Methuen School Committee Meeting 03-31-2025

001to the fact we just wrapped up an executive session. This meeting is being recorded and will be made available for viewing on the Mthuan Public Schools website. Uh, Secretary, would you please call the role? Member Daglio, present. Member Dunovan, here. Member Keegan, present. Member Maxwell present. Member Shabilia here. Member Wlette here. Mayor Borgod here. We need a motion and a second to accept the agenda as presented for March 31st, 2025. Motion from member Shabilia. Second is from the vice chair. Discussion. There's no discussion. Will vote. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. The eyes have it. Now we will rise for the flag salute. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next is

002public participation. Uh we do have uh some comments that were submitted electronically. Uh does anyone else though before we do that have any public comment? If not, we will read into the record the content that was submitted. All I attempted to compare the proposed budgets by measuring a few key metrics. However, the information provided in the packet and previous year's budget packets were not sufficient to compare to prior actual expenditures. The chart of accounts in the education budget expenditures is severely lacking in definition and organization. There are no delineations between fixed and variable cost or delineation between expenses and labor related expenses and labor salaries. Additionally, there are no mappings from the numbers presented in the provided packets to the cost centers or accounts in the general ledger. And this prevents my comparison or understanding

003of how the presented expenditures will affect the finances of the city. There are no discussions in the packet about school performance or how the expenditures from the previous year affected school performance or the forecast of how these planned FY26 expenditures will affect school performance. A significant portion of the FY25 budget was paid out to a vendor to vendors and consultants through contracts. However, there are no discussions of contracts, their performance, and no visibility into which items in the final budgets and actual expenses are sent to vendors through contract vehicles. Our contract performance goals established are key key performance indicators established and monitored in cost plus contracts. Are the cost adequately evaluated promptly? Essentially, are there vendors performing their services as required? and how can you show your work? In CY24, the city of Methuan's education

004department was proven unable to monitor school performance as identified by the rodent issues and the heating failures, both of which were distinct failures of supervision of either personnel performance or vendor performance. FY26 is an opportunity for the city of MDUN education department to refocus on results. requests. One, provide the FY26 budget estimates in the same chart of accounts that is used to report actual expenditures at the city as seen in the transparency dashboard. Two, provide definitions for the usage of each account. Three, provide a view of the FY26 budget that categorizes expenses into at least three organizational classes, labor, contract, general expenses. Four, provide information about the contractor's contract performance for any contracts that will be funded through the budget. Five, provide an example, provide an explanation as to the department will use the FY26

005funds to prevent the cat catastrophes that were witnessed in calendar year 24. Bobby King, my understanding is that the that's the only comment that was submitted electronically. Uh so at this point, we will close public participation. If you are unable to make a meeting in person for public participation, you can send an email to Martha S. Royce at masir o i s mthuan.k12.mma. us before 3 p.m. on the day of a school committee meeting. Uh so at this point uh superintendent I'll invite you to uh start the continued discussion uh regarding uh this uh look ahead at uh the fiscal year 26 preliminary uh budget document. Um just for the sake of discussion uh this is going to come up as a question I know uh we are still in the process the cafo and

006I are finalizing a number in terms of the city contribution. We will get that to the superintendent this week. drop dead this week uh deadline for that. Um I will say that there are a lot of other uncertainties that are at play, namely regarding uh the availability of federal funding. I know that we're still waiting on official word about what to expect uh in that uh regard. And then also uh what I will say is um I know there was a story in the paper about how this is a proposed $20 million increase uh to the uh proposed budget. At this point, you know, we're having these initial discussions about what some of the needs and desires are going forward for fiscal year 26, but uh I can say with uh you know, we're going

007to have the number this week, but we're certainly going to be significantly closer to net school spending than I think we're thinking of here. Um but nevertheless, we can begin the conversation with that as background. Okay. So, uh, I have I did give everybody a packet of, uh, slides for tonight. I did add a couple of slides based on some conversations since the posting of this Thursday. So, this has been reposted, just the last few slides. Um, again, just some information that came from a few school committee members. We might as well put it out there since I had it. Um but basically the slides are in order uh of just uh trying to synthesize some of the requests from the school committee from the last meeting information right I think this was information that

008was a lot to process uh and I do expect and if you don't I guess I I totally understand and if you do have more questions tonight that's also what we expect um to uh search and sort of find other answers uh that you guys might have to your questions. Um, so this was uh one of the questions uh that came from member Keegan of which of the positions that we have on the books right now that are new are non-negotiable, meaning that our service delivery uh based on requirements. So I have put those here so you can see from each school which positions those are and the total amount of dollars that those positions equal. Um 26 of those are special education. I kept the four ELE ones in there because while they are

009not in an individualized education plan like special education uh without those additional staff, we will not we will 100% be out of compliance for service delivery for our English learners. Again, it's a little bit different. Um but uh I just need to make sure that that is really clear for everybody. Uh so I did leave those four requests uh in here that you'll see. I also there's a note on the side member Keegan had brought up as well that the narratives didn't seem to match with the program assistance that we were eliminating. So uh that has been uh corrected and the narratives uh reflect an accurate reflection of the total number of program assistants coming out of the K4 program. if indeed we go ahead with constellations. So I don't know if there's any questions

010about that slide or that information. Member Keegan or anybody else. Did that answer your question? Member Shabilia. So this is 1.3 million of net new positions needed to keep us in compliance. Correct. I know that you aren't prepared to answer this question, but I'm ask it anyways. of our budget now. What is what is required to keep us in compliance? Just do you know a percentage off hand like of the positions we currently have? I don't have a number but I would say that current in the current FY25 budget anything that we haven't reduced because of case loads and numbers which we've already gone through that process. So you'll see in some of the schools last week we presented a reduction in I'm looking at uh resource room teachers in a couple of places just

011as kids move those numbers become smaller. Okay. Um so we've already done that. So we've done the case load part of that work with special education and any reductions that we felt were necessary have already happened. So everything else that's currently in the budget or presented to you last week is what we would need for compliance to actual for service delivery. Any of the speech and OT request that's all part of this as well. And this can change after October 1st. This could change after today, right? Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, and just to be clear that if we do not fund these positions, then these students have to go out of district to get the services that we're required to give them and that would cost even more money. Yeah. So, so yes,

012on the we're required to provide the services. So, one way or the other, I mean, that's some of these are onetoone nurses. uh that I can't I can't replicate that in the district for some of the needs that the kids are have at this point. Um but yes, if we can't service those those become compensatory services at some point. Again, these are all a little bit different. Some of these are onetoone PAS. So I h I I I won't be compliant with the students services if I don't have those positions. I know I don't I don't know which other I know you guys are trying to ask me to say it in different ways. I don't I don't know how else to say it. There are some of these position like I'm we're going to

013have to have these positions so I have to figure out how to get to give give to get. Yeah. Yeah. Um thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah. I I know we have to fund these positions, but also that like I said, I'm not this is not negotiable, but the problem also what it's going to cost us more money because finding people for these positions are also hard. So, we're going to be in that situation anyways, but I understand from the point. I just want the public to know it's really hard to find these positions. So, we need that extra money anyways because we're going to be paying for out services until we get these people in the school. So, that's why just having them there, we at one point we could bring them back. So, I

014want people to understand that from both sides of that. Any other questions? If not, we'll move on. Okay. So, this was a a question, a request from member Maxwell. I think just to break down, uh I had it into three groups. Students with special needs versus students with subsparate needs and non-subspparate needs. So, we had some of that in the narrative, but it it we had some additional things in there. So, I basically just broke it down into the three groups. So if you look and I kept it with 21 versus uh 20 no current so five-year difference. So the first uh line there the stu the SWD PK through 12 those are the total number of students with disabilities we have in the district. So 1395 in 2021 and 1581 this year. Um the

015SS stands for subspparate. So subsarate prek through 12 plus. In 2020, we had 209 and this year we have 286. Uh, and the non students, non-subspparate special education kids make up the rest. So, I don't know if there are any questions on that information. I have um I have some questions. So, it says students with disabilities. Is that is this IEPs and 504s? No, just IEPs. So through the numbers that you provided the last uh meeting there were 13 1,380 students on IEPs. Yep. So th this would include out of district students as well. This is our total student population. I can't forget about those as a total. Um so this is actually the number of of students we have with IEPs. the 1581 the 1380. Yes. Okay. Um, so it's a total number. So

016what what are I mean how many students are out of district? 180 175. Um, and how many of these? Um, so I I guess with the with the budget that was from last week and I guess with this slide here, I you know, I did write and ask about separating out the services provided of reading services or writing versus OT and speech. I think that that's critical for us to know because um I mean you know for instance we have the marsh who has 227 students on an IEP and we have 268 at the tim and I understand that the marsh has high needs so I'm not suggesting that anything be taken or not given to the marsh but I think that obviously it looks like here that the tim is you know very underserved

017in comparison with their teachers. So, I'm just curious to see the breakdown of um the actual services needed. Yeah. So, um I did respond to your request on Friday in an email just saying that if we were going to do what you requested, it would be every the seas would have to go through each IEP by hand. Um so, there's a way that we can break it down a little differently. It wouldn't be as specific as what you're looking for, but it would be the data that we send to the state and I can get that. It's definitely not going to be broken down by each student's grid with how much service they receive. We don't I don't have that. I don't think the need of how much service um they need is as important

018as finding out how many have certain needs for certain services and do we have the staff to service them? So, so the the budget that we're presenting to you has been developed with the seas, the principles and GINA at every single school saying this is the service delivery requirements of the school by way of teachers by by way of related service providers, program assistance, etc. So everything that we're presenting is what is going to cover the service deliveries of each of the schools with what we presented to you last week. I mean, um, I would I would just be interested in seeing the breakdown because I think that that's, like I said, I think that's significant and I think that it's important for us to make that decision with the budget in mind. I I

019feel like maybe we don't need certain positions or maybe we do need more positions and and that is very interesting to me because I I want to make sure that every child is getting serviced the way that they should. Also, there are IEPs in our districts that are stay puts and there are also IEPs that aren't currently being serviced. So, I would be interested in seeing those numbers as well because we have, you know, we have, let's say, 1300 IEPs. How many of them are state puts and not actually being serviced? A state put doesn't mean that they're not getting serviced. They're getting serviced by their most recent. Sure. Right. Right. Yes. Um, thank you. But I think those numbers are important as well only because I think that the it kind of gives us

020an idea of how many kids may be either on their way out or on um on your radar of needing more services or whatnot. So I I guess I'm I'm still confused. Yeah, please. I just want to make sure I get the request. is there on sorry when I met with the Tim staff we looked at all the services case load all of those pieces so for the Tim for the budget we're proposing an additional resource room teacher because the level of need for students that require the pull out resource room or inclusion support is higher than in some of the other buildings whereas at the marsh Marsh, we're asking for more staff to support the subspparate program, but when we actually looked at their resource room services and levels, we're reducing a a resource

021room teacher at the marsh as well as the CGS. So, through the budget process and all those discussions, those are all the things that we're looking at throughout the year to determine so that when we propose the budget, we are increasing or reducing necessary levels of service. Okay. I I mean I I still am interested to see the breakdown of what services are being needed versus what is not and what we have for staff and what we don't. I I would still I mean I'm still interested in those numbers. I think that that's really important especially for this budget. So I understand the breakdown. We'll get you what we can. Y I I'm still confused about what you're looking for for staffing. So what we presented to you last week in the budget narrative has

022FY25 compared to FY26. Right. I understand that what you presented is what you think or the schools think would be most beneficial or yes that that is the desire of what that school needs. I would like to see the need rather than the want. So the breakdown of those numbers are going to help us with the actual So I would say to you that anything special education rel related is a is a need not a one. Okay. I would still request the breakdown. Okay. Any other questions or discussion? If not we'll move on. Okay. Okay. So, this was a um request from member Wlette, a historical breakdown of uh custodial and maintenance reductions over the course of and we went with FY14 was the actual year that I could find the most reliable information by

