001Christmas. All right. >> No, I don't. the water issue started. There are So, we are going to get started right away this morning. Our friends and we want to be respectful of them getting to where they need to be on time. Um, okay. So, first, thank you all very much for coming. I'm going to call the regional school committee to order at 8:02. Are there other uh committees and boards that need to be called to order? I call finance order. >> Anybody else? >> Perfect. >> Shakespeare. >> Excellent. >> Uh, we don't have a quorum yet. >> Oh, okay. Well, we do. I will raise my hand. Give me the high five. Okay. Um so thank you all very much for coming. Uh this today is going to be um this is a very early
002draft budget as we all know. There are so many factors that are not yet um confirmed. Uh so however we did have a great conversation earlier the fall and I wanted to be able to continue to have um a collaborative process. So that is where we're going to start. Uh there were there any uh there were a few announcements people. >> Yes, there we go. >> Hi, I'm Susie Mo from the Sheets Finance Committee and we have initiated a postcard lobbying um effort to send it in to the governor before she finishes her draft. Um there's two sides just um and the you have to put your name and address and email on the back. Um and there's some check boxes. Um insufficient state support for rural schools import impacts me by limiting local learning
003opportunities and reducing access to programs, making it harder to afford staying in my home and community and straining other town services and employee retention. So, if you could fill out one of these, I'll put them in the You can put them in the bag over there. It's over by the donuts, I think. Um, and I'll mail them on mass to the governor. Thank you. >> Thank you. Were there any other No. Excellent. Okay. So our first um agenda item is identification of the four town representatives for collaboration with the fiscal sustainability subcommittee which was part of what we talked about at our last four towns meeting. Um the regional school committee has a fiscal sustainability subcommittee that has been doing a lot of research and advocacy. Um and part of that conversation at our last
004four towns meeting was there was also a four towns working group. Um and for those two to come together to be able to continue to work collaboratively. Um we had asked that each town uh put forth a representative to work with that the fiscal sustainability group. Um, and do the towns have a representative? Um, Joe, so I'll start. Um, I was elected president on Monday. We just reorganized on Monday for the town council. So, we have not yet. Um um we will be doing so on this coming Monday at our next council meeting, but I was hoping to request um given the interest that our counselors have in potentially serving on this group that the towns consider the possibility that at least Ammerst, but we're open to all the towns being willing to nominate two
005representatives to this and the school committee to consider whether that's a possibility that we could nominate two or nominate two. Sorry. >> And we just got our quorum. So, we're calling the council meeting to order. >> Thanks. I didn't see this. >> Nominates our chair of the finance committee, John. >> Thank you. Um, did Le or She have an opportunity to go on. Did Labra Shbury have an opportunity to Yep. >> We nominate Steve Field as our representative Weiss. Excuse me. The other one. The other Steve, sorry. As our representative, he's from the finance committee. >> Le Shootsbury will nominate AG Cashew. >> Excellent. Thank you. Uh Deb is chair of our fiscal sustainability subcommittee. Um so if uh we will coordinate and move forward. Excellent. Thank you all. Okay. So, next is our um
006rough draft of our FY20 budget. >> Good morning. For those that don't know, I'm Shannon Bernachio, the director of finance here at the Regional School District. I am going to walk us through the PowerPoint. Some slides will be a little quicker in the interest of time. Um so, we're just going to dive right in. um if I know how to change it. There we go. Um so a general overview. We're going to start off actually Dr. Z will start off talking a little bit about what's required by law for our educational programs at the school. Um and then I'll talk bit a little bit about our operating budget, the revenue budget. We'll move into capital. Um I heard at one of the town's meetings that you wanted to know a little bit more about our
007revolving funds and stabilization. So, I've included that in this presentation. Um, and then also at the request of a school committee member, we're going to just have a brief information about school choice, charter, and vogue and what those costs are. Um, then we'll take some clarifying questions and in the end of the PowerPoint, I won't be presenting, but it has the uh information for enrollment by town. Um, so you have that at your fingertips. So, with that, I will pass this beginning piece off to Dr. Z. All right. So, you can keep that one. Good morning, everyone. >> Good morning. >> I think that um in one of our budget and audit subcommittee meetings, um the chair of that subcommittee said it would be really great if we could present what is required versus what
008is kind of like optional. And so we created a document um I'm not going to go through the whole thing that outlines the various laws Massachusetts um general law as well as desi regulations um even some federal state laws that outline what is required um I think a lot of times when the budgets come forward everyone thinks that it's easier to make a decision around the academic programming because you can save special education teachers but get rid of core teachers well the Special education program is intended by law to ensure that students who have various needs are able to take part and learn with their peers. Right? So there's terminology least restrictive environment, faith, all of that talks about the educational programming. By law, we're required to have a special education program. By law, we're
009required to have human resources or it doesn't say how things show up. By law, we're supposed to be able to manage our funds appropriately. By law, we're we supposed to have a school committee. We're supposed to have a superintendent. It outlines a principal. It doesn't outline assistant principles, but you know that in depending on school populations, you need assistant principles. You need deans to run your school. So, we wanted to create a picture for you that's not just about numbers, but also why we do what we do and why we are what things we are required to do. So there's also a glossery in here that talks about what we must provide, what we must ensure access to and what we should provide because some things we have to provide access to which means that
010it doesn't mean that we have to do it. For example, transportation. We have to ensure that children are transported have access to transportation, but it doesn't mean that the school district has to has to have the buses. It means that we can contract out. So it's a very relevant document when you start to ask your questions and when we start to dig into the conversations around the reductions and FTEES because it frames in your mind when we are saying that we can and can't cut certain things the wise around it the what we are pushed to do and I would rather us be in full compliance and create the educational program for our children that we are required to do. I would also want us to start to think about programming that we can do.
