001okay welcome everybody we're gonna get started so I would like to call the Concord Carlisle Regional school committee to order and I'd like to call the Concord school committee meeting to order and just for the notes we have all members are present and we do not have our Mecca Representatives here so we're gonna we have a few things going on tonight so we've moved the kids till after oh sorry my camera is on thank you thank you um a few concerts and things happening tonight so we're going to start off with public comment so just as a reminder this is uh we're gonna start with public comment in the room and then we'll also go on to zoom so we'll go every other one in the room one on zoom and as a reminder this
002is a meeting in the public and not with the public so the school committee will not be responding to any comments you will have a time limit of three minutes so if you can state your name and address for the minutes you can come on up if you have public comment time this might uh either way okay great uh Monica Grandfield 110 Carlisle Pines Drive Carlisle I'm here tonight in disbelief that I must Advocate against the American Library Association and their willingness to expose mine is to pornographic content that is being shelved in the high school library this is not about Prejudice it's about Crossing an Insidious and Sinister line with naive complacents in the face of a world with Jeffrey Epstein's and just Lane Maxwell's the depravity of the content is grooming and that
003it normalizes teen prostitution incest assault dangerous anal sex pedophilia the use of pornography and promotion of promiscuous sex this threatens and harms our kids by assaulting them with unhealthy ideas and creates an intimidating and hostile environment that can be considered sexual harassment and not a safe place for kids parents have never been notified of this explicit content as stated under the mass parental notification Law chapter 71 section 32A pornography is addictive it produces habituation and sexual dissatisfaction the use of it leads to a higher likelihood of Contracting an STD it presents sexual access as a sporting event that amounts to innocent fun with income sequential effects on emotions perceptions and health when males and females do not believe that exposure to pornography has any effect upon their personal views Our Lives they may more readily
004internalize abnormal sexual attitudes and increase the likelihood that they will engage in perverse sexual behavior see footnotes the Supreme Court has never said that the school libraries have a right to present obscene materials to a minor if it's capitalized into a larger work a work is pornographic if it has porn in it the percentage does not matter and I am going to quote from boys aren't blue and you might want to turn your bikes off or your sound off if you have a minor present you were fully erect at this point I was nervous we're going to get in trouble you can't tell anybody okay you then grab my hand and made me touch it it was the first time I'd ever touched a penis that wasn't my own I knew what was happening wasn't
005supposed to happen cousins weren't supposed to do these things with cousins but now we were touching each other they used it in front of me fully erect and said taste it at first I laughed and refused but then you said come on Matt taste it this is what other boys like to do when we touch each other we both put his hands around me and move down to touch my genitals I didn't know who was behind me but I knew I was being violated he reached his hand down and pulled out my dick from tricks by Ellen Hopkins graphically describes children working in prostitution Iris worked at a cat house making money her usual way while a regular paying customer had an appetite for younger meat I totally wanted to pop your cherry you were
006my first version you were probably won't be my last because sorry but virgin sex really isn't good [ __ ] you already paid 200 for a good time with you he's on me yanking my hair pushing me to my knees he flips me over you're even prettier from behind you know that don't useless to Pew to plead useless to fight he Yanks down my shorts in a single Swift motion he's humiliating me in every possible way as promised he's rough biting pounding shredding you're failing out black communities by providing books with pornography and incest and meaning and objectifying young women by offering them books on prostitution it's Maleficent and is this the best that we can do I ask you to please revisit the book review process to ensure that all voices are heard review the criteria
007for what is an acceptable book awards a meeting list criteria provide accurate and thorough descriptions of books to parents and allow parents to opt their children in to be access to these books thus giving book choices that align with each family's values be kind and stop the harm thank you okay I'm just going to look online if you are online and you have a comment please raise your hand use the raise hand feature these are just two of these several many and many books okay it looks like we have a comment online Aaron Fife please state your name and address hi um my name is Erin Fife um 174 Hill Street in Concord and I just wanted to take a moment and thank the school committee and the superintendent and our district for all the
008work they're doing with the Celtics Playbook initiative I'm excited to hear more about that tonight in the recognition I think it's incredibly important that we support the social emotional learning of our students and that includes um uh many different uh supports and I think the the district is doing a fantastic job in making that a priority for our students and I just wanted to say thank you and I look forward to hearing more about that and supporting the district as we expand that work um throughout the district and the community thank you okay thank you hey we'll go back to the room if anyone in the room has public comment please join us at the table state your name and address and as a reminder you'll have three minutes foreign School library might play in
009improving the students learning and knowledge are you aware of any scientific studies showing the positive correlation between enhanced learning and education on one hand and sex education in the curriculum with easy access to pornographic books in the school library on the other please let me know if there is and where I can get access to it for as a taxpayer and retired librarian I am very curious it for no other but for professional reasons if there are no such studies then how do you justify the availability of such material to other students material that would make the street walkers in the combat zone blush do you plan to release such study to the parents and taxpayers if yes when and how and if not why not I also would like to get access to any
010and over teaching material you are using on sex education and gender ideology education in every class and every lever here is my email address please send me them the next three days thank you thank you we'll go back to our Zoom audience and if you have a comment please use the raise hand feature or you can just show your screen okay having seen none anyone else in the room again please name an address and as a reminder you'll three minutes my name is Robert degree I'm from Cornwall 80 Wildwood Drive there's quite a lot of XP or I congratulate all the teachers the administration and the joint school committee for our well-deserved mention of getting to 31st Place and the rankings and I say this from the very bottom of my heart in the school
011library the popular book written for teenagers and Roses opening randomly nearly on page 246 we find the following poetic description of two young people in the throes of passion Allah Romeo and Juliet quote he growls softly and definitely flipped us over spreading me beneath him Etc and also the quality tract in an excuse deepened his fingers slid between my legs coaxing and teasing Etc I congratulate The Librarians for the selection of this book and here I shall discuss how such fine literature can improve the general level of Education along with the current MCAS and similar test results let me elaborate for example the number 246 is the product of 2 3 and 41. right here the mathematics teacher can introduce the concept of prime numbers without fear of losing the students in deep Sleep also
012this Hands-On mathematical education could be combined with giving them homework to use their fingers to count the number of definite and indefinite articles on a strictly non-discriminatory basis a veritable percentage of mathematics and English grammar moving forward as those students identify as male to study these passages and thus further the writing skills for the school newspaper from the point of view of journalists in push and pull Allah Jonathan tubing the sangutan usually learn about both biological rhythms and fluid mechanics then ask the same students to write a fluid essay on these newly acquired skills will even demonstrate how they will have transgressed their inner inhibitions that might cause them to underperform relative to students say in Western and in Winchester the teachers could also be part of this age-appropriate life demonstration for students to identify
013as female surely we have dedicated Educators who would eagerly volunteers to be part of this public service without burdening the taxpayers for otherwise well-deserved overtime pay and finally regarding lgbtqia plus plus in general and gender dysphoric students specifically who may have difficulty identifying with these books for this outwardly heteronormative subject matter the same teacher should strongly Express their compassion with inclusivity by teaching the transitions out of natural occurrence common to all matter everywhere and is always reversible such as phase transitions between ice liquid and gases water and this way we all together can learn about thermodynamics physical chemistry climate change and mutual acceptance without prejudice for hate has no place here thank you for your attention thank you you are welcome okay anyone else oh thank you thank you actually we're going to go back
014to zoom sorry a hand just popped up all right Elizabeth Frank please state your name and address you're muted sorry about that thank you uh Elizabeth Frank I'm at 1283 Elm Street in Concord um and I guess two things first off I just also wanted to um appreciate um what has been going on with the CMS Playbook initiative and just really um think that the middle school for what they've been doing and really encouraging the school district to broaden this into other grades I know it's happening in ninth grade but especially thinking about younger students um and them being um the social and emotional learning and the importance of that um just so that all students can feel a sense of safety which will help them to learn better um and that's all thank you
015so much thank you okay coming back in the room okay before I start my minutes there is another parents then will like to give me her minutes is that possible or something that you don't do you you need to have a speech for you'll have three minutes so state your name and address and then you'll have three minutes three minutes get the other ones okay uh Carmela G uh three two eight border Road in Concord Mass this one yeah okay yeah we can go in a sec all right Elizabeth I think you're unmuted still oh I'm so sorry thank you okay okay Carmela G uh 328 wrote in Concord Mass honesty is the best policy this is what I wrote when I first approached the Middle School principal and the superintendent it has been over
016two years now when I frantically reached out to this committee to try to make sense of what why my child has started learning a bike about gay sexuality as part of her own educational program it seemed any happened overnight as the principal explained in one of our many meetings Christine Herbert and her selected panel of the school committee of teaching and learning he made the choice over the summer to include his books under the pretense of more diversity as part of the new English curriculum the problem no parents would included into this decision-making and no parents input was obtained while mapping out this crucial decision much more to my dismay the English teacher spent over five months analyzing And cross-examining The Ivy iberdeen's book to a bunch of 12 years olds then they were supposed
017to comprehend and write about over and over again how a young guy be 12 years old herself hated her mother father sister young twin brothers and at the end found herself confused and drawn out to a lesbian couple that showed her how to love moreover while experiencing feelings herself then showed her how to love uh another girl after Silent Hill silently watching her best friend making out in the back seat of a car she'd befriends Robin a transgender black girl from the south then opens her eyes to a new reality people are racist and people are cruel especially white people from the South this can be found on page 215 of the book if you're interested now you have to tell me what was the point of this chauvinistic book was it intended to disunite
018people or was it intended to make kids believe that they are racist or perhaps was it intended to destroy the fundamental ideas of race gender and identity and destroy the idea of the nuclear family our superintendent repeatedly sent out emails underlining that CRT was not adopted in our schools hence she stressed the importance of our currently and towards deib Five-Year Plan unfortunately critical race theory is the core for deib in fact the very center of CRT focuses on preaching the value of equality since it's believed in the American society it's incredibly racist which it solidifies us diversity inclusion and whatever it is training programs the concentrating systemic racism and white privilege diversity Equity inclusion and belonging is the new code word for critical race Theory the school board is deliberately trying to hide their curriculum
019to further divide the value devalued morality right now K-12 is educating children in learning then there is something wrong with them then they should be shameful of their own white race can I keep going W3 Minister up thank you how can I uh can the other parent come up and give me the minutes can the other parent come up and state their name yeah she can and can she read it thank you just state your name and address please over here right now um Krista Johnson 58 shag bark Road right now K-12 is educating children and learning that there's something wrong with them that they should be shameful in their own white race that there's racial categories between whiteness and Blackness that as Robin says to Ivy white people are racist and homophobic this new
020program is teaching our children that everyone can be whoever they want to be and act as they wish without consequence our public school system is teaching our kids that it's normal to meow or have multiple pronouns in order to fill this void and confusion that they have created amongst our Young Generation kids have been pushed to jot down the preferred program pronouns on every single sheet of paper and online assignments they've been punished if the task didn't get completed and yes this happened to one of Carmella's daughters just last year when after refusing to put down her pronouns the teacher marked her work as incomplete and gave her a lower grade as Albert Einstein once said in teaching history there should be extensive discussion of personalities who benefited Mankind through independence of character of judgment
021critical comments by students should be taken in a friendly Spirit restore the values of individuals stop indoctrinating our children we need to go back to basics and start teaching our kids again that the process of reading math and science and all to be good and successful people thank you yes um okay let me just look at myself one more we have time for one more because our public comment is 20 minutes so online do we have anyone online yes I would like to comment Rachel fried okay um yes hi your name and address Rachel and you have three minutes and this will be the last public comment okay thank you and thank you to all the school committee members who are here today um I'm sorry I see a um someone trying to speak yes
022Rachel you're up next um if you could just pause for a minute so our public comment is 20 minutes and then we finish our public comments will you take a hard time to come to this meeting and we can't go a little bit old so we're good we're going to go back to our public comment online we're going to let her finish okay so if I could ask you to sit down thank you I didn't see anything [Music] so we're gonna I'm gonna ask people in the room if you can just stop what you're doing right now and online Rachel fried if you can finish a public comment thank you very much and thank you members of the school committee um I am a woman of color living in the Carlisle Community who will be
