good evening and welcome to the third and final fiscal year 25 budget hearing hosted by the Boston school committee and superintendent Mary Skipper we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance pledge allegiance the flag to the flag of the United the United States of America of America and to the Republic the Republic for which it stands one nation nation under God under God indivisible indivisible with liberty liberty and justice justice for because this is a remote meeting I'll ask Miss carix to please call the role thank you chair Dr alkins Mr Cadet Hernandez here miss Lima Barbosa here Mr meta Miss poano Garcia oh sorry Miss palano Garcia Mr Tran present Mr O'Neal present and Miss Robinson present thank you we have a quorum thank you tonight's session is being shared live on Zoom it will be posted on the school committee's web page and on YouTube the recording will be available in all of the BPS languages tonight's meeting documents are posted on the committee's web page bostonpublicschools.org school committee under the March 20th meeting link the meeting documents have been translated into all of the VPS major languages any translations that are not ready prior to the start of the meeting will be posted as soon as they are finalized the committee is pleased to offer live simultaneous interpretation in Spanish patient Creole cabano Cantonese Mandarin Vietnamese and American Sign Language the zoom interpretation feature has been activated Zoom participants should click the globe icon at the bottom of your screen to select your language preference I want to remind everyone to please speak at a slower Pace to assist our interpreters thank you to everyone who signed up for public comment sign up for public comment close today at 4 pm please make sure that you are signed into Zoom under the same name you use to sign up for public comment you can use the zoom tools to rename yourself so that committee staff will be able to recognize you when it comes time to call on you thank you for your cooperation since superintendent skipper first presented her preliminary fiscal year 25 budget proposal on February 7th the committee has held two public two budget hearings one taking a deep dive into school budgets and another hearing taking a closer look at the central budget at tonight's meeting interim Chief Financial Officer David Bloom will share the memo provided to members with the final proposed fiscal year 25 budget no discre question no discussion or questions will happen at this hearing we want to make sure we get to hear all of the public comment however we will have an opportunity for questions and comments as part of the regular school committee meeting later this evening before we get started I would like to acknowledge and thank councelor Brian warl chair of the Ways and Means Committee for his collaboration feedback during the budget process Council of world's contributions are undoubtedly Val valuable and we appreciate his different approach his leadership amongst his colleagues to ensure that to ensure their priorities are represented and a willingness to work together to support our students and families now I would like to invite the interim Chief Financial Officer David Bloom to present the memo with the final proposed fiscal year 25 budget thank you chair and members of the school committee uh it's my great honor to be here tonight to propose our $1.5 billion budget for your vote next week um this budget Builds on the budget that was originally proposed to you back in February taking into account feedback from the committee the public uh many of our school communities um as well as elected officials and others um we believe that this budget reflects you know how we can best meet the vision and strategy of the Boston public schools to meet the needs of all of our students in this upcoming school year I want to draw your attention to a couple of key changes reflected in what um is pres is presented tonight and then will be voted on next week the first is some additional uh some additions to school budgets every year the initial proposed budget has a number of reserves that we intend to partially liquidate throughout the process we've discussed these in our prev hearings um these reserves are typically held in the budget office budget and then transferred to the schools so the changes are outlined in detail in the memo um that has been shared with you tonight but a couple of changes I want to highlight first is transformation schools get special allocations when their state grant funding runs out these allocations require additional planning with our transformation and turnaround office and we're not included therefore in the original allocations we gave you the guu and the English got an additional about $150,000 each of planned investment uh since our initial budget proposal um there are a number of smaller uh specific instructional programming proposals based on conversations with individual schools and departments that are outlined um such as work with the sixth grade uh multiple disability strand expansion at the Quincy upper school and finally one of the things we're doing throughout the process is ensuring that all schools have at least a minimum foundation for Quality to ensure that they are getting at least all of the basics we want to ensure that all of our schools have one minor technical note I want to mention that you might notice is slightly different in tonight's tables in our um in the original documents we presented to you the current budget so not next year's proposal but the current budget for Grants didn't include a portion of our Esser spending for the current year due to a technical error that technical error has been revised in these updated budgets and only impacts the external funding of schools so it's not part of what you will be voting on next week finally there were a number of changes to central office but budgets as we went through what we call our budget collaborative process of reviewing Central budgets in more detail after we have finished with schools which are our priority most of these changes are small in nature such as moving money between Supply and contract accounts but one noteworthy change is an increase to the budget of the alternative education department uh reflected to maintain some centrally funded school-based positions for their middle school alternative education expansion the work we've done in this revised proposal continues to build on the work in our inclusive education plan the systemic Improvement plan and all the Council of great state schools reports that we have received over the last year as well as our omme strategic plan we know that our central office must be in support of our schools so that our schools can be in support of students and families I'm excited to take the rest of this this hearing to listen to feedback from members of the public and then to come back to you later this evening for further discussion about our budget that chair I'll hand it back to you thank you thank you Mr Bloom for the update and because again this is a budget hearing I want to pause here for public comment we'll now move on to public comment Miss parix thank you chair this budget hearing is an opportunity for parents caregivers students and other other concerned parties to make brief presentations to the school committee on the superintendent's fiscal year 25 budget proposal questions on specific School matters are not answered at this time but are referred to the superintendent for a later response questions on specific policy matters are not answered at this time but may be the subject of a later discussion by the committee we have 32 speakers this evening each person will have two minutes to speak and I will REM you when you have 30 seconds remaining if your remarks are longer than 2 minutes please email your comments for distribution to the committee the time that an interpreter uses for English interpretation will not be deducted from the speaker alloted time speakers may not reassign their times to others please direct your comments to the chair and refrain from addressing individual school committee members or District staff please state your name affiliation and what neighborhood you are from before you begin we will be with we will begin with councelor Brian borell Robert Jenkins antoneta Brownell Alison Dy and Sarah Fuller please raise your hands so we can find you faster thank you counselor warell HL please accept the prompt okay so we will go to our next Robert Jenkins is Robert Jenkins here please unmute yourself good afternoon good afternoon good afternoon school committee chair good afternoon school committee members good afternoon superintendent Mr Jenkins could you please turn on your camera thank you do you see he me now yes yes hello everyone uh I would like to thank uh superintendent skipper for uh last night having uh Capital uh planning department at Madison Park a alumni reconnection meeting at my our Alma ma uh we had about 70 alumni members who uh reconnected on uh the Madison Park renovation project and you you know we look forward into having more meetings as they laid out a plan they want us involved which was a very good uh you know it was a very good turnout it was very good meeting uh I've looked at some of the budget and I want to make sure that the budget reflects uh improving our a or helping to improve our Athletic program student Athletics very uh healthy for health and wellness and uh with a lot of transition for our uh student athletes I hope that uh the budget reflects that one thing I would like to make a quick suggestion on if it hasn't been given regarding the John de o'briant at Madison Park and the west roxber campus want to make a suggestion real quick I know my time's running out is that has there been well I know you can't answer the question but moving Boston Latin Academy out to West roxburry and possibly mov in o'b back to their four former home until a space is you know made available for them so that we can uh you know celebrate in 2025 Madison Park turned 50 years go and we know we know that there's a swing space issue and we're willing to work with the district but we want to make sure that also as well with other schools primarily that we know that the white Stadium renovation project which I am IGA member on is on hold but making sure that we have enough the budget reflects of having enough adequate spaces for our student athletes because we know that is a you know uh a Hot Topic and there aren't a lot of spaces around I know this firsthand by being a sports official in a number of sports especially for high school and Par Warner another thing seconds left excuse me you have 30 seconds left hey real quick I want to end this one on that when we look for the longterm uh the long um facilities plan we have to include our younger students starting off at third grade Because by the time if you get ideas from them by the time some of these projects are in are near completion thank you Mr Jenkins thank you very much thank you next speaker is anona brell Anton brell hi Hi how are you thank you thanks for letting me share tonight um so I just wanted to um just humor me oh so first of all my name is antonetta brell I am a parent and an educator I live in East Boston um I don't teach in the same place I live but I'm a Boston Public School educator um so I just want to kind of come here um kind of to speak on behalf of some early Educators um and we're talking more the littles like k0 K1 so I just wanted you guys to humor me for a minute I'm just going to ask some questions to help you envision the life of an educator in early childhood um you don't have to answer these questions but I'm like raise your hand if you ever taught Early Childhood um if you have how long have you spent in one of these classrooms would you say that someone who spends maybe an hour observing has enough information to make a clear diagnosis or would you refer to the educator that spends about six hours a day with the children five days a week which one in your opinion would weigh more remember these are highly qualified teachers who have their master's degree and even their phds to the life of an early educator is very physically demanding um on average I make I probably do about 10,000 steps a day so I just kind of you know and that's before noon um and then I want you envision doing this job without the proper supplies now I know oh gosh 30 seconds wow okay um okay definitely not enough time um but I guess I just W to do a call to action that The Littles in um Boston Public Schools need more um I presented a study to the district to prove my theory about this I did it through the btu and um the only person that showed up was my son's principal basically States if we give these kids all that they need um than you they don't need much more in the older Years thank you very much thank we will we will um we will go with um Council warell thank you um first I want to start by thanking everyone that's here to testify um but I also want to thank uh chair Robinson and the entire school committee for all your work on this fy2 budget I also want to thank um Boston Public Schools especially superintendent Skipper um and the whole budget team for working with the Council on the budget this year uh last week I chaired the city council's Ways and Means Committee working session session on this year's budget I was joined by every one of my fellow 12 counselors along with superintendent Skipper interm CFO David Bloom and the budget team we discussed topics including the ESS CLI school safety enrollment issues Transportation enrollment and inclusive classroom process as a council after review after reviewing this year's budget we advocated for more reading Specialists a greater understanding of the city's long-term elll plan apply pilot program to track bus ridership making investments in initiatives that improve outcomes for Black and Latino boys and an increase in sports funding um also an expansion of Health and Wellness days across the district and an increase in professional Pathways in all of our upper schools in a pilot program for after school tutoring and there was a long list of even more proposed Investments I hope um room for these ideas especially the increased funding for sports professional Pathways health Wellness days and initiative supporting black and Latino boys can be found in this FY 25 budget as we look forward to the final vote next week we entered into this budget season in the spirit of collaboration with BPS as part of an effort to Advocate early in the budget process for the issues that are important to our constituents this was not a a desire to usurp the school committee's power but rather an attempt to make sure all the branches of city government are working together to ensure our students on this on the path to success as Ways and Means chair I hope this process has set a precedence for future collaboration on the budget and might allow the council a voice even earlier in the process in the years ahead we all have what's best for our students in our hearts and our city works best when we work together thank you thank you thank you very much M councelor thank you very much next speaker is Alison doerty followed by Sarah Fuller hello can you hear me yes we can hear you hello oh oops okay sorry I literally just pulled into my driveway because I was at my IP meeting late and uh my son is knocking on the window hold on okay good evening everybody my name is Alison Dar I am a special education teacher at Fenway High School and a high Park resident I am Al a member of my inclusion planning team I am speaking to you tonight from a different perspective of inclusivity or lack thereof in the boson Public Schools I teach students with a diagnosis diagnosis of autism currently my students are in their transition phase meaning they have completed their four years of academic work and they are now focused on their vocational and secondary school training opportunities two years ago Governor Baker signed into law all state colleges and universities must open their campuses to students with disabilities regard regardless if they graduated from high school or not the Massachusetts inclusive concurrent enrollment initiative Macy offers grants to college school Partnerships to support public high school school students and with intellectual disabilities ages 18 to 22 to to increase their academic and Career Success by being included in a college or university community of Learners BPS has rolled out early college dual enrollment and year 13 to help support our students in gaining College experiences college credits and success towards their college degree however with students with disabilities are only offered they're only offered two seats for the entire District I was told if my student wants to access this opportunity Fenway High School must pay $1,200 for one semester there are hundreds of districts in Massachusetts who are sending students to Macy programs and is up to the leadership of BBS as to how many students they can send from the district currently in Boston public schools there are many students who are eligible however they are only able to Ser send two students because of lack of funding I've been working with state representative consalvo's office to get to the bottom of this glaring Injustice we need to advocate for combining our state's Early College initiative and our state's Macy program to offer equity for our students with disabilities let's make access to college inclusive thank you very much thank you very much next speaker is Sarah fer Sarah fer please raise your hand if Sarah Fuller is not here we will go with the next five Amelia MIT Burke Jessica dequilla cunda Banks Naomi bones and Joan medic Amilia mberg hi everyone my name is Amelia mitterberg um I teach K1 at the OD Donal School in East Boston uh at my school I'm the 1 K1 teacher there are two other K2 teachers and this fall our inclusion planning team worked hard over many months to make a thoughtful plan to roll out inclusion so next year we will have a full-time learning specialist that is also assigned to these three Early Childhood classrooms in our first year of inclusion um yeah this winter uh all three of our early childhood teachers were flagged for lure issu issues because uh by the district because we do not have dual licensure with moderate disabilities um our administrators at this time multiple steps through the planning process throughout the winter um thoughtfully return to our IP and clarified we have this learning specialist That's confirmed to cons support our early childhood classrooms um but then still on March 1st the day that jobs are posted in BPS our team was flagged again however this time it was only our one provisional Early Childhood educator so myself and another K2 teacher on the team have been in BPS for years we're permanent teachers uh but this teacher is in her first year so she's still provisional and therefore the district seems to have used this opportunity to now recode that teacher position to be a dual lure role requiring moderate disabilities and the gened um early childhood license also Complicated by the fact that our school has 70% El's and so we already are moving towards dual licensure with ESL so our question is what's going to happen then in year two of inclusion let alone year 10 and I'm here today because I actually was feeling hopeful about the plan for the district the first time when inclusion happened but we are already reverting away from creating strong teaching teams to support all of our Learners in the same space and reverting back to just checking a box by thank you very much Miss Mr bar your time is up next speaker is is um Jessica dequa Jessica dequa otherwise we will go to kaunda bank i f the banks please turn on your camera thank you uh can you hear me thank you we can hear okay my name is Gunda Banks I am a third grade teacher at the curly K througha in Jamaica plane I'm also the co-leader of the inclusion and right committee um previously I was an ABA specialist at the curly the curly K througha consist of approximately 935 students and 200 staff members we have two subpar strands we have an ABA Strand and an S strand we began our inclusion Journey over 10 years ago with the 1.5 teacher model after years of trying to do what's right for our students we came to the unequivocal understanding that this model did not work for our students we needed two teacher teams so when the district announced that the schools would convene IP teams and propose and we could propose budget plans to to support students needs we were elated by this during the 2022 23 uh school year our school was one of the first to submit inclusion plans we met weekly for months to put this plan together and we were told by the district that our plan reflected the needs of the students but was a little too ambitious for we had created a plan for inclusion for our entire school so we revised our plan with a roll out across two years for the first year we got close to what our proposal requested and we were given the Assurance by the district that we would be supported for the second roll roll out of our plan but that's not what happened this year we resubmitted our plan for our other grade levels and this time instead of getting the staff allocation that we asked for we were granted 1.7 additional positions 30 seconds 1.7 this is a tiny fraction of what is needed to successfully meet the needs of our students in the remaining grades our Educators feel like we were duped like we were let out into the deepest part of the ocean in a robo with one ore and now we're being told you're not getting the other ore if the district truly wants to meet the needs of diverse students of all um diverse meet the needs of all diverse students it's essential that you listen to the experiences of your school staff and provide us with sufficient sufficient teachers prayer professionals very much m thanks yes thank you our next speaker is Joan medic followed by Aon divine medic please unmute and turn on your camera thank you good evening it's sry go ahead okay good evening my name is Joanne medic I have been an early childhood teacher in Boston for the past 19 years for the last 10 years I've been at Ellison Parks working as a k0 and K2 SEI inclusion teacher I love my students and I love my families this year though I have struggled more than ever before to meet the vared needs of my students I am a strong and experienced teacher I hold triple lure in special education ESL and early childhood despite these facts it's becoming increasingly challenging to provide strong tier one instruction while at the same time working to meet the needs of my students with autism and other significant disabilities as the district moves toward its full inclusion the number of students requiring ABA Services has increased in the inclusion setting our school does not have an ABA program so the district contracts with outside agencies to provide the services each year rather than giving us ABA Specialists from the district this year our vendor is Treetop Treetop has been short staffed all year and has failed to provide the services required by our students IEPs this is not a new problem but it is significantly worse this year failure to provide services violates seconds violates students rights and betrays our fam's trusts we need District ABA and bcba Specialists who care about our students and are invested in their success if we want the dream of full inclusion to succeed we need to adequately and strategically staff our schools it is impossible for one educator to do it all we need a sufficient number of teachers ABA occupational thank you very much your time is up thank you next speaker next speaker is not here Erin Divine so we will go with ma Trout the next ones are m Stout K Karen Wilkerson Megan Brownsville and Ruby Reyes ma Stout yes thank you my name is May Stout and I'm a K2 inclusion teacher at Bates Elementary my concerns are based in our District's new inclusive education model particularly in regards to the proposed increase in kindergarten class size from 20 to 22 students over the past seven years our school has worked tirelessly to v a successful inclusion model that caters to the diverse needs of all of our students our efforts have been recognized by both our community and the district for their positive impacts on student learning and wellbeing it's disheartening to see that the review of our recent inclusion plan failed to acknowledge the unique needs and strengths of our school Community the district's one size fits-all approach to inclusion including class size overlooks the intricacies of our inclusive model and the resources essential for its sustainability moreover the inclusion planning process itself was inefficient with a hasty review that wasted valuable time and resources without yielding meaningful outcomes for schools like ours the required inclusion planning process took 13 people 10 hours and we received just three sentences in response which which essentially said you are a model for inclusion in the district therefore you get no additional resources despite the district's affirmation of our current performance and recommendation against altering our model they are in fact proceeding with changes which pose significant risks to the well-being of our students the decision to increase class size without providing additional resources will have immediate and profound repercussions particularly for students with special needs and multi- langual Learners with a larger class size the individualized attention and support each child res receives will diminish putting the success of our inclusive learning environment at risk I implore you to priori ize the well-being and academic success of our students by maintaining the current class size ensuring that every child continues to receive the support and resources they deserve thank you thank you next speaker is Karen Wilkerson hi my name is Karine Wilkinson and I'm a science instruction coach the bees initiative which stands for building excellent educators of science was created in partnership with GE over four years ago with the intention to transform science instruction across the district by building educator capacity providing our teachers with standards aligned curriculum boosting content knowledge and pedagogy required to bring rigorous joyful learning however when ge's funding ended so did the district support of this work which impacts 56 schools across nine regions and over 20,000 students in BPS on February 16th all 15 science coaches were excessed leaving no science coaches for next year from a science department survey sent to teachers in 2023 science teachers are requesting our services 38% requesting science instructional coaching 69% requesting professional learning around curricular materials this is the work we're currently providing and our work is not done Boston is in its third year of the Middle School roll out of opsed science curriculum while simultaneously rolling out the high school opsed curriculum and field testing the elementary science curriculum these coaches are essential to this work we provide direct coaching we provide professional learning and we're currently conducting interviews for the science department to assess where we are in implementation and to plan professional learning for next year when it comes to mcast 10 out of 15 B School exceeded the district in science scores we are asking to continue this work to improve science outcomes for BPS students as in line with mayor Woo's vision of increasing um residences in life sciences Boston Public Schools deserves an equitable path in these careers and BPS needs seasoned science educated professionals to help create this path we ask that the school committee allocate funds for science coaching positions for all regions thank very much thank you next speaker is Megan rville hi my name is Megan rville and I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight I'm a parent of a K2 student at the her rapael Hernandez school and I live in Dorchester I'm a former