BMR School Committee Budget Workshop 2/322

001okay so i will officially call this uh february 3rd meeting of the blackstone millville regional school district to order and welcome everyone and anyone who will eventually watch this um it will be recorded it is not live but it will be available to you to review on the blackstone millville regional school district web page we are mostly going to talk budget and try to see if we can come up with some priorities and um dollars to bring forward to our communities uh but before that i would like to tell you a little bit about what i've learned in the last couple days so two days ago when did we go to millville two days ago three days ago two days ago um we were in millville for their um capital outlay committee meeting and presented

002um about the plan for moving forward um with a facility feasibility study and submitting a statement of interest to msba and i will say the work that matt and greg did on that presentation has been a very positive hit in both communities they went to the blackstone uh capital group previously and then we did the millville and and i think people are really starting to get it like i think they're really starting to see that you know we have have deteriorating facilities we have a high need we've proven the need over and over and over again and it's a significant impact to the community and it's a significant impact whatever direction we end up going in whether that's to go in and develop a feasibility study to see what we can do differently or new

003or remodeled or or if we simply create a plan for maintenance and upgrades and so it's i mean it's in the the millions and millions of dollars and i i think that people understand that that has to be on the priority list and so that's something we'll talk about tonight in terms of that has to be on the priority list and there are certain things that have to happen regardless of whether we go through with a statement of interest like there are certain things that have to happen and need to be in our budget and then we went to the blackstone finance committee meeting last night which was a joint meeting of the finance committee and the board of selectmen and the purpose of that was supposed to be to re review opec um and

004they were reviewing their own for the town of blackstone and their plan and they put 250 000 away each year in a trust and then it came up that you know the school department and our actuary was there and he gave a wonderful presentation and he tried to explain what matt has attempted to explain to us before that yes we have an unfunded liability but we're funding it through our budget as we're paying those benefits that people need to to get we have committed benefits to our retirees who work in our district who retire from our district to have health care that's required by the state and we pay that in the annual budget and then things turn left that's the best way i can describe it things turned left and there were comments about

005mismanagement from the school department not on a budget standpoint very clearly not on a budget but mismanagement in that we haven't addressed these things we haven't addressed opeb we haven't addressed facilities we're just adding more people adding more people adding more people and then it got they will tell you it did not get personal i will tell you from the individual woman sitting there it got very personal when somebody says that chairperson from millville can't get much more personal than that like there's not anybody else that they're talking about um and their comment was that um i had indicated that i just didn't have time to bother and that this was all on the backs of the taxpayers and that oh well that's the way that it was well that was very much a misquote

006what that comes from is a previous meeting when the new administrator in blackstone had asked um jason and myself and matt was anybody else with us no i don't know the three of us to meet with their different boards to just help educate people like what was going on and as we were and it wasn't that was a pretty good discussion it was it was frank but it was a fairly good discussion and and as it was going on the town administrator said you know we ought to do this on a regular basis we ought to have you guys come and have these conversations and at the time i had been to a mobile finance committee meeting we had had a negotiation meeting that week we had had a school committee meeting coming up and

007i said i can't do that i cannot physically do you know we have a lot of meetings we have capital campaign you know capital meeting committee meetings we have school committee meeting if people want educated they need to start coming to those they need to ask the questions of those i can't do that that was turned into the well she just doesn't want to do that was then turned into and besides she's from millville where are our blackstone representatives so i believe i had shared that before we had talked about how we needed to be out in the face amongst the folks and tim went to a couple meetings um well last night that was reiterated we have not seen our blackstone representative we don't even know who some of them are they don't have

008a conversation with us um and i left that meeting feeling like we've lost some of the connections that we have like that used to be the way i felt in millville sometimes now it's the way i feel in blackstone and i feel like we as a committee have lost that and as i was talking with jason and matt afterwards we have some hefty prices we're looking at right now we have some really really really tough decisions to make and if we don't get the town's people we don't get our groups if we don't get our families if we don't get people to understand if we don't get out and about we're we're going to have some problems because essentially what was said to us and i think very clearly we're not supporting the school budget

009unless we see opeb dollars and we see xyz and we see what we want to see lying for line for line for life we're not supporting it and we're taxpayers and et cetera et cetera so i think whatever we come up with tonight whatever package we come up with tonight it is going to take some boots on the ground like it is going to take some meetings with the pto groups that may exist or some meetings with the senior center or whatever we can do but this is us this is on us school committee members like we've gotta be at finance committee meetings and and board of selectmen meetings and whatever it is moving forward um because they have to see us they have to have conversations we have to reach out and and i

010know we've we've had some really good relationships develop over time but it's new people now and i don't even know some of them i mean quite frankly i didn't know the names of all the people at the meeting last night and some people were very supportive of what we're trying to do and people will always couch it with i really like where you're going with this dr defalco but you this you know the school committee has mismanaged the schools whether you whether you want to believe it or not whether you want to take it or not you know people believe what they hear and that's what they're hearing right now and we have the responsibility to change the dialogue it's not the responsibility of these two people right here it's our responsibility to really really

011change this dialogue or we're in trouble now the other thing i learned last night and matt i'm going to ask you to help me with this i want to hopefully maybe people will watch this but i want to talk about opec the way i understood it from our actuary every year in our budget we put into our budget the amount of money that we need to pay those benefits that year and over time that that that benefit is going to increase substantial amount and as people look at it over time they create this liability that's there within the district but i liken it the analogy that i left with last night is i feel like we're having the conversation that a hus that that spouses might have in a household that says you know we

012really have should have a rainy day savings account like we really should have some money set aside in case the boiler goes or in case the you know you lose your job for a month and we can't pay the mortgage and yet the bills come in and we go shoot we gotta pay them and we live paycheck to paycheck to paycheck and so this as a school committee we've had bills to pay and we've lived paycheck to paycheck to paycheck and so every year when we develop our budget we do it so we can pay the bills and provide the services that we have we don't have a rainy day savings for facilities we don't have a rainy day well we do have a trust now for opeb and hopefully we'll put some money into

013it but we don't have a rainy day fund for those things and we don't have a rainy day fund for um aaron and i i don't know how many years ago did we go to a conference and we came back and we said we really need to create a special ed um what did we call it i don't remember but fund um oh stabilization yeah stabilization account for just first for special you know we need to do that we haven't had the ability to do that and it's not we as a school committee our communities have not given us the funding to be able to do that so as our actuary was very clear he said to them this is not for the school committee to say two hundred thousand dollars in opeb account on

014top of everything else that we need it's up for the towns to say we're gonna commit annually you know on top of the required amounts on top of the mlc on top of the supplementary to put xyz into this this opet account and to fund it um i'm not sure that was heard well but i think when we develop whatever we develop moving forward part of our conversation is going to have to be to get both the towns to agree that annually they will commit as supplemental dollars x amount of money to go into a trust that eventually can pull from the trust and then you don't have that budget expense every year because you can pull it from the trust but that's 40 50 years down the line how do we get the classroom

015teacher the half history teacher and so we need to get our our communities to understand that we hear them and we understand the need but how are you balancing the budget do we have schools that that work like facilities that work we can turn the heat on do we have 28 kids in a classroom or do we have a savings account to fund future retiree benefits and somehow we have to have it all but i'm not sure how we do that so that's what we're here for tonight is to figure out how do we make those little steps to to do it all and yet not lose sight of our mission which is to educate the children in this school district because that's our mission hopefully in buildings they can go into hopefully with teachers

016that can retire from here but that's our mission and then we have to get up and we have to sell it and we have to get boots on the ground and you know i know that's easy for me to say as somebody who is not going to return in the next term of the group um but i am willing to say i'm willing to stick with this to see these projects through to see this process through whether i'm officially on a committee or sitting in the audience we have some work to do and we have to get families involved in this we we just have to be out talking to people because i don't think the message is as bad as we heard it last night in the community but right now the boards are

017talking a lot louder than we are so i wanted to say that before we started does anybody have any questions about that or reaction or thoughts i do think that um i i have heard some things as well as um as far as the capital campaign you know my daughter worked at the food pantry the other night and volunteered and um i don't know anybody's names i don't you know but she spoke with them and there was one woman that was there that apparently was very dead set against any of our capital campaign because she was part of bringing mes to life and was talking about how the berthalette family gave all this land up and you know what are they getting out of it which of course my answer is i'm sure they got

018something out of it years ago um but that happened in the 90s that was in like 1989 and 1990 that school was built so we're in 2022 and that math is really hard to do but there's so many of uh of people like that that are not understanding that our schools haven't they like their they've aged regardless of how well they were built at the time um and and she started talking to them about you know well the high school was was built a really long time ago and there are so many things that really need to be updated and and it was also the day of the boiler and she was like so here's the other issue like now we've got to replace this and we didn't have school today because of that and

019she said as the night wore on um they kind of started to come around and understand what they're and they're not saying okay these schools you built were trash um it's it's not blaming anyone but it's a matter of you know like you you still have to rebuild your homes you have to redo like there's not many homes that are still standing from the time that the high school was built that haven't been touched um if they have that most of them are up for sale at the moment for obscene prices and so i i but it took her hours to make that i think that's exactly the point i mean this is going to take time and our time and and i will say that the new video and pro and dialogue that greg

020and matt have been having does really make those points it really really does like it it really is short it's to the point it's like you know it's it's kind of and it's not a now or never doomsday kind of thing it's a it's a on the right hand and on the left hand you just you know you decide which hand but either way millions of dollars need to go into the this school district millions like tens of millions either way so either way these things have to happen and um the representative from blackstone would say that i would say and you're putting it on the backs of the taxpayers but regardless of how you look at we get 50 percent of our budget from the state where does the state get its money on

021the backs of taxpayers we get money from the towns on the backs that like everything we do is you know tax whether it's your shopping and your taxes are going to education or it's your lottery and they're not going to education although they're supposed to um everything you do so saying stuff is on the backs of the taxpayers it's just a general it is like it is it's not um and that's not that is not saying oh well then we should just pay whatever we should pay you know no one wants to see significant increases in their taxes but i prefer to see significant impact of my taxes in a directed way as opposed to a reactionary way oh my gosh now we've got to replace 10 boilers no support from the msba or anybody

022else to do that right um so so i would prefer directive but but anyway so yeah i'm glad they had those conversations well it also made me think how do we also engage some of the students because i've said that they might be a bigger part of this conversation and i don't know how that conversation would have gone had i been there instead of my daughter because she's you know she's in it every day and she's like i'm proud to be a charger but you know some updates would be nice um so maybe that's where we can also help out but i i i think we know the segment that's going to be the hardest not to crack are the people that put these buildings in place and you know it's not that anyone has

023wanted to see them fail because they haven't but time does that to every structure yeah anyone else i think a population of families that will kind of be instrumental in getting the message out is some of our youth travel sports families because i've had conversations recently with some of them saying like we went to this high school for a travel basketball game you know we peeked into a science lab you'd be amazed at what these high schools have so i think that's going to be a good population because they see what else is out there bmr has served us all well it has had a long history and these families are seeing what else is out there what else their kids can have access to so i think they're going to be a good population

024for us to get the message through too and we have yeah and we have to do it so if that means you know meeting with the football whatever group or meeting with the with the ban you know um the band group or whatever it is we we just have to get coordinated effort to do that and i am concerned um you know i know that we have two plate two spots um on the ballot in blackstone tim has taken out his papers he needs signatures if anybody would like to sign his paperwork for him but um but i don't know that anybody has taken out the second one i don't know if anybody has taken out the paperwork in millville but we have these places and we need people and it's and it's a hard

025job to do um but it's a very rewarding job to do especially when you get into the schools and see the difference that that we can make so i hope people still have time i hope that they go and decide that it would be worthwhile but anyway at that on that note i will turn it over to um jason and matt to walk us through where we go from here thanks jane uh nice to see everyone good evening and there are treats help yourself um so just a few things in framing the discussion tonight which you know jane has done very well already but as far as the specific fy 23 budget is concerned we're really looking at a few major factors tonight specifically starting with our revenues we do have some very preliminary numbers

026that are in your packet and just to kind of restate to anyone who tunes in later who may see this we know the revenue numbers change these are the governor's first round of numbers and i think it was mid-july last year matt when they were finalized um so just so that those that are kind of tuning in from home the state revenue numbers change frequently throughout the budgeting process and even after long after our budget is certified uh in march frankly so um you know we do our best to make projections and we're going to talk a little bit about how we did that tonight once we go through the revenues we also want to spend some time talking a little bit about some of the cost saving measures that we've already put in place

027and what we did was created just kind of a one cheater that has all of that information right there already um i think we had mentioned this prior but uh what matt and i did um you know shortly after the new year was we sat down kind of locked ourselves in a room over the span of a couple days it took about nine hours but we went through our budget our current fy 23 budget line by line it was a the 60 some odd page budget i think we sent all of you that um but we also uh to the to the left side of us we had our five-year actual so we went back five fiscal years for every single line in our budget and we looked at exactly what we spent so that

028we could ensure right because you know that this isn't a science it's a forecast it's like a weather forecast um i wish we had the latitude that weathermen had to say we're gonna you know yeah zero between zero and sixty but that's okay um but we took the five year actual to really look at our forecast for fy23 to see where we could uh find some savings um we did you know again just so folks at home understand we don't just roll it over at three percent we don't do that we haven't done that that hasn't been our approach um and what we what we did this year uh is essentially just you know a big reset a big check like we do each year and we go line by line it's incredibly time consuming

029but it's a really good way to make sure we're spending the dollars uh appropriately after all of the workshops concluded um with the cost center managers matt and i pulled out all of the big the big asks like the big ticket items for materials and for staff and we condensed them into two uh handouts one is the staff and one with the materials and we itemized them and we listed the amounts again just trying to make it a little bit of a more streamlined process so we're not flipping through binders and some odd pages and all those t-charts and you know kind of figuring out like where the heck do we start here so um we pulled all of that out already and put it on a couple of sheets for all of us to

030really delve into to figure out uh jane you know to kind of what you were saying like you know what are we going to use to move forward to the towns in terms of saying what the priorities are um so that's really like the first bucket the second bucket for conversation tonight is really around our capital planning and there are uh a couple of important documents for that one is a fairly significant document um that is you know frankly is is a bit overwhelming to to to look at when you when you do it at first glance um what we did was uh we took the capital review that that again like that 60 i don't know how many pages like we pulled everything out of that and we put it on one spreadsheet so

031every single thing that that totaled up in terms of do you remember that cip graphic that capital improvement plan graphic that bar chart um i think that puts all of us over the edge when we see it but we took all of that out and we actually prioritized it uh by uh safety and like health and safety needs and then the actual current condition that the materials are in um when the materials or the structure was built or installed implemented however you want to look at it depending on what the system or structure is and then we organized it in terms of priorities by fiscal year um again we tried to take a lot of the guess work out to say like well do we start here do we start there uh can we put

032together a proposal for us to just start thinking about and talking about and then on top of that of course are the is the asbestos work um that we're gonna need to have done so uh that's a little bit of uh kind of a summary point of where we're hoping to go this evening um matt did i miss anything no okay i heard it um and if that and if that makes sense uh jane it's into the rest of the committee you can jump right in if that's okay with you for a plan tonight okay everybody good ready to go go yeah okay all right so let's start with projected revenues um matt i'm gonna tee this over to you sure because what you have in your packet tonight and looks you probably looked at

033it this section looks kind of familiar but it looks different and so matt you can kind of delve into what's here and where we go sure so um this is one of the sheets that we typically it's part of one of the spreadsheets that i put together for the certification of the budget this is the information we have so far so we don't have everything yet um which is why we kind of only took the pieces off of that spreadsheet and put them right on to this sheet that we had and that we were more confident about if you take a look the columns to the left the little section of the chart to the left will show you those first few rows include our expenses something worth pointing out um you know people have

