School Committee - Grafton Public Schools - Regular Meeting

Good evening, Grafton. Welcome to the uh February 10th, 2026 uh school committee meeting. Um I'm calling the meeting to order and we will start with public comment. Do we have any public comment this evening? I see the public here. Okay, great. Seeing none, um I'm going to dive right into general business. And we're going to start with the Grafton High School program of studies. And we are um very lucky to have um three folks from the high school here to present to us today. Tracy Kao, the president, president principal, the president of the high school, the principal. Um she should be president.

Sharon Buckley, director of counseling, and Anthony Deanetta, one of the assistant principles. So, thank you for being here. Thank you for having us. We are very excited to present the offering to the 202627 school year. Um, as you mentioned, I have our uh brand new assistant principal, rockstar assistant principal, Anthony with me and you know Sharon Buckley well. I'm going to have them take the lead as they are building the master.

Awesome. Thank you for having us. We're excited to be here to go over the uh proposed changes to our program of studies. Um this there we go. Um just to give you a little bit of background on how we landed here today. Starting in December, believe it or not, Tracy Anthony and I meet with the department heads and we begin to discuss proposed new courses, maybe the deletion of a course and looking at the general scope and sequence of courses that Grafton High offers. We've done all of that homework. We've had conversations. Um, we've also considered some other things that are kind of um this first this first slide explains a um kind of a thematic uh explanation for the proposed changes. First and foremost, um Tracy asked all departments to start to look at expanding electives so that we're sure to have course offerings for our students. Um you may have heard about the reduction in early college high school coursework. It's um it's an issue that's many high schools are facing given the notion and the um the um initiative that all college courses are free. Um QCC and other community colleges in addition to um state colleges and universities that run early college high school programming are finding a short of shortage of professors. Um, so we are working with QCC in partnership. We'll be offering some courses, but we are unable to offer the same amount as we've had in the past, but we've also made some changes to accommodate for that. And then lastly, we have a focus on adjustments to our career pathways, our MYAP initiative. Um, these are in direct response to DESI's proposed graduation

requirement changes. Um and we'll look at those briefly tonight as well. Um Anthony is going to address some course level recommendations um and some changes to that. We included here a copy of our MYAP worksheet. You can see that it's directly addressing the three pillars of Jesse's recommendations. That being students should be doing some type of discovery. they should plan um in depth and they should then act upon what those plans are. Uh due in large part to our uh school um college and career counselor, we have expanded our um my cap initiative in addition to focusing on our pathways of recognition. Um, our students starting at grade 8 will go through self-discovery assessments at the middle school and then we continue them at the high school. We then will have the students meet and consult with their counselors um numerous times during their four years at the high school um looking at career development post-secary options. You can see that some of them are listed there. um we include those that are the non-traditional postgrad options as we know that they are viable for many of our students. So the two-year school, the four-year school tracked certification and technical skills trades. Um we are doing a lot of work around that. Um putting students in front of C programs that would get them qualified uh employment. Um that can be very affluent, right? Um, in fact, in March, Kelly Stairs has our BBT partner coming, the adult ed, um, is coming to talk about their certification and technical programming in addition to their LPN program, um, that many of our students are recommended to take

advantage of. Um, that will also be capped by a uh, college and career fair in April that will include the military as well as volunteer organizations. And then we touch upon in the program of studies, we're not going to go into depth here at this presentation, but we explained it in the um proposed changes that we've streamlined our pathways of recognition um they were a bit cumbersome. We felt after working with them for about three years um in in the way in which they were presented initially. um we've streamlined them to make them a little bit more achievable and more equitable depending on the pathway. You'll notice that we did away with the global studies. Uh we found that it was nearly impossible for a student to meet those requirements. Um some of them included um foreign travel, some of them included coursework we simply just didn't have in our repertoire. So, um we believe that these four are more um focused on next steps for most of our students. And then we included a copy of the MYAP worksheet. Um we have this is our second iteration of this document. Um but we feel confident and comfortable. It's one that is um studentfriendly. Um that is pretty much a template of what we do and recommend in con uh doing consults with our students around okay you think you want to be this in a career let's work backwards from your senior year what classes do you need to take. This is certainly not written in stone but it's a lot more um sound thinking for students and families. Um, and so we're excited to continue to roll that out through counseling seminars and one-on-one meetings.

Again, I'm Anthony Deenadetto, assistant principal of the high school, and thank you very much for having me. Um, I do want to say that this really is Sharon's baby. She has done the yman's work to get this ready and has for the past few years. So, I'm here to just kind of highlight some of the items in there that I've started to work on her with. Um, one is the honors level placement process. So, new this year, we put in place some ways that a student can automatically be placed into an honors class with kind of a threelevel uh placement process, or I should say three tier. The first is if the student has a practice completion of 90% or higher in the class. The second is if they have a current grade of 90 or higher in a college prep class or 80 or higher in an honors class. And lastly is their star assessment data. If their star scores indicate that they are exceeding expectations, they get an automatic bid to take an honors or to take an honors class. If a student meets two out of three of those, then it's a conversation with the student and the counselor um and the teacher to see is necess is the honors going to be a right fit for the student. when we start to look at some of the individual departments and the courses uh I should say the updates to the program of studies um we've eliminated the principles of macroeconomics and that's the QCC course but that's because we are now offering both AP macroeconomics and AP microeconomics and an alternating schedule so one will be offered one year the other will be offered on the op year um we've also kind of streamlined added AP computer science principles um to the computer science of business as For English, we've added a couple new courses. One is a personal writing course where students are reflective of their own experiences. Um, and the other is a for love of reading course that really focuses on um student directed and student centered reading options for them as well as a variety of different assessments that the students have. So,

it really is to uh engender that love of reading for the students who opt to take those courses. For math, um, we've clarified some of the prerequisites for quantitative reasoning and for statistics. And we've also added some new courses. We've added, uh, topics in algebra 1 course, which is a course that students would take concurrently with AG1 as a semesterbased course to bolster their mathematics, mathematical skills as they're coming into the high school. Um, we are also offering a financial math, which is a semester long class. The math department class is one that's going to really focus on the mathematics of the finances. So, algebraic equations. Um, we are also offering AP calculus BC and we have the math essentials 9, 10, 11, and 12 classes. For science and technology, we have altered the AP physics prerequisites to mirror what the college board criteria criteria is. And also we wanted to include that students should have completed um algebra and geometry 3 as the physics is generally a very heavy math centered course. We wanted to make sure that they had those prerequisite skills. Um we also looked at engineering essentials in design and adjusted the introduction to engineering courses.

That's okay. That's um it it more closely aligns with project lead the way language and that's why we changed it to intro to engineering design. um social studies. We have a new course that will be partnering with Worcester State University. We'll be offering um general psychology. Again, that is taught um asynchronously and it will count um as AP weight for courses. wellness. We've adjusted the health um accessibility to include grades 9 through 12 so that we are minimizing the potential for conflict and students not being able to meet their graduation requirement. Um we've added personal fitness 2, team sports 2, which are diving a little bit deeper into the personal fitness and team sports um course offerings. They lend toward a little bit more leadership skill and personal programming development for the student. And lastly, we're offering life after high school. It's similar to an adulting 101 class. It's an elective that does not count toward health graduation requirement. However, um we believe it would be a really relevant class for students to take. And that's the gist of our changes to the program of studies.

Super. Any questions? Yeah, super helpful. Anybody have anything? All right.

I have questions. Thank you so much. This is fantastic. Um I'm loving all the additional classes, especially it's great to see the AP uh Cal BC. Um it's really nice to get that extra level. Um I had a question uh about French, I guess. Are we planning on any French one classes in the future if we're No. No. Okay. All right. So, okay. So, I'm thinking down the path if language is required to graduate and we eventually need to just go possibly down to Spanish, will we be able to accommodate that? Am I thinking the right way or no? I'm thinking because we don't offer it right now in the middle school.

