##VIDEO ID:ccGCmSCK4e0## you realized it spe we to get started about 1 minute app good evening let me know if you can or can't hear we'll adjust the mic as we need to go um thank you so much for coming out tonight uh we're thrilled with the turnout really appreciate you making the effort I know it's a little chilly out there so staying in in the comfort of your own home um probably was appealing uh but we do appreciate you coming out tonight we are going to be uh recording this and actually streaming this so we'll we'll share out the recording afterwards with you as well as uh with the community same thing with the PowerPoint from this evening I will'll get this information out to all the parents uh you included in this week's bus um but certainly you know we can certainly get it to you individually if you have any questions or concerns afterwards uh and obviously if you have questions tonight that I can't answer on the spot uh we'll certainly follow up with you and get you those answers as we go um I'm not much of a stand at the podium type person hopefully he's not too distracting for you I do like to walk and talk as I go obviously uh I'm not the star of the show but really will be the PowerPoint so you can focus your attention up there uh but without further Ado we're going to get into this um really what uh just to kind of quickly go over the agenda for this evening obviously we'll do welcoming introductions I really want to give you an overview building the District budget what that looks like for us uh talking about our expenses talking about the different sources of revenue and funding that come into the district uh we obviously will talk about budget revisions what happens if we have to revise the budget we'll take a little little bit of a look at FY 26 and then obviously we'll talk about some challenges and advocacy I have my powers on superintendent I know U met several of you uh already not just this evening but uh you know throughout the years in the community again I really appreciate you coming evening we do have members of our school committee here than I want to thank them for their support and certainly members of our administrative team uh spread out throughout the audience so I I truly appreciate them uh they play a major role in our budget development in our budget process so I really appreciate their their attendance and certainly uh appreciate your attendance as well as I stated uh you know you made the effort to be here tonight I think the the sheer number of you that sh speaks Vol about how important the budget is to you uh couldn't do more so thank you really uh what tonight is going to be about uh and hopefully you didn't come uh here under false pretenses I really want to talk about the budget process and what that looks like the purpose of tonight is really to set the context for next week when I do deliver my preliminary budget to the school committee to the community that presentation will be you know heavy numbers we'll be talking about uh the state funding the governor released her budget today um you know information is coming out in Snippets in terms of uh how that really impacts Brio rham and I'll share a little bit of that with you as we go but next week will'll be heavy into the numbers tonight really is just to be able to provide you some context so when hopefully you attend next week's presentation you're watching next week's presentation you have a better understanding of okay I understand what that means and I understand where that funding came from this Revenue source of that expense I am tonight though as I kind of explained the budget process going to use real numbers uh so you will see some numbers up there they're really not for FY 26 they're current year numbers and obviously uh historical numbers as well I wanted to be able to put a number with the explanation just so it it it made better sense as I'm going through this that's really what we hope to be able to do tonight is to be able to give you that context really for next week and if you can't attend next week obviously we'll share that information out as well uh and so when you're reviewing it possibly on your own throughout the spring as the budget process unfolds you really have a better understanding of of the process and obiously I want to share a little bit about the district uh we are currently the second largest Regional School District of the Commonwealth um you know something that we take great pride in it's we were uh kind of back and forth when I first came to Bridgewater rhand with acting box Bor for number two one year we slipped to three uh but if you look at there in R over the last few years it's it's trended down where ours continues to Trend up uh we do offer educational programming preschool through postgrad um so you know High School Plus for some of our students instead and uh we operate in seven buildings but we actually are a district of eight schools um obviously you're familiar with the majority of our schools uh one of the schools that you may not be familiar with is our therapeutic date program um for uh some of our student disabilities that have uh need you know some additional support and social emotional support um and then I just do some information around enrollment so these are based on Desi numbers uh and what Desi does is obviously they review the enrollment D that we submit to them and they for a lack of that term certifi say okay this is how many students you have enrolled as of October one now that's not necessarily reflective of all of our students that's our students that are sitting in our seats we certainly have students that are on ours but attend out of District placements uh we also have students that come in on an itinerary basis some of preschoolers so they come in just with services but they're not actually sitting in a seat so when we actually factor in all of those students we're over 5700 uh but sitting in our schools right now uh 5682 uh you can see it's actually um you know say going up by 100 uh if you notice that that's the trend um it's exactly 100 students over the last few years um you know again something that I think we're defying what we see in other districts L across the state and that enrollment keeps going up many districts are facing the opposite challenge that their enrollments declining uh that obviously is translating into less dollars for funding because funding and we'll talk about this is really based on uh the number of students we have so it's a challenge uh you know obviously with more students uh comes greater needs we have to provide uh more services for more students and so we'll talk about what some of those challenges are this evening but just to get into a littleit about the the school budget process uh it's obviously and you know some of this I understand is going to be redundant and I won't necessarily read everything up here because you may have already have knowledge of this but obviously we have to operate under the guidelines the rules the regulations and statutes uh set forth by the state so Department of Elementary and secondary education oversee that process but certainly working uh you know with uh the Department of Revenue uh and as well as Department of um Revenue the department of Elementary and secondary education obviously our regional budget has some complexities to it uh because we're you know we have to obviously develop a budget and then share it with individual Towns now we're fortunate that we're only a two member Regional School District there are some Regional School Districts that have uh three four five six member towns and so obviously you can understand the challenges with that but again we're fortunate that we only have Rich water and Rain event um and but really at the end of the day in its simplest form our school budget is very similar to your household budget it's obiously about what money you're bringing in and what money you're spending whether it be on your bills your utilities car payments so forth we're in a very similar situation to that over on the left those are some of the funding sources that we build our budget on over on the right we'll talk a little bit more about this those are examples some of our expenses so when you look at our funding sources and I'll kind of explain these in in Greater detail as we go the first one is Chapter 70 that's the state's program for educational Aid so that is the state providing dollars to cities Town School Districts Regional School Districts and is referred to as a Chapter 70 program chapter 71 is transportation reimbursement Regional School transportation reimbursement uh again there was some benefits uh to initially becoming a Regional School District not just for bridgew rham but the state really advocating for towns to kind of come together form a Regional School District one of those was our regional transportation it was originally promised that Regional Transportation would be reimbursed by the state at 100% so they were trying to give incentives to towns to really try to consolidate Services expenses and so forth so chapter 71 is our uh Regional scho Transportation uh reimbursement obviously we have our town assessments by that mean once we know what our budget is going to be we then send