WPS School Committee January 13th, 2026

001Good evening everyone. With the time being six o'clock p.m. on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, I will call this meeting of the Webster School Committee to order and ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The first item on the agenda is the review and approval of the minutes from the December 9th, 2025 meeting. Is there any discussion around those minutes? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve them. >> So move. >> Second. >> There's a motion and a second. Desire, would you please pull the committee? >> Yes. I'm going to abstain. >> Yes. Motion passes. And the next item on the

002agenda is our superintendence report. Good evening, Mrs. Pingley. >> Good evening and happy new year. Welcome back. I hope everybody had some nice time off over the holidays. I know we certainly appreciated our twoe break and I know I especially appreciated that break. So, it was nice to have that time with family and just some quiet and downtime. Um, I'd like to start off by giving a personnel update. Um, I have no retirements at this time to announce or official retirements, I should say, to announce at this time. Uh, for new hires, we have hired two new staff. Lauraai Chisnowski, a PAR professional at Webster Middle School, and Dominic Palm Marino, a new custodian at Bartlet High School. We'd like to welcome them both to the Webster School District, and we're excited to have them

003on board. Uh we did receive one resignation, Rebecca Connley, who was a power professional at um Parkav Elementary. Um so we're sad to see her go, but we wish her all the best of luck in her future endeavors. There are no transfers at this time and we continue to have a shortage of instructional assistants in ABAs. Um like many other districts across, we continue to advertise. We continue to look to hire new staff. Um, as you know, we had a nice little surge before the Christmas break of hiring um with six new staff on board. So, we hope the new year will continue that and we can bring some more members in. Are there any questions about personnel? Okay. Um, as far as instructional update, uh, as you know, the first week back was extremely

004busy. Um, busier than I would have liked actually. We were running around this week. Uh on Monday, January 5th, we did have our new power and ABA orientation. We had the six new members that we hired before break. Um there was a training here in central office with Miss Debbie Rivera, our curriculum director. Um the feedback that we've been receiving about the onboarding has been very positive. uh we do um send them a form and ask for feedback and they've all um been happy to go through the training and find it helpful. So we'll at the end of the year we'll continue we'll take a look at all of it what and adjust if we need to adjust to make anything better or improve on it. Um but so far I would I would say

005it's successful so we're happy about that. There any questions about the training? Oh I have the full team here tonight. So, if there's any questions, don't feel free to ask. Um, back in November, I notified you that Webster Middle School and Bartlett High School were receiving site vis visits from the Center for School District Partnership, which they call the CSDP monitoring. Um, the first week back, uh, Webster Middle School had their visit. Uh, Bartlett is scheduled for the week of February 23rd. Um, progress monitoring includes an analysis of data such as MCCAST, vocal access, and more. And they're going to do a deep dive into school level data practices collected through a one or two day visit. Um, I know Miss Peterson will be here and she will be able to update you on the

006um visit that they had at Webster Middle School. Uh this past Thursday, we continued our Dilt walkthroughs. Um and in our upcoming meeting in February, we're going to be analyzing and discussing our mid-year data, see what that looks like at that point in time and see if we made uh any progress on our instructional priority and see if we need to make any shifts and not. And then this coming week uh coming up, I have two board meetings on Thursday and Friday. So I will be at the collaboratives both days this week, Thursday and Friday. I also have a desi scheduling meeting at Holy Cross on Thursday that I will be attending with um Dr. Mai, Miss Hair, Miss Peterson. Uh it is scheduling for L and special ed. So we're taking a look at

007the schedules and I believe actually Miss Neves is also going um to see how that works in with the high school also. So, we will be doing that on Thursday. And then finally, uh the leadership team continues to work on a strategic plan. Uh we hope to finish it in our upcoming uh full DLD on January 22nd. We met as a DT a couple of weeks ago and touch base on that, did some more work, and then hopefully we can complete the final steps um so we can bring um that to the committee for their review. And I'm not going to do too much more talking tonight. That's it. Uh just a little bit more to go. Are there any questions for instructional leadership? >> No. >> Through the chair. Member Millet. I do not

008have a question, but I have a huge comment. >> A huge comment. I like it. Huge. >> Bring it on. Well, at our last meeting, I asked for Christmas cards for Webster Mina and Park AB came through with flying colors. Excellent. Oh, I want to say a huge thank you to the students and staff at Park AB because I picked up a box. >> That is wonderful >> of cards and brought them and they were so the people at um Webster were so excited to get them. >> That is wonderful >> to give to people. So, I wanted to make sure I got my thank you out. >> Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Amy, for doing that with your staff. >> They did. It was a big box. >> Excellent. Excellent. Um, in

009other updates, um, excited to inform you and Miss Nez is here, so if she wants to add a little more detail, she can. I don't want to spoil it too much. um that Bartlett High School is being recognized for their work with um Big Brother, Big Sister and have been ex uh invited to a ceremony on March 26 in Worester. So, we will be heading out there. Do you want to add any you want to wait till your next meeting? We're gathering more details on it, but um it was an exciting phone call that we received this week. So, Miss um Miss Neves will give you an update at uh her meeting, I think, which is next time, right? Next meeting. Um, on December 16th, I attended Adults Ed Multicultural Night at Bartlett High School.

010That was a wonderful event and I want to give a shout out to director Ava Landry for her work in putting that together. It was very well attended. It it was exciting to see parents and students um and children celebrating in a variety of cultures. They had um it was a wonderful turnout. They had a lot of staff and uh students, adult students and younger students there. And I will tell you the food was delicious from everybody. So I went there uh not intending to eat dinner and I ate more than my share um trying new foods. It was wonderful. So I want to give Ava a shout out for that. Um it was also very exciting to see before Christmas that our winter performance by our coral and band group on December 18th in

011our new auditorium. Um it was magical to be there and all the feedback that we received from parents and community members um was fantastic. It's just uh being in that auditorium uh it feels uh what's the word I want to use? You know, for me it felt magical being in there, but everything, the visual, the seeing, the sound, um the it feels like you're close. You're sitting right up there in front. I was actually up on the balcony. Um to get a feel for that. And it just I don't think there's a bad seat in the house. Um and it was just great to see. And I know the chorus and band were very excited to be performing in there. Oh, any comments? Any >> I just want to say my son and I went

012and he took pictures and then he sent them to his brother because they both graduated from Bartlett and they're very excited. They they want to see this when it's all completed. >> That's great. That's great. It's moving along. We're getting there. So, but it was wonderful to be in the auditorium and I the use moving forward we I can't wait to see a play um the drama in there and other uses of the auditorium. I'm sure it's going to get its use and um for many things and even the community welcoming the community into our auditorium um I'm excited to hear the feedback on that. And then we've started work on our upcoming school year calendar. So I hope to bring that to you either at the next meeting or the first meeting in February.

013Once I get some draft, we work through it as an admin team and then once I feel ready, we'll bring it forward to you. And then on this Friday evening, I attended the winter literacy night at Park A. Um it was great to see the parents and students and staff show up. I want to thank the PTO for organizing this event and for all the volunteers and staff who gave up their Friday night to make um the evening a success. I know I saw Miss Pulyafo and Mrs. O there and many teachers if it wasn't for them doing the crafts, doing the shows, um doing the readings. We wouldn't have these wonderful events. So, I just want to say thank you to all of them for giving up their Friday night and coming out and

014supporting our families. And that concludes my report. >> Thank you, Mrs. Fangley. Any questions or comments from the committee? >> No. Hearing none. Okay. Well, thank you. >> I appreciate >> trying to keep it at a minimum because you're going to hear enough from me later. >> Yes. Uh the next item on the agenda is our business manager report. Good evening, Mrs. Ktos. >> Good evening, everyone. Happy New Year. Um, we're going to get started with a update on the renovation project. In followup to our last meeting, I did share with you that the phase 2 completion date was at risk. We have confirmed that that schedule is going to move out two months. So, from February break to April break and that is confirmed being moved out. There were attempts to try to accelerate

015the schedule, work weekends, work nights. um some of those options added additional cost to try to expedite that and even at that that schedule was really not realistic and so the end result is that we are moving that date out and as we shared we certainly weren't going to push to get a just in time get into the building like we did last time. We really wanted it all to be buttoned up so that that move in and that transition was smooth um and that we didn't spend 80 hours here during uh the break to get it all done. So that is moving. What we don't know at this point though is whether or not that is going to move the phase 3 date out. Um they are evaluating the schedule to see if they

016will be able to accelerate over the summer um to be able to keep it on track for October. Um they're evaluating the schedule um not confident that they'll be able to pull it in in October, but the OPM is looking at those schedules to try to see whether or not this is really going to be feasible. and then they'll advise us back on that. Any questions? Uh, in terms of getting ready for that move, we actually have still been working on move planning. So, one of the things we accomplished over break is we had two of our science teachers in as well as a chemical company and we were able to actually go through all of the science chemicals, get some of the chemicals disposed of and the remaining chemicals in their different classes and

017stored until we're ready for the move. So, that was a big accomplishment to get that done. And so really appreciated the teachers coming in and helping us get that done. The other tidbit is that the school building committee just last week took a tour of section B and I know two members of the school committee were able to join. Um so I think it was exciting to get in there be able to see it come to life. Uh the ceilings I know weren't up so you were able to see all the mechanicals in the ceilings and all of the wiring that's running through but you were able to get a good feel for that layout of section B. I don't know if any of you want to comment about what you saw or add to

018that. I know I couldn't walk through myself, but um I did hear it was very good. >> It's exciting to start walking through and seeing walls up, drywall up, um flooring start to be laid, trying to actually get a understanding of where am I at in the building because it looks so different with maps to say, can you tell me again where I am? Can you tell me what rooms these are going to be? Because it's that different when you walk through. Um, but it is exciting. Uh, and I I can't wait to see it done. We will find a time to invite the whole school committee to go through so you can take a look at it. Um, but it is moving along. You you think when you walk through, you think, is this

019going to be ready in 3 months? Um, but it's amazing how fast progress happens um in the building every day. So yeah, I think the big shift is we were so accustomed to one hallway throughout the entire building and once you get into section B that really changes from section C, right? It's not just one hallway. There's different nooks and crann um um um in the building which gives it a completely different look and feel um to how the flow goes, right? So it's exciting. We're actually um I think the report we got last week is officially about 73% complete in the project. I think we reported that with the completion of phase one that was 50% and so now we're up to about 73%. So after we get through this the hate to say

020it the next two phases are going to feel very very easy in comparison to the first two. >> Take that back. >> I said feel easy. It would be easy. Um okay, moving on to some maintenance updates. Uh the first one's really not a maintenance uh per se, but just awareness. We actually had a power outage um in our IT closets at Park A last week which caused some of our internet to go down. It turns out that a breaker in a full room UPS went out and the likely suspected cause was a power surge of some type that caused that to happen, but we were able to get that back online. Um, at Webster Middle School, we did have to replace a valve on our a water tank uh that was malfunctioning. And we're

021also working on replacing a shower in one of the science classrooms that actually had a leak that was coming through on the ceiling. Um, and then in the district office, we've had some challenges with the heat in this section and we actually had some compressors that had to be replaced that were under warranty. Those compressors were replaced, but in the course of doing the work of replacing the compressors, of course, more things came to light. We had some refrigerant that needed to be recovered. We had some sensors that needed to be replaced. And then in the superintendent's office, the the thermostat itself was sending some errors out. So, a cassette actually had to be replaced. So, now the heat is in full force. I think we can all feel it in this room. Um Yeah.

