LAE Budget and Board Meeting April 9, 2025

001[Music] Good evening. The Lawrence Alliance for Education public budget hearing will now come to order. The time is 603. Maria, would you please call the role? Dr. Lores Gala, present. Er de Leon, Arlene Garzia, Wana Matias, Maria Müller, present. Mayor Brian de Pena. Chair Patricia Mariano, present. Um, did you get Alene on on um Zoom? I didn't hear her. She's on. She's on. She was on a little while ago. Arlene Garcia present. Oh, there we go. All right, we have a quorum. Could we stand for the pledge, please? I pledge allegiance allegiance to the flag of United States of America and the republic which stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Could we also remain standing so that we could have a moment of silence for the tragedy that's occurred

002um in the Dominican and for all the people that have lost family members. Thank you. You may be seated. All right. This evening, um, we are going to hold our public hearing on our two 2025 2026 budget. This is the notice that appeared in the U local media. A public hearing on the proposed 2025 2026 Lawrence public schools budget will be held on April 9th, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. at the Salt Lawrence East Educational Complex Auditorium at 165 Crawford Street in Lawrence. The proposed budget is for the time period of July 1, 2025 to June 30th, 2026. A copy of the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget will be made available on the LPS website, www.lorence.k12.mma. us by the end of the day on April 7th, 2025. As always, we'll open this portion to public participation.

003And Mr. Mali, you're you're up for the budget hearing. Yun Mali, 53 Chester Street. Good evening, honorable members. In this important budget hearing, we the citizen are proud to have the most f student focused budget. Lawrence public school with impeccable leadership by honorable superintendent Raph Guerrero on the road to become the best public school in the nation. We must remember in in order to have the most successful budget, we have to take care of and focus on our great teachers and the Lawrence public school employee. We are we have to understand the best teachers in the nation are teaching in our city. We must know the great Lawrence public school is great because of our excellent teachers because of our hardworking par profofessional cafeteria workers. The genius Ben Franklin said, "Every investment in education have

004thousands in return." In this most important budget hearing, we must know must best the best compensation to our teachers. So other cities, they don't offer the best competitive wages to our teachers. We the Laurentian are number one champion in support of teachers union. Lawrence always strong. Lawrence always unite. Lawrence teaches you are number one because of your hard work. Because of your best education, children of the Lawrence are proud to have the best future. In this important budgetary hearing, we must focus on our hardworking employees of the Lawrence public school. We are proud to have the best budget for our public school. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Molly. The meeting is now open for public comment. Any anyone wishing to come up and speak on the budget, please state your name and address. And we'll

005follow the same um rules as we have for public participation. It'll take be about two minutes for your opportunity to speak. Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak on the budget? We'll leave the hearing open for about for a little bit to allow people to get here. Um and then um after that happens, we'll go back to our regular meeting. Thank you. Hearing no participants here in the public hearing. I'd like to entertain a motion to close the public hearing. Do I have a motion? Second. Second. Second. Thank you. Um, any discussion hearing? None. Maria, please call the role. Dr. Lores Kala. Uh, yes. Arling Garcia. Yes. Wana Matias. Yes. Maria Müller. Yes. Chair Patricia Mariano. Yes. Could I have a motion to adjourn from this portion of the meeting? Second. A

006second. Thank you. Maria, please call the role. Dr. Lores Galaf, yes. Arlene Garcia, yes. Matias, yes. Maria Müller, yes. Chair Patricia Mariano, yes. We are adjourned. Our regularly scheduled meeting will begin at 6:30 as posted. Thank you. Good evening. The Lawrence Alliance for Education Board meeting for April 9th will now come to order. The time is 6:40. Um would you please stand for a moment of silence? Let's remember the um victims of the uh explosion in the Dominican and all the families that have lost loved ones. Many have been impacted in the city. Thank you. We will begin with um public participation for this portion of the meeting and we have Mr. Ma 53 Chester Street. Good evening honorable members. Lawrence public school with the impeccable leadership by honorable superintendent Raf Guerrero on the road

007to become the best public school in the nation. Lawrence public school is great because of our awesome teacher because of our hardworking professional employees and the excellent employees of the Lawrence public school. The teachers who inspire the whole world. The teachers who educate children of the world. Lawrence teaches thank you for excellent job. The great Nelson Mandela said, "Education indeed the most powerful weapon to change the world. This change is only possible if we support our teachers union." We the Laurentian are proud to be the best example of support of the teachers union in the nation. The meaning of the true Laurentian means the one who support teachers union. Lawrence always strong. Lawrence always unite. We are proud to stand united and strong in support of our awesome teachers union. Lawrence teacher. Thank you for

008gift of best education for the children of the Lawrence. Thank you Mr. Molly. Um, this portion of the meeting is my chair's report and I'd like to call upon I'm sorry, attendance. Oh, attendance. I'm sorry. Well, I'm entitled to one mistake tonight. Um, Maria, would you please call the attendance? Dr. Lores Galaf present. Arlene Garcia, present. Juana Matias, present. Maria Müller, Chair Patricia Mariano, present. Okay. All right. My portion of the um of the meeting tonight, the chair's report. I'd like to start with subcommittee reports. Um Jason Cabrera, could you come up with the budget and finance subcommittee report? Good evening, uh Madame Chair. Um, this last meeting we did not have a quorum. Uh, I had the honor of spending some time with uh, board member Miss Wa Matias, but uh, we did not

009have a quorum. Should have crossed the recognition. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I started speaking and you were you were not looking at me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I I I reported that we did not we did not have a quorum. I met with uh Miss Wana Matias who was present and that was the extent of of the meeting. Thank you. Okay. Um Carlos Moss on the policy subcommittee. Good evening board members. Um as um I had stated before the committee the uh subcommittee had decided to form a working group so that it could advance the work. Um, initially we were having um, uh, quorum issues and so what we decided to do is have a working committee to present uh, to go through the policies and review them against both the state standards, local standards,

010best practices uh, guided by Mass Associations of School Committees. And uh, tonight uh, we're very pleased to present to you uh, three sections that the working group has completed. uh section A which is uh foundations basics uh section B which is board governance and operations and section C which is school administration for your consideration any questions tons of question because I haven't seen them uh if that means that this is I mean we have some time to look at them and then yes So, it's not the expectation is not that the uh the board votes on it today. The expectation is we're submitting this for the board to review and hopefully at the next board meeting or when the board deems uh ready that you will uh vote on it and we'll be happy to

011answer any other questions you may have. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. If I may, Madam Chair, just as a point of clarification, so the packages that Mr. Moss is talking about looks like this. However, this is only the first three sections. The policy manual is about six inches thick. Correct. In the spirit of saving trees and technology, um what we've discussed is that while Mr. Matoss and um and his uh uh subcommittee will be meeting with we contracted with the Mass School uh Mass Association of School Committees. So they work with the team to go over our policies and the previous discussion was to try to do it in small sections to allow for the board to review them but also we need to be able to post those publicly. So while Mr. Mtos

012has reported that these first three sections have been submitted to you, we will not ask for we won't ask for a vote until the following meeting. thus allowing the board to review them and we will also post them on the website so that the public has a chance to review them and they will be posted as draft. Correct. And we will continue each time that the subcommittee has several packages of uh sections that Mr. Moss will come forth let you know that they have received them from the Mass Association of School Committees. We would post them again and as each section gets voted in by the board, we then would post them on the website and make them official, right? So that when he sends it to the board, he will send it send it

013as a PDF copy to your home so that you can re uh review them online versus printing out all of these things unless somebody wants them printed. Is that okay, Madam Chair? That's perfect. Um, any further questions? Yes. The the way that this is organized, I see that it's like a by a a general theme. Section A B section A has foundations and basic commitments. Commitments whereas B is board governance and operations. B is general general school administration. Are they are they ABC is A is more important than C or does it matter? They're they're not more one section of the policy is not necessarily more important than the next. It's an integral system. You can't have for example A speaks about the foundation and the the legal structure of the board. And so you

014can't have that. uh I don't see that being more important necessarily than how the board yourselves governs themselves. So it's not necessarily that there's a weighted it's just a matter of organizational system. Um one of the other things I would also mention to you that um we also provided uh to the board the markup of what the original was versus the the final version was as I have indicated in here in previous meetings. Um we through the suggestion and the guidance of the Mass Association of School Committees, we have gone through what's legally required, what is best practice, and what is in uh unique to the to to the to the Lawrence uh public school systems. So that's basically the rubric in terms of how we've gone through and analyzed these policies as well as

015really removing things that are part of that are should be procedures versus a policy uh also versus things that are obsolete. All those are indicated u in your markup copies. Um thank you so much for this and thank you for like thinking of bringing on MA MASC. I think that's great just to have, you know, a third party reviewing our work um and processes. So, are we going to go over the budget here today so that there's a public kind of going through what it is that we're proposing before the next meeting where we would uh eventually take a vote because I know you've provided the materials, but are we going to walk through the materials in a public way? Uh yes, uh Miss Matias, that will happen in in in the next couple of

016sections. We're just going through the subcommittee. So, there's only one other report and then we'll get into that. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? Carlos, can I ask you a question? Sure. Um, how do how do you I don't want to use the word like, but do you think the Sorry. Okay. All right. Do you think uh the uh person you're working with or with with the Mass Association of U Schools, do you feel that they make good partners for us in this project? Yes, I think that they've been excellent because they have they have worked across school districts uh across the state. They are the state's expert with regards to these types of policies. As a matter of fact, they have a model policy, which is what we've been comparing ourselves to. They've

017been very methodical uh with regards to informing us of this is not necessary, this is outdated, this is we've updated our policies, we suggest this. I think that they've guided us very well with regards to something and have been very thoughtful and objective with regards to their recommendations to us. Okay. Thank you. All right. Um, Jennifer Perry, would you come up and report on um your curriculum and instruction? Good evening. Can you guys hear me? Um so the curriculum and instruction subcommittee met on uh April 3rd and we discussed the curriculum dashboard. Uh the curriculum dashboard is something that um the department of uh elementary and secondary education puts together and has us report on annually um that indicates the level of uh high quality instructional materials that the district utilizes. So we talked about

