001All right, we are live. So, good evening everyone and welcome to the Wednesday, June 18th, 2025 Lichfield School Board meeting. The time is now 5:30. We'll call the meeting to order and begin with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh we are a four member board at the moment. Mr. Shoemaker is on his way. He should be here in about 10 minutes or so. Uh and with that, we will continue with tonight's agenda. Uh next up is review and revision to the agenda. Any changes to tonight's proposed agenda? No changes. All right. Hearing none, we'll move to consent. Any committee members like to move anything off consent tonight? hearing
002none. All right. Summary of non-public actions from June 4th, 2025. Mr. Shoemaker, motion to approve the May 21st, 2025 nonpublic meeting minutes. Mr. Dit seconded that motion and that motion passed 40. Mr. Shoemaker motion and to approve Matia mania as a CHS English teacher and Rosanna pass as a CHS Spanish teacher. Mr. Mr. Cutter seconded that motion and that motion passed 40. Mr. Shoemaker motion to approve the resignation of Arian Ariana Goslin as presented. Mr. Cutter seconded that motion. Uh that motion passed 4 Z. Mr. Shoemaker motion not to approve the resignation of Jessica as presented. Mr. Cutter seconded that motion. That motion passed 40. Mr. Shoemaker motion to adjourn the non-public session at 9:13 p.m. Mr. Cutter seconded that motion and that also passed 4 Z. Uh next up is presentations and recognitions of
003which there are none listed tonight. So we'll move right along and there's no student representatives tonight because we're now in summer session and we'll turn it over to our first community comment on agenda items tonight. We have one community member in the audience. I'm all set. Okay. All right. All right. So, excellent. We're going to close community comment. There is a second community comment later this evening. Uh, and moving right along into correspondence. I'm gonna pull it up. Hold on. That was quick. It's quick for me. Let's see. Correspondence. All right. Starting on June 4th, uh, Jen Grantham, LMS principal, emailed the board advising of the progress being made at LMS by the literacy team, which includes Karen, I'm going to say I know named Dejan, Amy Provincial, and Kate Kramer, who partnered with teachers
004to help offer support and highinterest rigorous material searches. On uh June 5th, we received an email from 9to5 Computer Supply offering different options for student cell phone pouches or storage for the 2026 year. On June 5th, Brooke Roman, a CHS student, invited the board to attend Campbell Movie Night, which was put on by Campbell Student Council. On June 6th, Tiffany Brown, a parent, sent uh a recent Facebook post uh to the board that was regarding personnel issues. On June 7th, Jan Sullivan emailed the board circulating draft minutes for the June 4th, 2025 public and non-public sessions. On June 9th, Sean Mcdana um emailed the board circulating the LEA's official intent to negotiate letter um and there was a response for Mr. Cutter. On June 10th, an enamora board circulating the GMS and LMS electric bills
005and there was a response for Mr. Dit on June 12th. and Anorati emailed the board circulating manifests that included live checks and EFT for accounts payable. On June 13th, Chairman Cutter emailed the board um the SAU and LMS principal with concerns u from both a parent perspective and schoolboard perspective regarding the accuracy and the use of P school. On June 13th, Renee Burgess emailed the board circulating the agenda for tonight's board meeting. On June 14th, Julie Darling emailed the board circulating the audit questionnaire for board members. That would be on our next agenda. On June 16th, Dan Dwit emailed the board regarding um the dynamic grid and solar contracts. On June 16th, and Marotti emailed the board circulating a second set of manifests for the board to review um that were for accounts payable in
006light of when our next board meeting is. That brings us up to date. All right. At least till 3:30. I appreciate that update as always. Uh moving into general business tonight and I'll turn it over to the superintendent and kick it off with enrollment. All right. Uh so our overall numbers stayed the same at the end of the school year um as it's been for the past couple months with our district total. Um also our kindergarten numbers stayed the same, 61 students. Um which comparative to previous years is significantly less than what we've had. Um I believe this time last year we had 73 74 enrollments uh in kindergarten. Um so we have made the decision to only go with four kindergarten teachers um next year and if something something happens we will we'll deal
007with that as it happens in the summer but uh we move forward with with four kindergarten teachers. We've had a fifth obviously this year. We're not going to obviously let that person go. We have other positions in the district and we're going to repurpose that person um for one of those positions as we kind of go forward. So, um, unless something radical changes, and again, if anyone's out there and hasn't registered their kindergarten student, please do so. Um, but that's that's where we're at with kindergarten numbers. So, is our enrollment center. Okay. Will that other position remain within GMS? We have, without getting into too much detail, most likely yes. There's something that is likely going to be resolved soon. um that yes is the short answer of it. I can certainly discuss that with