022Yeah. Working good. I mean, and we we needed that because on some of those cold days, it was getting cold in here. So, I think we're up and running all in this section now. So that's it for maintenance updates unless there's any questions. Okay, I'm going to move on to some other updates. I want to give an update on the chapter 70 formula. Um the foundation uh inflation factor has been set at 2.76%. That's one of the factors that's used in the chapter 70 formula. This is what they're considering the second release. They technically feel like they're behind schedule because of the government shutdown. Um, but Desi will actually use the final factor that's going to be released on January 22nd. And from what I understand, there's not usually much fluctuation with that factor. Um,

023and last year was at 1.93. So, this is an increase over last year. And so, that's some some good news in terms of um what we can potentially look to see in state aid. The other thing that happened um on the chapter 70 front as we're looking forward to budgeting at the state level is the joint ways and means committee met. They met with the mass uh taxpayers foundation um and the department of revenue to take a look at revenues and look at the levels that we are at at 26 and whether or not they're going to be making any changes. And the projections really landed with the do looking at projections between 1.7 and 3.1% increases potentially. and the taxpayer um foundation is really thinking it's somewhere between two and 3% but they're proceeding

024with caution as they look at what those revenues might be moving forward. Um so that's the latest report that we've gotten from MASBO on chapter 70 on the f federal grant front. We're continuing to monitor where we are with uh the grant funding. As you know on November 12th the continuing resolution was issued and that runs through January 20th. Um, so we're really in a state of flux hoping that they'll be able to get a budget pass because the what they're working on has a direct impact on our title grants as well as um our sped grants as we move forward. So if they can't come to an agreement, you know, we'll continue moving forward without a sense of clarity of where what direction the grant funding is going at at the federal level. They

025also did announce, which you may already be aware of, is that they're shifting the responsibility of the title grants from the Department of Education to the Department of Labor. It does look like the um special education grants will stay with the Department of Education um for the time being. They haven't um made any announcements that they're going to be shifting that at all. Any questions on that? The other thing just for awareness, it's in your packet if you're interested. At the end of this month, the Mass Taxpayers Foundation is going to have an open house. It's a virtual open house and they will be going over Governor Healey's budget. So, they're going to give a full overview of that if you're interested in attending. There's a link in your packet if you want to register

026for that. Um, and also on the chapter 70 front, um, what I included in your packet is two testimonies about the chapter 70 formula that I thought you might find interesting. One is from the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center itself as well as MASBO which they did their own analysis of what they thought some of the things that needed to be addressed in that formula moving forward. This is kind of the continuation of the listening series that Governor Healey did and I think there's some interesting things in there relative to um changes that are being promoted to be made with in that funding and we are in year six of six. Um, so not in this round will we see changes, but hopefully going into fiscal year 28, we'll see some adjust adjustments to how

027that formula is uh calculated. I think that's all I had for updates. Any questions? Thank you for your updates, Mrs. Ktos. Any questions from the committee? >> Okay. Well, thank you. Lots happening. um hopeful that the um building project will continue to chug along the way it has been and you know no more unexpected situations during this phase. >> Yeah, I think we're beyond the unforeseen conditions. So I'm not expecting anything to come forward from that standpoint. >> Okay, that's good. >> The unforeseen things really come in during like the demolition and then when they start to rebuild things back. So I think we're beyond that point. >> Yeah. Okay. We just hope that when we get into phase three, we don't encounter any more unforeseen. >> Right. Exactly. Yeah. >> Um Okay. And the

028next item on our agenda is our principal report. And joining us this evening from Webster Middle School is Miss Heidi Peterson. Good evening. >> Good evening, everybody. Uh tonight I'm going to talk to you about our recent AIRIR um visit. So I'll tell you what that means. Uh last week part of um Department of Education's CSDP AIRRI monitoring took place. The CSDP is the DESIE Center for School and District Partnership and AIIR is the American Institute for Research. AIRIR is not part of DESIE. It's um they are working with DESIE or actually for DESIE. Desi sends them out to collect data and then um AIRIR reports back to DESIE's CSDP. Um so the purpose of this um uh monitoring cycle is to gather feedback and data on work being done to improve student outcomes uh

029specifically at Webster Middle School. And then um once the AIR uh completes their report, they will provide their information both to us the school and the district and to the DESIS's CSDP. So there are four parts to this process. Um there was a principal questionnaire which I had to fill out which uh asked about um how we collect data, what our curriculum is and then I had an hour uh Zoom principal interview. Um and then we had a full day site visit where two members of AIR came and um did classroom visits for the day. uh they did have a um a guideline which they were following. So I'll talk about that in a little bit. And then uh after the site visit, we had in-person interviews with seven focus groups. So two different members

030of AIR came to the building for a another full day. Um and they met for an hour with each of the following groups. Our counselors, we had two teacher groups with five teachers in each group. Um we had a student group with five students representing uh all four of our grades and various um uh subgroups of students. Um we had a special ed focus group with three members of our special ed team uh the EL teachers and then three members of our uh instructional leadership team. Um and then the fourth fourth part of the process was a survey that was sent to um staff members well teaching staff members. So the questions that they had asked um were around what types of data we utilize and how it's used um our curricula, what types of

031interventions we use, how we get to those interventions, how we determine what students need interventions, what types of student supports we have, both both academic and social emotional. Um and then questions around staffing and how we support uh students with staff. Uh the classroom visits focused on um student support, classroom climate, student productivity, instructional formats, content understanding, analysis and inquiry and quality of feedback from staff to t staff to students and instructional dialogue. Um so it's quite a lengthy process. Um the only thing that I as the principal was part of was the principal questionnaire and the principal interview. Um so I did not go on the classroom visits. Um and I obviously didn't sit in on the focus groups. Um but my understanding is all the questions were pretty much pretty similar around data

032um and interventions and and um all the things that I listed. So in talking to staff members, they were positive about um their conversations and the classroom visits. Um they definitely felt like it was more of a conversation than a peppering of questions and answers. Um they we the last time we had an AIR visit was at least five years ago. It might have even been six years ago. Um I know it was uh before my time, but I know I have the the data from those visits. So um definitely before COVID. Um and then the staff um have also indicated that they were um much more able to answer their questions uh in terms of what our data looks like and how the teachers and how we utilize our data in the building. So

033that's what we've been going through the last two weeks of returning from vacation. I'm happy to answer any questions I can around this. through the chair. >> Members Grigglia, >> I just want to recognize you and your staff for diving in and doing this. I know it wasn't a choice, but um in addition, like you said, coming back from break and also knowing probably this was going to happen leading up to break. um on top of everything else that you guys have to navigate and um deal with, you know, it's not I think it's appreciated and it's noticed um you and your staff and I look forward to seeing the results of what they what they can come put together for us. Thank you. >> Thank you. Any other questions or comments from Miss Peterson?

034Thank you for sharing the experience. It sounds like a thorough process. >> We'll be doing it again in a month um over at the high school. And as always, feedback um for these reports is informative. It's we're always looking to improve and do better and grow. So, we look forward to their comments and reading their feedback. >> Yeah. How long does it take until we can get the feedback from all of these visits? >> I didn't hear a deadline on the deadline. I can reach out to them and find out, but I again I wasn't part of the last process. So, I I'm not sure how long it how long it takes. It is a pretty pretty lengthy report that they send back um if it's the same type of report unless they've changed anything.

035Um so, it will probably take some time. Probably the spring I would imagine. Did you say in a couple months, Patty? Yeah. Yep. Um, yeah. This was very different. Usually, typically I get the emails and saying, you know, we're going to come to your office. We're going to speak with you. We're going to go to the schools. And it's very hands-off from us here at central office. They've been working directly with the schools. They're doing their own scheduling, setting up their own focus groups. Um, so it was very hands-off. it was very much staff surrounding the staff and students. So, um I really look forward to hearing what the feedback is. >> Great. Um is that feedback that you'll share out in some fashion to us and maybe give us some updates on how that

036goes? >> Maybe I'll think about it. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure we can arrange that. >> Yeah, it' be interesting to hear. You know, I'm sure there's a lot of great things going on and maybe some opportunities there. >> Absolutely. there's always opportunity for growth and it's it's always good to get the perspective from somebody who's coming in who doesn't live in your building every day to see what's going on. Um so, you know, we even see that with our walkthroughs. You're in a classroom for 10, 15 minutes at a time sometimes and you're trying to get a gist of everything that's going on in that one lesson. So, and we are there often, you know, we see what's going on. So, um I look forward to their reports. I look forward

037to the feedback. Um and uh we'll share out once we get it back. >> That sounds great. Any other updates? >> Uh that's all I had tonight because that was quite extensive. So, you know, report wasn't super extensive, but >> it was a big thing for us. So, >> yeah. Great. >> Well, thank you very much for those updates. >> Uh the next item on our agenda is our update from our student representative >> and I'm going to turn it over to Miss Neves. So Eric, our new representative, was unable to make it tonight. He they have switched their track meet from tomorrow to tonight in Boston. So he's at the track meet. So I have his report. >> Okay, great. >> Um he wanted to introduce himself, but I believe that was done a

038little bit at the last >> He wasn't here. I introduced him, but he wasn't here. >> He says he's a senior and he's involved with many events around the school. He wanted to note some positives um that we've made it through halfway through the school year. Um and another big one was during lunch our lunch um has changed to um what we call ovs to reduce food waste and so the students get a little bit more choice as far as what they can choose. So they're they're given one >> versus serve. >> Yes. They get to choose they get the main piece of the meal and then they can choose what they want as they go along. So the students are really we did a soft roll out. They seem to be liking it. Um,

039so so far we just did it as of last week. Um, he said some challenges. They're walking into final exams starting tomorrow. So that's one of the challenges. Um, lots of student engagement events. He said that we just had fun Friday trivia. We have that every Friday by Mr. Panto where they say a fun question every Friday and then it's the first person to email the answer to Miss Smallers and they get an award every Friday. So that ranges from staff events to I don't know anything that Mr. Pronto can come up with. Um they just had a DECA club participate um district competition at Nichols College and I will be able to announce more at the next one but we did have someone qualify to move forward um in the end. We just found

040that out. And every Friday now PBIS is giving out raffles um raffle prizes if for their Bartlett Bucks into the they can buy into it at lunch. He said coming up there's an open audition call um actually tomorrow for our spring showcase. There's a food can drive being run right now by the student ambassadors where five cans can be exchanged for one game admission for the boys basketball game tomorrow night. um and that they're they're given a golden ticket to get into the game and just for Bartlett students and they're walking into um they walked into study sync benchmark testing and CPM benchmark testing right after the break. Family events, we have two, he said, one coming up on February 12th with his community bingo night and one coming up on March 28th, which is

