001good afternoon everyone i'd like to welcome you to the dartmouth public schools budget subcommittee meeting today i'm dr gifford the superintendent of the public school district and as usual we meet with our subcommittee prior to then presenting our budget to the um school committee as well as working with the town on our proposal we just want to let everyone know that even during tough times we're hoping to be able to continue to secure enough funding to maintain the good work that we're doing and provide enough funding so that we can continue to forward ahead and offer our students an optimum optimal education as well as social emotional support so with that i'm going to turn the um meeting over to mr kylie who obviously works very hard preparing this budget for us with the input
002from the rest of the district kylie thank you all thank you dr gifford um today i'm going to share this presentation with you this will be the first opportunity that we've had to share publicly uh the fy 22 budget draft budget where we are so i will share that with you momentarily so it has been an interesting year to prepare um to prepare a budget there's uncertainty in every area of the operation and it has been a difficult uh challenge to overcome we there's a lot we don't know still about what even next year is going to look like and what the remainder how the remainder of this year is going to affect next year so with all that said we have to move forward and and um you know be flexible through this process
003and be ready to respond to the challenges ahead and we think that um you know this budget uh you know helps helps us do that let's see we um you know dr gifford spoke a little bit in her intro about um you know our focus and and really the focus is on kids um we we're this is our mission and vision and budget goal and it's here for you to read i i won't read through it all but our focus in this budget process and our decision making is to try and support kids as best we can um it is never an easy thing to balance the needs of all the learners um and in this year it's particularly difficult but um that is the focus for us and make sure that we're strategic making
004sure that we're strategic in the way we do that is is really the goal that i have for the budget process so to do that there's quite a few steps that need to take place in order to you know to to meet that budget goal of being strategic and providing a quality education for all learners so we start with a school and department proposals before the holiday season all our all our principals and department heads provide thoughtful proposals that are focused on their improvement plans and focused on student achievement we then on my end have to do all of the projections for things like staffing utilities transportation other areas of the budget that are you know constantly evolving we we make those pre those projections and build those into the initial draft budget then we
005look at all of the proposals and projections on a district-wide basis and try and focus our efforts as with what the best possible scenario that we can bring forward to uh you know improve the schools and promote student achievement so we sort of bring together all of those proposals from the departments and and and principles as well as all the other items that uh that are projected or known and bring it together into one cohesive district-wide um draft document we then talk about it internally and um you know this year i think uh more than more than ever um with having having had to be so flexible for so long now uh you know our administrators in the district have understood that this is going to be a challenging process that things that they may
006want to do that may you know that are focused on improvement and students may not be possible that said we still strive to figure out ways to shift resources and be strategic to support them and you'll see that as we as we go through this so we try and work collaboratively um toward building consensus and that's a big part of what we're you know what we're here today um you know having met with all the principals and department heads and talked about our proposal and what it's going to look like moving forward and now bringing it to you folks as budget subcommittee members of the school committee we hope to find some advocates who can you know who can help us get through this process because this this is clearly not going to be an
007easy process um and we can use all the help we can for for to meet these uh these goals for kids expansion of communication and collaboration so the budget subcommittee and then the school committee so um we'll we'll look at the timeline of how that's all going to play out in a little bit and then making sure that we communicate the needs to the community we normally do a budget subcommittee meeting uh and it's not very well attended it is a public meeting it's uh you occasionally will get somebody but uh very infrequently so we have an opportunity here i think you know we have a i'm sure we have an audience who's interested in this or at least i hope so so hopefully we can begin that process of communicating our needs so there
008are some key factors that uh really drive the formulation of this budget staffing uh is the number one factor we are a people business you know we we focus on students and the way we do that by you know focusing on 3 500 students is with people um so obviously that's going to be the biggest portion of our budget and you'll you'll see how that plays out on future slides but our wage increase for fy fy22 for most people in the district there is already a determined contractual obligation for two and a half percent wage increase there are other contractual increases like steps longevity other things lane changes depending on academic uh achievements of staff members that also play a role and then on the other side there's retirements this year we had 13. last