That's right. So, kids will be coming in and they'll still want to take a and we're going to accommodate the kids who had French, but eventually that pipeline it will dry up. Um not and so will we be able to right now. So, do you think Kristen and I have discussed that at length is concerned about class size? Of course. And what will happen with class size? Yeah. Um so, we may have to be creative in terms of supporting the existing staff. Okay, so something to think about. Thank you. And my other um question was, do we still offer APY or is that Worcester State kind of replacing us or is that we didn't offer it haven't offered it in a little while and now

we haven't with the advent of QCC psychology. Okay. The requests for that course were outweighing the AP psychology. We really don't want to compete with ourselves. Um, yeah. However, uh, with Worester State stepping up, we're moving forward. That's terrific. No, I love I love it. I just was curious. Um, I think it's great. I think, um, I love seeing across all mediums, the English classes obviously, and I had so many funny thoughts about the life after high school, but I'll keep them. That's near that's near and dear to me. I used to be a health teacher and I taught a class called reality check. Yeah. Awesome. It was it was a very good class.

It's it's such a wonderful I mean I can imagine all the great things that come from it and also all the things that really life after high school you just an excuse but you know maybe people make different choices than me but thank you this has been a phenomenal stop talking. Yeah. Um on the I have a question on the honors level placement process. I can't remember. I thought the discussion last year was a conversation about giving students a pathway without having to seek approval. Is that correct? And this is sort of the answer to that. Is that right? I don't know about the I don't recall that. Okay.

Um we move forward. I actually asked the department heads to create a subcommittee to look at a honors process that is unified and coherent across the building. Um it came to my attention that um people were looking at it differently and there may not have been consistency. Yeah. So um a subcommittee created that process. We then brought it to the department head team and they um put forward some input. They brought it to the whole staff. They had some input and then we landed it on. Yeah. I really I really like this. It's like if you qualify, you qualify and if you don't quite qualify, there's still a little wiggle room. I like that. Yep. That's perfect. Awesome. Thank you.

Yep. honors question. Sorry. Has that trickled down to the middle school as well? So those eighth graders who might be doing it well and they want to get into honors classes their freshman year. Are they is it the same? Do you know? So um essentially what's happening from 8th to 9th grade is dependent on the content area. So in English it is um unle. So English yeah there's no honors. Yeah. Um in what typically happens with math, students who are already taking algebra 1 are jumping into algebra 2, that would be considered their honors, right? Um and then with I'm thinking science. Okay. So I haven't got the sign yet.

I know. So there's actually a process that um Jocelyn and Maggie, the curriculum leader at the middle school, put together. Okay. It's a fantastic process. It's about DBQs and making sure the writing skills are up to snuff. Um my understanding of science is that there is not a process um other than teacher recommendation and grades. Okay. Well, that's a question for another group. Yes, it is. Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's good that you brought that to my attention. Yeah. Okay. Oh, to piggy back on to what Laura was saying. So, with the social studies, it's my understanding that they students have to write an essay for that, right? But none of the other classes do they have to write an essay just for social studies from grade. Well, you wouldn't have to write an essay for English because you because it's unlevel.

It's unlevel. Yeah. So, I'm going to in a shock to no one dive into the math essentials a little bit because it looks like it um provides some more opportunity for kids on IEPs um for example to be involved in sort of general education classes. So, can you talk more about that and what it looks like? I mean, am I reading it right? Yes. Um, so essentially what we had talked about at length was that there's about 25% of the grade according to the math department that doesn't have the skills necessary to be very successful in aging. Yep.

Um, and Paul my who is the department head and our other assistant principal and I both were hesitant to introduce a second level to 181. We wanted to keep it um unlevel much like English. But what we decided a nice um compromise is to come up with a semester based class on algebra 1 topics or skills that are very difficult to pick up for that 25%. And so the the win-win of that is that those students are going to get the skills that they need, but they're going to stay in algebra one. So they will be technically taking two math classes during their fall semester. And then if they're all set and we feel like with some benchmark testing, they're in a good place, they can come out of alge topics in algebra one during that first semester. If not, they can always continue that study.

Okay, that topics in Albert algebra class would earn them math credits. So, credits toward math graduation requirements. They could couple that with financial math. Um, I don't know if we had that on our screen. We might have neglected that, but that's a new course. There's a year-long financial math class and there's a halfyear financial math class. Um those are also designed in keeping with DESI's new initiative around financial literacy as being a grad requirement and um where was I going with that? The topics in math is 2.5 credits. They could potentially take financial math semester long 2.5 and earn their math credits.

And then so then math essentials 9 10 11 12. Are those substantially separate? Math Essentials used to be called mathematics for our life skills kids and it was so it is a life skills class. It's not an it's not a genet class. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Welcome. Anyone else? Great. Thank you. This was great. Oh, thank you. Really appreciate it. With your approval, it'll be on the website tomorrow. Do we have to vote? We usually We do vote. So, all right. Madam Chair, yes.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the Grafton High School program of studies for the 26 27th school year as presented. Second. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? On the paper we have, it says 2526. I don't know if they want to change that, but it does because it's the proposed change. So, that's fair. It's a red line. I just want to make sure that that's, you know. Yep. Yes. Anything else? That's all. All right. All those in favor? post it. Thank you guys. Thank you. Have a good night, Tracy. All right. Dr. Cummings.

Before we um jump into feed discussion, I wanted just to quickly thank Bob Doma and Bill Robo. After all of our adventures with technology at the last meeting, they contacted me the next day. They came up maybe a day or two later into this room. They called me in. We went through everything. We used Andy Jefferson as kind of our tech guinea pig at home to see if it all worked. And uh I think by all accounts, at least so far, they did a fantastic job. So I wanted to send a huge thank you out to them. Excellent. Okay.

All right. So I put a bunch of slides together that I've shared just to help with the feed discussion. Obviously, it's a it's a a broad topic with many different pieces. You can go in any direction you wish. So, I was going to run through the slides until you stop me and then Okay. Uh so, in total, I'm going to touch on bus fees, parking fees, those two we have, athletic and activity fees, which we don't have. Facility rental fees we do have. And then with tuition, uh we currently charge preschool tuition and over the summer we've built up over the last maybe eight years, six years, uh summer enrichment. I put an asterisk on that. That's historically been not really a a money-making endeavor. If we bring in extra like we did last year, we're putting that into software that helps us do signups and and payments more effectively. Ideally, we could pay our staff better over the summer. We could decrease tuition. At least the spirit when we started it was having high quality programming that fills that big gap during the summer. It really wasn't let's make a buck. That of course could change, but that one kind of stands out as a little bit different. In terms of current revenue generation, obviously we have the the bus and parking fee. We charge $200 for those. We have school choice that's raised over $8 million. We have uh relatively new athletic booster organization, and if you've been to the fields or paid any attention to high school athletics, they're killing it. Uh so that's really taken off. We have really robust PTG organizations. Uh when I think of PTG, it's elementary, but we

do have parent groups that do fundraising for all kinds of awesome things at the secondary level as well. Uh we're maxed out on solar, which is great. Um and then uh we tuition institutes, which is we've talked about that a lot. That's a really good thing for us in terms of previous and considered revenue generation. I think it's important to touch on things that we have done in the past for about a decade. Uh we had two parents I believe it I think it was Debbie Marlet and Doug Broad who went way above and beyond. Basically it was like a PTG for the town. Um and they ran that. It was in existence for about 10 years and then it just takes a lot of manpower and life happens and it kind of faded out. Um we did make a great effort at starting up an adult ed program. Obviously, we've always been in need of additional revenue. I saw that Aspet Valley after dark thing that we all get in the mail. They make like a million dollars, probably more off that. And I said, "Oh, we could make even a fifth. That would be awesome." So, we tried. We We offered classes. Nobody. It just It just didn't work. We had a few people show up for yoga and that was lovely, but it faded out, but it was a good effort. And then in terms of revenue generation init initiatives that we've considered, looked into, but yet to be implemented, the one that jumps out is driving school. I think that would be kind of a win-win, but you need a a front-end investment uh to make that to make that work. So, we'll start with bus parking and the possibility of athletic fees. steer me in a different direction if you think I'm off on this, but when we think about any new fees, athletics and then activities are the two that come up the most. So, here's a comparison. Um, I pulled as