023sending my children to the Carlos uh to the Concord Carlisle Regional Schools in the future and I just want to express tremendous thanks and gratitude for the work that you're doing to build belonging in our communities I am an expert on diversity equity and Justice education and um I have been doing this in organizations for over a decade diversity equity and inclusion work is not the same thing as critical race Theory anyone who has done the research and learning around that should know that and we need to understand that helping children recognize their own identities is critically important to community health and wellness and it is also critical to building belonging belonging love and acceptance in our communities I am deeply appalled by what I've heard tonight and I am extremely of the mindset that
024schools get to decide what to educate children about the parents don't get to review curriculum and make determinations this is why we have Educators in the room this is why we have the leadership of our superintendent this is why we are learning from best practices in current education and I appreciate the work of building belonging and helping children understand their identities as a woman of color who has been discriminated and marginalized not only in this community but in this world and I am glad that we can finally wake up and see how racism persists in our communities how discrimination against people be because of their sexual orientation and identity is prevalent so thank you for the work that you are doing thank you for your leadership and I commend you thank you okay all right
025we are going to close up public comment right now as per our policy it's 20 minutes and we did State at the beginning we were going to go back and forth within the room and online there's nothing in your the journeys it says excuse me it's in our policy but at the beginning of the meeting I stated that we were going to go back and forth but we're not going to have a meeting with the public right now so we're going to move on to our next agenda item thank you when you started when you finish it because the open laws I'm going to ask you to please sit down thank you thank you okay so we're going to move on to our agenda and we're going to go on to our recognitions so tonight
026I believe oh sorry student update sorry about that so our students are with us tonight I saw Harry online I think Harry is here yeah I think zarya was planning on coming a little bit later because we were planning on 6 30. so if you wanted to do if it's possible do the recognitions first it might be better you know what actually we'll go we'll go watch your update first I think that's okay you know well too we'll wait on all the students till 6 30 so we'll go on to Dr Hunter's update thank you sorry about that Harry yeah no worries all right thank you I wanted to provide a few updates tonight uh it's a little eclectic so bear with me we did that on purpose there's a few things we wanted to
027be informative about and then highlight some of the great things that have happened the last couple of weeks um we did know there was some interest in hearing about bus drivers and the incentives and how we're doing so I'm gonna ask Bob to give you that update um we're doing the best we can with what we have is the answer so I appreciate the incentive program being approved that has had an impact um but it's not a Panacea um so we have we've had a driver um we've had multiple drivers express interest what we're finding is that they're shopping right now so they're interviewing us probably more than we're interviewing them um we recently had a driver who just passed the dot exam and is now driving a route in Concord so that's a A
028plus so we're excited that the incentive program helped uh kind of attract that driver um we are still short drivers we're still looking for more we have a couple that have expressed interest um but the ins it's important that we keep the incentive program in place um just for Clarity like pretty much everybody has incentives now so we're not the only one doing that um but I think it's a it's pretty much a requirement right now with the driver shortage um but the new uh the new hire uh was a big plus it's helped and we have again a couple other candidates but um they're shopping and considering us [Music] great thanks uh other updates tomorrow night is our second of four strategic planning sessions so we're really excited big shout out to Kristen for
029all her work to facilitate and organize ahead of time we've been receiving the visioning data from all the different stakeholders who are participating so that includes every faculty has done the exercise we're bringing in the ptg feedback so that's coming in the student Senate met and attracted 40 students in what they hosted so it's a really wide range the leadership team had a little time with it this morning just to be sure we were ready to run our own smaller groups tomorrow but we're excited to see where it's going and definite themes are emerging which is very similar to five years ago some more to come on that and those of you who will be there we're looking forward to that activity tomorrow so um I think my other highlights are much reflecting on the
030week of Thanksgiving it's such an amazing time and we've been able to recuperate on the pre-covered activities that we so loved um so first just really noting the level of generosity and community service that we are promoting as a school district and I think that comes from every direction staff leadership parents kids one of our biggest Partners is OpenTable so if you followed any of our our social media theirs there's just been a lot of sharing of what we were able to donate either financially or in actual food donations then that the kids are very in hands on with and I think it's a great learning experience and one of our real strong points as a as a school district and Community the second part is just bringing back the climate and cultural activities that
031happened that week I think I previewed them a little when we last met and what a really fun week it turned into with 3 three big highlights of things that had really not happened or not happened in the way we had hoped but that that changed this week the Turkey Trot it out at the row was back the turkey shot at Alcott happened earlier in November Turkey Trot at Thoreau was back with the assembly prior to and then the lap around the block um the middle school was able to do a full-blown Marine maroon and gold day including a game game show during the morning and a big assembly that we haven't done in years and just a lot of fun um and then the high school was able to bring back its Spirit assembly
032where all of the high school goes into the gymnasium together which we have not done in three years so severely fun um cheerleaders and the athletic teams and a lot of really goofy games to watch and music and really fun environment the kids were really engaged and I think just had a great time so really fun to see all that come back and I think we realize now how much you lose when you don't have it in terms of what school can be so and then finally and I know Sarah does a great job of updating on an adult community ed and I'm going to do this as Kristen brought it to my attention this week too they're doing a great job of filling this the center for parents and teachers merger um so we're
033going to be sure to continue to promote the upcoming parent events that are happening mostly in early 2023 very focused on technology and mental health and really support to parents and how to manage those and obviously those are aligned to the strategic planning objectives and I just thought it worth one more time to note those in public but also to note that we work collectively as a district with them to be sure those are aligned and to really try to Foster the parent parent piece of the work so um exciting work for them and they really picked that torch up and ran with it so so those are some of the highlights and thank you for a little time to to give you those great thank you you're right a lot of great football Thanksgiving
034in Lexington and all sorts of great great activities we did win this year so yeah very exciting yes and and we broke ground exciting we're gonna break ground and finish um the support you had to the Thoreau accessible playground that happened is happening this week we actually expect that kids will be able to use it next week um and we got it in before the ground froze which with the supply chain issues was yeah thank you touchy all right thank you all right and now I think we're gonna have Harry with us and I'm not sure if zarya and Felicity are with us also 10 so it's just right Harian sorry hey welcome yeah um thank you so much so like Dr Hunter had said uh Felicity can't be here today unfortunately she is a
035chorus concert but sorry and I just have a few quick things we wanted to touch on um yeah sorry do you want to get started uh okay uh Spears spirit week was a great success students and staff seemed to enjoy the spirit assembly uh I know myself I have really I really enjoyed the spirit assembly I even got to get like a really good seat I I was in the commentator box it was really good it was really fun yeah definitely that was a great success and a lot of good work from students Senate on that and then also the blood drive was a really big success we managed to get I think almost 50 people to sign up which is a really big deal it's a lot of people and Boston Children's Hospital was
036super thankful to have her support and then also winter sports has started this past week after break and the first games and meets are starting next week so that's very exciting uh the two volunteer activity fair was a good opportunity for students to earn community service hours I think that happened today um I think it went good if I'm not mistaken uh again chorus is recruit having a recruiting content for eighth graders tonight uh that's why Felicity isn't here yeah and then student Senate has also approved a couple of new clubs in the past few weeks since we've had an update we now have a knitting and crocheting club which is going to be donating everything they make to Charities that's pretty exciting and then also a chamber music club which had been operating kind
037of unofficially for I think about a year now but they're now an official club and they're going to be able to perform at a lot of different community events and things like that so that's great um everybody feels pretty refreshed after the Thanksgiving break and I know myself I'm included um we're all excited for the winter break and for Christmas yeah definitely and then all three of us including Felicity are looking forward to the strategic planning session tomorrow I think it'll be great to share some of the stuff that we gathered like you had mentioned earlier we met as a senate and we managed to get like around 40 student volunteers of that so we have a lot of good information to share so yeah thank you great thank you for the update anyone have
038any questions on the table not a question but I I would certainly reinforce the idea that the activity fair today was a good one um it was uh probably as good a one as we've seen in the last five or six years um in no small part because uh Ned Roos and Terry smoker and others really supported it nicely so students knew it was happening so instead of walking by the tables the students made a point of coming right over and talking to the different Community Representatives we were very pleased great well thank you thank you for coming taking time out of your night and you're welcome to stay as always or um if you have homework or something to do you do that too so thank you thank you thank you thank you guys
039all right and next up we have our recognition so I'll give it to Dr Hunter to introduce our recognition this week yeah and I I want to make sure Mr Cameron's there to cue us up but we wanted to bring some of the there he is bring some of the Playbook initiative to you um knowing how much we've spoken on it and highlighted it for you so Mr Cameron's here with I think about eight students who are also zooming in and I'm going to turn it over to him to get us started thank you can everybody hear me yes wonderful so I invite all the Playbook student leaders there's a little confusion on the time um so some of them came on at six and may have left so the ones who are still on
040I invite you to turn your cameras on you can stay muted and I believe Aaron is behind the scenes um yes I'm gonna share a link great and if Aaron if you could just advance that to the cover that'd be wonderful thank you so the left there you go thank you there's a video embedded as well um I do remember the last time I came the video audio was um not matched up very well so we'll see how this goes um so I just want to welcome um and thank the superintendent of schools the assistant super attendant um of course Andrew our director of equity inclusion um and belonging for allowing us this opportunity to really showcase uh year five of The Playbook being at the middle school um what you're seeing either on your
041screen or on the active board in the school committee room is the actual Playbook initiative parent guide so the first time in about three years we actually had an opportunity of an in-person parent meeting to really slow down this urgent and important work and make sure that our parents felt like they were engaged and part of this work um and I'm very proud to say we had about 130 parents who came to this night it was on Wednesday October 27th I believe um and we also had the opportunity for the Boston poet the Boston Poet Laureate her name is Porsha and she not only performed at the very first Boston Celtics game in honored Bill Russell and his work in the social justice Arena but she also came and performed um and did some readings
042at our parent night and also for our students because um during the day that we cancel classes and and had the playbook in action and the students are going to hear from in just a few minutes um they the students had a such a wonderful opportunity to be in front of the Boston Poet Laureate as well Aaron if you could just Advance the book all right and again there's a lag on my end so I think we're just going to test this video and let it run for about 15 seconds and see how it goes foreign I don't hear any audio and I think you should already hear audio just confirming in the room you can't hear the audio of the video either no yeah is there anything we can do mark foreign oh it's
043the it's the sharing through YouTube I guess yeah so we can go live with talking yeah let's talk with the kids we're happy to see that and I think on the video after Justin yeah that's wonderful if we want to just go through the pages really quickly sure this just shares um a brief history of the Playbook at Concord Middle School um year one was 2018 2019 um when we essentially just allowed middle school students to kind of raise their hand um and be a part of this work um it was an optional uh place um in year two which you see on the right hand page we had a community evening that you see the picture uh Down Below on the right hand side very engaged with our school committees school committee members Administration
044uh the police chief the fire chief parents community members from Boston and from Concord um then if you can advance page um you know in the covid era was a little bit more difficult you see us on Zoom with some of the Boston Celtics players engaging in this work year three is also where the student voice was predominant in an area of can we also run this workshop and this training for the adults so the pictures you see under year three of 2021 you see the bus drivers every bus driver has engaged in the Playbook and then very proudly year four which was last year was the very first year that according to the Boston Celtics and project 351 which is an organization that helps sponsor The Playbook we were the very first school to
045actually do the playbook for every single student every single Adult School line both buildings um and that was spring of last year which brings us to fall of this year um in the fall this year I have some student Playbook leaders um that I invite to really just unmute and share a little bit about let's first talk about um the student learning student leader training where we partnered with the Concord free public library and one was one of the first groups we had 85 Playbook student leaders Aaron you can actually take off the screen sharing thank you we had 85 student Playbook leaders who were the one of the first groups to be a part of the Doris Kearns Goodwin Forum that is in part of the New Concord free public library so I first
046invite the um the Playbook student leaders and I apologize I had more on about a half an hour ago but we have about five that are still here um so Emmy I'm actually gonna look to you because you're an 8th grader on and this was not your first year in Playbook and I also would like to introduce Emmy O'Donnell as the project 351 8th grade ambassador um and that's important for the school committee to know that she is concord's Ambassador uh to project 351 but Emmy can you talk a little bit about you're going to need to mute yourself um the student leader training that um we did at the Concord free public library yeah first time we've ever had at the library so we went to the library you sat down in your groups
