001[Music] good evening and welcome to this scheduled meeting of the Milford school committee today is Thursday February 27th 2025 and this meeting is being broadcast and recorded by Milford TV copies can be obtained at the request of this board or through central office we'll start off tonight with um some Milford High School student recognitions for superintendent Awards all right so principal is jump up excellent good evening hello thank you for taking time out of the business that you have to recognize a couple of our outstanding seniors I'm really privileged to have the opportunity to come and speak to you about two of our students tonight Jennifer Cruz and V Ral um I want to start off with Jennifer so Jennifer you want to come on up you can take a seat next to Mr Wilson
002that is your prize congratulations um Jennifer is uh the recipient of the national school Development Council award for the class of 2025 and with the national school Development Council award we recognize students who've shown really exemplary growth and their achievement over time at Milford High School I want to talk to you a little bit about what Jennifer has accomplished academically and then I want to talk a little bit about who she is as a person and share some words from her guidance counselor so um academically Jennifer has done everything that we hope to see students do at Milford High School with each year that she has progressed in Milford High School she has challenged herself to a higher and higher level and every year that she's challenged herself at a higher level she has risen
003to that challenge so Jennifer's always done well at Milford High School in her first year at Milford High School she took one honors class in her second year at Milford High School she really stepped up and she took three honors classes in her third year at Milford High School she took two honors classes but she also did a full year year full year Service as a teaching assistant where she was working alongside our teachers in the classroom assisting them and aiding other students in their learning this year in her senior year uh Jennifer is enrolled in two honors courses and three advanced placement courses so again Jennifer started off taking one honors course in her freshman year she's graduating this year taking two honors classes and uh I'm sorry two honors classes and two advanced
004placement classes as I said earlier we could not ask anything more from our students this is exactly what we want to see our students do and all along the way Jennifer has excelled in her coursework um I've had the opportunity to sort of see Jennifer from a distance as a principal in her time here at Milford High School she's always composed herself with dignity I know that she is very very well respected by her teachers and her peers and I'd like to just read a short excerpt from um her guidance counselor's letter of recommendation for college and her counselor is Miss Claudia Sana tamsky and she writes about Jennifer's character she says Jennifer maintains a strong academic record while being actively involved involved in several extracurricular activities she's the current president of the national Portuguese
005Honor Society where she has shown her passion for both her Heritage and service by helping foreign language students at the elementary school level this commitment has not only earned her valuable community service hours but also showcased her dedication to making a positive impact on those around her in addition to her leadership and the national Portuguese Honor Society Jennifer is also a member of the science National Honor Society the best buddies club and the pre-health club each of these memberships reflect her passion for Learning and her willingness to help others Jennifer has a kind caring nature that makes her a natural leader and a supportive friend to her peers so again it's really my privilege to recognize uh Jennifer and I'd love to you know open up to the committee for any comments or questions for
006Jennifer this year's award winner what you guys got sure first off thank you always Dr all you do such a nice job really allowing us to get to know the students because we don't I personally don't know you Jennifer but that's amazing I definitely give you incredible kudos for taking all of that on especially senior year when some people are sort of going in a different direction I'd love to hear from your perspective maybe a little bit about your experience at Milford and we'd love to know what you're thinking about doing next yeah so um starting freshman year I didn't really know much but I feel like I just wanted to challenge myself each year a little bit more and up next I want to pursue nursing excellent it's a great career which APS are
007you taking this year AP Bio and AP Language and Composition excellent oh good luck well thanks for coming and best of luck we make a great nurse thank you congratulations thank you for being here tonight can you tell us a little bit about the it was a program that uh principal Alon mentioned where you were able to help other students so a little bit can you tell us a little bit about that and that experience for portuges Honor Society we have to do some community service and me and a few other students chose to go to um Woodland Elementary to help students that speak Portuguese with their schoolwork and with English excellent very good so if you decide not to do nursing want to go to teaching you know there good group of people here
008support you because it sounds like you but no especially for someone who speaks Portuguese exactly so but no that's that's that's really great we this is true this is true listen I'm promoting the teaching thing I feel like I'm starting to rub off any little that's great but again congratulations thank you anyone else yeah all right thanks very much congratulations that's really um quite the list of accomplishments already and challenges so good luck in the future thank you and then if you just hang around for a couple minutes we're going to take pictures after uh we talk about eating all right thank you Jennifer congratulations um next um I want to speak about VI Ral who you know well because V has served as uh the student representative to the school committee um she is
009on the agenda tonight as being the recipient of the Massachusetts Association of school superintendent award the certificate of academic Excellence VD has distinguished herself as a scholar I also want to mention tonight um and I'm sure that uh most of our school committee members read about this I hope many in our community did as well that VI has also been recognized uh this year by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts she is one of the commonwealths 2025 US Presidential Scholars nominee uh V is the only the second student in my 8ye tenure from Milford High School to be selected as a presidential nominee here for the Commonwealth so we're looking forward to the results of her application at the national level she'll be competing with exemplary students from all over the country for the presidential scholar award
010um I am uh not going to list all of V's accolades um I want to sort of Simply I want to speak about her her achievements as a student briefly and I want to speak about her as a as a as a human being as a young adult um as an academician uh vid reval is as strong as they get um she is one of the most accomplished uh academic students that I've seen in my 25 years in high school V is the Valle Victorian of the class 2025 uh we're very proud and delighted that she's been accepted early decision to Harvard um as someone who's got to watch her develop over the past four years it's really no surprise to me uh VD has distinguished herself from the moment she stepped foot in Milford
011High School is clear that she was a unusual young woman and a a really distinguished student uh I think as impressive as V's accomplishments are um I have been really more impressed with just how she has um how she has lived this experience of high school um in addition to having a ferocious work ethic and being gifted with a natural intellect um V is one of the friendliest most positive uh people you're going to meet um she gives of her time and talents ex with just extraordinary generosity um she leads by example um she truly is a servant leader and to see that in a person so young um is just remarkable um she is for for great great things her guidance counselor uh Mr gini wrote The Following in her in his uh letter
012of support for V what stands out most about V is not only her impressive achievements but also her unwavering dedication to making a positive impact on the world around her she's taken on numerous leadership roles including serving as the president of best buddies where she organizes events and fosters connections between students with and without disabilities her involvement in this program has taught her the importance of inclusivity and the power of community values that she carries into every aspect of her life as president VI has created opportunities for students of all backgrounds to come together and celebrate their differences and experience that has profoundly shaped her perspective and will undoubtedly continue to influence your contributions to any College Community um V uh leadership as the president of best buddies is just uh one of a long
013long list of leadership achievements that she's racked up here at Milford High School but um as the principal it's the one that I'm personally most grateful for um our best buddies organization of which which Jennifer is a member as well plays an incredibly important role um in the culture of our community and VD has taken responsibility for being a great Steward of that program um her predecessors have very her successors have very very big shoes to fill um but she's really um done a lot for our school um we are going to um we are certainly going to miss her when she's gone uh but we could not be more delighted to watch her move on to the next stage Megan sure congratulations V obviously we've had you know the great opportunity of getting to
014know you so thank you for coming here and you know sharing so much with us as you have I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience at Mur I think it's like from an academic standpoint right we couldn't ask for anything else like there's nowhere nowhere above to go what have you gotten out of your experience at Milford High um I definitely gotten an amazing education um I've taken as many classes as I possibly could with the best teachers ever um but I also have an amazing community of people um everyone here on the school committee all my teachers my amazing family and also my friends um I can't say that I've missed out on anything in high school I've gone to every event I'm constantly with my friends and with my family