011But I know that with our current budget situation, let's at least talk about what we have to provide, what we have to ensure access to, and what we should be providing in this budget. So, I'm going to go over the uh draft operating budget. With this budget, we have already applied 850,000 of school choice um into the salary line. We've accounted for our OEP funding. I don't know if you remember from last year, we weren't following the schedule that was originally voted. So, we took the amount that we were off, divided by two, did half last year, and then the remaining half is this year. So, now we'll be um going forward following that schedule. Um we are assuming right now an 18% health insurance increase. I'm hopeful that we'll know more end of January,
012beginning of February, but at this time, that's our assumption. Um, we're in year two for FY27, our transportation contract with this message. Um, there's some things about the track maintenance that I'll talk about when we get on to the next slide. Um, we've made assumptions for where the APA contract will land. It's not yet ratified. Um, and then in FY27, we'll start negotiating the APSME contract um, for the following year. So, I know this is this slide's really hard to see. So, I'm hopeful that you had some chance uh last night to to review this slide. Um our salaries, we have projected out a 6.8% increase. Um and this accounts for uh steps and colas, but right now it does not account for any um shared staff that may be uh at the region right
013now, but be assisting with teaching the sixth grade when they come into the middle school. So those reductions um of split staff is not yet projected in here as we're still working on that. Um our contracts uh we had some increase to our tutor line and increase for our um athletic trainer per their contract. Um for subs I have a three-year increase. We've noticed a big increase in our substitute lines. Um so I've done a three-year increase to account for that for FY20 or three-year average to account for that for FY27. um in some of our expense accounts that are non uh payroll, we have possibly three potential residential placements for um the region and other out of district placements. Um so residential placements could cost anywhere from $200 to $300,000 for the year. Um
014out of district placements that are not residential cost a little bit less. The interesting thing here is that our transportation costs for those out of district placements are just about the same as the placement for the program. The transportation costs are absolutely outrageous. Um but we have to account for those as it's a required service that we have to provide. Um so you'll see an increase in the special education line for that. We have applied IDA funding which is a federal grant that we receive every year to help offset some of that and also circuit breaker to those lines um which helps not having them as dramatic increase. Um but right now we're having an increase of 13% in that area. In other programs we have an increase to our choice assessment and uh to
015our vocational assessment for or vocational tuition. We have an influx of ninth graders who have gone out to vocational schools for FY26. Um, so we'll monitor that and and see if they come back because sometimes that does happen for 9th graders. The charter assessment I have not yet updated on here. I'm waiting to see uh when the state budget comes out and also uh the Q2 report from DESIE uh with the actual placements for FY26. So that has not been updated, but I do project an increase. um but not sure yet. So, I didn't put the number in. Um for student services, we um we have a little bit of an increase there that's specific actually to students, so I won't talk about that. Um in our program and staff development, we have some increases
016for our printers and some decreases in supplies and contracted services and PD that we've already taken out. um and a slight increase in some resource materials that we'll need, but overall it has a net decrease. It's a little amount, but we're going to account for it for 20 about $2,500. Um in school administration, we have um we've had to do some increases for our printer and copier contract. You'll see that in some of the various lines because it affects all different departments. So, we charge that department. Um, in central administration, you'll see an increase of 146,000 here, and that is due to um some of our legal fees for student and staff issues. I did a three-year average of what those costs are. Um, we did decrease our advertising notices. We have an increase in
017our Hware software for some of the new practices that we have put into place. Um the business office has also seen se seen an increase for our accounting software with munis and um our unib financial advisory fee and we because we are going out for some new RFPs we've increased some of our legal ads and of course the printer um contract. So when we get at some point to the line by line that's what those costs are. Um, in is we have a reduction in some of our tech leases and an increase in some of our software licenses, but again we it nets in to a decrease of 15,300. Our utilities um we've aligned closer with our actuals. There was a slight decrease in our gas and but we did increase water given the uh
018fields at for the new track and field. I don't know how much that's going to cost yet. Um, so we we did project an increase. We do have capital funding for a well um which we do plan on pursuing soon after the track is done, but we'll need to wait until the weather is nicer and the ground is not frozen. For facilities, there's a big increase here and there's two reasons for that. One of that is our um we have a unfilled HVAC position and unfilled plumber position that we haven't been able um to hire somebody for. So, we have decided to take those positions out of the payroll and put it into a contracted services line within facilities because that's what's actually happening. And when we do our quarterly reports, you always see that
019that's over budget. Um, and it's it is offset by those par payroll lines. Um, so we're moving that down. Um, although we might actually have a hire um for our HVAC position. So, that might be changed um at the next round of this. So that is some good news and would help us not contract out for those services. Um the other big increase in here is for the track maintenance. Um so we have looked at what other maintenance of tracks cost. I think uh Bob Karin at the town of Amherst had uh received some estimates and we have 120,000 in here for that. But after speaking with Paul and Sean at the town of Ammeris, they have said that it's possible they may cover those costs for a year or two and then we um
020slowly build it into the budget. It's not finalized, but it is something that we did talk about. Um and if we were able to take that out, that's a $120,000 savings for this year, which would be helpful. Um, in our transportation, uh, we right now have, uh, we're in year two of our contract and we do have unfilled driver vacancies and we're, this year right now, we're not able to do the VO transportation. So, I don't see that changing right now. So, I'm projecting uh, contracting that that out for 27. So, that is also part of the increase in our transportation. Um, for our risk and benefits, like I said, we have the health insurance increase of 18%, we have an increase for our liability insurance, um, an increase for unemployment. In our control accounts,
