North Brookfield Multi Department Budget Meeting May 14th, 2025

001[Music] I am on good. Okay. All right. Well, I will call this meeting to order. Uh, thank you all for coming. Uh, nice to have everybody in the same room. Um, we do have two seats open here. Uh, if, um, the accountant and the superintendent want to come join us. I'm good. You're good? What's that? I missed said antisocial. Oh, okay. Um, so everybody knows everybody here. Do you know? Not all the names specifically yet. We'll get there. All right. Um I guess the first order of business would be to ask the uh finance committee chair for his review of the budget and um some recommendations he may have at this time. Okay. So as projected behind it may turn to see you can see what we could cheat. So these are the various departments

002the slug board uh proposed budget is 97 the difference from 25 to 26 is 99,000 primarily the 90,000 is the uh town administrator because as you know that was part of the uh uh 300,000 000 from uh the ARPA fund. So that gets flowed through. The other is insurance is going up. Uh in the budget we have about 5,000. I fear that we may be looking at something more. And the other is the additional cost for street lighting for about $9,000. So I don't know if we have any challenges to that in the future but uh that's what's reported so far. Uh fin uh last year when I first joined finer of 150,000 by the end of last year we have reduced that reserve to 15,000. When we got free cash in in October, we

003we added another 20,000 to the budget. So, we have 35,000 for this year and we're going to keep it at 35,000 until maybe we pay depending upon what uh free cash comes in. Uh the accountant uh the accountant treasurer assessors are increases in there for uh the assessor we're going through a every four years we have to do a revaluation and we're next year is property revaluation. So there's a there's a a cost of probably about 9,000 in there that's associated with the firm that has to come in from outside to do it. Uh no benefit costs again uh group insurance has is going up uh approximately 16% overall. But since group insurance itself is a moving target, we never really know because people come in and people go out, they're not necessarily. in our

004insurance program or they drop out. Uh let me go back on a couple of things in the we have made a couple of changes. We're suggesting some changes for the select board for the past few years. the select board salary uh has not been paid and it's uh I think we're we're suggesting that we go a third year without it or maybe the fourth year. I don't know. Uh uh also in there was an adjustment to uh the uh town assistants salary was going to go from hours to 32. So we brought it back to 25. Ashley is not going to be with us. I think I have uh to be more clear here. So the adjustment to the assistant salary we reduced by $9,000. This was voted upon by Fincom and it's recorded on

005the worksheet. Again, the elimination of the select board salary and this was the uh dues and membership. We reduced that by,00 and brought it back to the 900 it was last year. Uh, Fincom, as I said, we put up the the additional 3,000. Oh, no way. We took away the 2,000 for uh $100 for our membership in the association of uh finance committee uh members. Uh it's a good organization. It's part of the MMA, but since we're taking it away from the certain departments, we felt it's only right to take it away from our own department. Uh the accountant has reduced the audit fee. Uh the auditor agreed to keep it as it is uh for 2025. So, we reduced by 1,700. Excuse me. Uh, please. We really haven't done anything yet. Uh, uh, fire.

006We need to speak to the chief. Uh, we have not done any of these, but for the past two or three years, he has had an open position or assistant chief position. uh has never been filled and we have managed G3 years without it. Uh we're going to suggest that we just uh reduce that from their budget. Uh they have increased electricity and heating cost by double the amount that we have uh for 2025. Uh again, we're now operating they're operating a few buildings when this was proposed early on in a couple of meetings. The when uh couple of people brought up the idea, all right, you know, all your utility costs are going to be more expensive. And their argument was this is the uh fire department. Well, we're it's new buildings practically. They're

007going to be highly efficient and so on. So, if they are going to be highly efficient, let's bring it back to what they were at that point. Uh the emergency squad. Now, the I guess a couple of months ago, the the squad presented to the select board at that time. to discuss you and Brooke and show [Music] that they can no longer manage on the amounts of money that we are contributing it and how a contract uh they had a very good presentation. They had a lot of information in there. It is a very difficult situation. Not just North Brookfield but a lot of the ambulance companies. I know Eastbrook Field is struggling. Uh uh so they wanted an increase of 60,000 which at this point based on our budget it's very difficult to do

008that. But on the other hand, we need to support the ambulance as a community. We have to have some sort of arrangement with an ambulance company. It doesn't have to be this particular one, you know, it could be any other one, but I don't think it's we're going to be saving any money and we run the risk that the service is not in our town. And you know, I'm not going to suggest that we go and and hire a uh a commercial company out of Worcester and in an emergency them having to come from Worcester to here. Uh you know, that's that's not serving our people. So, we're recommending maybe we could go back to them for with an additional 40,000. We're hoping that there will be additional uh growth in the revenue for some

009of the new houses that are being built and maybe that could offset that. Uh so I had we had a lot of questions when they were here and I then had a subsequent meeting with the treasurer of the ambulance association and she's provided me with all the information I wanted including their IRS reports and uh you know as of this year their their fiscal year closes is on March 31st they had a loss of 60,000. So that's where that 60,000 is coming from. Uh uh highway we're looking once again at the we have to talk to the line painting. So, we had 8,000 in the budget last year for line painting. We still have 5,000 left uh as of uh April and they're wanting an additional 10,000. So, our suggestion is possibly cutting that back

010to five. uh you know they still have to do a lot of paving and whether they'll get to the the line painting this year. Board of Health. So the board of health came in wanting to like many departments in in our operation here hiring and keeping employees is challenging. Uh we have we have 118 full-time employees of which only seven are not union or not on contract. So their salary is definitely needed to be adjusted. We went in and we did a comparison to other towns. It's quite a detailed comparison and we came up with these adjustments. Uh it's going to break the bank. No. Uh what would break the the uh the operation is if these people leave. Um besides working very hard, they have a lot of history. Uh so the board of

011health raised their recycling monitor salary to what they thought they could keep their people. Uh it was rather high. We as a committee did not agree with it and we're reducing the the salaries that they asked for what uh the committee asked for uh by 7670. right now. And we haven't had a a clerk in the health department for a permanent one for a year and a half. And you know, they come and go. So, he wanted a $25 an hour. uh they're getting 18. Uh so he wanted to move it to 25 and we thought that was um a bit much and we kind of recommend we're recommending uh 22,000. And then we have the uh the school which we'll get into a little later. Let me bring it back to here. So, those

012are some of the costs are baked into these numbers, some not. Uh so the bottom line is at this point with the adjustments that we've made and we are in a deficit of 1 million 132 031 one and uh we're not sure how we get out of this. So we came back to when you have such a loss like that it's and the school committee or the uh it's coming in asking for uh 1.2 increase from the prior years. Uh we do we can't do that. Right. This is this is a comparative of uh last year to this year. So we are looking at a difference from fiscal 25 of 1,183. It's broken out here and you know it's a one of the things that we had looked at is that part of it is

013made up of just operating costs and the difference there is an increase of 338,000. The bulk of the difference is through the offsets. So the offsets being what the government gives to us, what the state gives to us in various forms. Chapter 70, the [Music] uh the circuit breaker for special aid until last year. It was 2,3898,000 was anticipated that we were going to get as uh offsets for this current year. Uh the budget is now reflecting 1.552. So that's been a degree decrease decrease of 847,000. And I know in our March meeting I had pointed out these these figures specifically in the U special ed and asked Jim why has it decreased and uh as of as of now we still don't have an understanding why that has decreased to that that amount. So

014that is are we just having less students in special ed? Are we sending less school uh kids out? Uh from our initial discussion, it did not like did not sound that this was a uh the situation So, when I first started, you know, I've been chair for two of the three years that I'm on the committee, uh, this is this is my final year. And when Jen and I started discussing the budget in January of last year and I had the big budget book and went through it, I just said, "Okay, let's look at let's look at the school in different years." So I went back and said, "What did it look like pre- pandemic before the world changed?" And this is what it it had. Uh then I did 22 23 and again 23

