Scituate School Committee Budget Workshop - 02/12/2022

001one moment one moment so you just click that little gotta button on your screen mr long you're good to go thank you seth uh good morning everybody i'd like to call the um february 12 2022 citrus school committee meeting to order uh this meeting will be recorded and posted uh following the meeting we will have a public comment um after the presentation is done today through the zoom but community members can also email me at malongxit.org if they have any questions she'll start the meeting by doing a roll call vote um long yes uh mr gates yes ms limbaugh yes mr antolini yes and dr berkowski yes all right uh so before we get into the presentation so this is our annual budget workshop it's been on a saturday morning for the ten years that

002evan on the school committee it's a great opportunity for us to start getting the budget information out to the public um this is the first time that most of the committee has seen this information we received the binder earlier this week with information peter and i have seen information ahead of time because we're on the finance subcommittee but really you know this is our first opportunity to get the for the administration to get the budget information out to the public this is a conversation we typically have from february until town meeting when our official budget number for the next fiscal year is approved and then it's something we talk about typically at most meetings as we go through any you know changes or um anything needs to be added to the budget for whatever reason

003so this time what i'm going to do is turn it over to superintendent burkhead and dr dutch to start the presentation great thank you chairman long and school committee good morning everyone and on this beautiful saturday morning uh we're looking forward to presenting uh the fy 23 budget for this workshop um and look forward to sharing um the reflection of our values through that budget i would like to uh and just for formatting purposes uh dr dutch will share a presentation him and i will collaborate on that presentation uh we'll stop when we get to the we'll start stopping at uh specific slides to give the committee opportunities to ask questions um we also also want to thank um our kash center leaders our principals our central office team and our department chairs uh for

004being present as well as our other cost center leaders and technology food services for being here today so if we have any specific questions that they may be able to better answer that'll be terrific and i ask those folks if something a question does pop up that you uh would like to chime in on to simply raise your hand on the screen and uh chairman longwill or seth will allow you the opportunity to unmute and speak all right so um dr dutch you want to start the presentation yes let me share my screen so hopefully everybody can see that at this point yes okay great um let me just get this into presentation format okay um so mr barcat i'll i'll turn it over to you and um we'll progress the slides throughout thank you

005you want to hit the uh or do i have access to the first slide okay all right so yeah thank you um so the budget is not simply how we spend our money the budget to us is a reflection of our district values our core values and beliefs the goal this year is um on creating equitable opportunities for all our students and families while providing highest educational experience so money is a reflection of what we value you measure what you value so today you're going to see that i'd like to start out to talk about some of our values and beliefs through the lens of our two pillars which we operate our district through and those two pillars are a culture of collaboration and a culture of excellence so in today's budget you'll see the

006monies that we spend there'll be a direct through line through those two pillars and i'll get into a little bit more detail in the next slide so some high-level highlights of what you'll see today reflecting in in our budget are um under our cultural of excellence academic and personal as uh an increased investment in curriculum um what we found when we as most people know uh the central office team is pretty much predominantly uh been here 17 months or less and what we found over last year in the in the um and this year is that we haven't been investing enough in our curriculum which um ultimately reflects in what our department shares can do what our assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction and professional learning can do and ultimately what our teachers can do in

007the classrooms with their children we've actually tripled our curriculum budget from uh 17 months ago and we're very proud of that so we'll be showing you some examples of that and i'm sure our department shares will be able to speak a little to that as necessary today so we're we're committed to that increased investment and we believe that will reflect on improved learning opportunities for our students and a higher level of academic excellence the next one um is removal of athletic fees and a little context here when i was interviewed for the superintendent position a few years back it was made crystal clear through all stakeholder groups that i think this was the number one or two uh concern for the community is the number of fees the fees total approximately a million dollars that

008we take in in revenue and once the school district becomes comfortable collecting those fees that becomes part of your budget and therefore they're tough to get rid of my commitment uh starting last year was to eliminate all those fees in my tenure as superintendent we were successful last year in removing the full day kindergarten which again aligns with our commitment to equity for all students and families and that was an approximate 525 000 um commitment and you have to think about that as that's 525 000 that we don't have every single year in our budget for eternity that we have to find money for similarly the next big ticket item and fee and i refer to them as taxes because i think in a public school there should be no fees so we've committed this

009year to making and finding room to remove all athletic fees for those that aren't familiar with that some families are paying a cap of 900 a year on top of bus fees and parking fees um it gets really expensive for our families and especially during covid in any time quite honestly that's too much it also blocks potential families and students from participating although we do offer scholarship for those that can't afford the fees a lot of people don't participate because of the fee structure so this is a net value of approximately 220 000 a year which is significant savings to our families that all that money goes back into the pockets of our families it allows our students to fully participate not worry about a fee and i'm assuming that the numbers of student athletes

010that participate will increase but i also know for a fact that i that our families will appreciate having that money back in their pockets uh so that's a huge investment for us and what we're committed to and we believe that aligns with our personal uh excellence we want more students athletes or students participating and extracurricular events in the whole developing whole child the last one is um you know a first ever and you've heard that heard of the last couple of years we're establishing a lot of first ever and this one is aligned for our diversity equity and inclusion line item a commitment to spending money on um equity quite honestly and last year first was hiring the first director of equity and inclusion and one of the best moves we've made in fact i've

011got superintendents almost monthly contacting me because we are ahead of the curve here asking me about the position of dei how we hire that person what they do and i think within a few years you're going to see every district in the state that will have that commitment the next thing they'll have to do is organize um a budget so that we can continue to establish equity and all the great things that are happening in that department and the other pillar is collaboration uh partnerships working with people building relationships uh the core foundation of any great district or if we want to be the best district in the world these are things that simply have to happen uh and really important when developing a budget so something we've uh worked on is additional funding for

012maintenance and so i think it's important to understand that um as recently as the um last school committee opening with dr burkowski was successful in achieving a place in the board i believe there were eight um people running for that seat every one of them said that the one of their biggest concerns was the facilities our buildings um and they were right uh we've come in and they want to comment uh compliment our and again a partnership our town our town facilities the town manager um the dpw our own facilities uh assistant director mr dillon our custodial team we've really spent a lot of time in dr dutch of course in assessing the needs of our buildings this really came to light when we um when we had to use cares money to really assess

013the hvac systems and air quality in our buildings and i will say and this has come from professionals that have a third party that come and looked at our buildings that our buildings are in the best shape they've been in years as far as hvac and air quality and our commitment is to make sure that is maintained oftentimes what happens in budgeting is that uh schools put themselves in a position where they have to make a decision between hiring a teacher that's needed to put in front of kids or putting money in for maintenance of a boiler in a school and nine out of ten times the staff is going to win that as it should we want to avoid that by working smarter on this and including this in our budget so what we

014did last year again was the first ever we had a first ever line or this year excuse me this fiscal year we have our first ever maintenance line item i think it shows us the town that we're good stewards of their money um it shows a partnership between um the town and our community members and our taxpayers that we're committed in our budget and we're not always going to rely on the town to proactively take care of our buildings so we're not asking for another new school so that wampatuck is being taken care of so that the high school uh wampatakin and um um high school in wampatak and jenkins excuse me have new roofs that are coming up through capital and that's another partnership that the town has worked very closely with us but

015while we're working on that it also means maintenance of all those schools and the new gate in the new gates if you think about it um gates is a relatively new building but if you don't maintain it it will quickly be a building that needs repairs so what we're looking to do and what we'll see in this budget is we're looking at doubling that maintenance lineup again showing a commitment with our town partners that we're taking care of our buildings so when we do go out and ask for a new combined heavily and pushing school that they also know that we're taking care of our buildings in good faith that we're also taking advantage of the capital money that the town has allotted us and committing to those projects same time um so that our

016buildings will be in good shape for the future so i think that's an important one i spent a little more time on that i think increased town support goes hand in hand i just want to thank all those community members who supported the votes um as recently as the msba on the feasibility and schematic design which we'll be starting shortly they've supported since i've been here all our capital requests and we have to show them in good faith that we're taking advantage doing that but we're also um have a significant line in our in our budget making this line item which has never existed so that they know we're just not always going to ever hand out to the town and the last one is uh extremely important we have six contracts that will be

017negotiating this year um and we want to make sure that our staff who are extremely hard working and dedicated i'll tell you they're some of the best i've ever worked with and during covid they've truly shined i consider our six unions and all our employees essential workers they've had to work through covet they've had to come in buildings they've had to work through it so we'll look to look at all those contracts what a contract is it's collaboration it's a partnership to look at the vocabulary and language in those contracts to make sure the reflect that our people are being respected and taken care of um and paid accordingly so those things are important and embedded in the budget as well um just to give you a little detail on the partnership with the town

