001e e e she's right she's off she's in a bad spot okay um I call to order this meeting of the Sherburn school committee today is Tuesday November 12th 2024 and we are meeting in the over Sherburn Middle School library the time is now 6:31 uh first on the agenda our community comments we've provided a virtual link for those who wish to make a comment but for whom it is not possible or preferred to attend in person are there any Community comments okay anyone on Zoom okay please remember remember that Community comments are an opportunity for members of the school committee to listen to members of the community as chair of this meeting it is my responsibility to facilitate this communication between the public and the committee present this evening I personally believe this communication
002is a critical element to assist members of this committee with discharging the responsibilities of the positions they've been elected to hold to effectively facilitate this discussion I encourage anyone providing comments to consider that the volunteers that comprise this committee are your neighbors friends and fellow community members we welcome all points of view but I would respectfully ask that you treat these committee members in a matter consist consistent with that in mind collectively we are here to support the administration who in turn assist our Educators and support staff to educate care for invest in and inspire our children community comments are not a forum for answering questions or engaging in a debate we respectfully request that you please make your comments brief no more than 3 minutes and that you move the discussion forward by adding
003new information please try to avoid repeating points that have already been made once the public comment section of the meeting has concluded we will move on to other business whoops and unsolicited comments from the community will no longer be permitted this is standard operating procedure in school committee meetings across our three school districts if you desire more information or have specific questions contact information for committee members is on the district website okay dou did hi uh my three minutes is starting I'm Doug Kingsley I live at 138 Farm Road in Sherburn 19-year Town resident this is my first school committee meeting I'm delighted to meet all of you my neighbors friends and community members as you said um it's my first school committee but it's not going to be my last I joined the Advisory
004Board and I think you're going to be seeing a lot more of me um I learned before the meeting and with your comments moment ago that Community comments are I guess you know allowed before the meeting but there's no interaction with the school committee um I would would humbly suggest that the the board consider having Community comments before and after the meeting such that when there's topics that are live the community can comment on them as opposed to waiting a month to the next meeting to com comment on something that just happened tonight so if you discuss something tonight and I have a comment I gotta wait till the next meeting to make that comment so that's my thought I'd like you to consider adding that to your format is that it that's all I
005had to say thank you well I I have questions but it sounds like you're not going to answer my question so I'll just leave at that okay thank you okay the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's comments superintendent McCoy thank you um good evening everyone um my comments will be brief this evening because a majority of our uh conversation tonight will be around um mcast analysis that assistant superintendent Conlin will provide and then um an overview of version 1.0 of the budget which Miss ftor will provide um just a few updates of the exciting things happening um at Pine Hill school and within the [Music] district um as you know one of our uh District goals around this year is elevating student voice and understanding their perspective um since they are the client
006to attend school um every day and making sure that they feel like they are heard and they have ownership in some of the decision- making that's happening so one of the um initiatives that we have is shadowing students so we have had um roughly 20 um adults whether that's um Educators um instructional leaders such as our PLC leaders or our district leadership um follow a student for the day we've had lots of positive feedback so far um and there are several other Educators who are excited about that opportunity and so we'll be rolling that out slowly over time um to have other Educators follow the students for the day get a sense of what their day is like um what they're engaging with in the classroom what their homework loads are like um what their
007after school schedules are like all in line with a challenge success uh program and what challenge stands for so we'll certainly provide more feedback and information as that continues um Denny and I have launched the superintendent advisory Council which at this point has 25 um middle and high school students we're going to be meeting with the elementary school students during lunch bunches as well to get their feedback on a number of topics um but it's certainly an honor to be working um one on one kids and hearing their input and feedback um relative to um School practices and policies but also um providing feedback to teachers the kinds of questions and surveys that we're asking them on a regular basis and how we can make that more impactful by the information we're collecting and then
008how we use that to inform our decisions um so again more to come on that we just had our first meeting um we have been busy working with all of our principles assistant principles and coaches um looking at the mcast data analysis at the secondary level we're obviously looking at advanced placement scores SAT scores ACT scores as well um and Mr Conlin will be providing an overview of what we have taken away from the spring administration of mcast at pin hill um and again this evening we'll be going deep into uh the budget planning process um which you are all Prime members of um and it's a long process so when we get to that the item will give you a little bit more background um and context as we start the planning for FY
00926 happy to take any questions or concerns otherwise I would like to hand it over to assistant superintendent Conlan to talk about our mcast results okay uh so before we get going just a quick update for me in terms of assistant superintendent updates um so one of the things that I've been working on to minimize can you just drink it like can be dry it thank you um so as you all are we have a new elementary math curriculum which we've been talking about for a while now um so I've spent the past month diving into the new math curriculum in a firsthand way um so I feel like it's really important to get a sense of what the teachers and students are experiencing with the new math curriculum uh so I've been going to
010classrooms and I've been guest teaching math lessons um and it's been a really valuable experience just to understand the curriculum to be in the perspective of a teacher when they sit down with like teacher manual and online resources like what are they really dealing with what are the kids saying um and how's the math curriculum going uh so just a few of my learnings from having taught some math lessons now at Pine Hill um there are tons of resources with the new curriculum almost too many resources so we're just trying to figure out how to direct the teachers to what they need and how to find the things that they need to find on the website um the online platform is a little clunky so we've come up with some screen cies and some kind
011of quick start guides to help teachers find what they need to find on the online platform uh you've heard me talk a lot about math talk and math discourse and encouraging our students to just Express what they're thinking and how they're using different math strategies and that has been awesome um I'd say that's been the biggest growth point I've seen in my personal experiences and just in observing classes is that our kids are talking about math sometimes it's really really hard because we're asking them to explain why somebody chose this solution or why but chose this Pathway to get to An Answer um but it's really I think forced our students to think about why math works the way it does rather than just focus on getting to the answer quick um releasing responsibility is
012hard is another thing I've learned as part of this curriculum um so there are times where like you know the students aren't going to know how to do something and you just have to let them try it and come back with their ideas on how they want to solve it and then you can lead them through like the mini lesson but kind of releasing it to the kids can be really really daunting um I found that out firsthand where I just wanted to talk to the kids more because I was worried they didn't understand it um but just had to let it go and let them try to kind of grapple with some of the concepts um I've learned that we have a wide range of Learners so differentiation is really really important um and