018that dashboard uh what materials are being used across the district uh and how we will go about um making decisions about uh future curriculum purchases. The other topic uh on the agenda for April was the February uh acceleration academy. So it was a report out of what happened in February uh in terms of the program design, participation and intended outcomes. And we had a discussion about how we can do a better job tracking the impact of the program and thinking about uh collection of data over time uh looking at student attendance at different accelerationmies maybe summer as well uh in order to understand the impact of thosemies or re-evaluating the program overall and determining how better to meet the needs of our students. Uh the next meeting will be on uh May 6th at 5:00

019pm. So that's the the summary of the Any questions? Thank you, Jennifer. I just have one. Sure. Um, did you use that data to prepare for April vacation, April? I think it's quite a big turnaround to be able to do that because it's kind of the plane is already flying by the time February uh, academy rolls out. But we are certainly in that reflection state of of looking at how to do things differently. So, if we've been able to make minor adjustments, but not big uh programmatic adjustments at this point. That's what I was going to ask you. Was there something specific that you felt had to be changed for April? Well, I I think the big thing is is are thesemies having an impact for our students? And so, if not, like how can

020we really understand what the impact is uh by looking at data over time, looking at student participation over time. I think the place that we're able to make some bigger adjustments uh uh right now in the short term is summer and summer school and how that rolls out. Uh but I think really uh programmatic changes would be for next year for the accelerationmies. Okay. Thank you. Yep. No problem. Any questions? Anybody on Zoom? No. All right. Thank you. Okay. Um the next portion of the meeting is probably one of my favorites. Um this is an opportunity that we as adults and um parents get to celebrate the terrific programs in the arts that the kids are working on right now. Miss Saigon is supposed to be fabulous and I look forward to being there over

021the weekend. Um but you did go to Florida. you uh came back with the big prize and we as a board would like to thank you for that and should we invite them up? Superintendent, what do you think? Well, thank God the stage is big enough. Absolutely, Madam Chair. So, um the this is only 35 members of like the 85 uh actors that we have. These are the 35 that participated and went to Florida uh and particip and participated nationally. Um I will give you a data point that I had the honor of hearing. Not only did they win first place for their performance of uh in in the Heights, they won it with the highest score in over the last 10 years of any performing arts school while in Florida. While they were looking

022at the big prize and said we're going to work for that, they noticed that there were single plaques there. They said, "What the hell? Let's take those two." So uh we had individual performances also and they won prizes in first and second place for solo performances also. So they came back with all the hardware that they offered in Florida. I said don't feel bad if they don't you if you don't get invited back um because I think that they're going to be feared among schools. Uh Mr. Kawaju, if you could have the team come up and uh the chairwoman is going to present the performing arts students with a plaque uh of many of them over the years coming up that they will have on the walls of our performing arts academy. Uh Maria, would

023you uh give the chairwoman her microphone to be able to read that to the students plaques? [Applause] Are you coming up? Okay. All right. Before I present this plaque, I'd like the students um to do something for me. Okay. Now, it's not going to be that bad. So, but if you know me, it will be. No, no, no, no. How can we make your terrific performance known to the city in a wide way? Where were we? You know, if you talk to the average person, they don't know that you came back with all those prizes. And I I think that's something we should shout off the rooftops in Lawrence and say, "Do you know what terrific students and and performers we have?" So, I want you to think about some way we can spread the

024word. And you can email me, you can call me, whatever you want to do. But I really would love to the citizens of Lawrence to know how exceptional you guys are. So I'd like to read this. Lawrence Public Schools and the Lawrence Alliance for Education are proud to recognize some exceptional students and staff this evening. First, the students and staff of Lawrence High Theater for their exceptional representation of our district and city in the 2025 National Performing Arts Festival where they received several major honors, including the showcase trophy for the highest honor. I mean, this is where Hey, Lawrence, do you know how talented our kids are? That's what I'm looking for. So, if you could come up with an idea, I'm sure the superintendent would go along with it. Do you have the plaque,

025superintendent? I gave it to Okay. All right. So, I guess we're What are we doing next? You can read the plaque and then you can You want to read the plaque? Oh, you want me to read the plaque? You can read the plaque. Okay. I'll hold the pl. In recognition of Lawrence High School Theat's exceptional representation of Lawrence Public Schools and the city of Lawrence at the 2025 National Performing Arts Festival, Ensemble Excellence in choreography, the judges trophy for high achievement, and the showcase trophy for highest festival score. And I and and another thing as the the chairman of the cultural council, I want to thank you for applying for a grant every year and um we're glad to be a little part of what you do with the kids. Thank you, Lori. [Applause] That

026little camera's powerful. Say the best. All right. Thank you everybody. All right. Thank you. Don't forget I'm looking for ideas. Yes, I know with what I do with the paper. Yeah, I do. We have another terrific award and this was presented to Hillary Mdonald, class of 2026. Hillary, could you come up, please? She has her dad here and I believe her mom. The lights are Hello, Hillary. Congratulations. And you don't look like a wrestler. Congratulations. All right, Hillary. The assignment I gave to the um theater group holds for you, too. We should be shouting your praises across the city. So, if you have any ideas, we're looking for them. All right, the sec um let's see, where are we? Um Hillary McDonald, LHS, class of 2026, for earning her second consecutive allstate championship and for

027being a New England championship finalist. Fantastic. And we have a plaque for you. Wrestling 185 pound division 2024 division 1 state champion 2024 all state champion 2025 allstate champion and two 2025 New England finalist. Awesome. know that we are very proud of all of you. So, thank you very much for um making Lawrence High School shine across the country. Right. I'm sorry picture. [Applause] We would never know this. She's so gorgeous that she is tough. It's exciting, Madam Chair and members of the board that uh not only are our kids artistically gifted, but obviously they're also athletically gifted. Um, and Hillary has represented us over the course of the last three years. I know that her college career is going to be an exciting one. And boy, whatever school she goes to, every other school

028is going to have to fear her because she uh has proven in and out of the rink for the last three years. So, congratulations. And uh students, both the arts program and our athletic program, thank you for making us shine. Okay. Um, and this is just the beginning of your successful careers. And remember where you came from. No one can take away the fact that you came from Lawrence and you should be proud to wear those lands of colors. So, congratulations all of you. Thank you. [Applause] Uh, we have votes, Madam Chair. Yes, we do. This is the fun part. The next item on the agenda is a school choice. I'm just going to read the motion because any of you that were present last year know that someone sitting at this table messed up

029her grandma. I did. Um so I'm looking for a motion or superintendent. How about you give us a little bit of a uh Sure. So every year um school uh districts that do not want to part participate in what is referred to as school choice. School choice is where our district allows for students from outside of our community that want to apply and participate in our school programs to be a student. Um, and the recommendation this year is for us not to participate in school choice. Not because we don't want to accept other kids from other school districts, but because we have so many kids in our district that we don't have enough room for kids in other districts. So, in order for us not to participate, the school board annually has to take a

030vote of an affirmative yes that we uh that we are we are declining to participate. So, a majority of vote of a yes is required for Lawrence public schools to decline participating in the state's public schools choice program. Okay. So, the motion, Madam Chair, would be uh for the school board not to participate with a yes vote. All right. Any questions? So, sorry, Madam Chair, through you. Can you clarify what we're voting for? I I can't hear very clearly. It It didn't make sense to me. I'm sorry. Uh, Miss Patas. So, every year, every school district has to has to take a vote whether they want to participate by allowing students from outside of the Lawrence Public School District to apply to be in our school. And we're making the recommendation not to participate. So,

031we have to decline it because of the overcrowding that we currently have in our schools. Um, I would envision sometime in the future if there's an opportunity because of like you saw our phenomenal performing arts program, our phenomenal athletics program, or our phenomenal bilingual program that we might have that there will be other school districts that would want to be able to send their children to our school so they can graduate. uh being proficient in two different languages or because they have the type of skills that our our uh other students have uh demonstrated. But that's not the point at this time. So because of that, the recommendation is for a yes vote that we are declining school choice participation. Is that Miss Thank you. Any further questions? All right. I'll entertain a motion. So

032move. Second. I was going to read it first. Okay. I'll entertain a motion for the Lawrence public schools not to participate in Massachusetts school choice for school year 2025 26. A majority vote of yes is required for LPS to decline participation. May I have that in in a motion? So move. Thank you. Second. Second. All right. Maria, please call the role. Dr. Torres Galaf, yes. Arlene Garcia, yes. Matias, yes. Maria Müller, yes. Chair Patricia Mariano, yes. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. The next um item on the agenda that requires a vote is the MSBA statement of interest and application submission. Again, superintendent, would you give us a little bit of a Yes. I'm going to ask our um operations manager uh Miss uh Hernandez to come up just to give a point of clarification.

