did they negotiate something no she pushed looked different had a different memo the memo so she looked at older over a year old so she went back and they gave her a lower number I don't know how much we'll find out for same amount same I believe all right good evening it is 7 p.m. on Thursday March 21st we're back 24 hours later I'm calling the lunberg finance committee meeting to order in accordance with the requirements of the open meeting law please be advised this meeting is being recorded and broadcast over the lunenberg public access Channel and on Facebook live on the public access Facebook page following information is provided for members of the public that would like to participate in the meeting remotely to par to participate remotely from a computer please use the link attached to the agenda which can be found on the town website on the calendar from a telephone dial the toll-free number 888 475 4499 and enter webinar ID 892 2688 7485 this agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the chair votes may be taken as a result of these discussions not all items listed May in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by open meeting law Shuffle Shuffle Shuffle shuffle please stand for the pledge of Legion to flag United States of America okay oh shoot recording in progress my apologies at least it'll be on Pack's version all right so we are at a full committee but one of our members Miss Russell is remote for now so any votes that will be taken will be a roll call vote and I will check in um on occasion with Miss Russell if there's anything that you want to say specifically feel free to just interrupt Miss Russell and I'll let you go thank you of course are there any announcements from the or from the committee this evening we Haven been way long enough all right is there any public comment ment from the public good evening I'm Mary foil 985 flat hill road but I'm really here as the president of the lunenberg Education Association I watched the fincom meeting live last Thursday and was disturbed by what I heard from some members and even emailed my board and asked them to watch it to see if I was out of line action $4,300 that's the amount of money that separates a firste teacher with a bachelor's degree in lunenberg from being eligible for government assistance programs $4,300 out of 12 schools in close proximity to lunenberg there is one school district that has a lower starting salary than lunenberg I share the offer mentioned to make the point that at least some members of the finance committee are not working with accurate data or they do not fully understand the data they're using as a teacher I believe the most important skill I can work on with my students and encourage is critical thinking last week my sophomores learned about and discussed factchecking bad facts and bad narratives bad facts is when one takes data that is not complete out of context or not fully understood and draws conclusions or makes decisions using that data bad narratives are created when one uses inaccurate or incomplete anecdotal narratives or shows an incomplete story there were a number of comments from some members of the finance committee last week that fell into these categories of bad facts or bad narratives if you're not working in education or haven't been directly involved with those working in education please ask questions of those of us who are we're Educators we like to educate just as I may not understand the data connected to your job you may not fully understand the nuances of my job having been a student for a number of years knowing someone who taught or being a parent does not automatically mean that you understand these nuances in education I've had a baby but it doesn't mean I'm I'm ready to help deliver someone else's baby I ask you as you serve in a leadership role in this committee and in this town to do your due diligence be a good good example for our students as to what critical thinking and factchecking really looks like there is already a lot a lot of misinformation in the world and in the town and I'd ask us to stop please contributing to it thank you what was the number that you gave again 4,300 below above um at the that's the first level for government assistance okay 4,300 above there's a 4,300 down okay thank you just want to make sure is there any other public comment from the public Rond delisia 181 Reservoir Road I just had a quick comment about some of the discussion last night involving the whether or not the finance committee is going to vote on the override prior to it being on the warrant and I just wanted to comment that I would hope that you would vote in advance of the warrant being sent out to the homes in town um you know not everyone's as follows government as closely as I do and I think if someone were to get a warrant and there was a split vote on something as important as an override that it might motivate them to um go to town meeting where you know some years they might look through through the warrant and say nothing is contested the both the finance committee and the select board agree that these are necessary things so why do I have to go to town meeting so that's just my two cents thank you thank you are there any other public comments from the public on Zoom if you want to just raise your hand right seeing none is there any public comment from the committee this evening fantastic welcome back Mr bars I hope you got some rest all right so we've adjusted our our meeting a little bit because we've been negligent for getting through our minutes so we moved them to the front of the meeting so we don't have to do them at 11:30 um there are five sets of minutes in the drive has everyone had a chance to read through them yep are there any issues with any of them at this point as I said last evening I'm a little concerned in the wording uh that was describing Mr beard Moore's comment and that was I believe the 22nd but I was not able to pull that back up today I got tied up with other things I I just like some one other member to read through it and see if they remember it the way it's worded there if so then I have no problem okay what was the fifth one uh we go let's see 220 221 222 229 37 look at for my only question is if we could have as part of the minutes a link to the YouTube for the finance committee for that meeting and also any presentations that have been given also be added into the minutes usually any public documents should be part of the minutes okay thank you it was his part of his comment that was talking about um The Debt Service mhm and I think it I think it states that they he said that they are not included but I think he was saying that they were included so I'm inin to just leave out 27 now like I said 21 29 happy to throw it on the next meeting vote if we want to do it and have a discussion when there's not a whole bunch of people waiting for okay votes made and seconded any other discussion on approving four out of the five there'll be a roll call vote Miss Russell Hi Mr paos hi Mr Gray hi Mr Sim hi M tarez hi Mr Bernard hi and an I from myself get those posted I'll send those over first thing tomorrow all right mov on do we have there she is do we have any um e sorry about that one of the latest slides addresses issues with the PA system in this room make sure I don't forget it about the kicking in the fan so I'm Steve I live on Pleasant Street here in Lunenburg I'm the chair of the public access cable committee um just give you a quick overview of what Pac is doing um our mission establish develop modernize and operate the town of Lunen BG's public educational and government channels we do now have three channels so we have one for each of Peg which is the uh acronym we normally use and that's to to reflect Lunenburg so our job is to get lunenberg out there one way or another so recent accomplishments we improve the production quality we all right yes okay improve the production quality of the town meeting we went from one camera some years ago we now not only have four cameras uh we also have the presentation and the electronic voting machine all brought into our system so we get them all at the best quality and we can get the a best presentation of things like Town meetings uh out there uh We've increased the number of government meetings recorded and broadcast um bear in mind that the more meetings we record and broadcast the more time that takes from our videographers which is both a good thing and a bad thing uh cost us some more money um but we're doing a better job so that also will come up when we start looking at the real numbers uh we also increase the amount of pack content that uh goes out to other packs uh not only in Massachusetts but elsewhere uh primarily in Massachusetts I believe um and that's a a good thing because we also get access to programming materials from other packs as well uh we use that and what would be an example of that I'm sorry what would be an example of that uh talking baseball which is one of our favorites is taken I Believe by about 70 people right 70 about 70 we have um about 94 Affiliates that are part of this database mass mass access and we provide um a couple of programs every month and there's some stations in in Massachusetts it's it you know take all of our programs some take part of the programs and we do the same I get a a Catholic Mass from uh Burlington Vermont that I play from this database thank you okay one thing that I like to see is because so many people are taking some of our programming it's kind of a testament to the quality of what we're doing so that's outside people saying yes that's good enough I want it I'm got to put it on my system so we're doing good as they say hey isn't that the American way of saying it I don't know okay channel8 the government the meetings that are covered they're all listed here you presumably had a copy of the presentation it's up beforehand um some we send people to record with a a camera and all the necessary gear excuse me I thought I'd turned that off but the um some we take the zoom feed so if they're doing Zoom uh recording it and then we can take that we can put that out uh on our channels as well um left over from covid uh we still have hybrid meetings we um so this is helping us get it out and the Curiosity from that is it's causing people to be more interested because it's easier to watch meetings without having necessarily to come to them so um I hope there are a lot of people out there watching this at this very moment it's this page right okay this shows next slide please um the meeting hours that are recorded that one thank you there's a slight there's just a slight delay going over there it goes immediately on the zoom call it's just your 7c delay okay um so more meetings means more hours work so you'll see the videographers doing more hours than the meetings and that's because we require them to show up before the meeting make sure everything's working make sure all the bits and pieces have come together properly uh to do the best job we can so doing our part to increase these hours no after budget season we're going back to 45 minute meetings it's my rule uh on Channel 9 we put our locally produced programs that are not governmental these are the ones we were just talking about that are shared is talking baseball uh Story Time the books we love that has a variety of people who contribute to that they bring uh typically children's books and read them um and there's also movie talk uh one thing I will bring to your attention is Pete Lincoln who's been doing talking baseball as of February this is his 10th year of doing it and we do between eight and 10 shows per year so that's a tremendous asset to Lunenburg an asset to pack and truly grateful to Pete Lincoln for everything he's doing there so technical difficulties right I I we will mention that in a moment so on the uh Channel 9 program sources and growth um between Financial year 22 and FY 23 uh we grew them 33% um this says we're doing a lot more of our local programs both governmental things like the ones we were just talking about we're getting a lot of our stuff out there which is uh extremely valuable and encourages people to uh to look at it can we have the next slide please the um blue ones right the this is too small okay the blue bars there are the local programming and the orange ones are total programming and you will see from the third pair of columns that even though these numbers are from February cuz they're the latest ones we have we we're already getting well up there for the year so uh trusting the Joe and our trusty band of videographers and people will keep doing this and get these numbers up since we do local programmingsoftware % increase in sports between fy22 and FY 23 this is something people do like to see we're trying to improve the way we cover it we're getting better at it and it's a real asset once again so the educational Channel which is channel 22 um it's been in operation for four years it was part of our last contract uh to get the uh third Channel um some programs get shared on all three channels so if it's a school committee uh meeting it may come up on the educational Channel it may also come up on the government channel uh some other materials that we bring in uh are shown just on the educational one so varies on the type of material that we're putting out there uh how it's shared but it's used across all three channels and one of these days we might have a high definition channel maybe so so I'll move move on to the financials um which I'm sure you're all eager to hear so the pack revenue from Comcast that's most of our revenue is reserved for pack Capital Improvements um and operations and does not affect Town budgets so the monies that come in go into an Enterprise fund and the town is promising us new Studio space and that's what the money is there for so we can properly fit out and equip the new studio space do you know what that's currently sitting at second do you know what that's currently sitting at for a uh I can't I tried to work out an accurate number we've had a minor confusion to do with indirect costs uh that were overestimated taken need to be put back in but at the moment it's uh uh in the 900s 100,000 um if you take a studio that's 2700 Square ft which is what we're looking for and take a base number of about $350 per square foot for everything for fitting out new equipment everything else uh that comes to pretty much that amount of money so we're also trying to ensure that we protect that um we do get some interest from that fund directly which is another smaller income for the year but some of the Enterprise fund under advisement from the town Treasurer has been invested in short-term bonds now the reason to do this is basically manage inflation so we're getting income from that but we're reserving it into the fund so that as labor for instance and as equipment uh gets more expensive due to inflation these monies are are going up um they're short-term bonds because when we get our space we have a town meeting roughly every 6 months um we would have to go through a town meeting to release budget from that money to be used uh for fitting out a studio so the shortterm so every two months I believe we set that uh some of it comes due if we don't need it right away it gets reinvested and presently that yields about $30,000 per year which is good do you have a timetable for when you're planning on the buildout is it building dependent we get the space okay so you're you're waiting for a design Comm we we don't have the space presently we have 900 square ft which is basically one classroom in TC paos um everything is in there so we have a studio in the corner uh feel free to call Joe and take a walk through if you haven't been there um everything is done from that space we're looking for roughly three times that but right now we don't have a prediction of when that's why we're trying to manage this uh money through these bonds because we don't know when it's going to happen we have to use shortterm mhm uh so when it does happen we can respond through the to meeting quickly are we good on that excellent can I have the next slide please oops so almost there that's good the actual Comcast fee income here comes the fun part uh we've heard of people what's called cable cutting but typically is not cable cutting what it is is they're cutting video services so they still keep Comcast they use the internet access through the cable stck um and they're using streaming video from which we get no Revenue at all as a consequence of that the revenues we're getting from Comcast are starting to fall uh we've got numbers from a number of other places that mass access uh shares with people uh we're actually doing fairly well but they've just started to come down enough to get our attention so we're trying to make sure as we put all of this together uh that we're using honest numbers and we're prepared for them still to go down so what this table does I can go through it in excruciating detail or I can tell you the bottom line is whereas last year I believe we were about 27,000 somewhere around there um this uh FY 25 we're looking for 194,000 and that's our best guess at that number uh we can't predict some of this um there is a law potentially getting passed which I'll talk about which may tax streaming so I'll come to that shortly so if we put all of those together the um next slide is already up there thank you yeah um Comcast income of 194,000 regular interest that's the remainder of the fund we don't have invested is held in Town accounts and that generates some interest the bond interest 3,960 that's a uh best guess at our number for this year we're not attempting to do anything other than best guess because I have no idea what's going to happen with interest rates over the next 12 months so if I did I wouldn't be sitting here I'd be on my yacht somewhere so the total for that is uh 200 1 38,768 of which because we reserve some into the fund we have about 207,000 for our operations so the reason we try and stay within that is if we start using parts of the fund for operations now when we get our new studio we won't have enough money to run it so we keep them separate we try and maintain uh living within our means I guess is one way of saying it so uh operational costs need to be within our expected income so the next slide please um what's happened here this is the pack uh indirect costs so basically uh benefits for employees um we have two employees Joe being one of them and we have a production technician on board as well at the moment um the committee at their last meeting went through and uh assessed what Joe was really doing you can go and stand somewhere else if you want to while I do this and Joe was doing uh more um than where she was in her pay scale and things like that uh the real problem was not really the rate of pay it was the number of hours that were authorized ized so the committee voted to move it up to a more reasonable number uh which it was 28 um we put it up to 36 and as we did that we also ensured we stayed within our budget so it wasn't an arbitrary Joe you're doing a great job have some more hours it's and we can afford to pay you as well which is important so this picture of indirect cost um actually is a spreadsheet there is a surprise um where we can change the hours and it generates the new benefits costs as best we can so it's not the one that was provided to us it's derived from that by putting the hours up um this would take effect the 1 of July as long as everything else comes together correctly so the manager's hours were increased to represent real hours worked approved at last pack meeting and the costs are all recalculated based on those new hours so is this working at the current levels that we have in town so this is not prepared for the sap articles that are coming forward that are going to change potentially steps or anything like that is this no no step change no no gr change just hours same rate more hours okay but there is going to as I look looked it over very quickly we just got it this afternoon and I'm pretty sure there was a change in rates as well for all the steps right and we didn't know what they were so I can't use them but you know Joy it's a spreadsheet we can just put in I just wanted to see where we were at for this one thank you so we we do have room to maneuver somewhat so okay now the next slide which is absolutely my favorite because you cannot read a single number on the thing um what I did is I this is had high definition you could this is what it's based on but the next slide if we could have that um I this is a more readable one in case you have uh specific uh questions on any given line item the one we're going to come to will be the summary which puts it all together but um if there's anything when you look through it you have questions about what it means or anything else uh now is a good time to ask we can answer as best we can uh the committee did go through this line by line um we've tried to justify all the lines and the salaries we did using the uh pack approved new hours for Job M okay the big block in the middle the very bottom one no bottom but two uh no bottom one uh the 30,000 there let me just explain that one because that is not operations what we have to do um we have some very expensive equipment and if we have a catastrophic failure our system can go down completely um there's a thing called a castus which I hope is running in the back room there which is a principal server uh for all three channels as well as recording coming in it's the heart of the system that's somewhere probably 25,000 or so if we had a catastrophic failure there if that happened if we don't budget for that here then we'd have to wait for a town meeting to get money released for us to get it fixed so we put 30,000 of capital in here um that is not part of operations so that doesn't count towards our income so the health insurance line is blank is that in the indirect I'm sorry I can't hear sorry okay yeah I I had a couple of questions too if that's okay yeah so I'm just curious what is consultant services for what is that line item we we have a consultant when a technology is not covered by the variety of people we have okay um we have a uh consultant we can bring in uh just uh on an hourly basis to solve a particular problem he's from another cable system from fitur Fitchburg cable thank you it's it's a good way of working together actually so okay the videographer number has been increased from what it was more hours more meetings more government exposure the lease is for our present Studio which is 900 square ft in TC pasos um the Comcast revenue is declining so that's the guesstimated education guest guestimated a number for that um but the investment income is not showing up as being available at this point because that's ready for us to get our new studio you haven't heard anything on that so the summary budget this is a a readable slide with a bit of luck so the total salaries so uh that's all the people basically um at 126 a half thousand the indirect costs as calculated by us with the change of hours is 28,000 approximately um so together that's 155,000 and that's sort of the people costs if you like so that includes the benefits includes the salaries and that's what we need to run the show the um operations without salaries so that's everything else bits and pieces that we need small stuff um is another 24,000 on top of that so total operations 178,0 773 we have an estimated income of 27,800 so we have approximately 30 ,000 left over from our expected income uh two things there one our expected income from Comcast we may have been a little bit enthusiastic we have no way of predicting that um but also that's just enough to cover that Capital expense that I want to budget for for catastrophic failure so allowing that we come out actually expenses less income is about a $1,000 differential that's probably less than the accuracy of the numbers we try to put together but we do the best we can putting them together but we do ensure that capital is kept that way this gives us a cushion for the following year potentially if concast fees come down a little more um so we're trying to be realistic about holding this together while things are changing around us so I hear silence it's well explained the next slide we did get some funding from arpa so this is just a heads up this is not part of our budget so we were given uh just over 50,000 uh we're creating