see buet forun you know we we put a 2% on on that across the board and then you know we prioritize what needs to be done and if something ends up B up the list for priority then we have to look and say okay push that offer have fix this instead and if it’s a huge you know not what if it’s a huge thing like a boiler this way outside that those are the kind of

2:12:22 things you may have to back so you know you you can never no matter what you do you’re not going to pad that in your budget you’re not going to do contingency for you know $200,000 boiler system but you know for the normal wear and Care stuff I I I’m confident that what we have allocated and what recommended is going to be able to get us through and then any kind of thing that comes up we we that discussion we look at what me prioritize how so operational wise there’s always that that same thing with salar for what you know but people retire quick people leave people be shift from one position to another it’s always a moment in time it’s going to change you know here and there so I think one of the things I’ve

2:13:08 noticed in my years they said 12 years ago our administrators and our our secretaries were ordering from one primary school vendor for their supplies now they’re actually doing some shopping because their budgets are a little bit tighter so they might look at paper and say okay what’s WB Mason’s price what’s Staple’s price what’s School Specialties price what’s Amazon’s price and what is the the local um paper vendor you know the big wbb used to be the little paper vendor but they’re actually shopping around versus just placing in the same order they’ve always placed year after year and they’re looking through their closets to find out what’s buried in here that we we we’ve been storing away for years because we were always told when the budgets freeze up in October you better have money you better have stuff s sort in your Clos we’ve done a really good job not to

2:13:56 freeze our budgets and not to hand our our administrators what that not

2:14:07 done a year yeah I I think we’ve but that’s from the work of everybody being able they’ve G they’ve shopped for the best price best value that we can get instead of just order the same V always a I tell that to my vendors all the time I I have CAU your vend who said Mike we’ve been doing business with this district for 20 years I said those days are not you know but money’s TI sorry go ahead any other questions for Todd the only thing I wanted to make a comment um m is when we when we start coming talking about the um what likely will be uh Capital um expenditure oride for the um for the high I think it would be help system I just want system

2:14:52 want system want system um um can I I think that this maintenance plan um in the pay plan I think that’s something we ought to start commun communicate that atel meeting or at least leading up to it so we can talk about you know how extensively have you know we do have in terms of our activities in maintaining our building so I think it’s going to be important to so we have a very comprehensive um facilities master plan it’s a 10-year plan I think we’re in year four of it maybe year five um but you know I think there’s been some some talk about the lack of of a PL of a master plan last 10 years you don’t do one every year that’s actually a lack of planning um so we we do have a very

2:15:39 comprehensive plan that we’ve been referring to every year diligently we referring that to the um some stelf Comm no I think it’s a Comm it’s a problem with communication what she no it’s just I think we need to have the administration communicate and what got you got understand thank you okay um what are we moving on to joh any other questions okay um we’re gonna move on to John Constantino our director of food services and TOD you can go home and go to bed please camera John’s on Zoom so we need to get Addam in um

2:16:46 hello hello [Music] hello John hi can you hear us yes I can hear you why don’t hey you’re up John all right uh yeah okay um yeah so to just give a little bit of an update on food services for uh 2025 2026 school year that kind of thing um we have some plans in place moving forward um to increase some uh Revenue streamlines for us you know especially with catering um and that’s really designed to make sure um as we move forward with School meals that if there are any additional changes with our reimbursement rates

2:17:34 that we have some viability within our department to cover um any you know unplanned costs and operation expenses based off of the the federal reimbursement rates and the state reimbursement rates and you know the the plan to have the you know this additional money is to reinvest into the department uh you know with training better equipment um moving away from um relying on prepackaged Foods you know things of that nature um and you know so far this year we’ve seen a big increase again in student participation within the within the

2:18:21 schools we are up 21% from this time last year on lunch and 44% this time last year in breakfast and that is um Counting the months outside of November uh because November was a big hit for

2:18:45 us but there we go yeah and so as you as um as you can see um the anticipated revenues uh projected for this year um um and the FY 26 is based off of this year’s um reimbursement rate as well um just because the state doesn’t release that until um later in the school

2:19:20 ton so so we’re seeing Works a pretty large increase um if you the percent of change in hand corner pry large increase in Revenue

2:19:32 right right um with with your increase in profits do you foresee being able to move oh you talked a little bit about this with the moving away to from the priest hackage I know periodically around specific holidays or events you’ll do things to know around Thanksgiving you gross turkeys and give you know a meal that is not prepackaged at all it’s my um do you foresee being able to move to a model closer to that in its entirety um I know it’s there’s a lot of cost for that um but you do you foresee being able to do that yeah I mean there’s there’s definitely a lot of additional costs involved in and move into a fully

2:20:18 scratched kitchen um there’s other factors involved in that as well um Staffing was a big one um but we were able to create a cafeteria agreement with uh my staff and was able to um you know provide a higher salary and that actually took our vacancies from you know I think last you know when I met with you at the end of the year was I had 13 vacancies and this year I now have one so that’s a that that’s a huge difference obviously and um you know as this year has gone on we’ve done a lot more uh scratch cooking um and still utilizing our uh Federal funding for

2:21:03 brown box commodity items and fresh produce and diversion of products as well so I see us continuing to move further and further away from the prepackaged Goods thank you J what what do we do with the profit I hate to use the word profit just no no it’s it it is in that it’s we were reimbursed at a higher level in it process but it’s reimbursement from federal government I just yeah profits a tough for but yeah yeah we’re so any revenues that come in through the Food Service have to stay in Food Service they cannot be turned over into any other program um we would look at any additional or revenues that exceed expenses would be reinvested into the

2:21:50 program whether it be equipment um different meals different you know whatever um salaries certainly increase every year um so we would look at certain things but we’re not allowed to carry more than three mon wor of operating profit in our budget operating expenses in our budget at any given time uh that’s actually very difficult to stay under now because of the reimbursements so shouldn’t the expense line be more than here terms of the budget this is projected known expenses anything above that would be unknown or or you know but it sounds we should plan for it right because we’re going to have significant excess I think it’s better to plan for the end of the year or plan to have a plan for the end of the year then actually plan now and not have the

2:22:35 money we you needed for any where to see I it’s a small off it’s a very small about $116,000 that’s you know in the commercial kitchen that’s an oven and a warmer you know could could blow you could blow to that for very quickly right I mean I mean just just to speak on that small amount for examp example if I wanted to replace the serving lines at the Village School to do both of those schools that’s over $125,000 to replace the serving lines alone so that’s that’s one I guess Mike it’s a little bit of Optics right so someone looking at this which is publicly available now right that probably why wouldn’t you ask the same question wait a minute we’re making money on this is this being reinvested somewhere else outside of food service well no it’s not but you can’t tell that

2:23:20 from just looking at this right so oh to me it would almost be like if you had like the expenses just an additional 116 and just ear Market potential food equipment to be determined right just because then it would zero out and no one can interpret it as a profit and we really don’t want to use that word right like that’s that’s really what I’m just suggesting yeah I think maybe for next year’s presentation We’ll add in another slide that says if there’s if expenses do not exceed revenues or revenues exceed expenses these are the things we’d like to T right and it would be you know replacing the service line of Village giving a list of things that we’d like to do provided we have the funds to do there but what’s in the revolving fund there’s a lot I got end of the year the Revol okay so part of our facility’s

2:24:09 master plan is kit equipment P placement and so what they they could do with a surplus is look and say the oven making something up somewhere is set for next year we can go ahead but but it is part of all that equipment’s part is embedded in it and another really important piece for people to understand Food Services is entirely self-funded including their benefits that everything that comes into food services including last year is the first year we did this the director of Food Services used to be the only line item that was embedded in our in our general budget um that came from funding from the town and even that has been embedded in the revolving fund now so it’s a self- sustaining program in its

2:24:56 entirety so having car a small carryover is important because we don’t want to have to return to our line items for this because it it is self sustaining and this is one of the programs that is is potentially Wars yeah and again I I agree with all that makes sense but again if you’re just looking at this slide I parent I might go to we’re charging too much we’re charging char and that’s the reason we have an excess in revenues is because the federal state are reimbursing a rill um which did not used to be the case we to chase pay again iess get

2:25:41 there’s a lot of kids double Revenue double eating I would say like I can tell you as a family of party we pack lunches for every child and almost every child will get a school lunch too so don’t J us um but I think there’s a lot more families that are doing that when the kid can go up and all of a sudden pee today and can get a free meal versus they might not have had money in their account because their parents like I’m making you a lunch so since we’ve started this grant program you see the principals are shaking their heads yes you see a lot more students who are bringing a lunch and Al I see parents doing it too and also e eating parts of the school lunch so it’s it’s this is not coming out it’s coming out of your pocket inadvertently in another way but this is a