023staffing. Um, so, uh, I went with FY14 compared to FY25 and within that time frame, we are 17.5 less custodial and maintenance staff. Um, so I don't know if there's any questions about that. Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, in terms of the the grounds uh, operations for the school department, Yep. That does that entail in a municipal chargeback to take care of the grounds or are people doing double duty of our custodian building interior building exterior? Correct. Our custodians duty. Yes, our custodians have taken on some of the general grounds work, groundskeeping around the buildings and then in the summer we do have um some contracted service that do the laundry lawn larger like lawn mowing and mulching and things like that. But for the most part, it's the custodians in the building

024that do the preventative maintenance and stuff around the buildings. So, is there a municipal chargeback involved at all? Is there outside vendors that come in? Is it landscaping companies that Last year was the first time we went out to bid for uh landscaping over the summer just because we didn't have the staff to really pull out of the buildings. Um, we did get a company out of LOL um that did five of our six buildings. We did Branch Street ourselves. Um, and it was to the tune of like $80,000. Way cheaper than hiring a three-man ground crew. Okay. Um, they did a decent job. They're willing to do it for the same price next year. So, we're in the process of locking them up for that next year. Um, there there is not an exact

025chargeback from the city per se for mowing fields or anything like that. They may do, you know, some of the bigger fields, the baseball fields and stuff like that. Um but we do get as as part of our um chargeback agreement um which needs to be renewed but um it's been pretty consistent over the last years we do pay a certain percentage of the um DPW's total charges and I'll get the exact percentage of you. It's not that high. Um, but that that includes trash removal and things like that in in terms of like what was past 10 recommending to us in terms of reclamation of taking away the foliage and and bringing down trees and um is that landscaping company doing those things? Cuz when I went to the Tim that No, that is

026a they they do mowing, weed whacking, they do like a fall cleanup. they come around, they get, you know, all the leaves and they they do the beds and that kind of stuff. That would be above and beyond. Okay, we do have tree companies that we work with that that is in our it is in this budget to do it right away in July um under the uh extraordinary maintenance line. So, um but it's not the it's not that group. Okay. And then um do we have a sense of like when the $4 million deficit took shape based on a prior superintendent? Um is that when we hit the wall in terms of the custodians because you're talking about a roughly a 10-year look back period. So you have the final number versus the the

027prior number. Um, was the the $4 million deficit did is that when we really hit the custodial ranks or was it because we had again we had two successive $8 million increases to to our budget due to the student opportunity act and I know the city had an obligation to pay down that school deficit because of a prior administration with the stu uh superintendent. When did we hit that wall with the custodians? I mean, I would say um it wasn't all at once. I would say it was more gradual. It was a peace meal. Yeah, it was a peace meal. Um when we did have those years of the good funding, nothing was cut or very little if you know maybe a retirement we didn't refill if we felt it wasn't you know worth it.

028But um for the most part it's been peace meal up until this point. And then um I know with the the ice ring that's based on the revolving account and they get paid out of that. Correct. Okay. Now the lunch program I know it's it's kind of difficult because we're talking about federal versus state. I know the state with the millionaires tax does have a revenue stream. The federal we don't know. It could probably be cancelled or stimulus funding that ended. Yeah. Now the lunch program is that potentially or evolving to clean up the the lunch areas with those custodial crews or you have to be careful. We do we do have a certain percentage of um we have custodial support within the cafeterias so we can justify right now we pay two full-time custodians

029out of the cafeteria so districtwide. And then what schools would those be at? Um what we do is we we pick two we do half half of a custodian at four grammar schools is what we do so that it so that it's evenly when when the auditors come in they I can justify you know a 0.25 position to help clean the calf wipe down the tables and that kind of stuff. But it also I I don't want it to appear as though we're we're using the US government to fund all of our custodians. No. And again, so that's why I'm just that's why we split it up and make sure it's a you know 0.25 at each building. I'm sorry.5 at each building which equals uh two full-time custodians. Yeah. Well, again, the reason why

030I asked the question is is that one of the the schools was pretty even kill with the the maintenance crew from be beginning to end in terms of the years we're talking about. Another school had a reduction of of two, another school had a reduction of one, but another school had a reduction of uh three, and another high school had a reduction of four. I just want to make sure if it's common sense of backfilling as much as possible that those two people are allocated to schools that have been kind of like reduced in terms of the workforce uh as opposed to rotating because again issues arose and we need to be able to backfill and help with those situations. Um I think one thing we did do in here is last year obviously we

031cut a a CGS custodian and we feel you know we cut too close to the bone I believe. So first thing we wanted to backfill that and at least make them whole be before we start adding additional to other places and and I would add as many as I could if I knew we had as much money as we we needed. But again we got to have find a happy balance I believe. And then um this was something I mentioned during prior meetings in terms of the rental fees, what it's being allocated for, when's the last time it was visited. Um again, I only represent one voice, one vote. I want a hybrid approach, maybe have uh cleaning crew when we have vacation breaks or someone's on a sick leave or we have a depleted

032staff. um that rental fee account especially with the Tim and the Tenny because those are hightra schools. What exactly is that entail? Is that just a repair internally the schools? Is it help with overtime? Does it could potentially help with the outside cleaning crew? Yep. The uh it does both. It helps with facilities to some degree buying supplies, paper towels, stuff for the bathrooms that get used and consumed. So, we do make sure we back fill there. It pays for all the overtime for custodians who are working those events. It also pays for a full-time custodian out of central office. Um, we have a courier and a second shift custodian out of central office. We use the funds from the small gym at Branch Street to cover one of those salaries. Um, so yeah, we

033do we do use those funds. We're just careful how we do it. Okay. And when was the last time it was revisited with terms of the rental fees? When was the last time? We should probably rewrite the We should probably rewrite the policy. Okay. It needs to be revisited. We just need to find someone to revisit it. Maybe uh Mazbo has a Yeah. has a policy. I appreciate Thank you, Ian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Any other questions or discussion regarding Here we go. U member Daglio. Yeah, real quick. Um um so when it comes to the grounds crew um again like I know Wlette um covered it like I said going back when uh super the last superintendent was in office like I said we did volunteer work we did that again I feel like

034that is something we can capitalize help kids maybe do an internship program I know money um is tight But like like I said, I feel like with the $80,000, maybe we could put it towards that and get kids jobs working with the schools, maybe potentially become a a stream of baby custodians cuz I know that's how the last superintendent did it. That's how she kind of found a little pipeline. Um I don't know if we're interested in doing that or we have that type of capabilities right now. I feel like if we can deplete $80,000 and put it to something good, we could think about doing that. I I agree. It would be great to get kids involved. Um when we did do that, we had three full-time staff members that we were paying um

035to the total of probably about $150,000 a year to supervise those kids and make sure they were safe and then paying those kids on top of that. Um, we might be more interested, maybe not this year with the vendor we have coming in, but maybe next year we go out to bid for somebody who's interested in hiring a couple of our kids on their crew. And, you know, they add that to the bid, and it's a little bit more, but they're working for them, they supervise them, it's on their insurance, but our kids are getting the skills, they're getting the jobs, they're getting the the income. So, maybe that's something we should look at for next next fiscal year. Not not 26, but 27. Yep. Yeah. Perfect. Remember Dunovan? I know we're all looking back

036at what used to be um when there was a lot more money around, but I remember having the grounds crew from the city side come and do some significant, this was a while ago, significant like the pruning, the going around the buildings, getting rid of the shrubs. I don't know if that's feasible now, but um and I think member who was it for retro brought it up at our joint meeting. I think it would not be a bad idea if it's feasible to utilize if I welcome the collaboration with the city. What? I welcome the collaboration with the city. I mean, we work well with a lot of the departments. Um so, how would recreation? Yeah. You know, exactly. One handwashes the other. How would we get that conversation started? And I know we have

037to consider all the members involved. So yeah, I think you know there's there's always a better way of doing things, right? And um you know, it doesn't hurt to look back at things that have worked in the past and uh see how we can incorporate that potentially going forward as a way to streamline things as we plan for fiscal year 26 on the city side. So maybe it could be brought up. I I don't know how this convers we talk about it's a good idea but how can we take the steps to maybe have a conversation to see if it's feasible. I think at this rate you know I'm in the process of uh meeting with each department head to plan for fiscal year 26. So, uh, this is something that I can certainly bring

038back to to DPW. Member Wlette, just a quick question through the chair to, uh, Ian, when we have these vendors and landscaping companies and outside people coming onto our campus, do they have to abide by the the Corey checks like any type of employee? And again, I'm not a big fan of Corey should be the FBI database. It's more comprehensive. It's not state adjudication matters, but do they go through uh Corey? Any type of vendors? All all our vendors go through Corey check. They don't have a Cy, they they don't have our buildings. And then also um in terms of what the city council was doing, work in conjunction with the mayor. Do we know about like their tax status? Um and also in terms of E-Verify to make sure they're all on board. Is

039that something we as a committee should explore further? I'm not sure the ins and outs of E-Verify, but we do have to go on to the state. There's a state website we have to go on to make sure that they're tax compliant and they haven't been uh debarred, okay, by by the state. So, uh we do do that before we sign any contract. Okay. But it's something for future discussion too in terms of verify because I want to make sure and again I'm not accusing any particular company but something to to explore. Okay, thank you. All right, so I added the next one uh just in the the spirit of the one that member Wlette asked. Uh I had the information, so I calculated it. Um just so you all could see since 2014, we've

040had nine less clerical staff. I know we've been asking for uh additional clerical staff to come back. uh in probably almost every budget I've presented to the school committee in seven years. Um but just to see sort of a a snapshot of where we are with clerical staff in the district. Maxwell, um I know here it says that all the lower schools have two clerical positions. Um so I'm assuming that's the upper school and lower school receptionist. Correct. what is the parent liaison if they are not the receptionist? So the parent leaison is um really just that they are doing translations. They're sitting in IEP meetings to translate if the phone calls come in and we need somebody who speaks uh primarily Spanish. Um they're translating those phone calls for staff. So they are not

041primarily a secretary. They are not. That is not actually their primary role and that's unfortunately what many of them have taken on because of the need. But that is not their primary role is actually meetings, parent conferences. They come to the parent conferences for the afternoon and the evenings as well. Any other questions regarding the clerical slide? Member Shibilia. So this trip down memory lane has been um enjoyable. Do you like that member Donovan? I'm glad. Um and that's and and it's great. It's sad. We used to have money and now we don't and here we are and we don't know what we're getting and what we're not getting and it's, you know, it's going to be interesting. But I guess other than to show that we've had staffing cuts, which I think everybody already

042knows that the positions we're discussing have been cut. What did we accomplish in the last couple of slides? Just request from the school committee and showing. But then that's great, but what what did that information do for anybody? Because I feel like we were just rehashing previous fiscal years. And what we I think it's just it's a it's a show. U member Shibilian, I totally understand where you're going. Um but I think there's uh a conversation and uh I've heard from this committee loud and clearly. the more data we can share, uh, the the better off we're going to be in the community as well. And I think part of what, uh, I know I'm hoping is that people really understand, uh, we're in a place that I don't feel we should be in. And

043as a superintendent of schools, I feel very confident in saying that over the course of my career here in Mthuan, there's there's been almost every year it's been about cutting. Every year I've been in this district for 23 years, it's been about cutting. And I think uh for me it's it's the it's there's a time in I don't know if we're here and I don't think it's going to end here, but um just to show the community that at what point are we going to stop cutting? Um how much are we going to have to cut, right? I I think there's again there's some really unfortunate narratives out in the community that have lived on for many years previous to you you know even living in Mthoan and I think there is something to that

