MRSD School Committee Meeting | 3/10/2025

001that okayy call this meeting to order at 7:02 start with uh remarks from the chair glad to see everyone here tonight um and I just want to start with a a comment uh and maybe a clarification for some folks everything that's been done so far has been looking at possible scenarios of things that may never happen and I can guarantee you that everything presented so far is is not going to happen uh what the school committee has been doing is trying to understand what possibilities are and we're doing it for a number of reasons one reason is we've been asked by our towns to try and um control spending to within 2% of last year's budget plus um when when not considering increases in insurance cost so some of the things that we've we've done

002have been to show folks what the impact of that would be they are not analyses and presentations and recommendations by the school committee that this is absolutely what we want to do I would say probably far from it and so what you've seen so far are an analysis of what it would take to get to what I consider to be myself an un unreachable Target probably I don't know if the balance of the school committee feels that way because everyone has their own vote but I would caution you and I would urge you to understand that anything that's been looked at so far and what we're going to look at tonight in the first section are all hypothetical areas to explore to see where we may be able to make cuts and I would also

003add that my understanding from talking to most members of the committee is that no one really wants to make Cuts but we have to understand where we're at as a community um if we don't make any Cuts this year next year is going to be even worse um we're using $700,000 of funding this year just to cover a gap in outof District placement costs um and I should add that anyone who's looked at the numbers will tell you that what's really driving a lot of what's going on here is out of District placement costs and it's something that is a Statewide problem it's something that really needs to be addressed probably at a higher level I was kind of kidding around with someone today that we should have a ballot question uh and just have

004the state cover all of those crazy costs instead of putting the onus on school committees because it just doesn't make any sense so um you know before we we get into the comment section I want you all to understand that we aren't here to cut as many positions as we can we're here to try and get to a good balance point that doesn't harm the school while also preparing for what looks like a downward trajectory on uh total funding that's coming our way and uh it's it's a challenge and we hope you understand again that we're all trying to do our best to understand possibilities and I will I will close with just to the rest of the school committee we've got uh a meeting tonight a meeting Wednesday uh meeting next Monday if needed

005and then the final vote is a week from Wednesday we've been asked by the administration by the end of the meeting this Wednesday to have no more than three proposals for them to consider and come back with numbers for us to deliberate on further on Monday so the goal for this week to get to the end of the day Monday with three scenarios that we can explore and then on Monday hopefully we get to a point to where um we can agree on on where we're headed and maybe a little bit of fine tuning but by the following Wednesday that's when we have to have a final number so for all of you folks here all the sausage making really is going to happen over the next three days everything that's happened three meetings everything

006that's happened in the past here say at this point so I'll leave it at that and uh we'll move on to comments from the audience so let's see a raise a number of hands see how many people we have two three four five six seven8 nine 10 I got like 12 I think all right we're going to limit it to uh two minutes each please and I would also urge you not to repeat what someone before you has said because if you do I might have to cut you off um I hope you understand that but we only have so much time uh to use here okay so with that said I'll start on the left side whoever was the leftmost person with a hand up come on up to the table we're g to

007go clockwise so please state your name and the town you're from uh my name is Landon buer I'm from Middleton I'm currently a junior here at Masco and I've had the privilege of getting my education here since the seventh grade I'm here today to express to you the concerns of your students and your children I understand that you're like faced with this impossible decision one with you know no good solution for you but many of you are not in our classrooms in our hallways in our clubs so you should know that students are afraid it may sound over the toop but these students care somehow in an everchanging World Mas is a place where we come to process it it's a place where we reflect on history and compare it to the issues of today

008students are afraid that their favorite electives their favorite teachers and the most vital parts of Masco will not be available to them next year we've built a community that works and your decision cannot change that I urge you to understand all of the impacts of your decisions do not look explicitly at numbers do not look at dollar signs look at us us look at the opportunities that generations of mass economic students have had and how you could very easily take them away I do believe you're capable of making the right decision creating a solution that does not overtly and negatively impact the students at Masco so keep this in mind when making your decision in your upcoming meetings remember us thank you I'll go next I'll try to keep it short because I know you'd

009rather hear from the students zil Bou topone Massachusetts former school committee member um I have four little points one is um I was really happy that at least this year uh positions and last year uh were titles that were clear of where Cuts might be proposed as opposed to in 2020 when it was a little bit less clear and ended up cutting our health director and a medical um secretary without understanding who we were really cutting um so I'm grateful that that's this is more transparent now um since then but I do want to remind the committee especially since many of you were not there at that time that when we had to make Cuts during the when the pandemic first hit and the towns pushed us hard like they're doing this year but for

010slightly different reasons um we did reduce a health director who was a nurse and a medical secretary and those positions had been created because as a response of sort of the first line of defense a lot of students were appearing in the nurses offices with uh psychosomatic condition symptoms and it became clear that there was a lot of preventative opportunities through the health department um I think the Administration has tried and has sued in sort of Shifting some of that work to the overhaul overall student services department but the nurses offices are off often the first line of communication with families and the first place that kids show up with any issue so when you're looking at the nurses I just want to keep that in mind after that cut one nurse was added but

011it wasn't like we're adding a nurse out of nowhere we we took position away that had been a nurse and then added a nurse um so just a reminder that there's history that sometimes the data that we're looking at there's context and Nuance that sometimes is not so apparent so I just want to remind the committee of some of that history and keep that in mind um my second thought was if we're going to start trying to think outside the box I get to say this more comfortably than I would have ever been able to in your seats but maybe there are some administrators who might consider a pay reduction in order to offset some of the um cost ofing Educators and third point is I want to remind all of our staff I over

012the years have often heard Rumblings and conversations that I consider to be inap appropriate around premature assumptions that are communicated either to teachers from administrators or to students from teachers and this is all very sensitive and the school committee is in a process that is not complete so I just want to remind everyone in the district to be pleased respectful and honor that advocating is different than making assumptions and throwing people under the bus and lastly back to my whole mindset of school as people I'm going to do a little polyana a moment and just remind everyone you know school is not just a place it really is people and when we're considering our community of people bottom line they are the most important part of our education program I know you know this I

013know I'm asking I know you can't get blood from a stone but had to say it thank you I'm Michelle voner resident of Topsfield at 11:00 am today the administration linked their slide deck of the cuts to the school committee's um meeting agenda then later in the afternoon we finally got to see what the administration views as the most acceptable of the Litany of cuts sorry I'm going to stop you're there no that's my file that they put up that's discussion file it is not the administration's file be clear on that was no recommendation by the administration period yeah so okay my bad um in scenario six in the slides that were attached it was proposed that there would be a reduction in department heads combining English and history math and science and art and

014music I want to remind all of you that last year it was decided by unanimous vote of the school committee to State the position of performing arts department head the position was not haphazardly added back into the budget last year it was after months of conversations and hundreds of community members speaking out that this position was restored now we're looking to relitigate this topic in a somewhat different situation with less than two weeks of uh deliberation until the school committee must approve a budget and give it to the fin towns of each town I not understanding why this topic is back up for debate for the candidates who were hired for that Performing Arts position told that they should not assume that they would have job security last Wednesday's presentation by both the fincom and

015Selectmen asked the school to bring them to a budget where a good faith eort effort was made in making Cuts due to the financial issues in all three towns they also recognized that the school system is what draws families to purchase in the tri town yes that the administration looked for creative ways to make cuts that have the smallest effect on the students a reiteration of the proposed budget that has come forth has focused on cutting the adults that the students trust and rely upon last year when five teachers were cut the school committee asked for budgets scenarios of one two three four and five positions being cut and the response was that cutting anything less than five teaching positions was not acceptable because it would turn things into I quote The Hunger Games what

016should we call this situation proposed in scenario six combining departments make so that don't forget department heads manage but they also teach compete against their colleagues from that even guaranteed that one department heads would get the job Administration just finding some new an outside of the school H who's possibly it states that department heads could rebert to full-time teaching but nowhere in the budget propos scenarios does it add in the salary of a it has felt like a shock and all campaign presenting six budget scenarios in the negative and now finally we get to see some some reasoning behind some things despite the towns and school Comm asking for scenarios that aren't folks on cutting student facing positions this is still what we keep hearing why is there no reflection on what administration can contribute

017teachers have made sacrifices the town's people have made sacrifices where the sacrifices being made by Administration I implore the school committee to look at the administration's recommendations with a critical eye please make the decisions that are the least impactful to the students thank you thank you very much hello everybody my name is Eva Urban Hughes and I'm currently the social studies department head this is my third year here at mascow and I'm glad to be here I've been a social studies educator in public schools for nearly 25 years and I'm passionate about what we do the proposals that you're going to hear this evening will merge various academic departments for the sake of cost cutle what I want to do is give you an very clear idea of what the impact of that would be

018on my specific departments and then you can extrapolate would look like across all of the Departments by studying social studies students learn to think critically about social issues understand different perspectives and make connections between past events and current affairs these skills allow them to participate meaningfully in Civic life whether they're voting in elections or advocating for causes they believe in or simply being a more thoughtful member of their Community social studies also help students develop a sense of their own identity and place within the broader human story fostering empathy and cultural awareness and today those skills are more important than ever our state and our local leaders demand that we teach these skills for good reason with the mcast Mandate for graduation eliminated it's not unlikely that the state will mandate Civic engagement projects as

019part of the graduation requirement for Massachusetts we need to be investing in social studies right now and not reducing it department needs a dedicated leader to pursue this work personally I wrote for and I received a state Grant then brought brought Salem State professors an exhibit into our school the school Community Partnership brought Statewide recognition I hosted a desie focus group on genocide education in my class just last week about the impact of that programming where it was confirmed Beyond a reason Beyond a doubt that the social cities department is impacting student learning in a very positive way currently a group of social cities teachers is working to display the kilum collection a collection of Native American artifacts found while Excavating the school in the 1950s and working with Comm Partners to display them and

020also to commemorate Mas anomet in our school merging social studies would diminish or otherwise eliminate all of this work currently I'm managing 17 teachers and give them feedback on curriculum instruction while at the same time teaching two different classes with a total of 43 students including an AP class I'm simultaneously leading and managing the overall program and I'm constantly meeting with students across the district about social studies programming as well as working with my own two classes will be lost in my department at a minimum as well as two classes in the English Department where we removed from the classroom the supervision and expertise of the individual programs will be lost as one person focuses on managing upwards 35 teachers and two distinct programs to combine them two of the largest in the district means

021that something's got to give in addition to the classes we teach say goodbye to the schoolwide programming large scale field trips students working the polls during our elections in at town meeting say goodbye to the initiative and vision to write for Grants and build social cities program you need concentrated leadership to do that kind of work and there simply won't be the capacity to do it and although I focused on the direct impact of social studies I know that every single one of my colleagues science math English art and music can give you the same speech merging departments means that some things are going to give and whatever that is it's going to be detrimental to all students and hurt the entire Academic Program not just social studies fundamentally as public Educators we're here to

022prepare students to be good citizens in our community any moves to diminish that work in the humanities whether it be cutting teachers or cutting Department chairs is shortsighted if a restructuring of our building and District leadership is the ask I would hope that we'd be creative and how we go about making Cuts especially considering various upcoming retirements or turnover whatnot as a group we're happy to consult with our building leadership and upper Administration is make these very difficult decisions and proposal thank you Elizabeth young foxford a parent of a sophomore um I'm gonna have a more focused question I'm kind of numers an engineer I appreciate knowing that these are just scenarios that these are possibilities and you're going to make the sausage that's a that's a over the next few meetings I appreciate that

023nonetheless I still have two questions how is it possible to come up with numbers down to the dollar significant figures about eliminating department heads how much that's going to save you without knowing which department head is being eliminated because the department heads do not have the same level of number of years in education or 10 year at mascow so I'm feel pretty safe in postulating that they do not have the same salary so that's one question my other um my other thought here is the line items defer fraud assessment until fiscal year 2027 and defer high school student activity accounts audit until fiscal 2027 which saves a grand total would save a grant total of about $330,000 Which is less than 2% of the total across all the scenarios but it's it's half of just

