001Welcome to the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District School Committee meeting today is Wednesday March 5th 2025 it is 6 32 p.m. I call this meeting to order we are going to start with the this meeting is being recorded I don't see anybody else recording at this time we'll start with the fiscal year 2026 public hearing Madam chair and school committee. This is the opportunity for the public to come in and weigh in on our budget after we presented it a couple of times Typically we go through some of the slides again that we operate on for the public. I don't happen to see anybody new in the audience So I'm not sure I'll cover a couple of things I guess with the size I'm not gonna go through each slide that we've we've been presenting for
002a while. I'll get to the I'll touch upon this slide, slide number 10. This is assumptions and risk. And in my report, I don't know if anyone else attended the Project 211, plus 21 last night with Mars. I did attend, so I did put something in my report for everyone to see. I do see some shifts in the sand, I believe, so I'll talk about that in my superintendent's report. I just want to confirm that minimum chapter 70 still seems to be. place if excess and deficiency is definitely in place school choice charter assessments to this point is still in place level funded supplies technology counts are still in place with the exception of HQ IM with targeting the Amazon funding for that and reimbursements remain stable for FY 26 we're getting close to checking
003this box and I think that we're getting starting to get a little more shift again with better news on what this reimbursement may look like moving forward so that's good news so i'll want to touch upon slide 10 but i'll have more with the project 211 plus 21. i don't i tried to read everywhere where the plus 21 came from i couldn't find where 211 plus 21 came from in the mars thing i don't know if anyone knows i couldn't read i couldn't find the 21. Class size is still stable in slide 11. Contractual obligations we're still working on. Employee benefits insurance we're working vigorously on. Our utilities, transportation, all of these, as we said before, are modest increases from previous years, which is good. And then I talked about on slide 13 the large,
004sizable increases for us this year that we really needed to put a particular focus on, contractual obligations, employee benefits. And after we did all of our scrubbing of all of our lines and looked at all of our reimbursements, we are looking closer to able to reduce the budget by 8 and 11 to create a better starting point. Remember these numbers that I have in here are not the capital numbers. When you vote this evening, we're going to respectfully ask you to vote on a number. The language for the vote will include not only the operating but the capital expenses for the following year. And that was the original. This is the budget sheet. This is the one that we're going to ask you to take the information from to provide a vote this evening regarding
005the budget. This is under new business. We have not changed these numbers since our version 2 on February 4th. We have not been given or provided any additional information. I have been, you know, not in depth, but working with the towns, asking, feeling around for the towns. I'm not feeling any. external pressures for the for the communities regarding the numbers and the budgets we presented thus far you know things are always subject to change but I don't I feel relatively confident I feel more confident this year than I have in most years with our budget and the number we're at right now so we are going to be looking to recommend the school coming to vote on version two of the budget for FY 26 moving forward So that's kind of it. Our next school
006committee meeting is March 26th in case something changes. We do know that the House will come out with their numbers in the beginning of April. So we're looking forward to what those numbers will look like. And as I said in my superintendent's report, I will share some of the more extensive work that... Project 211 is doing with Mars, Massachusetts Association of Regional Schools, Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, Massachusetts Association of School Committees around the work around the budgeting for FY26 and beyond. So I will share some of that. Again, keep in mind the town meetings are for the second year in a row are on the same night. So we will divide and conquer for those as a regional district, but we'll figure that out. But I don't know if there were any questions of
007the public on FY26 because this is a budget hearing on it. Does anybody in the public have questions? No? Okay. So we close the public hearing? Yep, and then we stop the regular meeting. Do we need to vote to close it? So we'll just close in the public hearing. Thank you. All right, now then I will ask that we all rise for a pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we'll just take a short moment of silence this evening thank you great thank you okay and tonight i am excited to announce that we have the charlton elementary school here uh principal ramos and miss curl and her crew i believe
008have some information for his presentation Welcome CES is excited to present the hard work and creativity of this to showcase their planets and animal projects. All right so the first thing we're going to do is I'm going to have my friends say their name nice and loud once we get in our spots. They know they have special spots. All right Bridget and then Christian. All right so in a nice loud voice when I touch your head say your name. You are? Awesome, and we're here to share with you our CKLA knowledge curriculum and our skills projects that we've been working on. And the first thing we're going to do is we are going to sing our planet song that we've probably done about 35 times at least in our class, and it's helped us get
009excited for the domain that we had done and really get some wiggles out, right? So we're going to put that on, and I know we are going to do it. There we go. You ready? It's a commercial style party. Always commercial. Better than we ever knew. So, Ben and Natalie are going to share our culminating activity for this domain. So, we were asked, what planet would you want to go to? Colin, go for it. I would go to... Awesome. And Natalie, where would you go? I would go to... And then Farrah and Bridget are showing one of our partner activities. Bridget, go for it. What planets are you showing? Mercury. And then Bridget, if you could pick which one to visit, which one would you go? And Farrah, which one's your favorite? Alright, and then
010moving on from knowledge, we're going to go to our phonics program, which is CKLA Skills. And we just finished a really long process of our animal projects, which we had to do a plan, we had to do research, we had to do drafting, we had to do editing, everyone's favorite. And then we had to do our final draft. So Christian is going to tell us about Rattlers. And did his research on puffins. I like learning about puffins because they are fun. And then our last step of these projects is it's going to connect to security knowledge. We're in our animal and habitat knowledge domain right now, and they will take these animals very soon and put them inside their habitat in a diorama that we'll be working on next week. Thank you for having us.
