we'll get started call the meeting order we'll start the Pledge of Allegiance United States all right so um Norton media and Norton public schools are recording um just let me know if anybody else is they need to know that up front um thank you all for coming we're going to start with um the minutes from February 29 2024 Open Session you guys had a chance to look at them any comments concerns questions Mo to approve the minutes from this February 29th 2024 meeting there second all those in favor um then the uh executive session minutes from the 20 February 29 2024 anything on that motion to approve the minutes second second all those in favor um all right next is me so I have reviewed and approved the following warrant School expense warrant February 29th 2024 $ 38729 120 and school payroll Wars February 22nd 2024 1,222 74540 I wish to enter them into public record student updates hey guys um so student uh from the Y students are getting ready for re uh are getting outside for recess now that the r has ended and they love getting on the turfield and playing all types of games and activities they're also getting outside during class time for experiments uh during PE Wellness for other outdoor activities uh we are currently engaged in our St ma March mathness tournament where all 15 home rooms are matched up against one another in a bracket style tournament competition we are looking for each student to do 60 required puzzles per week with the class with the better presages moving on to the next round the first round has home rooms from fifth grade versus fourth grade we'll let you know who is crowned the St M March mathness champion after a few weeks of competition students are excited for our hey PTO upcoming music fingo night one of the best times of the year is also here with our HTO book fair which begins next week during the parent teacher conferences students come down as a class to the fair and hangle during the conferences to print out book or pick out books we hope to see as many parents as we can during parent teacher conferences next week all right and so for the JCS they are looking forward to the warmer weather and all that it brings and they asked the students this morning what they were looking forward to and we have some responses so autumn said I have to swim in the cold and hot um and I said more playing outside because it's been cold forever playing on screens is no fun Colton said going outside more to play basetball basetball and soccer and Noah said going swimming and Miss F's class in unison said more recess and the first graders said getting to plant more sunflowers for the garden and nearly every other student K through three all said going to play outside and then from the high school the past few weeks have we have seen a lot of cool things happen at the high school in the past couple weeks National Honor Society travel to elementary schools to run cool science events for science days and National Honor Society travel to elementary schools for your cross America day um yesterday was the teacher versus student well faculty student volleyball tournament it was very successful Mr NHS uh Matt Williams B Mr NHS last night if you weren't there it was uh interesting um um as temperatur is warm people are very excited about all things spring including the spring music high school music which is the first weekend in April uh spring Sports and eating lunch outside that's all we have for you guys tonight thank you guys do we have anything all right um update is if necessary on the Norton BFW Carnival Gary can't I don't know that I just want to make sure we're all up on white GES and everything and if everything's okay ladies and gentlemen voted on it be June 19th to the to the 23rd any question the last day we're going to have a car show from 10: to 2 while the car was going on we're using the uh the same vendor for the carival this year as we did last year we didn't have any issues with d St at across the road in the parking lot parking on doing that in same setup so THS you're starting like in the afternoon they starting setup in the afternoon is that correct and then Friday you guys are go yeah yes so actually we're going to start on Wednesday this this Wednesday so it's start on Wednesday and go through Sunday so five days 19 23rd yeah was that an extra day than last year yeah we lost a day last year to the weather and we're trying to build in another day this year just in case we hav plant weather again that we can get try to get as many can it'll be a great wayas to start vacation so so we're out of school as of right now yes so um as of right now the last day is Thursday June 13 um which actually works out really well um I met earlier this fall with um Mr Cameron and we looked at the school calendar and it was it was a great partnership to um make sure that we were using dates that worked for everybody um so school will be out at that point um and they'll have a lot of availability in room to segate I'm going to get a hold we'll have a meeting with them too and you people be invited you know get that out the way I think something going on the tur field what about behind the school so it's just that where like solar panels AR and the grass area in front jinx it Dan and last year we moved the buses to another parking lot I believe we to the Middle School those we're hoping to do that again this year y it should be set up school mini buses you know yeah the mini buses were a little bit of an issue last year but we're out of school I don't think thank you very much for you know walk wel excuse me and uh voting on it giving a see okay always welcome you guys are always welcome here that's right then Gary I'm looking forward to I'm looking forward to the caral so I don't think I don't think huh um I don't think we have to vote right because we already voted for this so you guys are set to go I know you just want to make sure that we were all on the same page which we are um yeah wish you a lot of luck with it and hopefully it's a huge success all right yeah thank you thank thanks all right so next up we have recognition of Mr Mala Mr Mala up right there um so um earlier this year members of the Massachusetts uh School administrators Association came and visited the Y school to um officially recognize and honor Mr bwa um as the 2024 Massachusetts school assistant principal of the year um this prestigious recognition highlights Mr bl's outstanding contributions and leadership in the field of Education um distri bwa has been with class here in Norton since 1998 um and spent I would say what more than 15 or 16 years as a classroom teacher at JCS um and then also at the yell school before transitioning into the role of dean of students in 2014 um for those of you who are not sure what the dean of students does um it is really the role of an assistant principal within our theel school and he works side by side with Mr gagan every day to uh make sure that students have everything that they need to learn safely in our schools and does a ton of work uh with our staff in looking at positive behavior initiative PBIS um and making sure that all of our students have a um welcoming and safe school so it's it's really such an honor um not just for Mr bow but really for the town of Norton and nor schools to have him recognized in this way um and we're just so thankful that he is is ours um Mr gagan I know is here as well do you want to say anything Mr gagan uh sure sure um so I've worked with Bob now for six years and uh Bob I nominated him and uh Bob is really wonderful as Dr anneal said uh he does everything for me as a principal he is really a co-principal when it comes down to it and uh he does an amazing job with the kids with families uh with the staff uh he and I teach a r RTI block together uh so kids come uh during their llt time and uh we teach together uh fourth and fifth grade math and Ela um and it's just it's awesome I I can depend on him and I know that things are going to get done and uh he's just a wonderful educator the best that I've ever Le what a great honor I just I just want to thank smarty uh he's been awesome I great person to work with I work with Dr O'Neal Dr a um the staff I couldn't have done it without the staff school they have phenomenal um and the student we're all in for the students and they great they really are I live 45 minutes away year and on because I I love everything about the kids and staff so it's great thank you nice job congratulations um you have to go into the budg so I can do this one do yes okay so we're going to go into the um on the 2025 school budget so is there a motion to open the public hearing second we need to do a roll call so um yes and I'm yes as well Shar just following my orders here and you know we're all learning at this year so uh thank you everyone uh for joining us tonight for the fy2 budget hearing um I would say this is probably the most people we've had at school committee meeting in the last prob this year so thank you all for coming um I'm going to go through a few slides to kind of talk about how we arrived at this number and this recommendation that we have and also give everyone in the room some updated information that we just received today so I think it's always really important to start with our core beliefs so in Norton we believe that students belong in a safe inclusive in Collaborative Learning environment we believe that students belong in learning environments where they have access to appropriate curriculum and instruction and we also believe that students belong in a learning environment where they are able to receive differentiative injus in time interventions and that's a lot of the work that we've done over these last few years with our imss initiatives all of the work that we've done and all the time that we've spent whether it's during staff meetings professional development looking at student data has been toward these goals this is our current enrollment as of October 1st um District students we have 2,166 students that are here enrolled um in Norton public schools that are Norton students um as of October 1st we had 252 school choice students we had 39 students that are enrolled in our read staff and heart hearing program and they U use our schools for their program and then we had 29 students that were placed out of District um through specialized education programs since September I have been talking in sharing information with the school committee with our school Community about the goal of a level service budget for this upcoming year a level service budget means that we would retain the Exact Staffing program services that we have during this current year it is a financial increase when you think about level Services because costs go up in year to here so I apologize because I'm getting old and my site is not what it used to be um our current FY 24 budget is 34764 43 and our proposed budget for the FY 25 school year for level Services is a 12% increase 38,8 73,4 31 it's important for um everyone in this room to hear me say again um this increase of $4.1 million represents a few different things previously we had Esser Grant funds which came from um Co relief grants that were all given to us over these last few years and what we did was we used a lot of those funds in order to either hire new staff or to retain staff over these last several years um during our current budget we spent $550,000 of err funds to employ staff members so unfortunately with with that money going away we now in order to retain level Services we need to add that $550,000 to our budget itself you'll also hear the school committee um and our administrative team talk a lot about mandated Education Services um versus the general education services mandated education includes special education um the service the staff also out of District placements for our students it also includes includes um education and supports for our students that are English language Learners that are working on their English language proficiency um as well as um translation services for those families um and also homeless Transportation uh that is something that we are required by state law to make sure that we are transporting our students that may be without Homes at this time um to their school of origin so if they were originally a Norton student and now they may be living in in Taunton it is our responsibility as a school district to bring that child to school here in noris vice versa if a student is living here in Norton and their school of origin may have been in Rim we also need to work with the towns to make sure that we are getting our students to school um so that is actually a large percentage when we take a look at the increases over our fy2 24 budget currently the mandated education is about $13 million for FY 25 we are projecting it to be about $15 million which is a total of a 15.6% increase on that area of service itself for general education it's 21.6 million for this year our request is 23.8 million which is a 99.8% increase on those line items this information has been shared um over and over again um I think it's really important it's apologize that it's very small state um but it walks our um community Through how we got there because I think it's really important for everyone to see how you start with a number and how those line items add up as you go along otherwise it's very confusing you $ million where did that come from um so I'm going to give you a very brief overview um $2.6 million is salaries and contractual obligations as I mentioned when I first started that $550,000 that we were using previously as part of Esser that's included in that we have to make sure we're adding that money back in um we are looking at almost 775,000 of increased cost to special education placement that are out of district and it's important for our community to know that this 77200 is actually not the whole cost the district is reimbursed at percentage from something at the state called circuit breaker so therefore our tuitions are actually going up over a million but the cost to Norm Public Schools will be about $772,000 um additionally an increase of about $350,000 of transportation to our outo district placements for our students Transportation these days is extremely expensive and it's a very competitive um our thank you my brain is just very tired um it's a very competitive market you do not get a lot of bids for transportation um so you're we're pretty much stuck with the prices that they give us it's extremely difficult to negotiate um within the district we have um increases to special education programming that could be um student needs in terms of specific clashing materials it could be curriculum materials it could be um just a different type of programming than they were receiving originally or could be students that are now moving in to the district and are going or aging up they may have turn three and are now eligible for special education Reserve all of those things are included there um this year as I mentioned transportation is really um a tough Market we are actually going out to bid for another contract with our Local transportation service we use Bloom currently and what will happen is we will get probably three or four other companies that are interested um and learning more about our process taking a look at our bid and most often when we get to the day where we open our bids there's only one and so it's very difficult to go through a bid process and make it a competitive Venture when there are only one was only one company returning that we have an increase of $50,000 for homeless Transportation increase in operations and managements that is the day-to-day so um toilet paper cleaning materials paper towels making sure that our elevators are safe and able to run on a daily basis making sure um that our cameras are working when we need them to be keeping our schools safe and clean and then what we always do is we always add a contingency for unanticipated special education costs we have $187,000 in there and that really is the cost of one student that may be going to an out of District placement and one student that may be going to a collaborative and every single year without out we always use that contingency and then more it's very very difficult for us to budget for special education needs for students because we never know what is going to pop up through the course of the year so that's how you get from the $34 million where we're starting this year to our 12% increase I think it's really important and this is something we never ever talk about is unfunded requests every single year and I've been in Norton for um this my 21st year in Norton um and I have been an administrator in central office this is my 13th year in in a central office role and every year our team comes to the table and says wouldn't it be great if we could have or you know our kindergarteners really need some extra support wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have kindergarten par Professionals in those classrooms so I think it's really important for our community to know that the budget that we're putting forward is level service it does not include any of those extra really would be nice to have so these are actual really legitimate and justifiable needs that are coming from our principals our department heads our teachers things that we could use in our schools but they are not included in our budget it's actually a $643,000 increase if we were to be asking for these additional positions so things like um an adjustment counselor here at the middle school for our bridge program um kindergart at par professionals to just be a halftime support in our classrooms with some of our youngest Learners um last year we had to cut a fifth grade teacher at the yel this we were hoping to reinstate that position this year um same thing at the high school we cut a math teacher and an Ela teacher we were hoping to reate those positions so this is something that we typically don't share with the community but I think it's really important for people to know that there are things that we aren't asking and really would benefit from dral yes this library media specialist for the Middle School how many years has that been asked for or recommended and keep me honest this is the only school that doesn't have staff from the library okay Mrs wibur saying that she's been asking for the LI media specialist for the last eight years I was actually gonna say probably closer to 10 Mrs lur um our libraries were closed in 2007 um in 2007 we actually received a negative increase um that year in our budget our our allocation went down from one year to the next and then in 2008 we actually received a zero so our libraries were closed as part of those budget cuts at that time um all except for Norton High School um because a librarian is a recommendation from neas as part of the accreditation process um for probably I'd say a good year or two they were covered in um plastic and you would just walk through the buildings and they were all covered up um we have been very fortunate that um at one point our parent volunteers went to the superintendent and said please let us help you let us run the libraries for just so students can come and pick out a book and that's what we did for many many years we the students were able to go into the libraries um at the elementary schools and here at Northern Middle School come in with their class maybe 20 minutes once a week or once every other week and just choose a book and to take it and read it um we have had uh Mrs deris at JCS I'd say probably six or seven years um and the way that we got that position is we used to have Elementary Spanish and at the Spanish teacher ended up taking another role within the district we couldn't find someone to do like a04 or 6 Spanish position um so we posted the library and we found Mrs dermes who started just working at JCS and lgn to provide that teacher preparation time um and over the years we've been able to increase her a little bit at a time um so now she is actually traveling between the three Elementary libraries two days at JCS two days at lgn and one of the G um for students to get Library classes and this library is run by a fabulous parent volunteer but it does not have a certified libr specialist here so that is definitely something that's being asked for for a very long long story short sorry I need to give you all the history on that one um yes y so those are some important things um earlier today I met with um Mr units um our town manager to talk about some of the challenges that we're having and um looking at at the projections that we have um the receipts that are coming in from you know Town Hall um and then our as a community the fixed costs that we have around health insurance um retirement benefits um all of those things we're actually looking at a deficit for the upcoming school year so instead of we've been talking about level Services level Services we want to have the same things we have now now we're going and we're talking we're not even talking about level pling so this is extremely detrimental to the budgeting process for Norton so just to be clear this just happened today yes the meeting with the town manager so we thought we were going to expect X and now we are looking at way below yeah X I just want to make sure everybody is clear of what just took place today I actually not I didn't hear anybody gasp so I I I'm not sure that people understand the gra what you said um so we this would be we would be receiving less money for our schools this coming year than we are receiving right now so you forget the 12% is what you're saying so there's no 12 essentially it's a negative percentage so it's a negative percentage so I I think it's really important I want to say that um Mr unit is sharing this information with the select board night um I shared this information with the school committee today because that is my responsibility as a superintendent is to make sure that they have the information that they need coming into this meeting and to not be blindsided um this is a very beginning conversation um I asked questions this afternoon I sent Mr unit an email what do we have in free cash what do we have in stabilization what are what do we have in some of those other accounts that we've been able to draw from in the past is there any wiggle room there and I'm waiting for some of those answers as a school district we don't have a lot of Wile room left in our revolving accounts because we've been using them year over year to help to close the gaps that we have um so if we were not if for some reason we were not able to use other funds um we would be looking at a deficit of 374,000 $680 less than what our budget is right now which when we think about level Services I've been talking about that 12% number we would need to cut 4.5 million from our level Service number in order to open our doors in September and so just to be clear all the work that has gone into let's say 8 hours ago yeah all the work from our admin team team from us sitting down and talking about what this is going to look like going forward what we're going to do that was all just taken shaken and thrown up in the air in a sense yes I I can say it you may not want to but it's sh what just happened so this and we just all found out about it because our superintendent is very clear and communicating with us immediately when we find out things like this yeah I um so I want to give people a sense of how to wrap their heads around this because sometimes you look at the numbers and you say oh it's 4.5 million what does that mean Etc so the way that the budget is set up we we break it into two pieces we break it into our special ed component and our general education now special ed by by law is basically mandated to be covered so the special ed increase was 5 five something I think and the general education was something per. um it was 15 and six on that line it's actually not even relevant what they were our increase is 12% the special education is going to