024counselor understand that right so my thought is I can understand why that might be considered a an appropriate thing to do I can imagine you know multiple scenarios in my head where that might be the prudent thing to do and might be a a the the right thing to do first impression though is appearance of impropriety and that's so so you know deferring a fraud assessment deferring an on it it just doesn't it doesn't give the feeling and the gut right that that this is you know again good intentions but how does it look to the outside for such a small amount so um very detailed I know those are very detailed comments you'll get to it in the sausage making I'm sure and I'll here's some of it tonight so thank you my name

025is Luke D Michelle this is Pier steel we both graduated from Masco two years ago good to see a lot of you again uh before I go into what we both prepared to say uh I would like to say that even considering cutting any classes particularly AP and honor classes in the name of helping our students is absolutely ridiculous I understand that we need to consider cutting things in reality we shouldn't have added things like a director of teaching and learning in my opinion uh but but I think that that is an insult to your taxpayers an insult to your students and ultimately an insult to your teachers and we have some of the best teachers in this district and that's coming from a a be student last year the superintendent proposed merging our music

026department and our arts department while justifying the addition of an unnecessary and unwanted administrative position the director of teaching and learning along with a nearly unanimous front of music and artarts students from this school we took time out of our busy College schedules to speak with school committee members and explain how the budget proposal would damage masco's highly successful music program which has sent numerous students to high level conservatories the school committee rightfully rejected this proposal but here we are again one year later uh not only is this proposal back on the table but it now goes even further removing AP classes like I said and cutting vital department head positions uh I would like to know how dep uh combining departments or cutting an AP class would help our students I really just I

027can't see that doing it um meanwhile administrative bloat will continue unchecked and hire people who will never interact with students over the very teachers who have made Masco exceptional uh this trend of growing Administration while removing classes and teaching positions needs to be reversed and I truly believe that this illogical ideology just needs to be eliminated it was already unanimously rejected by the school committee once Mr Cassidy was told that he had job security and while we implore you to do the same this year we understand that this is a difficult decision to make but we truly feel like the proposals on the table are illogical and indefensible thank you uh hi everyone I'm going to keep my comments brief uh Nik zorus uh longtime teacher and president of the Union um I'm sure that

028much of what I would have wanted to say will be said much more eloquently by others but I want to offer a few things just before we get started with the meeting proper um while I appreciate the sausage being made and the process that it goes through please understand I and I understand your opening comment but please understand that um from the teachers perspective from students perspective seeing this which it should be seen it's a public uh event it should be seen by the taxpayers it should be broadcast it should be talked about this is important this is Civic obligation of its highest order but it affects people in three years we're going to have Myriad people retiring and we are at a we are at the precipice right now of what we want from

029education you are being tked was something impossible and I can appreciate that but the tone you set now will carry forward for Generations hiring 10 20 30 teachers five six seven eight years down the road will get immensely harder if we make major cuts to the teaching staff now one of my uh co-workers said a few weeks ago that masto is a place where people want to work it just is as is a place where students want to go and in a little while and again I I can appreciate the fact that it's part of how the sausage is made you're going to hear about adjustment counselors while at the same time knowing that we are losing students to outside placements having people who support those kids leave is not going to assist us in

030bringing people back to this district and I know this is not what you want to hear but my job is not to make your life easy there's an argument that we should be adding teachers specifically for that population and making a real legitimate actual argument to families in lie of government inter like interjection which I don't think I would expect coming anytime soon I don't mean to be negative but if the sausage here takes a while to make the sausage on Capitol Hill takes infinitely longer and the sausage in Washington takes longer than that so in in the absence of of that there is an argument that we need to take a legitimate real actual look at what it is that we're doing administratively moving forward how it is that we are accessing what we

031need to how it is that we bring people back whether it's having Roundtable discussions with parents who are placing their kids out a district whether it's inviting teachers to this table which I will say again for the many time and I apologize for S broken record you have spoken to several important voices at this table whether it be department heads or whether it be uh building principles and have been able to sit here or from fincom and from uh the leadership of your towns to sit at these tables and ask questions and answer them I would be happy to sit right there and answer whatever questions you might have about what we're doing here and offer Insight from the teachers perspective of how we can make it better more than happy to do that uh

032so again I I said I was keep it short that was not that but um I do appreciate your time uh and I appreciate your consideration thanks ni good evening I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Lara daki I'm a 25 year resident of Boxford and for 14 years I have proudly worked as a teacher here at mascow like most of you I chose chose to move to the TR town because of the outstanding reputation of the schools my property value is a direct reflection of the school's exemplary status please do not consider cuts that will damage such a correlation after 20 years of practicing law I changed careers to become an English teacher because I wanted to make a more positive impact on people in making such a shift I was

033extremely thoughtful as to where I wanted to work I toured schools throughout the North Shore and none made a better impression on me than Masco over the years I've repeatedly stated that my career change and working at mascow was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made tonight's consideration has left me dismayed repeatedly teachers department heads and amilies have asked you to consider cuts that do not impact student facing staff such Cuts will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the quality of Education our students will H will receive yet again tonight the prospect of losing department heads is another such cut department heads may fall under the umbrella of administration but make no mistake they are student student facing staff department heads teach classes department heads help some of masco's most vulnerable students through

034specialized guided learning department heads are vital what makes Masco special when I was hired Pam Culver the former principal told me what makes an excellent school is a staff that knows its content and likes working with children department heads embody that philosophy having spent significant time in the classroom department heads know their content and are passionate about helping Masco students become the best version of themselves I consider it my good fortune to work for English department chair Megan hilderbrand I deeply respect her knowledge of the curriculum and the text I teach her feedback is content specific and because of that it carries enormous weight she is a wealth of resources to me to become not just a better teacher but a better English teacher I've had students return to school after an extended illness and

035because of her knowledge of the curriculum Meg was able to work with them to catch them up so that they did not fall behind their peers Meg has also provided struggling students with meaningful individualized instruction that no online program could possibly replicate she is a champion of her department and knowing that I have had the confidence to make thoughtful academic risks to deliver the best possible instruction for my students none of this would be possible if the backbone of our school Community is removed and our department heads are stretched Beyond a reasonable limit man managing multiple departments we have very intelligent students here at mascow as evidence tonight they need leaders that have the background knowledge of their content so that they can reach their potential we have the common goal of helping our students

036but the proposed scenarios are all counterproductive I implore you to truly consider options that look beyond the classroom and will not detrimentally impact students everyday lives thank you I want to say thank you um the Laura um just a comment where we're looking at administrators department heads teachers speaking here I'm I'm fine with going longer to four or five minutes I would ask others to try and keep your comments a little briefer if you can so thank you um hi fellow students parents and teachers my name is Charlotte Guido I'm from Topsfield and I'm a junior this year um I would like to voice my concerns about the impending budget cuts and potential losses of teachers that would affect my school community in an adverse way I want to begin by stating the importance of

037the guidance department at mascow because one of the proposed Cuts is cutting someone in the guidance Department each guidance counselor plays such a central role in the development of every student at Masco um they play a central role in the well-being and organization in college and after school planning of each student and they are the people supporting us here in our future planning um as I'm going to be in senior next year I'm highly concerned about the effects that cutting a guidance counselor would have on Juniors that are preparing to begin their search for colleges and looking after Masco right um we have each worked with our guidance counselors for the past three years we've developed a strong connection to these guidance counselors we need a letter from these guidance counselors and the students that

038would be affected if such a guidance counselor was would were cut would have much more trouble because they'd have to start fresh they'd have to start a new bond with a new person that they haven't known and they haven't been talking about where to go for the past three years um it stresses me out a lot and I'd also like to about the department heads when I was a freshman I had Miss hilderbrand as my English it was one of the the most enjoyable and amazing classes I've have ever taken it was engaging it she is an excellent teacher and an excellent person and I implore you to please look to every single option before cutting vital people such as department heads which are needed in every area of expertise at this school thank you

039hello my name is Joyce massak I'm a junior here at the high school um I know that I speak for almost all of us students when I say that these teachers and department heads because they also are so very important in student learning and teaching have supported us in so many aspects of Our Lives not just academically yes they support us in our studies and very well so but they also support us to keep going on with life it's not only guidance and students support it's also the teachers we see every single day it makes all the difference to have that one teacher who notices who cares that one teacher who just clicked I can guarantee you that every single person that you are considering right now to be someone who is cut is someone

040that current and future students depend on for so many things I know that I certainly depend on them to take them away would leave me my friends and my classmates lost espe especially with Dr Fay and Mr Cassidy as they have helped me and so many people just move on through days even if they've been absolutely terrible the Masonic Vision 2025 explicitly states that students will feel emotionally secure how can you proudly and honestly say that's true if the very people who make it so are being cut please keep our staff and teachers we need them thank you thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Annie Rollins and I'm speaking tonight as an English teacher at Masco as a Boxford resident and also as a parent of an eighth grader in

041the Middle School who's going to be entering the high school soon this is my 17th year teaching at masanam and I take immense pride in this School community and the exceptional education it provides like so many of us here tonight I'm deeply troubled by the proposed teacher cuts additionally I understand that the committee obviously is considering consolidating department head positions another decision that would have far-reaching negative consequences for our students Educators and the overall quality of Education in our district our department heads are not just administrative figures as SP said they are essential leaders who provide daily guidance to to teachers while also teaching students their roles are not interchangeable or expendable strong education system rely on Specialized leadership while merging English and history for example under one Department may seem efficient on paper and

042practice it undermines the targeted support that teachers rely on from experts in their subject area and its pedagogy English teachers need leaders who understand and have experienced firsthand the complexities of teaching literacy writing and literature just like history teachers require leadership in historical analysis and civic education eliminating teaching positions and consolidating consolidating Leadership weakens the very support systems that ensure Student Success stretching leadership across multiple disciplines forces Educators to navigate their challenges with less mentorship fewer resources and diminished advocacy our students deserve teachers who are supported not overburdened if we prioritize short-term savings over longterm educational quality is our students who will ultimately pay the price I understand the need for Budget efficiency but cutting teachers or Department chairs is not the answer these student facing positions are essential to maintaining the Integrity of our

043academic programs and I urge this committee to reject any cuts to these roles as they are vital to teaching and learning at NCO thank you thank you anyone else excuse my voice it was a very busy day of buying and selling in the classroom today um very exciting day and uh I'll honor your request to leave out two things I was going to speak a little bit about my department head Eva Hughes and Tom seventh grade social studies uh in the Middle School and I was also going to give an example of what happens when you combine um the department heads um but I'll leave those out because I'm sure you get that understanding uh the department heads of mas gomet are key to creating a great work environment and culture within each of our

044departments and the school itself each is a specialist in their chosen field and together they have Decades of teaching experience experience in the classroom is crucial to help guide our new teachers as they join the ASC anomic community and continue to challenge the old hats like myself to continue to learn and seek out new challenges I myself was lucky enough to have a number of great mentors in the social studies Department throughout my 31 years here at mascow including dick Megan Patricia pesi Jill story and currently Eva Hughes who have all helped me continue to hone my craft and become the teacher I am today most of our department heads were excellent former teachers here who were asked by this upper Administration to move from their classroom into their current leadership roles each showed excellent

045qualities in their classrooms and the administration obviously felt that they would be a great leader for their respective departments a few left their positions at other schools to come work at bomic because they wanted to join a school with a great longstanding reputation as a school of excellence and success they Rose to the occasion because they were asked and took a risk leaving their classrooms willing to serve their co-workers in their school Community if we want to continue the tremendous reputation of our school as a place of excellence and success cutting teachers and department heads who serve this community with great dedication is not the way to do it you have to look elsewhere as you take each of these positions away you crack the cement holding up our school and our reputation eventually the