01524 and this is just a trailing to show how much the school budgets have increased and it's you can see the various departments and again the critical one has always been pupil services which is special ed and uh I don't know how do we we get around that. So the special ed even though proposed is 3,015 compared to 2 million840. pretty decent increase. But yet again, as I was saying before, the offsets, meaning being reimbursed by the states, have decreased from 1,824 to 962,000. So these are variances that I think as a committee we certainly would like to look into further. Uh and as an organization I think we need to understand these numbers. Uh but bottom line is this town does not [Applause] have the ability to support an increase of $1.2 million at

016the moment. And you know, to give everybody history, especially the new board members, uh when we were talking about this before I when uh I first came on the committee and Mike was still the chair and you know, we met several times with uh Tim and went over it and understood the challenges that the school has and We did talk about, you know, maybe we need to look into an override. And at that point, Mike did some back of the envelope calculations. And his calculations, if my memory serves me correctly, I can't remember where it came from, but I remember numbers. And uh so for to generate an extra million dollar it would be a 14% increase. Okay. And depending upon what your property values were your real estate taxes would increase in some part

017substantially. And I went home and I looked at I calculated my own and it calculated that I would have to pay an additional $1,000. And I said, "Okay." Uh, and I think I may even mentioned it to Tim or I know I mentioned it to uh Bob before Iowa. I said, "You know what? If this would straighten out the school and put us on the right track, I'm good with it. Right at that time, my tax real estate tax uh burden was 6400 uh a year. Now, if you ask me now, would I want would I accept $1,000 more increase? No, because my tax rate my real estate is 8,200 now. and I could not afford the burden of another $1,000 with all the other increases. So, you know, it's at that time it may

018have been the answer. Uh I don't think it's the answer today. Uh and there again, you know, I'm uh I'm blessed. I'm fairly comfortable. so I could absorb this and I believe that there's a lot of people who can't. Uh so just as we as a finance committee try to look at everything we could possibly do whether you know from an override to and we talked about cutting services you know how could we cut services look at the budget you know it's got rid of half of the police department and all of uh the highway department, it still will not cover the 1.2 million and you know so our hope is that we did try or you know the group tried to regionalize and that failed. But have we gone and looked at other possibilities?

019I mean even when it failed, did it fail as a regionalization of the full schools full district or did anyone go back and say, "Okay, we could carve out something. Could we carve out the high school and maybe they would talk about redo regionalizing with that?" I don't know the issues and you know those who have been on the committee. Uh so we're at the point we have to look at everything and that's every department every committee and you know we just we can't keep on growing going this way. our our revenue only increase so much. We have two big projects going on and we don't know where that that will lead us. You know, you have the sewer project. We don't know what the actual we borrow money but until that is flowing until

020there's a sign off by the federal government saying okay it's good. We don't know. And can we start continue start taking [Music] money closing the budget uh using anticipated free cash? No. Because that's insane. I mean that is so risky. The department of uh services have said that all along for years. we you know I I believe years ago or at some audit reports that the auditors say that's dangerous you know it could only accumulate so we can't do that we can't really go and start taking monies from the uh stabilization it's a stabilization god forbid if something we need to stabilize if you know the federal government comes back and says oh you need two more million three more million million dollars worth of work on the seal plant and or else security has

021to be shut down. What are the residents going to do? You know, they you know, how are they going to that's what stabilization is for in my opinion, you know, is it should we be using it for operations? That's that's it. I'm done. All right, enough preaching from an old man. Thank you, Jim. Thank you very much. So, did anybody have any questions for Joe or the finance committee? No. What is the deficit? What's the deficit? Uh 1 million72. What is What is it from? Is it primarily from the school? So that's just the just the school primarily. Yes. I think if we look at the budget and we could drill down and maybe 100,000 is from uh and that's based on projected numbers. Projected numbers. Yes. That everybody has put their requests in. As

022I said, we be we began eliminating with our recommendations and again we're we we could only recommend you know we can't do anything and uh you know so yeah we could maybe chop it another 50. I have a question. You said your personal property went from 6,400 to 8200 within the last couple years. Yeah. What was the in townwide like what was the reason for that increase because we haven't re-evaluated right you said that was in next year now they they kind of evap re-evaluate based on one of the problems it's not a problem I live on lake so we do have the highest tax rates in in the town and uh so when the assessor is reassessed they actually go and they look that houses that have sold. Correct. But you said that's not

023due till next year. No. And now every year. Oh, I think you said every four years earlier. I must have four years. Now they're going to do an actual They're going to come to your house and say, "Oh, you know, now it's worth, you know, 50,000 more or something like that." And that's what they're required to do every four years. And believe me, I'm not an expert on uh assessing. I usually don't open the doors but uh you know so yeah and it's [Music] the the finance committee is people who have been here a long time and who love this town and you know and and love the school, you know, and it's it's painful. It's painful when we have to go through these these numbers. Kathy, what do we say most time when we're

024leaving? We're going home depressed, right? So, anyhow, I'll I'll shut up. Um, anybody else have any questions for Joe? Anybody have any questions in the crowd? Raise your hand and for finance committee. Okay. Um, there were some statements made about um an override. Uh it had been brought up, it had been um mentioned at several meetings here and there. Um and you know, we're more than willing to talk about what it means to have an override. Uh but I don't think that with all the debt exclusions that we have, we don't know where they're we don't know what they're coming to. We don't know what their end result is going to be. Uh, I think it would be irresponsible to put an override on the warrant, especially considering um the results of recent um override

025votes. Um because to Joe's point earlier, you know, sewer is going to go up. We don't know what the um end is going to be of this build the buildings project with the the the fire and highway buildings um because there's probably going to be extra costs there as well. Um so until those are done, we really can't know our our impact on the tax base. Do you have anything to add or you r? Not at this time. I mean, this town is crushed. It's being crushed with debt. Crushed. And unfortunately the debt exclusions that we've taken out, like I said, there's a lot of uncertainty, you know, and I and I've heard some things about the sewer project that indicate it's has similar trajectory as the the building projects. The building projects have certainly

026hit some pretty big hurdles and as of right now I I I can't tell you we're going to get past them and there's some very ugly decisions ahead and and decisions that are u as a taxpayer I, you know, not too happy about, but we we we we are we're we are poor town making poor people decisions. The credit card is maxed out in my particular situation. You know, I'm comfortable. Can I afford it? Sure, I can afford it. You know, if I if I if I it feel a whole lot better if it was a one-time deal because I can afford it now. 10, 15, 20 years from now. I'm not gone. And there's a there is a large percentage of our town that is in that situation now. And you know it it

027it since co costs have gone up on everything and and and and you know and and with everything and and it gets to a it gets to a point where you know if if if we're not looking out for say fixed income senior citizens What happens? What happens to them? We're in a situation where, you know, we're we're asked to sacrifice one demographic for another to some degree. And what's happened in the past couple years is is having a a a tremendous terrible effect on some of these folks. And I haven't heard anybody tell me any different. And the taxes have increased tremendously in the past couple years. And to think that we can go back and and and ask for more. I mean, like I said, Spencer got shot down last last night. Mhm.

028And it didn't get it didn't it didn't just lose. I mean, it got squished. It was decimated. I mean, the people spoke. So, yeah, I agree. Kathy, another thing that I say to Joe all the time, what do we do? What do we do? Well, that's what we're here to figure out. Mhm. Ralph, you get anything? I'm going to hold off. I may have something after, but I'm going to hold off. All right. School committee. Tough position to be in. You say we're crushing the talents being crushed, but we also have to be so careful that we don't crush the education that these kids are getting because they are the town's future if we crush so much of what they're getting. Are they going to stay here? Are they going to raise their families here?

