School Committee - March 19th, 2025

001Good evening everybody. Um, sorry for the delay. We had to find a new laptop to attach. Thank you for your patience. We'll call the meeting to order. Wednesday, March 19th for the Milton School Committee, 7:11 p.m. And we'll begin with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. So um as we look to approve our agenda for tonight um I know of one change is I would like to um pull from the chair's report the interim superintendent process topic for discussion um to come after public comment. um we have some guests joining us this evening for that portion. So we'd like to let them um travel

002home sooner rather than later. So we'll move that up ahead of the superintendent's report and then return to the rest of the chair's report after that. Um other changes I know that um Anna we have the calendar piece under the chair's report but that's really connected to the policy subcommittee so we can maybe just tag team that part or does that work okay and then um I know that under the FY25 budget update for finance we will not be doing the capital request revision Um that's something we did previously and we can share an update in the course of that discussion. Are there any other changes people have? Okay. Uh so then with that we'll just move into public comment uh portion of our meeting that we set aside to up to 15 minutes hear

003from members of the community who would like to share their perspectives with us for up to three minutes a piece. Um, is anyone in the audience here for public comment this evening? I don't believe so, but just making sure. Okay. Is anyone online hoping to join for public comment this evening? If so, can you please raise your hand at this time? Okay. I don't see any hands raised, but we'll just give people another few seconds. If you'd like to participate in public comment, please raise your hand. All right. You there are no hands raised, right? Okay. So, um thank you everybody. With that, we can move on um to our first item for this evening. uh next item rather is a discussion of the interim superintendent process. Um I'd like to invite our two guests

004and thank you so much for joining us tonight. Um this is our um friends from MASC, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, Executive Director Glenn Cooer and Field Director Sean Castello. Thank you both so much for taking the time to be with us. Um they are here to share some guidance recommendations um for us to consider in the process of identifying um the leader for Milton Public Schools beginning July 1st. And um this is something you have great expertise in. So we really appreciate your advice and and support with this process. Um, thank you so much. Maybe if you could just sort of provide like an overview of recommendations for how we are proceeding. Um, and we'll then kind of open up the discussion so that we all have the opportunity to be on the

005same page. Thank you. Is this these are all on? Okay. Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I'm Glenn Coocher. I'm the executive director of MASC. Sean Costello is our field director. Both of us have been involved in superintendent searches over the years. Sean is a former school committee is current school committee chair in uh Marshfield and back in the Nixon administration. I was on the Cambridge school committee for 12 years. Uh let me be uh be a little glib for a moment, but you have extraordinary flexibility over what to do about a vacancy in the superintendency because you've indicated that you'll be talking about the superintendency tonight. It would be perfectly legal for you to just appoint me right now. Now, an act of political malpractice, but that's how much flexibility

006you have. And in the case of an interim superintendency, most districts need to act expeditiously because there aren't a lot of people out there who will will fill in for a year. Usually, they are retired superintendent. uh there are superintendents who are not retired who would accept an interim superintendency but there's a risk inherent in that uh because they may or may not be able to stay afterwards you may not wish to continue them. So uh we frequently assist school districts in going through an interim process which is an expedited process. There's a lot of diligence involved but it's an expedited process. The first thing you definitely want to do, and uh we've begun this already, is to let the universe of potential candidates know that you're looking for an interim superintendency. Now, I say

007that because under certain circumstances, retirees can come back out of retirement and work in a district without forfeiting their pension income. Uh but there are certain things the school committee needs to do in order to uh be eligible for that kind of a a waiver to to conduct uh a search that gets you that kind of a retiree. Those are usually the best candidates though because they're experienced. And I will tell you that one real advantage that interim superintendents have uh is that everybody's on their best behavior during an interim superintendency. Everybody wants to make sure that the interim superintendent passes on to the next superintendent just how terrific uh the faculty is and and who in particular is more terrific than others whatever it might be. So it's very important that uh uh the

008interim be able to do that and they are able to do that uh quite well. you uh we are posting your position now. The superintendent association will be posting it also. Those are among the conditions that the state looks for before they grant a waiver. Did you really make a decent effort to try to find an interim superintendent? Because it's an interim superintendency. We we we you would want to expedite the process. Now, when I say we, uh, our association provides the technical assistance that districts need for interim superintendencies. That's the fee. It's not a feebased service. It's part of your membership. So, you've been paying us dues for 75 years. This is one of the things that you that we will do for you. Uh, we are pretty diligent about how we do it.

009We take the applications, we scan them, we uh make them available to uh the uh school committee as soon as they are uh in to us. You may be getting some directly to you if you use school spring. uh at the end of the application period which in your case is March 31st uh the school committee can meet review what's come in and um select someone that they might like to interview. it would be public. Uh so you don't have to worry about the the issues around executive session and uh after you do your due diligence of interviewing a candidate or candidates, you're not required to uh interview any, you can interview all. you can make a decision about who you would like to engage as your interim superintendent. And u an interim superintendent is

010simply a superintendent with a shorter contract. Whether it's an interim, a temporary, a provisional, whatever, they all have the authority of the superintendent. So, you're appointing someone who will have the full legal ability to administer the school district and take care of business. And you can then uh execute a contract and work with that superintendent until uh you're ready to conduct a full search and engage more of the community in that process. So, uh, we are here to explain. We're not here trying to sell anybody any services, but at some point, uh, you will need to cast a net to see, uh, who you would like to help you with the process. Uh, in the past, you mean for the permanent superintendent? Next year, there are there are districts that uh will conduct that process

011themselves. And if uh some of you may have been part of that process uh last time, but if you do elect to conduct the process yourself, uh we can provide you with extensive technical assistance services as well for which there's no fee. That's the general picture. Now, this document uh and this is not specific to Milton. It's it's generic to our school districts. This is a public document. This is not confidential. Uh it's sort of called the oh my god handout because many districts find out a very short notice that they'll be looking for a superintendent and they want to think about what potential candidates think before they apply. Uh what the criteria might be as you get ready for a provisional or permanent search. Uh I think if you review this process, you might

012find it helpful going forward. Uh there is also, you know, an expedited timeline. So you're going to need to take more time than in candidates in a full search than you would the fewer number of candidates that will happen in an interim search and you could be done within within a month. Uh a lot of these things take longer depending upon how much process you have. If the school committee is handling this process, any interviews that you have with candidates, any discussions that the body has uh will will be in public. The executive session option is not available to the school committee, but you won't need it because the candidates will know. And there's less risk to a candidate to apply for an interim superintendency because most of them are retired. Uh most of your

013candidates for your full superintendency will be working somewhere and may not want to disclose that they're seeking a job before it becomes uh appropriately later in the process. Uh Sean's been through this process. I've been through this process. We'd be delighted if you have further questions that you that you'd like to pose to us. Yeah. And I can just add really quickly again, Glenn Glenn has done this over a hundred times, correct? You've you've been involved with superintendent searches. Um I just wrapped up my third, so he's got a little bit more on me than this, but um I can tell you just having done it recently in Marshfield, I understand it's a daunting process. I understand as a member of the school committee going into this can be nerve-wracking and deciding who's going to

014be leading your district even just for one year as an interim or beyond that is a really uh daunting process. That's what we're here for. We are always here to answer your questions. You can call us anytime, email us anytime. Um, let us know uh any questions you may have. We'd be happy to answer questions now or if anything pops up in the future, please always feel free to reach out to us as a resource. Thank you so much. I'll just say um as chair on behalf of the committee having had the opportunity to reach out get your advice also be in touch with the um Tom Scott at the Mass Massachusetts Association of School Superintendent as well. I feel very fortunate to have access to um such a wealth of experience and knowledge and

015um it's based on that that we've taken the preliminary steps that we've been able to do so far and um I think knowing that our goal is to really maintain stability for the district to regain stability um I think it's very reassuring to have your guidance and support and um I don't know what other questions people might have. I know that you've laid out that there's really there is a spectrum of sort of approaches that we will take with the pool once we see like what it consists of, right? Um and we'll kind of go from there based upon um you know how clear the sort of paper screening as you called it. Um how how clearly that sort of presents a direction. Um and we need to sort of see see that part in

016order to understand what comes next. But um yeah, what anybody have questions? because I've had the benefit of Glenn's uh you can you can contact us at any time if you have a question. Yes. Okay. I I have I have a couple questions. First is that today is already March 19th. Yes. And our deadline for the interim superintendent application is the end of March March 31st. That's only 10 days from now. That's not unusual. That's not unusual. For an interim it's not unusual. And we have distributed notice of vacancy to about 1,400 uh aspiring superintendents, current superintendents, uh schools that train superintendents. And usually people who are looking for a superintendency know to look at the websites of the state school boards associations and the superintendent association. Superintendents get a million hits a year, but

017they post everything. We generally only post superintendencies and uh interim superintendencies. And at this time of the year, this is when the interim superintendent demand heats up because the this is when the candidates, excuse me, when the superintendent are announcing their retirements. Uh I see. And things come up late. So I would say for an interim superintendency this is not likely to be a problem. Okay. If this were a full superintendency for the long term, you'd certainly want about four weeks or five weeks of recruiting. Also, it is not unusual if you are aware of someone that you'd like to be made aware of the vacancy to let us know or to contact that individual. it it's not inappropriate to to to reach out and say, uh, hey, so and so, uh, you know, I've

018known you for a long time. I think you'd be good. Why don't you apply? Just don't make any promises you can't keep. That's Got it. And, and if there are any questions, uh, you can refer them to the chair. Yeah. Uh if they're technical questions, uh if you're getting ready to develop questions for your interviews, we have an extraordinarily large question bank. We have model interviews that are suited to vocational schools, interim superintendencies, permanent superintendencies, and they're all available to you. uh we can send them to you electronically and uh you can come up with and we revise it every year with some of the new things that emerge. As you can imagine, this year's uh crop of new superintendants will be dealing with a a very perilous uh long-term financial situation because we don't

019know what the future will bring. Mhm. Uh an incredibly complex regulatory environment with the state looking at graduation requirements and and the federal government uh uh making headlines several times a day much of which affects us all. Yeah. But for when we are looking for a permanent superintendent, usually the search starts in February, March, or like which month? The best time to begin a search for a superintendent is to spend next summer getting your criteria, your decision criteria, your job description in order, and then getting it out, blasting it out during the month of September, keeping it open through maybe to the beginning of October. getting the interviews done by the screening committee prior to the end of October and then uh having a decision made before the other districts start picking off the best

020candidates. I see. Thank you. And typically in your experience, how large is a pool like for these types of um positions? Not the permanent, the the interimm. You mean the interim pool? Yeah, exactly. I would hope that there might be, I don't know, four or five candidates who you would you might want to consider seriously. Okay. Possibly. Uh some I mean there are always really good very appropriate candidates who want to do this and they and they stand out very quickly. When you're looking for your permanent superintendent, the average search depends on the district a lot of the time, but a district this size probably anywhere from 15 to 25 and then 25 being on the much higher side. Okay. But but of that 15 to 25, you should be able to find in the

021first round at least 8 to 10 candidates who would merit first tier consideration, especially if you're beginning your search in September. And and interviewing eight candidates in a semi-final round is typical. have kind of an odd question, but um why would somebody come out of retirement to do it? Why would somebody come out of retirement to Oh, that's easy. Just just if you get a waiver, Yeah. you are allowed to come out of retirement and work as a superintendent and get paid and not give up your pension. Gotcha. So I I will tell you without the critical shortage waivers, we wouldn't be able to find anybody willing to do this. Okay? With the waivers, it won't it doesn't cost you anymore. You need a superintendent. You will have to pay for a superintendent. Superintendent is

022retired. That superintendent is getting a pension from the state. It won't cost the state anymore. So, we think it's good public policy to allow the waiver process because you have the right incentives to get some. I mean, someone wants to pay you double for a year. Yeah. It's like Christmas all year long. And is it a is the year is a year the the a retired superintendent is allowed to earn in retirement. the difference between what their successor in their previous job earned. I'll give you an example. Let's say somebody made $200,000 a year and retired at a pension of $170,000 because they're cutting the spouse in. So that person can earn the difference between the 220 that the person who's now the superintendent is making. All right? They can earn that 20,000 and they

023can earn 30,000 to bring them up to 200,000. They can earn the difference between the pension and their old salary plus the difference between what that candidate is making now plus $15,000 in a calendar year. Okay? So for a lot of retired superintendent without a waiver, they can make 60 or $70,000 between July and December and then another 60 or 70,000 between January and July. With the waiver, they could earn much more. Okay? And if you're a superintendent who retired early or you retired from another state and you just want to come in, uh that can be a a really good deal. The the the out ofstate people generally uh want to come here because as they say to us, I figure I'll go to Milton, do a year. How hard could it be? And

024they they think they can phone it in. And of course, you know, they can't. But there are people who, you know, I always wanted to be near Cape Cod. I think I'll apply to Milton because if you're from Muny, Indiana, you don't know where Cape Cod is relative to Milton. So, you know, you when you're questioning the candidates, you should uh be asking them why us, why now? Mhm. And when you're interviewing the real candidates for full-time, you really want to look them in the eye and say, uh, you know, why Milton? Why now? I think in in this interim expedited interim search, um, we're we're prioritizing in our criteria length of experience as a superintendent in Massachusetts. Um because one thing nothing against people from other places but for us for right now we

025really need somebody who's brings a demonstrated track record of confronting some of the challenges that we're facing here in Milton. So along with that you know we are able to like to know about you know the extent to which an individual ha what what challenges have they faced what success have they had in similar you know situations to the ones we face here in Milton and we're able to draw on the network essentially of MASC and MASS who can sort of help us vouch for certain candidates based based upon the work that they have already done as superintendent. So I think you know for us for right now that's a really important feature and why we're kind of really looking at that profile for um a person to come in and this and do this.

026This is a complicated state at a very complicated time. So you don't want to have to educate your interim superintendent about chapter 70, about the importance of the circuit breaker, about uh the regulatory nightmare that is the department of elementary and secondary education's book of rules and policies. Uh it's tough. So, usually an experienced veteran candidate uh is good and and our pools are now that that uh things have have changed for for individuals uh we now have a very balanced pool of who those candidates might be. So, say I hope you'll have some good choices. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for Thank you for sharing this information and um we will stay in touch and really appreciate it. And yeah, if anybody thinks of other questions that you want to share, we I

027I can give your emails to the members here and then people can also reach out. Yep. Um so, thank you very much. And you can share our cell phone numbers. Yes, please. With the members. Uh, our members meet at night so we get called at night and our members worry about things over weekends so they call us on weekends and that's okay. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. So, thanks everybody for letting them come in front and review. Great. Um, it feels like every update is talking about the budget and all the work we're doing on the budget because that feels like it's taking up 95% of our work right now. Um, I guess the one thing to share and I know budget's coming here. Um,

028and we'll have a lot to share on both FY25 and 26. Um, last week we had our first grade information night and one thing I just wanted to kind of flag and and kind of share is one of the things that we're balancing and thank you to Karen McDavin and the entire admin team and and directors, all the people that were part of that. Um, as we're waiting for the override to determine kind of what next year looks like. Um I think on a lot of things we're we're having to talk about well if the override passes this what this is what it's going to look like if the override doesn't pass you can expect this and um you know as you all probably realize there's a lot of work to do if the override

029didn't pass to to make decisions around how systems function without all of those really critical essential positions. So, um, that was a big topic of conversation leading up to the first grade information night. U, a smaller team of the larger presentation group met to talk about how how should we navigate this. Um, and I just kind of wanted to flag that. It's something that we are working on on a lot of different things as we kind of move forward to April 29th and and town meeting. So any questions on that or anything else? Because I was going to introduce our our two visitors here. All right. So uh we we have talked over um I think the last two years about doing kind of deeper learning here around teaching and learning. And we at the

030beginning of the year had had built in our quarterly reports and have had some other presentations, site council presentations. Um we had a special ed presentation as well. U what u what we're going to hear tonight is information on our diagnostic assessments which Brian Selig and Cat Rush you guys can come on up. Um who are exceptional at the work that they do. Um, I think this this information is really really helpful for the school committee to understand and I think moving forward to to have these every quarter to have a conversation here about how are we doing. This is one of the main ways that we assess how our students are doing. It's it's information that we're using in the classroom um formatively to make changes to instruction. So, as as you all think

031about and kind of in the future, um I think this would be a a strong thing to continue to to have a a a focus on the quarterly report and not just kind of looking at at what's happening at the end of the year, but but kind of bringing this into the conversation of how we are stewarding um the strongest instructional vision that we can. Hi everyone, thanks for having us. Um, I'm Cat D. Ro. I'm the literacy director here in Milton for kindergarten through 8th grade. And I'm Brian Celig, the math director for the district. um want to apologize right away for some changes that we made to the slide deck kind of right up until the start of the meeting to try to not necessarily change any of the information that was presented