018and and how the schools are a component of how the schools are funded uh the town uses uh something that's relatively unique not not practiced in many places uh is they they create a forecasting model whereby they identify all of the funds uh all of the revenue that's coming into the town they then subtract the shared costs between the town and the school district and come up with an amount that's available that's determined or called the net available amount and you can see that that's gone up by about 2.5 million dollars from the budgeted amount in fy 22 to what they're proposing in fy 23. and then keep in mind the proposed amount is still a target it's not set in stone what then happens is that it's divided uh two-thirds to the school district

019and one-third to the town so that determines the amount of money that is coming to the school district as a town appropriation so you can see that for next fiscal year it's 42 million 961 thousand seven hundred and eighty three dollars which is an increase of about 1.7 million dollars a little less than 1.7 million dollars so that gives you a about an increase of a little over four percent back to you mr burkett yes thank you so i wanted to um mention something before i get into this slide um the one thing that we're been really proud of the last um two years in our budgets is transparency i think what you'll see today is a level of uh detail that are similar to what we have in our own books so we want

020the community to know when you look at these numbers that's exactly the numbers we're using um and if the community will have questions down the road or want to have conversations with us we're very open to that we open our books up um we think it's very important that people know where where we're spending our money and we're very proud of that too feedback is also helpful so that's something you'll share so part of that transparency is sharing the process you know how do we do this and um you know the mission of the budget process is to help administration and the school committee make informed choices about the appropriation of limited resources developing your budget is not simply replicating the previous budget the budget as a whole is a strategic financial and operating plan

021that allocates resources based on identified goals that's a little outline that dr dutch had prepared actually that i wanted to read and share with you so the process itself um we work with our our staff and before we even get to that i want to give a sailor shout out to our financial forecast committee which is representative of town stakeholders school stakeholders community members that's a group that looks at you know state state numbers predictors a lot of detail in uh what past budgets have um all kinds of of information to come up with an estimate on what we'll have to spend as a school so it's a really collaborative process that goes on behind the scenes that's um kind of reflects on where we get our allotment for the year then once we have

022an idea of that we work within our school district in our in our school community and so the cost center folks and those cost center people are anybody that oversee a budget it could be principals they could be department chairs and central office staff so they they will all get a document that shows what we spent last year what we spent it on um and then what we asked them to do is we asked them to work with their teachers to get input um from those uh who have boots on the ground on what they may need for supplies what they may need for programming things like that that goes through the principals department chairs and central office staff to get those requests and then we align that with how much it costs and then

023the amount of revenue we have available and then we have really in-depth meetings with our cost center folks um we look at uh with our principals after they collect and have meetings with the department chairs as well as our assistant superintendent and we meet and we go line by line and we just talk about accountability justification if we're increasing a line item from last year why why is that important our textbooks simply cost a textbook simply going up or are we moving from one program to another things like that and we always want to make sure that it aligns with our pillars and our values and our beliefs so that conversation happens at a granular level level with our central office team uh with dr dutch and i and our principals and call center leaders

024uh for example our athletic director meets with us our technology director meets with us anyone that has a budget will meet with us and go into great detail about their requests justify those and have conversations and that's where things are edited and adjusted to fit the revenue that we have then we also get involved and i want to thank our finance sub school committee subcommittee i believe that's mr gates and mr long who we meet with and get feedback from after that process they've got a kind of a draft of what you'll see today get their input so it's keeping the school committee in communication throughout the process and this is a five or six month process starting as early as and we start thinking about this thing in september but as early as late

025october early november where we're in into this pretty heavily uh today's budget workshop uh is a wonderful opportunity for the community in the school committee to have a detailed look at our philosophy for the money we intend to spend our approximate allotment and answer any questions uh the time presentation um excuse me the public hearing is thursday so we invite everybody to come to that thursday at 6 p.m that's a special meeting we thought along with the school committee that just having that when one agenda item is important because this is so important and um you know answering the community's questions and concerns at that point would be a wonderful opportunity then we go before the town in the select ward and have a similar conversation about the budget our values how we spend the

026money and then we go uh before in the uh finance and advisory council as well and again justify our budget answer questions so it's a pretty thorough vetting process and then it goes before the people in the tom meeting floor after all those uh parties have had the opportunity to um to vetted ask questions and get those questions answered also just uh we had left out obviously the school committee votes on that budget after the public hearing at their next school committee meeting after that the public hearing so they still have opportunity for us to make modifications after the public hearing and then they would vote on on the budget so one of the the questions were asked is how are we doing this are we getting getting rid of the fees we started to

027take a close look at how we're doing that um and we've created a slide here that will will share this information mr burkett if you want to emphasize these points thank you we titled this good stewards i know i mentioned this i think it's really important to us that we know this is taxpayer money harder money given to schools and we really want to be responsible for how we spend every single penny um and again the questions that have come up how did you save you know the five hundred thousand dollars for last year and no no athletic fees this year and still support contracts for your staff that are that are fair and equitable and we just wanted to share with folks how we're doing that and it's very purposeful um so creative staffing

028solutions um when we we hire our folks we look at you know are there ways that we can save money here and still increase the productivity of a certain position the most recent example is the combining of our paying outside companies to do our athletic training which is a costly endeavor um and replace um administrative assistant for the ad we combined those two into an assistant a d position that allows us to build uh more leadership in the district that person has to have a creatively we decided that person has to have a training uh certified training license so that they can do both and then we don't have to pay for the consulting therefore we're saving a significant amount of money and elevating the position at the same time so those are some examples

029or one example of of things we've done to create staffing solutions um the next one is increased revenue we've been fortunate in the town that our revenue and uh contribution from the town has been increased so that's an obvious one that we're um taking advantage of smartly and i think the next one is also very very important you know national and state monies have come into us through covet we very specifically use that money to enhance this year's budget last year's budget future budgets by using that money on significant costs that are usually one-time events or one-time costs what some people may make the mistake of doing is using this money to to purchase extra teachers or extra counselors and that's all well and good for a year or two but when the money runs

030out in a few years those that those um those monies now come over to your regular budget and create an extra debt for you to offset a revenue that you may not have budgeted so if you hire a couple of staff you know and [Music] next thing you know the extra money is gone now you have to support those two staff in your future budgets which may cause layoffs and other concerns so what we've done is for example in the cares act i've given this example is we put a lot of that money into our aging buildings fixing sinks fixing hvac windows those types of things uh yes or money we've reported out on the sr102 money to our community recently on what we're spending that money on one time curriculum uses for example we

031were talking about this reading program that has lacked in the district for several years that's an extremely expensive cost to initiate we'll be using extra money to do that instead of putting that 300 000 or so into our regular budget and crippling that so again we're very uh cognizant of the ester monies we're appreciative of it we're using it smartly so it's one time expenses that help us kick things off or keep things going uh and supplement our education and make it better but also things that we're not relying on that would hurt us by budget so if we're not spending three hundred thousand dollars in a new reading program a one-time cost in this year's budget right there you can see that's money that we can use in offsetting yeah athletic fees then looking

032ahead as we always do two or three years how can we uh is it sustainable and we believe it is also we've got some great people that are working uh in our central office and uh with their teams coming up with competitive grants and so those competitive grants um offset some of the things we may need to put in a regular budget and are part of this savings and then efficiency of services i just think that's just everything we do we question is it accountable uh are we is it making us better is it a cost savings or if it's a cost increase how will this help us improve student learning and efficiency down the road those conversations happen and then this year what you'll find in the budget um is there's no additional staff

033our enrollment has gone down a little bit uh we feel that we've got one of the most amazing staffs in the state i think the families would agree with that but we carefully looked at this and looking at our needs that this year we don't need additional staff to carry out the services to maintain high levels of academic services so all those things combined have allowed us to operate and achieve some of these cost savings that i alluded to earlier in the presentation so what you have here are is a snapshot of where the dollars go and you can see that the the two largest components are direct services to students regular education at 52.5 percent and special education at 26.3 so over 75 percent of our um budget goes into teaching and learning uh

034when you then factor in the early early childhood center at 1.5 percent and technology um you're well over that 75 and really the only operations pieces um would be administration and maintenance uh which are only a little over 14 so you can see most of the the money is going into um teaching and learning we then look at a little more um broader perspective you can see that 80 percent of our expenditures 81 for 80.5 are going towards uh salaries we've got another eight point three percent going to supplies eight percent other which is mostly out of district special education costs uh and transportation and then facilities and operations um which would be a lot of our maintenance so we're next going to go into the cost center budgets and what i'd like to do

035is make this a little more interactive than rather superintendent and i just speaking so after each cost center will give the school committee an opportunity to ask questions as well as the person responsible for that cost center if it's a principal or department head they'll have the um have the opportunity to speak to those okay so we'll start with the elementary schools first and we'll start with cushing and i'll zoom in on these a little bit so they're they're visible i'm gonna point out um just sorry those things that are of significance uh give you a layout for how this is structured you've got the fy 22 budgeted and ex budgeted amounts and then the fy 23 amounts where there are blanks it's because there's one individual and we didn't want to share those personal