videography kits these are the kits they take out when they go to meetings or sports events uh we have significant improvements to the studio but improvements that can be carried over to a new studio so they're not installed in the studio and the other thing we're looking at wait for it is the audio in the belot room because we're having issues with it we we didn't put that on for you deliberately tonight so there was a lot of feedback but uh we are talking to a couple of people who are trying to come in with a better system better speakers and a better management system to go in the control room that also is stepping forward in terms of the technology if we get the right one in um and if things get reconfigured and this room this the function of this room ends up somewhere else in the buildings uh that goes with us so so to this room just a question um sorry would it make sense to have like a TV down here for the presenters to actually see what's being yes it's very awkward like to present from there or or to talk to people yeah I'm working with Joe and Eric okay to so that I could have used my laptop here and then what's on my laptop I know if you've used PowerPoint where it'll give you a screen on the laptop with notes and things and the other one's up there and that but you can yes you see one propably there is a lot of turning around that happens and even audience members have to kind of turn around to see we we are aware of that we haven't done anything yet okay so have we not yet we were talking about it earlier today um just as a glimmer of hope for the future there's an act to modernize funding for Community media which has been committee and almost got killed hence the phrase up there that says it's alive it's alive uh it almost died it is still alive uh we are putting together some support for it to send in to representative Scarsdale is that right yeah um the Bill's deadline was extended rather than sent to study it's for the state only so this is a Massachusetts thing and and it's one solution for the state and basically it would you put a fee on streaming video that's not covered by the present franchise contracts so that would be taken by the state from the service providers uh 40% no 20% would go to the state general fund that's essentially to administer and manage that 40% would go to the municip is still can't say that word and 40% would go to community media my problem with this is I haven't managed to find out anywhere if it goes through what it would mean in terms of replacement of our com cod's franchise fee so the um some other states apparently have already done this have we asked whether it actually come to Lunenburg cuz the state tends to collect money but send it somewhere else this is set up by population uh the monies that come into the state would be distributed or dispersed by population so okay not to do with whether people take the service it's done at a different level so okay unfortunately I'm hopeful I can't give you a number on it um there are a lot of people working on it especially Mass access which is kind of the uh professional group that we're involved with that uh is all the packs or most of the packs in Massachusetts sorry and you said that then that would eliminate the franchise fee that one SE no that's interesting because we have a contract uh with Comcast until February the 28th of 2028 as far as I can tell I'm not a politician I don't read this stuff as far as I can tell you would still negotiate a contract under the cable Act of 1991 I think 1884 no that was the communications act 84 okay but you're good I like that the um the as far as I know you would still be doing that because there will still be people taking video Services um old people like me for instance the um so you would have that as well that would still be IND ually um negotiated on a Town by Town basis uh costs money to negotiate and I suspect it won't be the one we got last time was a pretty good one um it looks like they're going to get tougher on us you know they'll claim they're paying this other fee actually Comcast is not involved in paying the streaming fee that's paid by the people who Source the streaming as far as I can understand so it doesn't sharp in Comcast anyway so okay um so that covered that bit there is a proposed warrant oh the screen real quick so quick math on that one if 40% are going to municipalities and we say it's a $10 million of income we're looking at $656 in lunenberg so not not a drastic amount of money I I have no idea the people are really involved with it which are not only some members of mass access uh but they have legal counsel as well um they wouldn't be doing all this work for that well no I'm just saying for lunenberg specifically because if it's based on population lunenberg makes up 0.6% of Massachusetts population oh yeah but the 10 million I'm just guessing I'm throwing 10 million for a round number that's the number I have trouble with I don't know right it would just get worse if it's less than that it's called a zero too many or a zero to few okay just it's yeah so we're talking I would love to if you find that number out let me know please so the warrant which is in your package was already sent in and it's the same warrant as we've used for the last five years except somebody told me to change the FY 24 to FY 25 so any further questions open up to the committee okay don't forget I'd just like to thank you and your staff for all the work you do recording these meetings and especially the marathon meetings and um you know it helps the public be informed thank Joe know me she she's handson with everything thank my videographers great the whole staff works together we do the result is a great service you thank you that's really good Miss Russell any questions oh I would just like to thank them as well oh thank you uh the only question that I have is um the upgraded Studio does that include switching over to some type of high def system or is that an extra expense on top of that present contract um allows for one highdef channel um what we've been looking at is if we manage to get that and we're about to have that discussion now um what would we use it for so we believe everybody would want it um however at least one cable system around one pack has done the approach that I like is to use it for the best of so for government meetings that would use it some of the time but uh things like talking baseball let's put that on a highdefinition channel rather than designating it just for one the other confusion is do they take the standard definition channel away so does this become an extra channel uh we don't know yet cuz some places have ended up with an extra high def Channel and still kept their three standard definition channels and other places have had to retire one and put it in what I will say is the equipment that's in the back room and the equipment that the videographers carry around is all high definition we're high definition from from end to end and we have to pay to buy a piece of equipment to downconvert it to standard definition to put it on the cable system I find that frustrating that's pretty much a function of the delay in your new studio I believe isn't it so what you we do I I say that's a function of the delay in your new studio because you are buying equipment in anticipation of operating through a new studio actually it's tough to find standard definition equipment anymore so but yes you're right are we cool thank you thank you thank you you're very welcome thanks before you do take off though um is there any public comment from the public oh it's not a conversation necessarily just just for we we don't want to make them wait until 11:00 no I'm just concerned Rond delissio 181 Reservoir Road I'm just concerned about the numbers about the dropping revenue and how much is being spent toward operations and the fact that you're still paying $66,000 for rent that was the same that number hasn't changed since 2012 right and then to go into a large space you'd have even more operational expenses like I don't believe I guess the 6,000 May cover some of the electric use it does it covers utilities but I I just can't imagine in a what are you asking 3,000 2700 but yeah 3,000 square foot place I just it just seems like a lot and like we're setting up for having to cover it you know through taxes that's all and the other thing I wanted to mention is the it seemed like on the programming slide that most of the programming is generated outside the studio which would allow you to downsize the actual size of the studio itself for the size we came up with we talked to a number of different places around including lemonster that has a brand new one we visited some it seems like it's practical and realistic to use that size but until we know the configuration of the space we don't know quite where we'll stand we're also trying to expand our we're presently working on can I say podcast yet or not you can say podcast okay um so that would require a small but well soundproofed room to do something like that so things will change we're doing the best we can thank you thank you is there any other public comment from the public before we say good night seeing none thank you very much thank you all right school department if it's possible in the booth could we get some microphones for the table just cuz I think this might go a little while just might just a suspicion at least 20 minutes we can't go past 11:30 that was our limit last night thank you very much come on Mr chair we need to go to 1205 nope nope not a chance I will resign on the spot by the way we discussed that earlier that we'd need to adjourn the meeting and then open an emergency meeting because it's not posted for the next day I'd say we just adjourn at that point it just uh let me check that it might have just been emailed to me let me check real quick let's see is there any did you email this just to me Dr Burnham I shared the actual docent with but I also sent you by email a pdf version okay of the slides oh there we go let me send this to the committee real quick I'm still sharing my screen that's fantastic just email it's all public record anyways it's email all right let me know when you guys get it I've opened all right floor is yours all righty so we'll go through the slides um I think relatively quickly um the intent here was for this to be a standalone document to Encompass um uh some context I guess for the budget uh so we always include our mission statement and that is to provide all students with the skills confidence and passion for lifelong learning so that they may find their own path to successful careers active citizenship and rewarding lives we move to the next slide when I first came to the district um in July of 2018 I began an entry process I spent uh the first year uh engaging in conversations uh with members of the community surveys um examining data reading through documents to get a sense of the district and what the priorities were and from that um I developed a report of findings which then led to the strategy for continuous Improvement we've been working under that strategy uh since November of 2019 19 when it was approved by the school committee in a matter of months later the world shut down yet our work under that strategy continued um we can move on to the next when we began this work in fy19 we had four objective areas transforming teaching and learning cultivating climate and culture communication and operation and Equity access and opportunity and achievement for all students we can go to the next slide over these last several years with very focused and um intentional work on that strategy we have now um cull down our work to just the one objective area and that's our work to continue to create a culture that values data use and fosters continuous learning in a climate that is safe caring inclusive and reflecting reflective of our core values in fy19 um before we began our work relative to academics we had no curriculum leadership Beyond high school department heads we had no District adopted standards aligned rigorous on grade level curriculum in any content area K8 they were all largely uh teacher developed we had no District benchmark assessments in literacy or math no data to determine need for intervention no intervention model for academics no referral process for intervention and no or very limited common planning time for teachers teachers had prep time for their own prep time but common planning time with their peers uh was very limited if we had any uh relative to behavioral health we had no districtwide tier one seal curriculum we had one social worker she was a licensed social worker um we had six guidance counselors in the district we had no intervention model for Behavioral Health we had no referral model for intervention in Behavioral Health as as well through the work of the strategy uh by this year we we can say that we have curriculum leadership including a director of teaching and learning we' have had a title one coordinator A literacy math and co- teing coach um and we still have our high school department heads the district has adopted standards aligned rigorous Ong grade level curriculum in ela and literacy K8 math K5 and this year we are piloting um several uh math curricula uh for adoption in grades 6 through 8 so they will finish their pilot make a recommendation we will take it before the school committee and hopefully they will approve adoption and next year we will Implement a new uh math curriculum for 6 through 8th does that include student feedback as well or is it just the teachers the teachers tend to um take units or lessons from uh the curriculum and actually pilot them with students in the classroom so they they do get to see um how the students engage with the materials okay um and I'm sure that they're they're assessing um the success of the different programs uh in terms of the actual student use um we now have District benchmark assessments in literacy and math we now have data to determine the need for intervention we do have an intervention model for academics we do have a referral process for intervention and we have increased common planning time for teachers in terms of Behavioral Health we have now adopted a districtwide tier one seal curriculum we have five social workers or adjustment counselors they're similar clinical licenses but they are different licenses we still have six guidance counselors um we have two behavioral health staff at the primary school and at Turkey Hill um we have three total behavioral health staff at the middle school and four at the high school we have an intervention model for Behavioral Health and a referral model for intervention now I'll give you some data that we typically include with our budget presentations um this is the enrollment Trend you can see uh dating back to fy15 um recently the last couple of years we've dropped down a little bit um but it seems that perhaps that trend is starting uh to tick upward again next slide we always give um data on class size averages um and uh you can see that our class sizes um up through grade eight range between 20 uh to 25 um data for our high school indic Ates that our average class sizes are smaller um but again not to be misleading with averages we also included the range uh for for class sizes as well we also include uh data on homeschooling we always include um some data for our accountability rating and uh we have some information this year as well on our national ranking so one of the um one of the the measures that comes from analysis of mcast scores along with other data that uh every district has to submit to the state um they come up with an accountability rating and um you can see down below uh circled in red Turkey Hill Elementary School um last year uh broke into uh the 51st percentile we moved from the bottom third in Prior years to Breaking the into the top half and and we believe that that's based on a lot of the the coordinated efforts that we've put in uh to support student learning and closing learning gaps next slide is there any indication as to why the drop off in the high school numbers there's nothing um significant that stands out there um slight fluctuations um Can can cause that little dip um I will preview for you that they are going to be changing the formula for the accountability rating they are going to more heavily wait The Chronic absenteeism data because they are seeing across the state that uh we have not returned to preco absentee levels um The Chronic absenteeism I believe that that's uh in excess of 18 days if you if you have a number of absences in excess of 18 you now fall into that chronic absentee category um the state would like that remedied so they're going to more heavily weight it and essentially penalize you on your accountability rating if you're struggling with absenteeism that's unexcused absence um like if there's medical absence is that come they they do take a look at all of that we do report um we don't know that they that they discount um for the excused absences um what does a low District accountability number do does it affect anything monetarily or is it just sort of how you're perceived across the state yeah so they they use these factors this would be one of them um to determine um and identify districts in need of targeted assistance it's a softer terminology as compared to the old days uh when districts would be sort of in that on Deck Circle for receivership M um so they've softened the categories around all of that but um essentially this is something that would factor in in there okay uh typically you have to be down in the uh low uh the bottom quartile to even be um in the in that realm okay and um we thought we'd share some some good news uh relative to our high school we ranked number 67 in Massachusetts compared to all high schools and we're number 12 in the Wier uh metro area and you can see that our uh students are doing pretty well by most academic measures we always include some information on the State Testing relative to achievement and growth I won't linger here too long um we have some bullets there that kind of hit highlights for you uh we are performing either below or at the state average in meeting and exceeding in six grade level content areas K through six we're about or above the state average in meeting and exceeding in 11 grade level content areas through 12 uh we're still only uh at 35 to 65% of total students at each grade level meeting expectations that is a number that is concerning to us that's a number that we continue to focus on and target for improvement we also have some National and district testing um in in District um we use a variety of Assessments we use the I ready uh assessment for reading in math up through grade8 we also use the Dibbles reading assessment uh for uh students in the lower grades typically we we don't Dibble assess Beyond grade three unless um there's a concern uh hmh is our our new literacy curriculum and there are also module assessments that we give to our students and we look at that data as well we also have uh a universal screener for number sense and we have a new uh kindergarten assessment uh each each year since we've adopted the I ready assessment that is our Benchmark that we give in the fall in the winter and uh again in the spring and we bring reports on the results to the school committee uh in October February and June you have some information here as to um advanced placement testing and the results of our high school students in their advanced placement tests and you have a snapshot there of some of the um the I ready data uh from last spring is that typical to see it kind of Trail off as you go from K through 8 so as you think about that um when you assess at the kindergarten level you really can't be assessing two grades lower than kindergarten level because there aren't two grades lower than in kindergarten Lev okay um the other thing is it's not unusual that you would see um numbers Trail off a bit um as you head up up the grades keep in mind too that um these kiddos have been impacted by covid mhm um obviously the kiddos that have started school in the last couple of years still in the early grades here wouldn't have had as significant an impact uh or Fallout from co uh as compared to some of the students that are in our you know Middle School at this point particularly so there are gaps for us to fill for sure still but we are happy with the progress we've seen okay we have some data from from our um special services uh Department here's just a summary of the number of students that are currently on individualized education plans um and evaluated for special education services um in order to qualify for uh an IEP a student needs to be evaluated uh that could be a variety of of tests that are administered uh to get a a a snapshot of um areas of different performance for students so that we can identify if there is an area uh where they struggle um once a student is on an IEP there's an annual meeting to review the IEP update the IEP but every 3 years the the student needs to be reevaluated and deemed eligible to remain uh with special services so you can see the number of evaluations that uh have gone on um are there Trends associated with the numbers um you'll see that the overall numbers um they they tend to be uh highest at the primary school um I guess I'm thinking more like year-over-year Trends um seems to me I don't have the side-by-side comparison here but um seems to me that we we are seeing slightly fewer numbers of students on IEPs at the lower grades um I think that that is um in part due to the fact that we now have other ways to assess students determine if there are areas of um learning Gap skill Gap um and provide some intervention support to Target that Gap to close that Gap and when that's successful then there's no need to go to the Next Step which would be a deeper evaluation for specialized education um so I do think that that is contributing to some decline in overall numbers uh at the schools I think it'd be interesting to not this year but to monitor the trends in this over time year to year and then help us to inform what's working what needs to change and we can do that we also have some data for you on 504 plans um these plans um support students with an either identified disability or suspected disability um but this is not involving specialized education this is general education and we just identify accommod ations that students need in order to successfully access the curriculum we've included some Behavioral Health Data for you um each building each School building has uh what we call a behavioral health support team um these team members uh meet and they review cases of students who may need to be referred for some possible intervention um and you can see the numbers there uh break being broken down by school the number of referrals uh for Behavioral Health intervention did we track this in the preco time do we know how that is looking again we created this behavioral health support team um after right right as that covid year was was kind of getting underway um we really uh formalized it a bit through that through that year um so I I don't have any data that goes preco and just as a reminder we had one social worker in the district District preo um we had a total of four guidance at the Middle High School level we had one guidance counselor at the elementary school and one guidance counselor at the primary school preo so we really didn't have a whole lot of um behavioral health staff to get together as a team take a look at uh trends that that teachers are seeing um to uh to assess what's going on and and recommend some strategies for intervention by you saying that you indicating that that leads to the lack of data or that it leads what am I to draw from that statement so pre preco we really didn't have enough um staff that could provide that that level of expertise to teachers in the classroom we have more of that behavioral health staff available now in every school and we recognized that there are students who struggle with Behavioral Health whether that appears as um disregulation behavioral um manifestations at the younger grade or uh you know anxiety and depression as they they get into the upper grades um we knew that those challenges were there preco we didn't have the staff in place or the structure in place for this referral process we knew heading into that Co year that this was something we needed to develop and we had