MRSD School Committee Meeting | 3/05/2025

001something all right now that we're recording I called the meeting to order at 7:01 we have a quorum present and um Erica and Joe will be joining us via Zoom tonight um so any votes we take will have to be roll call votes um so the first order of business is um the and I'll call to order and open up the public hearing for our budget deliberations um do we want to go through that policy or we don't have to yeah um so the administration will walk us through um the presentation that we've seen now a couple times um just for the public to see and have their chance to weigh in on okay so uh thank you this is the FY 26 budget for administration's recommendation we are Administration is recommending a level service

002budget uh and as we've talked about already uh for FY 26 uh that level Service uh reflects an increase in our operating expenses of $9.3 million or 99.6% uh and an increase of $3.2 million or 99.9% in our operating assessment versus the fy2 budget increase of 3.9 million okay sorry okay make I say the wrong number said nine and I went wait a minute 3.9 sorry they do it quickly um so from our assessment uh overview uh see our general operating expenses after us sets is that $3.9 million or 6% um we look look at our total funding sources which includes Chapter 70 or reimbursements on Transportation uh other local receipts uh and the use of excess and deficiency funds um which total uh just over 8 million uh for FY 26 uh so when

003we subtract that $8 million from our total expenditures budget uh it leaves $ 37,2 30,000 to be apportioned uh to the towns uh and that's an increase half million doll uh in the assessment um as you can see the breakdown is that the assessment is in two pieces it's operating and capital uh as we apply the formula for our assessment uh we uh a portion the uh the assessment between our three member communities in both operating and in capital there difference in the calculations and so we do it uh uh for Boxford the operating assessment uh is an increase of 1.2 million or 99.7% uh over this current year uh in Middleton the operating assessment uh is an increase of $743,000 or 6.7% over current year and tops field the operating assessment uh increase is

004$1.35 to million or 13.9% uh over the current year as we look at this major expense category analysis really breaks down the uh key uh areas that are uh driving that increase in our budget um our salaries uh are projected to which looking at the right one um to be just $5.8 million uh which is uh 1.3 million increase or 5.4% out of District tuitions uh4 mil 97,000 or uh which is 99.2% of our total budget uh which is an increase just under a million dollars or 32% increase uh our insurance benefits for active and retirees uh is budgeted to be $5.8 million again 13.1% of the total that's a $624,000 increase or 12% over the current year um big ones the other some of the other larger increases transportation for special education is $742,000

005uh which is a $23,000 increase or 37.7% um some of these other ones the S6 retirement contribution uh 1392 million it's a $130,000 increase or 10% um and then basically um as you get down this list see those percents of the total are very smaller amounts one or two% we talked about Capital earlier uh we have a request of $690,000 in capital expenses uh for FY 26 um and you can see that we're looking to do uh an HVAC electrification feasibility study uh we're looking to do a feasibility study for rehabbing our track uh and our softball facilities uh and then we're looking to uh do modernization projects on the elevators in both the middle and high school uh and to replace the uh lift in the Press Box uh in Bunker Stadium again this

006uh breaks out what the increase where the increases are really coming from 34% of the increases in salaries uh 32% of the increases in out of District uh tuition transportation and consulting services for special education uh 16% of the increas is in benefits health insurance and dental insurance uh 5% is in maintenance and utilities most of that is utilities talked about already uh and then 4% is at 131,000 the uh Essex Regional retirement assessment this actually again is a a similar breakdown looks at um as we've talked about the a lot of these uh cost increases that we're seeing are really out of our hands noncontrollable not much we can do about them out of District tuition special at Transportation um staff that's required to service IEP benefits the regional uh retirement appropriation a regular

007Transportation contract uh insurances utilities and the you know janitorial contract so of the $3.9 million and increases 2.3 are really sort of fixed costs uh that you know we really don't have a whole lot of wiggle room on on uh controlling and last is our budget calendar uh we are now at the uh school committee public hearing on March 5th uh the committee is scheduled to meet Monday and Wednesday the 10th and 12th uh next week and then the following week on Monday the 17th and uh Wednesday the 19th and the school committee will vote to adopt its budget uh on March 19th um from there the school committee's uh adopted budget will go to town meetings uh on May 6th and May 13th for approval by the towns all right so with that um

008that's it from the administration so I'm going to open this up to anyone from the audience who would like to speak during this public comment SE uh public hearing session um during this it's a little different than public comment where um the committee and the Administration has the opportunity to respond to any questions you might have about our budget um if you have any sort of statements or anything else about anything else we have a later section in our agenda for public comments um for things not necessarily related to our budget um so with that um I'll allow anyone just to show a hands who plans on speaking during the public comment to public hearing sorry I see five all right so we can do we'll say four minutes a piece is fine three minutes

009a piece um and just please write your name down at the sheet that's up at that um docktail lack of a better term um and yeah Mr zort says you can GOP hi top college hi everyone uh some of you may know me a lot of you I saw during baring my name is nro zorus I am proud to have served this district for 20 years uh as a teacher and to represent the momic Teachers Association as their president I want to start with a point of information uh many things were discussed during our several meths of Bing our most recent contract something that was never discussed was aging that if there was a pay increase that we would be cutting teachers it was never said during our meetings and never agreed to I just

010wanted to set the record clear on that point in regards to any tone that existed in the room last week please understand that we are thankful to Mike Jeff and the administration for putting forward a level service budget we believe this is the right call we also appreciate your sentiment uh that you want Master nomic to remain the robust educational institution that it has always been having said that all of the permutations of cuts that you have seen to this point have almost exclusively targeted student facing positions positions that will have an immediate and drastic impact on your students and children we understand the position that you are being put into in regards to your budget and want to be partners with you as you present what we hope will be a level service budget

011to your accounts we also call on you to be creative if you do intend to make cuts no stone should be left unturned and no corner of this District's budget should be left unchecked non-student facing positions should be considered before reducing our staff and those who spend time face Toof face with your children every day students need more individualized care than ever before many of them are living on the razor's Edge every day and need time with trusted adults to get through the day we provide that we provide that conduit we are the teachers guidance counselors nurses adjustment counselors Librarians Specialists and a host of other positions that spend time advising educating and counseling your children we have already faced Cuts last year when our staff was reduced by five to make additional cuts to

012our staff now would be catastrophic it would cost the jobs of people who have proudly served this district for decades these would not be new teachers but seasoned experienced members of our community who are respected and regarded in the highest order I want to thank you for giving me this platform and hope that we can work together through this process thank you thank you um I see no question there so anyone else wish to speak madam Trevor hi my name is deud Bush and I'm a French teacher here at the high school and I've been here since 2006 and I want to talk to you tonight about two programs um which the proposed reduction in Workforce would negatively affect um the global competency diploma and the French program um so first the global diploma I'm

013just going to shorten it to Global diploma because it's a mouthful um it's Unique to Masco um it was launched in 2009 it's a multidisciplinary and experiential course of study that allows students to gain a Global Perspective through a series of components including academics Multicultural community service and international travel at the end of four years students submit a portfolio of Reflections an essay and they complete a video project narrated in at least two languages um it's a rigorous course of study um and the recognized for at graduation um I'm working on my doctoral dissertation which is an evaluation of the global diploma um and so part of my research involved serving alumni who earned Global diplomas um since the program's in Inception so finding showed that the program has a long-term impact on the co

014on the um career and College trajectories of our students um the alumni that responded to um the survey which was Anonymous are extraordinary they're making our world a better place here are just a few examples I could go on and on but here are just a few a graduate student helping to develop national parks and farms in Tanzania a law fellow student studying International Justice a cause Advocate working with Refugee populations a surgical resident planning to perform service trips to underserved countries a PhD engineering student researching in areas affected by War a geopolitical threat analyst um a grad student researching Green Technology in Europe a healthcare worker administrating neurological evaluations to patients in Spanish I could go on and on but it's absolutely incredible what our students do when they leave you and most of

015them credited this program with inspiring their um their continued work in global areas um I'm sharing this with you because the global um diploma program cannot continue um if we don't have the bandwidth to support it um as it is the teachers who coordinate it um do so voluntarily um Furthermore with a reduced staff the number of elective courses fill part of the program would be minimized thus making it impossible for students to meet the requirements these electives span every department for math to music business and computer science English science and engineering World Language and art um these also revealed um that they are really aware of the privilege they had to have this opportunity and an equal measure how their awareness inspires them to give back um next the proposal to eliminate the high

016school French teacher position would devastate our French program the French program at Masco is robust there's an active French club we take ninth graders on an annual trip to Quebec City we have an exchange program with Lisas in Ren but which has been going on since 19 1986 this is going to be our 40th anniversary um next year um it's just a wonderful collaboration the exchange students are integrated into our community for two weeks their visibility impacts every Masco student last year students from France presented in a variety of mass book classes poetry Global literature history of the 1960s world religions they shared their perspectives their culture their history with all of our students The Exchange cannot be maintained if we lose a French teacher our department is small and we all work as a

017team to share the responsibilities losing a French teacher will require combining some sections and levels Empirical research on multi-level language classes shows that merging two courses does not provide the optimal optimal learning environment for students combining levels will alter the curriculum and reduce the depth and breadth of our honors classes massell French AP students scores are outstanding I'm not the AP teacher I'm just saying French students excel at earning the Seal of by literacy last year we had almost as many students earn the seal as Spanish which is three times the size of the French program students have won speech competitions in the past and first place in National media contests this year they won third place one of the reasons for these successes is that they can offer we can offer college prep and

018honors classes if we lose a teacher we will not be able to offer AP French as students will have to be in Combined sections and they will not be prepared there will not be prepared to meet the rigorous demands of that curriculum some Global Al uh Global diploma alums mention how fortunate they felt to be a part of this program one said quote when I explain it and talk about all the amazing things the first thing people ask me is you must have gone to a private school um opportunities such as these make Masco different from your average public school I've worked in two other districts and I can tell you they cannot compare to the quality and expectations and rigor we have at Masco the tagline on the Masco website reads thinking critically in

019a global environment our learner stresses the importance of real world Readiness the high school mission statement calls on students to understand their responsibilities as Global Citizens the district Vision imagines graduates who are aware of the world's diverse cultures and the interdependent nature of global Affairs the vision also mentions a diverse curriculum offering International experiences that can engage student in cultural learning if we have to eliminate some electives and other learning opportunities we will not be living up to the mission and vision of this institution considering the current geopolitical situation a potentially changing world world order threats and of climate change our students need now more than ever to understand their place on the global landscape and to empathize with other people on this planet that we all share so I ask you that when it

020comes time to make difficult decisions you consider the impact that will have on some of the outstanding offerings that are unique for Masco students such as the global competency diploma program and the French program thank you thank you anyone else wish to um I see one okay Carol course spot Topsfield and um okay so I've been at the past couple meetings looking through the presentation and reading all the different slides are trying to you know understand them and I just came here to say tonight that I I can see I don't think it's feasible to cut any of the Middle School teachers and being that you cut five teachers out of the high school last year it would I just do not think the school can afford that and I definitely do think Cuts need

021to be made I don't think you can go to the town with out a cut and expect you know being that much over budget um you know the continued overrides I don't recommend that as well I think non-student facing Cuts have to be made and I guess the question I have I have a couple questions I mean last year when you cut the five teachers but and you added that administrative position I saw in the budget like budget season this year there were 25 backfield positions is that like part of last year's that's what I don't understand like how we be able to fill those positions after cutting five teachers last year but maybe I'm not understanding it correctly let's just turn over someone leaves you replace okay all right so just wanted to um

022reiterate that definitely I think need Cuts need to be made but non um student facing Cuts what is my recommendation thank you thank you hi um I'm Michelle voner I'm a resident of Topsfield um I have been at all the school committee meetings or watched online um for this year's budget discussion I'm trying very hard to understand the reasoning behind the proposed budget since I live in Topsfield I fully understand why cuts of some sort need to be made I went to the fincom meeting on Monday and it sounds like topsville will possibly need three overrides this is not sustainable however I cannot understand the reasoning behind presenting budget cuts in which every scenario only includes Personnel cuts to student basing positions all of you have heard about the massive layoffs that are happening at

023Mass General briam due to the projected 250 million shortfall over the next two years they're already at critical Staffing levels with overwork providers you can't have a functioning hospital without providers therefore they are making cuts from Administration is it ideal no does it mean a lot more work for each person yes but providers are what make a hospital just like teachers are what make a school last year teachers Cuts were due to enrollment numbers this year only teachers and other student POS facing positions are being offered up at what point do we say enough when teach features are cut such as the French pres position um that's being proposed has a devastating effect on the quality of the education suggesting that it would be acceptable to combine CP honors and AP levels feels like you

