And if you have a teacher at another one of our schools, teacher could potentially be using Remind. Three different communication methods to communicate. Well, if I'm a parent and I have three students in three different schools and I have to have Remind, I have to have home room. I have to have the other one. Not easy. One of the goals of this budget was to build a new website for all of the district and all of the schools and then implement something called pattern swing which is a unified communication platform for all families consistent messaging across our schools multilingual support for diverse families and two-way communication between home and school. So unifying that. So it doesn't matter whether you have a high school student or a preschool student. The communication method moving forward will be parents for all students. Budget goals seven and eight over and over and over in that critical reflection process.
So, what's Madelyn's secret? How's she doing this? Let me tell you. Madelyn's doing all the things a good students do. She arrives every day with a quiet, determined, confident, and ready to work attitude. She's willing to ask questions, rework problems, assist others, and maintain a relatively positive outlook. But, what makes Madelyn exceptional? Is that she's literally wrestling concepts such as oxidation and reduction reactions, integrated rate law, bond enthalpies, and equilibrium solubility constants to the ground until they make sense and she has mastered them. Like I said, she's wrestling these concepts. Is it a stalled cone stoner? Is it a piledriver? Is it a powerbomb? I truly don't know her secret. But, what I know is that Madelyn intuitively understands the academic feedback loop. After a lecture, she works on the problem sets, she evaluates her work, she analyzes her errors. And she's convinced that the answer is out there.
So I'm really really excited to be here. I'm really happy that you guys have chosen me to lead this program. And like I said, I I'm I more excited for the opportunity than I can let on right now. So, thank you. >> Real quickly, you don't want to miss this opportunity. There's somebody sitting to your side. You want to introduce her as well. >> This is my fiance, Brooke. Uh she's a fifth grade teacher at Mount Vernon Intermediate School in Fortville, Indiana. And my better half. >> Thank you. >> Welcome. >> Thank you. >> Okay. brings us up to new business item 8.1 facility update. Miss Ker off last month put him to work, right? Um, a lot of probably I say 90% of my staff is going to be here over spring break. We have a lot of small projects going on. We are uh besides deep cleaning of the buildings, uh all my four hyd custodials are doing PM filter changes next week.
Um because I have to start by saying uh the Trump administration's cuts to services and programs have had and will continue to have I'd say a significant but the word devastating I think is more appropriate devastating impact on Massachusetts. We are nearing 4 billion with a B4 billion dollar in real financial impacts to Massachusetts from health care subsidies to potentially 350,000 Mass residents losing their health care uh which we know the costs will fall on the state if the federal government abandons us with that to the SNAP program cuts to K to2 education tens of millions of dollars public higher ed. We all hear about what's happening with that and the cuts to that and PEL eligibility grants to our students making it harder for our our kids and and people to be going to higher ed if they want to do that which will have a long-term impact on our whole state, our economic activity, uh our quality of life and clearly uh people moving into the middle class and and rising raising themselves.
And while we were down there, we got to stay in Sacramento and go to the Capitol. I got to meet um Megan Dolly and Heather Hadwick and a lot of other state representatives and I actually got the opportunity to go during an actual assembly session and was recognized along with a few other FFA members on the actual state assembly floor which was really cool. We got to do mock lobbying and um pass um mock legislature and it was a really cool experience and I'm just uh I'm very glad that I had the opportunity to go um for our FFA chapter. THANK YOU.
It is something that we could probably send out some type of a survey monkey or something to that effect to just get some general basic information. I think that would help us as we look going forward with these measures because while I think it's meritorious there's a lot of work that has to go into it and you have to you know show that you've recruited you have to show that it's hard to fill there's a lot of lot of hurdles and so I think you know um do DOE uh to your credit you folks want to um support a number of these programs but at the same time the amount of work that goes into it I don't know if you folks really think it through and feel comfortable in saying well you know wow this is really good um you know this another whether the benefits outweigh everything else that has to go into it time costs and so forth >> understand and we we have stopped using basic ways of of um surveying people like it seems like you always need an app when you need a consultant or something when you don't you know a simple email go out you know it's like the it's like the Star Advertisers poll.
