MSAD #51 School Board Budget Workshop, March 20, 2025

001e e e I heard there was an accident on 295 that may delayed a couple board members um but they Tim and Kim are on their way e welcome to the msad51 board of directors meeting Thursday November 20th nice rainy evening um March 20th what did I say November that's a that's a good start did WOW November I'm ready for spring all right so tonight we are going to start with public comment um as I've mentioned we do have a signup we have two signups um the board welcomes and recognizes the value of public comment to ensure public comment is fair and orderly we will follow procedures outlined in our board policy BH and we ask that all members of the public do so as well we follow this policy to help keep the meeting

002civil respectful and productive we also hope that this allows for all community members members who would like to speak to be heard residents and staff members will be given priority over nonr residents within the allotted time frame our policy allows for 30 total minutes of public comment although that can be modified at the discretion of the board I will use the list to welcome speakers to the podium we ask that the speakers use the designated Podium when making their comments and speak into the microphone comments by individuals are limited to 3 minutes maximum uh clock should be visible on the screen thank you um it should be help everyone keep track of time when the timer goes off please wrap up your comments please state your name and town of residence before beginning your remarks

003and as a reminder public comment is not a time for discussion Q&A or debate between the board and speakers rather is a chance for members of the public to express their opinions on school and educational matters the board will not comment on remarks made by the speakers during the public comment period please know that this does not mean we are not listening and it does not express any agreement or disagreement with your statement lastly please keep comments respectful and civil we are neighbors here be kind that in also includes members of the audience please do not interrupt or respond to speakers comments we also ask that comments be addressed to myself the chair please do not direct comments at or about individuals in our schools or communities I do want to note that I will

004stop any comment that is contrary to these rules and that individuals who disrupt the meeting may ask to be asked to leave great so I'm going to start with the list that I have here um the first on the list is Susan Inman sta who's a staff member plus three hi uh I'm Susan Inman uh The English Department chair at gy high school thank you for your time tonight we appreciate the immense task before you this evening my colleagues and I are here on behalf of the ghs English Department who recently learned that we are facing a08 reduction in our department for the 2526 school year we're processing how this is going to impact student learning especially among our College Prep student body these are the kids in the middle who are most vulnerable to

005slipping through the cracks whose class sizes are going to increase by this change we are also losing exceptional teacher expertise with this reduction this is all deeply concerning to us enrollment at ghs is increasing next year and it is our understanding that student numbers are only going to increase more in the years ahead and so we want to understand the District's vision for addressing that and how this decision to reduce our staff affects that Vision thank you thank you next I have Sarah Staples hello I'm I'm Sarah Staples from Cumberland um so I'm here tonight just to express um as a parent whose students have already graduated I still live in this town that I fully support um increases that are necessary to support our Educators I was a former educator myself in Portland and

006I think we don't do enough um to support our Educators who are who are really facing quite a bit of stress these days both professionally uh I think and culturally in the classroom I also really want to express my support for an inclusive education that protects the rights for self-determination for students thank you thank you next up I have Sydney G did I say that right um I'm Sydney from nor North Yarmouth whoa okay imagine for a moment that one day your child has their face in name all over national news imagine the constant harassment and threat threats imagine the hate your child and your family will receive for years to come your presence here today is the result of your nightmare happening to another family but clouded by hate you fail to EMP with

007this child in fact you justify it I ask you when as harming a child the very thing you claim to fight against ever been Justified if the cognitive dissonance hasn't set in yet I'd like to make it clear you do not fight for children's safety you want to erase a people instead of pushing for gender neutral bathrooms you'd rather be they be more inaccessible for even biological women and men who may not look feminine or masculine enough instead of changing how team matchups are created you'd rather bar trans people entirely I remember growing up politics used to be about finding a middle ground now you harass children it's much easier to feel hate than empathy the people who tell you to feel anger instead of Reason are well first inless but they do not care

008about you or your children they simply want to divide us thank you and I have one more paper just want to make sure that we have everyone on that list okay okay great all right next I have Michael Peretti a standoff right once you start hello my name is Mike Peretti I live in Cumberland I said the last time I was here to be careful about claiming to follow the law the law may become immoral and when and then we will be faced with more difficult choices it is as it is evident I did not know it would be so soon I want to add here that I believe we are now on Dangerous Ground with our government if they will use this this issue to force us into immoral choices what is next the

009idea that there are strictly two genders is in the middle of being debunked by science and good theology the Prayer of St Francis has a line in it it is better to understand than to be understood so before we make judgments about what is and isn't we should spend time learning to understand what is being asked of us the science I direct you to the podcast embedded tested scientific discoveries in the last 50 years have expanded our notion Beyond Simple XX or XY chromosomes these are simply not the only indicators of gender sex and identity our scientific understanding of it now includes so much more evidence if we're open to learning the history the concept of gender identity as fluid is also an ancient idea quote from a National Geographic article I read today there's

010amp evidence of gender variance throughout human history among the earliest are accounts of Gala and Gali priests assigned male at Birth who cross gender boundaries in the warship of a variety of goddesses in ancient Sumer accadia Greece and Rome other cultures acknowledged a third gender including two spirit people within indigenous communities and Hijra I probably mispronounced that I apologize non-binary people who inhabit ritual roles in South Asia or more recently Albert cashier a brave Soldier for the Union Army born as Jenny Rogers I quote this article first though says Gil Peterson historians and the public alike must turn their back on the idea that the existence of trans people is a recent phenomenon and learn how to find their stories LGBT history is not physically hidden from us she says it's hidden from our imagination

011about the past and here's the math of it if one does not want to accept these facts the science and the history and Theology of ways of moving through the world then perhaps statistics will help in the last 10 years transgender students in Maine 10 in the last 10 years 50 transgender students in Maine have asked to participate in a sport I don't know the total number of uh student athletes but I suspect that over 10 years this is an infantes % of the total also before the nc2a shamefully bended their knee to the federal government Charlie I'll wrap up Charlie Baker the head reported fewer than 10 transgender athletes participated among 500,000 athletes additionally it is estimated transgender people make up 2% or less of the total population transgender athletes are in no way

012displacing female athletes statistically speaking thank you I'm the father of two daughters I'm going to leave the community with this one one person's existence is not a threat to my existence I speak now in favor of our current inclusive policy because I'm reminded of Martin Neer a conservative German Theologian who initially supported the Nazis but had a change of heart and he coined the phrase first they came for [Applause] so next on the list I'm just going to start with continue with residence Brian oconor you start at one minute uh I'm Brian oconor I live in Cumberland I have two children one of them goes gy High and the other of whom is here tonight um it's easy to be angry right now empathy is under attack Community is under attack I'm not here to

013tell you how angry I am I'd rather use the privilege of public comment to share some gratitude I'm grateful for governor governor Mills and her willingness to stand up against tyranny I'm grateful for the main principles Association and their commitment to inclusion I'm grateful for the school board and administrators who have stood behind inclusive policies but mostly I'm grateful for this generation of kids who keep showing up being themselves taking care of each other while the adults behave badly and make them political pawns and pit them against each other the present is scary the future's not thank you Carrie chinat good evening my name is Carrie chette I live in Cumberland I have three children in the school district I'm here this evening to express my support for superintendent Porter our district our students and

014our community I support msad 51 in following the main Human Rights Act I want to emphasize that our community has done nothing wrong and has in fact followed the laws of our state and been a model of human decency My Hope is we will continue to stand United in this effort I like many of you am eager for the attention and scrutiny to move past our district for the safety and well-being of all of our students and staff I do not think putting students at the center of this debate is ethical I believe our district has many other issues on which to focus I hope this unnecessary overreach of the federal government will stop distracting and depleting our district thank you and then I have Hillary Leman hi I practiced this beforehand so I'm going

015to read it real fast now my name is Hillary Leman I live in West Poland I'm a retired educator here to speak in support of gy high school the main principal Association and this school board for allowing equal opportunities for all athletes as is the law of Title 9 the purpose of Title 9 is to promote inclusion and prevent discrimination based on gender identity regardless of how the sitting president speaks about this law and the small fraction of people it actually affects it does not change the fact that court and federal agencies recognize that title 9's protections against sexual discrimination include gender identity meaning that GRE is not in violation of Title 9 they are in fact upholding that law in addition I think it's important to note that policies excluding transgender athletes are being

016challenged and overturned I said at the start that I was a teacher but once a teacher always a teacher right science health and biology to be specific so a brief lesson on what exactly is going on in a person who is transitioning like wearing an uncomfortable ill-fitting itchy sweater many feel as though their body doesn't fit their mind some can get therapy to work through this body dysmorphia like someone with anorexia or bigorexia where they take steroids to bulk up so they don't feel too small for a person that has decided they want to transition they begin hormone therapy such as estrogen this hormone will cause changes like feminine features storing fat in different places and it can halt testosterone driven puberty such as hair growth and a deeper voice fun fact all humans have

017both estrogen and testosterone in their bodies a transgender female who under goes hormone therapy often has test tone levels within the range of cisgender females this means they they do not have a physical advantage over assigned female at Birth people on top of that the physical and emotional challenges of gender dysphoria and transitioning can significantly offset any perceived benefits but let's get real here the main issue is about inclusion and fairness and that has nothing to do with what barely 22% of this population perceives about transgender female athletes aside from being angry at the wrong 1% the truth and actual legal precedent is that all athletes who want to compete in sports are protected by Title 9 this educational amendment is a federal law that says clearly no person in the US shall on the

018basis of sex or gender be excluded from participation in any education program or activity simply put hating or being prejudice against oops transgender female athletes is merely the opinion of a loud close-minded person pushing their own biased beliefs and that moral and ethical failing on their part does not make it acceptable and it definitely does not make it the law even without the education department this is still a federal law established in 1972 in conclusion I want to say again that I support this school district the mpa and any school that continues to promote equal access and inclusion of all student athletes environments where all children have the opportunity to participate and Thrive should be the norm the principle behind Title 9 was meant to prevent discrimination and promote inclusion when children feel safe supported

019and loved they have a fair chance at success so thank you gy high school and this school board thank you for giving every single student the ability to express themselves I have no doubt you are creating Future Leaders for of America who won't allow hate to defeat hope and progress thank you sorry bro thank you so that was everyone on my list so thank you um for everyone who spoke thank you for public comment and we are excited to move to the budget Workshop you are stay come on back good budget really scares everyone away [Laughter] huh got a few hearty souls are here peanut butter cup okay so now we are going to Pivot to the school board budget Workshop I'm G to hand it over to Scott is that true okay great good

020evening everyone thank you so the uh presentation tonight is basically a deeper dive into the budget than the presentation that was done by the superintendent which was a more Universal and higher looking look at the budget so we'll dive a little bit deeper into it this evening the um I've shared the presentation with everyone so you you should have a copy of that um so you should have that uh available um the budget has been reduced slightly from the last uh budget that we presented the last budget was about 7 and a half% we're now at about 7.23 and that has to do with the reductions of a custodial supervisor and the um basically reallocation and um reduction of some of our utility lines based on some assumptions now that we've had the modular in