021it looks like there's a massive increase, but last year we had um, rural school aid to support the budget, which made that line lower. I have not put rural school aid in this budget yet. Um, I want to see what the state is saying before we do so. And if you remember, 250,000 is what we estimated based on what we have been receiving. But in FY26, we were only given 190,000 and not the full 250. So I want to be really cautious with that. Um so we'll see what the state is saying um when the time comes. Um moving forward, I won't this slide. I just wrote down some of the things I was going to say so that you had it if if you weren't able to jot everything down. Um, our revenue slide,
022uh, I should say that that operating budget that I showed is level services with no reductions taken into account. So, this revenue slide that you see here is for level services of an operating budget of 40,600,000 and change. Um, which is an increase of 9.51%. Uh, I have made an adjustment and an increase for chapter 30. Um we'll see what the the state is saying, but right now we just have $30 per student as the increase. Um a slight increase to our transportation because our contracted out for transportation is costing more. So we will see an increase in that. Um so I've accounted for a small increase there. Our Medicaid reimbursement has been really steady over the last few years. So I'm not changing that. Our at least not right now. Our charter reimbursement is
023the same, but this will change. Um, I need to see the Q2 reports from DESIE. They don't release Q1 because it's preliminary estimates. Q2 will have actual information on there and hopefully that's out by the end of January before I make any adjustments to the charter. Our interest revenue, we have a big increase here considering the amount of interest uh revenue we're receiving. We want to make sure we account for that so that it can support the FY27 budget. Um, so we have a $280,000 increase to that. Uh we have not in the past put homeless care and foster care transportation um reimbursement on here. We that's new. I think it started in I don't maybe 2019. Uh so I looked at what we have been receiving over the few years and normally this amount
024it rolls into the END. It is a small amount and we have been consistently receiving it. So I'm adding it onto our revenue sheet going forward. And then we have um an increase for our END given where that level is to support the operating budget and then the 280,000 for contingency. So down at the bottom of the sheet, if we were to fund a budget with level services, I have the percentages broken down uh for each town of what that increase is and then what the total dollar amount changes. Because we had or we uh at the time END was certified and we were over by um 5% it was a total of $151,000. we have the option to either alter the FY26 budget um to reduce the assessments for 26 or to use it
025in the 27 to reduce the assessments for 27. So after a vote by the school committee um and my recommendation to use it in 27 um that is what has been voted and it's so whatever the assessments end up being for Ammerst and Lebert Sheets it would be reduced for Amherst 120,000 um Palum 8,000 Lebert 11,000 and Sheetsbury 12,000 um so but the base for each of the towns for the following year will be what was voted but you won't be paying that full amount in FY2 7 because of this the EMD. So on this slide w with a draft operating level services budget of 40.6 million um we've outlined what level of reduction uh that we took. So if we had a $800,000 reduction, what does that mean for each of the towns? What
026is the percent increase look like? What's the dollar amount? And then the actual total. So I won't go over this line by line. Um, but we wanted to make sure that you had uh this these scenarios laid out um based on our reductions. The the last one, these are in $400,000 increments. The last one of 2.06 million um we added based on the AMERS guidance of three and a half%. I know it's not exactly three, it's 3.52. I could have played around with more numbers, but I just made it simple for this for this. Um so with that I want to talk a little bit about our um operating budget as a whole. So 52% of it is um salaries and the remaining are expenses. And then on the bar graph chart uh for the
027district, the middle school and the high school you can see majority for the high school and the middle school is salaries. And then majority of expenses for the district is our expenses which are like our transportation um our health insurance those types of costs. Um and I kind of outlined that on the side as well. So our composition of staff this is a request that school committee had is how many teachers parents do we have at each of the schools. Um so on the right hand side you'll see the bar graph that breaks it down by high school, middle school and central office. um for approximate how many how many staff are in each of these and then most of our staffing is teachers at 56% followed by peros at 28%. So this was just
028some good information um that we wanted to provide to you some of our unavoidable costs. So on the two slides back, the district, most of the district costs are um expenses, not salaries. And and this accounts for our health insurance, our charter tuition assessment, the choice assessment, our transportation, utilities, etc. And these are just some of them. I only pulled out some of the bigger ticket items, but this accounts for 36% of the budget, and that's not something that we can change, unfortunately, although we would like to. um the these are costs that um we have to account for regardless of what reductions we need to make. So in perspective, if we had an average salary of 70,000 and we had an $800,000 reduction, it it's equivalent to 11.43 FTEES. If we had a $2
029million reduction at an average salary of 70,000, it's equivalent to 28.57. >> Quick salary. What about the benefit of the insurance and the retirement reduction that would go along with reduction? >> So, that's a good point for this scenario. We just kind of wanted to get in perspective of what we're looking at. Um, we we'd really So, health insurance costs can vary from person depending on what their plan is. So a PO plan is much more expensive than an HMO plan. So to I guess we could make an average and an estimate and also show that, but this was really just to give you some FTE idea, but not going too deep in the weeds at this point. Just an overview. Um so with that, I will talk a little bit about our capital projects
030for FY27. Um, we want to continue with our ADA work. There's always things that come up. Um, so we're asking for $40,000 to continue to support that. I don't believe we have any more ADA funds available. Um, in our high school, in some of our suites, the air handler and the temperature control needs to be replaced. And, uh, we would like to do that this upcoming year, and that's approximately 80,000. It's a high priority for us. Um, we have been we already did have some funds for the girls locker room renovation. Uh, but we need additional funds to complete the study and so we're asking for $10,000 additional to do that and include the adult bathroom that's there because that's often used and it's in poor shape and we'd like to make it nice so
