001good evening ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining us this evening um this is our annual uh budget Summit and um at this time I'll open up the meeting and ask everyone to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance iedge Al to flag the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all I'll just uh probably make it easy and we're just going to go right around the table and everybody can in introduce each other um starting with you Ted Ted novio uh School Committee Member milville representative tyara Lin School Committee Member milville Tyra scobby School Committee Member Blackstone Harry goette School Committee Member Blackstone Matt Catalano School Committee Member milville W Sweeny Blackstone border selectman T poock Blackstone border selectman R
002buo Blackstone border selectman Lauren Taylor assistant Town Administrator town of C for the town of Blackstone Chad love it Town Administrator from Blackstone Chuck dunon School Committee Member Blackstone Jeff Silverstein uh chair of finance committee and capital Outlet Joe Baker B select bville Matthew mey milville selecting Peter Caruso milville town administr Ator and chair of the capital committee uh andreward mil Bo slman CL Barrett finance committee milville chair Judy Monro milville finance committee Joe spatter Director of Finance and operations for Blackstone milville Jill P gallerani assistant superintendent director of student services and Jason DeFalco superintendent and I'm Dan Keith Black Zone rep uh school committee um all right moving forward review and discuss blackone milville Regional School District FY 26 budget Mr superintendent yes thank you good evening everybody uh great to be together good
003to see everyone all in one place uh for our I think we'll uh dub this meeting now our annual Summit is that what you call it uh it's great um look forward to this conversation every year because it gives us an opportunity to of course talk about the uh the needs of the school system but also uh I would argue just as important it gives us an opportunity to talk about the successes uh and we are only able to achieve the successes that we have uh through the support of everybody around this table um and of course our larger Community parents uh our Educators and most importantly our students so uh very grateful to be here with everyone tonight uh to talk about uh a very important issue um and so with that in front
004of you um you have uh a few different pieces of information you have copy of the slide deck that we're going to walk through in that slide deck there are some handouts and materials that will go over um and those of you that have been uh with us for a budget cycle or more in many cases uh the documents will look very familiar we've tried to stick to a very um consistent format but uh included in the PowerPoint is um an overview of our budget for FY 26 our draft budget an overview of the assessment sheet that we will talk about uh also uh a breakdown by Major cost center I know that's something that's been interested many of you have been interested in in the past so we just included that uh in this
005year's presentation and also uh the first uh of a five-year overview of our Capital plan uh I say the first year because we do have years two through five built out but in your packet it's just year one and that we'll speak a little bit too later uh regarding what uh the school committee has prioritized in that 5-year Capital plan this evening helping uh review all the information uh tonight will be Jill and Joe um and Jason so the Jays will be presenting the information tonight uh but as we're going if you have questions don't hesitate to ask and uh we look forward to to getting started um first and foremost um probably the most important document we have in our school system that's our Improvement strategy everything comes back to this um what is
006listed here as our five C's these are the promises to our Learners to our graduates uh you might have heard the term portrait of a graduate or P portrait of a learner uh that's where these came from these came from a a working group of stakeholders from across all groups in our school system I spent a lot of time thinking about what are the promises that we make to our students who graduate from BMR every year um and of course something to us that is more than just a tagline but it's truly how we function and approach our work we are working on being a school system where everyone is welcome in Bel logs uh and we value uh diversity inclusivity with that so the other guiding structures to really help uh pull together our
007budget um is not as simple as just saying to our C Center managers you know what do you need uh but there's actually some guiding structures that we use of course the the first is our strategy which we just talked about uh our blueprint is the name for our strategic plan um and we are actually in our last year of our current blueprint so as we move forward into uh next school year we will have a newly revised uh strategic plan or blueprint that we'll be implementing so you hear a little bit about that later um our end of year 20 uh 24 um accountability in mcast results um we have a lot to be proud of um as far as our overall achievement and growth and we'll talk about that uh we believe that's
008an important piece of information to review with everybody because that's our return on investment so how are we doing with our kids how are they performing um and so Jill is going to actually uh get into a bit more detail about that the end of school year feedback from our school committee the school committee has a very thorough evaluation process that they do every year it's actually multiple stages uh starts with data review we look at um and established goals we have a midyear evaluation and then we have an Endy year evaluation so the school committee takes that process very seriously and uh we use that data to help inform where we go next with our work uh and of course uh equally as important are Community surveys uh we survey all of our students
009and grades 2 through 12 we survey our families and all of our staff um and we take all of that feedback and we use that feedback to help inform where we're going um this just these are important to mention because sometimes we might see something and not really understand where it comes from as far as either a new material or program or a new position we take all these pieces into consideration when we're putting our budget together yeah so this slide is probably familiar to a lot of you this is our student demographics we always have um some updates so you can see our students by race we also identified our English language learner students and I'll get into that we are seeing an increase in our our student population in that area which help
010you know also drives our budget um our students with special needs it's pretty stable over the years High need needs but also if you look at that old uh low income you'll notice we're right now at 41.8% and that has climbed about 16% of the past five years and that's identifi that's come up with that families that actually reporting their data there are some families who still don't but that is an area um again that's continuing to be on the rise so again I'm not going to go over every of those you can see those but again our student overall yep so between is the high need students and students with special needs are those mutually exclusives no you'll see when I get in it'll it'll show you in a slide what what that means