036salaries um and then um we'll we'll talk from there about each so you you can see that the number of elementary teachers and kindergarten teachers has been static at the cushing school the only significant change is the number of paras they've gone from eight to twelve those were not increases in positions those were positions that were unfilled at the beginning of this year and that's why you're seeing those that increase we've actually we're planning to fill those positions for next year and then band you see as a increase of 0.25 we have a band teacher who goes across the four elementary schools last year that person was put into one school only so we've now in in all of these cases where you see some increases uh in in fts it's because i have a

037better handle on staff and budgets here in scituate and can identify uh providing uh greater detail and putting people where they actually are okay i'm gonna jump to supplies next and then once once we're done with uh cushing i'll give you the opportunity to ask questions so supplies we've provided a great deal of detail both for you as well as the principal we gave them the actual expenditures for the previous three years what was budgeted for this year they then provided their request in in some cases these requests are for i'll use uh math for example the math text and the math supply comes as a as a collaborative process comes as a result of a collaborative process between uh the director of curriculum and instruction and the coordinator at that particular level as well

038as the principal so those those people decide collaboratively what what their needs are and that's why you see a little bit of a difference because that's not how it had always happened in the past so this is a i think a little more accurate view of what's really needed based on what we've spent in the past and and the plans is as we move forward and then the last column is the change the difference from one year to the next from fy to 22 to fy23 um so i'm not going to go through each of these you can see in some cases there was nothing requested and the reason for that could be a variety of reasons in some cases where it's the building administrative contract services we've moved those items because they're they're district

039contracts we've moved them into the district expense so when you when you see the district expense line it's going to have gone up significantly it's because we've taken these contracted services out of the line items for the schools so with that said i'm going to open it up for questions regarding cushing uh mr long if you want to facilitate that and i'm actually going to ask the first question um you kind of covered this and i'm going to use cushioning example just because you have it up but across all of the schools you see some swings in um you know we're spending in this case we're sending lesson language art supplies and more um in a different area is it i'm assuming though at the end of the day all the supplies we need for

040next year for the curriculum like we're not you're not going to tell me that we're missing you know we couldn't fund something everything that we expect from a curriculum perspective will be funded it's really just what we have to buy this next year versus you know we may already have supplies that cover next year yeah well i think it's in some cases particularly the language arts and and reading for example that's more a function of moving money from one one program to another and less about a decline in resources you can see i think the bottom line number is really what's most telling um if you see a lower number um from one year to the next then you might want to ask the question why other than that it's probably a reallocation uh and

041yes to answer your question directly i don't think within the curriculum area there was anything that was requested that we've we've denied at this point um partly because of esser we're able to to provide a lot of the materials but as far as consumables and in those day-to-day expenses yeah we've we've been able to provide all of that okay and that was my biggest question because christian i mean you have those two examples there each school is a little bit different with each subject area so that's why i i figured it out the blanket question early on as opposed to the detail you know in it the answer to that depends on who the cost center um person was some some uh divide the resource equitably across all four elementary schools and others look at

042it at a per pupil basis and where for example jenkins has more students than nathalie a dollar amount may be greater for a particular line item at jenkins because of that um ms driscoll had really asked the curriculum coordinator the uh the department chairs and the curriculum staff to take a granular look at what we're spending and what we need and they provided a great deal of detail so that we we know where the funds are going and when they actually make requests next year um through the the purchase order process we can cross-reference and say you know is this something that you had planned for or is this you know why is this now being asked for when it wasn't planned for uh particularly if we overspend a line item okay and that makes

043a lot of sense and you're right i know that's one of the questions we've gotten in the past is why is drinking spending more than another school and it's really class size right you know you need 500 pencils for jenkins you only need 300 crocheting because you know um proportionately that's what you need um but no you the important point that you made was there was nothing that we that was requested that we missed and that was my my biggest question so i'm glad that's the case okay um are there any questions on questions from the rest of the committee yep my apologies i didn't want to drop but i think ms gregory had her hand raised it might have been pertinent to that last question you had okay sorry inside um um [Music] if

044you want to raise your hand again i can unmute now um i just wanted to clarify that so we have two separate lines ela and reading um that we pull basically a lot of the same um a lot of the same curriculum items from so where you see um the ela line went to zero this year it's because those funds went into reading we put them all in one line so we could have one line that we're pulling all of those materials from instead of splitting them between two so you'll see that at all four schools if that makes sense nope that makes perfect sense just with each school we're going to see that happen and that's just why i wanted to ask the question earlier but thank you that makes a lot of sense

045are there any questions on cushing from the rest of the committee mike just a quick clarifying question um so that the band teacher the 0.25 position so is that that looks like i mean as i flip ahead in my book that is so the way that it's laid out it's distributed between the four elementary so basically 25 of the time at each school is that how it is now mr thomas would you like to respond to that sir thank you um can you hear me yes okay um so we we have for the last few years had a blitz model where um the teachers are coming to a given elementary school and working as a team now to accomplish that um we are using some staff from the gates middle school greg lazar in the

046morning and adam bruchow works throughout the district um so on on most days except for the tuesday i believe when there are ensemble rehearsals taking place at gates um we're using the blitz model i think what's attempting to be done here is to just show a better accounting of the use of staff um i would say and honestly it's probably 20 percent because there is one day where susie de silva who works primarily at the elementary school uh does go back up to gates and helps there and the reasoning behind that is we have a net loss at the gate school for uh the lesson pull out program when greg lazar and adam gusher are down at the elementary so to restore that balance she in turn on tuesdays comes up and teaches at gates

047i don't know if that kind of fills in some of the blanks yeah for me it does because um i know i've got band kids that play in the band so i'm totally familiar with um the hard work that that department does so um yeah i just wanted to make sure i just want to clarify so that absolutely clarifies how it works and how it's laid out in the budget so thank you jim yep mike i just have a quick question okay good um i know that we had implemented a new math program is i'm just curious as to why the line item i think we spent 10 000 in math last year and then it looks like another 8 000 is proposed i'm just curious is that is there a particular reason for that

048that we have all that spending two years in a row and i mean it's good it's curious as to why i thought that we'd implement the entire elementary level mr allen could respond to that oh i actually think i can respond because miss allen was not here last year um she was didn't um put that in so right now um the math curriculum including the digital supports that we need on a one-year basis and that is something that we're looking to consolidate in the future so that it is not costs every year maybe we do a longer adoption so that we have bigger savings she's already working on that both in math and science but that is the cost that we need to continue the math programming that we adopted last year and heather if

049you want to add anything feel free but i didn't want to put you on the spot for a program you weren't here for thanks honey yeah um heidi is correct that was the cost last year and i wasn't here last year but in order to continue that program we do there's consumable items that the students need as well as online digital access which will be a recurring cost but we are working hard to have a longer license so that the annual cost will be less okay great thank you okay all right doctor not just ready we can move on okay uh so heather lee staff uh again same format um you can see that there there are a couple of 0.8 positions there uh there's there are no change i don't think there are any

050changes in total uh total number of staff there so you get a pretty good idea and then uh heather lee supplies again very very you know they're all the same layout i'm sorry to make them bouncing it's my mouse um you can see there's a small total increase in the bottom line when you look at the again language arts for example and then you look at reading you see the the increase similar to what you saw cushing um so i give you a couple seconds to to peruse i'm not going to go through each line item uh if there are any questions regarding hathaly happy to have those answered okay move on to jenkins uh so you you see a little bit of you say a reduction of a 0.8 position here um from fy

05122 to 23. uh and that's the ell i'm sorry that's a parrot primarily a para position uh there is one less position uh in next year's budget based on on the needs and then jumping to their supplies there's actually a reduction thank you principal jen principal jenkins dr long um we we see a three thousand dollar reduction but you can see it by line item uh where those where those reductions are questions i was just wondering if um dr dutch if someone could speak to the science because it seems like there's some changes happening in the science both in the the um supply and techs and it's not um it's just different across the schools and i'm curious what what great things are going on there that's changing those costs either miss driscoll or ms

052allen i can speak to that so last year we didn't purchase um any of the hands-on materials for the labs that went with those we couldn't let anybody touch them so we didn't purchase those uh we'd like to purchase them now so um that it was a pretty significant cost um i'm not sure exactly what the titles of the modules are but it's the hands-on materials that go with each science module and um that's i think the biggest change um if heather you want to elaborate more yeah that's correct if the lab materials are the biggest cost it's also has the biggest impact on student learning so we wanted to make sure that we were budgeting for that so students had that experience that they missed for the past few years thank you that helps

