Yes, I can. on Can you hear me? OK. Um, good evening. Tonight, um, we are calling to order the first of two public hearings at 6:30. I also just want to know two things before we get started. Uh, we have a member. Joining remoly on Zoom, Julia Campbell, and so later in the

meeting, if we take any votes, it’ll be a roll call vote. And I also want to mention that this meeting is being live streamed and recorded by HW CAM and can be watched on YouTube. Um, so the first thing we have On the agenda is the public hearing for school choice for the 25, 26 school year, Mr.

Tracy. Thank you. I just want to give a quick overview. As we do annually, we are required by state law to, uh, vote for school choice. Uh, annually before June 1st, and, uh, we generally do it in. January so that we can get the process moving in early February. It takes us, um, about a month or

5 weeks or so to, uh, keep the lottery open, make sure people have notice, etc. So, uh, this year we have, um, Similar numbers from previous years, we will be graduating out. Um, 11 students this year who are in the Choice program. In the next biggest number will be the current junior class, which has

18. Numbers that fluctuated across. Uh, the past probably 10 years now. Gone up and down mostly hovering around 10 or 11. Uh, on the average, so these are the current numbers that are in our buildings, and they’re based again on. Um, the vote of the school committee is specifically to either have

school choice or not have school choice, and then the principals will look at openings. Uh, generally, at the secondary level because our Elementary schools are jammed, uh, jam packed in a real open seats at the at the elementary level, so any openings generally occur at the, uh, Secondary level 6 through 12, which is what you have

represented here. And then certainly um my recommendation. For, uh, school choices to continue the School Choice program. It is, uh, revenue source for the district. Uh, it continues to, uh, fill seats as they become available. Generally at the 9th grade is where you see the most kids

entering the program. Um, but they, as you can see, there are, there are kids that have been kids in 6th grade. There have been kids in 7th grade, we actually, um, We, we actually have 1 3rd grader who’s a longtime choice. Uh, student because of what they call the sibling rule. The law allows uh

for one child gets in. It basically opens the door for any other child in that family, which makes sense when they’re dry, they have to drive their own kids to, to school, etc. So, um, these are the numbers that’s the secondary. Um, we continue, we, we feel they’ll continue to stay about the same.

Mr. Mannigoni knows this 6 coming up from the 8th grade into the 9th grade, so he knows his numbers of seats will be fewer, um, but again, the principals will determine that as they figure out their schedules in, in February. Thank you. Um, so, as part of the public hearing, we can hear

comments or questions from anyone in the room. Anyone on the committee have questions or comments? How about anybody joining us in the room tonight? Looks like now. How about on Zoom? Is there anybody on Zoom? There is nobody on Zoom. OK. Um So, that closes the public hearing for school choice at 6:34 p.m. The next public

hearing we have is on the Hamilton Hamilton Wynham Regional School District, fiscal year 26 budget. So I’m opening this public hearing on the budget at 6:34 p.m. And I believe. Vinnie will take it over from here. Sorry jump off. Always the right time for an update, right? time. We’re ahead of schedule for hearing.

Hold on I can just read them. Just Here he is. Mhm To unplug her just kick you out. I, when I plug in and I had Hm. not opening. OK, sorry about that. Uh, so thanks for joining us tonight. We are here to review for the first public hearing on the superintendent’s tentative FY 26 budget recommendation.

Now for those of you who were here last night, uh, today in the audience and maybe at home listening, uh, tonight’s public hearing is based on the last iteration. Of the budget that the school committee has seen, that was on January 2nd, and it is our approved tentative budget. Later on tonight at the

full meeting, I will be updating these numbers, uh, a little bit, which is what we presented yesterday at the quintuple board meeting. So I’m gonna run through some of our major, uh, budget highlights and then go over some of the numbers, uh, from a high-level view and sorry, I got a little

bit of a cold, so I struggle in breathing at the same time. Uh, so year over year, uh, one of the biggest things we’ve seen is our growth and our revenues. From FY 25 to FY 26, excluding our, uh, town assessments and our END. We’re seeing growth of just under $400,000 which

represents a 5.7% increase, and this really is what we like to see. We like to see our revenues, uh, outpacing the growth of our expenditures, cause that ultimately means, uh, less of a tax burden to the community. Uh, some of the major growth we’re seeing is around our state aid for our circuit breaker reimbursement.

Our regional transportation revolving fund in our chapter 70 base aid is where majority of those increases year over year. Uh, is what we’re seeing. Uh, from the other side, from our expenditures, uh, the biggest challenge we faced in FY 26 revolved around our salary cost increases. For FY 26, our salaries have increased

upwards of 8.8%, which equates to a $2.3 million dollar increase. Uh, if you compare this to FY 25, FY 25 are total town assessments only when up roughly $1 million. Uh, so just our salaries alone are nearly double what our overall budget increase was last year for the town assessments, uh, so that

really is the biggest challenge we face. For FY 26, those increases are the results of all of our collective bargaining agreements being renegotiated, um, the teachers, office personnel, custodians. Um, ESPs and food service are driving those costs. Uh, next up is our increase in our out of diser costs for FY 26, uh,

we are predicting an increase of roughly 517,000 out of district costs can vary year over year based on our student needs. Uh, this 517,000 covers both are out of district tuition increases and the outer district transportation costs, uh, just relatively speaking, it’s about a $250,000 increase on both sides, the tuitions and the transportation. Uh, we are

excited about the next one. We are asking for a new investment, uh, to hire 2 new additional STEM teachers at the elementary level. Uh, this is costing roughly 209,000. Uh, the two elementary STEM teachers will be split between the three elementary schools, approximately 0.7 at each school, uh, and we really enhance the STEM program at the

elementary level. I am also happy to announce that for FY 26, it is the 5th year in a row we are contributing and increasing our OPEP contribution, uh, I believe, uh, again, 5 years ago, we started our OPEP contribution and since then we’ve contributed over $2 million for FY 26, our annual

total will be 300,000, and I think says a lot about us taking our OPEB liability serious and trying to lower it overall. Um, over the past few years. Next we are asking for an additional $30,000 for new curriculum and workbooks, both for our ELA program and the, uh, math program. Uh, we have, we

do have some reductions to our staffing whenever we add new staffing in the district. We always try to look in other areas of the budget and around the district to make reductions to offset some of those increases. Uh, one of the areas we looked at was within our literacy program at the

elementary school for FY 25 each elementary school has approximately 2.6 literacy ESPs for FY 26, we’re reducing each building down to A 2.0, so that’s a 0.6% reduction at each of the three elementary schools for a total of approximately 1.8. Uh, that is saving us, uh, just below $50,000. Uh, every

year there are some savings from retirements. This varies year to year depending on who we have retire, what position they are and where they fall in the salary schedule, uh, but historically speaking, when we have a teacher retire, uh, they usually deeper in the salary schedule and we, when we

replaced them, we try to hire someone, uh, who’s lower on the salary schedule, which ultimately results in some savings, uh, for FY 26, we’re incorporating a $91,000 reduction for our retirements. Uh, we are also seeing a reduction to our debt service payments, uh, for FY 26, it’s a combination of two things.