029Are they going to be here to be the next generation to support the town? Or are they all going to hit that age where they're starting to have their families and they leave? Well, how many are choicing out? All righty. But looking back, where was the biggest piece of that? They get nervous when they they hear these things, the regionalization and the happening and not happening. I think too finding ways to bring them back is more is is a huge piece that we need to be looking at, too. And we can't afford to lose any more of them. Well, I think you have 10 going. You got 10 that are choicing into seventh grade at playbug next year. I mean, that's a huge hit, right? How many How many are in the seventh grade or

030sixth grade rather going into seventh? Yes, sir. I'm not exactly sure about our seventh grade, but currently our eighth grade class has about 30 and uh the way that looks right now, we're going down to 14 that are staying in North Brookfield next year. We're losing about four to Bay Path and the rest are going to surrounding districts as uh Qua Bob, Quabin, all the other ones. Can you give those numbers one more time? I'm sorry. So currently in our eighth grade we have 30 and we're going down to 14 and I believe four are going to there's no guarantee they all leave but that's yes as of right now there's 14 that are uh sure they are saying and the other 16 believe they're leaving. Thank you. Yeah. You guys have anything? No. I

031mean, the cost has been rising year-over-year. It's not anything new. So, you know, the cost the the cost being higher this year shouldn't be a surprise given that the state has these unfunded mandates, especially around special education and uh when we have out of out of district tuitions to pay for the state allowed uh uh quite an increase a couple years back and it's come down a bit, but it's still higher than it's ever been. So, that's that's an additional burden on the budget. when you have 1.7 to 1.8 million for 13 students. Um that's that's a a large percentage of the budget right there. And that's that's based on what the state allows these uh out of district schools to charge for tuition. And they allowed the the bump and um so that's where

032there's a lot of cost driving there. And obviously, you know, you got salary increases and transportation costs. So those are all those are the the major drivers. And one of one of the big things as far as offsets go is the ESSER funds. We don't have any more ESSER funds. We've been artificially floating the school for a couple years now and warning repeatedly about that cliff. I think each of the last two to three years, we've had a cliff warning from Mr. McCormack about the loss of that funding which was COVID related and how we were propping up different programs in the school with that money. Well, that was temporary. Yes, that was temporary and and we were cautioning against that for the entire time. Every everyone started except for this year because now we

033don't have it anymore. But it said there is a fiscal cliff coming. Here is what it is. This is the money. One year it was $700,000 was was a part of the budget from ESSER funds, right? Because you had the one year where it was $585,000. But again, the EST funds were put into place only for temporary enhancements to the school that they were not everlasting. Yes. So it should have gone away when the money's gone away. It did. That's what we're saying. And now we're saying in order to keep a level budget, this is what we're looking for. And I don't know what we're going to solve here at this table because we need to go line by line through this giant book of things and figure out what we can cut because that's

034where we are, right? So that's that's the reality of the situation right now. We've been cautioning about this for years. We we've seen it coming. It's not I mean we we just had teacher negotiations and I thought they went pretty well. They weren't asking for the world. It's not like we're giving them 25% raises and and unlimited vacation days and things. It's not it's not anything like that. They knew the budget constraints the town had. But you say that that there was the cliff. So the 500,000 that came in, where did it go? It should have only gone to programs that at the end of that year or at the end of the three-year program should go away. So if you went in there and hired a teacher from the ESSER money, that teacher should

035have just been temporary. So I I know Well, I have this year's book. I don't have the previous year's book, but I could go find them because there were rules as to where that money could go. Exactly. And all of those rules were followed and some of them were ABA, um, paraprofessionals, things like that that helped the kids kind of come back into school. That allowed us to prop up the staff and avoid additional school choicing, but additional placements out of district because you have that extra support staff that keeps the kids in the district. So, but that was for a period of time. It was for a period of time and and now that period of time has ended and we are saying this is what it costs this we are saying this is

036what it costs to keep this going. If you are saying we need to sunset all of the things we funded with that then that's a conversation we can have and we can come back and we can say here is what we are cutting because the esser funds are out. What we're saying right now is that this is the school is running pretty well and the kids are getting a decent education there and we have the minimum number of extracurriculars and services and things like that that keep kids in the school. But those are always the first things to go and then we lose additional kids. If that's the plan, we can do that. But we're trying to avoid that. We're trying to put the numbers forward. The whole purpose of this conversation is to say

037this is what the school needs to keep running the way it's running. And then you tell us we cannot give you that. You need to come down to this number and then we will say okay we will come down to this number. This is what we were losing and we have to say that publicly. We have to sign off on it and then all of us are on the hook for that. So that's part of this conversation which we are not going to solve at this table sitting here right now. There's a lot of there's a lot of stuff in this book that we have to go through with Mr. McCormack who's already working on this. We already cut 300,000 at the last school committee meeting. 377 $377,000 at the last school committee meeting. So

038right now those numbers have come down and that was just the stuff that would have been easily cut without impacting programs. That was our first step. Here's $377,000 back off of the budget. And we've already condensed some of the services. We We already have shared teachers between the two schools. Um, art and music are shared. Actually, sorry, art is shared. We have uh we have people working multiple roles in the in in the district. Um, so there's already consolidation and cost savings going on. It's not like, you know, money's flying out the window at nothing. So, I just wanted that to be clear and um yeah, if if we cut more, it'll seriously impact the quality of education of the school. Michelle, um I did serve on this committee for the regionalization for all five

039or six years that it was going on. And I also know that we as a town were approached in January with the opportunity to do a tuition agreement. And I'm still not sure why this has not been considered, why it's not being discussed and why we're talking about a sinking shift that's going to go into receiverhip instead of giving our children a better education at a neighboring school where everybody was okay with this school when we were talking about regionalization. And now all of a sudden we don't want to have a conversation with them about tuitioning because they didn't accept us as a regional school district, which is ridiculous. That was a financial thing. So now we have a better option that we are just tableabling and not talking about. And my taxes have gone

040up 36% since 2021. My income has not gone up 36%. I can tell you that. Nor has my family's income. So I'm not able to absorb any more of this either. And I want to know from the school committee, why are you not discussing it? Why is it not being seriously considered? Um, I'm new here, so I wasn't here to answer your from January part, so I can't speak to that, so I have no idea. Uh, one of these three can answer it or two. Sorry, Dan's not here. But I think there's two separate conversations going on here. I think you didn't mention any, this is another personal attack, but you didn't mention anything about the kids and what they're going to, you know, we're just talking money, and that's We have to, it's a,

041it's a, we're an organization. We're busy. No, they're they're a great school. Everybody thought they were a great school and they wanted change. Their programs are great for the kids. I let her speak there are thriving. I had a lot more to say, but she was more important. So, no, you you said I wasn't addressing both sides and I did. So, please finish. So, I what I was going to say, Michelle, is that I think the big picture needs to be looked at. I I don't know any conversations that's happened before tonight about tuitioning out with the committee. I haven't been there. I think it does need to happen. I think a lot of people on this committee would agree long term everything needs to be looked at. You can't close the door on anything.