047and at the start Mr Cameron asked us all a question I forget how you worded it what was the question again Mr Cameron it was yep the Icebreaker that we did as student leaders and we ended up doing um school-wide as well is being a leader is a choice and you had to agree disagree or be unsure with that Icebreaker yeah and I think that Icebreaker was kind of the big one of the big takeaways for me I think that's what I kind of am focusing my leadership around in CMS so I think we started out with that I'd say this room was pretty split on it but after that we kind of left that question just for you to build on and we did some a little bit of learning and then we did
048some um some real life situations where we brought broke into groups we had a seventh grade one of your 10 students we had one of them lead our groups what they we had I don't know who's in my group but she was really nice and we did um some real life situations and talked about it with our groups talked about some some solutions some ways to deal with this stuff and then at the end of the training that day we Revisited the Icebreaker question and the whole purpose of that was kind of to see how everyone's opinions changed and how everyone had grown throughout the day so that was the big thing for me great so I guess 30 more seconds anybody else any other Playbook student leader want to reflect on October 30th which
049was uh the day of our leadership training at Concord Library yeah Jack go ahead oh yeah we went through a lot of um relay scenarios and talked over the scenarios and it was kind of helpful because of the same scenarios we were using to lead the uh home bases so we kind of had to in a way previewed them so we knew what we were going to say so I found that really helpful yeah thank you Jack um before we talk about the work we did engaging all close to 700 students and about 130 or so staff on November 3rd is there any questions from the committee about the leadership training that these um that 85 Playbook student leaders received at the Concord library last year and again this year was there a difference between
050what you did for seventh grade versus eighth grade or was it the same type of training um we had different scenarios so two of the scenarios were the same and um then two of the scenarios were different so it was a little bit of different problems and but we had the same um Icebreaker question so it was cool to see um the different opinions from the different years because obviously there's new students there's sixth graders and on last year's eighth graders left but I would say mostly most of the stuff was the same the same idea right anyone else have any questions for our students I have a question I mean like when you guys are going through these scenarios and these questions do you find that you guys like all kind of come to
051consensus at the end or are people like really in disagreement about like what a leader might be or how to resolve a situation or do you guys end up sort of finding like oh there really is like kind of one good way to solve a problem I'm just curious as to like what it all looks like with all you guys chatting about it in your groups yeah so I think a couple on a couple of them people had different approaches I think there was um a couple of them we were talking about being a bystander versus being a leader in the situation and I think we all kind of came to the same agreement that um made like not being a bystander in this situation but I feel like sometimes it depends on the question
052but some people may have different opinions but once you talk it out usually towards the end everybody's on the same page about it cool thanks so from October 30th which was the day-long student learning student leader training um the very following Thursday which was November 3rd um we did what we we did in the springtime but the difference is we gathered as a school Community both buildings gathered and had an assembly for what is now I think traditionally called our Playbook day and that's where again the Boston Poet Laureate Porsche she came back and she did a couple readings for both buildings the sixth grade building first and then the seventh and eighth grade building and then the student leaders I'm going to focus on the 7th and 8th grade building for a moment the
053student leaders were actually sitting on the stage facing the student body facing the almost um 350 students that the student leaders were about to engage in for about three and a half hours in their advisory block which is called home base so on Thursday November 2nd excuse me on Thursday November 3rd we started off with about a 45 minute assembly where we named the social justice work this anti-discrimination bias prevention work as essential and urgent as our school community and then we allowed the 85 student leaders to walk into the 85 home bases and again home base is our advisory program we have 85 student leaders we have 85 home bases so is there any student that would like to speak about their experience on the Playbook day of November 3rd yeah Sam you want
054to go first and then Luca you want to go after yeah um so I feel like when we walked into the home bases on November 3rd I mean October 3rd um we November 3rd actually oh November 3rd um we had some meaningful discussions about the scenarios that we've gone over and the training and the workshop um so we first started with the Icebreaker that we did in the training and we went over the scenarios and went over kind of how was happening to the people in the scenarios and what the solutions might be as to being a bystander or a leader um and I think that overall people like uh help people pay attention and be aware of kind of what can hurt others with their assumptions and I think that it was a really
055good Workshop to do great Luca you want to expand on that you what was your experience on November 3rd when you had a home base of about 11 students um the adult was there as a guide but you completely have this home base for almost four hours yeah my home base was much smaller it was about six people I believe um but it was it was a lot of fun and there were a lot of quiet people that I kind of got to open up because of you know the scenarios and it the stuff we have to talk about is definitely hard to like you know talk about with people but you have to talk about it with someone at some point it's definitely difficult all right thank you Luca Ryan this was your second
056year as a as a Playbook student leader um do you want to share a little bit about what made this year different for you on November 3rd from the home base that you led last year as a sixth grade when you were a sixth grade Playbook student leader um yeah so it was a lot more um I feel I wasn't I was a lot more confident going to it because I had um experience already and even without knowing the home base I was going to do I felt like I had a lot more experience and wasn't as afraid or like knew what to talk about more because I had already done it right so before we share what what's next um I guess you know I just want to make sure that the entire committee
057um is familiar and understands what the student leaders did on November 3rd so for about three three and a half hours they LED discussions on religion race orientation and disability and they were scenarios written by middle school students that did not happen at Concord middle school but could easily have happened at Concord middle school or any other middle schools and they LED and facilitated conversations about a student who let's keep in the disability realm um you know were either being questioned or an awkward situation or or actually being bullied or harassed because of their disability in each scenario also had guy adding questions to it that the Playbook student leaders facilitated and guided before we share what's next are there questions of the school committee for the Playbook student leaders go ahead I have a
058question um is it is being a leader in the Playbook initiative is this something that you would do again next year and or would you encourage some of your friends to do it why is that Luca you have your hand up do you want our Jack do you want to speak yeah I feel that it was really interesting hearing different paychecks I'd definitely do it again um I learned a lot and I thought it was just an overall good experience um to me I am 100 doing it next year that was probably one of the most fun and awesome experiences I might be able to do in sixth grade um and I will definitely encourage my friends to do it next year as well that's a resounding yeah 100 percent set of positives so I
059guess before sharing what's next I'm gonna I'm gonna put Emmy uh come full circle and and with Emmy um again she is concord's Project 51 Ambassador um and I'm asking a question I actually don't know the answer to has project 351 Emmy engaged with you yet about trying to bring the Playbook to Concord Middle School uh not yet I went on the zoom for just like the orientation gym just learning about everything but I don't think I've gotten an email about that yet okay and can I just ask Emmy to just explain what project 351 is for people in the audience that might not be sure of what it is yeah so I'm not a complete expert about it but what I learned so far is that um it's um so there's it's 351 because
060there's 351 towns in Massachusetts and so one middle schooler I believe it's only an 8th grader one eighth grader from each town is selected to kind of go to um to go to this launch um orientation thing um over MLK weekend where you're going to do some acts of service and just try to create a positive environment throughout um your community but just Massachusetts and then later on I'll have smaller projects and some bigger projects like I will be leading um a uh in March and just um I think it's more around trying to be a positive leader throughout your community and just by going to this Lobster I think I'm going to learn a lot about how to help conquer and how to help CMS thank you so the intersection between project 351 and
061the Boston Celtics is the Boston Celtics actually reached out to project 351 and said you know even though we're the Celtics we need help getting into each Middle School um you know in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and because that's your structure um we're you know we being the Boston Celtics is interested in using project 51 um as kind of a platform to try to get the Playbook into each School in Massachusetts what's fascinating there and this is one of the earliest conversations I had with Emmy was that um when she's being spoken to um you know sitting in a zoom room with 350 other eighth graders across the Commonwealth you know she's going to actually be used as a model school for the Playbook initiative and soon she's going to be invited I know this
062and I've shared this with her she's going to be invited into trainings where other middle schools are looking to bring the Playbook to their school in Project 351 and the Boston suffix are looking at different ways to recognize Concord middle school and Concord public schools for their work done in the Playbook I just want to finish with kind of what's next because what's so interesting and amazing in terms of how well our 85 Playbook student leaders have engaged this year is we engage in this work so early in the school year that you know we have a good six seven months left in the school year so I met with some Playbook student leaders actually this afternoon and we did a project where we're putting together a bulletin board for both um both middle school
063buildings and we talked about bringing this work into each Elementary School and we're going to be meeting with the elementary school principals on Thursday of this week about an idea where about 10 to 12 Playbook student leaders visits each Elementary School sometime in mid to late winter um we also are looking at the Playbook student leaders to revisit the home bases that they were assigned for the Playbook um The Playbook day to lead future um bully prevention um and anti-discrimination and bias prevention lessons that I should also cite are part of the law a part of mass common law that each School delivers a curriculum that's based on Bully proofing and on harassment we've had superintendents across the state reach out to Concord Middle School including our partner School Jim or superintendent O'Shea has reached
064out to us a number of times looking to get Concord middle school students over to Carlisle Middle School um and we're looking to bring back a community night um to not only inform our parent and guardian Community but also have an evening in Concord and have an evening in Boston where we actually allow our parents and Guardians to actually go through the workshop so that our parents and Guardians can actually experience the work that our students um you know have already been through and now the student leaders will be leading in elementary schools and also in these parent and Community nights in both Boston and Concord that's it all right well thank you so much what a great presentation thank you to the students for being leaders in your buildings I mean that is so
065important and for really taking that role into the home bases and I'm sure that you have an impact on that home base where you know they're probably going to want to do it next year so keep on doing what you're doing so sounds great and Emmy I'm sure we'll see you later with project 351 work I think we saw Tyler Shepard in the spring last year right so yeah we'll see you again so thank you Mr Cameron great job thank you thanks everybody thank you guys thanks guys right uh on to the ready of the minutes so everyone should have the November 8th minutes you should have gotten that email and so I'd entertain a motion to uh accept the minutes from November 8th so moving second thank you and Aaron in case you didn't
066hear it's Carrie Renkin sorry hey it's Cynthia Rady seconded any discussion on the minutes okay all in favor aye aye aye opposed hey we're all set and Aaron I should also say for the minutes uh Domingo serosa is also with us in person and Aisha is on zoo so thank you and then on to correspondence you want to start with CPS yeah we only had one um for a piece of Correspondence at CPS it was um a question about um the mecco application process and at the region we actually didn't have any correspondence did not now so that was a quick one everyone's celebrating Thanksgiving I guess exactly um and then we did our superintendent updates for all set there so now we are on to with the regional budget so I will turn it
067over to Lori and Bob yeah I'll just cue it up while Bob's presentation is coming up so we're bringing you the fy24 uh High School Regional budget we've tried to provide you and Bob obviously is the one who's you know put this all together it's been the collective work of a lot of people um central office administrators the high school administrators and Department chairs a wide range of input we don't do these in isolation so I think our goal tonight is to give you the high level version which is what's in the slides you have the line items so that you can take those home and study electronically or on hard copy whatever um you know suits you best and let us know if you have questions I think we've captured the themes the trends
068the patterns um Bob's done that really concisely but effectively so hopefully it will give you the the big picture of where we are at so I will turn it over to Bob and this is a dialogue so we'll make it a conversation and I think he'll be open to talking with you along the way great so um Aaron's going to drive on the slides thanks Aaron um and we're starting off with um the regional budget we can advance Aaron Aaron can you go to the next slide actually I can share it too right yeah there she is I was gonna say I knew she was there uh so just process wise this is something um we actually look at this in the bud shop it's just a reminder of um kind of process we've gone
069through um and as Laurie mentioned a lot of work has been done by uh building principles uh administrators in the central office as well as department heads um haven't listed them on the slide because I ran out of room but apartment heads at both the middle school and the high school so a lot of work went into building these budgets from the bottom up um and um you know we also just highlight there the parallel Town process um where we've communicated guidelines information to the guidelines committee so right now we are in December we're doing our preliminary presentation and the open hearing at December 20th um and we know that um there's times when there's more work that happens after that and there's new information that happens so a school budget is a lot uh
070less static um than a lot of budgets we have changes in our student uh population might have other changes that happen in the district I'm going to have changes in Energy prices so there's a lot of variables this is our budget that we're building based on the information we have available to us today father women who speak to this side um where would you recommend the school committee uh make a decision about a budget to adopt to bring forward to town meeting they don't see that here are we ready to call out a timetable for that my understanding is well and my experience has been that the open hearing that's typically when we would ask for a school committee vote uh I don't know if that's been the past experience here and I think what