that information to the towns and the towns fund us so our budget isn't funded by the school district we present a budget I present a budget to the school committee to the school community school committee adopts that budget you may make changes to it the school committee in the district you don't fund the majority of our budget we certainly has a district contribute to it I'll talk about that in a minute the main funding sources come from the state and then obviously the town so we rely on really those three big buckets for us the state town of Bridgewater and the town of ran ideally and obviously the state has a formula which I'll show you ideally we'd love all of our funding to come from the state because that puts less of a burden on the towns but unfortunately that's not the case and when the state necessarily provide the funding that we need based on their formula the burden does fall on the towns which is unfortunate because in in some cases we're asking them for potentially more that they can provide which uh we'll talk about and then obviously District contributions I reference that I'll get into a little bit more detail as uh we go circuit breaker is uh some reimbursement for special education costs some of our special education costs we can actually get reimbursement for and then and another example would be Charter School reimbursement um and then school choice reimbursement would be another one so if we have any students that are School choicing into our district we actually receive funding for those students as well some of our expenses obviously expenses that uh you know look familiar if you were to equate uh to your to your own home budget um payroll uh so obviously we have salaries right we have to there a majority of our budget those are the greatest expenses that we have curriculum resources we want to make sure that we're providing high quality education materials to all of our students who prek through postgrad but those programs can be costly obviously supplies and materials we want to make sure that you know our our students have paper they have pencils they have what they need to be successful um that our schools uh again are are well supplied well stocked um we certainly don't want to over resource if you don't need to so that's something paid close attention to the last couple years is doing a a very detailed inventory of what we currently have uh you know just as an example one of our schools uh found a surplus of paper clips uh probably that we can send you each one with you know 15 boxes so it's something we won't need to order uh you know for some time so we're trying to save cost that way as well uh Transportation obviously that's a big expense for us so that's not just uh regular Transportation that's also special education transp ation but then we have you know transportation for you know our athletic programs uh in our various clubs and uh extracurriculars utilities much like you have at home you have to pay for electricity you know heat telephones and so forth uh special education tuitions so some of our students uh that were just not able to educate within the district uh they either go to a collaborative or a special education date program or in some cases you know res School uh and certainly mous cost and then health insurance just like at home again health insurance is a is a big number for us um we want to make sure obviously our employees have health insurance both our active employees and also our retire Le so we do uh you know have a cost associated with this and just like at home uh we cannot legally build a budget uh where our expenses are pass out so I want to provide a little bit more information about what some of our expenses are um and how we get there so September October we really start the budget process for the following fiscal year which is sometimes a challenge to plan it's September of 24 and we're trying to actually plan for 26 so you can see it's somewhat of a challenge uh but we do uh you know obviously we do those projections we do some forecasting uh again we do build inventory so we can start to really know what we need um I asked the administrators the department heads central office staff to each develop a budget present it to myself our director of Business Services other central office administrators uh that you know it's really what we refer to as a needs-based budget now I know that term can be used uh in different ways sometimes you hear needs based budget well we need a budget that we can turn the lights on sure 100% we talk about a needs base budget we're talking about what we need to provide the highest quality of education for our students we your children and we obviously want to be able to provide the highest quality of conditions for our teaching staff uh and any staff member that we have again does a cost associate with that we understand that but that's what we need so when we say yes we have to have the lights on 100% but the budget that I'll present next week is reflective of what we need what we've heard from you what we've heard from staff what we know is District leadership so for example I I'll use class size that's something that we know I'll show you those numbers in a few slides we know our class sizes are high we've heard that from you scho just heard that from you um we know we walk the classrooms that our class sizes are high the only way to really reduce class size is to add more staff when we add more staff obviously our budget up which is fine that's what we want to be able to do but when we present the budget next week our needs based budget that meets our Student Success plan it's going to be reflective of all of those positions that we've heard and you know adding unfortunately added one position two positions doesn't really change class size District wide to really have a significant impact we're talking you know 10 20 30 positions is that realistic I don't want to be in a position where I don't ask for that um because I think it's what our students need it's what our staff needs so that what we mean by needs based budget some other terms that you've heard uh level Services level funded uh level Services just means that for FY 26 we would provide the same level of services that we currently are now obviously with the level Services budget costs typically do increase uh just because uh the price of uh you know goods and services goes up but we're providing the same level of services a level funded budget would be we are operating under a budget with the same amount of funding unfortunately what usually happens with level funded budgets is there are uh reductions to Goods services and Personnel just simply because as the cost drive up and we're still using the same budget amount you only going to offset that is unfor sometimes of Productions to good services and personnel as I mentioned this would just be a this is a sample uh these are not real numbers but just so you understand uh when the building principles Department Ed submit a budget this is somewhat of what it would look like so what's the category this is you know for example expenditures they would also submit salaries uh they would submit supplies materials um and so every EXP every salary every Supply material has an account number associated with it that helps us obviously keep track of all of our expenses all of our supplies materials and it obviously puts a number associated with what we're requesting and then there's a description so a particular principle May request some supplies to the main office a particular principal may ask for uh you know funds in their General textbooks line in case they you know need to repace books uh you can see text for science Technology and Engineering you know we're rolling out new science materials or I need to replace in science materials it would come out of that line and then extracurricular obviously depending on the level uh as we go up in levels we have a lot more extracurricular activities we also have to budget and fund those so again that will be an example so those are our things up top we also take a look at our Personnel so we obviously uh you know review our existing Personnel to make sure that all of those positions are still needed and then we also look at any new requests uh and that's also something we ask our principles to do you know please give us uh any new request to any new staff member that you may need it may be building base might be a districtwide position uh it could be in our facilities Department could be in a central office uh Department doesn't necessarily have to be you know school but obviously our main focus is the classroom when we develop our budget and I won't read through this uh just because there's a lot of words up there and I don't want to bore we develop our budget and organize our budget by what we refer to as Series so our overall budget starts with 1,000 that's the administration so that's any cost Associated if you think of central office so the superintendent's office the business office human resources and such it also in expenses uh you know by school committee uh working with our attorneys uh you know whether it be uh our labor attorney our special education attorney any costs associated there we also have our