042However, to get to next year to disrupt families to I mean there's a lot of things at stake. I don't I personally don't think I mean I would be willing to discuss it. I don't think why wouldn't you? But there's a lot of things to be asked. There's a lot of things to look into is what I'm saying. All the the problems we're in right now have come from a long time of issues. Not just this current administration, not just this current school committee. It comes from select board decisions, fin decisions, everything over the last 20 or 30 years. So to make a decision from one year to the next, just to say we're going to do it just to maybe save some money, which we don't have the whole picture yet, which we should

043look into. I agree. But I think we need to focus on two different things. be to focus on how do we get to next year and then we can form a committee and look at the big picture cuz I want to know what's going to happen in 10 years from now. I don't care about just next year. I think the town's been operating like that for a long time. How do we get to next year? How do we get to next year? How do we get to next year? We need to look at 10, 20, 30 years from now. And I think it would be very silly to make a decision that quick because we got an offer from a district who wouldn't accept us in regionalization who now says they want us because it

044is it is going to benefit them. I mean, a lot of districts right now are looking for students. So, we shouldn't just be going to one district either. If if that's the thing, we really need to look into this. That's all that's my opinion on it. But I don't think I have no answer as to why it hasn't been talked about if it hasn't been talked about. But we can forget about that because we're in May and it's done. So, but we actually it's not done. It is. No, what I'm saying is why haven't we talked about it's done? We're here. We have a new It's not It's not a not option still. It's still an option today. It's an option through Friday. And if we had been having this conversation from January, we would

045have had another five months worth of preparing everybody. And this school honestly has been talking for 5 years about sending these kids to Quayog for the whole entire time. I don't know why this is a shock to people. Like, did nobody think that that was a possibility? It was a possibility. These kids could be regionalized there next year. And what would the answer be then? Oh, we're all mad. It's not regionalization. I mean, so tuition out different regionalization. That's what we have to look at, too. There's things that go along with that. I was for regionalization at the time. I thought it was a great idea. This could be a great idea, but we don't know. That's my opinion. As of tonight, I wouldn't have I wouldn't have nearly enough information to vote on that.

046Can I can I Sorry. Can go ahead. What is the answer to that question? Regionalization is a quite different from a tuition agreement. With a tuition agreement, it is basically you're paying X amount to this town and the kids go over there and there's still a lot of costs that the town bears. Special education being one of them. That's not going to go away. Um, and there's no guarantee that all students would go to uh this tuition agreement and uh because kids would still be able to school choice elsewhere. beyond that the because we don't even know that the cost of that yet because we don't know what uh Quaog would uh say per student. Um as a town we lose complete autonomy and we would be disenfranchised from any say in how the money

047is spent in that district. We wouldn't have any seats on that school committee which would that that would have been a difference with regionalization. We would there would have been representation on the committee. Um, one of the reasons we went to Qua Vog was equal number of seats per town, so we would have an equal voice with the other towns in in the district. With a tuition agreement, there's no representation on the committee. And with a three-year contract, there's uh, as Mr. Duff presented to his school committee, there would be an in a cost increase year-over-year within that contract. So, it's not just a flat rate for three years either. And on top of that, uh, students that are already school choice into that district, once they hit, uh, I believe it's grade seven, I

048guess I'm assuming 7 through 12 is is what's on the table here. Um, if you did 7 through 12, the kids in that that are already school choice quay presently would be grandfathered into that agreement. So the amount that that we're paying for them to be school choice down there, they would be raised up to that new I don't believe that's accurate. That is not accurate. Stephen said that actually they would they would stay at what they're choic um could I just um make a couple points. Um the total expenditure per student according to Desi in FY22 in North Brookfield was 18,122. The proposed rate is 115 for tuition and they'd go up 2 to 3% each year. Special ed students, this bed director would be part of the special ed team for any NB

049students. Um, school committee representation, they're willing to put an ex official member, meaning you can communicate, you can participate in conversations, but you can't vote. Um, anyone that school choices from any grade stays school choice until they graduate. That was from Desessie. Um, so if your child goes in second grade, when they hit 7 through 12, they are still considered school choice. Um, sped costs would be done as they are with school choice with sped increments at the end of the year. Uh those are the that's the information I got for funding your title one grant 240 small regional schools rural schools stays with North Brookfield chapter 70 stays with North Brookfield the one you'd be looking at would be the 18 project lead the way but quibb does have those the scholarships for the

050um seniors um you would try to reach out to the originators if you couldn't it would be up to the school committee to vote to transfer those to QuaBog for North Brookfield students and school choice tuition is $5,000. Correct. Plus, if there's any sping increments, but that's not always true with um if they go to TEKA, an online academy, it's a little more. Sheila, do you have any of the information from those schools um that currently have those deals what it what their budgets are for K through six? I have not gotten that far. I did a little I did a little bit of research on that in rough research and this this is not going to be like a cash windfall for the town. No. Yeah. So, I just I want to make that

051clear. I mean, we're not looking into this and I understand. I'm just saying that in front of the finance committee just so because I have a feeling that there's some people that think that, you know, there's going to be millions of dollars back in there. I think it's going to be very similar, but if it would it benefit, that's why I think we need a study to see if it's if it is going to be something beneficial. Well, let's let's let's start with something we can all talk about and and somewhat agree on. Okay, which is what's the quality for the for the kid, right? What's what's the educ if we were okay with regionalization? if we looked at the school and we said, "Hey, well, you know what? This is a place where I

052would send my kid, right? Because I'm assuming when you're on the regionalization committee and you're you're evaluating the school, I mean, that's that's the thought process, right? Would I send my kid to this school? Do I think that the kids in North Brookfield are going to be served well at this at this school system?" and and I guess you know and and I've asked this question if the school committee and I'm not it just if there questions out there and and that's kind of what I'm I'm kind of driving trying to get an answer that of the of the questions that I hear from a lot of people is that if the school committee was okay with regionalizing with with Quaog that the tuition out even if there's no money nothing other than a contract

053that says here's the amount and that contract says it's a 2 to 3% increase next year and maybe a 2 to 3% increase the year after that. Okay, that is a controlled cost. That is a cost that we can count on as opposed to say the spreadsheet. And if we say that okay, if we can understand the cost going forward and the child is going to get an education that that we're comfortable with, then by and large I'm I'm assuming that the the child's experience is the same that the whether they're being whether we're regionalized or whether we're tuitioning out, that child when he gets when he get when he goes on the bus and it goes off to school doesn't know the Right. But we've got a contract that says here are the costs.

054Here's what they're going to be. And and I guess I I I just I'm there are folks here that are saying this and then there are folks in another group that say we don't know. We don't know. We don't know. And and there's still that question as to well come January the question was asked, right? And here we are in May and now we're saying, well, it's too late. It's too late for next year. And some of us are having a hard time reckoning that if the question was asked in January and you know here we are in May and the only numbers we have are from the town accountant which you know you you'd like to think that there would happen a different way. Well, there's a good reason for that and I and

055I guess if if if there's one question is is is what is the reason for that? Well, so first of all, question being asked in January is a very vague term. There have been two informational meetings. I have not been able to attend either one. First, second one I wasn't invited to. I didn't get an invite. First one, I received an invite from the town at 11:00 a.m. that there was a two o'clock Zoom meeting that afternoon. I was at work. I could not pull away from work to attend that meeting. So, in the meantime, I looked into what that involves, what what does tuitioning out involve? There's actually not a great amount of information on Desi's website as far as tuitioning out. There's lists of towns that have done it. Um, I spoke with

056a woman who has been on the school committee in Otis for years and they've never had a high school and they're a regional district because there are two elementary school. There are two towns that make an elementary school and then they tuition out to two different high schools in the Birkshars that they one's Lee and one's the other one uh Birkshshire Mountain School or something like that. It hasn't necessarily solved their problems but they never really had that. So, that's the only perspective I've been able to actually speak with as far as finding out. We spoke with our our school council just to make sure what what the legal stuff involved here is. And he said it seems unlikely they could get it done this year because there has to be a contract. There has

057to be an agreement with the contract and then Desi's commissioner has to approve that contract for the tuitioning out and then we have to renegotiate every three years. So, it's a that's a process, but just getting that contract done. I mean, I think the last two years of the regionalization committee were just contract discussions over that. Now, this is ostensibly a simpler contract to get done. Um, which would be my hope, but there's also um in speaking with my field coordinator for the school committee, the mass school committees, she said there's rules as far as when the state has a the state has a deadline for when these things need to be made, these decisions need to be made. So, if we got it done now, we could get we could meet that deadline and

