[0:00] Welcome to the Trashine Valley Digital Vocational School District School Committee meeting, March 23, 2023. We'll call tonight,

[0:08] Glen Larson, Ken Marford, S.S. B.D.N., 30 Royal Donald, Charlotte Diori, Cheryl Ballet,

[0:15] Valet Belloni, and we're going to be all right. Tyler Gillis, 30 Pat Uses, Christine Kim,

[0:21] Superintendent McIntosh, Business Manager, let's go. Karen Feo is our recording secretary and we have a

[0:36] to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation,

[0:45] under God, indivisible, and liberty and justice for all.

[0:50] Thank you.

[0:54] We'll take a motion to open a public hearing.

[0:56] Please do a second.

[0:57] A second.

[0:58] What was it made and seconded?

[1:00] The discussion all those in favor?

[1:04] The public hearing for the FY-24 operating budget is now open.

[1:08] I'd like to at this time ask Superintendent McIntosh, Mrs. Manager,

[1:14] let's go to briefly give us a presentation.

[1:18] I just need one comment.

[1:20] Just with the stuff that's going on tonight, can you potentially table 14?

[1:25] Connecting?

[1:26] That's possible.

[1:26] If

[1:30] I second that motion to table evaluation, we have enough stuff.

[1:36] I understand.

[1:37] I just briefly.

[1:39] No, I think I appreciate that, Carmen.

[1:42] I sent out the information for everybody to read, and I'll just, I'll see you at the

[1:49] end.

[1:49] Yes, I will.

[1:50] Consider the time of the evening.

[1:51] I will consider that.

[1:52] In terms of future meetings, I've mentioned this for the last couple of years, the meetings

[1:56] would be go to approve budgets can make sure that that's what's on the agenda especially with an open

[2:01] hearing and any other stuff can get moved to a future meeting cannot be requests to be for future

[2:07] I mean right now we're gonna not for this year but for future years when we have an open hearing

[2:13] have budgets approved especially with this one and make sure that's one of the main things on the

[2:18] agenda everything else can get yeah exactly I understand like you still got to do like bills and

[2:24] minutes and all the other stuff. But like, yeah, I know you weren't here last year.

[2:33] Jenna's name was this is some I've mentioned for the last couple of years. That's something

[2:36] we should really talk about making the budget process kind of focus. Yeah, like if you're

[2:43] okay, and then you're operating. If you're open hearing, that should be the main focus.

[2:48] There's other administrative stuff you have to do. Okay, but those are the things should

[2:52] to focus the meeting. Okay. And I think that's good for me. Okay. So just to give some

[2:59] background information and we'll kind of go through this presentation but just to kind

[3:03] of set the stage if you will. Jen and I have obviously had many conversations with staff

[3:09] and administrators and other people in the building and throughout this process and I believe we

[3:15] also talked to the budgets of committee about this too. We asked for a level services budget.

[3:19] We did not ask for a level-funded budget, so we realized that there are some increases

[3:24] in this, and it's just kind of caused some anxiety amongst some of our members and

[3:30] some of the community members, but we want to be able to continue to provide the same

[3:35] level of service that we have done consistently in the past.

[3:39] In order to do that, there's a lot of stuff that shows up in this budget that needs to be

[3:45] addressed.

[3:45] we've already talked about capital. Most of you are aware there's a $475,000 request in the capital

[3:53] budget to repair the wall above the pool area. We've been told that you know that is deteriorating

[4:00] and at some point in time it may cause potential issues. We either damaging the roof or forcing us

[4:08] to close sections of the building while it gets repaired. So we want to be proactive in that. We want

[4:13] get ahead of that and we want to take care of that repair over the summer so that it

[4:15] doesn't impact our ability to deliver educational services, but it also doesn't impact the community

[4:21] usage of the pool area as well. So, well, it's a big expense and we understand that. That

[4:27] is a priority. When you look at the total budget requests that are related to building repair

[4:35] and maintenance, it adds up to about $670,000, which is a big chunk of our capital requests

[4:41] this year. The reality is we have a 53-year-old building and you know things are coming up around

[4:50] heating system repairs, around plumbing repairs, around the infrastructure that we need to keep

[4:56] this building open and operating. Those costs are going to continue to show up in capital budget

[5:01] requests until there's either a major renovation project or some type of building project that's done

[5:06] here. So I think it's important as a group that you know we all kind of have that context

[5:12] and we have that background as we go through that. The other thing the other things that I kind

[5:16] of want to focus on and we'll go through this quickly in the presentation is we've averaged

[5:22] a 2.67 percent increase over the last five years here at Shush. What we've found in this year's

[5:29] budget is we have to make some corrections based on the fact that that has been a little bit low

[5:35] for where we needed to be and now unfortunately now this is all coming to

[5:40] coming to Roost at the same time. We've also utilized grant fund and I'm sure most

[5:48] of you are familiar with this. We utilize a lot of grant money to implement the

[5:51] one-to-one technology program during the pandemic. A lot of that money is now

[5:56] starting to dry up and go away. So as another cost has reflected in this we've

[6:01] picked up the cost of buying laptop computers for incoming freshman

[6:05] in class and also the replacement of a portion of the staff, administrator, clerical, support

[6:12] people's devices as well. Those are going to be, again, recurring costs that we're going

[6:18] to have, that we have to go into the budget. We have to make sure that we account for those

[6:23] as well. Other things to keep in mind. We did sign a two-year contract extension with

[6:30] the teaching staff with the STA, and we're locked in for a 3% increase next year and a 2.75

[6:36] increase for the following fiscal year. In hindsight, I think that that was, that was

[6:42] timely. If we followed any of the other stuff that's been going on in some of our sister districts

[6:47] in this area, I think that could have gone a lot of different ways that it did. We've also negotiated

[6:53] initial contracts for Pera's educational technology and maintenance staff, and as part of that,

[6:59] We purposely instituted a three-year phase-in plan, so all of those groups now have steps

[7:07] and column raises.

[7:08] As a district, we put a limit on how fire people can move in year one, how fire people

[7:13] can move in year two, and how fire people can move in year three to minimize the impact on

[7:17] the budget.

[7:20] We also are looking at a three, we've built in a three percent cost of living adjustment

[7:24] for clerical cafeteria and all the other non-union employees for the upcoming fiscal year.

[7:29] This also as people are I'm sure aware includes increases in our health insurance and transportation.

[7:35] We've hit the escalation clause for our transportation contract so that our transportation costs up by another $50,000 on top of what they were already.

[7:45] And again that's based on the cost of fuel that our provider has to pay for and it was built into the contract.

[7:51] I believe we're in year two or three of the current contract.

[7:56] I already talked about the one-to-one teaching.

[8:00] We are also this year had to establish, we were mandated to establish an English language

[8:05] learners program based on our student population and student enrollment here.

[8:09] There are some significant costs around testing those students, around software that we have

[8:14] to purchase to track them, we've had to add staff that is certified to instruct those

[8:20] students.

[8:21] Again, if those numbers continue to rise, that budget is going to continue to increase

[8:26] in incoming years if we have to add another staff person.

[8:29] So those are things that were never funded in the past, they're also powered as a budget.

[8:37] We also have included some money in there.

[8:40] We were able to get a grant this year to fund a board-certified behavioral panelist.

[8:45] So if you look in the contracted services for support services for next year, there's some

[8:52] additional money put in there to continue to support students that we have within the

[8:56] building that have the need for those specialized supports that a VCBA brings.

[9:02] We are not in a position to try to hire somebody full time in that role and I think we all

[9:07] understand that but we've tried to build this and where we can still support the students

[9:12] but try to be as physically responsible as we can as we do that.

[9:16] There are some new positions in here and I shared this over the course of the past couple

[9:20] meetings, adding a ninth grade guidance counselor. Well, the guidance position was rolled

[9:28] into the director's, director's salary last year under the former superintendent. And

[9:33] again, trying to get back to a spot where we have two counselors that are dedicated to

[9:37] our ninth grade students. I know I've talked about this at numerous times in the past. That's

[9:42] a really vulnerable time for kids transferring here and making sure that they feel supported

[9:47] and that they have the attention and the people monitoring their progress so that we can keep them here and we can keep them enrolled as they roll through the programs.

[9:55] They also include science and support services.

[9:58] And the reason for that is we are also looking next year to move towards an inclusion model for instruction.

[10:05] We currently have pull-out services for our special ed students, which is something that is not, from my understanding, is not thought in our sending communities.

[10:14] And it's something that when students come here, it's an adjustment for them to have those services delivered in a different way.

[10:22] And based on the feedback and the input that we've gotten from a bunch of the stakeholders, that is the way that we should be moving forward.

[10:30] So I will quickly go through this stuff.

[10:34] To get Jenna and I, we're going to share this just to give people an idea of what we're

[10:39] also bringing forward.

[10:40] If people have feedback or advice about things you think should be added, the things you

[10:45] think should be changed.

[10:45] Please let us know.

[10:47] And again, I think everybody's aware that we're trying to work our way through this and our

[10:52] first iteration of presenting this.

[10:56] So again, Chashine is a public school district in Valorika, vocational technical education grades

[11:02] 9-12. Our funding comes from our five sending communities. And the formula that is used

[11:09] to determine that is based on a lot of different things with our enrollment here from the

[11:13] communities, the enrollment in the sending communities, the property values in the sending

[11:16] communities, the income level in the sending communities. And we are provided with a net

[11:25] spent a net chapter, a net school spending in chapter 70 summary, which is what we use

[11:30] to build our budget here.

[11:32] We don't have information about all of our sending districts until that report is shared

[11:37] with us.

[11:38] And I'll talk more about that later in my update.

[11:41] These are just some highlights I've talked through all of these things already.

[11:45] The contract extensions, the initial contracts, the coal increases, the new positions, the

[11:50] all the department upgrade, the building repairs,

[11:54] the one-to-one initiative and, again,

[11:56] our average increase over the past five years

[11:59] has been a little over 2.5%, 2.5, 8% percent.

[12:03] Just so people are aware,

[12:06] we have been actively pursuing competitive grants

[12:09] at every opportunity that we can.

[12:12] So we have pulled and we have managed to land about $336,000

[12:17] dollars for the spray booth and auto body that did not come out of our capital or operating budget.

[12:24] We got a social emotional learning grant which again is proud of that's being used to fund

[12:29] the BCBA for our current school year for a little over $100,000. We got it ramped from the genocide

[12:36] ed group to do some curriculum development and some planning in our English and history departments

[12:41] and then we also have this myCAP guidance program that we got for about 40 months.

[12:47] We're also actively pursuing some other grants, but we are in the waiting phase now

[12:52] and as that information becomes available, I would at least share it out with people.

[12:58] So things that are unique to Shawshine, we've heard from our local towns

[13:03] and our local communities about the cost of running schools going up.

[13:08] Again, a lot of schools that's paper, it's toner, it's copier leases,

[13:13] is it's other things like that.

[13:15] We have all of those costs plus.

[13:18] So just to give a quick comparison here,

[13:22] the 3-8-inch copper tubing that is kind of a mainstay

[13:25] on our HBAC program for a lot of the projects that they do.

[13:28] In FY23, it was $75 for $54 role.

[13:32] It went to $95 for this current school year.

[13:38] And plumbing our 3-inch PVC pipe went from 1470 to 1770

[13:43] per 10 foot length. The copper elbows that are used, the half inch copper elbows used in our

[13:49] plumbing program, 51 cents to a dollar five, 106 percent increase on those items. And we use a lot

[13:55] of them because we do a lot of copper projects with the students in our program. Electricity non-metallic,

[14:02] a lot of people know it as romance. It's the wire that is used on the vast majority of the student

[14:07] projects down there, went from 49 cents a foot to 92 cents per year. This is a one-year increase.

[14:16] Masonry, the price of bricks went up 80 cents per brick, which again is a 76 percent increase,

[14:24] and in our advanced manufacturing department, the price of the aluminum barrel that they use for

[14:29] projects went from $8.3 to $8.75.

[14:35] So again, if you think about the student enrollments in these

[14:37] programs being somewhere between 12 and 26 students in each grade level and those students

[14:43] are in there working on projects, doing skill-building activities to learn the skills and competencies

[14:48] to make them successful on the leave here.

[14:51] That has a huge impact on our ability to deliver a lot of services to the budget.

[14:58] I'm going to turn it over and just let's go down.

[15:02] I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought this was Jenna's slide. I apologize. I went back to the last year that I could access information on on the profiles on the DOE profile site was 2020. So this is net school spending as a percentage of the foundation budget. So just some comparisons to our sending districts. In FY 2020,

[15:30] Shawshine's percentage was 126.

[15:33] The next closest one was Bill Rick at 153.

[15:37] I know we're asking for a significant increase here,

[15:39] and I know we're asking our sending communities

[15:42] to support that and by kind of buying into this vision

[15:46] and this mission we have, but again,

[15:49] when we look at the percentage of the foundation

[15:54] budget of men's school spending for sending communities,

[15:57] most of them are spending well above and beyond what we currently do.

[16:02] And again, I apologize that it's a few years out of date.

[16:06] Now, I'm sorry, enrollment numbers.

[16:09] We are down a little bit.

[16:12] We're down 28 students based on the October 1st deadline.

[16:16] With the transition of our director of data, admissions, and assessment into a new role,

[16:22] We did have a period of time there where we had multiple people trying to man the admissions

[16:28] process and bring 9th graders in and I think we are ready and poised to accept some more

[16:37] students to backfill that class and again Mr. Norquets will talk about this in a few minutes

[16:43] but we're looking at waiting until all the current students in the building have been placed

[16:46] in the technical programs that they're interested in and then we're going to have a more accurate

[16:51] reflection of what programs have opened so that when we accept students, they know these are the

[16:56] programs that we have space in. I think these are the programs that you're interested in. Are you

[17:00] willing, ready and willing to come here for one of these programs? So that number will go up.

[17:06] Also, and you can see this in my update later on, we have a very small senior class. Our senior

[17:14] class is about 285 students. When that class graduates, we're also going to pick up probably about 65

[17:20] 75 or 70 students in our enrollment next year, if we bring in the 340 or 350 that we've

[17:26] typically run.

[17:30] Now it's Ms. Lasco.

[17:32] I will take this laptop.

[17:33] Thank you.

[17:35] So I'm going to explain to you the state formula and how we arrive at these numbers.

[17:39] So first of the required minimum contribution.

[17:42] So this is what the state says every town has to pay.

[17:47] So this is not a non-negotiable.

[17:50] As you can see, those percent changes are based on what the state gave us, and you can

[17:55] compare FY23 and FY24, so the formula starts with required minimum contribution.

[18:02] So then we take those capital assessments, capital budget was approved in December, and those

[18:10] are for all the big things that are going to happen in the building, such as equipment,

[18:13] construction problem, project, builder, repairs, maintenance, technology.

[18:17] The formula for the capital assessment is a little different.

[18:21] Bedford and Burlington always pay 10% unless for some reason their enrollment would over

[18:26] the 10% but they're required to pay at least 10% even though the population is lower.

