He just I think he bring you Bill, you Good evening. I call to order the meeting of the Hamilton Wenham Regional School Committee, um, on Thursday, November 20th, 2025 at 7:01 p.m. Um first up, um, oh, this meeting is being live streamed and recorded on HWCAM. Um, first up on our agenda are citizens comments. Before I give my spiel about citizens’ comments, is there anyone in the room who’s going to be offering a citizen’s comment? Doesn’t look like it. Do we have anyone on Zoom who’s OK. Seeing none, I will spare you all the rules of citizens’ comments, um, and we will go ahead and close the citizen comment portion of the meeting. OK Um next up, I forgot to hand this out, um, here we go. Who wants to talk, um would anyone be willing to read a portion of the school committee protocols? Sure, I would love to. As elected members of the Hamilton Wyndham 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 5, if an individual school committee member receives an email relevant to overall district policy or operations, they will forward it to the full school committee and the superintendent. Thank you Um, and now Julia, if you’re willing, uh, we’ll read a portion of the mission statement. The Hamilton and Wynham Regional 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-Wynham 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. Thank you Um Yeah, I thank you, um, and, and OK, um, so our student representative, um, is, uh, unable to be here this evening, so we will not be getting that report this evening. Um next up is the consent agenda. Does anyone have any items they’d like to hold? I have one. I’d like to hold the minutes from November 6, please. Anybody else? No Julia? I move that the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School Committee approved the consent agenda as presented except for the minutes from November 6th. Seconded by Amy Kumberger, uh, all those in favor. that is unanimous of the six members present and the motion passes. Um, I held the minutes, um, because, uh, one of the speakers at the meeting. It is the final speaker, um, Citizen comment speaker Scott Maddern’s name is spelled incorrectly, um, it’s, I know I didn’t do the overview of Citizens’ comments, but I do always try to ask that citizens, um, state and then spell their names so that we get it correct in the minutes, um, we really do try to do it right, um, but anyway his name is spelled M A D D with D as in dog, E M A D E M A D D. It’s, it’s in the minutes it’s spelled with T’s, but it’s actually D D D E R N. Um. that’s, so that was my reason for holding them. OK. Do we have to make a motion to change the minutes. Um, yes. I move that we change the November 6 minutes from to correct Scott Maddern’s name from Mattern to Maddern. Seconded by Amy Comberger. If there are any questions or further discussion? Um, a lot, but I actually noticed another inconsistency, can you talk into the mic? I can’t hear you. Um, I actually noticed another inconsistency with the minutes, um. I think we incorrectly stated that Amy will be the Miles River liaison, and then I will be the Cutler liaison, but I think those are flip flopped, right? No, I think that’s correct. Is that correct? Oh, why did I write down that I was Miles River then? OK, then I am incorrect. OK. Does that still work for you? It works for me. OK Uh, do we all, I mean, I’m happy to go back to my own notes and see if we all um no, no, I think that’s right if you guys are I think that’s I think that’s right. OK. Um, to You good? Um, I move that we accept the amended consent agenda as presented. I think we are. I actually think we already had emotion and nobody seconded that one so just keep going, um, uh welcome, Jen. We are just, uh, reviewing the minutes which had uh um spelling correction on the name of one of those people who spoke during the, um. right, uh, any further questions? Uh, all those in favor? that is uh 5 in favor or is it a unanimous and uh of the 7 members present and the motion passes. Thank you all. Um OK Next up I think we’re ready to hear from Kevin Murs our uh treasure Oh, that is very small. Good evening, Kevin Mars, district treasurer, so I’m here today, uh, because we’ve issued some bonds that need to be approved by the school committee, uh, if you have a few minutes, I could kind of go over what got us to this point in time. Uh, so as you know, uh, school committee and town meeting will authorize, uh, borrowing for a project, uh, once that’s approved at those levels, then I reach out to our bond council to get a requirements letter, uh, to make sure we’ve done everything properly on the district and at the town level, uh, so we can move forward to today to borrow the funds, so once all that is completed, I get them all the documentation. They approve it, they send me a green light letter which gives us the authority to start spending the money on the projects, uh, so the two projects we have is the Cutler feasibility study and the athletic field project, um, so then at that point, uh, we can start spending the money but we still don’t have the money, so at that point I would go ahead and and borrow on a short term basis on a bond anticipation note, something called a ban or a note, uh, which is short term one year or less, and normally we would b or row uh on on notes for a year or two, so we can kind of narrow down the exact cost of what the project’s gonna cost us, uh, so like with the feasibility study we were getting money from MSBA, so that was reducing, uh, what we’d need and, uh, as you know at the Athletic project there was lots of grant money and money coming in from the towns. So once we had our final project costs, um, then we knew what we could actually go out and bond, which is longer than one year, so a long term borrowing, uh, so then at that point, um, we then prepare a preliminary official statement, which I think you guys got in your packet, uh, that goes out to our rating agency, uh, Standard and Poor’s and uh then Standard and Poor’s we, we set up a rating call with them and so, uh, a month or so ago Vinnie and I were uh were on a call rating call with Standard and Poor’s and uh I will say Vinny did a fantastic job describing the district, the finances of the district, uh, how we stood in fiscal 25 finances that fiscal 26 and 27 moving forward and all of our financial policies and uh and I will say they were very impressed and uh and they, we ended up getting the highest rating, a AAA rating on our bonds, and they stated, uh, Hamiltony and Regional School District, uh, received the highest rating, uh, they stated that the AAA rating reflects the district’s forward looking budget ing practices leading to consistent positive operating results, maintenance of a robust reserve position in the member town’s affluent tax bases as positive credit factors, so, uh, so that that was great news uh because again, uh getting a AAA rating means more people will most likely bid on our bonds and at a lower interest rate, so, uh, so once we had that then our preliminary official statement and rating are made public and sent out, uh, and then there’s the, the bid, um, bids are received and we actually received on Wednesday, November 12th, uh, 11 bids, uh, for the district bonds which I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I’ve never seen that many bids on a bond issue, so so we had a $7.65 million dollar bond issue, uh, and on that day Janie Montgomery Scott LLC was the winning bidder, uh, with a true interest cost of 2.29% with a premium of just over $604,000 so a premium, uh, gets added to the bond by the bidders because they want to create uh a coupon rate that’s marketable in in the market, uh, so again, even though our interest rate is about 2.29%. The coupon rate that you’ll be voting is 5% because that’s what they’re going to sell. They don’t sell coupons of 2.29, uh, so, so it’s 5%, so the differential is the premium they give us and then we use that premium to pay for any of the cost of issuance uh, and then any additional money which was uh still half a million dollars actually goes down to pay down our principal paramount of our bonds, so instead of having uh the what we requested 7.65 million are actual bond that you guys will be approving is 7,190,000 with the rest being a premium to to cover everything we need for our projects, um, so then once that all gets done, bond council, uh, prepares the required votes, which was submitted um and then we come here for the school midi school committee to approve the borrowing and then I will forward all the documentation on to bond council and then on December 11th is the delivery date of the bonds, and that’s when we would get our money, uh, for this borrowing. uh, so I would just ask if there aren’t any other questions that uh you approve for this borrowing with the motion that was prepared by bond council. Thank you for that. um I know that there’s a formal, I know that you just said there’s a formal motion. I’m wondering if it makes sense to do the uh to the motion and then and then once that’s on the table we can potentially have questions and there aren’t any. Do you have the motion? I have the motion. I’m going to read generously. Um, just one question. Should I wear this as making a motion or use the language voted as it should be a motion. OK. Um, I move that we hereby determine in accordance with general law Chapter 70B that the cost of the Cutler Elementary School feasibility study project authorized by Vote of the District school Committee passed on August 18, 2022, being financed with proceeds of a portion of the bonds defined below, together with all of their bonds and notes of the district previously issued to pay costs of these projects, does not exceed the portion of the total cost of the projects that are not being paid by the school facil ities grant, and we hereby approve the issuance of notes and bonds to finance these projects under general law Chapter 70B. Further moved that the sale of the districts $7,190,000 general obligation, municipal purpose loan of 2025 bonds dated December 11, 2025, the bonds to Janny Montgomery Scott LLC at the price of 7 million,757,558 dollars 20 cents, plus accrued interest, if any, is hereby approved and confirmed. The bonds shall be payable on December 1st of the years and in the principal amounts and bear interest at the respective rates as follows. 2026 $1,215 an interest rate of 5%. year 2027 $1,450,000 at an interest rate of 5%. year 2028 $1,520,000 at an interest rate of 5%. year 2029 $1,465,000 at an interest rate of 5%, year 2030. $1,540,000 at an interest rate of 5%. Further move that in connection with the marketing and sale of the bonds, the preparation and distribution of a notice of sale and preliminary official statement dated November 5, 2025, and a final official statement dated November 12, 2025, each in such form as may be approved by the district treasurer, be and hereby are ratified, confirmed, approved, and adopted. Further moved that the district treasurer and the chair of the committee B and hereby are authorized to execute and deliver a continuing disclosure undertaking in compliance with SEC Rule 15, chapter 2-12, in such form as may be approved by bond council to the district, which undertakings shall be incorporated by a reference in the bonds for the benefit of the holders of the bonds from time to time. Further moved that we authorize and direct the district’s treasurer to establish post-issuance federal tax compliance and continuing disclosure procedures in such forms as the district treasurer and bond council deemed sufficient, or if such procedures are currently in place, to review and update said procedures in order to monitor and maintain the tax exempt status of the bonds and to comply with relevant securities laws. Further moved that any certificates or documents relating to the bonds, collectively the documents may be executed in several counterparts, each of which shall be regarded as an original, and all of which shall constitute one and the same document, delivery of an executed counterpart of a signature page to a document by electronic mail in a PDF file or by other electronic transmission shall be as as delivery of a manually executed counterpart signature page to such document. and electronic signatures on any of the documents shall be deemed original signatures for the purposes of the documents and all matters relating thereto, having the same legal effect as original signatures. Further move that each member of the committee, the district secretary, and. the district treasurer be and hereby are authorized to take any and all such actions and execute and deliver such certificates, receipts, or other documents as may be determined by them or any of them to be necessary or convenient to carry into effect the provisions of the foregoing votes. Do we have a second, please. Second seconded by Dan Carr Thank you, Amy, my new record for longest motion. That was the summary version. Um so does anyone have questions first. I, I do, so go ahead. OK. So you said we got approved for an interest rate of basically 2.3%, right? 2.29%. But when you announce the interest rate, you said 5%. Why is there a discrepancy there? Yes, that’s what I was explaining. We received a premium of $604,000. They, they marketed at 5% because that’s what sells in the market. And so the difference between uh the premium they offered, uh, is that that between 2.29 and the 5%. OK. I just wanted to make sure I understood that I was a little, so the 500,000 is 500,000. is that right? that we, the premium received was just over 600,000 600,000 is then basically subtracted from this, the number. Correct, yes. So, so they reduced the par amount of the bonds. We still get the premiums, so we’re still gonna be getting uh like over the, the 7.65 million which we need uh for our purposes. that clarified it’s so confusing, I know, but uh that’s a fair amount of numbers. So, uh, am I? Yeah, yeah, would you mind Um, do other people have questions? Um, my question was, uh, sort of it and maybe this is to Eric what is included? What projects are included? because it it, I heard you say. projects are included in the bond. It’s, it is the feasibility study, the Cutler feasibility study. So when, when that gets authorized. No, it’s also the, the athletic athletic fields I guess that because I, I didn’t want to say that. I thought that’s what you were saying, but I wasn’t sure that it said it in here, did it when she just read this? No, it doesn’t, but it’s, it’s in the official statement and all the like documents because it’s that was my understanding when I first read this that and asked what it meant, um, it that it was Cutler feasibility plus yeah of the form, yeah, yeah, right, but in when she just read that that’s why I was a little bit like I just wanted to, it doesn’t need to be bond council, yeah, because we could be borrowing for 50 projects. Some towns might, um, so it’s not I just wanted to make sure that I understood and that it was done correctly we’re perfectly fine. Yeah, I think it’s good to make that clear to everyone listening as well. Yep, it’s important to note that people are probably saying 7 million. I thought it was $15 million for the project. The, the reality was $15 million was the max we could use that was voted. Uh, we came in about 10 to under. Uh, we added almost 5 million in offsets from local donations CPC funds, etc. um, out of our stabilization fund as well. The first year, which was, uh, last year we, we had a million dollars in the budget that was, that was um included in the budget that was paid, paid by the towns this year was another million in this FY 26 budget which gives us that balance so overall there was slightly over 9 million, um, that was used for the from the from the, the town side if you will, the taxable side, um, because we took out all the, the 4 point. $8 million in offsets and it’s just good for people to know that because people are like, why is it only 7 million? And then the feasibility study is the balance of the feasibility study because we had 1.25 million and we, we were, uh, we received, I think $564,000 in reimbursements from the state so it’s the balance, not the whole 1.25. Thank you Other people have any questions or discussion? Vinny, you look like you may know. I was just gonna add the Cutler feasibility study came in 53,000 also, OK. Um. thank you All right Looks like we’re ready to vote. Um. Yes, all right, all those in favor? Uh. Animus of the seven members present, and the motion passes. um, and I understand we need to do some paperwork right now, is that correct? My pen is unfortunately purple, so I’m gonna need, thank you. It’s um 0 Does it mean I thought I sort of thought it was you. the secretary. All right, so it’s you you’re gonna sign on OK First you on that’s the secretary. Thank you. Oh, that’s for you OK, um, next up, uh, we have uh some information regarding the MCAS. right. I’m gonna take this from the, a quick start just to give some people an overview of uh what happened statewide. There were some interesting anomalies statewide, as you know, MCAS has recently voted down by state of Mass people of the state of Massachusetts as a graduation requirement, so no longer has that cache or that value, um, so not there there were some interesting anomalies that you’ll see that maybe be representative of of the drop of being required as a graduation graduation requirement. This is statewide results 3 through 8 in math and in ELA, um, really Howard are all the same 3% up in ELA and math was, was unchanged from the previous year. Same high school, ELA and math both drops ELA in in high school across the state with 6% points less. than uh 2024, which is one of those anomalies that the state pointed out may be because of the um the loss of MCAS as a requirement. Same with math. Math was down only 3% points and then science laid flat. It didn’t really change much at all. And then from our perspective I just did the grades, uh, 3 through 85 through 8, so in 3 through 8, 63%, that’s up 1% point from last year, 3 through 8s for math up 5% points. We had some good gains in math. We have a new elementary school math program, um that is really showing its it’s metal, if you will, and then in grades 5 through 8 and in science, that’s also up 3% points and what we’ll do tonight is school by school they’ll present each principal will present, uh, the data from their schools. We can certainly ask questions wherever you need to, um, each principal will do the comparative of all students versus students on IEPs, and then I will hand it over to the Buka principal, Mr. Shurston, to take it from here. Alright, thank you. um, so big picture stuff, um, we’ll start there, we’ll talk a little bit about um the the three individual tests ELA, math and science, and then we’ll talk about some steps we’re thinking about for moving forward. Um, so big picture stuff, um, ELA is, um, back on an upswing. We brought in a new curriculum a few years ago, um, and we expect a little bit of uh implementation, uh, dip. Anytime you bring in a new curriculum, um, so we are coming out of that, which is great. Um, even with our new math curriculum, we did have a subtle upswing there. We didn’t have that implement ation dip, which was fantastic. Um, that decreasing achievement gap is on the math side, um, so that achievement gap between all students and students with disabilities