licenses our it licenses uh facted into that line so sometimes you see a pretty significant increase it's not because we're adding staff but we may be adding uh licenses renewals or new licenses computer licenses instructional Services that's kind of our meat and potatoes that's really what we're all about so in there that's all our curriculum resources that's our teaching staff uh all of their salaries so that certainly is a uh you know big piece of our budget big piece of our operating uh other school Services uh that would be our health services department so all of our School nurses are in there Our Food Services Transportation certainly a big number uh plays into that and obviously uh Athletics in extra any type of security or school resource officer operation maintenance it's really self-explanatory utilities our maintenance ftorial staff and their supplies uh fixed costs big thing there is obviously health insurance again for active and retired employees um asset acquisition that's also worker to as capital so any Capital expenses uh if we're going to do any type of construction building uh buy new uh you know buy new uh equipment for the grounds uh we have to buy new lawn mower if we have to buy a new pickup truck um if we're going to again do some type of building renovation we want to do some type of uh technology infrastructure upgrade that would all fall into Capital capital's funded a little bit different uh than the operating budget you'll see how I have that broken out in a minute and then debt and Retirement services so if we have to do any type of borrowing again to fund some of those school projects if we you know have to replace the roof um or you know for the new mle that just opened or any of these other buildings that uh are fairly new uh we may still be paying off lack of that term again equated to home you know paying off our mortgage or or our loan on that and then programs with other schools that would really be our special education cost for any of our students that are again uh in a collaborative program some type of day program or potentially residential program that would be in the 9,000 Series so that's just a quick overview it's not everything that's uh in each one of those categories but just to kind of give you a quick synopsis here is the uh budget as it currently stands uh and so you can see what I tried to do is show some historical information so you see FY 23 approved FY 24 approved I didn't share fy2 initial versus FY 25 approved because I again trying to explain to you the budget process so that fy2 initial was the budget that I presented last January now you can see obviously here I kind of direct your attention to that FY 24 is $88 million we came in and asked for a budget of approximately $13 million so a pretty significant increase where we ended was at $90 million so that means that a lot of the things that we asked for a lot of the positions that we asked for the good services that we asked for we didn't get funding from the state wasn't what we needed to be and unfortunately same with the towns and so we weren't able to move forward with that $103 million budget so we had to make some revisions which again I'll walk you through in a minute but you see here how the 1,000 2,000 3 4 5 and it jumps to nine these costs up here that's our operating cost so we talk about our operating budget you see our oper operating budget subtotal is here so for FY 25 our operating budget is 90 million 7,000 and 8,000 are broken out they're not part of the operating budget obviously we have to pay our mortgage or our loans so that would be the 8,000 series and then the 7,000 series it's pulled out because it's funded differently by the towns the towns both have Capital funding uh mechanisms so that they're setting money aside each year for their various departments including the schools to fund capital projects that amount changes and you can see that up there that amount does change from year to year there may be years where we don't ask for much in way of capital because we don't have many capital projects that happen there may be other years that we have to ask for more Capital uh we may have an unexpected uh boiler that's gone down and we need to replace it so again that's broken out separately and then obviously our total budget is that last line so you can see for fy2 our total budget was $96 million so we had $6,000 in capital in debt this just gives you kind of a a a quick snapshot of what our expenses are and how it breaks out certainly I haven't detailed every expense but as you can imagine salary take up the majority of our budget now what I'll uh say is this that's pure salaries that's not benefits if you were to add in health insurance other benefits certainly that percentage would go up that's just straight salary so if you were factor in health insurance and such you're looking at you know probably 70% of the total budget uh obviously you can see Transportation health insurance those are our other two big categories our cost driv is what we refer to them as you can see textbooks less than 1% of the budget supplies about 1% of the budget and then all of our other expenses so health insurance would live in there our utilities would live in there any other expense that the district would incur so again just to kind of give you a visual of how that all breaks down so want to go over revenue and funding there's really four main funding sources and I say four name because there are other funding sources this grant funding um and so forth this Choice funding that I mentioned ofman but the four major ones are the ones up here so again Chapter 70 State a chapter 71 Transportation reimbursement local Aid provided by the towns of brid water and mingia which also we refer to as our town assessments and then obviously District contributions again I know a lot of words up here so I won't read them all to you basically what it boils down to is the state determines a budget for each district uh they refer to that as the foundation budget which again I'll just kind of direct your attention to over here that number is established by the state so the state says your foundation budget and this is for FY 25 was going to be $76 million they then determined how much each City in town or in our case how much birdwater and Rainham have to contribute towards that 76 million so for fy2 it said for and rham combined have to give 44 million change and then they look here and say okay we're going to make up the difference through State a or chapter 7 so what we're required to provide uh what the towns are required to provide Plus state aid that's what they refer to as net School spending that's what's required you have to spend that money now what I'll say is this here in the middle when the state says that this is what Bridgewater and Rainham have to spend minimum they can't spend less there's actually penalties associated with that if they were ever to do that but they do give the cities and towns their opportunity to provide more so in in a lot of you'll hear what are we spending over our required contribution you know are we spending 100% are we over you know 105% 110% I will say at least my time in the district the towns of Bridgewater and Rainham have contributed more than what has been required of them I can't say that's true for all cities and towns there are certainly some cities and towns out there that say well that's the number that we've been told we have to give so that's the only number we're going to give we've been fortunate that we have a strong relationship with bridgew ringham and they've given more when they can uh so we certainly appreciate that um what doesn't typically change though is obviously State G kind of once that number is established uh as the governor releases uh her numbers obviously the house and the Senate will kind of go back and forth and then that final budget number is released it fluctuates ever so slightly uh but it's not going to be a significant change at least it hasn't been in my experience uh you know during my 10 years the district 10 plus years now talk a littleit about chapter 71 so again as a Regional School District uh we're reimbursed with transporting students that live 1.5 miles away from school uh that doesn't include transportation for uh Athletics doesn't include transportation for our students with disabilities we're talking about chapter 71 there are some other reimbursements that come into play for some of our students with disabilities but as part of the chapter 71 program uh that is now factored in I mentioned to you to you in the beginning about Regional Transportation and the initial promise of reimbursing districts cities and towns that participated in regionalization 100% reimbursement I just showed you the last few years I can tell you it's never been again in my time here and even looking back historically it's never been 100% so when you see there FY 23 was less than 80% again 100% would help right FY 2486 that's been kind of one of the highest we were almost at 90 going back during the towards Co and then fy2 our current year is only 84 so when every dollar counts you can see not being fully funded you know has an impact in the governor's budget today although we don't