2:26:29 grand thank you I just want to say thanks to John and Todd um we started composting now we are composting in all schools and Marblehead public schools and that’s a really great effort we’ve made in collaboration with the town um we started this months ago and thanks to the school leaders for making it happen every day and it’s been a really nice leadership opportunity for our students as well so just thought I’d highlight that’s a really nice it’s the most fun thing and that was like six years of pushing to try to get that in there the Department of Health really was supportive stainable Marblehead Head was supportive stainable Marblehead was super supportive and we had in the last year a lot of Administrators by to buy in on this and it it’s it was a long time coming very

2:27:15 successful um so we’re going to transition into the next part which will’ll be hearing from our school principles and before we launch into that I just want to say we are truly grateful for the collaboration and the the dedication uh from our principles that they show every day to our and our staff so just want to as we kick into this next section of the presentation just highlight um and show our gratitude for our amazing princi first up is our Brown School principal very Max

2:27:47 thank back on on the composting thing yes it was no easy feet to get off the ground and just huge shout out to mat Andy our sister principal who has wrangled our Rangers who are every day on that line and helping kids you know helping their peers to do that and it’s going very well but it it is it is significant amount of work to get going and and big big kudos to him um thanks for having me thanks for uh giving us some time to share our goals and our and our numbers that are so associated with budget tonight so um what we will hear is um in our goals is very much what you’ve been hearing for a while because goals take a

2:28:32 long time um especially if they’re really good ones and they have um and they go deeper so these goals align to what youve heard from the office of GT learning as well as student services and basically the bottom line is to meet the needs of all of our students both social emotionally and padem so the first goal is to strengthen our multi-tier systems of support everybody’s heard of TSS and nauseum um but uh with improved Data Systems in order to meet the academic and social emotional Behavior ands so mtss really does take three to five years to develop um you’re developing systems and you’re developing systems within systems so um that is we I’m very excited that we are

2:29:21 really in year three um our tier ones is secure in terms of what we are teaching um and how we are teaching um but in terms of our tier two and our interventions we now are learning all these different interventions so when when 55% of the kids get it at first time what are we doing to make sure that we’re meeting the needs of those kids who might need it the second time again to Allison a point earlier what are we doing to those those kids who fallowing and what are we how helping them to stretch their learning so that’s all part of that system so um the budget reflects what we need and we get so much support from our coaches from our L tutors um this year it’s the first time

2:30:07 that we’ve been able to come up with a system where our tutors are able to share their data with our teachers and that’s been a game changer um in terms of what we know how how much deeper we know our students in learning um the second is Fidelity to three-year implementation of the uh literacy program with wisdom um again already eons ahead this year um year two already getting more we’re much farther ahead than we were last year um even with uh the time that we had off in November so we’re pretty excited about that we are um getting more just the conversation set here coming from

2:30:54 classrooms around this curriculum or just here you know kindergartners talking about van go on like Blown Away um it’s just it’s it’s incredible so really um putting a lot of effort into that and that’s obviously supported by the office of teaching and learning um continued emphasis on tier one social emotional learning through wayfinder our first year with wayfinder which is our tier one um support system for social emotional learning uh pgis responsive classroom zones of Regulation all tools all things that we Implement to make sure that we’re meeting the social emotional needs of our kids um and then continuing a a sense of belonging for all

2:31:42 students really with an emphasis on differentiated instruction and the dcap so the Decat does give you s small spy of of things that you can do but what does it look like what does it feel like do we really know what’s in there how do we make sure that we are relying on that and looking at it more deeply um and studying it and and presenting a problem of practice to make sure that all kids are engaging and their all kids are part of the conversation it’s really part of you know authentic learning making sure that kids are engaged in those so that um so that that we are meeting here all the way through those are those are the goals

2:32:29 and on the next slide I have our involvement in class sizes it’s always sort of a a best guest for kindergarten um and first grade I typically and I usually rely on it um we usually increase by about 10 kids uh because we have PIV kids who go to private kindergarten and they come in in first grade so that’s usually around 10 um so that’s where I sort of get those projected numbers and the others are fairly even um with regard to the year before

2:33:12 questions this is a question I will be asking everybody just I just get to get um it looks like if you

2:33:29 don’t staffing has stay is staying the same um one thing that we’ve seen across the district is round class sizes have been from a percentage standpoint substantially higher than Club so it will be interesting to see as we move to Glover do we have that comparable class sizing and if not how are we addressing that because you know we had years of 22 in the kindergarten I think last year at Brown and 14 at glubber and that’s not that so um how are we addressing that it’s also not real bu for bu either um and where you have no ST changing you really don’t have to answer this one but if anybody does move for just where is this steming from um

2:34:23 yeah I I don’t see any I mean right now yes I would I would agree with you our far I’m concerned about my first grades and kindergarten their the numbers are up there um I don’t have any place to come I mean if I put in for a new teacher to try to make another class that would be something but there’s really

2:34:47 not so not so um I don’t know answer question we we talked about we District dat we talked about um housing programs in different buildings we talked about you know a number of things I and I suspect that will that conversation will you to see saying address it and and then this again will be for everybody we we saw a lot this is more for the public to hear so we’re not answering this later on we saw a lot over the last you know six months of hearing cries of we’re under staffed we’re underst staffed when you look at our state numbers we’re actually substantially lower of standard than the state average your numbers for

2:35:33 class sizes although you know I think you and I would have three 21 in first grade isn’t ideal it certainly is not what other districts would um I I love them in the teams which is who might not be there um but can you you just speak to does the budget you’re presenting and I know you’re presenting what you need but I think it really needs to be said because there’s been such a narrative are your needs met with this budget I believe my needs are met with this budget with regard to the goals that with regard to mtss making sure that we continue keeping our tutors being our coaches I

2:36:19 mean they are essential absolutely essential to making sure that those things move forward to making sure that we’re getting the academic needs now we have employed um some volunteers we’ve done some uh training for parent volunteers to do some um extension reading groups and some extended math groups I’m teaching a math group twice a week um um with that’s um Extended Learning uh which is they’re phenomenal I just unbelievable conversations math well it’s a wind okay it’s a wind group but it’s um using the data you know they they already know it right so what are we doing to make sure that we can provide activ right so that’s just that’s a perfect example I think you’re

2:37:05 saying of actually implementing what you see in the testing results and creating that true mtss method where you know you’re teaching differentiated learning not not straining from the curriculum it’s not that it’s just different types of problems and it’s not you know it’s also not more work and I would say that it’s giving them the opportunity to do that so the book groups for example yeah you know what I mean that giving them the opportunity even if it’s just twice a week to have those conversations that go deeper on a level that they that they can do right so that last just so that last slide is not actually in the book so I don’t know we’re going to have a building but the average class size it’s not

2:37:52 in the budget book we have a to like you’re showing the brown in the budget book was the projected enrollments but that last slide it’s the presentation is in the packet that went to okay school committee okay I think what I think I think that be there though and get that slide in there it would be great for this budget book to have absolutely everything that that not only we need but I think from the public perspective that was presented so the electronic version of the budget book has this oh it does sorry the first 42 pages will be online tomorrow morning as the entire presentation is the first okay amazing thank you sorry um yes the Staffing

2:38:37 that’s in the budget is is appropriate for meeting those needs all those positions are not filled so do you right but you understand what I’m saying I I do think some of the narrative about you know we need more support or whatever we we may not have had build positions and that too is true let’s operational other operational other questions when you speak about empty positions how many vacant positions are we funding that have sat vacant for seven months and then that begs the question if a position has been vacant for seven months finging positions that we know we need and if there positions we’re still trying to fill them there’s

2:39:23 no positions that we’re saying we don’t need those positions it’s just that sometimes it’s hard to fill certain positions or we’ve had people come in and they around so we’re funding so all of our principles said we this is the staff that I need in my building to be able to operate dayto day and we said okay they’re all still in the budget we’re working to fill all those positions we’re going to continue to do that and then we look at efficiencies so we look at how we if stff need to move from you know program program or operational that we do so you know I he the question is like if it’s been been vac we haven’t fill it why do we need it because I listen to my administrators my administrator say I still need this position we’ve been figured out how to figure it out for the

2:40:10 last six seven months so like when you talk to every single principal in this room there’s been times when they’re struggling because we haven’t filled certain positions so that’s not that’s not a place where I would look at look at you say well you haven’t had s months it’s not going to f no I’m not I’m just saying these are the questions we’re faced with answering continually that’s why question and quite frankly it’s a question that came out from I think what I also I think is important to note and what I’m seeing from where I sit and what I hear publicly from John that again not withstanding whatever may have happened in the past with veg administrations John is hiring people week by week right and he’s been you know whatever you’re doing with your your folks in terms of and we are actively hiring people not withstanding might might have had I just hired four

