001one moment that was me sorry good evening everyone and welcome to the 2025 public hearing on the Cohasset Public Schools budget in accordance with section 38n of chapter 71 of our general laws the purpose of this hearing is to present the budget to the public and allow for public comment and discussion and so at this point I would ask that any members that are present please indicate so in roll call so that can establish that we have a quorum um Mr Carr is not currently present Mr dial is not currently present uh Mrs Hannah present Mrs leki present and the chair is present giving us a quorum of three out of five members so we will officially and formally call the public hearing to order so at this time I would turn the meeting to
002either our superintendent schools Mr Sarah Shannon or our Director of Finance and operations Miss Susan Owen to present uh on the budget before we allow for comment and discussion great so I'm going to sort of Take the Lead and Sue will jump in where necessary or to answer questions um so this is a very similar presentation than what's been shared um both here and at select board sorry that's it one um but I have added a few details just for clarity purposes sorry superintendent Shan I just interrupt just to note um that it is being this is being recorded broadcast on at43 TV live streamed on Facebook and you can participate virtually using the Q&A feature on Zoom just want to make sure that everyone knows that yeah say all right thank you sorry for
003the interuption no you're good um so again it's just a little bit of an adjusted presentation to account for sort of where we are today versus where we were when we first presented did a few a month or so ago um so really think it's important to continue to share what drives us as we think about creating the budget and really um prioritizing the Mission Vision and core values of the district it's you know we are in a transition year this year we have a bridge goal document that gets us from our strategic plan that's shown here that ended in 2024 to the new strategic plan that we're currently in the process of building but that said our mission andv vision and our core values though they may shift a little bit at their heart
004are still the same and so between that those documents and our budget priorities we used these as drivers to make decisions for FY 26 budget and we followed a process that was approved earlier in the school year to develop our budget um we started by really meeting with leadership and thinking about what the schools needed um what our priorities were we knew because of the current situation for fy2 that there would likely have to be reductions this year and so we used our budget priorities to think about what those might be um and then we continue to work together both as a leadership team with the school committee and with um selectboard and the town manager to continue to drive the plan for this coming school year and so we are at the March 19th
005budget hearing we actually are adding a a date in here it's next Thursday March 27th at 7 p.m. where there'll be a vote on our fees um because tonight will just be a discussion and then April 2nd that is a regular school committee meeting and the vote for the budget will happen at that meeting and then May 12th will be the annual town meeting for the town here in the high school gym where it hopefully will be approved on the gym floor as we think about our budget and what our budgetary considerations and drivers are there are several um but these are the biggest ones that we have to think about our contracted salaries are the biggest part of our budget um special education costs also a driver and a pretty big driver and a
006driver that is a bit outside of our control facilities and maintenance class size course offerings transportation and fees and so we'll address each of those as I go through um this is an overview of all of the cost centers um in our district and it's broken down by those major categories you can see as I said that salaries really um take up the majority of our budget um there are some areas where you'll see in the presentation for our proposal for FY 26 we have proposed some reductions but there are also some places where we had to prose some increases as well because we know that those costs are going up whether we want them to or not utilities for instance is a place where we really have no control over that the cost our
007usage is going down but our costs are going up special education is an area where we have some control and we we have some we are at the whim of some of our outof district placements so as a district we've really been working to to create a um a system of support across the entire District to support our student needs as much as possible within the district so as a result we have supported classrooms with our educational support professionals we have co- teing at almost all levels and in many subjects and we have some partial inclusion programs with special Educators in our esps but we also have some students for whom we can't meet their needs within the district and those students we are legally required to pay for as outof District placements and so
008they attend schools that are private um out of district schools for students on IEPs and they're great and they meet the needs of our students and their um tuitions aren't as regulated as they could be and so in FY 24 the tuitions for out of District placements actually went up 14% in FY 25 they went up another 4% and they're anticipated to go up another 3.67% we understand why their tuitions are going up their costs are going up as well um but they have a luxury of creating tuitions that are based on inflation rates where we do not and so their increase costs make it really hard for us to keep up with the costs that are rising for other District placements because we receive you know around plus or minus 4% increase from the
009town each year there's no way that increase can keep up with you know over almost 22% um over the last three years and yet we have to be sure that we actually pay these tuitions because this is what our students need so that's something that we are really aware of and and taking into account um in addition we really are looking at facilities and maintenance utilities just like at home our utility costs are going up um we have had folks in and our facilities department has been excellent and helping us decrease our usage but that only has helped to a certain point because even though our usage is going down our costs are going up um and we did take on some maintenance roles um in the district we worked with the facilities Department to
010say what is going to be the facilities Department what is on our custodians and after that there are some costs that we had to assume and so that is being built into the budget as well we've really paid attention to class size and class size has gone down down for us as a district over the last 10 years it's actually a trend Across the Nation birth rates have gone down um they're starting to come back up you can see we use nezda they are an organization that projects out enrollment for the next 10 years our enrollment numbers are going to start going up because birth rates are coming back a little bit um I think Co helped them with that just a little bit um but it it's still something that we're watching because when
011class sizes go up and down we have to accommodate them based on the number of teachers and so we are looking closely at that and each level has ideal numbers of students so in our Oscar School arcade the 2 students we really want to keep those class sizes between 18 to 20 21 at A Max because those are our littlest kiddos who are really learning their foundational skills they're learning to read They're becoming math literate and so the more we can have smaller class sizes there the better we feel better about class sizes 21 to 24 at Deer Hill because they're getting a little bit older um and their skills are more developed middle school and high school it's hard to just say we're we have a class siiz number because this is where students
012start to have choice in voice and some students are choosing French and some students are choosing Spanish and some students are choosing calculus while some students are choosing statistics and so as a district that really is trying to promote students finding their own path and making decisions that are best suited to them so that they can be best prepared to go on to whatever is next we can't just say take uh you know 100 students and divide by five because it doesn't work that way when they have choice um but we are really aware of when we can potentially reduce Staffing in order to have class sizes that feel more reasonable at a high school level um and a middle school level and similar to how the class sizes go up a little bit each
013time it's more okay to have class sizes of 25 to 27 to 28 as you go from 6 to 12th grade um we do as I said look at the numbers and so we have had several Staffing shifts since Co um I think it's important here to note that while we have reduced staff we have also brought on some new staff that may not look like um classroom teacher staff because for two things one is we have added some counseling staff at all levels um one of the things that has really shifted over the years and I would say first started to shift as technology came to be more of a front Forefront of teenage and Adolescent use um we saw a rise at that point in student um mental health concerns anxieties depressions um
014more issues amongst friendship groups and that hasn't changed and then when we added on the impact of covid it just increased and so we have seen this need to increase our um counseling staff at all levels because even our youngest students are having school anxiety issues they're having issues of anxiety we're seeing evidence of trauma and so as a school district we have to attend to those needs so that our students can actually learn additionally since covid we have added some Specialists because they are help helping to close the gaps that came out of Co with regard to literacy and math skills and so far those additions in Specialists literacy and math Specialists we've reaped really great rewards we have seen our our students achievement levels getting higher we have seen them come back we
015are closing gaps it's it's part of why the high school received the Blue Ribbon award you know I know the high school received the Blue Ribbon award but part of that is all the work that's been done up to high school and we are one of only a few districts who can say that our mcast scores are actually at or above the levels they were pre-2020 um and that is I think a direct result of some of the staff additions that we've brought to the table um we also have staff that are funded through grents and revolving funds one of the shifts though that has happened is that we have moved some teachers specifically kindergarten teachers and kindergarten esps out of the revolving accounts and their salaries are now being paid out of the operating
016budget because two years ago it was a decision of the district to have free kindergarten um and so those salaries no longer could be paid for out of the kindergarten revolving so they are a part of the um operating budget we also really take pride in the fact that we offer a really comprehensive educational experience to our students prek through 12 we value the Arts we value having a a robust fed in health curriculum having strong libraries and having a strong computer program all the way elementary through high school you know one of the ways that we help our students with the so social emotional needs they have as a result of the technology is through a strong technology curriculum and teaching them about digital literacy and then as they get older starting to teach
017them about computer science that's one of the um most popular college majors and it's a profession that so many of our students want to go into so you know as we continue to grow the computer science program that's something that does benefit everybody um and it is something that impacts our budget we have a strong language program um and we have a really robust Club activity and athletic offering transportation is another area where we're trying to balance our fiscal needs um we currently have eight bus routes and eight least buses and one least electric bus um we do charge a fee for some of our students to ride the bus we have to legally provide free transportation to our K through six students who are outside 2 miles um and so we do that but
018we also take in a lot if in Revenue with Transportation the hard part is like we are adding another bus route for next year because our we have several buses that are at capacity and who have long rides so in order to manage those two things we're adding another bus our transportation is not making money at this point and it's not breaking even so this is another area where we need to consider how do we balance the needs with the budgetary considerations I should say the bus parking lease has been a a Hot Topic in the community that is something we have been paying our buses are parked out on 3A over by aashan but in the the empty next door um and that has cost the district money we are planning to bring the
019buses back to the school lot um we we know that that's an area where we can save money um and so that decision has already been made and is happening we are still looking for a place where hopefully we could actually have the buses parked during the day just from like 9:30 to 2:30 um and they will stay overnight here at the high school but tonight you're going to find in our regular meeting we're going to talk a lot about fees because in order to get to a balanced budget we really do need to think not just about reductions but any Revenue increases that we can bring in and so fees or something we'll be talking a bit about um tonight and then voting on at the March 27th meeting we'll be looking at athletic
020Transportation building rental fees student parking fees activity fees and full day kindergarten fees as well um one of the things that we are trying to counter is the deficit that we have had this year in FY 25 um through a series of um what's the a perfect storm right we are at a place where this year we are well over our budgetary allocation um we are we froze our budget early but as you're going to hear later tonight our our costs continue to rise you know during the winter we had some really really cold months so I think you know we had a month where it was like $440,000 for utilities we still have to pay that um so those are costs that we can't avoid um but what we can do is think about
021how do we address this for next year so that we have a balanced budget so our budget for next year we know that we're going to be getting approximately $950,000 from the town um but we also know that we need approximately 25,5 35,6 180 in order to run the district next year and I say approximately because we don't have a voted upon contract for next year yet um and so we are looking at what we think might be the the cost of living increase for our our staff so so going into that with no negotiated increases that's a deficit we know we we're going to have a deficit no matter what because we're in a deficit this year and so when you add in cost of living increases then we know that we need to
022start to identify at least $1.2 million um to close that Gap through either reductions or Revenue resources and so as a district we've done that and we've worked together and I am really grateful to all of the district and school leaders for doing this it was not easy work um and it was really a collaborative effort and I think while it's easy to come to a table and Advocate only for your school I think our team came together and really advocated as a district and so I'm grateful for everybody who was at the table and did that work and so we know that there we are have at least $575,000 of reductions that we can make and then we will see if we need to make further reductions based on what fees get voted upon
023through school committee meetings next we next week um Sue has really done a lot of work in building her budget workbook and so this is a overview of of everything that and I can make it just a little bit bigger I think um maybe not um of where we stand at the moment with potential increases to some line items like we know we need to increase the line item for our utilities budget we know we need to increase our line item for our custodial supplies and materials for transportation for special education but just like at home if we know we need to increase those line items we know we need to decrease other line items and so that's where you see those reductions below we know we'll have approximately $50,000 in retirement savings we're looking
024to reduce about $155,000 and supplies materials professional development things that do matter to the district but we had to make some really hard choices and our choices are really to reduce those things before we continue to do deeper Cuts with regard to Personnel um and you'll see that there's some potential added Revenue there so we are still looking to to think about what that shortfall is and some of that will depend on what gets decided um in the next couple of weeks but we thought and this is some new information we thought it was important for people to start to see what the actual reductions in staff would be um um and I should say that the people who are impacted by this I'm thinking they principles who have had these conversations they're not easy