We have a lower principal payment, uh, based off of our FY 25 paydowns. So for FY 25, uh, we paid down approximately $1.3 million of our overall debt. Therefore, we have lower, uh, principle in FY 26, which then lowers our interest, and we got a reduced interest rate compared to FY 25. Uh, the combination of the two.

is resulting in a reduction of 153,000 as it relates to our debt service payments. Uh, the last item here is our biggest item, our biggest reduction year of a year. Uh, from FY 25 to FY 26, we are seeing a reduction to our END offsets of 1.5 million. Uh, this really is what is driving our ability, uh,

to not need an override for FY 26, uh, if you see here those salary costs of 2.3 million, the main way we are paying for that is from our END offsets, uh, so it is helping us for FY 26, but this will be something that we have to, uh, continuously. look at throughout this year and before

we go to build the FY 27 budget. Yep. Thanks, Vinnie. Just for those that um are maybe watching at home and in the audience. Could you go through the acronyms and just define what those are, and if it’s not clear just a brief explanation stands for excess and

deficiency for those who may listen to the towns, it’s kind of their version of free cash. So at the end of every year, um, For every year we have a budget. I’m just saying it’s $40,000. If at the end of the year, we only spend 30, I’m sorry, 40

million. If at the end of the year, we only spend 39 million, uh, in theory, we have an extra million dollars at the end of the year, that falls to our END account, otherwise known as kind of your savings or your residual balance at the end of

the year. When that happens, uh, there’s state law that says if you hit a certain threshold, you have to return it to the towns, uh, we choose to do it in a, in the form of our budget process and enter it as a revenue line within our budget,

uh, because it’s such a wild card. We really try to use offsets, uh, really capital items to kind of offset that E&D, uh, because E&D can vary so much year over year. You really don’t know how much you’re going to end the year with until practically June, uh, so because of that, you really

want to try to use any savings you have for the prior year, uh, for capital items for kind of one-time expenditures. That’s what we have historically done, I believe the past 3 or 4 years, uh, this year. We are not doing that. We are lowering our overall cost to do business in the cost to the communities.

Does that help? Yeah, just, um, some of the other acronyms that you have listed here as well, um. OOD. ELA, I just, I wanna make sure everybody is on technology, mathematics. OPE is other post-employment benefits. Uh, so when an individual retires who is. When we have an employee who retires, uh, one of the benefits we offer them

is health insurance for them and their, uh, spouse ineligible dependents for the rest of their lives. So that’s a future liability, uh, so we have actuarials come in and say, because you’ve guaranteed this benefit to an employee, uh, you have a liability in the future. Uh, so they really, that really hurts us when it comes to our

bond rating, when it comes to our overall financial picture, uh, so what the best practice is, is to stop putting money away now and pay for those benefits. So when the future comes, you have the money to fund it. Do I have any other acronyms in there? Uh, ELA’s English, English language arts,

ESP is Educational professionals, otherwise known as teaching assistants or paraprofessionals. They get them all I, I think so. Yeah Uh, just without going into it, I would say probably 3 years, off the top of my head. It’s the combination of. Having expenditures left at the year over budgeting and receiving more revenue. Um, so the state

might put out a number right now that says next year, we’re going to give the regional school district a million dollars in chapter 70. They haven’t finalized their budget till later on in the year after we finalize our ours. So maybe when they go to finalize theirs, they come in and say we’re

actually going to give you 1.1 million. So we get an extra $100,000. We can’t use that because we didn’t put it in our budget and it falls to EMD. So there’s two sides of it, it’s the additional revenues you receive, and it’s The lack of expenditures that you spend.

Yeah, at the end of every year, uh, I give a presentation that has the amounts in there, so I say how much we underspent the budget and how much revenues we received over. But that is added to the prior year. before So what I detail out is the additions to the account, not.

The historic going back. To the whole way. Does that make sense? OK. Uh, just one comment, the, the, uh, given oops. Given the, the enormity of uh of that one. Major um rise in the budget of the salaries. I think it’s worth saying. That, um, to the where we haven’t already said

it. That it, it was intentional and intentional strategy to become competitive with, with peer schools in in in our adjoining towns, because otherwise we were gonna experience continuing brain drain. Um And uh So it’s, it, it’s a tough pill to swallow. But it was, it was that or have a continuing deterioration as a

result of not being competitive. Uh Not when you put it in the budget like we are now, if we were to need it right now today to hold a special town meeting and seek your approval to use it if we uh build it into our budget process and it’s approved at town meeting, it’s

your approval to use it. How we say we are. Uh, it’s just the sum at town meeting. We’re asking for a budget of X. Good. OK, so just to go over some of the numbers on a high level, uh, perspective for our tentative budget when you look at all of

our operating and debt for our revenues. Again, this is excluding our town assessments, but now we are including our E&D, uh, you can see a drastic difference in the slide before I was saying we had growth of upwards of 400,000, uh, when you incorporate our END, it brings it down to 91,000, uh,

another reason you really don’t want to rely on END uh to fund your operating budget. Because it is very volatile and can change year by year, uh, something that brings, uh, unneeded stress to the, to the budget process. Uh, in terms of our expenditures year over year, we are our tentative budget is,

uh, seeking an increase of approximately 2.3 million or a growth rate of 5.11%, uh, the Department of Elementary and Secondary education, uh, has regulations on the way a school district, uh, presents and approves their budget. Uh, they have us categorize all our expenditures based on these, uh, DEI chart of accounts and categories, uh, so that’s how

we present the budget. Vote on it, how we historically manage our budget is by location or department, which is more what we look at. Uh, these are both the same charts, just different categorizations. Again, a growth rate of approximately 2.2 million or 5.11%. Um, included in the presentation, I

have a summary of all of our operating expense changes year over year. Uh, you can see that the biggest changes year over year are around our cola. Uh, we have our additional cola from FY 25 because the majority of those contracts weren’t settled till FY 25 after our FY 25 budget process was approved,

uh, so not only is our FY 26 budget, uh, incorporating the FY 26 colas. It also has uh, the additional FY 25 colas that we received above what we budgeted. Uh, so on here we have a lot of moving parts, and I’ve detailed out all of our increases and decreases that make up that 2.2. A million

dollar increase year over year. Uh, that is with the caller, correct. Oh sorry. Excuse me one sec, sorry. Do you mind answering, um, asking your question in the microphone. HWAM just said they couldn’t hear your questions. Just wanna make sure that people at home can hear your questions. Uh, colors cost of living adjustment. Sorry. So it’s

applied to a salary. The following year. Um I was think I was done with that one. Uh, in addition, I have a summary of changes to all our staffing. Uh, this is broken out by building or department, uh, every year we really go through and take a good look at each

one of our buildings and try to adjust our staffing and what our demands are based on what our student needs are. Uh, you can see there’s a lot of movement between buildings and again, that’s based on our student population at the time and what demands we have at each building, uh, year over

year, we really try to be level and keep our FTEs flat for FY 26, we do have a minor increase of a 0.88 FTE, uh, just under a, a, uh, just under one full-time position. Uh, this really can be attributed to a recent move in of a, uh, student that

required a 1 to 1 aid based on their IEP, uh, the school committee saw this, I believe, in October or November when we asked for an additional position. Uh, this is being carried through to FY 26 to meet the demands, uh. Of the current student population That kind of concludes the public

hearing. I can take any more questions. If you have them. Thank you so much. So, um, does anyone else have any questions, comments? You can go up to the mic and ask. No? OK, so that concludes. I’m gonna close the public hearing, number one for our HW Regional School District, fiscal year 26 budget.

Um, should we wait 5 minutes to start? OK, so we’ll take a recess until 7 o’clock to start the regular meeting. All set? OK. Um, I called to order this meeting of the Hamilton One Regional School Committee at 7 o’clock. I invite everyone to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. P. United States s

One nation. God OK. Um, so next up is Citizens’ comments. Um I just want to remind everybody that this meeting is being recorded and live streamed, and that we also have a member, um, attending the meeting on Zoom. Julia Campbell. Um, so any vote we take tonight will be a roll

call vote. So citizens’ comments, um, any citizen wishing to speak before the committee. Can, um, I’d like you to come up to the podium, identify yourself by name and address. Um, you’ll be allowed 3 minutes to present material. Can I have a timer volunteer? Thank you. Um And why don’t we start with some in the room.

