Um, more and more we're seeing more and more cars fill our parking lots. Um, there's also more demand for say student parking. More and more students are driving. Um, there's more push for that. Um, and then we also have the challenge of snowfall and sometimes we we have to put the snow somewhere. Um, whether it's temporary or permanent, um, we end up with some piles of snow that, as you can see, have taken up a few parking spaces, and that presents some challenges. I know when I come here, it's a little harder to park um, for meetings and things like that because in some cases there's snow. Um, so having that additional overflow parking would be very beneficial. >> This is the conversation we're having with both towns. They they appreciate and realize it. So we keep bringing up on our our presentations for both towns because there's there's absolutely a huge thing to take place.
>> Oh darn. >> And the parking lot is smaller than it used to be because the footprint of Dondo is bigger and allows to go above that. >> Yep. So um I I have a quick video that I I share frequently. I don't know if I've shared this one before, but um uh I'm going to hit play, Joe. >> Yeah, >> right there. >> Is that coming up? Did I kill it? >> No. >> Oh, there you go. >> So, what you think of the house? >> It's got a great kitchen. But did you see the school right now? >> Hey, babe. I got to go. >> Bye, Daddy. I want to talk with my parents. >> Okay. So, I I'm sorry that wasn't as loud as I'd hoped. Um, we'll take the volume up next time if we can. Um, but um, did anybody catch like what was what was the very first thing that they talked about?
Very first thing they talked about, >> what was the school rating? >> The only thing, right? So, she had this great they great house she was in love with. His first comment was, "Well, look at the school rating." and instantly that house is off the table. It's not an option. No matter how beautiful the parks nearby are, no matter how few potholes are in the road, they didn't talk about police or fire response times. They talked about the schools. If you go to Zillow tomorrow, today, tonight, you will see school ratings front and center. You will not see potholes per linear mile of road. You won't see any of these other things we talked about. Um, this is what matters to families when they're moving into neighborhoods. This is what impacts, there's no bigger impact on home value than the quality of your schools. Um, so if your communities want to maintain home value, they'll invest in the schools.
The best investment you can make for homeowner value, period. And with that, >> thanks Aaron. >> My presentation. >> Any quick questions for Aaron and we'll have two more meetings where we can prep with details. But >> yeah, as a lay person, I see your END and then also school choice and all of a sudden there's a $400,000 request for each of those funds. Um, if someone's just tuning in, can you explain just very briefly why those funds are available and and haven't been utilized or seemingly utilized in past years now with so much money in them? >> Sure. So, um, the the district uh you've seen the draft audit um financial statements. Um, if you go through those, you will find school choice. And as of the end of uh 2024, the district had $2.8 million in school choice funds available. Um, I didn't put them there.
I they they came through probably many years in the past. Many districts had balances in the past because the $5,000 you once a you've been getting all these years once a time upon a time was worth a lot more money. Right now, it it doesn't quite mean quite as much. So that it's sort of declining values as with anything that stays the same cost, right? That value declines over time. Um but that balance is there. Um in 2025, we received about $450,000 $435,000 of school choice funds. We did not need to spend school choice funds to close out that year. Um so that brings that total up to 3.2 million. Um when we started this budget this year, we knew we wouldn't have END. Uh we knew we um had already looked at shedding some physicians. Um we put additional school choice funds in there.
So we've got about $400,000 to reserve the budget beyond what we take in. So that will bring down our balance a little bit, but that still leaves us at that sort of $2.8 million. If we were to we were to spend all of our choice money that you've allotted for this year, we would still be at that $2.8 million. That's a that's a a very very robust school choice um number. Um you would be very hardressed to find any district that has that much particularly not that much per student. Um so uh our our auditor will certainly suggest that we spend some of that down responsibly. I am looking at responsible ways um to spend out that money. Um so you'll see some of those items are investments in essential items, things that will better the school district as well as will demonstrate a bit of a partnership with the towns, right?
We're picking up a greater piece of sort of this capital uh and one-time outlay. Um so uh it's part of building sort of that partnership with the towns. We understand um they're looking to replace it particularly in Boilston the BDES roof. Um they've just done the the Berlin memorial roof. Um we greatly appreciate that and anything we can do to sort of help alleviate um and help them meet some of their needs whether it's police, fire, recreation department in terms of capital this year. We want to be good partners in that process. So that's that's sort of the philosophy behind this. Um, uh, it's multiaceted. This takes a few things off the table that might also have been kicked down the road a couple years. So, we'd like to, you know, be able to start sort of fresh on some items. >> And how much income are we going to get from school choice this year or like for the next budget?