021place for some time we can get a little bit more accuracy around that so that what I'd like to do is go through the presentation it has um lines page numbers and uh amounts of the changes to the budget and if you have the budget document in front of you uh if you flip to the first page of the actual working budget see this page uh it says working budget and it's behind the tax sheet and what you'll find is that budget has to the leftand column line numbers there's page numbers at the bottom right and I think if everybody can see that that's how we're going to kind of follow the budget and I'm not going to go through every single variance in the budget because we'll be here until 12 o'cl okay so

022what I'm going to do is hit the highlights um which you'll find will kind will follow uh the budget that uh superintendent Porter had presented um at the previous meeting so so we'll start with revenues so our revenues um are mostly from several sources uh State subsidy is the largest part of our Revenue other than our tax base and also we have miscellaneous revenue and Debt Service from shig Island so if you'll see our variance uh on the shig island Debt Service is a about $80,000 uh decrease and that has to do that this is the last year coming up uh the fiscal 2526 budget in which shig island will be responsible for making a payment of their share of debt service from ceding from The District in the Town of Cumberland in miscellaneous Revenue

023we've increased that by uh about $197,000 and the reason for that is we're now gaining more interest Revenue we have use of facilities revenue and also main State billing revenue for some of the uh students that we bill for State subsidy we're receiving about 1.2 million more in state subsidy and the allocations from that end up coming from our increase enrollment which should come as no surprise to anyone okay that's one of the parts of the funding formula the other part of that is our special education allocation that we receive and also Transportation allocation so those are the reasons for the increase in the state subsidy any questions on the revenues at all right now from the board okay all right major budget drivers across the multiple cost centers that's really what we're going to

024be looking at uh this evening but what I want to do is give a snapshot of the budget so that we understand that the budget what is is mostly made up of so if you look in fy2 and then in FY 26 you'll find that the majority of our budget is made up of salaries and benefits so salaries and benefits account for a little over $44 million of our budget uh the increase just in salaries and benefits is about 3.1 million which is a 6.3% increase on the budget of our um you know 7.2 increase so there isn't much difference there between what the budget is mostly made up which is 82% of salaries and benefits and if you look at a 7.2% increase and 6.3 of that is salaries you can pretty much understand

025what the the sad budget is made up of so if we look at expenditures uh the district um has to account for its expenditures in an 11 cost center format um by State Statute and this slide I won't go into it in in depth but this is the um areas of which we have to organize the district's budget these areas also appear at our District budget meeting and are actually voted on at our District budget meeting so just a um summary of the expenditures our budget is up uh $3.6 million or 7.2% and these are all the cost centers and just the dollar amounts that are with there regular instruction is our largest cost center special education is the next largest and then uh below that they just fall into the different categories so reductions

026to the uh FY 25 budget and these um were presented previously um you can see the the basic reductions large one is The Debt Service about 88,000 uh in debt service we also have some um uh decreases in reallocations in our staffing of about 294,000 good evening and uh this just gives kind of an outline of the um decreases in the budget so then we get into the various cost centers and this is where we'll start to reference the actual budget document regular instruction which is the very first cost center that we have um so if we take let's just use for example miw instructional supplies if you turn to page two of your [Applause] budget all right on page two go to line 32 which is out on the lefthand column follow that down

027to line 32 then go across the page and you'll see that the um miw instructional supplies are up by about $151,000 and the reason for that is the literacy program that we're operating and looking into at mael eye Wilson school you'll also find that below that the books which is line 33 right below that is a reduction of 20,000 and the reason for that is is that um less books were needed due to the literacy supplies being or the literacy materials being purchased so that's one area of how to how to look at this another example would be if you looked at um uh let's take for instance uh to the top of the page on the right hand side uh the educational technician uh grey Middle Middle School Educational technician that would be on

028page 24 so you could literally flip to 24 and you would see on page uh yeah on page 24 again if you followed it down to line 465 um we have group health insurance uh uh and also previously on the previous column of this there's line or page 24 and line 461 is the salary you'll find that we've we've actually moved an educ educational technician over to the Middle School from another cost center so that's why you'll find that that particular piece is up and that particular area is up in the budget can I start to ask questions you can ask any questions you want um so the increase in the miw instructional supplies so is that a one-time increase so it looks like you know two years in a row it was a little

029over $100,000 up 150,000 now is that the onetime purchase of supplies and then the expectation is that it's coming back down I believe it's going to come back down so this is all related to the literacy pilot that um K through five is involved in right now the elementary literacy pilot so um we had teachers that were involved in in three different Pilots this year so they bought supplies for those Pilots this is an anticipation that a there will be a decision made and these will be the supplies for the decision um again no decisions been made has been brought to the curriculum committee uh but this is an anticipation of a literacy consistent literacy program at at the elementary level so a one-time like purchase of of new supplies that will be used every

030year or yeah you won see this cost every year there will be some replacement books um that are built into the literacy program but this should be hopefully the B bulk of it but that's why it's so much higher this year is that investment for a new program the rest of the school that didn't pilot it okay thank you um and just one point and the salary line we were just what on page 24 are any of the salary lines the percentage increase is a combination of both the the raises and also if additional position positions were added that would be correct because you know initially I was like 15% I was like I don't remember the increase being that much but it combines the two there is yeah there's um and the salary increases

031it depends on with the contract that we had some got larger raises some got lower raises but the net effect um what we negotiated isn't 15% okay overall to the budget thank and that's actually um there's actually a position that's in there that's also transferred from another cost center so you'll see high school is slightly down Middle School is slightly up so the other uh place we could take a look at as well is really high school books which would be page 38 and again we're still following through instruction and I'm not hitting all of the areas just catching the major areas that I can and um you look at line 753 and we're at gy high school and you'll see that the book line is up $24,000 the $24,000 around the book line is

032for the new is for new math books or the uh subscription for the new math books uh the subscription expired we had to renew the subscription we had to pay for that so so this is for the new geometry I believe Jee it is geometry books and these are the actual physical yeah physical books the licensees expired okay can I ask a weird question on that go ahead the the fact that we have technology and iPads and Chromebooks that have all this stuff and we're paying we're still paying this amount of money for books I'm sure that's like kind of the norm around and not everyone wants everyone reading screens and I know there's different learning styles but it feels like that again is that's so expensive to have to do all the time any

033new changes and the fact that we're still doing it is there like are there any is there any light in the future where those big heavy books that get updated every once in a while and it cost that much money anything that from a technology standpoint we can do to supplant the amount of money we put towards books I will say that we we have drastically reduced book cost over the last several years yeah this isn't this is one of those exceptions it's a math um and Stu I actually think Sophia and Katie spoke to this at one point but this was a decision the math department thought a lot about and felt that um having a physical book for geometry was extremely important um and there's consume goals that go with this as well

034where students can actually do the work at home so there's some math I would say math is one of those exceptions I've seen your backpack well I would say like geometry is the only class that I've had that we had to have like a single use book but the rest of our books we all reuse multiple times but I think for geometry it is important because it's shapes and you have to draw but um the that program too is actually it's like connected to a digital copy of the book so they use it both ways but um where we would have like I know what you're talking about with like their different books but you can get all that same information online and so you can print things out differently and use them too but

035like Sophia said with specifically geometry you kind of you do need the physical copy because if not you'd be either printing it out sheet by sheet or having to retrace the diagrams that you're working with but with every other book like she said we use them and then return them at the end of the year okay that's helpful thank you all right um so that helps you go through the budget and you understand what the instruction cost center is it's all those areas that have books supplies texts that are directly related to the classroom and staff salaries and benefits that are related to direct instruction the next cost center uh would be special education and this uh cost Center has a um increase in it for several areas and uh so at um 4 five

036uh we had to add an instructional assistant which would be an educational technician so if you look at line 15 I mean excuse me page 15 and you look at line uh look at line 292 and follow that over you'll see a $79,000 increase in that line that that's not the entire amount of the um all of that amount doesn't relate directly to the educational technician an educational technician is less than that it's probably you know in the high 40s um this is 79 it also represents other salary increases as well you'll also find that we have um on various areas of the budget um if we look at line excuse me page 40 on line 801 this is where we're going to start getting into our out of District tuition so we look at

037uh page 40 and please stop me at any time if you have a question so so if we look at page 40 and you look at l line 801 you'll see that there's a two about a $219,000 increase that's for an out of out of District placement or a uh private tuition for a student and special education uh several students and then you'll also find that there's um in 45 there's $100,000 and then also in 68 which is the middle school there's another $80,000 uh totaling a bit over $400,000 for out of District tuition which which is um which is the increases in that area is that um is that total higher than normal yes yes it is and is that based on um like actual children who are currently enrolled that we know we

038need to place so it's a combination of children that are placed out right now placed out right now okay and are um in the process of being placed out so they're either been recommended for placed out but we don't have a spot there's not a spot for them yet or we are the IEP team is close to making a decision about that and so we're anticipating that there'll be out of District placement so it's a combination of the two and it's higher than normal and is this sort of like where we should assume that the number stays as our enrollment increases or do you think that this is just sort of an interesting moment in time I think it's an interesting moment in time I'm not sure if it's really tied to enrollment the number

039has gone up and down over the years um it used to be this this high at one point and then we made you know a lot of efforts to keep our our children in the district we still do that um but there are occasions where the IEP team doesn't feel it's in the best interest of the student to keep them in the district okay thanks there's also some reductions in special education which is I I won't take us to those lines but in uh the middle school teacher salaries um for special education there's a position that is not going to be refilled um it's currently an opening and we won't be filling that position so and that's um you know that's easily $100,000 position what you're seeing on the list here is just the net

040of the reduction plus whatever increases in salaries and benefits we had so to the right hand side of this is the next cost center would be other instruction and in other instruction you have extracurricular uh co-curricular activities in athletics and what you'll find there is we have have gy high school activity stiens and it's an increase of about $113,000 there were a number of stien reviews that we did this year that um based on the hours that staff were working increased some stiens in the district so this is a budget to actual and it also pertains to a Kyle's care stien which was added due to the uh popularity and the increasing student population into that um activity so that's where that's where that amount comes from then we get into student and staff support

041and this is one of our uh larger increase areas um as far as just an independent cost center around a lot of it has to do around technology so if we um I'll I'll choose let's say for instance um uh Mabel eye Wilson school and let's take a look at uh technology software uh which would be page 10 in line 218 everybody could go to that so if you remember in Jeff's presentation uh this was discussed that uh uh that the increase there um you know we talked about various technology areas the increase in the technology software is about 42 a little over $42,000 and the the reason around that is the moroi licenses that we have to do in the district now and also the um s centx cic thank you crisis alert program