much data as I could. I believe it's all updated. Um, I looked at a bunch of area districts. Looked at if they had an athletic fee uh at the high school, did they have an athletic fee at the middle school level? Did they have a bus fee? And then did they have a parking fee? And you can see where we land that 200 and 200. Um, we currently don't have an athletic fee along with uh Milbury in the area and Oxford's got the $50. Uh the middle school, it's only five of the surveyed towns have middle school athletic fees. Uh and obviously you can see the bus and parking fees. I didn't touch on activity fee here. I'll I'll get to that in a minute. There's been a bit of a movement or a trend towards decreasing or eliminating some of these fees. Um both Bellingham and Oxbridge for this year eliminated their bus fee and Shrewsbury decreased from 320 to 300 their activity, I'm sorry, their athletic fee and their bus fee this year back in spring of last year. That's been a big topic. It's not a secret. out of all the districts, Shrewsberries for a while, they're probably still the most uh known for having high fees in numerous areas in this in Central Mass. When we consider athletic fees, um I did not include a cap. So, for a family cap, an individual that does three sports, I didn't put a cap in the numbers I'm about to show you. I did take into account 17% free and reduced. That's what the state cites us as being

at 17% for our student body. Uh so in my numbers, they're very rough that I'm putting before you. That's not including that 17%. Um I didn't factor in any decrease in participation. If you charge 200 a sport, I'm going to guess some kids that were kind of on the fence aren't going to participate. Um, I didn't factor that in and I put all sports with the same fee. I did not I I should have mentioned this earlier in the data that I shared with you. I do have the data, but a lot of the districts that have athletic fees, uh, typically it's a little more for football and hockey, those those are the ones that kind of chill out. All right. So, we've got tremendous student participation just at the high school alone. 329 kids in the fall, 221 in the winter, 292 in the spring. They aren't I don't have the number is that 600 kids in total. Numerous kids play numerous sports. A lot of our students play one sport. Um you can see at the middle school level we had 96, 26, and 98 with each season. That's awesome. That level of participation is fantastic. So scenario one in terms of revenue, if we don't change a thing, we're going to bring in roughly $22,000. That's off parking and transportation if that number isn't changed. If, and these are arbitrary, I made these up. If we charged a $100 per sport, no cap, take out that 17%, we would bring in about $70,000. Again, with no decrease in participation, bringing that total from fees, just athletic transportation or bus and parking to 272.

And then not rocket science here. If it's $200 per sport, no cap, no decrease in participation, we bring in an additional 140,000 totaling 342,000. Doing all right so far. All right. So, here's the potential revenue summary. As in as with most things that I deal with and that you deal with, not too many things are super straightforward and this is this is one of them in my mind. Um we need to some of the complexity comes with like unified sports, middle school sports. They're they're robust but they're not at the same level as high school. High school sports for the most part are going seven days a week. um at least six. Um the different fees for different sports. That's im important and this is strictly me speaking as superintendent something that's messy but but real is the need for if we shifted to a payforplay model. Without a doubt, in my mind, there's going to be an increase in expectation and increase in expectation for coaches for what we offer. Our coaches are woefully underfunded. The stipens are tied to the unit contract that we have. To the best of my knowledge, they haven't been touched in about 20 years. Um, there's not an o a lot of towns. I think Westboro and Shbury actually have an automatic they built it into the contract that every year it goes up by either 2% and one of them is 3%. I can't remember which is which. So there's always at least an increase but I picked these I didn't there all of our

coaching stipens are like this is representative. I picked these three for for a specific reason. It's that truthberry in red. They've got a fivestep model. So, I wanted to compare apples to apples. Somebody that has at least five years of coaching experience with us. So, they'd be at the the Shrewsbury top step, if you will. Dave Mitchell's been with us probably since he started teaching here uh ages ago. Uh football, this went back a year when Chris McMahon had been with us for a long time. And for lacrosse, we've got Carl Moyes, who's been with us more than five years, does a fantastic job as our girls lacrosse coach. So, this is apples to apples. This is right out of the teacher contracts. Uh, all public, easy to find. U, even if you added $2,000 to the coaching statement, they're still short. Uh, that's a big issue. So, if if you were to impose fees, I would simply recommend that we take a good hard look at that. Um, if you break it out, we have 51 teams between GHS and GMS. If they all had that $2,000 adjustment to just get competitive, that's obviously 102,000. And then we have 16 assistants. They could probably the 2,000 would probably go a long way, but even if we did a thousand um that makes us a heck of a lot more competitive. We don't the fact that we only have 16 assistants is super low. So that would take a big chunk out of the the money coming in. When I think of the easy way to think about it is the money comes in and I usually get save two positions or something. Um, I get the thinking, but it's it's more complex

and it's messier than just that. If we did an activity fee, that's inherently super messy. Sports is a is pretty straightforward. You know, who's on the soccer team. Um, since the day that I arrived, and maybe it preceded me, we wanted kids to do as many activities as humanly possible. That's always been a big thing. Uh just it wasn't that long ago, a few years ago uh we really internally worked we doubled down on that effort. I was getting emails and phone calls about kids hanging out after school. They're all over the place there Dunkin Donuts. We've got uh bicycle gangs, you know, ravaging the streets of Grafton. Like I'm in charge of that after school, but okay. Um, so we very purposefully worked on that and we've got awesome engagement with kids doing clubs. I want kids to go and try Dungeons and Dragons. Realize that is just not for you. And then you go try another club. But to figure out who's paid what for activity fees, just what staff does that, how's that I I couldn't be more strongly against activity fees. And I'm never as superintendent going to be in in favor of fees. That's till I am not here in Grafton. That's just the way it's going to be on my end. Uh but North Bridge and Shrewsbury do charge fees. I won't read them to you, but they're laid out there. This is just to give you a sense of what we have. This is as of this year what we have for the 42 clubs at the high school bike. And it should be clear that a lot of them do have cost associated with them. We we do pay for somebody to oversee the ski club, but people go we're not paying for this whole group to go and ski all

the time. Uh you know, they're they're chipping in. A lot of these unfortunately we've got to go to parents through fundraising, through uh different means. We try to kind of meet halfway as best we can and support these things. Uh they're all great, but I don't want anybody to think we're throwing money, you know, at this kind of, you know, not giving it a lot of thought. And the stipens associated with these, let me tell you, are nothing compared to the work that goes into them. Middle school clubs, we have 22. And Chrisesky just happen to have the numbers of the kids associated with each of them. That's awesome. That's That's great. Excuse me if I don't. What are the stars about?

Are they the ones that cost or No, I wouldn't. Oh, I don't even know. Uh, those are just your favorite. Yeah, you could say that. Um, if Tracy was still here, I'd ask her. She gave me the list. I asked Chris and Tracy today, what do we have for clubs? Just a It's one thing to say clubs, but to actually look at them and think about if it's 10 each, that's 420 kids and we have more than 10 kids doing these. Yeah, stars don't mean the stars don't mean anything. Yeah. There are some there are some here that charge that he doesn't have a star. Others that charge. See, I was thinking they're like ones that do fundraising, but forget the start. Move on.

Uh facility rental. The last time we went through that or the school committee went over that as a group I believe was last spring. I do have a presentation that the slides from that if you want to see it. Um we obviously rent out to our rent our facilities out for the most I mean at all schools but especially the high school and to some degree the middle school now that we've uh revamped the auditorium. Um, and we bring in, you know, well, in 25 it was about $85,000. And what's the cost to uh with uh custodians? And

that that's basically is that removing that? Correct. Okay. Yep.