031when um parents and staff and students, whoever uses that bathroom when games are going on, it's it's a little bit nicer. Um, we also want to uh replace the domestic hot water heaters at the high school. The units are over 20 years old and they're approaching end of life. Um, so we don't want to wait till the last minute to when if something happens during the year and we don't have the funding for that. There is a roof repair at the high school that one of our staff members can do with shingling. Um, I believe it was above the English wing. Um, yes. Yeah, it's a Yeah. Um, so one of one of our staff members can do that work, but we need to be able to purchase the materials for that. Um, at the
032middle school, we have to do the electrical service update. So, the main breaker is original to the building and the company's no longer in business. So, for us to get replacement parts, it's very difficult and that does need to be replaced. So, we are asking for 235,000 for that. Um, that is the biggest ticket item on here. The wood shop door, it's that needs to be replaced. It's not a high priority, medium priority, um, but it needs to be secure. And doors are actually expensive. I don't know if anybody's looked at doors for your house, but they are. Um and then our um middle school elevator, we need to do an oil change and those are also expensive. Um it's about $10,000 for that oil change and we're learning that with the repair of the
033high school elevator which will be um repaired starting next week. So that is some some good news. Um so the total capital of 4.7 project request is for 497,000. Um, and I just want to give a quick shout out to our um, director of operations, Mike Gallow, because we have been working really hard on our capital plan. Um, looking at funding from previous projects and really getting together a timeline. Um, so I'm really happy where we are this year and our teamwork on that and to really getting these projects done. Um, so our capital debt assessment. So, I know this is super small. Um, at at the request of one of our school committee members who helped join some of our capital planning discussions, um, she had asked to separate the middle school roof and
034the track and field debt because those were two major projects that the community and the school committee really supported and I didn't want to roll it in with the other debt. So, those are separated out which is I think the roof was always separated out but the track and field wasn't. So, that's done. So on this document um and then in the projected FY21 to 26 that are the other projects that are not the roof or the track and field. Um for 27 the total debt assessment for the towns which is a dramatic increase from last year but this has to do with the middle school roof is 944,000. So, it's 761,000 for Amherst, 31,000 from uh Oh, yeah. No, I'm sorry. 29,000. I was looking at the wrong column for Pelum. Um Lever 86,000
035and Sheetsbury 67,000. You'll notice that Pelum does not have a big increase like the other towns from 26 to 27. And that's because of the roof since they're not participating in district borrowing pending your approval of those votes um that are coming up. Uh I have taken that out of here and accounted for that already. Um but if something changes I will certainly change it. Um then I know last year I think Mandy Joe you had asked me um well what are the projects for those out years? We'd like to see what they are. So this is I apologize for the highlights on this sheet. They do mean something when we're working on them and I didn't want to take the highlights off. Um but this has I won't go through it. the more detail
036of what these projects are that make up the possible outyear debt um assessments. So, and they're subject to change every year. It's not finalized. Um but this was revamped and updated with um myself and operations and we had um a school committee jo member join us as well. Moving right along, our revolving funds. So, there were some questions about what funds do we have in revolving? What are they? How do we use them? So, Food Service Revolving is one of those um which fully funds all of our operations for our food services. There is nothing on our operating budget for food services, which is great. It's self-unding. We get all of the money from the state and it's stable. Our special education tuition, we do have a revolving fund for that and we take in
037money for placements for Summit um and PIP. It's majority of Summit students um that tuition in and we have some teaching staff and paras staff that are funded from that revolving account at Summit. Um then we also have our school choice. So we um have students that choice into the district and we receive 5,000 per student. But you'll notice our school choice money is a lot higher and won't ever um be exact to okay, we have 10 students times 5,000 um students. So it's x amount of dollars. We also get reimbursed for however um much spending we have on special education. So it won't ever match 5,000 per student when you see those actual amounts. And we use that to support our operating budget year-over-year. And like I said before, $850,000 of that is already
038uh accounted for in our operating budget. And so what we do is we take a salary line um that supports, you know, something that's overall like I don't know the math department um because everybody has to take math and we reduce that account line by x amount of dollars. Um so that's how we account for it. Our athletics is uh it has a revolving fund and we receive participation fees to participate in the sports and gate receipts that support that fund. Um we had a little bit of a hiccup at the end of 25 with some of the athletics uh revolving funds and we had to move some of that onto the operating budget. I will report we are now using electronic payments for athletics that and that has um been super helpful with our
039collections and the athletics department has done amazing job following up with uh families and I I think I did a internal report our collections at October from this year to last year it was an insane percentage it was like almost a 200% increase in gate receipts and I think like 60% increase um in participation fees that we had already collected in comparison to the prior year. So, they're really doing a good job and I'm going to do a more thorough look to see how we balance out some of the costs that we did put on the operating budget for athletics this year and what we might do for next year. That that's still in the works. So, um I'll keep you posted if I make any changes that affect the operating budget. And then school
040committee when you receive the actual line by line, you'll see the revolving fund um information in there for athletics. Circuit breaker is another fund. Um, so anytime we have a special education student that meets the certain threshold for uh the state that says, "Okay, if you are over just a madeup number, $100,000 for this student, and it's much more than that, um, then we will reimburse you anything over that at a certain percentage." So this past year it was 75% and 61% for transportation costs related to that student. Um, so we use that to support the operating budget. If you um remember when I was talking about special education, we had already accounted for IDA funds and circuit breaker. Um we have this fund set up in a really great way where we claim the
