001It being 6:00 on Monday, May 11th, I hereby call the regular meeting of the Gardner School Committee to order and ask the clerk to please call the roll. >> Rachel Cormier. >> Present. >> John LaFreniere. >> Absent. >> Robert Swartz. >> Present. >> Jen Pelavin. >> Present. >> Ann Hurst. >> Present. >> Paul Cormier. >> Present. >> Mayor Nicholson. >> Present. >> And Dr. Pellegrino. >> Present. >> Thank you very much. At this time, all who are able, please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you very much. Um, we'll note that Mr. LaFreniere is here. Uh, at this time we're
002going to take uh item B, open time for the general public. Uh, we'll note that this is different than the public hearing on the school budget that will follow later on in the hearing. Aside from the school budget, is there anyone here from the general public who wishes to be heard? Believe me, we'll take that for that part of the meeting agenda any day. Um, seeing none, moving on to item C, recognitions by the superintendent for the fourth grade student council for 2025-2026, Dr. Pellegrino. >> This is Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. So, this is one of those um meetings that I actually love to come to. Miss Cobelli, would you mind coming up here? >> Miss Tubchinsky, come on up. >> So, the fourth grade student council every year does so many different
003things. We like to recognize them each year for all the different leadership things that they do um during the year. So, Miss Cobelli, you mind saying some of the things they did this year? >> So, we keep them pretty busy and they're very good at what they do, getting involved in their community. We're really proud of their efforts. So, as far as the community for a whole, for the Gardner CAC, they had a Thanksgiving food drive during um our GES Harvest Festival, they sold raffle tickets to benefit the CAC. They also had a holiday toy drive for the Gardner CAC and had the opportunity to deliver the items and speak to the director of the CAC to hear about their good work through the community. Um we also had a spring drive for the Gardner
004Animal Shelter. They did a spring clean up. Um they help with the PBIS Carnival at school, PBIS Carnival. And then there's things they do through the whole year, including collecting lost and found through the school and bring them to a central location to be organized. Um they help the librarian, Mrs. Bro, weekly with shelving her books. They volunteer um in the pre-K to three classrooms once a week. They keep their own schedule. They work out with the teacher what they'll do and they come downstairs or go downstairs each week and help the teacher out and they really enjoy that and the kid little younger kids and the teachers love it, too. They also help PBIS additionally with making positive pouches. They cut the cap cash and bus bucks and they hang up and take down
005posters for events. And I'd like to also add they're very excellent role models and that's another important part of being on the school council. So. >> Thank you. So, the students here tonight um are definitely leaders within our district. Um and when it comes to our um core values of with community, responsibility, and excellence, they definitely hit each one of those, absolutely. And appreciation is something that they're doing every day just by showing up and working hard. That hard work pays off for the entire community and you make Gardner public schools a much more special place. So, thank you for all you do. I think they deserve a whole ROUND OF APPLAUSE. >> [applause] [applause] >> SO, WHEN WE CALL YOUR NAME, WHAT WE'D LIKE YOU TO DO IS just come on up here real
006quick and receive a certificate and right after everyone gets their certificate, we're going to take a picture right outside here, outside the door. Okay, for our Facebook page. >> Oliver Barrett >> [applause] >> Zuleyka Castro >> [applause] [applause] >> Gavin Chisholm >> [applause] >> Primrose Fisher >> [applause] >> Yustina Hakim >> [applause] >> Logan Arizari >> [applause] >> Olivia Layton >> [applause] >> Brandon Meagher >> [applause] >> Madison >> [applause] >> Logan Perkins >> [applause] >> Colin Scoville >> [applause] >> Adeline Tereschuk >> [applause] >> Aliyah Williams >> [applause] >> and Donavan Yeba. >> [applause] >> All right, now another round of applause for ALL THE STUDENTS. >> [applause] [applause] >> YEAH, AT THIS >> AT THIS TIME THE MEETING WILL TAKE A BRIEF RECESS. We're going to invite all of our students out in
007the hallway underneath the city seal for a brief picture and any parents who'd like to take the picture take individual pictures after that are more than welcome to as well. So, at 6:37 the meeting will be in recess. >> Yes. >> The meeting will come back to order at 6:10 p.m. And moving on to item D in the agenda, this is the public hearing for the FY27 school budget. The process will go as follows. We'll have a presentation by the superintendent and the director of administration and finance uh for the school uh department on the FY2027 proposed school budget. Afterward, we'll have uh comments and questions from the members of the school committee followed by open time for the general public for comments and questions after that. The city's rules for public hearing allow for
008comments of up to uh 4 minutes for individual up at the podium here. When you come up, uh please state your name and address uh for the record as required by the general laws of the Commonwealth. Uh and we uh require everyone to go through once first, and then if anyone has any subsequent comments, they can come back up to the podium after that time after everyone's had a chance to speak at least once. Uh so, I hereby declare the public hearing open and give the floor to Dr. Pellegrino and Director Hawk for their presentation on the budget. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, I'd like to thank some of the future of the GPA for coming out and listening to the presentation and showing their support for the schools. Thank you very much. Um