And then last and then I'll stop talking uh preschool tuition. So we offer a both half day and full day programs since 2122 we've been slowly increasing the amount charged um currently. So for 2526 and for next year we're set at 450 um for the fiveday half day program and 700 for the fiveday full day program. And I believe not too long ago we went through with uh Nicole McDonald last year. Last year. Okay.

Um and I think that's all I have. Yes. Go ahead, Madam Chair. I would just like to make a suggestion. Uh when we were talking about fees at this point, could we just handle one fee at a time? Yeah. Okay. So, I would um It's funny you say that. I was going to say um Otherwise, we'll be all over the place. Yeah. So, maybe let's start from the end of the presentation because we're sitting here on the preschool tuition slide. So, maybe we should talk about preschool tuition tuition.

Um, so I think what's important for us to remember when we think about preschool tuition is that we need kids from the community to make our preschools truly integrated. um so that our students on IEPs who we're required to give a preschool education to are learning with their peers. Um so we don't want to make it um inaccessible to the average family in Grafton. Um but we do have a nice program and we've been slowly going up a little bit. So I'm not opposed to looking at you know modest increases there. Dr. Cummings, quick question on that. Is that a 10-month program or a nine-month program on preschool?

I think it's This is good that I understand. Sorry. I think it's 165 days. Okay. So, they start a little later because it's you're charged by the month it looks like you say, right? So, how many months are we charging is my question. Let's go with nine. Okay. So, September to May. So, okay. 4,50 per the half day, 6,300 for full day for the year. I don't know what you I thought you were making a statement. Sorry. No, I thought that you were confirming when you were looking through your notes. Nope.

I mean, when I did it years ago, I think it's September through May. I don't remember paying because it's like that far off. Yeah, because June it's like you only have like, you know, because they add like a week earlier to Yeah, but it's not dramatically different. I don't remember. I would say months with it. Yeah. Well, that's what I had from last year was that it was nine.

Um I would recommend going up on them. If you look at the neighboring towns, this was even my presentation from last year. Last year, Milbury was charging for five full day uh for the nine months 6,700. North Row Malboro for five full day 9,400 Oxbridge 7,000 Bolton 9600 I mean we are the lowest by far for the five full day we're more in the realm for the five half day but it it looks as though typically they're charging like twice as much.

No. Can you do can can you say because you were giving the full month do you have it I mean the full year not per month amount I can sorry I know I but I just I didn't write them down quickly enough so thank you so in Milbury for example they're charging 750 okay a month for full day five full day yeah so $50 extra a month right okay now granted they're charging less on the half day okay they're Well, this and I'm telling you these numbers were from last year. I did I have not read fair and fine.

They were charging like 350 last year for the half day per month. Sorry, my my numbers are by the year. What is Do we have more? It is a 10 month. Thank you. That makes a difference. Y they are charged for 10 months. Well, then do we know that whether we have more kids signing up for half day or full day or is that also dependent on the IEP needs because that's what we let people in to kind of

That's a fantastic question. I don't know. I think it's still a good conversation to have. I would say, and I jumping ahead, but if the decision was to con consider an increase in this, I would think the 24th, we'd have Nicole McDonald and a preschool people also come and answer the specific numbers. Okay. In the notes in there, it said that you had 42 half day and 14 full day students. That came right from Nicole. So, so that's what that's what the numbers are. It's 42 half day and 14 full day. Yeah. But I think those are to fill that's what the tuition the tuition right now those are tuition those are the tuition so that's what we're talking about across both schools

but those numbers would change if our enrollment would change for special a kids per year right but the numbers that we're looking at today yep like he says it's right there enrollment is 42 half day students and 14 full day students my face okay Um, okay. I would definitely recommend going up. I would wonder where we go up, right? Because we're sort of out of whack with that one example you gave, right, Christy? We're like way we're about 50 bucks lower than last year's Milbury, but we're like a hundred bucks. Yeah. Higher on the full on the half day. Right.

But if you I mean I only have like five schools. I I assume that No, no, I'm not saying it's it's comprehensive. I'm just like if we look at going to make the money, right? If we look at Bolton, they're charging 480 for a half day and 960 for full day. We could look like you can kind of play the data how you want. Definitely the lowest on our full day.

What I don't know is, you know, does Bolton have like a preschool director? Is it like a traditional preschool program or is the public school preschool program? We don't know. I this is just pulled off their websites. I have no idea. But I would venture to guess even that the other local preschools that are in the area are not charging this low of a rate. Like if you looked at Busybe or um ELC or any of these other preschools that are in the area, but on that note though, they're also open until 5:00 p.m. A lot of people that use these preschool programs have to have additional

Well, that would be an additional That would be more of a daycare thing. They offer half day preschool. I mean that's they do and they offer full day preschool meaning that it just goes from 9 to 1. They don't have to offer daycare. I'm not comparing it to dayare private schools that they're going to be more expensive. Right. So, you know, I'm not opposed to raising a little bit, but I don't I want to be careful of not looking at private preschools because it's just not the same and I don't want to lose the community enrollments we have because they might as well go to private preschool. That's all. So,

well, I think you're getting those students that go to daycarees. Like, I was thinking back to myself. I pulled my son out of a private daycare to attend public preschool, you know, just for, you know, exp having him experience like the public school and um, you know, everything that goes on the the preschool program. But yes, we were paying more, but then we're like, well, he's getting, you know, a head start in education. um where you know we but then we had to also like you know it ends at 3:00 you know and the the parents have to pick them up as well so there isn't any kind of transportation for the ones that pay in so it's

it's something to think about Dr. coming. Has preschool registration started yet. So we these fees are already set for this. We have nothing to this. Let's kind of move at this point. Won't we look at the fall for next year? Well, but I think if we don't talk about it, we're going to be in the same boat the following year. Like I think we should make some decisions. Well then, so you're looking So it's not even for this year. It's for FY27. Yes. I would definitely rephrase them. Yes. There's not even a question about that. Correct. It's it's at this point what's the dollar amount? Yeah, respond kind of the willy-nilly. I do want to make a

I don't know if this is help. It's not going to be helpful, but there is a huge push right now in Massachusetts government to make public preschool. You can take us through that in New York. This could be a not now and it will probably take forever and everything, but yes, but in the right now I know I know that raises other problems, right? Huge problem. I know. I'm just saying. this right now. How are we going to do that? The state will pay for it. Yeah. Um, so I mean, does somebody have a proposal to put like, have you thought of

I've been doing a lot of other stuff stuff at this week. Um, I I mean, I would definitely propose probably 500. And I' I'd go up a hundred on each. 100? Like a 100 for? Yeah, I think so. Like a month. No, a month. Like I think that Okay. Okay. Well, then I'm just throwing a number out there. Like we I can play the math any way you want. So 100 a month is $1,000 in the change in the tuition for a if we're billing on a 10 month period. So I just want to be clear. I'm okay with 500. I think 500 for half day and 750 for a full day. Say that again, Stella.

50. Go up 50 for half day. So make it 500. Yeah. And then 750 for a full day. So go up 50 on each. So about how much extra money a year? So $100. It's 500. You want to go up to what amount, Stella? Do that again. So it would be 500 half day. Yeah. 750 full day for a family. Yes. If they're paying $500 more than what they were paying, it makes $50 times 10. We'd make $2500. That's if you keep the enrollment. Let's Well, I mean I to be fair at this point we do have weight lists. Like people want the spots.

