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and Sunday March 2nd at 2 p.m at ashon high school and um the AFI ashon Education Foundation uh who just does a great amount of work for our school system in terms of providing our teachers with opportunities to apply for Grants to support the work that they do is having their annual casino night and that is on March 8th Saturday March 8th at the Warren Conference Center from 7:00 to 10:30 and tickets can be purchased just for $75 so I want to shout out those events uh because they're all really important to our school Community thank you Mike any questions on uh all that um all right next item on the agenda is um superintendent's contract so just for a little context um mostly for the public um we had started having conversations with our superintendent uh few months ago about an extension of his current employment agreement um we had pre previously authorized Lori as the chair to sort of have the initial conversations with Jim um she did that and of course Lor's been out of town for um a little bit so you know the rest of the committee met um for our last meeting made some file tweaks to an agreement um and then at blessed sort of gave me the authority to speak with Jim afterwards um which I did we reviewed the changes and and sort of final language then emailed it to Jim um with the changes in it gave him the opportunity to look at it he Subs informed us that he's good with that um he did make some sort of grammatical changes but nothing of any substance from the last draft that you all saw um I did go through all that and made sure that there was anything that changed anything in substance um so with that um you know the the agreement um which really doesn't become effect until effective until July 1st um just for The public's information would be six-year contract you know I think reflects this committee's support for Mr Adams now been in the seat for 11 years um you know I think we've all expressed through our evaluations the P strong support for the work he does and the team he leads and things the district has accomplished um so we're really at a point of unless there's further discussion just looking to approve the final version of that contract which I know Jim circulated for everybody to look at in advance um a couple days ago but that's just for sort of for the community benefit the background on it anybody want to add anything to that before take up the issue um is so is is the motion for us to approve it and to authorize Lor to sign she's the only one that sign yeah yeah I mean I think that's a good point I really thought about the second part of that but yeah I think we're looking for a motion to approve the contract as presented and to authorize the chair Lori to sign on behalf of the committee so move second second we'll do roll call vote because Lori is remote um Marcy yes Hina yes Paul hi Lori hi and I for me unan five nothing congratulations and I'll take the opportunity and I'm sure everybody will chime me with their own two words just to say continue thank you for all the work that you do for this District it's been a pleasure to work with you and continues to be and just him for myself I for all just really grateful to have partner and a leader District that keeps us all student centered trying to move us forward every single anybody else wants to yeah thank you Mark I agree with everything you've said Jim I appreciate you so much and I've been here since you have and um you've been a wonderful leader was lucky to have you trans far you do I would just Echo all of that and say how much we appreciate your dedication and loyalty to the district and I'm thrilled to know that we're going to be able to have you on board to to uh for the next several years to to continue the the work you've done here we appreciate you stuck with us Jim stuck with us now well not until he signs it might be the other way around um thank you it's it's humbling for sure um and uh for you all to put your trust in me and and my team and and it's really as a team it's not me um I can't thank you enough um to potentially really round out my career and education here something special thank you okay and uh you can work out of time with Lor to do the signing ceremony when she gets back after bathing in the sign all right uh next item on the agenda is the fy2 budget update and adjustments I think um there a slide that was yeah I'm going to bring it up as well look to you and Chris I guess to walk us through this issue I'll turn it over to Chris here in a second I just want to give the context uh of what we do and how we've done this for the last couple of years um so we are in well beginning of March coming up on on Saturday uh so you know throughout the year we have an operating budget that's approved at at town meeting but also we have a number of of expenses offsets if you will that we utilize revolving accounts for to help pay for some of the uh expenses salaries supplies Etc uh through throughout the year and as we get closer and closer to the end of the current fiscal year that you're we're in we start looking at balances and to determine okay are these balances what are the discrepancies positive and negatively right and and how how do they fall within the overall uh budget approved at town meeting and then if we've got some favorable variances and and and Chris can speak to these in a moment if we've got some favorable variances how do we then look at those variances that are part of the operating budget and move some of the one-time fund expenses that we would you know count on using like revolving accounts so it could be salaries could be supplies it could be other things can we then shift those into our operating budget thus preserving the revolving accounts for future use um and and that's sort of that's what we're proposing tonight uh there there's some significant funds that we feel comfortable and I and I will say Chris and I are going through this on a weekly basis uh for him it's a daily basis like literally tying the numbers out um so and we're both pretty conservative individuals when it comes to our budget and making sure that if we're going to move some of the the expenses from the school choice lines which you don't have all the school choice lines if you want to go back and ask for those specific details we certainly can but it's probably a hundred different line items that could it could impact um we could certainly do that um when we provide the budget book if if you go back and look at the back of the budget book we have a number of school choice line items there already um so I will you know transition it to Chris here but that's what we're asking to do tonight is to be able to authorize us to make some adjusting entries to our current um budget and you might uh get to it but just you have a a school choice uh number now but understand what what the what the forecast was to use yeah yeah so yeah so and that's what c will he'll I did asked him to make sure he says exactly what we had um you know set aside for school choice this year so Chris do you want to take this over do you want me to hand your call it's sorry you will get to that to that part once we talk about what we're asking to to use um so you'll see the financials um in front of you too I think in your your packet so I'll just speak to what I see on my screen which is similar to to this but uh um just to give a quick overview you get the original appropriation which is our the the approved budget we have transfers the the dollar in that transfer is essentially Po's funds that roll over from one year to the next so it's it was already committed um Let Go 24 we roll it over because it's committed expense and it's U you know we pay um but it's not an addition to our clear it's more counting mechanism so the Year date expended versus uh is self-explanatory I think already spent cumbrance those are already committed expenditures that we have on our ledger so they're either salary dollars or they're purchase orders that we've placed with various businesses and Chris that encumbrance just looking like the first line of 534 that's an encumbrance against the original appropriation of 1.

There's a big hole in it. We blew insulation into the attic, and we changed all of our light bulbs in the house, and the light bulbs were horrible. Yeah, they are. But it's no longer MassSave. It's now MassPay. What Maura Healey has done to your How do you heat your home? Well, we have oil hot water blown through the house. Forced hot water? Yeah, we got like, you know, what do you call them? Radiators down there in the floor? Yeah. Well, I have gas I have gas heat in my house. And my bill last month I my gas usage was $320. Yeah. My delivery charge on that gas was $600. So, I had a $900 gas bill in my house, and it's all because of Maura Healey canceled two pipelines. Uh and I think we've got a clip. Uh let's go to that clip now of Ben Simmoneau from uh WCVB asking her about uh what's going on.

