001[Music] w e e e [Music] everyone have whomever they are expecting or need to be able to call their Town meetings for are we ready to go we need another minute everybody ready to go nobody saying no okay so I will call the regional school committee order at5 um pum do you have any meetings you need to no pum Cate finance committee EXC finance committee Town Council our finance commit is part excellent well okay so we're now all in order uh thank you all very much for coming I know this is a much earlier time then we usually start having our four towns meetings um but given H and we wanted to be able to have more conversation and find the best way we can support all of our students so thank you all very
002much for coming um and Dr is going present um our preliminary uh budgets and ideas and our part how we words are gone anyway so and then we can um after the presentation we can break into our towns have some stocks and conversations come back together and you know have our conversation together and then make some plans for our next so this is [Applause] our is enough all right um I'm gonna step to the side good morning everyone I wanted to start off by introducing myself because everyone's heard about me um and whatever you read about me but I need to tell you about me and why I am who I am and what drives me and that's children and education and putting them first so the person that you have in front of you
003is an individual who loves crossb puzzles sometimes who couldn't get soku well um but I've also really had a love of math and science and so problem solving perseverance critical thinking are all the things that I apply to everything that I do and I say that because when faced with a problem most times individuals step back and think of the obvious but I have to in my realm of thinking always go to the far farthest point that we could go to and so what you're seeing today is the early stage of a conversation around how do we provide the children that come to the regional schools with at least the basic education requirements and so we're going to walk through the numbers and I want to remind everyone that it is very very early in
004the process very early but because from the time I've stepped in heard of the budget as equally as much as I've heard of cracker Farm's fire alarm and cracker Farm's fire alarm has been fixed so now let's work on the budget and so um we are our goal with the district team and I want to stop and thank my team members who are here today who came to show support and to help with this process um we our goal is to have a draft budget completed by at least early late November early December and so so let's walk through today with me we're going to there's going to be a lot of questions right them now um and then I I was told as you go off into your your smaller town groups I will
005me and the team will be around to answer questions and then we'll come back together so where are we um last year April earlier this year April 2020 during 2024 um this was presented and these were the scenarios of what it would have meant to have a FTE reduction versus restoring the positions and the significant gaps and the long story short in this slide is because this isn't new to you is the fact that to me a bandaid was placed upon a problem and it just moved the problem down the road and so now we're facing a much larger problem currently and I want to get into that so this year our processes have changed a bit where the budget team is working and what we're working on is what does it cost to run
006the region so this is our fy2 projected cost well not FY 25 actual cost right CH okay thank you so to run the middle school you'll see that they takes about $5 million in salaries this is the staff and then about 752 th000 in operating costs right and this is where we have their supplies and and the things that they use to make sure that those wonderful lab lessons go well and the books that they need and everything that happens within within a school the same thing for the high school you notice that the high school is approximately $12 million in salaries and then we're looking at about $2 million in operating [Music] supplies in terms of the central office and the district office we have the smaller salary because we have the smaller individuals
007we do have some teachers that float through the district and this is so we're at about $3 million and the majority of the central office cost sit in operating this is where transportation is paid maintenance is paid this is where the bulk of the supplies in terms of curricular research and things that move around this is where it sits in the region and so as you can see through this bar chart majority of spending the district office is like about 20% Staffing 80% operational cost to run the region at the high school this is where the majority of the Staffing and and is as well as the middle school and it's about the flip and so we started to to have some assumptions in what we're doing of course we think about the fact like
008what's happening with Chapter 70 um we're thinking about our towns assessing their annual 2.5% we're looking at what are our expenses for example um we know that there are Transportation costs and this year we're about to send back Transportation RFP we know that we're entering in apaa negotiations this year um and so what we recently also found out this week as we were prepping was that our health insurance when we originally presented and I want to the number that I presented to the regional committee um I believe it was at 2.6 since that meeting on Tuesday we met um with the IAC and we were asked to project out at at least 13 % for health insurance for this year so that has raised our numbers in terms of the projections on what you're going