have to be met so the way to wrap your head around this is to say general education from Level services will be cut by 12% so we will cut 12% of the services we had from last year to next or sorry this year to next that that's what this means as we stand right now there's no other way than to say it's it's Jone I mean this is a huge huge blow it's it's going to make for a potentially very bad year next year there there's absolutely no way to to Su that I wish I could sit there and say hey don't worry you should worry but honestly you should work and you know uh our team and the school committee has spent countless hours looking at because we knew 12% was probably a long shot we've been looking right SP we look okay what if we got 5% what would those cuts look like what if we got 4% what would those cuts look like and we have spent a lot of time looking at our program looking at Staffing looking at ways that we could make this work and not with a least impact to students and up until eight hours ago approximately we really thought we really thought we were at 4% and it wasn't a brick I mean don't get me wrong it was going to hurt that plan was going to hurt but to add another one .7 million on top of all of that that's another 15 teaching positions over and above the 29 we had already discussed so I kind of want to just touch a little bit for what last said we look at our budget as this we run the budget for the school department we are one of 20 departments in the town of they receive money but we think you know we have an idea of what our budget should be 12% we knew pretty much right off the bat that's that's that's a dream scenario what we vote on is what we think our needs are but we don't get our final number till bcom departments till the voters at town meeting decide what their their choices are so you know again I I think collectively I don't want to put words on anybody's but I think we're all you know shaking our heads for the last call it six hours when we received this information it's it's been a lot for us to process just in this and and we all have had multiple meetings where we know there's going to be significant Cuts I think I I think anything over five is significant and we were at 28 at one point um and it's now it's going to be a lot more than 2018 if everything stays the same um to Mr sas's point it's it's time to worry I think in my opinion it's time to you said 15 15 42 44 so I think 29 15 44 I I don't know where you get those kind of positions from and then that's really looking at our lineup items as well and I think it's going to require our team to sit down and really look at things is going to require um the school committee and you know to talk about what our priorities need to be um I think it's important to recognize that there is a perception in our community that we always save the day right I've been here for 20 years I I know that you can't save the day from a $4.5 million cut like you don't that money does not exist there is no way that we can you know have a people retire and a couple kidss move out of district and we and we save the day it's it's not possible and I hate to be the person to have to say that we will sit here probably in a month's time as five volunteers and become the most hated people in the St the things that we have to do it is terrible please understand bringing kids to the meeting it it can't help can't help we can cry along with them they cannot help at this point this is bad who will become hated people and we are your neighbors we have worked some of us have been here 15 years you know nine years like this we volunteered you know when our kids were in preschool this is bad we've been saying this day was coming people chose not to listen here we are so please understand in the next month how difficult it is to sit in these seats please understand have generation of of both D Sher say I think it's important that people understand but we we're putting as forward as if we're voting on budget but kind of dance Point that's actually not what we're doing this is just a transparent hey level services this is what we would need to fund that there is no budget nobody gets a budget until the citizens of this town sit down and vote the budget grou that's the budget that's the only thing that matters no disrespect to fincom or a selectman or to us what we all say does not matter Town sits down and votes on the reality is we don't have enough money to fun so that's it is what it is to sh's point you know people are going to get angry at us they're gonna say how dare you ask for that not asking for it this is just a transparent admission of this is what it costs to run this District the tower will decide what it wants to do so sher's right you know we listen we've been saying this for years I've been saying it for at least a decade that we are heading down tracks to a really bad spot and I said to these guys earlier I said the second worst thing in the world you can do is to tell people there's a disaster coming the worst thing you can do is to be right people are going to be angry about this I mean it is what it is though another thing I always say not your enemy math is your enemy it's that just simple as that if you have $5 40 years not mathematics you don't have the money to cover your expenses it is what it is so it's and and listen I I we made Cuts last year we we make a lot of cuts that people never know about say you save the day well we didn't really save the day we just we cut services and nobody noticed it because it was a little here a little there and if you spread it over school district it seems like well things are pretty much the same and they might getting better but they're slowly eroding they've been slowly eroding for a long time a few meetings back I just we were talking about back of the nap and I just kind of did projections okay this is you know stud budgets going like this we're doing this to this budget at what point does this you know does this kind of collapse I think I said like 10 years or something like that was 10 years from now we're not going to have any money in the general education budget that that's what the projection is right now and that wasn't even off of this that's that was off of actually much Rosier NOCO so you know I mean I get it people are be be pissed about it but this is this is where we're at as a town this is not the school committee is doing it's not for selectman's doing it's simply this is this is where Norton is right now it's it's the financial reality and we can be angry about it we can you know we can shake our fists at Clouds it's not going to change it it isn't I think that's the other thing to note is we've I say we the school department has gone through these motions for a few months um we don't know what the impact to town Services is going to be because they don't they haven't had a budget Workshop they haven't had this level of depth of what it looks like so we don't know how this affects our partners on the town side we can only speak for the schools with the numbers we're given this could be catastrophic on the town side as well but we don't know yet so I mean it there's not much else we can really say that we haven't said in the last you know four or five meetings at this point this is always I mean in my nine years I think this is the most talked about bu number of meetings that that I've never been a part of um and you know we we're in the situation we're in for a variety of reasons um Mor has to choose what of the future wants to be um and you know we're all citizens we're all voters um the voters and the town's people need to figure out what they want to become not what we are the last thing I'll Stand is before we open question I assume we're doing that I think we have to yeah and the last I'll any any comments but um understand that this is something this is very very new to us not the process the numbers we just found us out today and I think a lot of us are kind of still digesting it we don't know that these are the final final numbers these things are always in flux I sometimes we the day at town meeting yeah but but this is a big this is a big one I I don't think this is a oh no wait you know what we found $4 million like that that's that's not happening um so just keep in mind that you know we're still kind of digesting this as well from our side so um I think we're not really 100% sure yet what it will mean to us but it will mean cuts and my eight years I've never seen anything like this happen I don't know in years years I thought the one where we we were talking about going um pay toight sport I thought that was the worst we ever seen and this is FX for I think this is the where added up of all my nine years here yeah could like like I say it's always like a little bit here one program here one program here largely under the radar and then so we I mean we don't know what it's going to look like you know we we have we have to take a vote we have to have everything in on time we will do that process we will follow the process as we are mandated to do but we we get our number and we like to work within our number your Fusion sorry it's been so hard today Mr CI said it can't get worse and I said I think they stop saying that it does let's stop saying that leave it to Vinnie to always make us laugh me too all right so I guess we're gon open up questions name and address I that Circle you need like the actual technically yes oh to Robin ccle unit 2 Orton um I'm from Pennsylvania I've lived in this town for one year so you guys probably maybe be thought of these things um have you reached out to any grants from the state or federal level and also um something we do in Pennsylvania to help offset the cost from special ed is actually any student who's eligible gets Medicaid insurance and then Bill Insurance um in the budget book which will be um once the budget number is finalized and voted on by the committee it will go right on to um our website there is a whole page that talks about um grants and revolving accounts so there are a number of f federal and state grants that we received that are entitlement grants so um Title One Ida those are grants that we receive every year based on our student population um I wrote the um Title One all those esset grants for a number of years Dr arriman does now um Mr Cersei does all of the special education grants um and it's a also on that page we'll show you the exact number of Staff we pay for with those grants so I hope that's helpful for our community to see how we do offset um we've also been involved in a number of competitive grants over the last couple years um Mr Cersei and I wrote a umal grant which we were able to um about $150,000 we were able to purchase our district curriculum we were able to pay for more PBIS training we were able um to buy an screener so we wouldn't have any of those things without those grants um but Norton is also in a very unique position of being a suburban community um we're not extremely diverse we don't have a large number of um High needs families or low-income families so it's often when you look at those competitive grants we don't qualify as a community which makes it difficult too because we have a lot of the same problems just as some of the other but thank you yeah I mean one thing that always comes up I think you probably know about this is Gord consider right to pay community so our median income is very high whether or not we believe it or not you know but that's the problem when it comes to some of these grants and and what we've seen the last couple of years is we've seen the one time you know grants because of the pandemic you know they were one time fail everybody out type of thing but we're seeing a lot some of the grants are just drying up they're not being funded at the state or federal level um you know that's you know it's different changes in administration different Visions for different politicians you know unfortunately I mean you know education is very public but the problem with that is nobody wants to show the public what education truly needs financing that's the that's the biggest problem at the state have anything I think just to piggy back off of what Dan's saying with politicians and whatnot I reached out to our state reps our state senator and our uh Congressman of DC trying to get an open form with them around out of District placements school choice dollars mandated education that we have no funding for um and it's met with a yeah we know about that but it's nothing we can really do um which is the problem you know I've said it multiple times nor is getting $30 per kid Marx is getting 1,200 from State F so it it turns into an issue that we've always had in this town from a standpoint of we only have so much and everything is riding on your backs as taxpayers and our backs as taxpayers you know we don't have the commercial real estate like Manfield does or foxb does you know so we're getting to a point now where unfortunately you know when we had these s grants and everything else we kind of basically Co saved our bus I mean it's that simple Co and the three funds financially saved our bus you know now what's happening is those those are going away and we're incorporating them into the budget that was free money essentially from us in terms of getting it from the federal government now that money is riding on your back it's it's it's not a uh overly complicated system it's complicated because unfortunately the state government and how the state Mars does them they don't want they don't care about the kids education they don't it's a dollar in games it's all a game around public education to begin with you have a desie board who's unelected they're all right there she tell you right there alone it's all government crap that gets involved in your kid's education and unfortunately this is what has struggled out to and it's trust me it's going to keep getting worse before it gets better my public is will kill me if I don't get on camera hi I'm Jo um here president of Norton Teachers Association um thank you very much for this um I think that I don't necessarily have a question as much as I can phrase it in the question like Jeopardy so I'll charge you $800 okay um I think that uh it's important just and any guys are speaking into this but I think it's important to say um that um things are not great now right and I'm not sure that people outside of the buildings have a full understanding of that um you're absolutely right when you say that um people don't necessarily notice the cuts because there are little places here little places there um when I think just in my time here um what we had that we don't have anymore um a librarian I think is a big deal um and the shelves like just look at the shelves behind me when I started here most of these shelves were full um homech is gone um foreign language to our sixth and seventh graders um is gone um there are and there are a lot of other things there are many other things in all the other buildings um and I think that for a lot of people who maybe aren't involved in school they follow you know this kind of Maxum you know you have to just have to do more with less and that economics kind of works at your kitchen table we all do it right we say oh I can't um take that vacation this year so we're going to spend a few days of the on the he or like I can't shop there anymore I have to shop it like Aldi can you know like save some money we all do that I do that um but there's no like you can get a can of Beats at all that's probably pretty good there's no Aldi like adjustment counselor like this like like this there's no like no discount teachings no discount teaching no um and like these services are so important and you know something um one of my colleagues I mentioned this in a meeting earlier this week so those you there I'm sorry I'm repeating myself but one of my colleagues uh said to me this week and I thought it was so powerful um her students also attend school here and she just said to me I'm so sad that the things I was able to give my students my kids aren't going to get when they come to the system and so um I really hope uh that you will approve a level fund budget I know that pragmatically why you might not want to do that but um I think sending that message so people see like this is really what we need and not just what we need but what the community deserves um yeah so please please how many years have you been here just so I have been here this is 18 years um and and it is on that note um it's a wonderful place and I watch every day the people that I work with just do such amazing things um and I think that to like to think of some of the cuts that we're talking about and think of what that would do to the experience of a student you know graduating from Norton High School by 10 years from now the triple down effects have makes us all really sad um so thank you for the work you're doing I'm going to advocate for passing a level budget I think that those conversations that report have than people need to see what we need to give our students what they do than I I want um I guess request about passing L Services budget that's actually we have done that for quite a while I can't you Happ Administration when we decided to start presing our budget as it really was pretend it was less than it was so we've actually been requesting level service for quite a while yeah in some years it would be a level Service Plus a couple position okay um this is truly like yeah exactly so we we've been doing yes we've been asking for real needs yeah yeah we we always for for last de we've been presenting what our true needs were and and allow the town to make those decisions as we started off before um and I I get the idea of sending a message my my question is or I guess my my I wonder if anybody's listening to the to the message and and I think we've g a lot of years where people haven't listened to the message and when you think about those cuts you know we make a cut here cut there cut there it seems really nocuous at first and so that's not a big deal and people kind of get used to that they get used to the idea of a cut here a cut there a cut there and I didn't really notice it so cuts are kind of okay so I think we've kind of gotten the mindset of cuts are cuts are okay and uh you know I think they hit theil on the head before we were going to be at this cliff three years ago whatever the number is and surprise Co and all of a sudden it was like wow we actually got state of execution uh not and I'm not happy about that but it is what it is so we got a state of execution we're kind of through that now s's gone and we never really got away from that Cliff we were just standing at the edge of it you know instead ofstead moving towards it we stopped right the cliff and everybody's like yeah they're fine they're fine well here's the cliff and here we go about to about to go off of it so I'm not trying to betic um I don't know if there's I don't see anybody here who was in the JCS back I was the direct for that or whatever but you know but I've been talking about this for a while like this is it's not sustainable the way that we do this is not sustainable and eventually you get there and we've gotten there and I think over the years people kind of they got jaded to the to the idea that there was a problem and so you know we all said they say that every year they say it's coming it's coming and and I'm sorry but it came it's unfortunate is going to be it's going to be tough it's going to be a tough year for for you guys a tough year for us because there's going to be sleepless nights for us it's going to be a lot of work it's going to be ton of time away from families you know just going through the stuff and you know it is what it is I us my kids ahead of time not going to see it so what can you do um I'm I live at 104 nuk Street um I just have a followup question to something that was brought up a couple meetings ago I'm just wondering if every single member of the school committee has had a chance to visit um at least one of the school buildings because I I just think it's hard to make decisions about the schools if you've never even been in any of our building place I mean I can speak personally you know my my youngest child is at the high school um I've had two others graduate from so you know being active in the schools when they were younger um more recently i' obviously spent a lot of time at high school but I remember when Mr gagan started I had a child in that school and we became pretty good friends uh with my youngest who's Al sophomore um so I mean we we obviously we don't get in probably personally as much as I'd like to but it's on the list of things with Dr on the a to walk through um you know I think there's a there's a lot of good things in all of our schools um but much like my house there's things that need to be um you know and we know that and unfortunately there's a different process when it comes to repairs so you know we spend as much time as we can I know like I said I I go there my children and have in the past um you know and I can say my my oldest graduated six years ago uh thanks p and the schools look drastically different from like when my youngest was at JCS let alone when my oldest was there we we take great pride in our schools and and it's not just driving by you see the outside there's a lot of good to happen inside um so we do you know in an Ideal World yes we this I mean we do our road trips I call them road trips at at the beginning of the year we go to each school for a meeting so we are in those schools at least e nights but um I think it was last year at the end of each of those meetings um Wade brought us around the school and showed us you know good bad the ugly um it was I known weight a lot of years he was so excited to bring us into the former Boiler Room at the Y I've never seen a grown so excited to go so when we did these big projects it was like Wade was like these schools look great you know big train project um but like anything else there there is work to do we know that um we rely on the administration to let us know these things we know we have a problem um you know the lgm whether be this group jcn we we know what these problems are we try and do the best we can we are obviously work with a very limited amount of money um and that's not even you know this is just keeping the lights on but if a a light you know while from ceing that's a completely different process um but so that's personally I'm kind of on the the end of my my time with my children in public schools I had never thought to S my children anywhere else um I was never full disclosure to my children did reply to sou Eastern and get in they chose to stay here that was their decision um but I know a couple of members have had walkthroughs a couple of more are on the books so we will be out there as much as we can Mr and I were scheduled for today and then this bomb dropped like how you good so I just did a few walkthroughs as well about a month ago and I think what you guys have to understand too is you know I report back with things that I saw you know we are in constant communication as a school committee of course you know legally right we're not breaking any laws so don't anybody worry about that um but we're in constant communication about things that we see things that we hear um you know Jen is very good about and Joe is the same way just always updating us on things that we be updated on um but yeah we have done we have done lot so just so a couple of things I've done multiple group work throughs over my 15 years in every SCH one schools I live in the LG because I don't live on that side of town I've had one child go from kindergarten all the way through she's college now and the other one kindergarten all the way through to she's in high school right now so I I I believe I'm very familiar with with what the schools are doing um my only question I guess or well when you ask that question or when you POS that have you walked through because I don't think you