042so uh so and then um that's where the uh software lines have increased from also we have hardware and um some of our Hardware areas if you were to take a look is miw which is also page 10 line 219 there's a little over 61 $1,000 increase there that has to do with the grade two Chromebooks and um also some access points projectors um and Replacements and it's also um a lease that was a lease purchase this is all lease purchased there was a Le P lease purchase that we did towards the end of last year that the first payment is coming due in the new fiscal year uh for materials that were received last year the uh devices from last year any questions on those student and staff support and Technology can you remind

043me what plg is professional learning Grant okay and it and the reason those are reduced uh when you take a look at it is we had um that's been something that's been budgeted um for a period of time uh we now have in the collective bargaining agreement um a day which is self-directed professional development so we'll be looking at putting less money into the budget um for the plg grants which staff can apply for for that technology software and Hardware I I think I recall so this again a lot of this is one time we need to buy new licenses this isn't going to be ongoing that's correct that's right but it'll be cyclical we'll have to reup that license again at some point we have to reup at some point and then if we

044do end up getting anything from eate um it will help us in the long run when we apply for E right okay but the licenses are they an annual license cost they're an annual license cost so we'll we'll see that but we're hoping that we can get e rate which will allow us to buy three years and not have to buy just one year we just don't know what's going to happen with that in our application process yeah when we put the the network in the network is paid for by federal funds um through the state uh back during the covid period when we had a lot of federal monies for things like that so we got our Network f network was replaced one of the things that we did not opt to do at

045that time is um take on the moroi or take on the licensing um for that and we did not um replace the core switches there wasn't enough money to do all of that so we knew that those things were going to catch up with us they have both those things have caught up with us our switches are aging licenses um I believe were six-year license if I remember correctly um and now we have to go ahead and renew those you'll see if I just went to the next the next page under um this uh cost center student and staff support you'll see that that's one of the things that shows up reallyy Middle School Technology hardware and the High School Technology Hardware that's where you see the uh switches and uh things that are needed

046for the district along with um projectors and access points so so it's a combination of things that yes will be paid for that won't continue that's correct switches a one time would be much more than that um we're least purchasing these items over over a threeyear period okay so we'll see the same dollar amount for the next three years for those no it'll be it'll be this payment but once it's in the budget it doesn't Force an increase in the next year so it won't be like this increase plus another 73 plus another 73 but you're right it's in the budget it's in the budget it's in the budget it's not like we buy the books and then we don't need to buy the books it doesn't show an increase okay and the thing I

047just want to for folk disclosure um we are replacing the very worst and most important switches in our uh Network so there are switches that still have to be replaced but we're taking care of the warts ones the ones that we think could fail and the and the whole intent around the lease purchase is to expense the items as we use them before we need to replace them again so if you enter into a lease purchase which is a threee or a fiveyear you're paying for those things over the period of years that you would utilize and then when it goes to when that lease goes off to drop off again then you start looking at replacing again and so you try to get into this cycle whereas one lease is retiring you're bringing on

048another one so your budget stays flat these technology upgrades just for clarification like well in my world I would say is it doesn't sound exciting to update a wireless access point or switch but from like cyber security and all that we talked about last week it's a must and it's not like the coolest thing or why are we spending it all this often but it is a it's a real security issue because you can't update certain things certain software doesn't work on it and so I think it's it's definitely a priority things come to a screeching halt when the neetwork goes down yeah not that most exciting even phone systems yeah yeah as we learned in the board meeting a few mons back right can you remind me how long cenix will be a line

049item and do we know how much it will change after after like an upfront cost so um originally the setup costs all had to be put into year one um of and I believe I have to go back and look I think it is a fiveyear lease okay so that will definitely drop um but what we did is flattened it over the years and put the setup in each year okay um and then the actual cost for licensing each school I think is going to be you know going down but I have to double I can double check that for you okay I don't have an answer that's complete thanks at this moment all right the um if we're all set with that area um the next cost center would be system administration and in

050the uh Contract Services line which would be uh we want to look at uh page 52 line 1042 hard to believe there's uh over a thousand account lines in here so okay so um so if we go to page 52 again now you're in system administration and if we uh take a look at this it's down at the bottom of the page and it's line 1042 you'll see that we have a $24,000 reduction here and this is our Equity consultant um that we've reduced as a cont track service um our legal line which is on line 1043 which is on the next page 53 that's a budget to actual um you can see from uh if you go all the way to the left you'll see in fiscal year 2324 we spent almost 238,000 illegal

051this year we're trending higher than what we budgeted and uh so we're trying to bring it budget to actual by adding another $50,000 to the legal line I got a question about Legal Services yes um do you know where we how we compare to other schools around us in terms of the money we spend on Legal Services um we can we can definitely get that information that information not sure how we compare to other districts yeah of our size yeah just and yeah specifically like for the policy committee I know we have legal review our policies and just I mean is that standard practice that like they get to build us every time we want to make a change on a policy or do some school districts just change their policies and use sort of

052model MSM model policies and just forego the some District yeah some districts just use msma sample policies they're not msma sample policies are good but they're not always updated or current or there's nothing available so that's why we we do check msma first that's our first go-to and then in terms of um contracts like I know they're looking at our the contract for for the turf field where if we' gone with a co-op we would have foregone that cost which seems like a conflict of interest that they told us we couldn't go with a co-op so that they can now charge us to review it I'm wondering do you know what other potential like do they review any contract is it only above a certain dollar amount I'm just wondering how often are they charging

053us to look at these things when we might be able to forego that cost if we could go with a pre-negotiated co-op something or it is it just very large contracts or are they reviewing like the Bobcat or sort of any contract we sign um I do not have them riew like the bobcat and things of that nature it's it's more your larger contracts anything that would have to do with build and construction certainly okay which seems like you would want them to but again absolutely if we could go with a co-op or any other school district that's listening if we have to sign a uh if we have to sign a conver a uh a contract for bus transportation to uh Boston that wouldn't be something send to drun either we' just take care

054of that it just be interesting to know the exposure level right you take a look at what's your gross exposure level yeah because I mean it looks it's a lot of money so I'm just wondering are we higher than other school districts are we is this just a cost that of doing business and having to well make sure we're covered yeah a lot of it is the one campus project we've had so much legal activity around that project and there have been so many legal things we've had to check into just around that talk3 half million do project um special education collective bargaining um definitely you have to create legal council with uh working with us on that um actions brought against the district that that's risen in the last couple of years three years

055four years so definitely those are all expenses yeah we have to incur can I ask a follow-up question to that um because you're right on the policy committee we throw it out being like yeah just send it to drum and Woodson all the time and I do Wonder if you're like oh God like is are they do we have like a package deal at all with them being like this many hours or is that every single time we send a document to them it's an hourly rate and we just like an hourly rate so there's no like that's how it works okay it's it's yeah they're buil they build it an hour and we um I we are you know when a policy is done and ready to be reviewed that's pretty much when we

056have them review it yeah if there's no changes to a policy we don't have them review it and I know it sounds EXP expensive but it also it's un necessary like it probably saves us tenfold in having it reviewed beforehand because you don't want a policy it's faulty um but it you know it is an expense that we have to incur when we have those okay for sure but it is it is hourly we do get discounts when we've reached the threshold we've been given a given a reduction punch card yeah you know I feel like given that before like with your trash bags you can there's also when they when they do things for multiple disc districts as well so like if they've already done one particular thing for another District I've seen discounts

057for that as well we don't even get a fruit basket like I feel like we're you know not even a card you get one free seminar a year but okay right do they put it on do we get to choose our seminar no it's for superintendent only oh so you yes what what worries me is that that could be a tactic by a variety of different parties to because they know we're costing we like they know how much we have assigned to legal fees they know that we're doing this um build and so it worries me and if we're we're facing we're facing you know this year we had a bunch of negotiations is like we have the new build coming up we're facing what we are in from uh like the federal government side

058of things like that I feel like is a risk for us like we know how much we have to spend in that am and how much we don't have to spend and so that um I don't know how we kind of evade that avoid that risk but I'm I'm worried about just that amount of money being out there well is a followup like from a policy committee perspective right is it like an up to amount like oh we've reached the number of legal reviews this year for policy committee I guess we've I will say that we overrun our legal account and this is showing this amount out is basically what the actual is for the year yeah and we've been increasing every year for years and years and I think some of it is just

059the cost of legal has gone up and but I also will say that since Co there's been a lot of actions taken a lot of litigation I mean are you worried about I'm I'm very about that it takes away from other things in our district okay I I think that's facing these actions all the time and it would be nice to it's not good for our students and our community not the only District seeing this there's a lot of school districts that are facing lots of action and it it is a huge area of concern that we're doing this well and that's only captured in legal fees I think the other point that I want to make is the cost of administrator's time Administration time that's not captured there right administrators are investigating um lots

060of Investigations and the I'd say the investigations have probably if I had to guess have doubled in the last three to four years for administrators and what is that taking away from right taking away from culture building being in the classroom working with students other things like that leadership in the building Jee did we get a report from Drummond at the end of the year like a bank report where it's like we spent this many hours on policy this much on litigation this much on building I mean because I think before yeah that'd be super helpful just to know like where's our money cuz some of it like is just cost we got to eat and some of it if it's like if they're reviewing our policies maybe as a policy committee we're like we

061will not send things to Drummond unless it is we think it is ready to go right like just to see just to sort of know like litigation we need them to defend us but just to have awareness of sort of how that money is getting broken down I think would be that's probably the smallest cost polic smallest cost but that's something that we could directly help with we're often just within the control you can tell us no wait until you have all your revisions before we send back to them because I and you know we want to be thoughtful about that too you know or if we're okay with Ms Ms yeah maybe the model policy is fine yes and I'm interested also in the collective of other school districts if there's a number of

062districts that are making the same change can just during this particular time especially 1% of that can be saved well I will say we've used msma as a starting Place way more in the last couple of years and one of the reasons for that Drummond Woodson used to have a staffer who her only job was policy um in Chapman but she retired and so she wasn't an attorney so she didn't bail at the attorney rate she built at a staffer rate um she was very thorough very good and Derman Woodson hasn't uh replaced that position so now we have attorneys doing that work and so they're obviously Billing at a different rate than um when an was there she was there for a long time so last question and and Tim mentioned this and I

063just wanted to to better understand the costs of when uh attorney rates are covered by insurance versus so they're covered by Insurance um if there is a legal action that has been taking place um is taking place where we're going to court or there's um usually it has to actually go to court in order for us to be able to recover those those fees so if there's a judgment against the district or we're in court and often the court will say you know you can recover those fees and then it would run through Insurance anything else just that there's a a deductible to that um they don't pay the 100% cost so there is a deductible to that through our uh insurance so okay all right thank you great okay I think it's an important