071what our plan was if we have any questions you can send the questions on it between time we're going to vote into December right I think that's the intention so you meet again in two weeks we're calling that as the public hearing which we must run for public you know legal processes um if you're ready to vote on the 20th we'll certainly put a placeholder in for you to do so the warrant in Concord closes January 4th so if you don't vote the 20th you will need a budget meeting on January 3rd which we have I don't know if that's motivating or not motivating but we all need a second another meeting to finish it up yeah which is why we had that placeholder for that January third meeting and it would only be budget
072if we don't vote it on the 20th yeah right on the agenda yeah next slide Aaron please uh so uh just just a contextual information I think it's just helpful to share in uh in budget presentation so um you can see the enrollment Trends um but you know it doesn't necessarily reflect there is the um is the kind of needs that we're seeing emerge in students and the intensity of needs um but you know the population has declined a little bit uh from 21 to 22. next slide Aaron this is uh additional contextual information I know the school committee saw this uh previously but these presentations will be viewed by others as well so I just wanted to include this information we saw this in the workshop but just kind of a context on our
073pupil spending relative to other districts these are kind of the districts we benchmarked with and it also has a state total there so do we know why Weston is such an outlier do they handle that exclusion differently than we do or what's going on there uh I can look into that uh there's a certain uh piece of that is their extreme wealth relative to every other District um they um you know which bucket it shows up in I don't know like in terms of which Desi function is it teaching and learning is it instructional materials um so that's something I can look at just out of curiosity yeah in a very small class sizes I did look at that um in terms of class sizes so maybe a lot of its salaries item they brought
074them dramatically yeah my recollection is it might have something to do with small class sizes that their teacher instructional uh line was the highest next slide Aaron so I'll hop in and I'm not going to go through all of these these are I think they're very familiar to you and almost more for other audiences as we share the budget going forward but it's important to note that all of these are always front and center to us and when when we're building the budget and our driving where the resources are going and the filters that we put on things so you should recognize most of these initiatives either as things that were started this past year and continuing on or um you know work that we know is coming forward in FY 24. I think one
075thing I will note just the bottom note in addition to all of the the work that we are named and purposely been moving uh what was never on the objectives was the pandemic so just a note at the bottom of that in addition to the physical safety needs we've had to prioritize there was and continues to be significant impact on each of these objectives and the urgency intensity and greater level of need been anticipated so in many cases it's forwarded these objectives at a faster Pace than we expected special ed being probably an example there um or we're having to do it in a different way than we expected because kids aren't where we thought and there's just more need in general so all that's worth noting especially as we bring you the fiscal outcome
076of of what drives all our work next slide Aaron please uh so this is the regional budget um by the Desi 1000 function this is how we typically report um throughout the year to the school committee on the 1000 level the 100 level and this is the way that the state uh Department of Ed uh tends to group The their expenses for reporting purposes so um you can see in terms of what's driving the increase um it's being driven by teaching instructional support um fixed charges which I'll talk about there's an offsetting decrease in debt service and fixed assets and intuitions is actually down on a net basis but um I'll go through each of these in more detail but it gives you a sense of the overall contribution of each area it's a 3.5
077expenditure increase which equates to a million three hundred and nine thousand uh 917 dollars versus last year the following slides will will go through each of these categories in more detail well for fiscal 23 requested is that in fact the July 1 approved budget that's the approved budget yes okay thank you foreign next slide please Erin so uh if you're looking at the the handouts you can um you can kind of cross check if you want but um so the first item we had a variance on was Administration it's um it's it's actually a decrease what's embedded in that is there's the the normal contractual increases um but there's a 74 000 decrease to a real due to a reallocation of costs from restructuring of metco program staff we had one staff member classified as
078Administration last year we also have um you know through this restructuring we actually have a full-time director now at the high school we have a counselor supported by it and we do have a tutor so we've actually netted out to have additional support um it's just not coming out of administration the general fund anymore um so Administration is um at that level of a minor increase next slide Aaron I'm sorry it was yes good memory um so teaching and instructional support uh it's a 4.6 percent increase over the budget the the gross dollars of 909 000 are the um the largest uh component of the year over year increase for the region when you break that down um a significant portion is CTA salaries which is a 4.8 percent increase versus last year there's a
0792.7 2.75 percent Cola cost of living increase that was in the contract for fy24 in addition their steps in Lanes um there weren't many retirements um be retained a lot of our teachers and one of the retirements we had was in a subject matter area that's harder to hire in it was either science or math so you know we didn't have much of a savings uh back so far I'll just add because it's December there may be more coming but we don't know and can't count on that right um so that's the uh the largest components the CTA salaries we also have increases in in non-teacher salaries 7.2 percent which is cost of living plus steps in lanes and a 2.8 FTE increase um and that's in our intensive programs um this is offset by
080a hundred thousand dollar reduction in the contingency um and that's something we looked at when we looked at our overall budget we didn't want to get to guideline um and that was one of the things that helped us get to guideline is just like it's just there if we have to hire more phases yeah yeah and the ftes for this for the teachers is steady state or I mean because I see the 2.8 increase for non-teachers but it's very close to steady state there's some minor increases in like percent like for like analytically it's yeah accumulative so it's like you go from where you have 0.75 to a full or whatever yeah question how many retirements do we have in 22. last year [Music] um I don't know last year off the top of my
081head I know this year we have four and three of them before that we know about three of them and I'm just gonna have to hold him back because some of them haven't actually been put together yet this year I want to know about last year because I would assume that we would be seeing a drop in salary drop it we took savings where we could based on those retirements for sure I don't have the number off the top of my head either I mean if that's what you're asking our adventure savings and Longevity right but to your point a lot of the retirements in both CPS and the region were taken in the budget you know planned during the build during the build of the budget they were factored in already with what was
082anticipated we can get that yeah okay uh next slide Aaron please uh other school Services um it's really the regular red Transportation pieces as many components includes fuel includes Parts um there's more significant one there is the case special ed transportation of nine percent um uh which is based on information updated information we received from case um it's driven uh their formula is driven based on student miles or number percentage of students um transported by each district so our share next year will go up nine percent um and that number I don't think will I think we're fairly confident in that number um for the region and overall so overall that's a 4.4 percent increase for other school services next slide Aaron please before you go on about this um I'm sorry I I looking
083at this when you were just talking so sorry if I dismiss it so the case special education transportation is this different from the Transportation that will eventually over the next couple years go away weren't you saying that some of the special education transportation might subsidized through circuit breaker so it's a payout and then reimburse later and there's a percentage now and it's going to continue to go up is it going all the way to 100 yeah so we'll continue to pay for for this Transportation yeah the state will the state uh started reimbursing us through circuit breaker a certain point they started including transportation and a calculation two years ago yeah and it's getting phased in I think it's over five years okay it was not for Regions only uh no it's for everybody you
084know that's part of the student Opportunity Act for everyone but wait but that hasn't taken effect yet uh well what I'm talking about here is just the expense yeah uh but the revenue part is being spaced in we're in like this next FY 24 will be year three of a year five phase in okay so when we file circuit breaker we are now including Transportation costs and we're getting a subsidy back okay eventually it will be a hundred percent subsidy okay but you're still going to pay it out right a lot like the tuitions and again just as a reminder circuit breaker you're only getting reimbursed for the amount four times above right the state for people average so after 64 000 we start to get reimbursed yeah um and I think there's um efforts
085to to change that I don't know how successful they'll be I mean but there's certainly been expressed that um it would be nice to have that threshold be a little bit lower um so maintenance and operations as you can imagine in this uh environment of you've probably seen it in your own bills Heating and electricity um we did have uh so it's actually it's for us it's actually relatively minor in the regional budget because we already had a little bit factored in or anticipated last year um I would say we had a little bit of a safety net in last year's budget so the increase is still significant 17 000 but not as large as it might otherwise might have been um building and grounds maintenance is a 26 000 increase in uh Contract Services
086and supplies that's factoring in things that we are already doing that we um are incurring expenses that um been a little bit light on that budget um the contractual increases are uh on a percentage basis not large but in terms of their contribution to the 73 000 they're they're noted there um so all in all it's a 3.6 increase which um Express is not higher yeah I was uh that was a positive I thought this was going to be a bucket that was going to be a little bit higher um it's a little bit higher in CPS which we'll talk about later but um partly because the way it was budgeted next slide please Erin so there's a lot happening in the fixed charges the fixed charges includes health insurance for our employees um and
087that's increasing by 269 000 or 18 percent there's a few contributors there the first is that we're um we're expecting a nine percent uh rate escalation in rates in FY 24. um that's our most current information um we also saw increased participation levels in coverage and in addition um there's an increased share by the district on certain plans we're aligned with the town of Concord we um we had some shifts to plans we're now offering Tufts Blue Cross Blue Shield there was some changes there's some impact in the change uh and through that the town took on a little bit more of a share and um we're in alignment with that at the region um the you know the so the there's three factors contributing to the helping uh increase uh the retiree health insurance
088increased by 26 000. uh there are some retirees who who use the um the regular health care plans if they're not a retirement age a lot of them will take the Medics uh supplement plans uh which don't have as large uh of increases um we just found out that our retirement we just received guidance on a retirement assessment uh last week it's a pretty large increase we're going to try to dive into that more we haven't been able to dig into it but we do have a number that was reported to both us and the town uh last week it's 120 000 increase we'd like to understand that a little bit more um so as we as we do we'll we'll share that but that's a large contributor to 16 increase for the region um
089the last piece is that the property and liability insurance increased by 88 000. we previously had our policy embedded in the town policy and received a kind of a share of it it's been broken out we now have a separate policy um I'm not sure if the allocation that we had in the past was um was accurate or not I do know that um the rate that we've budgeted uh for next year we're actually paying uh it's based on what we're paying uh what we paid in fy22 um so we're reflecting a change that's already happened um in our FY 24 budget so FY 22 this change has already occurred um did that come out of the town or am I a it's funded Maya is the insurer um no I mean the the uncoupling
090of region from town where where did that originate do we know I'm I I think it was a I thought it was a mutual decision was my understanding uh so it was an elective yeah okay I do think it's it's beneficial for us to have our own um our own policy most regions I now do have their own insurance um yeah I was just curious that we were combined with the town not that I was opposed to it yeah I mean it's always worked for us over the years yeah yeah I don't have a position on it just curious it was changed . so can you remember that that it's already been reflected or like there's already so the cost that I budgeted this when we look at um actually if you see it then
091it's probably on the line on a budget yeah you look at fy22 we already paid uh we you know we had budgeted 40 something we're already paying a hundred thousand twenty three at quite uh 22 I think it occurred you mean you're talking about the jump that we're seeing now as opposed to yeah the jump just hasn't been budgeted so now we're budget we've always paid it but it happened no no not oh it's just recently just start starting I think it was fy22 books in 22 was like 60 000 or something like that you can get the history but we're happy to get it and then there's the jump that happens yeah yeah I can't tell you for sure that it's done whether it's 22 or 23 I can double check um and so
092we're carrying over the policy uh into the next year um a side note one of the nice things about having your Assurance is that Maya does offer grants so we're able to get risk management grants through them we did get some a couple of this year some minor ones to do some risk management opportunities for our maintenance group so it's kind of a nice benefit that goes with it we're trying to get on that list and off of the one where they send fire warning signs to other districts about fire safety and fish you know it's a fish uh heaters on the fish tank so I got that warning notice there is there are reasons our costs have gone up because we've had claims last year too fire yeah yeah nice tend to happen so
093and I do think you know Maya's a good partner for for the district um they've done risk management assessments for a lot of districts um so um we'll certainly take advice and guidance from them and look to have best practices in place so a lot of this the 496 um in total for fixed charges it's a it's a big budget driver um and not much is education you know these are all things that are happening outside the classroom you expect that to change next year in the coming years or it will continue to what do you expect I mean I hope I would hope at worst it normalizes and maybe there's some opportunities if we have better experience for us to see if their savings you don't usually get savings offered um readily by insurance
094companies but and we can certainly talk to them look at things that might help um so I mean I'm hopeful that at worst it's it's going to be level I mean knock on wood we need to be responsible um and make sure we don't have you know more claims but yeah and on the employee health insurance there's a major plan change last spring because Fallon and it wasn't available and we had to transition a whole bunch of people to other plans I think Blue Cross coming on was appealing to a lot of people so we picked up some folks that enrolled that hadn't been plus the town has gone up to 70 on some of the plans um to compensate and be supportive of the process I think those are one-time factors that are now