025conversations we do not want to lose any staff every staff member in this district is important it makes a difference and we had some really hard decisions to make and so these are the positions that we have identified as reductions for this coming school year um the director of data curriculum and evaluation is a central office position it's been a really valuable position I think it has moved our data work tremendously and I think between Dr stalins and I and some of the principles we can start to take on some of that work if we have to um we also have identified that we could reduce 1.5 pastorial positions um principal godet has said that we can reduce One ESP at oswood and still meet our IEP requirements superintendent Shan where there's a list there
026and we're four minutes yeah I think that um I because I want to be able to okay provide at least a little opportunity for folks to make comment yep so this last slide is we also identified some possible reductions and this is the list that we would go to if we don't increase this many fees as we think we might um and I've already talked about the benefit that our Specialists bring to the district I think we're also trying to be really careful to not raise class siiz numbers so we've tried to not include as many student basing positions but this next layer of potential reductions would include some student some additional student facing positions so that's sort of where we are at the moment so open it up for questions thank you superintendent Shannon
027um so staying true to uh Forum I would turn to members of the Community First that have tuned in and as superintendent Shannon stated there is a full discussion on fees as part of the regular meeting that will immediately follow this hearing so it may make more sense while it is related to the budget and you're certainly welcome to make those comments now I think it may make more sense to make those comments in conjunction with our discussion during the regular meeting just a thought and a suggestion with that said if you are participating virtually you can utilize the Q&A feature on Zoom to make any of your comments or discussion points known I'll monitor that and then I'm looking in our audience and I don't see anyone other than perhaps our select board leaone
028that may want to make a remark um but anyone Miss SM are you just here to observe you have comment okay okay and I know our faculty is here for as invited guests for the for the and our M School principal as for the um first item on our agenda in the regular meeting so just monitoring the Q&A function on Zoom I'm not seeing anything so at this point I'd invite any committee members to make remarks at will regard or questions for superintend Shannon about anything she presented um I would just say like continue to thank you for presenting um I think I've seen this presentation or version of it several times now and learn something new each time um and I think it's important that this this final part of your discussion tonight about
029what um what reductions mean um is really important for the community to understand um because beyond the emotional part of these are people we know they're part of our community they're part of the educational Community they help raise our children um it also impacts the academic um programming even if it's done in the most careful way to try to have as least disruption as possible um so I appreciate that you put that forward because as we counter that with the discussion about fees I think that that understanding what um the rejection of fees brings is is super important thank you thank you m lki missah do you have anything um I think there's opportunities for Revenue generating through the athletic department that we haven't ever explored um in this day and age like there's no
030reason why that shouldn't be Revenue generating um with bringing we're a small town we have great athletes you know and we have a community here that has never even been given an opportunity to sponsor and so I do think like we're like nickel and diing around places with like you can generate money with a strong athletic department by doing field signage and a lot of other things and activations and you can make that a club for students um know so I just I think that there's other ways to get creative around actually generating money as opposed to going through and you know cutting any of these you know the art program at the high school and stuff that so just to be clear it's not cutting the art program or the art teach one of
031three art teachers um just to be clear I am not and will never I would like to say I would never cut an art program it's just one and class sizes can yeah okay I get sorry art teacher um and that was just one that the top that last there I mean it's the ESP it's the M Specialists like all of that is critical especially as we're trying to close this gap on you know the the um testing and everything else and make sure that these kids you know do bounce back in Co in the strong way um so I just don't think that's ever um thank you that's a great uh suggestion actually um and I think that the Diamond Club was considering something like that when they're trying to make some improvements to
032The Varsity basement um you know getting some additional money through sponsorships it's a good it's a good idea actually um so we should explore that um in the meantime as Mrs Le is making her comment um a Community member chimed in um I've asked um them to State their presidential address for the record and I should just note that if you are making a i i this is my failure I I neglected to mention this if you are making a comment please just uh at any point during this hearing or the school committee meeting please note your residential address that's um simply to memorialize the comment properly in the meeting minutes um Mr uh Scott McCoy of 572 Jerusalem Road he asked have we considered proposing cuts to sports programs I uh asked the clarifying
033question does he mean like cutting certain Sports um but I imagine that this question uh while I wait for the response to that I imagine that the question arose because we're presenting you know anticipated cuts and um it all centers around academics or you know District costs um so I don't know if this question is best directed to you superintendent shann or Maan but have we considered cutting Sports programs um he updated so my questions is whether we can find savings with additional fees for sports so I think that's sort of along the lines of MN was just saying um so I don't know if that question was kind of addressed by m Hannah's point that we could explore different Revenue sources of sports um but have we considered his original question is have we
034considered cutting Sports not at this point okay um it is certainly something if the committee was looking for us to do that we could go we could do that um we have we had a um budget subcommittee meeting where we actually talked about seeing if we could get some sponsorship for the um fitness center um some other things like that because we thought that might be a really good opport opportunity especially you know while it's mostly our students our police officers also use it and so we get some coverage and we would certainly promote that um but we did have that brief conversation and of course we are looking at increasing our athletic fee and so we sort of went that road first to try and minimize any impact to the budget because the more
035we can increase the revolving account for athletics then it doesn't actually impact the operating budget and so the hope is that we can eventually get to a place where the Athletics is actually self- sustaining and then we don't have to assume pieces of it thank you um hopefully that answered um that individual's question there's another question from Stephanie Saunders of 10 statford Terrace she asks whether we have considered installing solar panels to offset utility costs um we have explored the um the potential for installing photo voltaic arrays on the roofs of our school buildings I believe there was a study done within the last few years and the results were that the secondary building meaning the middle middle high school was the only building where from um an Energy Efficiency perspective Ive it made sense
036to do so because of the number of because the size of the array and the energy it would generate that the roof could accommodate in addition the age of the roof comes into play you wouldn't necessarily want to install a brand new photo voltaic array on in ag roof if roof you're going to have to replace that so um that obviously implicates the new roof project we're contemplating at OSG good school where we were accepted by The Accelerated repair program through the m MBA and um the msba necessarily as part of their process um ensures that any um plans for roof replacement are able to accommodate solar panel array meaning the engineering of it can can sort of bear the weight whether it is from in Energy Efficiency efficiency perspective practicable that's another inquiry and
037while I just stated that in recent years we've had the study done and it was it seemed that the secondary school was the only building where it made sense from an energy perspective there are obviously advancements from year to year in the technology uh of the efficiency of each panel so that may have changed and as we're um actually someone from the Alternative Energy commission or committee committee committee had contacted me in connection with the contemplated Ood project and um it prompted me to connect with Nick barardi our head of facilities so that um it's known that we're interested in re-evaluating the uh feasibility of that uh project of solar panels on the Osgood school where we're going to replace the roof anyway so um that's a long answer to your question Miss Saunders the
038short answer was yes but wanted to provide you with a little bit more information Mr McCoy um followed up and said that that answer did help as well as the superintendent's followup thank you okay um Mr Carr arrived at the meeting at 6m promptly for the the regular meeting we're still in the budget hearing because we're just going a little over here sorry everyone and sorry to our invited guests um there's another comment in connection with the budget hearing from Neil Andrews of 171 Hall Street he asks where do the fees that are collected at athletic games both in season and during tournaments go so during the regular season and up until a certain point in the tournament there are gate fees that are collected by the district that go directly into our revolving account
039for athletics once our teams hit that point in the tournament where the MIAA takes over the MIAA takes those fees um so that's everything where you're required to do the ticketing through gofan that goes to the MIAA but everything else goes directly to the athletic revolving accountant right back into the athletic department okay well that I believe those are all the comments we have on the Q&A feature um for our virtual participants I do not see any additional in-person participants walk in so it's already 608 I want to transition into the regular meeting so at this point I would ask for a motion to adjourn the public the 2025 public hearing on the public schools budget motions been made by m leki there a second seconded by Mr car all in favor I opposed exensions
040meeting motion carries by a vote of four members that are present and uh the meeting is the public hearing is adjourned so we'll move right into our March 19 2025 school committee meeting and I would ask uh all committee members who are present to please indicate so in roll call indicate whether you're present roll call Mr Carr present moment Mr dial is present now Mr dial can you hear there he is present virtually I can hear and be heard thank you welcome Mr dial Mrs Hannah Mrs leski chair is present giving us a full panel of five members I would formally call the meeting to order at this time would all who are able please stand for the recitation of our nation's Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of
041America and to the Republic which stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for well welcome everyone at the outset just as I did during the budget hearing I just state that the meeting is being recorded um it is being live streamed on Facebook broadcast on casset 143 TV one can participate virtually by clicking on the link that appears at the top of our agenda which you can access online passive town website and you can participate virtually by utilizing the Q&A feature on Zoom to type in a comment or question or discussion Point um which brings us to the first agenda item which is public comment this section is reserved for folks to make comments or air concerns that are not related to topics that are already on our agenda if you have
042a concern or a discussion point or a question about a topic that's on the agenda we just ask that you wait until we arrive at that point in the meeting and then we'll take your question so I'll give folks a few moments to generate if they're participating virtually again I don't see any in-person participants give everyone a moment to generate questions if they're watching not seeing any right now but if you were just a little slow on the draw Fe not we will continue to Monitor and uh be happy to address any comments that come in later so move on to the next block which is the section of the agenda reserved for our invited guests and we have uh two members of our staff here Miss Jenna bluen and Miss Elisa gens Carl to
043talk to us about our very exciting middle and high school Washington DC trip and I'm so so sorry the principal of our Middle School Mr Mills is also here I'm here for moral support he's often called in as the muscle no so uh we turn meeting over to you please thank you for being here thank you for the inv thank you for having us um so we are proposing that students in grades 8 through 12 take a three-day trip to Washington DC um this would happen in October of 2025 we're thinking at the dates the 13th through the 15 we've reached out to Grand classroom and we have an itinerary which is on I don't know if you guys got this packet it's on the last sheet the packet um but essentially we would be
044taking students to see all of the national monuments the museums um as well as to see Howard University and Morgan State University which are both hbcus great uh is Carl do you have any to supplement or you just supporting said the same thing okay she said it before me all right okay um as um as Miss um Blen mentioned uh the materials outlining specific to the trip are in your packet and while I can't physically locate mine right now they are in there be happy to talk about some of the details trans the motor Transportation the accommodations sure there may be questions about anyway so you may anticipate some of the questions because I certainly would have asked those so please share share whatever information you you have and uh and then the committee members
045will probably have questions anyway but and if I could just jump in for a minute so both Jenna and Lisa came and they said you know as part of the work that we do with the inity club at the middle school and the black student union at the high school trying to provide an opportunity for students who wish to go and explore some of the HBCU and some of the history in DC that is specific to um africanamerican black history um this would be a really good opportunity and so um this is a pilot and it's going to have a bit of a cap for numbers Just For the First Time go around but um it's a really I think great idea to build some opportunities for students and opportunities for inclusivity and it's open
046to all students and I think they've put together a really wonderful itinerary it's incredibly thoughtful um and I think it's sort of the tip of what could be but I think it's it's intentionally designed to be a pilot is something that I think is important so we can all learn from the experience as well I think it's important too because um some of the books that the students read in their Ela classes um some of the history that they received in their history classes I think sometimes it doesn't really affect you until you see it a person it's one thing to read it it's another thing to see in in person to see actual artifacts um and so to have that experience um you know that so many of our students haven't had because it's
047not in our regular histry um I think it's important so I think it's a great opportunity to give them um an idea of what is out there what has happened the pieces of history that have been left out um or that haven't been talked about as much um and it also gives us an opportunity to see where we have been where we are and where we need to go as far as really developing relationships and Partnerships with each other and in terms of some of the details of the trip as well we would be flying there um and then obviously staying in a hotel when we get there um we'd have a bus through Grand classroom as well as a tour guide which was take us through the city um and then in terms of
048safety we would have a um security guard provided to us through Grand classroom that would be in the hallways nightly and then would meet with us as well as another shop own in the morning um to provide us with any updates that they might have and then in terms of medical um needs all of the grand classroom tour guides are first aid trained but there also are many uh you know clinics and hospitals in the DC area as well um for how many students we were thinking we are thinking we would cap it around 30 um with preference given to the upper classman because obviously we're thinking about going on College Tores um this might be relevant a little bit more relevant to students that are closer to graduation um but all students in grades
