Acton-Boxborough School Committee Budget Workshop - February 9th, 2026

001All right, it is 6:02. So, noting the hour and the presence of a quorum, I call the Actton Boxboro Regional School Committee to order. Members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may use Actant TV's YouTube channel, which is found at the top of the agenda. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted on Actant TV's website at actctantv.org. I'm going to pause here and look at my collected boards and committees. I don't think anybody else has a quorum here. We're good, right? Nobody else needs to call a meeting to order. Awesome. Okay, cool. Well, welcome. So, this is our um this is our budget workshop and this is a special meeting for the school committee because as you may have noticed, we have uh members of our finance committees and

002our select boards here as well. And this is a really good opportunity for us to have a conversation about the budget, where we're at right now, where we're going, and making sure that when we come to town meeting floor, we're all on the same page because that's really important. Um, so we are really glad to have everyone here. I will highlight that because this is a workshop, there is no public comment period tonight. So our next uh regular meeting will be February 26th and that has a public comment period. Um, kind of what the evening looks like. We're going to begin with actually an update that is school committee focused um from Dillinger. We're really glad to have you here, Nick. Um and that is just making sure that we continue on the pathway to

003make key decisions in time for our administration to be able to make key decisions that will support our staff and our students as we move through transition. So for that piece, that will just be a school committee only um conversation, but then after that, we'll flow into the uh the budget workshop. Um once we get to the presentations, we're taking them about two at a time and then afterwards we will pause to do kind of our question and answer period. So I'll start with the front row school committee members and I'll move to the second row of our boards and committees and then if we have time available after that we will take um questions and comments from the public. And I'm also going to um kind of name the elephant in the room that

004uh there are some topics that are not on our agenda tonight. And if they're not on our agenda, we're not talking about them tonight. But there will be an opportunity for those topics to be on our agenda at the February 26th meeting. So I know people have um things that they want to talk about and we will get there. We're just not going to have that right now. So that said, Peter, you have any opening remarks you want to share? >> All right. So, speaking of elephants in the room, everyone um first good evening. Um you know, I I know from a school committee perspective, I had an opportunity to speak with each of you over the weekend. Um and then we sent something out to the the broader community, but um you know, in

005essence, I have accepted a position that starts 18 months from now um in in an international school um in a different part of the world. Just as a little background, um I actually when I was very young lived internationally and started school myself internationally, grew up bilingual until we moved back to the States. Um and so this has been something that's been on my mind for most of my adult life, being able to pursue an opportunity in an international setting and kind of end my career the way I started it um in school. So many many years ago. Um that said, the position doesn't start for another 18 months. Um, and so I just want to reassure you I'm fully committed to doing the work that we're doing now in this district. Um, AB, you

006know, I was thinking about this and I will have spent more than one sixth of my life, not my adult life, my total life, um, here in Act in Boxboro. Um, and I just want to let you know I'm deeply committed to the work that we do. Um, this has been an amazing place to be. It will continue to be an amazing place to be. Um, and we're going to do some great things for kids. So, um, that said, I recognize that the school committee is going to need to have a discussion about this. Um, because this was a position that starts 18 months from now and not now, um, this year. It doesn't really qualify as an emergency. So, we couldn't amend the school committee agenda for tonight to provide time for that. Uh,

007but we do have a discussion for you planned for your next school committee meeting on February 26th. you actually have an opportunity to have uh you know a discussion about what this means next steps and and start to talk about what what that means looking forward. So um I just want to thank all of you very much appreciate all of your support and just again reassure you I'm deeply committed to doing the work here and so let's get to work >> and with that Nick it's all yours. So, um maybe I should introduce Nick Celitano who is our uh lead from Dillinger uh RAD that is going to work with us on developing our geographic zones. And in case you missed the conversations that we've had earlier, one of the reasons that um we were

008really glad that you followed up with our uh request for proposal was because Nick actually got to speak to us early on when we were thinking about our strategic planning in those first steps. So Dillinger is familiar with our district. They were ready to jump in and thankfully you're on it and we're moving. So let's go for it. Check. Check. All right. Uh and good evening everybody. Uh thank you very much and it's a pleasure to be here to uh meet with all of you today. As was sort of mentioned uh my name is Nick Stalatano. I'm the managing director of Dillinger Research and Applied Data. We are a nonprofit uh based out of Connecticut and our focus has been over the past 5 years supporting youth driven organizations. Uh that's schools, districts, departments of

009education and nonprofits around all things data. Generally that looks to uh can look very differently. It can be uh redistricting for a lot of school districts. It can be data infrastructure, research, analysis or uh facilitation at the state level. Why are we here today? Um as was mentioned by the chair of the school committee, we're currently partnered uh with Actton Boxboro Regional School District uh in designing sustainable elementary attendance zones uh in support of uh AB Forward. Um, as you all know, uh, this is a an ongoing process that's leading into next year. And so, part of our skill set that was brought to or that will be brought to bear is helping really think strategically about how new geographical boundaries across the elementary school zones uh, can best support the current students and future

010students of act. uh given that this is a budget workshop uh this is a very high level introductory uh presentation more to uh I think start seating some ideas that we need the school committee to be engaged with uh now uh leading into uh the 26th I'll go a little bit more into detail in terms of the timeline uh but it is safe to say that the timeline is um moving and it's moving quickly and so at the end of the day what we want to do is make sure that we are engaging uh with various stakeholders to include the school committee uh on a regular and frequent basis. And so we didn't necessarily want to wait another two weeks uh up until your next meeting. So very quickly, we'll be going over the timeline

011of what phase one and two uh involve. Uh those phases usually is encompassing about a three-phased approach. Uh we'll go over quickly what we've done project to date. Uh we've only started in the past two weeks, so uh there's not much uh but there is enough to be uh providing an update and moving quickly along. And then I'm going to seed the idea of decision points. And that's really where I need uh you folks that the school committee and really the public because we're going to be engaging with them as well um around how we best want to think uh about geographical boundaries. So when it comes to uh developing boundaries, uh typically it involves three specific phases. Uh phase one is usually around designing new boundaries. Um and that is encompassed around thinking about

012all of the quantitative and qualitative data that we can collect. Um that usually involves collecting a lot of demographic uh data both from the school and the local town. Uh it usually involves engaging with the school committees uh the public the community parents students and any uh faculty who may be working within the district. And it's really trying to aggregate that to basically understand both from a trend perspective in terms of what's been happening and what we project will happen from there going into phase two part of the conversations around not only developing what the plan of the new boundaries is going to look like but understanding how are we going to actually implement that. um and implementation I think a lot of people think are the multi-year uh aspect of following a plan being

013put into place but really it's actually thinking about what exactly happens immediately following when the plan is voted on in terms of the support and the uh information that can be provided both to the students and to the parents immediately following that vote. So part of this is also thinking about what can happen this year before we even get to the summer about how to best support families and students as we think about this implementation process. Finally, phase three um is the actual implementation and that is again starting immediately following the vote when the district can help start thinking about how best to support uh students and families. It's important to note uh our focus really uh given our timeline and given our project scope is really focusing on phase one and phase two in

014terms of the conversations, the analysis and the the facilitated support that we're going to be providing. Uh phase three uh is not within our scope, but obviously will be something that we're setting the uh district up for uh as we move through this process. So to that effect, I really do want to detail out uh some specifics around uh phase one and phase two. Uh first off uh it was important to note uh we were uh sort of engaged with the district or engaging with the district previously to uh the January I believe 22nd vote. Uh once that actually took place, we uh reached out to the district and a contract was finalized. So it's important to note that no work actually had started until that uh school committee vote had taken place. Uh from

015there uh just this past Monday, February 3rd, uh we had the opportunity to sit in on one of the parent webinars uh where we did a very similar uh presentation just to again start to engage uh the community, start to uh receive some of the questions and answer uh answer questions, receive some feedback and uh sort of start that process. Uh February 9th, uh that's where we are right now is uh the initial introductions to the school committee. Um and then over the next two weeks, I know uh school vacation is coming through and so essentially leading up until uh February 26th, uh myself and my colleague Katie will be providing or will be conducting a lot of the quantitative analysis. Um, we feel good. We have just about all of the information for the

016past 5 to 10 years that we need to start really analyzing, like I had said before, trends that we're seeing within the school, trends that we're seeing across Actton and Boxboro and trying to get a sense of overall uh population uh densities uh layouts and uh overall uh trends uh that we're seeing across the board. So from there on February 26th uh we are hoping to come back to the school committee with an initial set of uh scenarios. Um I know see that seems rather quick but at the end of the day part of this process uh is really engaging not only the school committee but uh also the community around various um scenarios in which to get a sense of what is resonating, what's working, what's not working so that we can continually iterate

017uh across those scenarios. uh once we get your initial feedback on the 26th, we're going to release that to the public and get a public uh input around what they perceive those scenarios to be and we're going to have an immediate turnaround for that May uh March 5th uh school committee where we'll be providing additional set of scenarios. Um it's important to note this whole process involves understanding trade-offs. That's one of the things that we're going to talk about during this decision point process is understanding uh how can we make the most optimal set of uh boundaries to best satisfy uh the district and support the district as we move forward. Part of uh how we define what is optimal is all going to be uh input that we receive from the school committee and

018the public uh as we move forward. So uh March 5th we'll be uh again going over and receiving uh discussions around different uh scenarios that we've iterated on and again we will be following up that meeting with another parent webinar on March 10th. Much to uh do in what we're doing with the school committee which is to present these scenarios, receive feedback, have an open comment and uh collect as much data as we can about these various scenarios. Uh we'll take all of that input uh and again we'll have a public survey so folks who may not be able to attend the parent webinar can sort of chime in and that'll lead us to uh the March uh 19th and my eyes are going bad sorry March 19th and uh April uh 9th uh school

019committee meetings where we hope to present a final set of scenarios uh for your consideration. Uh the general plan as of right now would be for uh March 19th for us to come with three uh scenarios that I think represent a a healthy balance of across the different trade-offs that could come come into when we think of uh the geographical boundaries. Uh we will identify one that we would recommend. Uh but ultimately at the end of the day the decision lies with the school committee in regards to what the plan is. uh throughout that process we'll be also discussing if any any type of implementation support that can be provided uh we'll be also preventing uh presenting for you that consideration as well uh for you to vote on as well so uh as we

020had sort of mentioned uh it is a fairly aggressive timeline one of the questions that came up during the parent webinar was is this too aggressive of a timeline and the way I sort of identified it was part of the key aspects of what I think make for a good process is making sure that we have time one to engage with the school committee but two to engage with the community and receive feedback. And so I am confident given the the current schedule that we have that there are two iterations or two times in which we can start to receive as much feedback as we can uh through the school committee in the community and I think that is a really important point. Um it is important to note there are many districts around the

021United States that don't uh receive input. um they just do a black box and they make the plan and then they publish the plan. So at the end of the day uh I am confident that in this plan we are at least providing opportunity to make sure that a we are transparent in how the scenarios are being iterated on and two that we're providing opportunities for input. Do you want me to stop for questions right now or do you want me to just push through for timing? Okay. So in terms of project to date, I'll be providing updates as we uh continually come back for these meetings. Uh again, we're uh facilitating this conversation or this rather project through a couple different means. Uh one is in terms of meetings. Again, we've uh or are

022meeting with you all this evening. Uh we've had one parent webinar and uh we are regularly weekly meeting with the district team leadership uh in which to sort of help move this project along. Um we are open to public input. Um there are uh emails that I would encourage the community if you are inclined to uh send me an email. Um, we'll make sure that it is posted, but my email is nstellatano dillingerrad.org and uh I will endeavor to answer and respond to all uh emails. Um, I encourage you all please to send me both in terms of feedback and or questions that you may have. Uh, one of the emails that we've already received were extremely helpful in terms of identifying uh specific areas within Actton and Boxboro that we should be aware of

023in terms of our planning process. Uh from there uh during the February 3rd uh webinar we did have 150 participants on average and so again through that uh medium we were able to both answer I think a lot of questions but b also receive a lot of feedback as well. We have not uh administered any surveys yet uh but we will be doing so here uh within this next week. Um, in terms of the data analysis, we are currently uh trying to uh get going given the fact that we just literally finished getting the data around the demographic and enrollment analysis. We're in the process of calculating and understanding both capacity and utilization across the remaining buildings and uh we will be starting to think through what transportation routing and analysis um can come from

024different uh scenarios as we come to play. At the end of the day in terms of scenario development uh we have not started on scenario development yet but that will be coming here uh in the foreseable weeks. All right. So I think uh the final point one of the reasons why I'm hoping to both engage the school committee very quickly this evening but uh for the public I will be pushing out a survey for input as well is the role of decision points. Um, and so in terms of when we're thinking about decision points, I'd like to take a step back and say we will be iterating and reviewing uh a couple different scenarios that really detail out different plans that the school committee could adopt when it came to geographical boundaries. So, as we

025sort of indicated before, given the fact that we'll be talking and discussing and um evaluating the various aspects of what makes for a good scenario, part of this process is really understanding what you all deem to make or what you all deem to mean when we say it makes for a good scenario. So, decision points really help do a couple things. one given uh the decision points you can help us meaning myself and my colleague Katie understand uh the different criteria that we're looking for when we draw boundaries as we sort of mentioned here there is in essence infinite number of boundaries that we could create. So instead of just boiling the ocean, what we need to we need to get from you all and the community is some guidance in regards to where do

026we need to focus our attention and what do we need to make sure does happen when we start to design some of these scenarios. Uh preventing churn. Um what we try to do too is we don't want to waste a lot of time given that we don't have infinite time. Uh I don't want to waste time showing uh you all scenarios that we know are sort of excuse my language dead on arrival. Um so why waste time when it comes to either overutilization or in terms of the balance across schools? Uh part of those things is what we can do initially when we're thinking about what is uh fundamentally correct or technically correct and what is not. And then finally transparency. At the end of the day, what happens is is there's going to be

027a set of scenarios that you all, meaning the school committee, will have to discuss and uh discuss what makes for a good scenario and what not and what makes for not a great scenario. So, it's helpful if as we sort of identify and get feedback, some parents are going to be happy with some scenarios, some parents are not going to be happy with some scenarios. The decision points are really meant to help ground our conversations in priorities that will help them make a decision. Um, it's important to note and I know you all and I and I feel very passionately in terms of understanding you all have been through a lot in terms of the conversations and the decisions that have already been made. So, I would love to say this is going to be

028easy. Uh but at the end of the day, we're really starting to talk about kids moving and uh kids having to either shift what schools they are or what friend groups they have. And that gets really personal really fast. And so at the end of the day, helping to establish a framework that people understand why we're making a decision will not be won't make it easy, but it'll at least make it transparent and understanding on what we're trying to accomplish. So um I'm going to go through a couple of these. Well, I'm I'll go through all of them. I had an opportunity to engage with the district like I had mentioned before on our weekly uh chats. And so these are initial starting points in terms of what decision points either need to be exist

029or what generally speaking I would recommend we at least think about before we start reviewing scenarios. Um this is not a complete list. If you want to add more please I would encourage you to let me know what would be a priority. Um or if depending on how we've uh established these if we want to change the wording I think that would also be helpful too. Um, again for the public that might be listening, we'll be putting out a survey to get feedback on all of these decision points. And so I would encourage uh your feedback as well. I would say and I before we jump in, I will emphasize this point as well. The decision points are really helping understand how we are measuring trade-offs across scenarios. You will find when we start to

030review scenarios with the public, I think a lot of feedback that I normally get is, "Please, I do not like this scenario because my child will have to move." I totally appreciate that and it is a scary sort of idea that that we all are going to have to kind of grapple with. At the end of the day, that does not help understand the the merits of one particular scenario given the fact that in any scenario, a child will have to be switching either their school or their friend groups. And so I don't want to sound callous, but I'm just emphasizing the point that this is going to be a difficult uh process because at the end of the day, and I'm preaching the choir, a lot of kids are going to have to be

031shifting around in terms of the schools that they're at. So to that point, zoning and geography decisions, decision point one is really around walk zones and transportation. Um part of what we have to think about um given sort of the layout of the two existing campuses beyond Blanchard is do we want to establish a formal walk zone to reduce both transportation costs and encourage walking. Um typically what we have seen across uh the board is that most elementary schools have about a mile walk zone. Um and that's something we can establish that will kind of help I think create boundaries. Decision point number two is the flex zones. Um, I know there was conversations about flex zones and so for those who may not be familiar, there is this idea that we could create explicit

032geographical boundaries and then layer on a an area of flexibility to where in future generations we the district may have to help select what school a child could go to based on current capacities of that school. So in terms of thinking about the philosophy of those flex zones, we could lean in on we want to try to minimize flex zones as much as possible or no, we want to maximize flexibility, so we want to have larger flex zones. Again, I'll always kind of continue to point out these challenges of trade-offs. We are either minimizing flexibility or maximizing uh or I'm sorry, maximizing flexibility or minimizing ambiguity for uh parents if they live in those flex zones. Uh num another one is feeder pattern alignment. I think there is an assumption that if you go to