um at the time what we called our Behavioral Health advisory Council that was comprised of our bcbas our guidance staff our social worker nurses uh School psychologists and administrators did I miss anybody um they knew that we needed to have um the tiered supports in Behavioral Health the way that you would have tiered supports for academic so again this was put in place just as Co was kind of coming and taking over everything I guess I won't believe it I'm just I guess struggling with how to relate what's being shown here towards what ultimately becomes a budget ask one way or another yep so you see these numbers of kiddos that have gone through a process and uh often times they are being supported um either directly by a bcba uh guidance counselor with group sessions um the social worker adjustment C clinical license in um one-on-one counseling sessions um those staff members providing um strategies for teachers classroom teachers to employ with these students as an intervention to um help them navigate anxiety in the classroom depression uh disregulation the goal here is if they can navigate that successfully they can stay in the classroom they can be more available to learn academically um so these numbers here indicate there's a fair number of students uh in need of some level of um mental health behavioral health support So this speaks to the need for our clinical social workers in the schools guidance counselors in the schools the bcbas um I have I have a question so relative to what Mr manard is talking about with how this affects the budget do you feel that the position that you've just listed have had a high staff turnaround since implementation of this guidance counselors no um bcbas we had two one a year ago um left uh the field um following maternity leave um we backfilled that position position and social workers uh we have had two I think transition out one left um one left the field of Education um and another one uh left to pursue uh Administration and oh actually there were three there was one more who left to take a similar uh position closer to home but in your opinion in a three-year span including social workers do you think that's a high staff turnover um given the high demand of uh these positions everywhere no it's a highly competitive uh Market out there there aren't enough of these licensed folks in the field of Education it's not easy to be become licensed to be in the field of Education um so I I'm knowing the individual circumstances for each of those uh clinical positions that that I just outlined I'm not I'm not concerned at this point about turnover thank you for your answer this is additional information as to the number of students that each of our Behavioral Health uh staff are are working with either our guidance counselors or our social workers as I said this there there are two licenses that are clinical in nature it's a social worker license or it's a school adjustment counselor license guidance counsel license is different they don't have a clinical background and if I remember correctly tier one is effectively no support correct it's just tier one is essentially everybody okay um we're using the trails to Wellness curriculum we've developed common language um there's a a set number of lessons with the same theme up through the grades all the way up through grade 12 um so having that sort of of um common language building wide classroom wide um having those little mini lessons on different topic areas um like catastrophic thinking with the littlest ones we talk about is this a little worry a medium worry or a big worry and kids can identify now in conversation with adults in the building I have a big worry and then they can start talking about it um obviously language adjusts in a developmentally appropriate way as we proceed up through the grade levels but you can see that um we still have a a fair number of students that are engaging in tier 2 and tier three interventions is this on par with the state you know I don't know that this is not data that is tracked and submitted to the state um if we were if we were going to be able to compare I I'd probably have to put out an inquiry through the superintendent's list Ser to see if if they were doing similar um similar type supports with with similar types of Staff in their district and I don't I don't know that they're tracking data even in their own District that would be probable but um it would be really nice if the the state actually track some of this data because is this a standardized way of tracking it is it um maybe for us it's just keeping track of how many kids are in need of what level of support um but it would be to my way of thinking it would be a great thing coming back to The Chronic absenteeism issue that the state wants resolved if you can identify the root cause of Why students are not coming to school some of them it is about school phobia because their anxiety levels are so high or because of the depression level um if we were submitting and tracking data at the state level they might actually be able to quantify uh how significant a problem we're facing with mental health but we don't have to report that sort of data yet yeah I I asked the questions because I think that this is going to be a conversation we're having year after year and we're going to we're going to have to find ways to control costs yet provide what's necessary on it and it seems as though the way to do that is to look at larger sample sizes and seeing what works for similar type districts yeah um uh about a month ago when we were having conversations with the um the delegation I had a one-on-one conversation with rep Scarsdale and I told her that this was an area of concern for us um that this is an area that they need to become more in tune with and um rather in the state taking punitive action to penalize schools that are having challenges with students and absenteeism how about we get to the the root cause how about we find some solutions to root causes and invest in those um so I did ask her to sort of have that in mind um with any future conversations relative to budgets relative to legislation you know the the state's very very good at unfunded mandates so maybe there will be at some point an unfunded mandate relative to uh mental health Staffing we don't know there's a new interim Commissioner of education so we'll see what direction he sets thank you we also have our board certified Behavior analysts uh and you can see their case loads as well and we do have uh Data Tracking back to fy21 uh for those staff as well and again we have two bcbas districtwide one that primarily Services students at the primary and Elementary School and the other uh handles the High School the Ace Program and any out of District placement students do you have an idea as to whether or not these numbers are just reflective of catching up to the needs that we had before we had bcbas in the schools and we're just finally seeing okay now we can actually address the issues or do you think it's actually still climbing it it seems to me that um it's possible that teachers and administrators since we've put in the behavioral health support team referral process that teachers are more in tune with what to be looking for and how to approach getting students assistance and support uh so it's possible that bcbas are actually picking kids up because of this new uh referral process again this is a a referral process before you get to the level of special education um I can't say that that is um exactly what's going on I think we'd need to watch uh to see what happens trend-wise uh for another couple of years to know how does that referral process actually transpire does it just go through through the bcbas and then that goes to Administration and then involves parents or anything or is it all internal you want to talk about the referral process in general how it works both academically and behavioral what do you want me to sure we we have um student support teams and we have a a referral process that there are forms that teers need to fill out there's a designated meeting date we have and set action steps from that date so we have um we have meetings for students support academically Behavioral Health and then from there we decide the the course of action sometimes we determine certain interventions meet again the next month for example to check in on how those interventions are working before we move to for a special education um it really would depend on the nature of what the teacher was seeing in some cases it might be a disregulation uh or a social emotional uh concern that they're seeing coupled with an academic struggle um and at those meetings you would have present um bcba um a social worker you might also have the math specialist the literacy Specialist or other intervention teachers um in some cases uh you know they'll set up meetings that they have have um a series of students that all falling really in the academic referral process and then there might be some that are clearly just in the behavioral health uh referral process but occasionally there's some overlap um and it really depends on the nature of what the teachers are reporting as concerned who would be sitting at the table so it's not a linear teacher refers to the bcba the bcba assesses the situation then identifies for the for the administrator um it really is much more of a a team process and there have been uh opportunities for parents uh to participate as part of that as well okay but primarily this is all happening inh house apart before it gets to actually involving the parents um or is there notification that goes out to the parents when there's a referral if they're going through a referral process there's communication with the okay just want to know if I have a kid that it's currently in a referral program and I don't know it just one just one 25% chance it's not that bad we have some data for you on um Mental Health crisis hospitalizations that required uh tutoring so in other words this wasn't a bad day I ended up in the ER I was released from the ER this is an actual Hospital day um you can see that last year was a year of concern uh we had a total of 16 last year could this be one person showing up multiple times there there were I think two no more than three individuals that had multiple hospitalizations last year um the interesting thing is when we pulled all this data for our initial budget presentation back in January um we only had four to date you'll see the notation there that that's exactly where we were at that time last year and we ended up with a total of 16 for the year um we'll see where we land at the end of this year can you please talk about how that affects the budget when you have a situation like this with 16 so um one of the positions that we had at the high school was an intervention teacher and um we have a we had a different program as well where kiddos that might be coming back from a hospitalization transitioned into this much smaller setting to ease the transition back in to get ramped back up catch up on misw workk manage anxiety levels and then transition into classes in their regular schedule but they always had that classroom as a fall back if they were running into a time in the day that uh they were feeling that they were having trouble coping um so that's one way um another way is that there's intervention and connection to our social workers in the schools for for kiddos that fall into this realm um very important actually and and it's not just at the high school level um we've seen a hospitalization in the elementary school um also the the tutoring you right we also have um in the budget there's a line for uh the hospital tutoring um so that's also in there and this data reflects the hospitalizations only that required tutoring right so there were other hospitalizations that if a student stayed for example for 3 or 4 days and then return to school there was no looking at the spreadsheet and having the answers that you've provided on that helps a lot CU as you're looking at those line items you're able to say okay now this makes sense this goes and you'll see that we double the line for uh Hospital tutoring based on the data that we saw last year we were underfunded in in that line last year to handle um the number of kiddos that required tutoring um and looking at our data thus far this year if it Trends in the same direction we need we need to be ready to support those students so there's a budgetary impct back there as well how much over budget was that last year because of that unexpected expense I'd have to go back and and double check on um actuals but I know that a year ago we only funded that line to $33,000 I believe um there was another line in the budget for just uh home tutoring um so we reallocated money from that line into the hospital tutoring line to um to offset that impact but um again it it's a concern um often and I think that this is a testament to the um confidentiality and discretion that our uh School administrators and behavioral health staff uh employ students in crisis like this are taken from school in an ambulance to a hospital for assessment it's not out and about that there's an ambulance coming to the school on a regular basis is because they are very discreet in timing of the arrival because it's not a medical emergency so you can time the arrival of um an ambulance to a um a more discreet location for a door um that a student can be uh taken out and other students in the building don't notice um we we work really hard to protect um the confidentiality of our students what's the average length of the hospitalizations is there a length average length associated with them cu the tutoring would be driven by days wouldn't it I think it it's when you trip into a certain number of days is it Beyond five I'm not sure I'd have to check that with our um special ed director for you um yeah maybe just something for future again looking at the and then me is there tutoring for non there must be tutoring for non-b Behavior related medical issues that could come up too right oh sure if we had a student that was out for a medical and they out for a period of time we would also uh be obligated to provide tutoring for them as well do we see Trends associated with that or is that no no none that I'm aware of how is that tutoring employed not on hospitalization but you know I think to Chris's Point like at what point does that happen how does a parent invoke that or is it the teachers or a principal or social worker they don't invoke it it's our responsibility once a student is out for a period of time on AAL and even the behavioral health mental health hospitalization they're out on a medical we are obligated to provide that tutoring because they need to have access to their learning so there are state requirements then yeah we have to provide the two thank you did the the overage from last year did was that I just looked it up it was was from 3,000 to 5,000 or 6,000 excuse me did that cover 6,000 covered Juliana is pretty good you I remember a week ago um I believe that she doubled that line because that was pretty close to what we actually spent so worst case scenario if we see a repeat of last year that would get us unfortunately but fortunately prepared okay so in our initial budget presentation we actually um proposed that the school committee may want to consider since we're looking at many cuts um whether or not they wanted to consider Cuts in our athletic Staffing and our only uh budgeted staff permanent staff not seasonal coaches uh were our athletic trainer and our um athletic director and um one of the parents noted that there was no data on our athletic programs and the participation of students in the programs and we do have um reports to the school committee about participation of high school students in our athletic programs for each season so I just went back and grab some data you can see that there are a couple Seasons there due to co we we weren't playing in that season um during the 2021 year The Fall season was actually relocated to the to the tail end of spring there was an abbreviated fall and spring season in the spring um so you can see that we have consistently strong uh participation there's a market increase in Winter the last two years is that for because it new sports were at added or I don't believe that we've added any sports we have a co-op ski I think that our kids participate in um we've got a co-op hockey um indoor indoor track um pickle ball all there St coming soon um that'll drive you crazy though you should come visit over in the office and you it's loud the Ambiance of pickle ball in the background makes you feel guilty for sitting at your desk and working on your laptop you feel like you should be up and moving around but um it's exercise osmosis Sports oh basketball basketball of course the numbers there are kind of limited you're kind of limited in the number of kiddos that you can have on teams but um we I think just in general there are just a couple fewer sports that are running uh for us during the winter months as compared to the the fall in the spring I have I have actually a few questions about this because parents pay for athletic programs where does that money go to pay for the programs I I'll end up doing a full breakdown at the end of the year um assuming that we get past budget by the end of the year um we have fees that come in to our athletic revolving account we have um ticket sales to different competitions that come into that revolving account um we have some support from uh booster organizations um and then there's some uh some budgeted lines in the budget but the the vast majority of what we're paying out uh is funded through those those fees because when you take a look at the lines that are budgeted they fall well below what the total cost uh would be in those lines a transportation alone do you know what percentage the fees cover of the overall cost I can do a breakdown of that when we actually dig in and break it out by um by season by sport um keep in mind that not all students who participate are actually paying the full fee if you are eligible for free lunch there is no fee and if you are eligible for reduced lunch there's a significantly reduced fee I want to say it's like 30 less than 302 or $33 I mean it's a significant reduction in the fee which then becomes a challenge so you've got a lot of kids participating but not all kids contributing to the cost of the actual sport mhm um I've always had a lot of questions surrounding this because I don't understand all of the athletic programs that are offered through the town of lunenberg but if you have sponsors participating for marketing value for their businesses we for that by policy that is but is that not part of the athletic program this is part of what I'm asking there are no sponsors no so I don't understand what that would be for like Bengals or Falls in this like what categories of sports are relative to this screen our high school and middle school athletic programs not the Bengals not Lysa not uh lunenberg youth basketball those are separate entities they're youth sport organizations they're not part of our lunenberg sports program but does your athletic director contribute the time to schedule those teams out on public Fields how does who schedules that like who whose position pays that that's a joint effort between our um athletic director and the facility director okay thank you and I will say that our athletic director works really hard to try to accommodate the preferred location dates and times um the challenge for us particularly in the fall um given our own high school and middle school athletic teams their need for practice time on a field games scheduled on our Fields um it's a real challenge we don't have enough field space to accommodate everyone's preferred ask uh and it gets even trickier once you have bad weather and Rain outs and reschedule of our games which then bump the Youth Organization practices or games um we just don't have enough space I I think that's very important information for parents to know because over the years I've had so many conversations with you know fellow parents and they're like if the athletic department is scheduling this what's the participation if we're paying and is it private so I think that answers a lot of questions it's not just you know for finance committee members but the town as a whole to try to understand what does this program actually include so the the budget and the line items that you have specific to Athletics in lunenberg I think it helps people that are listening and are you know tuning into the school budget in the state that we're in right now with a worst case scenario say okay the line items for athletics are for x y and z there is a charge for facility use for those organizations so the fact that we maintain the playing fields to the right specs for the sport we line the fields for the sport we have the lights we do irrigation um this scheduling on and on there's a fee that the users pay um and honestly hasn't that fee stayed pretty static for yep we like hundreds of years or something like a long time hundreds it's been a long actually currently um Mr heee is now re-evaluating the rates um and we will be going to the school committee this spring with recommendation for changes to some of the rates as an example if you uh if you rent the gym that's inside the building somebody has to be there to open the building be there to you know have oversight of the building and then secure the building clean up uh as that event is done um so one of the fees if you're having an event inside the building is a custodian on for the duration of your event um we have to pay the custodian time and a half because they work their regular shift and then they're also working these additional events let's say on a Saturday um and it's not always the custodians with the lowest hourly rate that are the ones that are volunteering to work the event often times it's our staff who are making a higher hourly rate uh so definitely we we can't be losing money on on rentals so we need to go back reassess all the kinds of charges that that we have relative to facility use I support that effort very much I I think it's much more complicated than that because everyone is still a taxpayer for every field in every gym in this in the town yep so and our approach has always been what's what's the fee that needs that we need to charge to cover cost right it's not a money making Enterprise for us um because it is it's largely it's the kids in the community that are right that are using the building Y and it's a good thing for them to be engaged in in these activities we we're not looking at this as a money-making opportunity we we're we have always just sought to cover cost but if it's self- sustaining at very least instead of being in a deficit state maybe there could be a little bit more effort on an an arts and culture you know director so there's this information and there is quite a bit of focus on Athletics and by all means I support Athletics but I also support arts and culture and there's been many discussions this budget season about students concerned about losing band and losing art and how the integration of that creative aspect of learning has helped them in academic learning so I would be interested to see that and I understand like this is very close to the end of the budget season where you know we're going to be reviewing this but I think for future that would be something to really dig into and not to be this money maker but at very least self- sustaining and taking a closer look at the private institutions in the town to make sure that the contributable factor with them is fair so that you could put a focus on other programs as well yeah just another plug out the rec director is part of that whole scheduling process as well she been phenomenal to work with yeah she really has and she's she's done a great job organizing a variety of things for kids all year long she really and she's a great communicator with us gets us a schedule we can promote the schedule um which again helps get those programs enrolled well so that they can run so I think you're on noncom platforms what was that you were on different platforms I think which makes it a little harder too back to the very beginning one of the things I heard in my entry process here from all of our facility users how much they hated school dude how much it was not user friendly