Concord Carlisle Joint School Committee January 11, 2022

001so i'll call the concord school committee back to session and i'll entertain a motion to enter the public hearing i move to open the public hearing on the concord public schools budget for fiscal 23. thank you very much just a question do i have to roll call us back into regular session i don't believe so i don't think so but okay um and i'll do a roll call on the public hearing anderson eye moroni and rainy eye and i believe we're going to hand it off to mr stanton for the hearing presentation great laura do you want to start us off and then i can scream here yeah why don't you load the slides well while i'm introducing here so we are reviewing the superintendent's recommended budget that was initially presented a few weeks ago

002to the concord school committee this is the public hearing and meant to be an opportunity for the public to comment and weigh in which can happen after the presentation uh the school committee is in session but this portion of the meeting really is about the public and making sure we're meeting all our obligations to um open up the information and and receive any feedback or comments so um the presentation itself is almost identical to the one the committee saw a few weeks ago jared made that one recommended adjustment of including the dei director in the budget rather than the metco grant so you'll see a reallocations of positions to make that happen both in the medco grant and in the budget and otherwise we're bringing you the same content and the same requests um and

003we can talk on those as we go great yeah all yours june all right good evening um so the fy 23 budget timeline so today january 11th is the public hearing a couple important dates for you all to to know is warrant articles are due in concord on february 2nd march 10th we're going to be presenting pretty much this same presentation to the finance committee budget books at this time will be due in april and conquer town meeting is may 1st the recommended budget for fy 23 is 43 million 170 which is 3.87 percent more than the fy 22 approved budget and 486 thousand eight hundred and eighty um 848 dollars above the finance committee's guideline the 1000 function includes all of our salaries and expenditures for administration i.t hr and other central office-based staff

004the 2000 function includes salaries for teachers assistants and tutors the principals and assistant are substitute costs curriculum costs school supplies and materials special education contract services and equipment teacher salaries and longevity account for 1 million 326 853 dollars of the 1895 thousands you're seeing there in the 2000 function the 3000 function includes our transportation expenses nurses athletics and student activities the largest cost driver here is due to special education transportation costs which are going up 125 000. the 4000 function includes all of our maintenance costs last year we negotiated with both of our custodial and maintenance units fixed charges include teacher retirement incentive and our teacher sick leave buyback costs these two lines of decreasing a combined 142 780 the community service function uh is all of our private school transportation salaries 3.67 of our

005fte or driver ftes are dedicated to these ones fixed assets include all of our bus leases uh we budgeted for two new leases in fy 23 as part of our 10-year replacement plan and lastly special education tuition lines are going down a total of 528 459 dollars from fy 22's budget tuitions are down 366 000 and our offsets are going up due to increases in circuit breaker and idea we've identified 2 million 141 174 in budget drivers made up of eight different expense types for something to be considered a budget driver the expense type category must increase by 50 000 or more a cost savings is the same thing except a decrease of 50 000 or more in that expense category this year there were about 36 expense categories at cps and 12 of them

006are salary categories the first is our largest budget driver which is typical and there's our teacher salaries next the special special ed teams have done a great job creating programs to keep children in district as these programs have grown we've needed additional staff most of the additional ftes are for programs at thoreau support staff lines are increasing due to salary increases and we also restored an hr admin assistant that was reduced before the pandemic this is split with the high school custodial maintenance those are the contractual increases principles and assistant principles we identified as a budget driver mainly due to cola increases in fy 22 that were a bit higher than i budgeted in addition we budgeted some funds for an assistant principal's mentor in anticipation of an impending retirement contract services are up 4.32

007mostly due to some increases in special education contract services needed to keep children in districts and lastly stipends have increased due to special education summer training for research and development dei building leads and an increase to teacher mentoring cost savings uh to offset the budget drivers we've identified 781 482 dollars in cost savings as you can see here is the breakdown of the special education tuition savings sick leave in early retirement and then the curriculum instruction savings the fy 23 recommended budget includes 419.6 ftes which is 11.35 ftes more than the fy 22 budgeted we budgeted approximately thirty five million six hundred and twenty five thousand four hundred eighty nine dollars on staffing in the general fund the only ftes not included in this total is our calf workers who are paid out of food

008service revolving account which is self-funded and we have about 8.5 ftes charged the food service involving account we budgeted approximately 445 000 uh of our total cps medical allocation towards salaries the dei director is now in the general fund and we moved guidance salaries in the mecca fund instead other expenses in our mecco grant include small supplies and material allocations contract services and then the rest is for transportation supplies materials fuel and insurance we use our title one monies on two to salaries and i set aside approximately 139 000 and fy 23 and then lastly we charge preschool teacher salaries to the preschool revolving account and we estimate receiving about a hundred and forty thousand uh here's our special education questions broken up we have 1.2 and non-public just down to 250 000 in collaborative

009uh for a total um general fund budget amount of uh 1507 517 and then the tuition office circuit breaker and idea we are projecting 14 students out of district in fy 23 which is down uh five from fy22 um and 12 from fy 21 and a lot more from before here's the chart of our estimated savings through the early retirement incentives as you know when someone retires to get this incentive they have to be at the top of their lane because they have to have that number of years of experience and then we bring in their replacement at 75 000 or less and as you can see these numbers speak for themselves cpr cps has 22 buses two of which are wheelchair buses the oldest of the fleet are from 2008 currently we are getting

010uh two busted um we budget for two bus leases and two leases are actually falling off we currently have two electric buses the newest one which was delivered in november is still going through inspection and still not on the road i can't wait to bring you that what it is uh we have 26.73 transportation driver um ftes at concord uh 19.3 after the for in-district runs um 3.68 are designated for necco and 3.68 are private school routes overall the preschool location is going down 0.55 percent from fy 22 budgeted we have a total of 15.87 ftes in our preschool program 6.8 of these ftds are teachers while the tutor line here is increasing 11.14 we've had some changes in personnel from who was budgeted versus who filled the positions from last year in addition the

011cost of living increase was a bit more than budgeted the contracted services are special education related and are being moved to the district-wide location this is actually going to be a theme throughout the presentation in the other elementary and middle school areas lastly the curriculum instruction line is now consolidated in the district-wide location as well overall the elementary budget location is going up 9.56 from fy 22 budgeted we have a total of 15.2 ftes in the district-wide elementary location this is an increase of one which is for a new curriculum academic coordinator that is being requested savings for this is coming from curriculum pd lines which you will see when we get to the district-wide location in addition we have budgeted for a retirement at 75k but the replacement for this position was filled by

012an existing employee who was higher in the salary scale there was a salary savings but it was realized in the school location where the employee used to work lastly the nursing line includes additional days for nurses in the statement for the need nurse the out location is going up 3.45 more than the fy 22 budget we have a total of 69.95 ftes budgeted uh which is an increase of 1.81 contract services are being moved to district wide the curriculum instruction accounts are going down 47.27 primarily due to savings and software professional development is increasing 13 000 after the um uh is going off thirteen thousand teachers are going up uh 1.0 under the need for a new special education branch teacher supplies materials are increasing due to supplies needed for everyday math and supplies needed

013for the language arts line and lastly we are protecting a five percent increase in utilities the thorough location is going up 6.95 from the fy 22 budgeted the request for fy23 is 85.84 ftes which is nine more than we budgeted for for fy22 due to currency education needs and programs our assistance and tutor lines are going up seven fdes these were addition after last year's budget was approved to help support these programs we have also added an additional special education teacher in addition to the projected kindergarten class sizes we have a need for another case section for the same reasons as alcott began contract services and the curriculum instructions are down supplies and materials are up 9.8 mainly due to everyday math and lastly we're also projecting a 5 increase to thoros utilities the wheel

014the willard location is decreasing 0.73 fy 23's request also includes a reduction of 3.86 ftes from fy22 uh two of the two ftes will be following the students to the middle school so that will account for two of their increases our teacher's line is decreasing 0.5 fte due to reduction of a 1.0 fte in k due to current numbers but the speech and language pathologist line increased 0.5 for the same reason as the other two elementary schools again contract services and curriculum instruction are down and supplies materials are up and five percent increase in utilities the middle school location is going up 4.85 and 2.4 total ftes in fy 23. like the elementary schools the middle school portion of the special education contract services are being moved to district-wide curriculum instruction is also decreased due

015to reductions in math and social studies textbook textbook lines the tutor and assistance lines are decreasing a total of one in sally valery administration the director of student services is being moved district wide for that wash the business and assistance are reducing two and there is an overall uh increase of 3.4 in the teachers lines due to special education needs this budget includes three additional special education teachers and an additional adjustment counselor one special education teacher was added after the fy 22 budget was done and then we are requesting a language based uh based teacher through essar funds and lastly every request for an asd position there are some other moving parts in english world language social studies and science that make the overall increase 3.4 and lastly we're also projecting a 5 increase in

016utilities overall the district-wide location is increasing 3.49 in one total fte contract services are the largest increase in this location we consolidated all the special headlines the interim special ed director zero based all the special ed needs throughout the district and this was the result case transportation costs are projected to be up 110 000 based on the formula which faces the costs on ridership from two years prior professional development is up six point six seven percent overall special education pd increased for eighty one thousand but the curriculum staff development decreased 48 000 which is helping offset the requested academic coordinator administration is up 0.4 due to the addition of the dei director our tutors and assistant lines are up 0.5 due to the need for a special ed monitor the substitute line is up 20

017000 but this is because we reduced all the special ed subs in the school locations and brought them to one location so this is actually not a overall increase our teachers category is up 15.34 but no ftes we reduce 0.6 district-wide speech but we increase the cps side of the special ed coordinator 0.6 because this person is now in k through 8 but was budgeted k through 12 in fy22 this is not an overall added position but an increased cost to cps and a decreased cost to ccrsd also k5 through k to 5 grade level chairs are now district wide and moved out of the locations this was an addition of 27 362 in this category in this location sick leave in early retirement savings as you can see special education tuition decreases are shown

018here and the mentoring especially research and development training in the dei leads account for the increase in stipends here is a summary of what has been spent or encumbered debate in the esser funds in the cares funds as part of the american revenue of 2021 cps received 995 840 for sr3 the funds are available through september 30th 2024. some of the fund requirements include district plan to safely reopen schools spending 20 percent of funds to mitigate lost instructional time plan as to how to use the remaining 80 consultation with stakeholders to determine local priorities assurance of how interventions will respond to academic social emotional mental health needs consideration of those disproportionately impacted including low-income families students of color english learners and students with disabilities the deadline for the grant submission was october 4th um and

019does not require a breakdown of the allocation into yearly increments but after a survey was developed and distributed to staff and families the following expenditures on this slide became the priority and that is the cps presentation thank you mr stanton great if members of the public would like to ask questions or comments please raise your hand i'll give you a few minutes for a minute i do not see any raised hands at this time i believe we're prepared to close the hearing unless somebody has other business that needs to be conducted so i'll entertain a motion to close the concord public schools budget hearing for fy23 don't move do i have a second second and roll call please anderson i booth i miranda why rainy eye thank you very much and the hearing is closed

020so let us see here [Music] we might note at this at this point cynthia that our deliberations on the budget certainly continue for members of the audience so they they know that full well there's multiple opportunities to correct watch these deliberations continue right through town meetings so we're a little shy of seven when we're going to call the region to order so i'll just wait a moment and let's see if our sarah is here hi [Music] that yet sorry we're just waiting to our appointed hour to call the region to order so we can call the region to order now and we can call the region to order now and we just have one minute until we can open the hearing so i'd like to call to order the uh january 11th concord carlisle school

021committee meeting roll call please anderson present who's present murano present rainy present and wilson present um and it is seven o'clock now so i'd like to open the um the budget hearing so i can set the stage and then jared will take it from there we originally presented the superintendent's recommended budget uh right before the break uh the bud the presentation tonight is the same presentation with a small change in that we've embedded at the school committee's request the dei director is now contained within the operating budget and we've reallocated other costs to the metco grant so you may see some numbers are a little different than a few weeks ago otherwise our requests are the same it's an essentially level service budget with some small additions to special education settings so that we have