053and i guess with the text the the differing numbers across the school is that just a function of which school is needing new textbooks is that a good read of that number so they're all getting the same thing um all students all schools are getting the same program as well as consumable workbooks the number variation is just reflects the number of students within the building thank you and mike i have i have two uh questions um just across the district for the elementary schools the kindergarten supply line um could somebody speak to that uh it's gone from there's no line on them so is that just re reallocated into other departments i can speak to that yes that's exactly what we did just for cost savings we put it in so that we can purchase

054items um often those are general supplies that everyone uses so we just wanted to be able to purchase for the school and then kindergarten has that opportunity just to take what they need so it should be allocated okay um and my other question um maybe goes to dr dutch and um bill about do you know the elementary schools as a whole there was that deep dive into the kindergarten this elementary school population related to the msba process and i was just wondering if you know i know this the budget process started you know months ago but i was just wondering if there was any changes uh if that that deep dive had any impact on the on the elementary school budgets bill do you want want me to respond to that yeah i could start

055and you'd fill the blanks bob i guess we're very aware of the the projected numbers and we we do account for that it kind of goes along what julie said we include that in the larger uh budgeting of the numbers to include in the schools and building a cushion for that based on those estimations and then when the real numbers come in through registration we then become at this point a more finite answer and then anything extra we need we can use and apply so there's not such a great change where um you know we have to make it its own line item but we are aware of that yes i don't know if you want to add anything to that bob just that you know this budget is reflective of the number of students

056currently um that are in the buildings and and the msba study is a more long-term uh projection year to year and and while they they do give you a projection for next year we really have a pretty good handle on on the number of students that we're going to have in any building or across all four elementary schools in particular year to year it's the long term you know 10 years out 20 years out you know the p which is the uncertainty uh in looking at all the the birth data and the housing starts uh housing sales uh that that sort of thing that that we don't really do on a on a year-to-year basis thank you so i'm going to move on to wampatuck uh and wampatuck again has uh a little more than

057one fewer uh staff member and that again is is one para less um and again uh you know the the music teacher is actually a 0.9 and we we always thought i always thought it was a full-time person uh they're only at the uh the wampatuck school for for 0.9 so this is more reflective of the actual time additionally there's a another an additional half custodian we were missing somebody uh this year and that has since been at least when we budgeted so that's been addressed moving forward then looking at the supplies for wampa tech you'll see a similar picture as you did for the other schools a very slight increase of 547 dollars as it relates to the total at wabatak questions so i'm going to move on then to the middle school the

058gates middle school staffing again this is uh there's one one fewer position this year next year versus this year it's a 0.5 uh literacy la literacy position that you see as a change and then the 0.5 math specialist and that's because those positions were rolled into a different title for the most for the most part um and the ally the health and allied applied nutrition excuse me is a 0.5 less as well mr beatty i don't know if you wanted to speak to any of those modifications uh sure i think our existing staff will be remaining in those positions uh maybe have fallen into a different line but the staff number stays the same okay and then supplies at the gates middle school these get smaller as the as the list get longer and again

059similar to the elementary schools those items that our district expenses were taken out here many of the line items particularly for for example world language math those are the responsibility of the department chair um along with the director of curriculum in collaboration with the principal they they meet they talk about that and so open it up for questions i don't know if ryan there's anything you want to comment before questions or hiding okay i'm seeing heads heads nodding no so i'll turn it over to you mr long if there are any questions regarding either staff or supplies at the gates middle school doctor doctor she had a quick question on the the totals for the yes staffing looks like fy23 has a number of 16 million is that um accurate uh no so the difference

060is accurate the difference is accurate the number is wrong i don't know where that number came from okay not a big deal i just wanted to make sure that you know we run the same page it's about 9 million that's a big deal give me one second and i will tell you what that actual number is at the uh for staff uh it's 7.8 million okay i'm not complaining about the the number for next year i just want to make sure the difference is accurate i appreciate you pointing that out i missed that any other questions in the committee okay we'll go to the high school uh high school staff um there is a request for an additional 0.2 business teacher um and while we're willing to to do that uh the the enrollment at

061the high school will be down about 60 students next year so there there would need to be some sort of a change as well you see a reduction in science teachers i think it was just a miscount in fy 22 but i didn't want to change the number and and the dollars you can see do represent a difference in in positions and i'm not sure where that where that came from the the same is true for um school psychologists and some differences in numbers and then increased number of paras in fy 23. uh so lisa i don't know or dr mcguire would you like to speak to any of those changes sure so um with our lighthouse transitional learning program for students coming back for hospitalizations we had a 0.5 uh school psych who uh

062retired and we ended up replacing with the adjustment counselor position because that role is better able to fulfill more needs within the high school as well as the full program and comes in at a cost savings as a 1.0 to a cost savings for a school psychologist so that was a decision that we made this past year and it's working out very well so we want to stay with that um in addition i just want to note the business teacher we are going down in enrollment uh due to graduation we had that two-year bubble that went up but we didn't receive any additional staffing uh when we had that bubble so for the past four years it has been tight and our class sizes have been up so at this point as that graduating class

063leaves and our numbers come down a little lower i would say we're right on point with where we're going to want to be and we have wanted to be we just haven't been able to because of that bubble um so i do advocate i think the business department needs to grow i think that's what we're seeing our students are passionate about they're um they're going to college many students to study business and for the size of our building we want our program to grow and thrive so that's the the one request we have there thank you and then supplies at the high school it's two pages of supplies so i'll go through both of those you're going to see a significant decrease in the supplies at the high school primarily because we athletics was taken

064out of the high school and given its own line item so that's where you're seeing the greatest reduction here in athletic contract services you see 195 thousand dollars less in athletic equipment repair you see six thousand dollars less uh so those are those are significant reductions in the supply line for the high school but we are still spending those funds at the district level for purposes of awareness the physical education equipment repair um i it's it's very unique uh and there is a an outdoor ed program and i'll let mr ranieri speak to that that's something that we've not budgeted for in the past and we we need to it's a big enough number that you just can't uh absorb that so craig yes uh thank you dr dutch um you know with any uh

065when you have equipment you need to take care of it right and um what we saw is uh about 2010 we had um we're fortunate enough to offer a fairly large scale pep grant that brought in about three quarters of a million dollars for physical education equipment supplies materials uh that included um 18 new pieces of commercial grade cardiovascular equipment in the in the cutler fitness center an outdoor adventure ed program and you know just this past year some of these outdoor items are starting to uh need to be replaced so there is a was an outdoor item um an element that needed to be replaced for the tune of almost uh 4 500 so there is we also want to maintain uh our maintenance on our fitness equipment um you know it doesn't take

066much for the deck of a treadmill to be replaced um [Music] we do have a maintenance contract for both the outdoor adventure ed equipment as well as our fitness equipment the goal is as well as to create an attrition plan for our equipment so that we don't have everything fail at once and need to have a massive expense to to replace it as well thank you you're welcome uh mr can i just comment on that too um thank you mr ranieri and i i think i want to uh commend mr o'neary uh for doing that safety is the number one thing in in wellness in the outdoor pursuits equipment we had and the um fitness equipment so i think um the best point he made there certainly was that we're keeping our kids safe this

067is similar i think the analogy i would make is to our buildings um what's he's doing is we're putting um smaller amounts of money in now so that we don't have to shut down equipment or someone gets injured so by coming up with a three to five year plan on maintenance improvements uh in the outdoor equipment in the fitness center equipment the kids will have high quality equipment we'll have a high prior uh quality wellness program um but it won't be a lump sum uh drop it five years from now for two hundred thousand dollars so i think it's smart investing and it's and it's good business so i wanna thank him for that that's a great point mr burkhead so for example we have um safety inspections through the department of public safety as

068well as project adventure and they identify equipment that is reaching the end of their useful life so for example helmets that are used to climb on the climbing wall or any of our vertical elements indoors they have a useful life they get sighted we need to replace those ropes harnesses these things aren't cheap and they're awesome experiences for kids and we need to make sure we're in compliance with any regulations thank you guys okay so we'll go to the second page of scituate high supplies um so again you see some some reductions uh some increases um [Music] so i'd be happy to answer questions about about any of this uh dr dutch i just had one quick question for the um the foreign language staffing i know when we did the program of studies i

069think it was latin that we weren't going to offer last next year so we're able to just reallocate that stuff into a different language or i'm just curious why we're going up if we're not offering a specific language next year i'll pass that on to uh mr yeah sure so what we currently have is flexibility and staffing um we have staff that can offer or speak provide instruction in a variety of different languages so although we're um sort of dissolving that program at that level we have some flexibility with staffing okay that's great thank you any other questions i had a question about it was sort of at least dr mcguire pretty much answered it already but um it was sort of about enrollment and so we know that that bubble has graduated and is