008the board more non-public but without saying too much about something publicly without you know any more information. Yes, that is the the idea. So chair I didn't even move it. Sure you didn't. I didn't provide some entertainment just very close. What happens when you're the last one in the building? All right. Uh, well, Mr. Shaker gets situated here. We'll move into I'll just sit up there. It's fine. Our other grades, first grade and, uh, everyone else, everyone else is looking where we were. Okay. End of school year wrap-up. Yeah. Just wanted to kind of uh, well, we wrapped up the school year last week. Um overall, you know, every school year comes with its own sense set of adventures that happen and highlights and things that you wish you had a second shot at, but
009um overall I thought we had a kind of a great school year in the district. You know, very happy um obviously for many of us our first year here in the district and and very happy with um our students and our staff and and working with the families and the community and everything that happened. Uh we wrapped up with with numerous um events last week, finalizing with graduation for the class of 2025 last week. beautiful ceremony and highlighting our seniors who are who are moving on. Um, and just everyone, it can get really tough. You get back that stretch after Memorial Day, it's hot and everyone can see the finish line. It gets stressful, but everyone just did an awesome job wrapping things up. Um, one thing I just want to kind of bring to
010the board's discussion, maybe get some feedback on. We we have a lot of award and recognition nights and I know there's discussions um, we heard from some families about some great things we do and some other areas that we can kind of improve in those kind of um, areas and certainly tried to take all that feedback into account and then the next year always improve upon things that we can improve upon. Um, and uh, you know, personally my first year I everyone was trying to uh, it was really hard for me not to get involved in graduation. I've been involved in graduations and specifically the planning of them for 13 straight years. Um, so it was really hard to sit back. I'm glad I did because the ceremony was absolutely wonderful and when you see
011some of that stuff that was I couldn't understand when it was being described to me but saw it executed was like, "Oh, that's awesome." Um, and uh, some really good things. So, personally, I tried to sit back and see how a lot of things unfolded this year in my first year and um, talk with some people about ways we can improve it. But, I did want to just open up to the board if they had any any feedback and thoughts about any of this. um that we can kind of discuss because we're now far out. Um one of the things that you know just as an example the scheduling of stuff um I I don't love how we schedule. So I would like us to schedule much more in advance these events for families and
012spread them out a little bit more. Some things are out of our control when good things happen like our lacrosse team makes the semi-finals and the semi-final game got moved from the Wednesday to the Thursday because of field places and then it starts to to to overlay graduation. Some things out of your control, but there are some things that we had in our control that I would like to see us do better next year when it comes to scheduling and stuff like that. So, that's something we're going to focus on actually this summer. Um, not just wait till next year before that gets off. But, I wanted to kind of open that up to the board for for any thoughts that you had. I think for some of the stuff that where the board is
013invited to participate more advanced notice. Um I mean I me personally it's really hard to plan something within a week because usually between family and everything else it's I it's already booked out for the night. I think one of the things that we're trying to Thank you. um that's always challenging is and I I'm going to say this from a very high school oriented background is what constitutes a big night out and what constitutes not as big of a night out. Like for example, you know, when I was a high school principal, we would do our senior awards and scholarships and it was a big night, right? It was a big event. It was the marquee awards ceremony for for frankly for the district, you know, that was a big you had to dress nice
014for it and everything like that. Where our underassman awards, we would typically do that during the school day, right? And there wasn't parent involvement in that. And it was just um not the same level of of expectations for the night and stuff like that. So, I think what we need to do is try to find the right balance for that for all for all the awards. Um, you know, we look at fourth grade, and I'm not critiquing, this is just observationally, like fourth grade promotion was during the school day, you know, on 9:00 a.m. we had great turnout from families that could make it. Um, where we do eighth grade promotion and then obviously graduation in the evening at different times and stuff like that. Um, so is that the right decision, not the right
015decision? Those are the type of things we're going to kind of look at and kind of figure out. We look at the middle school when it comes to some of their um, awards things. Um, someone made this point to me and you know, I want to think on it a little bit. We do evening events for like seasonal athletic awards and for seasonal or year-long music awards, but we didn't do that for the academic awards for the middle school. Not saying one's right or wrong, but we should be more consistent in our approach and more logical in our reasoning for some of these things. So, those are the type of things we're going to try and look at and examine and everything. Sounds good. I think it's hard. You're never going to please everybody, right?