the number one thing we want you to do Kate is get rid of school dude I'm sorry it's called School dude that was the name of the platform School dude yeah so we we vetted a few um and the the one that we've moved to now ml schedules is actually um a bit cheaper and it is much more user friendly even on our end it's much more user friendly and um Chris Ruth has actually come down and we've uh walked him through the difference you know how this this new platform works works and as I understand it he was going to be exploring uh picking it up for the the scheduling of the rec programs in so because as the just an average citizen in town you don't know who to go to if you want to use a certain facility in town right the library the yep the the Boys and Girls Club you know the who charges rent for some reason on a Town property that they have no lease on um the um Parks has you know so it's confusing right it should be one pretty much any anybody who needs to know um given a call to my office we Liz is pretty knowledgeable about all of that and can generally Point people in the right direction but we had talked a while back about um creating some sort of uh information on the town website as to what facilities were available and who the contact would would be if you were interested in renting the different facilities because they are under the purview of of different boards and departments in town yeah and there's got to be a savings if you could have one entry point into the reservation of different things and scheduling software for yeah like I said um I think the parks was using something different in the my only time that we that the town was using School dude was just for TCP I thought um and we had communication before we rolled away from from school dude um but like I said uh Chris Ruth came over and and we kind of walked through how it works and the things that we see that are a bonus uh to this new platform yeah um and like I said he was going to be looking into it because he was uh happy with it as well yeah okay and it's a little bit of savings and I know live Li is on a different platform having used theirs so a couple of years ago you your policy committee spent I'm going to say half a school year trying to sort out the pecking order it's the best word I can come up with for use of the fields y I would assume that's kind of hard to build into a software platform yeah that really does come into the approval process MH um we work hard to get our athletic programs scheduled in early right and they were they were high we're pretty much scheduling the next season out yep in the current season so we can kind of preload those things um that way when it's time for the seasonal users uh to start putting in their request for their schedule um our facility director has the uh sign off for my sign off um if it is a uh field or a gym um the athletic director also is in that chain of approval so that there's a cross Check Yes it's available it's approved um the building principles are also in that queue for approval um and and we have conversations with the um the leaders of each of the organizations as they're you know about to start uh scheduling for their upcoming season um and like I said our athletic director has been really good about working with um the leads on uh one of these sports groups it it just seems like there it would be nice if there was a more streamlined process but there there's so many facets to it it's it's difficult yep there's a lot of layers of of checks um but ultimately it's the uh facility director that has the responsibility for um invoicing for facility use um so he would be the one to make sure that he had all the proper details loaded in uh to the system uh through the approval process just a quick question about the status of the fields and the status of of the since we're on Athletics and the status of the stadium as well um we had a pretty wet winter y we had a pretty wet year last year as well has there been any indication that our fields are not able to hold up to all of this weather at this point or that the stadium is so historically we had problems when we've had heavy rain any time of year Heavy Rain weeks havoc on the turf because we've got a drainage issue over there um which is contributing to um the disrepair of the retaining wall the paver walkway the the the retaining wall at the fence the fence you can visibly see is leaning um we were allocated 50,000 in ARA money um we have um uh gone through the process we've got uh somebody doing that site assessment at this point and we'll make that recommendation as to what a full a full assessment uh and the work that needs to be done there would entail MH um so that's getting underway um we just signed a contract with the the one that was awarded so um we've we've had a challenge with um low-lying areas of the grass fields holding water um I think honestly to remedy that we're we're going to have to address leveling that field filling it in um that's going to take the field out of play for a bit of time so uh are you talking along massav or behind Turkey Hill um the one that the the side of the grass field where the bleachers are as you come up the driveway to the middle high school behind the TCP parking lot those grass fields right there the one that's close to the driveway has some lower Ling areas that can get kind of Swampy if we have it's one word you got to remember a brook was buried underground through that property many years ago yes we've heard that story from our own resident historian on the school committee so that that's part of your water it's a natural Brook that's underground exactly that's why you have that little patch of cat cat of Ninetails down at the corner of the driveway on Route 28 see you tune in to finance committee and you learn some things about town qu we should do a a trivia night on wenberg trivia can add it to the SM than the sixth grader I think we just had a a great idea any questions on Athletics for now no all right um added a few slides on grants because through the early part of the budget cycle this year there was lots of conversation about why don't you just look for Grants um and uh I thought it was worthwhile to share some some data on that so you have a summary there of just the Esser grants that are closing out um sr1 has already sunsetted sr2 sunsetted last September and uh sr3 will sunet this coming September um when we got these grants however we knew that they were multi-year and uh we had multiple years to expend them and we developed a plan for Staffing and it was a multi-year plan um and we have stuck to that plan and as we've gotten to um the sunsetting of any one of these grants if there were any uh remaining funds uh we use them as a one-time purchase often times you know grabbing a handful of Chromebooks or something like that which which is an allowable expense on Esser um and likely we would do the same if if we had a small amount of money remaining as we close out Esser this summer if there are you know Tech things that we can purchase for the kids we would do that in retrospect has anybody verbalized U what might have been a better way to use these funds I know that there are some people who thought these are not sustainable funds we should just you know do onetime purchases do repairs of some things or whatever the intent of these primarily um was to address the covid impact and the two biggest priority areas um that were identified for this grant uh were social emotional mental health and academic learning loss and that's exactly how we prioritized These funds so there was an impact no doubt about it mhm but we have stayed focused we knew that we may only have this level of Staffing for three short years but we were going to hit it hard because we were going to do everything that we could to close any of of the gaps that were resulting from that period of time whereas a one-time purchase of Chromebooks they have a lifespan they're gone the kids that we impact their lifespan is a whole lot longer and the impact if we can address mental health for them now and give them strategies that can last them a lifetime and get them access to being in a classroom and available for learning again that's a lifelong impact that we had we did buy some air purifiers for some of our classrooms where teachers were rather anxious around the concern with covid and airf flow and uh so we did purchas some things like that we aren't still using those in the classroom that concern has dissipated one quick question if I may interrupt for a second and and again this is coming from a person that does not know what the collective bargaining agreements say in the fine print uh and whether it's even doable but in retrospect would it might have been better served to contract out those services using the Esser money um and no because um one of the things that we're finding right now um we have had significant challenge finding a speech language pathologist speech and language uh services are included on IEPs we have to provide them we we can't find anyone to fill the position we have had to bring in contracted service it costs more than double what it would cost us if we could fill the position we can't afford contracted service more than double including full benefits yes okay thank you it's cost us an awful lot of money um so I I would say that we we actually made out pretty well um and most of the positions that we hired were not most of them were not folks that had a lot of years of experience mhm so they were entering at a a lower pay scale um I I I think they were absolutely 100% worth worth that money they've built raor with the kids they've been in the same buildings for a few years now um that that connection and more with the kids seeing them every day being out at recess with them with contracted service you're not getting any of that um so I I do think that we saw a a substantial benefit from making that investment and we knew and I have said for three years yes we know we're going to have to cut positions when s monies are gone however we might find based on student need that some of these positions must stay and we would choose to cut other positions in place of them and that's exactly where we're at we're looking to keep our clinical licenses our social workers and adjustment counselors in our schools thank you I have um some follow-up thoughts to that so in regard to the learning loss for students across the board Y and there's been a difference in the way that the school I'm not even just going to say lunenberg schools in general have tried to re acclimate students going back into a building hybrid learning full-time learning and I am of the opinion that right now the students that have gone from the elementary school this past year and they're now in Middle School were not prepared for having homework and for the rigorous schedule of middle school because there was not a plan in place with the elementary school to have any homework I don't see that was a deliberate decision I I want to finish this because I really want to hear your answer to this because I want to understand this so I don't see that that's really changed this year with the elementary school so the elementary school still does not have any homework and you have one of the largest classes going from the elementary school into the middle school this upcoming fall and with the loss of these grants I can certainly understand wanting to keep those clinicians I do think these positions are important and I think it's this is my personal opinion it's rather unfortunate that we're faced with what we have and we're trying to exist within our means and make the right decisions I understand those are hard decisions but having a strategy in place to say okay we need to slowly acclimate the students through this curve into the middle school do you think that it would decrease some of the need for the clinicians or the anxiety that the social workers are trying to decrease because I have I have experienced and had conversations with dozens of other parents who are also in a panic because that we're not used to it as parents and I'm not just speaking as an I I am speaking as a Wei for the community to try to get our kids used to doing that type of homework and I am concerned for that class even though I don't have a child in it I'm still concerned for many reasons about what is going to happen next year especially with these budget Cuts so are the clinicians going to see a heavier workload in the social workers because they're going to have the same recurring problem that's happened this year into next year what is the strategy to fix that the strategy comes back to uh pedagogy if you take a look at the academic performance of The Turkey Hill Elementary School it's increased during the years that they have not had mandatory homework as part of what they do it's not that they don't have anything to do at home they prioritized asking students and parents to prioritize free reading at home they're asked to spend some time reading every night they are not sitting down at the kitchen table doing math worksheets or spelling lists or writing sentences with the spelling words we've seen an increase in the achievement we need to have conversations at the 6 12 level about pedagogy about what is the purpose of homework what are you trying to accomplish with the homework teaching children time management is not the right first answer for why we give homework it's not it should be connected to the learning outcome so those are conversations that are ongoing that said I know that homework is important as the kids progress up through the grades but the sixth grade teachers have some responsibility to help kids transition up to that level it's not you walk in the door your sixth grade boom welcome to Middle School here's your homework load that should not be happening I strongly disagree with you and I encourage you to sit through your sixth grade classrooms because it is a shocking amount of work and I think the teachers are stressed out from having to acclimate those students and I do think spending your resources on trying to decrease the stress levels in that middle school because these kids are not prepared I am not saying that Turkey Hill is not a successful Elementary School I am not disagreeing with that point I'm saying I think the money that is being spent on the clinicians maybe you wouldn't need as many clinicians and maybe the time could be stretched differently if there weren't as much anxieties and the teachers may have a little less on their plates too to say you know what I have a third of my classroom that is stressed out because they've never done homework before and it's not like they they wait to give the kids homework 3 months into the year it's it's that's not the case that's happening in the middle school right now so this is a big conversation and it's a philosophical conversation and it really does come down to the pedagogy of learning um so I think we can agree to disagree on this one for now we sure that's fine but pedagogy is learning it's the methodology of teaching and there's a lot of different learning styles and there's a lot of different teaching styles there are and this is a point that I bring up to the community publicly that I think think that where there are there is opportunity to potentially save on Resources by changing a structure a simple structural change by slowly acclimating a child potentially reducing the stress of that child and the people teaching the children no matter what style those teachers choose so I would say that there is no homework at the Turkey Hill Elementary and yet we have students that are uh in need of tier 2 and tier three uh Behavioral Health important so I don't see it as a direct connection I do see it as a contributing factor you are absolutely right on that I won't deny that but again it comes back to conversations around the approach to education um it's an ongoing process because we don't dictate to teachers what they must do or what they cannot do it's a process to get them to a place where they can understand that they can have high quality instruction in their classroom without giving kids a half hour of homework every night um it's a process it it's a transition in in practice and um sometimes it can be hard when you shift practice when you've been practicing this way for 15 20 years um it's a process it's a conversation um I don't disagree that kids get stressed out about homework teachers get stressed out about having to correct homework but they're getting paid to do that and the kids are setting up success for the rest of it's also a case of if it's stressful for you to have to correct it again please revisit why are you giving this assignment and what are you looking to assess of the student through this assignment and oftentimes teachers can't always answer that question it's just that this is what good teachers do they give homework they teach kids time management they get them ready for college but what we're finding is that the kids come back from college and tell us that college is a cakewalk compared to high school because they had so much homework in high school it didn't really get them ready for college College is very different now than it was 15 20 years ago if the level at the middle school homework wasn't as high as it is I don't think I would be advocating for both students and teachers and when I say it's a shocking amount it's not that they went from having elective reading in Turkey Hill to half an hour at night at home in the middle school that is not the case it is ours for some of these students I know that so what you're talking about with there's more work in you know the high school level and college is actually more manageable that's currently happening so I think there needs to be some check and balance in between the elementary school and the middle school and my advocacy is for I'm I'm happy to hear that I'm very interested I'll be tuning into that but my advocacy is not just for the students and the parents it is also for the teachers because I see this is a big stress load on the teachers as well I think because we made the decision to stop homework at the turke hill level just I think it was two years and it was actually after having conversations with teachers because during the hybrid year they backed off off the homework and what they what the teachers reported was that they did not see a decline overall because they did not have homework and they wanted to continue that for another year to see and like I said we're seeing good good results in terms of achievement for kids so they've embraced this this idea at that level it's a process it's going to take us some more time and effort and conversation with teachers to help them navigate to a place where it can be less stressful for them as well as for the kids because they don't have to give as much homework as they're giving they don't have to have kids spending the time on it they don't have to spend hours and hours themselves grading it again it's a process um that you engage with the teachers through it's not an edict where you just say you're not giving homework anymore that was a process that teachers in concert with their building administrators got to at Turkey Hill thank you and I'm going to continue to encourage that transition conversation yeah y I think it comes down simply to when I leave my job I don't go home and then have to start doing more work for my job right the kids are there for six 6 and 1 half hours and then they go home and then they to continue their job and they're wiped right and the the thinking at Turkey Hill was we want kids to love reading so let them read what is interesting to them we just want them to read I'll give you my own life story at some point there was so much homework and so much reading as part of homework that along the line when I had free time I was not reading reading was work to this day the books I choose to pick up are work related not a fiction novel or something like that that was the connection for me reading is work we don't want I I don't want that to be the connection for kids I want them to love reading whatever kind of reading they want to do I will give you and other people it right out of them I think that's a successful program I think that that is very successful the elementary school students that I know in this community they are more connected to reading and that credit is due so to be fair I think that's successful and that has shown through in my own household and that's something that we push as parents but I have to say Turkey Hill has done a phenomenal job with encouraging children to read and again that's that's not the point the point is about the trans transition into something else and keeping that excitement for learning it's keeping the you know this isn't a chore because to Mr wat's point you know they're they're leaving for 6 hours of school and they're going home and now they're required to read and they're required to do an hour and a half math and they're required to study so the excitement of the learning and you know I don't want to you know waste more not waste time but I don't want to continue to go this cuz I think we see each other's Point here we need to work on the transition we need to work with everybody involved and I think it does relate to the numbers and the budget as well but I will give you that credit all day long and everyone else that's worked in the program for Turkey Hill because I think the reading program there is very successful thank you you still get a prize if you read 15 books no um I don't think they do no was it Pizza Hut that used to give you the little yes read so many books f schools used to do it but it was through Pizza Hut did they do something at the library a couple of years ago I think the kids got we had a connection with um the public library um we partnered with them generally speaking for their kickoff for summer reading and I think a couple years ago they got they got prizes based on the most Pages read or the most books read or something and you can imagine there were all kinds of theories around that too and reading LS and forcing kids and making them earn and that's hon it was books and Beyond and my son had to do 15 every night so that he could beat someone else so yeah he is real right there you love the joy of reading I got to read 15 books how many pages in those books no they're too long many words on those pages graphic novel we need some pictures in these books all right shall we continue please so again there are a few slides um taking you back from the current year back all the way to fy20 you've got our federal grants which are enti it lement grants we get them every year it's a formula based allocation um and then the state grants those are the ones that we actively pursue uh they are not a given um and as you can see uh we've been fairly successful uh in in bringing in some additional uh funding sources for the work that we're trying to do in the district you can just quickly scroll through because they're they're pretty much the same um I did have somebody inquire as to who's the primary grant writer there is no primary grant writer um it's the lead person uh that would uh be connected to that Grant area so in other words any special ed related grants uh Juliana hansum would be the uh lead anything connected to curriculum learning um instruction uh Mrs Scott here our director of teaching and learning would be the lead for those um we have had a longstanding family and Community Grant that's an Early Education and Care Grant uh Patty Gillette is the one that runs that program and the last couple years there was an add-on to that Grant if you had that Grant you were eligible to apply for and we did uh get the child home program uh we have folks who go into homes with with little ones and they bring books they read um just trying to make that literacy connection um and resources for literacy really early and we've also had some um school health type grants and that's our uh nurse coordinator uh that would facilitate write for and facilitate those grants any of the real covid specific kinds of Grants it was our business manager that was the lead on those or state funding we we heard last night about the fair might have been last night I don't even know about the fair share millionair tax funds for chapter 90 and we're getting in I have gotten no no information usually if there are funds that are targeted to K12 they they