009to see including what the the committee is going to see because that happened after a committee meeting and that's why one of the key things again I want to repeat is this is a living document for us because as we go through this process we are gaining additional things that we assumed originally because we originally had assumption at 6% % for health insurance now we're at a 7% increase over what we've assumed and so again this is early uh we will be having more meetings and conversations but we're looking at that so we're going to present today six scenarios I'm going to present six scenarios um that ranges and you're we're going to walk through them together and have conversations so what should we what are we projecting to spend for FY 26 38,4 75,6
010that's what we're projecting in terms of salar Staff um our projected Transportation this is within our current model this is with the Staffing this is with the expenses this is with everything that we currently have we would have to have 38,4 75,6 to run the region the monies that we expect to receive when we add up Chapter 70 our reimbursements um if we look at how we have our I'm going to say Net Zero in terms of circuit breaker and everything we're looking at $1,160 so 12 12,160 589 is what we would receive outside of what the towns would be putting in to the region going good CH good all right so again I'm recapping for fy2 we needed 35 million about 36 million to run the region and this year I already said we
011need about 39 so that's about a $3 million difference what our current model has in place um to run the Regional Schools so here are the scenarios that we are posing today and we're walking through scenario one what happens if the towns keep 6% within the base with 4% increase for FY 26 we would be at a deficit of 2.2 million 2,1 195,000 allow kept the 6% within the base of fy2 and we use with an additional 4% for FY [Music] 26 so just recapping what that number is what Happ back see it [Music] again what happens in scenario 2 this is scenario two what happens in the towns keeps 6% within the base with a 2.5% increase for FY 26 we would operate at a 2 Milli 543,000 deficit this is if all four
012towns kept the 6% and only increased by the [Music] 2.5% good scenario three what happens did the towns reduce FY 25 back to the 4% base and increased by two by 4% so technically that what you would do is take back um 05% would be around here you understand it we we're good okay so we would be at a [Music] 2,650,000 reverted back to 4% in the base and only increased this year by [Music] 4% scenario four what happens if the if the towns reduce FY 25 to a 4% base and increase only by 3% now we're I just want you to see how we're working all of the possibilities and scenarios and we want to present all of the possibilities and scenarios to you so that as we talk and go through this process
013you're aware of where we are um and I'm going to say something at the end we scenario six so if this happens if all towns reduced to four and only increased 3% this year we would be at a 2,877 deficit scenario five what happens if the towns removed 2% from the base so again we revert back to the 4% and only increase from to 2.5% we would be at a 2,991 91,4 towns only provide 2.5 in the base and increase by 2.5 for FY 26 we would be at a 3,328 th4 deficit so these are our six scenarios that we're posing today um and we began to plan because the one thing again I started off by saying the type of person that I am is that when faced with a situation I look at
014all of the facts and the data and it is evident that regardless of what we do we are going to be oper operating at a deficit it is for us to to determine how can we best operate where regardless whatever the scenario is we are at a FIS severe fiscal deficit so I'm very evident and research based and I I don't feel like I have to read this quote to everyone but I might read it for those who are online and it says to address the current funding crisis we must move away from the outdated level service and light line item budgeting practices performance-based budgeting allows us to align Financial Resources with educational outcomes creating a clear pathway for restructuring the system and ensuring that every dollar is used effectively to support student achievement this
015is from Eric scorsone um a doctor in Eon in Economist and Public Finance expert and I need to say this because what was being done in terms of level services in my opinion humble as it is was not the method being done correctly and what we need to have happen and what we are trying and attempting to do now is shift to a line item budgeting process however we are in transition and still it's you can see where the gaps are essentially as a school system we need to be performance using a performance based budgeting model however it's going to take some shifts and Steps step one we need to move from Level services to line item budgeting transitioning so that's what we are working on this year Shannon Kate the budget office has been
016working with that to make sure that we are shifting out of overlooking inefficiencies in the current budgeting model and addressing the Ever Changing needs of students by now coming into the fact in looking at the categories but line item is not where we have to stay because it doesn't work for an educational system so we then need to shift to performance-based budgeting and tie our financial decisions to student outcomes we need to make sure that we are clear on what our attendance rates are going to be our graduation rates intend to be what are the outcomes we want for students that go to school within the region and we have to make sure that we create a clear pathway for restructuring the region so that we can meet our financial gaps as well as we