033I believe we had discussed this at that at our last meeting and it was introduced through the fact that um we were contacted by the Mass uh schools of building association of our willingness if we they had extra monies available and if we were interested in applying and Odonis couldn't get off the phone fast enough to run to the uh mayor's office. Odonis, thank you superintendent. Good evening board members. As the superintendent alluded, uh we're here before you to ask uh for a vote to allow for Lawrence public schools to submit an application to the uh Massachusetts School um association. So the MSBA, there is funding available as part of the are um accelerated repair project. There's about $300 million available that um all school districts are um entitled to apply for. So part of

034our internal um capital plan we submitted or we would like to submit an application for roofs and for windows. Those are the two eligible categories or two of the three eligible categories under the ARP projects funding that it's available. So we have identified um a muchneeded roof repair here at the South Orange East. I'm sorry, not a roof repair, a roof replacement here at the South Orange East. Also at the uh Frost Complex and then the windows project uh for the Arlington complex. The some of the criteria for um qualification for this projects are the age of the buildings. So it needs to be a roof over 20 years old and or windows over 20 years old. Therefore, those were the three schools that met that criteria. Hence why we are um we wrote the

035application to include those three schools. What are the votes required for eligibility, Miss uh Hernandez? So the the requirement to successfully submit this application to the MSBA. It requires the a vote from the um you know the vote from the school board. So you this board and also it required a vote from the city council. Um, we successfully received and obtained uh uh the vote from the city council and now we're here before you to hopefully uh also obtain a an affirmative vote from the LA board. There's about I should also add that we did um an estimate with a um engineering firm to kind of estimate the cost for the roofs and the windows. And we're looking at a total budget of about $18 million that it would cost to do both replacements of

036the roofs and the windows. We have over 800 windows at the at the Arlington. Um it's original windows from when the school was built in 1985. And um some of those windows, if you visited lately, you can see we cannot open the windows. They're also you can't see in or out. So I think it's um much needed um for that school. the the MSBA as part of the ARP project goes through the same similar um process as the two schools that we're building, right? They have the 80% reimburseable rate that the city is entitled to. And that 80% it's more accurate on a AR ARP project than on a core project, which is the construction of the the schools. Therefore, we anticipate that if the MSBA invites us um or we we are selected one

037of the three schools, hopefully they you know they they invite us for all three schools that the reimbur reimburseable rates will be very accurate or very close to anywhere between 70 to 80%. Where as you remember we saw from the building of the two schools some of that you know the reimburseable rate was about like 60% versus a true 80%. Um it would cost um it would be an estimated cost to the city when we get there. We're anticipating this will be a two-year um project from when we submit the application to when the MSBA board of directors um review all the applications and then decide to invite us in. We're anticipating a two-year project with about anywhere between four to $5 million cost um to the city. Any questions? the um Odana is the

038application similar to what we did for the new schools like that period of time before you're approved. Correct. Yeah, it follows the same process. Correct. Yes. Okay. Anything else anybody would like to ask? Dolores? Yes. Uh so so I'm clear. Um so the the the city council has approved it, right? Correct. And then based on the upcoming uh budget, it wouldn't affect it wouldn't affect wouldn't affect. So, if the board if the LA board approves to submit the application, the mayor would sign the application and off it goes to the uh Mass School Building Association. They then when they take it up, it would take approximately two school years. So, we're looking at a minimum of approval for SY27 school year. So, that's two years. Two years. And then in order for us to receive

039those funds through the administration, we would have to secure our 20% of the 100%. So the the state would provide 80% and the city would provide 20% for what that cost factor is. Okay. So in lie of what's unfortunately is going to happen with the uh president's uh undoing many things. How do we tackle you know this uncertainty that that we don't know that what's what's I mean we keep planning no matter what. I think that it's uh I think it's prudent for us to continue to plan accordingly. Um and there is uncertainty but um if uh for whatever reason we believe in two years there will be a change in whichever arm of government whether it be the congress or whether it be the presidency it might change. If we don't at least put

040our application forward, we would have made a mistake and not taking advantage of the opportunity that it presents itself, what harm do we have in not putting forth our application. The worst that can happen is they would say no because the state doesn't have money. But if the state does have money, and let's remember, Massachusetts along with 13 other blue states in the United States are what foot 75% of the federal government's budget. So, I would choose to say that currently in the state of affairs that we have in Massachusetts, we have a pretty stable economy. Um, and we can we can incur some impact. That's not to say that we should sit on our laurels. We're working diligently with our representatives, our Congress, our Senate to make sure that our voices are heard and

041um if we and I know that the governor is taking up legal matters through our attorney general's office to make sure that Massachusetts gets its fair share of federal funding the way it was committed, the way it was also distributed by Congress. I hear you. And and also in the meantime, you know, we don't if we don't attend those windows and those uh roofs, it's going to get worse, right? There you go. Yeah. So I just I just want to like just highlight that this is a process that is highly advantageous for the city and for the district to take advantage of because it's an opportunity for funding that's there. Um we're not there's no funds to be committed at this moment. the you know I provided kind of like the rough um estimate on

042what the total co what the total budget would be or the total cost would be including the roofs and the windows because we needed to we needed to include that we need to include that as part of the application and also to be able to give us an idea of what the true cost may be right that's the cost today uh what may be and also for the city and for the city councilors to also have that information however it's similar to the process with the construction construction of the buildings or or the construction of new schools, right? That's they call that core projects. It's it's an invitation to apply. They and then it needs to move move through the motion for the two schools that were almost um completing um soon. That application was

043submitted in 2015 or 2016 around that time 17. We weren't invited um to move through the process till like 2018 2019. So, you know what I mean? So, it takes time. It's just submitting the application, letting the MSBA know, yes, Lawrence has a need. Um, the roofs are it's not that the roofs are in any dire need or in bad shape. However, because of the age of the school, it is appropriate for us to consider the schools and we should cons we should take advantage. Anything else? Okay. I would entertain a motion that the Lawrence Alliance for Education authorize the Superintendent of Schools to submit a statement of interest to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for their 2025 accelerated repair program. Could I have a motion for that? So moved, Madam Chair. Thank you. Second.

044Second. Thank you. Um, any further discussion? Maria, please call the role. Dores Galaf, yes. Arlene Garcia, yes. Matias, yes. Maria Müller, yes. Chair Patricia Mariano, yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on the agenda that requires um a vote from this board is the facility rentals and I believe that came in your packet. Yes, ma'am. And Miss Miss Hernandez is up at the microphone. Remember, we always have different organizations interested in using our facilities. There has been several requests. Miss Hernandez. Yes. Thank you, Superintendent. Um we have four requests before you this evening. Um we are presenting them all with a favorable recommendation. There is one slight change um and this just happened today. It's the last um request here. The Lara stage for a um dance uh recital. The date that

045they have requested is actually not available. So we were able to communicate with them and we offer a different date um and they have accepted that. So the actual date for that studio, that final show will be rehearsal on Saturday the 12th of June and then the show will actually be on um Sunday, June 14th. That is the only change here. What are those dates? Um Oh, Donna, one more time. I'm sorry. The dates. Yeah, sure. So, the date for the um request for the the Lara stage is Saturday, June 12th for rehearsal and Sunday, June 14th for the show. Would that be the 13th? 14th. 14th. Oh, because you're right. I I see what you're saying. No, it No, I'm giving you I'm saying the dates and they're not aligning. Give me one second,

046Madam Chair. So excited. It will be Saturday the 14th and Sunday the 15th. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You know she was a principal before. There's also um another change and this just also happened um today. The FIA immobilaria here at the South Lawrence East they had requested to do this um at the end of this month. However, because of the unfortunate tragedy that it's um has taken place at uh the Dominican Republic, that entity has requested to move the date. So, they're are now requesting and we're looking uh for availability for a May date. They're looking for May um 18th. So I just asked on this item because t you know time is present that maybe your vote will be that you um approve the request of the recommendation with the availability of the date

047as negotiated with with Lawrence Public Schools. What date does the the 18th fall on? I'm sorry, superintendent. What day does the 18th fall? Is that like a weekend? So they are requesting um right now to do Friday the 16th of uh of May. The 18th is a Sunday for setup and they are requesting to do the actual days of the their event on Saturday May 17th and Sunday May 18th. Got it. We are still working to ensure availability of the space and also um ensuring that the entity agrees or formalizes that that date will work for them. Again, it's you know it was a last minute kind of change of date due to what's happening in in in my country in the Dominican Republic. Any questions? All right. Could I have a motion to approve

048the use of school facilities request for the Vshell Gade New England Marathon Marathy Mandel I'm sorry for misprononunciations Mitchell Mitchson Center for Performing Arts Dance Studio Bango Band Reserves and Laura Stage as recommended by the um facilities committee. Madam chair. So moved. Yes. Did you approve? Um you said yes. Second. Second. Thank you. All right. Motion. Um Maria, please call the role. Dores Galaf. Yes. Arlene Garcia. Yes. Matias. Yes. Maria Müller. Yes. Chair Patricia Mariano. Yes. All right. The next item is to approve the minutes of the March 12th meeting. Um followed by u are there any omissions or corrections that you'd like to make? Hearing none, would someone make a motion to approve those minutes of March 12th? So moved, Madame Chair. Thank you. Second. Second. Thank you, Maria. All right. Could I have

049um could we have um Maria call the role, please? Dr. Dores Gal, yes. Arlene Garcia, yes. Matias, yes. Maria Müller, yes. Chair Patricia Mariano, yes. Motion passes. Okay. The next um superintendent, I'd like you to explain to us about this donation from the Shman Foundation. I'm sorry. Yeah, it took me a couple of times to pronounce it. I'm gonna have Miss Perry to come up quickly to the microphone because she led the visit by the foundation uh subcommittee um to quickly explain um what they were looking for in terms of our literacy uh assessment of our district and what the don the $30,000 donation is about. So, um the Schustman Foundation I I believe I presented um maybe last month when I talked about the literacy team. Uh the Schustman Foundation is an organization, a

050philanthropic organization uh that works with one of our main partners, the achievement network, and they uh did a literacy site visit back in February and visited six of our schools and uh the process included bringing in um experts from around the country into Lawrence uh and then giving us feedback. And so that feedback I shared with you all last month, uh, as part of their recognition of the the work that we put together for them and hosting them, this $30,000 comes from that. And so uh they have awarded us that money uh without um any restrictions, no need for follow-up, no need for reporting. So, it's truly a a gift, an honorarium almost, if you will, uh to acknowledge the work that we put in to host the the Schustman Foundation um in their literacy

051site visit. So, that's kind of the the gist of it. Um and the money would go to the curriculum and instruction department to really follow up on some of the guidance that they provided us in terms of supporting literacy work in the district. Any questions? No. Are are there any specific initiatives that you think this will um help to highlight? Yeah, I I mean uh the the feedback that they gave us was really around creating a literacy a vision uh a unified vision um thinking about high quality instructional materials. So, I can see work for next year, uh, where I mean, $30,000 won't cover the whole amount of it, but it will certainly support us to move that work forward. Um, and so I can see that money being applied to directly to the the