can do without going through the schools I think I think you're you're thinking or you're implying or maybe I'm inferring I don't know that these are things that we're doing lightly and and and kind of pmel and we're not really like thinking them through I want to be really clear this this is not an easy thing to do you know we we sat down a couple weeks ago and talked about these positions and it was hard it was really really hard and I know a lot of people were talking about well you know what can we do what can we do to save this what can we to say that this isn't something that that we take Joy by any stretch you know and if if I'm being really honest about it like part of this is that we've we've cut so much of the what you would call fluff over the years that there's nothing left to cut like that so I'll say something that's going to make me unpopular these Cups have to be made they have to be made it's as simple as that and it's nothing personal it's not I'm cutting you know this is doac I'm cutting that position not saying your position's going to cut just saying it's that's that's the reality of how you have to think about this is this is we have to now go through this and say okay what positions what position can we you know most afford to do without and and that might be a bad way to phrase it because we can't really afford to do with without any of these positions we're literally at the guts now right we we've we've cut the skin we've cut the you know whatever we're at the B right now we're in we're in the guts we the vital org now the schools but unfortunately we have to make those cuts because if in fact this is the the final number and it's another 1.7 million there's absolutely no way to we can't we can't dim the lights and get 1.7 million we can't turn the heat down at 1.7 million it's just not going to work so it's it's not something we take lightly it's not something that we're we're very cognant of the great work that's being done and it honestly just makes it all that much harder so I I I respect what you're saying I I respect what you're asking please please realize that this is I'm not trying to imply this that you know you're taking me lightly or anything like that I just think that seeing what's really happening and going on is important too like it gives you another piece of evidence I think right what we actually need and that's that's why it's so hard I think we understand what's going on and the problem is is even if we understand even if we say this is vital to the school we may still need to cut it because we just don't have the money I mean it's this is this is not a wants needs whatever this is a funding issue it's nothing more and it's nothing less and that's I'm sorry to be you know callous and and put it on a base level but that's that's what this is it's simply funding we have a through z and we can fund a through M and we got to decide what a through M are going to be and 10 through Z are going to get cut because that's what we can afford to do unfortunately it's it is it is not you know it's not not understanding what happens it's not appreciating that it's not valuing that at all it's not the case and I think I think they pck you back off of that too this is a very collaborative effort it's not us five being like we're gonna cut the high school and we don't like that math teacher and we're g to get rid of this part like that's not how it works it kind of comes down from Jen and the admin team through you know up through the principles of like hey where can we start all right who who's you know what positions are we looking at is the first grade class next year supposed to be a little bit smaller so we can you know kind of frustrate eacher and keep the class eyeses the same this isn't us five just going in and saying okay we don't like that I hate Athletics I hate this over here chop that off that's not how it works we take I mean we basically go off of central admin's you know recommendations and then say hey what is that going to mean to our high school kids what is that going to mean to LG what is that going to mean to you know JCS and try to again it's very difficult you know whatever you do it doesn't matter what some something you cut someone not going to like that's how it all goes you know so you have to try to do what's best for Norton and what's best for what's best for our schools and it's it's nearly impossible and and when we I just want to say one more thing like and actually like collaborative effort and it does come from from the administration as it should they say okay here's what we think and when we sat down two weeks ago we went through the initial Cuts after every single this is a position where cut same thing same thing was asked why why are we cutting that what's it doing for us stud what's it going for what is what is the impact of that every single one and we had we had to cut 28 28 28 28 times we said why and if the answer's not good say that's not a good answer and there were some things where we said nope that's less important or sorry that's more important than this we need to rearrange the priorities here so it's this is not a you know again this is not like you know chop chop chop it is a explain this to me in depth explain it like I'm a 5-year-old is we need to know that we're doing the right thing because this impacts lives it impacts kids adults the people who are employed here it we we get it trust me what I tell you I just want to say sitting in the seat too is very difficult very difficult you walk through the schools and you see these kids faes and you know what going to happen that does not sit well with me at all any of us right and so I've got one more year left right I'm done next year close to this time and I know that I'm going to leave this District worse than when I started that's terrible that's a terrible terrible feeling to have terrible to our students to our staff to the people that we have got to know and love this is terrible so I just want to understand I want you to understand that even walking through schools it is not easy for us to do that it's not easy to look our students in the faces or rest out and have to sit here in the seat I think one thing to I'll um talk about it a little bit I I want to just thank the administration um they've worked countless tireless hours on this to give us the answers that we seek we're asking the a question we're looking at things talk about and they they have they anticipated our answers and they had valid answers to our questions so I I want to publicly thank our Administration uh our building leaders all of those involved in our budget process they have done a tremendous job um and have been felt a pretty awful hand to do with so um I just want to thank Dr R staff um for giving us at times I think a lot of information some you know more than what we look for sometimes and more than what we've seen in the past but this year we absolutely needed all that information provided to us as we navigate will be a troubling time in the next couple months where's the mic is this where the microphone is yeah I just want to make sure Zoom can hear uh my name is Val cabal I live at 50 manal Avenue I do not have children um I have two questions that are somewhat pointed one of them is does anything even in a level Services budget that wouldn't include fixing the Norton Middle School theater lights that haven't worked for like literally had to stop the middle of a show this year no that does not that that's actually a capital item careful on our Capital list when we're able to move it forward awesome do we know what the amount is on that um off the top of my head I believe it's $118,000 all rightfield yeah all right look at that if no if people aren't aware middle of the way through a Norton singers were paying the school to rent the space and we had to stop the show mult multiple times because one day we couldn't get the house lights off we've had multiple shows where we've had to stop at intermission and reboot the entire light system so it's not a great system in there it's original 1998 yeah that's pretty old for a light system in a school for sure um the other question is I know last year the cuts that were made were a flash point um and I know there were issues where the students found out of both them in the first place everybody was very upset parents got upset um do we know when that number of those 8 to Now 44 people are going to come out like when we're going to know what those cuts are going to look like um personally and this is something that I've shared with the NTA this is something I've shared with school committee I would really like to be able to do layoff notices prior to April vacation which is a month from now um because I believe that our staff deserves to know what what the future holds for them and um I don't we Tech technically contractually by law we have until June 15th to me that is too late um to do something like that that is extremely impactful um whether we're able to do that before the April vacation when we're really saying okay it's not going to be this many it's now going to be this many um we are really going to need to sit down and and really look at our programs and our enrollment and so many other things as a committee um that we have only scratched the surface on um in terms of fees and um transportation all of those things are now going to need to be relooked at and rediscussed um so that's my goal but I just curious thank you I think you know historically I want to say it was probably September October um I think I I might have said it publicly I know I said it privately I don't I don't want to hear about Cuts like our last meeting before summer break like we had a pretty good amount of people show up Dr AR's first meeting um that's that's too late you know welcome to Norton um that was too late that but the problem then is our budget is set that town meeting which is to me it's very late um and you know I said this to Mr schleker you know it's it's the biggest part of Tom meeting and it gets little to no discussion or anything um it's just yeah y thanks everybody I name yes um so that's always kind of frustrating cuz like we do all this work for 6 months and we get our number validated and it's like it's no you speak a little more about that because I definitely think it's worth discussing but I'm not I'm not sure what the ask for discussion is that's come up a lot of times from other people not just you not just here that we don't really talk about it and I'm I'm curious about like what the conversation would look like because I think most people assume there's nothing we can do by the time it gets to town meeting you're in a grand scheme you can't however the exception being if you wanted to add a million dollars to the school department budget you can formally write a request bring that up to the town clerk and say I want to add a million dollars to the school budget it goes through the motions however mysteriously you can't have a million dollars come from somewhere so it have you have to write out where you're having it come from so whether that's picking on our town friends uh want to take 300,000 from police 300,000 from fire 400,000 from Highway and give it to the school department you can do that as a citizen of North as a taxpaying citizen that is your right to do so um so we're not making any friends no friends you know I believe the only time in my 20 plus years in town that that's happened I believe was denz I think you made that motion the year we need prioritize Food Services to swi some money um from the town budget to school budget because of savings very specific example though where we were essentially laying off however many people yeah 13 16 and all I said was there's now a a healthc care saving Insurance savings to the town and we should get that back so that we don't have to lay off any more people because we were lay off a bunch of people as it was so um and and I will say um I I somewhat disagree with with the about you can't do anything time meeting I actually think that's the only place you can do something quite honestly um but to this point if you say I want to put a million dollars more into the school budget you have say and I'm taking it from a b and c and I by no means a down meeting expert honestly I would I if you were to introduce that I would vote against it because this is not a hey everybody else is doing great and we're not everybody else we're we're going to be cut from our your budget everyone else is my understanding is going to be as well so this isn't something where you know it's the schools are getting screwed honestly the point of this meeting I think is basically just to make sure everybody understands this is what's happening because every year when we do this last year Mr aran's first you know oh my God what I didn't hear about this really we had 10 meetings on it 10 meetings in a town meeting where we voted it through and everybody knew it was going to happen I mean this is this is the problem this is why people get mad at us everybody says you didn't tell me personally you didn't come to my house hey you want to make sure you heard about this but we're doing this we can't do that we have public meetings we disseminate information as best we can it would be great if we had a you know a media person to do it we had to come no longer I mean this is you know this is this is the reality so you know I I think it's important for people to understand what this meeting is about this is not a hand meeting it's not a low as me meeting this simply a hey guys just a r stance here's where we're at no surprises nobody gets blindsided later on alexin Circle so what does this SCH Community need from the community like if we all like go to the town saying you know increase our taxes oh I'm sorry um I was saying what does the board need from the community do you need us to write letters to the town saying like increase taxes by bucks so that school can be funded you are sorry you could do that Pennsylvania called proposition two and a half which is you basically can't raise I I think that don't quote me on the intricacies of the law but I think the Ines of the law basically you cannot raise your entire tax base by more than two and a half% so there's actually a cap on how much we can we can raise our taxes how you're going to override which is good talk of everybody so you can override prop two and a half based on whatever number Select board has to put onto a a town meeting uh B and then the town goes makes a vote we've had override TS in the past we've done overrides in terms of Deb exclusions in addition to the high school building uh what else we do the fields so we've done those before we've never actually overridden prop two and a half I just public want to say it it wouldn't be what you're doing for the schools it would be you're doing for the town we don't want this to be schools versus town it's it's one community so it's what you're doing for the community um you know we obviously you know we can give everybody all the information they want but time decide I think this is sher's line has to decide what wants to be when they grow up and then you don't need to respond to this but we're talking about cuts so maybe instead of cutting positions and this is way out there but cut ail and instead of having as many elementary school that we have consolidate and has like a k to2 and a 3 to five and that way every building has the library and the things we've been talking about so it's actually not a huge savings which sounds insane right because you still have the same number of students you still need the same number of teachers it's really only about a half a million dollar savings once because we have looked at it um and the other issue is that people think our schools are empty they are not we have very very little space in any of our three elementary schools we are filled to the brm at alga North we every single space is taken um we have our elll teacher who teaches on the stage um which is also the cafeteria so I'm sure you guys can imagine how well that goes during lunch time um our our class our schools are very very full um but that is definitely something that we've heard many many times over the years is like well let's close let's close lgm let's close the El school um it's just not possible and and ultimately it's not a huge savings Jen we also have some teachers that are in closets yes yes we absolutely in closet and I think the other thing here is like one we don't have the space but if we had to could we do it maybe if you 135 kids in the classroom that's the trade-off you know do you want to make it that second graders instead of having 20 to one have 35 to one you know no one wants to do that you know because I mean the only way saving the building okay that's a half a million dollars call a little bit more inflation everything else sure we're still going to have to bring some of those teachers from LG to JCS or wherever we're going to go with them you know because you're not going to be able to do it the only real savings you got that means anything to millions of dollars is in stack that's where your expenses are that's where you go to chrisy De a Norton employee um been a resident of Norton at one time I am a product of Norton kindergarten through 12th grade and I've also taught in the district for 28 years um very disappointed to hear how we've gotten this I've worked with many of you that are on school committee I've worked with many of the staff as well as the administration this is the worst I've seen worst I've experienced in my 28 years worst that I can remember as a student going through um as a student myself 49 plus years ago um way more I had available to me than what we even have currently right now which is sad and here we are 2024 that we had less Services less activities less opportunities than potentially and things that I didn't have to pay for that you all have now as fees um my question as much as I would say and I would and this comes back to what the plan originally was for tonight which correct me if I'm wrong was it to vote discuss and to vote and put forward what you were going to put forward to town cor we're required we still have do that so that's why and that's why I wanted to know so that was the plan you getting information that you got is that still the plan tonight and still what you have to give to the town doesn't change what we actually need for level Services the level Services is level Services it's it is what it is the 12% increase is is where level Services is and it's this is not you normally this is not hey here's what we want for our budget it's just a simply here's what our budget would be if we have level services and it goes to fincom it goes to the where look at it um there's so pom puts forward their budget Mike puts forward his budget um and I think I should actually reverse those ERS un puts for his budget first which includes his opinion on what the school should get the fincom then works and they put their recommendation budget that goes to the town meeting and then the town votes on the budget so but tonight is is simply I hate to say it's a formality but it's a formality of this is what our level Services budget would look like full transparency to so everybody house and that's what I would I wanted to confirm that that was even with your information that you were getting that was um and also will also because I also know that we put the numbers of what it would have looked like if we had gotten the three or the four or the five and I think it was very interesting to me to look at with those cuts that we were talking at like a first grade we would have a class size of 27 you're talking now 40s something cuts that class size is going to go up in all of those and I just think that needs to also be put in there when we're talking about not getting that three that four that five so that it's transparent of that is going to look like to the community because when you talk about a first grade 27 and I'm talking that was when you got your three% kids per classroom and now making another 15 Cuts per se I can't imagine what those cuts and what those numbers are going to look like in the class sizes and I'm just saying I totally get that I just think it needs to be also what the potential could be because that's out on there for the community and the public and I think it's important to make sure that that's also updated if that's what we're going to and I'm sure it will be I'm just saying and I think and we agree and just to reiterate this is literally we found out about it this morning totally and that's why I was asking about whether or not you would continue with your vote yeah we continue the vote because it's doesn't but as far as like putting out you know disseminating information 100% we will it's at this point we honestly haven't had a time to it's so it's so fresh it's going to require a lot of time to sit down look at programs look at look at seniority look at teacher licenses we're going have to do all of those things um again um and you know add to that list that we've already started to establish um but it it will be significant our our budget is due to town hall and money um and so it's it's fine our budget is done the budget's budget like we just have to vote on it so I think it's important to point out take take out the information we found out today we I can pretty much safely say we had a plan for what 3 four and five we don't make that decision the pwn does so whatever we got back we knew this was going but we were very we were confident that these 28 people should have you know hit the ground running that if you know you know there was also a chance that 30 we could get to 30 if it was 3% or twice so but our important thing is you know some of us are friendly with staff um you know some of us you know we know our kids students have teacher I saw a teacher today and my daughter had i b c um so we want the folks that are impacted by this to have a a good chance to we don't want them to but have a career somewhere else if that's the real Poss possibility so um and that's why I stressed you know the folks that were finding out at last year found out too late and they it was it on P battle so we're trying to weigh everything out we trying to give our staff a good chance if unfortunately there isn't a spot for them here next year so but you know we have guidelines we have this a lot of what we found out today doesn't impact what our vote is in the next 20 minutes um largely because if you think about we're voting what our budget should be the town votes what our budget is and then we come back and say well we we anticipated it was this these 30 people now it's 44 um so that's I think just a point of clarification as well was like say 20 positions that doesn't necessarily mean 28 classroom teachers that always seem to kind of Le out there like oh my God going to go cut 28 D that is not the case I think I will speak for myself but I think I can kind of speak for all the board we know and I think Chen knows as well being a teacher there's no more important person in our schools than our classro phas of teachers you know it's every study in America is behind that that the teachers are in that room are the second most important kid uh uh adults in that child's life next to their pars uh you know so I think when we look at that we as of the five of us kind of took down consideration of like okay you know we're going to try to save every possible teacher we can where else are we looking you know there are going to be teachers cut you know I'm you're going to you know whether it be a special someone moves down Life Changes whatever it may be but from our standpoint we were trying to do our best to keep the teachers invol in you know in those classrooms try to keep the parents in those classrooms and again that's unfortunately still got to C8 you know and now if we go to 44 that brings in a whole other stand and to add to that Nick I I think it's also important for people to realize that