good evening we have a m school committee good evening Medford school committee meeting special meeting of the school committee public budget hearing please be advised that on Monday May 6 2024 at 5: PM there will be a public budget hearing of the mid school committee held of the Howard Alden Memorial Chambers the meeting can be viewed live on the Medford Public Schools YouTube channel through Medford Community media on your local cable channel Comcast channel 9 8 or 22 and Verizon channel 43 44 45 or 47 since the meeting will be held remotely participants can log or call in by using the following information there's a zoom link um as well as a dial by Location meeting ID is 94309 6735 questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by me emailing Medford SCC medford.ma us those submitting questions or comments must must include the following information if you're doing it by email your first and last name your Medford Street address your question or comment pursu today's agenda pursuant to Mass General law section 7138 n the medord school committee will convene a public hearing to members of the community interested in either for or against or in part or in whole the superintendent's recommendation of the fiscal year 25 operating budget member Rell you callor roll member brandley here member Graham here present member Al present member reinfeld here member so here Mayo present seven present zero absent all may rise to SL the flag Mr McHugh if anytime you're ready to get started thank you yes how's that good thank you thank you uh good evening um members and uh first I I want to thank my uh um colleagues at at central office and the administrators who all hand a had a hand in helping um to get this proposal together for you tonight um as many of you know through our subcommittee meetings this is um kind of the perfect Stone of salary demands and federal funding expiring uh undefended accounts um just all converging in fy2 so uh I'll begin the presentation mayor M I just would like to note that both of the student reps are actually here both of our student reps are here yes thank you the S okay the first thing we look at um before we even start looking at numbers and is uh what the enrollment might look like for next year and trying to make some predictions around that uh what we see is continued growth in the lower grades um and that's been a recent uh phenomena we do have this small first grade moving into grade two uh and that's going to put less of a teaching Demand on that grade level and you'll see we're taking some um savings opportunities there uh but there's there were other cases of low class sizes but there were also needs uh we have positions being added to manage uh class size as well kindergarten growth is another area that will mon monitoring um we did not um continue with the kindergarten teachers that uh we added at the beginning of the year um we uh we are predicting that we'll have a kinderg enrollment very similar to what we had this year so we think um the prior Staffing should be sufficient for that but we will have to uh make adjust adjustments if that um if our predictions are a little short there are there are some indications that um the kindergart registration is a little bit higher right now at this point of the year than than it has been in past years uh and we continue to see uh some declines in enrollment at middle and high school uh and this um this is just uh kind of a focus on the Elementary grades you can see uh grade one grade three you know shop increases compared to grade four and grade five and these um larger increases will kind of continue into grade four next year and eventually grade five and then we have that kind of outly a grade two um you know in the middle of all that but actually that that grade two is going to kind of help manage you know the total uh uh School enrollment uh things are um pretty tight at some of these schools particularly the Roberts then the next slide um there should be one before that Peter is um just this looks at the district as a whole you know total um we see our enrollment predicted to go up by a net of 14 students but uh we see kind of lower growth or we see declines as we mentioned in the middle and high school grades and then we see that 60 student increase in the Elementary grades this is um a a graph on kind of the history of budget increases um and those taken from the FY 24 budget book and uh you can see it's kind of Peaks and valleys they on average uh you know you have these kind of two outlier years um in uh I think it's 22 23 uh if you take those out the average uh increase has been about three and a half% um and then the the other thing we want to look at is um the Trends on how our salary budgets uh are increasing versus our non-salary budgets which is the next slide so on this slide um the percentages you could see are kind of growing the salary budgets uh consuming more of the budgets um you know from at one point around 8020 and then it gets up to 84 uh 83 um our proposal uh will adjust that uh those differences back down closer to 8020 um but what it indicates is that you know the the the additional resources that are available in the budget year and year out are not sufficient to meet the salar so there's been a combination of new Appropriations coming in but some of that salaries being funded by uh the non-salary lines as they begin to shrink so it's just something to keep in mind that you just you don't want to you want to keep balance there and salaries are always going to be the majority of our budget but uh it can't can't consume the entire budget obviously so the first group of slides is we're going to you know see where are the major areas that our budgets increasing and uh this year to fund our collective bargaining commitments uh we we we are increasing salary Lines by a little over $3.3 million and then we have um a few contracts that will be expiring this year uh as well as non-unit staff who who go year to year and so we are um uh increasing our undistributed uh salaries budget by uh over $600,000 um to provide some funds for those uh contracts and non-unit salaries in the in the Medford budget there's um you know uh $500,000 uh in non-distributed which is meant to be maybe a contingency um it's it's you know about a half half a percent of the budget so we're kind we're maintaining that um you know this that it's important to have a contingency in your budget because there'll be unforeseen expenses that will come up for instance if our kindergarten enrollment is higher than we predicted we have funds where we can hire add some more teachers um if needed so I just wanted to you know to be fully transparent that we have in addition to the 665 we have um a half million dollars in in undistributed which we had this year as well so the the next category are these accounts that we've been talking about in subcommittee that have been underfunded for uh two or three years that we're seeking to correct uh ny25 homeless Transportation being the big one we budget 130,000 and we spend uh closer to five or 600,000 every year um and then substitute coverage um special EDS uh extended school year um of number of our students on IEPs get programming for the year round and and so they have a summer program that's part of the rip uh legal expenses um has been unfunded as well uh and of course buildings and grounds um is um very uh underfunded so this these more and the copy of leases uh there's sufficient money for the actual lease itself which has some copies built in but there's if you go over the the set amount of copies in your uh contract um the the that prediction was a little bit low so this kind of right sizes that um that contract so these are to bring those accounts up to what the historical spending has been and then we uh we have uh we have two uh um special Revenue funds that are um no longer sufficient to support the staff that we've signed assigned to them um and and so we are proposing to um add $1.1 million to cover positions that are currently funded in the Essa Grant that's expiring this fiscal year and then I've um we have 23 par professionals that have funded on the buildings and grounds revolving fund and this was done in FY 24 as kind of a bridge to get the par professionals contract settled um but I don't think it was meant to be something permanent it it's really you know un unsustainable if it was supposed to be permanent so I'm proposing that over the next few years we enough money to kind of unwind that and put uh get some of those par get those 23 par professionals back into the general fund and so that uh will cost a little over 1.2 million dollars to the budget so we had uh 30.8 FTE funded on Essa we're proposing to carry over 20.2 of those FTE and the professional development funds that were uh also charged to Essa there's uh very small amount in the general fund budget for professional development right now uh uh and as I said that would cost the budget a little over $1.1 million from Esser and then there's 10.6 positions that we will discontinue and at the end of the sheet and so what are these positions that are in Essa there's an adjustment council at the Brooks there's uh a number of positions um dedicated to the newcomers program at the Miss and mcglen an adjustment counselor and L literacy interventionist at the Roberts a pair of behavior specialist at the Andrews uh two security monitors for the high school uh academic leads at the high school uh as well and and as well as instructional support staff which are basically building substitutes um and and uh one per School uh we're retaining of the 2.6 re-engagement Specialists we have we're going to retain one who will also uh take on some attendance officer duties that were uh bound uh to to um to implement uh the grant manager for the business office the director for the ccsr program and the professional development that I talked about and so for the positions that we're not uh carrying over we had four literacy uh coaches uh that are currently vac vacant uh the director fidor and Reporting uh 1.6 re-engagement specialist three parab Behavior Specialists and the nurse floa position that was on S was vacant as well and we have some uh new spending um to propose um totaling a little over $1.7 million um the first is special education there's there were U rate increases issued by the state this year to be effective in fy2 for all uh outplacement tuition programs and that's at 4.69% and is uh requiring us to add $224,000 to the budget and there was also just kind of a natural growth in placements I think the district does a pretty good job of uh providing a lot of IND District programming for our special needs students but some students do require an out placement uh but what's likely in this $239,000 is uh sometimes students might be placed in kind of a a least restrictive setting and it might not be sufficient and they have to go into a different program that costs more money and then um we're asking to add another $100,000 to to our Network um contracted Services account um it's the current um the current budget for this for the whole district is $330,000 so uh that's severely underfunded and it probably should have went into the account fix um group but anyway um we also need to look at um refreshing some of our um uh student and teacher um computer equipment so we're proposing that uh 20% of our Apple devices which are primarily for teachers be refresh this year and then begin a implementation of uh um uh a a five-year um total refresh of that inventory the these computers were bought you know with covid funds everybody had a scramble everybody had to go on remote PE put computers were bought um so what's going to be tricky is down the line trying to maintain this fiveyear uh roll out uh as these computers that were all bought in the same year are are aging out so this is probably good for this year but then we might have to tweak it a little you know as we go forward and then the Chromebooks um part of this uh funding is um uh We Like to Buy tablets for kindergarteners that are incoming first grades and then they have that tablet through Elementary um Chromebooks for fifth graders that are incoming into sixth grade and then they have those Chromebooks uh for their middle school and then Chromebooks for the eth graders going into nth grade and then they have those for their um four years in high school so these funds will allow us uh to buy um it's about 950 devices uh to make that plan work the the the the district does a good job of trying to refurbish and refresh but um as you can imagine those computers take a beating and you know four years is is probably the extent of their life on that um we're also proposing to um outside of the repair budget fix which was on the previous slide is to add money to Contract Services so we can begin uh to do some planning for the future and to purchase um services to do project management on some of our projects um what would um what what I'd like to accomplish would some of this money is to do a space utilization um analysis of the at least the elementaries and maybe the middle if we had enough money just to see um how many classrooms we have are the classrooms actually being used for classrooms um are there um programs or um are they being used for office space can can we look at other ways to provide that space and kind of return more classroom uh to the building so anyways that that type of analysis would allow us to take a look at that the um the city also we had funds in here for um doing a recommissioning effort for our k through eight schools and um the mayor has uh agreed that she will provide some city capital funds uh to be able to do that so um with those funds we we're hoping to do that type of recommissioning for all schools I only had one School uh in the budget because that's all the bandwidth I thought we could we could uh uh utilize an FY 25 so but that number was 150 it's now 120,000 the uh the night cleaners at the high school and the mcglen middle are under our contract and in Janu on January 1st there was a scheduled um rate increase for the hourly workers on that contract and so this um request of $74,000 annualized that uh rate increase into fy2 um we're also recommending putting two uh more yellow buses on the bus route there was a lot of uh when I first got here in August was a lot of um concern about overcrowding on the bus the buses and um so this would go to address that the Medford High School is under their um accreditation process which they go through every several years or so um it need they need um $30,000 and they they have to um put up an outside team that comes in to um to actually conduct the evaluation um there are teacher teams put together to look at um to to respond to questions that that accreditation team um wants to have answers to uh they currently have a budget of 6,000 kind of for pre planning work this year and so this will get that budget up to 30,000 and then I'm also recommending we increase a school supply account um I came up with a formula for the principal's offices that um allocates money kind based um on the allocations that are provided for in the foundation budget it's not um uh very generous by any stretch but it does provide them the uh money for those principal offices the high school principal has a budget of $10,000 for office supplies and and other expenses and um we do have a lot of Supply budgets kind of filed out into the various um curriculum areas uh so those really have to be uh looked at as well because that that may provide a a savings opportunity in the future um once we get this rolled out but for every every School principal's office to get an increase uh in this Supply account we're asking for 203,000 and it's a per pupil basis so the every school will have the same per pupil amount but it will be based on the number of students that they have at the school um which was which is something I I heard loud on clear when I met with the principles uh and then we are proposing uh a new position for payroll in the business office and a position in the uh human resource office um it's very challenging to keep up with uh the weekly and bi-weekly needs of the payroll and also kind of maintain our uh nprs reporting um Fringe Benefit Management um 403b management and um so this will help um alleviate some of that so believe it or not um all those proposed changes total up to 8.2 million which is a lot for one year in a budget um in a perfect world we would get that and our budget would go to 79 4 million um but we're not going to get that and um we have to look at uh uh ways to save money in the existing budget so we can kind of redeploy those funds into area into other areas where we need the money which which I've just identified the first thing we looked at was class size and um based on our October one reporting the average uh K through five general Leed class size in the elementaries you could see we're kind of at the low Point 165 at the high point 19.3 so we did look at um making some adjustments um to boost those uh class sizes up a little bit uh in order to achieve some savings and uh so this there are some uh changes going on within schools uh that I did not add to this slide because I didn't want to make it too busy but for example at the Brooks you know we talked about this low uh grade two uh enrollment and that uh we think that um that uh one grade two two teacher could be at the Brooks but we also think we we're going to need a Grade Three teacher at the Brooks to to keep those class sizes reasonable so that's kind of a wash and um you know there's an extra uh grade four position at the mlin for instance and a grade one that we're um discontinuing in order to provide that grade one for newcomers but the the count right now is uh two fdes from Glen Elementary five from the misu at just about every grade level except for the fifth and then one at the robits and that's in grade two and then we're also proposing that we add a position uh to create a new grade one newcomers program at the mlin and this is based on um kindergarten enrollment and the this uh population of students currently in kindergarten and then we're uh proposing two new special education uh teachers at the Roberts one uh for inclusion and one for the um connections program so the net savings there is $318,000 and so this would be the average um school class size uh once we implemented those changes so going from from kind of mid to high teens to you know low to to uh low 20s um we do have um contractual um language that we have to pay attention to in the teachers contract around class size but these are uh within um those those uh those that required amount then at the middle school um and I'll I'll talk about this at the end but the you know the Middle School um also has very low class size but but there's reasons around that and it um it gets to the the co- teing model that's employed there uh so for now we're just we did not um kind of take a deep dive into that model we are looking at it and uh we'll we'll see how we can address that later on but we do think that um the guidance Staffing is um Rich when you compare it to uh uh National guidelines for guidance so it's roughly like uh one guidance Council for every 500 students is kind of the national norm and uh or or um goal to have um most school systems are are much higher than that like 1 to 700 uh so we have less than 500 students in each of our middle schools and we have four guidance counselors so we think we can reduce that um Staffing by two and um in the PE Health we have four uh fizzed teaches and uh between the the uh Andrews and M Glenn and we have um one health teacher that's split between the two schools we think it would be better to have one PE teacher for each school and one health teacher for each school um so that would increase the the uh the health component and um would take a savings of one position there and at the high school um we waited until students chose their their grades for next year uh to take a look at um how that affected enrollment in each of the sections we also looked at uh schedules of teachers to to make sure that we were fully utilizing uh the the time that's available to the district uh and so we came up with um a reduction of six uh teachers at the um at the high school and that uh is affecting um the PE Department technology Performing Arts uh vocational uh program and World Language we also are um proposing some uh consolidation of our administrative Staffing um and trying to figure out ways to divide the work uh amongst a small group of um administrators but essentially it's six administrators for Savings of a little over $800,000 and it affects uh Athletics library media Performing Arts Special Education student assessment and moral language and then we're also proposing uh a similar um consolidation in our administrative assistance Staffing so we are looking to kind of consolidate some positions so that one Administrative Assistant has a like a broader portfolio uh of work so um we're consolidating from two positions to one between nursing and guidance departments uh consolidating from 3 to two administrative assist in the High School uh assistant principal's uh office consolidating uh from two to one uh between the two mlin principal's offices um uh same thing with curriculum directors consolid consolidating that position and the student assessment um support uh is being recommended to um not be continued and then there's one position in the before and after school program um that doesn't have any savings to the general fund but yet it's it's also on this list but one thing that's not on the um the slide deck is that there are currently two administrative assistants in our special ed Administration and one of those women uh as part of her responsibilities handles a lot of Transportation um that comes out of that office and what we're proposing is to repurpose that position to be more of a districtwide transportation coordinator because they do a very good job in managing those services and kind it's more of a struggle for the El bus and the uh the homeless transportation and we think if we put um dedicate more resources to the management of that there's there's likely some um opportunities to lower costs in that area I think as long as the the ridership doesn't grow and then same uh with the nurses um you know if you look at what the dph minimums are and kind of apply that to our staffing patent um we think we can reduce um our current uh nurse staff by three uh there's also one nurse uh that we're not continuing that was part of the Essa slide deck or slide um but it's just noted on this one uh and that uh Essa funded one was vacant at the time for a savings of $211,000 so all told these savings um come up to uh almost $2.3 million there's 40 2.6 positions that um will be discontinued under this proposal but we'll be adding uh 25.2 and of course the 20.2 of those positions added are actually already exist and they here in the they're funded by Essa currently uh so basically we're kind of redeploying those funds to cover some of those positions but we do have a net position reduction of 17.4 FTE so just to start begin to summarize where we're at um once we apply the savings we can get our