co-chair of the family council at the Hernandez and an alumni of both the Hernandez MVPs and I'm really motivated to come speak tonight because the Hernandez has sought from the district budget to fund three learning specialists at the school and the district has only provided 1.5 as a parent of a K2 student I have seen the importance of learning specialist for my child's learning in this dual language context the Hernandez because of the level of the demand had 25 students in my child's K1 class with one teacher and one parent professional some of the highest teacher student ratios in The District in this context it is extremely difficult for the teacher and the parent to meet the variety of dual Lang and inclusive learning needs in the classroom alone my child greatly benefits from his learning specialist because the learning specialist joins the class to help provide all children a healthy learning environment sometimes what that means is sitting in circle time next to a child that's having hard time staying still or playing a game an academic game with a student that needs a one-on-one moment of Engagement during a center that's built for Independent Learning for five children to help enable the teaching environment with such High student ratios these adjustments transform an environment that can hinder All Children's Learning environment making it a stressful space and turning them into a joyful space or calm space that benefit All Children's Learning um we also know that having sufficient learning specialist um that were funded through Esser funding has been working the principal at the Hernandez has um spent a lot of time to find or to show statistics that these learning Specialists have helped improve learning outcome for all students and growth on Ma tests for students with disabilities the high population of English Learners and growing population of students with IEPs is an intersection that represents some of the highest overall needs in the district and I'm asking you to please fully fund the Hernandez's 3 FTE learning Specialists thank you thank you very much next next speaker is Ruby Rees good afternoon my name is Ruby Rees and I'm the executive director of the Boston education Justice Alliance and Dorchester resident this year's budget process has been unsettling due to the combination of loss of Esser the inclusion rollout that unfunded proposals without explanation and a murky shift from weighted student funding to something else that hasn't been explained the reimagined school funding model acknowledged that weighted student funding is inequitable however basing the school's Budget on their weighted student funding for from the year prior is starting from a place of inequity and expecting different results what is most evident is that there is no vision or push for infrastructure or Equity schools that use Esser funds for staff positions are going to feel the biggest Cuts however these schools desperately needed these resources for years even before Esser due to historical disinvestment and inequitable approaches to school funding those schools will desperately need those positions temporarily funding through Esser was their only option this budget does not address these schools with desperate needs to receive resources and staff Bea Demands a budget where students and schools with the greatest need are not harmed by funding Baseline budget positions including a full-time reading specialist in every school every classroom must be staffed by a team of Educators to provide general education instruction ESL instruction specialized specialized instruction special education services and social and emotional and behavioral health support for students including our deaf and D heart and an alternative education programs as required by their individual needs and education plans in addition last year superintendent Skipper and mayor woo made very public comments to restorative justice but only Incorporated eight restorative justice coaches to carry out the type of programming that requires systemwide infrastructure what happened to reimagining school funding to prevent schools and students with the highest needs from experiencing Cuts where is the equity thank you thank you very much Miss Rees next speaker next couple of speakers are Betsy Yoshimura Holly Jordan Bridget fantini Andia corbo Betsy jimura sorry yes I am here can you um sorry turned my H okay yeah hi hi thank you so much for giving me the chance to uh testify today um I'm um I am a mother of two students at the Mario umana Academy in East Boston my younger daughter is in C one and my older daughter is in K is in fourth grade um we had had requested um a few positions um through the um the the uh committee and we were denied um uh by literacy specialist and we were also denied an instructional coach and um with the uh um amount of we've got 630 kids in our school we're a dual Language School we have um 97.5% of our students are high needs and 81.3% are lwi income and we have um a high population of multilingual Learners students with disabilities and multilingual lingual Learners with disabilities as well and our uh you know in addition to our dual language General Ed and having one instructional coach for the entire K through 8 is not ideal and I think if we really want to provide our students with a high quality uh education um dual language is fantastic but we need this we need to have the personnel and the Staffing to properly provide um the needs that our students uh have and so if you guys could work some magic and um find some money for an additional instructional for the Umar that would be fantastic thank you so much for your time thank you next speaker is Holly Jordan hi my name is Holly Jordan and I am the co-president of the School parent council at the Beethoven orberger school in West Roxbury I am sure you're aware that the Beethoven orberger Community is special we are a k to8 school on two campuses there are roughly 750 students from more than half of the neighborhoods in Boston nearly 13 positions across both campuses are being eliminated eliminating teachers and staff will decrease our ability to keep up our current rigor harm what makes us unique and threaten our level one status all of which our school has worked so hard to achieve we are the only level one school in Region 5 we have smaller class sizes in staff who are present when the need for social emotional support or interventions arises we can only maintain a tier one status by staying Vigilant and prep and prepared for the needs of our community there is an emerging Mental Health crisis particularly in our young people and we need an appropriate amount of staff to adequately meet this need I recently learned that there has been a 30% in a 37% increase in sexual misconduct claims across the district I fear the statistics with Statistics like this if they continue and Rise uh we won't excuse me I fear statistics like this will continue and Rise if we don't take a hard stand against removing the adults in the district that work directly with the students 30 seconds to reduce staff now is not only unwise but unsafe my fear is that all students but particular particularly students of color multilingual Learners and students with disabilities will be impacted so significantly that all the great work that we are planning and that you are planning will be marred with the potentially dangerous choices that could be prevented with more reflective planning perhaps the district could consider additional facility closures or other cost-saving measures including thank you very much MK you our next speaker speaker is Bridget pantini Bridget fantini hi my name is Bridget Hester fantini I'm Apparent at KP Manning School excuse me could you could you turn on your camera y thank you apologies uh um thank you chair Robinson and and superintendent skipper for having us here tonight the JP Manning School in Jamaica plane has been held up as a model for inclusion for well over a decade the new BPS Model for inclusion was proposed for K1 and 7eventh grade for fy2 we don't have a seventh grade um at the Manning so that doesn't apply to us but this new new model that is being rolled out at the Manning is intended to impact all of our grades k0 through sixth it's a dramatic shift for our elementary school we've had amazing Staffing to support MLL disabilities Q4 Q3 over the years and um my personal concern is that there is not one teacher of color in the new model for the Manning that has been shared with parents and families caregivers and you know I would just respectfully ask the school committee to coordinate with BPS leadership to explain how this model is going to benefit all of our children thank you thank you very much our next speaker eia coru is not signed in so our next group of speakers will require um interpretation support So if I can ask my our Spanish interpreter swaso Medina or Calderon Sim Rodriguez Lamar Alandra please please raise your hands a and our Spanish interpreter is our Spanish interpreter available just a second our Spanish interpreter H yes I'm here um good everyone my name is SAS I live in South Boston my daughter is going to the heling school and thank you very very much for the opportunity the herley school has been a great support for my girls education at this particular moment my daughter is in need of more help from the school and I'm aware because of the budgetary constraints Some Cuts will be implemented so I am very frustrated after hearing this news of the cats that will be implemented I am here to specifically ask the district not to cut any budget budgets from the herley schools it is difficult to for me to understand how the district is promoting an inclusion plan given the fact that the very little budgetary allocations are given to the hurle school have witnessed in person being there at the school of the lack of stuff they do have for the students the lack of teachers that is I'm actually working there at the hly school as a parent inventor and I do know that the kids are in great need of help I do know that many of the kids are an individualized education plans or I PE and it is very difficult for the teachers to work by themselves because of the lack of stuff I do hope that my voice is being heard and that no budgetary cuts are implemented at my girl school please please be more conscious about the needs that our students have our kids have much thank you very muchas um Sonia Medina is not signed into the meeting next speaker isia good afternoon everyone uh greetings to everybody greetings to the school committee Public Schools inry my name is ensia Calderon I live in rockberry I do have two granddaughters that they go to the Hurley School my granddaughters are very lucky to be out of school such as Shirley providing that this is one of the few bilingual schools that are part of the educational District I have to point out as well that my granddaughters they write and they speak very well the both languages English and Spanish so we have to say as well that this model that is implemented there has to be it is an inspirational model that has to be followed so it is very critical that the district promotes the hiring of bilingual teachers we have to point out as well that the Hurley School been actually considered one of the model schools it is very sad what is happening at this particular moment they actually having that the principal and the governator uh Personnel at school in a situation that is in itself difficult provided that the budgetary uh cuts that are being allocated they are in the position of making very difficult decisions such as cutting different positions for teachers and bilingual personel I would like to uh ask the uh District to please do not cut any budgets we have to consider that this particular school has a dual language program therefore it demands in itself having more bilingual teachers and paradoxically they are losing this bilingual teachers thank you very much to all for the opportunities you're given me to express myself next speaker is Rodriguez good afternoon everyone good afternoon Boston Schools and all the authorities that are related Sim Rodriguez my name is simel Rodriguez I do I do live in the rockbury community my daughter she goes to the black school and she has an individualized education plan I do work directly in a uh classroom that is an inclusion classroom and that belongs to the first grade so I am here as a mother advocating for more support for that school so those students that have high needs it is important to provide an environment that is safer it's important to note that having enough teachers and enough Specialists there is no way to be able to do this unless we do have a fair budgetary allocation for this purpose our school has been impacted and affected because of lack of staff and the lack of resources that is for the special education students and we have to point out as well the instability that is being caused because of the lack of presence of the leaders and the other practices that are having Personnel not being Pres have to point out that there has been more than five different principles over the five last years of the Blackstone school so what Destiny are we hoping for the students if we are not considering those decisions that are having a negative impact in our students the district is in the process of implementing a an inclusion plan but they're not taking in consideration those students that have special needs so is very diff difficult difficult for me to understand what is the inclusion model that They are promoting so the way the budget is being allocated it is my understanding that that budget is only sufficient for the hiring of three different teachers three inclusion teach that is but they are not it is not enough it's not sufficient we need more bilingual teachers we'll need more Personnel because uh actually those positions are being lost next speaker is Alejandra Kint evening thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to express ourselves Jamaica plan I'm a mother of the kid that goes to the mining School located in Jamaica plane so far we had felt very fortunate my son is very happy going to school that he has very good relations to with the teachers that are there at that [Music] school that is my understanding and I hope they can continue doing so having a model of uh co- teing that has been very successful I hope that that continues to be the case so it is very concerning regarding the uh changes that are to be implemented we are very confused about this I have to say so you have to point out as well that the present model and the grades are between two and six they only have two teachers is a model that has been very successful up to the present time but with the budgetary constraints that model will not be functional any longer classes so what they intend to have is a group of specialist they that they will be at different [Music] classrooms replicating as what the other parents have said in their testimony I do not understand how this particular model is beneficial to our students we have to say that the ratio of teachers per student it's uh lower and it's MiniMed I do not understand that this how this particular model of inclusion is going to work but consider it in particular that there will be more students that will be in need as well of the language access we have to point out as well that considering the success that this particular model has at the Bing school instead of replicating or mimicking this model they're trying to dismantle this model so please one particular request that I do have involve the parents involve the teachers before implementing any drastic changes [Music] so we do understand that actually we are not the only school that has suggested an iepn IND individualized education plan that was not implemented so again as I say please involve the students and the parents and the teachers in this particular model thank you very much thank you very much the next group of speakers are Janina tman Danielle drinkman ikram hamadi suao and Erin Birmingham anadu Janina kilman hello good evening everyone my name is could you please turn on your camera oh is my camera my camera's not on thank you hello everyone my name is janana Tillman I have two kids in the Boston school public in the Public Schools um my young one is in the Roger clap and my older one is in Snowden International now I've been blessed to get my child into the Roger clap school they actually have a really good inclusion plan um and I've actually seen other schools come and watch our schooling to model their school after ours so it's very very stressful to hear that the funding is going to be cut for the school and those cuts will impact the parent mentoring program the gym program the music program arts and the extra the extra teachers in each classroom what I'm here to tell you people is stop cutting funding to Roger clap because the way we have things it works and it's going well if you give us the funds we can show you what our students can do we can show you what we are capable of the cuts across the board of every school on every level should not be happening right now we are in a crucial we are in a crucial moment where we have to make sure our Generations are properly educated so they can take the future Reigns I am deeply I'm deeply hurt that fun is going to be taken from everywhere that matters it's it's everything matters everything extra matters so we're finally getting to a place where we see some light and we can see some things that are working and now you're going to say oh no we're going to cut it that's so unfair it's unfair to our next Generation think of the fact that they're going to be coming up behind us don't we care about our future thank you thank you our next speaker is Danielle drinkman hi is it my turn to talk sorry yes it's your turn thank you great um hi I'm Danielle I live in Jamaica plane I'm the mother of a K1 student at the Hernandez um you thank you for letting us voice our concerns today I'm not as organized as I planned because my wife Oney old is sick but you know I think a lot of the testimony today has been about funding the additional staff in particular and I think we've heard a few people from Dual language schools so I think that's you know in general a broad reach to ask you know to to increase funding for for these things but particularly for the Hernandez school um we are looking for funding for the learning Specialists so we had requested three and are only getting funding for one and a half um this is something that the school had funded using you know this special covid money so other schools got computers hard things that they could keep for years we knew we needed these learning Specialists so that's what we got and now we're losing them and you know I don't even have a child with an IEP but she's directly interacted with the learning specialist for her grade you know he's helped her because pretty much the entire school is secondary languages right either most of the students either speak Spanish or either speak English and they're going to need help in one of them so we especially have a high need for these additional specialized learning language specialized learning assistance um it's been working we don't want to see this lose um the gains we've made it's going to be hard for us to get the Staffing back you know years down the line when they finally decid to give us this funding again because you know we're looking for people that are dual language it's not the easiest thing to fill um it's working for the people with disabilities you know on a personal level it's working even for the entire classroom allowing everyone to get the extra help they need um and it's just you know thank you very much than thanks next speaker is ikram hamadi who will need a support within Arabic interpretation could our Arabic interpreter please help us yes Yesa thank you very much you're welcome hamadi hiab okay good afternoon okay it's me it's me hamadi my name Isam hamadi I live in South End Boston Blackstone and my three kids are students in Blackstone School I'm here to raise my voice uh in behalf of the uh students who are uh in ESL classes I uh like that our school have a good budget to uh give more support to elll students I work in this school and I see um more and more students joining the school and uh they were uh recepted very good in in the school okay but unfortunately I don't see that they have the uh resources from uh education uh people and other resources which can help in this aspect and uh also the subjects that those kids can get good education I want to know exactly where the budget for elll goes like mother I like to see uh more investment in uh uh education staff and subjects which can help elll students in their education uh Ian also I worked in Blackstone for two years and what caught my attention that we have a swimming pool in this school and I didn't see that it was used and I want to know the reason for having the swimming pool in this school and what caught my attention also that the building for Blackstone school is very old so uh my school my question is when the school will be rebuilt it well thank you so much for listening to me thank you very much our next speakers are s Koto Erin bham anadu Alisa ker and joy hars please raise your hands hi good evening um my name is sua to and um I just want to say that I stand in solidarity with all of the parents advocating for the Blackstone um I was a Blackstone parents for 10 years and um I really understand where they're coming from um after so many years of fighting for a new building um so my name is suao and I am an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and a PR parent and graduate of Boston Public Schools I am here before you to advocate for the preservation and enhancement of bilingual or dual language education in our schools bilingual education and BPS was instrumental in my success story with the guidance of an inspiring educator Miss FES and afro Latina like myself I mastered English while preserving my cultural identity as a Dominican and my native language research shows that bilingualism enhances Cog cognitive skills and academic outcomes and I am living proof of its Effectiveness however since the looked Act of 2017 there has been limited expansion of bilingual programs like BPS promised in the previous years moreover the threat of budget cuts puts the progress and sustainability of these programs at risk we must prioritize allocating resources to support their growth and broaden offerings to reflect the students diversity this will allow more BPS students to earn the Massachusetts state seal of biliteracy which recognizes high school graduates profession in English and another language it values the assets of English language learner students bring um and respect in their native language and culture in addition we need to focus on hiring retaining culturally representative Educators um like the one I had and enhanced family and Community involvement and educational decisions about I don't want spending as well place please increase the um budget for bilingual education thank you next speaker is Ain bourbon ham anadu T my name is Aaron Birmingham manadu and my family lives in Rosendale our daughter is at the Manning school just this morning I had the pleasure of attending an assembly where our son was recognized for seventh grade honor role last week he was recognized by deathy for exceptional performance on his 2023 mcast exams they even gave him a Target gift card we're so proud he's Young gifted and black and he has worked very hard for his success our son began at the Manning on an IEP when he was just three years old nearly nonverbal the staff teachers and true inclusion model of the school built a foundation for his success as I have said before I'm eternally grateful to BPS and the Manny for this I was here two months ago testifying about new concerns at our school and my concerns have come true our librarian of 23 years is being cut our Music Teacher is being cut our entire coach teaching model is being cut principal Alison H is not even doing a gradual roll out as described in the district inclusion Ed plan against the school IP team she's scrapping the model as a whole starting this fall there was no Community engagement on the new model any explanations provided have been botched and confusing with zero evidence that the new model will work for anybody let alone mlls students of colors or students on IEPs there is an utter void of leadership at our school teachers have voice concerned to caregivers the btu and even unanimously voted no confidence in principal Hart the school climate survey shows 8% approval rating one of the lowest in the district as caregivers we don't know the Manning is a Desi School of recognition and student test coures across student test scores across sectors supersede District averages especially with students on I the Manning should be a template for inclusion not its next tear down superintendent Skipper Mary woo why are you taking away our teachers thank you thank you next speaker is Alisa creger we can't hear you can you hear me now yeah yes thank you hi my name is Alysa creger I am a parent of a K2 student at the Hernandez I live in rosindale I'm here also um to ask for the three learning specialist positions to be fully funded at the Hernandez um as a couple of people have already said uh with all the students learning two languages there's so much need I think I think you've heard a lot of the reasoning but I just wanted to say that um last year was a really hard year for my son he doesn't have an IEP um he's uh you know like doesn't have a specific need but he really struggled last year um and the learning specialist sther Hernandez really um turned it around for him and I think it's hard because at the Hernandez these are like people who work there who are part of the community who fit in the system and who know everybody and taking those positions away only to rehire them later doesn't make any sense um when we reached out to the school because our son was struggling he was didn't want to go to school he hated it he he was getting in trouble all the time we met with um Carlos who is the learning specialist for who was the learning specialist for K1 and we sat down with him and we sat down with my son's teachers and we made a plan to together and I was like okay cool like make a plan whatever but the the change happened so immediately when the plan that Carlos put together like the change was immediate my son loved going to school he was doing really well and those positions are invaluable and taking them away and hiring them later is unacceptable because they're not just positions those are people who are part of a really valuable community and they make a huge difference not only for the kids with IPS but for all the kids and they're just really important and we need them so thank you for the time thank you very thank you very much Miss creger next speaker is Joy harms and then Sarah Fuller hello good afternoon my name is Joy har I live in West Roxbury and I'm the mother of four daughters who have attended or currently attend Manning Elementary School and the testimony of these other mothers and caregivers here I'm sorry I'm Jus getting emotional with you because this is this underscores the importance of what's happening and and the dire need for our children's educations my oldest daughters enrolled in the Manning 10 years ago um we are pleased to discover a community of Learners with a wide range of gifts and challenges and teaching staff that could help each child thrive in that environment our school was an early adopter of both full inclusion programs and the extended day schedule and parents Educators and leaders were always asking how can we make this even better we at the Manning were recently presented with an upcoming Staffing model that appears to be opposite of that question and instead asks the question how can we do this cheaper this frankly makes me very concerned for the educational future of my daughters that are still at the