058get it for next year, that sort of stuff. Okay. Um, these are the conversations I've been having because I haven't been at these meetings. Also, we don't have anything to even look at right now in writing. I'm hearing 11,5 but that's my question. Is that theformational session? I'm sorry. It's it's not even about the information. No, no, but but theformational session was not brought on by the school committee. No. So, so again, I'm I'm I want to get to my question. My question was if if in January the question was posed to the school committee, session, firstformational session I think was March, the superintendent was approached in January. If he didn't tell us committee, that's on him. There was a phone. No, he there was a phone call to uh to our superintendent from the

059other superintendent and it was a brief phone call and it was after we had already met as a committee and the suggestion had been made that we look into it and we said we don't like that idea right now let's move forward and so you shot it down we didn't it wasn't shot down we don't we didn't We don't like this idea right now. Shot it. Please, please. I'm glad I'm glad you're putting words in my mouth. Um, so I repeated your words, John. So, we didn't like the idea at that point. And that was it. It it was a very brief thing in in committee and that was it. And based on that, Mr. McCormack uh relayed, "We're not interested right now." And that was it. And that that's not that wasn't even a

060formal that wasn't like an email. It was just a brief informal phone call. There's nothing. It's not anything binding whatsoever. So, um, never had the best. So, from there on it was someone has a question. Let's let's move on and and and and work with the budget and and you know, try to move forward as a school. And what part of it wasn't what part of it didn't you like? Well, the fact that we had been we we voted as a committee in favor of regionalization and we I I believe it was a unanimous vote that it was we were in favor of it and uh then the same night they voted no, a pretty hard no against accepting us for regionalization. So, you know, it was like why would you all of a sudden

061want, you know, why would they why would they want us now? And if if we weren't good enough then why now? Did anyone ask? So no. So that was just that was in the air and that's that's kind of like you know why why would we want to all of a sudden say you know just jump on it right then and there cuz even I think even if we had started the process then we still wouldn't be anywhere we it still wouldn't have been in time for this year. You know that that's that's the thing because there there's with all the all the negotiations and contracts and everything, even if we had started talking about it then the the deadline for the state to have received this and signed off on it for their budget

062purposes on a tuition pass because on a tuition agreement, correct? For a tuition agreement. Yeah. If if if we had already if everything had had happened like super quickly, everything was somehow miraculously super fast and and golden very quickly, the state would still need to say uh Desi would have to sign off on it. But then from Desi, the numbers have to be transferred to the state because as far as I understand when they vote on their budget, they need to have the numbers in way up front for them to work into their budget for each district. So for I think by the time any of that had actually washed out, we would have already missed that deadline anyway. So the talk of of this being done in a in a fast manner I think

063is that's not none of that is true. Michelle, please. I'm sorry. It's not true. How many times are we going to listen to people say things that aren't true and accept it as the truth? Because we we were in discussion with lawyers that have are familiar with these types of arrangements in other districts. All right. So we knew regional regionalization wasn't going to go through at some point, right? When was the vote? I think that was in January, wasn't it? The the regionalization vote. Um December. So much has happened when when when Quayog voted and and they didn't vote us. Yeah. It was the same night that we voted. So it was like December. Okay. So, and I know Mr. Mr. McCormack and I had a discussion about halfway through the regionalization process and we

064discussed what would happen if the regionalization process didn't work and I asked him if he was working on other options and he said yes. I don't know what those options were. I have no idea what they were. We didn't talk about that. I just asked him if he had other options in mind. Now, he did bring up at some point um December, January an override discussion. He brought up the override at at a department head meeting and um as has been noted, we don't think we can afford it. All right, but what are other options? Okay, so a tuition agreement with any town is an option. Doesn't have to be QuaBog. Doesn't have to be anybody else. Could be could be David Prrowy. Could be Quabin. But the the fact remains to the question that

065people keep asking is why hasn't the school committee actually discussed it? You've talked about it at your meetings and told everybody how big a bad idea it is. And you've said things about the selectman wanting to crush the schools, but we want what's best for the kids. And we can't afford an override. So what are we going to do? And why haven't you talked about it? It's your job. Cuz we need information. Get the information. That's what I've been doing, Jason. I'm not not doing anything. I'm up late at night looking up this sort of stuff so that I can try to bring that to a discussion. I don't have the information and I can't provide a thoughtful conversation about talked to other school districts. Yes, I just said I talked to other school districts.

066I haven't talked to I haven't called up Quabin and said, "Heyqabin, what would it look like if we did a tuition account about our town budget?" No, she sent me some emails about what it looks like. I know the situation. I'm not unaware of the situation. I'm I'm aware of the school budget. I'm aware of the town budget. I'm aware that tuition out is on the table as far as a possible solution. I need to know what that entails before I can make a educated vote on it. And I I I know there were these meetings with Qubog. And I So when has the school committee talked about it? It hasn't been brought up for discussion yet. John John and I have talked on several occasions. you you can't find the answers to questions. You

067don't know what the questions are. That's why I was reaching out to our attorney or to our the Massachusetts Association of School Committees to try to find out who I can talk to. When that's what I've been playing phone bag with people around the state to find out what's going when we have issues that we don't understand, we talk about them to find out what the questions that we all have are and then we discuss it in a meeting. Yeah. And we move on. You haven't done that. I tried to bring up for discussion the last school committee meeting I was at and I was shut down hard. That's true. I wasn't treated very well. I tried to bring up we should be looking at this. We should be looking at this by again. You're

068not going to like this but I think we should look at it. We are we are looking at that's the thing is I'm trying to find out what's cuz I didn't have anything to discuss Ralph and now you're not willing to listen. We've got two new members that I need to I need to try to help. cuz I was talking about facts that were brought up at the meeting. You brought it up at the very end of the meeting and it was meeting a several things I brought up that that meeting. So, we have a meeting on Monday, right? Yes, we do. And this is on the agenda for that meeting. That's what we've been building up towards. I didn't realize we were going to have this joint meeting tonight. So, I tried to scramble

069to get as much information as I could and we are working on it. It's not off the table. It's not something that's not being discussed. We have a lot of other things we got to do. Even if we regionalized, we would still have to get through the next school year because the regionalization wouldn't have happened this school year. A tuition agreement could have. Not from what I'm being told. Well, if what you're being told is different than what I'm being told, then there's nothing that I can do about that. I could talk to your source of information and find out where the disconnect is between what I'm hearing from everyone that I'm supposed to call. If I have a question, it all revolves around votes of the school committees, but we don't have anything to

070vote on. You could vote on pursuing a tuition agreement and then you could talk to people who might be interested because we have to approach whoever it is in order to make it happen. Well, we can go out and say, "All right, we're looking for someone to tuition with, you know, Quavin, Quaog, Bayath, whoever." And say, "What do you got?" and talk to them. Yeah. But you have to make the the you have to vote to actually pursue it in order to make to gain all the information necessary. Okay, Kathy, we first discussed this at the bincom meeting on March 13th when the school board was here. It was brought up at that meeting. I have the minutes of the meeting and the the sentence says after a very lengthy conversation regarding the pros and

071cons of this offer and how to proceed, Mr. Maggario said that this would be discussed at the next school board meeting. We went to that school board meeting, Mr. McGario, and it was not brought up for discussion at that school board meeting. Okay. I I guess that you Tim, you you know a you're extremely highly respected person in this community and so far at this table we've heard what you've done, what you the phone calls that you've made, the research that you've done. And I I guess the hard the hard thing to understand is is is there's a committee and and and and there's a team and I guess you know why isn't the team working on it? Well, I've been working with John, but that's I talked to John when I when I find