013it's hard for teachers when they get done with the meting lesson and they split the students into three different groups and the teacher is working in one small group and there are two groups working on something else um and if there's not another adult in the classroom you know it's a lot to manage for a teacher I think um there's a lot of language so you might have heard from any of your children that you know we have to talk a lot the problems have a lot of words in them um and we know that that's a challenge right now um but it's also very reflective of what we're seeing on assessments like the mcast what we're seeing in terms of the types of Real World skills and situations we want our students to be
014looking that so that's been a learning curve as well um and finally we know that this is really hard again I've just done a couple lessons and it's been very hard and we're really hoping that our teachers you know Embrace mistakes and model it for our students that it's okay for them to make mistakes um that they're welcome and they're expected um so you know there was a point during one of the lessons that I did where things just were not going well and I said you know what we're going to regroup and start with something new um and I think that's really good for for our students to be seeing from our teachers as well um so things are going well you know there's a lot of growing pains in terms of getting used
015to a new curriculum um but it's been really really neat to see everything unfold firsthand um so now the heart of presentation is thinking about our 2024 mcast results so before I get going quote from John hatti um who researches a lot about what makes an impact in terms of teaching and learning um and he says in this quote the major purpose of assessment in schools should be to provide interpretive information to teachers and school leaders about their impact on students so that these Educators have the best information about what steps to take with instruction and how they need to change and adapt um and you know if you talk to people they'll tell you all sorts of things about what does data do some people will say you know data functions as signals some
016people have made an analogy to the a flashlight like data shines a light on little areas but doesn't give you that full view of everything going on um but it does give us Clues and it does give us information about ways that we need to change or adapt the way that we work with students um I also think it's important to look at this big data pyramid and just to see that we are using data in a multitude of different ways and at various times throughout the school year um so at the top of this pyramid you can see we have the things that happen on an annual basis mcast is something that happens on an annual basis um at the region our AP scores our SAT scores um our L students uh they take
017the access test so these are things that happen once a year um two to three times a year that's when we have various diagnostic tests um that's like ourl diagnostic our Dibbles our phonic screener our Universal math screener um our Panorama surveys and then at the secondary level we have midterms and final exams um then there's data points that we collect more on a quarterly end of unit so that's kind of that end of unit assessment or end of unit test or quiz or project that students are completing uh one to four times a month you have formative common assessments so that might be a math problem of the week that every third grader does might be a science journal that every fourth grader completes um and various other student products and then we know
018that our teachers are collecting data on a daily basis uh so they finish a math lesson they do an exit ticket they get a sense of what students have learned um they're walking around talking to students seeing what they're absorbing what they're struggling with that's all data that they are kind of taking into mind um to plan for the next day and to use so this just gives you a picture of the fact that you know it's important to note that there's tons of data that our teachers are paying attention to um and that the mcast while it's an important indicator is only one of those pieces at the very very top that only happens once a year uh so with that being said I wanted to start off just by talking a little bit
019about the overall State landscape with the mcast um and some trends that we saw across the entire state of Massachusetts last year um so the first one is that almost across the board Ela results have shown a continued Gap since kind of Co happened um so we're seeing Ela results kind of go downward across the state um in terms of math results uh there was some improved achievement Statewide and third grade math um but besides that it was relatively flat in terms of overall scores throughout Massachusetts and math uh science showed Improvement and uh we only do the science mcast in grades 5 10 and grade eight um lower achievement in grade eight across the state although I did say at the regions meeting that our eighth graders actually showed a huge amount of growth
020U so that's a place where we were different than the state um another important Point Statewide is just knowing that chronic absenteeism is having an impact on student achievement uh so we think about students who are chronically absent that students who are absent for 20 days or more uh which makes sense that it's hard to achieve it's hard to learn if you're not in school to learn um be able to learn in the first place so that gives you an idea of the overall State landscape that we're seeing um another thing that's going to come up throughout the rest of this presentation are two different measures on the mcast uh so a student score represents their achievement uh so often we look at scores and that's a comparison from one year to the next so
021this year's first third graders what they got in terms of a number score versus last year's third graders so you're comparing year by year so you're comparing one grade of students to last year's grade of students um the measure of growth is called an SGP a student growth percentile and that measures how much students have improved since their performance in the previous year so that's actually showing the growth that students are making since they last took the test um so that's what we want to see as well is we want to see high achievement but at the same time we want to see that students are showing growth in their sgps uh so that's a number that we'll see as well uh so in terms of Pine Hill and their mcast results so I'll give
022you an overview of ela Math and Science in grades 3 through five and then talk a little bit about some of these really big highlights some areas that we want to focus on on and then how it all connects to our district Improvement efforts uh so when we think about Ela in grades 3 through 5 um I think the biggest thing that I take away from these results is that Pine Hill and Sherborn continued to exceed the state averages uh so you can see the percentage of our students who met or exceeded expectations was 21% higher than the state average our scaled score um again that measure of achievement was 133% of uh 13 points above the State average and our sgps our student growth uh 8.6 points higher than the state average um so
023those comparisons continue to show that our students are performing better than the state um and it also um when we look at the growth from 23 to 24 um you can see that the level of proficiency went down 7% since last year in the me and exceeding um but that does fall in line with the overall State Trend that I had just mentioned about Ela scores is decreasing um across the state in terms of math uh you can see again that we continue to outperform the state averages um and that we saw um 1% increase in our students that were exceeding um but we also saw that we um last year had 57% of our students meeing expectations versus 49% of students in 2024 um so there is areas for growth and we'll talk about
024the ways that we're planning to dissect this data and to lead to you know further growth for 2025 and then science happens only in grade five uh so you can see again we exceed the state averages uh there's no SGP for science because there's nothing to compare it to because students have never taken it before um and you can see that um we had 65% of our students who met or exceeded expectations in fifth grade science um that was up 1% from the previous year um in terms of scaled score uh we stayed about even in terms of the scaled score um so these are just some of the data points um but in our analysis that we did um with our building leaders at pin hill here are some of the successes that we
025wanted to highlight um so again our Pine Hill students continue to perform above the state averages um we saw that our high need students when we use that term High needs that's three populations that are encompassed in high needs those are students with disabil ities our lowincome students and our English Learners um they did show growth in ela their SGP increased by 16 points from 2023 um so that again is different from the state Trend where we saw scores go down um in math are low income students proficiency rates so the proficiency is exceeding their Med expectations um it's good news there their those proficiency rates were either at or above preco levels um so that's been an indicator that we've heard a lot about from the state um is you know how are we
026doing in comparison to pre-co um additionally our lwi income students are showing higher sgps higher growth compared to last year uh so when we look at our subgroups of students that's good news for that subgroup our low-income students um another spot to highlight our fourth grade ELA um students with disabilities their proficiency increased from 9% in 2023 to 40 1% in 2024 um so we saw a lot of growth with our students with disabilities in fourth grade ELA and then we made some modest gains in the essay writing and language skills in fifth grade ELA so these statistics again relating to ELA are important to consider that state context of scores going down to see this growth specifically from a lot of our subgroups is very uh encouraging um areas that we want to focus