024are gutting the French program the program with the highest level of success in the Seal of bi literacy I know that without um the excellent French teachers at ncco um as the program currently stands my this would not be minoring in French studying in France over the summer and considering getting his PhD um at a university in a frankophone country without these same teachers my youngest would not have been able to make vital connections this year while mentoring a a Lewiston Middle School student using that student's primary language please do not gut this program and please stop looking at only teachers when needing to reign in a budget I believe that at the last school committee meeting a school committe member asked the presenters if they had considered all other Alternatives it didn't sound like

025that really happened I would implore you to be creative and think outside of the box the quality of the education at Masco demands it thank you thank you and is there anyone else Russ porori from Boxford so two or three meetings ago this committee voted on what I considered to be the masal version of Title Nine and as I recall at the time this committee understood that it blew in the face of the executive order from the White House and I believe that the chairman said that this committee is not bound by executive orders and I believe there was a further statement along the lines of school doesn't really get a lot of federal money so it really doesn't matter if it's cut off and is that six weeks ago you recall um I that

026was we took the final vote on that policy last meeting so my question is what's the what's the number how much Federal money do we get I mean I and sorry for interrupting but initially I was a little that you were taking that vote without having the number but I'm wondering now after all this time what's the number how much Federal money the RIS half a million this year half a million yeah ID Grant special ed Grant you thought it would risk in this budget environment of dropping off half a million dollars and cutting teachers instead I didn't participate in that conversation so it was a your question to the committee I know Jeff but so yeah you asked a question I answered it I appreciate out right anybody can answer I personally believe that

027yes it's important so you can take that and do whatever you want with it I I'm I'm happy to jump into I think I would like for the comments here to be stay related to the budget y um y I think um a lot of people have concerns about this I've heard it you know kind of anecdotally in the community as well um I do think that the vote that we just took brings us into compliance with current federal and state laws um while the executive order provides some direction it's not law yet so it doesn't provide specific Direction so for us to propose some changes might have to be Revisited anyway um today there is no threat to the federal funding as the law stands so we have other issues to focus on and

028think about and our budget doesn't depend on that right now so that's why I think we chose to move forward as a and say yes let's bring ourselves up to date and when such a time comes that there might be impact to that half a million dollars we'll address it as a committee appropriately but we also have to consider that might not happen for a year years which means we can't even bound enough committee to that some of us might not be sitting here in a year how do you know threat what's that how do you know there's no threat I mean how do you know there's no threat you're gonna get hit by a bus tomorrow right like you don't know you have no idea getting hit by a bus you cross the bridge

029teachers teaching and but we cross we cross the bridge when we get to it and right now there's nothing specific guiding us on what should specifically change to keep funding intact or potten increase it or decrease it let me ask you this most of the money comes from the state the cities and towns for us yes much of the money that we get from them comes from the federal government we're funded a lot by tax dollars I I mean education is primarily funded through the municipality then the state and then Federal money will be filtered through the state and then we receive it to the state corre cut off is that shortfall made up so I the state has issued guidance that they would make up the difference for that pass through yes that and

030that is specific based on projection speculation no I think they've looked at budget and made some specific recommendations on what they could even though they don't know what they might do it was issued on the 27th of of Fe very it was very recent okay and I'm I'm gonna jump to Joe here he's set his hand up for a while okay I'll sit I made my point Thank You Russ all right my my speaker wasn't working can you hear me yeah y yeah I think the key thing that's missing from this discussion is what we said was we're complying with the law which is a state law and until the Law changes we will comply with the state law period and there wasn't a lot of money at risk uh overall we didn't think so

031that's I just want to make that comment so everyone's clear here this isn't us off doing our own thing and ignoring an executive order an executive order is not law and we're bound to follow state law that's what the discussion was so just wanted to clarify that thanks we are bound to follow state and federal law out loud but in order is not a law anyone else have any other comments they wish to make in this hearing okay seeing none I will officially close our FY 26 public hearing um budget thank you all for your comments and that moves into remarks from the chair um I have really none I want to welcome all of you here tonight all the staff and the member Town um board Representatives thank you for coming um we appreciate

032you taking the time out of your night and seeing what but the conversations we've been having over the past several weeks so thank you for coming um so with that we'll move into comments from the audience does anyone have any comments not related to the budget that they wish to bring up tonight okay seeing none we will move right into our student Advisory Board update from Genevie clap and take it away hi I'm jenevie klopp I'm the Sab for the class of 2026 nice to see every um I'll start with student council and student council I believe you guys have been beefed on the open projects we're starting these consist of a blood drive which will be March 12th a cultural fair with the ace Club a baking competition a mural design for hopefully the

033library and then the sabs have their own open project we have battled the band coming up April 4th with which we're also working with masco's radio station and we have the senior St Patrick's Day dinner which is March 20th for in the school gymnastics just won the state championship they're honestly probably one of the most outstanding teams here I believe that's their fifth title in six years which is amazing basketball won last night in the solo move on to the Elite 8 after their win over middleb and they're playing Mansfield Deca just had their state competition and we will have over 12 members competing at ICDC which is the international competition in Orlando Florida this April and then again students are excited for swing Sports to start with winter sports wrapping up captains practices for

034a lot of sports have been starting and you can usually find details for that on the Instagram lastly I have a few concerns from the students first they just students are talking about the teachers again that maybe let go they just they're sad to see people have to be let go and they want to say that we'll miss all of them and wish them the best of luck and sad to that happened and then also students dislike how after school a lot of teachers aren't available theyve whether they're in a meeting I believe which is most common um only having after school twice a week makes it even more complicated if the teachers aren't even available for one of those two days because it only leaves one day and it's Tuesday and Thursday so it's

035kind of if they need help that day or need to make up a test before certain deadline and that doesn't really work and after school just tends to be less busy than mblock which makes it easier for a lot of students and I think you guys have heard this one probably every time an Sab has been here but then studies being gone a lot of people have been saying whether they bring them and it's just juniors seniors that can do them but again students just still continue to talk about that so that's it and if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them any questions can you I'm sorry can you share a little bit more about the study hall your concerns around that so students are just I think a lot for

036juniors especially now since whether they got their credits St like freshman sophomore year they're sad to see it go like their senior year I guess and a lot of the people have been wondering if it could just be a junior senior thing where they receive study halls especially so seniors could have that senior privilege so students obviously just with um schedule and electives coming out they've just been continuing to talk about it thank you other questions seeing none um you of course are free to stay free to go whatever you want to do you more than welcome okay so moving on to our next item on the agenda it's our FY 26 budget deliberation and the administration again walk us through some scenarios that myself and Joe had requested um that this committee get the

037chance to see again this isn't the administration's recommendation it is just for the committee to have a full scope of potential places um for savings and just to see the numbers in different scenarios for this committee to consider so with that I will thank you um mentioned uh tonight's budget discussion is a continuation of uh the last meeting's discussion around scenario planning uh will specifically look at uh two areas the first ask principal Manis to join us I'll call it scenario three we were asked to review uh the middle school teams and then uh once Phil's done and addressed any questions uh a quick um review of athletic and co-curricular user fees in scenario um very ly here's kind of a running total of the things that we've discussed the top two sections scenario one

038and two would discussed at the last meeting uh scenario three is um what Phil's going to cover and then scenario four that last entry uh I'll cover once Phil's done next two slides are um simply a recap uh of that running total uh with respect to how it would impact the uh District total uh assessments at the bottom and then the member Town assessments um running from top to bottom Boxford Middleton Topsfield um scenario one two and three you can see the impacts there um those three combined would reduce the operating assessment by 4% and then slide scenarios 1 two 3 and fouring assessment by 4.2% uh so with that said Phil I'll hand it to you and you can take us through the middle school presentation okay thanks so um as requested I present

039to you the impact of a reduction in the middle school for FTE teaching positions or one teaching team for the fiscal year 26 budget process so I'm going to start at a basic level here and walk you through what the Middle School model is uh the Middle School model is unique to the two grades here 7eventh and eth um in at Masco has a developmental Focus so Middle School recognizes that students in this age range undergo significant physical emotional social and cognitive change um we aim to provide a supportive and nurturing environment that helps students navigate these transitions one of the main focuses of the Middle School model is team teaching so this is the use of interdisciplinary team of teachers who work together to instruct aired group of students those teams consist of social

040studies math science English and a special education um teacher who is assigned to each of the teams and then you also have your um other classes exploratories and electives as well as World Language that I'll cover as well so this setup Fosters a sense of community and allows teachers to better understand and address the individual needs of their students exploratory learning emphasizes uh through elective courses such as uh I'm sorry these are not elect courses EMP we emphasize exploratory learning through courses such as art music technology um and this allow students to discover their interests and develop talents which they can then expand upon um if they so choose when they go into the high school whether they want to pursue art or music or further technology classes through our elective program there uh for

041social emotional learning we place a strong emphasis on this in the Middle School helping students to develop essential skills such as self-awareness self-management responsible decision-making social awareness and relationship skills we have our um student support center which uh is part of this which supports students in all these areas as well yes so for the exploratory learning is this um are these mandated classes for everybody to go and try all the different assets of the exploratory learning or are they optional so there's there's um your exploratory learning classes are mandated for all students so for seventh grade that is um yeah it's there's a slide later that's going to show you what an eth grade schedule would look like and has the exploratory it touches all of them so I can get that when I get

042to all right thanks Middle School serves as a transitional Bridge so Masco serves as a bridge between the more structured environment of Elementary School the greater independence of high school so uh when students come to Masco they're coming out of the elementary schools in the three towns and they have one teacher maybe two teachers um at the most uh that they have for their regular core classes and when they come to mascow we're talking about seven different teachers that they have beginning in seventh grade so it's it's a big difference it's a big change and we um helped transition them from that Elementary model into the secondary school model and we increase um we prepare students for the increased academic demands and the Social Challenges that they'll encounter in high school sorry I got I

043got one more yep on the on the exploratory learning sure how long have we had this model in place I am not I'm not sure um a long time quite a bit at least 2006 at least graduated 96 it was like that then I was 1990 so Matt long been a while been a while been a while I would have I would have explored things have changed in it like the stem and thank you the the types of courses have but this the basic structure I think it's the same I mean I'm trying to understand how the school has evolved over years right I think that there's questions around you know how do what does the school look like what does the programming look like what does the the student facing engagement look like today

044versus what it looked like five years ago versus what it looked like 10 years ago right those are some of the questions that I'm hearing well I can tell you I can talk more about that when we get into the schedule with the exploratory um classes and the um and the electors that we have great uh the team model has been the team model because it works and we' found a lot of success with it and students you know coming out of the middle school and going into High School have been very prepared and well positioned to take on the rigor of high school um from our program and uh there's you know Middle School model in Massachusetts is very prevalent because it does work and teams support students and I think the strength here

045at Masco is that our teams are um positioned in a way where we have under 100 students on each right now you know right we ideally we're about 95 to 100 at the most on each team and we found that I'll talk about more but we found that that's a perfect size for for kids here I'll talk more about class sizes coming up thank you so we are uniquely Mas we're three towns into one here at at Masco um whereas as you all know the three towns each operate independently of one another although they're organized into the TR toown School Union you know that each town has their own school committee their own two elementary schools um and then once they come to Masco here for Middle School we mix everyone together so we balance

046out three teams with students from all three towns we balance out the needs of students whether it be 504 plans um IEPs um social concerns whatever it is we you know we mix everybody up here and make sure that we have a good blend of students from all three towns on the three different teams um we have a program and structure with the teams that keep students from quote falling through the cracks so that all teachers know their students well um and we aim to have at least one if not multiple adults here that students have as a go-to that they can trust somebody that they can see um with concerns whether it be academic whether it be social whether it be something at home whatever it might be and I think that that's an

047important piece to mention um about Masco and how how we do things here um we only have two years to prepare students for high school a lot of middle schools start in sixth grade or even in fifth grade um we start in seventh grade which is unusual there are not as many middle schools that start in seventh grade and only have two years I would love to have sixth graders here at mascow obviously that's not something that's going to happen so in those two years we have to make the best of it and the team um program with or the team model with six teams three per grade is the way that we do that so that we can prepare students for so current enrollment uh this year the 2425 school year grade seven is

048at 268 and grade8 has 287 students we're right at 555 students total right now our elementary enrollments coming up are right around that number so you can see that um two of the bigger classes there grade three and grade four at 290 and 294 um and those are those are good siiz classes and we have found that coming up to seventh grade projecting um that there will be students added to those numbers so we could easily see classes of over 300 once those children rise up to seventh grade it's usually about 15 is the average number that we see add from six to seven you could have a class of 310 come in in a few years for grade seven that's that's pretty big so team sizes so right now our current uh seventh grade