011for the student population they fit into very many categories thank you [Applause] sure okay our state determined measures um again it's not a new slide the We are continuing to make moderate progress toward our goals as in the district um and our we have no schools within our district that requireed any state Assistance or intervention and I just want to give you a little detail about that so there is the Department of Education there's a comprehensive accountability system and they look at each district um across the state and they look at things like mcast they look at attendance they look at student participation they look at a variety of fields to identify are we a uh a district that is in the bottom 25% or are we in the lower percent compared to student uh
012compared to school districts like us we are not a school at all that's being identified in that area and the other thing that they also look at us for accountability is our tiered Focus monitoring which seem to be here all the time every year almost every day but they also look at besides our student data our data as a district they um look we do tiered Focus monitoring in Special Education civil rights educational stability um our English language learner population are our titles grants that we get um those are yearly and all of our we actually just had a few over the last couple of years we were in full compliance um and also our L indicators that they look at they always look at our kiddo data coming in and how they've been um
013addressed in their progress and they look at our students that are leaving us and those are done on a yearly basis and there hasn't been any findings in any of those areas which is really great um and again you'll see here our four-year graduation our dropout rate um there's been a lot of focus on those areas that we're trying to get those either you know higher when it comes to the graduation rate or low when it comes to the Dropout and those have really been targeted areas um that our guidance Department's been working working on you can see here again this information isn't new I'm not going to go through each one but you can see that our student performance within the cluster of grades is Right within that state average and the bottom three
014um uh notes you can see are areas that we actually exceeded targets as a district when it came to our um science when it came to our absenteeism targets and also for our English language um students actually exceeded what our um what our targets were this year I could just when when back back when um in 17 when you come on in 17 18 18 uh going back to the requiring any state Assistance or intervention was that the case when you we had quite a few findings that had come up through um office of civil rights special education um our title grants and over the series The the first few years we were able to work through all those issues put everything in place that we needed to and we have we have no findings
015and we're not being monitored for it hasn't it's been the case for the last several years yep that's correct it and like I said we I I know I've mentioned at a school committee meeting our district with our English language leers we actually um myself and our lead coach were actually asked to present at the um office for language acquisition um presentations in person and and online for the work that we've been doing with our kiddos because we are a low incident district and a lot of low incident districts don't aren't able to do the work that we do so it was really nice we were honored in that way um um things that are driving our budget um you can see we have we're always just over that 1500 Mark um the department my
016department also oversees our welcome center and it seems like on a regular basis we are having new students control in our district which is great um you can see here just under 50% of our students Jennifer I think you asked if High needs so they fall into that category if they're economically disadvantaged special needs they have more than one category they fall into that real God thank you is that um excuse me is how comparable is that to surrounding towns the percentage of high need students yes we're we're more in line um as far as the high needs percentage with uh Northbridge uh milford's higher than ours um but um the our immediate bordering uh xbridge Bellingham hope Dale that number is much lower it is okay thank and with that said if you look
017at I'm just going to go back to our Mass performance a bit our higher need students and our students of low income and our students who have some significant challenge actually outperforming the state in their growth which is really nice to see so if you look here we're also seeing an increase in our student enrollment like I told you it's actually daily we're getting new folks who are joining us um um our students with English language Learners actually last year we had the year started off about 41 students and we're up to 72 um so I anticipate that's probably going to double by the end of this year um we have had increased students who are outplay but I want to make it very clear the majority of our students who have come in actually
018over the last two years who weren't placed by us they were either movein students or they were placed by out outside agencies we've worked really hard in this District to build our programs within um but what has happened is we are doing that but some of the new students coming into our district have already already been outplaced so unfortunately has increased our numbers over the last two years um also we are looking to maintain our class size so you'll hear a little bit more um later on this presentation about Staffing that we would like to add um we are looking to increase our um English language learner teachers by 04 we currently have 2.6 and with our increase we're looking to make that three with the point four um as Jason mentioned before we talked
019about our district strategic plan that is always guiding the work that we do um we are looking to reinforce our core literacy programs we're making some adjustments and we're also working to to um strengthen our writing um across the districts with programs and of course we'll talk a little bit more of the implementation of revised 5year Capital plan a quick question sure have a curiosity for the um the increased enrollment for the language learner supports is needed is what's the what what languages I guess are the the top like most needed our right now the highest population of languages are Portuguese and Spanish but we do have several and I can get those I know my school committee presentation I listed them all we have quite a few um we have a lot of uh