[18:31] And then the remaining proportions are based on enrollment with taking Bedford and Burlington

[18:37] out to come up with the work it took spring in Burlington's piece.

[18:42] So that is based on enrollment.

[18:43] and then we have the FY-24 regional operating agreement.

[18:47] That is strictly based on enrollment

[18:50] for all five sending districts.

[18:52] So that is a proportion of above and beyond

[18:55] what we're asking for from minimum in capital.

[19:01] So total operating, projected operating assessment,

[19:05] this year, compared to last year,

[19:08] you can see it has changed for some of the districts,

[19:11] it's gone up and down.

[19:17] But this is the assessment detailed by town

[19:19] and this is probably the most important slide.

[19:22] So we have a broken down first by FY24 capital contribution,

[19:26] which I talked about in previous slide.

[19:28] That's that 1.6 million that we already have voted on.

[19:32] Then we have the minimum contribution

[19:34] that's required by the state.

[19:36] And then we have the regional operating agreement.

[19:38] So that's what's above and beyond

[19:40] that we need in order to fund this budget.

[19:43] And then the last column is the total assessment.

[19:46] it's the sum of those three previous columns.

[19:50] And then we get chapter 78,

[19:51] which is what the state's giving us.

[19:53] Transportation aid,

[19:55] which is something state will refund us.

[19:57] And then that we have our total budget.

[20:00] So the transportation aid is taken out previously

[20:02] to get to that $8.5 million a number

[20:06] that you see under FY 24 regional operating agreement.

[20:10] So we budget it in and then we get some back from state.

[20:15] So, overall, the 7.9% increase from last year, which, like we said, is higher than usual,

[20:22] but we're dealing with a lot of inflation factors as well.

[20:25] You can see total minimum required contribution, all the changes that have come across Chapter

[20:31] 78.

[20:31] It was $30 per student increase this year, which wasn't a ton of money.

[20:38] And then the amount assessed per regional agreement is that percentage piece and that brings

[20:42] us to our total budget of $37,423,644.

[20:48] So this was presented to the budget subcommittee, and that's our whole budget.

[20:54] Go ramps.

[20:56] Does anyone need to go back to another slide?

[20:58] Yeah, we can put that just to the point where I can send this to you.

[21:03] I think I have it somewhere that I wanted to just make it easier for me to do that.

[21:09] Sure.

[21:10] Thank you.

[21:35] If anyone here for the public to speak, I'm the budget hearing none.

[21:42] I would make a motion to close the public hearing.

[21:44] The motion is made to close the public hearing.

[21:46] Second.

[21:48] The discussion hearing none, all's a fair.

[21:50] Aye.

[21:50] I oppose none.

[21:53] Anonymous public hearing is now closed.

[21:56] This point here.

[21:58] Next up on the agenda.

[22:03] So on Wednesday, 28 students were inducted into National Onesci, National Virtual Onesci,

[22:09] 25 years and 3 seniors.

[22:11] Make sure you watch out on the NHS, Shawshin, K, John, Instagram because we should be posting

[22:16] all pictures soon once we get them back.

[22:19] Most of the students just had a presentation by Tony Hoffman, he's a worldwide speaker on

[22:25] and alcohol, drug abuse, and mental health awareness.

[22:29] It was really engaging and I heard all good things about it.

[22:33] And then all our spring sports just started on Monday

[22:36] and it's all trials this week, so talk to them.

[22:40] Skills are just happened last week.

[22:44] We had 20 gold medalists, 20 silver, and 27 bronze,

[22:49] who all of the gold medalists most of the silver

[22:52] and some of the grounds will move on to states at the end of April.

[22:56] The drama club is getting ready for their show by Biberty,

[23:01] and the show dates on that is May 11th and 12th at 6.30 pm.

[23:06] It's going to be here in the auditorium this year.

[23:09] And we will have more info after this senior meeting on Wednesday.

[23:13] So at the next school committee meeting, I'll have more info about seniors.

[23:17] So, and all the duties are about to get ready to go out on call on money.

[23:22] Good day.

[23:24] Thank you, you're in the sky.

[23:27] As everybody gets just onto my head,

[23:32] Principal Cook sends out the report every Friday.

[23:37] And there was a listing of everything that's going on

[23:40] and all the activities and everything.

[23:42] So thank you, folks.

[23:43] and we are also grateful to see what's going on.

[23:47] To read it and listen on the agenda, I thought about that

[23:49] when I was first sent these up.

[23:51] But we are informed of what's happening

[23:54] and who's doing what, and so it's congratulations

[23:57] to all our skills here at City winners.

[24:00] Next up, we have the public comment.

[24:02] There's a recent update.

[24:07] I'm going

[24:10] to sign up for that.

[24:12] Okay, item six tonight in moving along

[24:16] with our meeting, our directors, something I wanted to do this year with Tony's help,

[24:23] rather than have Tony just talk about who they are and what's going on.

[24:27] We did a meet, doing a meet and greet.

[24:30] So one of the last people, last but not least, tonight is our vocational director, David Nogwood,

[24:37] David and I have known each other.

[24:38] Many, many years back when he was a teacher.

[24:40] So David, thank you for coming here tonight and now talking about what's going on.

[24:45] Well, thank you, Mr. Pascale.

[24:48] My name's Dave Northwoods, I know a lot of you folks

[24:50] and the ones that I go are going to meet you

[24:55] probably up to the speedy.

[24:57] These young lady stole a lot of my fund up,

[25:00] but I'm going to give you a little bit more information.

[25:03] Last Thursday, skills USA, we had the districts here.

[25:06] We had 178 students participate in that districts.

[25:10] Out of the 178, 67 metal, and like young lady said, 20 gold, 20 silver, and 27 bronze.

[25:22] Out of those metals, we have 41 going on to the states down at Blackstone, Mauro,

[25:29] Upton.

[25:30] So we're very excited about that, for the fact that last year, we sent 61, and we came

[25:37] back with 31 medals, sending 11 to the nationals, where we took home a gold in six silver

[25:46] medals from the national levels.

[25:48] So we're pretty confident, over confident, that we're going to do the same.

[25:52] So we're very excited about our skills USA folks in regards to that.

[25:57] The other thing I got a few other things on my little list, new high list, new teachers.

[26:02] We have two teachers retiring.

[26:04] Actually, we had three teachers retire in one particular

[26:08] coppatory instructor left in February, which we already

[26:12] re-hired a full-time coppatory instructor.

[26:15] We're also losing a cosmetology teacher and a health teacher.

[26:20] I took the liberty of starting interviewing actually today.

[26:24] We have 28 candidates for our cosmetology

[26:29] instruction position so stay tuned it's going to take a while.

[26:34] 20 mentioned earlier we're right in the middle of going after a couple of competitive grants.

[26:41] We got introduced to this new foundation, fidelity foundation, and we gave them a little

[26:47] tour of the school the other day and we proposed a couple of grants, a proposal store, total

[26:54] are about 400,000, want to renovate our Masonry program and the other one to renovate our

[27:00] HVAC program. Stay tuned. We have a pretty good feeling about these proposals. The other

[27:09] thing we're chasing the competitive is the capital skills grant where we're looking to renovate

[27:14] our federal fabrication welding program, another 400,000, which is put the final touches on that

[27:22] grant. We're going to have Tony sign off on it probably by the end of the week and we feel real

[27:28] confident with that when we got, we got some good information and we feel pretty good about getting,

[27:35] getting that grant. I probably shouldn't say that should.

[27:41] Speaking of grants, we

[27:46] actually just finished

[27:47] spending our pericons money from last year in regards to roughly about 300 well

[27:55] let me take that back. About 100,000 we got some new dental chairs all installed

[28:02] for about 70,000 health assisting we continue to get our couple of beds for

[28:07] about 4,000 which we've been doing for the last three or four years. Metal

[28:11] fabrication we bought a plasma cutter for about 40,000 all those have been

[28:17] purchase, kids are using them, and we're taking advantage of that

[28:21] Perkins funds that we usually get every year, roughly about 100,000.

[28:25] This case was about 125,000 in regards to the Perkins.

[28:30] That's federal.

[28:31] That's federal money.

[28:32] That's been happening.

[28:33] How many years have we gone on?

[28:35] Since I've been in education.

[28:38] It's been a friend of ours.

[28:40] Hopefully it doesn't dry up.

[28:42] The Perkins in running makes a good point in regards to that.

[28:44] It's federal money, and it's predicated on the communities, and roughly

[28:51] shushing over the years has gotten anything from 80 to 130,000 in regards to

[28:58] that money, which we usually spend on capital equipment. So it works out very

[29:02] nicely, and how that works is through the capital budget, with our support from

[29:06] advisory committees, they determine, basically, the new cutting technology, and then

[29:11] We vote on it, but programs are in most needs in regards to that.

[29:18] The other thing that we're very proud of in regards to our co-op.

[29:24] Right now we have 76% of our seniors out in co-op, roughly 216 students.

[29:32] In starting this week, we've already signed out 20 juniors with another 35 in the

[29:38] docket which will probably get signed out by the end by Friday. So we're going to have

[29:43] close to 50 or 60 kids out on co-op being juniors already. Very excited about that.

[29:51] Co-op office is exploding but that's okay. That's always a good thing. And I think it really

[29:58] differentiates us from any other vocation.

[30:03] We're very proud of that. That's an outmission and we're going to continue to go down that path in regards to getting these kids jobs, even though a lot of them will go on to post-secondary education. It's an experience that you can't beat it. You just can't beat that experience of working out in industry. So we really committed to that. The other thing we're really committed to is projects, community projects. Because of the COVID in what night?

[30:29] It's been a little off, but we we've hooked up recently with the Baraka police in regards to renovating the supply.

[30:39] I'm going to call it a supply storage ship they once had and what they're doing what we're doing.

[30:47] We're renovating it so they can do training there. It's pretty exciting.

[30:51] Chief Frost has been spearheaded this. We've been talking about it for about a year and it went through.

[30:57] and we're pretty excited to renovate that for the training for the new police offices that they come in.

[31:03] The other thing we're doing is we're over into the police station, Bill Ricka, actually repairing,

[31:09] are actually not repairing, but replacing a couple of water fountains. Good experience for the kids to get out there.

[31:16] So it's nice. In-house projects, we have a lot going on. We've got about a dozen in-house projects,

[31:21] keeping my construction programs up and going, which is fantastic.

[31:25] It helps with the budget reduce the budget a little bit by doing in-house work and everything from building

[31:34] Shelfing for storage to opening up walls in the Dean's office

[31:38] bakery renovation

[31:40] We've got a new railing going out by the bakery. I'm sorry by the culinary program the old bakery

[31:48] We got the corrosive field house

[31:50] We put it in a mini-split so we can utilize that at night to utilize our electrical night

[31:56] school program.

[31:57] What we were finding, the original heat of that we put out there was running continuously.

[32:02] So now what we're going to do is segregate through just the room they're using, same

[32:06] stable, quite a bit, energy cost by doing that.

[32:10] So that was a well worth venture.

[32:12] We're still working on the football field house, the plumbers have got everything rough

[32:16] in and it's looking like we're on time on schedule in regards to the football stadium.

[32:23] Cosmotology, water heaters, we get the plumbers down there doing a redesign of the plumbing

[32:29] that needs to be replaced. But we're also upgrading the hot water tank for the hot water down there also.

[32:38] And then we talked about the outside the gym that we've been working on also.

[32:44] So, the last thing I have is this is a very exciting week for the freshmen, this is exploratory,

[32:51] this is their last cycle, they've gone through 14 and this weekend they will be selecting

[32:58] their permanent shops.

[33:01] Stay tuned, we're pretty excited about that.

[33:04] Usually I would say 90 or 96% of the students get their first top three choices.

[33:12] I don't know how that happens, it just does.

[33:15] We have a lot of exciting programs that everybody's trying to recruit these students, but

[33:21] it always seems to be that a high percentage of our students get their first three choices.

[33:26] So stay tuned on that.

[33:28] That's going to happen this weekend.

[33:32] And that's a pretty exciting time for a fewer freshmen.

[33:35] Of course, I have my box of tissues for the parents that will come in and cry because it's

[33:41] on a data to get into plumbing or cosmetology,

[33:45] but that's all right.

[33:46] I got my tissues.

[33:48] And just for the, you know, I make a joke of that,

[33:52] and I show it, but what happens is

[33:54] in what we try to stick by is I've gotten a question,

[33:57] well, if 60 students want electrical,

[34:00] why don't you just put them all in there?

[34:03] And there's many reasons for that,

[34:04] the first being safety, the other being the co-op,

[34:07] because if we start flooding the market,

[34:09] because we put 70 electricians out in the community every year.

[34:15] That's not good for anybody.

[34:17] So we're very careful.

[34:18] We watch that.

[34:19] We talk to our advisors.

[34:21] And the biggest thing is the safety.

[34:22] And in a lot of our license programs, we have ratios.

[34:25] When we send our students out to do community work,

[34:28] there's a certain ratio teacher to student that we have to be in compliance with.

[34:34] So those are some of the factors why we can't really appease everybody.

[34:38] I wish I could. It's probably the hardest part of my job telling the student that they're

[34:44] going to be in a wait line to get into their favorite program. So it is a tough job.

[34:50] But we try to explain and we try to give a lot of guidance before they do their selections

[34:55] to make sure they get the appropriate grade to get in that shop that they really want.

[35:01] So I think we got that down to a science over the years to make sure a lot of our students

[35:07] It's like I said previously, get there for free choices.

[35:11] So, we're pretty excited.

[35:13] It's always an exciting time around.

[35:14] This time of year.

[35:17] All right, maybe, yeah, any questions?

[35:21] The football project, but the other school year maybe?

[35:25] Close.

[35:33] It's been back.

[35:34] That's a no.

[35:36] No, I'm just very, very grateful.

[35:37] We planned close, I know.

[35:39] It's just been, I know it's been dragging out.

[35:41] I know it's been, definitely.

[35:46] I was planning to finish it up and I know that's why I'm doing it, but anyway, given the

[35:56] class that we've been incurring over the last three years in the rise in what construction

[36:02] has done since we originally initiated this project, it's not helped with any questions.

[36:10] The pertains when you were talking about is that something you have to apply for every

[36:14] year?

[36:14] Yes.

[36:16] And it's changed a lot.

[36:19] Usually you would just apply and it wasn't much to it, but I just came from a director's

[36:24] meeting down in the Maaba, and a lot of schools are getting kicked back.

[36:30] Things where they used to buy computers and technology, they're saying, no, we do it.

[36:35] I've got to amend it.

[36:36] So the change in the movement of the goalposts on us, as I like to say at the Department of

[36:42] Ed.

[36:44] Thank you.

[36:46] Question.

[36:46] Is that just for Bill Kent, how is that for all schools?

[36:50] Correct.

[36:51] It's more than the book and it's for community colleges.

[36:55] A lot of people really go after that correctance money.

[37:00] For example, if you're a gateway city, say it's great a little, great a little bit, they

[37:05] they might get $500,000 a correctance money.

