good evening and welcome to the local Control subcommittee meeting it is Tuesday May 28th 2024 and calling this meeting to order at 511 roll call Mayor Garcia here Mr Romero gavo your mic is uh muted come back to Gustavo uh Dr Gloria cavalero and Dr Rivera Kong present please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance housekeeping protocol on March 29 2023 Governor Hy signed into law a supplemental budget bill which among other things extends the temporary Provisions pertaining to the open meeting law to March 31st 2025 specifically this further extension allows public budes to continue holding meetings remotely Ely without a quorum of the public body physically present at the meeting location and to provide adequate alternative access to remote meetings the language does not make any substantive changes to the open meeting law other than extending the expiration date of the temporary Provisions regarding remote meetings from March 31st 2023 to March 31st 2025 pursuant to Mass General Law chapter 38 section 20 I'm hereby informing all attendees that a video and audio recording is being made of the meeting and the meeting is being live streamed and run live on the city's Community TV channel welcome everybody and welcome to our esteemed guest commissioner Russell Johnston and Chief of Staff Lauren wo thank you for being here I'll also like to acknowledge that here with us tonight is Mr colore Miss Wilson Mr SoDo Mr Kennedy Miss lefave and Miss sensley Williams thank you for being here moving into item one collaboration this is part of the Holio Public Schools committee capacity building document that was provided to us by the commissioner and pretty much my favorite part of the whole plan part of this is because the Holio Public School District as well as the school committee it is already a community based on collaboration we really work with each other's strengths and we move forward with what we do best which is serve our students here are the topics that we should make sure that we do and I will and I hope that with the information that we get to share today we will be able to convince everybody that that's something that we really do and we do very well establish a culture of collaboration ensure that members develop and sustain a collaborative working relationship with each other and with the superintendent actively create opportunities to engage stakeholders in working together to improve student outcomes promote positive working relationships between district and Municipal leaders provide opportunities for students to share meaningful input into policies and decision making as appropriate Gathering input from stakeholders this is something that we will definitely do in order to inform our plan moving forward the working group members will seek additional input from Community stakeholders including but not limited to students family staff external Partners Etc the work of the working group will be presented regularly to the full school committee and the local control subcommittee as well we had a conversation um as preparation for this meeting with Mr stto and I'm happy to share some of the highlights of that conversation they are summarized in a memo that was also linked to the agenda we basically have in the conversation with Mr SoDo we B basically already have what could be called I don't know if it could be called a A playbook but basically a way that we already do um in order to engage the community as well as to inform decision making in the district there's definitely many different ways that Holio Public Schools engage engages with the public and that starts with um our face team which stands for family and Community engagement there is a family and Community engagement team member at every school we have surveys which that's not everybody's favorite and it's not always easy to get everybody to fill out the survey but it's something that we do and we do well we do routinely and in order to really understand and inform how stakeholders feel about um what could be happening in the district's culture as well as the decision- making Pro process we also have many deliberate Partnerships including colleges mental health Partnerships Community Based organizations and so on we also have advisory groups which allow for us to really understand what the pulse is and how is it that any changes affect different members of our school community many of these include teachers students parents and any other stakeholder that would need to be a part of a conversation depending on the particular um initiative or decision-making process we try our best to encourage family involvement I would be the first to say and I know that Mr SoDo um always hears me say this but if there's any other way that we can engage our families and our community I'm right there for that right like this is every time we get better I always try to remind everybody that who isn't there who isn't represented when we're having different conversations and that's because there's always room for improvement but we can only improve because we already have a plan on how to actually seek input from our community we have different examples on how we have as a as a district and led by Mr stto at this point um with the different priorities that have been part of the established turnaround plan things that we have done as a district to gather in input from stakeholders and we had our entry plan in fall of 2021 middle grad planning for 2021 as well as you can see there was a lot of things that Mr SoDo was doing this whole time strategic planning spring of 22 and 23 resoning which this was a really big one that impacted a lot of people and it was there was a lot of Outreach before I actually was part of the school committee I was part of that Outreach helping parents actually become involved in this process and as a work in progress so winter 2023 24 and spring 2024 teacher retention so collaboration is something that we are good at is something that we thrive on and um I would like to make a motion to suspend the rules to allow Mr SoDo to speak about um our efforts in stakeholder engagement I that motion seconded by by Mary Garcia all in favor hi oh gustavo's on it do yes so Mr Gustavo Romero is on the call I'm here by okay hello go ahead Mr SoDo I I don't know if I have much more to say than than what you said but uh one of the things that we have uh focused on um es you know since the beginning of receivership is coming up with creative ways to engage families I I'll never forget you know something that I learned not learned from the mayor but something that the mayor said that struck me as true is that the the hardest part of government and the hardest part uh of just local government in general is is engagement and you could tell by our voter turnout you can tell by when we have big events like how how many people show up but um we have uh done extensive work to try to continue to grow that effort I think uh one of the things that we have done was we we added a family engagement coordinator at every single school um and uh We've we've we're providing a lot more language access than we ever have before so anything that comes out from the school department you know I think about my grandmother um and and whether or not she was able to engage when I was a kid in school and you know I I I believe the answer to that would be no because she she wasn't a strong reader and uh particularly in English and I know that uh not everything that was communicated back then was communicated in her her language so uh language access is is pretty near and dear to my heart because uh of my experience as a student and and the impact that that had on my family so we we're just really aware of of what our community's needs are and we've done a ton around trying to engage the community in in different ways in person virtual uh you know uh just just different ways and and um I think that you know in in doing so we learn something new every time we have a major effort um I've always utilized our teacher Advisory Group our student council our parent groups and I think like those those systems we don't have it in the form of a plan or anything I think that I hope that post receivership that this school committee would would embrace you know the the those efforts and build upon them I still think you know there are other other ways you know I'm not saying we're perfect and we got it right but like I I hope that you know you can embrace the the know we have examples of when we have to make important decisions what the process looks like to get engagement through all those different stakeholder groups um and throughout those those opportunities that we try to create for for families thank you so now I want to give an opportunity for acting commissioner Johnston to tell us any feedback or anything that any questions that you may have for us at this time welcome Mr Johnston thank you and I'm great to be here with you and uh always so encouraged by the engagement that Holio has had such a long history uh of being involved in really valuing the voices of all community members and uh receiver superintendent so do I really appreciate what you just shared uh just both uh personally and professionally I think it's uh really profound um I I think uh so I I appreciate that the district has had a long history of very effective engagement of involved parties I just wonder if uh we could talk a little bit more then about um what does that look like for the transition plan because I do think that this is a unique um set of uh you know a unique type of work that needs to be done and you know I really want to make sure that when we launch the transition plan that people see themselves in it that they they hear their voices they see the future that they feel like they're involved in planning for that future and I believe that you had mentioned maybe a working group um that would be advised of various community members and Personnel from the school department and I wonder if we could you know i' just love to talk more about that just to make sure that we really can all see where we're going and and how we're going to get there together thank you so as we move forward and we look through um what the working groups are going to look like well backtracking from that we have to make sure that we plan a good timeline for this to happen because in order to have meaningful engagement we have to make sure that we have enough time to meet with people collect their thoughts and then be able to include them in the plan so that's something that even though it's not finalized yet is something that we have very present at putting this um working group together we had we have the example of when we did our rezoning um plan and when we got the opportunity to then engage all the different stakeholders we had members of the school committee we have members from the different schools parents of the different schools we had staff we had teachers and this is something that we would like to replicate in a sense not necessarily that they would be the same people but basically we already have the mechanism to do that we know how to recruit from the different groups in our community and one thing that I forgot to also mention is that there is already also a networking event that is actually led by safe neighborhood initiative U Mr Ed Case who already has all the people from the different um local organizations and nonprofits and we are a part of that as the school district so that's going to be yet another resource to our at our disposal that we will be able to use in order to move forward and have all stakeholders involved and be able to do this we have again like we have like a A playbook in order how to do this and as soon as we decide that this is going to happen that the plan is finalized and we can move forward together ing input we will be able to start that very soon that sounds great could we um just talk a little some more details than about that would mean a series of meetings between now and August with that working group I I'm just thinking out loud so this is Mayor Garcia so we have a frame work that we can replicate I think if and when we get to a point where we have so when we get to August and we have this transition plan um yeah how so to the commissioner's question how do we see that roll out that level of collaboration in this transition how do we make that fit Mr SoDo do you w to add more about what we did with the resoning and how that could be applied here um I'm not sure I understand the question so are are U Dr Johnson are you are you saying um seeking Community input on this plan before August on the transition Plan before August yes yes okay uh I think it's important that we and I'm glad you're asking that that question in particular because I think this is sort of the the key thing to get to in this meeting uh but I definitely think that we need to make sure stakeholders are in involved in the development of the plan I would worry that if we you know bring out a draft plan and they they haven't you know been a part of it that um they're GNA I think there could be some strong feelings that it was sort of done around key involved individuals as opposed to with involved idual so that that thank you for clarifying and I think that um that hasn't been a part of the plan up until now but I think that we can easily put together a a communication plan I think the first step would be what are what are those guiding questions that we want to that we want to ask all community members that were seeking input on this new plan and um once we can can kind of solidify like what are those guiding questions we can certainly come up with a timeline and a plan to host uh a a couple of community sessions at least one virtual one in person um as many as the school committee would like and i' I'd be happy to to support um you know uh walking them through the process of how when when we had to seek out input like what what that timeline could look like and and the the different ways we can go about it but I think the first step is really you know what are those guiding questions that are G to that are going to be asked at these uh input sessions because we want to be pretty structured and um we want to make sure that we have people there that are taking notes and collecting the data we can certainly put a survey together that's you know surveys are what I like about surveys is that you actually can easily collect the data when you have these inperson Community sessions you really have to have somebody there taking notes and aggregating it so that um we can get information back from the data that we're collecting but I'd be happy to support in any way mayor um and and Dr Rivera cologne in in making that happen thank you and that's part of the things that we're thinking about is developing that survey and what the questions are going to be focusing also on the why I think that we have been under receivership for so long that the community may have forgotten what it was like to be um in local control and what that actually means for our district so that's going to be important developing the survey making sure that we have those questions at hand and having those also as part of of course having inperson and virtual also to make sure we can engage as many people as possible having that um a short presentation about what where we have been and where we're headed in order to help people understand um how important their feedback is but also how it will inform our plan moving forward as well I see your hand up Mr Johnston thank you so much um you know I think uh really to the question the receiver superintendent Soo was asking uh about what what are what are the questions we want to ask and I have appreciated the way that we have formulated the structure of these meetings uh to focus a lot on the role of the school committee in their governance Authority Post receivership so things about you know budget and policy have been very meaningful and media conversations and you know that those are probably areas where we don't arguably need as much external stakeholder input on because it's really just about how will the school committee function in the future and kind of Lan the the groundwork I really think it's that focus on Improvement piece where that's where we really want to make sure that we're getting input on um about what are those improvements that have been made in the district that we don't want to lose sight of as we move forward again I some of the ones that we've talked about before are things like early college the um you know the the expanded preschool seats the you know for Early Childhood um you know the the way in which the um High School is restructured um you know the the focus of of the elementary schools on early literacy there you know there are a lot of pieces that uh the district has put in place that the turnaround plan the current turnaround plan sort of help helped to you know kind of um ensure our there for the for the now and I think we need to talk about what do we want to make sure we either preserve for the future or adapt for the future um