009and thank you all for having me to talk about this. Actually, you require me to do it, so But, it's But, we we we all know this is one of the most important things we do. We need We know that the education needs to drive the budget, not a budget-driven education. So, with that said, I'd like to go over a few things um each time before we before we talk about the actual money. The first thing is just our student enrollment trends. As you can see, since um 2015, um we've been go we were going down for a while in terms of our student enrollment, and then we started going up. This year, 85% of our district of the districts in that state of Massachusetts are um are considered hold harmless, which means that their
010enrollment went down. There's about 15,000 public students throughout the state that are no longer attending public schools. We're not sure where they went. Some of them went to home school, some of them went to private school, but they're no longer attending um public schools. So, the state lost about 15,000 students. Our enrollment trends, as you can see, this is um high needs. So, high needs is um assigned by the state. Um students who are um considered high needs have more intense services and often times need more resources um provided by the district. When you when you say there's a student with high needs, that's a student who either comes from a low-income family, a student with a disability, or an English language learner. Um students might be in multiple categories, or they could just be
011in one. As you can see, our numbers for low income have gone from um from a little over 1,250 um back in 2021 to um almost 1,500 now. And our students with disabilities have increased 20% going from a little under 500 students to 613 students. It's over 100 students in the district. >> [clears throat] >> And with a district of our size, that has a huge impact. English language learners, again, another huge impact. Um more than um 2 and 1/2 times the size of that population since 2021. This I find to be a very interesting chart. This scatter plot represents 215 um districts in the state of Massachusetts. Each one um has a high school and that that has an accountability rating. And um they have um a high needs percentage. And so what I
012did was I I any district that has more than one high school, I actually looked at the accountability percentile the highest accountability percentile for that district. So it's the highest rated school. For the accountability percentile, the state looks at things like MCAS scores, dropout rate, chronic absenteeism, advanced coursework participation, graduation rate, and extended engagement. So when you look at this um graph, the origin line the x-axis goes from 0 to 99. 0 uh actually it goes from 1 to 99. One being the lowest, 99 being the highest. So the further you are to the right on this graph, the better that high school is doing. The y-axis going up and down um the higher up you are, the higher percentage of your high needs students. And if you notice, I put a little red new
013new axis there. And that's and the orange dot is Gardner High School. So Gardner High School's rated 40 on the 45th percentile. And that horizontal x-axis is 64% high needs students at Gardner High School. And if you notice, any school that has 64% or more high need students is rated below us. So, their accountability percentile is below our accountability. There are many in the lower um left-hand quadrant that show school districts that have a lower percentage of high need students, and they're not doing as well as us. The only schools that are um that have a higher percentile rank are the ones to the right, and you'll see that they're all they all have a lower >> or high needs percentage. >> So, we're improving outcomes at the high school. Um and where that really
014I want to show that because it's an outlier. And we like being an outlier cuz we do things differently, and we show that we're actually improving outcomes for students. With that said, when you look at the entire district, including the elementary school and the middle school, our elementary school and middle school have been in the bottom 20% since before I was superintendent. We're actually starting to improve now. We've really started to to move. When you look at the STAR and ELA scores, our STAR is our universal screener test. We do this test three times a year in English um in literacy com- um uh comprehension and math uh ability and grade level. The bluish line, greenish blue line, that's what we're doing this year. The light gray line is what we did last year. And
015as you can see, both of those groups improved starting across the district. Over to the right is our DIBELS score. DIBELS is our reading percentage, and that also has gone up significantly for our earliest youngest learners. And reading is the key to success in in uh in school. Another anecdotal thing that I do want to point out is our school choice numbers. In the red is our school choice choice numbers going out. In the blue is our school choice numbers is in. And as you can see about 2018, we had over 300 of our students leaving our district because they weren't finding what they needed at Gardner Public Schools. At this point, as you can see, by 20 2025 and in 2026, we still have parity where we have a few more students coming in
016than are going out, which is really what you want to see. That took a long time to get to that point where we're turning around the reputation of Gardner Public Schools where it's a place where we're meeting all kids' needs. Um another quick anecdote, too. We also look at our the students who are applying to Monty Tech, which is in a way leaving our district. It used to be when I first became superintendent, we had between 70 and 90 students applying to Monty Tech. One of our biggest concerns was that the students who were applying often times weren't applying to go into a vocation. They were applying to go on to four-year schools outside of the vocation that they were attending to go to Monty Tech for. That was really concerning to us where between