011Great job. Excellent job. Nice job. Thank you. All stage fright. So funny. We know they can sing louder than that. I'm sure. Thank you, though. It's so fun to be a first grader again. Yeah, that's fun. It's a fun way to learn. I love it. All right. Back to our agenda. Next up. Okay, we have consent agenda items. approval of the warrant approval of minutes and executive session does anybody have anything to pull out Madam chair we didn't get into the actual posted agenda but we do have a field trip I would respectfully ask you not to put that in consent though but vote on that after you do consent okay it wasn't in the consent packet gotcha okay so we'll do the consent first I actually want to just pull out one of I
012think the meeting minutes Only because well, I guess we have to have discussion pull it out for discussion It just doesn't have the time posted of at the bottom of when we went into executive session and out of it Now there's a spot for it, but it just doesn't say what time it actually was so you're going out the executive session But oh, can we just think yeah? Yeah, okay. I just want to make sure the times good in there, but that's the only thing I saw but I was not here so If there's nothing to pull out, then entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda items with that. Second. Maureen and Kathy. Thank you. All those in favor? Any animus? Thank you. Okay. Move on to the field trip. Madam chair and school
013committee. I apologize that this was not in the consent agenda for the time of posting but this was a field trip that was Submitted February 24th. It's request number 121. It was approved By the administration and it requires your approval. Now. This is for mr. Wilson. It is for the a Massachusetts New England SBA competition for our band And it is on March 15th next week And it's departure time is 2.45 p.m., and the return is 10 p.m. I believe that's a Saturday, right? Yeah, Saturday the 15th. So it's for the winter percussion and winter guard. Anybody have any questions? No. I entertain a motion to approve the field trip for March 15th. All those in favor? Thank you. All right. Next up, we have communications. Does anybody have any communications to share? Can I?
014A couple. Okay. So I had a couple of parents that got in touch with me about some concerns regarding homework and the amount of homework that's given to students under, students that are still up to grade four. So I think that their concerns was that it was inconsistent between classrooms and teachers and grades. They know that our policy says that there's no homework for students. grade four and below and I think if that's something maybe if it's something that the teeth now that we're out of COVID and we're getting back into a normal pattern if that's something that we need to be looking at then maybe we should be addressing that and then the other area that I heard from was attendance and that you know we have the ability to excuse like you have
015you can have your attendance excused if you go to and get a doctor's note However, a lot of parents were saying they were getting communication from schools that we know that there's a lot of flu going around and a lot of illness going around and that their doctors didn't want to see the kids. And so if a school system's already, like if we're already sending those notes, why are we not excusing it if the parent calls and says that they do have a fever or if... they're sent home from a nurse one day for a fever the next day is absence isn't necessarily excused so I think I just I want to make sure that we kind of look at that and think about extenuating circumstances and how we excuse attendance for illnesses anybody else
016Madam Chair, we did receive a letter from Brad Monroe, who's the co-president of the CLAC Tournament Committee. He did write to us on behalf of the CLAC Basketball Tournament Committee. I want to thank you and Shepard Hill, thank us and Shepard Hill for hosting four large schoolboys quarterfinal games for the 2025 CLAC Tournament. On Saturday, February 15th, Athletic Director Chris O'Donnell did a tremendous job hosting, organizing, and scheduling the day, which included eight teams, eight referees, many staffers, and hundreds of fans all coming and going all day long. The days leading up to the actual game were filled with many details and concerns about the weather. Chris was extremely cooperative to work with our tournament committee. We appreciate the flexibility and support of the clock for those games from everyone associated with the Shepherd Hill
017Regional School District. Chris worked tirelessly to make sure every detail was covered for our large school boys division first round. He treated his own staff and those from the Clark Committee with tremendous consideration and respect. I can attest to all of this because I personally was the committee liaison that day. As you know, the Clark Tournament Committee consists of representatives from over 43 eligible towns. schools in central Massachusetts and one member of the Clark University athletic department Clark has limited the committee to 12 semi-final and final games of the Clark so we have had to turn to generosity and cooperation of four volunteer members schools to host the other 16 games in the tournament you folks once again stepped up to help out and we truly appreciate it sincerely Brad Monroe and that was sent
018to school committee principal Alwell and Chris O'Donnell myself and director of athletics I just wanted to add two things that came out from the NHS National Honor Society that I saw this week was kids night out for I think it was up to age 12 is that in your report? No it wasn't but I forgot it and needed about it. Okay all right well you can probably speak a little better about that in the hygiene collection that is at all schools so I'll let you go ahead. Sorry, one more correspondence, and this comes from respected town administrator Andrew Golis. This afternoon today, March 5th, the... general contractor, tower construction. There was a kickoff meeting in the town of Charlton for the fire substation project. A formal project schedule will be forthcoming. He wanted to share
019with us that he will be working closely with the general contractor and communicate with myself and Principal Monette of Charlton Middle School because it really affects that entrance or could affect that entrance. But they are looking for possible potential mobilization of the construction project on March 24th. um so we are very excited for the town of charlton we look forward to supporting them in every way and making this a very smooth project for both our students attending school at child middle school but also for uh the general contractor tower construction in the town of charlton uh to have again a very successful project so that was my last correspondence that i received this afternoon okay if there's nothing else then uh we'll move to our student representative report anthony if you want to yeah um
020So the NHS kids night out that is next Friday. No Friday March 20th So either next Friday or two Fridays from now. Thanks to Fridays for now March 20. It's my Friday March 21st. It's for Kids up to age 12 I think and NHS is gonna be here and there's gonna be a bunch of stations run by NHS kids, you know basketball dodgeball There's a group doing Friendship bracelets. There's a group doing, you know slime stations. So it's just Kind of a thing to get kids out of the house for a night. So it'll be good. That's Friday, March 21st at, I think, it's in the afternoon. It's 5 to 8. 5 to 8? Yeah. Mrs. Zeller, you're a lot more prepared than I am, and I'm on NHS. Well, you know, the kids can
021go to it. All right, moving on. The winter athletics have come to an end. The basketball went well. Both basketball teams went to state playoffs, but boys ended up making the second round and the girls lost in the first round. So kind of an unfortunate way to end, but it was a good season. The cheer, the Dudley-Trompton Regional School District cheer finale is... two days from now Friday at 6 at Sheppard Hill. It's a way to cap off the season. So the Sheppard Hill team, Dudley team, and the Charlton cheer teams will all perform to kind of wrap up their season. In academic stuff, the Sheppard Hill juniors and some seniors took SAT tests yesterday. Overall I didn't hear anything bad about it. It's just a test. So I don't know how much there is
