001Patience. I really appreciate you. We have managed to, with Fernando's help, defeat our technological problems. And so now I should be able to put a presentation up online. And here in just a moment, I just want to state that this meeting is being recorded by the Greenfield Community Television, GCTV. If any other persons present are doing the same, you must notify the chairperson at this time. And I'm seeing that our intrepid reporter from the Greenfield Recorder is also recording. With that, I would like to call us to order at 6.37 p.m. Member Webb, will you please call the roll? And I know that we do have one online. Chair Sexton. Here. Here. Here. Here. Sorry, Member Deitman, I think that I may have not had our audio on for that. We are in the middle
002of a roll call, and we would like to know if you're here. Present. Thank you. Member Goodwin is not present. WE HAVE A QUORUM WITH ONE ABSENCE. SO WITH THAT, WE HAVE OUR FISCAL YEAR 2027 PUBLIC BUDGET HEARING. Do I have to open it formally? The public hearing is now opened. We have just to walk folks through the agenda. It's in a slightly different order than you might be used to. We're going to hear the presentation first and then we'll have public comment and then we will do our discussion after we've heard from the public. All right. With that, give me two seconds. I'll put your presentation up on the Zoom. I AM SHARING MY SCREEN TO THE ZOOM. JEFF, CAN YOU CONFIRM THAT THE ZOOM IS DISPLAYING THAT FOR YOU? YES, I CAN SEE
003IT. OKAY. IT IS NOT DISPLAYING IT. WITH THAT, I WILL TURN IT OVER TO YOU, SUPERINTENDENT. THANK YOU. MEMBERS OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE AND THE PUBLIC, SO YOU HAVE SOME OF THE MATERIALS THAT YOU HAVE IN FRONT OF YOU TONIGHT. YOU DO NOT HAVE THIS. YOU WILL HAVE THIS AFTER. I WANTED YOU TO PAY ATTENTION TO ME, RIGHT? AND NOT FLIP THROUGH IT FOR THE MOMENT. BUT YOU WILL GET THIS. I HAVE IT QUEUED UP AND READY TO SEND TO YOU ANY MINUTE NOW. BUT YOU HAVE IN FRONT OF YOU THINGS, MATERIALS THAT WE PRESENTED LAST WEEK TO YOU, THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, AN OVERVIEW FROM THE BUDGET AND FINANCE SUBCOMMITTEE ABOUT PRIORITIES AND THE ACTUAL BUDGET. AND THEN THE MAYOR WAS KIND ENOUGH TO PASS SOME THINGS OUT LAST WEEK ON THE TAX RATE. information.
004So the FY27 budget hearing overview. Obviously we're starting the process right we're into it. This is a beginning number. This is beginning. You're going to see that our overview is roughly a 7.4 percent increase about 1.7 million dollars over last year. What that represents is this year's budget and what it takes to run the Greenfield Public Schools rolled over into next year. AND ADDING SOME DIFFERENT THINGS, RIGHT? CONTRACTUAL SALARY OBLIGATIONS, ANY NEW SPECIAL EDUCATION OUT OF DISTRICT TUITIONS THAT CAME IN THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF THE SCHOOL YEAR AND SOME OPERATIONAL SERVICE DISTRICT APPROVALS RATING INCREASE, OSD THAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT YEAR, AMONGST SOME OTHER THINGS. SO WE'LL GO OVER SOME OF THOSE THINGS TONIGHT. WHAT I WOULDN'T, I'D LIKE TO DO IS KIND OF, I'M GOING TO USE THE WORD RUN, SEEING WE'RE ABOUT JUST
005A LITTLE BEHIND. in this sense but i'll run through it and not read everything to you because i know you can read and some of you may know some of this and you'll get this afterwards and then any questions please feel free to maybe write some down and make some notes for yourself if you want to ask questions at the end and I'm fortunate to have assistant superintendent Sullivan here business manager Andy Paquette and special education director David Messing will be available as well for any types of questions and obviously we'll be back at this again next week if there are some things that we can't get to you momentarily tonight we will get those answers for you next week as well so there are priorities and guidance These are priorities that have been ongoing
006in the Greenfield Public Schools some related to curriculum and instruction up there high quality instructional materials new literacy interventions to support our students supporting the district's SEL program and anti-bullying as well as restorative justice at Federal Street that's a pilot program in active bystander programs with the anti-bullying. On the next page, it is to maintain and expand art and music opportunities, right, including long-term stability and expansion. And we know that we're not, well, at least I don't believe we're cutting tonight. I'm not cutting anything tonight. We're just presenting. But these numbers that we are presenting for the increase and what things are going up. I don't think anybody, well, I don't myself, believe that we're actually going to be granted all of this, and this is all doable from the mayor's presentation or the city
007council or whomever, right, weighs into what's out there. We have, there's a reality factor, and we know that. So while we're presenting this tonight, this is what. right in a perfect perfect world everything rolling over plus a couple additions which we'll get to would would be in the budget but we know that that's not going to be the case in that sense right and I stopped at the first one here momentarily to maintain and expand art music because the music program has done a great job right they just had a great event last week again another one and the art programs are growing Etc and those are the first things that tend to come up when people talk about cuts, unfortunately. So we want to try to maintain and expand those programs. We also want