2:40:57 staff in the last so what I would like I don’t need to tonight but is a list of any positions districtwide that have been vacon the entire time because there’s a given let’s see if the Comm I have a right to ask for this that have been vacant for the whole year and who has been covering that work because I to make sure that we’re getting under a narrative that students might not be getting a service they need I wanted we we were probably Consulting it out like but there is a narrative students might not be getting what they need and I’m not hearing that from our administrators so I want to get

2:41:37 on we have to have that conversation I don’t

2:41:45 know I I just I don’t understand that I don’t CL thank you think the other thing

2:41:55 to one of the things that I I’ve said this before saying this to John the whole team that is and we’re probably going to see this in the other buildings too is and and I believe it’s implicit there but we got to be stating the record that um the rigor and the academic Stu student academic achievement ought to be at least in my mind first and foremost in what we’re what we’re trying to maximize here and it’s again it’s not necessarily reiterated but do look at EPC scores we look at results that um you know clearly tell one story so I just you know I want to just underscore as a school committee member that is my priority

2:42:40 everyone’s any other questions for Mar this is question like the format but you know so you know Personnel budget requests and have people FES but there’s no fiscal year 25 comparison I think that would have been helpful information because it’s not easy to tell right sounds like we have to ease her about the same probably see that through the num you know through the budget number and salaries but it would just be interesting to see if you know phys State say or you know some things there I like she said she says that in her executive summary too right that she’s not there are noest I my old budget book in so Browns Browns FTE in last year’s budget were

2:43:27 81.5 and’s proposal 82.1 and I apologize I did this last night because I foresaw this question coming up so it didn’t get in the book but so next version would be awesome 8.5 to 82.1 so that 6 I had it highlighted where it came from um I think it was moving a position from another building versus hiring staff okay like to thank Mary for her leadership and we’re going to introduce intern principal Frank kosi of blover

2:44:15 school thank you it’s a pleasure of being here first foremost like to thank um uh John Julia and Mike um my first here definitely a challenge I I came with three I I want to kind of think measure sometimes in being the first year I I saw how it works I think a New Year hope understand more about how it works we’d like to continue with station

2:44:59 assistance that’s important to continue effect the data the effect of the programs are the second one I think really important through the success of our school we talked about this day my teachers a renew focus on professional developments on tier one positive behaviors um teaching years ago is not same as teaching today the student needs were like difference uh I think it’s important that we continue to have our teachers evolve to learn new methods and teaching our students how we handle situations within the classroom that they may not be familiar with um basic good teaching practices I think it’s important to to update how best to serve our our students in classroom management I know uh we can all use updated version

2:45:45 of how we can best service our students that are having trouble focusing class that’s one Focus I’d like to have next year and one of the big ones that we worked on is Contin empasis on table social learning using wayfinder I did evaluation say I think a way it was it was excellent students love it they engaged with it and it goes to what we’ve done since day one um learning the students learning me and I’m learning from the teachers and one thing we Implement day one was U relationship building uh if you come to Glover in the morning it’s kind of like it’s almost like I it’s kind of cool to see we have guidance CS out front of the school we have teachers out front we have people in the lobby um really assisting our students coming to school every day I

2:46:31 think it’s important that our students feel really faces all over the school not just the one they see every day in the classroom so that it’s really effective for our school um it helps with our buing interventions helps with um responsive classrooms our teachers from the hallways all day long I think it’s real important this level is students feeling long as the school and one of my cool vales has always been through my life is that kids feel comfortable School the academic piece and the rigor piece really just work they work side by side show three goals I really want to work on this year and um I guys want to highlight that really helped me this year has been long skeleton um my depart my special

2:47:17 Department ch um Lauren been great with me because I don’t have the syst shalar and I she helps to Fu things off dream talk about things with school she’s taught me a lot about the special education role students with day

2:47:38 obviously a big ass and I don’t think the joh thank joh thank you nice and sweet just good consistency with

2:47:57 do you do any of the differentiated learning like Mary talked about we do it all in the classroom and we have our teachers and when you have uh young children it’s very important to keep them moving around the classroom and to the fact that more the more you speak the less they’re going to hear after a while so teachers are very trained in see and feeling body language in the classroom and get them around the classroom do a lot of group work p group work that teachers sit down one-on-one instructions and uh students when they finish their instruction they are you to go to another area where they can work where they can learn areas they

2:48:42 tell great they don’t have to just sit there they’re always busy okay that’s great so I think than um Frank and I think if we look at the class sizes you know we’re just chatting about the differences between Browning BL class sizes really not that far off I mean I know there’s been times when you 14 15 one class there and 22 23 and the other but we’re really pretty close I me when you look at projected numbers for K it’s 18 long 19.6 at um round 18 I mean uh 18 for first grade 21 21.3 and 22 21 and 22 so you know the talk about um the redistricting stuff I don’t think that that speaks to the need for that but what we did do this year and we’ll

2:49:28 continue to do is when the kindergarten numbers started um getting a little bit higher and this year was brown so we redirected some of the kids to Glover to to balance off the kindergarten numbers which we’ll continue to do because I think it’s important to try to balance it as best we can and realistically 18 19 even 20 kids in the kindergarten the the regulation are um an average of 27 is when you have to have a cut off and I mean no one wants 27 kids in the kindergarten class me I’m not saying I’m not advocating for that don’t crucify me I’m just saying that’s where the regulations are so 181920 even 21 is doable it’s not you know when you start getting 22 23 24 yes that’s that’s a much different animal with with kindergarteners than it is with first

2:50:14 second third and up um but we look at those class sizes closely we monish that talking about the ways to make sure that there Equitable to into classes so I just wanted to share that um and I’ll add to that that we want to class sies we want to add classes to our school we want we want a robust school we we have four 500 students in the school because know we be enjoying teaching again now teachers do not mind having again is the capacity in the building’s the same or Brown’s higher no Brown higher we have we have more capacity say that when we went through the feasibility study for brown um Desa came in and gave us updated numbers depending on our programming

2:50:59 what we were running out of Glover arm Brown the Desy numbers for for what we could comfortably have I don’t want anybody saying we have too many two kids too many we need to move that’s not what I’m saying Glover’s numbers were 325 and Browns 450 so you look in your projections you’re projecting 327 we’re projecting 460 we’re projecting F built so when in the context of redistricting it doesn’t it’s it’s not called for because our buildings in each building are full um one question I do have about your prek projections and this I don’t know if this falls under Lis Marie or who this falls under it’s that time of the year I only think about this because it was conversation I was hearing unfolding in real time today in your life this is

2:51:45 the time of year where parents are deciding with those TK kids if they’re going to what do they call red shirt if they’re going to move them on and those conversations are happening in real time in preschools I can tell you I heard a bunch of them today um do we would it be a good idea because there are some years I know from my own kids going through there was some one of my kids it felt like 50% of the parents were doing it it becomes a trend almost and another one of my kids I think no one did it um do we put a call into those private preschools and just say listen are you seeing a lot of that this year or no because that may affect our projection I can have the conversation with I don’t know if she’s had that level of conversation she’s definitely having a preschool discussions and started to um and there have been discussions about

2:52:31 like oh should my kids stay in preschool another year go on to kindergarten there’s a cut off Age Two so that happens as much in our prle program in as in the private ones and it seems just as apparent I’ve seen it seems like a trend the years it’s happening it seems to be a contagion where everybody start starts chatting and it starts happening so it might be helpful to know is this a year you’re seeing a lot of this is this a year you’re not seeing aot you mean by like you parents keeping them in preschool yeah starting them at six instead of yeah and that’s I mean there’s benefit I think the answer to that in my humble opinion as an educator is it depends on the kids so some kids that absolutely can go in early there’s some kids that are young for their you know young for their age and immature they need that extra year so it’s really an individual choice but I haven’t seen

2:53:17 that Trend yet but I I will talk to Lis about that cuz I think it becomes a social thing almost at least here in town like it a lot of parents are doing it then they keep those friend groups together so it’s only so they could play D1 hockey when they get the high I want to stop paying for PR they’re all going to get anything for Frank just have a a small thing the the spreadsheet page three has a few division by zeros I don’t think it affects the numbers at all but I be nice to just clean that up before the next you

2:54:04 Frank like to introduce um B principal St Williams good evening thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to present to you our overarching goals for Bill of school and our budget um we are the village Ducks our acronym is dynamic unique courageous kind and safe um I also want to give a shout out to our partners at education rpto because they’ve been very helpful this year gring our mascot um we have new swag and apparel that we wear with pride and so I’m very thankful for our P for helping us uh with that our PBS initiatives are that is a a very important goal that we both high if you visit the lobby at H will see our cylinders filled with rubber ducks this is not for hot tubs or swimming pools