041the community egg hunt and breakfast. He has lots for sports. Um, and he mentioned the indoor track team just had their CMAC meet um with Xavier capturing first time first with a time of 5.8 seconds and Deborah taking first with a time of 6.8 seconds. Um the Bartlet versus Oxford game is tomorrow night which is um a big game and they're doing the big green wave. So anyone that's coming they want to wear all green. There's the track meet tonight at Reggie Lewis Field in Boston. There's a JV girls game coming up against Oxford on the 14th with the JV boys that's at Oxford. And then the boys JV and varsity is tomorrow night here at home. The freshman boys play against Auburn on the 15th and the JV girls again against South Lancaster on

042the 15th. And for senior class updates, um, they begin to post the scholarships and that the students can apply for. So, he's excited about that. And that's the whole report. >> Great. Thank you for sharing that. >> Hope Eric does well tonight. >> I do, too. And he will be here at the next one, he said. >> Great. >> He's a student first and an athlete and and then school committee rep after that. So, we get it. >> Uh, thanks again. The next item on the agenda under old business is a monthly report on fundraising applications. >> Um I don't have that pulled up in front of me at the moment. Um anything to report out on fundraising? I see some here. >> Uh nope. We have the grid iron the football team who is

043selling snacks. Um, and they did put in drinks and I did ask that they only do water in the gymnasium at this point just because it's a new gymnasium and you know we don't want all that sticky stuff all over the floors. Water is easy to clean up. The other stuff not so much. So they are selling um water and snacks at the game. Um so that was approved. And then the Webster Middle School Band and Chorus um is doing a Papaginos fundraiser on January 20th um of this month. So um everybody order your pizza and your snacks on January 20th from Papaginos. A sh a portion of that um will go towards the Webster Middle School Banding Chorus. >> Great. Thank you. >> And I want to thank the staff for their efforts and

044the grid iron for their efforts in fundraising. There's so much that goes on um that these uh members are doing for our students to raise money. So, we appreciate all their efforts. >> Great. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. Just a reminder, uh the school committee's role is to review fundraising activities. We don't approve them. Those are done at the building level. And uh moving right along, the next item on our agenda under new business is the FY27 budget update. >> Thank you. All right, I want to plug in here and as you see in front of you, you have the whole team tonight um uh that work together to put this budget together. And I'm going to ask them that if at any point that I am varying or that I'm missing a point, please

045don't hesitate to speak up. Um this is a team effort. So, let me get this up here. So, as you know, um it is our job annually to come up with a budget um with the school committee's recommendation. Uh we we always take a look at multiple budget scenarios. The budget that's the budgets that we're presenting tonight um is not a budget that we're asking to go forward, but more of um information for the school committee that as we move through the budget season um and we're asked to make decisions that you have all the information that you need um to know what we need to run a district here in town. Um so I'll start out uh this is just our budget planning calendar that we have in district. Uh we start our planning

046in October um going out uh sending templates out and I think it's a little easier. Well I can go through here. So in October we prepare budget templates and we send them over to the schools. That is where the principles meet with their department leaders and talk about the needs in the school. what department requests are. Um they once we have the department requests they bring them to district leadership team. We spend November and December working together as a team meeting with individual groups. We meet with the building principles um Miss Ktos and I individually to talk about what the school needs, what are they looking for. Um once we do that we come together as a group. Um the principles are also meeting with special education. They're meeting with the L department. Um they're

047meeting with the curric curriculum department to talk about needs within the schools. Um once we do that in November, um we we start putting the budget together and discussing it as a team. We take all those requests, anything that um they need. We start talking about curriculum. We start talking about our programming. What does that look like? Do we have any changes in the program this year? We took uh knowing what the climate is like, we took a very conservative approach knowing that this is a basically a needsbased budget. What does that look like for us? Um there are um staff requests we knew would pretty much be off the table. Um and we were looking at managing um putting together a budget that we can manage with the staff that we have. So, you'll

048see that moving forward. We're here tonight with a first presentation for the school committee. We're hopeful for your feedback and look forward to it. Any adjustments, corrections, um any thoughts that you want to share with us. Um we'll take that back, review as a team. Um we'll then come back if there are adjustments that need to be made with another another budget revision in January. And then we have uh we are tasked with sending a budget to the town by the end of February. So we have to have a school committee budget approved that goes to the town by the end of February that then we start having those discussions as a whole uh with the town members with the town boards. Um once we do that we'll continue hopefully finding out what our revenue

049looks like. Well, you know, we'll be getting some updates um next week, I believe it is, um from the state as hopefully as to where they stand with their revenues and their budgets. Um we'll then take sit and work with the town um to see what the town revenue looks like. Um and hopefully come up with some final recommendations and if we need to approve another budget before our public hearing on April 4th. As you know, everything needs to go to the town um at their annual town meeting to be approved for the end of the year. Are there any questions about the timeline or the budget process? No. So, we talked about our FY27 budget goals as a team. Um, part of what we were doing was creating a fiscally responsible level service budget

050that preserves our existing service uh existing service quality, compliance, and operational capacity without expanding programs and increasing resource demands. We prepared a budget that fully satisfi satisfies all our collective bargaining agreements. That includes all our wage adjustments to stipens across the board. We continually re-evaluate and improve student programming. We're looking at strong academic skills and all students um by sustaining and expanding our HQIM to ensure student achievement and equitable access as you know over the past few years. We have been building our HQIM. Um we've been doing that since COVID. Uh working on that. Um we're looking to foster continuous learning and skill enhancement among staff. So PD is always very important um to improve and grow. Um like I said, we're always looking for ways to gain and grow as staff, as individuals. So

051that um professional development is very important. We're uh continuing to provide a safe um and supportive learning environment. And we're looking at the budget as a systemwide approach. Right? We operate as a system. We are one team here. So, what does that budget look like for everybody? And then, as always, we work collaboratively with our town partners, um the finance committee, the town accountant, and the town administrator. Um we communicate frequently about our budget needs and uh work together to present an overall um balance budget to the town in May. This is our district priority. I'm not going to stay on this slide. You've seen it a few times this year, but this is um what we're going to be reviewing in February, monitoring, and this drives a lot of our needs across the district.

052As you know, our chapter 70 funds is based off our school enrollment. So, this is a look at our enrollment since 2019. As you know, we had that big dip during COVID years. Um and then we've been slowly building some traction back. Our numbers in October were um up to 1736. So those still significantly down um prior to CO um but we are slowly building up. This is a breakdown by school. Uh so if you look at that um you can see that we've had some shifts. We've had some big grades going through. Those big uh grades are now hitting Bartlett. Um so we are, you've seen our Bartlett enrollment creep up and our middle school enrollment um creep down. Uh adjusting by the grade levels at the schools. Uh we did our enrollment just

053we were looking at it again last week and we have remained pretty level. We were down one student from where we were in October. So our enrollment has has stayed pretty steady. I'm not saying we haven't had staff come uh students come in and out, but it's level. It's staying the same. I don't know if Miss Pulleyo if you want to talk about your class size, your enrollment. >> You can see here what we're looking at with um keeping everything the same as it is right now. Uh we are consistently evaluating our enrollment. Things have been shifting and changing a little bit throughout each grade level. So we always need to be assessing that. But this is where we are currently. And then you see the so FY26 is where we are. And then FY27

054is just bumping up that where they are right now. the current um enrollment size to the next grade and then keeping all the teachers the same. So um it stays pretty consistent. A couple dips here, a couple little bit of shifts upward there in class size, but generally stays uh the same from last year to this year. >> U just a quick question before we move on from this slide. thoughts around the grade four class size of 25 estimated. It seems kind of bumping up on the higher end of what we would >> Right. Well, again, we're we're con we're always looking at enrollment and I'd say right now it's a little too early to >> say we would make that change. So, um but this keeps our overall staffing like our number of classroom

055teachers the same across the building. Might there be a need to shift somewhere? Yes. Is it um a little premature to necessarily say that? Possibly because if we then >> go from somewhere else. So we we aimed at keeping st the number of classrooms the same. Not only just for consistency there, but um building capacity in terms of classrooms. We're tight on space. reason large jump from Roman Fisher in third grade to fourth grade >> additional >> currently we have 149 in third grade so that will be moving so >> so here we have 149 in third grade right now so that's anticipated to be so what we typically do yeah so we'll we'll We're going to monitor over the next couple of months if we have to shift grade levels or make any adjustments,

056but right now to do that, sometimes our enrollment can really jump in certain months and we might not want to make those decisions right now. Um, we have time >> for those decisions. >> Yeah, I was through the chair. >> Yeah, members there. >> I was just going to say you're I was going to ask about the classrooms because there's no empty classrooms, too. Like it's not like you're >> No, we're we're creating classrooms out of other spaces. So say creating new classrooms. >> If we needed an additional fourth grade room, it would >> And I have several um specials teachers on carts, right? That go into uh the grade level class. >> Do we have any specials that are not on carts now? >> Yes. Art and music. >> Art. That's right. >> And

057library. Yeah. >> Um but art and music have classrooms. >> Who's on carts? like technology or something or >> technology and steam. >> Yes, please. >> It has historically been the case at Park Avenue that third and fourth grade like flip. So, one year you have six and third and the next year you have seven and it depends on the enrollment of second grade. And so it's it's early, but it's it's also not unusual at all, especially when we don't end we don't know what enrollment's going to look like in the summer. We could be having a very different conversation when we come back toward this, you know, closer to the start of the school year depending on enrollment. So at this point in time, this is about stability and um and we have to

058wait and see what happens. But we anticipate if history tells us, you know, teaches us any lessons that there probably will need to be some adjustment. >> And through the chair, >> member scribe there >> and those I'm more freaked out about the 21 like in 21 and first grade and kindergarten like just thinking about those babies, you know, it's granted smaller bodies, you know, fourth grade, you think bigger bodies in a smaller space, but um just the level of independence at that level. But >> one thing I would add about that though is kindergarten typically has, if I'm not mistaken, another adult in the room, a par educator is typically assigned to each kindergarten room, which alters that ratio a little bit. >> Is that sped par or just a classroom par classroom? It's

059it's a classroom para, not assigned um to special ed. And it was nice to see our enrollment uh this year for kindergarten going up because we had a couple of smaller years where we weren't getting the numbers. So a good jump this year. I don't know if it's the co babies that are coming in or that time of year we might be seeing that again. Um so we'll see. But there is not a lot of wiggle room. And as you know, you know, we're in a year because we haven't made the adjustment um in this budget because of timing, but we have three preschool classrooms that are going to be heading over to the high school. So, there's going to be a shift there, which will give a little additional space there. But then we

060got to talk about what does that look like? What are we moving? Where do we go? Um we did not incorporate that because it wouldn't the building's not going to be done until October maybe. And are we gonna be moving those classes mid year? We don't know what that's going to look like for our pre-K kids. >> Um, Miss Peterson, the middle school. >> Um, yeah, same as Miss Popico, we're pretty static. Um, can see that we have some bigger classes, too. Um, so we are not looking at adding staff terms of content. Any questions for middle school? I think 22 to 25 is a good size class for the middle school. um you wouldn't really want to get it too much more than that and increase that class size. >> I agree. The trick