008to ensure elder activities are aligned with grade level standards and to support our exploratory integrated arts. Because again, the IAs, whether they be physical education, music, art, technology, library, you name it, a lot of times are first to go, right, when priorities have to come down. In Greenfield, we're in a unique scenario in some of our classrooms and our grade levels where these programs are supporting teacher prep time as well, too. So there's a necessity to that as well, as well as not just the prep time necessity, but what they're learning from this as well. Some other priorities are staffing and volunteers to maintain the level of staffing, to provide small enough class sizes. and provide individual supports. I think the class size you'll see not so much tonight. We haven't cut down every numbers.
009You have enrollment numbers in front of you. But what's small to one is all relative. And I mean that. really politely. And what's a lot to some, right? What's a lot of money to one person is not always a lot to the next person. So what one considers a small class number, somebody else may not. But those class numbers come with choices that are going to have to be made. There's no doubt we'll be coming before you, whether it's April, May, saying, yes, how would you like me to split 48 students at an elementary level, right? Is that two classes of 24 or is that three, right? of something smaller. And we all know what we like and want, but there are financial constraints with all of that. So those are things that won't happen
010tonight, but they'll be out there and they'll be in front of you. You'll see the numbers and you'll see what happens with everything. Trying to consider additional resources for our substitute teachers, fully staffing our school, including prioritizing, right, attracting full-time employees that we've previously been forced to use outside contractors and services for. And we do not want to. There's nothing more, less than I want is to hire somebody from an outside vendor when we're paying a premium for that when they could have just applied directly to us. Unfortunately, in some cases, we don't have that choice to put people in, but we are making every effort not to do that. In terms of professional development, to provide the resources to our staff in teaching our students, neurodivergent students, and the consistency of our IEP implementation,
011to support the English learner population, instructional assistance. PD in investing in our value core of equity particularly in works to advance anti-racism throughout our school communities and the restorative practices as we've touched before in transportation we were fortunate to hear a presentation last week that we that you commissioned and we want to continue to ensuring equitable access to sports after school like extracurricular activities as well as parent engagement and related district groups throughout and we've been fortunate to do that this year where we've had some open houses And we've sent buses to people who didn't have transportation to bring people to our open houses and conferences at night. So I think we are making great efforts through our schools and our principals and the Transportation Department to move forward in that thing. Some of the
012assumptions and guidance in this FY27 school budget proposal would be to provide adequate resources to meet legal mandates. We obviously have to comply with collective bargaining agreements and other contractual obligations to maintain our programs and staffing levels to utilize the best available information to project changes in costs such as tuitions and revenues, establish funding levels, estimate, sorry, level funding for all federal and state grants, reducing and shifting costs so that we can save some money, and aligning our Greenfield School Committee. policy, budget planning by ensuring the educational welfare of the children in our schools while attempting to balance the valid interest of our taxpayers because we know that people pay pretty decent taxes here in Greenfield and there's only a limit each year that things can go up. Also achieving the greatest educational returns and
013contributions to the educational program for dollars expended in establishing levels of funding that will provide high quality education for all of our students. So some of our budget numbers, you'll see the FY27 budget is a 6.39% increase in the all funds. That's all funds. And what you see a lot, though, is the local appropriation. And that's what we talked about at 7.46. And you'll see that going from 23,600,000 to 25,400,000 for the local appropriation. When you total everything in, you potentially could have a budget of 29,700,000 on that. Some factors that contribute to the local increase on the next slide are out of district special education tuitions increased by six hundred and seven thousand dollars right a 19% increase You guys have done a nice job here. You can't plan for that You can't plan
014for move-ins unless you had a big Bucket of money at the end of the rainbow and it's there's no rainbow. It's raining out right now Contractual increases, right, we know that you settled, Greenfield settled with some collective bargaining agreements last year and we're going into negotiation with some other ones this year as well. Special education transportation needs increased by $233,000, a 21% increase. These are done to accommodate mid-year move-ins and the needs as reflected in IEPs. Something that... potentially is being looked at to add next year, and this is for next year. This is not this year. It would be the potential of an EL teacher possibly restored at federal and restoring a possible float custodian. These are some of the hopes that some of our schools have. And some of those things aren't hopes.