required budget down to 77.1 million uh but that presents us with a funding gap of almost 6 million million dollar and we we had two two new initiatives we thought we could kind of bring to this problem it's not any WIA U what we need to solve the problem but it's a little bit we we've talked about implementing a a chargeback system so we can recover uh some of our um payroll and um HR uh costs uh a as well as facilities costs for our fee funed programs um that are being supported by uh Medford Public Schools the you know before and after school would be the big one but uh you know there's Kids Corner and uh the driver ed program um and uh we we we have to stay away from um programs that receive federal grants because they have a different methodology uh to recover those funds funds it's called indirect costs and we'd have to do some more analysis of title one for instance I don't know if um if we begin to charge indirect costs are we going to reduce the number of reading teachers that we have on that Grant so we have to be uh strategic before we move into those programs but we do have the ability to do that with with Grant funded programs and then um I believe we have uh sufficient fund balances to charge a teacher uh that is involved with the Meep program to the Meep revolving fund and a teacher in the vocational program um to charge that to the tuition account um but these are basically one one time moves we're going to have to we would have to revisit this in FY 26 because there may not be sufficient fund balances to do the same thing next year so when we apply those um additional resources to the budget we get our uh budget down to 76 little under 76.7 million uh that still leaves us with the funding gap of 5.5 uh versus our current general fund budget we we have heard from the city at least their initial um appropriation increase uh is 2.3 million um I'm also requesting that if we get additional Chapter 70 money that we be allowed to use that to support the budget there's um good good indication to believe that the the house will increase its um minimum uh uh minimum uh minimum funding for Chapter 70 which which Medford uh receives uh from $30 per student to $104 per student that would result in an increase of uh $470,000 versus Chapter 70 this year um and that could also go up by the time the budget winds its way through the Senate um unfortunately the history of the state is that the budgets get finalized in July and August and it's going to be uh too late for us but I think we'll we'll know uh the house should be releasing its version of the budget fairly shortly they've been debating it for about 10 days now so uh our foundation bu budgets will be rep published after the the house um concludes its deliberations and sends the budget over the Senate so so where we're at is you know we still have a need of uh $2.7 million but I believe that um from the last subcommittee meeting that this is the budget that the school committee wanted to see you know what are the real costs where do we have gaps how much do we need um but unless um you know in the event there's no uh additional resources coming to the budget um we will have to go back and look at um positions again I mean we're not we haven't um as part of this proposal we we haven't looked at par professionals or custodians or security monitors or adjust counselors um and then we'd probably have to um rethink some of our new spending and and kind of man manage that back but still more work to done more work to be done so I'm I'm happy to answer any questions you might have or any thoughts you want me to take back and consider um certainly value um your input you know as to where you think we might be cutting too much or we I I think the way this is um uh this might roll out is that we're going to have to come back and kind of see how we address that 2.7 um and you know there'll be an opportunity if you think we we made a mistake in one or more of these areas with one or two positions it' be an opportunity to add those back as part of a a new um cycle of of spending reductions from the chair if I may thank you for the presentation um does the 2.7 take into account potentially moving the c um 20% CH no no it doesn't that $500,000 reduction yeah like it's about 477 but that's you know close to 500 thank you member Graham thank you Jerry um just a couple of questions just to make sure I'm clear on the um reduction that are outlined here at the high school we're saying six FTE and there's six departments listed so it sounds like a reduction of one teacher per department is that and does that mean our course offering is being reduced in some way or is that are we able to maintain the offering that students selected with this like reduction of six yeah yeah the The Proposal is based on the um what students chose now if there was a section that only had four students or five students in it maybe that section doesn't run but what the students are suggested that they want what the school department is saying they required to take to earn their credits those are not affected and um I I think we'll hear from some folks later on but specifically there are some questions about um Dr drama CL classes and um you know drama club and all that so I know that there's a new theater offering this year is that being eliminated it it was because the enrollment um was low okay um but you know part of this public hearing is to get feedback from the school committee to get feedback from the public and we're certainly uh going to be listening to to see you know how we can um kind of meet the needs of everybody in the context that it's just a very difficult budget um second question is um when you said we're reducing our nursing staff to align to the dph minimums what are those minimums 500 um one nurse for every 500 um okay thanks Jerry um and um um I guess my other question is like we're we're already reducing you know a net reduction of 17 point something is Nets about 2.2 um so it sounds like if we needed to close another $2.7 million gap we'd be looking at like another round commiserate with that size where would those teachers come from well I just did a quick um analysis of our new spending and um with the caveat that it kind of goes against the needs that I describ that maybe we could trim that back by 800,000 and kind of take a two-year View and rolling all that out um and then the balance in the absence of of any other uh resources would would be around 2.2 so very uh similar to The Proposal uh we have currently so another [Music] 17ish right people that's yeah yeah although yeah and it it depends on on uh the positions and the salary they command and so this particular mix was a Net 7 but it might be different um if if we get into positions that come in you know have lower salaries got it um and then I think the other thing that sort of struck me and this is not a comment for you necessarily but just as a general comment um when we talk about enrollment Trends and we talk about seeing declines continuing at the middle school and high school that will never change if we keep doing this this way [Applause] um we did I did say um I would talk a little bit about the middle school so we did you know that has the co- teing model and you know that was a a district decision at some point um it requires um a much larger investment in staff in order to make that work co- teers get more uh prep time there's more need for unified Arts to cover those prep times so there's uh there's a lot of um resources being deployed to make that work and whether you know so I think looking back we have to figure out a way to say you know is the investment uh worth it are we seeing the results that we should be seeing or is it there a different way uh uh to go forward on that but the the staff savings would be um you know would be significant okay um and then I just wanted to say you know thank you this I know this is like the worst work in the world um to do and I will say I appreciate the clarity I know exactly what this budget proposal is and isn't um I'm not sure we've ever quite had that before so I think that's important um I also think this sort of the steps in the care that you've taken to be in conversation with our Union Partners where there are reductions that are being put forward in advance of learning about those things here on the floor is really important um I know that's really hard work I know it's terrible news to share I know it's terrible news to receive um but it's even more terrible to learn that here so thank you for um taking care through this process to um be appropriately transparent and also um in collaboration or in conversation at minimum with our Union Partners so thank you I really appreciate that I think we need more clarity we need less vague budgets um and this really um is a great example of what a transparent budget looks like even if the answers are really very terrible so thank you okay thank you member reinfeld yes okay thank you hello I just have a couple questions regarding the proposed budget so on slide 15 um there's two positions being proposed uh it says payroll HR new positions capacity and supervision so with the current proposed uh budget cuts could you just elaborate on what these two positions uh being added with considering they cost roughly $150,000 annually yeah um those um so for instance one is for payroll so the the Staffing for the entire District uh for you know a budget that's 80% salary uh there's two payroll positions and this year uh one of those uh indiv uals when on attorney leave so that effectively cut the payroll staff in half and we've figured out a way kind of to work around and some of our administrative assistants have stepped up and we're kind of spreading out the work uh uh our assistant uh Finance director has taken on a lot of that payroll as well um but my um read since since I've gotten here is that we have a very difficult time keeping up with the work that we have so the the payroll itself the the keying in um changing deductions when people request it uh changing payroll payroll is is uh changing uh throughout the year as uh people earn degrees or they get promoted into a different job um that the growth in that area has left very little time for those payroll clerks to address kind of the maintenance of the budget um there's a whole um there's a significant requirement for the um uh mtrs reporting um to keep those um their database current um so we're having problems where you know teachers are having difficulty um trying to retire or trying to project how much they would get in retirement because we were just not able to respond to all those inquiries uh and then there's the the supervision so the way I looked at the office was we have an accounts payable department we have a a payroll department one person for two payroll people one person for uh accounts payable and that to me is kind of a logical uh Staffing so so they have some so the rank and file people have some extra resources to go to ask questions h on how to do their job and to plan out their work uh for the HR department same way is just the whole the number of um positions that we have the whole onboarding process for new the priority is obviously teachers at the beginning of the year but we're uh in desperate need for substitute teachers and if people are um emailing us saying you know they would like to work as a substitute we can't get to them because we're so deep into uh onboarding uh uh instructional uh staff um so it's just that the the amount of administrative work has just grown Beyond uh the Staffing levels in those two departments then I just had another question on um slide 19 for the uh proposed uh General Ed class size from schools so for 2025 um for the Brooks it' be up to 19.9 uh the mcglen 22.2 Mr tuck 22 and then the Roberts 20.5 um do you have any uh data about the possible uh posi uh sorry the possible negatives of increasing uh class classroom sizes to that size as that could potentially put a lot of strain um on teachers and Educators in classrooms yeah well um I look at at two things one is how do we get out funding so Chapter 70 makes some assumptions about class size when they put together the foundation budget and I think it's um it's like 22 at 25 at the elementary and then 22 at 25 at the middle and then it's actually 17 at the high school because of all the honors and AP classes there just on average the class sizes are going to be lower at the high school uh so if we had not maintaining our class sizes somewhat around those numbers we don't have to hit them uh exactly but we should be in the same ballpark and if we're not we're going to be diverting resources from one area to put into low class sizes um the research is very mixed on whether class size a lower class sizes actually improves student performance it's the most expensive type of educational reform that you can do it does tend to obviously in specialized programs special ed actually has legal requirements about what their class sizes should be our eel program the class sizes should be lower obviously uh so more one to one time with the teacher and um in the lower grades pre and kindergarten there is evidence that those low class sizes are probably uh more effective but when you start to move up um it's kind of a mixed bag so my view is let's not be too low let's not be too high but let's try to uh keep it and I think night low 20s is kind of a good spot to be in um anything more than that I think there would be status strain but if we have to cut $2.7 million we might have to think about increasing those slightly again if we have no other uh way to do it thank you Darren member reinfeld yes thank you all right I'll start with what I like um which is I like the transparency and the clarity here so thank you again for that and I really like that this reflects the past year of spending and okay so that's incredibly helpful and that moves into my first question I'm just going to go in numerical order um slide seven this didn't appear on the slide but you mentioned that there was 500k for un distributed yeah was that used for its intended purpose last year or did that end up being Flex well the um the year before that um I'm trying I think there was like1 and a half million dollars and I I don't know one um committee the whole um we talked about the fact that to make the 24 budget work those budgets were reduced but part of that money is meant to cover uh negotiations for contracts that are you know being negotiated and um that money was needed to make the budget balance and so you know that went to um you know fund those those contracts and was not sufficient uh to fund the contracts that got settled so it's just helping to um uh you know keep the U allow to finish the year with a balanced budget great thank you uh slide 14 you mentioned new technology um is this coming with new with added security concerns to or costs to maintain safety privacy yeah all that the the um we we've included the educational package for Google um and that right now we're using the free version um the educational package um it will provide a lot more security uh for that programming but we really need to develop um some uh strategic planning around technology to address um all these needs that we have in Securities you know top of the list but that's one of the positions that is potentially no no um so the two the technology we were at adding money is in our Network infrastructure uh to keep that going there there is a technology teacher at the high school um that we're proposing thank you Peter um we're proposing that um we're going to take a savings here just because enrollment uh is low okay um and there's there's other technology teachers at the high school as well right but there there's a director program as there's a director position as well yes yeah and we would see that Consolidated with the rest of our technology staff okay the management all right um I'm always going to have this question on slide 15 I see a lot of Contract Services listed what assurances can you give me that Contracting these things out is more cost efficient than doing it inhouse yeah um is that for for um there were facilities yes building yeah yeah well those those are actually we're already Contracting them out okay so we're not um budgeting sufficiently for what we're already doing um on the the proposal for $120,000 those services are like architectural services project management Services U so they're not very specialized proposing to privatize any work that's currently being done by uh existing staff yeah all right on this same slide you mentioned the supply budget is that going to reduce the I'll call it an unspoken burden on individual staff members for supplies I would like to think so you know um in terms of those for individual classrooms are they for schoolwide on a whole you know the supply budgets are low you know so I think they can be built up and uh you know I would hope that and I'm sure that you know we we have some very good principles and I would hope that they would want to um they just haven't had a sufficient budget um so when they have to say no to a teacher and the teacher needs something the teacher you know goes and procures it herself I'm I'm glad that we are providing more of that um member Graham already asked about class sizes and offerings um I would love some more information on the mlin position the consolidation of the administrative position there given that those are two schools and each of the other schools [Applause] has has its own administrative assistant and also given the particular vulnerabilities in that school's population yeah um you know the the role of administrative assistance have changed because administrators are now routinely do a lot of their own work emails um you know um so so that you know we still need administrative assistance to deal with parents that are calling in and submitting purchase orders for supplies uh but it was just felt that you know what that the um that there wasn't sufficient workload for the number of administrative assistance that we had at the mlin I'm sure we'll hear about that yep soon all right and then my my very last question was actually building a little bit on member Gram's question about the dph minimums we my questions were what are they where are we and how do our health needs and this the health needs question might be for some of the people out here compared to other districts with their ratios um and those are minimum so they're not meant to be um if you if you can um do more than that it really depends on uh kind of the Acuity that they're dealing with so I know nurses are very good about who shows up in their office and what they they have um medications that they have to um give to particularly younger students um and uh you know we're we're uh in the case of the Brooks we're little bit above 500 the remaining um schools are below uh 500 but close to that uh and I can furnish you with some staffing analysis that we've done uh to show where we're Landing with that but um um what's what's often the case is that you have um just to simplify it you have not enough work for two people and you have too much for one person and you can't and you can't um so we're looking at you know coverage and do we have to dedicate staff to one school can we dedicate some staff and have some staff move around and uh so I think everybody um said this in one way or the other at the beginning um it's not U we don't take any pleasure and having to implement these but we we know what we have in obligations um and I think in my experience the worst thing is to have you know budget chaos because uh when you look at what happened in Brockton and north andova um that to me would be a lot more disruptive let's figure out what the pain is and then see if we can um make some adjustments nobody's going to be happy with the end result but um we have that's the only thing a business manager is required to do by law is to make sure the budget's balanced and then other duties as assigned so we're going to have to we need to get to a budget balance uh a balanced budget thank you I understand that and I I will have questions for the administration at later dates about what the plan if if these changes are accepted what the plan is because just because you take people away the work doesn't go away either exactly and we've made some [Applause] preliminary so we have put a considerable amount of time into on a very preliminary basis thinking about how it would happen and then the next phase would be to actually sit down and kind of plan out how the work will be reallocated thank you member brandley well I'd ask if I'm making faces but I already know I am so I'm I'm trying to Center myself because this is obviously horrifying and as somebody who has worked in an elementary school in this District I don't see how how any of this is is could even be possible um I'm not going to take it out on you Jerry because I know you're doing your job and I thank you for it so it's not personal of course but I I have I don't take it personally a lot of questions so um you keep saying we we we came to this decision who's the wi well as a group is it's not Jerry McHugh by himself we we sit senior staff um you know there's been some ideas are rejected because they're not workable some ideas might have Merit and you you kind of keep working them okay but we try to we we try to be as thoughtful as we could be about the cuts and try to U balance them against some kind of Standards um that easier to do with class size than it is for some of the reorganizational work obviously but um we okay thank you um let's see I'm just going to go Page by Page um um the SR funding those positions on this page here BR uh let's see I'm on 11 are any of those going to be added to the general fund any of those positions they all are they're all added okay I just want to make sure yeah before I go that that's that's kind of contributing to our funding needs um and I have to agree with our student rep here the two full-time um employees for payroll and HR that are being suggested you said the words it's going to it would it's hard for them to keep up so I think it's going to be hard for teachers to keep up I think it's going to be hard for nurses to keep up I think it's going to be hard for secretaries to keep up up at this rate we're burning people out as it is and this is going to just increase [Applause] that yes it would be hard to work without two more full-time people but it'll also be hard to work with only one nurse it will also be hard to work with only one administrative assistant at the mlin it is two separate schools it is two separate schools I know they're housed in that same office but that doesn't make any one more valuable or less valuable than the other they're two separate schools it doesn't mean that one can absorb the work of the other and as an administrative assistant myself I don't see the people that are above me that I'm an administrative assistant too do more work on their own um I see that we're leaned upon more and more every day um from something as simple as the copy machine being jammed sometimes I pretend I don't hear them saying to me Nicole Nicole I need your help I'm like it's a piece of paper you can do this let me