022completed our continuum of intensive special needs so i will turn it over to jarrett to talk us through it great thank you tonight is the superintendent's recommended budget public hearing a couple important dates for you all to to remember is january 26th the governor's budget will be out we'll we will learn about our initial initial revenue projections articles are due on the 28th to both towns march 10th will be concord's finance committee public hearing we anticipate right now that budget books will be out in early april carlisle's town meeting is april 25th and concord's town meeting is may 1st the recommended budget for fy 23 is 36 million 644 994. this is an overall general fund increase of 2 million 2.48 over fy22's budget the 1000 function includes all salaries and expenditures for administration i

023t hr and other central office based staff the 2000 function includes salaries for teachers assistants and tutors the principals and assistant principals are substitute costs school curriculum costs school supplies and materials special education contract services and equipment salaries for teachers are the largest budget driver in this function they represent an increase of 431 206 dollars in the general fund the 2000 function does have some cost savings our contract services have decreased 111 000 mainly due to special education last year was the end of our three year computer lease that is no longer needed and we are also realizing a savings of 111 000. the 3000 function includes our transportation expenses nurses athletic student activities this function is decreasing 5.84 mainly due to a decrease in our case collaborative transportation cost driver salaries are increasing a

024total of 53 687 based on the fy 22 budgeted amount drivers hours can be a bit fluid due to rough changes and the need for some added times the 4000 function includes all of our maintenance costs we negotiated with both the high school custodians union and the maintenance union in fy21 discharges include banking services our audit contract sick leave and retirement incentives insurance opeb and retirement overall the increase is 0.36 percent but there are a few drivers in cost savings that offset each other the insurance projections are up 68 000 which includes a budgeted increase of 90 000 for active employees but a thirty seven thousand decrease in our retiree medical insurance also the retirement incentive is down thirty six thousand nine hundred and twenty four dollars from the fy twenty two budgeted amount fixed

025assets include equipment and our vehicle bus replacements the region's vehicle replacement line is increasing 53 000 due to two new bus leases in this year's budget debt is continuing to decrease and lastly special education lines are increasing in fy 23. we've identified one million three hundred and ten thousand eight hundred ninety nine dollars in budget drivers made up of eight expense types for something to be considered a budget driver the expense type category must increase by 50 000 or more a cost savings is the same thing except a decrease of 50 000 or more in the expense category this year there are 43 expense categories in the region's budget and 15 of them are salary categories the first is our largest budget driver and that is the teacher salaries special education tuitions increased 452 we

026currently have three more tuitions in fy 23 than we had in fy 22 the addition of students coming in from eighth grade versus the students who are aging out also contributed to the increase the dei director was added to uh was an added position fy 22 and is now in the general fund support staff lines are increasing due to salary increases and we also restored an hr admin assistant that was reduced before the pandemic this is split with cps inference is an overall budget driver uh salaries for assistance and tutors are increasing 6.02 percent due to an additional tutor fte in this year's budget the tutors contract is expiring at the end of this fiscal year and we will be negotiating sometime in the coming weeks lastly driver salaries and bus replacements are identified as

027budget drivers i've identified 554 768 dollars in cost savings made up of four cost categories contract and transportation is down 237 000 due to the formula which is based on ridership from two years prior contract services are down 121 000 most of your savings and instructional special education contract services the three-year computer lease is up in fy 22 so we are realizing 111 000 savings there and again that is decreasing the budget has a total of 227.25 ftes which is 3.55 more than fy22's budget salaries account for a total of 799 the salaries account for a total increase of 799 379 in this budget this includes every employee but our food service staff who are paid out of the food service revolving account we are paying about 4.5 ftes out of the regional food service

028revolving income our largest salary category is the teacher salaries this category includes salaries and longevity payments the budget includes an additional 1.25 fte increase in this category the main increase is the addition of a reading specialist half of the salary is being paid in the general fund and the other half is being paid out of sr3 which is on a later slide then there are some small moving parts in other departments due to scheduling that caused the additional 0.25 fte increase and i spoke about the support staff the ei director and cuda changes a bit earlier we charge approximately 431 297 dollars in salaries to our grants and revolving accounts at the region this excludes our food service grant which is a hundred percent self-funded we are expecting four hundred and sixty two thousand in

029our mecco grant and fy22 and 23 at this time most of the grant is spent on staff salaries driver salaries and fuel costs we then spend a small portion on supplies and materials and professional development we also touched 50 000 in campus monitor salaries to the parking lot revolving account fy 23's budget includes three million forty six thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars in out of district placements our circuit breaker projection and idea grant offset is projected to come in ninety one thousand one hundred seventy nine thousand more in fy twenty three at this time we are protecting 36 out of district students at the region fy 23 up from 33 in fy 22. our excess and deficiency balance we started the year with one million six hundred and twenty seven thousand nine hundred thirty

030eight dollars we received 160 507 dollars more in revenue and budgeted in fy 21 we ended the year with a balance in the general fund of 587 864 we increased e d contributions from 300 000 to 600 000 to offset the fy 21 budget in june but that is in now the reserve to reduce therefore i'm estimating 1 million 775 thousand 769 dollars or 4.69 is our end level for fy21 and 5 is the maximum sorry for all the background noise if you can hear that i love zoom [Music] um early retirement uh here's the chart of our estimated savings due through the early retirement incentive when someone retires they are at the top of their lane and then we bring somebody in usually around 75 000 or less and here is to save us

031the district's opeb fund balance increased to seven million five hundred and sixty nine thousand two hundred and thirty two dollars in fy twenty one the valuation will be completed by hopefully sometime at the end of this month if not early next month the district has level funded opeb contribution amounts of 550 000 in fy 21 and fy22 and we are recommending the same in fy 23. actuaries no longer use the arc concept they no longer give a specific amount to fund each year and they no longer give us a schedule um so at this time we've funded approximately 30 000 of our obligations once the valuation does come out we'll have a much better understanding about how they're doing it going forward they seem to change it every two years the moving problem the region

032has 20 buses one of which is a wheelchair bus the oldest of the fleet are from 2008 as part of the fy 23 budget we have budgeted for two new bus leases healthcare premiums continue to rise at a pace greater than inflation fy 21 active employee premiums increased between 1.5 percent and 6.5 depending on carrier and plan rates in fy 22 increase between 1 and 5.5 percent depending on carrier and plan recent actuarial estimates predict a 6.5 percent increase in fy 23 in a six point and a six percent increase in fy24 beyond premium increases the cost of retiree health insurance increases proportionately to the number of eligible retirees recent actuarial estimates predict a 6.5 per capita increase in fy 23 and a six percent per capita increase in fy 24. the high school construction

033borrowings will lower debt service assessments for the next next decade uh this chart presents anticipated debt service amounts through the final high school construction debt service payment and fy38 any future debt issuance requires concord and carlyle town meeting approval here's a summary of the cares act monies and ether monies to date as part of the american rescue of 2021 the region received 193.25 for sr3 the funds are available through september 30th 2024 fund requirements include district plan to safely reopen schools spending 20 percent of funds to mitigate lost instruction time plan as to how to use the remaining 80 percent consultation with stakeholders determine local priorities assurance of how interventions will respond to academic social emotional mental health needs consideration of those dispos disproportionately impacted including low-income families students of color english learners and students

034with disabilities the deadline for the grant submission was october 4th and does not require a breakdown of allocation into yearly increments after a survey was developed and distributed to staff and families the following expenditures became the priority in addition to assessments the district receives state aid in other revenues at this time we level funded chapter 70 in chapter 71 revenue the governor's budget is coming out on january 26 and i expect to learn more in the coming days excess and deficiency offset is back to 300 000 at some point in the not so distant future we hope to reduce this even further but since we are at 4.9 percent projected uh right now i think it we're in good shape to move it in all the revenues were level funded at this time so overall

035we expect approximately three million nine hundred and thirty two thousand two hundred and forty one dollars in non-assessment revenue assessments are based on the october one enrollment on october 1st concord had 77.41 of the students and carlyle had 22.59 these numbers drive everything the superintendent's request is 36 million six hundred and forty four thousand nine hundred ninety four dollars the first bar uh the first box starts with our operating uh budget which excludes transportation and debt after reducing the state and local revenue we would just that we just went over in the last slide the amount to assess is 28 million 483 426 dollars from there we assess the transportation costs after we apply our chapter 71 reimbursement the amount of transportation assessment is then 90 000. nine hundred thirty one dollars we then break

036out i'm sorry is one hundred and twenty two thousand one hundred and thirty five dollars uh we then break out the debt assessment therefore uh overall the region's budget is increasing four point seven seven percent without debt in concord and four point two three percent in carlisle overall the assessment without debt increases 4.65 percent and that is the assessment and that is the presentation great thank you all right just one thing to note the carlisle warrant closes on the 25th which is before the state budget comes out um i will make that change right now i was gonna stop and ask um i thought it was the 25th and then made a lasting change i will make that now um and members of the school committee you can ask questions now but we will be

037discussing this later on in our meeting and members of the public if you have any questions please either use the raise hand feature or turn on your video and let yourself be known and seen no raised hands and no new videos um like to move to and make a motion uh chain emotion to close the hearing so move their second a second roll call i'll vote for it anderson i uti verona why brady and i mustafi wilson i and uh many thanks jared thank you director thank you jared and um now back to our regularly scheduled program to the agenda um darcy i she was on but i think i know she had a conflict she had to go yeah we'll look forward to a student update um later in the month and uh yeah

038on the 25th which means that then we can go to public comment if there are any members of the public who would like to make a non-budget hearing comment uh please raise your hand up carlin reed hi carlin reed 83 wits and i'm here on behalf of the league woman voters voter service committee joining me is also nancy confrey she's the chair of the voter service committee we are thrilled to announce that we're going to be holding a candidate forum for the two contestants for school committee for the february 3rd special town election that candidate forum is on thursday january 27th from 7 30 to 8 30 pm it will be by zoom it will be moderated and will you and the audience will be able to ask questions by chat as well as live

039feed questions the program will be recorded it'll be open to the public and the video will be posted shortly hopefully so the time we have before the actual election itself um now nancy i think i covered all the bases did i miss anything the only thing i would add carlin is if people would like to uh propose questions to ask during the prepared questions period please send them to voterservicelwvcc.org and they will be put in the pool of questions that we're considering during that period great great that's it is there a link on your is i mean is it can can that email address be found easily online somewhere or yes i will also send an email to cynthia with all of this information so she can forward it to you uh the there will

040be a registration link on the legal women voters website by friday okay but again i will send cynthia a detailed email so she can forward that to all of you that's lwvcc.org is the website okay i think that's it sarah thanks so much for the time thank you thanks everyone thanks for organizing the forum um are there any other members of the public who have comments c [Music] c none um let's move to the reading of the minutes from open sessions of november 30th and december 7th they're a motion to accept those minutes i'll i'll move it so moved i moved to accept the minutes of open session from november 30th 2021 and december 7 2021. a discussion if memory serves me correctly there was a minor change or two made from the draft to

041the final version can anybody help us there yes [Music] lord i did make those changes that you had suggested but i don't think i sent them back out they were yeah so they were very minor they were very minor um and i think i've got them here uh yeah there was a reference to energy flow and it was in fact revenue flow so a change from energy to revenue [Music] and i think that was the only change that required any any word smithing on aaron's part okay thank you any other discussion i'll try to articulate better in the future for aaron's sake okay so is there a vote to accept the minutes as uh as noted with the changes yeah roll call yep anderson i for both blue thigh for both miranda y for both

042what's the fbi for region marine air for both and wilson for region okay correspondence um we had one correspondence at the region um and we had a correspondence at concord public schools regarding literacy okay um [Music] and then let's see so now we have chairs and liaisons reports let me go around sir i have one request while we're on this that we need a liaison for the calendar committee 2022-2023 and i have met with me except me did we appoint that i could not remember and didn't get a chance to look back i thought we did too yeah i think that's me great okay that's easy thanks soon tracy alexa yep i can go um last night actually um eva and i were present at the um cpac board meeting um and there were actually

043it was a pretty robust meeting um one of the things that i know we've all been um following as a school committee is the fact that the cpac board is no longer subject to open meeting law um so the board has gone through the earth beginning to go through the process of um amending their bylaws um and concurrent with that um because so many things will change you know in terms of the norms of you know sort of what open meeting law is and means they are in the process of adopting best practices so that what all the benefits of opening open meeting law sort of are maintained and the things that um really are a hindrance to getting you know their work done behind the scenes are are sort of what are amended there