095going to be normalized and you won't see that same increase most likely uh next slide please Erin so um out of district tuitions is actually down 55 000. you've got to explain that yes so um but yeah to understand that you can't really look at the total um there are the actual costs we're paying and then there's offsets um so the the gross tuition costs are um increasing 669 000 or 22 percent that's driven primarily by the private school increase of 14 for tuition rates it's also reflecting the fact that we have four CPS students transitioning from grade eight to grade nine that are out of district and four from Carlisle that were out of district and grade 8 that are moving up and becoming the Region's financial responsibility in grade nine that's eight that's
096netted off with some graduating students um so that's what brings it from the 14 increase up to 22 percent um the good news is that um when you have additional um out of District costs there are offsets um from circuit breaker and Ida and we had a significant increase some of these cost increases um well again we talked about Transportation being factored into circuit breaker that's one driver um so the circuit breaker increase and Ida increase in total um or 706 thousand dollar increase most of that is circuit breaker um and um we do have to use a hundred thousand dollars in current year circuit breaker funds we usually try to carry over a full prior year amount into the current year we'll have to dig into it a hundred thousand but just for a
097sense of context our our circuit breaker million uh revenue is going to be 1.2 million and change um so using 100 000 seems to be uh certainly prudent um and reasonable voice asks about this so then we carry the 1.1 that's wait so if we yes if we were in 1.2 but we eat up 100 like we can we can carry over okay that will be the plan yeah um so that's uh next slide please yep kind of contradict like we should be okay we should be in good yeah that's still a very healthy circuit breaker balance we've had I I've had years here we've had zero in the region and obviously we're not even close to that so it's a balanced approach to a pretty substantial need this year obviously so I think we're
098feeling comfortable with it can we uh parched a little bit the the word guidance uh on the 14 is that guidance to uh private entities is that a ceiling is that I use only use guidance because I said it was from OSD OSD is supposed to provide guidance but I asked and was told that basically their guidance is followed like so they might not be the I don't know if they are the entity that sets the rates but they're required to provide guidance on what the rate increase will be I asked the OSD uh contact and they said no this is what your rates will be okay so it'll be a 14 rate increase and that's been communicated by other people at Desi as well um and does that uh get accompanied by any expectations
099from the private schools or is it simply to meet their escalating costs and their their services to us remain unchanged there's there's uh two components to it there is a um I might have the exact numbers but um I think it was about a six percent was inflationary uh based on um they follow some metrics and it was inflation based and there was an 8.8 percent piece that was called a Workforce stability Factor um we'd all like eight percent to be um but I do think the reason that I mean they didn't say they didn't they didn't communicate it too well but I do think that the workforce stability factor is uh reflective of their difficulty of being able to hire people right uh for what are probably the most needy students who can't be
100serviced in schools have to go to uh on District placements what we would hope for is that the state maybe we'll see that districts are impacted and there'd be some supplemental funding offered and Communications I think we've I don't know if we've shared it here already but us an email went out from um the four of us to the state um asking for really just a template from the Superintendent's Association and all sorts of other school districts sent the same thing no we haven't heard anything um I know they have varying needs but you know there is certainly so that's important 14 is not a ceiling that uh people might not hit it's an expectation it's got to bury it into our budget yeah thank you thank you um so the salary non-solary breakout just
101when you step back and you you know we looked at it by Desi category I think it's also helpful to look at its salary non-salary so this is the budget in total uh in total it's a 3.8 increase on the salary accounts in 3.2 on the non-salary and on the next slides I'll I'll kind of jump into um the key drivers there next slide please Erin and so you know these are things we've seen But just to to look at it in the non-salary bucket that the main drivers here the health insurance have combined the active and the retirees uh there together the retirement assessment um from the Concord Retirement Board uh property liability insurance and then the case special ed Transportation there are other uh you know increases in uh decreases as well these
102are the key drivers I I wanted to highlight the debt services to decrease the transportation vehicle replacement we have leases ending and we've also factored in two new leases so you know we are continuing to invest in transportation but there was a bit of a bubble a few years back where multiple vehicles are coming off um and then the out of District tuition increase we just talked about um so those are kind of the key drivers on the non-salary side I know it's short money but this is my opportunity to ask the 95k are we continuing to Electrify uh those are factoring costs of uh diesel vehicles diesel vehicles yeah electric would be an additional 180 000 per bus you know I'm going to have a hard time supporting more diesel thank you I understand
103I think there's a there's a potentially a an additional discussion that would have to happen somewhere else I don't know where about how to fund that I personally from what I look at um would have I don't think that we have the capacity in our capital or operating budget to pay for electric vehicles unless we come up with uh either more capital or there's some uh mechanism we've looked at uh vehicle the grid charging um that Brian folds has talked about that but it's it's a little bit theoretical now um you know if there's some other mechanism to fund it that would be the way to do it or we'd have to ask for more funding and um that's where we are now that doesn't mean that's we're going to be forever in the age
104of the fleet to me is a factor I don't think there's time to hold off right now John actually asked for twice as many buses as you're getting in these two budgets because his concern of the the age of the fleet so I don't know maybe in a couple years when we get to a fleet that's newer overall you'll have window to wait and see if there's a way to get the funding secured but at the moment we're just trying to be operational and fiscally realistic so yeah and with time we buy five buses in 2015. didn't we buy five pluses in 2015 coming up to the cliff rather than isn't 10 years um well we have four buses on their way this spring you know what I'm saying but we're we're heading to having
105to replace a whole bunch of buses potentially well we've tried to balance you're correct there's five that came on all at the same time when the high school start time happened part of the cycle we are trying to build which we've done in a couple of spots is that the incoming two or so per year per District keeps the fleet new enough that we can be operational knowing so that's probably part of John's ask because you can see those aging up but we feel like we've got enough of a handle on it that we can stay operational without asking for additional costs here so rather we brought you savings because one of the leases was rolling off so um yes I mean are funny this is reflects the two for ccrsd uh Cynthia so you
106know we are funding it out of both districts um so two from each that's four a year um next slide please and so we talked a little bit about this before but the CCTA salaries uh when I reflected it on the um the instructional cost drivers slide it reflected just items coded to teaching and learning the nurses are in the 3000 Series so I just wanted to just provide a district-wide uh view of CCTA salaries um you can see the a good chunk of that is uh contractual and then steps in Lane advancements with limited retirements uh the non-teacher salaries is um is a 3.6 increase with contractual increases and additional uh tutor um we reduce the contingency by a hundred thousand as I had mentioned that's rolls into the salary lines it's really intended
107to reflect contingency for additional staff and then the sick retirement program payouts are reduced by 37 000 those are those payments are winding down um I don't know there's and they'll continue to dwindle down um those programs are not being offered and so those payouts will continue to reduce until they're zero but approved increased salaries for substitute teachers um and I know we really utilized a lot of substitute teachers in the last quarter of last year how are we tracking like I noticed it was level funded right at 70 000 um I think also for next year is I mean is that I know I mean the hope is you're helping us retain the ones we have I think that part mattered yeah recruiting still really challenging um but at least we're in the upper
108end of the market now so that we're more likely to be appealing kind of like the bus driver answer I think yeah I do think we retained some of what we had because these folks can actually we all share the same technology and they can just put multiple districts in their portal and hop literally you know ubiquitously so we we are now competitive for sure so okay I do think it's helped to maintain yeah yeah and we can monitor it I don't we don't anticipate it's a concern for us next year um is that like like something they asked that's like daily weekly like it depends how they want to they get to structure their own time so they might go in and book themselves some of them like to plan ahead and book themselves
109way ahead if they know some are on there at 5am grabbing jobs yeah there's a lot less of that you know in the days I subbed you were getting phone calls at five o'clock in the morning like that the morning of is the hardest to fill because people have so many choices yeah okay yeah so it's still a challenge still definitely chill hmm okay um next slide please so uh I know uh this is something that um I think was asked about I wanted to provide a start with the high level update and I can always provide more information at a future meeting if um that this um isn't as detailed but these are just kind of a summary of the Esser grants that we've had over the past few years a couple years and
110um I'm really focusing on what's left um and that's the sr3 grant um we do have money left in s or two and our American Rescue plan Ida which is for special ed um we are using some of that for supplies and materials that um um in the special ed area we anticipate well the deadline for the ARP Ida and the sr3 you can see is 9 30 2023 so we really are targeting spending those down this year you know if need be we could we could stretch some into next fiscal year but um our goal is to utilize that money in fy23 and sr3 um the region that uh significant smaller than ccs and um students and families there's lots of equivalents and a low-income population uh so um at the end of 24
111that's Rapunzel before we spent down the deadline is 9 30 20 24. if we do have um some opportunity to maybe spent to defer someone to 25 we'll try but the purposes we have we anticipate spending in the region um through FY 24. the next slide shows um what the uses are of sr3 uh next slide please Erin so this is what we had in our grant and this is how we will spend the funds um the bulk of it's dedicated to a specialist teacher reading specialist a language-based program and language question intensive programs yes it's an intensive special ed language based program um and so I mean really the only thing there I'd say that would be something we consider spending in 25 if we were able to would be some of the summer
112school costs the reading specialist is the school year position um and obviously we're gonna have to absorb that yes my goal would be to wean into it and do a portion of it but One Way Or Another We're gonna have to absorb that it's one position so it's not a huge clip next slide please uh okay so um what we've just finished so far is um is the expense budget and the grants um obviously the towns are interested in how this translates to an assessment um so you know in order to arrive in assessment we first look at our revenues as one of the offsets um these are the changes that I made to the revenue assumptions um I did in the it's a it's a kind of an eye chart so I didn't feel
113like trying to squeeze it into a slide but in the agenda there's a link to the full assessment model if you want to see it um but the changes we made were an increase to chapter 78 um 16 000 which is relatively small there's a possibility that we'll get more funding because of the student Opportunity Act but we've budgeted based on what we're receiving um what we received in FY uh 23. I will receive in 23 excuse me uh chapter 71 Aid has been adjusted to reflect um the most recent chapters of anyone Aid we received which was higher than we budgeted so that's a substantial increase of 19. um and interest rates have gone up um significantly from uh barely above zero to um still low but a little bit better uh so we
114have a sixty thousand dollar increase there uh 215 000 overall uh those revenues are based on uh trends um we've held access and deficiency level at three hundred thousand um and so that's what we've done kind of uh from a revenue standpoint so those revenues will offset to an extent the um the expenditure increase next slide please Erin and so uh this um is uh kind of a summary of the assessment model um and again this uh the the more detailed version you've seen in the past is um in the agenda as a separate link um but again a bit of an eye chart for PowerPoint so we start with our total expenditure budget when we deduct our revenues um in our utilization of e and D we arrive at an assessment amount to the
115towns of 33 million 341 830. um you can see the breakout for Concord and Carlisle 25 246. uh 25 426 480 for Concord 7 million 915 350 for Carlisle there's a comparison to 23 a difference the percent increase for Concord is 1.86 percent for Carlisle it's 8.66 um another important uh thing I wanted to highlight was the um the assessments based on the percentage of students for each uh Town their relative share of students um at the high school that percentage has shifted a bit from uh 77 and change to Concord down to 76 and um in the opposite direction it increased at Carlisle that's what's causing uh the 1.86 percent at Concord in the 8.66 that Carlisle the shift in percentages of students between the two towns and um a relatively small shift might
116seem like a small shift of a little bit more than one percent uh has a pretty big impact because it's on the total dollars of the whole budget the only thing I'll say is we've been better at forecasting it so it's not a surprise it's still a little sticker shock I admit myself yesterday no but they're not easy either right so yeah we met with Carlisle fincon yeah we just got a date with them for January 12th and I just sent it to Melissa with these slides yeah so I don't know if they've seen these exact numbers but they heard the shift in student Trend and that it will have an impact so I think they're expecting it I don't know if they know uh you know from our other meeting I think they're expecting
117yeah I think I got the packet after they've met so um next slide please and so this is um also the slide that we've um traditionally shown I think that um well it shows the increase if you don't factor in debt um and if you do factor in debt so if you don't factor in The Debt Service decreasing we have Debt Service that's been set up to decrease that'll be a 2.7 increase if you factor in the decreased Debt Service it's a 1.86 percent increase um well ultimately the taxpayer impact is the 1.86 percent and the 8.66 in Carlisle and I've reflected the debt there just so you can see it separately it hasn't been reported uh shown elsewhere in the slides um and again the full full set of data for the assessment calculation
118is in a separate attachment that you all have um I think that I don't know Aaron next slide please one more um so this is a projection um it needs to be certified by the department Mass Department of Revenue um so and there's Sometimes some minor offsets based on cash timing issues um but we ended last year at 1 million 671.90 um our revenues were favorable the budget of 298 102. that's why I was able to to budget um more Revenue um in the regional budget um expenditures were just under budget that was the balance we had left in our budget last year we spent uh nearly all of it and then we need to deduct the planned usage of v d which we had baked into our budget and that would get us to