072things I communicate with and I get that because he's the chair, so I have to No, and I understand that. But but but but when you when you've got a team to to to work on to work on a on on an issue or a problem, a research and and you know, the the the questions that you know, did the did the committee vote on? Did the committee discuss it? And you know, we come back to, well, Tim did this and Tim did that and Tim and and and and it's great, but it shouldn't all be on your shoulders. It's I've taken that on. I I asked John before I pursue this stuff just to make sure that he knows what I'm doing. And I'm trying to find this information so that we can have

073a reasonable discussion. It's a big topic for one person. But well, he went to theformational sessions. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to click but again. So do you understand what I'm saying? I just and that and and I guess that's and we have two new members now that that can be brought into this. That's the thing is we we we haven't I mean committee wasn't re running for reelection. We're going to reshuffle the committee anyways at the next meeting and I've just been getting as much info as I can so that we can have a reasonable conversation about it. The hope was that we would have a meeting prior to having this meeting so that we could bring a little more and and have a better conversation. This is not productive. We had we had hope

074for more meetings, too, but they weren't they didn't happen. Well, here's another piece is that we're in the midst of contract negotiations with the teachers. Okay. And to just the the idea of tuitioning is I mean that's a huge impact on the teaching staff. You're talking about the elimination of those grades and you're eliminating positions. that's of grave concern to the teachers union and we're in the midst of of negotiations and to have that thrown in um was counterproductive and to have the school committee on one hand trying to um bargain in good faith and have a a a contract that was fair and equitable to the to the both for the town and for the the teachers. But on the other side, you know, be talk be two-faced and talk about eliminating their positions.

075That's not a good faith negotiation. And that's that's to be honest, that's part of why it was not brought up in the committee because it's not something we wanted to consider at the time just because of the teacher that for propriety's sake. you because I'm not going to be called a liar in in the long term, you know, by by saying, "Oh, here here's here's a great contract," and then, you know, turn around and and and do something different. It's not it's not fair. Now you're faced with cutting. Yeah. Yeah, we're looking we that's what we're left with is cutting from the school and it's not palatable. Nothing nothing about this is palatable whatsoever. Tara, can I ask why the school committee only meets once a month? It's 52% of our budget for the town.

076Wouldn't it be better to meet more often, especially when there's so much going on? Never mind. Michelle, um, how long is this contract for that we're signing with these teachers? It's a three-year contract. So, what you're saying essentially is you're willing to go into a three-year contract, but next year you're willing to talk about a tuition agreement, which would still impact that contract. No. or are we just going to table it for three years until there's another contract negotiation and say no, we're going to talk about other options besides teachers. I don't understand where the good time is to have the conversation if we're promising them jobs for 3 years and then a year from now they don't have jobs. That's not the case. There part of the contract discussion involved. What would happen if

077there was tuitioning out? I can't hear, Mr. Canada. Part of the contract negotiation involved what would happen if there was tuitioning out. So now I'm really confused. Does the teachers uh agree to the contract in principle? Yes. So if the teacher if part of the negotiation included tuitioning out Why would why would that hinder talking about tuition? I know and and I apologize. I'm a manufacturing guy, right? I I I I look at how many employees I have and I and I deal with salaries, but I also look at the business level, right? Well, I'm I'm looking at the negotiated contract discussions and what we can actually say here at this table. Okay. Okay. So, because right now there is a agreement, there is not a contract. Jason, Chad, you talked about the state has

078a deadline. What is the next deadline? when if if we want to get this going next year, when do we have to have the ink dry? I believe it is October. She was checking on it. Okay. Yes. That's an important date. Yes. So, you're planning on talking about it on Monday? Yep. So for your perspective, the uh tuitioning agreement just for the sake of discussion couldn't happen this year. That's everything that I was told. So, so the tuition and agreement from your perspective couldn't happen this year. So, we're left with really two options, right? We're left with an override option and we're left with a net school spending option, right? Cuz how much how much does that cut from the budget shield? Do you know net school spending? Yeah, based on my current figures, it

079was uh 1 million23. Um so we have one or the other. And according to what I've heard in school committee meetings and seen in letters, um, you're looking at massive cuts to the elementary school. Is that correct? Yeah. Well, we're looking at massive cuts to possibly everything. We need to have a convers we we need to have a conversation about that, right? That's the thing. We have already cut 300 70 377. Now we got to now we have to get into the weeds and go through line by line which Mr. McCormack's been working on to present to us what the other impacts are that we can eliminate programs and eliminate costs and get down to that number. Um, so just so you know, uh, according to Desi, the and this is from a discussion with

080Michelle Griffin at Desi, um, the deadline was this coming Monday, the 19th, to get the information to Desi so they could vote on it in June for next year. That's the deadline and that's according to Desi. If by some miraculous stroke of luck, you decided tonight to pursue an agreement and vote on it a uh closing the high school next year. If you voted on that Monday, they'd give us wiggle room because they know what our budget is and they want us to regionalize with people. and a tuition agreement would be a leadin to that. And what you would do is you'd sign that three-year contract with the understanding that we would be negotiating during that 3 years for regionalization. I think that's one of the things we'd have to clear up in talking to

081Superintendent Duff because he didn't mention that at he mentioned it at the meeting here, but he didn't mention it um at their meeting. I didn't hear it. At least I watched their next meeting. um he didn't say that this would be a leadin to um regionalization. He made it sound like this would be you know the going forward for them because there was a lot of their concerns too were all around the special ed cost. Right. But that's part of the discussion. Exactly. Right. But that would have to be discussed. You can't just assume. Exactly. That's it would be with the understanding that we'd be working towards an end goal. I get that. I just don't know that they're of the same opinion. Um, so anyway, in theory, it could still be pulled off this

082year. Whether you believe it or not, it could be. Um, so that being said, uh, it's getting on 7:30. Does anybody else have anything to add? Mrs. Hansen? Yes. Um, from my perspective as a town resident and as a parent who educated their children here in North Brookfield and at Bay Path and working at the school in the middle school as a parah. I I am very discouraged every time I hear about what we don't have because I see what our kids do have in North Brookfield. And every single time you say out loud what we don't have, you're discounting those things that we do have that we give our kids that our kids benefit from and that go on to be productive members out in co. They go to the colleges they want to

083go to. They pursue careers. We have done a good job with the students educating them with what we're given. And I know that when we were talking about regionalization several years ago, all I heard from parents that I knew was, "We're going to regionalize. Let's go anyway. Let's get there ahead of the ahead of the game." And we lost a great amount of students because of the talk at the very beginning of regionalization. And the second year we also lost a great amount of students which really hurt our school when we were at the beginning of talks of regionalization that did not happen. So now when I watch the meetings on YouTube because I cannot attend all of them and I hear choice out is the best option for our kids. Choice out, choice out,

084choice out. And I think about those kids that I see as middle schoolers go through and then graduate and then I see them afterwards and have conversations with them about how they benefited from their education in North Brookfield. I don't think we need to give up on our school so easily. I live in town. I pay taxes and I believe in education and it's always worth the money to me. And I just it just is it's disheartening to say that now we should go to QuaBog and they're welcoming us with open arms. It it's really hard to hear that when I know a benefit of our school right here who as a freshman was invited to do a research project that only juniors and seniors are invited to do and she graduated from North Brookfield

085and I hear about all the other kids. You know what? I know we don't have everything that the bigger schools have. We don't have every sport. We don't have every elective. But what we do have means a lot to the kids that are there. So I I just wish we wouldn't give up on North Brookfield. I I feel like it's so important to have a school in town to believe in them. You have to actually speak it out loud that you believe in them and convince people that it's worth educating them here. M. So, we don't hear that enough to convince parents that our school is good enough. All we hear is what they're going to get somewhere else. I don't have any solutions. No, you you are the elected body to come up with