um we have some retirements that are coming up and we may also have resignations so what we will do is we will look at those positions and decide is that a position that we still mean or is that something that we can eliminate through attrition and so it may not be 28 people with a pink slip which by the way are not pink but it will be it will be th that number of positions so it's important for the community to know that as well and and just a final a final note I guess on that because I think what ni says is very important it's we work really hard to keep it away from teachers last thing you want to cut that being said I think it's important that they know and I don't know how much we've discussed so UL at by the end we had gotten to teachers so what does that mean that means we got to the point where we had to start cutting teachers and with the 1.7 million that's where we're at we're at teachers now so just so everybody's clear out where we're at you know so it's it's not what we want to do we're there let me go Peter yes I'm Peter J William 157 mfi avue I'm a lifelong nor night I've lived here for 37 years and 38 years and my good friend bill says in the past 43 years this town has never passed no and this is an article that I posted from 1993 and go back in 1993 said this town has to start finding more Revenue to pay for the service it wants or understand that it's not going have the service expects then I lived in this life for 38 years I'm a proud supporter of the school system and this is going to hurt but I will stand by the school committee the teachers and the students 100% I because I'm theond may I still love the students never I love you all thank but I don't want to follow Peter could gone first um Karen d i six North Washington Street um I just want to talk a little bit about special education um my son is in special education and not only is he in special education but he's in a specialized program so um he's one of those kids that on this budget is costing us more for the town um and I've been concerned I've gone to meetings um since I don't even know the budget started October November whatever um and I've heard how special education is talked about and it's often talked about these State mandates and um that special education problem you know that special education is costing us so much and therefore we don't have enough for general education and that is um not true those kids are our kids they live in our town they deserve that education is the school committee actually going to say that because the state mandates it that's why you're providing those Services Would we not be providing those Services if the didn't mandate them um the problem is is this this town does not increase its Revenue um we had a chance I I would love somebody to Crunch the numbers and find out if we passed an override and Peter are you're GNA tell me 16 and 17 201 201 we would not be here we would still we would be probably you know it would be L but we'd still be here we would be looking at another over 1,000 and that is a that's within our control that is within our control as a town that we can control that we can't control the state we can't control the state only gives us $30 because we're not lawence we are not lawence we're not Taunton we're you know there's million dollar houses in this town um but in our control is that but I do want to speak to the fact that special education is not the reason that we're in this situation um and those are our kids my kids yeah so nobody I don't think anybody's ever said here at the last meeting somebody said a school Committee Member said what would happen if we didn't follow those mandates that's not what I said nice try tell us what you said this is what I said what would happen no I said what would happen if the unfunded mandates that came down from the state if we didn't have the revenue sources to fund them what happens I think it's a fair question if we can't fund them as a town and we don't get an override and we we're staring at a $4.5 million defent what happens but it's the town's responsibility to educate their children correct why should the state be paying for that as in special education there's there's reimbursements that come into play and they are I mean CC breaker but the problem is communities across the commonweal are seeing an increase in special education needs of students um right now they're seeing a a a very dramatic increase because a lot of the children that are starting in kindergarten have come out of Co so when you see you know early intervention programs are at capacity preschool program is our capacity and the problem is when a child becomes comes in at preschool kindergarten we don't quite know what their needs are but the difference in special education and general education is special education students have a legally binding contract that must abide by so when Mr schanker talks about unfunded mandates not speaking for him we get those for general education not necessarily specialed so special education mandates what we have to give these students because they have a legally binding contract with the town of Bo school department so we can't do anything those those are costs one thing you know we look at and I I had a special needs student I have not a District student for a while I know the sare I have family members that are in the same vote so I I know the special education world and I I expect you know work those Educators do the problem we have is the state education board can come in here into any district and say you have to teach our kids this whatever that is so if it's I think the last change was Civics as opposed to something at the high school level all they said was you got to teach Civics they didn't say you got to get a teacher certified you got to get a curriculum certified you have to get this certified they just said you're teaching Civics now those are what I think Mr sler is adhering to not special education we can't do anything special in future costs and and I know for a fact they are Skyrock just last year one of our collaboratives the state allowed them to raise their tuition by 20% but unfortunately if we have a student that can only get services at that collaborative then not student go correct our hands are tight and and we can't do anything about that I mean we've we've tried to talk to our state representatives tried to have these discussions with the town the only real part of special education I think we can contr and control is the transportation working with you know a van or maybe trying to say if we have two students going close by we've invested in some many have some of our own drivers it's it's really just it's it's a DPP in the bucket of what we're trying to identify is a lot of our discussions that we talk about we can't change at the Town level when it comes to the urement rates and things like that one of the big things that a couple years ago tried to have a special education circuit rer account set up stabilization stabiliz it didn't go through um special education costs are as Point earlier they're Rising because the needs of children younger are rising you know I graduated high school many years ago those are different than as I mentioned earlier my son graduated six years ago things are were different for his two sisters just six years so those who are thinking you know special education is you know something we try and say you know our school budget is for our 2600 off students that we have District we don't separate them by special education in general we do just so we can tell where our C are going but we don't treat any student different whether they're on an IEP of 504 or they're just Joe and from down the street so we we try and make it a point that we don't discuss it that way we talk about cost but when we talk about special education those mandates are in place because of those students needs if I can just add to that Karen thank you for sharing that and I appreciate that and um as an educator and a mother right I have a daughter who's a freshman she has dyslexia she got on an i and she was in fourth grade I have this son who's in fifth grade he has ADHD in attentive type which is important to designate um if he's on a 504 um I think it's really important that we make sure that we're messaging around like all students and it's really really important for us to make sure that every single student that comes to Norton public schools has the best possible education that we can provide for them and we have spent so much time and so much effort and like worked so hard with our staff and with our families to create programs in District because we know and research shows that students attending school with their peers their neighbors is so much better for them than to be you know in a different placement in a collaborative or a private setting it's so difficult be just because of the Golden Hand so to speak um of educating our students these days and um when you guys see my budget book and I've shared it with people before we all have education as a common experience and it's something that we all can talk to we've all been there it's personal for us the education has changed so significantly and the needs of our students have significantly changed when um I'm about the same age as Dan and like I remember I was like Reading Writing and arithmetic like that was what you went to school for you did not have a lot of these extra things and now we do so much more our teachers and our staff are you know counselors we doal we teach them how to you know persevere we all of these other life skills that are so important for our students it is just the Dynamics have significantly changed and I think when we look at the mandated costs we don't have flexibility in those costs where we do have flexibility in other areas um so that is why we show it that way to let people understand that but I don't want you or anyone else to think that um it's an US versus them it is 100% we are always looking what for what's in the best interest for all of our students so I'm going to change my opening statement because my last one I started the DI I have never suggested that we should not educate special special education never never said that one time this is not I hate to say this this is not an educational discussion this is a a a financial discussion unfortunately the reality is special education is mandated so it will grow at a larger rate than the general education will these can back me up if something grows at a larger rate than something else it will become a larger and larger piece of the whole that's just the reality so it's important for us to point that out it's it's not saying that special education shouldn't be funded or whatever it's listen this eats a larger and larger piece of our general education bu I I get where people in town might look at that and say it's your fault that's not true right I was about to say a word I should have said that's not true it's it's not I mean we we are mandated to to fund that and we should be but honestly we should be mandated to find a general education too but we're not it's just the reality where we're at so that's the finances of it right it's a becomes larger so B is going to become smaller it's just unfortunately that's again B is our enemy it's our friend but also our enemy in this case so so what do we do we have these discussions to say hey this is why this is happening there was a question earlier about well does does Medicaid pick up anything listen a lot of these cost this has been a a discussion for I've been doing this for 15 years and I can say it's it's been 15 years I remember distinctly sitting down at pcom years and years ago there's a guy I don't remember his name he's he's been G so long and he asked he said well why isn't why isn't Insurance why isn't Medicare you know Medicaid why why isn't health insurance picking this up certain things they probably should be right you're not if you look at them they're not really educational so so why are we required to pick them up this is not I think this i w speak for what I think next point was you know to to say we're not going to to say we're not going to pay the mandates wasn't hey we don't want to it was more of a hey state federal can you help us out we can't afford to do this you know and this is we're seeing it right now we can't afford to do this and it's not special education I'm really fair on that it's the reality is our budget is growing a lot faster than our revenue is it just is what it is now there's a section of it that we're mandated to pay I we mated to pay the other side too right and I mean it's it's crazy like this is there's there's no greater equal I know we talk in society and I'm sorry I'm get getting out of soap box now we talk in society all the time about you know equity and blah blah blah there is no greater equalizer than education that's it that's the equalizer if everybody's educated to the highest degree they can be equality will take care of itself we don't do it we talk about it lot of lip service blah we never do it why not most important thing a do I I again I hate to it's 15 years this is a difficult position and there's times a lot of times when it stinks no one to thank you is you know mostly complaints but I believe this is as important a position as you can possibly have in this town people said what poor S no no interest in that this is where the actions this is this is where you make a difference it's for lives lives get made you know better or worse here and and right now unfortunately the reality is with the funding issue we're possibly going to make it worse and you know Sher was upset about it we like to leave this you know in in worse position that than when she started and I would make the argument that we've done a lot of good over the years too so you know and sometimes sometimes the good is just staving off as much of the bad as you can over time and that's kind of what we've been doing recently you know we've been basically fighting fighting at the walls like trying to keep this this from overrunning our district and unfortunately they starting to win you know so I I don't honestly I don't know where we go from here I don't know what the next step is I mean it's there's no white you know White Knight coming in to save the day there's nobody riding on a horse saying hey I got the money here or maybe there is I don't know but but it's not going to be the town we just don't have the revenue you know and I know well we need override I mean s two months May 13th I don't May May 13th I mean I don't I don't think an override is realistic right now I think it's I think we should start kind of wrapping our heads around the reality is we're going to be in this situation at least for the following year so over the ballot it would have to be voted on next yeah I mean it's just I just don't see over on has actually C and we've been discussing it tonight in the meeting there I de personally my my thought process was put an override on what's the worst that can happen maybe people will get nervous enough or or understand the cuts that are going to happen and let them decide we've always said let the people decide we've done it four times in my career here of overrides and we weren't successful so the year out of planning and all the preparation didn't work didn't work all the information we get out we walked we knocked on house KN doors we went to fields we did it all it didn't work and hold on so here's the thing put it on a ballot and let the town's people decide how much hurt is enough how much do we want to suffer it's your call right you make the decision so that's that was what I would recommend um and I did mention it to fincom and the chair of the select board that would be my recommendation put on a ballot let the people decide and you know what put it on a ballot until just keep putting it on a ballot until until we realize what it takes as a community to to educate to have police and fire that we need to have a full-time parking Rec director put it on until so now I go on record that's what B recommendation would be anybody else and try to remember those days you B and S back in 2016 we were part of a good good and great TR fight good battle we need did to the good battle and this school needs money right the problem is the battle is exhausting it's exhaust y does anybody else have any oh T Daniels um 54 power Street I don't have Finance Comm since 2019 I have two children in the school district you might have to speak up sorry I sorry Paula Daniels 54 power Street um I'm on the finance committee and I have two children in the school district um fourth grade and seventh grade um I really just have a process question I'm just trying to follow all this so we are meeting with you all on the 25th of March finance committee is um are you presenting to us the 12% budget or are you going to be able to present to us what you're really get that's pending what our vote is at the conclusion my guess would be we we'll present to you the 12% budget with full already yeah I mean I think we we've always been pretty um pretty clear about like we get that that's not what you're going to do you know and the the methodology or the mindset has always been we present what what's required to keep our services intact so that people see it knowing full well that that's not a reality and and you guys look at it and say okay we get it here's what you actually can you know can get here's what we can actually afford to give you and that's fine we we get that so yeah I mean my my guess is we haven't voted on on yet and I'm not counting votes here but my guess is that that's what we'll present to you guys as a high you know budget that that would be what our budget would look like but again it's it's a process right and and we fully understand that that is not what the town by any stretch if we don't tell you what we need right no I know that so we heard that all in the joining that's why I'm like I wanted to move this process along I want to I want the town to hear what's really going on and for us to go through the formality again of this like dream world of the 12% increase do you want us to vote no I mean not no I just want to know like can we start having the real conversation it's like when you guys are presenting to us like you know what's actually mean yeah what what's what's this actually a better idea of what that just to confirm I have April 8th on my calendar for the school to um present and so maybe you and I can connect offline just to double check double check that okay I thought we had I think Chang that's part of the budget process it's kind of a little backwards because you know and I say backwards meaning as an elected board with a department under us we set our budget there is no board that oversees police fire parks and wck so they go through the town manager to you guys and and so and again I think I mentioned this earlier we don't know what the town's budget is looking like for police fire the mail started presenting to us last week and we're definitely seeing over 3% for everyone um so maybe they haven't been told the hard tooth maybe they all got the news today too I don't know um but yeah we're not seeing reality from them yet either um so I mean you you know I speak for your Bo I don't know the insd out you know the way it's been for my years here we vote on our budget we send it to you guys you guys talk to the town manager he talks about the other Town Department budgets you guys then say this is what the recommendation from us is going to be for town meeting if you guys were to come back to us and say you're going to get a 1% increase then we work within our confines to say we're cut you know at that point we have 11% that we're not getting so we're getting 1% so we wait for those recommendations right um you know then you guys and in floorida to meeting are the final decision makers and then you know in said May 13th so May 14th you would say this is what our budget looks like next year these are the takeaways these are the cups that we're going to make and we're ready to go on July the 1st for our new fiscal year right right um and as far as overide process I know you mentioned the ballot um option and the deadline being next Friday for it to be on the ballot which is um Town election is April 27th um we also have another option for during town meeting to present two budgets to the town one being um what everyone needs for their departments and showing that which would require an override and then one being um Delta cuts and then the town would decide which budget they want for the town so that in that scenario the role would essentially be reversed as I understand it so it wouldn't go to The Ballot Box first right it would go to the floor of town meeting first right and then you'd have to have a special election after after to the $210,000 you could actually approve two budgets yeah one well if that's your question I don't know if you know the answer to this um or I see Zach working back there he may know the answer to this um as well and and I want to preface this by saying I'm not saying I think this is necessarily a good idea but is there a way to fund a budget deficit like this by floating a bond or something again I get it it's not it's not ideal but because this seems like it's so crippling this year and it looks like it's crippling to not just us but everybody is there a way to do that or is an override really our only option I've never heard of what you're suggesting but we can definitely talk about it Z Would you know account takes a whole yeah that's so we can't finance a deficit basically and we don't even have that money in free cash what you and and again I want to PR I do not think it was again what we did last year we we took 700,000 I think it was from stabilization um and that was a Band-Aid and you know and then it probably just doubl the next year um but yeah a bond is an interesting question I heard that scenario definely M or jange yeah but I mean the 700,000 it's it's kind of cir back to what we talked about right where we're we're always doing these little things to make it big things 700,000 not trying to say small amount of money but you know we're doing these things to to stve this off and eventually run out a little things to do and that's kind of where we're at right okay I just wanted to clarify the prop as far as like what we might be seeing and I'll double check the date for when we're meeting thank you so much you mind coming up so the M catch you up here don't be shy is this good name and address too please Zack three richond drive also a member of the finance committee a couple points to make that a lot of people make realize Municipal governments do not carry unemployment insurance so call the U off if they don't get a job you're paying them anyway and that's going to make even a worse disaster come to fall because if these people stand unemployment tell is obligated to pay them and it's a snowball that goes down the hill so people need understand that secondly like I didn't hear the first part of presentation because I was at the orientation of High School Sun School in the next year um but can we see a budget when you do come to finance committee that includes uh no teacher cuts so you can make your FS whatever I didn't hear the first part of this yeah Administration but this is the number we would need not to lay off any feature facing student patient and the other thing we to do is we to start thinking about okay no teacher cuts you know we need to be here or we need to be here with you know increases to fees Etc you know like and I hate to say that I feel like an air like charge it for everything yeah right I mean it's but we need to start thinking in that area you know there's no other option we just don't have the capacity we do not could I I can't even begin to imagine what that laying that many and so we're going to have to be really creative and look at options yeah I'd be curious to see if if we can even get to a point where we're not where