022good, but wishing them luck. Last week Some of the cool of the junior class got to see a live performance of one of their books in the curriculum is Macbeth and a playgroup, I'm not sure their name, came and put on a performance and they also ran some workshops for Shepherd Hills Drama Club. So it was not only for the junior class but also the drama club and talking to Mr. Foley, the leader of the drama club, he said it was a very successful performance all around. And they've come the past few years, and they're hoping to have them again. And then finally, the Sherbrooke Show Choir traveled to Virginia this past weekend to compete in the Hanover High Show Choir competition. And they managed to secure a great second place against some of the
023best competition in the nation. And that's all I have. Hygiene drive? Yes. All right, there it goes. She found it quicker than I could. The hygiene drive is all around the schools. So we had our officers dropped off bins at all the schools collecting things from toothbrushes to deodorant to anything that can help out some of the less fortunate around the community. And then the Kids Night Out is 5 to 8. You were right. And it's for kids 5 through 12. Do you happen to know how long that hygiene drive is going on for? Because I didn't see it A whole month, yeah it's a month and a half To benefit Abbey's House and Worcester Yeah there we go Thank you Okay I complete your report We will move into the superintendent's report Madam Chair,
024I do have a couple of items to report out on this evening My first item is really around the fiscal 2026 budget process As we move forward with the fiscal year 2026 budget, I want to extend my sincere appreciation to the members of the school committee, you, for your unwavering support and dedication to our schools. Your commitment to ensuring that our students and educators have the resources they need to succeed has been instrumental in shaping this year's budget that reflects our shared priorities. With your deep understanding of the challenges before us, we have developed a balanced budget that maintains fiscal responsibility with our efforts to provide high-quality education for all of our students. This year budget represents not just an investment in our schools but in the future of our community. The partnership between our
025district, local officials, and school committee has been invaluable. Together we are making strategic decisions that will support student achievement, enhance educational programs, and maintain the financial stability of our district. Thank you for your continued dedication to our schools and families we serve. The next item I have is last Friday I did have a very productive lunch with Nichols College President William Bill Paizinski to discuss opportunities for collaboration that will benefit both of our constituencies. While I do not have specifics to share this evening, our next steps will focus on leveraging resources effectively together, expanding access to higher education experiences for our students, enhancing high school programming to better prepare our students for future academic and career success, and I look forward to continuing these conversations and working together to create meaningful opportunities that will have
026an impact on our students and the local community with President Byszynski. The Thursday before the February vacation, since this is the next meeting after that, the Worcester County Superintendents Association held a legislative breakfast with local education leaders and state legislators and representatives from legislative offices. This event provided an opportunity for us to discuss the current state of affairs in Worcester County and to share the Worcester County Superintendents Association's priorities with our local legislators or their representatives. As an organization, we presented our collective priorities and engaged in meaningful discussions to advocate for the needs of our schools and communities of Worcester County. I just wanted to share the priorities. These priorities are very similar to MASC and MASS. Priority one is inadequacy of school funding, Formula Chapter 70 specifically, minimum aid. I know when I presented
027the budget to all boards, I did have a number. I transposed two numbers together. Those that are receiving minimum aid... this year are 232 districts out of 319. It's still a representation of 73% of all districts in the state of Massachusetts, which also represents over 51% of all the students in Massachusetts are only receiving minimum aid, and that's a per-pupil expenditure. So that is a priority for all of us. Party number two, educator pipeline and retention efforts. You'll hear me say in certain circles that I think that we're going to struggle to find a 30-year educator moving forward. I just think our business is very difficult, and I think the investment of people to stay for 30 years is going to change. It's been starting to change rapidly already. So what are our legislators, what's
028our state doing to maintain our high profile as an educational state, but also what is the pipeline for retention efforts or to try to add more educators within our pipeline and our efforts. Number three is special education costs, circuit breaker. You'll see that there's a lot of talk around this. cover the project to eleven of the state of connecticut just past the supplementary budget uh... as a state to find special education rising special education costs for the state of connecticut i don't see why massachusetts wouldn't follow suit And the last priority right now, and this is just, it's not to say that there are no other priorities. These are the ones that we voted on as Worcester County Superintendent's Association as our top four priorities to share with our legislators, was transportation costs and out-of-district
029and regional transportation costs, that we need to continue to look at that. We know districts this year who went out for a contract. Keep in mind, we went out for a contract two years ago. Districts that have gone out for contracts this year have seen an increase of 38% to 40% in their transportation costs, just for transportation. So this is a brewing item for us. We have a five-year contract I think with a one to one year extensions possibly we know school transportation is Somewhat difficult anyways But the limited vendors that are out there are part of the reason why they can charge so much for a new contract moving forward So I would implore anybody in the Dudley-Charlton area, if they want to start a busing company, transportation company, please do so. We'll do
030what we can to try to support you and help you. But there are limited resources and limited vendors to provide transportation. But a 38% to 40% increase on transportation costs for us would be a sizable increase to our operating budget. The next item I have is as previously shared at our last at the all-boards meeting is that the Dudley Chilton Education Foundation is holding its third annual Heroes Among Us award in recognition dinner on Saturday March 22nd 2025 it does appear that a few limited tickets are still available this is a this is definitely a worthwhile event to celebrate and recognize individuals in our district who have made significant impact on the educational experience of our students we are excited to honor this year's recipients and I've included the the graphic that has all of
031the recipients that are going to be recognized on December 22nd at the Wellsworth Hotel. The next item I have is as we move forward with the Dudley-Chelton Regional School District strategic planning efforts, we have established a structured timeline and key deliverables for the development of a comprehensive curriculum plan, a technology plan, and capital plan for the April school committee meeting. I can already tell you that we may adjust that. It looks like we're going to try to come in with a curriculum plan at the end of this month. So we've got to start delivering these. So a curriculum plan and a technology plan may come in at the end of this month. A capital plan will definitely be in April, and as we talked about, the capital plan will be presented to select boards when
032we go and present our FY26 numbers. And then we will try to culminate all of that with a district improvement plan, and we're looking at either April for that, and I put here as a safeguard the first meeting in May just for the district improvement plan. These planning initiatives are critical to ensuring that our updated district improvement plan remains responsive to the evolving needs of our students, staff, and community. We will outline clear objectives, assess current resources, and identify opportunities for growth and innovation. This timeline will serve as our roadmap, guiding the development review and ultimate endorsement by you as a school committee. The second to last item that I have is I've attached some of the PTO happenings for us. Child PTO has a kidsbookfort.com Cards for Cause fundraiser that's starting. And the WPTO