Thank you. Hey everyone, um, my name’s Maria Mahart. Um, I live at 14 Chestnut Street. I am a teacher taxpayer, um, in Hamilton when I’m, I work at the Miles River Middle School. Um, and if I’m remembering correctly, it is the newest of the 5 school buildings that we have, um, so it’s in pretty

good shape, um, but I am here just to ask, um, even though I know in education. We all like keep our priorities like this instead of like this, um, because we’re passionate about what we do, um, but I am gonna ask that we make a priority the physical. Structures that our children learn in every day, um,

I know we’re talking about a massive new building, um, that has lots of promise. Um But until that time comes we’ve got some pretty decrepit crumbling buildings that are leaking rain and children are tripping over buckets that are catching rain and um hearing yesterday about dead animals in the wall,

starting to decompose and smell at the high school, so some of the time on learning for the kids is actually time on relocating to a place, um, where they can concentrate a little bit more and really benefit from the teaching and instruction. Um, when that’s possible. I know, as you know,

Eric said earlier that elementary schools are really packed to the gills, so when there’s an issue in one classroom, there’s really no place for The children are the teachers to go, so, um. You know, it seems like when it rains it pours or You know, if it isn’t one thing, it’s two

things, um, and in our case it seems like it’s 10 things all at once and I know that shoring these buildings up and keeping them in good shape, um, is very, very expensive, but Whatever you can do and whatever you think we could do as teachers to help rally some support to Make these buildings better

places for teaching and learning, um. Ready and happy to do it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. Hi. Hi, I’m Linda Mastriani, M A S T R I A N N I and I live at 23 Maple Street. And I also teach at all 3 elementary schools and um I’m

really. Hopeful that we will get this new school, um, the, the students and the teachers are great and we’re doing really good work, but the students deserve to have schools that support and encourage their learning and the teachers need a place that they can work as well and I’m

not looking for The Taj Mahal, but somewhere that is appropriately warm and dry and vermin free would be a great start, um, so, uh, as a taxpayer and as a teacher, I am looking forward to this. Um, I know that there are lots of. Thoughts around neighborhood schools, and I will admit that

my parents and my children and I all went to Cutler school, and we have great memories, really, really great memories. But throughout the years, we’ve had lots of great memories in my family from the South School, which probably never none of you have heard about or the East school or the high school

that was on Union Street, which were all great places until they weren’t, and I think that’s where we are now. We have great students, great families. and we could really use a great building. Thanks. Thank you. Mm, yeah, thank you. Anyone else Some was here before me. Anyone else in the

room want to offer public comment, yeah Nobody on Zoom. OK, so that concludes public comment, our citizens’ comments rather, um, close the Zoom link at 7:05. Leave it open just because we have it, yeah. part Yep OK, uh, next up on the agenda. Are the school committee protocols, um.

I failed to pass them out to anybody, so I will read them. Tonight we are reading school committee protocol number 8. As elected members of the Hamilton-unham Regional School Committee, we, including the superintendent, accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best education

possible. To that end, we hereby commit to the following in the conduct of our business. Number 8 School committee members will vote according to their convictions, we’ll avoid bias and will uphold and support the decisions of the majority of the committee once a decision has been made. Physicians will not be used for personal or partisan gain.

Next up on the agenda is the school committee mission statement, which again, I didn’t hand out to anybody, so I’ll read that as well. Um fair. Um, the Hamilton Modern Regional, uh, school district school committee’s mission is to ensure our schools create graduates with a passion for lifelong learning together with the critical skills needed to

maximize their potential. The Hamilton Moham Regional School Committee will lead and inspire a district that inspires all students to realize their fullest potential and feel a powerful sense of individual and collective belonging. OK. Um, next up on our agenda is, um, a word from our student representative, Whitney Fitzgibbons. Hi everyone, I’m

here tonight to talk about some of the events currently going on within the district. Um, first at the high school, it’s a sort of in between period right now currently, uh, with midterms coming up next week. The environmental club is currently selling wild flower seed packages to raise funds, uh, to support those in

California affected by the wildfires, and there’s also an alumni panel last Tuesday, in which high school alumni came to speak with juniors and seniors about their college or after high school experiences so far. And then for clubs and sports at the high school, the boys and girls basketball teams

have been very consistent this year, and the boys team actually had the opportunity to play a game at the TD Garden last Saturday against Milford, and they won 60 to 42. The swim team has had a successful first few meets, uh, gymnastics won their first meet of the season on Tuesday, and they had

another one today. strong with the girls’ team winning their first race of the season last week, and the cheer team has a competition coming up that will be hosted at the high school on February 8th and eSports is also going strong. As for clubs, uh, student government, Spanish culture club, robotics,

environmental club, and more are meeting frequently with strong participation and finally, DECA is sort of starting to wind down for the year with a state competition being held in the Seaport district in Boston from February 27th to March 1st. Uh, next at the musical they’re currently performing SpongeBob the musical. Um, starting today

into the weekend. There are many clubs running as well, including homework club, uh, GSA, jazz band, art club chorale, National Junior Honor Society and more. There’s also a cross-country intramural. Then it’s a little quieter at the elementary schools, uh, Winthrop, they have a jump rope assembly coming up on the 6th,

and there’s also a Rubik’s Cube club going on from now until the 6th as well. At Cutler they have a jump rope performance also on February 6th. And then lastly Becher is hosting an elementary literacy night on the 28th of January, along with the elementary math night on February 8th. Thank you all,

and I’m happy to answer any questions you all might have. Thank you. Anybody have questions? Great. Thank you so much for that report. It’s always so nice to hear what’s going on in all the schools, and as Dana always says, um, you’re welcome to stay, but we understand you probably have

some stuff to do. Thank you so much. Thank you, Whitney. OK. Next up on the agenda, um, is the consent agenda. Um, just Anyone have anything that they would like held. David, do you make a motion, please? Uh, sure. Uh, I move that the Hamilton Regional School Committee approved the consent to agenda as written in tonight’s, um,

excuse me, meeting agenda. second. Second. to you. Um, any discussion? OK? Uh, we’re gonna do a roll call vote. Have a virtual number, um, we’ll start with Trent. Yes Julia. Yes, Amy is a yes. Yes Yes. OK, and that passes of the 5 numbers present. Thank you so much as usual for donations, so that’s.

Amazing. Next up is new business, um, the first being the state of the buildings report. I’ll jump in here. The opportunity to finally introduce our new, uh, director of Facilities operations, maintenance, and 4000 other things, um, who has been on his toes running since we hired him many months ago.

Um, so I appreciate the time he’s taken to kind of go back through the former report that that was presented last year and updated, and he’s here tonight to go through some of that and answer some questions. Weed him to the basketball team too. Thank you, Eric. Uh, for

the record, my name is Curtis Whiteman, the director of facilities maintenance operations. I also live in town. I’m on, uh. 27 Lee Road in South Hamilton. Um, so a copy of the state of the uh facilities report was provided as part of the agenda, I assume members of the school committee

have had time to look through that. Um, so what I really just wanted to highlight was some of the key issues that were, uh, as part of the executive summary, and then if any questions have come up. We can go through those. Um The big 4.1 is accessibility across the district, um, ADA

non-ambulatory occupants, main entrances aren’t adequate, um, across our elementaries. So whether it’s door width or um ramps. Uh, the switch is required to open the doors. We’re we’re. Fairly noncompliant in, in, uh, in that regard. Mechanical systems, I’m sure all of you are aware of the current plight at the middle school, high school with

the boilers, um, we’re continuing to fight through that. um, their end of life and we’re we’re working on coming up with a solution there. And lack of cooling. And air conditioning across the district. So I know this was a problem over the summer, especially with summer programs. Um, so something that we want to definitely consider. Uh, for