through that engagement and I do wonder about um you know it's and I think this is a good meeting to kind of put a lot of different ideas on the table and so so far tonight we've talked about you know a survey and maybe Community meetings and a working group and I just wonder about you know perhaps a working group that is um sort of developed now um and then you know during the formation of the drafting of the plan so that they're kind it from the ground up and then involved through when the full plan is drafted and giving feedback on it and then you know perhaps in supporting the implementation again just you know one idea just to to put on the table but uh you know I understand that we sort of need to balance uh what's manageable and how we will get information that we can very much use I don't want to go out and ask for a lot of information then not you know the worst thing would be to ask people's opinion and then not use it so and I I know you're not in any way suggesting that uh it's just we probably need to narrow down what are those options that we're going to use to engage um more involved parties from across the jolio community thank you and I also think that if we use one of the documents that you referred to us that had that um list of the things from the turnaround plan that you were referring to like the Early College Etc we will be able to come up with meaningful questions for um our stakeholders and I propose that then for our next meeting we will have a solid plan of what we want to do so that way if there anything that we need to adjust before we roll it out we still have time to be able to have at least again like one meeting in person one meeting virtually as well as the survey finalized so that way we can make sure that we have just enough time in order to be able to again gather meaningful feedback that is going to inform our plan as well questions from my Committee Member it's going to be a a challenge um although critical the challenging part I think is we're near end of the school year and How likely can we get you know as much people as we want um sharing their input particularly our our parents our staff students but we have to be intentional and try our best I I like the idea of presenting to the community the menu of different things that have taken place and somehow in a scale type of survey in a rating of 1 to five 1 to 10 you know this particular change or that particular change to gauge the feeling how the the community has felt regarding some of these changes um uh and then also give them you know folks an opportunity to contribute maybe something for anybody that's following this process something we didn't think think of or think about so maybe an opportunity for folks to voice uh what's on their mind as we um that they want us to think about as we go forward with this transition um how you put that together in a package and and engage people is you know sounds like to me Soto's got a good solid team to to roll that out but it's going to require all of us working together to intentionally engage people in our neighborhoods to get that feedback we're looking for especially you know this time of the year as everyone's preparing for summer so MTO yeah I I mean I just that you took the words out of my mouth like summer is a probably a harder time to engage families than any other part of the year uh because of vacations and and other things but I think the you know the the the input effort that most closely aligns to this is our strategic planning process so we went out and we asked like what are your priorities what but now that we have a strategic plan and a turnaround plan I think that we could use that as a framework for what Russell what Dr Johnson was actually talking about like what what of these priorities are most important to you you know I don't want to I don't want to like get into too much detail but I think I think like that is going to be a good place to start to to to develop like what do we want to get input on and thank you mayor Garcia and that's the surveying part still need to develop our working group and at what point do we want to get the working group to the table working with this body I guess that's the question I have what you that's something that we have to decide together so yeah so I'm wondering if if we just put out a solicitation how we draft that we might have to come up with two or three different versions we can review um how many people we want in this committee and and the difficult part is getting every voice reflected but making sure that that committee helps us engage those that are not reflected at the table so that we're expanding their tentacles there as much as possible in this engagement process um and I think that when we do do the survey they're going to be particularly helpful in helping with crafting it and then getting it out there into the community together with the school department in the face team um so I don't know if this is Mr Johnson anything that we can finalize today I think we need to come forward with some sort of U uh option that we can like take apart and then say all right let's move forward Madam chair commissioner yeah go ahead all I complet Ely agree with uh what mayor Garcia was just proposing that I wouldn't want to I want to make sure that we are all in agreement about a thoughtful engagement process and so I think if you know if it's possible to have sort of a description of what would be in a working group um you know that plan for the survey just you know doesn't have to be elaborate but just something that we're all able to see and review and know that we're on the same page that we're talking about the same thing in terms of you know just like you were saying Mary Garcia about what would the the composition be of the uh of a working group how many people and you know because I think it's better that you know we all lay eyes on it and say wait you know maybe we're I think we can make it better and stronger because we would all look at it together and say you know maybe we feel over represented here but under represented here and how do we make sure that we work on that and I like this idea of you know at least a two-part approach between a working group and a survey um and perhaps you know other ideas as well but um I appreciate what you were saying about making sure that we are definitely listening to voices who have been you know most historically marginalized and most maybe not right at the the Forefront of the conversation and so that Outreach that you're talking about and that very deliberate engagement seems vitally important so I appreciate you naming that and we also have a variety of parent advisory groups that will be the the Right audience so to speak in order to help inform our decisions as well so this there's many places where we can recruit great people who are already engaged but who also want to be able to come here because again the summer is a hard time to recruit people but there are people I would argue that for a lot of our parent advisory groups they're involved all the time so that's not going to be hard it's going to be an easy way for us to be able to engage people in this process and um again as part of other things that we have done in the district I'm sure there is already a draft um recruitment email somewhere that we can start use as a startup point in order to be able to start recruiting right away any other things that we may have been missing or that we want to discuss today Mr SoDo yeah I just you know thinking about you know we're already in June right so I I'm wondering or and I like I don't like we don't have to make decisions you guys don't have to make decisions on this um if we're if we're really committed to get feedback we're going to need more time than now in August so like I think that we're we'll be able to do a a a very decent amount of of input but I don't think it's going to stop when the plan comes out I think we're going to continue to to get ongoing feedback even when the plan is released and I'm hoping you know that we have the the grace to do that because it is it is you know June what if what if um gra sorry madam chair thank you what if we said this plan that we're drafting for August right this final transition plan the plan just simply States in there that we include that we make sure we put together a working group and that um in this transition that we're working with that working group to solicit feedback and doing community engage the plan has language declaring our commitment to the collaborations we've established throughout the you know the whole everything that was talked about earlier on so we want to make sure that we continue that culture that we're we're committing as a school board to continue to cultivate and maintain that culture of collaboration school districts done and also as we go forward with implementation of this plan part of our task is to make sure that form a working group and you know whatever other content you want to include in there surveys and soliciting feedback and doing focus groups to make sure that in this process implementation process that that um that there's that stakeholder Buy in so instead of us kind of RA racing to get that level of feedback on the transition plan itself instead it's imp mation of the plan um that it's a uh one of the uh benchmarks for us to make sure that we have that working group to engage the public in the implementation process am I off track thinking that way or no I think we have to be mindful of again timing and also I keep using this word but I mean it is Meaningful feedback right like it has to be feedback that ends up making change and really um being taken into account as we do this plan and like Mr SoDo said um and I don't know if commissioner Johnston is not going to like this but the fact that this is going to be a living document right like this this there are things that we're going to think are going to be amazing and as we go through may not necessarily be and we may need to adjust and and work through because again we're talk talking about a school district where there's many things and many people involved and many perspectives but one of the things that I often tell say to Mr SoDo is is the question of like okay so when do we evaluate if this is working right we we have to be able to gather stakeholder input but also see where people are at in our community as we go forward cuz if there's something that we need to adjust we need to be able to have that finger on the pulse in order to be able to adjust and make sure that we're doing our best to serve our students so how about how about this how about in August we schedule a hearing or two and again like it's not it's not going to check off all of our Outreach box is again the most so alluded to the most important part of government's the most difficult and that's reaching out to 100% every corner of our city we draft this plan right and we have a couple of hearings where we present the plan as detailed as possible so get that feedback so we can you know contribute that feedback to the plan to your point fluid document and then even after after that as we go forward with implementation again our commitment needs to be that we're implementing this together with the community um and making sure that we form that working group so that the the whole purpose of the working group is is is again to be sure that the stakeholders are moving we're moving on a One path forward together that we're all on the same page so we're getting the same information we're sharing we're learning together as neighbors we're continuing to evolve our our uh method um in this implementation process so that this moving Target that keeps moving that we're getting close to as much as possible as far as landing on it um what do you think about that is that online that's that's about the same line of thinking that I'm thinking about as well Mr SoDo yeah I only wanted to acknowledge Aaron Lia our chief of of strategy and turnaround who who also had up our Communications Department so whenever you know whenever we come up with a plan Aaron Aaron has been you know uh tremendous in making sure we're you know we're we're thinking about things that we don't think about so I just wanted she's on there and I wanted to acknowledge that motion to suspend the rules to allow is that suspend the rules or uh to allow Aon lville to speak motion second second all in favor go ahead I'm excited to hear what you're talking about and excited to support you all in the work I like mayor Garcia's recent suggestions so that we have time to get meaningful feedback that sounds terrific and happy to help um you all in any way possible that's what I was think so instead of scrambling trying to engage the public and do all these things between now and and August you know think that it buys us a little more time if we just say okay let's add in our transition plan a commitment to establish a stakeholder group and engage the public but have these hearings um before we finalize the transition plan host a couple of public engagement hearings however you want to do it zoom in person through a surve I don't know through a survey maybe um we present it thoroughly um and then have that that that that level of Engagement in a room where people can offer their feedback so that way we can include it in that plan in areas that we might have missed whatever the case might be before it's finalized and finally present it to the school board get it finalized and then we have from there that's when the work really starts that's when we start getting really busy with implementing the plan and engaging the stakeholders you Garcia I guess my big question here for commissioner Johnson is going to be um how set are you that the plan is 100% finalized by August and then the follow-up question is if you really need the plan finalized could you accept a communication plan on how we're going to do stakeholder input as part of the plan um moving forward again because we want to make sure that we have as much time as possible to allow people to contribute meaningfully Mr Johnston go ahead uh as usual I just couldn't be happier uh with these conversations uh and I'm really um very grateful for the way in which we keep looking at this from a variety of viewpoints and uh what is a I think we're we're getting to a similar place and let me just explain a little bit more um uh I think I came into this thinking that kind of everything would happen at about the same time in terms of all this uh the transition planning but in fact you know um some things right we really do need to know by August what what the plan is so take budget for example I think by August we should have a plan that sort of lays out what is the school committee going to do during the 2425 school year Rel related to the budget development and I think that that is something that um you know I don't you know this is sort of like what are the practices right we've talked about things like signing warrants and um you know the the the budget development process and things like that that we just need to make sure we're getting in place so that when receivership goes away it's just already running like it's it you know it's a machine that's already been put in place this piece about the focus on Improvement a key aha from me in this conversation is that you know the district has a strategic plan and it is so much deeply informed by community and you know uh Holio staff input and that plan is going to be in place at the beginning of next school year so no amount of you know we're not we're not really needing to talk about the focus on Improvement and get all of the piece all of the details on the focus on Improvement worked out by August because receiver superintendent Soto and his team they're already doing all the work to plan for next school year and that that is going to move ahead um in the way that it should so I actually think that the you know I really appreciate you know the way in which all of youve kind of contributed to this idea that um the plan that we will have in August will sort of um include how we will then engage a working group and have other types of community involvement uh to really look into that focus on Improvement I think it would you know thinking about the sort of life cycle of a of a school district and the planning it would need to be kind of a like you're already suggesting sort of a late summer fall activity so that you know things can begin to get in place for the 2526 school year but none of what we're talking about has to be done in time for the beginning of the 2425 school year unlike some of the other topics that we've discussed in these meetings and it's so so important that we get community engagement right for this and so rushing it is not going to help um I do think though that we should be reaching out to some groups before the end of this school year uh to kind of alert them to what's coming to get their initial feedback um so you know I think about some of the groups that you've mentioned between if it you know possible to you know any of the the parent groups that