052types of work related to the feedback that they gave us. So, absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Can we get them back for quarterly visits? What's that? I missed what you said. Can we get them back for quarterly visits? Oh, yeah. Yeah. $30,000 every time. Dolores, did you ask excuse me, did you ask if there was some place for recognition for them? No, no. I I was just thinking about was there any specific angle that they they were looking right because maybe next time we can go for higher. Yes. Right. Yes. As somebody who who writes grants, that's what I thinking. You know, maybe um Jen, if you think about it, maybe some place in one of the schools or something, wherever that money is allocated, there could be some recognition for the um the group foundation

053donation. I think it's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. It's very it's very generous on their part. Okay. Could I have a motion to accept the donation of $30,000? So moved, madam chair. Second. Second. Maria, please call the role. Dr. Lores left. Yes. Yes. Yes. Arlene Garcia. Yes. Affirmative. Wana Matias. Wana. Yes. Maria Müller. Yes. Chair Patricia Mariano. Absolutely. All right. Thank you all. Okay. Motion passes. Um, at this time I'll turn the uh meeting over to the superintendent for his monthly reports. Thank you, Madam Chair. As uh you well know and members of the board, uh it's budget season and um our CFO, Mr. Jason Cabrera, who has worked nonstop over the last uh four weeks with all of the teams, all of the input, has finally put together a draft budget for us. I also want

054to thank Miss Matias that came in during the subcommittee meeting to offer some advice and questioning obviously of the budget process that worked with uh Mr. Cabrera. I'm going to have Mr. Cabrera come up to the microphone and I'm going to turn it over to him to provide the presentation. Please hold your Well, actually um Jason, do you feel comfortable as you're doing the budget presentation for board members to interject questions at that time or you want them to hold off? No, I would appreciate if if the question comes up with with any given information, just bring the question up at that time and then, you know, we'll address it then and and move on and and if there are questions that's still at the end, we'll address those also. Take it away. All right.

055So, I I just want to I want to um refer to the online documents online for the people that may be watching at home or watch this later. online. We have a the draft budget. We have two parts to it. One of it is uh the prelude to the spreadsheets and then the second part of it is has to do with the sheets uh spreadsheets that address budgets for all departments and all schools. So there are two parts to the budget online. Uh so if folks want to refer to that um that's how you find both up. Um, super superintendent talked about in the last four weeks, uh, we've been working non-stop. We started this process probably soon before soon after we got here uh sometime in September, October, meeting with our department heads, meeting

056with people uh budget owners and uh kind of looking at where we were at right as far as aligning the funds to the priorities of the district. um came across some surprises and some things that were not so much surprising. Um when I first the first time that I stood here in this in this podium, I talked about uh the team that we were assembling to address uh the finances, right? And I talked a little bit about uh I I think I said that we couldn't have accuracy without accountability and we cannot have accountability without transparency. So through this throughout this whole process even here um that stands true as far as transparency, accuracy and accountability. Um we have looked at um the priorities of the turnaround plan, the priorities of uh our superintendent of

057the LA board, and that's what we're here today. This is a draft. My hope is that we get a lot of input so that next time that we are here with a final budget, we can we can uh get to where we need to be. Um, if I can get the the first slide and if you can zoom in, I want to zoom in on this thing that says NES school spending. Um, I would hope I think you may have to zoom in a little more. Um, and it doesn't matter if it's one side first, but but yeah, you can move it around. Thank you. Um the our foundation budget for the district uh for the for the city of Lawrence, it's the the number on top 330 uh 33 million uh 900 almost 334

058million. that money doesn't it doesn't mean that that money comes to the Lawrence public schools but um it's what the city starts with and then there is a formula where um you know these the amount for charter tuition gets taken out uh school choice um special education and then uh municipal related costs then after that's taken out then we add the reimbursement for charter tuition Uh we also add the funds that the city uh the city puts towards transportation, adult education, uh leases and and a miscellaneous chapter 74 tuition that is on there on the left. If you can go down a little bit more, Suzanne, uh that's the schools department's calculation based on on the state data and kind of what we've been doing in the past. If you go to the right, there

059is another uh another calculation. That calculation is based on my conversations with with the uh the city's uh chief uh administration and financial officer and and the treasurer. Uh that number as you can see, I don't know if you can see the difference there. Um there you go. on the on our calculation for the school district, the number is close to 10 $310 million. Um, if you go to the right, the number that is being given is about close to $5 million less. If we're going to go to the next slide, please. Any questions about this here? And and I just want you, as a matter of fact, hold that thought. Uh if you have a question about this, let me talk about this and then we'll I'll go I'll make sure I go back

060to it and and point out some things. Um the building the uh budget process explained. Um like I said, we started this process a while a while back. Um where are my notes? Um throughout the process we um we started with an internal uh subcommittee meetings that included department heads uh such as curriculum and instruction, OSS, student support services, uh HR, deputy superintendent, facilities or operations. Um and that was to assess kind of the priorities and and the objectives for this for this upcoming year. We also had meetings with principles and the department heads again just to gather their input and inform people of the process. So we met with them. We let them know what our priorities were and also listen to what their needs uh were. Also uh LA board subcommittee meetings. We

061started those sometime in December. Uh and that was you know to discuss priorities and align the finance the finances uh uh with the district's priorities. Um we had school planning sessions with which were two weeks uh straight of um listening to principles and department heads about their operationals operational plans about their um improvement plans for their schools, their needs um and kind of get getting to know a little bit about to me was an experience a opportunity to learn about them and and to learn about the district. So that was a very um uh very um informative uh part of the process. Um let me see. Um today we're here for the public sessions and also the presentation of this first draft uh to gather input from the community but also gather input from from

062the LEA board meeting from this here from the LA LE board. Uh and from here uh the next time we meet uh we would have finalized hopefully uh the budget and presented for approval and voting to you and after that presented to the city council and you will have uh uh finalized budget uh weeks couple of weeks before our next meeting. All right, we can go to the next slide. All right. So this is the this is the uh the two revenue formulas that that we have and again this is based on um I wish let's see I hope that you can read read that but um you can make it bigger Suzanne and we can just just uh uh move around the the document as as we go. Uh, as I said, it's close

063to 334 million. That's the the um foundation budget. You take out charter, uh, school choice, um, and add the things that need to be added. in my ad when I add the amounts there are fixed amounts that I cannot change and then there are amounts that um that are expectations right uh for example transportation which is the responsibility of the city we uh we have an expectation of of of what amount uh based on our current contract on on where we're at uh with that contract that vendor and the prices of in the market, right? We we have an expectation of of how much it's going to cost us and how much the city uh would provide. Adult education, they they their budget for last year was 1.3 million. For this next year, they're they're

064want to do some things that are going to come up to about anotherundred uh uh $30,000. So, their budget went up or the request uh for the city to fund an extra 130,000 for for that group. And then uh leases uh which we have and and again the chapter 74 miscellaneous uh tuition. Um so on the right hand side if you can uh there are some arrows there. I I pointed out some of the differences between our calculation and the calculations based on the conversations that I've had with the uh with the city uh treasurer and the uh chief financial officer for the city. Municipal related costs are going up uh by um it's written down in the if you have your uh the print out it's over there. There is a um a couple

065of of bullets. Uh the first bullet says that municipal related costs are based on a 2013 memorandum of understanding which has been attached. You should have that with you. uh that is dated from uh from 2013. And I just want to point out that that memorandum uh is currently being being um reviewed by the Lawrence public schools and the Massachusetts Department of uh by Desi. Um so more to come on that. Uh and again please note that the city's appropriation calculation for fiscal year 26 which is the total appropriation at the bottom uh that amount uh decreases significantly when compared to the calculation that we have which is based on past practice and not past practice but you know the last year's budget and how we've calculated in the past. Um the category of mun

066municipal related costs like I said was increased by 1.819 $819 million up to a total of four million uh almost $4.3 million as well as a decrease both in transportation by a,637,000 and the leases by 635,000. The shortfall caused by this changes uh to the expected appropriation amounts to about a little bit about $4 million over a million $4 million. Um, in the conversations that I've had, um, again, transportation, we're asking for, um, what we know is going to cost or close to it based on what the market is. This year, we have we got about 12.5 million. Next year, we're getting less the city's responsibility, right? Less than what it was this year. So, that's just one point of of understanding where where we're at when we're talking about the discrepancy between one calculation

067and the other. Uh, same thing with the leases, which uh this year we got 900 uh [Music] 985,000. Next year, the city's allocation appropriation for that category is um $350,000. So, As you're going through these calculations, the $313 million the that you have calculated based on what our cherishy cherishy is saying that we're having versus what the city is proposing to honor us with our money is a difference of 6,899. 9,000. Let me let me correct Let me correct that because I I I I looked at the sherry sheet and it has been updated. So the amount is the 4 million 4,20,000 is the is the amount that is the difference. Go ahead continue sir. Okay. Um and looking at one other huge discrepancy is under municipal related costs the 2,480,000 that was based on

068the memorandum of understanding with the city from last year. Not from last year sir that was from 2013 2013. Oh. So what is this 200 what is this 2,480,000 what is that covering and when we signed that memorandum of understanding I I believe that it was dur during William's time because I took a a look at the memorandum did we stipulate that we were going to continue to pay the city for whatever these municipal costs that have not been enumerated I'd love to see a detailed kind of breakdown of like what is it that we're giving the city $2.4 4 million for and um if nowhere we signed a contract that was indefinite or for five or 10 years, we are not legally responsible for this. And I would want to hear very clearly from

069the city why they think we are. Um if I could just answer that real quickly, uh Mr. Cabrera um on on and I one I don't know if you have a copy of it in front of you uh the the the June 13thou but in the provision under stipulation number 13. Thisou will be in effect through FY1819 and will remain in effect until a successor agreement is approved. We have contacted the department of education. We have a scheduled meeting um with our oversight board members and um the state fiscal agent with his uh Jay Sullivan. So that's scheduled sometime I believe next week or the following week and specifically Miss Matias this contract is what's going to be discussed and um some of the concerns that you have raised. So I appreciate that. Awesome. And