044um we also discussed um as the two co-presidents start embarking on their relationship with the administration they were updating us on some progress they've made and i know one of the things that um was discussed last night was the potential of a um presentation made by the administration and this is one thing i'm hoping to get to have a i don't know if it's discussion or but just to bring out there tonight about um the new dyslexia guidelines that were put out by the state um that the cpac had discussed with both lori and the director of student services sort of some things they'd like to see in that presentation and in the meeting last night there was some discussion about whether that could be how to sort of make that happen and and whether

045it's something you know i think the school committee would be very interested in um that presentation as well so there was um you know i i'm going to put it to lori and debbie at some point not now to determine um whether this would be a presentation that was made to the school committee and we would invite the cpac and the larger community whether it would be something a presentation that would be for the cpac that we would invite the school committee to or if it would just be or if the interest could be great enough that it would be a some sort of public forum so um i'm i'm looking forward to seeing how that shakes out um as we wrap up you know our budget and middle school and then we can um

046and and put some energy there um i'm trying to think what else what else what else it was there was a big it was there was a lot of um a lot a lot a lot of detail i'm going through my notes here oh and then and the other thing too is i think one of the things that they're working out is is um putting together a robust set of goals um that and and they've also developed because it's of particular interest to this group um a literacy subcommittee so the larger committee is going to put together their goals their subcommittee is going to put together some goals so that will help sort of inform their progress and sort of how they work with us so i think all of those are really positive developments

047and you know i think one of the things that we've all committed to this year is to figure out better ways and processes um to have a really productive and collaborative relationship and you know it's it's it's not always linear how that happens i think um there's a lot of back and forth between all the relevant stakeholders but i'm confident that we will get there um eva do you have anything to add yes um so in terms of uh the regional high school side um that was a discussion about uh up consensus on setting up coffees with special education coordinators in february um so um i know that there was a very constructive um uh conversation with administration to allow parents to meet these coordinators and and the role that they play in um guiding

048the iep uh process so that was very very much welcomed by the cpac group there were some discussions about things that they would that the cpac would like to put on their website and add the information that the administration is compiling about the programs and certifications and things like that um they talked about crafting minds literacy uh program coming uh coming up in the future so there's a lot of lot of interest in um in how the district is um working uh to go working and going through the massachusetts guidelines and i think that's it i i think you have covered most of it um the other thing there was another big call out for parents uh and um sort of a big brainstorming how to pull in a bigger engagement of family helping the

049parents navigate figure out special education in the district for their families so um very robust uh discussion a lot of topics covered i think that's it yeah i think one final thing just because sometimes you never know who's gonna watch one of our recordings um they still have some open positions on their board um and you know if they're always looking for additional parent engagement so if anyone out there in the world in concord and carlisle has an interest or has a um has some time please reach out to uh the cpac board they are anxious for um some help and enthusiasm yeah and i just wanted to add um looking at my notes uh the uh cpac group was very uh excited and looking forward to the administration presentation on how how the um

050concord uh high high school and the schools are implementing the guidelines um how and and they have specific questions uh how is the testing done and so they will be coming back with some of the uh data asks um as they line up with the uh freshly developed cpac goals and i think we have covered everything thank you that's that that's quite a meeting yeah um to look forward to seeing what happens um with the whether it's the forum the presentation that however orchestrated and all these other developments thank you court yes the policy subcommittee will meet this thursday 10 a.m and meeting links are available on the school and the concord town website that's what i've got thank you okay tracy okay so we met on january 5th for dei and um we thank

051you all for doing the surveys if you haven't done it yet that's okay there's still time to do it and we had our focus groups which i think were some really productive discussions that we have with dr blake and dr warnham um andrew updated us on what he's got going on right now he's still meeting with groups he's meeting with i think the lgbtq plus group at the high school spectrum he has an upcoming meeting to be scheduled with cpac he's met with some of us he is going to continue to meet and really focus on developing his strategic plan so some of the work that we did in our dei meeting the other day is going to help kind of shape that for him looking towards the end of the year so just coming

052up the equity survey results will come probably february um maybe andrew will present to us like on that february march timeline so that's all a little bit fluid right now um as soon as all of that information gets aggregated and gets to him and then the other thing we discussed was our school committee training which the the subcommittee decided that we would go with ideas and dr martin so we're waiting for that proposal still but we've been in touch with um karen at ideas to get that and it looks like it's probably going to be like a three like maybe nine hours in total so it's up to us if we want to meet you know every other week if you want it you need for two hours at the time one hour at a

053time so they're gonna run us kind of through what the teachers are also doing so we can have an understanding of what's happening you know from the teacher's perspective and from our perspective and i think we just had some really great discussion the other day it was a great starting point so um we're going to continue as a subcommittee of three there you know there's some discussion if we should make it a whole subcommittee but i think just actually from an equity perspective we don't want to you know make it so that people can't come to that so please feel free to come if you're a current school committee member and it's also open to the public and those meetings are posted online our next meeting is february 2nd um and i'm just waiting to

054hear back from a couple of folks i believe it's going to be [Music] 11 30 to 1 but if not it will be 12 to 1 30. so february 2nd is kind of a save the date for now that's it thank you yep and we hope to have a proposal on the 25th um for the school committee to review to to see about uh the ideas uh workshop so that we can get acquainted with it um great thank you i think that's it evan do you have any other um updates uh nope i'm all set okay all right so discussion dr hunter all right updates here we go so uh it's interesting because i use the same template every time i bring you this and it was fairly startling to see how much had changed

055and uh since december 21st but you're all living that with us and so is the student staff and parent community so high levels of the data that we're seeing which is very on par with all districts i think 217 cases over last week and reminder of that's a combination of incoming from the break some people reported during the break some people reported at the end of the break some people reported right as we returned so it wasn't a clean divide about what happened on the vacation and what happened last week in school and then of course what evolved as the week went on so you know that's an exceptionally high number if you look down at where we are for the year 452 for the year so you know just short of half of those

056cases happened in one week's time um i'll talk a little on the impacts of of how that plays out in a minute once we get through the data this week as of last night these numbers i grabbed this morning so they're not updated from today um but this week so far we're at 37. it's definitely shifted back to what we were seeing the week um we went on break which was about 18 to 20 cases a day total so that's a pattern we're starting to see settle in for this week that's far better than what was happening last week at 217. so hopefully that's a sign of progress and stabilizing after the holidays most kids are vaccinated i think that's just a fair way to say it almost all staff are vaccinated as you know

057you mandated that so that's held it's almost without saying at this point that we assume vaccinated people are getting are getting coveted we aren't tracking boosters we didn't get a chance to do that before the omicron hits so we know there are some breakthrough cases it's not not as significant as the the vaccinated folks though um and just it's worth noting uh even to date with as many cases as we've had in the last few weeks um we're really thankful that people are essentially having mild symptoms and able to to stay home and anything from asymptomatic to mild symptoms or a flu-like event and we're just glad that everyone's staying healthy um this is last week's pool testing results i'm still aggregating the amount of pool testing we did yesterday it is higher than that

058i believe i know the high school was up another 20 kids or so um we don't have pool testing results back from yesterday yet the labs have as you're well aware and the media overwhelmed and um slower to process so and a little bit of hurry up and wait on that we did make some changes to pool testing this week based on cic which is the vendor and desi who are trying to help us be more efficient the amount of follow-up required last week when 30-some pools come back positive and there's 10 or so people in each pool really really was overwhelming to then have to antigen test every pool and then find the individual that's positive and then do any follow-up then so um with support from the state we are streamlining that to

059now three tests in a pool which is gonna we think should be a lot less follow-up when we get positive pools back we are expecting some we're certainly hoping it's down from last week but hopefully making that a little less cumbersome we'll make it more doable there were really rough days monday and tuesday last week with so many cases and pool testing and um and such so we're we're ready for tomorrow assuming the test results come back and following up as needed um definitely worth noting we are tracking where cases are occurring um especially now that we're getting past the vacation so we had spotted uh clusters the best word i have i suppose um a cluster in a kindergarten room at thoreau that late last week started to feel more like a pattern a

060couple more cases over the weekend i spoke to desi you'll remember i i don't have full authority on closing classrooms grade levels or schools unless i use snow days which obviously you're only going to do that at a school-wide level so the direction we had been given as superintendents as recently as last wednesday we've been meeting with the commissioner weekly um was to put the call into desi talk to the public health officials tell the story and start to get some feedback so we did that yesterday um we talked with trisha mcgee and here in concord and then talked to the state and the the common conclusion was if we saw more cases within a short amount of time we would we would likely go remote there it also happens to be a very small

061classroom because of the fire um so five of 14 kids felt significant enough and an adult that the recommendation especially with the young kids and i want to just stress every time we see a little group like that it's going to be about context age of the kids all of the various factors that go into it that may or may not lead to the same outcome because remote isn't our first choice at all but in this this case we did make the decision to send them remote for three days again very short term not long term back to the schedule we used last year three hours in the morning provided devices if families families needed them today and expecting to really be back to normal by tuesday of next week after the three-day weekend so

062um i i wish we hadn't gotten to that point but now that we have experienced it and made the decision i think we've got an understanding i'm starting to gain understanding of where the state's mindset is um and they were quite responsive and supportive and we're grateful for that so uh vaccination rates i do have updates from the uh elementary schools we're still gathering grade six uh and certainly some of this is still moving um fully vaccinated k-5 we have 76 percent of kids partially vaccinated eight percent so we're we're strong there and um likely those numbers will tighten up a bit more i think a little frustrating for parents who believe their child was just fully vaccinated within the last couple of weeks and um omicron took away some of the benefit of that

063unfortunately but it's certainly an important data point and one that's going to serve us well down down the road and just a big reminder that what shifted as that many elementary kids were fully vaccinated is test and stay has shifted to the backdrop because we don't do test and stay with vaccinated kids and i'm going to put an asterisk next to that in certain situations we have continued to do some antigen testing like the thoreau setting to know what's going on in that room um so we're we're listening for the state you heard the governor announced today 27 million tests were just purchased statewide with the priority coming to the schools the superintendents have sent feedback that to some extent we would almost rather in this environment if they can't afford everything sideline pool testing

064and give us enough antigen tests for everyone because that's the immediate current information that we need the pool testing delays and other pieces aren't quite the same fit to the new world we're in so um things are shifting again and we're we're doing well i can't say enough about the flexibility of staff um kids etc just a data point i don't have on here but i'm watching very closely on a daily basis we're averaging um eight to ten percent of the staff out every day so there's always some fluid moving pieces about that um it you know it can depend on what pocket of people it hits as well and it might only take two people in a certain category of employee that will have more impact so that's an ongoing moving aspect for us

065that we are juggling um and then student absences we're running about 150ish it's a little 20 plus or or minus at the high school daily just under 100 average at the middle school and somewhere around 50 to a peak of 70 at the elementaries on a day-to-day basis so daily we're seeing 350 to 400 kids absent i think the really interesting point with the five-day quarantine those those individuals adults or kids are always swapping out and that's a very big positive and it's also a challenge because it means while those numbers maybe aren't growing and i'm glad to see that um different kids are out or different staff is out and that comes with positives and challenges so so there's a lot of covid back in our lives here and we're working really hard to

066make sure instruction stays available to kids and curriculum stays available our extracurriculars are still running we're watching for any trends there not thankfully knock on my wood desk here not seeing anything concerning right now um even in the sports arena so that's really good news and uh just you know day-to-day monitoring monitoring all of it um jesse did extend the mask mandate yesterday through the end of february so that's formally intact we met with the commissioner last week i won't be surprised if we meet again before the week is out i am in discussion with the vaccine vendor and trish mcgeehan trish is the lead i'm just the scheduler um to look at a vaccine clinic again at the end of january we know the booster being approved for the 12 to 15 year olds