020speak uh students who speak Mandarin um but I would say right now the top is Portuguese and Spanish I I think the last I'm sorry some the last school committee meeting we addressed this on was like 17 or 19 different quite a few different languages and also um that 1500 number I I'm being in selectman or whatever for the last several years years we we watched the enrollment decline that 1500 number has been pretty consistent over the last three three years um which is good that we're more more kids are staying correct um okay and some just some of the other factors driving of course our health insurance increases I know that you know that's an ongoing review um an assessment of healthcare options um our collaborative and private tuition there is an increase in
021we're we were hoping for a 5% it looks like it could be as high as 10 14% um and then we also have as I mentioned before increased um due to our overall enrollment in our district of students who are already outplaced um facility needs that's I'm sure we've we've talked about that over and over at the high school as well as some of our short-term capital projects what goes into this too some of our factors that we have the faculty and staff our contractual obligations our mlc our minimum local contribution it continues to increase every year the expectation from the town and of course our transportation process so budget process to date um again those of you that have been through a few budget Cycles with us uh this is not at all uh
022different than what we've done in the past as far as using those driving documents meeting with our cost center managers we start this process back in October uh late October um going through each specific cost center with each cost center manager so principles and directors um we do not just let folks know here this is your lump sum or just take what you did last year and add x% uh that is not at all how that works um we then present to the school committee in December what we think it's still early in the process but what we think the main priorities will be um in terms of we kind of jokingly call IT staff and stuff like so if there's any new positions or if any new any new materials what are those positions
023and materials uh so we do an early kind of preview of that in December January we get real deep into the weeds so the first meeting in January with school committee we're in the detail we're looking at all of the um all of the function code lines what the anticipated increases will be in each area and then from there we hold usually two to three workshops we had three this year um to help get us to a place um where we're ready to share with all of you uh the budget information that we have this evening of course one of the most important pieces of information on the other side of the house right I'm talking about uh the cost side but are the revenues so um there's not a lot we can do about
024that until the governor releases her budget and it's I think it's the third Wednesday in January um when that is released so those initial revenues are really important but again as everyone around the table knows those revenues change constantly between January until when the budget is uh put into place sometime in early July I know it's been later than that in some fiscal years so uh we too like you are kind of dealing with that EB and flow of what those changes look like as they work their way uh through the legislator so more specifically these are the Strategic priorities as it relates to materials right so again we kind of talk about the materials then we talk about the positions so this is the material side of the of the house so to speak
025um and uh as um as our community knows we take our curriculum piece of the work very serious uh what you may have heard or seen in in some places usually curriculum is the first place that gets cut uh when there are budget reductions uh we do not do that in BMR that's actually uh I think would be a detriment to the work that our teachers need to do in the classrooms every day the curriculum the tools and resources teachers need in order to instruct so we have a really uh tight revision and renewal cycle and this year we're focused on literacy but we're taking as Jill mentioned a little bit of a different approach we're kind of taking a two-year approach this year we're uh looking at just replacing the Middle grades uh literacy
026program but leaving kind of the book ends the way they are and focusing uh more closely on a really consistent and coherent PK to 12 set of writing expectations rubrics genres across the board so that they actually build so we did something a little different this year our curriculum committee uh was not necessarily the traditional kind of literacy committee that we've had in the past these folks were focused specifically on writing and that is it um and they are still hard at work on that um so lots of good work happening in that space uh but we know there's some work that needs to be uh materials that need to be purchased and put in place for next year um our assessment system those of you that either have little ones in the school system
027or have had little ones in the system um you have probably heard of the star assessment um maybe with a smile maybe with a frown depending on your kind of piece to it uh we spent a lot of time we meet with our students multiple times a year but one of the things that we do is we actually have students on our district leadership team uh from all three buildings so we have our little ones up to our high school kids uh and we meet with them minimum three times a year as a district leadership team they meet in their school every couple weeks uh with their principal but we bring them all together kind of like this and we actually look at our data together uh from kind Garden all the way through High
028School uh with the students with members of our instructional leadership team which are our staff uh the instructional coaches principales Etc and through a lot of conversation with the kids um they brought to us is there a way we can look at assessment different um and so we are so we took a little bit of a different approach this year in terms of utilizing our our unit tests and our quarterly exams to replace our math star assessment um and so we're still in the midst of that and seeing you know how that's working um we have a district instructional leadership team meeting on March 18th where the students will be presenting uh which we are very much looking forward to and seeing the progress that we are making uh I should also mention that in
029those conversations we look at the aggregate so we look at all kids but we do pull out those subgroups of students that look specifically at our English language Learners our students with special needs students are getting reading intervention but they may not qualify for um either um elll services or may not qualify for special education services so we actually look at the data broken down so we can get a really good lens on how the kids are actually performing not just overall but within specific groups uh we look at both achievement and growth and we do it with our students which I think is is really powerful um they'll tell you the kids will tell you like this is what's working and this teacher needs to stop doing that because that's not working it's like