070then my next question is, you know, bringing in MASC, have they seen this ever be done in other school districts? Um, is is do these memorandums exist and and whatnot in terms like what are best practices as a third party? I'd love to get their viewpoint on that. And then one other point of clarification because I think um Jason and and yourself, superintendent, have been great in being very transparent around this. The 13 million in transportation, is that a is that our responsibility or city responsibility? I'm still very unclear on that. That is one of the costs that the city is responsible for. It is right. We're paying it. Well, no, they they ass for this year they uh assessed about 12.5 million. So, we're hoping I'm looking at at at our COO, but we're

071hoping that that's enough for this year. Uh, for next year, the amount being allocated is less than that. The amount for next year is less than this year's by But we have more students requiring transportation. I'm sorry. But we have more students requiring transportation. That That is correct. I mean, our population is growing. Yes, sir. But we're getting less funding of what the city wants to appropriate to us. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I it would for me it would beg the question and if we don't have that answer now I think it's important that we have that because it's a legitimate question to ask and um I won't put our COO on the spot but I assume that we calculate um our busing needs based on our special ed population which is mandatory and um

072students that live beyond the 1.4 uh miles or 1.5. So yes, so superintendent, one thing that I want to point out for this year, we calculated for 60 or so homeless families. Okay, that population has grown to 300 plus this year, right? That's just one of the populations that that has exploded and and we have to transport those kids uh to our school. Go ahead. Yes. and and that you bring up a good point because those families are considered homeless. The McKini Vento Act comes into into uh um applies at this particular point that's mandatory busing or transportation in general. Correct. There will be our unhoused or homeless students and also students in foster care. um in in DCF. So we have seen a tremendous increase um of our families becoming unhouse or doubling up

073and also of placements of students into um state custody. And I I just want to clarify because when we uh title students or families as homeless, that doesn't mean that they're living in the streets under tents. So for example, you just mentioned children in foster care. because they're in foster care. Does that categorize them then as being homeless? Two different categories, superintendent. So, under our homeless um contract, when we go and contract out, it services both our homeless students and also students that are placed um and stay in DCF custody. And the the reasoning why transportation costs have increased is because um our students are not being placed within our neighbor neighboring communities. They're being placed in Worcester, Framingham, Boston. So we it's it's not a regular cost of a of $345 per bus or

074per trip, right? We it's an it's almost an individual it's almost like an Uber ride. It's almost an individual um trip unless unless we have multiple families possibly in the same shelter, then we can we can then use one van or one bus. But you typically it's it's oneoffs and that's round trip. Correct. Thank you. Thank you. Um Odin, may I ask a question? What you just said about students being um placed in different communities? Is there any way um an addendum or something could be play added to that McKini Vento law that the student should be placed in the closest school or school district um that they were previously in. So if we have a Lawrence student that right now is being transferred to Worcester, why can't they stay here and eliminate that transportation?

075That's the piece I don't get. So So good question, uh, Madam Chair. So they so we're we're hoping to have those conversations. Uh, we're working with the F FRC and our homeless point of contact, uh, for the state, family resource center. Family, I'm sorry. Sorry. Yes. family resource center in the in our um homeless point of contact for the state to start those conversations. But this are these are our own kids, right? So this is I become homeless. I'm being the only available shelter may be in Boston. So my family is being moved to Boston. I want to stay in under the Mckin Vento, I can stay in my district. So then I'm transportation is required to then pick up the student in in Boston and then bring them to the Lawrence school and then

076vice versa. So, we're not bringing kids necessarily from other districts. It's our own kids that are being moved outside of the district. Thank you for clarifying that. And they're being moved because of the shelter availability. Correct. Availability. Correct. All right. I have a question. In terms of the the money that the city has for transportation, is that coming from the federal or is that state money? Do you know would that fall under their net school spending requirement? That that part of the their contribution, their minimum contribution. It may be I'll be honest, Miss Galaf, I don't I don't know where they get the money. Uh um but I'm assuming is the tax you know tax base yes tax base comes up with you know tax revenue that is put towards that yes state okay all

077right I that's helpful any any questions about transportation you may continue not transportation so sorry um is trying to mute myself I was going to I was going to go back to you and and the what does that that money uh cover. But uh for for example uh Odanis has brought up a Mr. Hernandez brought up a good point, right? Um the last few years we were fortunate to have had ESER um Esser funds, right? The the emergency relief funds uh which helped us with supplement transportation because we were correct. we were short on their budget on transportation and that money was there for us to be able to tap into and cover that deficiency. That is not the case going forward. That's helpful. And then one of my questions, and I I assume you'll

078get to this through your presentation, Jason, so this will be my last question. When I look at the $313 million proposed budget for fiscal year 26, is that taking into account potential federal cuts or is this like or is this the 313 like this is if no cuts were to happen at the federal level, this is what we expect and then there'll be an iteration of like if there were to be cuts, this is the gap and this is where we'd see that we need to cut. So, so, so that money is straightforward chapter 70 funding, state of Massachusetts, commonwealth of Massachusetts money. The taxpayers of Massachusetts fund uh chapter 70 uh and the student opportunity act. Uh I'll get to a slide where we talk about grants um which amount to about $19 million.

079And uh that's that's where if there were any federal cuts, that's where we would uh feel it. Right. For example, I don't want to get ahead, but but since you brought it up, for example, under title one um um title one federal grants, um we get about seven and a half million or so. We have out of those $7.5 million about $5 million of that is uh salaries for teachers. Like that's how we pay teachers, right? So if we didn't have that, um that would be a a huge hit to some of the things that that we can do to to supplement um you know the education of our children. Does that answer your question, M Miss Matias? It's supposed to It does. It does. And I assume we'll start looking at that as we

080get closer to the to the grants. So, but it's good for me to understand that the 313 is our state budget. Correct. And so regardless of what happens with grants, this is the money that we know is coming in through the state through taxpayer dollars. Yes. And that number may change. It changed this morning. you know, there's still the budget uh you know, it's still a a work in progress with the ways and means votes and and then we'll you know, we'll know exactly we'll have an official 100% official number. Um, sounds good. Going back, I think you asked a question about the uh the 4 um eight the 4.3 uh million dollars for the um municipal related costs. Um the the memorandum of understanding calls uh if you look at section 8 of that

081memorandum of understanding, it points out um some of the charges that are to be included uh with this uh memorandum of understanding. Um I wasn't here in 2013, but um so I cannot speak for how the the work that the city did for us back then. Um the one the thing that we're bringing up now is that the services that perhaps the city offered back in 2013 are not the services that they provide today. And this when I'm talking about service, I'm talking about the things that that are in the memorandum of understanding. Um that amount was back then was 2 uh you know 2.48. Uh today that amount uh is 4 uh 4.3. Uh and that comes straight off the top of our allocation of funds. Um, I don't know if anyone has any

082questions about that. Any any more questions about the memorandum of understanding, but Jason? Yes, ma'am. It's, you know, it's it it's disgusting to read this. I hate to say that. Um, I didn't mean for that to happen, ma'am. But, and I inherit it. But you know what? Somehow or some way we have to convince the city that it takes a village to raise a child and they're part of this village and they're just not sharing their portion. What what um what can we do to almost I don't want to say tie their hands but re to insist that this is a requirement that they have to pay. So we're involved we're superintendent just mentioned it earlier right we in every dispute that I that I may have I involve the department the state the commonwealth

083department of of education uh we have a meeting set up with them um I I don't know how much progress I could make you know talking from financial officer to financial officer as as to why I we believe that it doesn't makes sense that next year we're getting less money for transportation than this year. I've tried to have those conversations. Um it is it is what it is. I think that um when we I'm hoping that when we look at at the memorandum of understanding and we look at the things that are on here that they would be responsible for but they have they're not right because uh for example uh if you look at um number 10 right which talks about school building maintenance um I can tell you that we cover all of

084our maintenance. I was just going to say that, Chris. We co we cover all all of our maintenance. Um but but back in 2013, I'm assuming that that was not the case, right? So isn't this memorandum? It's a matter of um getting the people to a table and talking about a new memorandum of understanding. What does it look like? And how much money is that that that you are talking about the the what uh on you're talking about maintenance or the the whole thing? Maintenance. Oh, maintenance. Merina won't let me lie. It's uh it's a lot of money. Let me see. Um Merina's always asking for more. So, I I can tell you it's a lot. Um let me see. money in the buildings would all be falling apart. Exactly. Roughly 15 million $15 million

085that we spend out of chapter 70 funds to support the maintenance of our of our own buildings. 28 to 31 buildings. Correct. Supposed to be responsibility of the city. that that is correct. However, let's just uh frame it and um this past uh fiscal year because of the relationship we have with the department of of education under the receiverhip. They allowed the school department to use funds. Yeah. to use it for maintenance and repair. And because that was the case, we invested $28 million. Our uh city schools have never looked as good as they had. In fact, I don't know of a day that we had this year where we h we have over 2,000 classrooms. 2,000 classrooms. That's where Mr. Molino and his crew takes care of. We did not have one day canled

086because of no heat in a building or because um pipes were frozen or it was too hot. So, we collectively as a school and as a municipality made the investment, but you know what? You're tossing it out the window if we don't maintain it. And we don't have all brand new buildings and it requires a certain standard of maintenance to make sure because those buildings are being used on a constant bas basis by close to 14,000 students. So we cannot go back or we will lose all of the efforts that we made. And that's I think collectively what we have to explain to the municipality through its elected officials through our budget hearings that we'll sit down with them. Um one strategy, Madam Chair, you asked what can we do? I would ask that um

087I know that this is uh an an area that's near and dear to Miss Matias. She's passionate about it and I would ask that you allow her to uh continue to serve on the budget and finance committee as we now meet with each city councelor and explain to them where this budget came from, what the responsibility of the municipality is and for them to also lobby to make sure that we're receiving our fair share to maintain our public schools and for the effort of maintaining maintaining the educational programs for our kids. Um, we're far, but it's it's a first reading. We're going to continue to lobby and advocate for the needs of our kids, but at some point in time, um, we have to make a decision of where you draw the line. Um, I