067was really approximate to last week's clinic and there's definitely some uh hope for for making access to that available to the community um so that's those are the really high levels and we're working really hard at this again at the moment not to the sacrifice of everything but we are working hard at it especially i'm gonna shout out my five principles that uh literally are the cogs that keep all the staffing holes closed and keep the student pieces moving and then a really big shout out to the nursing staff who there's no avoiding their frontline role in this and i continually hear no matter how busy they are or how much is on their plates the tlc that's happening with families and the time they're taking because they're really educating about covet as well of

068course and um parents feel really supported so i'm incredibly um grateful for their work over the last few weeks here so that's where we are happy to talk on any particular aspects or questions no thank you thank you for all of that this is um not the 2022 we were all thinking we were coming in uh school command by members do you have uh any questions comments this one is not covered specific just i'm confused a little bit about the uh the relationship to small class and thorough and fire it's counting counter-intuitive so when we first uh when when mrs charles in august had to put her classrooms into the thorough building without the mods um creatively she reallocated the kindergartners a little bit so one class was smaller because the space they were in

069was small smaller than a full-size classroom so it contained the size of that one group the others all stayed very reasonable but we had a purposeful inequity there a little bit because of the space initially from september through november um so i don't i can't explain why that anomaly then tracked to this cluster of cases because they are in a full-size classroom and have been since november and they're not in the mods they're in the regular downstairs of the building so quite simply of necessity that group got smaller and then that group got a bigger rum yeah later on okay thank you it makes perfect sense now thank you yeah i mean to thread fire and pandemic together it becomes a little surreal at points of how much thoreau has managed this year and we

070increased nursing staff and you appropriately gave them a shout out just as we should give you a shout out for your covered vigilance which seems to be unceasing um your estimation uh have we right-sized with the both the increase in nursing personnel and the elevation of a lead nurse position does that seem to be just right for us yeah um for for good or bad um we've had nursing absences for various reasons and um the fact that we increased has given us more ability to manage that uh but even pre-pre-surge here it was a very um wise move in terms of what we were able to do with the high school but also support the other nurses our lead nurse again lisa koski i she is such an anchor to this whole operation both coven

071and otherwise in our health systems um it's really freed her up to be leader um in a really really visible way and incredible support to the other the other nurses who can feel isolated for sure and we have noted in uh months ago and shouldn't forget and we don't that uh mental health is on their radar as well certainly no questions uh last question for me uh eight to ten percent absences uh does this mean we've got a sub crisis or or are we approaching one how are we doing uh we're back to where we were a year ago almost almost operating the way we were when we weren't allowing subs in we are allowing them in but there's no huge pool of people um so we're we're back reallocating staff depending on who's available

072using support staff to to cover classrooms etc so it's not ideal um it's i feel very fortunate that we have the support staff we have that we can reallocate the districts you're here closing i don't think have as many options as we do it's a juggling act every morning though for sure at the building level to see who's out um and most of it i scan the list every day to see who's who's not in and why and it's it's mostly cobit exposures coveted illness or that occasional blip of child care where the daycare says we're closing for a few days so it's exactly what we lived a year ago thank you very much you're welcome thanks for your questions and i just had um just one comment for laurie and for trish the vaccine

073clinic was amazing so thank you for that super organized um really helpful for everyone in the town people with kids they did take some walk-ins the end is very quiet so if there's another clinic uh you know that maybe that gets out there to people that if there's any left over at the end you want to come at 8 30 well not 8 30 because then they'll be staying too late but it was really really well done so thank you for that and that turned into you know needing a regroup pretty late in the game because covet protocols had to be part of the clinic you know trish trish called me and said i don't need the vaccine clinic to be a super spreader event that would be ironic um so she had a lot

074of amazing strategies for that and people waiting outside and um everybody adjusting on the fly just like everybody is so and to that end i will say um you mentioned the unfortunate if you will timing of the booster approval for the younger set um with the timing of the clinic i have gotten a lot of inquiries um about the about a possible vaccine clinic more than even before um so if you could ever book that i think there would be significant interest yeah we're honing in on a date that i think should get confirmed tomorrow excellent or certainly not many days after so that's good good news and uh just a comment in addition to uh the updates on covet uh uh i've heard from a few carlisle families of high schoolers and everyone is

075i'm getting a lot a lot of uh great feedback about mr maestro's um outreach to families uh that letter that went out to high schoolers and families definitely decreased um the anxiety levels um around the terms and uh people are now very happy with um the solution manage balancing the balancing act between our health mental health uh the educational needs and the covet situation so grateful for for all the um extra hard work and um that's um out of box thinking uh to the needs of the students yeah i will agree with you there um they they owned that and creatively dove into it and as a as a faculty and as a leadership team which is the department chairs came up with an idea i got looped in at the end and said are

076you good with it and off and running they were and of course they did it very quickly um as you know so really i think you know there are moments in all of this that where you see all the initiatives and objectives start to overlap and i agree with you i think mental health was very front and center in that um you know plan that was both academic and covid related all at the same time so thanks i'm glad you mentioned it i'll pass that along great thank you thank you dr hunter thank you keep you posted and thank you to to the to well just everybody everybody there's there's nobody not that that's the right answer it's the bus drivers the food service the nurses the teachers the support staff the administration so thank

077you on to policy [Music] here we have our community use regulations and fees uh court would you like to take the lead yeah i'd be happy to if we want to do a screen share uh we we debated as a subcommittee uh whether we would lump together the policy and some of the accompanying regs and decided to keep them separate um dr hunter thought this was the cleanest way to do it we concurred uh so we bring you a revised community use policy uh and regulations and fees this last received a thorough examination uh and updating in 2009 so this is number one long overdue but number two i think users would be gratified to learn that the fees have not uh escalated wildly uh in those intervening uh 12 years um the i believe

078okay what you got on your screen now is the policy that is general in nature that seeks to inform the community and users specifically that we do intend to make public schools available for community use after hours with the one overarching condition and that is that nothing interferes with our capacity to have these schools open and ready to go at dawn the next morning for uh school-based activities we are making very very clear in the policy that summer users some of these are quite uh ambitious programs that operate in the summer uh will be able to queue up with their requests at any time and then there's a february 1 initial review of those requests also because there are some fee changes as well as policy clarity i don't think there's any significant policy change

079in terms of regulations usage but because the fees have changed the business office has notified the big summer users to uh be mindful of what we're doing here so they can take any changes into account in their own budgeting and scheduling and so on uh so we have this policy that was uh recommended at our last meeting for a first read tonight and if you then see fit it could be adopted at a subsequent meeting and i pause here turn to my colleagues on the subcommittee anything i've neglected at this kf level the general introductory piece very thorough thank you can you guys refresh my memory facilities would include certainly the buildings the interior use of the buildings and do they also include field grounds and other facilities i forget yeah surprisingly little by way

080of outdoor facility because most of those fall under the purview of the town of concord and good excellent question and you're going to see in the next section that we actually have provided links to for example concord recreation for their properties concord board of health for licenses that a user might require and so on so we've tried to get make it as best we can a pretty comprehensive picture of how to do this right good question you're going to see that shortly so specifically for fields there are certain fields at the high school that we have after hours jurisdiction of and that's it not at the k8 and addition in addition to um what we've already uh discussed here is um is there a time you have mentioned that last time we have reviewed the

081facility youth policy was in 2009 um i i if i recall we had uh we talked about maybe bringing this back in about a year just to um just having a conversation with the administration to see how the new policies uh are working if there's any uh tweaking is that is that um is my memory uh excellent point yeah we were very sensitive to any unintended consequences that the business office would know about first and could apprise us and speaking of the business office uh uh they joined dr hunter in working very carefully with us and uh were were very thorough with us so we we want to thank them as well we wouldn't be here without their their efforts and their technical support i will ask that we look at kf-r and uh let's

082there we go and so here we begin and we're going to take you through about five pages here we begin with a repeat of the priorities uh who gets first crack at it and second crack at it and so on and then we move to something brand new uh i i did misspeak there is something significant and new and that is a frequent user discount the idea here is that if a group in the school district were to reserve a bulk of time there's an economy of scale that we benefit from and therefore we want to extend that benefit to them as well so we're looking at a reduction in the fee of 15 for a rental transaction that adds up to 40 hours or more and 25 for something that is handled in a

083single rental transaction equaling 80 plus and important proviso here this refers to the facility rental fees and it has no bearing whatsoever on any personnel fees that have to be borne by the user and those are activity specific custodians av technicians uh and so on food service perhaps those uh those are those are billed out according to contractual rates and you'll see those shortly we have a supervision section that makes clear again our insistence that the buildings be protected for their primary use the following day and stop us as we scroll through this for any uh careful parsing of any of this uh hearing none i'll ask that we move on so now we've got our restrictions and a lot of these are baked into uh commonwealth law as well as uh our own policies

084that follow on around smoking intoxicants then we've got our food and beverage and you see embedded here a link to the concord board of health anti-hazing which is under state law of course section e we give the principal or uh his or her designee authority to take a look at what's happening by way of decorations uh for safety and uh building building protection shall we say fire prevention uh uh if for example uh a drama production had to have a candle for five minutes there would be a probably be a contractual obligation for somebody from the fire department uh because we've got to take great great pains around safety so we've got all of those authorities uh with our superintendent in the lead on that what might be required for personnel um the use of

085facilities section uh talks about uh uh the fact that when there is a specific area of a building called out or rooms uh that's not uh something that has any uh ambiguity about it um and we don't have building creep um in the middle of a rental that we wouldn't be prepared to handle with our building service personnel h there is a building service worker or custodian assigned and that's also in keeping with the contract with our building service workers in regard to quote-unquote outside users concessions uh fall under board of health regulations perhaps depends on the nature of what they're doing uh so again we call out that link to the board of health and uh the way to receive that permission seek that permission we are concerned about our gymnasium floors hence the

086reference to footwear that we would be quite strict about raffles uh fall under both state and town guidance now yes the high school is a regional school district a political subdivision independent but not for purposes of pulling permits that's where we turn to the town of concord we want buildings empty at 10 pm although dr hunter has discretion to authorize use after that hour the business office will require uh the the user provide a certificate of insurance that has the public schools region or cps as a named insured with as you see a millionaire per occurrence 3 million aggregate and an umbrella policy as well workman's comp as required by law custodial coverage we return to that and spell out that there shall be a custodian that she or he will have certain duties on

087behalf of the user uh in order to ensure good use of the school for that user and protection of the school for return to duty the next morning again a gymnasium reference here now we get specific we saw dances before now we see use of gymnasiums and the reference to sneakers our generic term for shoes that are unlikely to damage one of those floors use of fields to alexis point here and we spell it out the facility facility use policies refers to cchs baseball softball field and memorial field stadium everything else is going to fall under the town of concord by virtue of other agreements that have been affected over the years the high school tennis courts can be rented there is a listing in the fee schedule but we caution people that the the

088availability is quite limited but you and i know there are courts right down the street as well as other locations around the district we can and will provide for audio visual equipment and technician support as necessary and we have the right to cancel an event due to school cancellation or other cause and we give the superintendent uh rather unfettered authority to add additional requirements as she sees fit because some rentals could be unusual in nature and we can't predict every every uh type of occurrence we have a very good track record with a collection of fees we know our users well so the billing occurs after the fact rather than estimated billing or deposits up front and this is something that the business office continues to be confident is going to work out well for

089the districts so with that i think we're going to turn to the fee schedule a little bit of cleanup here we can drop the highlighting before we authorize this or approve this next week uh you see these effects these fees would be effective july 1 of this year so people have five and a half or six months to anticipate these changes um and if you uh need to we can pull old figures from 2009 uh but i assure you these are not uh wild increases uh and in fact got some careful scrutiny by the business office first then by the subcommittee then again by the business office and we think these are rates that are uh ones that will not discourage community users but not be so low as to be subsidized and too attractive

090that would distract from our main mission of k-12 education during the day so we can scroll down here and you'll see that we've called out the figures rather specifically we tried to make it very clear what was uh k-8 and what was high school and most of those distinctions occur in the fee schedule not in the regulations themselves those regulations seem to be broadly applicable k-12 in all of the facilities so there you have it the subcommittee would be happy to entertain any questions i just also add that we did look at these schedules of other districts to make sure we were in the right ballpark thank you very much yeah we didn't want to be [Music] in competition with other districts where we're looking more attractive or less attractive we wanted that to be