030they'll be very blunt and forward with us um but there's still lots of work to do uh in terms of getting that assessment assessment system uh just right um we are looking to implement two items off of our year one of our five-year Capital plan which Joe will talk about in a few minutes so you'll see those items come up and you'll also see the first year of that Capital plan um so those are present in um in the FY 26 budget as far as they're not in the budget numbers but they will be articles that we be looking uh to add to the warrants for town meeting um increasing after school and summer uh School programming I just so that if any of our parents are tuning in at home I think it's important
031to know we have a before school program for kindergarteners um it started out looking at students in K that didn't go to preschool uh the challenge of a kindergarten teacher is is one of the largest challenges in the system because they're getting students that have had home daycare students that have had BMR preschool students that have had private preschool students that have had no school and all 22 show up on you know day one so to speak so we started a before school program specifically for students that didn't have preschool to see if there was ground that we needed to make up but we've since expanded it so we have about 20 students we just ran uh a February Camp uh which was great uh we only had 18 kids participate but it's a start
032so we had students uh come in uh Tuesday Wednesday Thursday for enrichment for athletic uh opportunities with our athletic director um it was really great for the kids that participated they loved it um and we do extensive summer programming through uh 21st century which is a grant uh you may have heard us mention it before um our allocation about $117,000 a year that we uh are able to use to run this program it's paid for through the federal government through the state and it's the you might have heard that uh 21st cclc 21st Century Learning Center is what that stands for uh but we're always looking to expand programming so we're looking to build off of um off of that after school programming and sumar programming as well and increasing uh support for students with
033some behavioral that have some behavioral needs so on to the Staffing side of the priorities um all of the numbers you're looking at right now are the projected numbers for next school year so we rolled up the existing numbers that are in our classrooms right now with the exception of k um our census is looking like will be right around about 110 uh kindergarten students um and what you will see for the Elementary grades is the grade level so kindergarten first grade second grade third grade and then right next to that you'll see the number of teachers that we have at that grade level the number of students and then the number of students per class so you'll notice that next year it is um it is projected that we'll have um our five kindergarten
034teachers about 110 kindergarten students 22k students overall uh in each classroom we do have uh an instructional assistant in each of our kindergarten classrooms it's important to note um for first grade we'll have five teachers 100 students and about 20 uh students in each classroom grades two and three I want you to remember these numbers because we are uh in our budget does have a an additional second grade and an additional third grade uh teacher um we ran into this problem or this challenge this year where we thought we would be able to work with the numbers we had and then and for whatever reason it's just kind of the lack of the draw you end up with an influx of families unfortunately it tends to be the last week in August right before we're
035about to start I think people are making their last minute changes and uh families are getting settled in for the school year and this year and second and third grade or in first and second grade we saw an increase there so um we were able to absorb some of that in first grade because we have five teachers but looking forward into second grade next year that's not going to be the case um so um we are asking in our budget for an additional second an additional third grade teacher that'll keep our K through third grade classrooms all right around 20 it also gives a little bit of wiggle room if you have four or five families move in we have the space to to to spread those students out uh across our classrooms so the
036four and the four excludes the additional teachers correct that's right yes that's right that would be if um if what we have that get you down to the 20 that's understood um at the middle school um again it's a little bit different fourth and fifth grade run like Elementary classrooms but the sixth and seventh grade run as teams so you can see the overall class sizes there um but what we're looking to do is actually add an electives teacher um we have a lot of opportunity at the middle school but one of the things that we found this year um we had a good problem we had so many kids that went out for abandoned course it left us with a group of about 70 students across the upper grades that actually need needed in
037elective so we were able to put in Virtual Middle School uh for the seventh graders this year and do a different enrichment uh opportunity with the sixth graders um but we really need um a electives teacher for the Middle School one of the things you might remember when we went through last year's reduction we reduced and it we'll talk about it in a moment but we reduced our staffing by 18 and a half positions full-time positions um 11 of those were classroom teachers and the rest were administrators are support staff like nurses custodians Etc um so we are looking to bring back six of those 11 positions um and because our enrollment is increasing uh we actually will have the means uh to do so um High School uh we have another good problem on
038our hands uh this is the first time in a long time we actually will have over a 100 students in every grade level at BMR um we are seeing tremendous success with having our eighth graders at the High School uh we typically have anywhere between 60 and 65 applications of BVT this year we have 22 uh and I think that's important for all of you sitting around the table because as you know on the town side you all get the tuition bills for that um so um our thought of bringing the students up to the high school getting them plugged into the high school program of studies the pathways of which we were just awarded uh I was with the governor on Thursday and the Secretary of Education uh BMR was just awarded um the
039environmental Sciences Innovation pathway uh we are one of only 100 high schools out of the 400 plus in the Commonwealth that have an innovation pathway status uh so a huge shout out to our high school um and I know it was a great event we were at actually we're at alal high school and some of you might remember Matt aworth uh our former assistant Su he's a superintendent there so um he also was awarded a path which is kind of neat so we had an opportunity to be there together to uh to be given that um that Grant um so with that next year we are projecting about 135 eighth graders about 111 and that's reducing 25 um eighth graders moving into nth grade um you can see our numbers for 10th grade about 120