[37:07] So again, it's predicated.

[37:08] So we're competing with community colleges and schools.

[37:11] Yes, it's a good money.

[37:13] Absolutely.

[37:14] And as we all know, community colleges,

[37:16] they have pretty strong advocates.

[37:18] Yeah.

[37:19] It's been an issue.

[37:20] They have state colleges.

[37:23] It has to be over here in technical education.

[37:25] Yeah, I don't believe so.

[37:29] I'm sorry, Brian.

[37:31] Thank you for everything that's happening.

[37:33] And it's all good.

[37:35] It's very exciting.

[37:36] One question I was going to ask when we do the program of studies book later tonight.

[37:42] It looks like all the changes this year in the program of studies would go on the academic

[37:47] side of the ledger.

[37:50] Do you, is that something that the folks side also reviewed and made a deliberate decision?

[37:58] I'll tell you why that's a great question.

[38:00] Recently, a lot of the frameworks have revisions done to them.

[38:04] So, what we do is we approach them, we provide those to the advisory community, they look

[38:10] at it.

[38:12] In some cases, like cosmetology, we had to change that a little because there was some

[38:16] new competencies placed in to say the cosmetology, their frameworks.

[38:22] A lot of the revisions, it's just new type of equipment, Ryan, in regards to that.

[38:28] So, you won't see a lot of big changes on the actual program of studies.

[38:32] But there are, we're always making changes in regards to the curriculum equipment because

[38:37] of the new frameworks and the new technologies, especially with our computer, our ISN,

[38:42] and our programming web.

[38:44] That framework is obsolete in two years, and the Department of, and it's aware of that,

[38:50] but it's tough to keep on, you know, doing revisions to documents like that, takes a lot

[38:56] of man hours, and they're aware of that.

[38:58] So that's why those advisory committees are so critical to us getting their feedback

[39:06] The questions

[39:07] Thank you David

[39:09] You can see and everybody here great work here. Thank you. Thank you

[39:14] And I've been told by one other person that you're probably the most best

[39:17] Most director of the state. So keep up the good work. Okay. We're very proud to have you and

[39:22] Appreciate that. You do all you're doing

[39:25] Thank you already

[39:29] but I actually got to go to work.

[39:33] Thank you.

[39:35] We have bills in front of us tonight.

[39:38] The first bill is from how would you expand in the amount of $1,230,

[39:44] $0.50 is our motion.

[39:48] Second.

[39:49] Second.

[39:50] Second.

[39:51] Second.

[39:51] discussion. I was a failure.

[39:56] We have another bill tonight.

[40:05] I'm sorry, we have two bill.

[40:07] I apologize. You have another bill. Did I miss that?

[40:12] My boss, my boss, I, I, I, I,

[40:16] second bill tonight is also from attorney Howard Greenspan in the amount of $1,072.50.

[40:29] The next bill is from Nuddle McAvoy and Joyce for the amount of $107.50.

[40:49] sense.

[40:50] Some of the motion minutes news second by it was that meeting in discussion.

[40:57] Here we met all of us in favor, post none unanimous, okay thank you next let's see here

[41:03] we go.

[41:04] There's one more in that one and we got one more to go, last one from metal, Mackaboo

[41:10] enjoys in the amount of nine hundred and twenty-four dollars and fifty cents as a motion.

[41:14] I'll show you this news. Second, my name is I've been in discussion.

[41:19] I was in favor. I was done unanimous. Thank you so much. Okay, awesome.

[41:25] Next up, we have the minutes of January 24th, 2023, and we have discussion on that.

[41:33] Move on, this is news. I can second by Mr. Moffett. Any discussion?

[41:37] Okay, we'll give it to everybody.

[41:40] I was in favor.

[41:41] All right.

[41:42] Opposed.

[41:42] Thank you.

[41:43] Minutes of budgetary 24th of the past.

[41:46] For respondents, I don't think there's anything

[41:47] in the packet carrying tonight.

[41:49] Nothing I missed.

[41:50] Nothing there.

[41:51] Item 10 is our business finishes report.

[41:56] Tell us, did you, I know, you spoke earlier?

[42:00] Okay.

[42:00] So yeah, just the main focus obviously

[42:04] has been preparing the FY24 budget.

[42:07] budget presentation and in meeting with the budget subcommittee. We also discussed the budget subcommittee

[42:14] actuals for FY23, what we've spent so far by department. So Tony and I are watching that

[42:21] closely. We meet monthly to go through it and we'll make the decision of when we have to start

[42:28] leaving transferring some funds from one line item to another our privacy and school year. So that's

[42:37] in this office, been doing some serious,

[42:40] immunist training, so the whole department

[42:42] has been involved in that, which has been helpful.

[42:45] Immunists is our accounting software

[42:47] that we use payroll, human resources,

[42:50] and the accounting, and it's been really helpful

[42:52] because there's a lot of modules that we currently own

[42:55] that we can utilize but haven't been able to yet.

[42:59] So that's been a big initiative for the department

[43:01] to come together, just we have a lot of,

[43:03] I don't know if you remember, a lot of people change positions

[43:06] and took on some new roles, so we're doing some formal training as a group and it's been really helpful.

[43:12] And that is all I have to update other than...

[43:15] Thank you.

[43:15] Thank you for the, the quote I don't get, I was asked before, and I hope it worked out nicely.

[43:24] Give us an update of what's going on in terms of budget spent,

[43:27] but I think we're going to keep that going.

[43:31] That's what I assume.

[43:31] It wouldn't like to have a meeting soon to discuss that quarterly budget

[43:38] tax.

[43:39] Sure.

[43:40] And we did because we, yes, the spec, the majority of the focus was on this year's budget.

[43:46] Yeah.

[43:46] But I mean, the approval of the budget moving it to the full source.

[43:51] The going forth, I think, yeah, you do have to look up the budget.

[43:55] Yeah, that's perfect.

[43:57] Tony, item 11.

[44:00] Sorry.

[44:00] It was a theory.

[44:01] I know.

[44:01] I think it's because I remember a lot of the people I made here, the mic was showing

[44:02] to me.

[44:03] I just want to look at it and remember that there are a way that you are now becoming

[44:07] officer.

[44:08] Can she share a fight for the state?

[44:10] Congratulations from the line.

[44:11] Thank you very much.

[44:14] Thank you very much.

[44:14] Thank you.

[44:15] We'll be 16.

[44:15] You can officially.

[44:17] We're sure grants or I mean purchase.

[44:20] We're just purchasing funds.

[44:21] Yes.

[44:22] There's a lot of different funds which, yes.

[44:24] That's awesome, gentlemen.

[44:25] Thank you.

[44:26] Put that to your resume.

[44:28] I said.

[44:29] Okay.

[44:29] Item 11.

[44:30] Super Tennis Report.

[44:31] for Tony is going tonight to report his entry-financing seat.

[44:37] So it's going to be, it's going to be two parts to this.

[44:42] I'm going to try to go through the first part of this quickly

[44:44] because I don't want to spend a lot of time.

[44:47] As far as the applications go, for the class of 2027,

[44:51] we stand approximately 120.

[44:53] I know we've lost a couple of kids.

[44:55] Some kids have already said that they've changed their mind

[44:57] and are interested where somewhere in that, you know,

[45:02] It is my understanding that acceptance letters and waitlist letters will go out this week to students that have applied and completed the whole process. So we are well on our way to welcoming our class of 2020. These numbers were updated. There are a couple of weeks old. They had the numbers for our scheduled meeting, but essentially we have 30 kids from Bedford, 146 applications from Bill Ricca,

[45:28] 43 from Burlington, 123 from Tufsbury in 79 from Wellington.

[45:34] So we are moving forward with that.

[45:37] We have scheduled April 1st as our placement testing date, which is a Saturday.

[45:42] We are inviting every single student that applied and completed the application process

[45:46] to the testing day, anticipating that, again, we'll have some kids that may change their mind

[45:53] and they may decide to stay in their sending communities or pursue a different avenue.

[45:57] And we want to make sure that we have testing results for every single kid so that we can continue to quickly place them in backfill that class to make sure that we maintain the enrollment numbers that we're looking for.

[46:10] How many students are you playing to accept?

[46:13] I believe our target is at 350 in the building in the fall.

[46:18] So we've started with that target. Right now, we're currently held to our community caps until the April 15th deadline and then after April 15th, we can start the pull kids off the wait list to that fill communities that they need their quota.

[46:34] So again, some of those kids may come off the wait list.

[46:37] That's not what I'm going to do.

[46:40] Enrollment numbers.

[46:41] Again, these are a couple weeks old.

[46:44] But essentially, you know, there hasn't been a lot of big changes.

[46:48] Like I said, our freshman class is lower.

[46:51] We're down to about 321.

[46:53] We do have a plan to bring in.

[46:55] I believe we have about 30 students that have expressed interest in transferring in.

[47:00] So we're working through that timeline again around freshman placement and making sure

[47:04] that the spots that we have available for them are programs that they're interested in

[47:08] before we transition here and then have them just end up transitioning back to their

[47:12] sending school.

[47:13] So what would be cautious and very, we're being a little intentional about how we do that

[47:19] to make sure that the kids are here and they're placed in something that they're interested

[47:22] in and that they plan on staying with us.

[47:27] Cooper Vigitave, they went through a lot of this stuff, he kind of stole my thunder.

[47:33] 250 and his number was 260 and so we must have had another student go out since I get these

[47:37] numbers from Brian. Again supporting 197 different employers, kids at work go

[47:44] at 76,000 hours to date, and earn just about $1.2 million in salary, which I think

[47:51] is pretty impressive. And as Dave shared, we're on track to have 50 or 60

[47:55] juniors start to call up as well. So those numbers will start to be included in

[47:59] those reports. Here's the breakdown of a current demographic of who's out by

[48:07] community.

[48:11] Project Explore is wrapping up this week. We ended up having a snow day

[48:17] and because we had stale districts on a Thursday we added a couple more sessions

[48:22] to it so this this group the Bedford Hands come in two straight group one of

[48:26] having five sessions instead of the normal six but it will wrap up. I was

[48:31] actually around this afternoon and visiting with the kids and talking to the

[48:35] students that are participating in it and they have one more day here with us on

[48:38] Thursday and then a wrap-up project to explore for this year.

[48:45] MSBA, this is a little, a little outdated at this point.

[48:49] The Capitol Facilities, some committee did meet to review it, and it's on our agenda

[48:54] for later tonight to make a recommendation.

[48:59] There is an additional vote required every year that we go submit something we do need to

[49:04] how the school can be, we both reauthorize us the submit.

[49:09] They weren't, and I had a couple of questions

[49:10] for some members.

[49:11] They weren't a lot of substantive changes.

[49:16] A lot of it was kind of cleaning up

[49:18] and expanding on some of the things.

[49:19] I added some more information about some

[49:22] of the technical programs.

[49:23] I kind of built off the submission from last year

[49:26] and just tried to add a little bit more detail

[49:29] and a little bit more clarity in a couple of the areas.

[49:32] So, and I actually have all of that stuff uploaded into the template in the

[49:37] site. So, as soon as the vote is completed, we should be ready to move forward

[49:41] and submit that again.

[49:46] Contract updates. So, the, I'm sorry about that.

[49:52] The PARA edtech and maintenance contracts, we've received all of the documentation

[49:57] from all of the people that are covered by those contracts.

[50:01] We drafted initial letters to inform them as to what step and column they've been placed on for year one year two and year three of that contract.

[50:10] As I mentioned in the budget piece, we've phased this in and that was an agreement that we made with the two groups, the two unions.

[50:19] So year one people got credit for one column, year two they get credit for their second column.

[50:25] In the year three, they would get credit for all of the approved credits that they had submitted and been verified.

[50:34] And at the time, you know, at the time we were working to process this, I believe, as of last Friday.

[50:40] All of the retroactive pay and benefits and increases have been established and have been sent out to

[50:49] individuals that are now covered by those different contracts. I've had initial meetings

[50:54] for both clerical and calf workers and I've reached out to the negotiations of community

[51:00] to bring them together and have a conversation about what it is that those two groups are

[51:05] looking for and to kind of come up with a plan on how we want to move forward and what

[51:09] are I already going to meet with those two groups as well.

[51:13] Well, exciting news. So, Ms. Johnston, our academic director of the most of you have met and

[51:18] Ms. Campbell, who is our English language learners instructor, have been asked to present

[51:24] at the Mathsall conference. I had to look this one up. I didn't know this one either. Massachusetts

[51:30] Association of Teachers of Speakers of Other Languages. So on March 31st and June 1st, they're going

[51:38] to do a presentation. So, so Fells are students that have progressed out of more intensive supports

[51:44] in her kind of considered more of our mainstream student population, but they are also the ones

[51:50] that are at the most risk of dropping out of school, because they, again, they've been

[51:54] supported in a certain way throughout most of their educational career, and now that they

[51:58] move out of those supports, a lot of times those students for whatever reason seem to fall

[52:03] through the cracks. They've done an awesome job this year working with that group. Ms. Campbell

[52:08] meets with them on a regular basis. She has a home-room group that she works with them. It was

[52:13] actually this student group that made the suggestion about hanging the

[52:16] forage and flags in the cafeteria. So they've been very active and the two of

[52:21] them are looking forward to presenting on May 31st and June 1st at the

[52:25] conference. I believe it's in my room. I may have the location wrong but it's it's a

[52:31] local kind of.

[52:35] And then again I just wanted to share budget timelines just a

[52:39] little comparison from last year to this year. I think most of you were aware. We didn't

[52:44] get, no, Jen and I didn't get budget numbers. The chapter 7, the net school spending numbers

[52:49] until February 23rd. We turned that around. We had a budget subcommittee meeting on the

[52:54] 13th, where the budget subcommittee had approved that. And obviously we're here on the 21st

[53:00] for our public hearing and potential vote. I look at the full committee to either approve

[53:06] or not approve that request later in the meeting. So looking at those timelines, we're about

[53:12] 20 days behind where we were last year and based on the information in the feedback that

[53:18] we were initially provided by the department of ed they were talking that we would be

[53:21] somewhat between four and six weeks behind so I think I think that's kind of a reflection

[53:28] of how hard all of the people involved in this have worked from the budget subcommittee

[53:33] to Jenna to get this information out and you get it to this group to have it approved and out

[53:40] to our Senate communities as soon as we can, I believe.

[53:48] So the second part of what I wanted to talk about tonight,

[53:52] the next question is big.

[53:53] Oh, yes.

[53:54] Any questions so far for Tony?

[53:55] Anybody?

[53:56] Right?

[53:57] I could bring this up in future agenda.

[54:01] As I think in light of the communications,

[54:05] everybody here has had one way and the other from towns.

[54:12] Now the right this week focus has to be getting all these budgets approved.

[54:17] There seems to be some differences of opinion regarding how the process has worked in the

[54:24] past, how it worked this year, what communications have worked, what communications haven't worked.

[54:32] I think it would be helpful maybe in some future meeting after the budgets have been approved.