044here that people still talk about right of uh certain things that happened 12 years ago certain things that happened 7 years ago certain things that happened 10 years ago so I just think putting the information out there uh in in a fashion that everybody can kind of understand and grab on to uh is only going to be helpful for us to fight for what we I know think we need. Um and again, I'm not here to bankrupt the city, so don't misunderstand, but as a superintendent of schools, it is absolutely my job to advocate for what the schools need, and I will every year. I will also do the hard work to make sure that we prepare a budget that is going to pass and won't bankrupt the city. Um, so it's just it's a

045place that we seem to always be in every single year in this community. So I I agree that was a long answer of the what did we just accomplish? It's just it's information I think sharing and so there's actually numbers out there instead of just throwing out a nebulous we've cut every year. It's just holding on to some of those tangible numbers maybe. So, I agree and I I I've been one to advocate for the data. But I guess where my frustration stems from is I've been listening to the conversations and it comes back to, oh, we need to add bodies here. We need to add bodies there. We need to add bodies here. The secretaries are overworked. They're they they can't they can't answer the doors at the CGS because they're too busy doing

046things. And you have parents upset at the door because they can't get into the building. that the custodial staff is overburdened and we just spent a boatload of money to clean up the buildings that we don't have a plan to maintain. Not that we're not trying, but we don't we don't have the human capital to do so. And we're talking about adding heads, but if we're going to be closer to net school spending, even the slide you showed us last week where we're not getting the additional 40 is a pipe dream. And I know that, you know, the the mayor had mentioned we'll have the number by the end of the week, and that is both fantastic and slightly ominous, but it's it's just I'm I'm having a hard time because I feel like we're

047we're just kind of dancing. And I guess that's that's it for that one, I guess. Keep going. All right. Then anyone else? Mr. Mayor, member will just very briefly, the reason why I asked for information is to give me context. For example, member Donovan had talked about the groundskeeper and pruning the trees and in the grounds. And that was identified in the report submitted to our attention regarding the rodents and the pests that you need to prune your trees. You need to get away from the foliage. You need to uh remove the leaves and any debris outside of your buildings. So, we are dealing with a very constrained budget. I understand that. But I'm also obligated to talk to constituents and they have issues. And again, the superintendent is bringing up certain issues. Now, ultimately,

048I might have to vote on a very difficult budget that's a barebones budget because we're not going to receive any assistance from the state. And there's a possibility we might not receive as much from the federal government. But in the very least, we should be having these conversations because these were brought up in reports. These are issues that were brought up in the past. And if things are neglected, we should at least talk about it. Now, I know the superintendent has a reorganization plan about custodians and maintenance, and that might be one of my priorities. Last year, he was talking about the crisis intervention, and I said, I'm not going to vote for a budget unless it has the crisis intervention. I have certain goals in mind, but I'm not going to lay out my

049cards right now. I never did in 14 years of service. This is a fluid situation. We have to wait for the numbers and we will have good give and take and debate and we try to reach a consensus. If not, we have a a majority that will vote on the budget. But, you know, things were brought to our attention from constituents speaking at the podium and it's included in the superintendent's report. And I give her kudos that she is bringing up these issues to us because again, if we neglect it, if we do like the deep cleaning through the mayor, that's outstanding. But if we have these issues four or five years down the line without a plan in place, without some type of accountability, shame on us. But that's part of an ongoing conversation

050that I have no problem with. If someone requests information, I'm not going to uh critique the information they're requesting. I I never did. I said, "Okay, that's great. I'll review it and if I have questions. If not, I move on." Thank you. Thank you, member Willlette. Any other comments about the clerical slide? Just to quickly echo just I guess piggyback off of what member Shabilia said. So if I had the ability to give the school department literally everything that they were looking for in terms of uh meeting the needs outlined in this presentation, I think as somebody who has been really focused on education, I know you would. Yeah, I I I I would if I could. The thing though that we have to keep in mind is that uh this year of all years

051is probably one of the most difficult uh planning uh years in terms of budget that uh potentially the city has seen in many years. Certainly, superintendent, you can probably reference uh I don't know if we've ever had a time uh like this in at least recent uh memory in terms of uncertainty from the federal level uh on down. And so, you know, ultimately, you know, my responsibility is going to be to ensure that we're able to preserve our city's uh fiscal health by making difficult yet, uh, responsible decisions. And you know, I'm going to do the best that I can with the resources that we have available. But nevertheless, uh, you know, when we're talking about overall a projection of, you know, a $20 million increase year-over-year for the school department budget, I think that

052anybody uh here at this table can understand how that's not possible. That's not going to happen. Uh but we're going to do our best to ensure that we're providing our students with uh the education they deserve and uh we're going to do what we can to get to that point. But nevertheless, we're in for a tough couple of weeks in terms of planning. Member Daglio. Um name Mr. Mayor. And Mr. Mayor, I I I've been on school committee for 5 years now, and this is your first first time as mayor, so I'm not going to hold this against you, but the previous mayor always said the same thing that we we're always tough, but I would love to give a bucket of money to the schools. And you know, and I get it. We are

053the biggest budget and the and I know the needs with the state um and everything, but I've I've heard it five years in a row that it's like I would give it to all of you and I would love to do this and then every year we're cutting. It's It's been every year, which I'm not saying that you have a difficult decision to make, which I'm not I'm not doing that. But for some people, it's a really hard pill to keep swallowing when it's like I get it when it's it isn't your fault. It's the state. It's everybody else's. it. And I'm not going to go into the details, but it's just it's really hard to swallow it over and over again, especially being in this well, not in this chair, but um but it

054is it is hard to keep hearing that when we have students like they're the future, your child, my niece, my my future, my nephew. And I keep saying it over and over again. It's really hard to pill to swallow when it seems like our kids, and this is throughout the Commonwealth, is always taking the back burner. This is a state issue, and I understand that, and I want to make sure parents hear this at home. Why is our children always the second to everything else? That's all. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Member Daglio. Just in response, I I have a six-year-old who's going to be going into our public school system in the fall. So, as somebody who's going to be a Mthuan public schools parent in just a couple of months, I completely

055understand and appreciate what you're saying. I think though that anyone who is critical of the difficult decisions that we're going to have to make in terms of priorities uh as it relates to the budget, I mean the only other solution is for those individuals to go to the public and request a Prop 2 and F override, which I can tell you exactly how that's going to go. Um so I think it's just important to just be cognizant of the realities. Uh certainly aiming for the best here. But uh the other thing too I I want to point out, you know, what we have here for the school department, you know, we're talking in the context of budget. This is more along the lines of a spending plan. It's not really, you know, you think of

056a budget, there's a, you know, revenue source and everything. This is really a spending plan. And, you know, ultimately, you know, we're going to reference the word a cut, making cuts. You know, I think in terms of the presentation that we have here, that $20 million suggested increase in this presentation, you know, those are things that perhaps the district is hoping for, aiming for, but reductions to that. I don't want to say that's a cut because it's actually not. Um, I just want to be careful about the wording that we use as well. Um, I I'll leave it there. Member will. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, um, I got to give credit to the superintendent in terms of, if you look at North Andover, what's what they're experiencing. And they again have very intelligent

057people. They did an analysis of the budget. They went through a process. They went through a collective bargaining agreement. They had similar issues to us with the maintenance. Um, and they also had a explosion of special education dollars. and they're a wealthier community than us, right? They are dealing with a dire straits budget of a $4 million deficit. Personally, I don't want to go down that road again. And I just want to say for the record is that other communities, the stimulus money they really use for personnel, which they shouldn't have done. And the superintendent, I looked at the prior budget that was finalized for us. We did for the circuit breaker, we did a carry forward provision. So, we paid ahead and I I think that was a very prudent thing. Unfortunately, because of

058the explosion of special education, that's gone right now. Now, if you look at transportation of the the prior budget in a couple of years ago, there was a increase of about $100,000. it was kind of stabilized. Projecting forward for special education, transportation, the regular ed budget, it's going to be about $2.5 million in that range. So, you got $2.5 million that we're not going to have with the circuit breaker carrying through because of an explosion of special education cases. You got another uh 2.5 increase with transportation. What we were talking about is October 1st with member Shabilia is beyond that you're on your own of any additional students. So that's a $2 million increase. What member Keegan was talking about with the special education in terms of information. So if you start lining up everything

059and then collective bargaining agreements, health insurance increases, municipal chargebacks and then you get a a pittance of I would say more towards the the co days of almost pre- studentent opportunity act, right? We're going back in the wrong direction. And we had like two solid years of funding from the state and then all these revenue streams that we talked about during prior meetings. And if you look online, it's a lot of it's going to the general fund. It's not going to local aid or to to student aid or the school aid. And again, there's people at home and the teachers and the parents and even the students. Stop making calls to your elected officials at the state house because you still have an opportunity from the governor's budget. We're all disappointed in, right? And the

060MTA has like about 115,000 members. Imagine if 115,000 members called up their state senators and state reps and be on record or we called up. I already did a letter. I did a letter last year. The only person that responded to me was the state senator. The state reps didn't respond to me. So, I don't know if they're packing it in or they're just relying upon the governor's budget. If we don't speak up, we're going to go through the same painful cuts again. And I want to increase the budget. and I have certain goals, but I also if you look at the reality of the situation, you're starting to just automatic costs and statutory obligations in transportation, circuit breaker, special ed, and all these things. Um, it's not we're going to have the same thing

061as last year because people are not mobilized. They'll mobilize before us. They'll mobilize before the city council, but right now they should be at beacon help. But we've gone through the same conversation in years past. Thank you. So when it comes off of transportation, like I said, I requested this like I think three four and member Shabilly agreed with me on this and we were trying to look into it about redistricting part of um especially when it came to the marsh and the tenny. Um, I'm looking because like I said, I'm looking at this budget where we could cut corners everywhere. Is there any estimation what would happen if we were to bring those like especially where Laurel Street is with those where those buses pick up kids to bring to the tenny? What would

062have happened if we could get rid of those bus routes? How much would that cost or in reduction? Like I said, I'm looking at anywhere where we we can cut and make it. I know that's a big thing to do, but that's why I was preparing for that. I think it was like 3 months ago I brought this up. So, I would like to know where we can if this would be feasible. Yeah, I think moving kids from a march bus to a tenny bus um we don't it's not like the tenny buses don't have kids on them right now. You know, we would still need those buses. Well, no. They're just bring bringing them to a different school. Especially when you're talking about the the Forest Street, L Street area. Yeah. That's not walking

063distance to anywhere. Yeah. But what? So, if I'm correct though, if if if that one bus is picking up because we pay do again, let me break transport. We don't pay for gas, right? Do we pay for the gas and all that stuff? Part of our contract. Part of our contract. Yeah. Part of our contract. So that would again my dad was a truck driver, gas, everything. It pays pays it to it. I'm looking at how much and how many buses possibly we could cut that route down and have people drive their kids at one point. Yes, please help. So I think what member dis uglio was getting at and what he may be missing and keep me honest is the buses that are coming and passing the tenny buses that are passing by on

064their way to the tenny as the kids are waiting for a bus to the marsh. Now I don't know what the vacancy I don't know what the seats are on those buses. I don't know how many kids are there and I don't think I mean I I'm sure Ian I'm sure you I mean you know everything so I'm assuming you do. No pressure. Let's not go there. But that being said, I it's it's not going to happen for July. And like I said, that's not realistic on a calendar perspective. But what our friends in North Andover did was hire a consultant to look at redistricting. And I know the Rword is scary because it's an absolute nightmare. And I saw Lisa's head flip around when Ryan said redistricting earlier. And when I be before the

065federal government decided to do cartwheels with our funding, that was something I wanted to ask for and I had had a conversation with uh Attorney Macaro about is being able to put some money aside to bring in a consultant to to look at it because I I mean I don't think I mean at least in my 12ish years in the city, I don't think it's ever been done. Has it ever been done in your tenure? 1990. I mean, this city has changed 400 times since 1999. We have no idea. And I know it's a monster of a a project. That's why we would bring in a consultant, but you know, now we're kind of out of money. Um, but if it's something that we could consider because remember ugly, I think that gives us our

