School Committee: February 5, 2026

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

1:40 I wanted to speak to the, the transparency or lack thereof, January past the last six year. In fact, we always had the documents prior to the meeting. I just checked, can’t find the documents, online presentation. I attended a meeting few weeks ago ahead of time. I think they weren’t chair and vice chair. This is their responsibility. Um, in a year where there’s a lot of talk about cuts and additional funding potentially through variety, it’s essential to have public behind you.

2:28 If you are closing down the Christina May the intent. But when we have six complete

2:43 out pushing them out, that you go to the sites. Even those three parties, giant doc right there

3:01 year.

3:06 But not everybody has that availability. Quite the backbone.

3:13 So I, we discussed it particularly, um, that, you know, certain wrote emails out to thousand people got themselves published in the newspaper. Ci a lack of transparency when

3:36 that’s beyond.

4:23 And then we’re back to two

7:34 Roll Audio.

8:01 Alright, um, the superintendent update. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Um, good evening

8:11 be his Black History Month. Um, a theme for 2026 is chosen by the Association of Student, uh, study from African American White. History is a century of black history commemorations Mark the heart anniversary of Black History Mons, founding by Dr. Carter t Woodson in 1926, focusing on celebrating, studying and preserving the contributions and stories of black Americans for the past century and into the future. This theme emphasizes resilience, identity and the ongoing importance of inclusive historical narratives, emerging exploration of creativity, leadership, reflective care as as vital aspects of black history. I’m proud to share that one of our juniors, not Naima and GTE, was recognized by Meco in their most recent newsletter

8:57 for her digital Black History Month book graduation, sorry. Um, uh, let’s see. Ms. Re, Ferrera and I attended the battle of the books at Vets yesterday, which is a way for students to expose to a variety of books and themes. It was the black team that Chef Nito Cheetos, um, versus the Red Team. The Red Rockets. Uh, the two teams composed of four students. Each had had to answer 24 questions about many different books to determine the champions. It was a great event. And I have to say that I’ve been to many, many middle school events and I have never seen students that were so attentive. They well-behaved. They did yesterday. They should be proud of the tea, uh, brow. And the teacher should be proud when, when the student front stage answering questions, we hear pinned off. And the winner of the battle was the Shao Cheetos. So congrats to them. Um, great events

9:44 last year was, was awesome. Um, I also had the pleasure of sitting the meeting on the Glovers Grade one Map Data Team meeting this week led by Emily Perez. Uh, the teachers and IE shared and discussed data collected from the iReady assessments with their students. They worked together and shared strategies, student successes and areas of focus for the next units. It was media, its finest. And I was holding request by the work that’s being done to assist students increasing their achievement levels and growth teaching and learning instructional coaches, the educators and instructional assistants for this collaborative approach. These data meetings transpire across our schools K to eight. And I’m excited to continue sitting in on the different grade level meetings to witness how the growth and achievement in our students is being captured, analyze and use for enhancing our teaching and learning practices.

10:31 This is the work, this is the work that gets done. It was really cool to see. Um, so I was glad I got quite to that. Thank you. I’m gonna jump into our shout outs from Scott Williams, principal Village School. I would like to recognize, acknowledge Jenny Wilkins an amazing teacher at Village. Jenny consistently goes above and beyond every day, have letters fully committed to not only the students she serves at village, but the student population and our school at large. Jenny is tireless and selfless, never wavering or deviating from our her commitment to our children. She helps out beyond her role teaching whole group lessons to our fourth graders. Her collaboration skills are exemplary and we are truly fortunate to have her at village. She has a steady compass and an incredible work ethic, which benefits us all at Village. Thank you all. Thank you for all that you do. Ms.

11:17 Lins from a lebane, veterans Middle School principal. Surprise, surprise, seventh grade teachers and instructional assistants. Thank you to the vet, seventh grade teachers and instructional assistants for the hard work in running the Battle of the Books contest. The energy enthusiasm they brought to the event were incredible and helped create an unforgettable experience for all students involved. A special shout out to Jim Schnick and Ryan Jenkins for leadership in organizing running such a fantastic event. Michelle Carlson, the principal of Marblehead High School. I’d like to recognize Kaia Johnson, our METCO director, and Latoya Salters, our METCO academic coordinator for a dedication to supporting students and planning of Black History month celebrations. Through their guidance and support, MHS students have taken the lead in organizing meaningful activity to celebrate black history, culture and contributions.

12:03 Voice leadership and inclusive programming truly enriches our school community. Thank you both for the important work you do and for supporting our students every step of the way. From, excuse me, from Frank Kowalski, principal Glover. He wants to shout out to his pre-K team, Laura Weis, Melissa Kaplan, Brianna De and Shannon Taree. The pre-K team is a cohesive unit that puts the needs of all, all it children first. They work together and integrate the children across all classrooms. They all support Glover theme days and really make school fun and enjoyable, nurturing, learning environment for all one of the most endearing traits of their years of experience in the love of the Glover community. Shannon is new to Glover, but has benefited from listening and watching her team and Julia Ferrera, assistant Superintendent teaching and Learning. The Office of Teaching Learning would like

12:49 to thank the teachers for their participation in data meetings, which are happening PLCs across the district in grades K eight. We didn’t even plan that. That was kind of cool. She said that there, uh, integration of data meetings is a key focus this year and has been truly collaborative effort among our instructional coaches, teachers and instructional assistants. Data meetings are focused on the analyzing student results and making informed instructional decisions to strengthen learning. We are proud of how effectively our educators are working to ensure all students have access to tiered academic supports and the opportunity to succeed at high levels. And finally, I wanna share this information that is actually a great segue into our budget presentation. The business development manager from the Education magazine reached out today to share that they’re preparing a special edition entitled The 10 Most Influential School Districts in 2026.

13:37 He let us know that this issue will celebrate school districts whose leadership academic excellence and continuous improvements are shaping the future of U of Education across the USA. And they would like, they would be honored to feature Marblehead public schools and share our district story and achievements with our broader readership. He goes to say, why is Marblehead schools stand out? Marblehead High School is rebounded in statewide academic rankings reflecting strong college readiness, high graduation rates at 99%, and broad participation in advanced placement coursework across the district. Students consistently outperform state averages on MCA assessment showing steady academic growth and strong proficient rates, particularly in the elementary and middle grades. Superintendents Roberts leadership has been acknowledged, is proficient and steady helping guide the district

14:23 through transition and refocus on student achievement and instructional excellence. The district has expanded advanced placement opportunities and, and seen increasing student engagement in rigorous coursework, underscoring academic ambition and preparation for college. He goes to AU to say that they would love to showcase our district achievements and share exploring the story for the global audience. So I thought that was pretty cool and very timely, but thank you. Be well, stay warm. Let’s go. Pats. That’s all I have. Alright, thank you Superintendent.

14:58 Under the, uh, consent agenda, I’m looking for a motion to approve the following,

15:05 the identified schedules of bills totaling $320,620 and 66 cents. The 2026 2027 school committee meeting dates and the meeting minutes from our January 29th, 2026 meeting. So moved, Seconded. Okay. The motion has been made by Kate, seconded by Henry. All in favor? I just wanna make one comment. I don’t, I I talked to Mike earlier today. There was, there’s a little bit of a snafu going on with the utility bills. I don’t know if you noticed that or not. Um, so it looks like, I guess it’s being worked out, um, between the town side and the school south. But

15:51 Yeah, I think the, uh, the issue is Credits on the bills. I don’t know anyone The issue revolves or resolve or voles entirely with National Grid. They have credited payments from the town for the town’s utilities to the school department’s accounts. We have a practice, so we only pay the amount of the invoice that is current for that current month. And that certainly there’s reasons behind that. Sometimes it takes, sometimes our bill, our check process before the payment hits. Uh, sometimes, uh, you know, just even like the town kind of warrant the week of Christmas, uh, holiday break or whatever, um, we only pay the amount that’s due on the invoice for the current charges. We don’t pay any past charges because we know they, they, they’re about to catch up. So those credits have been sitting there for a few months

16:38 because National Grid took the towns money, they should gone against the towns account and put it against the school department’s accounts and it’s on them to fix it. So right now we have credits, but it, they, we can’t use those credits. We shouldn’t use those credits. Those relevant town expense. Mm-hmm. So it’ll be a wash? It is. I mean, right now we’re, we’re not considering them as credits on our accounts because it’s not, it’s Been going on for

17:01 Any further discussion. All in favor? Okay. The motion passes. Five zero.

17:13 Okay. We’ll move on to, uh, turn it over to the superintendent to hear, um, review of the proposed budget for 2027. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Frank, if you can pull that up On the screen for me though. You then we’re doing the meeting

17:30 included. Oh, that was included in, sorry. Yeah, Something.

17:36 Um, no, the only thing I was gonna say, I’ll talk to, I think it’s helpful to add like, the, the, the heading for the minutes to show like who the numbers were. I do that on some committee ones. Right. But like, it’s like a letterhead. So I’ll show you. You, I believe I, I think we’ve got the M on there, but, well, I, I include this time, Tony? Yeah, those, yeah, yeah. There.

18:01 Okay. I have it here. And then, um, I can poster them. Okay. Yes. It must have been late because I, it was late. Yes. I, I I sent a large file. Okay. That’s, thank you. Alright,

18:23 let me let, is that okay? Thanks. Yeah, that’s fine.

18:33 There you go. Excellent. You guys have birthday copies? Yes.

18:58 I sent Lisa an email, so she gets it. She’s using pretty responsive. She made, yeah, we one was sent.

