001good evening and welcome to the Greenfield Public Schools school committee meeting uh special budget hearing meeting for Monday February 24th 6:30 pm um let's see the meeting is being recorded by greenfield Community television if any other persons present are doing the same you must notify the chairperson at this time not seeing any [Music] secretary Jive will you call the role yes secretary janim I'm here member Martini here chair Johnson mad here Vice chair ston here member Childs here member Goodwin here and mayor dorer oh okay great then we are all present and have a quorum all right and it is 6:32 p.m. um we'll start with a public comment with folks who are in the room if you're in the room and wish to give public comment please let Susan Farber know she's right there
002and then if you are on zoom and would like to um give public comment please uh let me know in the chat let me just get the timer set Glenn it's two minutes right okay okay I'm going to stay right here my name is Melissa web I live here in Greenfield I have not one not two but three kids who all attend Greenfield Public Schools two of my children are on IEPs and one of them is on a 504 I am here to say that we are very topheavy as a district we pay a lot to our Administration and to our central office staff as a nice gesture we did a little Valentine's Day thing for Newton and I thought oh it'd be really cute I could you know bring some to central office they
003always forgotten about and when I asked how many staff were there I was told 35 35 is more staff are relatively comparable to what we have in a building for our students so to me I was not able to bring little gifts by I figured it'd be 15 20 people not 35 I was expecting it to be a lot less um my child's classroom still doesn't have an IIA are we competitively paying our IAS no I think I think we're competitively paying the topper end of our budget the people who are in central office kids don't get excited about a 504 coordinator which used to be a stien position which now I see is getting an assistant a stapen position that's where it was when I first started with my son in Pre a stien
004position that was done by the adjustment counselor in the building when it comes to an IEP I see a different lead person at each meeting but yet I talk to families in the community who have kids who are severely autistic and they tell me we're we're going to a different School we're School of Choice and out and I say why we have a program that can meet your child's needs oh that's never been discussed with us so I look at paying people more having more people it's just not always helpful need more boots on the ground can you hear me okay um my name is Tera cluder I am a Greenfield resident I don't if I should go closer that noise is a little intense anyway hopefully it stops um I just want tell you
005a quickly who I am I'm I'm fully invested in this place I am a ghs grad from 1988 I am the mother of three children who have graduated from Greenfield Public Schools um they're doing great by the way class of 2018 and twins of class of 2023 um I have taught in Greenfield Public Schools since 1995 um I am the vice president of the GAA the teachers union and um I'm still a Spanish teacher here in Greenfield so I'm here to ask you to pass the budget um we we can't afford to have cuts to our school um I'm in support of many things in that budget I think there are some things we could talk about um but we can't take less money um I feel like if the redistricting is one of the
006things that's really causing us these big issues let's look at it again I don't know that that's you know do we have to do the entire thing right now if that's going to mean fewer teachers fewer bodies in front of children um I guess that's what I have to say thank you very much hi I'm Judy Bennett I live in Greenfield I am an eighth grade science teacher currently at the high school um I will be moving down to the middle school next year I can't tell you how not looking forward to packing up my room I am but that is something I will have to do um I was looking at the slides from the superintendent and I would just Echo the comments from Miss cluder because I'm asking you to yes pass the
007budget I know it is a heavy lift it kind of always is when we have these discussions but the topics that were brought up on the impacts of level servicing of class sizes I know class sizes were brought up this fall especially with the elementary and kindergarten classrooms and I know that that's a concern at all grade levels um and this year I'm implementing new curriculum so I'm very thankful that the district was able to get funding and and provide the science curriculum that we're implementing and I know that that is also a heavy lift that if that is now on our budget but I do think that those things are important for our students across the district so I guess I would just ask that you take our students into consider a and our
008our staff in a consideration we all vital to the success of our students and our community so thank you that's all the public comment in the room thank you is and I'm not seeing any yet on Zoom one more second if anyone wants to write to me and ask to speak happy to recognize you all right I'm not seeing any we'll move on to the fiscal year 2026 budget public hearing um superintendent thank you I'm gonna share my screen copies of the slideshow are online as well as in here on a table if you are present here and would like a copy okay to start um would like to talk about the priorities that are in the budget uh many of these priorities also came from a lot of the work the budget and finance
009subcommittee did in meeting with parents and families at lpac CPAC PTO meetings school council meetings um we took into consideration the feedback that we got from those families and those considerations are highlighted throughout these first three slides one of the things and Miss Bennett already addressed it in her public comment this evening is to continue to fund and provide support in ela Math Science and History we've adopted high quality instructional materials across the district and we need to continue to support those materials in our classroom sorry to interrupt we we missed something we've traditionally done at the budget hearing um which Susan Farber has a a motion that we've used in the past can you read to us what that was Susan sorry about missing that the motion is simply to open the Greenfield Public
010Schools FY 26 budget public hearing so moved is there a second second I was it you m Martini okay second from Member [Music] Martini any discussion all those in oh we have to do by roll call because we have a member on SEC didn't you me yes member Martini yes chair Johnson mad yes Vice chair seon yes member Childs yes member Goodwin yes mayor dorer yes all right motion passes unanimously back to you superintendent sorry about that no worries um the next priority though in the budget is to maintain a level of Staffing needed to continue to provide educationally appropriate class sizes and programming we've also discussed the need to assist our elll population to invest in and adopt the elevation platform to support those English language Learners we want to continue to invest in
011professional development relative to the Social and emotional needs of all of our students we want to provide expanded programming opportunities at the middle and high school for College and Career Readiness so that our students have alternate Pathways to success After High School school we want to expand benchmark assessments up to grade 10 to monitor student growth and we want to continue to invest in professional development aligned with improved instructional practices reading and literacy and the last slide with our priorities is maintaining staff and processes to support those seal needs of students including what many advocated for in the fall a commitment to stor of Justice professional development for students staff and administration as well as training active bystanders for our students we need to continue to refine and increase interventions at tier two and tier
012three to support our students academic needs and close those skill gaps we need to maintain staff to continue to support and monitor student attendance the district has a chronic absenteeism issue and we need to continue to support those staff that do that work and then we need to continue to support and staff the English language learner program and our special education to address the increased needs the district is seeing from those priorities though I just go back to the entry plan that I've presented to you along with the findings and the foundation of our core values and priorities in District this budget was developed with students first the budget reflects what our students need and as superintendent is my obligation to put forth what they need and what is best for them this budget also
013reflects a shared Vision with stakeholders the budget and finance subcommittee made the effort to make sure that stakeholder voice was important and included in this and this budget receives that feedback and puts forth that feedback with those engaged parents and families that offered their input this budget supports uh the ongoing work that we have been doing in District to close skill gaps so that our students can progress and meet those academic achievements and this budget also supports our continued collaboration with families and what they want in order for their students to be successful in learning this budget was crafted because the distri district has um voted to redistrict so this budget reflects the additions needed in order for the redistricting to happen and that includes uh two middle school science positions and two Middle School
014social studies positions with the eighth grade returning to the middle school they will go to full year science and social studies and that is what students deserve right now they have a half year of each if you're a sixth grader and you have half year of Science in the fall you may not have another half year of science till the spring of seventh grade they are not meeting grade level standards and we need to change that we have an influx of elll needs we need an additional English language learner position for next year we need a building based substitute at the Discovery School all other five schools have a building based sub to help with coverage in helping out with you know monitor ing what's going on in the school day covering classes helping out
015at recess and lunch the Discovery School is the only school that does not have that position and then unfortunately the Alternative High School program that was created three years ago that was originally under Greenfield Community College and then transferred to the collaborative for Educational Services in Northampton they have cut that position at the collaborative as a program that is has helped over 30 high-risk students obtain a diploma it is not one as a superintendent I could see not putting back into the budget those students deserve to have this alternative Pathway to assist them in getting that diploma and finding success After High School so we're going to get to some of the um budget details all of this is part of the presentation there's additional um munus report over there if you want the line
016item de detail and all members have this in their packets this evening the budget that I've proposed is a 5.89 increase from all funds and a 7.97 increase over local you might ask well how did we get here for three years we were in the luxury of having Esser funding we had Esser 1 two and three Esser 3 ended September 30th of 2024 and things that we were able to fund with those Grant funds it's no longer available to us additionally we have outof District special edit tuitions that have increased by $1.5 million we also had a transportation adjustment last year travel CU had overcharged us for one bus so we had 106 I mean $30,000 credit last year that obviously does not exist this year they found the oops and we are back to
017having a full payment there I do caution however though we have not found out definitively if there will be another bus needed in order to support transporting all students where they need to go with the redistricting of schools curriculum and instruction materials you'll see in assistant superintendent Sullivan cost center the increase has been pretty exponential we were able to fund curriculum and instructional highquality materials through Esser funding for the last three years those funds are no longer available but we need to still support those curriculum materials for our students they deserve them they need them and the cost had to be put back into the budget and then there are some redistricting alignments where we had to add those additional positions for the redistricting and the reconfiguration of great levels I'm going to go quickly
018through the cost centers over the next four slides because after that you'll see I've done each cost center specifically and in detail so um you'll see the specifics as we get through this the next for is just a uh cost center comparison from the fy2 local and then the increase or decrease as to the FY 26 and when we get to the specific slides for each cost center I'll go through step by step what those increases are so you'll see on the first slide here we have all of the schools and the uh ups and downs that we've seen at each and we'll go specifically through each School in a few minutes next up cost center are uh English language Learners Athletics all the way through systemwide and there's been some variations in those cost
019centers as well special ed 504 Services custodial Personnel some school committee changes and then finally with the business administration through all of those you'll see how we got to the 7.97 request this evening wanted to go over some of the estimated funding sources I think as many of you are aware and what if you watch the news Federal grant funding in its entirety or Federal grant funding at all is highly in question we receive a lot of money from federal grants so what you see here is uh the estimated funding we've received from title 14 and 2A which is a Federal grant to us our turnaround Grant is not the state funded one from the Department of Ed it is the federal funded one so that tag Grant is also ferally funded we have our
020idea um 240 and 262 Grant federally funded and then other funding sources that you'll see on the next slide have been school choice our circuit breaker sped tuition Transportation revolving and our a tuition prek when I start the next SL Ides though I just want to caution um the uh Excel sheet that we use goes to two decimal points I rounded to whole dollar so there's some slides that are off by a dollar if you're actually doing the math but it's because of that configuration don't Fred it all works out in the wash with the dollar at the end but I did want people to know that ahead of time so I'm going to start with the Academy of early learning they saw a 6.47% decrease um they have seven full-time teaching staff they are
