001yeah you why don't you introduce yourself yeah of course I just didn't know do we have anybody else in the waiting room or are we jumping right in we have no one else yet right now all right well let's Jump Right In then so good evening everyone um my name is Cathy Lewis I am the current chair of the mashby school committee I am in my second term on the committee I um have a freshman in high school at mashby Middle High School I grew up in mashby live you know came back and have my family here now and just uh really am enjoying the work on the school committee that I've been doing and I'm also the recent um elected secretary for division 7 with the Massachusetts Association of school committees so um not
002only do I work here in mashby but I also try to keep us connected to what's going on at the state level with School committees as well so uh welcome to tonight and we have with us uh don if you'd like to introduce yourself sure uh don Myers um I've been on the school committee for a while I think 11 years maybe and the various roles um one of the things which we're going to talk about tonight um I focus a lot on um just because I have a finance background is our finances and um you know money that we spend and allocate well allocate and spend um educating um our students educating our teachers Administration and supporting the needs of everyone so we have enough stff comes here next and I am superintendent Patty
003dor welcome to this is the second of four planned sort of drop in Zoom meetings where the school committee can help to inform our parents and Guardians in mashby community what they do in their role as members of the school committee great ince yourself yeah Ashley do you want to introduce yourself really quick hi everyone I'm Ashley Lopes I'm the Director of Finance the one here prepared the original budget with input from everybody and she's the one who pays all the bills um for the district yes she is our numbers Guru without everything I come to a speeching h so true so um as superintendent dor said this is our second uh drop in Zoom um and tonight we're going to be discussing the uh fiscal year 2025 budget uh as well as the 2024
004family opinion survey and student opinion survey and um we might touch on one other topic if we have time but we're going to see how long it takes us to get to those through those two first so with that being said um we're kind of in the middle of budget season so for those of you who don't understand Municipal budgeting um it's quite a process um the fiscal year starts July 1st ends June 30th and and because of that we begin our process sometime in October um where Ashley will kind of start she probably starts a little bit before then I would say um but October is kind of one of our first big deadlines where we have to enter the um the proposed budget into the town system kind of to get the ball
005rolling um sorry we've got a couple introductory slides here yeah yeah so currently um we serve about we serve 14 1,458 students um we present this narrative um we call it the budget narrative to the town manager and um eventually it goes before the select board for their approval which then it comes before the town for approval um at town meeting so these are some of our highlights from the last year and some of our goals um actually from more than just the last year um but these are what we like to highlight our district is doing um Don it feel free to chime in at any point if you want to add anything here um well so one of the things that I just wanted to point out here discover this whole process really
006starts um a year in advance of when the budget gets submitted so um in the spring so this coming spring um at the school starts really working to try to put together all the um estimated expenses and then that process continues forward uh to what Kathy was talking about in regard to um coming together as a districtwide u budget but it really comes from the very bottom up and gets uh raised and reviewed [Music] at multiple levels within the administration um so that you know all of the needs of the students that we can anticipate are covered but one of the um big problems is we're making a budget well in advance of when the actual expenditures are going to happen so um there is some guesswork uh and estimation that has to take place
007in doing this that and you know I really commend uh Ashley and the administration on their ability to be able to do that um I don't know as a parent I could do that um but they're able to um consistently come up with a pretty good budget that um supports the needs of the students sorry I was just gonna say so what Don was saying in March and April of this year so of 24 we start to accumulate from the ground up the early workings for the budget for FY 26 so that's what kind of lead time we're talking about um when we're working towards planning the future years for mashby and I think the other important thing that Don and superintendent dor hit on is that a lot of it is estimates and with
008you know mun ipal municipalities and towns there's like it's procurement is a very big thing so we may have a project that we can estimate but until it goes out to bid until we get those quotes back we don't necessarily always know the full scope of the cost um and so sometimes we're estimating for things that we need to put in the budget but we don't always have hard numbers until things come back to us through that procurement process for some of the bigger projects um so just keeping that in mind too that it's it's more than just kind of looking at numbers there are some estimations made and and I think I'm going to Echo Don's Point here that you know we have a great team that really is able to do a good