19:07 Yeah. Sorry for that. Miscommunication. I’ll, I’ll apologize for that. Um, so anyway, we’re here tonight to talk about our, uh, superintendent’s proposed fiscal year 2027 school budget. Um, first I wanna thank our central admin team. Uh, Mike Ling, assistant superintendent of finance operations, Julia Ferrera, our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. Lisa Maria Polito, our assistant superintendent of student services. All of our principals, uh, Steve Biotech, all our leadership team, um, for their collaboration. Um, they were a, a huge part of, of being, um, discussing the budget, going through, uh, the different aspects of the budget to help create the budget. It was definitely not done in a silo, and I appreciate the, uh, collaboration, the support

19:53 of all the, uh, the admins that were, that, um, contributed to the, the budget, the sharing tonight. Also, I’d like to, um, thank the subcommittee, the school school committee subcommittee, um, Melissa and Jen, um, as we went through the process. So we, we met quite a few times with, uh, uh, members of fin com, so like, thank them as well. Uh, and also conversations with, uh, you know, the town officials. I think the collaborative effort, um, in how we created this budget and how we’re presenting the budget is, is, uh, really, um, really good. And it’s really, uh, the way we should be doing it moving forward. This is definitely not though just Mike and I sitting there in a room and we, we had input from all that, you know, all the stakeholders that, um, that need to be, um, for product process. So I just wanna say thank you.

20:38 Um, so tonight we’re here to pro propose a level fund the budget, which we’ll go through in a minute. And, um, as we go through, excuse Me, John, just for a second. I’m sorry. Yeah. Did you have your, your hand raised? I was trying to commit as a panelist. I should be signing in, but I’ll, um, I’ll sign. I’m sorry, John. That’s okay. Lemme know when you’re ready. Go ahead,

21:12 John. Go ahead. I’m sorry. Go ahead. Oh, okay. Um, so I’d like to go through the presentation and obviously we’ll entertain questions from the school committee, um, when we’re done, if that’s, if that’s okay. Uh, next slide. So this, this first slide is our, our mission vision core values, which I think is important to make sure that we have these outlined as a, as a key component to our budget. Uh, I’ll go through it a little bit. Um, our mission is to passion, uh, to foster all students a passion for learning and to provide safe, nurturing, inclusive school environments in which they can develop values, knowledge, and skills needed to achieve full potential in their personal, social, and work lives. To become engaged in contributing members of society. The vision is especially important, um, because our vision is to be a model school district, exemplary and its student engagement

21:57 and academic excellence in which all students and staff reach their highest potential in partnership with the community. The core values we have, student achievement, personal growth, partnership and collaboration, school culture and resources. And just to highlight, encouraging students to excel. Uh, making sure that we’re partners with, uh, community at large in schools and families. And to make sure that, uh, we provide resources, put in the best interest of the students’ growth, recognizing funding and, and that supports education excellence and social emotional wellbeing. That’s very important to highlight those aspects. Thank you, Julia. Um, so again, we, the time has required us to, or asked us to do a, a level funded budget this year. And I’ll talk a little bit about what that means in a minute. Um, but we’ve been working, uh, to identify as efficiencies

22:45 and reductions to meet that goal of 11 a level funded budget since November. This presentation and budget book is a culmination of that process, and I’m proud of the work that’s been done. And we’re hoping that our work demonstrates the district’s commitment to the collaborating with the town during this difficult financial time, uh, level funded, just so we know what the definition is. So on the, on your screen level, funded level service and increased services, um, quite often if we’re looking for level services or increased services, um, you know, we would be engaging stakeholders, principals, et cetera, in a little bit different way, um, than we did this year. Uh, where we’d ask them to come to the table and, and kind of tell folks what they’re looking for, what extra services and justify those. When we do a level funded service, that’s,

23:30 that’s an exercise that, that, um, you know, is, is not something that we, uh, in my opinion, to engage in. Um, because the level funded is basically utilizing the same funding that we have this year, uh, for next year. It indicates a, a need for reduction in services, staff supplies and programming and or programming. So, level services, I mean, level services is what we would, uh, what’s required through the, um, the contractual obligations. And we’re told, um, level funded. So we have to kind of back off level service and level funded is using the same money this year, next year to provide all the things I’ve talked about, about academic rigor and, uh, academic excellence for our students. Thank you. Um, the budget development process. So level funded budget was developed as required

24:16 by the time incorporating feedback and input from administrative stakeholders to ascertain what is needed to maintain that education of all the students, I just wanna focus on maintain the education. That’s what we’re doing. We’re talking about a level fund of budget. We’re not talking about enhancement. We’re not talking about increasing rigor. It’s, that’s like an impossibility when you work with the same, same dollar amounts. So I just share that ‘cause that’s the reality we’re in right now. Um, and, and I don’t like to be in maintaining mode, but that’s where we are. So we’re, we’re gonna do our best to, um, continue to make sure that we’re providing the services for our students and staff. So administrators identified resources and services require, provide high quality education to students, make sure the appropriate staffing levels and programs are in place to support students’, social,

25:01 emotional and behavioral health. In conjunction rigorous academics, we identified areas of staffing, efficiencies, reductions in nutrition. We identified and managed revenue streams outside of local operating budget. So federal and state grants opportunities, user fees, things like that. Uh, we had ongoing meaningful communication and collaboration, which I’ve mentioned already with Tom officials, the fin comm select board, and continued collaboration with the PTOs and PCOS and community partners whose ongoing generous support to our students and staff is invaluable. And I share that that’s, that’s part of our process to get to, uh, um, the presentation we have tonight and the budget book that’s attached, um, to the presentation. Um, so we always have to make sure that we’re keeping our educational priorities at the forefront of the discussion and in our practice.

25:47 So, all right. Some of our educational priorities are listed here. So to continue to cultivate it, cultivate a sense of belonging allowance for our students, staff, parents, community input into educational practices to utilize M-M-T-S-S, the multi-tiered system of support to promote student success, align our goals and strategies with the new district improvement plan that’s being developed. And this individual school improvement plans ensure that database decision making is aligned to meet all students’ needs, challenge students with rigorous instruction within safe learning environments to enhance student success, enhance and reimagine special education programming and service delivery to meet students’ individual needs. And also to provide meaningful professional development programming. So is the educational priorities that we have to stay focused on as we develop a budget to be able to, um,

26:34 provide services for our staff and students and community partners. Um, so we’re gonna start getting kind of the meat and potatoes of some of the numbers. And, uh, you know, we’ll kind of bounce back and forth Mike and I with this first, this first, um, chart here is, is our enrollment. And I’m gonna speak a little bit more about the enrollment later on in the presentation. But just for folks, um, edification in 24 25, our enrollment was 2,564 students, uh, for 25 26. It was 2394, and that’s the October one report. So when we look at dsi, um, it’s hard because when we have enrollment discussions, sometimes we’re looking at different, um, points in time, and then it gets confusing and we’re talking about numbers that aren’t accurate. So we get, we get a weekly report that goes to school committee, and there’s a number at the bottom of

27:19 that report that includes this number, but also includes, um, um, numbers of children that may be being tested for special ed, uh, homeschool students, things like that. So we kind of have to back those numbers out to get the actual numbers. So this is more, this is, um, in alignment with what the actual, um, enrollment numbers are. So if you look at that from last year to, from 24, 25, 25, 26, it’s minus 170 students. Um, but what I can tell you is that as of this Monday, uh, February 2nd, um, it’s gone. We’ve gone up plus 41 students we’re at 24 35. So when I say a moment in time, it’s a moment in time. It ebbs and flows. And that’s why sometimes that conversation about enrollment gets a little convoluted. And I just thought it was important to share that. Um, out of the 24 35, I just wanna share

28:06 that 23, 2386 students are being serviced in district. 49 of those students are being serviced out of district. And then the other numbers that aren’t reflected here that I talked about that come to the report for the school committees are students that we have to identify, but they’re not in our schools either because they’re either just being tested, but we have to identify them because we’re providing a service. Um, or they’re homeschool, which we have to identify because we have to make sure that all students that reside in Marblehead are being educated somewhere. Or it could be in private placements where it’s, uh, parents have chosen to send students to other private places. So again, I just wanna share that sometimes those numbers are a little, uh, discrepant. And that’s the reason why. Um, so moving on, um, to our goals and challenges, and this is just, you know, in an overarching way, our goal is to ensure that our school budget allows the district

28:53 to provide appropriate level of support, resources, and programming for our staff and students in order to achieve excellence across all grades, levels, and all abilities. Our challenges are many, but these are the, the couple ones that kind of rise to the top is establishing level funded budget as directed by the town and for, and in doing so, and working within level fund a budget, um, providing excellent academic and social emotional learning, pre-K to 12, professional development and district wide educational programming, utilizing the same funding as the current year while minimizing impact to the classrooms environments. So those are the overarching challenges. The next several slides, um, we start talking a little bit more of our funding sources and stuff. So I’ll turn most of this over to Mike. Um, but if we go to the next slide, this is just emphasizing our, our, our current budget,

29:40 49 million 122 85, and we’ve been asked to use the same 49 1 22 85 for next fiscal year. I just emphasizing that a little bit. And then I’ll kind of start turning over to Mike. This next one is the bullet budget allocation by category, um, with a level fund budget. It’s a pie chart that kind of shows where the monies go. Um, Mike, I don’t know if you wanna go through it. Sure. Thank you, superintendent. Sure. Uh, as you can see, obviously the biggest piece of the pie is salaries. We are a very human environment. You don’t teach with robots, and we don’t work with outside contractors as much as we work with our own Marblehead staff. So about 80% just shy of 80% of our budget is with salaries.