032there, but just to make sure it was clearer um and maybe sequence in a way that we thought the presentation might go more smoothly. So I just added the copy to the folder updated the copy version. Yeah. So there were two goals really if we're to think about um the slides that you have in front of you and the first or one um is to look at midyear data um as a district both in literacy and in math. Um but what I think is the bigger uh purpose of this presentation is to really go over the different types of assessments that exist in education in an educational landscape. um and for what purpose they're used. And so um we're going to start there because I think even though the data that is collected is is

033very very important um teachers, administrators and district personnel have been using this since January and it's almost April. So I in a way this data is somewhat um outdated um because we've collected other data um in informal ways that um is new and updated. So just putting that caveat that while this data is alive and real um it has changed since January and it should change um that quickly. So we'll kind of start by looking at um these are all probably words that we've all heard um in the educational space and also outside of it. um but they often get used in an interchangeable way. And so for the purpose of our discussion and discussions going forward um I'm just going to level sit a little bit about what these words mean um and then

034on a subsequ sub subsequent slide go over what they mean in Milton. So we have summitative assessments and formative assessments. And one way of thinking about these is summitative assessments assess or are assessments of learning. So those are very sumitive obviously. Um they're done at the end of the year or at the end of a unit. Um they're standardized. They might be the report card. These are all examples of what summitive assessments are. Formative our assessment for learning. So a teacher would use a summitative assessment to see what the students learned. They use formative assessments to see what they need to teach next. Now, those may they are very related, but they're adjacent. So, it really this is more informing as a teacher. What is it that my students need next? So, those types of

035assessments are far more vast. So, those are screeners, diagnostics, um progress monitoring, um and informal assessments like observations and anecdotal information. Now, this is where the real magic happens, I think. um that's where teachers do their craft of teaching and um kind of tune in to what what their students need. So I won't go through this entire all these boxes, but I will on the next slide kind of explain overarching what this looks like here in Milton. So um and this is not exhaustive. This was just to give you an idea. These are terms you've probably heard about. So for our summitive assessments those are things like MCCAST your report card and unit or module assessments and then formative assessments. So screening different from diagnostic those are normed so that's like a nationally normed uh

036evidence criterionbased screener. So that's like dibbles or easycbm it's lexia what we used to use here in literacy. And then for diagnostic you'll hear hear Brian talk about I Ready. We use I Ready at the middle school as well. that makes more sense for our older learners. Progress monitoring is used in all with all students in all classrooms, but a lot of um all of our interventionists use progress monitoring to make sure that on a four to six week cycle we're making the gains we need to see within certain domains. Um dibbles, subtests, word list, skills checks, things like that. And then informal assessments are things like running records. Um, we used to use a benchmark assessment system, which is a just another form of running record. Kind of tells you how a student is

037doing in their reading with certain behaviors in the moment, but it changes very frequently. Um, and things like exit tickets. So, if I taught a lesson on um, multiplying fractions, I might give everybody a post-it note before they went to lunch, see if they know one example of what we did today. They stick it on the door. I kind of look at it during lunch and recess to see all right these three kids I need to pull them tomorrow because they didn't quite grasp the concept and we move on. So that's an overarching sort of level set of understanding of what we're talking about when we talk about things like screeners and diagnostics and those are the two categories that Brian and I are going to talk about today. Thanks Cat. So, I'm going to

038speak um about I Ready Math uh the diagnostic data collected in the winter window for grades K through five. Uh but first, I want to kind of acclimate everyone to uh more about that assessment. Um so, it's administered to all elementary students three times a year. We say in the fall, winter, and spring. Um in reality, for grades 1 through five, it's it's early in the first couple of weeks of the school year. um uh in the winter uh shortly after we get back from the holiday vacation in January and then the spring is close to the end of the year to try to allow sort of the maximum amount of learning before we assess for the final time heading into the summer. Um we stagger the first two windows slightly for kindergarten just in

039recognition of the fact that they're new to school and new to technology and new to just about everything. So, um, their fall and winter windows are, uh, sort of staggered compared to the rest of the elementary school. Uh, at Pierce for middle school students, we assess every student in the fall and the spring windows. Um, and then only certain uh, groups of students um, who we have greater reason for concern and the sort of built-in ability within the Pierce uh, Bell schedule to assess. One of the biggest challenges we've run into with I Ready at the middle school um and this remains true year after year um is the amount of time it takes for students to complete the diagnostic and how that infringes on instructional time which is so precious. Uh which is why

040we eliminated the winter window um a couple of years ago. Um, and we also struggle sometimes with the validity of data uh with middle school students um whose whose buyin um tends to be a little bit harder to uh to acquire. Uh I Ready is taken on a Chromebook by students during the school day. Uh the lower the grade, the less time it takes. Um kindergarten first up to second grade can be done in as short of amount of time as 30 to 40 minutes. We still encourage teachers to spread that out over multiple days and not just one sitting. uh upper elementary closer to an hour and as I sort of alluded to at the middle school um potentially over an hour and as I describe kind of how the test works it'll probably

041make more sense. Uh the way I Ready is designed is uh to adapt to the responses that students give with each question. So with multiple correct consecutive answers, the questions get harder with the intent of essentially getting a point at which they no longer recognize or understand the content of the question that they're seeing. Uh, conversely, as students answer questions incorrectly, the uh subsequent items um go uh younger in in grade level alignment and easier theoretically to what the student should um be able to answer. Um and so you end up with sort of this toggle back and forth between questions that are um initially potentially way too hard to questions that are uh pathetically easy. uh and then sort of back and forth until uh the system has identified kind of that sweet spot.

042Um the uh data reports that we rely most heavily on um in our work uh among leadership teams and uh classroom teachers um and other service providers is the uh results after each diagnostic which provide the over overall scaled score um and grade level placement along with uh grade level placement in each of four standard aligned domain areas number and operations algebra and algebraic thinking. Those two are considered to be priority. Um as well as measurement and data and geometry. Um and some version of the results are shared now with all families um after each administration and certainly readily available and reviewed by both teachers and school and district leaders. Uh once we get to the winter and spring windows, we also get growth data uh some of which we'll see today. uh which offers

043a comparison to the fall overall scaled score relative to the amount of typical growth uh that I Ready expects each student to gain from the beginning to the end of the school year. And those growth reports are again a source of analysis for uh work with classroom teachers, service providers, and district administrators. Once a student completes the diagnostic uh on I Ready, they're prescribed a pathway of interactive lessons based on their uh performance in each domain area that um sort of has them navigate through um a series of lessons um uh known in the students uh to the students as my path um and begins in the area uh the domain area of highest need. Uh and the goal is for each student really K through five um to complete approximately two to three lessons

044in a normal week and spend um somewhere between 40 and 60 minutes doing so. Um so that gives some context about kind of where this data comes from. And I think um where I'll sort of wrap up after we look at the data is to acknowledge that there are some limitations that we have to keep in mind um as we look at at any data source but particularly with Ire. Um so if you can advance to the next slide here. Um this is one of a few slides that focus on overall placement for our elementary students. um at the top um from the fall administration and at the bottom from the winter administration. Um and you can see sort of the color coding. Uh the point that I want to try to um make clear

045about this slide is that when we're talking about at the beginning of the year, um we consider students that are placing one grade level below to not have necessarily any gaps. we sort of expect that placement because by the time at the time they're taking it early in the school year, they haven't received much if any grade level instruction. So, we wouldn't expect any demonstration of proficiency on the chronologic grade that they've just begun. As we move to the winter, um obviously not just the red, but also um sort of the the placement into one grade level below now draws u more of our concern and attention. And so this breaks down um you know the the the placement into each category and also the number of students spanning grades K through five that fall

046into each of these five placement categories. Uh I thought it might be helpful on the next slide to kind of see where our winter data from this year compares to previous years. Uh and so I I um pulled that from uh last year and the year prior and um it's remarkably consistent. Um we see um a sign I mean that's just the best word I can use to describe it. The data from each of the past three winter diagnostic windows is remarkably consistent and similar. The next slide gives a chance to try to um acclimate you to how growth is reported on in I Ready. Um so there's actually three different visuals sort of uh embedded in this one slide. Um the um part I want to address first is sort of during in the

047bottom half of this slide. Um so one of the valuable uh lenses through which to look at I already growth data whether it be in the middle of the year or um after the spring administration at the end of the year is to see um which students grew the most based on where they started. And so this breaks down for us um the um growth for each group of students based on their fall placement. And I just have to step back uh to explain what these percentages uh refer to. And and that's really regardless of whether we're looking at uh any of the sort of three embedded images here. Um so I I mentioned earlier that in uh that I Ready through analysis of data for its uh millions of students that use the uh

048diagnostic assessment platform across the country. Um prescribes a certain number of overall scaled points that it expects a student to grow from when they take it for the first time in the fall to when they take it for the last time in the spring. and it assigns the name for that as typical growth and annual reminds us that it's for the whole year not just from the fall to the winter or the winter to the spring. So the hope and expectation is that every student attain their projected typical growth from fall to spring. And then it also assigns a stretch growth which is intended specifically for students who are starting at the beginning of the year further below grade level and therefore have more room that they would need to grow in order to get

049closer to uh the the goal of of being on grade level by the end of the year. Um but it's sufficient I think for our purposes to focus on the typical growth uh information. Um, and so, uh, when we talk about mid-year growth, we're basically saying that we would like to see whichever individual student or groups of students we look at to have attained at least 50% of their typical growth. That sort of feels reassuring that they're on track or on pace. And what we're seeing in the bottom half of this slide is that that's true of the average student in um who placed one grade level below in the fall. It's um beyond true for students who placed two or three or more grade levels below um in the fall, but it's not quite

050true of the average student who placed early on grade level or even mid or above grade level at the start of the year. Um, and I wouldn't um expect it to be um the case uh for students who are already placing on grade level, nor would I be as concerned if students who are already testing on grade level in the fall and continue to do so in the winter may not necessarily be growing um by half of the number of points that they're projected to get over the course of the year. uh those students we usually see as we'll look at uh the data from last year tend to sort of make up for that growth by the spring. Um so this gives you a chance to kind of dig a little bit deeper into

051not just um how did our students grow, but which ones grew more than others. Uh there's one other data point I I know we're kind of in the weeds a little bit here that I just want to draw your attention to and try to do my best to explain and that is in the bottom row of this slide where it says 45% of students who are three or more grade levels below in the fall have already met the expected growth by winter that they would have uh been expected to attain over the whole year. So there is some definite um uh improvement happening among what we would consider to be our at least as far as I is concerned our um most concerning population of students. Now it's only 48 44 of whom we have

052this data from both the fall and the winter. So it's not you know we're talking over a thousand close to 2,000 students altogether. So, I I don't want to dwell there, but I'm hopefully in the process explaining a little bit about what you're looking at. If we move to the top half of the screen, um the the information gets a little bit less vivid. Um, what I can tell you about the graphic in the upper left is that if we take all of the K5 students who have a score from the fall and the winter, about a quarter of them grew less than 20% toward their typical growth and another 21% already exceeded their typical growth. So, we kind of have this skewed on either end mid-year data. Um, that um, again, in looking at

053last year, we'll have some reassurance. I think that that will write itself between now and the end of the year in the spring administration. And then the image on here that I debated about including at all because it's sort of so um unhelpful is that the median student um attained 53% toward their typical growth if we lined up those 2,000 kindergarten through fifth graders from least to most growth. So, uh, on target, but hardly, um, you know, real insightful. Uh, if we move to the next slide, because I'm tired of talking about that one. Um, we see, um, kind of a full year's worth of data. Obviously, not this year because we're not um, we're only in March, but uh, looking back uh, if you advance this slide, um, oh, I'm sorry, Mark. I moved

054you back moved you too too far forward. Uh the next slide, I'm sorry, is a comparison to 2023 2024. So I spent a lot of time talking about this slide. Um and then the one that comes maybe before it instead of after it is the um comparison to last year so that you can uh in the winter. So it's meant to be an apples to apples comparison. Um and I I'm hesitant to bog down um in that data. Sorry, which slide is it? I have it as slide eight. I have it as slide eight. This one right here. That's it right there. Yeah. Sorry. No, this one. Too much time on my hands, I guess. Um, but it still looks pretty consistent. Yes. To this year. Exactly. Um, there's a couple different like if we

055were if we were in last year and we were looking at this data, I'd point out a couple of things that stood out to me. But, um, that was my purpose for including it is to show that we're pretty consistent. uh we already said in terms of performance from this winter to the previous two winters I think in growth as well. Um and if we look now at the next slide, slide uh nine, this is performance at each of the three administrations last year. Uh part of my goal today is to try to um use our time together to anticipate or project what the future likely holds. And because we have such consistency in our fall performance data from this year to last year and in our winter performance data from this year to last

056year, it stands to reason that our spring data will also be consistent. And when we look at last year's spring data, we see um that 62% of our kindergarten through fifth grade students placed overall mid or above grade level. Um which is an impressive jump from the middle of the year to the end of the year. and another 19% whose overall placement was early on grade level. So the visual itself is um aesthetically pleasing to see such a large chunk of dark green and um light green. Um which isn't to in any way dismiss the fact that last year 341 students um placed overall one grade level below and another you know combined um 60 students just about um finished um more than that. So, um, but we're here to kind of look a little

057bit big picture and that's a reassuring, um, data point as is the next slide, which shows those same graphics, but with regard to the growth last year from the fall, fall of 2023 to the spring of 2024 where we see every data point showing uh, growth in excess of the anticipated and 64% % of our students going beyond the projected data or the projected growth. I'm sorry, chose the wrong word there. All right. Um so one of the reasons that the slide deck has changed since it was originally shared with you is it was decided that to keep all of the subgroup um data slides embedded in this portion um had the potential to kind of draw this presentation out longer than it was intended for. Um so those slides have been migrated to the

058the end of the slide deck. Um, and I'm using this slide to summarize uh my interpretation of them um and with reference to slide numbers um for your for your reference. Um so we continue to see our uh special education students and EL students perform um below their peers. That story is told on slides 28 and 29. Um but as you advance to slides 30 through 33 um I would say that there is some I use the phrase modestly encouraging um comparison measures um from last year to this year. Uh a trend that I hope to see continue uh when that analysis is conducted at the end of the year. Um, by contrast, the the there's um not unfortunately um and I wish there was a stronger word I could use um much in the

059way of encouraging trends with respect to our black African-American IRA data. Um it remains deeply troubling and concerning. Um and that story is told in slides 34 through 37 for your reference. So each time we administer I Ready um there's a um analysis performed uh excuse me there's an analysis of the results or the performance data along with in the case of the fall excuse me the winter and the spring the growth data um with leadership teams in uh each of the elementary schools as well as the middle school uh just not in the winter. Um uh I'm often invited around that time to attend common planning time with grade level teams to review uh the teacher level data and recommend action steps to ensure that um students are getting the most return on investment

060for the time that they're spending on my path lessons in between diagnostic windows. Um and then with respect to our um math intervention team uh we look specifically at what's called the instructional grouping report which shows um placement not overall which is the data lens through which we've been looking but in two of the priority domain areas um the number and operations and algebra and algebraic thinking. So that work happens in between these uh presentations and after each administration. Um to summarize uh this year's overall performance and growth is consistent as we've said with each of the past two years. Um there are uh as has been noted and and not meant to be in any way uh overlooked uh students um who are demonstrating significant gaps um uh and placing uh below grade level.