um we'll start with a public comment with folks who are in the room if you're in the room and wish to give public comment please let Susan Farber know she's right there and then if you are on zoom and would like to um give public comment please uh let me know in the chat let me just get the timer set Glenn it's two minutes right okay okay I'm going to stay right here my name is Melissa web I live here in Greenfield I have not one not two but three kids who all attend Greenfield Public Schools two of my children are on IEPs and one of them is on a 504 I am here to say that we are very topheavy as a district we pay a lot to our Administration and to our central office staff as a nice gesture we did a little Valentine's Day thing for Newton and I thought oh it'd be really cute I could you know bring some to central office they always forgotten about and when I asked how many staff were there I was told 35 35 is more staff are relatively comparable to what we have in a building for our students so to me I was not able to bring little gifts by I figured it'd be 15 20 people not 35 I was expecting it to be a lot less um my child's classroom still doesn't have an IIA are we competitively paying our IAS no I think I think we're competitively paying the topper end of our budget the people who are in central office kids don't get excited about a 504 coordinator which used to be a stien position which now I see is getting an assistant a stapen position that's where it was when I first started with my son in Pre a stien position that was done by the adjustment counselor in the building when it comes to an IEP I see a different lead person at each meeting but yet I talk to families in the community who have kids who are severely autistic and they tell me we're we're going to a different School we're School of Choice and out and I say why we have a program that can meet your child's needs oh that's never been discussed with us so I look at paying people more having more people it's just not always helpful need more boots on the ground can you hear me okay um my name is Tera cluder I am a Greenfield resident I don't if I should go closer that noise is a little intense anyway hopefully it stops um I just want tell you a quickly who I am I'm I'm fully invested in this place I am a ghs grad from 1988 I am the mother of three children who have graduated from Greenfield Public Schools um they're doing great by the way class of 2018 and twins of class of 2023 um I have taught in Greenfield Public Schools since 1995 um I am the vice president of the GAA the teachers union and um I'm still a Spanish teacher here in Greenfield so I'm here to ask you to pass the budget um we we can't afford to have cuts to our school um I'm in support of many things in that budget I think there are some things we could talk about um but we can't take less money um I feel like if the redistricting is one of the things that's really causing us these big issues let's look at it again I don't know that that's you know do we have to do the entire thing right now if that's going to mean fewer teachers fewer bodies in front of children um I guess that's what I have to say thank you very much hi I'm Judy Bennett I live in Greenfield I am an eighth grade science teacher currently at the high school um I will be moving down to the middle school next year I can't tell you how not looking forward to packing up my room I am but that is something I will have to do um I was looking at the slides from the superintendent and I would just Echo the comments from Miss cluder because I'm asking you to yes pass the budget I know it is a heavy lift it kind of always is when we have these discussions but the topics that were brought up on the impacts of level servicing of class sizes I know class sizes were brought up this fall especially with the elementary and kindergarten classrooms and I know that that's a concern at all grade levels um and this year I'm implementing new curriculum so I'm very thankful that the district was able to get funding and and provide the science curriculum that we're implementing and I know that that is also a heavy lift that if that is now on our budget but I do think that those things are important for our students across the district so I guess I would just ask that you take our students into consider a and our our staff in a consideration we all vital to the success of our students and our community so thank you that's all the public comment in the room thank you is and I'm not seeing any yet on Zoom one more second if anyone wants to write to me and ask to speak happy to recognize you all right I'm not seeing any we'll move on to the fiscal year 2026 budget public hearing um superintendent thank you I'm gonna share my screen copies of the slideshow are online as well as in here on a table if you are present here and would like a copy okay to start um would like to talk about the priorities that are in the budget uh many of these priorities also came from a lot of the work the budget and finance subcommittee did in meeting with parents and families at lpac CPAC PTO meetings school council meetings um we took into consideration the feedback that we got from those families and those considerations are highlighted throughout these first three slides one of the things and Miss Bennett already addressed it in her public comment this evening is to continue to fund and provide support in ela Math Science and History we've adopted high quality instructional materials across the district and we need to continue to support those materials in our classroom sorry to interrupt we we missed something we've traditionally done at the budget hearing um which Susan Farber has a a motion that we've used in the past can you read to us what that was Susan sorry about missing that the motion is simply to open the Greenfield Public Schools FY 26 budget public hearing so moved is there a second second I was it you m Martini okay second from Member [Music] Martini any discussion all those in oh we have to do by roll call because we have a member on SEC didn't you me yes member Martini yes chair Johnson mad yes Vice chair seon yes member Childs yes member Goodwin yes mayor dorer yes all right motion passes unanimously back to you superintendent sorry about that no worries um the next priority though in the budget is to maintain a level of Staffing needed to continue to provide educationally appropriate class sizes and programming we've also discussed the need to assist our elll population to invest in and adopt the elevation platform to support those English language Learners we want to continue to invest in professional development relative to the Social and emotional needs of all of our students we want to provide expanded programming opportunities at the middle and high school for College and Career Readiness so that our students have alternate Pathways to success After High School school we want to expand benchmark assessments up to grade 10 to monitor student growth and we want to continue to invest in professional development aligned with improved instructional practices reading and literacy and the last slide with our priorities is maintaining staff and processes to support those seal needs of students including what many advocated for in the fall a commitment to stor of Justice professional development for students staff and administration as well as training active bystanders for our students we need to continue to refine and increase interventions at tier two and tier three to support our students academic needs and close those skill gaps we need to maintain staff to continue to support and monitor student attendance the district has a chronic absenteeism issue and we need to continue to support those staff that do that work and then we need to continue to support and staff the English language learner program and our special education to address the increased needs the district is seeing from those priorities though I just go back to the entry plan that I've presented to you along with the findings and the foundation of our core values and priorities in District this budget was developed with students first the budget reflects what our students need and as superintendent is my obligation to put forth what they need and what is best for them this budget also reflects a shared Vision with stakeholders the budget and finance subcommittee made the effort to make sure that stakeholder voice was important and included in this and this budget receives that feedback and puts forth that feedback with those engaged parents and families that offered their input this budget supports uh the ongoing work that we have been doing in District to close skill gaps so that our students can progress and meet those academic achievements and this budget also supports our continued collaboration with families and what they want in order for their students to be successful in learning this budget was crafted because the distri district has um voted to redistrict so this budget reflects the additions needed in order for the redistricting to happen and that includes uh two middle school science positions and two Middle School social studies positions with the eighth grade returning to the middle school they will go to full year science and social studies and that is what students deserve right now they have a half year of each if you're a sixth grader and you have half year of Science in the fall you may not have another half year of science till the spring of seventh grade they are not meeting grade level standards and we need to change that we have an influx of elll needs we need an additional English language learner position for next year we need a building based substitute at the Discovery School all other five schools have a building based sub to help with coverage in helping out with you know monitor ing what's going on in the school day covering classes helping out at recess and lunch the Discovery School is the only school that does not have that position and then unfortunately the Alternative High School program that was created three years ago that was originally under Greenfield Community College and then transferred to the collaborative for Educational Services in Northampton they have cut that position at the collaborative as a program that is has helped over 30 high-risk students obtain a diploma it is not one as a superintendent I could see not putting back into the budget those students deserve to have this alternative Pathway to assist them in getting that diploma and finding success After High School so we're going to get to some of the um budget details all of this is part of the presentation there's additional um munus report over there if you want the line item de detail and all members have this in their packets this evening the budget that I've proposed is a 5.89 increase from all funds and a 7.97 increase over local you might ask well how did we get here for three years we were in the luxury of having Esser funding we had Esser 1 two and three Esser 3 ended September 30th of 2024 and things that we were able to fund with those Grant funds it's no longer available to us additionally we have outof District special edit tuitions that have increased by $1.5 million we also had a transportation adjustment last year travel CU had overcharged us for one bus so we had 106 I mean $30,000 credit last year that obviously does not exist this year they found the oops and we are back to having a full payment there I do caution however though we have not found out definitively if there will be another bus needed in order to support transporting all students where they need to go with the redistricting of schools curriculum and instruction materials you'll see in assistant superintendent Sullivan cost center the increase has been pretty exponential we were able to fund curriculum and instructional highquality materials through Esser funding for the last three years those funds are no longer available but we need to still support those curriculum materials for our students they deserve them they need them and the cost had to be put back into the budget and then there are some redistricting alignments where we had to add those additional positions for the redistricting and the reconfiguration of great levels I'm going to go quickly through the cost centers over the next four slides because after that you'll see I've done each cost center specifically and in detail so um you'll see the specifics as we get through this the next for is just a uh cost center comparison from the fy2 local and then the increase or decrease as to the FY 26 and when we get to the specific slides for each cost center I'll go through step by step what those increases are so you'll see on the first slide here we have all of the schools and the uh ups and downs that we've seen at each and we'll go specifically through each School in a few minutes next up cost center are uh English language Learners Athletics all the way through systemwide and there's been some variations in those cost centers as well special ed 504 Services custodial Personnel some school committee changes and then finally with the business administration through all of those you'll see how we got to the 7.97 request this evening wanted to go over some of the estimated funding sources I think as many of you are aware and what if you watch the news Federal grant funding in its entirety or Federal grant funding at all is highly in question we receive a lot of money from federal grants so what you see here is uh the estimated funding we've received from title 14 and 2A which is a Federal grant to us our turnaround Grant is not the state funded one from the Department of Ed it is the federal funded one so that tag Grant is also ferally funded we have our idea um 240 and 262 Grant federally funded and then other funding sources that you'll see on the next slide have been school choice our circuit breaker sped tuition Transportation revolving and our a tuition prek when I start the next SL Ides though I just want to caution um the uh Excel sheet that we use goes to two decimal points I rounded to whole dollar so there's some slides that are off by a dollar if you're actually doing the math but it's because of that configuration don't Fred it all works out in the wash with the dollar at the end but I did want people to know that ahead of time so I'm going to start with the Academy of early learning they saw a 6.47% decrease um they have seven full-time teaching staff they are six regular Ed teachers along with one special educator um they have a 6 social worker this year based on special ed needs and services provided they have a full-time principal a full-time admin assistant they have 12 instructional assistants they have their building base sub and one full-time custodian I also included on the chart you'll see that every building has instructional supplies office supplies and field trip money because I know field trips were um something someone questioned in the past so I wanted that delated we have used some Grant funds from 262 to offset um an IA salary and we've also used some a tuition revolving to offset a unit a salary teacher um the other decrease that you see that accounts for that 6.47 is just a change in Staffing and the step rate of a teacher hire that was either on a lower step than the previous teacher that they replaced Federal Street staff you'll see that they have a 20% increase and it may seem as if they have more they have um 12 regular Ed K to5 teachers for next year so that would be two at every grade level they have three special Educators we have one subpar program a transition program at Federal Street and then two special Educators that provide inclusion or pullout Services um Federal Street is unique though you know we have six Elementary Specialists but all six of them can't be everywhere so three of them spend their full time at Discovery three of them spell spend their full time at Newton and then they split Federal Street so part of federal Street's increase is because they share six Specialists not three so they have a point4 and A6 of each person's salary so it may be a little confusing but I just wanted to point that out because they do share all six and not just have three each Elementary shares a librarian so they have a 33 um cost share of that for the librarian and each Elementary School shares an elementary instrumental music teacher so they C share that of a 33 as well Federal Street has a 1.0 Title One math interventionist and a 1.0 Title One Ela interventionist Four Corners um you'll see that they have also the specialist shared the they have 12 regular K to five so they will have two classroom rooms for each grade level um along with three special Educators we have our Asus program Asus one and acis 2 at Discovery School so there's two special Educators running each of those programs along with one inclusion pullout service provider they have 26 par professionals um the Asus one and Asus 2 program require one to one for many of our students so the increase in instructional assistance are the majority of them are one to one one that serve as special ed students they also have a building based sub which is a new addition to the budget this evening and then a building Monitor and two custodians they have a day and a night custodian um they also have a split 1.0 Elementary um Ela math Title One interventionist Title One grant funding is based on poverty level and your need in school so they do not qualify for two 1.0 in that building so their their interventionist does halftime math and halftime Ela Newton Elementary um again 12 regular Ed they'll have a K through five two at each level that is a you know increase of the two fifth grade teachers that were moving back to the elementary they have two special Educators they have one sub separate program which is seeds and then they have one special educator that does inclusion and pullout Newton has two adjustment counselors um this year we saw an increase in behaviors and moved um the full-time adjustment counselor from a to Newton to help with the service providing over at Newton because the demand had increased there they also split the elementary librarian and the Elementary music teacher as well as they have a full-time math and Ela interventionist Greenfield Middle School the 29% increase may look like astronomical on paper it's a lot of the shifts that are happening because of the redistricting so they will have two teams of four in grades six seven and eight next year in order to cover collective bargaining agreement preps they had to increase also the uh unified Arts staff that are there so that they have coverage for not only the electives that we want to increase there but also so that we meet collected bargaining agreements they will have um seven special Educators they currently have four inclusion pullout service providers and they have an ases one and two program as well as a transition behavioral program at the middle school they have a full-time math interventionist and a full-time Ela interventionist they split the band teacher with the high school and they have the band teacher they will have it six of the time next year and she will increase her time at the high school next year due to another elective that was um very popular in the scheduling of the high school so there's an increase in music options at the high school and then the middle school has a 1.0 full-time librarian um that has remained in the budget even though it remains unfill unfilled um I think you know from the Personnel updates I've given you we've had three Librarians this year but because it is a unified arts teacher this year and not quote unquote a librarian um in nature they have departed because they want to be a full-time librarian we value the full-time librarian and feel the need for our literacy Focus to have that profession and that person remain in that position so we left it in the budget and we continue to post and hope to fill it the high school you'll see has a decrease because of the shift the eighth grade teams are moving to the Middle School in those salary line adjustments have been moved to a different cost center um they also have many different additional uh accounts in munice that I wanted to provide for you so that you saw where um many of their line items are expended they have um three adjustment counselors currently at the high school and two guidance counselors they have a principal and two assistant principls they have two admin assistants in the main office office but they also have a guidance Administrative Assistant that helps um with college applications graduation all of the needs in the guidance department they have 16 pair of professionals they also have a building based sub and two building monitors there are four custodians there is one in the day and three that work at night due to the size of the facility the need is there the other cost accounts you'll see on the left of this slide and I think they're pretty self-explanatory um the one though however that we will be um removing is the 7500 because you did vote to eliminate our neas involvement so we will not be expending that 7500 but I wanted to make that known the high school also has Title One money for a 1.0 math interventionist and a 1.0 Ela interventionist and currently we've been only able to fill a point4 La this year so um the we'll see when and if title one gets given again next year what happens they do have seven special Educators but the high school houses four subpar special education programs we have our Rise program our transition program our essential skills program and our life skills program which services our 18 to 22 we also have three additional special EDS Ed teachers at the high school that provide inclusion or pull out Services per Service delivery grids the assistant superintendence cost center I highlighted on the slide all of the Investments we have made with our highquality instructional materials and you will see outside of salaries or obligations to our substitute pool or tutoring pool the majority of the increase in this cost center has been textbooks instructional supplies and um servicing those highquality instructional materials and maintaining them in our district the cost center for the superintendent um we have an additional uh support admin staff who handles all of our FMLA workers compensation and supports the payroll department the 504 coordinator was made full-time and um while it was a stiffened position in the past no one would fill it and we have an obligation to meet the 504 needs according to law so we tried we worked with the union for many years tried to do stiens at grade level tried to do stiens for teachers we had some teachers try it and then gave up the stien because the work load is enormous and so we made made it a unit a position it's in the collective bargaining agreement and it is um definitely needed so that we are meeting our obligations under law the elll cost center increase you'll see is the additional elll teacher we need to support the districtwide needs that would bring our total districtwide of elll teachers to five and that cost Center also includes our two tutors that service students we have one Spanish tutor and one uh movan Russian tutor currently Athletics the cost center did not change um based on historical spending we feel as if that will cover what we need for athletics the nursing Services every school has a 1.0 full-time nurse plus we have a district nurse leader position that is is in that cost center as well the salary adjustments really were just based upon a different Personnel taking a position after someone had left admin technology our technology department unionized this year so now they work under collective bargaining agreement and the salary adjustments in this cost center are based upon the collective bargaining agreement that we have with their union now the cost center also provides funding for a 0.5 of our registar position special ed covers the other five of the registar um and you will see that um we have five Union employees in the it Union the 0.5 register salary a IT director and our network network manager in that cost center systemwide systemwide was really just uh a decrease we were trying to clean up munis Personnel control Ledger we move folks to where they should be because a lot of people are in the wrong spots but this also includes our director of Behavior Services this cost center also pays for our rental of the church parking lot for GMS so that we have the parking we need it also covers postage travel reimbursement for staff who travel between more than one building this cost center includes marketing newspaper ads when we need to run anything in the recorder supplies District wide Etc transportation we have 21 staff as well as a transportation coordinator 50% of the coordinator's position is paid out of gen the general budget 50% is paid out of special ed this cost center also includes mckenny vento and Charter School transportation as well as gas repairs of our vehicles we also chose to offset this fund with 400,000 from our transportation revolving this year so that we we could decrease the budget request special education increase um our outof district costs increase for students who attend outof District placements this cost center also includes salaries for our director our two assistant directors two administrative assistance and special ed and two educational team leaders those team leaders are part of the unit a collective bargaining um so while many of these folks sit at central office and are located there they are not central office salary employees they are simply housed there but they are part of the unit a collective bargaining our psychologists are at our central office our etls are at our central office as well as other folks that are in the unit a because that is where they have space to work so that is not simply 35 central office employees I just wanted to clarify that 504 service um 504 is not special ed many people confuse that and 504 does need a cost center to support any students 504 needs um such as tutoring or supplies for any supports that are put into a 504 plan for any reason um custodial and maintenance you will see that each of our custodians at the schools are in the schools cost center but we also have two maintenance workers along with a director of facility that are in this cost center we also want to say though that the increase in this cost Center is really about maintaining healthy and safe buildings a lot of our contracted service providers for you know checking up on certain things with regards to building maintenance have increased exponentially the Personnel cost center um some of this is really collective bargaining agreement issues that we have to fund so we have un and C course reimbursements per their contract that are in this cost center we have 403b costs that we have to cover longevity stiens for non- teers we also have professional development costs that admin assistants get according to their Union agreement so this cost center really covers all of those kind of odds and ends issues that are required contractually the school committee you'll see we decreased um we decreased some of the cost for the expenditure of our school committee secretary based on historical Trends and then this cost center also covers your mass dues as school committee members as well as your stiens and then last but not least is the business administration um there were some obvious Personnel changes this year and some of the salary adjustments were due to those Personnel changes and then there's the contracted service Prov provider for our current business manager in this cost center as well so through all of that is how we got to the 797 some of the highlights though are really maintaining and enhancing the programming at the middle and high school including Workforce Development opportunities at ghs financial literacy um keeping the alternative program Beacon at ghs and accessing foreign language at the middle school as well as highlighting the increase in music opportunities at both schools the increase and music opportunities at the elementary level the instrumental teacher remains as well as general music and our budget does account for half of the strings for kids coordinated program which is an outside entity but is uh $25,000 of our school budget to support that we also remain committed to the restorative practice work and the stiens that we have provided to have that work be fulfilled we have stiens for extracurricular clubs at ghs and GMS to get kids invested into more activities outside of what is currently offered and expand those options for our students and we remain committed to experiences we continue to fund field trip funding at all school so that kids have those experience and can go outside of the school building to learn we have a continued investment in high quality instructional materials they are costly it is a commitment we made but it is a commitment that we need to maintain we have um a skill Gap issue we have students underperforming they are entitled to grade level material in front of them they are entitled to grade level access and every student regardless of their abilities are entitled to this and in order to sustain that it costs money and we need to continue our commitment in all four subject areas so that our students get the education they deserve we need to continue the support of literacy as you'll see uh our tier 2 interventions and our tier one diagnostic assessments are part of the work that we're doing with the teaching lab part of the work you hear about in the assistant superintendence report at every school committee meeting and how we need to really identify those skill gaps and support those skill gaps so that they close quicker and our third graders move on being able to read we need a continued investment in professional development that's aligned with District initiatives we have to support our teachers and the work that's being done on the ground we have to continue to support our instructional leadership teams and the work that they're doing from the professional development in their faculty meetings and in their collaboration times so that we're constantly analyzing student data and finding out what kids need and addressing those needs continued investment in Staffing levels to maintain appropriate class sizes our average class size right now districtwide is relatively low at 18 removing teachers means collapse in classes which means increased class sizes um we also invest in administrative levels to maintain operations and accountability I hear often that we are topheavy we have mandates through desie through at least three arms of desie and we were chosen by a fourth this past week for civil rights and Mr messing knows who's with us this evening um to have administrative oversight this requires numerous numerous hours and effort based upon that our administrators at the building level have to perform and commit to educator evaluation over 50% of our staff currently are not pts which means they require at least four observations with feedback throughout the course of the year in addition they run faculty meetings they supervise and engage professional learning time they have the oversight of daily operations of the school lunch recess arrival dismissal they have to supervise and investigate all complaints bullying harassment or otherwise as well as try to continue to build culture and Community with families and parents I think that uh numerous teachers know that our administrators are working hard every day trying to support them and what they bring to the buildings that they serve we also have a continued investment in supporting the social and emotional learning of all of our students we have counselors that we've committed to maintaining at the levels we currently have along with rbts at our elementary to continue to assist with the behavior issues that they're seeing and then last um redistricting was really part of a lot of the shifts here with the change in the GMS schedule and the offer of more electives in the full year of science and social stud I a lot of that is incorporated into the 797 you see tonight a question that was posed was what did level service look like versus what does a needs-based budget that's presented and you will see that a level service budget is a difference of a $ 66,329 does have impacts anytime you reduce a teacher or a support staff um in the redistricting model in order to continue with redistricting those positions are needed and if we adopt level service those positions will have to be acquired somewhere else so we will have to make shifts and moves at other buildings in order to make that happen class sizes increase and class offer class offerings will decrease we could use some special ed contingency money for potential out of District placements but then we are also in need of having to potentially ask for additional funds if we need that funding at a later time and then tier 2 intervention supports that we've been talking about all year with regards to the core pass diagnostic test and possibly adopting Lexia to help with the skill Gap those are currently not allocated in the fy2 budget and would need to be covered in the FY 26 budget so I just took a line from policy dbd since um you know this was my first superintendent budget and um this line spoke to me that the superintendent is charged with making budget decisions that reflect the attitude and philosophy of those charged with the responsibility for educational decision making the need needs based budget or 7.97 increase allows the district to fund the staff curriculum instructional materials and programming that students of Greenfield deserve while also implementing redistricting and there's certainly our options the reality is you know a needs-based budget is based on our district prioritization plan with desie our strategic plan as well as our redistricting plan and you know we can consider options here and there but um with the policy in place for redistricting that is the proposal that is in front of you this evening and I just ended with you know thanking you for your support because our students really do deserve the best and I'm happy to answer questions along with Andy or Mr Sullivan thank you so much for the thorough presentation questions on the presentation I'm a good one so unfortunately the world is not um what I would call predictable right now for funding um so I have questions about different things but what if we had to wait another year for redistricting what would that save us really MoneyWise what would that save us I mean that the be the level service yes because everything would remain the same okay and that's every position is the same everybody is the same okay that's just taking out redistricting okay other questions member deneve I just wanted to thank you for the very thorough budget hearing this is the fourth one that I've been through and it is by far the most adjustable um but I did have a question um maybe I don't understand this the business administration cost center is more than the superintendent cost center in total and I was wondering could you explain why that would be the case there are more Personnel in that cost center so we have payroll our assistant business manager our accounts payable and our payroll assistant okay thank you any questions from anyone who hasn't asked yet I'm a good one so were we paying the collaborative for the beacon program yes so would we I mean so adding that Future Would it be additional funding or the coordinator position or both positions than what we were paying the collaborative it would be a potential half okay they were essentially subsidizing it so we had a cost per student and I think this year it was about 50 but uh unit a teaching staff to cover it would be more than 50 I think their B1 is 53 I'd have to pull up their contract but so it could be a wash depending on who you hire but it potentially will be a cost addition is that a program we could accept students from other districts not that I'm trying to make any money but I am and when I when I first created it with GCC that was the full intent was to try to have it become a program an alted program that would be Franklin County um and then it became a GCC program and they only ran it for ghs and then when it turned to a CES program they were going to expand it to Franklin County um but then they lost a lot of their funding as well so they cut that portion of their programming but I think potentially it could turn into that in the future I don't think I would propose that for next year when you have a first time ghs or GPS person running it okay Chads so this isn't a question it's a comment of something I found very very compelling was the move to full year instead of half year for science and social studies at the middle school I mean those are two incredibly important subjects science shows up on the mcast which our students still will be taking um I have a kid who's a nerd in both of those subjects and so I have personal stake at getting him more of those classes so that my two cents I do want to add level service would not provide for that may do you have a question oh your hands up yeah um yeah I have a I have a few questions go ahead them the first one is um first that was a great presentation thank you um I have our question about the out of District placements do we have the same number of students out of District placements as we did last year I have M I have Mr messing with me for confirmation so let me just get him up to the mike evening good evening uh a little bit more than that I mean in short similar so we're talking about for projected fly 26 at the time that this budget presentation was set forth we were looking at essentially 30 uh students placed and these are students that were also progr refunding um but what I would hope folks would keep in mind is for example last year right when we looked at the students that were reported like October 1st uh of this year we reported 29 students but actually looking at serving 44 separate students in that time so I would just caution us I mean in short we're talking about similar numbers of students the numbers are not drastically different but we want to also understand that those numbers are only so helpful because some of those students might be ATT ,000 tuition cost and another might be 156,000 for example but if so if the question is you know as compared to projections for when the fy2 budget came out as compared to when we are crafting the this iteration of the FY 26 budget uh pretty similar um when we're talking about es and flows and that becomes much more meaningful when we talk about the context of my desire and my full throated support for having a contingency you know nobody's trying to have extra funds but when we're talking about the EB and flow of those students for example even in the time since this budget was uh prepared and delivered we get notices that we are fiscally responsible for students uh in one form or fashion so um in short yes the numbers are similar in terms of uh particular out of District placements what is more nuanced is the cost of each of those placements uh not to mention the reasons for those placements for example you know referrals versus those things that are outside of our control uh thank you and are you a able to send us the ages of the students that we of the students that are going out of District in terms of I could send you the both separated out from three to five you know in terms of the younger students um as well as 6 through 21 and then I could certainly give the grade level bands of course if that's helpful in terms of trying to project out when students might age out um because the other thing that happens is especially with the highest cost centers some of these students that are in our residential centers for example if they age out um that has significant implications um and the one thing I would just take this opportunity to help folks keep in mind is that part of the other uh elements or components of the proposed budget related to District quality has an impact on our needs determination so our performance in District which impacts our maintenance of effort uh which is only relevant here because until our needs determination our performance with regard to students uh with disabilities in District improves in a couple meaningful ways and that's an interesting conversation on its own we are not able to take advantage of the exceptions for maintenance of effort which is to say we don't uh in other years we would get to spend less than we did last year if a student aged out if a student moved as long as we are in a needs assistance determination with regard to our district performance we can't use those exemptions um so again not to take up this time for that but it's related but absolutely I can send those in terms of U age level band and grades so I had a question about the what we said was a 1.5 million increase um the the office of I think it's student with disabilities I actually called on a couple of the schools they all can only go up [Music] 3.67% for the next school year so that the cost of out of District placement is going to be a million and a half extra is something that doesn't appear that that that that's going to happen um I noticed that you know what we've already paid for this year which is you know through February we've encumbered a lot more than than what we've already paid in out of District placement so I I actually wonder if it's going to be that much more where it can only go up that much yeah it's a a great point so for example we always want to be uh projecting out a higher cost than there it's always easy to pair back as opposed to that so we use a 5% expectation so when they just published the OSD number so it's the operational services division um that they set these rates for out of District uh programs and a couple of years ago it was double digits uh during Co it was it was asine so you're correct the 3.6% so we actually can reduce some of these numbers by the 1.4% difference um but then also when we look at that a family moved you know we talk about you know um the EB and Flow because a family is going to have moved prior to April 1 a 100,000 of that is no longer needed at this point right not that not that we don't need to account for the potential that somebody will move in um but again yes that's exactly point so reducing that 1.5 by the you know difference in the OSD cost and then accounting for some of the notifications for fiscal responsibility so in large part that's individuals moving in or in some cases uh like in one case for example if DCF terminates C parental custody fiscal responsibility reverts back to where the parents live so because the parent lived in Greenfield uh we assume some of that responsibility to the tune of you know 56,000 for example so there's a host of those um you know we talk about 114,000 that would be one we talk about funding in District programming and make sure we're robust in District you know being able to bring a student back in right uh increasingly because of the need at these out of District placements the value ad that they used to provide 15 years ago is being offset more and more by The increased level of need which is to say that these out of District programs are now only taking the highest need students districts are keeping more and more of those students and as a result being able to bring back a student you know reduces that and then we're talking about 1.3 and then we're talking about 1.2 and then we can account for some you know like the 700 in um in additional you know in the cost within that um but yeah certainly part of that is the OSD increase uh that was capped and those numbers came out after this iteration of the budget was um was developed and when the numbers are that big right that one that 1.4% is is significant and you know if the total spending has varied tremendously during the last several years other than that Co year yeah and I was actually doing some of that you know and again to speak to the piece about being topheavy like I would love to do more of that Trend work like as I was looking trying and identify some of the nuances like even looking back the last year before I came on 2223 trying to sense make of how some of the people Services budget tracking work Works were utilized but the current format is pretty similar so with regard to the idea that you know we we're topheavy I would just say I wish I had additional time to devote to that sort of things it's important right like fiscal responsibility is critical for sustainable um administration of a district uh I would say that I don't have as much time as I would like to do some of this work uh although there are particular deep Dives that I think will continue to do um and superintendent Pat no reference some of that work with the significant program uh program audits that we're doing uh and I think some of that will bear out for example with even um internal program evaluation right when we talk about evaluation on a couple of key metrics of our internal programs specifically how are substantially separate programs serving kids um what is the increased outcome for students uh if we're saying that a student who's substantially separately placed is going to at least be able to achieve at the same rate as their peers uh some of that but yes I would be very interested in engaging some of those deep Dives and I think there's a lot of that that would appropriate to partner with some folks um in terms of areas of mutual interest as we look back certainly before 2223 right so as you look back prior to FY 23 I think there's some real lessons to be gained for all the uh confounding variables for all the things that aren't relevant and that uh would obscure any insight from that I would say that there's enough to be derived from that and certainly it informs the these conversations that that uh type of thing even on a fiveyear uh would be would be worthwhile um and again I would love the I would love to be topheavy enough for me to have enough discretionary time and effort to do that thank you is there I just wanted to clarify something too regarding the 3.67% that is only for 766 approved programs so for those programs that are not 766 approved there is no cap so they can go the OSD the operational services division that's the office of school disabilities just to clarify mayor um they're the rate setting Agency for programs but it's only 766 approved programs so any program that we sent to that is not 766 approved the rates are set by those schools themselves and what does 766 six approved me sorry that's the special education law regarding placements yes thank you good one I guess I have two questions so and I don't know who this is for but do you know how many non 766 schools that are out of District that we are currently sending students to very few so for example we looked at one um that we had to look at um because other placements weren't appropriate for example if there are limiting factors for a student but in short like we try to keep it under two uh by and large because we have to have a rationale if we don't choose a 766 school there are very few instances where the circumstances would be such that there wouldn't be an appropriate 766 school okay um but uh one of them for example we have an interesting case there's a behavioral clinic that uh we utilize as an evaluatory placement because they're despite a student responding favorably to their time in that programming and the compatibility of that student's needs with the program delivered in that setting by way of them not having gone through the accreditation if you will you know to to be chapter 766 approved because it's a pretty heavy lift um it wouldn't be appropriate for us to place a student there so we have a situation where because the student student was not demonstrating fate there um we were able to access some of that under an evaluatory placement um but again that would be the type of thing where were we uh to be able to demonstrate the quantifiable progress that the student demonstrated that would be the type of rationale there and then I guess I've heard this conversation since mayor Martin was mayor um about special ed and the In-N-Outs of you know the kids moving into town and exactly so and every school district has money set aside for that child who may be around the corner because it is an a flux like situation that you live in so what is and every District does this so what is the you have circuit breaker you have reg regular I guess what I call it taxpayer money local money Mone local funding so what is the percentage that you're kind to hold on to because something may move into town what is that I mean it's honestly it's Community Based if there's some I've got clients that set 3% as the number I've got clients that will do like an average tuition amount but as far as circuit p goes you're only allowed to carry over your prior year receipt amount so that's kind of the threshold that if we were to have you know a move in that wasn't budgeted for we have two options we we can dig into the circuit breaker receipts that we have using more than what we want but then that just again kicks the can down the road as to having less available for the subsequent years's FY 27 and so on budget because you always want to keep a year in the re for the circuit breaker is statutorily allowed okay so we're keeping a Year's aside so you're basically keeping a Year's funding aside which is in a sense we're already planning on using that for 27 so it's all theoretically wor what it's already spoken for okay so that that explains some numbers because math teacher here is going wait a minute I'm seeing double things so because I do like I've lived this so and I wasn't quite sure if it was just setting aside funds so you're setting aside whatever circuit breaker gives you this year for next year correct so what we're budgeting for for 26 is based on what we received where it's using slightly more okay in 25 so what we're going to be getting in 26 is what we're going to be using for 27 so what was circuit breaker this year 1.6 1.4 1.4 says the 337,000 * 4 okay you're scaring me but that's okay sorry so and we're going up what was the increase one point 3.67% it's going up more the 3.67 is only the amount Associated to the placement it's you have to we're budgeting for the 3.67% plus our known placements plus a contingency factor in the local budget for FY 26 okay because the FY the amount that we're carrying over in circuit breaker we're already planning on using an FY 27 gotta so we' got in a sense I want to say quote unquote two contingencies but one of them potentially is going to if we decide to use I'm going to call it the FI 27 contingency that just makes f27 more difficult because we'd be using you know more than what we originally plan for hence budgeting for a contingency and a local appropriation for fi 26 I get it framed differently when I built this budget I baked in an unanticipated placement at the high school level an unanticipated placement at the middle school level two unanticipated placements at the elementary level and then three evaluatory placements which are are much smaller they're these uh several week um evaluatory placements at uh the student stabilization and diagnostic Center and those by comparison are like 15,000 a piece but baked into that because on balance that would account for the potential movein um whereas we have done a really uh sound job of trying to avoid unnecessary referrals there were some referrals over this past year for students that um it was inappropriate for us to have kept people did their due diligence to try and keep students in obviously budgetary pressures right that we don't ever talk about uh at multidisiplinary Team meetings but are the realityy um we had some referrals there but in terms of those when I built this budget uh the reason I had one at each level was really to ensure we were robust against move-ins because of the high Mobility um of some of these students and a reasonable person not that uh you know correlation is causation but there is some relationship between some of these highly mobile families and some families who have found their students placed uh here so again especially if we're talking about either Franklin County or if families are jumping between Hampshire and Frankin County uh over time there are a handful of communities that families that are accessible with the real estate market so my thinking was that by having the essentially four unanticipated placements plus the uh much smaller uh so 15,000 a piece for the three student stabilization Center placements that was a uh conservative approach such that we're not coming to this body to say you know we need more funds or conversely like when I was in Northampton their budget was Stark enough that we anytime there was an out of District referral there was a conversation about what the building principle was cutting to allow for that and that obviously has KnockOn effects that are really drastic so that's uh framed differently that's how I had baked in some of those um expected costs and just one of the questions that member Goodwin asked FY 25 circuit breaker projected reimbursement is 1,268 1851 to give you a comparison FY 24 was a $1,563 and4 so it's down by $200,000 that gives an idea as far as the I'm going to say the volatility of the ups and downs because then I also went and looked at the special ation tuition Trends um in fy20 it was $4.5 Million out of District placements with fy21 it was $ 4.18 million fy22 it went back up to $4.75 million FY 23 it was relatively stable at $4.6 million so hence the we'll say the rer coast of volatility of whether it's being fiscally assigned the responsibility of a student students moving in from out of state Etc all those things that come into play regarding the need to have contingency in addition to what it is we have for circuit breaker and the district itself reports the numbers correct to circuit breaker yes and to that point one of the things you talked about like process improvements one of the things that uh we had done even the last cycle was making sure that um State Wards were reported appropriately so the difference between getting a 70% reimbursement for a student who's above foundation so the way circuit breaker works is any amount more than four times you know the pure pupil expenditure so you know talk about like $52,000 for example you get reimbursed 70% if it's a state Ward for example somebody's in the custody of Department families for whom uh or we get 100% of that I bring that up because that has real impacts on how much you know being more effective you know are we leaving any money on the table as a result of our circuit breaker monitoring and um identification practices so you know making sure we can have confidence that of the circuit breaker monies we're receiving we are getting 100% of what we could have possibly gotten if that makes sense thank you other questions may you ra hand I have a couple more go ahead May um all the advice that I'm getting from the Department of Revenue and MMA is to be budgeting very very conservatively as we can't count on a lot of the grant money um do I guess this would be for Karen or could be for Karen and Andy whoever wants to take it um do you think it's wise for us to be doing the redistricting move this year that's one part and secondly have we thought at all of moving the um the preschool into one of the other elementary schools to be saving on a building and principal custodian so those are my two like like I think I just feel like we have to be thinking about how we're going to afford this so I'll whoever wants to take that sure um it is the school committee's perview right now to redistrict so I would deflect back to all of you that if you would like to change that vote that would have to be a school committee decision not a superintendent decision um as for AE and its move that has not been part of the conversation as long as I have been in central office administration so that would be a whole other conversation to be had to see if the space Etc would even be feasible and as to the conservative budgeting with the obviously the concerns of what we're hearing down in Washington I'll just say that the M Mass Association School Superintendent legislative committee has told us all to forense of purposes just sit tight and watch what's going on and be in touch with the house of Representatives representing the mass the massachusett delegation the Senate offices the governor's office Etc so um if you want to go strict numers wise if you look at the slide that uh regarding the federal grants if those were to go away the what would be available to us would be to completely exhaust any potential both current and future using current year receipts for current year expenditures which just again kicks the can down the road I'm going to say when you look at the way the federal grants are budgeted um as of right now um we are even though it's considered FY 25 grants that we're currently using the federal government set those in the prior year so they're in a sense a year and a rear so we I want to say being optimistic I understand lower KC conservative without any political connotations when we're coming to talk about budgeting is that it's a year away if you will the but as we know what's going on as I was reading the news who knows but at the same time we can't budget out of fear we just know that if the things are happening now if it were to hit the fan so to speak uh there are potential solutions for us and I also think back about 16 years ago I think it was under Governor Ramy when there were significant cuts the state stepped in and filled the Gap you know and so that's other things that are being discussed about the fact that as much as we're hearing about Revenue projection now this is just Andy putting on his financial prognostication hat um if you look at the quote unquote R day fund that the state has I think there's Potential from several funding options out there that could potentially cover any drastic draconian cuts that could be made at the federal government I'm going on quite honestly right now that I'm putting my faith in the mass Association School superintendent's legislative committee and saying right now it's monitoring at this point in time and seeing what's going on and taking the lead from the House of Representatives that represent the Massachusetts delegation as well as the Senate thank you Andy any other questions M seon hello um one I just wanted to take a moment to respond to that because you sort of put the ball back in our court if that's fine I I think it would be helpful to remind ourselves why we wanted to redistrict and we thought that it was in the best educational interests of our students to move them back into the buildings move fifth grade back into the elementary schools and eth grade back into the middle school and I don't see why we should postpone making the best choice for our students given that we don't know if the situation will be better in a year or two years so I think that we should just move forward with our plans now get it done and that way if it is even worse in the next few years then we will have already made the decision and our students will be where we at least think they should be based on our own judgment um so that's that's uh that's on that I did if if we could start if we get into some of the spreadsheet into some of the lines I would love to I just have questions um one of them is line 287 and this is in the very colorful spreadsheet um and this is the transportation contracted Services one I've got sort of two questions this is more educational or informational for me um one I'm noticing a pattern year to year where like in was that 22 21 goes it's goes from 672 down to $448,000 then back up to 609 then back down to$ 459 then back up to 607 and now we're going back down to 379 why is that what is that pattern representing is that like is there a reason for that and then the second question is I'm noticing that we're saving 38% of that budget it's a pretty sub substantial amount different what is the reason for that savings and can we expect that to continue into the future or are we going to have to put that back next year essentially so