091a non-issue for a local user thank you uh yes thank you tracy i had that comment and also uh looking back at our links to the um town website and there are some uh links to uh whether it's uh state law or guidelines um conquered uh concord's town website pretty much might stay the same in terms of links however those links in um those state links to to particular loss may change at some point uh would would uh should we add just the name of a particular um guideline law state law for example like there was a hazing line so i what i'm hearing is uh link and the official title of the document so that if the link gets lost the title remains correct okay yeah good point so uh hearing no objection um

092we could ask that that be incorporated into the uh version that comes our way next week i don't think that's a substantial change that requires any further deliberation on our part um because it doesn't doesn't change any any of the information in the document simply makes it easier for people to track should there be a change do we have a tacit endorsement of that idea that we dropped i think it's super great it's smart okay thank you any questions yes please go ahead i'm sorry who was speaking that's cynthia sorry i want to thank you all for doing this work um it's a lot i know it is um i just want to confirm so the fees are per hour so you've had a very good point the fees are per hour so that second

093highlight with a question mark gets pulled out of there and we'll make as bold as we can the highlight above it that reads notes are all per hour unless stated otherwise and then we have minimums as well great i apply sometimes not always and i'm a little unsure of the group definitions so maybe you can give me some examples of group one i as i assume in-house means uh yes this would be a uh this would be a school activity or this would be a uh town government activity for which there would not be a rental charge but there would be a personnel offset by that user by that government user the second one would be uh the local nonprofit group uh or this could be somebody outside of carlisle and concord who could provide

094us evidence that they were serving uh a majority of concord and carlisle residents and or conquered and carlisle residents in that activity you could have a boston address but if it was in service of concord and carlisle uh you would fall under that group two and then and then group three is uh all others okay which which would uh for example would be uh an out-of-district uh company that wants to have a have a basketball fundraiser i'm making this up but i think that's so just to be clear to people listening in so all concord and carlisle and conker carla youth sports are in group one is that correct nope they're in group two so just to be clear because of the agreement that we signed yeah charge youth sports on our high school okay

095all right well let's go back to the earlier language then uh where in the beginning of the document we call it out as well and let's compare the two thank you cynthia so we're going to go up to the very top okay so we have this uh which needs to reasonably conform with the uh piece that was put in at the end okay so the business office can correct me if i'm wrong but i believe at our concord public schools we don't charge do we charge the basketball a fee on top of the custodian we just we just charged custodial fees right in for that yeah right so right now for x for outdoor events at the high school on our fields youth sports do not pay a fee so the town run youth sports

096don't pay a fee right so carl island concord town right apartment esports yeah yeah they're not technical they're conquered carlisle youth baseball is not town run i have to check yeah i'm not sure if they are or not but no there's an agreement when we finished off the cc play activity preventing us from charging all youth sports all youth sports that are conquered carlyle non-profit correct okay exactly so this is this is uh this is important um and i think that uh uh [Music] thank you for surfacing this i think we've got to go back uh ian and uh we can work on this together such that at the next reading this is called out so there's no confusion right that's that's probably why i was so keen on having two sets because they're very

097different but i mean i think you can fix it just yeah you could just have it some other way to define group one uh not only uh change how we define group one but also uh reference in this introductory section uh the the same thing and make them more consistent right and then um another question i have is how do we handle summer custodians so they have a they have a summer shift um so anything outside of those summer shifts um is billable on top of what is already available during the day so so for the high school for example how many custodians would be there if the building was closed depends on the activity um probably you obviously i'm saying if the building is closed yep there's no idea if there's a camp going

098during the summer and it's outdoors let's say there's no camp what what what's going on in the building if no one is in there their hours during the summer i want to say are six to two we have nine custodians at the high school so anything after two depending on what's being rented out we would bill the custodial or close the building okay yeah so we might we might need to carve out a little something to make that clear it's different than regular i mean obviously that we don't write the building out when the students are there but like you know just somehow another after two or something i don't know so just think about it yeah and i'll confirm those hours i believe it is and then the one other thing comment i have

099is that many other facility documents do you charge an energy energy fee ones that we look at not and actually one in my past did um we did not recommend it we think it's sort of embedded in the costs okay that's fine yeah if you're taking that into account yeah so i assume we're going to use more energy when the summer camps are in there obviously not attached to outdoor activities um and then who has jurisdiction over the upper grass field town it is a town yeah okay that's right again right the behavior of the grass field as well so what i'm hearing so far is we've got to clean this up such that the uh town district-based sports organizations know where they stand in this pecking order and that we need to uh call

100out what people would not expect in terms of uh possible additional coverage after 2 pm on summer weekdays yeah right and is the shifts are the shifts the same at the concord public school buildings in terms of using indoor facilities i believe they are and with the exception maybe of summer school where we we know we need school specific coverage yep okay jared i'm confident we can work this up and get it to the policy subcommittee and then the uh committee at our next meeting uh knowing that there's nothing uh significant in our approach here rather what we're trying to do is get accuracy and clarity about the the user groups that would have would have uh slipped by me cynthia so thank you it's um yeah and i'd have to probably somebody should dig

101up the language that's in that signed agreement we can do that um i have it somewhere but i think it might even be on our website i think i have it as well yeah good any other questions comments uh concerns thank you guys this is thorough well i hope so and and evan made the important point uh that the business office will inform us if we've made any any missteps here uh we're doing a bit of catch-up here um and we're hopeful that we'll prove to be uh wise and sensible we'll we will be ready for feedback thank you uh thank you great thank you okay we're back to uh budget now i believe yeah jared well i don't know if we've seen the budget presentation it's just a chance for us to talk about

102are there any questions from anybody any this is just regional talk right this is just regional talk right now i think too we wanted to frame where we were with the guidelines and just talk on what your next uh steps might be or not be so we can revisit this is these are slides we brought you in passing really back in december the guideline delta right now and carlisle has met the concord guidelines so everyone is synced up is a difference of what equates to 240 813 overall so that's that could be the discussion you have tonight is to to hear some of our ideas on what we we might recommend for that and then talk on any of your ideas and um decide if you're interested and ready to act on anything or not

103so jared could go through this if that's helpful or we can hold off and talk in more general terms well you anticipated my question about the carlisle guidelines so if there were any more uh efforts possible toward concord guideline it would pull carlisle below carlisle guideline is that correct yeah i can go through it so basically what this is is obviously the superintendent's recommended budget is the top uh numbers 36 million 644. concord's assessment without debt is is the one that they look at that's a million uh 972 dollars right now their guideline is the 21 million 957 151 which was 821 over fy22's budget the delta is 186 414 for concord but when you put it into the spreadsheet to get to 186.014 we actually have to come up with 240 and here were

104something that we discussed the guideline if the committee so chooses yeah and court i think what you're asking is the carlisle guideline are you are you okay now yeah no i get it no it yeah because of the assessment to uh to pull pull it down for concord is to pull it down for carlisle two hence the second number 240. yeah right so yeah yeah if we find that 240 then we'll be in got in compliance with like we'll be in an agreement with both guidelines so the way i always look at it for everybody's for every three dollars we have to reduce the concord you have to reduce one at carlisle give or take so i think the obvious question for me i don't want to take up too much air space here uh

105can uh you speak to the uh implications that would reach classrooms if any uh were we to move toward some of these uh reductions well so you've named that i think is that we're not recommending implications that directly touch classrooms so jared why don't you go through what's hard quickly so this is a mixture of both general fund implications as well as revenue implications so as i said before january 26 the um the governor's budget is coming out we expect an increase at the time when i first gave the presentation the december 7th i i wasn't ready to give my estimates yet based on what we sort of know right now um we felt comfortable that we could increase our chapter 171 chapter 71 transportation revenue portion by fifty thousand uh that would decrease assessments

106by fifty thousand in addition we felt that we could go up to about three percent that was a high number that we were hearing for chapter 70 which is equivalent to about 87 000. in addition we were notified after um the presentation on the seventh that we would be getting a mecco supplemental special ed grant so what we can do is we can reduce salaries special ed salaries and put those into that grant as an offset uh and lastly we could take a gamble or a risk um at this time we anticipate ending fy even though it's only january fy22 with hopefully a max circuit breaker carryover so what this would do is in our offsets in the budget we would just increase our circuit breaker offset an additional eight hundred and thirteen dollars it's

107a gamble but we have been prepaying tuitions the last couple years uh so that is uh embedded in the fy 22 budget which will potentially allow me to to end with the surplus so therefore with all of these four recommendations uh could get us to the guideline and i think it's important to know the part of the rationale for being comfortable is our reserves are still flush both circuit breaker and e and d and um i you know we want to be respectful of the fact we are flush with reserves and can i think be supportive of both communities to to make this um pretty streamlined budget process and as you know too for for revenue when you when you vote a budget the revenue has to match the expenditures but if for some reason

108you are short on your revenue there's a there's a few things that can make up that shortfall first end would be reduced to cover that additional revenue or second if there's any expenditures uh surpluses in the general fund account that would offset it so while it's not great to have a shortfall in revenue with the savings with the contingencies that we have especially in end it's going to cover that shortfall they're saying if if the budgets come the state budget comes differently in the chapter yes if we don't get 87 000 and we don't get 50 000 it you know there's a way to to make that up okay and then what's going to happen with um uh pre-paying for the following year uh right now we we hope to uh hope to be able

109to prepay um i usually know where we're going to start ending um right at the beginning of the springtime right around april 1st a little bit beforehand we start planning ahead um so right now all of our numbers are tracking well um but as i said before this is still a difficult year with all the covert expenditures all the grants were sort of bottom line borrowing bottom line budgeting um and right now i feel comfortable with our available balance that we're going to be able to at least pre-pay some which of course we're going to bring to you as we get closer to the close of uh fy22 for your decision to do that or not and i just have a sort of micro question but i'm kind of confused now so in the presentation

110um we the mecco director is a .4 at the conquer public schools but at 0.6 isn't that the reverse of our formula it doesn't be it doesn't necessarily have to be that way um when we talk to when we did the mecco grant and the way that the mecco grant works is you don't have to do the formula based um after talking to andrew a lot of his time is is spent at the high school so it is justified that's an echo so what that would do and i didn't feel comfortable director it's the same formula yeah so the way that that would work if i increased the general fund with the 0.6.4 that would have increased the cps budget right but that's the right thing to do i think we should be consistent in

111our split on staff there are staff there i agree but if if if the time is spent at like if the time is spent at the high school it is just fun but yeah well what do others in the committee think about that everything else is always the other way is always point four to point six right that's why i was sort of yeah it strikes me we're doing it because it's a convenient fix that might have unfortunate implications longer term but again wasn't it wasn't it our uh point to put this into the budget versus taking it from a medco grant yes that's fine but it's the it's the split that's the issue so taking it from the mecca grant and putting into both the cps budget and the cc budget the the balance

112that goes to either of those budgets should be in accordance with how all the other things that are split you know between my question is though jared you said that there seems to be um i don't want to use the word disproportionate but if in fact our needs vis-a-vis um diversity equity and inclusion for this year or any years seem to be dispropor keep saying disproportionately seem to be you know more heavily required needed if there is more work to do at in you know with the grades 9 through 12 community then that would make sense to me um and i do think you know the way this year has played out um especially sort of the needs of the students as as they engage with andrew it does that doesn't seem to be um

113a matter of convenience that does seem to be sort of the way i see thing this year having evolved in a genuine kind of way well i i have a serious disagreement with you it's very important that we signal to the community this is a pre-k through 12 effort and that we apportion the work between the two districts and k pre-k 12 8 is much bigger than the high school so i think i think any of the positions that are split whether it's mine or any of the central office positions kristen's probably another more equal you know counterpart to andrew you know they ebb and flow depending on the year depending on the initiative it doesn't mean you're not paying attention to the rest of the district it just means there's particular concentrations going on

114in one place for a time being i think we're fine if we go back to 60 40 the concord cchs formula you're used to i don't think that's a huge issue because we're going to have other things to talk about at the concord budget anyway right so if you're as a committee in agreement that it should align with the others knowing that the time actually ebbs and flows oh yeah that's totally fine so that's what these conversations are about is feedback on things like that so let's just make this you know so that both hands know that we're consistent and i know sometimes we do a 50 50 on other things but it just seems like this is too far out of a skew and i thought that when we did the metco grants when