064point that was raised and um can't say don't suw us but um when you you live here you work here be careful what you ask for because it takes money away from this from the students exactly I have a crazy question have we ever thought about a different attorney or a different group um there are about 10% 15% of the districts use another firm or other firms in Maine besides drumond witson 85 90% use Drummond and witson because they're Diversified and um they do more than just schools they do everything real estate everything they have specialists in the various areas but the school one has they have specialist in you know Finance um you know just students personel special education so that's why I think most districts feel comfortable using do we sometimes use other

065attorneys we do if there's a conflict of interest and we do right now we're using another firm for a case that we have y hey before I move off this one so I was digging some through some stuff um I'm not saying these are accurate numbers but it looks like we're not too far off from Yarmouth and bouth and to be honest from last year I'm guessing we're Fair feel better but good J feel thank you Google not as bad less bad less bad their budgets align differently so they have we have one legal line they have like 17 on one of them I think six on another so I don't know which they fall under how they add up but rough that it's similar it's um I would say and I I know some

066of the issues they're dealing with too so it doesn't surprise me um when you said that I think school legal costs are just up in the last five years I have never seen so many actions okay all right um the uh we go back for a minute so the other Co the next cost center would be School administration um nothing really much in this area other than there's a large reduction in uh gley Middle School tuition in office of the principal we had several staff members who were working towards degree levels and one towards a doctorate so uh that's uh no long longer done being done so we're able to do a budget to actual adjustment on that and reduce that money so did they graduate yes awesome congratulations so um transportation and buses um

067so let's talk about a couple areas on this if we look at um page 57 and we go to line 1,135 in the budget one of the areas under safety in Security in the district um uh has to do with uh cameras in the schools and also cameras on the buses and so this particular line under contracted Services is up $24,000 and the reason for that is that we now have cameras on all of our buses where they can be looked at live at any given time and that the administrators also can have access to them to see what is going on in the buses and so forth so it's a uh uh addresses um a serious shortfall in uh security and safety that we had on our buses so and that um that's really

068more for the service um there has to be like a network service um rather than just the cameras themselves so uh there's also under technology software um I won't take you to the line but there's also a parent app that we've uh have in place now it's called parent app geofinder and it'll allow parents to download the app pertaining to their students and they'll be able to log on to and see where is their students bus at any given point in time it's also a great security issue and it also helps with um parents will be able to set a circumference when the bus is you know 5 minutes away from the house uh a mile away from the house uh two miles away from the house they'll know where the bus is if it's

069running late we can also send messages out to let people know if the bus is running late and and go to just that bus so that's a $4,800 increase for that app many districts have added that app so it's and so that's an annual fee uh that particular one there would be an annual fee yes yeah it would be a software fee and then we also have a van purchase um which is online uh page 57 as well in line uh 1149 and that is a lease purchase on a new van um we now need to get into a replacement schedule on the vans that we have we we purchase those over a period of time we actually even use federal funds um for some of those vans initially and then um they're used quite

070often by um you know special education transportation of homeless students and actually they go to the mountain from time to time um the Vans have really helped us out um rather than having to run a bus and also not having to have a bus driver with a license um you know we don't have to have uh you know five more bus drivers uh because they a van driver can be you know what the vendor who the vendor is for the Vans at this point I don't we haven't put out a uh uh an option on this one yet or put out a bit on it okay I know what you're asking we know what you're doing and I I and I know where I'm heading we should just double check see we some time and

071money can we check with the other attorney yes we can use the co-op we um we have pushed um one of the things that I wanted to mention is on the loader we did get the co-op price on the loader okay so so I want to let you know we talked to the vendor and um and the price was was close to being there as it was but we were able to push a little harder and get a better price uh so that so we were able to get that and I'm sure that if we're eligible for other things through the co-op we'll look at them okay and it's actually a good it's actually a good bargaining tool oh that's true because even though we may not be eligible for some things um we can

072push on the vendor and say you know look on the co-op it's this price and we've used that so can I ask another o sorry question just for clarifying so again we're in a very tight budget season we're about to incur a big expense next year and moving forward we we're not sure what's happening with you know tariffs and stuff like that and expenses we're kind of a lot of questions around this time so even in my own home like I would like to get a new car since we're adding another kid um but I don't know if that's possible at this point and so like if we look at things like van purchase like what is our definition of like I would want to see this budget and look at it and be like

073this is a musthave we can't send a van by the way to the mountains because it's going to break down reliability safety so like in other years where it's like I think we should be on top of it it's an open year where we can do this this year I feel like the lens should be no it's like a safety issue we have to do it we'd be D looked in our dirt d not to is that the lens that you're approaching this is one of the Vans that's starting to rust okay a lot okay so and we need to replace you're a car guy like I trust that I just want to make sure if we look at this you know I don't want to look at every item and be like is that

074a must have is that a must have and we have not been on a replacement schedule for the bands and we've got a number of them and we need to get into a cycle of rep can't you fix it for isn't that what you do okay conflict Tim are you in the market for a used band do you have man that could fit four kids and they're also um these bands as well um um some of them have wheelchair lifts in them as well so so that's the other part and when the wheelchair lifts start not to work and so forth and we have more problems than we have to replace I think I'll be in one of those soon so that van might be per they actually have become very popular to use in

075the district so I have a question that's not specific it's more General but like what's our line on putting it into the budget versus having like the geometry books paid for by the geometry student family or you know the um the geofinder app having that be question you know paid for by the person who chooses to use it like I think the books would fall under free and appropriate public education okay we wouldn't be able to charge for those um the app I'm not not sure I'd have to I'd have to think about that one a little bit and I don't know how that would work with accessibility and Licensing and things like that it may may not be an option but y as Tim said anywhere we can sure so we have more Flex

076it's a great question because like it gets us um sometimes we have more flexibility in charging parents for after school activities um and there the courts have made made that very clear then we do for co-curricular and extracurricular but we don't have as many options during the school day so for books and stuff like that field trips we can because it's considered a co-curricular experience um so you can charge parents for things like that but when it comes down to kind of the basic supplies uh we all know that teachers um spend money on basic supplies beyond what they get for Budget as much as we don't want them to they do because they have to they sometimes parents will donate stuff for the classroom we know that what we have in the budget doesn't

077cover everything but in terms of just uniformally charging parents it's generally kind of a no no to and in the app that you're talking about our interest is is having as many parents have that as possible because it helps us allows us to communicate with parents and adds to the safety of students writing so it's less of a convenience item is more of a safety item uh so we don't have students getting dropped off at a house that's empty parents will know where the student is and they can get to the house and make sure they're there so uh so those are some of the things that we we look at with this all right so then our next cost center would be facilities and we've done a number of adjustments to our energy lines

078uh across this uh budget to actuals and um the miw water and sewer which is page 12 in line 243 one of the things that we found is that we were trying to get our arms around the water and sewer once we put in the modulars and the other part is is that um the water company was out and just replaced the meter lately I'm not so sure that our meter was working properly and so they were out here to fix the meter so um we've done a projection based on our recent Billings and we've also done projections um since we've had the modulars in place and we feel that it's about a $23,000 increase to our water and sewer line uh in mael ey Wilson school um personally I think we've been under bu

079um on it and now we're being built appropriately uh there's also other areas across the budget would have to do to modular so if you look at for instance um the uh uh gy middle school and you look at the um line 700 on page 35 this is an area where we're having to add another modular and uh so uh page 35 and we've had some discussions about the modular in finance and at the board meeting and the the cost of the lease on the modular is approximately $150,000 and then there's also onetime setup costs that are included to that that bring it over just over $180,000 increase in next year's budget and that has to we have three Modular Buildings which are less than optimal right right now uh uh we've had some issues

080with air quality we've had some issues with the buildings themselves because they're older buildings and they don't have the um parts available to repair the air handling units to the buildings that we're actually leasing right now they actually have to go find another one and steal parts off it to replace ours so so due to that we're looking to replace the three that are already there and then also add a two classroom modular for our student increased enroll at gley middle school so that's what that increas is for and um uh so I don't know if there's any questions on that piece but that's one of the uh larger increases all right we can then look at one of the areas of um a cost center which is uh our principal interest payments on debt

081service and if you look at page 59 lines one uh 117 5 and 1176 you'll find that there was principal and interest uh over $800,000 uh reduction in our debt service which has to do with the bond on gy Middle School retiring next year or this year excuse me and no payment next year on that so that would be the cost centers uh any questions that you want me to go back to on the cost centers at this point because I was going to go into the tax assessment okay go ahead sorry so we do get some money back on square footage for the modular correct we do and um I think it's almost $300,000 let me just and so with the increase in square footage yes we'll get yes we have to uh we

082have to apply to the state for that and it basically you can get it for up to five years okay and it's based on square footage and um uh excuse me one moment here I can tell you exactly what it is you found that pretty quickly I don't know I haven't found it yet okay here it is uh so it's $289,200 that we're getting back right now on the square footage of the when will the five years be up let's see we just did a threeyear renewal two more years I believe and they're going toy they're going to cycle off because we didn't you know the ones at miw will will mature and we'll lose that first and then we went on to put the ones at the middle school as well so there's a

083little bit of a lag there I think there's a years lag between the two of them okay but we should be able to continue to get funds through when the through till we get the building project I hope okay can I ask the finance committee a quick question is there anything before we move on to the the fund taxes part of it is there anything that you're surprised that we haven't asked questions on or anything you think we should be paying attention to or highlight for us cuz it's you know it's a big document we're jumping around very organized way anything that we should be looking at that just to be aware of I want to give these guys a chance one thing I will say is our last um budget committee subcommittee meeting uh

084I think the three of us went through every single line and asked a question about at least two or three things a page so just to give you an idea of how in depth we Dove and how many questions and sometimes I feel painful to try to take away from teachers but at the same time just being responsible and digging into it yeah anything you want to share though that like we missed or should know about that's all I just want to open I think a lot of what uh Scott's presentation kind of reflects is what we asked for the most part I think he's covering kind of what we asked and plus obviously what effort and energy the significant effort and energy that he put into it beforehand well giving you another minute to

085maybe think about that a couple things that I had on my list from last time um that I will go ahead and ask are the bus Zone R is that the Geo the go no the Zonar is a GPS unit um that's part of it and that was an add-on to the Zonar the Zonar is used to check the vehicle the drivers have a handheld unit and it forces them to go to areas on the bus to where there's buttons so they have to do their pre-trip and their post-trip inspections so the Zonar this is an add-on to the Zonar the app that we talked about here is an add-on to Zonar and it uses the GPS system okay and Zonar is also in the budget or it's already Zonar is in the budget Zonar

086is in the budget we bought the units uh and we bought the units um out of our uh parts and supplies so that cover that covers it and the other rest of our contract Services covers that and um it it's great the the Zonar handheld units are great because the drivers literally at the end of their run or the beginning like at the end of the run at the end of the day they have to do a post trip inspection and they literally have to walk back to the back of the bus with a handheld unit get it close to the tab that's at the back of the bus and then we know that the bus has been checked on a daily basis so that's part of the Zone R system for the pre-trip and