066answers because to ask our internal staff to go do that analysis, it's just not real. I think if I may there I no it has not been talked about in my intent I mean talked about bandied about. Um I know it's always a a rumor flying around. Yeah I I think um when it was uh talked about maybe openly or in a public session with any prior school committee. It was talked about in a way that that is that is a like a three to five year process of like examine subcommittees, committees, community committees. what does that look like? Um, so I I I don't think there's any opposition to that. Just understanding how much time that's going to take and what who knows what the outcome may be um with different lenses and a

067focus on it. But it's not something that yes, our team can just pick up and put that on our to-do list to start looking at different, you know, schools. And I think the one way we've we've I don't want to say subsidize. No, I'm going to word retrieval is going to get me. Um because we have these district-wide programs at certain grammar schools, right? the the English learner beginner program is at the CGS and the pathways program is at the Marsh primarily because they have the space to hold those programs, right? A lot of those kids in those programs are from the Tenny and Tim district and I don't have any more space either, you know? So, so there's a lot of that is happening as well. Like you have these district-wide programs, right? our

068tenny special ed specialized program houses 80 kids but they're from all different all four schools right um so so yes there's no you know again opposition to that there's just an enormous amount of commitment from the community uh and you know the the work that will go into that I you know again I don't think there's opposition to it it's long overdue uh how to get that started and and who who needs to be a part of that you know those are all questions I think to work through. I know you were hoping to retire before we would have to do that. I might. Uh I mean, again, it's a long process. I don't, you know, I think that that's just something that you have to commit to. And I think it's also hard when

069you have school comm you have twoear votes. Uh and I don't mean that in a negative way. I just that's a reality here in Methuan. You have the political turnover is also challenging when you're pushing something like that that could be longer term, right? that I that could need more than two years worth of work to commit to. Right. But I don't think at this point you want to commit to anything. And you you may know from your conversations with the superintendent. Yeah. In North Andover, but my understanding is they did this that this consultant come in, they did some analysis, they consulted, did things with how who knows. Yeah. But then they came forward with the plan and said, "This is what we think you should do." And then the school committee was able

070to review it and decide, do we do we want to redistrict? Do we not want to redistrict based on now the information that they have because that consultant their one job was to sit down with that data and figure it out. You've done 497 jobs. Yeah. And I certainly I can inquire with her who they use just to see uh I'd be curious and then maybe I mean we've got 20 million in free cash certified by the state. So, can't hurt to ask the mayor to uh I will ask I will definitely inquire with with the superintendent or the end of her. Thank you. You're welcome. Um in the short term since we're on busing um something that I would like looked at is busing is not something that is necessarily mandatory for a lot

071of our students and um it is one area that we could possibly look at to reduce our costs that wouldn't affect class sizes would not affect learning etc. And so what I'd like to do is explore how much busing we could reduce to save money so that it doesn't affect academics. Um and I know um for instance we are not required to bus anyone above grade six. And do I think we should cut all busing above grade six? No, I do not. But what makes sense and what what could we expand our our radiuses of who's not receiving busing so that we can possibly reduce that $20 million down a considerable amount without having to touch personnel. Yes, we were expecting that this evening. So Miss McCarthy and Mr. Gaza already began to discuss what

072that we weren't sure exactly how it was going to be asked. We expected it to come up tonight. So, uh, we will definitely explore. We have some ideas already on what we could explore. Member Maxwell, the member Daglio. I just um off of that, I just kind of want to maybe we can keep in mind the safety um of no sidewalks. Yeah, we wouldn't. Yeah. So the I'm and let me preface that by our exploring would be anywhere with sidewalks, how close to the schools they are, any neighborhoods that would have safety. We would never uh talk about no sidewalk. Correct. This is what I'm saying. Like it it's going to be in pieces. It's not going to be a wholesale. Like we we could never say within a mile and a half of every

073school we're just going to take away busing. We can't do that in this community because there's not sidewalks everywhere. Can't happen. But are there neighborhoods? Are there different places, sections closest to the schools that do have sidewalks that are safe that are within that mile that we could reduce bus routes? Because right now everybody gets buses in this district. And just for the sake of discussion, we've had not everybody, but most said that he's like, wait, a lot of kids get buses withund emails right now within a quarter mile, half a mile from the schools. Some because of safety and some because the buses go right by. Just to mention, we've had we had a recent meeting with DOT. They have it's called safe roots to school program and uh we had a meeting about

074uh initially the marsh and improving sidewalk access at at the marsh, but then that turned into a conversation about taking a look at the CGS and other uh schools that are in need of a lot of, you know, investment when it comes to uh pedestrian safety. So that's something that is a topic of conversation now. Member Dagio. Yeah. So um first to piggyback off of member Keegan, I would be all support of the six new loot up. The problem is when you have a tenny student coming from Lel Street. You you can't really cut that off for a sixth grader. So that's why I would probably say that wouldn't work out until you redistrict. But just don't. And second of all, I am so happy that the fact that DOT is doing it. However, and

075I and I've made this public probably for 3 years now, um is I hope it's concrete sidewalk instead of the T sidewalks that we get all the time cuz tar sidewalk uh the the is ugly and concrete. It is. It is. It's awful when especially on 110 when you have concrete for one pot and then it becomes they're coming back to that's part of the next cycle of their project is they're going to be installing the concrete. So Oh, okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Vice Chair. Um just to be clear, member Daglio, just to address this, um if we were to get rid of all busing from six up, we probably would have a huge attendance problem at the high school, right? because that means everybody like from the Marsh district would have to

076somehow get to the high school, right? And so it's not realistic to say that we're going to get rid of all busing um even if we redistricted the middle schools, right? Can you clarify what specifically? Because I thought you were saying six and Yeah. I I said I don't think that's realistic. We can't do that because our high school kids coming from the Marsh district, how are they going to get to school, right? Like we have to be we have to be smart about it. And so that's why I'm saying, can we explore what is realistic and what we can do as opposed to just say, okay, we're just we're going to take the state law and just run with it. I don't think that's feasible in in Mthuan. All right. I sorry. Yeah, then

077I misheard. I thought you were saying let's explore six and up. And I'm sitting there going, "Okay, so we were on the same page. We're on the same page." Okay, we're all This is good. We're all on the same page. Uh cuz although the law allows us to not provide busing for certain grades and within certain perimeters, we're that's not what we're really going to entertain. We're just looking at places and neighborhoods closest to the schools that we might be able to eliminate some of our bus routes because it's close and safe for kids to get to. Right. That's that's what we had in mind when we were talking expecting this conversation to be brought up. So we have ideas about that. We will absolutely be able to provide that the next meeting. And Mr.

078Chairman, this is just factf finding. This is not an actual proposal. These are numbers that you're going to derive and present to us. This is nothing concrete. This is not a proposal. Nothing that we necessarily going to finalize. So I got to I got to qualify it. So yeah, it's the same like this that we would present to you. This is these are the neighborhoods that this is possible and it could eliminate 17 buses or one bus and is it feasible and is it going to do anything that we needed to do? Yes. And I and I was part of redistricting I think at one point way back in the in the you know galaxy far far away. It was a herculean and colossal task. So and I know with North Andover right they did

079a redistricting consultant but then they they're shutting down a school anyway. So that got thrown out the window. So I don't know. We'll have to really explore that other one. Thank you. Keep going. Okay. So the next uh the next slide, this was something that member Wlette asked. So this is as concrete as I could get for you today with the numbers that I had from the state. So there was a question about CTE enrollments do bring in additional funding for our high school students. So, uh, with the information that I had last week, uh, I had the FY25 foundation budget rate, so it's only going to be a little higher. So, I'd say that, um, I did receive the link this afternoon for FY26. I just didn't have time to go through it and

080change it. So, uh, it was not on the website last week. So, for a high school student in FY25, the foundation budget was set at $11,042 per student. If that high school student was also indicated to be in the vocational pathway, their cost now per pupil is 16 not cost uh their foundation budget uh I don't know what it's called amount I guess uh is $16,490 which is a $5,000 difference. So if you take if we add CTE so the question at hand was we have some new CTE programs on the horizon our media production which we already that it already exists we're hoping for it to become chapter 74 certified right that's one our Mr. Wilkins is here. It's already a program. We are trying to certify it to be chapter 74 certified so

081that it can count in this vocational. Right? That's one. And then I also have two new FTEEs that we're requesting. One for EEC because that pro program is full and the requests are high. And also for marketing. So we have two currently two teachers in marketing and the request is to add a third because that program also is booming. So what I did is just to keep it as again concrete as possible, the number could only go higher, right? If you look at two uh the two new FTEES, so let's say and I'm not going to say it, but let let's just talk about two new FTEES in CTE, that would add about a 200 students to that enrollment that would have that increased per student cost fund, right? So, um, for the FY25 numbers,

082we're talking at minimum a million dollars of additional revenue from the state that we would see not in FY26, it would come in FY27. So again, I did that because I wanted to be what I knew concretely and minimum. So, it's only going to go up, right? So, so even if we do not get the two new FTEEs, but our media becomes chapter 74, that is still an additional amount of money because those kids right now are not actually receiving the $16,000 per head cost for the state. They count for Perkins. They don't count for chapter 74. I believe I said that correctly, right? So that that just gives you a sense of how the foundation enrollment works. It's fascinating. Uh this the budget rates that are set uh every single category of kid has

083a different budget rate set. And so this is the magic of that formula. Um and again I have the FY26 now. I just I didn't have it on Friday. Uh I requested it specifically from the director on last week to see if they had it. Does it make sense? So, I hope that makes sense. But again, just gives you a little perspective, which I think is what you were looking for. Member Wlette. Yeah. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, so there's going to be a funding lag. Is we're going to have an an increase and then we're going to be responsible for it or is it's over and then going forward is because there 200 students that potentially could be that we're gearing up that we don't right now qualify for it because we don't

084have that designation. You got it. Okay. So, we wouldn't even be able to qualify for the grant funding anyways because we don't have that designation for some of the the courses that like the broadcasting one. So, the broadcasting one is the is the pathway that we are in the final stages of certifying as a chapter 74 program. We already have that program at the high school. Yes, we're looking to all so we want that program and we want all those kids in that program then would count as a vocational student with the fund here. In addition to that, Mr. Caret and Miss uh Golovski have worked to the two programs that are kind and bursting at the seams right now that we would like to expand and have students who want to do it is

085our early childhood program. We currently have one teacher. Okay. and the clo courses are her five sections are full. Um and then we have two uh marketing teachers and both of those teachers sections are full. Okay. And so we're looking to those two are already certified. We add a teacher to those. Those automatically become vocational because we already have that designation for those two programs. Okay. But is it is there a funding lag or that will we the funding lag is the next year nothing counts for ne we won't see any funding for next year. It's all from the October one enrollment for 2025 that we'll see for FY27. Okay. I know that's hard to but like you don't see like the investment for this. You don't we wouldn't see the funding until we got

086the foundation budget in January of 2026 for the FY27 budget. Okay. All right. I appreciate. Thank you. You're welcome. Questions about that one? Okay. I'm going to skip this one. Go to this one. I'll go back to it. I promise. Um I just wanted to The next four are all the same, which is why I think these are just going to be a little bit easier and quicker. Um I put these on here because I had conversations with at least three of you via email andor directly uh regarding sort of this idea of like what happens when or if and so I'm I'm giving you I'm arming you with information. I'm not telling you what's going to happen or not going to happen. I'm arming you with information. Um, for each of the grammar schools,