061Um, and it's important, I think, in this uh group to acknowledge the limitations of a classroom teacher in being able to provide the level of intensive and targeted support that students in that um reality need. Um, their responsibility first and foremost is to attending to grade level content. Um, which isn't to say classroom teachers aren't armed with uh expertise and knowledge when it comes to helping to address small gaps among some students. But large gaps um are are it's that's not a realistic solution. Which is why I add the importance of continuing to develop a remote a robust MTSS model uh that includes greater access to math intervention services. And then I'll conclude by uh in my last slide here just um acknowledging the reality of the limitations in I already data period. It is

062just one data point. We talked about the experience that students have while they're taking it on a Chromebook. Um, and this, um, sort of toggling back and forth between questions that are intentionally too difficult and ones that are intentionally too easy, um, is a otherwise pretty unnatural one for them. Um, and one that requires a high level of attentiveness and perseverance um, and intentionality in order to ensure that the results are valid. Um, in order for any I Ready data to sort of be conclusive and actionable at the at the learning level, um, we have to go much deeper than the overall performance and growth data that we've looked at today. And then lastly, um it's important to note that particularly within our into math curriculum in grades 1 through five, um grade level instruction

063is concentrated in certain areas. It's not um for those who are familiar with our uh its predecessor, everyday math, which was sort of a spiraling curriculum uh into math is very sort of concentrated in in certain topics uh throughout the year. Um and that as a result um hinders some of the growth data at the midyear point because students have to that point only received some grade level instruction and only in certain areas which may be reflected in growth only in certain domains. And with that I'll uh turn it over to Cat for some dibbles information. Thank you. All right. So, Dibbles, uh, Dibbles is the screener that we use here in Milton along with thousands of other districts. Um, it stands for dynamic indicators of basic early learning skills. Um, and the big sort

064of takeaways from this to to understand what that is is is it's a set of short meaning one minute literacy tasks um that vary in how many subtests are given by grade. And so we do more subtests earlier because there's more to screen and to monitor and fewer as students get older with the understanding and assumption that we identify any areas in need of intervention and support. um and progress monitor only the students off of grade level for those subtests. Um the purpose is to provide educators with benchmarks for gauging the status and progress of all students. Um and another purpose is to monitor student progress. So both for students that are in intervention and those that are not. This can be used as a very short quick measure um that doesn't need to be

065done in it in in in completion um during those in between intervals. you know, if you have a student that you're wondering about a certain area or skill, um you can pull them and do a quick one minute progress monitoring and and keep it moving. So, um that is a brief overview. Um another thing just to note is we do screen all students K to five. Um though in kindergarten much like um I Ready or any other data collection we don't um we collect the data after the students have been here for a few weeks. Um and we use that as a baseline. Um, but it's not really fair to to share that or or or widely use that to dig um to really put our stake in the ground in those first few weeks

066of school knowing that students are getting used to being in a school environment. So, this is just a brief um overview of why we use screeners. Um they're easily aggregated for efficient analysis. So unlike the I Ready assessment which is a diagnostic and goes over standards, this is more skill- driven and it's meant to be quick and efficient so that we can quickly um and generally aggregate students into certain groups and again not to keep them there but to then know who do we need to follow up with to dig deeper to get more information. Um this is not used in isolation. It is then followed up with to get different assessments to ensure that we're giving intervention to students that require it and not um overindexing in that in that area. All right. Screening

067data is used um the goal is to be able to distinguish the unique struggler from the population um and understand and analyze that the struggling reader profile and context to drive more effective programming and support. So if we see that universally across the district um all students over the course of the year are not able to demonstrate mastery or understanding in a certain domain or skill um that would tell me it's a tier one problem. Um if it's very discreet and there's a small population that's where we bring in the interventions. So, what Brian was talking about with MTSS um really layering on interventions and not um and using data to drive any changes to instruction or intervention. We want to be able to regularly answer what percentage or number of our students are at

068risk in each areas that we assess. How do these rates differ by grade level? What are our instructional strengths and weaknesses? And what are our priority issues? So these are always questions we're asking ourselves especially um in the intervention um in the reading team in our group. All right, this next slide um kind of gets into the actual data. So this is an overview of the fall and winter composite scores for dibbles uh this year. So a composite score doesn't indicate one particular subtest. It's um a com a combined score for multiple dibbles measures providing a comprehensive estimate of a student's overall early literacy skills andor reading proficiency. So it is a general score. Um while we use composite scores that is not the first score we look at when looking at this data. Um,

069while it does sort of give you an overall estimate of students reading success, when we're thinking about how we're using the data, which is to identify what students need, we want to make sure that we're grouping like students and that we're taking into account the weight of different subtests. So, in other words, excuse me, if a second grader um is doing great in everything, but might not be grasping that comprehension just yet in September, we'll say to ourselves, okay, they're doing great. They're going to get second grade reading skills. we're going to progress monitor them, but if they're still showing some deficiencies in say um letter sounds or word decoding, we're going to say, okay, we're going to really get those foundational skills up to par so that we can see that progress in other

070areas. That's just an example. Um but I say that just so that we don't put too too much stock in a composite score, but it is the best way to kind of look at trends when you're talking about such a big group of students. So, as we look um at these bar graphs, um it shows that our kindergarten students, as we would expect, are making huge gains. Um and in each of the other grades, we see either an uptick or a pretty steady plateau. Um and this is very consistent with previous years um progress. So you'll see that the blue are students that are um above benchmark, the green at benchmark, yellow below, and then red well below. One other thing to note is that in grades four and five, there are only two subtests.

071So this brings in uh a potential reason why we see less shifting at those grades over the course of a full year. And that's because um they really just work with the comprehension assessment which is it's called a maze assessment um and then an oral reading fluency. So we we listen to students read and see how their pace and their rate is um in accuracy. Okay, we can move to the next. All right, this is just showing what last year's um winter scores were and this year's winter scores. So, I don't know that there's statistical significance to any of the differences in these. Um, bless you. Except for kindergarten, I will say we see a bigger jump. Um, and then in grade five, we're seeing some more movement, but generally speaking, um, it's pretty consistent.

072I do want to note um that the implementation of UFly this year in grades K1 and two could account for some of that extra growth. It's something that I wonder we'll certainly dig into it. Um but it's a positive change nonetheless. Um all right so we can continue. So this is the composite scores for the complete uh beginning, middle and end of last year's data. Um again as we would expect to see it goes we see the blue getting bigger, we see the red getting smaller. Um in fifth grade, you know, we sometimes see that dip. I do wonder if it has to do with um engagement in fifth grade. There's a lot going on. I don't know that that might not be it. But um it's something you know that we consider when we

073look at when this is administered much like the I Ready. It's um September, January, and June. Though we have played around with it and done late May, but we don't want it to be too early. So um we see that in eighth grade as well with the I Ready. Um they're often tested out after MCCAST and all that. So I don't know, could be a factor, but something we look at. Right. If we go to the next slide, this is um this is really where we spend most of our time both with teachers and with interventionists and building administrators is really looking at the subtests because again it's really specific to a grade level and the skills that are listed here um contribute to a student's overall reading profile. So, um, as I said, there

074are fewer tests in the upper grades. Um, we're no longer screening universally for foundational skills, but when there is a flag or a student who has been in intervention, we continue progress monitoring them in those foundational skills to ensure that um the universal application of mastery is being, you know, done on an ongoing basis. So those first two um grades one to five take the subtest of oral reading fluency um and grades two to five take the maze reading comprehension um and that shows what those grade levels are specifically how they're demonstrating competency in those areas and this is from the fall of this year. Some of the more dramatic um shifts that you'll see between this slide and the next are on that bottom row of subtests um letter sounds decoding and word fluency.

075So those are very foundational skills. Um and you'll see that I know it's a little weird, but Mark, if you could go to the next slide, if you look at the shift in color, if you just kind of go back and forth for a second, you can see that there's been enormous growth when it comes to those foundational skills. And that's very encouraging and really points to a strong implementation of the UFly at a tier one level. Um, and you know, I just want to take a moment to just shout out all those teachers who are implementing it with Fidelity and really sticking with it. They're they're amazing and it's it's looking great in all the classrooms. So, well done. All right. And then this slide, though probably hard to see if you don't have

076a copy in front of you where you can zoom in, um this is taking a look at subgroup uh growth from fall of this year to winter of this year. [Music] Um it categorizes it as average growth. So above average or below average growth from the fall to the winter. Um it shows the percentage of students in each of the growth categories determined by Dibble norms. each student group you can compare whether there's a high percentage of students meeting average or above growth. Um you know we use this we use this data to make goals that we might want to see in the future. So identifying if we want to see you know 50% of a certain subgroup um make average or above average growth. Um this is um this is a new measurement that

077you know we we haven't used in the past in terms of using it as growth. We've looked at performance data which um can be can be different. Uh but this is really showing that um we have a pretty a pretty I don't know like 50/50 in a lot of cases averaging for our growth. Um it'll be interesting to see what this looks like in the spring to see if we're seeing you know an increase in that. Um but it's um it's certainly an important data point as we look to increase growth for all subgroups um in the district. Sorry, Cat, by 5050, do you mean 50% above and well above? Yeah. And 50% average or below average. Correct. Yeah. Sorry about that. Okay. So, similar to Brian, I'll go through what we do after data

078is collected. Um and in a similar way, uh we review the data with principles and classroom teachers. So we make Brian and I go together. Um it's helpful to do this together. Um we've worked hard this year to calibrate our approach to data analysis so it's more holistic as well as our intervention approach so that it's a system rather than content specific and we found it to be um really effective. So, we review that growth and performance data with uh school-based administrators um and highlight the instructional groupings with supporting materials. So, within the Amplify MClass platform, it will put students into instructional groupings. It's not you know, you can move them around. It's not um you know, rigid in that way, but it then lists out some lessons, some um you know, analog lessons that

079you can print out to work with small groups or to have students do in centers. Um we use consistent criteria across the district in reading to identify students um that can be supported both in the classroom or with an interventionist. So we determine as a reading team um immediately after the window closes. We get together for about three hours. We sort the district spreadsheet into certain subtests that we know we're going to intervene with so that we know that consistently across the district with the four elementary schools that we're identifying students that meet the same criteria. So, it's the true definition of equity. Um, it sometimes means that we need to shift interventionists to pick up a class at a different school, but we try to do so maximizing their time with students. Um, and

080we've been able to do that consistently. And then, of course, we communicate with families both the results of the screener and next steps. So, if your student is is scoring below or well below in a certain subtest, we will identify, you know, either they're going to continue on their IEP with their service provider liaison or they're going to continue working with the EL teacher and or they're going to work with a reading interventionist at that um grade level. Um, and similarly to math, reading interventionists really not only work with students and and and um target these skills, they work with teachers a lot of the time and talk about ways in which they can replicate those supports in a classroom, strengthening our our approach at MTSS. And I think that it's um an invaluable skill

081and a really important part of our of our team here in Milton. and then some conclusions. So, keeping in mind that this going kind of hearkening back to the first slide about uh the very you know the varied ways in which we assess students, this is really one way. It's a screener. It takes seven minutes um for each student. It is meant to be quick so we can um kind of have a way to uh one-on-one assess students in their literacy but also do so not at the detriment of their school day. Um but it is one part of their learner profile. Um but we do follow up with other assessments to ensure that that was a true reflection of a student's abilities. Um, it's used in combination with developmentally appropriate classroom assessments to triangulate

082the data and create a balanced learner profile. And as I said earlier, it's part of our robust MTSS process, ever growing. Um, and really complements a strong tier one um higher levels of growth and foundational skills. Yeah. So, that was something I wanted to highlight again. um the UFly implementation, we've seen just really really great growth and excitement in students that are able to tackle some of those foundational skills in ways they weren't before. Um and students with disabilities, English learners, and our black African-American data um remain to be areas of concern where we are looking to um ensure that the growth and performance rates meet those of of the aggregate um data. Thus concludes our brief our very presentation content light. Yeah, I know. We shortened it. I I would just like to say

083I thank you so much for all the work that you put into this and I know that even as of today you were revising those slides trying to focus really in on answering as many questions as you had and having resources for the school committee members to look at um in the future. And I'm happy to answer any questions um if they come up at a later point too as our cat and Brian I have some questions. Yeah, sure. Because um the data we see is only focused on elementary schools. Do we have any data for middle and high school? Because even for dibbos, we don't assess after middle after fifth grade. But for math, right, the I ready, it seems like middle school and at least for middle school level, we still do that

084assessment. Do we have data for for the middle school grades? So we do I Ready both in reading and math at the middle school. Okay. Um the high school does not have a generalized assessment but we do use I Ready in certain with certain students to progress monitor. Um yeah more as an intervention tool. I mean, for a very small percentage of our high school students who are um showing um signs of potentially being um significantly below grade level and helps sort of figure out and customize um the best way forward for them. Um, this presentation, if it were done at the end of the year, would include some of the same opportunities for comparison between fall and spring for our middle school students, both in math and reading. But, um, to to include fall

085data at this point in time from sixth through eighth graders, I think, would have been too outdated to feel like we were using your time. Well, um I have a few other questions that I would like to have clarifications for my understanding like regarding the I remember you mentioned something about the first and the kindergarten and the first grade they don't do the fall assessment because they need to know how to use those computers softwares. Um so you would do that staggering up with the winter assessment. So when when do the kindergartens and first graders do their assessments? Like which month would that be? I'm glad you asked. So to clarify, it's just kindergarten that we do that with. So So everyone else um first through 8th grade tests in um the month of September.

086we sort of offer uh I would say our elementary data is generally collected a little bit um earlier uh than in at the middle school but I'll just for the sake of of answering your question say that happens in September. Y uh kindergarten doesn't test for the first time until uh just after like the beginning of November sort of that period of time uh before Thanksgiving. Got it. And then uh the winter window for grades one through five opens shortly after uh we come back in the new year in January. Um and for kindergarten it was the two weeks leading into February vacation. So not that much different. And all the data that you saw included kindergarten. So the window was sort of that I grabbed those um the data from was just widened to

087make sure that all K through five students were included. Got it. Um you also mentioned about the multiple day testing um instead of one sitting did you recommend teachers to do it on m multiple days I also noticed that some of the the testings actually for all the grade levels um it's not 100% student participated is it due to maybe some student might be absent on one of those testing days so the data is not um computerizing so usually we try to be flexible enough with the window to capture data for all students or as many as possible. Um, in order to have growth data, we need both a fall and a winter within the window that the capture was taken. So, um I mean there aren't as many students new to Milton Public Schools

088during the school year as are missing as far as data points, but those are examples of students that might have come in um and been tested when they came in, but their data is not reflected um in what was taken there. Uh it does occasionally happen and less so at the elementary school because the day is a little bit more flexible where a student will begin um the diagnostic at the normal expected time and then for extenduating circumstances be unable to complete it during the 21-day window that they have to complete it. At which point the diagnostic automatically resets and by that point they either the the sort of choice is either uh made with with consultation to start over again which might mean that their data is not captured or depending on what the

089circumstances were maybe forego that administration and wait until the next chance to collect that data point. Mhm. Um, so it's not we don't get everyone, but we try to set it up in such a way that we're assessing as many students as possible in the intended time frame. Got it. Got it. And you also mentioned about the new math curriculum is into math and you say it's more focused on specific areas of math and compared to the old curriculum we use is more spiral sequence, right? Um, is there a reason why we switch to this new curriculum? That's the first question. And second of all, do you see the benefit of this new curriculum and or or maybe the comparison of the new curriculum result with the old curriculum results? Which one is more effective

090and should we stay with the new curriculum? So um we don't have I ready data that goes far enough back to give us uh the ability to compare the everyday math that we were using um for many years before I came into my role and into this district which was um 2019. Um, I think it's okay to draw a comparison to where we were in math at that time with where I think we may be right now with ELA, which is that we had um we had analysis of curriculum for alignment is done both at the state um and the national level. And um when that analysis was conducted of the curriculum that we were using at that time, everyday math, it was found to be um out of compliance is the wrong phrase. It

091was not rated well for its alignment to standards um to the common core state standards, which is essentially what the Massachusetts math frameworks are based on. Um, so I arrived at a point in time where it was it was widely uh understood that we would need to move um away from everyday math and towards something different in a in a relatively timely manner. Um, we were delayed by a year because of the pandemic. we couldn't implement a new curriculum in fall of um 21, which was maybe what the original timeline would have been if not for what those two school years preceding it ended up looking like. Um but there was it was very evident um at that time that we needed to undergo a thorough curriculum review and analysis and had the benefit of

092a number of newer more um I guess highly rated or or um better aligned um resources available. And so we went through a a pretty thorough and robust process to lead to um where we are now um which is at the elementary level actually with two two different uh corecurricular resources in place uh bridges in mathematics in prek and K and then as I mentioned into math in grade 1 through five. Um so we didn't replace everyday math because it happened to be spiral in its design. and we replaced it because it wasn't well aligned to standards. I see. And it so happens that what we replaced it with um and this is not as true for bridges and why I didn't mention it for kindergarten um where there is a more uh there is

093greater integration of topics throughout the school year and the and the design of the curriculum and into math um which uh holds true for the curriculum that we use at both the middle and high school as well. Uh topics are pretty concentrated. they're they're taught to mastery um within the sort of units that it's it's organized in in that way. I don't know if I'm describing it clearly enough. Right. Algebra is algebra geometry is geometry. Yep. Yep. So um exactly. So um the the into math curriculum is designed in such a way that um they're called modules. Basically, uh modules address a specific standard or topic. Um and then a few modules combined together to make a unit that all has uh a similar theme targets similar and related and interconnected skills. But um as