087the post-trip inspections and then it also notes any uh deficiencies in the bus so the mechanics will know what they need to fix the drivers can put in notes when they do their inspections it also pertains to the routing software that we have we have a routing software that's also tied into the zoner the Zonar which allows us to look at how efficient we can be with the bus runs timing of the bus runs we also know where every bus is and we can check a lot of times we'll get a phone call the big yellow bus went speeding by my house today I go and I take a look at the the GPS unit and I can tell that the bus was doing 25 and somebody's telling me it was doing 60 right so

088you know they look big and they go fast you know people think they go fast but we we've had times like that where we've been able to you know look at things and either validate them or not validate them thank you um also so the budget experience sorry the health insurance experience rating just had a note that it seemed like it was higher this year and I was curious as to what was impacting that yep um I've budgeted 10% for health insurance increase I don't know if that's going to be enough based on what our experience rating is The Experience rating is claims paid to claims collected that's really what the experience rating is um year to year it can be multiple different things in with the um with the experience rating um but there

089wasn't anything specific it sounds like that no I mean it's you know um calculation this year could be could be surgeries could be you know a number of different things um higher usage but a similar calculation to previous years and and also the um my understanding is that the benefits trust has had had the ability to buy down rates over a period of years they no longer have that same amount of money and available to buy down the rates so and to apply to those rates uh and then I guess the other thing if we can just talk a little bit about the Staffing adjustments um those obviously came up this evening um but also were um presented in some information that we received in terms of that you know being able to reduce the

090three FTE down to 2.8 and um I know I I also learned more recently I guess about the change in the leadership uh department head structure at the high school which I'm not sure if everyone is aware of in terms of the stiens and how that right maybe if everyone can just understand how that all fits together yeah so one of the things that um it's part of those um it's really a lot of it is just adjustment so we have adjusted Staffing in order to move staff from one place to the other um and so uh in the presentation you'll recall that I said there's a 3.0 FD reduction um so we also have two new vacancies at the middle school 68 um which is for enrollment we have just increased enrollment we need

091those two teachers instead of um looking at those two teachers as um two teaching positions at the middle school as we've got to go out and hire two new people to do that and add those two positions to the budget we made efforts to look at our staffing within the district and one place that we found um was at the high school which is the leadership team model right now six teachers have one block that they are released um uh on their rot their teaching rotation where they are uh meeting as a leadership team and doing uh department head duties so they're released from a block so this budget proposal um removes that um model from the budget and those six teachers would uh go into the classroom instead of um using that that release

092time as um leadership team time in exchange they would be paid stiens like all of our other schools are for leadership team work um after because that work will have to happen after hours or after school or whatnot so um we're transferring one we were able to reclaim an FTE at the high school that were're transferring from the high school to the Middle School to fill one of those two vacant positions um and so you did hear some teachers tonight advocating um there is a teacher that is um transferring from the high school to the medle school um we left it to the high school to look at their whole schedule try to figure out where that um where that ft will come from um they looked at a whole variety of things including their

093labs and who is Staffing those labs um how many staff are Staffing the labs how many blocks per day Etc and that's how they came up with the FD they also look at class CL sizes um so that was how we determined that situation so we're able to fill one of those positions with a transfer from high school to Middle School um and we feel comfortable with the numbers that we've looked at that we can do that you know fairly reasonably um and then at the middle school and again there's some we have some staff that have not been informed so we're still working through some staffing so I can't give a lot of more detail um but we are reorganizing services at uh the Middle School in one of the areas special education areas

094and as a result of that we're able to um reduce uh teaching uh the teaching positions at the middle school um in particular one of the positions um is vacant right now so we don't have anybody in the position so we're just R we're just eliminating that that position through a reorganization of services that we've looked at case loads um of students and we're able to do that um fairly reasonably without an issue um so that's where those some of those expenses at we're also looking at an edtech reduction um in a regular education technician again we have informed staff it's going to be through um attrition because we have an opening for an elll position in the district which is a new position which we need um so that was a wash we're able

095to um eliminate one and then we have um in addition of need in a different place so it's really again we're looking at transfers and moving staff around so you'll see some areas are eliminated and then when some areas we needed more staff so overall um you know we're looking at those staff adjustments overall it's a reduction in Staffing and it's common place to move staff around based on enrollments and and reassign and especially when um in the special education area specifically and also in other areas of the budget so um that's not an uncommon thing for the district to do can I piggyback on Ana's question specifically about the science teachers a few meetings ago High School science teachers came and spoke about elimination of I think one FTE in that department um and

096it doesn't sound like that's being reversed but it is a little confusing when our enrollment numbers are going up um but we're hearing about positions being eliminated I hear what you're saying that there's some sort of um shuffling of resources but can you speak to that yeah so our high school we have about 65 students right now at really high school and um we offer everything that we we know that we're very comprehensive high school so we offer AP we offer IB we offer CP we offer electives we offer comprehensive special education comprehens of alternative education so we offer a toz um and um the the school has made a lot of efforts and we've um added Staffing previous to the last couple of years um in order to support more electives at the high

097school and support programming so we've consistently added um and um this is the school right now that is not growing there is going to be some growth enrollment next year but the growth still has not come into the high school won't be in the high school for another three years um and so that growth we're going to have to respond to just like we are 68 we've done for the last two budget Cycles um we have done an enrollment study and a class size study and a program study um of all of our schools but particularly at the high school because we knew that um we've looked at some of the class sizes and they're lower than we would expect or have been the case in previous years we've also looked at the lab model

098um at the high school it's a great model but we have a lot of blocks where we have multiple staff members Staffing those labs it's expensive we looked at the ilt model at the high school um we're the only High School in this area that has that model where we release teachers for an entire block of that's an 86 minute block that we're releasing um it's a great model I was supportive of it when we put it in years ago um but it also is it's it's expensive and we need to reassign teachers back to the classroom we just can't afford it um in years like this and we haven't had a budget increase of you know we've had two budget increases about 7% or a little over 7% in the last couple years we

099can't keep operating that way without making some reductions uh in our in our budget and right now the elementary and the middle school have been really hard hit we've been adding adding adding adding adding the high school is not added with enrollment we've added a few students here and there but when you look at the class sizes you know across the board we're dealing with class sizes at 6 78 right now they're 20 21 23 24 in some cases Allied Arts might even have 25 you look at the high school classes were well below that so there is an ability to do that now at some point the high school is going to add a lot of students that's coming and we know we're going to have to be prepared to add staff at that

100time and move staff around um but we're in a period with the high school where the high school enrollment has not gone up much and it's pretty much stayed flat for a while so we looked at all of our class sizes we looked at what we're offering we're offering a lot and we'll continue offering a lot even with these reductions um but it's hard to justify when we have a third fourth fifth sixth 7th e8th grade class it's got you know well over 20 21 22 23 students and many many cases and we have high school classes out of 15 students or less now again we run a comprehensive high school we have IB AP we're committed to doing that when you do things like that um and you have these programs you have to

101be willing to offer classes that have 10 students in them uh because otherwise students don't get those courses and you just have to do that we know that but we also know that there's other areas that we looked at we were very careful and looking at those um where we could make some reductions and we have made reductions in the last two years in order you know in a different budget season we might not have gone that deep but we've had to just that's where we're at but these aren't reductions it's a reassignment most are most of it is a reassignment like we have a need for example like right and I say reductions but it's reductions at one place and it's a reassignment to another place where there's another need so we don't have

102to hire right this is so we do not have to hire that's another way of saying it so we're moving staff around because we we would have had to hire another position at the middle school if we didn't do this now we're only hiring one outside or one additional we have two openings but we only we're filling one internally so that's what we're trying to do that's helpful thank you and does this give us access then to another science at least another science class yes it does yep because all one of the ilt whoever the well um Carrie gasio is the ilt teacher um and she'll be going back to the classroom for another block so there'll be an additional um science class that can talk how much larger is the incoming 9th grade than

103the current class sizes it's quite a bit right yes there's an adjustment we have we look at the total adjustment from the school I can't give you the number right there yeah no that's fine no because I think we also saw that not as many kids have reported that they're going out of District you know you will see that from 8th to nth grade and there's a lot more kids that we've heard are are contining to stay which is great um but but the overall High School enrollment next year it go it's going up a few students but it's not when we look at the class sizes with those numbers it still wasn't much of a uh there wasn't much of a movement there okay with the number of courses and offerings that we have

104and and it will I will say that you know one of the things that happens sometimes is that we just don't offer as many electives um when we we doing that we have four courses we have a lot more electives today than we used to which was a huge push for us to do that but um that is something that happens you know if you don't have enough Staffing we also have courses that don't fill we'll have kids um sign up and then there's just not enough students so we won't run that course um so we look at all those things right as well um within our finance we had a pretty substantial conversation about the Portables and conversations about options um and it was the following day or a few days later after we

105had our board meeting um can we have like that out loud conversation to express so that we can all understand we were talking about shifting and could we not do them and have teachers do some movement and how that could work so I yes that's a great um conversation the finance committee had and we talked it through there prior to that we started talking about this back in the fall uh we talked to the administrators at the Middle School uh all three of them um 45 and 68 to try to get a sense of capacity and can we do it a different way um we even started looking at the Mabel Wilson school was there anything in the modu of capacity that we could actually have a you know a classroom over there uh in

106order to to look at this and so we looked at all the angles originally the board back when the referendum failed I think it was what was it 2023 the board approved a short-terms a short-term facilities plan which in this summer we would have added a um 12 room unit in order to go forward at the middle school obviously we're not going to do that because the the bond did pass you know um a year ago and as a result of that we've we're trying to make do with everything we've got right now but at a minimum we need to add two rooms to get through um the next school year and um we also forecast that we need two more rooms a year from now in order to get through that last year before

107the new school opens um we're going to be looking at those that last two room again just like we thoroughly looked at it this year um but we need to have the two rooms at the middle school that's just the bottom line part of the expense um that we've been talking about at the middle school is also the three units that are at the middle school right now have some substantial HVAC concerns these are these are the same I think all six of them that were at Wilson years ago we moved them over to the middle school which was a concern of people at the time we've tried to make it through but those HVAC issues are getting worse and Scott can actually speak to that so some of that 100 $50,000 lease um is

108to replace the three and we worked with Scott worked with scavi to get a fairly good deal um with scabi to make that happen but that includes the two new rooms and replacing the three units which is six rooms that we have right now that are the HVAC is really on its last leg we're not going to get through the next two years with those they're old do you want to add Detail no I think that took care um the other so um I would I'd like to reduce some of the electives with the smaller class sizes at the high school I'm looking for any possible way that we can save any possible money um I've had a lot of people just reach out with big concerns about this the the tax increase um and