30:26 Uh, I’m gonna just kind of hit the big ones. Um, outta district tuitions, we’ve talked about that. We’ve had many conversations over the years, long before I got here. Outta district. Tuitions are certainly a budget driver for us. Uh, contracted services, those are the things. Um, prop need, leases, any, um, fire alarm testing and, and fire extinguisher text testing and all the things that go into the contract services bucket. I mean, there, there are numerous things, uh, that we utilize contract services. My explanation of contractor services to our staff when they’re entering purchase orders into the system is if you could touch it and you can eventually throw it away, it’s a supply. If you use it up, it is a supply. If you cannot really touch it, you don’t, you don’t own it. Like software, software as a contracted service,

31:13 where textbooks used to be a supply ‘cause you could touch textbooks. So there’s still supply, but as stuff has migrated, four parts of it have migrated over to the, to a, a web-based or a, a software-based environment. Those become contract services. So contract services are a big part of our budget. Uh, obviously utilities, it’s one of the ones, uh, fortunately we are locked in on our supply rates. We are not locked in on our delivery rates, but we are locked in on our supply rates for natural gas. Uh, so utilities are one of the ones that could be a budget buster. Fortunately, you know, uh, I think we have a good grasp on our, on our utilities. And, uh, it’s nice to have our own marble headlight department to, uh, keep our lights on. Uh, a couple of the other areas. Technology, certainly we have moved into a technology age

32:01 that’s, you know, um, understood. This is our network, our backbone, our website, uh, all of our, uh, student information systems. Uh, anything that helps us operate. This does not include salary. Salaries for the technology group are in the salaries bucket. Uh, supplies, it’s, it’s relatively a small number. It’s, it’s, it’s 1 million out of our, our 40 million, $49 million budget. So supplies really isn’t a great big number, but it’s imperative. I think it’s really important. I think this year our paper costs went from high $30 a case, 38 30 $9 a case, and we were able to negotiate a price down to $30 a case, which is, is amazing. ‘cause that’s probably one of our biggest supply dollar items in the district. So, um, we’re, we’re fortunate to do that.

32:46 And that helped smooth the edges on the level funded conversation about the supply lines. ‘cause we did level fund all of our supply lines and principals were concerned how, how, how can I do the same thing? And, and we reminded them that the paper costs did come down this year. So we’re hoping that, that, that lock in for next year. Also, uh, transportation, that is a in-district and out of district transportation. We have, uh, about six of our own vehicles. We run four or five on a daily basis. And then we have all of our out of district transportation for on a special education, our homeless or McKinney Vento students and our students who may be somehow involved with TCF. So, uh, those are really the big buckets. There’s a small little bucket called other expenses, um, a hundred, $181,000. That is really just about, um, professional development,

33:34 um, professional conferences, uh, training for all of our staff, whether it’s our teaching staff or administrative staff, or our custodial staff or our food service. All food services covered by their own budget. But I think you get the idea that that training across the district for all areas, uh, and there is some travel money in there, we do have to pay some staff to, to attend, uh, training outside the district. So that’s the pie chart. Okay. Um, and then the next we get kind into the money aspects. I might again go through it. This is the budget. Budget offsets the funding sources, and he’ll walk you through kind of the FY 26, FY 27, um, where the level service and what the changes. And that will kind of get us to the next round of discussions, Mike. Sure. So this is, uh, this was presented last Thursday at our finance

34:20 budget subcommittee meeting. Um, it’s been tweaked a little bit, and as superintendent Roberto said during that meeting is this budget is going to change, uh, pretty consistently until we get to the vote of the school committee. You know, small amounts up and down, certain little areas that we tweak. Um, but the reality is, is if we were to do everything the same next year as we did this year, we had no changes. We did level service. Uh, the increase to our budget would be about $2.56 million.

34:51 The next line shows how much of that money comes from the town. This year, 49.12 million came from the town next year on a level service, it would be 50.7 million. And that, that, so that would be a really a $1.6 million increase to the town’s, uh, appropriation to the schools. Uh, we have been able to make. And, and you say, well, we, we didn’t come up with the $900,000 between what’s level service and what the town appropriation is. We dug deep, we dug into things before we even had started having cut budget conversations. We knew it was gonna get tough year. We looked at circuit breaker. Um, we are only able to keep one year of reserve and circuit breaker. Our circuit breaker did go up this year, and that’s kind of an, a testament to, um, the claiming that was done by the student services department. They really put the pencil to it

35:36 and claimed every dollar that they could through a circuit breaker. So kudos to, um, Lisa Marie and Victoria and their team. Um, we reduced the retirement savings a little bit, and that’s when you’re, when you’re talking about a a level funded budget, uh, savings that nipple normally would have with retirement are gonna be at its other area. So we’re not gonna have as much savings in retirement. Uh, the biggest one is that we looked at our second biggest one is we looked at our kindergarten pre-K revolving account. We charge for students to come to our kindergarten full day, and we charge our peer models in the pre-K environment to come to our prepaid programs. Um, it’s not, um, I’ll leave my opinions to myself, but, um, we did almost double

36:22 what we’re taking outta those accounts next year to cover some staffing for those programs dedicated strictly to pre-K and kindergarten staffing teachers and instruc assistance. Everything else was pretty much leveled across the board. Um, not any great changes there. But the bottom line is we needed to make up $1.7 million in additional, uh, revenue, revenue or cuts in order to make the level funded as requested by the top.

36:50 Um, and then the next, the next one, just some more, some of the Fed Grant awards. And what you’ll see here is, uh, the awards for, uh, FY 26 FY 27 is TBD, um, still getting, um, squared away the state federal level. Um, so if you look on the, on the slide on the left, title one was at 99,000. Change. Title two is 41 and change title three is roughly 12,000. Title four, 10,000. It’s not huge pockets of money, but money nonetheless that we, that we utilize to help serve our, serve our students on individually individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA Grant two, grant two 40, sat on seven, um, under $47,000 in the early childhood grant. It’s another smaller grant, but it’s, it still helps with, you know, some of the early childhood stuff, which is 21,000 for a total

37:39 of 930 2003 43. Um, so you see the same, same grants in the next chart it saw at the bottom, you could see it says, planning for Level funnel grants from the federal governments for next year. So what that generally means is at least level funded, if not less than. Um, so the, a lot of these title grants have been going down incrementally over the years. All these grants, it’s Grant two 40 and the early title Grants one, those ones that kind of goes, ebbs and flows, but it’s a small pocket of money. But all the title grants and the two 40 grants have generally been going trending downwards. We’ve been told it’s supposed to be level funded. So we’ll see what comes out. But, um, I don’t anticipate ginormous changes, but again, it’s, um, in a $49 million budget talking to $900,000, which is, which is great offset.

38:24 Um, but it’s also something we have a little control over, um, at the state in federal level. So, uh, this next, this next slide, uh, we kind of kind of just, uh, encapsulated our efficiencies reductions and then the further reductions. So, as I said at the beginning, we went through a whole budget process where we met with stakeholders. Um, we met with our admin teams. We went through, um, each, um, school with each principal said, here’s your, here’s your classrooms, here’s your staffing. You know, like, what does this look like? And help us understand what we can look at for efficiencies first, and then kind of go through the process. So in that far left column, some of the efficiencies where we look to offsetting the budget, the Meco and IDA grants, which we just kind of talked about some of the stuff. Mike just also talked about, the circle break of the pre-K a tuition, um, special education education is

39:11 of the money we get from students who come, it’s not called for an exchange anymore, but it’s students that come to our high school and there’s some money attached to that. Um, in building rental, also, also revolving accounts that we help to offset the budget. Uh, we level front of the supplies, PDs, and technology lines. And Mike alluded to the, um, reduction for the copier leases and the utility savings. So there was some, a decent amount of savings we were able to do there. Changing overall, the copiers. And we have paper cut in the copiers now. It’s a program that allows us to kind of monitor and or, um, make sure, um, we have a better handle on how much the copiers are getting used and by whom we can, uh, you know, that’ll, that’ll, uh, help save some things over over time. But, um, that’s the first one. Uh, and then the initial reductions we looked at, um,

39:58 in these next two boxes, some of these, um, positions are, uh, were vacant and we decided not to fill ‘em. Some are actual positions that are filled that we’re reducing. So, and I’ll share those. So it’s initial round of reductions round one. The summer technology position is a, it’s a small, it’s a small, um, amount of money, but it’s a position in the summer that we had had in the budget. We decided to reduce that. Um, we talked to Steve and he was, he said, you know, he, he can make things work, um, without that position, um, as best you can over the summertime, uh, even though it’s really busy in the summertime doing all the technology we have to do in the, in the, um, in the district. But, uh, we had a, an HR assistant position when we, when we revamped central office a little bit. We, uh, you know, we hired a HR manager at a lower cost in the previous hi HR manager.

40:43 And we also had an HR assistant, um, that, um, was vacated. And we dec we have decided not to fill that position. Um, so that’s, that’s a, that’s a decent savings there. And, uh, not, not rehiring for that. Uh, there was a teacher in charge stipend that Glover, uh, Glover does not have an assistant principal, um, unfortunately. And, uh, but there was a teacher charge stipend that kind of, you know, put in the budget last year, the year before. I remember that before we got here, but last year. Um, but the thought process being, you know, if the principal felt that, um, you know, this is a model, a lot of, a lot of students, maybe a teacher that that’s in a more of a leadership role wants to step up, we pay him little extra stipend to be the coverage in the building. So if the principal’s aren’t there for, you know, the conference, they’re not sick, they’re at a, a meeting outside the building, there’s that person that’s a go-to person.