school it's been very obvious over the years that the successes that we saw were due to having multiple trained teachers in the classroom my daughters over the years have come home with anecdotes of classmates who were having rough days as a result those teachers had to engage in physical holds for student safety remove the class from the classroom and other interventions that print prevented them from actually teaching learning only happened because the other classroom teachers stepped in and continued the lesson our inclusion model works because there are two fully certified teachers in most classrooms learning does not have to come to a halt because a classmate is having aough day model presented to us at the Manning reduces the classroom teachers to one teacher per classroom with shared learning Specialists and prayer professionals that spend only a fraction of the school day in the classroom this model also results in the loss of our Music Teacher our librarian and experienced teachers who know how to help all students thrive in an inclusion setting our school does not need fewer fully licensed teachers in the classroom it doesn't need fewer experienced special teachers we need more you miss harms thank you our last speaker is Sarah Fuller hi my name is Sarah Fuller and um I'd like to say good evening to members of the school committee um superintendent Skipper and any others who are on Zoom um like I said my name is Sarah Fuller I live in Boston in Charlestown and I've been a special education teacher in BPS for 20 years currently I work at the Blackstone elementary school as an inclusion specialist and I am the facilitator of their inclusion planning team I also have two children who attend Boston Public Schools I here because we have concerns about our inclusive education plan as well as the IP process in general I wrote this with members of our IP team so I'm just reading reading from what we wrote initially our IP was very excited about the district's proposal to create inclusive schools throughout the district our team worked very hard to create inclusive classrooms for our k0 to K2 communities our vision identifies multilingual Learners and students in subst substantially separate classrooms as our most segregated populations we agree we wanted to desegregate our sheltered English ersing classrooms to create inclusive classrooms we thoughtfully looked at the staff we had and identified positions we would need about one to two months prior to our plan's due date we were told we could not include additional Staffing in our request um okay that was really quick um and so at this time this is very important um our plan was not approved we were told that we should be um programming a transitional bilingual education plan which um you know a few weeks later we were told nope that's not going to be the plan at your school and as of today we still do not know what our programming will be for our SEI students thank you Miss fer that concludes public testimony for the budget sh hearing back to you chair thank you Miss Paras I want to thank everyone who spoke tonight your input is critical as we consider the superintendent's budget recommendation for fiscal year 24 I want to remind everyone that all budget documents are available online at bostonpublicschools.org budget you can email your comments to budget bostonpublicschools.org as well as the school committee this nothing further I'll entertain a motion to adjourn this budget hearing and immediately convene our regular school committee meeting is there a motion to adjourn the hearing so moved thank you is there a second second thank you is there any discussion or objection to the motion Miss Prix will you please call the role thank you chair Dr alkins yes Mr C Hernandez yes Miss Lima Barbosa yes M Garcia Mr Tran yes Mr O'Neal yes Miss Robinson yes thank you we are AJ thank you we'll move right into tonight's school committee meeting we'll begin with the approval of minutes at this time I would like to entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the February 28th 2024 school committee meeting and March 24th 2024's fiscal year 25 budget hearing as presented is there a motion so moved thank you is there a second second thank you is there any discussion or objection to the motion hearing none Miss provix will you please call the role Dr alkins yes Mr Cadet herandez Miss Lima Barbosa yes Miss palanco Garcia Mr Tran yes Mr O'Neal yes Miss Robinson yes the minutes are approved unanimously thank you we'll now move on to the superintendent's report I present to you our superintendent Mary Skipper good evening to the committee and thank you chair Robinson I wanted to start with an update on our Capital planning uh BPS Capital planning team hosted the fourth and final Community engagement public workshop on the long-term facilities plan at the bowling building the meetings were attended by a total of 203 individuals um last week's meeting particularly focused on high schools I really enjoyed hearing the feedback from all of the participants but I especially enjoyed hearing the feedback from the students as they used the tools uh to look through the data and they learn really learn about their school but also all schools the capitol planning team also joined the Boston student advisory Council which we call BAC earlier this month and conducted a version of the workshop with with the students there to gather their input on the district's long-term facilities plan we're especially grateful to the dozens of high school students including BAC members and those who came to the high schools workshops and shared their thoughts and their experiences about how our school buildings must change to be more Equitable and inclusive we even had a student who attended all four of the Workshops the team right now is synthesizing the input that they received the feedback from the four workshops and the BAC meeting as well as the community survey that was disseminated in February and March this analysis will be shared with the school committee members once it's compiled and analyzed and that will happen soon quick update on our new arrivals um on Monday the office of family and Community advancement welcome Services team was led by Chief Mall Sanchez and senior director Sonia Gomez banre in collaboration with the office of multilingual and Multicultural education which we call M welcomed additional students and their families who are currently staying at the Farnsworth shelter in the seaport the team provided a full day of registration assessment and enrollment for students which also included breakfast and lunch parents and students also chose clothing shoes toiletries as well as other basic necessities from the donation drive that's been that's been led by Francisco borders of the office of family and Community advancement to date for the committee's knowledge we have enrolled 118 students from the mass Cass uh temporary shelter the team continues to do a wonderful job welcoming and supporting our new families and students and most importantly they are really getting our students into school as quickly as possible so that they can join uh their learning communities last week BPS joined the center to support immigrants organizing its Equity now and Beyond Wellness fair at the bowling building where our newcomer families received a variety of Health and Wellness Resources including covid testing and PPE supplies blood pressure screenings On-Site Health Insurance enrollment and more thanks to the welcome Services team Community engagement team the BPS helpline and the office of multilingual and Multicultural education and really all of the other BPS departments who helped to make this event a success and continue to support our newly arrived families last week I had the pleasure of being interviewed about my job of being superintendent by a very curious group of Harvard Kent Elementary students in the fifth grade um this was led by teacher MO McDon uh students in in What's called the careers in the community enrichment class where they're introduced to different careers that to be kind of inspired and become leaders in their own Community the students were really curious they asked great questions they shared with me what their interests were inside and outside of school I just want to thank the students but also especially Miss McDon for offering such an awesome opportunity for our students to learn about different careers meet different people and for inviting me to be part of her class earlier this month I had the pleasure of joining BPS social workers at their professional development um which was a kick off for the national school Social Work Week social worker week um and this was really a celebration kicking off social worker month nationally uh the theme of this year was imp empowering social workers inspiring action and leading change social workers as we know are agents of change they're within our schools within our communities and I'm so grateful for the work that they do every day in our schools to care for and Empower our students and our families and support staff having social workers in all of our schools has never been more important or more necessary than it is today in this Year we're able to say that we have at least one social worker in every school a goal we had set as a department more than four years ago I want to recognize interim chief of or sorry chief of student support Corey McCarthy director of social worker Jenna arafin zik who I just can't say enough about her work and support of her team and really um their entire student support team for the hard work and dedication to the need needs of our students this morning I joined mayor woo and the Boston Public Health commission and other partners at the Joseph Lee K8 School in Dorchester to announce $21 million in funding from the city to support mental and behavioral health programs and services to support Youth and families these Investments are part of the city's response to the need for more mental health supports as well as addressing Behavioral Health Workforce shortages and a lack of Avail of availability to culturally competent care these Investments over the next three years will directly impact 21 BPS schools assist up to 5,300 students at all grade levels support 292 people in pursuing behavioral health care careers in Boston and provide more than a thousand people with Behavioral Health Training to better serve Youth and families in Boston and before the event we had the opportunity to um do a round table uh led by Dr Simone from the Boston Health commission uh with a group of students and they were very articulate in talking about who they go to when they need support and that really ranged from social workers to teachers to other trusted adults in the buildings and how value valuable that is for them um given all the pandemic has meant for our students and all the return from the pandemic has meant for our students so we're very grateful for this additional resource and uh we're we're looking forward to working with the city as we Implement BPS in mayor woo kicked off the 30th annual youth Arts month celebration on March 9th at Boston City Hall where more than 300 pieces of Art from 24 schools are now on display through the end of May through the end of March I encourage you to walk around the building if you have the opportunity during business hours the artwork not only showcases the immense talents of our students but the artwork also speaks to the high quality of the Arts instruction by our teachers in our schools so great job to all the participating artists and to our art staff I'm so proud to share that Winship Elementary School fifth grader tenosi inomata an 11-year-old from alustin Will Go On The scrips National Spelling be trip in Washington DC in May to no she was declared the winner of the 16th annual Boston centers for Youth and families city-wide spelling be on Saturday March 16th for correctly spelling the winning word or tooshi was one of 23 Boston Youth and 14 BPS students competing in the spelling be and we'll be rooting tanoshi on uh as uh you know in the in the next phase uh early this month I joined uh mayor woo chair Robinson and vice chair O'Neal the city's public facilities Department the Massachusetts school building Authority which is msba and members of the BPS leadership team at the topping off ceremony for the new William E Carter School in the South End the district school dedicated to students who need individualized intensive education programming it was an awesome event everyone's Spirits were high despite the rain and the cold I'm always inspired by the students at the Carter and by the commitment and dedication of school leader Mark o Conor and his entire staff the new Carter building will include more classrooms a new Early Childhood Program 3K to2 pathway a therapeutic pool and a sensory garden we're so excited to see this building near completion and look forward to students and staff returning in the fall of 2025 and finally in sports it was a huge weekend for high school BAS basketball boys basketball and hockey three BPS schools brought home state championship titles on Saturday March 16th new Mission and Charlestown High School boys basketball teams won their respective divisions at the songus center in UMass low seat toown clinched the division 3 title with their 61- 40 victory over old Roos Rochester the new Mission Titans beat husk Valley 57- 49 in the division five contest and on March on and on Sunday March 17th St Patty's Day the Boston Latin School boys varsity hockey team won the division 2 state championship at the Boston Garden late night but a great night it started two hours late and they played until well after 11:00 but it was electrifying and the hometown crowd was ecstatic and BLS was able to beat toar 4 to2 this is a Wolfpack hockey's first state championship since 2005 congratulations to all of our student athletes everywhere in the district and especially for our championship teams on an incredible season we're so proud of you and I want to thank BPS Athletics director Avery esdale his entire team and our athletic coaches with their dedication and commitment to BPS students lengthy but full of some really good news chair that concludes my superintendent's report thank you superintendent now I will now open it up to questions and discussion from the committee I'd like to remain my colleagues about our agreed upon Norm that we each have five minutes that's one to two questions and I would like to remind BPS staff to also be brief in your responses I'd also like to remind everyone to please speak at a slower Pace to assist our interpreters thank you questions comments none um superintendent I would like to um talk a little bit about our student member who I think has some good news to share with us um that wasn't in your report so I'm going to allow him to share that news himself excellent Mr MAA would you like to share your exciting news okay um yeah I guess sure um I end up getting a for right to North Eastern do you want to say any more about it um I I guess that's it what about your what else you got as part of getting your acceptance that's all you want to share right now okay yeah well we wanted to say great congratulations to uh Diego um when I spoke to him on Sunday I have never seen him more elated about this accomplishment so we know that nor Eastern's really great to have you and that you'll do a great job there great thank you right congratulations um Dr alins um yes I mean I think mostly I just wanted to extend congratulations to all the teams um definitely to you Diego that's you know not to be understated um going to college for free is never uh is it's that's I mean you could take it from I would say a generation of Millennials um that um that is you know never to be underestimated so um certainly uh congratulations to you and congratulations to the district for a lot of their accomplishments um and I look forward to the the discussion later on this evening are there any more comments before we move on okay well thank you everyone um there's no objection um we'll close out this discussion and I'll now entertain a motion to receive the superintendent's report is there a motion so moved thank you is there a second is there any objection or discussion to the motion hearing none missx will you please call the rooll thank you chair Dr alkins yes Mr CET Hernandez yes Miss Lima Barbosa yes Miss poano Garcia Mr Tran yes Mr O'Neal yes and Miss Robinson yes thank you the superintendent report is approved unanimously thank you Miss Parx we'll now move on to the discussion about the appointment of Le Lina Parx as executive secretary to the Boston school committee as I shared with the committee I'm recommending the appointment of Miss PCT as the executive secretary for the Boston school committee Miss Sullivan served our body with great distinction for 16 years for seven of those 16 years Miss provix worked side by side with her playing a critical role supporting our regular school committee our regular meetings in school committee task forces when we went remote it was Miss Prix who worked tiously with the district's technology department to learn how to implement this new technology and ensure our meetings ran smoothly and were fully accessible for any member of our community Miss Prix has the knowledge skills and experience to serve as our next executive secretary we will take further action on this later in the evening but I will now open it up to questions and comments from the committee Mr O'Neal I'm Madam chair not a not a question but just um want to speak in support of this as well miss parix has has been with us for a number of years and Miss parix if I remember correctly you're um I I believe you have a degree in library sciences and I know you've also been doing an effort to um digitize all the polic of the school committee and have worked with um Mass Association of school committees on that as well so um thank you for the work that you have done a lot of the public haven't seen you but the we have because you've been very much behind the scenes in these meetings working with Miss Sullivan and so um look good forward to you taking the next step and and uh so thank you chair for your recommendation thank you thank you um we'll now move on to General Public com comment Miss provix thank you the public comment period is an opportunity for parents caregivers students and other concerned parties to make brief presentations to the school committee on pertinent School issues questions on specific School matters are not answer at this time but are referred to the superintendent for a later response questions on specific policy matters are not answer at this time but may be the subject of later discussion by the committee this meeting will feature uh only one public comment um period of uh we have we sorry uh we have 22 speakers this evening each person will have two minutes to speak and I will remind you when you have 30 seconds remaining if your remarks are longer than 2 minutes please email your comments for distribution to the committee the time that an interpreter uses for English interpretation will not be deducted from a speaker's a lotted Time speakers may not reassign their time to others please direct your comments to the chair and refrain from addressing individual school committee members or District staff please state your name affiliation and what neighborhood you are from before you begin we will begin with John Mad Mike Ean Jake temp and viell John man we can't hear you okay can you hear me now yes thank you sorry uh my name is John mud I'm a resident of Cambridge and a longtime education advocate in Boston uh I'm sorry to say but I feel compelled to say that I don't think the school committee is fulfilling its responsibility to establish education goals and policies and to exercise its fiscal responsibility in adopting a budget we are told the school committee will approve a general fund budget showing an increase of over 220 staff positions while at the same time the Comm comme has given documentation that in fact when all funds are accounted for including the end of Esser the district will suffer a loss of 339 positions I've earlier testified about the very large Personnel shifts among programs in the all funds budget what are the specific programmatic implications of these changes in English Learners general education special education and their projected impact on student outcomes you should ask for this before for approving the budget many of these changes are a result of the district's inclusionary education plan this plan reflects a major transformation in education policy the school committee has the responsibility to establish education policy yet it did not give prior approval to this new policy before it was sent to the state the evidence says it is the wrong policy for English Learners you can still still stop its implementation for English learners the same is true for the long uh long-term facilities plan the committee says it wants authentic parent and Community engagement on facilities proposals but you're allowing a plan to be implemented in which it is not clear that the district must bring specific proposals to parents and stakeholders before they are presented to you and the timetable in the plan States if these proposals are supposed to be approved by you before the end of April this year change this process thank you thank you next speaker is Michael Heisman Mike kishman Bea dochester the BPS strategic Vision begins with with at BPS every child in every classroom is entitled to an equitable world-class highquality education this proposed budget does not support your vision your reimagined school funding steering steering committee recommends fully fund resource needed for students with disabilities and multilingual Learners first at every school ensure a baseline of funded resources at all schools this is not what this budget proposes many of our children attend underresourced and substandard school facilities to often conditions are deplorable your budget proposes to continue this abuse and neglect this is a painful austerity budget proposal the community needs an authentic facilities plan instead you plan to steam roll over Community opposition and closed schools we need a budget that would make major Investments and exper in successful programs like Community Schools and ethic studies you should defund the policing of our schools and instead make major increases in restorative justice stop inclusion done poorly and cheaply and instead fully fund inclusion Done Right invest in programs so that our children will graduate with both the high level fluency in both English and a second language spend much less money and lawsuits the obri ran Community has shown us that when we unite and fight we can win we must unite and fight against this horrific proposal by mayor wo and superintendent Skipper listen to what people have testified today this is a painful painful budget proposal Lena congratulations on your position you've done a wonderful job good luck to you sister muchas graas thank you very much thank you Mr tman next speaker is Jake Dempsey hello everyone can you hear me yes we can hear you my name is Jake Dempsey and I'm a parent of the gardener superintendent Skipper I'm here to address the lack of transparency and inaccurate statements that you and your leadership leadership team have made regarding the investigation into and dismissals of principal Erica Herman and assistant principal Joe Sara of the Garder pilot Academy when you spoke to the governing in February you told us that the investigation was launched due to multiple staff and parents coming to the district with concerns a statement also echoed by Christine Landry and Drew eckel however in the report that justifies the firing of principal Herman States the investigation was started solely because the office of equity raised concerns that four instance were reported late there is no mention of families contacting the district you also told us that Mr Sara was restricted because of his inaction regarding an incident with the staff member but I have since learned that Mr SAR did indeed contact DCF multiple times spoke with families and asked School leadership for guidance on the incident repeatedly parents were told that egregious code of conduct violations were unreported and unaddressed if you had spoken to Mrs Herman and Mr Sara you would know that these incidents were addressed whether and how they were reported is worthy of a conversation but does not justify the slandering and firing of two committed Educators throughout this exhausting process parents were told again again that our positive experiences with Mrs Herman and Mr SAR were not Universal and that the district was acting at the Beast of parents to hear this wasn't accurate is infuriating when you spoke to the board I felt you were being very transparent with us now that you know that some of the statements you made were not accurate I implore you to go back to the records and dig deeper than your investigator did the parents of GPA are not satisfied and we are not going away I have more questions and we'll be back to ask them thank you very much next speaker is ver Rell Miss R is not in the meeting so next speaker will the next group of speakers will be Albania Orosco Jacqueline Rodriguez Sonia Medina and simel Rodriguez Lamar next speaker will be Alban Orosco hello bu com interpr yes see um could we please have an interpreter support the speaker ready okay my hello good evening my name is Alania Rosco and I have a 9-year-old um kid who goes to the App Academy and and I am also from the Dorchester neighborhood and my comment is about the excellent uh job that the whole team is doing at the school and also here to say that please please whatever resource that the school is asking for please give it to them because the school is doing an amazing job with every student also the school needs uh the district needs to pay attention to this school they need more bilingual teachers because most of the students in this school um speak Spanish and um most of the teachers only speak English it's a school that is doing a good job and needs a lot of help thank you very much have a good night muchas next speaker is Jaqueline Rodriguez Jacqueline Rodriguez are you in attendance please raise your hand please go ahead thank you uh greetings superintendent Skipper and school psychology me and and school committee members I'm Dr jacn Rodriguez bilingual school psychologist have worked in BPS for 23 years seven years at the Charles suar Elementary School school psychologists are facing Cuts possible Cuts in positions due to the loss of fund I'm losing one day at my school next year a school of 600 over 600 There are 16 bilingual English Spanish speaking school psychologist in Boston but that is not enough for our students and our families in order to recruit and retain school psychologist I propose us offering a differential such as that used by the Department of Mental Health I emailed that language to miss par earlier currently Bilingual School psychologists can actually stop being bilingual according to the btu contract on page 79 also emailed due to our unmanageable workload our students and families need us to remain bilingual having school psychologists who speak the languages of our families is a strength and something that is in danger of Disappearing as we Face a loss of positions I was asked to translate three times yesterday at my school I was um we are asked to do more without any kind of differential BPS can no longer rely on the Goodwill of my colleagues to ensure families and students get what they need BPS needs to fairly compensate Bilingual School psychologists for our skill set and not encourage us to stop being bilingual as that does not serve our students and families thank you very much for your time thank you thank you next speaker is Danielle noi vooma and we will need um our Spanish interpreter for the next two speak speakers thank you okay bues good evening um good evening my name is Dan Danielle and I'm a proud