109I know we've looked at it I know we don't have a lot of room for movement with between salaries Beyond salaries you know there's there's just not a lot of wingle room um but we need to find more well with 82% of the budget being Staffing there's only really one place to go it's not going to be widgets yeah so and is this something you guys talked about too in finance like what that would look like so that would have to be a reduction in staff right um I don't know if it would be a reduction in staff as much as um making sure that classes were were used more fully so that there were you know more than six kids in a class that's an elective do you mean at the high school Sarah

110are you talking about like at the high school okay yeah yeah because that I mean we would be talking about Staffing but I I don't think most of our electives are are quite a bit bigger than that it's some of the um upper level courses that we have like the AP I yeah IB diploma AP courses and we try not to to duplicate so if we offer something in AP we don't offer it in IB so kids only have access to one and they can take courses between the two um to do that as you know but um so I don't think the elective I think the electives we don't run electives have no idea where it is that we can find money you know is it um Arts people always love to cut the

111Arts I mean I'm saying it's want to cut the Arts I'm just um I don't want to cut the Arts either but like you know do we not want kids to learn art or music or foreign languages I mean this is you can cut but like I don't have an appetite to say I want to do it um speaking to the student perspective also I'd say that people get really excited about our vast options for electives and I know like Sophia and I are both in the diploma program for IB so we don't get a ton of options for electives cuz our schedules are set in stone so we try to take them in the first 2 years and kids get so excited about like the opportunity to take Ceramics or just like any of

112the like Performing Arts like just it really gets kids excited but I also like do we have any electives that kids really don't utilize that would change anything financially so uh the high school each year there might be usually I'm aware of one or two electives um at least that um get put into the schedule but there's not enough students um and usually 10 is our like minimum a bare minimum uh most electives have well over that for electives because they are popular um but um we won't run a course we just don't run it the high school one with the course and they'll reassign that teacher to another um course another core course I'm also like just to add- on 80% sure so not that sure but like the only class that's really under

11310% that or under 10 students that gets you know that we have to carry is IB Biology and that's just because of the IB program but I mean we like we had to cut AP Bio because there were four kids taking it and as Mr Porter said electives they really don't get run if there aren't enough students taking them so what I hear from I think Sarah is I know I mean Sarah's line of work would indicate that she would never want to cut from an academic side of things but there are really hard decisions we have to make it's like I'd rather be like I'm going to cut that bus like we're just not going to go to Rangely in the middle of the night or that van and we're like from then academic

114but there are there's a lot of things there's like oh we need to have we need to have we need to have and we've done a lot of that work that I don't think people see for example like in our renovation of the new school and or mayel I Wilson like being like if we do this then we have to have another staff member which talk about that like we do cuts that you'll never see on this paper but we do we like the the the hard to have conversations of maybe for a little while we can't do these things we can't get a new van we can't I'm just focusing on the van unnecessarily I'm sure that van is fine sure you're totally right about that I'm sure you're totally right about that but

115I see where Sarah's trying to go like I feel like it sounds like correct me if I'm wrong that we're not at the number that you want to get to and the percentage that you want to get to and we're having like hard time with that and so I get that like you know I I I get that and where is the where can we cut we're just going to have to get on comfortable in a little bit I don't think cutting electives are necessarily something that I would be for because I think we need should put her Focus all on academics which I think majority of it has been staff and all that but I'm I I do see some things where it's like oh nice to have and then I just then I

116just promoted wireless access points so I'll I'll shut up but like yeah yeah and that and that's what I was trying to understand too like what so when we say cut electives like does that mean that you can move somebody to be doing something else and I I think elective is a misnomer um keep in mind that all stem classes are electives right right and and also students have to have a certain number of electives I have to have a certain number of credits and you can't get them just from core courses um so students have to take electives and they also have to take courses in certain areas um so those you know in order to graduate so in order to meet the graduation requirements and I have an idea and this isn't for

117this level but because this is a state requirement um the gym requirement I do love gym this is nothing against gym teachers we value our sports but gym is a requirement especially for our athletes um I would love to see maybe a policy change there because then we can maybe shift that around too but well I will speak for the High School PE program nothing nothing against the PE progam chair hates Jen um so the we have we have two uh PE teachers at the high school uh but one of the reasons um is that we used to offer a summer PE program for high school students in order to get their their credits um that was we eliminated that that actually was fairly expensive because we would have a group of 25 students every

118summer that took it uh because they didn't want couldn't take it or didn't want to take it during the school year so it was additional cost and nobody really liked it was too hot um and so we we got rid of that was an expense we got rid of um and we invested in our PE program which we have an outstanding PE program at the high school uh at all of our schools but um yes and this is nothing against the PE program I think people who haven't even taken the PE program just dread I'm taking all the electives you're taking the van or that they want to access the other electives especially for our athletes right um and then to take J and when I say electives too I probably both of you can

119probably correct me on this a little bit we say electives electives are beyond the core courses but again there's electives that aren't really I mean you could say World Lang is an elective no you have to have World Language to graduate but if you take for example you want to continue that becomes an elective because it's a course that you choose to it's beyond the requirements uh but I will say for students um in our community and I would say for really all students you can't just go two years and learn a world language for example you've if you really want to learn the language you've got to go all four years um and we have a lot of students that come in with um level one done from middle school and they progress and

120become profi really proficient in language so I say that's you know that's an elective but it really isn't for most students that's kind of like I've that's like I got to do this in order to get into a college that I want to get into so I don't know if I'm saying that eloquently but no definitely and um like just to reiterate that it's you have two years of required is it two years or is it two it's two or three it's two I think it's two yeah so you only have to take two years of your foreign language class and then you don't necessarily have to take it your Junior and Senior year but you I don't I think I know of maybe two people who have done that but um you really need

121it like there's no way you're going to become fluent from your two years of middle school or three years of middle school and then um this when you're only covering one level in middle school but um like that being considered an elective yeah I I I can a core class right cuz I put it is technically an elective but it really is for most students it's it's like a must and if you want to go to college you got to have that you know if you want to go to college of your choice you've got to have those three or four years um they look for that so those are things that I think are nuances in the way we look at electives okay I'm gonna jump in um so Tim I want to go

122back to your question because I think it was a really good one and um I'll kind of let you or I'll turn turn this back to you for a moment how detailed would you like me to get about how in depth I went like much do you want me to share no because that would be like I trust that that committee did and like it sounds like you guys have done due diligence I just know like when I come to the meeting from a position of chair or in a committee I'm like oh they're totally going to ask about this and this is a very heavy document so I just want to know like is there something that you guys want us to know like you had a big conversation about the Portables that's really

123important for us to know cuz that checks B we talked about that at the end so like that I really appreciate so is there anything else that for the community that's here that's hearing that like a lot of stuff happened behind closed doors anything you want to bring our attention to of like you might see this later on when you read this at 12:00 at night over your serial and this is the this is the conversation that we had at this point like I just want to provide that opportunity for that group to be like what am I missing here because I must be missing something you guys have had a lot of back and forth conversations yeah yeah so is there anything and you did it yeah so um I I I will go

124then a little bit beyond that because this is more my personal analysis because and we'll just take a step back here everyone at this table with the exception of Scott and Jeff either is or represents a taxpayer right so I need to know not just as the finance chair but as a taxpayer whether or not I am okay with this budget because I also have to go home and get into bed with a taxpayer who really is going to grow me about this so um I decided to come at it from a slightly different perspective which is I kind of broke up this budg budget I I mean there's no way around it because of the way we're required to do it but I hate the setup of this budget because it doesn't line up

125with cost centers and it's just hard to wrap your head around so I sort of I and I literally went through line by line broke it up into three categories of what are fixed numbers that are mandatory MH their contracts their debts that are encumbered we we cannot get around that and then um our best estimates they're still mandatory but maybe it's not a contract so legal utilities um gas if you know fuel um things that the um special ed um uh placements out of District placements those two categories of things that at least in my opinion we cannot get around came to 90 almost 95% of this budget okay that's good okay so we could talk about cutting positions we could talk about you know maybe like how to get around the enrollment issues

126and the kids who come who show up at our district ad my my opinion none of that is negotiable so the portables for instance would be in that 95% yes okay yes that's so this is you know's my analis it's and I so I just I just I'm gonna say that again this is to me right I know that a van is going to be a mandatory cost because we can't we can't safely drive around in a van that's resting out so yes I put a van into a controlled or a mandatory cost um so that left me with less than $3,000 in costs that we could control meaning we could play with I don't like the word discretionary because that implies a want not a need but you could call it that um of

127that 2 point 8 million 2 point sorry yeah 8 million in costs that we could technically play with 40% of that is technology and so this is where I started to really get into areas because when I'm looking at a budget words I don't like are miscellaneous I don't like supplies I don't like anything where okay what what is actually in that line item and so that was one thing that kind of get back to your question where I really grilled Scott okay what is in supplies what is in software hardware and he was able to answer everything um to my satisfaction but the software or technology line like I said is 40% of what we could control but that is curriculum that is moroi that is the switches that is the bus um um

128Zonar thank you Zonar I don't why I can never remember that such a memorable name yeah so I don't even know that I would keep that in that you know kind of soft cost um but technically we could play with that okay then there's instructional supplies and books um which we've talked about the reading program that's a huge piece of that 2.8 million um books are let's see books represent 5% of that cost that in my opinion we could play with uh Athletics I put in there I put um there's a line because this was another one that made me nervous or uncomfortable gy um the high school has a line you'll notice under supplies that is miscellaneous so that's a red flag yellow flag yellow flag to me of $110,000 well guess what that

129includes all IB costs AP costs graduation um Scott remind me what else AP IB graduation n or accreditation yes accreditations graduation cost us a lot right it does cost a lot y yeah yeah in order to put on a party like that you have to pay for it and there's certain things that people want okay graduation is don't feel too bad Sophie thought you're believe graduation is around 33,000 yeah that number so again that's a a want I don't know but it's part of that money that maybe you know isn't a fixed or encumbered cost um and then a portion of professional development is in that as well um not the part that is part of the teacher's contract so like like uh the equity contractor would probably follow that's gone do you mean we

130got that down we still pay so contracted services are included in that line that um but then yeah professional development that is not considered contracted under the teacher's contract yeah okay yeah Kim is happy to share her work I am so happy to share it because I spent so many hours um when I could have been getting caught up on Game of Thrones or something but um I've never watched that's the one more complicated thing than this yeah that's right so it's not perfect like it didn't add up perfectly but I I got it to be within $500 so I was pretty dang proud of myself um so I I say all this because I can look at this line of $2.8 million and say I there's really no room to play with even that