070it accurate as i believe it is that behind that bubble is pretty stable class sizes so even in the next three to five years we don't anticipate kind of too much change there i do not anticipate change based on the numbers that are gates um based on the numbers that we typically have to vote in a couple private schools uh we should be steady over the next i would say three to five years at least yeah that's great thanks lisa to piggyback on that mr brandolini um the projections through our msba recent um assessments there'd be a slight bump very small bump in the next five years k-12 however over the next decade they're predicting um a pretty steady uh balanced number that we have currently right now no huge drop no increase so that's

071also good to know as we uh continue with our planning yeah that's great okay moving on to special education staff uh some of these staff obviously are duplicative all of these positions were also listed on the school page for staff but i did want to break it out as an expense uh within special education so you can see how many special ed teachers there are in each school how many each school has one speech language pathologist one school psychologist and then the number of paraprofessionals and the differences that you see particularly in the paraprofessionals but also in the special education teachers is sometimes a function of the specialized programs that may be in a particular building such as hatherley and and jenkins so that kind of explains those differences and then you have district-wide positions

072besides the special education director you've got folks who go between all six schools potentially the elementary team chair covers the four elementary schools secondary team chair the middle school and the high school we have an out of district coordinator which is actually a 0.7 position so i'll need to adjust that um teacher visually impaired the behavior specialist we have two uh one physical therapist who goes between all the schools uh there are three occupational therapists and then two secretaries for the special ed department one for the team chairs i believe and then the other is at the central office so you can see the total for central as well as the total salaries for special education i'm going to jump just to the supplies next before i open it up for questions so and and

073i'm not sure why i ended up with these colors i apologize for that it must be because it's close to mardi gras um so when you you can see purchase of services materials and supplies these are those items that are needed i'm going to focus on three items four items here and then let you ask questions and i'm assuming dr bober will have some comments as well the summer program was very effective last year uh and that's the same dollar amount that we used last year uh so we reallocated the same amount um it was a very effective program it kept us from sending students and paying tuitions to go elsewhere transportation has gone up significantly uh when when you see the the district supplies um you'll see those expenses are much higher and i'm

074sure part of that is fuel costs for what we're being charged uh by the vendors but these are these are outside third parties that are providing transportation to us uh and then private school tuition and collaborative those are our out of district expenses and uh so we're we're a little bit uh over 3.1 million i think we're close to a little over 3.2 million uh you can see that as a total down at the bottom here uh 3.2 million 10 000. um so i'll open it up to questions i have a question uh mike yeah good okay thanks um so given the pandemic and um obvious increase in mental health needs and also special education needs i'm curious if there is any consideration to adding any additional special educators or social emotional staff if you're

075seeing data that supports that if there's an increased number of special education students in the district um i'll speak to one part of this and then i'll open it back to michelle for regarding the special ed component i think the the social emotional health while there is an increase in need and severity i think that scituate is very well positioned regarding those supports with an adjust particularly at the elementary level where there's an adjustment counselor and a school psychologist in every building i think there's enough supports at that level um middle school and high school i think that's a little more open to discussion and i'll turn that over to uh michelle to respond to in addition to your question regarding special ed teachers thanks bob yes hi um i agree we do we are

076very fortunate to have an adjustment counselor and a school psychologist in every school building um especially you know at the elementary level where we don't have you know a ton of students so i feel that the social emotional needs are definitely being taken care of the other thing that we have is we have an adjustment counselor specifically for our social emotional behavioral programs that are at the jenkins school and at gates so there's an additional counselor to address the students needs i think that the staffing the teachers the counselors the administrators everyone we have the peras are all very focused on social emotional mental health and they do a great job working with all the children including the students from middle school to high school i think at some times it's hard for certain students

077to you know make progress in a big school setting and that's when we have to look at other out-of-district um possibilities so even adding another counselor it's like we can't change like coming into a big school and those kind of things but um for certain kids but we do a great job with meeting all the kids needs the counselors are wonderful um so i don't have any concerns at this point regarding that and we also like i said if there are additional needs and we need to look at the collaborative we're lucky to have south shore collaborative close by and they do offer a lot of programs for kids with mental health issues um in terms of the teachers you know we do have relatively low case load sizes for special ed teachers in scituate

078and um you know when you look at the school staffing um where there's more special ed teachers that's also because there are special ed substantially separate programs so at jenkins we have our language-based classroom and we also have our gems program social emotional program at hatherly we have our programs for students with disabilities that are more intensive like cognitive disabilities and autism so i think that you know the budget is um i know that the you know we all work together to make sure that we're meeting the needs of all the kids long may i add to that of course um as far as the scl goes um i know we've talked about this in the recent state of the district but you know it's also our one of our pillars and one of our

079commitments and developing the whole child is equally as important to us as as the academic excellence as the social emotional learning of our staff in regular times let alone coveted it's certainly more of a proven to us so as i mentioned then we do a lot of work and we've invested in the peer program in that partnership it's been expanded this year where each school level has its own team we have a new district team and so i think that's been really well received each principal and their staff has committed to investing time into looking at the recent data reported by the kids and so it's kind of all hands on deck with the social emotional learning you know of our students and our staff as as adults you know how do we how do

080we support each other and that's been reflected in our pde and um it's crossed over many um of our practices including special education and also curriculum and development so i know um if i could also turn this over to mrs trisco to add to that as well i think she has some um can can bring some more insight into it as well laura as far as funding goes um we have a substantial amount of money in the esser grants that's dedicated specifically to social emotional learning and that includes screening assessments and support support and services and that goes beyond just students who qualify for special education services that is for all students so that's something that we have that you may not see in here but it is for all students and it's a part

081of how we're using those emergency funds just thank thank you for that um i just want i just want us to really um double down on all of that stuff you know the learning losses and i worry about the elementary kind of bubble of um you know as we've talked about many times in school committee meetings and um obviously insurance every day in schools just um you know every grade suffered obviously because of pandemic times but i i just think the particular strain has been on the younger kids in um you know in those formative years so just to really keep an eye on them and you know make sure that we're investing in them and kind of bringing them to where they need to be is super important great [Music] any other questions on

082the special education from the rest of the committee uh doctor that shouldn't this is for you or dr bill bird but i just had a question in the out of district totals i was just curious how that compared to uh this current year and then have we heard from any of the private schools we sent our students to if they might be increasing tuition at this time or for next year or here that would be coming up in the future dr bover and i'll defer to you sure the schools do often increase their tuitions we haven't gotten official notification they can do it any at any time during the year so i usually budget a small increase about two percent just to account for any increase that they might they might add in terms of

083the out of districts we're doing really well in terms of the numbers of students going out and in terms of uh keeping that cost down um so i know that um i think last year's budget we were projecting or for fiscal year 21 projecting 4 million 314 000 out of district and now we're at 3.2 million the reason for that is combination of factors of some students that have either graduated or turned 22 but i think um and some students that were not living within our town but we were providing their their care and you know when i came on board we kind of looked at those kind of things students still continue to receive their district tuition but it wasn't our responsibility um and then finally the most important reason is just making sure

084that we're providing effective school services within our public schools and i do stand by the programs that we have in our staff so i think that is making a dent but it is a fluid picture at any point that you know could increase but i think this is a conservative estimate for what we would expect next year okay thank you and i know that that number has hit you know bit us a couple times mid-year in previous years but you're right i mean this number's a lot lower than i've seen in previous budgets and you know for all the reasons that you mentioned i'm grateful that we've been able to cut that number down and allocate the money somewhere else so thank you uh and just to give you a solid number the budgeted number

085for out-of-district total lap for this fiscal year that we're in was 3.8 million so you're seeing a 600 000 reduction thank you just one final question mike on this topic before we kind of head to the next item um not now obviously but i'm curious maybe a bug in front of my face um in future maybe school committee meeting or something i'd be curious to see um what our ratios are in terms of like i know the national it's the national average i think of like it's over 400 to one like counselors to students and obviously our numbers are better than that i know that i'm just curious what our kind of student counselor ratios are at the schools and even special educators um student ratios those sorts of things maybe just interesting to see

086in terms of where we're at as compared to i don't know if we compare state or sort of national averages or local towns or then we could do that mr brandolini all right thanks ready for me to move on mike uh yes please okay okay so curriculum um this is a level of detail and and to be honest it was much more detailed coming from the department chairs but i wanted to give you an idea of the sorts of things that you know when you look at what those expenses were at the elementary level and elsewhere what what they're going towards so this is the representation of this and and keep in mind that this presentation will be posted to our website so you'll be able to to take a deeper dive um but it

087you know if you look at the elementary program in particular uh you can see the science k through sci k through three science curriculum the digital textbook so that's the detail behind what you're seeing at the elementary level heidi i don't know if there's anything you want to add to this i think i just want to thank the department here so the general numbers that we all saw in all of the buildings that's the big picture number but as bob said these are those specific details to just explain where things are going so the eureka math digital resources that we mentioned earlier that we need to be able to sustain our math program it's actually written out here um something that michoula and teachers of foreign languages really wanted to make sure we go forward