009job and and keep a a pretty good budget that is making sure the needs are met and the facilities are maintained and and it's it's working so that B sorry I was gonna add and we can do it one later on the slide but about 81% of our budget is personnel and in most cases there that we have a ve I mean we have a very good handle on each individual who's within that budget where they are in terms of what their salary is supposed to be the following year so we feel confident generally with that number but then they're always variables with unexpected retirements or what someone comes in at so um while there's a lot of known are always those unknowns so so what we're looking at now is in the budget overview
010we like to show what we had the previous year compared to what we were requesting for the next year so currently we are in fiscal year 24 we are getting ready to make our request at town meeting for fiscal year 25 um as you can see we are requesting a total of 2,434 353 which is an increase of um 4.44% so um it's not a massive amount it's mostly a superintendent Bo just said a lot of it is tied to salaries which are contractual obligations um and we did you know what you're seeing the school choice offset and capital Improvement program those items you know will they've been taken out of the initial recommended budget and so what we hope to have approved by the town manager and the select board will be that 25
011million 434 353 um and we're in the process of that now so we'll hopefully see some more information on that soon but that is what we're looking at in this slide Don you want to add anything to this or move on go ahead and move on okay um in our budget narrative and when we present this to the town we like to show our plan for Success which is our fiveyear um our fiveyear plan for how we improve the school district and things that we've identified as needing to work on and work toward um it includes our mission statement for the district our vision for the district core values and then our four pillars of success uh portrait of a graduate which to the right here you can see the five pieces of the portrait
012of a graduate um you can use your QR you can scan a QR code to learn more about them um about each one of them but those are the five things that we feel every student in Mash B Public Schools when they graduate should be fully competent in um and then diversity equity and inclusion is another pillar teaching and learning and then mashpia connected community so as the budget's being developed the items that we're looking at on the budget the the initiatives we're taking within the schools what the district needs are we try to make sure that they are all aligned to this plan for Success so that we are moving this plan for Success forward um and ensuring that our students are graduating with these five competencies uh so that is why we include
013this in the narrative the budget narrative because we do want people in the town not just the parents of the students but you know taxpayers in town who are also funding this budget to understand what their money is going toward and this is a big piece of that Don if you want to add anything no you did a good job on that one may I add that uh just for everyone who is listening under each strategic objective there is a series of initiatives uh not presented on this slide but definitely in the full narrative that's posted to the website and each year this is year three this is going into year four uh we've chosen certain initiatives to focus on and then hopefully by the time we're in the last year we will have spent
014time um accomplishing all the initiatives or the action steps to uh reach the Strategic objectives exactly so if you want to read more of that you can always go to our website and find that we also include that um you can probably find it in a couple of our packets for meetings as well yes um as we talked we kind of talked about the budget time a little bit already but here it is presented and it can kind of it shows you a little bit more where we're at at the moment um so as we said early spring we kind of start um the district leadership begins meeting we establish our goals and priorities of the school committee goes to the finance working group to review in the summer and the fall where the draft
015is made um October as I mentioned that October deadline that's when the budget is entered into nunis which is the town's counting system um October through December we review as a school committee we review the budget we kind of find tooth Comet make sure that the items we feel need to be in there are in there the amounts that we you know that look like they should be in there are in there questions get answered um Ashley is great at answering our questions and for those of you who don't know sometimes we as school committee members will ask questions mostly Don who is our financial Hawk here but um I will say a lot of his questions are the ones that I end up wanting to ask as well so he covers a lot of
016the things I have questions on I also learn from his questions too um but those questions sometimes get emailed to Ashley you can access those questions through our website at any time they are made public so if you ever had question of like why didn't they ask through about this chances are pretty good it has been asked it's just was asked outside of the meeting but it is made public through those um emails and linked on our website um so basically right now we've presented to the town manager the school committee has voted on this on the 17th we voted to approve this budget um it the next day was presented to the town manager and now we kind of are waiting for the budget to be presented to the finance committee sometime in March