021six regular Ed teachers along with one special educator um they have a 6 social worker this year based on special ed needs and services provided they have a full-time principal a full-time admin assistant they have 12 instructional assistants they have their building base sub and one full-time custodian I also included on the chart you'll see that every building has instructional supplies office supplies and field trip money because I know field trips were um something someone questioned in the past so I wanted that delated we have used some Grant funds from 262 to offset um an IA salary and we've also used some a tuition revolving to offset a unit a salary teacher um the other decrease that you see that accounts for that 6.47 is just a change in Staffing and the step rate of
022a teacher hire that was either on a lower step than the previous teacher that they replaced Federal Street staff you'll see that they have a 20% increase and it may seem as if they have more they have um 12 regular Ed K to5 teachers for next year so that would be two at every grade level they have three special Educators we have one subpar program a transition program at Federal Street and then two special Educators that provide inclusion or pullout Services um Federal Street is unique though you know we have six Elementary Specialists but all six of them can't be everywhere so three of them spend their full time at Discovery three of them spell spend their full time at Newton and then they split Federal Street so part of federal Street's increase is because
023they share six Specialists not three so they have a point4 and A6 of each person's salary so it may be a little confusing but I just wanted to point that out because they do share all six and not just have three each Elementary shares a librarian so they have a 33 um cost share of that for the librarian and each Elementary School shares an elementary instrumental music teacher so they C share that of a 33 as well Federal Street has a 1.0 Title One math interventionist and a 1.0 Title One Ela interventionist Four Corners um you'll see that they have also the specialist shared the they have 12 regular K to five so they will have two classroom rooms for each grade level um along with three special Educators we have our Asus program Asus
024one and acis 2 at Discovery School so there's two special Educators running each of those programs along with one inclusion pullout service provider they have 26 par professionals um the Asus one and Asus 2 program require one to one for many of our students so the increase in instructional assistance are the majority of them are one to one one that serve as special ed students they also have a building based sub which is a new addition to the budget this evening and then a building Monitor and two custodians they have a day and a night custodian um they also have a split 1.0 Elementary um Ela math Title One interventionist Title One grant funding is based on poverty level and your need in school so they do not qualify for two 1.0 in that building
025so their their interventionist does halftime math and halftime Ela Newton Elementary um again 12 regular Ed they'll have a K through five two at each level that is a you know increase of the two fifth grade teachers that were moving back to the elementary they have two special Educators they have one sub separate program which is seeds and then they have one special educator that does inclusion and pullout Newton has two adjustment counselors um this year we saw an increase in behaviors and moved um the full-time adjustment counselor from a to Newton to help with the service providing over at Newton because the demand had increased there they also split the elementary librarian and the Elementary music teacher as well as they have a full-time math and Ela interventionist Greenfield Middle School the 29% increase
026may look like astronomical on paper it's a lot of the shifts that are happening because of the redistricting so they will have two teams of four in grades six seven and eight next year in order to cover collective bargaining agreement preps they had to increase also the uh unified Arts staff that are there so that they have coverage for not only the electives that we want to increase there but also so that we meet collected bargaining agreements they will have um seven special Educators they currently have four inclusion pullout service providers and they have an ases one and two program as well as a transition behavioral program at the middle school they have a full-time math interventionist and a full-time Ela interventionist they split the band teacher with the high school and they have the
027band teacher they will have it six of the time next year and she will increase her time at the high school next year due to another elective that was um very popular in the scheduling of the high school so there's an increase in music options at the high school and then the middle school has a 1.0 full-time librarian um that has remained in the budget even though it remains unfill unfilled um I think you know from the Personnel updates I've given you we've had three Librarians this year but because it is a unified arts teacher this year and not quote unquote a librarian um in nature they have departed because they want to be a full-time librarian we value the full-time librarian and feel the need for our literacy Focus to have that profession and
028that person remain in that position so we left it in the budget and we continue to post and hope to fill it the high school you'll see has a decrease because of the shift the eighth grade teams are moving to the Middle School in those salary line adjustments have been moved to a different cost center um they also have many different additional uh accounts in munice that I wanted to provide for you so that you saw where um many of their line items are expended they have um three adjustment counselors currently at the high school and two guidance counselors they have a principal and two assistant principls they have two admin assistants in the main office office but they also have a guidance Administrative Assistant that helps um with college applications graduation all of the
029needs in the guidance department they have 16 pair of professionals they also have a building based sub and two building monitors there are four custodians there is one in the day and three that work at night due to the size of the facility the need is there the other cost accounts you'll see on the left of this slide and I think they're pretty self-explanatory um the one though however that we will be um removing is the 7500 because you did vote to eliminate our neas involvement so we will not be expending that 7500 but I wanted to make that known the high school also has Title One money for a 1.0 math interventionist and a 1.0 Ela interventionist and currently we've been only able to fill a point4 La this year so um the we'll
030see when and if title one gets given again next year what happens they do have seven special Educators but the high school houses four subpar special education programs we have our Rise program our transition program our essential skills program and our life skills program which services our 18 to 22 we also have three additional special EDS Ed teachers at the high school that provide inclusion or pull out Services per Service delivery grids the assistant superintendence cost center I highlighted on the slide all of the Investments we have made with our highquality instructional materials and you will see outside of salaries or obligations to our substitute pool or tutoring pool the majority of the increase in this cost center has been textbooks instructional supplies and um servicing those highquality instructional materials and maintaining them in our
031district the cost center for the superintendent um we have an additional uh support admin staff who handles all of our FMLA workers compensation and supports the payroll department the 504 coordinator was made full-time and um while it was a stiffened position in the past no one would fill it and we have an obligation to meet the 504 needs according to law so we tried we worked with the union for many years tried to do stiens at grade level tried to do stiens for teachers we had some teachers try it and then gave up the stien because the work load is enormous and so we made made it a unit a position it's in the collective bargaining agreement and it is um definitely needed so that we are meeting our obligations under law the elll cost
032center increase you'll see is the additional elll teacher we need to support the districtwide needs that would bring our total districtwide of elll teachers to five and that cost Center also includes our two tutors that service students we have one Spanish tutor and one uh movan Russian tutor currently Athletics the cost center did not change um based on historical spending we feel as if that will cover what we need for athletics the nursing Services every school has a 1.0 full-time nurse plus we have a district nurse leader position that is is in that cost center as well the salary adjustments really were just based upon a different Personnel taking a position after someone had left admin technology our technology department unionized this year so now they work under collective bargaining agreement and the salary adjustments
033in this cost center are based upon the collective bargaining agreement that we have with their union now the cost center also provides funding for a 0.5 of our registar position special ed covers the other five of the registar um and you will see that um we have five Union employees in the it Union the 0.5 register salary a IT director and our network network manager in that cost center systemwide systemwide was really just uh a decrease we were trying to clean up munis Personnel control Ledger we move folks to where they should be because a lot of people are in the wrong spots but this also includes our director of Behavior Services this cost center also pays for our rental of the church parking lot for GMS so that we have the parking we need
034it also covers postage travel reimbursement for staff who travel between more than one building this cost center includes marketing newspaper ads when we need to run anything in the recorder supplies District wide Etc transportation we have 21 staff as well as a transportation coordinator 50% of the coordinator's position is paid out of gen the general budget 50% is paid out of special ed this cost center also includes mckenny vento and Charter School transportation as well as gas repairs of our vehicles we also chose to offset this fund with 400,000 from our transportation revolving this year so that we we could decrease the budget request special education increase um our outof district costs increase for students who attend outof District placements this cost center also includes salaries for our director our two assistant directors two administrative
035assistance and special ed and two educational team leaders those team leaders are part of the unit a collective bargaining um so while many of these folks sit at central office and are located there they are not central office salary employees they are simply housed there but they are part of the unit a collective bargaining our psychologists are at our central office our etls are at our central office as well as other folks that are in the unit a because that is where they have space to work so that is not simply 35 central office employees I just wanted to clarify that 504 service um 504 is not special ed many people confuse that and 504 does need a cost center to support any students 504 needs um such as tutoring or supplies for any supports
036that are put into a 504 plan for any reason um custodial and maintenance you will see that each of our custodians at the schools are in the schools cost center but we also have two maintenance workers along with a director of facility that are in this cost center we also want to say though that the increase in this cost Center is really about maintaining healthy and safe buildings a lot of our contracted service providers for you know checking up on certain things with regards to building maintenance have increased exponentially the Personnel cost center um some of this is really collective bargaining agreement issues that we have to fund so we have un and C course reimbursements per their contract that are in this cost center we have 403b costs that we have to cover longevity
037stiens for non- teers we also have professional development costs that admin assistants get according to their Union agreement so this cost center really covers all of those kind of odds and ends issues that are required contractually the school committee you'll see we decreased um we decreased some of the cost for the expenditure of our school committee secretary based on historical Trends and then this cost center also covers your mass dues as school committee members as well as your stiens and then last but not least is the business administration um there were some obvious Personnel changes this year and some of the salary adjustments were due to those Personnel changes and then there's the contracted service Prov provider for our current business manager in this cost center as well so through all of that is how
038we got to the 797 some of the highlights though are really maintaining and enhancing the programming at the middle and high school including Workforce Development opportunities at ghs financial literacy um keeping the alternative program Beacon at ghs and accessing foreign language at the middle school as well as highlighting the increase in music opportunities at both schools the increase and music opportunities at the elementary level the instrumental teacher remains as well as general music and our budget does account for half of the strings for kids coordinated program which is an outside entity but is uh $25,000 of our school budget to support that we also remain committed to the restorative practice work and the stiens that we have provided to have that work be fulfilled we have stiens for extracurricular clubs at ghs and GMS to
039get kids invested into more activities outside of what is currently offered and expand those options for our students and we remain committed to experiences we continue to fund field trip funding at all school so that kids have those experience and can go outside of the school building to learn we have a continued investment in high quality instructional materials they are costly it is a commitment we made but it is a commitment that we need to maintain we have um a skill Gap issue we have students underperforming they are entitled to grade level material in front of them they are entitled to grade level access and every student regardless of their abilities are entitled to this and in order to sustain that it costs money and we need to continue our commitment in all four subject
040areas so that our students get the education they deserve we need to continue the support of literacy as you'll see uh our tier 2 interventions and our tier one diagnostic assessments are part of the work that we're doing with the teaching lab part of the work you hear about in the assistant superintendence report at every school committee meeting and how we need to really identify those skill gaps and support those skill gaps so that they close quicker and our third graders move on being able to read we need a continued investment in professional development that's aligned with District initiatives we have to support our teachers and the work that's being done on the ground we have to continue to support our instructional leadership teams and the work that they're doing from the professional development in