they tend to come through the department of um we haven't I checked with Juliana too we haven't seen anything uh come our way yet uh but we can we can do some inquiry to see if if there are any funds coming to k12 and what they might be from what I remember you saying it was supposed to be 5050 right um I looked again I was it targeted to higher red higher red and I found something for K12 but it was it wasn't like it come to to is that paying for the associates degree for people over 25 maybe yes that's what it's going towards uh it might that's not to say that there's nothing coming to K12 mhm just nothing that we've seen yet we haven't seen anything and that we haven't heard anything about it being factored into the Chapter 70 formulation or anything okay okay that's unfortunate this says 510 budgeted for Early Education and Care K12 education the entire education I feel like it was definitely sold that way it was which is usually the bait and switch that happens on legislation but well the other thing is if Early Education and Care is eligible maybe there's another Grant that's coming that way maybe maybe it'll be the book ends it's the higher ed in the early early care but I I don't know we haven't seen anything I would hope that wouldn't be grant-based though I would hope it' be direct sort of like a 40s effectively so when you think about it being grant-based um the Esser grants we didn't apply for those it was an allocation but it was it came to us through the department of Ed got it just so when they're trying to Target K12 those monies funnel through the department of Ed and whether it's a we have a formula this is what you're getting they facilitate them like grants okay in other words we have to report information on them and um that's how they kind of manage and track at the state level so okay I don't know if they're not competitive grants they're just grants and it does show education mostly higher ed K12 is only for early college and inovation Pathways okay that's the Innovation pathway don't know if this is right but it's something it's on Google so it's it's absolutely true Mr Google knows everything do my percent well this is Mara H's Bri okay it breaks it down if it's right so it looks like there's not much coming K 12 okay so again if you just flip through these quickly you'll see it's a similar uh series of Grants uh different values uh different years um and as you flip back and get all the way back to like fy20 you see that there were far fewer grants at that time again a lot of federal money came into the state with with covid um and how the state used that money and how they chose to distribute that money and Target their priorities that's where you see fy21 22 23 24 accelerated learning deeper learning literacy like all of that um I suspect that at some point uh probably as soon as next year we'll start to see some of those grants dwindling off um there was a time where if you got in early and you got into this Grant and often times they would do a continuation so if you were in you could apply to continue the grant um and and we're already starting to see some of that fade off okay but we were able to take advantage of purchasing almost all of our new curriculum materials through grants and we were told by desie that we they were glad we we took advantage because at some point it's going to be unfunded mandate to use high quality instructional materials so even though we're paying for the consumable in the building budgets now um the original bulk of the cost was you know okay and when you're talking K5 that's like a few hundred, to make that purchase and Implement K5 all at one time we never would have been able we would have had to start with will'll start implementing K1 and then we'll add grade two next year and we like we would have had to phase it in we never would have been able to afford to implement K12 12 or k K5 literacy and K5 math and then 68 literacy and like I said next year we'll be implementing um curriculum for 68 for math is that primarily license-based those those expenses or or is it physical okay are those there are tangible um materials uh that you can purchase as well are are they permanent licenses Perpetual LIC or are we going to see another need for a large investment at some point at some point only if we adopt yeah so here's the thing about the state every 10 12 years or so they revisit the standards they change things up and then you have to update your curiculum to make sure that you're aligned with the standards that they have now put in place for that grade for that content area mhm um so that's a natural driver at some point the state is going to make some adjustment to to Frameworks and um you will have to make an adjustment as well um some of the some of the licenses that we have though for one of the lines in the budget uh is a renewal uh for books science y science books at the high school but that renewal cost is a six-year license so but they make you Fay it pay it on year one there's no option for spreading out discounted rate for a six-year option versus paying but it's still upfront they they turn because I know there are plenty of options that give you and again this is private sector not or public sector not Public Schools we could pay annually but like an said in the in the long run we pay more money for it no like we are able to P purchase a bulk package that we then pay if it's over six years we divide that number by six and we pay that amount every year until we hit the total amount they don't offer that with anything like this I can't speak to those science Tex we it's something ask about I if they want to make a sale um if if these do come through on average of every 10 years is that something that we could put forward as as as a 10-year plan to prepare for so that we don't have to phase in that we would be able to you know set up a license management fund or something to that effect that we dump money into every year and then we're ready for that big purchase look in our budget there's a curriculum adoption line ideally that's where that money would go okay um you'll see that this year there's a reduction in that line because typically that line more recently has been funded at 4,000 um Once Upon a Time 40s was in that ballpark and it was that that line was fully funded with 40s monies and then as the actual 40s value decreased um we kept it funded at 40 um and in the last few years it's the 40s has been like 17 $18,000 so you'll see that decrease in that line um as a marker for the loss of that 40s okay but that is a place that we could put a plan together where over a 10year period of time we were building up the monies um that that are allocated there um because it's not like in 10 years every curriculum is going to change this year they're implementing a new fed and health curriculum next year it might be something different three years from now we might be looking at an updated science curriculum we just there's always something coming we usually have um a little bit of lead time knowing that they're working on revising a framework so we can get a sense that in a year or two it's going to be released we're going to have to assess it we're going to have to make adjustments to our curriculum resources it's not necessarily always going to be a full overhaul right it's not necessarily that oh in 8 years if they revise the literacy framework um that we have to totally toss hmh out the window it may be an adjustment of what what units we teach or don't teach or shift to a different grade level um or have to find supplemental um curriculum materials to enhance That Base curriculum with in order to meet the updated standards so it really is kind of case by case we take a look at how significant the shift to the curriculum framework is um we may or may not need to have a a a major investment uh to update a curriculum I think by not having that sort of annual padding that you're putting forward that it it's it sort of hits you twice where if you do have one of those years or you know in a year you're going to have to replace K through six and that's couple hundred, by the if you do it peace meal one year at a time by year six you're already six years into the possibility of them changing it again in four years and that's on a on a 10-year plan if they do it every eight years who knows but at the same time if you have to do the up upfront cost of a couple hundred, and then you get another fizzed change where do you absorb that from so I think if I could recommend anything it would be too welcome to education if I not that you have an issue with the budget this year but Targets in the dark you just you don't you don't always have enough weed time to really map out a well prepared plan M um which is unfortunate for those of us who like to have strategic PLS and follow them and budget appropriately for them it it can be hard um I will say that just um two days ago uh we found out that we uh will be picking up for special ed services um threey old because if they're in early intervention 3 years old they're eligible for special ed services and this one will require special ed Transportation not in our budget but we will have to pay for it anyway these are the things that try as you might you sometimes you might land right in The Sweet Spot and other times not so much and this year I will say in the world of Special Ed we've been hit a couple of times which is not the typical pattern for us um nonetheless that has been our our year M as the finance director Finance all the time I would I would encourage at least I would like to see for next year if there is some type of a plan that can be put forward or worked with the school committee obviously just to see just a plan for it because it's an expense you know is going to be coming and being proactive and planning for it is going to be much easier to absorb than than a reactive standpoint agreed all right um and then on this slide here you've just got a summary of the totals of all the different kinds of Grants over the last uh five years um as you can see in Grants over the last 5 years we brought in uh $7.8 million a lot of it brought in by director of teaching and learning okay so budget development all the typical patterns in our budget cycle thrown out the window this year um this year the priorities for the budget um were really to align with those priorities identified by the school committee they wanted resources to support differentiated instruction Equity family engagement and um our continued execution of the strategy for continuous Improvement so annually in August the district lead leadership team uh we have data Summits we take a look at um our high ready data from the previous year or two or three we look for Trends uh we look at cohort groupings uh class level groupings individual class room groupings to see what what patterns emerge for us in the data we also take a look at um the uh information that we can get from our mcast results uh when they're initially released in August we take a look at our um districtwide goals our school Improvement plan goals our uh strategy for continuous Improvement the action plans aligned with that strategy and we make adjustments um and set of course for the year ahead um this year in October our central office leadership team started meeting multiple times a week that's not typical um but that's because of the early uh warning that we might be looking at a 10% increase in health insurance we knew that that was going to have a significant impact on our budget uh and I was was also aware in early October that we would be losing our finance director so uh we got to work really early uh digging in hard and um then through November December and January we continued to meet with building administrators um you know assessing our uh increases uh in all areas of our budget uh by November we were able to communicate publicly uh through a school committee meeting that with the 10% increase to health insurance we were potentially looking at an impact of the overall budget not just the health insurance but with all of the increases the loss of Esser funding uh health insurance um the impact could be be potentially upwards of $1.5 million uh so again we started contemplating how would we make that kind of cut um and not have to dismantle all of the um structures and supports that we had built into place that we were seeing good results come with those um and yet realistically knowing that there was no magical solution that we were going to find a million and a half dollars to be able to maintain where we were um uh so we started looking at some really difficult uh decisions around all of it um by February um we were now looking at um not only the typical 2.5 Target budget for the town manager that we do every year um we were now looking at level service level service with just our Esser Cuts what would the needs based budget look like and and um the town manager seeing uh that that there was going to be a significant impact with her preliminary budget it was a 2.94% increase for us so we developed that budget um we've been looking at at all kinds of different budget scenarios from 2.5 all the way up to keeping everything that we have um I think there's been an awful lot of good discussion around the the impact of each type of budget that we've looked at um and there's been a lot of um good conversation around what the priorities of the school committee are what the priorities of the parents in the community are around the budget um and then uh just last night we we presented um what would be what I'm considering the town manager's updated budget which would be a 4.19% increase um additionally um the select board earlier this week um voted to allocate some ARA monies for some of those one-time expenses that were built into our initial budgets the 911 compliance upgrades for our phone system um the uh upgrades for our security our work to increase the security of our Network um and um as you know we have a an annual cost of um investment in updated Chromebooks we issue to sixth graders they keep those as their device until they leave the eth grade they turn them in any any of those devices that and there should be many that have some usable life still those go down to Turkey Hill we swap out anything that's really outdated um kiddos coming into the ninth grade also are issued a new prome book and they keep those until they graduate typically when those are turned in there's not a whole lot of usable life left but um anything that that looks pretty viable you know we again send those down to Turkey Hill as well um we do have to not on a large scale but we do have to make some investment in some additional Chromebooks as looners to have on the Shelf if there's a damaged uh Chromebook for anyone who's on a one: one so sixth through 12th grade they can turn in the the broken one for repair and they get a loan our device but we have to have them on the Shelf in order to loan them out um additionally we uh often times buy maybe 40ish 50 uh Chromebooks for Turkey Hill again that's to be sure that we have enough devices with an updated operating platform that can support the mcast test because it's all done online now and some of our devices they they've just been outdated and they they can't support running the online test um so those those kinds of things are going to be annual costs for us additionally we're on a replacement cycle for um staff devices so our teachers and our par professionals administrators and secretaries um next year it's the high school staff but there's a rotation and we do one building a year so it's a fouryear cycle for that um next year is just we're replacing for our largest staff um so some of the upper money will be allocated uh for purchase of some of those there's still money in the line um in that 4.19 budget for the rest of the Chrome books that will still need to be purchased oh and we also uh were allocated the uh New Growth monies and the additional 50,000 that was taken from the DPW um pavement management so this was a slide that um I shared back in late January just to give people a sense of some of the drivers for this Gap that we were seeing um just some notes there in Blue uh to update you know the actual impact of the health insurance when it came in at um the 5.7% was uh about 380 not the 500 that we were potentially looking at when we had early projections of a 10% increase um you know some of the other uh factors driving up our budget um our facility repairs and you heard Mr heee talked to you about that he continues to dig into things that are problematic he's troubleshooting and he's getting to the bottom of things and finding out what needs to be repaired and getting quotes for those repairs some of them that are not emergency must do right now um he's holding those quotes other things are emergency must do right now and we've had to address them but we know that there are some that we're we're going to need to be addressing um next year um the other thing that we had talked about early on was um a plan to uh move from 11 buses down to 10 um at this time uh DBS is insisting that it's just not viable they're basing that on our total student enrollment because the policy is that we any any one who asks to be transported by bus we accommodate that ask uh so they're basing that on our total enrollment not on the actual asks that we get when the parents put in those Transportation request forms um we will have those in by early May May 1st is the deadline um if I see that the numbers can be accommodated with 10 buses I will push back on D and see if they uh could reassess their roots and manage to transport with just the 10 buses um so there isn't a contractual requirement with d that because our policy policy is to transport anyone who wants to be there that it's counted based on the total number of enrolled students it's okay so as long as we can prove to them we only need 10 buses because we only have a thousand kids going okay so this isn't factored then on like new enrollments or people students that their parents dropped to off are now going to decide to take the bus next year cuz I would think that would be a heart Dart to throw to say how many kids are going to take the boss it is but everybody has to submit their form by May 1st we then have a roster with addresses that we give to Debs they can then map out these kids would be on bus room 10 Route Six o there's too many kids on bus route 10 I need to make an adjustment to a route so that some of these kids could be picked up on a different bus um we we do have to straddle that l we can't totally fill a bus because if we have movein along that bus route and they ask for transportation we're going to have to put them on but the policy change did leave us a buffer of 60 days to accommodate that request for anything that came in after that may 1 deadline obviously we do our best to get folks on as soon as possible but we we do have a little bit of um buffer there uh time to work out if there there needs to be any shift to a bus assignment in order accommodate additional Riders because you might have a couple kid in one household move in they're all going to be on the same bus so um we have a good working relationship with the the office manager at debus um and uh Folks at my office work out those details pretty well so we actually had we had mon Tech in here last night and they are now down to three bus contracts they were at four before and I realize that they're spread out across 18 towns it's not exactly an even thing they did acknowledge that they have a difficult time they see that there's a difficulty in getting bids for buses but I I I'm still curious as to how they manag to pull four different companies to give them contracts and then they've now had to reduce down to three I just I know we're owned by D in this part of the state but are there actually other companies in the area at all or is it do they have a monopoly I believe nrt is branching out this way I don't know how well established they they've become in this part of the state um but we did not get any bids from them the last time maybe they're more firmly established this bidding cycle maybe we'll have another bid can we suggest to them to bid or do we have to just put it out there and hope that they see it I think for the most part um the companies generally know the the timing of the cycle uh for bus contracts and they they start paying attention you know December January because they know that that that's generally speaking the the timeline that that the the bids will will open okay and this is also partially Catch 22 from having to redo the the contract because we were at 10 buses but then there was a large public outcry about busing kids that were a while we were I think we were at 10 and then we were up to 10 and a half because we had a higher ridership on the elementary run mm so there the buses go out they pick up the middle high school kids bring them drop them off to school go back out on their routes pick up the K5 kiddos and then bring them to school we had more kiddos in the K5 so we actually had an 11th bus just for that Bus Loop um so there there was a year that we were paying for 10 and a half buses and then we went I think we were down to 10 and then ended up bumping up to 11 with the change in policy of everyone's allowed to be bust yeah but the the factor there too is that having the Kos at extended day morning and afternoon at TCP the a bus a couple of buses would swing up there in the morning load kids on and drop them down to the Hill and then the primary and it would be the reverse in the afternoon kids would hop on the bus at school and there'd be a couple of buses that would have extended day kiddos on them and those buses would come up and drop the kids off at TCB um if if those programs are relocated back to a school the kids don't need to hop on a bus there are less bodies getting on the bus and in the afternoon we have we have a cap and we generally fill to the cap 75 kiddos in the afternoon most of our buses seat 77 that's practically a whole bus which is why we were pushing back and saying that if we make this move we think we can do it with 10 buses um I think the poof will be in the pudding if I can actually demonstrate that the numbers are uh reduced I might be able to to leverage some of that but right now I don't have any leverage okay so at this point you're not planning to push for the move okay I I can't push for I can't budget for just the 10 buses because I I don't I don't think I'm going to win this argument in the near term MH depends on what the the requests look like when they come in in May okay if they're well below um I could be in good shap to argue back okay but right now I don't have I don't have the leverage I need to win that argument okay so there's lots of talk about the eser positions um on uh the left side you see the positions that were paid from the Esser Grant this year and um an equal amount of cut to offset the loss of those um those funds that's what's listed as the um would be identified Esser cuts for next year this is the budget that's aligned with where you stand with Town manager right now yep so these Esser Cuts if you look at the the yellow the green the pinkow or the blue budgets if you look at the cuts listed across the bottom there's a darker line that goes across in all of the budgets these cuts are listed as the first tier of cuts in every budget okay the 9.4 FTE 91 uh uh the the Esser cut which is eight is it an 8.6 something um they're in that budget they're in the needs budget they're in the 4.19 budget they're in the 2.94 budget EV every single budget this is the first tier of cuts consistent okay with the position cut of the PE teacher for the primary school and the elementary school what happens to PE so with the primary and Elementary um most most of their unified Arts uh for the last three three years have been shared so one building will have their specials scheduled in the morning and the other building will have their specials scheduled in the afternoon so the teacher starts in one building in the morning does their classes has prep time has lunchtime transition time to the next building and has their specials classes in the other building in the afternoon um the The Fad class was the last one that was maintained at one full time in each building um so essentially we're just moving to the same shared 50/50 U model with the fette as well um we had one of those positions vacated this year so we've