046building will fall as will our reputation and success thank you anyone else hello my name is Emma Smith I'm a freshman here at Masco um I came to you guys last year after um the proposal to merge the Visual and Performing Arts departments and I'm a little disappointed that this is happening again this year um a question I have tonight is last year you voted not to go through with the merging deciding it wasn't a great decision for the school district all and for the students my question tonight is if it wasn't good last year for one Department why do you feel that would be a good idea this year on such a large scale my other concern is that she have already started having students sign up for their courses and offered a wide

047variety of um electives this year um more than I think last year even my concern is you also took away study halls so kids have already started signing up if you cut these positions who is going to teach those electives and what is going to happen to those students that already signed up for those classes I'm also a little concerned about the teachers and what will happen to the students um as you know students are also leaving Masco to go to other schools to pursue other things um I almost did this myself as I said last year but one of the main reasons why I stayed is because the education here is great the teachers here are amazing and the opportunities are great and I'm concerned if you cut these positions or if you merge

048these departments that these opportunities will be taken away thank you thank you thank you any further hello my name is Rebecca Delano I am a teacher here of 17 years at mascow in the English Department and I was trying to count how many supervisors I have today and I was thinking so first of all I have my department chair and then I have two assistant principes in my building which I'm very fortunate to have and then I have a principal and then I have a director of curriculum and I also have a superintendent I have a lot of supervision which is terrific however there's only one of those people that knows me and knows my style of teaching and knows how to help me and redirect me when I need mentoring and guidance and that's

049my department only one of them knows how quirky I am and how that can be helpful to my classes and also um detrimental to me in my own anxieties only one of them knows the metaphor on that page in the chapter that I'm trying to get the students to see only one of them knows how to appreciate the Artistry in the poem that I finally elicit from the softspoken student in the back of the room only one of them can walk into my classroom and understand during a Socratic debate all the scaffolding and layering of work that I've spent a month trying to to implicate in order to get the students to where they are in that moment that she walks in only one of them is able to evaluate my instruction in English language

050arts because she herself can instruct in English language arts and I'm really glad that I've been able to have a dep department head all of these years while peers of mine in other districts have had to lose department heads in their disciplines and I have witnessed uh to their their suffering their lack of guidance and support when someone who has a completely different background who has great intentions and a sense for how to interact with students but just cannot offer content specific support and with that we teachers are able to be wonderful for this the wonderful students that are speaking here today so thank you for your time thank I'm gonna mix it up a little bit I'm um here I serve as a sometimes substitute teacher a track and field coach a parent and

051I also serve on the board for the Masco Education Foundation so on the board of the Masco education found sorry can you give your name please Jin elesta thank you um for the Masco Education Foundation we've granted over $25,000 this year to teachers for individual grants and including to a grant to the language department for equipment so that students can test for their language um or certificates for fluency and we've also granted a $5,000 Grant to the history department for their Native American um project that they're currently working on and the program um requests that we get are absolutely amazing the things that the teachers are trying to do are wonderful the rocketry club is doing outstanding things and this is a language teacher teaching rocketry and he has these kids out in freezing cold

052temperatures shooting Rockets 800 feet up in the air I mean some of the stuff the kids get to do are just amazing but we employ implore you to use these grants more we had $50,000 this year that we could have handed out to teachers and we did not get 50 applications and we could have given 50 teachers, grants for applic for the projects that they're working on so teachers if you want to help keep the budget down please use us we can fundraise additional funds for you if you know what it is that you want to work on that will help the overall school budget stay lower so please think of the educ Education Foundation parents give to the Masco Education Foundation every time your child goes on a field trip or does a special

053outside of classroom project it's probably coming somewhere from us also we need new board members to help fund raise to get more monies for the schools so there a lot of people are talking about Cuts today I'm trying to bring something to the table that there are other ways to fund certain things so that we can take away from the burden of the taxpayers to fund some of these other programs so just please remember that we're here this five of us we're all there's four of us from Topsfield one from Middleton we would love the other towns to get involved we have a um campaign that we're going to launch soon so that you can get more information but there are other ways other than just tax dollars to raise funds for the schools and

054so it can't just always be Cuts we have to look at other ways to raise revenue for the schools as well besides tax revenues so think of that in your you know process here but as a parent I was kind of disappointed in how the kids found out about the information that was being presented tonight because it was just like a bullet list of um highly emotional things that were going to be talked about instead of information that they could process as you can see they're all quite upset about the thought of losing teachers and administrators that they deeply care about so I just implore people that when you're sharing information with the students that it comes from a place where they have the information they need to process this stuff like these kids don't

055know that there are three overrides going or three tax increases going in front of taxpayers there's an override from the grammar schools there's an override from the high school and then there's the towns two and a half% that they increase every year as well and we have seniors in our community that are getting food delivered to their house because they can't afford things so there's there's more to it than just teachers being cut is it's not just the schools it's the community members as well who are being affected by all of this stuff and I think the kids need a little bit more information other than just they're going to lose their teachers there's also people that might might lose their houses because of all of the things that are going on in the world

056so please just when you're presenting information to the kids a thoughtful about how you're presenting them because I can tell you my kids love their teachers and they were quite upset to and that upset me okay sorry we're the audience the teachers aren't the audience yeah well that's everybody put on that like this information is coming down from you guys and being presented to the students from your information so I mean just be a little bit more thoughtful about how this is being done I love that everything is being shared and transparent and but you know just consider your audience when you put stuff out that it's not just you reading it you know that the kids do see it some of these kids are voting this year on this they're going to be at

057the Town Halls so just think about that a little bit more when you're disseminating information that's all I wanted to say thank you thank you tce as long as we should have so far um I don't want to stop people who have something to say but again please um if you can be as brief as you can we'll see how well you've been taught uh in your ability to present my name is Isabelle B I'm from Boxford and I'm a junior at mascow hi I'm Nea partel I'm I'm from Middleton I'm also a junior I'm Elanor Casto I'm from Boxford and I'm also a junior so we all have a few there somebody else with you I'm Bren hi I'm from thank you so we have a few kind of like varied concerns um one

058of our concerns is larger class sizes due to Class Cuts um we believe it could decrease um engagement between students and teachers because of the larger class sizes and that would also add more stress on to the teachers because they have to deal with larger class sizes which could be harder to manage um and it also decreases individualized needs that students need met um and it also limits other kind of enriching activities such as field trips because lots of those are tied to different classes um and also um because of like the a lot of we have a lot of classes especially some like AP classes that some people don't take for example I want to take BC calculus next year there's a little interest in that class because of the difficulty and I know

059that next year if there's not that much interest in that class it might be cut and I just don't I really want to improve on my education and continue my interest in math however if this class is cut then I can't do that and also I talk to my math teacher and she said that that next year there'd be bigger class sizes and smaller class size smaller classes will be have to cut and she said that she'll be much more busy next year and she won't be able to write like recommendation letters for junior she will she would love to write recommendation letters for because the teachers are so busy and they have less time and they more and they need more time to grade tests and stuff and so she said that a lot

060of students won't be able to get the recommendations they need for college and that also ruins our college career as well and also I moved here from a different country and my parents were choosing place to go they chose here they chose Middleton because of the education and the opportunities that masca provides and not some other other um school districts is even in Boston though they choose here in the Trion because of the education here like naeva my family also moved to Massachusetts and we chose to move to Boxford specifically for the schools so we really are care about making sure that Masco stays and matches its in very incredible reputation with the education that it provides um and cutting teach teers also effects Beyond has effects that go beyond the classroom like teachers are

061involved with other extracurricular activities such as Sports and clubs where they serve important roles as leaders and coaches so cutting these teachers not only affects students learnings but enrichment become a whole person and as a final Point um as others have mentioned um students are consistently kept out of the loop in these issues and we do care a lot and it would be wonderful if there was a way we could increase communication the school committee with teachers so that we are able to our voices heard and understand the whole issue at large and also just to add on to the extracurriculars last year I was in student council and our our advisor was cut because of the because of teachers and this year we had a new adviser who wasn't really experienced with student council

062and my job in student council I was supposed to be reaching out to I was supposed to be attending meetings from the Board of Education and our adviser was supposed to register us for this and uh we were not registered because he was not aware of the situation therefore this year I could not complete my tasks as a as as a student advisory council member and I just I could only attend to any Council Mee but I couldn't really do my job as I was elected from the student body so because of the teacher cut my my new our new advisor couldn't really um recover to the new student council things we had to do this year oh and um one more point I'd like to make is that um specifically speaking on the um

063French Department I have a few concerns and so do my fellow classmates so in the budget scenario planning document for the year 2026 it states that the French Department might be facing a $115,000 reduction and this means one of the three French teachers will be let go and as a French student of five years I'm I'm sad because every single French teacher I've had has been outstanding no matter how frustrated we might get with conjugations these teachers are patient and kind to us and they never fail to bring the energy especially at 7:35 a.m. with only two French teachers employed class sizes will increase creating a lecture environment for a course that's meant to be interactive where everyone has opportunities to participate CP and honors level language students can be expected to learn together simultaneously

064in the same classroom this system will hold back proficient students and confuse the ones who aren't I strongly believe larger classes will result in less individualized support to students thank you for listening at three minutes until the hours there anybody else who wants to use that three minutes if not we'll we'll move on thank you all of you for your um insightful comments heartfelt comments um it's helpful to us I mean we like to know what everyone is thinking and uh I'm not going to reiterate what I what I said at the beginning of the meeting we're we're just getting started here on on where we're headed so don't misinterpret the documents as some kind of grandm plan they're all just talking uh points at this at this point in time so but that said

065let's move on um who's doing the um that's me ask ask Brad to come on up and join us he's going to take a piece of it long all right so our agenda for tonight is to look at scenarios five and six we're at six scenarios scenario five is to review our school adjustment counselors on scenario six uh from administrative positions so these are to recap the of uh the four scenarios that we've talked about over the last several meetings um again I I actually want to start off with saying administration's recommendation is a level service budget um we understand that that's a big ask uh given the amounts that are that are here uh but that was something we felt strongly enough about the members of the leadership team are here um know so

066that's where we're starting from we're not recommending any of this but these are things that we've been asked to to put out for consideration all right so um this is here's uh the list of uh our scenarios five and six uh we'll get into the details on most of them a little later in the presentation but I do want to talk about some that we don't actually have slides for for um there's two positions on here one is a regular par professional General Ed par professional position um this is a par professional that's assigned uh to assist in our physical education classes um a person you know good things about this you know person's a longtime employee uh who actually has a uh certification from Project Adventure uh which allows that person to assist uh

067fed teachers out on our ropes course out behind the building um you know and again having a second set of eyes is a is a good thing to have in some of our larger uh physical education classes uh the other one that we don't actually have a a presentation on is the security position it's kind of rehash we've grown uh on our security positions uh the security staff position there uh We've grown from having nothing having a part time director of uh Safety and Security eventually that position was increased to a full-time position uh and then over the last couple of years we've increased uh two security monitor positions uh these positions are uh security positions that are really more engaged in supervising students uh they're inside the building uh working with students working in

068the cafeteria uh you know working in the hallways between classes um these people you know these two positions that we have on staff they're all over the building all day long um so you know definitely um positions that that we feel are important to have so but I didn't want to mention those two because they're not uh the slides getting on to um the scenarios um this shows but um as you can see actually on the slide before uh that all six scenarios add up to a reduction of $2.1 million uh or 22.7 uh positions uh if we were to do all that whole list um this is what that would mean for uh the assessments for the communities um boxford's assessment would be reduced um to an increase of 3.2% uh Middleton be a

0690 2% increase uh tops Fields a 7.3% increase and that total increase with that $2.1 million reduction is a 3.4% uh overall operating assessment for the district next one we're going to talk about is I'm gonna turn this over to Brad to talk about school adjustment counselors um I I want to not you know I know there's a spotlight on services and um I think part of our part of or one of our issues is that we have um odd names titles positions um I think school adjustment counselor is one where you know I don't know that there were School adjustment counselors in school when I was in school so I don't have know necessarily a context maybe you guys don't either um but I do want to um just read something to try to

