001provide name and address and limit comments to open public comb. and 121 circle in I'm sorry I'm bleeding off the paper because I cannot stop Bridgewater Ranham Regional School District is struggling and yes many school districts are struggling but I want to start here. I have hope I have hope that I can be part of the solution. I have hope that there are people in this district, on this committee, in our schools, and in our towns who want to solve this problem together. But I also know this, the problem does not start here. It starts at the top, not just Massachusetts, but across this entire nation. Our country does not value public education the way it should. The people at the top do not value it. They send their kids to private school. Full stop.
002And until we vote in leaders who truly value public education, the funding will never match the rhetoric. I am not sending my children to school, to become robots. I am sending them to think for themselves, to problem solve, to make friends, to have fun, to be guided by teachers who love teaching and care deeply about kids. A couple weeks ago, I attended the school joint joint [clears throat] school committee, reom select board, and Bridgewater Town Council meeting. I went to that meeting with hope. I hoped to hear solutions, ideas, a path forward. Instead, what I saw was finger point fingerpointing and nitpicking. And what I felt afterward was dread. But I pulled myself up and here I am again because giving up is not an option. At that meeting, the one thing I appreciated above
003all was Rachel King's point that the district does not fund itself. The towns fund the schools. The taxpayers fund the towns. And right now, I feel like my nation isn't pulling through for us. When federal and state funding falls short, the burden lands right here on local communities. I want to be clear about something. I understand my privilege. I have a roof over my head, food on the table, clothes on my kids back. Yes, I work hard, but I will not pretend I don't understand my privilege when I say this. We need to give more money to our towns. I pay roughly 1,200 a month in real estate taxes that supports our schools, police, fire department, senior center, library, parks, highway department, and more. And honestly, that's a pretty damn good deal. I've seen the
004police show up to help in so many ways in this town. If I smell gas in my basement, the fire department shows up just to check. When my mother was dying, they came to carry her up the stairs. The library and senior center hold countless free and fabulous events. And every day I send my children to school to be cared for and taught by professionals. The least I can do is contribute a little more. Last year I pushed hard for that huge override. >> That's your three more minutes. No, >> we I'm sorry. comments are limited to public comment at the end though if you wish to come back and please email me your comments. Do we have anyone else that would like to come and see [clears throat] Ashley Maller 270 Range Park um
005just come here to really talk to the town leadership and address unfortunately only one town. Not really sure both towns are here if I'm seeing someone. Um but I just really wanted to bring some attention when we talked about wanting professionals. I appreciate that. Some of the things that I've heard from town counselors include using AI to supplement kids education not understanding the concept that every time we lower the quality of education here. The money just doesn't get like disappeared. It goes to charter schools and it goes to school choice. I think the latest cherry sheet showed I don't know uh school choice tuition 1.1 million. Um and then charter schools another 800 plus thousand. So you know it gets worse every time we don't invest in our own district. And I know that the
006finance committee discussed um how more money is going to be going to You don't really have a choice on BP, but you somehow think you have a choice on our school. And that needs to end. We are talking huge class sizes, an increased demand for using um technology to just basically you can't run stuff off the way you used to. You can't grade the way you used to. And there's stats. There was just a hearing before the um federal government about how the use of technology is actually hindering our students ability to grow in education. This current generation 2010 to now is actually performing lower than their generation before and that's the first time in history since they recorded those stats. You need real people teaching and these classrooms are not cutting it and we
007all know it. It's just when are you going to step up and actually say it's time to do it? We got to figure out how to do it. Or how much further down do you want us to drop with the kids? This isn't about me. If I have to put the extra hours in, I'm going to do my job and I'm going to do it the best I can. This is about the fact that I'm debating, will I, if you don't turn around, I as an educator who grew up here, whose father taught here for 30 some odd years and considering not sending my own child to this district. Thank you. That's how I ended it. [snorts] >> Good evening, school committee members, member of the public, Dennis Gallery, state representative for this district. I
008just want to quickly in three minutes or less um talk about um as the school budget will be presented tonight to to you guys for the first time in public. Um the superintendent will have numbers probably from the house two budget which was the governor's budget. I will firstly say that I am a little disappointed in the numbers that the governor came out with regarding chapter 70 and school transportation which only funded per pupil at $75 a person and our transportation was dropped back to 88%. Those are the two troubling numbers that I see on the cherry sheet. Um, I do think that now that the House has the budget, the chairman of the Ways and Means will host uh threeformational sessions. I know many people had already talked to Desi over the summer and