087this is something we already had. I figured I would share it tonight so you have it. This is not I didn't have to generate anything new. This is what my team does to prepare for the budget. So, what you'll see for each of the grammar schools, it's much more challenging at the high school. We can do it. It just won't be as accurate because of the numerous uh offerings and the different grade levels. So, it's it's going to be a little bit of a hodge podge if we start looking at we can do it. It just takes us a little more time. The devil's in the detail when you're talking about the high school courses. Uh what's required, what's not required, very different for social studies than it is for English and math, right? So,

088we just need some time to go through that. But for the grammar schools, and again, this is just grade level. We're not talking about specials. That would be our next I would provide that information next to for you guys. Um, but what you see in yellow highlighted on each of these grids is what we presented to you last week. Those were the class sizes we presented to you. Those were the number of teachers in the core grade level. All right. So, so if the question came up and again I think member Shabilia, I'm going to call you out, but you said like I'm interested in like what happens if we had to reduce sizes of those class those grade levels. So you're basically going down. Wherever it is highlighted, you reduce one. That's the class

089size. Correct. So, so where we are in the yellow right now, so the Marsh their preliminary budget as per as given to you guys in the narrative, they're they're presenting a kindergarten with six teachers at 16. We're trying to keep that kindergarten small. Uh their grades one and two are both at five teachers right now. Their grade four, they're reducing to four teacher. Grade three, they're reducing to four teachers. And then in grades four through eight, they're currently at five teachers. So again, you reduce one, you basically go to whatever that class size is in the max column. Each each of these for all four schools work the same. I didn't go any farther than this, but there's this pattern to this. Basically, you reduce one, you add five at least. So, if you had

090to go down to three, you're going to add five to that number. So, for example, grade six, if we had to go to three teachers, it would be a class size of 31 or 32. I'm just saying I'm just I'm giving you the facts. I didn't these are the typically the columns we do in the in the Tenny and Tim. We actually do 765. We don't go to four because it's not we can't go to four, right? We don't have classrooms that fit that many kids. So that's what you're going to see in each of these. Right? So this is the timony. As you notice, there's no column with four here, but you can do the same kind of math. If you had to go to four, you just keep adding five. Am I making

091sense to everybody? So I think one thing that you'll see here is for the most part we reduce one in each of these grade levels. We're already starting at starting at class sizes typically 26 28 in almost everywhere. Okay. So that's the Timony. Then we have the CGS and the Tenny. So again, you can see as you move it over one, it we're starting off in a challenging position in most the majority of places. We're we're we're getting closer to 30 than we probably all feel really comfortable with. And and actually here at the tenny, you're you're over if you go down to five teachers, you're over 30 to start in the school year. Member Maxwell and member Donovan. Just just a quick question. It seems like the tenny has a lot of students in

092each grade. Yes, they do. So does the Timony. Yeah. So I mean is I mean never mind. I guess that is a redistricting thing. The Timony and the Tenny are neck andneck right now at about just under,300 students and the CGS and Marsh are about a thousand. So if you think about that just in functioning there's like two more grade levels at the Tenny and the Timony for the same amount of administrators uh and custodians and staff in the building. It just gives you a little different perspective by just the sheer numbers of kids in each grade level being larger. Yeah. And if I could just build on that, I mean, when you look at the numbers, it's it's always startling like at one school 96 eighth graders, at another 156. So, you're thinking of

093where the rooms are going to be, right? Um trying to keep all the kids at the same grade level near each other, but should we in a perfect world be thinking about the specialists who are taking on Yes. their CL I a specialist at the Tenny or the Tim has much larger classes and I think that's a you know you worry about safety you worry about classroom management and um and I don't know if there's any room it hasn't been proposed but I do feel for them yes so uh you're absolutely right member Donovan that the Tenny and the Tim struggle more as you have grade levels with seven teachers and in places eight I'm not sure we have any eights this year. Oh no we do have a couple eights this year. Um those

094eight home rooms are filtering into six five band five plus band specialist classes. So at the CGS and the marsh the specialist classes are five going into five and you have at the tenny and timony seven going into five six going into five. So it absolutely is something to take into consideration because as we reduce these right you have now are we reducing the amount of specialist teachers because we have the same then we're going to have the same situation. So that's why I said this this comes without a I'd have to do a grid like this for each of the grammar schools so you could actually see the average class size and the specialist classes because they are very different school to school because of exactly what you just said. We have the same

095number of specialist teachers at the Tenny and the Timony as we do at the Marsh and the CGS for exposure and you know consistency of access of those topics and and in a perfect world you you break that out to guidance for case loads right I'm thinking like the particularly the eighth grade checking in with all those eighth graders may look a little bit different or are the guidance staff adjusted too. Okay, good. Okay, thanks for the Tim and the Tenny do have more guidance staff than the CGS and the Marsh. Okay, that's good. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Um, just one more question. I know it says general ed class sizes. Is this including the kids that are in inclusion classes? Yes. Okay. Yes. So, this these are any students that would be in

096the mainstream classroom that we're including in our class size. So the reason and I will I shared this with you guys during the actual presentation last week. So the reason this one looks different that says anticipated gened class size for CGS. We remove the the newcomer Excel students. So we have to adjust the actual what's the number of students in a gened class because we have a newcomer uh Excel classroom teacher who who only teaches the newcomers and they're not mainstreamed yet. And then we have some kids who are newcomers who are ready to be mainstreamed. So Miss Pretti has done all of that here. I've just hidden some of those columns to show you what the outcome is. So So the everything highlighted here in the class sizes that Miss Prowetti presented would be

097any students that would be also mainstreamed and included in the gened. And the same thing with the marsh. We pulled out the subsparate pathways in the enrollment because those students are not going to be in the general ed but the other special education students who are included their resource from students in the pathways resource are going to be included in these numbers. Okay. All right. So again armed with information. All right. So the last one uh I guess I should have put this last. So, this is again information. Um, and I just I think it's important information and again it's information to have out there uh for our conversation. Um, and I would be remiss if I did not advocate as strongly as I could for our districts um and our school department and the

098work that has gone into every year preparing uh what we need what we believe we need best for our students. But this is something that is I did not create these numbers. This is on the DESIE website. You can look this up for yourself tonight if you want to check my numbers. Um, but basically it's it's a comparison of required net school spending versus actual net school spending. So it's not money that would be spent for transportation. Right? So that's not what we're talking about. It's just required versus actual. The state gets these numbers and they certify these numbers and it's listed publicly for every district in Massachusetts. So there's a couple of things. The four on the bottom are four of the districts that number one, they're urban districts in Massachusetts. So they're part

099of the urban gateway network. Um but they're also what Desi would consider comparable districts to us. So when you look at our profile, these are four Framingham, Salem, Somerville, Peabody. They come up as four of our comparable districts by percentages of high needs students with disabilities, English learners, low-inccome. Okay, so I know those look very different, but that's how DESIE does it. They look at our percentages by our subgroups and our low-income, high needs students with disabilities. Um, I put HRO and Andover on there because they're geographically what we compare ourselves to all the time and these are the districts that other staff might be going to and such. So, you can see here, I think one of the things I'm just trying to show is that our our actual net school spending for 2024

100was $600,000 less than our required net school spending, which Ian could explain and was not intentional. Uh, however, which I will let him explain. Uh, I will let him explain. My point here is that all of these other districts function because they are above net school spending and pretty significantly above net school spending year after year. If I went and looked at 23 and 22, I would see very similar numbers, right? And so this is this is something that I do think is information. Uh, I understand and again I will say it again. And I'm not here to bankrupt uh this city, but I am here to fight for what the schools need. And every year we are faced with a really close to net school spending budget, which is never going to get us

101ahead. and the two years that I had to stand at this podium and face the city council when we got chapter 70 money that was absolutely deserved and overdue. I was met with incredible fire of why is the school department getting so much money and you don't need so much money and that was really challenging because I live in this community and people should have been so excited for the community to finally get money that the schools deserved. And so this is where some of the frustration comes because we are always right skating right on that net school spending line and it will and I know we've talked about it but if we're fighting if we're if we are right skating on that fine line it is going to be catastrophic to this school district

102this year. If we're looking at net school spending only, we are looking at evenings and evenings of cuts that are going to be catastrophic. So, so the expectation of maintaining buildings and getting our stu students all the services they need and servicing our second language and expecting MCCAST scores to grow and making sure our behavior management is in place. Those are all going to be really challenging and I just I feel that I I would be remiss if I didn't say that and advocate for that. That is my job. That is what you put me here for. Um but I I think that this is part of the story and and it does uh you know it tells part of the story in this community what is important in this community and I hope you

103know as a school committee um that we fight for for these things. And again, I mayor, we're not looking, right? We I think we're on the same page of not wanting to bankrupt the city, but what can we do differently to make sure that we're not, you know, again, just completely devastating the things that we've tried to build. And nothing helps. And we know that, right? Nothing nobody's going to come to our rescue right now. We know the state has not uh given us what they've promised. And there's nothing anybody in this room can do about it in a time that we needed to get done. That's that's the reality too, right? We can advocate and we can go to our legislators, which I have been doing. I know many of you have been doing.

104I don't think that's going to fix what we need in the next 6 weeks uh of what's ahead of us to have a budget that is ready to go uh for this community. So, uh, that's that's my my last piece, but again, I just felt it important to just share some of this of like how are other districts doing it? It this is how other districts are doing it. They're they're not just planning for net school spending. Um, and again, I don't know how to get there in this community. You know, I don't know what the answer is. I don't think any of us have a magic wand or answer for it. Um but you know I hope we can continue to work towards towards it. I'm done. Member Shabilia. Thank you. Um I want

105to I want to echo what the superintendent is saying and I mean there's no easy way to say it and I'm going to people are going to get upset but Methuan does not value education. This is embarrassing. I wish I had remembered to bring it with me, but I had pulled the last seven or eight years worth of net school spendings and the lowest one on here is 8 million over net. We've never been there in the 10 years I looked at. We balance our budgets on the backs of six-year-olds who need speech therapy, on kids who need to learn English as a second language, on on the kids who need a bus. We are balancing our budgets on the backs of our children because this community doesn't care about education. I said it in

1062018 when the first time I sat down and actually decided I wanted to care about methan politics because I knew my kids were going to be in these schools. Everyone wants to come out and Dr. Kuang catches an awful lot of grief but she has been handed a raw deal because we don't fund education. This is disgusting. What kind of city do we want to be? People move into a city for the schools. Ryan, you're a young guy. You're going to have a family someday. You're going to look for a house and you're going to say, "Where is my kid going to get a decent education?" And if we don't start building towards that again, we're we're off the map. Right now, people are moving to Methun because it's a affordable. But that Oh, true.