009year we had nine so this is up a little 13 though is more the at the norm um maybe even a little under average in the in the grand scheme of maybe the 10 years that i've been here but we do have 13 retirements so we build in savings depending on you know the position for replacement cost for those positions special ed tuition it's it is just it's a very volatile area of the budget um it can mostly because um it can change very rapidly it can change with um you know one or two tuitions and um so that increase here for next year is projected to be approximately is projected 400 000 increase part of that increase is the state approves a rate increase for each out of district provider they do that every
010year um it's usually in the realm of five percent which i always feel is difficult because obviously local you know local districts aren't getting five percent increases haven't gotten any five percent increases in a long long time so then you know to bear that burden we have to you know we have to budget for it and um you know it does it is a difficult one in terms of allocating resources so um that's a major factor transportation also a big factor in that this year is the third and final year of our regular uh bus contract so that's expiring this um this june and we're in the process of putting together our bid and we'll be going we'll be going out to bid uh just after february vacation it'll be in the newspapers and published
011online and uh and we'll be seeking bids so we will see exactly how that comes out but that's it's a sizable increase that we're projecting approximately 285 000 there's a transportation's been a key um area of concern in the state because transportation providers have had difficulty with the pandemic and not working um you know having all this investment on their end that's a it is a big equipment investment that's a big portion of their costs and um obviously not having recouped that because of you know the pandemic is is a concern and it's ultimately showing up in prices of new bids as as people are you know getting bids coming out now um enrollment we don't really know you know where this is going we have some ideas of where it might um but you
012know our enrollment is somewhat down uh we have more homeschool kids we have more private school kids we have more prob more kids who didn't register for kindergarten um you know than we would ever have in another scenario um but we're hopeful that that you know those students will you know will be returning and we expect that that they will um so we're still planning on you know approximately uh you know a similar similar level of enrollment next year covet 19 related costs this is you know we we just don't know we don't know what september is going to look like we don't know if we're going to be running virtual virtual schools um we don't know if we're i mean probably who knows maybe we're all wearing masks maybe we're all doing um extensive
013additional cleaning of the buildings for another year or maybe not um there's there's a lot of different costs that uh you know have taken place through throughout this pandemic and and they have been supported through you know several different grants that have come our way through the federal government there's a lot of talk about support moving forward that's great we need it um hopefully it happens i don't know and and i don't think anybody knows for sure if that really will happen um if it doesn't that's a big problem and it's not built into this budget so i don't have virtual academies i see dr jenkins you sort of had your hand up there my question for you right now jim is whether you and mr kyle would you like us to wait until the
014end to ask you questions or do you want to i'm sorry i should have said that you can you know let's please okay so one question i have is do you have that this bad tuition is increasing 400 000. um it goes up about five percent each year i know the voc and aggie tuition often goes up more than 2.5 as well right that's another problem um are we looking at similar rates of increase for our for our vocational schools for next year yeah i i don't have those numbers yet so um i don't i i can't give you a good estimate of voke and aggie at this point um last year the big increase on on the aggie side was relating to their capital project right so i don't think an additional amount will
015be increased on their end um the aggie enrollment is quite low i uh i have it here somewhere um you know so that that i don't think is is a major factor but um but vogue i mean you know a substantial enrollment at this point i think we expect it to be fairly consistent with what has been in the past but that doesn't mean that their budget is going to be exactly consistent with what it where it was in the past so right i mean the problem is right is that a lot of the things that are driving our budget increases are not actually under our control yeah that's another one of them so that's what i was curious about it is and i'll talk about a little about that on the next uh on