What came out was the need for systems and the need for support. One of our goals in building the budget was attempting to implement an online lesson planning tool for our staff. In addition to that for our administrators, implementing an online evaluation tool and the benefits of that are it's digital evaluation platform. It's secure. It's audit auditable. It provides us with visibility into what we're doing instructionally. And it will professional work. One of the overwhelming things that I heard is that the playground at Clara Martin needs to be fixed, needs to be prepared. It is not safe. It is not good for our kids. A goal of this budget is to fix that. In addition, a goal of this budget is to fix some of the HBAC here at the high school that is not working properly. Another goal, something that I heard overwhelmingly from families was, "I don't understand why my kindergarten student can get on the bus and go to school at this time, and my prek student who goes to the same school has to get on a different bus later." The goal of this budget was to fix that problem for families and to support our students who may increase the numbers in participation in extracurricular or sports activities because we're eliminating fees.
And if she digs deep enough into the logic, she'll find the missing piece of the puzzle she needed for it to all make sense. So, Madelyn, your soaring Eagle award is a testament to your grit and your determination and your tireless pursuit of academic excellence. I hope that the problem-solving skills that you've developed empowers you to pursue all your academic ambitions. The world needs problem-solvers like yourself to navigate constant change and complex challenges and drive innovation forward. It's been an honor to recognize your talent and your accomplishments and I wish you the best of luck in the future. >> [applause] [applause] >> Hello. My name is Alicia Arnold and I teach Spanish. In a world filled with noise telling young people what it means to be cool, Addison Myren already knows what cool is. Having a chinchilla is cool. Putting cornstarch in your bangs is cool.
Um Rick Hayes is prepping the outside sports complex and uh Josie is uh our lady that cleans admin is deep cleaning everything next week. So they're they're very busy. Custodial staff is doing everything from changing light bulbs also and things that they can't normally get done. A lot of them are working 8 to 4. so they could be together a little bit, a little bit of a team morale and also it's a lot easier to get more things done. Um, we're going to uh clean the tunnels out next week so we can start on the 27th of April with that project. And then we're also working on a I'm working on a spring uh on a project during spring break. We're hoping in the middle school to in-house that we're going to take the panels in the hallway and change them to LED and do that in-house.
So, so we are being incredibly cautious with taxpayer money even though the yearto-date revenues for this year that started in July are ahead of last year's collections uh by a little bit about $600 million. Um if it was just our budget, our state revenue that we had to count on, we would be doing okay. I wouldn't be this cautious because we're doing okay and I I believe that at this point I'm hoping we do not hit a recession with what's happening. But as you mentioned the war in Iran that's eating up I mean billions and billions of dollars with that and the impact that it's having uh in addition to the fatalities of our Americans uh is also having an impact. You see it we see it every single day. um for the current year, you know, I'll I'll skip. So, we'll we'll have to see.
UM, DO YOU GUYS HAVE ANY QUESTIONS? >> Thank you. Hello, my name is Billy Gino O'Reilly and I am the ASD president at Anderson High School. Thank you board members and district office staff for letting us update you on the happenings of our school campus. Starting off with athletics, the boys golf team has a record number of players with 13 boys. Track is doing really well at the moment. Connor Bushy got first in long jump and Peyton Ford took first place with shot at the Cowpoly Invitational. Softball is having a great season so far with a 52-1 record after winning a double header against Williams last week. Coach Hawkins and Coach Gurnie were complimented on the team sportsmanship and attitude. They are prioritizing responsibility and sportsmanship. Our new baseball coaches are focusing heavily on rebuilding the program and team culture. Coach Travis, varsity and David, junior varsity, are doing a great job so far.
How many of you feel this? It's not scientific, but at least you get a sense of the area and whether it's worth a while to even dictate something like this. >> Understand? Thank you. >> There's any other questions. >> Thank you. So, are there any other states that are trying to do this that are doing this? >> I believe there are. I I don't have a list of the other states with me at this point. I know that there I believe there have been a few states that have tried it before in the past but I don't know Senator off the top of my head. >> Yeah. So the leading up to that is then if you are aware of that then what are the hurdles they're having to jump through that we need to do before this comes before us because it might be premature unless we know all the the answers.