061is here, right? I mean, they're teaching in in teams. >> So, it's it would be >> interest. It would change the whole structure of the middle school had one >> classroom teacher in a grade level. Am I right? >> Yep. Yep. >> Uh through the chair. members, >> are you do you find yourself at the middle school at the same lake with the park a with numbers of classrooms? Are are you okay with space? >> Uh we're currently okay with space. Um one of the reasons is because this year uh well previously we had an a large number of students uh receiving resource services. So we had two seventh and eighth grade resource teachers. Um this year our numbers are lower. So we were able to combine that to one teacher. So we actually have

062a an extra room at this point. So >> don't say that too loud. Miss Pava is looking at you >> through the chair because I just remember too like Park A when I went there we separated at a certain point. Some kids stayed at AJS, some kids went to Park Gav just because of the space. So, not saying we're there yet, but I just No, I know. But it was did happen. >> Having taught there at that point, just having two two third grade classrooms at Park Avenue and the rest at middle school, like it like we will do everything in our power to avoid that. >> Yes. Yes. That's not ideal. >> Yeah. And then the high school, >> Miss Davis, >> we're staying the same as well. We average 25 to 30 students

063in all of our classrooms. Um, with no expected changes and we use every ounce of space right now with the three buildings split and uh, we try to find space everywhere. We have classes in every nook and cranny right now. Any questions for the high school? >> This next slide takes a look at our student populations. Um so if you look at the top that's in our enrollment by race and ethnicity and then if you look at our bottom um this is the percentage of students that if you look uh it compares us to the state. So high needs in our district we are 81.3 compared to 55 at the state level. Our English learners we are higher than the state level at 16.6. Um first language not English is a little lower than the

064state level at 23.3 to 27. Um low income we are much higher 71% rather than the state at 42. And then students with disabilities is extremely high at 26% um versus 20.6 across. So we are a very diverse school um with high needs. Um Dr. Okay. >> Um this slide is really designed to give you an idea of um just the changes in the population in the L uh in the L world. Um so what you have is what we ended at the end of the year 2425 with what our current numbers are. And so for example um at Park Avenue we have we had 150 L's that were serviced. We currently have 124 L's that are serviced. Um L's are considered students who are L's are opt out L's and um and students that

065get direct service. Of those students that got direct service in June, some of those students failed. We actually had a nice population of students, a good chunk of students that reached the proficiency level where they no longer require. So it's not like they moved. It's not like we have less students. they just reached their they attained their proficiency level. Um certainly some students moved. Um and we have a which brings our number down to uh 124 students that are being currently serviced. What I'd like to point out about Park Avenue in particular is that um Park Avenue has u 62% of its 124 students that require two sessions of EL. So it's not a simple numbers game where you can say oh we have less students therefore we might need a we might need one

066less teacher when 62% of the students need 90 minutes of ELLL not 45 minutes of ELLL. So I think that that's an important qualifier. So so that helps us say we need to keep what we're doing. We need to keep the staff that we're doing. In fact, we have the new kindergarten teacher who is um that was a really good addition for us to see if we can get, you know, um quicker proficiency by servicing directly at the kindergarten level, but that person is doing three sessions in other grades because they have an overflow in other grades. So, um so that is uh that that's an important qualifier. Um the other the other um schools are pretty stable, I think, but they still have 41%. So almost half of of the students in the other

067two schools also require two sessions of ELD. So it is um it's it's just important to to remember that it's not a simple like how many L's do we have versus how many teachers but what level of service they might need. And as you know students that fell and students that opt out require monitoring. Um and and we have had we we also do a lot of paperwork and collaboration with other teachers for students that are not making progress. That's one of the accountability markers. Um our L population um while we have had a good number of students in pockets in certain grade levels do um do reach that that proficiency level where they are no longer considered to need direct service. we have a good a good number of students that are not making

068sufficient progress so they do better but the state sets these target levels and we have it's kind of like AYP used to be with um with MCCAST um the state sets these benchmarks and that's the standard even though their scores increase that's the standard that we have to um consider the state actually tells us it's a zero or a one didn't make progress or made progress uh according to those benefit benchmarks. So then we have to do a lot more work at all of those levels, the optouts and the and the service LS to try to fill in the gaps like why didn't they make progress including you know we've been talking a lot about chronic absenteeism and um you know is that an impact does that does does chronic absenteeism have an impact on

069whether students make progress or not and the answer is yes of course um so we need to do things about that as well. Any questions about the numbers and the and you know the numbers change but the staff doesn't member calleros >> I just had a quick question about what is the do you have rough percentage of the who are ESL and also have >> sorry do you have a rough estimate about the number of students who are ESL who also have a disability and how that's impacting progress at all? Sure. It's about 25% of our students. Um I have I have it broken down by >> um by grade level for our midyear meeting. Um I also have it broken down by that benchmark that was set by the state. Um and so by

070grade level, how many students didn't make progress of those students that didn't make progress, how many students are duly identified, how many students are opt out, each of which come with different action steps. On the next slide is our special education profile. Miss here, would you like to speak to that? >> Sure. Good evening. >> So, as you could see, the student count over um last year decreased by 24 students. So, I just wanted to kind of explain why that is and then have a conversation around um our numbers related to the the disabilities because the numbers could look very deceiving and there's some background knowledge that could really be beneficial. So, when we see a drop in numbers, we could we look at the data driven reasons as to why this may be the

071case. It could be students newly qualified and their IEPs haven't been signed, so they wouldn't be accounted for. It could be students moved out, graduated, could um have a lesser plan like a 504 plan, a district accommodation plan. So, it could be that they're still in our system, but they're not in our system for for special education. Um, what I thought would be interesting to share at this point is although we have seen a decline in special education students, we do have 121 students on 504. So there is over 600 students in the district that have a a known disability or a suspected disability. Um we shared a very similar um information related to primary disabilities. So students could have more than one. They could have up to three identified but they require one in

072order to be to qualify for an IEP. What's really interesting is and what makes this deceiving is that if you look at the communication one and you see that we have a decline of um 16 students this year in communication, it doesn't mean that they're the only ones that are receiving speech and language services. So, I wanted to share some background information. Right now, we have over 252 students receiving um speech and language services. So that's approximately 252 hours of speech and language services that we're we're delivering. So if you were take into account that we have four staff members that could deliver those services that have about 30 hours each that's about 180 hours of service delivery time. So just you know doing the math in your head when you have to service 252

073kids you know right away that it's not onetoone treatments. It's not even possible. Then you take into account that that only four of those staff members are going to provide consultation services and they need to adjust for 65 hours a week of consultation services. So that is really like the the crux behind why we have um so you know it's not the number of of students that we have but the needs that they have. The student with autism for example may have physical therapy, occupational therapy, be in a specialized classroom, one-to-one support. So when you see an increase of 19 students, that could really change the whole dynamic of a building or or of a program because there's very strict guidelines around how many students could attend um a a class program. Does anybody have

074any questions or further further information through the chair? Member Calleros, >> I know you told me this, so I apologize, but how out of the communication, you said there's four staff. How many are speech and language pathologists versus assistants? >> Good question. We have um four speech and language pathologists in the district and two speech and language assistants, pathology assistants, and one open position. Any other questions? This is right off the DESIE website. And so this is a student placement. This takes a look at um Webster and compares it to the state of our regular education students and our special education students compared to the state. So as you can see, if you look at the years, we've been pretty consistent since uh um with the ratios much higher than the state level. So our

075numbers fall in line with the um pattern across the state over the years. Uh in 2025 we had um um 91.4% of our students with disabilities in district and 8.6% out of district. >> Uh this takes a look at our Oh yeah, go ahead. >> I'll take this one for you. Yep. So, we're going to just focus on here just looking at outofd district placements. So, those students who we've made a determination or maybe the student moved in and they already had an out of district placement um that we're not able to service them within district. So, what this is painting a picture for you. Let me just kind of lay this out for you. So, you have a chart at the bottom. Um the yellow is giving the number of students and again the

076number of students is very fluid. This is what snapped at the time that we do the budget, right? Um, so that yellow line is number of students. At the bottom, the gray line that you're seeing going across there is the inflation factor that the OSD sets for out of district tuition rates. Right? So they set that inflation factor rate. And you may recall maybe a few meetings ago I had talked about the big increase that happened in 2024, which is a 14% increase. And that's the spike that you see there. And then what we're seeing combined there is all of the tuition costs that we've had for those outofd district placements. So that's costs that we had directly in our local um education budget as well as money that we use from our circuit breaker

077reimbursement. Right? So we pay those tuitions out of both the local budget as well as the circuit breaker reimbursement. The interesting thing to see is that while we're seeing a decline in students going into our projection for fiscal year 27, yet you're seeing the tuition going up. So that's why we actually put the average on there so you could get a sense of, you know, what we're seeing in terms of shifts in overall tuition. So in some cases, I mean, there's a range of tuitions. Collaboratives are less expensive than going to private um schools, but then the ranges are very different as well. And we have some very high tuitions that we're seeing based on the needs that our students have. Um, so I think this is an interesting this tells an interesting story about

078what we're seeing relative to cost and number of students and our out of district placements. Any questions? Fiscal year 26 and 27. I just want to highlight there's an asterisk there. Those are both budgeted numbers for now. And then keeping um along the lines of um special education, we've been sharing um these slides for the last couple years, but I think it's showing the trend. The solid line that we're seeing here is the total cost of tuition as well as services. So services are what we consider our contracted services where we may go out, we may work with French River to augment some additional services that we need to provide. It could be through additional psych evaluations that could be needed. In a couple years, they were actually augmenting um for some vacancies that we

079had in some areas that we weren't able to hire for. So, we actually went out through services to augment an actual um FTE because we were unable to hire that. But this gives you the full breakdown of overall with the line that shows the trending that we've been experiencing that's going up. break down by the different types of tuition or where we've actually um applied circuit breaker overall. And if we move on now, not in our budget, right, directly in our local budget is transportation, but those costs for out of district uh placement have a direct correlation with the projection that we provide to the town for special education transportation. Um, we know the last couple years have been particularly challenging with special education um, transportation. We actually put a couple freezes on to help

080cover some of those costs over the last couple years. And as a result, our projection for the town was much higher than it's ever been with respect to um, transportation going into fiscal year 26. And what we've seen in in our numbers dropping in our our counts of student counts, you would think our transportation would go down hopefully, but depending on who's leaving because for instance on our collaborative runs, those are not single runs. Those are runs where we we have a bus going there no matter what. So we could have six, seven, eight kids on those buses. Um so a a reduction in that is not going to impact our transportation. Um but what we could see on the opposite end is some of those students, those higherend students who are going out to

081residential placement um are not coming home. They're living there. They're staying there. So we're not going to incur transportations, but yet the tuition um is 4 to $500,000 for those students. >> Okay. Next couple slides we're going to run through are really just kind of level setting before we launch into the fiscal year 27 preliminary budget. Uh what this is is really just a rundown of what our actual expenditures have been with the exception obviously of fiscal year 26. We're showing a budgeted number there um of what we've actually spent yearoveryear. Um you will see in a couple of those years we we were 7% increases for a couple years and then the last couple years were a little less than that. And again, some of that is attributed to the fact that we actually

082put some freezes on as well to cover some things. So, this again level sets where we were for actual spend um over the last several fiscal years. Um and then just kind of laying out where we've been for chapter 70. So, uh first column is our chapter 78 and what we've received in aid. That foundation enrollment is a little different than the enrollment that you saw earlier. This is the actual number that's used in the formula for chapter 70 which basically looks at your actual enrollment but then it applies factors into the actual calculation and that's the number that is derived um for what they use for your foundation enrollment. We're showing you the increase over the prior year. Um but then lastly the amount of the actual chapter 70 money that the school received.