2:54:51 this is so our kids can earn and grow and um develop themselves collaborating as a group as a cohort we recognize those kids who earn duck dollars we announce which grades and which classes are on target to meet their goals every week and so we celebrate that that’s one example of our student voice and our student power um I also want to share that we’ll be using these overarching goals next in two weeks when we meet with our uh School advisory Council that is our body of of entity people that we work together and collaborate with so this will be developing our next school Improvement plan I just want to mention that um our my colleagues have already mentioned the multi- support systems I know there’s been conversations about

2:55:37 our gifted and talented Learners and I feel this is one vehicle to achieve that using our datadriven instruction models um we are we have in any population of students we have our emerging Learners our on grade level Learners and then are kiddos that need that extra enrichment and that extra push so it’s our job to differentiate that within the classroom working with our special Educators working with our tutors working with our coaches I believe that is happening day-to-day at Village um our wind blocks what I need again this is another way that we differentiate meet the needs of our students and the day-to-day small group instructions these are models where we’re meeting our kids with the tools that we have what they need developmentally so that’s a very

2:56:22 reflective practice that we’ve really adopted at Village this year I have to give a special shout out to our teachers our coaches because they’re doing amazing things dayto day um we’ve already spoken about our new tier one social emotion learning program wayfinder this is this is a robust program that I think is is a really solid way for our tier1 kids to get those communication skills conflict resolution how to engage with your peers um I’ve attended all of our community meetings which are led by our teachers and our kids are getting consistent messages what is the expected behavior and what does it mean to be a duct from the bus ride to the lobby to the classroom to the that consistent universal language sets ourself our kids

2:57:09 up for Success so that’s happening in our wind blocks it’s happening with wayfinder um we’re in year three of our wit and wisdom literacy program uh again I think we’re all familiar with that at this point uh frequent data meetings are happening um again shout out to our coaches I’ve attended so many data meetings at this point where we are looking not just at one data collection point I know mcast gets a lot of attention but we really want to focus on those benchmarking tools and progress monitor over time to have a collective repository of data I believe there’s danger at one data point I think you need to look at Trends over time for each child and then you can make it more informed decision about what that child needs academically or socially or

2:57:55 emotionally um special shout out to our inclusionary practices I have to thank Ashley leedman Victoria Ryan and Lisa Marie because they have been our true Partners this year in special education of Village I believe we’re doing a great job meeting the needs of of what our friends what is developmentally needed for those kiddos our principal learning walks is another that’s something that uh Mr robu has has tked us to do and I have to say I had a visit this morning to Mary and um over at uh Brown and it was I sat in on a tat team meeting and I asked a lot of very pointed questions because this helps align not only curriculum in the classroom but it helps principles I think to gain some insight

2:58:40 as to okay these kiddos are coming to us someday how can I align our practice with our Tad team protocols um the Tad team is the support team it’s free referral free special education where we’re working with those kiddos in the general education center so again um and I I visited Michelle and I visited um Matt and I visited Frank so this is something I think that is really H helping us to develop as leaders and helping our kids um we’ve empowered our teacher leaders shout out to the Village School teacher leaders uh we meet with them every other week and these are very Dynamic people at Village that have helped myself and Jenny Conrad our assistant principal lead um we’ve relied on them to work with their teams to make sure that we have consistent practices

2:59:25 so we’ve empowered our teacher leaders through our professional Learning Community meetings um our village Partnerships are I’ve already mentioned our PTO owner School advisory but this goes beyond just those bodies of folks that are dedicated we work with parents across the district and the town all the time and then lastly our our student voice developing um the sense of belonging is a critical component for our kids kiddos um Studies have shown and proven that the sense of connection to a community is a very strong indicator of future success so we take that very seriously at Village there are different ways with our morning announcements kids now are giving joke of the day which is very exciting um our composting program is one way that we’ve

3:00:11 empowered those those leaders within within our learning community and I have to thank Jenny Conrad our assistant principal she spearheaded that effort ear in September um and my last shout out is to our school counselors last week was um school counselor week acoss country and so I have to say that our village counselors are just such strong Partners as we lead together um and then the next slide shows you some enrollment Trends and figures and that’s us and in not showing and happy to answer questions

3:00:50 so when we look at your class sizes it looks like I think you have 10 sections per grade level my understanding is uh at the that four through six level at least in Marblehead head we’ve usually sat around 22 Marblehead we’ve usually sat around 22 23 at times pushing it to 24 in a class size um because there’s teams of you know anywhere from 45 to think team is 50 um when we look at that I’ll call it a small bubble year moving through we’re you’re maintaining 10 sections when you could maintain your average of 22 to 23 in eight sections so ideally we want obviously

3:01:36 glass size is better and we know that we do have fiscal realities and and some params around that there will be some internal movement it’s not requiring additional Staffing but in order to I I understand why you’re asking because cor some of our class sizes our fourth grade sizes right now are a little cuspy um 23 is manageable as John mentioned uh it’s it’s bigger big is um my barometer has always been K to2 under 20 kids 345 under 25 I’m not advocating for larger class size please don’t misunder no I’m not and I’m not either I just I thought your point was the opposite no no I’m not I’m not saying making class size bigger I’m saying when

3:02:21 the math works out yeah that with two sections left it the average stays comparable to what we’ve always had what what we have in the rest of the building yeah is there a way to use those to to go to eight sections still maintain those two teachers but increase what you’re delivering for students Maybe by more mtss like is there a way to to maintain the class sizes and then focus on the delivery what delivering being in said so on a on a data point on a spreadsheet or Google doc when you see the class that I have 23 kids that is a reality however I will also offer that we have tutors coaches special Educators

3:03:06 it’s re I I rarely walk into a room where there’s just one adult so I feel like we meet the needs of those kids with the additional resources that we have competitive in we’re saying the same thing I’m saying keeping two extra teachers aren justified in the number like your sixth grade we’re not asking for additional stuff no I know that but this is what when we keep answering in the in the town your enrollment down your Staffing isn’t reflective of your enrollment these numbers right here are saying you can do 10 sections of 18 or you can do eight sections of 22 to 23 when our whole building model is 22 to2 so there’s a reason and I’m sure there’s a reason we just need to be able to articulate that reason to the community

3:03:53 when we’re asked why and I I think and I don’t want to speak for stop a lot of times when you have those classroom numbers are a little bit smaller than the other ones that’s generally where you the extra resources like so you may have some um maybe more kids on IEPs in that classroom so you can support them differently with a lesser number of kids in the classroom so that’s one way that it’s a whole grade level that we’re adding to pies we give yeah I mean it is sixth grade versus a public coming up and fourth gr that no and I know and you don’t want to keep moving because people learn their curricul I understand there’s reasons for it we need the talking points to explain to people what the reasons are I’m not saying there aren’t Reasons I’m saying the number the math here works out that we two teachers

3:04:39 left would maintain an average so if there’s a reason that the math isn’t what should be driving it I’m not saying that there’s not a reason we just need to be able to be advocates our budget to our community when we’re asked why that’s just I’m not saying I I’m arguing to cut two people that’s not at all what I’m saying I want to know how this benefits our students so we can advocate for okay can I ask this question so I just heard in the last conversation that we’re looking to keep the classroom numbers on the lower side but now you’re basically saying we should lower the number of classroom raised I’m saying if we have a standard standard Mark of 22 to

3:05:24 23 are we Staffing to the students we have or we splitting the students up for the staff what’s driving the bus here is my question and it’s not actually my question because if you go back in the years past I’m always the one that’s saying smaller class sizes give us more money I need to be able to go out in the community and Advocate because every single solitary year this is the question we get to town meeting this is always the push why our enrollments down your step like I just need the talking that’s all I need but it’s not just telling I mean it’ll be every single public comment so not that I’m saying I want you to do less St because that is not at all what I’m saying I’m saying give me the data so that I then can be a foot soldier for this I

3:06:11 appreciate that I just think so I think that the narrative then becomes okay we do what you just said because it the numbers dictated and then have five fourth graders move in and now the CL size is 25 and we could have had it at 22 and then we have now we have over there’s a little bit of Wiggle there I mean in two staff isn’t going to change isn’t move budget by understand why ask question so you know we we can look at that a bit differently but well two staff in one building won’t but two staff in five buildings right so so how I maybe the answer is this is how I look at the budget when at Staffing I think here Marblehead head it Staffing I think here Marblehead it seems like everyone is so um this is your budget in this building