015Some of those, we're going to have to pay some of those anyway, regardless. On the next page, you'll see a local appropriation comparison by cost center. And you'll see, you know, the FY26 revised local in the first column, the increase or decrease in the second column, the percentage in the third, and the overall number there. The high school is down. And Andy, you mentioned, if you can just help me. There's a reason it's down. It's not really down. I think it's being funded. Yes, we are using more school choice and we use our school choice at the high school. So that's why the all funds would actually be an increase, but the local is a decrease. Thank you. If you go to the those, so those are the schools. If you go to the next
016page, you'll have some different categories. The budget has lots of categories. Those of you can see it online in EL, athletics, nursing services, superintendent, admin technologies, assistant superintendent. I'm going to keep moving if you don't mind going through that. There's special education, 504 services, custodial and maintenance, transportation, personnel, school committee has a line item, and the business department also has that. Some estimated other funding sources through grant funds. You will see some of our grants there. And these are early numbers. Assistant Superintendent Sullivan and I were on a call a week or so ago with the state commissioner. It does not look like Title I is going to be fully funded. It may be at about an 80% funding. That's going to be a big hit to us in that sense. So we'll end up
017seeing where that truly comes out. Those numbers haven't come out yet, but they're asking all cities and towns across the state to budget at 80% of what they received this year. And you'll see some of the other grants and some are non-competitive, obviously non-competitive grants that we get each year. On the next slide, you'll see school choice, circuit breaker, special education tuition, transportation revolving, AEL, pre-K students, and the totals there. The increase very small there at half a percent going on up in that and special education revenue funds. On the next sheet is a combined balance sheet and income statement. That shows the balance from 7-1-25, projected revenues, expenditures this year, the June 30th, 26th projected balance, and the percentage change. So you have school choice, circuit breaker, special education, tuition, transportation, and then the
018total. On that, some other, these are the special education. Revenue funds continued the balance on top projected right on 7-1-26 and then going forward for school choice circuit breaker special education tuition and transportation. We've heard a lot and you've asked us and we've I think we're giving and we're going to give you more information on staffing. So here are each individual school the Academy of Early Learning AEL What you'll see here is a total budget on the right 1.1 million in that green box on the right some grants that are helping out over there $20,000 with special education in Individual assistance it shows the breakdown of teachers adjustment counselor principal admin assistants IAS building based subs custodial staff. So you're gonna see that for all of our schools flowing forward what it takes to run
019here. So this is just the line item chart. If you go to the next one, you'll see positions allocated by role. Doing at AEL, you have one principal, one admin assistant, one custodian, six preschool teachers, one special education preschool teacher, .6 adjustment counselor. That means we have somebody who goes there, call that, you know, three days a week. preschool IAs, nine regular education IAs, four, and a building-based sub one. So your total positions at the bottom, it's a little cut off there, 24.6 for that. You can see the total FTEs for that building. So we run through that for every school. I have no problem running through it, but you'll see the next school is Federal Street at $2 million total budget allocated to that. And the next page has all their staffing next couple
020have that and they're at over 30 staff members for that building when you get to FTEs at Discovery 2.3 million for that they have some grants and 48 staff members FTEs at Discovery at Newton a little over two million dollars budgeted for that 31 over just over 31 staff members at Greenfield Middle School four million dollars total budget allocated and have a breakdown of the IA special education regular education teachers admin and facilities and I think I missed the total I'll just have look at that you get you that I'm not going to add that up right now and miss it up mess it Greenfield High School 4.6 million dollar total budget again regular education teachers 17.6 I a 11.2 special education 30 admin facilities FTE 11 El and then we we end up going
021to el after the high school which are English learners and there are four Discovery, Newton, Greenfield Middle School, Greenfield High School, total $424,000 for that and a tutor in there. Nursing services, one nurse in every building. 6.0 FTEs, $436,000 for that. Your special education department, now we have departments from administration, therapy specialists, psychologists, and admin assistants. $1.6 million to run that department with 22 FTEs, superintendent's office, 504 coordinator. For a minute, I got stumped for a minute. I'm thinking, I knew there wasn't one, but potentially that's a category where somebody's in there for $413,000. Assistant superintendent, $213,000. That's not all for Steven. Technology department, six people there, $435,000. In that department, custodial and maintenance, the central office part of it is $204,000. Transportation, $981,000 for that, 22 people in transportation. The business office and staffing