094an example uh in third grade a lot of the uh instruction that happens in the from between the fall and the winter diagnostic is in um understanding multiplication and then division. There are a lot of other topics that are taught during the second half of the year in third grade including the introduction of fractions and understanding um what fractions are and how to work with them. So students taking the I Ready, third graders taking the I Ready in um the winter in in early January have not received any instruction on fractions, but are very likely to encounter questions on the diagnostic about fractions, which we wouldn't expect them to answer, but that would sort of hinder their ability to place very high within the domain that fractions fall into. Does that make sense? Yeah. Um,

095I don't know that that would have been any different with everyday math if if we would have seen some of those domain subcores in the winter jump more. I I wouldn't have been a reason to keep it, but it's possible. How high can not sure this a this is a question. I love how you started. How how are students are put into different math class in middle and high school? like is it depends on like at least from kindergarten to fifth grade we have these monitors and we we can see the track that they're going on right we we know that by the end of this school year they should meet all these benchmarks and and then but in middle and high school as you said like is is math is based on different area

096so what are the tracks for the math like how do student advance from for example algebra one to algebra 2 to geometry or is that a different different way that you can take choose different math classes until the senior year you can get like AP math or calculus classes. Um, so I know just to so I just want to point out that that is a great question and I think it also kind of like goes a little bit beyond the scope of this. So I'm like because we could have a whole conversation about that um unto itself the place course placement and whatnot. Um, so maybe just I I think I'll do my best to answer it concisely. You could. Sorry. I don't I don't think of what happens in math in sixth through 8th

097grade to be marketkedly different than what happens in K through five other than that they only have a teacher for that subject area and then when there it's time for literacy they go into a different room with a different teacher. Um but the same idea holds in middle school of this sort of integration of topics um standard aligned instruction and home and heterogeneously group students all the way up through 8th grade. Um and then at the high school level um is where different opportunities for advancement of learning are first introduced both in terms of how um classes are coded as honors college prep versus AP. And it's really hard to kind of go much deeper than that without kind of sharing the graph the visual graphic that shows what math pathways are available to our

098Milton High School students, which I'd be happy to share. I emailed you a copy. Okay. It's on the high school course of study page. Oh, I I know that. Yeah. No, I have that file. But how do you know that after you take algebra 1 in ninth grade, you can take algebra 2 in 10th grade and then like things like that like the different sequence that you can take all those classes like how do students know? Yeah, the Okay, that's and um last question. Okay, because then I want to make sure other people can ask questions and we have we have to move on to the budget too. My last question would be um how how do you know the students of English learners is lacking the language skills to read the prompts of the

099math problem comparing to or or the English problem comparing to um having the math calculation skills that they are lacking. So, how do you know which one is? It's a great question. I'm glad you uh I'm glad you got that one in. Um we don't we don't we don't know. I mean um I Ready is only available for students to take in English. Um it's available for them regardless of what grade level they're in to hear the problems or the prompts um read aloud through, you know, in the in the system. Um but for our EL population and our students with disabilities um it's um impossible to decipher from their results what is the cause of any gaps that their results um imply. I see. Which is why we are shouldn't be particularly um surprised

100by what what we see in those results um for those two subgroups. Thank you. Can I ask a related question? So for the conclusions and it came out about Devil's data as well as the I Ready, excuse me. um underperformance for students with disabilities, black and African-American students. And so the note is that data remains an area of concern. And I guess the question is like what are we doing around that because I know that this is an ongoing concern and um is there research being done? Is there a group? Is there like what are we I guess what are the real the action items around that? Yeah. So, it's a great question and one that is being asked on a national level and a local level. And I think I've been here for almost

10115 years. I think it's been pretty consistent. Um, it's really complicated. Um, and involves a lot of layers that have nothing to do with literacy and math. Um, and I think it's something that, you know, we would need to change a lot of things in order to to dig into like what that is. And we we We haven't done that. Um, but it would be a great thing to to discuss, I think, at the um the district level. I don't know if you agree or see something different. I I can add just a little too. I mean, I think we understand that and looking at our MCCAST data data, we had the same issues identified. And one of the things that we're really working on um is developing um an MTSS structure that addresses multiple

102areas of a student's development. Not just their academic performance, but supporting them with social emotional and other needs that they may present um and you know continuing to work on the tier 2 and tier three interventions. Um, you know, today's presentation was really focused on how are we looking at data for students at the tier one level and our curriculum, but designing specific instructional um um groups that look at students and I have to say Kat and Brian having worked other places really work to have some fluid groupings between students when we do different testing. um we are using sort of what we would say is state-of-the-art decisionmaking in terms of the groupings of students. So we need to look broader have a multidisciplinary team design interventions to help and support them. It it's as

103as Cat said extraordinarily complicated. Um I guess I just and I appreciate that like and I appreciate your answer. I I just it's it's just the question comes up every year and data doesn't change and the answer is the same. And so if there's information that we don't have or conversations that we're not having, why aren't like what can we do to change that? Because it just is really disheartening to not see anything change and I think the work is amazing and I think like all of the diagn you know the screeners having more earlier dyslexia screeners all of those things are important but if we're still not impacting a level that's consistently been an issue I don't I don't know what we're doing. So, I just think it's something that really needs greater attention

104and and like a concerted effort and a plan. And I just I just don't feel like we have one yet. And so, I think just to piggyback on Cat's response, that plan has got to be made with systems in mind. Um, this is not a reflection of instruction in a classroom. Yeah. um you know, we can we can actually look um more intentionally at our EL and our uh special education subgroups and assess the design of instruction that's happening there. But um it's a lot harder to do with, you know, our black African-American student population because um nowhere in any of our classrooms are teachers instructing differently based on the race of the student in front of them. So it's we can't trace it to curriculum or pedagogy. So we have no choice if we're

105really interested in fixing it but to look at something Um, outside of that, um, I can say I want to live to a hundred, but a lot of choices I'm making right now are not likely to make that reality. If we're serious about changing this recurrence of stagnated data with this particular population, we can't just keep talking about it. We have to change systems. And I think there's, you know, some appetite around that. So I think it would be a great great place to start that conversation and um pull in a group. Thank you. Yeah, I mean I jump in here. I can continue to agree with that statement and that like it's that is an urgently pressing issue kind of within our district of you know what are the I guess the question I'd

106say is like you know we've what is the new strategy in which like we have looked to implement in terms of how we are utilizing our um small group instruction things like that like we've the the breakdown of African-American students and others is really also a breakdown within our K5 schools of Tucker and the other schools. We know the demographic breakdown of across kind of those those school buildings and we know that Tucker has historically seen lower performance amongst its student population than the other schools. We are a small town. We should be able to kind of direct resources into the places that is most needed. We know that is the place right now at least along amongst the K5s where that is most needed from a school system perspective. So I guess the question

107I have is what new strategies or resources have we pushed into that facility or towards those teaching staff to support them with the fact that they are receiving students who last year were behind grade level like we knew that last year. Therefore like now behind grade level again we're seeing the data and that's like a compounding a negative flywheel effect right of uh just compounding the impacts. So like in my mind the only way to address underperformance academic underperformance is more time on instruction more in terms of like supports smaller group pullouts conferencing whatever it might be. So I guess the question is like what new kind of strategies or resources have we pushed kind of towards that that site? So I think to Brian's point you know we've our our systems and structures have

108remained the same. So in that light there is not a new approach. Um in terms of curriculum and intervention as described we look at the district as a whole and sort by need and so equitably they're getting more say per per number like the population is smaller but it's getting more support so the percentage is higher. M um but the like the approach districtwide has not the system is still the same if that makes sense. The the equitable distribution of support is there. Um so it's not like we're putting one staff member in each building. We're seeing who needs what where with the same metric so that the students who need the support get it. Um, I just keep, you know, going back to that sort of definition of insanity of like doing the same

109thing and expecting different results. Yeah. So, I think it just points back to that point about maybe zooming out with a different at a different time with a different group um to ask some of those questions, too. I don't want to let an opportunity pass without recognizing the job that Principal Hog has done so far in her first nine months in that role as principal at Tucker. Um I've been in that building um by her invitation to uh meet with teachers and try to combat the trends that we see um maybe more than in the previous four or five years combined. Um and that's um kind of how this works is that that principles drive instruction in their building. Um they um identify the areas that they want their staff focused on and then they

110tap into people like Cat and I to help make those actionable changes. Um but um she's inherited the staff that she has which is great but also has some inexperience in it. And I think again if you're looking for answers, if that's the area of student need that's the greatest, it seems that we should deploy our staff with the greatest skill level and experience to it. So again, we can sort of talk about what Cat and I are doing. Um, and that might show itself in the margins. Um, but that's an example of a system that has not really been to my knowledge explored or considered or done to really prioritize um that the population of students in that building. I have some other questions by um just a quick question for you Kat on

111a different what is the diag like what does the diagnostic assessment for ELA or do do we have one that is aligned to kind of state standards to let us know where kids are performing that so we do have curriculum embedded assessments through reach for reading that are standards aligned that teachers use um it's not something we would report out on because unlike math those discrete skills look really different in reading Um it's really very much similar standards every year just increasing with complexity in terms of where we're applying those to different texts. Um but we do use them. Yes, they're part of a student's um unit assessments are aligned to the standards which then are aligned to the report cards. Um so teachers use those. Gotcha. Do we find those to be predictive of

112like performance on like are those well enough aligned for kind of MCCAST performance? because I know for I Ready math, right, the mid above is pretty well aligned with how a kid will do on the MCCAST. I would not say at this moment that they're predictive. Okay. Um there's a couple other one the middle school math like we test in the fall, we test in the spring. What do we I guess what do you see as the benefit of like what we get out instructionally from the spring test given the kind of gap between the two assessments and the fact that we have an uh a summitive assessment kind of at that same time I assume in the end of the year and like what yeah what what's the thinking around those two benchmarks within

113the I Ready and how does that inform kind of instruction between right within the school year which is essentially kind of the areas between yeah I would say um the juryy's still out. I mean, I think um there's um I feel very confident in saying that the the data and more importantly sort of the platform itself provides a learning opportunity and experience for our elementary students that is um extremely valuable. um at the middle school level. Um a couple of things I mentioned earlier including um sort of the um greater difficulty in getting student buy in when taking the diagnostic. uh the fact that the instructional side of the platform which I think as as I am uh hopefully conveying clearly um offers a lot of value when it comes to particularly closing gaps in

114certain areas for our elementary students uh has not proven to have the same impact with middle school age students. Um, and so the question you're asking is essentially like, is that even worth doing just once in the fall and once again in the spring? Um, I don't know. It may not be. Um, I I'm I'm um hoping that the promises that I Ready has been making about gearing their product separately to middle school students um has some promise. I'm also hoping that um sort of a similar design and style of assessment that embeds to the Amplify Desmos curriculum that we're using might offer actually a better option at the middle school level than I Ready. That wouldn't moving to that wouldn't be without some reservation because there is something nice about cohesiveness at least between

115the elementary and middle school levels. But I think as far as our priority, I think our priority should be on what drives instruction in the classroom. And I'd be hardressed to stand in front of you or sit in front of you and say that that's the case right now with I already at Pierce. So I think if there's something that would do that better that is uh um embedded into the tier one curriculum that we use that we should strongly consider moving to it. um that's not yet available as the case, but something we're looking very closely at for uh potentially as early as this fall. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, totally agree with the point of it's got to drive instruction otherwise, but what are we doing here? Uh so great. Appreciate that. Uh I guess

116just one other question. I appreciate it. Uh let's see. the annual typical growth um rates and things and then the stretch growth rates um for I read a math where for the students who are two grade levels below or three plus grade levels below where would a if they get to 100% of kind of typical growth within a year where does that get them and then like I'd assume it doesn't get them to grade level so I assume the stretch grow goal is kind of the thing that gets you closer to grade level. And I guess maybe it varies on the kid and how far off they are, but I guess the more question is like for those f kids in particular where we actually need them to grow at a faster rate than the

117other kids, do we have goals around how much of the stretch grow goal they need to get on kind of an annual basis in order to help catch them up by the end of fifth grade? It's a great question. Uh there is some correlation available there. uh the stretch growth. Um if typical growth gains you the expected year or so of of overall placement, the stretch growth doesn't do more than two, but somewhere in between there. Mhm. Um so you're right. If you want to use um say a third grader as an example whose placement and again it's um an overall placement that's at the kindergarten level likely means that that student is multiple grade levels below in each area. M um we put far less emphasis on gaps that show up on a diagnostic

118and measurement and data and geometry or geometry um for a couple of reasons. One is those don't tend to be gaps in that sort of specific either specific area that um are uh prohibitive of of accessing grade level content uh the way it would in one of the other domains. um but a student that far below overall is almost certainly at least a couple of grade levels below in each area. So the intention of the um additional um intervention is to really address the gaps as they exist in those priority domain areas. Um the other thing I'll say is that we've seen sort of a loss in the validity of results when you get to gaps that are that wide. When you have students that are placing multiple grade levels below, it's a little bit

119hard to have as much faith in those the the specifics of those results. Um they're bringing some of that um uh like discouraged experience into the test itself, which is harming their performance. Um, which again isn't to dismiss it, but but I Readyy's sweet spot are students that are within at most two grade levels and better yet one grade level in any particular area. Those gaps can be closed pretty effectively just by attaining the typical growth. Um, so what are we? So the students that we're talking about are often getting a heavily modified curriculum with a lot of um prerequisite reinforcement in a tier three setting. Um, often by a special educator, less often by a math interventionist. um the the measure of success for those students is not always tied to their I Ready

120performance if that if that makes sense. Yeah, that does make sense. Okay. Um last thing is not a question but more a comment first. I really appreciate you coming in and letting us talk about instruction uh and not budget for a little bit as much as we're going to need to talk about budget. Really really appreciate that. And uh I guess this is maybe more for you all, but I still think we've talked we talked about this in the fall, but for me having a sense of like what are some benchmark goals that we're actually looking at as it relates to these I already like winter performance, right? We we have fairly consistent data over the past three years. And so maybe we say this benchmark is kind of what we're trying to hit cuz

121this will get us to 70% mid or above grade level which means about 70% of our students will be meeting or exceeding expectation on MCCast. Like that something like that is just I think goal setting for ourselves to say this is where we're trying to get this is why this is what it means for us as a district. 70% would put us in the top 10% of the state in MCCAST. like those those types of things to me would help drive the conversation and help help us like have a north star as we have the conversations. I think that's a great point and like wondering if that's something given sort of what we're preparing for here if that's work that could happen this spring um to sort of not wait to have that conversation not

122that it's you know just to yeah I mean what we had have had been talking about I don't know where that stands right now but you know looking at key performance indicators so I think it's kind of the same thing Mark that you're talking about in terms of looking at the work that we're engaged in the systems work that you both are talking about um that we've articulated in the implementation plan around instructional framework assessment system all those things right that we can't just keep doing the same thing over and over again expect to put more staffing in place and that's just going to fix everything right um so we had talked about developing this year for end of year a a set of those key performance indicators to then have those be the benchmarks

123year after year so that those things don't change but they're also tied to the work that we're doing so there's not a disconnect where we're looking at data here and then we're talking about all the work we're doing over here that those two things are aligned together and they're informing each other as we're as we're moving forward. So that is work that that needs to happen. I think that there's a lot of pieces kind of on the table right now. And I think honestly like the the conversation now in terms of kind of where we are and and in this transition right now is figuring out how to pick up some of those pieces on the table, use them to the best effect, and then have next year not be a year of stasis, but

124a year where we can kind of continue to develop some of these these systems pieces. Maybe not at the scale that we want to, but um to to move that forward. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. You have other questions just email us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck with the rest of your night and your thoughts. I think that's it, right? Isn't this far more interesting? I think it does. I think and thank you all. Thank you for the great questions that that you asked. Um I think it does sort of show how much this the committee benefits from having that opportunity to sort of really make connections and ask questions and get informed. So, um, yeah, the idea of having this become a more routine like feature of the

125ongoing learning of the school committee in order to inform decisions, I think makes a lot of sense. So, you want them back once a month. Well, you know, as you can see, we have a lot to say. It was It's really helpful. And I just before Thank you both so much. And I want to Did we stand up too soon? I know. No, all I want to say before we before we do move on because we do have to get some additional topics, I want to just take the chance to shout out you, Dr. Watts, because I think we all recognize that you've been in this role of assistant superintendent curriculum instruction in a part-time capacity, but it seems like you're always here when we're when I'm here. So, I just I think that um

126you've been doing a lot behind the scenes to keep things moving forward and um just want to appreciate you for that because I I know that they're an amazing curriculum team. They really are. And um experts in their, you know, in their domains. So, I I appreciate working with them. Um I really do. Thank you so much. Um, all right. So, we do have Whoever thought we were finishing at nine, I can't remember who that was. That was not accurate. Um, I I would like to move efficiently through the remaining items in under the chair's report so that we spend the rest of the bulk of our time on the finance. So, we do have a couple of important topics to kind of update and move through, but let's just try to stay pretty focused

