School Committee - February 25th, 2026

001Welcome everybody to the uh February 25th meeting of the Milton School Committee. Um we will begin by uh starting with the pledge of >> allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stand with all nice to have so many people here. It's great to have an engaged community. So, I appreciate all of you coming. Um, tonight we're going to be rearranging our agenda. Um, and we have postponed some items to future meetings because of the snowstorm and the staff wasn't able to get in. So, the preliminary approval for the Milton High School field trip to Europe, the early literacy initiative update, and the facilities advisory committee update will move to March 11th. Um, facilities was canceled due to a snowstorm. Tonight, we also are [snorts] doing something different. We will

002first present the FY27 budget information uh first followed by citizen speak to allow for public comment regarding the most recent budget information. So we had some discussion this morning. We had not been able to have any um school committee or finance committee conversations immediately following the initial presentation. Um, we were able to speak this morning, but we wanted to have the opportunity to have any conversation and comments reflective of the most recent updates and comments from the committee. So, we will do public comment following the budget discussion, and then we'll continue the rest of our agenda, which will be the superintendent's report, the chair's report, approving uh vendor warrants, approving minutes, and discussing the next items on the agenda. So, with that, John, I will turn it over to you. >> Sure. Uh, thank you.

003Um, welcome everyone to our school committee meeting on February 25th. I'm going to ask um, member Mark Luring to uh, put up the presentation that we uh, presented to the community at finance uh, prior to the February recess which I think was on February 11. Um over the course of February break, we had some meetings with our elementary principles and we had a meeting as recently as yesterday with our full leadership team. Um and we also had finance committee this morning. So the presentation that we generated on February 7 for finance has been upgraded a little bit. We've also received feedback from families through phone calls and emails uh both to the school committee and to me as your superintendent. Um, and in listening to that feedback, we wanted to make sure that we presented

004any updates to you um that would be maybe worth hearing prior to public speak so you wouldn't um you'd be able to take that into consideration when you make your comments later on uh after this. Um, so before we actually start the presentation and I led with this this morning at finance, um, I can absolutely understand why people are here today or have been emailing related to the concern that when you just receive a list of reductions that that list looks harsh to uh, some of our students that we work with that are most vulnerable students and families. it was heavy in its uh reductions in areas of special education and some of our uh DEI position work. Um and that feedback that we took in over the last two weeks was um very thoughtful.

005Uh we heard it. Uh I thought about it and um we presented something a little different today to make sure that we were um being uh very cognizant of the feedback from the community. Uh we have tonight's meeting to present what we're doing a little differently and we're presenting also a rationale that goes along with some of these realignments and reductions. We'll have a open budget meeting at our next meeting that folks will also have an opportunity to comment again uh before the budget's [snorts] voted. And we're trying to squeeze in uh a PTO budget night where I will host at the high school and just have an open form on the budget as well. All of those will be opportunities for folks to provide feedback. So with that in mind, we're going to walk

006through the presentation as it was presented last week and then at the end we'll let people know the different renditions of that that has changed between uh February 7 and today February 25th. So I ask for your patience a little bit. We'll walk through it. Some of you may have seen this already at finance or watch that meeting from the 7th. Uh so we'll go through it in a pretty medium clip. Uh but anybody can ask questions at the end and we'll get through this. So you can ask any question through your comments at public speaking. All right. So today uh we have the the presentation for the 25th at the school committee meeting. The agenda uh that is behind me reflects the different pages of different subjects that we'll be talking about uh throughout

007tonight. Um and then we'll also be adding the updated uh reductions and realignments as well that were discussed this morning at our finance meeting. U what you're seeing on the next page is the timeline. A lot of folks have been asking the question uh how did we get here when we thought we had an override that took care of all this. And I'm not sure everybody's starting in in um how they're approaching the budget, but it is important to note that we started the budget process uh back in uh October 15th where we talked with the town administrator and the finance committee. Uh we wanted to get a timeline on what when we needed to submit our budget and what that would look like. On the 19th of November, we did submit a level service

008budget of 5.2% which was significantly below the last two years, but but in line with the average over the last 20 years for the Milton public schools in most school districts across the state. And then we presented that level service budget information to the town administrator. So leading into November, even after uh the Thanksgiving break and leading into December, we thought that we had a rollover budget that we would be able to look at, make our necessary realignments, and then move the district in a way that we thought was good for children and teachers. Um so while we were in that mindset, we had a budget philosophy that we were going to utilize in order to make those um budget decisions. Uh on the next slide. Thank you, Mark. Um, right off the bat in

009early fall, we wanted to make sure that we were a long-term budget um, sustainable as a district. And you'll see some slides tonight that will show how that's been uh, a challenge uh, in in the district over the last few years. Uh, it's very important for us to be able to know that the funds that we're getting from the override and the revenue that we're getting from the town is consistent with the amount of uh, needs that we have as a district and the expenses that we have uh, as a school department. We also wanted to prioritize our number one um priority this year was strengthening the classroom instruction tier one every student in front of grade level work in front of their teacher. Uh it's very important. We've been doing a lot of good

010inclusion work in the district over the past few years. Seeing that happen in our learning walks has been fantastic and doing what we can to enhance that tier one instruction is very important for the students uh success. We also wanted to make sure that we were actively addressing student learning gaps. um as we have been doing this year and in future years we will do the same and also improve the school district and the culture of each school and climate um throughout the district. So with that said the next slide shows where we thought we were when we were presenting our budget in the fall. What you can see is the traditional document that walks us from the current um final point of the FY26 budget of 72,873,000. And you can see each each cost

011category and what it costs and what the percentage increases are and how we get to the 5.2% um final number. So just in salaries alone um when we roll our staff over there's an increase just in the salary line of 3,322,000. Salary line is 81% of our budget. Our non-sary line is about 19% of our budget. So obviously uh that is a substantial increase and that alone is about 4.56%. The increases to other lines uh are above 26,000 uh to salaries, increases, adjustments to substitutes and coverage, which we had challenges with in our last few budgets. Uh revenue offsets for uh the budget uh in the decreases to Medicaid and IDEIDA. That's kind of a budgeting function. Uh it's a negative number because it's an offset. Special education increases for out of district tuitions would

012be uh at that point in time 259,000 which would be about a 4.78 7.78 increase. Special special education contracted services as well as transportation was a 4.9% increase. transportation increases um in non- salary accounts uh yellow school bus foster care transportation and homeless would go up by 5% and facilities would be increased by 5% bringing the total to 5.2%. So again, this was basically rolling every staff member over, adjusting some of our expenses that are non- salary based based some of the contracts we have with our yellow school buses and other vendors that we work with. And I thought uh and we all thought we were coming in at 52%. That would have been a $3,788,000 increase or 5.2% for the next coming school year. And again, very much in align with what the average

013is over the last 20 years of building. The updated timeline [clears throat and cough] uh came to our attention in December that the revenue projections and the expense projections had a far gap that we needed to support and be connected to uh on behalf of the town. Uh after discussing that situation with the town administrator, uh we asked for a meeting with the finance committee of the select board. Uh and that meeting was on January 7th and that's when the $2.1 million deficit uh was discussed. Um and we began to address that be began to communicate that to staff and families and also began the conversation of uh political body to political body and town administrator to superintendent. How can we bring that number down? Our goal in January 7 was to do the best

014we could to uh reduce the impact on next year's budget, but also really hone in on the fact that the formula for the town moving forward after the override um was that the schools in the town would only grow by 3% a year. I just want to pause for a second there. That's a big shift in what we've seen in the district for a long time. If the average is 5.2 to over the last 20 years and over the last several years we've had up to eight uh going all the way down to a 3% increase was a substantial change in practice that we had to really reconcile and have good conversations about and I want to thank Nick Milano and Amy Dexter for being open about having those conversations. We've done I think a

015lot of good work in the meantime and school committee and the select board and members of the warrant committee have done so as well. Um as you can see from the timeline we brought that shortfall for the schools only from 2.1 down to 1.4. 4 on January 27 and we brought that revenue short for dollar down from 1.4 million to $1,49,000. That was the number that we finally settled on that we would move forward with um and start to begin to uh finally make the decisions about how we would approach the budget between what we would reduce in non salary areas of our budget and also reductions to salary because that's 80% of our budget. um when we had that final number, that's when we brought this presentation to the school committee and finance uh

016back on February uh 11. Um the next slide, basically the other part of the why are we here and what brought us here and what what the recent history is um is that in FY24, which is two school years ago, um the school year uh 2023 24 was short by $3.8 8 million. [snorts] And that, you know, um, shortfall had to be remedied by the use of one-time money, meaning money that's not coming back into the budget every year to support these budget lines. 800,000 in emergency circuit breaker relief, $1 million in reserve circuit breaker, 600 in Medicaid reserves, 500 in community schools reserves, $500,000 in food service, and $400,000 in one-time opera money from the federal government. That $3.8 million was an infusion of one-time money. That means that that money wasn't going to

017be part of the budget in the following year. >> [snorts] >> when we go into FY25, which was the school year prior to this 2024-25, um it wasn't a surprise that there would be a gap in that school year in the funding because there was really no major shift in the revenue and there was no shift in the expenses. The expenses actually got larger. So coming to grips with the shortfall that we had last school year, I believe started somewhere in January where uh hiring was frozen, certain purchases were frozen and uh Katie Blake identified the gap uh brought it to the Warren Committee and the school committee as well as the select board and all the town partners worked again in order to try to bring uh an override to a successful vote, which

018they did and we're thankful, but also uh additional onetime money and some reductions that needed to be made at the end of last year going into the school year we're in right now. That required another $1 million request from the warrant committee in June. Um and it also required um thankfully a what we call in our work a fifth quarter payment from the governor through circuit breaker which isn't always given out each year. It just means that circuit breaker happened to have few a few more dollars in it and they've redispersed that leftover money to all the municipalities in some in a in a ratio or a formula that also helped us close the gap. Without that million dollars and without that added circuit breaker payment in July, we would not have been able to

019close out the books in FY25. So that two-year gap and that the making of that gap uh impacts the year that we're in right now and also impacts the year that we're going to have next year and probably impacts the next one after that. Just like your home budget, if you're relying on one-time money to pay things like your mortgage and your car payments, and that one-time money is no longer available, it's you're having a hard time paying those bills. And all these are bills that we have to pay. So we go to the next slide just to do a quick analysis. uh in how we were thinking of this while we approached FY26. I can say that first of all, thank you to the community of Milton. I live in the community. I voted

020for the override. Uh I'm happy to pay that tax bill to make sure that our schools have what they need. Um, we also recognized very early on when I arrived on June 1st that even with the override funds that we were worried that we didn't have the amount of uh dollars and reserves that we need as a school department to make sure our balance sheet is an appropriately funded uh budget. Uh so when we started to think about reducing the budget, we paused and we waited for some of the vacancies to come about like they do every year. people retire, uh people go to a different district, uh people take a year off, and so we decided not to fill some of those positions. And we took those dollars and we put them into circuit

021breaker and transportation revolving accounts. Uh we also leveled out things like athletics, uh other areas of the budget that had not been budgeted accordingly. And I want to be really clear, there were budget lines in our budget that were identified by Katie in the spring last year that had not been budgeted to the projected amount used. So, there's a term budget to actuals. If my if I know that my utility bill is $500,000, but I only budget $300,000, I can certainly expect a $200,000 gap that was happening throughout the budget. So, we needed to patch all those holes with the money from the override and the money that we saved by not filling those those positions. Um, we are very happy that we did that because I can say with confidence that the FY26 budget

022that we're living in right now has adequate funds to support the needs of all the students that we have and has the ability to support any uh concerns that pop up in the middle of the year that we need to address as well. And things happen every day in our schools. We work with 42,000 4,200 children that have a lot of needs and they don't always come in perfect and we try to help them as best we can. So, the following page of the analysis, and I'm sorry that we're taking long on how we got here, but I think it's really important to understand why we're here. Um, the impact of the two challenging fiscal years compromise our future budgets. Uh, we want to make sure that we're very clear that the ongoing work that