we essentially getting what we have in the books this year that's I mean I I I get the I get the idea of saying we're be to get know sure else I don't know if we can get there I mean just and that's not I'm not no I'm talking about a revenue standpoint I don't know we just have the revenue to get us to that so I mean I think we were we were closer with our last discussion but now with you know today's events that might as well take the that's what I'm saying that's what I'm saying if if we're actually getting cut it's like you know and I think it's important to know that some of the positions that talked about may not be stud say oh sorry um some sorry I sat down I thought we wereing um some of the positions that we've talked about eliminating I think it's important for people to know while they may not be a classroom teacher they are still student facing in terms of providing students with support additional support for reading and math and making sure that they are able to be successful one of the things that I've said for many many years is that if you want to um I'm going to use the word in quote and I hope you guys will understand fix your special education problem you have to focus on general education and we need to make sure that we are enhancing core instruction in every single classroom across the district if we want to support all students in their learning when we do not have strong core instruction that is when we see students falling behind and we see parents and teachers having conversations about interventions about IEP about testing a strong for instructional program eliminates a lot of that conversation so it's important for us to know that those some of some of those things are already on the top does anybody have anything else they want to add or say or no thank you for doing a thankless job I get that it's hard and I get that it sucks and I get that nobody says than this is Val bra oy no it sus I mean they I grew up my mother was a conservation commissioner for years of my childhood so I have been to plenty of meetings where she got a lot of things said about her and you can find all time because that articles if you want to but um it is a thankless job and none of us I don't think think that you guys are sitting here hoping to cut things from the students and I mean I appreciate as as a citizen knowing what you all are doing and all the work that so thank you because it is hard app you do a good job thank you Peter all right so back to I got my notes me all right I know it's kind of tough meeting but I'm following along there all right so we need a motion to close the public hearing on the FY 2025 school budget is there a second second do a roll call Dan yes Nick yes jusz and I'm a yes as well now we're going to move to a motion I need a motion to approve the FY 2025 budget in the amount of $ 38 m873 $873 431 as recommended is there a second another roll call Dan yes Nick yes Justine yes den and yes as well thank you all very much um but thank you thank you for approving what we had discussed as a level servic I do want to mention publicly um the school compy has been invited by the board to have next thursdaying and process if you're able to make that work not we'll have to so we're doing as well um th just I only heard select board okay um so you're not invited to the party but um always to do all J is the next surve that is what we've been what we've been invited to so we'll follow up and see yeah a little Clarity you got it so um we still have one on our agenda so before I want I want to thank you for Thanking us um because you're absolutely right and then you can thank me for than and and it's want to kind of close out that budget situation by saying like you know I say this all the time like every meeting it seems like I I'm casting a yes vote for something that is diametrically opposed to my thing I I I feel like I'm constantly voting something that's going to financially hurt me or educationally hurt my children because it's just what we have to do and it's unfortunately it's the best for you know best for the town um so it's not position um and it is nice to hear thank you so much appreciate that so we do have more on the agenda um you guys are all you know of course welcome to stay and listen but we're not offended if people need to get home um but I do want to thank you all for coming it does mean a lot to have o00 756 yeah maybe we'll just take a hang on second hold on D all right can we change can we just do the Community farmwood First if you would be willing to touch the bottom bottom good evening hopefully this will be on a lot lighter note just had to see you guys go through uh my name is Joseph I've been running second nature Farm here in town for five years as this uh I am a resident of crown N harvy Street so we're neighbors we are neighbors neighbors we always say hi but we've never done um so there's a little back history about just myself uh and what's going on in town here so I am the last commercial vegetable farmer left in town was currently on the crane Farm which is up for sale lots of rumors around town about that but um currently we our lease is no longer there and the town has extended us the opportunity to use rose Farm is there some of our aric practices retained from chemicals we're a basically an uncertified organic operation uh a lot of our community outreach in the past has been with food insecurity and he food pantry is a pantry that caters to the north here so that's one we had CH to donate a lot of they're able to service the community weekly as opposed to our here which is f so we're just we are a community based operation uh more interesting things here uh so Rose farm is the property behind the JCS JCS school was actually built on Rose farm Rose farm was a old self heel grant that came into the community to support agriculture way back when So when you say behind the school are you talking like behind the softball field area directly behind area so if you are so the elementary school's here and there are four Fields behind a school that's and AI helps there is an so what I am here asking the commission for is to build a community par conservation has granted second nature Farm the use of Rose farm and small p enti is one and the community has long time been asking for Community guard and what better for someone in the community who is a agricultural person to provide they service back of the community the unfortunate thing to Rose farm is it has very limited access it's a beautiful hidden little gem in our community that most people have never wanted um and if we were able to get some permission from the school to access where our pink line is here and there's potential for lots more building back here but this is just general basic gathering information such because there are some things that have to happen here for this in we did I discussed with M O'Neal and way the other day and we had a small discussion about some of the options here and that was when maybe a fence possibly could come up to denote some of the areas after that meeting I had met with the police department to see if there were inss there and their concern was yes we definitely need a visional separation to know where one operation begins and one operation ends and L like I said this is a this is very preliminary for the community guard but we're asking it as a this is not a cost to the school system this is this is a good for the community and also this would Grant many opportunities for staff and student to have access to Second Nature farm and our resources and community garden areas for education so I I think my first point like what kind of Road are we talking like a two- Lan Road or like a farm dirt road it would be a dirt surface or gravel surface loose gravel surface something that storm Water Act doesn't have to so we don't have to deal with capturing water and sending it in all kinds of places and treating it natural cage so in so doing that it definitely would need to be able to pass the two directions um it's a you know we're looking at trying to find the safest way to do this and obviously there are operations which I didn't realize we have access to a community place right here in town the trienal park front which I didn't realize there was an access to the school to get to that so we're here kind of gathering information to see what your take on gaining access through here before we move forward with any more planning is purple Square there rectangle whatever is that a parking that notes a parking so we're between 10 to 30 parking spaces handicap you know all of the guidelines will need to be met even though I am acting as a liaison in this with a steuart it will this is this is a community project so it's not a Joe project or second major we're doing this for Community ACC I guess my question when you go into JCS and go around like yeah like is that one way coming out of that parking lot or is that it is not so that's that's entrance you would you would enter in off of northwester Street um it is not one way um but you know Dr marus and I have had a few conversations and I've said to Joe um some of the concerns I have are um number one with the fence you we want to make sure that there's a clear delineation and that students um because we have education classes out there um or you know Field Days things like that we want to make sure that there is a clear division between where our school property is and where when Road is um and the other concern that Joe and I spoke about Dr Marcus and I spoke about was access during the school day um which you know I think that there something that we really have to have a conversation about um for those of you who currently have students at JCS you know how crazy that parking lot and that driveway is um be really between like 8 8:15 and 9:15 in the morning and probably 2:15 like almost four in the afterno between preschool and the buses and how late they come sometimes um I would be concerned about a lot of additional traffic at that time of the day so I think that you know if there's an opportunity for us to kind of take a look at what some guidelines would be to go there so I guess my other question if you can Farm on this land how how are you gaining access to my access point is further back and is a very long agricultural Road okay like your equipment's not coming down here through this area more than likely other than the farm access is going to be through the rear I could we access through here occasionally yes but no mainly our accesses is beyond I don't know how much traffic you think a farmer will cause we're probably going to end up probably two to three times a day as a farmer I worked on a farm I know that we don't leave but I know a community guard could be a community is that obviously this is going and this will also be an access point for the entire conservation this is not a limited access this is a community property we're asking to come from a public property to a public so people could come down park there they could walk around or they'll be able to buy things Public Access it is entirely a public access situation this is not a one use situation this is a Community Access and you know and also in town we do also have a school that has ball fields along a road so you know there are situations in town here where we have traveling along a athletic and so typically we have very clear signage about accessing um like the fields at the high school are not allowed to be accessed during the school day um across from lgn it's typically not an issue that school gets out at 2 o'clock at practices later in the day um tricentennial they can also enter from the from 123 that access road was put in just last spring um actually to ease the flow of traffic that nor schs have when they go out to take that right as you're very familiar with the Public Public also is able to access from that through the school so this is not something that foreign to what could potentially happen on public property so why can't why couldn't the access road be where you access right now it is so narrow and it is one way and there are there some CS in there it's just not it's a very dangerous situ it's a very dangerous situation to have traffic flow and that and also where the entrance is it's not very wide visibility down the road is very restricted and this obviously will have great visibility that was my next question is I'm not assuming there going to be too much going on after hours if you will in terms of sales or whatever like is there going to be lights out there lighting that road up or youing no we're not this is this is yeah this is a typical Public Access situation daylight hours non Cloud Road you know not accessible at other times the other Beauty to this is as we're on the property it is also going to add another access point for policeing fire in a just another situation where they'll be able to get to the back of the inst structurers from an unrestricted way because the farm as we get through here there will be an unrestricted path right now they could get a police car down they're not going to get a emergency veh as we're on property it will allow for an emergency vehicle situation because it will be open enough for an emergency vehicle to travel down so it's giving another option for those Services too have you got any feedback on the butters there it's public property so we have not gone that far um we actually not need that as it being public property it is you know these these properties are public they're public accessible so would be at this point it's informational at this point we're looking for informational we're looking to see what are your objections so we can answer the objections and come back to you or permission for this project I think the only thing with me and I think we talked it's just know school day access and be nuts you know have to be aware and we can and obviously like anything else at house we can add signes along there there's going to be a kiosk on the property you know we can post information just as the school has posted information El this is like I said this is for public when do you think you want to like when are you moving on to the farm to like what's your time frame uh we will be on on the day after count meeting okay we're waiting for the approval of the Le I me I just my to sense here was I do like the fence idea I would wrap that fence all the way straight up as the uh softball field basb softball field has a fence here there is a fence so will be a discussion with we beyond correct but you can still easily access from your parking lot you can simply one jump over the fence or two walk around and walk right to the back of JCS there is fencing throughout this area this fence needs to go all the way to this point at least where no one can get in because if you leave this open they can walk around Nick also that there's no F behind the playground go straight to the woods yes there's noop off the back of the FL does not have that's what I'm saying correct so what I'm saying is if you're in this parking lot this defense is really doing nothing besides keeping the cars in hopefully this is the this is what we're saying this fence is to do is to build the travel we're never going to stop any anyone from entering property we don't G the entrances of our schools we don't you know our security places in our school system start out our front doors that's why we have cameras that's why we have secur yeah yeah like yes I understand what you're saying existing public assets so I understand that but not with costs you have to be on foot so the vehicles will not leave this area there will be barriers in a gate so there's an emergency w here but there will be barriers within that system so a vehicle cannot travel we don't we don't allow we don't allow our kids during the school day to go play on the playground for like if I want to take my kids are up sick and I want to go play basketball behind the CT behind the thing during the school day we know W get B back there and do that why the hell will be want a bunch of citizens with with no fence or nothing that makes no sense but we don't have a fence now that's saying if we're going to have people who not supposed to be on school grounds we better try to keep them out of it you you do have a sign that says that you're not supposed to be on school property am I we not asking to access the school property no he's not he's not about someone parking in the pink and walking through the back school what is the difference from them parking in the front driveway walk in because we have security measures in place at school playing on the playground out here correct right now there's really no access to get back there if we give a road now there ACC get back there make sense okay I think if somebody parks in the parking lot you can walk around the left side of the building there's nothing stopping anybody in after like drop off in the morning I get it someone on WE worried about a car accessing that I've heard about someone being go out to a back parking lot where there's no supervision whatsoever from the schools with no fence someone just goes there at new walks past the softball field now to get directly to our playground with no cameras nothing out there because we don't have anything out there my question is do we have cameras at LG on the fields I just extend the fence another 200 ft or whatever it was all the way to as far as we can go where PL is thick woods and everything else and then we're going to have to try to deal with it I guess I don't know I mean the fence between woods and that where is I mean I'm not sure where you're I think he's worried about someone with bad intentions being able get get that to that point in a public setting already if they're coming in there's they can come in it is a do you have anything to say recognize thank you um I uh as principal of the building um absolutely support the concept of making use of the F and having uh opportunities for the students to learn supporting the community in in any way that we can to have the farm uh being used in different ways and for the community and educational purposes and things like that but there are a lot of things that we have to figure out before uh this plan is ready to go um and I think Mr styker brought up an incredibly important one about safety there isn't anything more important than that for me uh and there are lots of safety concerns that I have about that kind of a access um there is a drawing that you put up um it has the purple uh line it can't go from right there there's a large Swale right uh at the uh at the edge here and there is a Swale here all right so you so you and that is wet so that swell right now is has got water in it um and it's and I don't know if it's part of the water that's also part of the Wetland that runs along that access rad um but it's not you know it's not something that you can just open the fence and and have a road go right through you're going to have to do some kind of construction or whatever in order to make that work um the fence uh concept I think is incredibly important um and I would see uh again the importance of having that fence wrapped all the way around that that that whole area should be fenced anyway our fence right now goes out to the property line of the abutters and all the way back um and if we were going to do something like this we'd have to seriously consider that we also want to look at water and the water resources and where that's coming from um along with lots of other things I think that car Water Resources all of those things will be provided through the aess on the conservation that will not be coming through the school system all of that will be selfcontained on conservation so I'm assuming for this whole project and I know you know the farm is one part of you know your livelihood well the farm is already all set what we're do what we're trying to do is create a community garden area I'm assuming with this road I'm assuming an engineer has to go out there and do all like all of that work has like we can't just say here's a truckload of gravel here's our road like it has to be a deliberate you know Engineer Road there can be some there certainly could be yeah I'm not like I said just a lot more questions I guess but about to against it by any means but my concern is you're going to have a parking L the back of the building where we have fiveyear olds playing on the fields which I get it the on foot come from northw I come through the woods through the farm anyway I get it but you're giving the ability to we're opening up our our students to a potential issue with having a parking lot back there with no security measur so it's almost parked here there's equal security there's a gate there yes there's a gate to the back that Ro this is why not it's F it's fenced all the way across now yeah and it's fence and with that well whatever if you wrap around the building there's a swing gate that opens for traffic and I don't know hopefully it gets shut during the day but during the day it's shut FL so therefore again someone jump over fence absolutely you're not stopping we're not a 4ot fence is not a security which that has to before why can't it be well I mean there's not a piece of property here in town that we have a like that sure I'm just I'm trying to I get I get from our standpoint yes I think the idea behind this I I don't think you're going to get met with too much resistance to be honest there just going to have to be a very good plan in place that we're going to make an access road the first and foremost thing is to safety of our students and then from there once that question is done and answered then I think we can get into the other stuff of that's why we're here and and we're I'm asking you what are your safety EXs where are they so we can address them another piece is that you are opening up traffic to basically our parking lot so whether it's during drop off and pickup uh at those hours or it's during a regular day all of a sudden we're introducing a number of cars that are going to be driving up and back um anytime that somebody comes on the property right now we had uh uh land uh what's it called Mark land mark yes came today to work on the baseball fields I got three walkie-talkie calls within a minute you know Dr marus Dr marus there are people on the we got should we pull the kids inside what do we do to so we are unbelievably security conscious and if we're worried about three guys that are supposed to be there that we given passes and ready to go and we're introducing something that's much more wide open again I'm I as I said before I'm not opposed to the use of the farm I think a community Farm is a great IDE idea and how how we can support it I think we should but we have to come up lots of thinking about how this is going to work before we make a decision that's my opinion like say this is this is a g information G session where looking for those specific factors so they can be addressed well I mean I think to your point a 4 foot fence I I could probably find my way over one to but I think it's a pece of mind to have we're not saying that if we fast not belong in here there's nothing near now there's nothing and why is say that property has been open to the community for as long as I've down ironically I didn't know it was property I'm in like I said we're trying to do this in a way that is positive for the school yeah I mean I think in a nutshell we're worried about that s and I think we're really we have to be aware of the timing of this you know because I I'm assuming it's going to be like a DUS to Dawn but you know we already have a lot of cars going in and out of that school um to add on potentially you said 20 to 30 it's just you know there's going to be some traffic most of this activity is going to be happening when the school is not there's going to be a small window in the spring and a small window in the fall these are the extension Seasons yes it will be accessed back there for the public so yes there will be some people