##VIDEO ID:kst_UXbF5aA## Beyond that is a school leader ,an educator here in BAPS and I always appreciate his thoughtful and insightful comments, his knowledge, his deep knowledge of the schools you've been in. So many of them visited, so many of them and it's just his deep love for the students in the staff.  I am extremely happy to welcome you back in the reappointment. You know, you have always been a steadfast advocate for our schools and our students and I'm really looking forward to the work ahead in the years. So congratulations.  So in terms of our showcase of schools and registration, we're gearing up for school registration time for the 25 26 school year we recently held our annual BAPS showcase of schools here at the Bowling building last Saturday on December 14th the showcase provided families and students the opportunity to visit all of your school options in one event where they could meet their school leaders, they could ask questions. They can meet staff who are on hand and really find out what makes each school unique. We had record more than four hundred and twenty families attend this year showcase and we had one in five of the schools represented along with many other additional community resource tables.  Families received a list of their home base schools and they were able to visit those school tables and get answers to specific questions.  As usual I was just really impressed with the effort that each school made to make families feel welcome while highlighting what's special about their particular learning community.  I want to acknowledge the work of warm welcome services particularly senior director Sonia Gomez, Ben Ray and her team, our school leaders, all of the volunteers who made the event a success talked to virus . You know our schools are currently holding information sessions until January where prospective families can tour the school facilities. They can see student work, they can meet school leaders and staff and they can get a chance to ask questions about various programs. So you know, schools try to offer a combination of virtual and in-person as a way to ensure that they meet the needs of all families.  Families and students can also go to W W dot Boston public schools dot slash great starts to learn more about each school and access the school choice list which has been updated with the most recent school quality framework Teres Priority Registration begins on Monday, January 6th for students entering K zero K one two and grade six seven and nine and four additional dates and times for those sessions important baps registration information and deadlines please visit WWOR Boston Public Schools for Forward Slash Enroll Last week the Massachusetts School Building Authority Board of Directors for what we call MSBA voted to move the district's application for the Ruth Patten Academy forward in the next step of the core program to support a major renovation of the school's facilities.  The invitation from MSBA into the eligibility period means that over the next year the district will work with Ruth Batson Academy leadership and the MSBA to lay the groundwork for large capital project supported by state funding delivering on a longstanding commitment to the passing community.  I want to share my gratitude to the Boston teachers and Families leader who've all ADIC advocated for this project for many years and I also know Jim Robinson, Vice Chair O'Neill have as well making visits to the school itself.  You can, you know, really continually pushed us to honor our commitment and I'm very, very happy for the spazzing community.  This morning I joined the Curlee Cate School in Jamaica Plain for the Unified Champion School Celebration and banner unveiling.  You might remember that earlier in the school year the Curlee eight and the Matterhorn Elementary School received national banner recognition from the Special Olympics North America for meeting national standards of excellence in the areas of inclusion, advocacy and respect in school year twenty three to twenty four both school communities were honored for creating a social climate where everyone feels included and respected. They represent two of nineteen schools named in Massachusetts and they are among 202 recognized nationwide for this status through unified soccer and basketball teams, unified arts programing and a unified student government.  The entire Curlee school community demonstrates the power of exclusivity by creating spaces where students of all abilities can come together, thrive and support one another and maybe most importantly have fun.  We were joined by City Councilor Ben Weber, city of Boston disability Commissioner Kristin McNeish Special Olympics Massachusetts Vice President Patty Dougherty and a special guest was a special Olympian athlete Moomin Montessori Lumin that the high one of the highlights of the day was was that we mean has won three gold medals. >> Moomin is also a graduate of cash and when she held up the three gold the charter, two gold medals and a silver medal, the kid's eyes really big because she was sharing that she's a runner and she said I'm like Flash and so she just she really the kids were just all enthralled with her. It was a very sweet moment but it also was just the power of what's possible.  And finally, I just want to give a special thanks to leader Katie Grassa, her whole team for putting on the event. There were lots just balloons music celebration. We had a third grader who actually performed in the organ and it was just wonderful to see the students coming together and really rallying around each other. So congratulate us both to the curlee into the Matterhorn.  PBS held its football all star game earlier this month at English High School where Team Randolph Abraham, who's the athletic director at Brighton High prevailed over Team Paul Brown, who's the head coach of Tech Boston Academy with a game final score of twelve to six and you might also remember that Coach Brown last fall was named the New England Patriots coach of the week. So congratulations to both teams and in particular to to Brighton High in prevailing schools and students around the district to celebrating the season with special events and performances a highlight of the third annual Boston Common Christmas tree lighting on December 5th was a beautiful, uplifting performance by members of the Boston Arts Academy Blended Roots Ensemble and on Friday December 13th last Friday the BAPS Central Office was treated as we are each year to festive performances by more than 600 talented students from sixteen dance and music ensembles.  >> I want to acknowledge the work of BP's executive director for the arts Tony Vitreous, who continues to shine a light on the incredible talent in the district and celebrate the creative spirit of all of our students truly fills our halls with just joy.  Last week the Shatila Elementary School in Dorchester hosted a successful drive for their incredible students in partnership with the We Love You Foundation shortly. Students receive coats, gloves ,hats and scarves as we prepare for the colder temperatures and will actually be sending a notice home to all parents so that when we come back from the break everybody remembers we're back into the winter season and so we want to make sure students have what they need, congratulate us to the Bradley Elementary School for being named a twenty twenty four national ESEA Distinguished School in the category of exceptional student achievement earlier this month by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education or Dessy. Each year DC nominated just two schools across the Commonwealth for this national recognition.  I'm so proud of the entire Bradley Elementary School team for well-deserved honor. School leader Claire Carney attributes the Bradley success to their commitment to implementing high PIAC High Impact Instructional Strategies a culture of staff collaboration aimed at enhancing student learning outcomes in a welcoming environment that values parental input and ensures clear consistent communication between schools and families.  I also want to share that myosin who's the associate head of school at Fenway High School has been named the twenty twenty five assistant principal of the year by the Massachusetts School Administrators Association. Miss Smith is twenty one years of experience in education in a variety of leadership roles and she served in her current role for the past three years.  She's committed to improving educational outcomes for all students by ensuring they receive rigorous daily instruction and by breaking down barriers for the most marginalized communities. Congratulate to Miss Smith as we end twenty twenty four I'd like to note the Miss Smith Sparrow the Bradley and the Curlee schools join in the matter. Hunt joined an impressive list of BBS educators and staff who are recognized this year for their outstanding contributions to district success.  That list also includes twenty twenty four school counselor of the year Swahili Santo's from curlicue eight school the entire team at the Madde Hunt who are the investors school on the move prize winner and the O'Donnel Elementary School community which was recognized by Governor Moore Healey in DC for successfully reducing chronic absenteeism.  These awards and recognitions are a reflection of the talent, commitment and dedication that make up our baps.  I want to thank our teachers, administrators and staff for their hard work every day and we really look forward to a banner year in 2025 before I close my report would like to pause to mark a very special occasion. Chir Robinson's tenth anniversary as a member of the Boston School Committee Chair Robinson was appointed to the school committee on November 19th, 2014, serving as chair for the past three years in expert and early education early childhood education chair Robinson brings decades of experience to this role as an educator and as a long time vice president of early childhood initiatives at the Boston Children's Museum. Tia Robinson was instrumental in helping to guide the district out of the covid-19 pandemic and through a period of enormous change in our city by providing steady leadership and always centering the needs of the district's students and that's what she does every day this body this district in the city or better because of your leadership chair.  Congratulations on making this milestone and we have I know that your vice chair O'Neal is going to say a few words and we have a little presentation drum roll yena that was a total surprise to your daughter.  So Madam Chair, on behalf of your fellow members, we want to congratulate you on the tenth year anniversary or as I like to say a good start.  What what the superintendent did not mention is you're also a graduate of the district, something you have never forgotten and you and I have always shared that being graduate the district as well and as as the superintendent said, you a longtime vice president of the Children's Museum, a very passionate advocate and then several years ago you retired and thought you're going to enjoy retirement and now you're working harder than you probably did when you at the Children's Museum and I know you work very hard at the Children's Museum because what a lot of the members of the public don't realize is what you see up here is just a small part of the role of being chair of the school committee in particular as well as being a member overall. But the chair is very frequently out visiting schools. She has sat and I believe every single BTA you negotiating session or most of them I should say and frequently updates the members on the progress there.  She has joined many other negotiating sessions as well.  She meets with community folks all the time. She meets with members one on one, usually weekly.  I join her in meetings with the chair and other folks on a very regular basis. So this is a very small part of what is an extraordinarily full time commitment for for our chair on behalf of all of us. And she works very hard to bring us together to hear viewpoints to make sure it is incorporated into policy recommendations and to always push the district forward and is an incredibly fierce advocate, most particularly for the students that we are serving every single day.  She brings that commitment to every single conversation and I know our fellow members and I one on one meetings with her and the superintendent can certainly attest to there are times when we're in small meetings and Chair Robinson pounds the table because she wants to make sure that our students are heard and represented and so having served the role myself, I often tell the chair that there is nobody happier in the city of Austin, that Jerry Robinson is the chair of the school committee than I am. And so you do an extraordinary job leading us and we thank you for your commitment and your passion to all of us, to the staff, to the district, to the parents, to the community advocates and most of all to the students that we serve.  Thank you, Jerry Robinson. Thank you.  Could you up? Oh yes. Yes.  We all go for it. >> Yeah. So OK, Stephen your dad just come down here.  Oh yeah. Oh I hear you come right here.  Yeah yeah right Mary I took everything for everyone come quick.  Yeah that's a little bit yeah yeah yeah.  All right Miles don't close your eyes OK great thank you Chris you have these great estamos ray you know a to make sure they're OK. Well thank you Superintendent. I will now open it up questions and discussion from the committee. Um I'd like to mine my colleagues about our agreed upon norm. We each have five minutes one two questions please make sure your questions are on topic related to the items in the superintendent's report, other items and other topics not related to the superintendent's report can be raised during business later in the meeting. I'd also like to remind staff to be brief and your responses and please speak at a slower pace to assist our interpreters question main questions. Maybe just a reminder for folks to when they will expect to hear things around like school choice and things like that. Coming up, a new semester,  right? So we have um we have all of this going on right now. Um, having just done the showcase the information's on our website and it really starts that January six when we come back, that's the priority one.  >> Thank you, Madam Chair. So just a couple of quick points, Superintendent. Thank you for sharing that the MSBA voted to move move the rules. That's an academy I believe. What step was it that they are right. >> So so the next step would be for them for us to put forward a design. >> Yeah. This was the feasible move to feasibility. Right. So my suggestion would be it would be helpful maybe we put it on our website and the facilities or something to kind of explain to people what the various steps are of the MSBA process and what the time frame is for each. We certainly know it very well by a number of buildings that have been built recently such as Josiah Quincy Arts Academy, Exito Dearborne that were all part of MSBA and it would be helpful for people's expectations. I know we're working on it as well for sure. I think Taylor was a step ahead now bats that's is empty so it's it's about a four or five step process and I think it'd be helpful to have people understand both what the process is and what the time frame expected timeframe is usually in each I'm thrilled and I know the chair is as well about both bats and we have been pushing for that commitment to be on it for a while.  So I'm glad it is second that it's holidays celebration the chair and I were at and it was really special.  It was so great to see our particularly well elementary and high school students variety of arts represented everything from music to interpretive dance.  A variety of cultures represented and cultural celebrate and it was great to see the interaction between the schools but in the chair and I was speaking to a number of the students and we complimented them on one jazz version of a song and they told us that they were in fact ten different genres represented it was gospel and it was this and it was that and they were teaching us and to see the power of the arts education now in our schools and the investment that this committee has pushed coming through. So we're now seeing it particularly in our early grades. So congratulations to Toni Beatrice and and the rest of the team that worked on it because it was very, very powerful and I just have to say, Superintendent, that and the chair knows this last Friday night I attended an incredible event and it was the faculty and staff of the Colorado school getting a chance to tour the new kind of school that is under construction for the first time I get to see where their classrooms are going to be and where their arts rooms and where the therapy rooms were and it was incredibly moving to be there.  There were a lot of tears happy tears.  One teacher in particular as we all climbed to the second floor excitedly told each of his colleagues every time they step to the door this is your first time stepping on the second floor of the car to school because the existing building didn't have one and one person who said I was going to retire . Now I can't because I want to teach our students in this new environment so I have here to share with my colleagues drawings they all received what the building is going to look like when it will be done the end of this year and it's just another example of new you know, we hear so much that we need to be doing buildings but between the DeBaun, Boston Arts Academy, Jaci Quincy Opera and now this one short tale of bats and we have a lot underway right now and particularly this is for our most vulnerable students and it's it was it was a very special evening and I thank Principal Carter excuse me Marc O'Connell of the Carter School of Michoacana for the work that he and his team are doing and this is going to be a game changer for our most vulnerable and most disabled students. So thank you, Madam Chair.  That actually reminds me I jI2y< @p÷i5t!97i%8'O;&@+@/@,@0L)L(@@ far as at least in the past year and even moving forward are going to be having school mergers. I mean this is something that we're anticipating but because you had mentioned the Charlotte Taylor that sort of brought up what are we doing to stay with this community to actually continue monitoring how these communities have merged and actually how they're thriving now or if they are thriving at all?  I think that would also be something for other school communities to look at to see what the process is and how we're continuing to stay with these families and with these communities after the merger has happened. >> Now it's a grade point, Dr. Hawkins. And I think that when we are doing our presentations in January we can also share you know, how we're partnering schools in school leaders as they go through the variety of whether it's a merger or a closure or great great reconfiguration.  But I think those that have gone through it first have so much to teach both us and the other communities. It's a great point.  I just want to say I was so pleased coming on Saturday morning for the showcase.  It was great. It was so much enthusiasm and it was really provided me with an opportunity to talk directly to a number of school leaders and I did talk to folks from two schools that are merging Sean Taylor and the summer school to hear about how they're going and I think they need to hear from us is one of the requests was that you know, there are still meetings that are going on. It would be great for members of the school committee to go out and show their support.  We know things are going to be difficult. They need some reassurances from us about that. You know, things will not be forgotten. The things that they're concerned about a real and that we want to hear them in real time and not have people waiting on those things and worrying about them. So in the new year we will be probably getting some invitations. I explain to people they need to invite us to think so many things are going on half the time we don't know every single thing but if there is something that's going on at school we would welcome getting those invitations. So hopefully in the new year we will be hearing more things.  Um, I will now entertain a motion to receive the superintendent's report.  Is there a motion some thank you. Is there a second second is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent hearing on the Supreme Attendance Report is our first action item this evening is the grants for approval totaling four million one hundred thirty eight thousand four hundred and twenty one dollars.  >> Now I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent for any final comments.  >> Wonderful. So tonight's grants Pell Grants package includes for grants totaling four point one three million.  The largest of these is a three year continuing project provide grant totaling more than two point to three million to improve access to mental health staff across the district project provide is a partnership between BAPS UMass Boston and Bew to increase the number of diverse highly qualified mental health staff that work in the BAPS while also improving the technical and supervisory skills of the current mental health workforce . We also seek your approval of the new more heavy trucks grant for nearly one point six million which will serve students district wide in school year twenty twenty five . This grant is a rebate for the purchase of nineteen electric school busses.  It will pay for additional busses and or the continuation the bus fleet. This grant will help GPS and the city further our fleet electrification goals tonight you are also asked to approve two additional grants and acceleration academies grant totaling two hundred forty thousand dollars which will serve a total of six students in school year twenty twenty five and a grant one hundred thousand supporting students social emotional learning and behavioral and mental health to help 5000 students.  I see that CFO Blum is squarely seated at the table so there's any questions we're happy to entertain questions now entertain a motion to approve the grant as presented. Is there a motion?  So thank you. Is there a second second is there any discussion?  Is there any discussion or objection to the motion?  >> No. Is there any objection to approving motion by unanimous consent hearing none of the grants are approved?  Our next action item are the United Steelworkers Local eight seven five one letters of agreement and fiscal year twenty five supplemental appropriation request. You'll recall that at our last meeting Executive Director of Transportation in Rosengard presented these items for the committee's consideration at this time I'd like to invite the superintendent to offer final comment.  Thank you Chair. So tonight we were asking the school committee to take action on three items regarding the bus drivers union in your role is the current school bus vendor for the Boston Public Schools, Transdev employees, school bus drivers who are members of the United Steelworkers Local eighty seven fifty one union under the contract between BAPS and Transdev, Transdev is reimbursed for all unionized personnel wages and fringe benefit costs as approved by the city and payroll taxes. As we explained at the last meeting on December 4th, Transdev and the School Bus Drivers Union recently reached an agreement on a successor collective bargaining agreement for a four year contract through NY twenty eight. This agreement was ratified on November 15th. We are asking the school committee to request an F. Why twenty five supplemental appropriation from the Boston City Council in the amount of six point six million to support the cost of the contract. In addition we are asking members to approve two side letters of agreement between BAPS the city of Boston and the School Bus Drivers Union United Steelworkers Local eighty seven fifty one. These letters continuations of letters that are currently in effect the school committee members have been updated on the recent agreement and its financial impact the side letters of agreement and the actions requested of the school committee.  This is outlined in a memo that was shared with you prior to our last meeting. The memo was also posted publicly on the school committee's website Woodthorpe Boston Public Schools Forward Slash School Committee PBS Executive Director Transportation Rosengard is here tonight to answer any questions you may have.  I'm going to ask one quick question, Mr. Rosengard, since we have you here we've seen steady improvement in transportation now this year we started slow as we have in prior years. You had cautioned us at the beginning that to anticipate that particularly because of the zoo may being implemented now it's fully implemented.  We actually had a student testify about it tonight. I think a potential future student intern in your department. I hope so. But I'm interested in in your assessment of how we're doing now and number one and to how you feel getting this contract resolved is going to continue to move forward for improvements for us. >> Yeah, I appreciate that question. So we have continued to make steady improvements in our on time performance since that really significant decline that we saw at the start of the school year for November the most recent month that we have full data for we had ninety two percent on time performance in the morning which was more than a full percentage point ahead of where we were for the same month last year afternoon we haven't seen as you the same gains but we have made steady improvement each month we were at eighty one percent for the morning and November and then also in November we had the driver rebid which went into effect where we saw, you know, a much smaller initial decline in OTP compared to what we've seen in past years. And I think a lot of that is driven by, you know, the GPS navigation tablets that make things easier for the drivers, particularly when they're doing something new for the first time.  So we we are seeing that steady improvement and I think the other thing that that really for me is, you know, meaningful is kind of this time last year it very much felt like we had hit a plateau and there wasn't much room for growth. You know, from this time of year through the end of the spring right now it feels like between the work that we're doing with the ridership, you know, with the data we're getting from ridership tracking through Zoome as well as just the continued weekly feedback loop on you know, on the normal routing side there's a lot of kind of untapped potential and room for continued improvement throughout the year in a way that we haven't had in the past.  So I think that that's where we're focusing our efforts right now and and this CBA helps in a number of ways.  One is just in providing that you stability over the next few years so that we have that that labor stability also the the increased wages which make sure that our drivers are continuing to get a competitive wage rate, you know, compared to other districts so that we can stay fully staffed and not just be able to hire drivers but really be able to retain them and provide them with you a good living and a good career so that and then I think that that work as directed piece that we we talked a little bit about last meeting that's introduced in this contract really provides us some some new opportunities that we haven't had in the past particularly to improve how we provide athletics, transportation and some of these other supplemental transportation which is huge that we're getting this and we have not had that before.  Correct. So exactly the feedback we've been receiving collectively over the past year about concerns on athletics and field trips, you're going to have the ability to address that more closely with this contract.  That's exactly right. Yeah, right. Thank you, sir. Thank you.  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you.  Other familias Cabildo transport transportation localist bueno Gurunath heard through different families that there had improvements in terms of transportation which is something very good. >> See the embargo your tangoing but say this however I do have a question for you will direct the transport Escalon Sonal familias but landlessness to the Yantis you have to take into consideration consideration that the direct users are the students themselves, the families, the students, whatever Sandra either Uncle Albert and Quester and they need your feedback on Escalus Familias.  It's our conversation thing come to transportation. >> So my question to you is had there been any service for the families to evaluate what their opinion is or regarding the performance of transportation itself, how do they feel? Has there been any service regarding this with the families directly regarding transportation?  No, thank you. Thank you for that question. No one Garcia.  