If you make it too high, yes, I worry about that. But I'm not adding 50 bucks a month is not going to your kids dry up. I don't think that. If we assume all things remain the same with the same amount of enrollment and the same days per week, you're looking at a $28,000 gain over the 287,000 that's today. It would be 315,000 with those numbers. If you're using $500 a month and 750 a month, if you want to, we can play this game again. So 28. So if we use the same, if we if we assume the same enrollment

enrollment enrollment remains the same and we say $500 a month, jo $700 $750 a month. We're looking at a total revenue of 315,000. Now, the revenue that that's total, the amount that we're that we get now is 287. So, the delta is an extra 28,000. But here's the exciting thing about anything having to do with people is we have no idea what enrollment's going to be in 2027 because you don't know what kids are coming. I mean, we probably have a sense of what kids are coming out of early intervention. um that we'll have to match them with community people. But it's an idea for sure, but enrollment could go up or down depending on the special education needs. If let's say we charge 500 a month for half day and 800 a month for full day, which I think that's here's the the thing. The numbers I'm looking at are a year old. The numbers you're trying to compare are two years out. So, it's a three-year difference. So, it's very hard comparisonwise because we're not even in the same year.

Absolutely. Right. But, but we're projecting from a while ago. So, this this from other towns a while ago. If you go $800 a month for full day, 500 for half day, your delta is going to be 35,000. What's an additional 35? 7,000. 7,000, right? Yeah. my comments to myself. I mean, okay. I just don't want to forget that because we're going to keep going, right? We're not going to I know we want to look at it oneonone, but are we going to look at everything before we like make hard decisions?

Can I ask a question also, Jay? I I don't know if you know the answer to this. This might just be my own impression. Um, but is it harder to fill those half spots? I my impression is it's harder to fill those half day spots. My impression, but that's mine also. I would love to know for sure because I would be more inclined to have a bigger push on the five on the full day spots and not on the half day because I I think I want to encourage people to take those spots. And I don't I am not opposed to Christiey's um proposal that if we're doing 50 on the half day, we do 100 on the full day or something like that. longer. Right. So that's not

something I So that would be the 35,000. That's what the middle Yeah. 500 half day, 800 full day. Yeah. In two years, right? So in two years, these numbers will be So this time next year, these are the the numbers that we'll be getting out. I I think this is a good amount and it's reasonable. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's I mean we'll still be low compared to the neighboring towns once their the numbers go up as well because we'll just be in their range from a year ago in two years. No, I don't have an issue with that. Do we require a vote on this?

Well, I'm wondering if it needs to needs more info from Nicole. I think it would be smart to to watch this discussion. Yeah. Yeah. bring be able to answer some of the questions that I tried my best, but I agree. So, I'd like to So, we can do that on the I'd like Yeah. What I'd like to do is have something that we vote on on the 24th on this, but take it as a first reading. Yeah, let's take it as a first reading. I think it's a good I think it's a good place to start the discussion of the vote from, though. Okay. All right. Let's take up facilities rentals.

I um wait I'm sorry. Didn't he have like a sheet in here? That is here. There's an expense. I think it's in the book. It is not in the book. It's in It's in our drive though. I feel like it should have been separate. Oh, you're talking one with actual. Yeah. Um, so again, we have in town people and out of town people and they have very different rates. Yeah. Where's the thing with the rates?

If you click on the slides, you get to that. Can you this one the links on the slides? Yeah. slides from 525. If you can click on that, that's a link. You click on it. I think that's the way to go. Yeah, we got it. We all did it. Yeah. You haven't. Yeah. Yeah, totally. That's the end of that. Great. Okay. I would at least like to start with talking about athletic fees. I was thinking about when not athletic fees. What? Sorry. Field. Field. Field. Yes. Yes. I was thinking about when our good friend Frank came

and he was talking about we were talking about the field and how how much we've heard from families in the district and all of that and he was talking about how we went to visit that college and how pristine their field was because they use it six times a year. Obviously that's not what we want from our public building and all of that. I I totally get that. But I'd like to I would like to see a little bit more go into that because When people rent the cafeteria, they're not really wearing and tearing down the commons, right? They're not living the Well, but I know what you're saying. You know what I mean? It's not We're not replacing the floor because people have been renting it out.

Um the fields I think and I I also understand because I know Jay in the past has talked about, you know, we're we want it's it's still our town people that we're like taxing, right? It's still the soccer clubs, the lacrosse clubs, and all these things. So, it's coming from the same pocket of money, but I do feel like that is is the most expensive thing to upkeep in this list. I'm looking at auditorium, cafeteria, gym, classroom, LGI room, library, fields, right? Probably the most things that are rented are um auditorium, cafeteria, gym, and fields, right?

Um so, I I I would like to go up. I don't know how much. I mean 50 an hour when you think about how long you rent it, you probably have to rent it for at least is there a minimum four renting a field. It would depend if if you need a custodian, right? That's the minimum of Saturday morning. No, you you could you could do an hour. You could pay. So if you're doing an hour every week or you need you need lights because you want to do a game under the lights and we're paying for the lights. I mean

I those are things that cost like other towns charge a minimum of so many hours if you're going to rent the fields or yeah the fields and the auditorium and then the other thing with this fee schedule if you look at it I know that we had adjusted it last year and I I thought that Dr. Cummings and I had talked about it afterwards. we were supposed to bring it back. The if you look at the auditorium for in graft and approved groups, the auditorium, which is probably the most expensive thing right on the other side is 20. No, it's $25 for ghs and GMS. That's less than a classroom. We're charging less to rent the auditorium than we're charging to rent the classroom. Does that make any sense?

Oh, I see where you're looking. Qualifi for qualifying drafting program, right? for the the high school auditorium costs less to rent than the than a high school classroom. It costs $25 an hour versus $30 an hour for a classroom. That makes zero sense. You know, I'm looking I'm looking at something totally different. I'm looking at something you're different. Dr. Thomas, can you open up on I I will open it, but I just want to let us all know that we might lose this portal. That's not where that goes. That's not where that goes. I've been I've been into this this Stranger Thing portal before, but Oh, I'll come in and get you out. What's your favorite song? Maybe it's that's going to take you. Nope. You want us to go to the website?

I want you to go to the website. Go to the website. I told you that I'm link to the link in the document. We'll go to the website. Go to the website cuz the link in the document is taking you to there. So, some old thing. Oh, boy. We're never getting just back. Just escape. Escape. I know. Back. Back. Back. Space. My nephew over. Where am I going? If you Okay. Type in Grafton Public Schools facility rental. Okay. Open that. Use of facilities. Got it. Thank you. And then rates. Oh god. Dr. coming. Do you want me to send you the link? No, just tell me where to go.

The facility. Oh, wait. You're almost there. Hold on. Go up rates for school facility. I have no idea. Up or down? All right. So, go to the search and type in go all the way up. Go all the way to the top. See, it says search the site on the left. Left tub, right? Facility rental.

Yeah, this is more use of facility. Do you know when you're looking at it? Yeah. And then go to the right where it says rates the screen. Yes, I think we are. Open that sheet. Yeah. You have to click UDF thing at the top at the There you go. You did it. Look at you thing we ever see. So you talk about those adult education classes. Okay. So the point being is that the the auditorium costs less than a classroom. This is crazy. I feel like last year it was like why is this price worth

because we increased it by a percentage and and after that went through Dr. Cummings had reached out to me and we discussed having brought it back because of just what we're saying here. Do you recall this Dr. Cummings emailing me and saying this was crazy Christy the classrooms cost more than thing? And I said you're right Dr. Cummings. I I feel like you would have framed that email. I definitely remember that. Yeah, you would have framed it. It should be up on your wall right now. And I said, "All right, let's bring it back." And then it never happened. So, point being, these rates have to go up. Yeah. I'm not The auditorium doesn't make any sense. $25 an hour is at the very least it should be like $50 an hour.

Well, other groups for I do understand. I mean, I think that it is important to just think about where this came from. I'm not opposed to grow going up. It is, you know, it's also using again same as the J as the fields. It's using that floor that's down there. It's wear and tear on the building, all of that. Um, but there was obviously this town and school partnership when we built the school. And I think that that was these have been honoring that. I do think we've honored that long enough. I do think we also remember that we're still taxing the same people.