015so I tried to have a like holistic High School experience and I think milr did give me that that's incredible and I think that balance really speaks to how capable you are and I'm certain you'll carry that forward so good luck to you I should have mentioned this one Jennifer was up as well I think I would be remiss as the parent of a senior not to acknowledge the emotional roller coaster that you're navigating and kudos to your family because it requires a lot of support at home to make those incredible things happen so we'll miss you thank you I want to miss you guys look forward to getting all the updates anyone else Chris quickly congratulations on this award wish you the best of luck in your senior year and and enjoying it and
016but I know that we'll see you I'm sure at a few more meetings before an official send off so so just enjoy everything thank you I'll just say similar words congratulations and and good luck in the future thank you so much I was just going to say I don't really have any questions I think principal atland did a really great job and the letters from both of your guidance counselors were wonderful to hear but to both of you congratulations and I love hearing about your involvement in best buddies I actually had well when I was in high school I would volunteer with best buddies as well but I recently went to the January best buddies dance so it was really nice to see that and actually V the way I met you wasn't through school
017committee it was because you were helping my daughter learn how to swim so I think that you know this just shows you know not anyone can get really great grades that's something that's difficult that you have to work hard for but the fact that both of you are so involved with your community and trying to make other people have great experiences just says a lot about your character so thank you both and congratulations thank you so much let's give them a run of Applause all right now we're going to do pictures real quick so if I could have Dr Allin and shair um we'll take a coup we'll take a picture with maybe Dr consig you can actually take the pictures why don't we reverse go first picture you guys one picture you guys your
018phone actually professional photographer there ago please come up [Music] I'm just kidding there's a good chance and you guys are all free to it was nice meeting you all congratulations than congratulations I'll go represent the district at the basketball perfect thank you it was 305 at half time the good the good guys the good guys you like that take it all right haven't got an update since then we will move on now to the update from the student representative um so hi guys long time no see um so the Milford wrestling team won the 2025 Massachusetts D2 state championships title which is very exciting for them um boy swimming won the hawk League championships and finished with an undefeated season the arts department help their Arts night before February break so that featured the music
019department with their love notes and small little groups and the visual arts and culinary arts programs so it's a very fun night for everyone involved the guidance Department held the FAA Festival on February 11th to help seniors especially with the financial aid process learning how to fill up the FAA it's very complicated and not very fun on March 12th a select number of early college students from our early college cohort will be invited to attend the Early College State House day so they'll get to learn about funding for the early college program across the state and how that can be implemented in no High School March 14th it's a half day also a p day um will be the filming of the lifp dub for the class of 2025 so that's exciting we're all definitely
020looking forward to that and as for like complains I think the only thing a lot of my peers have been saying are like the buckets um and the smell but we all understand that it's just temporary it's because of all the snow melting it's not really anything we can do we're hoping no more snow and this kind of resolves itself in the next few days cuz there's more leaking this year than we've ever had unfortunately questions comments quickly I appreciate you bringing up the buckets and in in a sense tolerating it right and and understanding that it is short live so I guess we appreciate that and if that's you know the kind of what your classmates are feeling it's good to know and and I hope that you know as said that hopefully the
021snow melts quick and the the water feature stops quickly um water features features yeah I promise we won't have that in in the new school no water features um but yeah no I appreciate you being very candid with us on that so thank you maybe just a followup question have you noticed that issue in the classrooms like I've definitely seen it in the hallways is it a classroom issue that you know of or not necessarily none of my classrooms have like any leaks right there's one classroom we have Miss year okay awesome thank you it's mostly the hallways though and three three really spot three real trouble spots yeah got it thank you that's it all right thank you very much thank you easy one all right so as you guys have noticed the next
022agenda item is rather lengthy uh we have approval of minutes and we have them I'm I'm going to try to take them in three sections thank you guys so we'll start at the top I'm looking at the approval of minutes for January 23rd 2025 that's a regular meeting and then February 11th 202 that would be the budget meeting that we held there's no corrections I might have take a motion to approve those two meetings um sets of meeting minutes together cor apart or just can you separate them because I want to vote on one and obstain from the other absolutely so let's start with January 23rd 2025 uh regular meeting motion to approve motion by Megan second by Brendan all in favor all right got that two abstain four in favor thank you all right
023and then we will go on to the budget meeting which was February 11th 2025 motion to approve motion to approve motion by Chris second by Michael all in favor I okay it's uh five in favor one abstain uh we got the next okay so the next set of minutes is from the backlog of executive session minutes that were periodically reviewed I went through those um so we have seven of these These are release they've all been approved in the past two sets of them will be released with redactions due to the technicality that the after contract is not signed yet so we're still working on that um so the executive session minutes to release are as follows March 23rd 20123 April 6th 2023 April 27th 2023 May 11th 2023 February 8th 2024 April 11th 20
02424 and August 19th 2024 there are no comment any of those which I thought we should have said before um we take a motion to approve those together motion by Michael second by Robin all in favor unanimous thank you all right and then the last section is uh executive session minutes that are being uh put up for approval only anybody have any comments or Corrections on any of those I'd just like to abstain from September 5th if we could pull those out separately absolutely so let's do that one first we'll go for the motion to approve September 5th 2024 executive session minutes motion motion by Chris second by Megan all in favor four in favor and one obain and then we'll try um the remaining would that be good all right so the remaining um
025executive session minutes for approval only are September 11th September 19th November 7th November 21st December 5th and December 19th of 2024 and January 9th of 2025 motion to approve second motion by Michael second by Brendan all in favor janous thank you we will uh work on releasing those when appropriate um so that's it thank you for that announcements correspondence and distribution I've got got one if there's nobody else um just really quickly uh I just want to emphasize this again the Milford High School wrestling team has won the state championship at division 2 this is the third time in four years they have won the State title which is incredible last year they came in second uh this is become a real Dynasty and is really a credit to the entire program um and our
026basketball team again is up about 16 points with about four and a half minutes left to go right now in a first round playoff game so those are my two announcements excellent Sports focused tonight Sports focused anything else right see not so we'll move on to invitation to speak and there is no one here for that brings to it brings me to the general chairperson update so I do have um three things on here so I'll move through these hopefully quickly um Tuesday I believe I met with the town finance director regarding our first pass at the FY 26 budget so he did indicate there was still a sizable Gap that we have here their Hope was that we would land somewhere around the 7.5 Target that was given we're around 9.5 9.56 something like
027that right now um so we do have some more work to do in terms of uh maybe whittling some things down the Administration has been made aware they're going to look at it again too we did set a meeting for 6 PM next week which is just an hour before our general meeting to come up with what I would say is a second set of options to be able to work with and then we may have a following meeting with the finance director directly so um the other thing that came up these these next to her today Michael and I attended a meeting uh earlier today with Dr kigle and the director of community use which is Chris Burns um Briefly summarize um Mr Burns was looking to do some more research in work on
028facility usage fees and that did include the idea of possibly bringing fees in for youth sports groups so essentially what uh Mr Burns was looking for was um some advice from Michael and I whether or not we thought the committee would have an TI to um investigate this further given current times and and the uh the advice that we gave him was that he should definitely look into it gather the data um and then we would discuss it as a full committee uh I would assume sometime this spring or this summer the goal that Michael shared which I think was a great one was to try to step into this so we would aim to potentially do something in the fall for the fall Sport Seasons to start that way and then ramp up as
