Concord Finance Concord School Committee February 15, 2023

001so I will call to order the meeting of the Concord finance committee and I'll call to order on when on Wednesday February 15th and I'll call to order the Concord school committee on Wednesday February 15th so our agenda today is to review the school budget to um mainly mainly on the Concord Public School side and look at how that will hopefully come to terms or have a relationship with the guidelines presented by the finance committee we are off right now by about five hundred and eighty three thousand dollars and there are many reasons for that just uh I'll step back a little are there many reasons for that we all understand them we are interested in hearing more detail from the school side and providing an opportunity for the finance committee to review and ask

002detailed questions so that we can work toward a a mutual solution to the budgets prior to town all town meeting which is in April and with that I'm going to turn it over to fairchar who is the guideline chair of the finance committee [Music] it's a little awkward slides um but in the meantime um first of all thank you for having us here today as as part of the annual process as well uh I had a couple slides I wanted to share and hopefully I'll get them up I can't promote them for some reason um but what we're hoping to do today is to better understand um Public Schools historical and upcoming Trends both Financial as well as strategic and outcomes performance um because that'll be helpful as we consider the broader challenges facing the

003town uh from a financial perspective over the next few years uh so today we're looking forward to understanding as I said the Strategic plan the progress uh that we've made in meeting the Strategic plan objectives uh what work lies ahead because I think at just 18 or 19 through 23 strategic plan uh and the anticipated costs that we're going to face to hit those strategic milestones and plan metrics so hopefully during the discussion we'll have an understanding of both the financial Trends as well as the outcomes for the school and as I said I've got a couple slides to share but um parisha can you send them from your phone to Bob and then he could well that's what I'm going to try to do so uh the problem I didn't have them on my

004phone I had them on my computer which is uh so let me let me see what I can do to send them over there um but maybe in the meantime I'll just share with you kind of high level the trends that we saw uh The Five-Year growth rate in total spending if you take a look at the budget books right for CPS uh was 3.7 percent and so that was basically from fiscal year 2019 through fiscal year 2024. uh and then if you take a look at the growth rates from fiscal year 2024 through 2028 that you all provided in the fall uh the the kegger was 2.8 and so you know one of the questions that we had now I think that's good news frankly so if the keger's dropping uh what steps are

005we anticipating that the schools will take to to lower the gross rate uh the the rate in in spending the growth rate and spending so that that's good news I think that's one uh big picture and then second uh there were a number of Grants and revolving funds that were understandably used during covet right I mean we received a lot of funds uh we used them on the store assuming that those funds were the grants were one-time grants that were used over several years and so I think we would presumably expect a little bit of a decline in the grants if you will uh and to go back to almost steady state maybe a little bit higher than what we've had in the past but as we take a look at the numbers we're actually

006seeing a slight increase and so just kind of curious maybe you can remind us maybe why the grants of revolving funds and the circuit breaker numbers those offsets continue to increase through 2028 because we would have expected a dip if you will right um and then as you'll see terms of the outcomes based both of what you all shared Monday your Monday meeting as well as work that some members of the fincom have done you know we're kind of in the middle of the pack if you will and I think this goes and that's neither good or not or bad I'm not making a um I'm not passing judgment on it but when you compare our standings with other towns we're not the top we're not the bottom we're we're in the middle and whether

007that's good or bad I think it'd be great to hear your perspectives and then tying it back to the Strat plan you know are we comfortable with where we are and again not making any judgments or do we strive to improve or or not just hearing those perspectives and tying it back to perhaps if we think we should improve if it it's reasonable to improve because sometimes they're spending you know boatloads of money and maybe that's why they've got high performance but what are we planning to do what what are what's our thought process there and how again how does it tie back to the overall trends that we're seeing in the future so hopefully we can have some conversations to help the finance committee better understand some of these aspects so I don't know

008do we want to ask others I know the school committee and finance committee other members to just chime in if they've got additional thoughts uh sure I think it might be valuable to I know you weren't able to share your slides um we do have an extensive amount of data that's been very specifically curated to answer I think a lot of these questions that I think we would like to present in order to create a base level Foundation of knowledge that we can all operate from um so from my perspective that would probably the best be the best way to kick off before we get into the questions so that again we're kind of all operating from the same set of knowledge I I think it might be useful to if there are any members

009of the finance committee that have a burning question in addition to how Parish our summarized it um that you might want to put on the table this would be a good time to do it so that as the school committee is responding don't you know we will have already asked some questions rather than asking them after um the information has been presented so is there anyone here I know I've certainly received a lot of emails from members um does anyone want to put anything on the table to specifically um or response today or well okay I think we can only do that too and you're good good to go okay um with that we're gonna have Dr Hunter um review all of the data about many of the things that Parish are discussed today against

010and I think that's will be a really good jumping off point for um our discussion and debate so I will turn it over to Dr Hunter if court before you begin the presentation could you share from the school committee's perspective for the audience where the school committee stands vis-a-vis the budget sure um so our the superintendent and her administrative team came to us initially in December um with their recommended budget the year-over-year increase for that budget was 5.01 um we we put together that budget after the finance committee goes through their process to determine what they think an appropriate guideline is um they their guideline your guideline I believe I came in at about 3.4 percent is that right 3.1 3.3 okay okay so they came in at about 3.3 percent so that left us

011with a real dollars Delta in the 700 000 range um in the time between uh that December um presentation of our first budget at 5.01 increase year over year um our administrative team went back combed through the budget one more time they were able to to identify two places where um we could find money to offset this Delta we were able to come up with about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars which leaves our new budget our new recommended budget at a 4.7 increase and in real dollars that's about 585 000 over what the finance committee um is recommending to us so that's where we are today um and Lori Hunter is going to be here to sort of um I'll just be open honest and transparent try to try to help um the community

012and the finance committee understand um you know why we feel this budget is the appropriate budget um to satisfy the demands of our students and community um so with that I will turn it over to Lori if no one else has any questions yeah I have to log into the zoom I have your slack maybe we can just do that for two minutes because eventually it'll set the stages the other thing I want to do is I want to make sure that the numbers that I the growth rates I talked about are based on Act uh accurate numbers I pulled some of them from the slides you guys presented on Monday but I just want to make sure that we're all in agreement of what the actual numbers are um rather than finding out later

013we've got numbers that don't match so appreciate the patience well that's coming up Alexa in reference to the 150 000 uh that we have uh seen identified that we can use as offsets um just again for clarification for the audience that uh hasn't uh determined a new Budget on the part of the school committee yet all of these are discussions underway yes I think it's important that people know that we haven't changed our December number as of yet no we did we voted on to accept those two recommendations disagree we voted to accept the report we have not adopted a new budget just for clarification thank you simply because it's a work in progress I think that was our premise am I am I correct indeed what happened uh we we agreed to accept the

014memo which was 150 000 less but we didn't actually technically vote a new budget but we agreed to accept those Savings of 150 000. so we agree as a committee that those are appropriate savings all set yeah share my screen foreign [Music] a full-size version one second sorry spotted stuff you could do it that way and magnify it just go here and throw it up a little bit you can move it while we're waiting for that I would I would like to say that our rankings and academic performance comparisons with other towns is um very interesting um extremely important but there's years and years of build chop background in those numbers which I think would be hard to I know um Don you've done dug into this others have really dug in this is people

015are digging in 20 years ago I I am more interested frankly in looking at this year's budget and seeing how we can start to bring it back closer to our guidelines I um I think there are too many variables when we compare to other communities demographics historical budget I think we've in the past trying to figure out if there are differences in the way other communities account for certain um costing um so I I it's very interesting it's a subject that's been on the table here for at least 20 years as far as I know probably before that um I I guess I I would prefer to focus on what we're looking at for next year's budget and how we can moderate that and start to taper off any further growth if I just comment

016I'd say I undertook of the analysis that I did because I wondered if the if that could show some reasons why we need to spend above guidelines if our spending per pupil was out of sync with other towns that would be an argument for raising devoting more resources or secondly if if the school committee feels that there is a an issue that we need to address in our performance relative to other towns and therefore we need to spend additional money for a certain amount of town for additional math resources or something but I haven't heard that but that's why I dug into that see where are we really and is there some something going on that we need to spend money on thank you Don and it is a excellent question that we should dig

017into sure and and I specifically asked for this data to be brought to the public I think for two reasons one um again so that we're all operating from the same set of data um all of the data that we use is Desi data so it's not our own data it's not data that's curated one way in one District in another way you know this is all very uniform this the Department of Education applies the formulas that give us this data so I think that's important and the second thing is I did want to make sure to to show that our you know that our performance is strong and and then two things led me to talk about the rankings in academic performance or asked that at Dr Hunter to do that was one that

018um in you in your meeting for whatever reason you guys used um Regional data to talk about your arguments so it was important for me that even though this meeting is CPS focused that we were able to bring to you the narrative to to address what was talked about in your meeting so that's the most important thing and then number two just so the community has an understanding because we did get some feedback from community members after that meeting that there was confusion about um performance in the schools relative to all that so I do think that it's important that we have the opportunity to address that so this however looks long it's really brief I promise you that um and and then we can go into our discussion of CPS and the other thing

019too that's really interesting is the success of CPS and the budgets at CPS are what eventually create these outcomes um so you know so in in a way they're they're really married anyway um so to to separate them um while I understand for the purposes of our discussion makes a lot of sense I do think this this is really relevant because it speaks to um the foundation we're giving kids at CPS to ultimately um achieve at the high school level so I think all of those things are kind of important so um we will be brief with it but I do have the opportunity let's do it okay well you got your first can you just uh put that in the screen mode so that folks can read it and see it and we'll make

020copies available too um if you just go to the next slide Bob so I know it's hard to see back there but basically the second column 2019 the total spend was 40.8 million dollars and then if you go to fiscal year 2024 I think the current request and I don't know whether this incorporates 150 I took it off the Monday slides I think was four is 49 million dollars basically and so on an average annual growth rate that's about three that's three point seven percent a year there's a slight decrease in 23 and then an increase to about 4 4.1 percent in 2024 and then when you take a look at the projected growth rate as I said earlier from fiscal year uh 24 through 28 it's 2.8 percent right and I just want to

021make sure that those numbers are accurate and based on what I think either Lori or Bob presented just a couple days ago um particularly the growth rate because for going from 3 7 to 2.8 that's great and again try to better understand how we get there would be helpful yeah I think the other question that we had Dr Hunter is at the discussion on Monday I think I think Carrie you asked the superintendent you know what do you think it is going forward and I think the percentage was four percent so that's why we're trying to kind of how do we reconcile that with the projections data that we had well I think we just want to be sure to clarify that the top row and obviously we're just looking at it live with you

022here so we're interpreting as we sit here the top row is gross it doesn't factor in the grant offsets so if you factor in the grant offsets our increases have been 3.6 well so that's the third row right so okay third row basically it does the math but just again starting right because that does that gets to the second question that I raised around the grants right you could see the big increase from 3 million to 4 million from 21 to 22. again covid related I think a lot of those were maybe one-time grants used over a couple years I understand there's revolving accounts and circuit breaker built in but if there was an injection of Grants and they're not going to occur in the future you'd presumably see a drop in the grants and

023yet we're seeing you know the grants continuing at 4.2 4.3 4.4 so trying to better understand what you're anticipating in terms of future grants is that being built in or are you anticipating offsets from higher fees for athletics and all that because that then ultimately gives us a sense of how much we can we need from General I think we're going to answer a lot of these questions if we go through our slides and then we can Loop to the ones we don't at the end I just want to be sure for clarity our percentage increases since 20 have been three percent 3.5 2.3 3.1 we've been those are at the bottom but again those percentages I will push back a little bit our net of these one-time grants and exclusively so I think we'll

024explain fair enough and if you take a look at the cost structure on the first line that's the true cost structure growth okay right that's what that is we're here to talk about the impact on the town soon enough and so if you go to the next slide right this is something I think uh Don had put together and again you know just the facts and these are I think many of the same towns one set of metrics around spending per pupil and then whether or not the percent meat succeeds or neither the highest or not the lowest as I said we're the middle and then the next slide I think from the presentation on Monday is pretty much the same right we're not the highest we're not the lowest we're in the middle and

025again your perspective of whether hey we want to do better we want to increase by 10 percent increase to 15 all of that I think would be helpful again to place in context as Don said you know where where do we anticipate having to spend more money less money Etc so I think that's what we're here to answer we've got a lot of information especially that sets the context for some of the major questions we have foreign so in response to the questions about performance which as Alexa said started as Regional questions we did pull uh an overview of the high school performance most recent performance I think too we want to connect this to a very public piece of information that is just completely erroneous which is this year's Boston Magazine's rankings of having

026us at 33 at 33. we're going to detail why that's wrong in a minute here and explain it while we give you the data to show that the high school is still very high performing I'm going to push back a little bit on the questions about where in the middle of the pack and all because context and structure matter are you going to be able to get Boston magazine to I'm going to talk on hey I'm working on getting them to change it but it's a a red tape nightmare frankly so more to come Kevin uh so just to mention that and then the data all comes out of the formula Boston magazine uses which is the Desi published data and we've learned a lot about where Desi gets their data from which was eye-opening

027sometimes it comes from us and other times it does not so we always assumed it was data we fed them and it just simply isn't always so here's the the top 10 districts this year and we've fell to 31 I think it's a 33 who 31 instead um one metric that is used in the formula is class size and you can see where were we in the previous years we used you said we fell coming in one of the slides if you don't mind holding on so the class size is one piece of the metrics that they use this is accurate we are up at 19 ish at the high school overall I am actually not confident in the numbers that are here because if you look at Hingham they're under 10 per in class

028sizes that's just completely not logical we checked the deci page they're up at something more in the teens so the validity of all this is debatable for sure but the 19 is accurate we have had a little gross in class size at the high school that we thought was both educationally effective and cost effective teacher ratio is another metric the Boston magazine uses you can see we are there at 12.3 that is our understanding of where we are at we're con comfortable with where those those numbers are and we think the others are accurate from what we could tell at first glance uh grade 10 MCAS Ela 91 of our kids were meeting or exceeding expectations you can see that's um on the upper upper echelon of the performance scale of the districts under comparison

029math was more in the middle range and I'm just going to stress this is the middle range of the top 10 districts in the state I think that's part of what I want to keep saying this afternoon when we say we're sliding to the middle range we're not sliding to the middle of the state we're we're moving around within the top 10 districts in the state so let's just frame it as contextual that way um the ones we actually value more than MCAS which we could have a whole presentation about MCAS which we're not going to do this afternoon SATs which are a nationally normed test and much more standardized than MCAS is uh we're performing at very high levels both in ela as you can see there and in math so we're really feeling