show you um it's I I think it's almost offensive to think that you know their need is less because it truly is more and and especially at an elementary school level where children are coming into you parents are coming into you the phone never stops that alone I don't know how one administrative assistant is going to just handle the phone alone let alone all the chaos around them so how do you choose that elementary school over a different Elementary because there's not anybody else there but that doesn't mean that the administrative assistant for the Middle School can handle what is going to be put on her from the elementary side it it it's almost unfathomable to me to think that that is a position that could at all be cut um so that's one thing okay um kindergarten teachers added in fy2 24 will not be continued in fy2 but did we not see that the enrollment is increasing in lower grades yes but but the the um existing kindergarten Staffing that we have is sufficient uh I believe to handle that enrollment I would question the need for those additional kindergarten teachers this year I mean maybe one or two but not across the board but I don't think people so none will be saved pardon none will be saved correct at well they weren't funded for so if they if they were to be saved then we had we would have to add them into the budget this year so there was no no funding they were just there was a directive to add them and kind of make it work has anybody and that happens during the during the year um but you have to fix those positions in the budget the following year uh you know to to uh be accurate has anybody shadowed anybody in the kindergarten just curious yeah anybody shadowed the nurses has anybody shadowed any of these directors that are being cut to see what's actually happening on a day-to-day basis because I can tell [Applause] you we have been doing a really good job I think trying to get job descriptions but what written on a piece of paper what your job is when you walk into that building you are a hundred things to hundreds of of of little humans that that can't wait they can't wait they're throwing up they're pooping they're doing it all and I don't care what grade they're in they're all doing it so I think to you know cut jobs without literally knowing handson on the ground what exactly is happening I don't know how much more existing staff of these are all cut can handle how can you handle it how can you be there from from8 to three which I know is not what a teachers job is not 8 to3 believe me I I know that so um it's it's 24 hours a day but how how do you how does how does anybody absorb even more what what is the toll we're going to take on everybody and if we take the toll on our teachers guess who guess who it's falling down on too the kids these are our babies we want enrollment to go up it's never going to go up like this never never people are going to run away um okay keep going [Music] um strain on staff yes clearly um I can't imagine being being in any class with 22 kindergarten children or 22.2 I don't know where the point2 comes from because um guidance C I know I hate averages um so proposed saving initiatives do guidance counselors teach guidance coun teach guidance classes yes correct okay so if we cut them who's doing that and still guiding y well there'll be less of it and it's going to be up to the principal to develop a schedule with the staff that they have the principles correct so maybe they rely on their administrative assistance a little bit more sorry it's and and I know these are the numbers I get it I get that this is real dollars and and there's five million dollar OR7 million or the number just seems to keep adding up here so um I'm also curious if we eliminate directors do directors walk out the door or do they then absorb a teaching job what is how does that work well in any of these cases um we would try to work as best we can to make sure there's there's a landing spot for these uh positions um we can't always do it because there certification requirements um that is a question right now um and we believe that you know they're two separate unions so I do not believe there's an automatic uh claim to a teaching position if you're coming from the administrative ranks but um there's going to be bumping so the budget is really about cutting positions and not people because the budget the there's bumping in the in the contracts and uh those people might still have a job because they have seniority and somebody else might might have to go uh but that that is something that we looked at and if there are teaching positions uh for some of these administrators of course we would love to keep them in the district um but it you know it's one of those the answer is it depends yeah so I know you said it's a position not a person but at the end of the day it is a person it is at the end of day at the end of the day because if you're bumping someone someone else's out no totally and that's less and and I know you I didn't mean to that yeah to say it and I can't imagine any of these schools working with one body less at this point I really I it's it's going to be detrimental it really is um okay yeah mclin principal office Consolidated from two to one that's outrageous um reduce nursing staff and I'm sure the nurses that are here can help us understand that does can someone tell me how many students are at each elementary school just to start there yes I can furnish you with an analysis that did so it's based on what we predict the enrollment will be next year and how many nurses per student so maybe the nurses can answer my question a little bit better so working at the Brooks I used to I used to say to nurse Allison all the time I feel like we should have one of those little Deli ticket things here um because not only are there emergencies all day I mean I can tell you what happens in the kindergarten playground pretty clearly yeah um what happens if that nurse needs to you know they leave the room now the nurse's office is closed and there's another emergency I I you know field trips how do how do we manage field trips with less nurses things things like this that keep popping into my head I don't know how these things are going to get done with with less bodies it's not going to get done that's that's really sad it's it's it's it's not okay um and then if a nurse is absent what happens everybody hold on we be up to the director to do we have a director well we have a position in the budget when we have a direct um so we we expect that we will have a director so we'll have a director for the nurses yes yes we'll have a director for the nurses okay um so the director for the nurses will figure that out right okay great we have brandley let's see what else remember Bley yes Miss Hines was the director she just took another job so I'm sure it's posted well there's a lot of jobs posted um a lot not filled and that's that's what scares me because if it's not filled then what we need to know the then what's here when we do something like this because this is real day-to-day challenges and and I know even for myself I've needed the school nurse at times I got Co when I worked at the Brooks you how many times I was checked for lice luckily never got it I don't know how but do you know how many times my head was checked for life do you know how many times I had to go to the nurse's office for something a student student injured me that happens this is real live stuff that's happening every single day and and we're we're we're I don't want to use the word failing but I'm feel failing happening um identifying other resources um you said we'll need to revisit this in 2026 will there be funds so we're cutting but then we're going to have to revisit again for even more Cuts great okay all right let's see this page um you said we haven't looked at Paris custodians okay great um let's see my next page so I talked about if for shadowing the people whose jobs were cutting we hadn't looked at those U for cuts but we still have a budget Gap to look at so of course the question potential how are we going to you know reduce that 2.7 down to zero so I just gave um a group of positions that we didn't intend to uh cut but um be prepared everything everything would have to be on the table for round two of cuts okay um the individuals that are being cut as in directors how do we know if if they're cut is some someone's not necessarily replacing them correct correct okay so how do we know that the people are going to step in and do their job are qualified to do it because it's going to be someone under where the director was originally so how do we know that they're qualified to to make the decisions there's there's a whole well the administrators all have their administrative certification so um um I'm trying to think I mean everybody has kind of an area of expertise but but they don't have the certification but but I don't know if there are you know um certification requirements outside of the general administrative certification uh for the positions we have so they should be able to be an administrator you know um in in any of our programs um some are going to be better than others in certain programs I don't deny that uh but there's a whole uh process um once the budget gets passed where we have to sit down with our unions and kind of figure it out collectively how we're going to implement these reductions and who what what are the seniority lists and how will we um reorganize the work uh so that the process that will happen so basically if you're the senior in that group you're most likely going to absorb most of some of the work yes well that stinks let's see what else the whole thing stinks it really does yes I I can totally agree with you on that um let's see the director we talked about that we talked about that um Consultants how many consultants do we have working for us um is this the $120,000 proposal yeah or anybody else uh is not a lot of them I mean we use services for uh eate um take advantage of eate funds um we have uh Consultants that do Medicaid reimbursement um you know any of our um trying to think you know technology area if we can have a list of who is is a consultant yeah um are there any Cuts in assistant principles no so no assistant principles will be cut no across the board across the board as of today Jerry we still have 2.7 we have to do messing with me now come on yeah listen I I don't think um I think assistant principles are very important um just for uh you know our our principles are often at meetings out of the building uh somebody has to be in charge of the building in case of an emergency yes um so I'm I'm with you on that I mean I I I can't I mean I'll just use Mr chuchi as an example because I always say I've been chuch chied because I I'm at my sixth year at the mlin elementary school I'm G to miss it terribly next year um I don't think the man takes a day off I think he he's he's very good he's exemplary um as as are all of our principles um but I can't imagine not having an assistant principal yeah I agree I agree and especially at the high school y um have we decided on any Cuts in the central Administration office no none none not one it's the Staffing is pretty lean I'm sorry I the Staffing is pretty lean I I think all our staffing is lean yeah yeah but some are lean is and they you know okay I'm gonna stop so I just have one other question the raise that we received as school committee members where did that what was that funding from again the budget school budget our raise yes yeah there's no more money in there pardon is there no more money in there that we could use any of that for this because it seems really easy for us to get our raises um well that's you know entirely up to the school committee there's um those stiens have not been increased for a long time true other um Staffing certainly last couple of years there's been um efforts made by the school committee to address salary concerns of the unions um so um I don't think what was proposed is outrageous and it does um there's not that much um money to to kind of contribute to the problem but if think contributes to the yeah if the stiens were reduced that would be you know added to the plot to deal with the uh remaining funding Gap lucky for you I'm all done thank you I don't disagree with a lot of what you said so and I know you don't and I'm not trying to be trying to be um you know cranky um yeah but but obviously this hurts my children are in this District yeah uh my family's in this District this this is our family yeah this is our community these are the people that come home into our neighborhoods these are the kids that standing in front of my house for the bus every single morning these are the people that pay taxes and so it's it's just so frustrating to me because I think when you work in a school you have such a different perspective of what's Happening dayto day and I'm no expert I'm no expert at all but um I think it definitely gives you a bird eyes view of of really what is happening on the ground and and I think um you know I'm sure we have plenty of people here that would like to speak and I really encourage everybody to speak and to write emails and to send letters um because this is a priority so thank you very much [Music] [Applause] okay member and tapa thank you very much chair long thank you Jerry for putting this together in very transparent while I don't agree with you know all these cuts that we're doing I really appreciate being able to see where we are there's not a lot of guessing we can actually see it um I am very new to this I've been in two months to the day um so my apologies if my ignorance or my lack of understanding precedes what I'm about to sort of talk about um I the only way you can learn it I know the de end like yeah thought possible two and a half million deficit now it's 250 like diving in the deep end real hard right now um some emails that I've gotten in particular are around um Performing Arts um Athletics nurses um and I thought I guess these are more comments than questions um and again I wish I knew how to find the money I wish I understood that but I just don't so I apologize if I'm not giving too many solutions just more of the concerns that I have um Performing Arts um is on a decline and by cutting that uh I'm really nervous about the direction we go Performing Arts aren't just an activity it is how we integrate culture how we keep tradition how we keep um things alive in the city and you know we just had a great performance from our drama club yeah uh with Mama Mia and also just some other initiatives you know we're seeing them give back to the community in in ways that you know I couldn't even have imagined when I was at mord High um so I really you know that we just named the office after you know former School Community member Lena djaso and um I'm afraid by going down this path we're we're sort of going back what she was fighting against um you know the Performing Arts are huge staple to how we how we keep our our the users of our schools there um in terms of what was I talking about nurses um I was a student with um uh medication that had to be stored and one of the things that I think I am not seeing sort of brought up is also you know we cut nurses we're also cutting the fact that I even in the upper levels could not take my medication without a nurse being there um that includes epinephrine if I don't carry an EP pen on me there's one store there we need someone to be able to run around the maze that is meod high complex to find someone who may need to administer it as well as I need to find time out of my day to go and meet with one of those nurses hoping there's one not helping another student to take the medication that allowed me to help me learn every single day um so that's sort of one of the things that I just wanted to say in support of of the nurses here and just wanted to give that Insight because I'm not really seeing that being mentioned but you no one really sees that unless they experience it like sorry sorry okay um yeah the the complement of nurses uh at the high school is the same as it is this year yeah and it's just it's not even just the high school it's it's the elementary I've been taking medications since elementary school um elementary school middle school and high school um and so that that doesn't really change so it was always packed Sue even back then when I was there in what 2019 um so I'm really really concerned about how many you know employees we're cutting uh in terms of Athletics um that department in terms of is already thin enough and I I'm not sure what position was cut in the athletics department and you were administrative one of the administrative yeah the assistant athletic director because the assistant athletic director that I know that's in there is like the backbone of that entire athletics department um that is no diss to anyone in that department at all but the individual who in that um is at everything I've ever been to and it's there to make sure that that program stays running um so really looking at you know it's numbers but it's also people and support and who are they going to lean on if they're the ones there all the time anyways um and then in terms of you know looking at technology spending spending we've sort of digged ourselves into this hole of relying on Chromebooks and Technology because of you know the pandemic um I guess when it comes to technology as someone who's used that technology pre pandemic knowing how UNR reliable it can be I'm a little concerned about pumping more money into it until we figure out a solution because I feel like every other Chromebook had a missing key um and also I'm a little concerned about putting so much money towards tablets for kindergarteners instead of the support that they need to help teach those kindergarteners Hands On Learning tactile that I mean I'm not an educator but I just happen to be a designer and an artist and know just the value of tactile Hands-On learning and I would almost rather look see that money if that money had to go towards something be more towards school supplies or Hands-On learning than electronics and I I don't know how that makes me sound but um I don't feel like our kindergarteners need tablets they need people um and so that's a lot of what I have to say and there's a lot of things obviously you know I'm happy to see more increase in special education services um but there are a lot of alarming factors that I don't know if I fully wrapped my head around in the last 48 hours and you know thank you to everyone who's here to speak on behalf and I'm Sorry by taking up more of the time that doesn't lie but um I I just I just want to say that there's I may have more questions or comments going on but for now that's that's what I have so thank you I mean I think one of the good things about um trying to present the budget earlier than normal is that we do have some more time to you know discuss and ask questions I will say with the techn ology there's a lot more use of um instructional technology so uh the that the only way for students to access that is through some kind of a device and um you know the old way was you'd have like four desktops in the corner of the room and you'd share that and um now you know today that's um you know it's it's just a different model from what Wei we used to uh but that's the type of thinking that we have to do right now we can't um if somebody wants to make a proposal that we're not going to use tablets anymore we're going to hire another and that could fund another teacher that's those are the types of tradeoffs that we have to talk about but I would say that you know you know it there's there's pluses and minuses to every idea and if you say let's scrap instructional technology at the elementary school you're going to have a different set of people in that a audience right and I think I'm sorry just a point of clarification I guess on my point is it to cut technology it's more to look at and consult our users who are administering it to see where they might find it best so do we need to invest more in technology I don't have a teaching degree so I don't really know what that is like but um definitely leaning more on our professionals that are our faculty to to see where there are technological gaps and fixes on a day-to-day classroom basis so thank you for the the clarification as well okay again appreciate the work thank you Jerry um I think all oh sorry me member all part uh I'll actually yield my time to our student representative if they have a question briefly um I just wanted to uh ask a followup question I'm not sure I may have missed it in a member uh rley as as questions but if the um secretary positions are being cut at the mlin and other schools um I just wanted to ask a question if because I'm not sure it may have been clarified already if APS were on the um being considered for being cut because if the workload is being put onto the secretaries and I may be mistaken but for the mlin it's roughly for the elementary school alone it's 500 students per one secetary at the high school based on the cuts proposed it's going to be 600 students per per secretary so if AP uh AP assistant principles are cut in the future then who's going to do the workload because the workload from the secretary is going to go down to Works someone work and the the current proposal we are not proposing any cuts to our assistant principal ranks and I don't foresee I foresee that you know remaining even as we go through more budget cuts but um I just with the caveat that $2.7 million is a lot of money to come up with um but I I totally agree with you on on assistant principles there the the schools can only run when there's a team a leadership team in place and those include the assistant principles member ol thank you and thank you Mr mchu for being here and being as I think transparent as we would all like you to be um while we go through this process so I like my colleagues have a handful of questions so on slide 14 the uh question about special education um in in in District programming that we do do we have an idea or data on our neighbors and how they deal with in program versus out of out of City program and what that looks like for us um um I could discuss that with the director um each Community handles it differently because um the students are very different so when I worked in Chelsea we have a lot more uh students outplaced because of and it's all based on the needs of the students with first of all we don't have the capacity in our schools to to extend programming you know there's a very there's a robust um IND District program for students with autism um but when students um there's only so much uh therapeutic support that a school district can offer and sometimes um students need a placement that's more therapeutic with education rather than education with a therapeutic component so often times we we have to look at outside providers to provide that education and it's all based on a um instructional education program that's drafted with the parent and the teacher and that just spells out the requirements it's like a contract that's in federal law that that um those services that type of educational model has to be provided if it