041their faculty meetings and in their collaboration times so that we're constantly analyzing student data and finding out what kids need and addressing those needs continued investment in Staffing levels to maintain appropriate class sizes our average class size right now districtwide is relatively low at 18 removing teachers means collapse in classes which means increased class sizes um we also invest in administrative levels to maintain operations and accountability I hear often that we are topheavy we have mandates through desie through at least three arms of desie and we were chosen by a fourth this past week for civil rights and Mr messing knows who's with us this evening um to have administrative oversight this requires numerous numerous hours and effort based upon that our administrators at the building level have to perform and commit to educator evaluation
042over 50% of our staff currently are not pts which means they require at least four observations with feedback throughout the course of the year in addition they run faculty meetings they supervise and engage professional learning time they have the oversight of daily operations of the school lunch recess arrival dismissal they have to supervise and investigate all complaints bullying harassment or otherwise as well as try to continue to build culture and Community with families and parents I think that uh numerous teachers know that our administrators are working hard every day trying to support them and what they bring to the buildings that they serve we also have a continued investment in supporting the social and emotional learning of all of our students we have counselors that we've committed to maintaining at the levels we currently have
043along with rbts at our elementary to continue to assist with the behavior issues that they're seeing and then last um redistricting was really part of a lot of the shifts here with the change in the GMS schedule and the offer of more electives in the full year of science and social stud I a lot of that is incorporated into the 797 you see tonight a question that was posed was what did level service look like versus what does a needs-based budget that's presented and you will see that a level service budget is a difference of a $ 66,329 does have impacts anytime you reduce a teacher or a support staff um in the redistricting model in order to continue with redistricting those positions are needed and if we adopt level service those positions will have
044to be acquired somewhere else so we will have to make shifts and moves at other buildings in order to make that happen class sizes increase and class offer class offerings will decrease we could use some special ed contingency money for potential out of District placements but then we are also in need of having to potentially ask for additional funds if we need that funding at a later time and then tier 2 intervention supports that we've been talking about all year with regards to the core pass diagnostic test and possibly adopting Lexia to help with the skill Gap those are currently not allocated in the fy2 budget and would need to be covered in the FY 26 budget so I just took a line from policy dbd since um you know this was my first superintendent
045budget and um this line spoke to me that the superintendent is charged with making budget decisions that reflect the attitude and philosophy of those charged with the responsibility for educational decision making the need needs based budget or 7.97 increase allows the district to fund the staff curriculum instructional materials and programming that students of Greenfield deserve while also implementing redistricting and there's certainly our options the reality is you know a needs-based budget is based on our district prioritization plan with desie our strategic plan as well as our redistricting plan and you know we can consider options here and there but um with the policy in place for redistricting that is the proposal that is in front of you this evening and I just ended with you know thanking you for your support because our students really
046do deserve the best and I'm happy to answer questions along with Andy or Mr Sullivan thank you so much for the thorough presentation questions on the presentation I'm a good one so unfortunately the world is not um what I would call predictable right now for funding um so I have questions about different things but what if we had to wait another year for redistricting what would that save us really MoneyWise what would that save us I mean that the be the level service yes because everything would remain the same okay and that's every position is the same everybody is the same okay that's just taking out redistricting okay other questions member deneve I just wanted to thank you for the very thorough budget hearing this is the fourth one that I've been through and it
047is by far the most adjustable um but I did have a question um maybe I don't understand this the business administration cost center is more than the superintendent cost center in total and I was wondering could you explain why that would be the case there are more Personnel in that cost center so we have payroll our assistant business manager our accounts payable and our payroll assistant okay thank you any questions from anyone who hasn't asked yet I'm a good one so were we paying the collaborative for the beacon program yes so would we I mean so adding that Future Would it be additional funding or the coordinator position or both positions than what we were paying the collaborative it would be a potential half okay they were essentially subsidizing it so we had a cost
048per student and I think this year it was about 50 but uh unit a teaching staff to cover it would be more than 50 I think their B1 is 53 I'd have to pull up their contract but so it could be a wash depending on who you hire but it potentially will be a cost addition is that a program we could accept students from other districts not that I'm trying to make any money but I am and when I when I first created it with GCC that was the full intent was to try to have it become a program an alted program that would be Franklin County um and then it became a GCC program and they only ran it for ghs and then when it turned to a CES program they were going to
049expand it to Franklin County um but then they lost a lot of their funding as well so they cut that portion of their programming but I think potentially it could turn into that in the future I don't think I would propose that for next year when you have a first time ghs or GPS person running it okay Chads so this isn't a question it's a comment of something I found very very compelling was the move to full year instead of half year for science and social studies at the middle school I mean those are two incredibly important subjects science shows up on the mcast which our students still will be taking um I have a kid who's a nerd in both of those subjects and so I have personal stake at getting him more of
050those classes so that my two cents I do want to add level service would not provide for that may do you have a question oh your hands up yeah um yeah I have a I have a few questions go ahead them the first one is um first that was a great presentation thank you um I have our question about the out of District placements do we have the same number of students out of District placements as we did last year I have M I have Mr messing with me for confirmation so let me just get him up to the mike evening good evening uh a little bit more than that I mean in short similar so we're talking about for projected fly 26 at the time that this budget presentation was set forth we were
051looking at essentially 30 uh students placed and these are students that were also progr refunding um but what I would hope folks would keep in mind is for example last year right when we looked at the students that were reported like October 1st uh of this year we reported 29 students but actually looking at serving 44 separate students in that time so I would just caution us I mean in short we're talking about similar numbers of students the numbers are not drastically different but we want to also understand that those numbers are only so helpful because some of those students might be ATT ,000 tuition cost and another might be 156,000 for example but if so if the question is you know as compared to projections for when the fy2 budget came out as compared
052to when we are crafting the this iteration of the FY 26 budget uh pretty similar um when we're talking about es and flows and that becomes much more meaningful when we talk about the context of my desire and my full throated support for having a contingency you know nobody's trying to have extra funds but when we're talking about the EB and flow of those students for example even in the time since this budget was uh prepared and delivered we get notices that we are fiscally responsible for students uh in one form or fashion so um in short yes the numbers are similar in terms of uh particular out of District placements what is more nuanced is the cost of each of those placements uh not to mention the reasons for those placements for example you
053know referrals versus those things that are outside of our control uh thank you and are you a able to send us the ages of the students that we of the students that are going out of District in terms of I could send you the both separated out from three to five you know in terms of the younger students um as well as 6 through 21 and then I could certainly give the grade level bands of course if that's helpful in terms of trying to project out when students might age out um because the other thing that happens is especially with the highest cost centers some of these students that are in our residential centers for example if they age out um that has significant implications um and the one thing I would just take this
054opportunity to help folks keep in mind is that part of the other uh elements or components of the proposed budget related to District quality has an impact on our needs determination so our performance in District which impacts our maintenance of effort uh which is only relevant here because until our needs determination our performance with regard to students uh with disabilities in District improves in a couple meaningful ways and that's an interesting conversation on its own we are not able to take advantage of the exceptions for maintenance of effort which is to say we don't uh in other years we would get to spend less than we did last year if a student aged out if a student moved as long as we are in a needs assistance determination with regard to our district performance we
055can't use those exemptions um so again not to take up this time for that but it's related but absolutely I can send those in terms of U age level band and grades so I had a question about the what we said was a 1.5 million increase um the the office of I think it's student with disabilities I actually called on a couple of the schools they all can only go up [Music] 3.67% for the next school year so that the cost of out of District placement is going to be a million and a half extra is something that doesn't appear that that that that's going to happen um I noticed that you know what we've already paid for this year which is you know through February we've encumbered a lot more than than what we've
056already paid in out of District placement so I I actually wonder if it's going to be that much more where it can only go up that much yeah it's a a great point so for example we always want to be uh projecting out a higher cost than there it's always easy to pair back as opposed to that so we use a 5% expectation so when they just published the OSD number so it's the operational services division um that they set these rates for out of District uh programs and a couple of years ago it was double digits uh during Co it was it was asine so you're correct the 3.6% so we actually can reduce some of these numbers by the 1.4% difference um but then also when we look at that a family moved
057you know we talk about you know um the EB and Flow because a family is going to have moved prior to April 1 a 100,000 of that is no longer needed at this point right not that not that we don't need to account for the potential that somebody will move in um but again yes that's exactly point so reducing that 1.5 by the you know difference in the OSD cost and then accounting for some of the notifications for fiscal responsibility so in large part that's individuals moving in or in some cases uh like in one case for example if DCF terminates C parental custody fiscal responsibility reverts back to where the parents live so because the parent lived in Greenfield uh we assume some of that responsibility to the tune of you know 56,000 for
058example so there's a host of those um you know we talk about 114,000 that would be one we talk about funding in District programming and make sure we're robust in District you know being able to bring a student back in right uh increasingly because of the need at these out of District placements the value ad that they used to provide 15 years ago is being offset more and more by The increased level of need which is to say that these out of District programs are now only taking the highest need students districts are keeping more and more of those students and as a result being able to bring back a student you know reduces that and then we're talking about 1.3 and then we're talking about 1.2 and then we can account for some you
059know like the 700 in um in additional you know in the cost within that um but yeah certainly part of that is the OSD increase uh that was capped and those numbers came out after this iteration of the budget was um was developed and when the numbers are that big right that one that 1.4% is is significant and you know if the total spending has varied tremendously during the last several years other than that Co year yeah and I was actually doing some of that you know and again to speak to the piece about being topheavy like I would love to do more of that Trend work like as I was looking trying and identify some of the nuances like even looking back the last year before I came on 2223 trying to sense make
060of how some of the people Services budget tracking work Works were utilized but the current format is pretty similar so with regard to the idea that you know we we're topheavy I would just say I wish I had additional time to devote to that sort of things it's important right like fiscal responsibility is critical for sustainable um administration of a district uh I would say that I don't have as much time as I would like to do some of this work uh although there are particular deep Dives that I think will continue to do um and superintendent Pat no reference some of that work with the significant program uh program audits that we're doing uh and I think some of that will bear out for example with even um internal program evaluation right when we