017can meet the needs of students putting students first and essentially we need to shift to get out of our funding crisis because based on the states equations and the numbers that we get from the state really the hus and burden ends up resting with the [Music] towns and as hard as you work to ensure that you are funding we are ever clearly consistently in a gap and crisis so I understand I sat through my first PCG meeting this week and so I understand that there's a lot of weight that rests with the towns and I read a book I saw a movie where it says you know basically Superman isn't coming there isn't no white night really to create the educational system and rest within this room for us to determine what's the best possible
018way to move forward and so my team and I have created these scenarios as a realistic starting point to our discussion of where the region will need to go for us to at least provide a basic educational system and structure for our students so how can we restructure on Tuesday evening um the regional committee asked me to create the hypotheticals talk about what it could be and what is it going to look like um as we started to shift numbers I pulled a small coure team together and the reality of it was it's not 1.8 it's 2.1 so where we thought we could just shift certain costs we can so if we look at our old model we'll start off with a consolidation of the central office re reduction of staff at least three with
019a $250,000 savings as well as looking at and other District savings and then the reduction of Staff will also increase our reduction at the central office because we would now have less health insurance being paid in so we're looking up around 300,000 and the the fact that we would also go in very hard at the central office working within our negotiations one looking at our transportation I RFP to ensure that we're within a certain range and budget so we're going to look at reduction of transport ation costs as well as looking at our scheduling of Staff members in terms of reduction of overtime and so we're looking at starting in the central office first to create Cuts there we would shift the amoris regional ideally to a 712 model in one building um and have
020to consolidate building leadership and remember these are just scenario that we're posing however I need you to understand at the end you'll see at the end why we're posing it this way if we consolidate building leadership in a new model we would have five building leaders it will be a regional reduction of about one building leader estimating around 100,000 in that reduction we would have to consolidate our professional staff we have 15 at the region right now we will reduce by three professional staff members estimated savings are around $230,000 approximately at the region we would consolidate our 15 clerical staff we would have to go down to nine clerical positions there will be a reduction of about six clerical looking at a savings of 316,000 we will consolidate from 14 maintenance and custodial staff down
021to eight um because we will be functioning out of one really the schools will be functioning out of one building um it will be 1712 Regional School fol and so that would be a savings of around [Music] $267,000 we would say um we would have a reduction in additional pay stiens over time we're looking at how do we shift the model to have that will we shift into one um so that would be a reduction of about $26,000 we will consolidate our general and special education staff um and so that would be a reduction of 12 professional positions six support staff position that in itself is $1.1 million the total potential savings that we have come up with in reducing in consolidating into a 712 model operating out of the Regional Schools would be a
022total potential Savings of 2.3 I'm going to just round up and say 2.4 million we've also flushed out um alternative cost ideas if we fur all staff for one day that could that could equate about $80,000 if we look at our HMO premium and we shift it from an 80% to a 7525 model that's approximately $140,000 that we would save and like I said we also have to take into account our apaa negotiations which we have to account for what that Co at a cost of living increase would be um and then our trans portation RFP as well for the upcoming years so again we go back to our scenarios and what we did is we placed our potential savings within the scenarios to see which would be the best possible scenario that we could
023operate from um I believe my team has this so when you are ready to to to meet out they will leave this to you so you can see so scenario one you'll see that we would actually that was the scenario where if the towns kept the 6% with a 4% increase with our potential Savings of the consolidation into a 712 we would actually have a surplus of [Music] $178,400 um scenario two if all towns kept the base at 6% with a 2.5% increase for FY 26 even with our potential savings we would still have a deficit of 69,4 201630 um scenario 3 with 4% in the base for fy2 4% increase for FY 26 we with our potential savings we would still have a deficit of 276,000 $277,000 and I can go through this but