115when it was presented there it was the 40-60. no it was so echo and this is the way it's been for a number of years the mecco director was 60 40 high school cps and again okay that's and the dei was the same way and i didn't feel comfortable increasing the cps budget without telling you all that and that's why i put it back into the general fund as a 0.4 cps 0.6 not out of convenience i i i couldn't raise the budget that that would have changed everything so to do this is going to increase just so you know is going to increase the cps budget yep i do understand great and so so all of these recommendations that you're making basically we're at the guideline that's that's that's the bottom line of the

116high school it could be a guideline if you want to be yeah so i do have a question about buses and electric buses and i guess i just don't know what the plan is or what our opportunities are with regional reimbursement with the vw fund um yeah so right now the the vw fun there it's there's no new news about it um but we're constantly you know looking for it and you know we'll be the first ones to tell you when it comes out the way that the electric bus works with reimbursements from the uh from the state so if we get a electric bus at cps we don't get any regional transportation obviously uh reimbursement at the high school the way that it works is we buy an electric bus once that bus is

117on the road uh and we report it to the state the state will reimburse us up to approximately right now i use a 70 number will reimburse a 70 over the following five years after it's on the road so when we get this electric bus on the road um say we got an electric bus next year it gets on the road next you know winter then starting an fy 24 will get reimbursed uh over five years for that um for that cost and can i just ask how long does it take to get on the road and why does it take that long yeah it's taking because truthfully it's such a new technology all the inspections i was talking to ian and john about it all the new inspections just it takes it's not even

118like weeks it feels like it's taking two months we got this in november and it's still not on the road just to all the requirements from um the state and uh and everything and ian feel free to add yeah it'll be it'll be quicker in the future but it's just because it's so new the inspectors are kind of like training on it almost and they're going through to make sure it meets all the state laws thank you the other tricky part about oh sorry court uh the other tricky part about the reimbursement is we front load the money and then the state pays us back over time so that's always worth just considering that you're going to front load 300 some thousand it's not like some of the way other subsidies work where it's an

119automatic in our pockets we're only cat you know putting out a hundred thousand in cash so there's a cash flow potential challenge there for sure is that is the reimbursement i mean is that a sure is it a known or it's it it's an idealized it's uh like could be as much as right now it's a known uh depending if concord decides to get 10 new electric bus that buses that could change but right now it's a known we get reimbursed on it but not many uh regions are getting all electric buses it's a it's a known under current law yeah it could change if i heard you correctly it's region only correct and if i understood earlier tonight uh our two budget proposals call for putting a total of four diesel buses under lease

120on the road um the the issue i think we all have to live with as as as the town has to live with is this is a 12-year decision that it's going to make it harder to replace we're not going to replace these buses with electric for over a decade so we've we've made our pipeline problem a little bit worse anticipating more electrification so it is it is a heck of a dilemma it's not going to go down particularly well in some quarters of town i guess i have a couple of thoughts one is of course we all wish we could be buying electric buses that's that's a clear assumption um second of all i chapter 71 which is the reimbursement for regional districts from the state the intent of that is to motivate regionalization

121not to motivate sustainable transportation it's to offset the cost of transporting across multiple communities etc so i just i do think you're tempting fade a little if you push that too far i think they're because of the cost they're gonna they're gonna tighten that up and say excuse excuse me we're we're taking it to to a different purpose the other thing we are aware of and watching carefully and brian folds has been in touch with us who's such a strong advocate on this topic for us there's clearly going to be some federal money over the coming years here and he's pushing really hard to make sure the town in massachusetts accesses it so that is in its infancy conversation brian emailed a number of us at the town in schools this week about the process

122and how we need to be sure we're paying close attention and of course it's going to be full of bureaucracy um but it does seem like there's something for that ladies and gentlemen back to the committees members did i afford that nope yeah of course um so the one thing i'm a little confused about so there's no more vw money there may be another round but it's all stalled completely stalled i don't think we've been able to get more information i know we're trying to connect with amanda right can we just confirm that that she doesn't see anything coming on the horizon we can again but we have been ian and i have been doing our research on that and not that we don't see anything on the horizon i i truthfully think that you

123know due to all the shipping issues and everything until the pandemic is over um i i don't see that them continuing it until after but uh i'll i'll continue to research and i'll even um get back in touch with amanda and can you just do a back of the envelope char fuel charge the difference is it less or more expensive to fuel the diesel versus electric for the current price of diesel it's certainly cheaper upfront costs are obviously more but i can um i can get you some i'm not a hundred percent comfortable giving you exact but i i think i can just yeah a week in the life of or something like that yeah similar right something like that i can get you that yeah yeah i think maybe we're probably going to delegate

124that to john arena to do the best he can in a quick pass just knowing how stretched we are right now with everything he's comfortable poor so i know he he knows in his head yeah because he does daily yeah he lives it that's what i'm suggesting good i'd like to understand more about the implications best and worst case both of dialing back on the floor well jared and i have talked about this today um you do have a number of buses that are 2008 2009 vintage and i i can't stress enough the need to keep a reliable fleet running um four years ago this time on a day like today i was delaying the opening of school because we didn't have buses that would run in the cold so i just there's a lot

125of caution there on getting off track of the replacement cycle that uh we worked really you know hard and purposefully to build so that's that's some of my thinking it's just making sure you know you know well we're not talking about conquer but we kind of are talking transportation so what would be the implications of cutting to one bus in each district versus two i just uh we would just have to catch up in a later year uh to keep our 10-year replacement cycle so each right now we have it built in uh approximately two buses per district per year so if we were to reduce one in each it would be something that we would look to probably make up next year if not the year after but maybe even next year or it

126would be looked it might be something that i would come to you all at the end of the year and say we have potentially surplus funds but as as dr hunter said it's just really important to to keep the cl the fleet is as current as we can just due to those issues that she mentioned it actually happened in my first year as well um that the uh it was so cold like a day today like today that buses were taking too long to start up and we had a delay school but five years ago the fleet was much more aging i mean much much much more so it is good that we caught up yeah and we you know we were in a terrible situation where we were storing them and acting and you

127know so they were getting so much more mileage on them than they currently are so we're in a much better place having made a huge investment in the depot in concord and preparing it to charge buses so i just want to sort of not get off the path where you know we're getting electric buses for two years so i think we just should try to do everything we could possibly do to perhaps delay i've read things where you can retrofit diesel buses so that might become an option um i just i think we need to be very creative and so since we have such a great resource in brian foltz i think we just need to work with him and our new sustainability director and really think about this harder because the town signaled to

128a town meeting many times about their dedication and you know commitment to sustainability so okay um any other thoughts comments questions uh sarah we have a likely meeting next week right if yeah yeah um could you need to see if people are available i think this is an important issue that we need to wrestle with as uh as thoroughly as we can we may we may land uh right back on the superintendent's initial recommendation but i think uh we and the administration would do well to really wrestle with it can i just ask a clarifying question here we're wrestling with this bus issue is that what you know i'm not sure that we're going to get any more information by next week certainly and i think that you know from my perspective you know i

129remember days that kids were getting transported off of buses because bus was broken down and that was fairly recent i know that the replacement uh schedule has come up and i i'm comfortable with the replacement schedule i don't think we're gonna have all the answers i mean i think about even like go to try and buy a car right now it's very difficult to buy a car i just think we're in a really challenging environment right now and i just i don't know that we'll have the answers as quickly as we probably want them right we still need to redo the budget because of the necco i mean deirdre so next week i think another 10 minutes uh hearing through jared what the transportation director would say were he to have to triage a little

130differently were he to see two or three new buses instead of three or four new buses would would be worth our time my concern is we're putting diesel on the road for over a decade those were they four four diesel buses they're four diesel buses that we're not going to replace for a long period of time um and we are going to see alternatives come our way uh in in in that next decade i think so you know i i looked at uh jared's two charts and then i looked at my own odometer and i know we've got our own mechanics i know we've got our own uh shop right in town uh i think we can do a little more diligence on this one myself so my question is so then it in in

131not pursuing our regular replacement cycle with the with the leases two and two in each region it would therefore necessitate well it would it would there for keep existing [Music] buses on the fleet that are set to be sunsetted if you will on the road for longer and then to tracy's point thereby potentially jeopardizing schedules and whatnot and and what would their then be the solution we would have to purchase electric buses at some determined time in the not too distant future and we have to grapple with the idea that we may or may not depending on the law changing be reimbursed for them is that true is that an accurate summary i i i don't think we necessarily know when those options are going to be available to us um if ever i think

132the immediate question that john arena would answer for jared is if he has four buses he's going to take off the road now he's only taken three off the road uh that bus that he's not taking off the road he's going to run it another 15 000 miles that seems to be our average like like a typical household car uh he's got to ask the question does he have confidence so we actually it's going to be a vehicle specific analysis i think yeah so we do we do have the back of the envelope but it's pretty close uh uh savings so it saves about 2k a year in fuel after the increase in electricity use is factored in so about 2k uh per electric bus so alexa might i'm not i'm hoping for many more

133options i'm hoping that the cost of the electric buses begins to come down as they're getting manufactured in much huger quantities um and that um from a health perspective the american lung association has come out to say that diesel buses are dangerous to the um unfortunately to the people riding and to the people driving them so um it's not just a sustainability it's it's a health issue and it's probably one of the biggest polluters in town so i i'm just hoping that maybe next year we have more options and we can maybe have access to electric buses because of a another federal program another state program more funding sources less expensive electric buses um and maybe it won't be and we'll have to do some catch-up with diesel which would be unfortunate in my opinion

134but um we're not going to vote the budget tonight because we don't have the final number we don't have a document to show the public with the final number because we need to make a few tweaks because of the dei director and we're going to have a more com difficult conversation at the concord public schools so i know it's only a week and we won't have a great deal more information but we're not going to vote tonight anyway just a quick question do we know if the state has anything in the works to purchase actually buses the electric buses they have an initiative coming down the pipeline um to reduce the cost for the districts because that's probably the only way um with higher numbers to decrease any cost from with speaking to any provider

135currently uh the co i'm told that there is not one cost that is going to go down whether it's for hvac your car for anything because of uh the pandemic uh they are not for seeing if the cost will not go up they're not foreseeing any costs to go down in a in in the foreseeable future well that stinks i don't think any of us are experts in this area so um but we're not going to vote tonight because we're we just got to make a few tweaks put aside the whole discussion about the buses right here just quickly you talked about the well and we can talk about it next week i guess uh just a little bit on maintenance would be good to know um sure um and that's it and i'll talk

136more more drawn and more with the mechanics but since we now have the buses and they're able to have worked on them um they've become experts um in these electric buses i know that some districts i want to say cambridge was sending their electric bus for us to work on and paying us for them um so i i think that i think the maintenance is actually cost minimal but you know i i i could be wrong because now that first electric bus that was always going back to canada let me get back to you on that but i know that our mechanics have become experts that's great because that was a that was a question is like do we have to hire somebody new or do somebody have to get trained in something or where

137are we um can i just ask a very silly probably silly question when it comes to maintenance is that what's the battery replacement on those electric buses because i heard uh in tesla's that it's like 32 000 in four years is there uh do we know those costs as well i can speak to that one so the costs are really high for a bus because they're much higher capacity but um for us our routes are so small we only use a small percentage of the battery every time so we don't really know how long they're gonna last but it's probably gonna last a lot longer than someone that's commuting a tesla driving you know 50 to 100 miles a day because our buses are usually especially electric ones they're not going that far every day

138so they're not draining their battery very far could i just ask a clarifying question just how what's the line between this discussion and the budget impact is there a proposal of changing numbers or edits i'm just wanting to be sure we're all linking back to the budget so that the vote next week has that connection already made ahead of it is there a proposal to drop the budget number if we don't get all the buses or increase for electric i'm just looking for a little bit of clarity because i don't we do need to vote the budget next week given jared's assurances that if the anticipated revenues fall short we have other means uh i think it's a calculated risk we could take this year i don't think we could take it every year but