030great there and then the one that I think we're most proud of partly because we do this while maintaining our core values that everything is not about advanced placement courses and don't even offer them in the humanities of social studies in English but our kids still take the test in all sorts of areas include the ones we offer and the ones we don't and you can see that they are acing them when they take them and we're really excited by what that looks like and what that says about the rigor of the curriculum graduation rate no surprise to anyone here that we graduate essentially all of our students percent to college this one I'm going to spend a minute on because if you read the text box Boston magazine used a number of 72.3 percent

031of the kids in the class of going to college everyone in this room knows that can't possibly be true we did our data dive here to Kathy's question on how do we undo this because the answer is really 91 in talking with Boston magazine they sent me to Desi Desi sent me to the student data Clearinghouse which is in National Organization that collects data from high schools and colleges and I'm now working with the student data Clearinghouse to see if I can get them to get the accurate number in place and then I have to make my way back through that chain from student Clearinghouse to Desi to Boston magazine we're five months into this I look at Tracy because she's been very engaged we're five months into this effort to correct it and um

032gotten as far as direct engagement with student Clearinghouse who now won't upload the new data through the email they gave us but now we need to do it through a portal we have to be sure we have access to so everything's slow and complicated for one second so this has been going on since September 1st um and we have been trying to change it since September 1st and I think the the point is it's not fair to our students or our teachers because they worked hard for this and they should be recognized for that and over the past 10 years we've done a lot of looking into Boston magazine we have been top 10 until this year there's one year I think we were 18th but um when you look into what they're looking at

033if they don't for example in 2020 no one took MCAS but every single Town had MCAS course in the Boston magazine it's completely impossible so what they do is they go to a prior year they recalculate it according to how you perform the prior year so just I guess my my big ask is we are a high performing District we are high performing K to eight we are high performing at the region and there's really no place else to go we are in the top ten and I think especially K-8 we look at whole child and it's not just about a test score but it is about the whole child that's crazy another piece of the metrics is results of educator evaluation we have some very strong staff which is reflected here this is the

034grid with the overview I do think it's a few things to highlight off of this and these are the data points they include per pupil spending and I have such struggle with this with all the equity work we're doing per pupil spending factors into the ranking so by default and I think especially in front of the finance committee there's a counter purpose there the more we spend the higher the ranking could be I don't think that's the message you want me to take away this afternoon so um rankings always have to come with a grain of salt there there's also a lot of other factors in the rankings including selling magazines and you know that sort of thing so in closing we feel really really comfortable and proud of what our kids are doing and

035incorrect data is feeding into some erroneous pieces and I think we've talked already about context and we're going to go a lot deeper dive into the contextual elements at K8 because that is what we're here to talk about so that's that is that set of information yeah yeah when you see it when you look at all from my seat as a school Community member the metrics that matter which are student achievement metrics yep we're in the top five of everything so to suggest that from a success perspective of our kids who like Tracy said have worked so hard for this and the teachers who support them in their achievement I mean 31 just seems that's up so we just wanted to make sure we haven't really had the opportunity to put that out in the

036public in this kind of way so I thought it was important so we'll shift now to K8 because that is what we're here to talk about um a lot more detail and depth to it but don't let the the data and you know incredible amount of information there worry you because we're going to talk only about the most current but let me just get my slides going here so as we look at this and I'm going to ask you to step way back from me I haven't talked with the finance committee in a couple of years about where we are in terms of education and the impact of pandemic and all the other work we're doing so I'm actually excited to get a chance to do that this afternoon we opened the Year by just

037naming some things to ourselves and these are the facts our kindergartners haven't had any covid free years coming into kindergarten our third graders haven't had a covet for years since kindergarten sixth grade hasn't had a normal year since second grade ninth grade hasn't had any normal middle school years and this High School seniors have only had high school with covet until this fall so there's no way that that can't factor into how and you know the way we're operating the way kids are functioning the work that needs to be done for us and I think that we feel every single day on top of the priorities we had named prior to the pandemic so we're in the very last days here of a strategic plan that ends this year you've seen this because this I

038have shared with you over the last five years we've been working really hard and I think I want to stress the sentence that's below the initiatives the goal of the Strategic plan is that all students can achieve at these really high levels we've identified ways that we strategies we need to employ for that to happen programs and methods we need to employ we need to look at our students well-being and I'm going to show you some data that's really troubling in a minute we need to be sure it's Equitable for kids of all backgrounds kinds and whatever they bring to the classroom while we're fostering these great Rich robust learning environments so a little bit of data there's a lot of data here because I think this was an important data overview that we pulled

039but right off the press is this can we just go back to the last site because I like I like the Strategic plan right so I love that concept hopefully and I you know uh Alexa and I had a conversation hopefully we get to a point where it would be very nice and helpful and a snapshot to see where we are in progress relative to these plants um because that's something I think would be very helpful to see at a glance over 90 percent there 95 and here's how we're measuring even where we're there and at least through the slides on Monday that was hard for somebody like me to go through the slides and kind of understand and tie all the data you're going to share to these particular to the objectives that we

040have and a lot of the data I'm sharing this afternoon does tie it's it's the tip of an iceberg though of data there's data attached to all of these whether it be formative assessments and progress monitoring that we do with the first objective whether it be the survey work we do extensively with well-being and making sure our kids are well and I'm going to show you a little bit of that inclusive culture a lot of that's our Dei Equity work which we just completed an equity audit so we have that data we're constantly looking at our hiring and number of diverse staff or always looking at our number of kids in advanced placements like there's there's a whole Treasure Trove of information that I'm not going to do this afternoon so we could certainly be

041willing to do that as the opportunity allows there's no question uh right off the press we just surveyed the community um going into the formation of the 2328 strategic plan overwhelmingly the community is it is meeting we're meeting their expectations and exceeding them this was a pool of 1800 respondents so it's a really solid sample set if not really strong sample set so we were satisfied with that we would have loved to hit the Forum Arc but um that definitely indicates that the majority of folks are feeling very comfortable and satisfied with what's happening for our children so the goal is to get at least a 4.0 so that was my personal goal it wasn't when I sat with anyone else no we saw some fours during covid I actually think right now because we're

042back in the throes of normal operations and we have kids with a range of needs and a range of outcomes we're in the throes of it so I was actually really thrilled with this reason why I'm asking is if the goal is four what else do we have to do right where do we have to put emphasis to get to four because that's a good that's a good goal right and that's that's the type of conversation I think so there's helpful right there's so much data that's hard to put all in one presentation there are also reports from every of the initiatives people gave us feedback and we can more identify where those are within that survey data this is just the big broad outcome we didn't bring all the survey data to you this

043afternoon Dr Hunter is that a survey you do every year uh we we don't do it every year we do it at least every other year we haven't done it since just the emergence from covid so it was time um and like I said there's a lot more data that goes with this there's a lot of qualitative data as well directly excuse me directionally are we moving up down sideways we're really solid like I said we hit a four during covid in the throes of the pandemic where kids were hybrid and remote and all of that I'm really satisfied with the 3.7 because as you can see that shows that more more than 90 percent of our constituents are satisfied or better so we're doing a lot right and I think we just want to

044name that and that this community is really very pleased and comfortable with what the schools are doing so this is going to feel a little eclectic but that's because that's what's leading to the budget we're bringing so I'm going to shift gears and talk about an incredibly important variable that's just come to our plates that is about to imminently have impacts the home there's an emergency homeless shelter I know this is not new news probably going into the Best Western uh the doors are going to open March 1st we are expecting students to start staying for multiple months at a time as soon as that first week it's unclear they're not going to be able to tell us we're going to have to be able to respond in a really quick fashion I've been on

045calls with Desi and they were very clear that students that are in the hotel for five days or more need School attend a school enrollment so five days five days students mostly the demographic they're giving us which I expect is somewhat variable most two-thirds of the kids that they're placing they are naming those coming from within the state of Massachusetts that means through McKinney vento which is the homeless Federal homeless legislation they have a right to go to their school of origin they are placing kids within Middlesex County so that it's a doable drive to get them back to their home schools what that means is they're not going to go to the Concord Schools they're going to we're going to need to cost share Transportation with their home District at a cost of 50

046percent per child and I'm going to just say out loud right now the private vendors that have any drivers available because there's an incredible challenge of trans women are charging 500 a day so we're we're concerned by this knowing that it's the obligation we have there will be some State reimbursement um in the year to follow sort of like circuit breaker works of maybe 15 in a minute I'm going to talk on the work that's going on at the legislative level hoping to offset some of that however if the students want to attend the Concord Public Schools it will be a family's choice if they kill if they have a school of origin if they don't they're all going going to attend the Concord public schools and just to name the services we know that

047they're going to need and I've confirmed this with other districts that have homeless shelters trauma support English language learner needs academic needs basic needs um you know the gamut of just the Continuum of all kinds of services Desi has a grant up right now because of the house the homeless crisis in Massachusetts there's a deci Grant of a thousand dollars per student minimal uh the governor the new Governors proposed a healthy package of much more funding that is in the legislators hands just recently and hopefully he's going to move forward to help to offset some of these costs that certainly other districts are going to encourage us as we face it's a very sort of minimal minimum Grant of a thousand is there a range or how does that work right now they're saying we

048can apply for a thousand per child it doesn't have a cap per se a thousand per child is going to be very minimal given so that's their floor and the expectation of more later or there is definite hopes the governor is working really hard to push through this new piece of legislation which has um millions of dollars attached to it for exactly this purpose some to The Shelter Systems itself and some very much earmarked for the schools and the needs that we're going to have to support have they given you any indication as to the numbers of children uh nope they have a hundred room 105 rooms at the Best Western they have not said they won't fill them all they haven't said they will what we are very much hearing is that there are

049thousands of families in the pipeline waiting for housing right now so they certainly can fill them there are people in need will they fill them all I think is not certain some of the rooms are going to be short stay they're telling us which would just be a quick stopover so there may be some rooms that wouldn't require any support from us the other thing the state is trying to do to help offset some of the needs that would hit here is to place young families that might not have school-aged children so we'll see if that holds given the varial variables that are certainly at play here technical questions that I haven't asked before uh the 105 rooms those could have multiple humans in them and this is not about a one-to-one no they Place

050whole families yeah and so they do they have like a limit on how many people I don't know the answer to that but I know a family of four would easily be placed in one room yeah beyond that we'd hope they get a second room but Dr Hunter will you be uh carrying this as a separate and brand new line item in your budget no there's no way to do that it's embedded it has to be through the services we provide so special education will have to absorb those IEPs ell will have to absorb those needs class size will have to absorb whatever students arrive we can try on a Tickler off to the side to see if we can segregate it out but there isn't a way to just say its cost for the

051homeless I mean how then how will we know what what it's costing us and how will we know when it goes away that we haven't uh attracted those costs and kept them inadvertently forever even if that shelter is no longer part of the state program I think there'll be some things that are really easy to track English language Learners will be able to track if we had to add new staff members normally we have a small Core group of Staff members and that's more than sufficient the question is will that balloon on us here some of the most significant special ed needs we can certainly track those costs we can certainly track where homeless population tripped us to need a new classroom those sort of things we're gonna have to do it by category I

052think so I would like to request that you do keep a sidebar calculation of those costs because uh at some point those may go away and I don't want them to be permanently embedded in the budget and you know they're not in the budget yeah our zero-based process would always bring us back to you know the the needs we have at the moment so uh what we know right now is the hotel is being leased by the state till June of 2024. so that's the budget we're talking about plus whatever we got to do this year um certainly we'll talk more in coming years if that were to be something they maintain but we can do our best to track it off so we'll be tracking a number of kids though certainly we'll be tracking

053the number of kids so did they give you any indication of when you would know the number of folks coming no the word of wisdom I got last week Chris was be ready for it you will have no time to prepare as starting March 1st and I mean and from what I understand I've been following it it'll go up and down I mean you may have you know some kids come in and then they leave and some other kids come in so you don't know uh you know it's not it's clear-cut but I certainly you know maybe they can fit into classrooms without adding staff um you know for a temporary placement and what not so I I know it's an issue I hope it isn't a budget issue in the sense that we should

054be able to accommodate you know students as they come up and down and not the one I'm losing the most sleepover is transportation to the school of origin because if we get 20 kids we've got to transfer to other communities that could be budget busting pretty quickly that will track for you for sure thank you but anyway so that's one big variable that's actually brand new and only a couple weeks after we built the budget so all right shift gears okay did you want to say something yeah do you need to use a microphone would you just repeat your last comment about the um cost associated with the transfer term sure so if a student who lives in a Massachusetts Community becomes homeless wherever they become housed so we would be the housing District their

055school of origin so let's say it's that's all uh yeah sure if they want to go back to their school they've been in right they have a right to say that okay Transportation would be coordinated with us and their prior District someone would run point and then we would split the costs half the cost okay so we would be out of pocket half of the costs up front but I think I heard you say earlier in the conversation that the state is reimbursing there's a little there's about 15 percent about 15 I will reimburse this year in the following year 15 of those costs and our do we have a campaign to get a hundred percent well we're hoping the governor's legislation is including much more of a subsidy to the transportation issues associated with

056these shelters so the governor's putting forth a big package right now to try to offset these costs I am quite confident transportation is in that package so I understand that this is an issue between now and the end of this year but as we're talking about the subsequent view our our discussion is about next year's budget correct date has rented the hotel through June of 2024. Okay so since there are so many unknowns associated with this should we be focusing on that at this discussion during this discussion or should we go back to our regular discussion on the budget for next year we are going back it's just a really important piece of unpredictability that I think the room needs to be clear on and I think everybody is I think you all are amazed

057I'm ready to go on and I think most I hope members of our community will welcome yes we are actually 80 people into our town yeah thank you Peggy I agree with you thank you so back to back to the context of the world we're in here as we built this budget um we were naming a mental health crisis prior to the pandemic we are naming an aggregate Mental Health crisis since the pandemic and I'm just going to highlight those two numbers that uh the red arrows are are stressing all of this data is concerning for the most part but in grade six eight in the high school the high schools all the kids get are aggregated you can see our Trends this is a youth risk behavior survey that we take every two years

058um you can see the trends in grade six and eight especially are growing and concern and the high school's holding steady at a high level of concern self-identifying the students take the take the survey feeling depressed for two weeks or more in grade six we have 20 percent grade 8 24 and grade just 9 through 12 27 a quarter of our kids are considering themselves depressed even more concerning in so considered or thought about injuring or hurting themselves on purpose in the past 12 months we are running between 24 21 and 20 those are unacceptable numbers and must be the priority of everyone so that is driving and happy to talk academics and performance but unless we address this when the kids aren't available to us can you describe currently how you're addressing this yeah