Like we're gonna tax them no matter what. So, um because they're they're not going to absorb it, right? They're going to put it right back into the consumer. So, people are going to pay for their whatever it is. But I think we could probably I just want to be cautious a little bit. I do think they're pretty low. Um Well, for sure. I mean, I think in some cases, especially for a graft and approved group, they could cost us money because they're less than what you're paying the custodian to be there or Well, they still have to pay custodian fees. Yeah. Oh, they do. Yes, they do. They pay $60 an hour. But still like $25, I don't disagree with you. Quite low. Yeah. Yeah. Let's raise that. Yes.

Let's go up to at least I honestly what I if that were up to me, I would take whatever the approved rates are and do half for the like whatever the other groups are. pay half like we get 50% off for oh you know what I mean like it's an easy down the line it's easy to justify you're paying 50% of what what some other outside right and that's a large discount and it's we don't have to sit here and go through every number one by one that's if you think that the all other groups are fine right if you didn't want to raise anything what do we get most do we still get a lot of other groups coming in.

We do. Um yeah, our our rates I'd rather raise them a little higher than Yeah. than our our graft and friends. Not that I don't just I mean I love what you're saying, Christy. I just um I guess I was thinking raise them a little higher and then implement the 50% off something or maybe it's 60%. Whatever this like a blanket percentage would be the easiest thing. Yeah, we shouldn't even have to put What happened between 2022 to 2023 to like a drastic amount in um so it's 117 and 2022 and then it now it's been hovering around 70 to 80 folks that used to rent not rent from us anymore. Yes.

I can look into it. Yeah. No, I was just curious if there was like you know some like organization that like maybe used to rent from us all the time. It went down. It went down. It's steady now between 70 well it was after I think there's a couple of groups that used to be with us that aren't anymore. Okay. We used to do it multiple times a year that are no longer outside grafted necessarily based private organizations that would come in.

It is what it is. But they kind of thought we were the handover theater with staff running around. It just it didn't work on any level and they went some literally went to the handover theater as they should. It's a lot more you're paying for the staffing for you know we don't on a given Sunday if we can find a custodian to do the overtime like that's awesome but we don't have like specialists and sure the expectations are uh off the charts and unrealistic

Madam Chair. So my personal recommendation would be if we're thinking of of legitimately just saying like the graft and approved groups get a discount, right, of whatever percentage we set that to. I would set all the graph grafting groups to have to be an even number because when you start doing an odd number, right, like $75, then you're dealing with change, right? If you're taking a percentage off. If you deal with an even number, let's say, so basically we're going to do the grafted ones first and then raise the other ones by 65% whatever whatever whatever it is, right? That's what I would do. Like I would I would make all those even numbers. What is more regardless of what the number is? Like even if it's $80 and then 50% off would be $40. Right. Right.

It's a lot. You take 50% off at 75, you're the only change. Yeah, that's fair. Do you think there's kind of the same as we talked about with other fees, there's a risk of people of losing the revenue if it's too high? It's hard to say. I know it is hard to say. Um I'm not worried about the all other groups. I I think before a decision is made we get a better sense and provide to you a better sense of what that impact would be. You come by here on a weekend they're sports constantly and they I know struggle as it is to bring in money make it all work but

right it's it's not just the occasional game. I mean our fields are used It feels like 247 when the weather is decent. Right. I like this conversation. I just want to make sure it's not like arbitrary that we're just I just want you to know that. I would also love a little bit of a breakdown on how much money we're bringing in from grafting groups versus non- grafting groups. I think that would be very helpful to know. Probably did. I think on the 24th I can bring I think I think you did also. I just have it in front of me. Bring Frank. Yeah. always loving. But this this is good. This obviously they can watch this, know what kind of information you're looking for.

I'm definitely in favor of raising beef. I do this. I just want to say that. I just want to make sure we're we're thinking through everything and right and I don't want to still our kids that are going to be right. We're paying our kids are paying like right. But I I think we Yeah. We're extremely generous at our rates and we can go up and and I'd rather put it here than elsewhere. Yes. Agreed. Y so. Yep. Well, we'll get to that. Wow. Yep. All right. Great. Uh All right. And I like the idea of making it keeping it simple. For sure. Right. Just keep it simple.

Y one quick question. Um, so the Grafton wreck is considered the the Grafton approved groups even though we're kind of like all in like the same budget. We aren't. No, we aren't. That's budget. Yeah. I'm just saying like, well, the whole school budget's town budget. No. No. Separate. Separate. I know what you mean. We're all part of the big I appreciate you trying to keep us not separate. Yeah, that is good. That's thoughtful of Yeah, it's not. Um, all right. I I don't want to talk about activity fees without talking about athletic fees first because I do feel like athletic fees is the big nut. Um

so I have thoughts and things to say, but I'm gonna let somebody else talk first if anyone wants to start. I'm happy to go first. Okay. It's not going to be a surprise to anybody that has followed me but I'll say it again. Um this comes up It comes up a lot because it's it's an easy uh it's an easy Matt and I say can't you just

that people say a lot like can't you just um and it sounds super easy and I'm always like if it was easy it would have been done right um but and I appreciate the thoughts because yeah can't you just so um I want I'm going to acknowledge how real and difficult our budget situation is I totally get it I also understand why we are bringing up athletics and activities fees to increase revenue um to over you know hopefully lower potential uh taxpayer burden and but I need to be very clear on why I oppose the payto-play fees. I feel like the research is consistent um when schools charge athletic fees especially in the 100 to 200 range student participation drops in large district studies participation declined about 10% at 100 and roughly doubled at 200. I feel like that matters because our families are already paying $200 for transportation and parking fee. And in another life, I always say I think that's so bizarre that we have to charge people to come to school. Once you put these fees in place, they never go away. That fee was in place before I got here and has been here and we've gained money from it. That's great. Um, but adding another require fee um risks pricing our students out of school connected opportunities. And then I also want to just say when is it enough? It's not going to solve our problem. So is it then just well you only did a h 100red. Why not 150? You only did 150. Why not 200? Franklin is at $600. I just checked during this meeting. They did have a failed override. $600 to play a sport, a high school sport. Um they don't compare us to Franklin, but they also needed an override and and didn't get it. Um waivers are often cited. People love to say okay if they're on free and reduced lunch. um that doesn't fully solve the problem. Many families don't know how to request them. They don't qualify on paper but still struggle or they just feel uncomfortable asking. The kids just

won't ask. Um so the result there is that students quietly opt out. I always have firmly believed that athletics and activities are not extras. They are not extracurricular activities. They are tied to student engagement, attendance, mental health, and a sense of belonging. When access depends on a family's ability to pay, we create a two-tier system that runs counter to the values of public education. And when people point and thank you for pulling the slide together that's right up there, Jay, I I really do appreciate it. I didn't ask this, but we don't get the full picture. We don't see all those other revenues that those school districts bring in. Do people go to Douglas and are they bringing in millions of dollars in school choice? No offense to my president Douglas. I'm guessing no. Um, same with North Bridge. Are they getting any additional revenues? So, yeah, they're getting money from the fees, but I I don't have a clear picture of all the additional money that's coming in, and I don't want to lose that message when we're talking about this. Um, so basically, I love that we're talking about other ways to raise fees. I totally get that we're in this budget, but I do not want to negatively impact our student achievement. And I'll just finish on this. I'm in the midst of a uh college application season with my senior son. Um college right now and you guys are all behind me. It is so different than we were when we were kids. It is no longer about your grades, about your you know kids are already behind when they're financially when their families aren't in that financial. They have to have activities like beyond belief. All these things to build their resume. they have to practically like I don't even know solve solve cancer. It's it's kind of crazy that top tier or that next level down or a lot of schools. It's not like when we were kids. Um and then we're going to put one more barrier. They're already kind of