041money in one year, we receive that reimbursement the following year and then we use it the year after that. So every year we know the exact dollar amount to budget and there's no guessing. Um I wanted to just give you an idea of kind of what the costs are for the choice assessment over the last few years. So um in 25 we've had a high amount for um students choicing out compared to the prior years. And then I put what schools that they um go to. So most of our students when they choice out they go to Hackley. And I think that's key information to know if we are doing further research on that. um students that choice into the district uh and the revenue that we receive. I did the same the bar graph
042for the the amounts the actual amounts that the district has received and many of our students that choice in come from Beluretown. Um and then I would say South Hadley and is maybe the second second one where students come in from charter I have placed uh the blue columns are the revenue for charter and the orange columns are the actual expenses. So in um F oh in FY25 88 students uh were uh in quarter um most of those students were going to the Chinese immersion school. Um I like I said before I won't know I I'm really waiting for the Q2 rosters from DESIE um before I dig into charter more. Um, and like I said, yeah, most of the 65% of the students that did go to a charter school, it was the Pioneer
043Valley uh Chinese School and behind that was the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts School. I since we were talking about school choice in charter, we have to include vocational because that's another program that we do pay for for students when they go to Franklin Tech and Smith. Uh so you'll see the what what it has cost throughout the years and that seems pretty steady for um FY26. We have 29 students going to Smith and seven that are going to Franklin Tech stabilization. So we do have a special education stabilization fund. Um every year we do budget an amount within special ed that it's it's called transfer reserve. And uh if at the end of the year we're able to, we can then move funds into the stabilization fund, which is not something that has been done
044over the last few years, but at the end of 25, I was able to move, I think it was 42,000, I think, if I remember correctly into this fund. If we want to use this fund, school committee has to vote um in order to do so. And I actually believe when I was looking on the Dusty website that it also must be approved by four towns if we do want to um use this this line. So for in this case, if we had an unexpected um residential placement or um students move in, things that we didn't expect that are related to special education, we could access these funds during the year. Um but it's not something that we would necessarily consistently use every year. If we had one residential placement, that could wipe out almost
045the entire amount. Um, and then for the next year, we would be able to plan that placement on the operating budget. We also have a capital stabilization fund and transfers um similar to um special education. Anything uh going in or out of that fund uh well actually not going in but actually coming out of that fund, school committee has to vote. So revenue from uh interest revenue from our borrowing at with cash on hand in our bank account. The money that's actually in our bank account that goes into the capital stabilization fund and sometimes we use this to pay immediate interest payments that require cash on hand which does go before the school committee. Something's coming up. I will tell you that. Um and we could also use the capital stabilization if there was an
046urgent repair that was needed uh during the year we could access those funds and school committee would have to vote. So that was kind of most of the presentation and I will take clarifying questions. We have a second mic if we want to distribute that clarifying questions. Phil Carter, lever finance committee. Uh I have several questions actually for the first you said you're applying at 850,000 of school choice funds. Where does that show up on the revenue slide? >> So it's not actually revenue that we would show on there. I maybe I shouldn't call it revenue. It's more of reimbursement. So we apply it to the salary line directly. So the operating budget is already reduced by that amount. >> And then um in the revenue budget the slide are you sending I'm adding correctly
047something like $1.2 million from the END account. Is that correct? >> Yes. How much money are you going to have left in that account when you spend this? >> Um, so I don't have that information in front of me, but I'm happy to send out an email with a followup to that, but I do feel safe using the amount that I put in there, >> but I can get back to you. I don't have it on order to >> So, we have a little about 2 million or so in our END now, and it was a slight overage because of the 150. Um so we have to use that 150 which will reduce your assessments and then we have um a total of it it's 1 million80,000 so we'll still have plenty in the EMD
048to support the next year's operating budget >> and anything excess. So, if we receive more in transportation reimbursement or we receive more than what's budgeted in Medicaid or charter or more than what's in our interest revenue, that will also roll into our ENDA. >> Okay. I I didn't follow up with that. Um, you have now 1.8 million. >> Yes. >> And you're going to spend 1.2 million. >> We have two million. And you're going to spend 1.2. We're going to spend well we have 2 million plus 150,000. So two take the 150,000 that we're giving out just call it 2 million for simple math. We h we're going to spend 1.2 or one not 1.2 one point 1 1 million80,000 and then we so what's so say we have a million dollar left. We have
049a contingency of 280,000 in here that we don't plan to spend, but it's there in case of emergency. So then we would have a million. If we don't need to spend it, that's 280,000. That's 1.2 million. And anything extra that we receive in revenue that is not the actual dollar amount budgeted, that will also roll into END. >> Okay. So it sounds like you'll have enough money to spend this one something >> and you'll have enough to spend something like that next year. What happens after that? >> Uh well we'll be able to we we if we need to make adjustments we can based on what we're foreseeing but it it all depends. I mean it's really I have been told by very seasoned business officials it's really impossible to know uh to be able
050to project out five years of where you're going to be because there's so many changes. >> Yeah. But it does I agree you can't project five years and we can't. But it does seem like the best projection we can make is that two years from now, we're going to have to come up with another >> I don't know I don't know if I would say that because so if we have right now at the end of the year if like I said if we have 2 million minus the 1 million 80,000 that's a million. If we don't use our contingency of 280 that's in there and anything extra rolls in. same thing that happens next year if we have so if our balance then um is I don't know it it'd be the same scenario