061talk about evaluation on a couple of key metrics of our internal programs specifically how are substantially separate programs serving kids um what is the increased outcome for students uh if we're saying that a student who's substantially separately placed is going to at least be able to achieve at the same rate as their peers uh some of that but yes I would be very interested in engaging some of those deep Dives and I think there's a lot of that that would appropriate to partner with some folks um in terms of areas of mutual interest as we look back certainly before 2223 right so as you look back prior to FY 23 I think there's some real lessons to be gained for all the uh confounding variables for all the things that aren't relevant and that uh
062would obscure any insight from that I would say that there's enough to be derived from that and certainly it informs the these conversations that that uh type of thing even on a fiveyear uh would be would be worthwhile um and again I would love the I would love to be topheavy enough for me to have enough discretionary time and effort to do that thank you is there I just wanted to clarify something too regarding the 3.67% that is only for 766 approved programs so for those programs that are not 766 approved there is no cap so they can go the OSD the operational services division that's the office of school disabilities just to clarify mayor um they're the rate setting Agency for programs but it's only 766 approved programs so any program that we sent
063to that is not 766 approved the rates are set by those schools themselves and what does 766 six approved me sorry that's the special education law regarding placements yes thank you good one I guess I have two questions so and I don't know who this is for but do you know how many non 766 schools that are out of District that we are currently sending students to very few so for example we looked at one um that we had to look at um because other placements weren't appropriate for example if there are limiting factors for a student but in short like we try to keep it under two uh by and large because we have to have a rationale if we don't choose a 766 school there are very few instances where the circumstances would
064be such that there wouldn't be an appropriate 766 school okay um but uh one of them for example we have an interesting case there's a behavioral clinic that uh we utilize as an evaluatory placement because they're despite a student responding favorably to their time in that programming and the compatibility of that student's needs with the program delivered in that setting by way of them not having gone through the accreditation if you will you know to to be chapter 766 approved because it's a pretty heavy lift um it wouldn't be appropriate for us to place a student there so we have a situation where because the student student was not demonstrating fate there um we were able to access some of that under an evaluatory placement um but again that would be the type of thing
065where were we uh to be able to demonstrate the quantifiable progress that the student demonstrated that would be the type of rationale there and then I guess I've heard this conversation since mayor Martin was mayor um about special ed and the In-N-Outs of you know the kids moving into town and exactly so and every school district has money set aside for that child who may be around the corner because it is an a flux like situation that you live in so what is and every District does this so what is the you have circuit breaker you have reg regular I guess what I call it taxpayer money local money Mone local funding so what is the percentage that you're kind to hold on to because something may move into town what is that I mean
066it's honestly it's Community Based if there's some I've got clients that set 3% as the number I've got clients that will do like an average tuition amount but as far as circuit p goes you're only allowed to carry over your prior year receipt amount so that's kind of the threshold that if we were to have you know a move in that wasn't budgeted for we have two options we we can dig into the circuit breaker receipts that we have using more than what we want but then that just again kicks the can down the road as to having less available for the subsequent years's FY 27 and so on budget because you always want to keep a year in the re for the circuit breaker is statutorily allowed okay so we're keeping a Year's aside
067so you're basically keeping a Year's funding aside which is in a sense we're already planning on using that for 27 so it's all theoretically wor what it's already spoken for okay so that that explains some numbers because math teacher here is going wait a minute I'm seeing double things so because I do like I've lived this so and I wasn't quite sure if it was just setting aside funds so you're setting aside whatever circuit breaker gives you this year for next year correct so what we're budgeting for for 26 is based on what we received where it's using slightly more okay in 25 so what we're going to be getting in 26 is what we're going to be using for 27 so what was circuit breaker this year 1.6 1.4 1.4 says the 337,000 *
0684 okay you're scaring me but that's okay sorry so and we're going up what was the increase one point 3.67% it's going up more the 3.67 is only the amount Associated to the placement it's you have to we're budgeting for the 3.67% plus our known placements plus a contingency factor in the local budget for FY 26 okay because the FY the amount that we're carrying over in circuit breaker we're already planning on using an FY 27 gotta so we' got in a sense I want to say quote unquote two contingencies but one of them potentially is going to if we decide to use I'm going to call it the FI 27 contingency that just makes f27 more difficult because we'd be using you know more than what we originally plan for hence budgeting for a
069contingency and a local appropriation for fi 26 I get it framed differently when I built this budget I baked in an unanticipated placement at the high school level an unanticipated placement at the middle school level two unanticipated placements at the elementary level and then three evaluatory placements which are are much smaller they're these uh several week um evaluatory placements at uh the student stabilization and diagnostic Center and those by comparison are like 15,000 a piece but baked into that because on balance that would account for the potential movein um whereas we have done a really uh sound job of trying to avoid unnecessary referrals there were some referrals over this past year for students that um it was inappropriate for us to have kept people did their due diligence to try and keep students in
070obviously budgetary pressures right that we don't ever talk about uh at multidisiplinary Team meetings but are the realityy um we had some referrals there but in terms of those when I built this budget uh the reason I had one at each level was really to ensure we were robust against move-ins because of the high Mobility um of some of these students and a reasonable person not that uh you know correlation is causation but there is some relationship between some of these highly mobile families and some families who have found their students placed uh here so again especially if we're talking about either Franklin County or if families are jumping between Hampshire and Frankin County uh over time there are a handful of communities that families that are accessible with the real estate market so my
071thinking was that by having the essentially four unanticipated placements plus the uh much smaller uh so 15,000 a piece for the three student stabilization Center placements that was a uh conservative approach such that we're not coming to this body to say you know we need more funds or conversely like when I was in Northampton their budget was Stark enough that we anytime there was an out of District referral there was a conversation about what the building principle was cutting to allow for that and that obviously has KnockOn effects that are really drastic so that's uh framed differently that's how I had baked in some of those um expected costs and just one of the questions that member Goodwin asked FY 25 circuit breaker projected reimbursement is 1,268 1851 to give you a comparison FY 24
072was a $1,563 and4 so it's down by $200,000 that gives an idea as far as the I'm going to say the volatility of the ups and downs because then I also went and looked at the special ation tuition Trends um in fy20 it was $4.5 Million out of District placements with fy21 it was $ 4.18 million fy22 it went back up to $4.75 million FY 23 it was relatively stable at $4.6 million so hence the we'll say the rer coast of volatility of whether it's being fiscally assigned the responsibility of a student students moving in from out of state Etc all those things that come into play regarding the need to have contingency in addition to what it is we have for circuit breaker and the district itself reports the numbers correct to circuit breaker
073yes and to that point one of the things you talked about like process improvements one of the things that uh we had done even the last cycle was making sure that um State Wards were reported appropriately so the difference between getting a 70% reimbursement for a student who's above foundation so the way circuit breaker works is any amount more than four times you know the pure pupil expenditure so you know talk about like $52,000 for example you get reimbursed 70% if it's a state Ward for example somebody's in the custody of Department families for whom uh or we get 100% of that I bring that up because that has real impacts on how much you know being more effective you know are we leaving any money on the table as a result of our circuit
074breaker monitoring and um identification practices so you know making sure we can have confidence that of the circuit breaker monies we're receiving we are getting 100% of what we could have possibly gotten if that makes sense thank you other questions may you ra hand I have a couple more go ahead May um all the advice that I'm getting from the Department of Revenue and MMA is to be budgeting very very conservatively as we can't count on a lot of the grant money um do I guess this would be for Karen or could be for Karen and Andy whoever wants to take it um do you think it's wise for us to be doing the redistricting move this year that's one part and secondly have we thought at all of moving the um the preschool into
075one of the other elementary schools to be saving on a building and principal custodian so those are my two like like I think I just feel like we have to be thinking about how we're going to afford this so I'll whoever wants to take that sure um it is the school committee's perview right now to redistrict so I would deflect back to all of you that if you would like to change that vote that would have to be a school committee decision not a superintendent decision um as for AE and its move that has not been part of the conversation as long as I have been in central office administration so that would be a whole other conversation to be had to see if the space Etc would even be feasible and as to the
076conservative budgeting with the obviously the concerns of what we're hearing down in Washington I'll just say that the M Mass Association School Superintendent legislative committee has told us all to forense of purposes just sit tight and watch what's going on and be in touch with the house of Representatives representing the mass the massachusett delegation the Senate offices the governor's office Etc so um if you want to go strict numers wise if you look at the slide that uh regarding the federal grants if those were to go away the what would be available to us would be to completely exhaust any potential both current and future using current year receipts for current year expenditures which just again kicks the can down the road I'm going to say when you look at the way the federal grants
077are budgeted um as of right now um we are even though it's considered FY 25 grants that we're currently using the federal government set those in the prior year so they're in a sense a year and a rear so we I want to say being optimistic I understand lower KC conservative without any political connotations when we're coming to talk about budgeting is that it's a year away if you will the but as we know what's going on as I was reading the news who knows but at the same time we can't budget out of fear we just know that if the things are happening now if it were to hit the fan so to speak uh there are potential solutions for us and I also think back about 16 years ago I think it was
078under Governor Ramy when there were significant cuts the state stepped in and filled the Gap you know and so that's other things that are being discussed about the fact that as much as we're hearing about Revenue projection now this is just Andy putting on his financial prognostication hat um if you look at the quote unquote R day fund that the state has I think there's Potential from several funding options out there that could potentially cover any drastic draconian cuts that could be made at the federal government I'm going on quite honestly right now that I'm putting my faith in the mass Association School superintendent's legislative committee and saying right now it's monitoring at this point in time and seeing what's going on and taking the lead from the House of Representatives that represent the Massachusetts
079delegation as well as the Senate thank you Andy any other questions M seon hello um one I just wanted to take a moment to respond to that because you sort of put the ball back in our court if that's fine I I think it would be helpful to remind ourselves why we wanted to redistrict and we thought that it was in the best educational interests of our students to move them back into the buildings move fifth grade back into the elementary schools and eth grade back into the middle school and I don't see why we should postpone making the best choice for our students given that we don't know if the situation will be better in a year or two years so I think that we should just move forward with our plans now get
080it done and that way if it is even worse in the next few years then we will have already made the decision and our students will be where we at least think they should be based on our own judgment um so that's that's uh that's on that I did if if we could start if we get into some of the spreadsheet into some of the lines I would love to I just have questions um one of them is line 287 and this is in the very colorful spreadsheet um and this is the transportation contracted Services one I've got sort of two questions this is more educational or informational for me um one I'm noticing a pattern year to year where like in was that 22 21 goes it's goes from 672 down to $448,000 then