024you're going to have it so as you can see we've also ran the scenarios with the potential savings so it's it was evident to me and it's evident to everyone and I've committed to transparency and honesty this is the reality of the scenarios we're facing regardless of what it is cuts are going to have to be made that that is the reality and as you can see we started from the top and we're going straight like it's not just student facing it is all positions all areas are going to have to experience C within the region it's all about what is the best versus the worst [Music] scenario so for us scenario one is the best possible scenario because there is a surplus that is there that we can probably have some wiggle room to
025restore a couple positions we have some wiggle room to make sure Transportation costs are there as you know we have to maintain certain buildings there are things that have to be done the question that that resonated with the team was okay if we consolidate into a CER what are we doing with the the Middle School building right and and we flushed out some ideas but we can't finalize some ideas at this point because one of the things that we saw and and when we talk about this there are two critical things that affect our budget one school choice the students that we Choice out and we lose two special education special education in this district is $2.5 million over budget children that we receive even children a choice in because we have great special education
026services we receive $5,000 but we expend in special education services about1 to $200,000 per student so we're also looking at whether or not we're going to be having choice this year maybe we have to pause Choice programmatically remember if we are on a if we shift a performance-based budgeting model we're looking at student outcomes and that's so we have to kind of take the progression and move across so we're also looking at student so then the conversation shifted to school [Music] choice okay give me the correct number but this $2.2 million deficit we spent about $2.3 million school choicing students out of the thank you to Charter thank you King so we spent about 2.2 2.5 or so sending students who would have been in the region to charter schools that is our deficit so
027it is time for us to look at how do we create programming to retain our students within the region and to bring students in the region so the team has started having conversations again as we were working the past few days um around this it's really been like what's out there what's offered so for example Desi offers schools the opportunity to file to be an innovation [Music] school right or okay you can convert you can create a new one we've been researching what are the what are the reasons why students leave they leave because of V Tech they leave because we don't have certain programs that they want we don't have the digital and gaming so we really need to start but again this is early in a conversation I haven't even had the conversation
028with the regional committee as yet to present but we really need to start looking so consolidating to 712 in one building provides us the space to create an Innovative school that could be 712 in another building and return students to the region but this building needs work so even as it is right now there is work that needs to be done in terms of the Deferred maintenance but we'll get there when we talk capital and I'm not ready to talk Capital to so my team our team will continue to move forward with planning for the future of the region our children deserve the best but can we at least agree today to give them basic and so I know you may have questions but I think at this time we transition to our smaller groups
029and then we come back together may I suggest that because we go to smaller groups all these other questions people going to be asking won't know can we take at least 10 15 minutes to have general questions from the audience before we break into smaller groups are are there clarifying questions [Music] so what we can do is while the team hands out the folders um we'll take questions and then I'm sure everyone may want to go back and and write down all right start over here and just go this way yes please first of my uh is it reasonable to move the Middle School to the high school this year number second have you had any discussions with the charter school to determine whether they they could use the middle school and do some joint
030programming with us bringing Innovation to our town and then there's many more questions but I'm going to ask if others so can I have opportunity to that as you transition over um and I'm hoping that my team is right I know they're handing out but somebody's writing the questions so one then like I said this isn't fully flushed out um and so we started this week we started with the scenarios for the budgeting of what it's going to look like um we have to plan more and so I'm hoping that by November December we can have a clearer plan of what that transition will take um what it's going to look like I would prefer not to have a conversation with the charter school um I would prefer us to survey the students survey them
031in the community see what they would want to do um I would firmly believe that versus renting the building using our building and creating our own programming adds to our marketing of who we are and what we are able to offer our children so I I the second question is I'm not going to um at all I I I have a very strong team but the first question everything is brand new is conversation that we had and we wanted to be realistic in what are we going to do to offer at least the basic with the cuts that we facing hi um Mandy Johan the Town Council in amoris um on your scenarios you say on five or on all six of them with a 4% increase or a 2% increase or a 3% increase