you mentioned Madam chair the unions um you know the administrators just ways in which we are uh you know making sure that we don't have kind of blind spots as we go into that process but truly I think much of that area about kind of the future direction for the district and the the initiatives that are in place as a result of receivership those don't all have to be worked out by August and um I really appreciate your your push on let's not rush that and Madam chair I really appreciate you know the way in which you talked about authentic and meaningful engagement and um we you know we just can't let's let's not call it engagement if it's not you know if that's not truly what it is because we're rushing it so much and so I think you know it's like you're saying putting a stakeholder in the plan for in August to say this will be developed you know and we can have a time frame and be clear about who is coming to the table at that point um I think makes a lot of sense and but I do think need to there needs to be some initial work done now in the way of community and staff engagement to get us there um I don't want people feeling like again that like this like this plan has been developed around them I want I want them to know that some pieces are in place but really the part where we need them is coming in a more deliberate way um through the summer and fall late summer in Fall thank you and yeah that's something that again we can do and we have resources in place to do that right away so it's not something that would be a hard thing to do so we'll definitely have that and I'll put in my notes to have um to start our communication plan already and we'll have some feedback at our next meeting to make sure that we have everything in place to start rolling that out so that people know what in the Horizon for us um for our plan thank you any other thoughts or comments from the committee so can can summarize what we're confirming here so we will include our community communication planner stakeholder input um as part of the plan we will start our um communication with stakeholders as soon as we um confirm that in our next meeting and we will also start recruiting for the working group as well all of this Communications will be hopefully finalized or at least a draft will be available by our next meeting okay um thank you madam chair commissioner one of the things that I don't think we and this is just popping up in my head now since we've been speaking openly about how we're going to engage is uh we had the eight meetings between you know a few months ago in August is there we I think we're going to have to add a 9th right some sort of final meeting um to present and at some point we have to share this with the school board and get the blessings of the board um so I just want to make sure we're not you know as far as scheduling and our timeline's concerned that we're that we're on target here so we had six meetings planned with a possible seven okay all right so we definitely had room for that extra meeting to be able to communicate the whole plan to the to the school board and then be able to have input as well okay and also for um the everybody involved so that they know as well is that all the members of the school committee have access to the draft plan as is going through so that way if anybody wants to include any feedback or anything in the process they'll be able to send it to me and I'll be able to incorporate that as we see fit as well perfect thank you so much commissioner Johnston just before we leave are there any other thoughts before we go so last week I added you because I I couldn't add Miss commissioner Johnston but I definitely added you so I'll make sure to resend it with a message so that way you know that it has been shared with you email because I don't because we I think it's because we use Outlook this happens with Mr Soto a lot when he shares Google Docs we don't get the notification so makes sense if you could just share the link over Outlook and then I'll be able to hopefully access it okay yeah definitely I will do that yeah because I want to make sure that you guys have access as well thank you so much at point I'll motion to adjourn second motion I I thank you commission so much bye everybody thanks a lot --------- welcome to the Holio school committee meeting for uh Tuesday May 28th I apologize for the delay and start but we are starting the meeting at 611 p.m. uh can we have roll call please mayor Garcia Miss lefave present Mr Romero recording stopped oh hold on recording in progress Miss tensley Williams present Dr Rivera cologne present Dr carav Cavo uh Mr wellan here Mr Kore here M Wilson here all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you everyone I just got to go over a few basic house rules um on March 29 2023 Governor Healey signed into law and act relative to extending certain state of emergency accommodations which among other things extends the expiration of the provisions pertaining to the open meeting law to March 31 2025 specifically this extension allows public bodies to continue holding meetings remotely without a quum of the public body phys physically present at a meeting location and to provide adequate Al alternative access to remote meetings the ACT does not make any new changes to the open meeting law other than extending the expiration date of the temporary Provisions regarding remote meetings from March 31st 2023 to March 31 2025 pursuant to Mass General laws chapter 38 section 20 I am hereby informing all attendees that a video and audio recording is being made of the meeting and the meeting is being live stream and run live on the city's Community TV channel so moving on to agenda item two which is student showcase this evening we do not have one so we're going to move to agenda item three which is public comment is there anyone in the public that wishes to speak on um an item of the agenda or has anyone sent or submitted public comment no no one has submitted okay moving along we'll move to Communications and reports and I do see that we have our Dean um Dean representative Mr Kennedy present so Mr Kennedy would you like to share your report yes uh first things first the National Technical Honor Society induction ceremony will be held tomorrow Wednesday May 29th from 2:30 to 4: this will consist of our next generation of Scholars getting inducted as well as a candle lighting ceremony and some tasty food at the end next the thing that's been on my script for months now Dean Tech graduation is on Thursday May 30th this ceremony will begin at 5:30 p.m. in our gym we look forward to seeing you all there uh for those of you who rais concerns about the uh past heat wave in our gym we are attempting to make efforts to battle that uh um unfortunately it is quite challenging but we are attempting to take steps for that um next on May 18th our car show was yet again a success we had over 115 cars on display with the grand finale of Miss caracho driving the dean Tech race car under the lumbo bar uh we raised 12 uh we raised yep $1,200 each graduate in class will be getting about 300 each and on May 25th 5th the class of 25 held their held a car show with their adviser Mr K they raised uh $475 two next Dean Tech held their class day at which the entire class uh sorry entire school as well as family of the seniors students were in attendance to see the graduating class get their Awards with that our valid Victorian for the year is Isaac Rosado Cruz from carpentry and our salutatorian is De le Torres from Health assisting moving on uh well not moving on congratulations to them that's a big deal um uh student government elections will begin next week for the school year of 2024 through 2025 the official election day voting day will be June 12th I believe do next Dean Tech's after dark program begins this evening coordinated by our career in technical education director Joel mcauliff uh which is just upstairs in the gym at or not the gym sorry the cafeteria at the moment our health assist program and our Advanced manufacturing programs are going to be featured in this pilot program um I actually forgot to do this at the beginning but this is the graduating classes yearbook um M Wilson if you could pass us down you can take a peek at it um and Mr uh sorry superintendent SoDo I will collect it from you at the end of the meeting you can take a look if you'd like and if you have any questions I can answer them there's a link on the back with the video right yes oh that's cool what do you do scan it like a yeah it's a QR code on and it has a senior video excellent uh Miss tensley Williams so Mr Kennedy it's all set and I can purchase three yes the way that you're um the way to purchase a yearbook is you're going to have to come into the main office and pay with a cash or check um with our office manager Luna okay excellent any other questions from Mr Kennedy no um I do not see a student rep for the north campus so we're going to go ahead and move on to our superintendent receiver reports and that is fiscal year 25 proposed budget thank you um and give me a second so that I could put this uh presentation up I'm going to share my screen here and this guy share great so I I do want to acknowledge that I have my entire leadership team here um we're we're very excited to present our budget um you know I have uh folks that are in person and I also have folks that are online um anyone online uh if you're not going to be speaking just just keep your camera off so that um and then when you know if if there are questions that that come up uh during your sections you can come off off camera and and come off mute to to address that and I would appreciate it but um I wanted to get started with you know just lifting one of the messages that I sent uh in your packet which uh is is really one of our core beliefs in Holio Public Schools is that students are at the center of everything that we do and this this budget places students first and is designed to achieve our mission to ensure that all students develop the skills and access the opportunities to graduate high school ready for life career and college um really everything that we do is is centered around our strategic plan we just had a conversation about the amount of input that went into that strategic plan and as a part of that process um you know which involved over 1200 stakeholders over 60 meetings and and different uh whether they were in person or or um virtual uh and different focus groups uh we we were able to establish you know the different components that make up our strategic plan which is our core beliefs our vision our mission our Equity commitments and of course our priorities um this is a a slide that should be familiar to all of you our vision here at Holy Oak Public Schools is that HPS is a high performing school system where students reach their full potential Educators Inspire families are partners and the community thrives um and our mission here is that through inquit inequitable high quality education and trusting relationships All Holy Oak students develop the skills and access the opportunities to graduate high school ready for life career and college not going to go through all of our core beliefs but I think the one most relevant to today is that the students are are at the center of everything that we do um you know that it that one of the things that we can do uh is during our our our budget process uh make sure that we're leading with with that in mind leading with you know are if we're going to make this investment you know is it good for our students um sometimes and I've said this I've said this many times throughout my career here in hoolio public schools oftentimes what's good for kids might not necessarily what uh aligned to you know um how adults feel about that so uh whenever whenever we're faced with that decision we're always going to make sure that that that uh students are at the Forefront of of of those decisions um our Equity commitments here I'm not going to name them all uh but I think the one that I do want to lift today is that we ensure that students families and staff get the support that they need to be successful we're talking about resource allocation here and um again we want to make sure in our budget development that that that's what we're doing we're making sure that our students and staff and our families are getting whatever they need to be successful here's our uh our priorities that were laid out uh we have one on early literacy one on learning experiences inclusion whole child and educator development I think we've spent a lot of you know we spent the last few years really really heavily focused on early literacy and learning experiences and this year you know we had a pretty solid plan to to Really shift our Focus or not shift our Focus but really lean into inclusion and creating those opportunities for kids unfortunately um the plan that we had developed relied on additional Staffing and we you know we just weren't able to to hire the amount of special education and elll teachers that we'd like to have you know uh our leading our our leading theory was that if we had a a special ed teacher on every grade level team that they could be a part of the planning they could be a a part of the grade level team and that they would just be able to better support students and co- te in in many of the classrooms and that was difficult to do um you guys have seen had 70 uh vacancies all year uh teacher vacancies that we haven't been able to fill so part of uh balancing the budget this year is just rethinking that Staffing model that that's that would be nice but we in in today's Staffing Market it's just not realistic so uh part of uh our balancing of the budget was eliminating you know some vacant positions that were very hard to fill and that we just couldn't fill um moving forward I think that admittedly uh there has been you know because we were focused on those two things at the top we've kind of I I don't want to say we've we've ignored uh these other two priorities but um our our our our Focus was really narrow on those two and and really what we're what we're seeing is that we think we have really good curriculum in place uh we have really good instructional practices in place uh our leaders are are well trained to really focus on instruction and what's going on in the classroom and help develop teachers with the instructional practices that they've been learning over the course of the last few years but admittedly we we need to do more to support you know School culture and um and mental health and you all know with uh with our teacher retention work group that a lot of a lot of the the recommendations that came out we're really focusing on in the upcoming year we've recently just announced a change in schedule that hopefully gets at our teacher retention we're our leadership team right now is heavily focused on trying to prioritize what our professional development is going to look like and to to uh differentiate it by years of experience which is uh some feedback that we had gotten along the way is that we need to you know we don't want a teacher that has been here for 20 years to be attending the same trainings that our first year teachers are are going if they've already done it um sometimes that's necessary right sometimes that that's really helpful when a teacher does need that support but we got to be more mindful about what we're providing uh about providing those differentiated supports to uh to our staff um I kind of alluded to this uh you know my leaders our leadership team at HPS has really been you know one of the things that we've gotten feedback is that we're trying to do too much right like there's so much and we really need to narrow our Focus areas and uh one of the things that we are doing for next year is is naming what our three Focus areas are going to be be and the first one is to deliver highquality lessons to uh ensure that all students develop grade level skills and are supported to reach grade level expectations um you know essentially like if we feel if teachers are prepared well prepared going into a class with a a strong lesson um it's going to lead to a much better experience for our students and our staff um our second Focus area for next year is going to be to use instructional feedback and student data to identify what students know what they need and adjust accordingly you know uh essentially we could summarize that by saying we need to look at student data and and make sure that we're making uh data informed decisions um and then the third one which really gets at those that that bottom hold child is to exe execute uh schoolwide systems and classroom strategies to promote student connection and positive learning behaviors so those are you know we've tried to really narrow in our what are the three priorities we're going to focus on next year that are going to be the highest leverage in terms of getting the outcomes we want for kids getting the experiences we want for kids and and being able to provide uh uh teachers with the supports that they need um I want to name you know I I I I'm sure all