um on the math side is decreasing, and we continue to have within each test 5 to 7% of our kids are within 5 points of meeting the standard, um, which is, you know, with one or two questions. Um, so we’ve got a whole bunch of kids that are right there on that cusp. All right, um, digging into the ELA side, um, 7% of our kids are within 5 points, uh, 14% of our kids are within 10 points, um, so really close. uh, we are pulling away from the state average, which is also, which is always nice to see, um, essays continue to be a place that we are struggling with, um, what’s interesting is that when you pull things like mechanics or ideas out um of the essay and do those isolated questions we perform really well, um, but what they’re in context in, in the actual written piece, um it doesn’t come together quite so well. Um, with students with disabilities, the gray line in the middle is the state average of everybody. It’s not the student with disability average. So I put another line down on the bottom, and that’s the state average for students with disabilities. Um, so in terms of comparing apples to apples, us to the state, it’s the green line is us and the line on the bottom, um, is the state. One of the things that has been tricky with CKLA has been scheduling. Um, one of the things that CKLA does is it integrates all the pieces of literacy together, reading, writing, spelling, all of that research supports bringing those things together. The way that we support kids, the way that we write IEPs is around those individual pieces of literacy, um. depending on where those students struggle, but those individual pieces are not always taught at the same time within a 90 or 120 minute literacy block. Um, so one of the things that we are trying to sort out is how do we structure that scheduling piece, um, so that it meshes more with what we’ve got going on in tier one. the tier one stuff is working really well. How do we align better with tier 3 to support those kids. On the we get to math, yeah, on the math side, uh, we got 5% of our kids are within 5 points, 9% within 10 points. Um, one of our huge celebrations was fractions on number lines. Um, every year we sit down, we look at what are the things that we’re struggling with, and every year fractions in the number lines is like top of the list. Um, and this year we had across the board some really awesome just fraction scores in general. Um, for that subcategory within math, we have the highest fraction scores that we’ve had in 5 years. Um, so it was really nice to see that, to see that coming through. Um, we did expect a little bit of that inflammation implementation dip with the new program. We did not have one, which is great. um, and seeing that progress for our students with disabilities, um, and that is the lowest achievement gap there that we have had in the past 3 years, um, and really just teachers are getting more comfortable with the math, um, as we come into this year of this program. On the science side, 6% within 5 points, 11% within 10 points, um, we just started, um, meeting with a group of teachers around looking for um a new science curriculum for next year. We’re kind of picking and choosing from a couple of different things right now, um, and trying to sort of do that same curriculum process that we’ve done for, uh, literacy and mathematics in the last few years on the science front this year. Um the piece about the students with disabilities so this is a really weird graph. Um, it’s all over the place. This is just 5th grade, and then you filter out the kids with disabilities and the number of kids we’re talking about there is really, really small. Um, I put the numbers on the bottom. These are numbers that are not available on the state website because those cohorts are so small. Um, so it’s really hard to pull data from there. Um, I mean, there obviously there’s some huge swings in there. Um I think generally it is, I mean, there was that one year where it was not successful, um, but generally doing OK and I am excited to, um, I’m a part of that group that’s looking at science curricula, um, and trying to bring, um, something more consistent, um, to the, the three buildings. Um, so big picture moving forward, um, one of our, uh, professional development initiatives across the district is that writing piece, um, we’ve done a lot with the science of reading, um, the last few years, and we are shifting into the science of writing and how, how that integrates with the literacy stuff that we are doing. Um, on the math side, we are bringing in some new math intervention tools, um, with our new math curriculum, um, there is, there’s some intervention stuff that referred to as catalyst, um which allow us to target specific skills with kids to support them, um, we talked a little, I talked a little bit about that special education scheduling, um, we’re trying to get that pieces lined up, um, and then again that um new science curriculum. and that’s where we’re headed Thank you, thank you Questions me? I co-taught a course on science curriculum with our biology, science majors, be real careful for unconscious bias because, because it is, particularly when you get into topics like evolution, that’d be real careful. I can see that. All right, thank you Principal of Cutler School, Jennifer Hunt. Hi, good evening, everyone. OK, I just can’t see what slide it is. Um OK, some key insights. and a key highlights for Cutler Elementary School this year. We were, were a um DESE recognize school um school of recognition, Cutler School was one of 55 schools to earn this recognition in the state of Massachusetts, um, we demonstrated progress toward annual accountability targets with an emphasis on improved achievement in ELA and math. um we exceeded all improvement targets for all students, lowest performing students, high needs students, and students with disabilities, with 78% of the Cutler School meeting or exceeding learning targets with an accountability percentile of 70. Um, we had improvements in both, in both growth and achievement in ELA and math, and one thing to note that is that our attendance rate, um, was at 97.6% year to date absenteeism is down overall, so some attributing factors. OK, we can go to the next highlight. So I wanted to highlight, um, special education and in particular in students with disabilities because um when we looked at the growth of our students with disabilities. So low achievement but high growth. We were so blown away by how much growth our students had made. So 11 of our students with disabilities who were low achievement, um, their growth percentage was 63 to 96%, um, that’s an ELA math 5 of our students with disabilities, um, low achievement but high growth, while also the range was 63 to 96%, um, and just to note that our science percentage, um, in student growth performance went up from 32% last year to 49% this year. So clearly we still have some work to do around um that area, but I’m, you know, we are seeing some growth overall. Cutler ELA, all students, as you can see, um, are up 29%. Um, students with disabilities, uh, again meeting or exceeding um targets are up 30% and not meeting expectations is down 10%. So again highlighting how well our students with disabilities have been doing In math, um, we are up 30% with students meeting or exceeding, um, expectations, students with disabilities up 41%, meeting or exceeding, um, expectations and down 19%. So again, we are making really good progress in those areas at Cutler. And in science we are up 13% from last year students meeting or exceeding meeting or exceeding expectations, students with disabilities up 11%, down 16% with not meeting expectations. Um moving forward, like Ben had said, we are in year 4 of our CKLA implementation with a focus on writing PD. Um, last year we did a lot of looking at the MCAT scores in the um item analysis and looking at where we needed to sort of build up our instruction around a lot of the areas, but writing also was a focus at Cutler last year. Um, Eureka Math squared, we’re in year 2 and like Ben had said, it’s going very well Um, the students are coming in with so many skills and knowledge, um, academic language that a lot of the teachers are blown away by how well they’re doing, um, in math this year. Um, and we do have a new intervention tool called the MathC Catalyst Intervention tools. So that has been really helpful, um, in progress monitoring and supporting students maybe in tier 2, instruction but also students who need an opportunity for enrichment. Um, we also have a new progress monitoring assessment system called STARMA, and we’ve already implemented that and we’ll be looking at that data throughout the year. Um, and we are doing a science curriculum review, so we’re all hoping that that review will help, um, sort of inform what we’re gonna do for next steps and looking at science curriculum. And one really great thing that we’re doing, I know we talked about it as part of our school improving plans is we are, um, our special education teachers and our general education teachers are working really closely, really collaboratively, um, with a focus on closing the gap for students with special needs, um, and they do attend our, our PLC meetings as well as our job alike meetings and our data meetings. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions? A lot of questions. I have a question. The improved absenteeism rate is fantastic. What do you attribute to the change in that? Um, I’m, what I’m mostly doing is just contacting parents directly. Um, I’ll send a letter home, and then if it gets to a certain number, I call them in for a meeting because a lot of times those kids, there might be something going on where it’s like almost like a school refusal and they can’t get to school. So more often than not, families need our support to help them with that. That’s great. Thank you. Thanks. John, oh, go ahead. Um, so Ben listed the number of students for Bukker in the students with disabilities, um, are your numbers comparable to his or like just in terms of straight student number or are they lower or higher, and could that be contributing to the differences we’re seeing um, between, uh, students with disabilities at Cutler and students with disabilities at Bucher. I, I would say that they’re similar I don’t know if they’re that much lower or higher. You know, we talked about it. Go ahead. Oh OK. You’re, you’re just saying like the sheer number is not like the percentage is oh I’m oh sorry oh oh I’m sorry, I misunderstood your question. We do have, um, more students with disabilities at Cutler. We house the language-based, um, program, which is students who have dyslexia in language processing disabilities. We have a moderate special education, um, program also. So yes, we do actually in the town of, in the district, Hamilton Wenham Cutler has all of those students who have, um, that dyslexia profile and language-based learning disabilities. and congratulations for one year first year on the job. This is impressive. Thank you so much. I just want to say a tribute all of this to the teachers because they have worked so hard. Um, making this happen with, you know, really putting the kids front and center, what do the kids need and setting high expectations for all kids. So you might hear someone say, I can’t do it. That’s just too hard for me. And the Cutler teachers say, yes, you can. I believe in you. I know you can do it, setting those expectations really high, um, have really helped. OK, thank you, thank you, thank you. Karen Shediac, the Winter principal. and it’s so hard to be the last because we’re all doing the same thing, so I’ll, uh, I’ll try to in enlighten you with some things that might be a little different. Um, a couple of things to highlight, you can read all my statistics on this slide. Um, we did see a slight decrease in the percentage of students meeting and exceeding in ELA, um, but when a couple of things that I will, would like to highlight is that we had 9 students who on this graph that show low achieve ment but high growth and um and then for students with disabilities that high growth was, um, and that was all students with disabilities. Um, we had 19 students who were then were within 5 points of meeting, which means they might have missed two questions. So that’s kind of an important point, and then there were an additional 17 students who were, um, within 6 to 10 points. So we’ve got a whole bunch of kids who are right on that cusp and our focus this year is really going to be pumping those kids up to get them up and over the uh the meeting threshold. um, Ben and Jenny both mentioned it. Writing was the area of weakness at Winthrop also, um, and as Ben mentioned, it really came out in, um, you know, we did grading grammar, we did great in sort of all of the um the easier parts of writing, but when it came to writing essays, that was where we fell down. So we have recognized that as a district weakness and we are working really hard this year with teachers to do professional development on how we can bump up our writing, um, and try to infuse more writing and different writing into our CKLA programs. Um, one thing to notice, um, when we get to the slides is that the gap between grade 4 students with disabilities and all students that were meeting and exceeding actually decreased by 20% over a year keeping in mind though, it’s a different cohort of kids. So um, math, uh, as Ben and Jenny both mentioned was a highlight at Winthrop. Uh, we had an improvement from 47% meeting and exceeding last year to 65%, meeting and exceeding this year with an average student growth percentile of 70%, so that was great, um, and again, 10 students with disabilities were in the low achievement but high growth category, um, a couple of kids with 99% growth, um, and 14 students within Five Points, so one or two questions, and they would have been over that threshold, so that’s what we’re going to work on. Um, and then we also did pretty well in science, and you’ll see that when we get to our science grade slides with an increase from 63% to 71% who were meeting and exceeding, and you’ll see when we get to these slides, students with disabilities not so great. but in science, 40% of our students with disabilities were meeting. So that was an area of strength for our students with disability. Um, the other thing I’d like to highlight is our accountability progress towards improvement targets this year with the exception of achievement in ELA, which was, we got 2 out of the 4 points. We were 3 or 4 points for everything, and the um the achievement and growth in math, we got all 4 points for all 4, indicators and then um our chronic indicate our chronic absenteeism, we also got all of our points for that. So, um, this was really exciting for me to see this year because last year didn’t look quite as good, um, and then you can, do you want to skip on to my other slide there. Um, so students with disabilities, you can see we have, um, significant number of students with disabilities who were not meeting. A couple things to note about Winthrop is that we actually have the most students, um, with disabilities at Winthrop and we house the uh academic skills, um sub-separate program and that program actually really grew a lot last year. We have one grade level that has 6 students in it, which is 10% of the grade level are in this academic skill. So that’s gonna really, I don’t mean to highlight it, but it really does impact our percentages when we’re talking about how students with disabilities are performing, and we are trying to get them up over some humps also. And you can see the achievement in math when up significantly. Our, um, students with disabilities are doing a little bit better in math than they are in ELA, but we still have a lot of work to do. um and our students with disabilities gap uh in math compared to our all students from the state line. We’ve got to work on it. Um, but this new math program is much more concrete and it’s um it’s, I think it’s going to support more kids and these kids now, as Jenny mentioned, they’re coming in with skills that they had from last year. So hopefully, we’re going to see even more improvements next year. And then in science, this is where students with disabilities rocked it because we had 40% who were um meeting and exceeding, so that was a really happy thing for me to see. And just like Ben and Jenny, moving forward, we’re going to be focusing on writing PD, um, the math catalyst for intervention, um, Bucher and went and Cutler both have Title One math interventionist. Winthrop does not. So we really are relying on our teachers to do that tier 2 intervention, um, and the other, uh, piece of this is that our instructional coach has been working very closely with the special ed teachers at Winthrop, so they can use MathCatalyst to support their tier 3 math students and um there’s a lot of excitement and we’re just launching it now, so we’ll see how it all shakes out. Um, we also, we had piloted Starmath last year at Winthrop, um, for two cycles, so this is gonna be our first full year of using the program, um, beginning, middle, and end of the year, and we just did our progress monitoring this week and next week, so we’ll see how, um, what kind of improvements we’ve seen with students already. Um, as Ben mentioned we’re hoping this high quality, um, instructional material science curriculum review goes well and we can find something that everybody is really happy about and start to see our science, um, scores improve and as everybody mentioned having the special ed teachers tightly aligned with the uh classroom teachers supporting students, all working together, really looking at data much more deeply this year, I think it’s going to show us some great improvements. Thank you. Any questions? Questions So this is definitely the biologist in me talking, but the large increase you got in science with students with disabilities. Is that because the science curriculum tends to be more hands-on. Like, you are actually physically manipulating things, and then there are definitely students out there who work better and learn better if it’s like tap. It could be, um, and I think a couple of things contributed to it is science is really engaging. So kids who are engaged are going to be more excited and are gonna try. This we also um had, I think we mentioned this, uh, earlier, but this last year’s Science MCAS had a performance task portion to it, which was a little bit trickier when we were really worried. So the teachers did a really good job, I think, of previewing and preparing kids to do those performance tasks. That’s about all I can say. I don’t really know what the magic was, but I do think it’s because science is fun and engaging for kids, so. 00, I have a question Is anybody else have a question before, um, uh, I just, I, I think you said that Winthrop does not have a math interventionist and the other two schools too, is that because it’s through Title I funding and Winthrop no longer qualifies. We used to be the only one that qualified and now we no longer qualify. OK. Thank you. And then I, one thing that you actually brought up and um uh I I actually think Jen is usually the one that brings it up, so I appreciated you bringing it up just about that we are comparing when we’re looking at these scores or you’re comparing last year’s 4th graders to this year’s 