083So while there is chapter 78 aid that comes out of the formula, you will see over the last several years, we don't take that full amount into the school. We're taking, you know, roughly, you know, 79% to 80% with the exception of fiscal year 22. This will hopefully help solidify what I just said about chapter 7. We want to just review how revenue and cost sharing with the town works. So education receipts, that's chapter 70. general government aid um is other um revenue that the town receives like chapter 90 for highways. Um these are the numbers that are on our cherry sheet. And then the last one is our own local receipts, right? What we're collecting in in in taxes. That revenue is one big pool, right? From that revenue, what we do is we

084look at shared costs between the town as well as the school. So some of those things that are shared cost of like the crossing guard comes out of the town budget, but that's a shared cost between the two of us. Um, health insurance is shared, transportation is considered a shared cost. We get an assessment for our regional schools, uh, road improvements, Medicare tax, snow and ice, our general liability insurance, um, unemployment and debt and retirement. Once we kind of take all of that off, then what happens is 70% goes to the school, 30% goes to the town. So that's why when you look back at that last chart, you see that we're getting less from the full chapter 78, which is the education receipts at the top. Any questions about that? So, as we move

085into talking about fiscal year 27, and I'll have um Dr. Mai help out with this as well, is an exposure area that we have. We've been talking about this. We really don't know the specific direction that our grant funding will take explic explicitly with title one grant funding. There's a couple different options on the table. These are not things these are things that we pay for that help support us across the district that have not been factored into the numbers you're going to see for fiscal year 27. That's kind of me setting the stage. Do you want to take it from there? So, I'll say this with no certainty. Um, and I think that's the hard part of having this conversation. Um we have been given heads up by the feds and by our local

086by our Massachusetts um uh grants folks and um you know one of the proposals that's out there that's been talked about before is uh considering title one is a 27 27% cut in title one um and potential eliminations of some other things like teacher training community schools schools and English language acquisition programming, not programming in the schools, but the grant itself. Um, overall that that means major program loss for us and um cuts. Um, the administration for FY26 has um also proposed level funded um numbers and and a consolidation of the smaller grants. What that will look like, we're not sure. um and uh cuts potentially everywhere but um but preserve the core of title one. So what you see there are the numbers of our FY26 grant um the title grants the ESSA grants

087um and and as you can see there would be an impact on the budget. Um, we'd have to really do some planning as to to see if these things actually happen. Um, how it'll play out with what is prioritized for us to maintain. Um, how do we incorporate some of the other things um that that we need to do? It's not a not a a pleasant uh piece of conversation. Um, but it's also nothing is set in stone. We don't have we don't have any certainty. It's a factor and it's things that we it's on our radar and we just have to keep planning and and waiting to see what what develops. I will say this, I I heard on a on a sort of humorous tone um I was with the state um title

088one directors when we got the the news that we were um that the title grants were being um reallocated into the department of uh labor. Um which is kind of shocking and confusing because I really don't know the the relationship and why it would land there. Some of you might, but um and someone said, "Well, if money runs out in education, we know that we're covered in labor." So, I tried to hold on to that as a little a little glimmer of hope. So, when we walked through this budget, uh we kept status quo. What we have today is what we budgeted. Um we didn't plan on any reductions. Um it would have an impact to our work should some of this um be reduced because it funds things um like uh mentoring uh ILT

089stipens um a lot of our L work um some of our programming. So it would be a revamping um looking at everything across the board to say how do we recoup some of that in our budget? Chair member Millet, >> do you have a creating a plan B because you have staff that have paid through these grants? There's always a plan B. Um, and so we have plan B, we have plan C, we have plan D. um and things just not knowing what the possibilities might be because we don't know if Title One's going to be cut. Title One might be cut, not entirely. Title One might be reduced and we don't know if other grants are going to be eliminated, repurposed, consolidated. So there really is no way to have a like a set

090plan B. We have some ideas in mind that, you know, we've, you know, continuously have to think about this. It's not like it can be ignored. Um, but nothing that we're ready to present because we don't actually know what it looks like. Just to interject, I think it's always health healthy to have a plan B, C, and D. Um, I can imagine the panic that we would create if we started presenting plan B's because this is signific it has the potential to have a very significant impact not only on Webster but on school districts across the state and across the country. So, um, I remain hopeful but but really guarded about where we're headed with regard to some of these grants. Uh, good to know that that those conversations are being had. >> So, what

091we did is we took um so we have a two a couple of budget iterations for you tonight um just to look at uh what they mean for us in Webster. The first one that we did was a preliminary budget. We just looked at salaries only. Um what does it look like? what does our budget look like um to meet all of our contra contractual needs um across the district. Um this budget includes the six new sped positions added during this year that weren't in our FY26, we had come back because of compliance needs and having to add positions. So from when our FY26 budget was approved in May, we've added six new positions in there um that are in this budget. And then we um included all of our contractual obligations. That would be

092any stipend increases, any step and lane changes. All of those are brought in for everybody. And that comes to uh just that alone um without touching anything else in the budget um comes to a 4.64% um increase for contractual um obligations. Um that equates to a 1.2 289 million um increase. So that's the first iteration that we did. So then we from there we took our departmental requests and added those on to our first onto this draft budget. So our draft 2 budget comes to 30,390 162. Again um we're not asking the school committee or the town for a 9.41 41%. This is merely what our budget looks like with our departmental requests. Um, as I stated, we really did not talk about new programming, new positions. Um, there are minimal changes in there. Um,

093we have our compliance mandates that we had from our first draft budget. And then we made adjustments to our special education tuition and supplies. Um the one staffing change that we did um and this is pretty much tied right to compliance um in special education. Uh we have right now a school year secretary that leaves um at the end of the school year and with the amount of paperwork um and information that we have coming in over the summer, it's becoming a compliance issue. uh the turnaround time to get information out uh to families and make sure we have things in place for the start of the school year. Um it just can't be done with the staff that we have. Um we've talked about this for years and haven't done it, but it it's

094really is becoming a problem um for our schools and for the special education department. So, we did add that. Um we have another big driver um in this budget is our curriculum renewal and updates. I know um Miss Rivera has reported to you during the school year that we're looking at um uh science curriculum update at our middle school. That is a new program for this year. So we'll get into that a little bit later. Um but over the years we've been moving to HQIM. Um, and a lot of a lot of those renewals are up this year. Um, it's not like years ago where you just bought textbooks and that was it. It was a one-time fee. We now have reoccurring because many of these renewals um come with online resources. So, there's a

095requirement for online fees um with all of these. So, that's an impact to that. Um, the next one is the school resource officer. As you know, last year we pulled that out of our budget. Um, when we were going through discussions with the town, um, it was double budgeted. We had it in our budget, they had it in their budget. Um, so we had taken it out. Um, knowing that they were going to be short staffed this year. They were going to have a lot of um, need in the town. Um, and they figured it would help the school. our MOA with the police department does state that we are required to pay 50% of our SRO. Um so we added that back in this year um to be compliant with the MOA and then

096just our colar adjustments for supply software and utilities. Taking a look at our utilities, our copers and making any adjustments that we needed there. I was just going to add from like a utility standpoint as a good example is like for electricity our supplier rates we go out to bid for those but those supplier rates are going up right you know we had some really great rates for a few years but uh we had to go back out to to bid on that and you know it goes up a few cents but a few cents on your we all know it on our own electricity um our electrical bills but uh you know that's one example >> so then what we did is I took the difference between we took the difference between our um

097second draft and what's the difference between our first. So that difference was 1.324 million. And what I wanted to do for you is break that down so you see what the costs were on the drivers. Um that makes up that difference. Um so you can see the admin assistant impacted the budget by 13,000 to make that a full year. 139 almost 14,000. Adding the SRO back in impacts our budget by 40,000. Um special education tuition um is a big one that we're going to need to talk about. That impacted our budget by about 742,000. So we're going to have to talk about that moving forward. Um also our increases in special education contracted services. So those are services um that we um do above and beyond what we can do inhouse um that we have

098to go out for. And then our curriculum um which we're going to update on our next slide. So you can see if you add all of those things together um that's 1.3 million. So the mis the remaining of that was just miscellaneous. That's what the increase in our budget. Yes. Member Adamopoulos >> in the draft one. Would that eliminate the school resource officer? >> It was not in there. It was not in the draft one. So, it was just salary updates. >> So, we kept what exactly what we had this year and added the six positions and did that. So, it would remain in the town and may eliminate the school resource officer. was through the chair >> members correctly >> because the police department paid for it last year and they're this FY26. Yeah.

099>> But they're relooking and maybe readjusting that for FY27. >> Well, we have it back in our right now it belongs in our budget because we have an MOA that states we're going to fund 50% of it. That's our agreement with them. And if we're going to pull an officer um an SRO, which you know I believe is important, the police chief believes it's important um to be in our schools um then we're responsible for half of it. I can't we can that the town may fund it, but if we do, we can't what do we have to say that we can pull him into our schools? If he's needed out on the street and and he's needed to cover um patrols, then that's where he goes, >> right? through the chair. Well, I'm um

100I know they had a lot of medical leaves department this year. >> Um and I know our resource officer was utilized wherever he was needed, you know, as safety, >> but if we were to pay our 50 like we should, would that keep him on campus or would officer um or chief SHA still take him? No. >> No. And he would keep him on campus. So, uh, I spoke with him yesterday about the SRO position and he feels that it's, you know, that a lot of the people who were out on leaves, maternity leaves, um, are back in, injuries are, you know, people are healed and back to work. So, he's hopeful that his staffing level, um, is a little more consistent where he could, you know, um, relieve the SRO from duties on the

101patrol and have them back in the school again. when they are short staffed. It has always been his past practice that he pulls. Um he tries not to do that, but um you know again we look at the overall town safety. >> So just as a point of clarification, >> Officer Melhouse is the school resource officer. He's also a police officer and with the number of people who are out on leave and the staffing situation, that's why he was at times redeployed, not because the the police department absorbed the the cost of the salary. Those happened in the same year but were independent each other. >> Absolutely. Yes. Um so we'll talk a little bit about our curriculum renewals and update. Mr. Rivera, you want to talk about that? Our curriculum director. >> Thank you.