already made that transition this year we didn't hire the the vacant fizzed position uh we we worked with the the other fit teacher um who was amendable to making that transition this year so it's already in place thank you and it's working well thank you winter Cuts announced to the teachers or to the union or however that works yeah so um I feel pretty strongly that um teachers shouldn't get the first inkling that their position is being cut when they're sitting in public meeting and somebody else heard it and they pick up the phone and your your position's being cut that that is just so what happens is that we work really hard to figure out what are these Cuts potentially going to be and before I take them to a public meeting the individuals who are actually attached to these positions we have had a conversation um typically it's the building principal um if it's a districtwide staff position uh that falls under special Edge Juliana would have that conversation if it's connected to curriculum uh anakah would have that conversation when we were talking about uh custodial or maintenance Cuts Mr heee would have that conversation and we time that really tightly just in advance of a list of positions being discussed at a public meeting yeah I appreciate that and I I think on a individual basis that's the but that's not really my question my question is more when is it announced that these cuts are actually made so I give the staff updates along the way um because obviously a a decision a vote on a budget wasn't made until last night for the school committee and that's when the budget hearing is that's when they make their vote every year and I can give the staff updates generally what I do is I uh send out a zoom link it's optional for anybody that wants to hop in and and get the update um I explain where we're at with the process I explained if if you know things are fluid what's happening with that um I try to advise people that it it isn't done until it's done um things can change you could be on a list your position could be on a list in January and by February your position is no longer on the list because it's a cut that the school committee wasn't on board with so it was taken off the list so we do keep folks who are impacted in that way updated individually um but I also give the staff General updates about where we are in the process what's happening what's what do I think maybe the likelihood is of um you know a certain tier of cuts uh happening regardless so obviously the the cuts that are on this particular Sesser list they are Cuts in every single budget these folks we have had conversations with and and they know because we also if if the reality is the position's going to be eliminated you want folks to be able to have time to pursue other employment opportunities and we have lost a few folks this year who have taken jobs in other locations that they perceive to be more stable less vulnerable yeah no I understand that so maybe it's the wrong time to ask the questions but the ones that are on the bubble whether it's on the the the other scenarios and perhaps it's you know you get to full funding by either a prop two and a half override y or by some miracle our legislation comes through and says hey you're right Chapter 70 is messed up and we are not funding you properly right you dreaming that be something 2035 maybe but you make that happen I think you all should be making that happen by making a lot of calls I have statistics for you on that Chapter 70 up every time those three people are in this District you know campaigning okay it's an election year let's be serious um but again my question just comes down to there's a couple decision points that could be coming up y related to funding even if ch um the 2 and a half doesn't pass um town meeting yep so my question just goes towards I think the budget is done by I think it's like July 1st or something when does that announcement make that yes finally we have exhausted all hope we have to eliminate this position additional 10 positions typically the final date on that has always been annual to meeting once the budget's voted we know that that that's that's what's approved for the next uh fiscal year for us um that said again this budget Cycle's been very different um I've advised folks with different updates along the way um some key meetings that are happening um I sent an update uh out early early this morning about the vote that happened at the school committee last night I let folks know that there's still an override that's going to move forward um I encourage any of our staff any of our staff not teacher any staff staff employed in lunberg public schools if you live in town you really need to make it a priority to attend the town meeting this year I'm at the town meeting every year and I don't see a whole bunch of our staff usually at those meetings um so I'm making them aware this is the date a vote is going to happen on a budget and a vote is potentially happening on an override it's important I think that if you live in town you should attend um but the 10 to 12 additional positions beyond the level service minus Esser those people cuz they're now people they're not just numbers those people have been at least notified that hey this is what the school committee voted on last night this is what the town manager is currently at you're still in limbo but you should know at least by May 4th yep okay so you know the rainbow sheet and it's got all the I'm looking at it right now um I share that with the staff too okay so they know and like I said um we presented our worst case scenario at 2.5 back in January we had a conversation with everybody who was on that list potentially back in January and as things have evolved some positions have come off the list entirely and people have been advised you know you these are not going to be positions that are cut everything things good um and then as things evolve but we have more money there's another budget being developed you know stay tuned um again that information is available for our staff um I do have conversations with the Union leadership they they kind of get updates as I know things so what I heard from you though is that if F town meeting we pass the budget that we're talking about here as is without any modifications on the floor or anything like that right which all could happen as well that's the 4.19 it's green y the green budget um um we passed that in the two and a half fails what you're telling me is that you would go in that next week and start to have these conversations at it's final or you would wait until they already know that if that's the budget that passes at town meeting and the override is off the table Yeah again I I know the conversation's happening before that I got that and that's the right thing to do right as an as a but we would I would send out a message and confirm which budget had been voted and if the override uh vote is defeated I would inform them of that as well so then if it if it passed if it pass I would let them know that it passed now we need to vote right and that it would be going to a ballot and I would let them know you know the election date um and that we'd have results uh out to them as soon as possible um but you'd hold out no hope that the final passed budget at the state level which could put funds into lunenberg you'd hold out no hope on that so that's interesting what would be the mechanism after a vote at town meeting if Chapter 70 monies were increased in the final state budget because that has happened before yeah and our budget wasn't adjusted after the fact and that's why I asked that because I mechanism be I don't know because I did look back through the years of it and there was times when the um at The Last Moment in Time chapter 70 was increased in the The Joint budget right and a couple years ago we got a a pretty good bump because we saw an increase in um our uh lwi income student population that factored into their funding formula uh bumped us up in a threshold uh and we got um we got some additional funding through Chapter 70 but that year our our budget wasn't amended so I don't know what the mechanism for that would be since it's town meeting that votes the the budget so we would have unallocated Revenue right I'm kind of looking at Town manager special town meeting adjustments to our Revenue sector but that would come in like November right right or you call a special town meeting if it's in between and you really need to allocate it is there other ways to move budgets between no not are we not able to Simply say that education-based funding is appropriated regardless of what the final amount is no it's going to be appropriated by town meeting um I'd be curious to know how much the school department has owed I'd be curious to know how much the school department has owed from past years with the if the if the I don't know that it happened many times it has happened I did see it where that final budget that came out of committee and was passed by the legislature was higher than the ones leading into it right but if that money is being allocated somewhere else that's not allowed but but did you follow through as to whether it got allocated in November because you're still in the same budget no I was literally just looking on the I get that I'm just asking that question because that would be the clarifying point I know that that had happened uh one year during my tenure here but during my tenure year we've never had an adjusted school department budget like after it was set at at annual Tom meeting okay do we do that adjust is that including in the adjustment in the special town meeting help yell the back of the room so if you look at it from this perspective if you're using Chapter 70 as your base of what's already in the school's appropriation we fund the remainder of that portion through tax revenue other sources so they're automatically that's automatically going to the school anyways and look at this year as an example the percentage increase this year in Chapter 70 funding is uh 1% I think but you're basing that on the governor's recommendation correct what I'm saying is that there it has happened where coming out of committee the legislature has increased our allocation from what the governor's budget said correct but we're already exceeding that amount every year going into the budget because if you're building that into the base as far as what that appropriation for the school is we're far exceeding but your Revenue estimate would be lower by that amount of money cuz your Revenue estimate for Chapter 70 today and there could be other adjustments in um state aid assessments as well so those change as well both on the revenue side and the assessment Charter and choice assessments and state and County charges but shouldn't those money be at least those are just a a revenue receipt right we're we're voting at town meeting local receipts is an estimate that it's finalized in the fall before you set the tax rate those are submitted as part of the tax recap so going into town meeting those are all estimates besides your Levy you have your maximum that you can Levy at town meeting it seems to me though that if Chapter 70 were increased by our legislature because they're listening to us and maybe even the governor is listening because it's become a Statewide problem that there should be a mechanism to increase the school budget it would another town meeting vote to make those adjustments okay can we go back for just a half a second on what Chris was trying to I think drill down to a little bit closer was the question that I asked you uh a week or two ago and that is that uh in the collective bargaining agreements I know a number of years ago there was a drop dead date actually in those agreements that teachers needed to be notified uh I understand you're you're doing it as you go but there my understanding is that there's a drop that date they would have to have a formal letter notification by that date right so we we would have to follow up with any of these cuts by that date with a written notification essentially that written notification they they could have as uh proof to go open up an unemployment claim we do have to notify them June June 1st June 1st okay thank you so looking at the list of Esser cut positions and comparing it to the spreadsheet there's an extra position on there the guidance counselor for LMS LHS yep and that position shows up in the pink and in the green but lower down and not not part of the Esser Cuts is that is has is that reflect is that the newest one or is this which one's which one do we go back and double check the S budget and make sure which ones we took out okay um maybe it was just the one LMS that came out in the SR line cuz I have it right here yes it was just the LMS one that came out okay yep because that other one is is down here okay so it is 9.4 FTE it's not 10.4 FTE with s okay and then the other question was and the pink one we have the music teacher reduction at THS but on the green one we have a pair of professional is that a substitution so if we are at 4.19 we keep the music teacher but if we go to 5.44 we lose the music teacher So based on all of the conversation that's um been part and parcel of all of our school committee meetings public comment uh question and answer periods there's been a lot of advocacy to maintain the Turkey Hill teaching position intact so that the band can be offered during the school day versus the plan we had to reduce the FTE but offer the band before school or after school MH um looking for a way to keep that position intact I had to find a different offset for that value um so I had conversations with the principls and Mr s um agreed um that he could uh take another reduction of a pair of professional in his building in order to support keeping that so in order not to have too many confusing I left the pink budget exactly as it was before I have made no adjustments to it however that is an adjustment I would now make even to the pink budget okay the music position is off the table it's a paraprofessional position that would be cut and further down in comparing the student custodian right you'll see that um there's a student custodian the part-time summer uh positions that we we uh had carried in the budget um basically we would hire a student and assign one to each school so there'd be two at the middle high school we also would um pick one up for um assisting our maintenance and grounds crew outside um in conversations with Mr heee um thinking about that money only providing some benefit for a handful of weeks in the summertime versus an equal value funding a part-time year round custodian we agreed um to talking to his team that the greater benefit would be to keep the year round part-time position and foro the um student custodians for the summer and that's a pretty even swap um so that is a an adjustment I would now make to the needs budget the pink budget as well so the pink budget will reflect 20.4 FTE as well correct okay and the only reason that the 20.4 is different from the 197 is that I'm swapping dollar value three of a teacher position m one full FTE of a paa okay that that's why the number is off it's the same number of positions it's essentially pretty equal dollar value um but when I go back and make adjustments Within in the dollar value of the pink budget those positions will be swapped out in the pink budget too okay thank you that makes a lot more sense I was very concerned for a second if we if we vote if we pass the wrong budget we fire someone else okay okay so this is what I'm find the town manager's revised budget up to a 4.19 she took a look at numbers and there's a discrepancy somehow about 20,000 so I will uh get together with her and we'll check our numbers and figure out where that is off uh it's off a little bit in our favor she has the the Gap a little less than what I've got the Gap at um so that's good news um but essentially uh the move came from um starting with that 2.9 um and then adding the new growth monies adding the pavement management monies gets us to that new um that new bottom line I get that number as well I match the the town manager's number okay all right when I when I built it and worked it out and okay messed around with it all right so we'll figure out where it's off and uh make the adjustment all right I got to ask is there budgeting software that exists cuz doing this in Excel seems a little it's painful is that what you're going to say come on is there not like some kind of Municipal budgeting account software that exists I don't know see I I inherited the Magic The Magic pile yeah that had all of these formulas and it's really frustrating to me that it rounds and then how did it jump up $2 I didn't add $2 but it does all this rounding behind the scenes and it's just so frustrating to me cuz you got to move to Office 365 so I don't know okay but somehow we're I I'll I'll figure out what the Gap is it's a Sumer t and we'll make that adjustment happily it'll be an easier adjustment since in our favor good so additionally um again this week earlier this week um the select board uh voted to allocate um oura Monies to the school department um originally there had been an allocation of $1,640 for um a sidewalk project that the school department had advocated for that would um provide a walk from the school campus area up to Marshall Park um because that uh project hadn't yet been initiated uh the select board was amendable to allowing the school committee to ask to reallocate it um to fund some of those those projects the 911 the security upgrades for the network and the Chromebooks can all of those projects be completed by September 1st is it I think it's September 1st is when our June no next year 256 committed by December 31st of this year of this year but spent by December 31 got it okay yep so there's some time we have the quotes for the um the network upgrades uh we've got the quotes for the 911 upgrades um and it's really quick and easy to uh get a uh an order in the queue for for the Chromebooks as well we won't have any problem okay getting that done and that's just a breakdown of the costs of the different um items that will be funded um the purchase of the Chromebooks again that 75,000 figure is not a full purchase of all the Chromebooks that we have to purchase but it um it's about 3/4 of the cost okay of the purchase for grades six and N again that's just a add a glance look at it and um no matter what you're looking at whether it's the 4.19 or the needs based budget that the school committee voted to support uh last evening it includes the Chapter 70 funding that came from the governor's budget which doesn't the the Chapter 70 funding does include the loss of the the smart growth the 40s monies um it does factor in all of our uh uh uh bargaining agreements all our contracts with all of our employees um the health insurance increase and the green budget has been adjusted to reflect the most updated enrollment in health insurance for our employees as of March 15th when I go back and make adjustments to the pink budget I will update those as well so that it's equal our transportation increases are in there and the utility um cost increases are in there in both of them as well what's not included in the town manager's green budget um I pulled out the 911 compliance the network upgrades and um that dollar value for um the Chromebooks and um just to to note I did not make any adjustments to the pink budget yet so those lines if you look side by side you'll see that those project costs are still in in those lines in the pink budget so that you made changes to the blue budget I I can make changes no no I asked if you are there changes I haven't made any changes to the the blue budget but um isn't the blue budget the basis of the override value yes yeah basically the blue budget was taking everybody that we have employed right now rolling them forward with all of their you know contractual increases um and the expense lines were funded as they were requested so there were no edit if Mr hee asked for a certain dollar amount if Juliana hansum filled lines with a certain dollar amount if principal sry filled out his I made no adjustments those lines reflect what was requested for each department and then minus the Esser positions and when we actually went in the first iteration of an Sr budget that I gave you just took the total Sal off the bottom line of salaries we didn't take the time to go in and decide which people and actually pull the actual salaries out but when we did that because that's what they wanted to um target for the override we went in and actually made those cuts which more of those folks had um were carrying health insurance so we pulled that out and there's also a salary reserve line in there that's a formula base so anytime um the the groups that are involved with that um salary Reserve so we're bargaining with the Paras and teachers if I pull a par out the salary Reserve is reduced if I pull a teacher out the salary Reserve is reduced so we saw saw the actual salaries come out we saw the salary Reserve go down and we saw the health insurance cost come down as well um so that is reflected in the Blue version of the the budget that you're seeing there that yeah I didn't Cuts I don't necessarily need a full explanation of it I guess my question just comes down to are we changing what we are now the request for what's going into the two and a half override ballot and qu question yep so I think um if you can screen share the we don't have to look at it now I'm just so it's the gap between the 4.19 budget before we ask that question I want to make sure that I have the right number so the one I want to make sure so I pulled up 23837 094 is that the town manager's number or the school committee number so because I match this one no no before we get to the override I the the fy2 4.19 approv last Y is the pink at 23837 094 I don't have it in front of me because I pink is 24 million no yeah okay they approved 24 milon they approved 2 3548 the 5.44% okay so if that's the case then I do see the differential of as $64,000 okay not as as 44 okay so I just want to get to that part first that's where it's off the differential should be 41,000 3605 94 preliminary okay FY Base number is not the same can we come back figure this all out what preliminary speaking to the mic is okay so you're imagine one would imagine is different from mine oh you looking at I was because this is something that I work with every day with specializes I implement but I'll get you thank so the override number is the dark purple Gap from the level service minus Esser $1,129 right and that's the gap between the Green budget mhm and the blue budget and the blue budget and that's the dollar value that they approved for for the override last night and the blue budget has those removals of the monies that the select board approved no okay arpa monies any any arpa monies I have have not gone back and removed from the pink budget or the BL budget take that out of the or the green budget but you have removed budget is the only one that has those okay but because you're comparing pink to blue it's it doesn't matter okay but that's my point right I I don't know what happened at school committee last night cuz no offense I was not watching it they voted that one they voted pink okay but which is only a slight Delta between the two of them $64,000 $44,000 $41,000 okay so somehow to get to a balance but so somehow to get to a balanced budget we need to come up with $41,000 somewhere correct the needs based correct if for the needs based okay but they're taking donations 41,00 Let's Pretend This pink is Right somewhere between then pink and blue is what the override value would be which is purple but I don't think that that's the right calculation it is because they didn't remove anything from pink or blue for the for the arpa funds so they mirror each other Just Between the only difference between them is the Sesser Cuts I'm sitting here biting my tongue a little bit because this is the financial management component of this the bookkeeping of it is is my wheelhouse and there is a better way to do this although that may be a little forward for me to say I have many jobs Kate but um it's it's also said with see the CH the challenge for me is that there have been so many versions of this put out I absolutely could have gone into the pinky into the blue and made all these adjustments and then people would be like