It is it is something that we want to do that is actually something as well that the Council of Great City Schools recommended in their review which was September twenty twenty two. So you know, we are constantly talking with families through our transportation hotline. You know, families who come in talking with schools, going out to schools so so we're constantly interacting with families and trying to you know, understand in aggregate the trends that we're seeing in terms of their feedback. But we also want and intend to do you know, very specifically some sort of , you know, feedback survey, you know, for families on their experience and where we can continue to improve.  >> So that is in the roadmap whereas we I mean that is something I said I thought and the the approach on who however I do believe being a little bit proactive it would have been interesting if we did the service before the approval of the contract. No, I appreciate that feedback. I'm I'm sorry that we didn't do that. Oh, thank you.  >> Yeah I know you just mentioned the Council of Great City Schools um report and um I think I know I've spoken to Randy who unfortunately is not with us tonight but one of our concerns and one of the things that we would hope is that we would be able to get come back at this point in time and have a review of what are the actual recommendation we're taking because I understand how complicated all of this is and incrementally the steps and you are doing a yeoman's job of trying to make this work but I think it would be helpful to us particularly as we get ready to go into budget season to understand where are we making progress. You know, what's happening with the budget particularly as we're coming into a budget year that may have some more stressful things that we need to look at within it. But it would be helpful just to understand what are the actual recommendations that the council recommended and which of those things that were actually actively moving forward are absolutely yeah.  I will say that um this is this is a good point. Yeah. And uh Transportation Department Special Education I mean literally all the departments that we did reports on um we have a tracker like very extensive to show particularly in the high impact recommendations they had what we've been able to implement. So that's relatively easy for us to be able to provide them.  Thank you. Perfect. Thank you for your time.  >> All right. Thank you all. So we will now take three votes two on the letters of agreement and B and another on the supplemental appropriation is no for the discussion. I'll now entertain a motion to approve the UnitedSr.  Yes, Mr. Trent. Mr. O'Neill. Yes, Miss Robinson. Yes. The motion for thank you. I'll now entertain a motion to approve United Steelworkers Local eight seven five one letters of agreement be as presented. Is there a motion?  So thank you. Is there a second? Second thank you. Is there any discussion objecting to the motion is five X will you please call the roll Dr. Elkins? Yes. Mr. Hernandez. Mr. Miss Polanco Garcia yes. Mr. O'Neil.  Yes. Miss Robinson. Yes. And the motion is approved. Thank you.  I'll now entertain a motion to approve the fiscal year twenty five supplemental appropriation request in the amount of the six hundred thirty seven thousand four hundred eighty six dollars to support a collective bargaining agreement between Transdev and United Steelworkers Local eight seven five one is presented. Is there a motion?  Some more thank you. Is there a second section? Is there any discussion of objection the motion this provides for you? Please call the roll Dr. Atkins yes.  Misconnect Hernandez Muslimah Miss Poloncarz feel yes if the trend Mr. O'Neill yes.  Robinson yes. The motion is approved. Thank you.  Thank you. Thank you.  Thank you for a second presentation will be an exam schools admission so I think that's a good David Panic-stricken happy agenda. >> Right sorry about that tonight we have to presentations our first presentations evening is a finance update. Let's aim to keep the presentation within twenty minutes before I turn it over to Chief Financial Officer Mr. David I'll invite the superintendent to give opening remarks to thank you Chair. So tonight BP's chief financial officer David Bloom will present the district's annual fiscal update.  It includes an update on the FBI. Twenty four budget programs related to FBI. Twenty five investments in the first public review of the FBI. Twenty six budget and our financial projections for the coming fiscal year. The update will include where we have made key investments to advance our priorities including but not limited to the implementation of inclusive education district wide bilingual programs, hubs, schools expansion, equitable literacy and high quality instructional materials long term facilities plan family engagement and support and recruitment cultivation and diversity. The team will dove into some of our findings over the past year and share where we saw lower than expected costs. The presentation will include a summary of the district's pandemic relief fund over the last three fiscal years where we stand as we close out Essar and explain how we've used those funds to offset increasing costs is our enrollment continues to level off following a downward trend we will continue to focus on prioritizing stabilizing school budgets and investing in our highest needs students especially students with disabilities, multilingual learners and multilingual learners with disabilities. In early February we'll return to the school committee for the preliminary FBI twenty six budget presentation which will be followed by a series of school committee public hearings before the budget is voted on and sent to the City Council in addition to Chief Blum. Well it's only Chief Bill um I think Deputy Chief Financial Officer Peter Dawkins is available and other members of our leadership team are obviously here to support so without turn it over to you, David.  Thank you, Superintendent and Dr. Prior, your question from earlier I would just take a moment to shout out the family and Community Advancement Team and welcome services team. I am going through the school assignment process for the first time as a prospective one parent and I was not expecting the full range of emotions that would come with that, especially going to my first school preview and I have appreciated all the work that the team has put into making that easier for prospective parent like me such as having the Google for interest form which I had to fill a couple of times, have law schools on my list so I can get regular email updates and I'm getting communication from schools all the time. I've been very nervous about making all my different preview days so it's very exciting nerve wracking process. So shout out to the team doing all that work behind the scenes . I'm here today to present to you three year financial update. This is actually getting very close to a period of time where we transition from operating in three fiscal years at a time to a period of time where we are only operating in two which will be a great relief to some members of my team. This report will go through the school year twenty four three twenty four twenty four twenty five and a preview of twenty five twenty six.  But before I dove into the details just want to acknowledge that all of our work in finance is trying to ground ourselves in both the BPs opportunity achievement gap policy and our new inclusive education plan. One of the things I hope to see as I move through tonight's presentation is that you're going to see a lot of similar themes. When I was here with the team last year I talked about the major initiatives we're working on in the district and this is because our major initiatives are the same. We are still working to roll out these big important changes that are needed for the students of Boston.  So the highlights fiscal year twenty four was another year in our long tradition I think about thirty five years now of finishing the fiscal year on budget with less than the remaining salary of a paraprofessional as the target Vice Chair O'Neill I'm sure will make a comment about how I didn't quite hit my record from last year of nine hundred and sixty five dollars but I felt that we were within the margin of our current in the current fiscal year we are still feeling very confident that we're going to finish the year on track and close out our spending. Every single cent though I did just get an update from DC that suggests we might have a forty three problem but we're working on the accounting for that. We do want to give a couple of updates on our FY twenty five investments as well and finally a preview as a superintendent mentioned of what we've said to schools last week as they got their budgets for school year twenty six and in last week's with school leaders.  So this is sort of this year's update of a slide policy.  Thirty four years not thirty five bps since the year with a net surplus of twenty six thousand two hundred and ninety nine dollars.  These dollars do get returned to the general fund for use by the city. We every year worked to ensure that we end the year using all the tools in our toolbox that less than the salary of a paraprofessional and this year was different.  >> There were some slight differences in the sort of overage and and savings areas inside that for twenty four budget we did see higher than expected costs in temporary employees transportation and food services, transportation was mostly related to transportation out of the district and then we did identify operational savings from salary and health insurance by vacances and I'll talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation . And some savings in utilities costs that weren't quite as high as projected as we now move into FY twenty five, we are confident that we will continue to end this year on budget.  We are continuing to see some higher than expected cost in food services. We think this is mostly related to some slight delays in the construction that our central kitchen that will allow for more efficient and effective delivery of meals to families and so forth to students I should say so we are hopeful of these cost increases will get better over time.  We actually have some really great news of overspending. I think it's possibly the first time I've said that in that we are are part time employees. We are overspending. Our projections and this is mostly due to Dan and his team doing an amazing job hiring bus monitors. We did not anticipate being quite so full in those positions this year, which is a great problem to have and then finally part of a sort of citywide trend.  Our health insurance costs have come in a little bit higher than we anticipated as you'll see sort of in the attached memo that I shared with you, this is a pretty significant multi-million area of cost increase, something we are managing and we have resources at our disposal to cover it for one year. We're working closely with our partners in the city to ensure that we get this more accurate for twenty six and this isn't a problem again we are seeing some savings from a higher vacancy rate than historical. This is the same thing I've said to you now for basically three years. However, we are seeing some improvements in that vacancy rate heading back towards pre pandemic levels which is an exciting development and I mentioned just before that we're seeing some increases in health insurance. One of the ways we're paying is we're we are seeing some savings, if you will, from the end of Essar. We have purchase orders and contracts, things that we had planned to do with Essar that come in a little bit under budget for a variety of reasons . Maybe something couldn't be delivered on time, maybe a price estimate ended up coming in lower when you sweep that across two hundred and seventy million dollar grant that ends up being a couple of million dollars of sort of leftover money at the end right.  And we anticipated this come in. We talked a little bit about this with you last year how we were going to use this money to help offset costs for school year twenty five and that's now what we're doing. So with that in mind, we are very confident that we will finish off by twenty five budget.  I discussed a couple of times before our vacancy rates just as a note right because of the size of our district every one percent of change in our field rate for positions is about ten million dollars in salary savings in salary spending.  So as you can see our filled out before the pandemic was around getting to around 98 percent.  We had a real dip in the pandemic years through a combination of a lot of increased positions with Essar as well as just sort of some challenges in the hiring that I think we're pretty consistent nationwide going into twenty twenty five especially if you look at the actual FTE you'll see a really significant increase in field positions.  We still do have a higher than twenty nineteen vacancy rate. We were sort of down three point six percent in terms of field positions. However that is one quarter percent improvement from last year and so we are confident that that will continue to improve.  So if that's the nuts and bolts of where we are for our FY twenty five, I want to step back a little bit and talk about our goals for the FBI. Twenty five budget this is the exact slide we laid out with you last spring as we went through the budget approval process. We talked about these three major initiatives we were working on to help close opportunity gaps for our students, especially students with disabilities and multilingual learners.  And we said this was going to be a five year shift. So I'm here to give you an update on what we're doing this year and next year in our academics office. We've hired over fifteen million dollars worth of staff almost entirely teachers in this first year to work in schools and help support this team based approach to inclusive practices that we're working on as a district.  We've also hired inclusive education coaches had stipends for our inclusion planning teams to build their school based inclusion plans and really expanded our MT's work across the district.  We've also been planning for new bilingual multilingual programs.  