033the lower school that by definition you will go to the upper school. Put it another way the lower and upper schools of each campus should have the same boundaries. Again these are assumptions that I feel need to be codified both by the community and by the school committee. uh in terms of thinking about uh contiguous zones um in most geographical settings um much like the contiguous United States right you have a set of boundaries that are all interconnected some districts have employed a satellite boundary to where you might have either and usually has to do with multif family housing units or major complexes those specific complexes could be tied to a district boundary that is not directly connected to them. Um it does help in terms of providing balance across various boundaries. But it is

034a choice or a decision that needs to be made by the school committee that we either again again we can sort of debate on how you want to say this minimize satellite boundaries um have no satellite boundaries or can employ sat satellite boundaries if it does something to support either the demographic balance or the overall um I would say health of the district capacity and utilization. Um, in terms of thinking about uh setting a utilization ceiling, I know this seems kind of counterintuitive, but do we want to establish the a fact that says no school shall exceed 100% utilization? I know some people will be like, well, that's impossible. You can't have uh greater than 100% utilization. And I'm here to tell you, yes, you can because there are many districts that are stuck in

035that position where they actually do exceed 100%. It makes for a very crowded environment. And so it that can be a goal. Um I will from my understanding in terms of the current capacity we are at a very high uh capacity and utilization but that is doable in terms of making sure that no school exceeds 100% utilization. Future proofing um again as we think about it I think what is one of the challenges when we do a redistricting is um balancing the needs of the now in terms of current students versus the needs of the future students who may not be here yet. Um it is a very difficult conversation to explain to a current student that we are trying to game plan for the next 5 to 10 years. And so understanding how we

036want to think about what that looks like um by either affirming or not affirming that boundaries must be designed uh for future generations. And then finally in terms of uh utilization priorities there is a world where you could think of each school will be at the same utilization. Um there are pros and cons to doing that. Uh different school buildings obviously have different ages, different designs. So it is safe to say that one building that's at 95% utilization is not equal to another building that's at 95% utilization. Plus the fact that given district programming, some district school buildings might be housing different programs. So for flexibility and the balance and support of those programs, it may be beneficial to say it's okay to have certain buildings with a little bit lower utilization given the needs

037of the district and or the students that attend those different buildings. Community values um in terms of thinking about demographic balance um I was in terms of thinking about the pros uh of the system that you just came from, right? Like at the end of the day, part of what we're thinking about is geographical lines can disrupt uh which students are interacting with other students based on a various amount of backgrounds. So part of what we could think about is really establishing the idea that how we draw geographic boundaries need to emphasize and support the idea that each school is representing what Actton and Boxboro is uh on a global scale. And so it's important to sort of establish that part of what our metric is is understanding that each school um is as close

038to the district average as possible across various types of student demographics and characteristics. Neighborhood integrity um part of geographical boundary or boundaries really entail hopefully not dividing up neighborhoods. Um, part of the benefit of geographical boundaries is that kids who live close to each other go to school together. And that creates both a community within and outside of the school. Um, part of what we do when we draw geographical boundary lines is essentially go street by street and we try to analyze where natural uh, neighborhoods end and begin. Part of what we're asking for when we get input from the community is that like where are natural neighborhood lines so that if we do give you a scenario where it is that we are accidentally dividing up a neighborhood that is an excellent sort of

039flag for us to understand that that is something we're trying not to do. Uh finally in terms of uh the Boxboro preference um in terms of the current uh lay of how we're thinking about the exist or the remaining schools uh Blanchard obviously provides a unique situation where they are in Boxboro and so given the fact that it's on the western side um there could be some prioritization based on whether kids are from Boxboro or Actton and that can either complicate or not complicate um the different scenarios in terms of okay so that was my initial set of decision points that you may choose to use or not choose to use um and again uh I will be looking for feedback uh during our next school committee meeting around each of those um again I

040will reemphasize to the community I will be uh putting out or publishing a survey that will be asking about feedback on any of these as well as providing any other uh decision points that we should be considering to use as as we move forward. Finally, in terms of considerations and next steps, um, in regards to understanding how the pro previous process went, and I'm really specifically talking to the school committee here, um, I'm asking now, and you can please coordinate with uh, the chair and she can get back to me in terms of what would be helpful. Excuse me. What combination of technical analysis, visual modeling, and community feedback is necessary to help move the school committee uh, from deliberation to a confident final decision. Uh part of this process is making sure that you

041all the school committee get what you need to make a sound and thoughtful decision. And so at the end of the day when we're thinking about scenarios, I can promise you we'll be providing you with detailed maps uh along with detailed data analysis in support of those scenarios. But it would be helpful to understand if there are ways or things that would help uh facilitate that decision-making process going forward. Finally, in terms of next steps, uh myself and Katie will be doing the demographic and enrollment analysis. a public survey will be be pushing be pushing out this week in terms of getting uh input around decision points and then finally we'll start doing some initial scenario creations so that uh on February 26th when we come back uh we will be able to codify the

042decision points and uh start reviewing some scenarios. Any questions? >> Thank you Nick. That was a lot. So planning to talk our way through these decision points at our next meeting. is planting seeds for us. Um, does anybody have anything that is, you know, recognizing that that your team is going to work right away, do we have anything that we need them to know right now before these next two and a half weeks before we have a conversation about decision points? Adam, >> thanks Nick. I appreciate the haircut, by the way. Um, I I think the the the biggest takeaway for me and the question I have for you now um is that for us, this is not a redistricting, right? This is a districtricting. This is our first time that we're creating geographic boundaries

043and your your thoughts and your considerations up there were really helpful. I'm wondering if there's something now that you can give the committee some guidance on in terms of what we should be thinking about since our mind has always been around this school choice and open enrollment to you know how do we sort of change our perspective when we think about geographic boundaries? What how do we put ourselves in that perspective? That >> is an excellent question. Uh I appreciate you bringing it up. So, um, here is, uh, what I would flag, um, for consideration. And so, even though you say it is not a redistricting, and I completely agree on that. In theory, it kind of is. Um, so here, as an example, what we wanted to do was kind of give you a

044sense of the the distribution of current con students. Now, I can't show you the individual student houses uh cuz that's against Furpa. But what we did was just essentially aggregate uh student um counts uh across the district to sort of reflect um where are students across uh Actton and Boxboro. And so the darker purple represents uh more concentrations of conet students and then the lighter purple down to the white you know represent the various levels of uh student uh counts. So you can imagine a world if we are taking now if we're going from two I'm sorry three um K3 elementary zones so to speak. I know it's K6 K3 and so on and so forth but bear with me. If you have three different uh boundaries that we need to kind of like carve

045out, um no matter how you carve it, uh certain students are going to not go to the same school. And so by definition, that is a in my mind, I know it's mincing words, that's a redistricting. So it really comes down to um philosophically, right? How are you envisioning thinking about what is fair or what is just and how do you uh prioritize or identify what makes for a good scenario? Um I had the pleasure of sort of reviewing some of your conversations and I know the trolley uh scenario came up and so I watched a lot of videos on philosophy this past week. Um and it really getting at you know like you could maximize utility. So, it's the maximizing the good across the entire district. Or you could really think about it in

046the context of no, as long as the process is transparent and as long as we've established what that process is, then that makes for the best process because it's really the process, not the outcome. Or you could think about it in the context of, you know, the decision points that I made, right? Like we are prioritizing and identifying what is important and so we will use that as the guiding light. Um part of the challenge with this and I just really want to emphasize is there is no perfect solution. Um you will always have to give up something to get something and it is a very I think frustrated process because you want the perfect solution and what the perfect solution whether it's across time whether it's uh comparing various student uh demographics to uh

047transportation times or whether it's about utilization or whatever the case may be. um you all as the school committee need to help me and my team understand uh where those priorities lie. So I know that feels like a very not satisfying answer but you really have to do some soularching in regards to um how you are going to be able to understand what makes for a good scenario. I hope that helps. >> Absolutely. >> So I have a question for you Nick. Um, there are some informal trails and some small trails around that might not pop up on a lot of the maps that you might be able to to pull that students use to get to schools. Is that information you're interested in? And how do we get it to you? >> Yes. Uh,

048that is absolutely of interest. So, uh, walking. So, historically, when I've done redistricting, um, a lot of the decision points that come up are kind of what I've reviewed. Um, walking is usually a really big topic of consideration. Um, I know not necessarily for this district at the moment given the fact that it has been a school choice, but um those types of activities where it's the student experience, which is really important uh does uh come up. So, one of the things that or one of the tools that we'll be pushing out for the community is an interactive web app which basically will highlight for you all the current uh it'll be basically be a map like this which you'll be able to zoom all the way down to school level and it will allow

049you to draw boundaries across the map and within that boundary you can provide us with important notes, context or whatever the case may be. And so from that perspective that is the context uh that we need to help make informed scenarios because to your point I think we can look uh in terms of quantitatively uh how things are laid out across act and box borrow but it really is the community that's going to help inform uh what is the lived experience and then ultimately how does that play out with uh scenario development. So that interactive web app will be coming out in terms of getting uh that type of input and um I I will sort of say this as well kind of back to you. Um the prior the importance of uh walk trails

050um is as important as you as the school committee feel that it is important uh to guide that process. >> Thanks Andrew. >> Thanks Nick. Thank you for uh for this. Thanks. We had a chance to chat last week as well and I really appreciate the the framework that you're putting together here. Um, you know, we talked openly about how this isn't just a conventional redistricting like much like Adam said, it's the first time shift geographic enrollment beyond the uh and layered on top of closures and grade banding with real disruption for students and families. And because that disruption is immediate and certain with the hope for benefits of stability, equity, stronger communities, longer term and uncertain, I'm curious about how we can actively manage that trade-off over time. I think that u with that

051lens, I have two questions that I wanted to talk to about this. Actually, a third after seeing um everything you put in here, but things that we can do about how we can have responsible follow through and what that looks like after your work with us is concluded. The other thing as a direct response to this, a lot of the decisions points that you were asking of us demand a lot of data for us and a lot of thoughtfulness from us and I know that you need to have an answer of some sort next week or we need to get to that answer quickly. I am concerned that we won't have the ability to get up to speed with all the pros and cons of some of the decision points you're asking about prior to

052that decision point and hope that we will have the opportunity to go back and forth. I'm not sure if there's a way to have additional um conversations, a smaller committee of some sort to work with this. Um having a way to be able to work and be able to share information. I'm not sure if it's through AB forward website or something could be helpful because I know we don't want to go run a foul of open meeting laws. Um, but based on your experience knowing you're going to be out of this late spring, what are some of the most common impacts that this type of shift comes with? Uh, and and that only become visible one or two or 3 years after they start? What are the things we need to keep in mind? Not

053only knowing they'll be happening two or three years from now, but try to forstall them up front. What are some of the things that we can keep in mind? Uh so a couple things um in terms of the timeline and the decision points um basically the decision points the things I'm concerned with is uh missing some decision points right and so I would encourage anybody to email me um and provide me with guidance in regards to how we want to be thinking about the decision points um when we present the scenarios on the 26th even though we will have not quote unquote finalized the decision points I know enough to know that the decision points in our current form will provide a good starting point. Uh and really it comes down to those decision points

054exist whether they are important or not. And so really it comes down to prioritization. So I'll be able to give you essentially a sense across the decision points where we stand from a quantitative standpoint and you'll be able to sort of then use that as you will to say yep that is important or that is not important. In regards to uh 2 3 years down the line I mean I think there's there's a couple things that we have to think about. uh one the concept of the plan, one in concept of the implementation. Uh in terms of thinking just uh strictly about the plan um there are two two areas in terms of decision points that will sort of im immediately sort of affect that. One is the flex zones and one is the satellite

055boundaries. Um at the end of the day given your current trend uh within Actton and Boxboro your overall enrollment is slightly decreasing which is good. Um, normally I don't ever say that in terms of a district, but given the fact that you are getting to a state where your five schools are going to be almost at capacity, uh, you are going to want a little bit of a breathing room. But to do that or to really help support that, you're going to want as much flexibility as possible. Um and so that's really empowering the district to be able to I would say balance out the enrollments whether it's from either satellite boundaries where we know um certain areas are growing or or decreasing and then two those flex zones that will help help um move

056uh students uh from one school building to another. Um and so what that looks like and how again kind of coming back to those decision points is it fair and equitable um and just um that is ultimately at the end of the day your decision point. Um in terms of thinking about the implementation yeah I think a lot of what we need to do right now is especially hearing from the community what they need both from parents and students perspective. I think a lot of um I would say a big mistake uh that happens is assuming that the implementation doesn't happen until next fall. Um implementation needs to happen now. Um and those implementation supports whether it's uh and you know some things I've seen before are uh buddy groups, parent groups, uh meet the

057meet the principles, having uh shadow days, um having visitations, having um established PTO groups, um having summer programming, all those types of things that I don't think I'm preaching, you know, I'm not saying anything surprising, but it's actually I think implementing those to a um fidel with fidelity uh is one of the key asp aspects of it. >> So, I'm going to jump in here on a couple of things as well, Nick. Um, so one, we need to check on open meeting law to make sure um that we are doing the right things as a community to be transparent. So, please do not email Nick yet until you get some guidance from me. Second of all, everybody on this committee has to understand this is our primary focus right now. We are not putting this

058in a subcommittee because nobody is going to have any excuse not to be following along. So that means when there are forums, if you're not in there watching the forum as it happens, you should go and read the summaries. You should go and watch it afterwards. Our job is to stay on top of this. Our public is holding us accountable and our conversations happen in our open meetings. Dillinger will be on our meeting schedule from now until we make a decision. So just so everybody's got my eyeballs looking at him and I will share that with everybody who's not here as well. Stay focused on this. This is important. Um I want to note that we are 15 minutes over and we have a lot of guests here that want to get to what the

059main event is. So please limit any comments you have to anything that that Nick really needs to know for this next two and a half weeks. Is this a Okay, go Glenn. Thank you. I think we should consider bike lanes. >> Okay. Anything else? All right. Awesome. Thank you, Nick. We really appreciate you being here. We know you had to fight some traffic to get up here and >> it means a lot to have you here. >> No, thank you very much. Appreciate it. >> All right. With that, um, we are on for our budget overview. All right, Peter. >> All right, so you know, obviously the intent of that presentation wasn't to have a long conversation tonight, but what we wanted to do knowing that it was a significant conversation ahead of you, was

060to orient you to what the next conversation is and then give you a couple weeks to to begin thinking about some of those key decision points. um we will get the slides out to you so you can be thinking about some of the decisions along the way before you have to actually have a dialogue about that at the next meeting. So the the main purpose of tonight was to present our FY27 budget in a little bit more detail with you in a workshop format. So this is very much a back and forth question and answer. Um I want to thank the members of our finance committees and select boards for being with us tonight as well as members of the public who have come. Um I want to thank members of our leadership team who

061you know took the night out um to be with us tonight. So thank you very much to everyone um for doing this. And hopefully as we go through the night uh we will do a series of presentations um and after every couple of presentations we'll pause for the opportunity to ask some questions um and and be able to clarify for you anything that comes up. So I want to just take a moment and I want we've been zooming in on the AB forward process. Um and obviously the first part of this meeting was very much a zoom in just on the creation of geographic zones. But if we can zoom out about three or four levels from that for a couple of minutes. What I want to do is actually talk about what AB forward

062was. Um AB forward was not just a process of reorganizing schools. AB Forward was actually the next strategic plan of the school district and as part of that process we actually uh recommitted to a mission vision and set of values. These are largely unchanged um but our mission statement is to provide highquality inclusive educational opportunities that inspire a community of learners and we added the word inclusive with a lot of intention through that process. Our vision is to be engaged, well-balanced learners through collaborative, caring relationships. And we recommitted to the core values that have been ours for the better part of nine years now of wellness, equity, and engagement. These I'm going to choose members of the audience to read the small text for me. Um, but I do want to just share we spent

063a significant amount of time and we had over 200 community members last year participate in a process of identifying the skills, knowledge and habits of mind that we wanted act graduates to have as they progressed from pre kindergarten all the way through high school graduation and sometimes beyond graduation. We wanted students to be effective communicators, which means that they can listen actively and build understanding, can engage in conversations with others about a broad range of topics, and can convey ideas in multiple ways for a variety of audience and purposes. We wanted them to be adaptable. They can demonstrate physical and mental wellness by developing self-confidence and self-awareness through understanding strengths, passions, emotions, and needs. Can take healthy risks and use setbacks as opportunities for growth. and can show resilience by adjusting to changing circumstances and

064persevering toward goals despite challenges. We want them to be collaborators who seek diverse perspectives to broaden and deepen their understanding, can demonstrate empathy by respecting the feelings and experiences of others, and can work with others to contribute to collective goals. We want them to be intellectually curious. They can reflect on and question their own ideas and think critically about information. can identify effective strategies to expand ideas and navigate obstacles and can develop work through creative synthesis um and use the ethical use of resources. And finally, we want them to have integrity. They can take ownership of their actions and decisions, can demonstrate respect for others, themselves, and their environment, and can understand their role in and actively contribute to their communities. We also spent a lot of time developing a theory of action and I