>> I'm sorry, say again. >> The projected income from school choice with the current seat. >> So, we're we're expecting that to be pretty flat. I mean, that that's going to come down to a conversation about, you know, our willingness to open up school choice seats and where we might open them um and what that might look like for the long term. Um I think, as I've shared, I'm not some huge proponent of school choice, but I'm a proponent of school funding where if we're going to say that we don't want as much choice, it's absolutely fine with me, but then we have to replace that money somewhere, right? it it's a it's a give and take. The pie is only so big. Um if we start shrinking a slice of our revenue pie um something's going to give and so we need to ask that question.
Um again like I said not not against even not doing choice at all. I worked with this a district that didn't do it by principal. >> So so we have an admin meeting tomorrow and one of the agenda items on that admin meeting is school choice to talk to our principles and see what they're supposed to. So that's part of a conversation that we're doing in February and then we'll get that information that we do every year and bring it back to school to make some decisions with that. >> So that's early. That's good because we usually don't get to vote on that until like April or May. So that would actually be nice to have that information >> before. Any other questions for Aaron? >> All right. Thanks, Erin. >> Okay. Uh, if I can just close by saying since we're, you know, kind of in public and and everyone's here, um, I I just want to re reiterate that anyone would like to sit down and talk about this budget, go over the budget, I will meet with you any time.
If you're a school committee member, please work through as part of the communication process. But if you are a member of the town, uh, you know, a citizen, a parent, a select board member, just send me an email. um we can sit down and we can go through it. Al may join us. Um but happy to have this conversation. >> See, just appreciate it's an everchanging budget right now. Right. So this is the budget we're presenting to you, right? It's a little different than even the one we gave to April last night because they have to change that area today. Right. So it's ever changing, right? We're still working on >> perhaps a YouTube link could be put in the newsletters as well. >> Make it a little less hard for people to find for this for this. Yeah. >> Okay. Anything else? >> Good.
Thank you so much. >> Thanks, sir. >> Is anyone here for another public comments? >> All right. Anybody have anything for future agenda items? >> Subcommittee subcommittee. >> What's that? >> Are we doing subcommittee the next >> at the next meeting? >> Are we meeting on the 24th? >> Mhm. >> Is that And so that'll be another draft of the bud this budget. That'll be a detailed budget presentation from Aaron. Maybe an hour and a half, two hours maybe. >> What do you think? >> I don't know. >> Yeah. Uh yeah. So the 24th is all about budget. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> The 10th. Yeah. March 10th should be the really big one. >> That'll be the hearing. Yeah. >> Next time >> March 10th is the hearing. Yeah. >> Then March 10th will be the hearing. >> Speaking of the hearing, you're on top of the dates for the newspaper.
>> Yep. >> Yeah. We posted already. in the mods technical where reserve the auditorium like we did last year to present it there just in case there's a large amount of people so we take care of that as well too >> all right sounds good uh next up business items so the capital plan meeting we've been talking about this a little bit wants to be the representative to attend on behalf of the school committee um just remember it's attending listening bringing it back to the school committee if there's anything to act on you don't speak for the committee there's nothing that we know of that needs to be spoken for that I have a motion to appoint Megan Grill to attend on behalf of school committee at the board and capital play meeting. >> Jess, but I'll second it. >> Oh, Lisa, sorry. All right, Lisa move second.
All right, any comments on that? >> All in favor? >> I. >> Anyone guessed it? All right, the motion passes. Thank you. Uh, then a couple items or a few items as first reads school calendar. Um, do you need to say anything? I hope it's self or it's self-explanatory. We got a little different format this year of presenting it. We worked with our admin to put it together led this. We've also vetted this through the union as well too. Um but we're presenting to you for first week. Give us some feedback on this so we can get this out to parents. As far as the school calendar goes, this is the first read. So this is people's opportunity to look at it, think about questions for next time when it goes on for a vote. And uh next time when it goes on for a vote, hopefully that will be the vote and we won't be talking about another vote in August.