41:28 Um, it hadn’t really materialized. And, you know, so we, we were able to kind of, uh, move forward without having that in budget. The 1.75, uh, full-time equivalent EL teachers at Village, um, based on our census there, we were able to not, um, plan on not filling that 1.75 ft e there. Uh, similarly with the FT a e math intervention at Vets, um, decided that we were not gonna cover at it as well. And in the 0.2 FDER teacher, we had a one point or teacher, we reduced that position to 0.8 starting this year. So that savings already started. Um, and that’s carrying over to next year. So those are the reductions. So there’s, um, some full-time equivalence there and this some partial equivalent equivalents. And then the further reductions when, so that was that first, um, we still had about 800,000 I think

42:14 that we needed to figure out. Um, so we went further to get to level funded. And so the second round of reductions include a full-time equivalent of an elementary teacher, one, uh, teacher at veterans, three high school teachers, um, 0.4 of an EL teacher Glover, um, 1.0 a gen ed, um, elementary ia, 0.4 of a FT of speech and language. Um, there was a ft there was a, um, a BA coordinator. It’s a supervisory position. Um, we decided not to, uh, fill that position either. So that had been vacant, but we decided not to fill it as we had planned to do. Um, you know, special education, uh, environment is very, uh, you know, robust and we, we had hoped to be able

43:00 to fill out position going into the next year. But the budget, uh, that was one of the ones that ended up on the cutting floor, unfortunately. Um, and one special ed teacher at Village, um, is also vacant it, we’re not gonna fill. Um, and then lastly, we’re looking at, uh, reducing, uh, one maintenance staff. So that’s a total of nine re um, nine staff. Um, and we’re physicians and another 5.7 that we’re not, not rehiring plus a stipend. So it’s a total of 14.75 FTEs plus the stipend. So, um, you know, I, I’ll talk a little bit more about that, um, when we get to a further slide. So I’ll leave it at there for now and I’ll turn it back over to Mike. He can kind of walk through some of the, the efficiencies reductions on money Moneywise. Um, they got us, you know, to where we are this point.

43:47 So Mike, it’s in the next couple slides of the, uh, the round one offic that talk about this is the specifics of that. Great. Thank you. Um, so couple of these weren’t mentioned because they did not impact, um, staffing so much. The first one is, uh, we had Lisa Marie in, in her IDEA grant last year, had put two fellows. Fellows are, um, a step above a student teacher. Is that good explanation layman terms on a layman? So, uh, you know, graduate level student teacher, um, typically we pay the university and they send us the bodies. Um, that was in the IDA grant. The idea is to not, we didn’t, we didn’t fill those positions or didn’t contract with the universal industry to do that. The idea is not to do that again next year

44:34 and move something else that’s in our LEA budget, our town budget into the grant. So because we’ll have $81,000 in the bill on the grant. So, uh, it’s, it’s kind of a cut through a, a move. Um, we talked about the technology help. We talked about the HR V So we talked about a lot of this. I’m just gonna browse down here. Um, there are two positions that we are talking that we are proposing that we move from the LEA grant, I’m sorry, the LEA budget, the town budget, uh, to FTE teachers at the high school level into the education evolving account. I think you mentioned that, but I’m not sure. Um, and in addition to that, our assistant business manager is intricately involved with our pre-K and K program, uh, especially around tuitions

45:20 and enrollments, and also with our branch. She’s the one who does, uh, probably about 25% of all the heavy lifting on the grants, which is really drawing down the money and doing the reports and, and making sure that we’re spending the money the way we said we’re going to. Uh, so moving 10% of per salary, uh, into the pre-K k revolving and 10% of our salary into the LEA grants. Um, both of which are, well, especially the grants to grants have restrictions on them. And that is one of the areas that you are about to, um, to, to use the grant for. Um, we’re our Assistant Student Services Director, uh, from the LEA into the special education revolving account. I will caution that is probably a one year move because right now we don’t have, uh, a large number

46:06 of students being brought into Marblehead into our specialized program. So I would just caution that that’s a, probably a one year move. Uh, and we probably wouldn’t be able to, you know, continue that process unless we had more students to tuition into Marblehead. Uh, and then to move our facilities administrative assistant, uh, she, she does so much work with our building rentals as far as booking them and making sure the custodial staff is there, making sure the technology staff is there, making sure everything’s unlocked and locked and secured. So we talking about moving half of her salary into the building rental account. We’ll talk about copier savings. Uh, we did level fund all, pretty much all supply lines. Uh, if from the administration to the classrooms, uh,

46:53 our guidance, you know, everybody had some, some of ‘em are very small, uh, supply lines or contracted services lines. Uh, for the most part, we level funded the majority of them. There were some that we couldn’t because they have escalators in them. And we certainly needed to cover our, if we have a three year agreement with the company to cover those escalations.

47:12 Make sense? Um, again, mostly supplies here. Supplies, um, you’ll, you’ll notice curriculum. Last year we did add curriculum into our budget so that we had a curriculum cycle in place, and we weren’t waiting until the end of the year to see how much money was left over in our budget before we purchased curriculum. Uh, we were making that investment. Uh, we are for the most part level funding that, um, there’s, there’s two big buckets. Uh, there’s, I’m sorry, there’s two buckets. One large bucket and one smaller bucket. We are leaving the large bucket alone. In the smaller bucket is m below manipulatives, um, supplies, you know, things that we send out to the, to the buildings, or Julia sends out to the buildings. Uh, that’s the one that’s showing that $6,000 reduction. Um, we’re gonna level fund vehicle fuel right now.

47:58 Gas prices are holding steady. We’re gonna, we’re gonna try and, you know, hope that things don’t escalate. Um, contract services, maintenance vehicle repairs. Fortunately, we do have some, we’ll call ‘em new, but newer model vehicles in our inventory, a couple of them. So hopefully our repairs bills will come down a little bit. Uh, again, supplies, pd, contracted services for security instructional software. We talked with Steven and Julia on that, just to make sure that we could, we could make that cut. And, uh, and then just cutting, uh, the technology supply line, that’s hardware and our contract services. So Steven has done a good job negotiating with, they’ve done a great job negotiating some of our vendors to get us, uh, better pricing forward.

48:44 That was round one. Those were, those are the ones that, I’m not gonna call ‘em easy, but they were the, the, the less painful cuts to make. These are the ones that they didn’t affect any, uh, build positions or any, uh, it didn’t drastically impact the instructional pull. It’s gonna be an impact to there our principles, and we understand that. But we think that having the humans in the classroom is more important than maybe having some of the supply and contract services.

49:17 Next slide. Mm-hmm. Word. Yep. These are the ones that hurt. And I, I said that on Thursday. These are the ones that are gonna hurt. These are the ones that we, everybody should be paying attention to. Um, we are being somewhat vague in our descriptions of these, because these are real people, these are real positions. Um, we still have some, have some conversations around, uh, exactly what, what level, whether it’s a grade or a, uh, a program or what type of position it is. But we’ve identified areas that we do have, um, that we can, we, that we’re gonna have to make connections. And one is an elementary teacher. So that is, we have three elementary schools. We have grade level teachers, we have special education teachers, we have art, music, PE teachers.

50:04 We have all different types of teachers. So we’re cutting one teacher. Uh, and quite honestly, with our track history, there’s a, like, there is a likelihood that a elementary teacher will retire or will resign. We’ll move on to somewhere else. Um, so we have to plan for it. We have to budget for it. If we had to get to level service, the hope is that it will not result in an immediate layoff. Uh, one teacher at the veterans, three teachers at the mo uh, uh, at the high school, a 0.4 teacher at lover for, uh, el. And again, that goes back to census. Uh, a general ed instructional assistant at the elementary level, uh, I think John mentioned most of these. An SLP du reducing an SL physician speech and language pathologist from one 2.6.

50:52 Um, special ed teacher that’s vacant, a BA coordinator that’s vacant. Um, Ms. Murray went through her lines and, um, restructured something and feels like that we can make a cut in her contract services line. Uh, you know, one, one that’s gonna hurt again, is a, a maintenance worker that is a field position. And, um, you know, one of the things that I think we’ve done a better job of, certainly there’s, there’s more always room for improvement, but I think our, our buildings are cleaner and I think we’re doing a better job, uh, being reactive to problems be great if we got to the point where we were actually proactive to problems before they become problems. But, um, this one, I think this one’s going to hurt our district from a buildings and facility standpoint.

51:37 Uh, and if it, if exposed long enough, then it then takes an impact on the educational, uh, environment for our students. So that’s one. Uh, and then we did look at our, um, heating and electricity. Uh, I had explained this in the, in the subcommittee meeting, there was a practice before any of us arrived where electricity and heat getting fuel were intentionally under budgeted, because there was a, I’m not gonna call it, to my mind, it’s a stabilization fund, but I’m not sure if that’s what they called it, where when town lines on utilities went over, there was a money set aside to cover that. So, um, a couple years ago, they eliminated that fund with

52:23 that practice and told the, the, the school department to, to find their own electricity and heating fuel. Um, as I said, we, we did have a savings in heating fuel because we locked in a lower price for the supply. And, um, I just felt like, and, and I’m gonna, whenever you bring a new building online, and I’m gonna use the promise as an example, um, when it’s fully air conditioned, you tend to be very cautious when you budgeting for the electricity. So I know this building came online about three or four years ago. Uh, I’m not sure that the electricity lines were ever adjusted to actual usage. Um, it’s a hundred thousand cut to that line. Uh, it’s probably about 8%. Um, we’re gonna have to watch it very closely.

53:08 It’s a, it’s a big cut to one line. Um, but historically we’ve been able to, that’s what we’ve been spending.

53:18 Yep. Is that, that it you? Great. Thank you. Right. So we’re kind of wrapping up here. So I just wanna go through, uh, the executive summary and just share a little bit more about, um, some, some of the items. Um, so the district is being asked to operate with the same funding as the current year. This equates to significant staffing cuts and operational efficiencies that place constraints on our ability to provide high quality, rigorous education to our students. Already, already said that several times, but I, it bears me. Um, there has been a decline in student enrollment, as is the case in most Massachusetts towns. But reduction FDAs has also taken place with similar trajectories. There. You know, we’ve had conversations about the enrollment. Um, I’m just gonna share this, this with you, and I, I’m sure this is something we can, um, we can do better at sharing this, this, this data out.

54:04 But I just wanna share this at this moment. So if you look back in six, the year 1617, and this is desi de, um, reporting data FTEs, which means licensed teachers 263.9. We had in 2016, 17, in 20 24, 25, we had 225.1 FTEs. So that was a reduction of 37.9 FTEs. Over that 10 year period. From this year to next year, we’re proposing 12.75 FTEs for the teacher, the teacher side of things. So if you look at that, um, when people say, are the schools doing their job? Are they looking at, at, at staffing? Are they looking at what we need? I, I contend that over 10 years, we reduced 3 37 0.9 FTEs.