0498 through 12 would be welcome to join I think it's just worth mentioning too Sarah had mentioned uh that the relationship between the high school's black stud Union and Middle School's inclusivity Club has gone really since the both were created it's great because there's sort of a an older sibling younger siblin relationship a trip earlier in the year uh with a grant that was provided and uh it's it's a wonderful opportunity I love the fact that our middle school kids do get to be around high school kids and learn from them in this trip it's 8 through2 our inclusivity is 6 to8 but it's and it's open to everybody so it is it's a it's a it's a great group and to take that group and give them this opportunity is wonderful open to anybody
050but just to see these clubs at the heart of it it's exciting okay thank you so any members of the committee have any questions you can just ask them at will um if we can approve this when would fam need to yes absolutely um I mean I think our biggest hurdle would be fun raing for sure um so right now for opportunities for that we were thinking well I wrote a the two of us wrote a grant to the CF obviously that's pending approval um but additionally we run Mosaic together so we are thinking as having a boo there with information about the trip as a fundraising opportunity as well as having a popcorn fundraiser where students will um sell popcorn and then have the proceeds go directly to their fund for the trip we
051also did the oh sorry we also did the Boston Bridges initiative um which was also a grant that we had received um we actually used that Grant um earlier in the year when we took the group to see this the movie Wicked and then we talked about the themes of wicked how um it currently mimics what we're dealing with in society so it was a great opportunity for the students to have those conversations with each children and then for the cost um that would kind of be dependent on how many students were to join so if 25 to 29 students were coming it would be $1,565 if it was 30 or more it'd be $1,485 for student any other questions I'm sorry is itek yes that Monday is so it would be Monday Tuesday Wednesday
052Monday yes we did the Grand Canyon that I think that's the most recent one and that was only the eth graders right how many people went on that uh there was some years where it was uh 20 to 25 the last year we did it was 40 it was CAU it was much more expensive than this yeah I guess that's um just good to know like knowing that you want to C at 30 it feels like it's really going to be like a junior senior um so I still think we're missing like the now eighth graders who will be ninth graders still have not gone on any field trip and now seventh graders who will be eighth graders have not gone on any field trips outside of casset and so I still think we're missing
053the Gap there on those well that's a good point so I miss I might have misunderstood I are you looking to cap it at 30 students or you just saying that you're estimating you'll get 30 students but you could it says 30 plus students was so it contemplates that perhaps it' be more than 30 students is it possible that we could accommodate more because that's a good point I I misunderstood if that's the case it's possible we could um I think when we were just looking at the two groups the inclusivity club and the PSU 30 was the number right it is open to everyone but originally when you know we thought when we were coming up with the information we were looking at that group so there is a possibility that we could extend
054it um but there are sherons who are already asking okay so that's good so thanks for raing that because you want to make I mean the whole point is that like Mr Mills didn't we do a DC trip at the end of the year last year we did a small DC trip how many students now ninth graders yes right yeah uh about 20 and the only way we could make it happen was it happened after school was dismissed the year right it was almost July okay and we did that through Grand classroom so I remember yeah okay Y and then just a point about trips uh there is a scheduled ath grade trip for uh Treetops Adventures for June which is a a great uh Team Building day that'll be the second year we've done
055that in the seventh grade uh is just proposing a field trip the same thing in June is a team building to uh I'm not get the name right but it's it's like B Bo B uh I I don't speak much Swedish in m and that's that's going to be whole grade it's going to be a team building as my sixth grade went to Hall of Fame Patriots Hall of Fame two weeks ago as part of the stam te so all our kids are provided opportunity any else from anyone um I would just um say that one I love DC is a place for students to to go I think there is so much to learn there and so much that's actually affordable and accessible um the Smithsonian institutions um so I love the concept of
056this trip I love the monthly age concept of this trip I think that that's really important um but really what most excited me was the um having the possibility of making connections at hpcu I think to if it's possible to I know that it seems like the tour company is your Lea's on there but it's possible for Cohasset staff to make connections there as well to help facilitate those relationships at even just two in two institutions I think could do huge things for for our kids to start developing um not necessarily pipelines but relationships where if if those schools are of interest to students who are here um that there's some knowledge of this teeny little town in the coast of Massachusetts um at these major universities that could really be wonderful experiences for of
057our students actually last year towards the end of the year um myself and um one of the guid counselor in the high school we did participating in HBCU Summit um and so we had a chance to bring a group of students to the Reggie lewiis Center where there were about 30 HBCU that were there students got an opportunity to ask questions get the information um at the summit it was mostly guidance counselors um and individuals who worked with um high schoolers who had an opportunity to meet with people from the various HBCU and some even had an opportunity to go visit some so um we're continuing those connections so I just love how this just kind of gets feet on the ground seeing a college campus can really be transformative and I I just love
058that element of this of this trip and thank you for taking time away from the families with a bunch of middle school and high schoolers just pray for okay well thank you both for um for being willing to do this and for organizing this opportunity for our students I I I've said I mean this is I think it's extremely important our students are able to do this I Echo sen that Washington DC presents a unique set of experiences and I would love to see us do this on an annual basis in some way shape or form we did it last year I'd like us to keep on doing that it's really important that we're able to deliver that experience to our students and it's just incredible to have faculty and staff that are will to
059dedicate you know and volunteer their their their personal time to make this a reality for our kids um two things one I I always ask like safety related questions on these things and you kind of our our kids go away um so it looks like there's a professional security company that's there uh that's great if you could just um make sure that um or if you could just please submit to central office so the school committee has the name of the company and confirm that they do um criminal background checks on their employees I imagine they do if it's a production security company but want to confirm that make sure of it also um in hotels obviously there are rooms that connect we need to make sure that genders different genders aren't in those two
060rooms that they can connect if they decide they want to do that themselves and open the doors um and same thing for like little kids and big kids maybe not having them you know joining in those situations um so just some thoughts and then getting into the weeds a little bit on the itinerary there were two observations I wanted to offer one is I'm not sure so at the end of I think the first day there's some reflection time at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and reflection pool the Lincoln Memorial in recent times I don't know if it's I don't know when it was going to complete they were doing a major project where you could get in in the chamber underneath and they were going to do tours underneath so they were rehabbing
061the link Memorial I don't know I was there like a year ago and it was like well underway I am I I I imagine it might be done so you might want to explore whether that that's like a new thing that like many people haven't even experienced be great if we could get our kids to take advantage of that if it's available who knows might have been a massive project that takes like six years I I don't know the other thing is that I noticed that the World War III Memorial is not on there it's near a lot of the other ones that are named we need to make sure that our kids see that it's a magnificent Memorial it's in my opinion like one of the best ones they have there um I mean
062they're they're all magnificent in their own right and and extremely solemn and important but the World War II Memorial is really fascinating and um a little bit more interactive because you can like they allow you to like take your socks and shoes off and sort of like you know there's like a reflection pool there with the fountains and um it's amazing Memorial so if you guys could ask them to sort of incorporate that I think the kids would really like it it would be an important part of the experience um just a suggestion but I think everyone would like it it's a really cool one uh anything else Mr dial can you hear us do you have any questions I can hear you and see you and uh no questions I'll just chime in with
063my my um thanks for the uh the staff and the and the initiative to to bring these experiences to our kids and I appreciate the discussion on making sure that all of our all of our grades are getting these uh these opportunities and I Echo uh Mr mclin's uh comments about making sure that while our kids are in DC they see all sorts of uh the richness that that City can offer as far as history and perspective on our on our country okay thank you Mr D so uh imagine you are hoping to get an approval vote right now for the trip right okay so um just um bearing the ask that you just confirm that about the security company notify Central that you know who it is and that they confirm that they do
064background checks um is there a motion to approve the 2000 October 2025 Washington DC trip as presented tonight motion's been made by Mrs leski seconded by Mrs Hannah all in favor I all opposed exensions that was an I from you Mr dial that was an I from me motion carries unanimously thank you so much and thank you all right moving right along into our superintendent updates turn the meeting back over to our superintendent for schools Sarah Shannon thank you and I um I'm gonna toggle a little bit between just talking to you and sharing two quick videos um tonight so first last Wednesday chairman Len and I attended the Southshore Roundtable legislative breakfast the event was attended by all of the Southshore superintendents and our respective senators and representatives we're very grateful to Senator OK
065Conor and representative machino for their attendance and support of our schools the intent of this breakfast was to update all of our local politicians on our budgetary plights as we've been talking about all year the budget concerns that we have in Cohasset are being echoed across the Commonwealth the cost of inflation the loss of grant funding and the rising cost of out of District special ed tuition and transportation are untenable for the public schools while we continue to be grateful for support and collaboration of the Town state and local funding formuls can't keep up with the rising cost of running a district hearing all of the local representatives and Senators sharing their support and how they are working to support public school funding left us hopeful and we need to continue to work as a
066town to figure out how to meet these challenges until our elected officials are successful in securing us additional funding for the entire Public School Community across Massachusetts I also wanted to share an update with regard to our district strategic planning process our group of 30 plus stakeholders with many many students who are amazing um have met twice now and we'll have our third meeting next Tuesday afternoon in the two meetings that we've had so far we've reviewed work that's been done done in a district from the last strategic plan and the data that we gathered through the strategic planning process so far um our task next week is to review and revise our mission vision and core values and from there we'll start to identify our Compass points and strategic strategic objectives for 2025 and
067Beyond and we'll continue to keep you posted as our work continues and look forward to presenting a new strategic plan for the cohes of public schools to you in May yesterday Dr scollins principal godette and Alisa gens Carl and I attended the 20th annual women's educational leadership Network Conference that's put on by the Massachusetts Association of school superintendents it was a powerful and inspiring day and we came home very proud of the work that we do together and as a district and we're looking forward to continuing that um okay now it's time for a video but um last night I came to the Cohasset Public Schools all chorus night it was a great celebration of our students voices this and tomorrow night's concert which I'll talk about in a minute are some of my favorite
068events because you get to see from third grade through 12th grade the progression of Music um last night was chorus tomorrow night is band and it's amazing and at the end they all sing or perform together one some and what's fascinating to me is that they practice independently and then they come together and they just do it I mean I know they practiced right before but they just it sounds amazing and they've not been together as a whole group until this night um but last night everybody was wonderful like there was nobody that wasn't wonderful however there was one group that that just sort of stole the show and so I'm going to show just a little clip because when I think about joy and smiles and just amazingness this is evidence of that and
069I'm now realizing like I turn on my sound what's going to happen um because you need to hear this I think it's going to Echo um let's try it and see what happens that might change yeah that might change things let's see you and so it was Wonder I think half the crowd was either singing along or swaying along and so just like the joy that thir fifth graders can bring it was awesome um and so anyone who's looking for something to do tomorrow night 7 p.m. all band tonight um another moment of pure joy was today and Dr scullin and I took a trip down to Osgood and we went to a Mr dyus dance party and so we got to see Mrs deo's class put their party on it was so much fun
070the dancing was amazing but what was amazing to really reflect on is how in addition to it being joyful and fun the students are exhibiting all of what they're really learning through bized and all that Mr dkas provides they're learning to you know be coordinated they're learning movement they're learning how to take in multi-step instructions they're learning to remember they're learning to be resilient so that when they can't get the dance moves the first time they keep practicing and practicing and practicing they're learning to perform in front of an audience all of those skills in grades prek through to are unbelievable and I think a lot of us as parents and I'll put myself in that category go to the dance party because we love it and there's so much joy and we don't necessarily
071see all the skill building that Mr dyus does in the backgrounds and that the kids are gaining and I think it's really important that we call attention to that so I'm grateful for Mr dkas for the seamless way that he incorporates learning into something that brings so many smiles to the community um he asked because this was a second grade second grade class he asked for how many families it was their last dance party and it is such a Bittersweet moment when it is your last Mr D Dance Party um so I'm just going to show a small clip of the dance party because those of us who have not had kids in O good for a long time just need to see what it's it's the same it's amazing being informed the sound isn't
072really coming through on Zoom but you know okay we'll do the best we can okay I'll just show it then number 13 out of 18 for him 18 dance parties he you know it's not even playing so I but there's a cute little picture of it um I will say just sort of fun I I took this clip and I did throw it in my family chat and um my children all commented that both of them they're remembering it and oh my goodness as Mr Dyke is still doing that and so it's just this time honor tradition here and Cohasset um and I would like to just also um mentioned that on well tomorrow Thursday Dr scollins our Meco director Alisa gens Carl and chair mclellen and I will all be attending the Meco advocacy