immigrant from Latin America I have a kid in first grade and the second grade and Thea JP Manning J and JP Manning thank you for the opportunity to talk about this new model that they want to implement in the teaching of our schools um and for a lot of time the man in school has been a model school with this co- teing model and it has been a successful model School of recognition last year the the Manning was one of the four schools in the state that had the school of recognition which is the highest recognition a school can get in the state this uh this inclusion model it's been in a model of co- teachers this from uh grade six second to sixth this means two teachers and a par professional in each classroom so the model is not perfect it can be improved but what BPS is trying to do right now to make this radical um change so our model has worked well and has it's been successful if our model's been working like this you need to be prudent about the changes that you want to make so BPS wants to expand this model to K Zer K1 K2 and first grade that's amazing but why not expand the Cod teach and model and all these grades so if they want to expand this model that is fine but it needs to come with more budget but instead of that what BPS is doing is cutting the resources BPS they want us to do more with less BL we will not um the next speakers that were signed up with Spanish are not in the meeting so our next group of speakers are Bevin Kenny nck Dicker theof Tarina Harrison and Ruby Ras Mr Kenny is it okay for me to speak yeah you can start thank you okay thank you so much thanks for the opportunity to testify my name is bin Kenny I'm a parent of a fifth grader and a third grader at the Manning school I'm a BPS parent since 2017 when my daughter started K1 I appreciate the opportunity to talk at this committee meeting and about changes proposed for the teaching model of the Manning School Manning has long been a model of inclusion for students with social and emotional needs but have only learned in the F last few weeks that our school will lose teachers because our very successful model is not in alignment with the BPS vision of what inclusion should look like instead of coming to our amazing teaching PA professional and Special Education team and asking them how inclusion can be successfully implemented we're being told that BPS has a better model the data presented to say we're not serving all our students seems very flawed we've not been given data to prove that this new model is an improvement and this new model will affect all students in all the grades we're not rolling out new teaching to one grade or to two we are doing this to our entire School affecting all eight grades in every single classroom and every single student and as caregivers we've tried to engage PPS in our school leadership for weeks we've met a lot of resistance to our questions and concerns we've only just received answers to written questions we submitted to our principal and Dr Luna four weeks ago and we just received them yesterday I'm disappointed that huge changes to our model have been made without sufficient Community involvement in a very successful school and a model for inclusion and I'm very very concerned that we're losing talented teachers thanks so much for the opportunity to talk thank you very much our next speaker is Nikki Dicker hi good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Nikki dickerhoff I am the mother to eight um I'm sorry nine children um eight of who will be enrolled next year into BPS I would like to share an incident that has occurred over a long period of time we enrolled our children in April of 2023 when we moved into the district our children were separated placed in multiple schools because we did not meet the lottery requirements in time as a result of this I have two little girls who have congenital heart defects very serious ones ones that required our families to move from Alaska to Boston to save their lives we remain in Boston to remain close to the hospitals because that's what we need and that's what our little girls need we turned in an IEP during that April 2023 enrollment period that was somehow lost so the information was never passed along to the school that my daughter was selected to go to nor was it passed along to anybody that had any contact with her this is my daughter this is Magnolia on October 17th of 2023 I went out to the bus stop to pick her up given that she is only four years old she was covered in blood her ear was severely lacerated to the point that she needed multiple stitches to put her ear back together she was left bleeding on a school bus for 14 minutes with no medical attention no attention from an adult the only care provided to her was from a second grade student BPS failed to make sure that my daughter's IEP was in place properly if her IEP had been in place she would have gotten her door to door transportation and she would have gotten her seat belt we still don't know what happened to her because my daughter does not speak very well BPS has failed my daughter and our family will carry permanent burdens permanent scars on her little body that will never be made right and instead of addressing this situation I have been pushed down my emails my phone calls have not been returned until today the day that I asked to be here on a public comment today is the first time that I have been heard today is the first time that somebody has made contact with me thank you Miss liof thank you for your testimony our next speaker is Terina Harrison Miss Harrison please unmute yourself and start your [Music] video yes [Music] ma' [Music] I'm sorry okay can you guys hear me yes we can see you thank you okay sorry my internet's going in and out so I'll try to be as quick as possible um hello everyone my name is Terina I am an active oh I'm from Roxberry my daughter goes to orcher Gardens um K througha Pilot School um I am an active member at the oron school community as a parent as a parent mentor and and a parent council member I see the needs of my community and how the budget doesn't match the needs there are so many things that orra Gardens can benefit from when it comes to this budget but instead we are losing over a million dollars while there are so many examples I can provide and we'll name just a few today the seated in the auditorium needs to be updated excuse me needs to be updated some of the seats are broken and let's be honest one size do not fit all the gym could use some updating specifically the bleaches new equipment is needed old basketball uniforms um it's sad when a staff member have to reach out and get a donation of uniforms for their teams the students are working hard to be on our sport teams and they deserve to have uniforms that represent their school pride that should include new uniforms for all participating in sports like cheerleading basketball football soccer and much more proper ventilation and Pest Control 30 seconds I'm sure is very hard to keep pest under control at school but how do you with the construction going on black rap traps around the school outside the school can help keep most of the road away from the school some B orans have Mar and some don't why is that Mary should be in all bathrooms um you talk about building new schools but but what are you doing now with schools that have that have their buildings being fixed up properly all say we need more money Harrison thank you thank you our next speaker is Ruby Reyes um hello my name is Ruby Rees and I'm the executive director of the Boston education Justice Alliance in Dorchester resident City and central office leadership have begun to announce that there will be a list of school closures in the spring as you all are preparing to vote on another msba proposal Bia wants to remind you that you also voted on the following proposals for school buildings and projects the Taylor and Shaw schools were merged and a school building site has not been designated yet the McKinley or the Mel kingies were promised a building which has resulted in camera upgrades for increased student surveillance and their basketball hoop was removed to make space for additional parking Renovations have not begun the promised Renovations for the Blackstone buildings and walls have resulted in the school Community only being told they need Electric System upgrades to add walls as the only progress the Edwards has impossible Renovations left to open for a projected fall 2024 the Jackson man has not moved forward in any direction the o'briant school Community fought to keep their school from moving to West Roxberry it was a terrible proposal in process in retaliation the money set aside for their desperately needed Renovations have suddenly disappeared because they demanded an authentic process and developed their own student parent and educator Solutions the promised bcla mccormic Renovations that were supposed to be completed for their merger has resulted in their seniors at the old bcla building and the new msba proposal before you today this is a list of projects that are nowhere near completion there will be more school closures where is the list of completed School openings and building Renovations when will transparency be provided for community members and those most impacted the answer should be now thank you thank you Mr the next group of speakers are Terina no sorry Karen Wilkinson Luso Roy carp and Lis bergson Karen Wilkinson if Tarin if Karen Wilson is not in the meeting we can um go to our next speaker Jessica lus oh so Karen declined Jessica lus is next hello hi uh my name is Jessica lus I'm a parent of two children who attend the JP Manning school I live in Rosendale my son is in fifth grade he's had an IEP since K1 and has benefited beyond measure from the Manning inclusion model and we're so grateful for that but I'm here tonight imploring you to reconsider the radical changes that BPS is pushing through at my kids school and for inclusion schools throughout the district inclusion at the Manning is a model with excellent outcomes we represent a school with one of the highest percentages of children with disabilities at 24% and the plan to reduce the model to Shared learning Specialists across gate grades is a Market reduction in Services moreover the caregiver Community has been left out of any conversation about these changes and in fact from what I can tell essentially duped by BPS to participate in IP efforts that were ultimately an exercise and futility it's beyond disappointing that BPS would pretend to Value community and teacher input in this way only to push forward a top- Down plan it appears that we are losing six beloved teachers from our school including our library Pera our Music Teacher and perhaps most alarming the only two black teachers in our school it's alarming that this plan is being pro proposed through a racial Justice lens but that framework is being selectively used when we think about structural racism and the loss of teachers of color our teachers have expressed profound stress and lack of confidence in leadership I can't imagine that my child would have experienced the with fewer resources and more overwhelmed teachers someone in the last session said these are humans not positions please listen to that I applaud efforts to roll out inclusion across the system and to make sure that every grade has the same level of investment and Resource as a member of the larger BPS Community I want all kids to have access to the model of inclusion that our school has demonstrated success in and our budget should provide for that thank you thank you very much next speaker Isa photo oh my name is sulea soo from the south end as a concerned parent I'm here again to highlight a critical issue undermining our children's education and within BPS as well as this budget process the systematic exclude in usion of students families and Educators from essential planning and decision making processes the BPS inclusion and Facilities plan as well as its budget process aims to meet the unique needs of Ells and students with disabilities and every other student however these ambitious plans are at risk of becoming an empty promise due due to a significant and consistent BPS oversight the lack of meaningful involvement of those that it aims to serves students families and educ ators alike find ourselves sidelined and our expertise ignored this isn't just an oversight it's a direct challenge to the high equality equity and inclusion values that BPS this committee and even the mayor profess the champion different from what you heard at the last budget meeting and I know I am not alone when I say this there seems to be a deliberate move by BPS Administration and the mayor to undermine genuine engagement even of this committee the reality is that closed doors and denied plans breed family seeking real dialogue eroding trust and devaluing the voice of the very Community BPS is meant to serve this approach is not just disappointing it's very destructive before you vote I urge the school committee to demand from BPS that beyond the seat at the table as a checkbox we have a central role in discussions on budgets facilities and inclusion strategies that it offers clear accessible reports on student family and educator engagement and decision making acknowledging and rectifying failures in current processes any efforts to dilute our participation must be resisted and reversed by this committee we need Frameworks that bolster not diminish our voice demand spaces where our concerns lead to action reflect our Collective and wisdom even yours thank you next speaker is Roy carp hello good afternoon please go ahead good evening my name is Roy karp I live in Rosendale with my wife and daughter who is a fourth grader at the Henderson inclusion school I'm testifying because I believe in the full inclusion mission of the Henderson the school has a power to transform lives and I know this firsthand from our A daughter's experience and many other families that we've gotten to know I here in solidarity with the B and their call for inclusion done right at the Henderson we have thoughts about how to do inclusion right our school has been held up as a model of inclusion nationally and has been celebrated in several documentary films but it's DPS central office no one seems interested in learning from our experience to the contrary many families feel like our model of inclusion is being systematically dismantled while we remain under interm leadership and increasingly tight control by District official our IP process was run in a way that was not inclusive of parent or Guardian voice our IP was one of several across the district that did not request any funding even as we Face a budget deficit we've been told over and over that the Henderson needs to change the way it does things that even though we are an autonomous Innovation school we need to change to fit the district's way of doing inclusion this includes hiring a new staff member solely to provide pullout SE grid Services rather than using our pushin model this at the same time that we're cutting a seventh grade history teacher um to provide co- teing in that class and many arts and enrichment programs the district seems to understand inclusion primarily as a way to deliver special education but at the Henderson We Believe inclusion is a whole school approach a way of being in community together and touches every aspect of our school and benefits all students whether or not they have an IEP I respectfully ask that BPS stop interfering with our school and let us be the truly Innovative school that our student staff and families have worked so hard to build thank you for listening and the opportunity to testify thank you very much next the last speaker is Louis bergelson hello hi hello my name is l berlon um I live in Dorchester and I I have two children at the Henderson inclusion School I'm speaking tonight because I'm concerned about the way in which inclusion inclusive education is being implemented districtwide by inflating the needs of students with disabilities with the needs of multilanguage Learners the districts ignoring that the respective needs of these groups are quite different putting multilanguage Learners into jet end classrooms without appropriate native language support is detrimental to both their native language and English learning separating students with disabilities from their peers and sub-par environments which which is the current inclusion plan for many schools including it seems to Henderson is by definition the very opposite of inclusion with the lack of adequate District support and a lack of clarity around BPS decision making our Henderson systems have been let down and our nationally revered inclusion model is being systematically dismantled we're we are pro sorry we are proof of a process BPS is creating that is less transparent and therefore harder to be accountable to for student progress there's valuated inclusion when it's done right but it's going to be detrimental if it's done wrong thank you for your time thank you very much chair that concludes public testimony for this evening back to you thank you Miss parix and thank you to those of you who spoke this evening and shared your perspective your testimony is very important to us our first action item this evening is to approve the Appo the appointment of Lena harix as executive secretary to the Boston school committee effective immediately if there are no questions or further questions I'll entertain a motion to approve the appointment of Lena as executory executive secretary to the Boston school committee is there a motion so moved thank you is there a second second is is there any discussion or objection to the motion hearing none Miss priv will you please call the RO thank you Dr alkins yes Mr K herandez yes Miss Lima Barbosa Miss limaa oh I said yes too quick sorry I unmuted myself yes sorry Miss po Garcia Mr Tran yes Mr O'Neal yes and Miss Robinson yes the motion is approved unanimously thank you and congratulations and we welcome you aboard thank you thank you very much conratulations our second item this evening is the grants for approval totaling $91,900 a robust group of Grants uh this evening uh if I'll happy to take any individual questions on them but this is going to be Grant season going into it and uh I think in your packets you have the relevant information for each of them uh as well as uh you know what we're thinking in terms of measure so I would encourage you to vote affirmatively for them so we can begin the work great thank you I'll now open it up to questions and comments from the committee Dr alins um yeah this so this is still about um just improving like how we're getting this like as a group um and just shifting i' love I mean I'd love to work sort of offline with um you all to think about how these pieces are can become more digestible for us um you know just even just simple things to me like moving around of the purpose a lot of the times like as I'm reading this it's like I feel I feel like I'm halfway if not 2third of the way through the document before I understand what the purpose of the grant is um and just shifting that stuff around so I think it's easier for us to understand upfront I mean that not that the details are not important about is it if it's a renewal or those things are important but I think it's secondary and tertiary with respect to sort of what we're doing and then how we're comparing it and then just continuing to um ask for updates around are we creating a system where we can go in and check to see the grants that we've previously approved and then check the progress on them um I don't I don't know where we we just are with that um so I just want to ask yes so the grant office is working on that um and and I think that they'd be happy to sit and take any recommendations Dr alkins as to how to make it more readable uh I do appreciate that some of the grants are dense and uh there's a lot of information in there so uh certainly if there's an easier way for the committee we're happy to do that thank you right if there are no further questions I'll entertain a motion to approve the grants as presented is there a motion moved thank you is there a second second there any discussion or objection to the motion Miss proiv will you please call the thank you chair Dr alkins yes Mr candes yes Miss Lima Barbosa yes Miss palano Garcia Mr Tran yes Mr O'Neal yes Miss Robinson yes the grants are approved unanimous thank you our third action item for tonight is the Massachusetts school building authority core program statement of Interest bcla mccormic 7 to 12 school and now turn it over to our superintendent for opening comments thank you chair and you know tonight we're following up on our February 28th presentation and asking the committee to vote in favor of the district's plan to submit a statement of interest for a new core project to the msba or the Massachusetts school building authority the application is due in April and requires an approval from the school committee as well as the city council uh the city council's Ways and Means Committee is expected to hold a public hearing soon and vote on the application in the coming weeks uh just as a reminder msba offers competitive grants to municipalities to support School construction and renovation projects the core program funds projects that include extensive PA repairs Renovations additions new school construction and so forth if selected BPS plans to design a full state-of-the-art campus for the bcla McCormick that will be part of the Columbia Point Community and connected to the UMass Boston campus as part of our community Hub school strategy um and I think we spoke last time about the vision of bcla McCormick being the first University assisted Community Schools Hub and and what a wonderful opportunity uh that will be for the school uh as you know BPS previously announced that the msba approved the district's proposal to create a state-of-the-art educational facility for the PA Shaw and the Charles Taylor Elementary School communities I want to thank our partners at msba for their continued collaboration and support uh BPS chief of capital planning D Stanis L is here tonight and certainly happy to answer any questions but I would ask for a favorable vote by the committee thank you I'll now open it up to questions and comments from the committee Dr ains yes I could could we just get a little bit of a refresher particularly on what the community engagement process is leading up to the submission of this and then what it the int of it is after let's say it's accepted um just so that we just have an idea of EXA like what exactly does community engagement like look like and I think we've been hearing that respectfully just as long as I've been on the committee um just what what what that what that would include for the bcla McCormick um process sure so Chief Stanis L do you just want to um speak to what you would typically do um relative to the msba project as we do the submission and then certainly if we are invited uh to the next round yeah uh thank you superintendent um thank you Dr alkins for that question um in terms of engaging um so BC um actually taking a step back how we look at engaging School communities in this process so in the past um we did not have like things like the FCA and the rubric to inform our um decision making on like how we're moving projects forward um within sort of like the big like Capital scope of capital planning um and some of the larger facilities infrastructure projects um as we've developed um these sort of like systems now so looking at um the rubric data um and having actual conversations with like School staff and and the school leaders and bringing this sort of like the school Community along and like this is what the data is telling us this is sort of like the reason why your school is being either like selected for a project Etc like this is I think that this is more like future looking um Community engagement process and a lot of this is going to happen as we start rolling out conversations about like mergers and closures and all of that good stuff where we are right now with the bcla McCormick I think that this is a little bit a lot different where the bcla McCormick is a bit different is that the merger for the bcla McCormick um commun uh Community happened years ago and there were a lot of um promises to that school community of like Renovations and expansions of um of uh sort of like expanding the number of students um on that campus um this has this came up as part of the mayor's announcement for the green New Deal um just like the Sha Taylor so as and and this time around as we had the data the data actually supports so as we look at the building experience for um and where the facilities is failing in terms of like ad accessibility for students um and in terms of like uh teacher and support spaces like right now they're split across two campuses um and in order for us to one to move forward with expanding the access for students and also uh expanding the access and the number of seats for students in the BCL mccor community because um they do have a weit list we've had to like um cap some of the enrollment there because of like some of the space issues that we've seen um we've I I myself um I've had a number of conversations with the school Community about the msba process um should their school be selected for the msba process the next steps would be that the msba the capital planning team the PFD team would work with the bcla um Community within with in I think the context of like the long-term um facilities work that we're doing in terms of like how we're looking at expanding the area we'll work with them on an ed plan feasibility study sort of like programming um and this the community kind of like gets to build it with um the msba and capital planning so all of the Ed plans the programming will be done with the Comm with the school community and any of like the stakeholders that they um share as part of the process so I think the process for the MSP is like quite a lot of Engagement with the school Community um should the BCL any school Community um I think that that's a process that we're going to be starting with the shaw later this year Shaw Taylor later this year as they were um selected through the eligibility period so just wanted to name that like future msba announcements um or School selections um the EM the engagement would look different I just think that um there was a lot of promises made for the for the bclm momic school community and just like moving on some of the promises that were made with that Community is important so thank you for that and I guess in the 12 seconds that I have left um I will since like since since I have you just I know that we've also had some recent workshops around the long-term facilities plan and so as always is there somewhat of a timeline for us as a committee to to sift through that or what perhaps were some new things that you all learned in those workshops just to report back yep um in terms of bringing it to school Community uh sorry school committee um we will be bringing um more of like the the work that we've done in the workshops and also um sort of like as we're working um as we start sort of like proposing like engagement plans to school communities Etc we will be bringing this um information to school committee to um for members to start like grappling with the data and understanding how we're making decisions right how we plan on making decisions and taking feedback I think in terms of like Community feedback um I think a lot of like what we heard through like the workshop sessions um is I think that we continuously hear in those sessions um the trusts that have been broken and and how we need to like work as a collective community um to build trust back I think collectively we've heard um especially from our high school students the importance of like things like uh gymnasium m music rooms um science labs I I think that um just like we've heard from our our multi multilingual families and also our student with special education um families