139this year is quite unusual it's almost uh the the previous slide he showed us really reminds us that we in effect prepared for this eventuality i think so yes dr hunter is asking us do we have some members who would like to propose that we reduce the um bus leases to one bus i guess i'm not in favor of that because i didn't really see this coming until now um so i i think i think i need more information i'm not really sure where it's coming from so we're so we're sort of we need to have a final number i i completely respect that you don't have enough information right to vote next week so we could prepare two budgets i guess well i i guess more my question is is that i didn't know

140that the bus lease was up for discussion until tonight the potential and honestly tracy to me i wasn't really aware that there were two buses in the budget i kind of miss that okay because and jared correct me if i'm wrong we bought two diesel buses for each district last year correct this current year correct yeah yeah fy22 why um yes i believe we did yeah is he and that what we did ian does all the transportation yeah there's two in the budget this year two no what do we do for our flight 22 we leased at least yeah it's leasing yeah so these are for leases we bought what we did is at fy21 we bought an electric at the at the region um but we've been leasing um we've been leasing the diesel

141right so this would be two fiscal years with no electric buses and that to me doesn't really show our commitment and i completely respect tracy that you didn't have this information um so i'm just trying to figure out what to do we could prepare two budgets one with two buses and one with one i just want to be sure you know that a it's a 32 000 difference because the lease that's the cost of a lease per bus it's not money i think i think so no i understand but the the the timeliness of the money is what i'm worried about i don't know that i'm trying to see if i can separate out the two processes so you can have time to discuss buses while you still settle a budget next week and maybe

142you don't need to decide this and still vote a budget is what i'm wondering so vote a budget but sort of know that that may be that the bus issue may be something that comes down going because we can always come down you can always clean it but i just i have to make a clear statement that i am not supporting two buses so i have to think about it to be honest so just a point of verification just the point of clarification just so i know what the task is right now we gave four um suggestions to get to guideline are you not are you recommending that we in addition to do these four suggestions even reduce it to under guideline by the 32 33 000 or my recommendation is to if we reduce

143the um one of the buses i would probably take that off the circuit breaker offset and from 63 000 reduce that to 31 000 or do you want me to bring a budget that is going to be under the guideline i'm going to answer as the superintendent and say i don't think you should be cutting two buses right now so i i'm not bringing you that recommendation you can alter it at the vote if you'd like i think you need to give yourselves more time i think that's my bottom line piece leave the two buses in in the budget knowing you're going to have months ahead of you to keep talking about this you can lower the number before town meeting i'll just speaking for myself i think we need i know it's a terrible

144time with cobit and um but i just think we we need to have a better plan to electrify the fleet and that's not going to be next week i think that's another discussion but we need on a separate agenda and figure out how that is going to happen if it can happen well it's small stuff so but okay all right i think so jared i i think we're okay to i know what to tell you to bring and then they can talk on it next week wonderful good okay all right uh on to the capital plan yep great so really you're revisiting what you've already discussed here um similar with the debate of deciding if you're going to put a warrant article forward we need to make that decision in the next really next tonight

145or next week jared did we have any updated information this is all what they had in december yeah this is what they had yeah and they're they are working on um the roadway grade um we're working with allen on that um but this these numbers are um what we brought to you on the 17th have not changed there's two options we are looking into for granted if it can be reusable russ is on tonight and i think he can um he can speak to that he was on he wasn't yeah he will be back um third i don't think we need to know i mean this will be good if it brings the price down great if it doesn't so be it it just you know yeah and it may be that some pieces they

146don't know until you know until they're doing it but and so you know i don't every time we've had the discussion about ripley our regional members have not been present because it's been a concord discussion but i don't i do think we have to figure out a way to figure out what car last piece of the ripley so i had a meeting scheduled with tim goddard and carrie lefleur on the snow day that is now it's bumping into next week because our schedules are so full but they're both very happy to sit at the table with us and talk through how that ripley inc you know those ripply improvements might be managed which i think is where it sits i'm not sure you we don't really have a mechanism jared and i have talked a

147lot about this we don't really have a mechanism but i think the town leadership looks like they're very interested and willing to be part of the conversation okay i'll just perfect thank you so for sarah and for sarah and evan to that point the capital plan for concord has some paving at ripley to do some upgrades there and flooring at ripley next year and carlisle might be interest might be part of a small piece of that cost which i think is like a tenth of a i don't know it breaks down to a really small amount of money but so but that isn't your regional plan that's uh no no i just wanted every item yeah they're never here when we discuss it so now i'm glad you brought it up while they were here

148because we keep doing that where they're not here so good thank you all right so they they're the mechanics of how that would be brought forth as a to the carlisle because it's not it's so little money that like we're talking about thousand dollars maybe 10 yeah yeah we'll figure it out okay i think probably they'll figure it out yeah that that's a 60 40 split right then it's carlos portion right but it'll be carlisle's portion of the regional portion of the yeah it'd be more like eight to ten percent maybe less okay so it's a quarter of the 40 percent right all right so back to the road back to the granite back yeah back to the road i i support the article i want this high school complete before we start thinking about

149a middle school i completely agree with you court so i hope we get a bad grade yeah just so everyone knows what we're talking about the other day on the town meeting preview the dpw director in concord had these great slides of how they can rate different roads and it was very effective to show if you wait so long it costs you more to fix it which sounds obvious but he had some really great backup data to go with it so we've asked him to place the bd road or whatever loop road whatever we're calling it on the on the scale so i hope it's a d or f yeah i don't think that's going to be a stretch but we'll see we'll see okay um so if we've no more questions or comments on

150that i think we can then move to our action items uh action item a the vote to approve the budget will defer uh the vote to approve but i we can vote on the capital plan right now okay so is there a motion do we have language sir probably we want to get this one right because this is a dead authorization right so my suggestion let us bring you the warrant language article for next week okay we'll do everything we meant to do that and go through the crack we'll bring you that all right um so we'll go to the donation from looters environmental i can just talk on that quickly this is one of our vendors who i regularly ian will donate a small amount maybe annually yeah it's annually yeah so we're appreciative

151of course and i say every year there's no goods or services related to this that their contract is their contract and their donation is their donation and we've examined that and we've been comfortable with it in previous years our as dr hunter says grateful for their their beneficence correct all right i'll make a motion at the conquer carlos school committee votes to accept a 125 donation from looters environmental inc second discussion thank you very much many thanks anderson i for both booth i for both marana y for both mustafi i for region radii for both and wilson for region thank you um and we have another donation now to the cef donation to the sharon young scholarship fund so this is money cef had actually um designated a couple of years ago and the check

152is just getting to us and that's the explanation um the sharon young scholarship fund is a fund that was created to allow for subsidies of travel um for kids who needed it uh i'm having you know flashbacks to all our travel conversations the fun stills there there is other monies in it this um this would be part of that and when we can finally travel again we'll certainly revisit it and the scholarship fund is at the region is that correct correct okay so it's just a regional vote the regional vote sharon young those of you who don't know was principal at alcott with a really generous caring human heart that uh served all kids well and inspired inspired the creation of the fund because of the kids it contin you know it's going to serve

153at the high school so thank you cef yeah all right and tracy um i need to abstain from this vote because i was part of the creation of the fund okay all right so is there a motion sure i move that the conquer carlos school committee votes to accept a five thousand dollar cef donation to the sharon young scholarship fund i would just note that this is an equity uh contribution in a very real sense yeah please can i also just note that the last meeting that happened at the high school was to review the fund before the shutdown in march and how we're going to raise more money which seems comical now but it is really all about equity and it's about providing the opportunity for kids that wouldn't have this opportunity otherwise right

154it's awesome all right report it anderson aye for abstain mustafi i for region thank you radiate and wilson i for region thank you um and with that i'll take a motion to adjourn the sarah you've got one more public comment in your agenda i do have one more public comment okay uh so we'll go back to public comment if anyone has a comment to make at this time please raise your hand or make yourself known see none then i will accept emotion to adjourn the concur carla regional school committee meeting it's not moved second roll call anderson i ran away thank you concord will stay in session right yes we will good night all right so our first agenda item is the cms building project update discussion because we're meeting on the 18th we will

155have one more meeting before town meeting and we will uh the town moderator is trying to keep a very tight meeting i'll say that um and so i we will have the opportunity to make a very short um statement um so i'll just leave that there we have not crafted anything yet um and i don't believe it will be lengthy by any means um is there any more discussion around that and we'll let our liaisons tell us if there's been any activity at the building committee level well i think alexa can speak to a very robust schedule of outreach uh gatherings which we've been getting good feedback on if you want to go there election sure i'd like to come back to your your reference to uh what we bring to the special town meeting

156after that cynthia yep um yeah no from a communication standpoint we are in the absolute last throws of our outreach um i'm happy to report you know we weren't sure if people were gonna come this late in the game especially um given that the finance committee in particular has thrown their support behind the project and the warrant amount but they keep coming not the numbers that we were experiencing early in the fall but there are there are bodies on these zooms live and kicking um so that's nice to see we have two more one tomorrow one thursday um and then we're calling it the last chance coffee next wednesday the day before town meeting in case there are um stragglers we are also in the process of sharing um as much as we can on

157social media at this point just trying to remind people of the town meeting and and the vote itself and then i think it will be appropriate after that to remind people of the february um third vote uh and again everybody is um very appreciative of the outreach and the transparency so i think we're in i think we're in good shape there i got my finance committee report there yeah i got mine as well i think we'll need to remind people at every public opportunity we have that some precinct lines have changed and people aren't going to necessarily go to where they've been voting for many years um it'll be a good test of the system that's for sure yeah um i'm not sure how i want to approach this and certainly don't know how the

158committee wants to approach this if at all uh um i fully expect us to uh vote affirmative action i don't think that's too debatable we've been supporting this uh long long before anybody else um you know goes back a number of years now um i am not comfortable with the continued uncertainty about our efforts to be net zero um net zero is a far cry from net zero ready and uh i'm hopeful that we'll learn something tomorrow at the light plant board meeting um but i don't know if we'll have anything more than uh speculation about what might or might not happen not not when or how that concerns me um for a lot of reasons one because i think concord has a necessary sustainability goals number two because we want the most sustainable school

159that we can get we haven't cut any corners on education to say the least in terms of how we've designed this i would hope we don't cut corners on sustainability so we're going to need some commitments um i also think it's wise to make certain that the public knows that we didn't really finish value engineering because we didn't finish our homework the town has as much as eight hundred thousand dollars hanging in the balance in terms of where soil goes around town uh has over a hundred thousand dollars uh hanging on testing water pressure at the site and uh has uh a possible greater chunk of saving now there's been some 221 thousand thus far for acoustical fencing [Music] that requires evaluation of the noise making capacity of the units and therefore the design of

160acoustical fencing on the roof all of these add up to a potential million dollars and i think it's important this school committee and the town keeps that on their radar that we've got some necessary homework thank you court so i have similar concerns about the solar or we just don't know and again we'll tune in in a few hours to the light board meeting at 7 30 and see if we could get a little more information i doubt we'll get a lot more information before town meeting but i think we don't want to burden a future potential school committee with um having to deal with this because we didn't get get things going so i i i'm going to be optimistic and hope that you know we can start to work together with the light

161board and um the light plant and get some traction on this cynthia what do you explicitly sort of see our role in that being other than encouragement and support it's a concord public school it's not part of it's not you know a town building it's in school building so and we do want to have solar in some capacity there to um support our investment and having it be net zero ready right yep so i think it's in it's not the building committee's job so the next obvious person to work with the life plant on this would be the school committee and the administration you mean like to hustle them along so to speak well yeah right i i was just i'm just again we had talked earlier about expertise like i just i was literally

162being like what would be our role right and it's it's complicated right because the light plant's an enterprise for a good reason so their objectives and goals are similar but how they achievement how they achieve them financially are different so we just want to try to get an understanding as to how we're all going to do this whether it be you know concurrent you know or got to finish the school and do this after we just kind of want to know what the plan is that's all we do know that there is enough sincerity about this that the town has spent some sum of money on external consultants right um so one that says there's a commitment but two it actually adds to our confusion because the sketches that we saw would generate far in

163excess of the school's needs so it's quite unclear to me where where the light plant might want to go on this what they need for their their return on investment and how they would achieve uh managing the expenditures and how they would time this you know i'll repeat what i said at the outset i i don't want to be working on this in five years um i was just talking more in a literal sense of what we would literally do apart from championing it is there like like we can't provide oversight onto a different town like i i just again i just so that i'm prepared for what i may be at what the lift might be other than being a champion for it is there anything like literally nuts and bolts that we can