086solutions, but I believe in our school and I believe in the education that our kids are getting there is a good one and it's a solid one. J. Ma'am, thank you. Ma'am, I I I'd like I'd like to speak to the I took a tour of the school. Mr. McGario and and Mr. McCormack took me for a tour of the school this morning and I will say that it was quite impressive. I've gone to many factories and companies to evaluate how they're doing, whether they're worth investing in, whether they're worth buying. And and you over time, you you you learn how to walk into a place and recognize something that's falling apart. And that certainly is not what I saw this morning. What I saw was a clean, vibrant school. I saw students who were

087busy, who were happy. I saw faculty and teachers who were doing what they clearly love to do. I saw innovative pathways. I saw I saw some pretty impressive programs that I never would have thought North Brookfield would have. And to be quite frank, it was heart-wrenching. But that's not what that's not really the problem here. The problem really is, is it sustainable for the town? It's sustainability. You know, it's not an easy decision and it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be hard. But to say we can't talk about it, I can't I I can't disagree more with that. We have to talk. That was the whole point of having this tonight, at least for me because it didn't seem like talking was happening for whatever reason. And we could spend all night pointing

088fingers and we could say, "Well, you know, this this side and that side and and quite frankly, it's been n I've been selectment for nine days and I don't know any sides. I ain't been involved in long enough." But to say we can't talk about it because of fear is foolish. It's it's destructive. We have to talk about it. It's the reason we're here now. What happens in 10 years? We We don't know because we're not talking about it. We see a budget that's grown exponentially year after year after year trying to get through the next year just from one year to the next year to next year. And granted the regionalization, you know, I from what I understand, it was a massive effort. A lot of time, a lot of energy put into it.

089But these conversations have to happen. These options need to be talked about. Regionalization needs to be talked about. Tuitioning out needs to be talked about. The same as an override and the same as net spend net school spending. It has to be talked about. We can't be afraid of it. And if folks are leaving the school system because because we're talking about it, then shame on the parents. My wife and I, you know, well, my wife, credit to her, my daughter was going up. She did the research. She went out, she looked, she asked questions. And if parents aren't doing that and they're just responding to what they're seeing on social media, shame on them. Shame on them because we have to talk about this. I want to make one point. Good. You made a

090good several good points there, Jamie. And I agree with everything you said. I just want to throw one thing out. When we sat up here for candidates tonight, I said that I make decisions analytically and databased. I don't base my decisions on emotions. I totally appreciate the emotional attachment to a small town school. I have that to where I came from. Uh and it's hard to make decisions. It's hard to make hard decisions. However, if we look at a just a couple of numbers that have really just jump out, Sheila shared with us what we spend right now per student and what it would cost for us to tuition out. It's like $7,000 per student savings would go up two or three% per year. That's what she shared with us. And the school choice students

091would stay the same. something to it has to be part of the discussion. It's part of that's the an option. Quo, if we can't make this deadline, we darn well better do something by the next one. And if Quaybog's not the answer, then we got to find another. There has to be another solution. At least consider it as an option. Quayog these are this is what they have to offer our students that for whatever reasons all the reasons we can all come up with them. We can't afford to have a CNA program. Phabbotomy, ER Techch, I wrote down EKG Techch, Fire Academy, EMP. Those are great programs for kids. In addition, they offer 155 AP courses. We have one. That's not a knock on us. It's the way it is. They have honors courses. They

092preparing kids, too. That's not a majorly big school there. It's not a huge school. Our kids would like it there. They'd fit in right there. You can ask East Brookfield when they went in with with Spencer. There's they're not left alone. They don't have their own school. New Brainree doesn't have a school. Hardwick doesn't have a school. They don't have high schools. Brookfield doesn't have a high school. But they feel totally welcome in Tantasua. they get all the services they need in addition to all the courses that they can even think about. I don't think we should be thinking that thinking for our kids. I think we be should be thinking about them and about our future and being able to afford giving them the best education we can. All right. Terra. Oh crap. Oh

093no. There's not going to be any savings. We know that. But what is being spent in the high school could be moved over a lot of it to the elementary school to add programs, add your arts and your extracurricular and all of that. And Ralph, that was a wonderful statement. Thank you. I'd like to throw in an item there. If we no long if we are no longer a K through2 district, we lose funding allotted for K through2 districts. And um so up a little bit, please. Can't hear you back here. Usually I'm too loud. Um there's funding for K through2 districts and when if we are no longer a K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K through 12 district, we

094will lose some of that funding and we would have to seek other funding for the elementary school. What funding is that? I believe it's under chapter 70. Uh it's specifically for K through 12. Um I might be wrong there. I don't know. I I don't think that's accurate because the tuition cost would go towards net school spending. Another consideration uh with um the high school is that we have the sixth grade over there because we're trying to improve uh you know the the social transition between the elementary school age into middle school and into high school. and moving sixth grade over. We've had an improvement in uh student integration and so moving the sixth grade back over to the elementary school. Um we would need to there uh be new two new teachers back at

095the elementary school. So that that's something else to be considered with that. And um yeah, just the way our school has been broken out uh compared to other districts. Um we we Jamie and I we had actually discussed that today was the the transition of the sixth grade to the to the junior senior high school and what a benefit that's been. Um but these are all considerations um to be had. Okay. So where do we go from here? Anybody? Do we pursue a um override? Do we pursue net school spending? Do we pursue a tuition agreement? What do we do? is we're going to cut from the town various departments in town as much as we possibly can. It's going to destroy them. But you know this this the school's the big number. So I

096just in five years, let's say two years, three years, whatever it is in the in the future, um you know, we kind I think everybody agrees that we want to do what's best for the students in our town. I think that's, you know, out there. I don't think anybody disagrees with that part. Um I think the general consensus is that the financial part of it would be somewhat similar, but there'd be potentially a lot more benefits to the kids, right? I think that's so saying that controlled cost. Well, there is there isn't there isn't I mean but we have the 2% but then we have special ed which is you can't that's above and beyond. So that's the one you know the issue we have now is special ed funding that's still going to be

097an issue. So, I guess what I'm getting at is in 5 years, is this going to be a budget conversation every year? Even just to uh do the K through six, to fund the K through six, like if we're looking at the same amount of money, we're still required for net school spending, right? So, that would all go to Well, most of it would probably go to the elementary school, right? Wouldn't it What did you just say? Aren't we Aren't we still required to pay net school spending? We're still required to pay net school spending, but any expense that comes from the tuitioning is part of net school spending, as is school choice out benefits and um all the other things, you know, that go into educating the charter school um health benefits. That's all

098towards net school spending. The only piece that is not part of net school spending is transportation. State law requires that we provide the transportation, but that's not a cut to net school spending. Okay. The numbers you have, Sheila, first year is a wash. Excuse me. The numbers that you have, the numbers that I have would leave us an estimate of 300,000 to the good. But first first year first year and that is with one-time payouts, unemployment contract buyouts. Second year uh second year I have not gotten that far. She has other work to do. Are there costs are there costs that first year that aren't from the second year? Yeah, they'd be about $600,000. So there's $600,000 of reduced cost the second year, but you'd have to also take into consideration the percentage increase to

099the tuition rate, the 2 to 3% based whatever the contract is. Yes. in the the thing that you don't really ever know is the special ed cost because if somebody comes into the district, that's all I was getting at is if we're at the same operating number between K through six budget standalone and 7 through 12 uh tuition out, is this conversation at this table needing $1.2 million every year still going? Are we still going to be in the same position? We're not gaining any revenue. We don't want to get we don't want to raise taxes. Everybody's saying so. Are we still going to be at that same position? And it all depends on whether the legislators do get it to 100% reimbursement with the uh circuit breaker in which they talk about it and