can't be provided within the school then look for outside placements to provide that education thank you and then on slide 18 one of the proposed savings initiatives um when I'm looking at the positions that are being reduced in the mlin M tuck and the Roberts for example um I think what I'm trying to understand is when we're analyzing costs and we're comparing it to student and teacher um preferences you mentioned that earlier that we were deciding how we're going to kind of reduce some positions in other vocational art science um Arts programs what takes priority how do we determine where we need to move money around or where we need to improve our costs if I makes sense yeah well we try to evaluate those you know based on some kind of criteria or standard so uh in elementary it's a little bit easier to look at class size because students are basically typically in front of you know the same teacher for most of the day there Specialists that come in uh for prep perod coverage and they might go to library or go to a music room for music and then when you get into the Middle grades it's really based on schedules um more so than than strictly class size so uh because of the variety of um um instructional offerings that are off it at those grade levels so then you're looking at you know are you fully utilizing uh all of your teachers um to support the uh the program so you know it's it's nice to have extra teachers around I don't deny that people are out you you know it's very disruptive when um Teacher Calls in you know if they have if they're sick we we don't want them to come in we want them to stay at home um and to have extra teachers to be able to pick up that coverage is ideal um but it's just that we're asking a lot of the school department budget you know to have to pay you know Equitable salaries uh to be offer you know health insurance with uh 15% co-pay to um to have all this programming um and and and to on you know and have you know sufficient staff so that nobody gets burnt out and everybody you know has um you know a a good um work situation so it's just it we we can't do that all you know even let's say we didn't have Essa to deal with um we didn't have any undef unded accounts um we didn't require any new spending our salary budgets went up by $4 million and our city appropriation can only go up 2.3 so even with all that said the cuts that we're proposing would have to be made in order to fund you know what's required in those salaries so um you know we we have to do the best we can I don't I wish we we weren't making any we would probably make some um you know based on class size but but uh you know we we just we we're reach we're reaching a Tipping Point and like I've told the superintendent many times that while I'm here Medford is not going to be Brockton and we're going to get you know what it really cost to run the district and if we don't have sufficient funds to meet those costs then we have to together come to an agreement on you know what are the priorities in the budget and everything um we want everything to be a priority but everything can't be a priority another followup question on slide 22 when we're talking about the administrative assistance and consolidation for a handful of those roles and member brandley mentioned this and I'm going to follow up saying when we're deciding how we're going to consolidate roles or how we're going to go through job descriptions for example are we speaking to the people in those positions currently to determine how we're going to consult they if that's what we need to do or is it more so we're determining that based off of our expectation of what they're already doing and what we believe them to need to be doing um we made some assumptions about what we could do and then those assumptions are vetted uh with the supervisors that are involved in those programs okay and I think my so you have to come up with some you know when you're developing the budget and you need you don't have enough money and you have to start thinking about how do we rep prioritize our budget you have to generate as many ideas as you can and then you have to go out and test those ideas to see if they workable and you know we could have made a mistake with a few of these you know and when if we did and we go forward with it and we find out that what we had planned to do is not working out then we will attempt to correct that I think my final comment would be to the end I think that um the voices of our Educators in this here in the district are Central in deciding these big decisions that we have and I think that it's not it's not that that's not happening it's not happening enough I think that we have an opportunity here to have a real conversation with each individual as that's willing to speak with us um as as soon as possible realistically to decide how we're going to find the money that we need how we're going to consolidate positions if that's what we need to do um I don't think anyone in here wants to do that um obviously that being said um if we're not talking to them before making assumptions or we can do it at the same time let's say I think we not doing that um we're starting we're starting off um wrong and we're not opening up the conversation um I think properly so I would implore you and the rest of your team and I think the central Administration to do that going forward so that when we have the final conversation about the budget and we vote um both as as a city council and a school committee um that we feel as though we've actually been informed from the people that are going to be filling up these roles and consolida into them potentially yeah when so I uh felt it was important to to brief Union leadership once we began to um become aware of you know the you know kind of significant budget problem that we having so I was happy to do that I wanted to include them in uh kind of a thinking and then of course we do um have a requirement to meet with all the unions that are affected and kind of work out um collaboratively on on how we're going to implement any U cuts that are part of the FY 25 budget thank you for that and I I believe the work that you've been doing and I believe that you'll continue to do that and I want to say thank you for this because this has been an incredibly informative thank you member Russel thank you thank you um thank you for the best Pres presentation I think I've had in seven years uh the worst one at the same time of course but I understood it in in a way that I feel like I've not understood our finances before okay good that's it's one of my goals I wish it was a presentation about wonderful things and it was just as clear um but that's not what we got tonight um in last year at this time um I was on a little bit of a rant about how every single year on page eight you have this um correction to all of our um our fake spending so in every budget that I've been through we would say that um homeless Transportation was 100,000 even though it was 500 600,000 the year before because we had to get to the number so we would put a number in the budget that was completely a lie and everybody knew it and last year I ranted because we had the what did we spend in the previous year what were we actually budgeting and they were it was like no other thing I've ever seen like to see us spending 1.1 million and then budgeting 250,000 um it was really kind of like and I was ranting I'm like here we are next year we're going to be in the same exact spot so you made me a bit of a a I'm glad to be wrong for the first time on that um unfortunately that does mean that the budget is reflecting actual expenses which everybody can agree is what we would want it's just uh that means that we can't what this budget does not represent a fantasy so that we can get to the number from the city yeah and I I greatly appreciate that as hard as that has made this you just reminded me of another um aspect of with the salary increases so some of those contracts that were settled in this fiscal year went back to fiscal year 22 so the the first year of the new contract was fiscal year 22 which meant that in the budget for 20 for the salaries were based on fiscal year 21 salaries so the salary increas is a little outsized what it would typically be because those budgets not only have we we've met our obligations this year what we owed employees but we then have to adjust budgets from 21 to 25 uh in one fiscal year so there were a couple of unions that had that um that amount of retroactivity and we still have the custodial contract to settle which would be 20 21 through 2024 um and additional for the next coming year so whatever that comes but we we've accounted for that budget right um and you know I think there's a couple of things I just want to say about budgeting that not everybody will necessarily know is that well obviously the most the most important thing is we must have a balanced budget by law there there's no option to have a penny of additional spending outside of an identified Revenue Source um but there's this other thing we're talking about this undistributed salaries um because we're in the middle of negotiations you know if we set aside $600,000 for what may be the cost to settle a contract and then we don't have it settled before the end of the fiscal year we that all that money just flows right back to the city and then the following year the the the smart accounting would be whatever you think you need for this year plus the 600,000 because you're going to still need that right and we've had years where we would have1 and a half million dollars set aside for contracts we wouldn't finish the contracts we would send it back to the city and the following year we budgeted $250,000 like there's no world where that math makes sense um so that problem some of that problem can be solved by the school committee getting contracts done on time which we are working very hard on um but it's it creates this very lopsided thing when you look at our budgeted allocations so the budget goes up 1.1 one a half million dollar we didn't even spend it it went back to the city and then the next year we got whatever the increase was it's doesn't tell you the story yeah because that was money for three years ago contracts so when we look at that that graph that shows percentage increases year-over-year it is a it's not that it's not important but it does not mean really what it says it means um and even if we were to do one of actual expenses year-over-year well in this year if we paid three years of contract that's this year's expense so it looks like we spent way more yeah but it's really settling contracts from years ago so yeah all those numbers are uh very very funny frankly yeah I have to um give a note of thanks to the city Finance director um a couple of months ago we had we we we did have um unspent balances in our FY 23 budget and I was able to work something out with him with some of the um um the uh retroactivity for the administrator's contract could be legitimately charged to the 23 budget so if you recall had some concerns about finishing this year in the red so that actually helped us um with our balance budget uh for this year I wish we could keep it open for as many years as we have sping contracts um I'm going to just go through my list thank you for my colleagues who've answered some of the have asked some of the questions already um in the enrollment Trends um how many of the I'm I'm slightly confused on the kindergart situation so this year we had to add some kindergarten classes because we had some like literally August and September like I don't want to say Onslaught that sounds terrible but like an awful lot more registrant than we expected and so we added those kindergarten teachers now we are not expecting that number to go down in the fall are we not including those kindergarten teachers in this budget and then we're just going to over the summer as a registration makes it too much for the current for the the kept kindergarten teachers we're just going to go hire new kindergarten teachers that's the plan um with the staff that we're funding in the budget if the enrollment rejections hold then we'll have sufficient number of kindergarten teachers okay thank you if if the enrollment growth exceeds that then we're going to have to look we may we may have to add uh one or more teachers to that kindergarten great thank you I was I was just slightly confused on how that was working um on page 13 uh we have four literacy coaches we are not continuing they were actually vacant um my question is so do we have any literacy coaches at all and fortunately no we have zero literacy coaches as we have focused on Literacy for five straight years oh I see the assistant superintendent uh saying we actually have one my apologies we have one literacy um coach who's housed at both of the title one buildings the Muk and the mlin okay thank you very much um just for clarification so it's part of the title one budget okay her salary is paid the title one budget correct thank you um on page 14 um uh member olap had brought up um I think he was bringing up like you know special education services um and I'm the I'm the Medford representative I'm the chair of the shore uh educational collaboratives Board of directives directors and um you know and actually it's like it feels like it's actually just the Chelsea special ed Department because it's like I don't know two-thirds or maybe even three quarters of all of the shore students are actually from Chelsea and of course sha is in Chelsea so there's that's probably not a coincidence um um but you know when we when we're in our shore meetings we have talked about how districts come to shore seeking assistance um and there are a number of types of Specialists for instance that are truly unicorns I believe there's some for the blind that are like you know there's like two in the state or something um and so when we think about in District Services versus out of District Services cost is always an issue but sometimes cost is not the issue at all and um I know sh just hired somebody and I forget her title but she does something that like all the districts around are very excited because they need those services for a student so like it would make no sense to hire this person full-time to serve one student exactly um and there are very few of them so we will be getting that service from Shore and they will employ that person so it's it's very complicated like some I believe Chelsea also has space constraints for their special students so you know there's a lot of reasons to do things in District a lot of reasons to do things out of district and certainly the least restrictive environment is important but at least restrictive environment for which you can't actually provide the services um well that that's I don't know what to say about that but if you literally cannot hire a person to do the services that are necessary for a student to progress then you know that that's sort of a a a tough spot to be in so and collaborative is a different then out of District placements collaboratives are viewed as you know part of the school community and the idea was you know why should 10 school districts be fighting over the three or four teachers that can actually do that program when you know you can have a collaborative to hire those teachers and every school system can access those services so it's it's really viewed as like part of public school school I say more so than out of District placements right I mean they are me for public school students although I know that some I believe most out those District placement are also students of the district from but I know they are our students and we have a requirement to you know oversee the the implementation of the iips at those placements thank you um page 15 wait um you know um this issue of the two new positions for HR payroll um you know in my seven years I have asked for more reports than is probably reasonable okay it's definitely reasonable um and I'll go out on a limb and say 90% of those reports are not things that we can get they're questions like how much are we spending on overtime and Medford both in the city and in the schools does not have a modern information system for their finances so munice which is just one company but it's the one most people have very expensive a year ago I believe it was a year ago maybe it was two we had a presentation it was going to be $1.7 million to implement in Medford Public Schools Alone um and you know that would be a capital expense and a you know a massive training effort for a number of staff and like a 18month project so we don't have that so A lot of times we ask questions so that we can talk about efficiencies or the direction of the district or all what you know lots of other questions for which you need payroll or HR information for which the answer is you just can't have it because we're not going to have like a staff member and especially in a lightly staff department spend weeks and weeks pouring over data to type up a spreadsheet for you I mean you can do that if you have tons of Staff but then you probably would just have munits if you had that kind of money so um I very grateful for this because every time we have a an in for teachers or anybody other any other of our Union partners and we settle it and then two and a half months later they haven't gotten their retro pay I mean the new members haven't had this experience yet but we get lots of emails as if you all are just like on vacation and in reality when you have to give retr pay for three years for somebody who got a diploma in the middle of that and then you know increased in their step and then increased in their longevity like it is a painful manual process and I believe munus actually makes a lot of that stuff very easy and um adding these two people for $150,000 is I'd rather take these people and get munus but I don't see us coming up with an additional $1.7 million anytime soon so I want to get questions answered that we as a school committee really need one of the reports that I've harped on now for six years I think is a hires and terminations report which my understanding from when I go to the shore all the other members of the board are from different districts in the area no other Medford folks so I get to hear how things operate everywhere which is fascinating and wonderful and really upsetting at the same time they all get a hires and termination some of them monthly some of them quarterly Shore gets at every single meeting and it says who what are the open positions who left the who left the the district and and why you know not like gory to Tales but like resigned you know medical or retired um who did we hire a really important report for school committees and for Medford to do that it is not a report that you can do because our payroll system is separate from our HR System somebody would have to literally sit down and spend countless hours just to give us this report and countless may not be the right number if you go on our website there's a staff directory do a search for somebody hired in the last few months they're not there do a search for somebody who left last year they're still there why because that in every other district is fed by the HR System or the payroll whatever or munus um in Medford somebody has to have it on their to-do list in the HR or the payroll group to go in run a report probably make it look pretty send it over to Lisa at you know in the web design team who will then like have some students work I mean it's like weeks of work for something that should just be automatic so I very much support these positions even though I understand um that there's a cost an There's an opportunity there that we're uh there's there's a loss because we're including these um HR also does all of the um certification teacher certification stuff you know we used to have a deputy superintendent that did that um which you know from a financial perspective is probably not the most fiscally responsible person to be doing that but now we have HR doing all that and it's like we're not talking about an HR department like you know 12 people um I tried to look it up and I my vague memory is that payroll alone in malen public schools which isn't that much bigger than us was four staffers right and so to say we're lean is really an understatement and when we can't get the job done and you know I'm not going to put words in your mouth Jerry but let's be honest when there's not staff to get the work done it doesn't get done in a timely manner uh which I I'll save that comment for later so I I definitely support that addition and I actually believe this is the third year in a row where we've been like let's add them then because we we hear the problems um somerville's um technology budget is $5.4 million so we're talking about going from 30 to 100,000 so um Somerville has 500 more kids than us yeah so um it's it's really staggering frankly yeah to think of a of a of a school district with what is that tfold more than tfold 45 fold what we have yeah for a small fraction more um it's not really anything to discuss we know we need to bring that number up but we don't we don't need to bring that number up $100,000 a year because by then sum you know by the time we have a reasonable budget summer Bill's technology budget will be a billion dollars I mean we'll never get there um so that's an investment I really think we have to um yeah put on the list I mean that's the problem when there's not enough money it's put it on the list and then you sort the list and then these are the things that will never make the list never make the actual funding yeah um what what I'd like to see is like us uh the school department coming up with a strategic plan just for technology how it's uh LED I mean there's two separate um things that we have to look at there instructional uh technology that's um goes hand inand with the curriculum so that's more kind of teacher uh based in terms of what their needs are how they're rolling out instruction we do have some uh classes I think it's social studies that use uh online textbooks um and then there's like the plumbing for the network itself and how the schools are connected and uh you know there's all kinds of opportunities if you had a a robust network uh connecting all the schools and then of course you have to have a a a plan B Network in case something you know uh what are the odds of a truck knocking out you know utility pole uh and like taking down communication so you have to have redundancies built in uh but there's you know ways to kind of manage your facilities if they were all connected um to kind of keep our energy costs in check um so there's just a lot to take advantage of uh and right now it's it's the way we handle our um building repairs it's a break fix model uh you just let things go until they break and then if you don't have to deal with it right away don't deal with it but if you have to deal with it right away um even if you have no money it's it's got to be done so you know trying to be more preventive eliminate downtime to the best we can and and we have you know teach students are taking tests online mcast and and PSATs a AP so um you have to have be paying attention to the