017and then once the finance committee makes its recommendation it will go before our annual town meeting on May 6th which is why it is important that people go to town meeting if they can and and to approve it ahead joh so just to elaborate a little bit on this process um so we have sent the our proposed budget um as far as for Appropriations requests to the town manager um the town manager obviously is reviewing it and if has questions we'll get back uh to us um sometimes in the past um the town manager has come back and said um he can't balance the town budget and has requested us to um try to make Cuts in our budget and uh we're possible we have tried to accommodate him in the ominous budget that will
018be presented at town meeting there will be the school's request requested um appro appropriation budget there will be the town managers um requested appropriation by department so therefore for the school district it's important for people to understand that when the when you're voting at town meeting you're voting on the town manager's request you're not voting um on the school committee's request so if there is a difference and there has been in the past um it's actually the town manager's uh line item um that is being voted on in and it's usually done in totality so you're voting on the entire ominous budget um there is possibility that um the towns folks might not approve the uh budget and if that was the case um then what would happen is whatever the difference would have to
019be rectified um on town meeting floor um I've been attending meetings for 20 years that's never happened um but that's always um a possibility usually uh the school and the and the town manager are able to come to uh some sort of agreement in regard to any differences in the um om omous budget um the select board and the fincom um provide recommendations in regard to whether they recommend voters approve or not approve um the ominous budget and also um the Capital Improvement plan so those are recommendations those are not um they do not have the ability to um change the budget but they can provide um at least their recommendations uh to the voters and that will be published in the annual report and just to trail on to that that's for those who
020are maybe new to meeting format that's when they go through that the Omnibus I never say that word right um when they go through that budget the town manager's recommended budget that's when you'll hear people say hold you know like they they may ask for a hold on an item and that would be when you could question why there's a difference between the school committee's requested and what the town manager's proposed is so if again for those who might be new I know again some of our stakeholders are new to town some of our families are new to town might not have experienced town meeting before but as Don explained in in great detail I think that process you know if you do come to town meeting and you hear someone as they're going through
021that budget say hold that's a way to ask questions at that point so and just to add that um it is my understanding that this week the town manager is meeting with his team of um planners at Town Hall and reviewing all of the submitted operating budgets and that if there is going to be a requested uh change to our budget we should be hearing about that very soon excellent um so as we prepare the budget um you know Don mentioned we it starts from the bottom up um there are guidelines to it that we try to adhere to you know we want to make sure we're um it we're covering all of our legal and contractual mandates we want to make sure that anybody who you know has some kind of legal or contractual
022obligation is is fulfilled um we want to include sufficient operating and capital funds to address as we said the plan for success and implementation uh we would like to keep current level of Education Services Educational Services for masy students uh we need to keep up with our technology ology services and demands uh for all of our students and in Mash we we're very fortunate to be able to provide our students with a onetoone um at least that's starts what in sixth grade it's a one to one or does it go younger than that now no it's pretty well the way down okay so in match we were very fortunate to have that Ono one technology to student uh ratio which is is really amazing um we also want to make sure our budget covers any
023updates to curriculum and also address is the increasing social emotional needs of our students um through Staffing and programming uh don you want to talk about those last two um I'm gonna cover those in the okay so the other guidelines that we cover are school choice program funds we want to maintain a $250,000 floor is kind of our emergency fund um and we'll get into school choice funds I think in a few minutes a little deeper um and we also want to we also assume that ongoing practices and protocols to maintain the facilities are funded through the dpw's operating budget for 2025 F schal year 2025 um again for those who might be new to the district or to the town uh mashby our buildings are not operated by the schools or not maintained rather