027on um overall despite some of the growth that we've seen seen we do continue to see a gap in how our students with disabilities perform versus their peers in all content areas and across grade levels so there is still an achievement gap between our students with disabilities and our students without disabilities uh so that's something that we want to pay particular attention to um when we went through the item analysis looking at questions and question Types on Ela we found that our students need more support specifically in the area of writing um and then very very specifically in topic development literary analysis um and on the essay writing portion of the exam um when we went through the math item analysis we saw some pretty um consistent Trends in students need some more support in
028numbers and operations specifically with fractions um feel very good about our new math curriculum and that's going to address um some of these areas uh we want to place an overall focus on just having students right more frequently across content areas so they see writing not just as part as Ela um but with the new math curriculum I just mentioned there's a lot of language involved so students are writing more in math now um and certainly in social studies and science we want students to see that the writing they do in one content area they can take the skills from that and kind of generalize them to other content areas um and finally we want to give students some more experience reading and analyzing informational texts across content areas throughout the school year um and
029a lot of that again can happen through science and social studies as well as continuing to diversify the texts that we're having students read in ela uh so these are some of the specific Focus areas that we're looking at at Pine Hill um and all of the things that we saw are closely connected to our district Improvement efforts um so we do want to see our scores from Pine Hill continue to go up and we've put a lot of things into place this year to help make that happen um and again not just about our mcast scores but overall student achievement um so one of the things that I mentioned in our last Shor School committing committee meeting was our data team meetings in the way that our teachers administrators um our counselors all meet
030go over student information and then they make decisions based on that information um so our data team meetings have been very very successful in figuring out which specific areas students need more support in and we put interventions in place um in order to help students get what they need uh We've also organized all of our data this year onto a new platform called open Architects which makes it a lot easier for our teachers and our staff to access and to look at the data in a dashboard um beforehand you'd have to go on to the des's website log into this portal go to this thing called Edwin and it takes forever it's very confusing um so now we have the data in a very friendly way and we're walking staff through protocols on how toess
031access and interpret that data uh so Pine Hill at a faculty meeting is going to be going over these mcast results analyzing it individual teams of teachers are going to be analyzing the data uh so they're going to be looking at item analysis seeing where students might have struggled last year and thinking about ways to improve instruction in those areas this year um and as I noted we kind of have this gap between our students with disabilities and our students with that disabilities so our special ed Department led by our special ed coordinator at Pine Hill is going to be doing their own um they're going to be part of the whole school mcast analysis but they're going to be in their special ed Department team going over this data as well um in terms
032of math obviously we're implementing a new curriculum that's focusing a lot on number routines and fluency um so we're hoping that those specific areas are going to we're going to see Improvement on uh we have much better diagnostic tests to identify student needs so this was the first year that we used a universal math screener at the of the year to think about areas that students might need extra support in um and we're continuing to use ISL to Monitor and to dipstick where our students at in math and then for our students that need that tier 2 intervention that extra support uh We've adopted a new curriculum to use um that's an evidence-based curriculum called the bridges math program just for our students that need interventions um in terms of ela um again we have
033are using much better diagnostic tests this year in order to identify our student needs uh so we're giving the dibles Diagnostic in grades K through five uh previously it was only given in K through 2 so that's expanded um and we're finding that in terms of measuring students reading level that has about you know an 80 to 90% accuracy um we're using a new screener for phonic called a 95% screener 95% screener in grades K through 2 um and we've adopted a new evidence-based intervention system for students in ela 95% phonics lessons the great thing about that is that based on how students doing the screener it points our interventionists and our teachers to specific lessons to implement with those students to very specifically Target the areas that that diagnostic screener is showing um so
034overall again I feel like there have been a lot of growth at Pine Hill in terms of the systems that we're using um when we think about having our tier one or tier 2 and our tier three interventions our mtss model over the past three or four years has continued to expand we have additional instructional coaching happening um so the school has shown a ton of improvement and a ton of attention to ways that we can better support all of our students um and you know the mcast is one slice of the information that we get um so super superintendent did you want to add anything no thank you happy to take questions and comments no this great thank you for sharing that very comprehensive thanks see if anyone anyone raing their hand on we've
035got I don't know if Becca still on there or not Kimberly does anybody on Zoom have any questions or comments or Kimberly or Becca all good from my end thank you for sharing thank you all right okay um next on the agenda are the financial reports Miss vtori yes thank you um in your packet are your your two monthly Financial reports the first one are the warrants that were sent over to the town for processing since the last time you met um they are categorized by the fund that they're coming from and within general fund um which one of the operating line items is coming from again um those are always available for members to review at Town Hall as well as we keep copies at central office if you ever want to explore a
036little bit more of what those look for uh we bring them to you just because you have one signer and then we're allowing um everyone to see what the one signer is um authorizing on your behalf uh next up is your monthly Financial update so I wasn't with you in October but in September sort of gave you a little snapshot as to where we were standing and it was all really positive information from a perspective of cost savings um from the operating budget uh so as you know um Dr Brown retired and that seemed to put into place a um a domino effect uh one of the strong things you always want to see is internal succession planning and with her replacement and then being internal and then son's replacement being internal you can start
037seeing how things are going to start falling as well as two midyear retirements were announced in June that were going to take place this year so when you add all that up there's actually a lot of payroll savings that we are experiencing um for fiscal year 25 and you're going to see that rolling into the budget for fiscal year 26 um so as best as I could I added try to keep the numbers going for you so you can see how much is based on um the post fiscal year 25 budget changes um also as you know in March last year we made the decision to move the connections program over to chering at that point in time the classroom educator and the associated EAS were pulled out of sherburn's March budget but at that
038point in time we had not fully dissected into the other operating pieces of that knowing that it would take us just a little more time so you're also seeing some positive impacts from the last couple of pieces coming out of the Sherburn budget uh big piece of that was OT so occupational therapy that uh Personnel was actually moved from uh Pine Hill over to chering um as well as a few other costs associated with running that program so that also is adding to um the positive outcomes that we're seeing right now um so on a salaries lots of good things to um uh to say as far as savings we have had some um small additions So based on the Pine Hill composition right now of English Learners we have um haded to add a02