have the dollar amount what they're telling us is that we should plan for and this is great news for us um probably a 95% reimbursement rate for FY 26 now again we don't necessarily know what that number looks like that's a high percentage so certainly should be beneficial but again it all comes down to what those Transportation costs uh that are going to be eligible for reimbursement are um so it could be 95% of a lesser number it hasn't historically been that I just throw that out there as as some of a caution so you know we're hopeful 95% is is good news for us I did talk a little bit about this already local Aid so what is required uh again that's the same number that I shared with you before the $44 million 44978 but as I stated uh both U Bridgewater and Rainham have contributed more um when you look at the number where you know 50 50 million plus um the exact number but I know up the top of my head it's over $50 million so certainly uh you know they are contributing more than what's required we certainly appreciate that um and we understand that you know when the state doesn't come through with the funding that we need it does place a burden on the towns and that's unfortunate but that's really you know the only place that we can have a direct impact in the direct changes with the times fortunately the state doesn't always listen to us and make changes we asking to um District contributions so obviously we are contributing to the budget um you know we have fees associated with facility rentals uh believe it or not I'm sure you know this uh you know you drive by our schools at nights and on the weekends they're in constant use not just by our sports teams and our extracurriculars but by outside organizations and when we can we do charge rental fees I say when we can we certainly try to work with some of our local groups um that are impacting our own students uh you know we don't we try not to uh unless it's you know significant burden charge like our pto's for rental fees and things like that I know sometimes we have to depending on the event uh so really if it's connected to the district we try not to but any outside organization we certainly uh you know try to get some of that money back um we also charge for custodial uh custodians and such um obviously we charge an athletic fee these are things that you know we wish we didn't have to do uh but we're talking about every dollar counting it's something that we find ourselves now in a practice that it would be very hard to stop doing that so you know here at the high school parking fees at the middle school and high school level you have some fees associated with extracurriculars obviously Athletics as well um so again all that is revenue coming into the district uh Medicaid reimbursement uh we are able toit to Medicaid for reimbursement for some of our expenses some of our services that we're providing to our students during the day um Medicaid has uh you know been pretty lenient uh uh in terms of what we can actually submit for used to be very narrow now they expanded that so it should translate into again additional funds for us as long as we're kind of capturing all those services that we're providing um interest earned obviously you know any of the money that we're bringing into the district goes into the bank much like it home uh you know I'm sure you're checking your receivings and and checking accounts to to see the interest earned and you know it's not always significant but sometimes it is depending on the amount of money that we have in the bank U miscellaneous receipts so again kind of money that wasn't uh anticipated money that wasn't uh originally accounted for as coming in uh it could also be something that uh you know maybe uh you know there was an overpayment made you know some textbooks we we had paid $100,000 on textbooks come to find out shipping you know the W shipping and so now they're going to give us uh some unanticipated you know the cost of shipping back so that would be miscellaneous and then also sometimes again uh depending on what we're taking in for some of these reimbursement um programs we may not have budgeted for that full amount so again sometimes it's unanticipated uh receipts circuit breaker reimbursements I mentioned that to you for some of our special education costs we can submit for reimbursement and then end which is excess and deficiencies uh this is somewhat unique to a Regional School District uh you're probably more familiar with the term free cast when you hear you know the towns talk about uh the free cash that they try to spend at the end of their fisal years or throughout their years um and so you know if you're thinking about the town of bridgew really any city or town um sometimes they try to use that free cash to fund some of their bigger projects they might buy a fire truck they might U you know redo a park um some of those bigger projects that they didn't necessarily included into their operational budget so we have uh basically a free cash as well but ours is access and deficiencies so for example um you know when we're building our budget um and we anticipate to get you know $2.6 million for um transportation reimbursement that's kind of what we buil our budget upon that might be something that we've already sent to school committee School committees approved it um we have all our transportation costs already played out and then maybe by the end of the uh you know fiscal year um there's some additional reimbursement that comes in from the state state sometimes says oh we actually had a surplus of funds we're going to give you additional funding typically doesn't happen in Chapter 70 sometimes it happens in reimbursement sometimes it happens in other programs that money would then flow down to exess and deficiency so that's how we end up with free cash at the end of the year or again we may have budgeted and said well traditionally um you know we spend this amount of money on electricity well for whatever reason we've done a great job of making sure every night lights are off uh really trying to conserve energy as much as possible uh we might have uh you know put in some type of energy saving program and so just for rough numbers if we've you know anticipated a million dollar expense in electricity but we've only actually spent 800,000 in a particular year that now allows 200,000 if you don't have other areas that maybe came in short $200,000 to go down to ENT which we then use to offset the following Year's budget so we take that free cash um this year and we actually apply it to next year's budget here are just the numbers and again I know it's a lot to tryy to processes will certainly have these afterwards uh but what I tried to do again self-explanatory is you know if you start with fy2 approved you can see that's our amount that we had budgeted for Chapter 70 our amount that we had budgeted for chapter 71 the Bridgewater contribution the rainan contribution what we as a district contributed and then obviously the sub total so the sub total is that operating budget number that I shared with you that 90 million I gave you the dollar increase and then obviously the percentage increase really the challenges that we're having this year in fy2 I draw your attention to up here Chapter 70 dollar amount only increased by $500,000 from FY 24 to fy2 which basically equated to a 1.7% when you look at the two previous fiscal years the increase in chapter 7 funding that we received was 18 and 12% respectively so to go from that down to a 1% increase that had a significant impact on us you see it you feel it we talk about class size talk about goods and services we had to make some revisions to how we were going to operate this current school year again when this happens the burden unfortunately falls to the towns but this is where we locally can have an impact so that was significant for us that really made a difference um and again you know especially thinking about the prelimary budget that I shared $103 million to go down to 90 million and when you look at the percent increase you know that's really what drove some of that so we had to make some significant changes throughout the course of the budget process last year going into this fiscal year so I want to talk about some of those changes that unfortunately we had to make in the impacts so in January is when I present my preliminary budget uh to school committee to the community and that'll be this year next Wednesday um it'll be here back at the high school up in the lecture hall we are next Wednesday uh 7 o' so about 6:00 start time 7:00 hopefully we'll see some of you there um the school committee votes to adop the budget that I present as their Ro to then make any changes as needed then in March a public hearing is held and some of you I know have attended that in the past um where the chair of the budget subcommittee gets up he or she will present the projected fiscal Year's budget again that could be reflective of some significant changes could be a u look like a different budget than the one that I present in January one school committee votes to adopt it they have that a flexibility to make those changes or make those recommendations to myself and and to the central Office Team and we make