009fall about changes that they're going to make, but I do think the House will take up [clears throat] that $75 expenditure and bring it up hopefully back to 150 where it was last year and bring the um transportation reimbursement up. So, I just I' wanted to let everyone know that the budget is still a working document just as the town's budget is a working document and I along with a lot of my colleagues are very concerned about the chapter 70 to all the all the districts and towns throughout the comp we will address it and change that. The one troubling thing that is on the cherry sheet estimates which was mentioned just a minute ago is the sending tuition that you have which is total is about 000 the district um is sending to other
010schools from school choice either charter school or regular school choice. I don't think those numbers are going to change. You're going to lose that you don't lose that that money because of that those policies. So anyway, I'll be available to anyone that wants to sit down and talk to me if you want to come to one of the public hearings. I hope there is one in this area of the state um and voice your concern. write your legislature, right? Write to the legislature and chair with the ways and means to fix this chapter 79. It's probably not going to solve the whole deficit. Believe me, it won't. So, the towns need to make a choice as well. >> Members of the public, I did not intend originally to I came here to listen. I've been
011at the superintendent session dealing with um you know the parents and guardians. I've gone to as many meetings as I possibly could. Oh, identify Mark District 2 council. Um I have served on the council. It'll be a threeyear term and 10 months broken service. I was a regional school committee member before in another community for 11 years. And I'm schools. My two grandmothers were teachers. My mother was a teacher. My dad was a college teacher. But I do want to make people understand clearly from my perspective as one member of the council that the town council is not your enemy. I don't like hearing that here. We're here to work on behalf of the residents of the town the entire time. I sat on a school committee. I dealt with school issues for 11 years.
012Now I sit on the council and I have to balance the needs of police, fire, senior center, library, veterans, DPW, and everything else. I truly believe that there are ways to work together. We have tried we're doing it. We have joint meetings and we will do everything we can to solve the problem. I'm one member. There are nine of us. The majority of my council colleagues are here and I don't want to be bared that we don't care about the kids and about the schools. Thank you. >> 7:13 [clears throat] public comment will be closed. We will have another public comment at the end. Anyone else would like to speak following the other agenda? And thank you to those who did speak. Uh next on my agenda is correspondence and recognition report of community emails.
013Um several school members did receive email correspondence from special education attorney and CPAC with concerns which were responded to by those members. Mr. Powers, the school committee and bridge Council received an email from a concerned parent regarding snow removal and the safety of students on the way to school. Both Mr. Powers and myself responded. I received feedback on suggestions for future joint meetings with the towns to encourage potentially having a public comment period. I responded to that email and have noted that for future potential meetings um that we will have. Um next we have Excel graduation. Mr. Would you like to Absolutely. Thank you, Mrs. King. Uh, yes. Uh, as you know, we recently held our Excel program graduation. Our Excel program is our alternative high school. Uh, that's held here u most evenings during
014the week. It provides our students that have sought alternative pathways to graduation an opportunity to fulfill their educational experience. Uh, it's also open to other communities. Uh it's also open to adults looking to come back and earn their high school diploma. Uh but it is a very special program. Um obviously when our students graduate from college, it um sorry when they graduate from high school, it's definitely a milestone to celebrate. Being the father of a a recent high school graduate, I know how special that is. However, um the path that some of these students have to take to actually reach graduation uh is very unique and it's not always as easy as some of the other paths laid out before them. So I really do have to acknowledge and commit uh and commend their commitment,
015their grit, their perseverance and determination to actually get there. Uh you know every semester varies. Uh we have anywhere from you know five to 10 students that graduate per semester and that [clears throat] happens all throughout the year. We have a graduation in the winter uh spring and then you know there is another summer session that takes place. So we have students constantly enrolling in the Excel program looking to finish their schooling uh because for whatever reason they were not able to be successful or they had some challenges that prevented them from being successful here in the day school and same with other communities. So it really is a special program. Miss Watson and her team and Mr. Walsh who's the excel director do an amazing job providing those opportunities and just thank school committee
016for their continued support of that program. >> Thank you. Um, next we have consent agenda. I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented, which includes minutes dated December 17th, 2025, the personnel report, acceptance of gifts in the amount of $100 from Revolution Performing Arts to the Bridgewater Ringham Regional School District Wellness Fair, $200 from Teacher Union to the Bridgewater Rainham Regional School District Wellness Fair, and $500 to Bridging Lies from Trinity Episcopal Church. and payroll warrants dated December 24th 2025, January 8th, 2026, and January 22nd, 2026. >> So moved. >> Motion made by Mr. Loach, second by Mr. Gibbons. >> All those in favor? Any opposed? >> Motion passes. Next, we have administrative and school committee reports. And we will start with the Mr. >> Thank you again, Mrs. King. Obviously,