131that $2.8 million without sacrificing safety or educational that's what you're saying okay staff satisfaction right yeah didn't personal development Factor heavily into feedback from teachers yeah yeah I mean could teachers teach without technology and could students have a pen and or a pen pencil and some paper technically yeah they could would they be ready for a 21st century college experience they would not these people still want to do geometry on a in a workbook we did that 20 years ago but that's cool can can I just add something about technology is also to remind people that our high school students do not get a district issued um laptop unless they do not have one from home which we have maybe 80 or 90 students that partake in that but uh it's b y l d

132which is also a cost reducer in previous boards and have gone uh with that Approach at the high school um but we don't we don't issue them at the high school level Kim I would love to see that and I that's a really great breakdown so I appreciate you yeah I mean like I said this was for my own satisfaction it was just the way that I wanted to think about it but if it helps somebody else um Kim I have a question for you so so a huge portion of this is raises for teachers because we have been underpaying our teachers relative to all the schools around us and we are now catching up right so we've been getting away with underpaying our teachers in an incredible School District you know what portion of

133I mean so we're also hiring some new teachers yeah do you know what portion of the increases is the raises and those are going to continue for two more years right like over three years that we're getting big year when the teachers really get caught up uh this I don't know the answer is just under 8% the aggregate um for raises for this coming FY 20 FY 26 yeah because I mean it is it's a big pill to swallow but also to know that we've been underpaying our teachers relative to our neighbors and they could go elsewhere and they maybe have been staying because we have time for them to prep classes and that a lot of them haven't jumped ship I'm thankful for but also I think if we're not competitive with the schools

134around us then we're going to lose the best teachers and maybe that saves US money and we get fresh teachers who cost less but like I mean that's a a road I don't know that we want to go down yeah don't forget our Ed Tex teachers I mean so yeah costs go up because we have to pay these people competitive wages and yeah so the increases for the increase for the teacher contract was uh just under 8% for next year and 7% the year after and that requ equates to about 3.3% of the overall budget increase yeah so that's just so of the 7.2% about 3.3 of that is salary increases with contract do we want to continue with the tax assessment more questions for him I have one just one more question is that

135okay I'm sorry I just I noticed that can you talk about the special ed substitute lines a little bit there's been a pretty big increase I'll say over the last couple years um and just that substitute line like I it's not a big increase from last year but if you look at two years ago can you just kind of speak just a little bit to that CU at a 0% increase from year to year that's good but it was a huge huge before that so there must be something there that I'm missing so I'm sorry I know we need to get to tax which page and which line oh uh 78 and 497 so there are two lines that I was looking at in particular I there could be another one um I'm very interested

136in making sure yeah so the the answer to that is that substitutes used to be charged the regular regular instruction lines yeah and as substitute time has increased in the district we've allocated the appropriate amount to special ed that was normally charged over to regular instruction okay so that's a difference okay okay it's just an allocation issue okay it's just a shift it's a shift it's a shift okay so you're seeing less that just looked like you're not seeing an increase in the regular instruction lines because we've actually increased the special head lines okay with the appropriate substitute lines okay okay I'm out because that's right yeah it's good okay so um I don't know where do we go from here you want me to keep going so I think we have an a small

137group of attendees um if they might have some questions about some of the I think if the questions are specific to what we've covered um we might be open to a few questions you got to go to the yeah if if for our for our viewers at home shly story King Cumberland and um I've shared I've had I first I want to thank Kim for all the time she's given me and Sarah and Sean I've sat in on a couple of Finance meetings one of my is issues and Scott knows this issue too and he's working on it but one of my issues is you're building a budget for next year based on last year's budget not knowing what you've spent this year so for example last year you spent $700,000 less in in cost

138center one than you budgeted for but when you get down to the bottom line because of transfer and all of fund fund balance transfers and all of that it looks like 500,000 not and the year before it was close to N it was over 900,000 there that um I really wish that we could build next year's budget with a more accurate picture of what we're actually spending this year and Tim's question was exactly you know that if we if you're when you're looking at your budget you shouldn't be looking at just last year's um proposed or approved approved budget you should be looking at the year before to see what you actually spent in that category so specialed substitutes three different lines it totals over $42,000 difference from two years ago to this year that's

139that's like a teacher salary or an edtech salary so Scott explained it that you moved it from spe from um Regular Ed to special ed but did you look at whether that was reflected in the regular Ed um substitute line um so that's the level of detail and I guess it comes from you know my experience of going through line by line and we actually at the town do three years go look back three years and look at um the history of three years line by line by line but that information is not always available to you all and Scott is working on it I know he is we've had several conversations he did have first quarter financials um which are a great tool um even even quarterly financials are we on track are we

140on track in this category are we way over and legal that's one of the categories Cumberland goes over you know why are you over inlegal why are you under inlegal so um why are you over in Recreation or under in Recreation well that's because they all signed up in June but the pH you know or may or April for recreational programs but they don't start until school gets out so there's you need to be able to look at that over time and I know your Administration does but i' I'm asking the board um to do that too you Charlie I know we're excited about the new accounting software too that it's going to make some things easier on us it's taking a tremendous amount of work to get that implemented so yeah um it's going

141to provide us with a lot of opportunities um and we're our biggest start of that whole process was ensuring everybody got paid staff contracts and retroactive pay got done so we'll eventually have the soon we'll eventually have the report structure set as well so yeah very very excited we can deal with a lot of things in the organization but not people not getting paid right okay we can deal with anything I appreciate that's always the first priority that's the first priority um so is there other questions that are specific about the budget that's being shared tonight yeah we I think we need we need you too and yeah and as everyone knows and I think we've said said please always feel free to reach out to the board board um Finance chair anybody on the

142board um if you have specific questions happy I know many of us have have met with uh many individuals and are you know always happy to sit down with people and and answer questions via email in person so just want to make sure people know they have opportunities sure I'm Dave mlof and I'm a resident of North Yarmouth I'm met with the board before um couple of years ago um bottom line on it is I when you look over the next five years the tax impact is 60% and that's climing I bet you it's going to be closer to 70 to 80% I think that's beyond the affordability of the residents of this community and I think at some point the operating budget is going to be tested hard when you look at a 7.23%

143increase that's accelerating year before it was 68 the year before that's 3 times inflation you can't sustain that so to me the one thing that came to mind and when I looked at the referendum two years ago and I figured I'll take 10 minutes it's all I need what's a tax impact couldn't find it but the big thing was how do we compare to other schools and I think that's what's missing in this budgeting process that I think if you did it would be a huge help you're doing this in silos you're comparing ourselves to ourselves a year before you ought to have a column in there comparing ourselves to all the schools across the state I did that a little bit I look at Transportation facility management here and it's 8.4 million I look

144at our peers and they're 4 million why are we wanting twice as much that could be a category item and it may be in the end that when you do a peer analysis any way you cut it we're going to be a high cost school because we are it may be that it's Justified because we're a high benefit school but I think you really should go down through this exercise of doing a peer analysis the private sector does it I come from the banking industry we always compare to a peers within the industry did it with schools I finance private schools I don't see that here and I think it's the highest cost per student operation in the state assuming the new school I believe that's correct I think it Warren's taking a look at

145that out um Kim you're absolutely right it's tough you know when you look at the operations of the teachers I'm not talking about the teachers you got to keep the teachers I'd rather we be in tece and keep the teachers to be honest with you you got to keep the teachers and have good education I think you got opportunities elsewhere to save some money and if you go through the exercise of doing a peer analysis uh that exercise will clearly show you where our costs on a Prost basis there's 11 cost centers where do we compare to our peers and if we're High there's your opportunity and teacher wise you just got to remain competitive in the marketplace I'm not going to speak on that point obviously the teachers are critical um that's it thank

146you David thank you and I know that we've done quite a bit of work on comparison to peers I think it's coming in I was got there yet finish and then but people it's it's coming it's fine that I don't mind that you're talking here just anybody at home doesn't know what's going on can I can I just add that if you do anyone out there has ideas in this to save money and throw them out like throw them out to us and be like sure I'll email come to public comment always always receptive and open um because this is important we are all taxpayers I mean we've done some comparisons around facilities and transportation so like the facilities comparison you know we have modular over 700,000 we have projects such as the energy project

147on mael Wilson School uh which was subsidized we also have uh School revolving renovation fund projects over there as well so all of those things just by themselves are like $1.2 million so when you start looking at a comparison to comparison it's like you said you really have to dig deeper into the cost centers and figure out what's in there versus what's in another District because I can tell you the districts around us don't have those same things that are in their budgets um transportation as well um one of the things about this community you try to reduce a level of service um and it doesn't go well so people have a high okay so um we have you know buses that are running and trying to keep under an hour we have student pickups

148that are relatively do to-door um and we run four Activity three to four activity buses in the evening it's a level of service that our community has demanded and when we tried to reduce in those areas we take an incredible amount of feedback on that so so I would share that as well yeah that's fair just uh comparison wise if you look at last year's documentation there was a District budget uh District budget meeting presentation 5924 and there's a couple slides in there that give you very exactly what you're asking for regional comparison raw and adjusted per pupil cohort comparison between uh several different school districts just for something to review yeah we're doing that right now uh we'll have that information available in April as well we do that every year it'll help you

149big time absolutely well said do we want to finish with was there any other specific questions about the budget items we'll go to the tax assessment thank you all right so the um before we get into the tax assessment though one of the things that I wanted to share was that this is a working budget right now this is not the end of the line on the budget Even in our office right now what we're doing is we're still going line by line checking every salary line every benefit line of the budget so and then um also with Finance we'll be doing some of that work as well so so it is a working budget until it's a adopted by the board to go to our uh District budget meeting it's it's still live and

150to Shirley's point I presume you're you're also in real time actual cost for 20 current budget last year yeah and um as I said it's been a number to get our arms around we've done it in the past um but it's a number to get our arms around right now and health insurance comes out in April health insurance comes out in April so know is it a 10% is it 15% or is it 5% I just don't know um I'm going to guess by our experience rating it's not going to be five okay so but we'll see how that goes but we'll have a better idea of that so um okay so uh taxes so this is the tax assessment to the two communities and the way in which taxes are assessed uh or the

151assessment is calculated is there's a certain cost sharing formula that you have with the state of Main and that's the first area and that's called your required local or your six .1 mil that has nothing to do in the way in which it's shared between the two communities that's how your cost sharing as a community with a state of M and then the additional local is what's shared between the two communities and it's based on property valuation um as you can see Cumberland is 72.7 6% of the property valuation of the two communities and North Yarmouth is 27.24 obviously North Yarmouth is a smaller Community than Cumberland with a lower tax base so that's that's why they pay 27.24 of the share um so if you look at the difference between uh 2425 and 2526

152the increase to Cumberland is about 1.8 million and the increase to North Yarmouth is about 486,000 and the difference between the two on the mill rate in is a124 in Cumberland and uh 80 cents in North Yarmouth a 5% and a 4% respectively these numbers do not count any new property valuation they're based on the current Year's property valuation there will be growth in both communities that will offset these numbers and those come out a little bit later and we get that information from the town managers as we get closer to the budget meeting so so we should have more accurate numbers by then this is purely based on current property valuation um so that would be the tax assessment and that's how it's calculated so what that means in layman's terms is if you're

