It does not mean that on May 1st, we are going to request a budget tax levy increase of more than 2%. The resolution says 10%. Because that's the number that would cover all of the positions that we said that I mentioned last Tuesday night. We are not recommending that. But if we lose $21 million in federal aid in the next 3 weeks and we didn't apply for this and we say, "Oh, wait. We need more money." Then we can't. So Amed, if I missed something, please, Mr. Sh, if I miss something, please jump in. Just one thing, we did reach out uh before we even brought it to the board for a board resolution to be passed. Uh we reached out to the DOE and the the the state DOE and our local county BA and just asked them if this application was binding. I sent you guys the the email thread from both.
Yeah. I mean, we've well, when we upgraded everything, um, I think I think if you look back about how we presented the zoning changes in June of whatever it was few years ago when we're in COVID and the MBTA bylaw, we went through that step by step by step. I presented at town meetings step by step by step at numerous meetings. So, I don't think there's any chance of this kind of just Never have I presented something here. Just sign it. Right? It's about it's about explaining what the inconsistency is, why it it doesn't make sense, why it's messing up our actually the logical understanding of our bylaws and and making those changes. I think actually a lot of times they're really easy to spell out when someone explains this doesn't make it actually. No, I think we recently have done a much better job.
And then at Discovery, you'll see we had an increase. We actually had a student return from homeschooling. So, just wanted to document that. And then last but not least, um been getting many calls on kindergarten registration, especially with all of the um inconsistency on what we're doing with redistricting and where folks are going to enroll their kindergarteners. So, um I think we can hopefully put to bed some anxieties tomorrow, but Newton School will be having a open enrollment tomorrow night from 4:30 to 6 and then Discovery will have one next Thursday at the same time, but you can always call central office if you have a kindergarten that you need to register and we can certainly help you at central office as well. Thank you. Thank you. questions for the assistant superintendent and superintendent. Member Ston, can you tell us more about this advanced manufacturing pathway that we're that we're working on?
Which is why we have separate settings, which is why we have various levels of support within the gened setting because for every student that least restrictive setting where they can successfully access their learning, it looks different. So that's why we provide the continuum. And within that continuum, we were creating differences in what we were giving to our students. And I don't mean just us in Anaheim Union, just as a system. And so the SAI model really turns that on its head and it really create creates equity and access for all of our students because now our SDC students who might have been using separate texts and separate materials and having separate lessons that weren't the same as their GenEd peers, like Francine was saying, they're reading the same books. They're doing the same um performance tasks. There might be some differences in what they're expected to create or what it looks like or sounds like, but they're doing it.
Um, so she even stayed, she's like, "Mom, we can't leave." And she had a program and she was like going to each actor getting them to autograph. It was total. So, thank you for all of that. Um, and I'm definitely grateful that our district offers these uh experiences uh for not only for the performers, but also for the students and families in our community. Uh, in addition to these wonderful events, I had the opportunity to speak with Senator Rosalisio Choaba recently and I invited her to come visit our phenomenal food pantry. Told her how awesome it was. um and she was very receptive. So, uh I'm thrilled to hear that Superintendent Nelson has already followed up with her staff. So, hopefully we'll be able to get her out. Um and I was also pleased to hear that she's supporting important legislation like AB65, which is going to provide up to 14 weeks of paid fraternity leave, and AB 1224, which would allow long-term substitutes to continue throughout the entirety of that leave.
It is not. It is just in the event, worst case scenario, it is a fail safe. So passing this resolution tonight means that you are allowing the administration to apply in the event we want to apply for more than 2%. Doesn't mean anything else than that.
Unfortunately, right? So, we're we we caught ourselves this time. We said, "Hey, let's have this meeting first." So, if someone came to a hearing, I'm sorry, a premeating, they w we would have time to change it. We've had it where like, "Oh, sorry. Thanks for your comments, but we can't change it to go to town meeting." Those are the kind of things about being well planned and scheduled. So, if you have a meeting to explain it, there's a chance for someone to make a comment. Let's talk about what has worked. So, like with the MBTA stuff, what worked? I think there was a subcommittee appointed by the select board, planning board. I think you were on it and there was a lot of work that went into it and there was lots of meetings that were open to the public etc etc. And so maybe we need to replicate this for the zoning changes.
