In plain terms, if the cost of running our schools rise faster than the funding available to support them, something in the system eventually has to disappear to make that map work. Um, I've reviewed this budget. I've been to Boilson's meeting. I've watched Berlin's income meeting and I see that they're doing the best that they can. Um, but what that leaves us with is significant gaps and the district has to end up absorbing those costs somewhere. Um, it's important for the community to understand that the district already used a temporary solution last year to close a big part of the budget gap. Um, they used school choice funds, money that normally supports student programs as a temporary way to cover rising operational costs to stabilize the budget. In simple terms, we used program money to help keep the system running. That decision helped the district get through us last year, but it's not a long-term solution.
So that's going to be um on the 26th. And I'd like to suggest that we send out u maybe in Michael's newsletter and put something on our website um a a Google form that allows people to ask questions prior to um which would just be helpful because you know not that we wouldn't take questions that evening but it would help that be prepared with good good quality answers. >> Sure. >> Right. Yeah. >> We'll keep the time up. So so that would be good. So unless there's any additional conversation or any additional information that needs to be provided, I I want to thank Jim and Mike for the presentations, it uh it's not an easy scenario that we all have to deal with and uh for those who are watching at home. Uh bear with us. It's uh it's going to be a bumpy ride, but you know the people who have made these uh figures work uh have done it in the past and we will continue to use their expertise for the future and I hope that uh cooler minds prevail and people stay on point because this is very important for all of us not just for a group of individuals but for the entire town because it affects all of us as a community.
Those funds cannot continue to be used in the same way again without undermining programs they're meant to support. What this has really revealed is the underlying structural issue. The operational cost of running our schools continues to rise while the funding available to support them has not kept pace. And when the cost of operating schools rises faster than the funding available to support them, the district is being effectively asked to do less and less. At some point, we have to acknowledge that if funding continues to fall behind the real cost of education, what we're experiencing isn't just budget pressures. It's a slow defunding of our school system. Many of the costs driving the situation are outside of the district's control. Special education services, transportation, health insurance, they all continue to rise much faster than the revenue available to our towns. And Proposition 2 and a half simply does not keep pace with the real cost of running a school district today.
All right. So with that, I will entertain any of the boards who want to make a motion to adjurnn their their their session. >> Second. [laughter] >> I'll I'll make a motion that the select board adjurnn. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I a motion to adjurnn the finance committee. >> Second. >> Motion. >> All in favor? [laughter] >> The other two are if you guys could unmute yourselves. Yep. >> Roit and uh Shantel or just raise your hand session forever. >> Perfect. There you go. Thank you. [laughter] >> Motion to adjourn school committee. >> Second. All >> in favor? >> I >> thank you very much and good night.
And the state has not kept up with funding their mandates that the districts are required to provide. If we continue down this path, the risk is not just incremental cuts. The risk is that we slowly erode the level of education this community has always expected and that of our students. We really should be talking about how to strengthen supports like literacy across the district, not how to cut deeper. We have a literacy coach and we have a reading specialist that are on an investment slide as opposed to being in our operational budget. At the same time, education is evolving. Increasingly, students are choosing to go to vote schools. They're going to private programs. They're going to alternative pathways because they're looking for more hands-on and applied learning experiences. If we ignore that shift, we're going to lose students, which I think someone could argue that we already are.
And not because they lack academic ability, but because they're seeking learning environments that feel more relevant to their future. Academic rigor is obviously always a concern, but students also benefit from the opportunities that apply their learning through real world experiences and career connected pathways. But how do we begin building programs like pathways if we can never get never get to a place where we can even discuss funding them? This reality may also request to have long conversations about our priorities. If our financial situation means we cannot simply add new programs, then we may need to take a hard look at what we currently do and ask whether or not things in our system are still serving the needs of today's students and the future that they're entering. Education is changing. The workforce is changing. Our students are changing. We have to make room for innovation.
And that may require us to rethink some of the ways that we've always done things so we can create opportunities that better prepare students for the future. So I would encourage the committee, the towns, and the community to begin having more consistent and transparent conversations about where this path leads us, not just during budget season. These conversations should involve everyone responsible for the future of our towns, the board of selectment, planning boards, and those responsible for sustaining growth in our communities. If we continue the status quo, it will not be enough to sustain the cost of operating our schools. And if funding continues to fall behind the real cost of education, the decisions facing this district will only become more difficult year after year. Sorry, that's my spiel. Um so specifically when we're talking about what's not in the operational budget because obviously you guys have cuts you need to do as far as um what we're seeing and what we're here to ask for is more.