051per se it it that we would still have our contingency that would roll in if we don't use it which we since I've been working for the district we have not used so uh I don't think that we're going to have an issue in FY28 with this I think we can move on to the next question >> Shannon can I add to that Yes. >> So, the region's always used somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 to support the budget going back decades. So, it's not a I don't think this number is unusual. And given that they're at the 5% cap, using a little bit more makes sense because they're kind of right up against it. So, every year they're going to be giving money back to the towns if they don't spend that balance down a
052little bit. So, I don't think the number is, you know, it's not it's not something they can adjust in future years if they need to. >> My name is Sean. I'm Sean McGo, finance director for Kammer, but I was the regional business manager for a while. Um, and you know, just reiterating reiterating what Shannon said on the expense side too, if they come under budget on the expenses, that also flows into END. So if you think about a $40 million budget, if they come under 1%, that's $400,000 going back to END every year. So it's again, it's manageable. >> Sean hired me in 2019. >> Were there any other questions? >> Oh, sorry. >> Joe, finance committee in Merc. Um just a quick one on the central administration cost that increase that's forecasted. You list
053a few components on there like legal legal uh expenses and financial advisory expenses. Can you talk about is one of those components more than the other and making up that cost? >> I'd say most of the costs are for legal expenses. And and that's because >> that's because um and we clarified is not just staff issues but also student issues. Um over the recent series of years and I'm glad that Sha went back three years. We've had an increase in um issues in the in the region that we've been addressing. Um and so as we done that, we've had different levels of legal cases. um some which we are closing, some which we are still in the process of um and that is not just again for staff but also in reference to student things
054that we need to close. >> Hi, I'm Kathy Shane. Um I'm on the council and have been on the finance committee, but as Mandy said, we're reorganizing. So, we'll let you know on after Monday night where I'll be. I I have two questions, Shannon. There's a big jump that you're projecting for interest um uh in terms of revenues, well above what it was the year before. Are you running high in FY26 also? So, it so that's a good news for the FY26 budget. Correct. >> Yes. Yep. we are running high um higher in I mean we did account for a slight change because I I wish I had this graph up but when I sent the memo to the regional school committee I put what we received in interest revenue since I think it was
0552017 um and at the time when this budget was built we didn't see that we didn't know what how much we were gotten that's when the real big amount came um so this we're running high I still foresee this um and actually this is a slightly lower than what we could have put um just in case. >> Okay. I mean, I think that's good news for the current year that we're living in. So, I just wanted to then the second is on your original expense projections on the salary line. You had nearly 7%. Could you describe what's underneath that? Because um I know there's steps in cola, but is it just steps in cola? Are there people increases underneath that 7%? It's it's and I know it doesn't have pension and it doesn't have health
056insurance in it. So it's just the salary. >> Yeah. So majority is steps and colas. There are some additional placements like during this year the moment we started off um we had already eaten into our contingency based on some of the needs of the student that we had to hire additional positions for. So knowing that that was going we'll still have that student and that need is still there. it is added into the FY27 budget. So that is part of the increase as well. >> So the last part is there are some people in it. >> Thanks. >> Great. Thank you. >> Thank you. Jansky selecting from Leit. Um looking at the uh draft operating budget. Uh from leverage point of view, we have asked all departments to come in with a uh no more
057than a 3.5% increase in the budget line and that comes close in your uh reduction of $2,60,000. Uh but the question that I have is on all of those steps of the reduction, what is the impact on the services and programs that we run? So we have to know that to balance uh the reduction with the pain involved in that reduction so we can come to a point that makes sense. So I would ask not at this meeting obviously but going forward when you re represent the budget to have with each of those reductions the uh impact to education in the district. So, I just want to chime in and said I think that we know that this is early in the year. Um, and there's a couple things. There's two slides that you can
058start to have that conversation with. The first one is the region staffing composition. And then the second one is in perspective where Shannon lays out what the FTEES may be and we project it by salary. So, the thought process is the central office we can say is about 30 FTE but that's split across three districts and so for the region is 54%. So even if you erase the entire central office, we would still be cutting teachers. Um in high school, our science our guidance department is about 16.8 FTEES. So if we were to lose our entire guidance office, we still to meet a 2.1 I'll estimate 2.1 reduction. We'll still be erasing. We'll be at 29 FTEES. So I think we to start the conversation around where the towns could go. That's why we put
059that in perspective section there. And then when we come back and we're kind of delving deeper into the budget, we'll have more specifics around the impact of program. Great. Thank you all. Uh okay, so two more comments and then um we want to give our uh towns and committees an opportunity to have some discussion. Um, and we do know that Shberry has to scadaddle. Um, so we'll have I think I saw two more hands and then uh we'll have our breakout groups for about 10 15 minutes and then if there's followup uh we can come back together and then go enjoy Shakespeare's main library council. Uh I was very interested to see that uh you had discussed the possibility of providing some guidelines to the superintendent as you move forward with your budget. And let
060me just assume that we would all say students first. guidelines. >> Everyone didn't hear um Lynn's comment and she said she was very happy to hear the RSC discuss the possibility of providing budgetary guidelines to to to administration and she would like to say students first. Yeah, a question about the um interest revenue that we've already touched on, but when you talked about the capital stabilization account, it sounded like interest was staying in there. Is this so in the revenue is this interest from some other fund or is this being transferred in from? >> No. So they're completely separate. So capital's interest on that borrowed money goes into capital stabilization does not is not a part of the interest revenue line here. So this is our other all of our other cash. >> Great. Great.