So this year we received a grant to plan a pathway and essentially the way the innovation career pathways work are you have two technical courses that are related to the industry sector, two advanced courses and then it leads to either a 100hour um internship or a capstone project. So if we receive the designation from DESIE that allows us to begin this work next year, but it's it's like a building block. So we would start with nth grade and then build each year. So it's not like next year all of a sudden we have the internships and the capstones, but we would begin recruiting immediately for students who might be interested in ad advanced manufacturing. anything. We've looked at equipment from milling equipment to crickets for um like t-shirt and graphic design and things like that. So, we're trying to be thoughtful about having a variety of options as we build it up, but um the pathway also doesn't keep students from taking other courses of interest.
And that for a teenager is so important. Um I I've got one of those creatures at home and he has a 504. He doesn't like to have his accommodations because he doesn't like to be different. So when we can create environments where our kids aren't different from their peers, where they're doing the same things and having the same experiences, we're really building community. We're really providing opportunity and we're really getting to the core of equity. Let's turn my mic on. I heard you. It's okay. Okay. Who were our um first uh stu uh uh uh sites that we um we had the um models who were piloting who were piloting. So, uh Dale Junior High was one our probably our first pilot school. Um Lexington was in the second wave of schools that did it. We had a couple of different um different sites across the district who were willing to try it early on and then when we realized the benefit of it, we decided to go districtwide um rather quickly rather than doing a a slower roll out.
um helping to provide consistency for our students during those transitions. Uh lastly, this is um during the safe and civil schools training that many of us attended, uh I happened to win a free registration for future the future summer conference this year. Um, and so I wanted to ask the superintendent in light of our current budget freeze, uh, would it be possible to explore whether we can like roll it over for the next year so that one of our educators can hopefully still take advantage of it? Um, I don't know if they would be willing, but they will, but we do have a couple people that we have offered the training to. So if we No, I just mean so that it's paid for. Like not I'm not going to pick who, but just it's free for the district. Okay. But I wasn't sure if it had a deadline or if we could roll that over for Well, our hope was to use it for somebody this summer that would be attending.
So if you have any questions certainly we can answer that. And that completes my report. Mr. President, thank you. Doc, could you repeat that one more time very loudly to the community, please? Thank you. In simple terms, we have the ability this year to go above 2%. Without any additional public vote, this board of education can do that. And we can do that because we are, according to the state department of education, $44 million under adequacy in our budget. Meaning the state says we don't tax our citizens enough. And our citizens would laugh at that because our citizens are being taxed. Believe me, I know. So, this one year we're allowed to apply. We're allowed to tax increase the tax levy more than 2%. But in order to do that, we have to apply by April 14th. And the recommendation from the central administration is that we are just in recommending a 2% levy.
Maybe we need to think about we as the planning board are able to appoint and create groups to support our work. The design review committee in the past has offered help. We could in theory put it upon them. We could delegate some of that work to them. We could also choose, this is not crazy. Planning board has the power to say, "Hey, we're looking for volunteers from the community." For example, those who are no longer with the board. We're looking for volunteers from the community to sit down and do this task. We want you to read the entire bylaw and look for the kinds of things that maybe Trisha is interested in like what I would call kind of cleaning cleaning it up for inconsistency and lack of logic. And we're looking for a list of the top 10 things that need to be considered for bigger change, whatever that looks like.
So, it is different than a chapter 74 where you're really in that industry. this you're dabbling in it and if you're interested you could take additional classes or pursue additional internships but you can still take other electives and other courses that you might be interested in. Great. Thank you. Of course. Um and I also just wanted to uh superintendent that um would love whenever this uh restorative practice committee gets like a shared definition or there's some other substantive would love to invite folks to come and share that with us either through you or you know even have other people as well come and share the good news. Happy to invite them. Thank you. Great. Any other questions or comments? Questions? I mean, I just wanted to u appreciate you, superintendent, for um meeting and spending so much time one-on-one with um school committee members um this month.