029we need to so I would expect details to come our way at some point coming months and then finally I sat in with a meeting um I sat in with craigw and Carlos on a meeting today where they reviewed open town meeting articles and I believe this was just a request from town hall to uh periodically check in to see what can be closed so in short I just have the three on the list that were deemed by the group as completed so the Stacy fire alarm panel is done the high school field lighting is done and the track and turf project which which I think just had the repairs to like the fence and stuff like that that was what was left open those are all completed so um that will give the town
030back roughly $29,000 of what was left open one is Brookside closed out Brookside is not closed out um the information that was shared today was that the materials for the cracks in the floors between the units are in they're looking for the break to do the work Bally gave them April their a for that so I believe that's the last piece okay then a car rider thanks to ice the last week or so everything else from what I noticed looks like it's all great buttoned up so um any other questions on any of those items excellent all right that brings us to The Dual language programming update every everyone good evening um my name is Julia I'm the assistant director of dual language and multilingual programming in milart and I'm excited to share with you
031some of the work that we've been doing over the last year and a half to prepare to launch our program um so you all have access to some slides I've put together I'm going to be reading um some information from those slides and going off the off the cff a little bit I will be referencing what slide I'm on uh from time to time so you can follow along all right um on Slide two you'll see our agenda of what we're going to talk about tonight um trying to give a pretty bird's eye holistic view of the program as it it's incredibly multifaceted to start a dual language program on slide three you'll see a couple of important definitions so we're talking about dual language um education so when we think about this specific program
032this refers to any program that provides literacy and content instruction through two l languages and promotes three things these are the three goals or pillars of dual language programming that's bilingualism and biliteracy grade level academic achievement and sociocultural confidence um these goals in a dual language program are slightly different than you would find in a one-way immersion program um where all students are learning in one language um so that's an important thing to remember and it's something we keep at the Forefront of all of our planning is these three goals um we also have the definition for a dual language learner another acronym that we're bringing into our repertoire um so dual language Learners R dl's these are also categorized as multilingual Learners as in Massachusetts a multilingual learner is an English learner a dual
033language learner a former English learner or even a World Language learner right all right moving on the next two slides are going to give you a timeline of major highlights of what we've been planning in the past year and a half um so on slide four you're going to see some projects that are already completed um you'll see I was hired in July 2023 and I got started working on this project we established our dual language design team in August of 20123 and we did our first year of planning on Slide Five we're looking at our second year of planning um major highlights included our lasra retree with Mabe which is an organization we're paired with ma stands for the multi-state um Association for bilingual education it's a non profit that works in the Northeast
034that we partner with extensively for consultation and support as we're developing our program um we've also started our community outreach this fall fall 2024 we started meeting with the community meeting with perspective parents um in preparation for kindergarten registration which is happening now which we'll see March 2025 we have our K packet uh drop off happening next week and March 25th is going to be our Lottery all right so this is looking at what we're doing up until our launch in September 2025 have a question how does Lottery work how's a lottery work okay so um families are able to enter the Dual language Lottery through the kindergarten registration packet um there's a page in there that gives some context about the program and whether they want to opt in or not um when parents
035drop off their K registration packet which is happening next week Tuesday and Wednesday um we're going to basically check off that they're interested we're going to do some paper paperwork with them including the bilingual Continuum which is basically um a rating of how how much English how much Spanish each student speaks um this is going to help us uh collect some data and establish their Lottery pool okay we're going to have three lottery pools um the department of Elementary and secondary education recommends that we maintain a balance of English Learners and non-english Learners in our program and we also want to maintain a balance of students who are English dominant and Spanish dominant okay also in our community we know we will have students who are already bilingual in English and Spanish or who speak
036other languages so this is how we get our three pools we have our Spanish dominant pool we have an English dominant pool and then we have a pool for bilingual students or students who speak other languages okay um each of these students will have a randomly generated lottery number um the family will receive that number in the mail at the lottery we will pick one pool at a time um so we'll be picking numbers announcing numbers recording the lottery um and also recording the numbers as we call them at a certain point our seats will be filled and we'll start filling weight lists so we'll do that for each pool thank you yeah is it 50 like how was the split between your pools intended to be so it should be pretty much a balance
037it's a little bit tricky right because we're trying to balance our languages but we're also balancing our English Learners to non- English Learners our English dominant pool is going to be non-english Learners Spanish dominant will be and then our third pool is going to be somewhere in between so you could say it'll be about a third a third and a third but we do have to look at our whole pot before we can determine those numbers um so for example if we only have you know five Portuguese dominant applicants they're going to go into our pool but that's not going to be a third of our whole class y right and remind me total number of students that will enter the program mhm we're looking at 44 split between two home rooms both at Memorial
038no yes they'll both be at Memorial cool thank you questions all right stop me if you if you have any more questions all right um looking on to slide six this is just an explanation of the Dual language program application process so to um start a new program with the with with desie with the Department of of Education you first need to submit a preliminary proposal we did that in October 2024 um that was accepted and we were allowed to continue our application process we submitted a complete proposal in November of 2024 and this complete proposal was accepted on January 29th free and clear with no notes um so we are all set as far as the department is concerned to continue slide seven is going to give you a list of the Dual language
039action teams and pro uh projects that are happening this year in our second year of planning so the first one listed is our dual language education pedagogy committee this is um a group of teachers and Tas that I meet with once a month we actually met this afternoon um as you'll see soon we already have our kindergarten and grade one teachers and T ready to go they are already working together and building relationships at this point it's I couldn't ask for anything better they're they get along great it's kind of amazing I'm very glad um so I met with them today we also have our dual language design team which is in year two this is a list of the many projects that we're working on um sign engine operations at Memorial our curriculum alignment
040especially in math and literacy we have a transportation plan going on because um even though the Dual language strand is going to be located at Memorial it is open to all Milford residents so we will need a way for our Brookside zon students to get bust to Memorial so we have preliminary plans we won't have solid plans until we know who the children actually are and where they live um but that's happening we have a kindergarten switch model pilot happening as you'll see later um our students are going to be switching between English classrooms and Spanish classrooms so this year our two kindergarten teachers are already um modeling this pilot by sharing their home rooms even though they're teaching in English this year all right so by doing that we're able to figure out some
041of our scheduling snafus that we might not have known about until we're trying to teach in Spanish we want to know about that before that we're also choosing titles for our Spanish classroom libraries we have a special education and interventions team um thinking about when we're going to be doing our interventions our uh progress monitoring assessments when we're going to be testing in English and when we'll be testing in Spanish when we'll do both Etc looking at our building schedule updates to the report card that we'll need for the Dual language program and also Community engagement events so that's all of the teams that we have working this year to make sure we have a successful launch in September okay um on slide eight I'm going to be sharing some more information about our program
042model so first of all we are opening a two-way program which I've already spoken about a little bit when we talk about ways in an immersion program we're talking about the students who are in the classroom so in a two-way um program the students in the classroom speak both Target languages right so I talked about how we are going to have students in the class who um primarily speak English and who primarily speak Spanish in a one-way model for instance all the students speak the same language so if you have um a class of English-speaking students all learning French that's a one-way model we are opening a two-way model um we are also planning a 50/50 model okay that means that 50% of the time the students will speak and learn in English and 50%