081back up to 609 then back down to$ 459 then back up to 607 and now we're going back down to 379 why is that what is that pattern representing is that like is there a reason for that and then the second question is I'm noticing that we're saving 38% of that budget it's a pretty sub substantial amount different what is the reason for that savings and can we expect that to continue into the future or are we going to have to put that back next year essentially so the 21 22 23 and 24 are just the local funds that's from the mun so we also fund the transportation from the revolving account for the fees that we charge um the reason why it is lower is if you look we are using that's what in
082the slide that Karen referred to as $400,000 coming out of the transportation revolving account account to offset the transportation program as to Future potential I mean it it it I I'll be the first to admit that when we came back into the district when I heard that the district was buying its Vans and running its own transportation I was quite honestly Dead Set against it but I say to some extent I've been proven wrong as to the revenue that it's been generating so it really is contingent on whether or not we can sustain that Revenue source for the future years so if you were to look at the the total transportation cost when you add the revolving accounts and other sources that we use sometimes in the past uh special education tuition covered part of
083the special education tuition transport special education Transportation so when you look at it it is more I'll say steady some of those years were also a tail end of the covid so we had less Riders less buses and then now with a new contract as well we had to go out to bid so it's a new year which resulted in a substantial increase so I would like to think that we could sustain the ability to use those funds from the Transportation revolving account but um we'll have to see thank you um I okay I've got a few other lines um and these are not the most fun to talk about but I need to ask these questions um line 308 this is part of I think the substantial reduction in the amount that the school
084committee is costing but I am curious if that is voluntary and how that will impact the ability for us to produce speedy and accurate minutes it's just based on Trends corly if you look at the Historical trends for what it is that has been spent it seems that it was a budget line that could afford to take a reduction okay so all right so it's more reflecting the actual great um line 318 that is a somewhat uh that is that is an ongoing discussion and I'm just curious about in either scenario of either continuing with a contracted service or bringing in an actual employee would that be roughly the same amount or would that substantially impact our budget at all you're on 318 I thought I was on 318 yes sorry I'm using my ruler
085wrong yes yes um well it was a posted position for up to 130,000 um and we have no updates on potential filling that position okay so tentative great so it could even save us $20,000 that'd be nice um great thank you um going back up a a little bit back up to 1678 and n one I I just wanted to and I hope you don't mind that I'm calling this out that there is a tiny reduction in your salary line and I just want wanted to appreciate that in order to be fiscally responsible um but I but I was curious about lines 168 and 169 what the differences between those positions are and why there's a 73% increase in line 168 what is that actually reflecting so the 504 coordinator is actually in that account
086which is a unit a okay um and potentially will be moved to the 50 for cost center at some point but that is where the position is held right now right um I think that all of my other questions were answered during the presentation so that's what I've got for now thank you okay been the good one and then the mayor if you had defined the 6 six can't remember the exact number $1,000 what would you eliminate well we certainly would have to meet with building Administration I wouldn't want to make that decision solo today so that certainly would be a conversation we would have with department heads and building Administration [Music] so I wanted to go back to Transportation contracted services and I just wanted to talk about the um Capital policy and green
087Vehicles we just purchased in of the last warrant um another uh for $97,900 [Music] micro bird bus and also in this fiscal year although I thought it was in last fiscal year out of that same line item um to CH the Voyager van [Music] and I think that they they need to go through the capital project and they need to be see whether they're green vehicles or not and I just wanted to call that out the the the on for 97,000 was just on the February 11th warrant and we the city overall is trying to have a vehicle plan and policy that is green and and Earth friendly so every vehicle that we're going to purchase we have them go through Capital planning we sat with Carol Collins and Paul L the um you know
088who's our lead mechanic to go through whether they were uh actually we can lose our green vehicles our Green community status over purchases it's not just this department but we look at all of them so go ahead I think Andy was starting to say something so the school uh every veh been purchased we are aware of the school and City's Green community uh initiatives regarding the vehicles and they have I mean we we actually sent this the stickers for the vehle purchase to Carol Collins I believe Teresa Martinez did to show that it they are in compliance with the city's Green community initiative regarding the purchases of them two of the vehicles were taken off by the DPW because they were deemed unridable and so that was going to significantly impact the ability for the
089transportation to actually occur last year so the district had the funds available we went through the state procurement process because it is a state bid for these vehicles and it was done out of the need to have the vehicles that we could do to to operate our transportation program all with in compliance with the city's green initiative I did just meet with our energy director today and she was not aware of those purchases until I told her however I don't know I can tell you that communication was made because we were made aware we knew of obviously the Green community initiative and the need for the vehicles to be green in accordance with the city's policy and we adhere to that so I'm just going to say this going forward there's there's we we have
090always from this day forward I'll just say that um and I think if we we make a real big effort especially on the vehicles from this day forward if we can work together to make sure that we're purchasing them in a in a way that makes sense with our Earth any other questions oh if I just clarify regarding that 97,000 that was a prior year open po so it's not coming out of f25 so it's not we we it was even though it was processed on the February warrant the funds were committed as far as encumbered the order was placed in FY 24 so if you look at the detail of the warrant the purchase order number is a 2024 p just a point of clarification there's no so any other questions a good one
091everything in here is you know close to my heart I number one for me the priority has been throughout my career when I've faced cuts and I have faced hard cuts um throughout my career one year I was asked to cut 20 teachers um and is teachers and IAS in front of children that is my priority because that is what it's about and then my second priority is making sure that there are reading specialists in every school to help the children who will struggle in Reading because 95% of kids will learn to read despite what we do to them this is a direct quote and then 3% will learn with a systematic research-based instructional approach and then 2% will struggle without reading specialists in our buildings they face a struggle which they shouldn't face alone
092so I I'm totally committed to that so when I look at this and yes we all want to go ahead with making the shift I mean I was on the star committee and we wanted our K5 elementary schools every Thursday of my life I sat in those meetings so one of the things I was trying to do as an administrator I've been a principal of 600 I've been a principal of 800 and then I was became a principal in Greenfield is and at that time there was a formula that if there were 300 kids in a building that meant you got a vice principal when I went to 800 students in a building that meant I got two vice principal schol right now Staffing wise at the high school and the middle school we've added
093guidance counselors which I think we all agree after the pandemic we needed more guidance counselors but we have a declining enrollment we have less children in our buildings and our Administration has grown so I guess you know I'm not going to be popular tonight that's clear because I will fight for what the kids need um and that's good quality teachers and Pars in front of them and I believe in the materials and we've lost all these funds so I'm going to actually I don't know if I'm allowed to make a motion right now we're on questions right now but there will be a chance to make motions guess okay so if you look at your administrative um staff and the number of children in each building you need to to look at the ratio of
094children to staff um and I think that's in the 504 coordinator position years ago all the 504s were handled by guidance counselors along with Medicare reimbursements which was was really a problem and that's when we had one guidance counselor in each Elementary School um and so 504 that job went from the principls are going to do it to a guidance counselor is going to do it and now you have a full-time administrator so I think there's just some choices we have to make for the kids who are in those classrooms and thank you for um the information I wasn't sure how many first grade teachers we had how many second grade teachers we have so we're down to two of everything and at work can I just clarify to the fedal cordinator is not an
095administrative position it's a un day collective bargaining position good that's better okay any other questions remember Martini sorry you know I have a lot so I try to let everybody else go first um I wanted to I'm always trying to keep in mind folks who are watching who are not familiar with all of the acronyms and lingo that get thrown around in a school committee meeting and there's something certainly mean a lot of that tonight um so uh I have a f just um kind of definitional questions um superintendent if you could give um those who are unfamiliar with school funding and the changes that have occurred over the past few years could you please explain uh for someone who is not normally a part of this world uh a very brief nutshell of what
096uh Esser was and why we don't have it anymore I had to go back in my mind about that every student succeeds at yes so we had after covid sr1 came out initially and then the feds provided s yes yes um and then we no longer have any Esser Grant funds but Essa is every student needs act which is our Title One funding title two and title four sorry my I know yeah Elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund sorry to it is alphabet Su okay um I wondered uh there was a little bit of discussion about this earlier um uh when the special education director was answering questions um for the mayor but um I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who um might have been confused by um the discussion about
097how out of District special education tuitions at state approved schools are set and Andy I know you have a an excellent little nutshell about that so I was hoping you could just explain it to people you gave us a really good one at our most recent budget and finance um meeting so to go first or no I just I just wondered could you explain for folks how those do we set those tuitions does somebody else set them who sets them how do they get set what happened last year so that's back to the rate setting agency the operational services division set the rates for next year with a 3.67% increase so for as Mr Ming said that most of our students go to that those programs I was just bringing up again for clarification purposes
098that there are programs that are not 766 approved programs that we are you know if we were to be sending any students to them we're not beholding to the 3.67% um and can you explain what chapter 766 is that's the special education legislation thank you okay um I wanted to just add to that if anyone would like to know more um about Greenfield special education services types of placements Etc including the grade level information that the mayor was looking for I would just encourage them to watch the present presentation that was provided by Mr messing a couple of months ago um at a school committee meeting and I believe those materials are posted online still um so that would be an easy look back um okay we already talked quite a bit about Transportation so
099I'm going to skip that bit for everyone um could you please um superintendent provide some detail for folks who um were have not had the opportunity to watch previous meetings where this has been discussed um could you just provide some detail about how the district's recently adopted high quality instructional materials are improvements for the district over what was or wasn't in place before sure um when I first came on as assistant superintendent the first thing I was charged with was uh analyzing districtwide curriculum at every grade level seeing what each school was using or not using and seeing if it was aligned with grade level standards and uh what was revealed is that it was a nishmas Haj podge of uh different teachers using Teachers Pay Teachers materials some schools having some high quality instructional
100materials but only for some teachers some not having access to any of the above so part of our turnaround work with the Department of Ed and our Statewide system of support um we were charged with adopting high quality instructional materials because we were cited for not providing grade level content that was accessible for all of our students special ed elll and Jen Jen Ed and um our first grant uh covered the adoption of our Ela curriculum K through 7 additionally um during Co the middle school had done a high quality math adoption um and had worked on adopting Illustrated math um the elementary school did not use illustrative and we were working to align Eureka Math for all of our elementary which is also considered high quality um they are rated on Cur rate on
101des's website so you have to have a meeting of green ratings to make sure you can adopt them under the grants that we initially received we've further worked to get illustrative math um not only 67 but also through geometry at the high school which was last year's adoption we've also adopted opai Ed which is helping our science teachers and that's grade six Through Chemistry along with the middle school has adopted investigating history all of these are in line with our mandates under our desie over oversite and are um continually observed analyzed and we've had desie site visits um that they do come to ensure that our students have access to highquality instructional materials that teachers are delivering that curriculum and that we are accountable for reporting out the progress that's being made with those materials