088don't know yet where a lot of these numbers are coming from. They had their preliminary meetings and as you know madam chair this morning you and I met with the secretary of education who's the current acting commissioner and his team and we have expressed to them our concerns of this gap that we have. Thus the reason why we have the meeting regarding this memorandum of understanding with uh Jay Sullivan that represents the state's um financial institutions to see if we can hammer that out and and figure out a way of uh them making sure that we receive our fair share to maintain and sustain the level of uh of operation. One last thing and I'll turn it back to uh Mr. Cabrera, something that you know, Madam Chair, every single one of our unions up

089for negotiation this year. This budget doesn't even include whatever agreements are made. So, I think that we need to proceed cautiously, but we need to be very aggressive in advocating for what the needs of our current school district is as we go into the next year. One question. Superintendent, have you met with any individual uh counselors? Um, no, but they've sent a couple of emails inquiring and we have sent notices to them that uh as part of the budget process this year, we will be hosting small groups so that we don't violate these subcommittee agreements. So, we will be bringing them bringing them in two at a time or one at a time where Mr. Cabrera and I uh and the deputy and hopefully Miss Matias can explain to them every single one of those

090numbers and we can justify where they're coming from so at least they're educated in knowing the entire school budget. We know that we know it because we live it every day. But I think it's imperative that we help them understand how we came to these numbers and what the responsibilities are from the municipality. I don't know that everyone in the community that's involved in preparing a budget understands what um the maintenance of effort that's the responsibility of the municipality and funding for public education is part of that maintenance of effort. The maintenance of effort has to do with taxpayer dollars that come in that go directly from each community to the schools. We've been blessed through the new formula obviously of receiving a lot of money because Lawrence needed it. And recently coming out of

091our uh situation with CO um we were able to utilize a lot a lot of those er dollars that came out of the federal government. Those er dollars are gone. There's no es or dollars. This budget was developed without any eser dollars. Who takes up that gap then? That's where the city's portion is supposed to be. And unfortunately, my interpretation is that they're not reneging on it, but they're they're certainly shortcutting us substantially on it. Wow. Mr. Cabrera. Yes, sir. Um and just as a you mentioned negotiations which we have uh a big one coming up with with our teachers uh teachers union. We we calculate that for every 1% increase we're talking about close to $1.4 million. So um that is considerable. We also have uh the par profofessionals union coming up. Um and

092you know when when I communicate with with some of our internal stakeholders um you know we we we try to to help people understand that yes in the past we had I don't want to say a surplus but we had funds that were not used right part of it is last year for example we had 500 vacancies for example Right. Uh the money that goes towards those salaries, you can hold there and do with it as you find fit. From 500 as of this week, I believe, superintendent, you can correct me. I believe we're below 150 vacancies right now. Correct. So the pool of money that we had with 500 vacancies because we didn't have to pay those salaries went from 500 vacancies to 147 vacancies and the pool got that much more smaller. Um,

093so those are some of the things that that as we plan and and you know in the booklet if you refer to to the uh superintendent's letter in page three and four he talks about a lot of the great things that we're trying to do um you know our [Music] multilingual our English language learners how much and I'll show a little bit of that budget for example because we're growing that um the early childhood programming which we have a pilot going on for four-year-olds uh kindergart kinder uh garden um pilot also um looking at uh enrichment opportunities for our kids. We're truly really investing in smaller uh class sizes. Uh he also talks about on his letter on page four about the facilities upgrades uh and school building improvements and those are things that they

094require they require all the help that we can get and um you know we we want to keep our teachers you know paid competitive you know competitively across you know across the board our staff uh making a livable wage page. We we've we've done that. We've tried to do that with our the unions that we have uh uh negotiated with. So, we want to keep that going and it's going to take uh every help, you know, every dollar that we can that we can get. Um Madam Chair, for the sake of time, is there anything else that you want to highlight? Um Jason, not on this. If we unless anyone has any more questions, we can go to the next slide. I have a quick one. Is there an assumption of no salary like the

095FY26 budget is assuming no salary increases or No, that that that includes an an adjusted Yes. an adjusted growth. Yes. Do you know how much I don't I don't want to give away my formula, but I don't want to let them know how much we like it has to be some sort of an increase. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um so so talking about revenue some one of the ways that we get revenue uh as we know is the the student opportunity act which uh brings to the city um uh brings to the city um uh additional funds um I put um on here for fiscal year 26 um in addition to the chapter 70 funds uh the the state also provides for student opportunity act which amounts to the to about $43 million. Uh I put

096FTEEs at the bottom in fiscal year 25. It um accounted for or funded 299 positions. A lot of those positions were positions that were esser positions and and instead of eliminating positions, we absorbed some of those positions and then it grows by 20 uh this upcoming year. That's what we're getting funded for for 20 positions. Um, anything else out outside of that is funded by by the growth of of our student population, which is about uh for for October 1st numbers about 300 uh students. Um, next slide. All right. This is uh what M. Matias was uh asking about just federal and and state grants. If you can you can zoom in. Uh these numbers is as they is as they stand today. Um um grants run on two years overlapping year-over-year. So you know

097for we are exhausting we don't leave any grant dollars on the table. Um we we do everything we can to utilize those funds often and early. Um, for example, accelerationmies uh are funded again out of out of uh title funds. If we didn't have those funds, we wouldn't be able to fund accelerationmies, for example, or summer. Um, like I said earlier, the title grants fund about $5 million worth of worth of salaries for teachers, uh, speech pathologists, uh, nurses, professionals, etc. Um, and that's in addition to professional development and and educational supplies that that we purchase with that. Um, any questions about grants? Not about grants, Jason. Yes, ma'am. Um, are there any other communities within the state that are struggling with their city um people with the similar situation? I cannot be unique to

098this. I cannot speak for for other cities. I'll be honest. You know, I know we're not in a bubble, you know? So, we so we we uh hear about, you know, a town next door over here that has a budget uh deficit, right? And and how the taxpayers got to raise that money. You know, we heard about, you know, the strikes in in in Beverly and Marblehead and and those places, right? Um because money is always is always tight. Um so you know th those uh those are some of the the indications of um you know money's tight and we have to be to be smart about how we how we go about it. I don't I can speak to uh the relationships uh between uh city and schools and and the struggles that they

099may have in in other cities or towns. Uh, Madam Chair, no. I just thought maybe there might be some way they're working with their um city government to clear up some of this mess like we have. It was just it just popped into my head. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Uh, on this that says federal and state grants. Yes. So, we have here a a difference of 27 million. Correct. Right. She's referring to that. I see. Yeah, that's on that's on Esser. So compare that's on Esser only. Oh, that's not that's Yeah, it goes it goes left to right. Yeah. No, it goes left to right. I'm sorry. It goes left to right. So with ESER, we got uh we utilize again this is they roll over year over year, right? And um um

100so fiscal year we use this is the actual usage of it. Uh fiscal year 24 we used 17 million um this year um on fiscal year 25 we used 27 and we had uh late if you look at last year's budget we had $2 million in there um that became zero uh earlier um this month. Um we had early uh late liquidation on that uh which had been granted and then it was taken away. So these varants are individual. It's not a summary at the end. Yes ma'am. Correct. It's individual. Title one title one 81,000 title 2A 26,000 etc. So So all this right is already accounted in the in the amounts that that you have for the budget. Correct. No. So I cannot I I cannot count grant money. So grants are meant to

101supplement the state's investment. Okay. I cannot for example if if so let me give you example. So if a school the Arlington elementary gets one grandfunded teacher that doesn't mean that I can just take that money and use it on whatever I want. I have to hire another teacher because they have the need. So I have to use the money for whatever the title the title is. I cannot use that money for anything else other than what the spirit of the grant is for. So this is all additional correct supplement. Yes. Yes ma'am. Okay. But still it's going to be less than what we had had before. It was in a lot of these for this year it is. Yes. Going forward I I do not know. It looks like it's less. Yes, ma'am. All

102right. Next slide, please. All right. So, yeah. So, I talked if you can you can uh zoom in. This is what uh the priorities that I had talked about earlier. Uh these are the superintendent priorities uh which are in page uh three and four I believe. Um these are things that uh we have been talking about from from day one. Uh we understand um uh the need for for a lot of these things starting with you know with the first one which talks about the English language learners. Um I don't know if anyone has any questions uh about this. Um um I I can I can talk a little bit about each one of these, but uh on the booklet and superintendent's letter, he's addressed uh those uh priorities. I would just say I really

103appreciate how uh thorough you guys have been in this budget. This is not what we saw last year or the year before in terms of detail and understanding where certain money is going. and really grateful to the fact that you have noticed that we have not been investing in ELLL students at the rate that we should have, which is disappointing knowing that the majority of our students are English language learners and really just want to kind of lean in on anything that we can do to, you know, pivot and make sure that we're making those investments um is something that I would love to see. And just thank you. No, thank you. that that has been uh you know the directive um from the superintendent from day one. So that's one thing that that we've

104been looking at uh and looking at one equality across the district. We've talked about that making sure that that the school in Tower Hill has the same resources as the school in Prospect Hill, Mount Vernon, downtown Lawrence. Um and and you know the the English language learners uh that's that's why he was hired. to make a difference. Thank you. Um and um the uh thank you. English language learners was one population that that in in my opinion and and I think that superintendent and and and deputy superintendent and the folks that have worked on this um would agree has been somewhat neglected as far as the money that comes in and the allocation of money that proportionately goes to that population. So, we're we're starting that by increasing their budget by that department's budget by

105a little bit over $3 million uh or four million $4 million I believe. Again, that that's the plan if we get the funds that we need to get. Um but, uh you know, we're increasing that that budget significantly. And then we're talking about how do we address some of the deficiencies that are still there with uh uh you know teacher certification and all that. That's the next conversation uh the second phase of of the conversation. Um is there no questions about this? We can go to the next slide. I think it talks about a little bit about revenue. I think we have two slides left. Um this is in in your booklet. Uh you're you're welcome to look at it. Um uh of course uh you know salaries uh benefits utilities which have gone up