A goal of this budget is to attempt to bring back late bus service at the high school and at the middle school. Those were the goals. Our proposed budget is 54,28,312. There's three parts to the budget. There's the general fund, which is your day-to-day district operations. There's the special revenue fund. We get preschool expansion aid that goes into the special revenue fund. This year that aid will be $2,224,125. Then we have debt service. It's just like having a mortgage. We have to repay out our bond and longterm obligations. It's 2 million37900. That gives you the total of 54,2083. These are our funding sources. So we 74.03% 3% of our funding comes from local sources, which is property tax. 16.04% of our proposed budget will come from state aid, 4.31% will come from debt service, 4.1% from preschool expansion, 1.09% from federal sources, and 43% from fund balance.
Obsessing over Twilight is cool. And just so we're clear, none of these things appeared in my teacher training program, but Addison has convinced me that they are all valid life choices. Addison Myren is cool. She's also one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I've ever met and I'm including adults in this statement, which should tell you something. When I sat down to write this, I immediately thought of a recent evening when I ran into Addison and her older brother Sam and their parents and suddenly it all made sense why Addison is the way she is. Her family is kind. Not only did they actually talk to me in public out in the wild, but mom and dad made a point to thank me for being Addison's teacher, which is incredibly kind, but honestly, the gratitude should probably go the other direction. Teaching Addison has been an absolute joy.
So, I'm working with a com a couple of companies just to give them measurements and at no cost. They come in and say, "This is how many you need. This is what what you might need to do different." So, we're hoping with moving the staff out of the high school in June and July, they'll give them some opportunity to do some of that stuff over there. So, that's kind of what we're looking at. Also, I don't know if many of you remember, but about a year ago, there was a ceiling unit heater going into the high school, the main entrance that we're replacing during spring break. So, we'll be moving the main entrance of the high school down to close to where the IT department is, just east of the main entrance for the and that should be done in 5 days. So, as you can tell, staff is busy and most of them, like I said, I say 90% of them are working during spring break if turns to work.
Uh we'll we'll see what happens with the budget. We are continuing to hear uh the cuts. As you know, you hear this too. One day there are massive cuts to certain areas, the next day it changes. They go away um or they double it. It's hard to know but we are counting and looking at the state revenue uh but trying to plan for certain changes and deficits in case uh the federal cuts if all of them come to be uh we we will uh have a very tough year. So uh with that you know I just want to remind the for the current year for chapter 70 uh Ashland's chapter 70 K to2 funding was increased by over 50% since 50 since fiscal year 2020. Uh I know many of you remember the years when uh many years decades uh when we were really shafted by the chapter 70 funding formula and I know Claudia and I worked hard uh along with Harry Henchi and others in the town to make the changes and I'm really proud that when I became Senate President uh the first major bill that I helped to push through was the total reform of chapter 70.
soccer. Israel Garcia and Uriel Bar Veron got second team all northern section. We also have four all league individuals including Kevin Finch, Luca Rodriguez, Manny Galtos and Yuriel Baru, two of which were all northern section second teamers. And Anderson boys tennis team has gotten off to a good start. The team this year is young, consisting of sophomores and freshman, but there are a lot of athletic potential. They're learning the game and having a great time at it. The Anderson boys got a win today against the full at team. FFA spring in the A department has been off to a great start. Our milk product and farm power team have traveled across California and com competed in multiple field days. Our students have also catered and volunteered at the far sorry at the ver very oh my goodness of community events including the recent sax dinner.
Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Another question I had is a pointed out that we need to show that you've made a good what is a good faith effort? um towards recruitment um for the position and they said, you know, perhaps you have to advertise it for so long. So, do you have any thoughts as to what would that look like? We recently just had some discussions with the AG's office on that and what it would look like. I know that there are some collective bargaining agreement um terms that we need to follow. Um you know, things need to be posted internally and then possibly posted externally. Um, currently right now, majority of our postings for our educational officers, our classified staff are posted on a 10-day um, posting period at this point. Um, and then some will actually on the classified side move to a more continuous recruitment.
And I just want to touch on that fund balance because I think it's important for to have an understanding when districts are developing a budget and they find themselves who have a financial debt in their budget. What a lot of districts will do is they will transfer money out of either capital reserve or maintenance reserve to fill that gap which then puts them in a vulnerable position for a emergency capital project or an emergency maintenance project. We will not do that. This budget will not do that. We are only using less than half of 1% of our fund balance to make sure that we are properly funded in the event that we have a need from a capital project or a need from a mission fund. State aid summit. Everybody knows we got roughly $493,000 more in state aid this year than we got last year.