I believe it was as of last week that all nine programs were officially approved by Dessy which is very exciting and you'll see then the financial impact of that in our twenty six proposal equitable literacy was also a key part of our FY twenty five budget with a focus on high quality instructional materials, support resources and direct support to students with reading interventions. Finally, I'll just mention the academic area that we're very excited that we now are up to 20 hub schools all with full time coordinators and one citywide coordinator who's helping to sort of manage the work across the district in our operations team we've heard a lot obviously about the work we're doing in our capital planning and operations opening new buildings. We we're talking about the Carter earlier is a very exciting development but also the Horace Mann is in their new space at the Edwards and really filling in that facility. You heard a little bit from transportational earlier about Zoome and from our students as well as well as the electric busses and sort of the work we're doing along that.  Finally I should mention the work of our family and community advancement team and the progress they've made on investments. I actually thought maybe we had had a typo when I first saw this. No, but there were twenty five thousand individual touch points with families.  This includes calls, emails, walk ins and support staff provide support in seven languages. It was really a pretty remarkable number when I saw it and over 7000 students participated in summer programing this past summer with over 80 attendance.  So what does all this mean as we come into F twenty six? Well I'm very excited to say that our major priorities haven't changed right. We're still focused on these same investments in multi English learners and students with disabilities and inclusive education.  So I want to talk a little bit about what is the same and what's a little bit different and that's why twenty five we stopped using weighted student funding to adjust school budgets as we went through if you last winter we made adjustments to budgets starting from the school's existing funding level increased or decreased based on the number of classrooms or capacity changes and then prioritized new investments in instructional resources for our five twenty six as we're trying to stabilize right and build on that work, our priorities remain very similar right.  We are continuing to make classroom and capacity adjustments using the same methodology we're expanding investments and inclusive practices and investing in bilingual education through the establishment of newcomer dual language programs and full adjustment for any ESL services that are required.  Superintendent mentioned enrollment stabilization.  This is one of the important things that we are looking at as we go through this process. So I believe this is the first time in my this is now my 10th budget cycle with BPs that we've been a place where we're able to talk about a multi-year stable enrollment. Technically we were up this year it's eighty eighty six kids but it is technically an increase. So I appreciate that and I think you know, I think the interesting thing about this the underlying data about Boston is still true.  We are still seeing fewer births to resident families in Boston and we are still seeing the impact of that in our enrollment patterns. However, that has been paired with a real and lasting increase in multilingual learners through our city services. We're providing immigrant and migrant youth and as we look across our district we do see that the needs of our students have changed right?  We are serving more multilingual youth, more students with disabilities than we have before and more importantly more multilingual learners with disabilities as well.  Refresh my my other slide magically appeared about part the slide is a little bit busy because the lines overlap but I'll walk you quickly through it.  What we want to do is break out three categories of students as we talk about the level of need we're seeing in the district in blue is students who are multilingual learners without disabilities so only multilingual learners they don't also have disabilities in orange is students with disabilities who are not multilingual learners and then Ingrey is the intersection of those two multilingual learners with disabilities overall when you look this you can see that historically we were somewhere in between seventy five hundred and eighty five hundred multilingual learners without disabilities as a district for the last two years we've over ten thousand right. This is a real and significant change for the district. You can also see that the proportion of our students with disabilities who are also multilingual learners has increased right. So while the total number of students disabilities is relatively similar to where we were at historically the number of multilingual learners disabilities has increased and we know for school year twenty five this was a major area of investment for the district . So I'm going to steal the superintendent line as we get to the headline of NY twenty six because I like it we've had two years of really historic budgets and baps two years ago we reached this landmark deal with the Boston Teachers Union that allowed us to revamp inclusive practices and do the roll out we're doing now in collaboration with our teachers that required a really historic budget investment from the city to make it happen in the year one. Then last year we were planning for the first year of the actual rollout of inclusion and we were coming off of Essar and we went back to the city and we said we want to make history again and have year two of a historic commitment from the city and the city came through for us again this year we're back to a more traditional funding level.  But the thing I clarify for principals and school leaders traditional doesn't mean bad, right? We're not this isn't a budget of cuts. This still allows us to fund major cost increases. So for example, the health insurance increase I talked about earlier, we have full funding for that in our budget increase that we've talked about with the city and we are also in addition to those maintenance costs being able to invest in really significant ways and key programs around inclusive education, bilingual programs, continuing to grow our work around MT's and academic support and continuing high school pathway expansion.  Finally, it would be important to mention that the long term facilities plan still has impacts on our FSI twenty six budget.  There are changes that the committee approved last year that are going into place in this year's budget and we are working very closely with each impacted school community to ensure that transition happens and the best way possible.  One of the ways we could have this traditional budget more traditional level and still invest in the significant way we're investing is by identifying efficiencies and the superintendent is very clear when we launched our process with department heads in September she was very clear schools had to do the hard work last year when we left Essar right and they had to make reductions to their Essar program and make really tough tradeoffs and we all heard about on this body right through the process it was very difficult this year while we're still making adjustments related to classroom changes opening and closing and there's still some things happening through long term facilities plan that were voted on last year. The real work of finding efficiencies we wanted to put on central office and central office budgets more broadly.  Right. So both those real central office expenses that you might see in the bowl and building my salary for one but also those central budgeted school services or school services budget essentially things that you really would see out in schools like custodians. Right. And all these sort of central run programs all our summer school is budgeted centrally.  We're really trying to identify efficiencies in those programs . The superintendent was very clear we don't want to reduce services but we want to take a really close look at what we did an example of this might be looking at an area of service in the district where we run four or five different programs, all of whom are seeing outcomes for kids but maybe one of whom is ten times more expensive.  There are real circumstances like that and while we think that program is providing value, we may have to make a trade off to say OK, that's centrally run program might phase out so we can invest in more cost effective options that are still providing outcomes for kids.  As I mentioned before, there are still going to be some areas of increase that fit on the quote unquote central office budget. But these are things are purely school services budgeted centrally. So the three main areas of increase are health insurance as a central office cost but not really central office, just the central budget utilities same and then out of district special education,  tuition and transportation costs. These are just the those are the normal sort of inflationary costs of the program growth program expense growth from year to year. The last thing I'll say is not on this list but there are some cost increases in our facilities department as well for the increased inflationary costs of maintenance contracts and those sorts of things. But all of those dollars are things that will be seen directly in schools excuse me.  Finally I wanted to close with talking a little bit about the timeline.  Our budget is a year round process and I think one of the things we are working to improve in collaboration with you is how we engage a school committee in that process a year round really showing how the school committee's feedback you give us in meetings in October , November and April and June even if they're not directly in the budget process are key to informing the budget. That's before tonight. So while this meeting technically is the launch of the budget season officially because schools got their budgets last week we had really you and I'm not just saying this because I'm the CFO the whole year is budget season in a way. Right. And we're taking your feedback on what we need to do in the budget as we go through the whole process.  And so I really appreciate sort of all of your feedback on that and I can say that your colleagues in the community and in schools are also giving that feedback year round.  And with that I'd like to open up for any questions from the committee. Thank you.  Thank you volunteer. >> Thank you for the presentation at my quality showcase in the page number nine.  I think that you in the Progress progress by Bazawule Embassy onis 10 no. Yes. Thank you. Um, we're gonna give you a call with your or the Coordinadora this stepmother Bojo the Multiplicity Baylis so I could read um my question comes from page number ten and I could read the 98 percent of schools have has coordinators who create structures for empty assess and monitor services is aligned to student needs assessment either Ellos whatever's in the attack on the water Quantcast I told Yantis and attendees or Capellan and each of them may hold up to the anticipation the progress of the cage the group in particular a group the local authorities.  >> So do you have any data that can show us what what has been the progress of this group of coordinators? Um, how many students that they have served?  >> I don't have that data with me now but I think we can certainly get you.  Yeah, I think I think Lizzie Miller can as well.  I think there's been several things with MT's one was establishing a system because it didn't exist before and then secondly it was creating the coordinator position as a way to ensure that it was institutionalized in the school and that the teams would be regularly meeting to talk about the tiered supports for students brought forward. So part of that progress is in the team formation. How often the teams are meeting and then the number of students that get put before the team during those meetings. But Leslie, I don't know if you want to add you know, that's exactly the role that they play. One other thing I would just add that's critically important is that they're responsible for the documentation of services that students need. So outside of students who receive IEPs so when we have general education students that might require additional services like potentially support from a reading interventionist or other tiered services that are in a school, the coordinator supports grade level teams or content teams with documenting in Panorama what those tiered supports are and interventions that a student needs. We reflect on those centrally to make sure that the school has the interventions and supports that are needed so we can look in Panorama and see OK we have this number of students that might require service reading interventionists and if it doesn't seem like there's enough capacity we can think district wide about how we mitigate that need and we provide the services that are needed for students.  >> Another example would be chronic absenteeism and so the NTSB team in Panorama is responsible for ensuring that in attendance plan is created for the student that is showing chronic absenteeism either you've already reached it or they're approaching it and that can include outreach the home, a home visit, a contract and attendance contract with the student. There's a variety of things so they're really supporting in those in that tiered way the academic, social, emotional needs of the students, the whole Coordinadora that Okello of Pylorus receive Locata condolences to the Necesito might be so within the responsibilities of these coordinators do the parents received a letter when one of these students need an IEP so parents are involved in the process of getting an IEP. So there's certainly documentation that goes home if either sometimes the family could request services but if there's believed to be a need then there is a process that of course families go through that I'm sure Christine Travis could speak could speak better to than I certainly can grasp that anything for came equitable powers. OK, noisy Bitola Carter Lake Como with a very clear no support recipient Carter the Immunizes CWO Extra little of me but only to committee to keep the Troll City only being yes and thank you Christine and yes my question arises because I have heard certain parents or parents that have come up to me and have told me I have not received a letter yet and I have seen that my child is not reading at the level that he's supposed to be reading and I have not received a letter so I want to know if this is within this team that needs to do this . So thank you for having me. The MTA has processes a process to support students and give them that extra support that they may need if a student is getting for example, reading intervention for six to eight weeks and are showing growth, typically the team should be notifying a parent that the student is receiving those reports right there general education supports but that they're receiving them and making progress if they're concerned based upon the data they collect through that process that the students are not making progress. They could refer that for a special education evaluation sometimes you also say we thought the problem was this sometimes we think when you think of reading and learning how to read you think it's decoding the words but sometimes it's comprehension.  