bandwidth that that you have to get to these uh sites in order to take the test so it's it's um it's not a luxury anymore it's just integral it's a mission critical part of running a school now thank you um yeah I certainly agree it's Mission critical um this is my seventh year I still can't use the internet when I go to Medford High and I i' I've sort of wore myself horse trying to actually get that to happen and um you know I have a computer science degree and I feel like anybody says that's not possible like I just can't um it's like it's it's possible I mean so um is it possible for free the answer is obviously no so um you know I did look at the number of nurses and uh I'm changing gears a little here um Somerville has actually about 800 more students than us this is a year ago um they do have 17 nurses and we're going to be down to 11 um I I do think um I am concerned about that you know the the guidance counsel ratios or whatever it was the you know that the the National Association of guidance counselors we were better better than that number um but I always wonder about how those numbers are created are they like suring the whole country finding the average and saying hey that's the right that's the right number because you have States where there's 10,000 kids per guidance counsel or something like not maybe 10, some many thousands of kids for one guidance counselor and same for nurses frankly um so that's sort of like that's interesting information but is that the right number is sort of I think the question I I think other people have sort of said as well is like what is the right number you know and you know when when I talk to like just people in the community about the budget and how how it's the most insane system ever invented was school public school budgeting because we have to have our budget done before the state tells us even how much you're going to get can you imagine setting your budget before knowing what you actually have for income um and the FEDS they're always a year and a half late or whatever um but we also have the you know I don't think there's any other scenario where students can just show up this is my big thing about calling charter schools public schools if that's true then anybody can just show up and enroll their kids and that's not true um but tomorrow morning 15 kids could show up and we will educate them maybe not tomorrow morning maybe the day after um and it doesn't matter what our budget was and one of those students could be require significant Medical Care and it doesn't matter if that's $50,000 a month or even more um and I believe the number I heard was the highest was there was a student who was running us $400,000 a year like that's I mean we still should be doing it that's what we have to do however when that student shows up in January and we set our Bud budget in May of the previous year and we didn't have enough money then we still have to figure it out and so it's I'm not this has nothing to do about to do with the students at all here but my point is just that unlike any other Endeavor where you can be like well we just won't do it this year you know if like oh there's a road and it has a pothole and you're like everybody's complaining and you're like we don't have any money you wait for the next year and then you do it and that's literally not an option for schools we will always do it and you know if if those students that show up mean that we have to increase the number of classrooms here or there it makes it so that we don't have enough resource then we will actually cut somewhere else because negative isn't an option because as you pointed out you don't want to be Brockton and I don't know if everybody knows what's going on in Brockton but they had what $22 million deficit in the current year and to be clear that means that unless their City just rides in with a check people are losing their jobs mid- teaching a class like goodbye tomorrow you don't have a job and we'll figure out what to do with the students stick them in study halls I mean I don't know what's really going on on in their schools but you don't cut $22 million in the middle of a school year without it being a blood bath frankly that that's that's probably what it is um and so I greatly appreciate that you have sort of set the bar there is that that we will not be this like uh Brockton and I don't know anything about their system and their school committee and their city and how they came to their budget and how they lost all that money yeah that that's it's not a it's nothing to say negatively about them but we can't be them um and there's lots of other districts that have gone through this uh you know much smaller scale um but I I'm glad we won't be in that situation so I just want to there's there's one of the thing I've heard a number of times and um I was just laid off in December after 26 years from my employment um which I hadn't really disclosed publicly but um and it it's not been easy I've never been laid off um and frankly I kind of thought I was in this job until I was retiring because big company and I liked the work and it was always work um and um there's this amusing thing that happens in layoffs in private companies and I sort of hear it happening here is what are we gonna do with the work what are we gonna do with the work and um it's fascinating like I had a great boss and I think a lot of people were like well we got to transfer the work from this person to that person who's already working completely maxed out um but we don't ever just come to terms with the fact maybe the work won't get done and obviously a students in your class as a teacher you're that's not really the scenario but when I talk about like if we have to cut $2.7 million I mean I don't know where it's coming from but if it doesn't come from classrooms then maybe there's nobody cleaning the classrooms anymore like that would be a worst case scenario but like the idea that the work will always just get done is lud it's ludicrous it's just not you know I look at these administrators and secretaries and other people who are doing work and whether they're there's too many of them for the amount of work and all that stuff is is an important consideration for the administration and if you know this is public money we have to be good stewards but they were doing something and you know um all those administrators their work will it actually get done or will we simply put it on their plate and then that plate will just grow like some of those folks already were doing more than one job um and I in particular you know i' I've been on the heat the health education curriculum but whatever the at stands for um for the last year or two I can't remember how long we've been doing that and we we finished the analysis and I feel like we're ready to start talking about picking one and implementing one and the person running that is one of the people who is no longer going to be at least in that role I mean I understand understand with uh the way movement happens that they may still work here but they won't be working here in that role so that work certainly doesn't belong in that you know if you're running you know the health curriculum and now you're running you know math which yeah makes no sense like you you aren't going to be doing the health curriculum too and even if we did say hey you got to keep doing that they they got to do math so we just spent all this time we've heard from the community the health curriculum here is um not where we want it and now I feel like is it just hope and a prayer until maybe someday we have enough money to actually Implement a health curriculum that our students will have some clue what's going on uh before their adults I'm just deeply worried about that because we did just invest so much time um and I just don't see how it happens without the staff um I seem like I'm talking and not asking a lot of question questions but um I I do think it's important to to and I and I I know that like we have regulatory requirements like so we do have to say oh the work is going over here but we also have to just be a little more honest about it actually isn't going to get done though because there just so much time in a day um and it's just not going to get done and I I do wish we were more able without getting the Regulators on our back to say here's the pile of work we put it over there and let's let's identify all the work that will not get done because then that's kind of a story to tell the community when we say we need more money with an override or something and they're like you have now half the administrators and you're getting it all done why would you need more money that's like that's insane if you can get it done with half the people why would we give you twice as much money and we just tell that story and um instead of saying no there will be nobody doing this work and here it is on the pile of things that we might do if the city was to have an override and it was to pass but we don't do that and I I think that's a missed opportunity to be honest and transparent uh we talk about transparency sort of endlessly everybody has their own definition of transparency that U by the way this is the most transparent presentation I've ever seen um but transparency does mean different things to different people so I think of transparency especially around around this job consolidation as we're not doing the work instead of saying this administrator is picking up two other administrators jobs and you know they're going to get it done I'm I'm just not able to buy that and so this this is a this presentation to me represents a disaster I think the 2.7 additional million dollars in Cuts represents a catastrophe uh although I didn't use the dictionary to know the exact differences but if we have to make the additional 2.7 million in cuts um I'm saying it out loud because again for transparency purposes there are limits we can't have too many kids in a classroom we have teachers contract maximum size class we're not going to be one of these districts with 40 kids sitting on um you know on heaters around the building that's never going to be met for at least with our current teachers contract and hopefully just never yeah so if we're not doing that and we can't you know we have minimum Manning for the custodial which is reasonable um at some point we have to start looking at programs and nobody wants to say it out loud but if anybody thinks we're getting rid of math or science or or English or history you need your heads exam it that's not happening what's happening is the Arts the sports those are going and those are not 2.7 million probably altogether so we need more money and um I hope to never have to vote on another 2.7 million member Graham thank you um this is my fifth budget um they all feel like they've been bad but the fir in the first budget actually we went through an exercise where I think for the first time we said if you could have what you needed to make to improve student outcomes what would it be and the list quickly was 8 to 10 million right off the bat without a lot of strategic thinking or planning um and I feel like we're still in that same exact position with one exception which is that we've made deep investments in technology out of necessity because of covid but I have to tell you the idea that we could prepare students for the future without computers in their hands is absolutely ludicrous like we can't not by equipment for our students it's like not giving them a textbook in today's time and we have made curriculum decisions that are Central to using computers in lie of textbooks so that they can be modern so that they're not outdated so that they access all the latest and the greatest which is what our students deserve but we must be able to give them a computer to do that because if we don't they cannot learn so I understand the idea that like maybe we could wait on this but we can't if it means students don't have equipment now if there's another way to fund that replacement that is great and I'm all ear um and you know maybe there's arpa money left over in the city that could do that in a one-time way that would get us through that piece of this year but we have to plan for that instructional technology to be available to our students because otherwise we are not preparing them for the future we just aren't um I am imploring the city to find more than 735 for our kids including my own I have a high schooler and a middle schooler these cuts are deep and we're still two and $2.7 million away if we need to use one-time funds to plug the hole let's do that and then put this question to the voters so that they can decide whether our schools are worth funding if we make all of these Cuts today right now there's there's nothing left for our for our residents to have faith in and to believe that like we could be better than we are um so I really think we need a better plan that doesn't involved making $2.7 million more cuts um so if I am you know really thinking about what I think the city needs to be considering and I know this is you know a a conversation that is much bigger than just this uh the folks in this room um it's the 2.3 million additional the appropriation increase it's the $470,000 on chapter and at minimum it's like $3.3 million like on top of all of that so that's a huge ask I I don't envy the city for thinking about that but they the city has to determine where the revenue comes from um I appreciate like all the work that we've done to try to find proposals that we can survive with another 2.7 is not survivable at that point so um I I don't want to see all the hard work that we've done together Educators administrators support staff school committee we've made huge investments in this District um really strategically for as long as I've been here we've bought new curriculum where the curricula didn't serve us we have invested in mental health workers which are needed by our students we are trying to make all of these forward steps and we just it there's no more forward steps if we're going to cut $4 A5 million of the budget $5 million whatever it is it's too much like we never had that money to begin with so we can complain about like how many administrators we have spoiler it's many fewer than most districts we can complain about how much technology costs spoiler it's much less than most districts we don't spend money on maintenance you all see it every day um we we are underfunded there's no two ways about it student Opportunity Act is not going to save us it it never was supposed to save a city like Medford um we need a different we we need a different plan to fund our schools than we have been successful in finding in my four years here so um I I I don't know exactly how we do that um I will be the first person knocking on your door when we do finally for the first time in history put an override to the voters to tell you about all the amazing things we can't do anymore because we don't have the money I will ask you all to join me but we have to do something different and blowing up the schools at the beginning of fy2 is not the answer thank you just to piggyback on that from the chair um there's a group of us that have been meeting since the early fall maybe September U member Graham myself um and two members of the city council chair and vice chair and in I believe it was late March we did put out a press release where we just um let the voters know let the residents know that we are exploring um two debt exclusions one for the fire headquarters and one of course for uh Flagship new high school um in that we also mentioned that this fall there'll be two elections one in September one in November and we do plan on putting um potentially two override questions before the voters one to help fund our schools and one for a potential um sidewalk Street Maintenance crew that could help our and provide support to our DPW Focus mainly on the the lack of Maintenance that we've been able to put in based on chapter 90 funding to to our streets so that it has been discussed it's not been discussed as a full committee obviously because we have open meeting law um rules that we have to follow but it is something that we are putting forward I don't know if that will be September or November our next task force meeting is Friday I believe but obviously that is the position we are in we um used onetime funding for the budget for the last four years because of the pandemic and because of the loss revenues um that has have been able to um dwindle that down of course because those large buckets we're we're in these this position because all expenses are up as well as all you know all of our salaries and expenses cannot be met by the two and a half% that were able to tax the voters it's just too much and compiling that with these one-time funds that we've used whether it be uh on the school side I think about one and a half million to two million and then on the city Side luckily we've been able to find a few grants the bar foundations's one that's been able going to be able to absorb some of some of the um positions we have but we're also doing some hard work I think tonight is where I really realized where the Gap was because obviously you haven't called each of us and explained fully other than when we've been in um executive session meetings or um school committee meeting so my next several days will be trying to talk to my finance director and working through the Cityside budget to make the necessary cuts to be able to provide more to the schools at first I thought that was about a half million and come come this weekend and tonight I'm realizing it it's much more and that's including with some significant cuts that we all feel um pretty upset about I mean I don't think there's a person behind this real that either doesn't have a headache or a stomach ache because this is real lives this is our students this is um this is real and it's it's not a fun position to be in whatsoever and as I talk to Mayors across the state and I've talked to many it seems like everybody is in this position because of these large buckets of onetime funding and people are doing overrides or having major Cuts I think we're trying to Bright size we're trying to figure it out before we put a question before the for the residents and I do think that will pass I think that's a balancing act because we need to make sure we get a debt exclusion for potentially several hundred million dollars um approved for a new high school but it's the hard work that um we have to do and it's a tough week that I that I have ahead on the city Side to try to figure this out so that's that's where I am um I didn't know much this is obviously the first time this presentation was before us so there's a lot of things that I didn't even know until tonight and I appreciate the presentation I know there's a number of people that would like to speak um we have a number of people on online we have a number of people here um there's a lot more work we have to do this is very early um we gave the schools the numbers before the local receipts were in before we had estimates um hopefully we we can budge there um city councils do a budget May 31st if they get all their budget meetings in so so there is it's early in the process process it's a not a fun place to be in I think we all have said that so I just hoping we can get to public comment after the school committee rests to hear from y i just so I'm encouraged by the long-term prospects I want us to not be in this situation next year or any year after and then as we open this up to public comment I this you know this is what not just underfunded but deprioritized education looks like to be in this situation and so this year is terrible we are in a position where we're not going to find good Solutions we're going to find the least bad Solutions so please work with us to help us figure out what we can do to not cause irreparable damage okay thank you thank you Mr mchu um we have a yeah a lot of people on so I think our rules say three minutes one time each please make a line and we want to hear from you May no it is three minutes but if people could just give their name and um address for I can try to keep up rather than watching the whole movie meeting again thank you yes name and address for the record um please thank you hi my name is Jennifer Silva I gave my address via email I will give my address is 49 win up Street my name is Briana martinetti 188 Washington Street meford so I'm a meford school nurse I'm the chairperson for the meford chapter of the master Nurses Association I'm also a resident and three of my children attend Medford Public Schools and I am also a Medford school nurse a Medford resident and a medord public schools alumnus so the first thing we want to say is Happy National Nurses Week to all the nurses in the room I want anybody listen to [Applause] M thank you so much for everything you do every day I really wanted to jump in and talk a lot about what we do but I think I just want to jump into the meat of it right now um so really a proposed budget cut of four nursing positions um that's 25% of our current nursing Workforce so we are being disproportionately taking um cuts on versus anything else that's happening in the district right now um that leaves us with 11.6 nursing positions that's a level of Staffing that we haven't seen since the 2016 2017 school year um nursing staffing increased prior to the covid-19 pandemic and our Healthcare needs our physical emotional social needs have only increased post pandemic um really with these Cuts we won't be able to provide the level of care that many of our students caregivers and School staff have gone accustomed to and deserve our offices are going to act like triage stations we're going to have to quickly quickly move through students and and move on to different um sources of of putting them in other places if we can't see them in our offices um the director of Health Services position has been vacant since February so the decision to drastically reduce the nursing staff is being made without consulting a director um the director would really have the knowledge of what's happening in our office offices I know there was a question about um minimum nursing staffing so dph actually doesn't have any minimum Staffing guidelines and what the National Association of School nurses says which our is our Professional Organization is that appropriate Staffing is necessary in order to provide Safe Care and is accomplished through understanding and considering the complexities of the role of the nurse and the care that is provided using a ratio of nurse to student alone is not evident based or appropriate so determining nursing staffing without input of those who understand student Acuity is inherently unsafe especially for our most vulnerable students and we can't go just this nurse to this many students so just for some numbers because I know we all love data right so this year as of the beginning of this month we have had 45,000 student visits to our health offices we've also seen 350 staff in our offices we manag manage specialized healthcare for approximately 1,00 students we've administered 6,957 medications so far this school year we've contacted parents via