065want to talk about this because this is where the budget meets education and this is a really important part of the next strategic plan. If we enhance student support by using the vision of a graduate to drive improvements to our curriculum, materials, and instruction, investing in research-based programs that are specifically designed to meet the needs of students, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students with social emotional needs, and build a systemwide approach to understanding and supporting the diverse learning needs of all students, preK through 12 plus, so each student can access necessary supports. And we provide educator support through ongoing support opportunities for collaboration and professional learning for our educators that are specific to the needs of our students. Design schools and programs that inspire a community of learners and empower educators to meet

066the individual needs of students. Rethink how we use our resources to create educationally effective and financially sustainable systems that allow the community to invest in its people and expand offerings to deeply engage students in innovative ways. Then we will be able to improve outcomes for each of our students from all backgrounds and educational needs. Maintain a strong sense of belonging, safety, and support for students and staff in all of our schools. Ensure every student experiences developmentally appropriate, rigorous, engaging, and inclusive instruction that helps them reach their fullest potential. And nurture a thriving community of educators and maintain the finances and operations necessary to deliver excellence for students now and into the future. That's what we're really talking about tonight is how do we move from what we hope to do to how that can impact

067students and hopefully the budget that you see before you shows how we're starting to rethink how we're re using some of our resources to support the needs of our students in the district. So our strategic plan is organized around four key priority areas. One is social emotional uh student outcomes um both social emotional and academic high quality instruction in district-wide systems. who can see what that is. I don't need to read this whole slide to you cuz it's legible. Um, thinking about what responsive support for staff looks like, how we create welcome and inclusive school communities, and have sustainable district systems and operations. And all of these four areas need to intersect with each other in order to build a budget that impacts students in a positive way and creates sustainability for our community. want

068to just take a few minutes and and just talk about the path that we've been on over the last five years and what led to kind of this iteration of the strategic plan AB forward and how we're moving our budget forward into next year. I'm going to start first with the budget guidelines that school committee gave us and this is not word for word but this is is paraphrased. Um so there are obviously fiscal context and constraints to all of this and I think our school committee recognized the challenging fiscal climate and pressure um on educators and taxpayers. School committee directed us as administrators to present a budget that increased between 3.75% and 4.25% uh which was at the time about a 2.3 to 2.9 million reduction from what would have been level services. That

069is about a 50% larger reduction than we would have had to make in past years. um that was this was a more significant budget gap and that is the trend that we've been seeing as budget gaps are growing in that we also had to prioritize student supports, social emotional mental health and behavioral health needs, academic needs, multilingual services, and special education supports and services. And hopefully what you see as this budget presentation unfolds is how we've tried to think about that and make that actionable through the budget we're presenting. And then some of the budget directives were to um incorporate goals and outcomes of the AB forward process, leverage quality education in in a period of constrained resources. So that was the fundamental challenge that we were facing. Um school committee asked us to be

070able to articulate the impact of any budgetary changes we're making um so that that is transparent for both you and the community. Think about capital funding and facilities. Not only the immediate needs of the district, but also what are the long-term needs that our district is facing. Think about our obligations um for steps and lane increases, cost of living increases, but also retirement that we have to pay for and health insurance costs for employees. So, that's incorporated in and then really thinking about limiting the use of one-time funds um in our reserve account um and not to be using reserve funds for ongoing expenses. So lots to think about there. So um how are we approaching this? Um one is our core goal remains balancing the commitment to high quality education and the fiscal constraints

071of our two communities. Thinking about how we could leverage the savings from AB forward to think about how we protect and actually improve conditions for students who need additional support in the district. And then thinking about stabilizing our long-term finances. What can we do now that presents a better uh fiscal future for the the school district and hopefully limits uh volatility? How can we bolster elementary special ed uh excuse me, bolster elementary mental health support? Thinking about staffing for multilingual learners and our students with disabilities. Um and we also um are talking about tonight a K through 8 humanities coordinator. Uh we actually had two of these roles previously. Um, we cut a a large number of our leadership positions around teaching and learning over the last several years and are at a point where

072we need to actually start building that back up because we're not providing the level of support we need in that critical area. Budget increases over time. Um, I remember when I came to act in Boxboro, um, the finance director at the time always put in a 3.75% budget increase into the Act and Leadership Group, uh, multi-year plan. Um, and that was kind of the standard. And everyone always said a 3.75 increase is not sustainable. And he but unfortunately that's realistic of of what a regional school district needs year and out u year in and year out. we have averaged just about that over the period of time with the exception obviously of the year where we had an override in the community um and had significantly larger costs. Just as a reminder, a lot of

073those were one-time costs related to uh the health insurance crisis that we had. Um and so we have seen costs start to stabilize. Um we're coming in at a 4.55% budget, but I just want to reassure you, and you'll see the numbers later, that is only because we've added a million in one-time costs from excess and deficiency funds. Um, before that it was actually significantly lower in the 3.75 range, I think. >> Yeah, 3.69. >> 3.69. We actually came in just under the school committee guidelines. So, the actual budget increase without one-time funds was 3.69%. It's 4.55 with the extra excess and deficiency. But in order to be able to use those onetime funds, the school committee has to include it in its base budget. So there's really a paradox here in that the district

074has had significantly declining enrollment over a period of time and during that same time we've had significantly higher student needs. Um we've talked about that for multiple years now. Um but we're down about 650 students. Um and at the same time we've seen significant increases in our highnee student population, English language learners and students who come from low-income backgrounds. Um, and so the bottom line is even though I think a lot of our community members feel like there should be kind of proportional savings from declining enrollment, in order to meet the students needs, we've actually had to add very specific supports and services across the district. Um, in order to meet all of our our our students needs where they are. So, um, that is kind of the major story that has unfolded over the

075last five or six years in our budgets. So what has been the net impact? Um including this year's budget proposal, um we will have eliminated 107.83 full-time equivalent positions in general education, leadership and operational roles. That again 107.83 positions in general education, leadership and operational roles. Um we have offset that with increases of 65.62 62 positions in special education multilingual support in order to meet a lot of these mandates that we have as a school community. So the net impact has been a reduction of 43.21 positions over that period of time. Um and that is the story of how our resources have been shifting over a 5-year period. Um and it's a really significant shift. Um we also um have benefited from retirements and resignations that take place over the course of a year. um

076and to the tune of about $350 to $450,000 a year um in attrition that we typically have um from staff. So just thinking about that um and we've been very thoughtful in our hiring processes and kind of the max number of years experience and education level that we can bring new educators into the district at uh which is another you know kind of additional impact of some of the budget work. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of everything uh related to AB forward and our budget presentation. You're going to hear more about that, but I just wanted to highlight a few things. Um overall, AB Forward, some of the the kind of key realignments that we're making in terms of reductions, our 11 classroom teachers at the elementary level, three art, music,

077and PE teachers at the elementary level, um two principal assistant principal roles, and a school nurse. Those are some of the key positions. There are additional things beyond that. Um, but I just want to highlight some of those. They're significant. Um, and in terms of reinvestments and what we're trying to do with that, um, we're adding two elementary counselors across the district. Um, we will talk more about that later. We're proposing the addition of a K through8 humanities coordinator. Um, we are adding five and a quarter special education support staff and a multilingual educator, which will actually be grant funded next year. So that's not coming out of the district's operating budget. So our gross operating budget is a 4.55% increase and it's just um north of $122 million. You can see the ACT and

078Boxboro assessments um respectively um at a 3.75% increase in Actton and a 5.57% increase in Boxboro. Just as a reminder, those are fully enrollment driven at this point over a rolling three-year average. Sher can talk to that more in her presentation. And I just want to give a warning to to all of us in the room here um about sustainability in school funding. The only reason we were able to get to the 4.55% increase and again it was 3.69 without the one-time funds was through massive restructuring of the school district. Um, we currently are still projecting, and Sher will talk to this, increases of five and a quarter to five and a half percent a year over the next three years. Unless something changes significantly in our operating expenses um, on an annual basis, the

079current funding at the state level formula, it fails to account for inflation and it fails to account for the needs of our students that we're serving every day. Um, and unless we get some kind of legislative relief at the state level, and I am not hopeful that any legislative relief that would be enacted at the state level would have any positive effect on acting in Boxboro. I actually am more concerned that any legislative relief at the state level could have a negative impact on us. Um, or unless there's a change in local revenue increases, and I think you all know what that means, um, between the lines. Um, you know, we will continue to face a lot of challenges in terms of our finances. And that would be in the form of ongoing staffing reductions.

080Most of our budget is tied up in our staff. We are not a capital organization. We don't have, you know, assets and liabilities the same way large corporations do. Uh, we can't just sell off large parts of our business to others in order to to cut, you know, services that we provide. Um, but what we do is really a staffing type of a business. So, I just say this as a cautionary tale. Um, not to try and, you know, raise anxiety, but there is a reality that we got to the budget. We did through massive restructuring. Um, and that is not going to be an option for us moving forward. And so, we're going to have to figure out what the next steps are to get to a more sustainable solution. Overall, the timeline ahead,

081um, we're coming back on March 5th to a public budget hearing. That is an opportunity for members of the community to share feedback with school committee uh before the school committee takes its final budget vote on um the 19th. Then we have actton and town meetings respectively coming up as well. >> So I'm going to turn this over to Sher. She's going to go through the finance presentation and then we'll come back for any questions or comments. >> Just yep. So, some of this might be a little bit repetitive to what Peter just said, but so if you look at our budget at a glance, we're presenting tonight the total recommended budget of 122 349 388, which is a 4.55. This number does not change the assessment amount that was presented on the 22nd during

082the superintendent's preliminary budget. It proposes a 3.75% increase in assessments for Actton and a 5.57% increase for Boxboro. And our primary cost drivers that you'll learn about is the health insurance rates budgeted at 14.4% increase in our special education tuitions which is budgeted at 16.909. This is a 5-year history of where we where we stood in all of our uh budgets and assessments. And as Peter mentioned previously, FY25 kind of sticks out because that was the year of the override and that was the year that we had um the health insurance crisis. But FY27 shows the two assessments that we'll need. Financial overview. This just breaks down the operating budget compared to the capital budget. So we have a 4.68% 68% change for the operating budget and our capital which is our capital improvement which

083is within our general fund and the debt payments we have to make that's a $1.85% increase which overall brings us to a $5.3 million increase and 4.55%. And what you can see at the bottom is our state aid and this is something that um Peter just alluded to. our revenues are only going up 1.96% with the state aid that we get and then the other revenue that we have that equals a total of 21.78 million. I know that these are very small and they will be posted on the website tomorrow, but the the next two pages breaks down character codes and it breaks down um each one of the salaries. And this does look different than what was presented on the 22nd. On the 22nd when we had our preliminary budget, there are certain things

084that we didn't know. We there's positions and there's people attached to positions that are going to be um leaving as you saw some of the um subtractions we're going to have. I didn't have all that information. So even just line number two, salaries principles. I understand on the 22nd that looked like an increase. We didn't have the information we needed in order to change that at the time, but now it has been changed. And you can see on the bottom that um it balances out to the 122, 349, 388. And that very bottom line that says other, that is the million dollars that Peter mentioned that is going to be coming from END that will be helping with some of the transition costs that we're going to have. [clears throat] This kind of breaks down

085our cost drivers. So, we start off with our FY26 budget and you can see the health insurance. This number has also changed since the 22nd. When we first met um with an when Andrew and I first met with Maya, they advised us to have an 18% increase. Since that time, we have spoken to them. They have not finalized their numbers yet, but they said worst case scenario, it's going to be 14.4%. So, we were able to reduce it to the 14.4. The net special education tuitions um they're going up 755,000. The operation services division, the OSD sets the rates and they've set the rate for next year at 3.04%. But there are many institutions, some of which we're um we have students at that have put in for changes that go above the 3.04%. our

086county retirement, we've received our numbers from Middle Sex County, so we know that that's a solid number. And then our debt service payments are going up 114,000. These are all fixed costs. These are not costs that we can play with. Um the only one that might be fluid right now, like we said, is health insurance, and we should find out within the next two weeks what our health insurance rates are going to actually be. This just reiterates the special education um that it is going up 16.09% and our out of district tuitions are 5.45 million and that's after maximizing our circuit breaker of over $4 million to offset these costs. Again, the 3.04% is the OSD rate that they've created. and our transportation assessment from case did help us to offset it and that is

087decreasing by $129,000. This just also kind of reiterates what Peter said that where we need to reinvest our um needs with our mental health support, our multilingual staffing and our special education mandates. Um, the reductions that Andrew will go over when we get to the personnel section is mainly due to the elementary reorganization and looking at class sizes and he'll talk about the FTE reductions. The total personnel costs is going up 2.96% which is significantly lower than the overall budget increase of the 4.55. Um, one of the ways that we're trying to help with the cost mitigation of the increase is we are reducing our OPED strategy. In the past, for the last, I'm not sure how many years, um, we've set a 6 and a half% increase between the Middle Sex County retirement and

088the OPED. This year, we're actually reducing the annual contribution to OPED by 553,000, a little higher than that. And it's our strategic tradeoff to manage some of the im immediate assessment pressure that we've had. Regional transportation. I'm being a little conservative at 80%. It's because last year the governor's budget was actually higher than what the final budget was for transportation. So at this point, since we only have the governor's budget, I'm trying to be a little conservative to make sure that we don't oversell ourselves. However, I was able to level fund the McKenna Vento and the foster care lines. And then again, um, Andrew can talk about the personnel piece. Our assessment methodology has been since I've been here, at least in prior to, based on a three-year enrollment average. So the total district budget

089is 122.3 million that we're presenting minus the revenues of the 21.78 leaves us with the net assessment of 100.5. The assessment did not change from the 22nd to to now because the million dollars that we added is coming from our excess and deficiency account. So the revenue offsets the expense. And this just again breaks down the final assessment summary. It's 3.93 million increase overall in assessments. And this breaks down ACT and Boxboro and what the increases will be. We have shared this with both finance committees and select boards so they know and this number has not changed. And finally, this is our multi-year outlook. And I know again it's hard to see, so it will be on the website. But the way that we presented this is looking at health insurance, which is one of

090the greatest increases that we have here. We're estimating a 14% increase for FY28. And then we brought it down to 10% for the following out years of 29, 30, and 31. Again, fluid numbers. We don't know where they're going to be. We have to wait until midFebruary to get our rates from Maya each year. Our variable costs, which is all of them pretty much at the bottom from performing arts down, that's just estimated at 3% each year. Our special education, tuitions, transportation, educational technology, and facilities is estimated at 4% because historically that's about where they land each year. And for our personnel, we have estimated between the steps and lanes 5%, but it is also a negotiating year and we're not done with negotiations, so we're not really sure where we're going to land for

091the next couple of years. mind just maybe say what the cola is now that that's based on >> Oh yes. So currently we have a 2.75 cola built into our budget and I guess if anyone has any questions for anything that Peter and I went over. All right. So the way we'll go through this we'll start with school committee then I'll come back and I'll just work boards around this way. Um and then if we have time remaining um recognizing that this is going to be a long evening we will uh take questions from our greater audience. All right. Uh Andrea Sahan. >> Yeah this is actually on the previous slide. um as you were looking into the future, Conan is still on here as a projected expense for 28 29 303 31 and I

092didn't know if that was reflective just because we're thinking about stuff if it's reflective because those some of those FTEEs are within the rest of the budget. What's it doing there? What's up? until we know exactly what students are going where, we will take those funds because they will go with those students and we will disperse them to the other schools. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome, >> Adam. >> Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Sher. Um, a couple quick clarifications. Uh, the state aid that you accounted for in the revenue was based on what we've seen from the governor so far, which is $70 per $75 per pupil, right? Um, and our October 1st enrollment number is the number of pupils that >> 4,877. Thank you. And then um can uh I I guess I I want

093to make a comment and then I've got a a question for you. And the comment is um this is probably as good as any other slide. Um to sort of illustrate this, um we're showing an operating budget increase of 4.55%. And as we all know, it's the three-year enrollment average that then turns that into an assessment for the two towns. Um and a swing in either direction can affect either town, particularly Boxboro, because we're smaller, greater than that. And sometimes it is of no fault. Well, it's never the school committee's fault uh that people move in or out of the town and change our enrollment. And so if I looked at say this year for example, the enrollment numbers for Actton went down and the enrollment numbers for Boxboro went up. So that's a double

094whammy to the town of Boxboro. Um and so I think we just need to be really careful and I I appreciate the sort of the focus we've put on this year. Um that our we're we're sharing what our operating budget increase is. Um, and we recognize that the what the towns pay are the assessments, but we have very little control over how those assessments roll out to the two towns other than what our operating budget is. And so, I just want to be really clear that at some point Actton could have a bump of students and Boxboro could have a decline. And while that may not dollar-wise affect Actton as much, again, that increase in assessment will go to Actton and it will um adversely affect your three-year model, just like Boxboro's three-year model is

095a result of what our enrollments are um for right now. And so, I just think it's really important to highlight that when you're looking at the two assessments, 3.75 for the town of Actton and 5 >> 57 for the town of Boxboro, that is more a function of enrollment than it is financial planning on the district side. and the 4.55 is the thing that that we can control. So that was my comment. And then lastly, my question for you um since we've gotten this question a couple times, can you um explain for us the difference between character codes and line items, particularly around character code 35, which is labeled as administrative supplies. Um because I think there's a sort of a matrix between what is a line item budget item and what is the character