those changes and then based on feedback and public comment there could be some additional revisions and then at the end of March a final budget what we'd like to think as a final budget is again uh voted and approved by school committee as I mentioned earlier though that's kind of where the budget stops because school committee does not fund our budget the state and the towns that's where our funding comes from by this time and you have a sense today we'll know what our State dollars are going to be it's the money from the town now we may have a sense of what we can get from uh both Town Bri Rainham in terms of their assessments but that that funding isn't actually approved until later in the spring as the towns go through their own budget process uh and it's usually in May uh the p Town Council votes to appropriate the funding to the district and then because of the form of government it's actually the Rainham town meeting that's held every spring in May um the voters of the town of rhand vote to appropriate that funding as well so again we really rely on the funding from the state and from the towns in order to uh you know move forward a budget but if that funding isn't what we really need it to be we do have to make revisions and so so I just wanted to share with you an example and you've already seen these numbers but I just wanted to call them out as I share with you you know I'll just give you a whole numb it's $88 million in FY 24 is operating we initially proposed a budget of 103 million but what was approved was 90 million so we had to make significant Cuts got a couple comments I apologize um make significant Cuts there and so we had to go through that process so how do we do that we start with things so our supplies and materials so yes we are cutting pencils we are cutting paper we never want to get to a point where we have to say to parents listen you have to you know bring in your own pencils for your students like that we don't want to ever get to that point but what we're also trying to do is preserve what happens in the classroom as much as possible so where we can we're going to reduce things and we're going to reduce expenses and some of those expenses you know could be routine maintenance that we again never want to put off because once we start doing that then things start to break and then they become more costly to repair so we want to make sure that we're keeping up with our routine maintenance but if we have opportunities to you know make some revisions or make some reductions there we certainly will but what happens is you know we go do this exercise uh every year just because we always do like to make provisions we could spend 3 four hours in a room making revisions and we're excited because we think wow we just did that for 3 4 hours and when we go ahead and total all the revisions we made sometimes it's $100,000 and $100,000 is a lot of money don't get me wrong but when you're having to cut 11 million $100,000 isn't really going to make a difference so it takes us a long time to actually get to that point but we do get to point where we say okay we can't cut things anymore because we won't have enough money to pay the electric electric bill the heating bill um we do need supplies materials for our students for our teachers so then we have to stop looking at positions unfortunately so you can imagine when I presented that $13 million budget there was a significant amount of new positions that we were asking for positions that we've been asking for for several years but again going into FY 25 we asked for again all of those new positions were taken out of the budget the proposed budget so that just left us without current staff and even when we got to that point we said we might have to make some reductions not that we wanted to but we knew that that's what we're going to have to do in order to be able to meet the number that the towns and the state had given us so what that result in last spring was we had to Issue 11 non-renewals so unfortunately that basically means that we have to notify staff that your position uh will no longer be funded for the following school year um unfortunately I've been in the situation a number of times as a building principal uh it's not something that I would ever want to put on anyone uh let alone my own principles but it it's sometimes a necessary evil to have to deliver that news to what typically is you know first seconde teacher just starting out his her career full of enthusiasm to say sorry we're not going to be able to bring you back next year as difficult as that was we knew that that was what we had to do so there was 11 uh positions initially that we issued those non-renewal letters too and those are the positions up there now thankfully as the spring went on because we also had some unanticipated retirements we were able to bring back seven of those positions but what we also had to do in order to be able to bring back some of these seven was we had to look at any faculty member staff member across the district that might be retiring might be taking a leave of absence because what we wanted to try to do is avoid having to issue any more non-renewals or layoff notices to any of our existing staff we knew we were going to have four and that was unfortunate but we're trying to avoid any more and so we identified several positions that were going to be open due to retirements leave of absences resignations what have you and so that's where we started so here's a list of all the positions that are currently open in this current school year that we didn't fill in addition of those four that I just showed you that we weren't able to bring back that's significant you know when you talking about 24 positions overall that has a significant impact because you see up here a lot of those are classroom positions so what does that mean obviously we have less teachers at a particular grade level in a particular content area of the high school and obviously class sizes going up so we're going in the opposite direction of where we as a district want to go and I know certainly going in the opposite direction of where you as parents and community members want to see but unfortunately this is what we or Facebook we did make every effort and if you go back you know you can see here it's not just faculty but obviously Administration and we made sure here as well uh there wasn't an area of the district that we didn't touch as much as possible we tried to and it certainly doesn't look like it but stay away from the classroom if we could but in terms of who was retiring or resigning uh these are the how how it kind of played out but we made sure that if we were not going to fill a teaching position we also included an additional administrator now we're down two administrator positions uh we're down two positions in facilities uh we obviously uh Proctor positions we made some reductions there uh they're providing much needing support and coverage at our building levels uh some other central office positions we had two retirees one in our student services department and one in our payroll department you can imagine that's somewhat of a I don't want to say gamble on my part because what happen if we're not able to run payroll you can imagine right and if you think about this in your own work and your own company if your company can't run payroll the stress anxiety that would cause you but that's a chance that I've had to take and say okay we're going to reduce positions in the payroll office I still think we can do it and I think we can do it well thankfully because we have such great staff we've been able to manage that but it's placed a burden and that's not something that and I think you can appreciate again as as many if you work you never want to be in a position where you might not get paid and so even though class size has gone up there have been some other significant impacts that happened across the district biggest one though and this is uh K8 biggest one is class size I can tell you right now this year class size in Bridgewater averages 28 in a decimal rain hamro at 26 what happens though we look and say okay can we move somebody from here to over there and really when you're that close it it ends up fixing a problem to create another problem you know if we were at average of 30 and 20 that would be a you know logical movement because we get somewhere in the middle but when you're so close we're going to go from 28 on one side fix that problem to now 28 maybe 29 on the other side so we can't NE make those movements when we want to looking at next year and I think again I should explain but I think you can see it says a number of classrooms I tried to show you obviously that's where we've had to make some reductions so you can see you know we may have had 10 classrooms at a particular grade level last year going into this year because we had to make those uh reductions we had to leave some of those positions open now in some cases there may have been a bubble bu a bubble and en boat so a very large class so as that class moved on the class coming up may have been smaller so you'll see in some cases we reduce teachers the class size didn't actually change much it's really because it was an enrollment bub