024by the schools um they are maintained by the DPW so any facility improvements repairs upgrades anything building wise um in terms of repairs and maintenance is handled by the DPW and not by the school department we we work in conjunction with them and on some things we may provide some funding and they may provide funding but there are certain things that when we're building our budget um we are assuming that certain things that they have been paying for in the past will continue to be paid for such as the Merv 13 filters hand sanitizer sanitizing wipes disinfectants those types of items so and also to H have everyone realize that the custodians are not part of our Personnel budget nor are the groundskeepers they all fall under the DPW in the year-end reporting there's an
025allocation related to our buildings but we don't have control over um those components the other piece that um people should be aware of that's not included in the town or in the school budget is for um our technical schol in harwi um that is a separate line item that uh for both uh operating expenses uh for each of the U students U mhby gets a allocation um set by the technical school um mashby also similarly um is paying for Capital Improvements so the recent um new building that was built for um the technical school um MHP is will be paying for for I think the next 10 or 15 years or maybe longer so um those are two um significant expenses that are not included in the school budget but like you were talking about
026before at town meeting in the Omnibus budget there is a line item where you will see the Cape Cod Tech operating budget Mash be share of it and when I mean they have the same uh well not the same they have a similar process so that superintendent goes to each of the towns to present uh his his budget to the select board and then again fincom and select board make their recommendation to approve it or not so you'll see it in total in terms of technically it's usually a separate warrant article for the Cap Cod Tech usually I don't think they include that no it's in the Omnibus it's in the Omnibus budget okay I'm confusing it with where I work sorry because they do a separate War article for that one yeah and um
027contractually um the representatives on the school board for the technical school are appointed um by the town they're not part of the school committee so um it it truly operates as kind of a separate school um from the public [Music] school right yep so the big question where does all the money come from um and that's what this slide kind of shows and in the uh budget narrative we try to really clearly spell out where we get our funding from um we do get about eight in fy2 we're anticipated to get about 800,000 000 in Grants um we talked about school choice program funds so um those are monies that come from students who come into Mash B for an education from a neighboring Town um there is money that that moves between districts to
028cover the costs of students who are utilizing school choice to attend a school in a different town um and that is always spent in a rear a year in a rear so um the f y 25 that that's coming from the money from this year um that we've earned from students School choicing into mashby public schools um the town of mashby we do ask for the remaining amount which is usually a large lump sum and then the state has what is known as Chapter 70 state aid which is a calculation it's an equation that the the state uses um to determine how much funding each town and city in the state receives um um so go ahead Don um actually I don't know offand the exact amount you probably know it off the top of
029your head but um for each student who comes to mashby for under the school choice program um the state calculates what the reimbursement is and I believe it's around $5,000 is that still correct it's $5,000 per student if they're here for the entire year if they're here for a shorter period of time it is prated all right so we're getting reimburse $5,000 um the superintendent and administration uh along with working with the faculty determine how many seats that we can accommodate at various grades in regard to having students uh from outside who do not live in mashby come to mashby um and that's really if we have a class of let's say 12 people um and the normal size for that particular class is 16 then um the belief is generally that that class uh
030ruin could support for uh students who are coming under the school choice program and the te and that's done at a grade level by grade level um basis build up on an annual um or each year and that determines how many school choice seats are going to be available uh that information is presented to the school committee and then the school committee ultimately uh votes on that um and then there's a lottery that's done um or as publicized as seats are available um and if necessary lotteries done in order to fill those so just to give a little bit of perspective and this is um old information but um desie calculates what a per student expenditure is um and so for 2022 this is the latest information that Desi has published um they're showing that
031for IND District um expenditures it's we're spending $2,676 so just contemplate the difference between we're getting reimbursed 5,000 and we're spending uh 20 on average uh 21676 now that calculation includes you know building costs Etc um so that's a fully loaded one but just to give you an idea of what you're spending as a taxpayer per pupil so just to to add a little clarification we do look across each grade level when we're when we're considering where to add school choice or offer school choice seats we look at our resources because school choice is not meant to increase the budget in any way we're not going to add a teacher in order to accommodate 20 more school choice students so we do look across each grade level and we also look at sort of our