struggling sometimes at Grafton because we don't have all the things that other school districts around here offer um to the to the east of us. Um so I know I brought this up and maybe you all agree with me and that would be amazing. Um, but I needed to say that because I know people really like to point to that. I see it every year on Facebook. We have this discussion every year. I know there are our friends in the selector who keep asking why are you not doing fees? Um, and this is why I don't want to do fees. It damages our students. Um, it's a co-curricular. It is what we offer. It should be part of what is involved in a Roth public school education. Rebecca,

um that was beautiful, Laura. Thank you. Um I also like when you said that when they make fees $100, we lose 10% of kids. And that doesn't sound like a huge number. Like I could imagine people arguing against that. And I'm like, but I would argue that those are the 10% that are already not able to participate in anything else. Those are the 10% that we want desperately to be playing sports or to be doing activities. So, I I feel like that's exactly how we catch the kids that are falling through the cracks is giving them opportunities outside of the classroom to be involved. And I 100% agree. I do not think we should charge fees for um athletics. But I also really appreciated in Jay's slide where he pointed out the part about our coaching. It's like we're not even going to get any more money. We're going to just eliminate participation from kids who desperately need it. So, I also agree with you, Laura. I agree with the volume.

Great, Chris. Okay. So, I'd like to just raise point as to what the athletics are costing us. I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree. This is just a matter of fact. In FY25, athletic and activities costs the district $821,000. That's that's a lot. I mean, we can't just sniffle at that. That's a lot of money. The athletic transportation alone uh this year as as the budget what what it once was was 80 185,000. what it was spent in FY25 for athletic transportation because we're in that new um what is it Dr. coming

new league, right? Our our transportation fees went up because of this. Uh I've spoken with Kathleen about that because, you know, we're going further. We're doing what we spent $151,000. While I know the board is not in favor of fees or especially athletic fees, I would recommend at this point that if when we start talking about a reduction budget, which like we have to we like we that's our reality. I would I would strongly advise for like at least having an athletic transportation or activity transportation fee over cutting teachers. There's no way I would ever want to cut. Like those are people we we if we pay you pay to send your student to school. I by fact I paid $200 to take the bus and my son has to get to school, right? Athletic transportation, $151,000. That's what we're That's what we paid last year. That's a lot of money that we're paying out for transportation when we are paying ourselves to transport just to get to the building to take the classes. That's

right. But but we pay it but and we we're not getting rid of it. So I just think that we really when we start talking about reduction budgets, this has to be on the table. It just can't we can't afford to just give it away at this point. If we're talking about cutting staff, there has to be on the table this as well. So that's all. Okay. Um I'm going to start off by saying that I have a varsity athlete at the high school. So I

She should have Well, I just want to be very clear and if we end up implementing fees, I am able to pay them and she will continue to play. Um I will tell you that I spent a lot of time feeling like I don't like fees. I don't believe in fees, but we're gonna have to do them um to lessen the burden on the taxpayers if that's the way we go. Uh I felt that way for a long time. And I as I as I dug first of all last week um in the select board meeting, Amory Foley said something really interesting when they were talking about fees on their side. She said, "Remember fees are a tax." And she's 100% right. So, we're asking for an override to provide level services. Level services is is right now we provide athletics as part of the co-curricular program. Uh, number one. Number two, for a lot of the reasons Laura said, you know, when I looked at um a couple NIH studies, um you know, for girls in particular, playing high school sports uh has a correlation with like more AP classes, higher GPA. Um I also read a report um from the athletic director's point of view and they said they're basically chasing families all day to pay and it doesn't there's not a onetoone. And so the more I looked into how it works in practice, um I sort of moved away from that we've got to do it. Um particularly because I don't want any kid to not have an opportunity. Um I do hear what you're saying, Christie, about looking at it differently in a reduction budget situation.

Right. I think that if we to direct Dr. Cummings when we when talking about his reduction budget. This has to be on the table instead of just looking at reducing our you know I can't keep getting rid of Spanish and French and everything and and paying for paying 151,000 or 185,000 to drive to the Field and Hope deal. It just doesn't make sense. What do what are the boosters bringing in? There's been so much talk about I don't know. I can find out where that money has been going from and you're doing an amazing job and I don't want to I think they're helping with equipment. They're helping with like the things the teams need. They definitely purchased some uniforms. It's definitely helping.

Yeah, I know. I'm not and they're working so hard is so I'm I'm very grateful. I mean, I'm completely opposed to having the fees, but I understand what you're saying. Does it save a job? But I don't I will not I don't think we should consider it as part of our level services budget. Right. But I think we should consider Dr. Cummings placing this as a red in his reduction budget. I mean I do think with transportation it's the same almost because we can't and people and there are lots of people who drive their students every day. We all know that. So there's a lot of people in this town who are either able to drive because that's you know that's a luxury.

That's a luxury for sure. you have that kind of flexible schedule. Um, you know, and I I think that would be outrageous. I've always thought it was outrageous. And again, once you put it in, it never comes out. So, it's your future, right? Um, and then the pay for the transportation. I guess it look, and I get it. I'm actually I'm not a sports person, right? I'm sorry. I know. I know. Like my kid, I have a a varsity cross country at BBT. We pay 50 bucks, but we paid for nothing else and they have tons of money coming in and whatever. Ridiculous. And that 50 bucks is fine. Um, I did want to just mention the and Jay brought it up. I had a when we changed the parking um had a very lively conversation on my town Facebook page and I had one parent who said, "My daughter now has to wait an extra five minutes and I pay for her to park there." And that was one parent, but he was outraged that his child that he paid now had to park. Now I'm paying and maybe my kid doesn't pay play.

Oh yeah. So I do think that we've we're that's who we are as a generation, right? Right. Like good or bad, people expect more when they pay and they should, I guess, right? Um I pay for a lot, you know? So I just think that's something we need to keep in mind, too. Um, so but yeah, of course, I mean our reduction budget is going to be awful. It's going to be difficult and we don't want to do any of it. So yes, I mean it's a values thing, right? Somebody I mean somebody might think SP, you know, you have to have certain things to graduate, right? You don't have to have whatever. I don't want to say but right. And I mean we are giving them more now with that new athletic boosters.

No, no, no, not the boosters. The Dr. are coming sort of. Oh, the um it's not an athlete. You just told it to me and literally just not swinkle like the new league. Yes, that's the word. So So we're get Yeah. Yeah. We're getting Yeah. I'm also a shocker. Not a sports person. I like sports. I don't never So I think So how would we like to direct Dr. Cummings then when we're talking about a reduction budget with that? Run it with both. Sure. run in the reduction budget with with a transportation fee. Well, they have a No, no, an athletic transport. An athletic transportation fee. So, when you say that, what do you mean? Is it by the number? I'm just asking.