040are Juniors and then we'll have about 102 uh seniors um we are working just as an aside with the msba those of you that are part of the school building committee uh the enrollment piece has been a question for quite some time because their enrollment projections have been so low for a potential project so we are working with them on this as our numbers uh continue to at minimum stabilize but uh as we're seeing here this evening hopefully increase so with that this is what we currently have for Staffing we have uh for all of these students these are our core teachers and then our nine elective teachers you can see the numbers there um we need to bring back I say bring back because we reduced last year we need to bring back a
041social studies teacher we need to bring back a science teacher and an electives teacher um for next year so you'll see that uh for these new FTE three of those we want to send to BMR the ratios um as you have for the lower grades the student uh teacher ratio for the high school there're a little harder to do because it's course specific so some of it you can do like an aggregate like e8th grade's easy um nth grade core classes like English math science those are easier to do but where you run into the challenge is that you have uh College Prep honors or AP and so the numbers are different in each one of those sections so you might look and see we've got 10 kids in AP stats but you might have
04230 students or 28 students in you know honors geometry so it's we certainly can but it it doesn't it's not as clean as the other uh the other groups because it's specific to the course all right now we're going to move on to the the finance part of it um the first slide that you're looking at the first slide of Finance here is looking back at fy2 what was done to um help consolidate the buildings and what that impact was on the district uh as you know there was a uh significantly increased minimum local contribution last year to both towns 6.8% and 5.2% that's the state they said to do that uh in the same time chapter 78 was a minimal increase of 0.9% which I guess has been pretty consistent over the years here
043between 50 and $9,000 every year for increases uh with the reconfiguration that came through that was done uh there was a total Savings of about $2.3 million and that represented as um uh dralco was talking 18 12 FTE full-time equivalent positions were cut with that Rec U that reconfiguration 11 of those were teachers and you can see on the bottom what makes up all those cuts uh and then the supplies of materials were saved just under a million dollars so that represented a $2.3 million savings overall to the district so in the process my first time going through the entire budget process here at Blackstone milville and the two things that stuck out to me when we started doing this process and one was the main priority was the kids making sure we could provide
044a a good adequate uh actually excelling education for our kids but also was how do we limit the impact on the towns in doing that with higher enrollment comes higher costs so we needed to go take a look and see what what we could do so I tried to lay out here the revenue sources that we'll be using and how we'll be using those revenues to reduce that impact to both the towns uh one thing it's that's happening to us which is great we saw we're going to see an increase in our Chapter 70 Aid of over $600,000 it's a 6% increase over last year and that's mainly done because of the fact that we've moved out of hold Harless status with the state and all that means is our enrollment has gone up some
045of the calculations they use for increases has increased from 2 to 3% to 6% and the increase in low-income students while not a good thing does affect the funding formula and how much funding we will get um so this basically it's a one-time increase this isn't going to be $600,000 every year it's just going to be this one time where we moved out of whole thess then things should normalize but Joe this is our new floor that's right now we're in Foundation a this is the the the floor that we'll be at we should not be a we should not drop below that we should only grow from that based on Foundation Aid so that was one of the ways that uh we'll minimize some [Applause] impact some other new sources we looked at was
046the entitlement grants these are our federal federally funded grants um idea preschool grants about $22,000 we don't have our actual award for next year yet but they then $22,000 is is right about where they're at uh we're going to use that to partially fund almost all fully fund a preschool instructional assistant our Ida entitlement grant for special education that's our highest Grant it's $460,000 we'll use 400,000 of that to offset the collaborative tuitions from these kids that are coming in out of District that uh Jill had mentioned 33,000 for contracted services and 23,000 for special ed supplies so we'll be able to reduce the impact on the general fund by that amount our title four uh Grant is $115,000 we'll use that money to provide supplies for our social emotional learning Title One $213,000 we're
047going to fund 2.3 FTE of our reading interventionist with those with that funding and title two $35,000 we use to offset mentor stiens and Mentor [Applause] supplies go to the next page for Le Revenue Source some other areas that we'll be using offsets our circuit breaker uh $733,000 we'll be using that to offset our private school special education tuitions Regional Transportation reimburse ments we're going to use [Music] $856,000 worth of our collaborative tuitions each year for the next fiscal year we're going to utilize $350,000 of this year's budget to prepay for next year that'll reduce those collaborative expenses for next year um I jokingly said at one of our meetings that we're basically turning up the couch cushions here to try to find as much money as we can when I got here we took
048a look at all the funds that the district has and there are some smaller funds various funds uh special Revenue funds that are just carrying a fund balance year-over-year we don't really even use these funds anymore in most cases so the total of those funds that we have access to if we utilize that would be $90,000 so we pull all that money together put it into one fund that can offset some more expense with and we'll use up those funds too to make sure we can actually liquidate those and close out those those funds moving forward if we're not using them anymore we also took a look at our supplies and our consumables that we have in stock this year uh to see where we're at and we should be able to inventory that stock
049that we're not going to use in preparation for next year so we'll carry that forward that's going to be about $270,000 worth of supplies and materials that will'll keep from this year and carry forward to next year so the total reduction with all of these ongoing uh revenues and one-time um revenues is about 3 million it's exactly 3, 6594 that we were able to reduce in the uh from the general fund portion and the impact of the town in the next section unless anybody has any questions on that I I just want to like a a comment on that like the special Revenue funds that we closed out like one of them would have been a Kennedy School stage curtain replacement fund from like 1967 like 1500 a lot of those were just cleaned up