016the next slide um it you know down towards the bottom of this next slide i mentioned health insurance health insurance is is always a major factor the the cost of health insurance is you know a big uh portion of the town's budget we don't know where that's going yet um normally we would this would be about the time of year when we'd start to get a handle on that um i'm not sure what's going on in the healthcare world right now but i'm sure nothing none of it is good uh and and i don't know how that's going to impact this whole process yet i'm sh obviously it's going to increase last year it was great and and was a very minor increase in compared to some years and hopefully you know that continues i
017i can't imagine it in this environment that that could be possible but um but i don't i don't know we we shall see and it's part of why part of the reason why i wanted to delay the budget presentation a couple of weeks is that i don't really have a whole lot of information about you know where this is going from a town perspective and and that's what this this slide is sort of all about is uh normally i i have a number you know an idea um i've talked a lot with the town side you know of government with mr mcinnis and mr barnes and and uh you know they're doing a great job and and trying to manage things and and we um but but at this point there's just so much up
018in the air uh so so difficult for us to determine um you know what the support's going to be from the state we i was really pleased to see that the governor's budget uh included an increase in chapter 70. i thought that was a a very good sign i mean for us it's a hundred thousand dollars it's not a lot it's one percent increase so you know it's not keeping up with any other increase in the world um but it's something it's not a cut um so i guess we've got to be somewhat pleased with that the overall increase to the town you see there is just under 320 000 so uh you know there's been i i thought it would be worse so now to to actually act upon that the legislature is really
019going to have to commit to using um you know to using i would assume reserve resources on their end that's what they did to stem the gap in you know in 2021 in the 21 budget uh i just don't know how willing they're going to be to do that so i mean it's good good news that the governor did that i don't know where that's going so i have one other question that's going to sort of both of these slides so far um typically our budget is based on previous year enrollment right so our budget next year is based on this year enrollment um has the state held districts harmless for the declines enrollment associated with covid i mean we know that's happening statewide um the state is is the state not factoring it into
020their calculations wouldn't that make sense right yeah it that is not what they did okay and i will say since we are a community that the state perceives uh is is getting more money in chapter 70 than we would be entitled to based on the formula so basically what i'm saying there is they think that we are wealthy um since they think that we are wealthy the decline in enrollment doesn't really hurt as much so it's four thousand dollars that it hurt us uh now usually we're the ones who get hurt with just about everything but in this particular case them deciding to you know use new enrollment numbers when obviously it's a major issue and it will there will be a change to the positive of enrollment numbers next fall um it really hurt
021other communities much more than us uh and they're funding i i know that they are going to be vocal in trying to advocate for that for you know some reversal and the legislature certainly has it within their authority to do that so uh we'll see what happens but i mean you know it could mean a little more for us but but if it's only four thousand dollars then right you know i i would also say i'm not sure the legislature would consider us wealthy um but i think they might say we're not fully utilizing our taxing capacity given the levels of wealth in this community um and i would not maybe necessarily disagree with them looking at our tax rate compared to other communities in the commonwealth but that that is what it is yeah
022well the community you know and i don't want to talk too much about chapter 70 formula because uh it's early a little early for a nap for everybody but um but you know the the community the the state rather looks at income in the communities and property value and and we've probably had this conversation before but the property value in dartmouth is high there's there we're on the coast and there are a lot and it's a very large town um one of the largest and as a result they think that uh we're entitled to less money than other communities that you might think are kind of similar to us so that is what it is and then that part of the formula there's no chance to ever you know we're never changing that until probably
023never so we're stuck with that but um but yeah so so that is a factor but it the enrollment piece but it didn't have a uh you know a major um major effect on our overall projected increase at this point so let's see here okay so i just i wanted to get here to sort of the meat of the numbers of the presentation and there's a there's a few key things on the top two lines um there's the fy 21 budget which is that's our current budget that's the current budget that we're operating with and was appropriated at town meeting last june um 45 million 586 thousand dollars then based on the work that i explained previously when we were talking about the budget process we came up with an fy22 draft budget before considering