049team so these are projected for next year so eight white eight blue and eight red that you see on the um presentation there that's our current seventh grade class so next year we're projecting um each of those teams to be at 90 or 91 students um and we usually have some movement over the summer so that's where that comes from and then projected for seventh grade next year we're right at 99 students per team so this is a slide that I really want to highlight for you this is um our projections for next year if we were to remove a team uh and I am stating that if this committee decides to vote to reduce the Middle School by one team that would be in eighth grade and the reason for that um is as

050I mentioned in seventh grade we're bringing all of the students together from the three towns for the first time we feel that they really need that support in seventh grade and we'd like to keep the three teams intact uh so that's the reason for reducing 8th grade by one team I'm trying to build some Independence and getting them ready for high school when they won't have the team structure but I want to emphasize this is really not something that I would recommend at all and it's a last resort uh for the budget process what it would do is increase our team sizes to 136 on average um per team in eth grade which is quite large and would create a lot of difficulty for us with scheduling and exploratories and electives and I'll talk a

051little bit more about that coming up so the next slide here our average class size right now you have 17.8 and gr seven and 19.1 students per class grade eight so next year we're projecting grade seven is right on track with where we want to be at 19.8 students on average per class and our grade eight classes with only two teams would jump to 27.2 so that means that you would be looking at classes anywhere from 25 students all the way up to 30 students yes and how significant are the jumps when you look at classes like maybe some of the exploratory classes like band that have traditionally much higher sure um your your regular exploratory classes uh such as science and engineering art uh Health they would stay right in that range of 27

052but okay um yeah fed would be huge because those classes T just tend to be bigger course would be pretty big um you know band band stays consistent you know we're not reducing any band classes one eighth grade and two seventh grade band classes yes still be the same they would remain the same yeah wouldn't change those but 27 students for say a stem class which is Hands-On working at lab stations and Building Things that's that's a lot of kids to manage and um it would be it would be hard especially when they're using power pools and things as well without as much supervision listen what was our remind me what was our policy on class size I don't think there's numbers in there but I there's a guidance I think I think we kept

053the numbers I think the top was 24 think so and the botom botom or something like I think it was 14 but the problem CU When you doubled it I'm 14 you get 28 I mean my point is that these not this number would be over yeah likely over our policy definitely over our policy so I just want to make note these class average sizes does not include possible special education placements for substantially separate classes which could further reduce class averages but those substantially separate classes are much much smaller so we're not talking about any kind of significant impact um so without reducing a team next year um my projections are 19.8 for grade seven um which reflects that larger class coming in right around that 20 number that we aim for and then grade

054eight would be at 18.1 so that's that's where we want to be and that's keeping our team structure in place ours is a guideline to answer the question it's a guideline so it doesn't give a number says as a general guidance it's fewer than 14 or more than 24 so it's not a mandate thanks most but we are mandated in the collective bargaining agreements that class sizes need to maintain a safe environment for everyone in them so we're Limited in that capacity okay thank so Department impacts um so the learning environment with Humanities we'd have reduced opportunities for individual feedback um and addressing student needs become more difficult your um Social Studies English classes writing instruction challenges so there's less time to review student work reduced individual writing feedback um for English teachers or teachers

055who have essays um you know there's a big difference in having to create 136 student essays versus 95 that's huge there's just simply not as much time to be able to give students um writing where they're going to get valuable feedback on it and that's that's a major detriment to student development especially in in middle school when you know the demands of the writing curriculum definitely grow over Elementary School um project Faith learning impact and navigating the management of State mandated Civic engagement projects becomes that much harder when you have 136 students um so as you know Civics curriculum is rather new uh we also have a new um requirement from the state that Civics MCAS uh is given every year to eth grade students and you just won't have the kind of um support

056for students to engage in those Civic engagement projects as well as be well prepared for the MCAS with larger class sizes and more students per teacher um for math science um in math larger class sizes will neg negatively affect our new openup resources curriculum uh that we recently adopted adopted for math in middle school and it also is directly connected to our P portrait of a learner um vision and our strategic plan so each of the components would suffer specifically providing personalized eack to students and then it also reduces students ability to ask questions and explore Concepts in Greater depth um with science uh lab safety you were talking about safety in general with class sizes we aim for 24 students Max in our Labs so we have increased liability with any science class above

05724 students and again the reduced Hands-On learning opportunities would happen with um classes over 24 um it also threatens our open SED three-year curriculum adoption a research-based Integrated Science curriculum that uses a storyline approach to understanding different science phenomen and it disrupts the roll out um because teachers would be more focused on providing uh for their increased class size numbers than be able to um roll out this curriculum uh in a more timely fashion so schedule next and this is where I'll get into the electives and the exploratories um in a bit more in depth so courses in the Middle School are um organized into these various subjects so seven classes for each student um and then taken in the middle school schedule so they don't I won't get into the specific schedule but they

058drop one class every week in each subject so they're not in these classes every single day it's four times out of the five day rotation um but your core classes are are what would be um cut here if you were to get rid of one team so you know it' be an English teacher algebra Earth science in US Civics would be cut and then um you have your world language class classes Spanish French and Chinese of which most students take one from that don't take a world language class then uh your exploratory classes in 8th grade are art health and stem so we would keep those intact um but the way that it lines up now is students take one of those each trimester and it is perfectly aligned with three teams so each team

059goes to one exploratory each trimester when you only have two teams how do you do three exploratories it becomes tricky and that's where we'd probably be moving more into a junior high model we would just schedule kids into those three classes randomly so they would be mixed up they wouldn't be taking those classes by teams you just you would schedule those kids into the exploratory classes from each team where it can fit into their schedule um and then the same thing would have to apply to your other classes here uh like intro to coding and intro to communication studies um those are elective classes for students Band-Aid course songwriting those are mixed anyway because they're um only a few sections of those uh and then for um physical education those are also aligned by team

060but that probably wouldn't be as easy to do next year any questions about the schedule okay so considerations um Team breakdowns so if you were to eliminate a team it's not like we're just eliminating that one team and that specific group for teachers the cuts could come across middle school or across campus because it is know per the teachers contract um by seniority and you could lose a teacher uh in the high school so then we would have to move up a teacher from the Middle School to take that place or you could lose a teacher in the seventh grade um so even though you're cutting a team you'd have to move people around to fill in those vac so we're not saying cut the eight blue team and those four teachers and it's nice

061and clean it's four positions from um each of the subject areas that we have to make up for so that becomes tricky uh I just mentioned the exploratory class placements and how we would have to figure that out elective same thing um language scheduling is tied into teams as well so when you only have two teams instead of three uh that gets gets tricky um and then another big component of the team structures team meetings and uh plc's and those are organized by team um that would probably go out the window because when you have kids who are mixing into these different electives and exploratory classes that's usually where we create openings when all four teachers um can be off at the same time or even more than that if you include your exploratory teachers

062and World language teachers um so I I can't promise that we'd be able to schedule those team meetings in plcs easily if if at all for eth grade so that that's that's a a major major detriment to this different model so reducing the middle school team by one would cause a tremendous impact uh on the program and it would definitely harm our approach to supporting all students can you just remind me what PLC stands for um professional learning community so we have teach you know teachers that teach the same subject also meet regularly to plan and talk about you know things like that okay thank you and Lisa did you have a question no I was trying to get his attention thank sorry I should have that's okay you're in the zone I get it

063get it other questions no questions about the team structure I have a question Eric is thanks um so I'm wondering this is not specific to the team structure like having taught and led this model I completely understand it but I'm looking at the schedule slide on slide 16 um and I know that there are like some extra courses outside of the core courses so I'm thinking about seventh grade geolab and then foundations and literacy in seventh grade where are those presented in these courses and do the core content teachers teach those or are there additional teachers at the middle school level so Erica this is this is just eighth grade on this slide we didn't do seven those are seven was looking at the impact for eighth grade um seventh grade the goolab and Ela

064foundations are one of the uh three that are in the slot on course six okay so those are kids take our health and then La foundations and geolab as that sixth class together gotcha okay so there are there are additional teachers who teach just those courses but they they would not be affected in this um right okay this proposal gotcha was there any consideration or thinking around those teachers who are outside of the Court areas across seventh and eth I understand it wouldn't be a part of eliminating the eighth gr like the additional team in grade eight but like any consideration to just any Creative Solutions with those additional roles in middle school so I was requested to present on um the team structure specifically and how um reducing a team in the Middle School

065would affect our program not looking at um different reductions across various subject areas and grades if that's something you're interested in you know it have to come back present um Joe yeah I have a question and that is um I'm trying to understand what would be considered too many kids to switch you know you're saying that 136 is too many right um I'm looking back in history and I think in uh October sorry of in 2014 we had 330 kids in a class which would have been 110 for team I see some classes I don't have the data going back further than that but some of the upper makes me think that we were at 375 or something like that perhaps per grade which would been 125 kids per per team um and that's it's

066a simple question I guess is is what's the threshold where we would say it makes sense to do this versus not doing it um as in how small would the classes need to be to be able to make this work correct yeah I mean I I think that you could make an argument perhaps if the classes were down around 110 or the teams were down around that 110 maybe 115 Max uh 136 though with the class average of 27 just seems extremely large to me especially for where we've been historically of the past at least five to six years about 20 kids per class we had a we had a graduating class I'm not sure where what grade they're in right now but we had 315 kids couple years ago maybe there like junior year

067now um yeah and we were able to to handle that pretty well with this model and that was okay with the three teams um that's the biggest I've seen in my five years here I think you know Joe you have that as mentioned earlier that class coming up I think it was third grade currently yeah I don't know which slide that was yeah no it sounds like we're GNA get up to 310 or so which I agree we're going back up it doesn't make sense to cut back necessarily I'm just curious and I'm asking a question that's ancient history I suppose and nobody's going to know the answer but at some point we were at larger class sizes and I'm wondering how he handled them you know um yeah and I think I mean I

068can't speak to it because I wasn't here but it wasn't great it wasn't ideal the classes were huge I'm just looking around the room the folks who were here like they were big classes we have gym classes that were probably 35 kids um you know it it wasn't good so you probably made the argument back then to have four teams but you know the building is what got it thank you y any other questions I guess maybe a procedural question right I mean last week we had the first two scenarios presented to us and we deliberated a little bit or you know I think Chris set us up nicely to have a a a position maybe not a vote but a position amongst you know the the board or a temperature amongst the board is

069this the time to deliberate on on this and formulate a position or like just take the and away with it I mean we can I mean plan from you can yeah um so after middle school teams uh we'll talk about user fees and then on Monday we'll talk about school adjustment counselors and then as of as of right now that's the end of the scenario planning and then the plan would be to deliberate for the rest of Monday's meeting and all of Wednesday's meeting next next week so to come into next week really with you know an open mind but in your own mind kind of start to have a sense of where you're leaning towards so we can gauge as a committee because we need eight votes to pass a budget so we're going

070to try to get to that threshold and make sure we have a successful so the thinking was to arm you with as much information as you would asked for and Pro and provide ample opportunity for the 11 of you to deliberate so we were thinking half of a meeting on Monday the 10th and then the the 12th would be dedicated for those discussions okay so so is he is he asked to just hold our perspectives on this until Monday I mean you can offer your perspective sooner the better for us I mean it's fresh right I mean like it's fresh on our minds we're here I mean honestly like this for me I'll just show you my synthesis right going up to a class size of 27.2 is a non-starter right I don't know if

071anybody feels differently but 27 points who was a non-starter for me great right there's a couple things in here that maybe caught my eye but you know I'm down for making whatever wherever savings we can for the benefit of the taxpayer but this doesn't make sense and you know Bill I appreciate the briefing because I think our job school committee members is to get in front of the constituents and make sure they understand why we're coming to them with the ask that we're coming to them for so this gives us the data that we need to be able to go to them and say this is why so I don't know if anybody feels any different but I'd love to hear from you guys on how you feel about what you're seeing you guys have

072other questions for me or come on don't move I think it's been a common question that's brought up over the years um in some of our member town so we wanted to have a broad discussion showing that this might not be a feasible options for us it's come up it's come up I generally give the answer of it's 100 kids per team that's what we shoot for but we really wanted to be a little more deep in the in that information and show you what that would actually look like absolutely what we need right I had a clarifying question it's more just to make sure I'm understanding this so the the Middle School the the three you know class modules it's it's a module it's not amendable to doing minor tweaks here and there either

073no you lose a model or you don't there's no really way to yeah you can't just drop one right can't just tweak things a little here and there one it's a real challenge to address that at this point because yeah it's either the whole team or no team right I think to Joe's point you know with the enrollment curve coming back up right hting it now to rebuild it in a year and a half not get us some time right yeah did I see more hands on this side Chris so as you just walked through clearly G to talk about adjustment counselors on Monday Etc ET we're getting a lot of questions and emails and discussions about um looking at administrative positions and I think it might also be helpful to share similar information as