039FTE for that um with um a change over of Staff with our out of district coordinator um that out of district coordinator position is shared by all three districts and it had previously been shared with a educator at the high school when that person retired it gave us the opportunity to sort of revisit how we wanted to sort of set that position up um and so we ended up doing um the person's halim out of district coordinator for both towns as well as filling the needs of um setting up a preschool director with our three preschool classes and the need to constantly be doing external evaluations of incoming preschool age students um that was a need that we identified so we have a 0.5 preschool director that's being shared 0 2 with pine hill and3
040with Ching so that um 02 was an add um to your operating budget for fiscal year 25 along with two special edas um they one to one EAS for students that have presented the needs since our budget was approved last March and you will see those positions rolling into the fiscal year 26 budget as those are still needed to continue um into fiscal year 26 on the expenditure side it's been it's pretty operating to where um we expected the only one I want to um highlight is classroom instructional software and Denny's presentation sort of highlighted some of the reasons why we're seeing an overage in that account um if you heard him say Dibbles used to be K2 and now it's K5 there's a couple of those programs that we've expanded K5 as we continue
041to want to do more data accumulation as well as um we added districtwide an AI tool for educators um and there was one other little small thing so that are things that we felt um necessary to add to fiscal year 25 you're going to see an increase in the budget for 26 as well to cover those things uh so a lot of what we're talking about actually helps prep us for talking about 26 um but that's um a little bit of insight into that any questions on sort of the IND District before I I talk about out of District just from the monthly report okay so um as you know we always look at our budget in two pieces so the out of District we budgeted for 13 out of District placements um and just
042for the new members just to uh reaffirm that represents Sherburn residents Age 3 to 22 who are not educated within the district um all the cost of that sits in the Sherburn school budget nothing sits in the region so you're it's a that's why we look at it as two separate budgets because it's really not Pine Hill budget it's more of a regional agreement um scenario where you're we're covering all residents of Sherburn in this particular budget so we U budgeted for 13 we have 13 which that doesn't happen all the all the time um we had um quite a few placement changes so our tuition costs are under budget by 160 but those placement changes resulted in higher transport ation costs unfortunately so they almost netted out um so your your tuition is under
043budget by 160 but the transportation cost are over by 150 so right now we're looking at a net positive of 10,000 which is actually um good because it's if you recall the last couple of years we've been severely over budget uh so I think we've stabilized I'm going to say that tomorrow we're going to find out all new placements but at least we've got the same 13 that we've predicted they just changed where they are and unfortunately the cost um changed with that but I think that puts us in a good place as we start building the budget for fiscal year 26 um since we um last met in September uh circuit breaker reimbursement has been finalized so the circuit break and reimbursement remember is what we're eligible to being reimbursed by the state based
044on fiscal year 24 expenditures so it's um we report all of our expenditures from fiscal year 24 they calculate what the reimbursement is going to be and you get it in fiscal year 25 um so uh Sherburn uh is receiving a little over half a million dollars in circuit breaker reimbursement um it's comprised of 75% of um tuition cost so anything that were over the threshold which in fiscal year 25 the threshold was about 51,000 so you have to spend we have to cover at least the 51,000 anything over 51,000 of eligible tuition cost we get reimbursed at 75% so that is your circuit breaker tuition reimbursement and over the last couple years they have added Transportation cost so now that's become the um figure that we don't know what the reimbursement is going to
045be it used to be that the 75% on tuition we never knew exactly what was going to be but the way the um regulations are are working now tuition has to be covered at 75% before anything will be paid on Transportation so it would be highly unlikely that we never would see we'd see anything less than 75% on tuition so that is actually a really good thing to know that we can Bank on the 75% and now the um unknown is how much you're going to get for Transportation uh in fiscal year 24 we actually got 57% reimbursement on transportation we only got 44% this year but I never um include estimates for transport ation when we're looking at um circuit breaker and how much we can apply to your budget mainly because that now
046has become the um the unknown and that becomes an extra money um that we have to cover un uh unbudgeted placements unbudgeted placement cost Etc so that gives us a little bit more of a cushion um and so far year to date we had budgeted uh to use $375,000 of circuit breakers the way the um tuition by students plotted out by who I put the circuit breaker fund we're actually using about 400,000 of circuit breaker and we probably will keep that at 400,000 um because we did receive 500,000 so we do have a nice cushion in case there are any unbudgeted placements that come up during the school year um which would avoid us having to ask for an additional supplemental appropriation from the town um I think that's the situ situation we'd like to
047be in that we always have in the reserve enough to cover one uh typical um out of District placement just so that we have that um so that is good news on that front and new information for you as far as what the um computed circuit breaker reimbursement is for 25 any questions on that no okay so I just wanted to give you a brief update um as you know the town approved last year that hbac cooling project um the um Engineers had their first site visit on October 30th they're in the um stages right now of selecting the equipment I think by the end of this week they think they will have that piece selected for us for us to sort of sign off on and then they go into the um structural design
048and the specs design so they'll be ready to um put the RFP out by January um good news is that there has actually been a huge reduction in the um delivery time for HVAC equipment so we are they're feeling um I'm not going to say but they're feeling really comfortable that this is all going to play out the equipment will be in and this will be installed this coming summer um and just to refresh your memory we are putting um new rooftop units that can do dual cooling and heating in the library the auditorium and the cafeteria so we selected those big three areas um because it'll allow us to uh use spaces where that are used throughout the day in the library um it will hopefully provide some cooling relief to the classrooms in
049that Wing that tend to get the higher temperatures during the day and it will do wonders for our humidity that we experience um during the summer and you will see the humidity playing out when we talk about Capital um so everything's related um and so that we're looking forward to that because that humidity is something that is really daunting in that building in the summertime it's amazing how humid it gets um so that will bring some relief from that from that standpoint so we're we'll keep you updated on that our fingers are cross that when they put it out to bid stays within that um bid total Capital cost of 400,000 that we approved but we'll keep you updated uh on that for sure um the last thing I just wanted to highlight um uh
050you probably don't see this person's name very frequently but she's um a key piece in my business office but Leanne wilky who was my assistant business manage administrator um has been with the district for 12 years in various roles had actually been in this role a year before I got into my role um has fully retired as of October 31st she was in partial retirement I was thinking we were going to be able to keep the paral retirement going um but she's ready for the next chapter in her life so her last day was October 31st we have posted the position we're in the process of interviewing and I'm hopeful that we'll have someone um hired by the end of the month um but if there's some slow responses to certain things just know that
051I'm down a person um and we're trying to keep up but probably doesn't impact you guys very much but sometimes some of the people out in the school will will be a little slower um in responding but I just wanted to make sure I um gave her the proper thanks um because she definitely um 12 years in the business office is a lot of time and she will be greatly missed any questions or comments for Don from the committee no thank you discussion items no discussion there are no discussion items okay um next on the agenda are action items these items may involve further discussion before calling for a vote um um so tonight we will be looking at the first version of the operating and capital budgets and superintendent MC I'll turn it over