061Thank you all very much. So All right, everyone. Thank you very much. I hope you had a great conversation in your breakout room. And if there are um some follow questions or comments or things uh we should know moving forward, we will have another opportunity to come together. Um I want to first appreciate the collaborative process that has happened this budget season. Um I think it's great. We are all having hard budget days. Um but this feels a lot better than previous years even though we're having really hard conversations. So, I wanted to say thank you. Um, and Dr. Z, you had >> um I don't often I mean, we speak publicly all the time, but I do want to start off by saying we got some really good feedback, Shannon, and I as we
062were walking around about today in the presentation, and I know as a district team, we work very hard on things, but we really also have to give much appreciation to our regional school committee members. Um, we build the presentation off of their guidance, but also their feedback. And so a lot of what you were able to experience today as a town came because the regional school committee members who sit on the regional school committee take your imp input and your comments into deep consideration. And so we as a administration want to say thank you to our budget audit subcommittee members to our whole entire regional school committee for just your guidance and pushing. And I feel like the towns felt like today was a really good opportunity to delve into a good conversation around where
063we could go. So thank you to our school committee members. >> Okay. >> You know you think after all this microphone is I would take but so uh before we break for the end of today are there there any um questions or feedback you would like to All right. We'll start over here and just go this way. And can you please identify your town? I'm taking notes. So uh Phil Carter uh lever finance committee. Uh I just want to let the school committee and the superintendent's office realized that in leverage uh the average tax bill went up by more than $500 this year. That's a huge increase. And a large part of the reason for that was our regional school assessment went up by 14% this year. I don't think it's reasonable to ask the
064town meeting. Given that I don't think I can ask the town of the meeting to approve a an 11 or 12% increase in our assessment this year. I think that's just out of the question. And I do want everybody to realize also that when you're talking about a $2 million cut in the level services budget that what you are talking about is still a 4% increase in the school budget. So it really isn't a $2 billion cut. It is a 4% increase. may not be enough to keep to maintain level services but it is a 4% increase in the school is an interesting predicament much like lever was in years ago when you were looking to uh handle the kitchen estate reassessment. You thought you were going to have to come up with a lot
065of money as the assessment would go down and you looking at reducing budgets at that time, at least comparing numbers to see what we have to do. Tell them at this situation, I've been telling you everybody all along, the increase is 2.5%. And this year, 2.5% is $135,000 for the whole town. that is 4,000 more than last year. So the incremental change annually for Pelum is very small. So when you look at asking in the original budget of about 200,000 alone for the for the regional school that's nothing for the town left uh to spend. So, uh, to deal with whatever number we come up with, um, is going to come from the ele town support for the elementary schools. That's the only place there is any kind of volume money available. We have go
066I guess the DPW is already going down from four people to three people. That's already been put in place. They're just no money and the increases you're looking for are just not sustainable for a town like Pel. Now you talk about your taxes going up by $500, the annual average in Pal went up by $1,000 this year. So our taxpayers are already reeling under a a major and that was largely to fall in line with the statutory requirement for the refill school. So, we're not only facing a $1,000 increase for the taxpayers this year, we'll be looking at a major override next year to carry us on through a number of years in the future until adjustments can be made by the um uh retirement being fully funded, OPA being fully funded, which will reduce
067some of the tax burden. But for right now, this increase is 2.5%. >> Any comments from >> Sure. >> Oh, darn. I thought you were gonna go first. Um, first of all, I want to on on behalf of um the the town, um, we want to thank everybody for Shoots fair. I'm sorry. Rita Frell, I'm on the shoot select board. Um, we want to thank all of you for changing your schedules to thank you. Um, 10 o'clock we had the grand opening for our beautiful new library. Um, it's very exciting. We're thrilled to finally be have be here after decades of trying to get a library that had a bathroom in it. So um just you know I I think we can echo exactly what you've heard from from Pelum um and lever uh we
068too have uh experienced a significant jump approximately 10% in our average tax bill this year and anticipate given um uh expenses in including library coming on board um of another 10% % um next year and we're hearing a lot from from people who are on fixed incomes uh that this is unsustainable. So just briefly um the proposed level services budget uh would result in a 10% increase for us. Um the select board and the finance committee met earlier this week and agreed that this level of increase is um not fiscally responsible or sustainable for Shbury um given the broader pressures of health insurance, our elementary school budget which has a out of district um placement which is a huge hit um on our budget. we have the library debt service and um we're trying to
069keep up with our oped um contributions. So uh you know again we say to the the regional schools we support you. We think education um is a very high priority but um level funded budget is just not workable for us. >> Thank you. I will try. Um I I think I'm going to echo a lot of what you just heard from the other three towns. Um it's no surprise the council, the last council before we re we organized put out a a budget guideline of three and a half% per major funding area. Um that remains the guidelines for now pending new information that comes in February. But um that was a budget that had deficits already and needed increase in revenue to even fund the 3.5%. Um and the finance committee was concerned that given
070uncertainty about state revenues, it might not get there. Um and so um you know we have all the same challenges as everyone else and the the what would was presented as a level services budget would basically subsume the entire increase as as like Pelum said of our entire revenues for all of the fiscal all revenues which is about projected at $2.6 million for the entire town. Um, we had a good conversation and I'll try and be quick about some of the summaries there. Um, some information and how soon can we get an idea of the impacts of of the various budget levels. Um, when including benefits in the every FTE reduction. Um there was a request from a school committee member and similar to what the track conversations are about assisting in track maintenance of