022has four for $276,000. The school committee, secretaries, members, stipends, et cetera, 50,000, eight people on that. And then you have a budget summary. At the end, FY27 district budget summary, all school and total departments. Grant total when you add those departments, $21,299,150. And grants on the right-hand column go up to $1.2 million for that. I'm going to... send the school committee you have it coming to you this presentation so you can look at that and ask any questions and and i do know that i ran through it but what we'd love to do is hear any questions you have or any areas that you'd like clarification for if we can do that today if not for next week for you then i know that we'll obviously have public speak out as well too thank you
023for that presentation um yeah it It was pretty quick and I will just note for the future that this is the kind of thing I would have loved to have seen five days ago to be able to look through it. Noted. Thank you. In the meantime though, for now, I would like to open it up to public comment, give the members a little bit of time to percolate on their questions and get them written down, note them however you'd like. I'm going to stop sharing my screen. So that I can see folks online. All right. Any public comment in person? Yes, we have Pamela Goodwin. If you could share your name and your relationship to the schools. Hi, good evening. I'm Pamela Goodwin. I had a number of years teaching in the Greenfield system as
024well as some other area schools. I'm in Precinct 6. I want to congratulate you on all the hard work I have been following much of the school committee's work this last year. I also am thrilled to hear that maintaining arts, music, language, athletics is a bit of a top priority because I was a victim of being two and a half when I was teaching foreign languages years ago. I also lost a contract that I had with the city of Greenfield in the middle toward the end of the year, and I was teaching foreign languages over at Newton Street, and the school committee... canceled the only nurse in the building and broke my contract, which is when I changed careers. That putting aside, I also love hearing about restorative justice. At one point I was teaching
025in the elementary school in Coleraine. All of those little children were very involved in restorative justice and we had to have that at the middle school back a long time ago when it was actually a junior high setting. um i was hired by the city of greenfield to teach a little young either david was either fifth or sixth grade he was an iep child brilliant i went to his small apartment his mother stayed in the apartment while i was tutoring him and all of his subjects It's my understanding, the way I recollect it, is that maybe there was a lawsuit from the mother to the school system, and so that might be one of the reasons. But he also had some tremendous behavior issues, which... toned were toned down with me working with him one-on-one
026the good news is as a special needs child i got him into newton school he sat at the computer he was in the library by the end of all of the time that i was spending all of the time in his tiny little apartment with his mother being present there was also a younger sister but he was brilliant he just had special needs and I know that she wanted to have him continue to progress in like a summer school setting. So I had a number of experiences in special needs classroom over the years. And unfortunately, if they have to be driven out somewhere to get their needs met, you know, we all know that no child left behind is kind of where we're coming from. And we do have a lot of special needs kids,
027especially post-COVID. And sometimes it's just behavior, and sometimes it's something much more serious. And I had a number of... IEP children in my mainstream classroom when I was teaching in the school system here in this city as well as in other cities. I'm hoping that the volunteers that I had heard about who wanted to make it easier for people to come in and volunteer because we do have a budget problem and so paying instructional age is a big problem and if we can get more and more people in there on a volunteer basis to help with students. I would love to see that happen and I can hear that time is up. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in the room for public comment? And also if you are online and would like to give
028public comment, please put your name in the chat and then I'll call on you when it is time. Anybody else? Going once, public comment going twice. All right, I'm going to close public comment for this budget hearing and we'll return back to the members and open up discussion. I have two questions for you, Superintendent, and one question for Andy. What do we do with only 80% of Title I? Like, what's the plan is question number one. I'm sorry. Question number two is super easy. Can we add your PowerPoint to the website under our meeting materials so that the public can look through it at their leisure? The plan was to do that in the morning. Wonderful. Thank you. So then I guess that's my question for you. What do we do with only 80% of