4th graders and then you’re, you’re not you know, it’s not really tracking the growth of the same students. It’s, um, I just think that’s such an important thing I’m glad you said it. It is important I normally credits usually Jen who says just to be clear and to that point too, Dana, is that I have a couple of grade levels with many more students with disabilities in that grade level and then other grade levels that have fewer, so that’s going to have a big impact on how that cohort com um performs right? and yeah I mean and even where you said you have a new pro um additional program come in and so that changes the demographic for that and we’re not looking at that class over time. We’re looking at so that’s just important to keep in mind that’s all. Thank you for. Is there any way to look at I’ll wait until I get the Is there any way to look at it from a historical perspective, so you know, last year’s 3rd graders, did they improve now that they’re 4th graders and um I’d be interested in Open architects and there is a chart in there that does compare cohorts because we bring it up every year. So thank you, Eric for getting that done. And when I did look at it, the numbers are pretty close to how kids are doing with, um, you know, maybe 3 or 4% changes from year to year, but it’s pretty consistent. How that cohort has been performing. OK, so there isn’t a trend upward trend down. It’s, it’s a couple of points. Math, we did see some improvements. ELA, it’s been pretty consistent. All Now do I have the hallelujah, thank you. Hi, good evening everyone. Zack Best, principal at the middle school. Glad to be here tonight. Um, we’ve got a lot to be proud of, uh, at the middle school. I want to start by just sharing that our statewide accountability percentile remains high. We are in the 93rd percentile of all non-high school statewide that’s elementary, middle, any sort of odd configuration between the two, so that’s something that we are and remain proud of. We met or exceeded all improvement targets for all students this year and our chronic absenteeism target, we exceeded for all students and for our lowest performing students for the 3rd year in a row, and that’s something that we’re really proud about. We know that there’s a correlation between attendance and achievement, and we, we can get all of our students, particularly those students that might be struggling into the building and into class, we know that that’s going to contribute to learning. I’ll get into some of the areas, uh, for growth that, that I have highlighted here in the next slides. We can start by looking at ELA. Um, you can see that we had a slight gain in the right direction and that we lost that gain this year. It’s important to remember that this graph is all three grades 67, and 8. So for the purposes of our um data review. I do want to highlight that our eighth grade held steady at 77% proficient or uh meeting or exceeding expectations. That dip we really realized in the 6th and 7th grades. Um, it is important to note that we still significantly outperform the state, but we do want to see that graph going back, uh, in the upward trajectory. And on the right, this is something that uh the schools prior to me uh have been working on and we continue to work on as a school and a district and that is closing that achievement gap with our students with disabilities. In math, we had a growth percentile for 7th grade of 70.8%. That is a significantly high growth percentile for a grade level. So although the dip, which as you can see on the left is still attributable to 6th and 7th grades. Those 7th grade students are making significant growth, so it’s important that we consider achievement and growth as you all were just talking about when we compare cohort to cohort, we know that every cohort has unique attributes, um, that are different than the one before. Our eighth grade students in math improved from 71 to 75% of students meeting or exceeding expectations, and even with that high achievement, they also had a high growth percentile of 63.6%. And although our students with disabilities in math continued to have a gap between themselves and the rest of the students I would point out that their average growth percentile is also really high, so the students are moving in the right direction at a pretty good trajectory. pretty good rate rather And for science, uh for science, we continue to move in the right direction. You can see that, uh, we make steady progress every year, 73% of our students met or exceeded expectations there’s no growth for science because they only take it once in middle school. and if you look at the graph with students with disabilities, there’s a couple of things to note. Number one, our students with disabilities performed on par with all students at state, so that’s something that we want to highlight. Also, it seems rather um wacky of a graph. It goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. I think Mr. Sherston alluded to this earlier when we’re looking at students with disabilities that shrinks our numbers significantly. And then when we look at students with disabilities in a single grade, uh, you’re looking at a difference of, you know, a couple of students can make quite a big jump on the graph. So, you know, I, I tell folks, you know, don’t worry about that because it’s not indicative of a terrible drop off in a, in a year. It’s usually attributable to uh just uh, you know, a change or, you know, difference of 2 or 3 students. So as we think about moving forward, oftentimes when I’m speaking here, we talk about our intervention enrichment structure. This is something that uh we continue to make strides with. We have a structure that gives students access to additional help. All students access to additional help. We’ve had, uh, reading and math intervention in place for some time and just this year we have started an IE class focused on executive functioning, and that’s something that is designed to be uh where students can move in, move out, they need help, they get the help they need. They can move out, move out of that, um, and back into a different IE class, and that’s true for our ELA for our reading, uh, math and executive functioning. I will note we are just starting a new reading intervention program for our students in IE, so we’re excited to track that data and see how those students do. We are in year 2 of our HMHELA implementation we’re we’re increasing the number of units that were piloting, not piloting, uh, teaching, and those units bring with them grade level texts and a lot of scaffolds for a lot of different readers. This is our year where we’re going to do a math curriculum review. We have a different curriculum than the elementary and the high school. Uh, it’s not bad. It’s just good practice to review it, uh, periodically, and some of the things that we are going to consider is whether there is value or it makes sense to extend the elementary curriculum because it exists in the 6 through 8 form as well, or take a look at the high school curriculum and see if it makes sense to sort of start there so that students have a path as they go to high school or perhaps the curriculum we’re using um is fine. Um, one of the areas that our students didn’t quite do as well as a state. Typically we outperform the state in in every category, um, is the expressions and equations category, and so in common planning times our teachers are going to work with our curriculum leader to examine those question types and those skills to make sure that they are prepared for that. We are also working on a science curriculum pilot where pi lo ting two different curriculum, and these curricula are focused on task-based learning activities and that isn’t anticipation of a shift in the middle school MCAS towards more task-based questions. Um, you, you kind of had to remember when the waxing gibbous moon was, and if you couldn’t remember it, you know, you were out of luck. This is really about being presented with some information and then acting as a scientist to solve the problem. So we’re excited that these curricula are um leaning in the same direction as well That’s all I’ve got. Any questions? I wouldn’t expect this at the elementary level, but at the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade level. Do you guys ever go through test taking strategies because there are definite strategies to take multiple choice tests that don’t change like the amount that the student learns, but they use the strategies to like eliminate answers that they know are incorrect, and it improves their performance substantially. Yes, so the good news is the science MMCAS is moving away from that multiple choice format into more of a um sort of how you uh tack the problem and really think through that problem. So I’m excited about that. We don’t stop school and say today is test taking strategy day. Everyone, here’s what we’re going to do. However, teachers do incorporate some things and it’s more from a perspective of, listen, if you’ve got 4 choices and you know, oftentimes it’s work the problem, get your answer and then go back and use some of these strategies to see if your answer makes sense, right? Um, so yes, there is some of that. It’s not necessarily a priority for day to day instruction, but it’s incorporated periodically. Yeah, no, it doesn’t have to be like something that is specifically like taught but incorporated would be nice. I thought you were going to ask me a science question. Uh, no, because I’m waiting to see what the new MCAS looks like. Yes. Yes, we are. Uh, Julie, did you have a question? Yeah, I mean, I guess my broader question is just to Eric. Um and to everybody, like, if MCAS is not a requirement graduation. And maybe I’m just a cynic, but what is the incentive for students to perform very highly on it. If it’s just like our internal mechanism. to monitor them. I mean, for me, I think all of us here are type A, right? But like we, we all want to get straight A’s, but relaxed all the time. I’m just thinking I’m just, I’m just trying to think bigger picture. Like, I think what happens when is MCAS going to go away? What happens when teachers are like, just don’t do it at all or I don’t, I don’t know, like standardized testing might go away. So how are we thinking through How are we thinking through accountability in the future. I, I guess, I know this is the standard measure where we can measure ourselves in Massachusetts and um in our district, but I’m just, I’m kind of thinking broader. Like I’ve been wondering if anyone’s seeing a trend in students sort of saying, who cares? I don’t know, maybe they’re not, but you know, I can answer this for the middle school level or at least in the, the, you know, at Miles River, um, IMCAS has never been a requirement graduation. So ostensibly or or moving on to to the ninth right. So a student could ostensibly come in and go, you know what, I just don’t think I’m gonna uh put, put any effort whatsoever. I’m just gonna sit with my head down and, and, and they, you know, that’s not going to keep them from moving out of the next grade. So we don’t, you know, Mr. Minnigoni can speak a little bit more to the graduation requirement, um, piece, but that’s never been something for us. And I, and I think, you know, our students tend to want to do well, whether it’s, um, you know, a brief quiz one day, a unit test, or, you know, something larger like the MCAS. And for us it’s really not about teaching to the MCAS. The nice thing about the MCAS is it measures the state standards that that we all believe that that students should know and and be able to do so yeah it is a single public facing, um, thing. It is currently how we are, you know, there’s an accountability piece, um, to it as well. So at least from the middle school, we did not, um, hear a lot of, you know, pushback after that, that particular law was was enacted. Can I jump in on that too? You stole my final question, but it was it was going to be my vi not for Zach, but at the end of all of this, it was really the question is why do we continue to focus on MMCAS, so the, the, the, the bigger answer to that is the state does require accountability, so we do have to kind of meet there, jump through their hoops, um, I think the, the better answer for us is we have put together really good systems over the last 4 years that can uh give us a really strong idea where where kids are. The hard part is how does that translate into what the state’s doing, as you heard me say previous meetings that the governor’s office and DESE are in this dynamic push and pull over what the graduation requirement should be, will be, could be, um, and they’ve gone from extremes of going back to something similar to MCAS to try to get that moving forward. The other day I heard them talking about um using end of course assessments which would be fascinating because every course is not the same, so you’re you know, depending on the school and the level, uh, so that would be an interesting, uh, kind of data collection to. uh issue to deal with, um, but I do think, and I feel really good about the work that we currently do with our um all of our data collection, we’ve honed down, um, kind of the rough areas and gotten rid of them over the years how we look at data, how we translate data, um, the interventions that are set up really responsive now, not a year later because MCAS is a year later, you know, basically you don’t get your scores until the fall and kids took their first test back in March, um, so I think we’re a much more dynamic and nimble given the direction that we’re going. The big problem is we’ll be, we will be stuck. answering to whatever accountability measures get set up in the future and they’re looking at things like um aligning with the portrait of the of the graduate that the state just passed, um. but we have don’t have a lot of guidance from that so we’re all kind of waiting, um, and I think, I think Zach hit it hard. Our kids know why they come to school. Our kids do well, so for us it’s really that digging into all those kind of nooks and crannies of where we can help and support them to get even better and gain and in growth and achievement so. and I do wanna say it’s really helpful for us. I mean, because we’re not on the ground every day, so I do, it’s for us a very helpful accountability measure, but I’m, I was just thinking, yeah, like in the future. what else is going to be thrown at us and thrown at you guys and um but it, it is really helpful to sit here and talk through all of these things and to look at the amazing progress. So I didn’t mean to denigrate any of the work that you’ve done, but I’m just asking like that sort of devil’s advocate question, you know the fact that they’re not that cynical cause I could totally see some of my college students being like, what, this doesn’t count to my grade? A, all the way down and leap to go study something else. And that was part of what I was worried about with MCAS no longer being required, is that particularly students that are taking high intensity courses like the APs and the honors are gonna be like, well, this doesn’t count for anything, so why am I spending my time on it? Yeah, and focus on the AP exam. I just think the, the, the speed and the dynamic ability we have to respond now with the systems that we have in place far away the value of an MCAS presentation, but I think it’s important for the public to see kind of where we’re at. Yeah. The hard part with this presentation is, hey, MCAS doesn’t count for anything anymore, so go ahead and do it again, kids, and it was clear that some kids are like, no thanks, doesn’t count, so. Thank you Zach after that very sophisticated high level conversation. I have one just recommendation that’s not nearly is that the um elementary principles on the students with disabilities graph, they put in the statewide students with disabilities line and I think for the public that line is probably helpful for them to see that. um so it’s just a recommendation or a thought that next time I think that little line. Do you know what I’m talking about? Yeah, I just think that was helpful for the public who may not be looking super closely that I thought that line was helpful, so that was again. not on the same high level that we were all talking about, but it’s. Um, it’s pretty. Anybody have anything else? Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Best. And now Principal of high school, Brian Mannigoni. Well, oh Mr. Sherston’s back. Jen, we definitely do test taking strategies at the elementary level around MCAS. It’s a different kind of test, um, so we, we don’t teach to the test, but there is some pretty explicit instruction around how the test is set up, how to navigate what the different tools are around answer masking and all that stuff. So we definitely do that at our level. Yeah, I just, like I wouldn’t try and teach it at the elementary level as test-taking strategies, specifically, but it sounds like you’re incorporating them, which is great. MCAS strategies. Yes, MGIS that test is that assessment looks different than the other kinds of assessments we have. We want kids to know how to use that tool and navigate it the best they can so they can show what they know. All right. Good evening everyone. I’m here to talk about, uh, MCAS, the high school last year, so a couple of things that we’re really proud of at the high school is that we continue to perform well compared to our partner schools, and I can show you that uh a little bit later, um, and I think that’s reflected in our um accountability percentile, um, actually bumped up a little bit this year. Um, couple of statistics below would speak to that. Uh, we did note improved performance for all students in science, and I think that has to do with the fact that we were in our 2nd year of a new curriculum, uh, so you saw a dip in year one and then a recovery in year 2, so that’s the improvement, um we met and exceeded targets for growth, uh, for all students and some of our lowest performing students in ELA and math, and that’ll come up in a little bit here as we look through some of the graphs, uh, but our attendance remains strong. I know we don’t, uh, count attendance uh for MCAS, but it is one of our accountability measures, um, along with graduation rate, that improved. Um, the one thing I want to say about that and it’ll also come up later is, you know, the size of our school, uh, from year to year. um, if we have everybody graduate, it’s awesome. You may have a year where one kid doesn’t graduate and all of a sudden you see a dip in that graduation rate and it does impact your accountability rating. Um, so the small size of our classes, you know, does play a little bit of a role in some of the ups and downs that you might see here. Um, but things that we want to continue to look at, um the gap that’s appears to be widening at times between all students and students with IEPs. Uh, we want to take a close look at that, uh, but also our lowest performing students and high needs students, um, and then there’s a lot of crossover between those two groups and students and IEPs, but we all, we saw a decline in performance, um, an ELA, um, and math as well. So these are things that we want to pay close attention to. Now I think I may have heard a couple of minutes ago that um MMCAS no longer counts Um, so you could look at it a couple