127on these. The first one is straightforward because this is just an announcement essentially that will be shared with the community in the upcoming uh emails and whatnot and there will be more information shared, but this is just to sort of announce that we've worked in the past this week to schedule some of these um information sessions about the budget for the community. Um, those are going to take place, four of them. March 26th, so a week from tonight at 6 PM in the Pierce Library. April 1st at 8:30 a.m. in the Cllycott Cunningham Library or actually the cafeteria over there. April 1st, 6 PM on Zoom. April 7th, 6:30 p.m. Milton High School Library. Um, I acknowledge that with scheduling logistics, you know, we haven't been able to build these around the availability of all

128school committee members. So, this is going to be the kind of thing that like if you can come to one, two, like however many you can come to, that will be great. If you aren't able to come, that's okay. I think as long as we have a handful of school committee members present um and Mark and I are available to be present as well as Katie and Peter who will drive like I think the format will just be a short presentation that will be so these will be the same session essentially repeated four times and the goal is to simply um just really share the information about where we are as we're looking to FY26 with the budget. a short presentation. These will be one hour um you know up to one hour with the

129opportunity to just provide clarification um to the information that is shared. Um and members of the community should feel invited to come to which obviously we're not having them at every school building. Um, so anybody is welcome to attend any of the uh date date and time that works for you regardless of what building you're uh you might be attending. And then of course the one on Zoom is intended to be for anybody um in the community. So um does anyone have any questions on these? We will be needing to get calendar invites hopefully maybe tomorrow so that if we're available we can attend those. Um and more information is coming about that um on the let's see um next. So we talked about already the um interim superintendent search process. The next item is

130the um school year 2526 calendar for next school year. So, this is where we kind um and I don't know if you want to update on the policy subcommittee meeting discussion that we had, but we are sort of moving toward being able to share the approved calendar with the community, which is something that we're wanting to do. Yes. Um I can definitely Do you want to kind of set up how we got to like like I mean obviously the calendar is going to be published this week hopefully. Yeah. uh we had some some things that we needed to work through. Um I don't know if you wanted to share some of that. Yeah. So, as folks will recall, we had a very lengthy involved conversation over many months regarding um the calendar and we got

131input from the community. We've um settled on an approach that would um set aside two days every academic year to acknowledge um five identified religious and cultural holidays um sort of on a rotational basis. um it will become more clear when we're looking at the calendar itself, but that's a decision that we came to a couple of months ago now. Um and so one update is that um we we have sort of realized in taking the step back um and assessing sort of timeline with our collective bargaining and whatnot which is impacted by the budget override um conversation and there are many sort of factors um that we are going to for next year keep the two holidays that we have had currently and um historically in our calendar that's Yam Kapor and Good Friday.

132Um we are going to continue with those two next year for sort of the first year of this new approach. Um and we will then in the subsequent years um begin to acknowledge the additional holidays that have been identified for us. Um Eid Dvali and Lunar New Year. Um and so that explains sort of um how we are ending up with a calendar for next year that actually looks very similar to this year. Um this is in having taken into account feedback from the community that was uh clearly letting us know we were not interested in lengthening the school year in order to accommodate additional days off. Um so we heard that feedback and that's how we ended up in this situation as we were trying to also be more inclusive of um our community

133and people who celebrate holidays um observe different religions and um cultural observances here. So that's a summary of how we got here and the calendar that we have here represents that and the part you can see added is what we sort of generated in the policy discussion um which kind of tries to capture the approach that we've adopted as a school committee. Um so anything else? No, and I think in terms of also taking in like the feedback from like you know how many days off in a month and so on and so forth and just kind of spreading it out uh and offering some consistency on when the half days fall and so on and so forth just so that families have there's less confusion in terms of like you know how it changes

134from month to month and just really just looking at that holistically to uh spread things out as much as we can. some there are obviously some limitations but um we did that and then obviously having just the same format as last year listing all the the holidays. We also um talked about um including what one of the other districts that we looked at including you know more holidays may perhaps a description of what they what they mean just as you know as um conversation starter for families at home and so on and so forth. um just to kind of talk about it uh just as a starting point. So um you know we're going to continue to work to see like you know in in addition we talked about like what we could do comm

135community um within the school community to kind of recognize these different holidays and um you know cultural days um and support our students and make sure that they feel seen um in our community in our district. So, it's good conversation and and we'll be working with Dr. Shavers to develop some of that um process and information that will be shared. Um and we can continue to work on that sort of appendix I think of it. Um I know we had seen Franklin was one example that we found that we that was appealing. So that can continue. What we need to do now is just publish this one pager of the actual calendar itself so that people are able to make plans around the dates. Um so yeah any questions or comments on this? No, I

136think it I mean it it does address I know that we had talked about sort of the ambiguity or confusion for families around which holidays when and I think this calendar addresses that clearly that folks can look ahead uh beyond the present you know year to sort of think about what holidays will be observed on the following. So I think it's it addresses that. So it gives uh families the heads up. Um, so I think it's great and it does say anticipated there. So it will remain the case that each year the school committee look, you know, with the administration looks at the calendar and kind of confirms what the actual dates are going to be for the following year. But we're trying to provide a guide, a road map really for our colleagues in

137the future to sort of follow to um stay true to this. Yeah. and he's also developed a policy and procedure around how to go ahead addressing that or looking at it in the future just so there's some guidance. Yeah, that's something that we talked about. We'll keep working on. All right. Well, thank you all um for that. Um the last part under my report and thank you Anna for that. Um do we need a motion? Oh, I think there's a motion. You have a motion, but Yeah. Um. Oh. Um. Yes. Oh. To formally adopt this calendar with these changes. Okay. Sorry to skip over that. I can make a motion to approve the revised SY um SY 2526 uh school year calendar as edited for FY2526. Religious holidays observed will be Yum Kapor on Thursday,

138October 2nd, 2025 and Good Friday um Friday, April 3rd, 2026. Second. Um all in favor. Thank you. Um so the next topic is um about um revisiting this question of recording subcommittee meetings. This has been sort of raised um by members of this committee as well as um folks in the community. Um we did discuss this at length in the fall. Um and considered whether to um adopt a practice of recording our subcommittee meetings. Um we ultimately chose not to do that. Um, and this is in the context of the town having chosen not to move forward with requiring subcommittees to be recorded in the same way that um, elected boards and committees are recorded or required to be recorded. So, um, that was sort of the context of that conversation. And then I think

139we all have recognized that um you know in particular with our finance subcommittee meetings and I'd just like to shout out our finance subcommittee um there have been a lot of meetings um excuse me and you know um it's it's good and all of our meetings are open meetings um and I think it's been brought back as a question for us to consider you know in light of um where we are now and what we've learned. armed through this process of this budget cycle. Do we want to reconsider the question of recording our subcommittee meetings? Um, this is here as a as an overarching question of subcommittees in general. Um, you know, even though I think what we've really been thinking about a lot is obviously our finance subcommittee meetings where there's a lot of

140important information. Um, and so just I guess I'll um open up the conversation about this. Well, I'm I can go first since I brought I I had emailed you about adding this to our agenda. Um, I know we've there have been a lot of concerns in the last couple months, especially about having access to recorded meetings. I know it's 8:00 a.m. Mondays and Wednesdays is not ideal time for families with, you know, drop off, school drop offs and so on and so forth. So, um I also have to say I really appreciate having the meetings cross-osted and being able to attend because I do think really proving our checks and balances and our process on how we kind of look through and double check everything and make sure and ask the questions and have the

141opportunity for all of our members. And this is again why it's so great to have, you know, six of us on this board from different backgrounds to be able to ask those questions and kind of learn from each other. You know, uh, a question that, you know, Amanda might ask might, you know, I might have a followup on that. Oh, this made me think of that. So having that opportunity and I think you know when we get updates as detailed as Mark's updates are sometimes like a lot of those conversations don't necessarily make it to the table here you know and I think those conversations are really important and I you know I think um just even um just like our meetings from last week you know there were concerns over you know cutting athletics

142and I think it's just important to kind of for the community to see those discussions that we're learning and each of us bring different um um our our uh perspective on those and I think we kind of learned from that that how important you know something like that could impact the district. So I'm glad that we were finally came to that consensus. Um so uh and obviously we'll get that. So I think just it's really really important I think um just the experience that we've gone through in the last couple months um and just how to be better. I think uh recording finance I mean happy to record policy meetings but they're really not as engaging. I mean they could be maybe uh but you know the finance one is really really important especially where

143we are you know majority of the town's budget. So, I think um I think I I think it's a great way to be transparent and upfront and, you know, having people have access to those and email us if they pick up on something that we were discussing and it really just helps our process better and I think we can all be better. So, I I'm definitely for, you know, recording those meetings. any anyone else? I mean I think um last week was a great example as to why I mean uh at least the finance committee meeting um in particular you know I've changed sort of my perspective should be recorded um because I think if folks had been in the room um they would have been able to or or had access to a recording

144to see the full conversation because a piece of information was shared that then just spiraled. um and not right recognizing that, you know, it was a it was a very complex and hard conversation and we um were engaging in an exercise that we just needed to look at every consider um but we hadn't made a decision and I think um you know the recording would have would have helped um if someone you know they had the time to sit through uh the conversation. So, I would say that at least definitely the finance committee, but I could argue that if we're going to do finance, we could also just do it across the board um to just, you know, treat every committee um with the level of importance that we merit. For sure. Yeah, I agree

145with that. I think I you know I don't I still see the reasons the reasons why I didn't support this um when it was a more abstract question or more I would say principled question in the fall. Um, I I continue to, you know, just acknowledge that us taking this decision inherently, um, I think raises a question about our colleagues on other boards in town. Um, and as a citizen, I would then wonder, well, why would the, you know, subcommittees of one of our elected boards be recorded and others are not? So I I I think that's a fair question and I think I did hesitate to just sort of like step forward on that um with without consultation or certainly like outside of the decisions of town meeting. However, for the reasons that you've

146shared, I think the um my hesitations on that are outweighed by the practical benefits of of doing this. Um I do raise that, you know, particularly when we're talking about when we're talking about hybrid meetings or on or Zoom meetings, it's much easier because the Zoom is recording the meeting. Mhm. I do want to just flag um the change in a a habit and a practice that it will require for inerson meetings to figure out the use of the owl. We know already we you know Milton Access TV is does not have capacity to support us with technology and reporting for our subcommittee meetings. That was another factor we b weighed last fall. Um, and so this would be essentially up to us to like learn the technology and then do it consistently. Um because

147if we've said that we're going to record these subcommittee meetings, I almost I just sort of my mind flashes to a policy subcommittee meeting where we kind of just came in rushing from work and we sit down and we just kind of call to order and start the meeting and then we realize, oh no, nobody remembered to hit the owl and all of a sudden we're out of compliance with our own decision. So, I I I think this is going it it's not just like a flip to switch necessarily. Um, and so I just acknowledge that and we can work it out as we go. And I again I think the pros outweigh the cons, but it's not just like totally easy and smooth per se. We'll just have to work at it. Um, so

148that's that's kind of what I think. Could in the interim as we're could we agree that I mean if this is where we're going that we're agreeing that we record the subcommittee meetings recognizing right now that finance is the you know the one that's sort of top of mind for everybody. Is it possible to um have it always be hybrid so that we at least then people can participate by Zoom and we're recording it. So that's sort of the default recording if you think that works and then work through the process for the knowing that we're going to but work through the process for the other ones just I think it also just allows people to attend in the moment you attend the meeting if they want to and just allow am I making things

149harder Mark? No, we've already posted the next two finance meetings are already posted for that exact reason because that's just the easiest way to record the meeting. So, folks can access it. It's already going to be recorded to the cloud automatically. We can post it. It's it is no challenge. Uh the only issue is like just remembering to screen share and that we get connected to the okay camera that gives within the recording a decent view of what's happening in audio and it's not just my computer. Like there's that stuff but that's just connecting to the device. Okay. Um but otherwise it's all simple enough. Okay. So at least that may kick it off. We'll start that way. I mean those are our upcoming subcommittee meetings. We will not have another you know policy meeting

150for some time. The evaluation subcommittee won't be meeting. I don't know where this leaves advisory committees actually. Like I think for right now I would say this should apply to the the primary subcommittees of the school committee because those are our um like that's our purview you know most directly and then perhaps we can like continue to think I don't what do you think about that? So, so I'm all on board with recording finance, right? I'm like glad you know brought that up just in um just because the override, not even counting the all the issues coming up with F25 budget, but is there a reason we feel pressure that we because again there's no townwide policy on this. What is the pressure we feel to say it has to also be policy? I think

151the town cares about the finances because of again a the complexity of the current situation we are in, but also b just the school's finances are the biggest pot of finances within the town. And so like that that is why at least I originally brought it up in the fall was like I think there is particular interest within that. I do not regularly attend your policy meetings. Uh, so don't know what your viewership is, but um, yeah, I guess I just wonder like what if it's our own internal policy, we could just set it to say we're going to record finance because that's right now and then we can test it out and if it goes really well and then if there's like public sentiment to say we want to see policy, too, because there's

152like interesting conversations there, then maybe we open up that conversation. But I'm fine either way. I just wanted to flag. Yeah. Okay, that's fine. I mean, I I see that as like a yeah, a way to start immediately um with what we see right before us that we want to be able to do and then we can kind of like evolve from there. Okay. And are you guys still good with cross-osting the finance meeting because I think that really helpful to have and I I felt bad this morning that you couldn't you know uh join I thought hybrid also so I was like yeah but we weren't the only one last week but um um no I think that would be really really helpful I think I think just for all of us to kind

153of second set of eyes on everything um going forward. I don't want to make it too easy on you. You got to get up. You got to come in to those meetings with Katie. I did accept some of my policy meeting notices and didn't show up. Not quite as popular. Thanks for calling me out. Okay. So, in the interest of moving along, I will make a motion to record finance subcommittee meetings. Second. Starting Monday. Okay. Second. Okay. All in favor? Okay. Not I'm sorry. Prior recorded meetings. Yeah. That we have in the cloud from Monday was one. I think that was hybrid for you. Last Wednesday was another. So we were hybrid. Should we post them? Couple people honestly within the public have already reached out requested that within a public records request. At least

154those last two meetings we could go ahead and release. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Do we need a motion for that? I don't know. But I think maybe not. I think consensus I think that's consensus consistent with what we just decided and yeah. Okay. Okay. So um with that sort of segue to finance right? Y Oh yeah. Is that me? Yeah. Y uh all right. Well it's really more a segue Peter here in a sec. Um but yeah, we've had just update the public finances meeting twice a week every week for at least last month. Um we're carrying that forward at least into the next week. Uh so lots of work, lots of things happening um both under FY25 and FY26. Want to particularly shout out um town staff who came out on Monday and talked to

155us. That was helpful. I think Danielle Wetmore came today. Today's meeting and again those will now be made today's meeting. Yes. Was it recorded? No, it was not. Um so Monday's meeting will be posted. Um and then also just special shout out to Lori Connelly and John Cohane who are our proxy representatives on the finance committee because they come to every single one even though they cannot participate. So appreciate them as well. But um I will pass it over to Peter. Great. Great. Thank you. Um so yeah, we're going to go through um FY25 first and give an overview. We've been working on this and every Monday and Wednesday and all the time in between that and uh I think we're we've kind of pretty much looked at um everything within our ability at this

156point. Um I will then go in to FY26 and talk about the work we've done. This is probably version four of our budget and um I will talk about the work that we did with our leadership team to address the um the select board's current $5.7 u million increase in our operating budget. So Katie is going to um has put together the 25 slide. So she's going to take us through some of that and then I'll pick up 26. So, we are going to start tonight just um in a general overview of the timeline of some of the historical information and some of the timing around uh fiscal year 24 as well as fiscal year 25 which is um the budget for the current year, the current school year. And so, um, May of last

157year, as you all remember, the fiscal year 25 budget was approved. And so, the school department um at town meeting was appropriated 67,225,233. So, that was May and that was the appropriation starting July 1st of this year. So July 1st, 2024, which was last summer, the fiscal year 25 budget began and the budget lines were appropriated in accordance with the budget proposal that was um approved, reviewed, and approved uh in May of 24. So after fiscal year 25 after that budget began and after the budget lines were appropriated the fiscal year 24 deficit was identified and it was also addressed. So the school department prior year operating budget which was fiscal year 24, the deficit was identified in early July and the deficit was addressed by using um um a number of one-time funds. And