073day at the state house um our Meco program is an essential part of our district not just our district but many districts across the state and so we feel it's really important to be there tomorrow to advocate for funding and legislative support to continue to grow in enhance the program um and lastly I just want to take a moment to follow up on something from our last meeting last meeting um we were asked a question to find out if there was any time where a Girls Athletic team had been given um boys uniforms instead of girls uniforms and I wanted to let the community know that I did investigate this claim and found that within the time of our current High School admin Administration um it was hard to go back before that um this
074has not happened while we do pass Varsity uniforms down to JV teams they are passed down to JV teams of the same gender um we have not passed any boys uniforms down to any girls teams that is the conclusion of my report thank you superintendent Shannon any questions from any members of superintendent Shannon just ask it will if you do have any all right seeing none we'll move uh into the next agenda block to keep the meeting moving I know there's some community members that are eager to sort of start talking about the fees so we'll just keep on moving here and uh that is our uh our teaching and learning section and we ask Dr Leslie scollins to please take the helm here as she presents some academic updates so last week we had
075professional development so those parents know that we had a half day and then no school on Friday um on the half day the middle and high school continues their work with benchmarks assessments and the elementary schools did building Bas time a lot of them work with the mass specialists around fluency and um it was you know a well a well planned day um Friday we had the uh company called essential Partners come in and they worked with our high school and middle school staff as well as our leadership team um and for the middle and high school it was really around how do um we have constructive conversations in classroom in the community in the community and then we as leadership um worked to learn more about a dialogue protocol and how to have conversations
076and um ask questions and frame questions in a way that we um get the U get full information and engage in work that allows us to hear listen to um all different stakeholders and kind of pull it all together so um that was a wonderful day and and we were um fortunate to get a generous donation from the coaz support us with that and at the end of the day um well before I get to the end of the day um the Elementary staff worked with TLA they've been working with that for a couple of years um along with the read specialist each building did work specific to where they are in the process around our comprehensive literacy approach so dear Hill focused on writing and they've been doing a lot of that work all
077year and then the good school look at really what are their accomplishments this year with the workshop it's always so important to reflect on the things that are um that have gone well and then also looked at how to work with small groups and continue that work on interventions and small group instruction at the end of the day we came back all all staff in the district came to the high school and we had our final circle of the Year and that um has just been a really nice way for us to get to know each other across the district so each Community circle is made up of staff from all age groups and so at the end of mine um we were last we were very chatty um they asked if we would continue
078it next year and if they could stay in the same group when I thought and and I asked why and they said we're just getting to know each other and so they really valued that time together and to learn about each other and so that was really such a great part of the day and just a nice way to end it as we go into the weekend everyone's happy and was just nice um and then mcast begin next week so it starts with our high school Ela on March 25th or 26th if you are um looking for the calendar it is under teaching and learning I know principles have pushed it out but there is a calendar um on the website under teaching and learning under thecast tab pull that up I won't show the
079calendar to do unless you want me to pull the calendar up for everybody see it it's been pushed out for a while I just said it starts next week all of our students uh for those of us that have students in the school have been reminding us of that so everybody's prepar probably at least the school families are well aware of that is that does that conclude your report Dr s y all right well thank you so much any questions for Dr scollins anyone all right seeing none we will continue right along into the uh budget resources and governance block of our agenda the first item in this block of our agenda is a budget update so where we just had the budget hearing Mrs Owen I'd ask you to sort of give a pretty
080high level budget report because I know there's a lot of um community members that are eager to hear about the next section and chime in so um but turn it to you to provide the monthly update an own director Finance operations thank you so this is the FY 25 February Finance report um it will it talks about um what our actual school budget was voted what we've spent to date um we've expended 14,236 um with incumbrances for supplies materials and Main payrolls um total in approximately 10,932 751 this results an estimated shortfall that has grown slightly from 87071 to 895 894 810 um which is an increase over last month and as as superintendent shanon said there there are just some expenses that we can't we can't freeze um we can't freeze utilities we we
081can't estimate substitute teachers um when custodians say supplies materials we still have to supply them same thing with you know classroom instruction materials that necessary for the class that we have to supply them so definitely that um shirtfall is is growing we closey lach and everything and as was mentioned earlier we FR our budget very early back in November um we are not allowing any budget overrides without both the superintendent and my approval um for any purchases are going through so there's two sets of eyes on everything that's that's increasing our deficit um a special education tuition there was a shortfall last month um there was a shortfall of 18,9 35 in tuition cards which remained unchanged from last month which was good um Additionally the spread Transportation shortfall has also helped steady over the
082past few months um so that's one areas that we also watch um the budget line items that having sh Falls at the moment you can see the SP special education tuitions um it hasn't changed utility you can see has changed it's gone from 154 178 to 915 um spread Transportation has not changed by a few hundred the St supplies materials um have increased by about $8,000 and then our salaries um which are the unpredicted you know substitutes and such the next group is just a school breakdown um and it shows you each school and what their budget was what they've expended what they've inced and what their balances um and what percent of the budget they have utilized and it also gives you the number of FTS supported um sometime previously supported by the school
083budget ccer breaker um there's been no change we've received two payments on a four um that will continue to come in the rest of the year we'll get two more payment um and hopefully for luck you next and then I cap so this report was for February but a capital has now changed um so I can brief you so um Capital thankfully approved um our eight bus lease and instead of the 90,000 that they contributed to us each year they're now agreeing to cover the whole lease of our buses which is a huge help to us um they're also continuing to cover the $25,000 for electric bus they approved um one additional bus um so we can add a 93 because I thought some of our Buss are capacity right now we had asked for
084two District B activity buses um they approve one which is tremendous we um hoping one of those S years now and that will certainly help log the up log the athentic trips that we haven't been able to had Outsource um they approved the interactive white boards half um of O good and half of di Hill and then next year we'll complete the other half and then all of our schools will be up to date the security enhancement so there were several PA system upgrades that needed to happen or weren't in existence at all and all good in De Hill they approved that as well as um security enhan enhancment at the middle high school and the D Hill School um which include cameras and other type of safety mechanisms they approved the furniture um we
085we had initially moved the alate iPad to the colia in the window shades um the other thing that they did approve it it it's coming out of our Capital stabilization fund it was $75,000 to finally complete the extension of the pin Street sidewalk um that's at the end of Pawn Street and it's grass right now and then it becomes a sidewalk so they they allotted 75,000 so that um so that's all good news um they approved I think everything that we put on our list and we're going to Pilot the activity bus and see how it goes um and if it works out well this is just a breakdown of our federal state grants um to a group circuit breaker we are not a district that receives a lot of grant funding um and each
086year it's some of the grants decrease or go away OCT one and usually our speciation grants grow which is was nice um in our Meco Grant we have now um multiple different Meco Grant Reven coming in for different things we have a regular Meco program U we have Meco eek which just gave us $155,000 and then we have the MEO rest started Justice these are our revolving funds um what we bring in what what our carry over balances were what we've expended what's incumbered and what the fund balances are so you will see um the after school currently is a deficit of 11,234 that's because we only get transfers over I think had one transfer of Revenue um this year so there'll be more to come um by the end of the year and that
087Dem will go away School athletics which is a no topic for us to discuss um that that revolving is running right now about 102,000 this spring um of the spring Revenue has not been deposited yet um and there's more gate receipts finishing up winter sports that will be going um to be deposited and what happens is um with superintendent sh mention when the revolving Fund in a deficit at the end of the year we can't leave as a deficit so the school budget has to absorb that mon which is why we're talking about the other one you can see um which running deficit is the school transportation involved um which is also on our list of discussions for and um none of our Revenue accounts are holding High balances um over the last few years
088we have definitely utilized as much as we can to help support the district um even the school lunch program I mean still carries a pretty decent balance um but there's still more to be done in that area this is just a breakdown um by category um by head count and by poivy um how many staff we have in each each category hasn't changed um at all this year it's just a summary Personnel by type regular education mandated special education and salaries and then unut salaries and you can see in the high chart here that um Regular education salaries um make up majority of our budget and then to give more detail School um it shows you here how many staff we have in each school and budget funded rolv and funded um we've added a
089column to divide out GRS involving coming up to the next the next report um so down deep here it is I guess I I included it then the middle and high school and then districtwide which um was not included in the past boards so it shows you what positions are funded by the budget what positions are funded by grants and what positions are fed by again this is just a summary of Grants which grants they are and a summary evolving um and how many ft and hit C enrollment for March and it shows you the Elementary class is and then we have month for month um en from October to March and then we have our utility summary so you can see for electricity um we have definitely spent a lot more in um cost
090through the winter months but our usage is almost the same and then for gas I believe it has gone down so gas um we spent a little bit less and we've actually utilized a little bit less so we are trying to um do everything we can and work with facilities to bring our utility costs down in us this now just because the rates is so high and here is the breakdown of food service um and you can see we're at 16% participation for lunch now versus last last year at 55% um and I just gave you February's breakdown January's um December follow follow see how how the um particip participation it his grow I think I was told yesterday was the biggest seller they sold over 500 burito bowls burito bowls were big hit and
091this is just some you know some of the things he doing um so here's kale growing in our garden Tower and here's the kale actually being utilized in kitchens here the beginning of our pizza so you can see it's it's fresh made right from go a new pizza oven we're actually making pizzas so from scratch and the favorite um cinnamon cinnamon RS um they seem to be a big hit as well um again they're making them um come fret and then the last little treat I didn't get one of those one of those um just to brighten up some of the downside of the budget report you know show some of the fun stuff that's going on as well um transportation we're currently reviewing our needs we have asked for an additional bus we have
092been granted an additional bus um which is great we're Surplus in our Bluebird and our Mini Bus um and we are in the process of trying to either trade in or sell 70 D um to bring down the cost of the additional bus at this stage um there are concerns concerns all you regarding utilities Transportation tuition um and our salaries but we closely Monitor and with our FY 26 budget presentation we're hopeful that um I should say hopeful we'll be closing that Gap in having having a balance culture for next year any questions for Miss on the monthly update Mr Carr questions thank you Mr car Mr dial do you have any questions for Miss Owen on the on the monthly update I do not thank you Mah thank you m Hannah Miss leki Miss
093Owen I I oh and also so could I ask um Mrs Maher the chairperson of our select board is President M Mah Could you um I view her as somewh of an expert in Municipal budgeting could you join the group take a seat so that you could participate in discussion a little bit more um um Mrs Owen so I'm I'm becoming increasingly alarmed at the growing shortfall like it's already bad enough and we're going to have to like edit that presentation I mean it's it's going up how do we like are there can we brainstorm ways to I mean we we've instituted uh budget freeze how are we stop how are we going to stop this bleeding because it's it's I mean it's it's only March right so and that was thatle February's numbers I
094mean we're going to be into um seven figures here in no time and things are already bad enough I'm wondering you know do can can we brainstorm here on on how to we cannot keep increasing this $70,000 a month um or whatever it was excuse me okay all right so what what can be done and Mr Tom feel free to join in if you have any bright ideas as well but are there any thoughts on this I mean we can't I I'm like we're coming back here every month and it's growing this this this like this monster is getting bigger and bigger so what what are we going to do about this so I think one of the things that we need to keep in mind is that that's the current number and as we
095get closer to June there will be ways to bring that number down so we know that there's $100,000 in circuit breaker money that can be applied to this to bring that down $100,000 we think there will be because this Owen over encumbered salaries so while the yes we need to continue to think about how to stop that there are some things like utilities like toilet paper that we can't not purchase um would we say utilities is a major driver of that right now I mean what is the have we broken down what is accounting for these monthly increases in the shortfall it's what it's utilities I mean we've identified its utilities it's Transportation it's Athletics um some you know you know we have had movein who come to the district without out of District placements
096when they move into the district we have to assume those costs yeah and so they're completely unanticipated um that does Drive the number up you know Sue and I have started to make a list of where we think we will be able to bring those numbers down by the end of June um the question is going to be is how far can we bring the number down what about uh a little bit more of a creative deployment of our uh revolving especially like we have we talked about that okay yeah because that was discussed during the legislative that we attended and so just you know you know there are few revolving accounts that a little healthier than others one in particular there may be ways to okay so cre deploy those assets that we might
097be able to offset some bleeding in that way um yeah super said as we get closer to June and see what the numbers really are um you know if we have we have staff that go on unpaid leaves or medical leaves but don't return or uh maternity leaves and don't return the savings there um if someone leaves or resigns now when most times you're not H rehiring um we had a savings for the Elementry team chair um $7,000 there and then what happens is when we get to the end of the year we see what the rol accounts look like um we can we can charge off certain things so we can charge off you know percentage of custodian to say the cafeteria sure some utilities to the cafeteria and Mr condone and I we