So we might do six more weeks looking at comprehension then you know to address that if the MTA test team is concerned that this may be a result of a disability, it does get moved forward to the special education team which is the coast's at the school and then of course the parent would be notified if they're suspecting a disability and doing an evaluation. My recommendation would be any parent that has concerns about their child's reading or anything they should absolutely reach out to their school. That's the first place to go and they could, you know, let them know what your concerns are.  Talk to the people that are there to say you getting any additional supports? Is this something I should be concerned about as parents were often worried about things and teachers may not be as concerned as we are so I think that's the first step I would recommend. >> Um, I I also think it's an interesting question because I think part of why that 98 percent is so critical should be 100 but the 98 percent is critical is because without a strong NTSA structure in a coordinator ensuring it as a district we were skipping a really important step of documenting what we're trying and making sure the school has supports to try and we were unfortunately I think overall densifying students for special education in skipping a really important step now that MTA says is their we can put supports in place many of which work stabilize the student and then actually help the student to grow so that they don't get identified for special education service when that's not actually what they need. So I can't emphasize enough Sarge's work lezzies work this this whole structure of imtiyaz we've worked on now for two and a half years and it's a continuous creation of like progress we have to keep training ensuring schools have it, ensuring those meetings are happening. All that documentation gets put forward to the department romantic contact personal if so lastly, how many people are on this team? It's also another it's just one coordinator. So it's one coordinator her school and they work with various grade level teams or content teams at a school or case module person around this because that could be a lot for just one person in a big school at the Naval commute. Just a student is well done and see that he had to coordinate the incarcerator Trevor was Mujo to get the memo that it needs to continue and the conductor must that but I can do the right to coordinate.  >> Yes, because we have this coordinator that is in a big school with a lot of students that have special needs. I believe that we should start thinking about hiring help for these coordinators because this could be overwhelming. Sure.  So it certainly is a big job and one of the things that's really important is just the centralized support for those MT's coordinators so they get together with Sarah Jay who's the executive director of MT's every month and they talk about not only professional learning so that they can really put the role in place with fidelity but they do also talk about problems of practice case loads ,et cetera. So we're at least able to have a touch point with schools to know if there is a struggle that we need to address. Yeah, I think there's also there's other structures that support there's a student support team in every school and that will have on it a combination of counselors,  nurse administrator, educator, special educators could be the coach could end that team. Um is there to really move the student forward? What test does is make sure the structures are happening. The teams are meeting and that communication is really flowing but when it comes to the student level like for a special education student they have especially they have an IEP team, they have a coach in the building.  They have an ad for special education. So there's lots of layers of support for a special education student. So it's really we were missing some key structures that we had to make sure the teaming and schools and MTA says is one of those they're going to reach out if for instance they see a gap in service or they see a gap of need, they might reach out to Leslie around curriculum. They might reach out to Leslie around reading intervention for general education.  They might reach out to Cassiel and Christine if they see a lot of special education students bubbling up and they see a need but they are really working on a structure to bring people together to communicate student support team has like a really deep roll with the students and that's equally important. Thank you.  Thank you.  I just have one question and it's related actually to one of your appendix slides looking at what we know is the particularly the trend of new newly enrolled students in our district and you note that exclusively that those numbers are coming from multilingual learners in the district.  So this is actually and my presentation is slide twenty eight. Yes. So it's what's interesting about this particular slide to me is one wondering what particular percentage of the nine seventy eight and then seven hundred from previous years is due to multilingual learners and and do you have any just for thought on what that means for projections that might be going towards teacher pipeline as programs hiring things like that.  Yeah I mean you really hit the nail on the head with I think you know so you're sort of seeing we had about ten years ago we had the first sort of end of a big wave of this into the school year fifteen, sixteen.  And we really saw then those you know, sort of the new models were coming to just really drop off during the pandemic. And so when we started to see that increase again in school year twenty one twenty two as we're going forward I think the superintendent and Dr. Chan Joel and the team have done a lot of work to build up new multilingual learning programs . So we have these nine new programs are opening now but there's also the expansion of bother to buy the East who are serving a lot of the students who come in through the year. I think what we see is, you know, the distribution of the nine seventy eight or seven ten or the six ninety one on the slide it's not even it's not every school getting six or seven kids a lot.  The need is concentrated in certain schools and I think you'll see a lot of overlap between those schools and the schools getting new programs as we move into this. So one example I think that would be relevant is for a long time the English historically has been a school that gets a lot of new students when we see these influxes of students for a lot of really good reasons it's location, right? It's services it provides and so the English is now going to have a newcomer program that was formally approved in one of these new models from D.C. That's one of the programs is being built out for next year. And so I think, you know, we've really ramped up the district's capacity to do this work right . And I would add to that I think our newcomer programs have we have also increased those up and at the high school level where we've seen a lot of unaccompanied minors coming in.  We've also I think life is another great example where we had to open programing and ensure the social emotional support is in that programing. That's been a fast growing program.  It's all in response to us looking at the profile of the students coming in and what they need. And so that gets then reflected I think for our special education and ESL certified staff is really critical.  So much so that we're looking within a week right now to talk about, you know, early hiring of those positions knowing that we're always going to have a position for somebody that has those certifications and I think for our multilingual learners with disabilities that's where somebody that may have an ESL cert and is delivering ESL but also has a special education cert and has experience with special education can see what is language based development in what is special education.  And so it is we're really trying to hire in and create pipelines. >> This is where a of pipelines are also critical because that is our largest group of multilingual staff. So I think these are great questions and I think relative to the budget you would see in the 40s as you did the last two years are heavy heavy hiring is all students with disabilities . >> So basically special education and ESL do we expect this distribution to be lasting and throughout I mean on I think you know, this chart if you look at the where the drop off happened right at on this chart there was a moment in time that's very similar to a moment in time we're going through right now at a federal level. I think the thing we don't know is what the impact of that will be going forward and you know,  I can steal your line or I can let you say it, Superintendent, but we don't know whether Boston's going to become the safe haven and we might see an even bigger influx from students who are now sort of more all over the country or if we might see a drop off like this one. So for now these students we have these students are going to serve and so we're going to build the programing for them. And if we do see a drop off, we'll sort of think about how to manage that going forward.  But the great privilege we have in Boston is we can afford to build the programs even in that uncertainty to make sure the students are getting the services they need.  And so, you know, I'm very happy to be in a position that we're able to say even with the uncertainty we're building the programs for the students that we're a district that welcomes all and serves all. And so we very much hope that we continue to see the vibrancy of so many of our immigrant immigrant families and students . But you still always it. >> Thank you, Madam Chair.  Thank you, Chief Blum for this presentation. So I cannot let I let it go without repeating thirty fourth year consecutive year of a balanced budget there were not a lot of school districts in this state or in this country that can say that so congratulations to that and I can't help but think of our former chief financial officer and interim superintendent John McDonough who started that trend.  He did and clearly has it has been continued this past year under your stewardship as well though I can think of full skillfull school leaders that few school leaders that would be disappointed at 26000 what's left of I knew the feedback was coming by I I have to sit here and take it. It's fair. I have much more importantly it is important that it's a balanced budget and that's important to the taxpayers. This city for such a huge budget that in fact that is balance shows great fiscal stewardship and I thank you for that.  I remember when weighted student funding was put in and one of the key findings of it was we discovered a lot of inequities in our system of schools that quite frankly were underfunded and other schools that were overfunded. The old theory of the squeaky wheel gets the grease right or political favoritism, that type of thing. My big concern about moving away from weighted student funding is that inequities can reappear. Help me out with the philosophy of how we ensure inequities do not reappear intentional or unintentionally for sure as we move away from that formula what is we place in it to make sure there are checks and balances so that we are equitable in how we address the inequities in our system?  I think I really appreciate that question. It's been one of the biggest conversations inside finances as we think about and frankly with our steering committee that worked on this project and others has been how do we define equity and how do we ensure that we're meeting and sort of redefined equity from where it was the way the student funding world. But I think one of our biggest takeaways from weighted student funding and the thing that will not change and is not change and we will see it in your budget documents you get this year is the number one rule is transparency, right? We have to show everything about how we made what decisions are made, how they were made and every dollar that every school got where it came from. So that means any special deal that happens and anything that doesn't follow a specific rule preordained thing will be out there and will be listed right . And so I think, you know, there were examples of this during weighted student funding and we would have them on our sort of allocation tracker you would receive and we would discuss them now we think we are doing a pretty good job of avoiding them being the sort of special deals that are bad and instead being sort of special deals that actually are appropriate for a specific situation or circumstance where the rules or the math might not perfectly describe the situation. So in the example of a rules based special deal that we had implemented in the way the student funding era in our continuing is when you get a new ABA sub separate classroom we typically assign one new strand coordinator for every four classrooms.  Right. But what we said is essentially we're going to update that rule taking away from the student funding and instead say even if you're only starting one classroom we're going to give you a half time position and then even if you only have three, you'll get a full time position because what we found was when you had just a small fraction of a position it sort of didn't work. And so even though the rule would say if you have one you only get a quarter of a person's time, we sort of made this special deal. But I think the thing that makes these special deals that happen equitable is they're not actually the special part of them is that they're different from the existing formula but they actually are consistently applied to any school in the same circumstance. So we do a comprehensive review if we're going to make any deviation from policy right.  We're going to have a review of every school it might meet that need that level of service and then we'll adjust.  