034been asking when we're talking about our budget and our capital planning and all of the things that we're doing what's happening with the kids you know what's our enrollment like and how are kids leaving how much are we losing there's there's the number right there between school choice and charter school tuition leaving the district we are paying over 1.5 million dollars matt and if i could just insert just quickly right at that point i i need to underscore the importance of that number because when there is a public narrative like the narrative we heard last night why you know why we have so many kids leaving what are you doing to keep them and then followed with there's mismanagement things aren't going right you're not doing your job okay so that that is a direct

035that is in direct conflict with one another so i can't stress enough the importance right jane you said it people hear they just hear the sound bite and they go with it we need to make sure that all of us the collective all of us all of our boards all of our committees are all on the same page we i have to i have to believe and imagine and and hope that we're all trying to do the same thing which is make our two communities the best they can be and so we've got to be singing from the same sheet of music because this 1.5 million we've gotta that we've got to stop that absolutely and i normally don't like to bounce back and forth between columns but as we're speaking about our district and

036the students that we have i will ask you to just if you shift over to the second column first you know the question is well but we are bringing kids in and we are getting some reimbursements that's true however the if you look at the school choice receipts and the charter reimbursement total we are gaining back less than five hundred thousand dollars of that money that is leaving the district this i want to be very clear does not include any of our out-of-district expenses for students with special needs where if we had the proper facilities and programs we could and we're trying to develop them but certainly the facilities are limiting we would be able to keep students and bring those students back so our out of district expenses are over a million dollars as

037part of our operating budget and right out of our chapter 70 which is the funds we receive from the state they will give us the school choice receipts and they will give us the charter reimbursement and then they just net out the rest of it and we end up losing over a million dollars for the students going to charter or choice and that's one of the things that dr defalco myself and our entire leadership team have been really trying to address and inspire kids to stay here by developing the best programs that we can and amanda to your suggestion we're in the midst of uh finalizing our marketing video so thank you for that suggestion and we're actually pulling in a couple of students out did leave the district who came back and said i

038this is the place we need to be and so the students are going to be part of that so the on the back to the left column you will see that all other number that i put in there is then is the number that you've seen on the budget projection spreadsheet that you know we've put out the 28 million 60 000 453 is where we landed with the operating costs and expenses and out-of-district expenses that the district has some control over so the those 611 000 and then nine hundred and fourteen thousand we have no say that we just get those numbers provided to us well we have control in the sense that we can keep kids here but those numbers come to us so the developed budget is that 28.060 and that brings our

039total budget between those three factors to approximately 29.5 or 29.6 million dollars right now i do typically put additional uh revenue funds that are not the specific state revenues that we normally get get there um i you can see there are a couple of blanks in that left column we have used additional circuit breaker funds in the past to help support special education costs we do typically use what we get through the course of the year in circuit breaker but then sometimes if the things are tight we will apply even additional circuit breaker funds because we're supposed to have a bank in the event that heavy needs students move in or we have specific medical or learning needs that we have to apply extra funds to you will see also the sr2 and sr3 grants

040that we are going to be applying to our expenses for this fy23 that 320 000 from sr2 is half of the sr2 funds next year will be the last year of that grant funding so anything that we have that we end up funding through that source last next year will be the limit and the sr3 funding next year would be our second of three years and that grant will extend into fy 24 as well the typical state revenues that we will see are in that center column you can see that our estimated chapter 70 receipts will total approximately 11 million 84 000 if that doesn't seem significantly higher than the last chapter 70 receipts that we saw it's because that is based on the minimal per pupil additional expense of 30 dollars per student that

041we will be receiving from the state our regional transportation reimbursement has gone up so that's that's something that's positive we uh did actually this year we've been seeing some additional uh receipts from that that fund that we didn't budget for so that's a good thing for this year but now um some it's it's not a matter of uh well it was mis-budgeted or there's a problem the state determines what percentage they're going to reimburse and we try to budget conservatively at like an 80 around an 80 or 70 somewhere between 75 and 80 reimbursement and then sometimes it comes out to an 81 percent or an 82 percent and then that's where we'll see those variances school choice receipt charter reimbursement we addressed now can i just jump on the charter reimbursement piece we can

042expect to see this number decrease quite a bit over the next few years because of the student opportunity act we're going to be we're going to getting we will be receiving excuse me lesson reimbursements as as they continue to further fund the uh soa and and i will say given that um currently this is all based off of the governor's initial proposal and then it goes to the house and then it goes to the joint committee for finalization those are the areas where you'll typically see the most movement depending on whether there's a determination to go full hog into the soa moving closer towards meeting that goal or pairing back from it based on the finances of the state so we may see that charter reimbursement decline even in the next few months we could

043see it go up i wouldn't anticipate that tremendously um but those the school choice is pretty consistent but that charter reimbursement is tied to the legislation and we could see that vary as is transportation as is the transportation correct i thought it went down no it is good right now um then you will see our entitlement grants that we list these are grants that are the ones that we are eligible for based on our student populations not to be confused with the over two million dollars that the district has written for competitive grants that we've received i just want to put that out again that we are doing our best to bring in as much money as we possibly can into the district we got notified of that safety grant today very good so you

044can see our um that first idea is just the preschool grant that we receive it's a 23 000 grant to support our preschool programs our fund 240 which is the larger individuals with disability act funding that we get 454 000 that's all for special education we have our student support and academic enrichment grant that's eleven thousand our title one which is to support students of low income and in need of services that are not under special education services we have a grant of 215 000. our title two which is for professional development is the thirty nine thousand and as i mentioned our circuit breaker that we're expecting to come in is uh six hundred and thirty thousand dollars which totals our state revenues at thirteen million five hundred and ninety one thousand dollars to the

045column on the right you can see our additional revenues that we're that we're bringing in we apply as always every source of revenue that we can you'll see our athletics revenue listed you'll see our pre-k tuition listed that we are hoping to to bring in as our pre-k program has expanded our classroom rentals are listed at the 15 000 and 32 000 that's split into the two buckets because they're different classrooms in two different buildings we have a millville rental and a high school rental and then i did increase our medicaid program revenue the expectation because we've been seeing that with the change in the program our special education providers and service providers have been doing a tremendous job of documenting their services and keeping track and submitting these claims for reimbursement we've been seeing

046some significant medicaid reimbursements so that number i did increase by probably about it's usually around 85 we expect to see and i'm anticipating seeing about 40 000 more this year and i don't have to go through every number you can see our athletic user fees and our music fees which brings the remainder for what we are missing from that 29.586 to the 14 million 857 to 31 which as we repeatedly say it's about half now uh matt if i could piggyback on that um two other pieces in terms of where do we go next so these are the big kind of um columns of of revenues and um expenses what we are going to do for our school committee meeting just so we have a sense of where we're going on the 10th once we

047finish the priorities tonight we'll actually work in our budget and see where we can get that number two and then we can populate that number with these um with these other factors um a piece a very important piece of information that we'll have included in that the state um unfortunately across almost every uh district and um regional district and town uh municipal school district have increased the minimum local contributions by quite a bit so we're looking as a as a district as a whole our mlc so what's required by the towns is up over six percent collectively uh it is a it is a very significant number so um we will be including that in our overall figures i was i wanted to jump in because um to to the point of jason's how drastic

048this increase in mlc is i was actually just doing a very brief analysis of the mlc numbers from this year the current ones back to 2019 and i can say it may come as even more sticker shock because the increase from 21 to 22 was the lowest percentage increase that we've seen in the past five or six years it was like less than one percent and the increase that we're now seeing from 22 to 23 is the highest by far that we've seen in the last five years which is as dr defalco mentioned it's over six percent for each of the towns is a very yeah it is a hefty very hefty increase the part that's somewhat stunning to me is it's when you look at the state numbers by community it's it's everybody i

049mean it's so you know they're the state pushing more of the ownership on the communities it is not truly it's not just us it's it's it is remarkable what some of these increases are that that we are seeing uh in minimum local contribution um but to our own communities you know that looks that looks roughly you know and these are rounded numbers but roughly around 450 for blackstone and 150 for milburn again rounded on top on top of what they paid last year which was in their correct statement astronomical one so so feeling like the person between the four horses with a limb tied to each one and they're running in different directions that is that is how this feels in terms of the push being on we've got these capital pieces the push being

050on why are kids leaving the push being on the budget programming staffing right and it's trying to make something that is manageable for our communities but developing the programs that are best for students and trying in the facilities by the way and trying to find a way to do that um and i can add to that um you know we've mentioned that the phrase hold harmless in the past and that's where the state won't ever give us less money than they gave us the year prior but they do keep track of what our foundation and our foundation budget which is based on our enrollment and our socioeconomics what that should be and then they keep track of what we are receiving in chapter 70 and this year alone we are in that hold harmless realm

051by over 500 000 so the state is actually saying for this little tiny boost that we're seeing to support the increases that we need to especially with inflation being what it is they're saying we shouldn't even be getting that that they they would prefer to be giving us 500 000 less so it just goes to depict that you know the situation that we're in where we're really trying to keep our students here and draw students back and grow the programs and the facilities and the district here in those negative conversations in the arguing about opeb which most people don't even know what that is it just doesn't help most people will never know it just doesn't help and and it's that's that's the catch-22 in all of this it's we're doing everything we can we

052need everybody pulling in the same direction you just do well but it's up to us to put forward that direction that we want to move yeah and i think that's the you know that's the hard conversation we have to have tonight is what direction do we want to move in like what are we willing to forgo if you will to get some capital projects done what are we willing to forego capital wise to get some savings into retire you know future retirements and and um even if we say nothing to that like we we don't we can't fund we sorry we're the household this year that can't fund the savings account um my gut and it's been blank said to us is our towns won't let that go forward they will not let a budget

053go forward that does not address putting some funds into is that that's that's what we've been hearing pretty clear i frankly i have heard it it needs to be more than the 50 000 that we put in the budget to go into opec yes yeah i have heard that loud and clear yeah so we're stuck between a rock and a hard place because if we take money to put it into open type accounts then we're taking away from the children which means chances are we're going to have more children choose to leave the district which then we're sending more money out for that so it's a which is exactly what jason said to them last night it's like you can't have your cake and eat it too like you can't yeah it you know you

054can't scream at us at one hand and say you're letting a people leave and say but we're not going to give you any more money to try to create things that will encourage them to stay or facilities that they want to state and i and i will tell you there was more of the conversation in terms of why our we were pushed very hard in millville to to um come up with the reasons why people leave um and um you know jason was was pretty clear that we've surveyed folks and we don't get much of a response and that wasn't an acceptable answer and it was pushed it was pushed and so finally i said something i don't usually say which i'm clearly going to say on camera again tonight but i have a child

055and as a family we chose not to to keep her in this district we chose that as a family for very very personal reason not any of which i'll ever share with the school district or anyone in the community now i was told that that was very unfortunate that i wasn't willing to do that um but people get the right to choose that's the society that we live in and it's up to our job to make this the choice that's your choice that was the message we were trying to assemble last night we need to be the district of choice period and we can't do it in the in it with with that public conversation being what it is there's a new title district of choice and in that if if i may add my

056neighbors children do not go to school in the district they drive to take their kids somewhere else i have other friends that their main focus every time i see them we've got to get new schools yeah so what are we doing if if we're sitting here at a fincom or whatever meeting from the board of selectmen and we're being yelled at and our hands are tied then what can we do the kids are going to leave the parents are going to take them elsewhere to get them educated so that they can get the education that the parents feel like their children deserve and typically at a higher expense to the town exactly but but i will say and i i'm echoing what i know dr defalco has said many on many occasions those students that

057are here in our district we are providing them with the highest quality education that we possibly can and they know it and our families know that and that in itself is a testament to the way that we are spending the money that we have on the curriculum needs of the district on the instructional needs of the district to support what we can for the educational programs we do the best that we can with what we have the the biggest concerns and it comes out every time we talk about the capital is you know and everyone here knows it we can get off of education and say kids are leaving this district because of this athletics programs in other places our fields can be redone our sports we could have a sports complex like other districts

058have we could have uh the facilities that other districts have that's the draw it's not the instruction and the education that's happening inside of our classrooms that is driving people away it certainly is not we are doing the very best for our students that we can well the euro well and i think that that has changed matt in the early days when we surveyed those families curriculum was the number one reason the elementary families left true that has been addressed by this committee this committee has made a commitment to make sure that our curriculum is being is being taken care of so the kids and the students and the teachers have the cutting-edge resources they need and so i i think you're right about that matt in terms of that shifting you know so i

059think it's a fair thing to the it's very easy to read on paper for um members of other boards to say you know okay so this is your budget where's this money going to come from we need state of the art we can't build state-of-the-art equipment with legos that everybody else has in their house like that comes at an investment um but i also think that that is partly on the towns too because we look at the communities that we reside in which before i say this i'm very proud to live in this community i lived in blackstone for 10 years by choice and we moved to millville by choice i still don't understand why there's um less collaboration between the two towns and i never will i don't think i want to but um

060we look at the current opportunities for income in both towns and those are suffering as well so it that argument goes both ways to hear you know you point them pointing the fingers at us the school committee you need to do a better job with our schools we need to do a better job with our towns as well we have business buildings that are sitting empty that we cannot find businesses to go in so even as that happens more of this um is the burden of the taxpayers which is the homeowners and that's the unfortunate part so it they at some at some point they have to realize it is a two-way street it's not us against them but we benefit from those things in the town and it does and i'll be honest that's

061why i have a hard time going to those meetings i've been to those meetings and i can't sit there and not say anything about you know and and hear us being backed into a corner because we are doing good work we're not mismanaging money i would i would like to know where they think it's going well they were very clear they do not they are not accusing anyone of mismanaging okay from an at from an accounting perspective from they are not accusing anyone no one excusing anyone of of shady dealings or not being upfront or not being bored with the management what they are saying is mismanagement is we put our money in the wrong places and i would argue that we put our money in front of the kids right and and every year

062we present where we're putting that money and we tell everyone and show everyone that we're putting it in front of the kids and when we have attempted to put money in other places in the past capital wise or whatever we have not passed town votes but the majority of the boards are different now so they may not even have attended those meetings to know that the intent was there and it sounds like what you're saying is they want us to spend it where they want us to spend correct so correct you know if they if that's what they want they need to join this committee in in a sense because i think it's the only way they're going to see it our our responsibility is fiduciary it's fiduciary it's budget and it's deciding where that

063money is spent they don't they basically said they don't like our choices correct correct that's the mismanagement that they're talking about yep and amanda i would take what you say just said and add a yes and to that specifically around that towns also need our schools to be amazing which from my perspective they are could they be better of course of course they are better they have we have gotten better and if they're not giving us credit for that part then they weren't paying attention because we have certainly moved this district in a different direction and we have we have so it's unfortunate if they spoke that way last night and and i think we're still going up from where we used to be it's unfortunate well the the one thing i see and having

064traveled and moved across the united states many different times is that when you move into a community you look at the school system and you go to that community because of the school system and what education that can be provided to your children and to your family and if we don't provide that education to the incoming families they won't come here you'll get the ones and the twos but you won't get new homes built you won't get new families coming in wanting to be part of the community they'll move somewhere else that is exactly the point yep yep jane was that meeting uh recorded yes it i but had to be live because there was yeah whose official meeting was it income oh sure chalkboard and there were a lot of actuary terms you can