106considerably um an account you know the there there is a just in utilities alone it's a $5 million difference from last year's budget. Um doesn't mean that that it's a $5 million increase but the budget last year didn't account for it like it should. Um uh we can go to the next slide and and at the bottom of this here it's uh how much would we need if we got Everything that we want to do, the superintendent wants to do how much would it cost? The number is a is a different number. Um and that's why we're here to present this, get input from from people, from stakeholders, sit down, talk about uh how we can um make the best out of what we have. And um I just wanted to highlight that that number

107being different. That is the number if we if the children got everything that we wanted to get for for our children. All right. Um next slide, please. What is What is that number, Jason? Because I'm looking at your It's at 3 315. 315. 315. Okay. Yeah. Um this is uh this may be my last slide. This is just a little breakdown of of just the the the spending overview, right? How we are spending the money and how that money is distributed amongst the different buckets. Um we talk about uh we highlight um salaries making up 64% of the budget benefits 10% facilities uh which we've we we have to uh we've increased their their budget um significantly and then instruction which includes things like uh uh professional development materials those kind of things. Um the

108next next slide please. All right. So this is some this is the the the um this last slide. This is some increases worth noting in in our budgets, right? Uh uh for this year's budget, this is what uh some increases that are more significant. Again, almost $9 million in salaries. Um 7 million in educational supplies. So, we're heavily investing in high quality uh materials for our teachers and and for our children. Uh 3 uh3 million in professional services to get uh that's training for our teachers and then uh 3 point almost $3.3 million for the English uh language learners department uh increase. Um that is some of the ones worth noting. Uh hopefully we get to a point where we um have the funds to fund those those things and and and provide the best

109uh education for our children. Yes, Miss Galaf, what what is the the capacity or the highest number of students that that the Lawrence School department can can hold? Um well, our current numbers and me meeting with our assistant superintendent that handles our family resource uh center. Uh we're let me see if I remember correctly. [Music] 13,000 800 something Mr. Aosta is that correct? 13,800 students. Yeah. So, uh, that include that's the most recent number that includes like a half a dozen new students this month. So, we will continue to have student increase. And don't forget now once the summer time comes, we will project for how many kids are coming into the school district based on how many children early childhood has. um they communicate with us and how many three year olds and four

110year olds are in the community. So we would have a an estimate but that estimate is always going to be conservative because of the amount of families that we have that move in. Take for example last year we estimated shout that out to me Mr. Aosta. How many students did we anticipate for the first day of school of registration? Do we have a number for the first day of school last year based on our count numbers in the summertime and identification? 7 to 800. Yet that calculation, we were off by almost half. By the end, going toward the end of this school year, we've had over 480 new students on top of those 750. Did those students I'm sorry, did those students come in after October 1st? Yes. Which which is we take a hit

111on that. Correct. And that's something that um we have uh asked our delegation and that we hope that our senator is going to try to help us by working with the department to see if we can receive um funding for those students on a quarterly basis because it would help. We would have to absorb those students and wait till this next October to receive reimbursement for them. So um we can't shut down if a family comes and says we don't have any room. We have to create that. Thus the reason why also we've become a strong advocate of trying to work with the city to please consider when you're looking at um building more units and we know that for families. Um Mr. Deputy, how many units are in line that they're looking to approve

112in all of the Lawrence Redevelopment Authority for uh new units? Over 500 units of housing. Now, it it would be fair to say at least 50% of those are going to have families with children in them, right? So over the course of the next three years, you're looking at a potential increase of about 700 to a thousand students. So easily go to 15,000 uh within the next couple of years. Yes. Okay. So, we have to be smart about, you know, our enrollment, our projection, and making sure that we do the type of things that we're trying to do to forecast and work with the municipality. And how much do we account per student? How much it cost? Good question. What is the per pupil expenditure? It's about uh or for a for a regular student,

113nonell, nonsped student, is about 219. 21,900 29,100 21,900 and if it was an ML student there's a calculation but it goes up to a little bit over 30,000 no no no uh per pupil expenditure for that one student an ML student a regular student is 21,000 an ML student is about 24 the yeah the ML goes up to 3,000 per student and then if it's a special ed student there's also it goes to above 30 yes Okay. So, we can we can make some calculations based on the numbers that we have. Any other questions that we want to finish with, Mr. That is that is all that I have. I I invite you to to our subcommittee meetings. I I I'm always waiting for someone to show up so we can have a you know

114talk about it. Sometimes it's me and Miss Campusano. Um I would love to have I'm not invited. have the people here, stakeholders in the community, if they watch this, uh they can look out for the subcommittee meeting. We have one more um coming up which is going to be a week before um uh this meeting here. So, I look forward to to uh get input. This is what I wanted this to be a um kind of letting folks know where we're at and getting whatever input we can get on how to best uh uh continue to prioritize our needs. We will communicate probably on a weekly basis here on in with the uh LE board to let you know of any updates and changes and if we have and if we make any headway on

115the municipality of coming to some terms as to uh where our numbers are. Don't forget, Madam Chair, members of the board, we do have a meeting with the Department of Education um to go over that memorandum of understanding. And I'm going to invite Miss Matias, who is very keen on that, to uh zoom in with us to have that conversation. I hope that you would accept that invitation, Miss Matias. Thank you. Okay. Um that is all. Thank you and good evening. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Jason. To be continued. Uh, Madame Chair, I'm going to before I mention my uh goals, I'm going to have for the sake of time, I'm going to have the multilingual department come up uh to do a quick presentation on our tier focused monitoring review that we just finished

116from the Department of Education who came in. As you might know, or you if you don't know, um, every couple of years for our specials programs, the Department of Education comes in and does a monitoring view review to see if we're following the regulations, the law, and providing these services accordingly to the law for those uh, special populations, which is special education and multilingual. Miss Gutierrez, welcome. Good evening. Um, my name is Maria Gutierre. I'm here from the Department of Multilingual Learner Education just to give you a brief update on our TFM. Uh we just finished um last month. So the office of language acquisition OLA at the department of um elementary and secondary education support school districts and charter schools through tiered focus monitoring or TFM to drive reform, sustain effective practices and recognize

117high performance in schools in the state. Ola reviews English learner education programs throughout the state to ensure compliance with federal and state law and to improve student outcomes in our districts. All districts and charter schools in the state undergo monitoring every six years. The previous uh time here in Lawrence was school year 1819. During the tier focus monitoring, Ola reviews 13 indicators to ensure that the English learner education program uh in the district is effectively educating our multilingual learners. They review participation in annual English language proficiency assessment that is access for else um as well as um participation in state accountability assessments like MCCAST. They review our process for initial identification of English learners and former English learners upon enrollment. Um as well as our process for exiting the program and monitoring those students who

118are classified as former English learners. They review our EL programs and services that is the quality of our ESL instruction to make sure that the students are acquiring English language at a rapid pace. um as well as parent involvement in this process and also um the parents rights to decline entry at the program. So this is the students who opt out of EL services. Um, other things that are reviewed are parental notification of initial identification, progress in language acquisition as well as exiting the program, follow-up support after exit, um, as well as district requirements like lensure for ESL teachers and SEI endorsements for grade level and content teachers. Professional development requirements. All teachers and administrators are required to um obtain 15 PTPs worth of English learners. Uh professional development to renew their license. Um they

119also review our program evaluation. So our procedure to know that what we are doing is indeed working. Um and our record keeping for all things related to English learners. Ola does all of this in about three steps. First, there is a self assessment. Then there is on-site monitoring. And lastly, there is corrective action planning and continuous monitoring throughout the six-year cycle. In the self assessment, which actually happened last school year, um we uh collect documentation extensively to prove um that we have processes and procedures in place for each one of the indicators. It's very small on this screen, but you can see an example of what we were required to submit for indicator three, which is the initial identification process. Just as a brief example, uh we had to submit uh documents proving that we

120have a process in place for identifying English learners on enrollment that we have a home language survey that is given to all families and in English or their native language um and that the uh we had to also provide information about the um screening and assessment tools that we use for identification. We provided all of this information to the Department of Education last May and they've been reviewing all of this over the last few months. Now the site visit took um place on the week of March 11th. In this week, nine representatives from the office of language acquisition and other offices at DESIE visited nine of our schools, the Arlington Elementary and Middle, Oliver Elementary and Middle, Gilmet Elementary, Frost Middle, Leonard Middle, High School Learning Center, and Lawrence High School. During the visit um

121they visited many classes in these schools both ESL classes as well as SEI classes and had uh student focus groups, parent focus groups and interviews with leadership administration teachers um students, families and staff in the department of multilingual learner education. After our site visit, we had many things to celebrate. Um some of the uh of the highlights were our high assessment participation rates again both in access and MCCAST. We have low dropout rates for high school English learners and very high graduation rates. They also celebrated the larger num uh number of students who earned the seal of biiteracy at the Lawrence High School. Um the frequent and appropriate use of data cycles throughout the district. um as well as the expertise um of the department of multilingual learner education, our professional development offerings and support.