01770 and 90 of our students were leaving, they were our top students, often times in AP and college college prep courses. Now, this year we had 46 students apply and only four of those 46 students don't intend to go on to a vocation. It's a totally different dynamic and only 14 of those students are our top students. Our top students are interested in going to vocation, more power to them. I don't mind that, but I want kids going to Monty Tech who want to go into a vocation. So, we have the right kids applying because the other kids are seeing that we have opportunities here in Gardner Public Schools that are for them. So, with all of that, we have a lot of good things going on in the district. And the way our budget
018process works is it starts with the principals working with principals and directors working with staff, asking what the needs are to continue doing the work that we're They put together an entire budget based on the expenses that are that are required. >> [clears throat] >> And then they are required the my principals and directors are required to cut. Every year we cut about 1.2 million dollars in positions from the districts, which is an exercise to make sure we're we're developing the best district we can possibly develop. So we cut 1.2 million dollars in positions, and then we say, "What are the positions that we don't have yet that we really need?" And we list those positions out. So with those expenses and with those budget cuts, the the principal and directors then meet with central
019office. We go over their plan, we discuss their needs, and what um what their what their plan is. From there, we take all of that information, and then we sit in a room, all the directors and all of the principals sit in a room, and we have some heated conversations. And we actually take from every position that we cut and all the positions that we need, we say, "What's the first most important position in the district to go back into the budget?" And it's usually a kindergarten teacher, but that's the first one that goes back in. Then what's the next most important position? And sometimes those positions that we need bump some of the positions that we have. And so we do is we create a prioritized list to say, "Okay, what is the what
020is the best way we can have we can design our school system to support our students?" After that, after we design that, then we bring it to school committee and city council on what um what the budget is, and that's when we talk. So with that, for the fun part, >> [clears throat] >> Mr. Hawk will now go over the numbers. >> This is the fun part. Small print, so you probably can't see it, so I'll just explain a little bit of it. So our chapter 78 calculation, on the left side under where it says uh 103 Gardner aid calculation for FY27. You start with number one, which is last year's Chapter 70 allotment, 32,375,000. To come up with the foundation aid, they add the foundation budget for FY27. We'll get into that a little
021bit later. 46,507,000. The required district contribution for FY27, again, that's another slide, but 13,487. The foundation aid is then 33,000,019,000. That's deducting the required contribution from the foundation budget. So, that comes up with an increase of $643,719 over last year. The, as Mark mentioned, the minimum aid, the governor's numbers, is what this chart is, and it had $75 per pupil increase, which would have been 180, just short of 185,000 for Gardner, and you take the larger of either the per pupil aid increase or the increase um from the foundation budget increase. The House and Senate both have $160 as their minimum per pupil increase, which would be just short of $400,000 um if we were a minimum aid community. So, you 400,000 is still smaller than the $643,000 increase, so that's what we get. The
022comparison to FY26 is in the top right side of this, and it shows the enrollment, slight decrease, the foundation budget and increase, as as I said, of 1,468,720. The required district contribution and the Chapter 78 increase, which equals the 1,468,000, 720. >> [clears throat] >> To come up with a local contribution, this is all um dictated under Chapter 70. So, again, on the left side, starting with number one, it's the 2024 equalized valuation. So, that's the aggregate taxable amount of all the property within the city of Gardner. 2 billion 325 million 701,000 and change. That's multiplied by a uniform property percentage. Uniform, it's consistent for every school district. They have that same uh number, 0.3309%. It might fluctuate from year to year, but it's still the same for every school district. You multiply those two,
0237,696,000. That's the local effort from property wealth according to the chapter 70 formula. 2023 income, which is from the Department of Revenue, 582 million 205,000. And again, a different uniform income percentage number again, it's uniform for every school district. Multiply those two together for 9,255,000. And then number seven is the combined effort yield or our target. You add the local effort from income and the local effort from property wealth. And this is what the state says we should be spending minimum on our schools. So, the foundation budget of 49,689,000 is multiplied by 82.5%, which is 40,993,000. That is the maximum, no matter how much anyone wants us to spend on the schools, that is the maximum over net school spending we can go. We're not there yet. So, we take the lesser of the maximum
024or the local effort or the um the target number, which is 16,951,000. And then uh number 11 and 12 on the bottom of the left-hand side are just the percentages of the target local share and the target aid share. The target aid share is uh where the state wants us to be no more than getting that much money from the uh state. On the right-hand side, we have we start with our number 13, which is last year's required contribution. The municipal revenue growth factor comes from the Department of Revenue, 5.1%. This is different for every community. And you come up with a preliminary contribution of 14,274,000, which is 28.73% of our target level. Um the shortfall is 2,677,000 or 5.39%. If the shortfall is between 2 and 1/2 and 7 and 1/2%, a 1% adder