telephone email or talking points which is a godsend to 10,194 um separate occasions we we've had to contact parents about different Healthcare needs um we've spoken with 216 Physicians or other Healthcare Providers to coordinate care for our students we've been to 181 meetings whether that's 504 IEP meetings um and we've also had 911 calls we've had 14 medical emergencies bonified medical emergencies the nurses have called 9114 so with that making cuts to the nursing department will have a profound impact on students um it will lead to decreased time on learning um with fewer new nursing staff right now the average time out of class for our students is 7.4 minutes and with fewer nurses in the office that will inadvertently keep students out of the classroom longer since we're tending to one student and have five other students waiting if we're alone um early dismissals may increase if we don't have the time to do a full assessment we don't have the time if we have multiple students in the office for students to rest appropriately there's just not enough space of that many people people are waiting um it could decrease the potential time for emergency response for students or staff if there's a medical emergency in the building and we're busy tied up caring for one thing going on already um case management the ability to provide case management will drastically diminish um we attend IP meetings 504 meetings SST meetings and if there's only one nurse in the building we would have to then close our offices and it would be difficult to then provide those recommendations in those meetings um medical clearance for school registration and enrollment will take longer leaving students out of the educational environment for Unnecessary amounts of time and the potential for medication errors is greater with fewer nurses in the office as it's easily um distractable when there are multiple people entering the office and you're the only person in there mandated screenings will take longer um specifically leaving our most vulnerable students at risk who don't have health insurance or have lack of reliable Health Care um children who do not know to report that their vision is impaired especially if they've never seen clearly are left at risk um and we won't have enough bandwidth to follow up with parents on referrals that have been sent out making sure that we get them back and making sure that students have been seen um and also having less nursing staff will impact field trips right now we currently have 14 scheduled field trips that need a nurse to attend for various healthare needs whether it be medication procedures Transportation Aid um there are medications that we cannot administer to school staff it needs to be um provided by a nurse so a nurse would have to attend and if there's only one nurse in the building then those either a substitute will need to be hired or those field trips will have to be canceled so significant reduction in qualified School nursing staff could affect our ability to obtain the Massachusetts Controlled Substances registration that is how we are able to delegate medications and epipens to school staff without that nurses would be responsible for administering every single medication so John talked about carrying his EpiPen that would no longer be possible nurses would have to administer every single Med in the school skting and go to every single field trip um finding substitute nurses is very difficult in school nursing um so substitute nurses must be registered nurses uh The Substitute paying meford is significantly lower than our surrounding districts um and there's a lot of other perdm opportunities for nurses so School nursing isn't the first place that people are jumping to some of our surrounding districts I know some of those has already been mentioned and their Staffing they have also float nurses and resource nurses to help cover um when either a nurse is out or for field trips and things like that so they've already sort of built that in with 11.6 nurses we no longer have that built in um so we would have be looking at hiring um most likely agency nurses who can run upwards of $90 an hour um to hire those agency nurses for those needs less nursing staff will also put an increased Trin on the guidance Department um many students present to our nursing offices with psychosomatic symptoms that they may not recognize or anxiety or mental health concerns um sometimes the School nurses are the first ones to sort of identify those for students and and support them and make those mental health referrals um there was just a recent report where um Dr Shannon Salo she's the northeast regional nurse consultant for dph um said it's so much easier for a student to raise their hand and ask to see the nurse than to make a request to seek mental health counseling um so the nurses are the first places those kids end up um and then we can work with them we can support them whether they already have plans in place to sort of get them back to class without having to see a guidance counselor and without being able to do that with having significantly less nurses in our office we may be immediately trying to send them to counselors who are not available and then that increases the time out of class that they're waiting to see those guidance counselors or those adjustment counselors so you know we were asked to come to school when nobody else did we did we said okay we were asked to test all students staff for covid-19 we said okay um we were asking complete contact tracing throughout the pandemic we said [Applause] okay we asked to track immunization compliance for staff and we said okay so now we really ask that you support our students with maintaining safe nursing staffing levels to allow School nurses to appropriately care for all students thank you thank you member then member brandley and then you'll be next um I don't know if everybody in line is all the people that want to talk but I do the three minutes is not meant to cut anybody off but um nobody wants to be speaking at midnight so if we can try I wish we had a timer like you see in the state house and I really just not not to scream at you when your time's up but so you know because I'm the talker I go on and on um I gave them six minutes m Russo there was two of them thank oh no that's fine I just you know it's it's hard three minutes um member brandley and then we'll yield to the re to the res um nurse Jen can I just ask you a question um how many nurses do we have in the district right now I might have that number here but the numbers are that's okay so we currently have 16 positions but that's so it's 15.6 full-time equivalent because we have one part-time nurse okay and what number day are we on in school I know I know everybody here definitely know is it 29 days 29 days left 29 days left okay nobody's counting I get it all right thank you thank you just name and address to the record thank you hi my name is Olivia Pereira uh I am not a Medford president but I am a Medford public school nurse um I am actually the float nurse for the district um and I am the the position that is being proposed being cut um I wanted to stand before you guys today is to make my face known and my role known um I have grown as a nurse and I have found my passion as a school nurse within the Medford Public School Community um I like to believe that I've proven myself a valuable asset to this community and to the Health Services Department um I am the only staff member that speaks three languages and I have built an interpersonal connection with families staff and students that no Google translate nor pocket talk can um account for I have provided coverage during maternity leaves in the absence of a full-time nursing position for nearly five months and um on spur of the moment sitck calls I also um receive phone calls on a regular basis from other nursing buildings to assist to translate in sensitive matters I have been pulled by teaching staff on multiple occasions to help translate for families for I meetings 504 meetings when our district translator is unavailable I wanted to stand before you today despite feeling as though I'm cast aside to advocate for my colleagues I wanted to share my distaste for what is happening to them and to the Health Services Department as I as they have all worked tirelessly to ensure a safe and welcoming environment having seen over 45,000 students to date and maintaining health status to ensure students can resume learning eliminating additional positions not only places our staff with a shortage but it increases student wait times for the nursing office places stress on teaching staff to triage within their classrooms and it will severely limit and delay the availability and opportunities of students to have extracurricular activities that are pre-screened by our health department this may include field trips registration for school and sports registrations I caution whomever has received my email or heard me speak today to um consider the increasing social emotional needs of our students who are unable to distinguish between physical and psychological needs our school district and Community will not continue to thrive with a nursing shortage and the increase in Burnout is a very real possibility I urge you to recognize our hard work and the dedication of my colleagues and to take these above mentioned um factors into consideration when making the budget for the upcoming year thank you you're next but before you go if anybody in the audience is having conversations could you please just take it outside and then come back in because I just want to make sure we can all focus on the speaker thank you hello my name is Kelly Williams I'm a registered nurse in the Medford Public School System my previous practice setting as an ER nurse was in one of the busiest emergency departments in the Comm wealth and I'm now a nationally board certified school nurse I'm very familiar with the devastating effects of a delay in prehospital care that will result from your decision to cut 25% of the Medford Public School's health services staff equity and access to Healthcare in the school setting is a vital component of supporting students throughout their educational Journey the inequitable and insufficient access to health services that will result from your decision to cut 25% of nursing staff is unsafe and unethical particularly in the setting of the school committee receiving a 145% increase in salary within the same fiscal year Access to Health Services in Medford Public Schools will be insufficient inequitable and unsafe because of the proposed cut Health Services in all female department is being disproportionately impacted by this proposal raising the degree of Suspicion for gender discrimination research shows that School nurses incre increase Health Equity and increase access to care for traditionally disadvantaged populations the suggested allocation of less nurses across the district is inconsistent with Equitable access to care for all and will result in Damages in the form of increased weight times increased time out of the class delays in care that may result in poor outcomes and exacerbation of conditions to exceed Management in the school setting resulting in preventable dis dismissal and transfer of transfer to high level of care I implore you to consider the negative impact on student outcomes within this vulnerable population research states that School nurses can only address disparities and access to care if they're located where there is need research also shows that students requiring special consideration for chronic Healthcare needs are at higher risk of lower academic achievement increased rate of disability related to Chronic health challenges and less opportunities for job offers and Community engagement Health assessments individualized healthc care plans evidence informed intervention coordination with students families and Community Resources are examples of school health services that directly impact a student's ability to remain in school while managing chronic health challenges research has proven that direct access to school nursing Services improved clinical outcomes and reduced absences among children with chronic health challenges outcomes have revealed that absences impact standardized testing rates of graduation future earning potential and long-term quality of life to create an environment with truly Equitable access to sufficient Support Services to meet their needs Medford Public Schools must prioritize the health needs of the student population as challenges in health are directly related to academic outcomes registered nurses and schools demonstrate a significant return on our investment in education in the future of disease management and in our nation's potential to grow flourishing communities and engaged citizens there's a marked increase in students ability to return to class when there's a school nurse present there's a low threshold for dismissal when there's not a school nurse present and or available to conduct an assessment create a plan Implement interventions as necessary evaluate the efficacy of the interventions modify as needed and determine if the student is safe to remain in school reduction in Health Services will result in more triaging in the classroom as access to health services will be severely limited the liability for a staff member who is not a healthc care professional to respond to requests for Health Services is immense and for good reason the intricate nature of school nursing in Massachusetts requires double licensure registered nurse license and Department of secondary education Educators license for this reason the sensitive nature of administering school health services should never be delegated to nonprofessional Personnel without school nurse to supervise this is the unintended consequence of your decision to drastically reduce health services staff in Medford thank [Applause] you names and address for the record James casy 835 fway West Lindsay Quinn 16 Hatch Road Benjamin SES 19 Park Street Harrison 30 Lincoln Street Riley M Hill 92 Hume Avenue so the five of us standing here today have been going to see the drama club Put on production since elementary school and now that we are all a part of the drama club and the performing arts department we understand the hard work and dedication it takes to put on these performances this past weekend we put on four performances of Mama Mia along with 60 other students and entertained over 1,000 audience members despite the trouble the club has experienced this here with our advisers we were still able to thrive and put on a very successful show we would hate to see it fall apart as we worked so hard to get where we are in the four years that our seniors have been a part of the drama club we've only had one year with the dedicated advisor stuck with us for the full school year the Performing Arts coordinator has been our one single consistent figure throughout these past four years without someone serving in this position we would not have been capable of putting on the Productions we do today if these budget cuts pass we will lose our most valuable representative and the entire performance in arts department is at risk along with the drama club the marching band has also been extremely successful over the past four years this fall we won first place in our division and brought home the highest overall score throughout all five divisions beating nationally ranked marching bands the Metford High School color guard has also been consistently incredible and has been on the podium at every competition they have attended the students that participate in these activities find community and learn lifelong skills at Medford High all our seniors have a plan After High School some moving straight to the workforce and others moving on to higher education we even have we even have our own drama alumni John and TOA in front of us today one of your main goals that you preach is to keep incoming ninth graders wanting to choose Medford High School over some of the private schools in the surrounding area the Arts here are the one of the most impressive things that the school has to offer cutting the budget for a coordinator of this wonderful program is not the right thing to do and losing all of these groups can overall lead to a severe de decline in enrollment at meford high school how do we want and expect more students to enroll if the numbers of our faculty continue to decrease all we ask before you commit to these decisions is to please realize the loss of the students and teachers at Medford High in all departments these positions are crucial and without them the foundation of our school the foundation that helps so many students could fall apart [Applause] thank you students it's a hard act to follow my name is Nora Lyman I'm one of the guidance counselors at mclin Middle School one of two um my position is the one that would be eliminated ated if the budget um is passed as proposed um I wanted to speak a little bit about what the impacts would be about that today such a cut would mean that there would be one guidance counselor for grades six through eight and would double the case load of that counselor to approximately 432 students for the record um the American school counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 students to one guidance counselor and many studies have been done that show that student outcomes are improved with that count with that ratio when you consider the day-to-day responsibilities of a guidance counselor that 400 plus number is not just alarming it's simply not feasible as a guidance counselor in the middle school we are responsible for teaching social emotional learning to students as a class in their schedule one person logistically would not be able to do this for three grades we also managed the 504 plan of students with disabilities like anxiety depression and ADHD we meet with some of the school's most vulnerable students for one onetoone counseling and in small lunch groups We Are The Trusted adults who students come to when they are in crisis and we work closely with teachers to support students who are struggling academically reducing the Middle School to one guidance counselor would inevitably mean that students would fall through the cracks one guidance counselor would simply not be able to respond to and support students with the appropriate level of care if they are tasked with a case load of 400 plus students you talk about work being left on the table work would be left on the table students would not be got to I chose to work in Medford because I was told that this was a district that valued and prioritized the social emotional well-being of its students eliminating this position as well as the cuts to the Nur nursing staff sends a clear message to students parents and staff that Medford no longer cares about the mental health of its students thank [Applause] you SS good all right Anthony Gan uh 45 Elm Hill Avenue in lemon Massachusetts though I probably live here for the next five weeks uh and I am the President of the Medford Teachers Association I'd like to start by saying uh one Happy Nurses Appreciation week and I could not find it more appropriate that it is also Teachers Appreciation [Applause] Week having having been raised by a nurse and then having worked a good amount of my adult life to become a teacher I can't think of another profession I'd rather be tied to than nurses you all are the lifeblood of this entire Society um I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by dancing around it this budget uh represents a free fall for Medford um and it's regressive in the face of increasing needs we say there's an increase in the need for elementary teachers because there's an increase in not only the population but the issues that our elementary school teachers are facing they've stood in front of you all some of you members are new but even in the short time you've been here the elementary teachers have come here and said we are facing hardships we are facing physical abuse we are facing mental struggles and the idea that five Physicians had to be cut from that is appalling um at the middle schools the decrease in guidance counselors as is said not only to service our students on 504s and IEPs but to service students who are do not have documented um illnesses that still need to be dealt right um or cognitive disabilities I should say I apologize the week the music the musical happens we then announce that we're cutting the theater after a year and we can talk about low numbers but we can also talk about this has only existed a year things need time to catch on students talk to other students and say hey this is great you got to do this you're doing the musical you should do this um we're trying to curtail absenteeism we're trying to stop class cutting we're trying to really take back the standards we had before covid and we're looking to cut administrative positions or Administrative Assistant positions who who are in indispensable in attempting to curil those issues um we're basing decisions on class enrollments but it's may we any High School teacher knows that those first three weeks are an absolute Shuffle of students because they go in they decide it's not for them they want to change things happen people enter the school so I I appreciate the budget has to get done but to say that like well looking at enrollment numbers in May is living a lie the operations of the school are also never going to be fully presented on paper there's always going to be jobs that someone just does because they know they it has to get done it's not part of the job description it's not part of their they weren't told to do it when they were hired it's just they saw a need they filled it they don't announce it they don't ask payment for it and once the position's gone that's the only time people realize oh that person was doing that and we can do as deep of a look into our job descriptions as you want it's never going to cover it I just want to end by saying we're looking at what's being called a $5 million gap but that $5 million gap is after these cuts that doesn't mean like we're looking to fulfill $5 million to fill that5 million is to leave a short staff that's not level budgeting and I'll be the one to break the ice on it as far as this meaning goes the most updated amount of free cash FY 2023 in Medford reported 2,469 , 53 that closes it the Gap in MO we don't have a real excuse to leave the schools this short I'm asking for my the students I'm asking for my members I'm asking for everybody in Medford we got to fund these schools got to make sure these kids are safe and we got to push forward thank you very much [Applause] hello uh deid zabner 107 Bowden Street uh I'm a PhD student at Toof studying stem education and a resident of Medford um education I think is the most important thing city government does and the story we heard tonight about the future of Medford about what the Medford schools will look like in a year in two years and five years is horrifying um I'm hoping to stay here after I graduate from my PhD and I can't imagine staying and raising kids in in a place where the schools are in freef fall like the story we