122And I didn't put it in the slide, but we also got a shout out for our use of title three funds um and the innovative programs that we are running here in the district, which they're always looking to highlight and share with other districts in the state. Of course, not everything was good news. Uh we did have some findings um to highlight uh these three. So we had findings in E5 which is program and services. This looks at ESL instruction, the percentage of students who are making progress in English language acquisition. Um how we are monitoring progress in EL and the implementation of WEDA standards in grade level and content classrooms. We also had a finding in interpretation and translation EL7 in particular for school-based interpreters for more spontaneous interactions with families. And lastly, we

123had a finding in EL14 lensure requirements. Um we do have a number of uh staff members working in ESL positions who are not appropriately licensed to do so as well as some um teachers and administrators who haven't completed the requirements for their SEI endorsement. This was a a brief um summary of the whole process. We will be receiving a detailed report from the uh office of language acquisition this month. Once the report is ready, we'll be sharing with this board as well as other members of the school community including um school principles, teachers um as well as more importantly families to to keep them informed. Um after we receive the report, we will be working with the office of language acquisition um to create a corrective action plan so we can address the findings. Um

124this will happen in collaboration with Ola. It won't be a mandate. And then of course monitoring never really ends. So over the next five years, we have ongoing monitoring with technical assistance from Ola and the ML departments and we really look forward to um finding those best ways to identify or to fix the uh areas of growth and to maintain the strengths of the district. That is my brief update and if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer those questions. What would you say they found was the strength? The strength. The strength. Yeah. So, they looked at 13 indicators and only found findings in three. So, I'd say the other 10 uh were pretty positive. um they were particularly pleased with um our our processes and procedures and the knowledge of the staff

125on all of those for identification, exit, uh monitoring, etc. as well as the integration of English learners into the everyday life in the school buildings. So students had access to everything that a general education student would have in the district. Um, if I could just make a comment. Um, I think it's important to note that um, the parents have formed the ELPAC and it's a very vibrant group and we really need a shout out to them because they're really tuned into what their children need and um, I believe Mr. Rondon's right there and um, they're doing a great job. So, I think they need a shout out. They definitely do. Uh, we have the the largest and strongest ELPAC in the state. Uh, they are a point of pride for the district and the city

126of Lawrence as well. We have every opportunity that we can to showcase the amazing work that the ELPAC does. Um, and I think as a show of that is Mr. Rondon's presence here. We continue to collaborate with them to make sure that that flow of communication goes both ways. Any other Thank you so much for that presentation. One question I have, I I heard you say that one of the deficiencies um is the appropriate training for some of our staff. So going into fiscal year 25, also knowing that we haven't been investing in the uh bilingual program as much as we should, what is the plan to rectify that? So there is a shortage of um qualified ESL teachers at the state level. This is not just a uh a problem that Lawrence is encountering.

127Um there are insufficient um teacher preparation programs in the state uh in the universities almost nothing at the undergraduate level. So we have a lot of folks who enter ESL um after the fact. So either changing from saying a grade level teacher, a content teacher into teaching ESL or career changers um to because we know and we've been monitoring the number of uh staff who don't have the appropriate license. We do have programs in place. We currently have a partnership with Lester University. Uh we have 20 folks completing a teacher preparation program. Um they should be graduating in the fall. Um and we expect all of those those are all actively employed as ESL teachers in the district fully funded by LPS. Um so thank you LPS for doing that. We also have um support

128for lensure for passing the MTELS. The office of uh teacher diversification runs um MTEL boot camps both for the communications and literacy skills test and the ASL MTEL. Many of the folks who are working in ESL positions are English learners themselves till the language barriers are um um are present and and difficult to overcome. We have many ideas. We have some um you know projects in development to continue to offer more teacher preparation uh programs through partnership with universities to hopefully and potentially offer ESOL classes to the staff so we can improve their level of English and try to overcome some of those barriers. The other part of the finding was the sheltered English endorsement. Um the district does offer the SEI endorsement course twice a year. We are thinking um if we need to

129increase the number of offerings or potentially make it more flexible by either changing the time that when it's offered or the modality from um in person to online. We we need to be creative to to give people the opportunity to to pursue training um in ways that that make sense. And it feels like, you know, we're investing in in them because we want them to be highly qualified and stay. You're muted. Why are you not on? We can't hear you. I'm not saying anything. Oh, any further questions? Anything else? Thank you, Miss uh Gutierrez. Thank you so much. Appreciate you staying so late and uh congratulations to the department on the work that all of you do. Absolutely. We have big plans for all of you people next year, right? Good work. That's what it's

130about. Um, madame chair, uh, two quick things. Um, I know that I have, uh, submitted my, um, midyear review to all of you. I just want to uh remind and reflect that the whole evaluation cycle starts with uh a self-evaluation that I was required to do coming on many many many many months ago. um and followed by looking at and assessing the school district and really analyzing the turnaround plan uh that I have owned and I feel very comfortable with. Um and with that I had to develop some goals that I submitted to the LE board that all of you approved as my goals for the year. And at this time in the cycle of the school year, it is my responsibility to uh submit uh my midyear prog progress report towards those goals. So

131um as I submit this report to you highlighting, you know, the process that I've had and the initiatives that guided my professional work uh in leading the district. Um I'm happy that uh I was able to go through this midyear evaluation progress report. Um this initial year has been a tremendously uh gratifying and rewarding experience for me. The motivation of our teachers and staff, the commitment of our parents, uh the desires and dreams of our students and the unwavering support of our uh educational leaders have all provided me uh the energy and the drive to relentlessly pursue a vision you know for as the leader of Lawrence public schools. Reflecting on these last six months has affirmed my conviction that LPS continues to improve and remains and I remain committed to a vision where students

132achievement, family engagement and staff dedication are at the forefront of all my undertakings. The goals that guide our work continue to uh motivate me to work harder um expand collaboration and invite more partners and stakeholders to join us. So, as I submit this progress report to you, I hope that all of you have the opportunity to go through those within it attached are evidence as to the things that have been going on in the district. Um, and I look forward to your input, your comments and suggestions as we continue on toward the end of this school year. So, um, I submit this mid cycle report to you. So, I hope that you have the opportunity to look at it and I look forward to your favorable vote of accepting it with whatever comments you might

133want to add at our next board meeting. Okay. I um had the opportunity to go through it briefly and there's some really good stuff in there. That's the way I could place to explain it. Um, I'd like the board to take some time and to go through that document and and see some of the great things that are happening in this district. And um, I agree with you, superintendent, that perhaps we'll have some discussion on it next month. Thank you. If that's agreeable with everybody. Okay. real quickly as I finish up our uh meeting. Um, we had the opportunity just this past week to uh celebrate um the uh month of autism um here at uh in the city of Lawrence and um Richard Rodriguez who uh serves as uh um one of our staff

134members at city hall did the research and unbeknownst to us um there is no other community in um in the state that uh has designated you know a month for uh autism celebration. So um we it was the first and it was wonderful. We had lots of parents. We had about a hundred parents there. Uh we raised the flag. I think a lot of our um families participated. And let me tell you something. um those that are blessed to have artistic kids, it's a fight from the day they're born. Um those parents are tough. They advocate for kids and they represent the best of what parent engagement is about um in uh Lawrence public schools um and around the district. Uh if you go on to your next page, the wonderful thing about these things

135is that the engagement that we have through uh quality enrichment of our kids and where we're taking them. There you see them. They're at the science museum. Um it it it's such a wonderful place. We'll have our kids going to the aquarium um also. So our field trips are becoming uh very standards focused as to what they're studying uh through the curriculum. We were blessed to have the uh secretary of education visit us at Lawrence High School twice. And obviously uh you you have his picture there. If there's one um staunch advocate of public education who was a former school board member is Senator Payano who is always in the district engaged with our kids. Um you mentioned Mr. Rodon and um the ELPAC, but we've also seen a tremendous tremendous increase in our uh

136Tuvals Council and our coffees um our Tuvals and uh council and uh coffee hours for the next couple of uh months are going to be engaged in the um strategic planning. So they've been tapped into by ERS to tap into them and find out for them because they're engaged on a regular basis. So I think that that was a great strategy. But um also another foundation came and selected four of our students from the Leonard School and they are part of the uh leadership program founded by uh New England Patriots Hall of Famer and Super Bowl champion Matt Light. Uh these four students represent the Leonard school and they've been selected. They'll be going to a leadership training to Ohio in the uh in the summertime and they're required to do some uh work as

137leaders when they come back to the school and I had the opportunity to participate with them and and told them what you know what that undertaking is about. um around the district. Uh our our next induction class into Abbott uh was had at Lawrence High School. Um a lot of parents, a lot of staff, and everybody's eager and waiting to go. As you know, Abbott's going to be moving from the main campus to our old high school. And I think that that's going to be a wonderful opportunity. Um our young ladies in our district uh celebrated Women's History Month, and it's important. uh we had visitors come in and talk about the importance of women's contribution um and where they're at and why they're needed. But I think that that was a great uh uh

138self-esteem booster for them. Also, uh we celebrated the Lancer Special Olympics basketball team. Um they came in third place. They thought they were going to get in come in first place, so they were a little bit upset. I said, "But that's why we practice for next year." um Gear Up, which is a uh partnership that we have uh situated at the high school, do a tremendous job. They hosted a fair of over a hundred schools in the fall for our seniors uh to be looking at toward college. And this past month, they put together a trade show for all of our students to look at the career paths that are available. They're tremendous partners. Miss uh Miss uh Mariana, you mentioned the performance of our students. There you have them in uniform uh their acting

139uniform. That is Miss Saigon um which is available Friday and Saturday um of this uh weekend. So I hope that folks have the opportunity if it's cold out. You can't beat the price. is five bucks instead of going to the Wang Theater for $250, right? Our our kids tend to perform better. Sorry about that. And your last slide, guess what? We have an end of the year close. Uh important end of the year dates. So, you have uh the last day of school officially is the 17th. There's a couple of schools that need to stay extra because we had some emergencies and closing schools. Um but they've been communicated with and graduation. Madame Chair, members of the board, Friday, May 30th, rain, snow, sle hail, it happens at the Veterans Memorial Stadium. And if there's

140bad weather, we move it inside. But ple 6 o'clock, please put that on your calendar. Your presence is required to celebrate the accomplishments of all of our kids. Two other things going on. virtual coffee where our strategic planners are still going to be participating. And um for our folks listening outside and parents, we have questionnaires. It's important that our families fill out those questionnaires to help guide our work. Okay? So, we look forward to uh the spring. I know it doesn't seem like spring is in the air, but it is. Um and um we have had a tremendous school year thus far. I hope that we're going to finish strong. Thank you for your attention. I appreciate uh all your support and I apologize for such a long meeting. That is my report, Madam Chair.

141Thank you, Superintendent. And actually, I'm glad that my first meeting back was a long one. Um everybody, uh that concludes our meeting for tonight. The next anticipated LE meeting will be on May 14th. Could I have a motion to adjurnn? So move. So move. Second. Second. Okay. Maria, would you please call the role? Yes. Arlene Garcia, yes. Matias, yes. Maria Müller, yes. Chair Patricia Moriano, yes. That concludes our meeting for this evening and a happy Easter to all our LPS family families. Thank you. [Music]