050that were never used it'll be nice to clean up the GL too not have to worry about those funds anymore so the next slide we're going into is the budget workbook and and in there you should have this packet here and I know that's the that's the page the proposed budget page that everybody looks at okay and we even said maybe we should just put that one slide up but I'll run through this real quick too um up on the top you're going to see our our school choice sending and Charter School sending tuitions that's the preliminary that we've received from the state that could change up or down and on all the other costs so our our total uh budget is 32 milon 55 $ 4,718 we're going to use we have about just
051over $500,000 of um excess and deficiencies $50,000 of that has been allocated for oped payment and the remaining balance 100% of that will be used to help offset some some expense we'll use all of the E and D this year now you'll see our Chapter 70 receipts is just over $12 million there's the regional these are the other items I just went through the regional transportation of a 856 school choice receipts 100 again it's preliminary but 181,000 Charter School reimbursement 20 222,000 then you'll see our entitlement grants the preschool Grant of 22,000 the uh idea special ed grant for 460,000 title four for 15,000 Title 1 for 23 and title two for 35,000 you'll also see on here the circuit breaker of 7 $133,000 to bring us to a total state revenue of 14, 818343809
052rental of classrooms we're projecting to use about $100,000 uh Medicaid revenue is at $190,000 athletic user fees $72,000 music user fees $10,000 and obviously the onetime revenues I spoke of of 90,000 for $872,000 if you look down below the percentage increase over FY 25 with the budget we have in place right now even with with the the positions that we're asking for blackstone's increase in assessment is 3.95% well millville's increase in the assessment is 2.54% so we're easil easy we did a good uh a lot of digging to find a way to keep those numbers as low as we possibly could Joe excuse me um the you know the prepaid collaborative tuitions where's that where do you group that on the revenues that's that's not on here it's a it's going to be a direct
053reduction of what we would have budgeted oh it's an offset to cost got you okay thank you that's built into that 32 million and your percentages are the overall including Capital that's correct the Deltas yep so go to the further down if you if you want it we have the detailed information by function code here Jo can I jump in real quick just one quick thing so if you look on the if you look on the FY 26 proposed budget sheet you'll see as Joe mentioned the breakdowns for fy2 and then the breakdowns for uh FY 26 right next to it and then you'll see the change all the way to the right so you can see um the actual change for Blackstone as far as the minimum local contribution of 4671 166 the exclusion
054area 2964 uh the additional 16,060 the capital is down 41 268 and then the total uh is an increase in $471,000 but um through the work that we've done the overall increase for milville is 99,5 57 so that gives just a general sense of where from uh 25 to 26 where we landed if I could just add to that the the change in the minimum local contribution alone this is what the state requires the Two Towns to pay blackstone's change from that line item alone is an increase of 467,000 um they're being asked to increase over last year by just 9955730 but on uh Thursday the budget um if all goes well the budget will be certified on this Thursday the 6th Jason the with the the settlement of the Union contracts do does this
055current budget reflect any increase um or does it take into account what the settlement what the ultimate settlement might be we're prepared to negotiate with Unit A and we'll certify the budget on Thursday and that's those are the resources have so is it possible that you might have to come back for supplemental funding we have in my seven years we have never come back to the town okay yeah so that's my plan okay not well not Jason but his first year here was a super town meeting that was because of me that wasn't my fault but that wasn't that was a member of the town of black Zone increasing taking from the library and giving it to the school but So the plan would be no all right so again you have the detailed um
056we also did break out the the project expenses by location for build by building then we go into the capital um this page here does give you the breakout of the capital and how it was broken out by each town okay for you to look at but the the slide itself s we'll go into um a quick summary Capital assessments uh bway 26 is the total principal and interest for Blackstone has decreased 11% uh 300 it's the $339,990 for milville it decreased 4% down to 163,00 $984 for a total assessment of 53,9 168 and as you know the middle school bond was paid off in August so that's a big reduction there but it also includes the $500,000 band that we we're going through right now for borrowing for the feasibility study so that's in
057here now um actually it's just been uploaded and it's getting approved we should have that that ban within days so that's everything that's there is that the only thing that you're using a ban for the the feasibility study everything else is bonded no the we still have the the milville uh boiler project I believe a that's a ban and also the JFK uh I think that was a roofing project I'm not mistaken uh it was the windows spoilers and doors those there'll be three bands at that point in time but you've been paying down on the debt yes as a ban correct so if I look at millville's boiler 677 Grand y That's the balance of a ban as of whatever date here that's correct and those amounts don't re like we don't know or
058the amounts of the out how would I call the amortised amounts that might be due msba should they not be happy about facilities you follow what I'm asking I do but I don't I don't have that that's not on here yeah I can't equate okay hopefully that will not be the case understood agree uh the other part piece of this is our five air Capital plan uh I did include Ys happens to be in black and white and I apologize but this other document does have our 5-year Capital plan in it uh but it also shows what we're going to be what we're looking for year one obviously we can't do everything that we need so we went through and decided to pick out the two items that are most important right now um we
059need to keep up on the capital we need to keep up on these things before they become a a bigger detriment to us uh next year we'll be looking for a $70,000 approval for a play equipment for this school uh age appropriate playground equipment for grades four and five in addition our um sander and plow truck it's a it's a big vehicle it's um really on its last legs we've been putting a lot of money in that thing trying to keep it running it's it's pretty much rotting where it is uh we're looking to replace that with another plow truck this amount is based on a an estimate we've received so far but we'll still continue to look at other options we'll get more estimates from different um um dealerships we'll even look at some