102so what would happen if the district to suddenly drop its commitment to all of those materials I could not predict but I could at least guess that um we would be cited Again by desie we have two schools currently in turnaround our high school is in turnaround and they have um we are going to an instruction prioritization Institute next week because they would like to see Ela high quality instructional materials at our high school because of the student progress reports that we have with our underperforming groups um I think it would be very unfair to our student body to pull the rug on what is actually showing progress and albeit slow and steady progress it is certainly something that in the adoption of these materials they say you need a five-year window to at least
103see the effects of the great work that can happen with kids so it definitely would not be um welcomed not to be able to offer these students what they deserve thanks um and I know you explained this but can you just explain it again because I um I think it gets lost for folks sometimes um can you just explain the shift from grant funding to local funding for those materials to keep them going sure um desie is wonderful about providing grant opportunities for the initial roll out in many of the initiatives that they project upon districts especially those districts that are underperforming so usually in year one they give you a uh a nice chunk of change to do the implementation process and adopt the materials in year two they usually give you a a
104nickel to continue maybe some professional development but that does not actually afford the curriculum materials so we were fortunate enough to be able to use um that emergency funds in Esser for the last few years but uh K through 7even and now along with the high school math materials the costs are exponential to uphold the materials that are needed for students to have access to it and the shift had to be made to the local because there are no grant opportunities currently right now however we look every week to see if there are grant opportunities that might offset some of those materials but we just have not um seen any come out yet okay thank you and and maintaining these high quality instructional materials is one of the pieces of feedback that budget and finance
105received during our listening sessions this past fall um from stakeholders so I'm very glad to see that represented as a top priority in this budget um I'm I'm even more glad to see the pursuit of um improved tier two and three interventions and assessments um and uh I wondered if you could please explain for those who are unfamiliar with those terms um briefly what do those tiers mean what are tiers one two and three and um can you explain what investment in uh new interventions or improved interventions and assessment will do for our students in that context I can take that one so I think part of well tier one would be essentially if you're thinking of a classroom would be the whole class tier two is a smaller group of students who may have
106a specific need they might share that need that you can do that in the general Leed classroom tier three is more specific and targeted need for individuals or small groups of students um I think what these assessments do is allow us to hone in a little bit more specific speically to have more of a focus on what the individual student needs are that allows teachers to one know exactly what that need is specifically um if you struggle with decoding or you struggle with long vowels or short vowels these assessments get down to that level of detail that way the teacher in the classroom knows each individual student's needs and can work on that in both their tier one instruction and Target those U needs in tier two instruction um I think there was a second
107part to your question uh well I wanted to know um if you could explain you know what what will these assessments do for our students are are they going to get them intervention sooner are they going to get them more accurate intervention what's the yeah I I think it also means that not everything is going to happen in a tier two or tier three inter intervention I think some of this happens in the full group at tier one because now the teacher is equipped with more information about those individual students in the past and even currently we have dible scores we have nwaa assessments so teachers are getting an idea of the student is struggling but what their specific needs are may not always be identifiable the these diagnostic assessments allow them to hone in
108um a little bit more deeply like I said concidence long vowels the r the r sound um certain specific skills and then we're also looking at intervention resources that can support teachers in targeting those skills specifically but also in their tier one instruction so um correct me if I'm wrong what you're saying is the uh first goal here is to address needs in tier one and prevent the need for students going into intensive interventions absolutely I think we we're looking at all our grads but looking specifically at Early Education to make sure students have the skills to be strong readers by grade three I think all the research says that that is the time that students need to develop those skills and we're seeing Nationwide about 67% of students are below uh read below grade
109level and uh in Greenfield we mimic that Trend um it's actually a little bit higher based on some of our um assessments closer to 70% especially for certain groups of students in greenfields um such as the students with disabilities that we were talking a lot about earlier absolutely yeah um so if we're not serving those students well in District where are they going rhetorical question they're going out um so accepting that we hopefully reduce the need for so much intervention um we do need high quality interventions so um could you talk a little bit about what um is being considered for investment in terms of those tiar two and three interventions sure so Al Lexia is a is a um Intervention Program that some schools in the district some classrooms in the district have had
110before but it wasn't Universal um youly is another early literacy support hegerty um and they allow teachers to focus on different skills for different students if the challenge is um phic awareness or phonic they have supports for that if it is um I'm sorry core core and pass are the diagnostic assessments and then the uly and Lexia allow for some of that tier 2 intervention so Lexi is a computer-based program that teachers could have students working on personalized lessons while they're working on a specific skill based on the diagnostic assessments with either individual or small groups of students thanks um and what problems would you anticipate would continue to occur if the district is not um invest in these assessments and uh intervention tools I think that leaves our teachers and ultimately our students in
111a more challenging position because teachers don't have the specific in inform information about individual student needs so they're going wider than they might be going deeper at that point thanks um could you I think maybe this one's for actually I'm not sure which of you this is for U but could you provide some detail about how elevation Works um and why it's important for our English Learners as well as their General and special education teachers who are not their El teacher absolutely so uh one of the main things that came out of the tiered Focus monitoring audit that was done in 2223 just became a just before I came on board last year was that our ESL program was in need of a pretty drastic overhaul at the same time there was some updates in
112expectations of how districts were monitoring so uh elevation allows us to do a couple of things um right now we're moving forward with the form solution which essentially allows us to digitize the experience and data points related to each of the L's and monitor in real time so for me the selling point the differen being just one more shiny digital platform and something that actually was a lever to improve outcomes to to leverage technology to improve these outcomes was our ability to progress monitor students in real time specifically if an English learner for all English Learners people may be familiar there's access testing in February which is a standardized assessment that measures them across four domains so listening speaking reading right independent of the fact that it's not doesn't provide timely feedback because we don't
113get it until later in the year and we need to have more uh quick feedback to make instructional planning decisions in the order of weeks not months one of the things that um happens is the state sets Benchmark targets for English Learners so if you are an English learner uh and essentially they can be at level one through essentially five but they expect most students to be exited if they're above 4.2 so in the district we see level ones which the beginners we see level twos threes and fours which are emerging bridging they set targets based on your access performance which is to say if you score at a certain place or at a certain level at the access testing in the January to February testing window the department of Ed would expect you to
114reach a certain Benchmark if a student doesn't hit that Benchmark Target the state is now which is different from a couple years ago expecting us to meet individually and have individual Student Success plans U because with what gets monitored get measured gets monitored so what they're thinking is is that if we are focused on all these students that don't meet those targets and we have increased expectations for Progress monitoring specifically no less than three times a year um and this is with a team this is with parents this is with staff this is with Administration being able to identify you know what it is that we're doing very similar to the tier 2 and tier three conversations about how we're changing the kids experience to improve those outcomes um one of the things that we're
115not able to do in an analy experience now is keep up with that in real time so again when we talk about adding a fifth position when we talk about the current experience of of English as a second language teacher there's it's not sustainable it's not tenable to expect our teachers they're doing a bang-up job you know the the teacher Fran Ortiz at the high school is really in an impossible position trying to navigate 43 of these individual plans right you could almost do nothing else you know we talk about the ways Administration can support that work in terms of helping offset that load we couldn't do it with pen and paper just trying to do it manually so it's really a force multiplier in one way just with the individual Student Success plans for
116Learners having it um in a clear place that's accessible to all people in real time all stakeholders that are working with the student it uh reduces drastically the time that a teacher is spending on the bureaucratic side of it the paperwork stuff and that to to remember good ones Point allows them to be in front of kids and focused on instruction and planning on instruction data analysis we talk about making sure that uh English as a second language teachers are available for collaborative planning with their General Ed colleagues because a lot of this work happens in the General Ed setting it doesn't just happen during the 60 or 90 minutes that a student is receiv receiving ESL so one of the main things that I felt that elevation did for us was a force multiplier
117in terms of the progress monitoring for students in real time uh especially when we think of it being coupled with the test of language learning which is a a progress monitoring tool that we use that mimics access that is provided four times a year that allows us to have more timely uh results that we can then take action on so the main thing that it does is digitize and reduce the time and labor it takes not only to be compliant right everybody you know cares about compliance you know we obviously want to be compliant with the state to make sure that the department uh isn't putting um Draconian restrictions on us but more than that we care about outcomes for kids so for me moving forward with the forms solution from elevation allows us to
118reduce the time that the average English as a second language teacher is spending on paperwork it also reduces the likelihood if we were to suffer attrition for anyway that anything gets lost um for example you know you have me Robinson who's splitting between Federal Street and Newton she does a great job of making sure that the central office files for English Learners is kept in sync so when we talk about for example our experience experience in the last year and a half with all the families uh who were English as a second language families of students English as a second langage that were supported by the shelter site the significant amount of testing and uh transience you know Mobility that those students experienced she did a great job trying to keep the central office fold
119files synced being able to take that away and not be Reliant such that all of those materials are within Arms Reach for anybody not having to go back to you know a file room at central office being able to utilize in real time the secondary and tertiary benefits of of reducing that the state reporting aspect is isn't aside but really it allows for individuals at either the classroom level the grade level in the middle school for example the team level um certainly the district level to have conversations about how a student is doing in real time at any point in the year what is currently in place to scaffold for them them if we think that their performance is a byproduct of the experience they're having so if it's lacking in one thing or another
120specifically if there a part of their day that we are not taking advantage of that we should um and allows us to make instructional planning decisions more effectively it also allows for us to review the uh timeline of that students experience for the time we had them in District to be able to look back was something missed in a way that we couldn't do now or would be um uh time or labor prohibitive if if you were to go for example and pull out a students manila folder and try to manually go through all the years of of paperwork and try and connect the dots you can imagine how challenging that would be having it there having it synced in real time to power school now for example that the ccla for example K through
121R has in power school grade level assessments being able to draw that that syncs every night is just a really taking advantage of technology to reduce the time that teacher there uh what I hope to do in the future uh as we are able to find efficiencies elsewhere is there's a strategy solution um which allows for even more professional development with General Educators with regard to the other key point in terms of um reducing the time that uh English and second language teachers are spending on the paperwork and increasing the progress monitoring um and instructional decision-making capacity is being able to share with General Educators so that is to say a Content area a teacher uh a grade level teacher at the elementary and be able to communicate with that teacher in real time about