that's not always going to be the case especially where um you know those students move through but this is a concern this is a legitimate concern of yours this is a legitimate concern of ours we know that this is not ideal this is not ideal for our students we start talking about outcomes it's obviously not ideal for teachers we talk about our teaching staff wanting to be able to provide as much direct personalized individualized instruction as possible it's hard to do when you have 28 students thankfully we we have amazing staff but they don't let this be a barrier they don't let this be although it's a challenge they never say I can't do it they find a way to do it but it be much more effective if they do a good less so looking ahead to FY 26 Our Hope and what you're going to see next week is that I'm going to propose that we bring back those 24 positions that we had to eliminate now again rough math we're talking about $4 million plus so already I'm asking for $4 million more just to bring these positions back just to get back to even not even ahead and then obviously we're going to ask for a significant amount of positions to address other concerns across the district concerns again that you've raised to us that we're aware of already first being class size if we were to just try to address class size from 2826 down to let's just say 25 which you know sounds much better than 28 26 but it's an ideal it'd be a great world to be in the low 20s we're talking about a significant amount of teachers not just five we're talking about double triple that just to get possibly down to 25 so you can imagine the impact there so that could be another significant as interventionists these are positions that you know were rant funded for us during Co um it's something that we've heard again from parents who students benefited from those interventions we've seen the impact of the loss of these positions have had we've heard from teachers about the loss the impact that the loss of these positions have had so again we ask for those to be included in fy2 who already able to but we're going to bring them try to bring back in FY 26 um student services our special Educators our English language learner teachers we also want to make sure that first and foremost where compliance so there are state federal laws regulations around what um instruction looks like espcially design instruction what grouping size looks like so how many students can be in a particular classroom when they're receiving those services so first and foremost we want to make sure we're beating that but then we also want to say okay well we're in compliance but again it comes down to a numbers so can we deliver that specially designed instruction to a smaller smaller group of students and be more effective and more impactful and we can do that if we have more special Educators because our number of students with disabilities and our number of English language Learners continues to grow so we can't reduce those groupings by having less students within our district we just know that so the only way to counter that is to again to add staff uh we obviously need to address some teaching positions in the high school you saw when we did those open positions and reductions uh a lot of times the last couple years uh fire superintendent recently myself had to say to Miss Watson I need to eliminate a position because we're trying not to impact class size at the lower levels Miss Watson may have had a retiree um I know this happened probably about six seven years ago we keep promising for every year we bring that position back but it hasn't happened because we haven't been able to do it so we want to be able to commit to that and say okay again let's get us back to even and then let's get some additional positions for a high school of this size 1500 students give or take a year maybe up and flow but 14 to 1500 we have one music teacher and one our teacher for the most part we've waiting US every year if you you don't walk to school you see some of the art that our students produce it's amazing our marching Bank continue to grow every year it's amazing we have new faculty in in our music department here at the high school heard from a teacher who teaches down the hall he's never heard music from out of that room like he has this year we want to continue to build and grow that we've you know reached out to other high schools half our size they have four music teachers four art teachers 10 PE teachers we have three PE teachers and a health teacher I think again we're you know we need to be able to state law requires us to provide PE all four years that's been a challenge for us we've had to look at other creative ways to beat that counting Athletics counting some of the extracurriculars because we just simply don't have enough staff to be able to do that um again I talked about the electives and the Ys we want to be able to provide the best quality education that we can to our students at the high school level provide them different opportuni and you know I'm not talking about um you know vocational opportunities in a traditional sense that you know we do Co Automotive we're just not built for that and obviously we have two local schools that do an amazing job at providing those opportunities to our students so not trying to take that away but are there other um IND District programming that we could look at you know Bridgewater state has an amazing cyber security program that they started they've been very uh generous to us in helping us start an after school cyber security we've even created a a cyber security class that we hope to expand so that would be an awesome pipeline for us to have our students St here and be able to maybe earn college credit through a dual enrollment program state so looking at how we can expand those programs again it comes down to staff so what do we know about FY 26 um budget forecasts are are not favorable uh certainly not back to the 18% 12% increases in chapter 7 um we did get some preliminary news today after the governor has uh released her budget um certainly it's not going to meet all of our needs but it's certainly not going to be as impactful as it was this past year um it looks as though Chapter 70 you saw last year only went up by about $500,000 plus um it looks like going into FY 26 we're waiting Cherry sheets that's kind of the um official document that comes out but it looks like it'll be over $2 million as it goes up again not going to address all of our issues but certainly is going to help it looks as though that Regional Transportation May funded 95% again waiting for these official numbers but this is some of the Snippets that we've been shared from the governor's budget all of those will have a significant positive impact but obviously you can see that you know we have some other significant challes that we need to address um you know again part of the problem you know we look at the towns um you know towns get their funds from the state as well and they're also able to generate Revenue much like we are locally you know property taxes your excise tax uh and as such well growth is somewhat slowed in both towns yes there's still building going on and sure you drive around you see that uh but when we look at new growth that's happening um you know growth that's planed for down the road that you know currently may be started now uh but you know might not be finished uh that's slow um and so the towns again when they're doing their projections and forecasts you know they have to kind of look at what they're getting for State funding and then they also have to look at you know what uh they may have coming in um and you know our other challenges obviously our enrollment continues to grow as we saw that um you know listen it's a it's a positive uh we want to welcome as many students as possible we love welcome all of our students that walk through our doors I think that's the greatest part of our job uh so when we say Our Moment continues to grow and it's a challenge it's never about our students it's never about the individual students that is the best part of our jobs and I think you know our principles will attest the best part of their days when they're outside greeing our students at Comm in so whether it's uh you know 5600 whether it's 7,000 we'll take them all and we'll take them all with smile but you can understand now hopefully a little bit better that you know as numbers go up it they do have somewhat of a an impact you know the question I've been asked prior is well what can I do you know what can I do as a resident of the town of Bridgewater resident of the town of rham and certainly you know first and foremost I would always say reach out to me uh that's really where you should start if you have some questions or concerns about the budget about the operations of school let me know uh we want to hear from you because obviously hopefully some of you uh that we've been in communication with you've seen some of your um you know ass reflective in in what I shared in tonight but we also know that our state reps our state senators need to hear from the school system they need to hear from you as constituents and then obviously locally as well so I share this with you again