023we're trying to do right now is limited by the town's revenue forecast. Um, we're trying to learn from the previous budgets uh as best we can for the use of one-time money. Uh we know that the school department can only conform to this 3.7% increase that we're getting for next year which is less than level service for this year only. We are not able to s sustain a school system that we all want to send our children to at 3.76 a year. We need that to be more like four and a half 5%. and the work that we're doing now uh between now and next budget season will reflect hopefully an outcome that makes that number higher or that expense uh percentage increase higher. Uh future budget projections currently stand at 3% and that's not

024sustainable. So what we were talking about when this number came out in January was doing the best we can to make that 2.1 million go down as low as possible. I think we did a good job at that and now we need to do the longer term work of making sure that we advocate for the school budget being more than 3% a year because that's not a sustainable long-term vision of how we can support our schools. So we are making headwinds onto [clears throat] that as well. Um analysis of just recent budgets and future impact um we are proposing reductions to the salary budget line of $1,49,000. uh we intend to use uh a deficit based fiscal years and learn from them from FYI 24 and 25. We are trying not to use one-time money

025for this. We are trying to protect our revolving accounts and build them up over time. Those accounts were left in very low balances. Uh, an example would be that our circuit breaker account should have roughly 3.1 to $3.5 million in it. And we started the year with $8,000. So, we really had to take a hard look at what we did in FY26 and begin to build back that balance sheet. We will use the fiscal strategies that we learned from in FY26 about being mindful of our balance sheet, mindful of our revolving accounts, and try to reset our budget in a way that's more sustainable moving. [snorts] So when we get to how do we go about the reductions uh for this year uh our goals and priorities when we started this work was to avoid

026reducing studentf facing positions and protecting the classroom identify workflows to redistribute the work to non- studententf facing positions. There's some some of that in our reductions and also look to other non-staff reallocations of resources. So we are reducing some of the budget that is not salary based and it is non-s salary based FY27 budget reductions. Um on the next page uh please know that there's no reduction in elementary teachers. There's no reduction in art, music, PE or world language. Um there's no reduction to the clubs and athletics that students take advantage of. Uh uh and we will increase the budget by one bus. If you were a middle school or high school parent last year, uh you remember how bad that was. and we will increase the fee for all of those to make that

027work. Uh there will be no reduction to our mental health adjustment counselors or our guidance services for students and there'll be no reduction in our intervention work in reading, early literacy and math throughout the district. Those will all stay whole. The the next page shows the original set of budget reductions. Um and in this uh document in now in our website starting tomorrow what you will be able to see is this um presentation you'll also be able to see the context document that we have uh that outlines the rationale behind every reduction or every realignment uh that we had originally proposed and what we're moving forward with. Um so you'll understand a little bit more of the background if I go too fast when I'm going through these reductions. uh you will have the ability

028to go back and look at that document that has more of a narrative for each one of those reductions. Um and this was reduction um as of February 2nd I mean um February 10th. There's another set of reductions that we made uh and shifted those for February uh 10. And then there's the shift in the reductions that we made today at our finance committee uh that shows a shift in this. So this is really not this is the first view. There's two more views after this. So, I'll go through this one and then I'll introduce the other two um renditions as well. So, we started with some positions that were not filled this year that we will not fill next year. Uh one is the equity coach uh that was not filled during the school

029year and we will not fill it next year. Uh, another is a special education teacher that we had at the high school uh that last year the principal decided to choose to fill that with an adjustment counselor to serve students needs as part of a special education program uh but did not provide uh did not want to take on the special education role. So that was not filled. The director of fine performing arts resigned at the end of August. Uh we have since provided a stipen through a lead teacher model for one of our music teachers and they are doing that administrative work part-time in addition to their teaching duties. We will not fill those three positions will not be filled in the upcoming budget. There is a data and analytics position that we have

030that we will be moving that work from the person that we're reducing to another position that we are restoring which is the director of technology and data analytics. We think data is a very important service delivery. It's one of our um five priority areas this year and we feel we can embed that work into an existing position that we'll fill next year that will cover technology uh the AI work that we're doing with staff and students as well as do the data and analytics and have that come from an education view and through a data view that will support our teachers throughout the year. Um we have two BCBAs that we had originally put in place. You will see in uh the pages that follow that we will be recommending that those two stay in

031the budget that we'll be keeping those and have further discussion about how the workflow uh is or is not in place for that service delivery but we will be putting that back in the budget. uh we will be reducing the director of nursing and turning that teaching position into a studentf facing position with a lead teacher stipen which means that that person will no longer be working out of an office uh but also will actually be working in one of our school health clinics seeing students every day. That is a model that was happening prior to COVID. Uh that had met with success. Uh and we also will continue to have one nurse float in addition to the a nurse in every single building. Uh an academic tester position of 0.6 uh is someone who

032helps out our special educators in the testing work before initial eval uh and annual eval uh for students. We think that our academic special education teachers need to take that role back and take that work back. 504 coordinator. We have two. We're leaving one in the district and putting one on the list. Again, 504 service [snorts] delivery work has always been done by our guidance counselors, adjustment counselors, school nurses, and school assistant principles. So, that work will be filtered back to those positions um that we have already in our schools. Uh we had proposed a reduction in three teachers uh at the middle and high school. Uh at the middle school, that was one special educator and one elective teacher. We have since taken the special educator off the list and you'll see that in

033a later list. Uh and the high school position was an English teacher that we are keeping on the reduction list because the class size does not warrant keeping that position. We have a.3 out of district coordinator that works with our roughly 48 students who are out of district. We already have a 1.0 out of district coordinator and that 1.0 person will take up this work uh and do that work for the Milton public schools for all of our outside districts. uh students, families, and we did propose uh a reduction from 1.0 to uh 6 three days a week for our DEIB director and we have since changed that to restore to a full-time position in the district and you'll see that in later pages. Um I'm going to hold on that for a minute and

034go to the next realignment page because we're going to talk a lot about the reductions I think after we get through with the whole slides or people are going to ask questions I'm sure. While we were moving through the fall with a 5.2% 2% budget increase that we thought would be in place. We wanted to make sure that we were looking at all of our resources and aligning them to things that we thought were important for the district that were still missing in the district. So that realignment meant that when we had our busing challenges this year that we promised folks that we would actually address that, find money, raise the fee, and put the bus in place. And that's $100,000. So that's something that we was in the budget last year that got cut

035red at the end of the year. uh and we really felt that um hard this year for families that could not could not get their children to school. We'll be increasing our dire our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning. We are a school district. That's the most important role in the district that this year was started out as a three-day a week role. We'll now go up to a full-time role. We'll be adding a lead nurse. All that means is we'll be providing a stipen for a nurse who will be the lead nurse to support the administrative duties reporting to the state working with the nurse department of uh a nurse department of six or seven um and providing support to students as well as providing the administrative duties responsible by that individual and our

036nursing department. We will do the same thing and continue the fine and performing arts stipen. So, our music teacher at the high school, Rebecca Damiani, will support the entire department uh through a part-time stipen uh as she is doing this year. That has been going smoothly. It was a pilot and it seems to be working. And when we're short money, uh that position uh was $140,000 position and the director of nursing was $140,000 position. So, that's where we're going to make that reduction. We have increased our grade level facilitators for the Tucker school this year in order to create instructional leadership teams at each elementary school. But we piloted that work at the Tucker. Uh the principal and her team have been able to create grade level teams and a building based team to talk

037about teaching and learning curriculum shifts and data uh for our students in order to create a better mechanism of supporting students teachers in the classroom. That's working very well with the Tucker this year. We want to scale it across all three of our elementary schools. In addition to that, at the Tucker this year, we increased one of the special education team chair in order for them to have one more day's worth of work, not to do team chair work, but actually to get into classrooms and find out what's working, what's not working on behalf of our special education students and be able to be uh more involved in what's happening in the classroom. Uh we're leaving that position in place that we're adding to that this year and we're going to keep that add in

038place for next year. We are increasing our contracted service budget by $50,000. And what that means is that with this reduction in the test taker on the 504, we're acknowledging that there might be some room for us to have to pay additional stipens or pay money if there's any separation of work that we're that's heavier than we thought and we're just planning on that safety net. We might spend all of that money. We might not spend any of that money. It really depends on what the numbers look like as we go through the year. We have a part-time um director of human resources. We have 645 employees and we have a human resource director that works three days a week. Uh that is a job that's full-time. Uh uh it has been very much uh

039a position that has the lack of the position has created a lot of um HR headaches with uh all of our staff related to leaves work with our union uh supporting people who are going on on leave due to family illness their own illness taking care of their parents taking care of their children uh again staff members in only a three-day a week HR person uh is not a sustainable administrative of environment. Um, some of the areas that we will be reducing or having offsets in, we are reducing $143,000 in general expense lines. Um, some of that is the curriculum, some of that is the PD, some of that is for legal fees. Um, we are going to um through a fee structure that we're going to introduce to the school committee in finance, we're

040going to charge more for buses. Uh depending on what the fee increase will look like, uh Assistant Superintendent Katie Blake has provided a staggered amount, $25 at a time. If we add $25, what would it look like? If we added another 25, what would it look like? Um and how we can support that added bus. This uh fee um increase will also happen in areas of student clubs and also rental fees that we use to support um the use of our gyms and fields, etc. will increase all those fees. Um we also have some adjustments to stipens that we'll be looking at that will also be a reduction to a budget of 51,000. So in the end that reallocation green uh set of uh reallocating and reducing of certain areas of the budget is a

041net positive about $72,000 that will be made out. Things that we're also doing that we're taking off the list that we did not fill. the director of instructional technology will be filled and they will be given in addition to their work uh the work of data analytics. So that's where we absorb that workflow. Um the assistant director of student services which is our special education department uh did without the assistant director this year. Uh we really need to talk about how we systematically go about the work of providing services to our families. whether it's the initial meeting with families, whether it's uh work that we do prior to students going on IEPs or 504s and how we organize our interventions um and make sure that we have systems that are working for kids. And right

042now, I can say to you as someone who's been here for 9 months or eight months, those systems need to be improved in that assistant director position will go a long way in helping structure that work and communicate with all the staff members around that work. We also reduced the team chair last year because they resigned. Uh the case load for our team chairs at the middle and high school uh was unsustainable. So we're replacing that position as well. So you can see there's some ins and outs that have to do with all parts of our work. Um and that's how we were approaching the budget the week before break. Uh the tally for that um lands us right at $1,49,000 reduction with the ins and outs of the realignment and also the reductions to

043the budget of non- salary and the reductions to the budget in salary over break. Um after listening to folks and reading emails and corresponding with folks uh I have to say out loud that um the list I can I could um look at differently given the feedback that we received. Um, we thought a lot about it. We sent out to the school committee on the Tuesday of vacation a lot of different data points so they could consider the full picture and also uh take into consideration some um positions that we might want to take off this reduction list. Um the positions that we had recommended back last week was reestablish the DEIB director from uh three days a week back to five days a week. Uh at that point we recommended uh taking the English

044teacher um off the list. Uh take the special education teacher off the reduction list and put the two BCBAs and take them off the reduction list. Um that that discussion that we had this morning changed this dynamic a little bit. So when you flip the page over um we see another um rendition of the reduction list only changed by one position. We decided to put back the English teacher onto the reduction list because the class size is doable and even though it's student facing, we feel like the class sizes would be appropriate at the high school. Uh but we will be putting back uh into our budget and take off the list the positions that we have in orange. Some of the data that we looked at that helped inform this that uh we included

045in links at the end of this presentation that you can click on and see on the website uh was a new fee structure that we developed. Um we also gave folks all the positions that were hired since the school year. Um those positions tallied up to 76 added FTEES to the district in five years. Um, of those 76 positions, 15 were onetime money. Uh, so that means that they were funded with grants or funded with one-time federal money, but didn't have a funding mechanism to follow them into the operating budget. And of the 50 that were teachers andor administrators, 40 of those teachers use teachers as unit teachers, uh, adjustment counselors, math interventionists, literacy specialists. um 40 of the 50 were connected to support services for our most vulnerable students. So, we've been lucky enough