158so, um, some of the funds that were utilized were circuit breaker funding, which is our special education reimbursement program and funding that we receive from the state. Some of the Medicaid reserves. So, we also receive Medicaid funding from the state um for some of the medical needs that we um and expenses that we're responsible for paying for for the school district. and through a number of chargebacks. And what chargebacks are is that is um when we charge expenses from the school operating budget to some of the revolving funds that we have. And so the revolving funds would be um assigned to accounts for our programs such as community schools um and also um the school lunch program. And so if we fast forward to this year in January of 2025, um the fiscal year 25

159budget projected deficit. And so when we say projected deficit, that is the balance that we are projecting to have at the end of the fiscal year. So June of 25 that um projected balance was identified to be in a deficit position. And so that was um detailed in the second quarter report that was shared with the school committee. That report was shared in January. Um and the issues that were um identified in the report and the issues that we have discussed throughout the course of uh meetings both financial subcommittee meetings and school committee meetings over the past several several months are a continuation of structural deficit lines within the school budget. So just a continuation of some of the issues that we saw in fiscal 24 being carried carried forward into fiscal year 25. So

160if you go to the next slide and so when we talk about a structural deficit I just want to provide some more information around what a structural deficit is. So a structural deficit means that there are there are recurring expenses that are that consistently exceed recurring revenues. So in our case for the school department budget that is our budget appropriation or our operating budget. And so some of the examples of areas where we have identified a structural deficit are in accounts that cover expenses for our substitute teachers in our class coverage and also accounts that cover expenses for utilities and that includes heat, light, and water for the school department. And so you can see in these two um charts on the screen here, we've just provided some detail around what the historical budget was

161in each one of these categories, what the total expenditure was and what the variance is. And you can see here that the there has been a variance in um a range of amounts, but there has been a consistent variance over the past several fiscal years. And so how also looking at how does a structural deficit happen within a budget? And the structural deficit can occur for a number of reasons which include our budget or a budget line being based on past budget numbers and not being based on actual expenses. And then structural deficits can also occur because of rising costs that were unanticipated and also demographic changes. And so if we have a shift in demographic changes um because the budget is already established we are not able to cover the um change or the

162increase in costs. And so the important thing that I want to point out here is not necessarily tied to the fiscal year 25 budget which is the deficit um that we're talking about or that we're seeing for this year. But I do want to call attention to the fiscal year 26 proposed budget. And so as we went through the process of looking and projecting out the funding that we would need for fiscal year 26, we did truly try to take a look at and account for previous year's expenditures. The expenditures shown in these charts, they're shown in italics because at this point they are a projection for the end of the year and they are not actual. So those numbers are subject to change and will change. Um but we will have that updated information

163for actuals for fiscal year 25 this summer. And then that actual number will be able to drive our information when we're creating the budget for fiscal year 27. And that process does start late summer, early fall. So on the next slide, just talking more specifically about fiscal year 25 budget and just as a reminder of some of the work that we've done since um we talked about that quarterly report um in January. So as of the quarter to report, we had projected and again that was the projection for the end of the school year. um a $2 million deficit at the end of the school year. So in June of 25. And so that number was based on known costs. So costs that we've already incurred from the beginning of the year in July until

164the end of December. Projected expenses. So that's for um our salaries for our all of our staff, which is 81% of our budget. um known incumbrance is. And what an incumbrance is is it's essentially us recognizing that we will have an expense and memorializing what that expense will be in our accounting system. And then also based on known costs that aren't currently in the accounting system, but we know that we will um recognize some sort of expense from this point in the year until the end of the year. as the budget or as the deficit was recognized, we took a number of different action steps starting in early February in order to address the current year um deficit. And so those steps include a purchase order freeze. And so what a purchase order is is

165that's essentially a department head or a principal making the request to move forward with a purchase. And so they are not supposed to spend any money, purchase any materials, purchase any services until that purchase order is signed off on. And so knowing that we were looking at a deficit, we said we are freezing any we're freezing any um expenses expenses or requests for purchasing from now until the end of the year. knowing that we will have expenses that will come up but truly trying to limit um the amount of money that we were spending on in um moving forward. We also instituted a hiring free. So any of our staff that may be um resigning or um leaving the district, we're currently filling those with some temporary staff or in some instances we're not hiring

166at all and some positions have gone unfilled. We are doing an allocation um for a portion of our custodial salaries to our food service account. So the food service account is um a self- sustaining revolving account and that's separate from the operating budget and that's that is simply that is not moving any staff that is not changing the salaries of any of our staff. That's just an allocation of expenses to a different account based off of the number of hours that the custodial staff spends um doing work for the food service department um with custodial services. So cleaning kitchens and um our serving areas. We also reduced a number of consolidated facilities purchase orders um and that totaled $78,000. We um there is potential funding from the state that we were made aware of in

167the governor's supplemental budget. Um and that is an increase in the circuit breaker reimbursement for transportation and that could potentially be effective for this year. Um the amount that we're looking at um that we're estimating could be the maximum reimbursement is $488,000. Um but that is still not confirmed. And so we need to uh verify that that will in fact pass at the state level and that we will in fact be able to access those funds in this fiscal year. Um we're also looking at utilizing a number of um revenue offsets um that we had talked about. We had used a number of those offsets in fiscal year 24 to balance the budget. And we need to use a number of those offsets in fiscal year 25 also in order to balance the budget. And

168so those accounts include our community schools account, uh the Medicare account that we talked about earlier, and also our building use or facilities use account. And so, um, when we have outside organizations come in and utilize the buildings outside of the school day, they pay in accordance to the building use fee schedule. And so that revenue we can use to offset some of the expenses in in the operating budget. And then we also considered um just modifying the way that we're allocating um our substitutes and the way that um we're currently doing class coverage. And so there is an an amount assigned to that. But with the above actions, um, we have the new projected deficit is $883,000 883326. And so on the next slide, just real quick on the just for specificity, the projected

169deficit in January for the Q2 report was actually 2.3 million, right? 2.96 2.296 2.296 296 on the um quarter two report. Quarter two report. And then when we reran as we continue to rerun um the reports and update those projections, yep, it's just over the $2 million. And so we have in an effort to address the current year deficit and reduce that number um we've considered a number of different uh programmatic updates or programmatic shifts for the current school year. Um and and they're listed here. And um a number of these items were considered but after conversation that took place during finance subcommittee and during our school committee meetings and just in thinking about what the impact would be to our students and in some instances what the impact would be to our staff. Um

170we recognized that these although um they were items that we could consider, they are truly aren't possible. We also um had considered potentially um looking at some of the capital funding requests for fiscal year 26 and instead of receiving um that funding in the upcoming year for some rooftop unit um modifications as well as um providing us the ability to purchase Chromebooks in the upcoming fiscal year. we had said we could potentially use that funding uh to help address the deficit for this year. Um but those um those items aren't available to us um at the current time. And so the the items listed at the bottom of this slide are items that we are still potentially looking at. So we have had um an issue with one of the water bills uh at the

171high school. So there is potential that that will if there is a correction to that that that could create some cost savings um for the operating budget. We are also looking at taking some additional offsets from both our community schools and our transportation revolving accounts. Um and that would be $50,000 from each one of those accounts. And then again looking at the large group sub coverage. So that was the reference in the previous slide talking about looking at the way that we um fund our substitute teachers and how we're doing sub coverage moving forward. So that is also on the list um for consideration. And so the one thing I wanted to mention as well is um for using the funding from community schools and potentially using some of the offset from transportation, we are

172looking at um or just having to measure what the impact will be uh for fiscal year 26. And so if we are pulling money from community schools, we will have to consider a potentially large fee increase for our programs for the upcoming school year just to make sure that that those funds remain self- sustaining. Meaning we have to make sure that our revenue can cover our costs moving forward. Um and then the same can be said about transportation. So at this point I feel like I'm sounding like a broken record talking about large subgroup coverage for the last week or so and how I'm completely against it. And I have to say the presentation tonight from both Cat and uh Brian even, you know, offers like makes me even more against it because of when

173they talk about the MTSS support and all the supports and the time on learning with these students and we're trying to close the achievement gap within certain subgroups that are struggling. I just completely disagree with subgroup coverage. I mean sub coverage because you know putting students I don't care how many in an auditorium where they are not learning and when you get into middle school and high school you know kids you can't monitor them to make sure they all have phones they have social media like all of that stuff a lot of things happen that one teacher cannot monitor. I just don't think $24,000 and what that could mean in the future um in terms of expenses with anxiety as Danielle mentioned this morning about anxiety and mental health and like getting uh more special

174ed evaluations done. I just don't and the cost increases that come with all of that. I just don't think trying to save $24,000, you know, we've made many many references to cups of c coffee and whatever else. I just don't think it's a big enough number and but the impact is going to be huge. So, I I am going to continue to advocate to redline that one and uh cross it off that list because it's really, you know, we're getting down to 683. I mean, what's 700 at that point? So, just my recommendation I agree. I'm against large sub coverage as well. I also would be against not having Chromebooks for our kids that we propose. I'd be against removing stipens. It helps push instruction forward. I The thing I struggle with, Anna, is like

175we don't have the money. So, it feels like that's a decision with somebody else's money. And so I think what I I feel that same way about like why we have cut out the $1,800 even though it's $1,800 for the site committee work is like we don't have that $1,800. We don't have it. And so you know to say I I just I personally just to finish that thought I'd love to hear your thoughts. I just personally would want to hear more clearly from the town and I think we're still waiting on kind of a final proposed number because I know this is just at the current estimate and we have some other costs that we're projecting that might come in related to special education that are midyear and not budgeted for and so it's

176more a matter of like what does the town and the select board think they are willing to do in term based upon these numbers because if If they agree with you that like the 24,000 isn't that big a difference and they are willing to fund that, then great because I think that has a negative impact on students learning. Exactly what you're saying. I I just struggle with us saying from our seats where we don't have the money and somebody else is actually going to have to be the one to bail us out from that 24,000 and that 1,800 and that other 1,800. Um, and so I I look at it just from a standpoint of like we have to cut in in all the places we can, which is why we even brought up the

177term even though people got mad about spring sports and we we cut that because we said that was a bridge too far. And maybe the subgroup coverage is a bridge too far, too. But it it to me does feel like we're just kind of at at a certain point playing with somebody else's money cuz we don't have the funds for this. I think we have to advocate for what we need because I think if we don't and we cut these and the impacts I mean we are still dealing with the effects of decisions that were made over co you know trying when families were trying to get students kids back in schools um in the classroom because it was interrupted learning and we're still dealing with that. We're still dealing with uh trying to catch

178those students up. So that's where I'm like I am of the belief that if we if we need that and if we strongly feel that it will negatively impact our kids, I think we need to go advocate for it. And it's just a you know then it's it it's our job to advocate. You know what happens next is a whole other issue. But like it's our job to say we need this and uh you know at this point like if we keep pushing off these things and you know pulling uh FY26 fees into FY25 for transportation and so on and so forth, there are still going to be holes next year that we will have to fill. And I think we need to be upfront about the fact that we need to figure out a

179way with the town to close this deficit and then figure out how to live within our means in as much as we can. and whether that means drastic cuts next year, I don't know. But I think we have to be honest about what we need um and advocate because you know our job at this table is to make sure that the needs of every student is met and that time of learning time on learning is not interrupted. So anything that directly impacts students like that like spring sports is something that I cannot be on board with, you know. So, um, I'm going to keep saying that and, uh, you know, and hopefully hope for the best in terms of, but it's really just we need to figure out how to close this gap and we're

180going to need help to close the gap. I think that's where we're that's where I'm feeling like we are at. I had a qu actually a question because when we were talking about large group sub coverage I wasn't there that day but I thought was this something it wasn't necessarily and I don't know if we can even make this determination but it wasn't necessarily core curriculum classes that the thought was it was for am I misinterpreting that I thought the idea was that it's not necessarily for ELA and math that you're going to of large groups of kids in there that it would be maybe for places where it was more electives like a one I just think how would you manage what they're learning during that elective during that time I don't know I

181guess I'm just no it's it's about if that day on the building there are five teacher absent so whenever these teacher have this group of student they will all go to the cafeteria uh the the auditorium So that that few substitute teacher will be there to monitor that large group of students regardless regardless of what subject be but it's a maximum of 50 students per teacher. So it's not one teacher with any class that sub coverage. It's just essentially like instead of a teacher over 25, let's say it's a teacher over 50. And and I'm not disagreeing with you that it's not ideal. I don't know that I would necessarily equate it to like long-term, you know, when kids were in large in the auditorium during, you know, during COVID times. I think I I

182I understand the concern about it. I don't love it. I'm a little bit with Mark that's like I think we advocate for it but be I think we're at the part point where there are things that we just have to leave on and if it's one you know if it ends up being that it's one day I don't I don't love it. I mean, I'm not if it was like somebody's out for a week and you have large group, I mean, then it doesn't make sense to me. And I don't know that you can do that determination. And I agree that we need to fight for things, but I'm also feeling like sort of where Mark was that how do we like we just don't have the money, you know, and well, we have a

183it's not like we can close that. I if if you're talking about $24,000 is what's keeping us from closing our gap completely, then that would that would make yes a stronger case. But we still have a huge balance. We do. So that's where I don't understand it. And we're also, you know, we talk about overcrowded classrooms all the time to make a case for, you know, the new school, but here we are kind of doing something similar, you know, with larger groups of students. And I just I I ju it does not sit right with me. and I'm just going to be not in agreement of it. You know, if if the gap was very low, you know, small and we could actually close it, then then it makes, you know, like, okay, well, maybe

184we do this temporarily to close a gap. But something like this where we still need to go ask the town for money, you know, and in this scenario, um, I just don't I I just don't see the difference between 684 and, you know, 700. So that's all just to in terms of where this part of the conversation is going. It's my understanding that at Monday morning's finance meeting the purpose of that is to finalize. I don't know who I'm directing this question to but what what comes next needs to be clarity to the select board in terms of what we are saying is um what we need having exhausted the options having done these exercises um and having you know, and within the limitations that we have. Um, I know that the the HRS staff

185reductions was is not yet represented here, but we had a good important discussion on that piece this morning, which would be the only would have been the only Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry. Would have been the only possible reductions we could have made. I apologize. Um, you know, given where where we are with the vast majority of our staff being contracted employees that are on a contract through the end of the year. So the point being is that where we are Monday morning to identify a number for a formal request because I know the select board is expecting sort of um the clarity from us and you're right Anna like we've reached that we've reached that point. Yeah. So what else will we note by Monday? I'm sorry, I'm just not following because I thought like

186the number but I thought we were ready to have the information to Well, we won't get any more information. No more information, right? Because we wouldn't have the clarity on the water bill issue next by Monday and we obviously won't know about the state aid as either. So, we're not having any of that. So, this is kind of what we're working with. I do agree in this morning's meeting, you know, asking for more than we need just to just so that we're not going back and just at the end of June and asking for more to close the books like uh like we did last year. I I would think like we ask for and then I suggest we ask for more than you know what we know like based on the information we have

187and what we might need and then if state aid comes in and so on and so forth then return the portion back you know depending on what number that state aid comes in as too because that's a guesstimate right so I think and same thing with the water bill right like just ask and then you know say hey we We'll return whatever unused portion it is. We just need to be able to cover ourselves so we're not coming back to you in June and surprise you with a bigger ask. You're recognizing there seem to be a couple different ways we could go about requesting the funds in terms of so that's that's another piece that I think we need some final clarity on just so they there is nothing more they need from us. Mhm.