025or penalty is added, and it's 1% of the previous year's local contribution. Stay with [clears throat] me. It gets more exciting after this. Um so the 1% adder is 135,000 added to the the shortfall amount, which the shortfall after the adder is 2.5 million. So our FY27 required local contribution, 14,410,244. But we don't get all of that. So let me Let me just >> Can I bring something up? >> You may. >> So in in looking at this slide, this [clears throat] is probably um one of the most important slides. I think too often when um when people think about the school budget, we think of minimum net school spending. Minimum net school spending is the least amount you can spend on the schools. It doesn't mean that's what we need to support the students
026that we have. So the state actually does all of this complicated stuff that Mark just talked about. They actually come up with what's your target as a municipality [clears throat] in terms of how much you're taking in as a city, and how much you should be putting towards the schools. And what this is saying is we're 2.6 million dollars below what our target is. 2.6 million dollars below what our target is. And each time we're below what the target is, we get a a small penalty. And so this year we have 135,000 as the penalty. So we have about 850,000 that the city has to put towards the schools. Well, 135,000 of that comes from this penalty. Now, using this penalty as a marker to try to catch up to the 2.6 million dollars is
027like is like trying to pay off your credit card using the minimum amount. It's going to take forever to get to that point. So, it's important that if we want to start to move towards that target so kids get the services that they actually need, we need to do more than this minimum small increments that the that's that's the state says we need to do. So, with that, Mark. >> We're almost done with the state slides and then they get a little more readable. So, I mentioned the required minimum net school spending of 14,410,000. That is split between our two school systems, Gardner Public Schools and Montachusett Regional. So, you'll see Gardner gets what's in the little box there, 13,487,000 and Monty Tech 922,000 and that's divided up based on the foundation enrollment. The foundation
028budget, this is the last unreadable slide we'll go through. Just a a very high-level view of where the foundation budget comes from. Across the top, on the left-hand side, it says base foundation components which is made up of your kindergarten, your elementary, your middle, your high school, and vocational. We have 13 vocational which is part of our MVP program. And then more towards the right, special ed, in district, out of district, English learners, English learners low income. And then going down the left side are all the different categories. Administration, instructional leadership, classroom and specialist teachers, other teaching services, professional development, etc., etc. And all these are multiplied out to fill in those boxes in the middle until you come up with the 46 million 507,000 in the bottom right and what the SOA Student Opportunity
029Act really played with was everything on the right-hand side, the incremental costs above the base. So, that's the English language learners, low income, so forth that Mark went over earlier. So, we have a foundation budget per pupil of $18,867. One other note on this slide is way on the bottom left, number 14, it's our low income percentage, 67.35%. This has actually come down. Last year we were roughly 69.7% or somewhere in the 69%. And again, statewide, um the state reduced the low income students from 420,000 to 400,000. Wherever they went, they went. So, the new money on the left, 26 to 27 changes. Uh again, the $643,000 increase in Chapter 70, 825,000 in the required net school spending for the total of 1,468,000. This is year-over-year changes. Salary year-over-year, 1,687,000. Expenses, 1,868,000. Additions or cuts,
0301,821,000. Again, this is year-over-year, so last year we added roughly $320,000 worth of um positions and this year we cut roughly 1.5 million, so that's why it's 1.8 million. Non-net school spending, this is transportation, 896,000. Indirect costs, this is mainly health insurance, 949,000 year-over-year. Carryover deficit, last year we had a $474,000 deficit that we ended up picking up for a total of 2.262 million dollars, which leaves us with a shortfall of 793,669. Just a quick point, the funding over net school spending is 300,000 typically over net school spending. That's a an agreement that the mayor and I came to last year to to give us some of the money back that we earned from Medicaid. So, the there are several staff members who have to put in time sheets to Medicaid and then they get
031we get reimbursed the city gets reimbursed for that. We asked for some of that money back. So, last year we took in $467,000 and we got 300,000 over net school >> [clears throat] >> spending last year. >> So, there is still $300,000 over net school spend in the FY27 budget, just nothing new over what was budgeted last year. >> Great segue into the next slide. So, in '26 you'll see the funding over net school spending is 300,000 and '27 it's also 300,000. That's why the year-over-year change is zero. So, it's just another way of uh showing the same thing, 1,468,000. So, where does the money go? The various salary accounts. This shows FY25, '6, and '7 and then uh the change from '26 to '27 and the percent increase. So, there's the 1,687,000 um split