046to hire 40 positions that include adjustment counselors, um uh literacy coaches, literacy teachers, math interventionalists. Um all those positions, 40 of them in the last five years were hired. Um, we also added about 25 unit D parrofessionals that support our special education students directly um, in addition to the the ones that we already have. So, we went from about 85 to about 120 this year. So, we're talking about 75 positions uh that that have really put pressure on the budget that even after an override have already strained the budget in the first year of the override. and I have lived in this community for almost 30 years and I worked here for 16 years prior to being your interim this year. And after all the three overrides that I was a part of back in

047that day, uh we always had about three or four years worth of sustained financing in order to make our budget work. So, I say that out loud because the the positions that you'll view when you click on the link are all valuable. They're all people who are working hard. Um, there are some positions that don't have good workflows, meaning that we added positions, but we didn't necessarily add the right pathways of work and accountability to make sure that they were reaching the classroom. And so, as we look at the budget this year and next year and probably the following year, we're going to have to evaluate which of these positions we want to hold on to and prioritize. Uh, and if the budget gets tight over the next two years, we're going to have to

048prioritize the ones that we might not be able to keep. This is not the first year that you're going to have to go through this. you will go through this next year and you may go through it the year after that to some level. Hopefully not this level, but at some level. So it doesn't matter that something was one-time funded because if we need it, we need it. Doesn't matter if it was the last hire because if we need it, we need it. But when we look at everything in its totality, we um especially in my role for one year now, two years is to make the assessment and give advice to the district about what workflows are working, which workflows are not working, what do we need to pay more attention to, and what's

049the best budget that's sustainable that we can create in order to hire a new superintendent and have them start off on a good footing from a financial perspective and a service delivery perspective. And that will come with here are the things that are working really well and here are some of the things you might need to address moving forward because certainly in a two-year period we're not going to be able to reset everything in the district. We want to make sure that we have a clear picture. We want to make sure we have an honest picture and we want to go back to that first that first bullet point of our philosophy. We also are trying to get to a sustainable financial picture because you can't strategize and think about what future year is going

050to look like for your children and for the schools if you can't have a sustainable funding source in order to support your strategy. So from a lot of different levels from the classroom to the strategy to school committee to our families to students to staff consistent funding is important and having all of our staff have clear workflows that direct themselves right back to the classroom is very important. And if you've been at our meetings prior, you'll know that our number one priority is tier one instruction, which is the classroom. The second one is making sure that we use data to inform how we approach that classroom instruction. The third is that we want rigor in every single classroom. The fourth is that we want to use all of the strategies and action steps to reduce

051the um academic outcomes or increase the academic outcomes for those students who who are not benchmark. And the last is we want to do all that and keep our culture high, keep our happy parents, keep our students happy, and keep our staff happy. So that's what we decided to focus on as a leadership team. who were trying to use those philosophy statements uh to back our budgeting as well. So uh again in November we thought we were going to be in a situation where this was going to be a nice rollover budget. We'll do all these shifting and realignment uh but now we have to reduce a million dollars and that's what it looked like. So in the end um I think our final review uh for the budget for the realignments is a is

052a repeat page. Um, we have reduced $1.1 million, the final page mark, I think. Um, so we have a little bit of room here. We actually reduced a little bit more just by how the math worked out. Um, and there was discussion in our finance committee meeting today about getting there by reducing the amount of money we'll put in circuit breaker and putting those dollars to the operating budget to re to lessen the impact of this budget decrease from staffing. Um, so we do have a little bit of room if we reduce the circuit breaker by the discussion that we had this morning. So, um, where are we getting the money to do this? We are taking the money out of the savings that we had hoped to put away and instead of getting to

053that savings point in three years for us record breaker, we're going to stretch that savings journey to four years. So, we're going to show you a little bit about that what that looks like as well. Um, in terms of documents, the last page, uh, all the things that we sent to the school committee are going to be able to be clicked on and viewed by you. Um, this will be in our FY 26 and 27 uh, web page on the budget. It's the reductions and realignment and rationale document. What basically what that is is a narrative for everything that I just talked about. There's a narrative there. You can read it through so you can get a good sense of what that looks like at your own time. uh the historic budget positions added uh

054that we went through since the 1920 school year uh the annual town meeting May 25 school FTEE report uh which is called table two uh the FY27 presentation the one that we just went through and also the circuit breaker options and I think a lot of people have been hearing about circuit breaker and if you don't know really what it means that's okay it's a really technical piece of our work but it's really important to how we actually fund our schools and support our most vulnerable students um And so we're going to talk a little bit about that tonight as well. So we landed in a better place. We're not 2.1 short. We're only 1 million short. We're shaving down the edges of our budget in order to make it work. Uh I know there's

055people have strong feelings about different positions that are on that list. Some of which have come off the reduction list and put back in the budget. Some of them that are still on the reduction list. Uh we do have a plan for our circuit breaker that might take four years instead of three. But it's really important for you to have that reserve at a level that's sustainable for the town. Um, and we believe moving forward that we can continue to revisit the workflows of all of our staff members uh at all levels of the district and get better at what we do. Our teachers work really hard. Our service providers work really hard. Uh, but we also want to make sure that we're working smart and working in a workflow that makes sense for children

056and also gets into the classroom where your children are. Um so that's my presentation. Um I don't know if you want to talk about the circuit breaker now to give that that that uh context for the folks at home as well. >> I think if we did the circuit breaker and then had a discussion about >> what you talked about and then have y >> Okay, perfect. >> That was be this morning. So, uh, just for the public who are viewing, circuit breaker is a reimbursement program by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that every city and town in every school district submits a certain amount of expenses to the to the state and if the expenses of any one child go over a certain amount, we'll use 50,000 as the example. If we spend 60,000 on

057a child's uh out of district placement, the state reimbures that last 10, whatever's over the 50. So, um that reimbursement means that you have to put up that money and service that child and all the children first and that you get reimbured the next year. Um we use those dollars with the box on the right hand side with other revenue sources like federal money uh which is the idea funds um state money which is chapter 70 but more importantly our circuit breaker funds and any local money that the town gives us for special education. So those three revenue streams are used strategically to pay all those bills during the year and you don't get that circuit breaker money for this year. We didn't get that until October because they're reimbursing us from last year. So,

058the guidance that the the U association of uh school business administrators and school superintendents get is you should keep one year's worth of that circuit breaker that you get and plan for that for your next year's budget. Don't spend it in the year that you get it. You should be using last year's money because you just don't know. You can't count on that reimbursement the following year. So when I arrived and and Katie and I met, we realized that we were starting the year with $8,000 in an account that should have roughly $3 million in it. And that worried us tremendously. It worried me tremendously. Um these are bills to be paid. These are services that children need and deserve and are legally obligated to and they need to be funded um regardless. So when

059we looked at that, we realized we need to start working on our own to uh self fill those accounts. That's why we didn't fill some of those positions in August. That's why we used the uh the money that we got in the override sparingly and tried to make it work. and we decided to go on a pathway of trying to increase that that number to about $2.7 million over the course of three years, which is roughly 75% of around the $3.1 million that we thought would be enough money. So, that was our strategy. Some people feel like that's too much money that we're saving that we're shooting for. 2.7 is too much. Um, I disagree. I think that that number needs to be healthy because once that line in the budget goes then everything else

060follows. That's the brick that holds everything underneath. That's the foundation. If that falls, then all the general services on top of the special education services will fall down. So, we didn't think that we could get there in one year. We thought we should get there in three years. So, that's why we put this proposal together. And that's why when we were getting money back um and we discovered that we were short, we still wanted to hold the line on putting money into that account. So when we did that, of course, people said, "Are you really going to put money in your savings account and not spending it on the people that you're laying off?" It's a legitimate question. So that's what we just talked about. We talked about moving some positions back in. We talked

061about extending that instead of three years to four years. So if Mark can go down on your left hand side, you see option one, which basically has us using less circuit breaker money this year, I mean next year and the next two years, but still saving some of it in order to get to that number instead of in three fiscal years, but get there in four years. Keep in [clears throat] mind that that $2,700,000 number will probably at that point in time because the circuit breaker number will go up, the expenses will get higher over the four years, will probably only represent about 60% at that point in time of what the number is needed. But we wanted to have a model that people could understand and also give you the rationale that we think

062is really important that this is a really important revolving account to have because again it's part of the foundation of our budget moving forward for all students not um and more importantly the students that it serves. So at today's meeting we talked about going with option one taking some money out of that revolving account and using it to offset some of the reductions and that's what we did as as a the group this morning. Some of you may have been on that call, heard that discussion and um we wanted to make sure that we had the full story for the entire community tonight uh in the school committee meeting and um we will plan on using option two uh using four years to get to that circuit breaker revenue um balance that we think is

063appropriate um and reestablish that u after it's been emptied out and uh and use some of those funds to take some positions off the list. So that that's the big picture. uh understanding of where we are. I'm sorry to rush some of the rationale. You can go and click on to that and read it uh when you when it's live on the uh website. You can see the fee increases on the website that we'll be talking about and you can take a look back at some of the positions that we have increased over the years, which one of those were one time uh and what they looked like um in terms of what their service delivery looked like. So all that data will be there for you to to have. So with that, uh, Mark

064and Amanda and Nathan as part of the finance committee, um, I'll let you carry it from here. >> Thank you, John. Uh, just one thing I want to make sure is clear on the circuit right here is the dollar amount change and you might have said that, but I might have missed it. Um, again, we originally carrying assuming a utilization of 2.6 million. We're now uh expecting utilization around three billion. That's the $400,000 difference. That's what essentially is allowed for us to pull back um those roles and still provides there's a little bit of buffer right now within um what we do with that remaining about $100,000 uh that we are saving above what we need to to hit the town's budget request the 3.76%. Um I think you your presentation everything kind of covered

065everything we've talked about really well. So anything in particular to add about on your presentation um just on your last point John about [snorts] you know by the time we get to FY29 I'm looking at the circuit breaker presentation that ending balance of 2.7 million will be will actually be a different number because the costs change and I feel like my or like the [clears throat] cost like costs increase Um I assume reimbursements increase at the same rate. So it should we should we imagine this as you know potentially an inflated number that's still achievable in four years or because of um cost escalation this four-year plan may actually be a fiveyear plan or something. >> So I so um thank you for the question. There's a lot of assumptions embedded in that option that

066that Katie would uh probably speak better to. But the first assumption is that we're going to get 3.5 every year and you can see that circuit breaker number there. It says 3.5 million. That's just the number that we got this year. So we're just making the assumption that at minimum that will be the what the number is. That number will go up because the expenses will go up. And because this is a reimbursement if our expenses go up every year, which they will, the reimbursement correspondently follows in the dollar value of that. It's not the whole expense, but that's they they should run parallel to that. Some of the concerns related to that are it's always a year behind. So if the expenses go up one year, you're not getting the money till the following

067year. And the other part of this is this is all up to the legislature to fund at a certain level. There's no mandate that they have to fund this at the level that they do. Um so there are years where they say, "Well, we were going to fund it at 75%." But now this year we're having a hard time at the states. We're going to fund that at 60%. And when that's on the front of the globe, everybody says, "Oh, I guess that's okay." But that means hundreds of thousands of dollars to every school district. So, uh, we want to make sure that we we we are explicit about that. That that assumption means that yes, expenses will go up correspondingly to the reimbursement that that 2.7 will be I would assume that the reimbursement

068uh the circuit breaker amount of 3.5 will probably be more like four by then. So if we get to 2.7 that's just less that much less of a percentage of that. Uh but we might be able to save more. And to your point this morning Nathan every year if we set guidelines that we want circuit breaker to be roughly 75% of [clears throat] whatever it is so we don't have to have this deep heavy conversation every year. We should still visit every year. Geez, [snorts] we're doing pretty good in circuit breaker. We can use a little bit of money of that to put in operating. We need it this year just like we're doing right now. This is a very appropriate strategic conversation about budget. We should have this every year. We should not have

069the conversation every year that is circuit breaker important or not and is the account important or not. That should be a staple. That should be automatic. But if we are having a hard year and we want to slow down a little bit and take 200 $300,000 out of it to use it for positions, then that should be something that the school committee does and has a lever for that kind of adjustment. That's an appropriate annual conversation we should have with the school committee, with the school administration, with the warrant committee, with the select board so everybody knows that this money is flexibly used, but we can't take our eye off the ball and have that balance go too low because once it does, it leaves the whole district vulnerable. So, um, so there are a