074to why we continue to invest in administrative positions and to give that a look as well to also answer the questions the public and the staff and the Committees are all asking is there a time that we can do that and share that information with the community as well next week yeah I was actually ask about scenario I think we should have a model too that you know administrators facilities SRO you know things are are infrastructure not that's recommendation but we should understand the the logic behind it why why not recommend that yeah support information like was just presented to us yeah I think it's one we have really not delved into and whether it's recommendation or not we should at least understand yeah right it would likely just mean we're cutting back on our

075deliberation time for the next meeting which I'm okay with as long as we know that we have that end goal that we have to meet on that I really think we need to share that information with the community yep yep any other comment I I agree with that I think that goes back to my poorly worded question from last week about non- student facing positions and I'm wondering if within that we can include the regional special education Administration um like our special education coordinators within that if we could include the number of students with disabilities and IEPs um I just think that in order to really understand that portion of Staffing I I would really appreciate just like the high level numbers I I know we've shared them before but thinking about the multiple people

076who are in roles like that I really appreciate that being included within there okay you have thoughts yep Lisa so I just want to make sure because you said we should look at I'm looking at the elementary enrollment for the next years couple years coming in so we could add 15 students to those numbers that are current so we're looking at just under 300 for the next two years and then over 300 students in the two years after that so when we look at the the past the last 10 years for whatever reasons the number of students in grade six in the TTU in the three member towns increases by 15 on average when they make the transition to mcow so coming from private schools um that was the reference that Mike was making so

077those are the current elementary numbers without so it's fair to assume that next year's grade seven would be 297 kids I think this conversation was helpful I think it at least gives me and Joe a clear Direction about um the Middle School Staffing model and committee feels about that so thank you anyone else have any last words about the um teams model all right so we will continue on with our athletic and co-curricular fees proposed adjustment sure so shifting gears um Joe and Trevor had asked us to take a look at fees uh and as you all know we charge uh fees for athletic and Co co-curricular participation so a little bit of background um so in FY for fy20 the school committee established a new user fee structure that user fee structure was one

078of the highest in the state between fy20 and FY 23 um primarily in 21 and 22 the committee get a tremendous amount of feedback from the community about those fees and there was a tremendous amount of pressure to reduce those fees so during the FY 23 budget cycle um the committee after long deliberation reduced all user fees by 25% across the board uh this this action reduced um the line item on our assessment schedule called fund transfer is in it's a revenue Source um by $137,000 our FY 26 budget recommendation does not reflect any changes to user fees for FAA 26 so said differently keeping them flat um to the levels that we experienc in FY 23 through the current year fy2 as's a little bit of additional background uh user fees currently cover about

079a third of the total operating cost to operate all of the programs athletic and co-curricular programs um for a schedule of all the user fees and all the activities uh refer to the budget book on page 30 and 31 um it's posted online for for those of you that don't have a copy uh so what I did was I looked at a handful of scenarios uh so for FY 26 we were to increase all user fees both athletic and co-curricular by 10% it would increase Revenue by 55,000 um a 15% across the board increase would increase that account by 82,000 an increase of 20% in user fees across the board would increase um that Revenue Source by 110,000 and then restoring rates by increasing rates by 25% to three FY 23 levels would increase that

080Source by 137,000 uh so our recommendation is to leave the rates Alone um as I said the rates were extraordinarily High pre FY 23 um the reduction was well received uh by the community and uh We've carried that forward now into FY 26 and any questions just to add a little um color behind the 10% number it's to reflect that the colas for these uh the coaching positions are going to increase by 10% over the next three years over the prior over the okay over the prior prior cycle yeah so that would be the justification right possibly so any y Melissa if we were to restore it to pre 23 levels what's the percentage of house that covers for the program 25% so it would increase I can't do math at this lat at night

081it would [Music] cover just adding 20 increasing by 25 no that's not Melissa's question um like proportionally how it probably would cover maybe 40% yeah for those who weren't here and I was just getting on at kind of the tail end of these discussions but the committee had spent many many hours working with many different um groups in the tri toown many different parent groups um they had a task force that looked into this um and thought that this was the best solution at the time so I want to be mindful while we're talking about it that we're not we should remember all the hard work that was put into these tough decisions that were made at that time yep and what roughly is that number that we're trying to cover I don't think there

082is one no just it depends on how many kids are participating every year and it fluctuates wildly kind of you okay it could vary I mean the number of participants and obviously the rates don't change so right it it varies not but not widely okay it was a benchmark right now if you put the cost of all the programs athletic and co-curricular and a pot right so the result of the collection of all the fees which are kind of accounted for back into the operating budget to reduce the assessment at the end of the day covers roughly 32 or 33% operating costs at the current level Joe yeah I just wanted to comment that the reason why we asked this uh to be done was there's really a couple of things here one is the

083question is are the fees set at a at a number or are they set at a percentage of cost really right so if if if we consider them as a percentage of cost then theoretically if our costs went up by 10% the fee should go up by 10% that's why we asked to look into this uh the other thing that that uh for me I think is something to think about I don't know if it's really for this budget year or for a future one but we have on our agenda uh some pretty large Capital plans coming up dealing with Athletics and so the thinking was we we really you know shouldn't be cutting perhaps academic programs on one side and then you know spending a ton of money on on Capital plans for athletics

084which which is in my opinion very much needed um and it didn't seem like it was really the right balance so we should probably look at you know as you go through year-to year how do you handle this budget line item fairly um so that you know the non-athletes aren't getting Cuts essentially and the athletes are getting brand new facilities which again I think is is what we really need to do um but it it you know trying to balance the needs of all the students so that's that's kind of why we brought this one up just for consideration not not that we're recommending it we want to see what it looked like so I have a question what and this may sound like a stupid question but what are the opportunities that we have

085as a school to have maybe like one or two gigantic fundraising opportunities for the school as a whole for the budget is that allowed like you know I'm just just ballparking I mean we don't seem to have anything big like that that would bring in a ton of money is there an opportunity is that legal can we do that I mean I'm just thinking of ways to generate income for the school not just like fundraising for sports you know Sports PTO but like a generic School kind of fundraising event if there's two things that we do every year that could generate a ton of income like I don't know concerts or event or something events something that would be having the proceeds basically benefit the school what what are the logistics on that what's the

086legality on that I mean is it a stupid qu I mean maybe I sound like an idiot asking it but I'm just trying to think what could we do where we have three affluent towns with community members that want to be involved is there a way to generate income that way to fund raise for the school just to I've never heard of something like that to fund an operating um but there's certainly opportunities to fund other specific things that you could set up a revolving account for and you could you know have a charter for how that money might be spent at and appropriated by the school committee like the MEF yeah is really what the model is for most places that I'm I'm with where it's it's extras is what really are being funded

087through those kind of fundraising okay no I'm just trying to think of any opportunity to just sort of bring money in you know any way that we can that would High highlight and be like an annual thing that everybody knows is coming and this is the big sort of fundraising to keep the school going if that ever heard of once for operating okay just throwing it out there no all suggestions on sure welcome yep it's called town meeting today Jo point was kind of go to but I was going take it even a little further you know this is just be only but you know if we really are looking at reducing on the academic side have we considered reducing consolidating on the Athletics and extracurricular side you know this is a big school no

088no we have not right yeah so I mean that's where that's where I'll have a problem in the future if you know the core of a school their core focus should be on education and everything that's important if we keep cutting from academics academics academics and we keep tal the student population decreasing what does that mean for do we have too many teams can we consolidate can we reduce are we doing something that aren being used enough are there ways to find savings there just make sure that we're gonna feel some pain we should make sure it's consistent and even to everyone I hear your point it would go away from the historic kind of the tradition this committee and the precedent they've said about you know if we have we want to create as

089much opportunities for students no matter what their interest is and as long as it makes sense for us and it makes sense for them and they're able to do so safely so that's why we added a JB um 2 volleyball team a jb2 golf team so these kids have spaces where they can operate outside of school and have some on pursue their own interests outside of this I agree that's that's Noble and it's great an ideal world but if we're slashing Math and Science and English I think maybe JV golf can consolidate into one one group you know as an example not of course we're talking about very short money in those well that's the question I don't know I'd love to the fees that's you know that's not with the needle regardless of any

090of those scenarios well I mean you can always go through the contracts have how much it costs for those for the s for the stiens that's really the same you'll get some like busing and whatnot yeah that's in the book yeah it's all the cost per per sport is coach stien can range from round numbers like 3500 bucks to 6,500 bucks it's it's more than the stiping it's yeah right right right transort and Equipment it's not a lot so anyone else share that view that we want to start going through in the athletic department and seeing if there's any cost savings no no okay I do want to share a view on this though real quick while it's fresh you know when I first looked at this it said 10% Like It's GNA save us

09155,000 that like I don't know 18 Grand average per town it's not moving the needle at all and it's gonna generate a lot of noise and I don't think that's what the tax payer that's that's not what the families want I don't think but somebody made a point Joe might have been you about if you do it as a percentage of cost and cost goes up like in the future are we going to have the massive gap between the costs and the fees right and so is this just us trying to keep up in small bites with the costs of the athletic programs and so honestly I'm torn on this right I don't know it wasn't that right so this is all a reaction to something right so it's a reaction to a 10% increase

092in costs mostly driven by a very large long list of noncontrollable cost expenses that none of us anticipated right million two in special ed costs 600k in benefits right increases contractual increases to our transportation and janitorial right we're all getting gas bills right now they're like unbelievable right that applies to this building as well right our utility costs are off the charts right and you're seeing that in our numbers so the majority the vast majority of our our increases are these things uh we were expecting the increases in our salary right we all knew what was in store when we signed the new teachers contract right we talked about it so um the for me this is a reaction to that right is let's uncover let's look under every stone to see what we can

093come up with and that's what this is to me particularly in light of all the conversations and feedback we get from the community during covid it was it was a lot um and what the committee did in FY 23 was a reaction to that and and my opinion it was justified because the fees at Masco were off the charts High yeah but I mean again like but no that's cool but again like for a moment I'll put aside the huge growth that we have in this year's budget and I'll just look at the sports fees and I'll say to myself like is this the right thing to do just small bites every year with incremental increases just to keep up with the cost of those sports right or that makes five years and hit everybody

094with a 30% increase that makes sense maybe you you anchored that with the cost the cola associated with the statement right right trans um Transportation costs I would think that discuss that discussion deserves equally as much time that the original group put into getting that cost reduced to figuring out a path forward and if that cost is going to increase I think probably that would constitute another task force and that's the way that that should be approached because and Jeff's not lying our athletic fees and we had news articles written about us but they were astronomical compared to other communities and other communities had like family caps at this ex Wicked low rate and we're looking at our fees and we're like something's not adding up here yeah so I I just think if we're

095gonna come to that conclusion that we're going to try to keep up every year by raising and say 10% 15% that that come out of a task force and not by discussion here just be clear right if we don't increase by the way coverage will decrease right no what I was goingon to say is if we don't it's it's like if you don't get a raise at work you're actually getting a decrease because the cost of living goes up right so if we don't increase Sports fees as a cost of coverage what it takes to do business then right then then we're actually getting a decrease in sports fees every year because we're not keeping up with the with the cost of doing business espe R Rollin it's just are we running a business or

096are we running a school Jo it's a good point Matt right should should we have a separate conversation around so thanks can I can you hear me yep all you all right so just let's talk about the history a little bit because we had actually I believe agreed to reduce them by 25% and then reduce them by another 25% but we ran into uh budget issues last year as well right and personally I think the way to handle this is you know when we do get the chance to to put that other 25% decrease in place we should still try to do that when we see that we've got the budget to handle that but even when we get there there's still going to be this underlying growth of expenses year toe as as Matt

097has been saying so personally I think we need to look at both of those things so it sounds kind of crazy reduced by 25 and raised by 10 but I do think we should think about restating what the fees are as a percentage of the overall cost of the program at some point um you know and again that's that's another conversation as you've said Trevor um but it is something that that we should consider because if not every five years there's going to be a big discussion about whether we're increasing fees or not right and then it's going to have to keep happening as opposed to one time we go to a percentage and it stays that way um you know until something drastically changes Alissa I want to clarify that we did what we

098said we were going to do that's face um I think that sometimes or in the past we've had a towards the end of the budget cycle we've had of things that we may have wanted to do a wish list thank you late um and further reductions of athletic fees but we we did what we said we were going to do or we promised and if you haven't increased them over the last few years then in essence you've decreased them especially with you the rates that these last few years I would support doing it as a percentage at at some point a percentage of costs some yeah we probably need to relook at the athletic fees because I right some sports cover far more than 33 % some all over the place so but that's a