016I mean I just you know there are gonna whatever direction you go in there's going to be complaints on either end. Um I think we are lucky to live in a community where there is a lot of family support and therefore families want to be at these events. Um but it's hard to celebrate everything separately and all the time. And so, um, you know, at the end of the year when everything's busy and there's already so many different events going on, you know, again, I think as much pre-planning as possible. I, you know, there's some things you can't control. I, you know, I was a little for I had a senior um and frustrated for her classmates that played lacrosse and it was looking like they were not going to be part of the picture
017and they were not going to be able to make it back in time and um it took a lot of pushing to make that accommodation and it it was fine and it was great and it turned out well. So, all's well that ends well. But that could that have been planned differently? Yeah. Yeah. And you know those are challenging situations because Full transparency, I'm on the lacrosse committee. A game was supposed to be on the 11th, right? You know, and when we set our graduation and finalized that date, that game was on the 11th, right? You know, so um that's sometimes the stuff you run against and it stinks. You know, even next year, I don't know if you remember this when we had the calendar discussion, we talked about graduation being the Friday before
018the last day of school when regardless of when that is, right? So like if it was this past year for example it would have not been um the 12th it would have been the the 6th the week before whatever that Friday it was going to be the 13th is where it was and we never got there right you know so that is type of things that we need to do that type of planning ahead of time we that's what we put in for for next year when we did the cand calendar approval is the Friday before the last day of school um so we can stay away from some of these conflicts that we know potentially could happen right at least athletic type conflicts I know from the NHIA they never schedule on Friday's tournament
019games because that's such a popular graduation date regardless of the week in June. So like that's a safe one to put our graduation on so we're not running into those conflicts and yeah spring and stuff like that. It's good that you're having the conversations. I think hopefully if people are interested they'll provide, you know, families will provide that feedback. I've gotten plenty. I'm sure you have again because there's always going to be, you know, and it's good. It's good. Um, people are about it and it's good to hear. Um, but yeah, and I think it's sometimes it's tough. I mean couple you have multiple two three kids right? You know, like if it lines up, you're an eighth grader and 12th grader this year. There's um there's a lot to celebrate the district and that's
020a that's a great wonderful problem to have. Yeah. But I almost feel like we tip the scale too much on the on the celebration side, right? And if there's a way to combine or if there's a process, not to not to make a disadvantage or not to not acknowledge all the good work that's happening, just to make that acknowledgement a little bit simpler or easier or streamlined. Y agree. Well, thank you. I just want kind of bring that I think the the CHS ceremony I think from my perspective went well. Uh the weather was a perfect night. The breeze was perfect. No bugs. Like you couldn't ask for a better weather night. So yeah, and and special thanks to the custodial crew as always who has has the job to put up the stage, take
021down the stage and just you know a special shout out to them. Y All right. Next up, um I would like to ask uh for permission from the board transition into summer here. If you want to wait till the next meeting, I perfectly understand, but I wanted to bring it up at least this evening. Um as we enter the summer and don't meet as frequently and we do still have some open positions, if I may have authority to hire um these people for now and have them sign contracts and stuff, we've typically done that through a period like a date, right? And that was through through July and August until September 1st or something. Yeah. I thought it was until Well, because we're we're meeting twice in August. Yeah. I think last year you did
022it to the second board meeting. To the second board meeting in August. August. Yeah. Because we're back then. Yeah. The reason why is because it's so close to school starting that getting those contracts signed even a day matters. or they might have another offer. Okay. So, I think whatever is fine with me. The July month is the one that matters really from that um July night. And we don't have a ton of positions, but at the same time, oh, we always do. You give us notice. I mean, it's not like done in a bubble or anything. You let us know and um I can try and find that calendar. Hold on one sec. Second date there. August and then second date's August 20th. Yeah, I would agenda. They're at the bottom. Look at that. Almost
023like Renee did plan this for me so I can do uh I'll make a motion to approve the superintendent hiring making hiring decisions through our board meeting on August 20th. Second motion by myself, second by Mr. Shoemaker. Additional discussion. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Opposed? That carries. 5. Thank you. Um just asked that you know if you can keep us in the know with the course the personnel that Yeah. the bios and that type of thing. Yeah, of course. Um this last thing kind of uh we had a good meeting today. So this is kind of a late addition to the agenda, but I wanted to bring it up to the board. So if you call it the steam hallways, the hallway with the wood shop with the art classrooms um
024and uh there's a computer lab down there and so on and so forth. And uh we're looking to one clean it and two maybe make better use of it or not just maybe but definitely make better use of it. If you remember we got some wonderful donations from the Courier Museum um this past year of of different wheels and stuff like that. Uh we got an additional kiln. Um the robotics team is is flourishing and doing a great job and uh we need to utilize that space better so all these programs can continue to grow. Um, so we're going to start looking at that hallway and kind of take the wood shop and make it more of a maker space flexible spot for multiple classroom settings. Obviously, robotics is going to continue to use that