not to say Hey you know go protest outside these people's house I share this with you because if you wanted to reach out and say hey listen I'm concerned uh you know the local budget in my city or town my Regional School District doesn't seem like it's going to meet the needs I'm concerned about class SS what other concerns you may have share that with them because if they don't hear it they can hear it from me one person from The District when they stop hearing it from multiple parents that sometimes to them is an opportunity to say maybe we should really look into this maybe we should look into the funding formula for chapter 7 maybe we should look at the f that we're given to the cities and towns or the towns of brid I have to tell you you know obviously uh both Towns how they decide to fund our budget really is ultimately up to them um we simply are going to present them a budget that again is reflective of our needs uh we hope that both towns are able to support that budget even if it is a significant ask I think it's time that youve seeking um you know we're kind of at that critical tiing point we don't want to necessarily have to take a step back we want to try to continue to move the district forward as best we can um and really to be able to provide for our students I think it's what they deserve um and and I don't think anybody would disagree with that so I do you know just next week hopefully um you know you can tune in if you're not able to actually attend um it'll be a similar type presentation but obviously with a lot more actual numbers uh but it'll be reflective on what I shared with you some of those significant apps that we're going to incorporate is part of FY 26 we'll hopefully have by then more detailed numbers from what we're going to get from the state uh you know obviously I've shared with the percentages and what we think we're getting based on what was released today but hopefully by then we actually have the the true dollar amounts and then we'll start working with the towns throughout the spring and say okay this is what we need how are we going to fund this budget and and that's really going to be the the challenge as we go through the springtime making sure that the budget we put forward can actually be funded and that we don't have to make any revisions it would be great for us to get to that point where we don't have to uh and we're cautiously optimistic that we won't but time will tell really uh in terms of what happens next so again start you know if you have a question comment concern reach out to me I know members of the school committee are always open to hearing from you as well uh but certainly you know advocacy and and assistance that hearts of the state and local level with our Senators re and councilors and as well this is something that we we really uh believe in you know it's not just uh I mean ultimately it's all my responsibility right as a superintendent that's not something I take lightly um but I think we're more successful when we all buy into we all have a collective responsibility whether it be a parent whether it be the school teachers staff obviously the towns and certainly know the state uh we want excellence in education for all of our students I know that's what you want that's what they deserve and so again it's just becoming Partners as we go through not just the budget process but everyday education as well going to kind of you know open that's the end of the presentation um you know certainly no pressure to ask questions uh certainly happy to entertain them uh if you have them I know there may be questions that come up afterwards that um you know you get home you say I wish I asked that or maybe you know you might be more of the type that you know like to ask questions in front of others that's fine just reach out to us we're happy to answer questions if there's something that I can't answer tonight I don't ever want to give you false information or give you an incorrect number um you know I may simply say I'll have to get back to you and you know maybe we'll uh try to seek you all before you leave just get your I know you signed in but we want be a to put a face of name or the question uh and we'll just get your contact information so we can follow up with so Chapter 70 is definitely formul based and so really looks at the profile of the district uh enrollment how many students are in the district and then the profile of the actual individual students and so students are placed into different categories based on their profile um so a district that may have um you know more low income students uh more students of disability more English language Learners they may you know benefit from receiving additional funding however if their enrollment is declining uh they certainly may not um so that formulate is kind of Applied equally across uh the state and then from there um you know the state does make determinations in terms of U you know who may need additional funding and so when you look at the percentage of uh cities and towns there are some cities and towns that the majority of their budget uh because the the community itself uh isn't as what they as prob doesn't have that you know high wealth value the state likes to fund the majority of their budget so you know they look to us it's not a it's like a 6040 split per se uh they may actually fund a a city or town like 70 80% depending on that individual community's wealth and so that is part of the other problem they they do look at bridgew mham um I should say p problem a good thing right they look at both as being prosperous um but I think we all agree you know res itself there certain other cities and towns that are much more wealthy we are but unfortunately because of the threshold that use we are sometimes put in the same category so there what funing is what we what we might not think it is locally because of that's always something that's been dependent on state funding uh what's available and what they decide to earmark towards Regional Transportation uh is kind of one of those that is somewhat arbitrary um you know when they look at what they've brought in for Revenue what they can put towards Transportation you know do they have their version of free cash or excess funds from a prior fiscal year um you hear the governor sometimes talk about there R day funds and so forth um so there's never really a rationale given like oh this year it's because when we get 84% it's 84% for any Regional District so that that Regional Transportation isn't um specific to Bridgewater R here that's the percentage that they give out Statewide to all the Regal that's that's a we and other Regional districts find ourselves abolutely great question um I can 100% answer it right now uh you know as we're looking at what the budget May hold for next year worst case scenario um I think we would do everything we could to maintain our current Services um I think you know we have to certainly look at again we get into this uh you know kind of back and forth of we know we need to add additional staff to be able to maybe even provide level services but if we have retirements and openings we may not fill those to avoid having to lay somebody else off so we may not be able to provide level Services either way but it's certainly something that that is our ultimate goal um I think at a minimum that you know to us worst case scenario would be level services not level funded um because I I think we really you know we need to do more for our students yes micone and well said thank you uh yes to answer your first question uh obviously that you know when looking at the positions that are available uh you did see up there some retirements that were not filled I should have prefaced that by saying we did have other retirements across the district that we did fill because we knew that if we didn't fill those positions it was going to have a significant impact on class size so for example you did have a u Mitchell Elementary School teacher first grade teacher retired we did fill that position looking at the amount of incoming kindergarten we knew that was going to significantly impact when we looked at say the grade two position at the meld that we did Phill we did look at numbers and say okay it's not going to significantly change class size it's not going to make it any better uh but unfortunately you know it wouldn't make it any worse uh either so that's that's why some of those positions weren't filled uh and then obviously we get to a point where there were just some others and we just head to the but uh I think to your point about the high school I could agree more with you I I think we have to be able to provide better opportunities for our students and then I also think to your point about the kindergarten third grade class classrooms um you know those are the foundational years uh we've tried to make some uh you know significant uh impacts by hiring additional esps to be able to provide support in our kindergarten classrooms we did that a couple years ago because of our kindergarten numbers being high uh you know the cost associated with hiring an ESP is is less than hiring another the teacher um and so we're able to add additional esps versus AC the teacher we're looking to