[54:40] move for a little bit of an expos facto discussion about why we got this particularly

[54:49] strong input this year from our sending districts, allowing for the fact that some of it

[54:55] is the nature of the year, the combination of new people on our end, late governor's budget,

[55:03] yet not a late governor's budget, did it the way that it's supposed to happen.

[55:07] I look to New Governor, but there's multiple sides to all of these and it's easy for people

[55:17] to throw out suggestions and you've already addressed some of it in your communications

[55:22] but I think maybe after the process unwinds and it's possible that there were things we weren't

[55:29] doing correctly in previous years in terms of prematurely issuing numbers, I don't know,

[55:39] But I think it would be helpful down the road because obviously we all have sending districts

[55:45] that communicate with us and they seem to be a little uncomfortable.

[55:52] But they're all uncomfortable with their own budgets, right? And how in some cases, my understanding

[55:56] is things will go okay, most likely Monday night when the first of our towns or

[56:01] has town meeting but I think some further post-mortem on this is probably too.

[56:11] And I absolutely agree and I mean I've had conversations with some of the members

[56:15] as well with following up with specific town managers and trying to make sure that we

[56:19] close the loop you know and by all means I don't think that this went perfectly and that there's no

[56:25] one for improvement but I think having those collaborative conversations about what do we do, how do we

[56:31] do it, what share, who shares it, when it's shared, I think we'll go on way for future

[56:36] budget considerations.

[56:38] Absolutely agree.

[56:39] I think we might be getting some feedback tomorrow.

[56:43] Hopefully.

[56:45] Hopefully.

[56:45] I have to prove that way more of a few senses rather than a one-on-one.

[56:50] Yeah.

[56:51] Yeah.

[56:52] Yeah.

[56:52] I got to reiterate Brian's point.

[56:55] I mean, all of a sudden, people have differences of opinions, but I mean, I don't think

[56:59] I guess anybody's benefit, we're getting contacted by,

[57:04] so I think they're definitely in for next year

[57:06] to Brian's point, it's gonna be like some type

[57:07] of post-mortem to figure out like timelines,

[57:11] you know, like English is sure we're being our own

[57:12] internal timelines, make sure we meet with committees,

[57:15] make sure you're meeting the town's deadlines

[57:17] and to Brian's point, maybe there was some stuff

[57:19] that was done in past years,

[57:20] maybe that needs to be reiterated to them.

[57:23] I mean, the things you brought up,

[57:24] like that's the type of stuff that education,

[57:26] And I think that's, you know, I think, for next year, I think there really needs to be some type of like the budget is really important piece, I think from a budget committee standpoint and with the occasion with the overall subcommittee.

[57:37] I think it's everybody's best interest to do some type of like the budget cycle that we're in. I mean it does, but you're, as soon as you're done, you're into the next step.

[57:44] So I think there really needs to be some type of like kickoff meeting and there needs to be more regular frequent meetings.

[57:50] It's monthly check-ins, you see budget actuals, you know, whether it's, you know, you're

[57:55] talking about like it's your planning for the capital budget, for the operating budget,

[57:59] you know, you're potentially the town's, for public hearing, like those are more strenuous

[58:04] meetings than the off-cycle.

[58:05] So I think it's, you know, there's not much you can do now, but I think it's to basically

[58:10] learn from what, you know, to, I mean, you know, it's not to be a dead horse, but I mean,

[58:16] basically, you're going into time where you're going to be depending on these towns,

[58:19] where you're going to try and get an MSP8 doesn't always send the best message when you're

[58:24] and I'm not trying to pass blame or anything anybody but I think if you're these are partners

[58:29] you're trying to do that. I think that's something that when you're getting contacted to Brian's point

[58:35] that that really needs to be stressed.

[58:40] So some of you may seem to be cleaned up. I totally understand

[58:44] any other questions. Maybe another part of that would be clarity for all of us on

[58:53] communication avenues. I know some time managers read that to some of us,

[58:57] some time managers didn't. Should they have, would they have liked to? Did

[59:02] they just not have the contact information? And then, you know, if we do get

[59:06] reached out to what is our, you know, who do we direct that to? So like obviously

[59:11] If somebody calls me, I'm going to go straight to you, Tony, is that the best process?

[59:15] Are there things I should go straight to, Jennifer, that things I should go to, just sort

[59:18] of, it's not a relationship that's necessarily familiar to all of us, so clarity for us as

[59:25] well.

[59:25] So when we do get a call, people know they can call us if that's appropriate, and if we do

[59:31] get a call, what to do with it?

[59:32] I mean, I, you know, again, I think this has been a learning experience for both Jen and

[59:35] I, and I don't want to speak for her, but I am all about trying to be more collaborative

[59:39] we're about trying to make those connections.

[59:41] I think tomorrow, hopefully, a mile

[59:43] is a step towards that conversation

[59:45] and getting that feedback and working with those people

[59:47] to make sure that communication goes both ways.

[59:51] And that we're getting information from them as well

[59:53] as they're getting information from us in a timely manner.

[59:56] And I think people need to make some strides.

[1:00:02] I just wanted to ask on one of the slides that I know the capital budget was done fairly early. Thank you. I was just wondering if where we had the school committee had okay that budget back in December

[1:00:20] if it was shared at that time with the towns because there wasn't an increase in that budget.

[1:00:26] I will defer to you. I don't. I know I didn't share that with the town. So again, that

[1:00:30] might have been a misstep on our fair. I don't know if that information was given to them.

[1:00:34] I don't even know if that's when we normally do. I was just wondering. I don't think it's

[1:00:39] ever been shared that early, past practice. And I know. I know. As it then. I think they

[1:00:45] they would very open all the time with the town managers.

[1:00:50] So they always knew what was going on before he and so

[1:00:53] nothing was ever shocking at the end.

[1:00:56] And it could have been a mess up on my fire.

[1:00:57] But I know I asked specifically the budget subcommittee meeting

[1:01:00] for commission to share information with the town managers.

[1:01:03] Again, maybe that conversation should have happened much

[1:01:05] earlier in the process.

[1:01:06] But I also didn't want to overstep, you know.

[1:01:10] OK.

[1:01:10] I thought that was shared when we hired you.

[1:01:16] I thought one of the biggest things that your job is is to really reach out to our time

[1:01:23] managers.

[1:01:24] That's your job, you know, I mean, and I, and I did and I brought them in.

[1:01:27] We met in the fall.

[1:01:28] I was sending, well, and again, we had some, we had some email delivery issues, but I was

[1:01:33] emailing them.

[1:01:33] I was giving them updates.

[1:01:34] I was saying this is what we've been told for proposed timelines.

[1:01:37] Something is broken down in that communication.

[1:01:40] So did they give you a timeline when they wanted everything?

[1:01:43] No.

[1:01:44] So would they just assume everybody knew what they wanted?

[1:01:48] Yes, they went.

[1:01:49] The way I've been have had it, of course, you know, a lot longer, I was really nervous

[1:01:56] about this year and obviously we'll never end the budget because a lot of these people

[1:02:02] had established guidelines, the deadline, they were looking, looking, looking, looking,

[1:02:06] where is it?

[1:02:07] Where is it?

[1:02:08] You know, and I didn't know that in previous super tenants shared capital budget numbers.

[1:02:13] I did okay so thank you for educating me so I know Antonio and Jenna this is the first

[1:02:17] goal around the block yet I know this year I was I'm sorry everybody's had to see all

[1:02:23] these but we're all in this together and we're gonna get to this together and this is a great

[1:02:28] school we want to keep it great and I know that so obviously we've received emails and there's

[1:02:34] concerns out there and hopefully your goal Tony and Jenna is to ease their angst or whatever

[1:02:42] is going to say that you know what I mean. Thank you. It just seems I to be honest.

[1:02:47] So what is the use of? I'm going to get tomorrow meeting in the

[1:02:51] Catalimates as well.

[1:02:54] Hopefully with this clarification, some miscommunications or maybe some of

[1:02:59] something about it is that they're new, most of us on this board, so we don't know

[1:03:03] what protocol is. I'm not making excuses for it now. But hopefully, like I said, I think this

[1:03:09] being told will hopefully be very productive and we'll be able to move forward in a positive way.

[1:03:15] Yes. I just think it's very odd that, I mean, they have a complaint, but they all know we had a brand

[1:03:21] new superintendent, a brand new business manager, and they didn't send out the timelines that

[1:03:27] everybody, you know, I mean, like, it looks very we know, you know, I mean, if you've been

[1:03:31] in the office more than a year, you know, the timeline, you know, so I'm just very surprised

[1:03:37] that they didn't do that field.

[1:03:41] But I don't know, I'm so sure.

[1:03:44] I just wanted to ask, can you guys, you know, have any visibility to, you know, these

[1:03:48] sending towns high school budgets, I mean, have they gone up, you know, significantly and,

[1:03:54] And, you know, does it kind of, is it equal, or I know we are just definitely higher for,

[1:03:59] you know, because of our equipment, but they must be looking at any increase in theirs

[1:04:03] as well, and the stress of that, looking at ours, you know, have you seen their budget?

[1:04:08] The only budget information that's been shared with us was for a moment.

[1:04:11] The well-maintained sent us the proposed budget, I don't remember what it was back right

[1:04:17] after the first few years, sometime around that time frame, which again had all their projected

[1:04:21] the numbers for everything, so that the town managers

[1:04:24] recommendations and what they were going to do for

[1:04:26] FY24, that's the only budget information we've seen

[1:04:29] from any one of the Senate commitments.

[1:04:30] If it seemed like it was a more than 2.75% increase,

[1:04:35] then last year, or we didn't, you know, public air,

[1:04:38] just wondering, I don't have their numbers from last year.

[1:04:42] The school budgets for Burlington and Wilmington are 3.75

[1:04:46] I've capped, they wouldn't allow, but they're in mind that, like Bloomington High School,

[1:04:53] Burlington High School, they aren't as affected as much as we are by the consumables that

[1:04:59] we have in the vocational.

[1:05:03] And also, they have only one side to their school, whereas we have two sides, so we have twice

[1:05:09] the teachers, our IEPs, I mean, we'll get into the nitty-gritty of things, so I'm probably

[1:05:14] to specific, I'm sorry, but like our IEP ratio is 30% of our students because we tend

[1:05:24] to get students who are better hands-on learners, whereas theirs is 12%, so that also keeps

[1:05:32] us from being able to stay within that cap, and we tend to be a school that only spends

[1:05:40] what we need to be spending in any given year and this year our need to be

[1:05:46] spending is more than it has which is why it's been lower I think in previous

[1:05:52] years because we weren't spending anything we never spend money we don't have

[1:05:58] to spend it we're more physically conservative I feel like anyway in that way

[1:06:05] And I could be wrong and I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I know they did make a preliminary

[1:06:13] presentation to the slide board and they asked us for one and we just weren't ready to give it

[1:06:19] because it was prior to the third and the third numbers coming out. So it's very fun.

[1:06:32] So that's where at.

[1:06:35] Questions comments we get.

[1:06:38] Okay.

[1:06:38] Thank you, Tony.

[1:06:39] So to give back to the second part of the update, I did send the report of entry findings

[1:06:43] to everybody I believe last week to get people a chance to review it.

[1:06:46] I know Karen did make some copies for it, a few people need them there here.

[1:06:50] I'm going to, again, I'm going to try to do a kind of a broad and general overview.

[1:06:54] I chose to focus on some things that were shared with me kind of as

[1:06:59] Celebration points or pillars or building blocks or whatever you want to call them

[1:07:04] You know and again in meeting with groups we meeting with teachers meeting with the pack members meeting with students

[1:07:10] talking to

[1:07:12] Our clerical staff talking or me it's talking to everybody that they kind of is part of the building having an initial meeting with the town managers last fall meeting with the

[1:07:20] the superintendents from our sending districts,

[1:07:23] all of that information kind of led to that report.

[1:07:28] So the three big takeaways that I had,

[1:07:30] the three areas of pride that showed through

[1:07:32] were MCAS schools.

[1:07:34] And I heard that from a lot of people

[1:07:35] and a lot of different sectors about how well

[1:07:38] the school has done and how supportive we've been

[1:07:41] of students in getting them,

[1:07:43] not only to pass that test,

[1:07:44] but also to do really well on that test,

[1:07:46] which has led to us having a lot of John and Abigail

[1:07:49] out of scholars and leading to, you know, other opportunities for students that want to go on

[1:07:53] pursue post-secondary education. The other piece that came out of that, and I've already kind of

[1:07:59] keyed in on this this year is our cooperative education placement numbers. You know, and Dave mentioned

[1:08:04] that earlier in his presentation that, you know, that's kind of something that sets us up higher

[1:08:07] from other vocational schools. If we are not the highest percentage or the highest number of students,

[1:08:13] how we've got to be pretty close, you know, we're definitely in the

[1:08:17] top two or three statewide for the number of kids that we have participating in

[1:08:20] that program, which I think is awesome and I think that's something that we

[1:08:24] need to keep keep front and center as we move forward and as you know as we try to

[1:08:28] implement new things and and and update things, we don't lose sight of that. And then

[1:08:33] the last item that really really came through strongly to me was our success

[1:08:37] with skills USA, the district level, the state level, the national level, that was

[1:08:41] really a point of pride with a lot of people I talk to parents, students, staff

[1:08:45] numbers. So again, that report, I wanted to start by kind of celebrating those

[1:08:50] three things. There are three areas of focus in that that I kind of keyed in on.

[1:08:56] One is teaching and learning and if you read through that it's really about

[1:09:00] creating systems so that we can share the good things that are happening here

[1:09:04] school-wide. There's a lot of great practitioners, there's a lot of great things

[1:09:08] that go on in classrooms, but one of the messages that I got in having these conversations

[1:09:13] and meeting with people is we need to have systems in place and ways that we can share

[1:09:17] that across different content areas between vocational and academic teachers, you know,

[1:09:22] all special ed, you know, all these different priorities, so that is one point moving forward

[1:09:27] that will be a focus.

[1:09:29] You know, again, there's this verbiage in there, I think, you know, to me, that is the most

[1:09:35] important thing that we do as a school is teaching and learning and all these other things

[1:09:39] around budget and capital and buildings and everything else are here to support students

[1:09:43] in classrooms in shop areas so that they learn the skills and abilities that they need to be

[1:09:46] successful on their leaves. So I think that's got to be a priority and it's going to be front

[1:09:51] the center. Whatever we do is a district moving forward. There's a section in there that I title.

[1:09:56] I think I title the access equity and outreach and that's talking about getting more of our eighth

[1:10:03] creators in the building here to see what we do so they can make informed decisions and

[1:10:07] building off some of the successes that we've had this year so that students and parents

[1:10:11] can make informed decisions about whether this is a good fit for them and whether this

[1:10:14] kind of represents where they want to go and what they see their future.

[1:10:19] Part of that is getting out to the middle schools.

[1:10:21] Part of that is also as kids come in making sure that we're getting kids through all of our

[1:10:27] programs and seeing all the different exploratory options that we have.