017the bulk of my uh information tonight will be presented later in the agenda during the FY27 preliminary budget. I did want to provide two brief updates on uh the operational review as well as the UMass Con Center project. Um as you know, the district last spring uh enlisted the services of the common center which is out of UMass. It's a public policy center that assists towns, cities, towns, and school systems and other municipalities and various organizations uh with a a myriad of services. Uh we asked them to help review our budgeting practices and uh assist us with making our budget process uh much more transparent than it uh is. We obviously realized during the override as much as we think we shared uh you know a wealth of information and made it available. We also
018realized that there's always opportunities for us to reflect and grow. So if there was a suggestion out there or a different practice we could put in place. We certainly wanted to be able to do that. Um so we enlisted those services last spring and continue to work with them. Uh their deadline uh is coming up for our submittal of documents and we hope to have a finished product from them uh towards the end of February. uh which will then be able to share with with the community and obviously the committee first. Uh in terms of the financial review, as you know, both communities uh had asked the school system to complete a financial review uh given the again financial challenges that we had last year going into FY26 and the failed override. Um and so
019we did send out requests for proposals and we had one firm respond. Uh they have undertaken that work. uh we have received um two draft reports from them. They basically have broken their work down into uh really five different phases. Phase one and phase two are complete. We should be receiving phase three and four any day now. In phase five, if they're able to meet their timeline, uh should be due next Friday. Obviously, you know, we're staying with their holiday and vacation schedules and and winter weather. uh those deadlines may have to be uh altered a bit, but right now we're still targeting uh next Friday the 13th um to have final product from them, but certainly we'll keep the committee informed and provide any updates. uh we did ask them as part of the
020[clears throat] scope of work to be prepared to not only share a technical report but also a very userfriendly report that's easily uh readable and easily digestible as well as being prepared to do a presentation not just for school committee but also the community. So soon as we have that information and when those presentations andformational sessions can happen certainly provide additional information. >> Thank you. Do we have any questions on that? Um, next we have budget sub. Um, on January 12th, 2026, the budget subcommittee met at 5:30 in the superintendent conference room. In attendance were Mr. Fitzgiven, Mr. Lo, Superintendent Powers, Assistant Superintendent Barry, Miss Babalova, the director of business services, Miss Roashau, Treasurer, and Mrs. McDougall, our reporting secretary. and myself. Um, fiscal year 26 um was we received a budget update regarding that.
021Miss Babaloma gave a monthly update um at that time. She confirmed spending continued to align with the school committee approved budget. She also provided I'm sorry this was a quarterly update. She also provided graphs looking at historical spending trends and expenses by categories. Salaries and benefits continue to be 67 of the 67% of the entire budget. No action was taken at that time. It was justformational. U Mr. provided the budget subcommittee an update on CLA operational review and the calling center review which you just indicated. Um we also received a report on the base program that we have been following for the past two years now I believe. U Mr. Powers reported that based upon the first half of the year reports the base program overall was trending in a positive direction. The base director
022continued to monitor staffing registrations and collecting payments on time to be self sustaining. that was noted. It was recommended to review the summer phase program and that was put for the following budget subcommittee to review. The minutes of December 15, 2025 were approved at that time. U Mr. gave a brief overview of the fiscal year 2027 budget at that budget subcommittee man meeting um and received feedback from the budget subcommittee at that time on Monday February 2nd 2026 the budget subcommittee met again at 6:30 in the superintendent's conference room in attendance were Mr. Fitz given Mr. Superintendent Powers, Assistant Superintendent Barry, Miss Babalola, Director of Business Services, Miss Ro treasurer, Joelen Silva, the B the base director, Mrs. McDougall, the reporting secretary, and myself. Miss Babalola gave a fiscal year 2026 budget update for January.
023She again confirmed spending continued to align with the school committee approved budget. We reviewed all cost drivers which are areas that we keep track of such as substitute lines, utilities, transportation and out of district costs. Out of district costs, it was confirmed that we do have circuit breaker to apply to that line. Other of note in this budget is the capital which due to the capital being approved late in the budget um cycle is now starting to be um worked on. It is still at zero as of that budget subcommittee, but those projects have gone out to bid and will now start work fairly soon. Uh, next we reviewed the salary um annual rate. The budget subcommittee has committed the past several years to do an annual review of the rate of pay for proctors
024within the district. As they are not part of the union, they do received annual colas or step increases. Their current rate of pay is $204 $2043 um per hour and for fiscal year 2027 the first step ESP rate will be $22.3 um so the proctor rate currently is much below that after discussion it was agreed to recommend an increase to the proctor hourly rate in the amount of 2%. This would increase their hourly rate um for the fiscal year 2027 to $2084 per hour. Um I will entertain a motion to increase the proctor hourly rate for fiscal year 2027 to $2284.