088with is the stamp testing for proficiency to move more students to earning the seal of by literacy which is a very big deal and a wonderful thing to have on your high school diploma so i think you have said what where we are spending our money or where are we putting our funds really shows our priorities and um i think this is a wonderful highlight of some of those things any questions i don't see any dr dutch i think he can move on so next is athletics um and again i want to thank mr payne for a very detailed budget what i've done is kind of aggregate what he provided me so you see this the staffing here one athletic train uh director you've got one athletic trainer and assistant uh which is the assistant

089a.d which which we uh which was mentioned by mr burkhead and then the coaches and and the number is um a moving target at any any point in time as as we add programs so all salaries total those those are the salaries for athletics a supplies total and then i've listed here for you all of the supplies under boys soccer there was a listing of what was being purchased so there is a greater level of detail for all of this um and then contracted services is up here that uh excuse me down here uh most of that is officials so when you have uh basketball referees and whatnot those those fall within that range but then you also would have um ice time for boys and girls hockey you've got a pool we pay for

090the pool for gymnastics uh if we do out indoor track potentially there's fees for us associated with that um so that that's all included in these contracted services and then finally uh the last is membership to belong to each of these leagues um there's a cost associated with that um included in that questions about the athletic budget i just want to point out that included in the spring you'll see girls golf is is butted budgeted in there for supplies as is the coach dr dutch just folks that may see that the winter season looks considerably more than the other two i think a big ticket item there is the ice time am i correct saying that yes that's correct [Music] okay so seeing no questions uh i will move on so then we come to

091the district and uh you can see the district staff i've listed each each position and then you've got the department chairs and curriculum coordinators which historically have had a line on their of their own we kind of looped them into central as an expense there if you then go to supplies again i know this is small i'll try to enlarge it as much as i can um i want to point out the the significant differences to you here so school committee memberships there was no amount for them previously we've budgeted six thousand dollars because that's what we've spent historically in that line item you'll see that contracted services has gone up significantly you recall i told you that each elementary school middle school and high school had building admin contracted services that went away that's

092because it's come into this line item you'll see the the line item for dei uh supplies which didn't exist previously you'll also see a significant increase when we get to electric utility payments thirty thousand dollars more for gas utilities um and then the doubling of our preventative uh maintenance which is the extraordinary and unanticipated uh that's to fix things that we didn't didn't anticipate would happen uh so you see the total has gone from 2.6 million to 3.3 again these supplies custodial supply were never budgeted for previously yet they were expenses that we were spending and taking it from elsewhere so we wanted to make sure that we budgeted for this appropriately so i'll open it up to questions for uh regarding the district staff or supplies mr long i have a question if that's

093okay so i'm wondering if someone can speak to i know um mr burkhead you said you were adding a line for dei supplies can can you just give us a little bit more detail about what what might be in that line like what kinds of activities or or legitimately supplies just curious um i didn't know if jameel was on if he would want to respond to that absolutely i am here just making my screen come help okay here we go i am here so um the hey good to see everybody so the supplies in that end would go towards things like when we did it this is our house this year that event when we do um the affirmation cards things like that um any attendance at um well not any attendance at conferences but

094um latest literature and professional development um professional development materials as well and then any district-wide initiatives that we do that can help support the lit teams and all initiatives therein um and so as we also get some information from the uh equity uh audit whenever that comes up we'll have some resources in place for that as well so that's just the ballpark of some direct things and initiatives that would be taken care of helpful a little bit doctor or you need some more is that good no that that's good thank you jamil i appreciate it okay i might i just might dovetail that thank you mr adams is that um since technically this year we didn't have a uh prepared budget where as we go along jamil is building that budget so his preparations for

095next year some of the things that we've accomplished that i think he related to there and this i think you will see evolve over the years as our dei initiatives and programming uh continues and we'll have some more specific line items as things evolve yeah um mr barca i just have one other question and it gets back to your point regarding the pillars i'm not asking you to do it for this budget season but i think i would love again as nicole said maybe this is a conversation for a future meeting what i would really love to see is the budget lines that are directly associated with the pillar so for example mr adams i really appreciate your examples but i would also imagine that as teachers make changes to you know ela and reading

096and as teachers make changes to the math curriculum there are there are hints of dei work happening there as well that is separate but collaborative with mr adams and so i think it would be helpful at least as a school committee member to be able to see the different ways in which the the district is investing in dei is investing in wellness and you know personal excellence and also investing in academic excellence because even just looking at the curriculum to be quite honest it's not evident right like it's not it's not always clear so i think being really intentional and lining up those different items with our pillars would be again just as a as a person who's trying to understand this more just would be helpful absolutely thank you mike i have a couple

097of questions um regarding the custodial supply line where i imagine that last year in the year before a lot of that was covered by cares the cares funding much of it was yes actually yeah okay um and the line item for um homeless transportation it's you know this is uh last year it was 24 000 this year there's no budget so are we you know confident that that wouldn't be an expense so there's two answers to that question um one is we at the present time are not transporting any homeless students but we never know who's going to become homeless which is why there's a 24 000 um estimated amount that's usually in that line item that said it doesn't belong in this line item it belongs in the transportation and that's where you'll see

098it when i get the transportation okay thank you um superintendent brooke i said one question on the on this item so um if it's here in a different aspect of the presentation but food services um is something that might change next year so for the past few years school lunch has been free i'm guessing the federal government's not going to keep supporting that as much as some sort of families would love it um have we looked at you know the food services budget from what we expect to pay out to purchase food versus you know what we're receiving from students buying lunch just sort of bob on that okay so the food service program is um self self funding so it's not part of our budget so you won't see that here um it is

099it is this year um running to the positive side because all school lunches are free and paid for by the federal government so what we're doing very well and it's why we've been able to replace two two pieces of equipment through the the profit our food service costs uh both the food itself all of the supplies and the staff are paid for through the revenue that they produce so it's not budgeted and there is no cost to the district or the town for food service so you won't you won't see it in the budget anywhere okay part of the reason i asked um you know a number of years ago we were operating in the red from a food services perspective and i think part of that was because some of the larger purchases we

100had to like you just described were considered in that same line item so it obviously wasn't anything i stopped was doing it was you know how the how everything was grouped together so that's part of what i was curious um for that lineup yeah i i think those items um you know big pieces of equipment in reality are capital and should be part of the capital uh budget as we're moving forward but um i i can't speak to how things function previously but i i'm very confident in the processes and the methods that the current food service director is utilizing to ensure that we will always be in black great thank you would you like me to move on uh please so transportation staff and supplies you're seeing in one line so we have 16

101bus drivers five van drivers their total salaries and then you have our supplies so our fuel has we've increased that from 70 000 to 80 000 for this coming year uh the lease of buses we will be going out uh to lease our but for a new lease on new buses this year so that is a number that's determined by uh by the town and if we find that the uh cost of those buses comes back significantly higher we may need to revisit that with the financial forecast committee because that's where that that uh originates you can see uh miss this linblond that the 24 000 for homeless transportation is here our supplies um from headlights to almost anything is included in that bus drivers within their contract have longevity and that's the cost for

102that and then as also as part of their contract we pay for their uh biannual twice a year drug testing and their physical that's a requirement from department of transparent transportation and we we pay for that so you can see the subtotal and then our total expense for transportation and supplies any questions there i have a question just about the um the fuel um you had mentioned when we were discussing the sped budget that um they had that's a excuse me a different line item and we it's determined by the who we contract with correct so do they have the ability to i know you know gas prices are uh high anyway but would they do they charge a little bit more or do they have to go by you know what they're paying for

103gas i just you know just for some clarification the contracts do not specify um whether there can or cannot be a cost escalator for fuel or other expenses so they could very well raise the cost in the middle of the year and they have um so we we have to be pretty conservative and and put a number in there that gives us a little bit of a cushion to make sure that we we don't have a shortfall our own fuel it's a little bit different it go we buy through that we get it through the town they then bill us and the town uh does a on at least an annual contract through a bid process and that does guarantee them a fixed cost regardless of what happens to fuel prices for that year wow

104okay that's interesting thank you okay i'm gonna move on to technology so technology staffing um so there's one coordinator um there's some other positions that fall within technology uh because they don't fit anywhere else the pac technician the music accompanist and then we've got contra our union positions as well uh support the paraprofessional and then two teachers who are in support roles for students and staff as it relates to both hardware and technology applications so you see the total you then have supplies at twelve thousand dollars those are things like uh keyboards mice uh monitors those sorts of things and then contracted services at eighty five thousand dollars and then i listed uh some samples of what the contract services within technology would be so you could see see what those are some are software