096code that it gets filed under. And so, um, there seems to be a concern around the the co the the value of character code 35 admin supplies. And I'd like to sort of understand how that rolls out to the line item budgets or the line items. I'm I'm not as worried about the jump as I am who who gets to charge things to that. You know, is it just contracted services? Is it just central office administrative supplies? Are there other sort of parts of our operations that actually have costs that go into admin supplies? Oh no, it's not. >> So you gave a a wonderful description. Now it's working. Now no one online is going to hear all of those different areas. But if I were to summarize, it is everything in the central office

097that relates to contracted services, supplies, software, and then all of the school supplies for all of our school buildings as well. >> The principal supplies, >> not necessarily the supplies for the classrooms. >> Okay. >> And technology department as well. >> And supplies is probably a misnomer because it's not supplies as in paper. It is >> it is office supplies, but it's also contracted services. um memberships dues in fees, professional services. So I I have to figure out why they listed that character code as supplies. >> Thank you, >> Glenn. So, one thought I had um that I feel is relevant and want to share is that with the focus on mental health in this budget, which I think is fantastic, I'm wondering if we can sort of feed two birds with one scone by

098the way we're implementing community building into the districtwide restructuring process that We can also hopefully use that to community build for supporting mental health. There is one really cool Wall Street Journal article called with the headline, the secret of Latino teens, better mental health. Despite greater economic challenges, children in Latino immigrant families have a key advantage for personal flourishing strong families and communities. And I feel like that there's something we can learn here that if we're able to sort of build the community that can sort of absorb the stresses of the system that will inevitably come, then I think that benefits the entire thing in mental well-being, too. I mean, for me, I know that yes, like some of the best things I do for my wellness is just like reading fiction, weightlifting, and potlucks

099with my friends, and that that helps keep me sane. Um, so I just feel like there's something in that element, too, that could be incorporated here. So, that's my comment. >> No, Glenn, I think you you make a good point. I do think that, you know, we need to continue to focus on building strong communities, especially as we go through this reorganization process. I think that is, you know, certainly an area of caution for us as we move away from the traditional school structures into a new school structure um that we need to be paying attention to is how do we rebuild some of the sense of community within our schools. Um and I think that's important. I will also share that you know um from a mental health perspective the idea that it's not

100just direct services to students in terms of their own mental health um has actually been a core component of the strategy we've had for a number of years now um both in our partnership with cartwheel care where they not only provide services that are direct to students but they've provided a lot of family supports um you know as well as um kind of supports for our educators too and thinking about kind of the mental health of adults and how that impacts students in our schools um has been key. And then the same goes for when we've expanded the services through Care Solace um this spring knowing we were headed into AB forward which is really um the ability for anyone in our district whether it's a parent, a student or um an educator to be

101able to call and have a referral match to their own health insurance. or if they don't have health insurance, there are still providers available um that can partner with the family, student, educator uh to make sure that we're thinking just beyond the immediate needs of the students we see because it is part of an ecosystem. Lisa, I'm going to ask a question that I think a lot of the public might end up having was uh back when we were thinking that there might be an 18% increase in health insurance and we had that preliminary um budget estimate of a 3.69% increase prior to adding the uh 1 million. Um and now that's great news. 14% that's obviously better. But um because that uh amount hasn't dropped, I know the public will be wondering if some

102of that money from that percent change being lowered went back into some of those staffing positions that we talked about if that's kind of where that went because I just, you know, people might wonder and I thought I'd ask that question. >> Yeah, I think, you know, one of the challenges when you build a district-wide budget is there are levers that shift over time in every direction. And so, you know, I think having that flexibility from health insurance certainly allowed us to think about kind of the supplemental supports in terms of counseling, some of the other positions that we've proposed to be able to offset some of the additional costs of special education. It's never a one for one because ultimately in the end there's one pot of revenue and one pot of expenses. Um,

103but I think absolutely the flexibility we received in health insurance had a significant impact on our ability to actually think about what we would do to better support our students in the new new structure. >> All right, looks like we've gone through the school committee. I'll move back to the next row. Um, starting on the act and fincom end of things. >> Thanks. Um my I'm just going to ask one question then I'll let it let the group the team here ask another one. Um since uh the one of the primary drivers of all of these forecasts is enrollment um on one of the uh the paradox slide showed a decrease of 653 students. Um does the school do a uh kind of an exit interview of the people that leave the town? to get

104an understanding of why people left. So I think if we don't I think it'd be tremendously helpful as people leave to understand why uh as with people working remote I don't think it's as often as jobs. So to get an understanding if it's taxes if it's whatever it is so that if you have an understanding of that you can better project out going forward because we're projecting that enrollment is going continue to decline. But if you were to say hypothetically find that people were the 653 that left the town were because they all worked at the same company and relocated hypothetically that is not a something that would probably happen again. So it just give you a better understanding for your forecast. So just a thought. >> Yeah. You know, Scott, one of the I

105think the the most significant parts of the expanded NESD enrollment study that we did um actually got I think pretty well to the bottom of this and Andrew feel free to jump in too. Um but they said especially in terms of Actton it maybe not quite as pronounced in Boxboro but definitely in Actton the biggest driver of the decline in enrollment has been students aging out of the system and a lack of housing turnover because seniors are staying in their houses longer than they ever have before because services and supports for seniors to do that have actually expanded. Um and so we're not seeing the same type of housing turnover that the community had generationally. So, um I believe that was the single biggest driver as well as low birth rates. Um which is probably

106something that we're not going to solve either. Sorry, I don't mean to make another comment, but uh with the likelihood of interest rates dropping with the Fed chair changing in May, uh and the fact that we've had stagnant and rising inflation the last number of years, people in high mortgage rates and interest rates dropping potentially dramatically in the next 6 months, we could be back to a high turnover in housing. And I think you would know that by the summertime because people usually put their house on the market months before they intend to sell. So the realtors in town would probably know probably by, you know, April, May what that's going to look like and if it's trending higher than historical. as one of the seniors who uh hasn't moved out of town. I guess

107I'm uh a case study, but um one of the numbers I wanted to follow up with is is one that we talked about a year ago. Uh we focused on uh state revenue and I know that um the finance committee has supported um the school committee in its efforts to reform chapter 70. um deal with other local aid issues. What is happening on the federal level? I think a year ago we were talking about $1.9 million was at risk. Um what what what is the impact of of of that revenue source? You know, I I attended a talk with Georgetown University, who does a lot of the economic studies um last summer, and I think there was a lot of uncertainty around federal funding on a number of areas, but most of the district's funds

108at the federal level are tied up in special education. Um and there was extraordinary bipartisan support, um and continues to be bipartisan support against touching any type of special education funding. Um I don't think that that's politically going to be something that's palatable um at the federal level. So I I'm not sure that we have seen the same volatility in our own kind of federal grants that come in. So um it's still a relatively small part of our budget in the end. Um but I'm I'm just not sure that that's going to see significant change. I mean there might be maybe more in terms of like nutrition services, things like that. I think there's there's been some up in the air on some of the grants. um but not in the the vast majority of

109our funding. >> Hi. Um so there's a couple slides I I want to come back to this one at the very end. There was a slide where you showed the percentage increases like between 26 and 27 in the health insurance. Um can't remember where it was. No, it was well that one too. So you Okay, that one you show a 14.4% increase. You before it was 18 and now it's 14 14.4. But on another one in here somewhere there were some columns and it's like 11.73 is what it says in that column. And [snorts] then it shows that you're projecting 14 I think for FY28. Yeah, that one. So it says 11.73 and then you're projecting 14 for the increase the next year. So I'm wondering is it 11.73 or is it 14.4? The rate

110increase is calculated at 14.4 but after we reduce staff. >> Okay. Okay. Gotcha. >> Lower. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. And then um the pre-regionalization debt. How much is that still? And when does it roll off? >> It will roll off in 2031, I believe. And it's the lower fields. >> Oh, really? Wow. >> Hold on one sec. I can tell you how much it is. So for FY27, it's $108,000. Okay, thanks. Okay, so if you go back to the slide that has the 653, I've asked this question before, can someone please define for me the 653 enrollment? There you go. There you go. Thank you. Can someone please define for me what what is level services? So there there can be different terms used. There can be maintenance of services, there can be level

111services. Um level services implies that regardless of changes in student population, you provide the exact same services from one year to the next. Maintaining services means that when you decline, so for example, in this when you decline enrollment, you might also decline the number of general education classrooms that you have as well because you're maintaining the same level of service for students that you had in a prior year. But the change in enrollment necessitated a reduction in in sections or if you had an increase in enrollment you might increase the number of teachers that you have proportionally. >> Okay. So what you've been talking about then is level services. So I'll call that level resources. If we had been maintaining services we would have a lot fewer teachers now because the 653 is only going

112back to like regionalization. If you go back to peak enrollment it's a thousand students. And I I just wish people would get that stuck in their heads. It's cherry-picking numbers. Um, we have roughly the same number of general education teachers now that we did when we had a thousand more students. That is an accretion of services. So, I'm kind of like done with people talking about cuts to level services. There haven't been cuts. There's been an accretion of services. Um, and I think like I said that to me is somehow that's we got to figure out how that's that's the budget problem in my mind. It's like when 70 or 80% of your budget is people, the only way to fix the budget is to is to deal with that. So, oh, and one more

113thing. I'm sorry. The conversation, the thing that Scott asked about asking why people leave, I think we've missed the opportunity, but big an opportunity would have been to find out the people who left, like a third of the people who left in the last 17 years left between fiscal years 2019 and 21 COVID. That would have been a good opportunity to see why people left and didn't come back. Thank you. All right. So, Finncom, are you ready to pass it over to the select board? All right. Thank [clears throat] you. Uh, select boards. Um, so, um, just a uh clarification. I I I read the governor's budget and I heard what uh, Adam said that what we get now this year is $150 per student is predicted to be 75 next year. Is that correct?

114>> I I don't think that's a prediction. I think that's just the governor's initial proposal. Typically through the the process, the numbers in any category are continue to change between the time you get from a governor's budget to a house budget to the the Senate budget. Um per the minimum aid historically has trended up through that process. So typically what has happened is the governor releases the lowest set of numbers and that increases. But on the flip side, regional transportation actually decreased last year through the process. So, um, you know, I don't want to call anything a prediction at this point. It just that's what the number is. >> So, I should have said assumption. So, >> it's an assumption. Yes. Perfect. >> So, um, in in this budget, are we assuming 75? Are we

115assuming 150 be that the legislature will bring it up or what are we assuming? >> Right now, it's predicted at 75. >> I see you said predicted. Um, >> well, [laughter] assumption. I it's assumed. How about this? It's budgeted at 75. >> Great. I have one other question. Um uh is there a breakdown available of the capital program? And I don't need it. You don't need to to recite it to me now, but if you could send it to me, I'd appreciate that. >> There is a 10-year capital plan that's on our website. >> Um if you could point me at that. I looked a little bit for it. I can't say I didn't I obviously didn't do an exhaustive search because I didn't find it. Um >> I can email you the link. >>

116That's great. Thank you. >> Welcome. Thank you. Um, Alyssa Nickel, Act and Select Board. Um, I don't have a question, but I do have a comment that I'm hoping somebody would be able to respond to. Um, I don't remember if it was during our tri board meeting, which was actually five boards meeting, um, or an AB forward focus group where I said this. Um, but I cautioned folks who were talking about reductions in the budget that would be coming about because of the reorganization, those savings being reallocated to other services. and and I think it's really wise to add some positions back in for specific areas um because of the increasing needs that we've been talking about for years in our student population and also because students are going to need a lot of support

117through this reorganization. Um, so counselors and ABA positions, special education assistants and teachers, BCBA, reading specialists, um, multilingual educator, those all make perfect sense to me. Um but given that our major cost drivers are health insurance, retirey health insurance, um out of district tuition and transportation, and those are expected to continue to go up dramatically over the next few years. I'm really mystified by the addition of almost two FTEEs for elementary office admin. um especially given that we're closing one building, the addition of a custodian when we're closing one building and then the addition of a humanities coordinator because we'd like to have that. We used to have this position but right now and the high school robotics and engineering which totally support robotics and engineering but right now. So, I'm concerned about the the

118reduction of 22.03 FTEES that's been made possible by the reorganization, but we're adding in 17.55. So, those savings have been for the most part reallocated. And I'm really really um thankful that the district um brought in the assessment increases to the the lowest level of the range that you got from the from the school committee. That's phenomenal. I'm I'm really grateful that we don't need an override in an operating override in either town this year. But this is concerning to me um for future planning, future financial stability, and also for messaging to our taxpayers who are going to be voting on our budgets. So, not a question, but if anybody has any thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them. [snorts] >> Alyssa, maybe we can get into the teaching and learning, special education, and

119personnel presentations first and then come back to that. Thank you. Ah, I'm not used to these fancy. Um, Kristen Hillberg, Boxer Select Board. So, I'm actually kind of um bouncing off some of the things the Actton Fincom has said and I'm thinking about um we are not the only region, the only school district in the Commonwealth dealing with all of this. It's pretty much the entire state. Um as a select board member, the governor's budget was disappointing [laughter] to for lack of a better word. Um, and we also know that there's a movement to put a ballot question to reduce the state income tax, you know, and it looks like that might not make it to the ballot, but that's super concerning. So, my question is, you know, is there any um movement, organization, whatnot,

120on behalf of school committees, school districts to send that message to the state that, you know, you said in your presentation, the funding doesn't work, the numbers don't work, every single school district is being impacted by this. So, what changes are they going to be making and and how do we how do we communicate that? That's something that our select board's been talking about. How do we just say this ain't working anymore? So, I guess I can take that one. Um, some [snorts] people might have gotten emails last year um starting about with the Ways and Means Committee meeting that was um out in Amherst. And as a result of attending that meeting and providing a couple of letters, Alyssa was there with us as well. Um, we had some outreach from some uh some

121key people about districts getting together. There are about 251 municipalities that are in the same situation we are with hold harmless in chapter 70. So getting minimum aid. Um we did a letter writing campaign. Um and so what we basically were sending out to um everyone we could was you here's sort of the outline of the email. Here's a section where you put the part about your story because what we learned was that just sending form letters isn't very effective. After they read the first one, nobody reads anymore. And having now received some form letters, I understand that. Um being able to tell your story is important. Um we probably have to think about how we go about doing that again this year. So we heard back from our our state um legislative representatives that

122it we were effective. like people realize that Actton and Boxboro were writing and they're like what? We thought you guys should be okay. Why are you writing to us? Um we will probably figure out what we're going to do about that again this year. We haven't had that conversation yet because we've been a little focused on AB forward. Um and I think also, you know, the other piece of feedback we're hearing is things are tight everywhere. Um we are all aware of what's going on at at the national level. We're all aware of what's going on at the state level and um as hard a time as we are having right now, there are municipalities in Massachusetts that have it even harder than we do. So, it's going to be we're going to have to

123figure out what our angle is there and we haven't had that conversation yet. But, um I think we welcome your partnership in in thinking about that. >> Include us. Um it's it's top of mind and however we can partner we intend to do so. >> All right, looks like we're passing from the select boards back to this is the Boxborocom side. >> So Tony Newton, Boxboro income. So I've got one clarification uh and one question. So clarification on line 49 on the budget Sherry is a million500,000. What what actually is that again? Can you can you reexlain that? Sure. That is money that we're going to be taking from our END, our excess and deficiency, and the revenue offsets the expense, and we're putting that aside for transition costs, like one-time transition costs just for

124this year only. >> So, it's a onetime cost that's coming out that's going to be added to the budget basically as a as a cost. And what I plan on doing because we have it in that contingency line is anytime we use it, we'll do budget transfers that I'll have the school committee approve to show exactly where the expenses need to go. >> Okay. And and the question was about the the slide you showed, Peter, about savings in staffing from the re structural changes. This actually reflects on Alyssa's point actually. And then there are others other increased staffing costs and how much is that is due to the structural change or how much is that just we would have wanted to do that anyway to actually um add those positions. So is is it really

125driven by the structural change or is it just backfilling essentially you know with an opportunity to back fill? I think in terms of this the cost savings um and I think this might become clearer in both the next couple of presentations too u but in terms of cost savings we could not have reduced 11 classroom teaching positions um without also changing the structure because you can't cut a second grade teaching position from a school that only has three sections of second grade. um there's just too many kids who still sit in that school. And I remember when we did the override budget a few years ago, if that had not passed, we would have had to have just gone school by school and moved students around in order to balance our enrollments. Um and that

126wasn't going to be healthy either. Um same thing, savings from things like principal, nurse, some of those overhead positions. Those are all a direct result of the reorganization. Now there are also things that the students have to move someplace and there are types of things that we need to think about as the other buildings increase their enrollments to provide reasonable services for. And so I think some of the additions that you're we're talking about are recognizing that there are more students in a building, more families in a building um all kind of pushing on the services available to to schools. So, um, there's both of those, but I think maybe for the detail, let's hold until we get to the next couple of presentations because that's their focus. Um, hi John Connor, Boxboro. Could you