060used vehicles see if there's anything we can save some money there too so I would look at that as a more of a not to exceed amount than anything else and unless you have any questions for me that's much um the uh the year one plan um has some substantial uh expenditures or um some projections for the JFK playground and um and there's substantial capital investment projected for uh for this school um how how much anticipation is going into these Capital reviews um if we look at um the plan that was submitted the two the P the two building plan that's on the table right now if that goes according to plan um if feasibility study varries um you know bears that plan out um and you move ahead um how much of the stuff
061would have to change because at that point you're triggering um a substantial renovation of this building to accommodate a lower group of kids age groups so is there any um is there any projection or is there any uh secondary plan for taking that into account well we're not we're not actually projecting what the construction would be included in this building to fit the kids if their lower grades that is not in here not until we know for sure what we're going to do um so but what we are doing is some of the things that we can do that we know like the playground equipment that'll benefit no matter what the plan is um so no we're not looking at what it would cost in construction to make this building fit for lower grades if
062that was the model we went to right but we're also not investing a lot of money that's why we picked the two programs uh two PL as we have it's for this school for uh for the middle school and the plow truck which is kind of districtwide so we're not putting a lot of investment into the complex right now in case okay well given given that the feasibility study is supposed to be done by um uh October I believe end of October um at that point would a lot of this have to be reviewed I think so I think we're going to see some shifts in terms of priorities what my sense is some of some things might will move up the line right um right depending upon what direction the the community wants to
063go and and then some things will obviously probably fall off frankly alt together um when we submitted the two building model this was 2019 I know you were part of those conversations Jeff uh 20192020 it was just over 7 million to retrofit for the little toilets and all the little you know the plumbing and all the things that the little ones would need right um my sense is like everything else that's probably gone up quite a bit um so but with that you know what might there be an opportunity there to look at the roof in addition to look at the windows that need to be redone I think so so I I think to your question I think some of these will be reprioritized oh sorry go ahead s and pull had a question
064um yeah just in terms of like we're just talking about the school the the school building thing and I I know that's going to take some years for that to come to fruition so my question is how many years of you are we going to get out of this playground equipment if we do this next like well I guess next year based on when we go to town funding yeah in this in this building here so I don't see a configuration where this building is not a significant player in that uh and that wouldn't have elementary students in it so I I would assume that in all of the configurations we'll look at we'll have at minimum the grade span that we have here now and I say minimum because that we still have space
065here perfect yeah thank you the other question that I have is regarding um um JFK in particular um once if if if this plan moves forward um the two building plan um then JFK sort of disappears from your um from your uh range of of buildings um is there any plan or is there any planning going on for what's going to be done with that building so this when when when the high school is modernized and this building is modernized so cross that bridge when we get to this we'd like to go through the budget and capital uh requests that are going to be over $35,000 over five years in existing School B buildings that uh we don't plan on um uh we plan on keeping in the district so both these Capital item requests
066the playground is in a district owned property and the the plow truck will be for district owned uh claim in it and by the way the plow truck should have been replaceable 3 years ago if not if not longer so that conversation the bigger conversation of this is a budget Summit and I understand and by the way we will make sure you have a the copy of this fiveyear you know the supplement the town's one but um but I just don't want to get too far up because we can go on and on for hours about what we're going to do with this school building or that school building uh but we're not doing anything without the funing for the school buildings that we're currently occupying okay thank you another question pull just looking at
067the the fiveyear review chart so you also have playr equipment for JFK is that also like the plan is to replace some of that in the next year too so that's a town-owned building so we just put together what an estimate would be if if because we've heard from a lot of families some you know challenges and yeah with that playground so we had an and that was intentionally not presented to the towns because of the uncertainty C of the of the talent I should say uncertainty of the future of the yeah I was that's kind of why I was asking was because yes from like the like I know the condition of that but thinking if whatever happens in the future with the grade reconfiguration in this building if it whatever went in at
068that facility if it was able to be moved here later on down the line if that makes sense if like whatever the the feasibility study and all that stuff says like later if we went forward and updated some of that equipment could it actually be repurposed and moved here later on depending on the ownership of the equipment okay that's also another that's fair yeah I just wanted to clarify so this page The Five-Year review the only two things that we're putting in the budget are the two that we talked about everything else is just at FYI and there will be a warrant article that you'll be providing at a later date for each town to address yes correct can I ask some questions about the budget real quick and I just want to appreciate all
069all the hard work that went into this I recognize the work goes into this and I appreciate getting a a preview Jason and Joe came to visit with me today and I was sworn to secrecy not to tell anybody what I was looking at put it on Twitter right after the I did but I did have a little smile on my face so they saw something there um but but I I did get a chance to look a little closer at the materials and I find the page after this page very helpful because it breaks down by you know cost category and compares to last year and you know so one just one question I have in a comment one question is on your health plan who's who's your health plan with and what's the
070rate of increase that you're expecting with Maya Maya and Blue Cross and Blue Shields they recommended 16% 16 we budgeted 11 oh and we're in process now of going out to bid we just met with three biders this afteron because because that kind of relates to my observation in looking at the details you have over a million bucks in um substitute teacher cost which relates probably to their you know experience category uh experience in the right health plan usage it's it's a big number and um I'm not I I'm just wow I just had noticed that before big number right and now with the way the budget is now it's broken out by desie function code it's more accurate to what Desi is requiring for our yearend reporting so you will see more detail in