me, one of the biggest things having a background in military safety and security. So, uh, not only do we have a lot of alarm systems in schools that aren’t working. We have blind spots with cameras. And I highly recommend that we reach out and have a study done by a security firm. To come in and

and really look at What we could do better, uh, especially in this climate today’s environment, I think that’s very important. Uh, finally, you heard some of some of the uh members of the, of the community, but, uh roof and structural integrity, so leaking roofs, um, really the

high schools at the end of its life, and we are pursuing options to the MSBA there to get that, uh, as part of the ARP program. Uh, middle school is right behind it. Uh, we unfortunately are not eligible for another couple of years to replace that. And Bucher here in the school, particularly the

flat roof, uh, needs to be replaced as well, so. Uh, that’s really the big 4. Um, I don’t know if there’s any questions on those or anything else that’s in the report that I can help clarify. The committee or whoever. I’m sorry. Um. My understanding, you’re at the very beginning of, of a

study that National Grid is. Is uh sponsoring can, can you give us any insight into What exactly they’ll be doing. So he reached out to me and Eric a couple weeks ago, I believe, and I reached out back to him and we’re playing a little bit

of email tag right now, so. Um, my thought is they’re going to come in and do a full energy audit, um, based off just what is the limited literature in the email. So, um, I’m hoping for some more information on that, a part of the report, a

lot of what I have in here is around building automation, so I’m hoping that they offer some solutions for that. Lighting, HVAC controls, things like that. So Uh, I’m hoping that, that to your issue of there’s no cooling in the schools that um that they’ll also be looking at

the energy. Trade-offs of of using heat pump kind of technologies, but both of the town halls. Uh, doing a complete makeover. I don’t know whether you know that. Um, spending about 1.5 million each. Uh, using actually probably the most expensive of the geothermal kind of heat pumps.

But, um, this, it struck me that there were, that was one of the options that would involve Trading off uh On both sides of the equation. Sure, um, the, the cost versus the utility of of having cooling and and uh effective classroom control. Absolutely. No, I, I agree that’s gonna be part of

it. I, I agree, and I hope it is. I’ll be transparent with Eric and Vinny and in the committee about uh what is presented in Will obviously seek the best solution. That we can, so OK. Thank you. Um, thank you and welcome. We’re excited to have you, um, I, in going through the report, which

is very detailed, um, I didn’t see any mention of the, the water quality report that was done on the district. I don’t know if you’ve Seeing that are incorporated that into your thoughts of recommendations moving forward, I’m not a water expert, so I, I wouldn’t know, um, but we did have water

testing done by the town of Wenham in Hamilton. I also know that we reached out independently and had our own water testing done, so I think Um, I have not reviewed those. Um My recommendation would be to bring in an expert that could tell us what those mean in action that accordingly.

Yeah, I would agree. Sorry, from the water perspective, I think one of the things to note is the towns. Um, have different cycles, so the town of Wenham. Does the Bucher school. They actually do schools, preschools and in their community, so, and they do them on these rotational

basis. So one town does Once every so many years and then the other town does once in different cycle of years. So one’s a 6-year cycle. Uh, and copper. And um Is this inside the school or delivering to the edge of the school the school. And, and to be noted, they take the worst absolute case

possible, so they do it. First thing in the morning before any anything has ran, they take the sample. Um, so they actually did it over the summer here at Bucher. Yeah, but the test for the high school went in the high school Winthrop and Cutler was 2021. So we’re coming back up around on that one.

OK, where, where are those published at, uh, I was unable to find them, uh, way back when we. went ahead and did the, the uh summit. So they, they were done by the towns. So we actually had to reach out to the towns. Curtis reached out to the towns and and. which aren’t really the latest

because one was done in 21 and one was done in 20. So. We were able to get those from the towns. We didn’t. I wasn’t here at the time as the superintendent, so I’m not sure. So back then Uh, since I haven’t seen those, if you’ve looked at them, did any school have, for example, uh, any

trace of lead. So just looking at the reports, it didn’t appear that there were anything outside the, the normal limits. So everything was either at or below. The, my rate of it was that there’s 1.5 parts per billion lead. In Winthrop only all the rest were lead free.

And 1.5 is 1.5 more than the American Academy of Pediatrics. Think it thinks is acceptable. You’re talking about this town reports you’re talking about the town reports. OK. No, I don’t. Yeah, that was Yeah, no, I’m talking about the most recent report which um I think

Vinny. OK. Who, who actually did that? the OK I think it was on what we sent, but So just to clarify, so we have had multiple different. Samplings and testing of the water, the ones that we’ve all seen recently look like they were done in 2024. And so which ones are we, are we talking about?

Those are the independent ones. OK. The ones that everybody received. Mr. Frankel are the independent reports. We’ve recently received through the work of Curtis with the towns, the 2020 and the 2021, uh, Reports that were done by the towns. And they again, they do that for. All of the school buildings, including private

preschools and Um You know, other schools that are in the community, not just, not just the Bucher school or not just the high school, middle school. So it’s it’s a standard practice for the towns we. We, uh, have learned about as we’ve, you know, Curtis has been

digging in trying to figure out ways, uh, I think, I think he was initially trying to figure out how to get some more water bottle filled stations. With filter built into it filtering. Uh, for Just about free from a number of vendors through the through the federal government programs and some state

programs. Um, one of the things you need is this testing that’s done by the towns for lead and copper. Um, so that’s, that’s the reason we started to pursue this, if I correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s correct, yeah, so that was kind of an EPA dictate, I think nationally, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was.

The money ran out on the EPA side. I think there’s a, there’s a number of, uh, smaller groups. smaller grants that are still available, but I think the EPA, if I remember correctly, ran out at the end of 2023, because we got, we did years ago get um At least 1, maybe 2 bottle

fillers, water bottle fillers for the middle school and the high school. Uh, back in the 22 Or maybe it might have been even earlier, but I’m just, you know, we’ve been involved in that program and through Curtis’s work, he’s reached out to Uh, Vicky Masoni and tracked down some of the things with

the With the towns that we were not fully aware of, so he’s been able to help us to nail that down and get that moving in the right direction. It it does does seem to me that there’s a need for a true expert to take a look at the

advisors because apart from the lead, there were some things there that I was, uh, quite surprised that like quite high levels of chloroform. Um, which seemed kind of weird above, above stated standard levels. And there was a couple of other chemicals there that I can barely pronounce. I just some uh. That, um, but the I mean,

we can, I mean, the committee would have to Direct us and figure out how to fund that, but. You know, there, there may be. It may be, uh, available resources at the Department of Health. Cause the Department of Health will do a free assessment, for example, of air quality. Um, I don’t know what

facilities. I’ve not inquired as to what facilities. No, at the, at the state level. We can check. So Any other questions for Curtis? Sorry, this is not public comment time. Um Any other questions about this. So it has Curtis received the the reports that were forwarded to us, OK. Um, so, Curtis, um,

Knowing that nobody hears a a water quality expert. Would you be able to in your next report, um, address. the water quality reports that were forwarded. OK, excellent. Any other questions? No, thank you for the great Um, diligence and detail in here. Appreciate that, really. Good to meet you I think it’s

important to note that Curtis is that standing in front of a tidal wave as he walked in the door, uh, so he’s literally been digging through whole piles of stuff, cleaning stuff out. Trying to organize uh things like plans for the building so that we have them in places that are accessible,

be dry, and, uh, you know, so that that they’re useful and even things like looking for Previous testing that’s been done on anything and really, uh, this is even includes trying to figure out, um, Electricity usage in the buildings, you know. we’re carrying on the electricity coming in the

building. So he’s he’s done a lot of work and I really appreciate having him on the team as a member of the team and look forward to continuing to work on, on all these things with him, so. Thank you, mm. All right. Next up is a vote on school choice. Mm You have an

exhibit a motion? It’s just a motion to either or not accept school choice for the 25, 26 school year. Excuse me, all right, uh, I moved at the Hamilton Wham Regional School. Committee. Vote To approve in the school choice. Except I’m sorry, I vote to accept. school choice, um. school. Second Trent Any discussion?