099that's a lot of work that was done over four years so okay any more discussions around the athletic PES yep um does anybody know where we're at right now in relation to surrounding areas because I do remember this discussion when they were slashing it do you know where we're at now compared to other are we still on the Rel high end we are still on really high end I haven't looked at it in three years but you know at the time when we made the change we were at the very top you know put us much more in line with many other districts see so you might get pushed back there I get what you're saying but if we're already high to the surrounding towns yeah I think if if we want to have a

100discussion about trying to decrease another 25% or what ever percentage I think that's great I think just to maintain status quo you have to increase it by the amount of the whatever the the uh the rate is for the year or not let it just decrease relative right okay so I think we've exhausted that discussion so moving on so for our next agenda I know there's been a couple more things that um we've been asked toate into the nextend agenda but we had planned um scenario planning for cost reductions um relative to school adjustment counselors um and then we were going to deliberate for the second half of that session and then we had a couple more things tonight that will be cons put on that one okay and that's all we got so moving

101on now I'd like to invite um our member Town representatives to the table I believe we invited a select board and fincom member from each town so feel free to join us come on up said making a mess of things is thank you all for coming and joining us um I appreciate you guys sitting through that part of the meeting and getting just a glimpse of what we've going through over the last several weeks um and now this is our opportunity for us to hear from our town boards um and what you guys have been dealing through for the going through for the past couple of weeks um so we invite all information and materials you have for us um and yeah I plan on separating this out by giving each Town an initial five

102minutes to go through what your to what the picture in your Town's looking like what the budget season shaping out to be in any we work together can we do it a little differently if it's okay we have like a five 10 minute all of us sure do a dialogue I mean five 10 minut run through couple slides and then marks for me even okay I didn't even know we had slides give check your email there it is and somehow I didn't take two steps back when everyone else did and everyone just introduced themselves for a recording secretary Lynn so I'm Chay chair of the tops seal finance committee uh Dan V Boxford finance committee Chuck Costello Vice chair Boxford select board I'm John Erikson I'm co-chair of the Middleton Finance Costa pris Middleton select

103board and uh Marshall hook chair of the Topsfield select board thank you got that ly of course so we'll share actually we'll Swit the deck out to everybody that can have a copy it's over here but we want to thank everyone for everyone for being here and talking we all have love towns we live in in this community and we're trying to find everyone here obviously by the time we spend and the work we do we're trying to spend our time in to make them better all recognize that and I'm just trying to figure out where the page to is there we go that so um we recognize the value of the schools obviously everyone here does and invest in those um ultimately not is it just for the kids it creates the community of

104the TR and this school really does set of schools really do having had a daughter who went through here I fully recognize that still have an attachment to it because of that uh it is also one of our greatest commitments to the children for the future of our community not just for their future but for ours as well and the towns are struggling we've got a lot of commitments across all of our towns and we're really struggling to for their affordability and the leadership from the three towns been talking about this and we really are concerned about education's cost and it's un and the unsustainability of it and it we recognize this is not a Masco thing this is not a topfield thing this is not a Middleton thing this is a much bigger than

105that but we have to deal with it here what we can figure out uh currently in the three towns about two-thirds of the entire budgets for the three towns in each of the towns pays for Education 10 years go was about 50% it's a massive change and that means in effect that Poli fire counsel and Aging Services all those Services haven't grown and have constricted because of that or have had to not provide services or found other ways because in effect alter as I said before though we're all here because we love these communities we're trying to do what we all can do to help and drive I'm a I'm a Microsoft guy not a Mac guy so sorry a couple of big things that we have going on in each of the towns Boxford

106has a big DPW structure that they're trying to get through this year that's a large Capital uh excl debt exclusion there are Elementary School increases ess6 Tech uh we all experiencing health insurance and Sanity that and the cost expenses that are frankly the 14% that I think you guys had we'd take it the rest of towns would take that if we could um and then new contracts Middleton's got an override for police fire override for the elementary schools Essex Tech increases Rising Insurance costs and uh in upcoming Municipal campus then Topsfield has an elementary override this override likely certain override for us uh salary in increases Insurance increases we have a new trash contract we also have a new water treatment plant that we have or major Renovations of a m water treatment plant that's

107going to be millions of dollars as well as water main replacements massom you have your salaries you're out of District tuition your insurance your special ed all the items I just took the four top biggest items off of your list um and to acknowledge them and overall though the budget for Masco is $47 million proposed budget and the town's assessments are about 37 million that's to service 14498 students this equates to $311,500 $120 per student on the growth operating budget and 245 at the each town for each to the towns for each student that's just taking the 37,000 that you assess to the towns and dividing it by 1498 and in that 1498 are the 60 odd uh students who are outplaced and out of district there addition to that there are 46 students as

108are right now as I understand that um school choice of some sort whether that's true school choice or as I would benefit from in another town being a a child of a parent of a educator um have brought into the school through that process those 46 students bring in about $230,000 in Revenue that $230,000 was taken out of that 47452 to do the calculation so that we could separate get to a real the number ultimately um um the other piece that's really important to realize is up until 2022 there was about a thou a million plus dollars on the books and at one point it's was about two million that was debt from the first 2020 from the 2002 we of the schools that fell off but the assessments can just the way they were

109continue so for a couple of years the towns didn't feel the pain as much pain that was actually occurring in because the debt fell off inut and we didn't pay that but we were still paying the the growth in the assessment so running through some of these real quick trying to speed this up I promise um we did a little bit of a 10-year analysis um the operating budget's been growing at an annual rate of 4.5% enrollment has dropped in those in this 10 10 plus one years um just to be able to do 10 years um by enrollment has dropped by 24% or a 3% annualized drop you put those together in effect and you know that year by year you can't do it year by year but over 10 years you they start

110to rationalize that's a seven that is a seven and a half percent in change in budget versus students total sta sta Total Staffing has dropped by 6.6 employees direct support I think there was a different term used for here but that's the term I was using which is the sum of the general education and the student services and include special Aid was dropped by 10 employees or annualized at half a percent the year when we're having 3% drops in students for 10 years so other two things so this is the analysis that backs that up it's in the document and shows numbers and walks through it and this shows next is two slides that are going to just show what the budget looks like compared to the en enrollment and trying to use consistent graphs

111on each side and what Staffing looks like compared to enrolling one other piece of information that we wanted to share in our conversations about this was special ed in 2012 there were 32 students that were out of their District that was when there were 287 students this past year there were 66 students that were out of District that's was5 58 students that's a 4.2% of the student population are out of District in 2012 it was 1.53 there's nothing you can do about that this year but respectfully this is something that I'm very curious about you know what's going on what's can be done there uh ultimately our ask is to recognize the school committee respectfully that you're are here for the students and the and the parents and but you are here representing 24,000 residents

112in the community and over 18,000 1500 school which means the majority of the people that are you're representing are invested in the schools because they recognize the value of them they recognize the importance to the community but they are not taking advantage of those services and their families are not and so and many of those families are it's difficult I'll just say in top seal this year if all of the raise if all of the budgets go through as they are now the average tax increase is going to be over $1,500 just for this year on the average house um coupled with well over 1,200 last year that becomes unsustainable that's a concern that we have I don't I don't in any way um I don't in any way I respect that you have a

113very different difficult set of decisions to make and assessments to make but ultimately we're asking you to look for the opportunities to reduce expenses consider why the reduce expenses consider why the number of students for in service and out of District particularly out of district is increasing so much um consider we're looking looking at significant and consider that you're we are all looking at a significant investment experience and expenses coming up for the MCO Community between the debt future increases which are coming uh one side comment I just backing up a second in end this year you're releasing 700,000 into the operating budget um to as of what the plan is right now some of the modeling that we're seeing doesn't imply you're going to have that nearly that much next year we won't have

114any right so what you're doing yeah so what you're doing is is you're starting next year with a $700,000 deficit in your ability to spend and you're if you remember prop two and a half and all of that which you set yourself up for it prop two and a half is you've taken almost all a good half of more than half of your prop two and a half the ability that we have to incre uh fund the assessment you've taken more than half of it just by that um so in recognizing what it means is there's likely to be more over next year or the following year along with debt so we're asking you to look and see what you can do to find those difficult choices and find that that that that savings um

115ultimately reducing staff is never fun it's never it's unpleasant I've been on both sides of that and being a recipient of that's not fun and being a decider is in the long run it's less fun to be BL it's for the recipient it's hard for the days weeks months until they land somewhere else for the person who did it for human beings making that choice they understand that that's a lasting scar for a long time but it's part of what we have to do um so with that I think there are comments that everyone discussions that may have occur but we wanted to just give you a context of where we're coming from some of the struggles that we had facing across the community yeah and I'll just say I understand that you your job

116as a school committee is to focus on the school and your job as the administration is to focus on the school and I don't think we expect you to know about our trash contract or our I don't know whatever's going on over there um and I fully am aware that I have no Authority here other than I'm just and a taxpayer um but from the town point of view we do look at it all right we know what the ele El schools are asking for I mean just last night Jay and I had a meeting with them where they implored us to come up with money for a new English curriculum and they want us to take that money from the fire department like and you know and I listen I'm kind of sad all

117the Educators left because you know they have their very specific thing that they have to look at and are looking at um they also don't have to worry about a new fire Tru or many police officers we have on staff But ultimately there is only one pot of money and it all comes from there and so every $50,000 we slide over to masconomet like we did last year that is $50,000 less that we have and right now the town is looking for $100,000 to pay for a new Garbage Contract and 50,000 of that that we gave away last year would be very helpful to have this year so I'm not here to tell you not that I could tell you what you should do I know the French program is important my son is getting

118ready to go on that trip I know the music program I know you know whatever administrators you have I don't believe that there's anyone in Masco who just comes to work and sits and watches the paint dry everybody is doing something and it has value but we can't pay for it all we just cannot and that's I think the message that we're trying to impart here you when municipalities begin their budget process they are constricted by prop two and a half so you know raise two and a half from the previous year add growth you know your other local receipts and see how much money you have to spend and then try to fit everything in that pot and you have to justify adding something Regional School committees start with the expenses deduct the revenue

119and then tax the communities for the rest and you don't go through the process of saying what can can we afford to add the discussion is why we can't afford to cut anything it is a different mindset and that I think you know both sides need to recognize that the process is different we can't add a firefighter if we don't have the resources and it's not about putting it in and saying okay well we can't cut a firefighter because he needed there's nowhere to drop to to pay for it yeah you know hit it with with prop two and a half I've been doing this for a few years now and U over yeah prop two and a half was working when inflation was 2% 2 and a half perc um yes you had to

120come up with an override periodically just because the municipal budgets or the school budgets tend to grow faster than the inflation rate but with the inflation rate up now 4% certainly recently um who know know where it's going to go um prop two and a half is a serious concern and it's it's difficult to plan more than a couple of years we we try to plan three or four years into the future for say putting an override we did that in 2016 I think and um we managed to go five years without having an operational override I don't know what's going to happen now so but there isn't the revenue to pay the current proposed budget at masonet plus the elementary school budget plus we need to add firefighters and police officers who've been trying

121to do that now for four or five years and have been unable to do it because we haven't had the money they're absolutely going to be going on an override presuming we even bring them forward this year um I mean that's a decision that the uh select board's got to make are we even going to try so those positions are needed the the response time for firefighters showing up in Middleton is going up because call Firefighters are really we can't use them anymore the part-time firefighters that used to live in Middleton and could come run into the fire station in 10 minutes now all the firefighters live three towns away and we don't have a call firefighting group that can come in and do it we've got the the chief coming in every night to

122to backfill something it's just it's it's unsustainable and and that's the town's problem but it's also your problem because we're all in the thing together and we support the schools I've been coming here and budget hearings and going to Capital um budget meetings for a long time we know we need to maintain the school we know it needs to be a quality school but we got a do something because I'm afraid that it's bad this year but it's going to get worse over the next couple of years so we really need to start planning ahead thanks um so I I want to say that I appreciate the work the committee and the administration's done over the lasts with this SC a plan the Boxford fincom some members of fincom some members of the select I've

123been meeting with the Box reps we meet regularly we've talked about this a lot and I believe that kind of push to get some of these scenario planning done but the piece that I'm missing here is a little bit of creativity and looking at other things than just teachers and I know you know I don't know what it is 75% of the budget is Personnel so that's you know 75% reduction should be Personnel can um but I feel like there's no creativity in saying what other kind of things can we cut what can we look at other than teachers and even when looking at teachers are there creative things we can do and I really think um that that needs to be the next step I and I've heard that from some of you and