the 21 22 23 and 24 are just the local funds that's from the mun so we also fund the transportation from the revolving account for the fees that we charge um the reason why it is lower is if you look we are using that's what in the slide that Karen referred to as $400,000 coming out of the transportation revolving account account to offset the transportation program as to Future potential I mean it it it I I'll be the first to admit that when we came back into the district when I heard that the district was buying its Vans and running its own transportation I was quite honestly Dead Set against it but I say to some extent I've been proven wrong as to the revenue that it's been generating so it really is contingent on whether or not we can sustain that Revenue source for the future years so if you were to look at the the total transportation cost when you add the revolving accounts and other sources that we use sometimes in the past uh special education tuition covered part of the special education tuition transport special education Transportation so when you look at it it is more I'll say steady some of those years were also a tail end of the covid so we had less Riders less buses and then now with a new contract as well we had to go out to bid so it's a new year which resulted in a substantial increase so I would like to think that we could sustain the ability to use those funds from the Transportation revolving account but um we'll have to see thank you um I okay I've got a few other lines um and these are not the most fun to talk about but I need to ask these questions um line 308 this is part of I think the substantial reduction in the amount that the school committee is costing but I am curious if that is voluntary and how that will impact the ability for us to produce speedy and accurate minutes it's just based on Trends corly if you look at the Historical trends for what it is that has been spent it seems that it was a budget line that could afford to take a reduction okay so all right so it's more reflecting the actual great um line 318 that is a somewhat uh that is that is an ongoing discussion and I'm just curious about in either scenario of either continuing with a contracted service or bringing in an actual employee would that be roughly the same amount or would that substantially impact our budget at all you're on 318 I thought I was on 318 yes sorry I'm using my ruler wrong yes yes um well it was a posted position for up to 130,000 um and we have no updates on potential filling that position okay so tentative great so it could even save us $20,000 that'd be nice um great thank you um going back up a a little bit back up to 1678 and n one I I just wanted to and I hope you don't mind that I'm calling this out that there is a tiny reduction in your salary line and I just want wanted to appreciate that in order to be fiscally responsible um but I but I was curious about lines 168 and 169 what the differences between those positions are and why there's a 73% increase in line 168 what is that actually reflecting so the 504 coordinator is actually in that account which is a unit a okay um and potentially will be moved to the 50 for cost center at some point but that is where the position is held right now right um I think that all of my other questions were answered during the presentation so that's what I've got for now thank you okay been the good one and then the mayor if you had defined the 6 six can't remember the exact number $1,000 what would you eliminate well we certainly would have to meet with building Administration I wouldn't want to make that decision solo today so that certainly would be a conversation we would have with department heads and building Administration [Music] so I wanted to go back to Transportation contracted services and I just wanted to talk about the um Capital policy and green Vehicles we just purchased in of the last warrant um another uh for $97,900 [Music] micro bird bus and also in this fiscal year although I thought it was in last fiscal year out of that same line item um to CH the Voyager van [Music] and I think that they they need to go through the capital project and they need to be see whether they're green vehicles or not and I just wanted to call that out the the the on for 97,000 was just on the February 11th warrant and we the city overall is trying to have a vehicle plan and policy that is green and and Earth friendly so every vehicle that we're going to purchase we have them go through Capital planning we sat with Carol Collins and Paul L the um you know who's our lead mechanic to go through whether they were uh actually we can lose our green vehicles our Green community status over purchases it's not just this department but we look at all of them so go ahead I think Andy was starting to say something so the school uh every veh been purchased we are aware of the school and City's Green community uh initiatives regarding the vehicles and they have I mean we we actually sent this the stickers for the vehle purchase to Carol Collins I believe Teresa Martinez did to show that it they are in compliance with the city's Green community initiative regarding the purchases of them two of the vehicles were taken off by the DPW because they were deemed unridable and so that was going to significantly impact the ability for the transportation to actually occur last year so the district had the funds available we went through the state procurement process because it is a state bid for these vehicles and it was done out of the need to have the vehicles that we could do to to operate our transportation program all with in compliance with the city's green initiative I did just meet with our energy director today and she was not aware of those purchases until I told her however I don't know I can tell you that communication was made because we were made aware we knew of obviously the Green community initiative and the need for the vehicles to be green in accordance with the city's policy and we adhere to that so I'm just going to say this going forward there's there's we we have always from this day forward I'll just say that um and I think if we we make a real big effort especially on the vehicles from this day forward if we can work together to make sure that we're purchasing them in a in a way that makes sense with our Earth any other questions oh if I just clarify regarding that 97,000 that was a prior year open po so it's not coming out of f25 so it's not we we it was even though it was processed on the February warrant the funds were committed as far as encumbered the order was placed in FY 24 so if you look at the detail of the warrant the purchase order number is a 2024 p just a point of clarification there's no so any other questions a good one everything in here is you know close to my heart I number one for me the priority has been throughout my career when I've faced cuts and I have faced hard cuts um throughout my career one year I was asked to cut 20 teachers um and is teachers and IAS in front of children that is my priority because that is what it's about and then my second priority is making sure that there are reading specialists in every school to help the children who will struggle in Reading because 95% of kids will learn to read despite what we do to them this is a direct quote and then 3% will learn with a systematic research-based instructional approach and then 2% will struggle without reading specialists in our buildings they face a struggle which they shouldn't face alone so I I'm totally committed to that so when I look at this and yes we all want to go ahead with making the shift I mean I was on the star committee and we wanted our K5 elementary schools every Thursday of my life I sat in those meetings so one of the things I was trying to do as an administrator I've been a principal of 600 I've been a principal of 800 and then I was became a principal in Greenfield is and at that time there was a formula that if there were 300 kids in a building that meant you got a vice principal when I went to 800 students in a building that meant I got two vice principal schol right now Staffing wise at the high school and the middle school we've added guidance counselors which I think we all agree after the pandemic we needed more guidance counselors but we have a declining enrollment we have less children in our buildings and our Administration has grown so I guess you know I'm not going to be popular tonight that's clear because I will fight for what the kids need um and that's good quality teachers and Pars in front of them and I believe in the materials and we've lost all these funds so I'm going to actually I don't know if I'm allowed to make a motion right now we're on questions right now but there will be a chance to make motions guess okay so if you look at your administrative um staff and the number of children in each building you need to to look at the ratio of children to staff um and I think that's in the 504 coordinator position years ago all the 504s were handled by guidance counselors along with Medicare reimbursements which was was really a problem and that's when we had one guidance counselor in each Elementary School um and so 504 that job went from the principls are going to do it to a guidance counselor is going to do it and now you have a full-time administrator so I think there's just some choices we have to make for the kids who are in those classrooms and thank you for um the information I wasn't sure how many first grade teachers we had how many second grade teachers we have so we're down to two of everything and at work can I just clarify to the fedal cordinator is not an administrative position it's a un day collective bargaining position good that's better okay any other questions remember Martini sorry you know I have a lot so I try to let everybody else go first um I wanted to I'm always trying to keep in mind folks who are watching who are not familiar with all of the acronyms and lingo that get thrown around in a school committee meeting and there's something certainly mean a lot of that tonight um so uh I have a f just um kind of definitional questions um superintendent if you could give um those who are unfamiliar with school funding and the changes that have occurred over the past few years could you please explain uh for someone who is not normally a part of this world uh a very brief nutshell of what uh Esser was and why we don't have it anymore I had to go back in my mind about that every student succeeds at yes so we had after covid sr1 came out initially and then the feds provided s yes yes um and then we no longer have any Esser Grant funds but Essa is every student needs act which is our Title One funding title two and title four sorry my I know yeah Elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund sorry to it is alphabet Su okay um I wondered uh there was a little bit of discussion about this earlier um uh when the special education director was answering questions um for the mayor but um I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who um might have been confused by um the discussion about how out of District special education tuitions at state approved schools are set and Andy I know you have a an excellent little nutshell about that so I was hoping you could just explain it to people you gave us a really good one at our most recent budget and finance um meeting so to go first or no I just I just wondered could you explain for folks how those do we set those tuitions does somebody else set them who sets them how do they get set what happened last year so that's back to the rate setting agency the operational services division set the rates for next year with a 3.67% increase so for as Mr Ming said that most of our students go to that those programs I was just bringing up again for clarification purposes that there are programs that are not 766 approved programs that we are you know if we were to be sending any students to them we're not beholding to the 3.67% um and can you explain what chapter 766 is that's the special education legislation thank you okay um I wanted to just add to that if anyone would like to know more um about Greenfield special education services types of placements Etc including the grade level information that the mayor was looking for I would just encourage them to watch the present presentation that was provided by Mr messing a couple of months ago um at a school committee meeting and I believe those materials are posted online still um so that would be an easy look back um okay we already talked quite a bit about Transportation so I'm going to skip that bit for everyone um could you please um superintendent provide some detail for folks who um were have not had the opportunity to watch previous meetings where this has been discussed um could you just provide some detail about how the district's recently adopted high quality instructional materials are improvements for the district over what was or wasn't in place before sure um when I first came on as assistant superintendent the first thing I was charged with was uh analyzing districtwide curriculum at every grade level seeing what each school was using or not using and seeing if it was aligned with grade level standards and uh what was revealed is that it was a nishmas Haj podge of uh different teachers using Teachers Pay Teachers materials some schools having some high quality instructional materials but only for some teachers some not having access to any of the above so part of our turnaround work with the Department of Ed and our Statewide system of support um we were charged with adopting high quality instructional materials because we were cited for not providing grade level content that was accessible for all of our students special ed elll and Jen Jen Ed and um our first grant uh covered the adoption of our Ela curriculum K through 7 additionally um during Co the middle school had done a high quality math adoption um and had worked on adopting Illustrated math um the elementary school did not use illustrative and we were working to align Eureka Math for all of our elementary which is also considered high quality um they are rated on Cur rate on des's website so you have to have a meeting of green ratings to make sure you can adopt them under the grants that we initially received we've further worked to get illustrative math um not only 67 but also through geometry at the high school which was last year's adoption we've also adopted opai Ed which is helping our science teachers and that's grade six Through Chemistry along with the middle school has adopted investigating history all of these are in line with our mandates under our desie over oversite and are um continually observed analyzed and we've had desie site visits um that they do come to ensure that our students have access to highquality instructional materials that teachers are delivering that curriculum and that we are accountable for reporting out the progress that's being made with those materials so what would happen if the district to suddenly drop its commitment to all of those materials I could not predict but I could at least guess that um we would be cited Again by desie we have two schools currently in turnaround our high school is in turnaround and they have um we are going to an instruction prioritization Institute next week because they would like to see Ela high quality instructional materials at our high school because of the student progress reports that we have with our underperforming groups um I think it would be very unfair to our student body to pull the rug on what is actually showing progress and albeit slow and steady progress it is certainly something that in the adoption of these materials they say you need a five-year window to at least see the effects of the great work that can happen with kids so it definitely would not be um welcomed not to be able to offer these students what they deserve thanks um and I know you explained this but can you just explain it again because I um I think it gets lost for folks sometimes um can you just explain the shift from grant funding to local funding for those materials to keep them going sure um desie is wonderful about providing grant opportunities for the initial roll out in many of the initiatives that they project upon districts especially those districts that are underperforming so usually in year one they give you a uh a nice chunk of change to do the implementation process and adopt the materials in year two they usually give you a a nickel to continue maybe some professional development but that does not actually afford the curriculum materials so we were fortunate enough to be able to use um that emergency funds in Esser for the last few years but uh K through 7even and now along with the high school math materials the costs are exponential to uphold the materials that are needed for students to have access to it and the shift had to be made to the local because there are no grant opportunities currently right now however we look every week to see if there are grant opportunities that might offset some of those materials but we just have not um seen any come out yet okay thank you and and maintaining these high quality instructional materials is one of the pieces of feedback that budget and finance received during our listening sessions this past fall um from stakeholders so I'm very glad to see that represented as a top priority in this budget um I'm I'm even more glad to see the pursuit of um improved tier two and three interventions and assessments um and uh I wondered if you could please explain for those who are unfamiliar with those terms um briefly what do those tiers mean what are tiers one two and three and um can you explain what investment in uh new interventions or improved interventions and assessment will do for our students in that context I can take that one so I think part of well tier one would be essentially if you're thinking of a classroom would be the whole class tier two is a smaller group of students who may have a specific need they might share that need that you can do that in the general Leed classroom tier three is more specific and targeted need for individuals or small groups of students um I think what these assessments do is allow us to hone in a little bit more specific speically to have more of a focus on what the individual student needs are that allows teachers to one know exactly what that need is specifically um if you struggle with decoding or you struggle with long vowels or short vowels these assessments get down to that level of detail that way the teacher in the classroom knows each individual student's needs and can work on that in both their tier one instruction and Target those U needs in tier two instruction um I think there was a second part to your question uh well I wanted to know um if you could explain you know what what will these assessments do for our students are are they going to get them intervention sooner are they going to get them more accurate intervention what's the yeah I I think it also means that not everything is going to happen in a tier two or tier three inter intervention I think some of this happens in the full group at tier one because now the teacher is equipped with more information about those individual students in the past and even currently we have dible scores we have nwaa assessments so teachers are getting an idea of the student is struggling but what their specific needs are may not always be identifiable the these diagnostic assessments allow them to hone in um a little bit more deeply like I said concidence long vowels the r the r sound um certain specific skills and then we're also looking at intervention resources that can support teachers in targeting those skills specifically but also in their tier one instruction so um correct me if I'm wrong what you're saying is the uh first goal here is to address needs in tier one and prevent the need for students going into intensive interventions absolutely I think we we're looking at all our grads but looking specifically at Early Education to make sure students have the skills to be strong readers by grade three I think all the research says that that is the time that students need to develop those skills and we're seeing Nationwide about 67% of students are below uh read below grade level and uh in Greenfield we mimic that Trend um it's actually a little bit higher based on some of our um assessments closer to 70% especially for certain groups of students in greenfields um such as the students with disabilities that we were talking a lot about earlier absolutely yeah um so if we're not serving those students well in District where are they going rhetorical question they're going out um so accepting that we hopefully reduce the need for so much intervention um we do need high quality interventions so um could you talk a little bit about what um is being considered for investment in terms of those tiar two and three interventions sure so Al Lexia is a is a um Intervention Program that some schools in the district some classrooms in the district have had before but it wasn't Universal um youly is another early literacy support hegerty um and they allow teachers to focus on different skills for different students if the challenge is um phic awareness or phonic they have supports for that if it is um I'm sorry core core and pass are the diagnostic assessments and then the uly and Lexia allow for some of that tier 2 intervention so Lexi is a computer-based program that teachers could have students working on personalized lessons while they're working on a specific skill based on the diagnostic assessments with either individual or small groups of students thanks um and what problems would you anticipate would continue to occur if the district is not um invest in these assessments and uh intervention tools I think that leaves our teachers and ultimately our students in a more challenging position because teachers don't have the specific in inform information about individual student needs so they're going wider than they might be going deeper at that point thanks um could you I think maybe this one's for actually I'm not sure which of you this is for U but could you provide some detail about how elevation Works um and why it's important for our English Learners as well as their General and special education teachers who are not their El teacher absolutely so uh one of the main things that came out of the tiered Focus monitoring audit that was done in 2223 just became a just before I came on board last year was that our ESL program was in need of a pretty drastic overhaul at the same time there was some updates in expectations of how districts were monitoring so uh elevation allows us to do a couple of things um right now we're moving forward with the form solution which essentially allows us to digitize the experience and data points related to each of the L's and monitor in real time so for me the selling point the differen being just one more shiny digital platform and something that actually was a lever to improve outcomes to to leverage technology to improve these outcomes was our ability to progress monitor students in real time specifically if an English learner for all English Learners people may be familiar there's access testing in February which is a standardized assessment that measures them across four domains so listening speaking reading right independent of the fact that it's not doesn't provide timely feedback because we don't get it until later in the year and we need to have more uh quick feedback to make instructional planning decisions in the order of weeks not months one of the things that um happens is the state sets Benchmark targets for English Learners so if you are an English learner uh and essentially they can be at level one through essentially five but they expect most students to be exited if they're above 4.2 so in the district we see level ones which the beginners we see level twos threes and fours which are emerging bridging they set targets based on your access performance which is to say if you score at a certain place or at a certain level at the access testing in the January to February testing window the department of Ed would expect you to reach a certain Benchmark if a student doesn't hit that Benchmark Target the state is now which is different from a couple years ago expecting us to meet individually and have individual Student Success plans U because with what gets monitored get measured gets monitored so what they're thinking is is that if we are focused on all these students that don't meet those targets and we have increased expectations for Progress monitoring specifically no less than three times a year um and this is with a team this is with parents this is with staff this is with Administration being able to identify you know what it is that we're doing very similar to the tier 2 and tier three conversations about how we're changing the kids experience to improve those outcomes um one of the things that we're not able to do in an analy experience now is keep up with that in real time so again when we talk about adding a fifth position when we talk about the current experience of of English as a second language teacher there's it's not sustainable it's not tenable to expect our teachers they're doing a bang-up job you know the the teacher Fran Ortiz at the high school is really in an impossible position trying to navigate 43 of these individual plans right you could almost do nothing else you know we talk about the ways Administration can support that work in terms of helping offset that load we couldn't do it with pen and paper just trying to do it manually so it's really a force multiplier in one way just with the individual Student Success plans for Learners having it um in a clear place that's accessible to all people in real time all stakeholders that are working with the student it uh reduces drastically the time that a teacher is spending on the bureaucratic side of it the paperwork stuff and that to to remember good ones Point allows them to be in front of kids and focused on instruction and planning on instruction data analysis we talk about making sure that uh English as a second language teachers are available for collaborative planning with their General Ed colleagues because a lot of this work happens in the General Ed setting it doesn't just happen during the 60 or 90 minutes that a student is receiv receiving ESL so one of the main things that I felt that elevation did for us was a force multiplier in terms of the progress monitoring for students in real time uh especially when we think of it being coupled with the test of language learning which is a a progress monitoring tool that we use that mimics access that is provided four times a year that allows us to have more timely uh results that we can then take action on so the main thing that it does is digitize and reduce the time and labor it takes not only to be compliant right everybody you know cares about compliance you know we obviously want to be compliant with the state to make sure that the department uh isn't putting um Draconian restrictions on us but more than that we care about outcomes for kids so for me moving forward with the forms solution from elevation allows us to reduce the time that the average English as a second language teacher is spending on paperwork it also reduces the likelihood if we were to suffer attrition for anyway that anything gets lost um for example you know you have me Robinson who's splitting between Federal Street and Newton she does a great job of making sure that the central office files for English Learners is kept in sync so when we talk about for example our experience experience in the last year and a half with all the families uh who were English as a second language families of students English as a second langage that were supported by the shelter site the significant amount of testing and uh transience you know Mobility that those students experienced she did a great job trying to keep the central office fold files synced being able to take that away and not be Reliant such that all of those materials are within Arms Reach for anybody not having to go back to you know a file room at central office being able to utilize in real time the secondary and tertiary benefits of of reducing that the state reporting aspect is isn't aside but really it allows for individuals at either the classroom level the grade level in the middle school for example the team level um certainly the district level to have conversations about how a student is doing in real time at any point in the year what is currently in place to scaffold for them them if we think that their performance is a byproduct of the experience they're having so if it's lacking in one thing or another specifically if there a part of their day that we are not taking advantage of that we should um and allows us to make instructional planning decisions more effectively it also allows for us to review the uh timeline of that students experience for the time we had them in District to be able to look back was something missed in a way that we couldn't do now or would be um uh time or labor prohibitive if if you were to go for example and pull out a students manila folder and try to manually go through all the years of of paperwork and try and connect the dots you can imagine how challenging that would be having it there having it synced in real time to power school now for example that the ccla for example K through R has in power school grade level assessments being able to draw that that syncs every night is just a really taking advantage of technology to reduce the time that teacher there uh what I hope to do in the future uh as we are able to find efficiencies elsewhere is there's a strategy solution um which allows for even more professional development with General Educators with regard to the other key point in terms of um reducing the time that uh English and second language teachers are spending on the paperwork and increasing the progress monitoring um and instructional decision-making capacity is being able to share with General Educators so that is to say a Content area a teacher uh a grade level teacher at the elementary and be able to communicate with that teacher in real time about what a student who is an uh speaker of another language can do um and conveniently they're called can do descriptors so rather than having a deficit mindset and saying oh this is a a student who's U non-native English speaker you know they can't do this they can't do that helping the average General educator understand okay a student is at a level two in speaking what does that actually mean for their ability what does that mean for what they're I can expect should expect from them in my class and how I can make instructional decision-making to scaffold my class what types of things can I do as a general educator to help that student both access the curriculum more consistently and experience faster growth uh it just want to check and see whether your's question was answered yet one the Martin yeah I I um I was really struck by the level of um enthusiasm of uh one of our El teachers uh when I attended elpac to gather feedback there about um how this is going to enable her to integrate what she was doing with her students content Area Teachers and I think you elucidated that really well so thank you so much um let's see um superintendent could you detail or or maybe this is really assistant superintendent could you detail some of the professional development that is identified for the coming year it's it's in this presentation several times but I was hoping you could share a little bit of detail about what that um is going to look like based on the needs yeah so the professional development is Guided by the the assessments that were receiving by feedback that we're receiving from teachers um a lot of it is focused on current in this current year has been on the implementation and the current the implementation of the curriculum materials and our priority Focus instructional strategies um which we want to have more student student centered classrooms more building thinking classrooms so that students are doing the really the heavy lifting and teachers are facilitating conversations teachers are facilitating work and then this is connected to real world and relevant um relevant actions that are connected to the standards and I think a lot of the work has been focused on how we're making those connections to the standards are we at grade level I think the superintendent said earlier that prior to high quality instruction materials meeting district there was a wide variety of um things happening in individual classrooms and now that we have highquality instruction materials that are evidence-based we know that they're at the level and I think we want to support teachers in making sure that we're maintaining that level and not saying like all right we're going to bring it down because a student similar to what Mr messing just said we're going to bring it down so the students can access it how are we supporting them so that they can move up and uh meet those grade level standards or access that grade level content okay um one of the other things that is um clearly represented here is the high volume of stakeholder input that we received this fall um asking for increased and improved restorative practices um in preventing and resolving conflicts and responding to behavior so I wondered um can you explain what objectives the districtwide planning committee mentioned will be working on yes so our director of Behavior Services uh recently convened the teams so it consists of uh Unit A and Unit C members across the district across grade levels um they have a schedule that's set up and they'll be working with the collaborative for Educational Services Sapphire and Tom will be joining their meetings to really map out the um we call this year zero so that they can do a lot of the planning and um thoughtful steps that need to be taken in order to have restorative practices and GR Tred in the district um one of the things that we've talked about and I'm not sure if this will come to fruition is really just focusing on a pilot school for next year and who would potentially pilot um the work that needs to be done and then our teaching staff or Unit C staff that are members of this committee could be kind of trained by the trainers and then become District Trainers for the years moving forward um we're really excited because the collaborative is also working with with our administrative team already we have a meeting on Thursday with our whole admin staff um to really launch this work districtwide we're not asking um staff to do anything that we don't believe the administration should participate in as well um we've talked about this for many years in District and I've I've been part of the launch at the high school and part of the initiative and where it's taken off and where it's ingrained and it can't be a oneperson show it has to become part of the culture and a lot of that work is just timely it takes effort in input and practice and um as we grow into that we hope over the course of a three to fiveyear plan that prek-8 through 12 that is what this district is okay um what would it cost to hire a full-time position responsible for this um rather than a group of stipended positions and do you think these objectives can be achieved with just stiens so we want staff and teacher input because the buyin needs to happen because at that level it really needs to be part of the work that they do um with students with their building administrators with their own counselors um we have the director of behavior services and we've kind of dawned it as part of that job description even though it's technically not in that job description because of the social and emotional work that um is part of this person's background and part of the leadership that um she has done in the past that can really guide this work moving forward for the district so um outside of an actual additional position I think the investment is really in high quality professional development where folks learn how to hold circles how to be restorative how to um talk about the harm that they've either done or have been done to them and how to solve that so I think it's really key that the professional development is there at the get-go and not so much another person in District thank you that answers my next question already about what advantages to Distributing that responsibility um do you have a sense of whether there are enough staff who are interested in taking on that additional role in the stipended positions yes the committee is full they're very excited to do this work okay um great I uh I wondered if you could outline for folks when you were assistant superintendent of teaching and learning um how did you then spearhead the um District's strategic development in terms of high quality instructional materials related professional development and also um in terms of starting a multi-year plan for developing restorative practices and would you be able to carry that out now um essentially performing both roles if you were superintendent and doing your former role at the same time and if not why not big question sorry that's a huge question and uh no um I think many people misinterpret the role of an assistant superintendent as being an admin assistant to the superintendent and that is clearly not what the job is the professional development um alone the monitoring of uh student data the planning of professional learning and collaboration time for our teachers in the assistant superintendence role is very time consuming and uh a job in and of itself so I would not be able to tackle both roles um being both my previous self and my current self would be uh untenable actually I do think however though that um the commitment to it is what is intense with the time involved in those positions and I think that's what folks forget is that there has to be a monitoring there has to be an analysis of that data there has to be follow up with building leadership there has to be continual observations there has to be continual feedback provided so that there's a cycle in place and that is not something that is a oneandone um I've been in the district a long time I've seen a lot of one andone initiatives and it's easy to roll P something out and then simply forget about it because you get consumed by other tasks in your day and that is not something uh we want to have happen because we are seeing the effect it's having on student progress okay we are um past our 8:31 I'm wondering if you have how many more questions you have I will'll keep it to one uh look into the future how does improving all these things that we've just talked about our instructional resources assessments interventions and professional development that is to say improving instruction affect student Behavior student attendance long-term outcomes for students and our Educators experience well I hope it's a a positive trend moving forward for all parties involved but I think ultimately um schools are the foundation of why people come to communities I think when you have families that are looking to move into a town one of the first things that they look at is how is the school district what's the school district like how is the school district performing and I think it's very important to remember that all of these things are necessary to improve student progress here in Greenfield so that our schools are not in turnaround so that our students students are not underperforming so that they are allowed success and have a bright future where they can have a sustainable job and live in this community get back to this community and be part of a community so I think it's very important that we remember all of these things are working for the best interest of our students um while I know that some of these initiatives are a heavy lift for our teaching staff I have to commend them 150% because they work harder than any other bunch I've ever met and I give them credit every day for all of the hard work that they do all that they tackle I think we still do have some behavioral issues that um we need to address and the support staff that are there to help with them is pivotal to having all of our students be able to access the curriculum and be in a gened classroom so that they are offered the same opportunities as every other student I see a question from seon are there other questions there are should we do a five minute break and come back to finish those is that okay there's plenty of time if people want to ask questions absolutely I just wanted to make sure we get in our break so um we will take a five minute break um it's 8:39 my clock now we will resume at 8:45 as the clock turns to 8:45 [Music] a n [Music] n [Music] welcome back we're on the question section of our budget hearing member Martini do you have any more questions I I took up a lot of time so if somebody else has questions but all right we have to member St I want to give member Charles a chance to ask a question because I'm not sure she has yet remember child I just had a comment not a question earlier so my question is so we already know my thought on how full year science and also social studies are important but in terms of those positions would it be logistically possible even to continue having the sixth and seventh graders with half year for that in order to maintain the Staffing level instead of adding in those extra positions is that something that could even feasibly work in the schedule or because of prep time contracts it would definitely need to be uh remapped out with the Middle School principal because the current configuration and schedule that we have for the Middle School relies on those positions and the current Middle School SE schedule that they have doesn't have those positions so we would have to either create schedule number three and what that would look like and then how that would actually affect coverage under the collective bargaining agreements seon I mostly am wanting I have there's probably a question in here somewhere but I'm also wanting to externalize my thinking for anyone who's following along at home um or might view this later but something um Mr messing mentioned that sparked a train of thought in my brain about the families that we have had um living in the emergency shelter and and coming to our school schools in past meetings you have reflected that some of those families have in fact found permanent housing which we celebrate not in our district and so a person could Wonder then is our total number of students receiving elll Services going down that's a question that you could answer but noticing that our elll services number is actually going up somebody might think that there's a mismatch I'm wondering is my my thinking on that in trying to answer my own question without asking of you is that that actually represents one getting all of the students that we still do have access to services that they maybe weren't previously getting or getting them a higher quality of service than they weren't previously getting perhaps um or just like volume of it as well as like maybe it is not true that our El students population is declining so could you respond to that and Dave can verify all of this but I'll try to start the answer though um eell services are based on the level that the student is identify that so you need more services as a level one than you do a level five um with regards to our decrease in numbers I'm not sure we decreased exponentially we still have quite a few uh identified I think it's 10 two I was going to guess at my last conversation with you but it could have switched and changed um but it is also providing the services based upon the level that they're identified at and that is the need that we have currently in District yeah and that's and that's exactly it so even with the the families the vast majority of families have already been rehoused a couple of families did find alternative housing in U in District but when we think about the numbers even when we account for all the families that we were previously serving you know we think about a high we were like up north of 12 three and now we're hovering around 100 plus or minus depending on the point of the year but still to speak to superintendent P's Point like for example newcomer students that require significant portions of their day um like one of the things that the state is asking us to do you know there's a conversation about high quality instructional materials is improve our newcomer curriculum our s curriculum students with li formal education so that's exactly it so it's not just the number of students um but it's the amount of time that they need so with that span I referenced a teacher being split across two buildings being able to ensure that as potential increases there come back that's manageable we aren't currently doing a good enough job for our youngest Learners specifically like we're flirting with non-compliance at a preschool level difference between MTH state law and federal state law there but even as we think about the high school when we're talking about even with the the district's significant focus on development of early literacy and our K through four folks making sure that we're not leaving you know kids that are currently in Middle a high school U behind it is untenable to think about a case load you know of 35 to be able to provide meaningful instruction that's even before we talk about for an English as the second language teacher specifically but that's even before we talk about all the other work in terms of ensuring access you know inclusive opportun all that just purely getting students instructional experiences that can be reasonably expected to result in gains requires that even once we account for that thank you any other [Music] questions have a good one so my heart is breaking because 70% of the kids are not reading at Great level so I guess I'm just questioning why there aren't more requests for reading specialists at all the schools because to me that is a civil right that has gone un mandated and unfunded in our country that everybody has the right to learn to read and so I'm concerned you know everything here is important but to me that is a I know that districts have bitten a bullet and put more reading specialists in especially in elementary schools to to lower their special ed numbers because the number one reason that children get referred to special ed is because they have a reading difficulty so if we want our special ed numbers to go down um and one piece of information that maybe listeners don't know or parents don't know is special ed teachers are not reading Specialists they are trained in special ed and the children of our district need reading Specialists um special ed is when we're looking at accommodations but not direct reading instruction and so the more reading Specialists we have at our elementary schools the better we will service our youngest students and we will lower your numbers um and that is a goal because financially it pays for itself in the long run um and at the age of five they know that they are struggling to read it used to be the Red Birds the blue birds and all of that good stuff but children can tell you at the age of five that they other people are reading before them so I guess I'm questioning and I know you were trying to keep it down but what do you identify in here as something that's going to help our elementary schools get more of our children reading the high quality materials I got that but what else is in there that would do that after the adoption of all these high quality instruction materials we don't have a tier two problem we have a tier one problem and that's the the problem that people don't identify so so reading Specialists would identify a tier two or a tier three problem and when we have looked at all of the data and analyzed all of that we have a tier one problem and we had an inverted triangle when I came on as assistant superintendent we were intervening for 80% of our population and intervention should not be for 80% of your students so the high quality instructional materials require a certain amount of time for delivery so we have intervention built into our elementary schedules specifically for not only pullout Services by The Hired reading Specialists that each building has but then a lot for the intervention time in supporting our tier one teachers and being able to to apply in time interventions based upon the diagnostic test that we actually are adopting I don't think it's necessarily another person we need we need to strengthen our tier one instruction and learn how to analyze our data and analyze student skill gaps so that's what we're really focusing with the core and pass and then adopting Lexia and youly so that tier one can be strengthened and then tier two really becomes a true pullout of your 10 to 15% of kids that need it so do you still have have data meetings with we do and we have them as a district we have them as building leaders we have them at instructional leadership teams we're now doing it in professional learning time and we're identifying our three subgroups that are underperforming in those data meetings so we have um really taken on that task this year and what that data says to us is tier one needs to be strengthened so teachers know how to actually assist those performing kids that are in front of them and lessen or tier two pull out interventions from a reading specialist but that also means that people have to understand uh the science of reading and how kids learn how to read so we've upped our ATI and professional development and helping teachers in the tier one level identify how to actually be reading teachers without being reading specialists 19 I just had a comment that fits in well with this discussion um and um and I really love watching someone talk about something that is their passion like that so um that was um that was delightful um but I just wanted to add to the discussion about whether uh or not to proceed with full year science and social studies um at the middle school because this does pertain to our reading achievement problem in Greenfield um raising raising reading achievement in a district that fits squarely within the national quiet literacy crisis has been going on for a long time where two-thirds of our students are not making it um to grade level proficiency is such a multi-faceted project um it's never one thing and it's never even several things I mean there are so many parts of that um and I think that this um issue of full year science and social studies is one of those many parts for us um because we talk a lot about um helping our youngest students to master foundational skills and I'm really excited that we're talking about that because there have been some serious gaps um in terms of developing uh phic awareness and decoding skills and fluency um for our students and also uh it's important that we um don't forget that background knowledge and vocabulary are essential to comprehension uh those three other things that I just said constitute the other essential components of reading instruction and I don't know how we're providing adequate back background knowledge and vocabulary to our students particularly our middle school students who are struggling some of the hardest academically um in the district if we're not providing them full year science and full year social studies um especially as those are um content area domains that have very specific vocabulary uh in them and uh if we want to improve our students literacy and therefore their academic uh achievement overall we have to do this and I also um just want to say I agree with member seon's comment from earlier um I don't want to wait to make this shift in terms of redistricting which also then necessitates um this change to uh instruction at the middle school to next year the year after that waiting to see whether or not we might lose all of our Federal grant funding uh that year or the next year I would like to have this done now U so that we have our established um field so to speak before any such changes will uh potentially come down the pike so other questions um I guess I have a question um and I guess it refers to some of the budget vocabulary so I'll try to do my best to explain what my question is and maybe Andrew you can help um if I if I get this wrong but we talk about revolving funds we're talking about special accounts that let us essentially carry money over from one year to the next and sometimes it can be there as kind of like an emergency um piece and we're saying okay transportation is something where we want to draw from some of those funds this year for this budget or next but's being recommended by this superintendent I'm just wondering if you could give us kind of a overview of how our revolving accounts are doing overall I know in Prior years we had been getting kind of close to the edge in terms of using some of those up and how are we in terms of the healthfulness and their recommendations of where those accounts should be and where they are sure again as to the the definition of where they should be and where they are is kind of a a value what does the communities feel as I said I have one client who has an agreement with the the town that their total just because in a similar way that free cash can only be 5% of a a community's uh budget they use that as a dollar uh threshold for what it is that the school can have and combine for its revolving account so it varies but one of the standard rules of thumb is that you shouldn't be using current year receipts for current year expenditures because you always want to use like a year and a rear is what it is that's a best practice approach when it comes to revolving accounts um we are currently at that point slightly with circuit breaker where we're looking at to use maybe I think it's about $10,000 more than the prior year receipts that were allowed to carry over but as of right now we are still uh we are quote unquote I'm going to say using the prior year receipts balances uh and not using current year seeds for current year expenditures so that's solid for us that's is that forward motion for us from the past or how have we done there I can say the second time that we were here in Greenfield maybe six years ago we were using current year receipts Rec curring your expenditures and to be perfectly honest again and I tip my hat to even though we use uh we Greenfield use some of the eer funds for positions um we did not create anywhere near a funding Cliff like we've heard of other communities regarding the significant use of eer for personnel so by using eer as we did and it is a not that I would ever want to go through a global pandemic again but it did allow districts and Greenfield was not unique in using less of its revolving accounts that it urgently anticipated which allowed us to get us back to the point of being able to not use current year receipts or current year expenditures yeah I kind of want to underline that what you're talking about um because it was um I thought very Savvy of you and the and the prior superintendent in terms of really making a firm decision not to use the easer funds for personnel and so we're not facing the cliff that some other districts are right now with you know million dollar deficits and so on so I really um wanted to uh celebrate that um because of the district leadership we're in in a stronger position in that regard uh any other questions all right um so we move on to any motions um I have a motion prepared which would be for us to adopt the superintendent budget as the school committee budget that's there uh for us and unless there are other motions that people want to make right now which would be uh to make specific um recommendations for the superintendent to make changes to the budget um that would be something where we would as a school committee vote on whether uh to uh direct the superintendent to make changes to the budget and bring that back to a meeting that we would have um next week um so at this time I would hear those motions member Goodman I move that we direct the superintendent to eliminate three administrators and take the remainder of funds needed uh to match the 600,000 number from the increase in Special Ed Susan fer I did not get did not get that so you need to repeat it um I can repeat what I have so far your motion is to direct the superintendent to eliminate three administrators and take the remainder of funds needed to match the 600 something number yep let me get the exact number for 663 thank you Andy from The in to match that number from the increases in special education yes the requested increase in specialed the requested increase in special education thank you thank you for the motion is there a [Music] second let's see in a second are there any other motions not seeing any other motions I would uh like to hear a motion to accept the superintendent budget for FY 26 as the school committee budget for FY 26 at the total amount of [Music] 2,587 59 some moved is there a second second uh so that was a motion from Member de and a second from Member Martino is that right okay great any [Music] discussion I'll I'll say a few things I guess um I um appreciate the apparent willingness of the committee to move forward with this budget I really appreciate the superintendent's thoroughness and Clarity and your presentation I thought all of the administration tonight did a really wonderful job answering a lot of really uh hard and uh questions on the spot um and gave not just us but I think the whole public uh real education and what's going on um and the way we the way that students are being thought about in our school system which I'm incredibly proud of um I really am glad that we're not um going back on our commitment to do that redistricting we think that uh educationally it's the right thing to do and it's important that we as a district as as a school committee put forward a budget that represents what we really think is best for the students um it is a budget that reflects a lot of hard choices and there maybe there will be hard choices ahead for the mayor for the city council and um and I just want to say that in the richest country on the planet the fact that these choices are so hard and that it pushes taxpayers so hard to pay for these schools the way we that we do in a in a world where you know billionaires are taking a sledgehammer to government instead of contributing to public education um is is a crying shame but I think that we um I'm I'm proud of uh our leadership of our committee and of our city in t taking on these uh hard challenges together um to come up with a budget that will work for our students and for our community any other comments or discussion okay member Den will you secretary Den will you call the vote Yes secretary J I'm a yes member Mar yes chair Johnson mad yes Vice chair c yes member Childs yes member goodin no mayor dorer no okay the motion carries with two knows okay um so uh the uh desired outcome of next week's meeting would have been to um take any changes that that committee directed the superintendent to make and to vote on the final budget but since we've done that tonight and I think we will cancel that meeting um we will hear I'd like to hear a motion to adjourn oh yes first please a motion to close the budget hearing oh thank you very much our honor a parliamentarian which I really appreciate I'd like to hear a motion to close our budget hearing so moved is there a second second so that was a motion from Member Charles and a second from Member Den Martini Martini okay any discussion uh secretary didn't need weall the vote on the motion to close the budget hearing sure Den Dena member Martin yes chair Johnson M yes Vice chair seon yes member Childs yes member Goodwin yes mayor dorer yes motion passes all right and now I would like to hear a motion to close our regular meeting so moved a motion from H Martini seconded a second from H child's any discussion secretary Den will you call a vote Yes Yes chair Johnson the sun yes Vice chair seon yes member child yes member good member mayor disor yes motion class is we are adjourned at 9:13 p.m. thanks for your hard work everybody [Music]