of you have uh heard in the news know a lot of the the budget challenges that people are facing um in surrounding communities and we're we're we're actually seeing that as well um we're we're in a unique position in that we're really strategic in how we used our Esser funding and we're we we happen to be a community that is benefiting greatly by the student Opportunity Act so the St student Opportunity Act is uh essentially general fund and uh three years ago they said you know what districts like hoolio are not getting enough to meet the needs of their community so they are going to be getting more essent the biggest change in the student Opportunity Act is that uh districts are getting more money for economically disadvantaged uh student uh bodies that is the majority of the student Opportunity Act so but what's what what the challenge is is that it's being fix phed in over a six-year period so they didn't they they say hey this is a target like you should be getting $27 million more every year but we can't afford $27 million so we're going to chip away at it over the next six years so we've been slowly getting uh a little more general fund Revenue every year and um our plan was let's use this Esser money to be able to uh to and then in three or four years we can hopefully sustain a lot of the inv Investments that we're making on the on this Federal on these federal dollars so we have two more years left of of uh after next year we have two more years left of student Opportunity Act increases and then it'll taper off it'll start to be more more based on inflation than it is uh implementation of a new funding model but I am very happy with you know some of the some of the Investments that that we have been making um you know we've we've recently settled contracts for par Professionals for clerical staff for our APS and Deans for our therapists our custodians and our Crafts People all all of those uh collective bargaining groups we've we've reached agreements with and and have ratified their contract so you know part of our salary increases for next year is is those increases um and uh how I what I mentioned before about things that were funded on S you are going to see some funky changes in some of our department budgets and that's because you know during the pandemic when we had these federal dollars we started investing in things like new curriculum or uh just generally investing and things and using Esser to do that and little by little we we're putting some of that stuff onto the general fund budget so the change from one year to the next uh eventually will stabilize um we did a a lot of that for our elementary and middle schools last in last year's budget we tried to take all the academic intervention teachers all the counselors that were on Esser and move them um one thing we weren't able to do last year was the high schools so a lot of the funding in in this year's school budget for the high schools was still on Esser so um you'll see a significant increase in the high school budgets because the stuff that we invested as on to to balance the high school budgets now is coming to the general fund um things that we funded on Esser that we're going to continue is is uh increase uh counseling staff so we want to make sure that every school has an adjustment counselor um we invested in academic intervention teachers so every school has at least one Ela and one math academic intervention teacher um and then uh our expert teachers as well these are teachers is that their main focus is is coaching other teachers and helping develop some of the uh professional development and essentially just serving as mentors and coaching other teachers in the schools every school has one um Ela and and one math um there is probably one school that is sharing um sharing one of those positions depending on how many teachers there are in that building so if there's not a lot of teachers in that building they could be sharing but um essentially this budget funds one of of each content Ela and and math um our deans of management and Ops I know that uh uh previous discussions that we've had at the beginning of the budget development process was that those were positions that we weren't going to um I don't know what I just did here so yeah that we weren't going to allocate uh but we were able to meet with all of our principles and principles have discretionary money so a lot of our principles decided to keep their deans of management and operations and the the primary reason for that is because the reason we hired these deans of management and operations was that so our principles can be instructional leaders you know so they're not they're not you know focused on lunch duty and and uh arrival and dismissal and every little uh every discipline issue that comes up in the school and scheduling and you know assigning substitute teachers is like all of that takes up a lot of time and when principles are spending their time doing that they're not spending their time focusing on instruction on instruction and helping helping uh uh make sure what's happening in the classroom is is what they'd like to see so you know after having them for two or three years the principles really wanted to make sure that they they continued them and they prioritize them in their spending plan um we've we this was another thing that was you know we've funded a lot of this on Esser and we've had to absorb it into the um general fund and that's the enhanced translation and interpretation Services you know we're we probably spending close to a million dollars on that now just to make sure that families that need their IEPs translated have them make sure that when we have Community meetings you know even now this this school committee meeting is is right now being interpreted live by our our interpretation team so those Investments we you know we couldn't afford them before Esser and SOA we funded them on Esser and they're moving to the general fund now while Esser uh is going away um those are just some of the Investments that that that we wanted to name around uh teacher retention development and mentoring program for first year teachers uh that is something that's new for this upcoming year so included in the budget is uh stiens for mentors so first year teachers our goal is that every single first year teacher in Holio Public Schools is going to have a mentor which is going to be uh another fellow teacher that has experience there's going to be an application process but there's also going to be compensation tied to that um that's something that we have heard loud and clear for the last you know at least five years uh we used to have mentors what what's going on with that so this upcoming school year we are making that um we are making that investment into into mentors for our first year teachers and uh you all know the announcement we made a couple of weeks ago about the change in the schedule which also came uh with uh additional compensation for our high school teachers um around technology uh we have servers that are seven years seven year years old and um luckily we've been able to uh uh over the summer we're going to be replacing those so they're really at their capacity and you know one of the things that we that that we saw on on our Panorama survey was you know uh around infrastructure so next year all of our teachers are going to be getting brand new devices and our internet is going to be much more stable because of the Investments that we're making um in these these uh servers and switches so so the servers uh the switches actually plug into the servers and that's kind of what you see right up here um we're also making a huge investment in student devices so um you know our plan right now I believe is that in uh grades K to five we're going to be replacing all the getting brand new devices for those and then starting a regular cycle of of making sure that our devices are replenished every uh when they reach the end of their useful life um a new curriculum that we're we're um that's specifically designed to support early literacy and students with disabilities and English Learners those are investments that that we've made and are making in the upcoming budget uh we had our our early literacy team and and Rebecca Thompson and Caitlyn come present at the last school committee meeting and as part of that you got to see what the uh kada2 uh curriculum adoption was going to look like for next year we do have a question um Miss Wilson um with the uh student and staff device replacement what's being done with the old devices yeah so the right now the plan is for the old devices to be used in in so like some of them are two years old three they're good that's what I'm saying that's why I'm Wonder they're going to be used they're going to be used still by Kid students in grade 6 to 12 and then and then the following year will be whenever those reach the end of their useful life will be investing in in devices for grades 6 to 12 okay thank you m tensley Williams Mr SoDo uh the money that's going to go to the general fund from Esser is that extra um money or no Esser is going away so the problem uh Miss Tenley Williams is that we have things that were funded on Esser and Esser is gone like it is no longer going to be able to support our operating budget after September 30th so um what we're doing is taking things that we invested using that Federal money and we're we're making conscious decisions that like we want to move that into our operating budget and where we're able to do that is because um student Opportunity Act has given us a little bit more money every year on the general funding we you know we technically hit a funding CL this year but we've been preparing for it yeah so you'll see in later in the presentation that you know part of our strategy to balance the budget is to use some one-time funding sources like our school choice fund and um like a general fund carry over to be able to like get us to a better place after next school year to where we don't have to use as much of those funding sources because we'll get more student Opportunity Act thank you okay um another thing that we you know we we've uh invested in and are going to continue to investing is uh a new Implement uh an implementation of of mtss so our we have a team right now that is uh trying to develop a plan for jolio public schools mtss it's comprised of two teams one that's focused on three teams one that's focused onal one that's focused on academics and another one that is focused on behavior and all those teams are are working together collectively under uh Dr Mahoney's leadership to uh to develop a plan for next year that we plan on um rolling out to principles at the end of June and uh to to hopefully make sure that that students are getting the supports that they need around seal around academics and around behavior um in terms of facilities and and improvements you know we we everyone knows that we're in the process of of constructing a new middle school so that work continues one thing we have slated for this upcoming s uh summer is that we're going to be replacing all the windows and the doors at Lawrence dunu and M and McMahon um for those of those of you that have driven by McMahon or Lawrence you can see though the windows are like foggy you can't even see the the natural light in the classrooms uh is not deal and and when you do make improvements like that it it really does feel like a new school like it it it really just brightens up the classroom and and um those are some really good Investments that we're making thanks to the msba and the uh the city council support for their portion of it um our plan is to also uh upgrade the HVAC and boiler at Dean McMahon Sullivan Ian white Morgan and dunu uh currently we're we're shopping that around are bidding that out I I'm not confident that we're going to be able to do all of those things because depending on how expensive the bids are when they come back it might mean we have to take one school off or two schools off if they come in higher than what we initially anticipating and um a playground replacement at Lawrence is is also in the works I have a question Mr colore do we have a contingency plan in case something drastic happens in our school system and and you you mentioned boilers but it could be anything roofs it could be uh the playground collapsing or something yeah some ordinary thing that so shouldn't happen but we we should have a contingency plan in works so that we can go and get it we don't have to go to the city council every time we're looking for something um we so we have a reserve for contingency it's about less than half a perc of the total budget so it's in the range of about 450,000 so we do have a contingency but I can't say like we still have to follow procurement law and net School spending law if a boiler breaks we can't use that to replace the boiler we have to go to the city and ask them to to replace it um because that's greater you know any in any facility upgrade that's greater than uh $250,000 you can't use the school department budget for and count it towards in that school spending that you have to go to the city and and ask because what happens is if we use that all it does is it is it increases what our net School spending is for next year so it's like we got to ask the city council at some point for that money anyway you know so to I I think the the best way to answer your question is that our contingency right now is about 450,000 Which is less than half a percent of the entire budget um but it can't cover every possible scenario I understand that but at least we have something we have something have something in the pot to in an emergency to go right away and get it done um you'll see uh in terms of Revenue our our general fund went up by 5.6 million or five% and that's that's really uh one year of the the the student Opportunity Act as you know as we talked extensively about um Charter School tuition reimbursement so this um has gone has gone up about 166,000 so that's money that we get for reimbursement of new charter school students our school choice funding we're actually using about a million dollars worth of school choice uh funding we haven't really used our school choice funding over the last couple of years because we knew this funding Cliff was coming so we we wanted to actually continue to to grow that fund so that we didn't have to make a ton of Cuts this year we we'll have another year of student Opportunity Act money in the upcoming school year um and then the something that's not part of net School spending is the transport transportation funding that went up a million and a half and I I will say that my I we're meeting with the city council tomorrow uh I anticipate that you know the majority of the questions and the majority of the uh the dialogue with the city council is going to be uh around this this transportation funding you know we we are doing everything that we can you know we we have strategies that we did to try to minimize those costs but the reality is is that you know the the cost of each bus has gone up but also you know a significant portion of that cost is out of District uh special education students and we have more of those students um which which leads to uh an increased cost and I want to name right now too that the the figure that we have in our budget is not even enough to operate the way we're operating so like we're going to have to do a lot of work to get to that number so I know you know at the beginning of the school year there was a lot of conversation about changing the mileage threshold and and increasing buses to different neighborhoods like this is part of the reason why we can't do that um most departments in the city of Holy Oak were asked to go only increase 2% right um and this is something that's completely out of our control um but we what we need to do is make sure that we're doing everything in our control to make sure we're being as efficient and and fiscally responsible as possible um and then this last one is really important to note you know I I we just talked about other communities cutting their budgets and other communities don't have the student Opportunity Act money that they have so they've made Investments using Esser um and are now in a position where they have to lay off people and make SE severe Cuts in programming and things like that we're not doing that um but part of how we are balancing the budget is we're using about 4 million in transition funding to get us there so um because we've had so many vacancies we're we're able we were able to uh carry forward about $3 million to help us balance next year's budget um the St state has graciously uh we haven't asked we haven't had turnaround money for the last couple of years and um you know I had this conversation with Russell you know three years ago they they were like what do you need for uh for for State funding and I said we don't need anything we got this Esser money but I promise you we're going to need some money in three years um and he held he held true to his promise um and they're giving us $750,000 this upcoming