3:06:58 with this Staffing this is this I look at and the global thing if if all of a sudden I’m looking at Village School and we have two teachers that we can say we’re not going to get rid of the teachers but maybe we slide those teachers over to Glover or we slide those teachers over to middle school because that’s what the need is like that’s it’s it’s still the same pot of money it’s same still the same pot of status so I’m looking at a budget where we’re not reducing staff and we’re not overstaffing um to the point where I think we’re we’re where we need to be to meet the needs of the kids so I I know that’s that’s where I see it with Scott I maybe what right now the average class siice it ranges from 18 to 23 to me for the Upper Elementary grades let me be clear Upper Elementary that is reasonable and within Norms that I’ve experienced in other

3:07:45 districts well that’s different than a goal of 22 to 23 class so so then it’s 18 to 20 I think those are the things we need again we’re not like Sho the messenger here we’re just reflective what the community is ask and I think on a more holistic um statement John you probably know this that gave us our enrollment figure at the beginning of this three hours ago of 2500 we had 3300 students less than 10 years ago so that the same number of six the same number of Staff actually slightly higher Staff so those that is what community is asking I understand that so being able able to articulate the why is the important piece it is not this committee telling you how to run your school or

3:08:31 what you need or what is best at all it’s just being able to easily articulate those reasons to the public because whether it’s this year next year 10 years when if an override is ever necessary then they will remember those talking points and and we’ll be able to give more talking points and they’ll just increasing transparency with the community is is really Paramount here um for all of these things we’ve been saying years zero base budget was our goal y staff in Supply both expenses and and staff for to meet our needs in some

3:09:17 years it’s more and some years it’s less and maybe this is a more year maybe this is a less year that’s what this exercise is about but if we can’t start to articulate to our community that we are doing what our needs are because we’ve been getting hammered for years that we we practice roll over budget so I’m gonna say I don’t mean to thr but I’m gonna say as a superintendent this is this is my proposed budget based upon the needs of all the administrators we talked about based upon the needs that we’ve seen based upon Trends and I we are proposing a level service budget because we feel strongly that what we have moving forward into next year will absolutely allow us to run the schools efficiently effectively with the rigor that we expect and the Staffing that we

3:10:05 expect without asking for more Staffing for more services for more money so I contend that I thought I explained that at the beginning and maybe I didn’t explain it wrong they try to explain it any other way to the the community but I think when you look at I’m not asking for an in level service I’m not asking for reduce level service I’m asking for a level service budget and I feel 100% confident that we can make that work and I think actually I would think the community would appreciate that and not be you know not saying that oh okay well now the first year that we have an ask for excess staff we not reduce it knowing that as we moveing forward as had the elephant in the room is this contract the contract that we have on the table is

3:10:51 at some point going to um tip the scale in terms of either an override a reduced Staffing we have it that’s that’s been on the table since day one this is not the year that we need to do that and I feel very proud of the fact that we that we’ve got to this point we’re able to do that I think as like the day after this budget is approved is the day we start working on next year’s Staffing patterns what do we need to do how do we how we going to meet the 3% increase that we have up against it and how we meet 3 and a half% increase it the year after that the day after we this this budget approved that’s when we’re going to start working on so again I I understand all the questions I’m not I’m not question I know you’re the me mess I’m trying not to mess I just I think it’s important for the community to to understand that this is the budget that we’re putting forth that I feel

3:11:37 very comfortable with I think it’s a solid budget I think our administrators would say yes I can operate my buildings and and again there’s always when you look at staff and at classroom number numbers when you look at Services you’re looking at gas prices it’s all a moment in time so there’s always going to be that shift and there’s never going to be one time when I could say you know the uh these vacancies mean this it’s because maybe four vacancies now there four different vacancies that work you know six weeks ago and it’s three vacancies now three different vacancies were a week ago so like that’s always a moving tet so I just try to share that my I think my perspective is a little bit different than what’s been put out in the past m I but the the community is still the same and it’s

3:12:23 still a community that wants more transparency do not misunder understand me the school committee has gotten more transparency this budget book is now available online with line level details of every single thing for every single school and these principles in this Administration put a tremendous amount of time into this it’s still the same community that is looking at the rment is looking at the number of teachers and I understand that’s a very basic thing and that there is far more that goes into I don’t understand because I’m not a but in my head I feel like I would imagine there’s a lot more that goes into it than a 100 teachers 500 students whatever but the community sees it as that and

3:13:09 the community has a real problem with that and we want to be able to better advocate for you in regards to that so I think so I I think is really right so I think when we have the Public public meeting in public Hearing in those questions come up what I’m hearing is we need to be much better prepared to answer those questions and we willon yeah I’m not suggesting you’re not prepared no know the when we have people who will start we will have citizens board members of other boards start calling us tomorrow and asking us this and what I don’t want to do is say I can’t give me that information I don’t know I want to be able to say why why do we still need

3:13:55 this because I I it’s not that I don’t believe we need it I don’t believe I have all the information I have to go forward right now and that’s what is hard because we we hear understaffed we hear un overstaffed by some people we hear this data point for this this data point and to be perfectly honest my gu has always told me it’s not that we’re under or over we just might need some tweaking some areas may need more some areas may need less we need a little bit of a shuffle but what I’m seeing here is no Shuffle has occurred everything will march on next year exactly the way it was this year and if that is what’s appropriate then fine but if there’s some areas we’re a little over and some areas there’s a little under that’s what I was

3:14:40 hoping to so right so I think to to answer that question I think I said this at the beginning V repeating is that when we look at programming and we look at how how we restructuring special program General programming looking at the the different schools how how we’re doing all that that’s not a most of the people sit at this table have only been here seven months and that’s not a seven month thing so we’re operating basic on what we know with the thought process that yes it’s going to take going into next year and having those very more in-depth conversations about okay what’s working and how we’re going to move those move those pieces and a lot of those conversations already happening um internally but again it’s you know if you have 10 teachers in one building and they teach all these subjects but now

3:15:27 we’re to take two of them these subjects because that’s what we need that’s operational and and I can explain that but it’s it’s that’s operational that’s not like oh well now we need less less people it’s not we’ve reallocated because the meat is over here it’s over here and I think that’s maybe where the community might be stuck and I’m happy to have those conversations because I can get we want to make sure our Lins are clear too we don’t need it here and we need it here we need to be voting to transfer it’s not because this has been another push back in the community we have line item autonomy as a entity but it’s not just this is your pot of Staffing Shuffle it around as you see fit if we’re shuffling we’re voting a line item trans that’s that’s the way we vot we we were the other way and we got

3:16:13 hammered we don’t do that right now so no not right now but I think what I just heard is we have a pod and we can Shuffle around as we see fit maybe I’m Miss no we can but it’s still we can it’s operational but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have a conversation but also I didn’t see any of that in anything that’s the whole point whether in other words I don’t mean as as a committee we can discuss vote that you want to vote it I may not want to vote it but I just it isn’t necessarily like in other words what I’m saying is all the staff they have this year is rolling over into staff next year so that’s we haven’t seen that unless I miss something uh

3:16:51 words any transfers no because right now again right now we’ve identify that we need the staff that we have to be able to move forward to next year and as we move into next year there’s likely got to be shifts at some point but those we don’t know the all things yet because you can’t we’re in February not September and September may look very different in Fe so yes there’s there’s always going to be some movement and there needs to be conversations with the school committee if if the wish of the school commit is I want to know when a a instructional assistant goes from Brown School to Glover school then not that level but if we’re if we’re downsizing sections that’s always something that’s come back to us we want to add a section of 3K this is why we’re gonna downside sections of this this is why because

3:17:37 why because why because our those are bigger decisions yeah I guess what need to keep the principles but um what I’m concerned about out we may need some time we need to get to the level of detailing 3 100% what I was hoping to walk away from this meeting was it seems like we may not be asking for an override which to some people is going to be kind of a a reversal that’s fine how do I explain and I you know I heard free cash right so that’s one explanation and that’s a million dollars right two million million we get all the all the two one right but I think so

3:18:23 let so it’s one or two million right I thought I heard it was some of that and then efficiencies what are the efficiencies how do we go from potentially needing an override to not needing one and it’s not the data is not showing that and it’s not going to be in this book because that the contract be negotiated had a 2% Cola for next year the year after is three and the year after that is three and a half as was said in negotiations the contract is going to require an override not FY 26 is going to require an override so we were pretty clear about that so again and this qu to because I think a lot of people coming to us riew me is because of misinformation that has been put out there in the media well website dedicated to it and that is is for that

3:19:12 exact reason and I think it needs I’m I think we need to scream that from the rooftop that the contractor is going to require fiscal year 26 does not require an over and partially because we got a million dollars more from the town that we weren’t expecting during negotiations right and that and that the contract the life of the contract may require an override at current sta we have to keep reiterating um that’s which is what we said all along it’s the contract that is at current Staffing levels that could potentially require an and In fairness what John said this is pretty I mean we have we have some Staples who have been here like Matt and you have WEA many of storm but for the most part we’re very very new team in