So that's a difficult position to be in um having a full-time Florida nurse safety issue period. Right? We cannot have substitutes coming in and in and out and in and out that just don't know our children. Point blank, it's a safety issue. Um, you know, many students today, they have complex medical needs, right? My son personally has diabetes. Um, and you have things like seizure disorders, asthma, feeding tubes, um, you know, severe allergies. Having this full-time floater nurse is basically a built-in support when we have nurses that are out. And I don't think we can expect any nurses to be in every single day. I don't think we expect anyone to be in every single day of their job. Um, it puts the district at a significantly lower risk for any kind of lawsuits or liability exposure when you have nurses that know these kids and they know their their care plans.
Um, I think a lot was talked about. Um, I know Mr. Donna talked about the reading specialist and we have a new ELA curriculum coming in. Uh, I know the teachers are going to need supports to roll that out. We have the third grade uh scores that are falling. I know that was in Lisa's presentation. Um, so to not even have ELA supports in the operational budget seems really irresponsible. Um, so that was P1's. If I just talk briefly about P2s, I know Al talked about the strategic planning committee, which I'm on. um things that we really need to start thinking about and I'm not sure where the funding is going to come from but um major feedback from strategic planning was middle school in general right how are we investing in our middle school I don't think we talk enough about that these presentations have Tahanto middle school investments but right now middle school is on a high school schedule that's the main reason why they don't get enough ELA is because they're on a different schedule what does that require well that requires having not to share specialists, right?
Right now, the high school, middle school share specialists, right? So, we would need separate specialists. We would need more ELA supports for middle school. Um, and they sort of want their own identity, and I don't blame them. That was direct student feedback. Um, I know we've talked a lot about AP courses and that kind of stuff. And I'm not sure if it's because I come from a tech background, but I really recommend that parents do their research. I have a seventh grader now, so I'm just starting to get into it. But really looking at what is the job market going to look like for them when they graduate. A lot of the information out there that we don't know, but there are trends. Um I think to Lisa's point where uh there's a lot of engineering jobs and there's a lot of healthcare jobs and I think we really should be looking at that for our students.
We're doing them a grave in injustice if we make investments now in the school that don't align what's with what is going to happen for them when they come out. And I think we're losing kids to vogue schools because they sort of provide that sort of support. It's not necessarily that vogue schools do everything better, but they are giving them hands-on experiences and they're giving them these opportunities that are going to give them more when they leave than when you're in a traditional academic high school. So, I think that's that's where we're hoping to do pathways and I know I've looked at Rich's research a lot. Um, I think that's all I have. Um, I was happy to see um Erin's presentation about the capital that was great surprisingly great that we fund this capital thing. So, that's awesome. So, I'm I'm happy for you guys as far as that goes.
>> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Anybody else? Yeah. Nate Jerry. >> Uh, Berlin Boilson. >> Berlin. >> Um, I in Berlin. I have a daughter at BMS. Just super quick. Um, I just want to point out one thing about the last point on that slide, the specialist teacher, right? This I think is for the position that we lost last year. Um, and just point out because at the elementary school, I imagine this is the same at Boilson. um we're down to four specialties a week. That means that one day a week the elementary school teachers have no time. The students are in a specialty have no prep time that day. And I'm sure others can talk more about like how uh difficult that job is uh with no prep time in the day. Um just to have the students the entire the entire day basically aside from when they're working.
>> Thank you. And just to add to that, right, is so contractually, right, they have to have x number of preps, but it's really not the the prep we're looking for. And you'll hear Rob and John talk about looking for that common planning time. So teachers will all have a period that besides their prep that they can get together and discuss not only horizontal, but vertical, like what our kids need, right? What does Susie look like as she's going in from third grade to the fourth grade? What what tier 2 instruction is she going to need? like all those car our teachers are doing those in the hallway right now and not having I mean we're one of the few districts that I know of that doesn't have common planning time for our teachers to play it together. That's what that would bring back. Thank you.