065put forward through the first there's a lot of action too 45 minutes i don't know what but it was a very intense meeting yes it was it turned yes it was well thank you for being there for us for for you guys that were there and we will continue to go and we will continue to have dialogue and we will show up any place we're invited and maybe show up when we're not invited but we have we have to get our message out which clearly did everybody get their enlightener uh if when you if you watch the meeting and you would like to have a follow-up conversation with me i would be glad to do that it was a different level of intensity okay i am remaining silent until i watch it it's better for

066all of us all right we need to pause we need to move on i think we are okay to move on that's everyone else's yeah yeah okay so if you go to the next uh item in your package do we know which way we would that is the fy 23 budget review savings budget workshop february 3rd yeah i got it all right so these are the budget line reductions that we have already walked through matt and i have been able to look at again that five-year analysis compared to what's in the budget for this year and have looked at a reduction of almost 190 000 so we've been able to back these numbers already out of the budget the budget that we got in january or okay so so so the overall uh budget numbers

067these are already out of them so we're already able to take those out um and then when we look down below these additional adjustments have also been made um so that this is important because we've already from our total number so the number that matt shared the 28 million uh 60 thousand 453 so before you include the sending uh the choice sending tuition and the charter school tuition that all other number these this total this 685 775 has already been backed out so we took this out to get us to that number so and you're saying the top is from doing a five-year we can save five-year review and this was this is money covering other things that's right so we looked at other ways like so for instance looking at purchasing our math curriculum

068this year looking at using the full 100 000 from our cdc nursing grant and just applying that to all the health care expenses reducing insurance costs and you can see the rollover of esser reducing our professional development line uh this should be thirty thousand reduction not thirty dollars that i'll put that part in for you um and what is not on here because uh we are still working this out uh we are looking at regionalizing with bellingham some of our transportation for special education so uh we are we are doing a lot of work right now with them looking at cost sharing looking at we've already condensed the routes we've identified about half of our students that go out of district and transportation um so we it's a total of 12 students but it's five

069roots existing roots um and they are uh similar either schools or towns that bellingham has their students going to so for instance we have a student that goes to providence they have a student that goes to providence different schools but let's put them on the same run and so bellingham has purchased uh three vans um and we are looking at what it would um what it would cost for us we have a couple of estimates to buy a couple of additional vans and hire drivers and split costs with bellingham so that actually it's looking like right now and i know matt and i keep kind of going back and forth on it depends on the roots and the students but we could save next year next year alone about 75 000 if not a little

070bit more so it's not a ton but it's a start i think there's a lot of potential in that i mean in rhode island we pay statewide transportation that's who we use for our out-of-district placements you know like 235 dollars a day per kid oh my god it's insane it is absolutely insane and and for service that gets them to school you know sometimes up to an hour late yeah we're paying two you know five hundred dollars a day it's crazy so i think that is great news yeah i agree with that so there's still some work to do and we'll come back to the committee with a with a definite number and recommendation and um but it but the preliminary numbers look pretty good and you can can you use your a school van

071for transportation to and from school yes it doesn't have to be so i for some reason the license needs to be specific for the driver a driver would need that 7d license so in addition because we have drivers of our vans for our 18 to 22 but we can't transport to and from school because there's some like it has to be a yeah but maybe massachusetts might be different or you get so it's actually interesting the the regulations are really very specific to the laws and the laws were drawn up in a certain way where we you are required to have a 7d license to transport students to and or from school to home if we want to transport our kids from one school to the other it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if we

072want to drive our kids from school to washington dc and back it doesn't matter but if you want to bring them home or bring them from home to school you are required to have a 7d license that's really weird there are always some interesting little intricacies that you can find in mgl not that they'll worry we have a problem with that because we may be able to you know and dr defalco and i have discussed in addition to the possibility of this special education transportation we may be able to put those those vehicles into use in other ways and maybe not as significant of savings but you know be able to maybe save on shuttle buses or transportation right that goes back to like elementary school when you and i first met those discussions but

073if you look at using those vans right the bigger expense would be on the specialized what do you mean on the pto we can look at running the students jason if we look into grant opportunities for those vans because i i know of another school in our area that um has many vans on their premises that are sponsored by or donated by you know x company x bank x blah blah blah and so i mean i think that might be something to look into as we think about the potential purchase of new vehicles that um you know that advertising travels around we just revisited our sponsorship policy yes we did yep perfect timing are there any thoughts or questions or anything on the anything in the budget reductions or the that you don't want in

074there most of its utilities frankly but um some additional expenses on cameras membership fees anything in the further adjustments those are just what we were thinking we can apply to help offset offset excuse me right so these are all offsets like we're getting all of these you're just offsetting it with the bottom ones yeah that's the top one okay yeah the top the top are reductions so like for instance we looked at the electricity at the high school over the past five years we're not shutting it off yeah if we have to shut the school down for three or four days a year it'll help save on that brown outs yeah yes okay so i think we can actually we can may i ask a question on the additional information for budget workshop sheet sure

075wait oh that's it sorry and reducing all these utilities no worries with the increased utility costs that i know i see at my own house we worry about utilities every year so matt and i were you know it's a forecast you know we looked at so we looked at the past five years and we were obviously very very cautious with 2020 but we also had to take into consideration the movement of some of the utility costs so for instance moving the second grade uh well actually we're not moving the students because they're just going to move up in millville but like shifting where we budgeted the money for electricity um there's you know something there'll be some savings we'll see at the complex but you're going to see all that additional electrical pull at millville

076with all the equipment and technology and that kind of stuff um and then with the heating costs um you know that we you probably won't see much of a savings from moving the students there because you've got to keep the heat running otherwise we're going to have pipe issues and everything else so this was the best forecast we could give based on the trends and we did lock in our gas rate for this year matt i remember correctly i don't think it was in october or something november correct and i will say these as we move forward through this budget season you may not see the most conservative budget that we've put forward but we are com we're comfortable with the numbers that we're presenting um that it shouldn't put us in any danger of

077running into any kind of red so i guess i'm looking at the budget comparison from january 13th and it's lower than what our budget is even with you having taken out all this money so the budget changed as a total or does it include this stuff oh is that with i don't know is there a new stuff on these or something all of the uh all of the items so all of the staff and materials were in bowl so they were in the first round and they are in the second round because the one from january was 27 million 27.9 no you have to go this year oh that's it no but you have to go no we there was because because matt took out the pieces that so we had the what goes to

078the state and then what is that actual budget yep it was 26 and then it was 1.8 million you would add in to make it to 27.9 i don't know why i thought we were at 28. oh i got it all it was very close and i will say some of some of the numbers um have have already fluctuated a bit i can say that like we keep getting clearer amounts on assessments and things of that nature so there may have been one or two smaller changes like i can say i don't even know if it's reflected in this yet like our worcester regional retirement system assessment we had it originally as like 620 to i think it was like 620 somewhat thousand and it came in closer to 680 so all it takes sometimes

079is for one additional piece of information to come in and that can back and say okay well now we we make forward progress by reducing things and then we get a better assessment saying this is exactly what you're going to get billed and we're like oh great now we know we didn't get like an updated obviously it's not in here tonight but like it's worth key updated would show that the budget comparison if if by yes if we do a like a current like right to today if we regenerated it there there might be differences make sure to outline any of that in the in the final budget that we're then in the next iteration that we're bringing forward i guess i'm just confused with seeing outside just 85 there shouldn't be a 1.5 million

080dollar i'm talking maybe 20 yeah the the columns to the left which yeah hold up to the 1.8 million yeah that doesn't so twenty-six now the 27.9 does not have the so so the difference in numbers is the bottom thing compared to the 20 28 28 million so there might be uh what a 60 70 000 difference i think that's the worcester regional assessment if then you add in the because we didn't have the charter numbers and the um school choice sending we didn't have those until after uh that budget comparison document went out so that 20 this one at the bottom here the 27 9 does not include um the the charge the 1.5 yeah that does not include the 1.5 million in the charter or um school choice the 26 million um tara

081if you go across and you add up the 314 the 245 right all the numbers to the right those numbers you add to the 26 that get you the 27 points right i thought that's what jane was china that's what i was trying to say yeah so what gets us from 27.92 to the 29 the charter school sending and then the 1.5 million because those aren't on this this correct correct we didn't have those costs yet they don't fall into here though that right because they would be in the 22. they're like on a separate follow yeah they come out of the same like bucket but they're not yeah they're exactly they're in a separate column that's a good way to save it so you take the 27.9 and then you add on top of

082that the school choice sending and the chart are sending and that gets you to the 20 that the 29.5 okay yeah the district is going distance learning so my phone so those those numbers um get net those get net out of our actual chapter 70 receipts so we will show them as expenses but in reality they're just revenues we won't get yeah thank you i just needed to see what that meant so you're saying the 70 thousand difference is that you think it's the worst reason i believe it's the worst time okay yeah that came in it was like sixty six thousand i think it was was that six to six thousand higher yeah yeah it was about sixty something but really really at no time we're we're not presenting a 29 million dollar budget

083well we're going to discuss that tonight correct that's our work so what percentage was is does that come out to because we have 6.4 6.4 it was six point four with twenty seven nine that should be higher it's gonna be higher than that the the better i'm not yeah no i understand the budget the budget that we developed is 6.4 higher than the last budget that was district developed that's the one that's on that sheet yes i have to check last year's uh costs for the school choice and charter we can do that we can put that together that'll be on that next iteration harrison budget had those in it right last year's i think when we so when we presented last year the comparison we already had all of those numbers we presented earlier

084this year before the the numbers were released so all we presented initially this year was those expenses that the district developed we didn't have the the um preliminary cherry sheets in so those came in now after we did our initials so now we can add the school choice charter costs and get a a much bigger picture so the next 99 million the percentage is going to go up from where we were if 27 million probably probably because we are probably sending more kids out to the charter school and or more kids out to school choice so if those costs were escalated as well versus what they were last year then certainly that percentage will increase even greater so what was our actual budget for 22 this car yeah is that the 26.2 oh yeah we

085certified two budgets yeah right so our attempt this year was to pull that all apart so you can so what we'll certify is actually just the general budget and all the other grant grants that we have included we won't certify those because that's not part of the general budget i guess my final request would be to compare apples to apples compare apples to apples like what is our percentage like because at the end of the day that's what people care about and that's what the towns will care about and whether we have a sheet that has some math calculations but at the end when all is said and done what is the percent that where increasing quite quite frankly actually i will say now to not to dispute your point the entire budget does make

086a difference what the townspeople typically in what i've experienced so far care about is the increased percentage to their assessment right which is completely different than our total budget also because we have to back out all of our revenues implement the transportation reimbursement and then do the um yeah so and we are we will have all of those apples to apples members very clearly what they also care about is the supplemental dollars that we are requesting above and beyond what they're required to spend how much is that where what is that increasing what what is that what is that dollar amount and i think it gets a little complicated when you're talking about grants so in a lot of cases people want grants to offset the money that they're expected to pay in addition i

087mean we know in a lot of cases grants add something to the experience of the school and kids but in some cases can that grant money also reduce something that you already has a l have a line item for you know an off offset a cost rather than just continue to add and add an ad so i i think you know the grant piece is is a little more complicated especially with esser because when you're talking about you know it some kind of intervention service do we really need to add an additional person or can that grant first can the grant money cover that same service we want to provide which in the in turn you would hope would end a savings to the town correct right i mean i think that's in some cases

088it's great to add because you want to add this bit of a program or this or that but at some point the hope is that grants reduce what you're spending out of money collected other way out from townspeople i do agree the sr ones in particular may be a little more flexible i mean federal regulations the general the general overview is grant funds are to supplement not supplant so if they come in and they are auditing and they see that we've removed costs that we have been charging to uh you know a general fund line to pay for a second grade teacher and now he said right oh our idea money is going to cover that we will no no right i i totally understand i know you're saying that there are additional services yeah

089there are positions we add that are have benefits to students but that we might not need for a as a permanent person i want to use my words carefully not every not all of our grant funds that we receive and well and you can see i've always shown all of our grant funds as a source of revenue being applied just towards all of our expenses so it's it's not that we just you know mean that we had kept adding if our grant funds change we try to support the services and try to offset as many costs as we can sure but i but i think tammy to your point matt and jason have attempted to do some of that if you look at the hundred thousand dollar cdc nursing grant correct so we'll you know

090we'll use that grant to pay our nursing folks that would normally be in our regular budget um similar also you can see that 80 there's over 100 there's like 130 000 in sr funds that we i mean we have to spend we have to spend the esser funds as they've been approved by the committee and the community but there were other funding sources that kind of came in after we got some of our plans in place so we're able to say well you know we got this technology funding that was originally part of the esser and now that enables us to roll over that 85 000 from this year's esser funds to next year and the 45 000 so those are going to help offset other costs that we we're not adding new people with

091those we're just trying to offset the cost of the service like the 175 000 21st century grant like oh so remember that um the complex that we had put aside a few that i think was like five somewhere between five and eight thousand dollars for summer programming is each summer we don't need that because we're going to we're paying for that through the 21st century right it's those things that yes right that help you know i know it's not entirely what you say that's a that's an example of how we are trying to do what you're what you're saying but in theory then that should reduce the bottom line the bottom line of the new budget by five thousand dollars because you covered one thing with the other and then you don't need that 5

092000 that you originally had as a line item right correct okay which is why it's a reduction on here but i working not going to brain right okay all right good to move on yeah okay all right so the next piece is around priority so that would be the budget workshop new staff and materials the two handouts and then the we had a little addendum so these two so the first one is personnel the second one is programmatic if you will i don't know what else to call it and that's materials and addition and and these funds right now the 427 and the and uh 150 yep that's in the budget this is not that that's capital and that's the capital is not in there yet so there's 150 the only duplication jane is the

093forty thousand this is in here twice yep oh yeah it's in here it's under regular twenty three at that salary and the stem teachers are in here they're not in here they're not and that's we wanna talk about that there's a reason for that this entire page of additional information is kind of they all have their own talking points can i clarify these two pieces of paper compile everything from our all of our budget presentations from our uh each school and funding source yeah yes okay that is what i wanted to ask and they're in um yes they're in that 28 million dollar number yes okay so when you were asking one of you terry you might have asked or tammy you know are we presenting we're not presenting 29 million dollars to the towns

094right correct that's right and and what's in our priority i mean maybe we spend 27 million in the town go uh-uh you know and it was doesn't matter oh my god we still might like like it's kind of what's above the line what's under the line and what's you know what's happens if it's no line where is the sword we're willing to die off that's the question that we have to ask that's also and can can ice jane start with that because i think that might be an easy place it might be easier to work that way than the other way hence the additional information you need us to die on the the sword that we need to uh slice ourselves on we don't want to die on it is so if you look at

095the additional information um stay above the asbestos piece i just want to talk about the the positions um the two elementary stem positions so if you remember those were in last year's budget we ended up taking them out but we had them in the budget because they were part of the regional agreement commitment in terms of making sure that we had the equal stem opportunities for students at the elementary levels because prior to this we didn't have that and so when we received the sr3 money that was one of the first things we went to fund was the stem positions so what we are actually going to be proposing at our um february 10th meeting because we are we have a meeting next thursday too is to move the two stem positions now that are

096in sr2 to the general budget because we have the salary lines there we we have through the through the breakage savings and the teacher replacement cost we have the money to pick up these positions um so we are going to be asking the committee to consider i'm a 10th taking action on moving those two positions out of esser now and putting them in our local budget our general budget and these are the these are the current salaries for that so they're currently already in place oh yes they're in place and they're showing as an expense charge to the sr200 but as when we go through our monthly expenditure report as you've seen in our in our um classroom teacher regular education bucket that we have we've shown through our savings as jason was saying teachers