070give it some context um in a minute I'm going to run through some slides with a bunch of numbers and try to quantify the impact of reducing our school adjustment counselors I borrowed the format from Dr duro's presentation last year uh and while the slides will show some alarming numbers I first want to put things in context um and I fully understand that things um are easily measured with numbers things like enrollment and things like dollars just to name a few but numbers do not do justice to the impact of this reduction um and I understand what I'm about to say may be upsetting to some and I'm sorry for that but if some folks aren't familiar with what a school adjustment counselor does they should consider themselves Lucky in the most simplistic terms School

071adjustment counselors save lives that's not hyperbole I've seen it at Masco because of HIPPA and furpa and confidentiality rules we don't advertise or promote the work of our school adjustment counselors there is no equivalent to poetry out loud or model un or science team and math team but there are individuals in the community who are alive because of school adjustment counselors there are parents in the community who know what a school adjustment counselor did for them I don't expect those people to come here and stand up and share that I wouldn't want them to come here and have their pain memorialized on video forever but I hope that's not seen as a reason to cut these positions School adjustment counselors work with some of our needest students and they work with all students students on

072IEPs and 504s students in honors and AP classes students diagnosed with depression anxiety OCD students who have experienced trauma and grief they teach coping strategies to manage school and life they consult with teachers assistant principles parents principles and outside agencies and when we talk about student facing School adjustment counselors face students every day facing a student wholy lost a not easy facing a student student who has no friends and is lonely is not easy facing a student who's contemplating ending their own life is not easy this is the work of our school adjustment counselors It's a job without a lot of Praise or recognition but it's one that we should all value okay um here is a slide where we're trying to explain what a school justment counselor does with their time in a day

073um so we have school adjustment counselors we've heard a lot about the student support centers in both buildings um those are really important hubs um when a student needs support or they're feeling anxious in class that's a place where they can go and where they can connect with an adult um and feel safe our school adjustment counselors are also um Consulting with teachers Consulting with parents um they're creating um intervention plans for students who are who are struggling in class um students whose names may come up at a at a weekly student support meeting and one of the first things we look to is we ask Stu School adjustment counselors can you meet with the student can we find some um way to support them in the building um over the last few years we've

074done Universal mental health screenings this year we're screening um we've done three grades I believe at this point yeah so three grades who have gone through anxiety and depression screening looking to be proactive and get ahead of any um mental health issues that may become a problem later um they spend a significant amount of their day uh working with students on IEPs and 504s who have mandated um scheduled times with them um they're running uh CBT groups for students who may be identified in the Universal mental health screening they're assigned to a group um there are crises in the in both buildings you know so there they're some of the first people to respond when when a call goes out um what does CBT stand for cognitive behavioral therapy okay thank you so that's just

075trying to put um you know definition to what a school adjustment counselor actually does we can go to the next one um so this is um Middle School student support center um for this year through the first two trimesters looking at these are students essentially asking for help so um we have students who if they're struggling in a class or if the student support team um determines them a candidate they can go to the student support center for a study hall where they may get support um academically but they may also get support um executive function wise um it it in the middle school I know we've talked in the high school there's an academic success Center and a student support center in the middle school there is only a student support center so it

076it functions similarly it has qualities of both high school programs I should say um there is a a special ed teacher assigned to the middle school student support center so students can get um can get support there outside of special ed it's not just a special ed program um you can see the students who access student support center for lunch um whether that's because they may have a lunch group assigned through an IEP but there may be a student who can't make connections in the cafeteria in the middle school is a is a bus a bustling place if you haven't been so um the middle school student support center offers a safe less socially um high stakes I guess um so that's a it's a more comfortable place um but in looking at these numbers

077it's just an opportunity to see the number of students in the Middle School who really are engaging in um in some social emotional help R yeah how many adjustment counselors are assigned what's the Staffing for SSC just so in the in the Middle School yeah I was goingon to that's on the next next one yeah it's I did the I did student support centers you know and then I did each case Lo so um next one's the high school student support center um again you know it's alarming when you look at the number of especially if you could see these rooms these are smaller rooms um but a lot of traffic goes through those rooms on a daily basis um yeah I mean I think I think it speaks for them yeah I I have

078a question um the unscheduled visits are up pretty significantly from last year do we have any directional indicators for for why that number has seen like I think first um this is done by quarters last year it was done by trimester maybe it's roughly equivalent here um well one the high before was the middle school right but this is high school this is the high school one and when you look at last year's presentation yeah that Irene did yeah when you look at these numbers it would have been quarters too it I think it I think it might have been trimester it looked like it said T1 at the top I think have it here but probably middle school then versus midle school's on trimesters right and the high school on that would make sense

079maybe it was an error on that one then because the number I went Slide by slide and compared okay so unscheduled visits is up 83% year-over-year in the First Column and then 51% in the second column and I'm just wondering if we have any idea why that number has jumped so significantly I'd have to look at last year's and see how it was I guess compiled um I can do that as a followup and find out um yeah High School support Center SSC for 2324 it is q1 that's my bad okay q1 and Q2 are listed Q3 is not on last year's okay unscheduled visits in q1 179 unscheduled visits in Q2 272 so maybe you guys have different formulas or maybe there is a significant jump I call it out because I know we've

080heard from our student advisory presenters that the kids are having a harder time accessing teachers because of all the meetings that they have to accommodate right and I'm ious if the kids are showing up here because it says that they will go to unscheduled SSC for academic help test help things like that um yeah no that's a great question I'm sorry I don't have the answer as what that is but I will um I can have it for for Wednesday I'm sure yes i' agre you if we go to the next slide that will so here's where we'll look at um case load numbers for the middle school first um so there are three adjustment counselors in the middle school and in the um student supports Center as the Hub they they all work with

081um students and iups and students in 504s and general ed students and you can look there and just see the numbers um you know if you divide that I didn't break it out into individually but um with three adjustment counselors the um case loads are in the you know mid to upper 30s and then if we were to reduce that to go to two the case load would be 50 two and a half that's a that's a big number for students who are um struggling and a half any questions on that no okay um looking at the high school case loads so there are four adjustment counselors in the high school again they all work with students in IPS and work with students on 504s and general ed students um you can look at these

082numbers and they the case loads turn out to be pretty similar mid-30s each of them and then if we were to reduce it would go to almost 50 in in doing those reductions when those case loads get to 50 none of the other things that school adjustment counselors do that we um we ask them to do for us would be possible so currently we have school adjustment counselors who are trained in deescalation and restraint training and they are the ones who provide the training to staff in the district rather than going to outside agencies and doing that um working on the um the mental health screenings working on our strategic plan things like that there there'll just be no time they'll be left to you know essentially just manage the know students on IPS and

083whatever walks in the door yeah Melissa question no I so I don't forget letting you finish oh sorry I'm used to being in the classroom I saw kids hand and I would just call on them so um based on the numbers are you the IEPs and the 504s those are you know from year to year how many kids are going to be in the student support center for that and the general education what is the like how the kids Flow In and Out are are you seeing an increase in gen I I didn't I couldn't find the numbers from last year so I couldn't see yeah I mean I I would say we are still in the midst of a social emotional crisis for adolescence and teens so students um you know in both buildings

084we have weekly meetings where we're talking about kids who are struggling every week you know um and there are still students who are who are popping up who aren't on IEPs or who aren't on 504s who we don't know about and it's you know you get into March and you're like I haven't heard this name before and it's just kind of the nature of the Beast um yeah the gened numbers are up they're up okay yeah middle school last year was 13 it's 23 now okay thank you um because the fact that 412 unscheduled visits how many of how many students was that like I guess right so that's it it wasn't one student 412 times but I don't think we have the exact you know new student new you know it's not but some

085of that number could be one student comes once a week could definitely in y or it could be a new student comes once yep okay but yeah but they're unscheduled visits 42 which is a I think a big they're definitely on our adjustment building who you know a term you know white knuckling right like they come off the bus and they're just holding on tight all day long and they might pop in and see their school adjustment counselor for 10 minutes before lunch or those type of check-ins just for somebody to kind of check in and say you're all right you know I'm curious if generally speaking the unscheduled visits of today become the scheduled visits of tomorrow because if that's the case then there going to be some of those yeah 100% it's it's

086it's possible um it's yeah it's delicate balance it's a nuanced job where it's um it's not it's not not necessarily easy to predict um I mean I think we we created these programs based on um you know a few years ago just prior to and then even through Co when we were having higher numbers of um student hospitalizations and students who are out of the building and you know maybe left in an ambulance or something like so we we've kind of built these in response to some of the needs that we had So Lisa um just curious for the IEPs and 504s you have a sense of how many are graduating out and how many are coming in next year I if you've given us that number I don't I don't have that right now

087top of my head I can I mean that's an easy number for me to get yeah um the trick with um and I think this came up maybe at the last meeting when somebody asked a question about how many how many sixth graders maybe had school adjustment counseling on there just by the nature of adolescents and teenagers it's not uncommon for a lot of these students to be identified in middle school and high school um so you know aren't necessarily evident prepuberty or you know when they're in fifth grade versus when they're in eth or ninth grade that's definitely a factor I can get that number for you quick questions I guess um we keep getting snapshots in these presentations and not Trends and it would be a lot easier to understand whether we've got

088this going on that going on or that going on if we can see trends when when anyone comes to present to us right so lacking that my question is what would be a benchmark number for the number of students an adjustment counselor can um service I that word yeah I I think that's a great question I think um the tricky question to answer because the severity of students factors in um there there are some students does but we just can't sit here and say we don't know and we can't and and and you never know what's going to happen that's what we're getting a lot of honest but I don't think it would be fair for to tell you 35 is a number you know do you know what I mean like yeah yeah it's

089not I know is it easy is it ballpark you know is it Ballpark Way low Ballpark Way hot you know what I mean just yeah even a swag would be good yeah I mean I guess I I would think probably where we're managing right now is a fair number so I'm going to follow up with one more question and that is how does this compare to two years ago do you know off the top of your head in terms of prior to so we had a discussion last year when we were talking about reductions in staff and whether to keep two two adjustment counselors on and you know we had a meeting where we spoke to the department heads and there were other people there and I asked someone directly to keep these two student

090adjustment counselors or not and the answer was nah we could get we could get our way without them that's exactly what was said to me so that's what I'm curious has why would Cavalier of an answer right I I don't understand the conflicting inputs not knowing who said that I don't think it's fair for me to comment um I didn't say it so I don't know if my predecessor said it I don't I mean not knowing who's somebody said something like I can't I can't resp that yeah adri I remember being in the audience last year and and listening to I think Irene and others present and I think some of the the messages that were conveyed little more Nuance in that and it was if things are cut we will figure it out it

091was less ah we'll be fine it was more we'll find a way because that's what we have to do in our role and we will not let the kids suffer so I just want to make sure that that's on the table as well that was what was said in the in the open meeting I'm just telling you what what I what was communicated to me via personal conversation that's I'm having trouble yeah and and I'm a profession and I you know make things work but I wouldn't say that I wouldn't respond that way privately to you or publicly to but I'm anybody and I'm feeding point to death here but this is why seeing Trends would be helpful because well two years ago when that person told me that really not important and it's gotten

092much worse now so I I get it right yeah Adrian going forward I'll be a trend person I don't mind that Adrian looked at the numbers and I looked I looked at last year and this year about two years ago didn't dig that deep I only got the slides a couple hours ago so but that was the point that would have been relevant to me is my is my point I agree I it's not ideal but what I can say is that in general things are on par across most things except for the notable increase in gened and un scheduled visits which are both again notable sizable increases and I think in last year's presentation they showed that they had averages and if there was reduction they projected what the new averages would be if