102Um so as you can see we um we are basically up for renewal for a lot of the different um curriculum that we are currently using uh at each one of the schools um which is bringing up student and and this is uh well almost $400,000 and this is not even considering other instructional resources that uh we also are currently using and we have in place. Um so this is the minimum and uh again with the 175,000 for the uh science curriculum review for the middle school and again we're also um up for the elementary even though we're not adding it in this budget. Uh that would be something to consider for the future as well. Uh we also have the renewal for uh most of the social studies curriculum uh for both uh the

103middle school and also the high school as well. And considering all the different uh content areas that we have to renew. Um the $30,000 is actually pretty good conservative number right here or cost. Uh and a lot of it has to do because it's uh older curriculum. um that does not necessarily may have all the resources available and that would be one of the content areas that in the future we would have to go through the review process in order to ensure that we upgrade them to high quality instructional material. Not that necessarily they're not, but we would have to go through that review as well um by the uh recommendation of the Department of Education as well. Um and then we also have our uh wonders and study sync renewal which again you can

104see the difference in the cost that includes not only the hard copies uh books it includes the uh online platforms it also include uh student online access as well and also um technology and PLTW um renewals as well. Any questions about the curriculum? >> The uh the science curriculum, the open seda, that it says new here. >> Yes. >> Is that that's something that we would be adding to the middle school science curriculum? >> Yes. And right now we are still going through the pilot process. Currently the middle school is piloting open sed and also piloting uh amplify science and that is ongoing for the next couple of months and then at the end of that review process they'll make a decision. We're going to be making a decision depending on how the budget looks.

105So the $175,000 would be the minimum amount that we would need in order to purchase a new curriculum. that is based on a quote that we got from open sed uh amplify science uh also is right around the same cost uh probably a little bit higher to be honest with you. So, we're trying to budget for the minimum possible and we're also um I'm also working with a lot of the vendors to see if we can uh commit to more than one year purchase and then break down the cost so that we can pay one year at a time even though we are making a commitment of three years versus buying one year at a time because that is actually it brings up the cost if we do one year uh renewal. But typically when

106we're buying a new curriculum, it's at the beginning we're buying all the resources and hard copies, uh, digital content, you know, and student access, teacher access. So it it is a big cost. >> Thank you. And what? Yeah, we're using open sad at the high school also or no, >> we are using open sed uh for biology at the high school. >> Yes. What are we using now at the middle school? >> For the middle school is STEM scopes which is yeah it is not considered by the department of education to be a high quality instructional material. So uh that's one of the areas that we are required to go through the process of review and updating uh with high quality instructional material. And currently we only have two science curriculum that are >> considered

107high >> rated as high quality instructional material which is open sed and amplify science. >> Thanks. I'm sorry for all the questions. Okay. >> I do have one more. >> That $175,000 you indicated that's the low end. Yes. >> Of the estimate. Is that for >> four grades >> for that would be for grades five through eight, >> right? Just for year one. And that would be for year one >> and all the startup materials and things that are associated with >> absolutely because it is uh whenever you start the new process of uh you know introducing a new curriculum we are starting basically from zero. So we have to get all the books uh the digital platforms for teachers and students and student notebooks and also we have to buy the um kits >>

108for each every single unit for every single grade. So it is a big cost. Um we actually updated last year u and it was uh double that price. So, we're trying to stay on the lower end considering the budget >> through the chair. >> Thank you for that. >> Member Scriggia. >> Um, Amplify, they have a lot of different um avenues of their curriculum. Do we use them for anything else? We don't use them for ELA or anything else. No, >> it's so >> I just wonder in the future if there's like I don't I don't know buy >> three get one free like if I don't if we can like streamline the programs that we use. I know we're on different review like years. Um but like HMH or you know Amplify if like

109>> we can use them for multiple subjects. I don't know if that would decrease some overall costs and just I don't I I'm interested to see how the pilot goes. Yes. Um I'm I'm hopefully optimistic about about open sedues and friends who have used it and they do not like it like at all. Um so it's interesting. It will be interesting to see how our district pilots it and our teachers. Um, but I have not heard the best of things and I think I remember hearing I remember last last year going over the MCCAST data. Our MCCAST data for science wasn't bad compared to our other areas with the with the curriculum that we didn't have. So, um, I think I made a note to say it'll be interesting to see because our teachers piece

110meal a lot together for science at the level that it was. So, it'll be interesting to see the comparison with a curriculum. But, yeah, I don't know. It stinks. >> It's tough and it hits. You know, when we purchased a lot of this, we purchased with Esser. You purchased three years. You know, we were doing three-year renewals. And so now they're coming up all at once. Um some of our big ticket items. And then when you look at purchasing a year, uh you don't have any cost savings for a year. Um that's how they get you. They want you to purchase the three. So when you look at that, you know, one year of wonders um could be $90,000, but if you purchase three years, it's probably $150. So you're almost getting a free year

111by doing that. And most most programs um do that. >> So how do you sustain how do you make it sustainable and consistent for budgeting purposes so you're not seeing spikes um throughout your budget, >> right? And I mean certainly these are one of the things that are a costs that seem to be within our control in many ways because they're not salary. They're not contractual obligations, but at the end of the day, these are the things that are doing that are augmenting the the folks that are standing in the classroom providing the lessons >> and they're critically important to um you know to teaching the our students what they need to know to be prepared for the next grade or for what's coming after high school. For sure. And uh on the one hand,

112it would be an attractive idea to say, can we um have a multi-year subscription and and delay payment, but our budget outlook isn't any better >> for the next year and the year after that. So, we'll be having this reckoning whether it's now or down the line. >> Absolutely. Great. >> Yes, please. I think that it is within our it's more within our control than some contractual obligations or or or other things, but there's also a push and like a mandate really >> to um to have high quality instructional materials across the subjects. And so if if we were in a different um in a different budget situation, we may be able to we may have been able to entertain additional or other ideas, but our ELA curriculum is already high quality instructional material. >>

113And so we have had to take a look at like which areas are not yet. And so when we have this much and this much work to do, that's where the focus needs to be. Mhm. >> And through the chair >> members coruria >> and it's I just like a soap box you know moment but for something that's mandated by the state for something that we need to do you know it's I'm unless I'm don't know but there's no like grants or anything to support the districts like in purchasing. I know there's the funding but it's not like our funding goes to the things that we need. Like I don't know. It's just weird. Like, you need this, but we're not going to help you get it, you know. Um, >> well, the ESR money,

114it was given to you for a benefit to help you purchase these things, but it's didn't help the sustaining the sustainability of of the product, right? >> So, yes, it gets it in the district, but now we have to maintain it for years to come. And so, that's where it it falls short. you know, we're here to help you, but then the money goes away and what do we do now? How do we get rid of a program? What what does that mean? If we get rid rid of, you know, wonders, what do we use? What do we have that we can use? We don't, >> right? We simply can't um >> and the Esther money, it's not like something that we had that we couldn't we could save like we needed to spend it.

115>> Yes, we had to. we had to, you know, so it's not like, oh, let's put it in our piggy bank and save it for when this all goes back to how it was, but, you know, we were obligated and mandated to spend it. Um, >> otherwise, it wouldn't be COVID relief money, >> right? >> So, that would that's it had to be spent. we had to make a direct connection to why we needed it based on what happened with COVID and how we needed to to support learning loss and all of those words that came up that we learned a new lexicon through COVID. Um, but yeah, that came and and that came and had a deadline and we had a generous amount of time >> um and a generous amount of money and

116we we you know, we we did purchase a lot of things that we needed. Um, but then when that goes away, how do we sustain it all? We all talked, we talked at length about the the cliff, the Esser cliff. Um, and so, but here we are. But I I'm not sure that this is about the Esser Cliff because we could have purchased all of these things with ESSER, but we would be here renewing 10 programs, which no budget can fiscally do. And so, so I think it's I think it is it is like in the ideal world, you have to do this and here's here's here's the resource to do it. And we are given grants every once in a while and and we'll we'll keep certainly we'll keep an eye out for anything

117that helps us support curriculum. Um, but it is it is the the state of affairs. I just have one more thing to add regarding ESSER and hopefully this will be the last time I use that word tonight at least. We as a district, I think, did better than many districts across the state at planning very thoughtfully around that esser cliff that we all saw on the horizon and really skillfully moved a lot of our um musthaves, things that that had been nice to haves and once we were able to incorporate them into our day-to-day lives became really essential to our core programming. And I think that this leadership team really was very skillful at moving some of those things into our LEA budget over over the last several years. So we while we are not

118in the best position out there, um we're positioned much better than many many districts when it comes to the planning that's gone into to um our financial situation. Um, so compliments to all of you for taking something that's feeling largely impossible and making things happen. Um, I do wonder if there's a way for us to work these subscriptions so that we are chopping them up. >> We're trying. >> Okay, >> we're trying. >> Right. I think of it as a two-pronged approach of having the renewal years staggered and also um paying, you know, call it an installment plan where we're we're paying these subscription costs over the course of the life of the subscription or the term of the subscription. So that that would certainly alleviate some of the crunch this year and would would

119eliminate some of those peaks that we were experiencing too. >> Yep. That's what we're working on. Okay, using the second draft kind of giving you an overview of the budget composition. Um, most notably, I mean, our most valuable resources, which are people make up the lion share of our budget. You know, it's a little over 80% of our budget. So when we look um at some of the other notable areas, you know, we did see that 742 um increase for out of district tuition. So we're seeing that um out of district tuition going up a little bit from what we had it at last year. It's up to 10% of the overall budget. Maintenance is just slightly down, but that's because other things around it are increasing. Um but special education coming into draft 2

120is a little over 35% and I think last year we were around 32 33%. So um that gives you an overview of um you know some of the notable items and then the pie chart on the right kind of gives you all of our resources. Um not everything is labeled but it is colorcoded but kind of pointing out where um those salaries that 80% is uh distributed across the entire district. This slide explan explains a circuit breaker and this is an area that I'm going to be looking for some feedback from the school committee. Um we are breaking from our past practice um this year. So as you know we've always tried to carry over one year of circuit breaker. that has been the past practice for many years um to help us and if

121anything comes up during that year and to have um some stability in the years to come. If you look at the first column, this is what we budgeted for FY26. So this is what we did when town meeting was approved last year. This is what we had budgeted. We at that point in time our tuitions were at 4.4. Uh we had 2.3 million in LEA. So that was budgeted for tuitions in the LEA. We were planning on using um carryover from circuit breaker. Uh we were that's um we were planning on we had budgeted um circuit breaker for FY26. This was our anticipated receipts coming in that we were hoping to get. uh which adds up these things, these three items right here to get our revenue of 5.2. We were anticipating carrying over um