And um what would you say um were the challenges in fully uh implementing this? So it's a big shift. We were coming from a place where teachers had been SDC teachers or they had been RSP teachers and there were different teaching skills and strategies being used in both settings and now we were asking people to really truly shake it up. Teachers who had been doing this work for 2030 years were saying just kidding. This year you're actually going to go over here and do that work. And that's that's anxietyprovoking for any of us. change is is really really hard. So helping people to understand that what students were getting was going to be increasing in quality. Um but it was going to be a shift in where the adults the teachers were spending their time. So that was that was a really big one for us.
But if they w if we don't end up having those people attend, Safe and Civil is always willing to work with us to do that. I just want to make sure that if it can't be used this summer, we can take advantage of it next. Okay, perfect. Um because it'd be great to extend that value to our district. Um so again, let's see. Thank you all for the work you do to support uh our students and staff. And that is everything I have. Great. Well, thank you. [Applause] I want to comment a little bit about because most of the teachers that are here now were here. They're at 5:00 when we before we went into close session. So, there is a backstory to the person that was escorted out of the building tonight for creating what I create what I believe was a disturbance. And he was planning this.
But as we've seen in the last two weeks, things have been very unpredictable at the federal level. In the event over the next 3 weeks, we find out that we lose all of our federal money, not just the 11 million that we've told we're told we're already lost, in the event we lose the 20, and I said 21, but I think it's $24 million in federal money. In the event we lose all that money and May 1st comes along and this board is voting on the budget, some of you may say, "Hey, we need to raise the tax levy more than 2%." And if we don't apply by April 14th with a board resolution authorizing us to apply, then we won't be able to do that. So this board resolution doesn't mean that we are going to. We have it in writing from the assistant commissioner at the Department of Education that it's not binding.
Like we can delegate this work. Well, like I said, I I think we're you could be talking about the kind of changes I am or maybe not. But um I for like as I've said before, this is just as as you're going to look at hotels, this is just something I'm going to do. I'm not really frankly I'm not really interested in being on a working group or anything else with it. That's fine. If you want to do it, go for it. So I'm just going to do it at my own pace as how I when I see those things, I'll bring them before the board and that's and that's the time and energy I have to donate. Yeah. No, that's great. I'm That's awesome. I didn't want to just Nope. But if someone else if someone else is gung-ho about signage or something else, they can run with it.
And you've been making it a a regular practice, which is new for us under your leadership to have someone taking initiative in our direction and giving so much time to one-on-one connection with us. So, I wanted to appreciate you for that. Um, okay. Uh, we'll move on to the consent agenda. Can I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So, moved. Motion from member Den. Is there a second? Second. Second from member Childs.
But it's been so successful and we've seen such growth in our kids. It's really helped to increase the buyin from people who were hesitant to begin with. Um, another challenge is is we did have to increase the number of teachers that we had because it wasn't possible to truly provide the number of sections that we needed. And so that's a a a big thank you to you guys for being willing to spend that money and to increase our teachers so that we could truly implement this process and really provide what the kids needed. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Lauren, for your presentation and Francine, uh, for being here. Um, I did have a couple questions. Um, on the total number of IEPs, um, what's the I I don't know if it's a correct question, but what how average long is a student on an IEP?
I had heads up that he was coming and I had heads up that he was here already before I even arrived here and that he was intimidating some staff members. He's well known to the district and um he uh is kind of a frequent flyer here to certain people and um I didn't take pleasure in removing him. He looks like somebody's grandfather. But we all work around people at different ages and um we live in a society today where people are unstable. And it's my responsibility uh at this meeting and my responsibility as a person and as an ex law enforcement officer to make sure that these that the people are safe. and um that's why he was escorted out and we're going to take appropriate action later on uh down the road, but uh I didn't take pleasure in that, but um I'm not going to let people get intimidated, staff members get intimidated and and have and and be threatened.