3:19:59 seven months time is it’s gonna take them some time to kind of figure out what what their path of recommendations are so I hear that and that’s good but again we I think the problem we I’m feeling and I’m sensing a lot of us are feeling is we’re up against a tsunami of misinformation and gaslighting at times and we need to be able to combat that with direct documented facts and that’s kind of where we in I I don’t so towards that there should be something communicated on our website tomorrow or the day after right because the longer if

3:20:45 we wait till our next school committee right we’ve just allowed potential inless information to grow by Leaps and Bounds so so this whole this whole slideshow and book is on the website tomorrow so anyone that’s listening that’s heard all this and wants to go and look and say what are they talking about where’s the monies they can certainly go through that look at that and ask the questions I’m happy

3:21:10 to it doesn’t answer the question around Mike said it right it was the contract it’s the contract first the first year it really front page of the paper this week leave reported that front page of the paper this week it’s the contract that needs to be over not it was also reported that there’s a whole website out there of misinformation so it it that I mean if you’re going to say one thing was reported the other was reported as well and the other got a lot of more traff an anonymous social media which is anonymous no vetting don’t even know if it’s real or who it is in any EV the problem is there isn’t one slide what happened there is one we need one slide and I’m happy to work on whomever with this so to create this there just

3:21:55 one slide that explains exactly what you said that it is the contract that this year they got the two for that it is the contract that is going to need a potential override at current Staffing levels in year one two three or four because they are getting this and this percentage that I think is is what you’re looking for out correct exactly so page four of the document page 5 five already went over it it’s right there I I just we’re all on the same yeah no I’m just I’m just saying we keep saying like we need this information it’s but it need but we can put a cover right let’s work on that so so yeah this is a Nuance

3:22:42 around communication it’s not it’s not a dig at you guys going to do her job going to do their job that’s fine and I do think as I’m on the communication subcommittee if we really want to make sure something is communicated the way that we want it to be we need to do it corre so I would think and I agree with you and and I don’t mean to sound like defensive right this is my first go around here so I don’t mean to sound offensive I just I I think I’m just a little bit passionate the fact that we’ve worked so hard to get into a level of service budget and we feel really good about and and it maybe some community so and that’s fun and I think with the May the community Communications subcommittee can work with Mike and I to figure out hey how do we put that out there happy to do that we can we can certainly do that right um at this point can we can we get rest

3:23:34 the we just heard from Frank and Scott who have been great additions to the leadership team in Marblehead head leadership team in Marblehead so leadership so thank you thank you Scott moving into uh principal Matt Fox from Marblehead veterans Middle School so you see question go there for every budget we have the first is this they go to Future discussion in a few minutes about size uh mvms commit the student the Student Center strategies structure within a true Middle School model that’s something i’ be more to happy to chat about we get to few minutes uh second goal is we’ll continue to support student learning social emotional growth the conference assist te support uh baseball strong in class 21 that’s going to focus on our school for the last four years and District US District wi social

3:24:20 emotional that that we’re all buy into and is really taking off L like wildfire building as part of our tiered system support can M to evaluate improve our Wind Block uh for those of you who don’t know we have started a Wind Block this year uh sort of flying the plane as we’re uh going through the year uh I’m not saying no very often to our teachers as we explore different strategies of what we do to support our students and extend our students uh and finally mbms will continue to encourage and analyze student input voice evaluate a positive strategies to increase of belonging Community students so we’re finding ways for students to use their voice our building more for example uh for the first time ever our school council ourc has a student AR this here so we have made great student um went to cornerstones we approached the eth

3:25:07 graders told them the requirements gave a couple weeks to think about it went back hats in the name the Hat we did a random number generator and now I think it was a great contribution to our councel so so we’re doing that and we’re also finding the second second half of the Year lunches I’ll be doing some lunches with students talk about student voice John and I already talked about him joining us for a couple lunches too U so he can hear about hear from students at our Middle School directly to so um those are our overarching goals the next page obviously has our class sizes on it and what we’re looking at for next year um more than happy to sort of drill into that I talk simple questions just came

3:25:53 up your involment projection yes you’re projecting next year losing a substantial percentage of your seventh graders you go from 235 no there there was an error on a sheet that we corrected on the slot oh okay I was like Wow flip from what’s on the paper is now so just flip it from 25 26 okay per they put the numbers I can do that I just was like wait a second um instead of one that’s no that’s so that’s that’s still a little bit off I’m I’m gonna sort of tell you the CRA you just email me the right numbers they’re in the budget sheet uh on my enrollment figure uh so 179 uh so

3:26:39 we’re we’re looking at this year uh we’re at 179 about 226 right now CU 1.2% of our students as you noted in November 1.2% of our stud students withdrew to go to ski school did you say ski school 1.2% of our students so if you look at my 45 students 1.2% have withdrawn to go ski school and will reenroll later in the spring so that might account I’m not saying for the looking at your numbers but what I’m saying is because you were totaling as a district yeah we lost a lot of the elementary so I’m just saying that’s that’s something that we experience every year yeah yeah I mean because a lot of parents see middle schools the last time that they can May have this experience before going into high school not missing multiple months um so our our rle of figures this

3:27:27 this year are like 179 226 next year uh what we’re looking at for 7eventh grade is 175 and 184 for the eth grade okay so we be down about 40 from where we’re at today because the eighth grade is the I believe second largest gr aome okay um question I’ve had because this does affect our percentages with desie which affects you know the feedback we get from the community when we when you report your numbers I think you do it by um advisory right I I’ve never been involved in your Monday Morning Report so I I’ll be honest it makes it look like your average class size is like 10 no that’s I mean that’s not true I’ve never the Monday morning report we talked about it once Julia last year and

3:28:13 just sort of got lost in the chaos of last year it’s a reporting me it’s reported by advisor that’s what I thought by advisory can we report out by an actual like I don’t know can pick pick I can take a look over the next month or so figure out a better way to report it to you guys but I was involved in creation of that report okay so I I can work with KD and see if we can’t find a way to we’ve got it’s just I important to me to be how you get the ones of the high school so I could take a look at what the high school’s doing for class yeah we have an average like it’s very it’s veryy in the me the numbers we get yeah which I love I love in the weeds um give the number of sections we have versus an elementary model yeah we would either have to get in the weeds more yeah or do some pretty heavy calculations every Sunday well

3:28:59 what you did right here is perfect yeah that’s a lot that that takes you know we have 300 yeah I mean but every week to do 360 sections and and boil it down on the types of classes they are the small group classes you know it’s we can talk up line about that but I just want to make sure like and we’re getting an act accurate reflection of what’s really going because I know walk through your building you don’t have classes at 10 thank here and there maybe not for this but small classes and that’s and that’s the thing that I’ll point out so like uh this is your seventh grade uh you might see some fairly small classes up there maybe some 17 16 and a halfs uh I want to draw your attention to the bottom line where it says P Health okay and you look at the number

3:29:46 of 18 because every student takes PE and he okay 99.999 take PE heal we have about 1 to 1.5 sort of student average that are in our small group classes here in seventh grade so we just we’re meeting the needs of students where they’re at and so that is you’ll see the impact in our math and English especially our lower numbers because we have never this is going back 14 years I think gr conversations we don’t affort to small through substantial class sies because of cat by law prob students be in there so we don’t ever bring those to the table to discuss we have more this year for the sub gr it just is what it is so that’s why you see the higher number for PE

3:30:32 Health at 18 you see that’s 16.5 or 17s in the other classes so there is that little bit of difference there I do want to draw your attention to um it is what it is you know different grades different years it happens you know comes in Cycles or doesn’t come in Cycles just sort happens well look at um I I got to step up I apologize but we’re looking at 20% drop

3:30:54 Obed are we updated here correct yeah 175 184 y That’s right right so can you talk about your librarian people will be happy to hear this yes so you School cre gracion gave that 04 uh Spanish position last year for us to try to alleviate some of our Spanish sizes if you take a look bit our Spanish classrooms in the e8th grade they’re 24 and 25s across the board um we have not been successful finding a part-time point4 span teacher we’ve gone through multiple multiple interviews we posted on multip sites we reached some colleges we’re we’re sort of at the end of it so looking forward at you know possibly having smaller numbers more smaller

3:31:39 numbers in our Spanish uh we would like to convert that point4 to a 1.0 librarian um who has been has made an outstanding trans North school been in classes I’ve seen her teach three or four different classes on everything from the books that she has available to citing to uh searching websit so I mean she’s been a great addition to our school um and we think that having there consistently every single day for an entire day uh really helps our culture it helps the students I don’t think if find now and you know me that was two years we went from we had no we cut an entire position we didn’t have a librarian I was so upset about that and in two years brought back a librarian