discussion, OK, oh, sorry, 26 school year I actually went to. But someone was very, very excited to. 26. OK. Thank you. Um, you still suck at that. I get beat every time to be to be to be Um, OK. Thank you for clearing that up. Any discussion on voting school choice? OK, we’ll do a roll

call vote. Start with Trent. Yes. Julia Yes. Yes. And that passes, um, yeah, 5 members present. Thank you. Great. OK, um, the next thing on the agenda is competency, determination for a class of 25 and beyond, Mr. Tracy. Thank you. Um, I’m gonna, I need to do this from here only because I’m connected to the owl, so,

um. Everybody will be able to see it on the presentation, but As you know, and uh our most recent election, the I can see it and I can get the um attachment or the exhibit from the, what’s it called agenda. disconnect from the owl, so we’re OK. The um Last election, the in Massachusetts MCAS.

Requirement for graduation was voted down by the people, um, and that has put, uh, the public school systems in a precarious situation of figuring out how to continue to meet the federal law. Uh, so I want to do a quick overview for you of, uh, what, what has occurred. And realistically,

there’s some new language in the statute, uh, that Talks about competency determinations, and graduation requirements and what was removed as measured by the assessment instruments described in section one, that is all gone, which, which section one talks about, uh, an MCAS type assessment. And now it is switched to what you see in rat on the screen by

satisfactorily completing course work that has been certified by the students district as showing mastery of the skills, competencies, and knowledge contained in the state academic standards and curriculum framework frameworks in the areas measured by the MCAS high school test described in section one, administered in 2023 and in any additional areas determined by the board.

Um Fascinating language. It just really puts the burden on each school district to come up with their own graduation requirement, so there’s still a legal requirement for Uh, graduation requirement, and it’s just not MCAS. Uh, so I just want to be people to understand that their requirements still there. So we talked, uh, several, we’ve had

several meetings with the Department of Education and, uh, they’ve given us a little bit of guidance, um, to kind of kick things off for districts. And then some of the things that they have given us in one of their uh FAQs and through some of the conversations we’ve

had with them in online meetings, um, you have to be aligned with the new new language of the statute that allows the district to demonstrate students have met. Uh, the new requirements, the new requirements are, are they competent and proficient. In order to be a, get a diploma. That unfortunately is going to look very different for every

single school system. So it’s, it’s, uh, we’re pushing from the superintendency to try to say, We need some alignment here because it’ll look different in Lee, Massachusetts or on the Cape, it’ll be, it’s gonna be different. We’re already seeing some of the examples pop up, um, whatever

we decide on has to be approved by the school. Committee Um, it’ll be shared with the students gardens and district stakeholders. We do that with our, with our, um. Handbook at the high school level where which is generally where the graduation requirement comes in, has to be publicly available in

multiple languages. We put everything in. 11 languages now, I think 12 actually, um, so. Not a concern there. We just wanted to review some of the current promotion requirements. Students, um, just to move through. And I’m gonna use the high school as an example, assuming the kids have made it

through all the way to 8th grade, high school, um, becomes kind of a credit collection exercise where uh kids uh must earn at least 5 credits during their freshman year, which, which is, which is really 5 full-time classes, um. Summer school credits can be included. We generally don’t have a lot of kids who go to summer school.

Um, and the same thing as you go into your junior year, you have to earn 10 credits. Um You have to have earned a total of 10 credits during freshman and sophomore years, um, and then a senior, you have to have a total of 17 credits. Um, which gives kids some flexibility.

People always say to me, well, why isn’t 20? Um, because What happens senior year as kids go like this and they spread out and start to take Uh, courses that they’re interested in and courses that they feel like might prepare them for whatever college experience they’re looking for. So those are the current requirements. The credit requirements are

required 24 credits to graduate. So different than the promotion requirements. You only need 5. Uh, each year up until the senior year, a total of 17 to actually move through the years, um, but to graduate, we have um a total of 24 credits that are required. And this is a

combination of full one-year classes, which are one credit, and a combination of, uh, two half-year classes could be one credit as well. Uh, so we have a number of courses at the high school that are, uh, One year and Half year credit, so kids can again assemble those so that they get 24 credits.

If you do the quick math, um, you know, if you, if you look at the 7 period day. Uh, for kids, it could take 7 classes and get Um, credits in each of those and do that all 4 years and end up with many more credits than they actually need. So it gives

them some flexibility in their schedule to do things like internships, which are our graduation, uh, requirements now allow, and then, uh, community service is still on the books, so this really outlines where we’re at. The red is the part that we will remove. Uh, the, I, I left it in here because it’s still current with this graduation

class, um, because they were, they had taken the MCAS, all of our seniors who are uh in alignment to graduate, I passed the MCAS requirements, so not a problem for us this year. There are a number of schools in the, in the, uh, Commonwealth who are wrestling with Kids that have not passed MCAS and they

don’t have competency determination. Uh, requirements in place yet. So we, we don’t have that issue. We’re, we’re actually in a good place to take the time to review this and look at it carefully. I is there any intent to Continue to give the MCAS just to give you some. Uh, normalization data. Yeah, the MCAS doesn’t go away.

I’m gonna get that in one second. Uh, the MCAS doesn’t go away. This is just a slide with the piece that we’re gonna pull out of the current language, um, there may probably also be some additions and to answer your question, Mr. Frankel, here we are, uh, MCAS is still required, so kids in 3rd grade through

10th grade will still take these assessments. Uh, it’s still going to be used by the state for accountability. A little bit worrisome for school districts, uh, because the lack of the graduation requirement takes away the seriousness of the assessment, so now the state’s going to be using this kind of flawed accountability system. Those are my own words.

I will take. note that I said them, I believe they are, it’s a flawed accountability system when you don’t have, um, really the stringent requirements of making it, uh, connected to graduating. So that’s still in play, and that’s an important piece to keep in mind. Uh, students and that who, who

would not be on track for graduation this year would not be eligible to graduate until The districts put something in place. Every community is working on this. Every superintendent meeting I’ve been to has been the buzz. It’s been the buzz on what we’re doing, what they’re doing, uh,

I’ve noticed a number of school districts have said, if you pass, um, 9 and 10, and algebra 1 and geometry, then you’re eligible to graduate. I think we’re gonna look a little bit beyond that, uh, to, to make sure that we have, uh, uh, good competency determination to make sure kids are eligible to

receive the diploma from the community, which brings me to my next slide, which is the plan moving forward. As I said, the 2025 are all set. We’re not worried about them. They will get their diplomas in June. Uh, excuse me, in May this year that I just realized it was moved, um, and then, uh, the

high school principal would do the work with his staff to figure out what makes sense for a competency determination for students in the class of 2026 and beyond. That will be done in mass with that staff. It will come to this committee for discussion and then ultimately the committee will have to

approve some. form of competency determination based on those discussions. Um, quick question. What, what do you do if they pass MCAS but don’t pass your point system. They can’t, they’re not eligible to graduate if they don’t have the 24 credits. So if a kid had 20 credits at the last day of

senior year, they would not be eligible to graduate, correct. Correct, because it’s a combination of both. Um, one of the questions that came up several times was since ICAS is still at play, could a community choose to still use MCAS as a competency determination. The state, uh, has said yes. Um, we’re just concerned about the, the

validity of the assessments moving forward. Um, and then we’ll we’ll continue this work in alignment with the program of studies that the, the school committee usually gets to see right around late June. And those things should all match so that we have it ready for the start of the school year.