just heard um so I'm really excited to hear what the plan is to close the 6 million doll Gap um I felt like for two hours I I heard a story that had no no Silver Lining and then the mayor let us know that maybe there's a plan to do a prop 2.5 override to do a debt exclusion and that seems like the Silver Lining that seems like maybe an answer to not just next year's budget but the next 10 years budget the next 20 years budgets um because this is not something it sounds like this $2.7 million of cuts would be barely survivable and and the six would be destructive forever uh so I'm really hopeful in November that we'll see uh legislation in front of the entire city that can solve this problem in the long term and uh I'm excited to knock doors for that and to uh and to vote for that and to see a stronger Medford going forward thank you [Applause] thank you naming addess the record please David s's 19 Park Street if we want to see enrollment numbers go up if we want to see test scores go up if we wanted to see real academic achievement go up we have to invest in our students and that starts by investing in our teachers and our staff not cutting them in addition there have been numerous uh studies that show the link between the Arts including the Performing Arts and increased academic achievement and decreased behavioral issues not to mention the social emotion and Leadership skills the students learned as exemplified by the students that spoke here just a little bit ago now if I came to you and said there was a way of increasing academic achievement and decreasing disciplinary issues you'd think you'd all jump on it and it doesn't actually cost anything it just means not cutting the Performing Arts at Medford High School now as everyone here knows if you have a budget deficit you either have to make Cuts or you have to increase income as a midford taxpayer I support raising taxes to cover this budget deficit hi thank you for letting us speak tonight my name is Mary Joe Patron I'm the president of the secretary the administrative assistant unit I live at 12 greenal Street in Medford and I have been here for 24 years so first I'd like to thank Miss brandley because you brought forward many of my you bought my balloon because many of the points that I was going to bring up came from you because you brought very poignant issues as did all of you I appreciate it I know this is a difficult decision I would not want to be the budget person here however a budget means we have to look at where else we can cut we can't continue to cut the same secretaries teachers nurses power professionals whoever we look we have to look somewhere else and I don't know if it's like hey I understand this is in a in the real world someone says hey maybe I'll take a I won't take my pay cut I'll my pay raise I'll defer it I heard that brought up by you as well I want to answer interesting thing was we discussed how important this payroll human resource piece is and additional people in 2010 we had another very very difficult year with a lot of changes we laid off a lot of people and I was part of the reorganization I worked in payroll I was the backup person I could do everyone's payroll I entered everything and then I did the mtrs report and I did I also do Student Activities which is not payroll but I did anything and everything that they asked us to asked me to do put took on rant I took on they would come and say can you do this and as somebody said we just did it we didn't think twice about it we didn't think I need more money we just said yes because it's for the students the staff and the families I was reallocated I was brought in nicely brought in and said hey we need you to take everything you do and just go sit at a different desk and do that and I picked up my I rolled it down the hallway and that's what I did and I still helped out in payroll and I still did mtrs reporting and I helped out in the buildings and I do the buildings and grounds that job has become immense at this point so I don't I don't do mtrs anymore because I was told by a previous person it shouldn't be me that does it it should be another person in the payroll office we know that we have a payroll person on maternity leave in October that was brought to the finance department and our Union said hey we need to post this we need to get something figured out because this person is going to be gone and she was had her baby in February unfortunately she went on bed rest so in December nothing had been done and it was a scramble and I don't like scrambles Mr Russo you don't like scrambles I like it organized we knew we addressed it and we didn't get an answer my biggest biggest concern and you brought this up as did others is safety at the mlin school and at all schools we've had illnesses that came through and I was one of the secretaries that had to be out for a long time we've had illnesses in our unit and we've all had to help out wherever we could but the problem is when a parent calls up and says my car broke down I'm going to be late and John is going to be sitting in your office there's a secretary that goes don't worry about it I got a coverage you want a snack how about a drink that's the person but if a girl calls out six and no one's in the office and the in the administration is supposed to be covering it and they're busy dismissing students Johnny's like freaking out where's my mother where's my grandmother I covered at the mlin school and that was a big I never realized all those pieces of where's my grandmother why hasn't she shown up yet so that's a big concern also I because I work at Medford High School and I'm in the building's office I haven't to have a walkie-talkie so I'm able to hear the needs that are in during lunchtime and all other times there is a lot of students that are sent to assistant principal's office because they need to separate from where they are for safety reasons and more not for major safety reasons but because they need a break they need to walk somewhere those assistant SEC those administrative assistants in the assistant principal's office or even in the guidance office are welcoming to these students and they let them sit they don't they don't discuss anything with them but they have a place to go and they're supervised guidance and nursing combined I don't understand how you're going to do it because right now in the beginning of the year guidance is busy with college fair then they're signing up for AP exams then they're taking the then they're taking the the uh PSATs now they're doing letters mailings any applications applications after new done and the nursing office is constantly dealing with purchase orders things we need we're short on this Supply we're short on on that Supply so they're two very important jobs that when you combine them some one something's going to fall through the cracks and again who's going to get hurt students families and staff so what I ask is that you think about the problems that we're facing and I understand you're looking for money we are all looking for money I don't know whether an override is going to work in this city I'm not sure but the problem is I think you have a day fund that you can start and then you can figure out how to do it from there but from that point on we just honestly need to pay attention to what's happened in the past because the jobs that you're say saying in HR those are union jobs so at 150,000 you actually can hire three people and I'm saying and also maybe we have to train people we've asked for this Let's cross train it's been brought up for three admin three assistant superintendents at in finance and we never got the opportunity because they never take the time to se give us a break say hey during this time we're going to start to train payroll is a very busy job but it's very doable and it's something I've done and I learned it on the job I sat there I did things so I think there's ways to do that but a many you know hiring two new people in that field you're still going to be so you maybe you're saving some of my secretaries that are being told they don't have a job next year and that's a bonus for me I thank you for that but the reporting the payroll those are things that have been done and they did cut it once and they realize the mistake they made because now we're all of a sudden freaking out and again there's much more things that have to be done now and you're right about the two systems not talking to each other also correct that people aren't getting answers to their questions I hear it all the time so I think we have to be able to do that and maybe that's hopefully that's something that Dr vinent is thinking about out and working on with Jerry and Noel I know it's a difficult thing but we are here to help we never have you ever heard from my unit I have to say this I'm not doing that it's not my job we don't say it's not my job we say okay we're going to get it done we just got to figure out how we can squeeze it into the day because we are here to serve students and families and staff that's what we do that's why we're here we could be somewhere else doing a lot of different work where here for them and we're here because you're just like you are to serve people so thank you thank you welcome hello my name is guso and my address is 132 grandv hi my name is Sophia deelo my address is 275 Boston a um as a junior at Medford High School and also class vice president I have seen firsthand my classmates concerns students education is what comes first and it's what's being compromised due to this budget cut um alongside cutting vital Administration positions such as our nurses cutting staff who help make our Sports and clubs possible will cause a decline in students ability to thrive please put our students in our ability to succeed um first um so quite frankly when I came here I didn't really know what I was going to say and I didn't really plan anything but after hearing the nurses talk about the th being cut um the guidance Department being cut in the middle schools I think that I've realized all of these things tie directly straight to our mental health in school and after hearing um the drama club and possibly the sports might be cut um I think this all directly ties to mental health like I couldn't imagine having a problem and not being able to go to my guidance counselor when there's three other kids waiting and I couldn't imagine not being able to play you know LaCrosse or gymnastics after school and especially for my brother um who was special needs and he really enjoys playing adaptive basketball and um unified track which bring brings him a lot of joy and I think mental health matters everywhere and I don't think I really realized this until covid but I think I understand there needs to be Cuts made I really do and um I just think we need to find a better place to make these cuts and like work together because I don't think we can be cutting from the guidance department and nurses when Mental Health is such a big issue for everybody the students the teachers our families like there's something else we have to do thank you thank you shene Douglas 414 High Street Medford Mass um to say that these cuts are devastating is I don't even know have to say it to say that we of the shortfall you know our students have said it this school committee this Administration and the mayor have prided themselves on working towards social emotional well-being of our students yet today there is a proposal to cut from the the nurses the guidance counselors the Arts those things that are so important to one's social emotional learning and you sit here and you say I want that you vote this budget in and you allow those cuts to happen shame on you because this isn't social emotional we need social emotional we need secretaries we need nurses I went to a school when I was young and there was never a nurse and I was very poor I didn't get glasses until I was 40 I suffered headaches my whole life when I was 40 I said I can't do this anymore and because I had a real job that's when I found out that I had a stigma but there was never anyone there because we didn't have it so reverting back to the 1950s and 60s and 70s is that what we're reverting back to I hope not the other thing is Mr waso you made a very good point tonight we have these you know we hold money aside for raising and then we go a whole year without it and that money goes back to the city my question is to you Madame mayor that money that goes back to the city has that gone into that free cash account where it's $25 million in there which normally is anywhere between 12 15 Max we have a lot of money in there I understand you want an override and I can even maybe think about that but until we can't wait for an override to happen we're not going to get that on the ballot everyone knows that here correct it's not going to happen it's not realistic there's free cash I ask that you look at that free cash you fund our school appropriately and then you bring forward to the in an intelligent manner why we need an override and get everyone on board don't just say we need an override we've been hearing this for a very long time and I'm not saying we don't I think my taxes are exuberant in medf okay but it is what it is the taxes are exuberant Revenue businesses mhis Square I'm very I mean I went to a a breakfast the other morning with a group of friends of mine and they were so there's nothing there anymore we actually go to Winchester Center let's bring up the businesses let's look at things we can do and really improve this city and do not do not balance your budget on the backs of students and their social emotional health that's all I have to say thank you hi some of you know me my name is Sarah Mas um I live at three Fs viav in Medford I am the adjustment counselor for K through five um and I love my job I'm also the drama adviser for medfin middle schools um so I wanted just let of just sit here I like what some of you said especially um Mr olad I think Nicole you you you went on this too and I won't talk long because I will get emotional um so I want to give you a couple of examples of a day in a life that I think will support my fellow nurses and my fellow counselors because I think that's a good thing to think about um and today was a good example so we had an ambulance first thing in the morning which set kindergarteners off which had every one of us trying to help and support these kids um at lunchtime I had a group of three kids who have various disorders um mental health issues and I was doing that one kid squirted hot Empanada sauce all over his thing at the same time I had my nurses at my door because one of my other students was having panic attack in the nurse's office and then I had another kid um crying on the floor in the calf so I was balancing all these things and we all had to support each other and with less people that kid would have still been alone crying the whole time on the on the cafeteria floor with his head and his between his knees um my social skills group with the kid crying because he burnt his mouth and the cheese would be crying all by himself because I had to go support the kid in the nurse's office who was having a panic attack so all these kids would not get the support they need and One More Story to to sort of support the drama kids and I wish they were still here um and it also supports nor Miss lyman's words is um I happen to be talking points of parents and I heard some kids crying in the hallway um one guidance counselor was teaching a guidance class the other one had a social skills group with like six million kids in her office and these two kids are crying I said come on in let me talk about it let's talk about it one have was having an anxiety about a math test so I got her calmed down enough to go back to math math but I knew this kid was also an actor so I said at least you have drama oh drama is not gonna happen because she quit um so now I became the Drama teacher so like we all we all support each other and I have I had 135 kids sign up for drama this year so the high school is going to have a lot of these kids and I see them light up and I say after school three times a week and they're they just light up so I would hate hate hate to see that disappear because this saves these kids and it saved me in high school thank you you Michelle hadti 594th Street J pin 108 wood I'm the vice president of the Messa I'm the former president I didn't prepare anything I just like scribbled as I was walking up here but I'd really like you to take the mlin elementary and middle school into consideration I'm an elementary secretary at the Brooks I have 500 just under 550 kids I can't imagine a daily I can't be imagine being there daily with a thousand kids taken care of it's more than just filing it's more than just answering the telephones during report card time we're proof reading the report cards for them we're printing the report cards we're stuffing the envelopes sometimes it takes me two days because the copy machine is not working and the internet is down so I'd really like you to maybe go and visit the mclen and just see how busy they are with both of them um let's see and I'm going to finish now just just Lane's going to finish for us but along with the nurses we kind of are the backbones of the school and I don't feel like we get respected enough taken seriously we're always kind of pushed back in the backr thank you thank you all thank you follow Michelle's um comments I did Cover the mlen for two days while both admin assistants were out um for the week and I can say that it's really wonderful to say that someone's going to come and pitch in and let you run to the ladies room or actually have a lunch in the two days that I was there that did not happen once I had to close the office if I needed to leave okay um so while realistically on paper you can put down a floater you can put someone else down there and they can support the school it's unrealistic especially for safety purposes they are two school they're just about a thousand students out of all the positions that are proposed being cut that is probably one of the most um important as is our AP admin assistant at the high school you have discussed that you will not be cutting the assistant principles but yet two admin assistants now have to take on the work right someone has to get someone has to do the work which means that person will or both of them will have to split the work without any further compensation right also I I I see that we're we're looking at adding the payroll in human resource positions which work the work is Union work but as it's proposed here that doesn't look like they're Union positions but yet out of the six that's not our we don't make that much money um out of the six positions that you have decided to cut which we are by senority which are the bottom six you have a payroll position that is being cut so are we bringing that back as a non-unit position that's a concern for the union that just shows us how we are undervalued in this District are these jobs you know if they Union so they won't be an i Union but they'll be but they'll be doing our work'll doing our un work they'll be doing our work that's good to know also I am a parent in the district and I'm very concerned I keep hearing that middle and high school numbers are down if you keep eliminating position if you keep eliminating programs why should we send our kids here why when I we can easily have them go to um a private school where they will be offered all these opportunities I just food for thought I think you know as as a parent we want security but we also want our children to be offered everything that their peers of being offered in Somerville in Cambridge in Malden we're taking away from them we heard a good group of kids come up and say please do not eliminate our drama program but yet that we're going to do that because we have to save a couple of dollars I think we really need to look this look at this budget before it's passed and make a decision that are we going to do that on the backs of our students which are our kids thank you thank you hi my name is Tammy mlan I live at 115 Sharon Street um and I didn't really plan anything because I was coming believe it or not to see if we could get some mics for the drama club I don't think I realized how bad the situation was uh my daughter is in the ninth grade she was in the High School Musical and I have to tell you there's some little magic about theater and Medford and and there's just more kids coming up through the Saints at Spotlight to be a part of all of these programs and I am just in disbelief at what these kids face to pull off for performances of mam Mia all of which I saw they don't have they had inconsistent leadership they didn't have microphones until the day before the performance they didn't get to practice with them and then they didn't have one for each kid and clearly that is not the biggest problem that's here you know and so I really wanted to just step up and say this is your problem there you know you need to this is why you get the big bucks you need to stop the bleeding now without cutting these programs and you need to raise our taxes there are people here who want to pay their fair share to have better schools and and feel free to PVE Sharon Street while you're at it but really there's people who want to and you need to start working on the resistors now so that when it hits the ballot you have the support but there's people who want to support that so thank you um Chris Chris Bennett three minutes um name and address of the record please Christine Bennett 19 Martin Street in Medford um I've been a pro boto special education Advocate within your system and as well as other systems as well and one of the things that I'm I'm very concerned about is we're seeing an increase in the need for mcast and we're seeing an increase in hearing that Medford is going to be fast- pacing the mathematics Department um and I'm dealing with a whole different Lany of children some of those children are not academically sound they're having a lot of difficulty in one of the particular middle schools we don't have a special education specific classroom for mathematics uh so these kids are struggling they're they're getting through because they're doing better presentations or getting extra giving extra data to be able to get a higher grade so that they can feel good about themselves and in the areas that I'm very concerned about are social emotional learning since the pandemic we have seen an increase in children not getting along they have been not around each other often enough and the guidance department and the nurses department and I have to say secretaries are some of the major people that help these kids out to see what we're dealing with we've seen an increase in a stipend for or now it's considered a salary for for all of the school committee people we have seen an increase in the the the budgets in every other area I want to know how many how many assistant superintendants we have uh I want to know why the the meat of the school is being cut when we have so many assistant superintendents I I I think we're doing things backwards as far as the prop two and a half until we fix these issu issues we're