can still continue access but I mean I'm sure as you know we have people who bark in school parking L all the time to do other things all over this I've been a community this town my whole life I've been through the school systems here I'm aware of things and all I'm trying to get here is what are our exact concerns so we can address them and fing is one it's a signage obviously you have some other concerns about safety um traffic didn't seem to be a concern of police department at this time say went to the we discussed these things it is a public accessible problem there are no laws that you cannot drive on this property at any time there are some signs there suggestions just like most of but we unless I'm unaware of something we haven't passed any law that you can't enter this property can I clarify sorry it's not public property right now but where you have the purple line and where you are going to have that road is not public property at any time during the day publicly held property I can as the principal superintendent school committee can very easily say nope you can't be on the property correct so what you're asking I think the school committees have opinion or our opinion as the school department is can we turn this 12T 15t piece of school property into public property because it's school property right now it's it's publicly held school committee managed right so as the superintendent or as a principal or as a school committee we have every right during the day to say correct they there is no one allowed on on our property and we adhere to that pretty strictly and and so um I think perhaps what might be the best option so to move forward is perhaps maybe John and Nick I'm gonna Vol to volunteer you seem passionate about the topic um maybe work with Joe to share what our con like maybe this isn't just a Joe project this is a community project this is being but if you want to get our concerns and be able to solve those problems I I think we're going to have to be able to give the opportunity to write them down and share them with you um and I don't know that and I think anyone here this is this is we can certainly conservation everything can be emailed right over to conservation this is this is going on through this is part of a land use problem this is part of a lot of different things that have gone so what other do you need other per and approvals to do this well our process here to get this access way in is to is basically our hold up will be the school property okay so the the end decision will lie in you know at some point us coming back with a vote but you know we need to address the issues by to aring there because that makes no sense to come back BL yeah issues have been noted and you take it back to who you need to take it back to right and then we have another conversation correct okay providing like I said you put together a list of issues that can be mailed over emailed over to John Thomas at conservation and we'll address them one by one perect thanks for coming in thank you for your time right sorry I mad at was that's your fault that wasn't me question see told you a common denominator well thank you guys um having a back um back I think in the fall we did like an overview of pis and um we asked you you know sort of come back at this time um we have only about an hour and a half two hour presentation is really a really quick update um in in some data that we've had uh we've been able to collect over the over the course of not just so years so I'm going to go through my par very quickly you guys have already seen this but this is kind of the history of how BB um came about here in Norton and role that it plays um not just in tier one and now in some of our schools of tier two intervention but also in some of the um mandated uh grants and mandated services that we have to provide like around discipline and so forth these is one of the uh better known uh systems that we can Implement um to support some of the disciplines and other uh sports that we have in place for our students uh but more importantly it's really about building Community Building uh appropriate behaviors and and working together with our teaching staff to student forward with schol WR and other skills um this is the uh just real quickly is the LG's um uh Matrix you remember we talked about this of respect responsibility and safety how they go about it um they do purle hearts um they work both on an individual level and a uh classroom level and they have powers that they fill and then the students get choose once the to filled attracts to the teachers and staff and each other um tends to be the bigger draw for them in terms reinfor okay then we have the JCS who uses ter tokens I believe is how they how they uh they reinforce some of the things that we're looking for and they've done a really nice job of tying their PBIS to their character strong which is the uh the curriculum that we're using to and right now I believe is it perseverance to working with perseverance and um you know reinforcing those kinds of attempts and what I like about this is you know perseverance for one kid is not the same as somebody else you really kind of Target that to the individuals at grade levels and so forth um and then we have our hashtags U Mr gagan has left us but um he uses hashtags and Mr blow um to again reinforce their the areas that they're looking to work on uh and they talked pretty pretty intensely about um the different themes that they're working with um with their classrooms and their students as well um and if you wanted to make sure we noted that as of uh the middle of February they had 278 F news calls of the day to parents so students you know come down they get recognized parent is called you know this is what so and so did um and so forth and I actually hear a lot um my position um from my special parents uh that that just love that getting those phone calls um and then um as you know the uh parent board there has been a big supporter and they have set up the vending machine the book vending machine and they've had 250 visits so far to the book bending machine I happened to the other day when a young lady was turning in her tickets she was so excited to get this one book that you just D there a highlight of it not so otherwise good day so I really enjoyed that um the middle school has kind of revamped um and reorganized as we talked about and they do team buckets um you go there during lunchtime you'll see they they really use that time they have like a spinner that they use and they they pull um kids names from that it actually gets very engaged so they've been doing a lot of work um and their parent boy has also been a huge supporter of this initiative and then um The High School uh is we just came back from an internet conference not a lot of high schools doing this work um so we are in the first field full year um we're working with our students now on trying to kind of tailor what it is that they're looking to both address in terms of behaviors but also in terms how do we reinforce that what's that look like um and uh we've had some really interesting and dynamic conversations with them actually just the other day so um that's kind of just a real quick hit um on what's going on and now I'm going to let Eric talk a little bit more about what we are looking to do and what the what the data is saying sure just just in case you don't know me my name is Dr Eric Macky I'm a clinical consultant from the May Institute my training is as a psychologist with focus in school psychology and my role uh since the 20192020 Academic Year the year that was uh was if we all remember uh was is to support uh n public schools in the roll out and implementation uh of PBIS or primarily provide a lot of training technical assistance and coaching to teams within each school so that they can become the local experts within the building to be able to roll out these social and emotional behavi efforts so what we know from uh PBIS is just maybe a little bit of review but just kind of timely as we're talking about things like budgets and things along those lines is when we do PBIS as it's design designed positive behavior interventions and supports we get these positive outcomes such as reduced exclusionary discipline so we're not seeing as many students getting sent out of of the school we see improved testing scores which is like about mcast scores we improvements uh there we see better Equity as far as who's receiving office discipline uh referrals we also see improved teacher uh outcome such as reduced uh turnover and improved perception of school climate as well as feelings of efficacy so feeling like they can do their job in order to be able to educate as you can imagine these have Financial signs students are getting um suspended over and over and they have to be sent out of District that cost money they're just talking that while has been shown to be able to reduce some of the uh some of that sending out for students other District in order to do p oops click it's what time on Thursday thank you I appreciate that um so part of part of my work is working with teams in looking at data uh looking at data see are we doing PBIS as it's designed so that we can get to those desirable outcomes that I I was just talking about and are we getting those outcomes so the first thing I'm going to talk about is Fidelity uh and at least once a year with the team we go through what we call a Fidelity inventory scoring the school as far as how we're doing and rolling out uh the framework what we find is when we're at about 70% that's generally considered Fidelity or sufficient Fidel to say we should be getting those outcomes uh that we're expecting also it's a good key to say okay we might be able to continue building our building our structures um so what you see here are the scores for the elementary schools are all clustered together over the past three years what you see is their Fidelity has been over 70% for the past three years which has been tastic to the right you see the secondary school so you see the uh Middle School uh first uh they were implementing first and then you see combination of middle school and high school together as you can see we're building in Fidelity on that side on the secondary side but we're not quite at that Fidelity Point yet we're hoping to get there soon um especially with continued support but we need to continue to uh support them in in order for that to happen now I'm going to shift towards outcome so what is it that thank you for I'm so used to everything do that all right we did this start so as far as outcomes I'm going to focus in on office discipline referrals so these are the situations where a student uh may do a behavior undesirable Behavior multiple times like maybe they're knowing a or they're calling out or and they're not responding to a teacher's attempts to uh resurrect that that would get documented and land in this digital system that helps us to analyze those results we're also taking a look at times where students are getting sent out of class due to their behavior maybe they've been aggressive or they're absolutely un redirectable maybe they need to get sent to the principal the vice principal that's also documented within this swis system schoolwide information system and what that that computer system allows us to do is to take a look at the the data and the patterns to get a sense of what's Happening schoolwide as far as patterns of behavior what's happening grade wide is far as patterns of behavior and what's happening at the individual student which as you can imagine be really helpful when we're trying to get ahead of behaviors versus trying to fix them on on the back end so for for something like that if it's a digital system that fall next to their career that is part of the well my thought process real quick was if this student is struggling from like 12:30 to 1 every day then that's exactly there's lots of different ways to use it but one of the things you see is that's actually how we use it when we think about it from either a scho just counselor again or pcda perspective or even an administrator start to see both on the individual level but you also get to see at the at the group teach you know the group level or the um School wide level so you can address it it's not always about addressing just the child right it's about addressing the environment or how we're going about it it also is something we can use for um when we do our FB it it speeds up that process so it makes our work with our school dri counselors our BCBS way more efficient and effective because we have the data we don't to spend weeks Gathering dat just have question that the the digital program um so just so I'm like can wrap my frame around this one um like if uh let's say first grade teacher is teaching a lesson and a student talks out in class direct whatever you know and then finally the teacher's like okay you know what no I need you to go to your seat like they on the rough let say does she then have to go back and put that information in or is that sort of not what you're talking about as far as like a behavior I guess I'm trying I it be more I think typically you can drill down that level where we're looking at more little bit larer behaviors that so like they're on an incident report or they have to do they have to go like a Next Level type yeah I I don't haven't looked at that data in the last couple days I just looked at the middle school data and they do like they call minors and majors in this so they actually do track within classroom setting the some of the mind not all they need to be certain threshold in order to qualify even for documenting that minor because we really want to overwhelm teachers with that was the teachers to then have to go to the system it's something you know that we might be looking at in terms of asking them to do say it's more efficient there might be something that we would be asking them to do as old days you know Circle the pluses and the minuses um this just does it for us digitally and then from the office referal perspective it's just documenting in a way that that graph follow actually look at and I think too because I was doing this work previously um when we started these conversations at the elementary level it actually led to to a lot of really great conversations about what are things that teachers should be managing in the classroom and what are the things that are at that next level that warrant um an office referral and it it led to such great dialogue with colleagues to be like oh no I don't know that I would like to me that's more minor um so that was actually really helpful when we starting this process those conversations help lend towards consistency across the teacher if one's consequen for one for one or another is not that's confusing for for a student and they're not going to know what to do from Context to context they might attemp to split staff or teachers if they're creating sure so again back to those outcomes what are we getting out of uh PBIS this is a graphic that it's technically called a triangle report but it's a rectangle because we're it's basically a triangle stretched out over a over years and the way this is broken down is those who those students the percentage of students who earn zero to one referrals are considered to be in the green uh some might say that those are the ones who are responding to our Universal strategies or percentage of students who are receiving two to five referals that's in the yellow those are students who may benefit from tier two I don't say that they must have it but but they might warrant some further investigation to see if they might benefit from it and then the red are those students the percentage of students who receive six or more referrals those are students that we say you know what they might benefit from some individualized supports like an individual individual Behavior plan or counsel like that the hope is that we see the majority agree right we want the majority of our students to be receiving one or less referrals over the over the course of the year what you see here with yes um what you see here is majority is green that's the desired effect that's what we want we want I keep telling teams that I work with we want to grow the Green Grow the Green Grow the green we want our our green to be at least 80% or above and that's what we're seeing here we can actually for times kind of scroll through you can see that for nor majority majority gr we do see some of that tier two in there but especially in most recent year you see its major majority same thing for y same thing for middle so this is how we track uh progress to make sure from year to year that we're reaching that goal of at least 80% in that who are responding to those Universal p because I feel like this data is the best simply because when you look at this we're looking at it from 1819 if our kids were already doing this before we put in PBIS and we were already flot UN in the green this really hasn't helped us necessarily data well we have to have it somewhere so I think the other thing to consider too I was thinking about this specifically for norn middle school was how much is actually being reported right so what were things right so what what was being reported initially so and the middle school has kind of had to relaunch PB so I would be willing to you know wager that they weren't putting in those discipline referrals or they were writing a note to the administration instead of putting things or of tracking and documenting so the data almost looks like it's it's going backwards but instead it's just it's more accurate but I think Den's point when we talk about onecast testing if you have a really bad grade of second grade toys let's just say one year it's going to be you might have more referrals and the thing does this then all sudden you get the fifth grade you see the middle school or whatever El school start falling down so on and so forth so like we're looking at this I mean it looks like making this number up but so many school it's well over 95% of our kids have less than one or uh nor looks like well over 90% of our KPS you know like what were our numbers beforehand that is like are we actually gaining something from PBIS I guess I would say we weren't tracking any of it yeah yeah was no I mean that g there was no historical data so I agree right there's no historical data but I think the other point is it's just not about historical data it's about drilling down so I use this just within my own to kind of two departments or whatever I have um I drilled down a lot with staff um and and I think actually V he would has done a really nice job of doing this at his at his different um in his different teams to kind of look at like okay where where not just who right but where when and how are we seeing certain behaviors occurring and how are we then addressing them both from an adult perspective as well as individual so we may be addressing some of these kids indiv ually all right um but then I think the other bigger pieces we're looking at you know people get wrapped up in the reinforcement because it's kind of a pretty thing to look at um but to me that's not the most important part in all my training and I I did this prior to coming here it's about the environment about changing the environment making sure that we're okay how we um should we be taking a look at how we're doing dismissal because a lot of our problems coming out of dismissal what are we doing in the cafeteria like that was a targeted area for for middle school I know they did a lot of work around their cafeteria um and not to not to flash you know having a good time in the cafeteria but how do you actually manage like where do you cross the line you know does it being loud is is one thing smashing you know smashing into you yeah problem is a different thing right so those are the kinds of ways that we utilize it um and then again I think having some um consistent ways of acknowledging students when they're when they're doing the right thing one of again one of my struggles when I was a school adjustment counselor was always like I felt like you're focusing on a lot of times other the kids who were not engaged in the appropriate behaviors and you start to forget those kids that you're not we want to make sure we acknowledge our little kids because it takes effort um and then you know so and then teachers can look at it different too and look at say okay where where I feel like we're struggling as we come back from Recess does the data show that yeah it does okay let's see that time frame what can we do different we work with administrators or they can do it themselves they work with their teams or coaches to try to figure out a way to address that it's really a way to make sure that we're reutilizing data to address what we think we might be seeing um and then sometimes it's it's it's not like some I've been in schools where you hear everybody's out of control right the whole school's out of control and then you utilize the data and you're like no let's take these seven or eight students that are being more disruptive you take them out the data really shows that the school itself is not out control right so you have to address those tier two tier three here so to me it offers a variet at each level is offering us the ability to do some some drill down work having conversations so what do we have in terms of consistency because my first thought as we're going through this is in this school and the high school the kids are moving around yeah so if you have a teacher that's lack of is a little bit more laid back and maybe isn't doing the reporting versus you have a teacher that's going to report everything how do we how do we look at a data set like whe is human human element to the report you asked a great question and thankfully The Limited roles as far as who can analyze the data and there are select individuals who have the ability to dive in and take a look okay how are the referrs looking for staff and not so much as a gotcha but more say oh I see lot here what can I do to support this classroom maybe they have construction happening maybe it's it just happens to be a challenging class maybe there's a whole bunch of factors so we do have the ability to do that kind of analysis to go okay how how are teachers comparing somebody might just be a little bit uh giving out more frequent uh referrals so might be later but this an opportunity for observation for supervision for feedback look at individual student is it really like you also have to take a look is it that Dan is easier than Nick is or is it that that kid likes your class for whatever reason more than he likes your his class you know um so I mean those are the kinds of things sometimes what what the data leads you to discuss not necessarily with the data so you have to take the data like any data right you have to take the data and then look at it break it down and talk about it and have rational discussions about hey what does this mean um you know and you have to kind of think about what it means do we have any feedback from teachers on their thoughts across three levels about you like about the implementation of PBS and also students like how do the students feel are they so the I'll be honest right now the the I think the elementary for the most part again people right but you're looking for 80% Fidelity and that's what we we got there so that's part of that meas correctly um we good things from students I mean you know at the elementary in the Middle School the Middle School actually very excited to have it back I see it when you go in there we are you know we're have some growing pains in the high school um they have some good feedback back and then some kids are like I don't like it this way so we're talking about that like anything else this is a process um there not a lot of people do the high school so it's something we're trying to implement it's a way of addressing behaviors it's not going to address all behaviors it's not to