029Title I coming to us? No, I'm just kidding. You're going to chime in here. That's going to represent about 170 or what? 149 so that could potential loss of 149 thousand dollars there. I'm jumping on potentials. These are all what-ifs right now. Yeah So it is a what-if I think we're we've been asked by the Department to plan for about 85 like a 15% reduction So I think there's a couple of things that we could potentially do one of it is monitoring how we're spending Title one funds for this current school year right and anything in excess could potentially be used title one two three and four are 27 month grants so you have a 27 month cycle so any savings that we have from this year's could help offset anything but as you know
030if we do that this like you start to kick the can down the road so we'd have to look at um potentially some changes to our approach to title to what we pay for out of title one um but it's tough to tell based on information that we're getting from the state and federal level if this is Going to be long term or if it's a blip So I think we're looking at a couple different scenarios Thank you, and then my other question is for Andy Thank you so much Andy for making sure we had enough money at the end of the year to weather this storm of additional special education funding that we needed to give the services we needed to give to our students and then I remember you telling us that the
031federal Mandated minimum effort was nine point two six eight right for a green film Okay, so what is the total amount that we're spending for special ed this year? Do you remember off the top of your head? I was just trying to think of how much more we're spending than our maintenance effort compared to last year, just so that I have the number going forward. If you give me a- Oh, you take your time. You can email it. You don't need to tell me now. This could be future. Continue on and I'll have it for you by the end of this meeting. Oh, okay. All right. Yes, I appreciate that. I guess I just, when I read the executive summary, I was thinking, this isn't any different than any of the other times. Like, it's
032always 5% to 10%. It always, always, always is. This is just what you expect. And you know that it's going to get cut, right? And that's just life. But I guess I just was thinking today as I was going over all of these materials that, like, nobody here wants to cut any education for any of our students. Like, we're all committed to that. The city is committed to that. I don't think anybody wants to do any of that. But private health care is taking your child's education. So if the Greenfield Brain Trust that I know exists here can put as much energy as possible as citizens to working on universal health care and on making your voices heard, now's the time. Because this is just going to get worse every year. What is it going
033to be next year? 30% increase? I don't know. It's just never going to stop. And it has to start now, not when the budget is about to be signed. We need to do it now. So if you have been wanting to throw your hat into local government or help us, do that. Send us emails. Talk to us. Take all the energy you put into the town Facebook page and direct it to Boston and tell them, please do it, because we can't. Get this money for you all like we try but we need you so Please do that and thank you Andy for looking up that information that you can tell me later And I'll give mr. Messing the credit for this current year FY 26 nine million nine hundred forty four thousand seven hundred seventy
034nine dollars Nine point two eight was last year. Thank you questions from other members Just to say what Steven said the title one is 85% but do we know how many full-time employees we are paying out of Title one funds or as title one funds mainly for some of our after-school events it's a combination of personnel supplies and materials, but currently we have allocated for nine positions out of title one With the Title I funds being cut, would we be able to sustain those nine positions? I think that would be our priority with the funds that we do receive. I think our goal would be to maintain those positions that are funded or look at positions that were allocated that might have been vacant for a period and obviously prioritize maintaining the positions that have
035been filled first if we had to look at personnel cuts through that. but it could impact late bus transportation supplies material things like that all right so it is a combination but personnel is a large chunk of our events yeah yeah and member webb as you you're fully aware and i know the public is too and the mayor is when you when we have to cut and not tonight but we know we're going to have to cut when schools cut you cut the cuts are in personnel that's where you have the savings right you don't cut um Pads that you're buying for 89 cents from Staples or Amazon, right? Like it takes way too many pads to equal $700,000 or something like that, right? It's unfortunate. We want to keep cuts away from people right