093you look across those for like the case loads for IEP 504 gened and the total where we are now is about where they expected and so you can only assume that what they're proposing this year would be about where we'd land so I think whatever system they're using seems accurate and like we should trust it and I also think that that increase I'm I'm curious now to go back a couple years and look at any other increases if I can find them but if there was a year-over-year increase like that from 22 23 to 23 24 and now we're seeing it again then I think we can expect that Trend to go in the upward Direction because that's just what the story is telling this but I haven't confirmed that I will tonight when I

094go home though and let everybody know yeah I don't know we presented I can't hear you did we present them two years ago no I don't know I don't think we did I don't believe we maybe that's why I don't think we did no because we were we were still funded by Esser funds P done and do you think you have them I can find something yeah yeah they weren't in our school committee okay no I don't I don't think we had discussed it but I couldn't find it and I said you know what blame it on the website but I don't think we discussed it okay years ago at the school committe I had a quick question what did we do before school adjustment counselors here at mascow I mean it may sound like

095a stupid question but what happened to all of those students that had all of those indiv I mean I know I have two children on an IEP so I know that by law they will have care one-on-one but all the other students what when I first got to Masco want to go that far back um we had counselors from I'm looking looking for someone from the TR Town Council um funded counselors here okay and then as um needs kind of blossomed there were there were some things that happened in the tri Town few decades ago that spawned quite a few um needs in the building um so at that point we started Hiring Our Own okay and um we've kind of been chasing demand um I just wasn't sure what it's it's just such a

096large chunk of of needs so I'm just I was just curious who handled that before we had I mean I think yeah maybe it wasn't handled yeah maybe that might be part of the problem um yeah and I think somebody asked last time sort of what happened and I I don't want to blame you know technology but I think that is a huge factor in what you know has changed for kids today sure there any kids in here all right uh question on line Trevor hi thank you um so I was wondering so going back to the presentation we had a few weeks ago there was a standard kind of put out about the school counselor position that was like one counselor for every 250 students so is there no association that can that has

097a gold standard for us to go off of here there's not one that I'm aware of okay I can I can do some digging um but there there isn't you know a published adustment counselor recommended case load number okay thank you I have a couple of adjustment counselors in my family and they'll tell you that it really depends on where you are and what your case Lo looks like right 50 students at Masco might look remarkably different than 50 students in another district and the challenges that they're facing so I have a scho adjustment counselor in my family too and uh I hear about it every single day and it's it's hard to put a number on it even if you go to a big beautiful school that has yeah lots of things it's hard

098so one last question really just a simple one I don't know why but I thought we had five adjustment counselors in the numbers that's seven it's seven okay so the simple question is if we did eliminate one and there was an imbalance between the high school and the middle school because of it can the adjustment counselors go between sites can like a high school adjustment counselor go to a middle school kid or you could share um how that would how that would work um in reality you know that would be something have to but there isn't anything like a certification or something that prevents you know somebody from working with a certain age student or anything like that Noe same way a teacher can any other L than I think we're good gonna move on

099to department heads uh this slide just uh list out the current um nine academic department heads um that we have in the district um each uh department head also is assigned to teaching uh and that teaching assignment depend on how many uh staff me they evaluate they they're supervising in their Department more staff members means fewer fewer sections that they teach so what we're considering here is consolidating uh department heads and would combine the first one is to combine the English and social studies department head positions and creating really in fact a new position which is the Humanity's department head um you know already heard that that would a combined Department of around 35 uh teachers full-time equivalents um next one is to combine the mathematics and science department head positions creating a new position

100of them department head um again combined Department of around 35 um and then combine the Performing Arts and fine arts department head positions to a fine and Performing Arts department head uh combined department head of around 11 uh and then for this uh exercise we uh increased the current 7 band teacher to a 1.0 ft uh to some sections um there will be section in impacts on the uh other uh department head positions that we talked about how much is that in the the cost to increase 7 to I don't know if I don't think I have it was in the was it in the first presentation back end as oh yeah it is actually in the uh the list of things that we had considered but look it up thank you not I couldn't

101remember yeah it's in there it's it's um where they're saying there's there will be section impacts depending on the number of uh sections taught by a department head um so that would definitely be a being impact be two sections roughly per department at the on the high side um move on there so some of the impacts of uh consolidating in these positions we would have very large departments there you know 35 positions 35 departments uh positions for a department is large uh we would have increased evaluation responsibilities for these new positions um you know we you know as we said earlier Brad said earlier fortunately that's what we do in schools we figure it out when we have things like that so 35 uh we would look to see what other you know how we

102could move those those evaluation responsibilities to other um administrators um we'd have increased administrative responsibilities such as ordering budget uh development class coverage uh possibilities we definitely have less supervision of our teachers uh it's in the PLC model but also in the just the classroom support uh personalized coaching is say you know things that we would lose out on there um definitely having that less targeted in content specific professional learning is definitely an impact of of doing this um loss of that content specific expertise in all three of the new departments less expertise with the curriculum and um which would be less opportunities or fewer opportunities for new program development uh and we'd have less attention to subject specific advancements and initiatives some of the things that we've heard about already tonight um would not

103likely be happening have any other questions on that one really move on to Brad I have one quick question sure someone else went to who wants to go first that was me Jeff sorry I Erica go first I'll follow thanks Jeff um I just have a question speaking here as you know professionally as a former department head assistant principal principal and now as um an assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for regions of high schools I've had a department head position and understand looking at the number of 35 FTE is extremely high when I was a principal at a level one turnaround School in Dorchester the highest number that I ever supervised was 22 so for 35 to be above so far above that is incredibly concerning I'm curious as to why consideration to combine

104the larger departments like English and social studies math and science versus some of the interrelated departments that are smaller so for example science and wellness or math and business um I agree regardless there'd be a loss of some content specific expertise but when I look and consider the combination of math and science and stem with all of the AP courses the very specific you know content work that goes into just a lot of those courses that's really concerning so I love to hear some rationale around why those departments versus some of the smaller ones again particularly math and business and then science and wellness definitely possible Erica I think uh we were looking at sort of the natural connections there of humanities and stem um and you know first off I'll also say you know

105we just started putting this together on Thursday of last week this was definitely not on the radar not something we were thinking about until our last meeting um so definitely we can you know if you would want us to look at that we could that's really we were just trying to think of that natural combination of humanities and then stem Focus okay thank Jeff I I had a very similar question I was just I was just curious why we didn't look at Health PE World Language and other opportunities so I'll let it I think Erica made made my point thanks any other questions the next one is okay um again I just want to put a little context to these because I'm not sure that everybody is familiar with know some of the nuances Ed

106um so every IEP that we have in the district which is over 300 is a legal contract between the district and the student so um it it's a legal document so it it's something that you know we we need to follow and it needs to have um you know sort of strict processes to it um when a student gets based on an IEP that IEP is then reviewed annually to measure and ensure that the students making progress and every third year the students eligibility is reviewed to see if they're still eligible and still require special ed services um so we've got over 300 individual contracts that all contain individual goals and services to involve multiple service providers um whether it's the special ed teacher whether it's speech and language whether it's a reading specialist um

107so a certain amount of oversight is to is required to run you know a department um that oversees um these documents teachers special teachers are awesome but they can't do all of the instruction and all of the oversight so um we do have um an assistant director who is um you know helpful with that IND District oversight but also is responsible for coordinating our outof district IEPs so that involves um organizing meaning inviting scheduling um running the meeting writing the IEP for these um 70 students who are you know in in schools that are you know been outside of the state some situations so it's it's a lot um you know as the assistant director I was assistant director for a number of years you know you're going to these schools um you're observing students

108Zoom has been great for some meetings where you're able to you know if everybody agrees let's do the meeting on Zoom rather than drive to you know Belmont or drive to AP Cod or something so um but but it's there's a lot that goes into into this the assistant director is also um responsible for the pair Professionals in the district so there's you know plus she uh hires she assigns them to teams um she does evaluations um the assistant director also chairs the weekly high school student support team where we're coming together um school counselors School adjustment counselors administrators um department heads and we're you know talking about struggling students um and then I work closely U there's always been a good relationship between the assistant director of special ed and the assistant superintendent for

109student services um going back decades where um you know it's a it's a trusted position in the team that helps kind of plan and um you know develop our programming so next one yep um the other you know administrative position in the um special department is the team chair um this is the person who is um responsible for the eligibility the initial evaluations and the reevaluations for all of the students in the district um running countless meetings I think last year we were over 300 meetings so that's students who are up for reeval of our three 100 figure it's about a third um any meeting that involves uh additional testing so if a family you know student might have um might have an IEP for anxiety and then at some point somebody might suggest that

110you know what I think there's a a reading disability can we get some testing on that so that's additional testing off of the cycle it's not their turn to be it's not their third year so they shouldn't be revaled but if request testing so they're doing that testing coordinating that running that meeting um it's a a lot of meetings um also attending our um student support meetings in the high school and the middle school so they can be aware of um students who are struggling and if a student is not on IP in one of these meetings it might come up that hey we need to refer this student and that's where the team shair needs to be involved from the beginning um there are also times where you know I might say Hey you

111know I I really need you to be at this meeting it's not you know one of your um students in the eligibility cycle but I really think it's important for we that we have an administrator or somebody at a meeting so they will go to that meeting as well so um functioning without th those two positions combining those you know I don't know if my next slide says nightmare but it would be U it would be a nightm um it was a small period of time last year where there were only two of us three people's jobs and it it is not it's not sustainable it's not um it it was barely good you know it's it's not something that you would do on purpose or you know design so um it would create a

112host of problems you can you can read them I have a quick question yeah so the assistant director has to maintain IEPs for the out of District students that never come back to mascow by law by law y can we Outsource that why not we're Outsourcing the education right I I I don't think you want to Outsource any of these so like I used to be that person and you want to be there you don't want somebody else deciding that oh you know what this student might need something you know an additional service that could cost an additional I hear that but I would think that since these kids are all going to special schools that those schools would be taking care of a lot of this for you or at least come to you

113and working with you right yeah there's definitely um teamwork yeah I mean when I was the out of district coordinator I knew can I ask this a different way sure how much effort is there in doing an IEP for an outof District kid versus an IND District kid yeah I mean I guess it I guess it depends it's I know I there are no easy answers to this show so um sometimes it depends on on software so if we use easted a program called easted if somebody else uses easted it's easier if somebody doesn't use easted it's really difficult um so maybe the majority of schools are probably on easted so you're able to either work work on a similar document or they're able to send you a document that you're able to then you

114know tweak but if it's not easted you're starting from scratch can I jump in ER got a question yeah go ahead Erica um my just experience in as the person who for my district I we are an outter District placement one of my schools for many students we have population of over 50% to the school that I work with for students with disabilities um and my my experience with this is when you are a school who has a student somewhere else at an out of District placement they package it together share all the data collection with you share the proposed IEP everything ahead of the meeting so your prep is lower as that District however like Brad said when you go and attend the meeting which is really important you are then bringing considering and

115participating but in terms of the preparation that should be far far lower if if you are the district as we are in this circumstance so in terms of what our preparation should be and attending out of District placement IEP meetings that should be considerably lower than if we are running an IEP meeting either an annual or reeval for a student within our district yeah I mean I think that's I think that's fair um like when we send a student to an out of District school they're working with that student day-to-day so they know um you know they know the progress they they they identify you know goal areas or what we're what we're going to work on or where we are in um in the progress of an IEP it's hard to say um whether

116that you know that makes it easier probably but you're still going into you know the IEP meeting needing to obviously be there and need to be um aware and you you don't you don't just sit you know you're kind of I don't know how many of you have been to an IP meeting so it's hard to describe you're still engaged and involved in the process um whether they're at and out a district school or not add that sure go ahead so also when you're going with the out District because we're trying as we know in all of our conversations we're trying to get kids back so this person also goes to the schools and watches and sees okay you've made this project excuse me process can you come back to mascow can we bring you