032past experience with the number of students who move in and out during the summer where like say 8th grade to ninth grade we tend to lose some students because they have other choices so we have places to look at to try to be um consistent but when we open up school choice seats we are taking sort of the resources we currently have in place um and finding out where there are spaces to add children in without increasing the budget in any way and just to point out you know the Chapter 70 um8 has always been an issue with the um State as far as um they provide a lot of unfunded mandates that don't come with funding um that chapter 78 uh for FY 23 was four 4,772 th000 so you know it's gone up
033about $80,000 from FY um 23 to 24 and we're projecting not much of a change uh looks like no change um for next year so you know that's not a big Source it's really um the town that ends up providing us with the biggest source of our funding and if you look in total um the school budget represents well used to represent um roughly about 45% of the Town budget uh with the sewer projects and all of that stuff coming in I'm not sure what that percentage is going to be my guess is I'll probably drop a little bit but um you by far we are one of the biggest expenditures and obviously one of the biggest employers also and sure everyone realizes the chapter 78 goes directly to the town of mashby right yes
034so um the budget gets split in a sense into two categories we've got the Personnel budget we've got the operating budget um so Personnel budget really reflects the salaries of our contracted um faculty and staff um as you can see a lot of these are known because of the contracts what the increases will be um we just finished up our um last round of negotiations so we should be good for another three years with our our wonderful faculty and staff and um that is a lot of what we're looking at here there was an increase of about $900,000 um and again this is this is all these are known increases so this is um as superintendent dor said about 81% of the budget is tied up to these numbers um we did request this year
035a new position in a part-time pilot position um for a data analyst to focus on student data whether it's test scores whether it's participation in sports or clubs or after school activities classes CL you know just across the board analyze the data coming out of our classrooms um but using specifically the lens of diversity Equity inclusion and belonging to make sure that we are uh lifting up all our students in Mash B and making sure that the choices we are making and funding are actually increasing our students achievement and uh ensuring that they are leaving Mash p as best prepared for the world as they can um we also do have some curriculum in technology increases and you know there are some potential unanticipated Personnel changes like superintendent deor mentioned we never know exactly who's
036going to retire higher or who's going to come in for the year so sometimes those can be unknown changes um but for this budget there are no increase to full-time employees um those FTE um but we like I said we are requesting that part-time pilot uh position so that is a slight increase from last year to this year Don do you want to add anything to this sir um just to point out that um one um this is fy2 is the second year of our 3-year contract um with um our teachers union which is um our our largest um fi 24 was the first year um but the other point I just wanted to make was that um while our overall headcount hasn't increased the allocation of the the headcount will be changing and uh
037I'm going to pass that to Patty um if she wants to make just a little bit of a comment about that and what you're looking at and I apologize I I see an error I was trying to fix it can you repeat your question so while our headcount is not changing um the allocation of our head count to the various schools is changing based upon the needs and so you just want to talk a little bit about that process and what and why you have why we're making those changes yes so our our bottom line goal is to um as a way to address the social emotional needs of our students post pandemic is to reduce our class sizes we feel that that is one strategy that will lead to improved academic outcomes and wellness
038for students so we have a goal of our k through eight classrooms being um at an enrollment of 16 students per class and then also so that goes all the way up to 8th grade also at the uh College Prep level courses at M Middle High School we also have a goal to keep those class sizes to 16 so that we're ever better able to support the Learners we have looked across um our resources in total and in looking at current sort of um teacher loads at mashby Middle High School we believe that we can reallocate teachers down into the fifth and sixth grade level which will then cause a little bit more shifting lower uh so just as P last week I sent out the email informing staff of what the plan was and
039seeking volunteers so far I already have one um from the Middle High School which currently is over resourced to shift a few down to the elementary so that we can reach our goal and um we do feel strongly that we we can accomplish this goal with our current staff which is um we're very fortunate to have a pretty expert uh group of individuals who work for us all right you want to go to the operational expense slide sure so this is just a quick overview that shows you the breakdown of the Personnel it does remain pretty static from year to year uh you'll see a little slight difference in qu special ed to Cate special ed from uh FY 24 to fy2 generally um there's pretty much consistency the other piece up here um is