025spot in some capacity. Some of our our classrooms are going to use that in some capacity. And then longterm, we would really like to kind of develop our engineering program, period, which would then kind of utilize that space um as well. And then kind of there's a room there that is cluttered is the polite way of saying it that we need to clean out and kind of go through some different things. And then as we look at the two remaining art classrooms, shift them around a little bit to make them more reflective of the art practices going on in that. If you're doing drawing and illustration, for example, you really shouldn't be doing clay and sculpture in the same type of room for just cleanliness and function of sinks and everything else kind of in
026it. Um, so I want to bring that to your attention because we're going to start, you know, we had a great meeting today. We had a previous meeting a couple weeks ago and we're going to start inventorying everything. Well, we should have always been inventorying, but we're going to be inventorying everything we have in those spaces and we will probably be looking to dispose of some things. Now, some things that are beat up and just old, they're no problem. And I linked right there policy DN, which is the school equipment and supplies disposal policy. So, things that are valued at less than $1,000, you know, you just kind of throw away, right? Like if you have a book from the 70s that's beat up and not usable, you're just going to throw that in the
027trash, right? But things or a collection of things, like if you have a textbook collection that could be valued over $1,000 or you have a piece of equipment that is over $1,000, we need to follow that policy. If we were going to to move to dispose of it, um I'll give you a tangible example. I'm not saying we're going to dispose of this, but this is something that is in one of those rooms. There's this uh t-shirt printing machine um that doesn't look like it's been touched in a decade, you know, maybe even longer um just by the collection of dust and other things that have been mounted on top of it. Um it is a huge machine. It looks like a good machine, right? But I don't think we're going to utilize that. I
028will wager that it is worth more than $1,000. So, we should follow that policy if we're going to look to remove it from from the space and stuff like that. Obviously first we would make one last you know out to our people is there anyone who wants to use this for any purpose yada yada but if the end of that is that no one does we would look to move this possibly try to sell the piece of equipment come to the board for permission to make whatever decision we want related to that. So I want to kind of bring this to your attention because this is going to be work we're going to be doing this summer and into first semester. We have kind of a a timeline for cleaning and inventorying over the course
029of the summer here and make some smaller moves of putting up setting up equipment so on and so forth with an idea of over the course of the entire next school year repurposing the spaces at key times, school vacations when we can do certain moving of different things. So this this space over the next year can become more effective. But we'll probably going to come to you with following this policy with things we're looking to dispose. Um, so I wanted to kind of put that on your radar, see if you had any questions regarding that, um, that we can kind of help you with. Some of this stuff we might be able to sell. Now, I'm not going to say we're going to get rich off of any of this stuff. But we've had a
030school reach out, Doug from Golftown, who is interested in a piece of equipment because he knows it's not being used and that's something they would use at Golftown. So, you know, looking at whether or not that's something that that we're willing to sell them and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean as to me as long as the first choice is given to people in the district to be able to, you know, so if suddenly one of the art classes over at LMS wants to do t-shirt making, I don't know, or something that there's an option printer kind of a thing. Yeah, it's pretty involved. Like it's huge. Um it's like six feet long. There's a screen printing station clearly, right? That's a clunk thing, right? Then this whole other mechanism that's probably like five
031to six feet long table. I'm not sure what that part does. Like the screening thing makes sense to me. Maybe that's where you like uh slide it back and forth. Yeah, that like Well, yeah, you could probably do multiple stencils, masking. Yeah, multiple colors for the silk screening and the screen printing. Yeah, I I heard I asked around a little bit. I guess this was something we used we did used to do in the school. Maybe Liz has knowledge of this. Um, okay. Could we do our own t-shirts as opposed to paying somebody to print them, right? Yeah. Um, you know, it might be something that our business class is interested in, for example, but that might be something store or whatever. Yeah, exactly. I just use that as a big piece of equipment that
032No. Yeah. But it's a good example because again, I don't know that anyone at LMS might know that it's usable and so if LMS says, "Hey, we want to make our own t-shirts." This would be something that could save us moving it. Yeah, I know, right? But yeah, anyway, it's massive. as long as we're offering it in house illness. Yeah. But in a bigger picture because when we started to talk about this and I pull up the policy and and uh I know I'm just going to make Well, sorry Julie. I'm gonna just assign Julie a lot more work as what I'm about to do. It is welcome to year two. It says that every two years we should review our inventory of equipment. And not picking on Lichfield or Campbell or any of the
033schools because this has been true in every district I've been in. I'm assuming that that has not been occurring. Yeah. Um so we do need across the board. This was one of the things I was kind of beaten into the ground and and trying to do as a principal and I would like to do here is to get a better inventory of all the stuff that we have and actually document it and put it into a system like anything from textbooks which is a pretty common thing which we do in some capacity to these larger pieces of equipment that we know that we have. So saves us time in the budget process. People ask questions. Do you have something like this? We just have a whole you guys work real jobs. You know this is
034a horrible thing to do. um that we need to do a better job of that in general. So, isn't this where the school dude application came in handy or was going to come in handy? But potentially, but honestly, like I being familiar with school dude, I think just a simple spreadsheet system does the trick, right? Like you you do a label on it, you number the piece of equipment, and you put it in a spreadsheet, and you refer to it, right? I think for some things, well, now I'm going to go down the rabbit hole. For stuff like academic things like textbooks for example or books, developing a system within your your your learning commons, your library where you can scan everything is a huge asset. That was something that at B we were starting