do that same thing in first grade try to replicate that again if we can't significantly lower class size how can we also provide support we'd love to be able to replicate that at every grade level but certainly are foundational levs yes uh yes I the you Point 100% I would not disagree I I do think um you know you're starting to see uh the impact of having high class eyes uh and that we're not able to necessarily provide um you know targeted instruction and targeted intervention to all of our students and you know unfortunately sometimes the scorers show that and I think they are recently um unfortunately the state doesn't factor that in um when they're doing their Chapter 70 funding they don't factor in the scores there could be other Financial uh you know programs for districts sometimes districts that require a greater level of intervention to service because of scores or for other reasons there are sometimes gr opportunities for those districts un fortunately we're not at that case where we're that number performing qualify for that assistance yes they are well I I think first and foremost advocating at the state level uh because as you said you know a bulk of our funding comes from from the state um you know and then you know for us be looking at our Two Towns how can we work with them um to be able to fund our budgets again you know they're looking at their revenues they're looking at uh you know their expenses and so what they U you know based on you know what they know they're going to bring in the tax leving and so forth they can only raise you know their contributions so much much uh there are certainly other funding mechanisms that they can explore but you know that would be something we really have to PO with the towns on I think it's you know really advocating letting the state know letting the local um you know Town officials know um in terms of raising funds uh certainly always uh and our parents are amazing I I know I appreciate you saying that about about our teachers uh but we're so fortunate to have such you know well- intended and well organized parent groups um I would always be cautious as as using that as an Avenue to try to offset the budget not that maybe it doesn't come to that but what I worry about is you know if we have a very active parent group at one school versus another funds may you know um not be equally distributed but that's not to say that may not be a case of we have to ask them about principles to reach out to their parent groups to say you know is there something else maybe a that maybe we typically fund maybe the parent groups could fund or you know some type of extracurricular that we fund maybe the parent groups might have to do that if we were to come to that I don't I don't want to preface it by saying I don't think we're at that point but certainly we could be at some point I'm GNA say something that may be very very unpopular other TOS they Cann money the state or their local budgets they pass overides and they pass de exclusions problems and that it's un at I um New Towns passing prop two and half and that that money goes directly to schools um but it depends on a lot of the times it's two you know there different dollar amounts that can be added to a debt exclusion or override and that money goes directly into towns but it has to get put on the ballot and that advocacy to select men Town Council has to start at the local citizen level to say we want to do this we want to raise money again as an individual Community member it's something you to ask yourself this is important to you so It's Tricky everyone in this room obviously you're here because you care about your kids you're part of the school Community if you go out into the larger communities of Rainham and Bridgewater there's lots of other people in the town that are not part of the school maybe they're just community members they're elderly they might not be as invested in the school and the children maybe they are but you know for sure everyone in this room is dead exclusions I can't speak for Bridgewater I am a rham resident we just failed two dead exclusions in rham for different projects the town of rham was not interested in um for a mill project the the the Bridge Project and a safety building project we did eventually has a safety building but that's going to be even more money plus we're all oh the BP project debt exclusion failed so rham was not interested in debt exclusions um and because of that those projects The Bridge Project that we had to do and the BP is then coming out of their operational budget next year so they're not interested in that but then they're going to have a tight budget as far as overrides that's a bigger thing that's a townwide thing that both towns would have to agree to yes it would fund the school but generally overrides also tie in other projects I know Bridgewater always talks about their roads that's a big deal in your town Rainham we have our safety building we have the BP project so those are a large override which I don't know what the threshold percentage is for that but that's a larger project that you would do it would increase your tax and you would roll several projects into that so people don't like overrides but at the same time you can then gather your Safety and Security people your firemen your policemen your people that care about your roads and Facilities you gather more interest so it's a catch 22 but we are like Ryan said kind of at a Tipping Point we didn't get funded last year we cut a lot people are not happy with special Education Services class sizes this year we're getting a little bit more potentially but it's not going to get us back to where we were and we're definitely going to probably not get anything new so if we continue down this road it's just going to be further and further backwards I mean when I came on to school committee I wanted more for the kids I wanted languages in middle school I don't want to be going backwards where we're cutting program I want to get new programs for my kids so I don't know definitely the advocacy at the state level and especially at the town and thinking about out of the box how can we do that is probably the bigger idea and to Transportation School committees hate this chapter 71 the law says 100% subject to appropriation so that's where they met us they just kind of say we can only appropriate this much so we never count on that so it it actually comes out of if you were to look at say on paper you know each month we get um Revenue sourcing so we get our Chapter 70 money that comes into the district monthly when you actually look at what we're do they actually minus so they'll minus out you know the Char of school tuitions the minus out the school choice tuitions so yes the money is coming out but it's not like it ever really came in per se if that makes sense so you know there obiously attached to students that leave just like his dollar is attached to students that come in um but that um money rning leaves is just really deducted from what oh yes can everybody hear me so I mean I'll walk down in case you you want be on a mic but I think be pretty loud um just so everybody know I apologize for coming late I was actually at a legislative meeting for cpcs with our advocates in which uh Senator Rodricks was there high up in the ways and means he told us the budget does not look good um that for at least of our Advocates which is constitutionally guaranteed right that we have that we may not forget in AR so why am I bringing this up he also said that his office since the budget was just brought forth today his office is already inated with people requesting for um advocating for their school districts for this program for that program it is important that we let them know that we need the funding so to Echo my colleagues please please please reach out to them let your voices be heard we need the funding we got our funding as you've heard from Bridgewater and rhand Bridgewater and rhand not only do they get it from the taxes that we pay but from the state let the voices be heard I've been a big advocate for our students and our teachers we cannot have them do more with less again please I'm pleading please reach out it takes five minutes to send an email to those elected officials thank you suest sure that Mak sense well again I know start off by thanking you I really sincerely mean it uh we have had several parent uh evenings over the course of my time here uh this by far is the greatest turnout that we've had so really it speaks again volumes to to your commitment to our students and our staff and District as a whole and I can't thank you enough uh we'll certainly be here afterwards if you have questions um obviously you have my contact information um certainly reach out whether it be tonight tomorrow in the future uh and then as obviously the budget season unfolds it really goes from you know now all the way through May so at any point please reach out but again thank you so much for coming we really appreciate it we do have some handouts uh just the contact information we'll be sending this uh PowerPoint out through the buzz but if you wanted to walk away with any of that contact information uh you know we have in the back but have a great night