033has, and I just want to clarify, an adult only casino night coming up. It's an 80s and 90s theme. Our students wouldn't really recognize that anyways. But that's Saturday, March 15th at the PACC in Webster from 7 to 10 p.m. So that is a couple events that are coming up, and then I included the few important dates that are coming forward as well. It was striking for me to put the month of June on this report. But once you hit April vacation, it seems to move fast. And then the last item I have is around that Project 211 that I talked about, shared about. What I included is what Project 211 is trying to provide us as for any individual who wants to write to local legislators on the initiatives to try to change the
034funding formula. We know it's not going to change overnight. And Project 211 has done a really good job of understanding that Chapter 70 is probably not the target right now for any impact that would happen to any district, especially those that are held harmless. Now keep in mind, we've been held harmless since 2009. There are a couple of districts that have had 20 years of hold harmless, meaning that they've had the minimum aid for 20 years. as a district. So again, 232 districts, over 51% of the students are impacted by Hold Harmless. It's not keeping up with the required expenditures of school districts. So this is, you have in here, in this packet, you have a form letter that can be sent by anybody. It can be sent by a parent, it can be sent
035by a school committee member, administrator, what have you. And then you have the couple of proposals for FY25 to FY26. fy 25 i know i don't want to say that it's it's behind us but it really is to a certain extent so what i would respectfully ask you to turn to the not the first page of the chart the back side of that first page of the chart and look at the proposals for fy 26. i thought that these were well thought out again this meeting occurred last last evening i thought these were well thought out on how they can impact us now how can we work with our local legislators and the governor right now to impact our funding for our school districts right now so we do have A couple of items to
036really try to provide support, especially if we're in any circles that talk about how we can improve the funding for our regional school district, how we can improve the funding for our local communities. The first is to reconvene a funding review commission in FY26. So this would be something, this is the long-term goal, to look at how we fund and how minimum aid is not doing it and how SOA, Student Opportunity Act, did not do it. Student Opportunity Act did provide some resources and tried to correct some things in Chapter 70 funding, but that did not impact the districts across the state, especially those of us in central Massachusetts, regionals, and western Massachusetts were not impacted by SOA because dropping even one student changes the formula for Student Opportunity Act, and you did not receive
037money, especially if your demographics didn't shift enough. To be pulled in for that so we would support a two hundred fifty thousand dollar expenditure by the state with their trillion dollar budget to try to recommission a funding review basically chapter 70 formula Review they are looking to make sure that the other proposals are looking as to inflate the chapter 74 as we talked about the governor did have a an increase of $75 per student In prior years, they've tried to take two line items to try to combine them. We've always had like a $30 per student, and then the last couple of years we've had another $30, and then last year we went up to $104, but they weren't. Either one of those could have been – the Chapter 70 wasn't going to be changed
038because that was based off of the Chapter 70 formula, but the other budget lines could have been adjusted through the whole process of budgeting with the state. So what they were trying to say is we really need to put this within the actual budget for Chapter 70. We need to lift the cap on 4.5 percent inflation because, as we know, inflation isn't capped at 4.5 percent. point five percent for other entities the example they gave and i will continue to give is the out of district tuitions went up by fourteen percent one year uh... the state did not cap them uh... but we had to live within our own cap for chapter seventy so there is push for this to continue to be uh... a better match for for growth within our our fiscal planning
039for public education. Which then leads into the next one, the per pupil, to make sure that it stays at $104. If you talk in certain circles, $104. Some legislators will tell you that the $104 came out because of the change in demographics, to deal with immigration, migrants, et cetera. I can't buy that 100% because it was never written in any language that that's where the $104 came from, but now they're saying that. But really the push here is to say let's make $104 the minimum, not the $30, not $60 somewhere else, something like that. Let's make $104 in there. The next is to increase rural aid. I have to just continue to share with you that we do not qualify for rural aid, so this wouldn't impact us. And then increased circuit breaker, this does
040impact us. Keep in mind these are lagging reimbursements. So what you spend this year, you get reimbursed for next year. It's not an in-time or on-time reimbursement. But to increase that, and that's always subject to our appropriations. I've seen Circuit Breaker go down as low as 50%. I've seen it as high as 80%. But they're saying let's cover 90%, if not 100%, of Circuit Breaker, and that's what some states are leaning towards because of the high cost of educating students with special needs, with significant needs, that we just don't have the programming within our public school. The next item is increased regional transportation. Fund this at 100%. That's a promise made. They're trying to make it a promise kept. So I thought that was good as well. That will certainly impact us and all other
041regional schools in a very real way. So we continue to support that. Increased McKinney-Vento homeless student transportation. While this does impact us, we do not have nearly the amount of expenses that other districts have around McKinney-Vento homeless students to include student transportation. And then increase out-of-state vocational student transportation again. This would not be something that would impact us as well So it's not well understood, but that was kind of the gist of the the meeting I think it was a little over maybe of an hour and 15 minutes last night. There were some good questions as i've shared with you before i feel like there's some momentum here finally um around minimum aid because again we've been living with it since 2009 there needs to be some change to it um so i think there's
042some momentum here and i just i i want to applaud the work of mars masc massachusetts association of school committees and mass association of school superintendents for their work the question did come up if they are folding in other large statewide organizations like Mass Teacher's Association, Federation for Teachers. They have not yet, but they are considering that to try to have a multi-pronged approach to really influence our legislators to make the right choices for funding for public education moving forward. So that was that meeting last night, but I thought it was good information to share with you as a committee this evening. And that concludes the superintendent's report. Thank you. That is good information. So much for thinking in that, hopefully, positive direction. Hopefully. Okay. Next, we have public comment. Do we have anybody like
043to come up and state your name up over here at the microphone? Thank you. David Singer, Charlton, Mass. Just came hoping to ask a question and hopefully leave with an answer if the committee has one. So about a week ago or so, and I believe Charlton Dudley or Dudley Charlton falls under the umbrella of MTA. Yeah. So about a week ago, MTA got caught putting out pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic propaganda for the teachers to use as teaching materials to teach the teachers to teach the kids. They got caught. The backlash was swift. They had a press, public presser. They said they're going to take it down. The problem with this is, it was all over the news, all over the Internet, the problem with this is the damage was already done. They put the propaganda out there.