035to expand upon the use of the kind of that system that we had in house to start scanning stuff from science equipment to non- library books to everything else. So we could we had a a holding system for it. I think in some of the bigger equipment like single off things like you're just going to do that from like a spreadsheet standpoint and stuff like that. Like you have a t-shirt machine, right? We're not going to do a scan thingy for that. Um but the fact that we have, you know, 20 scales in the science department, that might be something we scan in and out so we can keep track of the most. We have an asset tag on everything in the office. Yeah, I'm assuming every chair, every you know, right? Yeah. I mean,
036they you can go as simple as just printing out your own 2D barcodes, right? Put it on everything and then it's just a human interface device with a barcode scanner that would it would just put it into the spreadsheet for you. Yeah. And then again, it's all spreadsheet driven, but now you can go by and you can scan it and then you can search the spreadsheet upon that as a very bare bones. Um to answer your question for when I audited school dude and looked into it it has the potential to do it but we I don't at least the modules that I have seen we don't have all the modules to do that for physical like academic pieces we have it we have the ability to do it for the like HVAC and utility
037equipment and possibly IT but there's more into it for that. Um, but that's Y, but we're going to be working on this and it's going to take a long time, but we'll we'll get it done slowly. So, maybe two years from now when the next two year cycle is up, we'll have the first set done. So, so I do have a question on your call it total goal of that hallway, that steam hallway. Do you guys have all the resources and proper personnel you need to reimagine that space? because I have a couple of contacts with the local maker space in downtown Nshawa. Do I think that's it's a loaded question. Um, do we have enough right now to make very effective use of it? Yes, we do. Like I think in terms now is
038that something like personally, I'm just going to talk about me personally as a person right now. I would love to see us grow the engineering program because that's an interest of mine in particular. something that we grew where I was as a principal and I see similar potential here at Campbell to do something similar right to invest that if and I'm talking way down the road we don't have an engineering teacher on staff in any sort of capacity and if we're going to do a real and we do have a wonderful robotics program but it's all exclusively um as a co-curricular right we're going to bring that any into the school day that might change the discussion on the resources and stuff that we need and stuff like that okay so for I think the
039programming we have right Now, yes, we're in good shape, but you know, previewing maybe three or four or five years down the road, it could be something in budget times where, you know, we're making a push to expand those type of programming and those type of offerings. So, yeah, I just physical layout how to interact, you know, engineering, possibly welding and that type of stuff with robotics and some of the other stuff, right? Is there is a big maker space in downtown NSHA. Yeah. So, both of our art teachers are are wonderful. Um, but Suzanne Canali, who is one of our our teachers, um, kind of I won't say has a specialty in this, but like from her past professional experiences, you know, she used to work at Courier, she's worked in other avenues here
040in the school, she's really got a good vision for how that can all look. Perfect. Sounds good. Okay, thank you for that one. Yep. That's all I got. All right, we'll turn it over for business and oper operations and turn it over to Miss Darling for an update. Um, so I had um as far as the financials, I had updated them last Friday, but I updated them again today because things are changing rapidly. Um, but I figured we're also going to just be having a bigger discussion anyway about unbalanced. So, um, with regard to the balance, um, do you want me to put this up? Which one? The projections. You can. Yeah. You want the thing? Thank you. Are we jumping in the end of you? Well, I was just as far as the financial
041piece of it. Go. Yeah, sure. We'll go for it. Time like the present, right? I mean, that's the point tonight, right? Tonight, let's talk about fun 10. Let's talk about under spend. Let's talk about incumbrances. Let's do it. Let's go. You want me to share this with him? Yeah. [Music] Give it a second. You plug all the way. If not, I can plug in. No, I'll do it. Suspense. I know. I know it adds a little bit hard to see. I can make it bigger. Okay. So, as you'll see, um we do have some revenues over expected. Um and then of course we do have some expenses that are under budget. Certainly understand that that looks like a really big number. Um, but I do want to make sure that we all understand a big
042part of that is going to be salaries and benefits for positions that we weren't able to fill. Um, so we do have the breakdown of that as well, but that's something that obviously puts a big chunk in that end of year number. um we had nearly 800 um $837,000 regarding um positions that we weren't able to um hire for. Um we also do have some undersend um with regard to some of our accounts. Um I think that we were all kind of working within this budget and trying to figure out um I think everyone was trying to figure out what the right balance is. is I know in previous years they teachers and and administrators were told to kind of slow down on the spending and kind of have more of a balance at the
043end of the year. We're trying to work to have people use their budgets appropriately. Um, I do want to hone in next year when we're building the budget more with having more conversations with people so that we can really make sure that everything that we're putting in the budget is items that we're going to purchase, we're going to utilize um so that we're not ending up with such a balance that is off at the end of the year so we can kind of stay on top of that more. So, Julie, is this in this FY25 schoolboard financials tab or is it in a different I'm trying to It was a sheet that was just shared with us a moment. Yeah, I just shared this one with you. Sorry. An email via email. Yeah. Yes. Okay.