153in North y mouth you'll spend $80 for every $100,000 of your property tax assessment so not your market value of your house all right if you think you can get 800,000 for it and it's Val valued at 500,000 your taxes are based on 500,000 okay so um so it' be $80 for every 100,000 of value and so you can pretty much extra extrapolate from your tax bill what your taxes would be on your home in Cumberland it's $124 on 100,000 uh so you can pretty much figure out what your valuation is there as well and again I fully expect that those numbers will decrease based on the valuation increases in both communities that's it I think we had some questions so any more thank you yeah and you said usually we'll find out in late

154April yeah we usually find out as we get closer to the health insurance usually comes out right around April you know the beginning of April is we're starting to look to you know around that time frame um and um as far as evaluation numbers we get closer to that as we get closer to um the budget meeting does the board have questions about the tax assessment information I think surely my question I know I hate to burst your bubble because those look like great numbers they don't look that bad 5% and 4% do not look bad but if you look at the last three years I I don't think you're going to get a handle on your budgets until you really look at what you spend your money on and over the last three years

155you've increase the budget if this one unless you bring it down a little it's increased over $1 million which is a 25 point I figured it out I like a 25.6% increase in spending so there might be increased revenues to offset that but I know the state and every municipality and every school district in the state is looking at what I knew probably years ago as the 26 the fiscal year 26 Cliff where we're all falling off because revenues have faded or disappeared or people have allocated funds for infrastructure that for in instead of using it for infrastructure they've used it for salaries and now they don't have the the money to pay for salaries because it should have gone I know that we do a great job I know Scott does a great job

156he and I have been frequent I've had meetings with Scott many times over the years and uh 26 years so 28 I just want you I just want you to keep that in perspective 4% and 5% increases in the mill rate don't s sound like a lot but you've increased spending $1 million in three years so it's another way to look at it yeah and I know um probably at the next time this presentent we have a lot of other charts that compare increases in enrollment the percentage of this that goes to the teacher salary like yeah I mean just to be clear I mean I I'll speak for myself but I'm sure this resonates with with other board members like yes you you add it up over a number of years it's it is

157a lot of money um I also know um as an employer myself uh that I've also I mean it's it's a lot of its salaries and the cost of living and that's what we're seeing in our in our budget and I did that too I um to the extent that I could um but I um I went through RSU 14 155 f Yarmouth Scarboro and Westbrook and um all with in the high 20s to low 30s um increase we're and we're not the highest so I don't have complete numbers because some budgets aren't available online as far back as 2019 and some budgets were not available for 20 uh 26 yet uh so it's not perfect Jeff is working on that to um show us what uh the the comparisons are for not just this

158year's increases but historical increases because I think that's really important um and it's not like just because everybody's doing it makes it okay but um it is it made me feel at least more comfortable about the budget knowing that every district has had a comparable increase um and and when I think of it in terms of percentage wise rather than dollar amounts because no no district is Apples to Apples no district is is a perfect comparison when you think about the commercial tax base or is it a district instead of a municipal budget so um one of the big differences though is like some of our comparison towns have a lot of businesses that share that like tax burden well that's why I was just saying if you go by the percent increase in the

159budget that's not right but I feel like you our circumstances like where I've changed some of my position on certain development like in our circumstance every additional thing hurts just that much more like we don't have something else to kind of like filter out of like oh we're sharing it it's like no we're primarily the responsible ones for paying the increases that we have here so every single added thing but at the same time like enrollments going up and this is we I don't I honestly can't see a lot of spots to cut and so um I think it's just it's that much more painful in part because of this unique situation of the lack of businesses in our towns and the enrollment increases well and that's one thing that I also we've been talking

160about that I think is getting added to some of the the the data because we're saying oh we're we're comparable or we're somewhere in the middle of these increases what those other districts haven't had is the enrollment increase so they yeah they've got their budgets have gone up just as much if not more and they've had stagnant or decreasing enrollment and less subsidy and and less subsidy exactly yeah yeah that's a good that's a good piece of doesn't make it better just a I know it does feel like more of a conversation if you can sit there and ask but Bill Young hedro so my thing is tiffs and valuation that's kind of what my thing is and so Scott I guess I run this by but and I know you guys are surprised by

161the um you know a couple of the developments that are go in we're going to get hit with 100 to 200 houses in the next couple of years maybe and uh so uh based on evaluations like the West Cumberland one that's going to be like houses uh I think that's in the tip Zone don't know for sure but how is um when you talk about valuations if we show I just want to clear this up if we show if we're going to show more valuation then we're going to get less from the state is that right if you yes but it's not necessarily a direct y direct direct correlation right but yes valuation is one of the factors in the state funding formula um in a lot of states the school district gets to participate

162in the tiffs that are done in the communities um that doesn't happen in the state of Main so but that's one of the things that so if we get if if just take for instance the West Cumberland one if that is Tiff then all those houses all those kids that are going to be in those houses we're everybody else is going to be paying for those kids and and so it doesn't go that money isn't going to go to the general fund and so that makes it worse for the district in a lot of ways done I think it's more complicated than that build I sure is it's a it's a further conversation um you don't necessarily receive a of stateid because you sheltered money in a tiff District okay um and um obviously if

163you have to build infrastructure for the number of students that are coming in or you have to hire more staff well those costs are certainly going to exceed whatever you might shelter is what I think I'm just looking and I'm just looking down the road too so that's right I believe so I think that is a good point though because years a there's few years years ago the board asked very specific questions about Tiff uh Tiff in both towns and what the impact was on the schools and uh being able to collect taxes and and all that um and there's pros and cons for Tiff you know related to schools I'll only speak to schools in the Town of Cumberland um I was the former Town manager did a calculation for us and over a

16410year period and I'd have to go back and check my math check my notes but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 11 million of in Revenue that didn't come to the schools uh because of um tiing and tax sheltered um things and it was it was a very eye-opening um calculation and exercise that the school that the board went through at that point um and I was surprised at at how large the amount was of but also I'm sorry but no I was just going to say this is a really good conversation I know we canel our joint meeting in February and looks like we're we're trying to settle on a date in May and I know this conversation is is bigger than any particular year um and so this could be

165a good focus of our main meeting I know we wanted to talk about shared services in general just so we can continue to find Opportunities which we we do even though we didn't have that meeting in February doesn't mean that we haven't been talking about shared services but um also just better understanding you know what what's upcoming what's the plan is it Tiff is it not Tiff what's what's the impact um I think that would be a great um joint conversation yeah the Tiff um the Tiff is actually I look at the tax rate Town School County right I don't look at it just school or just town or County so when you look at a tiff it actually is a great mechanism for a community to set money aside and be able to use

166it for infrastructure items I mean it's a it's a great tool and to do that so so in the long run it probably does save some funds so but not for us not necessarily depends right on what the infrastructure is it's used for yeah because I'm curious of I know that it's complicated the reasons that Cumberland has the 5% versus North AR with the four but I don't know how much tip plays into that or not uh that's just one Community growing faster than the other in terms of the kind of percentages yeah the value and just you know the and the sharing of the mill rate with the state and the sharing between the two communities can ask a weird question in terms of like to offset these increases is there any way we

167could think about ways we can increase revenue for example I know there was a big fight about affordable housing a little while back and it came to light that the Town Forest was gifted for the sole benefit of the schools and you know Denny Denny was a Schoolboard member pointed that out vigorously um you know so like there's a a sort of okay Forest there it's you know it's full of invasives that we've been grinding out but like there's a huge piece of land that somebody set aside and said it was for the benefit of the schools like as Drummond Woodson have we ever asked like can we actually do that can we put an office park there and have the revenue go towards offsetting the school or you know like are there other opportunities

168as a school district where we can and I know it's complicated and it used to be a municipal school and that's why the town has control over it now and maybe they wouldn't give it up but but maybe we can talk about that I won focus on that land piece but I think your point around are there additional Revenue opportunities is a good one I'm not going to touch the the forest personally there are statutory limitations to what I just for for you know rentals and building Office Buildings and things it it really has to be for school purpose so but I know we are as a district well I was just going to say I know that we're going to use it and benefit from but I know we would also like to be

169able to offer it to rent and so that fa yeah that would be increase in Revenue that we should you know think about what our goals for the that revenue is we rent the pool we rent the GCA you know we have other we rent rooms in the buildings at times and stuff so absolutely and I did see that went up it did so we could set that would be a good conversation what's our goal for next year and how can we achieve that we're renting to M the GCA is rented to M it's rented to other outside um organizations and piano recital for others who are wan to rent the space so it's it is used and it is rented so yeah we should continue to look for Revenue opportunities the questions I have

170an answer to Megan's question I found the information and unfortunately it's not it's not better than what I thought so um but it is it's a five year uh it's 5year contract for strategics crisis alert oh 30,000 um is inclusive of cutting those um setup costs and flattening it for five years so it is 30,000 each year okay thanks just to give you an answer all right well the presentation is down so I guess oh it's back off we're not done there we go see if I can get out the technology um Kim that Kim was uh talking about uh the finance committee did ask and I we did put it um out today tonight um just how is educational technology used in our district from prek through 12 um and also the approximate amount

171of time that students are on that technology so you the board has that information any other questions I would just like to express my gratitude for the countless hours and tedious work that it's taken to go through this at the administrative offices from our finance committee um we can tell how deeply we care about our community Through the the diligent work that goes into both understanding you know what where the dollars are going to support our students but also to recognize the cost to our community to do so um and how important the questions are um from the community ideas you know I we so appreciate it hope keeps us all accountable so thank you I attended this Workshop before I was on the board a couple years ago and I was the only one

172there and it's really nice to see like a lot of people engaged in in with it I think we all value from it so it's nice to see the change and just to remind everybody that the board adopts has um adopts the budget or chooses um to adopt the budget on April 17th there's also a public hearing that evening prior to adoption April 17th April 17th and and then the May 8th meeting is in the GCA GCA and that is where District budget The District budget meeting where we do vote um as a community on the budget before it goes to ballot Sophia are you 18 no oh okay and you won't you won't be during this school year no um well may oh okay so you you sorry guys so in June June you

173get to vote for well I'll vote okay you better believe I'll vote um is I just I know that you're probably going to ask this question but if there you know um if there is something that we need to know Administration needs to know about the budget tonight um going forward we only have a short period of time to get that budget prepared and I know we would work through the finance committee but we do need to know um if we're either headed in the right direction or not um in in terms of the the work on the back end just for our knowledge thank you great can I have a motion so moved thank you second for Jess all in favor great it's unanimous thanks everyone and I know Christina wishes she could be

174here