036so initially cutting supplies materials unfortunately sometimes events Things that are deemed Not even extras. I don't want to say like events or extras right but things They're priorities. We have to vote on teachers in front of our children or after school activities and things like that at times. We're not there yet, but those are the tough things to do. And to make savings, it's human beings that when you're averaging teachers, let's say, I'm not saying they all make this, but the average is $75,000, right? Or different jobs have different kind of averages that go with them. You've got to stop buying a lot of dry erase markers to equal $75,000. And it doesn't work that way. That's the unfortunate part about doing budgets. I did have another question. And I know I'm late to this
037party, but where would we be seeing a summer school in this budget, or is that like a separate thing? Summer schools funded from a couple of different places title one being one of those places But also and I'll probably get the grant wrong. So I'll defer to mr. Messing And then there is a line item in the local as well For summer school funding any other questions comments? Yes, mayor in the transportation one. How many? of in the some in the what you just sent us seven the 7d drivers 11 and 2cdl how many of those positions are unfilled and have been unfilled this year it's um yeah towards the end it's about three or four pages from the end i would i we could use one more cdl and i think one other driver
038to have a sub in that sense we've done actually okay in terms of transportation this year. There are two CDL drivers right now, the rest are 70, which are for people, minivans, smaller vehicles. The CDL would be any of your yellow buses, whether they're small, medium, or large sized. So that's 22 positions, they're all filled? No, off the top of my head, I would say we have two openings. Yes, go ahead. Under IT? I guess the hardware you call it. Did the grant that we got jointly with schools and the city, was that all figured out into the IT, I guess you call it hardware? Yes, the buying of computers and things like that, yes. Okay. Lastly, I was looking at the numbers from one to the other. Will we be adding teaching staff as
039well in middle school? Will we be adding? One teacher from this year to last year. I don't believe so. Yes member didn't even have one last question The Medicaid reimbursement so we get that last year and are we getting it this year and Who chases that down? Is that a mayor question? we Okay. Yes, we do the there's the claims we end up filing through lower Panty Valley collaborative But it is a general fund receipt that goes to the city And then does it come back to us? It goes to, it's a general fund of revenue. So, I mean, the argument could be made that part of the money that comes to the schools is part of the Medicaid money. So, but is it a specifically earmarked? You don't specifically earmark general fund revenues, but
040yeah. Okay. Well, maybe that's, maybe that's a chatty moment with, with you, Mayor, later after you go through everything. Thanks. You have, you have another question? Member Dykeman, do you have a question? Yes. Yes, I do. So when I look at this increase for middle school teaching staff salaries, and it says an increase of 34.8%, how much of that percentage has to do with increased health insurance premiums and how much of it has to do with contractual wage increases? It's not health insurance because that's on the city side of the ledger, so it's all wages related. Correct. And I guess I'm looking at... If I may, I believe, and maybe Andy or Stephen can help me, I believe that that has to do with when the budget was presented last year. It was presented with
041some changes anticipated that were going to happen, such as the fifth grade going down to maybe the elementaries or the eighth grade coming back to the middle school. And that had changed. So that had been approved. And I know that somebody will jump in and help me in a minute. That budget had been approved with changes that people thought were going to happen that did not happen. Is that a correct way to say that? YES BUT I JUST WANTED TO JUST DOUBLE CHECK ON UH DR DIETMAN CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE YOU'RE GETTING THE I'M JUST LOOKING HERE BECAUSE THE MIDDLE SCHOOL'S GOT AN OVERALL 11.13 INCREASE I AM LOOKING AT LINE HOLD ON A MOMENT LET ME GET BACK TO IT GMS TEACHING STAFF 34. Okay, I guess it's line 85 GMS teaching staff
042reg ed. Oh, sorry. Oh, no, that's 34.8 full time equivalent. I'm sorry. I'm just learning to read this. Okay. Okay. No, no, it's not nearly that high of an increase. I have a similar question to what member? Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Last year, I looked at last year, just because it didn't have FTEs from last year. next to this year on this year's budget. So last year projected it was projected at the middle school that there was 64.8 and that was before the changes that didn't happen and then this year it said 65.8 so that's why I asked if there was somebody else extra in middle school because last year when we got this budget because I pulled it out it was 64.8 was the projection. and that was adding folks I thought because