097retiring and replacements we've consistently seen a significant savings there that isn't going away we're saying we know who those people are we know who the who retired we know who was replaced and now we're confident that we can use that money to pay for these positions for the remainder of the year as opposed to keeping them charged to the sr2 funds now and into tammy's point i just want to try she's okay to your point when we do that and if we're able to move that money to be charged back to the general fund that will free up some more of the sr2 funds to roll forward to next year to try to help offset the bottom line the part i like about that is that we're not using temporary money anymore to fund a

098permanent need exactly so i think the shift would eventually have to go to our budget and if you're saying we could do that this year it's it's kind of getting two bites of the apple so does that then increase here it will if and when we make that yes okay the rollover of potential because the committee hasn't taken potentially 110 probably half of that because we've paid that's the total cost of those positions but if we move them for the remainder of this year this is just the salary cost this isn't benefits and correct and insurance and everything in retirement what not correct there because those are already factored into those lines already so if you looked at the if you looked at the um health insurance line these individuals if they're taking it would

099be in there regardless we were already covering that yeah and these are actual people hence the this very specific salaries that you see it's not written in as fifty thousand dollars six yeah and i said sr three i want to correct myself yeah sorry about that i caught that i wrote a question yes nope that i i used the wrong answer but just at least we used yesterday [Music] [Laughter] does that then limit the you so does that then limit the use of that 121 000 that we're rolling over because you don't you have to follow the s or guidelines on that money but not i mean but with uh generally make an amendment you you know we can agree to so it's the same thing we still have to agree to move money yes

100for a purpose of money either way that's right and if the committee approves it we would amend the sr2 grant correct so let's say let's say this let's say we left things as is right and then we just have that savings in that section of our general fund that money will just roll down into e and b which won't get certified till the middle of next year if we transition their costs over to the general fund we then free up that esser to money that can still be used next year and all we have to do is make an amendment to the grant on where we're going to apply that money so we can use it right from the start and we can have that funding up up front so really it adds to the

101offset but we could also before it gets to e and d repurpose it like we're doing with the 150 000 we're prepaying math curriculum right that that's another option it is another option okay all right all right i'm getting it sorry i've had a rough week and i'm just trying to get my brain together here where our thoughts were if if we wanted to make the moves or we had the most latitude aaron's point is exactly accurate i mean the real the the bottom line that i shouldn't say the bottom line the driving factor for this is not to try to roll over some additional sr funds it's these are positions that the district needs to sustain and they should be in the general budget and out of everything that was added through the esser

102funds those other like the intervention positions and we committed they will go away when correct when the grant funds resolve i was going to say to the statement we made last night again last night we were very clear we were asked are all of these grant funded positions aren't are are you really going to have them go away are they going to end up staying forever and our answer was no they are going to go away but these were two positions that are not different these are not remediation they belonged in the general fund to begin with but i want to say that we were very clear right from the beginning of our conversations about these two positions only their stem positions that because of the regional agreement and what we said what we committed

103to doing in that in terms of equity for our stem courses that we would want to include these in our local budget we did say that repeatedly the intervention positions we we made a commitment that we and frankly we shouldn't need them right if they're working if their work goes well we shouldn't need them we shouldn't keep needing them we will get pushback on this just so you know i think it's the right thing to do i really hope not because if the if the and i'm sure you're right jane but if the well we weren't we weren't invited to the budget hearing for blackstone last year with their fit but their finance committee but we did talk about a selectment about it yeah um and saying that they would have right because i know

104the border selectmen did we had a discussion with them and the stem teachers were in our local budget correct we cut them correct so this wasn't a we have s or let's hire interventionists kind of money this was this was our like top on our priority so almost to your point can we use the money also to try to get the services that we need in the district these were not there they were getting cut and then we did use the s or this year to maintain it so that was why that we listed this separately than than what's on this list um and then because we we want to do that we want to make those moves now um and we can uh have a discussion of the meeting on the tent if the

105if the committee is comfortable with that and there are plenty of things that we can use the rolled over plus the new esser money within the parameters of the requirement of the grant yeah absolutely there's no money left on the table anywhere oh no no no yeah do we know that for sure no i'm just saying that's the talk i don't know i don't know enough about it there are other municipalities that have left esser money on the table um there are other schools districts that have earned theirs returned their money we have were we allowed to apply for that right that would have been nice actually but honestly those other like the the we we are lucky we've been continuing to write grants like twenty thousand thirty thousand we keep getting them yeah and

106so i think it's because the state is money on that they have this money in the table and i think they're putting it toward other other like pockets and we're just going after it unfortunately it's it's like fifteen thousand twenty thousand thirty which is great but it's not like a hundred thousand rather than the numbers you know but so it's just a small chip anyway twenty 000 is not bad that was our late that was our latest thousand is good yeah yeah that was our latest endeavor hey i would take the thirty dollars [Laughter] um and then so the other position is the 0.6 history um which is at 40 000. and just so you that that is in that is on this list the 40 000 is on here yep okay but we wanted

107to call it right out so that you could see it because you know all of these things would be fabulous nobody's arguing that we wouldn't love these things we want to put the stem in now and we need the 0.6 history at the middle school that's because we have the the one teacher and then we've got a couple that are and in our preparation of the in our preparation of these documents you can see that those two pieces are clearly labeled we talk about all means all in equity for the students in the district we talk about equity across the programming and this 1.6 history teacher is a huge piece impacting class sizes at the middle school and what is able to be offered to those middle school students and it's it's a significant need

108and that's why it made our highest priorities list and that's also a key component to be able to team to help the team truly truly team correct it's equity in the class sizes the planning opportunities and and the offerings for the kids okay all right so that was just an overview and then we'll do the capital after yeah yeah that's a big other discussion brings us to you're getting to my favorite part now he's staffing me oh yes because on the second page the landscape page there's i have questions well so here's here's the the thing if if if nothing is moved forward short of the 0.6 so short of the 40 000. so take 40 000 off of 427 and 100 and that 200 000 on the other page so 500 that we still

109are at 27 million right so while i could make an argument for every one of these things on here i can't make an argument to move them forward what i never found out are we really willing to put open on that table so i have a i have a i have something that's been in my mind of how i think we need to do all that can i join in on that piece go ahead i want to say the conversation came up last night obviously it was the crux of the whole presentation but i referenced and i will defend my position once again i reference that oppeb really is a capital expense meaning and it was the actuarial it was the actuary that told me it is a capital expense and belongs in that classification

110uh i was i had some pushback it's really a payroll expense it is not a payroll expense because these are not benefits that are going towards anyone nor is it an operating expense that the district is applying its funds towards it is i won't say it is exactly a capital expense but from a from an accounting perspective it is because the actuary stated what it really comes down on your balance sheet is yes it's a future liability but it is the same thing as debt it's a debt assessment and therefore it goes to the bottom of your balance sheet similar to your debt payments for a building or whatever capital projects you have in place and that likens it closest to capital and we won't get anywhere by trying to say we're gonna take fifty

111thousand dollars and and and put it this year towards this expense it's that's not and so so my thought process when we move forward um with our meetings with the joint group is to say that the towns of blackstone and millville need to come together i mean we need to take this that puppet out of operational dollars of the school district and you agree that every year there's a line item in your budgets that says other post-employment benefits to the school district and it's you know you can agree it's it's two hundred thousand dollars and one does their 25 percent and one does their 70 you know whatever the percentage is you can do it that you can do but the towns need to agree they need to agree it needs to be separate it

112needs to be a separate part of the budget and and it can go into this our trust yep but it needs to be it it just we will never win the 50 000 from end and 12 000 here and 5 000 we'll never we'll never create that savings bank and and that savings bank needs to create it be created by the towns that are funding the support system so part of what what i want to say is yeah i'm willing to take open out of here because i need to put it someplace else and it needs to be strictly a town a town agreement between the two because our actuary was very clear one town can't do something and demand something and the other town is willing to do it so they have got to

113talk together and you know come up with a plan now that may impact what they're willing to give us on the bottom line that may come on they're going to deduct that may it may but they've got it it's got to be a line and i and i want to in in insert here which is really important and not to go on a totally different topic but if people recall like i understand the town's concerns you know what's the district doing to try to make sure your con well all of the money we get comes from the towns that being said i'm not arguing that there aren't things that we can do and if people remember when we were developing our opeb policies we discussed maybe there's a level at which if our end goes

114over this percent or this amount we take everything that's above it and put it into opec yes now those conversations can continue and when and and quite frankly i'm hoping you know fy 20 fy 21 20 to 21 believe it or not they were difficult years to budget for they were insane years to budget for and live through however we all went into those years preparing our budgets to be running into the negative and taking money from everywhere because the state the state uh chapter 70 wasn't going to match its what we were expecting we weren't going to get the grants we were expecting and then the state revenues came in higher than they were originally anticipated to be so our e and d potentially that is i'm hoping uh going to be certified prior

115to our certification of this budget may be looking pretty good and maybe then that's something we bring to the table and say we can we can kick start this with some portion of e d from you know what just got certified you know and again the conversation we keep trying to make clear is if we all get together and talk about how we want to make this work it will be much more effective than pointing and saying you're trying to do this you're trying to do that we can figure out what we have and what we need to do so that's part of our thinking when we said this fifty thousand dollars that got stuck into operating it doesn't belong there so yes if you guys are okay if the school community agrees let's take

116it out and to jane's point it's a totally other conversation would that go if it's and how would that work like would the towns have to agree to it somehow like in some kind of a meeting or does that become part of their regional agreement like a line in there at some point where would it like tie everyone into knowing that that's the policy so that's an excellent point e and d if we approve expenditures from e ind those expenditures do have to get presented to the towns and then they have a certain amount of time to either take action and vote to say whether you know they approve or disprove or they can just ignore it and not take it up at any kind of town action and then just that would that that

117indicates them giving us their permission and agreement that that's a good way to use the money and that's typically what has been done in the past we'll send notification to the towns and say it was voted to spend e d in this manner and we talked to the select boards and the select boards go great we're not putting it on our agenda but if it so if it's a separate capital expense or whatever annual it would just be like our cat so in other words we would submit our budget to the town that says here's our operating dollars here's our capital expenses here's our opeb expense which will be split this and this and it's like up another line on their budget and again if one town votes no and the other town vote you

118know we then it's a budget issue and then it goes where it goes but if we put if we put a policy together right and brought it to the towns and said should our end go and again i would certainly make sure i'm confirming with our council and and all of the proper channels but it's my understanding and not a hundred percent because i don't want to be be mistaken we could either do i mean if that's the case we could still do the same thing on an annual basis right we would still be able to no matter what we could all agree that if end goes over 500 000 we're going to try to put everything else in it and then each year we would just approve whatever that amount is send it to

119the towns and then they would say that's fine put that into opec right or if we develop a policy that states that and both towns consent to that policy then that would that would give their permission to use e d in that manner in advance and then it would just become part that that process i think the issue with the you know the overage so to say on an e and d is potentially you don't add anything to opeb at all for years which is which but which is you know which is why i think the townsville so you can down the road that's it potentially well and i wasn't suggesting that as the only method i was saying as something the district you know because the conversation keeps coming up like yes we can

120get go to the taxpayers but what's the district going to do it's like well we only get our money from the taxpayers like we in the state we don't generate i mean we put in everything we generate it's not tremendous it's it's a lot but it's not tremendous but otherwise that's our only other mechanism that we have is using the env sorry if i took us to a little no it's important what other districts do to fund there so we learned last night that 31 of districts don't do anything correct they've not done anything they do not fund they do not have a trust fund they do nothing but we are included in that because we haven't actually put any money into our trust as of our last valuation but we're getting a new one

121in fy yeah so 31 do nothing 64. well hold on hold the phone you have it yet 31 do nothing 71 percent so that includes the 31 percent fall into the 5 funded or less and 81 of the school districts around the state of massachusetts fall into the 15 or less but the ones that are funding it how are they how are they doing are they funding from their actual budget are they funding on the town floor i like the idea of that because if it's approved it's funded if it's not it's not you know when we go in and we need a supplemental contribution from the towns and we're counting on that in a way to spend fifty thousand dollars and they don't approve it we still have to find a way to cover

122those line items but if this is a separate piece of on the town floor like our capital items that they are already agreeing to years ahead of time the then that stress is off of our line items for each year so i like that but do we know if so we don't that was my that was my inspiration listening to actuaries last night so we don't and that was my you know thought listening to the the board of selectmen members who said you will you know we will budget for this and the actuary is saying to them if you can get both towns to agree you can budget for that and it was like yeah you can but you know we can we know that that has an impact like anything the town pays for

123has an impact you know because it's less that's available to do what we need you know so it's all it's all robin peter to pay paul or whatever they would have thought you would have thought that i was the only one interested in what the actuaries had to say but myself and lauren but everyone in the room was really attentive it was really it was it was a good it was a good presentation there was some good conversation there was some good conversation just fast forward the first four years yeah she was very good she was very good she was very good and you learned a lot but it was like she was excellent at explaining the whole um because i don't i'll be perfectly honest i don't understand that you know go to the

124gas fab of the fab fab and the exactly and i'm like yeah okay and you can look up every town in the xyz i'm like yeah okay um but she did you know she explained it was it was very good watch it it was very good um i mean to me that makes sense so but i think we need we need bodies at the table to have the discussion like we need it needs to be separate yet a part of like you know it needs to be an agenda item all of itself let's talk open essence if we truly needed to fund it to where it should be where it should be like to catch up yeah so it's so early that's why i was 450 000 a year which which is a year a

125year it's un un unreachable yeah unresponsive at least doing something will be correct correct in good 50 000 is not enough something according to our community and they're probably right i don't know right but again i feel like we're the family that has to pay month to month year to year if you will we definitely have been yes and continue to be and so if our towns want us to be the family that starts the savings account we need their help to start the savings account it's the only like way i can just analogy that made sense in my head i guess we live come up to my house i don't know um uh okay but anyway so i don't know i think we have to go yeah so when you started with this and

126someone pointed out that um opec was on here were you saying not to include any of this yep that's what i'm saying this is everything that the principals administrators have knew on those presentations all of it in one yep but what number are you trying to get to jane by doing that what are you you're you're i know it's only i mean 500 000 why why this and well because for me for me matt and jason already did this like they already went through line by line by line by law but there are some there are true needs here there are there i i don't disagree with you aaron and that's why we have to have the conversation but what i'm saying is to take six hundred thousand dollars out is a a dent we

127we can't move forward at six and a half percent six point four percent and we're clearly above that if we if the new numbers are really down and we can't if we're also going to ask for and i know we haven't gotten there yet but asbestos and sidewalks or whatever is on i mean there's 1.8 million in in capital so we can't go with 6.4 and i so but i want to go back to what what you you asked the question what do other communities do some other school districts for opeb have the staff pay into it summed it and i'm assuming that's a union negotiation it would have to be it was mentioned at our negotiations [Laughter] employee contribution employee contributions so that is another option that we we we have to explore as

128we progress through those discussions but that's not something we can put on paper in this discord are there any other ways they're doing do we know about anything it's yeah they can do an override there can be an override or there can be what it's part of an is the assessment and that's pretty much it i'm just picturing an override on that that would be like are you kidding me right talk about swords that you die on that would not be the sword yeah and and again it's like you know again if you're if if i'm the taxpayer in the community which i am a taxpayer in one of these communities and you tell me my taxes have to increase by a hundred and fifty dollars a month because i'm going to do some much

129needed repairs on school facilities that are required i'm like yeah that's like in my house i have to put the money into my well we just lost our water or pump we just had to do a new water pump surprise um but you can't not have water right so you make do i'm willing to to say okay i understand that if you're telling me as a taxpayer 150 a month so so the school district can have a savings account whether it's an unfunded liability or not put it in every month and i'll pay a little bit of it every year not a big lump sum right and so that's what's that's the hard discussion to have but anyway to your point aaron yes there are and that's why we're here today to say if we