043of the time they will speak and learn in Spanish we'll talk more about the schedule on a couple other slides right as part of their academic MC program students will be taking Spanish language arts and English language arts every day um the languages of math and science and social studies are going to alternate each year in kindergarten students will be um learning math in Spanish and their science and social studies will be in English and then each year students will be attending their specials and related arts classes according to their grade level okay the next two slides are going to show you a quite simplified version of what the kindergarten um uh schedule is going to look like so for example for a student in Miss Lama's um Home Room they're going to start their
044day on week a arriving and having morning meetings Spanish langage arts and their math classes in Spanish with Miss limma around midday they're going to transition into Miss woodbury's class she'll have an afternoon check-in with them to help them transition to their new classroom and their new language and they will study English language arts science and social studies and they'll be dismissed on a bwe it shifts so on a b week these students are going to start learning in English with Miss Woodbury and then in the afternoon they transition to miss limma okay the next slide is just delineating what a two-e cycle looks like for home room number one and Home Room number two all right so each um each Home Room will switch schedules every week and this um this does a few
045things it ensures that students in a given Home Room aren't learning in Spanish every single morning and then English in the afternoon where they may be fatigued or the other way around so that's the reason for the the changing schedule week by week on slide 11 you're going to see our dual language um kindergarten through grade five rollout plan we are planning ahead to roll up program through grade five reaching grade 5 at Woodland in the fall of 2023 um we're anticipating to continue the trajectory of having two 50/50 classrooms in each grade level up through grade five so that by the fall of 2023 we will have 12 dual language classrooms in MPS the next slide is showing our planned program language and content allocation by grade level which I already explained a little
046bit um at the top of the chart you'll see that students will have their English language artarts and Spanish language arts um every day every year and in the second half of the chart you will see how mathematics and then science and social studies alternate language year by year right ask a curriculum question and it might be pointed that way I'm not sure uh on the ELA that's the El program Craig that we've been discussing on the Spanish La I thought I was thought I was under the impression that part of the reason we were going with this program was because it offered curriculum in Spanish but maybe it does not okay so the two programs that were piloted were um cka and E CA has a Spanish counterpart called Caminos and elel does not
047got it um so we have gone with the one that has not that was the consensus okay um having Spanish was not part of the criteria it wasn't part of the pilot um so since that consensus was reached I have been working on a Spanish curriculum adoption plan um in the past two years I've done a lot of networking and School visits around Massachusetts there are four um Spanish curricula that are in common common usage and I'm meeting with representatives from all of those companies um and I hope to come to a consensus about that in mid-march I don't recall a budgetary allocation to support that should is that something we should be talking about that's probably going to be minimal because it's just the two classrooms yeah so for kindergarten it's it is going
048to be minimal okay um for grade one it's going to be um more of a budget initiative and that will be included next November great thank you all right on the next slide as you'll recall I was talking about some Community engagement events you'll see a list of our previously held events we had a dropin session in November um we had a presence at kindergarten packet pickup night and then we also held three in-depth information sessions in February um upcoming I'm holding office hours just in my office for any families who are entering the lottery and want to sit down and have an in-depth conversation whatever questions or concerns they have I'm going to be meeting with them how's engagement been at those events I'm just curious if you're engagement has been low but enthusiastic
049um I would say as this is a new program and it is kind of hard to pin down all the parents of kindergarteners even after we get the the the census it's hard to be in touch and it's not it's honestly not something I wanted to um advertise super widely well because I didn't want parents to come who aren't enrolling kindergarteners and for them to waste their waste their evening to be honest um so engagement has been a little bit low but they've been extremely enthusiastic there are people I've seen multiple times who I know by name and by face at this point excellent thanks in the next slide I'm talking a little bit about our program name and logo search we've put in a lot of effort into the development of this program and
050we don't want to just refer to it as the Dual language program or the Spanish program um so we have a process where each member of our dual language committee and our design team is nominating a name this year um so we're going to have 17 total nominations in May we're going to vote so we have a top three we will develop um two logo options to go with each name and then we're going to have our enrolled families vote on the final name and logo so we have multiple points to have Community um voice involved in our program naming and this ass signage will also develop to be present at Memorial all right on the next slide you're going to see the eight-step process of our Lottery and regist registration which I already went
051through um a little bit we talked about how families are entering the lottery through the kindergarten registration packet we will get their information at packet dropup off they will receive a lottery confirmation letter that has their pool and their number and an invitation to observe the lottery after the lottery each family is going to get a phone call with their result um there are going to be two results we're calling an affirmative result where they get a seat and a wait list result so they'll receive a phone call um with their result and what next steps they will have the next day they will get a letter in the mail again there's an affirmative letter um whereby they can confirm or decline their enrollment in the program and then there will be a weightless letter
052as well that will go out um we're going to ask families to confirm or decline by April 8th after April 8th we will look at our enrollment and see if we're going to start um contacting folks from the weit list at that point right the summer are also planning to invite enrolled families to a short dual language um program orientation which will be four half days at Memorial um so students have a little bit of K Readiness in English and Spanish the next slide I'm introducing um a document which I believe you also have access to called the language learning handbook um as we transition into a dual language District it was recommended To Us by m and other organizations that we develop a language learning handbook and it outlines a few things so number
053one our District's language learning philosophy it describes our language profile in regards to our staff and our students and it also shares um upto-date expectations and best practices for our two programs right right so we now have an SEI or sheltered English immersion program to support our English Learners and we also have a dual language program which supports our English Learners and our other multilingual Learners um these programs vary greatly in the language expectations and best practices um so this is a a document for staff families and community members to understand what's going on in these classrooms right on slide 17 you're going to see uh links to a couple of resources that you may find find interesting and that's all I got so far other questions yeah thank you um when I joined school
054committee five years ago this is one of the wishes I had for the district to do a an immersion program um and so thank you for putting this together clearly well thought out so good thanks you're very welcome I'm happy to do it um before I came into this role I was the English learner coordinator here at the High scho school um and I I didn't I didn't know that this was up upcoming I was just hanging out doing my job um and I saw this posted and I love a project I love language learning um and I'm super excited to do it I know it's something the district has wanted to do ever since the look act in 2017 so we're very very excited I have a couple questions oh yeah um yeah thank
055you for this this this is really EX um I know when my daughter enrolls in in a few years we're going to definitely check that box we'll be here um do you anticipate uh and this actually could be a question for everyone uh do you anticipate any um additional school choice um from other communities coming in because of this program and then how would they be decided in this would they would they be eligible for this Lottery pool at this point we've said no um students aren't eligible by school toys um right now we're not adding any additional classrooms to our schools we basically transitioning two of our classrooms to dual language so we're not increasing capacity at all um if in the future this is something that's coming up it'll be something for us
056to discuss and whether or not we want to increase capacity in that way okay then the second question on top of that if we get like 85% of our parents saying that they want to be a part of this I think the next question is going to be well how many more classrooms can we add for kindergarten in year two um is that like do you have a speci in mind that we would want to have that discussion I don't I that comes down to um budget and Facilities Che Staffing that's tricky too because the Staffing is very specialized for that program so exact I think that would be probably another like threeyear process to like redo because we'd have to not only do it for kindergarten have to go all the way up through