we're we're getting topheavy with Administration and we're getting and we're cutting the people that are necessary for the students specifically now again I said I am a pro bono advocate in the system that I've been working in I've worked in all different school systems and right now what's going on here is extremely disappointing thank you may member Russo then we have two more people online thank you um in my seven years I have heard that our Administration is bloated 7,000 times probably um we have one superintendent and two assistant superintendents there's not there's another 30 people hiding in the corners anywhere um and while sometimes there are districts that do have different levels of these folks they are almost always staffed by adding countless other people at lower levels um um you know in in many other school districts every building has a grade level administrator a grade level and discipline level administrator so a fifth grade science administrator um we have none of those people in this District none um and so I I I mean everything that uh the speaker had to say agree with almost everything but um the the myth that we have this gigantic bloated Administration um it's just a myth um we have one superintendent we have to have a superintendent we do have a director of people Services which is a legally mandated position for special ed and a few other things that she does um and then we have an administrator for all of academics for the whole district and look around nobody has one person responsible for academics K of 12 other than Medford um and then we have another administrator who is essentially doing operation Innovation and I forget all of his titles but um so we are not bloated and in fact I I can't really fathom how we could have less Administration um and this school committee and all the school committees that I've been on in the past so far like we throw countless things at these folks to do far greater than they could actually get done they do try um and um so I I just think it's important to point out that there is not this gigantic bloated Administration have one Administrative Assistant covering all of them even though there's you know uh positions that I think there supposed to be three there's one and they're they're covering all of those administrators and they're covering the school committee and we of course also have a lot of asks so um I think it's just important to set the record straight on that because they're they're working like all the time and um I can't imagine how we could have less thank you thank you Meo Sophie Ricks name and address for the record please Sophie Rick 78 toting Street um I was not going to speak tonight because I already sent you a very long email earlier um but when I sent you the email at 9:10 this morning I was angry and now I'm just really Furious so I feel like I want to read my email so that the superintendent can hear it as well and so that hopefully I can get a real response from you CU I know I didn't get a real response when I wrote something very similar last year um I'm writing with my husband once again to urge you to please fund our Public Schools sufficiently I am deeply alarmed by the significant budget cuts proposed this year our schools need more money not less last year when I wrote to you urging you to fully fund our schools I did not yet have a child in Medford Public Schools but I had a good sense of the problem from Neighbors and friends after spending almost a full year now with a child in kindergarten at the misuk I'm sadly much more fully acquainted with how dire this need is when my son's kindergarten teacher needed to be out unexpectedly for weeks due to a medical issue the issue of no robust substitute pool came immediately to the Forefront no surprise given the absolutely dismal pay that we offer our principal and our assistant principal were both forced to step in for multiple days to teach kindergarten pulling them away from their other critical roles they did an amazing job but this is absurd after that a number of specials teachers were tasked with helping pulling them from the classes they were hired to teach on multiple occasions it seems our exceptional pair of professional was running the class solo this substitute job is really a volunteer position one wonderful local mom was able to step in for a few days but it was far from enough most importantly kids across the entire School suffered from this not just our classroom our classroom also desperately needed additional help this year due to multiple students with significant behavioral challenges no such help was available because we don't have sufficient AIDS these students deserve to receive the individual support they need to be suc uccessful they're 5-year-olds I did not receive an adequate response to my email last year so I'm pasting more in from what I shared last year while our neighboring communities are prioritizing paying their teachers wages that reflect their hard work our schools are struggling to retain staff and Recruit new ones as you know our buildings and grounds are in disrepair and teachers have having to fund huge amounts of classroom supplies out of their own Pockets we were particularly Disturbed and frankly depressed to read the full climate report regarding Medford High School last year and the challenges that go far beyond the Aging building if we can't even adequately fund our current needs how can we possibly fund the Necessities mentioned in the report like hiring full-time substitutes to take the burden off classroom teachers will it feel safe to send our kids to Medford High when the time comes we have not yet heard a plan from your office about addressing the challenges and solutions proposed in the report I'm also really concerned about what uh member Russo was sharing earlier about the health curriculum that is a priority for me as a clinical social worker I work with college students and I see what the impact is when there are not sufficient mental health supports as a child I am asking like others that you fund or that you push forward for an override that you put that for the voters as soon as possible and that you use whatever means necessary right now to fully fund the schools to not have this $6 million deficit that really is a $6 million deficit not a 2.7 I'm really really angry and I hope you're listening thank you Miss Ricks Christin Christina Marie name and address for the record please um SC Angela Angela name and address for the record Angela Sasso 8 Madison Street um I as you all know um on the school committee in super in the superintendent I am a former employee of the Medford Public School System and former president of the administrative assistance Union I would I wrote in to the com to the school committee and I was told that the budget cuts that are being done were um proposed by the superintendent in the administration I have a question well a couple of questions the mcglen administrative assistant that is the position that is um being recommended to be cut what is the data that goes along with that decision do we know how many students are dismissed daily from that school do we know how many phone calls come in do we know how many quaries are done do we know how many children are returned on the bus daily do we know how many parents are late picking up their children um so uh there's that to take into consideration and as far as the position being cut in in payroll um I don't know how you can bring in a a management position to cover human resources and payroll when that is the administrative assistance Union work I'm no longer there I'm sure that the union president and the askme rep will be in touch with you about that but I'm I'm just a bit confused where we're making these pts and then we're going to add a management position thank you thank you Miss Sasso I'm not sure about the data I Christina Marie we're asking her to unmute I'm assuming Dr Cushing okay so probably not paying attention so Ashley Dy name and address of the record Ashley hi my name is Ashley dhy my address is 20 Watertown Street Watertown ma um I'm one of the newer nurses at Medford Public Schools I've been here for about two and a half two years um in my position can you hear me yes we can hear you yes okay great um my position is one of the positions that's proposed to be cut um and I just want to speak factually on some of today's data so that you guys have it um today at Andrew's Middle School we saw about 69 students um in about 6 hours and 15 minutes of the school day that's one student to every five and a half minutes um and not one of those visits do I think had higher priority than any of the 70 visits that we saw today um so I guess my question is how is one nurse going to be capable of seeing 70 students a day um and at what point are you guys going to put a triage system in place that says one student is more has more priority to be seen than another student and that's all thank you thank you Ashley one one last time um Christina Marie okay I'm GNA open it up to the floor um I know we probably need some time to digest this all come on up yep our student reps sure one thing I'd like to point out I I don't know um if it will seem tangential to what we're talking about here but I know um someone came up and mentioned something about visitation oh came up and mentioned something about uh the school committee visiting schools uh I know for um uh legal standards uh uh school committee needs to be school committee members need to be invited to schools but I do want to point out I'm not sure where else in Medford it is the case but I know at least at Medford High School it is um it does have an open door policy for all school committee members um as far as I'm aware from uh from from speaking with teachers they they've told us that it is an Open Door Policy um and we've also been working with um RIS cab to uh get in the new handbook Provisions to explicitly state that me high school is an open door policy to allow for school committee members to visit High School great great thank you very much thank you um mayor member Russel I I would certainly welcome that in the handbook um but the law is actually not very unclear on this matter we we I would not want school committee members to have the open door policy you know the group here right now is great we want to go on and look at some school committees around the state where you're like that person should not be showing up in students classrooms um that's why it's the law um is that when everybody's great and we'd be fine to have them in our class we're all fine with it but you know really a key part of the first amendment is it's the same for everybody so when somebody's on the school committee who's you know disruptive to teachers classrooms if you if that is just allowed then guess what they're going to show up in your classroom they're going to disagree with the way you're teaching a subject or the content you're teaching I I think that that is not when we think about inviting school committee members into the class we think of the good things that are going to happen and I do agree completely that there are lotss of good things that will happen but it is you know uh at this moment in time I don't have a full-time job how many hours a day do you want me sitting through your classes um I I don't think most teachers want to have me sitting in their classes for you know maybe I'm just curious how you teach or I'm you know anything you can think of um it's it's the superintendent must invite us and you know most superintendant I think Del at that to to to lower you know other people within the district to be allow that but an explicit invitation like we did get last week was it this week for the I don't even know what it's Monday last week for the um um the social studies presentations um at the high school we did get an explicit invitation a couple of us were able to go um and that was great but I think that having us just show up when I have spot in my calendar walking around the school um I I think that is not what educ s want and I also don't really think that's what students want like who is this this guy just roaming around um but I completely understand the intent and I think if we can codify some way to make it more of an Open Door like here's here's our intent and then here's the process school committee members must follow which would definitely have to include permission uh because when we show up at a building we are no different than anybody else in the entire public of the world frankly and have no more rights to be in that building even if our own kids are in that building if you are out there to see your kids you do not have a right to be in that building um and I don't think that we can put it in a handbook I don't think we can draft a policy that overrides that I think we could perhaps come to something that would lay the path for how we could do it the right way and make that really open and obvious that like you you want to go here's what you got to do email this person get an actual invite um but I that I just think that's an important thing for us to talk about and we can talk about it at the student advisory Council because I I do think it's important for us to get into the class um thank you thank you member Russo I just wonder if I could present a letter on behalf of the student advisory committee drafted uh to the school on behalf of the students of meford high school we the students of the student advisory committee expressing a consensus opinion of the committee for the school year of 2023 to 2024 are writing this letter to express our opinion on the planned budget cuts to the meford public schools uh positions and budget the meford advisory committee acknowledges that the city of meford has presently experienced a budget deficit this deficit has put a great strain on city services provided to the citizens of meford one place where these budget constraints are already felt is in meford is in the meford public school districts some of the major issues the student advisory committee would like to highlight to the uh meford school committee include the lack of running water in the teachers break room a lack of Heating and Cooling in classrooms during the summer and winter respectively as well as uh species remaining inside of the facilities in meford high school the school committee has proposed the budget cuts to the 2024 2025 school year budget of the me public school districts these Cuts if carried out will have an immediate and long-term detrimental effects on the quality of educations for the students in the meford public school district as a result of these budget cuts uh proposed in the Fine Arts positions as well as numerous other positions Student Activities that are essential to the school and culture of meford high school as well as the community of meford as a whole will be put at risk furthermore this would lead to a drop in education quality and opportunities for students which could lead to a decrease in the number of students attending meford Public Schools furthermore these proposed Cuts will raise the workload of mefford public schools faculties further increasing the already large burden on meford Public School faculty members Additionally the proposed 2025 proposal would increase the average class size across the board from nearly 20 PE pupils per class with mlin and Muk pushing a proposed average of 22 students per class the student advisory committee believes that when it comes to student education there should be no compromises students deserve the right to receive the highest quality education possible while the deficit does pose a considerable concern the student advisory committee would also like to point out that these proposed cuts are affecting teachers and lower estron administrative staff who do most of most of the day-to-day paperwork and operations while the school committee does not have the authority to make the budget they can request the city council propose a new budget to account for needs of the students stud and teachers in the meford public school district students deserve a quality environment with well-paid teachers and faculty and a safe operable facility and before I end off I would just like to add personal opinion as a lifelong student of meford Public Schools student representative for the student advisory committee as well as a student government official and someone who has performed in the Fine Arts I can say without doubt that these Cuts will result in an immediate and longterm long-lasting negative impacts for students for generations to come if these cuts are made thank you mayor member Graham um I just wanted to reiterate what how our process normally works just so that everybody understands like where we go from here um so we this is a public budget hearing it's required by law that's why we we're here to listen to All of You the administration made a proposal um to us with the direct C that they've received so far which is this is going to be a bad budget year we need to figure out how to ramp off of Esser because it's over right so they that's the sort of Genesis of what they brought forward tonight um I don't think anybody here wants to vote for this because I think we all know how catastrophic these changes are what we will do um is a two-part process so the first thing we will do is ultimately agree on what our request to the municipal government is so that number could be a number that you saw tonight and it could be something else entirely um we have work to do before we're going to get there so that's Step One is our ask once the mayor's budget comes out once the city council holds all of their hearings once that budget is approved then we will take whatever number is approved and we will have to reconcile to that number so there's two steps in our process that is new in the last like three years it's important because before three years ago we never asked for one penny more than the city was willing to give and that has set a trajectory that puts us all here tonight so the the point of this two-step process is for us always to be talking about what we think we need to responsibly run our schools I think this year it's obviously much more complicated because we sort of know what we're walking into and how devastating it is to come off of Esser there's 30 30 positions funded last year we we knew that this was coming and we knew that this would be hard how hard it is still is an open question that we have to answer but I just wanted to make sure everyone knew what was happening so we're taking this all in the administration's going to think about this figure out like how they how they bring forward updates to the budget based on what we heard the mayor's working the finance task force is working there's a lot still to do um but we will take two votes one is our request and then the other will be how do we get to the the number that we have to live with um and I I I hope it that number is not 73.5 um because we we did not see tonight the path that gets us to that number we saw a path that gets us to something $2.7 million more than that so um there's still a lot of work to do um this is not an easy process but I just I don't want people to think anybody here on this school committee thinks this is fine I don't think that's true um none of us want to do this unfortunately at some point we will be the ones to have to make these reconciliations and I just hope we can make a few less least bad choices then it looks like we will have to make as of tonight thank you thank you member Graham member rouso um yes thank you and um you know it I don't believe it was last year I believe it was the year before um there there's this sort of question in Massachusetts law about um well it it's settled in for City Council if the city council just refuses to pass the budget I believe it's 45 days later whatever the budget was that the city mination presented sorry how many oh sorry explaining 12th yeah um just becomes the budget without the vote of the city council after a certain number of days um and well that's the city council um and I have asked um our professional association which has every school Committee Member in the state and frankly people who have probably been on school committee as long as I've been alive um and you know I our previous Finance director was an attorney and like you know we it does appear to be an outstanding question if we just refuse to pass the budget what happens one option is one opinion is that on July 1 without a budget the district stops operating of course school's not in session and we have funds that are like you know left not left over that set aside funds for like special that there's a few places where we're allowed to save money for special EDS one I believe there's a transportation one but anyways like we could technically operate off of those funds for some period of time which of course does assume that like we're a week away or a month away from finally agreeing on a budget but the other opinion is that it just becomes the budget even if we didn't vote for it um it seems like no school committee and it makes sense when you think about school committees and if you've you know know you all haven't been to our associations but it's a group of people nobody runs for school committee because it's a good time um we run for school committee because we care about kids and so for us to decide that we'd rather shut the district down rather than take a horrible budget that at least is still operating um it does appear that no school committee has ever just said we're just not going to pass a budget um so you know it's it's it's settled for what happens with the city council if 45 days or whatever the number of days later it just becomes the budget whether they voted for it or not um for school committees that is an outstanding question and I'd like medfin to not be the first Community to ever have to sit go to a judge and find out what the right answer is um by getting us enough money um I'm I'm not necessarily saying I'm I'm if if we have to cut another 2.7 million and after the administration comes back and says well this is what that is um you know maybe we will be here and refuse to vote for a budget um and get to find out for the first time what happens in massachusett when a school committee refuses um I I mean 2.7 million more than the horrible stuff we've discussed tonight is a number where I'd be like fine we won't have school until this is settled um because what is school if you've chopped this much um I hope we won't get there and and you know my understanding of the courts is we'll probably just lose and we'll just say it just becomes the budget is my guess but um it is an outstanding question and one that I think about a lot when I think about what it would mean to vote for a budget that chopped six seven whatever the number is millions of dollars total um so thank you thank you thank you all thank you thank you everybody who came and spoke we have some more work to do and digesting to do um I'm going to move forward to the regular scheduled meeting agenda or motion to adjourn this meeting by member Russo seconded by second member Graham all those in favor I all those opposed okay meeting that meeting's adjourned