107It's not. It's not that that ship is sailing and we we last year couldn't even hit net school spending. We're we're planning for the minimum, which I'm still going to let Ian explain. Well, right. Right. And I I I know and I know we carried it over and I I get that we have to eat it this year now and but quite frankly, I don't I really don't care how it happened because it shouldn't have happened in the first place. We shouldn't be planning for Dminus. That's ridiculous and embarrassing. And unless the mayor has a rabbit up wherever he keeps his rabbit, that was I caught it. Um, we we we have no plan. We're going to be at net school spending. That's the ultimate reality. And we can sit here and talk about it

108and look at the history and bring up skeletons and we're going to be at net school spending. I don't think anyone around me can say that we're not going to be. It's the way it is unless there is a massive tide change. And it's it's not the mayor's fault. He inherited a mess. It's not the superintendent's fault. She's advocating for what she can get. It's it's it's the city. We we don't we have not prioritized it. How How do we fix that? We are the only department in the city that has to take what comes to our door. DPW can defer maintenance. The the clerk's office can say, "You know what? We're short staffed. We're going to do half days on Thursday." The fire department does not go out looking for fires. And if there

109are and we need it, we buy them another ambulance. We buy them another fire truck. If there is a gang that moves into town on their scooters, we hire more cops. The school cuts. Every year the school cuts. Every year other departments hire. So I got a lot of grief last time when I said I'm not voting for a budget that hands the council a softball. And I I stand by that. I am I I don't see how we as the school committee who was supposed to advocate for the school knowing full well that we're not getting the the budget that Dr. Quan put forward because that's aspirational and that's not real. But putting our kids into classrooms of 30, that's ridiculous. We should all be embarrassed. I I don't know where we go and

110I don't know how we fix it, but quite literally everything needs to change and we c I can't I will not vote for a budget that has class sizes of that high. I just won't do it. Thank you. Member Daglio. So to piggy back off of uh membershill and again I know I I always put myself on the opposite side of things as an educator. Um my class sizes right now at 28 where if anything changes in the next month I could have 30 kids in a class. Um, as a teacher, uh, it's very difficult to deal with IEP kids, 504 kids all in one setting. Um, and I know for other teachers and my team, it's very difficult for them to do classroom management. So, and and I'm trying to look at it from

111a different perspective of that. It's very overwhelming where it's not just the shellacking of the superintendent and the mayor, but also teachers get a shellacking when test scores don't go up and things don't work well be and when we're being overwhelmed over and over again because some people do blame teachers. I've been blamed for kids not meeting certain requirements and all that. And I look at it this way. Well, when you're dealing with 30 kids almost in every class in an hour classroom, an hour and 10 minute class, it's very difficult to fulfill every child's need. So, as I said with member Shabilia last time, as I did last year, I will not vote on a budget that is going to put not just the teachers and other staff members at a disadvantage, but our

112children at a disadvantage because our teachers can only do so much in one classroom. It it is and I'm only been the third year, but when you have trust me, I would love for you to all sit in a classroom of almost 29 kids yelling across the room, maybe throwing a paper ball once in a while. You know, it it's all these other things that teachers endure and that children endure at the classroom. we by voting on cuts is being a disservice over and over again, not just to the teachers but to our students. And we just had a poll literally 60% of the Commonwealth fourth graders do not know how to read on grade level. All right, that's and everybody's kind of shocked, which I'll sit here and I've been saying this for five

113years. It's because the state with the regulations of how they put on education compared to when we were in school when we used to have conduct and effort put on our report cards. They don't even do that anymore. All right. It's all meas No, they don't. We do. We don't. We really wow. Every other district I've talked to literally doesn't. And then Wow. That's amazing. We do. Yeah. No, like we actually do that. So, well, well, that's shocker because I heard parents tell me all the time they really don't know that. So, but anyways, they all laugh about it. It's fine. I made a mistake. What we do? Um, but at the end of the day, let's see see people sit in a classroom with 28 students and see how you guys do because I'll

114tell you this, our teachers will be overwhelmed. And you think what we dealt with for the last year will be bad. Watch the future. That's how I want to end it with that. Thank you. Vice chair. So 15 years ago when my oldest was in kindergarten, she had 36 students in her kindergarten class. Her kindergarten class. We have gone in 15 years, we've gotten that number down to 17. That's phenomenal. the work we've done in the past 15 years to get those numbers down. And it is heartbreaking to think that we have to go up again. It's absolutely heartbreaking because I know how hard it was for my kids to learn in class sizes of 30. And I mean, honestly, 36 in her kindergarten class. Imagine five year olds. Like, think about that. 36 5-year-olds

115in one classroom and they had five classrooms, right? Like it is you can't learn in that environment. There's no way you could learn in that environment. And right and one teacher, one teacher to 36 kids. It was unbelievable the herculean effort that those teachers did to educate those kids. And did they learn? Absolutely. my children can read, right? So, that's it's great that my kids can read, but there are lots of kids who fall through the cracks and can't in that environment. We can't go back to that. We can't undo all of the the work that we've done to bring those class sizes down. That said, we've we need to find other places where we can trim. And that's why in the past 15 years, we have lost janitors. We have lost secretaries and we

116can't lose any more of those positions either. So, we're going to need to figure out where we're going to trim and that's the work we have to do. But I agree. I don't want to see class sizes back up there because it's not reasonable. It's just not reasonable. Thank you, member Wlette. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. is such a difficult situation because and I I don't dispute anything that the superintendent has said and I've said in years past, you are obligated to tell us your deficiencies or needs within the system. And the number again of the $20 million increase, that was just a like a preliminary number that's going to be obviously reduced. Just to give context, we're about slightly over uh 50,000 population, maybe 53,000 from Mthan. Boston is like roughly about 600,000 people. Their

117entire budget increase was about $53 million in Boston. Now, I can only imagine what type of cutbacks and reductions in retirements and lack of services because they have well over a billion dollar budget for the city of Boston and they have roughly let's say 600,000 people and we have roughly about 53,000 people and we're talking about a $20 million increase and I'm not disputing that versus what they just finalized as a budget is about 53 million. Um, it becomes an issue about Beacon Hill and um, I I hate to cast dispersions to a neighboring city, but and member Shabilia might be able to reinforce it to a superintendent. I think when you talk about net school spending, you can be below a certain amount up to maybe even 4% and still deal with this the

118state. Um the problem is is that um certain communities are being inundated with school aid and and we're being sacrificed as a a community because of a obsolete chapter 70 formula. I I know again I I point to Haveril um and he did an analysis of the gateway communities and Mthan is one of them. Habil is one of them. Um and the disparity between the inflationary rate versus what we should be getting. Um you're talking about uh in HRO is $20 million in Mthan it's got to be at least what $10 million I would say hypothetically if we did the full analysis. Yes. I would say hypothetically we're if we accounted for inflation as it's been over the last four years and the the maximum amount statutoily is 4.5%. We've lost $10 million to inflation.

119So imagine what $10 million could have been used for our school system over the years. That's the biggest problem. And we're going through like I said the revenue streams. I mentioned that at a prior meeting. And I'm not going to belabor the point, but if you have the city of Boston that just has a $53 million increase for their colossal budget, we're going to obviously have to make significant cutbacks. And I don't dispute the motivations of anybody on the school committee. um and they read their packets and they do their research, but it comes down to you have a levy limit, you have uh a levy space, and then you have a final budget that has to be approved. And unless the state kicks in and assist us, because that was the problem with the

120Ed Reform Act of 93. Prior to that, you had massive disparities between the wealthy school districts and the poor school districts. And they try to stabilize that, right? Then you had the Student Opportunity Act, and that was a further stabilization. We had two significant years of increases. Unfortunately, that's when the inflationary whammy hit us. And so again, if you can say like hypothetically it would be about $10 million that would do as an estimate, that's significant amount of money that the state is not accounting for. Um, and I don't know what the solution is and it could be on deaf ears at the state house. I know again the senator was the only person that responded to my letter last year and this year and he had a conversation with me and I know he

121filed an amendment on the gateway communities. I know he'll do it again. So I encourage again teachers, parents mobilize and make start making calls because the house budget has not been released yet. There's going to be an amendment process. The Senate will have a campaigning budget. Then you have a conference committee. You reconcile it. Senate to the governor. And it has to be a message from both the House and Senate that we're we're really uh dying at the local level in terms of school aid. We really are. and whatever you're talking about in terms of millionaires tax and pot dispensaries and casinos uh and draft kings and everything under the sun. It's going a lot of it's going into a general fund. I know the mayor can attest that incrementally we really haven't had that

122much of an increase in local aid. you might have had some increase in chapter 90 a little bit and then school aid we've been decimated by and we're going almost into precoid era now with it's going down with the inflation it's still there um it's a very bad formula and we fight for our students obviously and I have kids in the system like many people have kids in the system and I can't you know compare to being a teacher I was never a teacher I was a public servant and I didn't get paid that great of salary. But again, it's it's our fight is not local right now. Our fight is that the state at least make an effort to approach your leaders on Beacon Hill. But again, last year I didn't see it, but

123I'm not seeing it now. So, it's it's a very difficult situation. Thank you, member Donovan and then member Maxwell. Yeah, I'm sorry. Mr. Goslin's going to share the Okay. And then uh my follow-up question, it's to you Dr. Kong. I mean, are there any updates? There's so many crazy rumors going around about our federal funds, the titles money. Maybe you could address that if there is anything to address. I I can that's quick. Uh I don't have any updates. Uh I think the hardest part for us is that uh Mr. Goslin and I are both hearing that our colleagues are just going with it and expecting the funds and not not and potentially preparing for a contingency plan. That's not typically how I can work and I don't think that is a safe way for

124us to work. Um, so I have not received I asked again today. Uh, I did send another email to the director of federal grants at DESIE who I emailed a week ago. I don't want to be I don't want to overwhelm them. Uh, I have not heard back but um I have not heard confirmation one way or the other. So, I'm just kind of holding on, okay, where we are. I mean, we know exactly how much it would be removed or added. You know, I think that's a decent place for us to be at this point. At least we know where those salaries would be added and how much money that we would actually be eligible for that. I did get confirmation that we would be our our eligibility is equal to last year. So,

125so he did confirm that with me as of January. our status would be the same uh whether or not those funds come. It's just nobody wants to put that in writing and confirm it at this time. And then Ian can explain to you the Yeah, I don't want you to think it was intentional by any stretch on the city's part. Um but our budgeted number was above net school spending by almost $300,000 200 and some change. Um when we do the final end of the year report, there are some numbers that come prepopulated which um it's the state populates them. So we punch in all our numbers, what we spent and everything. There are two numbers in there. Well, they combine. It has to do with charter reimbursement. So we get assessed for charter schools,

126but they do reimburse us for some funds. They deducted that off of our spending, which put us just under that school spending. So, we had budgeted above. I would never let the city budget below net school spending. Um, I just was unaware they were going to deduct those reimbursements right off of off of the budget. So, okay, that's my my short and sweet explanation. And it was we had to fix it in 25. Yes. Um, and when you're off when you're slightly under, they look at next year's budget to make sure that you're above that. our FY25 budget. So when I do the end of the re year report, I have to do actuals for FY24 and then I have to do what's budgeted for FY25. Yeah. And what's budgeted for FY25 covers that difference.

127So the state was happy with that. That with what if we spend what's budgeted this year, we'll cover that $664,000. And one of, if I may, one of my questions, I was really curious to see, you know, what we have to pay for the chart of school students, and I'm wondering if you've seen um a big We could tell you change. Yeah, I was going to say I was there. I just read an article before I was leaving the house that somehow perhaps our federal administration might somehow be forcing communities to use title money to pay for some of these tuitions. I just glanced at it briefly, so I hope I misread it. I I didn't actually hear you. Can you say it one more time? Loud and proud. I know it's hard. I'm not

128too proud about it. Um, no, I'm very The money we spend to pay for charter school tuitions. I know there is some rumbling at the federal level about how title money may be used. Yeah, I read it on the way out the door. I read it. So I will reread it. Somehow some of that money may be used to fund tuitions to yes charter schools. I will send you the article. I mean I can the the current the FY26 assessment for school choice and charter is 3.169 million. 2.169 2.5 for charter and about 600 for school choice tuitions. How much? Okay. And the balance was for school choice. Thank you. Member will Okay. Oh, member Maxwell. I'm sorry. Um, I just I just want to point out like I don't I don't think anybody's trying

129to take teachers away to add more students. I think we want to add more teachers to lower the class size. So, I I just want to put that out there because the conversation seemed a little confusing. But, um, as far as the desi comparable districts, I feel like I'm told all the time that our most comparable district is Malden. Is that am I wrong? Uh, it's it's one of our comparable districts. I didn't add all eight just because I didn't want to make this so small. Okay. I I just asked because like that is the one that is always like this is our comparable just Barnstable is another one that would have been on there that would have had similar number. Yep. Barnstable is another comparable district for Desi, Taton and Malden. Uh and Quincy.