117back are you doing well enough you know whether it's a one year twoe um so they're to Brad's point a lot of them are not next door so they're going out and observing the students but also on the flip side we have people coming in in to observe students to think whether or not Mas is doing so this person is also coordinating with outside people keeping kids here so there's just so much coordination and it just sounds like everyone's kind of hearing that the IEP paperwork process there's just so much relationship between all the different schools and the observate going to the schools and it could take all day because you're driving to the cape you're driving to New Hampshire and you're observing can we bring these students back or what are you know also

118working with Brad about programming oh we have all these kids that are out for this reason are we building new programs here so we can keep kids so they're the eyes and ears outside of the school um and so like I just feel like that kind of point was being missed it's not just doing the IEPs for the out of District there's just so much more with it and there's people coming in here that there there's just so much relationship with all the different schools you said uh an eye towards bringing kids back how many kids do we get back after out of District placements what percentage it's not yeah yeah I don't know if we're going to put a percent on it it's um okay we're trying it's not great yeah I we're try

119try we're trying to build question Jeff is next sorry somebody El had a question go ahead Jeff thanks um I just wanted to dig in a little on the the team chair role um is that a ad is that director is that something else like from the description it's hard to really figure out you know sort of what level and what the responsibility is I don't understand what's an Department it's in department head it's in the administrator's bargaining unit department head okay so pre senior role and separate from okay so assistant director and the depart and the team chair both depart are they both in the they're in the same unit yes yeah and they both Department considered department heads yes okay thanks is it three people you know one reports to the other who

120reports to you is that the that the picture of this or now we we work you know pretty closely I think in in the situation that we have set up now the the former team chair is the assistant director so the current team chair doesn't necessarily by Design report to the assistant director but because that person is doing the job that they did for you know five or 10 years there's a lot of um work together but not it's not set up to be hierarchy there's someone else the ER still a question go ahead me again um I kind of two part questions first it says in slide 17 that out of District cases would most likely Spike I just want to name that as a committee I think we have a very strong obligation

121to revisit is it what the action plan is to reduce added District placements after the budget season um I also don't I don't see how that would be true um looking at the numbers that we have looking at the numbers just thinking about the team chair and assistant director um you know I see that they are running the IEP meetings why are they running all of the IEP meetings versus special education teachers it's a really standard practice to have them facilitate since that structure is so structured and consistent and is based off of the IEP structure itself it's not a massive lift um I'm just really interested in why it ISR so special ed teachers run annual reviews the iup team chair runs initials and Rial I'm not sure of any schools that have their

122specialed teachers run the Rial we did that for a number of years and I know that prior to getting the team shair which was probably seven years ago we were the only one who was doing that um so I don't know if there if there's a you know I'm I guess skeptical that there's a lot of schools that have special ed teachers running Rial okay I can yeah that I think that's a probably conversation for another time I guess as we think about analyzing the role here and if there's any potential to slim this down given I think that the amount of money that would be on the line for this is 121,000 I could be wrong need to look back which is a significant amount um and the number of IEPs that we have

123I um I guess I I still just feel unconvinced that this is not a worthy consideration giving all the other highly student facing positions um so if out of District placements you know were you know not likely to spike because I you know understand some of the points made but also respectfully disagree with some of them too what would you say would be the greatest reason for keeping this position just given the numbers the numberb of with IPS and 54s yes I don't understand the question what's what's the greatest the reason for keeping the team chair or yes just given the number of students with IEPs um and 504s so the great are you gonna try jump in for I think some of the complexity in answering these questions is that there's been no specific

124cut the team chair it's just combine this and there's a number attached to it so we don't so I think what Eric is trying to say is you have three people working in a flat structure addressing the needs now well we don't have we have two right I'm I'm a little above above them okay so then you guys collaborate a lot but you got so what is the what's the rationale behind like guys previously had one person in this role you know what that looks like I never had one person so okay last year we've had I mean if we go way back you know when Patty Bullard was here I don't know if anybody here still here okay so Patty was the assistant superintendent for student services I was the assistant director there was

125a point in time where we had specialed teachers running reevaluation meetings the reevaluation meetings are relatively high stakes meetings um and we had a process where you know there's a dozen different people running these meetings and the results kind of varied right based on personality based on who they were and what their process was um the fact that we were at that point in time to my knowledge the last school district to have specialed teachers running those meetings um Patty made a prop proposal for a team chair which was accepted and we've been using the team chair model um ever since so we have a unified process for eligibility um in the district you know that it's on One Way by one person um we can be you know confident in the results of that

126to to get rid of that to to cut that position and go back to specialed teachers running um eligibility meetings that would be that would be a big lift and and I think the the point about out of District cases would spike is there would be there would then be 12 different decision makers or or more than 12 sorry in in these high stakes meetings so it would it would create a it would create a a scenario a major headache I can't I can't quite think of the word to describe what this would look like but it would yeah it would be bad and when things consistency right and and special ed is a little bit like the stock market where uncertainty is the thing that does you in when people don't know what to

127expect that causes problems so so I don't know who had a question earlier are you set well no I guess I I would push back against getting rid of one of these two positions again a have as a parent of having somebody that is actually both of my kids are on IEPs and having going through through first the initial evaluation the re-evaluations and the yearly evaluations the amount of time that these people put into these IEPs and to gather the information is just incredible and that's just for my two kids so I can't imagine doing it for and you said there's 300 IEPs in the two schools so to have one person running and taking care of all of that just does not seem surmountable and especially because right now my son is up for

128his threeyear and I have been told that's on hold because you guys are behind well hold on a sec and I'm not and I'm not mad I'm not mad not mad you can be mad no I'm not because you know what I yeah I know it's coming so I'm not but and so you also saying though that the out of District placement cases would go up I think that is as a parent I would feel that frustration and feel like you guys are not keeping up with my my child's needs so I'm not going to stay here if you can't keep up so that's the real sentiment and we're not just behind because we're behind we've had an unavoidable issue um that has been communicated Adrian is answered you're done y okay good ER is

129back up did one of you guys have a question yeah you can go first sure all right Erica you're good go my last comment I think in terms of the consistency in those outed District placement meetings based on where we are as a district and the financial implications we do need someone in there and I think that it would be appropriate for that to be Brad or someone on the team I agree with the consistency component in respect to what Lisa said there's so many players who bring and share the data when it comes to creating an IEP teachers are a vital part of that but on average for a newer which I don't believe our people are newer special education administrator it would take two hours to create an IEP once all of that

130data is there together if it is faster than that and we multiply that by 300 and we think about our R vals I truly believe if we do the math on that that we are within the realm of considering this as a possibility so just thinking about the numbers purely the number of time the amount of time that things take I don't think that we should just count this as an option just yet okay Kendra this just a quick kind of statement overall because I I feel like the special ed department and the out of District placement it's such a big number and it's a number that everybody is staring at it's a giant piece of the budget and it again it's been stated many times the point of a no special ed parent wants

131their child to go out of District the point is we want I like I want my kids here want them to be able to be serviced here so my worry especially with the num so high is that we remove and we keep taking away quality then that it's just going to get worse and worse yes it's a long road and we have to think outside the box to figure out how we can cover this and how we can lower this starting in in the elementary schools and convincing not convincing that's a bad word but showing through actual proof of programs and quality here that your child will be serviced appropriately here at the school you should have confidence in Masco but we have work to do we have to obviously get that number down but

132that's not going to happen today it's not going to happen tomorrow but I do I mean I again I have two children with autism I know this in and out and it is it's a lot of work and with this number so high My worry is combining this or taking away is just going to make the numbers worse so I'm aware of the numbers I don't like the way it looks I want those numbers down as well so I do look forward to really making this a permanent process to get the numbers down working with the elementary schools but for this moment here I do I mean I know what all of this takes you know every single day that I'm in a meeting every day I mean testing and everything so I appreciate it

133but it just it's just a a Viewpoint of for my for my bill you have a comment yeah one other thing um that we're going through right now with the Middle School's transition meetings for sixth to seventh grade and those meetings are run by these two folks positions um the team chair and the assistant director and that's a huge relationship building piece and um you know I think it's fair to say that some of the parents in six grade now could be looking at an audit District placement or considering it where're doing these transition meetings sometimes multiple times to have them visit the school um and visit the middle school and that keeps them in the district and if you reduce this number from two to one um that relationship just can't be maintained in

134the same way and those meetings might not even be Quantified in those in these slides because those are times when kids are coming in to observe a classroom um those are times we're hosting the tri toown teacher to come and look at our program those times we're bringing in the parent that all occurs between March and may late May um to make sure that those kids are set up for success in the fall and can I just ask to pay back on that they're also working be The Advocates the lawyers um this regular classroom special ed teachers are not we don't want somebody in the teacher contract making the decisions with the lawyers and with The Advocates you want an administrator to be doing that and also building the relationships and as Phil said going

135down to the middle school and finding out what is needed um I know I just feel like kind of stuck in the weeds of the team meetings but there's just so much more than that Trevor thank you ch um so I'm just thinking about this position and I'm thinking back to seven years ago when you said it was created and I guarantee you it was probably created to limit our out of districts and now we're seeing that number Skyrocket so maybe something I know the student population is change drastically in those seven years but maybe something might have to change for the process but that again talk about further down the road but I just want to ask CU um Erica had mentioned it in other districts is it common for the um assistant superintendent

136of student services to be running um those team meetings and the re-evaluation meetings no okay in in in most other districts that I'm aware of they're not in the they're a central office you know we're unique here we're technically assistant superintendent central office but I'm in the building so my office is in the high school so I'm you know around a lot more I think than the typical assistant superintendent sorry a district can I clar can I clarify one thing too that Trevor said um I think I presented this on a slide before um I I would tell you I think having the team chair has kept out of districts that we have control over lower I think when you look at our number and you know say it's 70 I think we presented you

137know more than half that number never came they didn't come in seventh grade so we didn't necessarily through our processes outplay 70 students um what what about the out of district meetings is that common for a team chair to be running those meetings or is that more common for an assistant superintendent stre Services it's it's usually a position called you know out a district most most schools have an out of District chairperson we just we combine that with our assistant director and what would be the sorry for another one but what would be the push back of making um this team more higher archical High you know what I'm trying to say um and have instead of having you know two people at the same level there make it a direct line what would be

138the the drawback to that yeah is that you're asking um what would be the advantage I guess I'd have to think about yeah why it's well I mean it would be cost savings and I I understand maybe that person no longer is running the out of district meetings but I mean it's something to think about yeah yeah I mean I don't I I don't know how it would be cost savings because you have they both have to be administrators they're in a bargaining unit and there's only one administrator bargaining unit that you know they're kind of like the department heads the athletic director they're all in there's only one thank you Melissa so I just want to say because we focus so much on outof District placements and I think we have to take a

139step back and talk about who's here now and what we can do to keep kids at mosow and I I'm I'm listening to The Experts who work every day and I don't for me I I've never had to deal with special ed services you know but for the grace of God and but there's so many families out there that we're like it's I I feel like we're putting the blame on special education at this point in time and it's making me a little bit more uncomfortable that we're blaming everything on out of District placements we have to like get away from that the 41 I think you said 41 of the place of the 70 placements never came to mosow so I think we just have to take that as a fact and do what

140we can with our budget to keep students at Masco and and listen to what our experts are telling us so I just wanted just I I needed to say that because the the continued blame on out of District placements is is making me uncomfortable and making me anyway I I appreciate that Lissa um and we are doing a lot of like I spent a lot of time talking with those other two the team about ideas and programs and things that we can do to um to keep like keep kids at Masco but but keeping kids at Masco is a byproduct of making Masco you know desirable to more people right like to to beefing up what we do in classrooms to doing things a little bit differently we've got a couple ideas that we're you

141know we're I don't really want to get into them but that we're sort of in brainstorming phase that that are cost neutral right like we know we're not adding anybody we know that but we're trying to do things differently we're trying to um you know today when um the assistant director and the team chair were doing transition meetings I was touring a spafford pond teacher who was new to Spofford and wasn't sure what happened at mascow and was getting a lot of questions from parents and students so hey come up and I'll show you so that you can then go back to spafford and talk about Masco um it it's it's those things that you know seem little there's a lot of them but like they're they're things that we need to start doing more