year through their state turnaround Grant which is available to to to districts that are in receivership um and then there's there's one time Esser money that Esser doesn't expire till uh September 30th so we're using some some of that to help balance our budget for next year um this this just depicts like what our Chapter 70 what our general fund look like for many many years um I think that you know my first year in in in uh School Finance was probably 2010 yeah 2010 um it looked a lot like what you see in 13 to 19 very very flat Revenue meanwhile health insurance is going up salaries was going up electricity was going up everything was going up but the revenue was staying flat and then came the student stud an Opportunity Act and that's where that's where you start you're starting to see these increases in funding um we're going to see this for two uh up until 2027 where then it kind of tapers off you can see that it's going up up up up up and then in 28 it kind of stabilizes that's what it's going to look like um and we just need to be smart with with our resources right and make sure that we're evaluating Investments like like yachi said uh Dr yat Rivera cologne said earlier in our subcommittee meeting is like when when do you say what's working and what's not working we do that every year through the budget development process um if we're in a position where we need to cut or invest like we have those hard conversations uh it's a very inclusive process um but we do have those conversations every year we have another question Mr wahan thank you yeah this is just probably um good time just to mention that we now have like a fiveyear budget plan in effect to kind of you know look at our revenues today and just um make sure that the revenues will be there in five years um you know because the funding sources might be leveling out so I just want to uh acknowledge that you know your team has been uh uh upfront yeah with that and just um you know we're not in u the same uh negative picture as some of the Str towns where they're they're using the exer money to plug their gaps you know so um so um I just want the public to know that we have a um long-term plan thank you thank you now on the expense side what we're what we see is uh salaries going up 2 and a half million or 4% um it it maintains Staffing that we had that we have had this year um and it also includes the the new collective bargaining agreements that that I named at the beginning of this presentation um and you know this number like I said would be higher uh but you know we're funding about a million dollars on salaries um on our school choice fund which we haven't really had to tap into um for for the last few years um in terms of supplies and services that's going up about a million and a half or 16% um and health insurance uh and other benefits is going up about 10% and we work with the city um the city just moved to a self-insurance uh policy and as part of that you know the school Department's portion did go up to about uh 10 10% whereas last year we didn't see any increase in health insurance for um active employees and then uh non-retirement which is another major cost driver in our budget went up about 8 and a half per. um out of District tuition I wanted to name that like although it looks like it went down I do have a slide in here that shows that it's going up drastically but what we've done is moved a lot of those expenses off of the general fund um and and onto that that the carryover fund that that we talked about earlier um so that so that uh we can you know wait for another year of student Opportunity Act funding uh we are in the process right now of working with a consultant that's helping us um take a look at special education and make sure uh that we're making the adjustments that we need um not just around cost but around better support for for our diverse learners and then our Charter and school choice just like the Holio Public Schools is getting an increase in their general fund money um the charter schools the way that funding works is we get all the money and then we pass it through to the charter schools so they're getting a little bit more even though their enrollment hasn't increased um they're getting more money through the student Opportunity Act um this uh this slide really is to to again address the transportation I did I do anticipate a lot of conversations with the school committee about this um it does include Charter School transportation um the the rates themselves have gone up by 5% but what has increased even more so is the amount of routes that we have for uh special education out of District routes doesn't necessarily mean that the number of students has gone up at the rate that the costs are going up um but definitely the amount of Vans and routes that we have um has increased and and you know that is one of the things that we are looking into you know we there's there's two schools in particular that have a lot of Vans going there so one of the one of the strategies that we have to try to work through to get us to the number that's in the budget is you know instead of using 11 Vans can we can we use 3 mini buses you know um you can fit more students on Mini buses and it makes more financial sense so we're exploring things like that um Mr wallan thank you um um can you kind of bring us up to speed on the current busing contract I kind of lost track of where that was I know we had a bid and they came back I think we were thinking about maybe having a a rebid yeah so last year we bid it out and it was awarded to Durham and vanpool and essentially it resulted in I believe a 133% increase um last year but um a 5% increase every year after that for five years so we'll see the rates going up by 5% every year for the next four years this is year one of a new contract Mr Kennedy um I'm sorry but I believe I I remember the conversation about the busing and when you were going over I think there were like what six different uh scheduling things this was the this was the cheapest for the district correct am I correct in saying that or am I completely just making stuff up yeah this was actually so we we did a public bid um and when you do a public bid Evan um Mr Kennedy uh you have to go with the lowest rate so the companies that we went with by far had the lowest rates the the next company uh the next closest company that other than Durham I I don't remember what the name was but they were like two and a half million more expensive than than what Durham is um but we do you know we got a lot of work to do internally admittedly like you know long it's going to have a long-term impact but not so much an immediate impact the IM in the immediate I know that we need to look at those routes those schools that have a lot of Vans going to them and seeing if there's an opportunity there to to do something different and then in the long term we we really got to evaluate or or review how our IEP meetings are going who's making the decisions on when transportation is is like putting some structure into that process is going to I think significantly impact the funding that that goes towards Transportation I'm not trying to take anything away I just want to make sure that we're doing what's right uh but I mean we have I've heard of and have wi you know when I was overseeing Transportation um there were there were buses going like across the street you know uh picking up kid and literally not even driving a block and bringing them to school because it's in their IEP like that doesn't make sense you know um and in some scenarios it it does but I know that it doesn't make sense in all scenarios right so we really got to think about like how those decisions are made who's making them and put some structure in place so that we're just being fiscally responsible the city can of our transportation budget right right now is more than the entire fire department's budget yeah yeah I know um my point no my point was like I know it's rare of me not to uh criticize the decisions made by District administration but I wanted to like point out that that was like the best financial decision for the district um because even though yes it doesn't look great that is what you know that is the best decision that could have been made at the time thank you Miss Wilson so I believe in um IP meetings the um special ed team leaders the settles are the decision makers for that um in the meetings and so you know I'm just going to reference back to before our current director of special education um the previous individual uh provided no training for a vast number of new specialed team leaders um and I think um that led us down the path to where we are now um so I just need to comment that I'm sure the you know the current director as well as the specialed team leaders are are going to be getting good advice as to how to make those proper decisions um and it's not you know using the word not benefit but require that students require this and it's not just benefiting thank you yeah thank you M Wilson and you know uh we had sped strategies come in and and do a review of of our special education department and one of the recommendations that they had was was really like really elevating the role of the the ETL and providing them with the right support so that they're so that they are they do feel empowered to make decisions at the building level um so there's going to be some changes in that in that area um it's not going to be a full quick implementation but we're we you know we definitely know that there's opportunity there to to provide better support and training um you know this is uh to Mr Kennedy's point I I think one of the one of the things that I want to name for the city council is some of the decisions that we made to to minimize the increase in Transportation uh which is was rebidding the the contract um even when we got that initial b bid like like you said Mr wellan we rebid it and changed some of the specs in there which which uh ended up saving us like $700,000 with the second bid uh We've adjusted school start times to make sure that we're Max every single bus that we have now is tiered we used to have a lot of buses that were on single tiers when we're paying for two tiers um they were on single tier so we took a look at all of our school start and end times and we we uh made sure that we were maximizing each uh bus that we were paying for um and those are those were things that we we did and and thanks to the city council too um I went to them at the start of fy22 um to ask them because the three-year contract had been up and I had asked them like look if we go out to bid right now we're going to see a 25% increase so uh let me negotiate a new contract with these for for the next two years and we were able to negotiate a 3% increase for those two years um but now that that five-year contract was up and we had to rebid and this is where we're at today um this just summarizes everything so our total budget all in with the uh just on the general fund is about 128 million um and that's about A6 million $6.6 million increase from uh last year to this year but but that in that also includes the increase of 1.2 million in transp ation and you could see here our normal process is we look at uh it towards the end of December we just try to Project based on what our enrollment is um and we were initially projecting a $6 million deficit and um that was assuming that we were going to keep everything that we had on Esser that we were just going to keep all the vacancies that we had open and uh then the governor's budget came out um and we met with department heads we met with principes and look evaluated the budget request and got that deficit down to about 782,000 and then um finally balance the budget using some of the strategies that that we talked about earlier in in the presentation um this slide here is is uh basically shows you how we come up with our operating budget this is uh it starts at net School spending um the city takes some of that money for admin costs like the treasury Department the procurement office things like that and then uh we add a charter reimbursement to get to our adjusted net School spending number and then these this this second set of numbers is not included in our net School spending it's transportation uh crossing guards Medicare Medicaid processing and leases that are greater than three years old so these are all things that are above the net School spending requirement that the city uh kicks in and then they take back some money for uh insurance and other benefits and retirement so the city withholds about 11.4 million doll of the school Department's money for for the benefits for insurance um and and retirement benefits um and we work with the city on those numbers to come up with our net School uh budget appropriation I think the point I want to enforce here is that we're funded at the very minimum net School spending number um thankfully we have the student Opportunity Act and that number has gone up but we're not you know we're not asking the the city to provide us with funding above the net School spending requirement Mr wahan thank you yeah just to kind of um emphasize you know um is it fair to say that the city pays really the taxpayers pay around 12% of the city budget the rest is funded through the a little less than 12% little less 12 okay okay that so that percentage has stayed uh yeah true okay yeah I have a slide that shows that in theing um this is what the city looks this is what the city budget looks like in their budget book so when we go to city council tomorrow it's just these two lines and then the the state assessments um and that ties to the previous slide on how we got to the net School spending number some assumptions that we're built into our budget is we're using the house Ways and Means budget so um at the end of the fiscal year when the when the governor adopts the budget we will re-evaluate if there was any impact we're also assuming that the city's going to meet their the net School spending requirement we're assuming that you know circuit breaker is not going to get cut we're assuming that title one will not be cut significantly um that all our eate applications are going to be approved and that enrollment is going to be fairly consistent with what we uh with what we initially did in our school Staffing allocations generally speaking that that usually is the case the place where it it could get a little tricky is prek and kindergarten um because we get a lot of late registrations and um right now we're assuming that the we have the same amount of kindergarteners that we had this year but who know you know until they register we won't know exactly how many kindergarteners we we will have um our another major assumption is that we'll have uh lost time and attrition about 1.2 million that's a reduction from the what was in the current year budget um and and and then that our our general fund carry carry forward is going to equal about 3 million which we're going to use to help balance the budget and that the state is going to follow through on their their uh commitment to giving us uh that $750,000 in turnaround money and I they did mention to me uh not in writing yet but that they're going to increase it to add the um the review of the policies so they're going to give us a little bit more money to cover that cost that's good um now we're going to get into uh the I think we can uh move to the department budgets in in a minute but uh this is some again some higher level uh facts about about the budget so about 88 a half% to your point uh Mr wellan comes from Chapter 70 State a and then 11 and a half% comes from uh local taxes that does not include Transportation though um and then you know according to the latest data that was published on des's website we're one in 16 communities in the entire State that's uh funded at or below minimum net School spending requ requirement so when you look at how other communities fund their schools um on average they fund them about 25% above the net School spending requirement if we were to be funded 25% above the net School spending requirement that would mean we would have $28 million more than what we have and I'm not say like the reality is is that this community can't afford that right the communities that are doing that you know can afford it like Cambridge and like Long Meadow and all these other communities that they have the tax base to do it so I'm not saying this to uh talk negatively about our community or anything it's just an interesting fact that um other communities that have the ability to do to to fund above net School spending do and on average in the state of Massachusetts that's about uh about 25% so here's a quick picture of what how much of our funds come from State and how much come from local again uh 88 and a half and 11 and a half% this just shows the two uh the three districts that uh that locally contribute the least um are Lawrence Springfield and Holy Oak so we're we actually go back and forth with Springfield every year um but right now uh in in this year's budget Springfield actually