071there and that that substitute number is just the what's happened over three years the growth that we've seen in absenteeism and then sub needs and it actually includes fillings too it's not directly substitutes um so that's why you see that increase in there every school committee meeting as Joe has been working on this we vote to adjust so every everything's categorized where in the bucket that it belongs oh in terms of where it so you yeah so it's it's we we've been doing that probably seven or eight months now just makes it easier to track and and as the water boy in mville I can't help but notice how you've categorized the facility costs and you've identified the facility for the elementary schools the cost is lumped and something you haven't taken a vote on
072that yet I understand that hopefully at some point you'll we'll all be where you got to be and make that happen but the other piece is just that in that JFK or the the the admin building wherever it winds up right because your your budget is a three School solution plus an admin building that's 240 Grand a cost if I'm understanding the numbers here to be in that building and part of that defensive against msba coming at you I get I get that but that's 240 grand for a building for low utilization and you know milville is facing a pretty darn big override so we you know we're looking for shekels everywhere we can and there's shekels there I so I just point that out as another observation looking at the materials I had a
073chance to play with just to respond to that real quick um we make the Assumption obviously everybody's coming back to Ms that's in here but the way I do you're going to now you're seeing Electric El telephone everything allocated to the buildings where they belong and it's all done by square footage right now yes so it may be that this you know if it's only admin again we still have to heat it we still have to do the electricity it's really all those fixed cost that we don't have any options can't make those go away no I wish we could not the bulk yeah I mean even even the custodial cost I mean somebody's going to have to keep up on the building or else if you don't it's just going to fall AP become
074worse um so that's really where that comes from it's been a balance of keeping in compliance with msba so that the the towns don't get we we've been very like proactive and with with the town like with milville and the situation and and and working with you to make sure that right that those are not those penalties are not you know they've been very Cooperative so BMR sign the agreements with Ms oh just kidding we also need we we don't do we don't do anything without approval from the towns you guys approve it first a town meeting before any signatures go on the paper I had a quick question on the capital because it says right up at the top the middle school debt and that was paid off in August which is great but
075that 3135 million that was what Blackstone and mville together paid for the school building $3 million 18 cents on the dollar if I remember correctly when it was built is what the towns paid W my father was on that building school committee that's just the issue amount okay yeah but it was 18 cents on the dollar is what we paid for this so we had 82% covered by msba it was SBA at the time it was a different it was a different plan okay yeah we're now looking at 60 I think it's 60% 59 60% reimbursement is that right the namesake of the school was walking out of the building when I was walking in here here I just just curious thank you should see how Mr cullin got that milville Elementary School for almost
076nothing for the town of milville as well back in the uh back in the early late 80s early 90s Mr chairman yes can I have another another question um Peter brought up the uh the issue of absenteeism um is there anything you guys can can do about that are there any options that would reduce absenteeism absente is in regards to teachers so we do yeah so we do we do have we have a we have a strong plan in place regarding meeting with teachers notifying teachers uh our HR office actually has a whole protocol that she follows working with the building principal to sit down it's it es and flows but we see uh currently we're seeing quite a bit of FMLA so we're seeing some actual family medical issues across the district for varying
077reasons uh and we have a younger uh quite a few younger staff members so I'm assuming that over the next few years uh if All Things fall into place they will be out on FMLA having children and things which will be a good thing for all of us um so I'm assuming that we're going to see those numbers probably increase too yeah I have another really specific question that's maybe more for Jill selfishly um are the mass pack dues factored into this budget we have that through our special life funding okay it's not specific line item but but like just it is in there though I was told to ask the questions tonight it's Joe right yes so I'm looking at this page right here my eyes aren what they used to be but one
078of the one of the f one of the uh lines for the fiscal year 26 request is at zero and it looks like it's classroom teachers regular I just wanted to get some clarification on that if I'm missing it somewhere else 2310 on 2310 three CL 235 that money was just reclassified properly 2310 is not a legitimate function code at desie got it's actually 2305 got and actually that was even split further into between special ed and regular Ed but that's how the budget was certified in 25 so I wanted to make sure I left it alone gotcha okay we've been learning this as we were going along for the last several months getting coded appro we did we did well without a financial director for two years we are doing much better with a
079financial we were flying Sol [Laughter] years we're not changing the codes for any other reason other than to be in compliance as Peter may think that we may be oh no he doesn't even like to change the line the line descriptions in our budget it's like don't mess with the model I told you to print it smaller that's right right else I'm done that's it for me then just our next steps uh public hearing and a school committee certification on Thursday um 6 pm here and then we'll start putting together the budget um certified budget workbooks uh next week if all goes as planned and then uh we're happy to attend the uh any Board of selectman meetings or uh Finance subcommittee meetings that you all might want us to to attend uh and then
080of course the annual Town meetings the noville board to select the NS I we heard your call for nothing over 3% thank you after we did this budget but we still appreciate it thank you that's it that's it anybody else have anything to add laen sure all right with that I'll take a a motion to adjourn motion by Tanya seconded by Chuck uh any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I it's unanimous thank you everyone thank you and