130if we have swords we want to bleed on we don't want to die um what would you what would you pull out of here that are are really critical to the education now i will say there are some things in here like you know men's volleyball and varsity tennis i would go back to the athletic director and say i think there's a real need here you figure out where there's not so in other words you take your budget and if you think it's important to have that volleyball team then maybe next year you don't have a whatever so on that can i add to that so initially i proposed the idea of adding a full-time athletic director which i think would be helpful to the programs of our school um i am all for providing

131our students with the things they want as also along with the things they need however part of the idea of that was also with the with that with that role comes running things like clubs so i did some math um and maybe i should have discussed this last week but it was so much to take in so i did that later so just looking at boys volleyball right where he has said we have eight people that have said that they've claimed interest all right in volleyball there are six people on the court at one time so that gives us one team to play and two subs now we all know it's so many kids will say oh i'm interested in that and then not join so all together for us to start one year it

132is going to cost sixteen thousand nine hundred and forty two dollars for one team that may or may not happen my point in asking for an athletic director is that this should start as a club and you run it at the time that volleyball would be running so it would be a fall club that happens you invite other schools for scrimmages to gauge your interest then you're only paying that club the extracurricular club yes thank you for that as well as tennis it's those same sorts of things when you finally get the interest after a season if you have more people that are interested then what a lot of other schools especially uh systems very close to ours that touch our edges then also go to their community for support and that's how a lot

133of these teams are started they start with some sponsorship and ask we want to start a new middle school hockey team will you sponsor us and that's how they help get started so i feel like some of these extracurriculars that's part of it and that's where when i started adding these numbers up i was thinking okay a full-time athletic director that that is a full-time job it's a huge job to properly take on it's hard to see all these other requests under athletics at the same time but i think those could be stretched out a bit so in my mind i was saying let's get rid of some of that not that i want to tell kids no but i don't want to spend almost 17 000 on one team that the following year or

134halfway through the season we have two people that can get injured now what and to follow up on what amanda's saying my when i lived in atlanta while the state athletic association had a water polo recognized as a varsity sport there wasn't enough interest across the board for water polo teams my son won the state championship in a club sport as a water polo goalie he did that two years in a row after we moved out of the district and away from atlanta there was finally enough support community-wise local-wise in in the in the region to put enough water polo teams together to make it a viable varsity sport it was you pay your dues we travel we do whatever but you know that's what our co-ops do and i and i do say that

135we you know we our athletic director as the position sits now has a responsibility to really look at the teams and say what you know we have a cross-country team that's budgeted with what two did he tell us two runners you know so if you've got eight volleyball players then you focus you know cross country becomes the club like it doesn't have to be just because something's new doesn't mean it has to be that it but it's almost like you've got a budget right and you need to to shift and adjust the priorities based on the the folks coming in front of you and maybe that's esports you know maybe right that's you know whatever that whatever it is but you know these are the teams that you want to field for this upcoming year

136what can you afford in the budget that you have but uh you know and i understand the desire to have a full-time athletic director i do i have a husband who's that's his career and family members who are still in the field and ones that have retired from that field both high school athletic directors and college athletic directors blackstone millville regional school district at this time cannot afford that full-time position and i think part of the conversation becomes in the next four years as we lose multiple athletic teams we are going to lose way more kids because the way our programs stand right now we're at risk in the next couple of years of losing several of our teams and if we don't put someone in that position who's willing to reach out to our

137youth leagues who's willing to make bridges at the elementary school let's have a pick up soccer game in the afternoon to get the kids interested in playing school soccer let's have the flag football team at the middle school runs let's get some of our high school football boys to participate with that but if we don't put an athletic director in who is willing to do those things and start making those bridges and start but you don't think a part-time person can do that they haven't we've already we've always yeah that's part of the problem and what i saw in their conversation that isn't happening now yep and the problem i from what i have discussed with other athletic directors as well is it it is a demanding job do i think it starts at 7

138or 7 30 in the morning no because they often have to be here for the games and later in the day but it there's a lot of coordination that happens on the back end which is why we've also suffered in the past having a pe teacher a gym teacher excuse me do most of it because they're also teaching classes so when you have suddenly a soccer game that needs to be rescheduled you're late on that or when you know you've got a field hockey team that has an issue you don't have time to handle those because you're also in a class now i know as many of you do as well that there's other athletic directors that maybe teach one or two classes and perhaps that's a way we could start if that's needed ours

139was teaching three correct yes yes when when it was a teacher yep they had an extra it was just okay they would have an additional prep period with the stipend and i feel like that's just not enough for someone that has to coordinate and at at the same time looking at some of the other items um i mean banned the districts around us how many have full-time athletic directors bellingham has a full-time athletic director um oxbridge i believe does as well i believe oxbridge doesn't also teach um douglas i think douglas may i'm not a hundred percent on douglas but some of those school systems are very comparable uh bellingham is a bit larger than us however um they have far more teams than we do as well before we get too far off from

140something that amanda mentioned i just want to point out that the last time we added a team to our budget was football yep and it was a very large community movement they came in with sponsors it was not just uh oh we're going to fund it and see if kids show up they we made sure there were feeder programs coming from the towns um and those community members were here they were here in our room at several meetings um they formed a boosters before we fielded a team so i feel the same way about i'm i'm shocked that jv volleyball and varsity volleyball boys volleyball is on here being that there were only eight eight and we cannot field a jv baseball team which he didn't mention until he was asked right so i was

141kind of and want to okay so let me but let me so let me go back to the what's on the page so what i'm hearing from folks is that an athletic director is critical for the future development of this district to a keep kids in school and service the needs that we have in the athletic department over and above i uh teachers in classrooms i don't know i don't know jane can i jump in on that do you want to so so i will say something probably not very popular but i'm wrestling with this a little bit because last year we added a facilities director which is great by the way i'm not saying we don't need that look at the facilities issues now we're adding or possibly adding an athletic director we are

142an academic institution we have no director for teaching and learning so i just need to put that out there that is my job which which i love by the way but if i get hit by a bus tomorrow there is nobody at the helm of instruction in curriculum in the school system i do it because i love it and that's my passion most superintendents think i am nuts for taking on that responsibility and they don't they just don't so i just have to put it out there that if you know yes we have principals they're great instructional leaders and they're doing their thing in their building but their takes to the point of athletics it takes a certain level of coordination to make sure that everybody's rowing in the same direction so i just want

143to put that out there i think that's you are right um i do think that most people in the community will think that is your job yeah well they they yeah because he's taking it on but i think a lot of them don't know what he's super interested in well that's the thing and i do think because you are different than many of the past and i i couldn't tell you what many of the past did i wasn't involved but my kid was younger so i see both of those but i you know to carry's point as we are putting new fields in as we are looking for new facilities um athletics is a huge part in and as we look at as i was going to say we look at band and how we

144have supported band through the years and look at the band we have we have kids that come here to be part of band um and it's we we have a band to be very proud of don't have a full-time band right now he teaches but he does teach but they can also teach bands what i'm saying in the classroom he's doing the reach out to the younger grades too right right but it so is it is it an issue of what's not happening in the position we have or we don't have the right position i think it's a combination of both with athletics i i will agree with kerry on and and take it a step further and say we may already have missed the window on saving the the younger i think we're seeing

145that with the lack of our jv sport teams being able to feel the team i'm not saying it's anything we could have ever afforded before so how do you you know how do you go forward from here and make sure that our school still has those extracurricular activities for the kids that they want that they would be proud of too we can't just say we have it it has to be they have to it's part of the day as i know it's not curriculum i know it's not you know but it is still part of their day i get it and it's a it's a hugely important it's i guess it's very important to the community it's important to the parents when you talk to them they they parents probably talk about that before they

146talk about what they did in math class unfortunately but it's i think we need to keep it level with the education piece in our conversation because i do think we could end up in a bigger issue than we already are trying to pretend we don't have well i'm just looking at things and listening to the impassioned please which i do hear the and going back to jane's point we're not getting the results out of what we're we're not getting the results that we want in the current position um we're not getting that reach out to the middle school kids to the community to everything else and i going forward i don't see that happening if we could make that a 0.5 position and still maintain a teacher relationship but that requirement of being the the

147athletic director is going to have to bear some weight that person is going to have to get out and communicate with the middle schools develop the feeder program in the communities you can't just walk out there and say okay i'm the athletic director let's go get this done all of you know you you've got kids in sports and everything else and you've seen it if we just say okay we've got an athletic director what good is it going to do us if we don't get the performance out of that position i think the bridge to that is that we have to appropriately pay somebody to spend that kind of time and that's why i think it is a full-time position because that's what holds a lot of people back it's a lot of excess time

148and if you add on classes now you've got those other obligations of parent-teacher meetings and all of those sorts of things but yet you also still have to do that community outreach i understand that but i going back to dr defalco's point we are here to educate children and i can't justify having that salary that we're looking at with no educational impact i was a high school athlete i enjoyed high school athletics it's the thing that most people look forward to i agree i was too and and both my kids are but i think if we didn't have that we'd be looking at a very different story that's what kids look forward to we have to educate them they have to come to school they don't have a choice well they have a choice i

149have a choice to go to a different district and the parents are taking them to a different district because we're not educating them i don't think they're taking them because we're not because they have more sports they have more opportunities right yeah i agree with that too so matt when i think when we originally got this from the athletic director it was 75 000. on here it's 78 but are we taking into consideration that we have the salary the 56 to 6 000 stipend or so we kind of need to subtract that from the 78 for we we already have the stipend in our line items and are we facing that 78 000 on it's not 70 additional it's it wasn't agreeing it turned 270 but are we why would we hire uh it was

150turned just it was turned to 78 from the stipended amount right but so when we're looking at new money likes for us we're looking at this as new money but it's not 78 new money it's 78 minus what's already being paid is the new money correct yeah okay he's not getting a hundred thousand dollars or something no i'm sure are you taking that as a jason's like i don't think so like then i would remove it as 72 000 if we yeah we wouldn't not have an athletic director if we got rid of the whole time it would yes this would reduce it by 70 i believe it's like 72 000. it wouldn't reduce it by it would it would increase to 72 it would increase by 72 000 to get to 78 because we

151have six thousand and forty seven right that's what i was trying is that what you're saying yes okay so the part-time position because they're six grand in first yeah i think i added it to this i'm saying it might be this might be really i have to double check we don't actually have a salary line and again i can double while we're on athletics on the other landscape page which is where when jane you said like say no to all of these that football uniforms baseball uniforms football helmets trap like travel fees we can't take out also here so those travel fees the travel fees that are for the new teams for the new sports that's for the new sports are these and the uniforms we have uniform money in our budget so that's why

152i don't understand that why that's why that's even there we have right every year we have money yes and it should be in the budget we shouldn't have to add new well he explained the helmets and the yeah the helmets are a must spend if they're going to feel the team understood but but what i guess what i'm saying is we have to take what we didn't spend this year because we didn't get all the unit not everybody got their uniforms and what we have budgeted for next year and figure out which of these things yeah i think from this year the only one who didn't was the it was the girls uh and i'm not minimizing it it was the girls basketball team which i believe he has ordered so you're saying essentially those

153items shouldn't be in this as additional it should just be it should be in his budget already like we should have you know 40 000 whatever we have whatever you spent this year is being spent on a different team next year correct right correct and that should be these teams that are up for their review the helmets yeah yeah i don't know because that's probably have something in the budget i thought i did i thought we had so many helmets per year yeah i thought i was crazy i think you said they weren't yeah but the money should be there that's the whole thing i talked about 40 brand new helmets which is what i can say similar similar to um the curriculum material that we said we would make sure that we were able

154to purchase this year um if we were to say we need to remove this from this budget whatever our kids need to play would certainly be they would be i i can assure you that i would make sure that we get any helmets if they're needed well we would make that happen by reviewing like what the balance is correct by reviewing yeah there was some saving yeah there have been some savings from lack of transportation for covid reasons so that's why when we were saying okay can we remove these things they were the total numbers that were just plugged into the budget we said okay we can remove this from potentially remove it from next year's budget i think we'll be able to and some of these things like even you know if we're looking

155at if if just sticking with athletics before he sports in that bracket i know that was something that was really important and i think the community the committee found that like a neat opportunity and the in the you know i i was i'm laughing because literally the next day i went to school and at my school we have these bulletin boards and there was an esports flyer up and i was like that is the most exciting yeah i actually never heard of it either honestly didn't we discuss on esports cutting that number and a half to five thousand dollars yeah because they just bought computers that work for their computer lab and i think and so i actually had flagged i flagged that one and i flagged even the qcc like the dual enrollment because

156there there may be an opportunity again with any resources that were left unspent this year to try to take care of those things in advance so i flagged a few things that and we could include in that some of the other athletics qcc is is one that i i see as a very valuable piece but i i'm in agreement that we need to get rid of the the athletic things here and the caveat is the helmets but matt you're saying that we can fund that with what we've currently got i can confirm that but yeah i believe that we would need that and i i would suggest eliminating all of that and especially back over to amanda's point the starting these new teams while it's valuable to start the new teams and to get the

157interest and and whatnot going the survey says eight children eight kids that want to do this we spend all this money to have a team and four kids show up yeah i like i really love the concept too of looking at and when some one of you said it here's so for the existing stuff i'm not talking about necessarily things new although you would roll it in but here's the the budget what teams are we fielding and which ones are we not because we don't have them and then looking at well how do we repurpose that absolutely you know to try to do like a a club team or uh to get something new started or different started or and if something's low numbers existing then do you do you co-op those teams until you

158can get yourself together absolutely our our athletic issue starts in kindergarten yep you know you know i know i um missed part of that conversation but i certainly watched it again and you know it's it's it's our our lower level startup you know that we don't have a baseball team or we don't you know that's that's our issue and it's hard to fix that in middle school it's hard to fix that you know you got to start a t-ball and i think our juniors and seniors right now where the last kids have town ball right so yep and then when you start when you start playing baseball in bellingham which a lot of people do then you then you school choice there because you know that you don't want to that's where i think i

159think the argument that we're educating kids but we can't those are the factors that we i have two kids who went to two different schools they are both on the dean's list of college for you know consecutive semesters we educate our kids fantastically that's not what some of this is about you know and i think athletics plays a big part of it and i don't i don't disagree at all but i will tell you that you could have the best athletic director in the world and that's not going to get more kids oh this is my argument for an athletic director i don't agree with that so okay i'm just saying oh no no and and again i i think i think we've had two years of exhausting people we've exhausted ourselves we've exhausted our

160teachers we've exhausted our families we're people are tired and it's the conversation i went to the last time it's like there are no parents left willing to take up the mantle it's not that they're not kids willing to play there are no parents who want to get that kind of facebook response for not picking their kid to wear a green uniform because they wanted to wear a pink uniform you know it just it's like we have become a society and and again we have nobody who's picked up the mantle to run for school committee as far as we know you know we peop we're losing volunteers because it's hard work and no athletic direct no seventy eight thousand eighty thousand forty thousand dollars is going to change that level and i agree with it's the

161it's the it's the before school it's getting the little kids on the soccer field who are more interested in the butterfly than the soccer ball but because they've done it and they learn to love it and then they still want to keep doing it because their friends are doing it and so so you could have an athletic athletic director who tries to encourage that with the town rec committees but you can't get volunteers on the town rec committees and so it's that grass roots that's the that's part of the problem the number of doers is dwindling because the number of non-doers and and the chirping that they do is exhausting yeah yep so moving in a different direction security cameras in addition to camera system please explain those two to me because that's 25 000

