I've seen a couple of parents share one one by email. I believe it's the school committee. Um, but I I have seen that last year's school choice opened around March 20th. And I'm curious why it's a month and a half later this year. I'm curious why it's a month and a half later this year. That's the question. So why don't I have an email if you can forward that that concern to me? Um, I can't investigate concerns. Sure, yeah. Um, second of all, one I I don't think I don't know if we started advertising like our um our Pelham open house earlier. Um, I know that there's different things that we're doing different this year to include the registration, um, to include splitting out our forms, um and making sure that Pelham has everything for its own district. Um, so I would say that there's a there's critical things that we're doing this year to separate the processes, um, but we're still to me on track with our spring enrollment and numbers.
Jen started to work with me to to start looking at that with our our secretaries as well, too. We really need some help from school committee and some other members to really look at that cuz right now some of the events we're having we're losing money by letting them use our buildings. But didn't you charge did you charge for tickets to the play? It's a great question, Peggy, right? So, we charged tickets for the play that goes to the the the the group that's doing the play. >> It goes to the club. >> to the club. The booster's club for the the helps produce the plays. That's right. So, so it doesn't go back to the district. >> to the club, it doesn't go to the district. That's right. Okay. Yeah. And and that's one of the things we do well, right? We we say, "Yes, we want you to have events here." We we we give you that free because we want them to be taking place here, but we still have to pay for our custodians and things like that.
Any any questions for student reps? >> I I have I might have missed you might have said this. Did this this student teacher basketball game this week? >> Cool. >> It's April. >> I think I saw it Thursday. >> It's always entertaining. >> Um, check your schedule because that's that's that's kind of a fun event. Um, it's kind of funny. So, good. Thank gentlemen. Jonathan, you're excused. I know you're studying. We appreciate that. >> Want you to come out with good grades. You're our senior leader next year. >> Yeah. Bus out of the chair. >> All right. Hey, let's let's chorus the band sounded great last night and uh I wish them well. It's pretty neat coming up next week. Thank you. Good luck. Okay. Uh, Mrs. Robin, business financial report, please. >> Um, thank you. So, we are reporting on um financial results for the end of March.
>> Is that what you're saying that? >> Yes. >> Compared to the middle school. Oh my god. This >> right? Well, here's a middle school, but well, we don't have one for 2023. I guess we can started right now on 2024. >> Yeah. So I was trying to figure out why is the high school so you know there's like >> well they were talking for me personally I remember when we were going through All right, I think it's time to >> baby. >> Thank you. Best for all you know the drill. The day of the week does matter. depending on what she >> Yeah, that could be true. Be sure. >> So this is the belonging collaboration. looking pretty good, right? I just want to remind you. So the students did not return to the right until April of March, April of on all >> and then different way to look at these.
And we'll clarify and unify the law enforcement agency. Law enforcement agency means any county police department, the Department of Law Enforcement, Department of the Attorney General, the Division of Conservation and Resource Enforcement of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and any other state or county body that employs law enforcement officers, and any federal law enforcement agency. And that's it. And we have priority concurrence from both both previous chairs. So, questions or concerns? If not, Vice Chair. Uh on HB 2540 HD2 SD1 recommendation to pass with amendments. Any no votes or reservations?
It was the school participatory budgets. We will be putting $75,000 in there again for all 13 schools to be able to um allow them to continue to work on additional projects that they may have. And then under finance for the warehouse and print shop, the biggest increase there is we are picking up some of our software uh that would have been picked up in IT. So, that's why we have had an increase. And then our estimated carryover, so after we run through all of this, look at what we're carrying over from 26 to 27, what we believe our budget capacity to be bringing money in from MNO, we believe at the end of 27, we will have about 4.5 million to carry over to FY28. And what makes up those numbers again, we'll bring 3.25 million in from MNO. We are anticipating a budget capacity of 6.8 million and a budget carryover of about 6.7 million.
Really? Um, just for myself, I did not see I don't see anything wrong with the forms being combined. Um, I don't think the the forms that I saw in the beginning were confusing and were not aligned that it was two separate districts. But I'm I'm to sharing that service if it's communicated and the posters and flyers are done in a way that it's not confusing to families. You're talking about the kindergarten registration or our forms for >> The kindergarten registration. >> Okay. So, under >> we had talked about separating that out and I don't know if that is like that's not necessarily direction I think we need to go. Um but and and I know you have made the comment before that we would get the rollover of the choice kids who didn't get into Amherst. And so, I think that it has a benefit.