057got it m thank you I have a couple just this is really exciting I just have more like logistical questions absolutely so the first one is just about the itself so I saw in the slide it takes place at the miltown library so are you opening the lottery to the public is that why it's there or why was that the ch ch location um it h it's happening during the school day okay so that's why you need to do it at yeah I um I I too often Reserve this space a lot of the time um but we didn't want to have um members of the public are invited to observe I don't think anybody who's not in the lottery would be interested on doing that on a Tuesday morning at 10 o' um but
058we didn't want to have a situation where we were going to have to figure out logistics of having you know parents come into a school having a space that wasn't going to be used during the day so that's why it's at the library it's also accessible for Wheelchairs and curious what that would look like and so and I mean you'll figure out I'm sure how that'll look just kind of thinking about like balancing like people knowing obviously this is a transparent process but also like there might be some confidentiality involved the student names so just kind of think yeah absolutely so I can talk a little bit about that yeah um so all families are invited to observe um we've communicated you know when and where it's going to be um we've we've also said
059that if your child's um number is called and has a seat you can accept right there and we don't have to do a lot a letter process you can do it right then um but we're not calling any names at the lottery it's all going to be um their numbers um so families have also been instructed to please bring your lottery number because we're not going to be saying any names um we're also going to record the lottery um on video we're going to be um it'll be a process where the lottery picker will choose a plastic capsule open the capsule read the number it will be translated if necessary they will hand it to a recorder who will record it in a spreadsheet they'll hand it to a third person who's going to tape
060it onto a graphic organizer so we have the order represented um it's on video we're saying it out loud We're translating for anybody who needs it we have Spanish and Portuguese um on board we're going to have it in our spreadsheet and then we'll also have it physically represented so I think that's really helpful to hear right because I'm sure you know individuals entering the lottery especially very limited number of spots families might be excited so it is nice to hear that it's going to be a very clear and transparent process um I apologize if you said this but students whose home language is Portuguese I know how you mentioned looking at first language English first language Spanish is supposed to be about 5050 for students whose first language is Portuguese would they would it
061come out of like both sides or how does that work yeah so that's why instead of s sort of saying 50 50 we want to say a balance right so the reason we want a balance between our English speaking and Spanish speaking is that um both communities can act as L language ambassadors and language models for each other but we don't want to cut anybody out the reason we're having a 2-way program at all is to be inclusive um so that's why I kind of say between our three pools it's going to look like a third a third and a third um language- wise where you come down to the 50/50 is what the state says about English Learners to non-english Learners so the English Learners will speak English and then the English Learners could
062speak any language sounds good and then my understanding is students would enroll in kindergarden and continue correct is there a process say hypothetically a family decided to exit a process for families to exit the program yeah there is so if any um students are struggling socially academically in any other way they're going to be referred to our mtss process like any other student um and we will you know put interventions in place we will do progress monitoring in order to support that student families um will be able to withdraw their student um when they confirm their receipt they basically sign a a a letter that says I fully intend to support my student through grade five but we understand that might not be a good fit for everyone um depending on the time of the
063year if families decide to leave we would highly encourage them to wait until the next school year so that their child could start the year with a a new home room from the beginning makes sense and then I just had two more quick questions sorry um so looking at the kindergarten for next year I see you know obviously the students are get Spanish language arts what would what are the other kindergarten classrooms doing during that time is there a spe is it more English language arts that they're doing Spanish instead okay okay so um when we're in a dual language program we need to think about holistic literacy so literacy is a skill that exists in your brain no matter what language you speak okay um so basically we need to look at the number
064of literacy minutes not even thinking about Ela just the number of literacy minutes that a kindergartner gets all right those minutes are going to be split between Spanish and English right so the students um in the Dual language program when they're learning with Miss Woodbury they're going to have fewer English literacy minutes than your average student because they're making up those minutes in Spanish as part of our curriculum alignment process after we've brought on our curriculum we're going to be developing um a holistic scope and sequence of our foundational skills um to see what's the same what's overlapping so for for example the the sound letter correspondence for M transfers in English and Spanish so wherever M comes up first in the scope and sequence they're going to be teaching the the children M for
065the first time all right the classroom whether it's English or Spanish who does it second that's going to be R you right so we don't have to double our work we basically have to look at in our curricula in Spanish and English what's overlapping and what's discreet we're making sure that everybody's getting what's discreet and what's overlapping could happen in either classroom okay sounds good then my last question which you might not have the information for yet but I know you mentioned you've been talking about Transportation are we anticipating an impact to the transportation budget by having you to rethink the routes a little bit for kids that normally would go to Brook side I I can take that one if that's okay if you if you want we have met about it already but
066yeah yeah I don't think it's going to have an impact on um the transportation we may have it may have a slight impact but again I don't think anything can build in the budget on supervision okay so we're going to have to really look at what the numbers look like to really have a clear sense of it but we think we can we can manage it without increasing the budget sounds good thank you those are all my questions thank you for that no problem I hope I was clear anyone else quickly uh thank you very much for presenting tonight I don't have any questions because I feel like you covered a great deal of this so I really appreciate that especially the uh that action and team projects okay so I appreciate all the information
067that you delivered to us and uh good luck thank you all right thank you very much for coming thank you good night all right so that brings us to Spring Town Meeting warant articles so I believe that these are due into town hall tomorrow but we did put some thought into this so the the first one listed here is the vending machine uh article which I think I opened um here it is now if there's any questions on this this is the one that I believe comes up every year um do we vote on this I don't recall do the warrants on moving for yes y there's no questions on the um bending machine one I'll take a motion to approve so Move Motion by Michael second by Robin all in favor unanimous thank you
068all right so the second one that you guys see here is for the literacy curriculum's onetime cost um this was the result of a discussion U with Dr Mcintyre and then with the finance director at Town Hall in an attempt to do two things number one bring our operational budget percentage down a little bit and also to make it above and beyond clear that this is a onetime spend that will not stay inside the budget the following year um so the finance director supported this idea it was his recommendation to leave it blank for now so that we can pass it on to the Town Administrator and it may get withdrawn if it all fits into the budget the way it needs to um but he wanted us to get it out there in their
069hand so they have it ready to go and then will work on that piece after um the number I'm going to make this up she might have it a little more accurately is somewhere around 375 378,000 for the first year cost it's about that um I'm sure you know my memory with numbers um but I do know that it was that that that information was shared with me so it'll be around or under 400,000 is is the anticipation so um any questions on the wording or using this tactic I do have to share this with um fincom and the education group and Al so that's on my list of things to do probably tomorrow all right if we support it I'll take a motion to pass it along motion by Brendon second by mik all
070in favor unanimous thank you policy we have one file ik KF competency determination and graduation requirements who want us to speak on what that's about um actually Craig okay all right so thank you if you recall we had a vote in in November that eliminated mcast as a competency determination uh so it's no longer legal for mcast has to be used um for competency determination however competency determination still um it's it's still a requirement there needs to be a compens determination in addition to the graduation requirements all right the way that the law reads is um they have to show Mastery in I'm going to I'm going to paraphrase it it's not exactly like this but they have to the students have to show Mastery in the subjects that were tested in mcast something to
071that effect so that's what the commy determination is about so if you look at um the reason we have to create a policy is because um there are students in the graduating class that haven't previously met the competency determination through mcast so we have to create a pathway for them um to graduate this year um by meeting the competency determination does everyone understand that so far okay so if you look at at what we have here basically the coursework that's tested in mcass in the high school mcass um is algebra 1 in geometry in math and then English 2 and then um it's one of the following science areas so it's biology it's chemistry it's physics or it's um technology engineering so if a student passes one of the the um this this group of