And then we’ll do final approval, which will be, which will coincide with the student handbook. I just wanted to give a quick overview. It’s not, there’s nothing for us to dig into yet, but we will at some point. I have a, I have a question. Is there any issue of kind of. turnover of the say,

current. sophomores and juniors that we would have concerns about. In light of, you know, removing this requirement. Or it doesn’t matter cuz they’ll earn credits anyway. You’re talking about kids that might not be eligible to graduate because of the lack of credits. Yeah Yeah Yeah, so, so, so the, the high school really does a

lot of work. It starts now where there are emails already flying out saying if you have a kid in your class who’s not doing well, we need to know, and the guidance counselors start doing individual meetings. There’s a lot of work done on the ground, um, to make sure

kids are ready to graduate, as, as you know, our, our graduation rate is very high, you know, so it’s, it’s not generally an issue. Um, we do have sometimes 1 or 2 kids that do need to take, they may have to take a class in summer school and then they’ll get the diploma at the end of the

summer. Um, uh, some kids stay for another year because They need to or they want to and that’s OK too, so. Thank you. Anyone else have questions? Mm mm, it is. Thank you for that. Um, OK, next on the agenda is town election information, um,

want me to take this? I can do it. Um As we know, the annual town meeting brings also the town elections and uh this information that’s on the agenda is, is for public consumption. So that people understand when things are happening, including the annual town meeting on April 5th, the

annual town election on Thursday, April 10th. Uh, and then, uh, it has a number of, uh, registration, last day to register to vote, uh, dates to get out there to people. Uh, when nomination papers are available, they are available. They were available as of this past Monday. Um, the last day to submit them is February 20th.

Um, Which is, which is, uh, it’s a Thursday and then, um, the last day to object to withdraw is on March 10th. Uh, those library papers are for um any of these positions can be picked up at the town clerk’s offices. The elected bodies that are available across the the towns, uh, select board,

there, there’s a 3-year terms, 2 positions available in Hamilton, Tom Moderator, uh, one year term, uh, is available. Board of assessors, there’s a 3-year term, single seat, planning board, 3-year term, 3 seats, uh, library trustees, there’s a 3 year, 1 seat in the Hamiltony Regional School Committee, 3 year, 3 seats.

That is for Ham. let me one second, I’ll swap to Wenham. See if I can get on their stuff. Um, and the ballot for when will include board of assessors, 3 year term, 1 seat, board of health, 3 year term, 1 seat, select board, 3-year term, 2 seats. Hamilton library board,

that, that’s the single seat I talked about. Uh, it’s a 3-year term, school committee 3 year, 3 year,,,, 33 year terms, uh, planning board 5-year term 1EEP, and then, uh, an interesting planning board 4-year term one seat, and then 2 water commission seats available,,, 13 year, 12-year, 12-year housing authority and 1 3-year housing authority available.

So those are the, the um positions that are open, uh, anybody can grab these either off of our agenda this evening or in any town websites. Thank you. Um, OK. Next up is finance and operations, Vinnie. a budget. A different budget beating the clock very well. Julia. Still there, Julia. Get a feeling of

deja vu with this budget. OK. Yeah. This is my 9th 1. Exactly. Get better at it. So. Up before this time. And Vinnie, you just explain the difference between this and we looked at earlier, the earlier that um For the public hearing was the tentative budget, which was the last budget before this one

that the school committee saw on January 2nd, uh, every school committee meeting pretty much since the budget starts, we update the budget. Uh, pretty much every meeting and incorporate our changes that we worked on. From the prior two weeks. Uh, so this is the update and all the changes that

we’ve gone through since January 2nd. Thank you. Uh, so tonight I’m presenting the superintendent’s updated tentative FY 26 budget recommendation. Uh, so again, I’m just gonna briefly go over the changes from the budget you saw on January 2nd, uh, to where we are today. Uh, and then take any questions. Uh, so like every year, the last thing

we want to do is ask for an override. So our attempt is always to avoid that. Um, so we went through our budget again and tried to reduce every way we could to get that number down, uh, below the threshold. Um. Uh, so some updates tonight again are on both the revenue sides and our expenditure sides.

Uh, so from the tentative budget to today’s updated, uh, we are seeing an increase of approximately $40,000 for our tuition in accounts. Uh, this is a special ed student, uh, that is not a Hamilton Wenham student, uh, they’re a student, uh, a resident from another school district, whether it’s

Ipswich. Um our district. Uh, this usually saves money for the sending district, uh, and generates a revenue source for the receiving district, uh, taking this student in, uh, did not increase, uh, the need for any staff and was a minimal increase, uh, to our supplies and materials, uh, so it really

is, uh, a generating revenue source for the district, uh, so that does lower the overall assessment and the overall tax burden to the community. 3000. In terms of our transportation reimbursement, uh, transportation reimbursement is a calculation based on the prior year amount we spent on transportation, uh, and that is directly related to all students that are transported

above 1.5 miles, if they’re below 1.5 miles, the state does not reimburse you for any of your expenses. Uh, so at the end of every year, we go through a massive, uh, reporting scheme to the state, which includes all of our transportation. expenditures and breaks them out, uh, below

and above that 1.5 miles. Once that’s verified and the state builds their budget, they then reimburse you a percentage of those expenditures. You don’t get all of them back, you only get a percentage back. Uh, that end of year report was a little late this year. Uh, we completed it in the end of

November, uh, beginning of December, uh, and went through basically a three-week verification process, uh, when it came back, we had our final numbers, uh, after I roll it forward for FY 26, it ultimately meant a $46,000 increase, uh, which again directly comes off. Uh, the town assessments as, as it’s an outside, uh, revenue source.

In addition to our increases in revenues, we went through our expenditures and we do have a $5000 reduction to our athletic contracted services. Uh, this relates to the new athletic turf field. Uh, there is netting that is going to be back there that when we first built the budget, uh, we

thought we had a hire someone to take the netting down and store it for the winter, uh, after consultation with the Uh, manufacturer and other school districts, uh, we are, we are able to leave those up, uh, so we don’t need to pay for them

to be taken down or for them to be stored. Uh, so we reduced our budget for $5000 really to the storage of those nets. Uh, and again an attempt to close the gap between where we were in that override threshold, we are reducing our, uh, administrative salary contingencies for any new newly

hired administrators next year by approximately $6000. Uh, earlier this year, I implemented a new, uh, social security, uh, Right, new Social Security, uh, tax liability, so Regional school districts, uh, in many municipalities and governments, uh, don’t contribute to Social Security because we have pensions, we have been contributing to Social Security for our non-pensionable employees since

I got here. Uh, this year, I finally had time to implement a Bencore FICA alternative plan Uh, that means the employee is still contributing into a tax shelter annuity. However, the school district does not have to match those funds, uh, so we feel confident that our FY 26.