119a projected uh balance really just almost level to last year uh 4.6 percent of our operating budget there's a cap of five percent that we're allowed to have so there's a little bit of room for us to increase that if we were able to but not much we're pretty close to to the cap which is I'd say a healthy position to be in foreign it's probably a very simple thing I'm just not seeing here fiscal 23 expenditure is less than budget 22 I should say thank you yeah okay and then the previous line should read 21. no 22 also 22.3 fiscal 22. correct I believe uh next slide I think it just says questions yeah so um hopefully I've answered some of your questions as we've gone through but wanted to see if you had
120any other questions that I hadn't dressed or if there's other information that you had or so just for clarity this does get to conquer its guideline um we were so we were able to do it um without touching instruction you can see we had to be more flexible this year than maybe other years but um I think that's good news Congress guideline is 2.4 and we don't know carlisles no correct we don't a lot of work thank you yeah thank you and if you have any other if obviously if you have any questions right now we can go through those now but we're also keeping track of any questions that came up throughout the session tonight and if you have other questions we'll send them to you by Tuesday and that way we can try
121and get any additional things that might need a little bit more research done before the 20th if members of the public have comments how do they reach us on this I suppose on anything yeah oh yeah they could just send an email to the the uh through the form on our website so yeah go to the home page okay and there are two links yeah we all receive it so if you have any comments the region receives it's all seven of us plus Dr Hunter and Domingos Naisha Domingos receives the region and Aisha receives CPS thank you so thank you thanks for that Bob sure question about the reading specialist because with the reading specialist That's covered through the um through the grant but in the in line item there was a reduction of 0.5
122for reading specialists so we have it funded in the Grant and we have it half funded in general funds so we've tried yeah we had um that's good news so so we have a little bit of a supplanting there which you're allowed to do you're not normally allowed to do in Grants but you are with faster so that's half of that positions cost it gives us a little bit of a safety net um the general fund um but um see that that's something you net out before but that's yeah that was the goal was to be able to you know sometimes the whole thing is there and then yeah and then you show the offset later yeah right right so right accounting okay so this softens not that we're reducing the half of a no
123okay I just this is yeah no it's fiscal fiscal management only yeah correct thanks for the support and general fund budget it also softens the impact of fy25. I couldn't remember if we held it I don't don't lose a lot of changes last week because we tried to get this close for you in terms of main office are you expecting that we return to principal to assistant principles oh that's certainly my expectation yes so there's no changes there I was asking if for fiscal 24 we're assuming a return to principal and two assistant principles yeah yep thank you Chris okay anything else before we close the region meeting oh wow I know I really haven't studied it we just got it yeah no I know and so and that was intentional um just to give
124us the amount of time to get everything in front of you that that was the most complete it could possibly be so now just let it marinate for a week and send us your questions the general question I mean sort of something we talked about over on Carlisle is about the the cyclical nature of things like textbooks and software licenses and stuff like that and and a software or something that we've talked about but I mean what are you seeing is it I mean are you seeing the basically like I mean yeah there's a cyclical nature on it but maybe textbooks overall are reducing in cost and the software is increasing maybe Kristen can answer that because you've spent a lot of time close to both of those times uh three General Trends the first
125trend is that textbooks are turning into software so most textbooks are no longer you know what we carried home a couple decades ago they are actually just online um and so the cost of those is a recurring cost meaning we don't just buy a 200 and yes that's what they cost math textbook we actually pay every year to a license right so that's how all of our major curricula work now in math and social studies science and so forth It's the Way of the World um and so the second trend is that during covid some of those were offered to us for free um and so people got very interested in them teachers as we were trying to provide education online um and since then the prices have basically been jacked up over the last
126um problems here um so much so that actually the Wall Street Journal just did a big article about it the percentage increase one of the products that we had used we don't use it anymore I ready what the cost went up 300 percent so we don't use that anymore um it was already expensive um so um we are trying to pair back what we're doing in terms of software to the The Bare Essentials of what we need for our curriculum and no longer need to deliver content virtually for kids at home we were talking about somebody was surprised oh wow it's a forty thousand dollar savings this year and like not curriculum and then it's like no it's not really because in three years we're gonna have to pay it again yeah and so we
127are talking about Carla like how can we look at things sort of more globally so that we make sure that we we don't get excited about short-term savings and forget about the long-term implications so that's yeah so um that three-year cycle is a big deal and we've tried to offset them from each other so we'll do that in one year science and another year World Language is very expensive in another year and so on um so uh just one thing so if our questions microphone so there are questions I assume you're writing region will come to me so if you've read your question send them to me and we're gonna do CPS next and send those to Alexa right I'll look at whether I think it's something I should like just put in a memo
128or something or an email or if it's something that's broad enough that applies to the presentation um assuming that if the open hearing basically go through the same presentation with the public here but if there's something that's been uh highlighted that I think might help I might just add it okay that'd be helpful thank you thank you thank you guys thank you so at this point um I would like to join the region so thank you to Sarah and Sharon and hope you guys are done all right Mark do you want to unmute us no we'll just says talk to us all right guys yeah foreign all right so we're gonna go right into our budget discussion with Bob again taking us through the recommended budget I think we can the first like four or
129five slides of duplicative right yeah we can kind of Cruise I'm sorry we're skipping the Middle School update I thought that was next I'm sorry no it's not but you could oh sorry about that I don't know it doesn't matter to me thank you I missed it I don't like the flipping of the page I don't even know where my agenda is Let's Be On It where'd it go so um thanks Gary um there really isn't an update in so far as um you know coming from court or I the building committee has not met since um we last met which was the 22nd of November um we the building committee meets again next Thursday on the 15th which is when um we will commence the work on creating an ALT deduct list however we
130all discussed last week or two weeks ago I guess now the idea of the potential of floating a capital article um that might address some of the things that come from that November sorry December 15th upcoming meeting so my thought is if you know let's say and then and there's so many moving parts and there's so much that's to be determined which is what makes this discussion tonight kind of tricky if we see collectively that a bunch of what gets all added to that alt deduct list really becomes things that don't actually get cut per se but don't get sort of eliminated from the scope of the project but are really deferments of costs I think it could be a responsible discussion for us to have if we see those things that get you know
131let's say their items one two three four whatever um do we take the the aggregate of those what what I would see is deferments rather than scope Productions and bundle together a capital article um so before the building committee meets we can't really have the discussion because as well a week from Thursday so the 15th um Capital draft Capital articles are due on the 16th but I think you had yeah I was in touch with the townhouse um Chris Carmody and Kerry they're that's that's flexible uh the January 4th dates the real bottom line deadline So to that point perhaps it would be appropriate for you and the chair to have a discussion is how we would fund such an article because it would not be within the levy I don't believe I think it
132would have to be a borrowing above the levy limit prop two and a half so but that would be important because that would be a vote so there's a lot of logistics around that um and I don't want us to have to have another election if we can avoid it so maybe you could talk to the moderator and town manager um and then uh you know one of the reasons they said to have it in by the 16 that have legal review so I just want to be sure we have yeah we don't yeah there's subsequent legal reviews there's a whole time yeah professionals have that I don't think everybody has that um happened later in the winter after the warrant closes but it's oh a good idea to start getting more information for sure
133yeah um I just my feeling is I wouldn't want us to put together something that didn't make any sense you know so if we were you know then it's just the order of operations here doesn't work out in our favor based on when that Middle School building meeting is um I wouldn't want to take a stab at a number I would want it to be meaningful and if we do it at all I would want it to be something that is Meaningful and purposeful and you know make sense and dovetails with that list um if we do have such an article though I think we do have to plan to meet on the 3rd of January we similarly too we had I think Laurie had talked to Chris Carmody about um that would be something
134that I we would be able to discuss on the 20th we have a meeting here on the 20th um you know so I'm I'm hoping that this discussion and the discussion on the 22nd um sort of serve as our no sorry the 22nd that we had in November so we've had sort of two like kind of preliminaries that we'd be able to maybe take a vote on something if we had a number on the 20th well I have some strong reservations about it and but I don't know what the content is yet so you know what I'm saying so uh I don't think I could vote without having to okay so then maybe we would have something again on the third so yeah we've got a placeholdered any place held anyway so good we are
135going to be meeting Thursday morning with tomorrow being a deadline for Alexa and for me and for Lori to submit to the chairs of the building committee uh any alternate deducts that we would recommend be considered were it necessary in order to live with a 110 million dollar total cap for the project so if you have ideas share them with with the three of us do you have a ballpark as to what you're aiming for in terms of a total number well we don't know if the bids are going to come in in excess of 110 and if so by how much right um the the rapid uh uh cost increases are now abating a little bit um some contractors are now eager to fill up their fiscal 24 calendar of work so we might
136see see the the fear fact after reducing a little bit about the the cost increases that we've been experiencing so far cost increases that have been hitting construction more than other segments of the economy what we want to do is uh speaking for myself Alexa you weigh in as you wish we want to come up with ideas for cost management if it's necessary so that we can go ahead with the project with the 110 that we have quote unquote in hand if the new seven million dollars gets added to the current 102 engine that's the Assumption with this discussion it's the Assumption with this with the uh exactly and further we want to see that any changes wouldn't throw the construction schedule off because if it throws the construction scheduled off it throws other things
137off and then the the savings that we might realize the cost management that we might realize get lost in the delay so it's a lot of moving Parts but if other school committee members have sentiments that they want us to bring forward please please do so so are you submitting what you think should be on the also that looks like individually individually I love that and the two chairs the building committee are going to put together that list in its entirety and uh then we're just going to have at it I guess well and I think the first preliminary step is that the professionals would that's what I was going to say for that's why they're due tomorrow so there's a week's worth of vetting by the professionals that they're viable and doable at almost
13890 percent well they can they can weigh in but they're not the decision makers well no but their professional opinions are really important there's a lot of professionals on the committee as well can I can I ask a question where did where did bleachers end up like I went to that last meeting and honestly I still don't know where like the bleachers in that gym ended up so because um any building committee with good sense pursues only one kind of strategy in the scenario we are in you either create um you either go to a town meeting vote with um with a plan to uh ad Alternate which means the strategy would be to bring forth uh as much scope reduction as possible with the caveat that if it came if a bid or estimate
139came in under budget there would be things that would be added in succession that's one kind of strategy yeah we decided and that for the Professionals in the room said that's a less um advisable strategy because it's more challenging for the general contractors to kind of make sense of that so then there's an alternative strategy which is to present to the estimators into the general contractors the the full scope or not the full scope but the but the current scope and then the idea behind that would be then if you were over budget you pursue a strategy of deducting things systematically in in a in a prescribed agreed upon voted upon order so that's so that the project doesn't come to all right so where did the bleachers end up so the bleachers ended up
140being in this in the project that will be estimated so essentially but but they become number one and then there was a wood look um element so the bleachers and the wood look um finishes in um some of the hallways become essentially deduct alternate one and deduct alternate two by default and then what we will pursue on the 15th are how do we fill in the rest of the list three four five how many things you put on it or is there as as much as we can agree upon because that's what keeps you I think safest you know within reason and we are bound by that list soon okay so because I'm in the order in which yes it's very prescribed as bleachers and the wood are for sure the number is one one
141and two yes because we had already agreed to scope agreed to reduce them in the scope but then because we were pursuing this so two things happened but because we were pursuing this plan one and two as Court mentioned prices and whatnot the economy is stabilizing enough that um you know I think that people are a little bit more cautiously optimistic about this next round of estimating um so I think those two things happening at once were the impetus for you know ensuring that they're there any one percent oh gosh it's like the January okay yeah it's very close so um and again and again make no mistake this the idea of doing even our own article is like the backup plan for the backup plan um you know and and you know who knows
142I mean with the economy stabilizing let's hope it's not even something we'd ever have to entertain and that would never even see the light of day and are you gonna bring those lists that eventually the building committee votes on are you going to bring them back to us oh yeah I mean I would think that we would get them to you that day yeah yeah and then we'll have a discussion yeah okay yeah yeah and by another town yeah yeah we won't we won't get to weigh in on them but they'll help inform our decision if we choose to advance an article for okay why did we pick bleacher and woodlook ceiling uh one would look ceiling because aesthetically although very very very nice it wouldn't have a direct impact on construction and bleachers because