072courses they meet the competency determination that's all this policy is saying so it's the graduation requirements are one thing that's something that's in the the program of studies that hasn't changed at all there's this other piece the competency determin ation which we're just trying to illustrate here um as the way to the pathway to graduation for students that haven't met um the mcast requirement okay thank you further discussion just quickly um thank you for that explanation that cleared it up and just to clarify yeah so the the program of studies get within the handbook it it will have the other cour like like history and Civics right so even though we're not test the students aren't tested on mcast in those particular subject matters students are still required to take those in order to meet
073graduation requirements correct it's two different things but that you need to have them both okay and generally in order to meet the graduation requirements you're going to have these courses in the competency determination anyways M anything else I see none okay that wraps up the discussion portion what's the action we're looking to take here moving forward second so it's a motion by Michael to approve the policy file ik KF competency determination and graduation requirements second by Chris all in favor unanimous excellent all right that brings us to the report of the superintendent of schools all right I have three updates for the uh committee this evening the first is um kind of a big one um I'm planning to retire from the Milford Public Schools on August 9th 2026 I am grateful for this experience
074and the privilege of leading the Milford Public Schools one thing that we do not do well in public education is leadership transition planning and I've been speaking with both the chair and the vice chair of the school committee about some ways to support a successful transition to the next superintendent and I just want to be clear that I'm invested in supporting that transition um I not only look forward to supporting that process but to also continuing to support the students and families of Milford through the end of the next school year I appreciate and continue to appreciate the trust the community has placed in me as the superintendent um and prior to that as the assistant superintendent over the last 12 years we've accomplished a great many things over this time and we'll continue to
075work to make our schools the best they can be for our students and families and obviously more to come on this sure I'm just going to add one quick comment to that too so obviously want to acknowledge um the question I think most in the community will have which is what comes next as Dr Mcintyre noted he's been in communication with Michael and I and and we've shared obviously the information with the committee as has been um has been necessary so obviously the the committee members have had some time to wrap their heads around what's next what the future looks like as individual members uh what I've done is I've worked a little bit to sh shift around some of the agendas of the upcoming meetings and the plan is to begin discussions on what
076comes next at our next meeting which is scheduled um next Thursday March 6 so we'll Carry On from there with next steps all right good next up is the msba update um and this is a very brief one um there are two pieces left to complete in the eligibility period process the first is completion of the enrollment meeting and the second is the feasibility study agreement we had an initial enrollment meeting that went very well with the um msba and are waiting to schedule a followup meeting to continue this discussion I anticipate that'll happen probably in the next four to six weeks um the feasibility study agreement is also driven by the msba and that's going to happen I believe at the end of April or thereabouts um but we've completed all of the other
077requirements for the msba to date um well ahead of schedule um for the process and we should be wrapping up and getting ready for Fe the feasibility study relatively shortly so it's all good news I don't know if there's any questions there I just have one question Kevin who is who owns sort of putting together the RFP for that the building committee okay for the feasibility study sorry that was there yeah yeah the building committee will work with it and I think the school committee has a part to play as well okay thanks uh last is kind of this is this is something that I think we just have to keep in mind policy update we're seeing shifts in policies with the new federal Administration and then and then sometimes shifts to those policies and
078then sometimes Court challenges by multiple states to those policies um so I want to say we're committed and required to follow state and federal laws as a um as a school department but there'll be times when again the policies are litigated or rulings are made on regulations and I want to be cautious in reacting too quickly to a policy or regulation change because sometimes we have to let things percolate and marinate a little bit before we jump to changing our policies um and it's funny like the title n thing it's not really a great example because we've been working on it a while and the new Administration came in and everything kind of reverted back based on a judge's ruling but I think we're going to see a little bit more of that over the
079next couple years I'm hoping it's going to slow down in the coming months but I think just be aware of that in cognizant of that and we'll be bringing I think some policies to retire and then some policies to bring back and hopefully we don't have to do a ton of that over the next couple years um but we'll we'll see we'll see what happens um just more of an FYI than anything else and you know we're having attorneys look at this both our in-house councils as well as um some of the councils we use regularly for policy and and other matters so and that'll continue to happen that's more just an FY I don't think there's anything more to be said there all right thank you very much that brings us to the report
080of the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and assessment thank you Mr chairman I just uh want to give the committee a brief update of um I guess all the irons in the fire right now um just so you're aware of of just all the different things that we have going on I know that some of these things are near and dear to all of you and things that we've talked about um not only this year but years passed too so um U I think it's important to note that that a lot of this is based on our curriculum review process which is a fairly new process that we started uh a couple years ago anyways um so there is a link to the 2024 25 curriculum review process um it's also focused on hqm adoption
081um we prioritized mathematics first uh and then going into K8 literacy um and then finally this last piece that we just T talked about was the competency determination there still still questions around it so although we we I guess what Dr Mcintyre said about policy changes there is a there is some more policy change about U the competency determination that may come next year this is what we just passed through this year is just to get us through this year um I think that the state is trying to create a different just guidelines for for districts um um in one of the one of the one of the pieces of the guidelines that we have to have a policy in place so um I think they're going to give us guidance on what that looks
082like in the future um so in mathematics we're in year three of our K5 adoption um year of uster math sorry we're in year two at 68 level year one at Algebra 1 and we're hopeful that in 25 26 we'll be moving forward with um geometry and Algebra 2 in auster of math um we're in year six of ST Math adoption uh and then we have this math Connections course at Stacy um which we're we're really excited about and it's still um we're still building it as we go uh there's three different pieces of it right now that we're working with um in this math connection class we have a we're working with um a program called Rapunzel which uh helps kids B basically trade stocks um and helps them understand what that's all about
083we have a financial literacy curriculum with fit money and then we're working with pbl Works through a grant U with 18 where um we're creating Project based learning opportunities for kids uh in mathematics which are supposed to go along with what we're doing in illustrative math um so again that's something that that's ongoing um and we're really excited about uh I think at the end of it the goal is that kids going through Stacy Middle School will end up with four years of math and three years um and I I think that uh it's a it's a model program um that hopefully it bear some fruit for us uh for our kids anyways um Ela and reading we're in year one of amplify Ela adoption um that's in 68 we all know that uh we
084came to consensus at K5 with El education um we have partnership we have a gleam Grant and this is year three of three for The Gleam Grant and supporting what's happening in 68 they helped us through the process of um selecting a a program um we're in year one of three in our learning acceleration Network or land for K5 um where Carol and others work with u Folks at the state level um to help us through that process um we're in year two of ignite uh that works with high dosage uh virtual tutoring at grades one and two um unfortunately that that funding is going away after this year that was a grant funded program through 18 and basically 18 trying to to show proof of concept to the state um the state has announced
085there is going to be some money for high dosage tutoring programming but they haven't released any um any particulars yet so we're hoping for that to come through um moving on we have some stem and science initiatives right now so open SED we're in near three of our 68 adoption so at the the Middle School level um we're fully implemented with open SED uh we're in year two of field testing at grade five so all of our grade five classrooms are using open side Ed uh units and they're just learning actually about the last unit I believe coming up uh we have a select group of third and fourth grade teachers that are using it as well uh we're hoping that in next year we'll have full open tied adoption at grade five and we'll