be all hand off but it's definitely a way to I was in a Brian and I were in a AP class the other day and they were presenting us all kinds of different scenarios um one of the things that came up was SEO ask and it was interesting the initial kind of response they said was well no this is kind of I know I feel like it's babying us and then we talked about incentives and reinforcement how we all get reinforcement and they kind of came around oh okay we're getting it we're on so I think there's some of that is it going to work for all kids no like it's not it's just that's why we have tier two tier three um and then if the elementaries are starting to to implement the tier two process which is much more structured check-ins with kids um it's a way to be more efficient and effective with my my staff you know my counseling staff my my my dcpas Smalls that makes it more efficient and effective um because we can kind of drill down quicker see what we is that we're looking at we also see turnaround you know in terms of those TI too is this you know let's do this for six weeks just like any other like from the curriculum for perspective how we seeing inter I I'll just add to that that uh one of the major drivers of PBIS is having a representative team so each school has their own team that includes teachers special ed regular Ed counselors mental health so that there's a representative uh Viewpoint there it's not just a couple people dreaming something up and they are they the individual who get to represent uh their peers so you're how is this impact the teachers there's a direct line to the teachers one person can't represent everybody at least there's some representation there constantly seek feedback on their products you mention about the students one of the best practices especially at middle school and high school is to have have at least a student on the team not have your own your own team uh of students to give that kind of feedback is what we find with PBIS at the secondary level is if you don't have that student Buy in you don't have that student Buy in you're kind of su so they very wisely especially I think high school has has students represented on the team helping them to build their framework I would think at like the middle and high school level like if if there's someone that's constantly interrupting class those kids are more than likely going to have an opinion to bring to somebody because it's their like if they say you know Johnny's constantly interrupted class but we're not seeing any interventions the students at those level probably be like I can someone do something about this kid I'm trying you know trying my best and I'm getting distracted because you know it's like the say one kid can stract 25 you know so I I think hopefully there's buying at the secondary level because they know this can affect their education on to yeah I think we're still again we're we're year really year one into the high school and you know we were at come we're we're we're leading like we do a lot we're leading kind of that chart you know that's why we're asked to come speak about it um because at that secondary level I've done it in a therapeutic Day School it's a little different than doing it in G high school but I I personally think the data is some of the most important pieces you know Nick I there's there's always issues with data um but the way you approach the data and the way our teams approach the data is with a little bit of skepticism it's not like oh look at that isn't that great or look at that that means everything no let's really look at it from a deeper dive um and we we we're growing we got to get better at that there's no two way I guess my last piece of this is obviously we want 80% green whatever we want we% uh I guess from the salones it looks like pretty standard across the board in five years again Co put huge interruped uh but again if you look at 1819 to 2223 they look pretty similar maybe one or two differences North with PB seems to be getting better and then yelling nor Middle School seem to be getting a little worse is that how we're should be reading it and I think that's where it's really important to consider the variation in data and thinking about who's who's giving the data how consistent are they in data what's going on within with the context since there b turnover within the tool so everything has to be vetted exactly um so say that this is the end all the all as far as the effectiveness of of PBIS I not say that I would rest everything on on this data I think it's important to also take a look at when we have the universal stream what is what is that what what are things like for internalizing students who might not be flipping over chairs or flipping the bird but who might be struggling so we to think about also Saturn that this available beting look at those other outcomes that we're hoping to see from totally I think that's my next news is like what what other data that we because yeah I just kind ofar to the mcast stuff it's like it's not the M you know what else can we tangibly see that we can see at the five of us to look at and say hey this is actually working you know maybe the yellows went from hey we're removing a kid from a class compared to 3 years ago we had kids throwing chairs that's a better know it's it's a step in the right direction I think you know again I think at the the I actually even though the data looks a little different I would say it's actually more consistent being used you know in a in a better way in terms of um how they're implementing it so some of that you know you have to kind of look at what's going on in the in the individual setting and to be honest is the behaviors are more challenging that we're seeing than we saw PR ago right so I actually again I think it's implementation I think John's case some of the stuff that John's put in there I don't know how accurate that data was prior to John coming in to be honest to your point too that you me earlier if you look at you know if you put up the yell and then you know JCS and LG it could be that great so this data the 2120 we can break this down in lots of different ways which we which we do I know there's certain grade levels are struggling right and so we're trying to address that over time I've also seen grade levels um that have struggled and then have improved right so you know there's multiple factors that get get involved um you know in in breaking down the data so I'm by know means PBIS implementation Specialists never many hats is certainly not my stretch um however I think I'm fairly decent at digesting data and so I guess actually my first question is I notic we have the triangle report on everything except for the high school yes because it's their first year of okay so we don't have data there yet um so actually have a couple of problems with what we're looking at uh the first of which is and again forgive me if I don't understand this correctly but when you talk about Fidelity and you talk about say okay we implement this program and these are the expectations and do we see the expectations we think we do how do you proove causation are you prove that your program is actually why they're either improving not improving Etc oh that's a great that's a great question that's one of the challenges especially School scenarios because we can't can't always turn it into an experiment where we have that clear conditional approve or we have that clear before and after unfortunately right now we don't have access to that before and after data to be able to show you that clear kind of line defining line to say okay so when we started doing pdis the these are the changes we basically started tracking the data as soon as we start I don't think it's even it's even that simple to say okay prior to and post because you don't want to you don't want to confuse causation and correlation right like cor so I mean the reality is here co could be a causation for something and we're saying oh look the program is doing this or not doing this or whatever you know in um 2020 21 when kids are allot you know maybe there there's less instead instead of interrupting they just and they're like walking so is interesting I can't say PBIS caused this I can't say it did this I can say it may have contributed there's a lot of factors I said it could be and this is why I'm not sure we we really have anything yet and this is not to say that DS is I'm not sensing it but I'm saying I don't think we've really shown that we anything at all in fact I would actually make the argument like if you look at some of these ones where the data starts with very few referrals and increases those are likely the most most accurate right because like like any anything as you do it for a longer and longer period of time you get better and better at it right so the teachers who were the first year are like is that a referral I don't know whatever by the fifth year they are referring it that's a referral that's a referral so you should actually see that progression where it actually increases I hate to say that but it it's the reality of data right so and they kind of bring it back to what what Nick said I'm not sure what to do with the data when I see it and I say okay you know um for the I think for y we had five we had five years it's twoyear school so I'm not sure show my take away from that you know what I mean like it's okay is it is if the yell went from a massive yellow and red to shrunk down to almost nothing that would actually tell me not that this is necessarily working it would tell me there's a completely different cboard of kids in here so I I I don't know what to take away from this and again I'm not trying to be dismissed of the program no I'm just saying like I don't think this data really if I'm being quite honest with you I don't think the data shows us anything yet and and and it may never quite honestly so I guess it circles back to my original question of how do you know that PBIS is causation and and not just simply just something else that's in the background well I mean I think from a from a scientific standpoint which is not our that's you look at research we get like a deep dive into research there is some it's one of the most researched programs out there in terms of what we're trying to accomplish um you know we look at it and I look at it in different ways I think that the value to this is not necessarily year to year although that's nice to look at I use it or we use it I think and I think as we be more NS we're imss least more of that so looking at the data both at the at the year level but even more brand new Lev right right so that you that's that's way at this right is not to look at it year-over year for the entire entire the co-works of the school it's hard to say you know student X you know as a whatever first grader had had five referrals as a second grader he had three and by the time he got to third he had one or less right and and this is this is what PBIS is doing or or you you could look at and say okay we put this in with this group of kids right and I'm just going to use the the cafeteria um we had a problem in the cafeteria we look at the data where we track we decided these are the expectations we Tau the expectations directly always made some changes to the environment as well now we look at the data a month later and say do we see do we see Improvement right and it's not just PBS in terms of we know for a fact that you know reinforcement verbal praise so those kinds of things there's plenty of plenty of plenty of research it says yes that improves outcomes for behaviors like there's there's no there's no doubting that I think the value of PBIS goes beyond that that's a component to me the value of PBIS is also it's the the the looking at the the data it's looking at the environment looking at where you're seeing your issues within your school and then how do we address that and sometimes it's not the traditional thing you think I I know keep this short I'm Sorry's gonna yell at me but you guys you guys are y you guys you guys you guys are asking the question so my first example like when I first started doing this at the therapeutic Day School we spend money every our first period not our check-in right we have the whole check-in process that went fine we were having all these issues first period first period first period and we kept trying you know we tried to gavial stuff we tried the reinforcement first period we couldn't get past it but we kept diving into the data believe it or not what it came down to is what we what what got to us was wait a minute what's happening let's keep backing this up and we realized our BS think about there few days were showing up and they were all sitting on the bands for like 20 minutes before the staff came and got that so all these beefs were happening but our our chicken system was so super structured that they didn't have a chance to carry those into the into that wasn't until they got to first period so what we learned with our PBS data in our process of discussion was we need to call the van company and say stop getting here so early and change that and guess what our data showed that our intervention was correct because it's not always about what I like about PS it's not always about just the kids yes I love the hashtags I love recognizing the kids I love doing all that I love that we can Target a kid who maybe can't meet this expectation but we need him to go here but he's doing it in the same way that his peers are doing it he's getting reinforced in the same way I love that but what I also love is it holds us accountable to look at our systems and how we're implementing our system systems um is that to me is almost more important um in some ways it's not the shiny Bubbles and you know all the things which everybody likes and you know sending home 256 good calls of the day you know is great like I think that's fantastic it's nice connection but there are things that we changed within our systems um and I would like to get there at high school honestly because I like be able to Deep dive into our systems a little bit more to figure those pieces out so it's not as simple sometimes as how people perceive PBF it's a much more complex approach to behaviors expectations School Readiness skills perseverance in those kind and that's a good answer because I the other thing I always worri about with these things talk about course you know people the worst thing you can have is confirmation bi right say this is what we expect oh we saw it well yeah you didn't see it so I love about that so the idea that you you know have this issue in first period you're like I don't know what it is I'm not going to go in and say it must be this or must be that I'm G just look and see what's going on that that's how you should hand we also try things and then look at the data right because the hebal interventions there much as also art oh this is what this is what it seems to be but when that data says no that's not that's your your intervention is AR being effective well then we need to look at did different interventions so we had to get there wasn't like oh it's the buses right right we do that again I'm not dismissing PBIS I'm just saying it's make sure we're not playing the flag halfway up the hill you said it's very complicated I actually think I'm GNA say the opposite there's also some very simple things that have anecdotal evidence that is um you know we didn't have any consistency and expectations previously you you were a second grade teacher and your procedures and your expectations for your students were to Night and Day from the person store and then they go on to the next three level they work C expectations and you know was a huge problem when ljn and JCS would come together and for G we spend a lot less time having to review some of these things because we're teaching children what the expectations are we always say they can't do it if they don't know how and so we're teaching them how to act and how to walk and how to be a student and that's really powerful too so that's anoral anything else thank you thanks thanks for staying so late yeah appreciate it all right so next step right we really going to be running up there she just want to start just with a thank you um for coming to you tonight and I know like we talk about process a lot we've been at this for 18 months Jen started this work along with G and along with all of our elementary school teachers our curriculum councel and our field test teachers the volume of work that has gone into this and the level of detail that's been provided is um up here the level of conversation collaboration communication I just want to make sure that the public understands how much time and effort everybody has put in to bring us here tonight so just a really public acknowledgement and thank you to everybody for this okay thanks so just to give a a little bit of background um our last uh adoption was a believe in 2016 um Pointon wiom and in 2017 the elementary Frameworks had changed and really what folks were looking for was what they called an evidence-based Literacy for so previously any vendor any publisher could slap on a textbook Massachusetts state approved comore state standard state approved but it was a meaningless designation because there was no vending source so there are two sites one is called Ed reports the other is called cury that really do a deep dive and they are the consumer reports so to speak for instruction materials and really what they require are complexity of text rigor representation of cultures and different cultures and perspectives engagement making sure that our screening assessments make sense and a connection to the imss process and I just want to diverge for one moment so all the work that we've done from PBIS to this work here to our conversation about budg educationally speaking it circles back to that laying of support I know that triangle and then in the case of P yes the graph you know the elongated rectangle but that's what it all circles back to and in our um effort we really were looking for what we call those high quality evidence based and in fact part of the council's non-negotiables were if it didn't meet the all green which is the highest standard on red reports we didn't even review it for consideration and so there are really four phases and this again began about 18 months ago the learn and prepare phase the investigate and select and where we are now which is what we hope for having a positive response from from the school committee this evening to really move into the launch phase and these phases have involved a lot of time a lot of effort researching the texts making sure that we had vendors comeing and talk about what the texts were doing Teacher book walkthroughs and actually using rubric scoring and I want folks to just understand that this was primarily a teacher-led process so teachers who are in front of the kids every day who understand the nuances of what it takes really drove the process and so I'll turn it over to G talk a little bit about our vision so the ELA Council that came together we had representation from each grade level from each school plus our special ed teachers and some reading Specialists and they came up with this Vision that really is at a lot about why we do this and it's I think everything that we've been talking about tonight and that is our students I think everybody could agree on that and so this Vision captures our why and what we want for our students and that would be to build a strong foundation and um support all Learners and to make sure that this new program is engaging for them and that they want to learn and they develop a lifelong love of learning and reading and writing and that it is high quality and and um engaging for all students and so this was our vision that was developed from the council oh get new battery BR so these are the parameters which are the non-negotiables um and that we wanted this to meet the high quality markers of having that text complexity and the depth of knowledge um differentiated resources for intervention our El students must be a rigorous curriculum that's aligned with our state Frameworks that it's within our budget um that it was a 2019 or later Edition we didn't want to go any earlier than that and then it had both paper and digital components those were our non-negotiable our priorities were that it was student centered and engaging quality and diverse literature incorporates reading and writing together lessons included embedded scaffolding uh built into in the format of assessment tools um tools to bridge home and School connections aligned with our district needs and priorities teacher and student user friendly workshop model which is our you know going into small group and Center work that it supported that and that it would made those authentic real connections for students T Student Center agent why would that not be must well it it is must there was I think it was part of our um priorities and perimeters as well but it's definitely a priority that's why it's on here the perimeters are more like that has to be within the budget it has to be you know you don't even look at something if it doesn't and I touched upon this just briefly before but really what we're looking for is all of the markers that you talked about but also with the solid empirical base which means that it was reviewed by teachers and administrators and shown to be of high quality in all throughout those areas particularly for us it was really about that foundational Knowledge and Skills the text had to be complex and Rich and clear and from the lens of our teachers because part of our experience the teachers did a field test of both products for between five and six weeks so that alignment with our standards and then the usability feature so that if you s product a and product B had a similar experience with both over a period of time you could make the comparison because you field tested both and that was really important for us to make sure that the decision was made so that everybody had equal footing with with both parts and so we chose between two programs one was called inter reading the other was called my view and this was after a process where we looked at other vendors as well even for just the books but we chose because you can only feel test two through a curriculum Council vote to go into reading in my view we wanted to make sure that from a planning perspective that we shared and followed the pacing and we had regular meetings with the council we aligned teachers created Google Docs shared back and forth positive and negatives all throughout the process and then to make sure that students had the ability to utilize assessments and make sure that the program had all the right components so the Student Book assessments and that these were used with Fidelity so that if G was teaching grade three at JCS I was teaching grade three at lgn we had regular conversations about what did this look like how did our kids interact with it you know what are our thoughts in terms of of how how it all worked out and so our recommendation this was after a um curriculum Council vote um after about an hour and a half discussion is into reading and the publisher is uh holding as an aside it's a little bit less expensive too so that that may help so gu my question and I know there's a whole ring console I think is how did it work if say you have 14 people and it's like seven versus seven like how how do we come to a consensus on that so on on decision day we had shared a process with the team very specifically up front because to to your point we had to be really detailed so the first component was we were to spend 15 minutes talking about strengths of inter reading EXC yes because that was the first book that we Feld tested getting 15 minutes of my view we wanted to make sure that we separated it out and then there was an ability for the curriculum Council people to go back and forth so like one of the themes that really emerged in that conversation was