uh the importance of um as we're doing this work right how we think about like breaking down like the systems that has like been built like in terms of like segregating um certain groups of students and wanted to push more on the data and how we're looking at the data to solve some of these systemic issues um and that's I think we've heard like a lot of good feedback that we're tying into the work and would love to come to the collective like school committee um members um to share that feedback and also to actually uh dig into some of the data that that were and and sort of like the logic of like how we're yeah thank you thank you Mr C Hernandez thank you so much just sort of a followup from the last time we were together uh I guess I'm wondering sort of in lie of a master facilities plan and understanding sort of our broader view for each grade banned if we don't if we are not to be approved for this funding from the msba is this still a priority project and will the do we anticipate building a new building to house these programs or is this just something that we're doing given the opportunity for funding like where does this live in a series of other priorities for the district um think that that's a good question I think that it sort of like Falls in um just like the the I think the shaw Taylor sort of like announcement like submitting to the msba um these projects are also a part of like the broader sort of like Capital planning um budget work that the city is doing in collaboration with BPS and I do think that um as a team will'll then need to like one it Still Remains a priority right for both the May and the superintendent I think as a collective team we then um come back together in terms of like how we sort of like prioritize all of the capital planning um projects the larger sort of like renovation and new bills um that is being proped moving forward sort of like Fair assumption if I'm reading between the lines it's a priority but not it is not one that is the highest that is like we're doing this whether we're funded or not or or we don't have enough information and so strike while the Iron's hot you know what I mean like do you get what I'm asking we don't have that sort of global picture around the vision it's hard for us to say like okay we were going to do this anyway this is the one to submit on because we were planning on doing it in five years or whatever right if we had a seven-year vision for the system um I guess sort of I'm trying to understand we vote on this in lie of another project is it still happening or you know so um I I would say that uh this was strategically picked um one because a lot of the work you know had already been talked about with the community um the UMass partnership makes it really uh unique in a lot of ways for an opportunity uh and so I would say yes this is a priority a priority project for us uh what we will always re-evaluate once we get additional information back from msba um and it may be that um you know if msba does doesn't fund it uh there'll be some you know it'll still go forward but it may not be able to go forward to the extent of what msba would have done but I would say that given the location the work that's already been done and the unique partnership with UMass Boston uh this is considered a priority project for us thank you you're welcome Dr alins yeah actually I mean so to I guess to follow up just like on that I guess you could also see the opposite too right if like have we if we've already it sounds like the project isn't a good place to to be funded it sounds like like what it is so the other question then could be do we have a plan for if it is funded does that the the funding that we would have originally allocated for it if the project didn't get funded does that go elsewhere and if so where um or are there ideas for that um that you all have been considering so y go ahead super I was just gonna say and Del certainly you should answer as well I I you know these when these are submitted to msba um it is very raw when it is first submitted um and so there's no details in terms of budget or dollars uh I think that uh we will always re-evaluate depending on the timing and if something else has come up as a crisis or something different but right now this is a priority project for us uh what you know what that means in terms of if msba msba doesn't fund it what that means in terms of what's available in the capital plan to dedicate toward it that's not something we're able to give you today um but it would we see this as a priority for the reasons um you know that I suggested uh andelle I don't know if you want to add to that I think that [Music] okay Mr O'Neal thank you madam chair and um I just have two thoughts on this one I very much and and uh Chief Stanis law hinted at this as as I believe the superintendent as well I very much view this and and Dr alkin your question about Community involvement ahead of time was was really interesting because I hearken back to all the community involvement in the original Talk of bcla and McCormack merging together as well as when um we had the conversation about the land next door the ball field being used for um potentially a Boys and Girls Club being built and then students be able to have it and so many promises were made at the time about what would happen with this building and and um quite frankly they weren't delivered on and uh the students there and the faculty there have made it very clear we have heard it in public testimony over the years about promises were made and you haven't done it and I've going out and visiting the school with the chair um you know we really saw and heard directly from the students how much they wanted this and so um to me I view this as a step towards fulfilling a promise to me it's never really completed until you have a ribbon cutting right um but it it's it's a big step forward because asking msba I think the district has learned so much now about what msba priorities are and how to work with them really streamline it down picking one strategically as a superintendent said this is very strategic particularly the addition of that work with UMass is going to be def defin I believe is going to be the defining feature of this school and make it a magnet for people wanting to be there so um um you know I'm I'm really encouraged by this step and it's such an initial step right just asking msba to consider it and it's almost visioning at this point um and that ties to my second point which is when I think of following very very closely this process for the cter school which has been many many years in the making the original submission of the msba was for a smaller project to just build a pool and msba turned it down because they said we don't build pools then we regrouped reconsidered proposed a whole new school and literally you know it's just all it is is a submission of Interest saying you know uh would you work with us on this and then the visioning process with msba when they dig in with their experts and see what is actually needed then they were like of course you need the full immersion pool right completely different from what they had said originally because it was it was part of the visioning of the school that they do so I'm I'm encouraged by this process having it it's it's a very very long process as the chair said last time the students who are there now will not be in the revised building because it takes a while they will have graduated by then um so this is for future students at the school um but I'm I'm encouraged and I think this will fit well from everything we understand of what msba looks for so I'm cautiously optimistic that if we support it and then the city council supports it it will hopefully be well received by msba Miss Lima Barosa thank you madam chair um thank you again for the conversation I think we've definitely addressed the mccormic even before my time probably since I was a student at BPS but I respectfully just wanted to uh move to make an motion to take a vote we still have to get this process done through city council that in itself can take its time too um I'm just looking forward for the students to finally for the future generation to finally have the you know building that they deserve so again just respectfully asking for a motion to take the vote thank you right thank you Miss Barosa Mr TR just a dumb question I guess um I have always been under the impression that uh any kind of projects rest within the perview of the uh superintendent and and this is only a statement of Interest why do we have to vote on it is it what what kind of requirement is this is it in the in our bylaw this is just a statement of Interest and we have to vote on it so yes so member Tron it comes from msba uh they require both school committee and uh city council I I think in general it is to show support on multiple levels from the district thank you okay great I want to go back to miss Lima Bar's proposal we have a motion on the table to take the vote is there a motion um um to authorize I want to entertain the motion to authorize the superintendent to submit the Massachusetts school building authority the statements of interest for the bcla mccormic 7 to2 school we have a motion is there a second second thank you so are there any questions or objections to the motion Miss provix will you please call the role thank you Dr alkins sorry I have a question I have a I have a question are we are we saying yes to the the the motion or yes to vote on a mo like I I I kind of missed that there we had the motion to vote to approve the submission that is what Miss Barosa proposed and so we had a motion it was seconded so that is what we're voting on okay um for the to approved the statement of Interest yes okay um yes Mr C herandez uh yes Miss Lima Barbosa yes Miss poano Garcia Mr Tran such a um such a bureaucratic process but anyway I said yes Mr O'Neal yes and Miss Robinson yes the motion is approved unanimously thank you our final action item for tonight is the student Opportunity Act I'll now turn it over to our superintendent for opening comments great thank you again Madam chair and to the committee for the affirmative vote on the msba um so as you know uh Dr eckelson uh who is the BPS chief of schools and accountability and Dr Leslie Miller BPS chief of teaching and learning presented on the student opportunity act or what we call the S SOA uh on the February 28th school committee to recap the SOA was enacted in 2019 to address ongoing disparities among different student groups BPS presented its first student Opportunity Act plan in April of 2020 as part of the district's strategic planning update and District operational plan the district is statutorily required to seek the approval of this body before submitting its 2024 three-year s SOA plan to Desi by April 1st on February 28th we looked at the we took the opportunity to focus on how the process will build on our 2020 submission with a focus of three of our key priority areas early literacy efforts the opport opportunities for Early College and Career Pathways and enhanced pipelines for educator diversity and qualifications we appreciated the enthusiasm with which the members responded to that presentation and to our ongoing commitment to continued progress in these areas and we also are very excited about this work since that meeting we've also begun to engage with key Partners in our school communities parents families and educ of our students this engagement will continue throughout the next 3 years as we continue to learn and adapt to what is best for our students on Monday March 18th you received a copy of the final submission that the district plans to submit to desie by the April 1st deadline I hope that tonight you will approve it unanimously thank you thank you and now open it up to questions and comments from the committee Mr cardet Hernandez I am just sharing I'm remembering this correctly part of what we talked about in [Music] the the last meeting was the Focus curriculum and the early literacy programs and while I'm voting yes because as usual I just think our we're against the clock and I was happy to see us having a conversation about data and outcomes particularly I remain incredibly concerned that we are using curriculum that is not has not been validated by external sources particularly in our earliest grades and I here and I have submitted questions and I don't know if those make their way sort of to the general public but I have submitted questions um about that process but I do just think it's really important for us to be circling back as a committee like we know phonic is the most important I bet you it's lovely curriculum but in this moment with the literacy outcomes that we have within our system and they're being existing curric ulum that is approved and validated um I just think it's really important for us to keep our eye on this conversation um and to do whatever it takes to get external validation or decide if like the thing we've created can't be validated then maybe we shouldn't use it um and so I just think that that's like just a really important conversation for us to to engage in yeah absolutely I Dr Miller and Dr eckson I I think uh in just a minute or two we can talk specifically about the high quality instructional materials and how we're vetting particularly for literacy so um we appreciate the the um the comment because we have as we shared um and lesie Ryan Miller shared last time we've been vetting all the curriculum in the case of focus we are really working on trying to get it vetted and the the issue with some groups is because we actually use other vetted curriculum as part of it so we use heger for phic awareness and foundations for phonics and so most places will not vet like partial use because they're so I I think that's been our challenge but we're getting very close to getting someone who can do that work um because that is really important to us uh that that is vetted and then we make any necessary improvements um that that vetting and review um demonstrates I appreciate that yeah as long as we it remains a priority and maybe it's something we Circle back to or we get an update when that validation starts to happen I hear that that it's parts of multiple curriculums and part of why it's tough to vet is people are looking for something that's whole and sequential in a way that is much more familiar um but it just you know it's the earliest moment of a student's experience and we know the most found ational part of someone's literacy journey and so like if there's a re there's a reason why external forces are not interested in validating this type of thing and so I just think we have to be asking ourselves the question even if a lot of really smart people have worked to build it and I appreciate the folks circling back to me on this thank you Dr alins yes thank you for um this report um in fact it's probably one of the first comprehensive three-year plans I think I've seen I think that addresses particularly um black and um Latina um student experiences multilingual learner experiences um very directly I actually have a question um particularly the section around the teacher recruitment pipeline as aspect and the number of programs that are listed there the statistics we've seen from those programs over the last couple of years I guess I'm concerned a bit around one being able to continue that process and then continuing that process amid what we've all are saying are like the Esser Cliff um and just what we've recently heard just around um how positions are changing within the district certain positions being let go or um recodified so just curious as to like what the current proposed budget does potentially to those those numbers moving forward right so um U I'll ask Chief KY if she wants to join but one of the things I will say is um you know we received a $5 million um US Department of Education grant that we are matching uh and so we're very excited about this because it really is enabling us to enhance the pipeline and to um look at particular uh positions like par of professionals as a way to be able to become teachers for educators of color um additionally uh director Martin is just continues to do an amazing job um with a lot of the pipeline program supporting all of our educators of color as they work through whether it's certification whether it's uh mtel uh or whether it's uh degree piece uh and so we are not you know taking foot off the gas in this in any way shape or form if anything I think with the uh waiver the emergency waivers um you know being Reed within Desi we're seeing that as a continuation to make sure that we're supporting every single educator uh and every single educator of color to get whatever the barrier is to that certification so um we see this uh you know whether it is um uh linguistic diversity whether it is racial diversity whether it's experiential diversity we're seeing this as opportunity in the pipeline work uh to to really drive this home uh and I Chief KY I don't know if there's anything else uh that you want to add with relative to rcd good um good evening school committee members um one of the things that we are trying to Leverage is a lot of our partners that um that that's doing this work with us so we are continuously reaching out to um partner organizations such as um some of our local um universities to try to figure out how do we move this work along um with the understanding that you know there there are some Financial restraints that the district have but like using the partners that we have to try to leverage that work has been one of the ways that like we intend on continuing this work by finding other sources um that sometimes it's not have to be money but like um finding resources such as you know individuals who can lend us their you know their educational facilities or you know make things um help our students um reduce the cost of some of the courses that we're um that they're engaging in so we are reaching out um finding other resources that not that's not necessarily always um dollar amount but like other means that will be able to um allow us to um continue this work before we move on are there any more comments questions if not I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the Boston Public Schools statutory student Opportunity Act submission to the Department of Elementary and secondary education as presented is there a motion so moved thank you is there a second second thanking is there any discussion or objection to the motion Miss provix will you please call the role hand excuse me Madam chair Mr Tran has his hand up oh I'm sorry I didn't see it sorry Mr TR I'm very sorry I'm I'm I'm it's not a question but I I just would like to put uh a me committee members unnoticed that I will abstain from this vote given my serious concern regarding uh inclus in inclusion practices that does not really address fully on plans for students with disability as well as bilingual students students with M multi uh lingual issues so just because of that I I I will abstain okay thank you thank you so where are we Miss Miss Peri will you please call the RO yes Dr alkins yes Mr CET Hernandez yes Miss Lima Barbosa yes Miss palano Garcia Mr Tran abstain Mr O'Neal yes Miss Robinson yes the motion is approved with five Y and one exstension thank you our last item tonight is a discussion regarding the superintendent's fiscal year 25 budget recommendations the superintendent has gathered the questions from members and this evening she and her team will provide additional information on those questions beyond the written responses we've already received she'll be joined by interim Chief Financial Officer David Bloom and her leadership team before I turn it over to the superintend I want to thank the members who have asked thoughtful questions and have taken the time to meet with the staff to understand the budget further this is a complex budget it's a $1.5 billion we will take a vote next week so I want to remind everyone that this is your opportunity to request changes or address areas of concern I will now turn it over to the superintendent for opening remarks great uh thank you chair and thank you again for the vote on the SOA uh tonight is the final fy2 budget hearing with a vote scheduled for next Wednesday March 27th would like to use this opportunity to address members outstanding questions about the fy2 BPS budget from the preliminary budget presentation which was on February 7th and the two subsequent budget hearings on February 15th and on March March 4th the answers to these outstanding questions were shared with the members in a memo last week which is also posted on the school committee website tonight we would like to walk through the answers we provided for two reasons one to provide additional context and address any additional questions you may have and secondly so that the public can have a better understanding of how members questions were resol OLED I also want to acknowledge the Massachusetts Municipal research bureau's questions many of which overlapped with members questions it is our hope this evening that members and the public have a deeper understanding of the complexities of the fy2 budget and how this budget is the first step in a multi-year process of shift Shifting the way that we serve our students first I'd like to take a moment moment to recap how we've engaged with the school committee and the Boston city council around this year's budget we've held four budget public hearings and school committee presentations my team attended more than a dozen meetings and fielded many many calls with individual school committee members we held 10 one-on-one meetings with City councilors or their staff last week we attended a public working session with the city council and I'd like to thank City councilor Brian warell who is the chair of the council's way Ways and Means Committee for reaching out to me and to BPS early in the budget process in a spirit of collaboration and for making meaningful suggestions to this year's budget we look forward to continuing to work with you and the rest of the city council also all of our budget materials available online at bostonpublicschools.org capital budget Big B for anyone who would like to review them more closely slide three is reoccurring because we would like to remind everyone that as we move the district forward we will continue to ground our work in what you have heard us call the high quality student experience in school buildings that support learning as we have said regularly the fy2 budget is about building the foundation to do the transformational work that we need to do but have been avoiding for decades as we decide how to best support our schools in fy2 we also need to be rethinking to think three to five years down the road we need to be thinking about making historic investments in inclusive education to the benefit of all students across the District of Shifting away from weighted student formula and continuing the reimagining school funding process that is now underway and shifting our physical footprint to better support the highquality student experience throughout this process we have re-evaluated our current spending to determine what should continue and what should end what is working and what isn't as chair Robinson rightly points out we must always evaluate how we are using our resources and if they're not meeting the needs of our students we need to repurpose those dollars to get better outcomes for tonight's discussion we've organized members questions around common themes that emerged in our hearings meetings and conversations and so those categories as you see General budget which includes funding model enrollment and technical details of the budget grants which would include Title One and Asser inclusive education overall academics and overall operations I'm proudly joined tonight by three my three deputies who will assist with answering followup questions as they come up in their areas Dr Linda Chen senior Deputy superintendent of academics Dr Sam deina Deputy superintendent of operations and Dr Anna Tavaris Deputy superintendent of equity community and family advancement we are also joined by the BPS budget team who has just done incredible work this budget season interim Chief Financial Officer David Bloom budget director Serena larac and director of state and federal programs Shera doovic we shared written responses to the questions last week some questions are more complex or have been asked by several members so this evening we will show all the questions that we've received and where members and the public can find the written answers we have also highlighted a few questions we want to share more specifically one question we've received from several members is regarding the formula we use to determine School budgets including the inclusive education allocations as we plan for the future of our schools we must move from an old model of one teacher responsible for a certain group of students to a team to a team teaching based approach a team Based Teaching approach means that there's a group of Educators and service providers who understand and can deliver the services and supports any student needs we've said it before but it's worth repeating every classroom with a Home Room teacher serving students with disabilities Andor multilingual Learners will have additional resources Beyond just the classroom teacher depending on the students needs it will they will we will determine that those additional resources may be like some examples include a Home Room teacher working with a team that includes a special educator Andor an ESL teacher Andor a parah to collectively create inclusive opportunities and provide the services students need this meant rethinking how we align school funding by planning for our highest need students first and looking holistically at current structures student students staff and programming when you look at the weighted student funding formula it really doesn't work for small schools or schools with declining enrollment dozens of schools across the district experien this and were only able to provide basic student Support Services with direct injections of soft funding and hold harmless over the years so what is the transition from weighted student formula to this year's budget and eventually a reimagined school funding approach in this transition year we started with the Baseline of what each school was given last year and then took into consideration several factors classroom configuration changes Investments for the students the school serves and for schools with increased enrollment allowing schools to keep their hold harmless on General funds and other smaller Investments I begin with this explanation because our budget represents our values and priorities we are undertaking enormous work and must ensure that we're thoughtful about the budget approach we take we'll now share the additional questions from the members in the five buckets mentioned above on this slide we've gathered all the questions related to the general budget as I mentioned written responses were sent to the members and are posted on the school committee website for the public the two questions we wanted to provide further context are are highlighted in yellow and I'll ask interim Chief David Bloom to join me for these questions the first question is about the long-term sustainability of our budget and this is something really important to us to think about and talk about as we recovered from the pandemic we were FOC we've been focusing on stability now we're taking a critical look at what we must invest in and where we can find efficiencies as our enrollment declines our budget increases why because in Boston our students often need more we have a higher population of students who are economically disadvantaged have disabilities or are multilingual Learners we must provide all all our students with both the academic and social emotional supports to ensure that they have what they need to succeed we also are shifting the way we serve students as we dismantle broken