130So they're just Yeah, they're just those four were additional ones. Again, I just didn't I was typing this out today. I didn't add those four to make it as small. I I thought it was important to add Andover and Hil just because of the GE geographic um understanding. Yeah, but you're absolutely correct. We do mostly Malden because it's a K8 district. That's why we're so comparable to them. Desi doesn't care about the K8 part. We we are comparable because of the statistics, this the groups. I gota uh but but we often compare ourselves to Malden because they have K8 schools and there's not a lot of districts that have K8 buildings like ours. Yep. You're welcome. Any other questions or comments? Member will. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the governor has in her budget

131that she presented does account for uh federal funds. So ultimately, if we're all in the same boat and it becomes an unfortunate situation with the elimination of federal funds, which I don't believe will occur, right? The governor's budget does account for Medicaid funds and other federal funds coming down the pike and she presented that in her budget. So I think we have to be again very careful and I think the superintendent has the right approach. Once we receive information, it'll be uh presented to the school committee. Um but I will not uh subject to um speculation other than that personally. Thank you. Members, real quick, I just want to restate and remind that Ian, you had mentioned that we were planning last year to be 200ish K over net school spending. That's the D minus

132I was talking about. We we are planning I'm saying that that's the number right but I mean none of these communities were in jeopardy of oops we we are we are planning to be not even mediocre we are planning to be sad and pathetic that's that's our goal guys for for for unfortunately for the mayor sorry buddy unfortunately for the city council like that that is our plan we We are planning to be the bare minimum possible to survive. That's that's our goal. That's where we are as a city right now. Any other questions or comments? Member Daglio. Um, just as member Shibilia keeps saying, but this is where I like I said, I I feel like I know I know the mayor is going to give us a number and at the same time,

133we accept it, we don't accept it, and we send it up to to the council. Um, like I said, like I did last time last year, I said, I will not send it the budget up. Uh, and I know that the council will kick it back and people are upset that we play that whole mind game, but I just want to say the counselors that I continue to talk to um, will always say we always say yes. They always say yes. Well, because they know there was a number given, so of course they're going to say yes to it. They can't tell us no and cut more. Yeah. But but in the end, No. But it wasn't but it wasn't as much as they they if we go over it. No, it they they gave

134you a number, you sent them a budget, they kicked it back and said cut some more. That's that's facts. Yeah. What? So Oh, wait. I still have five. Yeah, it was less than than what it was the year prior. Two years ago, we were we received a number. Yeah. We met the number and the city council rejected our budget and we had to reduce more for them to accept our budget. We had we had to reduce it by $350,000 and and agree to a an audit. Member Wlette and then member Donovan. I think I think the operative word here and the the mayor highlighted it and I concur with him is Proposition 2 and a half override which I know for a fact because I've served in this community for 14 years will never pass.

135So you have a levy amount and you have a levy limit and I think the the prior budget was about $300,000 in terms of the space of the final. If you went over that, you would have to do a prop two and a half override. Again, the reality of the situation is we're going to have very limited uh options as a community. We should face that unless we get additional infusion of dollars from the state, which I've been saying for the last couple of years. But I won't be party to that even close to that Proposition 2 and a half override. And looking at the prior budget, I can't see how you can have a much uh bigger increase Thank you, member Donovan. Okay, so while we're I feel like we're looking in the seat

136cushions, you know, of the sofa for money, let's talk about the cable money. Every year we hear No, every year I I mean, I've been watching city school committee meetings for years for reasons I can't explain. But that said, every year there's a discussion, where does the cable money go? because we know we get money from the companies that contract with our city. And from my understanding, I could be way off on this. The check goes directly to the city. We're supposed to the schools are supposed to get a percentage, the city gets a percentage, and there's a third party. Help me out, Tan. I don't know who that is. So when those contracts are negotiated between the city and Verizon or the city and com the city and Comcast which we are we just

137approved the Comcast contract Wednesday Thursday of last week whatever day it was there is a a sum of money that gets cut to the city based on the number of subscribers historically it goes to the city and it's supposed to be divided between the city the school and Mthoon community television okay that was that makes perfect sense I don't know what MCT TV is received. I do know and I've learned since we had this conversation that not too long ago in the Ed Lucia era, right, there were all those drops and fiber was brought to every building was about $100,000. And I just wish we could, and no offense to anyone, but if offense is taken, I'm good with it. Can we please have an accounting of where that money went? because I think it's

138been I don't know every year it's like oh yeah and maybe it all comes out in the wash but I would feel better in terms of transparency are we getting everything that is due to us I don't know so on top of the DPW request may I ask mayor because I think it would come from you other than um this team I don't know tell me otherwise you don't see it at all and I would hate for any of that to kind of come back to bite us. If it's meant to go in one place, it should go to that place, I think. So, if we could have that information, that would be very helpful. I will have that for the next time. Appreciate that. Thank you, vice chair. Um, totally changing topics. Um, and

139can you tell me what percentage increase from last year to this year is our budget? Um, and I'm asking because, you know, people are always asking us, "What are we doing with all our money?" And I just want to point out that we've negotiated lots of contracts that's automatically going to increase our budget by x%. Every year. And so I I'm curious as to how how how much what percentage over our contractual increases are we from year to year? Do you know what I'm saying? So, so like yes, the $20 million over last year is a lot, but what percentage of our budget is that? And I know I could figure it out, but I don't I don't have it right. Um, and I just want to point out that, you know, we have contractual

140obligations that have increased our budget. If we just kept everything the same, our budget's going to increase. And what percentage of net school spending from last year to this year is is the increase? Do you see what I'm saying? So like does net school spending even cover our contracts? Yeah. Our contracts that we just negotiated and gave people raises, right? So if if we increase just by net school spending, we do not have enough money to cover the contracts that we've negotiated with our staff. Is that correct? Or transportation? Okay, the answer is no. We do not have net school spending does not give us the increase we need for transportation contractual obligation increase, out of district tuition obligation increase, or contractual staff increase. Okay. So, if if the city gives us just net school

141spending, we're still cutting. We have to cut what we have right now because it doesn't cover our contractual obligations for what we have right now. That's not adding a wish list. That's not adding anybody. Correct. And then we have 30 positions that we have to fund above and beyond what we have this year. And we're that's gonna be above that. So, I just want people to understand that that that net school spending isn't even going to cover our contractual obligations that we currently have right this minute. Correct. And I don't think people understand that. They think that we're spending extra money on more things and we're not. It's the price of what we have right now has gone up and we can't afford it with because the net school spending isn't going up enough to

142even cover what we currently have. Correct. And and that was Yes, you're 100% right. Yes. Correct. Correct. In that this is this was part of the reason I had the as much detailed conversation as I did last Monday for people to understand, rewatch, hand out, whatever it is to understand that the way and and I I will apologize because I think I misspoke when member Wlette asked me when the last time the foundation formula was adjusted and I said 2019 and that was incorrect. It wasn't adjusted. The foundation formula stayed the same. They just added the supplemental S SOA amount to that formula. So, I did misspeak. It was added to it. It wasn't changed. So you still have this foundation formula that again gives you this crazy percent of in district special education kid

143a crazy kids a crazy p 1% of our out of district tuition kids for the right reason which I do understand now they don't want to incentivize students being overidentified however it is so underfunded the way that it is calculated and I don't know how else to explain that other than looking at if if I show you and I'll be happy to to share it with all of you the base foundation uh per pupil where I got that 11,000 versus the six it's a big chart that comes out of this 10page how they calculate the formula and then you're left with this chart and that's how they calculate each child and and it it's every student category is a different amount so your K4 kids are a different amount than your middle school kids, than

144your high school kids, than your CTE kids, then your special education kids, then your English learner kids. It's it's a remarkable formula. Um but it's somewhat I mean it again to account for in district services with one flat number for a 3.9% of your total in district students of which all we're trying to do is keep our indisteper programs in their neighborhood schools and not send them out of district. I don't know how we continue to fund that because what we are funding are out of district programs but in our community for our kids with our kids in the neighborhood and so they are with each other and we've also held that I know since I've been here that has not been something that any school committee or any superintendent I've worked with has wanted

145to do differently but those numbers are growing and so we're expanding our in district program but the state is not recognizing the changes to that in district special education child and how much those children as well cost for transportation. Right? So, so one thing we could do right now, so I take back what I said a little bit on the like the state's not going to fix our problem that we need fixed in six weeks because that's our reality. The the the conversation about circuit breaker is a reality and people should pay attention to that right now. all of us because whatever is decided with circuit breaker right now with our legislators absolutely can impact FY26. And while it's not going to fix 15 million or 20 million, it's going to fix some of it.

146It it will increase the amount of reimbursement we get, it could increase or make uh definitive the amount of out of district transportation and not have to wait until the state has leftover money and then we get something later. We could budget for it. Right now, we're not budgeting for any out of district transportation reimbursement. We don't know if we're going to get it. Again, I'm not willing to roll that dice. I don't think you are either that we would say, "Oh, we'll budget for 44% reimbursement cuz that's what it was this year." We don't we don't know what it's going to be. So, we're not going to do it. So, so that is something that I think we all if folks are listening at home, the conversation about circuit breaker reimbursement is real and

147live and actually could impact our FY26 movement. Um, so I would encourage everybody to write your legislators right now about that to really increase that fully funded to 90%. Right? And fully funded doesn't mean fully funded, right? But the the amount above that threshold tuition amount rise it to 90%. That gives us a little more reimbursement and give us an absolute they want to get to 100% reimbursement for out of district transportation. Confirm it. Make it make it just done so that we can budget for it. Um that's that's a huge cost and a huge struggle. So it would help and again it's not going to be the end all of this but that is something that we could do right now. Thank you member Wlette and then member Maxwell. Thank you Mr. Chairman and

148thank you for the clarification on the foundation budget and chapter 70. I I recall going back to the school committee and we had uh experienced a massive decrease in the expected chapter 70 growth and one of the revealing things was even that amount of money I think it was $3.8 8 million that was destined to be swallowed up by special education costs automatically that you had that chapter 70 increase. So I can only imagine the the smaller amount I think is 2.4 million that's automatically out the window and it's a commitment to special education. Um, and again, so like I said, uh, and I already sent the letter, um, and the senator was the only one that returned my call and returned the letter as a response. Uh, Senator Jake Olivera is the one that's

149filed the legislation to increase it to 90%. And I think it's important to emphasize is that it's a very fluid situation about the out of district special education uh transportation cost because we just got that recently at 44%. But that could be erased very easily. Uh so that has to be the circuit breaker. I I think it's a a strong term circuit breaker. Um the house is uh in peril right now and again these kids are entitled to services. I don't want to have any calls from anybody that says I want to reduce special education. They're entitled to the services. I think we've made made major headways and like uh the vice chair mentioned in terms of the class sizes all that's going to be out the window if we can't uh wrestle confidently the

150circuit breaker. So 90% reimbursement maintaining at least 44% if not more with the transportation costs um because that's going to devour the rest of the budget. People talk about Medicare and Medicaid and entitlement programs and that's swallowing the federal budget uh and the projections. We know the circuit breakers swallowing um our budget and it's not fair to the kids. It's not fair to the parents. It's not fair to us as a school district. But that's the reality of the situation. So I think that's maybe that's the right focus is to have people make calls on that front. Thank you. Member Maxwell. Um so it looks like everyone's like almost ready to go home, but I have um I have a few questions that were in the budget now that like now that I was able

151to review them at home. Um, are we going to bring this back to the table and talk about this section again or are we just talking about the packet that you gave us today? It's a discussion. Bring up the questions you had. Um, so I have a few. I just assumed that we were going to go um like section by section again, but um I'll I'll try to narrow them down to a few. Um, so one of my questions specifically was the addition of the risk coordinators. I know that we added a risk coordinator to the chimney last year and that was based off of the we had 197 ODRs and 70 of them were um fights, bullying and harassment and and and the argument there was that it took up a lot of the

152assistant principal's time. what is what are the ODRs at the other schools and how many of them are um level uh tier 2. So I think in the question um in the narrative for the CGS and the Marsh I think they had in their paragraph about the risk coordinator um they put some of their own uh data in that paragraph that said how many school office behavior incidents they had, how many students were involved, how many were repeated. Yeah. The only question I had were how many of them were level uh tier two, so I'd have to ask. Okay. Yeah. Um that was one of the questions. Another question was I know that we have the media centers in here and don't get me wrong, I want the libraries back. I I totally want that.