[1:10:31] That was some feedback that I got from some of the some of the shop teachers that we have some really popular programs that everybody knows about and then we have some other really good programs that don't always get the

[1:10:42] Get the headlines of the press. I'm so figuring out ways to do that. You know, also

[1:10:48] Making sure that we're supporting our special ed students are the old population so that they have equal access to the school. I

[1:10:56] I don't want to say quoted, but I referenced some information in there from the Department

[1:11:04] of Ed around demographics for the school, around our admissions policy, report list

[1:11:10] data that was shared.

[1:11:12] So I think all of those things are things that we're doing a really good job with, and need

[1:11:16] to be cognizant of as we move forward and make sure that those continue to be priorities

[1:11:20] for the district.

[1:11:21] And then the last item I don't think is really much of a shock is infrastructure.

[1:11:27] You know, we've had lots of, I mean, it's only been here about nine months, we've had lots of conversations about this building and

[1:11:35] how we continue to maintain and deliver the quality education that we expect in a building that's aging, that we are kind of pushing our capacity limits with and

[1:11:46] And how do we expand and provide additional programming support, the current program

[1:11:51] and we have support different groups of students as they come to us from our setting communities.

[1:11:57] Just to rewind a little bit back, I believe it was in October, I came forward and I also presented

[1:12:03] my entry plan, which kind of documented what I was going to do, who I was going to talk

[1:12:07] to, how I was able to collect this information.

[1:12:10] This report is kind of a wrap-up of that information and what I gathered.

[1:12:13] And if you read, I forget if I called it the summary of the next steps on that.

[1:12:19] What this report of entry findings will do is it will guide the conversations that I'm

[1:12:23] going to have with all of you when the administrative team with other stakeholders here in the building

[1:12:29] about creating a plan for what does our three to five year plan look like as a district,

[1:12:35] what things are we going to do, how do we want to do things, what are we going to do year

[1:12:39] one year, two year, three to build on the things that are in there, but also to address

[1:12:44] some of those things and make sure that we continue to provide the best quality academic

[1:12:51] and vocational education for the students that attend here.

[1:12:54] So that's coming.

[1:12:56] That is on my radar for this summer.

[1:13:01] If I get it done sooner, I will go out and share it with people, but that is currently kind

[1:13:05] of my questions.

[1:13:09] So this was just that I thought was really detailed and excellent.

[1:13:14] Thank you.

[1:13:15] I've never seen much.

[1:13:16] And so I appreciate it.

[1:13:18] The information it gives us.

[1:13:20] If there's an extra hot copy of you,

[1:13:22] but have one of those.

[1:13:26] I love, I love paper copies.

[1:13:29] I love my paper.

[1:13:31] Sorry.

[1:13:32] Thank you.

[1:13:37] I've got two.

[1:13:41] So this was going back to the original plan.

[1:13:48] This was his entry plan, his entry plan that was given to us in the fall.

[1:13:56] Here it is.

[1:13:58] Thank you.

[1:13:59] And so tonight, following with his entry plan, he's reported to us his findings.

[1:14:06] and next step for him will be to come up with a District of Public Plans, April to June.

[1:14:13] So that's all going to be working twice as evaluation.

[1:14:18] It's all going to be part of the whole process.

[1:14:21] So any questions?

[1:14:24] It's already about the entry plan.

[1:14:26] Everybody has their heart talking now.

[1:14:27] And thank you Tony for preparing any very detailed documents.

[1:14:32] Thank you.

[1:14:33] Okay.

[1:14:33] So, we'll be on. Subcommittee reports, folks.

[1:14:40] First is our safety committee and I am the chair. I wasn't supposed to be after last meeting, so it was going away.

[1:14:49] So, I don't have great notes because I wasn't prepared. So, I'm going to defer to Tony. Basically, we had a really great meeting. We had no significant concerns.

[1:14:59] on there.

[1:15:00] So we had been an incident or a high with people being in the building who weren't supposed to be. So we did discuss that and sort of how we will prevent that and how we address that. But I'll let Tony give the one. So we had a discussion about some of the updates around the locks, excuse me, the exterior door locks and the interior door locks that have been updated in the building. And we talked about the fact that we have now rekeyed all the exterior doors. And I believe there's only 25 keys that exist

[1:15:29] on the planet. So we are trying to very, very specifically limit and kind of have a narrow

[1:15:36] scope of people that have keys to get in here, which again is kind of the prior to from

[1:15:41] the past where we have a lot of people that had keys that could access the building from

[1:15:47] the outside. We are still in the process of swapping

[1:15:49] out some of the interior doors, and our plan is to issue all teachers and inside master,

[1:15:54] So that again, if I have to go to somebody's classroom to cover for a period or I need to step in for a colleague, I can open their door.

[1:16:02] I don't have to find a janitor. I don't have to find an administrator. I don't have to find somebody.

[1:16:05] In order to facilitate that, like all of the administrative offices, the guidance suite.

[1:16:10] We are also re-peeing those locks so that the current inside master does not open those doors.

[1:16:15] so that I believe is done. If it's not done, it should be done in relatively soon in the next few days and then we'll make sure that all of the staff have the inside

[1:16:26] masters to be able to access the areas that they need to get into. One of the other things we talked about at the meeting, again this is since been done, we've also added a couple of badge scanners, one outside the plumbing shop and one outside the automotive shop.

[1:16:41] When we re-keyed the outside logs, we did get feedback from staff that it had to do

[1:16:47] with some barriers for certain people getting into certain areas of the building.

[1:16:50] Our electrical students ran all the cabling, we were able to utilize the current controller.

[1:16:55] We have an hour, a couple extra pads to it.

[1:16:57] We also ran some extra wiring for additional stations down the road, if we decide we want

[1:17:01] to add more scan stations coming in.

[1:17:03] The big advantage about the badges is if somebody leaves,

[1:17:09] is asked to leave, is told not to come back.

[1:17:12] We can deactivate their access to the building

[1:17:14] in a matter of seconds.

[1:17:15] We don't have to chase keys

[1:17:16] and we don't have to try to find an individual

[1:17:18] to get them to return that information.

[1:17:20] So that is going to be our approach moving forward.

[1:17:23] We also can also control what doors you can access them when.

[1:17:26] Yeah.

[1:17:27] So we've intentionally set some time frames around that.

[1:17:30] So like the standard user for the building is open, I believe it's from 5.45 to 5 p.m.

[1:17:40] Monday through Friday, we've set up specific programs for coaches that you may be coming in

[1:17:45] earlier or leaving later after a game. So we've kind of worked a lot of the kinks out of this.

[1:17:50] It has taken us a little trial and error, but we've got to the point where it seems to be working pretty

[1:17:55] well, we don't have any more issues with it. We also added a camera for students coming

[1:18:03] into the building after hours so that they don't necessarily have to walk all the way around

[1:18:09] the building to get entry to the facility. We also talked about the pool and some things that,

[1:18:15] you know, moving forward, we're trying to put together some plans to have some more safe guys in

[1:18:21] pool area so on off hours we would be alerted if somebody got in there or there was some kind of

[1:18:26] access that was it was it was a tank to that space so that's that's also something to work on

[1:18:33] moving forward and I think that was about it. All

[1:18:38] of you so committee. Thank you. So um

[1:19:04] So basically, we finished section B with the exception of

[1:19:17] um the uh well pandemic related um policy which will expire and um we're still waiting on that

[1:19:32] well this one thank you Terry we will be meeting in April and going through section C section C

[1:19:42] much smaller section. And it's been going pretty good for the press or wasn't able to join us at

[1:19:52] our last meeting but we were able to have that meeting anyway. Tony stepped in on her for her

[1:19:59] and did a great job. So thank you for stepping into that role and I think we got a lot accomplished

[1:20:05] and I'm excited to have the whole package come to us once we're gonna put it

[1:20:12] forward when the whole section is finished. So as soon as we have that

[1:20:18] wellness meeting I think we'll be able to put through. And then he's almost

[1:20:29] So, like I'm hopeful, by the end of the year, probably see by the end of this fiscal year.

[1:20:36] And in Karen and I, between the two of us, I think keeping notes, Karen kind of has a

[1:20:42] running summary of the changes that were made to them and what decisions were made.

[1:20:47] So as we get closer to sharing this with everybody, and most of you want to read all of those

[1:20:52] policies, we will share out kind of the highlights.

[1:20:56] So, as long as the discussion was changed so that people have it, and they'll have to go through every single one.

[1:21:03] And then, in light of all the work that it had to be done related to the budget, I put aside the work on DK&DGA,

[1:21:17] but I'm hopeful to bring that back with the next meeting to discuss good stuff.

[1:21:26] Yes, she was first.

[1:21:28] Actually, the ad Dorothy has been very helpful.

[1:21:31] She's given us very concise sort of this as differences.

[1:21:36] This is what MSC does.

[1:21:37] This is what you do so that we've been able to look at it and say,

[1:21:41] okay, well, we want to do this.

[1:21:43] You know, she's not real writing us through anything.

[1:21:45] She's been very good about things.

[1:21:46] So your options, and then listening while we figure out what we're best for us.

[1:21:52] So are you saying you're done with the A?

[1:21:55] We're done with A and B.

[1:21:57] We're just reading on.

[1:21:59] I was a wellness today and ADF is the wellness program.

[1:22:04] So have you?

[1:22:05] That's the one we're waiting on.

[1:22:06] That's the one we're reading on before we bring it to the full school committee.

[1:22:10] So you're working on it?

[1:22:12] Yeah.

[1:22:12] So we've reviewed and updated all of section a except the wellness policy. So once the wellness policy

[1:22:19] I know you guys met today but once the wellness policy is updated and

[1:22:25] And then we'll bring out the policy, but it's all good

[1:22:29] It's good. It's good.

[1:22:32] It's good. It's great. We're going to go. We're going to go in on the model and forth. Yeah. Hey, you move in mountains. It's good. It's awesome. It's awesome. It's actually it's it's very exciting to see the work going, going, going and getting through it. Yes. It just is so everybody. We're going to add or about make sure that on the bottom of our policies that it says the day that we reviewed it so that at any time

[1:22:59] someone can go back and say well that was 1970 but then they can see that we

[1:23:04] looked at that, reviewed it, talked about it, and decided that some things

[1:23:09] really were the way that they were supposed to be at that time and were not

[1:23:13] supposed to change whatever that thing is. So that someday there will be an

[1:23:17] updated policy manual. It will be. Thank you, the topic. And I think we all get the

[1:23:21] mailings from MASC. I think they just came out with it. I thought last week's

[1:23:26] again updated policy changes so they're always they're always tweaking things

[1:23:31] look at things and say okay so I saw that so you guys get those by email

[1:23:36] if I can say I only get paper if there's an email I'm not getting it

[1:23:43] but there is an email and then they will email if they're running webinars or stuff

[1:23:52] like that email but paper I know they keep up with a policy paper last

[1:23:56] we think it was changes that they're always working it there.

[1:24:02] Third seat Cheryl.

[1:24:03] Third seat Cheryl.

[1:24:05] Yeah, it is.

[1:24:05] Policy looks like it.

[1:24:06] Thank you.

[1:24:07] Thank you.

[1:24:08] Thank you.

[1:24:09] All left.

[1:24:11] Thanks.

[1:24:11] We'll have like fine.

[1:24:15] And yes, the kind of buyer is this neck.

[1:24:18] Yeah.

[1:24:18] Just like clothes.

[1:24:20] Okay.

[1:24:21] Thank you.

[1:24:22] The curriculum subcommittee Nancy.

[1:24:25] Yeah.

[1:24:25] We met with Veronica, and she went through the changes for grade 9, 10, 11, and switching

[1:24:36] some of the courses from 12 to 11 to accommodate schedules.

[1:24:42] So the switches were basically placing this bit, that's not what you're going to go for.

[1:24:50] Sequencing schedules?

[1:24:52] Switching the schedules, it's yeah.

[1:24:56] It's not no major, major changes, but it's in not switching from

[1:25:03] juniors to seniors to juniors. So everybody can get what they need when they need it.

[1:25:16] What question about the change? I did not have a chance to ask Danica.

[1:25:21] I noticed that educational and organizational strategies has been removed in many places

[1:25:26] is to make room for other stuff.

[1:25:29] I assume this is something that's a special ed department.

[1:25:32] No, they have a plan for making sure

[1:25:34] what the kids are not getting there.

[1:25:36] They will get somewhere else.

[1:25:37] So when I talked earlier about moving

[1:25:39] to an inclusion model for delivery.

[1:25:42] So right now we use what's to have like the pullout model,

[1:25:45] which is those EOS classes.

[1:25:48] So for ninth and 10th grade next year,

[1:25:50] our plan is the phase out those EOS classes

[1:25:53] have co-taught classes for students that need those services so they'll be

[1:25:58] part of a mainstream classroom but then they'll also be supported by a

[1:26:02] specialist teacher that's assigned there as well which is which is more in

[1:26:06] line with the model that our sending middle schools are used. That's a thank you.

[1:26:14] That's basically it as the committee voted to accept anybody could you want to

[1:26:22] Is there a motion to accept the program of studies?

[1:26:27] No motion.

[1:26:28] Motion by Mrs. Gill.

[1:26:29] It's a second.

[1:26:30] Second.

[1:26:31] We'll use a discussion.

[1:26:33] Hearing that in all of us in favor.

[1:26:35] I.

[1:26:36] I.

[1:26:37] I.

[1:26:37] And that's probably one of the studies.

[1:26:39] I think it's probably one of the studies.

[1:26:40] Yes, please.

[1:26:41] You're not going to say anything else is done.

[1:26:43] No, go ahead.

[1:26:44] Yeah, that's why I said it wasn't the same.

[1:26:46] Well, it has nothing to do with program studies.

[1:26:47] It really has to do.

[1:26:49] So I had also asked to see the health curriculum.

[1:26:52] I'm sorry, I did forget about that.

[1:26:54] Yeah.

[1:26:55] And it's not something you vote on.

[1:26:57] I just wanted to see it.

[1:26:59] And I just want to tell parents that you

[1:27:03] can ask to see the health curriculum for your school.

[1:27:06] and you can also opt out if you don't think it's appropriate for your child.

[1:27:11] So, I mean, it's not something that we actually get to vote on as a school committee,

[1:27:16] because they all think school committees decide all these things. We don't decide them.

[1:27:21] But you are allowed to opt out.

[1:27:24] And also in the program of studies, if you want to know what your child is learning in that class,

[1:27:29] don't be afraid to ask the teacher.

[1:27:33] Sure.

[1:27:34] Well aren't the classes up front, students told they cannot do it?

[1:27:41] I believe it's with the classers, yes.

[1:27:43] I believe it's with Janica told us.

[1:27:45] Yeah.

[1:27:46] But then we had it.

[1:27:47] I'm not sure of everybody.

[1:27:48] I was going to say it's a message to us in Mexico.

[1:27:50] Yeah.

[1:27:50] I wasn't going to say it twice.