164do well i think we have to enter into some kind of agreement as we get closer to this becoming a reality so an agreement that would detail like what what uh how much solar it's the all the financial pieces right yeah yeah okay got it how much we'll pay right but that's once okay got it okay this stuff is really complicated that's all i know and i know less than you apparently so so you know um it's just sort of like we're not just like a bystander or uh you know um we sort of have to be i think an active participant in a good way um to just define our roles and responsibilities that's all so we're just it's just beginning so i think you know so i'll answer the question uh my way

165just my personal belief and that is our declaration of support for this could also include our declaration that we uh uh are uh eager and expectant uh around uh solar generation on the site and we uh don't want momentum lost right you know the farther this gets away from the building committee the farther this gets away from the uh the construction the more there are opportunities for logistical disconnects you know think about think about uh you know renovating piecemeal or uh doing something at initial construction they're fundamentally different even even though uh we are of a mind that this is going to be solar ready on the rooftop uh beyond that we don't know although light plant has consultant designs for generation beyond 65 percent building need rooftop capacity so there's a lot to be

166worked out and as cynthia says probably it's an understatement it is complex and the light plant would work with a number of uh subs and intermediaries even financing intermediaries i think i think you're right all right so court just as a uh but are you suggesting anything specific for language at town meeting or well yeah that's uh i i think i i think that the town needs to hear that the uh the vote we're looking for doesn't include solar but don't worry the project will i you know i i want to bring i want to bring that confidence to the town i guess i guess you know from my perspective it's just a town meeting we're going to bring this project forward and we're going to support it in the affirmative i'm a little bit

167concerned that once we get into all the weeds of all of this that that gives the appearance that we're not in support of it when we are in support of it so i just think we have to be really careful about um you know where we're going to the town with this and then at the next point i mean this is a work in progress this nothing has even happened yet right and so i think we obviously support solar and we support all the initiatives but there are a lot of questions out there and i just would hate for that to get muddled into a lot of discussion around the vote i'm not imagining a lot of discussion what i'm imagining is coming clean with the the knowledge that we know the building isn't quite

168complete right but that can be interpreted as we need more money which is zones right and we do the rating we do we do whether it's the you know electric rate payers or you know a capital article down the line i don't know i mean i i think it's just don't want to make the mistake of of you know what we do with the bus depot which is it doesn't yeah it doesn't make our support conditional no no it makes our support accurate in to my mind that's just one opinion yeah it's it you could go the opposite way tracy that it could be interpreted as a don't worry we know right as long as that's articulated with clarity i think that that's okay yeah and and that this school committee is keen on it

169as uh doubtless is the building committee or they wouldn't have made it net zero ready um you know i mean everybody's in favor of it so we're not really introducing anything new and to alexa's point you know we're not trying to hold the project hostage to this what we're saying is we know there's going to be uh another chapter right so we're being transparent in our process moving forward right looking for just clarity and being transparent in the process yes absolutely whatever confidence we have we want the town to have sure and i think again can we all examine that language because i think to tracy's point or i'm interpreting tracy's point but my interpretation of tracy's point is stakeholders who are keenly invested in sustainability initiatives versed in all of this nuance at least

170i think given you know as as in even in my limited role as communications co-chair it's a it's an actively engaged group um they it appears to me that the different various groups in town and their memberships are are very clear on the timeline the narrative and all these specifics who people who are less invested in the sustainability initiatives and more invested in the educational aspect of it are probably less aware of these nuances and details and i just maybe tracy was trying to say this but what we just need to make sure that we really nail the language so that it does not confuse people um again because i do think that you'll have people at town meeting who are you know lower information voters i don't know if that's a nice way to

171put it um but so again i just think as long as the language is very succinct and clear and is not and does not have the effect of confusing people i think that's fine and hopefully the light board will make this easier for us tomorrow than it would be were we to do it today so so accord after even better so after tomorrow's meeting it could be nothing it could be something we'll find out could you perhaps put together some wording to be part of a statement um and we review at our next meeting yeah i'll put something together that can uh i hope reflect what i'm hearing from the four of us yeah yeah i know you know i hear tracy's concern that you know stuff can get misinterpreted you know that we that

172advocacy for uh completion of the school with solar could uh make our uh support look conditional um and that would be a disaster right we don't want it it can't be it can't be conditional because we can't we can't hold the light board an enterprise fund to uh our wishes um all we can do is uh uh reflect our hope that uh this is going to be a streamlined process yep yeah but i definitely think the sentiment that you know we don't we're not pointing out something that the building committee forgot or ignored or um wasn't willing to invest and that's not what we're saying here we're saying that we just want to be clear that we do want solar and we're going to work with the light plant to get to that but i'm

173sure court can ward smith something that's clear and not with an opinion well and you know back to tracy your point i think uh we don't dictate any other boards and if it was uh if it was interpreted that way that's kind of antagonistic and inappropriate on our part so i'll try to be very mindful of that yeah yeah that would be great if we could see that and just have another discussion about that at our next meeting yep and then we'll see where it goes yeah okay thank you very much okay so we're on to the budget all right i'm happy to open it up a bit just to remind you where we left off absolutely uh so we've brought you a recommended budget which jared's got the number there the finance committee has

174voted their guideline the guidelines stayed the same as the preliminary guideline so we do have a current delta of 46 848 which with the little bit of the moving pieces we've talked on tonight might actually go up a little um we did some work up prior to the december meeting to see what we could recommend um so we we're holding to these recommendations uh with the 90 000 reduction from the metco supplemental sped grant and then some bit of risk taking with circuit breaker to um offset with 75 000. so that would close the delta to the 321 848 that you see there and so that's where we are tonight um we have a little longer the concord warrant closes february first week in february so you actually have both the 18th and the 25th

175for discussion lori not that it's an hour bucket but jared have you talked to carrie lafleur what is her chapter 70 number i know it's not going to help us but is it going to help her the one that she puts in is probably very conservative lower than what it's probably i gotta check it out it's probably a little bit lower right now than what the governor is going to come up with and they might adjust it um i'll take a look usually we're both since there are budgets to do before the governor's budget comes out it's we're both very conservative um we do that on purpose both of us and i'm just hearing a lot of chatter that there's just a lot of money at the state level so we'll hope that's true for

176the region um but yeah that can't help us so um i i guess my question is this so it seems like we've offered what is this 165 000 off the top here in ways that you guys feel comfortable with right um my assumption is this is sort of a like we've offered something in good faith and i know that the finance committee keeps a different kind of schedule than we do but you know is is should our expectation be that they would in good faith come come back to us i'm concerned that they had their preliminary guideline and sort of stuck with it um because that would seem to be to me in any negotiation sort of the next step it is unbelievable yeah the town's getting some bad news financially their free cash is

177way off so i'm not as optimistic about um this negotiation uh so and the other thing is a town put their needs aside for a couple of years especially the roads um so they're playing catch-up um so they're asking you know to do that um and if you've driven around concord last couple days yeah you're not got some problems so um and i just don't know if the local receipts will continue in this downward trend um i i think with omicron i think we're not going to finish out the numbers could be this good even though we were pretty healthy through the you know fyes but i don't know so i'm concerned that's going to be a big factor here and it impacts all of us right if receipts are down um it's it's you

178know taxpayer and mostly property tax but there is the receipt thing which is the cherry um [Music] so i don't know they've not met since we've you know they set their guide and then we've begun this process so we'll have to see yeah so and i guess um you know i am new to the budget season but i i do feel it's our duty and a responsibility to advocate for the students of this district because we are their only advocates and well i understand there's a guideline i mean i think this is the time that our kids need us more than ever and whether we're talking about academics mental health student achievement all of that rolls into what's happening right now and i think that i guess i would ask laurie jarrett is there anything

179else that you could find in the budget at this point that you would recommend or is is this kind of where you're getting out yeah this is this is where we're netting out right now um we did go back through we took some risks already uh in staffing with some projected retirements that we don't have in hand yet um i think there are safe risks but i'm not comfortable going farther uh there's a risk here with the circuit breaker offset with special ed um we've already trimmed supplies and materials so we're it's a it's tight it's a tight budget we don't i don't have another spot right now to recommend not at least on january 11th can i ask a quick question um and i should know this so pardon me has the finance committee

180seen our 165 000 okay so they've seen it they have nothing here yeah um right yeah okay so to again i'll go back to you know i think about buying a home somebody lists the price you put in your offer and then the next step would be the seller let's call the finance committee the seller wouldn't they come and counter and i know cynthia you said you're not optimistic but you know i think we need to give the process a few months you know the governor's budget which is a factor in all this especially it's more at the region but for the town is a factor get a better you know look at what the financial outlook is so i think it's going to be a process okay so i don't think any of uh

181any entities should dig in and say you know we're done and you know got it we can get off with our 165 is that sort of what i'm understanding well the superintendent has said that that's right now her position um and as we said to the region we can always go down yeah and the finance committee can always come up so um you know we'll just i think we have to kind of see how things go you know we don't have a lot of revenue so but again as i said the town will have revenue from the government state um and we'll just have to watch the local receipts the 165 is exclusively a revenue recalculation am i correct so it could be said that we haven't found any any additional efficiencies within our budget

182what we've done is uh recalculated revenues as as better offsets than before a question that'll come up again i think we should ask now i think there are eight new ftes here most of them are not teachers um i think these are all program-driven student-need-driven not enrollment change-driven um are we projecting uh static enrollment for next year as compared to this we're watching it carefully right now um kindergarten being the wild card that we're just beginning to register uh it can it could be that we're gonna be able we're gonna be down another section or two we've taken some gambles there and budgeted based on what we know so we've already trimmed one elementary section expecting enrollments will be down enough that we can do that so there's another risk we've already taken that it

183you know last year we did have to add back in the summer and use contingency to do that so we we already we have already looked at that i wouldn't go any deeper and the mecco grant is just a one-time this year yeah so those yeah those could come back into the budget next year and same with just so just a point of clarity the circuit breaker offset is not technically additional revenue what we would do is we would so say i'm projecting 800 000 uh i'm increasing that to say 875 000 just using those numbers um when i don't believe that we're going to be getting 800 000 but we're going to have carryover that we would dip into so this would we would have to potentially make this up um but it doesn't

184have to meet up in one year so we either have new money or carryover money right in any event we can pull it out of the appropriation request we did this three years ago if you remember to build the special ed programs we counted carry over to for new hires and it worked out great and we were able to make it up in a few years yeah so jared if you could send out a new slide just reflecting this current state of affairs with the di in and then just so the finance committee has this sure i don't know when they meet again i'll have to go look i think is this i don't think they meet this week and they wouldn't meet maybe it's gonna be after town meeting now just as an fyi

185my link in the agenda takes us to the uh 100 level uh spreadsheet not the slides yep that's what i'm saying i think we need to redo them we do the concord slide and send it around and that's the full line item budget not the 100 level that 100 level is the um that's the first segment but that is the full budget that is linked yeah the slides are not right right okay thank you yeah as as granular as we typically see we'll tweak the slides and get them to you for discussion next week and as information to the finance committee chairs yeah and if we could look at the the options that you did debate and didn't bring forward that would be helpful yeah i can write them down i think we named the

186big buckets of you know staffing which is always retirements and enrollments uh special ed which is always tuition and services and then supplies and materials there's not a lot of other pockets to go to in the cps budget so and also if you could redo the regional slide with the change in the dna directory salary yeah we will a little so tonight so we have two more meetings before we before our deadline right um so wait do we meet next week i don't i gotta get my look at my account yeah we're trying to add one for next week okay so we it's kind of a save the date placeholder if you can make a date i thought i saw that on email okay i just forgot okay next week yes and i'm gonna say

187definitely over zoom okay just friday this week busy week yes indeed okay any more discussion on the budget no i i'm thankful we have two more meetings to work on it yep okay um i will entertain a motion to adjourn unless there's any more business so moved so great i'll second that okay i'll call please anderson i verano i and rainey i thank you all thank you lori thank you jared sorry it's a late night try to go thank you okay thank you thank you very much you