of different ways. Yes, students do not need to achieve a minimum score on MCAS in order to receive a high school diploma. There are other things that they will need to do. However, um, I think it’s an important signal for us um as to the experience that our kids are getting in the classroom. Um, I know it’s a 1 or 2 day test that they’re taking, uh, but still, especially when you’re looking at ELA and math, you’re looking at, uh, skills and knowledge acquired over time, um, and so it does let us know what’s going on a little bit. and can uncover some gaps that meet that we may want to attend to. So up here you’re seeing ELA, uh, which traditionally we’ve done very well in, um, and there’s kind of the squiggly line, uh, green line on the left, that’s all students and that’s regular ups and downs over the course of years that you’re going to see naturally, um, and on the right hand side you see uh students with disabilities, um, and the, the gray line is what um. Dana alluded to there, that’s all students across the state, um, as a comparison, uh, but what I would want you to look at though is, you know, how high up all students, uh, the green line versus students on IEPs. OK, that’s the gap that we’re talking about, that persistent gap. But what I do want to point out here, um, is the student growth percentiles, in other words, how kids or cohorts of kids are getting better, I guess, over time. Uh, if you look at all students, the student growth percentile was a 56.1 and our students with disabilities was actually very high at 66, so you might wonder, well, how could their performance go down if they grew better and um student growth percentile is kind of a crazy statistic. Um, it’s looking at groups of kids who scored similarly similar across the entire state, um, so it’s I think they’re, they’re two different statistics to look at growth percentile and um percent meat succeeds, um, clearly we want more of our students on IEPs, um, hitting that meets and exceeds mark, but I think we can also point to the fact that they are growing with respect to these standards, how can we actually accelerate that? What’s the next step for us to take? So that’s ELA Um, when you look at math, uh, you can see pretty consistent performance year over year uh for all students and it does look like a big dip um for the past couple of years in math, but again, I’ll point you to that student growth percentile, um, it’s at 68, which is really high, and even for all students, uh, growth percentile percentile of 60.8 is considered relatively high growth. um the thing I can say about this particular year, I believe there are only maybe 12 students who would fit into the students with disabilities category, so it’s pretty easy to see ups and downs, um. uh, we need to keep that in mind, but at the same time we also need to make sure we’re continually paying attention, uh, to our learners, um. who are in that category to make sure that they’re gaining the really important knowledge and skills that they’re going to need beyond high school. And then in science, uh, that’s the place uh where we saw um an improvement this year for all students, and I think that has to do again with the 2nd year of using a new curriculum in 9th grade biology because that’s the class that’s actually tested, um, but you did see, you know, a dip for our students with disabilities, and they don’t calculate a student growth percentile for high school science because all of a sudden you’re taking an MCAS test for just a specific subject that lasts one year and it’s something that you can’t really follow over time like you can ELA and math. So you just really get um an idea of performance and not growth over time with science. So I think it can also be helpful, especially when we’re talking about, you know, MCAS doesn’t count anymore, you know, what did we see, um, at our partner schools and they, uh, namely, uh, Cape Ann League schools and generally there was a downward trend in ELA, although there were a couple of schools that improved, um, and if you want to jump ahead to math as well. um, we saw somewhat of a general downward trend in math performance this year, um, and it was also similar in science as well. um you know, and the kids were aware that MCAS no longer was a graduation requirement because they asked me, does it count? and I just didn’t answer them. OK? Um. and like Doctor Best spoke to this, when you put something called a test in front of our kids, they generally go after it pretty good, um, were there some kids this past year that kind of looked at it and said, yeah, I think I got something better to do. Yeah, that, um, I would say that probably happened, um. you know, but we didn’t, I don’t think really controlled the story at the time this, uh, you know, the tests were given because, you know, had just come out that now it’s no longer a gra graduation requirement. I think now we’re gonna be able to be in the position to say, hey, look, you know, you should always be doing your best. That’s a habit, uh, for life, you know, anytime that uh something is put in front of you, it should be your best work, you know, and so you have to sit there for a couple of hours and take MCAS and give it your best shot because it’s going to give you an indicator of where you’re at. It gives us an indicator of where you’re at, you know, and I find that our students, you know generally understand that and, and will work to improve. um. so that’s sort, I just, but I wanted to give you that, that high school level context because, you know, every single high school had to go through the same thing. Um, does that mean that every single kid in our school or other schools said, you know, I just don’t care. No, I don’t think that’s the case at all. Um. you know, but it probably did have a bit of an impact, but it, it wasn’t devastating or anything like that, and you may look at some of those schools up there and you, you could see like a huge dip from year to year, but there’s also some very small schools up there where it’s very easy for things to change year over year. So what do we want to do, um, moving forward. um, there’s some long term things and some short-term things that we would like to do. um long term thing or two things that I could point to the first two bullet points up there, um, in terms of improving uh cooperation uh with general education, special education, namely co-teaching. I think that’s a really powerful instructional strategy to use, uh, but it takes a long time to build those partnerships. Uh, you have to build in some common planning time for teachers. They have to really kind of get to understand their roles, uh, what their strengths are in the classroom so that way together they’re providing a really coherent experience for students. uh, but again that takes a long time, um, as does sharing other resources and data to put these systems in place, so I think that we just need to make that, you know, our school level goal for a number of years, um, and I think a couple of short term things we could do would, for example, be monitoring student growth percentile for specific students, um, because that’s pretty easy to do. We have MCAS data. We also use um star testing at the high school in ELA and math for grades 9 and 10, um, so we can keep an eye on kids throughout the year, even we’re not having to wait until early fall to get last year’s data. Um, we can say, oh wow, this kid really here is struggling a little bit, not showing the growth, um that we would hope for and align some resources with students like that. I think it’s also really important short term to do a cohort analysis. of students in a particular grade level, um, because those these year over year comparisons that you saw up here aren’t comparing the same kids, and you’ve already talked about that tonight. um, but we’re able to look back, for example, the 10th graders this year, um, we can look back at their ELA and math tests when they were in 8th grade and see, are there things here that they really struggled with and started to focus the instruction a little bit more on that, uh, but also maybe a longer term thing to do is just look at trends over time. Are there standards that we’re hitting really well and things that maybe were missing a little bit and you know make sure all students um get some attention paid to that. Um, another long term project for us is to really build out our tier one program at the high school, um, you know, it starts with instructional strategies that are in place every single day, um, you know, trying to infuse our inclusive practices across all of our classrooms, um, at all grade levels in common planning time, you know, we’ve really focused on that this year. um, how can we turn common planning time, uh, not just to like, you know, what we’re going to do, but also how we’re going to do it with our students, you know, to make common planning time are actually students the focus of that. How are we, are we going to think about the kid first, um, instead of necessarily the content first and the things that we’re going to cover and the, the instructional materials that we have as well, uh, for example, in math, and also in science, which we’ve recently adopted, you know, how can we continue to build those to make sure uh they support the instruction that we want to see. Um, we have ELA and math support blocks, um, going right now in the high school so that way um we can we use those support blocks um to give extra math an extra ELA to students who we’ve identified through SAR testing or MMCAS testing, um, a little bit of a bump in terms of their English and math skills, but also, you know, maybe for next year could we do the same for science, uh, because it’s one grade level, um, and how could we help prepare uh some of those students to be successful, um, in their, on their biology MCAS test, um, but I think it’s also important to give kids a little bit of a reminder, uh, about the platform that they’re actually gonna take. MCAS on. Um, it sounds kind of ridiculous, but in ELA and math, they took the test in 8th grade and then they’re not taking it again till 10th grade, so I think it’s nice to give them a chance to practice some math MCAS type questions and some ELA MCAS type questions on the actual tool that they’re going to be using because it is a little bit different. It’s just that it’s an entirely different environment, um, you know, and there are some, I, I think really academically valid things at the MCAS asks you to do, you know, for example, in ELA it’ll ask you to read two or three different passages, pull that information together and make some sort of logical conclusion and doing that in a testing situation, I think if you get a little bit of practice for it, a little bit of a feel for it, and some feedback on it, uh, that can help you, um, when the actual test comes up, so it’s kind of a long list of things to do there, but I would put it into two buckets, some longer term projects, um, that are just gonna take a few years to really get things where we want them to be, uh, but also some short term things that we can do now to um sort of target some interventions for our students. Thank you Uh yep, this is more of an overall question. Um, are you seeing gender specific differences at any level? Differences in between boys’ performance and girls’ performance. I would say generally on MCAs, the girls outperform the boys generally. moving beyond MCAS generally if you look at SAT scores, the boys might outperform the girls. So they’re two very different kinds of tests, um, you know, the MCAS is very tied to the curriculum. and when you look at girls’ performance grade-wise, they just, they do better than the boys do, so it’s, I guess not surprising that you would see them do a little bit better on MCASS. So is that something that’s happening at in the 7th. 6th, 7th, and 8th or at the elementary level at all. Like I’m wondering when this difference is starting to appear. one of the things that I keep an eye on is the first time the student has an opportunity to take a leveled course in Hamilton Wyndham is in middle school and that’s 7th grade math. So I, I keep an eye on, are we noticing an imbalance of students that are filtered into or, you know, invited to take that accelerated math and generally we don’t, um, see an imbalance, so that’s a good, um, would be a red flag for me if we started to see an imbalance there. Oh, Um, elementary scores are pretty similar across the genders. OK. Hm. I, I have a question Um Brian, the um and I don’t don’t know whether you know the answer to this, David, can you talk into the microphone? Yes, sorry. There appears to be a much bigger gap between Essex Tech. performance on maths and Hamilton Wyndham. Do you, do you have any insight into why they’d be in which subject you’re talking about in math, in math, OK, and there’s not nearly as big a gap in science. So Essex Tech and Hamilton Wenham, um I mean, that’s, there are 1800 kids there. um they’re in a very different it’s just a very different context, I think. By the time, um, the kids at Essex Tech have taken or yeah, they take their math MA in 10th grade, you know, they’ve had 2 years of something is very different than what we have, you know, ours is very academic focused whereas Essex Tech, you know, they’re half the time they’re doing their academics and half the time their program, so it’s, I think it’s a, it’s a really interesting question to ask. Um, you know, I at their level they may break it out by programs that they’re in and be more concerned about that. We just, we don’t have that information. We just can see sort of overall how kids at Essex Stack are doing. Thank you. Yeah. Right? Anybody else Well, Essexex also a combined school, right? So it would be more a more fair comparison to compare the Hamilton Wenham students that are going to Essex Tech for our current Hamilton Wetham students, but right now you have students from Lynn and Revere, Gloucester, and you’re mixing them all together, um. and as, I mean, we can see just by looking at the scores that a lot of those schools that feed into Essex Tech are not doing as well as Hamilton Wetamar. Thanks Alright. Anybody have anything else? Thank you all so much. Thank you all very much. Very much appreciated. OK, uh. oh. Yeah, oh, I thought he was getting up. OK. Um, so uh, at our last meeting we had um noted that we needed um an uh an additional school committee member to join the policy subcommittee, um um but, uh, and we decided to move it to um, so currently on policy we have Amy and Jan. um so, and they need a third and currently um, the only school committee member that we have who is currently serving on two committees is Jen, um so Jen, you’re out. You can’t be on policy twice. 2 votes if I run that? Um, so, um, just to review our, I, I wrote it down just for myself, make sure everybody makes sure I got it straight. Um, Dana, David and Kristen, Cat is Megan Jan, and Julia I get that correct. Um, so I’m gonna sit back and say, anybody have any thoughts on who would like to be on the policy subcommittee. or who would you like to be on the policy subcommittee, jump in and nominate someone. Yeah. I guess yeah you’re off on this one too. Is it worthwhile for our two new members to talk about what we actually do on the policy subcommittee Sure, we could. We did talk about it a little bit last time, but yeah, can you talk into the mic. Yeah, sorry. Uh, we did talk a little bit about last time, but we could. Do you want to review? Um, so we are the ones that probably have the most influence over what happens at the actual school level. because even though we’re not setting curriculum like we are setting broad policies that are gonna apply to all of our schools. Um, it’s not a heavy lift usually usually depending on what’s going on, be, um but we, I mean we have some interesting talks, conversations, which is nice, and you really get to get in on more of the nitty gritty stuff. When do you usually meet Uh, we’ve been meeting Monday afternoons at 2:30 once a month. Do you mean on Zoom or you mean On Zoom? I mean on Zoom. I could do that. You’d like to? Yeah. I can do it OK. OK. Heard one person a very enthusiastically jumping. this next year I’ll be more free. unless unless another member Can you repeat the meeting time We’ve been meeting on Mondays once a month on Zoom at 2:30. OK, but that can shift a little bit. If I have a standing Monday afternoon meeting at 3. We could adjust if you have interest, yeah. I think because you guys teach at night, both of you? Um, I don’t, but it’s because Monday we don’t have any classes. You don’t have flexible don’t have flexible don’t have flexible schedules are more flexible, and I do teach Wednesday and the occasional Thursday night. Well, if you wanted to do a Christian, I’m sure they’d be flexible to move it. If you, if something you’re interested in. Yeah, we can definitely. I’m, I’m willing. I’m willing to do to have a lawyer, but I policy. Yeah. Um, well then, choose. I don’t want to put you on the spot. Do you want to do it? Fine with me. Like, I’m willing to do it, but I feel similarly if you really. I’ve been on it and then I had to get off of it because I was doing I had my health problems, um. I’d be willing to do something like if you wanted to do it and it was too it would be honest and then I could assume it again if you, if you just wanted to like experiment with it for a few months and see if it works. Sure, I mean, that’s it’s so hard to know when you hadn’t it yeah. OK, then that’s a nice offer. I just personally think you would have more to offer than me, just with your law background. That’s all I’m saying. Let’s hope. OK, then I nominate Kristen Noon for the 3rd member of the policy subcommittee. 