124I appreciate that and I don't get to sit at the table so you know I can't say that as much um two things that I want to throw out that are possibilities um and I mentioned this when Mike came to the selectman board fincom meeting in Boxford um that instead I fully agree cutting one team out of the eighth grade doesn't work but I think you can cut a half a team and you cut half a team out of the seventh grade there's ways you can be creative and flexible to do that which spreads out that increased class size and increased team size across both grades and if I did real quick numbers and it comes out to about a 100 people students um for team I guess I can't whatever it is you know

125it keeps within a reasonable range and there's other school districts that do that so I think that is a creative way to look at doing these things instead of just saying it's this this is the only way to do it um and the other piece just related to what was discussion earlier was um the whole fee structure rure for athletics when it was originally set up it was set up as um the fees were going to cover 60% of the cost of Athletics and we had this very intricate spreadsheet that looked at every sport and every expense total all up and came up with fees per sport based on about 60% within Rangers know that and every year or two we looked at that see how cost changed and if costs went up the fees

126went up a reasonable a little bit reasonable amount so um and that's kind of what's been talked about here is let's raise the 10% because that's what our expenses are going on um but it would have been done over year over time I understand why it was cut three years ago or four years ago during V I understand why that dision made um but I also understand why we implemented it back in 20022 2003 when we were in a budget situation like this and the towns were telling the you need to figure out some other Revenue sources because we can't support masco's doing and we're back in that situation again um and I think we really we all together need to look at that and say what are those kind of things that we can

127do um We're All in This Together I can you know I've sat on your side of the table I'm s on this side of the table I completely understand it I want to help I want to support the schools um but we also have to look at the big picture that that we're all facing and it's and it's a it's a tough big picture um in my way of looking at how we can do things creatively I'm going through this at work right now and I just sat with my staff and made some major budget cuts and said to them on Monday that I guess I've done a good job in proposing our budget because everybody's mad at me I was fair more I'm mad at me for cutting my personal my budget and everybody

128else who works for me is mad at me because I've cut some of their budget you know and I think we need to look at that here and not put it all on the teachers some of it can be on the teachers some of it can be on the Educators but what other things can we do to make it fair across the board and unfortunately make everybody mad instead of just some people mad not other people mad um so I think we need to look at that we need to look at the big picture um and be a creative said our spe just quickly two things that come to mind for me which relate that is reemphasizing from what I said we've got a number of asss that are coming from masso this year next

129year a big one next year and likely more we have every one of these towns has two override like items in front of it probably this year more at least right in my toss Field's gonna have at least gonna have three G have four yeah we're probably we're probably trending towards four at this point because the town budget has gotten to the point that it's not sustainable so think about with the 18,000 voters that we are repres we all in various ways represent think about how they're impacted by this and how they're going to be next year and think about how they would be differently when they have to make these difficult choices next year if their opinion of what the town did or what elementary school did or what Masco did this year was

130fiscally prudent or in their minds not and that's just the one thing I ask you to ask about is thinking not just in terms of what it's mean this year but what's the extended impa um when I said your side of the table I fought with the fincom and the selectman to not do overrides and now I'm sit on the fincom and I'm still fighting to not do overs and over many years and I can you can go back to last year you the Masco budget has gone up considerably more than two and a half percent way over the prop two and a half and the towns for the most part have figured out of ways to make it work without having to do M right and I can tell you the bo perspective I've

131heard it for years we'd rather do a mask override than a town budget override because people support the schools but not going to support firefighters that's just unfortunately try to make it garbage cans and then see where you get the and so but we've always kind of fought that and I can tell you how many times I've fought with the slackman in the think on both sides of the thing of you know when we're pretty close to where you wanted us to be so just eat that little bit and let's not do an override and I know we did that last year in Boxford for Masco we didn't do it for the elementary but we did it for box for masc we can't do that this year the numbers are too big to to eat

132that little bit for any of the three things and I think Masco needs to understand that they need to bring that down and I'm not gonna make a promise but if you bring it down to something close maybe we can eat it a little bit and avoid some overrides Maybe I'm not you guys may add the added challenge of the enrollment yeah yeah every year there's every year there's one time but you know but bringing that down would help um and make it much more power right now it's just not and I just want to add one more thing and then I actually want to hear from you all uh just as an example of the pendulum swing of what goes on here we have been hearing for years the impact that overrides have on

133seniors you know people who've lived in these towns for decades and who are being taxed on a house that they bought for $150,000 it's now worth a million dollars so we have really dug in and are starting to look at a way that we can have a limited alleviation of tax burden to seniors but when you do that that puts more taxes on the people who aren't seniors and so this year with in tops field where we're looking at $2 million in overrides I think we're going to come to the conclusion we can't do that this year because that would be more on top of the $1,500 that we're already looking at in an increase that's on top of the $1,400 that came last year so at a time when they're getting hit even harder

134and harder we can't help them because we're helping the schools and so this is where there's got to be a breaking point I know you don't want to give up anything and every teacher and every program and every administrator is important they all have value you just can't pay for it all and so with that and I hear all that and thank you guys for coming again one thing I did want to point out in the present did you have oh I'm sorry oh sorry sorry with due respect to the gentleman to my left I've been doing this for 37 years and every quite honest ly when we start our budget deliberations we go through um what we call phase one phase two phase three and the sky is falling at Phase One and the

135sky is falling at phase two and the sky is falling at phase three and usually we begin to see some light at the end of the tunnel and by phase four and phase five we've worked it out and often it does include overrides not only uh the school mostly for the schools sometimes for the operating budget but we we seem to work it out this year I don't see the sky not falling for the first time in my 37 years I don't see us getting to the point where we can say the sky is not falling um our Revenue projection our revenue is is limited tax-based revenue and in Boxford unfortunately it's all um res EV Middleton has a little advantage in in some commercial and Industrial uh tax revenue but Boxford we just have

136bedrooms it's it's a human Vernal pool there there's nothing else there people come there to breathe that's it okay nothing else to do anyway um nothing else to do but this year seriously the sky is area um Dan stole all my good thoughts like he usually does um but I would say besides our RF I think we need to look at got non-mandatory programing stuff that's not required by the state or the federal government and uh that's going to include staff and and and non-staff cost um you also may have to reconfigure services to achieve efficiency uh perhaps without eliminating programs totally but they're going to have to be Cuts I believe in those areas in order for us to to get through it as far as boxford's concern um we have a $20 million

137debt exclusion coming up for a DPW facility that we've put off for lots of years we have a proposed 88.5% increase in our elementary school budget uh we have a 46% increase in our assessment our Essex Tech assessment we're going from uh what was 25 students to 37 students there 20% increase in health insurance I think we're all kind of facing that but that's crazy that's a crazy number we were hoping it would be 11 or 12% but it's not and of course Masco um you're going to have some big capital lasts in 26 and 2 27 I should say the our our Elementary School uh at Cole I believe it is needs back system but we're going to have to deal with that and we have ongoing negotiations with five units DBW this year

138then police um clerical staff and library next year um I would like to get to the point where in draft five the sky is not falling the only way that's going to happen is if you can find cuts to help us do it thank you and I appreciate like I said all of you coming and what you've had to offer us and we appreciate the partnership we've guys over the years and I did just want to touch on something that was in the presentation um the pure pupil expenditure I've looked at the doe website I've looked at US News ranking like all that stuff and I've never seen the 30,000 number so I don't know so that just took the $47,000 million dollars and divided by the number of students so I don't know if

139they everywhere else calculates it some somehow differently the point is is that I mean understand and I the same thing I rechecked the calculation multiple times I actually took out the $230,000 that was about what 46 students at $5,000 a is so I took that out but all I did is I took your operating budget and divided it by the number of students I don't I don't think the department has of AD has released a number for US within the last year so I just want to be C I don't want that to be the headline out of today that it's 30,000 30, but respectfully your budget is $47 million and I understand the Simple Math 98 but I don't know if the doe does it differently I'm sure they do it doesn't they don't

140do it the same way I've looked at it sh uses math five years ago five years ago here we would okay I'm gonna go to Melissa yeah um I thank everybody who's here for the time that you put into it I've said this before that the delivery of Education in 2025 is not black and white and we can't do simple math we can't I know that everybody wants to do it and it's logical but it just doesn't work I would like to know who in town administration had children in either elementary schools or mosow during the pandemic I did I did and I was also sitting here at the same time why are we not reducing enrollment I was also sitting here but at the same time we were required to feed people to give

141them Health Services to educate them and turn on a dime so again those things cannot be broken down and put into black and white numbers and what I'm hearing is that the towns would love the the Masco school system to solve all of the issues with funding across however we get our funding and that's very insulting to me as a parent and I'm talking as a parent now because we're also needing to give our children education to be in a world that 30 years ago didn't exist and I appreciate that nobody we don't have the money to do this but I think we need to take a look at what the schools are being asked to do and I think we cannot look at the special education numbers because those are uncontrollable and none of

142us here in this room can do anything about those we can provide all the services that we want or that we can but again if we were to provide some of those services inhouse our our budget would be exp exponentially larger and it would change from year to year so there's the Ault District like those we can't even look at but yet we're looking at them and I've had so many questions about why are why aren't we doing anything and we're doing the best that we can we're starting at the elementary schools I know they're trying to put the programs into place so that the the problems aren't coming damasco that we are also trying to solve so I appreciate the work but again I caution the numbers that are in that I don't agree

143with them I know they're raw numbers but again as a school Committee Member I'm here for the students and I need to look at what's best for our students and I know that it's going to hit my pocketbook at as a resident and I it's just what it is it's going to hit it for athletic fees and and everything but that is that's what we have right now so I think as a school Committee Member I need to make a decision based on what's best for our students and at this point I'm not going to be supporting any budget any cuts to Staffing because I don't think that's giving our students the best opportunity for success as so I'm just saying that now anyone else have anything to add to the discussion here B yeah

144um I definitely appreciate um the perspective that that you guys have uh brought here tonight and you know we've heard it uh uh in other settings is uh and I also understand uh Melissa's perspective on this um but I do think that and I've been hardly thinking about much else other than than this budget uh recently and um the things that have been put on the table for us to consider in order to make it uh less expensive and more um or less of a bird to our to our three towns um I think at least what I'm hearing is that know unfortunately it's it's hard to get blood from a stone and and um you know we may wish it were otherwise um and perhaps um we might be in a position to convince

145uh voters in in in at least two if not all three towns that um yes there is some blood in that stone yet and and and we should try to extract it um I just think um know we we do need to be careful about about doing that because as as everyone around the table knows that um you know this isn't a one-time ask and we're we're not coming back again um you know those of us that are been involved with uh the uh uh the the capital planning uh effort you know fully aware that next year there's certain you know likely to be a significant uh ask in order to make the required improvements to the infrastructure of of the school so I think that um as unpleasant um as it may be I

146I think um you know we have to seriously consider cost reductions um because know we we certainly do ourselves no favor by um presenting to the town uh budgets that or assessments that are are going to be difficult to get approved um that doesn't that doesn't do any of us any favors so we've got to be smart about what we ask for um and and I guess that's it s i gu go ahead you go you go I guess I'll share quick for FR um thank you guys um the the hardship resonates with me I I understand right and I understand meliss this point and you know we can't get but from a stone you know I guess my Wonder is is is there something I think there's probably T you know small acute things

147that we could look at this year I guess my bigger question is this growth isn't sustainable and is there something systemic the way that we're organized the way that we operate that could change I know Bill had mentioned earlier during his briefing about 8th grade schedules that you know you get to a point where if you do this well there's a couple classes where we'd have to mix the kids okay like we live with that is that good is that bad you know doing this model for 20 30 years now I think I've heard some of these things right like is there a time over the next year or two years where we just need to revisit systemically how we how we operate how we're structured our processes our education model and figure out you

148know is this the best model students and is it the most costeffective model for the taxpayers right and so I don't know what we solve in the next two three weeks in terms of big Monumental sustainable changes but I think it's upon us as a school committee to look at this over the next you know year and figure out how do we make it sustainable and I will say Matt um historically the school has offered some classes that are both mixed honors CP honors AP it's just not the ideal thing so we can avoid but I just want to that wasn't what I was talking he was talking about the blending of teams oh okay students from different teams into a we were telling in the French discussion too okay um just a couple things

149I was going to just hit on the and I've said this many times here I've said it at our Town meetings as well I'm the mother of two children in special needs that both have autism so I know this subject matter very well I've lived it every day for the last um 12 years of my life and I know that number is really big and for me personally one of my my hopes and goals is to figure out and we've discussed this openly here too because I know it's a big number and it's a number that people if you're not in a family that has a child with special needs maybe you don't understand that number and don't understand the laws and what it requires us to do but even for me as a special