e good evening good evening everyone thank you for joining us tonight um this evening we are in the process of finding Higley a new superintendent and so I thank you for joining us tonight um welcome to our board members community members our students and staff um thank you for joining us either in person or online tonight uh we have our three finalists this evening and they will be sharing about themselves and their career and then also sharing why Higley so in 20 minutes they're going to tell us all of that and then after we're done with that part we'll move into question and answer where I will facilitate the question questions for the candidates the questions have been selected from the survey that was sent out to the en entire Community as well as our staff and students to participate in this was done a few months ago um each finalists will have the 20 minutes to introduce themselves and like I said the 25 each finalists will have the 25 minutes to um answer the questions we would appreciate your feedback this evening please uh we have a QR code on a small sheet of paper over there but the survey will only be open for a short period of time and that's from this evening starting at 6 o'clock until tomorrow at noon and the reason for that is because the Board needs to see the results tomorrow afternoon as they go on their Journey to the finalization of what candidate they're going to be selecting uh let's see just just for the future what what comes next after this interview of course is tomorrow with the board members and then after that the board will make a decision on March 4th to bring forth a candidate and make that public so with that being said I have our first finalist here tonight Dr Erica copelan please help me welcome her tonight okay I let's see make sure I get that there we go Dr Copeland you're aome yes take hand this is my oh good evening everyone thank you so much for giving me this opportunity um I would like to before I begin um thank ultimately the governing board I I appreciate this opportunity to come and speak to the community of Higley I I'm honored and I'm humbled for this opportunity and I'm Al also very excited um so thank you very much um I'm Erica Copeland and um I have been tasked with telling you a little bit about myself I have 10 minutes and so um I have more content probably on my slides than I will talk about but you're welcome uh to read some of my thoughts that I included and um so the objective is I would like for you to learn a little bit about who I am and what I believe um and so I focus a little bit on my credentials but um I have the credentials and the education or I wouldn't be here so I I'd like you to really get to know a little bit more about me personally um and uh what the driving forces are um behind my career um and and how passionate I am about working with students uh so I'll start with sharing a couple core educational values and um some examples of how I have applied them in my profession I am going to share with you an overview of my career experience and then offer also a tiny glimpse of who I am beyond my professional career so with that I'm going to begin with some core values uh Student Success is um something that I have dedicated my entire adult life to um I feel passionate about preparing students um helping them to reach their Highest Potential um it's very important to me that students are not only successful within our K12 system but I think that we have a responsibility to ensure students success Beyond High School um and into our students lives and future careers and so that is um something that I have focused on um quite a bit um within my career and so I'll I'm going to highlight um one area uh that uh really shows my passion for Student Success and some of the work that I've done to promote that and I'm going to talk about Innovation and choice I have had the um great opportunity to be part of a team that has uh opened seven new schools and uh we are currently in the construction phase of an eighth new school um in the past 10 years and so that has provided a lot of opportunity for um how can we build Innovation as we are building these new campuses um and offer choice for our parents uh we know that um choice is important to families as it should be and um that's something that we want to try to offer um to meet the needs of our families so something that I'm really proud of is leading the um planning and programming for two brand new high schools um within my district and these are comprehensive 712 schools that have a career path Academy focus and so what that means is that um we were able to design these schools um with career pathies um amazing labs and maker spaces and opportunities for Hands-On learning for our students um our students are able to graduate from high school school with industry certificates um and preparation for their next step in their career um and uh it's something I've been very proud of um something that has been very well received by our community because not only is that promoting that success while they are in our high schools but we're really setting them up for Success Beyond High School uh so that is my example for that value the next core value um safe learning environment safety is extremely important to me um it is uh a top priority I I understand that students can't be successful they're not going to learn at their highest levels if they are not in a a safe learning environment and so um couple things that I'll share with you um about the area of safety um again through building new campuses and uh we have um uh had the opportunity to have a voter approved bond in place and so able to bring the buildings and that physical safety up to date in all of our campuses um we've done that through um physical barriers to the campus um ensuring that there's a single point of entry on all of our campuses um things like um safety glass um access onto our campuses through being buzzed in and out um and so those physical safety pieces um a second area that I'd love to share with you is our Partnerships with local law enforcement my team and I have um been able to build amazing Partnerships with our local law enforcement we meet monthly with u Mesa PD and Queen Creek PD um to talk about concerns within our schools within our community um and really problem solve and partner together to make sure that our schools are safe um they've helped us with um audits um and provided feedback uh something that I'm proud of uh that has come out of that partnership would be we have created a safety video this was probably two years ago I think is when we implemented this about uh The Power of Words and so a concern that we have had is um a threatening language right that happens with um students sometimes and so really trying to educate students and parents about the seriousness of that um whether it be um set out of anger whether kids think they're joking um there's there's really power behind that and so we um collaborated uh with the local law enforcement our sro's and and created an an educational informational video that all students Watch twice a year in 2nd through 12th grade uh we send that link out to the parents they also sign off on our um parent handbook um and I can tell you the data has shown that in the past two years we've had a significant decrease in our discipline in the area of threats so it's um been extremely successful and that has come out of that partnership with um our local law enforcement the next core value that I wanted to highlight uh family and Community Partnerships um I fir L believe that education is a shared responsibility um I think it is very important for our schools to partner with the parents with the community um so that our students can be successful and so I just shared um a few things that um systems that we have in place that I have been able to be a part of um they're similar things that um you have happening in Higgly Unified School District um but uh good opportunities to connect with our community and our families um I'm able to present and highlight some of our programs and those would be through things like um a cafe structure which is um community and family engagement uh business partner breakfast uh multiple committees with um lots of stakeholders I was part of I was a coordinator of our strategic planning um plan um vision and Mission Financial we had a bud a bond oversight Community um committee um with stakeholders and parents for a bond that we had in place um and also I think it's really important to be involved um with your local agencies like the Queen Creek chamber I was part of the education committee um that works to organize a large um Workforce um event um for juniors across the East Valley called e for Te um and and then partnering with our town of Queen Creek um we have um joint board um meetings with the town um and with our governing board and I've had the opportunity to present on programming um and some of our safety protocols and um next trust and transparent communication uh this is the heart of of who I am my strength um is building trust through positive communication through being transparent um I think it is very important to keep our families informed of what's happening in our schools um I would work closely with our governing board to keep them informed of what's happening I think it's really important to uh a mentor early on um shared with me that uh the importance of not only sharing the good news but we we need to share when there's challenges and news that's maybe not so good um as well um and and that's what transparency is um if it's something that should be knowledged that should be known it's going to be known it's it's going to be um communicated so this next slide um going to talk to you a little bit about my um 20 over 27 years in public education I of course started as a classroom teacher um I started out my career in Mesa Public Schools and uh something that um sometimes happens in education uh you're in the classroom and and you're a teacher and you are seeing these amazing results and you're you're feeling great about the positive impact that is um happening on the students in your classroom and you think well how could I expand my my reach how could I positively impact more students um and that kind of prompts us teachers to then move into some sort of school leadership um role and that that's what I did um after um I think six years in the classroom I became um this position it had it had a unique title at the time but it was a dean assistant to the principal who um traveled to multiple campuses um and uh worked with students discipline teacher evaluations all the things that an assistant um principal um took care of um and it was it was an amazing experience um I got to know the community better because I was traveling to multiple sites um and got to learn from a lot of mentors um different um leadership styles and things that were happening on their campuses after that I um got my first principal job in Queen Creek Unified School District that was in 2005 um I was a principal for nine years U one of my favorite jobs I I've ever had um just loved it loved being with the kids loved working with the teachers um and creating that environment for our students um so that they could succeed and Thrive um and so nine years of that loved it um was able to um as a principal um the the school that I took over um LED that to that school to its first a label um a and excelling that used to have an excelling label both with the state of Arizona um and also the first Elementary School in the district to receive the A+ um Award of Excellence and um that's because I had an amazing team um I had great teachers and staff Who Loved kids cared about kids and worked really hard every day to make it a great place so um that was that was my experience as a principal um next I um went into a district leadership role um I started out as a coordinator of um curriculum instruction and assessment um and I did that for a a short time we had some some changes in my district um and so the next year I became the executive director over human resources and academic Services um and so that was a challenging time in my career I had a a big learning curve um but I enjoyed it immensely and um I learned a lot and um these are things that I can draw from um in the position of superintendent that will really help me to support a school district uh so I was an executive director for I think six years um predominantly K12 um academic Services um which is basically all of teaching and learning um and after that I became an assistant superintendent I was promoted um to that role and did that role for three years um again on the teaching and learning side of the house with that um and I am currently an associate superintendent uh for Queen Creek Unified School District um in my role I oversee um there's kind of two sides of the house teaching and learning and operations I oversee um and and support uh all of the educational services which includes um curriculum professional development special education grants management educational technology um just to name a few um so I'm getting a I'm I'm getting a lot of um great experiences um I am able to impact student learning um uh I also supervise safety um and security Athletics um and so again I just have um had a great opportunity being in a growing District um to get a lot of experiences that I think um that I will be able to apply as the position of um superintendent and then lastly here's just a little bit about me personally um that's my family there in the center the the gentleman in the black shirt is my husband Chris and we were high school sweethearts and we've been married for 27 years uh we have two children as you can see um my son there on the far left he is a senior in high school and um has been accepted into the ASU College of Engineering for um Information Technology cyber secur is what he's really interested in um so we're super proud of him and we're really looking forward um to that time of his life and in our lives and then my daughter's next to him um she is a junior in high school uh she is a cheerleader so if you wonder where I spend my free time and my um free money yes thank you I knew somebody would get it if you know you know right um but it's amazing I we have enjoyed it so much um watching her Year all through uh junior high and high school um and then on the right um I had to add pictures of my pups there on the bottom we love our pups um my husband is a a big Aviation Enthusiast um his that's kind of in his blood of his family I'm being involved in aviation and um so that's something that um we like to be involved with as well um we like to travel we love the beach we love to play board games um and so really family is so important to me um and um that's just a little bit about me personally and that's the end of my introduction um to myself um and so how's my timing three minutes oh boy all right I'm going to go really fast so the next question was why Higley Unified School District Five Big Ideas came to mind the students the community the teachers and staff opportunities for growth um and I think I'm a great fit for Higley and higgle is also a great fit for me um so students the heart of Higley it's the fundamental purpose that we're all here right this is the work that we're doing it's for students um I am committed to creating the best possible learning environment for our students um it is near and dear to my heart um it it's what I've done for my my whole career so um I would love to be able to provide um that support to our students um and help lead higgle um to make sure that our students are getting the best possible education possible um the next uh big idea is community the higgle family and and I can tell you higgle truly feels like a family I I had the pleasure of visiting a few schools today and the just the culture was amazing the kids were amazing the teachers and principal I I truly felt like I was at home um and um that's something that that I love about Higley and that has drawn me to Higley um i' I've been in public education in the East Valley for 27 years so it I really feel like I'm part of the community we're we're a close knit community of Educators um I have um lots of connections within the community I'm a I'm a Higgly Aunt I have uh niece and nephews who attend higgle schools um I believe in the Community Values um within Higley and the East Valley I think you know we're we're very family focused and family centered and um as you saw from my previous slides that's something that's huge and important to me um relationship I I have a ton of positive um professional relationships and friendships um within higgle the the people that I have met and worked with in Higley are are um you know a key reason on why I would love to be part of the Higley family and then of course um having um making an impact in the community um serving the community is important to me and the way that I have done that has been through public education I'm going to go really quick through these next teachers and staff the champions of learning I I want to support our staff um I want to provide them the resources that they need um for their classrooms um and that is something that I'm looking for teachers have um made a huge impact on who I am today as a person um and and I want to support them I'm sorry that's okay and then here's my opportunities for growth um Higley has um some opportunities for growth with enrollment and I have some experience with that and some ideas on how to help that um I know that um we recently had an override renewal that did not pass um and so I would love to work with the team to strategize on on how to help with that um and then that fiscal responsibility because both of those things impact our budget Dr Copeland we're gonna head into questions now thank you thank you I'll start with we have 25 minutes for questions okay the first question how would you plan to Foster strong relationships with parents community members and local businesses to support the district's success so I think the uh key key there's a few key points to that um number one being visible and being in involved and engaged um in the community um that means um being out in the community that means being at school events um and really being um out there meeting people talking to people building those relationships um that that includes being involved in um in the community through things like the chamber um and so I think that that um that's that's the key to that um number two um building trust through through transparent communication um if if I'm open and concise and honest with my communication feel like that's the best way to build the trust of the community and that's how we're going to partner and and work together and so I would love to kind of be that that bridge um to continue to build the trust between higgle unified and that um community so those are those are two of the the big the big ways that um I would would engage with our families and um our community and and business partners thank you question number two what is your approach to school safety and how would you work with law enforcement and staff to keep students safe okay well that was I feel like I have covered some of that with my presentation but I'll I'll go into a little more detail um again building those Partnerships I think working very closely they are the experts right in safety and and um having them do safety Audits and walks on our campus um and monitoring our drills and then providing us feedback so that we are able um to improve our practices and our processes based on that feedback from the experts um in that area is so important um having um we have SRO on our campuses right um I know that Higley just got a grant um for an SSO at the the junior high and so working closely um with those folks um to help keep our schools safe and to build connections with students um are some of the ways that I would um work with law enforcement um to ensure the safety of our schools thank you question three what steps would you take to improve parent in Community involvement in the decision making process so I think it's um important number one to listen but in order to do that you need to provide some opportunities and so I would work to provide opportunities for parents and Community to be involved in the decision making uh um I've been involved in um multiple uh committees and um with a large large variety of stakeholders who are able to share their ideas give their input and and all of that is taken to consideration when you're making decisions um and so it's really providing that opportunity I think uh surveys questionnaires are are a good way to give parents a voice and give them an opportunity to provide some of that feedback as well um but but really listening right so you can ask for the feedback and um you can collect that information but really being responsive to it as well um and um making it meaningful um a meaningful experience um for for for our families and parents and um inviting them into committees there's there's lots of opportunities um having public forums um things like this um where you can share information and do presentations on things that are going on in the campuses um presenting um at our governing board meetings uh those those are some of the ways that I would do that thank you why is an affordable quality public education available to all children important to society as a whole sure well we are we're building the Future Leaders right of our community um and that's huge we we have a a a big responsibility for that and we need to make sure that we're providing our students um with the skills and the knowledge in order to be leaders to be critical thinkers um to be successful in the workforce and so um can you repeat that Karen I think I missing half of the do you mind repeating that one sure why is an affordable quality public education available to all children important to society as a whole sure okay that's what public education is all about right we teach all kids whoever comes through our door we're going to teach them we're going to provide them the opportunities to be successful to reach their Highest Potential um we offer um the opportunity for kids to be exposed to a diverse group of um students and people and so um that is going to be very important for them when they go out um into the real world world into the workforce and they have to collaborate with people and be part of a team um so you know that is that's the importance of of public education that uh we meet all kids where they are and and we try to move them to the highest point that they can possibly um become and uh and we just open our arms and accept them um and that's that's the beauty of of public education and and we're creating the the future citizens if if we are building strong leaders and students who are civic-minded and have the skills and knowledge that they lead that they need um you know we're building that foundation for this community to not only remain strong but to grow um and the students that we're working with are are the the ones who are going to be doing that thank you do you think public education is adequately preparing student students for life after graduation if yes give an example if no how would you work with the board and Community to better prepare our students sure I think uh for the most part we are being successful for that and and one of way one of the ways that we do that is um obviously that the fundamental um core instruction right we need to make sure that our that our students are are learning those fundamental um core pieces um as a system we're also providing lots of opportunity for extracurricular activities um we want well-rounded individuals who are um leaving our schools and so those are some of the things that we do um something that I'm very passionate about um and that I know that I am focusing on my career is um really helping students to explore their interests and their passions and help them come up with a plan um for what they want to do with their future and um I think that's one of the best ways that we can prepare our students um for the future for their lives after they leave our K12 system um with career exploration um with helping them to understand what if this is what you're interested in what's your skill set that goes along with that what would the education that might be required um and really helping them to leave High School um with a strong plan um for their future um and and for the career path that they're um interested in what is your philosophy on curriculum oversight and how will you ensure all materials align with Arizona State Standards well I think um first of all you start with policy right we have policies in and procedures in place um for adopting curriculum and um you follow that process you follow our policy um you take things for the public review um and receive that feedback and evaluate that um and so that's certainly one of the ways that we do that um I work uh very closely with our K12 principles and and so one of the ways that I try to help ensure that um is um reviewing policy reviewing expectations at our principal meetings um and having them bring that back to their teachers and their staff um and you know they're monitoring um their curriculums um their instruction through classroom walkthroughs um and so um you make sure that you're uh following your your policies and your procedures um and um and you hold people accountable to follow those um policies and procedures as well what is the biggest challenge you think our students and our Educators face how would you address these issues that's a great question um I think that we live in a a very complex world and so I think some of the CH there's a variety of challenges that our students are facing um and I think and I know um that schools are a place that students can learn the skills to work through those challenges um so it could be you know academic challenges and so are we providing that support that intervention that differentiation um we have students who are dealing um with personal problems and so are we helping them um with the skills that they need the life skills to be able um to work through those problems um and so I don't know that there's there's one particular um problem that I would identify um for teachers I think um we work with students who have a lot of different needs um and there's a a variety of skill levels and so I think one of the biggest challenges for teachers is um making sure that they are um evaluating and and determining how are they going to meet the needs of all students um and a lot of that comes with differentiating um and really meeting individual needs it's not a one- siiz fits-all for for our students and so we have to work really hard to make sure that we're meeting all of those individual needs and and that's something that um is certainly challenging for our Educators what leadership strategies will you use to foster a positive and accountable work culture among staff and administration so the the positivity piece I think um kind of go falls back on um being visible right um being out at schools being engaged um showing that I care and what they're doing is important to me um I think helps build that positive culture I also um know that there's a ton of great things happening in higly and we need to celebrate those successes um we need to recognize people for their hard work um and celebrate that and so that's one of the ways um that that you can build that positive culture um providing support and resources that our schools need that's you know that's our purpose at the district level is we are the support for the schools um and we're here to help them with what they need um so that they're able to teach our students and and take them to the highest level um so those are those are certainly some ways um that you can build a positive culture I think um that trust plays a role in that uh I believe believe it's important for um us to not only provide that support but um provide that consistency um do what we say we're going to do um all the things that that build that trusting relationship are things that that build a positive culture in your current position how have you uh attracted and retained teachers sure uh in a variety of ways right um one way that you do that is um you're doing great things for kids and um you've built that positive culture and you share your stories um and you make sure that people know all the great things that are happening in your District um so that they want to come be part of that um I think it's important to support teachers I was able to um start a new teacher mentorship program within our district and utilized my team and my coaches um to support new teachers and um that is something that I think plays a huge role in retaining especially um teachers who are brand new to the profession I I think it's important that um when you're working um with your budgets um that you're doing everything you can um to have um robust compensation and and benefit packages um for teachers uh we're never going to be able to to pay them as much as they deserve to make um but we really need to be um cognizant of how we are using our budget um and making sure that that we're able to um provide compensation I and that goes along with um having good salary schedules right that will attract um teachers um if you go back to your previous question having a positive District culture people want to work somewhere that's positive um and and sometimes that is um something that will attract and retain people um more so than those um benefits that I'm speaking of um they want to be part of something that's bigger um they want to have a purpose and so helping them um to have that Vision um that shared vision for um excellence in Higley is certainly a way that um that we can attract and and retain our teachers how have you engaged the community and supporting Public Schools please provide us with some examples I think uh one of the ways that um I have done that would be um through the promotion of um some voter initiatives and um sharing factual information making sure that um the community knows directly where those funds are going and how they'll be impacting the classroom um is is certainly a way that um I have done that and Karen I'm sorry will you repeat one more time for me how have you engaged engaged the community in supporting Public Schools provide us with some examples okay um again having having opportunities for the community to be involved um we have um kind of an initiative this year to increase parent engagement and so we have tried to provide lots of opportunities to get parents on our campus we want parents to be welcome on our campus and be involved um and so um we've increased volunteering opportunities events on campus that we're inviting um the parents um to be part of and so those are some great ways um to engage parents um again I think having that open communication um being visible being out there so that um I'm available to parents would be um another way that I would accomplish that what have you done to better the community in which you live in and how were you involved in that well I think um being a public servant through public education is a really powerful way to benefit your community um again the these children that we're working with are the the future of that community and so um whatever we can do to um help grow them help them be successful um set those high expectations um are are ways that that I personally have um benefited um my community I've also um been involved um in uh different initiatives um throughout our district um and really provided opportunities for our families to be involved um and so I think by doing that um we're helping our community um honestly I think the the work that we do um is some of the most in important work our our students are with us for you know the majority of the day sometimes they're spending more time at school than they are um with their families and and I take take that responsibility extremely seriously um and you know being a mother I I know what it what it feels like to to want um the best for your child and um that's really what I what I'm trying to provide for our community tell me about a time when you were able to bring people of different views together and make hard choices places I think that um strategic planning process um that we um did several years ago um we had engaged probably over a hundred different stakeholders um through some focus groups and committee work and we certainly did not all have the exact same Vision um of of what those priorities were um and so we spent a lot of time um working together and collaborating and and having dialogue and discussion um in order to bring people together you know ultimately we needed to come to consensus on on what those strategic priorities were going to be um and what some of those indicators and goals um were and so it was it was an amazing process process um but it it certainly it was a lengthy process um and it required um for all voices to be heard and considered um so that we could end up with a a final product that we felt like was really reflective of the entire Community um in addition to that um the focus groups um we also did some um we sent out an affinity question um to our um Community asking them um you know what is it that schools would need to do to to meet the needs of um of students to to choose their top thing and we had over 1,400 responses to that and and then went through some activities to categorize that and so um I feel like those voices all came together and and we were able um to work through it and hash through it and and came up with a plan that is really reflective of what our community um wants for their local schools well you did very well um in the sense of answering all my questions I have one more and that's it so how do you see yourself effectively gaining the support of our community well I would start with um I I would start how I did tonight right I would um communicate with the community what I'm about what I believe in my heart for students and Educators and public education um and I think I think that goes a long way for people to to know and understand who you are what you believe in what you stand for um I would be extremely inv involved in the community I I will be out there um meeting people getting to know people um and um communicating frequently um and I think I think that's a really important way for for people to get to know me um and um and and I think that if I if I'm present if I'm engaged if I'm willing to listen that that that's you know the perfect opportunity for people to understand who I am and and why I want to to lead Higley and how much um love I have for this community and and for our teachers and students and and for our staff uh Dr copelan you have a minute left if you'd like to say anything else I went short on the other one and now I have time for this one um I you know you know I just want to say um Educators school I think has played such a huge role in my life um I I feel like it has made me the person that I am today um I would not have the success that I've had in my personal and professional life without my teachers and coaches um and principles um and um I I I feel so strongly and I'm so committed to ensuring that higgle Unified School District um is providing that for all of their students um and I I would love the opportunity um to be able um to collaborate and and work with the community and the staff um and and build a strong team so that we can not only continue the great things that are already happening in Higley but really move us um forward I'm a I'm a I'm a big believer in continuous Improvement um we can always improve we can always move forward and um I would love to be the the driving force um um as um part of the team for us to be able to do that for our Higley students thank you Dr copelan thank you we we will have our next forum at six o'clock oh 7 o'clock excuse me e e e good evening thank you for those who continue to be with us this evening and have joined us um we are in the midst of finding a new superintendent for Higley Unified School District and we welcome our board member members our community students and staff and we thank you for joining us this evening in person and online um tonight we have our second finalist who will share with us uh about themselves as well as why Higley and then we have some questions for him each finalist has 20 minutes for their introduction in why Higley and then they will have 25 minutes for questions and answers concluding after 45 minutes we appreciate feedback please please use our survey the QR code and please do that as soon as possible we will be closing the survey tomorrow at noon so that the board has the information when they go into their executive session tomorrow uh decision will be made and announced and approved at the board meeting on March 4th so now let me introduce our second finalist um Mr David lenis [Applause] hey good evening thank you so much for being here my name is David lsen eer and I'm excited to talk to you tonight about why I would like to be the next superintendent of the higly Unified School District but before I jump in there's really an issue that we have to talk about there's an elephant in the room that I think a lot of you guys are probably wondering about maybe thinking about and uh that is how do you say my name okay it it 13 letters long it rolls off the tongue phonetically it's very easy lot Zen high and Zur all right when I was a kid I never got to put it all in the bubbles we stopped at for 11 and I was lots and he okay but uh I also go by a lot of different names I've been around for a long time you can call me Mr L A lot of people still call me coach Lots Dave David or the one that the kids grabbed on to the most and perhaps even some former board members and that would be Big Lots and so I'll go by any of those okay and I still don't understand where that one comes from but anyway I I'll go by any of those names and jumping in but lotson Heiser is how it is so today we're going to talk about I'm going to talk about my family I'm going to talk about my education I'm going to talk about my professional journey and then we're going to get into why higgle so be be remiss the most important people in my life and the reason that that I'm doing what I am and why I have the opportunity is my family and and if for you to know me you know that I'm family first and so uh I'd like to thank they're in in this row right here supporting me today and thank you so much for being here they rarely do they get to see Dad in action but I've been married to Sarah now and she's also a teacher uh we'll get our 27th anniversary that's going to happen this summer my oldest son Thomas is at work tonight so he can't join us but he wants to be like Dad and be a high school math teacher and so he's studying to follow in the foot steps my daughter Abigail is studying architecture she's down at U OFA matter of fact right now she's sitting in the m center waiting for tip off against Utah and then my youngest Ethan is in seventh grade he's here with me tonight uh he's really into chess and for those of you who have middle school kids he's really into Marvel Rivals and so if you need to talk about all the different character characters he's your guy to go to but my family is the most important this is why I do what I do right when people ask me hey what do you do how I respond is I try to be the best husband father and son and then they'll be like oh I mean your job okay I have a job but really who I am is my family and that's who who who represents me and who I try to represent to make them proud but let's talk about really okay and if you have Doodles you know who runs our house are these two okay that's sunny and Daisy and uh we got them during the pandemic like many of you these two uh Daisy is a wonderful little dog who now has decided that her favorite chew toy are airpods and so uh we have to be very very careful at our house but for those of you who are Doodles and dog lovers that that that's our too you know there's a lot of people that have influenced me as I've grown through my career and my life but I really need to shout out somebody who who's really an important part of who I am and that and that's my dad and so my father was a career educator in the East Valley he was a longtime Elementary School principal in wienberg Arizona and then in Apache Junction and then when he retired he worked for uh one of the Indian tribes as their director of education but he's been a huge influence on me and help guide me and how I make decisions and eight years ago I lost my mom to cancer way too early early and when that happened I made a decision that I'm going to spend as much time with my pops as I can and so you'll see our pictures up there were rabid U OFA people matter of fact he's with my daughter at the male Center she took my ticket tonight at the Utah game but we made a commitment to spend as much time as we can with each other because going going back again when you want to know who I am then you need to know about me and my family and that's the big influences that I have so my educational path I grew up in a little town called WI ber if you know where wienberg is you're driving to Vegas and you turn right then you go to okay and then and then there you go and then we moved to Apache Junction I graduated as the valadi dictorian of Apache Junction High School in 1992 and I was a basketball player and so I played for a couple years at MCC and then my mom said David you're going to be an engineer because my older brother's an engineer and my younger brother's an engineer and I was going to be an engineer too so I went to a school called Colorado School of mins and I realized quickly I didn't want to be an engineer and I realized that my path was different and so I transferred to NAU perhaps because my wife was going to NAU at the time and uh I graduated with a M uh BS in mathematics from na and I started teaching right away and then throughout my teaching career I've sought to improve myself so I got a master's curriculum and instruction from ASU dad does hold that against me and then I did my principal certification and my superintendent certification through NAU throughout my 27y year career let's talk about my professional Journey so what has prepared me to be standing in front of you today with the knowledge and experience to be a superintendent well my first job was right down the street at Gilbert High School in 1998 and um I was a high school math teacher and I was a basketball coach and at that time it was probably flipped I was probably a basketball coach and I taught math and people called me coach lots and everything was about that and and I really enjoyed coaching I ended up my last three years of Gilbert I was a head varsity basketball coach and then I had an influential person in my life Dr Charles Santa Cruz my principal come to me and said Dave I think you can do more than be coach Lots here's a couple books on leadership I want you to join a committee talk about Reinventing Gilbert High School in the year 2004 and so I joined that committee and I started expanding my scope a little bit more about what it means to be a leader and what I can do differently had an opportunity to open Perry High School in Chandler and I transferred there and uh I was a math teacher only it's the first it was the only year that I taught and didn't coach and I thought wow this is pretty incredible for what I'm able to do in the time that I have I started taking my leadership classes and then my principal there his name is Dan Serrano I'll never forget I I owe a lot to him because I said Dan I want to get into I want to get be a principal he said that's great I have a Dean job and he's like I'm not going to hire you I'm hiring somebody else I already know it but there's going to be an opening at SanTan Junior High and this is the end of June I was on on tap I was going to be the calculus teacher at Perry High that's if you don't know that's that's a hard not a lot of people teach calculus and Dan said hey this is your passion you go be a you go be the dean you go be the assistant principal and I'll find a calculus teacher with two weeks before school starts a big lift for him but it allowed me the opportunity to jump into Administration I spent four years at Santan Junior High in the Middle School uh environment I'd never taught Middle School I'd never been around middle schooler before and while did I learn a lot and God bless all of you Middle School teachers and and administrators I had an opportunity to go to basa high school as the assistant principal of curriculum what does that mean probably my most favorite job that I've had and that is I got to write a master schedule because it's a giant spreadsheet and it's a giant puzzle and everything is about what can I do to make sure that the kids get what they request and I loved it because it kept score and I could see if I could beat the other schools which I did after two years I became the principal became the principal basa High School down in Chandler and if I were to say if there's one position that's prepared me to become a superintendent it's the principal of a high school now remember at the time where I was when I was at Basia 2500 kids we had 160 to 180 employees on uh campus every single day and as the principal you're in charge of all of them and it is just non-stop going making decisions supporting kids putting in initiatives responding to the district Non-Stop and I think that that really helped prepare me while I was at bash a few things happened we were an A+ school we were an a-rated school we were a school of Distinction for civics education and we um I got to start two or be a part of two unique programs one of them is the accelerated Middle School which is a a 6 seven and8 that's housed on bash's campus that my kids attend and then the other one was the institute for cyber operations and networking which was the first uh joint venture to develop a student to come out with cyber uh security AA degree after four years because of the successes of Basha I was able to apply here in Higley and so then I came in and I applied and was selected as the executive director of secondary education and Athletics which is the job that I've held for The Last 5 Years I'm pretty sure uh if I read all the everything right I'm the longest tenur now at 5 years D executive director of secondary Athletics and I'm really proud of what we've done in the five years that we've been here I will tell you right now the district looks very different from 2020 now here in 2025 and there's a lot of things overseeing secondary means the high schools and the middle schools wow I'm talking way too much okay um oh 20 20 minutes is not a lot guys okay um the growth of the high schools through that time I think has been a really important challenge that I've dealt with okay I'm a relation based leader relationship based leader I I think it's so important what we do and I realized and I'll go really quick through this that when I looked at all the pictures getting ready for this slideshow that apparently when I see someone who is twinning I like to take a picture with them and so here's some administrators we're in our saucan gear or perhaps I have oh yeah so that's me and Big Al dressed the same right right and and I just like taking pictures John and I here we are addressed again yeah so it seems oh hey Lynette there we are I forgot to warn you you're in the presentation tonight and then uh here we go Bruce and I and and so it's just funny how it shows up that oh you didn't know that was coming huh guys right but but when you're out on campuses and you see connection with someone for me it's what I'm wearing it's the better that's you know here we go twinning is winning all right core beliefs education first and foremost is a relationship based business I want you to take we're going to take I want to take three seconds right now and do something for me we you take three seconds and I want you to think about the most impactful teacher you ever had in your life how many people started nodding started smiling had a positive image that came out of them because that relationship that you had with that teacher was so important so to me the most important relationship is the one between the teacher and the student my job as a leader is to provide all the opportunities I can for the teacher and set up systems to support the teacher what I can control for what they can do with kids because student achievement and student growth is is what we are here to do if not we don't need schools but I can control and support that teacher it takes a village we know that that's part of it with educator students parents and the community together and we'll talk about that a little bit more as I talk really fast all right how do we know how do we help our students succeed there's an educational thought leader out there mark Perna some of you guys have heard of Mark before he really talks about what are we doing in education with Gen Z students we need to give them a competitive Advantage a personal competitive Advantage for them to learn the lifestyle and get prepared for the lifestyle that they want career ready part of a huge thing is college for every whoa that's every kid going to college right but career lady are we giving them the skills that they need for the lifestyle that they want in the career that'll meet that lifestyle and so we're going to talk about that we jump into why higgle why do I want to be the superintendent what's my time check left oh okay I want to be the superintendent all right because I I'll be honest with you this is the only superintendent position I've applied for there's a lot of superintendent openings across the valley this is it I don't want to go anywhere else I want to be in Higley why I'm part of it right now I'm part of a cohesive group of comp complimentary leaders at the district office are putting together a plan to help us navigate obstacles that we have in front of us I'm I'm uniquely involved in all of this right now already and for us to continue to face the challenges that we have moving forward I'm I'm part of it I'm living it as we go this keeping the continuity of our leadership team intact is really important we know that Higley is a small town with a big town feel but together and and it's so important together because it's not about one person it's about all of us and all of us in this room together we can and we will provide Limitless opportunities for students to succeed partner with parents or open in consistent communication engage with community and strengthen the bonds between businesses higher ed municipalities Faith faas leaders and the districts we can do that and then finally we have to have an attitude where we turn obstacles into opportunities and it's a really important mindset for us to have all right team husd I've talked about about our our team as a group of leaders together we also have a team of sight level leaders together and it's important that we support each other and maintain high expectations for each other to maintain maintain high expectations for who the most important person for the relationship which is that teacher how can we continue to attract and retain the best teachers in the staff because that's what's going to impact our kids and that's what's going to impact our community so that what does that mean for me I got to provide necessary curriculum resources professional learning I'm really excited about a change that we have site-based instructional coaches now to support a teacher when they're struggling that's non-evaluative it's huge and then focus on building effective professional learning communities when we talk about Limitless opportunities what we're talking about is programs we already have I don't want to lose any of the programs that we have whether it's DLI whether it's gate whether it's CTE whether it's leader and me we need to keep those together because our community wants that and so we have to look at a way that we can support those programs and make sure that they're achieving what we want we education's always changing matter of fact it's pretty cyclical but right now we talk about career acmis and career Pathways which is what I was talking about at Gilbert High in 2002 but now it's back and so we got to continue to look and say how can we have a lens for our kids so they can see what this possibly is where's their connection to their future I don't know you can nod your heads if you were involved in an extracurricular activity when you were in School how important are extracurricular activities and opportunities to our kids so important and and and even though I'm the athletic director it's by far Athletics is a drop in the bucket but we need to support the Arts and we need to support Civic engagement we have those programs where we have to continue to support them and finally our next generation for opportunities we're going to talk about how do we incorporate AI into daily learning because it's here it's here so how can we do it safely to protect you and your kids when we're looking at AI all right partnering with parents transparency about decision decisions and sight information transparency is that huge word right how do you know what's happening we can communicate if we're making a decision and we can't explain it to you then we're not making the right decision so we as a group as a collective group have to be able to explain the decisions that we me you're not going to like every decision we make I learned a long time ago as a principal I'm never going to please everybody because as soon as I try to please everybody I please no one so how do I make decision ision I make decisions based upon what I think is the most fundamental relationship that affects Student Success the teacher and the student and if we continue to focus on that if we continue to focus on that we'll do great we need to celebrate our successes guys as an educational group we're not the best at shouting from the rooftops how great we are and we are great Higley is wonderful is a wonderful District that provides great opportunities our schools our community hubs we have Community Schools they're smack in the middle of it and we know that the strength of a community one of the backbones is a strong public school system and finally we Ally with parents in the growth of their children sometimes that growth occurs through opportunity of making mistakes in learning and their kids and we help them learn oh that's wrong way okay how do we engage with the community first thing my job is now this is where I get to jump in a little bit I got to listen and learn so I'm already part of working with the Gilbert chamber working with the Queen Creek chamber Mesa Workforce Development the airports in still in the Mesa in case you don't know and so we get invited because it's smack dab in the middle of our district is the airport but working with them on what opportunities they have um face-based organizations throughout our community that's a connection we need to build right because they want their growth for their students the same way that we do so let's work together to do that I sit on boards for cgcc and attend things with ASU and uh Grand uh Grand Canyon already that allow us the opportunity to learn what they're doing and be able to connect we have events that are important to us as a community Chinese New Year Fine Arts Festival events on the campuses probably the biggest if I were to ask you guys what's the biggest event that we hold every single year we hold two of them and they're on the last day of school and their graduation and nothing is fun or as a principle than standing and getting to talk to 7,000 people I tell you what it's awesome but okay how do we take those and continue to promote what we're doing um with our community I know I'm almost out of time I got to be involved in something called the Gilbert leadership class 32 it's really a wonderful wave that I got to make connections with people uh I got to go to First Responders day and make connections and this is what it's about we talk about relationship based leadership but it's relationships that are important how do we make connections how do we know when we have someone that we're going to call if we need help and so you get involved in organiz organizations like this the Gilbert leadership class 32 where I believe it or not SRP took uh 11 of us up in a helicopter and we toured all of the dams that SRP is responsible for one of the coolest things I have ever seen ever what a what a great experience but allowed me to make connections within the community and that's what's important as a superintendent that I can help drive and finally this is my last one I promise Karen I'm almost done we have some obstacles in front of us guys and we cannot shy away from these at all okay we know that we're sitting here when we talk about finances and for those of you who attend board meetings you know there are two things that that we're that we have to look at one is declining enrollment and there's a lot of different speculation out of there here's a simple answer on declining enrollment this year we are going to graduate 300 more seniors who are leaving us than we have kindergarteners coming in right off the top three 300 and so when you look at the projections we're doing and I'm stealing Tyler's thunder right here okay 300 kids directly off the top because they're not coming in as kindergarteners and there's lots of different reasons for that but what I wanted to get on to this one is people ask what are you going to do about it and this is what I would talk about at please give me two more seconds this is what I would talk about at Basia every interaction who who's who's the greatest mouthpiece for our district it's our families and every interaction that we have as a district employee is an opportunity to spread our story to a member of the community to a family so that when they're sitting in their parking lot or they're out to eat or they're at church there's that conversation about what higgle can do and Higley can bring so how can we change this mindset thank you one interaction at a time I know I'm listening one interaction at a time all right and and thank you very much I I appreciate that 20 minutes I would have loved 45 you're welcome all right oh oh oh sorry last one hey we got this there we go thank you okay thank you we will now start the question and answers of 25 minutes and let me set the timer and Mr lsen Heiser how would you plan to Foster strong relationships with parents community members and local business businesses to support the district's success and so I feel like I've already started to touch on this um but but what I really want to emphasize is that when they talk about when you ask how will I the response is how will we I am a member okay I am a member of a leadership team here at the district office called cabinet right I'm a member of the The Wider leadership group called The General administrators okay and I'm a leader of a giant or organization where I can model and then this is our responsibility as a team this is not one person's responsibility we just talked about one interaction at a time with how are we going to talk to parents and engage with parents okay we have very formal methods to do that we have board meetings we have communication you know we found the parents read the communication from the school much more than they read the communication from a district okay so how do we incorporate our message into what the school's message is because you guys will click that one but if you see maybe message from Higley USD it might not be as important so we need to be targeted in that how do we connect we connect through social media platforms that we celebrate our successes we have a um public relations and marketing team that's going to do that while we support our families to be able to create that I think we need to take advantage of events that we do have what are the other largest events that we have other than graduation anyone have any idea probably the most well attended ones fi we have Fine Arts Festival that's one we have football games on Fridays in the fall how can we use and leverage that to be able to celebrate the stories when we have a captive audience that are interested because we have these feeder groups they're going to williamsfield and going to Higley how can we leverage that to do it when we talk about businesses we already have some processes in place like the business partner breakfast I think the next step in doing that is using our contacts at the Chamber of Commerce okay and any businesses that we have to be able to tell our story invite them in and ask them what's going on whether it's a business Council Andor same thing with parents a formal parent Council which I know is done in other districts so that they have a voice and are able to talk to us that's how we can connect and engage right those are the formal processes what's the informal process that we connect and engage every interaction that we have every possibility that we have so for cabinet and we've already talked talked about that what does that mean that means visibility that means attending extracurricular events that when I was a high school principal that's what it was there was an event every night and I'd go to make three out of the five nights I'd get to be home a couple of them but that's what we need to do because now when I'm standing on the sidelines or I'm I'm in in the at the drama production and I'm watching the play then I'm interacting with parents and I think that's how we continue to sell our story about what we're doing so we have formal ways to do it and informal ways through the interactions that we have what is your approach to school safety and how will you work with law enforcement and staff to keep students safe so honestly school safety is the number one important thing that we can look at parents and say we are going to make sure that we can keep your kids safe and how do we do that and I need to applaud the efforts again it's a Wii it's not an i it's a we as a team what are are we doing to provide immediate response which is our camera systems right which is our security guards which is perhaps piloting Vape sensors and looking at those different things that you can can see about keeping Kids Safe that's a really important thing that we focus and when you look at our and and I'm proud of the work that we've already done in Higley when you look at what we are doing to make sure that we have the physical plant and the safe of the physical plant you know our our Safety and Security team here at the district that's working with it we work with law enforcement like this already guys and I don't know if you're aware we now through the school safety Grant have an SRO or SSO on every single one of our high school and secondary campuses they can also go down to support the elementary campuses with need be and the communication we have with Gilbert PD is fantastic and with Queen Creek PD we have that in place and we have to continue to have those conversations and engage with them in how can they support us and share with us as things are moving forward and so when you talk about the safety of what our students are are doing then we have the safety of exposure and how do we make sure when we have devices that we have appropriate filters on them so that kids aren't going to where they're not supposed to go and that's working with our it Department to make sure that we have filters and things in place so that we're keeping them safe when they're exposed to the technology that we provide them I can't control what they do on their phone but I I can control what they do on my device and I can also help and teach them what's appropriate things to do and especially going through social media I think that that's another important thing when we talk about safety on our campuses what steps would you take to improve parent and Community involvement in decision making processes again I'm going to trumpet the Wii because as a Cabinet many of you guys just received a survey it's probably not the most exciting survey that you have ever seen in your whole life but it's a survey that's absolutely necessary so that we as decision makers can make uh recommendations to our governing board should we need to continue to reduce our budget and so when we give a list of different options and you're going to see for all of you are going to come to the board meeting on March 4th you're going to see a more in- depth what our responses to that survey looked like but that's a way that we can actively engage with parents so they can give us feedback back on what's Happening and I think that's an important thing that we do uh you know I look at modeling um a program that that's used in Mesa right now where each campus asks for a couple parent volunteers and they come in and we have a a parent Council and so we meet as a parent Council we've already started and this is a shout out to superintendent Richards right here a superintendent's advisory Council of students where we have sixth through 11th grade students come and talk to us about it we can do that with our parents as well and to get a because we know we have active and engaged parents within our community I mean I look at this turnout tonight and how how fantastic is this I look at the turnout that we had from our community meeting talking about what were happening with the possible override continuation and the survey we went out and the fact that we had all these people here that weren't here to yell at the district they were here to understand more let me know more why is this happening what's going on and then that's our education of what happens but that important idea of connecting and then the other part about connecting from a district perspective is one thing but really it's then the the focus down back onto the school level and what are they doing to connect and to draw people in and that's the directive as a superintendent then I can help and support from our principal's perspective what are we doing to draw parents in and get them onto our campuses you know we it's funny we'll have a lot of people come to a a secondary basketball game or something like that but sometimes we don't have a lot of people who'll jump in and help out at different different times during the day and it's up to that sight level leader and sight level group to help us as a district work to make a welcoming environment for our parents to come in and support us why is an affordable quality public education available to all children important to society as a whole all right I'm gonna ask you to repeat it one more time because I think there was bunch of words right in the middle why is an affordable quality public education available to all children important to society as a whole now more than ever public schools have the ability to bring us together and to be that Hub of our community yes we know that there's competition out there everywhere divisive but our goal and our want is to be able to bring those bring our communities together where are our schools located SM not on a busy Major Street most of the time it's smack dab in the middle of a community that's why we are Community Schools and we are that Hub of interaction where we have people from a variety of backgrounds and we are bringing them together and that is so important when we look to our future we talk about different generations and expectations for different generations and so what's our job is the school to help present this next Generation this gen Z before we get to gen Alpha right we look at gen Z and their wants and desires honestly guys are different than ours and so this public education that we can provide that can be focused on what their needs are to help prepare them again for the lifestyle that they want and the career that can get them their lifestyle they want is super important and so I think it's I honestly I look at public education and the school system is the background to a strong Vibrant Community remember we're 24 square miles we're not huge we got a lot of people but we're not huge so how do we continue to make this Higgly pocket a vibrant place for us to grow and learn together do you think public education is adequately preparing students for life after graduation if yes give an example if no how would you work with the board and Community to make uh better prepared students yes okay we can give some examples he here's the thing when we talk about Preparing People and preparing Kids for Life After High School right we have to give them the skills to be able to navigate that very interesting we're in the superintendent's conference room or uh superintendent Council we were asking the kids hey if we were to add a new program if we were to add something new to our schools what would you want it to be and do you know what they wanted financial literacy okay and true life skills outside of the home right that's what they're looking for and so within public education I think that we have to reimagine what our expectations are for our students to make sure that they we can meet that need 20 years ago 25 years ago that was the responsibility of the parent right dad taught me how to balance my checkbook absolutely and we did that in that process and I got that first bank account when I was 7 years old with like 35 cents in it and then we kept that little Ledger I don't think that happens anymore how can we continue to support the students for what they need are we doing a good job absolutely we are our kids are successful our programs are successful there's something I'm really proud in in husd is our Career and Technical education at our high schools we have so many different opport unities for students who want to do something different we just had the Gilbert leadership class 33 coming to our police science labs and classes at Higley High School you're saying what even is that right so here we have a criminal justice program where we're teaching kids how to become First Responders at high school because if that's their passion and that's their need then we're providing that Niche for them we have Early Childhood where we have students that are they already learning and already interning and maybe some of you who own businesses that need those kids can come and hire them because they're learning that on our campuses at the same time we have these core academic classes that are preparing kids to go to college and not just get to college but to succeed in college and how many of you raise your hand how many of you guys got a kid in college right now right how many of them came back from their English one-onone class and said whoa this is way easier than high school I know mine did and I'm like yeah because you probably attend regularly and that doesn't happen in college but anyway okay but we provided that because we gave them a challenge right and we challenge them in high school so they can go and be successful in college so yeah I'm up here a product of public education I'm so proud of it and and I we are succeeding are there areas where we can do better absolutely please understand that we're never perfect and that's our job as leadership to provide and find ways that we can improve our resources and can improve how we are supporting students what is your philosophy on curriculum oversight and how will you ensure all materials align with Arizona State Standards so I I think with curriculum oversight and obviously this has been a Hot Topic a lot of different our board meetings already right where do we go into terms of being efficient on curriculum oversight there are State Statute and there's laws and there's District policies that we follow and it's a superintendent I uphold to make sure we're following those processes to make sure we have the appropriate curriculum you know books was a big one it's been a big one within our community and what happens with books what was our response put together a parent committee and of teachers and parent and Community to review to come back and give the governing board who ultimately makes that decision an informed decision about what we want to add right now we're going to we're planning on going out for uh English curriculum adoption next year we started working on it the goal is to be able to come to the governing board and present that to them we're going to follow the laws and the process that is prescribed by our policy to make sure that we're providing the most relevant curriculum that we can which includes a huge one includes opportunities for the community to come in review it and give us feedback on it and I will tell you it's great to talk about but we'll have four people come and do it okay that's what happens right and so so we know we're going to make it available we're going to try to get as many people possible Right to come of view and to give us feedback so we can make that educated decision when we're proposing to the governing board this is what our curriculum needs to be but we're going to follow those processes and I think the the idea of curriculum uh oversight it's very important when you look and you follow the process and there's safety in doing that and when people step outside of it then it's our job as leadership and site leadership then to put them back and make sure they're following our processes what is the single biggest challenge you think our students and our Educators face how would you address this issue cell phones honestly it's the it's this little device here that allows them to have a different personality than they have in person allows them just to disconnect with the people that are around them allows them to to only focus and listen to a certain point of view because that's what's available on these I think from a school district's perspective and we've already worked on this within our group you know there's this idea that you ban cell phones right and do that kind of stuff that we know that that's not going to happen because I tell you what you're going to have you're going to go on a high school campus and every kid's going to walk in and they're going to drop a cell phone in the pouch and say I'm good and then they're going to take that other cell phone out of their back pocket and be like game on let's get this done but honestly so I think that we have to work with our teachers to make sure that when they're in the classrooms and when we're providing the appropriate time for instruction that we make it relevant and we make it interesting to them and we make it so much so that they're not going to want to go into this device I think that when we look at professional skills that's important for us to address that we embed them within our curriculum so the kids are learning that in order for you to come to work what what does our business people want when people come to work they want people to show up on time dressed appropriately with a good attitude and they're going to stay the whole day right and when I talk to business people they say I can teach them the skills they need to do but if they don't do those things we're missing out we have a group of professionals that can help with that so much and that's called our teachers every single one of our teachers is a professional we are trained professional Educators and we need to model that for our students and that's something that we can control as a district but honestly when I look at what's happening I think how can we help assist so that the these little devices aren't taking over everything that we're doing what leadership strategies will you use to foster a positive and accountable work culture amongst staff and administration um it it goes back to the idea that it takes a village and what I'm going to model is building appropriate professional relationships with my peers and I'm going to expect our cabinet to do the same and I'm going to expect our sight level leaders to to do the same one of the most successful times I was ever at a leader I'll give you examples when I was at Bas of high school after 2 years I was not happy I wasn't happy because I was trying to be a leader that I wasn't I wasn't true to my personality and I wasn't true to what I hold dear into education and so I I came up with an idea that we're going to focus on community so basah high that's our keyword Community we're going to talk about what's our place within our community how do we get our kids involved in in the community and then really importantly and what I control is what kind of community do I build as my employees together so you know what I my my goal was to make them like each other because I felt like if they liked each other they might like kids okay and so how do we do that I do it because I like to have fun you know and so what did I do I designed ways that I could have people interact that weren't necessarily academic in nature but we're social in nature and that I strategically placed teachers who weren't in the same grade level or the same subject area together to force them so that when they walk down the hallway they might see a teacher and say hi and they might not teach anything like that teacher or be around that teacher and it worked and it worked and that years that I had I had the lowest loss rate of teachers within our district and I had people at other sites going hey I want to come to Basha because we like to feel it Bas and that's the same thing I think that we do here it's on larger scale but how do we model how do we get people together so that they can talk and then we can learn about each other and it's through those connections we make in the community that we build that we can maintain a consistent morale because right now let's be honest one of the biggest questions that I get are how are you going to maintain teacher morale knowing that we're losing money okay because we might not be able to give them any additional money so we look at the things that we can control for teachers it's 7:42 p.m.