032pretty much between regular education instruction and special [clears throat] education instruction. On the expense side, this one has a a lot of the negatives. This is where we're able to cut a lot um or as much as we could. And then the two highlighted other programs, which is out of district uh tuitions and collaborative tuitions, $1,081,000 increase, transportation, uh the other highlighted line, 767,000. So, that of the $1,868,000 increase in expenses, 1,848,000 are those two line items. >> And we only got 1.4 million [clears throat] one a little under 1.5 million dollars in new money. >> So, here's the actual costs for the out-of-district claims going from 16 to 27. And you'll see in the past several years we've gone over the two million dollar mark. The collaborative tuition, same thing the past several years
033the collaborative tuition costs have been dramatically increasing. The costs that do not apply to net school spending, this is funded by the city but it is in the school department's budget, which is why we have to back it out because it doesn't count towards net school spending. Again, you'll see the 25, 26, and 27 um the regular education 182,000, special education transportation year-over-year increase of 710,000. So, there's your 896,000 dollars in transportation increases. And then the indirect costs, this is another budget killer across the state. Um you'll see the last several years 787,575,000, 1.7 million. There were two increases last year and then right now we're looking at 949,000 for FY27. So, again putting all those numbers together the FY27 total funding of 46.8 million, the school budget of 38.9 million backing out the transportation
034costs of just over 4 million, and then adding back in the indirect costs of 12,753,000 we are having total net school spending of 47,600,799 dollars, which has a revenue shortfall of 793,669 dollars. But wait, there's more. Because that's not all the good news. Do we also have um this is just short of just over 2 million dollars in grants. And 2 million dollars, 43,000 and about 18 and a half full-time equivalent positions. And this is not going to come as surprise to anyone, but there is some slight dysfunction in Washington. And with Title 1, 874,000 dollars and 15.75 [clears throat] FTEs. Um we've already been informed or expecting a 10% cut. And the federal fiscal year starts October 1st, so there's still time for a lot more change in all these grants. So I think
035it's just important to know that besides our general fund revenue budget, we also uh rely on federal grants for quite a few things. >> We're just going to to to re- re- reiterate, we have a higher high-need population. Um this is the the a similar graph to what I showed you before for the high schools. Um but this is again accountability [clears throat] percentile on the x-axis. So again, one over on the left, 99 over on the right. So the further right you are, the better you're doing. Um but this is put on a um a vertical the y-axis is um above or below minimum net school spending. So if you're right on that um the origin line there. Um you're at 0% above or below, which means you get 100% of minimum net school
036spending. So by law, you're getting exactly what you need. Again, the orange circle shows us we're at 101.3 % of minimum net school spending. And so as you can see, the average district is 139%. of minimum net school spending. 139% we're at 101. 3%. The reason I like to show this graph is even though we're just about on the origin line, if you if you walk along from the left to right, there's only one district that's around our funding that's doing better than us that happen to be Holbrook. They're at 51% high needs students. That's the only district that's doing better than us. Everyone else that's along the origin is doing not as good. So, we're getting these great outcomes on a shoestring budget, which shows you that it's on the backs, frankly, of our
037teachers, of our administrators, our support staff, our nurses. We're working really hard to get these outcomes, and frankly, we're different than again, we're different than all the other districts. We're doing better with little. And the problem is we we can't keep keep doing this. Now that we have these these other drivers, the um the health care the health insurance is up 62% since 20 since 2024. Special education transportation has gone through the roof, 220% increase since 2024. And when you look at those 215 districts that I listed out there before, out of the 215 districts, we are 14th from the bottom when it comes to funding out of 215 districts. So, we're doing great work with very little, but we can't keep going on like this. Right now, you look at where we are compared
038with what our target is. Back in 2014, we were $2.3 million below the target. By 2021, we were only 50,000 below the target. So, we were just about there. At this point in FY26, last year, I mean, we were $2.7 million away from target again. We need more funding. That $783,000 plus the 300,000 over comes out to roughly a million dollars. Right? That's 2.2% above minimum net school spending is what we're looking for. It's not astronomical when you look at all when you look at all those other districts. What do we do? We had a cut so first we reorganized and so the first thing I do want to say is we did cut a couple of positions. There was a nursing position cut. There was a central office position cut but then we also
039cut Gardner Academy as I informed you all. That was a really tough decision for me. Um putting Gardner Academy at the high school, I think this is the right time to do it. Um right now we're over we've we're done paying off the windows and the furnace so we're not going to kick it have to kick any money back to the state um as a penalty. Um Also the high school is doing well as you can see and we have a great tiered system of supports there. So if there was any time to do it, now would be the time to do it. Um and I was so I was able to cut 11 positions by cutting that. I'll never be able to do that again. Right now we have now we have three schools.