059sure and you could be a whole hour presentation on itself um we are working really hard to look at both our broad-based social emotional curriculums and programming that all students are exposed to we're updating our K5 program home-based advisory at the middle school and we just put through a brand new high school schedule that's going to give us more options to do more directed social emotional work with guidance counselors to all kids so that's the aggregate level work is literally teaching social emotional skills coping strategies self-awareness all of it trying to in many ways just Norm the fact that this is an issue for all of us at the higher levels of tier two and tier three which are as the kids become more acutely in need we have broadened and looked at how our

060accounts and support services are available the kids are all taking a regular a regular a day annual survey that's more formative in nature so that we can self-identify kids in need both at the middle and high school so that they flag and we immediately Loop them to a counselor and work with them on whatever their needs are and we're identified in the survey at the highest level the most acute level we have more these are the most challenging these are the kids that are actually acutely in crisis suicidal or close to and in and out of hospitals and those are where we have built special education programs some of the Continuum you've heard about and some regular education programs too at the high school that can support those students without them having to go on

061an IEP but those are intense highly adult one-to-one ratios with students of some of our best mental health professionals there are districts we are not quite to this point yet but we certainly started to prove what's out there that our district bringing clinical therapists into the school day we're still working through what we're doing and how we're operating and if we're going to be to that point there's a lot of different ways to do that have you been able to quantify the costs associated with the actions that you're taking uh yes and yes with a big you know asterisk next to it to bring in a whole entire program of K5 and update that we just received a sixty thousand dollar Grant from Concord Ed fund to bring those materials and trainings in so we

062didn't have to bring those costs to you there are high price tags obviously Personnel you know expertise and Personnel they certainly got some attachments to it you can you know as we talk we could try to reference where we worked portions of the Metro Grant so we had a different a new counselor there and just tried to build out our capacity it's extremely important and this is a necessary cost and I'm not trying to um Tamp it down what I'm trying to do is is to better understand how do we how do we manage this this costs going forward that's a great question I think we're looking to do it both with a balanced approach to personnel and trying to not just bring you FTE requests year after year there is no new counselor request

063in this budget but then to also look at alternative sources we we felt an urgency to do the K5 piece without trying to we initially we thought we were going to piecemeal the process in and be able to do it within the budget and the urgency this fall made it very clear that wasn't the case and we approached CEF and just two weeks ago they awarded us the sixty thousand dollars to do all of K5 at once so so there's no direct staff to address Mental Health CPS no I wouldn't no that I wouldn't say because I thought I heard you say there's no additional requests how many staff do we have that are Mental Health Counselors right and I'm going to do these off the top of my head um we have uh two

064School psychologists at the middle school full time right full time we have five guidance counselors at the middle school that might be off one or two um we're always looking at what their role is and how they're servicing the elementary schools have uh one guidance adjust one counselor um the specific SEL programs that we built the special ed ones those all have a counselor attached specifically for our most acute needs so there's one of the Middle School attached to the program there's one at Alcott attached to that program foreign quickly Breeze over something that sounded like a grant and every time I hear the word Grant I think what happens when the grant goes away and so conquer don't get that out of the budget when the grant goes away yep so they're they're doing

065all the onboarding of this program the recurring there's no recurring costs that are going to be fall out of that the onboarding of training and the onboarding of purchasing of materials so um essentially one-time costs because they're trained teachers they're training teachers eventually as new teachers come in yeah they'll be doing it but that's always the case we had a previous SEL program that we always had to be sure we updated new people that is anticipated costs whether it's three five seven yeah the budget's failed to absorb that though just because we've always had to do that we had to do that with open circle which was our previous program we've now replaced the program and we'll just do the same built into the professional development uh we work with the provider of the program

066the response in this case responsive classroom trainers usually districts work together to onboard new staff as they get get hired we're obviously doing district-wide right now but we'll share costs with some of the local districts and then send we had not one-time training before through a grant and you're saying now for that one don't have to the materials let me clarify so I'll slow down a little bit so I thought you were asking about teachers as we hired after the one-time onboarding is done so three years from now when somebody gets hired and needs to get trained we will collaborate with other local districts who use the same program will cost share for a few teachers each and that we build in we already have that money it's built into the base all right that's

067what I'm here so because I thought I heard there's no further cost there is a slight cost that gets built in but it's a cost that we've always had when we had open circle as a program we had to train those teachers that money is already in the PD budget agreed and then when you have this that gets built in on top or would you close instead of good stuff thank you that's a clear okay that's what I was there we got there okay because otherwise I wasn't sure whether it was incremental or not thank you all right thank you I'm not going to spend a lot of time on NCIS we talked quite a bit about that I will just name on math because it's important to us to name it we have major

068technology issue at the middle school on the second day of the test so we're really not sure the results are valid because we're rushing through because they were getting booted off I physically I actually called it at 11 30 that morning it was so not effective the way they were trying to take the test so um more to come on all that but special education I just go back this is an example where I think it would be helpful I have an understanding of what we're striving to do right and I forget what the scale is whether is it 80 the maximum or 100 I don't know but I guess I'm kind of curious what are we strive to do if you just take Ela at 67 you know do we strive to be at

06975 77 90 I'm curious what are we striving to and then how do we measure ourselves and what programs do we put in place to ensure that happens and I think those those expectations have shifted as cobit has hit and then come through so everyone's down a little bit as you can see the top scores here are up at the 80 mark it wouldn't be unheard of that we would hope to get to that or even a little bit above I will say we're looking at math and naming curriculum changes we need to look at that we had prioritized everybody prioritize certain standards and now bringing back all of them and we need to balance that so the one other thing I'll just name it the K-8 level you have a lot of kids who

070are making are being identified in their needs and so that can be a really big variable especially as needs are identified but not being serviced yet so there's a diagnostic piece that involves the K-8 and you're going to say all the districts are having that same experience we're looking at how we're best serving kids from all facets and we know the academics will come as we service the other needs that are Provisions we don't have an expectation we don't set we don't set we simply we could simply say we don't have an expectation that we've set not on MCAS we have other data tools that we actually value more and are formative and we do set goals for ourselves there enough okay I am looking at this chart and wondering if it's Apples to Apples

071because we have on the math side on both sides some are just K8 and some are K2 thank you and a b is K-12 so where's the K8 there it's just it's not Apples to Apples it's not Apples to Apples and I'll say that you know between the regional or not Regional the size of the schools are very different you know Carlisle's got 600 kids we have 2200 so there's a lot of variables there okay thank you no thanks for that point special education and we're going to accrue there's a lot of data here so you can slow us down as you would ask ask me to slow down um one piece of data on this chart is 10-year history of out of District placements you know you know that's a significant intent that we've

072had to keep kids in District and we've talked a lot about that you can see the historic data of the number of kids out and where we are today at 45. um so and then in terms of disabilities by category we thought this would I'm sorry sure you started that in 19 is that correct when you started in sourcing yes we're going to show you more details of the Intensive programs in a minute because I know those are always of interest to you so this is another one do we it's our desire to get that to zero or two we'll never get to zero well what I understand that but still need I mean I'm just curious do we have some expectation of what would we like it to get to yeah so I I'm

073going to answer in terms of CPS because that's the budget we're talking about I my personal goal and belief from the minute we started all this because I've been in other districts of similar size and demographic was 15 was a really solid number for CPS and getting below that was really not realistic we are sitting at 16 right now I think you are at the place where students with certain profiles will be able to stay in District the ones that will go out are either very very significant needs or very individual needs that we don't have programming for so to me at CPS we've come pretty close to the goal that I had thought we would aim for um I don't think you're going to see that drop much from here so do you do

074you feel that your approach and the support people that you have and the teachers you have is what you're going to keep and what you're going to maintain yes and I'll talk more about that in a minute about what those services are we gave you an overview of the kinds of disabilities by category of our students just information we thought you'd find that interesting um I've been asked a lot whether our percentage of population is changing and compared to the state this year you'll see we have this is actually this year's data um 18 of our students and those CPS schools are noted with disabilities on verses 19.4 at the state level so when you ask him are we reaching some of our goals one of the threads of the Strategic plan if we build

075more regular Education Services so kids don't have to go on IEPs there's a data point showing that it's working um I had also been asked about families moving into the district and what the percentage of special education students was there you can see it's about 10 percent the last two years the disability is kind of nine through twelve were just conquered residents or is that conquered end which one are you looking at just so I answered table on the right hand I know that's all of the heights when it says conquered down below is that just that is just CPS fish so um is it positive then if I look at the bottom numbers there where it says nine and eleven percent versus the 18 is that what I'm comparing it to so nine no

076they're two separate data points the 18 is the aggregate overall CPS percentage um I guess it was at the school committee we had been asked if the family is moving into town new to the district you know third graders enrolling what percentage of the kids moving in were on IEPs you can see it's about 10 percent and then more depth on the programs that I thought you would find interesting and certainly the school committee did uh the number of students we have in our program since their Inception 2020 and Beyond and what that number looks like along with the correlating FTE which is obviously a big part of the budget driver I'll skip to the totals there you can see we've got threads of programs K through five and up through the middle school now

077which is exactly what the goal was and we're now servicing 80 students in our our K-5 intensive programs teachers of 11. you can see that's increased over the years because we were building out counselors have stayed at two one per social emotional program and our total assistance which can be one of the drivers for sure is now at 32. some of the most intensive programs especially at the younger grades might require one-to-one service for students are they full-time or are they Specialists or the assistants are generally full-time and we'll stay with a child all day just it's important to note when a student goes out of District most out of District tuitions don't include a one-to-one assistant you would pay that on top of the tuition so no matter how you service a child who

078needs that level of support it's going to have that cost associated I'll just you know share a little pride we're so so excited by what this has done for the students and families of special needs that they can stay in District and get Services here and I can't understate the impact on the general population to have those kids with them and sharing with them and participating with them it's just been such a value-add and if I could my take from your um the enrollments um nine percent eleven percent and then uh some of the other numbers uh it doesn't I know sadly one of the comments that where people move here where a draw for sped kids and it looks like we're at an equilibrium or close to it where we're not you know going

079up by some substantial number a new spend enrollments no there's always some surprises some you know more serious cases for example that that might come into town but um what's your responsible I think to many degrees I totally agree with you that we're not getting inundated with families coming here just for sped do we get a handful sure but then when I look at the enrollments in the in-district programs which I think we're staying level on the aggregate of special ed which if you look at 565 kids Pre-K to secondary or just focus on the K-8 if you'd like those were doing well at what the percentages not increasing when you look at the number of kids requiring the Intensive supports which is what this slide shows 80 of them which we were prior servicing

08023 in 2020 and the rest were going out of district and the rest there's that third group we're floating among all of our other programming not fully getting what they needed or not having been identified or we've had others that we were clearly needing to identify so I think part of the struggle we're having is that is the level of need and these intensive categories if that makes if that makes sense that feels like it's growing the data shows it's growing it's a 350 increase it's a loss so what impact will that have on the number of teachers or assistants yep so you can see right now we're at 11.4 and 32 assistance we need one more teacher in the FTE ask for 20 fy24 and I'll tell you it's because we have two middle

081schools folks otherwise we'd be able to put them all together and do one teacher so hopefully that's a short-term issue um and then in terms of assistance that one we try to programmatically plan for and my hope is that we're not going to need too many more but if any students need individualized that may vary that a little bit as we go so that one's a little harder to be sure of do you have any new outplacement students and I mean ones that with needs that have to be we have um placed one maybe two students out of District in CPS this year we've been very adeptly able to to maintain kids with very very acute needs in our in-house programming so very few are being placed out thank you this exercise was just to

082demonstrate how the circuit breaker formula applies and how the cost differential can look this is in a one program that we did this with from data from last year's enrollment in the program and last year's circuit breaker information so you'll see with a Elementary intensive program that across all of it houses um 18 students we're able if we had sent them all out of District which would have happened five years ago we'd be spending about 1.8 million inclusive of Transportation uh in District costs which we used based on our FTE formulas and tried to break it all out as best we could about a million so the savings there significant at 760 000 and that's annually obviously different programs have different ways this would come together you'd have to do everyone one at a time

083to actually see the savings because different needs have different costs associated doctor just to go back to that page before just one question so the growth of the students with acute needs from 37 to 80. um do you know what that number is going to be in 2024. I don't expect it's going to jump most of the growth errors because we brought the Intensive middle school programs online so students who have been getting piecemeal Services were able to then become programmatic students okay I think it's going to stay fairly flat okay with my crystal ball do you and do you do anything that um uh Aggregates the costs associated with the with those students is there any sort of number that says on average it's going to cost X dollars so the best District you

084know District the best we can do is to look at the number of kids with the number of staff and do sort of that basic um appropriation we took it another layer deep here as we mapped it against the potential of out of districts but usually it's the staff versus the number of kids do you have a number for that or varies in every program so we'd have to pick one and oh as an example this this slide I think starts to get to what you're asking where if the kid you know the out of District tuitions are a certain amount we could go back to the chart and look at how many teachers are in this room and divide it by the number of kids it's certainly less I don't know what's a state

085reimbursement or special needs right now circuit breakers at 75 75 75 and how is that determined the state decides that in their budget process um in a in a down economy that can change to less than 75 we're not uh we're not economy no at the moment fairly flush so what um okay so what does what we pay and then what does what's the amount they pay 75 are we paying 25 so if you look at it's a complicated formula this chart tries to capture it so circuit breaker applies to out-of-district tuitions that are four times the foundation budget For Hire what's your four time what's your fortune the foundation what's this year's Foundation this is State Foundation it's it's 13 142. that's last year that's last year's team 142 at times four is one

086to 52. yeah so say 52 000. okay 52. so they will pay 75 of any of the differential between 52 000 and the actual tuition so why aren't we asking for 100 percent uh there's certainly some lobbying going on to try to continue it oh absolutely so the superintendents Association has identified our goal our political goals this year as all special education related um increase of circuit breaker the way they came out it is not only the 75 but two times the foundation budget instead of four um they're also very aggressively coming after the 14 increase that has been allowed to the private settings we didn't even talk about that yet um because once before yeah so a portion of our increase this year to out of district tuitions is that the state has allowed

087all the private settings to increase by 14 this year and it just gets passed along to the district's circuit breaker will apply and eventually you'll get some of that back in subsidy but the front loading of that is really really hard um so there's definitely some political work going on to try to make sure that gets addressed so how can I don't know if the fincom help on this or how can the town help on I might have mentioned it to Representatives Cataldo and Gentile and I would encourage you to do the same in the mass Municipal Association might be doing something you could check yeah yeah masc is doing similar sent to our Representatives they're working on it so what we need to do individually or collectively is is go hit the people who

088have to vote on it right someone has to propose the bill first I think the I know there's some legislators being tagged for that and then once it gets in the mix the we need the legislators to attend to it yeah well if we can help by all means I'll just send you up there to you uh we thought I'd give you some background on the kitchen oh sure sure this sample was this last year for Scott Charles from fiscal year 2012. yes thank you carryover which is circuit breaker carryover and I'll give you remind you of the short version of how circuit breaker works we get the subsidy a year later based on the kids we claim the year the current school year the goal best practice is always to carry over a Year's