052to you great thank you um so uh first I would like to thank all the members of the Sherburn community and our taxpayers who continue to prioritize education we know it is certainly um the bright spot of our community and why many of our um uh parents and caregivers um move here to raise their children and so we appreciate all that our taxpayers do to make sure that we can continue to provide for our students um on an annual basis I'd like to thank the Sherburn advisory um committee uh of which we have three members tonight um thank you for keeping in perspective the larger view of the town and its needs and providing us guidance so that we can do what we need um at the school level in um collaboration with what's happening
053in other departments across the town and I'd like to thank the school committee for coming on this journey with us starting tonight and all the way through March as we continue to work on versions two and version three of the budget um as you know we have a 5-year strategic plan we are in year two of that strategic plan so we use the um the initiatives and the goals of that strategic plan to guide our decision-making around not only what we do every day for kids but how we spend our our finances and how we budget for our resources um specifically Pinehill school has a school Improvement plan that speaks to that larger strategic um uh uh plan but also speaks to the the details needed specifically at the elementary level um so we use
054those two documents to again decide guide our decision-making but also um are always looking for opportunities for cost savings and as Don will use the phrase often um sending smarter so that we together with the additional needs that the schools might need in addition to cost savings can come up with a fiscally responsible budget to present to the towns um this process begins in October with Don's guidance um as our business administrator um the principles meet with their um instruction leaders and their curricul leaders to determine the needs of their the schools moving forward they then come to central office and they meet with myself Denny Don Kate McCarthy our student director of student services and Brendon Hall Brandon Hall our director of um educational technology so that we can look holistically at the budget
055to make sure that we're all on the same page in terms of our priorities and needs um and then we send all that information to Dawn and budget budget office upstairs and she does her magic to develop version 1.0 which is here tonight um for your review so without further Ado Don please um share with us thank you for that that background and then just to give you a brief overview of the timeline so we are approving version 1.0 this evening in order to meet the town's requests that all um Department budgets be submitted um by I think December 8th I think was in their their memo but we usually um that's why we're meeting in November to get that uh set um from there we'll come back to together in February um because at
056that point we should have a little bit more information remember we're just in November in fiscal year 2 so this is our best DEC our best guess right now of where we stand um by the time February comes we could have a version 2.0 to present to you because more factors um more data points could be accessible we also will bring some additional information about some of the ads that are in the budget to give you more support behind those um and then we meet in February 1 of February because then our meeting with Sherburn advisory follows on February 12th so there's a timing where we try to make sure that school committee has approved the most up-to-date version that we can um before we go before advisory um and Dan maybe just before I
057start any further if you want to just introduce your members um that are here tonight yeah be delighted to hey everybody um so I think many of you know me I'm Dan uh chair of Sherburn advisory um and uh glad to be here and glad to get a chance to uh uh hear uh presentation and I'll just say Don has been a very good partner and and you know a really terrific person for us to work with on that um other um so we always have a set of schoolly asson a subset of advisory that really focuses in on school issues and that would be Paul pilot and Doug Kingsley and Mike wyers would be the other who's not here if you guys want to say hi that's great and then we're I think good
058Paul's always here with us so this is my second year advisor enjoy working with Don last year year I my P yeah all right good thank you so if you're ever wondering they're they're usually here in the audience and they're here because they're the leas on to the other members of Sherburn warrant to gain more information to support the budget as we as we move through the process um and so we put put together um I we feel like hopefully a complete sort of package of data for you to be able to use as you review the budget and again this is just version 1.0 I don't think there's any plans tonight to go deep into some of the discussion items but to lay out the pieces that are there for you to take some
059time as you review and you have any questions if you will um you can always feel free to send them to Christine your chair who'll filter them to us to answer um so don't ever think that you have to hold a question you're always free to send a question to us just um so that we can start working on any questions you may have uh so in your budget um we have a cover memo that sort of lays out just sort of it's like an executive summary and um it sort of tells you that um how we go about developing the budget so obviously at an elementary school where the budget is predominantly at one Elementary School enrollment is one of the key things that we um look at before we even start building the
060budget and in your tab three you're going to see our 10-year projections or actuals and then projection and it is um a formula that was derived by one of our uh previous superintendent where it looks at immigration and out migration as of October 1st so if you always have the same data points of October 1st and you compare data from grade three between those years if you can look down at the percentages then on the three-year rate and the one-year rate it shows you the growth so the three-year rate is looking at the growth over three years and the one-ear rate is looking at obviously what just happened this past year um we use both those data points because sometimes there's something that's happening particularly for a year so we like to highlight it but
061we have a a tendency to um move for with the three-year rate in most cases because that's giving you sort of um what happens not in just one year but over a period of time it's also interesting um I think to take this data um graph and follow like a kindergarten grade all the way down you will see that it's rare that you don't see growth in a grade every year and I think partly is that is like families that move in to town probably have uh K through five age um students that are continuing to build the grades um and you usually do see an incre between K and one um I don't know if it happens historically anymore but we used to have um definitely families that would send their um students to
062private kindergartens and then join us in first grade um it's like you still see a little bit of that uh you know the um uh last year's um kindergarten you know grew a little bit from 50 well I didn't grow that very much but uh some years we'll see um you know much much uh larger growth numbers um in that so we right now for kindergarten are using the threeyear average um we will get the census from the town uh by the next time we meet just to see how that is looking compared to what the three-year average is so you may see us tweak the kindergarten number once we get a more valid data point um but I think this is good to look at you can see that we one thing that we
063have is we don't have consistent in grades um you've got a grade right now that has a high of 76 and our low is 51 um so there is some right some different uh which is a is a um makes our life a little more difficult because we really try to craft the budget for exactly the students that we have but you also don't want to be a yo-yo and takeway AD takeway ad so we're very methodical um before we adjust staff either way um but I think it's good for you guys to spend some time look at some of the great cohorts um and just see what's happening with um your population um the other thing we take into consideration is the um guidance from the town and so that is what I had
064uh brought for you tonight to add to your to your notebook we received that just be after I did the delivery um but to that point I think that it's pretty consistent and we do try to always strive to have a a level funded budget where we can we make Cost Cuts where we can we're very good about if we add something for one year that's a one time we pull it out the next year so it doesn't become embedded in our base budget um and so you will see in your budget books and the detail line items um you know a lot of changes so we don't just go with the norm we do deep uh dive into each of the accounts and see what we can do what we can't do um and
065so uh I think with that that we're definitely following um the town's guidance we are bound by our contractual agreements which the majority of our employees are under contractual agreements um and so those are negotiated with school committee Town um select board members join us and so that's a joint project when we come to agreement with um the contractual increases um Don I have a quick question what is the class cuto off number to go from three classes to four classes so your guidelines are 18 to 23 um but those are um sort of guidelines so you can't go exact sometimes because if you go down a section you could be over the 23 y um but that's your guidelines 18 to 23 and we did change that I want to say about four years