070lot of assumptions based on that. That's not those won't be exact numbers. They'll change every year with whatever happens every year. But keeping our eye on that 75% marker, uh, I think is going to be good practice for the district. Thank you. >> And one of the things that was discussed this morning was a next phase of work to explore policy for the school committee to set our own guidance, you know, for these outy years and beyond that sort of supports as we've seen the select board do. Um, regarding town reserves, you know, what our approach is to setting aside until we've built it to an appropriate level. Um, and so I I think for anybody that didn't hear the conversation this morning, you know, that's not um the immediate piece right now, but it's

071it's an important next conversation after we get through the um >> in in addition to that, once you reach that number that we all feel comfortable with, whatever that 75, once we get to the point where we quote need to be four years, then we don't have to dedicate additional money every year to build up there. So therefore, the money that we're using to add up every year, we can actually use for operating. So think about the town had a mandate to get their uh oped obligation paid off by 2030. People have been working on that since 1998. Some districts did it very slow and now they're actually trying to catch up and get it done by the next four fiscal years. Some districts did it faster and paid it off right away. And during

072that time, people would say, "Why are you rushing to pay that off when you can use that money for things like police and fire and schools, and they just wanted to get that obligation done?" Because once you get it done and it's paid, then you can free up all that operating. So that's what the town of Milton did. And I think I congratulate them. They pushed through some hard years. They paid their OPE up to date. Now they have eight or eight or nine years where that money is now not having to go into the OPEC account. It can be used for things like schools, police, fire, DPW, council, etc. So this is the same thing. Once we get that balance to where we think it should be, we can then slow down on contributing

073to it and take some of those those dollars and begin to expend on positions in other parts of the budget that don't have to go into that account anymore. So that that will be the incentive actually to get to that point as well. >> I did have a question. And I know a few years ago when our special ed and transportation increased significantly. Are we this this method that we are following? Will that kind of help if that were to happen in like the next four years? >> Yeah. Anything? Yeah, Katie, go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm doing all the talking. So, >> that's okay. Um, I think that's one of the important pieces of um, being able to have a balance in the circuit breaker account is that um, the intent of the account is

074to be able to um, offset those expenses and the fluctuations in the expenses so that you have a mechanism to do so and so that you don't have to impact any of the general education expenses in the operating budget. So, it's a perfect example of um those increases that were significant were set by the state and we didn't have an opportunity to say no, we're not going to pay them. Um and so that 14% increase circuit breaker is u an appropriate funding source to be able to offset some of that significant increase if you do have a balance in your account. And and you don't have to go farther than today's article in the Boston Globe where it was yesterday or today that talked about special education transportation and transportation costs in general >> and

075how they are, you know, very much um crippling school budgets. So trying to hopefully the the the state will step in and come up with a plan to continue to include it in circuit breaker is one one way of helping and also providing some other legislation that will help us negotiate with the vendors and and to continue to be able to do this in a way that that is budget uh appropriate for lack of better term. >> Thank you. We had a conversation about the positions and I recognized that not everybody was in our meeting. So I just did want to make sure that we had the opportunity about I know you weren't able to but [snorts] um have the you were part of the conversation this morning and I wanted to make sure that

076we had the opportunity to talk about that and the positions that we're adding back in any thoughts around them. Um I did want to ask one one [clears throat] question around it. So, and John, I appreciated earlier you're talking about sort of structured the structures and positions being tied to things like sort there are positions that are that were maybe hired or things that that were brought in that there's really not maybe a a chain um they're not connected. There's not a either a reporting structure or a foundation that they're tied to. And so I think that that piece is really important. So I think that there are positions that um we are talking about removing that I just would want to make sure there's clarity around how that would work because in theory I

077understand it and I've seen it elsewhere. So, for example, the 504 coordinator. I know historically it might have been uh a guidance [snorts] counselor, nurse, um vice principal, etc. But I think having clarity around who sort of owns it. So, I recognize part of it could be based on the students disability. If it's a a health related issue, then it might be the nurse, but sort of who is the person guiding that. So making sure that there's that that structure in place for the one that if a family's coming in and saying, you know, I think my child needs to be on a 504, they know who to go to. Um so I think um having clarity around that will be really important. Um, and there's another one we were talking about. And then I

078think just similarly that what we had talked about this morning around around the BCDAS that you know recognizing that the model is changing moving moving to a more serviceoriented model recognizing there's also a direct service model but then if there is ultimately um that service model shifts and there is and there isn't the need for as many BCBAs because other people are helping do some of the work that they're responsible for now that might not typically be within their framework that um that there is the time for that that training that that that instruction that there's that lead time for people to to come up to it. Um, and I think the other piece that I just think is important is recognizing at least, you know, this was this I think just became very clear

079and I think a lot in the conversations that we've had with the community is with respect to the DEIB role. Um, there's recognition that you know there have been several people in that role and I don't think it's fair to to say I don't think it's about the people who are in the role. I think it's that we need to find a way to have structure, have supports, have something in there so that they can be successful. And I think, you know, having clarity around that will [snorts] be really important in order for us to to support that position and really allow that um you know, allow there to be success and allow us to really look to to have some of the gains that we're hoping. looking at some of those gaps, looking at

080some of the achievement gaps or opportunity gaps, that sort of thing, and really and and probably finding other ways to to make sure that they are tied within the schools and the system. So, you know, that might be I [clears throat] think that that's that I you know, I'm I'm happy that we're continuing to do it and giving it that opportunity, but I think if we continue to do it the way that we've done it, then we're going to keep floundering. And so I think that's the piece that we really should kind of focus on to ensure that that that they can be successful in that role. So I think for me as I'm looking at things that piece around structure process is very important for those roles to be successful or if we are

081shifting or if we're taking any away that we're clear around that that process of removal. So, we talked a little bit about who might pick up, you know, different types of work depending on what the uh role is. It might be reduced to the 504 coordinator. Um the example of that going to guidance or the nurse, etc. But when we we also talked about this morning the big picture, you know, two big pieces of work uh I think would be really helpful for the the school department to take on over the next three to five years, which is one is MTSS, which is the state department of elementary and secondary ed sanctioned approach to how services are provided to students and families. Uh you might know the the term student support team which means if

082a child's having a hard time the teacher might recommend that child to the student support team and people will hear what's going on with that child and try to make recommendations to support that child to give them what they need to enhance their ability to be successful whether it's a regular red accommodation or maybe going for a team meeting and having uh special education recommendation or a 504 recommendation or adjustment counseling whatever that could be. uh SST is is an outdated model. MTSS is really a a best practice that the state really invested a lot of money in several years ago. Um, and what it does is it allows all the professionals to get around and really connect on a lot of the positions that we've been talking about how they can be best utilized

083on behalf of the students and how those discussions happen with data in order to determine what's needed for students to be successful with either their ability to attend to a task at the elementary level or to get support for any kind of clinical mental health issue or whether that's a reading uh early literacy The MTSS is a comprehensive program that I think we as a district should invest in. Um it usually takes a sum of money to gather a third party to come in to uh to comprehensively do that work across the whole district. It should be prek to 12 endeavor. Um and uh the other one that we've been talking about at our leadership meetings is um the cultural response and teaching work that sounds like it was done at the leadership level over

084time but never really done with the whole staff. Um you know I believe the district worked with Khis Warham who I worked with closely for a good period of time. Uh I think that she is fantastic. I think that her work uh not only needs to be in front of our leadership team, it needs to be in front of our teachers, our custodians, our our administrative assistants, our coaches um so we can more embed the understanding of bias and how it works in schools and help shape the work. I think our director of um uh DEIB is one person and he or she shouldn't carry the burden of all this work. This work should be shared amongst the district. It should be embedded in how we do our work around uh service delivery. It should

085be embedded in our curriculum, how we do assessment. Um there's a lot of work to be done and one person shouldn't be in charge of that work. They should be coordinating, consulting and and um being the expert to look down at that work, but we need the work to be embedded. So, we talked a lot this year about our five priorities and how DEIB um thinking is is embedded in all five of those priorities and uh so I think moving forward uh would be better served by embedding that uh in a more comprehensive way than leaving that in the hands of any one or two or three folks. Um and I I don't think that that has been done in the district in the last several years from what I understand. I haven't been here

086for a while and I think that you know observing and being in schools every week um I think that it would be a worthwhile financial commitment and professional development commitment um for us to do that's why when we thought about the reduction you know we right now are working with Dr. shavers on retention and hiring practices as a very thin narrow workflow. Um we also have to work uh on we're doing a lot of professional development. We're doing special uh professional development with our teachers with our UN power professionals. Uh but that one role can't do all that work. It needs to be uh broadened across HR um the director of diversity uh the assistant superintendent, the school leaders, our curriculum leaders. it needs to be embedded throughout the district. So I would recommend that

087that be a chunk of work that the district those two chunks of work taken on um and and seriously considered for a several year strategy of embedding it into the district. questions, thoughts, comments. >> I do have a followup on the the um suggestions that you made about DIB. Um I think those are all great. I do want to highlight that there are some things happening in pockets within the schools that I've, you know, heard from my daughter and just observations that I've seen. Um, for instance, I English teacher who intentionally incorporates SAT words into her lessons to help students expand their vocabulary in eth grade because she's thinking ahead and saying, "Hey, if I help these kids, perhaps those kids that might not have access or financial resources to hiring tutors and college consultants

088can have a chance to apply to a school that they might not to be otherwise able to otherwise." um a a teacher who throws a pizza party because everybody in her class um ended their term with an AA average. You know, it's an opportunity for students to engage over a meal. You know, they who might not otherwise be friends, they have an opportunity to connect with each other. It creates a sense of belonging. Um I've seen a lot of small pockets of examples like this. So, I think there is a lot of good that's happening, maybe not at the larger district level. So, I I hope that we can kind of leverage um our individual DEIB committees at each of our schools and work with our DIB director to really create that, you know, give

089her the support that we need in this meantime while we do all this other stuff, you know, to kind of continue that, keep that work going. Like I would like to start seeing even if it's tiny little things that we implement, making sure that we implement those so that that work continues and our community feels supported through this process I think would be huge. And even if even if they're small events like you know um our peers DEIB team for instance we talked about doing a community project you know and it could be small but it's an opportunity to share learn about each other's cultures find commonality. I think that's the biggest thing because it helps people belong um feel like they belong and feel part of the school community encouraged if they feel confident

090about who they are. It helps you know help them helps them um achieve higher. You know that the academic rigor that you're talking about, you know, some of these examples I shared also show that because the kids are encouraging each other to do better, the teachers are pushing them to do better and they're having the support. And so those things I think really really like it's a great way to see how DEIB ties back into your, you know, um, our priorities of increasing rigor and offering those supports. So I really do see the connections. They're not districtwide just yet, but they're in pockets, but I see a lot of potential. So I hope we can leverage that. I also just want to add it uh that we are we have a DEI leads in every

091school uh that support the PTO groups that run in every school that the principles are involved in. Dr. Shavas is involved in get together that every school will come together with their communities to share best practices what's going on in their schools. We'd like to see that every fall and every spring. I think um we have a couple of members of CDM here tonight that remember that we did that um years ago and it was just really a chance for the each school to have their own authentic approach to the work but also have a centralized theme of how we want to go about the work and share best practices. So we're reinstituting that in March. Uh we'd like to do that every fall and every March. Um and um so there is this there

092is good work happening in in different buildings in different areas and um and that needs to continue. But I I do believe that we we also need to take the lens high up and look at what we need uh in the district because a lot of this work is it needs to be shared. It needs to be uh collaborative. It needs to be embedded um in the things that we do on a daily basis. So all good things in pockets, but let's tie them together. um would like to just really affirm the points that are surfacing here around the need to be doing both. Um I'm glad to see the retention of the investment in DEIB, you know, in the budget. I also um am very um appreciative of the investments in HR. I you