089worth of circuit breaker that can have that number can change depending how many kids are out of district and what reimbursement you're getting it seemed important that we show you this is what we've been carrying over not what we've been receiving we'll show you that in a minute this is what we've been carrying over in history and part of why I wanted to go back as far as we did is because there's been a lot of work intentionally done to stabilize the circuit breaker carryover and you're going to hear us mention that we've been dipping into it a lot more so I just wanted to note we've been working really hard to bring circuit breaker back as a reserve fund that it's hopefully maximum amounts and um we're definitely starting to use it instead of

090doing that so is there a cap on how much can be in the balance each year one year's Revenue well current year Revenue at the end of this year you can carry over yes same thing so for fiscal year 24 so the end of fiscal 23 coming up in a few months what's the cap that the maximum it can be uh I believe it's 975 000.9 so so we're not even close to hitting that yeah plus or minus a few thousand but 975. it looks like we'll we're gonna end up around 550. okay and then I think you're proposing a hundred of that to okay yeah um just one I found this on the Desi page and I thought it was great I thought you'd all love it and want to study it at home

091um so this is Jessie's version of our history at CPS with special education funding it's inclusive of everything but it breaks it out so you can see the patterns and the trends you can see the auto District um changes which was really validating to see I won't go through all of it you can see the um up you know percentage increases as total expenditures happen year to year one data point we didn't have that this did provide is percentage of total budget that special ed is is being allocated to um and we were right in the middle of the state on this one there were districts up at almost 30 percent of their budget as time has gone on and sped his needs have increased being allocated to that there were some districts who are

092somehow struggling to make you know 10 and well fifteen and twenty percent of their budgets work for sped we're staying right in the middle of the state at about 20 25 percent I found it validating that we're maintaining the 25 given the increased needs and all the programs we've brought online um one other random note I didn't have any place else to put that is related to our previous history here on spending in 22 and 23 part of what got us to guideline was these offsets by returning students from out of District you heard me say we're at 16 kids I don't think we're going under 15. there's they're they're already they're here they're not out so the hundreds of thousands we've saved is no longer an offset because we're stable at CB CPS we're

093just saving by not sending them we're not actually dollar for dollar gonna pull kids back and save anymore we already shoveled that walk yeah we use we used that at Peggy right for really good reasons we used it um a data point that we've wanted to mention and do the comps on uh the a number of the coming slides are back looking at districts around us and to some of the points we've made Apples to Apples is always a little bit of a hard piece but this is the deci data as they present it we're at 18 on average class size in the CPS schools that's by Design we feel like that's about where we want to be um and that's what we're aiming to maintain at both K5 and CPS student teacher ratio is

094another way to look at the number of adults versus the number of kids you can see we're in the middle of this list for that as well I'm not going to spend more time on it it's the same type of data enrollment I think is worth a few minutes on because you we've named this we have some decline over the last few years predicted and anticipated and frankly um in some cases is at the middle school we were anxious for it so you can see where we are overall at 1946. you've got the current breakout across the three elementary schools in the Middle School we're always maintaining those balances as best we can and what I want to then highlight I'm going to skip one slide to the projections before we talk adults these are

095brand new NASDAQ projections that we just received they certainly reflect the enrollment um declined moderate decline we're not in any grave decline here it's a moderate decline however you can see they start to swing it back up in the five-year time range or so so we're going to want to keep looking at enrollments and um you know we stay very close to the census numbers we stay very close to these projections we stay very close to the housing starts every variable we possibly can we try to continue to monitor but you can see by 2032 the middle school's back at almost 700 kids and we've rebounded to to 2017 in terms of total K-8 students so interesting set of data to just receive in terms of professional staff what I was hoping you'd see is

096that the ftes have some connection to whether we're talking special ed or the enrollment shifts because we build this Staffing plan just as zero based as we do everything else so one example is alcott's ftes have actually gone down in the last five years the middle school you can see a bump up in 2020 when we purposely built out the teams and made clean teams so that the vision of the Staffing we needed for the new school would start to form at that point you can see at the row we're but we're up and that's because of the level of intense programming there in special education so it was another data point that at a high level you could see the patterns and Trend and spot where things had happened with intent either up or

097down based on what our what our needs were her people spending we definitely all reference this fairly uh regularly this is comparable to the other districts around us you can see we're at the 23 000 ish Mark here this is 2021 data that's the most recent on the Dempsey web page so given that we're working hard to not be topped all the time and moderating where we can to make it cost effective for high quality which then I'm going to name average teacher salary because of the veteran nature of the staff and our salary schedule this one we definitely hit at the top these are 2020 data points which I wish were newer but that means that you know to maintain a staff of this experience and Veteran nature and salary scale we're working really

098hard to offset some of those salary implications to bring you this per pupil spending and I just wanted to frame it that way that um while teachers here certainly are compensated healthily we are still bringing you have you know pretty pretty reasonable per pupil spendings and increases through the work we're doing through the zero base and just to be clear this is for a nine nine months here this is not um prorated backwards this is a teacher's annual salary for 12 for all year all year and they work for nine months uh school year is ten full months and full months okay just checking well since we've paused it detector you flagged that the enrollment is going to increase and it looks if you could go back to that slide of 30 32 yeah that

099shows a 19 jump in one year between 30 31 and 30 32 and it's the only counter Trend year do you have an explanation we don't we need to we can loop back with NASDAQ and figure what they're thinking is there I only mention it because you you said that it's heading back up the trend is down right the trend is down okay yeah so it would be the year before that it's 581 yeah that's for the middle school which has a capacity for 700. correct which we knew might be 600 650 and um 700 would be the max so hopefully we're not gonna see these change a lot somewhere there's a night there's a projected 19 increase in one year we'll double check with them to see where that came from good a couple

100of questions on that be the baby bloom they had it by grade on there too yeah I we'll get an answer I don't think we want to go too deep right now it's a couple of questions just to make sure I have it I understand it so on the in the per pupil spending what's the source of it Jesse Jesse so in Concord where the CPS benefits and so forth are in the town budget how do they adjust for that do other schools have that we have to report that in our end of your report so we get that information and include it in our in our data okay so you think this includes your benefits or it's with that it does it's supposed to otherwise our audit wouldn't pass so okay that includes the

101benefits number that are carried by the town for most districts the benefits are carried by the town so they definitely get the benefits from the town if everything is just the numbers Tom what do you mean just the number so we would ask Gail what number she is reporting out at the end of the year for costs associated with benefits for the CPS staff and report that on our end of year report okay so that is available yeah okay there's a section of the report for municipal paid costs that were required to complete and work with the town on oh and okay that's interesting um I have one more and then I'll be on the student teacher ratio page where do um tutors and Associates how do they fall into this list yeah so they

102actually are part of this page but they're not part of class size that's actually the difference between the class size slide and the student ratio teacher student ratio they're in the tutors and so forth yeah that's why the number drops so much lower yeah okay okay thank you so this this slide in the previous slide I think are another one where I would simply ask what do we think should be the right sizes and what should we what do we think the right ratio should be so my goal is eight or lower no we're right where I want to be with K8 class size so class size we think the appropriate is 18 so that's good and then similarly on just in terms of the student teacher ratio yeah this one's a little trickier because

103it combines all the staff across all of the schools and then just divides without factoring in the programming that's there so it's a little harder to say a goal because depending on the setting you have different goals special ed classrooms because the range hopefully is going to be a very big range our most intensive sped programs would have but taking all of that all of that into consideration generally speaking within a given year because people are going to be students are going to be moving maybe forever is there a rough range that you would say anywhere from nine to twelve or ten to four yeah I I think I'd want to work on that one and get back to you and not do it off the top of my head a different question um sure

104on the student teacher ratio how many teachers do you have in a class you wanted to get to 18. so how many teachers are in a classroom at any one time depending on the student population that's in the room so a regular education General classroom has one teacher and Stu and the students by themselves that can happen uh there might be a co-teacher for special ed there part of the day or the CO2 the special educator might pull the kids out and service them outside of the classroom there might be tutors and assistants in the room all depending on the needs of the kids so when I'm looking at these averages it's because there's at some time there's another person in the room with for the student-teacher ratio yes that's why that's low okay so

105where so on average is it generally one and a half people or two people or one and three quarters person or I I wouldn't want to guess it really depends on the needs of the kids so some classrooms have multiple people and others don't we we'd have to pull the data in okay but it aggregated a particular class there's like a teacher the students are focused on a teacher there might be these others assistants so there's always one general education teacher in a K-5 classroom and a six eight classroom and then the other stuff is all about supports to the kids and their needs sure okay okay do we have any dogs in the classrooms too we we do bring therapy dogs in fairly often yes what about Grandparents they come visit they don't stay

106for the whole day for the whole day are they in all of the schools we have therapy dogs in every school to some extent yes oh well all right that's [Laughter] um the last page we were on was the average I still have one more I'm sorry Chris sorry all right because I think it answers a question I had earlier on that special education fiscal spending page the if I looked at column K which has the totals there yeah it's a bit dated it only goes up to 21. but if I went back to the pit to the page where you have the chart with the the students that are in the program is is this um just the middle school or is this everything on on the total fiscal space it's all of CPS

107it's CPS without the high school just yes and if I go to this page but 21 what number do I pick up for students the 51 which page are you on Chris it's a special education oh that one yeah is that is that what I would pick up for 21 I divide 11.7 Million by by 51 students so ask me again that question I'm sorry if I go to the page that says total special education expenditures which is 11.7 million for 2021. think that's CPS and I'm not quite positive it is yeah okay and then if I went to 21 on this chart if there are for CPS 23 students is that the number it should be if you're in the column that's out of District placements yes yes so I would take the 11

108almost 12 million yeah that should map together yep so that's only the out of District students right that's not the indistrict students somewhere else well we didn't give you a it would be a chart like the one here but a year old it's okay that's what I was trying to use the 16 plus the 80 isn't that right it's 96 runs out of District in the islands industry no that the whole page is in District that's all in districts that have happened yeah okay sorry thanks okay so let's just I think we're close to done here I'm sorry the salary piece is pure salary not counting benefits right okay uh Bob can jump in since he was the one who was able to put this together for us so this is a five-year trends uh

109both Total spends the grants the offsets and then the overall um I think in a minute we're going to answer more of the grant questions and the one-time funds can you just name what you've got in that Grant revolving line so that we're all clear what led to those numbers sure so uh within the grant revolving uh the Esther funds there Esther 2 Esther 3 those will be going away um there's a little potential Remnant in fy25 but by the end of fy24 they'll be substantially spent down special ed arpa funds which came out around the same time as sr2 are also included in Grant revolving so those are um ones that are um again will be going away um and are primarily being used in 23 and 24. the bulk of the Grant and

110revolving funds that are kind of ongoing are circuit breaker funds Ida special ed funds they also include food service revolving funds which are just passed through they're not providing budget relief they're just supporting the Food Service program so we can kind of ignore those but they're in the numbers and they're in the growth spend so those are the items um in the grants revolving you'll see in 24 we show a little bit of a decline and it'll decline further into fy25 um when when the Esther funds and sped our funds expire they expire in 2026 you have to have all the money paid by 2026. is that correct that might be the municipal Grant this is a year earlier yeah okay the answer is 2025. September 2024 which is fy25. so this is where the

111question came up right so if you go back to the fall and I can pull this up if you go back to the fall when you guys came in in mid-november to give the five-year estimates from there what the numbers I showed for yet a line called grants revolving circuit breaker right it wasn't broken out it showed 4.2 million for fiscal year 2025 which is higher than the 4 million so if they're expected to come down they're actually going up and so so there's different pots of money as there's going to come down the student Opportunity Act is going to probably help with some other things going up circuit breaker is all dependent on what we um moving pieces I've seen that but again if the s or two and three uh I don't even

112know what the size was how much they were but if those are substantial and the special ed were substantial are we saying that the other grants are going to come in and offsets are going to come in that will match that and even exceed it that's the question we will have we'll have growth in the circuit breaker funding models changing to factor in transportation okay done over time so that will increase and that's a significant offset we also we're forecasting three percent growth in the entitlement grants special ed Ida Grant and the title one Grant um they might not these numbers might not sync up exactly with um the projection from the fall you know we do have some new information but um big picture wise we are going to lose a little bit of

113revenue from Esser we're going to have a growth in circuit breaker and um we are gonna we're expecting three percent growth in the Ida Title One title 2A is pretty small but the entitlement grants that we receive I think we want to just name we've been really careful with the SR so that we didn't build things in that were recurring um and in the very couple places we did we've been weaning them into the budget so there's no Big Cliff coming um that we've been very careful about you know in terms of monies sr3 was the big one it was 995 000 at CPS that we've been spending over three years so we didn't dive in deep and use that all up the others were much more much less um and you know not nominal

114but certainly not Millions I I would be I would be interested in a um a detail on the um the grants and how where the grant came from how it was spent yeah we can get a feel for and I appreciate you Lori exactly like uh we don't want those to get built in permanently when they go away I mean this happens in the town you know grant for the police department an extra staff person all that information back in uh December so we can just okay so I I think that would be really really useful and when you said you weaned it into the budget well that wasn't exactly uh what we want to see happen but um well but I'm going to name those were mental health professionals that rather than the whole

115afternoon coming to you at once we've done it in small and I'm just saying it's incremental yep um and I also obviously the average teacher salary is a little um you know eye-opening um and if you take the average teacher salary and then multiply it by the average classroom size and FTE and you know it's just a roll-up which is how we get to a higher expense so I'd be interested in a plan to what your plans are to get that average teacher salary down I'm not going to answer that the school committee Bargains with them and I value my teachers very much I do too I do too but but it's an excellent question and I know I know you have the negotiations coming up next year so thank God it's not this year

116um but go ahead D so I was going to ask um when you have the negotiations there's a there are two different components right there'd be an increase if you may want to make an adjustment but then there's also a cola and the cola is every year right a cola increases every year what percentage is that do you know offhand for this year I'm short for that you're asking so the contract where the in right now has 2.75 so every year there's a the current contract there's a 2.75 increase no D so that was the contract negotiated three years ago Peggy let me okay just finish Okay so in this contract that they're in right now every year there's a 2.75 this year it was actually 2.5 the first year and then 2.75 for the

117second increase but when they negotiated wasn't there a general increase in their salary no and no salary so the only thing that increases I'm just trying to understand something experience that's lame okay okay but in the negotiations there's only the cola that's negotiated that's the only among a lot of other language and things like among the other language in terms of steps in Lane increases or steps in Lanes follow suit usually with the cola we um I've never bargained a step in Lane column separately so so the range I mean I'm familiar with the steps in the ladder so the range within each unit say is not being negotiated so the minimum and maximum for a particular salary you have not you could mutually agree to to decide to do that if it was an