122what a student who is an uh speaker of another language can do um and conveniently they're called can do descriptors so rather than having a deficit mindset and saying oh this is a a student who's U non-native English speaker you know they can't do this they can't do that helping the average General educator understand okay a student is at a level two in speaking what does that actually mean for their ability what does that mean for what they're I can expect should expect from them in my class and how I can make instructional decision-making to scaffold my class what types of things can I do as a general educator to help that student both access the curriculum more consistently and experience faster growth uh it just want to check and see whether your's question was
123answered yet one the Martin yeah I I um I was really struck by the level of um enthusiasm of uh one of our El teachers uh when I attended elpac to gather feedback there about um how this is going to enable her to integrate what she was doing with her students content Area Teachers and I think you elucidated that really well so thank you so much um let's see um superintendent could you detail or or maybe this is really assistant superintendent could you detail some of the professional development that is identified for the coming year it's it's in this presentation several times but I was hoping you could share a little bit of detail about what that um is going to look like based on the needs yeah so the professional development is Guided by
124the the assessments that were receiving by feedback that we're receiving from teachers um a lot of it is focused on current in this current year has been on the implementation and the current the implementation of the curriculum materials and our priority Focus instructional strategies um which we want to have more student student centered classrooms more building thinking classrooms so that students are doing the really the heavy lifting and teachers are facilitating conversations teachers are facilitating work and then this is connected to real world and relevant um relevant actions that are connected to the standards and I think a lot of the work has been focused on how we're making those connections to the standards are we at grade level I think the superintendent said earlier that prior to high quality instruction materials meeting district there
125was a wide variety of um things happening in individual classrooms and now that we have highquality instruction materials that are evidence-based we know that they're at the level and I think we want to support teachers in making sure that we're maintaining that level and not saying like all right we're going to bring it down because a student similar to what Mr messing just said we're going to bring it down so the students can access it how are we supporting them so that they can move up and uh meet those grade level standards or access that grade level content okay um one of the other things that is um clearly represented here is the high volume of stakeholder input that we received this fall um asking for increased and improved restorative practices um in preventing and
126resolving conflicts and responding to behavior so I wondered um can you explain what objectives the districtwide planning committee mentioned will be working on yes so our director of Behavior Services uh recently convened the teams so it consists of uh Unit A and Unit C members across the district across grade levels um they have a schedule that's set up and they'll be working with the collaborative for Educational Services Sapphire and Tom will be joining their meetings to really map out the um we call this year zero so that they can do a lot of the planning and um thoughtful steps that need to be taken in order to have restorative practices and GR Tred in the district um one of the things that we've talked about and I'm not sure if this will come to fruition
127is really just focusing on a pilot school for next year and who would potentially pilot um the work that needs to be done and then our teaching staff or Unit C staff that are members of this committee could be kind of trained by the trainers and then become District Trainers for the years moving forward um we're really excited because the collaborative is also working with with our administrative team already we have a meeting on Thursday with our whole admin staff um to really launch this work districtwide we're not asking um staff to do anything that we don't believe the administration should participate in as well um we've talked about this for many years in District and I've I've been part of the launch at the high school and part of the initiative and where it's
128taken off and where it's ingrained and it can't be a oneperson show it has to become part of the culture and a lot of that work is just timely it takes effort in input and practice and um as we grow into that we hope over the course of a three to fiveyear plan that prek-8 through 12 that is what this district is okay um what would it cost to hire a full-time position responsible for this um rather than a group of stipended positions and do you think these objectives can be achieved with just stiens so we want staff and teacher input because the buyin needs to happen because at that level it really needs to be part of the work that they do um with students with their building administrators with their own counselors um
129we have the director of behavior services and we've kind of dawned it as part of that job description even though it's technically not in that job description because of the social and emotional work that um is part of this person's background and part of the leadership that um she has done in the past that can really guide this work moving forward for the district so um outside of an actual additional position I think the investment is really in high quality professional development where folks learn how to hold circles how to be restorative how to um talk about the harm that they've either done or have been done to them and how to solve that so I think it's really key that the professional development is there at the get-go and not so much another person
130in District thank you that answers my next question already about what advantages to Distributing that responsibility um do you have a sense of whether there are enough staff who are interested in taking on that additional role in the stipended positions yes the committee is full they're very excited to do this work okay um great I uh I wondered if you could outline for folks when you were assistant superintendent of teaching and learning um how did you then spearhead the um District's strategic development in terms of high quality instructional materials related professional development and also um in terms of starting a multi-year plan for developing restorative practices and would you be able to carry that out now um essentially performing both roles if you were superintendent and doing your former role at the same time and
131if not why not big question sorry that's a huge question and uh no um I think many people misinterpret the role of an assistant superintendent as being an admin assistant to the superintendent and that is clearly not what the job is the professional development um alone the monitoring of uh student data the planning of professional learning and collaboration time for our teachers in the assistant superintendence role is very time consuming and uh a job in and of itself so I would not be able to tackle both roles um being both my previous self and my current self would be uh untenable actually I do think however though that um the commitment to it is what is intense with the time involved in those positions and I think that's what folks forget is that there has
132to be a monitoring there has to be an analysis of that data there has to be follow up with building leadership there has to be continual observations there has to be continual feedback provided so that there's a cycle in place and that is not something that is a oneandone um I've been in the district a long time I've seen a lot of one andone initiatives and it's easy to roll P something out and then simply forget about it because you get consumed by other tasks in your day and that is not something uh we want to have happen because we are seeing the effect it's having on student progress okay we are um past our 8:31 I'm wondering if you have how many more questions you have I will'll keep it to one uh look
133into the future how does improving all these things that we've just talked about our instructional resources assessments interventions and professional development that is to say improving instruction affect student Behavior student attendance long-term outcomes for students and our Educators experience well I hope it's a a positive trend moving forward for all parties involved but I think ultimately um schools are the foundation of why people come to communities I think when you have families that are looking to move into a town one of the first things that they look at is how is the school district what's the school district like how is the school district performing and I think it's very important to remember that all of these things are necessary to improve student progress here in Greenfield so that our schools are not in turnaround
134so that our students students are not underperforming so that they are allowed success and have a bright future where they can have a sustainable job and live in this community get back to this community and be part of a community so I think it's very important that we remember all of these things are working for the best interest of our students um while I know that some of these initiatives are a heavy lift for our teaching staff I have to commend them 150% because they work harder than any other bunch I've ever met and I give them credit every day for all of the hard work that they do all that they tackle I think we still do have some behavioral issues that um we need to address and the support staff that are there
135to help with them is pivotal to having all of our students be able to access the curriculum and be in a gened classroom so that they are offered the same opportunities as every other student I see a question from seon are there other questions there are should we do a five minute break and come back to finish those is that okay there's plenty of time if people want to ask questions absolutely I just wanted to make sure we get in our break so um we will take a five minute break um it's 8:39 my clock now we will resume at 8:45 as the clock turns to 8:45 [Music] a n [Music] n [Music] welcome back we're on the question section of our budget hearing member Martini do you have any more questions I I took
136up a lot of time so if somebody else has questions but all right we have to member St I want to give member Charles a chance to ask a question because I'm not sure she has yet remember child I just had a comment not a question earlier so my question is so we already know my thought on how full year science and also social studies are important but in terms of those positions would it be logistically possible even to continue having the sixth and seventh graders with half year for that in order to maintain the Staffing level instead of adding in those extra positions is that something that could even feasibly work in the schedule or because of prep time contracts it would definitely need to be uh remapped out with the Middle School principal
137because the current configuration and schedule that we have for the Middle School relies on those positions and the current Middle School SE schedule that they have doesn't have those positions so we would have to either create schedule number three and what that would look like and then how that would actually affect coverage under the collective bargaining agreements seon I mostly am wanting I have there's probably a question in here somewhere but I'm also wanting to externalize my thinking for anyone who's following along at home um or might view this later but something um Mr messing mentioned that sparked a train of thought in my brain about the families that we have had um living in the emergency shelter and and coming to our school schools in past meetings you have reflected that some of those
138families have in fact found permanent housing which we celebrate not in our district and so a person could Wonder then is our total number of students receiving elll Services going down that's a question that you could answer but noticing that our elll services number is actually going up somebody might think that there's a mismatch I'm wondering is my my thinking on that in trying to answer my own question without asking of you is that that actually represents one getting all of the students that we still do have access to services that they maybe weren't previously getting or getting them a higher quality of service than they weren't previously getting perhaps um or just like volume of it as well as like maybe it is not true that our El students population is declining so could
139you respond to that and Dave can verify all of this but I'll try to start the answer though um eell services are based on the level that the student is identify that so you need more services as a level one than you do a level five um with regards to our decrease in numbers I'm not sure we decreased exponentially we still have quite a few uh identified I think it's 10 two I was going to guess at my last conversation with you but it could have switched and changed um but it is also providing the services based upon the level that they're identified at and that is the need that we have currently in District yeah and that's and that's exactly it so even with the the families the vast majority of families have already
140been rehoused a couple of families did find alternative housing in U in District but when we think about the numbers even when we account for all the families that we were previously serving you know we think about a high we were like up north of 12 three and now we're hovering around 100 plus or minus depending on the point of the year but still to speak to superintendent P's Point like for example newcomer students that require significant portions of their day um like one of the things that the state is asking us to do you know there's a conversation about high quality instructional materials is improve our newcomer curriculum our s curriculum students with li formal education so that's exactly it so it's not just the number of students um but it's the amount of
141time that they need so with that span I referenced a teacher being split across two buildings being able to ensure that as potential increases there come back that's manageable we aren't currently doing a good enough job for our youngest Learners specifically like we're flirting with non-compliance at a preschool level difference between MTH state law and federal state law there but even as we think about the high school when we're talking about even with the the district's significant focus on development of early literacy and our K through four folks making sure that we're not leaving you know kids that are currently in Middle a high school U behind it is untenable to think about a case load you know of 35 to be able to provide meaningful instruction that's even before we talk about for an