that the inter reading component with those foundational reading skills K to2 which is really the ages where kids are learning to read whereas grade three kind of demarcates then to learn the K2 folks were super passionate that the inter reading component was deeper it was richer it was more clear it was more robust so that was really a mod and so in the rubrics that we scored our teachers were amazing some of the rubrics I kid you not they were 20 pages with level of detail and so it was a solid majority for inter reading I wouldn't call it you know it was not unanimous and my view certainly has some strong features um what we've already done as a council um we're organizing a group to look at the inter reading points that were identified for areas of improvement to meet with the folks from inter reading so we can have that conversation about we field tested this here's what we liked but as we launch we need your support with this because we want to be proactive in addressing teacher concerns up but mind you these are minor concerns they're not significant but our role in this process is to get everybody as prepared as possible so that when we enter we enter with a lot of positive moment I'm curious on the CL the classrooms that tried out like each program um what like do they are they continuing with into reading with like the the books that they had or like my son was in one of them so I got the my new book home um but I'm just like and then is there a a setb back because there was a small amount of time you know like I I do it's a great question so here's our here's our plan I was a little bit presumptive and I jumped the shark so to speak because I did ask the folks from into reading to send us the rest of the year's materials for field test teachers so that students that have that experience could continue they've agreed to do so at no cost um you know by the rules it's within your purview to approve first and they haven't gotten here yet but I wanted to make sure firming a positive vote then we were ready to position teachers for that question many teachers asked that well yeah just about about 3:30 330 330 buiness I got open up a curriculum this is a question I always ask with any curriculum what was the separating factor of inter reading over my view what is the one thing that was kind of like this is what's doing it and then what was the one con if you will of what why was my view that CL possibly being our next Cur kind I think I think the one indicator was when you were to weigh out the level of detail precision and um quality of materials and ease of instruction with the foundational literacy skills in K to2 that was a really strong marker because the difference there was I think was noticeable and the folks at K2 were really clear about that some of the folks in the 4 five strata felt like the my view component was a little bit um more streamlined and straightforward for the older students but there wasn't a significant disparity but it was enough that we noticed the trend but even again like to address that point we went back to the vendor and I said to to Cindy I said we want to be able to sit down with you and just kind of unpack a couple of the the areas for optimization before we get started I just what does my view do better than inre reading that we're gonna hopefully talk to Cindy and figure that one out I think the the the component in correct me if I'm wrong G was I think timing and pacing with the older students with inter reading need some tweaks whether it's done from the level or whether we decide to do do it on our own I think the timing will we'll need to calibrate that to our Norms here I apologize if I miss this this is Grant project so we have applied for a grant through the Department of Education for high quality instructional materials um dran apply for it probably in October um and we are still waiting to back them um we also put um 50% of it toward as part Capital which will be MC and it's also part of our our budget as well so it's um we're really hopeful that it's so so my first question is is the grant cover if we got the grant would it cover it would cover 50% okay um and so one of the things that we've done in the past has entered into a multie payment with um publishing companies which has been very you know they want their money right so they want you to pick their program to work with you um up that up through 3 years okay so we could potentially you know say okay we can give you the 50% by Advocate because it's Grant funded could we work with you to pay the other 50% over the three years so and we have a capital request which yes okay do we have an expectation on he back on yeah so last year we actually received the grants around mid-march that's how we paid for um the ELA program here at Norton Middle School and the map program here at nor school um so we're hopeful that we'll hear from them sooner rather than later um and you said that right now we have 150 this in our current budget we have 165 currently in our current budget um again as you know conversations we've had earlier to have those conversations so I mean I hate to say this but I don't I this is a tough one for me right now quite honestly and so what I would say is um I think it's important for the group to look at the program itself and say you know if if if if the funding is there are we willing and able to move this program forward and then we have to take a look and see okay we did get the grant we were able to get it for you know whatever that cost was so we have that first initial payment is there a way for us to do it over time what's our current program we have a we a few different pieces so we have uh Lucy cin units to study and then we use foundations and hegr for phonics I think Lucy like I'm wrong reading specialist but there's a lot of controversy around so right now we're in the middle of the reading again right reading Wars are back um there's a lot of ation about whole literature are we teaching children you know from this perspective or are we teaching children from you know chronics first and you know what we've always done is we have always supplemented Lucy cofins was not purchased for Norton as the be all end all we've always supplemented supplemented with foundations and other things there too I think one of the most important things about a new curriculum is the consistency of core instruction for teachers um this and uh please interject um that this program is much more structured for teachers the the resources that are available are all in one place they don't have to go looking for other things um and so you know we're talking about the lack of interventionists or the lack of other support position we're going to need to make sure that the poor instruction is is strong and we we had discussed earlier the the whole idea that we need to be proactive because our budgets regular Ed and special ed and part of really that tier one component is catching kids before they get referred to special education so ensuring you have an evidence-based program that's taught universally in the same way for all students starting in grade K I think would really go a long way to satisfying all of those all of those ends and was there any feedback or thoughts on like obviously we're talking about kids who were either born during the pandemic or are you know had remote learning during the pandemic so obviously there were gaps that need to be filled and did the teachers feel like this program was able to fill in those gaps and then help to meet you know Great Expectations and standards they they did and J can like we have and again we don't have to go through the slides but there was the teachers had very specific comments and very pinpointed feedback about why this was such a win for us I have my own personal opinions on luy C so I me I think one of the other areas that always looked to do since I got on the school committee anyway was theing percentage of what our students are reading that I remember Joe was saying at 1 point1 being 90% And we were well below % so I mean so I me I think doing something that's going to hopefully help our teachers in turn help our students is smart we talk about the money $330,000 is the water of money obviously we have $165,000 this year's budget in the upcoming budget which now that we have information that what we are we going to have any savings this year savings this year um I think there's just too many unknowns right now hard time voting on without Know M we the problem I don't want to also golden handcuff ourselves but now we don't do it we wait too long we can't get everything in and now we have our kids set back doing for two months and then we're trying to like I don't know how much time do we have we need an answer I can I could certainly I could certainly work with the vendor um you know I've been we been very if here if you're going to give them $330,000 they'll give you time and you know and I've been very honest all the way through the process kind of explaining what it is even going back you know to to to Jen's Point talking about multi-year payment plans because even with the you know without the new information we received tonight there are layers to this so we can so we could if there's a need to kind of create the space you know even perhaps there could be you know an ask for an approval of the program itself pending funding availability it seems like we should at least table this discussion to see if we get rant funding half of it because if we if the grant funding says no we sure as he cannot up 330,000 I would be more out to say maybe we could come up with three years at you know whatever 40,000 whatever whatever I don't do M so I mean not that we can this year but I mean if we're not getting half in it Grant then I I'm hesitant so what we could potentially do is we say that you know we you vote to approve the program as the next curriculum for elementary laa and I a that's super big or like I mean for them to you know so much work gone into yeah I hear you but CH this is the thing right like so I I'm super appreciative with the work and it's not that I don't want to have this program but we need to make very very hard decisions and 335 that's a third of a million dollars that we're talking about here you know we have to consider the possibility that that that may be teaching positions teaching positions that we need I get it this might be super beneficial the kids your teacher I mean that's so this is not like this is not a you know condation of any of the work that you've done I I appreciate it and and in a vacuum I would I would vote to approve this right now but I these are the hard decisions responsibility to this town I think we have to look at this say we at least need to know what the funding is before we can vote on this and and I get like you know I guess there's like you know we think there's a time pressure but we can't it's a third of a million dollars they'll wait trust me hold will be happy to take our money when we're ready to give it to so I I I I urge people to at least think about tbling this otherwise I don't think it's just quick math here $330,000 by basically what whatever teacher I think we're like 69,000 looking at that's 4.7 teachers or additional Staffing that we have to be looking at cutting in addition to a of 28 and or 44 right right because only whatever 168 of it is in our budget now we say yeah we don't we can't do some extended fund now the balance of that was the next year's budget too this is this is a table right it has to be this is probably a bad question ask right now but where my brain went how do how are we saying kept saying at 12% is level Services you $165,000 for new curriculum so with that we we yes yeah we're getting rid of the old C we're bringing a new the other thing to think about too is there are consumable products that go along with any curriculum so every year we buy New Foundations materials for students we buy um Hing materials so when you take a look at what those costs were it's not an additional 165 that we added to the budget it might be an extra third when you really look at what the costs were because your your expenses go down on the car rate correct I me I'm personally I think we should vote on it with a condition of something because if we do get half of it in Grant we do get something from Capital whatever that may be we might be looking at nothing and then nothing cost to us if you will but zero cost to us that we can then go and ding that Bell okayy go order that now we're good to go rather than if all of a sudden we're stuck here we haven't voted we get from capital in April 1st we here from the Grant in mid April we don't have another meeting for two weeks and or if it's even later like I guess what's the turnaround for this like if we if we table this till say end of April meeting whatever that may be we should have the grant we should have some idea about capital is that still enough time for Pati what's the turnaround it would it would change the curve so it's certainly doable so I want to stop by saying that either pathway is doable in the most optimal position we'd be able to order sooner to have the materials in and then offer the first round of professional development prior to the end of this year so that we could give all the teachers the manuals before they left have the materials here ready to go and then offer the teachers over the summer that opening round of PD now if that's not possible those other dominoes would fall into place they just would fall into place a little bit later correct which is then going to essentially set back whatever September October November is essentially wants to look like to pushing everything back we could we could figure out a way because we would never want we would never ever Educators enter a space with a new curriculum unprepared if it came down to waiting till April we'll figure it out we will figure out a way to make sure the teachers get what they need we'll figure out a way to get them to professional development so they at least have a taste prior to implementation and then for the PD opening PD day for next year that will be the day for our K PL folks we think we'll have more information in in two weeks time now I we're looking at a joint meeting next week that's true I think if we just push this to to the next March meeting I don't think we need a month but I think like after the trauma of today I think we need to just take a breath I mean listen I so appreciate all I mean I've known Gia forever I appreciate all that everyone has done but this is one of those hard decisions that we are now and I I just think to spend $330,000 we have no idea after what we were just told today we we are I I I just I know I absolutely want to say 100% yes it makes total sense to do this but just again after today I just don't know how we can do that without knowing how we're going to pay for this so what we can do is we can and if if we have an update from the grant side of things or the town side of things or the 28th um we can come back um I don't know if we would want them to do their presentation again and we can we can make that decision if we do not have that information we have a meeting on April 11th so um which is before the break and we can we can go that time so um I want you guys to be sure that you're feeling comfortable I know um I did say to Dr Aran earlier that they feel really bad we going to go present this UL after our budget hearing should put first but like um I did say that to him earlier so and I I do believe that there are definit options um for us in terms of working with Publishing Company um so maybe maybe we table it for at least two weeks you kind of go on your end and see what the options are we'll try to work on our end to see what is going to happen with us with capital I mean I don't even know how this trickles down to that how they do that I don't know but I just think we need more information I think we need more information about the budget I mean if you guys would have come to the last meeting this would have been a no-brainer right and then we would have been you know struggling right now saying how we're going to do this but but just I I think with what we just found out today we just have to pause and just take a break get inform just appreciate the opportunity speak and present and just you know again just the work that's going in and again my hope is this becomes an exercise and delayed gratification for all of us because the level of work and detail that's gone into it has been just a awesome and I just want to say again publicly just thanking everybody for you know everything that's going into it yeah we appreciate the please do not think for a second this is a no we disagree with you we don't like the whatever I love it I I I wish we could do it I wish I wish we had infinite money we don't this this just couldn't be a worst year and worst day of the year we definitely get the B the ultimate bad timing award I just I do want to say in in defense of this work in this program and having a new program it is critical I just want you to know how critical it is to have something that is up to date something that is that's meeting Jess's guidelines um right now I think it's it's a struggle to meet those guidelines so I do want you to know how critical it is yeah and I appreciate you saying that I I I totally hear what you're saying I just especially with the cuts yeah and that's the problem right this is we're cutting critical face right this is exactly the problem we're cutting teachers to implement a new curriculum have St reality not the program is to create a strong core so strong tier one and so without tier two support you're going to need a strong tier one makes sense yeah this is this is the dma that we're going to have now right we're picking and choosing absolutely terrible all right let's just take we can table it for two weeks let's just come back you guys don't to present we already know all the good stuff like we're we're good let's just see if we can gather some more information just take a breath from today and and come back and I'll I will do a deeper dive as well I'll Circle back to the vendor and kind of talk through what we've talk through and um see what the next does yeah just different scenarios be on there and to work with us maybe if you tell them what's going on maybe we say hey you know what we can extend it over five years or we can give you you know we can give it to you for because i' said you know just in the process I've been very open with them from the very beginning about what is and what isn't to the whole piece so I'll certainly take our information back and and and update them and um we'll see where that goes okay thank you so much thank you for your time have anything other um I just wanted to remind everyone that next wednsday the 20th is the at um it's a great opportunity um not just for students and families but for Community to come in and some of the great things that we're doing um at in Norton um and they'll have other um local commun as well I just have one thing as well just want to mention that the um it takes a community basketball game is going to be held on Friday May 3rd at the high school at 7 p.m. um for those that don't know this is a charity basketball game where teachers play against um police officers and we sprinkle in some um basketball players or with some high school kids and um all funds go to all profits made go to families um who have unfortunately suffered a loss of a a child or a parent in town um or uh have a pretty serious illness or um financial hardship um it's been a great event we've posted at the school for a lot of years I know they're looking for um and things will be coming out on social media into through the schools but they'll be looking for donations for concession items um there they sell Waters and drinks and snacks and stuff for the kids um there's going to be the balloon artist back again and um players of course needed and sponsors anyone looking to sponsor can be check itch Orton gmail.com I have so can I just say from my perspective and what I do like the counseling and support I has been there for so many of our um I don't even know what we would do so many of these difficult cases forch so I've never had this kind of sport and the almost 30 years that I've done this work um from a community organization around the kinds of cases that we deal with so um there's a lot of families out there that I don't know where they'd be without it so thank you just one other thing probably so this next meeting is Select what day um they would like to know if we are able to meet with them on Thursday March 21st time yeah if we can get that confirmed by so board is all set ready to go there just waiting to see if we able to can I make a suggestion to this I we always do a joint meeting we just do it with we is there a reason why you wouldn't want to come there I just I just feel there's too many everyone just G stairs each other well I mean they're not they're definitely not the meetings and Joint The Joint meeting itself the reason why we started doing with all three boards is because if two of us met it was we were hearing things but then the third wasn't so the reason why we started doing joint meting at the beginning was that everybody was on the same page of all situations that collation right so that's that's why we started doing that so I'm almost especially we're two Bon members were here tonight I'm almost nervous to not invite them because like Mak decisions as well right so yeah I think if you don't I think you end up having to have a second meeting to repeat that's just yeah it's just you know sharing information and just making sure every's on the same page and nobody's carrying something here say or whatever I think if it's especially if it's going to be about the budget I think at minimum if next Thursday is the day I mean I have something I'll just change it you guys all make it on Thursday czy sure um I believe so I just have to check on child okay so at least three of us okay that and I'm sure that's going to be it's going to start at 7 me another and this is of bus or not I think given what we found out today and hopefully in two weeks we'll have a little bit better understanding I think at some point need to kind of convene and look through look for options again absolutely I mean there were some you know boardline crippling decisions that we didn't want before may have to think about it and I think our team needs couple days or a week or two just to kind of sit down and and give you buy some options and you got you got with the numbers and say okay you know now now we have I think probably um you know 4% but now we have maybe maybe a more realistic idea of what we're going to be you know what is 1% what is 25% Z and a cut like what those look like and we can start figuring that out because I think again there's going to be ton of really hard decisions to make and we got to St for it now well I mean I don't think we necessarily need to throw throw away you know the blue no no that's starting we're starting from there I I mean I hate I hate to say this but what we were like this is what we would I think that's a PO conclusion yeah those are done like there's there's there's no coming back to that right so um and I'm sorry this probably should I show we talked about some of the budget discussion but and and so kind of cing back to like when you pink slips and we wanted it earlier L than later I think in the past you may say okay well June makes some sense because often times we can call that I think we we can fairly safely say that that first 15 to 20 are not getting called back in any scenario and probably probably a lot more but at least give them time to start looking and find something else somewhere because to Zach's point they don't now that is doubly damaging the town you know our education suffering and we're going to get with a financial break soy anything else when they did their thing valuation us I saw all I can see is Martini martini in