2 Uh, I heard a second. I don’t know who seconded it. David, all right, um Christian, would you accept that nomination? Yes, OK, just with the caveat that we’ll just have to talk about backing up the meeting time we’ve, yeah, and that, and I mean that actually goes for all of the subcommittees that sometimes scheduling needs to be re-adjusted. Um OK, um, so we had uh nomination and a 2nd, um and have anything else? Looks like we’re ready to vote. Oh, I would say it’s not every Monday, right? No, it’s not every week. It’s, um, usually once a month unless we’ve got a special project. That was my only um addition. All right, ready? All those in favor? That is unanimous of the member of the 7 members present and uh thank you very much, Kristen, um, for willing to join too, um, subcommittees, um. and yeah, and just. you know that just out of fairness, the whole committee should know like it isn’t expected that Kristen and Jen would have to serve on two committees forever, that at some point, we all need to take turns doing the extra um work um. all right. And and you’re the chair of policy, yeah, so you’ll. send out emails with OK. Oh God, I didn’t hire a secretary report. I first forgot I put prepare secretary report. Yeah, Yeah I can do all Yeah, Yeah I can do all Yeah, right. Next up, the initial budget presentation. Oh I spoke too soon, Eric. I don’t know. out here got to hear it Yes it’s so cute. just happened I on the floor. He’s going to do it from the floor. Someone taped this. I don’t want it. It’s. I got a clicker. It’ll work, it’ll work. Yeah, it works. Vinnie, do you want us to hold questions to the end or ask as we go. Ask as you go. OK. Have a problem breathing and s breathe. Uh, so thank you guys for joining us again tonight. I know, uh, most of you were here last night. A lot of these slides are very similar to last night, so rather than make you guys kind of suffer through the same piece of information. The slides that are pretty much identical to last night. I’m gonna try to go through a little quicker, but of course if you have a question or I’m going too fast, uh, don’t hesitate to stop me. Before I go through the presentation, uh, just like to explain some of the exhibits you have linked on your agendas, so you know how they all work. Uh, the first exhibit is obviously this presentation, uh, if you jump down to your 3rd exhibit, uh, that’s the one that has the cover sheet that has the nice sign on it. This is our full account detail of all 402 of our active accounts. Uh, this is broken out by each of our schools and department s and shows you literally every single line item, how much we budgeted for, how many FTEs are in it, and what that changes year over year, as well as budget to actual data I believe going back, uh, 3 fiscal years. If you jump forward to the 2nd exhibit, uh, it’s kind of looks similar to this, but it has the detail by school in DESI category. This breaks out all 5 of our schools and 7 departments into the 12 different DEI categories. There’s over 40, uh, I’m sorry, there are over 66 differentEI categories broken out in this in that presentation. Um, it breaks out the entire $3.2 million dollar increase year over year, um, literally down to the dollar within those 66 different categories. If anyone is wants to know what makes up that 3.2 million exhibit number 2 is probably the most detailed and can hopefully answer that question for you. If you then go to your 4th exhibit, it’s the summary of all changes that takes um exhibit number 2 in summarizes it onto one sheet. So if there are multiple categories across 12 of our schools or 12 of the DESI categories, it adds them all up into one line and summarizes it for you. So I try to make it um a few different ways of viewing it, cause I understand everyone interprets things different and learns different. So it’s a few different ways, um, in case anyone has a unique way of looking at it and then finally, the fifth exhibit is all of the um staffing transfers across the district. Now on exhibit number 5, I did try to indicate on each of these um changes, whether it was a transfer, whether it was level service or whether it was a new um ask. Overall, we are going up, uh, we are recommending going up 1.3 FTEs. Every single item on here is a transfer between schools, except two of them, and I’m just going to point them out to you. It’s the um special education teacher trade for the psychologists, although it is an even trade FTE wise, it does cost us about $9000 as I had hopefully mentioned last night, um, our new psychologist position, we anticipate is going to cost a little bit more than the special education position. So even though it is an even trade, it does cost an additional $9000 and the other position is under the special ed DAC, the 0.4 4 um, halftime administrator. So everything else listed on there is an even trade-off, both FTE and dollar-wise, it’s just us moving positions from one school to another. So I just wanted to explain all of the exhibits to help you guys uh understand why there’s so many of them. So to get started, um again, I’m gonna kinda try to briefly hit a lot of them that I did last night. Um, everyone knows kind of what we look at when we go to look our bug build our budget, sorry, the biggest thing is our collective bargaining agreements. This is really what drives, uh, our increase year over year with our expenditures and um the other items you see on here. Our difficulties this year, just to highlight the big two is obviously FY 26’s decision to use excess and deficiency funds, uh, to, to avoid an operational override at the 2025 annual town meeting. And then second is how do we adequately fund our maintenance department, uh, in light of the recent results of the school building, uh, votes. So one of the first things we look at is our enrollment shift, uh, Hamilton has gone up a total of 19 students and um hopefully it was 19. I couldn’t see it. Yes, 19, sorry. And Wenham has gone up a total of 18 students, so in total, our resident enrollment has increased by 37 students Uh, when you factor that new weighted enrollment into our three-year average. We’re coming out with a new split between the two towns, 65.51%. Hamilton and 3434.49% Wenham. Uh, that means if we rolled our FY 26 budget into 2017, uh, into 2027, it didn’t change any expenditures whatsoever or any revenue estimates. It would mean that Wenham would still have an increase to their tax assessment by approximately 1. 2 % or roughly 152,000 and the town of Hamilton would see a reduction of the same dollar amount, but for them it would be a reduction of 0.62%. Again, I went over some of this stuff last night. Our revenues are growing at a good rate, excluding anything to do with our excess and deficiency. Uh, we’re seeing growth of $550,000 or roughly 7% year over year, uh, for our expenditure summary, what I have displayed here is what I would consider almost our normal year over year turnover from FY 26 to FY 27. So this would exclude our additional request for maintenance ance So if you take that out, which is an additional ask for FY 27 are normal year over a year turnover would be $2.6 million or roughly 5.67%. So I wanted to try to show you what that would have been like if everything else was held normal. Uh, so we factor in our enrollment shift in our, um, estimate for revenues excluding END and then you factor in that $2.6 million which would have been our normal turnover We’re left with an increase to the net town assessment of just under $2.1 million or 5.64% increase. This would have been, yes, of course, yep. You have END they’re going to operating budget, correct? And isn’t that what you told us very forcibly yesterday that we shouldn’t be doing Can you ask that again? I didn’t quite on this you have END from the 87353. uh going towards the operating budget. Yeah that is Wenham’s assessment. Nothing to do with the EED on this slide right here. Uh, I’ll wait till you get to it then. Yep, so if you exclude the E&D situation and it you kind of took it out of the equation. Our normal turnover would have resulted in these numbers here and overall 5.64%, which would have translated into an additional 873,000 just to Wenham, which they would have sought just under a 7% increase. Hamilton would have saw just about under a 5%. Again, that’s if we didn’t have the END situation and if we didn’t ask for the additional maintenance request. Just want to make sure that’s, that’s clear so you understand where these numbers are coming from. I wanted to display to you what the year would have been if we didn’t have these two unique scenarios. Does that make sense? OK. Um, so I went over this last night. Our major two changes year over year is around our staffing, our biggest item on here obviously is our colas. Uh, most of our bargaining units are at a 3.5% cola for FY 27 that translated into about a million dollars increase to our overall, uh, payroll ultimately for FY 27, uh, we’re recommending a payroll budget of just under $29 million which is up 4.2% when you compare it to FY 26. Our health insurance, uh, is going up just under $600,000 the main two drivers of this are obviously our premium rate increase, uh, that’s adding roughly 477,000, uh, and then our move from the 63% district match to a 65% adds another 122,000. Uh, when you roll this up and compare it to our FY 26 budget, it’s the increase of roughly $600,000. Um, some other major notable things that I did not go over yesterday or at least didn’t, uh, touch upon in, on a slide is our overall transportation. Uh, I’m estimating this is gonna go up about $166,000. Uh, as you know, we recently signed a 10-year agreement to electrify our fleet in that 10-year agreement, there, it obviously lays out what our increase is every year for FY 27, uh, we have a rate lock with a 5.25 % increase. Uh, this breaks down to a $62,000 increase for our special education transportation, another $62,000 increase for our uh general transportation. Uh, we unfortunately did have to add an additional late bus this year. So now there’s one late bus for Hamilton and one late bus for Wenham. That did cost an additional $35,000 and then we do have a small increase related to a few field trips that the district does, uh, fund the transportation for, and a few line items in the athletics budget that we directly pay transportation for it as well. This does not include, uh, the transportation for the athletic department that is split between, um, the district and the participants so that user fee match, uh, that goes towards transportation as well, but that is not included in this number. The only number in here is transportation that the district pays 100% for. Um, the next item is our Essex County retirement contribution. Um, now how this is calculated is Essex County takes all of its members, all of the surrounding communities and adds up all of our payroll and then divides it out percentage-wise. Uh, the Essex County retirement system last year collected $54 million from all of their entities. Of that 54 million, Hamilton Wenham owns roughly 2.5% of that. So our assessment comes out to roughly $1.4 million Uh, last year for the FY 26 budget, the Essex County retirement System increased our appropriation by just under 11%, we will not receive our final number until mid December. Right now I just have a hold in there and I set it equal to that same exact 11%, uh, just assuming that they’re gonna hit us with the same percentage increase as they did last year just to note that was high last year. I’m hoping it is not that high and it’s lower. uh, but nonetheless, that number will be updated, hopefully by the tentative, if not definitely by the final budget, uh, but right now that is just our current estimate. We have included a um payment into our capital stabilization fund for $100,000 to start planning and putting funds away for any future projects that might happen. Um, next is our utilities, just like everyone’s seeing at home, our utilities are increasing. Right now I have a modest increase of around $50,000 and that will cover us across the district. Uh, last is our OPEB contribution, uh, in FY 21, I believe we started our OPEB trust fund and in that document we had unofficially planned to increase that $50,000 every year since inception, we have, we have been able to do that since we started. Uh, we’re adding, we’re recommending to add another $50,000 this year and stay on that path for FY 27. That’ll mean a total contribution into our OPEP of 350,000. Uh, Vinny, I have a question. I have, of course. Oh no, sorry, my questions are I just thought, how did you estimate the 50,000? Is that like trends year over year that you’re seeing percentage increase. Yep. So, a few years ago we met with our I’m sorry, I didn’t know Utilities. OK, sorry, OK, sorry I thought I meant OPEB. sorry. Oh, I guess I could probably ask the same question for OPE, but util I’ve just focused on utilities because I just know they’re increasing so much across the board is that that’s based on like what we did last year and then. It’s based on like a three-year rolling out on our usage and then I multiplied that out by what our rate lock was from last year. Oh, good. OK, thank you. You know, it, it’s not an exact science, but at least over the past 3 years, hopefully, we had a cold year and uh not so cold year. Cold year, not so cold year. Yeah Um, I just want to ask about capital stabilization last year did we? we didn’t last year meaning like this FY26 is, there is no contribution. So this 10 OK, thank you. Right now we are 0, that’s what I wanted. There is funds in there, but we there’s existing funds, but we didn’t contribute in FY 26 or aren’t contributing in FY 26. OK, correct. Um, the only thing is OPEB in FY 26 for approximately 300,000, but uh nothing for capital stabilization. Yep Coming back to utilities. I was looking at the breakdown. It looks like utilities at the high school. You budgeted a little over $11,000 The increase Right. Why, what about the fact that we now have. massively better energy efficient boilers. Do you still think we’ll get that much of an increase? Um again, it is very unpredictable. I, I do anticipate it a little problem with the high school and middle school is we have one year of bad data, uh, for FY 25, we did not use gas to heat our building. We trucked in oil because the boilers were down. So for all of FY205, when we saw those massive increases in utilities, it’s bad data at the high school. So I did Lan kind of an unforeseen at the high school, middle school. OK. with respect to the the boilers, I’m just looking at the additional maintenance requests. There’s no mention of that. Did that come out of the previous year? The replacement of the boilers, the replacement of the boilers. So at the end of FY 25, you authorize us to prepay out of district tuitions, and that was to use those funds to replace the boilers. So we’re using current year operating funds to replace the boilers. And what, what did that end up costing altogether just over a million dollars. The project is not complete. I just got another change order today for 8000. If I had to put a number on it, it’ll probably be a $1,020,000. Thank you. Good so far OK, so, um, I’ve lost my train of thought here So just from those seven items, our salary increases, our health insurance, the transportation, Essex County Kappa stabilization, the utilities increase in OPEB. We just accounted for $2.3 million of the $2.6 million increase. So there is only about $300,000 remaining that I didn’t discuss just by hitting those 7 items. That’s where the majority of our expenditures increase year over year. Um, those seven items cover 86% of the baseline, uh, increase that we’re asking for year over year. But that’s not where we ended because we all know we have an END issue. So in the slide before, I showed you that on a normal turnover, Hamilton would have had roughly a 5% increase when I would have had, uh, roughly 7% in the district would have been at 5.5%. However, because of the decision last year, um, to use roughly $2.1 million in excess and deficiency to balance FY 26’s budget. The way 25 ended, we were only able to add back in approximately 850,000 of that 2.1 million, which leaves us shy, roughly $1.3 million that automatically reduces our revenue and increases the assessment if everything else stays the same. Just to note this number is not certified by the state. It is a low number. I believe it will increase by roughly anywhere from 100 to 150,000 Uh, nonetheless, we will still be short just about $1.1 million in our END fund. Uh, yep. OK. Yep. All right, so uh FY 26, current year we use the $2 million. I’m looking at under total top line there. Uh, the top line would have been our assessment without the END issue. OK, so OK, well, maybe keep going and then I’ll ask my question in a bit, OK. I can I’ll just keep going. Well, I, so I keep going. Let me finish this slide. Say it again. So the top line is where we would have seen that makes more sense to me. So you, cause I was gonna say the END that you’re proposing for this year, I think is 8:30ish, right? So you’re saying it’s 1 1.2 shy I was right, I was looking for the 8:30 number to be there, but really it’s $1.2 million lower than what we put in last year. That makes sense. So you have to add back in that 1.2 million, which takes what would have been our 6% operating budget turnover and makes it 9%. So just that END issue from last year added 3% points to the town assessment. for FY 27 Um, and I think was your question why is our END contribution this year not zero. Is that your question? No, my question is, last night you said that we shouldn’t use END to pay operating. because we run into the situation that we just did. But doesn’t our current budget use that $873,000 to do the operating, it does, and if we use it instead, specifically to pay the capital projects if that would be the committee’s wish, of course, however, you will turn that 9% number into 11 or 12% and this is before our additional maintenance request, because if you now remove that $800,000 you just removed $800,000 of revenue that is given back to the community and taken off our assessment. So if you now remove that revenue source and put it towards a capital item. You ’ ve just increased what we’re asking them for today. Well, we have those giant capital items already, right? The security improvements that there’s like half a million dollars worth of capital improvements. Uh, you’re talking about the security vestibules, yeah, the security vestibules, the sprinklers, all of those if we put our excess and efficiency towards those large capital projects. Instead of towards our general operating budget. Won’t there be less sticker shock percentage wise, next year. but next year FY 28, you mean for the next, not for this year’s budget, but for the year after that because even though we might get less END. we aren’t making up. So yes, it would hit us harder this year, but like, but the capital projects are already in the budget. right? Yes. So the 8030, so it’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul. Well, it’s, it’s not because the capital projects are not gonna be in the budget next year. But they’re in the budget this year, right, but our capital projects don’t cover that entire amount so my question is, is do we save the difference. So, So, um go So, So um go ahead So, the additional maintenance requests. I you guys can change it if you like, but the theory behind that is not a one time thing. We need to permanently enhance our maintenance department and get funding for it. you know, in perpetuity. The way you designed it, it, we would be removing the 500 whatever amount you’re suggesting. forever It would just be one time. And that’s not what you’re, what’s going to happen the following way we’re presenting it here is it’s an attempt to lock to lock in 5, roughly $550,000 not only for 27. but for all future budget cycles to come. I mean, if I may, I just, we’ve gotten feedback over the years from the community. that. certainly not, but in general that they want us to focus on maintenance so that we’re taking excellent care of our schools and that oftentimes the first thing that goes when you is to say, well, do we really need to do that project and I so I guess I’m just. just sort of like saying I understand why it needs like I want a maintenance line in there because right, we need it and we need it to be consistent because I think that’s potentially been a problem in years past, which is why I 100% agree. I just, you had said yesterday not to use END for operating, can I jump in because I think we’re, I, I was asking ideal world I was but I was asking, I was like you and I were asking, I think a similar but subtly different like I asked Eric this a similar question so we understood last year when we were doing this, we went, we understood when we put that 2 million in we understood that it would um, result in exactly this, that you, you know, prevent um you know, you’re not asking for that much money in