086Pilot One One open SED unit at grades three and four and then hopefully that'll lead to a full scope and sequence at K4 uh I know that we've talked about this before um we're really trying to slow our our role with science and social studies we the same way we did with literacy because we feel like at at K4 there's only so much that our teachers that we can put on our teachers and so that they can roll out programs well so we want them to be do a really good job with math so that they're confident and this will be year four coming up now in year four they're rolling out a literacy program in Year One um and so we're going to have to do the same sort of thing when we're doing
087social studies and science as well um just so that they're comfortable uh and they know the ins and out of the program as they try to roll out a new program um in Project Lead the Way next year uh we've we've applied for a Grant That'll hopefully get us to a spot where in stem programming at the middle school um they'll be doing one module one module in um the engineering one module in biomed and then one in um computer science so that in what in sixth grade when they do computer science the stem teachers can say hey if you like this module guess what we have a pathway at the high school this connects directly to the high school and then they can do that in each of the different um Pathways and hopefully
088that'll open the doors for some some students um and then also next year we'll be reviewing what's going on at Project Lead the Way programming at K5 just to ensure that we're aligned um going all the way through um it's it's challenging to to fit what what we have going on in stem just because of the schedule constraints um at the elementary schools we run stem on a week to week on like a two we cycle but they get it three times during the year um and at the at Woodland we run stem once a week and as a tough model to do projects over the long term um because you got to keep revisiting one one time a week so it's hard um social studies we're actually beginning curriculum writing at uh the middle
089school starting tomorrow actually with our eighth grade group um we have a consultant to help us with that um our consultant is starting with A needs assessment of what's going on at the middle school um and then she's going to help them uh write uh unit vbd designed um units complete with lesson plans so the idea is that this project is going to take from this rame to next rame um we have the full year American government course with an edic Civics project that's um taking place we have a grant to work with uh Democratic knowledge project or dkp um we're in year two of our grade five Humanities course which sort of condenses our writing and social studies course in grade five um and then hopefully in the like I said in elementary we're
090looking at 26 to 27 to create a scope and sequence off of eel um and be able to bring more of the social studies standards into literacy um so that we can reduce the number of social studies units that we have at the elementary level to um increase the number of science units that we have that makes sense but I think that's going to take us a year or two anyways uh health and wellness we have uh groups of our PE and health teachers uh working on Curriculum maps that's going to be a full year process it started I have March there but it actually started in February um some of the questions that we need to ask where do where doal initiatives fit where does like bullying curriculum fit in our health and how
091do we get ele an elementary Health curriculum um I think that we can all agree that it's nearly impossible to put one more thing on a elementary teacher plate so how do we make that happen we does it happen in a PE course um or do we have to hire Health teachers to make that happen so that's some of the stuff that they're working through right now um you heard about the Dual language programming um we have high school and middle school um teachers revising uh World languages at the middle school level right now um this was the first year we had to change our programming we had um we used to have a sign a full year seventh grade World Language you you get to choose coming out of sixth grade you either go
092into a full year Spanish full year to French um for this year it's changed where every student that's taking a World Language gets a half a year French half a year of Spanish then they make a decision going into eth grade after actually basing it on a half a year of whatever language they um they like um and then we're doing the same thing up at the high school where we're revising um we're revising based on updated Frameworks and also writing ubd designed um units and then finally the work that we're doing with performance assessments um that hopefully aligns to our portra of a graduate uh we have some cross District collaboration going on with mcia um yes mcia is still alive and well we actually have some teachers going to the state house on
093Tuesday I believe to um talk through what performance assessments are and how we use them at in our schools um and I think a good example of it is a Civics project that we run in 8th grade in high school um I think one question that we're wrestling with with performance assessments is how do we do a better job showcasing the student work um we do have specific events like um like the art show at the end of the year just recently there was an SD High School SD um showcase um where there was a bunch of projects out here but how do we do a better job showcasing K to 12 all the things that we're doing um so I think that's something that we definitely need to get better at um so we
094have a lot going on um and I I think uh this is all leading in a good direction for us so I would say unless your question is brief um uh let's let me rephrase that if it's a if it's a brief or high level question we can feel those now if it's something more in depth then let's put it on that specific topic on a future gend item and we can talk it you a little more I think it's high level can you just understand how we're supposed to think about the curriculum review Rubik for new curriculum because I would think that would be like offthe shelf check check like the rubric well your process right has a rubric in it it talks about alignment to standards and modern learning practices like that's some
095of what we're buying I would think right yes and no all we can talk about it later yeah okay I don't I don't in theory yes okay we sh in thanks just quickly just a quick more of a statement as you were talking about trying to fit in more science and stem have you ever thought or considered just having a science and stem week for day anything like that so more of an idea you don't have to really more of a statement as opposed to a question there is a stem week uh it's in October we do run different activities more I guess more scheduled out if you're saying you're trying to get that in that's all so it's an idea maybe just putting the bug in your ear yep thank you any more bugs
096to insert I got more then I bet you too if you're GNA hold me down that was actually a a wide open Woodland joke that um all right thank you for that update so we will go now to the report of the school business administrator thank you chair um so um there are several links um about the fy2 budget report and um the first link is um second quarter report uh which is supposed to be like reported a few weeks ago um but we canel that due to snow um so if you open it up and um it's very similar to the uh quarter 1 report where I explained the um negative balance in uh each of the accounts um in um the budget detail report which is the second link and that data is
097from February 4th and I also uh attached the most recent one from yesterday um reflecting the balance as of yesterday and um for the second quarter report I would like to um I drafted um a motion at the end um to transfer balance from um accounts by function I'd like to motion as proposed to move the monies from those accounts okay second motion by Brendan and second by Michael do I need to read that out considering it's buried in this document or we good to go no as present all right so motion by Brandon to um adjust the budget as proposed categories as proposed and second by Michael all in favor that's unanimous you thank you any questions about the 25 budget yeah I saw the Q2 tuition expenses are already almost a million dollars
098higher than this year 2024 this is the first document uh the uh report the QT report yes um do we anticipate that continuing over into next year as well with that significant increase increase from 24 right here oh yes yes um the tuition like I mentioned for quarter one because of students um needs um tuition expenses is a lot higher than last year um so we just to keep monitoring and as you can see we transferred some money from other accounts to tuition and um we potentially will'll have um some money transferred back from the town because of um for circuit breaker about 150,000 so that will help offset this deficit so we're seeing two things in special ed one is um The tuitions increased pretty dramatically just percentage wise across the board just based
099on some guidance from the state they they're allowed to increase their tuition more than they have been the chapter 7 766 schools which are the a of District placements the other thing is is I think the mix of a of District placements just happens to be more expensive this year also than it was so you have those two factors and that's just based on the needs and the mix of students that are you know receiving those stud that was those things so some students will age out students will move so it be shifted um so it's it's I my prediction is we continue to go up just based on just the increasing costs of these particular programs but the mix of studs that we have and are providing services to are almost a bigger driver
100than the percentage increases in a sense because you know if we have a handful of very expensive placements it it might drive the cost up more than you know say seven or seven to 10 placements that are like a lot less expensive got it if that makes sense I'm not saying it right but I think you get what I'm saying no yeah yeah thank you than you I just have a follow-up question it's actually on the prior document when when you we were going through the transfers but one of the fixed charges cost savings was due to crossing guard vacancies I just want to make sure that we have all those spots covered so I think there were gaps in coverage I can't tell you if we're fully staffed right now okay um but I