systems we know we can't rebuild them overnight we must continue to operate some of the ways that we're serving our students while we build a new infrastructure essentially creating parallel systems that both cost money a prime example of this is as we Implement our inclusive Ed plan and expand choice and options for students with disabilities and their families we still need to maintain some of our substantially separate programming as we've talked about we know that we're also operating too many schools that do not meet our expectations for the highquality student experience we must consolidate some of our schools so we can reinvest these resources into improving the experience at other schools and increase the number of students gaining that highquality student experience the fy2 budget is a step in the right direction but there are several more steps for us to take before I believe we'll begin to see a more efficient budget the good news is that BPS is in its strongest position ever to transform schools we have all the reports and the data to understand the problems and share that information transparently with our communities and we now need to do the work and sometimes to get the best outcome you have to spend more Upfront for the longer term benefit all of our work is deeply connected if we want to lower Transportation costs we have to make sure all of our schools are inclusive so parents have options close to home and students aren't spending hours on the bus if we want to spend less on emergency maintenance then we must renovate and build new buildings if we want to see stronger student outcomes then we must invest in high quality instructional materials and then ensure staff have the professional development to strengthen their skills and serve all students as we plan for FY 26 27 and 28 and Beyond we know we must continue to find efficiencies and we will as we've begun to do this year but we also know that it's going to take further investment to get us to where we need to be the next question we want to answer on this slide is related to what is perceived as a decrease in the number of bilingual Educators I'll ask Mr Bloom to join me in answering this in more detail but as we've shared while the technical components show this as a cut the reality is much more complex It's a combination of recoding of positions and how educators are classified in our systems updates in the number of ESL minutes required changes in the definition for SEI classrooms and the consolidation of some of our our classrooms so while this looks like a major cut in one part of the budget it's actually a reclassification of these dollars and is reflected in other parts of our budget as supporting inclusive ad I'll ask Mr Bloom to share more thank you superintendent um as the superintendent just mentioned uh the change that you're noticing in the tables and the number of teachers in the bilingual teacher codes has changed for three m reasons the first is the shift from BPS SEI to Desi SEI programming as um our the way our system works is that when a teacher is working only with students in ELD levels one through three in what the district has historically called SEI they're coded as a bilingual teacher when they're operating in the desie definition of SEI they are not coded as a bilingual teacher because they are working with students in addition to their other students with other um classifications in addition to students with ELD levels one to three as a result as some of our classrooms have shifted from our district defined seci to Desi's model our Technical Systems have updated the codes of those positions to reflect their new um program however this does not mean the position is ending and it does not mean that the teacher in that position is being accessed from a school experience lens that teacher is still there um teaching a home room in the same way they were before it's just that the combination of students in that Home Room are slightly different the second thing that's changed is the change in ESL minutes in negotiation with desie and the Department of Justice there's been a change in the minimum requirements um for ESL minutes for students especially in El level one and three these minutes on paper would require a significant reduction in ESL teachers however we largely did not take that reduction instead refocusing the resources of those ESL teachers es with uh to focus on meeting the needs of our multilingual Learners with a special focus on ESL supports for multilingual Learners with disabilities the final thing that has happened is classroom consolidation of classrooms that have historically been District SEI classroom there are some schools and programs where we have historically operated District SEI programs in more grades where there is no longer enrollment to support those programs and they're being phased out and Consolidated into the rest of the school those are the things that might seem the most like a cut from our previous definition but are the smallest part of the three parts I mentioned the other thing I would like to note about the way our Technical Systems work is that the bilingual teacher label is a reflection of the students served in the classroom not the language capacity of the teachers bilingual teachers are coded that way when they are serving entirely students who um are learning English we're M uh uh multilingual learners but it does not mean that this teacher themsel is bilingual that information is separately recorded through our office of human capital and we are not necessarily um able to collect it universally thank you super thank you David um so at this point we'll move on to the next bucket of questions which are related to Grants and specifically uh questions related to title $1 and Esser and I'll ask both uh David and U movik to join me uh to be able to answer some of the highlighted questions um thank you Yu uh the so in regards to this question about Title [Music] One schools spend Title One money every year in the first year of the two-year Title One Grant so every year when we get title one we have two years to spend the money schools are allocated money their share to spend in one year in the first year of that grant that money runs from September 1st of the year through August 31st so it's a slightly different fiscal year than the rest of our funds in uh for FY 23 there um some of that money was unspent it is unspent for a variety of reasons that depend on the school Community the other thing to note and is being referenced here is that a portion of our Title One funds are required to be spent solely for the benefit of multilingual Learners those funds are uh schools bake individual plans to spend those funds at their school level in collaboration with oversight from the finance department and the office of multilingual Multicultural education those plans are reviewed both before during and after the expenditures if any of that money for multilingual Learners is left unspent at the end of the year which it was in the case of FY 23 there's always a little bit left unspent that money is gathered together across all of the schools and given to the office of multilingual and multiculture cultural education to identify programs and services to best support multilingual Learners some of the ideas in the past that may continue are things like acceleration acmy additional tutoring or other curricular supports to students um to support their continued learning it is too soon to say how much of their FY 24 uh Title One is being spent because a lot of that work is still in progress that money runs through August of 2024 and we'd be happy to come back and give the committee an update later in the year on progress towards spending the fy4 and I'll now turn it over to Shir to talk a little bit more about Esser good evening um I'm going to address these two questions uh how much of Esser is being rolled and how much is unspent I'm going to address them actually in the reverse order um in your documents you have um a more detailed numerical breakout of this um but in summary so far year to date um and across the three years of erer 2 and three we have spent $278 million um when I say spent I mean both encumbered and actually paid out some of that money particularly from this year are um are have uh is encumbered in purchase orders and contracts and will be paid out shortly during the year just as a a quick breakdown from our previous presentations the way that number uh looks is that $65 million of spending took place in fy22 $141 million of spending took place last year in FY 23 and so far to date we've spent um 72 million in fy4 now while that sounds might sound like there's a lot of additional Esser on the table we're we're actually very certain that we're going to spend far more than that this year to meet our existing salary and benefit obligations for current Esser employees we'll spend an additional $32 million this year um and we are using Esser to pay for another estimated $17 million of increased Collective bargain in costs we also anticipate spending approximately $43 million of other non-personnel funds that currently have a specific Focus so these are things like a partnership that a school has explicitly planned and documented that they're going to work with um curriculum that a central office is going to purchase all of those numbers I just shared total up to 370 million which means that we're currently projecting um a carry forward or a roll over into the first few months of um fiscal year 25 July August and September um we're projecting to carry forward approximately 19 million in Esser in the previous two budget hearings um the superintendent and our team has shared a set of commitments for using two 12.8 million um dollars of that funding to sustain key portions of Esser Investments for an additional year and I'll just remind um for at least another year and I'll remind the committee that um none of the uh none of the programming that's being funded for an additional year in this way is Staff um so no positions are left in question because of this strategy um all remaining carry forward after those commitments um is being set aside to offset any unanticipated costs in fy2 related to opening schools needing to open new classrooms mid year um or unforeseen costs related uh to the first year of the inclusion rollout and other things and now I'll pass it to Dr Chen um for the next set of questions good evening school committee members um I'm going to answer some of the questions that are on the slide here around um a better understanding of the IP process so the inclusive education planning team is a team that is in every school and it has a formal role um in terms of its composition as determined by an agreement with the btu so that is 50% BTU members that are elected and the other half uh School leader appointed the purpose um for these School level teams um is to ensure that staff who know their students best come together to establish a vision for including all students by reviewing their current assets the areas of need and how instruction and services are currently delivered and then to discuss how they can create opportunities to provide greater access to grade level learning um with the assessment of student need and current staff capacity to do so what's particularly important here in this process that makes it also more challenging is that we are moving away from a centrally uh mandated centrally driv driven process of sorting and assigning students to classes based on disability or language instead we want to make sure that when we are considering how to best include Learners the team considers both ways to include students with disabilities different levels of learning as well as multilingual learners but also is able to include those students but also consider when students need to be grouped by similar need when it's educationally necessary part of that really is ultimately making sure that we have a Continuum of services that's fluid for our students available at each school or across a region so that students can receive the instruction and services they need based on Family Choice so this requires the IP to take a close look at how they currently use their resources or Personnel each school is provided with the resources needed um as our CFO shared to meet IEP and ESL needs as part of their budget the IP consideration is to be able to look at how to increase and create flexibility so that schools can provide the instruction to students in inclusive Ive classroom settings while there isn't Only One Singular narrow way to to meet those needs across situations as the superintendent mentioned what we find um is most helpful is to think of it as a team-based approach where one teacher is no longer solely responsible for the need the to support the learning needs of all of the students students in one class rather it really takes a team approach where teachers work in tandem to provide grade level learning for instance a Home Room teacher Works alongside an ESL teacher a special educator an intervention teacher or a learning specialist to be able to meet the needs of a diverse group of students given that the constellation of the students may vary in any given class therefore the team would also vary depending on the needs of the students to that end the IP submitted a plan for how they plan to organize their classes and what staff would be needed the specific goal was to ensure that staff looked at the direct student facing needs in the impacted grades as you recall in our inclusive education plan we are not um uh tackling this with all grades in the first year essentially there's about a third next year a third the following year and a third the year after to make sure that we can Implement in incremental ways in this complex um budget year um some of these Staffing requests were also conflated with the simultaneous needs um in terms of positions that may Sunset because of Esser understandably so as a school thinks about the whole needs of the school there were other requests that were made that were beyond the impacted grades and were beyond the student facing um needs that we are prioritizing So to that end um there were various ways in which we approach this in terms of looking at what does the school already have in place what can they use and in many cases there were multiple ways to leverage existing staff in other cases there were additional supports that were needed to both provide the opportunity for students to be included as well as students in substantially separate settings to be given some part-time um opportunities in the inclusive classrooms as well we discussed some of the questions related to the focus curriculum and I can certainly um talk more about that but in the interest of time I want to also make sure that we move forward um we are um in what we shared with the SOA presentation as well as uh a memo that we shared with the school committee um do recognize that we have much work to do in making sure that students are in fact able to read write speak and listen in ways that are at grade level and that is specifically why um we are making sure that we have the ability to provide um tier one instruction with highquality instructional materials the instructional supports that are needed to give all students ACC access to that curriculum and also to provide additional sometimes we call it mtss but multi-tiered systems of support most typically it has come through the support of reading interventionist which is also part of this uh current budget and with that I will turn the slides back over to I believe I'll take it I'll take it Linda uh so thank thank you Dr Chen very much um the last bucket of questions is around operations and so I would ask deputy deina and director of Transportation Dan Rosengard to come on and be able to uh talk through some of the questions that are highlighted thank you superintendent uh thank you Dr Chen um and good evening school committee members and members of the public joining us this evening I want to start by just publicly thanking the Operations Division team for helping us organize all the questions we've received and helping to um compile all the answers to your questions and we're happy to share them with you um publicly in documents as well as answer specific questions now with regard to the questions that you see here we're going to focus on the transportation questions that were um that were asked and there were three specific questions we'll take them in order um as we go as noted in uh previous budget hearings the fy2 budget includes a $12 million increase in costs those costs are largely driven through our yellow bus operator private transportation for students in transition in rampf for our bus yards although not specifically noted on the slides these cost increases were also partially offset by 5 million in reductions within the transportation department as the inclusive education plan is fully implemented over over the next few years more students are able to attend schools closer to home we do anticipate seeing a reduction in the overall need for transportation however we do not anticipate seeing a reduction in transportation needs during this upcoming school year it will take several years for the inclusive education plan to roll out across all grade levels additionally current students are grandfathered in such a way that they have the option to keep their current School assignments we are also seeing growth in transportation needs as a result of increased numbers of outof District placements and students in transition we'll continue to monitor each of these areas to improve our projections and look for opportunities to reduce overall Transportation volume the $5 million I referenced earlier also includes $1 million in icies that we've been able to realize this past school year I also want to thank the transportation team who tirelessly continues to make progress to implement systemwide improvements including many of the recommendations by the Council of great City schools these include first the lift partnership earlier this year we were able to partner with lft and the transportation team is now able to deploy lifts or car ride shares to families as a last resort backup Transportation option in situations where BPS transportation is unable to provide a student with their IEP mandated Transportation on any given day as you aware we worked tires tirelessly to increase uh our driver pool and our bus monitor pool to date um just to remind everyone uh our goal was to hire 743 drivers to date we've been able to hire 735 of those drivers and have 27 in training our goal for bus monitor hiring was to hire 750 monitors to date we've hired 743 with 12 in the process of being um on boarded uh currently as a result of the progress made in hiring and retaining monitors we have only had to use this option for the ride shares in limited cases so far we average about one to two of these rides per week given the cost of a round lift this is not a cost-saving mechanism however it has provided the district with an additional Last Resort backup Transportation options for our families regarding the M7 MBTA passes uh starting back in the in 2022 to 2023 school year these p classes have been distributed to all students in grades 7 through 12 including those students who also have yellow bus transportation in their IEPs we have been working with the office of specialized services to help provide traveling training resources for students in grades 7 through 12 Who currently receive ybus service through their IP such that when appropriate those students can be supported in transitioning to traveling on the NBTA additionally students in grade six can opt into an NBA pass in L of yellow bus service ridership policies and procedures um our transportation team has completed benchmarking of ridership policies with other districts and it's now working collaboratively with the transportation advisory Council to develop a ridership policy recommendation for the district I want to thank all the members of the transportation advisory Council for all their feedback and input on this work today this will likely include a clause around suspending a student's Transportation assignment if a certain number of consecutive days of non- ridership with an option for families to reinstate bus service bus services later as needed as well we're also piloting an optin approach to trans ation the summer for our extended uh service year program through these efforts we hope to be able to implement a ridership policy that makes sense for the district and our families this will also help ensure that we are focusing our resources on those students to rely on yellow on rely on and use yellow bus services with regard to routing and Technology um we are rolling out more efficiencies with the use of GPS tablets the transportation department completed an RP process last summer for new Transportation routing technology as well as GPS tablets we are currently working through the implementation of these purchases the new technology is aimed at improving routing efficiency and providing GPS navigation tablets on buses to improve bus operations tablets also include ridership tracking features which will enable us to better identify students who are consistently not writing to support implementation of the ridership policy mentioned above and support more efficient bus routing the transportation team is committed to continuing to think critically about all aspects of our transportation to look for opportunities to improve efficiency and ensure we are providing safe reliable transportation and cost effective Transportation which is one of our operational goals um before I uh turn it back over to superintendent I also want to address uh questions that came up regarding our athletic Investments um we have to date um about a $4.8 million budget planned for for um the transportation the athletic department uh next school year um we have about 2.3 million for coaching stiens 1 million in central staff 1.5 for equipment contracts and officials fees and that work will continue to expand our focus in athletics will be to continue participation for both boys and girls students in all sports we plan to continue to invest in sports at the elementary school level to help increase in um uh expose students at a younger age to our athletic opportunities we're also going to continue to invest in college tours and opportunities to connect student athletes with secondary institutions we've contined to H to we will continue to have all of our high schools registered as MIAA members and uh and complying with all Mia rules and regulations to date this year we've made Investments with our Essa dollars that will have years of an impact for example we've invested in bleachers lights in our gymnasiums weight rooms we've we we revamped our athletic trainer model we've offered summer athletic camp opportunities and most importantly during the year large scale academic enrichments we anticipate those to continue um over the next few years um and look forward to more continued success and hopefully bring home more championships uh um for the city with that I'll turn it back over to superintendent great thank you Dr deina um so really chair this this is concluding I just want to thank you for the opport to share information and as I reflect um myself of where we began and where we've come um I really want to thank the committee and each member of it uh you have been really tireless in advocating for certain areas that have caused us to think differently um so many different questions in a in a great way to be able to get us to think about it and to make sure in the budget that things are funded appropriately um and I think many of your questions reflect the public comment uh that we've heard over the course of the hearings and tonight um but it's really been an investment of your time each of you to get us to the point that we are with the budget um as I reflect there's certain areas that I know we have since the Inception of the budget process to now um gone back in the budget Revisited and in some cases made um made alteration uh areas around mental health and social emotional supports um there were many of you that raised that as concerns uh and wanted to make sure uh how we were funding it and to advocate for that certainly on school-based budgets um really encouraging us to go back into the budget and to be able to put as many dollars as we could toward our schools uh and toward the services that are going to help our kids uh and that that really caused us to go back in efficiency dollars and really look at Central budgets uh to the tuna 17 million to be able to redirect back to uh back to our schools uh and students and staff um the pipeline strategies at all levels for for our staffing uh and that really is recruitment it is development and retention uh removing barriers uh for educators of color and advancement uh and so that was even brought up this evening but it's been a theme of the questions along the way restorative justice School culture um and making sure that uh you our schools are places where students see themselves and have a strong sense of belonging um and what comes with that you know with our restorative practice uh alternative education I know there's been a lot of questions around our approaches of chronic absenteeism approach to alternatives for Dropout uh and that really caused us to go back and look at alternative education in a different light as I think we reported out at the beginning of this meeting uh bilingual education has been since the Inception uh and one that we are constantly uh focusing on but that really is around our staff our hiring of our staff our attention of our multilingual staff access to native language and expansion of that um for our Learners uh in literacy and reading which was a core conversation tonight and that even extended relative to the libraries and making sure that our libraries are staffed in a way that um support uh as well as reading Specialists uh in our reading efforts across the district so I just want to thank the committee for what's been a really thorough process but also one that's been um I think one that's evolved over time as it should over the last several months and uh I hope that the budget that um we're sharing with you tonight does reflect that and certainly happy to take questions and to to hear any other uh suggestions and recommendations so thank you chair thank you um as I said earlier to my fellow members this is your opportunity to this discuss the you know discuss the budget ask ask all of your questions if you have concerns what is it that you would like to see change I also want to remind members that in addition to this meeting the superintendent and her team are available to meet with you in discuss your areas of concern or interest we will vote on the budget next week and now I want to open it up for questions Mr C Hernandez yeah thank you so much for the update and walking through some of those key questions um Ju Just as a question for next week there was additional questions that I submitted that aren't in the final list so I'm just wondering if we'll go over those I submitted another 10 or 12 uh yes so um so first of all thank you for those uh whatever we didn't answer this evening we will be able to get back to you um but they were because they were submitted so close uh we were preparing for this um but we we will provide what we haven't covered tonight member Cadet Hernandez in writing copy the question I want to move through a few things and I I'll go through a second round I guess the biggest thing I'm curious about is around the sort of community engagement piece we are sort of we've been alluding to the fact that we will be making announcements in the next few weeks around School mer closures mergers consolidations then that will continue to be a process we're going to go through once this year and then again next year I suspect um I'm curious where in the budget can you point us to that shows given the history of um Community engagement around some