uh is only contributing about 9% whereas ho y's about 11 and a half perc Mr Wan yeah thank you for um the stats yeah I mean this is where the student opportunity money comes into play because you know uh the city of Hoy doesn't have the funding to to really um fund our schools um above that school SP again we're not in the same situation as Newton and Cambridge and Brooklyn okay I won't go on after that you know this chart that you're showing here is you know some of the poor um poorest communities in in the state and we're we're just one of them I mean that's that's just the facts the statistics will show that you know that's not an opinion it's just a fact know so this is where the money that we're getting from the uh um uh the student the student opportunity um act really comes into play thank you are correct Mr wellan this that's why the student Opportunity Act is so important in a community like holy o um this is how we organize our budget so um you know when we talked about you know part of the ation with the local control committee was deciding what cost centers we want to review like my recommendation or not my recommendation but this is these are the cost centers that that we've organized the budget so it allows us the flexibility that if we want to move money from one school to another we don't have to go back and you know schools don't if they want to move money within their budget they can do that because it's all within that yellow slice so I do want to name that you know pupil services for example is 11% but I would say that the you know 10% of what you know maybe I'm not I don't want to throw out statistics but the majority of the pupil Services budget and the majority of the you know academics budget and um you know so so strategy and transportation like those are all like direct services to our students and um especially in in pupil services like we that's where we house all of our onetoone pair of professionals where we house our related service providers so like this this piie when you know if if you include all those school-based costs that are managed by in in a separate cost center um you know the majority of the money is actually in schools and not not these departments it's just where it's managed um you can see here uh I mentioned like there's going to be some changes that are a little bit out of whack and I actually have uh explanations for all of these um but you can see you know academics and school leadership going up a lot of their expenses were funded on Esser last year and we you know we've moved some of those investments into the academics general fund budget um we we saw a decrease in finance the strategy in transportation is really 1.2 million of that is the transportation budget um Human Resources uh that's where we had uh some increases and we're going to go through the reason why I asked our our team to be here is that if you have any questions in you know academics for example uh I have Rebecca here if you have any uh detailed questions that you wanted to ask um Sean available online Sean's online and we have other other cabinet members that are online that are um ready to answer any questions that you will will have um uh academics and school leadership increase like I said because uh a lot of the stuff was funded on Esser and we were we moved it to the to the general fund one of them being um curriculum and assessment contracts um some literacy tool ERS that we had that was funded on Esser we had a a manager of uh culturally responsive education that helps um support our ethnic studies program that was funded on Esser and we've moved it to the general fund in this cost center and the mentor stiens that we talked about so uh we want to make sure that every new teacher has a mentor those stiens are now included in the academics budget which is um which is why that that cost center has gone up so in academics um we've organized uh the academics budget into these categories so dual language Early Education Ela and Humanities ethnic studies Extended Learning Math Science Social Studies Dei office of school leadership and academics and then Arts music physical education and health you know um I want to make sure that that you're all aware that this doesn't include like our art teachers and our music teachers these are just the expenses that um that our district that are housed at the district level and spent at the district level but for sure schools are uh you know art teachers and music teachers and fiza teachers they show up in that big yellow pie part of the pie where where it says schools um and there you know art supplies and music supplies and fizzed supplies that's all in the school's budget already it's not it's not separate here we do have some like a small amount of money that the department heads for those for those uh content areas uh um support the the teachers but every teacher in this upcoming budget year is get has $300 for supplies separate from you know the the normal Supply budget that that principles had Mr Wan thank you again yeah just not a long discussion just some comments I know um been talking about getting more uh more of the student population um involved in the arts arts and and the music hopefully you know next next couple years we can have that that number increased maybe maybe 10% good um you know as a former history major in college you know the social studies 1% you know the lowest one you know so I like to see that you know increase too just uh you know the um have our student body just be um aware of you know history thank you yeah I appreciate your comments I I do want to reinforce though that um our art music PE and health budget is a lot bigger than that 7% because a lot of the a lot of the cost is really teachers and the supplies that schools purchase so they just don't show up in these cost centers um but your your point is taken I also wanted to name that we do have music and art in every single school um allocated teachers right uh some schools have had a very difficult time trying to find um art and music teachers and in turn have have had to make decisions around what electives students are getting because for example they can't find a music teacher so they had to be creative and do and and and create a different elective where they had a staff member that could do it um and encourage them to apply Mr Kennedy um just to kind of clarify something that Mr wellan said superintend Soo it's it's uh I'm correct in saying that social studies the ethnic studies and Humanities are all essentially like not not even close to the same curriculum has the same goal right in like what it's teaching it's teaching you know like the the history of everything so I mean it's not just that 1% it's just that specific curriculum that's at 1% am I correct do you know what I'm saying it's whatever supplies are in this budget for that department head so we have a director of science um and we don't have a director of social studies at the moment but we do have a department head I believe that that makes up you know a portion of the social studies budget or we might have some curriculum in there that we've purchased to allocate to schools but this doesn't include every social studies teacher in the in the district like it's just not in this budget it's in the school's budget so we we have way more we have a lot of social studies teachers we have a lot of ethnic studies teachers they just don't show up in this budget in this section of the budget yeah any questions for either me or Rebecca or uh Mr Mogel all right um included in your packet I kind of wrote explanations to all the changes so I'm going to move on to the next Department if if no one has questions great uh the next section here the next uh department or cost center is around transportation and strategy and really um our chief of of strategy and turnaround Aaron lynville she oversees uh our Communications Department our Enrollment Center and homelessness uh support um department and our transportation department uh the majority of the cost is is 1.2 mil the 1.2 million doll increase for transportation so um you could see that transportation is going from about 10.2 million to 11.7 million in next year 15% um we we see a small decrease in in Communications uh because we moved one of our language access um interpreters from the Communications Department to actually be on the translation interpretation team so they'll show up in the special education section of this budget but this this budget's pretty self-explanatory here we have a uh in Enrollment Center um where families come uh staff support them amilies are able to get support with enrolling their kid uh if they're making changes or anything like that that that's the uh that is the place that they go it's on the first floor right hand side of 57 suffix Street any questions Human Resources we saw a $195,000 increase no increase in FTE um um and the majority of that increase uh is due to shifting budgets from we had a teacher diversification Grant and um and Esser money uh where we were funding all of our pipelines um you know we had a pair of professional Pathways program that was funded on on the on Esser or that teacher diversification Grant so what we did was we tried to keep as much on this teacher diversification Grant um as we could but the the remainder of it you know we are committed to uh uh making sure that we're developing our staff developing our peras and maintaining these pipelines that we have um and and so we've shifted those costs it wasn't an increase in like the scope of work that the HR department is doing it was simply a matter of taking something that we we've been doing for the last three years and moving it from Esser to um uh to the general fund any questions on human resources so with wison sorry so with the pathways um for the par professionals or par Educators I'm not sure what their preferences in our city um so you know are we helping fund their uh development to become Educators through this um I have I have Beth online and and if the committee would allow her to speak I so um if so if there's a motion to suspend the rules but can we just do it for every department just in case I mean I think yes it's more prudent to do it that way so if there's motion to suspend the rules for any potential department head during this presentation s a second so um you know what I just had a brain fart right now um if there's no one opposing um go right ahead all right Beth thank you for joining yeah thank you for having me um so the the pipelines and Pathways we always welcome um the PA professionals to participate in things like the urban teacher pathway and things of that nature we are in the process of building out other other pathways for the PA professionals to become teachers as well um for example this past year we we developed a partnership with UMass for Early Childhood that focused more on par professionals who do not already have a bachelor's degree so um a lot of a what you see here on the teacher diversification Grant and the S um funds shifting it it's those pipelines and Pathways that we were building out um that are shifting on to general fund now um because we want to sustain that and we do offer financial support for pair professionals um that's for tuition assistance Beth is that does that cover tuition assistance as well um it that that is part of it uh for some of them the structure is different depending on the pipeline the pathway that they choose and the program that they're participating in so I have a follow-up to that um my question is is there any um commitment to staying in the district after receiving support from our district to to get this next level of uh education yes so right now we're asking for a three-year commitment um on average i w I will say like it depends on the amount that we're providing the individual what sort of commitment we are asking for um but generally speaking we're asking for a threeyear commitment after the completion of the program thank you all right moving on thank you so much Beth any other questions for Beth uh the next uh budget is our operations and Technology budget you can see um in that that cost center um the majority of it is Operation so this is where our custodians are this is where our utilities are for electricity and and heat um this is where our Craftsman are like when to your point Mr Kore when when something you know when something's wrong with the heat uh we do have like Cody for example as one of our partners that that you know they're a phone call away and and we have it an existing uh contract and partnership with them to support stuff like that so that's where um that's where this budget is and really we we've just really tightened down so we've we we saw a small uh decrease in the um operations and Technology budget uh there were some things in our technology budget that we had during the pandemic so we we just rethought about um some of you know some of the subscriptions that we were holding that we no longer needed um we maybe we you know Zoom is zoom is an example right we had Enterprise licenses for everybody in the district for example but not everybody needs it right like Cu uh that was when all of our teachers were doing remote uh learning and had to have a an Enterprise account that allowed them to to be on Zoom for more than 45 minutes um so just things like that we're we're just being a little bit more um smart about and um so uh we also saw some Savings in our utilities budget um obviously with the removal of PEC one of the things that PE was was uh uh it was definitely a drain in energy um and not having that school online uh we were able to save some money on on utilities any questions operations or technology moving on pupil Services um and MaryAnn is not here today she actually had uh some something with her son um who is receiving an award today so uh we're we're sorry she's not here today but uh we'll do the best that that we can Sean Sean's online as well so our our special education budget is organized into these cost centers here so we have our special ed summer school special education services our etls our related service providers so OT PT speech um are psychologists and then uh the biggest part of it is our autod district tuition costs which is which represents the majority you know Le a little less than half of the the special education budget Miss Wilson um we've spoken several times about the out of District tuition I'm I'm wondering if you can give um school committee members a breakdown of um more in depth as to like per student what the cost is just so we can have a a better understanding of the out of District tuition absolutely that would be great I think yeah uh if uh Ellie if you can provide me with like the level of detail you want like if you're looking for like the amount by school or how many students we have enrolled in each School we'd be happy to provide that I can definitely do that for you thank you okay I think what would be good in there is not only the the different out of District uh placements that we are using it's kind of also what was the previous that we were paying before what it is the new year what it's forecast going to be for for the following the other thing based on that is also are you taking into account in um in the budget when we're looking at Services is again we talked about a lot of positions that you know we've had great difficulty especially when we're looking at Specialized services such as speech therapy um are you taking into count the cost that it that it's giv are you still when you're creating this budget looking at it as if we still don't have those positions and we're using these outside sources that are costing us more than had they have been an employee um yeah that's a great question and um Sean has worked with Maryanne to try to figure out like what the right amount of Professional Services and what the right amount of positions is and we think that we're going to be Sean I don't know if you want to chime in here CU I know you were working closely with Maryann yeah no we reviewed that very closely this year as part of um developing this budget um for the most part we did stick with positions and what happens if we can't fill the position then we shift it over um to contract to Services um but I know for example we've seen a little bit better luck this year um I know we had a um some psychologist applicants for example where we hadn't had many in Prior years um so at this point still a lot of it's budgeted in the position side um but we are constantly monitoring that to see if we have to um if it's unrealistic that we're going to fill a position do we just start budgeting it on the contract of services side but unfortunately as you noted like it's a lot more expensive sometimes double the price so um we want to continue to actively try to find people whenever possible no and I and I agree that absolutely we should be trying our hardest um but at the same time I kind of look at it this way I guess tell me the worst end right now and then if if it turns out that we're on the better end I'm happier then um versus then finding out