040I'm not going to be able to cut another organization or another um piece of Gardner Public Schools and kind of cut that out. And in additional cuts, I cut another $487,000 in positions so almost 1.5 million dollars in cuts. Right? That's roughly 3.75% of my entire budget. These are the actual positions. Um an MTSS director for the district, a nurse for the district, the SRO which will still be funded by the city. Usually those are funded by the city, not by the schools. Um at Gardner Academy, um I cut the principal, the assistant principal, a special ed administrator, a science teacher, a history teacher, a school counselor, tutor, and a the nurse that was there. Um at GMS, we cut a UA teacher. There's a secretary that's shared by Gardner High School and Gardner Academy.
041That position was cut. A library position, the grade one teacher, and a grade one paraprofessional at GBS was cut. And at GHS a special ed teacher and then there's a shared EL teacher with well, it's not a shared position. We cut 0.5 from the middle school, we cut 0.5 from the high school and now we're going to have to share a teacher between those two buildings. Not something I like to do. So with that said, if you look at everything that we need, we're looking for 38,937,559 for our school budget. That includes the shortfall of 793,669. That means that's in there. And that would be covered. So if you voted that, you'd be voting for the city to fund us fully covering the shortfall. With that discussion and questions? >> With that we'll start with
042questions, comments, concerns from the members of the school committee first before we open the floor to the general public. Is there any questions from the members of the school committee? >> Damn, one question. >> Just comment. >> Were we able to save any money through retirements and able to backfill those positions with people that we were going to lay off? >> Sometimes that's possible. A lot of positions so I said we cut 18 positions. We were fortunate enough to only have to lose 10 teachers. I say only, 10 teachers is a lot, but at least it wasn't 18. When a teacher retires, we always thought we we would fill that position, but often times right now we're all all these districts we're all fighting over the same people. So a lot of times you're you're
043looking at people who are experienced coming over from another district and they're coming in at just as much if they're special education, often times more. >> Any other questions from the members of the school committee? >> That is, by the way, what I calculated in here. >> Seeing none at this time, I hereby declare the public hearing open for the members of the general public who are here who wish to be heard on the topic of the school budget. Again, if you wish to be heard, please come up to the podium here with the microphone and state your name for the record. And is there anyone here from the public who wishes to be heard on the school budget this evening? Twice, is there anyone here from the public who wishes to be heard on
044the school budget this evening? All right, I'm required to ask three times. And last and final, is there anyone here from the public who wishes to be heard on the topic of the school budget this evening? Seeing none, we'll get back to the school committee. Are there any final questions or comments from the members of the school committee? Seeing none, I'll hereby declare the FY2027 school budget public hearing closed at this time. Moving on to item E, the vote on the proposed FY2027 school budget. Is there a motion on the floor? >> So moved. >> Motion made by Mr. Schwartz, seconded by Mr. LaFramboise to approve the school budget as presented. Is there any discussion on that motion? Hearing none, >> I want to make sure the budget I don't want to see the council
045sees it and they give us the money. >> Are there any other comments from the members of the school committee on this motion that is on the floor to pass the budget? Seeing none, we'll ask the clerk to call the roll. >> Alicia Comerford? >> Yes. >> Jonathan LaFramboise? >> Yes. >> Robert Schwartz? >> Yes. >> Jennifer [clears throat] Pleavin? >> Yes. >> Ann Hurst? >> Yes. >> Paul Cormier? >> Yes. >> Mayor Nicholson? >> Yes. >> Dr. Pellegrino? >> I don't believe that's allowed. I [laughter] wish I could. >> I'm like, I know, but I'm like, I'm playing a role. >> Motion passes unanimously. Moving on to item F in our agenda, the consent agenda. This was included in your packet. We'll note that there was a correction in the minutes that had previously
046been sent out that has since been corrected in the minutes that are included in your packet this evening as part of the consent agenda. Is there a motion on the floor? >> So moved. >> Second. Motion made by Mr. LaFramboise, second by Mr. LaFramboise to approve agenda as presented. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. Item G, subcommittee reports beginning with the finance subcommittee, Mr. LaFramboise. >> All right, I'll try and keep this brief. We've heard a lot about finance, so I don't think we need to go over it now. Um, just go over a few things from project updates. Mr. Hawk noted that the Gardner Middle School roof bid has been received and the contracts are waiting signature. The bid came in