122$795,000 into FY27. So last year we started dipping into our circuit breaker, breaking from what we've been doing in the past because of our uh tuition costs going up. So, if we look at where we were, I'm going to say last week because things might be changing as of today. Um, but this is as of we'll say last week. Uh, we were at an actual 5.1 million in tuition. Um, up from 4.4 at town meeting. Uh, our LEA budget hasn't changed. We were able to carry over at the end of the year our full circuit breaker aotment. So we did not touch FY25s. We put our spending freeze on last year. Um we had a lot of salary contingency that was saved last year because of unfortunately positions not filled. Um we had many positions

123that were not filled. So, we were able to um hold on to our circuit breaker funds um for this year. And as you can see, I'm really glad we did because our tuition went up about $700,000. Um and then we're anticipating our F uh FY26 circuit breaker at 1.8 million, which gets our revenue to 6 million. Um, so we're hoping to carry over 953,000 um in revenue to next year. So that's less than half of our circuit breaker which will be carrying over. If we look at next year's tuition, we are up to 5.1. Uh, for now, we increased our tuition by 700,000. I think it was 742 I showed you on the previous line. Um, so our LEA went up. We have the 953,000. We estimated our circuit breaker based off of our 5.1

124million. Um, looking at any tuitions that are over the base. The base um for circuit breaker is 54,000, just under 54,000. So the school district is required to pay the first 54,000. Anything over that 54,000 the state reimbures at a 7525 percentage. So our reimbursement from circuit breaker is the 75% over over the base fee. Does that make sense? So if we have a $100,000 tuition and we have 54,000, the school district needs to cover the 54,000. That leaves 46,000. uh then you take 75% of that and that is the school's reimbursement. Okay. So looking at next year's numbers if we were carrying over the 953 like we're hoping to and then we calculate uh our reimbursements at um using the circuit breaker formula. That brings our revenue to 6.2. That means we would be

125carrying over 1.1 million which is again 50% of our circuit breaker. So there's no way we can carry over a full year. If I were to put that in and carry over a full year, we'd be increasing this LEA by a huge increase which we already can. So one of the things that we're going to be looking for recommendations is do we put more circuit breaker funds? Do we take another 600,000 reduce this LEA which is going to help our overall budget? Uh we have determined that a percentage in our budget is about 277,278,000. So if every percentage in our budget that equals about 278. So if we were to move 600,000 that's going to decrease our budget by about two percentage points. But then that's going to leave us with not a lot of

126wiggle room for next year. So um by reducing that um we have to be mindful that if we should have any other big tuitions that come in we might not be able to have that. You know as you can see from this year we've we've needed to go back and we're going to have to use more circuit breaker otherwise we'd be going back to the town. questions, thoughts. >> Member Adamopoulos, >> it's a band-aid. >> Yeah. Basically, >> you fix it this year. We have to figure it out again next year by taking out $600,000 we don't have available to us at that time, >> right? I mean, it's funds that we can have. We can we can apply as much as we can, but then we're we're at risk. Um, we have been very

127fortunate that any situations that come up, any special education staffing that may need to happen, any of those big tuitions come in, we've always had that circuit breaker to fall on where we're not having to go back to town and asking for money. Um, and what does that look like? If we're getting a 300,000, then, you know, we're we're going into a deficit in our budget. So this is an area that you know I will be looking for some guidance >> through the chair >> membersia. So going so going to town. So that's like we're asking the town people to vote to give us an allotted amount to support the special ed at some point next year potentially if we take from circuit breaker. >> Right. So we would have to ask at a town

128meeting. So, like we've done for transportation um in the past, we've had to wait till May and then we go back in May. We explain that we're anticipating a deficit and they have to approve for us to um use funds from any available source that they may have, whether it's free cash, whether it's um yeah, >> for for this school year, we had a reduction of special ed students that transferred to the 504. It was like, was it 10 students? How many? 40. What was it? are no longer going out of district, but their district their um tuition doesn't offset the cost of some of the other higher cost tuitions. >> So those 24 students, are we so we have we fiscally responsible for them anymore? No. >> No. Did that did that impact the

129budget at all? >> That's an those those numbers weren't closely related to the students that are sent out of district. We had 14 students leave at a that are are anticipated to graduate, move, drop out of school. So that's going to have an impact, but it didn't offset it enough because those tuitions were substantially lower than some of the students that were placed out of district, right? Or just >> and what you're thinking of is the in district. So we have in district, we might have students who have went over to a 504, but really uh what's the cost savings of that? There really isn't any cost savings for that, right? Um, unless they had a one-on-one and then it's highly unlikely that somebody's on a >> right and goes just to a 54 from

130that, >> right? >> Are we going to have to go to the town like from as a unit for any type of vote leading up to the budget? Do we know yet? >> Like for like um like an increase of anything like taxes or anything? Yeah. For for FY27? Because I'm wondering like I just I'm just wondering would it as a towns person or as a voter, right? Say we dip into our circuit breaker for whatever reason, what would be the bigger ask? You know what I mean? A tax increase to sustain a budget or like a vote on additional costs for transportation or additional cost for uh tuition. I'm just speaking out loud. Do you know what I mean? I think I think you're asking if we need to go for an override. Is

131that what you're asking? Are you asking that if we need to go back to the town? >> Right. Of the two things, you know, for the town like is like for our budget and the town's like because I know we had the workshop and it um the it wasn't too optimistic. >> Yeah. >> If I may. >> Yes. Member Miller, if you're going to speak, would you mind to put on your microphone and so that everyone can hear you? >> I will record my opinion that a two and a half override would devastate the town and it's a band-aid because it's not going to it's only going to fix something for a very short period of time, but it's going to devastate a lot of people. and we may not have to go back to

132the town during the school year to ask for money. I mean it, you know, we've seen some pretty extreme extreme cases this past year and and not just one, not just two, we've had a few um that have been major impacts to our to our budget. You can see the numbers there um just by the share of students leaving and you know losing 12 students but our tuition going up. Um, you can tell, you know, and how long is the town? We have to we we don't even know where our revenue is at this point at the town. Do I anticipate that we're going to get enough chapter 70 and we're going to get enough chapter 90 and we're going to have enough town receipts to accommodate all of our requests? No, I don't think

133that's going to happen um realistically. And we have other slides that speak to um and maybe we should continue on that. Yeah, we're we're getting close. >> If I may. Yeah. Uh just a couple things I want to address with regard to um bridging the gap between the school budget and the school expenses. it in in the time that I've been part of the school committee, I think that this was the first time I can recall going back to the town and asking for additional funding. >> Yeah, >> I I do recall having funding available and and giving it back. Yes. at times when we were operating um in a different financial landscape and were able to spend well under the school budget that was allocated to us. And you know in addition to that

134what I would add is a 2.5% tax increase for taxpayers does not cover contractually required salary increases for our employees. So if if you if you were to look at it from the way of you know you can't increase the tax base by more than two and a half percent and I'm not pro or against any of this but just to break it down our percent increase for salaries for even just our unit a staff far exceeds 2 and a half% on an annual basis. Mhm. >> So just with that and then the knowledge of the utilities, the costs for that, the cost of supplies, materials, um labor in general, everything is more expensive and the rate that everyone's being squeezed because the cost of everything has gone up and you know we're contractually required

135to provide these salary increases and you know it's 80% of our budget and there's certainly curriculum and all these other things that also are very costly but uh the system is not made to adequately fund public education. >> I think that's well said. And if you take a look at the two um pieces of information I gave you about chapter 70, I think it highlights that, right? So that Proposition 2 and a half really does not even align with the minimum contribution that's required. So that that is in direct conflict with what we're required to do for spending on on education. And so I think some of that feedback on the chapter 70 I think will be enlightening if you get a chance to take a look at that >> and through the chair I

136guess for your um you know looking for us for feedback on the circuit breaker I you know as Nico said it's like a band-aid right but do we want to provide the first aid I mean or do like or do we want to get to the point where we're asking you know someone else or the town or what like I think we just need to find a healthy balance of us taking care care of it versus asking and but also like finding that middle like I'd want to take care of it almost now but still have like a little bit of something just in case something were to happen like it's weird like it's a lot to think about but I mean if we have the money I mean but if you ask my husband

137I'm I'm not allowed to touch the money because I just spend it you know it's just, you know, I want to provide, you know, what we have to what we need, um, if we have it. >> The chair, I just to kind of touch on that, I would jump a few slides ahead, but the band-aid is a good idea. It's great, but even with the band-aid, with the projected deficit the town's looking at, it's not going to really take care of much. the town's still going to potentially be at a million dollar deficit even if we do that. So, um you know, it's a bandit. It's not really even covering up the wound at this point. Um without us getting that further information, it's probably going to come in the next couple weeks where we

138can actually >> be working with some maybe more >> some actual numbers. >> Yeah. um not just guess work >> because even with that like I said I'm jumping ahead but I think the number the town's using is a whole point lower than what draft one is in our >> presentation today so that that number is not even accurate from this >> correct correct >> and I don't need an answer today but it's something that needs to stay on our radar and it's information that you need to have. Um this slide was just a quick look at our school choice and sending and receiving through FY25. Um as you can see in FY25, our receiving students went up and our sending numbers had gone down a bit. So that's good news. >> And then Lisa,

139>> yeah. So as we kind of wrap this up and what are the key takeaways? January 21, I think, is a key date for us. That's when the governor releases the state budget. that gives us some insight into what we're seeing for funding overall. Um on a bright side, at least our our um enrollment is up. You know, it's up 28 students from last year. So, that helps out a bit. Um the inflation factor that I just reported on, that is a little bit of help as well um when it comes to revenue. Um and then the other point around chapter 70 is we are in year six of six. So going into fiscal year 27 um we're going in with the formula the way it is. We need to remain hopeful that going into

140fiscal year 28 they make some major overhauls to that so that maybe in fiscal year 28 maybe not. No one has a crystal ball. Could we be in a better situation where that formula works out that it takes into consideration some of those points that we already made about Proposition 2 and a half? even the rate that the inflation factor goes up doesn't even keep up with real inflation, right? So, there's all of those things that are at play. So, um we got to keep an eye on that. But I think we also have to stay grounded in the earlier conversation we had this year with the tri boards, right? We we looked at revenue projections. We know last year we used free cash to offset our deficit for this year. Um it was a

141very generous band-aid that the town offered up. Um but we are projecting right now a little over 2 million um deficit um from a revenue standpoint and that was using a factor for school expenditures at 3.75%. Right? So, um, it's still early, right? We need to let some things become more clear to us. And then I think as the superintendent said, we've been having lots of conversations. We talk about plan B's. This is going to be a continuous iteration in terms of how we look at this, right? What, you know, how do we how do we stop the bleeding? Is there something we do in the interim? What does that mean for the long term? I think as a collective team um we're trying to um keep all of these factors as well as the

142grant funding and the exposure we have there. Right? So there's so many moving pieces that we need to continue looking at what are our options and how can we present the best um budget um for the town and for our students and our staff. >> Great. So agreed and that concludes our presentation. Um I hope you can see that although the percentage is scary, we didn't ask for a lot in this budget. We are looking at basic resources. We're looking at curriculum. We're looking at compliance which is a huge part of the increase which is our tuitions that um we didn't have a lot of control over some of those um which is a huge impact to our budget this year. We're meeting all contractual obligations which we are required to do. Um there are