that one year and so it prevents asking for an override or or potentially just asking for a higher percentage from the towns, but that then the following year you still have that in the budget and so it causes this kind of thing. and I, I think and this isn’t on this slide, but my question had been we have since since I think 2020, we’ve had that, I think it’s 770. annually. um, in END that’s been going year after year and so my question to Eric had been slightly different than yours, but my question was why are we changing that? Like, I understand why we’re keeping the 770 because that’s would add an additional pain point that like we’ve carried that year after year and reducing that down would just make this worse, but I do wonder, I wondered why the 8, is it 8:30 or 870? Um, I think it’s 8 870 I think it, it’s, it’s, know where 8:30. So I was just curious about, like, I assume that that 8:30 is what’s available to us in END. That’s correct. So I wondered about like given that that 770 is an amount of money that we’ve been number that we’ve been sort of just coping with for several years now. Like I just was curious about why why I didn’t just stick with that number and that and and go I understand you’re saying, well this is the maximum we can contribute and it’s $1.2 million short of what we were able to contribute last year, but I don’t know, that makes sense. I mean the thought process that was we could have made it the 7073. It’s a $60,000 difference. Yeah, I just like I was just so used to seeing that area. It’s like, why are we, I think the hard part with END for people to understand is the dramatic swings that can occur. So for instance, if you go back in Vinny’s budget, our revenues without that E & D in there were I think 7 and some change, 7.5%. And then when you add that 1.2 back in, it swings the other way, revenues drop. by almost the same amount, so 15% points difference between putting it in and taking it out, um, is a big deflection point within within the budget, and I, I always tell people using&D is like jacking up your credit cards and trying to pay it off with the minimum every month you just can’t do it. The hard part getting out from underneath $2 million is it’s hard to do all at once, even if you level funded and just said we are level funding and that’s it we still have to figure out how to deal with any of the other increases that just occur like cola and things like that. The, the, the problem you run into is, is do you dump it all down at once, which would jack us up to, uh, I think 3% points more if I, if I remember correctly by just saying let’s just do put no money in as revenue that will increase the request to buy it a little over, I think it’s a hair of a 3%, um, and then you’re fine next year. The other way to do it, to take the pain point down a little bit, as Dana said, is put some of it in there next year drop it down a little bit more so you can ease into it. You just have to commit to that. It’s, it’s hard when you get into a situation where, oh no, we have this huge expense that we can’t cover what do we do? So it’s, it’s yeah, like last year, last year was just one of those like what do we do? Do we, do you want to, you know, do you want? start doing some cuts or not, so END is tough for people to understand as it comes in and out of the budget. I guess my concern is that right now we’re looking at a double digit increase for Wenham and almost a double digit increase from ham for Hamilton. Does it help us more? to have a larger increase this year. so we avoid a double digit increase next year. I would say that is for you guys to decide. Yeah, I think that’s a decision you have to make. How much do you want to cut? because the two towns have clearly stated they can’t afford, well they they they they can’t afford in their current revenue situation, they can’t afford to cover the expense of the school committee without an override. So that’s been clear from both, you know, some of the numbers last night they were short 1.4 million in Hamilton and 1.1 million in when I’m already and we’re, we’re looking at 3.2 million increase. So if we increase it to to the the the add the 8300 00 into that again, then you’re, you’re looking at uh 12 2 % ish roughly um might be something to cut some of that and try to go forward with some of it, you know, and we, these are conversations we have to have over the next 3 months. How, how, how do you want to approach this? Do you want to just, you could just say, you know, we’re going forward with everything and request an override for it all. You could cut some, make adjustments, uh, some numbers will change along the way over the next 3 months because we’ll get more solid numbers from the state or from uh Medicare, uh, for, for retirements and things like that, but it’s not be a big impact that that we’re looking for. So there’s, there’s a number of routes to go. I think that’s just part of all the discussions we’ll have from now through February 12 when we vote a final budget. Yeah, I was just, and that’s what I was kind of getting at. Do we take a big override this year. so that we don’t have one next year or do we take two smaller overrides over the course of or smaller overrides over the course of the next 3 or 4 years depending on how we choose to like spread that pain out. Yep So that is definitely something we would be looking upon you guys to, uh, give us your opinion on which way you would like to go. Uh, the assumption here I made, and maybe I should not have, was that this was already such a large increase. We didn’t want to take it from 9% to 12. Um, so that is why I put in the 8:30 as just a revenue offset, but I just don’t know which is more palatable. Do we do, you know, 12% now and then next year. you know, we only have to do 6% or 5%. and you have to have that discussion within the realm of everything we’ll be looking for and at the ATM, the town meeting, because the the the roof project’s $10 million. That is we’re targeting that to also be in there so that’s a debt exclusion. Do you want to do an override into debt exclusion. That’s a conversation so there’s, there’s a lot of things open wide open right now. The windows are open and we need to shut some so how we do that is just really part of the conversations we’ll have from for the next 3 months. Like I said, the, the only reason I asked about it is because you said that yesterday not to spend END on. I don’t disagree and I would love to taper it down in my opinion, this was just the wrong year to do it with numbers this large um, it was trying to make them as small as possible, but um if everyone thinks that we would be better off uh taking it all in one year. Uh, we can certainly change it. That’s why it’s a preliminary budget. It’s something to think about, yeah, things to think about, yeah. Yeah, I think that’s just definitely things to think about. OK OK, I have a question. So Dana, at the next meeting, we would come back maybe with our recommendations or maybe are you specific recommendations. Cause like tonight I feel like it’s an opportunity to ask questions and we’re not voting on anything and no, no, we’re not voting on anything. We’re just, um, I, that’s a good question about. I mean, that’s what I was going to say at the end of the presentation to kind of you, you have the information, let it soak in for the next 2 weeks and our hope would be, uh, the next meeting we would receive some sort of guidance on what direction. the committee wants us to go with. OK. Because if we don’t get it at the next school committee meeting, that guidance, there’s only one more meeting before the tentative vote, so if possible, it would be great to know by the next meeting, um. but I understand it’s big numbers to wait till the week before that tentative vote and tell you to completely rewrite the budget? Yeah, I mean I of course will if that’s what happens, but if I could avoid it. Yeah, no, that’s that, yeah. OK, so everyone knows where we are now. We had our normal, uh, operating turnover of the 5% we had to add in our END shortfall. We are now at a 9 % increase to the assessment combined. Uh however, as I stated last night, we are asking for an additional $550,000 for these maintenance items that I went over last night. Um, do you want me to go through them or everyone’s comfortable? OK, I’m just gonna fly by it then. Dave, I want to make sure you don’t have a question because I know you didn’t see this yesterday. Do, do you want to ask me anything about it? Feel free to ask me whenever you want though. Just, I was just offering. So thank you. This is this is more of a clarification question. So the new vestibules are not going to incorporate bulletproof glass. Is that what you said last time? not at that price. Correct. That was my question Just wanted to make sure I understood that from. Do we know roughly what it would cost to get bulletproof? Probably 10 times that amount, fully, I mean, if you’re talking about fully, there’s different levels of security glass so you can so so when we were talking about the new building, there, the glass, and I can never remember the name of it. It came out of Sandy Hook. Yeah, Glass maybe something but it’s not bulletproof, it’s just. a little more resistant than a regular pane of glass, so there’s different levels, so it really would it would depend on it, but if you put fully bulletproof in there you, that’s an expense. It’s a, it’s a big expense I remember the cost many years ago doing Wilmington High School. We were looking at it just for the two front doors and it was like $11,000 a door. It was, you know, you know it’s, it’s expensive. Well, and I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter cause it’s just a vestibule. What I was going to say, then there’s other factors because if there’s a fire, you can’t break it. So I mean, you know, so it’s about, it’s, it’s really until we get in this direction on what we’re gonna, what we’re gonna do with these buildings. It’s a, it’s a short term containment solution somebody with a gun wants to get in your building. They are getting in. There are very many all kinds of ways to get in the building with firepower, you know, even without, you can break the glass and go in a side window on every single school, so this is really a day to day containment of people coming into the building so they’re not just waltzing right in and and going we’re be able to stop people, identify them, figure out why they’re there, and then, um, have, have a conversation with them. But based on the statistical probability of any of our schools having a mass casualty shooting event. Is this really where we want to spend our money? I honestly think it’s a good solution for now for the safety of our staff and kids. um, it’s not gonna make it. I just, yeah, it’s just a matter of kid getting kids getting some containment so that people aren’t just walking into a cafeteria full of kids. I’m sorry, but I don’t, I, I think it’s also not I mean, just because of the world we live in, it’s like that’s the only thing that you could just think about, but there are lots of other reasons where you would want to contain people in their, their custody issues like parents coming in for custody issues. There are people that might want to come in and don’t have a weapon, but there’s still. not someone you want roaming around the school, so this is, it is a security that can protect kids it’s not only there for a firearms incident and it’s not my number one choice if I had a choice, I would do several other things, but we, as we saw in the other, the other design of the consolidated building. lockdowns and you know, loca safer locations is there’s a lot more tools on the market, but this is really how do we secure these places right away so that people aren’t just walking in. OK Advance. OK. Um, so after our normal 6% turnover after we factor our END, we’re at the 9%. Then when you layer in our additional request for maintenance for the 550,000. It brings our final preliminary FY 27 operating budget recommendation at an increase of $3.9 million or roughly 10.5% year over year. That’s where we are sitting right now for our operating budget. Just a lightly hit on our debt. Um, we had 3 of our 7 projects roll off in FY 26, uh, ultimately the only two we have, the only 4 we have left, uh, the, the only 4 we have left is the Cutler roof in summer 2013. Our Buker and Winthrop boilers, our new Cutler feasibility and new athletic turf bomb that, uh, Kevin came in this uh earlier and presented on. So when you, uh, wrap together, our operating budget and our debt, our total, um, assessment to Hamilton right now is an increase of 2.4 million or roughly 9.6%, uh, for Wenham, it’s 1.5 million or roughly 11.6, and as the district as a total, uh, it’s an assessment increase of $4 million or roughly 10.32%. So that wraps up my original presentation. I did add one minor slide just to show you guys a little bit more, uh. about the budget. Um, so when you look at our FY 27 operating budget right now as it stands, what we just presented our total salaries district-wide, all departments comes up to $28.7 million. Just salaries alone represent 58% of our total operating budget for 27. factor in our health insurance, it’s another 4.8 million and another 10% of our total budget. If you then add in all of our other benefits that we offer our 403b plans. Our other insurances are Essex County Appropriation. It’s another 5%. So just in personnel alone. We’ve already hit 72% of our total operating budget. Um, this is obviously the biggest bucket in our in the total operating budget. I just went a little bit further and tried to break down a couple of our bigger items, add in out of district tuitions, you’re at another 10%. So right now we’re sitting at 82% and we’ve only talked about two things really, our staff and our out of district tuitions. Um, one more step is our required transportation because we’re a regional school district. Our total’s 2.5 million. You’re at another 5%. Uh, we are quickly approaching 90% once you factor in our custodian and contracted services, another 3%, are utilities another 2%. Um, right now, in my opinion, there’s really nothing much left in the budget. All of these numbers you have presented here are not to say final, but the salaries, all those colas are agreed upon. Those numbers are final. You’re really not changing the adjustment year over year. Our health insurance, that’s really told to us by Harvard Pilgrim. Yes, there’s a little bit of negotiation, but there’s really not a lot of room for negotiation. It’s really what they tell us. Um, and that goes with all of our other benefits too, our Maya, um, property liability insurance. They’re really just telling us what they’re charging us year over year. Um, our tuitions, yes, we could adjust that a little bit, but that would take a lot more investment. We would have to invest in more staffing, we’d have to invest in our facilities in order to keep those kids in house and bring that down so although we might be able to bring tuitions down, it’s probably not going to happen in one year and you’re probably gonna bring up your salaries in order to do that. Um, so that’s kind of locked. Um, our transportation is pretty much locked. We know what our rate is, it’s not gonna change much. Um, yes, we can adjust our custodian supplies. We did ask for $550,000 additional dollars that is included in the number. Um, so yes, maybe you could adjust some there. Your utilities, there’s no adjusting there. Um, so what we have left is really just 1% of a few things, athletics takes up another 1% are technology devices and our software take up another 1%, uh, Capital OPEB and stabilization is another one. Right now, the only thing left is a lot of little buckets that account for 4% of your budget. So when I go and look at our budget, if we’re really trying to lower things and we’re avoiding staff, the only way to go is that 4%, which only leaves basically $2 million to adjust, and that $2 million is your paper, your supplies, uh, some of it’s your SRO, some of it’s your aspen software, the financial system for our office budget sense, a lot of those items you’re not taking away either. um So I just made this to try to um show you how our budget breaks down and do you have any more questions? Thank you. Yeah, that was good. Not nice, but. It’s very helpful. It’s helpful to see what’s non-negotiable, like fixed. What’s fixed. Um-hum. Well, it’s fixed unless we fire people. We do that Well of course that. Like, everything’s fixed unless we. Well, right. I mean, that’s right I actually have a question on the detailed budget. Um, under all the professional development categories that every school there’s an increase in cola. uh FY 27 cola base, but there’s also an increase under teachers, so why are the, what’s different about those two that we’re having an increase for professional development that’s not like is that separate from the cola increases for the teachers? No, so when you have your teacher’s contract, um, I’m using round numbers. There’s 190 teachers under that contract. Some of them are nurses, some of them are instructional coaches. Your nurse doesn’t fall under your DEE teachers category, uh, for DESE, the teachers category is more your grade school teachers, you know, you’re 1 through 5 and your subject matter teachers at the secondary level, your math science. Uh, once you get into instructional coaches or nurses, that moves out into other DEI categories. So under professional development, uh, the only staff members that fall under there are our 3 uh. elementary instructional coaches, is it 2 or 3? 