142English as the second language teacher specifically but that's even before we talk about all the other work in terms of ensuring access you know inclusive opportun all that just purely getting students instructional experiences that can be reasonably expected to result in gains requires that even once we account for that thank you any other [Music] questions have a good one so my heart is breaking because 70% of the kids are not reading at Great level so I guess I'm just questioning why there aren't more requests for reading specialists at all the schools because to me that is a civil right that has gone un mandated and unfunded in our country that everybody has the right to learn to read and so I'm concerned you know everything here is important but to me that is a I
143know that districts have bitten a bullet and put more reading specialists in especially in elementary schools to to lower their special ed numbers because the number one reason that children get referred to special ed is because they have a reading difficulty so if we want our special ed numbers to go down um and one piece of information that maybe listeners don't know or parents don't know is special ed teachers are not reading Specialists they are trained in special ed and the children of our district need reading Specialists um special ed is when we're looking at accommodations but not direct reading instruction and so the more reading Specialists we have at our elementary schools the better we will service our youngest students and we will lower your numbers um and that is a goal because financially
144it pays for itself in the long run um and at the age of five they know that they are struggling to read it used to be the Red Birds the blue birds and all of that good stuff but children can tell you at the age of five that they other people are reading before them so I guess I'm questioning and I know you were trying to keep it down but what do you identify in here as something that's going to help our elementary schools get more of our children reading the high quality materials I got that but what else is in there that would do that after the adoption of all these high quality instruction materials we don't have a tier two problem we have a tier one problem and that's the the problem that
145people don't identify so so reading Specialists would identify a tier two or a tier three problem and when we have looked at all of the data and analyzed all of that we have a tier one problem and we had an inverted triangle when I came on as assistant superintendent we were intervening for 80% of our population and intervention should not be for 80% of your students so the high quality instructional materials require a certain amount of time for delivery so we have intervention built into our elementary schedules specifically for not only pullout Services by The Hired reading Specialists that each building has but then a lot for the intervention time in supporting our tier one teachers and being able to to apply in time interventions based upon the diagnostic test that we actually are adopting
146I don't think it's necessarily another person we need we need to strengthen our tier one instruction and learn how to analyze our data and analyze student skill gaps so that's what we're really focusing with the core and pass and then adopting Lexia and youly so that tier one can be strengthened and then tier two really becomes a true pullout of your 10 to 15% of kids that need it so do you still have have data meetings with we do and we have them as a district we have them as building leaders we have them at instructional leadership teams we're now doing it in professional learning time and we're identifying our three subgroups that are underperforming in those data meetings so we have um really taken on that task this year and what that data says
147to us is tier one needs to be strengthened so teachers know how to actually assist those performing kids that are in front of them and lessen or tier two pull out interventions from a reading specialist but that also means that people have to understand uh the science of reading and how kids learn how to read so we've upped our ATI and professional development and helping teachers in the tier one level identify how to actually be reading teachers without being reading specialists 19 I just had a comment that fits in well with this discussion um and um and I really love watching someone talk about something that is their passion like that so um that was um that was delightful um but I just wanted to add to the discussion about whether uh or not to
148proceed with full year science and social studies um at the middle school because this does pertain to our reading achievement problem in Greenfield um raising raising reading achievement in a district that fits squarely within the national quiet literacy crisis has been going on for a long time where two-thirds of our students are not making it um to grade level proficiency is such a multi-faceted project um it's never one thing and it's never even several things I mean there are so many parts of that um and I think that this um issue of full year science and social studies is one of those many parts for us um because we talk a lot about um helping our youngest students to master foundational skills and I'm really excited that we're talking about that because there have been
149some serious gaps um in terms of developing uh phic awareness and decoding skills and fluency um for our students and also uh it's important that we um don't forget that background knowledge and vocabulary are essential to comprehension uh those three other things that I just said constitute the other essential components of reading instruction and I don't know how we're providing adequate back background knowledge and vocabulary to our students particularly our middle school students who are struggling some of the hardest academically um in the district if we're not providing them full year science and full year social studies um especially as those are um content area domains that have very specific vocabulary uh in them and uh if we want to improve our students literacy and therefore their academic uh achievement overall we have to do
150this and I also um just want to say I agree with member seon's comment from earlier um I don't want to wait to make this shift in terms of redistricting which also then necessitates um this change to uh instruction at the middle school to next year the year after that waiting to see whether or not we might lose all of our Federal grant funding uh that year or the next year I would like to have this done now U so that we have our established um field so to speak before any such changes will uh potentially come down the pike so other questions um I guess I have a question um and I guess it refers to some of the budget vocabulary so I'll try to do my best to explain what my question is
151and maybe Andrew you can help um if I if I get this wrong but we talk about revolving funds we're talking about special accounts that let us essentially carry money over from one year to the next and sometimes it can be there as kind of like an emergency um piece and we're saying okay transportation is something where we want to draw from some of those funds this year for this budget or next but's being recommended by this superintendent I'm just wondering if you could give us kind of a overview of how our revolving accounts are doing overall I know in Prior years we had been getting kind of close to the edge in terms of using some of those up and how are we in terms of the healthfulness and their recommendations of where those
152accounts should be and where they are sure again as to the the definition of where they should be and where they are is kind of a a value what does the communities feel as I said I have one client who has an agreement with the the town that their total just because in a similar way that free cash can only be 5% of a a community's uh budget they use that as a dollar uh threshold for what it is that the school can have and combine for its revolving account so it varies but one of the standard rules of thumb is that you shouldn't be using current year receipts for current year expenditures because you always want to use like a year and a rear is what it is that's a best practice approach when
153it comes to revolving accounts um we are currently at that point slightly with circuit breaker where we're looking at to use maybe I think it's about $10,000 more than the prior year receipts that were allowed to carry over but as of right now we are still uh we are quote unquote I'm going to say using the prior year receipts balances uh and not using current year seeds for current year expenditures so that's solid for us that's is that forward motion for us from the past or how have we done there I can say the second time that we were here in Greenfield maybe six years ago we were using current year receipts Rec curring your expenditures and to be perfectly honest again and I tip my hat to even though we use uh we Greenfield
154use some of the eer funds for positions um we did not create anywhere near a funding Cliff like we've heard of other communities regarding the significant use of eer for personnel so by using eer as we did and it is a not that I would ever want to go through a global pandemic again but it did allow districts and Greenfield was not unique in using less of its revolving accounts that it urgently anticipated which allowed us to get us back to the point of being able to not use current year receipts or current year expenditures yeah I kind of want to underline that what you're talking about um because it was um I thought very Savvy of you and the and the prior superintendent in terms of really making a firm decision not to use
155the easer funds for personnel and so we're not facing the cliff that some other districts are right now with you know million dollar deficits and so on so I really um wanted to uh celebrate that um because of the district leadership we're in in a stronger position in that regard uh any other questions all right um so we move on to any motions um I have a motion prepared which would be for us to adopt the superintendent budget as the school committee budget that's there uh for us and unless there are other motions that people want to make right now which would be uh to make specific um recommendations for the superintendent to make changes to the budget um that would be something where we would as a school committee vote on whether uh to
156uh direct the superintendent to make changes to the budget and bring that back to a meeting that we would have um next week um so at this time I would hear those motions member Goodman I move that we direct the superintendent to eliminate three administrators and take the remainder of funds needed uh to match the 600,000 number from the increase in Special Ed Susan fer I did not get did not get that so you need to repeat it um I can repeat what I have so far your motion is to direct the superintendent to eliminate three administrators and take the remainder of funds needed to match the 600 something number yep let me get the exact number for 663 thank you Andy from The in to match that number from the increases in special education
157yes the requested increase in specialed the requested increase in special education thank you thank you for the motion is there a [Music] second let's see in a second are there any other motions not seeing any other motions I would uh like to hear a motion to accept the superintendent budget for FY 26 as the school committee budget for FY 26 at the total amount of [Music] 2,587 59 some moved is there a second second uh so that was a motion from Member de and a second from Member Martino is that right okay great any [Music] discussion I'll I'll say a few things I guess um I um appreciate the apparent willingness of the committee to move forward with this budget I really appreciate the superintendent's thoroughness and Clarity and your presentation I thought all of
158the administration tonight did a really wonderful job answering a lot of really uh hard and uh questions on the spot um and gave not just us but I think the whole public uh real education and what's going on um and the way we the way that students are being thought about in our school system which I'm incredibly proud of um I really am glad that we're not um going back on our commitment to do that redistricting we think that uh educationally it's the right thing to do and it's important that we as a district as as a school committee put forward a budget that represents what we really think is best for the students um it is a budget that reflects a lot of hard choices and there maybe there will be hard choices ahead
159for the mayor for the city council and um and I just want to say that in the richest country on the planet the fact that these choices are so hard and that it pushes taxpayers so hard to pay for these schools the way we that we do in a in a world where you know billionaires are taking a sledgehammer to government instead of contributing to public education um is is a crying shame but I think that we um I'm I'm proud of uh our leadership of our committee and of our city in t taking on these uh hard challenges together um to come up with a budget that will work for our students and for our community any other comments or discussion okay member Den will you secretary Den will you call the vote Yes
160secretary J I'm a yes member Mar yes chair Johnson mad yes Vice chair c yes member Childs yes member goodin no mayor dorer no okay the motion carries with two knows okay um so uh the uh desired outcome of next week's meeting would have been to um take any changes that that committee directed the superintendent to make and to vote on the final budget but since we've done that tonight and I think we will cancel that meeting um we will hear I'd like to hear a motion to adjourn oh yes first please a motion to close the budget hearing oh thank you very much our honor a parliamentarian which I really appreciate I'd like to hear a motion to close our budget hearing so moved is there a second second so that was a motion
161from Member Charles and a second from Member Den Martini Martini okay any discussion uh secretary didn't need weall the vote on the motion to close the budget hearing sure Den Dena member Martin yes chair Johnson M yes Vice chair seon yes member Childs yes member Goodwin yes mayor dorer yes motion passes all right and now I would like to hear a motion to close our regular meeting so moved a motion from H Martini seconded a second from H child's any discussion secretary Den will you call a vote Yes Yes chair Johnson the sun yes Vice chair seon yes member child yes member good member mayor disor yes motion class is we are adjourned at 9:13 p.m. thanks for your hard work everybody [Music]