142and we are doing more I think since since I started in September we've really prioritized rebuilding relationships with the elementary schools and if you had one less if you L if you had to combine the team chair and the assistant director would you have the time there no it honestly last spring like there was no strategic real planning or thinking we were like meeting meeting you know this this let's let's get to because of the legal requirements that we because it's it's yeah I mean thank you I don't want to come up and whine a hard spring it was aot cover I uh just wanted to respond to Melissa just because I personally haven't heard anyone here tonight attacking out of District placements or special ed services I mean for me it's simply asking questions

143to get more information about this hu one huge portion of our budget and huge population of students we serve so I don't want asking questions to be construed as attacking a certain population of our students and that's all that's all I have yeah I'd like to just add a quick comment here as well that's you know looking at Trends over the last nine years and we get to it um I have a little more detail on it I suppose our student population's gone down our teaching population has gone down our districtwide administrative uh office has gone up but it's main it's driven by it positions maintenance and security all areas that we know have increased in in requirements um what hasn't gone down is is student service and special education that's gone up and it's

144I know it's a byproduct of more demand and it's the student population is changing but when we're looking at you know where are the areas where there you know there's um I don't know um less bony positions I'll say right meaning uh a little bit more meat on the bone it you know it would be obvious would be the place to look would be where are we looking at a higher um you know position to the number of ratio and it's it's in your department unfortunately that's why we're asking these questions yeah not saying it's it's not justified to have that number just we've gota we've got to dig I think I I think you know enrollment is definitely going down but like our special ed enrollment is pretty consistent essentially since my I don't

145want to take I don't be blamed or take credit but like since I've been here at Masco the number is it's close to flat so um but we are up by 13 positions in that time so if it's really it's not really flat it's got to be more than it's got to be growing it's it's the complexity and I know you don't you know people don't like that because it's not easily defined but the complexity of students from 2008 to 2025 they're not I think teachers who are here they're not comparable yeah okay Adrian um I think my question might shift the conversation and I realize we still have to go through mpfts so maybe it's best if I just fall to it because it I think will change the topic anybody else right the

146other the last position we we're going to talk about is the uh mpft the multi-purpose facility technician position you see there are current Staffing uh we have uh three mpfts on the first shift uh and two mpfts who work a second shift and we have about 24 hours of uh overtime to cover our weekend uh facility use um for thefts give a sense of what these five positions are are responsible for you see the facility is around 400,000 square feet we have 25 acres grounds and Fields those 15 Acres of athletic fields they need to owed um we need our mpfts are now responsible for 100% of our snow removal we don't have a outside contractor to do that work anymore um so you know we want to make sure school gets open on time

147and there's a snowstorm on a Sunday all of our mpfts are in here uh trying to make sure that we can get get things going and be open for Monday morning uh the mpfts also do routine or an emergency repairs and preventative maintenance areas that they work on um you know then there the the work happens school day after school uh in evening and they do facility use um support that's about 104 hours of operations for week for outside uh use of the facility and if we were to go from five to four mpfts you know things that we' have questioned about with that 20% reduction in Staffing uh that Athletics piece you know people want the fields mowed and they want them lined and things like that I mean it's there's a lot of

148grass that gets cut here in the summer it's pretty amazing um again the snow removal piece um and then that weekend facility use uh would be another question that you know we would have to think about U could we cover it um you know it's not really here and I you know when to get too much into the the you know things that are going on with our npft but you know there's five of them and they have things that happen in their lives a normal course and a lot of times we're working with four um so if you know we there would be times I think that that we would be you know not at four you know we would be at three um for you know an effective uh you know Force here

149at this point Adrian um how how much cost did we displace by having versus having a snow contract I'm assuming it was more to have a snow contract it was it was also that the the contractor informed us that they were no longer available to work so okay that that's the problem is finding people to do this thing it's not yeah it's not as big as the mall but it's it's definitely bigger than than somebody's driveway so there's only a certain sort of yeah niche of contractor that would be able to do this um I think the other side of that question was knowing the state of our campus and the Very tenuous situation we find ourselves in these are the guys that are in Andor women that are Hands-On yep every single day literally

150holding things together with duct tape and bubble gum and maybe some dental floss whatever they can find um so the gentleman that I met that keeps our Middle School boilers running he's yeah that's so he's not one of these five okay Keith is a HVAC technician so this additional SE okay still good to know right okay thank you any other questions all right um getting late so rather than uh go through I'm gonna do it again go ahead so many questions sorry I'm I'm a newbie so I'm just going to blame it on that um I think there were a couple things that um I didn't discussed and so you know I guidance creation said come back with some amounts um we didn't necessarily ask what does it look like to cut student facing roles

151versus this versus that we just said help us understand what it looks like to reduce the budget by thumb dollar amounts and we left it wide open I applaud everyone that came up here especially so you Brad you've been in that hot seat a lot has given us a ton of information it's all to consider the gaps that I see are and maybe they're easily explained is why I'm bringing them up one we hear a lot from the community about the director of teaching and learning phys K's a fantastic guy I really like him I really love that there's an attachment to the Strategic plan and this off amazing work that can be done but I think the community is making their message clear that we should at least look at that and I'm wondering

152why it wasn't in the scenarios the other thing is though our operating budget small there are some line items that do have a sizable increase and maybe I'm assuming that those budgets were submitted at a time when people didn't fully understand the fiscal position were in is there an opportunity to revisit those with the teams and say can you tighten things back to fiscal year 25 amounts and maybe get us another $100,000 which saves two maybe one more student facing position um and that I didn't hear any discussion about that um so just curious specifics yeah which ones you were talk I've got line items let me uh let me pull those right up anybody else wants to ask questions well I actually do have a question because something that I not noticed in the

153Staffing summary was that there was a big jump in things from fiscal year 19 to fiscal year 20 I wasn't involved in either of those budgets but um I could not find anything online about them specifically for Health Service assist uh uh nursing assistance or nurse assistance two were added in 19 to 20 and I don't know why or if there was just like a re naming of things I know this proceeds you Mike yeah no um but so I'm curious so so there was some jump about you know adding five or moving up to five nursing positions in 20 since 2016 but there was a big jump and I don't know why in 201 in fiscal year 20 and also in 21 we did add we did add a nurse because we lost the

154health director and a medical services um secretary or medical secretary and I don't I don't necessarily see where that would come in because that would have been a department head I think because it was not a nurse position I have to go back and see how it was account how was how it's tracked on this on this paper but that position did was not a nurse right so I I think of nurs I think it was a it might have been a hybrid position no no student no student responsibilities on that a director of nursing and then a uh support position okay and I was just trying to find where that support position the support staff I don't might be and I couldn't because and then it's categorized differently as in the detail can I

155just throw out that just to jump in here um and I please don't take this the wrong way but I'm I'm less concerned about the rationale of a decision that was made five years ago and more concerned with what's the need today so um yeah whatever happened back then just I'm not sure how relevant it is to discussion when it's stated on something with Mas letterhead that nurses are up 150% that's why I'm questioning it because nurses were very important in 2021 and 22 and there are first line of defense in a lot of medical crisis crises that then go to the adjustment counselors and are teaching staff so I'm I actually am concerned about not having enough nurses on staff when there's you know and I agree and like I said the are we

156meeting the needs today and going forward as opposed to why they did it why we did it f all yeah I was just curious if like it really is an increase to five since 2026 or they were bu they were they're categorized somewhere else that's and I just and probably nobody here knows because it was before all of us yeah I I don't know about not all of us haven't had the chance to research it and you know it's probably not at the top of my priority list I was just going through all the information that was that I got at you know one two o'clock today so I do my best all right uh Trevor I just wanted to Circle back to the mpfts really quickly and just um talk about how you know

157when we go to our member towns and we're talking about Capital with various boards the preventative maintenance piece is huge with them so I I want to I I'm I wouldn't be in favor of touching the mpft positions just because we know how critical that is um in one getting our Capital plan through and then maintaining the facilities we do have after the fact so that's it all right uh Jess like sorry search for the button um no I just want to acknowledge all the work that went into all these scenarios um it's been a long couple days so I appreciate that um but I'm still a little sort of disappointed you know we've heard from the towns you know we've seen this budget and the fact that you we get these doomsday scenarios where

158the the recommendation from this Administration is still Level service you know not really trying to help find areas this point it's a real challenge right you're basically forcing the school committee to kind dig into this without the the best understanding it's it's I think it's a missed opportunity at this point to kind of partner more versus forcing us to go out and debate this um it's just a comment no questions or or answers needed but I do really find that challenging okay so um because it's getting late I don't want I have questions sorry Adrian items pulled up but I think the director learning was the first question okay um just curious why that wasn't put into the scenario or any other because it's Central to the Strategic plan and it's six months and something

159that the committee had been at you know considering for years and yeah kind of falls into the why would you eliminate the Performing Arts uh department head I think the year after you just created it I'm not I'm not not agreed to keep it I am simply I am simply acknowledging in a very pragmatic way and in fact more pragmatic than I want to be that I've heard from more people in the community about non-student facing roles and specifically about that role and I'm acknowledging that there is an absence of that role in the considerations that's it I'm not saying with it I'm saying what does it look like to do away with it because those are the conversations we're having so I agree it's attached to the Strategic plan there's a lot of wonderful

160things that could come out of that especially if we want to set up for years and think more strategically however in unprecedented times many people in the community are advocating for department heads fantastic job they do and we're not hearing as much about the value and impact of the director of teaching and learning and so I just wonder what does that look like as a scenario for it to Beed because I think the community wants to hear that there is there a response or off the hip no can put something together for you but the one line item what's that the one line item that that role would be yeah okay should we expect it Wednesday or do what we can you want an explanation of impact I would love an exp of impact and

161and you know and and financially what that Ro like the other scenarios we've heard right like what do we else want to do that or um I guess one of the thing we could do here is we take a quick vote do we want to consider eliminating the position of director of teaching and learning that that's not what she was saying where I'm going with this is if there if there are enough people here that don't want to consider eliminating it there's no point in going down that Avenue that's but side unseen I agree with her because we need to show our Comm we're we're showing our finan our foms and our select boards turning over every rock yeah every think we need whether we it or not we have a responsibility to do this

162due diligence every single one of these presentations the yeah every single one of these presentations I would that but we have to show our we have to show the towns that we're looking at these things I'm sweating just asking it asking it because perception that we I've been asked things like I've been asked things like why don't we just have one principal for both schools I mean we put on a lot of different Avenues here my point sure all I'm saying is should we should we go down an Avenue that's not going to get agreed upon on that's all I think a lot of these are not going to be agreed upon I don't think there's anything responsible about putting it up for consideration um you know I I think Adrian makes a uh a

163valid point that said it as well that um you know asking that question and and and and data around the impact associated with it isn't St that we're advocating that particular thing just like the fact that we've had these other six scenarios doesn't mean that we're advocating for any or all of those so but I think it's it's it's um it's the right thing to do to say that you know this is what the potential impact of that would be um savings but also impact to our strategic plan as well as all of the other reasons why we created that role after waiting 10 plus years to do so um so I mean personally I I I don't think it requires a a tremendous amount of work but I'm you know it's easy for me

164to say that um but I think a uh uh a page with some bullet points on it about the impacts positive and negative would uh would go a long way uh to help us wherever this lands have the right conversation with our with our uh with our towns about you know this is what we gain and what we lose by the various decisions we make yeah yeah I mean I agree with what bill just said um I mean I I would say just to remind folks last year when we talked about this position we talked about it need needing a year or two to be able to realize the impact right so I just want to make sure that if we're going to go down this path that we frame it within the context of