[1:27:52] We went over the curriculum and I was really impressed with what's going on there.

[1:27:55] But we all were.

[1:27:56] I think it'll have to sit to where they don't choose to.

[1:27:59] Anybody else?

[1:28:00] Yeah.

[1:28:00] Okay.

[1:28:00] I wouldn't say we all learned that.

[1:28:02] Well, I was struck me was that the state has not updated their frameworks and forever.

[1:28:14] And then I could say, you know, so we're ahead of the game here, I think, Rajin.

[1:28:20] And putting out the health curriculum for these kids, yes, kids can opt out.

[1:28:26] But I think that there are many important topics that need to be taught.

[1:28:29] So yeah, so I don't like what's going on there. Okay, thank you, Nancy. Facilities and capital planning, Brian.

[1:28:39] The committee met on the 13th of the month.

[1:28:45] It's primary purpose of reviewing change and proposed changes to the updates to the Statement of Interest

[1:28:54] to make a second go around with our good friends at the math school building authority.

[1:29:01] As many as everybody knows, we made it a little ways under their agenda last year but

[1:29:09] not far enough, not as far as we need.

[1:29:13] We Tony and worked with staff to update some of the data related to the amount of square

[1:29:21] We're a footage and some of the training programs and make some of them a little bit more accurate.

[1:29:27] Much of the rest of it is very similar to what was put in last year.

[1:29:33] I don't think we had a sense that our same interest was our problem and that they seem

[1:29:40] to convey the appropriate messages, we think we were just caught in a budgetary limitation.

[1:29:49] One thing that we did discuss is whether or not if this, so the request will be to have

[1:29:56] the committee formally.

[1:30:00] Support sending this statement of interest to MSBA by their deadline of April 13th, April 15th so that we can try to get in the pipeline. Once again, I think the other things we did discuss briefly at that meeting, whether there was any other capital projects that needed to be addressed immediately, regardless of that, but there was nothing additional put forth at that time. And I think the one other substantive

[1:30:29] of thing we talked about was whether or not

[1:30:34] there would be a need at some point probably

[1:30:37] if we did not succeed this time with MSBA, whether we would go the route of asking for

[1:30:44] use for consultant, which is probably not the year to do it, we may need to stop putting

[1:30:54] some funds aside with those purposes.

[1:30:58] But so the motion to the group is to remove, to recommend that we approve the statement

[1:31:12] of interest that was part of everybody's meeting materials according to the MSBA.

[1:31:20] Is this a specific version that I can choose to be?

[1:31:24] I can take that and just put that in the minutes.

[1:31:27] I'm sorry.

[1:31:30] I can get it right here. Thank you. Or if you want to pass it across the table. Thank you. You're right. I could remember that.

[1:31:52] Okay, we want to hear this now. You've heard it a year ago.

[1:31:57] It's all having convened an open meeting on, it will be open once that door is open.

[1:32:05] March 21st, 2023, prior to the S.O.I. submission closing date, the school committee,

[1:32:12] of the Charisheed Valley Regional Facial Technical School District in accordance with the charter,

[1:32:18] Biolognes, and Ordnance has voted to authorize the Superintendent Director to submit to the

[1:32:23] basketball building authority. The Statement of Interest form dated March 21st, 2023 for the

[1:32:29] Charisheed Valley Regional Facial Technical School looking at 100 took street filled with

[1:32:35] a math which describes and explains the following deficiencies and priority categories

[1:32:42] for which an application may be submitted to the math school building authority in the

[1:32:47] future.

[1:32:49] And the intent is that we identify the priorities, priority two, elimination of severe

[1:32:55] over crowding, priority five, replacement renovation and modernization of school facilities systems

[1:33:02] such as roofs, windows, boilers, heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation

[1:33:08] and decrease energy related costs in a school facility and priority seven.

[1:33:15] Replacement of our addition to our obsolete buildings in order to improve for a full range of

[1:33:21] programs consistent with the state and approved local requirements. And hereby further specifically

[1:33:26] acknowledges that by submitting this statement or transform the Mass School Building Authority in

[1:33:31] No way guarantees the acceptance

[1:33:33] or approval of an application,

[1:33:35] the awarding of a grant,

[1:33:36] and many other funding commitments,

[1:33:38] and then from the Mass School Building Authority

[1:33:40] or commits Shawshian Valley Regional Cachels School District,

[1:33:45] filing an application for funding

[1:33:47] with the Mass School Building Authority.

[1:33:50] So I moved that we

[1:33:53] so to approve consistent with that resolution

[1:33:57] and forwarding the F.O.I.

[1:34:00] Second.

[1:34:01] What should be a second discussion, Nancy?

[1:34:03] Yeah.

[1:34:03] I just have a question.

[1:34:05] We were to consult with someone to help you find

[1:34:08] an application.

[1:34:10] Right.

[1:34:10] There are some school districts that have chosen, particularly

[1:34:16] sometimes only at first rounds.

[1:34:18] Sometimes their second goes.

[1:34:19] Sometimes their third or fourth go to use a consultant to

[1:34:24] to actually prepare the SOI, with the committee, but with the thought that maybe something

[1:34:35] about the language or points of emphasis, I mean some of us are inclined to hope that

[1:34:44] the challenges of a 50-plus year old building are sufficiently evident, despite its relatively

[1:34:52] really pristine appearance at times, but there are some that would say, well, there's

[1:34:56] a, you know, just like taking SATs is, you know, taking a class on how to take an

[1:35:03] SAT is the worst thing. So he's only to help you bring it to the court.

[1:35:06] Yes, and we've heard very often, we've heard various estimates of what school districts

[1:35:13] have spent on them, but we don't think we're ready to go in that room yet.

[1:35:18] Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So those have been made before I second my pen. Any other discussion?

[1:35:25] It's a pressure attorney question. We're at the meeting last time, or maybe Brian. What was the timeline for,

[1:35:30] like, because you had said, like, if you want to use a consultant, like, next year is the timeline to get

[1:35:35] submitted for this year? Is that going to give you enough time to find those findings or how would that?

[1:35:41] So I don't know how busy people are. There's only a handful of companies that really do this

[1:35:48] type of work, especially with vocational schools. I know there are a lot of other vocational

[1:35:53] schools out there that are already either in the pipeline or, you know, pathway through

[1:35:57] the funding process or whatever. So, I mean, the first question we have to get answered

[1:36:01] is, you know, does anybody actually have the time in their schedule to do this? Would you

[1:36:05] be the first question? If they did, this is something that we really would have to get

[1:36:09] on early in the fall to try to get them on board to have that report to us and to help us

[1:36:17] modify this. Again, I don't know what the exact date of submission will be next year

[1:36:22] from SBA, but it'll be around the same time. It's tomorrow, on April 15th, deadline.

[1:36:27] There's that kind of a catch-22, because you're not going to find it until a year-end, but

[1:36:30] you have to go by the fall. You don't, you don't, you don't have to put the money into it before,

[1:36:34] before we really have any indication as to whether they're going to move forward.

[1:36:39] That's the,

[1:36:40] the decision will have to be made.

[1:36:44] The motion's been made in second. Any other discussion?

[1:36:46] Still doing none all of the favors I've been going to set by interest.

[1:36:54] Thank you Brian and the committee,

[1:36:58] Charlie.

[1:36:59] budget sub-

[1:37:00] We were on my.

[1:37:04] All right, let's go to the boarding alley.

[1:37:08] I'm sure the Latin.

[1:37:10] But we will go that we're going forward for a full body.

[1:37:14] Which I will.

[1:37:17] And we've also, as I said, we had to be agitated quite a bit before I accidentally put it together for some of the members by the partners.

[1:37:28] So we kind of reviewed that to make sure we went like shortfall anywhere that we might need to be concerned about right at the point.

[1:37:35] And that there was nothing really glaring.

[1:37:36] It seemed to be on spending right when we should be.

[1:37:40] There's nothing significant to worry about.

[1:38:14] I know that it was super clear, glaringly obvious,

[1:38:18] because we really didn't super discuss the budget

[1:38:21] to actual, because it came at the end of the meeting.

[1:38:27] I think we should spend more time on that.

[1:38:33] Well, General is not going to have to pray for anything.

[1:38:37] And you can find them out.

[1:38:40] There are things on it that I'd like to talk about.

[1:38:49] Well, I don't think I can do it.

[1:38:53] Why don't we do this?

[1:38:55] General's nice of to do this.

[1:38:56] And this is going to be an ongoing practice.

[1:39:00] And I do quarterly reports.

[1:39:02] You want to hold off those questions

[1:39:03] to a budget subcommittee?

[1:39:06] Yeah.

[1:39:06] OK.

[1:39:07] Because we're actually here to make that as well.

[1:39:10] Like you said, you can make that as part

[1:39:11] of like a future. I was just mentioning it. Oh yeah. I did have some questions about some items.

[1:39:20] So we're in conjunction of where that was. So I just wanted to.

[1:39:29] Just on like the posting for the

[1:39:34] public hearing. And I don't know what the towns do. The towns that they just post the agenda. But

[1:39:38] But typically, if you're hoping public hearing isn't there's some type of requirement to

[1:39:42] get the budgets posted somewhere, at least on the website or on the school website.

[1:39:47] So people know that, and I know the town, you don't know how much control, really all.

[1:39:51] I've even looked at Burlington's, I think, all they post is like the, on the town's site

[1:39:55] is basically agenda, but can we make a practice so that the budgets posted out to the school

[1:40:03] website?

[1:40:03] committee meeting. No, I mean for before the public here for whatever you

[1:40:07] did. There was a packet that's on the website and it's a packet that we get

[1:40:13] which included the budget.

[1:40:16] It's not highlighted, it's part of the packet for

[1:40:19] this week's agenda. When did it go in? I usually don't put the full agenda, the full

[1:40:25] packet on to the website until after the weekend until after. This was a practice

[1:40:29] that I was asked to do prior so that the school committee has a chance to look at everything

[1:40:34] for the public as a chance to look at it.

[1:40:37] So you put it out of my head and it goes up one day?

[1:40:39] Well, it usually goes on Monday, but I'm sorry, I had seen you mom, but can I do it one day?

[1:40:42] I have a question.

[1:40:43] Public hearing has to be seven days.

[1:40:46] Public hearing?

[1:40:47] Is it now seven days?

[1:40:48] It was seven days because it was 14, so that was posted on the newspapers.

[1:40:53] It had been 14.

[1:40:54] I know it is 14.

[1:40:55] I'm trying to remember.

[1:40:55] I just didn't.

[1:40:57] We had the numbers and then we posted it in the newspapers, which is a requirement.

[1:41:05] So it was in the papers and we were having a public hearing.

[1:41:09] But I think the question is, well, now I do it now in the public hearing.

[1:41:15] I make reference to where you can find that on the ad in the paper.

[1:41:20] There's a reference that you can find the budget on the website.

[1:41:25] And I think that's what he's talking about, and I have never done a few things.

[1:41:29] I mean, I've been doing it the last two years, I think.

[1:41:31] But that's, I don't, Susan takes care of that.

[1:41:33] I will make it to her and that she, that may very well be on it.

[1:41:37] I just don't want to watch what it is.

[1:41:38] Because we'll see in that.

[1:41:39] That was my issue about today is because we haven't a public hearing.

[1:41:43] And I never saw the budget before.

[1:41:45] You know, until I got this packet.

[1:41:48] And I'm like, usually we have seen the budget.

[1:41:51] You got the packet on the third.

[1:41:57] I mean, but it's, I'm usual for the school committee not to have discussed a little bit of the budget before you walk into a public hearing.

[1:42:08] So that's all I'm saying. I was, I was surprised at this point. There's always going to be people like we know they are always going for ways to make reference to that so the more you can get ahead of that.

[1:42:20] If it's in the posting, then you can say, well, there you go.

[1:42:24] It's on there.

[1:42:26] I don't think it's a legality.

[1:42:29] The question is, is it a legality that we post, has to be in the budget in the packet

[1:42:36] 48 hours before or less than 48 hours before we do not have to post up packets?

[1:42:44] Right.

[1:42:44] There's no lot.

[1:42:45] It says we have to.

[1:42:46] who is a courtesy to do it a few years ago as a courtesy to uh and I think it's great because

[1:42:52] anybody can click on and see what we're talking about. So legally we have to post the public hearing

[1:42:58] about the budget. Yes. Today we do not have to share said budget. That's exactly right. And

[1:43:03] not saying that's what we do, but that's what we want to do. I'm just making sure I am as

[1:43:07] The U.S. has a gender-only right to it.

[1:43:10] You don't have to, you know, but there's a courtesy we post the whole pack.

[1:43:14] That's all set, 25.

[1:43:15] Wait, no, I'm not going to go ahead.

[1:43:17] I'm sorry.

[1:43:19] So specifically, because it doesn't seem super clear, because we're talking about all different things.

[1:43:27] Is the budget supposed to be available to the public 48 hours before, or does it not have to be given to the public

[1:43:36] I can tell it's, I don't think it has to be anybody at this meeting.

[1:43:39] It doesn't.

[1:43:40] Never in the past.

[1:43:41] We have to do that.

[1:43:42] When a public hearing, if Karen correct me for a run,

[1:43:46] when a public hearing, okay, we've decided, okay,

[1:43:48] we are going to schedule a public hearing.

[1:43:51] It has to be properly advertised.

[1:43:54] 14 days.

[1:43:55] 14 days.

[1:43:56] In the newspaper.

[1:43:57] And that's just days, our business days.

[1:43:59] No, it's business days.

[1:44:01] That was the problem.

[1:44:02] Thank you.

[1:44:02] When we had to put it in the newspaper,

[1:44:04] or we had to account, we had to account for the weekends.

[1:44:07] Okay.

[1:44:07] So that's why the March 21st date was really the first date

[1:44:10] that we really have the night in order to make the date.

[1:44:14] So that was going to have to take a close in the little sun.

[1:44:17] So I'm getting affiliates of the little sun.

[1:44:18] So we, that sounds like a lot needs to be updated, just saying.

[1:44:22] Well, that's, I know, and as I learned about the time,

[1:44:25] yes, all this has to be legally done

[1:44:27] because it can be challenged.

[1:44:29] So if we legally publicize it, and we schedule it,

[1:44:33] we've done our part and agenda has to be posted 48 hours before a meeting. We could put the packets out there

[1:44:40] We're really nice people and I see more and more boards doing that and it's great

[1:44:44] So that's what we're obligated to do and I think we've fulfilled our

[1:44:48] We've been doing it again for the school choice in April

[1:44:51] Correct me

[1:44:52] We'll also be posting the same. I'm 14 days in the newspaper

[1:44:55] So with that being said, go ahead, sorry sorry

[1:44:58] Can I just have some clear blank?

[1:45:00] So if I understood you correctly, you're asking for the information, the budget information to be shared with the full school committee. Yeah, that's what I thought, but I just wanted to make sure that I think we're Christians also are asking is basically like if you're going to a public hearing and maybe I'm missing the boat. I know you guys are saying about the posting, but basically if you're walking into a public hearing and it gets posted out to a paper and somebody that's in the community, I get, okay, I know 14 days.