044Once you've already put it out there in teachers of all senior materials, you can't just take it down. So my question was, what is Dudley Charlton either already done? doing or going to do to counter the propaganda MTA put out for our teachers, which would include Dudley Charlton teachers, to teach our children. Because I know for a while Charlton was once a no place for hate community. So I was very disappointed to find out that our own teachers union was pushing propaganda for our teachers to actually teach hate in our classrooms. So. To me, that's a major concern, and I know to a lot of other parents. I'm no longer a parent. I am a parent, not a student. But I was hoping to find out if I hoped you guys were aware of it,
045and if so, what are we doing for our district to make sure, A, our teachers are not using these materials that they were exposed to. They weren't taking this and saying, we're going to teach these things to our students, and what do we have in place if someone were to do that to make sure that it is stopped? Madam Chair, if I'm allowed, I would be glad to answer that. That would be great. Yes, please. A couple of things. I really appreciate the question. I completely understand. First of all, we were fully aware of what occurred. There's no doubt about that. I do want to say that we are affiliated with the MTA, but we have incredible teachers that are very independent of the MTA in their own right. They do, obviously, because they're under
046the umbrella of MTA, they're associated with them. They use some of their resources and stuff. But Dudley-Charlton has this unique thing where we're independent. And, you know, there isn't this overinvestment in what MTA produces for them to try to incorporate for us within our district. We've learned our lesson over the past couple of years, myself personally, even as a superintendent, that there are certain topics that are very important to this community, to Dudley and Charlton. And there are certain topics that we should not be addressing. And I'm happy to say that we weren't impacted by that because we weren't using those resources. That was not something that our association or our teachers or our educators brought into our school and said, we've got to do this. Again, we're affiliated with MTA. It's not that we
047don't, that the association, and I can't speak directly for the entire association because I'm not a member of the MTA or the teacher's association, but they don't take everything that the MTA tells them to do and do it. They're independent-minded, which is really a Dudley-Charlton thing, to be really independent-minded and really be who we are as a community and represent our community. So it wasn't something that we really had to impact. Now, the last part of your question was how do we address it like everything? When we're informed, we address things. We don't let them lie. Thank you. And so as far as like the Dudley-Charlton schools going to teachers, I have the utmost love and respect for them. Both of my kids came through our system, literally. from kindergarten, elementary, right through Shepherd Hill
048and graduated. And one of my daughters is now the newest doctor at UMass, thanks to Dudley Charlton's school system. My other one is finishing her first year of her master's for epidemiology, thanks to Dudley Charlton. Wonderful education system, wonderful teachers. If they don't have access to it, and I get it, and I appreciate it. I love your response. The independent nature of our teachers, and yes, I hope and pray it never comes before this committee. My concern was, because in the past, this is not today, but I am familiar with issues that have occurred in the hallways of the high school and the middle school in Charleston that people would be disgusted by. I don't know how they were addressed. I never bothered to come to the committee in the past. I assume if it
049was brought to the school administration's attention, they would deal with it. I guess, well, I love the response and I'm happy with it. I guess my follow-up questions would simply be then, do our teachers, and they are independent-minded, did they have access, even though we're under the umbrella as a separate thing, did they have access to those materials? And was there even a statement made to them, like, you know... If this were to come up, we do not support, we do not endorse, we will not, you know, our position is we love you guys. We're not going to stand for this. We hope we don't want to see this in our classrooms. I don't know if even a message that just says, you know, we still are that no place for hate community. We don't
050care what your color is, sex is, sexual orientation, religion, race. We don't care. No place for hate. And to me. I just, I'm glad to hear your response, but I'd love to know if there was some way to put, just even to take a public stance, if it was not public, but an actual official response to our teachers. I'm sure they're aware of it. Just reminding them that this is a no place for hate community. We have a wonderful group of teachers and staff. We just want to make sure this does not come into our community. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. Moving into new business. We now have a, vote for the fiscal year 2026 operating budget and I guess I would entertain a motion to read this out okay you look like you want
051to stop me okay entertain a motion We're voting on the 2026 operating budget and municipal assessments for version 2 as printed on February 4th 2025 version 2 includes a $500,000 reduction and the overall operating budget and municipal assessments from version 1 the recommended operation operating budget figure being presented for approval tonight is 62 million two hundred nineteen thousand four hundred thirty four This budget recommendation includes the town of Dudley and an operating assessment of $12,180,666 and a capital assessment of $376,613 for a total of $12,557,273. This budget recommendation also includes to the town of Charlton an operating assessment of 19 million nine hundred forty two thousand four hundred eighty four and a capital assessment of three hundred and fourteen thousand four hundred sixty five for a total of twenty million two hundred fifty six thousand
052nine hundred forty five Forty nine. Sorry. Yep 20 million two hundred fifty six thousand nine hundred forty nine. Thank you All those in favor? Thank you very much Okay next up we have our director of finance and operations Mr. Joseph DeSantis to speak on a few things I'm glad I get to follow the positive fiscal year vote that makes things a lot easier for me personally so the first item I have on my personal agenda is the acceptance of a donation made to Charlton Elementary School they've been presented with the donation of $1,000 the donor wishes to remain anonymous and specified only that they want the funds to be utilized directly to benefit Charlton Elementary we thank the donor for their generous contribution so I'd make a recommendation that the school committee vote to accept
053this donation Moving on to my second item. We've established some food service related procedures as they relate to Specifically procurement first. We have an overall procurement procedures Then we have a written code of conduct as it relates to the procurement You can find full copies of each one of those two policies within the school committee packet These documented procedures will align the districts with regulatory and compliance standards. So I would make, again, a recommendation that the school committee vote to approve and implement these procedures. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Thank you. Thank you. Finally, I have an update on fiscal year 2025. We are still within our established operating budget parameters, inclusive of our encumbered costs for the year, such as salaries. Our budgetary suspension was instituted the week of January 6th. It's