150ed mom I want that number to go down because the goal is always to have your child stay in the district and stay here so for me one of my hopes is to figure out what we're missing in the communication maybe with elementary schools at some point to figure out why they're not choosing Masco to get the numbers down but that's that's a long road but I'm aware of it and I I want that number to go down as a special mother um another thing for me is what can we do to generate Revenue that's to me is like it is always about cutting cutting cutting but we again we live in three affluent towns there's a lot of opportunities for in my opinion and I'm happy to take it over events to generate money

151coming in from if if we're allowed to I don't know private donors or something to get people in if we have contacts that we know to donate to the school um and and another issue for me is somebody said it over here I think getting creative but to me like that's the key there's got to be a way to get creative to find a balance here to not affect the face-to-face the student facing staff that gets caught because we also have to remember that the kids coming up the kids that were most affected by covid my children too you know they were in elementary school right in that Prime so but I am aware that we need police we need fire the wife of a police officer I understand where he is in his town

152they have nobody and it is and they're losing guys left and right and the response time is going up and I know it's a problem so for me I do want to become creative in figuring out where we find that balance and and I'm aware of it and I appreciate what you guys have to do because it just seems like money is just flying out everywhere and we're and we're just bleeding out everywhere in all three towns and I am aware of it so um those are just my thoughts really have a point but that was those are my thoughts so thanks had one and you know I appreciate Matt's you know comments about you know looking at how that delivery of service is done and is it the best model and the most efficient

153and combining result and cost and you know we're not asking you to solve that three towns Financial problems because if we were we'd be asking you for your FY 26 budget to be substantially lower than your FY 25 budget we are only asking you to look at that increase that you've projected and seeing if there are ways that can be you know through efficiency and different models that deliver the same quality at a cheaper cost um I do want to jump to Joe just because he hasn't jumped in here yet yeah so I guess a couple of things for me uh I would just suggest to the rest of the committee members to come to the meeting on Monday having looked at the scenarios we've seen so far and think about um you know where

154where each of you see potential opportunities and be ready to talk about them I've been looking at it and I do think there is room here to uh make a good faith effort towards showing people that we are looking to constrain costs in a reasonable manner I don't think there's a reason to um make Cuts in in core student facing positions I'll say um I don't think there's a need to do that I do think that there are areas where um we would be uh it would it would be disingenuous of us to to not pursue at least talking about them and understanding what the real impact is or isn't going to be um you know if you look at what's happened and I know everyone's looking at the number of teachers and the number

155of students but if you look at what's happened over the last 10 years the number of teachers has gone down the number of students has gone down and it's the non-teaching uh areas that have gone up and everyone says Administration Administration Administration but it's really student services that's mushroomed um far beyond anything else I think there are opportunities there based on what's been presented to us so far and I'm just going to look to uh you know talk about that in in detail when when we get together on Monday but I want to thank the uh Town officials for coming in uh thank the Boxford folks who've given us a lot of ideas over the year um you know we've we've tried to least scenario plan so we can see what the impact on some

156of these things are um and uh we'll see what what happens when we discuss in detail on Monday so thank you and also I have to leave because I have to go to a a a dinner out here sorry all right Joe thank you um did we get level set on that comment I was just watching your reaction perspective on that yeah I mean I um I I guess I would need a little bit more detail about what Joe was talking about but I think um you know School adjustment counselors and Physicians and student services are you know part of the teaching force and they do do a lot they are student facing um in in a real safety capacity so I'm not sure I I don't know who you were talking about specifically yes

157yeah when I say core student facing I'm talking about the core mission of any High School which is teaching academics that's that's what I'm saying is we've gone away from the money has shifted from academic positions to non-academic positions over the last 10 years that's what I meant that's a great conversation for Monday yep um so I did see a couple hands I do want to be mindful of time because we are already 23 minutes over so I'll be brief because I say everything I've heard on both sides of the table you know I kind of I agree with it the most part um so thank you for that and I think as Dan said we've been talking about this with the Box folks for a while so it's been good um so but we're

158in a period of global inflation right now right you know this is a a long-term problem we're trying to solve in a short-term time frame I think it's a real challenge some of the things we're discussing now are being thrown around of out of district and special ed and all that and those are real strategic challenges we have to address but we're not going to fix that this year so we have a short-term budget issue and I just want to make sure we're not trying to conflate and fix for those things that need a real long-term solution and that's one of the challenges we have this budget process is very tactical it's every year we look at it we fill with it and we don't really attack the core structure and a lot of us

159talk about that we want to get there but you know the next two months we can't revamp and restructure the schools right we kind of have what we have and so it's going to be this is going to be a hard year for everyone so um and the other thing I heard is that we getting requests all day long to cut cut cut but don't change anything keep the service the same keep the quality the same and that's an impossible ask so we're all struggling with that we're all stressed ourselves try to kind of you know t for that and I think it's just going to be it's a really inappropriate and challenging ask to do in eight weeks so I think we all agree that there's things we need to address long term but

160I don't want to sacrifice the shortterm damage we could do by not tapping what we're doing now and things that can be changed Now versus what things we want to have in three to five years did I see your hand yep so every year at town meeting I get up and give load a number it so top still people have heard me say this for about seven years fincom looks not just at this year but part of our role and responsibility is to model and think about what the future looks like and model this out um and there is a cliff that we have we're over right and I don't which and we're and I'm hearing it more and more now which is the taxes are continue to rise at a rate that drives people

161out as soon as their kids be school the average parent student right now it's going to cost even using not using the numbers that I have in here but using Desy numbers it's going to cost about $250,000 to educate for that 13 years the average taxes at that for that one child the average home in our three towns pays about $14,000 a little less actually than that but call it $144,000 a year that means just to educate your one child and you haven't paid for fire you haven't paid for police roads plowing any of that that parent need to stay in our towns for 18 years you have two kids that's 36 years that they need to stay in town just to pay for the education so as we drive up the prices what ends

162up happening in the model well bear this out if this continues is that people come to this town because they value the schools they will go through the schools then they leave right after and then the next people come in and the taxes explode more and more because what you're doing is you're you br the only people that are coming to town of those or staying in town of those so part of our model and what we're thinking about when we're looking at this and really a worried about it is the fact that we are pushing out the people who we need to stay in town because they're the ones that are are net providers of income to the town rather than net consumers um I moved into town when my daughter was in fifth

163grade she's been out of scho for three years now I still owe this down money just to pay for her school right so and that's part of my conversations with my wife and us all the what's our but that is reality so I just want thinking comment just cor cor sorry getting late you know if we you know end getting and hurting the schools that's the biggest magn to people moving into town as well so it's it's a delicate balancing act right so but with that model as soon as you move out it crashes right so what happens is that school home values will plummet if we get to that point Y because what will happen is is say the taxes will become so high that you're not going to stay in town so there

164is a circular thing there that it PL but people can't sell their house if no one's coming to buy it and people move for the schools that drives property values right I think it's an interesting perspective $150,000 house 50 years ago is now worth over I like the model but I think we're GNA try to go over here yeah we got to keep moving on but sometimes short-term problems help us see long-term Solutions even though they don't help us in the short term might help us down the road one of the things that has sort of come to my mind was something that Dr Harvey mentioned when he met with us in Boxford is that the sixth graders that are on IEPs and talking about spe special ed being a significant cost and and continuing

165to to rise become a bigger percentage every year it seems I I wonder if we School committees the finance committees Boards of selectman throughout the throughout the state couldn't petition the state to create a law that said sixth graders must interview with the local school before they go to an out of District place in other words if if I understood you correctly Mike you were saying that you don't see those sixth graders that are out of District of of those 69 kids out of District 41 41 didn't come here ever1 of them didn't didn't come here and and maybe if they came here and saw what this school had to offer parents might be impressed enough not to we have to we have to pay for so you know it might be something we want

166to think about as a state if we can get the legislature to insist that the sixth graders in the district that they're in interview the seventh grade team and the in the administration maybe we will capture some of those 46 and some of those out of District placement you know tens of thousands of dollars as a chair who regularly provides time updates during my meeting I know you want us to move on so uh I'm G to go ahead and speak for all these guys and say thank you very much for for having us guys for coming thank you appreciate all your inputs and thoughts and they'll be very useful for us next week as we really start to deliberate these next steps for the committee so thank you okay so moving on um we

167have um some information regarding the statement of Interest with the msba so in the packet for tonight are the copies of the two uh statements of interest for the Massachusetts scho building authority um one for massom middle school and the other for massom at high school that we um need to have school committee approval of before we can uh submit sorry he he can email us present yeah heer was gonna do that because I couldn't really see that yeah so um the committee has to approve both of the you know and language is actually in their packet as well there's a very specific that's the high school vote that has to be uh literally read into the record um this is a very uh structured process with the msba um hopefully hopefully we'll find out

168even more if we get accepted um but there's they're very specific about how this all um needs to get done um I'll ask Ask if anybody has any questions on the statements of interests that I I'll just say thank you to you guys I mean I I actually read it because I was want to learn more about nice well written and thanks the I'll thank Jeff and and Keith our HVAC Tech it was a team effort team um brain hurt yeah I mean it's it's actually it's kind of funny like a lot of the studies that we've done over the last couple of years actually came in handy there was a lot of copy and pasting from those those documents and then we sort of took it and tried to you know massage what was

169in there and and make sure we had a strong message going forward so um I am think we're both satisfied with with how they came out so if if I could just add maybe so um as our committee knows the details so our plan is to submit uh an accelerated repair program statement of interests by March 21st that reflects um think it's next a new roof and heat pumps for the whole place so uh which is a new um a new uh option for this year so um I just wanted to make sure everybody was really clear on what the scope of our submission is and then just to remind everybody um once it's submitted it'll go through a very rigorous process with this with with the msba um there'll be submissions The Accelerated repair

170program and lots of other submissions for their core program which is really built around building new schools right so they'll have their work cut out for them the boards usually begin to meet in late August and then September and October the sense that we got was that we sh we we might start hearing back from them about our SOI in late October so um stay tuned a there's a lot of work do and a long way to go and Matt I'm thinking this might be something good to send if the committee approves might be good to send to the building absolutely to who building yes you guys done this before like an so this yes okay so do they ever come back and ask for more information yeah they'll come out yeah they they make

171a trip if piek their interest which I hope we have um they'll come out and they'll send some people out any more y Lisa um so I got to preface this by saying hopefully we don't have to do this but one of the questions we had to answer was was there any budget reductions or reductions in staff so so he wrote do does not apply which I understand as of tonight there are not there there is not so and and that's why I say hopefully we don't have to but if it comes to that when this is in the moment so you're you're right yeah this is a motion and documents as of tonight we yeah we have to get it approved tonight we won't go back and change it that's why but I I

172understand that what I'm saying is Well will we have to go in and amend it if it comes to that okay we'll go through a process and if the committee decides to make changes and we're asked will be truthful yeah um but what time Motel it's like moment in time yeah okay question a Snapchat yeah yeah and generally not you know something that they put a lot of weight in at least for as far as I understand like you have you made budget reductions and she everybody is yeah so there's you know we're not alone in this I mean it's I got a article from the globe that talked about all you know all of the districts in Massachusetts that are having issues with their budgets for next year so I I can't imagine the

173msba is going to going to change change course and start waiting that again the spoils just thought it was a very odd yeah it's a weird ask in the middle when we're asking for a roof and AG vacis it's like wait a minute why do you want to know if we reduced our sta yeah they might be trying to get at so we we just went through an msba survey process and I had shared some of that with the committee a couple of weeks ago so I think they're trying to get at you know are you using your whole facility right are you likely to maybe um like sublet it to like coll local collaboratives or use it for other purposes so one one of the other questions they have they make us answer is

174that we have not closed a school in re in recent years I those are the kinds of things that they're thinking about because it's a building and it's their right so the other thing I would just say is you know this is so the the pipeline of projects is tremendous right so you know this will be an evaluation that they perform compared to other statement of Interest applications and in the context of their budget pool right so they have funding set aside for this round for the next two two years for core programs and ARP sois like this and I think it boils down to how bad are our facilities in comparison to the other facilities that they received statement of interest for in this application process and we don't know the answer to that

175but I do know they have a very defined budget okay good conversation and like Mike said we're going to have to unfortunately you got to read all this twice twice me yeah because there's well somebody's somebody this these are the Motions that need to be made I don't thinks make motions not refer to it we have we have to submit the minutes say that this was read into the minutes yeah there's a lot of red tape they're gonna want they want to copy they want to copy of the unfortunately you got to read all this stuff reading oh you can't you can't make them I think Matt's really good at reading yeah I can make I'm just trying to move this all right there you go don't make me gavl okay pretending you go am