071is there a possibility for town to assist in grant fund well grant applications to for capital programs given capacity of the region. So um I will forward that on to our manager to see if that's something that he can pursue if the region would like to pursue that. Um, we would like to continue conversations on how to minimize the damage because we do recognize that a 4% increase in the total budget that is the matches our guidelines will have damage and how do we work as towns to minimize that. Um, and the town's already looking at making its own reductions given that too. So, it's it's all across. Um and one other thing is how do we as a four towns and a region sort of meet this challenge long term? What bigger changes can
072we do that would or changes to reduce costs that would have a big impact on budgets and finances um across big things and I will throw out two that just come to mind as maybe it's time to con begin conversations on one was mentioned by the superintendent last year is moving middle school to the high school I don't know again mentioning not proposing at this time But another one that comes to mind is is it time to consider a larger regionalization effort um amongst the four towns? Um so but other those are the two that easily come to mind. There's probably others too to better or have bigger impacts on budgetary issues going forward. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you all. I think Oh, >> if I'm out of I'm out of place, I
073I apologize. You mentioned regionalization like expanding and I think we have to look at that. Where do those conversations start? Do they start with the region? Did they start with your towns? Like in my mind, Hadley, South Hadley, East Hampton. If we could grab those towns, then we could have a real I shouldn't say grab those towns. We have to >> Let's get Greenland. No offense to Dr. Z. I I don't think we're all that as a district. Okay. So, I think we may have to tuck ourselves down and say, "Hey, can we go join other areas?" I shouldn't say because I think it has to be cooperative and new, but like where do those conversations start and how do we talk to Hadley South Hadley in East Hampton to really see like, you know,
074we could have a school in East Hampton or we could have a high school here. like how could we talk about how that would impact our long-term >> survival Nancy Gman lever finance committee and I think we desperately need to expand this conversation to the state level that uh we've been put in an absolutely no-win situation where people who are tasked with keeping our towns affordable. Um so that we're not losing residents who can no longer pay our tax bills are uh you know placed in an unfair opposition to those whose concerns for the school uh school budgets are a little stronger than the tax bill concerns. And that is not a fair argument. And absolutely the state is not taxing our wealthiest residents enough, sending enough money back to uh cities and towns so
075that we don't go through this year after year after year after year. And the more we just fight here and if I never hear those who don't support these budget, higher budgets um don't care about students. If I never hear that again, I'm a very happy woman. But uh because that is not that is not a fair fair argument. But I'm wondering Mindy if you're still here if you're able to speak a little bit about what might we what we might be moving forward on the state level. Um if that's is that okay >> morning everybody. I don't have anything to report at this time. We're waiting to see what the governor's budget comes out with. A lot of us have been, as many of you have been, have been advocating with the governor's staff
076and the governor herself to make sure that she includes adequate levels of funding in her budget since that's where the conversation starts. There will be um and I just want to kind of flag it for you. You know, there'll be ways of means hearings on her budget. I encourage every town to show up. Ammerst I know has in the past, the school committee has. Show up as a parent. show up as a school committee member, a town member, a town official, and talk about what's needed because that's where you'll be able to tell reps and senators how deficient her budget is or what should be kept in her budget. But I don't really I can't really project and of course we'll see what happens with quite frankly at the federal level what happens with the
077ACA tax credits ultimately because without those the budget will be in Massachusetts everything in the budget will be in flux to be able to come I'm sorry I can't get >> I want to go back to the question that you raised and that is I think we have to start with our four towns. We have a good start. There's been a group of us that have been meeting which one are more than willing to uh most of that's been around budgets but it's time to carry it to a long-term future and then in that group begin to say whether or not we think we want to look at other towns as well. But you, this is not the first time that conversation has taken place, but it's the first time that conversation would be taking
078place since the town council was formed in >> Thank you. Last comment. >> Yeah. >> Clarifying question actually. Is that group that's having those discussions, the one you're talking about where you're asking for towns to send delegates? I I just don't I don't want to have too many committees doing too many having too many discussions like like let's coordinate this. There's some you were asking for representatives including school committee to a committee that is not going to talk I gather about long-term sustainability. That sounds like the conversation. Y >> I think we clarified the last time when we had the the disconnect at the RSC that we were going to hand that work over to FSS. That's why FSS started the um the conversation. Oh, sorry, Bridget. >> Well, it's more, you know, official coming
079from Dr. Z. We started off this meeting requesting that we have representatives to the FSS because we've already been working on okay what are those subcommittee areas one of them generalization is one of them related to operating and and all those pieces to figure out mainly at the end of the day how do we make these cuts the least impactful on students by making some some more structural changes. So, we want to have those discussions. Hopefully, Monday night, hammers will give us their rep and we can go forward. >> I wanted to I think we are all set for tonight. So, thank you all very much for coming and our continued collaboration and I >> ABSOLUTELY thank you all very much for coming and we are officially