54:54 And from this year to next, we’re proposing to reduce another 12.75 teaching positions. That’s a third of the total amount. Um, and I think that’s important to understand. The other piece to understand is the enrollment in 1617 was 3,144 students. The enrollment as of Monday was 24 35. That’s minus 709 students to do. The percentage on the decreased there, it’s 8% teachers FTEs 263.9, and 1617 to our proposed 212.35. And 26 27 is also 8%

55:42 decrease 8% oh 0.8. So minus 50 point 65 teachers, John that 0.2, I’m sorry percent, John, that’s 8%. Sorry, 0.2%. Sorry. So yeah, 0.8, we’re, we’re minus 50 point 65 teachers in that period time. So we reduce it by that. But that’s how we said it’s the remaining is 0.8, the remaining. So it’s a a 20% reduction in in staffing. And Yeah, sorry. Yeah. So, but what I’m saying is there’s this, there’s a narrative that says that it’s not, there’s a reduction on whole size, is what I’m trying to, what I’m trying to convey there. So, you know, we’re, we’re moving in the right direction with the, with the reduction, we’re moving towards making sure that, um, not just level funded,

56:29 but making sure that we’re still, um, uh,

56:34 ensuring that students get what they need while being mindful of the enrollment discussion and enrollment decline in the staffing decline over the same period of time. So I just, I think it’s important, um, to have that part of the discussion. The other piece is, um, continuing down the current financial path, our ability to enhance teaching and learning, increase academic rigor and provide appropriate supports to students and staff will not be possible. And our educational environment will be decimated if we follow the current path. So right now, level funded next year, we know our contractual obligations. We know what those obligations are. Um, if we do level funded this year into next year, and we, there’s no change in our, um, ability to, to bring new money into the district.

57:19 Our educational environ will absolutely start being decimated in classroom site. But staffing will continue to go down. Classroom size will continue to go up. Um, so we, we just have to continue to understand that as we have conversations with the town around where we are fiscally, and we are at the school side fiscally and work together to try to address some of the areas that need to be addressed, um, that have been longstanding there. In order to compete with the other North Shore districts, our budget not only needs to be restored, it’ll need to be increased accordingly in order to meet the goals of providing high quality education to our students. And again, I, that’s important. We always talk about how we, how do we compare with other North Shore districts? How do we do assess wise, MCAS wise, graduation, ap, et cetera, et cetera. Um, that we need funding to make sure

58:05 that we have resources, supports staffing in place for, for us to be able to compete, to enhance our students’ achievements and growth and, um, and to, and to make sure that we’re providing rigorous academics here in BLE head. People move this town for the schools and the view and the, and the lovely town that it is. And, uh, I just have to bang the gong on. We have to be, we have to be aware of where we are and what’s gonna happen moving forward. If we, if we don’t do something as a town, um, we’re working really hard to do our part. And I think we, we’ve done a pretty good job so far. We’ll continue to work hard to, to meet the goals, um, but it’s gotta take a village to, to, to get us in this town to where we need to be. Um, and then the very last, the last slide is just,

58:52 um, next steps in timeline. So we, we do a, um, proposed budget tonight. Um, and then we had the public hearing on the 26th, and then in March, uh, school, uh, March school committee meeting, vote on will do the vote on the, uh, proposed budget. And then we’ll meet with the budget and finance subc committees if needed. Uh, we have the finance committee budget hearing, uh, hopefully that’ll happen in March, April is the finance committee warrant hearing. And if we need to meet again, we will. And then in town meetings in May. And I think we’re down to 12 weeks of town meeting, I think. Um, so imperative that we continue to do the work. Um, that’s the presentation. Happy to take any comments, questions from the committee.

59:35 Um, John? Yes. You talked about student enrollment, decreasing and, you know, also staffing decreasing. Mm-hmm. Is there a reason we don’t have that data in this, this deck? I think it would be very, very, you know, yeah. It’s something that people appropriately ask. And I think, I think, um, so, so what, when it realistically, what happens? We, we did have the, we did, we have had the conversations and then we were moving towards that. It’s part of how we got to where we are with the, with the, um, with the level funded. But realistically, when, when things kind of shifted and said level funded, we, we have to do the work to get the level funded. So the, the, um, the work that was being done was really looking at what, what positions make the most sense, at least impact. And we really focused on that. So, um, we can certainly, we can certainly graph something

1:00:23 that makes a little more sense and, and add it into the book for the public, you know, prior to the public hearing. I think that’s, um, you’re not the only one that’s asked for that. So, uh, you know, retrospect probably should add a little bit more in there about that. But, um, we, we will certainly add that information in. So it’s, it’s, it’s clearer, um, to folks. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Yep. Can you provide links also to the side when you do that, John? Yes. Well John, can you talk a little bit about, and maybe it’s worth adding in here, Nicole, to understand, but there’s definitely a complexity shift in terms of special needs and how that’s evolved over time as well. That I think just looking at the number of FTEs doesn’t tell the true story because the needs of the population has grown while we’ve

1:01:09 been declining the number of students, and like any context you can share around that or information put together, I think would be helpful for Us. Yeah, and I think, um, you know, I’ll start if, if Lisa Marie wants to jump in. So in general, in generally speaking, you know, students, um, needs of students have increased social, emotional, academic needs, et cetera, et cetera. Over the years it’s happened not just at Marblehead across the district. There’s a reason for that that’ll get into a whole lot of philosophical, but it has to do with something that the state did probably 15 years ago where residential student, uh, you know, um, hospital level care students ended up going residential, residential went to col, um, collaboratives and collaboratives pushed down into the schools. So that was a, that was a shift in across the state. And it was kind of a quiet shift unless you were doing the doing in special ed at the time and realized it.

1:01:56 Um, which I did. And I worked a lot with the state to try to like, what are we doing? Um, but that’s, that’s kind of behind the scenes stuff. So what, what’s really happened is, so for instance, if we have a, you know, you might look at a classroom setting that has say 17 students in it, and it might have a, a, a gen ed teacher might have a special ed teacher, and you might have another classroom next door that has 23 students and has a gen ed teacher. You say, well, gosh, there’s 17 kids in that classroom, so why do we need, well, the reason is because maybe that classroom of 17 is smaller because it has several students that have, that are on IEPs and have other levels of needs, and we’re providing resources in that classroom. And that’s hard to, it’s actually hard to quantify because those things, uh, shift and, and change. So for instance, we could have a co-taught classroom. We have a gen ed teacher and a special ed teacher goes in

1:02:41 and say this, I’m just use round numbers, 2020 students in there. That doesn’t necessarily mean that gen ed teacher has 10 students and the special ed teacher has 10 students. It means that for part of the day they’re co-teaching for part of the day. They might be working in small groups. It might be, and then they might only go in there for ELA and math, go to another class. So that’s, that’s kind of the challenge of trying to follow that balancing ball. But what I can say in general is overall our, our, our students with higher needs, um, students with autism systems, with, uh, developmental delays has, has increased over the years here and in other places. And it’s just really, it’s one of those things where special education is not, you know, you have to provide, it’s a mandate. So it’s not like we don’t get to pick and choose if, if, you know, half

1:03:28 of us have special needs that we need. We have to, we have to provide, we can’t pick and choose and say, Hey, I’m gonna give, um, some service to Henry, but not to Katie. You know, we, we have to provide it. And that’s what public education is. And that’s really special. Education’s the biggest driver of any budget just across the board. Um, our, our, our programming, um, and working with Lisa Marie and her team, um, I’m confident that within the next, you know, year or two, we’re gonna have our, our, our special ed programming kind of back to where, I think it was several years before we got here where we were getting tuition in kids. And that’s why that that special education fund is there. You know, it’s there, but it’s, it’s, it’s been dwindling. ‘cause we haven’t had students coming into programs, but we’re working on recreating and recalibrating that and, um, really looking at this awesome staff that we have

1:04:15 and where can they, where can they, um, where, where can we use them to the best of our, the needs of the students. So there’s a lot of moving parts of special ed. And I, I don’t know if that answered all your questions, but that’s really kind of the, the backbone of, um, how we, you know, why the, why the numbers are so high, and then how we have to kind of manage that. Um, I dunno if you want to add anything to that, assuming, I mean, I don’t wanna put you on the spot, but, um, we’re doing do it now or Now. Um, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re working towards at least restricted environment for our students, right? So, um, providing programming within district as well as, um, more inclusion from our high needs populations within our own classrooms, which is best by kids. So with that, um, to meet the needs of the students,

1:05:02 you need to have that specialized staff, uh, to work with the students, including whether it’s special education teachers or instructional assistants, or for example, this year in our language based program, um, as we continue to build it, to have a high functioning language based program, you need to have a designated speech language pathologist. So that is a move that we made this current school year. When you’re looking at a therapeutic program, we’ll be looking to have, um, some other specialized staff involved in that program. And that is how students are going to be supported, the staff will be supported, and we’ll be able to have that world class, um, programming for our special needs students.