I do anticipate it will be more than the 10,000. Uh, however, I’m waiting for a full year to pass to realize all of those savings, uh, as we do have a lot of non-pensionable employees that join us over the summertime. Uh, the state did update our school choice outnumbers. So this would be,

um, students that do reside in Hamilton or Wenham that do not choose to go to our school district, they go to another uh school district, Ipswich, Gloucester, Beverley. Um, we have two less students going out, uh, just like our School Choice Inn, when we receive 5000 per student if we send a

student out, it costs us $5000 per student. So with those two less students going out, we reduced our school. $10,000. Uh, last week I did update you on our retirement savings, uh, I neglected at the time to reduce those retirees’ longevity payments when scrubbing through all of our expenditures, uh, to

fall under that override. I realized that I needed to zero out their longevity, so I zeroed out those 5 people, which reduced our budget by another 11,000. Uh, again, in an attempt to close the gap, uh, we lowered our teacher professional development funds for our tentative budget and

for all, um, prior budgets before this, at least for the past 6 years. The school district has always budgeted $250 per teacher FTE for professional development money. Uh, we reduced that to $150 per FTE, uh, which ultimately $18,000 reduction to our budget. Uh, Stacy Busick, the director of student services, uh, gave

us an updated out of district tuitions projection for FY 26. It contained one less anticipated district student, uh, which ultimately reduced our overall out of districts by $80,000. Uh, last but not least, is a reduction to our health insurance. Uh, I, this is a moving target. I met with NFP, our insurance broker, and Harvard Pilgrim, our insurance

carrier. Uh, we went over our loss ratios and how we were er how we are doing, uh, in terms of the benefits that Harvard Pilgrim is pushing out for our employees, uh, at the moment we are running well, uh, so they notified us to expect a lower than anticipated premium on our insurance rate increase.

Uh, that ultimately meant, $105,000 reduction to our health insurance, which equates to a basically a 1% decrease in our health insurance premium increase every year. So the till now, uh, these are the updates that we’ve made, uh, in the towns both reported to us last night that with these reductions, it does drop us under that override, uh, mark

for now at least. Uh, so just to review the revenues at this point. Uh, we are seeing revenues outside of our assessment coming in at approximately 9.6 million, uh, which is an increase of roughly 216,000 or 2.3% over the prior year, again, excluding the town assessments. Uh, in terms of

our, uh, operating and debt service budget in, in gross form, uh, year over year, we are at this time requesting an increase of 1.9 million, which is a growth rate of 4.08%, um, you can see the third line down on the top has the biggest increase. Uh, this is our teachers category, uh,

obviously, like I said in the, uh, public hearing, uh, it has to do with our new collective bargaining agreements, uh, in those new, uh, cost of living adjustments, uh, that were agreed to, uh, just to point out that is not where all of our teachers reside. This is that DEI category chart that I

was talking about, uh, DESE classifies uh teachers in a certain way. We have about 30 other employees that are covered by the teachers’ collective bargaining agreement that don’t necessarily fall in the teacher’s category. In that category, you can see this 152. FTEs, uh, the. people covered by that category is more like

190, so they are spread out in other categories, uh, so there is more than that 1.5, it’s about that 2.3 million that I mentioned earlier. Uh, and just to point out again that capital and fixed asset improvements is our biggest reduction at $1 million which again is that END offset. Um, this is that same

chart, but based on our site and support program or our school or department. Again, I’ve broken out a summary of all of our changes that 1.9 million that we are asking for. year of a year Uh, and we have here that same chart that we saw earlier, our summary of all of our changes, uh, asking for

an additional 0.88% increase for next year. Uh, so just as a final reminder, uh, this is the last meeting before our vote on February 6th for the final budget, uh, that, that vote does require a supermajority of the whole committee. uh, so at this time, uh, if there aren’t any questions or if there are

any recommendations. If there are no changes anyone is requesting from the quintuple board meeting. Uh, the chances of us bringing this, the numbers you see here into the February 6th meeting. Unless we hear otherwise is probably what we will be requesting in our final budget. Question, what sorry, I’m not familiar with what what constitute a

supermajority. OK, thank you. Um, anyone have questions? Yeah, um, thank you as always, Benny for great, um, presentation, um. FY 26 we’re paying down expenditures with END to get below an override. Um, FY 27, all things being constant without Some unusual windfall, are we expecting to put a

budget in front of the town that would likely constitute a need for an override. Um, that would be a question we put forth to you guys before the budget process starts. Are we gonna Put forth a budget that requires an override or are we going to try to make reductions to fall under it, that we would

ask you that before we even start the budget process next year. What, what are the sizes of reductions that we would have to make to be able to avoid an override. Again, don’t quote me on it because a lot of things can change but you’re on camera. OK, thank you. Some questions. Yeah, what would

that be in teacher headcount, if, if it was that’s a very tough one. It would not be in entire teacher, there wouldn’t be one union or department that doesn’t get hit, it would not be all teachers just for comparison reasons, uh, this happened to us during COVID. We had about a $1.2 million dollar

reduction and at that time, it meant about 20 staff members. 2 minutes. It also hit a lot of other areas that didn’t directly relate to salaries, but That’s just to give you a rough idea of what we’re talking about. Thank you. It’s important to know too that when you’re looking at situations or

times of, of having to cut. Um Remember the salary scales, how they work, you know, you’re the way the union contracts work and the salary scales work, you’re cutting your lowest paid employees. So you end up not gaining a lot, I mean. 56,000, I think we’re at at the lowest step. Um, versus somebody at

the higher step, uh, it’s just the way the system works. So when we start to look at Uh, cuts, that’s those are the, those are the impact points. So there may be Just use two departments and I’m not picking on a department, but if I had, you know, math and science and the lowest paid people teacher

in science that, you know, if we decided the car was making 80,000 and the lowest paid teacher in English making 56, that’s the variation you could see. In cuts, so that’s why Vinny says it’s hard to It’s hard to pin down because you could be looking at secretarial staff who was making 30,000 or

Um, nursing staff that’s making more than twice as much of that, you know, so. It’s, it’s a moving target until you actually get there when you start to look at, OK, what are the, what are the things we want to look at and we would look at as many things as possible that are not.

Uh, salary related, we want to keep. Our teachers and keep them in in place, but There’s only so far you can go in a tiny school district. Well, part of the trade-off in the end becomes facilities, improvement, new facilities. What, uh I haven’t got in my head yet. to make

that trade up, that’s back to the comment yesterday from one of the, the, uh, I think select board members. Is that it’s a bunch of priority choices. And how to make them visible. For example, when, when David, I can’t hear you, I’m sorry. When, when would the of The school actually hit the annual budget.

8 or 9. 28 or 2029, that’s when the first came in. On that would be and And roughly what, what would that be? It depends on how you look at it. So the debt. Schedules work differently for different projects. You can do, um, you can take out debt in a straight payment, which means you’re

making the same payment every year for just use a cycle of 20 years, you can take out a reducing payment that starts out high and drops down over the 20 years. You can also do a um debt schedule where you’re only taking debt. To cover the expenses that you need for that particular year. Uh, which,

which makes it kind of move all over the place, but, uh, it does help in the kind of the initial stages. The initial stages are generally the highest, the first, you know, 10 years are usually the highest, as we probably saw with the middle school middle school school when they built it modeling choices visible to.

To taxpayers, but to us, we, we just, we started, we’ve been working with um John McGrath on the Fin Car and Hamilton a lot. We’ve started to work with Phineas Sprague, who was a Final chair at uh Wyndham. We are waiting for the state to give us our updated reimbursement number. They do

it in January and it’s usually the 2nd or 3rd week in January. We don’t want to move forward with a number that’s not the number in 2 weeks. So we’re trying to nail that number down. um, we’ve also gained incentive 5.76 incentive points on top. of whatever we get for our reimbursement rate. So once we

get that, then they’ll, they go through a, a schedule of reimbursables like what the state qualifies as something they would reimburse the community for, and then they go through and say, right, these are the reimbursables and this is how much square footage gets reimbursed in that calculation.

So we will have that number soon and we plan to continue to work with, um, Both, both towns to to get those things out there to the people, uh, well before we get to town meeting before we’re, we’re hopefully targeting to have something out

as late as it, you know, in the next few weeks just to get, get it out there in public and we’re also going to work on some um tax calculator so people can put their individual properties in and figure out roughly what the impact will be, it really depends on how we choose to finance if, if it

gets approved. And how we choose to finances is really um different. You could, you could say, all right, we want to make it a 30 year note and drag it out, but the problem you do with that is you usually making repairs on the. On the facility before you even finish paying for the original bill. So we,

we generally recommend. We generally recommend 20 years for anything, and I think, you know, that’s, that’s a generally a good way to go, but some sometimes communities will say we would rather stretch it out so that the burden of the taxpayers last, the problem you run into is your interest

payments, uh, start to take off when you do that too, so there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of scenarios to look at with the towns and try to figure out what the best approach would be, whether we go in that direction or it could be anything, even if we’re talking about just, you know, replacing a roof.