127go back to the slide that has the um the high need students uh whatever that was called just a few slides ago? I just want to check. Yeah, that one. Thank you. So it says, and this is a shocking number to me, you have 33.1% of the student bodies considered high needs. So we have 5,000 PE students in in the population. So you're telling me 1500 are high needs. Is that correct? >> How is that defined? Um high needs is a very specific category. It's a combination of um three different identifiers. Um it is students who are English learners or former English learners. Um it includes students who um are from low-income households and it includes students identified with a disability. >> So >> okay, >> that is the most striking increase across the district

128of students in those identifiers. >> Do you have the data within those categories? Is it the same within those three groupings? Yeah, we didn't choose to break it out for tonight, but some of those >> categories, who are you pointing to? >> Just >> the English learners is 8% as you'll see right below that and low income is 12.2% and I think special education was 17.2%. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, if somebody just just needs more time for a test, is that a high need student? Um, not necessarily. Um, because you you can have a disability but not qualify for an individualized educational plan through special education services. Um, and that would not necessarily qualify you as high needs. Um, it's I'll let maybe Natalia come to that. When we do special education, that that's

129maybe her area. Do you want to just talk to that briefly? Yes. So the referral process to special education is such as if a student is identified as potentially having a disability, this is when we have to evaluate the student. The team meets uh and makes the determination. Eligibility determination. If the student is found eligible for special education services, the team writes an individualized education program and the student which is a legal document uh the parents uh agree to that document and students receive services. >> Okay, one last question. So are surrounding communities immediately close to our school system seeing that same level of growth? Do you know? I think it's been an overall trend across the state that they're seeing that level of growth. There are some communities that far outpace us in the

130level of growth and then there are some very similar communities that have not kept with the same pace of growth we've seen. So it it really is a range. Um you know I think we have seen a significant increase for us in our English learn learner population. Um that has not changed over the last you know 12 to 18 months. Um, you know, I think that's something that we were wondering about, um, going into, you know, kind of the the last year or so. Um, but we've actually seen that hold pretty steady or slightly increase. Um, I think the economic diversity of the community has shifted significantly um, from what the historical trend was. I mean, just, you know, a handful of years ago, we were at 4% low income and now we're at over

13112. Um, that's a real shift for us. So, um, you know, and all of these things are reasons why we've chosen to add something in the district. Um, so I think that's the reason that we feel it's really important to call out here. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Good. All set. >> Okay. I'm going to note that we are a spectacular 48 minutes behind schedule. So, I'm sure I'm going to get uh some grief for that, but let me show see a show of hands from uh our audience if anybody would like to come up and say something. All right, go ahead. So, um I'm going to have you come up to this microphone over here, which Yep. Right there. And uh you can ask your questions. You >> should turn it on. >> Yep.

132There's probably a good on switch on there. Okay. >> So, I'm the first test bunny here. Okay. My name is >> So, please introduce yourself and uh >> My name is Troy Gther. I don't know where the camera is. I'll um [clears throat] My name is Troy Gunther. Um actually an AB grad. Um I think there's a lot of concern. What would happen if the budget does not pass? >> Yeah. So, I'll I'll give a technical answer um to this. you know, if the budget doesn't pass um at eventually as it gets to town meeting, what happens is the district has to operate begin operating on a 112th budget. Um the school committee is tasked with going back and reconsidering the budget and then putting forth another budget proposal. Once the school committee has done

133that, um notice has to go out to the two towns. Um the two towns have to then convene individual town meetings again. Um I believe it's 45 days to do that. um from the time the school committee provides a revised budget to them. There would be a town meeting. If it um passes at that town meeting, then the district would implement whatever the new budget was. Um if it does not pass at that town meeting, the school committee has to reconsider again. They put forward a budget and I believe at that point they actually go to a joint town meeting between the two towns. Um, in between each stage, there's a period of time that the school committee needs to reconsider the budget and then notify the towns and then the towns have a statutory

134amount of time to notify residents um about the the next scheduled town meeting. In the interim period until a final budget passes, the district operates on something called a 112th budget, and that is a month-by-month budget based on the prior fiscal year's spending. So, we would actually go into next year with a monthly budget based on FY26, not FY27 projections. Um, and so from an operational standpoint, I mean, our budget, Sher, I think it's going up about $4 million even after reductions, >> right? >> $5 million after reductions or with the excess and deficiency. Um, the district would not have any access to those funds. Um, and so essentially, you know, we would have to also be planning for what we would do with that amount of money less should the budget not eventually pass.

135Um, I think there's a realistic perspective that at some point it's going to pass, but I think the challenge is going to be how do you get from one period of time to the next without that budget passing. >> I appreciate all the time. Thank you. >> Sure. >> Hi, uh, Jake Fay. Um, I have two kids in the district. Um, I've been looking in my couch and I can't seem to find anything. But I'm just wondering, are there any alternative sources of revenue that we could consider or any other sources of funding that might go into this? Um, or is it just clear that, you know, we are drawing on residential taxes? That's the main sort of driver. I just clarify for everyone out in the audience what we have to work with when

136we consider this this budget. Thank you. So, that's a really good question to ask and especially appreciate you asking it with the um the folks that we have here in the audience. So, we actually started last October um as as Alyssa alluded to with all of our boards meeting together and kind of having our conversation about what we could find in our couches. Um and the fact of the matter is that all of us are struggling right now. Um the towns are struggling, the schools are struggling. We are limited by what we can raise um by by Prop 2 and a half, by what we can raise in local taxes. We are extremely limited by what we're getting from the state. It's less and less for us. Um I I think the uh unrestricted government

137aid that our towns get as well has also not not been keeping up. Um so if your state funding is less and less, that puts more of the burden on us. And we are almost all residential homeowners, right? we don't have a whole lot of business revenue in either of our two towns. Um so there really isn't a lot else for us to be able to pull on. Um and the conversations we've been having amongst us is, you know, what does that look like? Where where can we wiggle things around? How can we bring budgets to town meeting that don't exceed the capacity that we have in our communities? Um and that is something that is ongoing on pretty much a monthly basis both with the Boxboro leadership forum and the uh actton leadership group

138and we have these conversations. We sit down with finance committee and select board and school committee members and and talk about this. We haven't been able to find any additional sources of revenue. Um and I don't know if any of my colleagues here um want to jump in. All right, go for it. Karine um the school district has cut off two sources of revenue in the last several years. One is they drastically reduced the cost of all day kindergarten tuition. That's probably a million and a half bucks. And also stopped allowing PTOs to contribute to the um cost of classroom assistance. That was probably a half a million dollars a year. >> Kristen, I I think to answer your question, there are a couple of levers we can pull. You know, we um in Boxer,

139we're looking at new growth, economic development, how do we bring more businesses into town? And at the same time, you've also got the lever that you could pull, which would be having a split tax rate and asking businesses to take on a larger portion of the taxes in order to offset our residents. In Boxer, we've decided that's not the best tactic to take because that could also drive businesses out, you know. So, it's a catch 22. So th those are a couple of things, but I think for us, new growth, looking at our zoning, looking at housing, um how do we attract businesses to the area, how do we support the businesses we have is one way we we can look to try to help our community survive this. >> You know, one thing we

140do is pretty aggressively pursue um competitive grants as well. Um and so the district has actually done very well by competitive grants over the last, you know, handful of years. Um, I will say the challenge with competitive grants is they're for specific purposes. Um, it's not just general submit an application and we'll fund your revenue stream. Um, so you know, for example, um, we did competitive grants that allowed us to procure electric school buses. Um, and we ended up with $2 million in grants between EPA and Mass CEC. That was a significant contribution, but we would not have purchased electric school buses had we not been awarded the competitive grant that could only be used for that purpose. Um we've also similarly done um grants for curriculum adoption. So we received a several hundred,000 grant

141for our early literacy curriculum adoption process. We also received several hundred,000 when we adopted our new math program um a number of years ago. Um now those offset the initial costs, but then there are also maintenance costs that go into those. Um I will say in the case of the literacy grant that that is a good opportunity to have pursued that at the time because all of the changes we've made are now becoming law. at the state level. And so, you know, if we had not pursued the competitive grant, then we'd be burdened just with the costs associated with it as we move into the future. Um, but again, I think, you know, the challenge with competitive grants is they're targeted um for specific purposes and not just general revenue sources. So, that's that's been

142our biggest challenge there. >> Thank you, >> Greg. Greg Jarbo, um, acting finance committee. One of the other things that we're trying to do to find the money in the cushions um is recognize we're not alone. And one of the things that uh Tori alluded to is the fact the Mass Municipal Association, which represents all 351 cities and towns, recognizes that they call it they're navigating the perfect storm. We are not alone. And one of the things that the MMA has done this year is put together a series of proposals to say, you know, they're calling it the 351 for 351 program, but there's about $351 million in unrestricted local aid that the state used to give us on a percentage basis up until about 2008. and then yeah fine there was the great recession

143after the great recession they never came back to um that kind of level and we've been underfunded for a long time and so working together we're going to try to tackle that not just as Actton and Boxboro but with 349 other allies with us and hopefully that will have an impact All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So, I think that brings us to Gabby. >> Thank you. Just make sure. >> Good evening everyone. For those um who I haven't had the opportunity to meet, I'm proud to serve as the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning for the Actton Boxboro Regional School District. Um really happy to be here tonight to talk about the FY27 budget implications for our teaching and learning um program. I want to start by first sharing that one

144of the strengths of a strong leadership team is to ask the question, what do our kiddos need first? And then to follow up that question with, how are we going to do that? Even in tough financial times and in difficult situation that we're in right now, this team has proven time and time again over the last year and a half that I've had the honor to serve in this capacity and asked both of those questions. What do our kiddos need? and how are we going to do that? So, the budget presentation that I have this evening really just highlights the areas that are impacted by the budget, but there are also other ideas that they have thought about creatively in order to support student learning with a greater level of depth and precision and specificity

145and care. And that is something that your community should be really proud of that you have school and district leaders who keep that at the center of all of their work. The four guiding approaches that we used as part of our um budget review for teaching and learning um focused on a careful review of our current staffing and program structures, ensuring that we matched our instructional priorities to our student needs and district goals with fiscal responsibility. And as was noted earlier, our needs have changed. This community is beautifying by the minute because of the diversity that's continuing to come to our community. Um, and it's one of the reasons that we should all be really proud to serve this community. The strategic repurposing of existing positions and slight increases to address needs um are present

146in in the um proposal as Alyssa pointed out, and I'll speak more to that in a second, and continuing to strengthen our practice with school-based support and access to high impact instruction. These were really our guiding light and our pillar. um as well as as Peter noted earlier, the strategic plan um theory of action was also a really important anchor for us because we started the AB forward process not by first talking about reorganization. We first talked about those two questions. What are our students need and how can we do that? So the staffing and programmatic implications under teaching and learning are highlighted here. I'm first going to talk about the position that Alyssa mentioned earlier. It's a very important to to talk about this this position for sure. So, um about three years ago,

147the office of teaching and learning did have co did have humanities coordinators as well as science coordinator and a math coordinator and three digital literacy specialists. The reason for their reduction was very valid because of the fact that we were in very difficult financial times at that moment. Peter also just mentioned that in response to student learning needs two years ago, the district received a significant amount of funding from the state to implement highquality instructional materials in literacy and at the same time we reduced both of those positions. So we in our office of teaching and learning strong and proud and few in number are really really proud of the work that we've been able to do with our students and with our faculty and staff and their incredible tireless efforts and our student learning

148results are showing us that we have to do more for them. We've seen early literacy results at a con persistent [clears throat] decline over the last um five years to a rate of where only 57% of our third grade kiddos are reading are our literacy literacy scores are at or above expectations 57%. And that's something that we expect to see different and changed in the future. We need help to get there. And so we had thought really creatively and the leadership team was incredible partners in this thinking. We had the opportunity to repurpose um a reduced position from the reorganization in the form of a sixth instructional coach to move towards a humanities coordinator curriculum coordinator K to8. This position it will be incredibly instrumental in bridging a K to8 um kind of throughine of

149learning for students. We currently don't have um positions outside of um teaching responsibilities. Our middle our junior high curriculum coordinator are full-time teachers. So they run their department meetings once a month, but there's not a bridge between sixth grade and eighth grade currently in a very meaningful intentional way. We do currently have a K to8 elementary curriculum coordinator who's an incredible partner in this work and this addition would allow her position that position to become much more streamlined under steam science, technology, engineering and and mathematics. So that we now have two positions. So over four years it will it will mean that we've gone from seven positions to two. But these two positions, I think, are going to be hearty and meaningful and really impactful on student needs. It's not enough, but it is just

150enough to help us kind of really do that intentional focus on early literacy and literacy across the grade level. So, this would be an a literacy and social studies coordinator position. Um, the second position that we looked at again, what do our kiddos need and how do we get that? um came from inspiration from our high school where we did some analysis of our math and science offerings and offered an offered looked at an opportunity to enhance our innovative practices through STEM offering in robotics and engineering. So um principal dean proposed a repurposing of a science/math position to a robotics engineering role. The next addition at the high school is in fact an addition um to fill out an existing position that currently is a6 reading specialist position to make that position whole for multiple

151reasons. We are receiving a great number of kiddos at the high school level who do not have who are multil languual lingual learners and who also have um diverse learning styles who are coming to us for the first time at the high school. We all know that if kiddos come to any community, especially this one, at a young age, we're going to be able to impact them early and often from kindergarten up through 12th grade. When students aren't arriving till our community until 9th or 10th grade, we are we are basically dealing with what their educational background was. And for some kiddos, it was excellent and for some kiddos it wasn't. And so for those students, we're responding to those needs in 9th, 10th, and 11th, 12th grades and expecting the same results that they're

152going to graduate college and career ready. And so the addition of this position is really intended to meet the needs of the increasing number of those learners that we're receiving. Additionally, we have 80% of our multilingual learners in our elementary schools. 80% of our multilingual learners in our elementary schools. 406. Marian, thank you. 406 multilingual learners. We did have a slight decline from last year. At our highest number last year, we were 450 even. Um so we're at 406 and 80% of those kiddos are at the elementary school and 50% of all of our multilingual learners are newcomers or level one or two kiddos. So they have these incredible gifts of another language that they're coming and sharing with us and we need to give them the tools to to share our language with them

153so that they can be successful in their own lives. And then lastly um this is not a significant fiscal increase. this in and out. Um, but in our history social sciences department, we've been um, for the last two years, and this was set a course set in motion by my predecessor Deb Bookis, who I can't sing the praises enough for, um, to bring investigating history to our fifth and sixth grade learners. and we're going to be expanding that to seventh grade next year and also exploring expansion to third and fourth grade as well as adding an AP course in um AP African-American studies. So to increase access to highly rigorous relevant coursework for students who may have interest in that experience. I'm now going to turn it over to Natalyia to talk about special education

154implications. >> Thank you Gabby. Good evening everyone. My name is Natalyia Carroll. I'm the first year special education director for Actton Boxboro. And tonight I want to share with you how FY27 special education budget was developed and how it supports students with disabilities moving forward. Special education is a budget driver. I know everyone is aware of it and I'm acutely aware of that as well. So I want to assure you that while making all those decisions, we made sure that the process was thoughtful and we carefully examined staffing and programming structures. The goal was to ensure that there is an alignment with student needs, program demands, and district priorities while being fiscally responsible. These budget decisions are intentional and based upon the needs of our students and our responsibility to provide a continuum of services

155within the least restrictive environment. And you'll hear me talking about the continuum of placement, continuum of programming and services over and over again because those are the department of elementary and secondary education mandates. They require school district to provide continuum of placements and this continuum ensure that the student can be educated in the least restrictive environment. ranging from full inclusion to highly specialized placement. So the least restrictive environment is the general education placement. What it means that the student is mainly educated with appropriate continuum of supports and aids within the general education setting and this is where student spends the most of the time. Then if the student has higher needs, we have partial inclusion which means that the student is being pulled out of the general education classroom for a part of the day.