066ago uh Pine Hill used to have a a class size range from K to three and four to five your high range went all the way up to 25 um and so we Consolidated those two um ranges to one range for K5 which was 18 to 23 that more aligned you with what Dover has for their uh policy which they operate was 17 to 22 so basically the same thing but that 25 was a little bit of an outlier in those older grades and so that alleviated some of the stress that we were getting and when we were looking at sections um so that was um a school committee decision um several years to go down to the 18 to 23 but that data point is on your en moment for you to look at
067yeah um and then as Beth mentioned and we've included in the uh notebook for you the um 2328 strategy and school Improvement plans because those definitely then do help Drive our budgetary decisions on the larger items such as curriculum um Staffing Etc and I also added in there the best practices um tool because I think that comes into play too when we're looking at some PD that we might be doing um and and just to give you a better um Insight too I think it's good to have it all in one place so I felt like that was a helpful tool tool like this should be your little reference book um with all that included um and then the last thing that is sort of one of our assumptions is that we're going to continue
068to receive our entitlement grants so in tab two you're going to see the grants that we do receive on an annual basis and how those are incorporated into the budget in any given year if we did not get one of those um grants it would probably be an increase to the operating budget because we use the grants for things that we really do need um and so if we lost the Grant I just want everyone to be aware of what could need to come into the budget in any um uh situation just so that you see the whole picture um and so there's I mean I think the largest one that um that we depend on is the reap Grant and then the sped 240 which funds several of our educational assistance for special ed
069so with that um we've put together version 1.0 and right now we're looking at an overall operating budget increase of just a little over 200,000 which represents a 2.43% increase um last year's overall increase was 3.99 um just to put some perspective your version 1.0 though last year was looking at an8 over an 8% in increase um so if you compare 8 to 2.43 I think we're looking much better than how we rolled out last year uh keep in mind though that the fiscal year 25 increase of 3.99 included the move moving of the connections in our 2.43 this year includes all those Staffing changes so our normal operating increase if we didn't have those two situations would be closer to the 5% so I just want to make sure that we're um transparent about
070that that we won't expect to see increases like this low level in a normal year we just happen to have things that happen that are allowing that um to um uh compute to that such a a low value um or a low percentage increase and then our um if you break it apart because as I said we talk about our budgets in two pieces your IND District increase because of all the salary savings was only 1.39% basically the cost savings offset all the contractual um increases in the in the contracts um in the out of District operating budget still showed an increase um High a little higher a little less than last year but still it's driving your higher number of 9.91 um and as I mentioned if we did not have those changes from
071the post budget that year number would have been closer to 5% and I also want to highlight that the budget um version 1.0 for circuit breaker um uh funding is at 300,000 um we used $375,000 in the fiscal year 25 budget and another data point that I added this year is on your summary um at in the gray area at the bottom is actually the amount of circuit breaker that we use in each of those years because you have to look at that as part of your total operating um budget so um part of your audit District gets funded with circuit breaker we put that on there so that you can really see the true picture of circuit breaker um I've done a rough estimate of circuit breaker expected in 26 based on our 25
072expenses and it's just under 300,000 excluding Transportation so um we may have a little bit more to add in later versions if we don't have any unbudgeted placements but otherwise we're looking at this is about what we're expecting to um receive so I went with the the more the higher number so that we had a more um uh best guest uh budget for this point in time so if we look at our key budget drivers as I've already mentioned um enrollment is one of the key things for in District and you have that um to look at payroll is 87% of your budget so that is a huge payroll driver and our contractual increases in all of our contracts right now are 3% for Cola but keep in mind your Educators have their steps and
073Lanes which um can be anywhere from 4 to 9% added to the 3% and um typically if we look at that over all of our Educators we're looking at about a 1.6% increase on top of the cola so your your normal educator increase and that's your veterans and your people who are continuing to get the steps in the lanes is usually just right under 5% which is what drives our 5% number that I tell you if we did not have um changes so that is um a good a good piece of information to to realize is the Educators and not just the cola it's the steps and the lanes and um also realize that we are in the final year of a three-year contract um so this is year three numbers that you're seeing so
074in fiscal year 27 Dare I say when we start planning that we'll have a reserve like we did um in fiscal year 22 um and as I mentioned we have approximately $260,000 of payroll savings that is being reflected in the fiscal year 26 budget based on the Staffing changes um and we also have additional reductions based on the move of connections um and then we're again this is all repeating what you've heard in the fiscal year 25 annual uh mean monthly report and then our staff increases the ones that are already in our fiscal year 25 budget that we're moving forward is the point 2 El educator the point 2 prek director and the two additional um special education assistants that will still be needed because the students are still uh will be with us
075at Pine Hill if we have any retirements which we're not aware of any right now they will be reflected in future versions um but we were fortunate enough to have the two retirements that happened post budget to be able to go ahead and have those savings um in our first version just looking at expenditures a couple of things um again another reduction in connections we had some outside Services um that was that supported the connection students that um we were able to decrease the budget for if you remember and Denny talked about we adopted the new math curriculum which was a large one-time expense we are reducing the general um textbooks by 30,000 to pull that number out um we do are seeing increases in technology related accounts one talks about the curriculum related programs
076that we um have discussed already and the other is Hardware Replacements we have maintained about a $220,000 technology Hardware budget line item over the last several years this coming fiscal year 26 that is all going to predominantly be used by replacing the um all of our staff devices we do do a four-year lease now but that one-year lease payment will probably be just under $220,000 um but also working with our director of um educational technology it is time to replace the access points um at Pine Hill which is what sort of powers the Wi-Fi in the building so we have $115,000 in the budget right now to cover the replacement of all of those that is a hardware item that is um eligible for E rate so reimbursement um from the state for that and
077that potentially could be anywhere between 40% and 50% um those e- rate applications are haven't gone in yet um so we put the total number in but if we um realize we if we find out we're going to get awarded and know for sure we can reduce um the um version two or version 3.0 for the expect that we will get eate um reimbursement um we just don't know that for sure yet so that is an increase of 24,500 for those two um it's also time for our um General a transportation contract to go out to bid we're in the fifth year um in fiscal year 25 so in your fiscal year 26 budget is a reserve for the transportation increase along with um we're continuing to see increases in our um utilities and it's
078mainly we're locked in on our supply cost but what we're not locked in is on our delivery cost and we're continuing to see increases in that so we're increasing the budget to try to keep up with our actuals and so those two numbers together is an addition of about 60,000 um just for um your information we typically in a Transportation uh contract period see a large increase in year one and then very smooth and low numbers from year 2 through five um and so that's why we see the sort of a larger uptick that we absorb all in year one and then you're going to see you know year two and three are probably less than 3 or 4% and if you agree to take on the extra two years four and five those are