165a p you know a perspective impact or something like that only because again I mean six months in we we talk about wanting to be data driven we talk about wanting to have you know detailed numbers behind impact and all that and we just haven't given it time to see that impact so Trevor I I just want to share with you Joe and Ju Just say that I do understand where you're coming from because we can't if people keep making these oneoff requests on certain positions we're going to be here till the end of time so we have to really be realize our Runway here realize that we don't have a lot and I mean I I personally was very adamant that we should have not hired that position last year but I don't think

166it's retiga that this year because there's going to be it would have been all for nothing we literally would have just wasted every ounce we invested into that position and into the Forward Thinking of the school so I mean if the will of the committee is to move and have a slide on that for the next meeting that's the will of the committee but I would really like to see us start moving forward here like the second half of this meeting was supposed to be on starting to deliberate and we didn't get there so I just want everyone to be conscious of the runway that we do have so we've been asked to put together three scenarios by the end of the day Wednesday we could just put that as one of the scenarios and

167they could come in and report on it on Monday will that work have it before Monday huh I would love to have it before Monday to consider at least yeah we want to have that before differences make one of scenarios okay I don't I don't understand why you know what I mean if you can do it by Wednesday great if you can't the next time we meets Monday which is right which do you prefer and I could give you a quick impact we work with Kevin every day classroom SL that's okay that's okay a slide I just want to make sure that we've done right by members in our community whoes we need to present it to our towns yeah and part of our whole this is why our budget is our budget and it's

168I think that's why we're asked and why while I fully know you guys could do that right now I do want to do it with some thought and make sure it's yeah right so then Wednesday sure all right but but I gotta say we can't be doing anymore I mean this is you know to Trevor's point about Runway but well we're up to 27 2.7 positions here we're not in any Jeopardy of um open meeting law with covered in the agenda that we have the agenda item is BU is budget deliberation so it's what we're doing yeah Adrian to be fair we could have accommodated Runway better and some of these presentations could have been more collap just saying like we didn't pick this Runway it was chosen for us we're just along for the

169ride and reacting now because that's when we were asked to react if it if I was my choice I would have said multiple scenario presentations upfront in probably two meetings lay it all out for us it didn't sound like that could be accommodated so we did it this way and I respect that it's a lot of work but to say we're out of Runway now I didn't choose this this was not my format I'm just here for the ride so I want to make sure that's clear to everyone too thank you Matt I mean Joe it goes back to your point earlier right if we're not gonna really entertain it as a board then I understand the need to collect the information I understand and I've articulated the appreciation for some of these pre presentations

170because it allows us to take this information and go present it to our respective towns but if that's the information that we need because we may not be considering reduction of that position then we can do that after next Wednesday right like we can still collect information on these things um and and help build the comms story to our towns after right as opposed to during when we've got limited Runway left so I support your your idea of having a vote tonight are we going to talk about like the scenario of the your slide thing your presentation we're gonna get to that okay all right because I have so I think personally I think that we're maybe wasting our time but because people really want to um demonstrate due diligence to to the towns then

171I'd say let's go ahead and do it on Wednesday but let's let's make it like five minutes it's going to be one slide and easy put the slide up here's the information any questions great that's fine does not have to be a 20 minute discussion just having the information is helpful it's a big enough topic that I think we need to just at least have it up there for like a second and be able to explain it yeah it's it's a hard balance what we're in right now but that is a big that's a big ask from not just the community but the towns as well just to at least show it you know do that we'll do it all right so the other thing that was on the agenda tonight I'm G to just

172skim a couple things on it and then we'll start the meeting on Wednesday going into detail but if you can bring up that presentation explain what's in it what it is so a lot of this was like just a um stream of Consciousness taking notes as we were going through the process and trying to understand what was being presented to us and what personally made sense to me that I thought um might be the areas to explore further so losing my voice so I just want to skip through um go to the next slide so this slide here just shows sorry I gotta get my PC up this is just some scenario checking uh getting back to what really kind of LED all of this discussion which was a request from our towns independent of

173increases and insurance costs can we keep the budget increase for the year to 2% and this slide just goes through the analysis to understand what does 2% look like uh when you take out the increase in insurance and it would require a $2.1 million in cuts to get there right and then I thought well what about uh different percentages what's a 2.5% increase look like what's a 3% increase look like those would require 1.9 and $1.75 million in Cuts all right um pretty early on we we we uh declared that really there's no way we can do that because out of District costs are are the big line item this year and so if we discount both insurance and outof District costs what would that 2% Target look like the Gap there would be $983,000

174what about 2 and a half% which is Proposition two and a half right uh the gap's 823 what about a 3% Gap it's 6 $63,000 the other thing is on here is on the right upper right hand side you can see controllable expenses versus not controllable this is not comprehensive I just picked off all of the key ones but you can see that you know the uncontrollable area we've got a 5.1% increase in the budget for things we have no control over whatsoever and on the controllable side it's 3.9% uh of the increase is is due to things that we do have some control over so that's what this slide is showing um next slide please I just want to comment on what the deck has in it and we'll discuss this in detail on

175Wednesday but I want everyone to know what's in it this slide just showed looking at a comparison of 10year um student to staff ratios essentially and again trying to understand where has growth been where have have we gone down and what you see is that we've lost um 21.7 % of student population our teacher population has gone down by 177% in that same time not a great big disparity in my opinion um but again our towns were saying hey got way fewer students why do you have all these teachers and the reality is we don't have a lot of excess teachers is what this says special services is where we've seen growth um and if you just go by numbers and you assume the ratio from fy16 was correct and there's no way really to

176say that it was a different student population but if you were to apply the same ratios to today you see that there is um you know there are more positions in the nursing office especially which Melissa was touching Bas on trying to understand whether the initial number in fy16 was really what the number was that's why she brought that up I think and then it's just in the special education and adjustment counsel area we've got nine more positions than we had in 2016 and again it might be completely justifiable as been presented here tonight but the idea was let's identify where the growth is and understand whether those are places where we need to make Cuts they'd be the places you might look first so that's what those two slides were everything in between is

177a bunch of notes on on uh what we got presented along the way and then the last slide simply based on the presentations that we've seen so far and part of was predicting what we were looking at tonight because I hadn't seen any of this um hadn't seen the presentations from tonight before putting this together but from top to bottom looking at that um 2% two and a half% or 3% Target above insurance and mandatory expenses um top to bottom a listing of potential Cuts in the in the D in an order of what what I thought might be the least amount of pain and so I just threw positions on here in order by again my um my reading of the tea leaves could be completely wrong now after tonight is there any way

178to make that bigger I can't see it I see it looks nice but essentially I try to go down and and list positions that would get us to um roughly the 2 and a half% level um that's what this table is showing and it's completely open for discussion still this is where we can start our our uh discussions on Wednesday uh I do think there are a couple things here that that we can probably tick off without too much pain obviously attrition is an area that we always like to pursue don't like to lose positions but if we have to that's where we like to look and then elective spending um I know that um I think it was Elizabeth young earlier made a comment about you know not um not not doing an audit

179because it doesn't look right but obviously we the books are audited every year yeah the obviously though we're complying with state law we're complying with General accounting practices so we wouldn't we wouldn't eliminate it if it was somehow going against um a legal requirement somewhere so to me those two are the obvious ones that we can definitely agree upon and after that where we got to start the discussion so that's I just want to cover that for now because it's getting late and I'll take any questions on this um knowing that we'll we'll start this off on Wednesday after we hear about the director teacher and learning teaching teaching and learning sorry Adrian there is another role that's posted right now for an assistant I think it's like maybe an admin assistant or something that

180new attrition student services probably student services I don't know I didn't look in the super details but I just know there is an open roll post there's an open Student Services assistant okay Administrative Assistant any other questions okay good to come back Wednesday looking forward to it SRA last one to follow up on what Eric had asked about the different combinations in the smaller groupings are we going to see that on Wednesday like smaller versions of instead of like English and social studies where it was more can't remember what so so one of those Athletics science and wellness that won't work because athletic director is also the wellness director so there's no position to save there if you okay rolled Wellness into um science that's great would you do it anyway you could build same

181person it was actually on the list of things that we had considered but didn't do I was thinking about how to get the you know the athletic director freed up from the wellness oversight responsibilities I mean that's another way to do it possible um we can think about I mean the other one only again possible but we were already talking about um what repurposing business bath and business we were talking about repurposing the business making sure the business department had actually had a full complement of teaching which it doesn't right now so it's another one that was already on the list I think it's I think it would be reasonable because we've been asked for three scenarios it would be reasonable to say go off and revisit combining departments and pick a better match that

182keeps the overall size smaller as one of the scenarios yeah no that's that's where I was going with it just right yeah it all sucks but you know it's I know least amount of suck I guess any other questions oh I see uh Jeff thanks just a another comment just I appreciate all the work we're doing it's gonna be hard as we go through the next few weeks but you know as we deliberate you know there is a snare we not considering and you know this is more for the committee members as we try to comp you know compromise and get there you know if there's a point where we we're not getting close to progress you know I don't see you know there is an option where overrides don't pass and that's sort of

183a end of day's kind of scenario right and that is an option that's out there that we have to keep the back of our mind so we should really do our best to get to a place that we feel the towns can agree with and support I'm not expecting a scenario on that but you know as we get closer to final votes just keep that in mind that we do have to this is a good exercise but it's still another question of this that we can sell this and get the tals across the board yeah I mean even getting to two and a half percent if we're able to get there is still an8 and a half% increase overall it's fairly significant um and a bad year for it but right is what it is

184yeah because you know we are hearing from a lot of people are feeling a lot of pain right now I think you know people we should remind them there you know there is another downside that's really unappealing to everybody for the for the TR Town um I'm not sure if we need to model that out but definitely keep in the back of your mind as we go through this deliberation well let say you have something yeah so on Wednesday we're just discussing the scenarios that we're going to ask to be brought back on Monday on Monday yeah so try to narrow it down as much as we can so that on Monday we can hopefully make it make a decision so look over everything come back with ideas on Wednesday and and it's other than

185the quick presentation on director of teacher teaching and learning and try to come to an agreement I if we have to go through each position one by one we can I think that's uh kind of a tough way to do it but especially since many of us I think understand which ones we don't want uh eliminated and I believe that the committee as a whole wants to not eliminate any teaching positions that's that's my my take right now all right on hold on the line items I was talking about maybe it's just helpful if you can give me some voice over on what that process looks like right was everybody submitting the budgets fully aware of the fiscal situation we were in or is an opportunity to go back to the team say can you

186tighten anything and so the budget was level ser but that's what's in yeah that was what was presented so if there are changes it was done to reflect still providing the current levels of service wasn't adding things it wasn't okay so that was the directive to the teams and they said well the the team yeah cost me this much next year to do what I did this year okay right that's what level that's what it means for level service so in some cases there are lines that increased but it was really you know I'm thinking of the you know want say there were textbooks and math Katie is that yeah I some of it looks like publish M we're still going to teach math you have to have textbooks level service but graduation graduation doubled

187for the middle school that surprised me but like okay sure I'm sure reflected moving on I guess that's the graduation lineup it's a reflection of what the actual cost was is my assumption I don't know yeah it doubled it caught my eye that helpful to know um yeah so that's that's what's in the book yeah as far as what was presented was said was level service Wellness went from 900 unpublished materials to 3,000 that's a 233% increase B it's big you know maybe these are absolutely the bare minimum maybe there's wiggle room I don't know even if you scrape small numbers it can add up to a student facing role so I'm just putting it out there calling out a couple of examples there are others if there's an opportunity to look at it and

188revisit I wholeheartedly believe that every educator in this building would find ways to tighten that belt if they had to knowing it would preserve the quality of Service delivery for the kids so calling it out as an opportunity we get MEF funding and MEF yes grants everybody can we do professional development on grants so everybody knows how to like go after them or something is that is that in bounds like anything yeah help them write for more grants about the fundra last meeting some Revenue big fan of add too much more work at this point all right any any further comments all of the night no I want to be here for forever just yeah all right with that we're going to adjourn at 9 51 thank you everyone