162earmarked as well so we had been putting in as a consistent upgrading of adding cameras like a ten thousand dollar line into the budget and a specific school one of the elementary schools actually we had two different schools that specifically requested a significant addition of security cameras to their buildings the middle school asked for it and that was one of the things that we originally recommended removing and there was an elementary school that recommended uh putting in cameras in various corridors and places and that was the um that was the additional is this is this school owned by one town versus the other or owned by the district the elementary school is well each of the elementary schools are owned by because if they're if they're owned by the town that's the security thing and

163the town's responsible it's not a no it isn't it's not over the 25 000 yeah it's not a capital it's not a capital it's been it's our lease agreement right yeah that's based on our lease but so i can say we have but we've written we've transformed we have gotten yeah this is this is to try to you know get to fully equipped every you know every place that people want the cameras so yeah and just to remind so that the items on these lists are this is what we took it right from yeah we didn't put the right judgment on it and said no because that's you know that's very respectfully that's the job of the school so we wanted to bring forward to you everything that people whether you whether you like that

164job in the moment another another thing i'm looking at is the erin's snow blower four thousand dollars for a snow blower for an industrial stuff is this a ride on turn the steering wheel pull the zero turn sticks and do a zero turn and then blow the snow away i mean it helped me understand four thousand dollars for a snow blower it was an industrial snowblower that the custodians went and got an estimate on votes for so my home snowblower was like fifteen hundred or four thousand i do have a question on that um piggybacking on that as far as well as the like the floor scrubbers so it which was kind of my same question we have the top one that says auto scrubber at afm and i guess i don't understand why that

165would be in our budget at the same time we have things like um you said last summer the town paid to like pave afm's parking lot auto scrubber meaning it goes through the hallways and scrub like cleans the floors right but that's like a municipal no like no that's a maintenance that's the maintenance issue we don't why why are we paying for that because we have our we maintain that yeah we have our own maintenance staff we made them if we contract it out for that that'd be a different issue but we don't we have all of our own facilities uh people so every broom every whatever yeah that's inside the building inside the building but the snow blower because that's outside the building so if a few walkways so it's the road it's the

166roadways so so the towns will it could also be the side but the snow but the snow blower could be the secondary buildings because we own the we care for the outside we do the landscaping in the grounds of the secondary buildings i don't know if yeah if it's yeah i think the the 4000 is i have to double check that yes you may so i don't i don't think we can just say this goes away right i mean because i think there are some things on here like looking at project lead the way without these materials that doesn't go forward even though there's grant money to support the other thing you know like there are things like that okay that just happens to be the one i thought this this doesn't go far enough

167you know i mean i think we really have to look at what is existing and what we can afford to lose or cut i hate to say that word but this doesn't go far enough to where to get us down to get us to the number we need right but i think it's important to you know look at the line items of what's in the existing budget that we possibly have to think about moving cutting being creative jason and matt are really good about being creative but i i think we have to go there okay and i don't know i don't disagree i don't disagree with you but i guess i'm saying but i wouldn't add something here's something that's in front of us yeah and are there things on this list that we can

168cross off or not that we want to keep let's start let's start with i feel like i can make a really strong argument that we need betty let's do the landscape supply what number are we trying to get to like i don't think we need one good question what do we why we're looking at like taking away taking away away but where do we want to be right right i don't know it is jason did not want to be i mean so let me tell you so let me tell you in theory what we need in theory we certainly know that that's not real let me tell you that blackstone's minimum local contribution potentially is going up 5.16 right so and and millville's four point four zero percent do you have a number attached to

169that jane blackstone's about 450 and millville's about 150. no increase what is the actual but there is two what are they about 2 700 one thousand seven hundred seventy six dollars in millville say that one more thing oh well all right i have to find it two seven two one seven seven six is millville's minimum local contribution projected please be clear projected blackstone's is jane i think that's the total for all of their educational expenses i think you have to go to the bmw let me like regional on the back that's in the yellow remember the different segments of oh but i can get those i'll pull up this one okay just moment but i thought these guys in the back these are us i have it just mad go with matt it's just as

170quick as my internet pulled it up i have it right in front of me so so starting with well that's oh you got it i got it oh you got it already so black stones black stones mlc total projected is seven million five hundred and twenty five thousand seven hundred and fourteen dollars and that's five point one six percent i'm sorry what what's the increase from last year with that or not the that was no they're all they're both over six percent um give me one second i'll tell you the exact percentage the exact percentage is 2.31 is six points between 6.5 for blackstone and six six seven six four millville 6.825 for blackstone and six point seven six four million and what was millville's number did you say that nope i didn't get there

171millville's number was 2 million 620. that's just their mlc the total projected project so you hear me say that a lot so so they're already being asked to pay a percentage increase that they cannot raise within their towns right i mean you know two and a half percent null um and so if if we then say so that those dollars if you add up those dollars it's 10 million dollars we have 14 million in the budget we had before page number one yeah 14 million just to do well to do all of this so that's asking the towns to come up with another 4.8 million they don't have it so to say you know where do we want to get them to as close to zero as we can get them i i i that

172sounds yeah with with doing the best we can to not compromise our systems and services so those are the capital but our conversation that's another conversation we haven't hit yet and and so to tammy's point i do think there are some some things we've got to look at um and maybe some really hard decisions but let's not pretend this is going to get any easier moving forward in the like i'm really like we have esser to support you know some of these things we've got had some savings because in 2021 or whatever it was we cut to the bare bones and the state said oh look people bought whatever they bought and we have money um so we were lucky but we won't always be lucky and we won't oh and so so we we

173have to get these numbers to a reasonable number that we don't lose services to kids that we can still do some capital and that we can still address them open here in lies art and here is the three books right and here's the three buckets yeah and and so you know that i guess having sat in on the conversation for the last couple days that's why it wasn't easy for me to say we can't do this and i agree with you tammy there's some things in here that you know hey we really do absolutely have to do yeah but they're going to have to be at the expense of something else right so 600 000 or whatever these add up to yeah can't can't get out of it to the bottom line so what do

174we do what is our current budget the 26 this year's budget isn't that the 26 220 yeah okay yes uh the the column on the left uh yeah so that's what yeah i don't have that right in front of you yeah because this budget is four million dollars but and we can't we and we can't and and and i think our towns know that that we can't because if we do never mind class sizes of 28 you know and then we'll have school choice that's i mean and teacher teacher run for the hill issues right right so you know somehow we have to find the balance and we need help to find the balance we need conversation with our town so we're talking in one voice um and not yelling in one voice at each

175other um but so i go back to my what's on this list that we feel something let's go through it that we feel we can we not only can we justify we have to justify and so and jane can i just add to that and then tammy to your question about seeing the other budget we definitely can do that i just we i just wanted the committee to hear that like other you know other than you know honestly like reams of paper or that we might look at you know reducing or you know let's not do a membership to this associate like those things are obviously on the table but you're looking at like 500 bucks 750 right that might all add up but it might all add up to you know eight grand right

176now so i'm not trying to pays me to it's just like like you know we tried to do that at the end of the day salaries it's that those are always and they hurt the most and um i mean i think we have to still do those thirty dollar you know the thousand dollars at a time as well but i i don't see any other way to get where in the ballpark i mean i don't know that i have a number personally in my mind i just know that it can't be where it is now okay and we can't get anywhere in the ballpark without bigger harder conversations than like this it's like when you're adding something it's a lot less painful to say we just can't do that now for me like i'm looking

177at boys basketball i mean uh volleyball sorry volleyball not basketball um like we i just don't feel like we can do that right now maybe we can do a club and kind of pull some money together or whatever but we can't i don't feel like we can do that now so let me ask a question this this might sound a little bit like 601 half a dozen of the other but would the committee be interested in looking at simply a level service budget with that well you could decide that one always takes your breath away well i just mean with it with the two the two stem teachers in that point six history and then whatever else you all might prioritize so we take everything else out we take out the 75 000 for transportation

178too that we've taken that out yet and then try to reset the numbers with the mlc numbers and everything in there and see where that gets us it's an option i'm trying to think of a way to to get the the um kind of like the most bang for the buck kind of in terms of a process well i do have i i think we have i think we could try that i think we have to try that but i again i i i don't wanna like like i made a bold statement this is off the table and and it was a bold statement and some of you like like you need to say now is your time to say this needs to be back on the table there's certain things in this that have

179to be on the table okay so pick pick a page pick a page salaries go too bad i did that one director of advisory let's just walk through him gone that's that's what i heard i heard god charger for change um it was all middle school right high school this one's high school we have people doing it now and are they not getting paid they're getting a small like a small amount this is it's not formally you know i i think this is a i think it's a conversation that we have to have with with the union to say what are the stipends we have and can we switch some for some or whatever the case this might be one that gets funded from that grant we just got yeah that's true we couldn't matt

180was just saying we could apply this to our the safety grant that we just got we just got a thousand dollar ramp a hate crime a hate crimes prevention grant we just got for twenty thousand so that could be something we could charge toward safety grant yeah yeah what was the crystal club the club were they you know collecting crystals they like crystals yeah it's literally crystal snaps you know again like maybe it's a club that the that somebody in the community would be willing to start or maybe it's a club you know like people so i guess that's ultimately why i feel like we're asking questions on these because i understand that you know like we could get rid of these 1800 positions and it's not going to get us there but people that

181are following along at home who've watched last week where all the principals came on and said we want to do a crystal club we want to do this and then these people not necessarily going to pay attention to the big picture but they're going to see a six percent increase and they're like what the hell is the crystal club right and why is it costing so much so i feel like we have to go through it because that's what's been presented like i didn't see chess club on or i'm assuming that's chess club is that right yes it was on where was that yeah why is that one was there so much more than the rest i don't remember what they said but it might there might be somebody that's there i think there's somebody

182in that there's someone in there that that they're doing uh they have the steps still on the stipends yeah which is a contract which is a thing that matt has already set up the focus for that yeah jane is yeah and again you know esports i'd love for them to look for you know there are so many companies i think we can do that for a very different amount yes you know i do i talked to jill about that today jill fowlers okay building subs these are permanent ones these are the permanent buildings second there's one we have one in every building and some we're asking for a second one each building is actually per second well how come there's only two here that there's four there's four they are listed slightly differently the eighteen

183three sixties are all filling stuff oh they just aren't called they're coded differently just get a second one like right now did who well they all got a second no they have one so that's one of those areas where clearly as we roll some money over if we said coverage because of covid and you know medical issues and concerns would that be covered through additional funds from esser that we're rolling over those could be things that we put you know if we move i could tell you if we move these two stem positions back into the general fund the money that we rolled over you know could be given directly to funding those positions in pre-covered times was one building sub per building just depended sufficient it just depended yeah we had we had substitute

184remember like that column would go nuts some year it just depended on the year i hate to say it but you know we gotta cut so yeah take them off and hope that as they recover it yeah well we're getting right there saying when we keep doing the financial analysis of this not having them cost us more money isn't that what we figure out every year and then we still got it not necessarily no it's been it's been off the last couple of years it's really hard to get a good financial analysis because of so it's not partner teachers one year and all right right we've always had some weird thing but yeah we've okay but instead of adding an additional one per building can we add two to the district and have them right

185be floaters one be a elementary one yeah absolutely okay so let's compromise it's shared all right the forty thousands the history person correct so that that i like that part i think that person is necessary but then looking at the class sizes i mean next year's gonna be fine but after that it may go back to not really necessary but look the sixth grade class is a hundred kids next correct but correct this is just for next year's budget so it's very possible that we remove it after yeah we're not going to so salary teacher ms regular 2 305. that's the that's the person yeah the 40 makes numbers manageable yeah and uh okay business math person sadly no no uh leader for academic affairs middle school business teacher no athletic director my vote's going

186to be yes and i'm going to say half a half time position how can we say no to the curriculum coordinator and yes to the athletic teacher after what jason said so i feel like they both so i'm going to uh so right now we have on the table full who wants us to support a full-time athletic director speak now all right one yes all right two yes three yes four yes i am a no i'm a no i'm a no well four yeses not a full time with what we currently have but can you ask that same question of the curriculum coordinator so that is a half-time person i know but you just was that the one we're sharing with i think we should go through for me the the if we're supporting one

187which one then we should be supporting that one i support support all right i would support that a curriculum coordinator the i mean just based on jason's point of we don't how do we have how would we have a full-time athletic doctor and not any curriculum support i i for me i would support that i listen to the group but well but can we just star both of them and have a further discussion yes for today but it could come off the next meeting it could be in the top of the line as we like to say on the top of the line so can you can we just ask everyone like we just how many people would support a leader for academic affairs i would i would i would okay so yeah and it's

188only a half time half time position so later for so so for right now two permanent building subs one to be shared with elementary school one to be shared with middle high is still on the list okay got it uh leader for academic affairs is still on the list athletic director is still on the list was there full-time versus half-time or part-time on the athletic director full-time everyone's full-time had four four votes we don't yeah i was gonna say we don't all agree but don't all over 78. okay regardless we keep the half before we go to that one to uh one to one nurse is this a is this a special ed that you really have to do it'll get covered with circuit breaker yeah it'll get covered out of circuit breaker so we

189can take it off we can take it off yep the same thing with the one below it quite frankly teacher for the deaf and then the whole bottom of the list the whole bottom of the list is reevaluate the athletic program and come up with a plan all right so we good on page one speak now or forever hold your page one can you just go through it one more time or just tell me about it so what i what i have is two shared subs one to be shared for the elementary schools one to be shared for middle high school um so that would be thirty six 000 i don't know 720 uh the 0.6 history teacher at 40 000 the curriculum coordinator salary of 50 000. and the athletic director salary of seventy

190eight eight thousand but potentially seventy two thousand because we already have six thousand yep so seventy two thousand okay anyone else going once going twice a la vista baby well not that's cavalier and i don't intend to be that way it's just getting carefully um instructional supplies library books so i'm just going to go through them if you want to keep it on the list you need to tell me keep it on the list for right now and then we'll discuss library bookshelves scholastic news grade three to five can i ask a question on that before didn't they i feel like i remember having to send in like two dollars for one of my children to have their like yearly membership to it yeah for sure i remember that yeah we know we bought them

191this year i think the pto will pick it up we offered this year and um we're told that they weren't using them but then they ended up putting them back in so i'm sure the bto actually would pick those up for both schools okay i will bring it to you with the meeting on monday for confirmation so with that we cross it off the list yes okay just mark it pto library circulation software yes auto scrubber no you're only supposed to say if you want to get up further discussion no nose hard no security cameras at the elementary school no i forgot he didn't follow the instructions so i didn't either anal vision goggles goggles goggles i wonder if there's a grant through the police department right any of that yeah we'll flag that as

192a grant there's oh yeah those are those are those there's another way to do it but it's not me telling kids they shouldn't drink probably so there's our project lead the way there i think we have to discuss addition to the camera system at the middle school protective window film somebody's snowblower whose building was uh i don't remember the snow blower or the 30-inch snowblower i'm sorry it was a scrubber but um the aryans um this was the one we set a grant too right yeah we're we're and it's required the advisor is required to have an esports team according to msc their but didn't they also say jill said sometimes the athletic director [Laughter] so we're so we'll bring that up for discussion later portfolio storage where do we leave that at uh we're

193bringing up for discussion later okay user fees portfolio storage setup is user fees we're not we're moving on what's user fees the for portfolio storage yes you can't do that for no not for instructional classes portfolios no but this is not to create their portfolio this is to store it i don't know what that means is a storage cabinet yeah that's oh it's a cabinet i think it's a rolling charge all-purpose uh camera body only for the um video lab class [Music] pen tablet i asked for that to go on to the technology i think all those could be a grant you can get the camera through a grant too uh do dual enrollment tuition we need to talk about that yes travel fee for games games games if you just got rid of the