well what happened the as was supposed to be 8.62 how did it get to be a different it gets super conf I would be able to keep up with what I've done I'm just saying there's a better so much harder to keep but there's softwares for very very very small amounts of money that could help you do this easier than the format that it's in and I don't know if that's allowed because I don't know the rules but I'm just saying there's easier formats that pull out details and comparisons and you're putting all those numbers in and you're not you know checking formulas and like it's hard for me to sit here and not say this although it's not relative to the override it is delightful I wish I had back in October maybe it's something that you need going forward though that would alleviate a lot of questions because it would be a little bit more comprehensive and potentially a little bit more mathematically accurate and I think and this is just take this for what it is it's just very black and white but I think when an educational department is presenting it reflects better on you to have more solid comprehensive details and numbers so I say that respectfully yes I know yes but there is a better there is a better way to do this because this is chaotic on here and and it's it's basically going to cause problems I mean we already had a case where we double counted with negative number I can't remember a little while ago so and I remember a few years ago in I think it was Princeton or something like that that were using an Excel spreadsheet and they messed up and they were million dollars and people got all upset for all for good reason so yeah I agree we we need to get or we should look at getting some software that we can take a little while to get it up and running but I think then you can have the numbers and then it'll be easier to to do all the things cuz the softwares that I have used in the past you know oh what if we try this example and boom boom boom and it comes out and you go like oh okay and then try that uh this is very difficult and I'm trying to read it on a much scaller screen than my cohorts here but still it's um it's hard to hope that these numbers are accurate you know I mean I hope they are I'm sure they you've double checked them but it's it's easy to make a mistake yes yes it is yeah and I would say that we have done a lot of double checking triple cheing having check the account and everything else because which is a waste of time if the software won't allow you to do that I mean so I think our recommendation or report should recommend that's one we can all agree on yes okay add another line please do send it my way but I guess my my key for for tonight was was kind of two things one or maybe three things one I wanted to I wanted to thank everyone involved school committee Town manager everyone involved that that got involved in getting to where we are today right okay and a vote last night so I wanted to understand how the vote that the vote last night was aligned or what the Delta was from the alignment on a balanced budget and it sounds like the vote on the pink is within $41,000 of a balanced budget I am sure we can find that somewhere that's the plan okay right or whatever we've got to deal with that so now we have a $41,000 problem related to what the school department in in the town has worked worked out but then I also wanted to say what then becomes the ramification of that towards what was Prior voted on as the million 70 I think it was override budget and whether those things that were removed were were dealt with through arpa and other things helped to reduce that number because my opinion is going forward with a million a Sev digigit override number is a much harder ask than a six-digit override number in one closer to five or six meaning $500,000 or $600,000 may be more palatable to a lot of people so my question just is is based on all the math that's in here and at 10:30 working a full-time job in many 4-Hour meetings what now is that do we believe is that override number the the thought behind the override number was that if we went for a 500,000 600,000 or we were looking at 700,000 um override number number the problem is we're doing this all over again next year because there's not enough to raise the base because we've got to account for the Chromebooks because they're reoccurring we've got to you know we the the in that um in the budget there's very little room for maintenance so we have something break we're in in trouble better in the pink budget than the green budget but if we have a breakage of something we've got a big problem if we have a child move in deservingly needing $100,000 out of District placement we're in big trouble the suggestion and actually Mr Franco made the suggestion a couple of times last night the suggestion was to not like to pretend the APPA funds weren't there and to put them to to keep that amount so that we're not back here again next year with this same problem so it' be about a million dollars so what do we do so if it passes we have a million doll override Y what do we do with the extra $221,000 this year for the for fiscal year 2 that's already removed extra right I mean but we have the we we are saying we are going to be we're doing an override that means we are going to be taxing the people $221,000 for something for this year we're g uh for fiscal 25 right because that's what we're doing the override for so the money has to go somewhere now we could put it in a rainy day fund or something like that but I don't think we want to do that that's that doesn't make any sense to say let's tax you and we're going to then we're going to put in a rainy day fund for next year when we we're not going to do it I it's a hard I mean I to me pink and the blue we're all you you you looked at the history from February till now we've all been doing this forever but the vast majority of people are going to be going what we're doing a what and they're not going to know the first thing about it so the someone says to them yeah it's 750 to pay for this year and 221 it's going to be so that we can get more money next year because of the what it's going to be a hard sell so I don't know if that's I mean and ultimately if you want it to pass you want it to pass so you got to figure out how to present it the way you need to do it it's a real difficult thing to get a number on I think the figure was 791 something um that we looked at first and then Mr beardmore Ted talked about adding the Opera funds back in and is that the difference 791 plus the Opera funds brings us to that 1 million probably yeah sounds about right because the problem is maintaining right I I understand I understand that portion of it because we want to start next year at a higher level so that two and a half over that is a little bit more so that is more so that we're not honestly I don't think it'll be a problem for Mr to find there definitely would be places for that uh you asked a very legitimate question Mr Gray yeah I just don't know where I mean that would be again I I could just imagine some of my friends who would be going like okay so tell me explain to me where that $1 million is going and I say well we're going to have 750,000 to do all this for this year and then 200,000 221,000 is going to we're not going to spend this year but so you're going to tax me this year extra and not spend it this year why are you taxing well we need it for the year after and the year after you have to spend it this year we do not have capabilities of saving money from year to year well well then it becomes free cash well free cash or you can put it you can put it in a rainy day fund or something like that we can't put it in a rain day fund stabilization well it's yeah um you you rais a good question the point in doing it was there were two sentiments in the room one was to the 791 that we discussed the other one was that's not enough if you're going to make one run and an override make sure that you're not going to be back in the same deep sneak as the next year so those were the two sentiments that were running in the room and the $1 million was what was voted I do and that's what I have for explanation first because that's what happened so that's what is going to be as a warrant on the at the town meeting it it is my understanding unless the select board makes a change in that number there's a meeting on Tuesday night and there there will be school committee members there there will be select board people there and I'm sure that the parents working on the override will be there um I imagine they could make that change I don't know logistically right I I don't have another meeting to change the number right well to me it would be a question of I understand the finan is what you're trying to accomplish on the other hand you got to sell it you got people have to buy people have to say yes and and I just have a hard time we were doing this about 24 hours ago this yeah so okay so You' had that I I I was here doing we're doing now doing the other discussion last night at this hour and we're going what are they what are they talking about over there is the light still on that's what we were talking about so okay so that was the decision made obiously um whether it's the right decision or not I guess we will find out so the select board will discuss it and kind of figure what to do for the green the pink and the blue which one of those has had the arpa funding removed from it the green only the green then your number isn't $1 million your number is in the 700,000 because if you're doing the differential between the level service minus Esser and the 4.9 budget 4.19 budget the 4.19 budget has had the Ester positions removed they're still in or the AR excuse me not the es position the arpa funds have been removed reduced from the 4.19 they're still in the 8.62 so that differential is what they said is last night that was done purposely yeah they did that on purpose they said was done on purp take the Delta and add back in the arer funded so that so that we have a buffer in the future so we could but it but that's not what's needed then at that point what's needed is 727 26,000 that was the discussion Evan so what he's been talking about that we have the 791 or this 1 million whatever 12,000 the number that you had that was the discussion was which way to go with the thought that be oh he has been for a while I was letting the conversation in the room happened first before we went to Peter we're torturing is that what you're doing tortur he's hoping I'm expl um but the the point made was you're not going to get an override two years in a row right so if if this override goes and it's not enough then what happens so what's the justification for the arpa funds as Mr graay said what justification was because we we will always have major maintenance things which were the um the money for the 911 and the money for the network security stuff like that is going to happen take one look at the football field we're going to have major expenses like that the Chromebooks recur every year those expenses will show up again the next year that is the justification okay Mr beardmore I think you've you've been you've been tortured long enough Peter beardmore uh 282 Pleasant Street um I think there's been a lot that's been um misportrayed and I understand that it's it's late and and as it was last night um and and and frankly I I wish the numbers in the pink and the blue columns were a lot clearer and that this was extremely well messaged and organized and it isn't largely because the number numbers have changed on almost a daily basis over the last two weeks as a number of admittedly creative options have come up to help close close the gap the school committee voted for the pink column last night based on pretty clear reasoning the first was was that that was characterizes the absolute minimum amount of money that was needed the needs based to operate the schools without massive disruption we are still looking at massive Cuts but we can do this wi without you know we we we can still continue to operate children effectively not as effectively as we would like to and possibly losing a lot of the momentum that we would otherwise have at an level services or a level Services minus Esser in that pink column however when you look at the green column and again I appreciate the arpa money arpa is onetime money so it fails to establish any basis to go forward already in that arpa funded option that is outlined in the green option we have nearly $100,000 of Chromebooks that we are going to have to spend money on next year so that puts us roughly $100,000 behind the aall in next year's budget we just learned that we're about to get a pretty substantial increase in natural gas we know that we have a busing contract we have two very large collective bargaining agreements coming up um we are going to be behind the aall already going into next year and onetime money in the form of $220 some odd, in arpa money is going to further set us back we have we we maintain over $100 million in facilities and grounds so if you think that something like a 911 you know emergency phone system um or other one-time expenses we have deferred maintenance expenses right now our our facilities director was in uh at our last meeting that that exceed the Deltas that we're talking about right now and and our maintenance budget our maintenance ask next year is likely to probably be double in onetime spending that we're seeing this year and so and then another thing is as close as we've come despite all of the negotiating that is happened over the last two weeks and there have been multiple meetings between the chair of the school committee and the superintendent and the chair of the select board and the town manager despite all of the meetings that have occurred the town manager couldn't see her way to close somewhere between A40 and $60,000 budget and everybody here knows that things like local receipts have been extremely conservatively estimated and so it was my judgment and I think the Judgment of the other members of the school committee that the pink budget was the appropriate way to go to establish a budget with a basis that could be not only get us through the next year but also a budget basis to continue us into the future and the rationing rationale behind the the override number which was roughly a million dollars is the Delta between the the budget basis of the green currently what the town manager has offered and proposed to put on the warrant and a level Services minus Esser budget so how do we get to the point that we thought we would be at the end of Esser monetarily that that's the reasoning that we came to it roughly 10:30 11:00 last night um it this isn't a matter of saving money for next year or putting money in a in an override that we don't have a plan to spend there is ample opportunity to spend money just on our facilities and maintenance we haven't even begun to talk about the disaster that's occurring in the track and field facility I I could go on and on but let's keep our eye on the ball at at 10:48 at night back to what I talked to you guys about a month ago and a month and a half ago we are reacting to a situation where this the a proposal was made that was toned deaf and offensive and we are trying to get to a point where it is neither of those things and and and the school committee and and our staff have been working tirelessly what you are looking at I believe the the green line represents budget number nine that the superintendent has prepared and at least seven of those budgets by my count were requests from the town manager or perhaps requests between the town manager and the chair of the finance committee I'm not sure um but this budget clearly needs some adjustments and will continue to need adjust adjustments and we will continue to need to negotiate over the course of the next month or two um but but but this budget represents the pink budget represents the absolute bare minimum and and I don't think one-time funding and I don't think that a gap of a poultry $40,000 is acceptable and I think that the finance committee should stand on that ground as well thank you thank you so I appreciate what's been talked about here and and I think we need to look at um the the green the pink and the blue updated with all the right additions and subtractions made to them and and deal with actual um you know there's some 41,000 maybe it's off by 20 whatever it is we got to get it right okay but we also need to understand the rationale behind the override figure that was was obtained um because that's going to be what we're going to talk about and probably argue about and we're probably going to have a lot of things that should require intervention by that team that you mentioned earlier because we're going to get irrational about things as a town and we're going to have behavior problems but there's going to be a million dollar 70 or maybe it's 730 K we should have a CH answer between the select board who's ultimately going to put a number on a piece of paper the school committee and then us as a as a finance committee in which we can make a recommendation on and our recommendation which was requested be made sure that it's put in the warrant we have to come up with with within about a week with a with a um a hearing in the middle there some budgets that we haven't even seen yet um so that that's what that again we've we have gone till 11 o'cl we maybe we didn't need to tonight in my for what I was looking for because I was looking for kind of some crisp things there's no doubt you guys have scrutinized this budget there's more scrutiny on this budget than I think has ever happened right in and it's good right okay it is good um and this scrutiny between the the the municipal side of government and the the school side of budget in discussions that we've never really done and that's good but we also talked about yesterday when everyone was at the school committee meeting right and we didn't have an audience um we also talked about the need for 10 years of planning we need to really plan operations in capital in in infrastructure and everything that's needed and to rush forward with a million dollar we're going to be going forward soon with a a debt exclusion article that's going to that's going to be you know eight figures High eight figures probably right so let's just I mean I know there's some there's everyone's tired we all need a time out right but let's I just want to understand going into what it is that the select board ultimately is going to put on the pallet it that it all ties out I think I got my answers tonight there was good discussion rationale for how to build up the budget what you're seeing as Trends you know in the school I think this would move us towards filling some gaps going higher than the 2.97 or the 2.5 that you've historically got to filling um you know some of the needs understand the still Cuts right got it but we can't count on a two and a half override and we can't H you know the Beacon Hill Miracles probably not going to happen um so those are going to be the next month's worth of discussions so we got to start off on a solid foundation and time is short on what those values are going to be I think there is at least a little bit of an understanding as to what those values are at least in terms of what we're getting I mean we have 11 FTE right there that that's that's half of it that's $400,000 $417,000 is the salary difference between green and blue 600,000 just under 600,000 is the difference in expenses General expenses so you're getting services and you're getting salary that's what the override is doing it's it's maintaining those services and the services salaries so at the end of the day with the numbers you're sitting over there talking about for the last half hour we haven't addressed the townside shortfalls going into this override proposal it was my understanding that we were going to try our damnest to get to a balanced budget before town meeting and then spend the next year doing the Deep dive to get the right number to bring both the town side and the school side into an override that sets us up for a long period of time uh I don't agree with what we're talking about here right now at all but that's my position well regardless of what we're what we agree about this is what's happening there is an override article that the select board is putting on the ballot is putting on the on the warrant it's happening regardless of whether or not we want well it's going to happen but it's not going to pass if you keep well spending an hour to figure out what it is because people are watching these videos and they can't figure it out why you know why should we vote for it I think I you have to you have to go to town meeting with a solid well-versed override or you've got no chance whatsoever of squeaking it through and I agree I personally think you don't have a chance of squeaking it through right now I agree you need the solid well-versed answer and I think fighting against the powers that be to stall and to hold this back as much as humanly possible has caused us to be in this position having an agreed upon approach to this is what should have happened from the start complaining about oh it's never been done before and oh they always fail and oh lunenberg can't do this and oh no one's going to vote for it doesn't do anything it doesn't help the process it's just whining and the general that i' I've seen it on multiple boards and committees and it's it's sad if we want to actually get this if we want to do anything then just have the conversation and do it we can figure out the numbers can I just recommend that we not debate the merits of the override but that we aspire to get to numbers that everyone is understanding on that ared towards a balanced budget going into to town meeting because there's still some Deltas in there and then we have the then we have the further discussions between now and town meeting and we'll probably be there midnight on town meeting too so someone will move the question you can have a b sale that day to maybe make up some of the override but I I do think that lunches they'll be available I do I do think we need to get to to facts and understanding of of why certain numbers are and ultimately what select board decides to put on as that number we have two things we have the we have the budget the non override budget that that I think is pretty close to being where it is I think the uh school board has has agreed on it just we got to get the numbers together I think that's pretty clear the override issue um I understand where this school board was coming from but like I said it as Peter was talking about you need to present you know say we want a million dollars just throw a number out okay what is it going to be used for as our chairman was saying well this is this this is this and you got to well the others is going to be what well we're going to do all this work uh on the on the on the buildings for this year and then next year we'll have and then this is what our you know we'll have enough money to do next year so we won't need an override that's the point that's what we have to and I think the select board along with the school committee probably uh will and probably with help from many others including people from this committee we'll have to discuss that at the select board meeting uh and uh and uh and maybe even a town meeting but uh it it I agree with our chairman that it just it's pretty obvious we need to do something and to not do anything is probably not a good thing for the community and you know we just need to do something we need to do something to to preserve uh the uh the momentum that we've had and doing right thing and we you know it's it's going to be a discussion that will be happen between uh the time the select board finalize it and that warrants go out until May in the annual meeting and there'll be a lot of talk and I'm going to suggest that the town maybe want to do some educational things so because I know I see Facebook and others there's a lot of BS goes out oh you know they're going to use all I already heard well they can use the money whatever they want to use it for and they're going to do this you know it's just like yeah no let's talk about what's real and I think more education people can make the decision and if the decision is they don't want to then that's fine but if it is uh at least it's based on facts not on madeup BS that go you