118item that would put on the bargaining table we have not I'm going to be really Frank with you that the lower end of the salary schedule is actually not as competitive I have candidates coming in from other districts looking right at me and saying I can't come for a pay cut so it's because of the veteran nature of our staff that those numbers are where they are we retain our teachers which is a good thing the lower end of our salary schedule is not as robust by any stretch so I'm not sure if I'm not sure we want to open all that up because I think it would probably go a different direction than what you all would hope for a doctor 100 of those the salary numbers include add-ons such as coaching uh no

119those are stipends because they work beyond the school day okay thank you so that this is just the ins in the class I'm curious about one other thing I remember a couple years ago um the former Finance person was saying how um when a teacher retires the pension the number of pensioners that we have is increasing and their costs are significant do you show that any place here that would be in the regional district not in the municipal District not in the municipal District where would it be it happened the town may carry some of that if there's the town would carry the increase in the the pensioners costs is that correct they carry the overall retirees so right okay and at the regional maybe it was a little more we budget our share of

120the pension assessment that the Concord Retirement Board tells us uh what that figure is okay thank you welcome so just when we do the breakout can we just make sure we have a similar breakout relative to the Future costs that you guys shared with us and if those have changed that's fine but just so that we've got some sense of what we might expect in the future taking the new assumptions in the account which which breakout just so we talked about the grants that pay he wanted us look out for the past right if we just get the future that would be helpful because again that was one of the major questions we had as we look to the Future right what are we expecting relative to the cost growth that we're seeing to the

121best of our ability I guess yeah the estimates are always the best of everybody's ability I I would also ask um teacher salary um Miss uh going back to my experience with the uh being in home and Concord um there's a big difference there can be a big difference between median and average and I'd be interested in the median as well as the average because you I I think it's a more accurate representation of where our Sal income if we can get it for other districts I don't know yeah I don't know if that's possible but average you know can be really tilted by a few you know we'll check I don't know if that one's available High numbers yeah yeah okay well if you if you can if you can get this chart done

122in median I I just would be interested in that as a yeah we could check if it's available I don't okay recall that it is one question I had watched the presentation when you talked about the Opera and the grants and the spending and so forth so part of it is related to summer school so it you use two years of it for summer school how is it that that goes away is it where there's special so there's still budgeted number in those are additional to the budget because of covid impacts we've been so as broadening so to the extent that covet is done then they're going to stay with them yeah we'll be back within the budget okay okay so it's not like the program has to be funded somewhere else no it was

123significantly expanded for a couple years thank you um one piece I just wanted to note here and this is actually from the town's budget book last spring uh just history of the budget increases the CPS has had from FY 13 on you can see from FY 13 14 15 it was four and a half four seven four two percent 16 I'm sure some of you were there for the big jump at 6.5 and then since 17 we've been hovering in the three lower threes mostly and it just seemed worth noting that the four seven isn't historically unheard of the ask right now and I think I say that because the conditions were operating under our historic and we're still bringing a budget that's not historically unreasonable uh so can I just sure whether it's four

124percent or two percent or three for it's difficult to understand the context without understanding where you are and where you want to go right and I've said it and I know I'm beating a dead horse but having some context around where do we want to go how are we getting there have we gotten there how much more that helps understand and place into context you know six and a half percent increase so again I'm not passing judgment whether the six and a half was appropriate they have a lot of information that this group doesn't have you've gotten a lot of information and I look at that as that as our role as a school committee to look at that and set setting goals and we've gotten many presentations all year about all of these things

125but again we're talking about children we're talking about goals individual goals that they're meeting special ed it's the same thing these are not just numbers they're children with needs there are children that have there needs to be met we have an obligation to do that so as much as I know that you're looking for metrics and numbers and things like that some of it we have a more narrative form that we have all sorts of data to back it up but we're talking again about children we're talking about their goals and their needs and what our teachers are doing in the classrooms our class sizes are larger but it and that's we're still performing and we're performing high and I think that's where I citizen School member and that's how we should be looking at

126it I understand we're talking about children as a parent I get that so I don't and we're in front of the public school committee I get that again the metrics is to help context again you know I asked whether the class sizes are should be higher or lower right and just help us understand we want to get to 12 we're at 11 we need to add something so that's the kind of context that the public should have we don't have time to put in all the time you guys do on a regular basis and it's appreciated but just distilling that down to say hey this is kind of what we're seeing at a macro level that's why I kept asking about what are the metrics what do we expect how much further are we there

127it was great to hear Lori say 15 is probably the lowest we can get and we're at 16. so that's awesome right so having that context for some of the other major elements is what's helpful and so and what's you know this is the reason I brought this up well it's not helpful from my perspective is to say well four percent is not on her heard of given past it may be it may it may not be enough right depending on where you want to go so that's why I was asking to me parashar the um Lori talked about things like class sizes I think we're comfortable with our class size I think we're comfortable with our student teacher ratios um I think we're comfortable-ish you know with our student achievement we're certainly comfortable with

128it at the high school as we showed you are there gains to be made at CPS I think so um and I think the context which is I think what we tried to do in this proposal is to say okay we need four percent to maintain this because even just to maintain the achievement that we're seeing the needs are are the variable the needs have become more acute we have more kids I think Lori said it really elegant eloquently the other day when she said you know if we're in a mental health crisis the kids in our classrooms are not in a state and ready to learn so we can't even get these kids to achieve even when we have the best teachers if they're not in a mental state to be there to to

129to be the beneficiaries of our like excellent staff and our excellent curriculum so to me the reason you might see this budget increase in and and to maintain levels of achievement that we are frankly kind of comfortable we're pretty comfortable with is the needs are significantly more so to just do the same we need more because the kids I don't know you know the kids people ever the kids are not all right um you know that um and they're not um so so that to me is the context and the story um there's one more chapter which is the next slide because all of that said I'm bringing a level service budget and that's really important because we're going to reallocate teachers are going to do different things everything is going to change within the

130structure of what we have for resources to to meet that now that we've built out the continuous special ed so Bob broke out and I'm going to let you talk this through broke out the buckets of category especially at CPS where 80 of the SAS 80 of its salaries so in terms of breaking this down it's worth noting that you know special ed is special ed we must service the children the needs are very different than they have been but we're also absorbing utilities we're absorbing eight percent inflation I haven't brought that up once to you that those numbers are off the charts right now and try to use it as a way to say four and a half is really good but we're going to just absorb it and that's having an impact of

131course so do you mind just running through sure this slide a little bit so um contractual expenses is includes all um our salary positions uh teachers staff um bus drivers uh it also includes vendors that we contract with we have preventative maintenance contracts for um for our buildings um and so that's the bulk of our expenses uh almost 40 out of 45 million um and um and really what's driving most of that are positions that we've added related to special ed you know when you've seen our budget increase who there was a seven point uh three or seven point five FTE increase is special ed tutors it's a bcba it's a one-to-one nurse for a student who requires one-to-one support um and um and so and as sanborn's connection program position so the contractual expenses

132um is level service and it's basically special ed Staffing that's that's driving that number in addition contractual increases um the out of District tuitions I presented at the top but it's a little bit misleading at the bottom I show it gross and with the offsets the offsets are the circuit breaker funding and the Ida funding that we're applying you can go towards those costs so at a gross level our out-of-district tuitions are going up by 250 000 um most that's the 14 increase that the state approved um sorry oops I had to plug in or you were all going to be in the dark any second I'll get you back one second because we're going yeah 275 is is essentially mostly um mostly the 14 OSD increase and as of yet um there's no word

133that we're going to get any relief for that um we're hopeful but we're budgeting what we know um we have factored in um you can see in the offsets to leverage some of the current year circuit breaker to to kind of cushion that impact um the um the other lines are um supplies as utility costs are going up as we've all seen um I'm sorry Bob to go back to the outer District tuition offsets I don't think uh 115 is that the circuit breaker or the 100 000 roughly we talked about or yeah I'm busy trying to power up here so let Bobby that includes is that what that was circuit breaker yes additional circuit breaker funding so if we didn't do that we'd propose an offset of 1.232 yeah we would have done right

134but then based on Wednesday's meeting the other Wednesday yeah we would have used 150 we would have used 15 000 more that's that was our plan okay thanks um utilities um we actually had um a little bit uh we came in a little bit under budget last year so the increase would have been more than nine percent but we had a little bit of savings uh last year um so that's something we'll we're hoping to see stabilization um next year and we factored in some stabilization um based on conversations with David wood and um Brian just kind of get some sense of where rates were going um it's a bit warm what's that it's been a warm winter yeah snow and ice is down maybe all the hot air in this room might yeah right

135well preserved for next winter supplies to materials cost this is a place where we are seeing the inflation so that includes instructional materials it includes actually the the diesel is in here too the the bus transportation related supplies um and repairs that they have it also includes technology costs um and so we we've kind of seen that with the pressure on the supply chain that those those prices have come up um so overall that gets us to 4.7 and I would say kind of just putting a broad context on this um and I you know I'm coming in and kind of have a perspective that we have built out our special ed programs during this year we have built them to kind of a full capacity um we now have programs at the middle school

136we have programs at the elementary school the savings that we were getting in special ed to offset are increases is gone um and so some of that is affecting um this year's budget and some of those I think are a lot of the things that we're talking about here are not things that we necessarily expect I'm not gonna you know predict or forecast other than um you know we'll do our best when we do our projections but student needs are a lot more variable than um I've worked in a lot of Industries and you know in the municipal sector student needs are hard to predict um and so we've seen years where the out of District numbers come down this is the year they're going up and so you know we will do our best

137to manage amidst that but that's kind of a broad context for Where We Are it does feel like every year it's you know we're all happy or someone happy um in certain years and then it it always feels like the big budget increases get laid all over sped and I just do you do you have a program where you set aside my sort of like the snow and ice account at the town where you can set aside money for sped and then dig into it to try and try to shovel that is that allowed the stabilization yeah yeah we don't have one so we could certainly talk about that offline do you think I mean when we have money in it correct it feels like that's always it and I and I get it I

138totally get it it's not a it's not an excuse but it seems like it's a repeated explanation for surprisingly High budget increases and somehow some approach to leveling that I I would probably favor um over time but I don't know I'm only speaking for myself and God knows I don't speak for my members plain or accomplished I'd like to uh to just make a couple of brief comments um uh I think that five year Trend chart was helpful I think that that reduction in the growth rate that came in in 17 if I'm not mistaken is when the sustainable growth rate was introduced by the fincom so that we could we could give you know work together on targets and I think that that I'd like to give you some context there too to think

139about level Services level Services we look at this sustainable growth rate is what we think can result in level services for the taxpayers so when when when you ask for something above that level essentially asking all of us and and the others who who aren't here to reduce their spending reduce their services outside of the schools and that's how we look at it I know I personally was looking in here for some reason to recommend that is looking for something that says we're looking we're we have an issue we need to address we have a whatever it is but I'm not I don't hear that what I hear is we're doing great which is wonderful and I'm really thrilled to hear it uh I'd even doubt it I know that you you guys have all

140worked really hard and we really all are one team here we're not I also don't think this is a negotiation of any sort it's not that kind of a thing we're all the town working together toward the same goals of high achieving schools and hopefully you know a town that people who live here today can afford to remain in one of the things we need to do fincom I think is look back and see the percentage of our total Town tax dollars that are going into the schools and whether or not it's a sustainable trajectory over time because I think we've been squeezing other parts of town that none of us are happy about roads that need repair Etc and we need to make sure that we have a sustainable growth rate and level Services

141throughout Concord um both you know at Town level School level and family and and taxpayer level so I just wanted to add that context thank you Don I wanted to give you some more context too on sort of the overall um tax bill and and where we are so the sustainable growth rate we had a kind of a range between 2.54 and 3.71 that's where we were um right now the um the guideline in total is 366 which translates into about four percent on the tax bill and that's before everything else right so that's operating budget X Debt Service X benefits When you put those things in we're close to eight eight percent that's big nut right to swallow so that's part of what we look at right is the overall picture we all have

142to look at it right so that's one of my questions for the school committee is how do we collectively feel about an eight percent increase right in the tax bill for 24. and it's you know part of that is it's not all you right it's the town it's the excluded debt it's it's everything but that's a big number right and so that's what we're struggling with as well right so we we uh we think it I think I won't speak for the committee but at 366 and translating into a four percent tax bill compared to where we've been which is under three I don't really have a lot of room to go anywhere so that's part of the that's part of the challenge so I finished these I've got two left um so thank you

143we do appreciate all that for sure just to note last year when we got to guideline in the spring we took quite a bit of risk and then there were things that we shouldn't probably have risked and had to find funding for and Bob and I will talk through how we managed to make this work part of getting to guideline last spring was reducing our contingency we had a hundred and forty thousand and then I think we reduced 113 of that so essentially we didn't have any contingency this is the short list of needs that came up that had at one point been in the budget and we chipped away to meet you and then had to reinstate so they are special education related there's no question but it is partly why we're here because

144this when you hear we're asking for eight ftes which I think is the number it's seven of them are already had already had to be put in for this school year because of the special education needs that were around us so there's one additional position for the expansion of that one intensive sped program into Sanborn but otherwise its needs we had to meet regardless of what budget we had all agreed on um Bob will talk through how we managed to make this happen and I think this is where the Grant and Esser conversation is really important because to pull this off flat for this school year we used one-time funds to do it and that's partly why you've got a 4.7 ask now because of that so do you want to just talk through so

145the first thing we did was we used as for funds they don't have the typical rules that you can't supplant so we had Esther funds that we could use for special ed to apply them to some of the tuition costs say these intuitions can be transferred to other lines but between the two uh between the Esser and sped Arbor grants approximately 165 000 of budget relief was provided um so these are not kind of one-time things that we paid for it's one time uh Revenue that we applied to our operating budget we used a hundred thousand in current uh year circuit breaker Revenue this year more than we planned and um and at the end of FY 23 we prepaid um 100 000 in um special ed tuitions um which kind of serves the same

146purpose as using current circuit your circuit breaker Revenue so the total of those things that are one time and they're not sustainable are 364 000. yes or funds and sped arpa funds are essentially uh spoken for in FY 24's budget um and I we're not anticipating pre-paying for any tuitions this year um and we are already leveraging our circuit breaker carryover um I think to an extent that we're we feel is you know about as far as we can go um prudently um so those are the one-time funding sources that we've so I'm sorry Bob can you just go over those again I got a combination of answer funds and sped arpa at 105. 165. 165 sorry okay thank you so that gets to 365. so 365 there but the total across here 150 250