1:05:47 I just wanna put a couple of like point, like specific data points to what you guys are describing from dsi. So between 2016 and 2025, the high needs population grew from 27% to 32% of the total student body. This is straight from Desi in marble in Marblehead. Since 2016, the district has seen a 34% increase in students with autism and a 48% increase in neurological or health related disabilities. So I do think it’s just really important from a data standpoint for folks to understand we’re decreasing the number of teachers needs of our students are increasing, and like those two things are going to come to it, tipping the point, um, at some point. Yeah, And I appreciate you pointing that out. Um, Melissa, I know we had that,

1:06:32 we’ve had those conversations and it’s important for Thank you. Uh, can I just ask a question? Um, well, two things. Two things, Mike. I think one thing at the beginning, we might wanna just go back and you talk about the give the two, you know, 49.1 million, 49.1 million. That is the, that was the town appropriation to disclose. That’s not our budget. Our budget is above that. ‘cause we have other funding sources. So I think that’s probably, Yeah, our total budget is going up. It was going up by 2.6, $2.6 million. Some of that is going to be cut up covered by cuts. And some of that is going to be covered by tapping other risks. It Always has been. Right? So the appropriation has always been less than what our total budget is. I mean, it’s 90% of it, but it’s still, um,

1:07:20 and then you had, you had to have a line earlier your last week about be paying out a district Correct. Tuition. I don’t see that Any, so that seemed to have caught a little stir in the community. Um, and I think that we were trying to be as transparent as we possibly could in saying that there has been a past practice for at least five years that at the end of every year we have some money was leftover in our, in our appropriation from the town. And that money historically, since there was a big issue in 2019 or 2020, i, I wasn’t here. Right. Um, at the end of the year when we have a a, a surplus of funds, we use that money to prepay tuitions that money. When you, when you budget for what, you know, for special ed tuitions, when you budget for that

1:08:09 and then you prepay against that, you’re gonna have a surplus the following you, unless something disastrously goes wrong in special education, or maybe it’s not our area, but traditionally special education, my my thought process is that at the end of next year, because we’re gonna prepay a million dollars at the end of this year for next year’s tuitions, we’re gonna have a million dollars left over at the end of next year in our budget. And instead of prepaying a million dollars towards FY 20 eights, we’ll only prepay 800,000. That was the $200,000 that we are, instead of carrying a million every year from now on, we’d cut it down to 800,000.

1:08:49 So what I did was I just reduced the special ed tuition lines by $200,000, which is to me less transparent, but it seemed to upset some people in the community that that line was in there. Okay. So you’re budgeting for the full out of district tuition Less 200 bucks. Yes. And I just wanna add too, For some reason, don’t repay your, That in, in that practice has been, that practice of prepaying tuitions has been in place Oh yeah. No. For five Years. Yeah. No, and there’s no question. Listen, I lived through it. Yeah, no question. Um, that we need to do that because, And it, and it was 900,000 before I arrived. It went up to a million last year. So going back down to 800,000 really isn’t a 200,000 cut.

1:09:34 It’s a, it’s a hundred thousand from where, where it was when I arrived. And we still have the special education reserve fund, uh, reserve fund from the townside. And we, There is a special education stabilization fund, uh, that is not our money to, No, it’s town meeting. We, we, we would be required to go to town meeting and get a two thirds vote to spend that money. Um, and we would not get that opportunity until May, which is probably too late school years. And there’s also circuit break there, There is circuit break.

1:10:09 So, so can I just, can I just chime in too? So, um, yes, that practice has been going on here, but that the practice of prepaying tuitions is, is something that happens. It’s, it’s, it’s allowed, it’s done. It’s, it’s, it’s actually being planful. It’s actually being, Hey, we know, we know we’re gonna have this money. So if we have money to prepay it, it helps, it helps the cases. Something else catastrophic that, you know, you have one out, you know, one residential student and you, you know, 4 million plus dollars, right? So there’s that. And then, um, circuit breaker, just, I mean, PE people need to, if you don’t understand, I just wanna say it’s a reimbursement mechanism. It’s not, you know, you have to, you have to claim for it, which is what Mike was talking about before we did the, you know, we did some really good job, really good job at claiming, but it’s, it’s, it’s in arrears,

1:10:55 so we have to pay that stuff upfront. And then it’s generally funded. If it goes to the state that’s 75%, but 75% over the threshold. And I think the thresholds center, what, 56,000 somewhere. So they, so for instance, a student has an a hundred thousand dollars tuition after, I think the threshold is around 56, 50 8,000. That circuit breaker only costs for 75% of the money over the 58,000 to the thing. So it’s not 75% of a hundred thousand, 75% of, you know, whatever the overage is. The district’s on the hook for the first 50 to pay the whole thing. And then we get reimbursed for that portion. So it’s helpful four Or three years or two years, or No, it’s for, it’s for the life of the, as long as a student hits a threshold, if once a student hits a threshold of 56, 50 $8,000,

1:11:42 anything above that will be reimbursed as 75% in arrears. Yeah. So what we spend this year will get reimbursed next year. Oh, I Thought there was a limit. No, you can, no, it’s, it’s, you just have to claim it every year. You have to go through the, it’s an arduous process. You have to go through the IEP and you have to, this, this equals that amount of minutes and that equals, so it’s a arduous process, but it’s helped. It’s not, it doesn’t solve the problem, but it, you, you’re supposed to keep like a year’s worth of, of circuit breaker this. So that helps in case we get a catastrophic hit. Um, the stabilization fund would help. But like Mike said, we’d, we wouldn’t realize that, you know, we’d have to do something else to, it’s, so it’s not a good place to be. I don’t love the fact that, um, you know, our prepaying what we were planning on paying,

1:12:28 but we’re gonna do what we need to do to meet the goal that the town has set for. So that’s, that’s kind of where that changed. So, Um, I had a couple questions. First, thank you. I know that a lot of time and energy and work on the part of John and Mike and the whole administrative team went into this exercise. Thank you for adding the presentation tonight. Um, I’ll start with actually a follow up question, I suppose on special education. In the past several years, we’ve heard a lot about out of district tuition and transportation costs as really being significant budget drivers. Um, and I went back and looked and in FY 25, um, we were increasing transportation costs at

1:13:13 49% in the budget. And in FY 26 it was at 39%. Um, and you have it at 6% for next year. And then there’s a sort of similar disconnect in previous years increase in tuition versus the 4% that you’re assuming for next year. And I’m just curious about that and about your confidence in that number. So, um, I think transportation was one of those that really spiked and is now coming back into realistic numbers. Mm-hmm. I think there was an opportunity for the transportation world to take advantage of school districts and public education.

1:13:59 Um, I know that North Shore Education Collaborative and seem collaborative have both bid transportation contracts for their member districts. And we are a member of NEC and we are a bidding partner with seem collaborative. So, um, I think we, we walked into a, a kind of a, we didn’t know where kids were going. The administration team, uh, other than Julia, who, you know, wasn’t involved without district placements even, you know, before we arrived, um, last year was kind of about what do we have, what was actually budgeted, what was really needed. Um, we right sized it in the FY 26 budget that we’re in right now. And I feel like we’ve reviewed the numbers of students that are out.

1:14:44 The numbers are holding, the transportation is holding. Um, we feel comfortable with those numbers. But again, we still have that circuit breaker and we have a million dollars in prepaid tuitions that if something, you know, that we can come to the school community and say, we’d like to transfer money out of transportation to tuition, to tuition to transportation. Because we know we likely would be with transferring budget funds out of tr tuition to transportation because that’s really the one that we’re not prepaying transportation ‘cause we’re not allowed to statutory the only thing that the only, there’s one thing that statutorily we can prepay and that is outta district tuition. So that’s the only thing we can prepay. So that’s the only thing we do whole thing. Um, unfortunately you can’t, but you can’t prepay the, uh, special ed transportation.

1:15:32 Um, and, and I think that’s a volatile, it’s a good decision that you can, because special ed schools are typically not, um, gonna fold where maybe a transportation company, depending on the size, could certainly experience some difficulties. So, uh, I’m good with that. I’m sorry, that was your first question. That was my first question. Gotcha. Um, so my second question similar was sort of looking at assumptions a little bit. Um, I appreciate the reliance on revolving funds and grants in order to try and make up some of this. And you mentioned, um, that you don’t think the special ed revolving fund is something we’ll be able to use sort of for more than one year. Yes, sir. Do you have similar concerns about other revolving

1:16:18 funds that you’re relying on? Or do you think they’ll replenish themselves such that we aren’t gonna need to look elsewhere for that funding a year or two down the road? So I’ll give you an example of my, on the special ed conversation. Um, that fund has a little over $300,000 in it. We are taking four $25,000 of four salaries next year. They’re, um, medical salaries, um, OGPT. So just say somebody salary is 50,000. We’re taking 25,000 out of the, out of the revolving fund and 25,000 out of our LVA fund. So that’s a hundred. And then we talked about moving the assistant director about 50 something thousand dollars into the revolving fund. So it’s about $150,000 we’re committing to that revolving fund. If it’s got a little over 300,000, I can do it next year.

1:17:04 I can’t do it the year after. So, um, could be, ‘cause actually I’m already paying some out of this year too. So we’ll be able to pay something in FY 28, but it won’t be the full 150 that we’re budgeting or we’re taking now. So that’s, that’s the first one. The other one that, um, that really we, we’ve tapped a little heavier is the K three K. Um, I think we can probably do that for two years, maybe three. That one’s, you know, um, that’s one that I feel a little bit more comfortable with. And, and again, I felt comfortable enough with it that I actually moved salaries into that before we even started talking about reductions. That was when I started building this budget last September. That was already my plan because I knew that the revolving account had grown a little

1:17:50 higher than it probably should have. Okay. But it, we’re taking more, we are planning to take more than we plan to bring in. So that’s, so it will spend down, it will spend down, but, but not at a dangerous rate.

1:18:04 Um, and then the circuit breaker we’re using more. And then it’s really just sort of dependent for next year on whether we get a comparably large. But with circuit break, you’re allowed to keep one full year in reserve. So this year we received $2 million in circuit breaker reimbursement. We can keep $2 million. Um, just looking at, I mean, they’ve done a great job. I I don’t see that number, that reimbursement number coming down, unless the state has a statutory obligation to fund it at 75%, they budget for that. So if the claims go up across the state, there’s no money to fund it at seven. There’s been a few years when they have not funded it at 75%. It was one year it was funded like 60%, it was four.

1:18:50 And to go back to your first question, um, tuitions, that’s what in my head, um, there were a couple years where the state allowed our private tuition. They, they set the rates, private schools, uh, and they let them hit, what was it, 14%, 14% two years ago. Um, and then it was still a high number 6% last year. We’re hoping that that’s now come back into reality. Um, and this, this goes into the override conversation. If the state’s allowing a private, or, you know, I don’t wanna say override, but if the state’s identifying that the private schools costs have gone up by 14%, how are we supposed to live within and the tax level? And you know, I sat at n the other day.