>> Thanks. Thanks. Anybody else? All right. Thanks everybody for your comments. Aaron, come on back up. >> Back up. Okay, we're going to go to the handy dandy spreadsheet at this point. >> Yeah. Well, >> what does the committee want to do? >> Let's hope it works. >> So, we have we have two things we have to decide, big things, right? Operating budget and capital budget to calculate the assessments to the town to get them certified for the 45day requirement. On top of that, there's a couple things I think, right? So whether we go to level service, whether we cut the level service to meet the town's numbers or whether we decide on some of these investments and then the other part is the Berlin request that Aaron told us about using cash to pay for operating expenses in in order to bring that assessment down to the town.
So what do we want to tackle first? >> I'm open to ideas. So these cuts were made to counter 18% rise in medical insurance along some other things we had no control over. And so we made a really hard decision to cut some of these things because we're being threatened with either make these cuts or the budget fails and then we have to make bigger cuts. >> So I think I don't think any of us would would want to say no to any of these things. Um, but I think you have to keep thinking, okay, well, we can't add them all because then it will surely fail and we'll have to make cuts regardless of this, but cuts to what we already have. So, make that >> do we sorry, do we have any numbers from Berlin? >> No. Uh, Eric, >> we don't have an official.
>> We don't have we don't have strict numbers from Berlin. No. And the numbers we have from Boil just got five minutes before. Yeah, >> we've met with them a couple times, Berlin, but they have not given us a specific >> Can I make a specific suggestion for >> So, my thought was if you go to slide um you can see that there's a twomonth overlap with the superintendent. I think it was like 28 or 30,000. Can we fund that with school? That's a one-time cost. Can we fund that gap with school choice funds? And then if we did that, that could cover the lunch and recess aids. That's a pretty much like like for swap and a good use of school choice funds, I feel like, >> right? Um, so what I would say is I'm sorry. Let me go to um this is gonna this is one of those those curve balls I mentioned that I can probably work with.
But um what we could do is you're talk you said lunch recess aid, >> right? >> Okay. So this would um we could say yes to that. Um, okay. In order to make those zeros zero, we would need to increase our school choice to 740 and that should keep everything stable, right? So, it means you're agreeing to pay for those positions at no impact to the budget. that would increase our school choice to 740. You know, where those those would sit in the BMS and and um bees budgets. Um but we'd offset them with with that. >> So Beth, I like that thinking, but do we want to take that 30,000 and put it towards a biology teacher or a floating nurse or something else? I know it's not going to cover the whole thing, but it's just so hard to prioritize what we really really need.
>> And I have two kids in elementary school, so I feel awful saying this, but I just feel like we really need that biology teacher. And then like second priority would be that reading specialist at Tanto. And again, just going back to like how we keep slashing at Tanto, I just feel like we need to start investing in that school, even if it may mean making some trimming in the elementary schools and I I don't want to trim anything but I think it's pretty clear based on you know Jess made the comment I kind of I totally agree along those lines with um you know I I I think nobody wants to cut anything and for everyone out there that came with these please like we're in this position where like the town is like okay if you guys don't go with what we're advising it might not pass you might at nothing.
And even though we're being pulled like we really need this, we really need that, it's like almost an impossible position. Like I personally think we need all of these priority ones. I would if the money was available and if it meant not having to go to override, I would absolutely agree with all of them. But I'm so worried about Howard's point about having it go onto a ballot with watching what happened in Boilston last year. So, Bang, what you're talking about is not discussing any of these investments, priority ones, and discussing what we cut from the level service budget. >> Um, or deciding amongst us what priority ones we want to te to keep and what else to Beth. That was a great I loved Beth's train of thought like can we fund school choice with this? Is there anything else in that budget? You know, again, without looking at it line by line >> expiring.
>> Yeah. expiring or that might you know working with Janelle about transportation and some other more things and can we f put more school choice and more cash that I know we have you know the even the um END like can we take more I know we have healthy school choice and END balances and following the audit reports and the financials is there any way we can do that and you know kind of I love that train of thought that she just introduced of picking out things from the budget that this is why we're funding it with cash because it's going even something that's going away in two years. I don't know. I know that's a ton of work for you. >> So, just for the clarity clear, those aren't in the order. Those priority ones, right? So, the biology teacher, we put it's we we just we didn't put a prioritized.