040the two schools sorry regular Ed and special ed but I will go to the next slide that's the this is the operation non-personnel right so go ahead Don you take so really this is if you look at um what's ENT entailed here the two biggest items that stick out to you are going to be out of district tuitions and transportation um I will handle the transportation and I will defer to uh the superintendent on the out of District but so Transportation Mash p is one of the few if last um schools here on Cape Cod and probably around the state that provides free Transportation or I.E free buses um to all of our students so everyone who lives in mashby can ride the bus there's no bus fees if you move to Barnstable you're going
041to pay a bus fee um that is something that we have been doing um for a long time we feel it's important that that this is not a burden um on students and families to be able to get to school um the other items that are listed here excluding um the out of District you know a lot of supplies um are included in here technology is included in here um those are things that help support our teachers in the classrooms support our faculty uh Administration to be able to do their jobs this is something that doesn't increase a whole lot year-over-year matter of fact this is increasing less than uh uh the total of the budget U is so um with that I'm want to let P just talk briefly about about the out of
042District tuition and what that's made up of um to make sure that you it's said concisely and incorrectly um well I might actually have uh Director of Finance Lopes involved as well what I did want to say to everyone is that the narrative that is posted on our website describes so when you look at the percentage change we look at anything that seems sort of abnormally High anywhere from the 9.61% that you see at District administration the 35.6 at there is an explanation for all of those within that narrative just um to clarify if you're wondering you know that seems high even though as Don pointed out overall the increase is 3.75% um director Finance Lopes do you want to add the out of District piece for I know that we've had students who have
043graduated out of the program yes so out of District tuitions um are related to are are student specific so those costs relate to the services that we provide to students who are outside of the mashby public schools receiving special education services um those will change year-over-year depending on what services are needed and what students are in District and at a district it's a very fluid number um a lot of towns uh will talk about this number can break a budget year-over-year so um our administrative team works very closely to project what the out of district tuitions will be from year to year um last year right as we submitted our budget the state gave us a 14% increase for private placements so that uh really impacted school districts in their projections uh this year you
044can see that we have a reduction because we had a change in services of those students who are out of district and most and just so everyone knows that a student who's out a district or needs support we cover that until they age out at age 20 2 it's not 18 when they graduate high school all right so just in the essence of time there's a number of other slides that are in the presentation that's posted on the website um if anyone has questions regarding uh the information is contained in here um please don't hesitate to reach out to the school committee or reach out to um the superintendent or the finance director um they would be more than happy uh to answer your questions yes and we are definitely available and happy to answer
045any questions you might have but um like Don said I'd like to Echo if you have questions or if you just have some time and really want to look at these numbers it's all posted online um for full transparency we we try to make it um easily understood by our families and cons and and taxpayers in town so please feel free to look through those um and and you know just pay attention to the numbers and be at town meeting to vote to help approve them so did you want to talk CIP you paused here for a minute well we did so the CIP committee did meet and approve both the 50,000 and 25,000 that you see there that were our CIP requests now that's within the committee the committee still has to come down
046to sort of their total we're sort of almost there and then What's the total that the town manager is comfortable with and moving forward with but um specifically within the committee those items for the schools have been approved down below as we said the DPW is responsible for maintaining our buildings so a lot of times there are CPI CIP requests that come through the director of the DP p w Katherine Lorent so flooring Replacements fire alarm upgrades is particularly at the mashby Middle High School uh the Kum School Safety and Security window film because they have a lot of glass and then we're asking um she put in 75,000 for an engineering design um for the access road that we are seeking it includes a pedestrian walkway but it would be for uh bus transportation
047and emergency vehicles to try to alleviate some of the um stress on Old barnville Road at arrival and dismissal all right okay thank you and if you're still with us we're going to take our last uh 12 minutes here to talk about our annual um Family parent Guardian survey and then our more recent student survey so the school committee we we don't want to operate in a vacuum you know we were elected to represent the families and taxpayers of mashby um but we do try to keep a student forward and student centered view as we're we're doing our work in order to do that we found that it's very important and helpful to actually hear from families and what three years ago we implemented the student version of the survey or four years ago this