I think the other thing that's really driving our shift away from weighted student funding is this changing definition of equity and I think the thing that was driven into really well is dollar per pupil equity . Right? It was researched multiple times. We were in national studies.  All the evidence was it is equitable when you review pure dollar per pupil and yet we would all sit up together.  We would be out of the schools and we would hear the real challenges at schools would be going through and they would say I hear you that our dollar per pupil might be right but you know, come see what we're experiencing.  And one of the big sort of takeaways from that as we sort of try to dig in and figure out what was going wrong is the thing that weighted student funding really struggled with was twofold.  First was as class sizes decreased, dollar per pupil increases were limited just to teacher classroom ratio and then schools have less money for all of those around the classroom.  Things that they needed even three dollars per pupil was high right.  And so we had schools with much higher dollar per pupil that felt poor relative to some other schools that felt quote rich but had a much lower dollar per pupil.  The other thing was, you know, I was this sort of the example I use more in the community when we're talking about it is if you're a school with three hundred kids and your enrollment goes down five, your school is effectively exactly the same.  Nothing's actually really different about the way your school is going to operate with five fewer kids. But in a way student funding world that could be a fifty thousand dollar budget cut for your school and that might not seem like a lot relative to what I'm sure is a multi million dollar school budget. But the amount of wiggle room in the school budget is very limited and so that fifty thousand dollar cut was really big for schools and then maybe the next year would swing back and they would get the fifty thousand dollars back but then they'd already cut the thing and then they have to put it back and it was creating all of this uncertainty.  So I think a lot of the funding I'm sorry for the long answer is something I spent a lot of time thinking about over the last couple of years.  I think we are trying to keep some of the core principles of Western funding transparency ,school based decision making equity obviously but also learn the lessons of what worked and what didn't. And the other thing that I really appreciate about the direction we've gotten from the superintendent on and every year in budget season we have to sort of calibrate on this is we're not going to move very fast, right to implement a new system and do sort of one of the challenges with funding implementation was a bunch of schools got told you're overfunded now you're going to make a whole bunch of cuts and a bunch of schools got told you're underfunded. Here's a bunch of new money. The second group of schools were very happy but the first group of schools obviously not so much.  And I think one of the things you'll see in this year's budget process as we go through it is the change for this year is the schools it might be we believe we're potentially relatively underfunded. They're getting a sort of disproportionate share of the new money. It's not actually disproportion in it though it's appropriate as schools that have been historically we think we believe slightly overfunded for a variety of reasons are not getting as much new money but they're also not cut and we think that'll help us bring the system into balance into this new sort of reimagine school funding world. And I have gotten feedback from multiple people that we need a better name so there'll be a separate conversation about workshopping that. So let me carry that thought process just a little bit farther because from a general fund viewpoint yes, base baps budget you can say they're not they're not feeling cuts of that type of thing but layered over that is the funding that is going away. Yes. So when you talk to school leaders we have some school leaders who said hey, I knew that was going to be going away. >> I didn't use it to hire people. I used it for other things and quite frankly usually a more experienced school leaders and they're in great shape. But I anticipate we will have folks both school communities and and school school leaders and school communities who will feel when my budget is being cut because they're looking at the general fund budget they had plus extra funding and now the ESA funding is going away which has been telegraphed for several years but from a total amount available for school it's going to feel like it's less I think we did so in this year's budget.  Most schools do not have any extra funding in twenty five so they actually mostly did that work through last year's budget season. So actually we're pretty confident that the vast majority of our schools are seeing a net increase. I think there are some schools and we will inevitably sort of hear from them and work with them on issues who are seeing real reductions due to classroom changes and enrollment requirements.  And I think, you know, even if we're not doing a weighted student funding pure system anymore, we are still making adjustments for enrollment and those adjustments are always difficult. I don't want to take that away from the experience of a school community but I think what we're really trying to be laser focused on is ensuring continuity in the student experience and that all of those services that wrap around the student experience the library in the school counselor or the social worker. Right. The partnerships we're able to maintain those programs and build more of them in our high schools. >> Yeah, I mean I think that there is certainly very good argument that the extra dollars funded districts like ours at what they should be funded right.  I would be the first one to say that um I think what we did over the last two years to previous budgets was to very strategically work with school leaders and communities around what to take off of ESA and get on to the hard dollars and those were the historic budgets that David referenced and so what you really didn't hear in our case that you heard nationally or even in our state was big lay offs and you know, just schools decimated because we did it very strategically and because the city was able to give us funding to actually build in and insulate some of those very things.  So we're we're pretty much through the Assar piece and now moving forward the most important thing is that I think it's a couple of things. I think one is that there's a stability in the budget that folks can count on and so when we say sort of a traditional budget, it's much more in line with the types of budget increases that we would expect or be able to count on in future years. I think the second is the efficiency pieces in us constantly being as efficient as possible as a system and in schools to make sure that the resources that we're investing are translating to the outcome that students want.  And then I think to David's point it's constantly seeking from equity learns how to make sure that schools are getting the resources that they need an equitable fashion. So I mean that is the work I think of the finance the budget team you'll meet you know, David's building his team out and I know he wants to do some introductions but that is going to be the work of that group going forward. >> Right. Thanks.  And just Mr Bloom, since you said this was a multi-year budget right. Three years it's somewhat correct me if I'm wrong it had to be committed by September and spent by December or committed previously and spent by we can go there so OK thank you. Yes. So it's it's obligated is the federal government likes to use obligated or spent by September 30th of this year 2024 correct. Yes. Yes. So we have obligated all of the money we then have until two weeks from today more or less to spend almost all of that. There is something called late liquidation which we have been approved for the federal government allows you if as long as you've obligated the project to apply for basically eighteen month extension of the spending deadline for specific ASR programs for us these are mostly facilities projects. There's a couple of other things in there. We are trying to spend it all by this summer so we're well in advance of the deadline. But if you can look at your appendix there's about three point five million of approved extensions and those have all been fully approved already. So we are on track to spend every penny well except for maybe forty three cents depending upon what happens between me and Dessy of the two hundred and seventy six million dollars and separately will have a look back on was that's spend worthwhile and achieve the goals we wanted with it which was to help with the academic loss due to covid improved facilities. Yes we're working to our a pandemic et cetera. That's right. Thank you. Thank you Mr originally to ask uh a question with Mr O'Neill already pertaining around like how the removal did funding was going to affect like how schools funding and how we're going to ensure that it's equitable. Yes my other question would be how and determining the investments that that are made to like schools.  How are how are students in the community contributing to what investments should be made and what voice do they get within a with like looking at the statistics of schools and looking the populations like how do they get a direct voice within a I really appreciate that question. There's a few ways so last year we had a working group of parents students, community members come together to help us evaluate weighted student funding.  We want to reimagine school funding system could look like those recommendations are heavily influencing the way we're moving forward now.  I think we also have a number of sort of community feedback events that happened over the course of the process. The main way though that we're getting we get community feedback through our budget is through our schools like councilor governing board process so each of our schools should be working with their schools council or governing board which includes student voice at the high school level and they should be providing an update on the budget proposals the plan budget the schools that council has reviewed the entire budget actually takes a vote on the discretionary budget as a committee and I encourage if there are any schools like council's watching our governing boards they're encouraged to write a letter to attach to there's a form they have to fill out to say they were involved in the process and those letters provide feedback on how the process went and things feedback they have on the budget itself and also, you know, they can inform the work we're doing. We're not able to necessarily take all the feedback in one year but we can definitely sort take the lessons we learned through each budget season and apply them to the next. The last thing I would just say one of the things we lost during the pandemic that I would love to restart and this is sort of plug but we can figure about out later is we used to have some schools like some Barsac budget events where we would meet with these sack and we would talk about the budget, talk about different priorities and get feedback from black members and anyone else they invited. So I would love to sort of restart that process.  We can have conversations offline about how to get that started restarted again. Uh, is there like how often is like the schools like council like advertized like students or people in the community so that they can know about it because this is like the first time of year when I want to know if students get the opportunity to hear about and maybe get involved. >> I like yes I yeah so I think I think on the school side council and the governing boards a lot of times leaders will reach out to their student government so if this student government in place sometimes it's the president that serves on it or the vice president on it or sometimes they'll just ask for like a member elect that wants to.  But generally I think leaders will try to recruit from folks that are kids that are already doing an active within whatever structure they have. Um, I also think Pisek I think to CFO Bloom's point I think Pisek would be great to sit down and have some conversation. We had a wonderful town hall with youth um probably about three weeks ago that you were at actually and I think you know, we heard I think from students some things that are very consistent with what students will say about social emotional mental health supports facilities and food certainly. And then I think, you know, we heard a couple of other things but I think, you know, as many forms as we can to kind of get that input. But at the local school level it's just really important that student representation, whether it's coming through student government or whether it's through the school, said council rep that the schools are getting that feedback. School leaders are getting their feedback right.  Thank you. Uh, I would look forward to like any involvement with Peter . That's great. Great. Um, thank you very much for the update and all the work that you're doing as we move forward. One question I have for you is are we going to get that book? >> Yes. Let me give you an update on the much discussed budget book we are on track I think the our current timing update as we've been are looking at what other districts do with their budget books is I think our goal is going to be to get it to you in the run up to school vacation week in February so we won't have necessarily for the first hearing but I hope we have it well in advance of the three five hearing and the reason for that mostly is we're literally building the budgets with schools until January twenty seventh like the last possible moment we need to prep the documents for it's like goes right from those tables straight translations and out to all of you.  So we need a couple of weeks basically from the twenty seventh to put everything in and publish it. I may be being a little bit optimistic about how that publishing process works. It's not my area of expertize but I'm hopeful that in that sort of three week period in between when we're basically done crafting the budget and school vacation week we can get that book to you.  My other question is I think Stephen complicated for me to try to think about how I want to say it. I'm many conversations we've we here we keep hearing about as we are moving towards full inclusion how complicated that is at the school level we're looking we're looking at how our student bodies need needs have changed.  