194volleyball tennis football uniforms baseball uniforms football helmets purchased this year i will confirm that we'll but we think that's already in the athletic production the uniforms in the budget already yeah is defense what is that is defender is that a technology it's an antivirus it's the antivirus software for uh windows machines is it required yes i don't need it right where is the um i feel like we can't cut that i feel like that's it all right where's the docusign so we brought docusign in to do the hr we at least partly for the current year because we are using it for the in the in the onboarding hr process piece so does that mean it's not here because it's not new it's not tech it's okay yeah well with all of the things that

195are being done with that i will i'll work it out if it means parents don't have to fill out 900 forms that have been i can't promise from the ditto that's what that that will do but i know we just did incorporate it into a big check mark next to that one set to do next year okay i'll give you i didn't do this years okay moving on uh i asked defender i i have a keep i have a further discussion next to you hope come contribution is further discussion with the talent it's got to come off here foundations your dry erase board you got we're getting all those now okay so elastic news one and two three and five so yeah yeah yeah is that a pto um yeah yeah okay thank you and

196stem supplies okay so going back sorry what did we say about stem supplies nobody said yes do you want them on the list where does this one choose without supplies or i guess that's my question can we discuss further yeah okay all right yep going back to library bookshelves tim make your case if we get new books we're gonna have to have some place to put them i thought this was also supposed to replace broken ones that is part of it yes so i feel like that's a maintenance sort of like upkeep it's two thousand dollars i think yeah i'm with you on that i think we what's that we actually generations right yeah we're not getting new books so we don't need new shelves right but we still have the shelves are replacing old

197broken shelves i guess my question is are there any i mean we could probably condense some of these and move them to wherever they are when you think about how many books are actually being taken out of the library at this point is there way to condense and repurpose one building's shelves you know potentially maybe what our facility director needs to do is an inventory of classrooms we don't even use these days and what's in them okay that works maybe shelves there may be again there definitely can be consolidation here so okay put the x to it okay okay create firewood all right library circulation software so yeah so is the problem they can't like check out of like what's the key yeah it's just old software you can't use it with the new hardware

198requirements that we're moving forward with the old software does not work on the new hardware and this covers the district not just one building and this is a one-time yes purchase not like an annual no it's a one-time purchase who wants this to stay on the list okay well that's in everybody so that's still on the list uh the next one i have is all the project lead the way consumables so i i guess my discussion is can we utilize continue to utilize the project lead the way grant if we don't have the supplies i think what we can do that's different than here this i think we have it's going to be you know just a challenge but i think we can do it we just have to go out for a different pricing

199instead of going through because you can order through project lead the way like the materials and resources and they come all you know all the sheet brands so we just have to we'll just have to parse it out and go to amazon for sheet brains and this company for tic tacs and this company for baggies and just do it that way oh yeah it comes as a complete yeah you can do it they charge you for the convenience right that's my sense yeah but so we can go out and just split the materials up and get it we want to do this is there a way to get local business support to fund that maybe hospitals or something like that i know we don't have one locally but you know there's milford really quick so

200project lead the way that's the okay science are we already doing a partnership with waters right they're currently doing a partnership um a leadership thing waters is located in milford they are biomedical so what on his part would they perhaps we try to request right be an opportunity yep as they are already in the schools doing another stem leadership thing maybe that's an option as well so i guess to so to the point do we keep it on the list unless we know we need some supplies i need the supplies but is there otherwise money is this happens middle school and high school are in these numbers right here can some of it at the middle school level be done as demonstrations not all not all hands-on lab anything can be done any way we

201want i think it's probably the best way i think figuring out how to but the question is this is what it should be i don't want to water it down the cheapest way exactly i think just figuring out the cheapest way i think we and to keep something i mean you have the grant fund we're getting money to do this to expand and enrich our pathways then i think we have to i think we have to commit to some part of that you know to make it work agreed personally so is that it i think it's a i think it's a proving i think it's the thought that we need to take a look at it and and get it down to what is manageable make it manageable all right uh esports equipment again i

202gotta go with the we have some pretty decent equipment can we make work what we have and search for sponsors to if you're going to sponsor the team you need to sponsor the game controls for us or whatever we don't have an advisor anymore in the last week since we talked about this there's been major consolidation in the gaming industry what is it microsoft has bought halo and then the other company i can't remember the name but there was a 63 billion dollar purchase of that company and right now there's uh it's up to the federal trade commission to approve it on both of them so trying to get community support and some of that may be difficult for esports but i i agree with you it would be nice to get some type of

203community outreach in that whether it's from across the border or in [Music] massachusetts and i think that's also one of those ones that jill said she thinks she can dramatically get that cost down too we're talking about that tv um it's available yeah so yeah right there he said cut it in half yeah so probably drop it to five but then i think if it's considered a sport i mean maybe these kids have to pay the user fees and that will help offset some of this and then like teammates keep saying though we cut the advisor so we either need to add the advisor back in or figure out well i didn't think that we cut the advisor but it's on one line yeah it's on the other page so there is a rule there's

204definitely a rule yeah there's a rule we read it we read when we when we were exploring the e-sports yes but i but it but it could be the athletic it could be the principle it could be the like it doesn't have to be a dedicated person but if we're creating a job description for an athletic director yeah and again it might start as a club it might start as a club and the only cost is the game subscriptions and the kids will go to it right because they can play and you still need someone that enjoys doing that we'll just oversee it so let's do let's do it that way it started as a club and not necessarily i still need a stipend for the club the club yeah it just wouldn't be twenty

205eight hundred dollars save a thousand dollars yeah probably eighteen all right so are we allowed to go back and mark that as yes is that the will of the group to reduce the stipend for the change into co to coach and drop the club from coach to club you still need the club advice you still need a yeah so so you have esports advisor versus coach advisor but if the advisor can be an athletic direct director right well and we we still then we can still cut it all together the advisor yeah doesn't run the club i i feel like we're get i feel like we're getting into these yeah we're getting into the weeds jason we're in the weeds i'm choking i'm choking on the weeds and the plain fact of the matter is

206do we do i i think esports is huge up and coming i think you can get a college scholarship for esports which far outweighs what you can get for boys volleyball and boys but but to the extent that we want to put ten thousand dollars towards it five well but that's what we're saying is no it'll be far less keep adding up if we go back to what dan was saying about what we currently have in possession for technology right in the future we may need to buy some gaming monitors because they need the reaction time right right now we go with what we have and if it's not good enough then let's look for donations we're also trying to reach out to a group of kids who aren't necessarily the athletes that right you

207get it well but that's also something i mean you think about a lot of sports like the the team themselves has to go out and fundraise so maybe that's not a expense we encumber but something they can build upon and i and i i have to think just like you're a hockey player who has to come with their own equipment yeah if i got an e-sport person i got my what is it a switch controller any sort of those conjunctions they've all got them switches right we were told switches the game was a switch so i come with my switch like like i don't you know i'm not convinced that we have to put like i'm not saying we shouldn't have esports i'm just saying we got to get creative in the way that we

208do it bring your 300 back to the baseball right done there you go wear your own cleats you wear your own hair hockey switch i agree with that agreed yep well i'm for taking it off oh yep okay that's me that's how that came too so you're saying it will let people will usually become a club but at their own find their own funding expenses whether they can find sponsorships whether they can find whatever be creative use your own equipment have at it like you guys said show the community support come and talk to us come and ask for you know whatever you talked me into it so we're moving damn and the fees just so no user fees remember so the esports is going all together right yeah oh yeah there's a club yeah

209so then it's all so we take it off totally and they just let them build a club build their club get you know come to us with a you know with that if there's a club they still have to have a stipend we still have to pay the eighteen hundred dollar statement to the background in the club but we but not necessarily not necessarily this is where we're but this is where there is no esports person in the contract there's no easter egg when have we ever been able to add uh anything that we we have this fall under the we've but does that fall under the whole same idea of we take a look at the clubs if they've got like we essentially does that mean we kick this back to miss phallus and

210say like if you find it in your budget you can do it but we're just not paying extra money is that yeah i think we have to rediscuss it yeah as we go in a different thought as we go okay okay okay all right i have the um dual enrollment tuition assistance so what we were thinking for that was creating that sliding scale we were looking at uh 250 for the full so for students that are not pre-reduced lunch they would have to contribute 250 to that um and then we had discussed for the reduced the contribution would be 100 and then the free the kids per class or for class yeah so what do we need in our budget to cover what can't be covered so we need 14 000. so what we did

211how we got to the 14 000 was we took the 40 students and we looked at 40 uh unique classes we'll call it that way to keep it simple because it could be 20 kids yeah yeah yeah and we we looked at uh we added a hundred dollars to our current cost our current cost is 250. all right so we added a hundred dollars to get to 350 times the 14 students i think that should get just uh i'm sorry times the 40 classes should get us into 14 000. but we need that 40. the 14 000 is we don't that's a that's if we paid all of it for every kid so yes so no so yeah we don't need that full amount if the committee agrees to that type of a scale so

212it depends on what i mean the alternative is you take it as a college credit later and you pay the full amount so right you get absolutely if i get 150 it's an opportunity versus a thousand bucks or whatever a college class is right it's the 40 classes at the 350. yeah so so if we so if we brought that back to 250 and said well frankly we could bring it to whatever we bring whatever we want to bring into and if the you know the student pays the full amount just on a sliding scale could we could we not that i was involved in this process could we speak with their administration and see if we can guarantee x enrollment that they would potentially sponsor x number of credits for kids of financial need

213oh in other words would they would they absorb the cost would quincy community say yeah if you're bringing in these people that are paying so here's my here's my people here's my here's my fear matt colleges can do that they do it off the kids financial aid and then when the kid goes to school their financial aid is reduced oh really yep okay that's interesting yeah we do not know at all so so colleges can do so i can be a 17 year old and i can go take a college course and say i can't afford it or whatever and so the college can support me in that way but because it's college support it's considered a portion of your eligible financial aid that you're eligible for in your four-year span of it of financial

214aid but it's really you're taking a class that you would have taken in those four years anyway aren't you you are but u.s but you but you're you're impacting future funding yeah yeah but you're also minusing future funding potential kid potentially college course in high school they then don't it's like an ap class right but if i take that you know i take i take i take um i take a certain course at quinsigamond and what you know it's their english 101 but that i decided to go to wpi and that english 101 is not their english 101 and now i've got to take english 101 at wpi and i'm just using but that takes your financial aid that takes my financial aid away so it's like a student who one of my like huge

215beefs about college is if i'm a um english language learner and i have to take an english class to build up my english then that's eating my financial aid i don't have enough financial aid to get over the graduation so but what i was i don't know i don't know if it works the same i was trying to propose like if we spoke as an organization that we got x number of tuitions paid would they grant us as the district x number of so it's not tied to specific students you mean for kids of financial need just in general so we wouldn't even identify who those were so yeah and again i don't know like a bible eventually that's a different conversation yeah you know it would be an agreement between the districts currently in

216rhode island a similar kind of thing with high school students in rhode island they're doing that um but the sponsorship didn't come from the college it came from a business okay so it came from polaris doesn't though yeah that's a different issue so are we all in agreement that this should stay we've got to work it doesn't need to be fortunate this line item should stay in the budget all right we'll figure out a way to get this program yeah so that was a little bit of like the chicken and the egg because i want to make sure that you're all in agreement with the fee scale before we actually can play with them yeah yeah okay yeah so now we can we'll adjust that there we go just a quick down and dirty of

217the 50 20 kids at the 250 20 percent of the the 100 that comes out to about nine thousand dollars okay uh is defender we must have that see the data you pay for something else to fix everything that goes wrong right the alternative is not good keep that in and the last one i have are the stem supplies so my clarifying question was we have stem teachers if they don't have supplies what are they doing well this is not specific for those stem teachers remember there's stem scope stem supply like i can say oh no that was elementary our stem people are illinois so but you can't tell me that we don't have in our budget now supply lines yeah we do we do we know and i just i think you have to

218you know some years say this year it's going to stem supplies and it's not going to taper it's not going to glue or it's not going to micro you know i think that i think we're asking certain people to be creative you know the athletic director or the band director with their funds we gotta ask the principals i was gonna say this is on the principles with their with their you know their funds if that's okay strike it all right yeah i'm swaying you tonight i think too and this happened um when my son was in like i think sixth grade they did they built um birdhouses and then as a fundraiser they sold them online to the parents they raised a lot of money i was trying to buy my sons and somebody had

219bid like two hundred dollars on it and i was like yeah they all ended up going for a ton and the the teacher was like this is great we can buy all sorts of new like drill bits and all sorts of yeah back to the additional information asbestos is a mandatory thing so we haven't even gotten that you guys we haven't it's 9 30 9 40 9 whatever what time is it 9 20. 12 30 p.m don't worry and we have not gotten to the additional nor have we gotten to the capitol capitol so i don't know what y'all want to do i don't know if you want to keep going i don't know if you wanted weird jason yeah i'm fine to do whatever the committee was like not coming in tomorrow right now

220we'll be here my only thought with respect to the capital information i mean the asbestos piece is pretty clear my only thought with respect to the whole capital packages yep you may need some time to digest i mean if you haven't really gone through it so so the bottom line here is this asbestos has to be on it's gotta be nice it has to be in there it's not it's not it's end of discussion it has to be in correct so the other things if you guys have this big packet then the other pieces you have to kind of look and say you know mes needs paving and we have it down in or they need stairs would it but it's one point eight million one point call it one nine um but these end

221up getting split paving that i also don't know necessarily that this is not just take it off this table but i don't know that this is all entirely a school committee decision with respect to all the facilities this is the town's i think i mean we plan on presenting this to the towns as well right we do correct this is right because is town responsibilities some of these items yes yes some yeah um also i was it in the or the enlightener that you sent that um the google playground right yeah the playground 40 thousand outdoor classrooms we have the money but we just hit the pause button until we figure yep all of this out of what we're going to do with the 40 000. so our our communities have been asking for a

222long-range capital plan this is essentially our long range capital not our capital planning for redoing facility this is the taking that report of the maintenance right and saying this is how we we need to fix it over time and i i agree with you matt i think this is the this needs to go to capital out but we have to go through it and say is this really what we want to send to those capital outlay committees correct and what piece of it do we do we like is a must do for this year because a lot of if that if our plan goes through and goes through a lot of this goes away right some of it all right a lot of that some of it because because even if the plan goes even

223if it's a feasibility study and then the feasibility study comes back similar to where we think it might you're still five years away that doesn't get you you know stair railings fix that kids can fall through right so so we need to talk about the 1.878 in 2023 right and maybe the 28 million through 2025 yeah well but we have to do things that are safety or safety wise yeah yeah that was how we had them right they are then they are rated specifically in that in that matter and the other thing and i know uh going back to members of the fincom complaining about uh ada modifications we must do ada modifications oh well that's the whole high school that's that yeah okay so there's that record yeah we can't do that that's the

224issue we can't redo the whole high school to to make it ada totally ada compliant every doorway i i understand can't do that without the bigger project so i guess my question then is if this consumes all of the upkeep that we will have to do over well quickly but um this is a repair okay why would we want to whittle this list down well because if we're comparing one to the other yeah like i'm saying if if we you know it's either right right so amanda i don't think we want to whittle the list down okay what we want to do is it's saying okay in 2023 which is the year we're talking about can we really bring the towns 1.8 million dollars or is there something on the list and so i'm just