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FAL Cy kick Cy KCK C KCK [Applause] c [Applause] k [Applause] yes falc wins [Music] [Applause] [Music] choose your fighter [Music] [Applause] Pon ready [Music] [Applause] 3 2 1 [Music] go go pyro get burn KCK prominent triple KCK prominent Tri [Applause] K C KCK sare prominent triple [Music] on edge yes again look on edge right help can't prominent [Music] [Applause] Tri pyro we did our best nice one Pyro [Music] [Applause] [Music] what [Music] [Applause] ready 3 2 1 go [Music] prominent go pyro burn e prominent [Music] tri's on edge [Music] got of punishment got [Music] Edge [Music] Edge got it [Music] ether whereare the end Pro e e [Music] this one [Music] [Applause] [Music] remarkable e [Music] e ether that's ether e [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] ether [Music] ether ether ether [Music] [Applause] e y i no sympathy from me [Music] [Applause] [Music] sh [Music] choose your fighter [Music] that's [Music] [Applause] ready 3 2 one go get higher get get [Music] get get high get [Applause] H get [Music] higher get P get P get p get get get [Applause] get get higher get [Music] [Applause] salute the sun higher [Applause] get higher geter [Music] geter Get High Get High Get get get higher get H get [Music] get get [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and get get [Applause] this Exercise Works your core [Music] [Applause] [Music] muscle choose your fighter [Music] JV match currently in progress so tonight our club team sorry our club team is playing against Huntington North all right so we got Adriana AKA Galaxy cat uh Kaden AKA megaphone 671 Parker AKA Shakira Robbie AKA Robert Jurg 56 Scott AKA Electro 1 and Corbin AK Onyx Vib 28 okay so what you are seeing right now is our opponents jumping off the ledge so we are in the second round actually the JB team unfortunately lost lost the previous round so they counterpick the stage to town and city which is a pretty good stage in my opinion and it looks like we got Corbin F currently getting a Smackdown from we fit trainer but good thing about Corbin is he can bring the smackdown right back all right doing a forward throw send him off there not really punishing off of it yeah we fit trainer would much rather just stay back and charge up a sun yeah that's weird all right more grabs but not really punishing off of them much rather staying away him and spamming projectiles which is I guess a decent strategy all right Corbin doesn't really know how to approach this goes for the side B again and it's Max good job oh but he does get hit with the with the tcer ball might want to Shield that o and he might want to Shield that forward smash next time too we also got the we fit trainer um not really getting the deep breathing right so basically if he had succeeded in that it would have made his speed bigger and he would have healed a little more it also makes his special attacks a little bit better oh yeah oh wow dark fit's already up to 61 all he needs to do is take a stock off of this we fit trainer and and our opponents will need to send another player in so yeah Corbin seems to be using dark pit side B really well actually and side B is basically when you press the control stick to the side and press the B button side B it's pretty cool all right yeah so he's using that side B to reflect uh we fit trainer's neutral B so that's pretty cool all right got soccer ball just out of range o instead of punishing we fit trainer going for another grab and dash attack dang this we fit trainer doesn't really see seem to be modifying his play style that much neither does Corbin oh man he gets hit by another by another soccer ball oh boy and a back air sending sending Corbin off off the stage you know and when you get sent off the stage you lose a stock you lose all three stocks and it's game over okay send some soccer balls over and a sun dang now dark pit actually has two different reflectors he has his side be which reflects at the end of the attack and his down be which is basically just a Shield that reflects everything I've gotten hit by that Shield way too many times it is not a pretty picture oh and we fit trainer doing that as well ding the percentages are really close oh and a side be setting him off good job Corbin just took off that stock oh what an amazing job he just did wow that is absolutely incredible you know it's games like these that really make me proud of the Esports team as a whole so good job to Corbin dang that we fit trainer was not taking it easy on him all righty there we freaking go so how about I explain the matches right now let how about I explain how the score works right up here you know you see the one and the one you know so each elimination is worth a point as you could tell we both have we both both teams have a point at the moment and we are racing to get four points in order to win the match now how do you cause an elimination you must Wonder an elimination is mainly caused when you take your opponent's through three stocks essentially eliminating them from the game there's four people on each eliminate all three stocks and then you go then you're good then you're good then you win then you win the championship and that red dot up there um near our opponent is uh basically saying how many games we have won all righty all righty okay so it looks like they are currently thinking a little bit oh and they're going to be need to be thinking quite a bit actually cuz banjo kazui has entered the chat it looks like it's PS two again which I'm pretty sure was originally the stage they counterpicked to but they kind of just vibed with the previous one all righty yeah so since uh since Corbin lost two stocks in the previous round he's going to need to uh he's going to need to jump off twice all right and now we're good taunting in the wrong direction but we don't really care all right a doing side bees yeah this banjo definitely had a lot of time to study Corbin's move set and he's using side BS of his own but the difference between that is the fact that banjo and kazui side B is limited but it's also insanely powerful so this B oh okay he does he can't use side B anymore until he loses his stock so yeah dang imagine if Corbin had that ability all right charging up for forward smash Corbin noticing it and getting out of the way not really punishing on it ooh the banjo punishing the down Smash in close range you don't want to do that all right and banjo wins this round so the JB team is going to send out another player in order to take him down I don't really know who they're going to choose actually we got quite a variety of players here and there's a lot that goes into consideration especially when thinking about who they're going to play and even more in consideration with how the player specifically plays the character cuz you can know all about the character you can know all about the character but if the player plays it differently then it just becomes a whole new game you know that banjo didn't really seem to fight with projectiles that much so they need to find a way to not keep it in close quarters I guess so to speak cuz in close quarters he can use that side be to his advantage and hit you for a lot of damage and there's not a lot of stuff that cancels out all right so they're debating quite a bit quite a bit oh Scott's got the controller oh and he's handing it off all right all right who are we going to choose who we going to choose let me see if I can see the name all right all righty oh he's playing playing Kirby okay quite a popular choice in this game actually quite a popular choice all right he must be really excited for it just look at that smile on his face all righty all right let's start the match so Corbin didn't take any stocks so we're going to start as soon as they say go No jumping off the edge this time okay all right talking about toun link for some reason down there I don't really know why they're doing that all right Kaden's going to need to figure out how to how to approach this character you know trying to keep it away he was given some advice to Scott earlier so so he's probably pretty good at this game oh forward smash oh boy got hit by the Ford Smash and the Ford special he's going to need to find a way to dodge that that's someone who doesn't play Kirby a lot I'm not really sure how how Kaden's going to handle this matchup so pretty intrigued to see how it's going to go yeah Kirby getting up close and personal with a for smash kick him in the face oh and another kick when when uh when good old banjo and Kazi let down their Shield that's a good thing oh and fell right into their trap you don't want to use a side attack when your opponent is below you ladies and gentlemen stuff like that it it doesn't work all right using a forward tilt send him send him off and a Dash attack from Kirby sending banjo kazui to the left they're pretty far away from each other but oh look at that Kaden wanted to close the distance on them all righty yeah just ducking and dodging around each other they're doing Dam damage to each other they're just not Landing really any kill moves you got to get them in a prime position in order to land their kill moves up special that's pretty good oh and instead of shielding he just takes it to the face oh well at least banjo's at a pretty high percent so it shouldn't be that hard to take away take away his uh take away his stock o and a Dash attack oh just not going to kill that's a shame and another Dash attack at ledge which is good cuz Kirby's uh Dash attack doesn't get off the stage and there we go Kirby managing to take a stock good job Kaden you really did it all right but banjo and Kirby both have two stocks remaining so there's still more fight to be had don't you dare click away there's more fight all right banjo charging up a for smash Kirby not buying it instead of punishing him for it he does he just stands there all right another attack and going for the down beam method again that's a very common practice it's very common practice for Kirby players and another down be and if it seems to be working I guess you don't stop you know what works works and another down Smash down special good job on punishing the forward smash all right he's trying to get back to ledge and uses a side special again that's very powerful and banjo only gets five of those like we've mentioned so he's got to be kind of strategic with it and another Dash attack from Kirby ooh and a down air and a up special to hit him punish that forward smash that's good I don't know why he keeps going for the forward smashes like Kirby in front of him all righty oh yeah there we go right out of range of the up Smash and doing a Down Beat oh look at him squishing down like a pancake and immediately uh banjo kazui wasting one of their side specials we hate to see it we hate to see it when specials like that are wasted and dash attack into a grab but banjo kazui wasn't there yet so quite a shame all right doing a down air and a side special none of which are hitting but he does hit it with the down special which is good but banjo also hits with a down air but it doesn't really have that good of killing power unless you're off stage o but a forward smash does especially on stage so Kirby and banjo are both down to their last stocks K's really going to have to bring this his aame in order to take this guy down oh an up special there you go all right a forward smash okay and an up air not really punishing of it he like hits an up air and then immediately goes back to down to the ground oh jump over the side special good job Kaden avoid that you don't want to die to that no no no he you don't want your character to die in general in this game that's why they're respecting each other's distance for the most part you know there we go don't know why banjo went for another Fort smash feel like he can punish it I feel like he sees that being punished you know is he going to go for another one no he isn't he's going to shield and go for a dash attack there we go and a forward tilt forward smash he being predictable but if it ain't broke don't fix it and Ford smash on ledge is a valid option especially if you want for me to recover high oh there we go a Ford smash wow good job Kaden oh my gosh congratulations side special Kirby cloned himself too dang I've never been so happy that I won a match that I cloned myself but maybe if I did I could take advantage of our sponsors for this episode so huge shout out to our local internet provider Adams Will's internet Telecom and TV they're directly responsible for our Esports players to be able to compete because of their incredibly fast and reliable fiber internet service if you are in the market for Internet TV or phone service check out adamswells.com that's adamswells.com yeah yeah they've been definitely helping us out a lot like we had a tournament here recently they freaking they freaking brought their aame there mhm all right and we also got this other one otherwise known as the Moose SL garage special thanks to the Moose as well check out the garage here in town on Main Street it's a cafe game room with music venue for the Youth Bluff in to hang out I've been there quite a few times with my friends and it is actually a really cool spot to hang out all right we'll get to our other sponsors after this match it looks like oh they sent out a a oh my gosh it's Captain fabulous they sent out Captain fabulous to take down Kirby all righty all righty and now it's PS2 again that's kind of funny it's kind of funny though the way that works they just don't care but hey keeps them on their toes all right and oh come on Kirby you lost two lives you don't no no squatting may have saved you sometimes but not this time all righty ta and we are good all right here we go okay so we saw this last match well you guys didn't see it but he is oh oh he almost uses down be off stage we do not want that oh boy all right a dash attack good job so Kirby it it's going to be hard for Kirby to approach this Captain Falcon especially since his side be does a lot of damage and covers a lot of distance his down be does the same as well but on the plus side both can be shielded and have lag so he can be punished for overusing them we're going to see if Kaden can punish it oh and he didn't that would be a perfect opportunity for a back here but that's okay and another down be wow jump back he's going to do a down be no an upy there we go all right there we go up special ooh but Captain Falcon countering with his own up special that's not good oh a down special from Captain Falcon into an up special if he does Miss with that up special it does put in his um it does put him in freef Fall which means he basically can't attack oh there we go he had the opportunity to take him down see after he hits the ground with that down be you can actually punish him but those hit boxes those hit boxes they last for quite a bit and also if you stay tuned we're going to be starting our Varsity match as well we're going to see some real pros at work um some more Pros actually cuz these guys look at them go they are professionals uh but our Varsity match is going to be starting at 5:00 p.m.