23, sorry, I had it right. I knew I had it right. Sorry. Our 3 instructional coaches, uh, and then at the administrative level, uh, it’s Jen Clifford, part of our, um, professional development coordinator. Those are the only staff members who actually fall under the professional development DESI category. Did that answer your question That does. My other question. was I’m sorry, as Operation and maintenance. And any in particular, at the regional high school it looks like the change from high school custodian to athletic complex subfloater maintenance floater base is listed twice. So you have two different things happening here. um, so how I break this down is really over the 1113 years of people asking me what the difference is. I’ve always tried to categorize them different. So you have your base with somebody and you have your stipends. Uh, so the theory here is, is we’re taking a day person. and moving them into a different facility which now moves them on the collective bargaining agreement into a different area so that increases their base because their hourly rate changes. But then in addition to that, we’re thinking they’re going to be second shift, which then adds a stipend to them for their shift differential. I separated in two different ways so people can see, you know, if you apply a cola to a base, it might be one number, but if you apply it to your stipends, it, it can be a completely different dollar amount because I, I separate the two. That’s, that’s why it’s really listed two different ways. I certainly could have just added them together and said that’s our difference, but I just I like I said, it looked to me that maybe it was listed twice and I wasn’t sure. Yeah, so the 11,000 is because of their, uh, base change in hourly rates and now we’re categorizing them different and then the bottom number is their shift differential, so. that’s why it’s just that uh my last question was on special education because we have a 20 other under teen services, uh, we have $24,825 for contracted services, but we just hired a psychologist. Well, that psychologist take over that those duties Um, can you just tell me again where you’re looking? It’s under special education. Yep. under other teaching services. Oh, the therapeutical contract because we just hired a psychologist and so we saw that increase in another category. Um, will the psychologist be taking over those duties. So unfortunately our psychologists are not trained in the younger age, and we have to contract out services for our younger children. We are working on getting them trained at the moment, but But right now they’re not. Cause right now they are not. OK. Um, I have a question for Eric Um, a few months ago, the committee assigned um the task of working out what the cost would be. to um implement to ashray 241 at all the schools. And it was meant to be ready in time for budget. consideration. I’m just wondering where that is. As far as I know, the, in talking to Curtis, he wasn’t able to do that because he wasn’t able to get consistent pricing. so we couldn’t say this is the exact price for this. This was the exact price for that. Um, but I can circle back to him and see where, where he, he went with that the last document that we had was, I think the one you had with they were very high level estimates of what it would cost roughly the what was the study, the uh it was a B2B study, the one that, uh, you had requested. Oh yeah, the, the one that the um B2V. Yep. consultants put together. That was, that was the last thing we had which ran between 5 and $7 million per school. I think when, when we looked at that, depending on which direction you went. Yeah, that, that wasn’t specific to Ash Ray 241. That was more optimization. of energy use and so forth. Yeah. Yeah, it would be handy to, to get, get more detail on what he found. Sure, I’ll circle back to him. Thank you. Only because you brought up some of that testing, that additional maintenance request does include, uh, funds for water testing enhancement across all five schools. Oh, good, great, thank you. Does it also include replacing the lead pipes in the schools that we had things that tested positive for lead. I am not aware that we have lead pipes. There might be, we had a couple of water fountains test positive for lead. It does include replacement of the ones that. are. were triggered to have. That was, that was my question. But we’re trying to replace those right now. um. OK. Yeah, that’s in process. Not necessarily lead Correct. It’s, it’s not necessarily lead pipes. It could be the solder it’s so, you know, we’ve asked what, what we, what we did was did the testing. We’ll replace the fixtures, which is part of our process, if you will, and then do the testing again and if it comes up again then we have to go deeper to figure out where the what the source is, but we feel like we’ll, we’ll be able to cover our bases with the changing of the the actual units themselves, which he’s almost done. He’s trying to get, get one of them to fit correctly, but he’s almost done. I had a question about um the revenue slide. It’s number 10. Um just a couple of things out of curiosity. I know we’ve all been talking about Eric’s recent memo about the chapter 70 base aid and the challenges with reasonable transportation because I’m looking at this and it looks like our revenue is going up 7.4, which is great, but the expenses are going up 10.3%. So I’m wondering if the chapter 70 and the transportation aid were funded at the levels that we would better like to see them at, how far would that go to closing some of this gap? between revenue and expenses. If we, I mean, I know, I know, I know we don’t know the nuts and bolts of those formulas, but I’m just sort of curious. It’s hard to say because the when I spoke about the kind of the, the regional penalty, if you will, uh, especially for two communities that are perceived to be wealthy. The um the first figures that come out are what’s your equalized housing value and in Wenham, I think the average, uh, equalized housing value in one of them is slightly over a million dollars and in Hamilton is 846,000, so we’re high there and then they go in and say, OK, what is your average salary in each of the communities, so they do salary study they add that in those two figures alone can throw us off and then because we’re so small, we don’t see a lot of L’s, you know, we see between 6 and 15 students who are uh who whose English is not a second language, um, we, our, our, uh, low income kids are again limited in in scope across the district so you don’t see a a big uh jump from there. So those, those factors alone out of the other, I don’t know this 20 something components I think, um, really keep it, keep it down, which is one of the reasons we’re trying to push it to be, you know, even if you get a million dollars or $2 million more, it makes a huge difference. Um, we were fortunate to gain a little bit of extra at the end of the year, the uh statehouse. divvied up what they called the millionaire’s tax, if you remember that was in May and June, they wrestled with that from April through June, and we got a little bit of an increase at the end of the year, which is, which is what we’re seeing here, um, because generally we don’t see a $250,000 increase in our, our Chapter 70. It’s, it’s, it’s generally 100,000, 150,000, 160,000, it doesn’t, um, jump up at like we’re seeing here. Is, is there any other like realistic opportunity for revenue growth of the categories on this slide, or is this pretty much this is pretty much it. Just for my own curiosity, like, because I, you know I mean, we are relooking at our special ed tuition in, um, but that’s, you know. only be around $40,000. Yeah, when you, you can, you can look at something that’s a good example, special ed tuition, and you could say, OK, we’re going to have, we have 4 seats available on our castle program and reach out to local schools and say, OK, we have 4 seats available for these grade levels. in contract with schools to say, OK, we’ll take on your child who might be 1 or 2 kids in a program with now they’ll come and be 67 or 8 in the program and that that might be a way to gain some revenues, but you also inherently adopt expenses as well. We’ve we’ve had an issue in the past where we’ve taken a student and fortunately in the contract we we wrote that anything more that Sudanese, the school’s responsible for, so, um, that’s generally how you. how you deal with it. There are other things like the, the circuit breaker offset that, that is dependent on special ed students succeeding 45,000 is 47,000 doesn’t kick in until we pay that much money on on kids and so. because we’re small we’re we’re limited. That’s, that’s a, a, a real difficulty. People say, oh, why don’t you increase the rates of preschool if I increase the rates of preschool to $200 a day, I still can’t cover the expenses of just preschool in the district, so it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a interesting um kind of catch 22, if you will, where because of our size we’re limited in a lot of ways. We’ve we’ve looked at, um, rentals where where we’ll be bringing forward in a couple of meetings, changes to our rental fee structure to try and gain some some revenue there, which is. maybe, maybe an opportunity, but it’s not, it’s not a million dollars, so yeah, it’s, it’s um it’s a, it’s a difficult situation and um you know, not, not having having the cost of everything in the community on the backs of the residents and not you know, shared across. corporate side as well as is difficult. So it’s, it’s, uh, it’s tough. We, we thought, we, we think every year, like how can we get a little bit more revenue. What could we do to get a little bit more revenue. It’s hard. Medicaid reimbursements go up and down. It really depends on the needs of your kids and the things that you can apply to get reimbursement for so. and all that costs money like Medicaid, we probably spend more. administratively and paperwork-wise to get the $65,000 we’re probably spending $180,000 to get $65,000 back. It’s, it’s, um, it’s one of the problems we run into with the state when the paperwork the expectations for paperwork and things. even if chapter 78 increases, we actually won’t know that. until after we have to pass the budget at town meeting, right? Correct. Correct, yeah. That chapter 70 number is pretty much final. Yeah, we think that’s right where it’s going to be given the boost they gave in June. and we didn’t have, there was no opportunity to spend it. They basically said to school districts on June 27th. Here’s a little bit extra you can spend while the squeer is over in 2 days. What do we do? So they extended the opportunity to use that money, but you know it’s again it’s not a lot, it’s not a lot of money when you’re looking at millions, 3 $3.8 million. $3.9 million. Yeah. Oh, I was just wondering because I know you had that graph showing like our budget and the chapter 78 and it’s a structural problem and we can’t fix the structure ourselves of that. problem. So I was just wondering if that those columns were a little higher on your graph, we would, we were getting $2 million more, just $2 million not just, but $2 million more in Chapter 78, you now are, are really starting to make a dent. on some things. It’s, it’s just, I, I don’t it would be extremely expensive for the state to make any dramatic change to Chapter 70, that would meaningfully impact small districts of 2500 or less, um. it’s just really designed now, including with the Student Opportunity Act edition. It’s designed now to really funnel money into I think 68 school districts who have higher levels of low income, higher levels of als, which is where the state wants to to focus those funds so it’s, it’s, um, I, it would be even, even adjusting the for inflation, the, the, the, the formula is capped at 4.5% inflation. You know what we’ve seen in the past um, you, you, you’ll never, you’ll never gain, you know, you’re losing before you even start and you know the same thing with some of the special ed costs we were surprised by over a 14% increase two years ago out of nowhere to all the outer disc replacements, the state gave them permission to basically raise their rates by 14 and some change. It’s usually between I think with the average was 2.8% on a usual year to year basis and all of a sudden 14% hits and we, we were saying to the state, you know, that’s a huge hit on us nothing else changes our special ed costs won’t see that increase for another year. They’re always a year behind. Um, and it sticks once you own it, you own it. The, the, you’re not the 14% is not going down the next year. In fact, it went up to 3.42 again again this year I think so it is a never ending battle of of, you know, where the state priority state is very clear about funneling their money, even their access money to places that are um focused on like the student opportunity act is focused on gaps, gaps with special ed, gaps for uh low income students, Es and any of those combined categories, so you’ll see a lot more money heading in those directions, so Boston, Worcester, Lawrence, Lowell, Springfield, see higher amounts of Chapter 78. you know. So I know it’s probably just semantics, but I heard, I heard somebody say, I forget who, that our revenue is growing at 7.5% but our expenses are growing at 10.5%. Our expenses are not growing at 10.5. Our expenses are 6%. The assessment is 10% because of the END is Shannon. Um, I know as a taxpayer I wouldn’t care because it’s, it’s 10%, uh, it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, but it made me feel better. Thank you. Yeah, no, that’s more accurate. That’s more accurate, yeah. Yeah Do you guys have any other questions? revenue wise, I think we’re up 2.5% from last year, right? I think it’s like 22, 2.5, 2.6% from last year. So that’s moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, everything else is running faster, you know, so. Um, so from here I’m kind of looking at you guys and what direction we wanna go. Um, there’s 2 more meetings before the tentative vote, um, we’re hoping that next meeting we get some sort of guidance on what direction we want to go so we can work on it and then maybe at least present it to you, uh, one time before you have to take a vote on it. but if not there is still, you know 3 months in the budget season to go, but. um my concern is that 11% or it’s actually lower than what you’ve first presented to me, which was close to 11%, but even so, it’s still a 10, a double digit increase. in the assessment to the town. or yeah will not pass town meeting. What was it last year Like the last year it was like 4 I wanna say. because of all the END. I think one of them was in the fives, right, but it didn’t, it, it didn’t require an override, so it did not require. And we’ve already, I mean, I don’t know how you guys interpret it, but it seemed like Hamilton’s like, uh, the school is gonna have to ask for an override. We’re not asking for an override. Well, that was one voice. Oh right, and I, I mean, but then I heard another voice saying, Shouldn’t we be asking for more for for maintenance for the school. So, right? Hamilton tells us every year we need to cut half of our budget, and they just tell us every year because I mean it makes sense because they’re in a budget crunch as well. So yeah, I mean. yeah, I mean, I I mean I, I felt like that meeting everyone was really saying like, everybody’s in a difficult situation here. I mean, I really didn’t, yeah, no, I mean, I really felt like everyone was sort of saying like OK, this is tough all around. I’m just saying the last time we had increases like this, we were, the school, and I wasn’t on the school committee. back then, but it was close. Well, when is the last time we had a budget override an override, it’s been a long time. I think it was when Baos, cause we weren’t sure cause of COVID. No, no. How much? No, that was not an override. It was, I promise you it was 2020. No, 2018. But that’s not COVID. That wasn’t COVID COVID. 2018 it could have been 2018. It was the one year where the state wasn’t sure how much Chapter 78, that was 2020. You were in the tent. You’re mixing them together 2020 was that’s where we got the 770 that were so, right, it was the, it was 1.2 million, which everybody was saying that the state was going to short the town, so I remember that night because I got a Julie Cookenberger was, was not at the meeting, but she called me and said, hey, they just voted the budget, and they took that 1.2% out because they’re not sure if it was going to be there. So that’s where that came from and then we tried making that up over the next 3 years, right? We really, yeah, we’re still behind. That was 2020 that were it’s floating right there. But I mean, I think that’s the last year we had an override and that barely pass ed Like it was, but that wasn’t, I mean this is. it’s that wasn’t an override that. we did have a capital exclusion that same year. I don’t know if that 958,000 for maintenance that same year, right? It was the same next year. Yeah, 950 annual town that was a separate capital budget from the from the budget itself there wasn’t an operational override that. Yeah, I don’t, I haven’t seen one since I’ve been here. I think it was 2009 or 2010. I will say I don’t know what year it was, but early on in the like I’m going with like, 0405, something we had several in a row. I was, you know, several in a row. uh. help me with what year that might have been. I don’t know, but a long, long time, 20 years ago, um That was a Marinel McGrath was superintendent yeah and one of them didn’t pass And that’s my concern is that it won’t pass and then we’re in heap, deep trouble. Yeah, I lived it once, but I was not, I was just a parent. I was not a. I mean, I think that’s always a concern. Concern. It’s real. We have to really figure out like what can we cut then? you know? I I agree, but I think we have to cut something. I mean, maybe we have to cut staff, but I guess like the question, so I think I’d love to ask the question of Eric and Vinny. I know the answer because I said in Cains, but I would love the rest of the committee to hear. If we were to right, entertain, cutting staff to meet this number. What would that look like roughly? What would that look like? People need to know that. I mean, based on their numbers last night, uh, you’re talking over $2 million. OK, and so that is a significant amount, 2 million more than 30. don’t even want to say the amount of staff members. It’d be, it’d be, it’d be a lot. It would be we couldn’t sustain the district in in that with that pressure because remember when you’re making cuts you’re, you’re taking because of the way the the the union agreements are structured. You’re taking the lowest. paid person generally you’re taking the the it could be a singleton position, but in, in the case of where there’s a lot of teachers in a particular area, you cut your, right, we’re gonna cut out. I’m just going to use the number. Don’t let anybody get nervous on me. We’re gonna cut a high school teacher, um, in the, you know, in the Mount department, that’s the lowest person in that department, you know, so you’re looking at salary differences of, of uh 60,000 to 118,000. So when you’re cutting that low, 60 divides just do the math just for positions 30, you know, um, 2 million divided by just use 60,000, don’t even include the benefits. It gets ugly fast. And so, and I am not, I’m not, I’m just trying to get a sense of scale here because I, I I struggle with like how would we last year most of the school committee members present here except for Kristen and I, we were not members. The school committee voted right, for the, for the teacher’s contract for salary increases, which I think is great, right? And, and we needed to at that moment. We needed to sign for those, the those um KOLA adjustments to negotiate and get us into that situation, and I think it’s really challenging then the following year to then say, well, we wanted, we wanted you, we thought you deserved these raises, but now we have to turn around and we can’t afford this as a town. I just think that’s really difficult. I have a hard time with that as a new member, um, but that don’t think the school is saying that. I think that the towns are saying that. Yeah. But so, and that’s why I think we we as a school committee have to have to stand up for this decision, and I can’t, not unless we meet somewhere in the middle. We’ve got to show that we’re willing to give on something. Yeah, I am not willing to give on that. So this is, yeah, that’s where I am. But this is, this is why we have these budget discussions, you know, it’s, it’s, um a budget is a statement of your values. Like where you put your money is what you value. Um, and that’s what I’ve seen a year, every year, every year, a year. That’s what I keep coming to, because you know, we can nickel and dime every like I even asked the $50,000 about utilities, and then I thought that’s so stupid to ask that because it doesn’t mean anything because it’s more philosophical, like you’re saying. What do we, and I’m not telling anyone