093know made this point this morning but to me it can't be understated overstated rather like the investments in HR um are necessary on so many levels but including the ability to actually improve on something we've been talking about for years which is to um recruit and retain a more diverse staff for our district. um you know that is just but one finding that has we've known about for years. We've not done anything differently. We've not seen different results. And now to be making these two investments in full-time HR director as well as a full-time assistant director of curriculum instruction where there can be that focus on professional development that has been lacking which includes the ability to focus on implicit bias training among so many other MTSS related focus areas. I just um you know

094I think it's nuanced um but this need to really focus in on the systems building. We've heard a lot about this over the past few years. We've not seen it in practice. Um and I know that those of us who've been sitting here are are very tired. I I will only speak for myself. I'm very tired of the the constant acknowledgement that we need the systems. But yet what are we doing differently to actually create and build the systems? You know, this is what we're doing is actually putting capacity in place and talking about what we retain that um important role and we think about how to help it as you were just saying Amanda be um you know have traction both internally within the district and externally with the community. Um, and and it's

095not the job of one person or a small team, but it is everybody's job. you know, I I I'm really glad to hear you talking about this in this way and you're here for next year and this I expect to continue into further action steps um that can hopefully in the short term along with the added investments on targeted needs for additional support at the Tucker that we've seen elsewhere. you know, um I I would like to be optimistic that we'll start to see some results. Um but I just I think for the community maintaining the short, medium, and long-term view like it's difficult. Um but this is what I think we're needing to do and this morning it came up. Um, you know, part of what we're doing here as well is identifying what

096we're looking for in our next superintendent. Uh, we're looking we're we're able to, I think, do better than we did last time by having a very clear picture of the person that will be able to come in here and lead our district to the success that we expect. um the DEIB, you know, skill set and competencies is but is is one area. Uh the financial management is another one. Um and so I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate the difficulty um for the community, for us. Thank you for having gone back through honestly how we got here. Um because it it can't go without saying that none of us want to be in this conversation and we didn't think we were in this conversation. Um we're doing [snorts] the best we can in an unfortunate situation.

097Um having managed the best we could and we did well with what was in our control. Um and when it came to our attention, you know, what we needed to do, we're now doing that. Um, but I appreciate that you went through an inclusive process with your staff, your leadership team. You're iterating on it. That's what this process is designed for. It's to, you know, put something forward and be open to feedback, which you have been um from the community, from school committee members, and I doesn't make it easy. Um, we're pleasant to be having to do this, but I feel like the process has integrity and I appreciate that. Um, I do also appreciate everybody who's, you know, shared input and who's here tonight. This is a lengthy discussion for you to be sitting

098through. Um, as was this morning's valuable discussion at finance. Um, so sorry that was a little rambling, but it's it's a lot, you know. Um, and I think we're being thoughtful and I really appreciate that. I appreciate the contributions of everybody um to it, but you know, it's it's a lot we have to do. Um, and I feel like we have a more clear plan than we have had since I've been here. And I can say that as the person who's been here the longest, except for you, John, but you won't pay me back. You know what I mean? So, um, we'll continue honing this over the coming weeks and I'm confident we're doing the best that we can. >> And I would already say that these are recommendations that we're listening and um, none

099of this is perfect. are how we implement. Uh we do a lot of good things for kids every day and teachers work hard, the students are happy. Uh but is there better work we can do in certain areas of the district? Absolutely. Um and even though we're making some good jumps in whether it be working with the teachers lounge or whether we're going to be the first non-boston public school district to work with the Boston for excellence which is a teacher minority recruiting service. uh we're very excited about uh we're we're really looking to be supportive of all the different service deliveries that we do. It's not perfect. We're it's a work in progress. It will be a work in progress. And we also have to make sure that we have a budget that follows

100that work and also have the um the strength to actually point out what's working, what's not, and actually have a high conversation about what may or may not be working and try to reallocate the resources to what's working. Um but your children are in great hands with great teachers every day. Uh we're in your schools every day. We see it. And um uh there'll be good work that there's a lot of good work to do and hard work to do, but there's a lot of good stuff happening in schools every day. So uh as as your current superintendent, I'm amazed at the hard work that we see every day and the amount of family participation that we see is amazing as well. So uh the work is going to be good. It'll be good work

101moving forward. >> Appreciate everybody sharing uh thoughts. I totally echo I think the sentence and y said about um meeting positions just as I share kind of my thoughts about each position again as it relates to the DIB director I totally agree I'm very glad we back I think points that have been made and just want to echo them they were made very well the work of kind of dismantling structural racism way supremacy culture embedded within [snorts] systems within an institution especially as old as Milton is way more than one person one person can never do that that needs the responsibility of everybody at this table, everybody within all of our buildings, support all of our students. Um, not just our students of color, but all of our students. Um, and uh, at the same

102time, I I like your statement of it needs to be both. And, uh, at the same time, reducing our capacity, that important work when we know we have so much more work still to do in that area does not feel right and like the right move for the district. I think uh again we heard that from uh families uh reached out. I appreciate the adjustments to kind of address that and glad that back in. I think I have, you know, less strong feelings about this CDA because I've seen those roles look different to kind of point you were saying, different service delivery methods, but I think based upon the feedback we've received from families, your point on this kind of a transition, keeping those going to allow for that transition to see if there is

103a different service delivery method for individuals might not be as necessary. I again appreciate how the responsiveness to kind of community feedback related to that. uh as it relates to some of the positions that we have not uh prioritized adding back in. I think um a role that I I asked about and um have some hesitation on but um again is the director of line of performing arts. I highly value that. I know so many of our kids highly value that experience when they come here. I know that's something that so many people talk so well about is the the theater program, the music program and just how phenomenal that is within Milton. I think that's one of the kind of shining stars of our district and so uh I'm again asked and I've gotten

104feedback that so far this year there not seem to be gaps. I know a lot of the excellent work is done by the teachers who are working directly with those kids and so I'm sure the director added a lot to that but if we are able to provide that delivery through a stipen have those savings given we are in a place where we have to find some cuts to meet the the budget that is allocated to us I think that's a an effective place I think that generally follows the philosophy of like keeping the dollars as close to the kids as possible which again talked about so uh that is something I'd like us to keep an eye on is just that those programs don't don't suffer without that that type of kind of position

105and that we're able to provide uh the support that those teachers need through that teacher model. Um I think the combination combining the data analytics role within the other role is [snorts] a good idea. So appreciate that. I think generally the special education positions is a place I really defer to the department on in terms of IEP minutes and you know what is necessary for us to provide the service delivery. I think you know it's a huge problem if we are not able to provide students uh if we're underserving students on IEPs 54. That's a huge problem. It's also a problem if we are overservicing students on IEPs. And so I think that's sometimes hard for folks outside of education to understand because like well any service to kids is helping kids but if you

106over service them the goal of special education is to provide them the level of service that allows them to access the general instruction and have the same opportunities as all of their students right eventually in some ca in as many cases as possible build the skills build the ability to kind of maybe pull them out of that over time. There are obviously some situations where that that is not possible and that's fine. Those need to provide services kind of all the way through. Um but but I think those are roles where those positions can go up and down based upon service delivery needs of the kids. Over the last two years we've lost from a percentage basis seems like about 60 kids within special education. So we'd assume it depends obviously on who those kids

107are, where they are, the IP minutes, all those like details that people in special education know very well. um of like what that means in terms of number of positions, but just from that like percentage number that's gone down a little bit. So, it would make sense to me that there be some capacity within existing roles where we could cut that back. Uh so, appreciate you looking at that. Um, another one that um some folks have brought up is the director of nursing role. Uh again, I appreciate the passion of the folks who kind of reached out about that. It's clear that the current director of nursing has some people who really have built strong relationships with them. So I I understand that from a position standpoint, I think the model that you're talking about

108is a model that my school district utilizes, which is the lead nurse. In my role, I oversee the nursing department. I work with the lead nurse, establish health policies, things like that. Uh, and so I work very closely with all of the nurses and we have a lead nurse model where based nurses receive a stack of work with the physician um uh that that contracts with the district that helps kind of coordinate schedules around uh testing and support um professional development for all the nurses, share updates. That works really well for my district and so I think that's something that colors my opinion on this cut. I think I've seen it work really well and so I it can work well. Bigger concern with the nursing department. I shared a bit this morning. It's just

109the the ratios specifically at Pearson the high school because those are thousand person schools. And so with seven nurses across kind of all of those we are those two schools I think are in particular ones. I know at high school kids are more independent and so the ratios aren't quite the same as kindergarteners uh in terms of the handholding they need. So, it's not apples to corn and it's not apples to apples, but um that's one I'm I'm a little worried about. Uh I appreciate you're adding the extra float nurse to getting up to seven. I know we talked about do you add other float nurse get it to eight and so I appreciate you saying probably your recommendation start the year with seven, see how it's going and potentially have the flexibility to add

110that role in. So I think as long as we're building in that flexibility to add that role and I'd be comfortable with the district's direction in that that area. Um but again generally very appreciative of the public feedback that we've received thus far. Appreciative the responsiveness of the public feedback and all of the data you provided and how the we have communicated about this. I think I've received some feedback from people on improvements maybe we can make to communication next year. Um which I think is fair and always something we want to look at. But uh really glad that I I think we are trying to get input. I'm eager for the additional input we'll receive tonight. I'm eager for the input that hopefully we'll receive at the P budget meeting. I'm really glad that

111we're not going to have a vote on the budget the same night as the public budget hearing on March 11th, which has been our practice my last two years here, which I've always thought has been uh a bit silly and so glad we're changing that. So we'll have again not just tonight, but then two other opportunities in addition to emails. You've gotten lots of emails. Please keep emailing um if folks have have opinions, thoughts, um feedback. So, please keep giving that because that has influenced some of the budget direction to influence the budget direction. This is not a finalized budget. We don't expect to have that until closer to March 18th. So, >> I also want to add that I really appreciate John and your team thoughtfulness that has gone into this process. I know

112it's never easy when it's positions. Um, but I also appreciate how you've kind of looked at positions that have been empty like the technology director and then figuring out, hey, I might need to add that that back in. So there is that we're going to try this out and then if we need to add that back in or another position in the future there is that flexibility and kind of assessing what what is working, what is not. Um I think that's so important and I'm glad that you're looking at it like that and this is a very fluid process and I also really appreciate the community reaching out with a lot of feedback. Good stuff. It's so great that you're all so passionate and involved in this process. Um, I feel great to be part

113of this community as a result. So, um, so it is like we're all working together on this and we love that you are so supportive of the work that we're trying to do here and we want to do right by all of your children. So, thank you for your feedback that list. >> Yeah, that'd be great. So, we will now um uh open up to public comment. Of course, I have to find my public comment out. So, in accordance with school committee policy, we welcome members of the community to share their perspectives with us during public comment. We've set aside up to 15 minutes for this part of the meeting, and individuals may speak for up to three minutes each. I will have a timer. I try not to be rude. if you hear it,

114just know that I'm going to ask you to wrap up your comments, but um allowing to stick within that will allow more people to speak. So, I appreciate that. Uh while the school committee does not respond directly to public comment, there may be opportunities for members to address issues that are raised over the course of the meeting when relevant topics are on our agenda, which we just did. We strive to engage in respectful discourse during our meetings and ask the public comment speakers keep that in mind. Speakers should introduce themselves for the record. Um, [clears throat] so we have people I don't know if there going to be people online um as well as in the community. So we will um so we'll be going back and forth. Uh we will start with the room

115um people in the room and we had a signup sheet. So we will start um with Maripole. Can you go ahead and just remind folks to go? >> Yeah. If you are if you are online and if you are online and interested in speaking if you could raise your hand um that would be helpful and we will call on you. So Ian if you could give me one second so that I can do my really obnoxious um timer just okay go ahead. Thank you. >> Oh thank you. [clears throat] Good evening. My name is Ian Mariple. I live at 45 Avalon Road. Uh, I have two daughters at Pierce Middle School who are truly getting a world-class education. And I want to acknowledge what what Lizzie said. Um, this is tough, right? And these are

116hard times. And, um, these are difficult times we're living in. And every public and private business and nonprofit is dealing with financial burdens and every single one of them are making cuts. Um, the Mass Municipal Association re recently issued a report declaring that the financial state of cities and towns is quote a perfect storm. Milton, unfortunately, is not alone. Um, none of us want to see people lose their jobs, particularly after the town came together uh so incredibly to pass such a large override last year. It's heartbreaking, especially people who dedicate their lives to educating our children. And every one of us feels that the roles being eliminate eliminated affect them and their families the most. And and that's a testament to what the staff of Milton Public Schools and how impactful they are to

117our families. Uh recognizing these challenges, I want to offer my full support to Superintendent Failen and the school committee. These are hard decisions, but they are appropriate and needed to make sure we aren't facing even greater cuts or another attempt at an override a year from now. Either of which could lead to either even greater cuts and further devastating impacts on staff, students, and family. Like you mentioned earlier, um we've added about 75 staff members over the past five years, many including those proposed to be eliminated with one-time funds. Staffing full-time positions with one-time funds was not sustainable, and it is catching up to us now. But we're not alone. Communities like Hangingham and Brooklyn, which also recently passed large overrides, are also dealing with potential cuts. It's also very upsetting to hear some of

118the things being said about the people who are making these hard decisions. I don't envy Superintendent Failen and the school committee, but I'm very grateful for their service. Many of them, this is a volunteer position. I know it's part of the job, but it's not easy. In my heart, I don't believe that any group are being any groups are being targeted with these proposed cuts. So, thank you, Superintendent Failen, for what you do for our students and my sincere and utmost thanks to the school committee for the time and care with which you do your job. Milton is in great hands. Thank you. There anybody online who's interested in speaking? If so, if you could raise your hand. >> No hands currently raised. >> We'll come back. Um, the next person we have is Chris.