098did do that um in small bits last year um he came up with a number um which seemed Fair um and we did we shifted it right over um you could part portions of salaries for staff that yeah so other than that we open to ideas I me we're we're watching everything said you know I don't what if supplies materials comes in it's it's 5 to 7,000 for um and we can't not to paper paper towels cleaning supplies tissues and then the nurse supplies come through we can't we can't deny any those things and we have looked at and it doesn't help us right well it can start to help us right now but we've looked at shifting our supplier for a lot of those things and there's a potential cost Savings of $10,000 in
099shifting suppliers so we are looking at those moves at right I'm not sure how much it's going to help us between now and the end of the year but we are trying to find all the ways we can all right I mean look it is what it is it's Grim it's just that I you know I'm looking last time it's going from the 700s to the 800s now it's we're about a 900 this just like I it's it's it's like veering out of control I mean out of control it's starting to like roll over on its side and it just it's it's it's nuts um okay well let's and and Miss ow so if there is a way to identify like like you do in some of the other pie charts what what represents the
100the majority of these increases from month to month I imagine it is probably utilities I I don't know what else I mean it's a lot of money so I'm just trying to figure out what what it is um and and if we're able to identify some of the more prominent factors we may be able to divide ways to offset those um oh I'm sorry one more I actually do have a question relevant to what you're saying so I went through and you included at least in our materials the um the town of capacit summary report and when I look at the like the percentage expended already I'm I'm assuming because I feel like we've had the 100th day of school celebration that we're you know halfway three4 of the way through and yet some of
101these budgets have expended themselves at 95% 117% um yeah 179% um what like is that even more like that to me was was a little heart stopping not only are things growing but that we've already far exceeded sometimes by over 100% um or close to 100% what was budgeted um for this year so that like it's it feels like this is only going to get worse I'm not a mathematician I I always claim but when I look at that piece that felt like even with a Frozen budget that we already exceeding um our budget dramatically in some areas some right like well beyond the percentage of the school year that's pass and we talked about in in my report like you know special education tuitions are over by $180,000 un anticipated right nothing we can
102do about utilities um 128% utilized or $195,000 over we're asking obviously 26 for those areas to be increased so we're more in line with what we're spending um but for the share that there really isn't anything we to stop stop um but you're right know special transportation again um is 129 again something that we cannot control if we have child that needs to be transed we have to transort at the mercy of the contractors who um have no regulation on what they can charge just it wouldn't be charge charge and we TR know we tried with our own 7e van um and it just didn't work it was such a small district and we had one man and one driver so if that person was out then we had to contract out transportation for the
103child and it was too disruptive um so we decided it was better off just to contract out um because it was too clly and we couldn't provide consistent okay um I want to get started on the on the fees discussion that everyone's waiting for um I I imagine there might be a few comments from people that that have been watching the meeting but um before we before we do that I just wanted to note on the record how grateful we are to capital budget because this is a an incredibly challenging fiscal situation for the schools so to be able to add resources of any type right now is an enormous Victory and not only are we adding resources but actually they're taking on the burden of some costs which also helps us um and I
104I found the um the capital budget um the current capital budget committee to be um extremely supportive of the schools they were um incredibly thorough and and um and I think that uh their support is evidenced by the decisions that they made and we're really really grateful I think that it's going to enable that the ninth bus is going to be huge and um as well as the um the the Vans um I think it might it will broaden some Horizons for us in terms of transportation and opportunities for students so thank you a sincere thanks um to the capital budget committee for that because this is a dire circumstance but we're actually able to I mean we're talking about reducing our Force but we're actually able to add a few resources here because of
105what they were able to deliver to the school district so thank you all right uh moving on to fees I imagine our superintendent has a proposal I mean excuse me a presentation on um these so I guess my question to you is it's the same presentation do you want me to repeat it or do or at a very high level I think at a very high level just because there may be some people that are watching that weren't able to attend or watch the recording from the last one um so I will note that while superintendent Shannon will give the sort of cliffs notes version of this presentation it is presented in full at the last meeting um so you can go back and watch that we're not making any decisions tonight as we noted
106in our district email on any of the fees this additional hearing is to invite um supplementary or or or or additional feedback from our constituency about their feelings insights perspective on fees we're not going to make any decision until our special meeting which is only going to focus on fees on March 27th and we'll advertise that independently you'll be well aware when that when and how that's going to happen but tonight we're just discussing it so superintendent Shannon please just however you want summarize that and then we'll get right into uh comments and questions from our families that are watching than um so yeah so and if anyone has qu if I don't go deep enough and families at home have questions please use the chat feature um so this is a just a overview
107again of where we are and we are trying to close at least a $1.2 million gap um through a combination of reductions and revenue increases which for schools is fees at this point um so fees that we are looking to to have conversation about the first one is kindergarten in FY 24 the district moved from a Feebas full day kindergarten to free kindergarten um while there was some conversation with the Department of Ed around how that shift could benefit financially the district there was and this happened prior to me there was a a funding formula shift that resulted in not that Financial year and so um as a result the budget really didn't adapt to accommodate the loss of that Revenue um and the Staffing had to be absorbed into the operating budget so there
108is a conversation to be had about reinstituting full day kindergarten fees um to potentially offset our budget deficit we did do a a scan of the area and a little beyond for who is still charging kindergarten fees this is the list that we have of who's still charging fees um you know philosophically I don't think anyone wants to charge for full day kindergarten um and yet it is something that our budget wasn't really prepared to hold the way it ended up coming at us and so if I would propose that if we were to reinstitute kindergarten fees we would look to over a three or five year period of time try to get back to potentially not having kindergarten fees but um because philosophically that is the right thing to do um financially we're in
109a a difficult place we are looking at transportation fees we are one of the higher transportation fee districts um but as you saw in multiple places we do have a a shortfall with regard to transportation and our revolving account and so looking at different proposals for potential increases to the transportation fee and how that could offset some of our deficit in the transportation area these are the area transportation fees um hangam will supered us at our current fee for the fall of FY 26 at $360 um so you know if we were to increase fees we would again be the highest in the area our current ridership our ridership is going up you know I think um as more and more families are required to go back into an office setting I think that's part
110of why our ridership is going up and something to to consider um again this this has already been addressed by Miss Owen about our transportation costs and the deficit that we are running and our concerns we are um um getting a new bus we will be able to reduce our ridership on some of our really full groups um and reduce their time I think we also are trying to bring our not trying to we are bringing our buses back to the middle school high school facility which will save us $48,000 per year we are looking to increase our athletic fee proposal we did a a a big study on this um it's here actually where we fall with regard to athletic fees a lot of our district Partners or just or peer districts have multi-tiered
111athletic fees because the cost for running Athletics does differ um and so we are looking at two tiers for athletic fees rather than one and again that increased Revenue would help off offset the deficit that and that's not a current deficit because um this isn't this is from March and we're at a different place um and this is last year we are I believe what we saw earlier was we're about $100,000 deficit currently with our athletic revolving account but we will be taking in some additional Spring sport fees and gate fees so that will shift again but again an area where we are not our revolving account is not covering all of our athletic needs we do take in Gate fees um I had addressed this during the budget hearing part of the evening um
112our gate fees do go towards our athletic revolving account they do help support the athletic department um we found that we are very much aligned with area districts with regard to gate fees so we are not actually proposing a gate fee increase um we are looking at a potential new fee A Student Activity fee this is something that we have found that our area you know peers are doing this would cover the cost of clubs um some of it would allow students it would incorporate the student gate fees for sports um it would also cover some of the other non-sport activities that our students do throughout the school year um that we currently don't charge for but that does cost the money so we're proposing $60 at the middle school per student and $100 per
113student at the high school just let me interrupt you just while you're in the middle of things if I just mention to anyone watching at home that's planning on commenting or asking questions feel free to start typing those in now and then they're already generated when superintendent Shannon is done presenting we'll take them in the order that they came in um also please remember to type your name and uh street address for the meeting minutes thank you sorry for the interruption um we are proposing a new student parking fee um we currently don't have a student parking fee most of the area schools do um you can see on this chart that one who doesn't is considering it for this coming school year along with us um and we are proposing uh $2 per day
114to park at the high school it would be prated based on when students get their spot or their license um and that would bring us potentially a total of $40,000 per year um we are also looking at building rental fees um right now it's not a huge Revenue source for the district but it is a a revenue source and with the increased costs of utilities and maintenance um and supplies we are looking at raising that fee as as well to cover to cover our costs um we recognize that this might mean that those who rent the building may need to increase their fees um but it's hard for us to justify losing money to outside organizations and so there's a proposal here for what those increases could look like and again you know the hope
115is that as we consider these fees there's a potential potential of you know closing our Revenue Gap or our um our budget Gap helping about half of it and so I would open the conversation up to questions and ideas and conversation I'm gonna stop sharing my screen but I can bring this up at any time that's perfect thank you superintendent Shannon okay um we'll go around the table I don't I don't see um amazingly I don't see any um comments from any members of the Community although um our chairperson of s board is here as a community member I don't know you have any questions or comments I we always defer to the community before we go around no go go through the committee okay all right so Mr Carr do you have any comments
116or questions or I would I would only mention that we did meet as a subcommittee and go through these line by line to brainstorm some ideas about what makes sense and what doesn't it was a robust conversation but this is consistent we discussed okay thanks Mr Carr Mr dial are you out there I am here um there I am um so thank you I have a question and then a comment um the question is and I think we touched on this last time uh but I didn't see the update the idea for um getting funded kindergarten fees came about because we had uh the view that Chapter 70 funding would increase as we um made made it free kindergarten it wasn't that we didn't get anything um I think it came in below what we
117expected so I just want to get a right the correct number on the potential savings because if we then charge for kindergarten again we lose whatever increase we did get so do we have an idea of what that increase is because it's not going to be a $300,000 savings it's going to be I'm if my memory serves it's probably going to be in the order of like 150 170 savings cuz I think there was like 120 Grand of that did come through Chapter 70 increase I don't know but I can definitely reach out and and find out um in the hopes that the formula doesn't change again right I mean we can we can obviously estimate on the well it wasn't necessarily A change in the formula as it was the plugging in the inflation
118rate and the inflation rate was so high it hit a cap and it came into um lower numbers than we expected but I guess it it'd be important to me to understand exactly what that that number is although uh on my comment side of things I guess I would say that I am in favor of all of these fees um except for the kindergarten uh I have a couple I have a strong feeling on the kindergarten fee I know it's the biggest line item and would be the most helpful for our budget and I feel that weight but I also feel like we U made a made a commitment to the community to have free kindergarten that the town funded this uh so that we could do it and I feel like we need to
119uh live up to that and I also don't think it's fair for the kindergarten families to Bear the burden of our overall budget just because we're allowed to charge them so I think we need to think that into into consideration as well um and I know that puts us in a more difficult and more challenging budget situation than it would be if we uh do increase that fee but I think that's an unfair burden for a small segment of our community um because we have high utility costs and high special EDG costs and high uh costs that are subject to state issues not necessarily what's going on in kindergarten the balance of the fees seem to be tied to the um to the specific functions of the school where the people who are paying the
120fees are getting the benefit so I can I can get behind that so um I'll I'll I'll stop there thank you Mr dial um but that's a really good point so like we need to know what the action before we vote to or consider increasing in regard tuition um we need to know what the actual benefit would be right because if there was Mr D Bas is saying we're receiving 150 in Chapter 70 and then that money is going to go away then we're not actually realizing $300,000 we're only realizing $150,000 which is is perhaps still attractive in this particular situation but um but it would be I think I think it's an important figure to know with certainty I will okay thank you so before we move on to Miss Hannah um someone from
121the community CH just want to take that question um so um Mr Kate Renny of 9 Force Notch states that the athletic fee budget expense slide doesn't seem to be in the posted materials so superintendent Shannon maybe you can get that um you can get it there but also maybe can we put it back up right now do you have that slide back up y so although I can answer with it's not on that side but I can answer okay there seemed to be uh there seemed to I think she means be higher expenses than budget for coaches how are the budget for coaches and the number of coaches per team decided yeah so um I will hold that up in one minute but the number of coaches and the salary for coaches are determined