225going to pick what's first because it's easiest that although it says to do the paving in 2023 could we potentially do it in 2024 like we have to do it nobody's disagreeing with that right and by the way what does a zero mean when safety because it says one scale one to four so what's a zero holy crap not a concern well or is that because it's not required it's not required to fix there's no dollar amount there i i feel like that more of the capital discussion has to take place before we really start bargaining it am i wrong in thinking that that like why would we if we don't have to pave mes so we have had the discussion in the capitol and some of you have been in the capital meetings more

226than me can go to this but we've had the discussion on those meetings that that capital committee is looking at long-term planning facility uses and then there was another offshoot group which was the facility director a couple people met who said all right we've got to look at how do we keep the building and this is what the town is asking for how do we keep the buildings running year to year so we don't kick down that can that we've been doing for years and we get our facilities up now like everybody has said that may impact the 19 million in 2040 or the 9 million in 20 or 20 35 or even the 21 million in 2030 but the 2023 i guess we have to look at those things and say you know are

227they built are they things that we need to do to keep the kids safe to to tim's point that we can't wait another year on i think we share them with the towns as is the actual list of needs i think some of these numbers are i don't think in the town like i think it has to be conversation i was gonna say is that like [Applause] oh well we have you know it's it's our buildings it's our students and and that but do we have a conversation looking at just say just 2023 with you know and then the question is who do you meet with right is it capital outlay is it florida selectmen is it fincom one of each i don't know and say here's the list for 2023. this is what you

228know here's our coding and among us you know we could even further down like this is what we feel you know and then say what are your thoughts i mean is this i think i think that's a great that works no i think that's the right idea i think this is the start right we just got this package right so i think we as a group need to look and say are there some things that we prioritize for 2023 to your point tommy and then once we just you know it doesn't have to be outlined from from here to 2040 but 20 jane like you're saying 2023 we look at it get some ideas and prioritize some things and then go to the right committee and say we've looked at it as a group agreed

229to say these are our priorities it's all listed in order anyway right but we realize that 270 000 for the paving on millville that might not be something we're gonna we need to bite off next year well i feel like my i i like the idea of only presenting like presenting it in small chunks but what the fear i have is they're gonna go well that can wait till 2024. and we have people say oh but look here is all of 2024 and then there's 20 25. no i think they've asked for a five year yeah like i think the whole thing you gotta give them the package the whole thing we understand that that this is overwhelming on top of everything else we're going to discuss absolutely so how do we take that 1.8

230let's just look i mean you've got the plan so you guys can plan as a town how are you going to address these things moving forward but let's look at the 1.8 and what are the must do's that don't kick these cans down i mean that's the saying of the day kick the can down the road agreed but that 1.8 does not include asbestos no that's on top of that no and that that's just not yes can we clarify what these um title the uh headings actually say because they're cut off on ourselves and we have this all electronically so if you would prefer to look at this electronically it says something one two three i think that person is safety this is health and safety yeah the second line looks like health and safety

231but priority one to four and then reading one to five yeah too high three medium or low but there's no one i'm pulling i'm pulling it up i'm gonna email it to everyone because we also have it broken down by so it's a workbook that has each school individualized and then we just printed it i think this is great i mean i think yeah this is i think i think this is so long overview i can't even tell you i think this is very easy to discuss i think it's it's good visually except for these a few missing letters and rather than that it's fantastic to ask the talents to pay for it like after 23 we go five years i know where it is what our capital needs are yeah but they wouldn't have

232that would involve jacking up the foundation 25 to 30. to be done yeah that's fun before i email this i have the document open between 30 and 35 they should be saving that money to be ready in 30 30 correct one two three four five to fifty so when they when they talk about our opeb liability okay go ahead unfunded liability here's their capital unfunded liability so so the first column says system priority one to four one health and safety two high three medium four low okay and one is super super i guess because there's not one on there no it is one of these ones that's one health and safety one health and safety it's like immediate health insurance it's immediate health and safety got it got it oh it's an immediate health business

233immediate health and safety like must do's immediately yeah one is the most important and then it's paving it goes down lower and lower so the second column says but it's par it's the paving of the parts that are like holes that kids will fall in if they exit the building so it's so it's the systems the first column is that system priority which is based on one is a health and safety urgent need then it gets a little then two is just a high priority three is medium four is low okay the second column is the system rating so it's the rating of what that system is and one to five one being the poorest five being excellent the third column is the last major yeah those are all full repair okay i'm just looking

234at the electronics it was just yep it didn't um wrap yeah so it's system priority and system rating exterior platform stair and area waves system priority is a one but the rating is a five so it's excellent at the same time as being a health and safety risk no it's categorized as a health and safety risk is that it might also be i'm thinking of the photo which one are you looking at specifically uh this exterior platform okay so do you remember the do you remember the pictures that um from the can you walk off to nowhere there's one that you have yes there's it's just a platform there's no sidewalk there's no railing there's nothing and then the other one the real platform is in really good shape correct that it's in fabulous shape

235it just doesn't lead there it just doesn't go anywhere this is right i think that's why he's saying like the condition of it's really great it just needs to expand it to finish the job who rated hartnett paving as a three have you driven up this way well i will tell you there was a change literally as of this morning because when i drove up to do my uh learning walk and visit here this morning the whole front was all crashed in yeah we have patched so many times [Laughter] so may i ask how we should go forward with this so you know we're talking about more face time with the folks in town yeah how do we do we do we share do we no i mean let's take people for an example okay

236so if i call the guy from finn palm you know whatever you know these three people from these various towns um boards and and say can we meet on this you know capital needs survey forum is that how we start no i i formal all joint meeting again well we we have to schedule an all joint meeting because we have to present the budget to them so sometime the end of february early march we need an electron we need a our power capital groups have specifically been asking for a five-year plan i think that matt shares this five-year plan you know it's actually more than five years like 20 years or whatever it is i've outdone myself i gave you eight five-year plans here's our plan but understanding we know there needs to be discussion

237around this plan we are not you know we are not saying to you we we will be putting 1.8 million dollars on the right right on the list for the year but here's here's where our needs are here is our plan when we have our joint meeting this needs to be one of the topics of the but do we pre-meet because the joint meeting they become a lot just like tonight is it's a lot and then when you have you know you have a we have an agenda but then when you take that left turn and you wind all the way through both towns you don't finish what you have to start so you have preliminary conversations so we can we can ask the talent when we when these are sent to the capitol we

238can say can we get on your agenda at your next capital meeting can i ask a question yeah you know it's more of a wonder on top of that so when i look at this i actually see this fitting in with the asbestos piece fitting in with the long range capital like the the facilities like the new building right and i guess my wonder is if it makes sense to have a more 360 conversation where we were yes this is absolutely part of that 360. and we're looking at this and talking about it but we're not necessarily talking about it in isolation so in other words we have the you know we have the pop we have the presentation so it's almost like like to me it's almost like sequential we finish the initial conversation

239with the boards that we need to around that 15 slide deck that matt greg and i have been doing right we're almost through that by the way like we're almost there so we can like take the next couple weeks we finish those conversations then we bring this in along with that and we say okay so now that we have like a vision of kind of where we're going let's look at where we are and now that we have this done and let's talk about what what does this look like over the next subsequent years along with the actual new facilities plan and and i know you're all saying the same thing but literally bring them into the dialogue of how to like here's here's a recommended prioritization how do you feel about this do you

240think this makes sense thinking about how we connected to a larger facilities project because you know with some of these things if we end up going forward with that mes just say for instance the mess and the complex go back to that right the use may change and then the the prioritization of these you know repairs may change and they may say yeah i mean if we you know now that we see the whole picture it makes sense to move forward with a new facility it may not be exactly what we all think because the feasibility study might show something else but they might say well we would change these priorities significantly if we knew we were getting mes back and we knew we were getting the complex back to the towns because we're doing

241something totally different with those buildings anyways so this might look really different and the only reason i'm not trying to believe it the point but the only reason i'm thinking that it might make sense to dovetail it with a bigger picture is because it really does plug into that because i do think this all some of these changes the whole conversation around 2025 and 23rd agree it's completely different yeah even 2020 because it's going to be five years out before if we do move forward we got a good five years three years four years yeah at least so it seems to look very different i wanna i wanna jump on board of your train of thought and this is just that i'm spitballing but i'm wondering just based on my experiences with our joint town

242meetings and our big presentations would it make sense for possibly us to invite one or two representatives from each board one representative so matt no and the only reason i say no is because they don't talk to each other they don't talk to me they don't talk to each other so i think we could break it down and i think we could have a joint meeting with all of the groups to talk about budget and then we could ask for a joint meeting of the two capital outlay committees just them and and then you know and or we can go to and do more of the dog and pony which you guys have been doing but if we do that we need more of us yeah like it can't be just you i was just

243thinking if we lie it out very clearly that the expectation is that whoever comes is going to share the information but you're right it may never happen anyway but i think tammy's right about and so when i think about though those meetings might be the pre-meeting before we bring everyone together right so by the time we bring everyone to a joint meeting they've all seen more people have seen it yes so now they'll see the summary and then we have a meeting after they look at it and start happening and then and like when when this is out there it's like let's have conversations one to one we don't we it doesn't always have to be a joint conversation to relieve one person's concern you know i i think that's where you know in previous

244years we were able or i i'll speak for myself i was able to have conversations with people on fincom or or somebody on board to select you know people on board a selectmen and have conversations outside of giant meetings right to listen to concerns address concerns or be able to take concerns back to the full committee and say hey i spoke to you know mr smith on the board of selectmen this this was a concern of his can we address it in this meeting and i think for me that's what we've lost that's what i agree i agree you said it better than i tried to say it earlier and i and i when when jane was talking earlier i was a little overwhelmed with life in itself and and i took that like really

245to heart for a few moments which is why i stopped myself from talking but now i think i can say that like i feel like from my point of view here as a school committee member i have lost touch with people partly partly because my kids are gone and graduated and i'm not on the soccer field i'm not having those conversations but i also had better relationships with previous members of boards or like just we were they would call me i don't no one calls me to ask me a question but they're mad at me because i'm not going to their meetings in addition to my meetings but they're also not sending me an email or a text and and i made it so that point made that very point okay yeah i made that

246very point to that it's like you know i i have given my phone number my email you know it's like our emails are the only ones that are published readily with our names exactly that you know and it's less like reach out i'll have any conversation one-on-one any conversation but i you made it much clearer than i made it tammy and i think i was caught up in the emotion of being called out there right right but but that is we have lost that personal touch we've lost that we're all here serving our community it's not it's not us we're not against anybody or i don't feel like and that's that's the point jason that's the point jason was trying to make he was trying to make we've got to be one voice in this

247we've got a we can't be accusing and and call i mean like i said our names i mean we have our everything is published um and i personally am willing to talk to any member of the community um but i also have a life and i can't attend every meeting that happens in town i i just i'm not going to do that i mean i i you know or i would have gone on all of those committees too if i wanted to spend that much time i just nor are they here at hours well that was that was my room but that was misconstrued that was my like myself with folks that are now in these positions um will be a priority for my next year of school committee jane do you mind if i

248summarize some next steps just to see if we got it so that matt and i have this clear so on on the on the capitol piece we have a few more meetings to have with the big building and the statement of interest and all of that work so we'll finish those conversations we also are having another opeb conversation with millville because what we're doing with one we're doing the other one so even if one's not reaching out we just so everyone knows we reached out to aubrey to say get us on the fincom agenda we want to talk about opec um so that way everyone gets the same information so we'll go through that round then we'll we'll loop back and we'll do a part two we'll get everyone comfortable with this we'll do that

249in the next few weeks um and then we can schedule and it's on the agenda for the february 10th meeting we can schedule that joint meeting sometime in early march because we have to certify the budget i think it's march 24th i think it's the second i think it's the second meeting um does that work for folks on that piece on the capitol piece okay then next steps with the budget again we have this as an item on the agenda for next thursday we'll take these keep stay maybe talk about later things but we'll we'll just take out the stuff that was a hard get it out we'll do that we'll adjust all of the numbers in um in the financial um the revenue sheet the first one we looked at with the mlcs and

250we'll get all of that updated in the format that you all are comfortable with and have seen before that has the little assessments and all those numbers next to it with the new numbers reflected and with the transportation backed out of that another 75 000 and we'll see where that gets us to um and then we can have that conversation on thursday as a next step with the fy 23 budget and and i that makes sense i i also think you have to add to that list jason um sort of conversations with cost managers about you know i think in the interim jason and i are going to continue to see what's in there that we can afford to you know whatever verb you want to use repurpose redistribute cut remove well like the stem

251supplies where else in your supply budget can those but i think it goes beyond that it goes it does it has to and so i think that's a very uncomfortable conversation to have on the floor here sure you know um but i think that has to happen before our next meeting because we're we're not in a spot we want to we can be in it's not that we want to be in we we can't we can't bring that forward and those uh it's better to come from a just i mean because again for us it's a number it's a it's a nate a line item with a with a number next to it whereas from their point of view there's all this internal things that it impacts and and they have to be the one

252to for them yeah i get it so that makes sense so is everyone comfortable with those next steps does that work yep okay that'll get us set for thursday do we have to schedule any meetings are we just going with what's already out there so we have to schedule a joint meeting meeting um take my phone out for that purpose oh i shut my phone we overloaded it we have a march we said that the seventh my district went to district learning we have a 28th right no no so we looked at the week of the 28th we said sometime between the 28th and the 7th we should do a joint meeting so we were thinking the second the only challenge with that now jane is if we go back and meet with the even

253if it's just the capital outlay committees we just have to be wrong by march yeah yeah so so march 2nd is a thursday right that's the first thursday that's the winner the win oh that's right because joint committee we yeah wednesdays were the better days yeah so march 2nd one morning please i'm working the vacation week too so i can meet if they have committees for that meeting here what do we usually do six o'clock right i just have to take it off from work and if that work if that works for people i can reach out to them to the town administrators tomorrow jane or if you want to do that go to the chairs and you want me to do the administrator or however you want to do that are we tentatively marking

254march 2nd did anybody have a conflict no i just have to do yeah i've got several names i'll move them out of the way no march 23rd is our open hearing right i think april 24th tim did you say whatever the thursday i'm sorry did you say march 2nd was an issue i've got several issues on march 2nd but i'll i'll rearrange yeah 24th june okay so 24th is our public hearing so we could i mean we could push it i i just don't want to push it so close to the 24th that the town starts saying you didn't give us any time to digest this and ask our questions all right so whatever you holy mold yeah we've stayed here too long we my goodness forgot jessie's here thanks jesse before jesse's asleep seriously

255that's definitely inside it was jesse that shut the lights [Laughter] so march 2nd i mean worst case scenario we could go march 9th but i just feel like that doesn't give me everything we have oh una meeting on the 9th don't we where are we march second work so right dave now are we thinking 6 00 6 30 6 p.m 6 p.m got it all right and do you want me to email peter and dory tomorrow jane and invite anybody have them invite and get everything set up or do you want to do the chat how would you like to do that um too yeah let's just let's do everybody yeah let's do let's do um if you i don't care it could be you that's fine but the chairs of the the boards of

256selectmen finance committee and capital committee to invite their boards okay and that's on the side and then the town administrators yep capital that's on 3 2 at 6 p.m yeah here okay and we need to we need to i don't know if it's scott i don't know who it is but we need to do like we need to make this table go all the way like we need to not have chairs for people like in the last few times we've done it there haven't been enough seats around probably in the center so we need to like go like go the whole way or whatever we have to do two tables together in a straight line like i think that's great yeah closer and whatever and yeah the other one we were i couldn't see people

257around the pool correct yeah so we need to yeah forget these two things here and just go turn them this way and make sure six tables down you're not doing anything on the ninth right no yeah i think we have negotiations we have negotiations on the night yeah you guys do we have something yep yep okay yeah i'm going to um okay all right i gotta go folks i have a journey so what oh all those in favor