119Is it Chris Naven? Naven. Hi, my name is Chris Naven, 34 Cliff Road. I have two sons, both of whom are Caucasian and are now grown men. When we moved to Milton in 1995, my wife and I were concerned that there was little racial or cultural diversity in school staffing and culture. So, I joined committees that I hoped would address this and eventually co-founded Citizens for Diverse Milton, which has worked with every superintendent since the year 2000. But the lack of staff diversity has persisted even as the diversity of the student body steadily grew. Recognizing this problem, in 2001, the school committee created a diversity policy, stating that the composition of the staff should reflect that of the student body. Any progress toward that goal now seems to have stalled. The policy also required the

120superintendent to present a diversity report to the school committee every October, which is not happening to my knowledge. So what? Milton's an excellent school system, isn't it? Students come out well prepared for college and careers, don't they? Well, they usually do if they fit the mold. But if they are from a low-income family or a family of color or if they have special needs, the data tell us that many, perhaps most, do not graduate wellprepared for college and careers. This is a systemic failure that is in part due to the lack of a richly diverse and well-trained teaching staff. My point is that now is not the time to cut the DEIB office. Few recommendations from the 2021 equity audit have been implemented. Is this committee content to accept grossly different outcomes of student groups

121that don't fit the prevailing mold? All three DEI staff positions should be kept in the budget. All three. [snorts] Also, the position of director of data and analytics should be protected because it is through in-depth annual reporting that the community can be informed about the effectiveness effectiveness of instruction. You as the school committee and we as parents and taxpayers need good data to know whether the Milton public schools are truly making progress towards educational excellence for all. Thank you. >> Next, we have Beverly Ross. Denny, >> I might yield my spot to Adena Sheffer. How far is she? Low is she on the list? >> She is seven. >> She's seven. >> Seven. >> I'll send my email out. >> Hi Good evening. I'm Adita Shear, a Milton resident, parent of a seventh grader at

122Pierce and a ninth grader at Milton High and the former DIB coach for the Milton public schools from 2022 to 2025. A few days ago, I wrote to you with questions about the recent budget reduction list. Um, glad that the there's now the DIB director role is fully restored. That's that's good news. Um, I asked what current data we have to show whether we've made progress on our DEIB goal since the 2021 equity audit, which Chris just mentioned, which identifies factors that support and limit equity in our district. Before we cut DEIB roles, I think it's important to understand why they were created in the first place, what has been accomplished, especially in light of talking about culturally relevant teaching, which is a big part of the work I did for the last few years.

123um and to think about how these roles have impacted student experiences and outcomes. So, I wanted to start I wanted to share just a little bit of historical knowledge as someone who's really been around since the equity audit. Um and and make some recommendations based on the barriers that I saw over the last few years. Um when I was first hired, it was the restorative justice coach position. It was a DESIE mandated grant-f funed role um focusing on addressing the disproportionality and suspension data. According to the 2021 equity audit using FY209 data, black students in Milton were receiving out of school suspensions at more than four times the rate of white students. Our theory of change was that if we used restorative approaches consistently, we could reduce reliance on suspensions. In my first year, all

124staff in the entire district received an introduction to restorative justice. And those who wanted to go deeper, they opted into an afterchool professional development. Um I personally led because we didn't have the capacity to really roll out the it systematic like to the whole district. I led a lot of those proactive community building circles for students who needed mentorship and and social emotional support and I worked with leaders at Pierce and MHS to co-lead restorative circles after incidents that previously would have led directly to suspension. I don't know what the data shows now, but we did those suspension rates dropped and in 2022 there was a law that passed that you can't just suspend kids for c you need to have data that you've actually used restorative practices first. So that that helped us as

125well. Um even when suspension was necessary, we held re-entry circles to repair relationships and support students returning to learning. I later synthesized a lot of this work in a document that I did share with the policy committee. Um, I know Lizzie, you were on it and it's I'm going to share this with you with with documents linked because I think it's an important document called the Milton Public Schools Code of Ethics Handbook and I sought feedback at the time for from all peer staff, all MH MHS staff and school site councils. Um, by the end of 2022 2023 school year, the the then deeib director Claire Galloway Jones and I recognized that we needed to go beyond discipline and support more inclusive culture responsive teaching. That's why I switched to the DEIB coach role because

126I had extensive experience doing this work in Boston public schools and in 2023 2024 I moved into that role and Cyrus Rivers became the restorative justice coach. Um it they really were two different full-time jobs. Um and I will send you more information about the specific work that I did in the DEIB coach role because I just want to make sure in terms of workflows that all of that work I think that we really want to be thoughtful about how that work happens if that if if my former role doesn't exist. Um so here are some recommendations I have. Um the first thing that I think is maybe the most important thing is to intentionally create and sustain a culture of feedback in Milton. Some staff eagerly sought coaching, but in other cases when I

127raised concerns about how grading, discipline, or instructional practices were harming black and brown students, I was shut out. People wouldn't speak to me. They wouldn't return my emails and often went to the unions to complain. There were a few incidents. This is not everybody. I don't want to generalize, but the few times that happened, it's still it sits with me because the kids in those situations were not um they didn't receive justice and that was my job to do that. Um, we cannot make progress if honest feedback about equity is treated as a threat instead of an opportunity to grow. To build this culture, there must be a stronger partnership with the Milton Educators Association. DESIE now includes culture responsive teaching the evaluation system and administrators need to be able to name clearly which practices

128promote equity and which undermine it. The biggest barrier I've seen is the defensiveness and fear. Fear of getting in trouble. I get it. um you know but or were fear of you know as a as a white woman myself being labeled racist like these are things that are you know real fears but we have to move beyond adult discomfort so that every student has teachers who are willing to receive the honest feedback and grow from it with an evaluation system that bolds that both holds staff accountable and supports them >> could I'm sorry >> yeah wrap up okay I think the last thing I was going to get into is just I think it's I really advise going back to that equity audit and looking into the bucket of like curriculum programming such as the

129French immersion, AP access and accountability and evaluation. All those things are listed specifically like where have we where are we on those things? I think the community needs an update because we spent money on that equity audit. Um, I am deeply invested in how DEIB evolves in known public schools, both as an educator and a parent. And I work for the Boston Plan for Excellence now. And so if there is a future partnership, I hope to be involved because this is where I live and I want to make sure every kid, not just my own two kids, but every kid gets what they deserve in terms of having teachers who want to focus on equity and grow from, you know, from their work. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, Camille, >> someone

130wrote their name down. >> Did somebody write their name and cross it out? >> You did. Okay. Okay. But I put it back. >> Oh, you did put it back. Okay, then come back. Oh, after Camille. Thank you. Hello, my name is Camille Sonaria Cooper. I live at 551 Center Street. Um, I am a Glover and Pierce mother and I am also a Milton Public School substitute school nurse. Um, I Good evening. I'm speaking tonight in support of maintaining the director of nursing position. This is not about a specific individual. It's about structure, safety, and legal integrity of our district. What works for other districts may not also work for our district. Eliminating the director of nursing position and instead assigning those responsibilities to a lead nurse with a stipen is not an equivalent substitution.

131A stipen does not create additional time in a day. It does not reduce clinical workload and it does not transform a buildingbased position into a district level administrative and regulatory role. The director of nursing is not simply a more experienced school nurse. It is entirely different role. A lead nurse focuses on building level clinical care. A director of nursing is responsible for district-wide leadership, regulatory compliance, policy development, supervision, staffing oversight, and public health coordination. But the responsibilities of a director of nursing are extensive and specialized. They include writing and updating district-wide policies, ensuring compliance with state and federal regulations, overseeing care for medically complex students, managing outbreak response, coordinating with public health authorities, supervising nursing staff, guiding high-risisk clinical decision-making. These duties required advanced education, experience, and protected administrative time. If a lead nurse is

132expected to absorb these responsibilities while still managing a school building, something will give. Either building li either building level care will suffer or district level compliance will. That is not a sustainable or safe model. Our district serves students with increasingly complex medical needs and significant medical fragility. Regulations governor their care are constantly evolving. Ensuring compliance is not optional. School nurses practice with significant autonomy and with that autonomy comes sustainable liability, substantial liability for the nurse and for the district. If policies are outdated, if procedures are not legally sound or if staffing models compromise safe care, the consequences are serious. Investigations, lawsuits, and regulatory findings are far more costly than maintaining appropriate leadership. There seems to be an assumption that having an extra nurse means operational gaps can be easily easily be absorbed. That is not

133realistic. Floats are already covering vacancies as we speak. If a newly enrolled student requires one-to-one nursing care or a medically complex student needs dedicated coverage, that float is no longer considered extra. Now, consider that scenario where a lead nurse is also expected to function as a director of nursing. Who is covering their building? That mask simply does not work. I am concerned that only one member of the nursing staff was consulted before moving forward with this proposal. Decisions of this magnitude would benefit from a broader clinical input from the full nursing team. I also would draw attention to the the committee's attention to the fact that positions are still being considered for elimination despite there being viable proposals that would allow the district to preserve staffing while still protecting financial reserves. There have been thoughtful

134alternatives put forward that could achieve savings without cutting critical roles. Choosing not to pursue these options suggests that it's not simply about fiscal necessity, it's about priorities. Eliminating the director of nursing does not eliminate the workload. It redistributes high level regulatory and public health responsibility onto staff who do not have the time, structure or formal authority to carry it safely. This is about student safety. It's about compliance. It's about responsible risk management. The director of nursing role is critical to infrastructure within the district. It is preventative leadership. Preventative leadership is always less expensive than a crisis response. I urge you to carefully consider the long-term implications before restructuring a role that is foundational to protecting our students in our district. >> Um, we have time for one more. >> I'll save my position to Beverly

135Rost and Beverly will be the last speaker. This is >> Beverly Rost Denny, 107 Coline Road, former school committee member and town meeting member, current town meeting member. The school a school committee member once told me that your budget is your strategic plan and your strategic plan is your budget. Your initial FY27 proposed budget cuts tell me that you do not value or prioritize our most vulnerable students. Students with special needs, black and brown students, students living in poverty, and LGBTQ plus students who rely on the staff you proposed cutting. Earlier today, interim superintendent Fallon shared that he was tasked by the school committee to create a sustainable budget. But you may not have understood the Milton context when making this request. For at least the last 5 years and probably the better part of