So, uh copier contract, finance office staff, tech support staff, uh curriculum review, same things you've seen in the other budgets. So, things we're willing to um do what we can. So, then we get into updated assessments. So, when we get into uh Berlin Memorial uh and Tahanto, we're looking at a total uh Berlin Memorial assessment of 4,918,497. Uh their share of Tahanto at 4,090,840. Total assessment of 9,009,337. Uh just a reminder, our March 10th Berlin operating assessment was 9,166,930. So, we feel like that um represents some solid cuts um on behalf of uh Berlin and um as we said, I think the select board has agreed to support that number. Um so, we're hopeful that that will go on the warrant to him we'll have there. Boylston. Again, [clears throat] uh steeper cuts in Boylston based on uh some of the challenges. Uh net Berlin Elementary of 5,346,791.
Um, the statement of accounts um the report on a forecast what the expected results might be by the end of the year based on what we are experiencing. Um at the end of March we are um unfavorable 191,287 which is worse than the previous month by 31,508. General education is projected to be favorable about $2500 which is 30 um1,000 worse than the previous month. Special education is forecasted to be unfavorable 193 747 which is 10,000 um worse than the previous month. So um we have some notes for the um some of the changes the bigger changes that have happened um in March. um our substitute line. We report on every month and um this month um um we did have experience an unfavorable um um movement. We I think we have one more month of that left. So um well we'll see what happens in April.
This one has questioning upward but I did take some time on other students either agree or agree >> these are positive responses. If you look over here last year and see all of those where they were feeling emotionally >> if you look at the chart right >> this was like a good story >> in general Okay. So there are a lot of different feel. >> Yes. So we're >> this is a little different because this is the like scale. you know the fivepoint scale. >> Yeah. >> Um so it's you know question >> so 68% of the students I did note that school that statement I feel like about five percentage points and higher That is our biggest back to the safety part. >> That was answered. >> Uhhuh. >> Moving on to Middle Scale. a collaborative relation this has stayed about >> not a lot of change one way or another positive response >> again down from median middle friendly around other students elementary but we can see it >> this year but it did slightly bumps up beyond the California medit Elementary school.
Hearing none, the measure is adopted. All right, thank you, members, and thanks everyone for being here. I promise I will never ever do a 37 bill agenda again. Yeah. Good morning. Like to call to order the Joint Committee on Committee of Education, Committee on Judiciary. Today is Tuesday, April 7th, 10:45 a.m. We are in conference room uh we're on 10:45 a.m. agenda. It is 10:52 a.m. and we are in room 016. Uh we have just one item on the agenda, uh Senate Concurrent Resolution 105 and Senate Resolution 99. This is urging the Department of Education to provide information to students on how to pre-register to vote prior to reaching voting age. And uh we have four people signed up to testify. I don't see them in the room, but we have Keith Hayashi from Department of Education, Scott Nago for Office of Elections, uh Yasmin Shaney from the Hawaii State Commission on Status of Women, and Shayna Wailana Kukila for the League of Women Voters.
And right now that's a low estimate. I would believe we will probably end a little better than that. Um we'll just have to see how some things come out with our ELA adoption and such. This chart takes what we had just talked about and kind of gives you a picture to see where the spending is taking place. So, if you take out our contingency of what we plan to carry over, you can see how much the middle school lease is affecting our capital budget. So, if you think about our ADM and what we will get just from ADM, that's like 6.8 million. And you look at our middle school lease and you look at IT, which would be you know the software for the students and um the computers, that's about $5.5 million leaving 1.256 for the rest of the district to operate for a full year.
Um but the forms that I saw were just confusing in that it had like dual enrollment and it had different things on them. So, I don't want to get I don't I hope that the message that I was trying to send is not that I want it to be separate. I want it to work the most effectively that it can. So, it wasn't it wasn't your >> in the beginning was effective. So, it wasn't your choice. It wasn't your So, first off, we received feedback from multiple school committee members um around the kindergarten flyer. But what I'm talking about is our forms, our actual forms as crafted as as they currently are, right? What people complete and different things. We are working to update those and make sure that they outline clear like this is Amherst, this is Pelham, this is So, it is we're not talking I'm not talking about the flyers.