047high and the mayor was looking uh to transfer additional funds from the Gardner Elementary uh unexpended bond proceeds account to cover the costs. Uh the OPM and the engineers recommended proceeding as a as a delay would likely cost as much if not more than proceeding uh uh proceeding now. >> [clears throat] >> Uh new business was uh pre-K tuition fees. These fees have not increased in several years. On a recommendation of the program director, special ed director, and finance director and superintendent, a motion was made to increase the full-day annual costs from 2,600 to 2,840 and and an increase the uh half-day costs from 1,300 to 1,480. Um and we went over the budget presentation and then that was it. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just I'll throw out that the City Council's
048Finance Committee meeting is meeting on the extra money for the roof tomorrow at their meeting here in the chamber. Are there any questions, comments, concerns from the members of the School Committee on the Finance Subcommittee's report? Seeing none, moving on to the Policy Subcommittee, Mrs. Hurst. >> Um we met on uh April 29th and tonight we have um six policies for first read, uh eight for second, and two for adoption. Do you like me to go go into those? >> Sure. We'll go with item number 3780. We don't have our Student Advisory Board members here this evening, so we will be skipping over item H. Moving on to item I, discussion items, item number 3780, first reading of policies. These are included in your packet for information this evening for vote at a subsequent meeting.
049Policy GBEC, Drug-Free Workplace, GBJ, Personnel Records, GCRD, Tutoring for Pay, ID, School Day, JKAA, Physical Restraint Policy and Procedure. This is new for adoption. And KBG, Parent Advisory Council, new for adoption. Mrs. Hurst, anything on those items? They're just there for first read. >> Those are the Yeah, those are the ones for first read. >> For uh vote at our next meeting. >> Okay. For second read, yeah, I can go for that. >> Go for it. >> Second reading part. >> EEAG, Student Transportation and Private Vehicles, EEAJ, Motor Vehicles Idling on School Grounds, FF, Naming New Facilities, GBA, Equal Opportunity and uh upper equal employment opportunity. Excuse me. GBEA, Staff Ethics, Conflict of Interest, GBEB, Staff Conduct, GBEBC, gift to and solicitations by staff GBEBD online fundraising and solicitations. So, those are all for um
050>> [clears throat] >> to be voted on tonight today. >> reading. >> Do we include the adoption ones, too? >> If you want to do it in the same motion. >> Okay. And then we have the two for adoption is EFA E A school food nutrition and EFE civil rights complaint policy for child nutrition programs. Policy subcommittee recommends acceptance of the above policies. >> So, there's a motion on the floor by Mrs. Hurst to accept the amendments to the first half and then the new adoption of the second two policies. Is there a second for that motion? >> Second. >> Motion made by Mrs. Hurst, seconded by Mrs. Cormier to adopt those policies and amend those policies that were listed in the item for second reading for item 3781. Is there any discussion on that
051motion? Hearing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. Item number 3782 preschool tuition. >> Um I think we already discussed it for the finance that it done that it's going up to how much? >> Yep. >> Um So, we're going to go Let's see how that goes. So, what will be is a full full day cost annual cost will go from 2,600 to 2,840. The half day cost will go 1,300 will increase to 1,480. Uh so, I make a motion that we accept uh uh this as presented. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Motion made by Mr. Frangie, seconded by Mrs. Palaven to adopt as presented. Is there any discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all in favor, say aye. >> Aye. >> Opposed, nay. Motion carries. Item 3783,
052the CAPS Collaborative third quarter FY26 report. This was included in your packet this evening for information. Are there any questions, comments, concerns from the members of the committee? See none. Moving on to item 3784, curriculum coordinator's update. This was included in your packet this evening for information. Are there any questions, comments, concerns from the members of the committee? Item 3785, Director of School Health Services update. This was included in your packet this evening for information. Are there any questions, comments, concerns from the members of the committee? Item number 3786, Grants Administrator's update. This was included in your packet this evening for information. Are there any questions, comments, concerns from the members of the committee? Item number 3787, Special Education update. This was included in your packet this evening for information. Are there any questions, comments,
053concerns from the members of the committee? Moving on to item J, communications from the Superintendent, Dr. Pellegrino. >> Just a couple things. Um, you know, first off, um, kindergarten is at 165 students enrolled. We're expecting over 200 students to be enrolled. Um, so we're excited about that and that seems to be going very well. Um, but also I wanted to announce that, um, this year the students who, um, felled, that means they are no longer need to participate in the English language alert learner services, went from 29 students last year to 40 students this year. So, we're really excited and we've had been having great outcomes for our English language learner students, um, on the ACCESS test, which is their test for, um, progressing in the English language. So, really excited about that. With that,