156We also have substantially separate classrooms meaning the student mostly receive their education in a small group setting outside of the general education classroom. There are also services provided for students who have medical and complex needs within the home setting. And then we have out of district placements starting with the special education day schools. Uh those are the 766 approved schools both public and private. Uh at times students might require special education services 24 hours and this a day which is a residential placement. Uh the most restrictive placement typically for students with severe medical or psychiatric needs is a hospital or institutional setting. So what are some of the key legal requirements that the teams are following when discussing placements for special education students? It is a an individual determination. The team that includes also a

157parent discusses a placement based on the students unique needs and those are outlined in the individualized education programs so-called IEPs and are based not on their disability category but on their needs. Next mandate that the teams take into consideration is the least restrictive environment which states that the student must be educated along non-disabled peers to the maximum extent possible. And district must investigate first how to support the student in district before referring the student for an outofd district placement. Parents have the right to either accept or reject the placement and they have 30 days to make that decision. Then continuum of the placement is not a rigid path. The student based on their development making progress can uh be uh moving between those settings in Actton Boxboro. Uh we provide a comprehensive specialized education programs

158and special education laws are written to support student access in the least restrictive environment. And it is very important that the student can access their education within the indistrict programming within their community. However, when the district is unable to meet the students needs within the district, this is when the teams look for an outofd district placement to provide services and supports and those DESI approved public and private placement become an extension of the district. So if you look at the trend lines for disability categories, they are actually mimicking uh the national trends where we see uh an increase in students identified as having a primary disability category of autism, specific learning disability and health. And those disability categories are typically associated uh with the higher level of need and specialized instruction. Similarly uh to the

159national trend where um where there is a clearly an increasing number of students identified as needing special education supports. The same trend is observed in our district. We're currently at 70.2%. Uh the state average is 21.1% and the national average is 15% just for the comparison. But both at the state and national level there is a clearly observed upward trend to a higher level of a number of students who need that support. Every recommendation in the budget uh is grounded in the following guiding principles and all those principles prioritize students needs and are supported in data. So the principles were aligning staffing and programming to documented student needs and referral data, protecting continuity of services, strengthening support systems for students with complex learning and social emotional needs, using strategic reallocation whenever possible, and ensuring compliance

160with IDA, FAPE, and DESIE. So this is really a needbased budget. This is not aspirational one by any means. One of the important investment in FY27 is the addition of 2.0 school counselors across the elementary schools. So this establishes appro approximately one and a half school counselors per school and is designed to improve access to social and emotional behavioral support. It's a preventative measure not reactive one to provide mental health interventions. It also will increase an ability to collaborate between general education and special education teams. So as schools grow larger, this staffing model allows counselors to be more responsive and proactive. One of the positions is structured as.5 counselor and.5 department head and is located at Blanchard. Uh so the leadership position is to ensure that there is a coordination uh within the counseling department.

161In terms of special education staffing investment, uh those are a response directly to the documented increase in student need growth in our programming. uh that it's uh addressed uh to provide support for students with autism and specific learning disabilities in communication disabilities as well as increasing behavioral needs at the junior high level. So uh the first one is a uh behavioral support position uh BCBA. It's an addition of 1.0 O and it will provide 0.5 increase for junior high. Currently they have only 0.5 position to address the needs of all the students who need a BCBA support. Uh this position is added because we do have an increased number of students who are going to join junior high next year uh within the pathways program. uh it will also support timely completion of functional behavioral

162assessment. It will improve staff coaching and fidelity of delivery of behavior intervention plans. It will also be supporting uh the ASD hub for connection and pathways programs located at the boardwalk. The budget also includes an addition of 1.0 of special education teacher to provide uh instruction within the language and beyond lab programming. This program is uh specifically for students who have specific learning disability and communication needs. We now have 1.0 opposition, but because of the increased needs and identification of students who require more systematic and more specialized instruction, disposition needed to be added for compliance. FY27 uh includes the implementation of the STEP program that is I talked about it. It's designed for student with more complex uh needs and global uh cognitive delays and benefit from systematic structured instruction. Uh this program will be

163staffed by allocating an existing uh position. Uh so there is a special educator who is currently delivering similar type of instruction that will be delivered within the STEP program. And uh this allows us to expand that program and offer this type of programming to other students in the district who have s similar profiles and similar needs. Uh the FY27 plan also includes adding one connections classroom. This is directly connected with the increased number of students uh who need this type of programming and it's created through reallocation tied to the learning center consolidation. So this change will support the growth in ASD programming. It will allow to maintain case loads at appro approximately 13 students for the learning center teachers and it also improves program access without significantly increased staffing. Uh we are also adding the

164ABA tutors to pathways at the junior high. This is a complianced driven need. It's not an enhancement. A student in pathways required structured behavioral support that's embedded throughout the day. Uh without sufficient staffing, the district risks inability to implement IEPs as written, increased reactive behavioral responses, compromised access to instruction in the least restrictive environment. The budget also includes uh three and a half addition of special education assistance and those are a foundational component of both inclusion and compliance. These roles are critical for implementing IEP accommodations and behavior plans, supporting student regulation and safety and maintaining appropriate staffing ratios. Next is the high school reading specialist specialist position. Uh so there is an increase from 6 to 1.4 1.0 and this response to a rise in students with persistent literacy needs. uh it also is a

165response to an increased needs to provide tier 2 and three intervention at the secondary level and it will allow to align reading services and an IEP goals. So uh the FY27 special education uh budget uh responds to real student needs, leverages reorganization to improve programming, expands flexibility and access for students, maintains fiscal responsibility, and strengthens stability during a time of change. And most importantly, it serves our students and supports their needs. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Natalya and Gabby. Questions from the school committee. Glenn, >> thank you for this. And I I like the focus on mental health and literacy. Um I do think just a very brief comment. I do think that the it the way literacy rates have been going it does require more targeted and acute attention like now. Um and

166I think we're addressing that. I from having a K through8 humanities coordinator sounds like to me it would help with literacy rates. Um, so I approve of this focus. Um, I think we need to do everything we can to help kids read. >> Adam, >> thank you both. Um, [clears throat] a couple thoughts and um, a question. So, first on the curriculum coordinator position, um, I think we've seen in other cuts that we've made in administration in the past where we've cut too deep. Um, and I think a a an a visible example to a lot of parents would be the second administrative assistant in the elementary schools. We cut that part-time position back to non-existent and we very quickly the next year brought it back because we realized it was detrimental to the running

167of the program and the engagement with the community. Um, I think we're slow in bringing back the curriculum co coordinators. So, I'm glad to see that that's coming back. Um, I think that uh it's a it's a it's the right way to do it to take that um coach out of the elementary school but put them in a position where they can support um all of the the rest of the elementary schools. So I thank you for that. Um and then I also recognize Natalya that um we over the past five plus years have added in district special education programs and as those kids get older they move into additional levels. Um, and so I think it makes a lot of sense that we obviously continue to keep those kids in the district. Um, and

168so adding support at the junior high and the high school level, um, to keep the continuation of the of that continuum of programs, uh, in place is is exactly what we need. Um, and so then, uh, I think you kind of answered my question. Um, both you, Gabby, and Natalya talked about, uh, adding the point4 reading instructor to get to a full-time reading instructor at the high school. sounds like that split between both students who have IEPs but also some MTSS. One of the things that I would just sort of also identify as we're planning in the future and we're planning and we're looking at um master scheduling in particular for elementary schools. I think part of the other reason that we're looking at adding a point4 is because it's really hard to find a

169part-time reading instructor on an high school schedule that has a drop schedule rotating and all of that. Um, and you know, we learned from elementary budget task force last year that, hey, part-time employees are a great way to get the resources where you need it for the kids who need it. But if your schedule isn't conducive to a retired person who just wants to work in the morning, um, that can become challenging. So, I think that's something to consider. Um, it makes a lot of sense to be able to bring in part-time resources to meet the needs, but it doesn't work if your schedule is always changing. Um and then my question um is around uh you did some I noticed you did some repurposing of um special educators in learning centers into specifically um

170defined special programs. Um and I'm just curious um how will that affect the case loads particularly in those learning centers where you tend to have a lot more students coming in for a shorter period of time. um what is what is allowing us to remove the resources out of the learning centers to put them into specialized programs? >> Thank you for the question. It's a valid one. Yes. So we did a case load analysis and we looked at what will happen if we move to special education positions into those specialized programs. So one of them is the teacher who is currently in the high needs program and who specifically delivers services for students uh who will be considered for the STEP programming. And uh the second position uh can be consolidated through the reorganization process

171because our ability to deliver services more efficiently. uh will be much easier within the new uh grand uh grade band um level leveling of schools. >> Thank you, >> Andrew. Um you mentioned uh either two or one and a half counselors per school. Is that per new school or is that per building? So it's per it's three counselors per building and uh it's approximately one and a half per school. >> Okay. And how does that map to the case loads that current counselors have now versus what we'll get into? >> So the number of students in those uh buildings will increase right because they will move from Conan. So we'll have to make sure that we're addressing the increased needs of those students. Andrew just to excuse me [clears throat] it's actually an increase in

172services in terms of counseling. We're maintaining the Conan counseling position and adding two more. Um so that's which is a significant increase and we're still well below national standards for student to council ratio. Gabby, could you tell us really quickly about the uh the cost of investigating history and a little bit about how that came about? >> Yes, thank you. So, investigating history is actually an open-source curriculum. So, the costs associated with it are just the printing costs for um there's specific vendors who are associated with it. So, it's about it's it's about $5,000 per year for um but if they don't update the curriculum, then you actually don't need to repurchase the um the teacher materials and everything is online. So, it's completely open source. And then the additional cost to that is one

173of the one of the major commitments that we've made since day one with investigating history specifically is an investment in professional learning. And so we work with a consultant through um an organization um who has actually co-authored several of the grade levels of investigating history and she has come and worked with our teams prior to the launch of each unit. It is an inquirybased um historical thinking curriculum. It's a very differently designed curriculum than what the educators are used to facilitating. It does not look like the textbooks that we all remember when we were in history class as elementary kiddos. Um, and so that professional learning has been really powerful and incredibly important to focus on. And that's about $2,500 per time they come out and offer that professional learning. >> Thanks. Anybody else? School

174committee. All right. Uh, go. regarding the mental health support roles. Um, this could be answered later, but is it things like one-on-one talk therapy, group therapy, art therapy, like there's lots of different ways for that? >> Um, Heather Stoke is our coordinator for mental and behavioral health. Um, she was hoping that she could answer this question herself. So, it really depends on who the provider is. If you're talking about some of the school psychologists or adjustment counselors that are providing intervention through IEPs, um, with targeted counseling goals, they might pull from a number of those methodologies. They use cognitive behavioral therapy, they use dialectical behavioral therapy, art therapy. If you're talking about a school counselor who's doing short-term interventions, they're using more resources like um social thinking or um zones of regulation, which is less

175of a therapeutic intervention model and more of an instructional model targeting those areas. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. So, moving back to our boards and committees, we'll start on the Boxboro fin commen this time. Go for it. just just an observation. So, we're going through this painful restructuring process and I thought the idea was that we would save money by consolidating schools down and and lowering headcount. And it seems to me just as a observation from the back row here that we're actually back filling most of those positions. So, there's a net decrease of 4.5 FTEEs overall in this district um for this budget year. This continues. is we, you know, we looking looking at the budgets forecast going forward. We can't sustain that as a town. You know, we're going to an override

176next year, I think. Um, and it's just too painful for us to deal with as a town. So, there's going to be big, you know, issues, I think, to us to get bring that to the voters and and have them passing our budget in future. So, I guess one thing I'd like to raise here because I I I hear that and we've been tasked with maintaining the quality of our schools, keeping our excellent schools within the resources of our community. And I think that's the hard conversation we end up having because you also heard Gabby say that only 50 57% of our third graders are meeting literacy standards. So, what that tells me, I mean, we just heard the percentage of how many high need students we have. You know, students that have some pretty

177significant obstacles to overcome in their learning. That tells me that a lot of our kiddos are having challenges, kids that that we think should be successful in the system that we have. And so, you know, I'm not I'm not push I'm not arguing with you. I just want to highlight that we have a bigger challenge here. Um, and we have a reputation of our schools to maintain. And that ends up being the conversation that we're probably sitting around the table having next year is, you know, we've heard a lot from our community about how important it is to maintain the reputations of our schools, how worried we are about what happens as a result of AB Forward if we have elementary schools that are no longer ranked. Well, it's also a problem if we have

178schools that aren't producing the outcomes that we're used to. So, I I think you've hit the nail on the head. we have a challenge, >> but we do need to focus in on basics. I think if if if reading's a problem, then we should prioritize that and do that and not think about all these other additional programs that are maybe not so critical like you African-American studies. I mean, I don't know how important that really is in terms of the overall educational, you know, program, >> you know. Yeah, Tony, I hear that and I I heard that comment about robotics too earlier and I think, you know, one of going back a little bit, one of the the most significant challenges to the school district's budget was the sharp increase in the number of students

179who were leaving the school district to attend Minute Man. um because that disproportionately impacts in particular there the actin assessment um in ways that is at least a two for one cost um for every student that goes to Minute Man it costs the towns twice as much to send them as opposed to going here and I think you know to to the high school leadership team's credit and everyone and the whole teaching staff there they've really rethought how they communicate about what the high school experience looks like with our eighth grade families and our seventh grade families, they've rethought what programming looks like for students and the types of programs that our high school needs to run in order to have students continue to attend, you know, AB schools as opposed to leaving the district

180for other opportunities. And I think as we think about the future of this, we don't want to only become so focused on just the basics that we end up losing opportunities that actually keep kids in our schools long term. Um, I think the robotics program is a really key example of that. Um, if only Minute Man is the place that kids can go and get a robotics opportunity, then our kids are not going to be going to school here if that's really what they want. they're headed over to Minute Man for something that that they can get. Um I think we need to be thinking about the types of opportunities and programs and I would say you know both the robotics position um that is a costneutral change. She's simp simply uh willing to accept

181some increased class sizes in both math and science courses um in order to be able to reuse just a position within her budget. It's just for us being transparent. Um because the bottom line is whether you call it engineering robotics, it's still sitting in either science or math. Um and so it's, you know, she probably could have just made that change. But I think we wanted to be transparent with what we're doing in terms of, you know, like the AP African-American studies. That's really you're talking about one class for one teacher. That's not a significant budget expense. There's some professional development that needs to happen for the teacher who'd be teaching that um and curriculum development, but you're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars to be able to offer a program like that.

182You're talking about a couple thousand dollars um to be able to train a teacher to do that. Um, and so I think, you know, one of the things we try to do when we present a budget is we're trying to see how we can best use the resources that we do have available in the community to present the best educational program overall for our students and for our our community members to be able to take pride in. Um, so I think you know the idea of repurposing some existing positions in order to be able to anytime you can expand opportunities and not add staff to expand opportunities, that's generally a win-win scenario for people. Um, and I think that's overall the approach we've taken with some of the growth that we're trying to make as

183opposed to saying we want a robotics program. Let's go out and hire a robotics teacher. Let's add all of this, you know, um, staffing into the district. That's just not the case. It's just coming from within. So, I I hear you and I get it. Um, but I think we have to take a balanced approach in order to continue the growth of schools. I mean, you know, the goal is not to stop growing as a school district. The goal is to continually improve um and think about what improvement has to look like within constrained resources. >> All right, ready to go to the selectboard table. Thank you and thank you for addressing my query. But now I have another one related. So I heard costneutral. So if we are repurposing positions to create this new

184um robotics and engineering position and also the humanities coordinator. Um is the subtraction of the f the two FTEs included in that 22 FTEES? I'm assuming not because it was listed as enrollment. >> It's it's not. >> So it's we're adding FTEES but it's costneutral. >> Well, you're not adding FTEEs. You're just simply reallocating the FTE the robot. So if the robotics >> but in the table in it's on both sides. That's not clear and it needs to be clear. >> No, it's not it's not in both sides. >> Oh, it's not in both sides. >> We just simply I think for the purpose of being transparent about how we're using staffing. >> Yeah. So, for example, um Natalia in one of her slides indicated that now that a new cohort of Pathways students are

185going to the junior high school, we have a Pathways teacher that's being reallocated from a current junior high special educator, it's not one of the FTEEs that's listed as a as a subtraction as an ad. >> Okay. So to Tony's point that we have a net um reduction of 4 something if we actually don't or if that is if there's some cost neutrality there I think there needs to be an asterisk and a note about where the position is moving from and two on um the budget memo which is from from Peter because the details might be in the um learning memo memo or in the special education memo, but it it also needs to be that was what I was talking about messaging. So, if folks are looking at this, say at a town

186meeting in the school committee's budget presentation, then it needs to be clear um that these are repurposed positions. Um I have a couple of of other questions just in terms of wondering whether we need to anticipate um future costs. I noticed in the chart that showed which schools the different programs are that we've created to keep students in district elementary, junior high and high school and there's only a couple at the high school. So, does this mean that with lab step and case in some future year we're going to need to add those to the high school as the students age through those programs? Or or do they just um transition to another program or or they no longer have the need for that program when they're high school age? >> High school already has

187a comprehensive special education programming. The names of the programs are sometimes different at the high school level, but they are able to address a variety of needs uh for students who have IEPs. >> Okay, that's great news. Thank you. [laughter] >> Um that's [clears throat] reassuring. And I I also noticed um a reference to IDEA and I'm wondering IDEA and I'm wondering is the district engaged in any efforts to get more federal funding because when Congress established the idea act they committed to 40% reimbursement but in reality we're only getting 13%. So, we talked earlier about um reaching out to state level um legislators and the governor. How about feds? Are are we doing that? Do we have a plan for that? How can I help? >> So, you're asking me if I have a

188mechanism to get the federal government to spend more money on education. [laughter] >> What's your strategy, Peter? >> I will have to think long and hard about that. Um, I I don't No, I look in in all seriousness, I don't think that we're in a period of time right now where I could reasonably foresee that any efforts to increase federal funding are going to meet with much success. Um, you know, I don't think that the federal government wants to defund special education. So, I feel reasonably confident in in being able to say that that's relatively protected. But in terms of increasing funding for things including special education, I just don't see that on their horizon. Um, you know, we have great relationships with our legislators at the state level and we have yet to see