044Um, we have hard hard copies if you want. Right. We do. Yes. If anyone wants a hard copy, I have those as well. I'm going to take a hard copy. My first question is why is it such a nice round number? Still an estimate. Still an estimate. Like it's going to be about that. They're going to take a couple thousand, but for argument sake right now, Julie, I'll take one, too. We just did a round number so we can see it for this purpose right here. It's not going to fluctuate by thousands and thousands at this point. It will be roughly about that. But as we finish off some some outstanding bills, we have about two weeks left in the fiscal year. We have people coming in to do professional development right now with Sarah.
045For example, someone who was going to do it pulled out, so that changed it slightly. So there's going to be some variation here still in the last two weeks of school. So we used the round number just for simplicity sake tonight for the discussion of it all. So is it considering any outstanding accounts payable remaining for the year as well? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So we factored in stuff that we've still encumbered that we know we're going to pay out, right? For example, we have hourly employees right now that are working the next two weeks, right? Custodial staff as an example. We have a rough estimate. Again, this is assuming they work all their scheduled hours and specifically their scheduled hours, not overtime or anything like that. And then what that's going to be and that
046is essentially encumbered already and is factored in here to this number here. Did you say the number that was um attributable to payroll? I I think I I misspoked as I said Yeah, I was going to say I was looking. So, it's approximately about $800,000 is for open positions that we have now. We contracted out some of those positions, right? So, the net of it all, and this is salary and benefits for these people, is about $546,000 that was left over from open positions throughout the entire school year. So, where am I seeing that on the spreadsheet? You're not seeing that on the spreadsheet. I have it in my hand right here. And out of that, what was the balance between in Heidi and I were just talking about special education specific open positions versus
047nonsp specialcial education? We can do the m I have right here. Um, it's a big chunk though because the two of the top three things and really honestly if you go three of the top five are specifically special ed people, but they're the pair of professionals that we ended up cutting in next year's budget. So the number one um where we had the most o most underspend is LMS special education pair of professionals and we cut a bunch of those positions next year. And the third place where we had the greatest amount of underspend was GMS special education pair of professionals where again we were less we had open positions and we cut a bunch of those positions for next year's budget. So can I just throw this out there at the selectman's meeting the
048other last week Kim Kleiner was talking about some legislation that's pending at the state house where if positions are held open for more than a year you will not be able to carry them forward. Yeah. And I don't know, I asked and we they was asked, "Is it this the school is it the just the town budget or the school budget?" She did not know. Yeah, I have not heard that from the school world yet, but I'm not surprised by that type of world. Now, we did make the decision this year to cut a bunch of these positions, right? They had remained open. We weren't going to fill them. We cut them. We did the same thing with the teacher position. It was specifically science up at the high school. We couldn't fill it for
049over a year, right? And we reduced by that position. That was that reduction we made way back in January. If you remember when we were finishing off on the budget and you'll see that's an area that I think it's six on my list here of um where we our underspend was because we had that open position that was there and stuff. Now some of these things we had to contract a little bit for right we did have to contract for some onetoone paras to help with some of our programming there. So that shows up in a different line because it's contracted services versus this line not 100% but a little bit because we did transfer some money over. Um, but that's where the bulk of the the that's where that bulk of that personnel stuff
050is in those special ed pair of professionals that we saved. We had multiple openings off and on at the middle school as case managers as well. Um, so we had a contracted we had it open to start the year. Then we were able to find a contracted person. Then another one of the case manager positions opened up in the middle school that remained open for the remainder of the school year. So with the cuts that I mean obviously we talked about this during budgeting but with the cuts that you made we're still able to deliver the services we feel confident we can still deliver the services that we need to be delivering in accordance with IEPs and I mean from a legal standpoint yes right like more pair of professionals is obviously going to provide
051more supports for our students that's going to benefit them from a legal sp standpoint we're covering all of our needs that we need to if something comes up where we have to um contract out, then we then we have to contract out, right? To give you an example, looking into next year, right now, we currently have two open case manager positions at the high school, right? We have to have at least one of those, right? Like, if we're going to realistically cover the needs and if we don't have an applicant for that, then we're going to have to contract out for for at least one person to cover that. Could we get by with leaving one of those unfilled? From a legal standpoint, we could get by. it's going to put more burden on our
052existing case managers. Um, hence why I think Liz is sitting here right now. Um, which is um, not ideal. But from a legal standpoint, we will get But I just want to make sure when we talk about contracting out right now that is coming from money that's budgeted for positions. Correct. So if you've cut those, how are you going to contract out? That's that's my question. I mean, this is the work we do during the the year, right? Like unexpected things happen. There might be a hole in the roof that you didn't obviously budget for. You have to shift things around. You have to not spend as much money somewhere else, maybe spend more somewhere else. Whatever the case may be, you got to kind of shift things around. I mean, this past year, you