176I having convened in an open meeting on March 5th 2025 prior to the SII submission closing date the school committee of the masanom Regional School District in accordance with its Charter bylaws and ordinances has voted to authorized the superintendent to submit to the Massachusetts school building authority the statement of Interest form dated March 2025 for the momic Regional High School located at 20 Endicott Road Boxford which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority categories for which an applicant may be submitted to the Massachusetts school building authority in the future category five replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs Windows boilers Heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related cost in a school facility to replace a failing roof in HVAC system at Masonic Regional High

177School and hereby further specifically acknowledges that by submitting the statement of Interest form the Massachusetts school building authority is in no way in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the Massachusetts school building authority or commits the Mas gomet Regional School District to filing an application for funding with the Massachusetts school School building authority that's a lot of second and we have to do a roll call tonight so I will start or any more discussion on that okay hearing that I'll start with Bill yes Matt Adrien yes Jeff yes Kendra yes Melissa yes Lisa yes Chris yes Erica yes and I am a yes so it passes 10 to zero okay I you do the Middle School okay ER read

178it just turn the mic offed having convened in an open meeting on March 5th 2025 prior to thei of submission closing date the school committee of the Mas anomet Regional School District in accordance with its CH Charter bylaws and ordinances has voted to authoriz a superintendent to submit to the Massachusetts school building authority the statement of Interest form dated March 2025 for the mask andom Regional Middle School located at 20 endicot Road Boxford which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts school building authority in the future category five replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs Windows boilers Heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in a school facility to replace a failing

179roof in HVAC system at Mas gomet Regional Middle School and hereby further specifically specifically acknowledges that the submitting that by submitting this statement of Interest form the mass assetts School building authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the Massachusetts school building authority or commits the masanom Regional School District to filing an application for funding with the Massachusetts school building authority second any more discussion Bill yes Matt yes Adrian yes Jeff Kendra yes Melissa yes Lisa yes Chris yes Erica yes and I a yes that also passes 10 to nothing um thank you Jeff and P okay moving on um we have the subcommittee report so we'll start with community relations so we had our uh working meeting on

180uh Friday and we organized um and it taken the timeline that Matt and the DCI and capital subcommittee that we had worked on in January when we had our joint meeting um Adrien sort of simplified what we already had and with the information everybody already knows into a timeline that we called modernized Masco if we don't like that name that was that's part of my question tonight we can change it I'm not sure how that works um but it was just a name we came up with to try to keep it a positive way instead of saying the budget or you know the big ass the big ask you know we were trying to come up with a a positive neutral timeline so we did design a flyer we sent it for um you know

181approval to see and find out if that's good to go from Joe Andor whoever would give the approval um the second half is that we do have a tab that is being held for us on the Masco website which is going to be great right on the homepage and it can be called modernized Masco if we want if the committee has other ideas or options we're open to it we're just trying to get it that done organized so that all of the information we already have we can put on one easy tab for everybody to get um so the question is just how do we get it approved what what's the process do we need to organize that a little bit better and yeah and I I'll just pile on that and say in general

182what is the most efficient way for us to communicate talking point of the entire committee out to the community so that we can do this quickly because we don't have a lot of time and we're going to have to be a drum beat for the community with all of the information oh so we can't like wait for the next meeting we have to like figure something out that was my question too have started to talk about it and I thought for some reason I thought we had a policy I couldn't find it about Communications and designating but um IDE ideally what I think probably for any information going out about operation budget um maybe that the designes are the chair and vice chair to approve those any about Capital maybe that's the DCI chair and

183the chair of the school committee but it has shown through this process that we do need to make some more organized decisions around approval of things to make sure that process is as efficient as possible um you think that's something we could do tonight yeah okay um so unless anyone has any other ideas I think those two options might be the for op for operating expense Communications going out out about operating maybe it's the chair and vice chair of the school committee for communications about Capital it's the chair of the school committee and the DCI chair so what we would do tonight is the school committee would take a vote to delegate operating Communications to be reviewed by the chair and the vice chair and capital Communications to be reviewed by the chair and the

184chair of the the DCI so moved second second any more discussion or thoughts just one more quick question what would be the turnaround on the approval is there a deadline on the response as quickly should it be chair or vice chair and that was my second question it's up to the committee if they want two eyes sets eyes are one and that's really the I think I guess is some of it's going to loop back to this table I would specif as one of the provs yeah yeah or reviewers I'm not whatever it's called I think two sets of eyes is probably good because there's a lot of nuance to all the information that we are communting out communicating out so I'll just I'll say that I'll I'll also say I do think we need

185to agree on a timeline because even the stuff that I put together has been sitting so long that now I would make changes to it and I'm not even the authority on it so yeah if when stuff sits for longer than a week it's outdated like we've already had new discussions this is what's on everybody's mind talking about Capital plan that's next year is going to throw people off they're going to see a 690 they're going to look at the proposed budgets they're going to get confus that's it it all goes out the window so I think we need like a two to three day yes right or goes out is the I don't know I mean for example if you have a communic coming out within the next two weeks I'm going away to

186a country that is not this one so I don't know if I will be checking my email every two days so I don't know if I could do that timeline I suspect that the chair and the vice chair that on almost every communication is likely going to go through either Mike or me or at least me so that a two-day turnaround with all the other things going on is a lot right I'm not trying to create a bottleneck but that's just what's going to happen I think in reality yeah I think we you know there's a lot of competing priorities yeah but communicating to the district what we're going for why we're going for it why it's important why it's a value add for them and that narrative we don't have a lot of time

187to do it and I I think it is important and I think if you express that message kind I know Joe is not here tonight but if I think this conversation might you know it might help that situation information that we've all already eyes on the format to get the eyes to say yep okay but it's never anything new or weird that we're just gonna throw this in and just it yep Matt I mean I'd be comfortable if proves us you know bet you know guidance should be three days or five days or whatever the timeline is that we agree I don't know that we should be sending things out without review and appr agre right and we don't and we never do I think we should agree on you know Joe and I or

188Trevor and Joe will review these things best effort within three days or five days and you know bu days to facilitate it do we have something at the end of the agenda that's like what are the three talking points we want to get out between now and the next meeting I think that could be Focus that can be in this update update yeah okay that's fine I just want make sure that the entire committee is like yes that is the most important thing we need to talk about for the next week and a half two weeks okay so there's a motion on the table and a second is the do people want to amend that to include a time I I get it I I think the time thing like okay if it's four days

189and you set it at three days what's going to happen it doesn't retroactively go out so I I think as long as we're all on the same page that we're going to work our hardest to get those things turned around as quick as possible what's important what's the downside of having a have it on the clock and we miss it there's no you get penalized well that's the thing bar I think it's good to have a guidance in there so we try to hold ourselves to it I'm knocking on your doors with the slides read it just sign here I think you guys do a good job yeah okay I really want to reain in this conversation okay so there's a motion people want to put in a time or no no no I mean

190what what are the rules like best efforts to to get uh less than 72 hours comments I don't know five business days but then it's outdated in in a budget cycle that doesn't work so no it's updated but if it's updated then it shouldn't have gone out in first place right it should work people read it for five days sometimes that too we're not Nimble enough to think that data is out outdated in five days I think for me it's more of it's not even the outdated part it's more of just like I don't want to look like where what are they doing over there at Masco like where's the you know where's the communicate where's I think you lose the initiative a little bit and I don't think we're anything complicated right these are

191all just bullet points I'm not sure what the concern is you know why we can't get out faster because you you guys are summarizing them it's really just a QC check make sure it's okay and then go um you know these aren't top secret this is just Summers of existing meetings yeah no it's it's usually it's always stuff I mean of course I can't just theing things it's all stuff that we know so um but my other question quick is about the website do we need to get full approval to get that name on there or is that something just because Ben Hodge is you know he's holding that little spot for us to be able to get and put up some of the stuff that we really kind of up to you and Joe

192I mean I I think probably definitely if we're going to name this campaign I think it should probably be a school committee vote um and maybe that's one if the committee wants to vote on it tonight they can vote on it tonight I I think maybe it's might be fresh for some people and they might want to wait a week but if they feel comfortable with the name I'm open but we do have a motion and a second on the table Rel to something gotta clear that up should we restate that or I've got a the motion on the table is to designate the chair and the vice chair to approve all Communications out of the community relations subcommittee regarding the operate the operating budget and having the DCI chair and the school committee chair

193be designated to approve of communications regarding the capital campaign and budget and then all others default to Administration I mean it's it's if it's a school committee Comm Communications Group it's really not okay right it's the board communicating okay so I'm going to have a vote on this if you think that there should be a time put in there you can feel free to vote no but I we've exhaust this conversation so we will do a roll call Bill yes Matt yes Adrian yes yeah yes Kendra yes Melissa yes Lisa yes Chris yes Erica yes and I'm yes um what were you thinking for a timeline on your naming of the as soon as possible I mean there Ben he's holding the spot he just said let me know what you want to call it

194and we'll put it in he said it should be two words to keep it fitting on the the tab so that you don't go to a second row um and that was it and I think we we talked about modernized Masco when we did our group meeting back in January but but we were just trying to think of something positive that would explain what the budget is what we're trying to do without saying budget and money Finance Red look away look away I mean I'm open to anything too we just we just want to get it up and have it is there a prototype of this page that was my other question he can design that but I wasn't sure if that's I oversee it and I haven't even heard of this um so I

195I would like to see a prototype to see how it links and see how it interfaces with the rest we can do that too and that was to see make sure it works the way yeah that's that was another question too do we need to do a sample and set it so that the whole school committee can see it in the meeting we can do that yeah that would be great it would be everything that you already see just organized with like bullet points and small visuals so yeah so my my IT director doesn't even know anything about this Ben what does Ben Hodes do the it dor oh and then doesn't know so here's a better question I think that we couldn't we couldn't quite get answered yeah owns the website and updating of

196the website because what I was told in the last meeting yeah that I was in and I asked this to Dr Harvey he was like there really isn't anyone that owns it per se access to update it and is a major stakeholder that's fantastic have an owner yeah yes I would say V my part of the organization owns it direction of Vin yeah and Ben who's the director of digital learning has a hand in it he doesn't own the website okay so so we would love an opportunity yeah look at yeah I saw the email yeah like whatever it is come my way we want to do this right but we gotor I think that's reasonable yeah that's fine I'm work tell you don't understand who who owns the website you know all right glad

197we have a old for the website but um how does everyone feel about the raay modernized mask do it yeah I can't come up with anything better it's that's fine it doesn't matter to so this is referring to not just the capital stuff in the future but budget now this is like budget you know it gives you an opportunity to celebrate all the things that are modernizing Masco so yes capital projects Capital project like the campus projects you know if we're doing anything really cool or different with curriculum celebrate that I think we had like some subcategories for the mockup that we were thinking about I don't know yeah but I I don't have them at my fingertips email it to just the few but it was like campus project strategic plan teaching and learning

198but surrounded with the budget it was all about what we're looking what it's going to cost just it all together exactly in one spot um so I can definitely get a mockup and design going and then send it to everybody to look at too so just wasn't sure what the process was and I I didn't want to be emailing everybody so do we have a few more days to think about modernized Masco then since we I think we do and we can improve it kind of the same time we go through that mockup version yeah the only reason the only critique that I have of that is we use the word modernize the heels of these heavy budget discussions how I'm going to back and say now's not the time to modernizing Masco what we're

199really doing here is we're allowing Masco to survive going forward maintain Masco right I mean something more sexy than that maybe that's what I'm thinking right a lot of it's hard I know yeah so that's what I was thinking if we can get a few more days what we a million dollars for must do at Masco you know I'm sure the DC I mean the relations subcommittee will be open to any suggestions email them anything please it two two words more than that DCI budget you're up two words that was vocal um we're do to meet one of these days we just have Billy our schedule together I'll see youil us for a week right um we're meeting on Monday Monday the 10th I couldn't remember the date 12:30 via Zoom same agenda as last

200week thank you um liaison any additional updates I think we've got plenty of communications with them I fill that one um negotiations anything nothing new I do have to respond to that D has everybody responded to that I did want I didn't figure out on my phone how to do more in one day our first session with the um mpfts is on April 17th and our first session with the support staff is on April 16th okay I will say the Wednesdays and Thursday dates i' be coming and Tuesday I get out of work at 3:30 so I'd be okay a half an hour late but un Zoom i' be able to join all right yeah we need a more more responses I have no idea sure job so okay and that moves us on to

201our consent agenda approve second okay and yes yes okay uh Matt Adrien yes Jeff Andra what up yes Lisa yes yes Erica yes I'm yes the consent agenda is approved and I will entertain a motion to adjourn at 10 pm yeah second this is the first