032is that across the board without regard to the assessment method and the split up of assessment method um so that every town would face that same increase or are you looking at the various distributions based on 100% statutory method so that some might be higher than four but some might be lower say I'm picking four here um and some might hit four so the overall is for so if you remember in previous years um there was a um in previous years there was a spreadsheet that we had with two blue columns and we kind of started on one side and it went in a u shape um when I plugged in what our current expenses are in that sheet everybody hits the guard rail so this planning was not uh to it we there was
033no point to adjust anymore there we had to present it this way because everybody's facing that ill so with our scenarios we came up scenarios for equal amount per town we can certainly discuss further and adjust and this was just very preliminary thank you I I want to say first of all thank you for this presentation including going back to thinking let's look can you please introduce yourself pardon ince oh who am I I'm Kathy Shane I'm I'm here on the Town Council I'm also on the finance committee of the town so I when you use the word charter the other question I have about Charter is we're sending a huge amount out to the Charter compared to school choice the public and um I'd be willing to work with you to start to put
034more pressure on the state with an analysis of that because that's one of the drains and I know we have the State Rep here so so that's one issue on how much we send out for student uh to the Charter versus what they spend and who they take so the second is um our sixth grade is scheduled to move up and um and I saw in the paper that maybe moving up sooner rather than later um was being discussed because of space issues at Fort River but in thinking about the Middle School building of having the sixth grade in the middle school was what had been foreseen and one of the potentials at least I thought one of the potentials is many of the sixth graders might be ready for language classes might be ready
035for some higher level math classes so some of what is being taught to seventh graders could be also have sixth graders enroll rather than having be completely separate so are you thinking through what that education program might be for the sixth grade yes so in the in our discussion this week and again um we didn't get to work out of the numbers what we did see is that with a sixth grade move even if we move the sixth grade this year there would be potential savings on the region but not not as impactful um and so what we would do is that we would look at current Fort River look at the ratio within the classes um we have to have that discussion to walk it through and again this is why we're this is
036conversation one so we're going to continue through um look at the current ratios but and then determine if the sixth grade can stay because that's a real concern for me for the um in terms of moving them here it would still allow for the sixth grp to move in on time for FY 26 um it would also allow us the opportunity to lay out the building so that it flows clearly and then in terms of curriculum we do think that it can create the opportunity where they have a sixth grade academy and kind of benefit from the same content teachers that would be here at the region however that benefit would not have yielded us a cost savings enough to hit our deficits for this upcoming year n from Le at finance committee I uh
037thank you for all this um early thinking and and sketching all of this out it's um very helpful um I also had a question about the sixth grade I'm a little confused about where they would go I mean I I support them staying in an elementary school but if you know if there's not room there's not room so uh and also is there enough room in the high school for all of a sudden the middle school team program so um question number one um again ear so um we are going where they were going in here I know there was an intended plan for where they would go in this building sixth grade however with the new model or those shifting towards the new model we can actually create how we can create like a
038sixth grade segregated Academy Wing where they are actually by themselves um but we haven't laid that out as yet the second conversation in terms of the space at the high school based on Massachusetts line or occupancy the high school can occupy 3,000 which means that 3,000 individuals can exit um safely however we looked at our projected numbers um and we compared our projection from it to nesda um so we are projecting in FY school year 25 um that we would have approximately 1172 students at the region um in terms of middle school and high school and so we are saying that we can hold the student population in the building um we would just have to work to lay it out it is again early we're just looking at early numbers we haven't flushed everything
039out in terms of placing like we haven't done that this has been a me and my team from Tuesday night after school committee to today um up till last night really hashing and moving things around thank you're welcome hi am Bethany Seager also part of the leverate finance committee I'm also sat in that one point in time over the years um just to note too that when we talk about sixth graders we're not talking about Leverett and shry sixth graders no I know no I know you know just sorry thank you um my question is more just just understanding when you when you say terms like 72 these different models you turn out I don't understand what those mean so we bring those up clarify okay so um in terms of 712 is creating is