024all of the additional requests from the departments and principals so basically talking about salary increases talking about um some special ed increases talking about that transportation increase some other minor increases that we have to absorb we were at 3.58 budget increase so 47 million 217 000 and then we began to look at you know we had already looked at all of these other things that you know are really valid requests from from our principals um and when we when we looked at those we knew starting at 3.58 percent that we would have limited that was the first page this is the second page of these uh that we would have limited ability to fund these i mean we are some we are realistic and understand that this isn't going to be a great year and
025to now have to face this is going to be really challenging but the things that we really did feel uh you know were absolutely critical that we um that we need to build into the operating budget were let's see one the a half outreach social workers for the district so i mean if there's ever been a time that we need these people we need them and now and um you know they're the the are presenting with um you know a lot of needs through this through this pandemic they had a lot of needs before the pandemic if you look back at last year's presentation there were requests for for this type of help in the district um and we weren't able always able to fund it uh but you know we really feel that it's
026important to move forward with this proposal so we have currently a half-time social worker at the cushman school or proposed to make that position full-time and then as you'll see as you see through this list that there's several schools that did ask for social work help and we've proposed hiring a district social worker who would then be allocated to multiple schools so that we could provide some assistance um you know you know to them the only other thing with that we built in from all these requests and and to be honest we really didn't have a choice in this one uh is a specialized reading program to support um students with dyslexia so it was basically the department of ed has indicated that we have to do this and we will do it so um
027we had to we had to come up with some money to do that so in total those three items are about 120 about a quarter of a percent and then bring our overall budget increase to three point eight four percent so that's where we are right now with with our uh with our budget and that's that's what we're presenting to you today any questions on these two slides okay so yes dr jenkins all right i was gonna let kathleen go but i couldn't see her if she had a question or not so um i will just say that i strongly support the prior prioritization of um social workers here um there's so much data coming out that the kids are not okay they're not doing well um and i think people really need to understand
028how important this is um my other sort of question and concern is related to learning gaps and i know that our teachers and all of our staff are doing the best that they can to provide kids with the best education they can get this year but we just we know right that that kids are going to have gaps whether they're not enrolling in kindergarten or you know they're not engaging even though we're doing our best to get them engaged or just the fact that but being in school there's a reason why kids are in school five days a week right because it's good for them and so i guess one of the questions i had in looking at this was whether we considered it all whether we have any cares money or whether there's any
029consideration of doing some stuff in august for kids before school start to sort of get them up to speed to deal with some of these learning gaps or whether we considered some extended learning time um again to address those kiddos that are falling behind i just think that next it's a difficult year financially but it's going to be a really needy year for all of our kids and i would really like to see us within whatever confines we have even if it's one time only money in part because right fingers crossed we don't have a global pandemic next year so if we can do a little bit extra like in after school stuff or in august and july whatever to kind of get these kids back on track it strikes me as money that would
030be well invested i think so and uh dr gifford chime in but i i think that you know what we've talked about is we have school choice here to support things that we might otherwise not be able to do and we are hopeful that we'll have cares act funds um there is cares act 2 coming and then hopefully there will be more coming uh you know from the federal government um we we do think i mean there will be something coming so i mean obviously that is going to have to yeah it's going to have to support those needs we recognize that those are real okay thank you so this this slide really breaks down um you know i guess i'll start with the overall for next year we'd be down four positions from where
031we are now um you know we've given it a lot of thought and and tried to um you know try try to be each each time that we had an opening or um you know a transfer there were a lot of there were a lot of moving parts this year um in personnel and and we hope that you know you recognize that we're trying to do more than we ever have and uh in this case we're proposing that we're gonna continue to do that with less so it's a challenge for sure um so the first two lines on here speak to the outreach social worker positions that i that i mentioned on the previous slide so those would be increases for fy 22. we've proposed a we as you know we had a retirement with