147310 310 roughly what's the how do I reconcile the two I'm confused we have other we have other costs yeah this list wasn't completely yes I drop all the babies these are highlights so there were other three hundred thousand dollars other costs that were not in the budget that you also had to meet no these these were applied towards these costs there's a little bit of excess here they covered up their overages they're essentially so let me just make sure I I understand this so there's about three hundred thousand dollars worth of costs for the nurse the out-of-school district placement Etc right those are costs I'm assuming yeah and then you said it was financed by 365 000 worth of Grants various sources that he just went through Esser and the total 365. that's a

148little over what's here but essentially we're trying to give you an example of what wasn't funded this might not be the complete list example of what wasn't funded these were the bigger ticket items and how we made that work so our budget's in the black so there were some other unfunded things yeah but I'm just trying to reconcile so okay because you say you took money from one line and moved it into another which is not you know not uncommon not within the budget from outside the budget which is the concern that we used Esser to do it circuit breaker to do it places that don't sustain [Music] because we the budget was too tight to move stuff just within we did do a lot of that and I'll name that we worked really hard

149last summer to hire so that we had savings to offset other overages like it was a really rough summer a very stressful summer um and trying to be sure that we set up a school year for this budget to come out in the black in June and between this work that Bob did and the work the principals did to hire high quality for cost Effectiveness and gain some savings there through attrition like we were hitting we were tapping every Avenue we had to make this budget balance that's the point I guess we can get into the numbers more if you'd like but the point is to do that we tapped into we didn't plan on using Esser to balance this budget this year we didn't plan to go another 100 000 into circuit breaker it's

150just part of why we are where we are for FY 24 because those costs are now showing in the budget not not available this year correct got it and then the last slide which I'm sorry just quick question because I just I'm dense sometimes if we go back to The Five-Year Trend number fiscal year 23 that we're still in right 47078 does that include this other spend that was not originally in the budget and what about the offset yeah do you want to yeah so the there is still some Esther funds being spent in 20. let's let's start with the top line for a minute the 4 million 47 million 0.78 does that include this additional spend of three hundred thousand that's what I'm trying to understand just the Top Line first that's our full

151spending for the year yes so that includes a four so that includes 300 000 for this additional spec yeah okay and the offset line if we stay on that same page that one yep the 4 million offset includes a 365 that you just shared with us as well it's built in it thank you okay and the last slide which uh none of us wanted to be having this part of the discussion but to demonstrate what would have to happen in order to get to guideline to try to show you why this is the list um we would never touch staff as a first pass we've we've done all that work already so the list we're bringing now is student facing um and as far from the core classrooms as possible but has certain impacts to

152programming and other aspects of the district and what makes us us again this list is bigger than the 585 we'd pick from this list not all of it um partly because it's February and to know exactly what to cut eight months before school year starts is a little tricky so the list right now is inclusive of uh the district sponsored field trips we would either not go or parents would pay we have a special education coordinator K-5 who helps to oversee all of those programs and needs that we've been talking about we'd eliminate that two to four tutors which is a risk every time I try to cut tutors because certain needs might pop up and I need to put them back but we would look at support staff technology Specialists right now we have

153one per School uh we would look to share among schools those are our certified Educators with backgrounds in technology and how to use the educational side of Technology not just the technical side the steam lab here at Ripley which was a mult you know million dollar project renovation a few years ago and now thrives on bringing kids over from the schools that slash data coordinator a couple of the curriculum position we have there'd be a one FTE reduction there which would mean the steam line would not be fully utilized or we'd be you know scrunching numbers differently than we are right now uh reduction possibility of K Square 5 instrumental music which would mean instrumental music would start at the middle school for individual lessons General music would stay in place but kids taking lessons

154and having banned would not start till middle school we'd reduce professional development again which is always concerning with all the initiatives and needs that we have we look at Librarians to share across K-8 I'll just note we have a preparatory time for teachers to cover with Librarians at K-5 so the middle school would have the most dramatic impact and we could look to reduce Transportation the law says we only have to transport Beyond two miles from the school and we certainly right now do transport within the two miles and we could look to increase the number of lockers and parent providers none of this is my recommendation I think this is getting into the services and delivery of the schools as at their core which is why the level service budget at 4.7 is what

155we've proposed and I think that's all the information we pulled together for you and we're these in priority order by any chance they're not right well I I will say myself I think this is an incredibly responsive and detailed presentation of where your numbers are coming from um a couple of the slides I'm not going to talk about sped so much but class size uh we're at 18 that's got it K8 18 that's gone up every year in your side from 18. um okay Carlisle we're up to 19. I honestly think there's more room at the high school it's I know that sounds counter-intuitive but you get a class of you know AP math students you can go above those numbers 18's the average I know we have well into the 20s at the high

156school and those are at the um at the higher numbers on our on the slides um the ratio of the CPS enrollment um the CPS Pre-K has gone down um and so has six through eight but the you know um uh it where in in that bind where it's distributed evenly amongst the three um elementary schools so you can't really lose a class and and as I said the enrollment's gone up so um it will be interesting um to see how that comes forward with the new Middle School don't forget to vote tomorrow um you know the professional staff the projections you know it's the I think the average per pupil spending has always been high in Concord it's been high for 20 years uh we get compared to the exact same schools since you

157know 2000 um specially acting Boxborough I don't know what they do with their numbers but um it continues to roll forward um and that's kind of been on the table as a major comparison for that period of time um obviously our number is on the higher side but it's not outrageously higher than some of the other towns I think the teacher's salary obviously jumps out no question about that um but you know where you know and we've gone through a lot of and your reductions um I think are very thoughtful and you know where where do we go from here and so um I have some comments on this thank you Kathy I'm not ending okay just make I'm summarizing okay and then I'm going to ask all the members of the fincom here and

158on the anyone in line online if they'd like to make some comments Kathy well I I wanted to comment on the last slide with the aware reductions potentially could be taken and um my first thing is I I would note that it each line item says reduction it doesn't say elimination which I think is great that just means somewhat less um two things stood out to me I don't I don't think they can be high impact in terms of dollars um certainly not a half a million but um district-sponsored field trips and instrumental uh music strikes me as something that parents can pay for because it's their specific children as opposed to as Chris had pointed out you know we're we're looking at the overall burden on every taxpayer so you know it just seems

159to me that there could be something there that gives more of a direct impact um similarly the um items of you know reduction of tutors how many tutors do we have in k through eight I don't have the number right handy we're always assessing tutors and building based on what we need so tutors are a critical component of special education well I would think that they're critical again I'm just trying to put in context a reduction of two is that out of 20 is that out of 10 is it out of is it out of two or is it probably no it's more I don't want to guess I'm gonna guess I'm wrong okay I mean you don't have to answer upwards of 50 for sure so look at some of these and and am

160hopeful well except I'm and I don't want to debate each one of these I don't think tonight like each one of these has such significant impact or I would have cut it already I want to get to guideline with all of you we're to the point we don't have the room to do that without real impact and to your point every year we try to reduce a few tutors and every summer needs come back and then I'm putting them back without them being funded and that's that's a cycle where we're running up against the wall on that cycle of gambling and then it has to get put back and we have to reallocate well maybe maybe the field trips or the instruments you know again I think that those can be direct expenses of of

161certain uh can I just make a comment about field trips um so we are doing a lot of equity work and what parents K to five are responsible for anyways school supplies and so I look at myself I have four kids it's about a hundred dollars per parent per year that you're paying so if you have four kids in elementary school the parents are shouldering that burden already for providing notebooks tape wipes for the classroom because when Dr Hunter got here that was a real shift in change for some cost savings and so you could I could be looking at twenty four hundred dollars as a parent while my kid is K to my kids are K to five in just school supplies so now we have field trips and you do have families that

162cannot afford a field trip and then we have to have a scholarship for those families so you know it sounds like yeah we can cut that and I look at K to five instrumental we have a thriving music program at our Middle School in our high school it is a reduction of Staff because it is a reduction of a program so even though we're reducing it is eliminating programs I think that's the point in all of these reductions it is an elimination of someone thing so Tracy my point is that rather than asking other people who again I'm concerned with people on fixed incomes in this town and the fact that we may be asking for eight percent more which is a substantial over a thousand dollar increase the people who may not have the

163money so if if if I have a child I can pay for my child but I don't want to be asking my neighbors too that's my that's my point thank you Kathy do we want to everyone else on the income Chris Christine no I mean what's up I I just I would go back to my earlier question which is you know how do we deal with the eight percent right so we're all in this right so what are we gonna do and I I've been on this committee for fincon for five years so since you since you've been here Dr Hunter and I think we've had a struggle with CPS just about every year not everyone but during covet it was a little easier but we were always struggling with it and the rate of

164growth there is higher so how do we solve for it right so every year we kind of put a Band-Aid we we come up with this we put some of the reserve but we're always you know sort of Hanging On by our fingernails to get the number and that's a problem so that's the sort of I look at it across the town and say well what do we do you know how are we going to ask the town to absorb those increases um that's a question I have for the school committee and for the select board right it's not fincom's problem it's all of our problems it's the Tom's problem I think when people get a 12 or 1300 increase in their bill it's going to be pretty surprising I don't care who you are

165that's a big bump so and that's half that's half of having the Middle School in there'll be another half the next year and the four percent if that's what we're going to be looking at for CPS then we know the town has had deferred a bunch of stuff right so the town has issues on salary big time right so we're going to have another hit when the comp study comes out on that so I understand what you're what you've done I appreciate the work that you've done in the budget but I think we have a problem as a town on the fiscal side and I don't I don't know how to solve it you know without having perhaps a deeper discussion on either you need more Revenue right so we're always talking about what the

166costs are so is there a way to get more Revenue so either from the business side from fundraising from fees in the schools I don't know or if he's in the town side or efficiencies there's only a couple levers we have to pull right if costs are going to grow at four percent what you know what do we do and so that's that's my that's my dilemma I guess I think it's our all of it is the Dilemma Dee anything else from you um just a couple a couple of thoughts and a couple of questions for the school committee members um two things I'd like to ask you what are the needs of our students our needs and the costs associated with those needs and the second one is what are our wants we want

167everything for our for our kids we want everything for our town but what are can can you look at can you differentiate between a need and a want because if we can have a bucket of wants that we can say okay maybe next year or the following year then we can focus on the needs and we can address those to the best of our abilities and then there might be this little bucket of Wands that has a cost associated with them and they can be used in our town for other things because we have a town that has tremendous needs as well and they've been deferred so I just want you to think about those two questions thank you Dee John yeah I think it's important to support uh this increase given uh a lot

168of the additional costs going on with the special needs and some of the fixed costs in this budget I think the town is reaching a Breaking Point and you're seeing it and it's you're just you're unfortunately here and it's a much bigger point that is being raised on the revenue side and how much the town can withstand on a sustainable basis um I just think you're taking a lot of the brunt of it now but it's important to consider next year and going forward because I think it's the discussion is going to get much harder as we go forward but I think all these are super important um components of the the students going forward for next year thank you John John first I want to thank you for the creating the schools that we

169have here um I really appreciate the hard job you're in um and the success you've achieved my big worry is that we've created something that we can't that has momentum and has a you know a uh carryover for the next decade that uh we can't afford and so there are two things on to add up to that one is that I don't think that personally I need to understand or could possibly have any uh valuable input on the line item spend it's really only the bottom line of of what it is and you set the priorities within the bottom line um I've been in situate the similar situations many times where people other people have the decision of where to spend the money but no and sort of our job as as a as a

170town is say here's how much money you can spend please use it to the best the best for our kids um and I also wanted to add just so you know there are many people some on this committee and and others who are brainstorming and working on ways that we can increase the revenue to the town because that's the other half of this so that we can continue what we have and we can fund the other needs in the town with without and our residents don't have to keep reducing their spending on other things in order to support the town um so that's the context um I think again if you try to conceptualize that guideline spending means level services for taxpayers and above guidelines means a reduction of other things can you visualize yourself

171standing at town meeting and asking the the community can you please reduce your spending reduce your lifestyle so that we can do this and I think that that that the town responds well to to these requests I mean this is a fantastically generous Community but that's the way we have to think about it okay thanks Tom Lindsay well I've learned a lot tonight so this is really helpful it was such a thoughtful presentation so thank you very much and I I agree with um what John said that it's it feels like you know this is it stinks that we're kind of in this position where you're kind of getting the brunt of this where it feels like there are a lot of factors that are not controllable that are causing a lot of these increases

172and it feels that I just Echo what Chris said and and what Don said that we have this structural problem we're going to keep coming back with this this same issue year after year because we know that an hour of time in the classroom with the teacher is always going to have a higher inflation rate year over year than everything else in the economy like these kind of structurally this is these cost increases are just going to keep being um a burden that is greater than other you know or it's going to have higher inflation so the only answer is to kind of change the equation or to have drastic um improvements in efficiency that would take a lot of creative thinking or something we can't even see at this point that could improve the

173efficiency of teaching overall because ninety percent of these costs are in teachers in the classroom tutors in the classroom right so I agree that we have to kind of probably take care of this on the revenue side structurally over time and um becoming a much uh you know more business friendly I think community and having more housing um and uh so um yeah so this is kind of just a bigger problem than what we're trying to solve tonight and uh and it's it's going to be exciting a few years as we try to figure it out but this was helpful tonight and thanks a lot okay I'm just gonna double check do we have any income members attending on Zoom I saw her and if she's still there she's gone on oh no okay all

174right then um uh I should we turn to the audience for any public comment okay oh yeah you have another please yeah that's right yeah I yeah we'll go audience I'm not going to press you all for further information unless you want to add to what Dr Hunter has said I mean I think probably there might be members that would want to I am certainly happy to hear public why don't we do public comments and then you can um respond to anything else we hear and really appreciate you all spending so much time with us it's a long meeting already okay on that note any public comments yeah I got some people signed up Peggy look at you I got a few in the mail email I'm gonna if some of you have submitted a

175form already I'll call those people first if you didn't submit a form and you still want to speak at the conclusion um just give a just give a hand raise um I'm gonna call Sue Richardson I'm going to just make a quick comment a quick comment to the pin com uh I just realized that we didn't select one so I'll scribe and go from there just in case anyone's worried about that yeah now you can really worry about that okay and just before you start Finance committees like but we're real strict then you get three minutes and I time you so um I'm learning something every minute but you're in my room tonight so I'm glad my three minutes you never get this level of participation so I'm gonna say coach I'll say no Madam

176chair because I don't want to call you by your name and in case anyone brought their little sir that wasn't part of my three minutes right all right okay thank you uh yeah Sue Richardson 260 Elsinore street I'm here to speak about the my support my deep unabiding support for unfailing support for uh instrumental music in K through five I don't have anyone who will ever be in the elementary school again but my family has benefited from starting music instrumental music education at that young age deeply benefited and I've seen benefits with lots of other people one thing I just wanted to say to set just a piece of information clear in everyone's mind is the instrumental uh music program in the elementary school does not pay for instruments for everyone doesn't pay for private