105applications some are contract services for support and others are network hardware types of support like comcast for example so any questions on technology keep in mind hardware like computers laptops those generally come out of capital we put in a capital request each year and those are planned for within that on a five-year basis a five-year replacement basis for each uh each device mike i don't know i thought you started to have a question i i was going to thank him up dr dutch okay so ready to go next is the early childhood center so there's a halftime director there are four teachers one's slp and then eight paraprofessionals and you can see the total cost their supplies they do not have a supply line item their supplies are rolled into the wampa tuck budget for

106supplies because they are housed at the wampa tuck school so i don't know if they're pretty straightforward i don't imagine there'll be questions but certainly happy to answer any if there are i just have a quick question um for the staffing is that based on what we project for enrollment next year or is that or do we think that the staffing we have today will just be up to the number of um kids we expect to join the ucc it is based on the number of students that we're accepting into the ecc there are more students who are applying than we have seats available for we certainly could grow the program from an interest perspective but not from a space perspective um we'd have to we'd have to look at alternative structures whether that would

107be all half day or some other sort of configuration to because we do have a full day program to to come up with some alternative configurations to accommodate all students the other piece of this is that there there's a fee it's a fee based program for those students who are not enrolled in special education um and you know while it's it's highly favorable compared to a private preschool that may not be sustainable if we continue to try to grow the program uh additionally i have shared this with the school committee at school committee meetings um we are struggling with getting payments from from some and and that's causing a a negative cash flow at this point with this program but we'll continue to to push that but obviously that would impact this if if that

108continues to be an issue so thank you okay okay so we're going to look at the totals here to give you an idea and i'm going to get this as large as i can so try to break this out so that we can provide data both back to schools to the public and to the department of elementary and secondary education um as well as the auditor who looks at all of this information as it relates to what the budget is and what's actually expended uh a year out so we we categorize salaries as regular ads special ed the paraprofessionals uh custodians secretaries and then administrators in each building as well as the central office across the board and then supplies by school we we then total this which is is not included here but was

109in the uh chart that you saw early on we then in special ed you'll see there it's a little bit different because they've got some expenses that that don't fit into any of these categories so we've got transportation and out of district expenses um within central we've got some contractual obligations through longevity that are in uh some contracts so that's that's why that's a different color and stands out by itself and then at athletics again not fitting into any of the categories you've got the league fees transportation contract services uh excuse me your member league fees or membership fees um and then you've got your totals by school and that gets us to and and by program as well and then that gets us to our total expenditures of 46 million 204 thousand 762.75 and

110hopefully that matches what's on the next slide which i will move to which is our revenue and then i'll give you an opportunity to go back and ask questions about any of those others if you'd like so i've provided you our fy 21 actuals rfy 22 actuals in revenue and then what's projected and you can see the change there so our title one grant is at pretty static 85 million 85 680 uh a slight increase in title 2a and we think that will continue for fy23 title four has been the same for virtually every school every year title four is um the arts enrichment type of program title 2a is educator improvement programming so that primarily goes to professional development idea has gone up very slightly that's the special ed grant and that's a a

111state grant but it's a it's a pass through from the federal government ecc grant is also a special ed grant and that's pretty static slight slight increase there the special ed improvement grant and the early childhood grant for special ed were one-year grants uh more discontinued uh for this year and and won't be continuing moving forward metco we don't anticipate our enrollment going up from ecco so we don't anticipate what that our revenue would go up our circuit breaker revenue is a little higher uh to this point this is what was budgeted um and so we're increasing that amount uh as well by a little almost six percent so you can see our total revenue for grants is up 2.2 percent we then go to other revenue uh from our revolving accounts uh which were

112primarily historically fees are non-resident tuition so the programs like ixl gems the language based programs that students are enrolling in from other towns and the school committee just voted or is going to vote on increasing those tuition rates we've already received this year close to this 214 thousand so i'm pretty confident that we will see that increase as a as a number moving forward so we budgeted for that as well athletic fees you can see there's a 100 reduction because we've not included those fees ecc fees are static we're not proposing any price increase and we're not anticipating any increase in enrollment so that number is the same our ridership for the bus is down about 400 students so we've decreased the anticipated revenue for that by about by twenty thousand dollars sports events we

113we've done better this year uh it's a non-cove relatively non-covered year compared to last year where spectators were not allowed this year we've done better so we've budgeted that amount for next year the bus lease as i mentioned is comes from the town directly as an additional revenue so our revolving subtotal is down about 181 000 with the reduction of 220 000 um within uh within revolving so 17 decrease so our total offsets are down 129 000 when you when you factor in the grants increase and the the loss of revenue in revolving our total offsets is down 129 000. the town you saw currently the projection as the town contribution is 42.9 million which is an increase of 1.688 million so the total revenue for us increased is 1.5 million dollars which is a

1143.49 percent and again this total 46 million 204 760 275 matches our expenditures to the penny fortunately um so i will open it up for questions well first off i think you're going to get high praise over the course of this weekend because of the fact that the uh athletic fees are going away i think that's that's great i know we've talked about it for getting rid of the fees for years and you know seeing such a large increase in the town when in the past we've gotten less than one percent i think it's great that we're able to you know give that give a chunk of that back to the town because for a public school we shouldn't be paying for um or having families pay for things like the bus for the kindergarten

115um athletics so i'm glad to see that we're starting or continuing to be able to eliminate some of those fees so [Music] i'm glad that's part of our budget for next year sure great are there any questions from the committee on the overall revenue side um i just want to comment that you know it's a great presentation um i love the detail um in the the fact that the you know revenue is to the penny to expenditures i mean it's great but do we not want some kind of buffer in case some uh there's some unexpected expense i think when you look and i'll use um i'll use homeless transportation as an example um when you look at a number like twenty four thousand dollars there's a buffer there um virtually every line item excluding

116salaries has some level or he has some level of buffer um you know it when when you look at and and i've provided you historical uh perspectives as through the year as we're going so you can see where we've spent money and in some cases there are line items that are overspent and in other cases there are line items that are significantly underspent and and a budget just like your personal budget is just that it's it's a projection um and and something's coming under and some things come in over i'm i'm confident that and and really need to be that we're not going to need to go back to the town and ask for additional funds to cover something um you know and even the revenue pieces uh you know there may be more money

117coming in from uh grants there may be additional monies coming in from circuit breaker uh the numbers that you see in those line items are very conservative uh as far as so so really it's very conservative on the revenue side we're not going to get less than that i'm pretty confident and it's very conservative on the spending side i don't i don't see that we would be spending more than that short of some some significant uh issue and i think there's enough cushion in other line items to absorb what that might be great and i think overall um what i'm seeing through the presentation is a is a really good handle on um what we're spending our money on and you know where monies can be allocated to be more beneficial to the to the

118students so i really appreciate that and i know a lot of time and energy went into this so i appreciate all the hard work that everybody's put into you know making the getting the the most for our money thank you you're welcome thank you um dr dutch i just had a quick question on the the bus fees here um do we expect you said our ridership is down about 400 students do we expect that number to stay down next year i'm not sure um i don't know if that's a functional covid and people not wanting children on the bus is it a function of parents working from home more and they have more flexibility to drop their children off and will that change i don't i don't know um you know we we've got to

119look very closely at our capacity because because really we were overcrowded on the buses and with 400 more students that would be an issue and we've got to look at how how we manage that fortunately we have two new drivers um so that we can absorb that and create additional routes [Music] yeah if that revenue goes up um it's going to be needed to to cover the additional costs of making sure that the buses are not over crowding and as my follow-up making sure we had enough bus drivers to add additional routes and then you know having a having enough buses in our fleet to be able to support them we definitely have enough buses in the fleet and i keep my fingers crossed that we have enough drivers we the two additional drivers help

120i don't know who's going to retire you never know but no i'm glad we're adding bus drivers because in the past it's you know struggling to find enough not not only in scituate but across across the board so yep i'm glad that's the case for us mike can i ask a follow-up question about the the bus drivers um just like right now we have 16 and you know we do have the two new bus drivers is there like a a good number that you that would be like a number of bus drivers um like a cushion for that that position well as the roots are structured now 16 works um you know if if ridership goes up uh then then we depending on how much it goes up we'll determine whether we need additional drivers

121also we have a couple of people who've come on board as substitute drivers which is helpful because there are always people out on an occasion so it's my hope that that we have sufficient numbers moving forward okay thank you mike wong chairman uh yes peter um this is a quick question i'm not sure um either for dr dutch or for um michelle but i know there were some potential changes or increased circuit breaker reimbursement for transportation i'm just curious if you could comment any on the status of that or if it's actually in process and if so is that incorporated into the potential circuit breaker revenue number i can address that i believe we did get a a small increase with the transportation and it is incorporated in our projections um so uh it's it's