Yes. Over the years to the point that General Ed students are almost the minority of students that we yes.  We are asking teachers to do any number of things and we are hearing the push back around what they were referred to as inclusion done right et um how can we take a step back particularly as we are looking at moving away from weighted student formula to look at what we have learned thus far in the new inclusion work and are we budgeting what we need? Do we really have the resources both in terms of dollars but also in terms of skill set? Yeah, and needs of the children that we are seeing both linguistically as well as special needs and then how do we rectify that budget alone won't do it. No the sort of the bigger issue of achievement gap issues all of the issues we keep talking about that are coming to a full head as we are shifting. Yeah we structured the district I will say so we're I think three three months and two weeks into the actual rollout. I think it's so funny for me to think about that because I think we've been talking about it for two years. Right. But we're actually only three months in and I think some of the big things we've seen in terms of the finance part of the things I can speak to is we're really shifting what we look at when we determine student need away from this very like boxes and classrooms lends to really specific student groupings and instructional minutes and the needs of of kids. And I think this year for professional development just last week it was the quote unquote budget professional development. But was basically a 50 50 split between finance and then academics on the other side talking to school leaders about the way they can document their needs for their groupings and one of the things I said to the school leaders in that meeting was we think this works for for most schools in the new way we're doing this in we we're rolling out the investment and the guidance from those departments for most schools in most circumstances what that means of course, right is it's not going to work for everyone because it's impossible to roll one formula out that's going to work perfectly for everyone but the real advantage we have in the lessons learned is that we've been able to collaborate with the academics team and build out a really strong process I think for reviewing student need and identify the areas where things don't work. And I think the other thing I just want to acknowledge from my perspective on this from a finance lens is we do still have because we're three months in and we're only doing grades K zero OK one K to seven and nine this year if you're a teacher in a K to six and you teach in grades one through six which is a majority of teachers K to six, you haven't necessarily felt a huge amount of change in what your classroom experience looks like . And so I could see how it could be frustrating to feel like the budget my school's budget hasn't really done anything new for me yet and the thing I just say is it's coming right. It's a multi-year investment. We're really doing the work and I think, you know, are there some individual areas where we're struggling either with resources hiring or training in some of the schools are doing the rollout? I'm sure I'm sure we are. But actually by and large when we look at just those roll out grades in the schools we're doing implementation. We sort of we see things working mostly as designed and so we're just sort of hopeful that will continue to continue to grow. >> Yeah, I think the other other pieces I would add to that is I think that the team has the academics team has worked in the office specialized services enormously. They've worked to create for the first time sort of like a real guidance around what types of classes ratio's supports and then with that is sort of a toolset that school leaders can use.  One of the things that's most valuable like when you think of the schedule as a school leader, the schedule is generally about 80 to 85 percent of your budget because that's your people.  And so we spent a lot of time talking to leaders about how they can more effectively use grouping so that students can get an experience of inclusion or partial inclusion with the resources that they have. But doing it in a way that's not overwhelming. The other thing I will say is that with any adoption like unless you say innovation in any adoption the adoption curve is slow at the beginning and then it starts to go up and then it kind of levels we are definitely seeing that with inclusion right when we look at the number of students who through the IEP team are being recommended to be included. So I think we're we're trying to pace the field in a way that allows for a mindset change adult you know, capacity building and at the same time allow for things that we might not have expected that we need to either add resourcing or we need to address in a different way. So it's all it's all coming together.  I think PD for us is a big piece in the capacity building for our staff is you know, over the next several years up to me a big priority.  Thank you. Well, I would love to also just take a quick moment to thank the team who does ninety eight percent of the work that I get to set up here and talk to you about our budget director Suriel Iraq is now in second budget season and acting basically like I did in my fourth Chris Williams our assistant budget director is a long time member of the team is doing a lot of his legacy, history and experience to that . Then of course the team members Christina Mary Salom, Trey Tai and JEE are working tirelessly to do all the things. And then I want to introduce you to the person who's keeping everything running as well. This is new Deputy Chief Financial Officer Blaire Dawkins'. She's new to newly returned to finance but not at all new to the district or BPs and you'll be seeing a lot more from her if you've noticed any improvements in your grant of documentation's over the last few months she's been working really hard on that as one of many projects and so I just wanted to make sure that introduce you to where as we get started in the process and you'll be seeing a lot more of her.  Thank you. Thank you. Welcome.  It's a great team. Yes. Thank you. And we look forward to seeing more of you in the next couple of months. So thanks.  Thank you. OK so our second presentation will be an exam schools commission follows the recommendation by keeping data information and systems improvement.  Is Monica Hogan to come forward with the presentation while to get settled I'd like to invite the superintendent to offer our opening remarks. We want to aim to keep the presentation under twenty minutes and a reminder to our presenters to speak slowly to sister our interpreters and I'll now turn it over to the superintendent. Wonderful.  Thank you Chair. We would like to share some data related to the exam school admissions policy changes this evening and bring forward bring forward a policy recommendation for your consideration as we prepare for our fifth year of implementation of the revised process we want to balance responding to feedback while making data informed adjustments. Tonight we're proposing a slight update to the policy that will help us achieve that goal while staying true to the intent and spirit of the policy shortly you'll hear from Monica Hogan who is our chief of Data Information and Systems Improvement. Monica has been through almost every iteration with this but she's going to provide some recent data on exam school admissions and share the recommendations going forward. We're asking for your vote when the school committee resumes at the January meeting next month in January of twenty twenty for the school committee approved a change to the policy. It took effect during the admission cycle for the 2004 2005 school year. At the time the school committee voted to revise the number of additional points that students receive who attend a school where more than 40 percent of the students are economically disadvantaged. That number was changed from ten additional points across all tiers to a number of points determined by the here that the student lives in and that range from two to ten points.  That policy change was intended to address the fact that some students needed a composite score higher than 100 points to get into the exam school of their choice which obviously was impossible for students who did not receive additional points during the last application cycle there were eleven seventh grade applicants who had a perfect score and all of those students received an invitation to their first choice.  Tonight we're recommending an additional minor change to the admissions policy we're asking to consolidate from eight to Fortier's.  If approved it would mean that students in each tier would be considered for a higher percentage of invitations an increase from twelve and a half percent to twenty five percent per tier. This change simplifies the policy. It mitigates changes due to minor variability in the American community survey data and lessens the disparities in access between students and geographically similar areas.  We recognize that there are areas for additional analysis based on feedback we've heard from the community as well as from school committee members as we enter into the fifth year of implementation of the policy as the policy suggests, we're committed to reviewing all available data around areas of concern that have been raised and as you'll see in the presentation that Monica will show shortly we'll look at these areas more closely this spring, address the questions that come from them and then look holistically at the data set and return with future policy recommendations for implementation to impact the following school year at this point I'll turn it over to Chief Hogan. >> Thank you, Superintendent and good evening. School committee members.  Um, we're going to look at some data tonight and before we do that I wanted to just remind remind you of what the admissions policies have been for the past five years because they have been slightly different each of the last five years. >> So the school year twenty twenty one was the last school year that utilized the ESI and GPA and did a straight citywide ranking of highest performing students school year twenty one twenty two was the policy that was in one year interim policy that utilized a twenty percent citywide around um and an eighty percent round invitations were distributed by zip code. There was no test in at school year school year twenty two twenty three was the first year of the policy that was passed in twenty twenty one on the first year of implementation used socioeconomic tiers and additional points but only grades and then in school year twenty three twenty four we introduced a test again so this was a policy that used socioeconomic here's the additional points and then grades and a test score for students and then in twenty four twenty five the last school year of admissions that have been fully complete use the socioeconomic tiers as well as additional points.  But as the superintendent just mentioned this was where we had the the small policy change last year where the number of points you received was dependent on the tier you lived in.  So this slide looks at the number of applicants for seventh grade by socioeconomic tier since twenty two twenty three the total number of grades seven applicants has slightly ticked up and the proportion of BP's applicants has remained steady. We've seen modest growth in the number of applicants in tears two, three six but a larger decline in the number of applicants in Tier seven and eight where the invitation rate is lower.  The next slide looks at the invitation trends by student group.  So we are looking at students identified as economically disadvantaged students identified as multilingual learners and students with disabilities.  And so over the past four years we have seen an increase for each of these groups. But what you can see in the graph on the right is that the dotted lines represent the percentage of those groups overall for the district.  And so while we have seen an increase, the groups are not at the same level as they are. District wide the policy change has also resulted in a shift of geographic distribution of invitations for seventh grade.  The maps on these slides are a visual representation of the percentage of invitations received by ZIP code comparing school year twenty twenty one to school year twenty four twenty five and so we can see that the distribution of invitations and school year twenty four twenty five is more closely aligned to the distribution of school age children in Boston.  And finally this slide shows the invitation rate by socioeconomic tier or the percentage of applicants in each tier that received an invitation in the last two admissions cycles and those are the last two admission cycles of did use a test as a reminder. So you can see almost all students in tier one three four received an invitation while approximately half of students in Tier seven and eight received an invitation.  Before I go into the policy recommendation under consideration, we wanted to share some additional information on the impact of last year's policy change. As a reminder last year this body voted to change the number of additional points that students received based on the school attendance in the previous year based on the year they live.  That meant calculating the point differential by here between students receiving points and students not receiving points and using that number as the number of additional points students would receive rather than the original ten points in the policy.  This was intended to ensure that students with composite scores of one hundred prior to receiving additional points were still able to receive an invitation to their first first choice school if they did not receive additional points in what we saw in the twenty four twenty five application cycle was that there were eleven applicants with the perfect score of one hundred and all of these students received an invitation to their first choice school the policy recommendation before you tonight is to consolidate the number of tiers from eight to four under the current policy each tier receives an equal allocation of invitation's or twelve point five percent as there are eight tiers currently by consolidating the number of tiers from eight to four students will now be considered for twenty five percent of invitations rather than twelve point five percent.  