well you know now we kind of needed to use more because and I know for a fact that we had a lot of difficulty in in filling those positions so we were looking for outside um vendors to provide those services to our students and we still owed back but um I was I was just thinking you know being more prudent towards it and just you know I don't know because I don't think we filled every position for speech therapy or did we not with not with not with uh employee candidates we we definitely had to get some outside providers to help support so it's just building that budget as if we're going to still continue using our outside Services even if we do end up hiring people yeah thank you so again out of District tuition it looks like it's going down but it's not going down it's just that we're we're not funding a big Port $3 million of it is not funded on the general operating budget we're using general fund carryover um we did add uh a two uh two ETL positions that were funded on Esser we moved them to the general fund and the increase in sped Services is about a million 1.1 million of of translation costs that we previously were funding on Esser so that's an area that like we're going to continue to to monitor um if we don't need that much money um to uh translate IEPs um you know this is is one of those kind of unfunded mandates right where we're required to do this work but the Chapter 70 formula doesn't really address uh uh communities that have a higher need of of of language access in in the community um but we're committed uh this year for sure and and in future years to uh find the right balance between how many translators interpreters we have on uh internally on our team and how much we have we have to get uh you know language uh other other companies to help us with uh interpretation and and uh translation and I know I'm just kind of going to go off topic here but it's based on what you were how you were saying you know the translation it's it's a it's an it's a mandated but it's not funded right but it's just like patient signing a a document to go under the knife right but not really understanding because I'm telling it to you in English and you only speak Spanish but let's go even further right what about families individuals that even their reading and understanding of literature whatever it is that they're reading that it might be at a third grade level even those IEPs they're not even understanding and they're signing um so it's how do we even break it down even further so that when people are signing these IEPs at the end of the day it's about the support for for that child to succeed and if they're really not understanding what they're signing it's really also not not providing the student with the resources that they need Miss Wilson so the state is put um we are having a new IEP form and I think um you know the push is to move away from the educator lingo and move into a student and parent Guardian friendly language um so that things are more understandable for all um you know I can tell there's you know significant training as far as that goes um with this new IEP format no no worries thank you um so this this next slide is really shows what's going on in in um our out of District so you can see we have about 114 students that are currently in AO District placements and uh next year we're budgeting about $13.4 million so um you can see the big jump from 23 to 24 was primarily due to the OSD increasing the rates by 14% so with a lot of these schools the OSD just sets the rate and last year they they increased the rates by 14% uh which meant you know even for each student we had to pay uh more money and I think this you know that that jump from 23 to 25 really speaks to that more so than the you know the increase in 13 students Mr Wan yeah I mean the numbers haven't really gone up that much and right you know it's just you know the rates you know I mean come on $6 million to 13 so it's doubled yep you know the amount of students hasn't doubled yeah I mean they've provided us with some temporary relief right like they have a circuit breaker Relief Fund this year that allowed us to uh you know to soften this a little bit but long term I you know I think they're financially in a position to do that but long term that 14% is not going to go back like that's going to you know that that's the new rate moving forward you know right I have to let Sean back in here so all right um and then there's the budget for uh our budget basically the superintendent and and school committee budget I think the the majority of that budget is legal expenses and reserve for payout so we did we did uh cut that out of the budget and we're using our our um our reserve for contingency budget bu budget to in case if something comes up that normally would have came out of that you know $90,000 line item will use our reserve for contingency budget I do want to point out and add here that we did add uh into our budget the 0.5 uh FTE for admin assistant that that position is currently posted we we had one applicant um the posting had closed I just reopened it again again earlier this week I'm hoping to get more candidates interested and then I'm going to be working with Miss lefave to uh to interview any candidates and and hopefully get somebody here that could help support um you know with with with everything that that this the school committee needs any questions schools we organized it in Middle High School elementary the transitions our Athletics budget our nursing budget um and then the charter and choice that's what shows up in the the schools line item um again the charter and choice we can't really like there's nothing we can do to control those numbers I do have enrollment numbers it shows that you know Charter School enrollment actually has gone down a little bit um but because they're getting more money for student Opportunity Act the the cost there is is pretty significant and you could see here um a lot of why it looks like middle and elementary schools is going down is because we're using that million dollars in the the school choice fund and last year I mentioned that at the beginning of my presentation we took a lot of expenses off of Esser and moved it to the general fund but we did that for elementary and middle schools we didn't do that for high schools so the high school's budget last year was balanced using about $1.5 million or $1.2 million in Esser money and this year since that going away we had to put we had to put that into their budget on the general fund so that's why it looks a little bit um a little funky there but moving forward as we continue to uh implement the student o Opportunity Act you'll see these these large changes will start to stabilize because everything will be baked into the general fund and we won't have these like one-time funding sources um you can see uh on the next slide I actually kind of went into explaining you know at the middle school for example like a lot of I I I opened with um this inclusion model that we had that there was a grade level uh special education teacher at every level we had you know 70 one teacher vacancies we really tightened up what what our staffing model should be uh based on what what the market is and that's part of the reason why you you see a decrease there any questions Mr colore can you tell me where the by% yeah um Sean are you on yes but I didn't hear the question clearly the question is why did Athletics go down by uh 1% by $5,000 we can we can certainly let me take a let me take a quick look but um essentially the way we build that budget is we sit with the athletic director and go through each line item um each year and and essentially level Service uh fund it so um this is a level Services budget but I can get you the the specific why I L down 5,000 we can get that to you so it could mean there was very low participation um in in a particular I'm not saying we eliminated a sport but maybe we' you know I'm giving you an example of what that could be we sit down with Mel Martin and we go through like what do you need for coaches what do you need for equipment and this is the budget that she provided we didn't we didn't cut the Athletics budget um this is what she needed to continue to to to fund the athletic program as is and we've made we've also made some pretty significant Investments outside of this operating budget um to get to get meel and and the Athletics what they need get to Mel and say how how can we increase the enrollment of our programs so that we have different sports and uh and I can I really say this our athletic clothing is the best I'm so proud of that when we go traveling all over the state to perform for the city of hoyo that our equipment and our jerseys are really really nice and I don't want that to go away because it's not just representing hyok high school it's representing the city of hyok all these students going different places and looking looking sharp yeah but I'd like to increase see if we can increase uh if students aren playing one sport can you entice them to try to play another sport we would like to increase that too Mr Kore I think what's happening now is students in like students interest in certain sports right like we can't for example we we don't have a hockey team right we don't have enough kids that want to play hockey so that's that's why we don't have a hockey team if we had enough kids that were interested in hockey and we could feel the team we would definitely have a hockey team uh over time what has happened is that we just haven't had that level of interest at in hoolio in that particular sport for example so we have to partner with other you know with with another school district to make sure that if we do have one or two kids that wants to play hockey that they have the opportunity to do that but I can certainly talk to Mel and ask her if she has any strategies or or or recommendations on how we could boost participation in sports I'm sure she'll have a lot to say and I'll make sure I share that with you yeah I and I agree you know we there might be some sports that we never even thought about that pickle ball that maybe we can form a team but of course the problem is the other schools don't aren't providing that kind of a support so I understand what Mel has to go through to get different teams playing so we'll just have to encourage Mel to go out and look for other sports for kids to play yeah thank you thank you um this uh this slide these next few slides are just about cost drivers so on average uh you could see what our average Health cost health plan costs are um one of the slides showed how much money we're we're we're allocating to the city for our share of the cost but you can see healthc care cost continues to rise and our average teacher salary has also um risen as well for uh every every year since you know since about 2020 and uh we're act you know next year is when we're we'll actually enter into negotiations with with the teachers we've you know that's just when the three-year contract is up and we'll begin those negotiations next year for the following year this is a list of our Charter School expenses you can see just like our general fund it's gone up since 21 because of the implementation of the um of the student Opportunity Act and the the reimbursement has has remained pretty steady around $2 million um here is a trend of of enrollment you can see that our highest point of enrollment was about 845 students that were choosing to go to Charter Schools and we're about we're down to about 666 um I think a a you know a good portion of that could be that Paulo Ferrera closed um which which I know we received a lot about 70 of those students came back to Holy Oak um to finish out their their High School career um but you know it's this you know I I just the the point I wanted to make here is that Charter School assessments aren't going up because enrollment is going up it's it's just a function of the student Opportunity Act and um here's a choice enrollment I know that you know a narrative that I heard a lot in in many years is that choice enrollment continues to go up it's been relatively flat for the last since you know 2019 when um you know when right after the pandemic you know I think a lot of families ended up um I know Private School enrollment has definitely gone up you know when we were forced to be remote and and there was no options for in-person learning uh Charter Schools I mean uh parochial schools did weren't under the same strict guidance and they were able to accept applications and some families chose to go there and and stayed there um you can see some a group of you can see a decent amount of students also choosing to come to Holio public schools that live in other communities either Springfield or chape we have about 834 of them um which that has grown as well since 2015 when we only had about 50 50 of them and lastly I'll close out with with just saying that um we you know we have a new we we've rethought our staffing model um and uh Sean is in the process right now of of actually writing a staff allocation manual that I hope will be completed by the end of the year the the fiscal year so that we can explain kind of how we you know how we develop our staffing models at every school you know what are the target class sizes how many uh custodians how many academic intervention teachers I think it'll be a good resource and tool to use especially when we're talking about local control and uh budget being a huge part of what the school committee is going to be responsible for I think this this staff allocation model was an attempt to really be Equitable and make sure that that that you know we're not just favoring one school over another there's a clear you know uh formula or process to determine how many teachers are allocated at what school and it's Equitable and I can tell you from experience that when I first got here that was not the case there were some schools that were getting a lot more than other schools based on different factors and one of the things that we've tried really hard to do is to come up with an equitable process to distribute resources and that's what this staff allocation model uh seeks to do um and then uh I'm not going to go through all of these but um you can see some of the Investments that we've made in each one of our priorities so learn uh new curriculum for grades K to2 uh instructional coaching tutoring for learning experience we have art and music in every school dual language programming and out of school time like after school programming um and you know again I'm not going to name all of them but um that that information is in your packet and my final thoughts is that you know the the we're going to continue to see student Opportunity Act Revenue increase for the next couple of years um thankfully we're not in a position where other communities were this year where we where they had major layoffs or program reductions uh we've been able to maintain this upcoming school year with not increasing our class sizes not cutting programming um and everything that we did was aligned to our strategic plan which drove our budget process and I hope that with you know with um with the hiring Market kind of Shifting and other communities that have chosen to use their Sr money for Staffing and are not able to continue those Investments That We're you know we're not going to be in a position where we have a ton of vacancies every year like uh all year like we have that is a hope um you know we we're seeing an increase in applicants um and I hope that that that that comes to fruition um some uncertainties really is the rising Transportation costs and um what the impact of inflation is going to be on on everything that we do here at HPS and then making sure you know continuing to work with our local legislators to make sure that the the state continues to fully fund the student Opportunity Act because we are relying on that to um to to continue to invest in the things that we have been any other questions Mr Wan thank you yeah no no real questions just want to thank you and your team for the budget and um all the hard work that you you put in place um like I said a lot of towns are um they're having layoffs um they losing programs you know there's some infighting um with the budget um allocation and the budget development uh so we haven't seen those those issues here which is good um so um just want to thank you I know Mr cmore M Wilson are part of the finance team and so um we've had um uh many um Finance meetings talking about the budget and just the budget development and you know the what the trends are like I said you know just just to follow up on what you said just with um the UN the uncertainties with inflation you know the the vacancies that's still an issue that um hopefully will rebound and again just um uh the transportation costs you know it's unfortunate that we're putting so much so much revenue into you know a an item that doesn't really provide you know know doesn't really enrich enrich um student learning you know that's that's really um uh sad but um thank you again I appreciate it