048will be the third year for students so three years ago in an effort to increase student voice we distributed a very similar almost identical survey to students in grades 5 through 12 um but we're going to talk I think first we're looking right now at the parent Guardian survey for students in grades 5 through 12 um oh and students in grades 5 through 12 sorry so every year we send this out uh we collect the data and this is what we try to use to inform our goals and decisions um as we as a committee work and try to ensure that our schools are the best they can be Don you want to add anything to that before we kind of go into the questions and how that all comes about no I mean because
049we've been doing this um particularly with the parent uh survey for a number of years it gives us an ability now to take a look at Trends over time to see whether or not there's improvements um based upon any changes that we've made in various uh areas and typically we the questions that we're asking um are very similar um or verba them year-over-year so it gives us confidence that um the feedback that we're getting um should be reflective of what we're doing yes and you know we do look at those year-over-year statistics and that's why you know we it may seem like a lot of questions but the information that we get from these surveys is quite invaluable um for us as a committee so um you know if you feel like it's the same
050old same old it really isn't and we really do appreciate you taking the time to answer it for each one of your students uh we should mention that this goes out to every family and we ask that you fill one out for every student in every school or grade that you have a student in so that we can get kind of a holistic picture of your thoughts on the schools and on your students experience in the schools um this year we are going to do something a little different to try to increase um participation and superintendent dore's edit there just reminded me of that we are going to be incentivizing this a little bit for families um with a drawing for um some Amazon gift cards if you complete the survey by a certain date
051which will be included in the sending of this um and this is kind of the draft that we're working on right now um so as you can see some questions might have changed from the year before um some questions are added like specifically I'm looking at question eight where you can see the wording that we had from the previous year our Outreach working group meets and they review this with the superintendent they go question by question to see if the question you know should stay if it's a legacy question are we still looking for that information are there things that we should add um you know during the co year we had a section of questions that were very specific to covid to um policies surrounding covid um to try engage what families were thinking
052during that time um clearly those questions are not on these surveys anymore because we've kind of passed that a little bit um but we do have other questions that we've added since then and have come and gone so um so the blue where the if it's shaded blue those tend to be our Legacy prompts which means they've been on for if not all the years most of the years um so those we keep sorry I was just gonna say there was some suggestion to move a few questions around just so that we if they were specific to staff they were all sort of connected in one zone I do want to speak also to the fact we do ask for your email in this not so much that we can identify you off the bat
053but more if there's a really glaring issue that the district can address um and are able to we would like to be able to reach back out to you so while the survey is going to ask for it's still does correct superintendent dor asks for the email address it asks it actually asks for the um the name Nam it asks for like the student names uh but I will reemphasize what um Kathy just said is that the principles the only person that really sees this information is me the principles do not even see um the the actual details that come in because we we encourage everyone to include any narrative that they would like and I have found that to be extremely beneficial and helps with problem solving that it would be harder if it
054was Anonymous but the schools do not see specific parent or Guardian responses um by name they just see it in the aggregate exactly so while it appears like that information will be distributed with your responses you it really is not even at the school committee level when we review these answers we are not seeing your name your child's name your email any of that it's really just if there is a really big um concern or issue expressed in a response it gives the district the ability to dig a little deeper and see if there's a more immediate fix for your student um than waiting for a districtwide change you know it's it's more so that we can tailor that to your child and make sure we're addressing any glaring issues right off the bat um
055that being said the the survey is what are we at this year we're at we jumped the questions yeah so we're at 44 questions no 30 seconds 36 36 for the pr uh parent Guardians quate and mmhs 33 for kum's parents and then the last two columns are students uh the mmhs and then the quash so um we do also put this through a parental right we still reach out to the parents we're probably going to do a zoom um where we're going to go over all these questions as well and sometimes it's a word change it makes a lot of sense from a perspective of a parent so it's good yes and go ahead just elaborate on one thing in regard to confidentiality so um what is shared with the school committee is only