043we because we needed some extra people in the middle school you know what I mean it was it was taking into consideration the redistricting right so the actual fy 26 revised FTEs and we can send it out and also put it on the website the actual revised FTEs at Greenfield Middle School for fy 26 is 58.8 with that fy 27 being the same correct Right. That's the original pre, that was with the redistricting. And when we've, I don't know, we talked about this in the budget finance subcommittee that the FY26 FTEs were showing because that was the voted budget with the voted redistricting occurring. What we have now is the revised FTEs putting the people back to. WITHOUT REDISTRICTING OCCURRING. AND WITH THAT BEING THE CASE, THE REVISED FY26 FTE'S FOR THE MIDDLE SCHOOL IS
04458.8. OKAY. SO FOLLOW-UP. SO IT'S 58.8 AND THIS YEAR IT IS? 58.8. 58.8 AND FY26 IS A REVISED FTE'S BECAUSE THE 65 YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT HAD, THAT WAS REDISTRICTING BEING UNDERTAKEN. Total in the whole school, right? Correct. Okay. So not to belabor it, but on the budget that we have, you know, the budget for the middle school that we have in front of us of the whole budget, it says that the FTEs are 65. Correct. For 27. For 27. Not for 26. For 27, it says 65.8. That FTE column is 26. That is not, that's not 27 FTE. Also, all the numbers that we're looking at in the FTEs in the FY27 budget. What was published is FY26 FTEs, correct. That's what I'm saying is we've added in the PowerPoint the FY27 FTEs. And then
045we have here, you know, an update that shows. FY26 original FTEs, which was what you're looking at. FY26 revised FTEs, which is since redistricting didn't occur, and then comparison to FY27 FTEs. I just had a question about the... for the high school and you all had mentioned that that came from one of our revolving accounts where it shows it looks like it's a decrease but it's not actually a decrease because it's coming from a revolving account. Can you explain that to me again and why? Sure. And immediately it's not a lot because what it is, again, when we look at the personnel changes that had occurred, there were, let's say, higher cost. people in FY26 when we built the budget to where the revised FY26 staffing is now. But we take some money from school
046choice. We always use the school choice funds to offset the high school. And then Title I, now we've already just discussed Title I, also goes towards regular ed teachers at the high school. So those two combined is a $656,000 and change offset to the regular ed teaching line. I'M ASSUMING YOU'RE SAYING THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE'VE DONE. I'VE JUST NEVER SEEN IT ACTUALLY PRESENTED CLEARLY LIKE THIS. SO THAT'S GREAT. IT'S ALWAYS. AND WE'RE PROJECTING THAT'S A SUSTAINABLE PRACTICE, PRESUMABLY IT HAS BEEN FOR THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS. WELL, IF YOU LOOK AT THAT COMBINED BALANCE SHEET INCOME STATEMENT, WE ARE. We're reducing those balances substantially if over the two years if you look at a school choice sped tuition transportation those numbers are going down as far as You know what it is that we were planning
047on using what we're projecting to receive I'm just looking over your shoulder Right, right. So we're we're looking at school choice So we're looking at a change in school choice for FY26 of a reduction of 40% available from what we started FY26 with. And then FY27, we are looking at a reduction of 18% projected available with a two-year reduction of the school choice to the tune of 51%. So we're starting in FY26 with $655,000 in school choice. We're projecting to end FY27 with $321,000. So as far as your sustainability question, the normal best practices, you don't use current year receipts for current year expenses. There's a potential on FY28, if all things go according to plan, that you would be using current year receipts for current year expenses. Not ideal. Of course, couldn't do. But
048again, going on the best practices, Department of Revenue recommends similar things, you know, and so that's the challenge that we're facing. You know, so it's a thing of we've heard prior year about the, you know, these quote unquote buildup of these reserves. Well, for all intents and purposes, when you look over the two years, our reserves are going down by 30.87%. So the sustainability question is a very valid question and concern. Yeah. Roughly speaking if we weren't able to use that fund for offsets, what does that do to us in terms of FTEs? I mean we're talking about school choice, so we're looking at, you know, six FTEs average. Right, and we've talked about, you know, everybody knows it's like these rainy day funds or excess and deficiency, E&D accounts, etc. Out there are for
049rainy days, right and we know it's raining right literally and figuratively outside right now. It's boring It's not just raining but you build up some of those and I know that the city obviously tries to do that as well, too during good times and Probably not too many of us can remember some good times in the sense when you've been able to put some Some money away in the bank account, but now we're spending that account and there's not many years left of that got a question I kind of semi know this answer how many in the budget you Presentation you just gave us I know that we do not we do have some vacant positions that have gone unfilled for most of school year I'm just going to use the Academy of early learning