of these processes like where are we beefing up or moving resources or consolidating to make that process feel better particularly given that I think the suspicion is that that number in order to realize some of these other things we're talking about will be large so I think it's in several areas um first of all um the the capital planning team itself as a unit began on Esser uh and we have developed that out uh and we have actually added to it even on aser to knowing uh the kind of robust Staffing and infrastructure that we needed there we've now moved that on to the general budget so it's secure and that staff is really dedicated to the kinds of projects that we're talking about and eventually relative to consolidations uh you know Andor uh a closure um I also think with family engagement there's a lot of work that's happening as we' strengthened family Liaisons and we've worked around capacity building there there's lots of um cross uh work that's happening between the Departments of capital planning uh working with Communications which is also a big investment area that we've made off of Esser and now moved on to the general budget as well as uh the family the community and family engagement area so um at the district level there are a number of things that began on Esser and then as things evolved we had to shift but they're in the areas that will enable us to have the kind of support and capacity that as we take these projects on uh they'll work in relative to the community engagement and most importantly supporting community Through transition and as we move into maybe it's next week or in the response I think it would just be really helpful to see knowing that some of you're we're talking about a lot that existed under Esser fund moving to the general fund but if we're amping up the the amount that we're doing are we building a team that's going to be able to be responsive to what seems like a pretty major policy shift that we're moving through as a district and if you can point us to that even if it's headcount or structure um it seems like a place we have to invest in given the shift so I'm just not you know I'm hearing the move from Esser to general fund which is great but I'm not understanding sort of what's new and different going into a big policy change that we'll see next year so David I don't know if you want to take that now and actually point to member CIT Hernandez where those are or if you want to um respond um I'm happy to start now and then I'll I'm sure we'll provide it more detail answer in writing but the thing I would just say about it is while the policy shift is happening in a lot of ways for next year the work is actually happening this year um and so a lot of the investment in staff and additional capacity are actually reflected in the FY 24 budget not the fy2 budget so your your your observation is accurate a lot of the the new money that we're spending in general fund is in the shift of things from from Esser to general fund because we've been ramping up those services so that we're ready for next year too often in the past we've said to you at this time of year we're coming to you with this big new project we're excited to start it next year and there's money in the budget for next year and the problem with that is you can hire somebody then in July or August or September for work that you're trying to start in September and that's very hard to do it's very hard to get people hired that quickly and move things forward so the wonderful benefit we've had with Esser is the ability to really get this work started under the superintendent's Direction in advance and so yes in the formal budget what you're seeing is a lot of moves from Esser to general fund but really A lot of those moves or positions that were new for this year as this ramped up and uh I'm sure we'll need to give you much more detail in writing as youve asked for for instance there's I think a total of 12 FTE that are dedicated to Capital planning and they're they're finishing their hiring now so to David's Point uh the scale up has really been tremendous over this year uh and that is really the team that's going to support but then additionally in Communications there were some I believe five or six positions that were hired out that will complement and support as well and maybe that can just be the sort of sharing what the structure is of that team it's the thing we're always hearing concerns about and we are not even managing at a large scale right now so it sort of begs the question and again not I have no idea sort of what's to come but I'm making assumptions based on the presentation and what we've talked about here that it's it's a significant policy the last question I have for this round is just around special education we heard a lot particularly from families from the Manning about the shift in their model and so I have a lot of curiosity and I if you can help us understand sort of I'm un I was unclear I don't think I voted for the reform for this reason like I was unclear about um sort of like what are schools being asked to do and like what is the the district Vision around special education it felt like we heard from a lot of people engaged in this process and then were rejected in the process of like we have a vision for special education that's what we were asked to do and it doesn't meet the district's Vision but the District's Vision may have not been clear and then you have successful schools who have been doing inclusive education who have served as a model for the city who are saying they've actually experienced incredible disruption to their existing model and service of the district model um that is now part of a sort of funding formula for how we're thinking about inclusive education can you sort of help us make sense of that what we're hearing how you understand it and and sort of where the middle ground is and then I think specifically too like what's the story that's happening with a school that's already serving kids in an inclusive setting really well or better than other schools in our system and how they're experiencing this change so David do you want to just uh talk about the crosswalk of the IP to the budget process and then I have a few things I'll add in yeah I'll say um I think one of the things that has been definitely been hard this year as we've been doing that crosswalk of the IP process to the budget is we've taken a a very close look at the specific connections between what's actually in the IEPs and what's reflected on budget too often historically we relied on these sort of disability codes as a proxy for need when building budgets and so much more as you've heard from the superintendent Dr Chen our budgets have really been built built more based on the needs of IEPs um and apologies because I'm coming in from leave I might not get the examples perfectly right but what I can say and I don't think this is about the school you mentioned but just to to say as an example of a conversation I was in this winter um there are some schools where we told them they had to hire more staff to service kids outside of the classroom as a part of their inclusive education plan and that feels contradictory we made them budget more staff who are designed who whose sort of job is to serve kids outside of the core classroom as a part of their inclusion plan right and so you know I heard some things that public comment like how can those two things be true and the answer is that what the inclusion plan does is meet the needs of kids in the general education setting for there to be included as much as their IEP directs us to and allows but also to make sure we're meeting the needs on their IEP that says they need to have Services provided outside the classroom and what we found in some cases when we were doing this deeper review is there were schools who are trying to identify ways in a very positive spirit to meet the needs of kids inside the classroom that are actually some of them are required to happen outside of the classroom for a variety of reasons that I'm certainly not expert in and so I won't dive into and so I think it's been a little bit of a challenge for us to explain that for we're making you budget this position to work with students outside of the classroom when we're focusing on inclusion as a part of your inclusive plan um it's been a sort of hard conversation for us to have but the goal is really to make sure that the staff that are providing services are reflecting the needs that are on kids IEPs and I think as we continue to revise our IEP process and our budget process alongside it the thing that we've committed to do Under the superintendent's Direction and with support from our steering committee that met for reimagine school funding and others is to make sure that our funding system is being driven by student needs and the instructional models we're planning to meet the needs of students versus having a funding system that then directs certain types of student need uh sort of instructional models being the only ones you can afford so I'll just say that's what I saw sort of to your question through this process um and I'll sort of definitely welcome any any followup questions we have that's helpful yeah the only thing I would just add to that sorry chair the only thing I would just add is that I do think in and it's understandable um given that schools were feeling the loss of Esser and even though we did good work last year and the leaders in their school site councils did good work in moving things over to the general ener budget in the first round of the IPS there was a lot of blending of trying to put forward positions that had been on Esser that were not directly connected to IP uh and put them forward to try to to maintain those positions and I think that really was a big Delta in what we ultimately funded schools versus what was asked for so and it's understandable because at Day end uh many people said it this isn't just about a position this is about human beings and people that are connected to the community and so having been a school leader I understand fully why that kind of U from the community side was the approach but at day in with the IP we were really trying to look at the resources that existed in the school and then what did we need to add over and above that to make it work okay Dr alkins had you raised your hand and lowered it um I'm not seeing any hands right now but I saw a few a minute ago no I did it was actually basically that follow-up question around what particularly have we learned from like the IP process um but also I I also think that like what we've heard tonight and I had mentioned this weeks ago around what I had heard was was was not like I guess like the response resonate with me in the same way um because it felt because it also felt like schools and school leaders and and respectfully those School communities were feeling like they the positions that they had asked for were really necessary just to maintain Baseline of what they were doing and and and it feels that they were I don't want to say robbed but at the same point in time that they were um their ability to now even operate at compliance level is compromised be like had been compromised through this process and so I'm trying to reconcile that um still not there but you know really trying to reconcile that and so I'll definitely follow up with some questions but um have to collect my thoughts on this to that end superintendent while we're on this particular topic um as school opens and you know programs get settled in um are there additional resources set aside to help to go back and to amend you know what the actual needs are in schools if it turns out to be different than the expectations of these current allocations yes thank you chair that's a great question um so so the answer is yes we uh I think we've presented a couple different times about keeping a small reserve so that we are able to go again this is about students and student need driving it and so um if we're seeing that uh something is not working based on the student need then that's what that Reserve will be for um David I don't know if you want to speak a little bit more to that yeah I would i' love to just quickly add that we're not going to wait until the start of the school year um the the real challenge for some of our schools has been there have been whole groups of students who haven't had access to their school Community before and so we don't know what's going to change right um there's a school um example I used earlier where they literally had zero students with disabilities in K2 they had 33 kids and I think maybe one kid had speech services but um zero other students right so there was no instructional need for special education so when their IP team met they didn't have a lot of data to go on it's not not their fault not the school community's fault nothing they've done wrong right they just don't know and so for a school like that we're GNA learn a lot more in April and May as we start to see who gets assigned to their school for K2 and if there's a change we need to make then we'll be to make it then right and so yes it's definitely going to be an adjustment during the year as we see needs change and things flare up but it's going to be something that we're reviewing weekly or bi-weekly as much as is relevant starting really in the middle of April as soon as we have that information about student needs and where where they're planning to attend school thank you Mr carded Hernandez just a few more questions um I guess four steps back because I've asked a lot of questions about sort of the future of the whole harmless process and when we move away from that so that we can consolidate resources and I think actually probably a lot of the sort of Staffing concerns we've heard about and things like that get addressed when you start creating larger clusters of kids to support program needs and maybe this connects to the second question so like there's a part of me that's like when when is the end of holding harmless and like difficult decisions and then I guess at the same time like what is the reimagine student funding and when does that roll out and when are we engaged in it as well yeah so David I'll if you want to start that one and I'll chime in yeah um so the thing I'll just say is in a lot of ways into the first part of your question this was the hardest year um because of the end of Esser primarily but also because this was the first year we didn't run weighted student funding and despite the fact that we had talked about it with school leaders that we had a school leader Advisory Group we had a community Advisory Group um it still sort of was I don't think anybody really believed we were GNA stop even though we had said we were going to um and so there's um I think that is a lot of ways the biggest change as we move forward I think the the challenge is going to be um how do we reinvest resources that are freed up and what are the right ways to free up resources right because we don't want to create a situation where it feels like we've just cut from this one school community so we can give to a different School Community right and so the real focus of this next year now that we no longer have this Esser cliff in front of us at schools which was really significant right $66 million of stuff on Esser going into FY 24 at schools um we're going to be able to think more tactfully about sort of the framework of reimagine school funding and thinking about I sort of almost think about it like a weighted classroom funding at the elementary level right or way that student grouping need funding at the secondary level right so that we can really say yes there are some resources that are discretionary that you are need to give per pupil right because it you know you need varying amounts of school supplies per pupil right I think we can agree like paper that sort of stuff right that makes sense per pupil but there are other resources that probably shouldn't be that Dynamic that should move off of groups of students whether that's home rooms at the elementary level or something a little bit more complicated at the secondary level and so I think that's going to start to take more shape as we move into the FY 26 budget um and as we talk to you over the next year as well as to you know the btu and and our community and our school leaders and other folks to really you know drive home what that looks like and I think um apologies if I'm getting ahead of myself here but I think one of the things you know that I've got ringing in my ear from the chair and other means is you know this is how if we do make any savings as a part of school mergers or cons validations or anything else that's happening it gives us an opportunity to reinvest right back into schools and to make sure we're giving that sort of high quality student experience that all of our kids deserve that's that's helpful and then is it fair to superintendent were you about to say something I apologize no I was just going to also say that I think as you brought up member and is like the efficiencies relative to the big op side of the house which is the transportation and food service and all those things it's taken this year of building Foundation right and putting starting to put into place um things like the ridership policy that's going to enable the difficulty is that we also have some economic driving forces in the form of inflation uh in the form of until we can get out of uh out of District students back into the district as I know you have brought up so there's also some counter influences in here economically that um you know it's it's just as the next few budget go through we're we're going to do our best to squeeze every dollar of savings out but we also are kind of faced with that economic piece and so there just has to be a reality to it um you know where where people are kind of hearing that uh but our focus is to give as much to the schools as possible to also have the infrastructure to support the schools in ways that haven't happened before and yeah I guess the second piece though just for us understanding future budget and you did do this preview for us around not the sort of ending of hold harmless last year I guess in a preview then for what as we were saying this is a budget to build off of like then what can we expect moving forward is there a formula for then how we're funding classrooms is there a formula for how we're funding Elementary School classrooms and a different one for middle schools and a different one for high schools like as a governing I'm holding space for like this is a transitional year and I'm also holding a lot of space for the district historically and a lot of urban districts has had a lot of control over what schools get what and that has had really negative impacts on kids of color and kids with disabilities for political reasons and about you know I was a principal and I was a firste principal who did not want to Advocate hard because I wanted to keep my job and then I was a principal later in my career who you know realized I was too good to get fired so like you know there's just you get something different based on where you are in your career and you can push different and I worry about that inequity and that is the beauty of a formula for budgeting so is that something we're building towards and what when will we have that and then I'll that's the end of my questions yes the reimagining funding is um it's a set of recommendations which we will bring forward as we look at them and put them together with what we're able to do but the timing of those wrecks and the budget process this year really just allowed us to be able to do more of transitional um but that will be coming forward uh to the committee and David I don't know if you want to say anything else about the reimagining no I I I I I mean I sorry I shouldn't start with no because the answer is yes I want to say a quick thing which is um I think at the core of your question is something we deeply believe right which is the thing that weighed student funding one of the things that we student funding did really well is it put all the dollars out there and all the decisions out there and if there was a back room deal it was published on a piece of paper and you got to read our justification for it and then you got to be like hey what's the deal with that back room deal why did that school get that thing and it was literally on there we gave it to the school committee in the beginning of the process it was public it was on our website that will not change right it's effectively the way to think about is it's it's a different formula it is a it is a no longer weighted student formula fully right there is a weighted student I think component to it but it's no longer a fully weighted student formula but that doesn't mean it is no longer a formula and so very excited over the next I guess nine or 10 months now to share more information on that with you as we get closer to our process but you put your finger on a very important part of where we're heading going forward okay Miss Lima Barosa thank you chair um most of the questions I had I know Dr Chen addressed it in the uh presentation itself so I just wanted to thank her but also thank the whole budget team I can't believe you all actually went through all these questions and and did it live here with us uh again I I've been in other uh spaces with the budget team when it comes to uh BPS budget so I I'm just happy to see that you all are trying to do it a little bit different um in bringing those questions back into the chamber well the virtual chamber and addressing it here um I think it's good that there's still opportunities for us to send more and hopefully we can get those on in writing and I'm assuming superintendent you could also address them during your report uh at the next meeting as well just for transparency of what questions were submitted and just uh just so we can maintain uh this uh consistently uh but no I don't have any particular questions I I just know that one you know this is my first budget in the committee so I'm kind of going at the same as uh Mr Kat Hernandez we get it in terms of like the transition but there's a lot of history there's a lot of pain and hurt and I totally understand why there's a lot of mistrust from the community uh but hoping that we are starting to see a change with this particular budget and and um I'm you know ready for for next week for four so thank you thank you um I just want to check in with Mr Ma you had your hand raised did you have a question yeah I think some of it was covered uh by Mr CET hernand is his questions okay Mr O'Neal thanks Madam chair so since the others have gone um yeah I I Echo comments and I do have some questions uh Echo the comments of really appreciate the process here and tonight's presentation of sharing all the questions highlighting some but then having the the document that actually shows all the questions asked and the answers made and um superintendent I also appreciate you sharing changes that you have made during the process based upon committee input and areas that we have highlighted and members of the public highlighted as a concern so this is a living Brewing budget it does evolve and um I think it's in a better place um based upon this process um also by the way I did want to call out as well appreciate city council warell and um the action of his team that's the first time that I have seen city council proactively reach out to get input and work collaboratively versus waiting until their budget process in June and you know when more of the budget is locked in so I thought it was actually a very thoughtful approach and you know reading through their concerns were very similar to the concerns we were raising as well um superintendent I appreciate I did have a question about alt Ed because that is obviously has always been a big area of concern to mine I appreciate that you're still looking at that and have made some adjustments on it as well um I do want to ask you know we talked earlier um about the the response to the state about the importance of literacy and having high quality materials and I know an investment has been made on that I'm curious in in talking with other districts that have also been doing this you know the biggest issue as well is about professional development make and it was referenced tonight uh the teachers and staff trained on using the materials and able to implement it with Fidelity Etc so superintendent do you feel there's enough of an investment in professional development particularly around those areas um you know that we've discussed in the high quality curriculums and you know really I want to say standardizing it more right which is what you have many and it's tough in a district that has autonomy but if you could talk to me your feelings about the professional development budget yeah so I I think this was was something that um you know we've spent a quite a bit of time the last two years uh as we phased the materials in it's really been kind of the core work of the principles with their time with their teachers and Educators and so I think it's gone at a pace because there's always this um you know a pace that you have to strike of absorption and how much time you're spending on it and I think right now we're in a good place given the survey data that we're seeing uh you know back from the regional networks but also as we go in and do the observations of the classroom and the classroom tool op uh kit what we're seeing is that the educators are using those high quality instructional materials and they're using them with their in to improve their instruction so I think we're hitting a good stride on this um I think you know uh inclusive Ed will be like another area that I think in terms of PD as inclusive Ed begins to really roll out uh we'll have to work with our Union Partners around what that looks like um but for this coming year and this budget I I think uh at this point with all the different uh ways in which we're we're uh implementing PD uh I I do think we're in a good balance with this okay um I also want to talk about operational planning you know we learned from baa and Dearborn our last two new buildings how much your time and effort it takes to actually plan to be in a brand new building that's very different and lining up your programming with it and um it takes time and effort both of which cost money and we have you know two buildings that will be coming online pretty soon the quiny and the Carter um actually three because the horis man walk away from me here in Charlestown the amount of work going on there is breathtaking and so have we built enough into the budgets for those schools to be able to you know learn from baa and Dearborn both of whom by the way had some backup financial support that they were able to reference that I'm not quite sure the quiny and the car or horis man would have as well so are we building in enough support for them to do the operational planning yeah so this is actually I really appreciate this question because I do think um there is so much that goes into moving into a new building and what that does to a school culture uh and and particularly if there's extra programming with it it's actually an area we are looking at right now relative to quiny oper um and you know will with the Carter um I do think one of the key differences is that we've never had a capital planning department in the way we do now and so there will be a lot more assistance available that wasn't necessarily available when baa was moving in or when Dearborn was but this is an area that um I have the team looking at uh to make sure it's you know people think more of the materials and the supplies and it's actually the human infrastructure and organizationally like how we move um and the culture so that's an area that we are looking at relative to quiny ERS since that's the first one through the shoot sorry that we in um in the capital planning RC budget that we created we took into account factors operationally that we need to