Tahanto assessment, 7,672,891. Uh total of 13,019,682. That lines up with uh the number we see received from the town this morning. Um factoring for that that small change in transportation. Uh again, reminder of the March 10th number. Um someone did bring up there was a question about the the difference in the percentage changes to the Tihanto assessment just to catch that ahead of time. There was a shift in minimum local contribution towards Berlin as well as an overall number shift towards Berlin. So when we do those calculations, that becomes a net net shift to Berlin absorbing a little bit more of the Tihanto piece of the pie. Oops. So at the end of the day when all is said and done, I know there's going to be some commentary and potentially some questions, but as we did before this would be the requested motion.
uh central office staff. Um if you look at the financial flex of savings due to pro personnel changes and an anticipation of renement from the town to the HR benefits position. So this position was budgeted at the town in FY26 but then there were there was some reorganization and movement so that the board of ed um this position came down to the board of ed since they did predominantly board of ed work. Um and so we're still trying to work out how that affects the financials, but our financials um reflect um some type of reimbursement for that movement. Um custodial and maintenance salaries um gez after the snow is over and things have settled. Um we had um quite a bit of overtime due to the snow removal. Um also monitoring during severe cold and frequent emergency repairs and monitoring due to our faulty and aging equipment.
>> So you can see nationally like we're percentile. So that's really strong if you know for elementary and this is where it is school. elementary school family survey are are a little different. They have multiple questions not just the one question positive response rate. So for elementary that's only if they put a three right an increase for our families and so this measure is is about this is a summary to the degree again this the numbers compared to the graph. Yeah, it almost I mean it doesn't tell a completely different story but it's >> right. It looks a little different. >> It really does. I had several during school. >> I feel safe at my school and my child's positive response that first quite surprised that >> Oh, but that's actually so >> what are trends? Yes. on the first grade. Do you feel like an important part?
All in support. Anyone else wishing to testify on this measure? I hear no one else here to testify. Members, are open for discussion. I see no questions to ask anybody. This is not my resolution, so I can't even speak on this, but So, but Are you okay to move forward? Sure. I mean, yeah. >> Okay. Yeah. >> You said vote. You got quorum. We got quorum. Okay. Okay. I'm just certain this is not going to come up again. Vote sheets. Okay, this this is an education question. We're getting new testimony from people in the room. I just wanted to You're going to have questions for No, we're going to send it to Virgin Virgin. We're just putting it in for them. Who controls it? Who sends it to them? Who's going to send it to you? Or we'll send it to um I would specify on my sheet.
So, if we did not have the capability of transferring from MNO to help cover the leases and if we did not carry over any funds, it would be very difficult to operate once we had a breakdown of a chiller, another cooling tower, um yeah, it would not be pretty. I know a lot of people talk about and ask about the capital lawsuit because that capital lawsuit um was won last fall. Unfortunately, it is not going to be something that's going to be quickly put into place or give us any relief. Um the lawsuit was filed in 2017 by Glendale Elementary. August 2025, Judge Fox ruled in favor of Glendale Elementary stating that the Arizona capital funding system is unconstitutional. And then last month, March 4th, the judge gave lawmakers eight months to create a constitutional funding system to which nine days later an appeal was filed.
We did update the flyers and correct them. Um like I said, there were just some things um and we um between myself and Martha, we agreed that there were things I needed to to shift and change. We knew that it was um one central office doing this this thing and opportunities for individuals to to experience both districts and it wasn't clear, but we cleared those up and we resent them. Um so, it's not the flyers. I'm not talking about the flyers. I'm talking about the actual forms that individuals and families fill out um and updating our entire process. Um you know, looking at we have a new website now. Um, we wanted to make sure that the correct things are up on the website. Um, I think we still have some other things to finalize around this and make sure it's clear. And for me, I I just want us to make sure and the team agrees that we had rich conversation around making sure that we identify Pelham as its own district.
Any questions? I have a bunch. Yeah. Thank Do you want me to go first? Um >> [clears throat] >> We want to do our discussion before public comment. We want people to weigh in on public comment. >> I have like some clarification questions. I thought maybe for um so first off, I know I don't want to put you on the spot, but do you know off the top of your head like about what our school choice balance was without before we take this 910,000? Is it like 2 million or 3 >> Um so yeah, it was so where you have after this this year you will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.4 million. >> After we take the 910,000? Um this this is not including this this budget. This past year you agreed to put um a significant amount because we did not have E&D certified.