050for example Like they do not have a full-time building based sub there. They haven't had one all year I know they don't have an adjustment counselor and they haven't had that there all year How many vacant positions do we have that we're reporting on in this budget? And then my next question was, I just want to confirm what the mayor said, that the number we're seeing right here is not for 65.8 FTEs. The number we are seeing is for the 58.8 full-time employees for Greenfield Middle School. I just wanted to make that clear. We're looking for the vacant positions for you there in flux, but we'll get you that number. Yeah, Mayor. I have a couple more. For the AEL, would you just as a question, the AEL wraparound tuition revolving, there's $526,197 in that
051one. Account 1513, AEL wraparound tuition, is there a possibility of using some of that? for AEL. This was from our last meeting you sent that. There's not $500,000 in the AEL. There's a pre-K tuition of the 526, but the wraparound is 55 and 526. Is AEL wraparound tuition, it says? 1513, on my paper it says AEL wraparound tuition? Right, 1513 has a remaining balance from the last report of $55,676. The preschool revolving account, which we do use as an offset of $526, that would be up for discussion as to what it is that we usually, if you look and see, we are... We will end up using some of that. It's just a matter of looking at as part of this process here. I want to say to someone that six and one half a
052dozen and the other, we could use that and or less of the SPED tuition revolving. So those are, they're interchangeable for all intents and purposes. But yes, it's a valid, there's a consideration as Superintendent Joyl is saying, as we're starting this process to look and see as far as using more of those. So yes, it's very worthy of a discussion that will be undertaken by administration and budget finance subcommittee. Thank you, and would you mind going over on the whole budget the way over on the right What the source is for that like in a EL it says total grants and SRFs $20,000 that sped ID a like what we're planning on taking each one of those things on the far, right? Yes, so the $20,000 is the ID a 262 grant If you look
053the 50,000 above is the aid that's the tuition revolving the AEL Pre-K. And then Federal Street. Yes the 161, 762 is Title I. Four Corners the 85,615 is Title I. Newton the 180,771 is also Title I. GMS 175,630 is also Title I. oh i'm sorry i'm reading fyi 26 then yeah i mean i don't have the same numbers yeah sorry i was in the 26 version i'm going back to your vacancy questions so my apologies no that's okay so we'll go back to you the federal street had 171 9 30 that's title one four corners sixty thousand eight oh two is title one newton one eighty six oh twelve is title one Greenfield Middle 172, 938 is Title I. Greenfield High 156, 614 is Title I. 500,000 is school choice. 500,000 is school choice. Correct.
054And the balance is Title I. Okay. Down to the SPED out-of-district tuition, the $2,647,000. Yes. 820,000 is the IDEA 240 grant. Say that again. 820,000 is the SPED 240 grant. Yeah. $1,527,398 is circuit breaker. $300,000 is SPED tuition revolving. Then we get down to transportation and $400,000 is the transportation revolving. And that's it. Thank you. That's number one. I feel like I'm putting a yell on the spot here and I apologize When was the last time we had a tuition increase? I don't know. I don't know the history and if you don't know we'll get you the answer We'll look it up Two years ago, right two years ago. Thank you member. Do you have a question? Or comment? Comment. Okay. Member Chauve. So this is a lot of information to digest in questions. So
055I'm going to plug the budget and finance subcommittee meeting a week from today, next Monday, 1130 in the afternoon at central offices, which is at the middle school and also on Zoom. So any members of the public are more than welcome to. come and ask more questions or if they can't make it or if anyone on the committee has questions after the fact by all means email me your questions so that we can try to get answers for them so don't feel like you are limited to just this moment right now you're on the spot questions are bust hearing that I'll do one more call does anyone have question I don't want you to sit here and rack your brain if you don't have them fully formed right now We will. We'll be back next
056Wednesday. Okay, so if you have questions that pop up in your study of these documents between now and then, either email Anne or email the superintendent and we will find those answers and maybe even generate new questions. Who's to say? But I want to thank everyone for coming out. Thank you everyone for listening, for your attention. I think that we have to vote to close a public hearing and then we vote to actually adjourn a meeting. Is that accurate? Right. Well, that's what we're going to do just in case. All right. Please call the roll to close the public hearing. Chair Sexton. Yep. Secretary Webb. Yes. Vice Chair Childs. Yes. Member Deneve. Yes. Mayor Disarger. Yes. And Member Deitman. Yes. all right the public hearing is closed at 7 42 p.m and now a vote
057uh motion to adjourn so moved okay great motion made by member child seconded by member deniv please call the role again chair sexton yep secretary webb yes vice chair child yes member deniv yes mayor disorder yes member dietman yes all right we are adjourned also at seven well 7 43 p.m Thank you all.