good evening T tonight is uh February 26 2025 this is the ashin school committee meeting we start each meeting by reading our um our mission statement um which is the Ashton Public School strives to be a model District that creates a culture of inclusivity for our diverse students and staff who feel safe and supported are empowered with the academic and social emotional skills to pursue their chosen path and embrace their roles as positive contributors to the local and Global communities this meeting is being recorded by waca cable TV our initial uh opening procedures are to review the agenda we will have a moment for public comment if there is any um in reports and presentations we look forward to a presentation from Mendes a Community Learning presentation L warrant approvals superintendent report and assistant superintendent report Action items and discussion updates and votes we will be um taking a vote on the new contract for superintendent Jim Adams we have a discussion on budget update for the fiscal 2025 year this year and and adjustments we also have a um potential calendar update for next year which is a proposal to move a scheduled early release day from May 15 to May 8th and our consent agenda which covers the approval of gifts and donations Grant approvals and minutes from February 12th then we will have updates from the members motion to adjourn is everybody comfortable with the agenda as presented yes yes um and I know that Lori is um I think zooming in as we speak um so let's start the meeting with um any public comment anybody would like to address the school committee please come up to the podium seeing none and seeing none on Zoom we can move right to our reports and presentations Jenna you could start by introducing yourselves maybe your friends who are with you yes do you want to come up Mrs Glen Miss am please um I'd also just like to thank the families so much for coming here tonight and um helping us to have your kids present today they have done a wonderful job this week preparing to go so they have it all ready to go and they're going to start can can you move that back down edit B and hold on one second while while we're doing all that I also just want to mention that Mrs Glenn and Miss Zita have been an amazing um team in contributing to help bring this together um Miss Glenn for planning the project for the whole school and Miss Amita for her willingness to have some of her students come and present tonight so and thank you both for being here tonight Jenna if you could have your friends introduce themselves at least their first name tell us who they good evening my name my name is denou we are in mum's third grade class at the minda school hello my name is jeny hello mine is name is EMT hello my name is Aubrey thank you for having us here tonight we're excited to talk about Community Learning during Community Learning we switch classes and have a new teacher with other third fourth and fifth graders the Community Learning groups meet once per month we have Community Learning so we have a chance to meet new people and make new friends it is nice to know more than one teacher each year we are third grade we are third graders so we have only had a few times at Community Learning at the February meeting we had drop everything in play I played Jenga with friends and it was very fun I know that last year the school did many different activities including drop everything and walk we are here tonight to we are here tonight to talk to you about the feather activ we activity we did in December each classroom shared a video of the book Wings the main idea of the book was being unique is good and people need to be true of them to themselves after we reread the book each person created their own feather to show how they were unique once we all completed our feathers Miss GL Mrs Glenn put them all together to make a pair of wings the wings were then hung outside of the art room so that kids could stand in front of them and look like a soaring uh Like an Eagle soaring Mrs bro our computer teacher put together a video e for e auy thank you so much for having us do you have any questions thank you thank you all for coming in and sharing that with us anybody have any questions for the kids I have a question what is your favorite part about being with the other grades it's a hard one my favorite part of being with the other grades is seeing how like they react and seeing how like like they could tell you things that you don't know and then you could be ready for that grade that's great how many feathers were there I think everyone in the school or everyone in third grade made one we're probably about 600 awesome that's awesome right all in a box and I wasna make something it's my turn did I notice that you guys have your feathers with you do you want to tell us what's on them or just hold them up and show us they look really cool oh really nice great did color copy their feathers and they are on the actual and they have these the inst one oh like we're on a photo opport and yeah I have I have one question about Community Learning just to make sure I'm I understand are you with a different teacher each time yeah okay so you get to meet a different teacher every single month no oh yeah so you get to so you get to have create a relationship with a new teacher throughout the whole year yeah awesome that's every adult in the building is there everybody great they actually move around the building with great success I was nervous about that what it would be like when all of a sudden all six moved but they do it so do you move to a different classroom when you do Community Learning yes and are you with your s you guys are all in third grade are you with your same classmates from your third grade class or with other third graders and fourth graders different groups there's like groups that's great so you get to meet a lot of new friends too that's wonderful that's great what are you going to pass on to the incoming third graders because you're almost fourth graders that's awesome and them off after do any of you all want to add to that what you might pass on you guys did a great job thank you for coming thank you for [Applause] coming I know you have the earliest time free to leave watch nice job you thanks for coming oh I know gets older better we just we'll give it a minute to S down Miss tosy can you hear us okay yes thank you I can hear you I don't know if you can hear me though I'm around a little bit of noise you have no idea it will be thank you thank you good night everybody oh as you should be they were wonderful what we used to yeah all right let's move on to the next item on the agenda warrant approvals Paul right I do have it up this time between February 13 2025 and February 26th 2025 I Paul Kendall authorized by my signature payables in the amount of 51194 this includes general fund expenses of $ 363,462 7 revolving expenses of $133,300 and Grant expens of $1,736 and meals tax expenses of $775 thank you Paul Jim you have superintendent's report yeah just a couple quick things one I want to publicly thank uh for those who don't know uh esmer uh castar director of communications uh is taking a job uh with the maror public schools uh as their uh director of communications and I just want to publicly she her last day is Friday I just want to publicly thank her for the work that she's done uh We've we've moved quite a bit forward with our um goals of communication and consistency within the buildings in terms of our our weekly newsletters uh the work with the logo uh the the platform of s'mores but also then she redid our website and She's continually updating that uh we do have a new one coming on board in in July so uh that's pretty well done uh we'll have some clean CLE up work to do and some training for our admin team uh so we can actually individually post from each building which is what our goal will be um so that's exciting but again I just want to say thank you to her um and lastly um well two things one uh we have a tri board meeting this weekend uh with the fincom and select board I met with Michael Herbert yesterday for a good length of time just to talk about you know where we are with the budget process and um you know we feel that you know as a as a town and you know General government and schools that that there's a lot of work still to do with the budget um but but there's still some optimism uh and that was curbed a little bit today uh when I just was uh just got back actually from uh spending the afternoon with uh Senator spilka uh in in Boston uh about six superintendents we went in met with her we do this on a yearly basis right around this time to to check in as as the new legisl process is beginning um you know generally the the governor's first iteration of the budget is out and and going from there and and what I can tell you I took away is that it's going to be a tough year financially um at the state level um and that when we're talking about compy determination in mcast uh that that was a question I had asked is there going to be some sort of um process so there's consist consistency across the state um right now there there isn't anything that is going to be implemented currently um there will be some uh public hearings on um some proposals that desie is making but desie is going through a shakeup as well the the interim commissioner uh has resigned and will be done in a couple weeks uh they'll hire an interim commissioner then eventually a um a full-time commissioner starting end of March will be the um appointment and so there's a lot in flux if you will but other than that um that's all I have for for my report thank you we have any questions for Jim all right move along to Mike just a couple quick things that we we had a vacation last week so there's not a whole lot to add in terms of from the curriculum lens but a few just congratulations uh over the weekend I was able to attend uh the division three um state champion wrestling event and I want to send congratulations to sophomore Logan Costello uh who is named state champion as well as senior Adrian Guzman who uh won state championship honors for the second year so congratulations to those two um few events that are happening that are worthwhile mentioning tomorrow the PTO is sponsoring the clocker classic which is a wonderful event allowing our staff members to play in a basketball game the kids always enjoy watching them play that begins tomorrow at 6 p.m at Ashlin High School uh and uh it's asked for a $5 donation upon entrance um the Ashton high school theater Society is putting on their show this weekend uh of anything goes tickets are on sale our general admission is $199 you can purchase tickets at a ahs.com up to one hour before showtime and tickets can be purchased purchased at the door for $15 uh the show is Friday February 28th and Saturday March 1st at 7 p.m.