122by the contract so our our teachers contract identifies how much each coach makes and which positions are available by contract so I think it's also important to note that we have many volunteer coaches um who actually are on coaching staffs but don't get paid um or receive a an honorarium to the boosters um so that's that's how it's determined it's all contract we'll just pull that up so that Mrs Ren can look at that she may have a followup question after she at the slide and just so that people know this this slide is from last year not this year is what so while um Mrs renie and others look at that slide Mrs Hannah do you have any um thoughts on um yeah a couple thought so I second um Mr dial on the
123kindergarten um cheese I know that that was a big thing coming out of Co um and so I align with him on his thoughts there around the town having voted to support that um the transportation fee I had voiced this before um I think that we should just be careful about what we're projecting the stadies we're going to be there um because I think once you raise that people are within a two- mile radius like they may not sign up for the bus um and so maybe that's part of it of actually getting like a realistic number for people like if you raise it enough people are going to self- select out of it but I just think as we're like going through the nickel and diing of the budget and everything it may not
124be 40 Grand in savings on that it could be like 30 or something so I think it's similar to some of the other projections um with the activity fee is that a mandatory $60 for the high schoolers or is that an optin opt out per student that's Middle School 60 okay so but every kid will be charged that or is that an optin opt out I it's it's all students it's all students so but so if they Club then they'll get charged if they're not in a club then they don't get charged well not necessarily because if they attend events and things it's all rolled into that activity okay it would be awesome but if if it seems like I'm not going to go to any events do they get like how are we monitoring
125that or are they just going to get hit that's why it would be just a for all students because it would cover other things as well so some of the events that the schools run that cost money to the to the budget um okay you know if I think about the middle school they run a lot of full day events or not or partial Day events and field days and the are Olympic days and they had a couple days in the fall and all of those end up costing money and they're wonderful events and we don't want to not do them but they do cost money right and so this would be a way and that is those are for all students okay so every student will get charged that okay um and then in
126terms of the facility Fe I guess my concern here is that as a town we're 17 field short as a town we have two fullsize fields that people can participate on um and so and then knowing the costs right now like you sign up for Town Basketball you're at four almost $400 $400 per basketball you're almost at 400 for lacrosse right now um I think Town soccers pushing three at this point so like these things start adding up and so then your participation on Sports is going to start dropping I think and so then um because they're going to have to continue to raise like we're going to get to like $450 $500 for a season for you know a like third grader to play soccer which is you know kind of astronomical if you
127think about it um so I just like I get raising those fees they've been getting raised year over year feel like at this point at least being on the lacrosse board we've been getting hit with them higher and higher Alumni field is the only field that has lights right it's the only field we only the town only gets access to that field on Friday nights sometimes and then Saturdays during the day Sundays during the day it's again the only field that you can guarantee you can get access to on those days because DPW runs milin and if it's rained that's out so then then it ends up becoming a huge issue on the town sport side of things and so I think this one I would get the boards involved on this one and have
128real conversations about what the impact is for what happens in the Town Sports um on this one because it it's it does become a bigger problem a bigger burden that goes across the entire town on that so again I think like there's other ways to do this if you're going to go after facilities it's like let's get a really strong culture from an athletic standpoint and you can get that money through sponsorships as opposed to raising these fees and digging everybody on the back end um because I think people will just not play and participate if that's the case season after season getting hit with four or500 fees so just add to that on the on the building rental fees one of the recommendations is to up the all TR custodian areas um because they're
129not covering so overtime rate for custodian is more than what we're charging no and and I get you on that I I those yeah so I just I think all I'm saying is I think a conversation with the boards to understand what the actual impact is going to be because I think it's really easy to sit there and be like oh yeah we'll raise these and that and everything and that one I think is different for basketball for all those Indoor Sports we don't have a custodian we don't have anyone out at the field during lacrosse games or soccer games um and so I think that one specific needs to go to the basketball board to understand that but I I don't disagree I just think it's hard for schools to absorb those to lose
130money I'm not for the schools to lose money I don't think any of the boards understood that the schools were losing money no you know but um and I know we're in a really difficult situation I just I think we're like attacking things that probably need convers okay thank you is that all uh thank M leki um I think I'm trying to like find that middle ground um and and I think I think about the word access and I think about public schools and that access is one of the most important things to public schools and I think while I see thee raising as probably the most sort of tenable solution to our budget issues um I also want to speak for those families in our community for whom um multip raises would create a
131financial hardship and would limit access um to um opportunities and that being said I've also heard bandied around a couple of times like well you're making this like private school tuition this is not like private school tuition even if you are a kindergarten family and you're paying every single other fee that's being put forward here this is not private school tuition and you are getting an excellent education and so I just what on the record for kind of clearing up that sort of misunderstanding and something that I've heard probably at least 10 times um because I think that's an important comment and sometimes we have to pay for those things that are valuable to us and valuable to us as a community and that's also part of our role as as adults and community members
132is to support our schools um and sometimes that has to be financially but so I guess maybe I'm I'm wondering how to kind of reconcile those ideas of complete accessibility for all of our families and for all of our kids and funding our schools appropriately and I guess maybe my question is about sliding scales and how many of these fees can be put on sliding scales in a way that feels Equitable that feels productive that feels helpful that doesn't create undue sort of bureaucratic burdens on the on the business office such as a kindergarten fee such as transportation fees that I think there are probably families for whom it that starts creeping up and they say we can't can't do this but we're also a two parent working family and we need to get our
133kids to school and we they can't walk because of where they live I I don't want that to be the burden um for families in our community um I think you know I think gosh all right I'm not going to have the buses a backup anymore that's fine you choose not to have the back bus as the backup anymore because I think there are families that just bust backup um and and that's a totally different situation um so I it's not a solution it's just sort of more of a com but I think it it's a really good point and I think philosophically I'm very aligned um the I think it's important to note that all of this has um accessible features so we do collect um we and encourage families to fill out their
134free and reduced lunch forms there's such a misnomer about the purpose of a free and reduced lunch form we have free lunch for the entire state of Massachusetts and we are very grateful to the governor for providing green lunch for the state of Massachusetts and for Cohasset but when a family fills out the free and reduced lunch forms they and they qualify then that allows them access to the sliding scales that you're talking about and that's for all fees um it's for the fees that we're talking about and Fe other fees as well um it's even for for for like AP tests sat tests um field trips all of those things and so it's really important that even though we have free lunch that families who do need that support fill out that free and
135reduced lunch form and I will make that a small plug that filling out that form also can help us get more grant funding so I wish they would change the name of the form because it is about so much more than lunch it it provides services to families who need those services and it potentially brings more money into the district it was just sent out again by all the principles and so it should be in everybody's email about last week it was sent out and it's on our website so anyone who's listening you know we would encourage you to to fill out that one so thank you for raising that thank you m lki we have a few more comments that came in from um some community members that are participating virtually a followup from
136Mrs reny she states that um she says thank you for the initial explanation about how coaches positions come about open parenthesis although it raises other questions about fairness and resources closed parenthesis why is there a $178,000 difference are we overspending or over budgeting So currently so like that slide was from FY 24 So currently the athletic account is negative $100,000 that will shift as we bring in all of the spring Sports fees as we bring in Spring Gate fees um so it will be less than $100,000 in the deficit um and so I think it it's a little bit of a combination I don't know that it's overspending as much as um similar to many of the other line items where there was a recognized need for additional funds to be budgeted for fy2 um
137that when those were not implemented reductions didn't happen in other places and so even though they weren't approved it doesn't mean that we weren't still going to be spending that amount because that we just didn't as a district make those reductions that were necessary so I I I think we are continuing to look at all of these things um but if you look at our proposed FY 26 budget we are proposing um an increase to Athletics because we are trying to budget appropriately which means we are reducing in other places or in this case specifically with Athletics trying to increase the fees to offset the budgeted necessary number okay thank you super shanon Mr R if you have any followup questions just plug them in another comment from Mr Kevin Hine of 57 how Road
138any transportation fee increase could put more of a burden on roads leading to from the school campus most parents are already familiar with long drop off SLP pickup lines that spill over onto nearby streets and burden nearby neighborhoods furthermore any Revenue projections by increasing transportation fees is sending the wrong message by likely placing more individual cars on our already burdened town roads by families electing to op out of paying higher fees Mr Hine is um great with some of the something Mrs Hannah raised thank you for your comment Mr H Mr Sher can I have the floor yes please uh just because it's going to be easy for me to miss the hand raise from you because the way the computer set up Mr D just please just interrupt when you have something to say
139I'm I'm I'm good at that so no problem um I wanted to uh respond to to miss lek's uh thoughts on trying to find the Middle Road and and I agree with that I hate these fees I hate that we're having to have this conversation um and so one question i' I'd like to have I don't know if we do this but is there a way for us to figure out the impact of these fees on say the average school family you know that say two kid family who plays Sports and goes on field trips and while I agree that it is a different order of magnitude uh between what we're going to what that would show versus private school tuition it's the sentiment is is real it's a it's a significant amount of M
140money we we just approved a field trip that would be $ thousand dollars we approved these other trips that are several thousand dollars people with multiple kids have to you know do that or they don't have access to those experiences and they're and they're left behind so you know there's there's a there's a real fiscal component that uh that you know all these fees um deal with our families that that that it has on our families and I don't think we're going to be able to fee ourselves to a to a balanced budget the problem that we have is a structural one our utilities costs are too high our you know required special education spending is too high I I think the solution to this is not trying to bandaid it by raising fees but
141rather revisiting what our budget needs are and working with the town and I mean the town as the you know citizens of the town to get a an approved budget that um is potentially through an override or whatever whatever platform that meets the needs of our schools uh and we we've talked about this for years since I've been on the committee that we've we've you know been lightly funded uh but I think now we're underfunded not necessarily because of uh anything in particular but just everything's gotten more expensive so you know I think we need to have that discussion as a town because these expenses are are the expenses that I think are rightly borne by the community as a whole and not by subsets of communities based on what uh access they want to
142the to the town so I guess I'm just setting up the idea that you know from from my perspective miss leki the balance in this is is not necessarily landing on the fees but looking forward in ahead to having a larger conversation with uh with our select board and um Miss Mar uh about how we can how we can increase the the town's um funding of our schools because that's that's really where where I think we are thank you Mr D um I had a few points to make with regards to the bus parking so I think this is the first time I've heard definitively that we've decided to do that that we're going to be able to make that happen so I think we've been t i in and by the way what I
143mean by make it happen is we're talking about relocating the buses to school property but that would require us to move them somewhere else during the day then shuttle drivers back and forth because their cars would be elsewhere so there would be this Logistics challenge that I didn't know that we had overcome we haven't overcome that piece of it yet we're still exploring we actually talked about that in our budget subcommittee meeting and Miss Owen is reaching out to some folks who a couple years ago there was a reach out to a bunch of places but we were looking for overnight parking so we're going to reopen those conversations to look parking for the um during the day and um SM you have a when you okay and so I think it I think even
144if we can't find a place we still need to bring the buses back it would mean we lose some student parking but I think spending $48,000 on bus parking when we have this much of a budget deficit is um not necessarily fiscally responsible but we are continuing to look for a place that can house the buses from 9:30 to 2:30 and I think we have ways of you know we've talked about one of the buses would be the bus that brings people back here and we would have a place for The Bu one bus to sit here during the day that doesn't take away through I think we can manage that okay all right but we haven't yet found and maybe M Mar's about to offer this yeah so I just found out this morning
145that um Craig you might Mr Mullen you might remember a few years ago the NBTA was engaged for the parking lot next to Old Colony that that Center and um I think that offer can still be on the table and it might lay some of the previous concerns if it's only during the daytime and all they wanted to know is how many spaces and um the number at the time was low four figures annually which is certainly attractive you know to to lease some space there so I don't know if that's if that's come up and that's on the list of places that Su was going to reach out to okay so that could serve as the daytime location U and and realize a vast savings okay because that was the missing piece of the
146puzzle that I had no knew we had identified yet is that we just talked about we out to there and a couple other places on Tuesday Monday because it's not a it's not a permanent parking solution because there's no facilities there correct so that's I I guess I want to go on the record to be clear about this issue because I think there's some misinformation about the our decision to have least private space for the buses so we need to make sure that there's facilities for the drivers right and there has to be space for them to park their cars um the town used to allow ow us to talk in the DPW area near the transfer station it doesn't happen anymore so we need to understand that the school buses are a town asset