177lessons for everyone it's a community experience that most of the kids participate in and yes there are instruments but there everyone doesn't get their own instrument or private lessons paid for through the district I'll see the rest of my time to the rest of my family thank you with that next in line is actually Sophie Richardson family member hi I'm Sophie Richardson also 260 Elsinore Street uh and I'm a senior in the cchs concert band I'd like to speak about the value that Elementary School band had for me during my time in the Concord Public Schools I started playing trombone at Willard in fourth grade and this March upcoming March I will be representing cchs at the mmea All-State Festival having received the top score in the state hey hey three minutes three minutes and

178say for certain that those two years of elementary school music were essential to my successful trajectory as a trombone player if I hadn't started until middle school or if I hadn't been in a program with two band teachers I'd be farther behind in my musical development and I would have missed out on the concentrated smaller group instruction and the large Ensemble instruction it is a large Ensemble that allowed me to really start digging into learning trombone in those early years and for what it's worth this year uh 2023-2022 school year is the first year that every current cchs class freshman through senior started music in fourth grade not Fifth and 94 of eligible students were accepted into the Allstate festival for our highest number of acceptes ever um an elementary school band is worth more

179than just two extra years of individual musical growth it also provides the necessary foundation for such a robust 4-12 program which we all know we haven't conquered some of cchs band's most cherished contributions to our greater Community like our pit Orchestra which is made up of student musicians not hires for the theater our large pet band and our prism concert you know fan favorite are at risk for disappearing if we lose our foundation in elementary school my friend Jack raziani who is no longer in band he can't be here but he says the following band in elementary school was one of my favorite classes learning how to play an instrument from such a young age evolved into a Cornerstone of my extracurricular interests throughout middle school and early High School while I ultimately chose to

180focus on my sport I continued to play my instruments outside of school and still consider it a passion if I had to learn an instrument from scratch starting in middle school I think pursuing it would have been much more difficult considering the already drastic change from 5th to sixth grade I think every kid should have the opportunity like I did to learn to play and practice an instrument in her Elementary School it was intellectually challenging to learn a new skill creative and it was great to already be part of a group heading into middle school thank you I yell the rest of my time so typically we bounce back between the room and zoom and I do see someone um on Zoom so if you could state your name and address hi my name is

181Kristen Tyson and I live at Hubbard Street in Concord and I am actually the uh president of the Alcott ptg but I am speaking tonight just in my own personal experience and thoughts about this particular crisis that we're in I think it's really critical to come at this from a slightly different perspective than I've heard from the femcom tonight first of all a huge thank you to all of you who volunteer on the finance committee and who volunteer on the school committee the school committee are our elected officials these are the people we have chosen to decide what our schools need we've hired this incredible educator and expert Dr Hunter who we're fortunate enough to have and who's brought us through the pandemic and through currently a mental health crisis for our children so I'm

182asking the fincom to look very seriously at both Dr Hunter's budget but also more importantly the budget that the school committee our elected officials these are the people who speak for our town have adopted and have asked you to fund I would ask you to change the posture to one more of listening even Dr Hunter's first I would say 10 minutes of her presentation she was interrupted I counted over 24 times I think we really need to absorb what the recommendation is before we think about cutting it before we decide that we can't afford excellence in education for our children and for the Next Generation it's really critical to the future of our town that we invest now and the best way to invest is in our children I do think this Delta is something

183that we can make up as a community even if it means Cuts in other places I also have a budget and a family budget like most concordians we've also seen what has inflation done to our grocery bills our energy bills why would that be any different at the schools we see that their costs are rising we need to cover those costs thank you so much for your time um could you repeat your name please I didn't couldn't quite get that Kristen Tyson my name is Kristen Tyson Tyson thank you I just want to clarify something that Kristen said and I appreciate the sentiment Kristen we don't fund anything to be very clear we are our advisory body that whose responsibility is to look after the long-term finances of the Town making recommendations and it's all

184the citizens that show up at town meeting with all the information they have and they make their choices just to be clear so we're not we're not funding anything we're just in the position of making recommendations people can take our recommendations or they can leave them okay I got a couple more blue forms and then I'll go to the hands raised if that's okay um your handwritings is confusing his mind I think it's Colin Jennings okay I nailed it hi there Colin James of 155 Mildred Circle anchor that down a few thoughts about instrumental music as well I am a high schooler I'm a senior who has played in Orchestra since elementary school for my statistics driven room I have a statistic from you from the University of British Columbia of 113 000 high schoolers

185who are surveyed of the ones that participated in instrumental music from elementary school to high school they tested on average in all sorts of Composites from English to science to math about a grade level ahead so that is that is a huge Improvement right things that you can't necessarily teach inside the classroom diligence determination collaboration a community-led event that is fundamental to a student's success both in the classmen in the real world you just cannot teach that without some sort of you know metric where you can see how you're progressing you know music programs and instrumental stuff I would also argue that middle school and high school music programs don't work without the elementary school Foundation my experience alone as an elementary schooler I was you know not so academically burdened as I was in

186middle school and I had parents who forced me I'm thankful of to uh play uh play an instrument that footing in that instrument in elementary school when your brain is more plastic and you're more receptive to ideas let me progress in middle school and in high school the elementary portion of this is absolutely crucial to the experience we would not have the Community Driven events prism pep band both of uh prison pep band and Pitt Orchestra two of which I participate in without that Elementary School involvement and certainly we wouldn't be going golden Mica every year so those are my feelings my parents felt far more strongly about this they actually chose Concord for their instrumental music programs because despite the fact that their involvement with Performing Arts was over 40 years ago they had

187such a connection with the people they met there that they wanted to share that experience with me I don't think I would be here without Performing Arts in elementary school I don't think a lot of you would be here without Performing Arts in elementary school I buy my time that's all I have to say next I've got a Barbara Powell I would like to um Barbara Powell 316 East Bridge Road retired Town employee and matriarch of a three generation family in a neighborhood that has a lot of kids the kids are not okay and one of the things that is happening is that they form some of their Posse their groups their connections in music as well as Sports and other things and I am going to leave it to the kids they're doing a

188much more eloquent job than I am but I would hate to see that program discontinued Mia thank you and then I'd like to I'd like to comment it seems like we're getting an awful lot of people commenting on music um which it was just one small item on a very vast budget of 47 million dollars and the line item just says reduction so I don't think there's anybody who's proposed to eliminate the instrumental program so I would I'm happy to clarify it says reduction because we would look to eliminate fourth and fifth grade instrumental music lessons it's one of the options on the table well okay so my my only other point had been that um I went to schools where I didn't have that program however my parents paid for me to go to

189lessons and that's all I'm saying is that this is the taxpayer issue so um can Alexa and Peggy can I just can I just make a comment we typically at our meetings do not engage with the public and so I would request that we not engage with the public during public comments here we don't um we don't typically engage in a back and forth dialogue so we'll keep that because we're in our building um our final uh person with a blue sheet is a Scott Richardson Scott Richardson uh 260 else on our street as a taxpayer I want a strong instrumental music program at all levels of public education I don't want the joy of instrumental music only available to those students whose parents or Guardians can afford private lessons or programs I want our

190public schools to make available Pathways to participation in collaborative music making at every grade as appropriate it's not just for the rich as a senior taxpayer even if I don't have children in schools I want to attend a school music performance because it's inspiring and local and inexpensive it's easily accessible to me as I age I want to hear my neighbor's children playing music while I walk through the neighborhood even when they're starting out and it's mostly screeches drums I want to hear high level performance at the high school level like you here at cchs and I know that the remarkable quality of our high school program starts not in high school or middle school but yes in elementary school as a taxpayer I want every Elementary School student to be exposed to the possibility

191of instrumental music at the developmentally appropriate time the experts say that's in elementary school that's when they're most Adept at picking up a new language as a taxpayer who is once a socially awkward Middle School student I want every Middle School student uh to be comfortable and included in middle school and for many students band and Orchestra is the place where they belong I want them to have a chance to play an instrument build confidence with that instrument before anyone tells them that they shouldn't finally as a taxpayer I want the real estate agent who sells my house when I'm long gone to say to those prospective buyers our schools are great for many reasons one of them is that there's instrumental music in every school thank you thank you um I do see on

192zoom and then I'll go back to the room um I see a hand raised if you could give your name and address iPhone um sorry um I I think Wilson was showing first on my screen so I'll ask you hi can you guys hear me okay yes so I will send her 20 Damon Street uh just a couple comments it's just it's heartbreaking to hear this line of people standing up saying we need music in our schools it's also a couple comments that I've heard from the fincom this notion of um rubber stamping a budget and Court brought this up at a meeting I was at is certainly not the role nothing should be rubber stamped but it's also been said by Lori at this meeting that they worked hard to cut this down that

193what we're seeing is already been cut this notion that um that they came to the meeting with all this thick stuff and now it's our job to cut this and not give this is I think sort of a strange notion if they're doing their jobs and know that they don't want to come in with a budget over the recommendation and then a comment about teachers salaries this I heard someone say you know well we need to work to get that down there's a cost to Bringing people up through a system having teachers that are veterans means they cost more because there's a cost of living adjustment they are rewarded for staying at a hundred and seven thousand dollar average the per pupil average is dead center in the middle of the pack and that speaks

194to the incredible skill of this group of Lori and her team that have done that with the teacher salary that's high that represents 80 percent this notion that we should push back and say well let's work to get that down these teachers raise our children they are the reason that we live in this town and we love this education system it isn't the bricks and the roof overhead it's these these teachers are unbelievable in our town and uh I I just this notion of we should I heard someone say we should oh let's work to get that down that's really eye-opening I view that as an incredible badge of honor uh and someone on social media recently said we should have others people should try and bring that up um there's lots of things we

195can cut I'm sure you guys have a huge budget there's fire there's police there's all sorts of other things there's roads there's potholes but the one thing you shouldn't cut is Teachers salaries or try to music programs being cut um there must be a way to to meet this budget and and again just to repeat just know that Lori came into this meeting with these things already cut or she wouldn't have had them in there anyway just a few comments from what I've heard tonight thank you thanks back to the rum gray on the left with glasses foreign my left if you could give your name and address hi I'm Erica Jocelyn I live at 90 . I've been the library media specialist at Willard Elementary School since 2009. my position is on the potential

196cut list in 2019 my family and I bought a house near White's pond we chose to move here even though our daughter could have gone to Concord Public Schools regardless we wanted to be part of this town because concord's values aligned with our own particularly concord's commitment to providing an exceptional education to all students my daughter is in second grade she is tentatively chosen the trombone as the instrument she would like to play importantly that she would like to play as part of the school band I can't imagine sending her to a school in which only the students whose parents pay for private lessons have the opportunity to learn an instrument this is not in line with the Strategic plan focused on equity I can't imagine sending her to a school where she won't be

197taught how to develop her critical media literacy skills in a world of fake news or how to make sense of her rights and responsibilities as a digital citizen in an increasingly online World both of which are core components of the current Library curriculum denying students these opportunities is not in their best interest and it is not in line with concord's commitment to our community so I ask that you fully support these programs in order to give our kids the best possible education thank you thank you um back to zoom um I see Harlan Reed if you could unmute sure Carlin Reid 83 wits and I must compliment the fincom on its diligence in examining the school budget it's not an easy job that you have to do basically your job is to say no and

198to give warnings to the Future on what the future guidelines should look like I think the message has been received by the school district their presentation has been uh diligent and detailed as well but I would encourage the fincom guy fincon to seriously consider changing its guidelines to something that is more favorable towards the school district I and I also encourage the school district and fincom to reach a negotiated agreed appoint so that when we come to town meeting on April 30th the uh there is one amount that is presented not two I don't really want to see the audience have to make a choice because they will and if fincom needs to find another five hundred thousand dollars to eliminate from the town's budget I suspect I can give you some advice on that

199thanks thank you Carlin back to the rum uh hold on those guys have had their hands up for a while I see three in the back there's a blonde I don't know gray blonde okay doing the best I can I'm feeling Pratt I live at 23 Garden Road a house that my parents bought um I think Dr Hunter is my seventh superintendent Maybe um and I take her at her word if she has cut this budget to the Bone she has cut it to the Bone and I've been here in this town since 97 and there's always someone who suggests there's a difference between our children and our children my children aren't in this school district anymore I'm paying for my children as we should all with the great privilege of living in Concord and

200owning property comes great responsibility our houses are worth a doo-doo vote we are going to have to pay taxes on them and we are going to have to support our children and if there is a question of our you know enormous salaries if you have this number of kids sitting for three hours at a fincom meeting you know how great your teachers are without question I would follow Dr Hunter over a ravine if she tells me we're cutting to the Bone we are cutting to the Bone every seven ten years we have a meeting like this and we have to Pony up for other people's children we are not pitting elderly people against our children we are a town we're going to come together we're going to Pony up for these guys because our kids

201are gone thank you I think we have a final person on Zoom yeah two two I keep coming iPhone and then Chris Harlow um I'll go with iPhone on Zoom if you could unmute and give your name and address iPhone hi yes my name is Laura lack I'm calling from 24 Willow Street uh on Zoom uh I just want to just first similarly to other people speaking just congratulate everybody in this open dialogue in regards to trying to come up with a solution because that's really what our town is all about is problem solving and it I think the importance and I don't know that there's the solution is but I do know that we know that there's a rising cost of inflation the Federal Reserve is constantly trying to work on that but it

202hasn't it it's still a trial by fire and trying to work that out but we can tell from the global economy that you know wages are continuing to be an issue and with the budget that exists a majority of that that's coming from the Concord Public Schools is going to be related to wages and this is going to be an ongoing problem um meaning that it's something that we problem that we need to have a solution for and I do think that that is going to involve creating additional funds to be able to make sure that we have the level of education that required is required for equity and inclusion as well as keeping The Talented teachers and staff and administration that work in the town of Concord these are things that you know we

203we don't want to have to negotiate I think the cost of having to do Replacements on these on teachers can be extremely expensive and time consuming and also disruptive so there is a you know a whole business side of this where you know if we're not making our budget in regards to what the you know recommendations being made there is a long lasting Endeavor where they'll have to find cuts and in that way it doesn't create equity and inclusion because there will obviously be areas that need to be eliminated that seem to be something that we critically need in this time and an era in which we're recovering from a pandemic where these kids have been put through a lot in the past three years so I just encourage everybody to take a collaborative effort

204to try to make sure that we can kind of come together an agreement that you know that everybody can live with and then I concede my time back to the room Terry hi I'm Terry ackerman89 East Ridge Road I'm on the select board but I'm speaking for myself and I really want to thank both committees this is a really excellent dialogue of taking three hours now that of your time really appreciate it um I'm also really grateful for you um looking at it as a town wide and a structural problem because um I did serve on the Vincom also and I don't remember back then that we were as aware of it um being a structural problem but it does seem like if we're going through um we're not prepaying tuition we're starting to go