188And then we are hoping for them to work with us. Um, but I also think there's a like the other question too is not only what are we getting like what's the reimbursement rate or what's the rate for these, but I think there's still questions around special ed, right? So they're they're cons special costs that have not come in yet. Yes. So I think when we're talking about a buffer, it's not that oh just in case. It's that no, we know that there are costs that haven't hit yet that are and that right. Correct. Yeah. Mhm. That's the challenge of, you know, when we talked about this earlier, that's the challenge of any kind of number right now where we, like you said, where we look at, you know, 880 and then we add 100

189to it and then that's set in stone. Um, you know, I think the the probably the best direction would be and of course we have like an override and non-override reality that I know Mark you responded to to Nick about that in terms of thinking through those two different scenarios. uh in the in the override scenario, having access to the special ed reserve for FY25, which is um currently at a million dollars, would be I I think in terms of where we stand right now, would be a good place to a good recommendation to provide to the select court. Is there another way? Weren't we talking about there was another scenario because in the sense of the special ed stabilization fund is very specific around what you can use it for and the timing of

190the invoices that come in. Correct. So, is it looking at I always get the funds wrong, but moving it from is there a stabilization fund or a general that that that isn't necessarily special ed specific that wouldn't be tied to those things. So, we're not accessing next year's 20. We're not accessing the that fund. We're asking them to move move it to a fund where it still would be for special education, but it's not specifically named that. Am I correct or incorrect? Um, I thought the other option would potentially be to put it in kind of a town like a reserve fund reserve fund and then the town would do a further appropriation. Um, I think rather than doing the special education stabilization fund, I think that was the other option we had talked about

191only because I think that there I mean I think it's either way it's just it's coming from the town, but just making sure that however it's worded, it's it's it's accessible to reduce the amount of the special education stabilization fund. Yes. That's built into the override budget and to Right. um transfer that to the town's reserve, which would be a way to ensure that um you know, if things come out favorably for us and we didn't end up actually needing that much, it would just remain whatever's left would remain in the town's reserve. So I think obviously how they would ultimately choose to do this would be something that the town administrator and select board would decide. Mhm. Um I think though, you know, what we're in the position of demonstrating our process, which thank

192you for so clearly laying out sort of how we got to this point um and all of the work that has happened like week by week through this time and then um you know where that has brought us to. So I just think on the the idea of the reserve and I agree with you. It's like the town administrator I defer a bit to on like what is the mechanism that works well but I think that another thing to name as relates to the reserve account is that has oversight from both the select board and the warrant committee to make sure the public is aware of that. So pulling down from that would then still require we'd have to get a vote of town meeting to allocate that funding to the reserve account and then

193we'd have to once we have the finalized number which is the thing that most interests me in this is like as you say we just don't have enough firm information. So we're going to have to kind of pick a big number. We then once we have that we can go back to the select board with that number to share with them again have their oversight. still also have to go back to the warrant committee to share with them, get their approval and oversight. And so all those groups are involved in the process. And I do think the mechanism of pulling it from what the select board has already allocated towards the schools for FY26 through the special ed stabilization fund um allocation is the way to go given that a that should not impact any

194of the long-term financial planning that the town administrator was trying to do around how we sustain this override through FY30. Mhm. So it shouldn't affect any of the funds that are used within those calculations for them. And I think the second piece is that you know those funds were were identified through the select board's vote to help with the unexpected uh costs related to special education that the schools are incurring and that's exactly what they would be used to support. It's just they'd be used to support that within the current year which is the year where we are significantly struggling with these. I know you highlighted utilities and sub coverage within your examples, but obviously the other is transportation, uh, special ed transportation and other special ed services. And I think that's the next slide

195if we want to jump to that. I just want to make sure we hit on that in terms of that that was the purpose of the allocation from the select board. My understanding given they put it towards special ed fund and that would be our intent of using it. It just would be a year earlier given this is where we're having the the budget tightness, right? And now is when we need it. Yeah. Based on how you built the budget for FY26. And so that is something I really want to make sure is highlighted for people. I think slide three was so important, how you are reminding us what was built into FY26. And again, I know those were just two different examples, but you brought that same approach across the board, right? And so

196that is why we do not anticipate finding ourselves in exact this exact position next year at this time. We you know we are in this position now for reasons that are not rolling forward into FY26. And so that to me is a rationale to use the free cash funds now when we need them. Mhm. You know, the idea is that we should not need them in this same way going forward, right? And so specific to special ed. So when we talk about the structural deficit that we've identified for 25 um we did in the slide three had um the substitute coverage and the utilities as examples but as you had mentioned special education specific to transportation for this year. Um but there were a number of lines I think in previous years that had um

197been underfunded. Um but when we look at transportation we did try to for fiscal year 26 account for um the historical expenses instead of going through the process of just rolling the prior year's budget forward. And so as we have identified that we're currently looking at a deficit for fiscal year 25 and throughout that process of looking at each one of the lines and each one of the areas to say how can we contain costs, how can we cut costs, how can we make every effort possible to balance the budget at the end of the year. At the same time that we've been doing that, we've been looking at the lines for 26 and saying, are these budget lines going to be appropriate? And so for special education, um, in the FY26 proposed budget, as

198I had said, many of the budget lines that were historically underfunded have been adjusted, but in some instances, costs have continued to increase. Um and so we do have to make some adjustments to account for those known expenses. And so the way in which that we can do that for fiscal year 26 specific to special education is in the original budget we had put um a proposed utilization of circuit breaker for $2 million in the hopes that we could potentially if we were allocated $2.7 million that we wouldn't have to use a portion of it and that we could use $2 million to cover some of those expenses throughout the course of the year. and the change that has happened since October as we have continued to see increased costs in special education and as

199we continue to monitor the budget and as we continue to look at next year, we will have to make an adjustment to the circuit breaker utilization in order to make sure that the the budget is balanced. And you can see in this exhibit, this just gives an example of how the budget was originally proposed and projected um at the beginning of the year when we first presented the budget back in November. And that was based off of historical expenses and known costs. Now, as of mid-March, we know that some of those costs have increased. And given those costs increase, we don't anticipate that those costs will be reduced significantly into next year. And so we will have to utilize the full if if not the full amount, the majority of the circuit breaker reimbursement that

200we will be receiving in next year. And so you can see the update. Originally, we had tried we had built in $2 million and as of as of March, as of right now, looking at next year, we will have to use $2.7 million we're projecting to make sure that the budget is balanced. I just want to point out in this scenario that is a change to the circuit breaker reimbursement that we can make that will not impact the total number that we're requesting for the operating budget from the town. So that does not if you look in the budget column it is not changing the overall budget in the operating budget. it's just updating the amount of the circuit breaker utilization that we're using for next year. So, I think that's just an important point

201to make that we're recognizing that the expenses are increasing. where um we are saying how we are going to offset that expense and the offset that we're proposing is not an increase to the operating budget but rather it's just the full utilization of that circuit breaker reimbursement. Can I ask a question? So is this cuz I was trying to follow this when we were on the finance call the other day. Is this what you were saying when when you were saying when they were talking about the difference of that 700? You're saying no, it's actually the budget. It's not that we're holding that money out. It's actually it's actually an expense known expense. It's known expenses now as opposed to hoping that we wouldn't have to take advantage of the 2 million. Our costs have

202increased. So now it's built in and now we will have to use it to balance in some of the changes were in transportation and then also in some of the contracted services expenses. Mhm. So um trying to Did you have something? No, I just because it just everything clicked from the other That's the part I was that slide is the part I was missing. So when we were talking about so now the budget is decreased by 700 because it's gone to the town assuming we were using it as a reserve fund but it's not a reserve fund. So now our budget just reduced 700,000. Yes. Got so transitioning to FY26. We um after getting the number from the select board um and the conversation we had at the finance subcommittee meeting to talk about how

203we were going to approach this um decrease from the $6.4 million level service increase that we um built our budget on to bring it down to 5.7 million. that we u on the next slide. Um our our main goal here was to both keep the things that that we knew were important um in the the level service budget. Um one one goal, one significant goal was not um not reducing sta staffing significantly. So you can see on this list here um we have not really other than um nurse admin assist which is a a very small portion of a position um we have not reduced any other positions here. Um through attrition we've found three positions. These are due to enrollment. Our current kindergarten enrollment is right now hovering a little bit over 280. Um,

204so that that is the for next year. Yeah, we expect that number to increase a bit, but that's significantly lower than it was last year, which was 365. Um, so we are finding two positions at the elementary um and one at the secondary level. Um, the bus is the bus that we had added previously. So would it be that particular route that would be or how does it work? No, we would just um reduce by one bus and then essentially reduce the route to include the kids that from East Milton that that bus supported. So our capacity would potentially lower but because we are reducing um so the capacity would so so there is um we would go back to kind of that preandemic level of being able to support that number of students and

205the capacity issues um for the bus typically are at the secondary level. Yeah. For the middle school students. Yeah. We go back to last year. Okay. But you would would Okay. So then So what happens to all the students that we added a bus for? Like are they just finding their own way to school? We would have to reestablish. So we we had a wait list for this year. So it's just increasing the number of students on the wait list again. So it would revert back to that. Okay. Mhm. Okay. Um we have general expenses just $10,000. Um a family liaison position which has been vacant where we hire that. Um the program design is the the neck program and the and and kind of taking on the neck curriculum and and neck expertise but

206running that ourselves. Uh I mentioned the nurse admin assist athletic fees. This would be an increase to athletic fees. Do you know just on that? Do you have a sense of what percent increase and I know there's the cap on athletic fees too per family, but like do I assume we'll talk about that in more detail at finance, but do you have a general sense of like what the percent increase would need to be in order to get to the 45? When we looked at it, I believe we raised it by $50 a sport. Okay. So, I just believe we're still low, right? Compar comparatively. in some um when we look at the the overall fee um is probably mid-range, but I would say for some specific sports it's low. The fee we charge is

207low. And then um 100,000 out of the circuit breaker brings us to the 996. um we did have to alter the the needs. So previously with that the needs based um provision we had the ELA curriculum we had additional time and we had more ELLL support. So we reduced that to the curriculum itself. Um and we would be looking next year at using professional development time and our professional development funds to we we would be able to support some of that training as well just not quite as much and we could look at FI27 to support more of that. And then ELLL support would be adding 2. We have 2.8 positions. Those are four days a week. 28. So that would make those two positions full-time, which with a kind of a rescheduling of of

208need. Um, we think we can we can meet the need and then again look to FY27 to to continue looking at building that staffing in EL which will continue to be a need. A question on the ELA curriculum. I know we had the 50,000 before for curriculum development. So I'm curious if we're using now PD time, which obviously we need to get all the other things that we do in alignment and making sure that our staff has pl time together between schools to work on things so that you know there's more uh uniformity across all six schools or at least the four and the the other two. How do we like what's our how does that affect the timeline for when the ELA curriculum gets implemented now? Does that is there a like a delay

209now? There wouldn't be a delay. No, it would be so the summer curriculum time which we've had historically every year. We've we've paid teachers to do summer curriculum in in different ways. So that would continue. So you would essentially be doing the same the the timeline would remain unchanged. it would just be, you know, instead of having that $50,000 to support a lot of additional time, you would just have to be a little bit more targeted with that. And then you'd be looking at early release days, you'd be looking at grade level facilitation. Um, so at the building level, you know, with in terms of of getting a a kind of the practice of of understanding the new curriculum and having teams work on it together. So there there are lots of different ways that

210teachers work together to both kind of learn, calibrate, and and assess and um we would just be utilizing all those different ways. I mean, would the $50,000 be helpful? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what I was trying to understand because I know in the past one of the reasons that we've held off so much on the ELA curriculum was like, you know, we we had other curriculums that we implemented before and there was like, you know, the learning curve of the complexity of adding another one, but it seems like without the support and we're asking teachers to kind of figure it out within the buildings on their own just seems a little scary. Um, and not that they do it. It's just like, but you know, it's just like, do they have the support

211they need to make sure it's given the fidelity, you know, done the way it's meant to be given or is there going to be more of a learning curve and then students won't benefit from it in its full capacity until like year two or three because we don't have the support. I'm just I'm just trying to understand. I mean, I I would say some some of that is related to what Cat and Brian were talking about in terms of systems and it it's less about bringing a committee together to talk about how how do we roll this out, but it's it's actual the actual action of of doing that and and having collaborative time to work together at the building level and then at the district level and planning that district level work in ways

212that then is going out to the building level so that there's not like too much development happening which I think is the history of Milton. There's a lot of development happening at the building level and not enough happening at the district level to then kind of feed back to the district level, change it, go back out like that that kind of symbiotic relationship which I think is again in a in a in a well functioning system that's like there's like a seamless kind of development that happens where you can that's how you that's how you improve. Yeah, I totally agree with your line of questioning. I think it's the right one. It's just like it are we are we confident that this allocation supports the appropriate implementation of the LA curriculum next year and that

213we are again not just like shooting oursel in the foot to save nickels and not nickels obviously it's $50,000 but you know I I understand what you're saying of there's other time in which you just would take need to take from that because you wouldn't have this u but totally agree I mean spending $250,000 on an ELA curriculum that's just going to sit in teachers cabinets. And again, maybe looking at you a little bit here too, but just like, yeah, given we're not going to have another crack at this for a year and we don't want to waste a year on this. I think it's the right question. I just want to make sure one more time. I feel like you've already answered it, but like are we certain that these are the resources, and

214I know you won't be here, Peter, but that the district would need in order to carry this out. Right. Right. So it it would be more traditional to have a expanded including you know the the programs but you know Cat has spoken um to us and does feel like next year the whole the way the year will roll out the first part of the year we'll be exploring the curriculum the second year we can pick up the steam on that piece it's I mean the first year is going to be a slower roll out anyway I guess that's why I think it's okay. Yeah. So that yeah that definitely gives it context. So then what is our I guess what I would like to understand and this is I first of all just to back

215up I appreciate that you know where we had to make reductions of $700,000. I appreciate that you didn't not reduce that and that's still a priority. I think again going in for an override, it's really important to give families something like what are they what more are they getting for the increase that we're asking them to support. Um so I appreciate that. I um and and just understanding from a timing standpoint like what like when are we looking to roll this out where students will be using it? Yeah, I think you've spoken most recently to Kad about that timeline. So it next year would be development pilot. Um and then you know and what I was going to say um Mark is FY27 will have you could put money into the summer for training as

216as we get ready to really roll this out districtwide. So that that's the place where that money will actually be more impactful is that summer leading up to full implementation. Okay. And that's the beauty of having a a line for curriculum within our operating budget, which is what you really were showing to us because that provides us some flexibility on a year when we're not adopting a full new curriculum that we can really do that. So, does that still apply though with this reduction that we have to make? Mhm. Okay. Okay. So, that doesn't change going into next year. will still have that 250 allocated towards curriculum. A big portion of the obviously the work next year will be looking at various curriculums and subgroup work. So it won't be the roll out to staff

217um and training on that piece. Okay. No, I I appreciate that it's being prioritized as it's been it's also very you know we are trying to be sensitive. many cuts are being made across the board that I mean as we all know it's devastating. So this is a long-term goal of the committees and the department the curriculum office. So we appreciate the support but it's also incredibly sensitive. Yeah. Um in terms of how we present it. Yeah. Yeah. So to that point, can I so the program design is the neck program and I think um so it's already been communicated to people that this is the program is going away and so I think it was well it's not I mean it's going away is I think that I think but I I I guess

218the way to explain it is I think there's a level of understanding that people have when they hear neck that they don't recognize that it's a consultative approach. approach to a program that we have right so we have the partners program as run or monitored consulted whatever by neck I think if you're up here you get that but when you hear it's going away you're like wait what and so um so I think that part is difficult but I also like the idea of this program redesign has been in the works or thought for for a little bit like in talking to Danielle and so again sort of I think it's around the messaging it's not necessarily being removed or red the program isn't being redesigned from a necessarily from a budget standpoint it happens

219to impact the budget but the idea was this is something that we could do and run and and own and own this program it's evolving and so I just want to like again I think a lot of it is just really around the messaging but it's This is something we have the experience. We've been running the program for x number of years. We have the staff and the facilities as opposed to it being positioned as we're changing it because of the budget which and so I just want to be because like there's like teen emails going around now that it's being cut because of the budget and that's not that's not the right message. So, I just think with all of these things as we're looking at it that there are some things that are

220evolving because they just naturally evolve and there other things that we have to cut because we have to cut. So, so would it be fair to say that the timing shifted because of the budget? So, not necessarily if the thought was already there, right? And we were going to bring it just fully in house and not rely on a third party. Yes, that that's the direction we were headed. But we were not. we expedited, right? It probably gave it the fire. That's accurate, right? So, I think sort of speaking to it that way is important. Yes. Yeah. That that's all. I just think with all of these things that it doesn't and you know, my understanding actually was that it was part of the Pierce plan very specifically at the elementary level, it may have

221been moved more quickly. Right. And that's just something for us when we take a step back and look at our process and think about our work you know into next year forward like that I think it is about the messaging because that is exactly the kind of thing that we want to be doing like we want to be looking for these efficiencies or savings that align with what makes sense operationally or instructionally. That's be that's sort of right the best case scenario right where something happens to make sense for our students and it also doesn't incur another cost it might save something and then we can and like what is our um I appreciate this way of looking which I know we have done to adapt to a compromise but it is a good way

222for us to think about level service one year to the next is that we don't just automatically on autopilot like replicate exactly what we've done. Yes. but rather we're we're making sure that our investments are really like strategically meeting, you know, our needs and that um I think I really appreciate the care in this list to minimize impact on students, families, and staff, negative impacts. I think that's extremely important, especially in this moment. Um, and I think it's just a good reminder that, you know, going forward, we're always going to be looking for these like positive tradeoffs that we're going to be able to make that can be hopefully like a win-win scenario. So, I appreciate having that energy myself like to bring into next year as a school committee member like starting a fresh