054still instituted. I've gotten excellent communication, excellent cooperation from building leadership as far as... them coming directly to our department for approval. This has allowed us to keep tight control over the FY25 budget, and it's allowed me personally to be able to manage that budget within the constraints that both the school committee and the municipalities have established. I will provide a full detailed update on the operating budget as quarter three concludes at the end of March, so that will be in the April school committee meeting. And that is all of my communications. Thank you, Joe. One of the things that I keep thinking about is we might be limited on what we can purchase or how much cost it may be. I'm wondering if we utilize our Amazon funds to almost pre-purchase any technology that you
055had intended to purchase for next. So, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. So the planning for the end of this fiscal year and how we plan to utilize the remainder of our budget as it relates to specifically school supplies is going to be something that I'm actively working on now. I'm hoping that we will have that flexibility at the end of the fiscal year to be able to plan not only for what we want. supplies wise for the end of FY25 but also to plan what we can budget for out of FY25 funds for what would be FY26 purposes. So that is something that I'm looking into. I'm hoping that we don't need to go down the road of allocating funds out of Amazon to be able to fund those aspects and those particular supplies
056that we haven't necessarily deemed how we want to use our Amazon funds. So again, I'm trying to complete our IT needs through our operational budget. And I hope to not have to tap into any Amazon funds or reallocate or repurpose the use of those funds. Right, and I'm not suggesting that we... use the funds, like totally use the funds in that way. I'm just suggesting we almost like borrow from the funds and then like pay them back within the next fiscal year so that we can, if we were going to use them for like curriculum needs, we could do a line item transfer and move money over. Just because I'm just, I'm concerned that if you need certain technology to do like classroom objections and things like that, they may not be available. Yep, and
057that's something again that I work close with Dan D'Arcangelo on as far as planning for the remainder of this year and what our needs will be for next year. Fortunately, through our TD lease for IT products, we've been able to... Kind of hedge our bets so to speak with how we're utilizing operating this year so I do anticipate that we'll have the flexibility to be able to manage that appropriately with what Dan's needs are and again, he's in continuous communication with me, so if there's a newly found need within IT. That's something that he'll alert me to almost immediately. And then, you know, we'll work our way through the funding portion of that based on need, availability, and that'll all be factored into a final decision. But again, I'd like to hopefully not have to
058make any type of transfers, but, you know. Who knows if the grid goes down tomorrow what would happen. But we're hoping there's no catastrophic issues. As far as our infrastructure is concerned, we've been able to address a lot of that and maintain. And that's, again, going to be a big part of Dan's IT plan and implementation. You know, how do we plan for that moving forward? How do we properly fund those on a year-to-year basis? So, again, that's in development. And right now, luckily, we don't have an overly large pressing need for big-ticket items in IT, so to speak. Okay. Thanks, Joe. Oh, is it raining? Yeah. Okay. Okay. We move on to the establishment of... representative pre-k group in accordance with policy IGA we have director Harriman and assistant superintendent true just speak to
059that superintendent true has been working diligently with a variety of stakeholders to ensure that we have high quality instructional materials for all of our students at the elementary level our preschool program is the only program that does not have a consistent high quality instructional materials to use with their students And our preschool teachers have been creating their own curriculum, which is very labor-intensive. And because we have programs for three-year-olds and programs for four-year-old students, it's essentially two separate grade levels that they're having to prepare a curriculum and all of the materials for. So Assistant Superintendent True and I, we recognize that there is a need for high-quality instructional materials at the preschool level. So in February, we formed a preschool curriculum committee. So far, we have had demos of launch. preschool from Teach Town and
060experience curriculum. We plan on looking at a few more programs before making a final recommendation. And the goal is to choose a curriculum before the end of this school year to present to school committee and hopefully have a curriculum in place for the start of the 25-26 school year. We have a group of dedicated professionals in our preschool program, and we'd like to thank all of the members that have joined us to be on the Preschool Curriculum Committee. And we're happy to report that all four of our preschool teachers are on the committee. So we have Terry Nolette and Samantha Johnson from Mason Road School. Holly Provost and Erin Goyette from Charlton Elementary School. In addition, both of our early childhood principals, Mrs. Desto from Mason Road and Mrs. Ramos from Charlton Elementary School have
061joined the committee. And last but not least, Andrea Ostrowski, our special education coordinator for preschool, is also serving on the committee. Pretty much everybody involved with preschool is on that committee, which is great. So we will provide an update toward the end of the school year with a recommendation for a preschool curriculum that we're hoping to adopt. Anybody have any questions? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Superintendent LaMarche, an update for the Southern Worcester County Educational Collaborative? Madam Chair and School Committee, I do, as a member of the Southern Worcester County Educational Collaborative, one of, I believe, 13 or 14 districts, I am required to present to you information regarding the Southern Worcester County and their operational status. So I do have a, I did provide you with a second quarter report that we received. February 14th
062at our board meeting. I just I only have to point out I only feel like only to point out a couple things but I'd answer any questions you have about any of these reports. So year to date for the solvency regarding the Southern Worcester County Education Collaborative they are have a revenue of four hundred and twenty three thousand dollars at this point in time or a little bit over that. Which is in good standing? You know with the collaborative we do work on Enrollment because enrollment is dollars and how that looks and in services they provide on a regular basis, but Right now our key always is to look at make sure that they are financially sound as an organization So that doesn't cost our districts additional funds during a fiscal year. So right now
063we're working on that and that all works that all seems to be working out extremely well for the Southern Wistakone Education Collaborative especially given their second quarter report. So I don't know if anyone has any questions on the second quarter report? Okay. Then the other item for them is they're proposed, and we did take a vote as a board of directors for their fiscal year 2026 budget proposal. So it was even hard to try to pull this out when you look at all these documents. But the board voted for a budget of $9,267,657. They're identifying right now that that would be a loss of $65,000. Keep in mind, though, that the enrollment for passing enrollments of students could certainly move that into the more positive area. The good news here is that we also voted