205through the um Surplus on the um I've gotten the name of it circuit breaker right that it's starting to really um get maybe become a worse problem so I appreciate everybody's honesty about that and you know you're gonna have to all beings together and solve it my question is the high school does not seem to be having this same structural problem not that I know of and I'm trying to figure out you've also got special education utility costs inflation um running out and I know you don't want to get into a dialogue but I am just really curious at some point to understand why it's only at the elementary school I am going to answer that one Carlisle is absorbing the largest increase in history of the region because of the enrollment shift we are

206having the same struggles and we proposed a budget that to Concord was a very minimal increase overall and Carlisle is working its way through an eight percent increase on the high school budget alone that's the simple answer we'd probably be having the same discussion if the enrollment shift hadn't switched the heavier load to Carlisle we're one more on Zoom is it was terrible yep Chris yep you're there Crystal hello um yep I'm Chris tarlow 1295 Main Street and um I just wanted to say that seems to always come down to special ed setting everything over the over the top but um that is kind of the the mission is uni and part of the law you have to provide what kids need so I think sometimes the budget is not you can't just set it

207in stone say this is what it is so just hoping people can take that into account thanks Chris right back to the room and then we are okay I see three hands up those are going to be my final three I'll go to four there are four one two you can see okay four and then I'm gonna call it because we've given a long time to this I'll go uh sweatshirt and jacket in the front hi I'm Jasmine Benham 257 to shove Road um I used to be in the band uh specifically in elementary school and it was um one of my most like treasured experiences I sadly um had other commitments that were also really important to me so I didn't have the time that to spend on my instrument but a part of

208me really really regrets that and that Foundation that I had from um being in a band with amazing teachers who kind of still have an impact on me now like I go to visit Mr Nessie all the time um uh amazing teachers that are super supportive of all the kids and I think having private lessons would really take away from a huge part of it which would be Community engagement and it was more about having a community for me than it was about playing the instrument um and you have that by having a group that you can be a part of and I think some people were just a part of it because everyone was everyone else was a part of it and it kind of just created this group environment um and I think

209if you start uh instruments later you are already committed to other outside commitments other sports and so you don't even start to go into that instrument because you're like oh well I don't have the time um and the amount of people that would reduce um in high schools band I love going to their performances it's absolutely amazing and people like one of my best friends Sophie she's in an amazing um trombone player and I am so proud of her and how far she's come and the school she's able to get into because of that and I think that that's just if you don't have that Foundation um you can't get there thank you thank you um Vlad ES Liz Kroll to Liz Kroll 212 Hubbard Street um I'd like to say first and foremost that

210um I appreciate everyone's work um I am very concerned by comments about reducing teacher salaries for all the reasons that have been already been said um the teachers of the heart and soul of our schools um they have opportunities to go elsewhere um as someone who hired at in Lexington I can tell you that it's a competitive market to get experienced good teachers and we should be so grateful to them um I'm concerned also about the comment that teachers work 10 months a year because they work all the time I could tell you that they work 12 months a year they work 14 months a year so I was a little dismayed to hear that I do want to point out that the Mental Health crisis that Dr Hunter alluded to um is um mitigated

211by the access to music and the Arts and the idea of the cuts at the elementary schools we've heard the wonderful testimony of our really great students tonight uh breaks my heart because I think we we have no idea as some of the people who are no longer doing music have told us about the long-term effects um of that program um and I I want to say finally because I feel like I have to be the hippie liberal and say this and it goes back to the 80s and Jonathan kozel's groundbreaking work um there are Savage inequalities in this country our choices are heartbreaking and they are so small compared to the impact of having um property driven taxes funding schools around this country and I just feel like I need to put that out

212there tonight because it's a national issue it's not just here um and finally I would like to say that Librarians in this country are under the gun as we all know and the idea of cutting one is just so incredible to me because they are literally preserving our rights to free speech and education every single day not to mention being de facto mental health Advocates and mentors thank you very much does that conclude our public comment I think oh that wasn't it we're the last two students yes okay um either one of you come up as you see fit hello my name is Mike McCabe I'm a junior at Cocker call High School I am the President of the orchestra Council I have been awarded fifth chair in the first Violence Section in the Allstate

213I have one third place in the American young classical musician award and I've been invited to perform in Italy I have been involved in the Concord School orchestras since fifth grade I moved to Concord after living in three different countries I started playing the violin when I was seven years old due to Opportunities given from my school and since then the violin has helped me grow as a person music is not only in art but a universal language I was able to communicate with people of different backgrounds and languages from music Alone music is not only just a source of joy in my life but also a source of protection and Community I am so grateful to have been introduced to music at elementary school and for my school to have given me such opportunities

214the best time to start music is Elementary School the earlier the better and so that's why I'm going to say please do not take these opportunities away from the students of the Concord Elementary Schools thank you our final speaker I would not let it Escape so please bear with me and then read my scribbles um your name and address if you oh yeah my name is Leah Greenberg I live on 86 Perry Street in Concord um I'm also in the high school music program and I was in the first fourth grade band at throw Elementary School I'm also a babysitter and one of the girls I babysit is nine years old and she just started playing the violin uh when I came over she was struggling with math so I decided yeah I suggested we

215take a break and she showed me what she was doing on the violin and her face just lit up she has a really busy schedule like a lot of kids her age and I don't know if she would have picked up the violin if she had started in sixth grade or later also hope it happened like you were saying most of the kids in the system have three years that were interrupted um and they were isolated from each other our community and our schools as you said we're in a mental health crisis partially as a result of coven well what can we do to build community and help mental health well music brings people together the nine-year-old I babysit was looking forward to a mini concert um she was doing at her school she makes

216friends there it's where I made friends too when I was worried and continue to do so if we want to rebuild a stronger Community um in stronger schools after covid we need Community Music and also please do not touch that please do not cut teacher salaries I love my teachers and we need them so yeah foreign I know this meeting is really long but I do if any of our committee members wanted to Miss discussion and I'd like to give sort of everyone the opportunity I'll sort of go down the line um Cynthia do you have anything you want to add we have a lot to talk about in our next meeting yeah I mean there's a lot of issues were raised I think I need to think about them for a while and I

217hope people are taking note of all the questions and comments from the public um I just would make it very clear that we did not vet any of those recommended Cuts in fact I would have he particularly did not discuss them and in fact I would like to I don't think they should have been presented as part of this presentation tonight sorry we weren't directly asked by the fincon to to bring them today those were not school committee recommendations I just want to make it very clear the school could he did not discuss any of those recommendations at all okay we'll make a note of that yeah thank you it's important to the public to understand we just had no discussion about them I mean everybody could occur we did not discuss them right yeah

218no yeah okay I think that was intentional because we didn't want to weigh in prematurely yeah I'll be brief uh I would Echo what Ms Rainey said um there's an implication in this list that this is under debate at the school committee level and it most certainly is not um we have yet to enter into discussion on where the budget's going to go from here number two I want to thank the fincom uh I don't envy you um it's hard work every year this year is uh notably hard I think so thank you and thirdly thanks to everybody who tuned in tonight or came tonight um this is unusual and uh we're glad you're here thank you and I think like the Finn common like the school committee you too are going to share the

219challenges that are before us you know that that's why you're here thank you so I just have a few thoughts one being um I can't reiterate enough that special education is clearly kind of the main story here and we do have a requirement to provide our students with these Services these are kids I know you guys think in numbers I think in kids that's just who I am um you know we did not discuss that list of reductions but in order to get your guideline there's nothing else to cut so that is the list the superintendent brought to us we we haven't discussed it but I think that's what you're seeing is that's the only way to see it I look at all of the students that came here tonight they're a product of arcade

220eight schools and here they sit in high school they are well spoken their teachers have taught them well I think that they should actually be running our meetings because they did a really nice job with it but know that we're raising people and and we do all have a shared responsibility in the kids of this town we all pay property taxes we live here we get it but we do have an obligation to the students that that live within this district and I and I understand your responsibility is also great and you're looking at the taxpayer but as a school Committee Member I you know I will only speak for myself I I am here to advocate for the needs of the school system being the superintendent's budget that she brought to us and this

221is just you know speaking just on behalf of myself this is where we're at so thank you Carrie yeah um thank you all for this has obviously been a very long meeting um I appreciate all the level of detail that you are willing to go into to get to um to where we are I guess um and I also appreciate that um you're having to balance the needs of the entire town and of which we are one component um so thank you for for really digging in and listening to all the different aspects of this um you know our job is to advocate for um what's best for students with an eye towards the impact on a taxpayer of which we all all are taxpayers um and since um this budget is is certainly um

222an increase but it's not an unprecedented increase and it is a level service budget it is not a budget that has fluff in it this is a budget that is going to Simply uh continue the services that we are currently offering our our students and families and our entire community so um this is a level service budget at a time when student needs are exceptionally high and I do want to just respectfully challenge one sentiment that I heard a number of times that um that things are things are going well the data is showing that we are we are things are going well and that is actually a testament to yes our teachers our administrators to all the incredible work that has gone into our um gone into our students in schools but at the

223same time it is things are not all right things are not fine I mean if you look at this Mental Health crisis page I mean the the fact that 27 of kids felt depressed over the sorry high school kids felt depressed over the last two weeks or even worse have thought about self-harm um is is it's not just shocking but it's it's not okay um so my I I think based on um what Dr Hunter has presented what we as a committee have talked about number a number of times like this we have to make really critical um really tough Cuts if um if we don't if we have to go deeper and that is um in my opinion that's not that's I don't think that's in the best interest of our community at this

224time so thank you um yeah do you you you sort of brought my favorite question of the night which is like can we talk about things that we need can we compartmentalize things that we need versus things that we want and before I was on school committee I had like no idea really about how much of our budget is not just things we need but there's another layer we are legally obligated to provide um and that you know shocked me I think you know not to get waxed too philosophical I think there's a debate to be had about how much in our country federally Statewide we tether to the schools for delivery of services that's that's unfortunately not a debate we can have in this room because the laws are the way they are now

225so when I look at the the big chunk of our budget it is the delivery of basic needs um and then when I looked at um I forget which which page it is but you know like when you look at um our proposed budget and the categories that we looked at you know out of District tuitions we have real dollars 135 000 more we don't get to choose that um 108 000 more we're projecting for utilities I think we all agree we need to keep the lights on um and then so so right there and then you know the 206 000 in supplies and materials that's really like inflation so right there that's 449 000 like there's a big giant chunk of the Delta that we're all talking about that's a huge chunk of this

226585 and there's just there's just not a lot there and again these are things we're obligated to so um I don't know who it was that said you know that that we really I think have cut this thing to the bone from our perspective of what are we doing to deliver needs and then you know and then you get into the wants right and that's where things become tricky because we have a strategic plan that had a tremendous amount of community buy-in um not just from students and parents and teachers but from the extended community so there are expectations of what we're going to deliver and sometimes even though the wants maybe might seem like wants when you stop delivering those things and they fly sort of in the face of what you've laid out

227in the Strategic plan number one and two what your community collectively has come to expect of the schools I think for a lot of people there's going to be debate as to what a want is versus what a need is and that is stinks for us so that makes it really hard um so I think that's just where we are and you know speaking again to these really horrifying statistics of where kids are and if they really are in classrooms ready to learn or not um that's gonna getting them to a place where they are ready to learn in their hearts and Minds is is a huge Challenge and sadly I think there's there's dollars and cents to that as I said to parashar like even though like I think our metrics are great we're

228achieving at high rates or all of our metrics are kind of where we want them but to maintain that sadly in this environment that we're in and I don't think concord's unique I think this is all across the country it requires more dollars does that stink yeah um but is that our reality also yeah and again I I just go back to it's it's very it's very challenging when so much of what we're doing is legally mandated where we don't really have choices here so that's sort of where I you know I I plead with you as you guys are examining things to to kind of take that all into account and recognize that a lot of the work has done been done by Dr Hunter and her team already to get us to a

229place where we're not really talking about wants but I don't know we all have we all have discussions to be had I know and town meeting isn't too far away so let me and I know Peggy wants to close but I'll just say a couple words so first of all I appreciate all the work and effort that goes on I said it earlier not only among the teachers the leadership the school committee the parents Etc and it's not a one-time event I recognize that and it's continuous and I've seen it over the last few years that I've been on this income frankly so I don't think hopefully none of our comments and questions are taken as you're not doing enough number one right number two I want to actually bring it back to the higher

230level in terms of the cost structure where it's been and where it's going as I started off Kelly it's been uh it was three points it was 3.7 going down to 2.8 I thought that was good news so I was curious how we're going to do that if it's four percent that's okay too again you know we're not I'm not here to dictate flying items I think Don said it well it's up to you guys to do that but if it is going to be four percent we should have an offline conversation about updating those cost Trends because I think it's important for the residents of the town to know that they can expect a four percent increase plus or minus whatever for the next four to five years because again our job is to

231make recommendations to the town around the Financial Health to stability of the town and that includes Town spending capital and operating school spending Capital operating Etc and so as part of that I think it's Our obligation to tell the town we financially we may be in a great place now but there are some yellow flags or red flags coming up and what those are and then the town can decide and the residents can decide whether they want to pay an extra thousand dollars a year or five hundred dollars a year right it's only our recommendation it's a school committee's recommendations if we can get to one place great if we can't then you know citizens have to make choices right so I appreciate everything that's gone into it I don't know whether you'll have further

232discussions around all the questions or not but at a minimum it would be helpful if we can just to get get together and align on the five-year cost estimates right because I think it's important information that we need to deliver to the town just like we did last year with the town and school five-year projections we'd like to do that again and again just to so that we can again give some strategic sense of what directions we're going so with that I'll turn it over to Peggy for an um Alexa for post adjournment a brief thank you a very brief closing statement um thank you very much for spending this amount of time with us the committee everyone in the audience our own committee um foreign clearly we do have a structural problem um and

233costs are increasing I I would just say two things two things in closing I uh please don't take budget reductions at the high school off the table that those if that if there's room there that will also save our taxpayers money um I know it's not the same kind of offset because it's the region we have Carlisle et cetera et cetera I'm sure they'll be pushing for some reductions but um there's you know that as a taxpayer to me you know that's an offset to the CPS so um don't turn don't turn your eyeballs off of that as a total gimme um and I hope that we can find you know some reductions on your side I hope that our committee has heard your the difficulty and the amount of work that you've already done

234in your budget and I would prefer that we can go to town meeting with a a single number which we did do last year is that correct so um hopefully we can do that again so thank you should we move to adjourn you do it don't you just you just announced this meeting is adjourned I learned that you don't have to move or vote on adjournment you just adjourned