1:19:37 They’ve done the, they do the budget and they’re getting ready to the budget. And you know, a lot of times the collaboratives that they’re gonna say, oh, you know, plan on three to 5% or five to 6%, there was a conversation that they might end up being at like 10, which that’s a huge increase. And you know, uh, I sit on the board, but I’m on the board of 20 other superintendents who may not necessarily understand all the special ed stuff and or the ramifications that have 10% versus the 5% increase in tuitions have. So we have to look at that closely too. I didn’t even have that conversation with, with, um, Lisa Marie yet. ‘cause we haven’t, they haven’t finalized it. We’re doing our budget there in March, so we won’t go that until then, which is way after this. So it’s not helpful, but just, you always try to plan for, you know, I always try to like plan more than what we think it’s gonna be. But September saids a huge, does Desi set those rates or not?

1:20:23 Uh, they, I think they have to get, um, they don’t set ‘em, but they have to, I think they have to approve them on back a mistaken Yeah. They have to say like, we’re, we’re gonna re we’re gonna raise our rates for this reason. And they very rarely say no. So is there, is there a way

1:20:40 to reflect that we are using funds that really aren’t ongoing for ongoing positions. So I think that helps educate the public around, you know, this isn’t probably a best business practice and it, it is just kind of something we’re gonna have to, you know, in some, in some cases it might be a year. In some cases it might be two or three years. But if there was a way that we can kinda help folks understand that, I think that would be, so I think the bigger concern is 150 outta the special education Yeah. Of revolving a con. And, and Lisa Marine and her team have done a great job rebuilding the programs here and hopefully we’ll get some kids tuition back in and that won’t be a problem. And we continue to fund positions out of there, but right now we don’t have the kids coming in, so you can’t plan on them coming if they’re not already here. Right. Um, and then the kindergarten one causes me a little bit of,

1:21:28 a little bit of concern, but I, I think we can buy three, four years out of that. So, um, and you know, I think superintendent and I have had conversations with both. We arrived here, kinda scratched our head and said, wow, Marblehead still charges for kindergarten. They one of like five communities in the state that still charges for kindergarten. Um, it was our intention to, if you look at the budget, I think, and I’ll give you the page really quick. It’s gonna be the last, one of the last pages. Um, if you look at page 43 at the bottom, there’s additional and reductions. I originally had three day threefold day kindergartens in there. I originally had a number in there, but once we got to level funded, that was the directive, obviously that number got blanked out. And on the next page, uh, the third item down was a technology refresh lease.

1:22:14 We talked about that with FinCon and the select board last year about starting. Um, the idea is you put, you fund it with a hundred thousand dollars in year one. You go out and you lease equipment on a three year lease. So you get about 250, $280,000 worth of equipment. In year two of the budget. You add another a hundred thousand. So it’s a 200,000 line. You go out and lease another three year lease for equipment. Year three, you do the same thing in year four, your first lease is paid off, so you already have the money. So she’s a three year investment, a hundred thousand dollars additional each year. Uh, unfortunately with the level funded, we had to cut that and everybody knocked their heads and said, that’s a great idea, Mike. I’m glad you’re thinking about that. We should do that. And then the sky is falling. There’s, you know, eight, 8 million I heard the other day from the townside, um, of, of potential deficit for next year. So certainly that we got line, we quickly cut out

1:23:02 of our level, level funded budget.

1:23:08 Other, I have a question. Um, I’ve heard a lot of, I mean, I appreciate you doing such a thorough job and, and really doing surgical cuts where needed to try to preserve positions for possible. Um, but there are some things that sound like variables that I’m wondering how nervous you are. I mean, it, it goes from small things like vehicle fuel and, and electricity. You mentioned, uh, maintenance costs and then kind of the expected rates you’re expecting to pay and then the federal grant money. Um, what are you going to be watching most closely to budget? Um, yeah, I, it it’s gonna be the utilities. It’s gonna be special education, tuition and transportation.

1:23:54 Um, and it’s gonna be the IDEA grant as much as the, the ESER ESA grant. There’s one part of the ESA grant that scares me and that’s the teacher quality grant. That’s the title two part of the grant that funds our mentors and mentees mentors, mentors, mentor coordinator. If that grant did not come in, it’s not something we can cut. It’s mandated by the state. Yep. Correct. So contractual title one is a bigger number, but that’s done to supplant supplement on a supplement existing programs. So maybe we would not be able to supplement some supplement something. Um, we’ve been very cautious not to put salaries in the grants. And there’s, there’s a reason behind it. It’s a selfish reason. When you put a salary into a grant,

1:24:40 um, there’s a, some silly how silly, I was gonna say stupid, but some silly law that says that 9% that when you put a salary into the grant, the employee pays into their retirement. The grant also has to pay into their retirement. So MTRS deduct getting 11% from the employee and 9% from the grant. So we lose 9% of the grant to retirement right away. So we don’t put salaries. We at all costs avoid putting salaries into a grant. It’s an easy thing to do, but you’ll lose part of your grant. So, uh, fortunately we don’t have any salaries in grants except for the mentor men that the mentor program is. When do you find out about the IG Typically? June or July.

1:25:22 And that’s, if the federal government’s play nice together. Well the two parties can come together and it’s been indicated it’ll be level funded, but we’ll wait and see. Yeah. Thank you. I got a question around class size now seems to be an important metric that people focus on. Um, you know, and I think, uh, in the deck somewhere, you know, you talk about academic implications being larger class sizes, and I think that’s part of how you, you know, you use decimate, right? Yes. Is there a way to quantify that in a way that you could show, I know there have to be some assumptions, right? But if we don’t properly fund certain things, right, our class size, you know, is this today it could go to this,

1:26:08 you know, and I think that’d be kind of an important thing to just help people understand in a very real way what some of the implications are of Yeah. And I think some of these reductions, I started, me, I met, I met with PTOs and PCOS and SACS and stuff the last several weeks. And part of the conversations I have is we have four, you know, fourth grade classrooms and they’re all at 21. And you cut it down to three classrooms. Like you just figure out math, okay, now they’re gonna go up, but from 21 to 26 or whatever it is. So that, that’s like the reality. Have we, have we done that actual math across? No, not, not specifically in those areas, but what we’ve done is we’ve looked at the areas that needs to impact. So when you look at that, it says three high school teachers. That’s, um, mainly because when you look at classroom sizes, it’s a, it’s a much different animal.

1:26:54 If you say the classroom size went from 19 to 23 at the high school level than it is, um, 19 to 23 at our first grade. And it’s a whole different animal. Um, so that’s, that’s kind of how we, how we how that way. And when we met with the principals, we went through that each, each um, each classroom, each grade. And that’s how we got to the, so yeah. Alright. Anyone else had any comments or questions? Um, so the only comment I would make to the committee is that, you know, we, um, have done our job. Uh, we worked with FinCon. We were asked to, um, consider a level funded budget. We worked with the administration on that.

1:27:38 Um, then hopefully folks are, you know, keeping an eye on what’s going on on the townside with the, you know, the finance department and the finance committee. Um, they are a little bit, um, behind us in terms of time and they haven’t presented a level funded budget yet. I think that’s forthcoming in the next couple of weeks. Um, so the deficit that they’re talking about on the townside is probably a bit of a moving target. Um, once we get that though, um, or once the, you know, sort of the town is aware of that, um, I expect that we may be approached again, possibly by the finance committee to, to reconsider our level fund and budget. I don’t know that I, I just, you know, from my experience I,

1:28:24 and just the reality of it, you know, it may be, um, uh, realistically, you know, the town entire town may be looking at, um, you know, the budget. So my question to the committee, but you know, maybe from both of us is, you know, if that’s the case, if we’re, so we’ve done what we’ve been asked to do, we’re ready to go, we go through our budget hearing, we’ll go through our vote, then come and we arrive at town meeting. If anything changes between now and then, and we are asked to make any changes to this, uh, my question to the committee is, you know, we need direction from the committee, um, as well as this administration, frankly, as to, you know, ‘cause it’s really committee, um, decision as to where we, we would want to, where we would wanna say big movement

1:29:11 or what sort of, what are the overarching goals and drives and drivers and assumptions, um, to go forward work.

1:29:25 I think that’s consideration once we know better from the now. I think stand, I definitely think that’s, I didn’t mean to jump in. I just, you know, um, that’s good thing that I think needs to Yeah, For sure. Because you’re gonna need direction, John. Like, I mean, I think not direction by, I think it needs, we’re gonna need to have, Well I think it’d be helpful to hear from, hey, you know, if we have to cut X dollars, um, you’ve already showed us where, where you’ve done these efficiencies and reductions. Um, it may be, you know, say we think this or we think that and then we, we just go back to drawing. Or if that’s the thing and say, well that’s nice, but this is where it makes more sense and we have that conversation. I think it, it would just be, you know, we have to, we have such, I’m hoping that, I hoping that the town will see the value of the fact that we, we, we’ve gone to a level fund budget would basically reduced our budget by 2.6, um, already.

1:30:14 Um, you know, but I understand the, the, the straight, the town was in. And we’re gonna do our part to the extent that we can without mean, I’m an educator, I’m the educational leader of the district. I am really concerned about students and, and their ability to be taught in an environments that are safe. I, I’m I concerned about the staff. They have the resources. It’s not as simple as, oh well we need to reduce by X amount of dollars that equals this many teachers. Like, it’s, it’s not that simple. So I just wanna, we’ll do what we have to do, like I said from the very beginning. And I think we’ve done that since, since we met the subcommittee. I’m proud of the work that’s been done. I don’t love having to do any kind of conversation about reducing staff, but that’s what we are.