3:32:24 which when we talk about funding it’s this is work in action like you shifting you don’t need we don’t need this this so that’s why I wanted to highlight that examp and so you know looking at our class sizes and and talking about our school um you know the first goal was the mdle school mod you know we aren’t a high school can’t just reduce classes or or reduce section sheets without impacting the model that we have um the Middle School model is a very important model to us and academically around the country it’s proven to be the best model for approaching this age group five hours ago I went over these goals with my school counsel and Jack

3:33:11 our student asked the question why is Middle School model and so we talked about and we talked about you know so so I try this to just approach it the way it’s going to impact him and so I talked about uh cross discipline collaboration and communication amongst teachers being able to work together and have that common planning time to then teach together so like for example as we do different types of writing my science teachers my math my English teachers and my social stud teachers are all going to use the same approach to writing okay and they have that time to collaborate and work like that and they also have time to talk about our students to examine data about our students who needs a support who needs a little bit more to do you know I don’t

3:33:58 mean to do but you know what I mean yeah you know and they have that time to collaborate and then what they can do is they they get to know their students holistically know and that’s an important piece of Middle School to know where your students are listed when you connect with them because the more and this is where I got him said The more teachers connect with you said do you feel better about school yeah said and if you feel better about school what’s your investment you want your learn and he just very simply said yeah it works okay so that was the discussion we had think gooseb thinking about just because Jack’s a smart kid he understood right then and there that any other model is going to leave him if he was in a high school right now and we gave this

3:34:44 example I said yeah in a high school we we might have all our Math teachers me at once so but compare that to all of your teachers me at once so what’s going to benefit you more because if I teach you in geometry and he’s teaching algebra too he’s not gonna want to hear about you because he’s not he doesn’t know all right but all those teachers in that cross-discipline approach are able to think about students work with students plan for students to listen and meet the needs across the board so it’s a true model decision answer that I was I’ve heard you say this before that’s why kind of guided those questions because this is what I looking for this is the answer so I’m quite honest when this is the will of the committee and everybody else and but when we going into a budget hearing and we know we’re going to get this question because we

3:35:31 get it every time when we’re looking at going from a class of 184 and we’re we’re dropping our numbers why is your Staffing not dropping and that’s the explanation and that it it’s factual it’s not because we just want to roll over there’s a there’s a reason and it’s rooted in the achievement of our students it’s rooted in in academic study you know there have been three studies the late 9 and then the last piece is if we can this is attached to budget I love how you’re utilizing the time you have at the end of the day to maximize that student outcomes at half an hour if we can find a way to mirror that where it’s age appropriate because it’s not always age appropriate with the younger levels

3:36:18 but I mean we’re really maximizing our pay for the about with with what we’re cont contractually paying with what the student time dir is if we can kind of expand that in other areas in other schools where it’s appropriate like I said it’s not appropriate with every AG group I would love to because that’s a direct budget correlation like what is happening with the home forms I would just add that I think first of all the transition and understanding the work you’ve done to understand your school and your students and your teachers to know that you can remove that point4 need and transition it to um The Librarian without having any effect on on what with that loss is

3:37:04 wonderful but I would take a step further what you said around teachers connecting and I would love to see more of that throughout our schools that effort throughout our schools um because not only does that make the student feel more invested in returning you know investing in their own education but I think it makes them feel better about themselves when they feel that connection and they feel like they’s someone that cares I a little bit feel like I want to cry when I say this but I I just think that that’s so important because Middle School it can be a very very difficult time for students from a confidence perspective um and you know lots of fun changes things like that that are not fun for any of us um were not fun 4,000 years ago so I I just think that that’s I would take it a further and makes feel

3:37:49 better about themselves um and gives them that that extra boost on it

3:37:59 right I don’t know if I’ll do my ma we don’t have a column for percent increase for the school at least on the same it may be in the book I think you said 2%

3:38:17 right% my instruction supplies 2% I’m

3:38:21 talking I don’t have the best calculator I think it’s 11% and so that might maybe my math is wrong right but 11% stands out a little bit relative to some of the other schools that BN like a lot the lot the question my total percentage of increase lasty the Callum on page 231 232 put the facilities back into the schools yeah I picked up U so yeah the custodians are back in the buildings versus being in all the custodians were in the central office made like we’re heavy Administration wise but all the custodians in the buildings where they belong so that was about

3:39:08 $300,000 explanation but it’s not it’s not obvious okay in the data right it is probably somewhere but it’s a lot of diving deep into salaries and seeing that there was an increase in FTE but really just a a transfer not en yeah yeah it also includes St people are gonna see people figure out we we also had this year for I don’t know about it’s not g be for f 26 for 25 we actually had positions transfer from Village and follow students this year okay so I’m not really sure yeah some some of our state Services age up right those stru syst came in you know your increase the salary yeah and steps and Lanes yeah don’t forget steps and Lanes

3:39:55 we have a lot of Staff yeah towards the top at my at my school so they got a new staff but they will um and then there’s Lane changes so I mean we all all part of that $257,000 in custodial cross central to Veterans and every building had something similar 257,000 of that increase um in that increases 11% s i that increase h on that col thank you so yeah so it’s just a shifting of staff to where they actually belong instead of in in a central location so I’m sorry 278,000

3:40:35 278,000 seems like we’re in the lead you would

3:40:40 theone all right thank you Matt for your leadership thank you mat introduce Carlson the principal marel High School okay so

3:40:57 um but um we are pretty much rolling a lot of the gos that we working on this year into next year and to work on those including maintaining the multitude conventions that that we currently have in place and r a magic block that is really help for stons this

3:41:24 year and of the programming and um revising and aligning PR and forces at NHS um is something that we will continue to work on um continuing to support the vertical alignment between the Middle School and the high school has it’s been really helpful for teach just to meet and S of talk about where they’re coming from and where they’re going to um ining all students have access to high quality educational and that includ giv different levels to be honor AP um as well as looking at Sy enrollment that we currently have been continuing forward with that um so that students are able to um stretch themselves if they want to

3:42:15 orl different of and also to Foster students we find we start with this year that tool that start working we’re going to expand that next yearing Magics

3:42:41 slide um we are looking at projecting just about stay same maybe going up about five kids next year we’re getting that Bu from math coming up to school next year um so we are gradua and good size class this year but we are taking good size class for GR that money um and then class size um I just think it’s important to note some of these class this will applied Arts that get small that we’re talking about like our marting Tech our wood shop and some of those sizes have to be smaller equipment and some things that are going on in those classes um culinary

3:43:28 so with good run on block

3:43:42 that have ships like weing A6 we’ll have a better idea once we get into scheduling which is going to start so recommendation started actually this week for the teachers could put in the recommendations for course levels for students for um the main subject areas um we have eth grade in parent meeting at the end of the month and then right after that the students will be able to start picking their electives so we are student driven schedule so we look at those numbers and then we decide based upon what the students want so no nothing obvious now like he need a full-time El you know sh yeah like I would say so like our L program who R new sections this year it no longer is

3:44:28 offered at the other schools so we do not have as many kids coming up but if kids want it and they want to start at Latin one which we didn’t offer this year then we would offer Latin one next year so we’ll just look and see what the kids want that will be the course

3:44:55 questions thank you so much Mich appreciate it um thank you again to all the principles and your thoughtful thoughtful uh inut into the budget process I appreciate that um I think you know I can move forward you know think about from tonight’s meeting that we we’ll get that our heads back together about and um you know answer some of the questions have been asked so do appreciate that I just want to make sure people understand being reflective and I know I was a little maybe a little defended there for a little bit but I just it’s it’s just one of those things where again I’m passionate about what we do um so just to wrap up the last couple things in the presentation um next slide is the Capital Improvements requests um these are cap improvements that you know are obviously things we we’re looking to do within our operational budget so just from the top the HV and te Lev of the

3:45:41 cafeteria these are some of the um proposed costs you know obviously we would need to do some deeper Dives uh you know actual cost these are all estimates of things that we need to do so play each fact be around 70 uh Glover playground see there 120 uh rear pulser of the pack seating and painting the pack it’s definitely in need of some attention so we’re looking at that um those are those are Ballpark figures in terms of um you know what it will cost to to cosmetically um fix up the pack these are things that you know we’re looking to do but um we always try to prioritize TI around you know what are we actually going to do what do we need to do um so these are things we’re planning on doing and then special ed uh 7D van is um some of this is Rolling