thank you Mr Kennedy um overall I'm actually um not displeased with this budget presentation um I will say like for the staffing wise uh I like that you have started to put more effort into trying to combat um the increase in well yeah trying to you know help students mental health I will say like my biggest uh complaint about this district is how I feel as though our mental health is often put aside um I even went so far as to you know an entire presentation on that and present it to you um that's a very that's a that's a key component of making sure our schools operate and I will say Dean I believe is I'm not going to say we're the smallest School Compared to North we are pretty small school and we have two adjustment counselors we have two other counselors and I think like an intern person who works with the adjustment counselors and we have River Valley coun Counseling Center in our building and even then sometimes they get incredibly overwhelmed and just there isn't enough resources um so I appreciate that you're trying to put more effort into combating that increase uh had way more but of course that's just going to turn to word vomit um yeah I can't think of anything else I I had more to say I promise but I'll tell you later if I think it yeah thank you goad sorry go ahead um another thing about the pan the Panorama survey part of that was like the staff didn't feel as though they were listened to like last January when the survey was uh presented and this appears from the presentation it appears that that has you've been working towards fixing that and you know relaying adjusting your methods to that uh result again I haven't actually spoken to many of the teachers so I don't know if they feel heard but it looks like that is what is happening um of course I will talk to talk to the people and get the behind the scenes but that is what it appears so yeah we're actually releasing this Friday is that right Dr Mahoney um this Friday we're going to be doing a a shorter version of the Panorama survey to staff to really see like hey how did we close out the year has things got better um so um interested to see those results and share them with the school committee as well uh but that email is going out um I promised this school committee that we would send a follow-up survey in May a shorter one and that's going out this week great excellent no further questions all right um next on the agenda um is new business school committee meetings uh school year 2024 to 2025 all right thoughts I oh no we haven't finished yet Miss tensley Williams I know you got a poem for announcements they keep asking me to do it I know I know um thoughts on our school committee meetings um continuing twice a month or once a month with ensuring that um our subcommittees are able to meet meet and be able to have fruitful meetings and have their documentation done so what is everybody's thoughts on that if you want to continue twice a month also or the second meeting can just be focused on school committee itself what are your goals what are um what are some of the school committee goals you want to do or working on policies whatever the case is Miss tensley Williams um we need to give the sub committees time to work on what they need to work on so maybe have once a month but if we're getting more done by having two a month then we have to do that but we need to give subcommittees time know because a lot of times if we're having them twice a month that's not giving them too much time to get prepared with what they need to do okay that's just my thoughts Miss Wilson did do you have your hands raised I did have my hand raised um I believe that um moving forward especially to local control I believe that having the meetings twice a month is the appropriate number of meetings um that's my thought Mr wahan yeah thank you yeah yeah just um um concur with Mrs Mr Wilson um uh twice a month is is uh preferable to me I know one of the problems with having the meetings once a month is if something's something's tabled okay table an issue and then we bring it back a month later and we sort of forget what discuss what would happen and we kind of talk about it again and it's not on the agenda we had issues with the agendas things not going on the agenda correctly then becomes two months okay and you you sort of lose track of the issue so I think I think the body this body owes the public to be here twice a month okay great anybody else Mr colmer I have to agree with what they're both saying uh it's a big try to get every single thing in one meeting this way beforehand I just keep leing it over to you I uh we need time to review every single subcommittee and what I'm saying is people have to understand why there're subcommittees so you go to it's referred to a subcommittee whether you're on the committee or not you should be if you're interested in a certain subject that's going to come up at that meeting you should be there to help them and also to uh get more knowledge on what's going on why we're trying to change it it's and you just can't do it everything on one agenda and get it done so I I think we did the right thing I hope we continue to uh have two meetings a month Mr Kennedy sorry I now I don't get a vote but um my thought on the matter is that the meetings twice a month first of all we've been having meetings twice a month for a couple months now and I think we've gotten out in three hours maybe once I think that like with everything on our agendas for each meeting it is still a very long meeting and after a while first of all you just your brains just don't work from you know what a couple months ago we were here well I wasn't you were here until like what 10 o'clock a couple months ago like adding everything to one agenda is going to be overwhelming also we are officially in the transition process to regain to local control so we need to be able to stay up to dat on everything in our district we saw just a couple weeks ago things can drastically change in three days right in our district so we need to keep up to date in we need to stay keep the public informed up to date um so I think that two two meetings a month is adequate and what the students and teachers and people in the district deserve okay so this was just to get a feedback um we're not voting on anything it was just to kind of get feedback on on people's thoughts um so we're going to go ahead um the mayor and myself to create the the schedule schu for the the new school Year's school committee meetings up through December 31 2024 um the other thing is is um announcements I know in here we didn't put down like the different subcommittees and I see one thing that's not on here and I hope you have it on your calendar is the joint school committee City Council meeting the regular meeting not the not the interview one this is the Joint City Council school committee they're going to be meeting on June 13th at 6:30 in City Hall 6:30 or 6 6:30 is what I have and I am going to follow up with that you have 6:30 right that's the that's not the interview for the candidates this is uh the regular meeting of the school committee city council stop confusing people because right now we're on something else right so that one is where we were putting in what was referred to the Joint Committee was the changing of the name the process that will be discussed there so Dr Rivera cologne if you could be there um because that'll be on there you have that on your schedule correct  sure you did the what oh oh the budget thing or budget meeting okay all right now the other thing is that the mayor wanted me to make sure that I got out to everyone and did the clarification June 18th at 6:00 p.m. the school committee along with the city council will meet in city council chambers to interview and then appoint who's going to fill the vacancy into the at large school committee position now here's the the big part this person that becomes um elected or appointed by both committees will serve the remaining of the first two years because they will have to a and for up to up to December 31st 2025 because according to our Charter according to our policies at the next mun municipal election there will be a special election specifically to fill in that vacancy for the remaining years so right now whoever is going to go through the interview and is appointed will serve in Miss brunell's vacant position up until December 31 2025 so that means if they want to be elected for that seat they need to pull nomination papers in January or February whenever it opens um in 2025 to then hopefully get elected or voted in by the people in November of 20125 and then they would then continue to serve the last two years because then technically that position would run again in 2027 right so any questions I know it's so confusing Mr colore than Mr wahan is it possible is it possible whoever these candidates are and send in their resumés that we get the resumés beforehand rather than the night of that meeting we we're looking through all kinds of resumees uh if there's the city clerk gets them get get them to us as as quickly as possible you know so that uh we can have a look at the resumés beforehand and then according to what I'm hearing is someone can walk in that night and uh put in an application for the position whether they have a resume or not their name will still go on for for election that kind of sounds like a run from the floor type of thing but no um so I had asked right that's something that they do and all they run from the floor um I had asked that question um because so far there have been two people that have submitted and I asked are we sending these out out as we get them it it was no it's up until the closing date and then all of them go to you so then you can review because it was said that it's better for everybody to have the ability to go through these um applications slrs because it's a letter of intent with their resume okay so that um all of us each have the chance to really read it it get to kind of know the person by what we're reading so that when we go to the meeting we're kind of pretty much informed right and so when we're asking questions maybe you can even personalize it right um I have to find out when is a specific cut off date for people I have it oh you have the specific cut so go ahead Miss Wilson June 18th is the cut off date oh so then I need to kind I'll contact the chair and find out you how are we going to do this um because again you should have the ability to have that ahead of time even if it's three days in advance um so you can just review the applications and the resumés Miss Wilson plus the posting says that um the applicant will uh their term will expire in 2027 right so today he just sent the email because they looked over the so that all has to be updated okay thank you all that has to be updated that's yeah any other questions Mr wahan thank you yeah I mean just to kind of follow up I mean just because someone applies applies to position you know the both bodies have the ability to to Nom choose anybody they want for the position just because someone doesn't apply for it you know you can G vote for whoever you want so that'll be um explained that night too and um another question I have is have we is there a new chair of the Middle School building committee uh chair mayor Garcia appointed Mr colore um to be the chair the chair thank you and to be a voting member no I'm sorry voting no voting member will continue yeah as chair and the other thing is um Mr colore will be the chair of the Joint City Council school committee committee not the interview committee not the interview The Joint City Council school committee Mr colore will now be the chair because we have Miss tensley Williams and Mr wahan Mr wahan you're the chair of the finance committee so I'm not going to keep bombarding you with a lot of work there um are there any other questions as everyone sees we've got the CPAC coming up that meeting is June 5th 6 p.m. I'm assuming that's the end of your celebration um Mr Kennedy talked about the dean graduation which is Thursday so those of you who are going to be attending 5:30 it starts I think they want us there by here by five or something five good 4:45 five is good we'll meet in the five Feld room okay I got the thumbs up I'm not asking you no it says 5:30 what okay very good and then Holio High School North graduation that's on Friday the 31st at 6 PM um be there around 5:30 okay all right the CPAC meeting it's typically done on Zoom but if it's the end of year celebration I know we've always done it at the Margo round um hopefully they put out something on Facebook Facebook on their Facebook page or if not miss Courier definitely provide us with that information um one of the greatest opportunities that I have is attending the opportunity Academy graduation and I think it's really important if you know we provide support to the students um and that'll be on June 14th from 10: to 11:30 in the morning at the War Memorial building we have our next meeting June 10th at 6m here that's the budget hearing right so it's the public hearing is first yes so the the budget hearing right was was tonight so like the public yes but tonight was the budget hearing the public hearing is going to be on the 10th which is that's when you guys will get your actual full budget books it'll have all the information that we shared but there's no real discussion um it's an opportunity for anyone from the public that wants to speak on the budget um they that that's their opportunity but um the the heavy lifting in terms of getting the budget uh presentation done and everything that was done tonight so that's not what June 10th is going to look like um if there's you know typically there hasn't been any member from the public showing up so uh it it in in that scenario it's a really short meeting and then but before that huh so I know that we've typically done it before the school committee meeting we've done it like what 5:30 or 5:45 5:45 and we've done a 15 minute start the we never did that Mr col yeah yeah yeah and then it's like a 15 minute meeting obviously it closes and then we jump into at six o'clock into our meeting but we have the local control subcommittee meeting so what we could do is that at 6: p.m. we go into the public hearing and we schedule our regular school committee meeting for let's say 6:15 or 610 if if you know just in case just to give something you know people time in case somebody does um want to present on it or make a public comment on it okay so that's how we're going to do that night Mr colore just let everyone know that the cooperation between the parks department and us has been wonderful they have agreed not to have any games in softball or baseball because of the amount of people we try to get into graduation and it's over the years it was tough but they have agreed and worked with us and there'll be no uh softball or baseball on the field excellent and I wanted to make sure that attendance celebration for those that want to want to attend that's tomorrow at Kelly school and that's for the district at 5:30 and the stem Beach concert will be also June 6th at 5:00 pm here at the campus and the Fun Farm Fair which I have no idea what that is um that'll also be on the six there's a lot of things happening on the sixth I'm just saying um d H school at 600 p.m. I think we've covered everything under announcements there's nothing else um Miss tensley Williams I'm G to let you go ahead with your poem and then so we can move into adjournment all right I've been asked to do this um a few requests they said please don't do away with your poems please do them so I said wow that's great I didn't want to bore anyone and they said no we love the porem so because there's so many pretty flowers out I have roses in my yard what I'm going to do is my flower poem I wrote this poem April 26 2021 at 3:00 p.m. it's entitled flowers flowers flowers flowers flowers everywhere although you didn't plant them sweet smells are in the air have you ever wondered where these beautiful plants come from some grown in the wild some grown in your home when we can see their beauty some wild but they are free and if you can imagine they are there for you and me flowers grow in So Many Colors some red some pink some blue there are flowers that are yellow and some are purple too there are so many flowers flowers everywhere and sometimes when you plant them they do not need much care flowers grow in flower pots and some on window sills often people receive them when they are feeling ill flowers are so pretty when it rains in a nice bouquet um and if someone is feeling down flowers can make their Day flowers grow in The Meadows and some grow in the woods too they are called White flowers and they don't need me or you the next time you go for a walk if in the woods you roam stop to smell the flowers and pick some to take home that was very nice thank you m Ros my pleasure all right um is there a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second second hearing no objection um the meeting closes at 8:19 p.m. we'll see everyone on June 10th thank you everyone