122it's such a small amount though that what they allow you to do so it i don't know that it makes a big difference but right it was like 20 of the something like 20 of the cost something like that something yeah yeah it's um but uh it is it is incorporated in there and it's not even though they give extra money for transportation they only have so much money in the circuit breaker so then they might be you know the problem with circuit breaker is it can range um anywhere from you know 65 to 75 percent so they might decrease the amount of total reimbursement you get so it's not a definite 75 percent um when they start including transportation because there's it's not unlimited funds so we'll see it's always a question but i

123do try to um i spend many hours just trying to make sure we get as much money back as we can okay all right thank you are there any other questions in general on the presentation uh from the rest of the clay um as jana said though i mean this is a obviously a lot of work went into this presentation so not only you know from our administration our department chairs our principals all of our staff who who brought up the uh the ass they had um to really thank you to everyone in the district who was a part of this and obviously the 30 or so members of the staff that are on a meeting today um answering questions and being a part of this conversation um this is one of the the biggest

124things that we hear about as a school committee so having this this support um come to this meeting and being a part of those conversations at regular school committee meetings is a huge help so thank you all for being on um today um and superintendent i know yep if i could add one more thing before you go to public comment is it okay one thing that we did leave out that i just wanted to circle back on because we we recently spoke about it and i addressed in the state of the district is the our commitment to uh technology and safety and our one to one our move towards one to one and i know there's a cost associated that with that so i wanted to give uh our technology director mr long just a

125brief opportunity to talk about that and the funding for that if we could yeah thank you so if uh seth of rich long could be clouds on you i think i am now am i yes okay yeah so um as as mr burke had said we did receive some funding and it's this is going to allow us to get to one-to-one much more quickly than we had originally anticipated and this funding came from what's called the emergency connectivity fund which was created by the federal government in response to the pandemic and was designed to fill the gaps between districts needs and ability to fulfill things like student devices so we applied for this this past fall and received a grant to the tune of just over 300 000 which has allowed us to purchase 1200

126chromebooks and these will be have we've already received 500 that have been distributed down at the elementary schools and also at the secondary to prep for mcas and will eventually be rolled out as one to one devices for students and the anticipated timetable for this would be to be fully one-to-one in numbers at the elementary school and in actual one-to-one devices as in devices that are individually assigned to students they'll be in charge of maintaining them and bringing them back and forth to school and this will be rolled out in grades 6 through 10 as of this fall and then we anticipate being fully one-to-one with additional funding from capital purchases by fall of 2024 will be fully one to one k through 12. thank you mr long i mean i just wanted to point

127that out because it's just one more example when i mentioned earlier the philosophy of how we're pulling some of this off is uh you know i want to thank swan for getting that very competitive grant and um using it towards that that one time cost us as he mentioned is significant and would have been a detriment to our budget should we had to take it from our budget monies and not acquire it through a grant just wanted to highlight that one last thing thank you yeah that's a great point thank you for bringing that up superintendent uh brookhad and mr long for giving that update that's great that we were able to um not only get that grant but also continue to enhance the technology we have in the district one other comment if i

128could if you don't mind um i know you've you thanked uh all the folks behind the scenes the department chairs and everybody who's contributed um and i don't i don't want it to be assumed that uh the great work that you're seeing is is singularly one person's responsibility or a result of their effort um i've got a lot of support behind me specifically uh andrea cochran and cindy seesaw uh without whom i could not get all the detail that that i need uh and get this thing put together so thank you to them and i want to make sure people know how much they're appreciated yep that's a great point i mean there's a lot of work being done across the entire research on a lot of things and adding this in in the work

129that they're doing and this is amazing so a completely crazy dr dutch um so superintendent per code was there anything else that you wanted to add on this presentation no i just want to thank everybody for their participation our team that was here this morning um all the work that's been done i appreciate your time and efforts does not go unnoticed into our community uh for their support and continued support as we uh in our town partners as we developed this very complex budget we're hoping today um was a user-friendly version to our in a transparent version to our community on the money we have and very specifically how we spend it to move our district from good to great so and thank you to the school committee for listening and for your excellent feedback

130and questions and certainly uh with a lot of information like this if things come up um between now and and you know the end of the physical process in town meeting please feel free to reach out and ask we'd be happy to answer your questions well that was actually my my next question for you um as we go through and really analyze the budget information if we want to get more information or presentation on things like um special education or um all the the work that we're putting into our curriculum for next year um is that something you want the committee to funnel to me and then i'll have a conversation with you to add that to a future agenda 100 we'd be happy to yes thank you okay perfect i think you know the

131more we can get that type of information out into the public the better it's just going to give that comfort and trust in us as we move forward into next year so okay that makes sense and then is this presentation going to be available on the the website in the in the coming days so that uh sorry the community can come to the next meeting with any questions or have a chance to review it without having to rewatch the video we'll have it up as soon as possible likely monday okay thank you okay last comment last comment then i'll move on to public comment um i know in our meeting over the past couple years it's all it's often a couple of people that stand up and say well you know the school budget is

132one line item um and obviously you know some of those people don't attend our meetings and don't see the level of work that's being done so anyway we can um make sure this gets publicized out to the public so they have a chance to review it either before one of our meetings or a four-time meeting and i know you and dr dutch are doing a great job of sharing that but anyway we can publicize it as well i think will help make the time meeting process a little bit easier we can do that thank you i agree so at this point i'll turn it over to public comment as superintendent burke had mentioned on our meeting on thursday it'll be more of an availability for the public to ask questions um obviously because this is

133just getting out today it's more of a a comment section um but obviously in thursday's meeting we'll take as much time as possible to answer any questions that the public brings to that meeting and then any questions that come up after um through email um phone calls whatever we'll make sure that they get addressed and then as i call in you ask you to unmute if you can just take either your name and either your school affiliation or address for the record um so miss o'neil good morning everybody um first of all thank you as somebody who's attended these meetings in the past this was a very informative um so i have a comment and then a question if that's okay with you mr long comment you can just have a answer today okay okay

134at least we can put it out there um comment number one is um as somebody who's paid over i just did a quick analysis somebody a family of three that's paid over thirteen thousand dollars in fees during our time in situate public schools the um getting rid of the fees is is amazing so thank you for doing that and i just 7 000 alone in athletic fees so this is a great savings to families so i thank you for that um my next question is um dr bobart made a comment that just stuck out she said that the reason our private school tuitions went down by close to a million dollars of course is you know students have graduated but that we were paying out of district tuition for people not residing in scituate so

135my question is number one how long had that been going on how much have we paid over the years and is that something we can get reimbursed from the um i guess the sending town that that should have been paying that's uh i don't know if that's a question that can be answered tonight or possibly i mean this morning or possibly on thursday on that one um and then two quick questions on um athletics i know that you said girls golf is in the budget for next year do we have any update on um the springs girls golf what's going to happen with that and as a gymnastics mom i just want to know why there's no gymnastics supplies is it because it's in contractual um with the gyms that that they're contracting with because

136i noticed no gymnastics supplies were listed in the uh winter sports budget so uh that's it for for what i have we can take those uh questions always done and try to get an answer for you on all those for a thursday night okay great thank you uh next is lori rithra thank you mike laurie with row 62 and vinyl road i appreciate the transparency of course something i've always brought up so thank you for that dr dutch and my my question was going to be about when this would be posted to the website before thursday's meeting so i appreciate it um it is difficult to see the numbers and really be able to ask questions when you're just seeing it online in the past when we've had the meetings in person we were given

137a packet at this meeting so as soon as possible if that can be published on the website would be super helpful as far as revenue i have seen on other towns i don't you probably can't get it for this year's um revenue section but i have seen on other towns revenue that they have included organizations like pto boosters shore scf course different groups in town that contribute toward the overall budget and without those organizations we mean truly our budget and revenue is a little bit higher to be able to run the town's education and a lot of it some of it comes from these other organizations so i was wondering if you had considered i don't know if you can do it for this year because you would have to you know really be in

138touch with those organizations but to look at what those groups contribute which really is going toward the total academic experience of the town so that was just one of my comments and again thank you very much for the transparency and look forward to the meeting thursday as well thank you thanks larry seeing no other um questions from the audience i'll move on um and just so people are aware as well um the presentation of this uh will be available immediately on scituate tv's facebook page as soon as the meeting ends and it'll be on their youtube page uh later this afternoon anyone who wasn't able to either attend the full meeting or for others who want to watch it in the town um so that concludes our meeting for today again i do want to

139thank everyone for coming today again for all the hard work being done by the district um and this is a conversation we'll be having the course the next couple of months um as we get to town meeting and really into july 1st of next year but um you know thank you again for everyone who's been involved and a part of today's meeting um so there's nothing else i will entertain a motion to adjourn at 11 15. so moved second um long yes mr gates yes uh dr burkowski yes miss limbaugh yes and mr angelini yes all right thanks everybody enjoy the rest weekend thank you