053know, we were fortunate with some of these open positions that it allowed us some flexibility when unexpected costs kind of arose, right? We're not going to have that same flexibility next year, which might put a pinch, might not on certain things if when unexpected needs arise, right? Like we're just going to have to play it out. I mean, you know, we look at the um we haven't gotten the final final bills yet for out of district tuition, for example, but right now with the incumbrances that we have, it's going to be that we underbudgeted by about $5,000, right? So we we needed to spend about 5,000 more in out of district tuition, but the the kids who specifically we sent out of district this year fluctuated. It's not the same batch that was budgeted for
054way back when in fall of 24, you know, or fall of 23, excuse me, for that budget, right? So when we go into next year, there's going to be things that kind of shift around and you hope it comes out as a wash in the end. And then but out of district tuition is basically like roulette, right? like we we at any moment could have someone at any moment good or bad you can swing in any direction and our swings this year ended up kind of being a while fortunate for us from a district standpoint. I guess the thing I just want to make sure we're careful to convey is like Julie you mentioned, you know, we're at the beginning of this, so we're gonna, you know, we're going to really try to dial things
055in more so we're not having such a big number. But I just want to be clear, if we've already cut from the budget, then we have to, you know, make sure that people understand that. That is true. That is true. Now, one thing about the $780,000 number, which again sounds well, a couple things about it. Sounds like a lot. Just for transparency and simplicity sake, it means we spent 97% of our budget. Like that's what that number comes down to, right? That's not bad. Like you know, we can't spend 100%. That's bad, right? Like you don't budget where you spend every single penny. You want to give yourself a little wiggle room. So we spent now ideally 98 I think is the magic number. You want a 2% kind of window there. That's when we
056kind of play it out from a from a budgetary standpoint, but 97 is not bad. The other thing is there's we'll talk about encumbrances here in a moment. There are encumbrances that we've left here that we haven't done yet that are like we got to do them. And for transparency's sake, we left them on this list to come out of this end of the year incumbrances here where if this type of thing had happened say in February, we would have already come to you for the approval of it and it would already be kind of out of this final number. For example, the HVAC system in the portables. If we had lost heat in the portables back in January, right? If those HVAC systems had failed, we would have brought that to you. I hope
057you would have approved it in January and you wouldn't see it as part of this end of the year number. For the timing of it, we haven't moved forward with that quite yet because it happened just recently in like the last weekish of school. So we just held off on doing that and have that discussion here with you tonight because we knew we had a number that we could absorb that from and stuff like that. So there are some of these out of typ I won't say typical but repair type of expenses that the timing allowed us to bring it to you at this board meeting rather than at other times during the school year. So I think administratively like that's efficient. I think the only problem with that is it does then reflect as
058we have this big nut at the end of the year that we are just elected, you know, electing to spend out of. And I do think when we go through these, we need to really highlight the total amount of things that we absolutely had to do that we probably should have already done so that we can kind of get an idea of what the number should have looked like because the number is artificially inflated. If you know, for example, the ramps for the portables, we we don't have a choice. We absolutely have to do that. So that we already know that the number is artificially inflated by $16,400 because we have to encumber that. And that's what I'm saying. Those are things we that failed during the inspection process. We were able to do something
059to temporarily get us through the year to get us through this. I just want when we go through I think we should keep a tally of the things so that we that way we have a better feel of what the actual end of the year number would look like had we done those things. Now, one thing, and I want to be careful when I say this because it might sound like um I don't know what it might sound like, but I don't want it to sound bad. Uh I'm going to propose to you very early next year to move the June last June school board meeting to the last week in June to help us with this because last year your meeting was in the final week of June and I think your numbers were
060more solid, right? And as we added a third meeting. Yeah. So that's not I I'm I've been on the board four years now and it's not been I think three out of four. We've ended up adding an additional June meeting to the fourth Wednesday so that we could have the most upto-date numbers because we are still going. We did that too last year. I think that's not a bad idea even for this year because when we were going through all this we are still waiting for a few things, right? like and bills to kind of finish off and you know Andrew you asked about why it's a round number that's why because we still want to have that kind of like estimated number because there's still some slight variations to this stuff that's there's no
061is there any more payroll coming out or are we done there kind of is but it's not going to make a difference whether we have a meeting next week right but it's minimal because it's just hourly employees who are working this twoe window for example us administratively who are salary our next pay cycle comes out next year's um things. So, we have that that number including benefits. Um it's about $48,000, maybe $49,000. So, we can like we projected that in, right? Um now, that could change slightly if someone calls out sick and then have sick time, you know, something similar like that, but it's not going to be wild swings. So, [Music] okay. With regard to food service, we are estimating that number as well. We still have some um reimbursements that haven't come through