This change simplifies the policy and also responds to some of the feedback we have been hearing frequently that families across the street from each other may live in different tiers even though they are in geographically similar areas. This change will lessen the number of places in the city where these disparities occur.  To understand the impact of this recommendation we conducted two simulation using the school year twenty three twenty four and school year twenty four twenty five applicant pools on the table on the right shows how the tiers were combined in the simulation from eight to four so tiers one and two became tier one tier three and four became tier two tiers five and six became tier three and tier seven and eight became here for and then this slide shows two visual representations of the tier map the map on the left using eight tiers and the map on the right using four tiers in the map on the right you can see that there are still areas where a tier one census track may order a Tier four census tract. However, with fewer tiers there is less differentiation between geographic areas and you can see the colors sort of smooth out more in the in the map on the right because there are tier options to consider.  So looking forward we are asking for the school committee to vote on this policy recommendation at a school meeting in January to go into effect for the current admission cycle and additionally we will undertake additional and deeper analysis this spring to better understand a multiyear impact of the twenty twenty one policy and consider potential future changes.  The last slide outlined some of the potential areas for additional analysis that we have heard come up through community feedback and comments from school committee members. We will be working over the spring to better understand the answers to these questions to inform future policy recommendation on these questions include some questions around the calculation and sizing of socioeconomic tiers whether or not the policy can consider individual socioeconomic status ,the impact on top performing students ensuring access for students with disabilities and multilingual learners and better understanding what the student experience is once they are enrolled in exam school.  And with that chair I will pass it back to you for questions just a couple and this is more data that I'm looking forward to seeing. So we talked about this a little bit. So next year is the first graduating cohort under the most recent exam school so this first students who were admitted under the twenty twenty one policy, the students who are admitted in twenty to twenty three using tiers and grades only those students are now in ninth grade those students. So that's been yeah.  Yeah it is. Oh no so I mean I think also this aligns with my my other question just around just wanting to see the invitation trend data broken out by race and ethnicity if possible I just would be very curious to see that shift and everything like that. I mean there's obviously some intersections with socioeconomic status but I'd like to see if we can provide them the Mysterio so thank you for this work.  I know what is this has been a quite a process as the chair always says. We spent a lot of time talking about exam school policy which take up you know, time talking about the rest of our students as well.  It's also a matter of importance to our families. I was struck by a couple of things in your presentation the first was the look at the change that we made last year where we substituted real data for what had been a hypothetical. So we had a hypothetical of ten points.  It was an assumption of what the difference was between Tier one and 91 schools and title one. Title one. Excuse me. Right. Thank you volunteers.  Right. So Title one Poverty deemed by the US government to be poverty level schools and so we adjusted we substituted real data for our hypothetical and because we were concerned about people applicants who had received a hundred and were overtaken by someone who would receive ten points and they weren't and were not getting admission. Mm.  And that was both in the data we had seen as well as inordinately that we had heard from a number of families. So this is interesting for me to see that this past year after we implemented that I think the number you had and there was eleven students received perfect score or better and all of them received invitations to their first choice. Yes.  So that's interesting.  I also note though that you put in here that there was a decline in applicants from Tier seven to eight to year seven and eight and it was a fair substantial six because they virtually no decline in the number of applicants in that tier. It had the percent in here it was sixty two quarters I think that was about 15 to 16 percent . I think that was the amount that were accepted or received invitation. Right. Right.  Right. But the percentage no. So where am I in percentage invited there it is on page three so the number of applicants and tier seven eight has declined by about 15 to 16 percent. Susp Bishan in my head is folks from previous years saying my children shouldn't apply because they're not going to get in because they need the hundred plus the ten points, that type of thing. So it will be interesting to understand that the change we made last actually did result in everyone who had at least a perfect score. Got it. And so it will be interesting to see if that data continues for previous years because one of the things you address on here is about our top performing students. Can the policy ensure that top performing students the city receive an invitation school their choice so be interested and see if that plays out.  I do appreciate the change from eight to four because there is such confusion among parents about what tier they are in. We hear consistently about trying to understand how the tiers are made up, what the factors are, what the census data is. You have an exhaust of Memmo in here from Miss Clarkson about how it is determined but it's pretty thick reading, right? And so simplifying to me makes a difference in this to me is simplifying Chicago a substantially bigger city than us who was wrestled with this same issue has fortius so for us to go to forty years to me makes sense.  It's responding to parents and it's simplifying how to understand what to in the last point I'll make is I think quite frankly the most important part of this presentation and and Dr. Elkin's asked for one way to see the simulation. I'd also like to see it what the results did you have in here in the appendix?  Did it change invite's and nine invites would be interesting to see.  Did it change that by tiers? I think you have the aggregate data there. Yep. But the last piece is this lot of potential areas for additional analysis because to me these four points you raise of the points we hear from people across the city that have raised this consist Antley our colleague Mr Khordad Hernandez has consistently raised about individual socioeconomic status versus by tier and so I appreciate that that's in here because I know that was important to him and he can be with us tonight but also this question of what are the impacts of size and T is based on a number of applicants in a tier versus the number of school age children. I know that's something the original task force wrestled with and recommended one way they had also wrestled with the issue of do we do a certain amount of applicants citywide and then the rest by tier that had been wrestled with by the task force is done commonly in other cities that look this.  So I think each of these four questions I appreciate, Superintendent, that these have been laid on the table for discussion. We're starting to get towards we said we'd look at every five years we don't want to be looking this at every single year we have clearly seen in the data we're getting a wider range of students from across our district. We're getting more applicants from students who are traditionally maybe not of thought applying to our exam schools and those are all positives. I think this proposal on the table simplifies also recognizes some outstanding questions that we need to analyze further and dig deeper on. And so thank you for the presentation and I look forward to a conversation about it, further conversation about it.  So I think also going forward this kind of three pieces for me when I think of a policy there's the policy itself which we was created . There is the implement Haitian guide for that policy which needed to be created for a policy that had not existed in this way. And then there is um what are the support of for the students who are part of that policy?  And so I think for us going forward as we now kind of go into year five, I do want to make sure that we're addressing kind of all three of those things. I think the existing schools have done a good job. Um, coming up with programing that they believe helps to support all students as they go to the exam schools. But I'd like to better clarify that and actually make sure that it's there and that means looking at how are the students doing that? Are there.  And I think Dr. Alphans, you poke at this a lot. Right, which is appropriate like how it's getting in is one thing but then what do we need to be doing to support success for students once they're in there? So I think going forward with our team I want to make sure that all three of those things are happening with this particular policy. But all policies as we implement them, whether it's inclusion or you know, whatever policies we're implementing, go ahead. No, by sharing your question makes me think of have we actually done any surveying within the tiers to figure out perhaps what's behind the decline because even as you mentioned the stat I was like the reason why I think my my head went to Slide six was because if you look at the actual numbers, the applicants Tier eight are the same. So it's really just tier seven that we're talking about. Right. So it's one tier that perhaps is receiving that particular message. Right. So I'd be interested to see if we have done any surveying or any have had any conversations with families as to why because it's particularly yeah. definitely like over sixty you know, a reduction 60 applicants . Right. So it's very interesting to sixty two to one to seventy two to to seventy saying the like. My question is more about the three hundred and fifty five kids that did not get an invitation and what did they choose to do. How many of them chose to enroll in other schools and also be interested in what percentage of those students were you know current student versus students coming in back into the district from other areas as well? >> Yes. So this past application cycle of the applicants who were not invited to any exam school um fifty four percent of them were enrolled in a BPS school in October . So about half of that was up, right? Yes. That was higher than the year before which was forty three percent until about one hundred and fifty kids that that's right. Were there and elsewhere and I think about them is one hundred and fifty high giving kids who BPs now does not have an opportunity to have this part of their do we know though of those hundred and fifty whether they were in the bps to start or whether they were taking the exam and sat outside of the box and then just remained outside of the baps?  Don't have that in front of me but I don't mean to ask you questions Mark.  Yeah, we'll follow up before when that because I think I think it really is it is the question of our students there in the past they don't get to see staying in the baps leaving the best students from not in the BAPS. They don't get an exam scores are they choosing to remain outside of the box or come into the BPS? So I if we can look at that that would be helpful. >> But I do remind us all that they may be quote unquote outside BPs but they are city Boston residents. Right right. Yeah yeah yeah.  And I think I mean something else that we're not discussing tonight but I think is equally as important as that and we've heard it in the past from parents that does not do a good job of advertising what all of its high schools have to offer us that I mean and some people who have not gotten into an exam school and have chosen the school have been pleasantly surprised at the academic rigor and the opportunities that other high schools offer.  So you know, we need to do a better job of making sure all of our schools are well represented as well as parents are getting the information early enough about what schools offer and how to access them because they often feel they get a lot of information about applying for exam schools which means we do our own selves a disservice is that's the only messages they're getting that there are not other quality opportunities that's right into our recommendation chair. I think we had a strong presence of the high schools at the showcase and a lot of parents for high school grades for sixth grade transitioning to seventh and then ninth grade.  The other is a lot of our high schools are doing open houses on their own to be able to sort of within their regions promote um so I think you know, this is something I know with communications and the new website this is something that will be particularly kind of um honing in on is how are we marketing is the wrong word presenting the best of our schools.  All right. Thank you for this continuous work that you've been doing and um, we look forward to taking action on this when we come back together and Joe, all righty. OK, so we will now we turn to public comment.  OK, well thank you all. Um that concludes our business for this evening is up before us. Is there any new business?  OK and then that concludes our business for the evening. Um, the school committee will hold virtual meetings on Zoome from January through March starting at five PM committees annual organization meeting will take place on Wednesday January six at five pm and our next regular meeting will take place on Wednesday January 15th at five p.m. Again those meetings will be held virtually the complete twenty twenty five meetings schedule will be posted on the company's web page after its formally approved at our organizational meeting with that I have a motion to the meeting so move on. Is there a second second or any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent? Gary none.  This meeting is adjourned. Thank you all and have a wonderful holiday and and then we're happy