[1:45:29] or seven days, whatever it is, but if I haven't actually seen the budget, like how do I ask?

[1:45:34] And based on what we reviewed today, it's very high level. I'm not seeing so how am I supposed

[1:45:38] to ask questions? I guess that's the part. I think that's what you're asking for, Steve.

[1:45:42] I will tell you what it looks like I used to do. So as you entered the public hearing,

[1:45:49] they'd give you a two page quick rundown of the budget. You know, and then you'd say, hey,

[1:45:55] Okay, how come the history is this?

[1:45:56] What happened?

[1:45:57] But it was really very small.

[1:46:00] And that's really cool, I'm sorry.

[1:46:07] When I post on the web page where all the meetings are, it says that it's public hearing

[1:46:14] all the towns get the agenda that says public hearing right at the top, so we're fulfilling

[1:46:19] the legalities and what we're supposed to do with it, so it's electronic and it's really

[1:46:23] important.

[1:46:25] If we were able to, as school committee members get the budget a little earlier, then that

[1:46:31] would help the general public, because I would think I didn't get contacted by anybody.

[1:46:35] But if, you know, Karen Fayell, a parent of a freshman, wants to know more, you would

[1:46:42] think she'd reach out to a school committee member and say, hey, can I see that budget?

[1:46:46] So it would be good if we had it, because at this point we'd say, sorry, we don't have

[1:46:51] you have to reach out to Mrs. Lasco, she can get it for you. But like it would be nice,

[1:46:55] I think, if it can get to us, well, that would help us share it out as a question. I mean,

[1:47:03] I didn't get any contact, and nobody asked me for it. This has just been an eye doctor, and I'm

[1:47:08] barely, I told you. I got it. It's just been a very, a very, and I notice about this, and I told,

[1:47:15] I'm just, I don't want to say, I hang in there, brother, I mean, it's gonna be, we're gonna

[1:47:21] get you through this.

[1:47:22] I don't want you to walk out of here and say, forget this place, I don't, and Jenna's

[1:47:26] like, what do I get myself into?

[1:47:28] No, these two have done incredible work, it's just a weird year, and I know that, everyone's

[1:47:32] like, okay, now, you know, Tony's gonna, you know, Tom manages it and keep the peace, I guess,

[1:47:39] you know, we're gonna be all right, so anyway, Tom, Nancy.

[1:47:44] What's the reality of a parent truly questioning a budget?

[1:47:49] I've got our town budget sitting on my desk and sitting there for over a week.

[1:47:54] I haven't broken it.

[1:47:56] I mean, really, how many people are going to look at a school committee budget?

[1:48:00] It's one thing to look at your town budget before town meeting.

[1:48:04] But to look at a, I'm sorry, regional district.

[1:48:09] Not likely, but a while, not likely, but I like it, yeah, I think I have no strength in here.

[1:48:18] We are not all Christian, but I'm not the only one.

[1:48:23] A lot of people ask the questions about the budget.

[1:48:27] This is just the chance thing.

[1:48:29] They already have no stake in it.

[1:48:33] That's interesting.

[1:48:34] Yeah, so that's what I've seen in our time. We're trying so hard to do the right thing, right? And I'm just wondering

[1:48:47] It's been a learning experience for us because as we've shared information

[1:48:50] We've had I've had FinCon members come back and say where's this and you know, we're used to getting this

[1:48:56] So it's like okay, we'll get it to you

[1:48:57] But you know, I didn't know that you know you want a V&C

[1:49:03] I mean, it has been a warning curve for us as well.

[1:49:07] Well, it's a big year.

[1:49:09] No, and I know we've been to town meeting in Barraka,

[1:49:12] and the people who speak, other people who take trust in

[1:49:15] is the best place in the earth.

[1:49:17] And that's awesome.

[1:49:18] And that's what we want to hear.

[1:49:19] I did it also.

[1:49:20] Thank you.

[1:49:21] But, Charlie, anything else you want to add?

[1:49:22] I just want to make the most of the discussion.

[1:49:27] Motion has been made to extend.

[1:49:29] I'm sorry.

[1:49:30] Please read.

[1:49:31] The motion to go to approval of the fiscal year 2024,

[1:49:38] the Schrodinger Valley Regional Technical High School budget for $32,423,640,

[1:49:47] which includes total assessments of $29,845,453.

[1:49:54] in to further portion the assessments to the district

[1:49:58] communities at all.

[1:50:00] That's with $1 million, $17,028.

[1:50:04] Over $10 million, $618,000, $618,654.

[1:50:13] Burlington, $2,976,385.

[1:50:20] $8,818,527 in Wilmington, $7,214,859.

[1:50:34] Second.

[1:50:35] Which has been made.

[1:50:36] Second.

[1:50:37] I have a discussion.

[1:50:40] Is there any monies, you know how we would sometimes use that 5% that's sitting up there?

[1:50:46] Is there any possible way of using this to lower it or have you already done that?

[1:50:50] It's not certified.

[1:50:52] It hasn't been certified by the state yet.

[1:50:54] We are being...

[1:50:55] What?

[1:50:56] Yes.

[1:50:57] Can you find a place?

[1:50:58] So in order for us to use E&D to offset the next fiscal year's budget, it has to be certified

[1:51:04] by the Department of Revenue.

[1:51:06] By this what money?

[1:51:08] Yes.

[1:51:09] So essentially, when one fiscal year ends, they tell us that account balance becomes zero until

[1:51:15] So we prove to them what is in it and where it's come from.

[1:51:19] So it's been submitted.

[1:51:20] I know Jenna's been working.

[1:51:22] They keep coming back to us with, we need you to follow up on this, we have a question

[1:51:26] about that.

[1:51:28] I don't know what, we haven't talked recently about what percentage are we?

[1:51:32] Directly with the Department of Revenue, so we have an agent that I get to work with to

[1:51:38] make sure that all questions are answered.

[1:51:41] Right now, I'm just about to hit the button to close FY22, and this is the physical part

[1:51:49] of UNICE closing, and there were some things that had to be cleaned up from FY22.

[1:51:54] So we've just kind of gotten there, but we're not late with END.

[1:52:00] They said that usually it can be certified up until the end of June.

[1:52:03] So I'm working closely with Department of Revenue to make sure that gets done.

[1:52:09] That's for fiscal 2020. Yes.

[1:52:13] 2023, that's for Carly and

[1:52:16] all right.

[1:52:19] It's confusing.

[1:52:21] I don't even know what year it is now.

[1:52:24] It's 24th right now.

[1:52:26] I'm sorry. Ciao.

[1:52:29] Is it against policy or has it been, you know,

[1:52:32] ever thought about to maybe have fundraising efforts to come up

[1:52:36] to lower some of the cost fixed pool?

[1:52:39] Is that something that, you know, maybe reaching out to the advisory board and asking, you

[1:52:45] know, would labor be something to be willing to donate your time, or if, you know, some

[1:52:49] of the students and community communities had some fundraising efforts to bring that down

[1:52:53] a little bit?

[1:52:58] That's a big ticket item that ends up going through a very formal bid process, and I mean,

[1:53:04] it's going to be posted to the, to the, I can't, the register, I can't think of the official

[1:53:08] name.

[1:53:08] central register, thank you. Those are things, I mean like you have to pay per

[1:53:13] billing wage, you have to be able to document that all your workers were paid

[1:53:16] per billing. I mean there's a lot of things that go into that and really we're

[1:53:21] going to be under a very tight time when we want to try to do that over the summer

[1:53:25] when we have as few people in the building as possible to try to minimize

[1:53:29] disruptions to classes. So to try to fundraise for that and get it in place, you

[1:53:38] Yeah, yeah, just a good point show that this is something akin. Yeah

[1:53:45] We didn't count this nobody said hey, you know, Tony was

[1:53:49] Right up to the roof and we don't do something. We're gonna have a major issue. It's not gonna take Nocus

[1:53:56] We let it go and then we get

[1:54:00] Ask for you ask for a lot more money, you know

[1:54:05] Anyway, all right, the motion has been made in second in any of the discussion.

[1:54:09] The only question?

[1:54:11] Like I just said, a lot of things I wanted to note that I alluded to when speaking with

[1:54:17] Cheryl, sharing our meeting, just that when I did see that 7.9 percent increase,

[1:54:25] I did, I was a little bit panicked when I first saw that number and how it looked.

[1:54:30] I expected it to be at 6%, and it was 7.9%, but then when digging deeper into the numbers

[1:54:39] and talking with Tony and Jenna, the numbers actually make a lot of sense.

[1:54:46] And although it is painful and it hurts, there are very valid reasons for the increase

[1:54:54] to it. The pool and creating an ELL program alone is 2% of that 7.9. Those are

[1:55:05] extraordinary items which if you took out the extraordinary nature of those two

[1:55:10] things which we have no choice but to do. If we wait at cost more and the state

[1:55:16] mandates that we have the ELL so we have no where our hands are tied in relation

[1:55:22] to that 2% of the budget. The other schools in our districts are at 3.75. We're only 2% higher

[1:55:32] than that when you remove the extraordinary expenses. But taking into account the fact that

[1:55:42] the other schools don't have the volume of consumables that we use as a vocational school.

[1:55:47] We have double the staff because we're a vocational school, so we require two sets of teachers,

[1:55:55] academic and vocational.

[1:55:58] So you can't really compare our apple to their orange.

[1:56:04] Not to say that their concerns aren't valid, but they haven't heard the background of all these things.

[1:56:11] We have a 30% IEP ratio for student population here.

[1:56:18] Wilmington has a 12% population.

[1:56:22] There is a large cost outlay for special education, and we have those kids come to us because

[1:56:31] they are drawn to hands-on learning, right?

[1:56:36] And then we unionize the Paris, we unionized IT, our transportation costs are higher because

[1:56:45] we pull in from other places.

[1:56:49] We have to increase guidance because we have more IEP and I didn't get the chance to

[1:56:56] see how many guidance and special ed people the other schools have, but I guarantee you it's

[1:57:03] not half or a third of what we have, we're not three times, Wilmington, Wilmington's,

[1:57:10] not to say again that it's not a valid point of being concerned, because I was the same.

[1:57:18] And then the inflation rate went up 6%.

[1:57:23] We're really at that 5.9%.

[1:57:26] And I know I would love to, I looked through, Charlie and I looked through the budget.

[1:57:31] There really is, you know, we could pull away a science teacher, but that doesn't do

[1:57:39] the trick, and it's not helpful for our students.

[1:57:44] We've stayed below where the traditional school budgets have been, and now we're at a point

[1:57:53] where we have no choice but to spend the money.

[1:57:56] It's not on our norm to have that large outlay, but it will happen from time to time

[1:58:02] I think we just need to explain ourselves to the to the towns and show them all of that which I

[1:58:10] have full faith that Tony and Jenna are going to do for us

[1:58:15] In the coming weeks. I just wanted to say all of that because it was that stomach thing in the beginning

[1:58:22] Yeah, all right

[1:58:24] I hate. Um, do you have any idea how much that money is that we might have at 5% and 1.6 million. It's about 1.6 TTE.

[1:58:36] And if we five percent last year's budget, is that good? Certified, can we use all of it or do we only use part of it?

[1:58:43] Usually it has, you know, you only started it, but it also has to be in the budget, the proposed budget that's adopted by the school committee.

[1:58:53] It's not in the FY23 budget either.

[1:58:56] Was it Pulse FY23?

[1:58:59] Was it?

[1:59:00] No, FY22 yes, but not FY23.

[1:59:04] Do we know what?

[1:59:06] But we didn't go up this high.

[1:59:11] I mean, this is going to be a huge hard sell and it looks very.

[1:59:16] You know, especially where the, I guess, weren't worn.

[1:59:21] That this was going to happen, you know, and

[1:59:27] I know it's a reach, but it's possible to find out, like, in fact, the finance, people, tomorrow, like, first off, to get, like, some type of post report, kind of Charlie's gone until we good to budget suffering, but still, like, kind of, should be back out to the committee to find out what came out of that meeting.

[1:59:43] And secondarily, maybe it's possible, not that's not part of the reach part, but the

[1:59:47] finish part is to find out whatever, because I think what the thing is most K-12s is not

[1:59:53] going to be a best apples to get their apples apples.

[1:59:57] Is there a way to find out what other...

[2:00:00] You know, vocational schools of our size, what their increase was, because if you could get that information, that might be helpful to provide them to say, okay, in the state, these are the 12 schools that are similar. I mean, again, I might be extent to maybe get five or six or something like half a dozen. It's okay. If you take to Christine's point, you take out the 2% for extraordinary items. This is where a target would be without those two pieces. This is what these six schools have. You know, they're all within the same size.

[2:00:29] as we are, maybe I would give them more comfort for that.

[2:00:32] And I don't want to out the exact school,

[2:00:35] because I don't know where he is in his budget process.

[2:00:36] But I did speak to a superintendent

[2:00:40] from one of our sister schools who is up over 12% this year.

[2:00:46] And he is, again, failing some of these pains.

[2:00:51] And a lot of that is that particular district had a lot

[2:00:54] of out-of-the-district students in the past.

[2:00:56] But with changes in their admissions policy,

[2:00:58] they are now almost 100% in-district costs.

[2:01:01] So the money that they were collecting

[2:01:02] for out of district students is now evaporated

[2:01:04] and all of the cost evaporate, that school district

[2:01:07] and now being born by the member, the members communities.

[2:01:13] I can reach out and ask some other people,

[2:01:15] but I know I just, I happen to be having a conversation

[2:01:18] last week at an event and he shared that,

[2:01:21] they're up over 12%.

[2:01:23] Did they have a swing call?

[2:01:25] I don't think they do.

[2:01:28] Yeah, there's great alerts, has a swimming pool, great low,

[2:01:30] has a swimming pool.

[2:01:31] I mean, there's a few around my door.

[2:01:33] I don't need to go all the way.

[2:01:34] So, but you know, I think that talking this through

[2:01:38] and preparing ourselves for the meetings,

[2:01:40] this is very helpful.

[2:01:42] I think to all of us, because, you know,

[2:01:44] I think that will be kind of a,

[2:01:45] it's gonna be a not an easy conversation to have.

[2:01:50] My question is, and I dare not,

[2:01:52] I know hesitate to say what if we have an unsuccessful meeting what happens then what it

[2:01:58] could do is not pass by our town there's a process and there's a there's a process in

[2:02:05] chapter 71 about what we have to we have to come back we have to make modifications to

[2:02:10] it we have to we have to go back out to them and show them what what efforts we made to

[2:02:15] try to make adjustments to it do everything we can for out of five times yeah I'm gonna

[2:02:22] Tom doesn't pass it, doesn't matter, so 4 out of 5 counts.

[2:02:25] That's what the mutual agreement says.

[2:02:27] You need 66%, you need two thirds, so.

[2:02:30] OK, so Cheryl, Devils Advocate, yeah.