143not a lot of big asks in this budget at all. Oh, and the other thing I think to keep in mind too is when we look at circuit breaker, while the reimbursement program is fantastic, that threshold or that base that the superintendent was talking about, that increases a little bit every year, right? So, goes up maybe 2,000. So, that means that your base tuition, you're covering the full amount of that. So, that even that little incremental increase on that threshold is more that we're absorbing into our budget, right? And that that's a slow sort of increase in the budget itself. And where did we get our um tuitions going up this year? 3% is it? Did we get that number? >> Yeah, it was um 2.76 I think. I have to go back and double

144check it, but I think it was 2.76 was the increase >> for our tuitions. >> Everything is increasing more than 2 and a half% around us. >> Yes. >> For us as individuals and families and educators. thoughts. >> Well, I think that the committee um certainly had a lot of questions and feedback throughout the presentation. Um and it looks like I don't want to speak for anybody. It looks like many of us are satisfied with the thoughts and feedback that we've shared throughout this presentation. Is there any other lingering um questions or comments with regard to this budget >> through the chair? >> Members, >> I think what what was our increase last year was like 3%. What was it? >> I mean at what point do we start preparing that? because I think we're

145at like that four and some change. >> So what like at what point do we start preparing like only like a 3% increase or three point wherever we were last year? I it's going to be reductions but >> um >> that work's happening, right? >> Yeah. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> So we work forward into bringing you this and then we go back and say what does a 7% look like? What does a 5% look like? What does a 3% look like? What does a 2% look like? Uh we have if you look in your budgets that in your packet you have two bug budgets. So if you were to look at the departmental >> Yep. >> and then the back page on that budget. So, um it'll tell you if we are looking at

146um the 3.75 which the town had, we would have to cut $1.5 million from our budget. >> Right. >> So, what is a 51 1.5 to get down to 3% we are cutting 1.79 almost 1.8 million out of this budget. So you have the gists what it's our work um to meet as a team and to talk about what that looks like um for our district. Um as you can see there is not a lot of fluff built into this budget. So um there's not a lot to cut. >> I would argue no fluff. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. >> Who's the chair? Member millet. And I will say what I did ahead that tribe board meeting and I think we're doing it and that is every department in

147this town has to look at needs and not wants. >> There's no room for wants right now >> in in this economy. It has to be what is absolutely needed and not what is wanted >> to benefit everybody. >> Yep. >> And I can share with you that the town accounting and the town administrator through the town departments um asked for them to submit two versions of a budget, their first one and then a 5% reduction in every one of the departments. So that's what they're working on right now. One thing that I would like to see if possible for the next time we get together would be um excuse me some movement with regard to negotiating the renewals on those subscriptions. uh and even negotiating that rate down with whoever the front runner is

148after those pilots are finished with open sed and I the name of the other one escapes me and uh thank you amplify and looking at some creative payment structures for not only uh the science curriculum but any any of the uh subscriptions that need to be renewed if we can chunk those up over the course of you know a three-year agreement or something like that I think that would be helpful I know it's a drop in the bucket But every little bit helps. >> Yep. We've already done that and we've started looking at um through the curriculum uh what do we have for supplemental? What do we not need for supplemental? We have HQIM. Um no no one uh curriculum is perfect, right? They all have some weak spots in them, some lapses that you

149use to supplement. But we've taken a look at programs. What are we using? What are we not using? Can do we need to have that? Is that necess is that a necessity uh for us? So we have um gone through those looking at usages looking at everything to see what do we not need what what can we get rid of? We have the HQIM. So um we're taking a deep dive into that. >> Thank you. I'm confident you all are. One other thought would be around technology. I don't know if we have any scheduled um equipment purchases that would be hitting next year if we can delay those or something like that. I'm not sure what our what our cycle is and where we're at with that with regard to Chromebooks and that kind. >>

150Yeah, we've already been talking about whether or not we're going to need to reduce for for staff. Maybe we elongate the the lifespan of those devices. Um because we also have on the heels, which is not in this budget, and not that I want to be a Debbie Downer, but one of the major players in the memory market are dropping out. Um, so there is suspicion that cost of these devices is going to increase substantially. So that's a concern that's running rampant across the state with all of the IT directors and managers because that will drive up device costes costs as well. So we will have to look at, you know, the lifespan of those devices and making them last longer. >> And typically we've been on um cycle with our Chromebooks, uh, grades five

151and nine actually, uh, replacing those. um you don't get much more than four years out of a Chromebook unfortunately. Um so stretching that might not be beneficial. Um but uh we are looking at everything with a fine tune code. We are truly looking at everything with the fine-tuned code. Right. Anything else from the committee regard to the uh budget update? >> Okay. Well, thank you all for your hard work and presentation. The uh next several items on our agenda. >> If you don't mind, I'll excuse >> Oh, yes. >> It's a long day. It's a long day. >> You don't want to say >> you're welcome to stay if you'd like. Um but I know tomorrow morning comes really quick. So, >> thank you. Thanks for giving us your time this evening. All right. So,

152with that being said, the uh next several items on our agenda are policy uh reviews or updates. The first one is related to um fiscal management goals. It's the first reading. It's policy DA. >> This is Oh, sorry. >> I'm going to make a few comments. So, um the majority of them with the exception of JFA, we're doing a review of all of the fiscal policies. So there are a total of 22 that are currently that that have been evaluated or in the process of being evaluated. 11 in front of you today. Um there are six that we're looking to adopt the updated language from the Mass Association of School Committees based on their recommendations. Of those um of those six, five we actually had previously previous policies for. So it's really an update of

153all of the language. One of them is a brand new policy for us, but it's a practice that we already do with um authorizing a signature or a designate a sign. Um so it's consistent with our practice. And then there's five um that we're recommending to be removed that have also been removed by the association um as no longer as basically being obsolete or providing no value anymore moving forward. So that's kind of a highle summary of those um policies. If you want me to go deeper in each one, we can definitely do that. >> Great. Thank you for that. So, uh, Miss Kontos, did you want to walk us through anything related to any of these? First one, two, >> I I will tell you that most of the language in these were either

154references to um updated language and how we're talking about education in general and and managing um um our our financials. But in addition to that, it also incorporated some additional legal references as well that are um pertinent as well as tying into our own town charter as well as it relates to budget deadlines and things of that nature. So um these are more clear, crisp and updated. Um doesn't change the overall purpose of them. I think it just cleans up the language >> and that's it for the first I think it's six that are related to finance. >> That's correct. >> Okay, great. Thank you. So um I'll go through each of these first six by title and these will be the first reading of these following policies. Policy DA fiscal management goals. Policy DB

155annual budget. Policy DB C budget deadlines and schedules. Policy DGA authorized signatures. Policy DJ purchasing. and policy DK payment procedures. So that would be the first reading on all of those. The next policy is policy JFA and that's related to CTE school admissions. >> Mrs. Pangley, would you like to talk to us about this one? >> Yep. This is brand new to us. Um it is a new requirement by the state. Um recently I brought you the middle school pathway exploration policy. This follows along with that um being a new updated. This is just how we're admitting our CTE into school. The process is that we come, we um we're given some guidelines. We draft um the policy that gets uploaded to the state. They then review it and give you feedback on it and

156make any recommendations or changes to that. So, u Miss Neves and Miss Bigalow have worked on this. They've looked at it. I've reviewed it. It's our policy. Um, as far as CTE, once this is approved, I will upload it to the state, but it is brand new to us. >> Thank you for that. Any questions or comments from the committee with regard to policy CTE, uh, school admissions? >> And just so you know, um, right now our CTE policy is that any of our students can apply as long as this space in our programs, they can apply and will be taken in. If for some reason they are capped, then it goes to a lottery. Um, we do have school choice here in Webster. So, any school choice students coming in have the same access

157to programming as any of our other students in Webster. Um what we did take out of that is um out of this policy I took out um nonresident tuition because we are not taking in other kids from other districts um that paying tuition to come to our CTE programs at this point. So I did take that out of the policy. Um if we are going to allow that down the road then we can come back to the committee and and add that. But as you know, we're in the process of building our programs and we want our students to be able to access those programs. Um, so that's why we did that at this point. >> Great. Thank you for walking us through that. Any questions or comments from the committee about this? >> No.

158This will be our first reading of policy JFA, CTE school admissions, and we have several policies that Miss KTOS referenced that will be removed. They are policy DBH statement asurances, policy DBI, budget operations and control, policy DID, annual inventory, policy DJ, vendor relations, and policy DKB, payroll deductions. Is there any discussion around the first reading of the removal of those policies? Okay. The next item is policy IHBH, middle school pathway exploration policy. >> Yep. Uh this is um I did put on the agenda update and approval. You have already seen this one twice. I submitted it into the state and uh received feedback on it. They wanted more specific um I did the highlight. Okay, you have the second copy. Um in those areas that I highlighted, they wanted the language to be more specific.

159They asked me to add um I put uh the district will collaborate with CTE programs to inform students about opportunities admission. They wanted me to be very specific to the middle school and and um put in the grades seven and eight. And then they also wanted me to add in that um admissions should be limited um for lottery and that I'll send them in information only attendance and discipline and student interest. So basically they wanted me to state the law. They wanted to be very specific in there. So they sent back those recommendations. So I'm asking for your approval um on that so I can submit it back in. >> Thank you, Mrs. Mr. Pangley. >> Any questions or comments from the committee >> hearing? None. I'll entertain a motion to approve this policy IHBH

160as presented. >> So move. >> Second. >> There's a motion at a second. Desire, would you please pull the committee? >> Yes. >> Millet. >> Yes. Motion passes. And thank you for the work on all of these policies and the revision of this one. >> Thank you. and I appreciate that and hopefully they will be happy with that. I asked them to review it before I came here to see if they had any other thoughts and they sent me the manual so >> hopefully I won't be back. >> Excellent. The next item on the agenda is the acceptance of donations and that's uh various school supplies that were donated from the Rosario family to Webster Middle School. >> Yes. Um I am asking the committee to accept the donations and would like to thank um

161the Rosario family for their um contributions to the Webster public schools. >> Great. That's nice of them to make a donation. >> Absolutely. >> Any questions or comments from the committee hearing? None. I'll entertain a motion to accept the donation of school supplies. >> Second. There's a motion in a second. Desire, would you please pull the committee? >> Yes. Merlin. >> Yes. >> Member Millet, >> Yes. Motion passes. And once again, thank you to the Rosario family. The next item on the agenda is review transfer signing of Warren's bills, payroll, and vouchers. And there is a transfer request. That's in the amount of $6,221.71 from the Webster Middle School activity savings account to the checking account. I'll entertain a motion to approve that. >> So move. >> Second. >> There's a motion and a second.

162Desire, would you please pull the committee? Yes. >> Yes. >> Millet. >> Yes. Motion passes. Sorry. >> You have what? >> Oh, no. Voted on. I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So move. >> Second. There's a motion in a second. Desire, would you please pull the committee? >> Yes. Meeting adjourned. Good night, everyone.