1:30:59 So we’re gonna continue to do that and we’ll, hopefully whatever we need to do to, to move forward and, and get this time where we need to be, and Jen, I, you know, we’ll provide the guidance. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, but I’m, if there has to be some significant further work, I hope that budget subcommittee still exists. Mm-hmm. And we continue as they did here. They did a great job of doing this for us. And I’d like for them to, you know, if we do have to do some things to work with John and we’ll, you know, as a subcommittee and we’ll provide guidance as Neil, I think what we should do, ‘cause you know, we’re, we’re, you know, we’re where we are. Um, we need to keep an eye on, you know, on the town side, on, you know, talk to the finance committee, hearing what’s going on on the, um, on the town government side, uh, and be prepared, um, for, for what we need to do.

1:31:45 I think, um, that being said, we ought to maybe have this as an upstanding agenda item throughout Spring, um, throughout the next few months. We can always, you know, skip table if they don’t have anything. But if, if there’s information, you know, real time, um, at a meeting, you know, we have the agenda item just as maybe as an FY 27 budget and we can share whatever is being being presented to us or communicated to us and the committee can, can weigh in. ‘cause that, John, Can I just make one more comment? Um, please. Thank you. Um, so we have the budget hearing on the 26th. That’s an opportunity for folks to have their input. Um, happy to hear thoughts, happy to hear, I’m sure gonna hear concerns or thoughts.

1:32:31 Um, pluses and minuses, but realistic. That’s this budget is silent line already. It’ll be there definitely tomorrow. So people can look at it, sift through it, come to the 26th meeting. I encourage it to come and ask the question. Don’t understand something. We’re gonna do our best to explain it. If there’s something that, you know, doesn’t look right or whatever, we can explain it. Um, if there’s something we can’t explain that shame on us and I think we need to do a better job. But I honestly think, you know, Mike’s been doing this a long time. School business manager. He knows, he knows this stuff. We, you know, between, between us there’s many, many years of education oversight and I think we’re in a, I feel like we’re in a much better place this year than, uh, last year when we got here. Um, and I really, even though we’re in the dire straits in the town, I still

1:33:19 for some crazy reason still feel like we’re moving in the right direction overall. And, and I’m proud of that work. But not just so much that we need to hear from the, we need to hear from the town and when the town decides what they’re gonna do in terms of the overall budget. But whatever that decision becomes, we need folks to come out and, and, and bang the gong. You know, we can’t do same old, same old and marblehead. It’s not gonna work. And the quicker people realize, but the better. We’re gonna better off, we’re all gonna be the not just advocate. I have to advocate for schools. It’s my job. It’s my, it’s my passion, it’s my career, it’s my life. But you know, there’s other stuff in talent that has to happen. People need to step up and just say, oh, same old thing. Well, they always find the money somewhere. Like that’s, that’s not happening anymore. And you, most of you have been here way longer than I have.

1:34:06 And I, and I I learned that really quickly. So, so, so we’ll get, we’ll get this up, you know, on the website as quickly as possible. Yep. Now there were some suggestions made right from us tonight. If those are made, we find, does the committee find that those will just, we could just update those to the website as needed? And I know we can do that up to our believe a week before Yes. February 26th. So, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll do some work around some things we’ve talked about. There was also a page in there with the enrollment. So we’ll, we’ll total make sure some of those, okay. Those areas that were kind of maybe needed a little bit more attention we’ll get done. Um, um, and we’ll make those changes as soon as I’m fine. You know, making the changes and, and get it among there. I mean, we gotta come back for public hearing anyway and hopeful. You know, I, when I’m, how about this? We make a change. We’ll share them to see ‘em, we’ll post them.

1:34:54 That, that make sense? It’s a budget. Presentation is change can change. It’s the actual budget. Yeah. Needs has to be right. It’s 10 days or seven days.

1:35:11 Seven days. Seven days. We’ll make sure. Alright. Um, Thank you. No, thank you. I appreciate the support, the budget subcommittee. Um, um, are there any subcommittee, further subcommittee liaison updates? Uh, yeah, the communication subcommittee this morning, uh, Melissa and I, and we are sending out the newsletter to work on Sunday, Friday, but we’re sending it Monday, so that doesn’t conflict with the schools newsletters. Um, it is obviously very budget focused, including an update for that roadmap. Um, and we will link to the budget back then. And I think we should link to this presentation.

1:35:57 I think we can link to the timestamp in the video so that people might just get right into it with a single click. Uh, and then can You do a favor, and I don’t speak for Melissa, but it to include my email around that, but has questions on you, contact our Yeah, I think that’s a good change we can add in, you know. Yeah, yeah. Uh, subscribe to. I’ll definitely do that. Um, but that way, you know, if anyone has any questions, I’m happy. Good idea. Talk to people off. Yeah. We’ll c change for sure. Um, the other thing that we’re doing, which I guess we’ll be working or I’ll be working on tomorrow, is we have just some a,

1:36:42 a short, you know, couple sentences talking about how the budget is available. Click here to see presentation that we dis to, uh, you know, through the BTOs if they’re willing to do it on social media specifically And at the hearing. Yeah. And the day to the hearing. So the, the goal is to really informed and ready to give us feedback. So we were sort of very focused on that this morning and, and that should go out on, on the, Have you had a roof committee meeting? Is there any No, but we, it’s something I know we have some updates that I saw from, um, from, so, um, they’ve been asking me. So we will be having, I was gonna sort of address that.

1:37:29 There’s a working group meeting today. Yeah. It was not a committee meeting, it was construction meeting today. All the HVAC units that we’re concerned about back order or long, not back order, but long delivery, uh, have been ordered and have been, uh, assured that they will be on site by June. So that was a yes. You know, that was a, that was a big concern. That was a big concern. So yeah, it was good. Meeting Thing we’re hearing too is just, and maybe the committee can talk about this, is, um, you know, it whatev what if any, impact the actual project will have on student staff in the building both during the school year and in the summer. Our building student. I could, I could speak to the summer. Oh, sorry. Go. Um, because there was concerned whether

1:38:17 or not, um, Piper Field was gonna be able to be utilized by exa Park and whether, uh, the students get in to do, um, their weight training and stuff. ‘cause there’s really no other place for them to go. So the special education program that we generally have at the high schools being moved to the veterans, veterans, um, so those students will be out thankfully. Um, what I’m allowing the, the weight lifting or weight training to happen and what I’ve instructed Kent to instruct his folks are is they may have to come in a different door on different days depending on where crane and setup are. But that’s on the roof and they’re in the base in the, you know, first floor. So they may have to go back door, they may have to go into the fieldhouse, wherever the staging is. They have to obviously be safe and work on that. Piper field will be able to be utilized, um, with the possible exceptions. Right. Obviously not putting the crane on the field, but it’s not happening.

1:39:02 But they, maybe they where they have to, you know, that may be in that area where they swing and suffer around. So, um, the tool right. And park, they have to make sure that they’re a little bit flexible there. So that’s the summer, but we won’t know the start of the school year. I mean, hopefully that the plan is for everything to be done. Um, and hoping if there’s anything that’s residual, it will not make sure it’s not effective. What about the, this spring? There’s nothing. Oh, so they still come through the April. There is, uh, so this in February vacation they’re gonna go up on the roof or they do a, a pre pre-inspection where they check every piece of equipment that’s gonna come off the roof. If it’s going back on, there are some things that are gonna go back on. They do an inspection of them, they make sure they’re operational, they make notes on everything. Um, so basically if they damage something they focus back

1:39:47 on, they’re responsible for it. That’s what they’re doing this for. It’s an insurance for them and an insurance for us, uh, that’s happening in February vacation week. And then, uh, in April vacation week, there is talk based on the weather of doing, uh, one to two small sections of the roof that don’t have each va equipment on them. Um, don’t have a lot of other things other than roof drains. So there’d be smaller sections that they feel like they can bang ‘em out in the week. And, um, and so that, that would happen in April vacation. Whether they depend weather dependent, how much snow’s still on the roof at that point, hopefully zero. And Then does end of this affect the office staff? So the office staff should be good because they’re all, uh, I shouldn’t say that. The first floor office staff, everything in that, in that main office suite will be good. I know that there are a couple of assistant principals who are on the second floor, they may need to write

1:40:35 and there’s an assistant principal who’s on the second floor. Uh, yeah, they both, uh, they May 1st floor for the time being, uh, guidance is already on the first floor. Uh, they have 10 days built into their contract for summer work. Um, so other than that, there should be no staff in the building. That was, they were pretty strict about a strict, they needed to know when we did this what staff was gonna be on site or what students were gonna be on site. So we let them know that there would be, uh, some students allowed in the weight room. There would be some students allowed, uh, into the building to see a guidance counselor to get transcripts to get, uh, final grades or whatever done. Um, the office staff would still be in the building. So they know that they’ll be limited. But, um, there will be no programs,

1:41:21 no scheduled programs in the building inside the building. Um, during that time.

1:41:27 Mike, do you know when they will decide whether they can do work over April break? I mean, will it really be like, I’m, I’m gonna say it probably we’ll probably get a, a one to two week notice. I don’t think it’s gonna be a a, you know, we’re showing up tomorrow. Yeah, I don’t think so. But I, I think it’s also gonna depend on, they may say we plan on doing, you know, the, the, the snow’s melted, the weather’s broke, and we plan on doing something over April vacation. But if they get to Friday and the forecast is a really wet and rainy vapor vacation, they may just say, you know what, we’re, we’re not gonna do this. Okay. Yep. Do you have any other updates? That’s all. Got anybody else? Okay. We will move on to closing view to correspondence. Correspondence. Alright.

1:42:13 Looking for a motion to adjourn. So I’ll second. All right. So a motion to adjourn made by eight. Seconded by Melissa. I’m sorry, I couldn’t, uh, heard it from over here. Sorry, Melissa. So, uh, motion made by Melissa, seconded by Henry. All in favor? Okay. The motion passes five to zero. We are adjourned. Thank you. Every.