101know whenever there's an opening we do work to fill it okay um it's it's just they're difficult to fill because we there's just not a lot of there's a large pool of people who are willing to kind of come in the morning and come back in the afternoon but whenever there is a spot we do we do try to fill it are times C we leverage the police or otherwise for like we have you know when there's when there there's specific like you know and I know Jim's even gone out and and crossed at a couple of the more challenging spots to cross and I know our school resource officers have assisted I drew light one morning like those to yeah yeah no no he jumps in when there's an absence or you know there's
102a couple abs and say he'll he'll jump into the most but yeah we've used both our transportation director and the police have stepped in at different times okay yeah thanks M right CH a few questions actually sorry um and going back if it's if I may to the uh transfer I guess the one one transfer I'm a little bit worried about is is reducing the operations maintenance by $250,000 um you know where we've got Ley roofs we've had a p burst at Stacy so I worry about when we start reducing that um I know that the the heating season's pretty much over at this point in time but I also know that I I I worry about anything that's going to come from a leaky ceiling here at at the school and what may uncover
103and onar so those are my only concerns with pulling from a maintenance budget that typically a lot of our projects are done as as the schools year ends in in June so you know there's going to be some um some expenses in uh late June and into yeah well late June so um I worry about that just want to make that note um and I guess the other thing is as we look at these accounts and we're reducing some and increasing others are we making these adjustments to our FY 26 budget no this is only adjustment to the fy2 budget which will be a base for 26 but so discussion are we adjusting as as you know if I'm reducing my operations and maintenance budget by $250,000 is my FY 206 budget going to show
104a $250,000 reduction in buser no um so I guess I'm trying to figure out like because we're we're moving money around which we've always done and I understand that but I'm just trying to figure out you know historically if we continue to move money from from an operations budget well let's just reduce it down on our FY 26 budget and put the money where it's going to be needed so we can prevent having to do these transfers is just so I'm following along it sounds like the question is are we are we taking 249,000 out of operations and maintenance because there's too much there there's too much extra there right now and it's okay to take that away I would here's what I would say let me can I answer this one sure all right
105what would say is that typically any money that's like Chris is absolutely right any money that is um I don't want to say leftover because that's the wrong way to do it we put towards projects in April May and June we've done that historically to kind of do you know like you know M like not major maintenance projects but things that fall between like a big yeah like and this year we're probably going to be able to do fewer of those I would say that you know the budget that when has put together was very thoughtful for 26 and I think is reflective of of real costs I think some of the challenges we've had to face in terms of Shifting money around you know prevents us from doing some of those mless projects that
106we typically do at the end of the year so I would I would not play around with a maintenance budget because you know we may have to bring some of that money back if like to Chris's point if an issue occurs it's significant or we get on that roof once everything melts down and say hey we got to do X Y and Z right we may have to figure out some other strategy MH does that answer the question I think both of you were asking it does it does like said I you know I I agree with you about needing to transfer the money to those other budget line items that are in deficit you know in that there's extra money I just worry about bigger projects that may or may not be able to
107happen or or or again another pipe burst and all of a sudden we we need that in our maintenance budget so again I just um looking ahead and just seeing how we can plan maybe how we can plan better for our FY 2 budget right on St yes and it's important to note that Len did not put together the budget for 25 too I just want I just want to say that publicly like this is not a budet che that yeah we can we cannot predict the future right this this report is from three weeks ago right and I didn't know about the leaking the bucket so right so maybe next year we're looking at a very healthy tuition budget and then we don't have to touch those we can do more Pro no one
108told you you needed to buy an umbrella during the month of February yeah so she doesn't have a recycling bit anymore for inside years too um okay good all right um so for FY 26 the chair has um done a good um very good update already I don't want to repeat um I just want to maybe give you um some numbers um so with um the approved initiatives uh after the two budget meetings the total increase is 9.56% but without the literacy curriculum the total increase would be 8.95% and uh in the next budget discussion we will like figure out strategies to bring the budget as close as to um as close to the town guideline as possible sure and then um finon had the meeting and uh they they sent us a set of
109questions we'll discuss those questions as well and um I put together the grand summary and we can look at those two and um also the cill budget we need to Revis it feels like an hour is not going to cut it and before that before the meeting if you have specific questions uh or like informations you need to put together to help with the discussion I'm happy to and so we're meeting Monday when Craig yeah just three of us and then the whole committee will meet um Thursday 6 yeah so if you can get the questions that you have to win by like Monday morning that' be IDE deal because then we can kind of work together to address them right anything else on that and person yes oh has fincom reached out with the
110um education subcommittee about scheduling a meeting with us specifically not yet no they the I believe Mike wanted to get his questions in to try to get answers from that and then I believe after that we'll have that meeting to talk does that process sound like what they've done in the past it has yeah okay that's yeah I just wasn't sure kind of looking ahead he has copied me on uh Mike Nicholson of the fincom education subcommittee has copied me on the emails that he sent out to when in administration so yeah I remember that okay um so next is the Personnel update for your information and on that uh I want to also give a quick update on the um the HR Consulting Services we we like we talk about a couple months ago
111and um so since since November we've worked on that and we develop a scope of work and there are five um focus areas um so the first is the HR compliance and the procedure review and second is Personnel policy and the procedure document for example HR handbook and um the third is a staffing analysis especially in the central office and uh the software utilization uh how to utilize uh use the um budget sense and the ticketing system more efficiently and the final one is uh to initiate to initiate a job description Workforce because um we need that we don't have good job descriptions um so we were about so we got the quotes and got the timelines from the um consultants and um as we as we plan to move forward we're informed by the
112town that they're doing a um Town audit on the school Center office so uh we don't want to duplicate work and or raise the resources so uh we decide to pause our process and just uh to fully support the town of audit and um we're eager to to to to hear the findings and the recommend ation um and that's it any questions yeah um that makes sense especially for the financial piece but why wouldn't we move forward with like the job descriptions and the other HR kind of stuff because um So based on the timeline um the the compliance and procedure reviews like a staffing analysis has to be done first before they move to the the second second stage um so that that'll that'll be the same set of interviews with us which the
113town audit is doing okay does make sense it does thank you all right thank you very much for that update so we'll get to that whenever the town is done I don't know how long their process is going to take either heard I don't know if you have um so we had several interviews already Craig was the first to be interviewed okay and my interview and other staff interview is in uh March okay and I don't know when the report is going to come out okay um but so our hope is to to to hire someone U for this year to help with HR and benefit but um I don't know maybe maybe not this year we'll see what happens we'll see we'll see what happens all right any other thoughts or questions on that
114before we move on yeah okay so that brings us to where am I consent agenda so we have four items on the consent agenda tonight so we have approval of warrants there are 14 in the amount of $938,000 3541 there's one gift it is in the amount of $4,000 from Js limb foundation for Math and Science prizes and then we have um February grants totaling $110,000 motion to approve so motion by Brandon second by Megan all in favor unanimous thank you like when eoes right subcommittee update you want to do policy first yeah um they might be the only one yeah we um uh Craig brought forth the policy today um we talked about um some Community use stuff today and uh also some uh fundraising so I thought i' I don't know how much
115more detail we want I think that's an excellent overview yeah nothing nothing ready to move forward this point EXC all right excellent future agenda items I do have that we'll U probably be looking to schedule a facilities subcommittee meeting potentially next week talk about a couple things including Stacy um Stacy heat and we may have to do that the week after just because I'm not okay I'm not Friday so maybe early the following all right I'll um agenda together and we'll we'll figure out that date okay all right if there's nothing else there then that would bring us to the conclusion of our Open session we do have executive session tonight to discuss an MTA grievance and we will not be returning to open session you any roll call Vote Yes yes yes yes yes
116also yes thank you very much good night