223budget cycle. I think that will be um constructive and I think in the meantime I'm think I'm I'm relieved honestly that what this tells me so I won't check my understanding with the rest of you but I think what this tells me is we are we are really able to move forward like we've the select board and having um approved you know unanimously approved the 9.5 amount structured the way they structured I believe they called it scenario B or option B. Um, you know, that it was stated that we need to be able to get to the point of working together, you know, to go out and just sell that to the community. Um, and so this to me is like allows us to really know that we can we're able to do that. like

224we're able to um to adapt to the compromise and move forward. Um so I think that's that's a great step and hopefully if we can like bring the FY25 closure through, you know, the um and I don't I'm still not quite sure where we're ending up on that piece for tonight. I'll send it to you on that, I guess. But like knowing that that we're getting very close, I believe, to where we kind of need to end up to be able to move hopefully move forward. Um, I mean, do you all have a a number that you were requesting at this point that we request or do you want another couple days on this to talk about on Monday? Not that you're going to have a whole lot of new information, but just so that

225you can, you know, yeah, go through current expenditures and just feel a little bit more refined. I mean, I guess we we have talked about this a number of times. Um, and we talked about it this morning. Um the the I think the one question that is remaining is that 450 for a circuit breaker which you know 48 48 48 88 Yeah. So you know I mean if we're looking at the full amount it's 1.4 or 1.3 I I mean Yeah. So, I mean 1.3 then changes the math because it's over the 1 million that they've allocated for us. And so, which is why I I I think and and Katie should weigh in here, but I I I think it should be the 1 million and we work to to make all those other

226pieces fit you. I agree. I mean, it's it's difficult. So, I think the 1 million was the amount that was identified that the town has said um or the town administrator has said um that they are willing to put into the special education stabilization fund and that was um the amount of money um for free cash that they were going to put in for next year. And so, um, I think at this point in time, um, based off of the the deficit balance that we should ask for the 1 million just because of the variables for the circuit breaker funding. Um, my only hesitation with that is that if we don't receive the circuit breaker funding, we are at a deficit number that's higher than the 1 million. Um, is there a chance we wouldn't

227receive this as a breaker fund? So, it's um the funding would be coming from a supplemental budget for fiscal year 25 that hasn't been approved yet. Okay. And that's at the state level. So, um there's chances that it could the amount could get modified like the 488. Yep. That's advocacy to our representatives to stand up for that. Yes. Budget as proposed. Yes. Okay. And then just I don't have a good sense of the um timing around that. So at some points um the budget process at the state level can go into the summer and so so after June 30th, right? So, I just don't know if uh I'm not completely familiar with the supplemental budget process if that's more of an expedited process or if that would follow the same process as the fiscal year

22826 budget. Um, so I'm I'm just not sure. Um, and I've attended a number of meetings and been a part of different conversations with other business directors and other municipalities across the state and they just are not providing um clarity around that information. We don't have any definitive answers at this point. So, I am hopeful that it is something that could potentially benefit us in many districts across the state. It's just that it's not final now. And then if we were to, you know, use that the 1 million from next year for this year to close out the the deficit. And then we're requesting the 5.7 for us. And then the 700 goes into a reserve of some sort, right? that we can draw from. From what I understand, the 700 is the would be

229an operating budget stabilization at the town level. So that is completely separate from the school department. And I think the intent with that stabilization, it's essentially an operating budget stabilization fund on the town side with the hopes of creating more sustainability um for the override that it will last us um as long till 2030. Yes. Okay. So then we should be okay to not so they can continue to build that so we don't have to borrow from that. from which account from this the stabilization the operational stabilization fund. So, I think the the town is looking at that account as um they may potentially have to take funding from that account in the future to be able to and I don't want to speak for but from what I'm understanding as a part of the

230conversation. They may potentially have to draw from that stabilization fund in the future in order to balance the budget. But in the meantime, I think they're also looking at ways in which to continue to allocate funds to it. So if there is free cash at the end of this fiscal year and next fiscal year, it could potentially go into that operating budget stabilization fund with the intent of helping to fund kind of the the budgets um on an ongoing basis in the future. and to stretch out the the length between overrides so that we don't need to go back for an overhead. Okay. So if potentially like I mean worst case scenario we end up with any sort of deficit it it could cover to help us if we need it and at the same

231time they will continue to like if I'm just asking like any worst case scenario expenses come in or anything like that like for next year for next year um I don't I think that the stabilization fund from my understanding with the 700,000 the intent of that was more of the operating budget expenses I believe in the future. Okay. So I don't know what the mechanism would be for next year but I'm just very hopeful based off of and I don't even want to say hopeful. I think for next year we did a lot of work to make sure that the budget is reflective of our expenses and I just we will have to operate within that budget for next year. Okay. So regardless of like I know we talked about when we built and I'm

232just trying to understand for clarity the when we built the budget in November and since then we've had lots of you know special ed expenses come in so you're still hoping that like because those are mandated and we have to spend that you know we have to um spend money on that like like I I guess I just needed some like reassurance from you that like with even those kind of unexpected expenses coming up. We are we're hopeful that we can stay within the our budget that we created instead of going over and if we do then okay in the we will be operating within the budget appropriated to us in the future. Okay. If we do not in the event that the supplemental budget is approved for this year and that we get some

233additional circuit breaker reimbursement and if we don't have to use the whole million dollars that we're talking about potentially accessing um I'm hopeful that there could potentially still be a balance in the special education reserve fund and then that funding will be available to us in the future because there is a a possibility that we have some expenses that are unanticipated, unbudgeted for next year. And so, um, if we're able to leave some money in that account, then that is going to be the goal to leave it there and then use it appropriately. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Sorry for all the questions. I do want to name the the negative impact of one of the other negative impacts of the FI25 budget is the impacts we are impacting FY26 free cash which again we

234just discussed in the override scenario what the implications of that are. that's already being allocated to the schools as we talked about within this million dollar special ed reserve. what the town administrator emailed us, I think us all about earlier um this week, uh was to after our Monday meeting, so sometime on Tuesday, was to say that in a nonoverright scenario, that same million dollars is not available to the schools within the special ed reserve account, right? That does not exist. that money is already allocated within the non-override scenario to be able to allow for the 1.5% increase to town and school expenses. Mhm. So, in a situation where the override fails, the million dollar of free cash, if we needed to use it, and again, I know we are saying the goal is to

235use as small a portion of that as possible, but that's I'm saying a million because that's what y'all are saying. We are going to request the then the town administrator said the schools would need to my understanding what he said is the schools would need to adjust our non-override budget allocation proportionally to whatever we're pulling into FY25. So that is to say if we are pulling in a million dollars into FY25 then we need to pull a million dollars out of FY26. Got it. And so our cuts in FY26 would be an additional million are going to be greater and we need to do that. My understanding would be now through an updated non-override budget to say this is the amount we are expecting to need to use from free cash because we know we're

236going to have to need to use something. Maybe again we're not projecting a million within that scenario. I'm I'm not sure but I'm not 100% sure how exactly it's going to work because we don't know 100% what the number is. But I guess we'd have to assume a million. Mhm. And so there are additional cuts beyond the 70.2 FTE and the other all the other terrible cuts that we've looked at and had to vote on last week or a couple weeks ago that will need to be added on to so that in a non-override scenario, we still have a balanced budget for FY26 that reflects less free cash. Any questions on that? So, we'll probably continue to need if if this moves forward, you know, for Tuesday and at the select board, if this moves

237forward with them, then that becomes work needing to happen over the next following week. Yeah, that you will do and right y bring back to us and it just it just makes it that much more important that um the community can be, you know, informed to understand the stakes of the override vote. Yeah, if that's you know where we are. Yeah. Any questions? I guess I have just one other I I think I was thinking about this recap like we this problem the FY25 problem popped up in January and I think from that moment my approach in any like emergency is like you dive in you deal with what you need to and that's what it's felt like we've been we've been in kind of emergency action for the last three months at this point

238uh and I think all of you have and done what we need to to kind of get to this point where at least now it seems like we have not good news, but clarity on where the FY25 situation at least is falling as it relates to the request from us. And so I just wanted to take a second and pause here around like kind of while that was needed like I I think we do need to reflect on the fact that this is and I'm somewhat directing this to you Peter but like two fiscal years in a row that we have failed to come in on budget and that's just a reality of kind of the situation we are we find ourselves is now we're in the second year in which we are needing to

239go back to the town to ask for increased allocation of revenue that was not given to us by town meeting. we've gone over our budget and I you know I know as well as anybody I think we all know here that a lot of that is mandated special education costs right those things are as Danielle said this morning uh predictably unpredictable and and difficult to control but at the end of the day that's the job right that's the job of the superintendent that's the job we ask you to do is tell us what the budget you need manage the district to that budget and we have not had that happen in the last two years And I think it's incredibly frustrating and incredibly impactful. And I think we've seen that as again we like take

240a I take a breath to like reflect. We've seen that for the last two months of how impactful that has been. That how impactful that is to our ongoing effort to get override, right? and the confusion and irritation that is the ongoing impact to our staff who have like on now even ongoing questions about their job given the FY25 implications for FY26 not to mention the HRS conversation which again is a terrible place to put staff into who to the point Katie made like are not the reason we're overbudget but those are the considerations we we had to make in terms of how do we get into budget the impact on students who you I talked to one of my kids in the neighborhood neighborhood walking by and talked about how his teacher is like

241buying the science supplies because they don't have the ability to buy them, right? And he knows that and he's dealing with that as a middle schooler should not be doing that. Have high schoolers who weren't sure if they were going to have sports for a little a couple of days because that slide got released. Um, you know, we have residents of the town questioning our competency and trust within the school department and within the town as a whole, all while we were asking for the most possible trust because we need the override and and like so it's just all these things that I think of and I I say that, you know, I think first like the need to acknowledge those things like that's real, that's true. I I can't shake the knowledge that if

242we had been informed about this project deficit sooner that we could have done more to close this gap because of how impactful this FY25 situation is ongoing and is now looking like it will be even into FY26, especially if we don't have an override. Um, and I'm just I'm very concerned based upon this new information from the town of administrator what the impact will be next year because it's just a compounding impact. Um, and we already I was already terrified about the 70 positions. I assume an extra million dollars is another I don't want to throw a number out there and and make people freak out. So, um, I'll leave that to future conversation. But, um, I guess the last piece is I assume at some point some of the select board members will watch

243this and so at a certain point we are like I made clear when this came out in in January like I do not want to go to the select board and ask for money. I think I said that at this meeting. We're in a place where now I need to pull that back. And I'm not above begging and like, you know, putting my own pride aside if it means the good for kids. And right now that's what we're saying it is. And so like I plead with the select board that we are in a situation we cannot help ourselves. We are going to need them. And so I think it'll be on us to advocate to the select board, ask them uh for the support because otherwise I'm I'm not really sure what this means

244without their support, what this means for kids and for staff between now and the end of the year. And it's just a an atrocious situation we find ourselves in. Um and so I I know now we we need to take the step forward, but I I just felt like that needed to be to be said um to kind of clear close that out before we can take that path forward. Well, I would I agree with a lot of what you're saying, Mark, but I also have to say this is years of budgeting, you know, incorrectly, right? and it just kind of happened to like happened last year and into this year. But I don't think it's I think a lot of hands have touched that over the course of you know maybe even a decade

245of just you know so I don't necessarily feel that it's you know like something that we did or didn't do. I think at some point it was bound to happen and I think we have an opportunity now to really change our practices with Katie's guidance. I think you know hopefully in her saying today, hey, next year we have to live within our means. We cannot go over and you know and that is so important and I think just having that perspective is helpful now. But I think it's it has been years of, you know, the the habits of going back to the town and asking for free cash and doing that. I mean, I've watched old meetings enough to know that that has been kind of how we've always done things. And I I don't

246think it can happen anymore. And because at some point, we're going to run out of money. And unfortunately, we're the board that ran out of money. It happened to. And I know it's very frustrating. And I know if an override doesn't pass, the impacts are, you know, horrific. But at the same time, it's like, you know, it's just it really just I think here's an opportunity for us to really say we can't let this happen again, right? We are going to it's going to take us a long time to recover from this. you know, regardless of I mean, depending on how the override goes, there are going to be needs based um needs that we're not going to be able to meet and we'll have to look at within our internal budget to figure out

247where we can like the ELA curriculum, you know, and so on and so forth and make adjustments and sometimes those adjustments will have bigger impacts than others, you know, and so we're kind of looking at the lowhanging fruit now, but at some point we will have to make bigger bigger cuts, you know, and unfortunately this is again, you know, um, as we make decisions as past members and however over the last several years, you know, other boards have made these decisions and we advocated for an override last year. You know, we wouldn't be in this situation now. So again, decisions boards make really impact not just for that year but for future years. And this is a reflection of those decisions. And I think we just have to be mindful and be able to work

248within other town boards to really say, "Hey, listen. We're in this together. If we don't work together to resolve this going forward, we're going to be in this mess again." You know, we're only as good as how well we can work with the other boards and them to understand. And that's where it's like if we need to advocate for that million dollars, we have to figure it out. And you know it just we have to figure out how to close these things and you know I'm really tired and rambling but um but I just you know this and I know it's very frustrating and I do um you know and as especially being chair of finance and not not the year to be chair of finance and I appreciate you um you know doing all

249the work that you are and uh I know it is very frustrating but I really hope that this is something that we all needed to kind of, you know, unfortunately had to go through to figure out a path forward. So, but I think also embedded in all that it's important to state and acknowledge not just as a committee uh but as a town that costs have escalated so much and we haven't been able to keep up with the costs. So, while there is internal actions we're taking to be more on top of, which is great, but there's also external pressures that are real and that are impacting districts across the state. And so, I think we need to just hold on to both. It's yes and um and I think that's important for us to

250continue to message that and and educate sort of folks who just don't realize that there are these external pressures that are there and we're going to try to mitigate them as much as possible by improving internal practices. But to the point that was made earlier, even now we're seeing sort of these increases coming and it seems like they're just out of control and we can't quite keep a handle on them. And that's a reality that we're going to a context that we're going to have to keep functioning, right? But the other side of that is we're also going back to the community and asking to help us with those and they're in the same boat because all their costs are going up too. So it's just it's really hard and that's where we have to

251like, you know, I think just make a pack to like as much as you know our costs are going up like we we we're going to have to make some changes. Unfortunately, there's nothing we could do because we can keep going and asking for more money, but at some point someone's going to say no and then we, you know, and just uh, you know, because it people can't afford it. So, I think there's only so much we can, you know, and yeah, it it's true. It's like a lot of these things are out of our control and uh you know unfortunately um the times we live in but um yeah and we're doing the you know but I appreciate that we're going through this exercise and kind of doing this and getting into the habit

252of you know what can we do where can we you know make adjustments and we're developing a discipline that you know may have existed in the past on the school committee but I don't think it existed in the recent past. Yeah. In quite the same way. So, yeah. Um I think you know Yeah. Make the motion. I I think this is I typed it into the motion chart. I think that's the motion we y'all are asking us to make. So, I'll make it and then if there's a friendly amendment, please tell me. I think it's a motion to request the select board move the million-doll free cash allocation from the special education reserve account from the soontobe established proposed or proposed I think they've already anyway yeah from the proposed special education reserve account to

253the town reserve account or other mechanism that would allow that would make the funding available to the school committee within FY25 in order to draw down upon an amount to be determined at a future date to close the school department's anticipated FY25 fiscal deficit right so this seems f this seems right I'm not sure I mean yeah I mean I think clearly we have consensus here that this is what what we're asking for. Um I don't know the if we if it would be worth like double-checking the wording of this if we're taking you I don't know. Um we can always revote it in the future. I I assume this should give the select captures the intent that we need to direction. Yeah. And as long as it's clear for us. Okay. So I'll make

254that motion. Is there a second? Second. Okay. All in favor? Uh move on quickly. Uh we have two vendor warrants. Uh vendor warrant 35 and vendor warrant 36. So I'll go ahead and make one motion. Um motion is made to approve vendor warrant 35 payable on 31325 in the amount of 1,14,22.97. and to approve vendor warrant 36 payable on 320 2025 in the amount of $695,53065. Is there a second? Second. All in favor. Thank you. Okay. Are we able to defer the facilities? Okay. We'll put that to next time. We already covered the policy subcommittee meeting. Basically, um approval of minutes. Are people ready to very quickly vote the minutes or does do people need a minute to look at the minutes? Yes. If we're ready, I think we can just take one quick vote

255on both. I think there are a couple of edits that have been um shared and so it's as as edited. Um Okay. So, I will uh make a motion to approve the school committee minutes as edited with for February 26, 2025 and March 5th, 2025. Is there a second? Second. Second. All in favor. Okay. Um we don't need to talk about our next meeting. I think it will be lighter than this one. Uh we can just make a motion to adjurnn. Second. Okay. Okay. All in favor. Thanks everybody. Good night. 3 2 1. Here we go. [Music]