189significant increases in state funding. Um, I think the distance to the federal level, I think it would be relatively slim to no chance that any impact of anything we would do would be significant in terms of the amount of time we might spend on that. Uh thank you. I just have one question. Will we add capacity to offer additional uh indistrict services? Um for example, increasing the capacity a little bit at the junior and senior high school levels. Um do we change the budget assumptions for uh out of district placement? Um no we do not. Um when we do out of district placement um we actually go on a student by student basis through all of our students who have been identified for special education needs and we account for not only students who are

190already known to be in programs but then we reduce any students who are aging out of special education um in the next 12 months and we also account for any students who we have seen through their IEP team processes that they may be on a trajectory to be going to an out of placement and so we include kind of all of that in our budget calculations. Um I think you know there's a longer term picture that you know if we develop programs that respond to the needs of students in the district we are likely to avoid additional out of district costs. Um and I think that was one of the I think thinking between the step program in particular that we had a cohort of students where they had a very very specific identified need

191um that you know if we can't meet in district then we run the risk of an out of district placement um and so I think that was a lot of the thinking around that Natalia I don't know if you'd want to expand there >> that was exactly the rational for uh introducing uh or rather reintroducing step program at the elementary level. It was at that level I think eight years ago. However, then we did not have a cohort of students. You have to have a cohort of students to have a program. And if we don't have a cohort and if we don't have a program, we have to send the student out of district. So strengthening our in district programming and making sure that we are addressing needs of the students is important just to

192prevent the unnecessary out of district placements and student students leaving our community. I'm assuming that you're assuming that these budget drivers are not a one-year uh phenomena that we will see them again next year. And um from my perspective, I think uh the value of our uh school system and the quality of the school system adds based on the numbers I've seen somewhere between 10 to 30% of our housing value. So that will mean it's incredibly important uh next year and the year after that and the year after that. So my question is would it be prudent for us to do the tri board which is you're right really five boards sooner next year than later because getting all of us on the same page may well first of all we got to get ourselves

193on the same book. uh then we can get to the same page and then who knows we might even get to the same paragraph by the time of town meeting. >> It's a fair question, Greg. Um I think one of the challenges is that we have slightly different cycles um especially with uh you know school for us not starting up till August. But um I think that's an absolutely valid question to consider. [snorts] I remember a few years ago, maybe many, um, we added some new programs in special ed to help minimize kids going out of district. Um, could someone say what like the median out of district placement costs us? And by someone, I mean Sherry. [laughter] Yeah, >> I would say between if you were an extreme is obviously a residential placement and

194private um I'd say somewhere around 95. >> Okay. So fairly well if we can keep one kid in district. If we have to add a staff member to keep a kid in district, we're doing well. And presuming that staff member helps more kids stay in district. Um, I personally from a budgetary sustainability standpoint am very happy to see staff added that helps us keep our kids here. That that is the way for us to keep some control over this this budget with you having mentioned that special aid is such a financial driver. Um, so yeah, please as much of that as you can do. And I I understand the um mental gymnastics required to see that adding staff in is a good thing, but this is staff that is offsetting a potential future large expense.

195>> All right. Do we have any I see our our uh CPAC team is here to talk to us. Come on up. Did I do it? Okay, great. Hi, I'm Kristen O'Neal. I'm one of the CPAC co-chairs. Thanks so much for having us to the mic tonight. Um, I wanted to start by thanking you for raising the counselor ratio. Um that was something that was flagged before the reorganization conversation and we're glad to see that level out a bit noting that these are folks who handle our 504s in our district and are important um for all of our kids here in the district. [snorts] Um Pathways is we talked about the program moving back into the junior high space. I think that's a cohort of about five, am I right on those numbers? What does

196that staffing look like specifically in in terms of special educator um related service providers? You talked a bit about BCBA and ABA at that level, but I wondered if you could get a little bit more specific about that. >> Yes. So, the pathways program is already existing at the junior higher level. uh the increased need is resulting from the students who are currently at the elementary level moving up to um junior high which will increase the numbers of students in that programming. So we have a special education teacher providing a support uh with the assistants. Uh we have currently um two assistants uh three assistants providing support to those students uh because of their um level of needs. uh if we have uh five more students coming in, we're adding 1.75 ABA uh spe uh

197ABA support just to address the increased needs of of those students. The 0.5 increase of BCBA is also addressing that need. >> And you also spoke to STEP as a cohort and I know this has been an evolving process. I'm wondering if you can put a number to that cohort. What constitutes a cohort um and how many students qualify um for that program currently under development? >> Absolutely. In the program, we have developed a referral process uh to special education programming. It is a team process. So anytime a student is considered for the program uh there is an communication to the family and it's a very thorough process looking at what are the supports that are provided uh currently uh in the current setting because moving student from place to place is not something that

198we take lightly. So if the student is in a setting where the specialized uh programming and supports is not sufficient, this is when we consider the need for the specialized program. So currently for step uh we have the high needs uh learning center that provides support to four students. Two of them are moving up to the step program at the junior high. And then uh we have um a tracking sheet for students who are referred to a program. So we have six additional students who are in the process of so-called least restrictive environment referral process. >> So there's two students who would be moving from the high needs learning centers currently at the elementary level and then you're looking at identifying peers um with similar needs. >> That's correct. >> Okay. Thank you for clarifying

199that. Um and then I had a question. I know um this budget process is a little bit different this year just given our timelines. We don't have five hours on a Saturday. We have dwindling hours on a Monday. Tori, I see you. Um and we're talking mostly about staffing and high level stuff. I'm just curious if you can speak a bit to professional development and specific consultation as it relates to um program movement, creation of new programs. Um just a little bit more about how you're approaching that this year >> or next year. >> Yes, absolutely. Professional development is crucial for success of the special education programming and we are planning actively to provide more of it. Uh so uh through for example through the grant uh that we got awarded uh to 13 to

200address uh the new timeout regulations we are able to work with Dr. Hburg who will provide more support to both general and education general and special education uh teachers uh in terms of providing uh deescalation strategies uh providing social emotional support to all the students. Uh that's one part of uh professional development that we're thinking about. We are also uh engaging in conversations with uh uh existing uh consult uh consultants to program. So we have Elise Wolf uh who provides consultation to our connections program and compass as well as we have um uh consultants uh and I forget the name of this agency it will come back to me uh who provides uh consult consultation to the pathways program. Great. And I know um just as a very quick followup, Tori, I'm almost done. Um

201>> Constellations, that was the name >> there. Um I know you were meeting with staff after decisions had been made, specifically program staff, to talk about needs. Has there been any sort of um alteration to your approach to professional development or the consultants that you have um contracted based on the feedback you receive from educators were very appreciative of the consultation model that is current currently in place in the district. Uh in terms of moving forward and making sure that because we have the ASD hub, we should be consulting with one consultant, not two separate ones for our ASD programming. So that's something that's in the works. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Yeah. Welcome. >> All right. Do we even do we have some members of the public that would like to ask questions? I'm noticing

202our audience is thinning. Okay. Um, in that case, I think we are to Andrew. >> Okay. Good evening, everyone. Uh, the good news, I think, is that the majority of my slides are kind of redundant at this point. So I I we will go over them quickly, but I actually think what would be most useful as part of this, whether it's during these little slides or right ahead of it, is um some of my takeaways from Anthony and Alyssa's questions because I actually think what is helpful for me is rethinking about as we continue in this process, this public process in the spring, ways to frame some of our information a bit more um in ways that might answer some of the questions that you guys have asked. So, um I think I'll do that

203halfway through, but I've got some notes here. Again, just um to to zero in a little bit, our personnel budget right now is slated for a proposal of 75.7 million, which is uh an FY an increase over this year by 2.96%. Um that number is uh influenced by a variety of things. Obviously the placeholder that we have on cola which is actually not settled uh we have three open negotiations right now with ABA OSA and ASME um and the reduction in staffing. So those are the the variables. So you can see the salary placeholders the AB forward savings and then obviously what was mentioned as retirement and attrition uh that happens naturally each year and the savings that we derive from that. the proposed staffing additions. Not going to go over them um again, but

204those are the ones that you've seen either in Sherry, Natalia, or uh Gabby's. Uh one of the items that you probably haven't seen is that we are um reallocating, we have a sixth nurse from Conent. Um we are keeping the funding, but we're actually converting that position into two LPNs. What that does is it allows us to actually distribute that resourcing to um all of the buildings, primarily the the twin buildings. If you had one nurse staffing, you can't necessarily have them that person be at both schools or both buildings at the same time. But uh LPN's will allow us to increase uh the necessary nurse staffing to account for the fact that the twin buildings will haveund approximately 160 more students uh per school. Blanchard would have approximately 80 more. Uh, and then as

205noted, you have the elementary office support, which I'll mention in a moment in more detail, and the human, excuse me, the humanities coordinator. And then the staffing reductions or reallocations. Again, these are all positions that uh have previously been mentioned in in some way, shape, or form. In terms of the secondary school, we mentioned robotics, the reading teacher, special ed assistants, ABA tutors, and then personnel. uh that's districtwide. We mentioned the multilingual educator edition as well as the custodian uh that is proposed to be uh brought back. So the change over time and this is I think this is where uh Anthony and Alyssa's questions really helped me think about how to present stuff more precisely in in a way that's more helpful. The net loss over this over the past uh several years is

20643.21 reduction in 38 and a half FTEEs of certified staff reduction of 20.86 86 in instructional support, but then we have this increase in specialed instructional support as well as case load educators. So that's the offsetting that I think Peter previewed at a higher level uh previously. And then again, operational and leadership impact in terms of the the decreases overall. So, what I'd like to um mention in terms of what Alyssa and Anthony talked about, I think what my takeaways are are the following in terms of how to sort of shape things in in in sort of four dimensions that might be helpful. One is maybe organizing our our thoughts as we've talked about into positions that we're proposing bringing in in a couple different ways. One is positions that regardless of our sort of

207strategic goals are complianceoriented. regardless of what we're doing, we have to bring them in because of services that are required. Um, compliance, legal mandates, moral mandates, whatever they might be, versus what we would consider from our professional judgment, strategic additions, things that maybe aren't that we could open the doors tomorrow or next year without those positions, but because we still feel like there's an important value to them, we're making the decision to either increase the position to reallocate it. So the robotics conversation about that we could open our doors tomorrow without a robotics. And yet I do think over the past few years, Peter's right, what we've been hearing is how can you uh in some ways not necessarily duplicate Minute Man Techch because that's not our job. Um but to at least offer things

208that offer a pathway uh that entice students to perhaps still view act and box as uh the right path for them. So there are strategic additions versus compliance um positions. I think we should organize it that way. The second one is how do we more clearly I thought we did but I think we probably need to a little bit better. Uh positions that are proposed additions to the budget versus reallocations. So the RN the reduction in the nurse and the two LPNs that's a reallocation. Same money different uh different staffing idea. Uh robotics that's the same thing. Um and obviously the humanities coordinator so on and so forth. So, how do we more clearly articulate things that are increases versus reallocations? The third that I think is actually helpful is this idea because you're right,

209if someone says, "Hey, we're saving five 4 point some odd FTE doesn't feel that great with all the halaloo. What I think needs to happen is also showing for lack of a better term, not all FTEEs are created equal financially. to give you the most extreme example on the reduction sort of uh ledger just to take assistant principal and principal that's two FTE that's a reduction of $270,000 whereas if you have an increase of uh four 19hour office positions that's the addition $60,000 and yet those are roughly it's 1.9 over here two over here it's a difference still of a reduction of $210,000 the reduction ledger with 11 certified staff, uh, classroom staff, three unified arts teachers, the average salary of those reductions is probably in the $80,000 range, whereas the average increase for non-certified

210positions in the increased area are probably in the $30,000 range. So again, you're absolutely right. when you just say, "Hey, we're we're reducing 22 and we're adding 17 or whatever it is," you're left with five. And yet the 22 over here is this. The 17 over here is this. It's our job to actually show the scale a bit differently. So that's where your your feedback is helpful in that. Um, and then finally, what are positions that we're potentially either reallocating or adding that are related to sort of the AB forward restructuring and doing it more thoughtfully? that for example or sort of learning some lessons that we thought we could we could live with certain things without certain things and now we're saying we cannot. Um two examples and for whatever reason if you saw

211the Martian with Matt Damon and there's that point where he had to get that space shuttle off of Mars and so they turned it into a flying gas can that in some ways is kind of when we had to make certain cuts. we sort of said, let's try and get get this ship off the ground by stripping all these things. And now I think we're learning a bit of a lesson. Two examples of that is, yeah, we're without a custodian, we cut a custodian. I think our standard for what we want our buildings to look like for students and staff is not up to what we think is reasonable. We need to add a custodian. In terms of elementary, again, I said we're adding 160 students to each of the twin buildings and then 80

212at Blanchard. Right now, we have one full-time office administrator and 119 our uh office admin support. That means there are many points in the day where there's only one person in the office. If that person needs to go to the second floor to help out with something at Douglas or at Gates, whichever one's the second and third floor, you now are left without someone necessarily in the office or when something's happening. I think what we said, let's try it out. I do think it's a struggle. I think when you add 160 more kids and families who are going to have phone calls and this and that, we I think are reasonable in predicting um that that won't be sustainable. So again, I think also articulating what are some of the the restructuring that we think

213is in response to Yep. we're consolidating, we're generating these savings and to still do it well and maintain a baseline of what we consider reasonable expectation of services, you're still going to have to increase some areas around the edges, i.e. some of these positions. So I also think that what might be helpful is for us to kind of highlight and articulate which of these positions is in response to that. And then there's the counseling piece. I do think the counseling piece as we've talked about people's worries around the transition. How do we mitigate and how do we get in front of some of those uh worries I think is a strategic addition. Again, we could open our doors tomorrow without those two additional counselors, but do we think that's that's wise and that's thoughtful given

214some of the feedback and some of the concerns that people think um they can reasonably predict. So um so I do appreciate those questions. Um, and at the end of the day, the strategic ones, we might have a difference of opinion about whether those are strategically appropriate given our our overarching budget concerns. Um, and so that, you know, even if I present it in a certain way, we may still land differently about whether uh a certain position someone might say, "No, cut the rope, cut the math and science position at the high school, save the money and move on." I think for us, we still feel like um as Peter pointed out, even in a period of retrenchment, you still have to articulate and find a way to generate sort of value for the the

215community that we serve. In addition to the the robot robotics, I think Peter and Joanie have previewed the whole um reintroduction of the the TV, the media center, right? The studio. So again, this idea of expanding that area along with robotics is the the media studio uh and again generating sort of a climate at the high school that that can I think stay up with some of um what other high schools whether at minute mag or other place are doing. So I'm going to stop and if there's questions we can do that. >> Uh I'm going to go to the school committee first and then I'll work my way to the back back further back rows. Lakshmi Hey, thanks Andrew. Uh, actually thanks everyone for all the information. So for a community grappling with why

216we cannot sustain this um you have provided so much data today and people are even getting confused between that number being different without understanding the context. So what makes sense is somebody asked well we have 1,000 students few we have fewer we have 1,000 fewer students now and we still spend so much more so does it make sense for your um reference to be per pupil of every cost right and especially when you do the historical trends it makes sense okay you're saying 23 to 20 through 27 we have lost we have letting go of so many FTEEs but is does it what does it mean you yourself said that what does it mean right so can we project it in the end it's all about the students can we project it in terms of

217per student how much are we spending inflation adjusted and then break them down like this is the instructional cost this is the counseling cost this is the special ed cost this is the capital expense. I mean, why don't we do that? It's much clearer picture and then explain away. That provides the transparency the district needs. Otherwise, they're going to walk away still being very skeptical of everything because they started there. This doesn't answer it. >> Yeah. I Let me take a crack at it and if Peter thinks that he can add some texture to it, I think would be helpful. I mean, we we clearly have a per pupil average that we send and that's published by the state and it's it's whatever it is. I think the part that is is more complicated and

218more nuanced is I think the the cost that a family might see really depends on what their individual student might need. you know, if you have a student who um needs English language services or needs a specialized program or uh or some other service, the staffing is there specifically for those cohorts of students. Whereas, if you have a student who doesn't need any of those, then then the pup per pupil might be a little bit different if we were to try and break it out that way. So, I'm not quite sure how we could do it in a way that >> that addresses that. Go ahead, Sher. The state issues per pupil costs broken down each year. It's always a year behind. So, right now I have it through FY24 that I can absolutely share.