143in the estimation of the building committee that could be perhaps of our possible choices most suitable for Community fundraising so if I could just State my opinion here on that one because I feel really uncomfortable with the community fundraising aspect of that I feel strongly that schools need bleachers and a gymnasium not just for sports but for academic purposes for assemblies for everything else and if there's any way uh that that if my opinion matters to you two of the building committee or all of that I mean I I feel really strongly about this bleachers and and I do think that this community doesn't have an appetite for as much fundraising as maybe had happened in the past although I hear you what I'm not hearing is what you would put on the list in
144lieu of that in order to save the project if we had to live with 100 right I mean if you have to live with it okay you gotta save it but I do think it is going to be a deferred cost oh yeah well I think the committee agrees with you by saying there would have to be alternate forms of funding for that we wanted to move ahead with 100 in from a process standpoint how does how do you write a hypothetical warrant well you don't which is why we like which is why we can't really have it to do it tonight but not tonight like we won't even know until even January 13th right or you know we'll know we'll know on the 15th after that meeting the one is on the list what's
145on the alternate to ductless so the with a price attached to it and again those costs are you know only as good as the most recent estimate of course um so we would be able to examine that list collectively and say okay you know what are likely to be essentially deferred costs rather than true scope production so would it essentially say in the event that oh yeah no you're gonna put a warrant out of this forward that you can always not notice yes you can put in a number that you can lower so you'll have options but if you missed the January 4th Stone right if you missed that January 4th piece then you have no option so that's why we're if the order of operations just really stinks for us it's not the right
146you can always withdraw yeah oh yeah and I have yeah I mean if I would love to never have to go up there and at that that would be true everyone no since this one it wasn't on the agenda so but I think let's you know we'll do we'll have this discussion on the 20th right yeah yeah and then that's helpful all right good luck on the 50 50. we're ready right corn it'll be a quick meeting oh yeah eat some candy for them I assure you I'm eating chocolate all right now we get to the main event you ready over to you Bob so I'm going to project this time okay okay so are you ready ready okay um so we're going to walk through the uh the CPS budget um it's similar in
147format to uh how we looked at the regional budget um it's just an expenditure budget we don't have the assessments here um so I'm just going to Dive Right In everybody's seen the first three slides I'm gonna skip those that's okay yeah perfect foreign so this is a top level view of of the district your over your changes um let's see uh again at the Desi 1000 function level that uh significant portion of the increase comes from teaching and instructional support where we do want our dollars to go we also have an increase in other school Services we'll talk about that and we have a decrease in fixed charges I'll walk through that in the out of District tuitions it looks a little distorted I'll explain that too because it has the the gross charges
148that have offsets um so the the Baseline number makes it look a little bit off but again I'll walk through each of these items but just at a high level the big contributors are the teaching and instructional support the other school services in the out-of-district tuitions with an offset in the fixed charges so the teaching instructional support is a 1.6 million dollar increase that's 4.8 percent over last year's budget um so looking at lines that are not the CTA uh first um 319 000 of that is for support staff uh it's a 5.6 FTE increase for special ed tutors and assistants to meet student needs that also includes the contractual increases those are in our intensive programs where those additions are and those were things that have occurred during this year it was an effort
149to kind of tighten or kind of hold the budget but we found that the needs have kind of expanded beyond what we were anticipating and um these changes these additions needed needed to occur to support our students supplies and materials increase 78 that's somewhat reflective of the inflation in that area we talked about that earlier but 5.8 percent I guess you know kind of in relative to other districts I feel like we weren't as impacted as some um contract service has a decrease of 82 000 um and that is a shift between having an outsourced uh physical therapist um versus a um an in-house uh physical therapist um so the contract Services line looks like it's down 82 000 but we have an offset in salaries the CTA piece is the biggest piece of the
1501.6 million it's a mill it's 1 million 345 000 or 5.5 percent and uh this slide uh next slide kind of walks through what that increase is so out of the 5.5 half of it is from a cost of living increase 2.75 um there's also steps and Lanes factored in there's three additional positions a bcba um a physical therapist which had been previously we talked about the contracted Services piece this is the offset to that the salary offset and then next year we have a special education teacher that we're going to be adding at Sanborn we have a a cohort of students at the sixth grade that's moving up to the Sanborn building we don't have a program there to support these students if we're in a single building in this position could probably be
151not one that we would have had to add um the longevity scale in our CTA contract there's there was disparity between CTA and CCTA um the fy24 um in fy24 there was um that's when some alignment to bring them into parity is occurring that's baked into our current CTA contract so the impact of that is 72 000 72 000 increase um there are retirements factored in however some were previously factored into the FY 24 budget in anticipation of retirement but not realized so some of the retirements that we have factored in here the savings were already taken um and then we have forty thousand dollar contingency budget which is an increase of 28 versus last year um it I think in a zero-based budget is helpful to have some contingency um and so forty thousand
152I think is is modest but we you know an effort was made to increase it from the twelve thousand we had from last year foreign sure um uh let's see uh not right now obviously but how many people entered longevity in CPS this year well sorry can you ask the question again how many teachers entered into longevity and then um how many retirements I say I I know you said was factored in um actually retired in at the end of last year and then one more question exceeding my limit um and then are we factoring in retirements for apply 24 yes I can tell you the last one I know we are um several uh but what we know please don't say what that is yeah and I can't say anything since we factored it
153in last I think we should be transparent but we're I'm not saying who but I'm just saying a number I don't yeah yeah a number um what was assumed last year and what's being assumed this year yeah yeah is it sort of steady like you know three three kind of a thing is it what was your second question I just I missed it I'm just trying to um enter longevity how many people retired oh last year okay how many last year yeah I think ballpark it's three to four this time of year both years um and then the actuals like right yeah I don't know we sometimes you can't be you know you there's unanticipated this year we really didn't take any unless we had a name fairly associated with it last year we were
154less I'm kind of asking how risk-averse and that proved and then you can't be on the money but you know are we exceeding every year or are we close to you know in our assumptions yeah you know yeah we can we can look at that we were less less retired than me uh forecast and they didn't and they didn't all retire where we forecasted it we did have some ones we didn't expect that May and June but they weren't where we predicted it so that's why you're seeing some of the swings yep thank you on the longevity I can tell you most of that impact is is from the the actual longevity amounts in the contract oh yes not from the entering yeah okay yes and then some of them might move you said entered
155but some of them might move from one oh each group to another so that's also happening I know okay they move up this yeah um and three new positions um because our needs are going up even though the numbers are going down a little bit overall um is there any sense of a priority order to these three new positions from your perspective uh we need them all the BC ba and physical therapists are actually some we've had to juggle this year so they're not really right debatable the uh special education teacher for seventh and eighth grade next year's really the only one that we haven't had to address this current school year and it's because of the cohort and the two buildings and do you anticipate this is part of a build out that will
156continue or do you well you know I would say we we keep thinking we've built out and then the kids keep coming so we're in that you know Perfect Storm of how how wide can we build out before we're at capacity and I think Debbie's certainly having those discussions with us and the principals right now almost daily honestly because kids needs are really critically in front of us daily at this point so we're trying to find that sweet spot um and are we looking at what we're doing in regular classrooms that relate to what we can't do in regular classrooms oh 100 absolutely Services no question these are very Acute Kids that we are working with everyone involved regular classroom teachers support and staff special Educators these specialized Services it's a full team effort for
157sure and the PT is not really an ad it's just it's a salary that used to be in contract we used to contrary so it's a reality right I was like really two ft's we're gonna have a little bit more yeah and the rates you pay for a contractor in the service you get relative to and staff is you get more for it you don't agree all right thank you foreign in other school Services we're up 9.4 percent um this is a I believe the nurse was also in Contract Services last year I'm not sure exactly um when the switch happened but I know that uh the nurse's salary now um it's for a one-to-one nurse support we've saved some money by Hiring Our Own yes is this Elementary or middle you probably can't say
158on that because it's one specific sorry if it's a one-on-one nurse sorry no I'm just saying is the student maybe going to move out oh okay out of CPS versus yes not any time yet sorry okay that's all I wanted yeah is it an 8th grader no I think especially the one yeah yeah not very many um okay and then we have a bus driver salary increase there's um that's seven percent that's also reflective that's kind of built up from Bottoms Up from looking at the number of routes we have the number of miles we have I think there's an additional uh route factored in there that when we looked at uh kind of building the route models uh most of that's contractual increases we have um a helping increase there um I guess you
159know given the um challenges in finding drivers this isn't really a surprise and we're still having challenges uh with this but something we'll continue to work on case transportation is up eight percent and that's really our allocated cost from case we'll continue to talk to them and try to get updated guidance as we go um and see if there's any opportunity there um diesel fuel for the bus fleets reflecting um it's about a 39 increase uh reflects the significant increase excuse me but a little bit of a drop from current rates we're seeing um a little bit of a moderation of gasoline prices that hasn't hit diesel yet right so um but it's still a big increase uh it's not uh could be 2000 it's not small and thirty seven thousand uh is based on
160we are seeing um you know with a little bit of an older Fleet some more maintenance is also um it's difficult to get parts um in this industry right now and it's kind of at a premium suppliers know it um so some of that's price increase some of that's a little bit of an aging Fleet um not a surprise I don't think uh maintenance operations is relatively modest considering we have a fairly uh healthy increase in in utilities of 109 000. um we I got guidance from cmlp there's um is currently at 5.9 surcharge um that will stop in January 1st um and they project it uh for uh us as a commercial customer a 20 increase on January 1st so that's factored into our uh into our budget now aside from that we have
161very modest increases and um we're able to kind of keep this to three and a half percent overall uh by limiting increases in other lines uh the fixed charges again this is a Insurance uh 58 000 some of that's lost claims history um some of that I think might be best being broken out um from the town um and we're going to do a little bit more research on that but I don't necessarily anticipate it changing um the early retirement sick time buyout is reduced by 140 ton a lot of those payouts have happened already um as these programs wind down this could reduce further but um that's a um a significant reduction as we don't have programs that we're offering right now that should continue to reduce mm-hmm so out of District tuitions you
162can um to 236 000 increase um when we look at this we we need to look at the gross costs separate from the offsets to to understand it a little bit better um the um the gross costs are increasing 251 000 or 17 and that is primarily by the 14 tuition rate increase um from OSD um we have offsets from circuit breaker and Ida that are fairly steady a modest increase to 15 000 that offsets slightly that 251 to arrive at a two thirty six thousand dollar reduction uh increase excuse me um I wanted to highlight something else too that I saw I'm looking at last year's budget um this is a very uh variable line uh for a lot of reasons some of it's driven by students some of it's driven by tuition rates
163some of this driven by the timing of offsets um last year in the budget in FY 23 it reflected a 603 000 reduction from the FY 22 budget uh and uh you know 879 000 net of offsets um to 276 000 net of offsets um so that savings really helped deliver a lower increase for CPS last year um and I think um we've we've realized the savings we're going to get in the budget from bringing special ed programs in-house it's it's kind of a different uh we're in a different place now where we're still avoiding costs but we're not going to realize budget savings um we have programs for all the kind of most common things where we'd have enough um capacity to have a program we can't have a one student program so um
164so the next slide kind of illustrates this and I know you know again this is partly I think the committee might have seen this or be aware of it but I also know that um you know the towns when they look at our budget want to understand this a little bit uh better as well so we looked at two um sample sample they're actually actual in-district programs um and didn't want to necessarily name them but this is the cost components of the in-house program compared to the estimated costs if they're an outside placement this is FY 22 data um you know the in-house cost is 1.179 million outside including tuitions and transportation 2.86 million so we're avoiding costs of 1.681 Million by having these programs in-house it's also better for students to be in their
165home District um so you know it's a win-win um the benefits costs aren't included in the top part and the bottom part doesn't include the 14 increase so I would say those kind of offset that picture's still the same we're still avoiding a very large amount of cost by having these programs um and again I it's it's best for students to keep them in District if we can offer that so Bob quick question on circuit breaker so if the tuitions do go up 14 in FY 24 um how would that then impact our next year circuit breaker um if they're above the threshold which they probably are we would get we would see a larger um circuit breaker reimbursement okay so that's everything else being equal yeah yeah so that's no not terrible news no
166no yeah no it would um yeah and yeah I mean that's just the way circuit breaker works right it is I know having been with my colleagues the output of a 14 increase while waiting for the circuit breaker is really paralyzing for some districts obviously so I think there's still hope for some more immediate relief or more relief when it finally comes sure okay and they are fully funding this um like when I say fully funding they typically reimburse circuit breaker at 65 above the threshold um we're in a state right now that has been a cash positive position in the Surplus so you know I anticipate we're going to get funded in down Cycles you sometimes see lower circuit breaker percentages yeah unfortunately good oops uh again this is um you know so we