064on a 1% increase for our member districts. to tuitions that is a drastic change over the past couple of years we've had six percent we've had four percent uh so we only have a one percent increase to our district and again i would put that under the list of uh financial increases for our district that we can manage within our operating budget so that was good news for us as well and once again i'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have in this particular report you have a lot of stuff in here you have the service rates you have their line item budget but it's we've worked extensively on this and then the only other item I have well does anyone have any questions on the fiscal year report over 26 the
065only item I have is and I'm just not sure if everyone's aware but I am also as a member my one of my roles is from as a Dudley Charlton superintendent and the charter of the Southern Worcester County Education Collaborative is to negotiate their contract and we are I am part of that negotiations we've had five sessions so far and we have another session tomorrow evening for their contract moving forward so that's been good work Southern Worcester County Education Collaborative does provide good services for the right students and for our member districts and we are looking to continue to make sure that it stays in the in the in the green are we saying the black i guess you say in the black not the green i have green means go so i just So
066we are working extensively on that. This is a meeting that I do attend regularly because it does require consistency and continuity in decision-making for the organization. Arnold Lundwell has been the executive director. If you recall, last year he came to present to you as a committee to ask for the establishment of a capital plan. We're still working on what that capital plan would look like for the collaborative. It does involve some of their facilities work that does need to be in it. I don't know if people know where the... collaborative is that we do there do have a site in Dudley it's on Southbridge Road is that what that roads called it's the road that goes from here to that Southbridge Dudley Southbridge yeah so it's on the left-hand side there as you're going towards
067Southbridge on the right-hand side if you're coming towards Dudley it does needs it does need a little bit of capital improvement for that facility as well I I almost feel like sometimes I'm going into one of my old college apartments when you go upstairs to their administrative offices and stuff you know the color of avocado And a nice off pink for some of their facilities. But no, it's a good program. It's doing well financially. They have good people at the leadership there. They have Lena. Lena is their business official, and she's new. She's a second year, and she's done a fantastic job. So as I said, I'm required to share this with you, and I'm open to any questions that you may have on this. But this is a secondary role for me. We pay
068per student. We pay per student. Yes. Do we have to have a minimum requirement? No. No, this is one collaborative that you don't have to have that. Many collaboratives have that, that you have a minimum. So even if you don't have 10 students attending, you may have to pay 10 tuitions. We don't have that for this collaborative. And that's something I would definitely fight against. Good question. I appreciate all your time and information on that and the update. we're gonna move into some subcommittee updates does somebody want to give us an update on the capital and safety subcommittee? how about the last teaching and learning subcommittee? I think we reported out last time I will just say our next meeting is Monday March 10th at 2 o'clock and we are going to discuss the preschool
069curriculum, transitions, how students go from the different schools and what transition plans are kind of in effect, math leveling in the middle school, and professional development updates. Awesome. Okay. Thank you. Did you say math at the middle school? We were talking about how math is leveled in the middle school and how the parents are informed and how decisions are made. How about the Budget and Finance Committee? Subcommittee? Any update? I actually have my notes, Jeff. We just had another meeting this past Monday, and it was actually pretty short just because budget is just what we've been doing, so it really wasn't. a lot to add to the meeting we just talked about the current budget freeze that's going to be reassessed as joe already said tonight the end of quarter three talked about the all
070boards meeting one of the questions to joe was if he received any feedback or follow-up questions after everyone left the meeting either town or any of the departments that attended and he Joe said none which no news is good news still waiting for the results of the auto update but again no news is good news and health care is obviously ongoing we're going to continue to talk about that as well yes you're correct it's it's a Monday So worth mentioning again maybe is if you aren't able to make it, if anybody wants to reach out to me, if you can't make it to the meetings, I can usually hop on to some of them so that at least we can get the meeting underway. So if you just give me a heads up, if you're
071feeling like you can, feel free to let me know and reach out because I would gladly do that. Okay. Thank you all for the updates. Superintendent LaMarche, we have the Policy Subcommittee. Yep. Madam Chair, it's good to meet you. Excuse me, we do have policies that we distributed at a prior meeting. I don't think it was, it wasn't the last meeting, that are ready for action by the school committee. We did put these out to the community for feedback. We did receive some community incorporated that feedback. It was, for this one, there was, for these policies, GBA, IJ, ACAB, JICFB, there was limited feedback on that. But we did meet as a policy sub. February 19th I believe at 8 o'clock in the morning yep and we did we work through those the feedback and
072we have now the policy sub has moved these forward for action by the school committee based off of any of the feedback and any minor edits that may have been done at that point in time so the policies are GBA equal employment opportunity this is a new policy for Dudley-Children Regional School District policy IJ instructional materials this is also a new policy for Dudley-Children Regional School District ACAB, this is an updated policy for sexual and sex-based harassment and retaliation. for the district this was updated and again we did send it out for feedback very limited I think there was no feedback on ACAB and then JICFB bullying and prevention this is updated but if school committee I would respectfully ask school committee to take this out separately because if you take this out separately JICFB
073what I would respectfully ask you to do is retire the current bullying policy which is in section A which is not where it should be That's where they wanted it back in 2013. And it is policy A, the letter A. So I would ask you to retire A if you do pass JICFB this evening. So I respectfully ask you to take that out separately from your motions. Okay. Would anybody like to pull any other of these out? I actually wanted to pull out the IJ just because I have a question. So if we could both out. then I'll look for a motion to approve policy GBA the equal employment opportunity and policy ACAB the harassment update any discussion all those in favor I'll go back up to policy IJ I'll look for a motion to
074approve for discussion And as for discussion, I am just curious, and I apologize because I want to kind of look back. There's no mention of these being approved, like going to a committee for approval, prior approval, be something that's mentioned in the policy? Am I missing something? I didn't go back and look at other policies. Well, it's a cross-reference that you have IGEA, Curriculum Development and Adoption, that you have that policy on instructional materials. This is a policy that is referenced, and I think the main reason why this policy has come forward is because it's associated with a lot of our discrimination policies coming forward. So it is statements around being free of discrimination when you're looking at instructional materials. It's not the adoption of materials. Okay. The adoption materials will fall under IGA. Okay.