100you know they have now come up in with an agreement. But yes, no matter where it is, we're always going to have special ed, right? That does not go away. It's always going to be a burden or shouldn't use burden. Sheila, um I just want to point out when I was doing these numbers, I didn't touch the special education budget as it is. That was not taken as a consideration. I looked at the high school budget, um athletic budget, and athletic transportation. and then some of the buildings and grounds, oil, electricity, uh custodial staff. Um that's that's all. So everything else was still intact. And that's just in the comparison that I had here. So So that didn't include the salaries of the teachers and whoever else works in the in the in that building

101in the high school. Yes. In the elementary school. low even using in considering that was still around 300,000 saving without and that was with adding back I put in 180,000 for two sixth grade teachers just of all our I do think just the proper way to do it is if you decide to look at You almost have to put out an RFP for proposals from other schools. Yeah. Great. And then look at it that way um to break it down. Unfortunately, the situation we're in for next year is um dire. That's basically why I said what I said at the beginning is because I think next year regardless of what we do long term about choicing out. I think we're still in the same situation for next year. Not saying I am for or against

102it as a committee. I have no idea what they think. I think it needs to be looked into. I don't know if I can make a motion right now, but if I can I I don't know if I can make a motion. As a as a committee for since we have not yet uh formed as a committee, we we can't vote. Bill, you actually can. You're still a chair and a vice chair with three three other members. Only two are present. You can actually vote on that. What are we voting on? I was going to make a motion that the school committee starts looking into the possibility long term of tuition out with the caveat that we have to figure out next year either way. Like we have to figure out next year. That's primary,

103you know. So I I don't know if that's forming a making a motion to form a committee or just doing it as the school committee. I don't know if we need a subcommittee. I honestly don't know the answers to that. I'm kind of fresh to the topic so I don't know. I think it's something that enough people are talking about discussing we John and I talked about the other day is the possibility of having not maybe not even a subcommittee maybe more of a task force. Yep. Because you need other other invested parties involved in this because if we're going to vote to tuition out all the kids, we need to present where they're going, why they're going there, what the advantages are to that and what the people are getting for their for their

104money. We need we need we need other voices besides just us. We're elected, but there's also they're they're not all our kids. So, we need we need a more diverse set of voices to be involved in making the final decision. We make the final decision, but to contribute to that, there's a lot of work that needs to be done as far as putting out an RFP for something like that and and finding out what our options are. Bus stops pretty big for Quab in here. you know, there's there there's you they might want the kids. So, we gota we got to ask all interested parties. And and that's why I brought that up is there was an article in I think it was a telegram the other day. Quin basically said we the first time

105in 10 years they're going to take in choice in students because their enrollment is dropping and they need more kids. Wus. Uh was it Wus? I'm sorry. Yes, it was. I apologize. Robins had halfpage articles in the new leader for a couple of times now looking for school choice. I know that Prrowy has submitted a proposal to MIAA to have a cooperative uh co-op soccer team and inviting North Brookfield students to play over there. So Prrowy is another candidate to go along with what you were saying to do the investigations. They're all candidates. And again, the regionalization ship is is still there, but it sailed 30 years ago, more than that, right? 40, 50 years ago. At one point, all the Brookfields were going to be a region. If you go to the town museum,

106you can actually see the plans for the regional school of the Brookfields. And now everyone's in their own district. So, we couldn't pull it together then. And North Brookfield is now the only one hanging on as its own independent district. What? There's a motion on the table. Effectively, no one second. No second. You want me to restate my motion a little bit more cohesive? Well, it was kind of vague and I asked if you could make one. Kind of trail. We have we have a meeting on Monday. Well, I was going to make a motion that at that meeting You're welcome to write it out. Nice formal fancy. I was just looking to make this a feel like it was productive. At least now it's productive. We know where people where where the town stands

107as far as you know what's available. So what are we going to do about this year's budget? This upcoming budget. There's really only two options left. Right. I don't know enough about an override. Two, there's several things at play. First of all, we got to go through what the cuts are. Obviously, we have to cut things. That's going to have to happen. We got to know what those are. And then last year, between now and when the budget was finalized, more state money came through. All of a sudden, those offsets changed. We we were up to the wire on things coming back in. And Mr. former gets stuff from, you know, his connections at the state house and things like that and we get a little jump on that. So, there's still a lot of

108numbers at play as far as how this plays out before the end of May uh sent out an email um back on the 9th and it's an update email about the state budget. Um as far as chapter 78 um the initial ways and means proposal um is up to 7.01 01 billion and it's 25 million lower than the initial uh house proposal. Um that would be a per pupil aid increase of $150. Circuit breaker reimbursement. Um it's funded at 60 681.99 million which is higher than both uh fiscal year 25 and the governor's proposed level uh which is 7.31 million more than the initial house proposal. Um regional school transportation is 3.4 4 million under the house proposal. And I think those are the major ones. And then rural school aid uh is funded at

10916 million and matching the governor's uh level funded proposal. The initial house proposal is only 7.5 million. So there are still numbers. The these are still preliminary because they haven't voted on yet. So there are some numbers that will come in higher I would assume, but um hopefully. How much time is left for what? I think so this July with the town meeting in June, right? June 13th. So much there's always been like a we get the numbers in after we get the the budget voted on and there's, you know, numbers shift. Generally the the the governor has their budget and then the the House and then the Senate and then they all talk and we usually find out these the MASC and the superintendents they they all have people that like just camp out

110there at the state house for this this time to kind of give us information. So, so, so how first time new guy? It's May 14th. We link one today, right? May 14th. Budgets need to be town meeting is June 13th. June 13th. Have a public hearing. You need a public hearing. Today school committee is supposed to have a public hearing and present the their budget to the town's people at a public hearing before town meeting and the state usually that number usually comes out whenever. Yeah. Whenever it'll be after it'll be after the the the town meeting. So no matter what happens, I'm sorry. Should the That's why we moved the annual town meeting to June because that's where you were finding the numbers that were coming out typically around that time. Yep. Could they

111have been later? They could. It had Yeah. Well, what could change is school choice and then we'd be looking at the special town meeting. Anything would be a special town meeting in November for any changes. It's what we've done in the past. The state senate is calling for a $45,000 increase to chapter 7. So that's that's not going to really change too much from this point out. It may it it may slightly change, but it's that's where it's at. The the Senate and the House both have at $45,000 for North Brookfield over what the governor's budget was initially. So you're you're kind of expecting that's where it's going to land. Yeah. The big one that we don't know about right now, uh, as John mentioned, is rural school aid, which was funded at $16 million

112the last couple years. Our ask has been $60 million. They're coming in around 7.5 million. That's the That's the projection right now. So, that's a huge loss. Don't you have 140 as an offset on that? We do, but I'm saying that for next year, we got 120 this year, and we're looking for about the same for for FY26. If it if it goes to $7.5 million projected funds for next year, that's statewide for all the 65 or so districts that fall under that umbrella, we will receive much less than 120 that were projected. The other piece that I received an email today from from Senator Durant's aid was that they are still advocating for increase with circuit breaker. So right now our projections, our budget for next year are at 75% for for tuition and

113roughly 54% for transportation. They're advocating for at least 90% for tuition reimbursement, which has been talked about for several years, but that urgency is more this year because uh of the the lesser amount for for rural school aid. And really, North Brookfield like many other towns has seen a constant decrease in the amount of chapter 7 funds for the town. Uh going back to 2016, we're at 70%, we're close to 61% now. So that means that school spending is going up every year. So the town has to produce more money to offset that cost. So that's that's kind of where we're at. Thank you. So those are those are the deadlines we have. We got a town meeting on the 13th and we need a public hearing from the school committee on their budget prior

114to the 13th. All right. Do you have anything else? John, Jim, Joe, Jamie, Ralph? No. Sheila, anything else? Tim? No. All right. Uh, I guess um I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I'll second that. All in favor? [Applause]