know that goes out I think we should skip the rest of the agenda I I have to agree with that and I think offering the one of the main points that Miss Mr GRE just said that I really agree with is the education to the town Mr L Franco I really hope I say this correctly came to one of our meetings and he Saidi a radical democratizer a radical democratizer thank you and it it's whether you agree with the override or you don't agree with the override if it's your argument or your case to make make it clear make it thoughtful and have a point to to stand on and I think that's that's a message that we could possibly all agree on and it's not it's not about what one person believes and what one person thinks it's about what the town wants and the town is going to have the opportunity to vote on it one way or the other so I think bringing all that information to the table and being as clear as possible no matter how I feel about it personally it it's going to present that best case for everyone and educating the town is a really big part of that how does this affect the people that don't have children in the school district how does it affect those folks how does it affect people if the elementary school all of a sudden has a major catastrophe and the kids can't go to school anymore because there's no building for them to go to school in what happens that's going to have impact on everyone across the board these are all points that need to be brought up over time and something that Mr manard said today there needs to be Capital plan longterm planning about how that we can avoid this and you know I still can't wrap my head around Mr he's numbers on here and I say that because I don't know how he can maintain these buildings for that much money I don't but the schools aren't the only buildings in the town either and it's about looking at the budget as a whole the roads the schools the elderly Community sewer all of it and my understanding of our position on here is to try to ask the right questions so that the town is educated so that they can make an informed decision transparency so the one thing that I will say I absolutely believe in is education and transparency so that's part of the reason that I ask these questions because I don't know the answers to all of them but it's also someone said this on this board maybe it was Mr pasos I think it was Mr pasos he said don't ever be afraid to ask questions because if you don't know the answers to them there's other people out there that don't know the answers either so that is the position I have on the conversation we're having you you just if I could just very quickly you you made one point that really struck in my head when you said it and you were talking about that this process needs to be all inclusive and at this point it's not if we go forward with what we we've talked about tonight it goes back to my point that it does not take into account the issues that we have on the town side so you know the comment was just made that it needs to be holistic but we're pushing a non-holistic uh path forward that's my point I think we're pushing a non-holistic path forward because there has been a narrative push put forward that the townside is fine everything's Ros and it's great yeah and that's why we have Town buildings falling down around us and we need $30 million in the next 2 years for Exempted borrowing and we need six or S million dollar for Marshall Park and and I can't even I don't even have the rest of salaries and and I I could not agree more I think this should have been a townwide override from the beginning and I've said that from the beginning there has been a push back and a narrative put out there that the town side is fine the towns are great this is all a school issue this isn't our problem we're great and it's it's ridiculous it every single department head that has come before us with the exception of maybe the library has said that they need additional funding mhm it's just it's a ridiculous thing that situation that we're in and we're here I hate to say by Design but we're here by Design seems to me we're just triaging it right and right now the biggest wound is is with the school that's also true so triage this year but at some point we got to fix it we do and I would recommend that I I got everything I need out of the the school presentation and I think everyone's followed enough and it's 11:05 at night and at some point we got to stop having 4H hour meetings so it starts in April um I'm going to hold Mr beardmore and M and Mr uh and T I'm going to hold off on any more comments because we have been talking about this for 45 minutes I think you should TJ well TJ you we're going to do public comment absolutely I'm not going to skip public comment but I want to hold off on on this conversation and give this this the superintendent do you want to I mean is there much more that we want to get through that you feel is important this is the can I ask a quick question of course ask a quick question is there a cut off time for tonight because I have to wake up in 4 hours thinking sometime around two well today ends in 58 56 minutes right we Chris and I were just talking about not finishing much after this one kind of going through public comment and then so can we see like hard stop 11:30 is that can I ask that should sure you can ask anything you want ask any questions can always adjourn whenever you make a motion someone will if someone seconds it C can I make a motion that we end and adjourn this meeting at 11:30 pm second any discussion hi roll call vote Miss Russell Hi Mr paos hi Mr Gray hi Mr Simeone hi hi get to you mrarz hi Mr Berard hi and I suppose an i for myself really wanted to break the record again okay let's go there's nothing real importance on any of theing that there was a question relative to the numbers of Staff in the different categories if somebody has that question just email me directly I can send your numbers if you have any other uh questions about any of the colors with the Rainbow on this um happy to answer send the email to me directly um and if you want to come in and have a a conversation because we think that that will be more beneficial then that's fine too M we can schedule a time yeah I I I actually I have sent you that email request for the positions for certain specific salary lines um and the reason is because I've I've plotted out I don't know if you can see behind you I've plotted out all the increases for where they are um and just to kind of get an idea as to how we're looking because I love graphs um and this takes out the two biggest ones of Transportation oh it doesn't take insurance and teacher salaries when you add those two back in it get you can't even see the bottom can I request right now can you just email that to me because I I would like to see that information thank you so much okay so I think with that um I'm going to open it up to public comment but I would like to remind the public that this is public comment it's not public conversation so if there is a question that would like to be asked of the superintendent or the school committee chair just please ask it through me and it'll kind of be discretionary I think at that point as to whether or not I obviously don't want to have a long-term discussion with this but I'm happy and we have a hearing coming up next week where that is designed to happen that conversation um with that Mr Mr llin hey y let's see if I can get this camera to work thanks for taking my question or comments here TJ Laughlin 207 Rolling anres Road um so I heard some things tonight that is sort of a trend you know I hear you guys are data data folks and like Trends but I'm seeing a common Trend um I think this is the fourth meeting where I've heard people say they don't know what it is they're looking at and they don't know the the facts they can't see the facts and people need to come back with the facts before I say more on that the second piece is education and info to the public right I've heard a few people say we need to educate it was said it last night school committee meeting it's said by a couple people here tonight educate the public there's misinformation people don't understand what's going on um how can we do that how can we educate the public when none of it is being stabilized you guys are all the stabilizers of the information we'll share it you're asking us start a campaign to educate we can't start a campaign until we have something to campaign on we can't educate until we have something to educate on and those are the numbers this select board has said we're not going to engage until we have the number the number when is that number going to be stabilized every time the school committee and Mrs Burnham Dr Burnham put something out there it gets undermined and rediscussed how how can we do what you're asking and you have the budget sheet I said line by line I'm going to ask you guys stop saying you don't understand what's going on and stop ask start asking direct questions right direct questions what is it what information is missing because the arpa question was answered by Mr beardmore there's your 200k that you had to question about Evan answered other questions about the budget and there was still not consensus that facts are in front of you which facts are missing like please please ask the questions about the facts because it's now March 21st we're actually past deadlines the deadlines have already been waved actually we're past deadlines so Now's the Time to ask direct questions right and the last thing I'll say and then I'll stop is this is the second meeting that I've heard or maybe the fifth I can't tell by this point the process is not all inclusive well why isn't it I sat in a meeting on fincom where you guys all half voted that fincom wasn't to be involved with the override so who and it's a question that was asked last night by Anastasia Grady who is responsible to make it an inclusive process because the select board has not acted you guys have not acted are you asking M uh Dr burnum to do it are you asking the the school committee to do it nobody is saying who should be making this inclusive but everybody is throwing salt and fire at this without taking action and making it inclusive you're the leaders make it inclusive please thank you thank you thank you to here Mr beardmore thank you Peter beardmore 282 Pleasant Street speaking for myself I have a question before I make my comment have you folks heard anything about the salary Administration plan or the salary Gap that was discussed a few weeks ago or what effects that might have on the budget we received that information this afternoon I have it open on my computer and that's as far as I've made it into it so you don't even have a rough idea at this point in terms of what that actually means nope nope not a clue okay um what we're seeing here is the mo of the Town manager and and my question is is who is going to hold her responsible we've known for months and months and months and months that we have massive pay issues in our town we were losing hundreds of hours per week due to vacancies over the course of the last year part of the budget increases in the library and the the Council on Aging are Point increases to retain key employees because we're underpaying them so we're adjusting their hours and adding benefits and that has been done on the backs of the school department this was a plan that was made prior to the beginning of February by the chair of the select board and the town manager to shift that burden onto the school department and we have spent the last two months arguing about this and the town manager has dragged her feet and come up with creative ideas around arpa and one time spending and can't find a way to increase local receipts by $40,000 to get to a point where we have an ABS absolute minimum budget the town is a mess this is not a school department problem it is a problem that has been shifted onto the school department thanks to our leadership and somebody needs to hold them her in particular responsible the reason why the numbers are coming in at the last minute the reason why the the pink column and the blue column don't match up with the with the green column is because the numbers were landed on on Monday and voted on on Tuesday and yeah I mean Tuesday and then Wednesday excuse me so this should have happened in January folks or before and you're absolutely right and the criticism is well warranted one final comment you know last night somebody in a fit of frustration said something that really hit me which is you know and I'm paraphrasing but it's something about a microph phone in a stage that gets people thinking that they're very philosophical and self-righteous and I understand that it's late at night but you know we're all fighting over scraps here and and I absolutely agree with the previous commenter somebody needs to show some leadership here and it certainly isn't coming from the executive of this town and so I'm I'm very concerned and I'm very frustrated and I hate to go because I'm not going to sleep tonight another night um thanks to our leadership or lack thereof thank you have a good night everybody thank you Mr beore I Mary foil uh 985 flat Hill Road and yes I hate myself for standing up um and I'm probably going to face the firing squad tomorrow at school for what I'm going to say um so I've been watching a lot of these meetings or watched them online um and trust me and Kate's been there Union wise we've thrown questions at her over the budget uh we don't always agree on where things are going but they're not my decisions I just get to say I don't agree with it um but one of the things and and like I understand when you're talking about why are we doing this on spread sheets I've worked at lunenberg public schools for a long time now and we never have good programming like we have the bare minimum we like make do so maybe that is something that an opera fund could go towards um better programming but I I do have to say um and and maybe this is a more positive note um but the work that the the school team has done and I think I'm using the correct business terms in this you know Dr Burnham is pretty much our CEO we are working through this process without a CFO um and I think if you look at any major company uh that would have this many employees and this much of a budget to be going through this without a CFO um is quite an undertaking in itself this would be difficult already um so I I just appreciate the work um and have to remind myself sometimes uh to have Grace in those moments because many people are doing multiple jobs right now um in order to get something out there thank you you we have any other public comment from the public this evening on the school committee budget seeing none any public comment she does oh just kidding so I'm going to reserve a lot of comments I would say um there's a lot of untruths I think in a previous speaker's comments that I won't address tonight um but what I do want to say is I am looking at local receipts that's um a truth that has been relay I need to look at historical um what's been estimated versus actuals before I make a recommendation and that's not taken lightly so I just want to put that out there thank you thank you is there any public comment from the committee yes so I think accountability is really important and if I'm so sorry Mary foil Miss Mary foil yeah I I am in the business world and relative to the school department Kate would be like the CEO um having said that when you have a position as the CEO of a company your main role is leadership and when you have someone a counterpart as important as a CFO missing you feel that all day long I will admit to that but you still have to step up to the plate and it takes some action and planning and sometimes that means I'm going to spend an hour and look at how to account in a different way for this that way as you're going along the process of building a budget of changing a budget 60 times which I do have experience in that and I will even call myself an expert in it you will have to modify those things and it is your job that you signed up for that you collect a paycheck for to make sure that your work is solid and everyone makes mistakes everyone I also believe that so if Heather is going to be called out and said that she needs to take accountability so does Dr Kate Burnham have to take accountability and this isn't just about looking at the numbers this is about the school as a whole and how is this affecting teachers and can we operate differently to save money to save time to save stress when we're looking at a spreadsheet and numbers don't match up and it's chaotic I'm not saying there is an effort there I'm not saying there was a lot of time spent on the process I'm saying sometimes you need someone outside of where you're at sometimes I need someone to step in because I have been looking at it so closely and scrutinizing it I need someone to come in and say you know what walk away from your artwork and walk back to it or maybe someone looks at it and they say well here's a different perspective that I don't think you've seen because your heart and soul is into this and you're trying so hard I am not going to discredit all the many hats that the town manager has to wear as well so you're not alone in being without a CFO you're not alone without like you have a lot of different roles that I've seen and I don't understand all of them cuz I am new to this committee so I think in effort to be fair across the board everyone deserves some accountability about all the topics that all of us have discussed and there's a lot of passion that has gone into these meetings at very late hours of the night and it is kind of hard to think straight when you're thinking about is my kid's classroom going to increase is my child going to have a social worker are my taxes going to increase am I going to be forced to move out of lunenberg and I don't even have kids here are the roads going to fall apart are the buildings going to fall down like those are all questions and they are all important and I think this has probably been the most intense for school committee meetings I've ever seen and it's it's more than 50% of the Town budget so those are my opinions and I do just want to say one other thing very quickly on mass.edu the salaries are listed for the town of lunenberg which Falls approximately in an average salary base of $85,000 a year so I find mass.edu to be a credible site because it's a government-based site however I am very open and welcome learning experiences and I have no idea how teachers unions work I really truly don't so if you're able to email me any information that gives me those details I appreciate it wholeheartedly because I would like to learn more because what I'm looking at is government websites which I again I find to be a credible Source because I I believe that's important as well so thank you thank you any other public comment from the committee yeah just quickly sorry Chris go ahead I would just like to thank uh Kate Burnham for her presentation I realize it hasn't been easy for you to do this and I appreciate you you're taking the time to go over what you did and I realize that you know you've had to go through a lot of different budgets and it and it has been very trying for you so thank you again yeah I mean history tells us even in budget years that are you know kind of easy things change up until you know the day of the the uh town meeting um so we're used to working with imperfect data um but we tend to be a little bit further along at this point um and I I understand that when you get out of a meeting at 10:30 and you finalize something you're not going to go home and stay up till 4:00 in the morning to to update a spreadsheet um got it right I understand I was just trying to you know earlier earlier I would um was just trying to understand you know kind of the fundamentals which is what are the differences what is what's the trade space we have to work with as a town again I want to say that I think I've seen positive interactions between the two Executives if you would the the the the School Executives and the town the municipal side and by law we have to kind of treat it that way to to work through this issue and I have no doubt that we will continue to work through this issue over the next month um and we just got to you know understand that we all have opinions and we're going to express those opinions and you know but then you know let's go out and have a dinner together because we are we are a community so I I do thank everyone that's been here and um we only have seven minutes left so real quick I just want to say I just going to push it right s minutes 6 minutes um you know the I think you know we can look back and say oh we could have done things differently well we're here and what I have seen since this started is people working very hard trying to do the right thing whatever that is and we can disagree on what the right thing is we' disagree up here about what the right thing is but good people trying to do the right thing making their best efforts and this is brand new for a lot of these things I don't don't see any conspiracies I don't see people talking behind the backs and saying oh I think I'm going to do this or that and that kind of stuff I I don't see it h so what I see is people trying to do the right thing so we'll get through this as a town and we'll move on I'm sure Dave can probably go back to years where this is it was 10 times worse so we'll get through this everybody calm down everybody put their conspiracy hats aside and let's just try to work as a and and have disagreements but do it in a way that's positive Jay before I go no to ajour have two minutes left go ahead no there's four minutes left what are you talking about it's plenty of time unless you have something Mr chair he just made a motion and I was about to say yeah I would just want to real quick um okay thank you I know you guys have all put a lot of work in and it really is appreciated um I I think there is I I also want to thank the public we still have I don't know how many people there's still 11 people on Zoom somehow which I'm still think they're all asleep but I'm glad they're still here I think Miss Emy fell asleep possibly she's close same um so if anything it does speak to the involvement and the importance that people do see in the town on this issue um and around the school specifically um it's not an easy process it's certainly going to be a messy process and there are a lot of disagreement and a lot of opinions and that doesn't mean anyone is right or anyone is wrong um I think that it might be worthwhile to discuss this a little bit after we get through this budget season and the fact that we have I think I Believe Miss memy actually came up with the the idea for it at a recent s board meeting for um I forget exactly what you called it but a task force a budget task force um that can address this exact issue of who is who's the leadership that should put this forward because if the select it's from our opinion it's the select board that's supposed to put it forward but if they decide not to put it forward then that's their decision it doesn't mean that it's the wrong decision or the right decision it just means that they chose not to put it forward but I think the idea that that ends the discussion right there and that it has to go to a citizen's petition is is unnecessary I think there are backups that exist I I know we've said people have said on this committee that it's not the finance committee's job I don't think that's true I don't think there's anywhere it's written that it says the finance committee can't put forward a a budget override article um I think there's plenty of opportunity for it um and I think that it's just a conversation that needs to happen I think the task force needs to happen and I think there's a lot more communication that needs to go on between this committee and other committees as well and boards but all in all thank you for the presentation um and for spending a ridiculous amount of time in this room thank you and L Franco is not sleeping he just told me he's not no he's probably an auto text he had I know this is going to go until 11:30 um motion to a churn second any discussion we got a minute and a half Miss Russell Hi Mr pasos hi Mr Gray hi Mr Simone hi Miss Darez hi Mr Bernard and an i for myself at 11:28 this evening no 11:29 1 minute off we are adjourned