079usually like one or 2% uh so it is front loaded in year one um so we're anticipating that to be the same we haven't gone out to bid but we're anticipating that so we are carrying a generous Reserve um in the transportation light items for all three districts um for the new contract which we will have before your March meeting the last time we went to bed did we go with the same company that we did previously um yes and have been I think from the beginning of time so connley um typically and you will find this across the state uh when school districts go out for their transportation contracts they typically get one bid um and so that don't know if that landscape it's going to change um it could we're definitely seeing our
080our Meco um Transport company did change so I think there are some other companies that are trying to Branch out and move around so we'll see obviously competition and a bidding process is healthy um but Conley has been um our transportation company for um at least 20 30 years if not longer so and I think they provide very um sound and valuable uh service and do a lot of the Metro West y uh districts so um that is that do we know how much we um how much we pay in comparison to other towns yeah so typically what we'll do is we will look at a per bus rate I will tell you it was really hard sometimes though to compare apples to apples absolutely because a lot of times what's built into your bus
081rate is your mileage that you're driving and how you don't how you do your runs so we use one bus to do two runs so you're going to get a better price if you've got a driver who's going to be within a 4-Hour period do two runs we share that cost we do have three separate contracts with the bus company but incorporated into those three contracts are the fact that we're sharing buses with the region so Dober shares 10 buses with their region Sherbon shares nine buses with their region um so that is a very cost effective way um for us to do it and they look at it you know we have three separate contracts but when they're bidding it they're assuming that's going to happen um and so that will you know but
082we do look at um as close as we can what a per bus is and we definitely had great data data about that during covid because as you know no one was running their buses and so you're trying to figure out like um you know what kind of rebate what to do what's their base cost that they wouldn't go out of business MH um so we we at that point we were sharing all kinds of information that I still have um for comparative purposes but um if you keep in mind this is a 5-year contract how much has happened in the world um so that's why and I think that's typical even without being where we are now um because they've got to play catch up a little bit so that's why I think they
083try to to bring us up to where we should be in Year One and then we can go um you know more with the norm in year two um this past five years I will say we've seen um we do have a fuel adjustment clause and we definitely have seen that um kick in um and so you've noticed over the last couple years we've had to add um transportation increases for the fuel adjustment um because that doesn't diesel fuel seems to be something that hasn't really gone down the same way you know as regular fuel has um and so with five years ago if you think about what our fuel adjustment Clause was set on it wasn't anywhere near what we're seeing now so that will be reset in this new contract fuel cost adjustment
084will probably go away initially and then you have to see how it how it Trends but we have a 20% they set a rate and you go 20% either way before the fuel credit or fuel sarch charge kicks in so we will share the RFP with all three committees um so that you can sort of see um what goes into that that contract um so that's our one thing right now that we really have a reserve on that we um is an unknown at this point um also for your IND District um in tab two you have um a summary that looks similar to your monthly Financial reports but it gives you um year-to-date information for 22 23 24 so you budget for 25 and then you're 26 and then the only time that we
085sort of roll out every single account that's in our general ledger is for this process and those are your large Pages you might have to get your magnifying glass out because we try to conserve how many pieces of paper we we do but this gives you um a really good perspective of sort of three years of actuals um you sort of know that our what our budget looks like or 25 actual look like we don't drop them in yet um and then you can sort of see the increases we try to give you as much explanation as possible so there are notes by each line item um for your review and included in that then too is a summary of Staffing so that you can sort of see the people that make up the 87%
086of your payroll um you have your summary of anticipated grants and then you have the technology Supplement Plan which talks about the staff um replacement laptops is I pointed out and the access points for the Wi-Fi coverage um we've already talked about tab three which is your enrollment um so that is sort of gives you a a brief overview of your in District budget so before I jump to the added District budget just anything jumps out you or any questions that you may have if I may may Circle back to one thing that you talked about you're talking about uh updating of the access points um I have to I'm unfamiliar but is there any parts of Pine Hill that do suffer with Wi-Fi access or we would be looking to expand it or are
087we just looking at essentially a like a onetoone upgrade of the infrastructure that's already there from what I understand I don't think we have any weaknesses in the elementary schools um it's me it's mainly just that these have surpassed their useful life um obviously you bring in new ones you're going to even probably get better wi-fi access um but um we are from their initial discussion with us there's no need to expand it's a one toone replacement gotcha what about speed so we just upgraded our um sort of our our our sonic wall here firewall sorry firewall and we have updated our speeds greatly for Wi-Fi um and it's all being managed um by an outside consultant um and so we are no longer paying directly for any of our own Wi-Fi or Internet coverage
088it's all being um covered by the outside group and we I think if I understand we at least doubled if not tripled the speed I think it's all relative um but we definitely had an increase in that with the um with the upgrade thank you okay so with that the other piece of your operating budget is the out of District um and so um we're looking at 13 the same 13 placements that we have in 25 continuing in 26 um what I haven't done a deep VI dive on yet is the transportation cost so that's one piece that will be refined in version uh 2.0 uh right now I'm carrying I believe um the um oh I am carrying the actual so hopefully that won't be what it is we'll go back and look but
089we did um increase that but what I did incorporate is um except who um transports a major majority of our students were're waiting for their budget to be approved so that we know what the increase is going to be um so that is really a placeholder at least to get us up to actual um for that piece um in Tab four we try to give you a little more insight into um sort of the types of schools are out of District students are attending and in what grade levels because you're also looking at um you know who's going to age out um or graduate as you can see we don't have anyone scheduled to be in 12th grade next year so we're not looking at any age outs um but you will see that um
090you can sort of track as they're as they're flowing down because there's a good chance that some of the elementary students could go out of District but then be able to come back to District at the middle school but this gives you an idea and I will have to say um it's really beneficial for us to have one of our highest cost um categories in the collaborative so we'll talk about it accept collaborative we'll talk about tech collaborative um those are uh where we're members they pull their resources together districts to send students with like disabilities they're a lower cost provider than if you went to a non-public school or an out ofate school um so it's good to see that we have a lot of students in the collaboratives um that's a very cost
091efficient way um to send students um out of District um and you you don't always see that when you look at District so I wanted to highlight that and thinkk our special education um placement staff for sort of always you always want to look at if you have a close nearby public school than a collaborative so you want to look at the most cost efficient um and least restricted uh place to send students so um we also try to Ru forward for you um last year's budget compared to this year's budget and this sort of sells the story of what we talked about about in the fiscal year 25 monthly report changes in placements was a savings for us um and then really our only increase then was the tuition increase so even though you
092see net activity of 89,000 that's not what you see on your budget because keep in mind we're using 300,000 of circuit breaker versus 375 that 75,000 difference you have to um incorporate into to this number it's a little complicated um and then we just have an estimated sort of uh box down there of all the components of the um transportation cost any questions on Adda District okay so with that before we go on to the capital budget we'll pause here if there's any questions on the operating budget and then we'll ask for you guys to take a vote to approve version 1.0 of the operating budget any questions okay we have a motion to approve the operating budget version 1.0 may have a second naelson any further discussion I think Becca is not there um