032our assistant superintendent uh and we are proposing that we eliminate the director of teaching and learning position um and that ms oliveira would become uh the assistant superintendent uh we i had a resignation to make a long story short it affected a couple of positions but i had a resignation as a secretarial position and we shifted things around and these next two lines are the net result of that with a decrease of 0.7 positions in our administrative office we had some other pluses and minuses of teachers and teacher assistants again through the throughout the year each time there was a retirement or a resignation these are not not layoffs these are all through attrition just just so you know um we so we addressed that at each school as they came up uh maintenance i've
033not filled the plumber position i've not built it into the budget i think long term we have to go back to that but um but at this point there's just not the money and i i didn't do it um and then uh there's a couple of other district-wide positions there in addition to the uh to the social worker and the administrative positions that um that were also necessary throughout this process for an slpa which is a teacher assistant position and then a part-time addition to a occupational therapist that currently works for us so the uh let's see the net there down the bottom you have the admit you know reduction in administration and instruction and then other for a total of four so any questions on on this dr jenkins i'm full of questions today
034that's okay that's what this is about how are we gonna fill our plumbing needs i mean i assume the plumber wasn't sitting around doing nothing all day no he was busy yeah yeah it's it's it's difficult you know he went to a he went to another district sort of a promotion job um for him and um it's been interesting working without the plumber in the end i i think you know when we sort of get past this and we have a more normal year um i think i'd be better able to then judge how much if we're hiring a plumber to do licensed plumbing work now our maintenance guys are really talented guys they are you know at their house they're not calling a plumber to fix something let's face it they're you know they're
035fixing it themselves there are some things where we need you know a licensed plumber and we have spent money on that this year and i i just want to get a little bit more of an idea of where that's going long term um so i i you know i'm willing to we'll struggle with it a little but you know i'm willing to struggle with it for a year and sort of determine how we're gonna you know manage that moving forward any other questions on this so there's a lot to do uh and there's a lot left um ahead for this budget so you know we we've presented you a draft obviously ultimately it's not a final document but you know someday hopefully fairly soon it will be a more final document we are presenting today
036to the budget subcommittee we then will present to the school committee on the 22nd um the day after february vacation so you will have um your your budget books and mr silva i'll forward you the information as well thanks for joining us today i'm sorry you were you were cut off at the bottom of my screen there i didn't see you for a while um but we'll provide mr silva as well as who's representing the finance committee with all that information then uh you know the the what i didn't put in here which i should have the school committee will have multiple meetings in which they can deliberate and discuss and you know make sure that you're comfortable with supporting this budget before it moves forward to the finance committee and the select board and
037seeking recommendations from them so you'll have opportunity to have your say then uh we our hope and we're flexible with this would be that a public hearing uh you know would be on or about march 22nd and and then followed by a school committee approval on april 5th we we have a little bit of flexibility but the town does need to move forward and and so we need to get our budget incorporated into the town budget and so we have to stick within a meeting i would say of those timelines for sure um and then tao meeting will be june 1st so that'll be our opportunity to ask me to cut that off well opportunity to ask for uh everyone's support in town and uh you know hopefully hopefully we can get it so in
038the midst of all that there'll be a lot of work that i need to do with the town side of government to you know iron out some of the missing items that i have on this list like i don't really have a financial projection we don't know what health insurance is we i mean we'll hear more from the state and the feds on grants and support and um and then we'll uh you know so we'll keep you informed throughout that process as circumstances change we as dr gifford has always been saying fluid and flexible we got to be in this too so and that is the presentation are there any questions dr jenkins i will channel my inner mr nunes looking at this slide and i will say i am deeply concerned i understand our
039need to meet town deadlines and i you know know that the town has the capacity to do this i am worried about the levels above us right um the state and the federal government i have zero confidence that we're going to get good numbers from them by our timeline um you know this is a disadvantage of being a town meeting is that we have to you know have such advanced preparation because we don't have a council right that can simply vote changes to the budget um but i'm really concerned about given all the uncertainties that we're going to have good information to make good budget requests uh by this timeline um but i know we'll do our part and we'll we'll do what you will do our best with what we have but um i