167looked at it by the the Desi function code view this is the salary view um and so um the non-style accounts are having a little bit uh more of an impact but you know with the bulk of our dollars and salary accounts 36 out of 43 million um is still the 4.6 yields 1.7 out of the 2.1 million so I'll kind of dive into each of these um but it kind of gives you a picture of salary versus non-salary um you know the big uh contributors in non-salary out of District tuitions again that's net uh energy and utility I kind of lumped the bus fuel in with the electricity and heating there I mean they're all kind of in the same bucket um property liability insurance um special education transportation and it's offset by that
168reduction in special education Contract Services which is in the OT salary so it's not necessarily A a real savings it's more of a reallocation of how we're um our supporting students instead of Contract Services through a staff position and on the salary account um you know the largest drivers you imagine is teacher salaries for the bulk of our costs are um the 5.7 increase uh 688 000 of that or 2.75 percent is contractual cost of living increase 386 000 is the additional ftes um the three that we had highlighted in the instructional teaching instructional piece plus the one-to-one nurse um longevity increases as well um and the remainder is due to steps and Lanes that's about an additional percent uh the non-teacher salaries are um 434 000 a 3.8 increase there are contractual increases there
169in additional tutor and assistant positions that are driving that figure and these are offset by the second retirement program which is uh 142 000 savings 56 percent uh decrease we have the motor assistant was something around six five point six I believe uh this is a school summary view I know in uh past um there's kind of been a detailed drive into each one um I think to me it's helpful to look at it this way the ftes are really driving these budgets the um the non-fte piece is really kind of embedded in the non-salari numbers that we talked about um so this kind of gives you a picture of um across the schools and um just a couple things I'll comment on um you know for and there's some moving Parts here too when
170we when we look at some things we we make estimates so Thoreau for example you see a decrease it had we had budgeted four sections of kindergarten at Thoreau and three at Willard it turned out we had three at the row and four at Willard so you have a kindergarten teacher and a um kindergarten assistant at Willard that we didn't budget for but we had those budgeted at thorough but they're not in uh next year's um so sometimes you have things that that net off like that um the Middle School includes the um the new special education uh teacher and um and the the balance is the um the tutors and assistants and the Intensive needs programs um elementary-wide is where the nurse is included um and the district-wide includes the OT and the bcba
171one thing that might be helpful over time is we add the actuals so you can because what we but right now you're comparing projections in December to projections in December maybe the actuals at another point in between would help explain the variance because there's a lot of moving pieces in those totals I mean the biggest yeah another column and and the big patterns you can see throw has more of the intense special program so that's accounting for that significant difference in Staffing alcott's building out its intensive program and it's had less um it's been more impacted by enrollment shifts than the other schools so there's stories to go with a lot of a lot of the moving pieces skipped one uh so I also wanted to provide an Esther funding uh update for CPS so
172this highlights the the different grants that have been received and kind of the overall spending that's occurred and really what um it's spending um this year and next um you can see the s for three funding is a lot larger here than it is at uh the regional district um and uh we do have some remaining arpa American Rescue plan act Ida funds that we'll be utilizing um and a small amount of sr2 uh this year those will be complete this year uh Esther 3 we anticipate spending um the remainder um equally between this year and next year if there's an opportunity we'll try to defer some of the summer school costs that we have budgeted into fy25 so we have some Savings in fy25 but at this point I'm not going to project that
173it happens that will be good news that will Factor but we kind of want to plan conservatively um and the next slide shows more on what Esther 3 is specifically being used for and just a couple comments on that um The Counselor piece psychologist is going to phase out so once we consolidate schools we made that a known entity so it won't be a cliff we have to solve um uh the special ed teacher the language-based program that is going to be one we have to wean our way into so that's the one clip to watch summer school Bob's already mentioned and then instructional materials is a one-time purchase that we've already started to use so um we're holding to the plan which I think feels good that all that work lasts a year or
174so ago of getting input and really looking at what our needs were and our objectives is have held fairly solidly assuming that that Sanborn or the new Middle School there is an existing team in place like an existing psychology counseling team yeah so yes yeah it's a master view of the six through eight uh resources that we have and right now the duplicity is because of the two schools essentially and and the needs of the kids don't get me wrong but um once we're in one building it'll be easier so does this really consume the Esther funds yeah this would this will this is how we plan to use it and how we are using it um the 372 for the summer school if we can preserve some of that like you know if we
175get to the end of the year and there's potentially money in the budget maybe we we put some of that back in the general fund so we can preserve some and have a budget offset in fy25 but that would be the hope you know I don't know we'll see whether that's possible or not um but the rest of those are being utilized and will be spent down well they all will but again the summer school is the one that we could potentially preserve because that occurs in July and August and the deadline for the grant is September 30. is there any indication of future like Professor like grants there's an indication there won't be so he leaves I'm getting to plan ahead use it for one-time costs and if you didn't start mitigating that now
176and um yeah I don't think I think it's going to be a focus on other revenue streams that at least my call the superintendents association's looking at special ed being the focus primarily but Chapter 70 still making sure student Opportunity Act is fully optimized the way that was intended I wouldn't be surprised if chapter 71 was Regional Transportation doesn't get some attention the rural districts are in great need of that being looked at so I think it's going to come from other directions the the focus from the legislators and others so are there any other questions no Sean Duval I'm sure thank you very much thank you yeah I just want to thank to again the principals and the administrative team department heads who put a lot of work into it not sure that's why
177they sign up to be Educators but um it's something that is helpful to us in building this many of us do that because it has to go with the parts we like and you folks in that office do it because you like the money so but yeah no thank you Bob big Endeavor especially the first time through and yeah 3.3 recommendations from the Concord Finn com yes uh so I'll ask the unpleasant question um have you looked at the delta yes because it's going to come up sometimes yeah I know of course we have yeah beautiful so I mean I think what we you know we certainly looked at it and this wasn't the first uh number we came up with and we felt like we were at a point where we needed to we
178we didn't um but we didn't we didn't touch really um the impact of students and we felt like we should explain where we are um and let folks absorb that rather than making cuts that are going to have impact um so we are where we are and we'll we'll have discussions with all constituents and go from there more to talk on yeah there's a lot of pressures happening at the same time honesty that are kind of reflected in the CPS budget I guess one thing I feel the need to say we took a lot and I've said it before but probably it's a good moment to say it again we took a considerable amount of risks in the zero-based CPS budget a year ago and several of them panned out in the wrong direction and
179we had bottomed out contingencies and other things and um some of what the increases here is recuperating from that because we've had to you know really look hard at what we're doing this year which it's the tightest CPS budget I've ever run and um and needs of kids exploding at the same time has been a real tricky spot so um we felt compelled to bring you the educationally sound budget for all kids and we will have conversations from there the town Also may have more Chapter 70 Revenue but it doesn't get factored into our budget but I think there's been a healthy increases in Chapter 70 funding for a lot of districts I think including uh Concord so but we uh we're told that the state's going to be late in projecting Chapter 70 because
180of the change in administration we are giving they're giving school districts tools to project on their own so we're going to attend a webinar and hopefully be able to project where they'll it would help also to get how how much are their health care costs going up for our teachers like ours are oh for the town yeah so we have to understand that they're under many of the same pressures that we are in terms of uh employment benefits right right yeah so is the next step the December 20th public hearing that's the next okay and then if you're ready to vote you'd vote otherwise we'd go into January 3rd we have to have a number by January 30th it could go down it can go down but we haven't right we need an a number
181for January 3rd that's correct yeah so right number but it can't go up yes is that in the bylaws sound violence uh I don't is it a legal mgl thing I don't know I've had some moderator that's always been the way it's gone Miss Briggs oh um all right okay I'll I'll acknowledge you Peggy I I just want to let you know that um we are listening we are here and uh appreciate the hard work you're doing um so that was my main comment I just mentioned that costs can't go up uh that's up to the moderator the budget has to be within the scope of the article so usually I can't go up once it's in the article on the motion you know should go down a bit but you know I I have
182been working with all of you uh I tried to believe we're moving on to regular channel meetings after so much effort on the special town meeting uh but thank you all I do want to let you know that uh you know myself and Tara Shard some of the other finance committee members are listening and appreciating all you're doing thank you thanks Patrick [Music] anyone else with questions on the budget before we move to the capital plan foreign I did ask you a question about the electrical bids oh yes I'm just gonna say I made a mistake last year and not getting enough detail on the capital plan um so I just I'm gonna ask perhaps if we could maybe get a little more information I'd like to see the full scope of the electrical work
183at Ripley and understand it so if you want to go ahead and vote tonight I'll probably abstain but it's up to you but sure okay um to refresh my memory one more time about just the bids for the electrical work that's been very electrical work at Ripley correct which is the main component which is the 740 yes um I apologize no don't it's fine I apologize it's not I'm sorry fine I didn't ask I forgot and I should have followed up and you're I'm sorry anyway I apologize so hmm maybe we could um at some point or to get those um the detail of that 745 000 like the breakouts I think you have an invitation for bid I can check and just like how it fits into the total project I know it's a
184big project you know with the heat pumps and everything and it's been going on for a little while right yeah this is essential I'm gonna say that I don't know what I'm talking about it's the electrical upgrade we need to do to be able to use the heat pumps and understood I just get a little more detail on it okay and so this is the conclusion of that work this this last is that right correct me when I get it wrong but should we done with the budget presentation I guess yes yes we're done with that job um so what it will do is set you to you know you'll be able to do the heat pumps on the pods we've planned and benefit from the green communities Grant it will set a Readiness for
185other parts of the building so the infrastructure is there to look at electrifying other spaces at Ripley at Ripley yes if we could just tell that story in a little more detail I think that yeah yeah you know what I'm saying is that context that would benefit you for decision making around oh I I just want to be like trans I don't think I'm going to change affect my decision I just like to be clear about things with um everybody be comfortable doing this on the 20th um when we have all of those pieces in place is there any I think they only ask is we get all of your questions in the next days that's really the scope my question is not clear let me know yeah all right so it's the scope of
186the work in Ripley the electrical work in Ripley and then the whole thing fits together with me but you know heat bumps and whenever they're sitting in there someplace and now we need to do the electrical work and also that it will provide infrastructure for further electric that word yeah right yeah we can get you more detail that would be great thank you very much right one of my questions on the Ripley is is there like a bigger picture vision for Ripley because it's a lot of money on an older building so I'm just curious what is the big and you don't have to answer this right now but is there like a broader vision for what we do with this building I mean I'll answer what I know for information uh you know the
187Children's Center is going to move out yeah so the town's gonna have supervision and decision making of that the talk has been they have their own program needs and we'll probably move here preschool if we had a way to do something different we might but we don't the schools are full so this is very effective in terms of service provision for children to have them all here and collectively together so I think that's I don't see a way you're going to do anything any differently with the preschool certainly the central office has no other home so the the schools don't have any fluid space at this point the middle school won't so I think you're in at least from the foreseeable future Ripley's probably fairly status quo which was the driving reason to start doing
188some work here so that things are both efficient more efficient fresher you know rugs things like that but safe as well which is the sidewalks and the paving so it's just been a long time since anything has been done here very shabby theater oh I love that theater I was very shabby but yeah Congress Children's Center please I mean I speak only for myself but I think that's where I see Ripley at this point I don't think you have a lot of other options to look at what you do differently yeah place to test out sustainability in a smaller setting as opposed to a big school I mean this room has a heat pump on it and I'll tell you right now it is not a not an efficient space it's very hard to regulate
189the temperature in here we've gone out now I've been in here twice you know hours and hours today this morning we were chilled right to the Bone and then it got so hot Mark had the doors open so we it's it's an interesting space that probably has its ups and downs yeah but we'll find out yeah big number yeah I think too let me name one of the biggest assets here at Ripley the steam lab that's here is a shining star of this school district in many ways It's amazing And um fantastic and this little you know in-house field trip we do and they come over here and it's all active Kristen will take it from there but um that is an important shining Gem of this building right now and it brings kids over
190here which is even better yeah it's really really engaging and Incredibly effective in terms of instruction and pedagogy so all right great question though Carrie I think as we it's been considerable funds yes all right so if we have questions on the capital plan we have yours all cued up now um just get them sooner rather than later so we can have like a wrap up on the 20th and we'll pop it to that agenda all right and I'm assuming you don't have any other big moving Parts here that you know of now that is going to necessitate a change in the next two weeks I mean there may be some changes but my budgetary Capital yeah I mean I didn't assume as much sure [Laughter] it's been a lot to get to where we
191are today yeah well and thank you I know it's a lot of work and you're new and we appreciate it and you've had to do it twice yeah two or three times nope I guess it isn't um well with that if we're going to talk Capital plan next week I think I would move to which are in this meeting and thank you guys all for coming thank you very much