054I'll pass it on to the school committee. >> Okay. Item K, final comments from the members of the school committee, Mr. Carmine. >> No. No. No No other comments. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. Mrs. Hurst. >> Um, I just wanted to congratulate the the fourth grade student council. It that's always like my favorite part It's when we have young kids that are coming in and to hear all the good things that they're doing. Um, you know, it it uh There's a lot to be proud of in Gardner. Um, and also thank you for the budget presentation. I know how hard everybody works on that, how much everybody hates what's what's happening with that. Um Uh people need to understand that it's it's not black and white. That things are are, you know, different
055things are happening. There's different components to things. And it's easy to look at it and complain about it, but again, there's not a lot of people here either asking questions or trying to understand it better. So, um I think it it becomes a little hard for me sometimes to um have people come up to me and talk to me or just get an email about, you know, the budget and what are you people thinking and those kinds of things. Um You know, it's like there's a lot that you can learn. And we don't take this lightly and we don't like to see anything be cut. And um it's hard sometimes not to take it personally. But um with that, I will say again, I'm very proud of the work everybody does here. And uh that's
056all I got. >> Thank you, Mrs. Hurst. Attorney Klayman. >> Um I'd also like to thank the fourth graders, um the student council, for everything they do. Like every year it's so interesting to hear the list of um accomplishments that they've done throughout the year and the amount that they get done considering their age. Um and then in In of the budget, I mean, obviously, it sucks. Um and I think I'll echo like none of us want to see any cuts. Um and I think, you know, we've been obviously realizing this has been coming and um it's been a long time since we've had to cut positions here in this district. And um yeah, it's just I wish there was something better that we could report tonight. I wish that we weren't dealing with this
057right now, but unfortunately, the reality of it is is that we do have to and hopefully um you know, I'm still hoping that there might be some better outcomes soon. >> Too. >> That's all. >> Thank you. Mr. Schwartz. >> I call age to the director of health services. We think back years ago when I was in school, the occasion of using the service was a band-aid or an aspirin. But looking at Becky's report that she provided, those nurses are running around every day there's a student in school. So, she's working very hard as well as the team. I don't want to neglect the team. Tomorrow night, I hope the city council really heeds and understands the presentation and comes up with questions to ask on the doubts that they have and pass the budget
058as presented. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Schwartz. Councillor LaFrance. >> Thank you, [clears throat] Mr. Mayor. Just um wanted to thank the staff, uh everyone that's worked on this budget. I know all those meetings were very difficult um to have and and and just trying to find creative ways uh to keep us going in the direction we've been going. Um really difficult and I appreciate all the hard work they do. Um I I can say that with the the talent that we have in our teachers, the talent that we have with the support staff is incredible in this district. Um and so I I I'm very confident that we can get through this and we can still continue in that direction we've been going. Um and and yeah, this wasn't easy, but uh it's
059reality. So, we'll deal with it, we'll get through it, and and thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Fournier. Mrs. Cormier? >> No additional comments, thank you. >> Thank you very much. Uh the last couple of stuff I'd like to throw out is to thank you to our teachers for joining us here this evening for um you know, your information on the budget. Uh as Mr. Schwartz said, uh the City Council is meeting tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. for their presentation of the school budget uh for them to get this information ahead of their vote of the full budget uh once that's taken up um in sometime in June uh by the full council as they're have to go through their full subcommittee uh process for review of the various different budgets of the different departments
060of the city. Uh but their uh informal meeting for the school budget that's dedicated for the schools budget is tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. here in this room. Uh and on a to end with a bright note, uh by the time we meet at our next meeting, our graduation ceremonies will have already happened, so early congratulations to all of our uh soon-to-be graduates and best of luck and enjoy every moment of the upcoming ceremonies. Uh and with that, there are no executive sessions this evening. Our next meeting will be held on Monday, June 8th at 6:00 p.m. here in the City Council Chamber. We'll note that that is the last meeting of the school year, and the School Committee does not meet in the months of July or August, so this June 8th, 2026 meeting
061at 6:00 p.m. will be our last meeting before September. Uh and with that, uh there's no other items on our business agenda this evening. Is there a motion to adjourn? >> Move to adjourn. >> Second. >> Motion made by Mr. Fournier, seconded by Mr. Schwartz. All in favor, I. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. Thank you all very much. >> Have a good >> Mhm.