040just don't think the state's gonna gonna make anywhere near here i agree i don't think there's any chance of that i mean look i mean i know that this was a catastrophic event but look at this past year what happened um i understand i i don't know how they i i don't know i don't know how they do it um you know they're gonna have to make a decision to use a major portion of their reserves to fund this 22 budget so and the town of dartmouth is going to have to consider you know their their tax revenue is not going to be what it was so um you know there's going to be a lot of considerations on on this end and and they can't really make all those decisions until they hear from
041the state too so it's going to be a bit of a mess for sure would anyone else like to like to comment the only thing i'll say is just even though the positions that we've seen that we're not going to be able to fund or whatever it might be i have to give the principals were obviously very cognizant of the stressful situation wherein they went bare bones with their requests and normally you know they're trying to put things in that really can take our district from a to z and have it fly but they so this was just very bare bones like like we said they they understood the situation so um in collaboration just deciding the social emotional piece we really needed to push and advocate for that that's important while trying to maintain
042the other positions that we've had this year and not replace some that we didn't replace this whole year as well and get by so that's my comment anyone else like to comment i have more questions comments i'm sorry um so i mean i do think that those those social emotional needs are going to be really great um would we consider funding that out of cares dollars if things look really bad at the state and local level i mean i just really don't think we can do without it i look around and it's it's really bad it's really bad i think we would i'm sorry to interrupt i i think we would consider that the the difficulty with you know funding things that way is we really should really only look at hiring for a one-year
043position if we're going to consider that because um you know there's there's no guarantee that we'd ever be able to build it in in the future um i know this year is not a good time to build it in but i'm sure next year won't be and the year after that probably won't be and you know so um so yes we could do that but but i think your your candidate pool is somewhat um you know is a different pool if you are a one-year only position with the understanding that it end at the end of the year um so that's something to consider too yeah i mean i would 100 prefer to fund it from recurring revenues and not from one-time revenues um but for me i would rather fund it with one-time revenues
044than do without because i think the needs are so great i you know having served on the finance committee the idea between recurring revenues and non-recurring revenues has been drilled into my head but i mean desperate times call for desperate measures we have to get support for our kids next year and so i feel very strongly about trying to make this recurring but making this happen um regardless of what our you know if we any way we possibly can yeah i'm sure we we would agree as a group i i think the other important thing to note know and we didn't talk about this directly is that right now for instance we have a lot of kids uh being schooled virtually full-time right now both at the elementary level with staff with six staff members
045that are not built into this budget so if um if we were to you know have to in the fall offer that level of service which is pretty unclear as to whether we will or not at this point um you know that six six teaching positions just at the elementary level we then would also want to look at the middle school level in which we've we've at this point because we we really didn't know how long this was going to go and what this was going to entail we uh you know purchased a software package essentially for the middle school and the high school you know to educate kids fully virtually and and um you know we'd want to look at that and and see what that looks like so that hopefully uh if we
046do have to do that there'll be grant funding to support that otherwise i yeah i don't know how we're going to do that that's going to be quite a few positions obviously so does anyone else have any questions comments mr silva i know you're new as our representative of the finance committee um you know miss ham has been doing this for a while with us uh we we always uh although this is an official school committee budget subcommittee we'd you know certainly uh entertain any comments you might have oh thank you yeah this is so it's my first time obviously i'm kind of getting my way to land and feel for what's going on um i i'm just listening to you guys this time i i don't have uh you know more questions and answers
047as usual it's like everyone else in town and in the world right now so great yeah no will and uh you know if you think of anything or as you start to bring information back to the finance committee please feel free to reach out to myself and dr gifford and and you know and certainly school committee members and and uh you know we'll keep you in the loop as we as we move forward through this process all right great well if there's no other no other questions or comments from anyone then i'd really just like to thank you all it's it's going to be a long process we know it's going to be a difficult process and we just you know appreciate your thoughtful comments and um and your consideration thank you everybody have a
048great day thanks thank you you