That's right. >> All right. Sounds good. um program studies first read. Any quick comments on that? Quick comments on anything. >> Um so just we are proposing four new electives that we have. Some of these are driven by uh looking at like the business concentration piece. We pull our kids every year to ask what they are interested in. And we had asked our junior class that if you were applying for a major right now, what would it be? And 17 of our 71 students said business. It was our top response. So in response to that, we are building in these courses. Um and we we're really excited about them too. They're really looking at some kind of new pieces and opportunities for our kids that haven't been offered before. Uh the final piece is the great American novel. Uh that is the uh fourth offering here to really support kids for the humanities.
challenging uh piece for some of our high achieving students who want to take on a deep dive into the classics. >> Any questions or follow? No, >> I was going to say the only course that is not going to be offered for next year unfortunately is nature of feeding. Um SteveO who's long worked with this authority uh is going to be retiring um come the fall and this will no longer be offered. We always look to what can we now replace it with as this has been a staple for Tahanto. Um and other pieces that we've looked to build in which the school committee has supported is initiatives such as like our world traveling club um and these other expeditions that we have with world language. So we're hoping to continue to supplement and as opportunities go out new ones arise. >> Thanks Rich. So Al, we also talked um this is not here but just to point out program studies handbooks whatever handbooks we need to sign off on we've been getting those a little late the last few years.
Yep. >> Signing up on handbooks in December. Yep. Probably not a great idea. >> Agreed. >> Could we could we get working on those so that you know come maybe the July or June or July or maybe even at the latest August meeting we can do whatever votes we need to. >> Yep. Absolutely. That'll be the work that we'll be doing with print on that as well, too. >> All right. That's why we're getting the calendar to you guys in February this year. >> All right. Uh, and then the last first read we have on there are the protocols. We talked a little bit about these last week. Um, I put them out there. I put them together. I It's first read. So, if you've got questions on them, we can discuss them. Probably more appropriate to get to them after the budget is is handled.
again get them worked into the committee handbook however we feel like we want to do those but it's something that's been hanging out there since October so I felt important to just get a document out there so people can take a look and we can go back to that and uh discuss on the vote at a future meeting but just put something out there for everybody to take a look at all right >> and those those will then lead us into a self-evaluation >> I mean they're they're two separate is this is the training from MASC we took with Tracy in October that was about how we run our meetings make things more efficient. Self-evaluation relates to goals we might set at the beginning of the year and how we write about those protocols can help us run things in line with our goals but they're separate from whatever that process would be.
coming up with the document was separate from whatever that process may be. >> Yeah, I'm just saying operating protocols are generally the things that we hold ourselves to and we agree and sign them and superintendent as well. And so that is generally what I learned at MASC trainings that we base our self-evaluation and our goals on. >> Yeah. How we the protocols that we met with, trained with not Tracy with, discussed and agreed on were things like uh how to uh communicate before meetings, how to put agendas together, how to run agendas during meetings, what should be on agendas, things like that. They're in the protocols there. If we want to set goals, we might set a goal of um you mentioned want to have a retreat over the summer, right? So a goal might be have a retreat and do some of the kind of training.
We don't necessarily have to have a protocol that says we're going to do the retreat every year, but it could be a goal for a particular year and then we could evaluate ourselves on what we do for the retreat. Did we work it out? Did we stick to what we said we were going to do with the retreat? Whatever it might be. But this document is on there simply as a first step so that it got done and we can take it, vote it down, change it, amend it, whatever like your goals as well too. school committee not telling you how to do your goals, but it's reflective of the district as well too like starting a strategic plan next year. One of the things that school committee would want to be doing is is supporting that, right? And implementing some of the things that are coming through in that.
There's a section that we heard loud and clear from the survey about school committee, right? So, you want to be looking at that reflectively so that you can then put your goals based on that as well, too. >> Will that Sorry, will that be on the agenda next time? >> What's that? >> The district improvement plan like Al was just talking about. We're hoping to we're working to get there. Um we're either >> no rush. I was just asking because you brought it up >> because we have to have you guys vote on it. So that's plans to come in front of you guys to vote on that. But we also have to go to from the towns as well too and let them see it as well too. So every month from now until the end of the year or the end of this school year, we'll have that on the calendar for you to look at.