[2:02:33] Yeah, I'm sorry to say, it's in the statute that.

[2:02:39] I mean, we had a fight on the floor,

[2:02:42] and our budget had never gone over 2%.

[2:02:45] They still fought us on the floor of the town meeting one year.

[2:02:48] So this is, it's scary to me and I have never voted for a budget like this in my life.

[2:02:56] And I'm having a hard time doing this but all right.

[2:03:01] Sorry, sorry, I'm not just, we're not really agreeing but to the question that Pat raised about the E&D is her scenario whereby

[2:03:14] I get the towns to agree to this higher number and then the good news is you get the full

[2:03:25] E&D amount certified by TOR and now we have an essence extra money, but we have already

[2:03:36] assess the talents at the level that this budget requires and there's really no going

[2:03:45] back at that point.

[2:03:48] So if we get the E&D money later, I think once this is approved, it's

[2:03:52] approved. We move forward. So if we're going to use E&D money, we have to put it in the

[2:03:58] budget now. So officially we have zero dollars in that account because they don't have

[2:04:04] Okay.

[2:04:05] All right.

[2:04:06] So, what we would be able to put out next year, but actually, theoretically, we reduce the

[2:04:13] assessment going forward.

[2:04:14] Okay.

[2:04:15] What do we, could we do an amendment to be a man's last year for, sorry, what do we do

[2:04:23] to use back when you would share the identity, I mean, it's with Melanie.

[2:04:28] I'm just thinking, well, we move, I've been moving money around because it was already in

[2:04:33] the budget. I guess it had already been certified, but it was certified late, because I remember

[2:04:41] we had to fight it about late. Yes. Because we think it should be certified in like no

[2:04:47] member. That's really when it should have been certified.

[2:04:53] So I think it was already certified.

[2:04:55] I don't, you know, I don't remember being in this position before. And actually a million dollars,

[2:05:00] is everybody's still going to go up pretty.

[2:05:05] I think you gave me something that $600,000 would help.

[2:05:09] Yes, you remind me of what that was.

[2:05:11] 2%.

[2:05:12] Any other discussion direct operating budget,

[2:05:14] which would bring us from 5.9 to 3.9.

[2:05:20] Well, it may have some 7.9 to 5.9.

[2:05:23] Sorry, sorry, I keep backing out the extraordinary costs.

[2:05:28] One more point in there.

[2:05:29] Can you make sure that the standard practice is sort of like the posting of the thing?

[2:05:33] We just we can avoid our friends from the outside and then we all know where they are

[2:05:37] new name names, but just to make sure that the budgets and the assessments are posted on the

[2:05:41] website. So then you can say guess what standard practice are out there. So past years, so just to avoid

[2:05:48] that nonsense. Who's attending the meeting tomorrow?

[2:05:51] Sure. My house meetings with the town managers.

[2:05:54] And you and John. And I know John.

[2:06:00] And that's to present what you just presented to us.

[2:06:03] So to summarize, we can't put E&D in the fiscal year 2024 budget because officially we have zero dollars sitting there.

[2:06:12] And by the time we get any money in there, which we hope to, it's too late the budget is already passed.

[2:06:19] But there's something wrong with them.

[2:06:22] Because then we lose that money because you're saying we absolutely lose it because the next year because you can't keep more than 5% right right?

[2:06:31] So the next year if there's extra money they can't put anything in because so we'll lose money.

[2:06:40] Well, it goes it's 5% of your budget every year so we're going to gain more every year.

[2:06:47] I mean, it's not going to go up to half a million dollars, it will go up the percentage based on the increase in the budget.

[2:06:54] Is there a, I'm not a budget question, we almost, is there a way to amend a budget, say in September?

[2:07:02] Thank you.

[2:07:03] And say, you know, the E&D has come through.

[2:07:07] We are going to take $500,000 and apply it to the budget and tell the town's that.

[2:07:13] I don't know if that's how meeting always has a special time meeting in October, right?

[2:07:18] I mean, then they changed their budget.

[2:07:21] Yeah, that's good.

[2:07:22] Again, we are considering our own municipality as a regional school district.

[2:07:27] So, I'd have to research that.

[2:07:29] That's not something I would be comfortable trying to answer.

[2:07:31] I mean, I'm just saying, personally, I am willing to budget is big, but I am willing to accept it.

[2:07:38] But if there was a way that we could apply some of that indeed, it would be great

[2:07:43] But if there isn't there isn't but and I don't know how we communicate that to the town because we can't promise them anything

[2:07:51] Because nothing started fighting. Yes. We assume it'll be certified, but we can't promise anything

[2:07:56] Why don't you

[2:08:00] Yeah, well, it's worth investigating I will check it out. Thank you. We had a motion. It's been seconded any other discussion

[2:08:07] I'm cutting off the discussion at this point.

[2:08:08] All those in favor, I'm supporting the fiscal 24 operating budget.

[2:08:13] Say aye.

[2:08:14] Aye.

[2:08:15] All at.

[2:08:16] No.

[2:08:17] No.

[2:08:17] Roll call.

[2:08:18] Thank you.

[2:08:19] Roll call vote is required.

[2:08:22] This last.

[2:08:23] Aye.

[2:08:24] It's my turn.

[2:08:25] Aye.

[2:08:26] Nancy.

[2:08:27] Aye.

[2:08:28] Aye.

[2:08:29] Aye.

[2:08:30] Aye.

[2:08:31] Aye.

[2:08:32] Aye.

[2:08:33] Aye.

[2:08:34] Yeah.

[2:08:36] That's what I think is no water.

[2:08:40] Choe for the better minutes.

[2:08:42] Choe for the better minutes.

[2:08:43] No, I don't.

[2:08:48] Thank you.

[2:08:51] How many minutes?

[2:08:53] You voted yes.

[2:08:54] You voted yes while Choe is okay with it.

[2:08:57] I'm a little bit.

[2:08:59] Listen, old business, I had talked with a story

[2:09:04] about the pool they built that and I had this discussion and he mentioned that I didn't realize

[2:09:08] the upper class but I getting swept in so yeah we are utilizing it with some grade levels.

[2:09:14] Jenna and I had originally anticipated using some some savings that we had in salaries from

[2:09:21] you know replacing teachers that are retired that money has all been utilized to kind of settle our

[2:09:29] pair of ET and maintenance contracts because of the, there's some decent salary increases

[2:09:39] based on the pay skills that were negotiated and credits that people were able to submit

[2:09:44] for you.

[2:09:44] One, and we can go back and book again but at this point in time, I don't know that we have

[2:09:50] the funding to bring in somebody because we would have to hire a staff member to my down

[2:09:55] there.

[2:09:58] We can go back and look at that again, but I know as we were as we were cleaning up those those initial contracts, we came to the realization that it was there was some cost associated with that.

[2:10:10] So hopefully we can working towards.

[2:10:14] We have been using it. I believe it's juniors and seniors are there now.

[2:10:18] And our plan is to try to bring the other classmen back into that pool.

[2:10:24] I'm putting, I'm gonna table this, the hour is late here and it's been a lot on everyone's plate here, is that okay?

[2:10:33] Are we ready?

[2:10:35] Well, you're looking at me like that.

[2:10:36] No, I was just saying, you gave me a look.

[2:10:39] I said, no, it's all family kidding.

[2:10:41] I just want to mention briefly, everybody received the information in your packet.

[2:10:45] I would like you to just take how far of your time to go over the documents.

[2:10:53] This is going to be, because at the end of April, I was going to have a discussion on

[2:10:59] what we're going to use.

[2:11:00] And this was brought to be by Charlie and Barry from the former conference.

[2:11:05] And so I was looking all over the place.

[2:11:06] I was thinking, let's just do it the way I was supposed to do it in Tony's contract.

[2:11:10] We're going to evaluate him as the state requires us to do.

[2:11:13] And we're going to do it as a one-year evaluation, not a two-year seminar thing.

[2:11:18] We're going to use the form as everybody receives in their packets.

[2:11:21] I'm going to explain it out to everybody.

[2:11:24] That's just going to be two seconds here briefly.

[2:11:26] We'll explain it out to you all weekend.

[2:11:28] We can discuss what areas you're going to do all of them.

[2:11:31] And so the idea of my plan is to have this all in place for you to take it home.

[2:11:36] Karen, I've discussed this.

[2:11:38] Take it home with you at the end of April and return it to Karen.

[2:11:41] and at the time in her family and early May in a timely fashion, she will tabulate all

[2:11:48] the data to be recorded at the end of May.

[2:11:52] I think that's what we said Karen.

[2:11:53] She's been, she'll do it.

[2:11:55] So that's what we want to do folks.

[2:11:56] So when it's time, I'm not, I'm not going to do the presentation tonight.

[2:12:00] But that's all I ask you to read through this stuff.

[2:12:03] It's not as daunting Christine Cloud, Nancy email me, I said no.

[2:12:07] Just relax, when I'm a new teacher, when this came across,

[2:12:11] I played as a teacher, I'm like, what, it's not as bad as it is.

[2:12:15] So it's real relax, it's not bad.

[2:12:17] We will be working with this and coming up with a evaluation

[2:12:20] that will go on 20th record.

[2:12:22] And the idea is to get a company that may not wait till we don't.

[2:12:25] So that's what I'm going to just say,

[2:12:26] and to leave it there, Nancy.

[2:12:28] What kind of evaluation did we do before?

[2:12:32] I'm not going to recall.

[2:12:33] Patty gave us something that can't speak for us.

[2:12:36] this is.

[2:12:37] No, we didn't do it for them.

[2:12:38] No, we didn't do it.

[2:12:40] No, no, no.

[2:12:41] No, we did not do it for them.

[2:12:43] Um, we didn't do it for them.

[2:12:46] First, the first.

[2:12:47] I know.

[2:12:49] We didn't do this thing.

[2:12:50] We're going to do it.

[2:12:51] We're going to use this form format.

[2:12:53] So I'm going to do that.

[2:12:54] So we're going to we're going to

[2:12:55] I'll do the full presentation and April folks.

[2:12:57] That's okay.

[2:12:58] Alright.

[2:13:00] Future agenda items.

[2:13:04] Just FYI May 6th, as a Saturday,

[2:13:07] M-A-S-C will be here.

[2:13:09] I have to confirm with them.

[2:13:10] I know it's on their calendar.

[2:13:12] They're already posted on their website.

[2:13:14] It's a Saturday, May 6th.

[2:13:16] I've invited them to come here

[2:13:17] and do a new number orientation.

[2:13:21] And if you all can,

[2:13:23] everybody can make it that day.

[2:13:24] It'll be great.

[2:13:24] Well, it's already on their website, the public size.

[2:13:27] And it's just, it's a great refresher course.

[2:13:29] I do it.

[2:13:30] I didn't want to try it in the course.

[2:13:31] Yeah, China, of course. I did it online the time when I first went on, but this is so I called in ahead of time months

[2:13:36] Months actually last summer

[2:13:39] Brian and Charlie's we give him I gave him a phone call. It was booking. That's our events. So well anyway

[2:13:44] What other towns are you inviting? It's out here the whole

[2:13:48] Everybody the whole Northeast area, you know, so it's just not just for new members of everybody

[2:13:52] So it's I think it's like eight to one nine to one eight to one. So Karen. So I get they're gonna send me a form

[2:13:58] I'm gonna fill it out information that we need to

[2:14:01] Provide to them. I know it's so clear any school clean numbers on their last year

[2:14:11] So that's that's the plan on that no, can't next next right now

[2:14:20] Oh, cuz I did a year and then I could get it. I am running

[2:14:24] Yes, we are running

[2:14:31] Can you tell me what?

[2:14:32] I know it's for you.

[2:14:33] I know what I mean.

[2:14:35] So, we see it.

[2:14:36] No, I want us to date for 28-24.

[2:14:39] 24-25 after the administration?

[2:14:48] Yeah.

[2:14:49] Next week we are going to date for 27.

[2:14:54] But now it's the next week.

[2:14:58] the wild Asian.

[2:15:00] But the council based on the report to the state about public comment, can we either have a discussion about that at a future meeting or have a Howard way in to basically to look at our policy or. Yeah, look at that. Is that said, Brian, brought that to the table. I was going to be a suggestion for the next policy agenda and start there and see. You know, we can maybe bring it forward everybody, depending upon what. My second one was just sort of with just the role, the treasure. I mean,

[2:15:29] and just getting stuff from middle sex basically,

[2:15:33] like to me, I don't think that I'm perfectly

[2:15:36] and I understand finance well,

[2:15:38] but I'm not excited maybe time to look at a district treasure

[2:15:41] to make sure that's a good example

[2:15:43] of what we're getting represented for

[2:15:44] like middle sex retirement of being as a business unit.

[2:15:47] So I feel like that song we should look at

[2:15:49] is like a employee of the school committee being at a treasure

[2:15:54] a part of time, part of time for the budget.

[2:15:58] It's just, I know we've always had it so more, you know.

[2:16:01] Yeah, it was.

[2:16:02] This committee's always had a treasure.

[2:16:04] And I found in those meetings.

[2:16:06] Yep, I was trying to.

[2:16:07] Yep.

[2:16:09] We talked about, I don't know, what to investigate that.

[2:16:13] To have a treasure.

[2:16:14] It's saying FY25.

[2:16:17] So we have a secretary, you know,

[2:16:18] to your device too.

[2:16:21] Okay, anybody else, we good?

[2:16:22] Okay.

[2:16:23] Just we're going to add to the policy to look at two policies that Jennifer had related to procurement law.

[2:16:35] That's right.

[2:16:36] So there's some things going on.

[2:16:37] We just have to have a curiosity.

[2:16:39] Where are you going to hold this thing on the six in the office?

[2:16:42] Yeah.

[2:16:44] Yeah, I'm just going to make sure I touch it.

[2:16:48] That's right.

[2:16:48] I'm going to continue.

[2:16:49] Yeah.

[2:16:49] I'm going to go into my office to get the view.

[2:16:53] So anybody's invited.

[2:16:54] It's already on their website.

[2:16:55] I feel like the people are kind of what we have to do.

[2:16:58] They'll come in with the speakers.

[2:16:59] I think they're at the press that will probably be here.

[2:17:02] I know the other people.

[2:17:04] It's not interesting.

[2:17:05] I'm looking forward to seeing it in person.

[2:17:07] So I thought it would be something interesting.

[2:17:09] I'll take you to suggestion.

[2:17:10] We invite our town school committee.

[2:17:13] Where do you want?

[2:17:15] Okay.

[2:17:16] But we're going to have all these people.

[2:17:19] We're going to have all these people.

[2:17:23] Okay, I thought it was an interesting idea.

[2:17:25] Okay.

[2:17:25] Did we let him out?

[2:17:26] What's your name?

[2:17:28] What's your name?

[2:17:29] I'm a sec, and this is Gillis.

[2:17:31] All right.

[2:17:32] And this is it.

[2:17:32] All right.

[2:17:33] All right.

[2:17:34] All right.

[2:17:36] All right.

3_21_23 Tech School Committee Meeting

Transcript