153Have we um have we looked into volunteers and PTO groups and all of that to try and take the need away from hiring someone? um you know where is the we will explore whatever the committee would like us to explore. Okay. Um um I know that so in these in these budgets um the timony for instance is relatively the same as last year in a sense of like staffing needs and all of that. I'm curious because um last year we were going to look into Fatimony specifically to find out why um 51% of their students versus the other schools weren't reading at or above grade level. Um and I know that you said that you would come back to us kind of with the investigation on that. I I know that we haven't heard back

154on that and I just feel like with the staff that they're requesting are you know what is the change? Is there a significant change that we will see a benefit to the kids in their growth this year or are we just going to at the you know I'm I'm assuming the reading rates are coming out soon but are we going to see that the Tim is still at 51% that aren't reading at or grade at or above grade level versus the 42 and a half% that aren't at the tenny the 39% that aren't at the marsh. Um what have we done to correct it? like where when are we going to see the measurable results for that? What are we going to do differently? Um, you know, I just I I'm just curious because I

155know that you we said that the curriculum is the same and the style is the same and the you know, we really just didn't have an answer on why there was such a difference at the Timnney because we took EL students out of that number. It was, you know, out of 885 non-ELL students, 51% were not reading at grade level. Yeah. I think um we have agreed at the April 14th meeting that we're going to yeah we're going to do a quarter update because we should have done it in March but we I thought we wanted to do the whole thing for the budget to get that out early. So Lisa's going to do an update which will have the midyear scores and the questions I believe that you just asked. Okay. So I that

156is delayed a little bit but we had it originally on the agenda to do both things on March 24th and then uh I thought about it and removed it because I thought the budget meeting would last a little bit longer. So that will be April 14th. Um I also couldn't find any information when I looked up [Music] the that program. Um I know it started with a C um constellations. I couldn't find any information. If maybe you could share a little bit more information about I know you gave us like a breakdown, but and it doesn't have to be public. You can just let me know, but I I'm just curious what that program actually is, like what they have agreed to do for us specifically. Yeah. And one last thing, I'm sorry guys. I

157know you all want to go to say sorry. Um, I know that we're looking to add um we're looking to add team facilitators to each school and correct me if I'm wrong. Is that not what the um director of special education does in each school? They're like the team facilitator. Yeah. So, the special ed administrator right now does all of it. They evaluate and supervise the teachers and they run all of the meetings and compliance and that has become incredibly overwhelming for one person to do in the buildings as large as they are. At the high school, we have two administrators that run the programs at the high school and we would like to see something similar to that at the grammar schools. Okay. It's just it's an impossible job right now that we're asking

158one person to do and maintain compliance. And is there a way to make that a a district position or is there a heavy need per school? It's really Yeah, it's really per school because the it would the person would be running initial evaluations and re-evaluations and those are happening every day. Okay. Yeah. Um, and as far as far as the um STEM supervisor and the no that the humanities isn't in here, the STEM supervisor, I'm curious with our comparable districts. I've looked up um a lot a lot of their positions and it looks like they have directors of those programs rather than just being an individual school title. Is that something that we could look into having one versus four and maybe that could save some money? Yes. So, those are all ideas that I

159think will come from our continued discussions. Okay. Yep. I think that's the majority of my questions if there were more. Yeah. So, the the bigger ones I can the Lisa I think will answer the reading questions during the April 14th quarterly. Okay. Um I will have to get you the information from the March and the CGS about the ODRs. Okay. Mhm. I think that's what I just heard as far as asks. Yes. Thank you. Yep. Other questions or discussion? I'm I'm going to quickly wrap uh before we move on to selecting the dates for our additional budget workshop meetings. Um so I think tonight the conversation was one that was certainly based in reality. Uh and that reality is that we are facing in our city when it comes to our uh outlook for fiscal

160year 26 in terms of revenue. We're facing a perfect storm. In the past couple of months, we lost one of our largest sources of non-residential tax revenue by way of Holy Family. Uh very grateful that the hospital is still alive and uh operating under the umbrella of Lawrence General, but Lawrence General's a nonprofit and uh that revenue is out of the picture. Our residents at the local level, I think if you were to talk to uh any uh residential taxpayer, uh you'll probably hear the same message and that is that they are taxed enough already. It's already a struggle for people to pay their bills. We have an increase in the cost of living that folks have endured and that uh is only becoming more difficult. We have limits to state funding that we've talked

161about. We have uncertainty at the federal level. But uh you know even though those challenges are certainly there and we have to be cognizant of them, I have been on a mission as our new mayor to make our government function better. And at this point in developing my first budget as our city's mayor, I have a few different priorities in mind as it relates to a plan forward. So, right off the bat, uh we are identifying and pursuing opportunities to make our government, especially on the city side, more efficient. And uh another thing that we're doing as well is uh we're going to be going through the process on the city side as well of putting together department by department a strategic plan which is something that hasn't been done in some time in terms

162of the budget on our end on the city side as well. Uh we're going to be uh putting forward a responsible conservative uh budget that ultimately preserves essential services for our city but does so in a fiscally responsible manner. And I think the most important thing that we're going to do aside from maintaining as conservative of an operating budget as we can is we're going to be embarking uh going forward on a real concerted effort to expand our commercial tax base so that our residents aren't forced to bear as much of the burden. There are no quick and easy fixes to any of these issues. We're not going to get to a point where I think we need to be overnight, but this is the direction that we're rowing and we're going to get there

163in spite of the difficulties we face in the coming weeks and months. At this point, we'll move on to the next part of the agenda, which is the selection of the dates for the next budget workshop meetings. Um, open to discussion about that. Do we have any proposed dates, superintendent? question is, do we want to have another meeting next week prior to April 14th? That's really the only option is to meet, you know, next week before the April 14th business meeting. Um, if not, that will be another uh pretty lengthy meeting. Uh I just again worry about the time frame between April 14th and the time our our budget approved vote and budget hearing is scheduled already for May 21st because of the timeline that we have to follow for the city unless that is

164pushed back or changed that is the timeline we're following uh that we have had for the past I'd say two or three years. Um, so I'm just a little worried about that time frame to do the work that we may have to do. I'm not saying it can't be done. Um, so I'm looking either if we're going to meet again on the 14th. I will certainly have some of the requests that you've asked some additional information for that evening. Um, but we should probably schedule between April 24th, uh, which is a workshop night, which is good. Oh, no. 24th. Is it the 24th? the 28th 28th uh is a workshop night. We should probably schedule I would say one for the week of May 5th at the very least to have another one in there

165before May 12th which is when we're going to have to have a final budget which again the the weeks are just structured differently because March got that today in March got the 31st in. So, it's moved all the weeks back from when our meetings are. So, if the mayor is committing to having us a number by the end of the week and next week, I mean, we're going we're going to need some time to digest that. Your team is going to need time to digest that. Our meeting is regularly scheduled for the 14th and I assume we have like other stuff to do that night. Is everyone opposed to doing something I don't know midweek Wednesday Thursday? Because I mean to Dr. Quank's point if we wait this is going to be a shotgun wedding.

166I'm open. Um, I would recommend Wednesday as opposed to Thursday because Thursday is a half day and you're going into April vacation and Easter and Good Friday, etc. So, I would I would just recommend Wednesday versus Thursday. I'm sorry, I missed that and I apologize. Recommendation was avoiding the Thursday before the Easter weekend, I believe. Yeah. Oh, yes. So the 15th or 16th for us is No is good. Yes. We'd prefer not to do it on the 17th, but we'll do it if we had to. I'm down for either. Wednesday the 16th. That gives us a day. So I' I'd make sure everything was posted on Monday, which is good because that gives me Monday to get like as close to a final uh packet and numbers as I can. 16th at 6 o'clock. Are

167we good? Good. Very good. [Music] All right. Uh, so we have our next date. Um, at this point, do we have any other business from the committee? May I ask, and I apologize. Can I ask a clarifying question? Do you want me to not have a budget on the 14th? Like, do you want me to not have um that topic on the 14th and hold it for the 16th and just have a workshop just about the budget? Yes. So business meeting on the 14th, we can do the quarterly, we can have awards, we can do everything that's on our normal business, and then budget on the 16th will focus. Okay. Thank you. That helps me. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah. Other business. Other business, I I would just ask um for an update from member Dunovan

168um from our January meeting when you were going to meet with the superintendent to review changes on how school data is reviewed. school data. I know you said you were going to meet with the superintendent to discuss um Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. I'm sorry. Maybe I maybe I was thinking that it was other data. Yeah. Okay. The school committee how we presented the data to the school committee was the the new chart with the enrollments and withdrawals and residency so that it was in one place and more efficient for the team. I didn't know if I didn't know if that meant the school data that's given back to us on the regular. Um, you know, like um I'm trying to think of a certain specific report that you give back to us. I didn't

169know if that would affect reports given back to us or if it was just that specific enrollment. Um, yes. Um, no, I was just looking for an update. I didn't know if there was more to understand. Um, and then one other question is, can we potentially look into um map testing um map? I'm assuming you know what that means. We do. Okay, that's all that that was my only um I know I'm not on the committee, but I do want to give you an update on the studio equipment at the high school. Uh we did have a contractor come in and um look through it and find out what the problems are. Gave us a stock list of new switches, new equipment that we need to the tune of about $16,000. Um we're in the

170process of getting quotes for that stuff right now. My deadline to get the quotes is Thursday morning so that we can put in an order Thursday afternoon. Um and I've already um signed an agreement for that vendor to come in and install it and get it up working correctly. So, I'm working as quickly as I can to get it done. Just it's gonna probably be a week or two. Let's say three. Yeah, we will. We'll keep you posted. We'll keep you posted. If we have to have the meeting here on the 14th, our business meeting, I will make sure that uh MCTV knows that uh so that we are in the clear. Unless I have the full 100% guarantee and all the equipment is installed by the 14th, I won't take that chance. I will

171I will let you know next week. Yeah, TBD, I'll let you know next week. If everything comes in as it's supposed to, we could be fine for the 14th. So, off off hand here, I I threw out the idea, as you were saying, that it's going to cost $16,000 to probably fix that equipment. Um, I threw out the idea of simply saving money by having our meetings here, but member Shabilia just referenced uh accreditation for chapter your CTE class. You need that maintain. Okay. You're not on that committee. All right. I know, right? Yeah. Member Donovan. I I just feel like we need to acknowledge a few things. This has been a tough meeting. Um Friday night, member Keegan and I, Dr. Kong. Um, we were lucky enough to go to the military ball, the

172ROC. It was I can't describe it. Amanda asis was u recognized as teacher of the year selected by those students. So, it was it was really meaningful. Um, and I'm not and in addition this week I've been hearing about some of the college acceptances, which is not my story to tell, but I hope we get to hear some of the colleges that our students are going to. Um, it just is amazing. So, there is some good stuff happening as we deal with the Yeah, there is as as we try to find a way to fund the continuation of the good stuff. So, um, I just wanted to share that. I'm sorry. Um I just also want to congratulate the winter color guard for coming in first place at finals this past week. Um those kids

173work so hard and it is not a trivial um thing and they they have come so far in the past few years and I just want to say congratulations to them. All right. Anything else? Thank you. All right. At this point, I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. So move. Second. A motion from member Shabilia. The second is from member Daglio. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. The eyes have it. The time is 8:33 and we are returned. Good night, Mthuran.