1457 not not against the revised budget figure is that correct is that right so like where we're showing in here transfers and adjustments bumps the revised budget up you're not the encumbrance is not against the 1.6 figure it's really against the original it would be against the um the what the encumbrance says it's 8 889 plus 53 4,000 gives you a total dollar amount and then the variance would be to the 1.6 yeah go ahead y six okay okay that helps thanks Marcy that's correct yeah 92,000 in March yeah yeah thanks Marcy do you have an accounting background do you explain these types of things all day this on a daily she speaks numbers sorry Chris go that's fine so and then uh anticipated we don't have a book yet meaning we don't have a purchase order yet out on it but I just know it's going to happen so I anticipated on the so or I anticipated on this report and then we have an available budget of which I I thought there were seven categories that be beneficial for us to to talk about so you can understand where the variance is that we would like to essentially transfer um in summary I'll get into those details but in summary as it stands today we looking at a $1.2 million um favorable bar uh variance to budget knowing that still several months of school so there are seven items that make up that 1.2 variants of which I'll just go through them 92,000 salary administrative there is essentially 1.5 positions that have filled the administrative area the salary instructional majority of that is it's 444,000 majority of that is retirement savings so hiring ow this this school year and um we also had an unfilled R teacher this year special ed salaries a favorable $500,000 variants the majority of that is unfilled esps and we have a one position there is um maintenance contracts 86,000 unfavorable majority of that is fire alarms that we continue to have expenditure Budget on a literally a day-to-day basis just with having electrician is it that the high school correct yep and which we uh we do have Capital funds identified which will be fixing the situation over the summer but there's still an ongoing cost on a daily basis if you will to maintain to we shut off the alarms right do you expect that um that c is is the negative 86 like a budget do you expect that amount to go up by the end of the school year or is that through the end what I did was in it was anticipated for a while and I moved over to encumbered so we put the PO out there so so it's that uh that's what we anticipate that's that 81k to the left yeah a good portion of that 81k is getting us through the rest of the year I just didn't know if that number would get bigger no I don't see that getting larger well good question not for the finals correct I say knock on before you know thing tips over on you correct yeah people Transportation this is related to um homelessness prior years we've seen expenditures budgeted for accordingly this year we're seeing less of those those expenses outo District we do have some savings or AO District placements it's it's variable and based on individual needs this number can change and does change you know often on a weekly or or every other week basis you'll see a report on Saturday that I've put together that changes on a monthly basis that we and um impressive the the last one is on labeled sped other and that's directly related to special education increase Transportation have we incurred additional costs because of the lack of esps pa pa professionals those vacancies that you talked about before have we had to incur like contracted services to support kids because we didn't have staff for now we did not the share we did in previous years correct yeah we did we did last year we did not the yeah no I understand that yep y yeah so as you know in in terms of I don't want to jump too far ahead but in the FY 26 budget we will be removing some of those additional esps that are currently within the budget that we didn't fill as we didn't F now we don't feel we need them yeah it was a good way for us to look at it too so with this favorable variance the the request right now is we have $629,000 within school choice that are it's they're essentially salary dolls school choice that we would like to move into the school fund so we can use you know we we'll free up the available balance in school choice so we can focus on that in our fiscal 206 planning fiscal 26 budget development it'll be it'll be available at that time and we we're comfortable that we can do that so uh so we're we're looking now to use 630,000 of school choice what was the original was 1.2 1.2 so the yeah so we're reducing our our dependency on school choice by about 6 that's correct 29 with and and again if you look at the chart that Chris is is displayed here there's still this remaining variable Val balance right of 600,000 you know we don't feel any we don't feel comfortable going any further below this number right now because we don't know what will happen even though we've accounted for and anticipated some even at a district costs um we have a feeling there will be some additional costs that are coming through uh and as we get closer to that June time frame May time frame this number may have a variance again a favorable variance for us where we could then you know reapply some of the say Transportation or school choice um revolving accounts that we're using in FY 25 again to be able to roll forward to FY it it's a it's as I will comment on sary it's a it's a delicate um way to balance your books on a yearly basis there's no way around it um we rely on our one-time funds cover salaries uh and that is um a dangerous game uh to play on a long-term basis now we've been fortunate that that we've been able to have significant increases in our operating budget the town has been really gracious and good to us and we've seen increases in Chapter 70 and State funding um uh but that is now drying up we've got to be really thoughtful you know down the road if you notice and reading in the paper natic $7 million override coming up there there will be other communities that have been looking at it in going forward after the federal dollars and the State dollars are starting to dry up so um this is just where we are right now this certainly is is positive news not only in the fy2 but is you've been through the budget process with me for f26 it's a big could be a big step in helping us reduce the deficit we currently are have any other questions for Jim Chris I just have one question probably for history but if we move this now is there anything to preclude it if a one-time event came up and you needed the funds can you move it back we can move it back okay yeah yep good question but yeah we we have the flexibility to do that we do have funding still ail yeah so to do this are you looking for us to uh just to approve um the abil the to approve the 629 number was um of school choice funding to be adjusted to the general operating fund so the motion would be to approve the transfer of $629,500 then WR correct thank you there second second any further discussion all for the vote Mar yes actually's not on she's not anymore all in favor I I okay thank you both next item on the agenda is the school year 2526 that's next year correct proposed calendar update moving the scheduled early release day from the prom yeah the prom and this is just that it's we do this quite often we bring this back we always when we set the calendar we don't always have the prom date uh so miss aner a lot of people don't have the prom date I I didn't have one either I'm just saying but but may uh May 15th we we had put on the calendar uh they cannot have the date uh the prom on that day they found a facility for May 8th so it's just really shifting at a week for early release day so we can get squared away that's all it is any need for discussion on the point there motion I move to approve the uh proposed calendar update for the uh 2025 and 2026 school year as thank you all in favor I I thank you m Zer thanks you all right um next item on the agenda is the consent agenda um was there anybody had any specific discussion any the consent agenda items can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda so move second second all in favor I I I not asking for opposition because all right and uh reports of school committee members AB do you want to start uh so not much really differing from the last time we met um it's been a calm calm few weeks uh we had a nice break we're appreciative of that um but now it's back to work and back to the Grind pretty much it for me sound like an adult back to the Grind Marcy grind goodness um I went to the Middle School site counil that again so a few updates from there um they had their first whole school assembly since Co um which I guess went swimmingly and um Aon wants to have one every maybe going forward but she said they did great a lot of enthusiasm there they had a toy drive and collected over 1,200 toys and we got one week's notice as parents so that's like particularly impressive um new toys went to uh public safety building for Toys for Tots and then other toys got distributed through the community their student council has been pretty active Spirit day every Friday I knew nothing about so I got to get on that with my my sixth grader um eighth grade class recommendations are going out soon for the high school and they're having an assembly next week with parents and students about that had 40 students apply into keep Tech so a lot of discussion about um interest in that and prepping families about you know all the things you need to do to think about if you want to apply into keep Tech or other private schools um we had a really good discussion about um like setting expectations and work progression for grade levels um homework expectations what the grades mean waiting a lot of lot of discussion about that um and then the um in the CL in that evolve uh evolved from the class schedule discussion because um you know the changes that are being made there and what the expectations of students are and explaining that to them um and then I think for the next meeting we're going to go through the um School Improvement plan and Aon wants to add a new item to each area and um look at what's continuing that's already been achieved and going to be continuing so more in like a maintenance mode and what can be added but um sounds like she wants to have discussion about just um like expectations on uh you know grades and and what that means and from a parent perspective too in terms of like just because you got a 95 in a class does not mean you should then be put in accelerated whatever it's there's more to it than that which was really helpful as a parent to hear all of that um you know is a child like ready for the next level at the level you know just a lot of discuss about that so that was good um it also sounds like there's going to be some discussion about if a student um is put on an i SSP or an improvement plan how that gets communicated to parents and and what it looks like going forward because there were letters that went out parents that take a lot of time but maybe the message wasn't delivered in a way they thought was most effective so um she wants to explore that so there just a lot of good discussion and I'll just say it again like Aaron is just I just think doing a wonderful job so thoughtful thank you Marcy Hina I don't have any update since our last meeting Kendall uh not too much we had very quick building committee meeting last night uh update on the our tax rebate so our our Tax Advisor has been in communication with the IRS trying to get a status on that so still hopeful that that will move through the system and and to us but uh no timeline on that yet when when does the school building committee kind of officially complete its work well we don't even have grass yet so um and and there's several things but the close out is typically about two years after construction so there'll be maintenance and different things with the until the msba process everything wraps up they need to exist although you know some point it might make more sense to ask the select board to or ask members I don't need to be a I don't need eight members to get a quorum to do like last night we only met because we needed to pay an invoice so uh it's it's got It's a lot you know have to get eight people minimum to be able to hold the meeting so uh so at some point it might make sense to to get there we we still have some things that are outstanding that we definitely want the whole committee for but um so I would expect pairing down over the next year and then probably maintenance for another year after that all right and uh I I don't have anything for for tonight either anybody else has anything else we look for motion to adjourn we move is there a second all in favor I unanimous we are adjourned 43 p.m good night everybody e