There’s those are multi-million dollar jobs and those are debts that that get taken out. Um, over time. Yeah, what concerns me, there’s another big variable, um, is the cost, the cost may be severely impacted by the rebuild in California, labor and materials, I think are gonna be. a lot of.

Because that’s, that is a massive rebuild. Yeah, yeah. Yeah just wanted to jump in to respond in sequence to these parts of the conversation, um, first around. You know, that $2 million and what that looks like. That, you know, to your point. is to make cuts. It’s the job of this

committee to make sure that we don’t ever get there, right? That’s like the most important work that we’re going to do over the next two years, um, is that that. like Um when we’re going to be promulgating information on the the tax cuts. Um, I was surprised last night to learn that. This had already

been run for one cost of a home, and, you know, put up uh online, um, and I think that that’s excellent, if you happen to own a home that’s $789,000 right? Um, I do wonder. calculator to put a mailer out for each home that is going to be impacted by this. This is what the estimate

is going to be. Um Because we do that for other we do that for other we do that for other we do that for other we do that for other then it’s really just about printing the data that would be there, um, and what, what I don’t know because um

John didn’t say it yesterday is if this is like a linear relationship, right? If you’re able to say, well, it’s, you know, $1800. a year for a 689, then it’s just a proportional decrease. My guess is it’s not, otherwise that would be too easy, right? Um, but that means that we have to have some kind

of be able to get people accurate numbers. I think the best way to do that would be and what to expect and I can have that conversation with, with the town. So John has been really good. John’s been on top of it since day one. He’s been really into the numbers. He’s he’s been trying to figure out.

to the scenarios, how, how things should look to the public, how things, you know, He, he basically just keeps putting information out there. So the best source has been John. um. Not 100% accurate because it it changes so much, which is part of the other secondary problem. Somebody goes to the website and sees

the original price of 150 million when it’s currently 143 million. I think the bigger problem is like, how would you know. Go to the website, you know, like I’m on the town, um. right? Um, I try to follow the happenings across the different committees such that I’m here, um. not a not a clue that was

published on the website back in, in April, right? Um, and so I, I, if, you know, because, you know, you have kids at home and and I think that that that the burden of information is really on us to to them, right? Yeah, we can work with the towns. I think the other aspect

of, of building a a proper forward looking view over the next 1015, 20 years, is the, the, the work that’s just been begun by the new facilities director, which is, What To, to the complaint that was made yesterday, what improvements can we and should we make? With and without the new school, how

do we budget for that? How do we plan for it? Because I, I don’t think we have a coherent. Plan yet that that deals with all that and Raises the standard of all for all students and teachers. So what, what process Would you like to see? That would get us that

kind of plan and that kind of budget forward looking look. Again, to Because it’s again, it’s going to be a priority choice for, for the town first of all. And then for this committee, yeah, every, every capital project is, is a priority choice, not only in the district, OK, we’re gonna

do a roof first. Um, but it’s also for the community because those capital. Purchases or expected purchases need to go into town meeting every single time. We can’t just say, I’m going to drop $2 million over here, um, we have to really. Be transparent about that, so it’s, it’s really incumbent on Us to

take the list that we’ve, the new list we’ve generated that Curtis presented tonight and start to aggregate that and then look at what that looks like outside of. Um You know, building or no building, just take that off the table. Where do we go from here? I guess is your question. So that’s part

of the planning that Curtis will be doing over the next probably 6 months. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to see it more like a smorgasbord than rather a la carte menu with, with, with no prices on it and a high priced restaurant, but um. Just so

that That, um That we can give an honest answer to How we how are we going to avoid This, this, um, deterioration issue really affecting and impacting. Learning Uh, absenteeism and all those things. So any other questions about this budget. Are there any questions because this will be what we present.

Last OK. Um, thank you so much, Vinnie. No. You No lift. All right, um But, but thank you again. Next up, our committee reports. Anything from capital financial planning subcommittee. I can report on that. Um, if I can pull up my Minutes from the last meeting. Um We did another look at the FY 26 budget in

great detail. Um And um I was nominated to be on the Subcommittee advisory advisory board. OK. Um, and then we adjourned. Um, do you have a future meeting planned? We do, yeah. There is one on the books. Right before February vacation. OK. Um, policy subcommittee, I will take that one. we’re still

arranging. Meeting time. So I’ll send out an email just to remind everybody. I didn’t see that. OK, um, And Eric, I don’t know, do you wanna attend that next meeting. OK. And negotiations subcommittee, the two negotiations. No, we haven’t been up to anything lately. And the secretary’s

report. I did reach out to Janelle and we were playing a little bit of tag we’re putting a report together, but it’s just not ready. Thank you. Superintendent’s report. Sure, uh, just a couple of quick items. The first one is, you know, whenever the students are here. They always, they always get some of some of my report,

but I, it’s worth repeating. SpongeBob tonight, tomorrow and Saturday, uh, in the middle school, always a fun time to go to uh the, the events at the, the schools, I think, uh. One of the the events I went to last week that was. Interesting was the panel that uh Whitney talked about. It was a Uh, 6.

Uh, former students who came back to speak with seniors about their experience going to college and the interesting thing was there were some kids who were in the states in college with two kids who are in Europe in college. Uh, so they were able to talk a little bit about the differences and

kids were able to ask them questions about You know, OK, what’s this experience like? Where are we heading, you know, and so, uh, that was, that was interesting and then the uh Kind of the big news for all of our high school kids during Martin Luther King week is

always a mid-year exams. So if you can’t find your child who goes to the high school, they’re probably studying, uh, during, during that time. So it’s, it’s a big time, it’s a stressful time for the kids, but it also marks the end of The halfway point of the school year, so we’re, we’re a little

more than a week away from the halfway point of the school year, uh, which is, which is exciting to try and, you know, as you come through this colder weather, get into a little hopefully a little bit warmer weather, um. For the rest of the year. So. That’s all I got.

OK, thank you. And I don’t have anything for the chair’s report, so I’ll move to any topics for future meetings I can. pass along. Just the just the uh the next meeting I’d like to. Of the um The response To Dana’s OK. Um Yeah, I think I Made a note for next meeting. Just more generally speaking, if

everybody could. Maybe think about preparing ideas for, um, procedures to respond to actions of committee members when procedural questions arise. So Kind of similar to your topic. Um, anything else? Um, just asking the new facilities director to respond to. The water quality report. Yeah And because of the enormity of the

expenditures that are going into facilities, I’d love to recommend that he Report to update the pretty much at every Every meeting we have because the clearly it is very, very industrious. Very active and I’m I’m guessing that there’s gonna be Action, new actions, pretty much on a regular basis.

Yeah, you’re you’re looking at 30 years of deterioration and and lack of upkeep that’s now caught up in. You know, no matter what direction we end up going in in April, we still have to deal with the issues that are facing our kids every day in their classrooms. So yeah, you’re right for 4 years

in the uh at the very least in two of the schools and In all the rest, yeah. OK, any other topics for future meetings? Julia, you’re all set. All right, I will take a motion to adjourn. To to adjourn as I think is the word I’m looking for a second. Yep. Second adjourned at 8:09 now, yeah.

Thank you so much. Good to see you. Thanks so much for your hard work on the budget. I can’t wait to vote on it.