do to make these moves and make these shifts and build it all out and implement the work so I just want to note that as well yeah I appreciate that from the from the district side I do think the schools themselves will need some support in their budget even if it's you know a one-year type thing um and you know then right after that will be sh till will need it hopefully in a couple years and hopefully bcla mccormic Etc but we need to make sure to think about how to support the schools in their budget for that planning because as much as the capital support is there and can do some of the work a lot of it has to be done by in the schools in the teachers the program leads Etc y so I would really appreciate to make sure that there's support for them and there absolutely um one more question superintendent and we've talked about this in detail so I just from a high level Viewpoint in listening to the parents uh who spoke tonight you know we' certainly heard from the Manning and the clap and the Blackstone and the herandez most of the concerns about budgetary impacts Manning they're talking about the changes in the teaching model and you know you and I were out there recently together superintendent could you just talk a bit more about the Manning do you see this more as an academic change and how it's being approached or is it truly a budget driven change so I think it's a combination things I think um first of all I you know I think I've said from the start that Esser actually just started to fund our schools the way they should have been so the loss is real to our schools and to our school communities and I would never uh I would never uh undervalue what's been said because uh you know to to many point um you know the people that are impacted relative to positions uh or initiatives and partners those are very real and they're tangible and school communities are going to have to figure out as we move through this how to do things differently without some of those things um I think in the case of uh Manning and you know certainly like our team will go back we we always go back after public comment and take a look at um you know uh what's been what's been said and shared um I I think it's a combination that uh there was some loss of Esser uh in with that positional but I think think that they're trying to make a change of model um where they're leveraging in a different way the the team of Educators that are in and around uh and so ra different than just having two Educators in each room the idea is knowing you're going to have special education students multilingual Learners in uh you know in in same classrooms at different times it's really responding to the needs of the students and looking at the IEPs and so I think that um you know anytime you've been doing one it one particular way and then you shift from that there's going to be that sense of why are we doing this this is you know what we were doing was working before um so this will be one that we have to I think really work with the Manning on uh in in in together in Partnership uh and so that's one of the notes that I took away to follow up with them um Madam chair I see them out of time so I'll stop because I see Dr alkins has questions but i' to come back one more time thank you Dr alins yes this is just a quick question I'm actually curious as having a what having a small influx of of students um more more recently what that might do and as you all are thinking about the budget being a an evolving breathing um proposal have you thought anything about sort of like the recent influx of students and how that might impact us yeah so so absolutely I appreciate that one Dr Ain so um I think uh actually we started to see uh a much larger increase in our newly arrived students uh actually a year ago really and our projections reflected that in this year's budget um the fortunate thing for us is that we're such a large District that um when students come in we're we're generally able to move or to make the change we need to respond to a particular need or need of a group of students so in the case of our newly arrived immigrants we were able to find the seed uh you know in in schools and then be able to kind of work with Partners to provide other kinds of supports for those students uh we we need to always be nimble enough and I think this is you I think David brought up that we we always have some amount of efficiency or Reserve dollars to respond in that case so in hypothesis say uh we did not see a tremendous amount of s students in the newly arrived students that we've served but say we had and we had to operationalize new s classrooms we would have the resources to be able to make that kind of a shift in that kind of a move yes I was just wondering if it actually had more of an impact I know I think there was what like 1 million that was allocated around like student support and addressing things like chronic abente ISM just didn't know if that's where if there was any change in the allocation that that might be where it goes or so that was part of my question as well so okay so the newly arrived students kind of got that side now chronic absenteeism so we just kicked off win the day which is our very large campaign we're doing it you know huge shout out to Chief McCarthy and his team um I really think that they've been so thoughtful in how they've approached this uh we're starting in Region 8 and we have a tremendous amount of Partners including the faith-based community that's helping to lift this up in the business community in terms of getting the word out we will take that practice and learn from that and then uh we'll be able to expand beyond that uh so in the student support department there are dollars we were able and this is like another example where things were funded on Asser that were vital to the operations that are schoolf facing and uh you know our s soas and chronic absenteeism was one of them so those got shifted to the general dollars uh in and invested in and so that enables us to be able to do the home visits it enables us to be able to uh launch a lot of the strategies that we have that we see our chronic absenteeism coming down um so I I believe that uh restorative justice is is a in practice is another example of that where it was started on Esser and that's core work and so that's now been moved over through the regional uh Network model into the hard dollars so I believe that through your advocacy and others advocacy around what I would call kind of the core components of student support we've done a a pretty thoughtful job and added more uh because it has been such a priority uh for you and for others on the committee thank back to you Mr O'Neal thank you madam chair um so just a a couple more points and really appreciated uh Mr Bloom's comment in the conversation about weighted student funding formula and moving away from it because it it does have me concerned as clearly other members of the committee have expressed as well because I remember so much when it first went in the inequities it exposed in the district and schools that was severely underfunded and quite frankly schools that were overfunded and when we dug in it was usually you know because of favoritism or teachers who knew principles who knew how to work the system and so on and so forth and it really exposed inequities in our system that's where soft Landings first came from to kind of help the schools that were going to be cutting budgets get used to it so to speak and it's it's become a crutch over the years um so I heard Mr Bloom say it will still be a formula and that's important to know because I want to make sure superintendent how you ensure that we don't creep back into a system that favoritism could make a difference so to speak I want to make sure we're Equitable to our schools so yeah this is this is um it's a it's a great point to to underscore I think we heard this loud and clear from the reimagining funding committee um and I think fortunately weighted student formula with such a decline in enrollment in so many schools it actually allowed for lots of that to creep in um with soft landing and with advocacy uh either by communities you know or or uh you know leaders and we we need to get back to where it is a very transparent way that we can account for the money we have with our schools and I think that's what CFO Bloom was talking about yeah and I'll just say that the the promise I can make um at least in an interim basis for now um is that um that part of the budget where you can go from zero to every school's budget and understand if you're willing to sit down with a spreadsheet sort of look through all the math and see where what the rules were that everything came from I think we're really committed to continuing that that component of way student funding really needs to continue and then the other thing I'll just add and I think has been very true this year in a very positive way is we need to continue to talk about how an individual school's feedback whether it be to this body or to individual members of District administration or others how is that representative of a districtwide trend and how do we address that in an equitable manner across the district so if a school is coming and saying they need another social worker if even if we think they're right we don't just give them a social worker we identify what are the conditions that made our allocations of social worker not work for this school and what other schools does that apply to so we can update our rules and I think what we found in weighted student funding is we were continually over the years needing to build rules that weren't weighted student funding to ensure equity so we had to allocate social workers separately we had to allocate family leison separately and eventually what we sort of realized is you know every year what we're learning from the committee from the public from others from the feedback is just adjusting the weights isn't working uh Mr O'Neal I remember in our initial so our our first few budgets with you and with chair Robinson um we would talk about changing the weights and that would be the adjustments we would make we would add the homelessness weight for example we had talked about adjusting the weight for high school and then we walked that back after some pressure right um and I think what we really found was adjusting the weights wasn't the answer to the problems we were having right it is it's needing a different approach and so um really the core of this is based on a lot of feedback the sort of echo of the school committee of of years of feedback is in the steering committees advice and in the reports and where we're heading um sort of to say how do we make this work more efficiently and effectively and what are the components of it we need to keep we're not just throwing everything away and forgetting the lessons we've learned but really building on the things that worked while potentially moving on from the parts that that really seem to stop efficient and effectively love it let's make sure equitably is in there as well of course and and I know it is but I just I need to say that my last point is my time Runs Out is you know I spent some time this past weekend with some other districts who are really facing you know big Cliffs because with the federal government money going away and the Secretary of Education says they're just passing the Baton to States right they were filling a gap for a short period but it's passing baton to States and a lot of States aren't picking up that baton so a lot of districts are really really struggling um we are incredibly blessed to have the city's support and the financial you know to step up um at the expense of departments in the city however having said that you know I I know a suggestion has been made and I wholeheartedly endorse it that we need to be doing some multi-year planning even if you know the father out if we do five years for example we're really guessing what's going to be happening years two three and four but there are changes coming to the tax base in this city with the Reliance on commercial property and so many requests for abatements now more will probably end up shipping and the mayor has been talking about this publicly right so um more will probably end up shipping shipping uh shifting to the residential tax base um but we need to be thinking about the impact in the city's ability to fund us and what's going to happen with the district and I'm not sure if it's uh superintendent if it's it's the financial team trying to look out five years if we ask some outside experts to think about this you know we have some pretty Smart Financial people in this city um you know Consultants Etc maybe we can get a group to do pro bono founding firm I'm not sure but I think that you know some fiveyear planning financially with you know scenario a b and c to help us as a committee to better respond to Future budging requests I think could be really helpful and I will just say this year for the first time since we launched our long-term financial plan in my first year in BPS nine years ago we have worked with our partners in the city to start to build a joint multi-year Financial forecast so that they can also understand as they build their financial forecasting what are our cost levers and our cost drivers right and so we've been talking to the CFO and her team um in a really deep partnership that I very much appreciate um sort of making sure they understand what we see coming over the horizon for us so that we can really build build something together and so this is just obviously it's early phases but it it's a really important partnership with City Hall that I I'm looking forward to building on yeah but just this member and I appreciate that but as m cadat herandez talked about external validation on the literacy it it you know in the curriculum it may help to have some external validation on financial forecasts just want to just want to put it up there thank you madam chair thank you Mr cardet Hernandez um I have three questions I don't know if all of them can be answered and I think some of them are actually just around how for me to get to a yes on the budget what I will need and maybe it's about the presentation for next week as well I think there's sort of two things that remain I appreciate uh Mr O'Neal's question about the sort of future planning of the budget my fear given what the city has put in plus the SR rollover is like we're not having real conversations that like there will I suspect there is a budget for the next fiscal year that is also a budget that has cuts and in the way that we forecasted the and and got folks starting to anticipate what that was going to look like for this year I I don't feel like we're doing that for what the future year looks like and that's the sort of House of Cards feeling I fear in the current sort of presentation of the budget like and so I I am wondering I think maybe what I'm asking here and I'm sort of thinking as I'm talking but like in whatever our next conversation is or throughout the course of the next week it's like what are the things that will be shifting this is the budget for now but there are changes to come and like what is that we we've had these sort of theoretical convers conceptual conversations about like a new student funding mechanism or formula or classroom formula but that's super opaque we've had conversations around consolidations and mergers but like without any real numbers so that still feels opaque we do know that there is money rolling over from Esser we do know the city's pitched in a lot and you know they're watching this like is that something that we're anticipating for future years or if not what are the types of things that will continue to shift as one I think we move into further consolidation but also as we start getting real about the resources that we have to work with and I'm just hoping that that can be part of our conversation as we go into the vote sort of like what else is to come so that we're being honest about this budget in relationship to what it does later and you know no business is just sort of looking at a single year forecast like you're talking multi-year and we can do the same and we know the city's doing that and we know that you're doing that behind the scenes so like what does that mean and what does that look like and what can we expect as a school committee to be thinking about um and then I think the second thing for me is we've referenced a lot earlier in the presentation the reports from Council of great City schools and things like that that we submitted to Desi I still don't have Clarity on which of those recommendations were Tak and how that aligns to this budget and I do think it would be really helpful for us to know we have some of the sort of like um again like these sort of conceptual ideas around our the sort of value proposition of the city and I'm not I haven't felt very clear on how that aligns to goals and so there's the student academic goals and then there are these other recommendations that I'm I'm suspecting this budget is moving on that I'm curious where which recommendations are we taking in the next year and how does that align to the budget and then I think the last thing I'll say here and you choose if there's any of it to discuss this evening or if it's something you want to reference for next time we know that there are layoffs I understand the complexity given labor agreements around the sort of and and unfilled vacancies and all the things but I do think it's important for us as we go into a vote to have real Clarity around the projected number number of layoffs in the system what we think will'll be able to backfill and also the timeline for when those layoffs will begin because that is also part of what we're voting for um okay so I think definitely on the council great City School's recommendations we we will'll cue that up uh to be able to show that to you um and then on the layoffs we'll we'll talk with OAC about this I think for all the reasons we discussed the timeline is a little bit off um we could probably do a worst case scenario and a best case scenario and that's probably uh what we can do but uh we will we'll have the discussion with ohc perfect and on the future thinking I'm sure you can lend some thoughts to that going in like this is this budget that you're pres the final budget you're presenting with the changes that you're presenting and some of the UN the things that are unspoken or like what's to come in the following fiscal year that one can anticipate hard I think what we can do is we may be able and I'll I'll talk to CFO Bloom but what we may be able to do there is uh to talk about what could be the co like potential cost savings where we sort of see again these are going to not be like close to the mark but uh to be able to sort of reassure the committee um you know relative to the budget we're putting forward yeah and and an understanding of your priorities too as you're having to make those decisions what what you're okay thank you thank you um most of my questions have been answered um but a couple of things and I think this is more of an observation for me having now going through this process about thinking through not only what decisions are ahead of us immediately but thinking ahead till next year and thinking a lot of the questions and that that are out there that have been that you've been working to answer to me still need a lot of monitoring as we move forward into the next year and I know we've talked briefly before about perhaps having some kind of um budget related task force working group Etc so that we are looking at this budget throughout the year particularly in a year as we know there are so many changes coming to our schools with regard to you know inclusion Green New Deal all of those things that just starting these conversations in December and you know moving with lots of energy towards a vote in in March I think doesn't do service well to all of the hard work and all of the thinking that goes on you long not only for us and the public but really to get our schools much more engaged and understanding about the budget process within their own school and the choices that their school Community is making I mean I it it you know it always feels when they're coming to us with their questions or concerns as if it's the district or our fault that certain decisions were made within their schools and wanting to fully understand you know how those decisions are being made and if there are problems with our process or concerns even with the process being done well in a school that the outcome doesn't feel quite right how we have more opportunity discuss and look at how schools are managing themselves throughout the year and and where we need to look at other kinds of Investments and that couples with I think listening to the concerns we continue to raise around declining enrollments Etc and greater needs that it continues to point us back to the fact that we do have to be honest with ourselves around the mergers and closures and creating a district that is right the right that offers the right opportunities for all of our students we know our larger high schools offer more than some of our smaller high schools what are those facts tell us about the district we need to be creating so that we can really say all of our students get what they need and and I feel H part of it is based on the way we're organized that that's hurting us as much as you know not having all the dollars that one would need Esther did give us a better picture of what our schools need in terms of funding and with that going away the need doesn't go away um and we can't manufacture dollars so you know it just feels like um as we say in this transitional year a lot of issues have been raised but I don't want to see those conversation stopping with our taking a vote and then moving on so super contendent i' like to you know have us think together about what kind of a working group or task force or whatever you would want to call it that we could have that we could continue the monitoring around our budgetary issues as we move through um the school year it's a great suggestion Sharon uh would definitely welcome that I think in the area of finance and Facilities that's going to be an ongoing yeah yeah my only my only budget question um relates to to partly to the SOA conversation around early childhood and um the data we looked at that was showing the big drop between K2 Readiness and second grade and wondering um with Equitable literacy and other things what are the what are the Investments that we are making um kindergarten first and second grade literacy I mean as an early childhood educator um if we are not giving our kids the strongest Foundation when they're young and we are already hitting a cliff you know at that before the third grade reading um it just feels like we've got to do something different um because otherwise I feel like we're setting our kids up for failure um when they seem to have been on a great start so you know are there efforts being made are there going to be more reading Specialists um you know I know we're getting good curriculum sort of what is it and are we budgeting it at the highest level and um as a one of our highest needs to make sure we're trying to close this gap before it actually goes too deep uh so uh uh I will say uh a couple things and then Dr Chen you might want to weigh in on this a bit more I think this is where the investment in in both the materials but also in the calibration of the instruction I think this is where you know we're creating momentum so that as the students get older the grades that we typically kind of see that second third grade there's other safety nets for the students and that is the strengthening of the MTS process in a way that hasn't existed here before so I I I do think we are better positioned to not have that decline happen in the way that it has and where it happens like where a student is still struggling there's now safety nets as well as different levels of literacy curriculum uh that just hasn't worked cohesively uh in the way that Dr Chen and her team are now lining it up uh and Dr Chen I don't know if you want to add to that sure I think some of this is also two things one is the monitoring and accountability chair that you had mentioned previously and in this context um we are we have very specific walkthrough tools that look at early literacy and especially foundational literacy um implementation that way we know where are the places that need more support and the regional coaches can provide then that support to the places that need it the most I think the other piece is um knowing where students are in terms of our map fluency data and then also this past year we had had mtss coordinators begin so there's one in every school next year um we're making sure to look at very closely the documentation of the additional supports that may be needed for students through reading interventionists or other folks to be able to make sure that no one slips through the cracks like there's we are tracking the data of students we are tracking the implementation of instruction and then we are following up with the kinds of supports a student may need beyond the tier one um high quality instruction materials implementation and the other thing I would say too is what we're doing moving forward with our earliest Learners that are multilingual Learners is making sure that we have native language access and supports in the classrooms and more formal ways so that students are able to also leverage their native language to acquire English and to learn content areas thank you all right as we go to wrap up this um conversation I want to say great thanks to David Bloom and his team and superintendent and all of your Chiefs and assistant superintendents and everyone who I know has both worked very hard to bring this budget to fruition but also to thank you all for answering all of the questions that we have asked and I know that there's still some to ask and I just want to remind uh my fa my um fellow members that um we are taking this vote next week need you to make sure that you've read through all of the materials looked back at school committee meetings that you may have missed um to get other questions um but in please take advantage this week of your time to meet with um the superintendent or staff to get any um additional questions answered and with that I want to turn it back to miss Parx and so that we can now return to public comment Miss Parx there's no P there's no more speakers thank you sir any new business that concludes our business for this evening as a reminder the school committee meeting is in Virtual meetings on Zoom now through the end of March we go back in person in April so next week is our last virtual meeting um the next virtual school committee meeting will take place on Wednesday March 27th at 5:00 pm at which time the committee will vote on the superintendent's revised fiscal year 25 budget recommendations there nothing further I'll entertain a motion to adour the meeting is there a motion so moved thank you is there a second okay thank you is there any discussion or objection to the motion M Jimmy I make a comment about the motion just want to um compliment and thank Miss parvex for her first meeting as our new executive secretary which was actually a double meeting a budget hearing and and a school committee meeting so um big shoes to fill with Miss Sullivan and her 16 years but look forward to your work Miss barx and I forgot to mention before you're also a be well we're a BPS parent and and I a BPS parent right we a BPS parent both graduates they're both graduates yes excellent but uh I just want to compliment you on your first meeting thank you very much thank you all right hearing none Miss N Miss perix will you please call the role Dr arkins yes Mr KET herandez yes Miss Lima Barbosa yes Miss plco Garcia Mr Tran yes Mr O'Neal yes Miss Robinson yes the meeting is adjourned thank you all and have a good night good night good night thank you