136a decade, the initial funding offered by the town was always insufficient and then the budget was always negotiated. They never have enough money, but they always give us the money. Last year, we passed the largest override in town history with a wide margin of victory. Furthermore, the select board um had a significant shift which reflects in the progressive majority primarily due to their position to the prior select board's position on fiscal management. Since interim superintendent failen left 12 years ago, the town has had one override. For a town with Milton's revenue base, the override last year was well overdue, and we now know that the number was insufficient. After listening to the select board and select and school committee financial committee financial committee meetings, it has become quite clear to me that the proposed cuts

137are optional. Select board the select board has provided sufficient money to close the budget gap. Town funding for both the circuit breaker and special education reserve are technically optional. In prior years when there's been a budget deficit, even in the middle of the year, the select board has provided the emergency funded need funding needed. I've not had them tell me no once. That extra bus we had was because the select board gave it to us. If you insist on building these reserves, your time horizon is also flexible. Which leads me to the essential question. Why would you initially propose such aggressive cuts that target our most vulnerable student populations? As member um Carol mentioned, Milton families are exhausted with fighting for our schools and what little staff we've been able to hobble together to meet

138the needs of our students over the last five years. Interim superintendent Phil will tell you when he was here, we didn't have all these coaches. We didn't have all these student supports. It was a barebones district. And every year through negotiation, we added more staff and more staff and more staff. For a district that has a chronic deficit, it's a miracle how we've grown. Um the initial proposed cuts are a conscious decision to eliminate the equity department, a department that was never truly provided with the support, authority, and autonomy to be successful beyond complying with the state mandate to hire a restorative justice coach. I'm grateful that you all acknowledge that progress has not been made, but we actually have to go more than talk do more than talk about it. We actually have to

139do something about it. Interim superintendent Failen says he's prioritizing those who are not studentf facing in terms of the cuts. But as we all know that for some students, the staff on this list are what makes their learning environments possible because they motivate students to stay in school and make them feel valuable in order to be successful in a very what can be a very hostile environment. After interim superintendent fail and is gone at the end of the school year, we will have to we are setting the next superintendent up for failure by having a community that no longer has confidence in our work and our ability to solve our problems without it being a fiscal nightmare and trying to lay people off at every opportunity when it may not be required. You could wrap

140up your comments for time. When Milton finally when Milton finally um adopts the MA DESIE new teacher evaluation instrument that was made available two years ago and includes the demonstration of equitable teaching practices, you will need the staff in the DEIB department, all three positions to provide the professional development, evaluation, and the follow-up work necessary to prepare all of our teachers to be successful. I highly recommend that you reconsider these decimating cuts. You should maintain the full-time DEIB director position as well as the equity coach for our students, teachers, and community. Thank you. [snorts] If anybody was um had written their name down to speak, um we will be having the public uh budget forum on March 11th. You are also welcome to send us emails or comments. Um but if we didn't get to

141you, we apologize for that. Um but thank you for taking the time and thank you for sharing your comments. It's always appreciated. Um we will now move on to the next item which is uh the superintendent report. So before we start the superintendent report, I would like to start by asking a very patient uh Milton High School senior, Elias Carris, to come up uh to represent the student representative program we have with the school committee in Milton High. Uh Elias, as you know, is a senior uh fourthterm student representative at Milton High, class of 2026. uh he's been in front of us before and we have welcomed him back to share all the good stuff that's happening at Milton High School. Welcome. >> Thank you. Um it's always a pleasure um to be here and

142to share a little bit about um Milton High School, the place we all know and love. Um I hope you are all doing well. Um and you've gotten through this snowstorm. Um I think um we're coming back and I'm so glad to see that. Um so something about some things about the high school. Um now is um the time when the course selection process for um many of the students are um they have to decide um which courses are best suited for them based on their own goals and um in themselves and what they would like to do um during their time at Milton High School. and um beyond. So to tomorrow, the 26th of February, that's the program of studies night at 6:00 p.m. um in the high school auditorium. And then on the

1439th of March, the course recommendations are will be released. So um again as I've said this is a very um important time for um my peers to um to decide which course is best for them. And as for me, um, as a student myself, um, I can speak to, um, the diversity and the, um, wonderful offerings of, um, the courses, anything from dystopian literature to, um, woodworking to, um, visual arts and music. It's just truly wonderful to um experience that and I'm very grateful for it. Um I believe it has set all of us up for success. And then in addition um our competitive student organizations have recently won some awards in the past few weeks. The math team, they've qualified for the Southern Massachusetts Math League playoffs. The dance team, they got second place.

144at the Universal Dance Association regional competition at Endicott College. Um the MHS science olympiad team they just competed at Harvard University and they proudly placed 37th and um model UN they've participated in both Harvard and Boston University conferences and several members have received recognition and all of these achievements speak to our drive as a student body. We're very passionate and we care about many different things and interests and um it is we are truly grateful for all of you as a school committee for supporting us and all of our teachers and administrators. It's truly you who give us all of these opportunities and make them possible. And then furthermore, um the music of our schools month is March. So, we're hosting four concerts um for our music ensembles, plus a music discovery night for the

145younger ones, the elementary school students, so that they can be exposed to an instrument early like we all were to continue this wonderful program. Um, and I think it's just s so great to um make the arts and our talents accessible to um the community at large and to open these concerts and host them um for the public. I I think it's truly a great achievement. So, props to the music department um on that. And then um our sweetheart dance has been postponed um unfortunately due to a lack of interest. Um I would like to recognize the families who made fantastic contributions in terms of the um decorations and whatnot to host a great event. Um and those um contributions will be reused for um the next event which is going to be probably later

146in March and then um we will meet as a small group again um with member Bao and um Superintendent Failen just so um we can discuss how we how as a small group we can better support the needs of the school committee and the district at large. So, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share. >> Thank you for being here. >> Appreciate [clears throat] it. you uh you checked a lot of things off my highlight box and I would [laughter] have myself and um what an amazing run for you as a senior who doesn't have to fill out a program of studies uh >> uh schedule for next year because you'll be graduating and um your passion for the arts and your passion for Milton High always comes through Elias and

147I truly appreciate your uh that you bring your authentic self here every every meeting and share what's going on at high school. It's It's really great. So, thank you. >> Thank you. I'm so grateful. >> Thank you. >> Good night. >> Have a good night. Thanks. >> Thank you for your patience, buddy. Yeah. >> Um I'm just going to read some highlights um um that that feel like it's too much information to share. And along that like tonight, uh I wanted to mention a couple of big future issues that are going on uh and dates for the district. Um, very important as Elias just pointed out, program of studies night is tomorrow night for all of our families to uh take take part. There was a uh course of studies night in the fall that

148I attended and um this is a uh a second event that talks about the teaching and learning at the high school. uh it is consistent in parallel to the students filling out their course selection sheets and also [snorts] consistent with something that um uh Mark and I were talking about earlier which is the discussions that are happening throughout the school in the month of January related to AP and honors in classes that um students might want to think about taking and getting some support for them. Um the um opening night for MHS theater with the festival is the 27th of February. March 3, next week is a full PD day. Want to let the community know that we did think about changing that to a student day given the break in February and then the

149two snow days, but the logistics of it um weren't able to be, you know, worked through in a short period of time. But we did think about changing that. Uh we did get some parent uh emails. We did respond to those emails, but we're not able to execute on that. Uh, so it will be a PD next Tuesday the 3rd. We thank everybody for being involved and Carlo needing that work. March 10 is strings concert at MHS at 6:30. March 11 is school committee and open public hearing on budget. Um, here at the fire station and March 18 is our annual grade 1 information night. Uh, all the great things that are happening at the high school were said by Elias. Um, I have four or five at the middle school, but I'm going to

150just pick one, which is congratulations to our Pier students who along with Milton High students travel to Abington High uh in a month uh over the course of the last month to audition for junior and senior sba. Um, we are thrilled to have 28 of our high school and PS musicians accepted to the festival. At Glover, we had a future problem solving grade five team that competed in qualifying round uh in the future problem solving nationals, which is a really great competition. The results will be in soon. We're very proud of our scholars that are led by uh Colleen Martin and Capro Cassidy. At the Collie Cott, we had a great read aloud day. I think some people here were at that group. I know uh folks at the table were reading uh at the

151colliecart. It was a great morning. Uh they also had a great um robotics night and uh the colliecart as well as the Glover are participating in uh certain activities this month for Black History Month that are happening this week. The Cunningham also had a great day and a great showing for the future problem solvers. Uh and also they celebrated the 100th day of school this year for fifth grade. So fifth graders had a thousand days of school. That's what they celebrated. Uh [snorts] Tucker um has several good news stories. is one of which is the Tucker show is from March 12 uh from 6 at 6 p.m. Uh Jess Gil Gali who's our art teacher is hard at work uh to make that uh display that amazing artwork in the hallways of Tucker and the

152Black History Month assemblies will take place Friday in strong partnership with the PTO and the DEIB committees at the Tucker as well. Um and the athletic update this is um playoff season. Uh this afternoon was girls basketball, tonight is girls hockey. Tomorrow is boys hockey. Uh Friday night is boys basketball. We have male and female wrestlers who are wrestling in the state championships out in Springfield over the weekend. Uh we have um uh what else did we miss? Indoor track won the division three state title and uh we did wrestle and the ski team uh has a big um a meet uh tomorrow uh out in Mount Wuset. So, um, in the fall we had almost every fall team make post tournament work. Uh, and, uh, I think we're almost there with the spring and

153in the winter as well. So, as Elias says, a lot of good clubs, a lot of good access to a lot of great things at the high school and the athletics and the dance and the theater and the music are all to be celebrated. Um, so that's that's a quick update across the six schools. >> Thanks, guys. In the back, do we have a hockey update? I think got booted tonight for the hockey game. >> The girl >> think they booted. >> Oh, I'm sure they did. So, the girls team um uh ranked second in the state in the seedings >> and uh they play a team tonight that I think that they should do pretty well against. The boys team seated high in hockey as well as behind me. Are they all watching it?

154>> And they won. Uh we're hoping girls basketball won this afternoon and um they did. That's fantastic. Uh, and boys, everybody had a home game, which is great for the fans to be able to go to and, uh, yeah, just all good stuff and for the sports you don't see that often. Um, you know, get the wrestling matches have been fantastic this year. Um, and so, girls hockey, boys hockey, girls basketball, all good stuff. So, congratulations to our coaches and our student athletes and our student who students who participate in music and drama, etc. >> Excellent. Um, are we doing the program studies? >> Uh, I know Mark had a couple of quick questions, but we presented on the program of studies at our last meeting. That was the first run through for our uh,

155curriculum advisory committee. Uh, we will actually ask the curriculum advisory committee to get together next week to talk about our lit literacy program that they're coming to close on. Uh, we had a meeting today with uh, Cat D. Ro now Cat Young about they made a selection for curriculum not a unan unanimous decision we thought we'd run the decision by the advisory group and then presented to the full school committee on the 11th um there'll be a process discussion that night we also have some numbers for budgeting that have all been um taken care of by Katie for this year and for next year uh already uh built into our budget so we are very happy uh I'll give a a hook to make people come back to the next meeting. We have a wonderful

156desi uh curriculum that is um approved uh for reading in literature and early literacy for our elementary teachers that will we'll engage in a five-year agreement with this curriculum company that our families have been asking for for years. Uh Kar Ro has led a team of wonderful educators to come up with the selection process. This is something that I think families have been coming to this board for for a long period of time and we feel this along with our um uh current um I'm going to lose a name. What do we see our um >> what sounds like sounds like [laughter] >> the phonics program. >> Oh you fly you fly >> between you fly and this new uh early literacy material. We certainly feel excited about what's going to come forward for success

157for all of our early readers uh and writers at the elementary level. So, this is good stuff for the district that parents have waited a long time for. Uh that will be pushed up to three to March 11. Um so, if we want to take a vote, uh Bob, thank you for representing the group two weeks ago. Uh Karen Kill is not here tonight. Uh, so if we weren't about that, we certainly >> do have questions about >> Yeah, I mean I I don't think they can be answered. I think my questions came from um just around the process for um the enrollment in course, right, which Karen shared last time around requiring a teacher recommendation uh and just questions on that barrier. I think some conversations with families uh who've gone through that process