219I can actually put it on the website. I don't have 25s. Those don't come out till April, but it does break down instructional cost. It breaks down administration and it figures out the per pupil. And at the very bottom, it shows you what like acts per pupil is for a year. Can can I just follow >> would it be helpful if we can explain a growth in certain area drop in certain area right I think that's where our story starts right I think as a district school as a school committee as a school administration if we can do that I think we would do justice to going back to the district and asking for more money. So, actually, I really appreciate that you brought this up because I was thinking about um actually our mutual

220first year on the committee and coming in being very skeptical um as people were coming up to the mic and we were, you know, looking at a potential override in Actton and and big bucks from Boxboro, right? And I didn't know anybody here and I wasn't going to trust anybody I didn't already know and have some reason to trust. So, I ended up going out to the Desi website and doing a lot of digging. And I think something that we often lose in a conversation like this is we're just looking at ourselves. And it's really valuable to be able to understand where we sit compared to like districts. Um that's one of the reasons I like the per people spending and and we we refer to that a lot. Um we are below state average

221for per people spending. But I don't know if you remember the budget Saturday presentation from that year, but you actually did this Andrew. you pulled um in your presentation on personnel and you talked about administrators and you had gone through and you had looked at all of the >> right you had looked at the different um positions across like districts but you also had what Sher just referred to our costs and I remember looking through that and going okay this is interesting like everybody keeps saying that there's this glut here that that we're we're not being efficient that we have all these people we don't need when actually we're below state average spending for administrators, too. So, I I think that's a really that's really helpful context, especially, you know, on a day like today

222when we are staring at our budget line by line. Um, and I I guess maybe that's another thing we we can all think about as we're messaging is that understanding in pretty much everything if I remember that we had in that budget Saturday presentation, we were way below um what pure averages were doing and very often state averages as well. Um so yeah, thanks for naming that. All right, who else has something? Adam. Andrew, I want to follow up with you sort of on on presentation of material first with a question and then a thought comment. The question is the multilingual educator position that we're adding this year that's grant funded. >> Correct. >> How many years is that grant funding support that position for? Do >> you have a sense? >> Yeah, it could

223be three. >> Probably three years. >> All right. So I think then in terms of transparency three years from now depending on who's around this table >> you're going to have to either fund it or >> right and so I think that like I think we've seen that in in other areas too where we've grant funded and this is a reoccurring cost that we have a limited amount of funding for so it probably needs to come back to us in 3 years >> to say okay the funding has expired for this position and we need to add it on and I'm sure we've had other positions like that and I think we might have done this a couple times in the past But I a it's great that we got grant funding. B it's wonderful

224that it's multi-year, but >> it it means in 3 years we've got a cliff of this person that we need to be able to support. And so >> this committee needs to approve that addition now knowing that in 3 years if we want to keep that role, we're going to have to vote it again. >> That's fair. >> That was that was it. >> All right. Looks like school committee's done. Scott, I saw your hand. Nope. Okay, [laughter] maybe we'll start in the middle for fun. The select board hasn't got select boards plural. Sorry, I keep saying that. Um, [laughter] >> you're either all exhausted or I did amazing. >> All right, >> no one from boards and committees. >> Go for it, Greg. >> Why Why should you get off so easy? Right. >>

225I was hoping. So I I like your approach about trying to do the benefit as well as the cost because a lot of what whether it's the finance committee or it's town meeting voters or whoever what we're trying to do is make trade-offs intelligently. So the more you can basically make the case for yeah we know what the cost is and that's what these budget sessions are all about. We got the numbers. It's the benefit that that basically is is needs to get get a number to it as well and that will become increasingly important a year or two or three from now. I mean, you guys are doing a great job focusing on your twothirds of our budget. The guys to the left of us are are looking at eliminating one of our four

226fire stations. So this is this is there's more hard decisions to be made and the more that we can frame them in cost benefit than the easier it will be to when we have to make the trade-offs to say this this one is absolutely what makes this community worth living in. I just wanted to say that I appreciate the messaging focus, Andrew, on on on this um that all FTEEs are not created equal and the distinction between a compliance position versus a strategic position. I I do think that we all need to be careful when we're talking to the public. um voters, taxpayers about reasoning that we are um that underlies our decisions um to either uh reduce or add positions. Um I appreciate, Andrew, that you said we're not trying to duplicate the vocational

227technical school. Um you know, the the public high school cannot be a performing arts school. It can't be a vocational technical school. However, we can have programs and and courses that enrich um the experience of the public school students here. Um and certainly I when I hear from students and and families, parents especially about why their kids have gone to, you know, Minute Man or say Parker Charter. Um it's not because there's not one subject that's unavailable at the high school. it it has a lot to do with with learning style and and other um needs for the you know the whole child um and finding the right learning environment. So I think just again that's a messaging thing. We're not adding this robotics program to keep students from enrolling at Minute Man instead. >>

228Yeah. I also appreciate the folks on messaging because we, you know, we need to be able to talk to the voters, you know, in in Boxboro about, you know, why these why taxes are going up and and and how what we're doing about it. Um, I'm also concerned about future years actually. I mean, I think we dodged the bullet this year with no override. We managed to do various things to actually keep it, you know, below the line, but we probably can't do that next year. And uh that would be a tough tough you know year next year to actually go forward with an increased school budget beyond say 5.5%. You know we're trying to give a message to Box you know taxpayers that we have a steady increase in our budget that's sort of

229controlled um and that overrides are a normal thing to have every few years because you know nobody can sustain 2 and a half%. Uh but that message requires us to be fairly consistent with our budget growth yeartoyear and the school budget of course is you know a large chunk of our budget. So that's what we're living with I think. >> Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting to think about this from sort of a the five-year perspective, right? We've talked about and if you look through the the memo um that is in the packet um superintendent's memo that's in the packet, we've cut administrators. We know we know that we are well below what the state averages and and what our peer districts are doing. We've cut at the operational level. We've gone through and looked

230at all of our positions that are are not student facing and where could we cut back. And in some cases, we've discovered maybe that wasn't such a good idea. [snorts] We have taken our general education classes and we have pushed our class sizes up to school committee recommendations first at the high school, then at the junior high. And with AB forward, this allows us to also do this at the elementary school, but recognizing that we are at the point that we are starting to exceed those class sizes. So our our gened classrooms are they're right sized right now. Um at the same time, you know, our enrollment continues to fall. The needs of our students are there and we need to meet them. Um and so, you know, I think, um we had a we

231had a member mentioned that in four years on the committee, never being able to have a year where you didn't have to cut back is an awful thing. And so, you know, we hear we hear the the concerns being raised right now about being able to maintain the quality of the education that we offer. Um, and I think everybody I think everybody's now aware of that. Like there are a lot more people in this conversation than I think we've ever had before. Um, and I think we realize how serious it is. We are making some hard choices here. Um, it doesn't feel good. We're not, nobody is jumping up and down over a lot of these decisions that we have to make, but I think they're really the responsible ones. And, you know, I'm also

232appreciating all the committee members who came on January 22nd and we thought that uh we had gotten to our hard decision and that we were going to be able to shift and move forward and yet, you know, you heard me earlier say, don't don't lose focus now cuz we're not done yet. Um, so I just want to pause and appreciate you all for all the hard work that you're doing. And I also want to appreciate all of our boards and committees that have been a part of this. Um, we've been talking about this, I mean, for years, honestly, but we've I think we've probably been closer this year than we ever have been and and I really appreciate that and the the consistent feedback that you've provided through your liaison and, you know, knowing that

233we have appetite to keep doing this going forward. Um, and I think probably the last thought that I would just leave you with is what I shared with ALG on whenever it was that we met last couple weeks ago, I guess. Um, you know, I share the concerns that everybody's raising about next year. Um, because if the pressures on all of us remain this steep, we're all facing some really hard choices. And I mean, on our part, we are out of rabbits to pull out of hats. Um, I just rattled down the list of things that we've done. I don't know what comes next. Um so with that wonderful inspiring life is going to be awesome speech it must be time to start figuring out um what we are going to do with uh voting

234to set the preliminary budget. So just for context today this is it's traditionally the not to exceed. So I went digging around to see is that anywhere in the regional agreement is that in in the the law of you know how we have to get to the budget. Basically, the rules we have to follow is you back off of the earliest town meeting, which in this case is Actton, and you figure out what your key dates are that you have to do certain hearings, certain approvals to make sure that you know you arrive um ready to go. This preliminary budget vote being our not to exceed is is our commitment to the towns that this is where we'll hold the line. We're not going to come up with anything new in the next month. Um

235and so we are going to uh work through this language and somebody is going to read a very very long motion and uh we will get ourselves through the rest of the evening here. Um so I think coming around to you right now >> the language >> is the language. Okay. So I'll let that get around so everybody can >> take a moment to read it. Was >> okay. We'll share our language and it's on the board. Okay. [gasps] Um, so all right, Adam. >> Hi. Uh, I just want before we get too deep into this, I want to give an update from our budget subcommittee meeting uh last Monday. Um, and I did preview this with the budget sub and I actually was able to preview it with the Boxboro Fincom earlier as well.

236Um, so I asked Cherry earlier this evening um, what our revenue numbers were based off of, and they were based off of a what we saw in the governor's budget, which was $75 per pupil in additional chapter 70 funding. Um, and historically, at least the past few years, um, we've seen the House and the Senate come in with a higher number. Um, and the way the machinations work is if we don't put that money into our budget now, it flows directly to END and we don't get to use it next year. So last year we sort of went out on a limb and we said we're going to plan for additional funding from the state. We're going to raise our not to exceed budget number by that amount and it's actually going to affect our

237assessments to the towns as well. Should we get the additional funding from the state, we'll come back and we'll vote our budget and we'll basically say our topline number is still the same, but the revenue sources now instead of coming from assessment will come from the state aid that we're anticipating getting a higher number of. So in discussion with the budget subcommittee um we decided that we wanted to do something similar um along those lines for this year um last year what we did is we put that money in and we used it towards staffing and we recognize that this year is not a good year to add more staffing with that number. Um but there are strategic areas where we can put that money towards that still allows us to use it for next

238year. And um one of the ideas that made a lot of sense was we strategically reduce our oped contribution for next year. Um and so uh that would be a good place where if we don't get the money from the state, we're not going to keep that money in the budget, we can reduce the the budget by that number, but if we do get it, we actually get to put it to use for next year. Um, and so what I would like to hear a little bit of input from the committee on is first of all, uh, if you like this idea, second of all, uh, if you like where we're putting the money, and then third of all, um, what's the additional money that we should account for? So again, last year we planned

239for we started at 75 per pupil um, and we actually voted anticipated $150 per pupil. Um, we could say we're going to plan for an additional $25 per pupil, 50, $75 per pupil. Put that into the budget. My recommendation is that the way we account for that potential additional revenue is by for now until we get it from the state having that come from END. That way we can give the town's information now that says this is your assessment and then should we get the money from the state we just adjust our budget and say our chapter 70 revenue went up and our use of END went down. If we don't get the money from the state we just reduce the use of END and we don't put that extra money into OPED for next

240year. So that's the thinking that I had. I want to thank the Boxboro fincom for some of the feedback and push back and the confusion around how assessments would work. And so being able to pull this from END now means that the assessment that you get now is fairly stable and we're just using END as the placeholder until we know what the state's going to give us for funding. >> I'll to turn it over to Tori to see if there are any questions. >> All right. Who wants to who wants to take a stab at that? Leela. >> Yeah. I wonder about 150 per pupil. um revenue from the feds isn't looking so hot, but um I think there's enough political pressure to make sure that it's somewhat level funded from this year to next.

241Um and I know that some of the bigger districts who historically have not been included in this are also losing money per pupil because their students are leaving district by the hundreds year-over-year. Um and so I actually think that there might be an opportunity to broaden our network of people who are advocating at the state level. >> Liz, um, so given that probably should we maybe not assume a 150 per pupil, but go down to either 125 or 100 as our placeholder? Just throwing out whatever. >> All right, I'm going to say 125. We could plan for that. >> Yep. So that's an additional 50 per pupil from what we have budgeted now. >> Yes. >> Okay, >> Lisa, >> it feels safer to be more conservative and uh planning for 75 per pupil is

242just my two cents throwing in, but I can definitely understand the other ideas. >> David, >> are you taking comments from the pen gallery? Um >> sure. So, so wi with the um moving expenses, the onetime moving expenses this year, I'm concerned about the END level, it's not it's not as high as it could be, right? And I I don't mind it going up, frankly. I think it that um reduces the chance of an emergency, right? um the more there's an E and D that the the school committee can use that should something unexpected come up you know uh a roof start leaking an HVAC system fails whatever during the school year without getting into a crisis I hate managing to crisis I would vote we should just allow the uh END to come up

243I do have a question though um uh can the school committee and I think probably the answer is yes if you get this money into Andy. Can the school committee transfer some to OPED without changing the budget number? >> Adam, >> I I don't think we can, David, but I I hear what you're saying. My goal is to not use any more than the million that we're planning for now. So, if we don't get the money from the state, our plan will be to vote our budget lower. Um, so the END is the placeholder for now so that we don't give you an assessment that's higher that we then change your assessment later on. Um, the plan is to have another budget vote in June once we know what the numbers are at and we

244either remove that additional funding from our budget altogether and don't affect END or we just move the revenue source from END to chapter 70. >> Yes, I understand. But I I still I wouldn't mind it staying in E and indeed myself, but I understand what you where you guys want to go. >> Sure. >> David, I'm going to step in a little bit. As you know, we dissolve the health insurance trust at the end of this year. It's going to be fully dissolved and we still have a large balance in there. 77.45% 45% of that is ours and 22.55 I might have done the end part wrong. Um this year we're going to be having money come back into the district. It's going to go into the general fund and it's going to filter through

245to END. That amount is over 700,000. Our interest income that we've had the interest rates are still high. So we budget very conservatively and we're going to have a very large balance in our interest income and that's also going to go flow. So yes, we're using a million dollars, but we do have a good deal of money that's going to be going into END as well. >> So I am going to mention that I need the school committee to actually vote this. Go ahead, Alyssa. >> Thank you, Madame Chair. I just wanted to point out that there are a few school committee positions open and current school committee members not running for reelection. So, I was not a big huge fan of this last year thinking, hm, this sounds like a an existing school committee

246um making plans for a future school committee. And again, this year, not a big huge fan of of that action, although you you followed through on your word, so I appreciate that. But there may be a few. I don't know what that's going to to work out in terms of votes. Um, and whether or not the new members will agree with you, that's a fair po point. And we are all prisoners of these schedules that are completely desynct. And I know you feel it too. Um it's not helpful that we don't find out what our actual budget is from the state until July and we have to go to town meeting way before that. All right. How are we doing with um Yeah, we need an emotion here. Okay. >> So, I I think I

247got a consensus saw from the committee a consensus to move forward with this and we had a proposal of an additional $50 per pupil. Um, so my >> Do we need to mask that? >> Oh, >> Sher might already be prepared for this. We spoke about it in budget subcommittee. Um, so an additional $50 per pupil, Sherry, check my math, is an additional $243,850. Yes. Um, thank you. I was really excited about that. Um, so what I don't have is the math around what that goes onto the the bottom line budget, but I know that the proposal would be to add an additional $243,850 of END usage. >> Perfect. >> Please from END. Yeah. 1,243,850. >> Just to be clear, Sher actually came in with three different scenarios at $25 increases. Just knowing that this

248could have been a possibility. It wasn't that she created one scenario ahead of the meeting. I just want to clarify that. >> And I'd also like to clarify that he said he would like you guys to do like $51 because then I didn't figure it out. All right. Somebody's got to >> I'd like to make a motion, please. >> I'm glad to hear that. Adam vowel at the same time. Uh I move that the total budget of the act in Boxboro Regional School District for the fiscal year July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027 be preliminarily set at 122,593,238. an increase of 4.75% and that the budget would be funded by member towns to be prelim preliminarily assessed in accordance with the education reform law and the terms of the regional agreement and amendments there

249too as follows. Actton 82,830,682 an increase of 3.75% and Boxboro 17,734 uh $734,13 an increase of 5.57% offset by use of END reserve in the amount of 1,243,850 with the remainder accounted for by other sources of revenues and reserves to be detailed in the final budget vote. Second >> and that was sorry as I'm not watching Leela. Thank you. Okay. So that was moved by Adam and seconded by Leela. All in favor? >> Any opposed? >> Just to keep it. >> Okay. Lisa's going to keep Okay. Any abstensions? All right. So hang on. Uh Lisa. >> Oh, does it create a problem? >> Maybe >> we were supposed to look this up whether or not our preliminary budget is a majority of all members total. All members present members present. Yeah, we got to look

250for that. >> It's the the voting is different on budgets per the regional agreement. Yes, there was one year where we had to revote our budget three times >> because we did not have it calculated correctly. It's all right. So just to be clear, the approval of a preliminary budget has to be a majority of the members of the committee from each town. So a majority from Actton and a majority from Boxboro. >> And so that majority from Actton would be four of us. That would be Glenn, Andrew, Leela, and me. So we're good. And we're good with our box burrow. All right. So that motion passes. Lisa, [laughter] >> is I'm sorry. Is that a majority from each town that's present at the meeting meeting for the quorum or to >> No, it's that

251a majority full stop. >> Okay. >> So four of seven act members is enough. So that motion. Did we have any abstensions? >> Okay. Thank you. Um that motion passes. >> All right. Um, >> can I move to adjurnn? >> You can do that. Second. Moved by Lisa. Leela, seconded by Lisa. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. Thank you all for staying for this.