3:46:27 Stock so you know we have Vans and buses that we that we operate we have to rotate them I they they have a shelf life so um as you can see on there you know it’s around 70 77,000 to to get a new van um and then the the next columns on the bottom are some of the things that we’re we’re looking to see like if we if we can fund them and looking at what those would be the high school Fieldhouse fire alarms on there the vet small gym already finishing 20,000 vet gimm for ref finish is 32 the Vets AG fact is in l 10 and then again the small bus with trucks and the transport trailer all things that you know we’re looking to see if we can manage um in this up budget um then this the last one question the Glover plate it’s about 10

3:47:15 years old is that the normal life expect this is a second this is a secondary place this for the preschool I believe Bron Cole placing the existing plays adding on to smaller kids I believe I heard the preschool play they already resurfaced the play back so we have the funding to do the surfacing so that’s not this this is like a roof conversation all over again if we put it if we put the surface down and then we buy the playground we’re going to be cutting into the surface to put the playground in so hopefully we get the playground approved and get it all done as one pro so so Frank’s unfamiliar with so maybe can we at least

3:48:00 at least have a conversation with that just but to your point is is 10 years of you know life expect expectancy of those rubberized playgrounds probably you’re talking 10 problem 15 is one is yeah no but the question was is it is you know the life expectancy pieace um so yeah we’ll look at that the one thing that’s not honest that we um that we’ve talked about briefly and I wanted to mention tonight um is a feasibility study we’re looking at potentially um looking at an Early Childhood Center a possibility of and and that relates to evess school um because obviously we still we still operate evess school and we need to look at what would be the feasibility of using that building potentially for you know An Early Childhood Center or something or the site of them or the site of that

3:48:47 um so those are things we going to look at um going to look to see what a feasibility study would would entail what it would look like what hope for that will be some very infancy conversations but I’m confident that um we can we can manage that feasibility study within this budget um we might need to rep prioritize some of these things but I think it’s important that um we start figuring out have a school a site Etc um because there’s some definitely opportunities that we can look at and is important to do that now so we don’t get in a situation you know like the call from where it just sits and ODS and we don’t want that and I think um now is the time because even if we do a feasibility study now it says oh this would be a great site for XY or z um we can start the planning moving down

3:49:33 mod you know any any kind of structure any kind of pro progress or um plan for for utilizing that space is going to take a couple years so we want to start that process in this upcoming year and have much more in-depth conversation about that so I just want to bring that to folks attention today and I’m sorry I remiss request discussion um and then separate from this you know I mentioned at the beginning the high school roof project obviously that’s been com um that’s been a separate conversation clearly I this budget operational budget the roof project clearly um the roof of this High School needs to be replaced I don’t that’s a that’s part of the contention it needs to be leaking we had rain today there’s

3:50:19 in here earlier these bucket some cat your water again it it’s we’re trying to do our best to manage um the the perforation of the roof um it needs to be done relatively soon um I won’t get into the weeds of the conversation about how we get to this point but the point is is that we will be looking so we move forward the roof project it’s separating from our operational budget and we have more in-depth conversations going forward we have to have obviously some public discussion we have to look at what that entails we have to look at you know how that goes on the town town meeting in May so I just wanted to share that because it’s kind of one of the smaller elephants in the room or maybe a bigger elephant in the room but it is separate from our operational budget but I I didn’t want to be missing not mentioning it I don’t know if anyone wants to add

3:51:05 to that but that’s really um you know I don’t want to get into the numbers we all know kind know what the numbers are the numbers that have been put out there accurate and um you know we need to move that direction uh I’m hoping the time will will uh understand that we have kids and staff in this building and you know it’s not a want it’s a de this roof is at the end of life expectancy um and it needs to be replaced it’s just simple as that

3:51:34 and when I say I’m sorry when I say roof I mean everything that’s the roof and on on the roof which is the whole hvc system because you know when you talk about roof that’s the membrane that’s the feces of the roof and the parts that are also on the roof HV AC system and anything else that’s up there um that needs par has to be taken off replaced and replaced with things that are new and then we have whole building envelope for that um which you know is is what we need to have in place because otherwise we will have warant

3:52:09 meal I just want to share that um folks um and then the last thing the budget calendar um this is just injector me February we talked about it you know we we did everything so far in February we did the budget subcommittee we did the uh we met with the town officials fin this proposed budget Workshop that’s tonight um you know we the school committee um in March we’re looking at um school committee meeting with budget hearing um voting on The superint Well possibly March maybe sooner um this is just all kind of outlining what needs to get done so um budget in finance sub committies if needed Finance um committee budget hearing I believe is in March and then April we go into um again the warrant hearing if we need another budget subcommittee and then the Tom meetings in May um so I think you know

3:52:55 over the next several weeks we’ll be having further conversations we’ll work with the town around when when they want to meet um Finance committe etc etc and again I appreciate the collaboration that’s been going on with the town I appreciate everyone’s input into this bud this is definitely not a just a mic and a trist thing it’s a um I’ve only done the you know am work

3:53:19 collaborative Happ to take any further questions that we haven’t talked about yet tonight the capital F the pack piece is 340 did the town seem to embrace that or did you need push back on that no I didn’t get a response either way other than yes it needs to get done and they put it they agreed with that so these were all of our requests they asked us to rank them so we rank them so they took one eight me so they took one from every Department we got five once because we have in essence five yeah so and we’re one half of the right why can’t the H H

3:54:12 Serv not St door right and anything we spend in capital for the kitchens has to go through Des their Nutrition department has to approve we buy a stove if we buy small weers no but anything that’s going to be connected like an oven or something is s but that doesn’t include HC it would include like the ventilation over the the hood the hoods and stuff like that but not the for the sittings and you can’t do that sub plation like other words if you evolving fun for something else and not with the Food Services now entit I’m happy to see the pack is going to get addressed I that’s a townwide both well yeah but it’s I’ve always viewed the pack as a

3:54:59 town resource resource that’s where we have a town meeting it’s our only space it’s large enough to accommodate a group of that size so I you know but we also get rid one yeah so just in terms of calendar real quick um so one thing I know I talk s about this earlier was some talk about when we would have eventually have our hearing I don’t do you see any reason why I think one of the issues was around special education or out of District placement why we need to I think March yeah I think in because that’s the way we’re looking at but um we have a meeting on February 27th and I think honestly I think the budget we proposed tonight you know obviously any tweets that you you want to do I think we can certainly come back on the uh

3:55:44 meeting on the 27th meeting public hearing hear whatever in to go back into a regular meeting um I’ve seen that done in many districts well that way I would prefer to do it sooner rather than later because then we have some time to manipulate anything that we need to manipulate based upon what the town input is you want to a

3:56:09 regular I don’t it’s not this law obviously right it’s going to be a you know we had this was because we were working on but will be a presentation right at the hearing and then the shortly the opportunity for the public to come and if we end up having to you know if it goes long for some reason obviously there’s a tremendous number of people that are com to speak that we I think you know again new to Marblehead heads but I have to surmise that in the year where we’re asking for all sorts of crazy increases or decreases or some all sorts of different things I think you get a much bigger discussion I think in idea that we’re saying we can manage with you know manag well with the level service budget we’re not looking for the extra money for the ride blah I think again I would think board appreciate that but you may

3:56:54 have a lot of question fine I think that coupled with the slide yeah is the slide this slide that we talked yeah slide so happy to answer any other

3:57:15 questions my concern is it’s going to run really long the last four or five years we’ve had it on its own night it’s what a couple hours and those on years that without an override with no override just level service sort those were years with two budgets we had multiple budgets we had yeah um yeah so three different question yeah right is it is it a back and forth or is it like a public comment they say they been no it’s a hearing they they can speak as much as they want it’s back and forth by by Statute question par has been in one way they come in they voice their

3:57:54 concern concern well not understand why we go along if there’s a back for if they’re there to ask questions and we’re we’re importantly supposed to give the answers to those questions and I think that a lot of that’s coming from us right here the answer to your question yes not us it’s the and I think you know but we’ve had this very lengthy conversation which I think is great very robust we have the stuff on the website and I think you know people have the you know shle is goingon to report out so there’s going to be questions and then you know hopefully hopefully sorna’s gonna follow her lead and then and then we’re gonna have some um you know some some questions and you know I would again to the public any questions

3:58:40 that folks have I mean I’m happy that to them and Mike you know two of us can sit and um respond back and forth anything in between now and the public bearing I’m fine with that as well I do that’s I have an open door policy so I’m willing to do that at any given moment so um any response yeah I think also because we’re not you know F I’m thinking of the library situation where we’re not we don’t have people coming and saying oh my God you know person after person desperately wanting the library back not wanting to lose the the library we don’t actually have any of those situations in here and we also had we going into you know we contract negotiations last year now so Sol

3:59:28 so is that so we’ll shoot for the 27th and extra long we just have to

3:59:36 table um anything else all right I will join us at 9