093okay all in favor anyone oppos the motion carries thank you and so as you spend more time with your budget book like I said feel free to send any questions if you need additional information um and then we will have be sharing additional information with you in February on some of these increases to give you more of details um and uh also reflect anything else that happens between now and February so the last piece of your budget book is actually our Capital request um and it is broken out to be uh Capital requests for fiscal year 26 and then an Outlook of the next 5 years um and that's for planning purposes for the town you will see we're a little light um on future projects um mainly because one it's it's actually a very
094quiet period on our on-site Insight report for these particular five years but also as you know we did a building assessment um uh um report or audit last year and I think we're still um digesting that information and working with the town with our little building task force to decide next steps for Pine Hill so given that you're we're going to sort of pause really large Capital item so the one large item that is on on-site and sight report for right now is H is actually the roof covering um we have absolutely no issues with the roof covering and we did do an extensive um um assessment of that in fiscal year 21 we actually did all of our schools at the same time and there were no issues uh cited with the Pine Hill
095there were no leaks no no moisture issues so at this point in time we will continue to kick that out from year to year um so that's really one of the main things that you see out in the out years there are a few other little things um we have a Kabota tractor at Pine Hill that um will you know is on our radar um the town Capital threshold is 25,000 so that's why you're seeing these items for 25,000 and we have just um onside insights carrying just a grouping of boiler related projects but not out until like 2030 so we're not disregarding any projects um we if they were on on-site Insight we would have them here but it's a really um low Capital 5year stretch um that we have right now so that
096that's a good thing we're not really deferring anything that's going to cause any um irreparable damage or issues with the current building so the one thing that we are bringing forward tonight that's new to the fiveyear six-year plan um are three lower classrooms in the library that with the continued humidity that we have been encountering there actually tiles are popping a little and the adhesive is compromise because of humidity um and so we do want to replace those three classrooms and we have a state quote from um a contractor that we've been using for our floors that would do that at a price of $30,000 um and so that is the one item that we're bringing forward for your approval tonight that we will submit uh to the town's Capital um committee um for a
097fiscal year 26 Capital project those are the the fourth grade classrooms yeah the lower yep sorry U tiles in the ceiling or tiles in the floor floor file yeah floor sorry it's okay yep and I think that you have I don't I um yeah like I said we have a a quote base on a state contract to do those three with the um LBT um and again the beauty of that is we are getting rid of the VCT tiles that require the stripping and waxing um so they're better for the environment but also less labor for our custodians during the summer so we are close to getting Pine Hill um 100% non BCT tiles but at this point we're only replacing them as we need to um and all the other areas are intact it's
098just the humidity and that one lower level because they are starting to Pop um we tried to glue more of them down this summer but it's just you can't you can't go back um so we would like to replace those is that happening this summer or earlier than that it's been um well I think it's one of the thing it's builds and builds and builds oh I mean sorry when is the replacement happening it will happen this summer okay yeah if it's approved it'll happen the summer yeah questions on Capital no okay um may have a motion to approve the capital budget I'm sorry M just go back um the boorder uh replaced not replacing but boiler projects related projects how old is the boiler current and when do we see it coming to end
099of it service boilers actually um we've learned have a longer useful life than then in onsite inside so with with proper uh preventative maintenance you can replace pieces of it without having to replace the whole thing I don't have in my in my memory right now the exact age of um sherburn's boiler but we actually have um annual prevented maintenance contractors that come out check it annually do whatever minor repairs to keep it operational so we um we are the little bit of the money that we invest in um our annual maintenance contracts buys us extended life on a lot of our uh mechanical um pieces so you know one line item you have in here is the building maintenance contracted Services those are all of our annual contracts and the other line item you'll
100see is the building maintenance Reserve those are for repairs needed repairs but we do invest heavily in our preventative maintenance um to get every useful second out of all of our pieces of equipment and we do that across off four schools do we have any um Vision on any ways to make it more efficient though also so we did um in all three locations install a new energy management system that is supposed to provide that for us um it's actually taking you know it's it's you set set points and it's coming on and going off when it needs to versus just running all the time so that was one big Improvement that we did in all three Pine Hills was just last year their EMS system so it it tracks data for us but it
101also allows us to have um when things are shut off we do holidays it's but it's all it's all elect you know um um electronically handled so it's not someone having to do it um there's schedules and programs um built into that so cont um and then Pine Hill is um through the sustainability group in um in town I think a lot of our lights are LED those were all SWAP swapped out through some of those initiatives um so those are the things that we try to do that can make a difference but the EMS system was something that we invested in to sort of um more effectively run our our HVAC equipment um last question I promise but no i' like how is our boiler currently powered is it powered by Fuel Oil is
102it powered by electricity um we are gas we gas gotcha natural gas on what school yes okay natural gas okay um with that uh is that a purchase from another town or do we actually have maintain a tank no so we we purchased from like so we have a a gas um contract with um the region and Pine Hill together so we have um it's from an outside Supply but eversource y but through eversource but we contract for our supply got and then eversource delivers even though they probably deliver and it's just what you're paying right um but we do do uh long-term contracts um and Pine Hill comes and gets bundled with the gas that we use here at the region thank you just as we do electricity we do all four schools the
103electrical um electricity contract so by pooling you can get a better a better price because we have more um kilow or thms that we're using in fact the library in Sherburn is part of our gas um contract as well happy to all have good questions okay um we have a motion to approve the capital budget May moved have a second melson any further discussion all in favor motion carries or yeah yep thank you I will submit both these um budgets to the Tomas Sherburn this week okay um next we have informational items so in your pockets you will find minutes from the September Dober school committee meeting and the October Regional school committee meeting and our next meeting is on February 4th 2025 if there's anything anyone wishes to add to the agenda oh is
104there anything anyone wishes to add to the agenda now and you're also welcome to contact Christine before then if anything comes up um the one question I had and I don't it doesn't have to be February but it'd be great to get an update from Brandon just about how par and square and all that is going and if there's new feedback it's it's been a few months so that would be great February or yeah and that was one of so in your the strategies about communication and in all of your fiscal year 25 and 26 numbers is the cost of parent Square so those are one of the few things those are one of the items too that we were going to highlight in February in February yeah that things that um we have built
105into the budget that are related to the new technology the strategy and the um uh um School Improvement plan with Communications right so that's how we're supporting yeah we just back up to number seven there's any changes to the oh oh sorry agenda um yes um sorry next on the agenda were the consent items tonight will be approving the minutes from our October 15th meeting are there any edits or changes no okay may have a motion to approve the consent agenda may we have a second any further discussion all in favor motion carries okay I did informational items um so our meeting has come to an end it is now 7:57 p.m. may have a motion to adjourn second all in favor thank you thank you thank you for coming thank you sh thank you
106Kimberly did you get your budget