147okay it's not like the schools and the towns like this is a town asset the town did not have a location for us we did not have a place to park buses so I think folks were agitated by the fact that we had seemingly been recklessly allocating $50,000 to um you know private parking area first of all didn't start at that amount but um second of all there wasn't an alternative so we're trying to find this alternative which in of itself is suboptimal because we're going to have to be transferring dri so it's just a creative solution that was not that's not something we would have considered when we weren't in some sort of fiscal crisis but now every dollar matters so for individuals thinking that that was just like halfhazard done it wasn't that
148that that we had a town parking location for the buses and it was taken away so we didn't have that anymore um and we're trying to find one so Mrs Mar just offered one potential option that we can look at it's not going to be free but it's going to be hopefully a lot cheaper than what we're currently paying and still going to require some some Logistics to get drivers to and from and it can't serve as the permanent location because there's no facilities um but that's edifying and uh and that's optimistic you know I'm optimistic about that so um it's encouraging um Athletics uh I I had a question about Athletics and thinking about all these fees for athletics like so I do not have children in high school so I have not yet
149confronted school teams right um I guess I have to an extent a little bit in the middle of school but but they operate in a similar fashion to the private Sports and Town Sports that my kids are currently participating in they're just so they're they're self-funded they're like the the parents are charged per participant and that includes the uniform fee and whatever other fees that they you know whatever cost they they have per sport so um I feel like is is would it be would it be sensible to consider that type of model where then we're not worrying about uniforms every kid's going to get their name on their uniforms they get brand new uniforms and you know everything everything sort of turns over every year you have an identified amount of money that you
150need for that Sport and then it gets divided up by the number of participants and that's how much it is to play Ice Hockey or field hockey or softball or whatever and that's and then we're not worried about you know is the allocation Fair are the football uniforms nicer than the lacrosse uniforms are you know where is the money going for these athletic fees is it fairly allocated like have we ever given thought to sort of like individualizing this a little bit more maybe Mr Hannah can shed some light on on the wisdom of this I don't know it was just something I thought about because that's that's how I all my I pay a price for my children to participate in sports right now they're not school sports they're Town Sports or club sports
151but it costs what it costs and then we get all the uniforms and everything's new and everything fits and I'm not worried that I'm paying for someone else's new uniforms have we ever thought about that doing it that way and Mrs Mar you may be able to offer some some inside into this too because of your your history with the school committee before that predated my service so um would that make sense at all I I guess we could look at that I wonder if we would find that some sports are even more expensive than what we're currently proposing um that would be my greatest fear especially when you um add in things like uniform we don't like that's something we save for several years and then we purchase new uniforms and so it saves
152money um if we went to every year it would cost more money um you know I think we're also talking about referees and all of those things um I mean we could look at what it costs to play for each sport I think it's also hard because we don't know how many kids are going to play each sport each year and so that is also uh we would be playing a guessing game every year with every sport um like you have no idea idea how many freshmen are signing up for sports until they sign up right we make the sign up earlier like make the decision earlier you know and it's like just because look and what you're saying is the point right if we have to realize economies by not buying uniforms every year
153yeah but if there's issues with that we can resolve that very easily people might have to pay a little bit more but you're you're getting your own uniform new uniform the whatever size you want your name on it your number okay and all those problems are solved you're going to pay a little bit of a premium but that's how you get that and then not worried that your money is being allocated because you're a swimmer and that may be less expensive than the football and you feel like all your money is going to the football team and because I think there's some concerns about that like this like I think there's this like transparency issue or concern about like the fees and how they're allocated but I feel like it could just simplify it yeah
154it might be a premium I'm not suggesting this is what we do I'm just expecting saying it might be something consider we could look at I think it's going to be very expensive for some of the sports more than what we're proposing on uniform front you could have come in as a freshman and like you keep the uniform design the same I buy my Hannah Jersey and they keep it for four years and then and you just keep the design the exact same it doesn't work with Bo they grow well I and I I I get that but then as as like a mom I'm like okay great I have to buy it every two years like because he grew like I have to buy shoes all the time because my daughter's feet keep growing
155right like so I Logistics do you want me to jump in now with my my thought Mar I wanted to jump in an hour ago sorry it's not my meeting so um I'm just gonna I'm G to make just one comment as a select board member regarding your deficit this year um whatever you can save only allows us to help you more next year and the longer we don't know that number the tougher it gets for us because we do have free cash we have competing interest for free cash we have select board and town priorities that are banging on the door and we're we're kind of keeping everyone at Bay until we get your final and best number so I can't promise every dollar you save this spring will be a dollar for FY
15626 but we will do our best um on that front um and that's a message I think stated publicly so I'm not speaking out of turn on um on that I mentioned about the MBT parking lot uh we talk about the bus parking lot a lot and what can we do and where can we go and we all know this town intimately there's not a lot of land I mean it's 30% water um so we we do discuss it we do brainstorm on what we can do um for the for the buses and it's not off our radar I just want you to know that we haven't come up with anything other than NBTA but um that's that um so so regarding Athletics and fees in general I had a I had a meeting with
157uh superintendent Shannon and expressed my thoughts about attrition which some of you have mentioned in terms of fees get too high they get um families get hit with you know additional bus fees parking fees this fee that fee um I I understand it I think we always had a practice a regularly reviewing fees they should always be reviewed you know and and upgraded during the normal course of school business um I know for athletics um and I I know that that subject best and in it for decades here in Cohasset um we haven't raised the fee since 2008 it's been the same when it was initiated in 2007 it was $150 and in 2008 it went to 250 and it's never moved so I think a review is good your benchmarking is good on that
158so um that's all I really want to say about fees what I want to talk about in athletics is and again this is my perspective as a citizen not as a select board member because I've been coming up here to go to events since prior to 2006 and I will say that I have seen an escalation in game day staff over the years and I would challenge do we need a detail a police detail at every event indoor outdoor okay because you pay for that sometimes I see two policemen here I don't know if One's On Patrol and just stops by to catch the game or not but do we really need to detailed do we need four people taking tickets at football games at 75 or 80 or $90 a game do we really
159need four people for the 150 people that come to a game do we need two people and an administrator and an athletic director at basketball games I would really encourage that department to to look at Staffing during game days and what it really needs um because I have seen it grow over time now there's certain areas you have to have at a basketball table you need a timer you need a score and you need a a 30 second oh it's now 35 second clock person you need three but do you need all the other people do you do we really need with a qu and caliber of the kids in this District do we really need administrative overview supervising what is already good behavior okay and those that's those staff members get stiped now sometimes
160if you're playing a big rival if it's a big event and you expect capacity crowds I get it but the run-of-the-mill Tuesday Friday basketball games I'm not quite sure so I would encourage you to to look at at those game what I would call game day expenses um utilities spring Sports haven't started and I I'm blaring at the lights on Alumni field I I don't know why they're on um but they're on and do they need to be I drive by here all the time and you know the student parking lot is dark and the middle school is lit up like a Christmas tree all night long because I drive by it at quarter 6 in the morning and the lights are on so I I don't know if that can can be you know
161accommodated I I hear that your usage is down and the rates are up but I think these are simple things um I would encourage you to resume the practice that maybe Mr McCullen um remembers we used to have uh season end athletic reports where the athletic director would come in and present the prior season team by team um and would go through the roster sizes we go through all all the accolades the and the highs and the lows of the Season give the shout out to the kids that you know and the teenss um that do well because our sports teams do exceptionally exceptionally well and then go through the budgets okay football we had a 100 kids we used to have 100 kids at at 250 it's 25 Grand we have do this many
162coaches this is what the grid iron does this is this is what the gate fees are this is what and they would break it down and I think it's very helpful so you don't get get into this kind of situation where now we're trying to to Scurry along and and and try to figure it out um I have examples I can I can send to you um if you wish um somewhere in my archives um and then um another thing I would comment on is in 2008 the district was in um financial distress and I have someone in high yeah I had someone John was in high school and um I was involved with basketball boosters grid iron Club situ Cohasset youth football I think that was it at the time um and so Ron
163Ford who was the athletic director at the time he called all the boosters in and he said we're cutting JB Sports we don't have the budget we don't have the money and we all said ye no that's not good you can't because you can never get it back once you cut something you can it's very hard to get it back in so he laid out every sport every JV how many contests uh JV coach is an assistant coach in the contract it's considered they don't get the head coach site then they get the assistant coach sometimes instead of three football officials you'll have two so so there were different Financial uh implications for JV Sports and he said can you help so we all looked at what we did and we came up with a
164way to not 100% from JB sports but to support the program in a one-year crisis we were very clear that this is a one-year kind of thing and what happened was we did a little extra fundraising we cut out some of the swag that the kids get I see what they get now and the banners and the posters and the gifts on senior nights and the gifts at the Banquets and the flowers from Winston's for the moms instead of Trader Joe's I mean it it's kind of snowball what you it's true right bouquet from Trader Joe's is a lot less expensive you got five seniors you're talking about $500 that get spent on on flowers so I think getting the booster groups together and and saying what can you do a lot of them already
165support maybe a halftime assistant coach um out of their fundraising um I think it's worth a conversation because what's the worst thing they can say is no and then I think you should look at your subscriptions to your sub Varsity Sports and say and how many kids from Varsity play down on a JV and how many JV kids play I mean you you might not H you might not have enough you know for for True JV but that's up to signups and things like that the thing about signups is kids can sign up that doesn't mean they're committed they're they're not you know in June you sign up for your winter sport Sports doesn't mean you're going to play you know you get a cross coach recruiting you got a football coach saying get into
166the waight room you know you never play hockey in college so okay I'm going to do that I'm not gonna play hockey those conversations happen that's all I wanted to say okay thank you Mr Mo um we just have a few more comments that came in from community members that are participating virtually um Stephanie Saunders at 10 stord Terrace states that if we are able to park the buses at the MBTA you could reach out to either the landlord at Old Colony Square or the owner of workstation to ask about the use of facilities open parenthesis bathrooms are shared amongst businesses there Clos parenthesis so there's a a thought about how to address the facilities need just the facilities need would be addressed through here because they would park the buses over there come back
167here to get their cars and use our facilities I think she may have been saying like if we wanted to avoid the logistics Challenge and just use that as like the full-time location perhaps maybe not that that was my um but yes thank you for offering that because that is the point of yeah what L Logistics challenge involves um the next comment is from Laura Soderberg at 16 Black Horse Lane she says so many of our students play sports and participate in activities finding themselves too busy to attend other athletic games clubs Etc what average number of activities per school year do you anticipate students might attend for the $100 activity fee what assumed cost per activity was assumed to arrive at this fee I find my kids don't have a lot of opportunities to
168attend other activities given their busy schedules this fee plus increasing the Athletics fee is a lot so um I think she's primarily questioning like the calculus that we employed in arriving at the the amount and I was not personally involved in that so I would defer to someone who was yeah so some of it was by looking at other areas participation fees um but also looking at you know all of our well middle and high school have clubs some of those are stipended positions and some of them aren't um so even some of those that meet during the day are St because of the activity that happens outside of the school day as well um so it was looking at some of those costs and running some of our clubs it was looking at some
169gate fees and I know kids are busy but we were also trying to find ways to encourage students to to start coming to games we felt like in the conversation there was a large push and part of this came from students actually in the forums for the Strategic plan to to not have students have to bring money to the games so that they could come and watch their peers um I realize that this is still incorporating some of that gate fee but it was from the students perspective it was always having to find the $5 or whatever it is to come um and we do have an issue where students don't come to watch one another and I do think Laur is right is that sometimes it's because our kids are so busy and they
170they're doing other things but where we can we thought this would be a way of of doing that so it does incorporate a few games per year um and then additionally some of the things that we talked about like some of the Middle School events some of the high school events that we don't charge for that do end up costing the schools some some money okay thank you for that question more comment sort of uh I would just add that to me I think we've identified a lot of the competing interests here there's it's a it's a complicated issue especially in a year where we're struggling to confront a shortfall I mean I think Mrs leski and man have brought up the sort of accessibility and interest element to this there's also the ability to
171maintain our current programming which I think is is moving in the right direction I think our school schols are performing well right now and then there's the consideration of the fact that the public schools are um an employer right so probably the largest employer in town so there are people's careers that attached that are attached to and you know obviously people's livelihoods so that is that is a factor to consider um and so I view these fees nobody likes fees they're essentially taxes and we already pay a lot of taxes but I view them as reduction mitigation tools and the more that we approve the less reductions we have to confront though some may make more economic sense and practical sense than others I'm also becoming increasingly concerned about the timing of all of this