158who just expressed from their experience that there that felt like a barrier, right? it did not feel quite quite as easy as um as maybe again the intention was for that to be and that it felt like a a barrier that prevented entry to higher level course work. Um and so when it could be that that's just those few parents um experience maybe it's not a systemic thing but I wonder just what is the goal of the recommendation right is this a student driven kind of process versus an adult driven process and so it's very reasonable to say that teachers should you know have really good insight into students academic prowess and provide feedback to the kids and have adult conversations around uh this is how you're doing and this is where I see you

159kind of going. Um I don't personally think that that should be a barrier to entry if the kid says okay I hear you I still want to try this course and again I know the the statement is that it's not that they can get the kind of waiver uh I just and that all the waiverss are granted I just wonder if that step is even necessary right like if if the student disagrees can't they just enroll in the course without going through these other other hurdles again given some of the feedback I had heard so that was one of the the questions I have is just what what actually are the exact steps that families need to go through and are all those steps necessary and all those steps you know designed really to support

160students or are they kind of procedural hurdles that that might inhibit students willingness to take higher level course work. Um that was one of my questions and then the other was kind of data around that which was connected to kind of the equity audit and some of the conversation that came up here which just historical issues of course access for students of color uh specifically and so just where where does that data stand currently? I think that would be interesting data to to that first conversation I was having like is this actually showing up as a barrier? Do we see that in the courses not just within AP enrollment but the difference between uh the um college uh prep uh course work versus honors courses and just like where where are our students falling falling

161as representative across uh the different subjects um are there places that we're we're concerned the data is like flagging that there's a concern we should look at um hopeless the data is there's no concern that we're having great access for all students Um those were my those were my questions um related to the course of science conversation >> as far as um I appreciate the questions. Um those are good conversations for us to have. I um I in reviewing the course of study and understanding the need to vote it so that plans can be put in place and obviously um students know really the changes that were presented to us regarding new courses being added changed like that is important information to get settled soon. Um so I'm wondering as I look through the course

162of study um program of study sorry document I don't actually see um the procedures regarding the process of teacher recommendation and whatnot like I don't actually see that detailed within the program of study document. Um I think that that's my understanding is that's an accompanying procedure that sort of how decisions have tended to get made and currently are being made. Um there is an acknowledgement on page seven at the top of page seven of the the working copy of the program of studies a sort of a disclaimer statement. Milton High School reserves the right to schedule students based on course enrollment conflicts, graduation requirements, staffing, and other relevant considerations, but a lot of the um communication in the principal's message as well as in the leveling guidelines, the section on deciding what to take. It's

163really I see emphasis on the um family and the student sort of carefully thinking through what they are interested in and their different factors. So I guess that's all a long way to say Mark like would it be possible to vote the program of study with the updates that have been presented while kind of continuing the track of conversation about which probably maybe should be a conversation within the curriculum advisory committee. Um maybe more conversation with principal Kill. I'm I'm not sure, but I'm wondering if those are like mutually exclusive because I I don't actually see like hard and fast um prescriptive language within this document that we're being asked to vote that really pertains to what you're the important questions that you're raising. >> Yeah, I I get that. I think the only specific

164language is in the section you're talking about where it says parents and guardians. students are required to discuss level recommendations with your child's teacher before requesting level changes. So that required meeting um is one of the steps obviously and so that that's the one piece that is in there. Again I I understand they have a program of study thing tomorrow and so like having some comfort some um clarity for the kids in that presentation is really important. Uh and so I'm not suggesting necessarily that we hold this up. I think this gets the larger issue that I have at times with, you know, potentially just my own engagement in this board of like, you know, I feel like I bring up stuff and it's just like a little too late, right? We talked about this

165similar with like graduation stuff where I tried to bring it up last year and it's like, oh no, you're too late again. So, >> that's fair. So, and and to the point like these are if there are issues with access for any student, but especially our most vulnerable students and students who historically been marginalized, been kept out of these types of courses, that is urgent. Uh that's obviously like urgent work that I think all of us know and agree. Um and so I'm happy to again from a process perspective say we need to provide these program studies. I don't have problem with any of the course changes that the principal presented. I think that all made sense and sounds fine in terms of those tweaks. So, it is a larger conversation I think um beyond

166that, but just wanted to raise those concerns while we were talking about this and hoping there's just so many things that pull our attention to and at any time. And so, I think in two weeks be budget focused and then something else could pop up and >> that will lose the thread. Um, and again, I've just heard from I don't have kids in the high school, so I've not gone through it myself, but I've just heard from multiple parents, uh, both of students of color and of non students of color. Um, they've just felt like this has been there has felt like barriers to entry to some of these courses. And so, >> I'm curious though, like I mean, I know this is kind of separate and we have to vote on it, but I'm

167curious though with our what you were talking about having access, right? Is that somehow connected to increasing rigor at the middle school? Right? Like I think that's something that because it's a big jump between middle and high school, is there a fear of, hey, you're doing fine in these classes, but this might be hard for you to do, so I might not recommend you to that. So, how do we kind of create like, you know, a little bit more a seamless process to get there so that students when they get there even or parents to say like, "Oh gosh, this might be too hard for my kid, you know, he's already or she's already struggling." So, how do we kind of bridge that gap so more students, you know, are interested in taking these harder

168courses and and more students of color, for instance, going into, you know, having access to AP, like how do we kind of build up that rigor, you know, and like I was telling you the examples of like introducing the SAT vocabulary words, like how do we start that like thinking at that level so that they can be better prepared when they're get to nth grade and I'll be there tomorrow. Uh but kind of getting to that process and saying, "Okay, I really want to take this because I feel like I can do it, you know, and really making advocating." And I do I mean I agree what you're saying the hurdles, but I also feel like when a student advocates for that and they're like almost they want to do it and they want to

169put in that work and it almost sets them up for success when they get to that class because they're willing to go that extra step which is what's required in those classes. So I do kind of appreciate that it shouldn't just be like I mean they need to work for it right and that because they have to work hard in their class. So I do understand that process. But if there is a way to streamline so there is more exposure to that level of work early on would kids naturally you know go in that direction? I don't know just >> that's the tier one focus. [clears throat] >> Yeah. >> So so a couple of quick things. Uh one we have Bill um Fish coming in two meetings to talk about the 8 to9 transition

170committee that he put together >> uh to talk about academic rigor and meeting that from 8th grade to 9th grade. that's already been established. That committee's been meeting. Uh so he'll report out on how what what his process looks like and how he wants to move that work forward. Um the program of studies vote tonight to Mark's point and Liz's point, I think we should take it settle it because everybody's going tomorrow night to to explore it and uh students are actively trying to look at courses and take those for the for the fall and that we know what time is now. Uh there are definitely several practices that are happening at the high school related to access that I think are good news stories and um but I won't bother doing those tonight if

171if we feel like we want to talk to Karen and Jenny Bell who's the head of guidance at seal to uh to just talk about what that process looks like. Uh we do not have one high school parent here, right? So you haven't been through it. Um, I want to let you know that there is uh an AP at at every January was AP month where every student got exposed to what AP English looks like, what AP cycle looks like, what the work level looks like. We have student AP ambassadors that actually explain it in um 18-year-old language and not 35 year old teacher language. Uh we have a we have the ability for parents to understand the program of studies back in the fall, so they're ready for that. We have a lot of

172parents that are coming up from 8th grade. they should be going to that meeting so they can get ready for what they want to take in 9th grade because that does help set you up for 10th, 11th and 12th or higher level courses. Uh we are going to engage in SAT and PSAT. PSAT will be paid for by the district next year. That's a past practice that that we left in recent years. So every child takes PSAT. PSAT now will give you recommendations for every single child based on their scores and their correct answers and their incorrect answers to decide to give you a feedback sheet that every student will get that that guidance can sit with them and say well you have strengths in writing or you have strengths in aptitude and math that

173should [snorts] guide your decisions on what you might want to pursue for advanced placement or higher level courses because you're good at it. shows that. So there's a lot of steps being taken and I think that um if we want to bring make sure we can shine a better light on that for families to know and understand. Uh but what I said at the beginning of this process is everybody should read the program of studies before we start because it's a thick document and and I'll always quote Elias now who's my good buddy. There's a whole lot of good stuff in that program of studies. The offerings in business and different areas is great. Uh so uh we can certainly talk to Karen and Jenny about uh coming up with either a set of slides

174or a conversation with the uh advisory curriculum committee. Um and I think that this is an issue that we will be also talking with uh CDM in Mark about in March. We'll be talking about the the AP participation in uh outcome rates for all of our students. Uh so this work happens every day. Um, and but if we want to talk about it further and you all as a committee and through the chair want me to explore formally, I can do that at the chair's request >> because I don't want that to get lost because I know that there's questions to get brought up and I think a lot of it does even tie into some of the things that you were talking about earlier with, you know, the conversations. Is there like I don't

175know is there bias training around talking to students of courses encouraging certain students to take care courses I think that that all of that should be part of the conversation so I think if there's data to explore I think that would be helpful if people have that um but I also think we should vote on it tonight um so do both but I app Mark I really appreciate you bringing it up and I appreciate the questions around it and I think the it's important and that you know even if it doesn't impact this and starting the conversation now and that it doesn't get lost is important. Um so I will make a motion to approve the Milton High School 2026 2020 2026 2027 program of studies. All those in favor. [snorts] Um, do you want

176to report on >> Did I sign 32? >> I I'm not getting the emails. This is where we miss. >> Do you want to hold on? >> Um, I know I signed one. >> And we didn't vote on anything at the last meeting. So maybe 32 is the one, but I would I usually go back and double check that what's been emailed to me in terms of copies. No, one I can't see. Um I know again I signed I've signed one last or right before February, so I assume that is 32. >> We don't have to double check and double check the amount. So >> I should ask before the start of this meeting. We'll hold up on that. >> You sure that's not gonna That's your >> Okay. The other vote that we have

177is to approve the minutes from February 4th. So, I'll take a motion to approve them. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from our meeting on February 4th, 2026. >> Second. >> All those in favor? Um the we have two things left. One um we have the just looking at the March 11th meeting agenda items. So we uh have the open public budget hearing um FY27 discussion. We have the preliminary approval of the Milton High School trip to Europe. Have the early literacy initiative update. uh community schools FY27 fee increase discussion vote and then the subcommittee report updates. So we will have finance, policy, facilities because we're meeting on Tuesday um and school building. School building committee. >> School. Yeah. >> All right. >> I can follow up with you, but I believe I

178had postponed the capital um final update. So I can do that. It will be very short. And then the last thing I just moved to the charge report to the end. um as I've shared with all of you and I've shared with John and now the community is aware of the select board voted on it. I just wanted to um I guess officially state that I um have sent in my resignation from the school committee effective April 29th. Um I will finish out this year but I will not be finishing up my term for personal reasons. Um there is absolutely um it is not reflective at all of this school committee. I've been so fortunate to work with all of you. I appreciate the respect that we give one another. I respect I I appreciate

179the ability for people to share their thoughts and opinions. Um I truly appreciate the passion that everybody brings. Um so I feel very very lucky to have been able to do this for two years. I also feel extremely fortunate that I got to um jump in to the chair position um and got to work with um John. He's made it really easy to to step into this and and I've appreciated your guidance uh throughout it. I've learned a lot and then Katie and Carla, I've really enjoyed working with you, Katie. Um been a lot of meetings together, but I just I think you all have such tremendous talent and um the district is really lucky to be working with all of you. So, um it's very bittersweet. I appreciate all the kind words that you

180guys shared. Um except Mark. I'm just kidding. and [laughter] and um and I just, you know, I just wanted to officially say it here. Um it was vote, as I said, it was voted by the select board to put the remainder of my term on the ballot this year so somebody can run for the one-year position. Um and that's it. So, thank you all. I really appreciate it. And and to the community, it's been it's a great invested, as we saw tonight, passionate community to work for. And I would rather walk into a meeting with every seat filled than every seat empty because it just says that people are engaged and they care. So that's all I have to say that. So thank you all. I appreciate it. >> Thank you very few more meetings.

181>> Four more meetings. Yeah. Yes. [laughter] >> And with that I will take a motion to move. >> All in favor? Thank you. >> [music]