062yet. So, we are anticipating that number to be about 89 around 90,000. Um we are hoping it might come in a little bit lower than that. Um but that is what we're looking at current more or less than last year. I was just going to ask that question. It's about the same. like um I think last year I thought it was 77,000. Oh, I stand correct. Stay correct. Stand correct. We made some extra revenue. You did that. I mean I I recognize you weren't at the last meeting, right? Um, but it it it just goes into the bigger conversation about meal prices, meal program, allocart menu. All right. And and kind of bringing that back up to the board for discussion, consideration as we approach the new school year. I mean, we have that as
063a business later just to touch base on it again. um you know to to just jump we don't have to dive dive into it but like the first thing we're going to ask is like do you want to change prices for next year right like and I don't know if you want to do that for next year right we'll talk about then right but I mean the reason why is because this is increasing that's that's why okay so what else do we have for encumbrances all right I'm going to switch screens here real quick for do you want to so will the board um it sounds like the will of the board is to schedule another board meeting whenever the date is towards the end of June 25th at the 25th I I don't know
064about conference room availability we'll have to check with Mr. know that's something certainly that we can arrange and and maybe it's directed just to encumbrances so or emergency items. So assuming that let me just check the town calendar too. assuming that um we're able to line up a meeting we'll be at a conference but we could potentially so that meeting there's an economic development committee meeting here conference all next week 6:30 you know you got me though so it wouldn't be able to be in this room and I don't know about the fire department room so [Music] going back You don't need to go back to the screen, but the 780 that's the worst case scenario you think of what will be remaining after those last few things come through. I don't want to call
065it worst case scenario. That's our best guess right at this second, right? Like if it comes out at 790, I don't want you to be like you said worst case scenario was 780. Now, you know, just because we're we're still estimating I guess I'm saying it won't be any less than 78. It could be less than 782. Okay. Right. Like but I don't think it's going to be radical swings. Like it could be at 770. It could be at 790 or somewhere. It's not going to be 850 or not be like a million dollars. All of a sudden I will I'm just going to say this out loud. I mean this is my thought process. I mean, I very much think it's important for us to approve a lot of these end of the year
066expenses in part because the budget didn't pass for next year and I think this will help alleviate some of the pressure on next year's default budget if we are able to one safety, two repairs, which we've been trying to catch up on for a long time now, and then three anything that we can push into this year. So I'm looking at this total of 304 58596 if we were to do all three priorities. And I'm not saying yes to all of them yet, but I'm saying if we did, there appears that there's that much money available to do all of those things. Is that a fair There is. Plus still a return to to the taxpayers. We always want to return the 200,000, right? So that's with the 200,000 plus that 300,000 304. Does that
067add up to that number that was? It's roughly 200, right? Depending on exactly where everything kind of falls because you still have two warn articles, one small, one big that you have to account. You have to make up the difference in food service is lack of revenue. That's lack of revenue from food service, right? It's 899 right now. That could fluctuate a couple dollars here and there. You have the two big warrant articles to come up. Well, not two. One's big and one's small. You have the salary and benefits one, which is about $2,200. And then you have the $200,000 special ed one that you have. So, you got to do those first. Do you mind going back to that other screen? Sorry. No, it's okay. I'm a visual person. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So, that
068brings us to that. So, that brings you to 521 right there. Yeah. Right. And then if you the list we're about to go over has I think like 304 304 321 and 304 you'd still have 18 to play with which I will say the tier three priority three level ones is about 25,000. So if tonight we did tier one and two and then left tier three for a meeting next week, we could do that or approve it contingent upon again I feel firmly that we should be returning $200,000 to the taxpayers. And I would say that the tier three items don't seem to be I I think we can do it all. That's my point. If we get want to start that discussion Yeah. like so maybe it's better to start backwards the tier three
069thing before we do that right is the will of the board to to vote on what we're able to vote on tonight see how far we get and then reassess at the end of voting I think that would be what I would propose that's what I I came into tonight prepared to do that me too okay so that would be what I would propose the only thing that's holding me up is not knowing that exact number and understanding that there are what 12 days left in the fiscal year, but it seems like we have a good ballpark. If we're going to add another meeting, if we had to amend our vote at a later meeting, right, we could revote on something, couldn't we? I guess the money's not going to be they're they're not going
070to spend the money in the next two weeks or week. No, no, no. I mean, yes, we can hold off on some of this. There's some stuff if you approve we would like to Well, I'm not I'm just saying if there was if for some reason we found out next week that there was a massive swing that you guys didn't anticipate. Yeah. Which I don't think is going to happen. But if I mean I just want I again I'm not trying to build an excuses. This is our first time wrapping up. Budget we didn't develop. We're we we're trying. Yeah. No, I I get it. I agree with that. uh idea Heidi. Okay, let's uh let's do it and see how far we get. Okay, so we just kept this on the same list we've
071been using so you could kind of see it. Um we can do kind of a category here for votes um that I can just do right here. Start at the top. It's big apparently a big one. And we'll vote on each item individually. So we have GMS HVAC unit replacements. These are replacing the two HVAC units uh on the portable units that are currently not working.