040having seventh grade through 12th grade in one school so it would be kind of like Hampshire Regional Frontier Regional it'll be ammer Regional School Jeremy May I'm the school committee I'm just curious about two things one is what the Furlow model would look like how that would work contractually and like how that would how you implement that uh and secondly just a little bit about your thinking of why we might be able to save on Transportation if we're having to go through the contract again this year considering things are not trending cheaper um you know is there a reason why you might think there might be some savings there so um in terms of the transportation a couple things that we were going to look at is how can we shift one of the higher
041costs that we pay in transportation is outside special education transportation and so looking at can we now do that in-house versus Contracting that out what that cost would be we're also looking at the fact that it will be less mileage because they everyone is going to one building um and then also reconsidering how much door Todo stops we have um some houses it's is like within a mile like what's within a mile range between the staff some areas we can't um do it because the homes are a mile apart but then there's some where we where we can uh we can reduce the number of door-to-door stops so we're looking at those different aspects in terms of the conversation again it's real early so those are that's the idea of of it we're reducing the
042steps right now our middle schoolers and high schoolers ride the same bus so they would just be going to one stop pick up from One Stop um we're also looking at how can we stagger our schedule to reduce the amount of time and overtime that we pay because of how our schedule's running now we pay overtime to our drivers because of the pickup time so there's a lot of nuances that we would have to walk through to see what our real savings would be with transportation and because things are not going down we're like the cost and everything economically is rising we're trying to see if we kind of reduce just enough if we can stay within the range of where we're at and not hit that projected 10% that we're projecting it to be
043um and then your first question was furl um that's you how would it look for like how would that look like what would is it you're talking about like how does it work contractually like how you we would have to negotiate with all unions um and get them to agree um committee AC it would really be um for me to say hey guys we're taking one day I think I think the conversation of consensus is not work one day versus not having a job is is really something that we could have in terms of Community Action but in terms of whether or not unionized employees that's why it's a kind of an additional that's we didn't build it into our overarching savings because we know that we would have to go back and negotiate and
044get all of the unions to agree to that oh so Jen Committee Action are I'm going to say exempt but that's not going to help Committee Action are all non-un positions in the district so at the will of the superintendent and school committee yes Mr Right yes mrning how do you plan to determine student outcomes oh well I'm data driven one so the intent is first we look at what the SE requires what's this what what are we supposed to move in terms of proficiency um and then we gear towards for some students and and for me long term is the interest where do they want to be and how and where do they see themselves um and so there's various things we know that there's a base there's a base for attendance we if
045a student is absent 18 days out of the school year um um research says one thing but the law is that that's the most number of absences a student can have and so we want to make sure that our absences are less than 10 we want to make sure that we're looking at um where each child needs to be again what are the standards what are our proficiency our cut scores and that's how we're going to determine basic student outcomes in terms of long-term student outcomes I prefer to work with students to build on their goals that helps us to direct them through a pathway so that they can feel like this is for them um our children today are gen Z and gen Alpha are microwave students I say there students who want it
046now want it fast and they want it to be relevant they want their voices to be heard and so I would like to say outside of what we say is a proficient score and we're saying we're doing well I would like to say hearing them say that my goal is to be an engineer my goal is to be a mechanic my goal is to you know be an agricultural s and develop a new strain then we our goal is to make sure that that student takes a path that's going to get them to where they need to be so okay are you talking about mcast scores so I can talk about State scores mcast scores that's one thing that's that's the that's what Desi requires that's what the state requires but I also want us
047to think about the fact that the only way that we get mcast scores or we get students to engage in learning is when it's relevant to them and we put them on a pathway that they are now engaging in learning that is relevant to what they see themselves or who they see themselves being in the future it's going to translate into increased mcast scores it's going to translate into proficient students students who write well but we have to make sure that the primary outcome is meeting their needs you can transition y so thank you all very very much can all bre into our to for a little bit and [Music] then great [Music] oh that's right that's right [Music] hello sorry I can take it hell I know I think there twoie think e e
048e