what to believe in, but what do we believe in, what do we stand for? What are we willing to fight for? That is so much of what we do here and I think that the budget is one of the biggest things that we do. So to me, I don’t think we’re going to answer this necessarily tonight, but that’s something that I want to think about and maybe debate about next meeting. Where we, where we want to go and where we want to direct and if we don’t agree, then maybe we have to come to a consensus or I mean this happens every budget season. This is an important conversation. I mean, I, I will say, you know, because I I mean, it was a good question that you asked earlier, like, what are we, what are the expectations for next meeting. I think that’s a really good question. I, I, you know, I’m jotting down ideas about like how do we structure the conversation for next meeting. I’m thinking it might mean Eric and I can discuss, but also like I’m thinking it might be helpful. to Vinnie, you might have some specific questions for us at that meeting in addition to our feedback. I’m not sure, but you often say, well, here’s some things. Um, I’m not sure that that’s where you’re going, but it’s a question I have is like, I think it’s great that we should provide feedback and it might be helpful. for you guys to have some. sort of structure around like I mean, like that was a good, you already had an answer there, like, OK, if we’re looking at staff what does that look like? I mean, that’s just, I don’t know. And it’s a scenario development too. Sorry, go ahead Dave. I know Dave’s on waiting. Oh, I’m sorry, I was just going to say the feedback I’ve had is that there’s good support for paying competitive. salaries for, for teachers to make sure you’re not having a talent drain. Um by, by, by doing where we were. I think, I think you’re absolutely right. There’s absolutely like values based support for that and when you actually see the number that’s where it gets tough like I, I think you’re right. I don’t think we don’t have what we want people to uh and I think it’s real that it’s it’s difficult when people see the actual number of how much this is gonna really cost and what it means on their tax bill and let’s be honest, trust in the school committee is it probably a at one of its lowest points that it’s been at least since I’ve been a member. Like, are people really gonna trust that an 11% increase in their, you know, taxes to pay for the school district is really like a we’re like we’re really making the best decision. but I think if they say they support teachers. and they say they, they want maintenance. What, uh, what are we doing with the schools? How are we maintaining the schools, you know? So I guess like I’m and I and I’m not, I hope like I think maybe we do need to kind of wrap up and go to next time, but I guess good questions that we need to ask these are good questions. This is my philosophically, I hope that when we come next time that, yeah, we I. like I think all those things are important, thinking about messaging and all that. trust and concerns around that are all really important and you know, we really have to think about just the actual numbers of like what is it that we want in this budget and what is it that the people that we’re talking to in the community want in this budget. and it’s a separate conversation about like how is that going to get presented and how is that gonna get perceived. I think those are all really important, but the first thing we have to do is to get really clear. Like I think we obviously have to have a really clear conversation about the END and like what do we want to do about that? And that’s a real, you know, but then, so. and obviously there’s a lot of other things. um so. we I don’t want to cut people off. I think the the difficulty is this is a massive amount of data you have in front of you. Um, but the these categories make it a little bit easier to digest so when you start to look at some of the categories, um, not sorry, not these categories, the DESI categories you can, you can start to dig into those particular areas and say, OK, let’s look at maintenance. Can we can we set of 500 and some change? Can it be 400 and some change for now? What’s, what’s, you know, how do we prioritize that list? I think no matter what we do in the next 3 months, we’re going to need some levels of prioritization and some different strategies because if you’re right, if you go to town meeting and it doesn’t pass, you need a backup plan and you need to you, you know, you need to know, OK, I’m, I wouldn’t put a number out there, but if it whatever it went forward didn’t pass. You’re back to the drawing board and then back to another town meeting, um, that to, to kind of sell your case again. The um the climate has been difficult for a lot of these small districts, um, Amesbury just lost and override again and part of the reasoning for the superintendent to leave was I can’t keep cutting a million dollars a year and run a school district so those are important pieces of the puzzle. The Georgetown. passed one by the skin of their teeth, and they were at the point of possibly having to be divided up into other school districts. So there’s a lot of um there’s a lot of activity out there in school budget school budgeting, um, you’re seeing those conversations everywhere. Some community started before us. They started last year, Andover, North Andover, I mean some of the teachers that we were fortunate to hire really good teachers this year because they were laid off in another district, so it’s, um, it was, it was helpful for us to be able to do that for the first time in many, many years if you remember we had so many unfilled positions over the time, so we, we, we’ve had a really good opportunity in the last two years to solidify people that we have in place and you’re seeing some positive outcomes for it. So it’s a values conversation, but I would also encourage you if you’re new or if you even if you’re not, if you’re looking at something you don’t understand it, please reach out to Vinny and I during the week and ask the question, um, so that you can come to the meeting and say, OK, these are the things I’m thinking about These are things I’m thinking about because I think we got to just throw them all on the kind of on the table and figure out what will make sense as as maybe in different, different levels of depth. The other thing to remember is we’re asking for the roof money too. Yeah, you got a debt exclusion on top of a possible override. and that’s the reason we use DND last year was so that we would not have a debt exclusion and an override in the same year. That is correct. And, and, you know, think go future, what happens with our buildings? Do we incur suddenly incur $30 million debt for renovation 3 years from now. Those are all things that Vinny and I think about like looking out 3 to 5 years, where can we, what is this this roll over to and then what’s the comfortable spot? what. what makes sense for running your your school district, go back to your class size reports. It’s the reason we give them to you before beforehand. Take a look at those, see, you know, there, is there room in there to make adjustments we’ll do the same thing at the leadership team level. We’ll look at every efficiency we can with our teams and the people in the buildings to figure out, OK, can we be efficient here efficient there, maybe not just in staff, everything like can we do something different with maintenance? Can we do something different with our, our, um, utilities, you know, the, the possibility of saving money with electricity if we can get this, um, solar canopy up and online in a year and a half or so. That makes a big difference in the budget, so there there there are lots of little pieces to this that we have to kind of keep in mind, so. And this almost 10. Yeah, well, no, I. um, are we OK moving on? OK, and that’s, we’ll be ready for a good discussion at our next meeting. Uh, thank you so much, Vinny. Finny. Thank you for standing up there for so long, uh, let’s run through committee reports, uh, Capital Finance, um, budget, budget and more budget. In our next meeting is December meeting is I think December. December. 8th 8th, OK, I’m 8th, Monday the 8th from noon to 1. Um, policy Um we haven’t met since the last school committee meeting, but you have a new member. And our meeting is December 1st at 2:30. Uh, but I can send out an email again and see if we can find a better time. Yeah, you’ve got 22 o’clock will be fine. I mean, assuming we meet for an hour, I don’t know. It’s not even usually that long, but I usually block an hour, but we have to talk about agenda too. Yeah. Let me know. Oh, great. Um, negotiations, uh, we are meeting on Monday. um at one I begin, uh, strategy discussions, um, as we get ready to negotiate with the um ESP union um and secretary report Uh, we still have quite a few missing minutes. I don’t know how to Should I just send out a reminder, but some of them are from like 2017, so I would say this is just me and other people can chime in. I would say. if something is, let’s focus on the last year. Last year, yeah, and that if something is, you know, an FY 25 or FY 26. Yeah and it’s missing We have some people here who were. around during those times because 2017 doesn’t. have anybody here that was around in 2017, so, um, and yeah, if you could um just send a reminder to those people and say it, so like I would it’s my thought, but you can do it how you want, but I would say like you know, Amy’s the chair of policy. If policy’s missing minutes. send it to Amy and say this is what you’re missing. Um, and you’re chair of negotiations. We have to decide that on Monday, but it was David. OK, so Amy is chair of policy and you’re chair of Capital Finance Finance. I know we’re missing 2. Yes, um, from the latest, I think the latest two and you’re welcome to send it to me if you’re doing it before Monday and then. then we will determine um OK. Um I I was gonna die Thank you for that. um, and we’re doing OK and we always are on up to it to date on our the whole city is always up to date. Janelle said the whole committee’s up to date and we’re missing one executive session, and that’s me, so I’m gonna do that. Fantastic. That’s great. Um thank you. Um, Amy, do you have any in our inbox update? No, in our inbox updates, no emails. I haven’t received really anything. Yeah, since our since last quiet. OK. um all right, thank you. Uh, Eric. uh real quickly, I just wanted to touch on staff attendance. It came out in the news lately that’s the state has released publicly teacher attendance at all staff attendants for schools, um, claiming that it’s not something that they’re going to use in their accountability. I, uh worry about that because it’s, I’ve heard that before. Uh, anyway, when you look at it from the perspective of our staff, um, 96.5% staff attendance, uh, actually mirrors roughly what the overall tenants for kids is as well, um. I have do not have a lot of confidence in the way they collected the data and I used myself as an example today and you know it shows that I was out. sick 11 days and I was not over the time period they’re collecting, so I still have to kind of work with the state where superintendent’s trying to figure out. what makes sense and what doesn’t so the state claimed they’re not gonna use it for anything, but they thought the public should know, um, but I think from the perspective of our district we’re fine. There are, you know, anytime we have an issue with the tenants we deal with it with our unions and and the people on the ground, and it’s not something we talk about very often in our districts, so check off that one for um we’re, we’re gonna dig into that a little bit more. As you know, there have been a number of changes in the United States Department of Education, uh, we are still trying to figure them out, some of the things that have been moved to the Department of Labor are things like our um our grants for Title 1, Title II, Title II, Title IV, uh, those entitlement grants have been moved to the Department of Labor, which is fascinating for us. We’re not sure how that shifts for us because we’re using a state level system to upload our information, so we’re not sure if that will still use that or change to a new one so those things are still kind of more to come if you will. Um, so we’re just, we’re really waiting to see what moves where in the final destination document that they have, but I guess they haven’t continued, they haven’t finished moving things around, um, 11 thing that’s important is IDEA, special ed in in civil rights will remain at the US Department of Education, so that’s helpful because I think that’s one of the bigger areas that, uh, schools wrestle with the most so it’s, it’s nice that that’s not moving and then we’re, we’re kind of doing the same thing everybody else is doing is waiting to see what the other changes will be and how they’ll impact us either in reporting or gaining funds, losing funds, etc. So, um, more to come there and then um next week we have the 50th Thanksgiving game between Ipswich and Hamilton Wyndham on Thanksgiving. That’s an exciting time of the year for everybody. Our alumni come back. We have a new event this year where um we’re having an alum alumni breakfast for the first time and we have a whole bunch of people in our community that have come together to try to pull off an alumni breakfast and really bring some spirit of community to the event, um, and then that game will kick off at 10 and that will actually close out the winter, uh, excuse me, the fall season and the winter season will will start, believe it or not, the following Monday they’d jump right back into it. Uh, and then I just want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving to all of you and all the people in our general’s family. I hope everybody has safe travels and a great time with family. Thank you you too you too. cooking, um, alright. Anybody have questions for Eric? Um. uh, all right, I’m mindful of the time. Um, OK, so, um, I just wanted to update everyone and we do have a regional agreement meeting. on December 3rd, so I’ll let you know. occurs when we get that done, um uh, two quick things Eric and I had a brief conversation about um an about the potential of having some kind of a school committee or workshop. It’s just a thought Um. I, I think it was well it’s got several people mentioned it, but I think Megan mentioned about, you know, doing sort of a postmortem, a debrief regarding the vote sort of thought that a workshop environment, short workshop like. not a day long workshop like a couple of hours maybe. um might be a good environment to have a conversation around that, um. just letting you know that I might sort of throw that out there in terms of scheduling, um. it’s scheduling is challenging. One of the things Eric and I talked about is potentially thinking about that kind of vacation time at the end of the year. I don’t know if people travel or I will be out of state. OK. Good for you. In upstate New York where it’s cold. Um, so, but anyway, I, I might like I’m open to feedback if people are like not wanting to do that at all. We don’t have to take a vote tonight. We can talk about it at some time, but it’s you know, I think it’s a good idea too. So I might throw out some potential times for that. Um, OK, um, and then I just wanted to in like 12 seconds we have left, um, I wanted to just highlight that Eric mentioned the chapter 70 memo that he had sent out or had presented at our previous meeting and then he mentioned it last evening and then he resent it to us and all the other elected officials, um in town, um, and I know that there are some other um, I know that Amy mentioned to me that the MASC did send something out similar with some information, um, and you had some other resources, I guess the MTA has resources about um. so I don’t know if you wanted to add anything to that. Yeah, I was just going to pull it up, but, um, I was impressed with the MTA’s page on not just the chapter 70 opportunities, you know, to advocate, uh, if you want to write letters to representatives, um, but also rural transportation and special ed funding as well. So, um, if anyone’s interested, I can forward that. It just has really good like one pagers that help explain how all the funding works and like who to contact and what to say if you’re interested. I actually have a question because I think it’s something we need to keep in mind. If we ask for an operational override? Is that a simple majority or is it a 2/3? Uh, so at town meeting it’s 2/3 of the ballot. It’s simple. OK. And I have another actual questions, and the budget doesn’t pass 2/3 of the school. Is the budget2/3 of the school committee has to pass at the, at the school committee level, no, no, at school level, yeah. Yeah. OK. I don’t remember, I mean. Yeah. It’s not like I’ve. No, that’s why we have that sheet that Amy made that policy made I was I was just clarifying. Yes. Yes. No, that’s great. That’s we could look it right up, uh. um OK um 10 o’clock Does anyone have topic for future meetings. Mm develop the possible availability of penguin. Hall. I’m sorry, what? The possible availability of Penguin Hall. It’s going to be auctioned off. Like to purchase it Wait, I’m sorry, the availability of it of its apparently it’s a bankruptcy so, correct, yes. and uh it may be an interesting, um, option. may not be too But wouldn’t we have had to start that process like last year or just looking for topics for future meetings right now, so um, so Penguin Hall auction. discussion right? OK. Anybody else? Mm Oh yes, yes that’s it’s written all over here. What are the results of the survey on the change. Oh yeah. Uh, in school times, if you have those yet? I do, and the committee is just going to study them at their next meeting. We had our first kickoff meeting. uh, so they are working on it. They’re working towards some data collection right now, so they um. we have our next meeting on the 7th, I believe it is. Yeah, I was just thinking of it as a topic for a future meeting just to stay in the loop on that. Perfect. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if you want to wait for the committee to do all the data, the study and make this make the presentation because that’s what how we outlined it in the goal. If you want to see the data, we can put it out there. It’s, it’s not a secret, but it’s just the committee is going to have at their next meeting to filter through and use to make some determinations. OK. It’s up to you whatever if you want. I don’t need a big presentation. I just, just what you just told me is like just the status report is good for me. Yep, committee has kicked off. They are, uh, they have been given some assignments. We did a brainstorming session the other night. They have some assignments to do before our next meeting, which I believe is on the 10th. What’s what’s the composition of of of that committee. Sorry, I’m just it’s on the next meeting. I’m a stickler about this. We took a lot of votes that like at 10 o’clock so somebody either needs to make a motion to continue the meeting or we need to make a motion to adjourn. I moved to adjourn at 10:03 p.m. That second. All right, I heard a second. I’m giving it to 0. All those in favor. and it’s unanimous and we are adjourned to you the second.