075That's what I wanted to confirm because I wasn't able to go back and look at the other policies. So that's why you do have a cross-reference for IGA. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Then I'll look for a motion to approve policy. You already have a motion. No, I got the motion. Sorry. Sorry. All those in favor? Thank you. And now we look for a motion to approve policy JICFB, which is the bullying prevention. Kathy, one second. Jamie. Okay, discussion. This is where we want to. If you pass this one, then I would respectfully ask you to retire A. Okay, so pass this one. Because they would be contradictory to each other in two different sections. Okay. So if no discussion, all those in favor? So now do we have a motion to retire the current
076policy letter A? Nicole? Second. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? To retire, cover letter policy, letter J-I-C-S. There is no J-I-C. It's policy A. It's just called policy A. It's just called policy A, yes. It's a starter policy. It's in the governance section, and it shouldn't be there anymore because this should be in the student section, which is J. J is the student section. So it is just policy A, which is really strange. There aren't many of those single-letter policies. Next we have some policies for distribution. So, Madam Chair, I'd like to first start with number two, J-R and J-R-R. This is an update to the student records policy for us. We have a form of JR within our staff resource handbook, but we don't have it as an actual school committee policy. I know that
077when you vote on the staff resource handbook, you're voting as creating policy, but we have come to learn through our work that we should have an actual JRA student records policy. And then more specifically, JR-R, student records, it goes into more of the detail to ensure that we do meet the rights of our students, but also the rights of parents, caregivers, not caregivers, parents, custodial parents, non-custodial parents, et cetera. And so that's why that's coming forward as a distribution. And again, we'll send this out to the entire community for feedback as well. So it's being distributed this evening. Okay? Okay. And then I'll go back to IKF. This is graduation requirements. As you know, there's a lot of work going around regarding graduation requirements. We are taking the tact of recommending a school committee policy
078that is general in terms, but I would consider this new. I tried to look back. I couldn't find one from the past, but there's been ones in the past as well. So this is just for distribution purposes. At the next meeting, March 26th, Principal Elwell will come in with a recommendation for the competency determination for school year 25 graduates this year, graduates. We are not behind. It feels like we're... behind but we're really not behind so we will bring that in March 26 and then we'll also be bringing in the program of studies for for the 2026 graduates my reading and understanding is the governor has set up a council and she plans to come up with her recommendations from her council on graduation requirements for the state in 2026 so that gives a whole
079year and then the Commission the commission the desi Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is also working on something too. We don't know what they're going to come out with. So we do have to take a look at this kind of incrementally. But the first step was to try to create a policy that gives some of the flexibility for you as a committee to approve the program of studies, which would have that in there and really own some of the information that is really required still. for competency determinations. Meaning the state has not given up on competency determinations just because MCAS is no longer a graduation requirement. There still are expectations that our students are successful within the core subjects of mathematics, science and technology, history and social science, English, foreign languages, and the arts,
080and also minimum coursework, outline mass core frameworks. Please know that other districts, every district has their own little flavor on this, but they also have their own credit process. Some districts, you get five credits for a course. We give one credit for a course. So this distribution is intended for feedback, which is what we want, and especially timely to try to bring it in when we bring in the competency determination for 2025 and 2026 eventually. But it also provides us some landing zone for whatever the state comes out in the future as well. So, again, it's just there for distribution purposes this evening. But I'll take any questions if anyone has any questions on it. I have a couple. Yeah. A line where it says, requires students to demonstrate competency in the core subjects of
081and including foreign languages. I think that that could impact our students that maybe have special education needs that cannot particularly take foreign language based on their disability. And I'd hesitate to put that in as a requirement. The other thing is, I'd almost... Also understanding that there may be students that, whether they're on IEPs or they have needs for EL services, that may need to have those requirements met and may not be able to do all the MassCore frameworks. I hesitate to have us put that in there. I would almost just strike out that. Strike out strike out students must also complete the minimum coursework outlined in the mass course framework We are 100% in our shepherd hill. Yes, okay Thank you again this there's no request for action on this we're just trying to build
082a policy around graduation requirements In math, would you demonstrate competency at a geometry level? Would you demonstrate competency at an algebra 2 level? I think that's more program of studies talk. That's why we were trying to keep this general. We weren't trying to. So I think that those, because graduation requirements are in a program of studies. That's the thinking. That's all. I'm not saying that. Okay. So I guess we'll just take note that our next meeting will be held March 26th at 630 at the middle school. Chilton Middle School, yeah. Chilton Middle School, yeah. We'll have some future and end items and ongoing items at that time. And Madam Chair, I did write down, as we were talking, Class of 2025, Compensated Determination, Program Studies at Sheppard Hill, Curriculum Plan. The May 7th, we're looking
083for our annual DCLC comes in to present their work from the year, the W. Chilton Leadership Council for the high school students. And then I want to be optimistic and believe that we would schedule an executive session for April. for the first meeting in April for any contractual stuff that we're working on. Okay. Okay? Yep. My favorite motion of the night. Okay. We'll do that. Do you have a motion to adjourn? I move. Second. Thank you. Maureen and Kathy, thank you. All those in favor? I'm sorry. I missed who it was. Motion? Maureen and Kathy. Okay. Yep. All those in favor? Didn't need to that. Yep. Any other miss? That's that. All right. Thank you, everyone.