All politics is local, with John Featherston. An in-depth and comprehensive look at Massachusetts political news and current events. Hi, and welcome to another edition of All Politics is Local. I'm John. That's Mike. What's going on, Mr. Adams? I'm still Mike. Still Mike. still glad you're still John. We don't want you to change. Don't ever change, John. What a week in the world of politics, Mr. Adams. It's hard to keep up with. Um you know, I I enjoy it, but I mean, it's like we'll we'll we'll talk about a lot of things today. We'll talk about DOE. We'll talk about the audit. We'll talk about But the one thing you Have you ever had a MassSave audit done on your home? No. Not Well, you mean to save energy? Yeah, to save energy. Uh I might have. I had one, and They told me to fix the roof.

Commissioners, does your administration bear some responsibility for not acting sooner on these rates? No, I don't believe so. It's not my fault. to do with it. nothing to do with it. It's not my fault. It's somebody else's fault. I mean, enough is enough, Maura. Like, you brag when you're campaigning that you stopped two pipelines to Massachusetts. You have the ability to appoint people to this board, and you still don't think this is any of your fault? Well, plus it seems like she's able to add charges to all kinds of functions in life. Isn't she involved in prescription She wants to charge $2 per prescription to help pay for the cost of the migrants uh free health care. Yeah, and these two things are so related how? I mean, why why does that We already have a gigantic budget uh at at addendum from Maura Healey based on additional costs to pay for the last year's migrants, right?

good evening and welcome to the Greenfield Public Schools school committee meeting uh special budget hearing meeting for Monday February 24th 6:30 pm um let's see the meeting is being recorded by greenfield Community television if any other persons present are doing the same you must notify the chairperson at this time not seeing any [Music] secretary Jive will you call the role yes secretary janim I'm here member Martini here chair Johnson mad here Vice chair ston here member Childs here member Goodwin here and mayor dorer oh okay great then we are all present and have a quorum all right and it is 6:32 p.m.

and Sunday March 2nd at 2 p.m at ashon high school and um the AFI ashon Education Foundation uh who just does a great amount of work for our school system in terms of providing our teachers with opportunities to apply for Grants to support the work that they do is having their annual casino night and that is on March 8th Saturday March 8th at the Warren Conference Center from 7:00 to 10:30 and tickets can be purchased just for $75 so I want to shout out those events uh because they're all really important to our school Community thank you Mike any questions on uh all that um all right next item on the agenda is um superintendent's contract so just for a little context um mostly for the public um we had started having conversations with our superintendent uh few months ago about an extension of his current employment agreement um we had pre previously authorized Lori as the chair to sort of have the initial conversations with Jim um she did that and of course Lor's been out of town for um a little bit so you know the rest of the committee met um for our last meeting made some file tweaks to an agreement um and then at blessed sort of gave me the authority to speak with Jim afterwards um which I did we reviewed the changes and and sort of final language then emailed it to Jim um with the changes in it gave him the opportunity to look at it he Subs informed us that he's good with that um he did make some sort of grammatical changes but nothing of any substance from the last draft that you all saw um I did go through all that and made sure that there was anything that changed anything in substance um so with that um you know the the agreement um which really doesn't become effect until effective until July 1st um just for The public's information would be six-year contract you know I think reflects this committee's support for Mr Adams now been in the seat for 11 years um you know I think we've all expressed through our evaluations the P strong support for the work he does and the team he leads and things the district has accomplished um so we're really at a point of unless there's further discussion just looking to approve the final version of that contract which I know Jim circulated for everybody to look at in advance um a couple days ago but that's just for sort of for the community benefit the background on it anybody want to add anything to that before take up the issue um is so is is the motion for us to approve it and to authorize Lor to sign she's the only one that sign yeah yeah I mean I think that's a good point I really thought about the second part of that but yeah I think we're looking for a motion to approve the contract as presented and to authorize the chair Lori to sign on behalf of the committee so move second second we'll do roll call vote because Lori is remote um Marcy yes Hina yes Paul hi Lori hi and I for me unan five nothing congratulations and I'll take the opportunity and I'm sure everybody will chime me with their own two words just to say continue thank you for all the work that you do for this District it's been a pleasure to work with you and continues to be and just him for myself I for all just really grateful to have partner and a leader District that keeps us all student centered trying to move us forward every single anybody else wants to yeah thank you Mark I agree with everything you've said Jim I appreciate you so much and I've been here since you have and um you've been a wonderful leader was lucky to have you trans far you do I would just Echo all of that and say how much we appreciate your dedication and loyalty to the district and I'm thrilled to know that we're going to be able to have you on board to to uh for the next several years to to continue the the work you've done here we appreciate you stuck with us Jim stuck with us now well not until he signs it might be the other way around um thank you it's it's humbling for sure um and uh for you all to put your trust in me and and my team and and it's really as a team it's not me um I can't thank you enough um to potentially really round out my career and education here something special thank you okay and uh you can work out of time with Lor to do the signing ceremony when she gets back after bathing in the sign all right uh next item on the agenda is the fy2 budget update and adjustments I think um there a slide that was yeah I'm going to bring it up as well look to you and Chris I guess to walk us through this issue I'll turn it over to Chris here in a second I just want to give the context uh of what we do and how we've done this for the last couple of years um so we are in well beginning of March coming up on on Saturday uh so you know throughout the year we have an operating budget that's approved at at town meeting but also we have a number of of expenses offsets if you will that we utilize revolving accounts for to help pay for some of the uh expenses salaries supplies Etc uh through throughout the year and as we get closer and closer to the end of the current fiscal year that you're we're in we start looking at balances and to determine okay are these balances what are the discrepancies positive and negatively right and and how how do they fall within the overall uh budget approved at town meeting and then if we've got some favorable variances and and and Chris can speak to these in a moment if we've got some favorable variances how do we then look at those variances that are part of the operating budget and move some of the one-time fund expenses that we would you know count on using like revolving accounts so it could be salaries could be supplies it could be other things can we then shift those into our operating budget thus preserving the revolving accounts for future use um and and that's sort of that's what we're proposing tonight uh there there's some significant funds that we feel comfortable and I and I will say Chris and I are going through this on a weekly basis uh for him it's a daily basis like literally tying the numbers out um so and we're both pretty conservative individuals when it comes to our budget and making sure that if we're going to move some of the the expenses from the school choice lines which you don't have all the school choice lines if you want to go back and ask for those specific details we certainly can but it's probably a hundred different line items that could it could impact um we could certainly do that um when we provide the budget book if if you go back and look at the back of the budget book we have a number of school choice line items there already um so I will you know transition it to Chris here but that's what we're asking to do tonight is to be able to authorize us to make some adjusting entries to our current um budget and you might uh get to it but just you have a a school choice uh number now but understand what what the what the forecast was to use yeah yeah so yeah so and that's what c will he'll I did asked him to make sure he says exactly what we had um you know set aside for school choice this year so Chris do you want to take this over do you want me to hand your call it's sorry you will get to that to that part once we talk about what we're asking to to use um so you'll see the financials um in front of you too I think in your your packet so I'll just speak to what I see on my screen which is similar to to this but uh um just to give a quick overview you get the original appropriation which is our the the approved budget we have transfers the the dollar in that transfer is essentially Po's funds that roll over from one year to the next so it's it was already committed um Let Go 24 we roll it over because it's committed expense and it's U you know we pay um but it's not an addition to our clear it's more counting mechanism so the Year date expended versus uh is self-explanatory I think already spent cumbrance those are already committed expenditures that we have on our ledger so they're either salary dollars or they're purchase orders that we've placed with various businesses and Chris that encumbrance just looking like the first line of 534 that's an encumbrance against the original appropriation of 1.

There's a big hole in it. We blew insulation into the attic, and we changed all of our light bulbs in the house, and the light bulbs were horrible. Yeah, they are. But it's no longer MassSave. It's now MassPay. What Maura Healey has done to your How do you heat your home? Well, we have oil hot water blown through the house. Forced hot water? Yeah, we got like, you know, what do you call them? Radiators down there in the floor? Yeah. Well, I have gas I have gas heat in my house. And my bill last month I my gas usage was $320. Yeah. My delivery charge on that gas was $600. So, I had a $900 gas bill in my house, and it's all because of Maura Healey canceled two pipelines. Uh and I think we've got a clip. Uh let's go to that clip now of Ben Simmoneau from uh WCVB asking her about uh what's going on.

I don't understand. Some little old lady needs, you know, life-saving prescriptions, and we're going to charge her $2 per prescription to fund the migrant program. Tell me how that makes sense in anybody's world. Over and above whatever it already costs for health care to add to that for the purpose of that you just described of making sure that the illegal immigrants get what they need. It doesn't make any sense, and it and it's it seems to me like the the entire Commonwealth should be up in arms over everything she's doing. I think we have another clip that's not going to make any sense to anybody, but look at the type of individual that Maura Healey appoints to these boards. before I was able to get new windows. Plastic is another really important thing, and I want to quickly make the connection for you. As the fossil fuel companies see the writing on the wall, and demand for fossil fuels is going down and will continue to go down, they are increasing their upstream production of plastic, because plastic is made from fossil fuels.

Commissioners, does your administration bear some responsibility for not acting sooner on these rates? No, I don't believe so. It's not my fault. to do with it. nothing to do with it. It's not my fault. It's somebody else's fault. I mean, enough is enough, Maura. Like, you brag when you're campaigning that you stopped two pipelines to Massachusetts. You have the ability to appoint people to this board, and you still don't think this is any of your fault? Well, plus it seems like she's able to add charges to all kinds of functions in life. Isn't she involved in prescription She wants to charge $2 per prescription to help pay for the cost of the migrants uh free health care. Yeah, and these two things are so related how? I mean, why why does that We already have a gigantic budget uh at at addendum from Maura Healey based on additional costs to pay for the last year's migrants, right?

It's really hard, and I believe me, I just bought some cherry tomatoes today, and they came in a plastic container, and I was hungry, and I had a shortage of time, and I did it. So, we're not going to be angels, but think about ways that you can reduce plastic in your diet and or in your home purchases, and try try not to do that. Making your home as energy efficient as possible, you know, even if you're just covering up the windows in the wintertime with that that plastic sheeting. I used to do that um before I was able to get new windows. Plastic is another really important thing, and I want to quickly make the connection for you. this lady in charge of anything? How is she in charge of lunch today, much less the energy policy of the Send her out. I need some cherry tomatoes, but no plastic involved.

I don't understand. Some little old lady needs, you know, life-saving prescriptions, and we're going to charge her $2 per prescription to fund the migrant program. Tell me how that makes sense in anybody's world. Over and above whatever it already costs for health care to add to that for the purpose of that you just described of making sure that the illegal immigrants get what they need. It doesn't make any sense, and it and it's it seems to me like the the entire Commonwealth should be up in arms over everything she's doing. I think we have another clip that's not going to make any sense to anybody, but look at the type of individual that Maura Healey appoints to these boards. before I was able to get new windows. Plastic is another really important thing, and I want to quickly make the connection for you. As the fossil fuel companies see the writing on the wall, and demand for fossil fuels is going down and will continue to go down, they are increasing their upstream production of plastic, because plastic is made from fossil fuels.

The other thing is, does she realize her glasses frames are plastic? I mean, this is Where's the common sense, John? Where is it? You're the governor of Massachusetts. You can choose from a huge pool of over, you know, millions of people, and that's your choice to run your energy program. But it's like all the common sense in the world is gone from you know, I think DOE is great, and I think it it it adds up to a common sense, you know, equation. No question about it. But I see I I pulled this up. Look at this. I pulled this off the internet. I'll hold this up. This is a children's book uh inspired inspired by a real family, it says. It says the children's book is called In My Daddy's Belly. What? And it's the story of a transgender dad giving birth. Okay. Call me ignorant, ignorant.

It's really hard, and I believe me, I just bought some cherry tomatoes today, and they came in a plastic container, and I was hungry, and I had a shortage of time, and I did it. So, we're not going to be angels, but think about ways that you can reduce plastic in your diet and or in your home purchases, and try try not to do that. Making your home as energy efficient as possible, you know, even if you're just covering up the windows in the wintertime with that that plastic sheeting. I used to do that um before I was able to get new windows. Plastic is another really important thing, and I want to quickly make the connection for you. this lady in charge of anything? How is she in charge of lunch today, much less the energy policy of the Send her out. I need some cherry tomatoes, but no plastic involved.

but I was pretty pretty much under the impression that the only bellies that you can evolve from would be a a woman's belly, right? That's what I was taught. Am I wrong about this? No, I What, you know? It's a children's book, and they were they were trying to get it banned from the you know, look, you're going to give this to a 6-year-old and say, "Oh, no, you Yeah, daddy can have a What are we doing here? Where's the common sense? It's unbelievable. We want this in our schools. But I I lived for a sh- a short period of time in North Carolina. NASCAR was huge in North Carolina. I remember when I lived in the Carolinas, they wanted to ban all tobacco ads on NASCAR Mhm. because they were destructive to children. But now in 2025, This is okay. CAMEL BAD. THIS IS GOOD.