172like I want wonder if it's if if some of them are too sudden if we're not Mrs Hannah raised the point earlier about um you know collaborating a little bit more with some of the sports boards prior to increasing fees um the counter I think our superintendent pointed out is that you know the object the objective fact is that we're we're losing money on them so it's like there's not it's a dire circumstance and that's not there's not too much of a conversation to be had but I think that like there may be I don't know in that sort of in that Arena it may make sense to explore that um you know for for another fiscal year and so it wouldn't be contributing to it wouldn't help us mitigate reductions this year but it's
173just a consideration it's just it's a factor to consider so I think everyone just I I just want to make sure everyone realizes how how complicated this is it's just not a matter of like I think that when we say Revenue Source it's it's a little misleading I think it makes people feel as though it's like we're just trying to make more money off of our families and that's not at all what we're trying to do to me the it's it's to to mitigate the amount of reductions we have because I I really value the staff that we have here I've come to know a lot of them personally um I see I mean they're the lifeblood of the school the reason the schools perform so well is because of our human resources so I
174I would I would hate to I mean I I am absolutely completely adamantly opposed to reducing student facing positions if as a community we can come together and pay a few extra fees to ensure that doesn't happen like if we were to you know if there was a you know a talented teacher that was you know a little Junior and by contract maybe the first on the shopping block but they're really talented and they're a huge asset that's that is that's non-negotiable in my in my opinion I mean we don't want to be losing those those academic assets so it's just we have to consider that as a community we live in a town that is very small has no commercial base and our our schools are just costing more to run than the town
175I think is able to afford to give them right now um I think we do the best we can with it um but it's it's obviously um a major problem this year so it it's just these are all just proposals um we're going to continue to to to to consider them as we go into the special meeting to make some decisions I think they're going to be hard decisions to make so I think you have some homework to get some some members and some information back to us that we can make as informed decision as possible and again I just like invite everyone in the community that feels strongly about this to tune in we'll we'll advertise the the the meeting and how you can participate in the special meeting and Mr D did I
176see you just appear there do you feel like saying something yeah I just wanted to to underscore um your request of Miss and if there's two things that it would be helpful for me is is one that Chapter 70 figure on the kindergarten and then two if there's any modeling we can get on what an average family would pay in fees what they're paying now and what they'd pay assuming we make make all these changes I think that would be really helpful because you actually to be honest I mean I see all these numbers and it feels big but you know maybe if maybe it when we do that modeling it's not as big as it seems um so I think that would be really helpful just say quick if if these fees were voted
177for it would cost me personally an additional $660 and so we can figure that out for different you know a middle school but it's hard to it depends on how many sports each child plays it depends on if they drive to school it depends so we can start to figure out some Mayes but just as an example I will have a senior at the high school so I will pay for parking I will pay for two sports to be played that and that's over and above what that actually doesn't it's actually going to be more because I just factored in the extra $100 per sport so add another $500 on to that for what I already pay so that's $1,160 um and there's a reality to and so and then the athletic or the activity
178fee so I'm just one family with one kid but that's what it could look like Y and and I think those were some the points that M leki and s are making I we got to consider that it's an important factor too I we don't we certainly don't want to equally important is not to deprive kids of experiences right we don't want to do that we don't want to reduce a force and lose great assets we also want to make sure that and we don't want to adversely impact our current programming we also don't want to do those things you know at the cost of losing student participation because that's the whole point so it's a I think it's a tough Balancing Act um as we come into this um this next meeting to make
179some decisions here about how we're going to handle this so um any last minute comments on the fees issue before we move on saying none we'll move on to the uh committee uh community relations and um communication block which requests any updates uh of any subcommittee leaz on positions you can certainly f as it will thank you Mrs Mar for your participation no reports from anyone it was in our subcommittee we did uh start to discuss one item as a as a potential for um offsetting our budget deficit that could have some ramifications around contracts we currently have in place and so it might be my recommendation at a time convenient that we discuss that in the executive session to see if it's something we might consider all right so perhaps can the subcommittee notify
180Mr serus that we need to do that and CC um superintendent Shannon so that we can make sure to get that on so that you and I are reminded I have it on my list for so never mind next Thursday's meeting it's already super Shannon One Step thank you any else um I I I do need to uh reach out to Jason ear the school fa committee he was requesting some direction um a few days ago and I have forgotten to call him back and I need to do that so Mr ears if you're watching I apologize we'll be in touch um and we'll get the school facilities committee back in the mix here um okay seeing no other updates we'll move into the school committee governance block I am not aware of any topics
181that not posted that brought to my attention tonight uh there are no minutes to approve this meeting anyone have any suggestions for future agenda items I I I the process of the audit with the athletic department um so I think giving transparency to people on what that looks like I don't think any parents have been communicated about it there's concerns that there was one big meeting with all the athletes at once where it's not really like most people are going to speak up and then there's 48 kids that were out at a model un during that so they didn't get to participate but there's no communication on if they wanted to how they could um so I think just giving some a line of sight to everybody to understand like what is this audit what's
182the process of it like if it's replacing or taking place of having a committee like we owe it to people to be transparent about how we're doing it so we can provide an update um superintendent but um I also think principal Scott had recently sent out uh an email about maybe that's what was talking there was there was going to be a meeting or a series of meetings to he sent it to families but to high school families only probably yeah and there's some Middle School families that have a lot of concerns too based off of everything they've heard and everything so okay um so maybe um maybe you can speak with principal Scott and we can sort of um rebroadcast whatever messaging he I just don't remember exactly what it was I remember seeing
183the email it was about the yeah it was the the audit exactly who was doing it what was about um so maybe we need to broadcast that a little bit better maybe maybe Mr Mills could send it out if there's some Middle School families as they approach high school or concerned about it yeah I I mean in all honesty I don't think we considered families who haven't had the opportunity yet to participate in high school sports because they don't have so and some of those eighth graders yeah so I think we could reach out to the families of eighth graders who participated in high school sports through waivers but I think it's really a review of the the depart the the department as people have had the opportunity to participate in it so well look
184why don't we I mean you know whether you're in third grade or seventh grade you know you're heading to high school hopefully in Cohasset maybe there's a I mean I I know that principal Scott's current message was certainly tailored towards the high school families maybe there is some way we can broadcast the information because everyone listens to school committee meetings it's been a topic that's been discussed maybe there's some way you and I and you know Mrs leski or you and the principles can elaborate on how to get that sort of messaging about I think this Hannah is just asking for just sort of a general update because I think only High School families are aware of it so maybe there's a way we can just sort of like broadcast that some general information about
185it and um and when I I don't remember uh I I don't think it's commenced yet it's a to to be commenced in the near future so um once it start once there's like a substantive update we can probably you can probably work that into your superintendent update at some point or princial Scott can come and and and talk about it but for now at least some messaging just informing people of it um that are not part of the high school community and I think also understanding like what we're doing about the concerns for anonymity you know if somebody does want to come forward and talk like how are we making sure that they can come forward in an anonymous fashion that I think was addressed in principal Scott's email I think I remember reading
186something about that um I think he he mentioned that you could like have private discussions um like oneon-one discussions with the person okay um again I'm like just going off memory it was like a longer email okay which you didn't see because you don't have student High School don't have a high school but I did get ped by quite a lot of families that I don't think also so yeah so so Point well taken so I think we can figure out a way to to broadcast the information a little bit so high school families that didn't see it that they they said their child got pulled in but that they have gotten they are not aware information what they didn't get the parent email either I mean that's what they're telling me so I'm going
187on for that yeah and and that time but I would I would wonder I would have those people reach out because I wonder if they're getting any of our communication and any of the high school communication okay um because they should be getting like because it's all being sent the same way and so if they're not getting that then they're also not getting Mr Scott's email or newsletters and yeah you know sat updates and parent Forum updates so we want to make sure that they're getting everything and so if they're not getting things they should reach out and we should make sure they're in our system that's a really good point it was obvious to me when I saw it like I get it like you know so it was like it was apparent so
188that's true so that's that's a possibility yeah it was a Emil okay is that all on future agenda items anyone else this there's a request Mr we'll get to you I know you have one you're after Mr Carr there's a request from an outside party for one set of minutes from last year um Jennifer's been in touch with me I'm researching that okay I'll come up okay thank Mr car keep all right Mr dial future agenda item yes future agenda item um this all this budget talk reminded me um it's and raising Mr ears I would like to have a budget item at some point about the future planning for the stabilization fund uh what our planned expenses are over like a five maybe 10 year period and how we're going to be deploying that
189fund now that we're going to be dipping into it for the roof and um you know making sure that we've got a a longer term maintenance plan and I think that's been on the agenda but uh' be good to get it updated some point okay that kills two birds blch Stone Mr dial thank you I think that's how we're we're going to get the school facilities Committee in here and we'll have Miss Owen at some point in the not too distant future put together a spreadsheet on the um special purpose stabilization fund that's a good idea okay um mine is uh homework I'd like to explore like homework a little bit I don't know if we need to do it at the start at the committee level like we might want to start at the
190SubCom level level or something I just I'm I'm I'm starting to question like you and I have talked about this before like we want to make sure that the homework assignments are valuating they're not just like busy work I feel like the kids especially like Elementary School students and even middle school students who are experiencing a Hu a sixth grade students who are experiencing like a huge transition I just don't know how important it is to do you know to have like you know an hour's worth of homework or 40 minutes of homework or whatever it is after a full school day I do like that a lot of them use their utility period to do some work and that's great because you want them to not have just nothing to do that's I I
191like that aspect of it they're in school they're working that makes a lot of sense to me um a lot of them play sports a lot of the older kids like in Middle School get the later um time slots for those things so I think it can be a lot so I'd like to talk about that maybe we don't have it as a future agenda item but maybe continue our conversation about homework and like what our policy is I'd like to develop sort of a definitive policy on on homework in the district um some teachers assign it some teachers don't so um so can I just of course yeah so I both Elementary principles have been talking with staff and with parents around homework and so I think letting them do their their thing okay
192is important and I think it's something that yes continuing the conversation and seeing where that may land potentially in a strategic plan okay because I think it's very much a part of a it's a part of a much bigger picture um than just an isolated piece of the education now that you mentioned that I remember you saying that when I brought it up before strategic plan okay fair enough um okay that may be the like I said maybe it's it's best addressed as sub SubCom maybe it's best addressed as a strategic planning issue um that sounds good so we can take that off that's good just as long as it's on the radar because I want that to be like a value leading experience not just busy work that keeps kids up later or you
193know gives them more work to do after a full school day and they're exhausted um and then lastly um I'd like to do um a metco presentation we had a metco presentation I don't know maybe two or three years ago various students came in past and present we're gonna have to coordinate with Miss SK and scarl um and they we we had a really critical discussion about our programming because I think that some of those students still confront a lot of issues that you know it's it's it's not just just all sunshine and rainbows for them and we need to know about negative experiences to improve the um quality of life for those students um transportation treatment um you know respect amongst peers anything that they're feeling like alienation any anything like that um we
194need to know about it um and then also I'd like to explore um revitalizing the host program I know that I I I I don't know what Miss get Miss Carl her current position is on that but um I know it's been sort of like a a challenging issue in the past but I I think it I really think it can be a great program I think that the participation has been challenging the past but if we roll it out in the right way and collaborate on it with enough planning I think it could be a good thing I think it was a really I think it's like a very um mutually advantageous situation for families could add a lot of value so I'd like to think about that maybe we could incorporate that as
195part of the Meco presentation like a discussion on the host program and or maybe that just occurs offline and you know we think about the pros and cons there's costs that we might be not be able to incur I don't know right um but at the very least let's let's and I have it on my list so when we're talking uh you know I'd like to get get that Meco presentation going again I think it was last time it was done in the spring it was good it's an appropriate time I think towards the end of the year so maybe in um maybe in late April early May or something like that's all I have for me any other last minute comments no there's no reason to move in executive session tonight so just ask
196for a motion to adjourn the meeting motion's been made by m Hannah there second second second by miss leki all in favor I I all opposed exensions motion unanimous to Carri as meetings jour thank you all for attending thanks everyone