056um aggregate information it's it is not individual information so um just to emphasize that we you know the only one who's seeing that is uh the superintendent right yes um so again these these surveys are very important they're usually sent out we're sending this out right around school February school break correct superintendent we are still aiming for probably around the Wednesday we get back from the February vacation and we're going to probably extend it a little bit into March we are trying to have it um be available at some of the school events because there is a strong desire to have a table and encouragement to have people complete the survey there um the other piece too is we trying to incentivize with the Amazon gift card which thank you to the boosters as they
057have provided that to us we will also do some sort of uh the students at the Middle High School kind of like the idea of some type of a gift card as well the elementary schools are going to do some sort of like pizza party challenge for you know 100% participation with you know taking your time and reading the questions carefully which is great because you know while parents see things one way you know as a parent I know my perception might be different than my child who is in the building day in and day out so um as a school Committee Member it's very interesting to see the differences between the parents answers and the student answers or in some cases the similarities between the parents answers or Guardians answers and the the students
058answers so this again I can't stress enough I know it seems kind of like oh I got to take a survey but we do use this data very much to understand you know what people perceive the need in our schools ought it to be um last year we had some some scores on some of these questions regarding safety and how our children feel in school if they feel safe in school um it was a little vague last year I think this year we've kind of made that a little bit more clear correct I'm trying to see yeah it's 20 it's qu right at the top of the screen 26 yeah so this year we're gonna kind of separate it out between physical safety and emotional safety um but the overall notion last year was not
059exactly what we had hoped it to be so when we were making our goals as a school committee in August we really wanted to focus on the safety of our students and making sure that students who attend mashby feel safe so um we do use these answers and we do look at these answers and we try to inform our decisions uh based on some of these perceived needs and perceived experience you know and these experien um I shouldn't say perceived experence their experiences that people are having that are making them answer this way so you know please take a few minutes to answer these questions for each one of your students and if you have a student remind them say hey did you take that survey yet um because it it's important information and we
060really do value it in terms of the students this year too last year we kind of had we picked a block of time at the middle high school and said okay everybody's going to take it well there was some crashing and learning involved with that so we are going to be very specific as sort of seventh grade is taking it on this day during this block of time and so spreading that out um for their initial and obviously um kids can finish it also no one no student is required or forced to take it it is still voluntary but we are going to work with our teachers and um to make sure that we're all messaging the importance of student voice and answering the questions so hopefully that will help yes of course it's it's
061not mandatory but it is appreciate it so very much that is yes very very much Don do you have anything else you want to add to the survey no I I think um you know the school committee the superintendent have put um a lot of work into uh trying to craft an informative survey um you know they have done uh some focus groups to try to refine it um and make sure that we're covering uh the right things here so um you know and I hope that uh we're able to get a high percentage of both parents and uh students participating in it so I look forward to seeing what the the results are agreed it is always very interesting that night when we get to kind of review those results so um that being
062said thank you again for tuning in tonight uh hopefully you've got a little bit more understanding of our budget and how we craft and develop and present and vote on our budget um hopefully those of you who watch this will be at town meeting to help support the schools and the approval of our budget um and then also hopefully you understand why we do our students our our family survey as well as our student survey and as Don mentioned earlier if you ever have any questions all of us school committee members we do have personal emails but we also have a group email school committee at MPS pk12.com can either answer or direct you to the person who can depending on what the question is but we definitely welcome hearing from families and constituents uh
063because we we recognize um the importance of our schools and how it factors into our town budget as a whole so thank you for spending some time with us tonight and hopefully you found that informative thank you thank you everybody I'm going oh soon as I uh okay I'm going to stop recording now