Is it by the number of Right. I don't know what you're I I don't know. I think it's either a sports fee or a non-sports fee, right? You're either paying $100 a sport. So, is it a sports fee or sport and activity fee? because you're going to get pants that are going to argue and I mean I would be one of them on the other side saying like my son does robotics that is a that is basically a sport where he's there every Saturday the fact that I wouldn't pay for that seems ridiculous if you're paying for basketball like I don't disagree with like you I I would want to pay for that because do they take a bus to there we do not take a bus now we the only ones that don't take a bus to the thing I mean this is for

this is the can of worms though right like Deca takes buses and student council. Right. So, is it an activity athletic activity fee of of $100 like he had said at the beginning? Is that what we're directing him towards? No, I'm not. For a reduction budget, I'll be happy to put it all in. I'd want to see what it Yeah, sure. I'd want to see what it looks like. I'm not I would run the numbers with $100. Or do we run it without as many sports or do we just make or parents drive their kids? No. Well, no. They're never going to get like but I think I know but I mean that's then you don't have kids playing sports at all because

but that's the I mean but that's kind of where we're going I get that point NIH study told me one in seven parents whose childrens did not play middle or high school sports cited cost as the reason like they're already behind if they don't have a lot of money they're already not on the club sports they're not already not on so the kid who joins track because they can't do anything else or they can't afford anything else but all they need is a, you know, pair of sneakers. It's so gross. And it is gross. It's not our values. And exactly what Jay said earlier, we're going to pay the people more, which we should be doing anyway. So, it's not it's it's Yeah, I mean, sure, of course, we have to look at everything, right? This is just for a reduction budget,

not added in um and let people I would I would like to see it next to the reduction budget to see if it has an impact. I can do that. Okay, that's what I would say. And you're going to hear from all the people that'll say, "I can afford it." And that's awesome. Go back for the people right they don't even know. Here's the thing. The kids who know it's a struggle for their family won't ask. They won't ask. Exactly. They're not going to hear from their parents because their parents won't even be aware they want to do it. For the 100, it's 70,000. I'll see the athletics be the 70,000 140

and if you're giving if you're increasing stipens you've actually lost money that file unless we do 200. Yeah. So, okay. But again, that's the you're paying somebody. Now parents are paying now parents are yelling at coaches because their kid isn't playing and the coach still makes what they made before. Yeah, that's I mean be yelling at coaches whether they pay or not. Get coaches as it is, right? The reality. No, they just care like they Yeah, they do. And that it's they're not doing it to get rich. They're great.

But if you counted up the number of hours they put in, I had to do track for number of years. I didn't get paid for it, but it was Saturdays, Sundays. It's kind of a lot. Boy, if you did an hourly rate, it would be laughable. They they go way above and beyond. Yep. So, so for reduction budgets. Okay. I just like to see it next to it. I don't want it in the budget until we evaluate it. I mean, it's fair to evaluate it. Okay. Um Okay. Any That was it. That's all the fees. No, we have parking and bus. Oh, parking and bus. I certainly don't want to go up. I

I think that we should go up on the parking even if it's a nominal amount of $50. They do not have to drive to school. That is not I know. But look at our parking compared to other places. Like we're already super duper high. Yeah. What do you had some slide that showed a cost association with I mean what does it cost us to have something? It cost him like $44,000 or something he had on a slide. He had must have been what we utilize the money for. I don't know. We are limited in what we can. No, you said total expenses. The re Yeah. What was the revenue? You said revenue was 59,000 for parking fees and total expenses are 44,000. I don't

So that would I I can guarantee that's going to be one of uh like a maintenance salary. You're super limited in what you can use it for. Obviously busing fees you can use towards transportation. uh parking fees. It gets you know I don't have big parking costs but we can you utilize maintenance salaries. So that's weird because Okay. So you're just showing what this funding source is used towards and not towards and what not what the actual expenditures are for that. I mean service whatever I don't know it seems odd that it was 44,000 why asking the question. I mean to me

paying the same to park as what you pay to take the bus, which is a resource that costs us money, is already cuckoo. That's the technical term. Cuckoo. Uh, you know, I it is what it is, but I don't know that we go up. How much do we make? I just don't know. I mean, like we're doing this like a 1% correct? I don't know. I I do part of me goes back and forth on that like it's the privilege you have to already be able to afford a car or have a car be able to pay insurance so you're already you know right

we also don't offer any kind of after school transportation so that is a way for kids to be able to participate more they can carpool like there is like a um a benefit to most drive to school you see them get out in the morning and they have you know there's like three or four open campus. Like it's all sorts of things that come with being able to drive. Um I just I I I totally get it. It's just it's I don't It's odd that it's the same amount because it's so high. Well, that's why. Well, it should be it should you want people to take the bus, make it busy 150 to take the bus and 200.

In fact, I think you proposed again something crazy or something many times. I know you want to encourage people to take the bus, but again, the bus costs us money. The parking lot is sitting there. Somebody who drives isn't like a drain on our budget, right? But we're looking at re ways to build up revenue. Like that's just the the state that we're in at this point. We have to find ways

about like $20,000 in a $50 million budget where we've already talked about the hundreds of thousands of dollars we bring in from all our other programs. Now we're going through and we're trying to nitpick because we're thinking we're getting this outside, you know? I just I want to look I just feel like we're not looking at it holistically. We're just going through and being like, "Okay, well, yep, we should raise our fees." Yeah. And we're going to bring in X amount and then it's going to go to I mean it'd be great to be able to you know I mean it's money you can pay and get other money but I don't know. Do we know do we have here how many people park? We don't it's three level three. Yeah there is somewhere.

Yeah there somewhere in the slide. somewhere. I thought it was like I thought it was 289, but maybe that sounds the math works. 200 go with that number. Yeah, I trust you. You trust me? Well, 59,000 divided by 200, whatever. Um, you're right. So, we add 50 bucks. What are we going to make? I don't know. Or will it matter? Maybe it doesn't even matter. Maybe people are like, "Fine." And they probably will. will probably say most people will still pay it. I think probably because if you already can afford the car and the gas and the or I'm drowning. It's so expensive.

I know, right? Exactly. Yeah. My kid drives to school, but yeah, the insurance, the gas, the whatever. It's not cheap. Oh, should I have recused myself? I have a kid who drives to school. Um I don't know. I I don't I'm not married. I just I feel again we're taxing people in another way. How much can they bear?

But I suppose it's putting it in the reduction budget and this is your choice. You can all pay for this. You're alikart or we think of it as a true public education system where everybody pays for what you get to go to practice, right? And if not, then yeah, this is what people want. They want to see the school people suffer. Your kid goes to school, so they should pay out for everything. We should charge for books. No, we don't. People who take 50 gets paid more. They should. So, yeah. So, are you saying to to to put that in as a reduction budget or No, I'm definitely not.

Okay. So, then we'll just leave that you guys. I mean, you do like like do you want to just leave that? I really didn't I didn't really I didn't think we were going to spend a lot of time on transportation fees. I think they're on the higher end for towns in the area and I am comfortable with where they are. Okay. Uh so to to just to recap, Leor, so the we're looking at the preschool. Yeah, that's real. That's that's not as a reduction budget. That's what we're looking at for real. That no matter what. We're doing that no matter what. We're looking at the facility rentals no matter what.

No matter what. bringing them up to some sort of an even number and then and then saying a percentage decrease for the reduction budget. Dr. Cummings is going to look at the athletics fee correct and nothing else. Yes. I just want to make sure that that those are that's what we're saying to recap the that's what I understood but I recap the statement agreement. So okay do you get that to that? I understand. Great. Fees check. Keep on going. Transportation. Oh, no. Was Christy going to jump in? Uh, after after. We had not yet. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Um, I'll go through this relatively quickly. obviously stop me as I need to. But going back a couple meetings following the arrest of a bus driver in January, I spoke about uh obviously the commitment to safety in regards to transportation. I laid out that I was going to look at three big areas of focus for us. One was the bus monitors particularly on the uh preschool runs, GPS tracking software and staffing dedicated to the transportation coordination and communication. I uh surveyed and talked to superintendent in 19 or representatives in 19 area communities, met with the Graptton uh police chief, and went over and met with the owner of AA Transportation. Uh these are the 19 area school districts that I surveyed and connected with. I think you'll find it's very comprehensive uh in terms of the area in the survey. I I wanted just to run through the the three big things that jumped out. I was a little surprised by a number of things that came out of the survey. Uh one was the preschool monitors. uh a small majority but but just over half um do not have monitors on their preschool buses. Uh obviously despite the numbers I am moving forward with the recommendation that we maintain monitors on our preschool runs uh this year and next year uh in talking to so this year's already we're already covered for this year. um next year. You saw in the memo, I should have mentioned that I put every all the details in the memo. It's also in the school committee book um in working with

the owner of AA transportation at cost like we've kind of met in the middle. We're going to be covered for all of next year. So we'll then build in uh going forward. So that is in my mind checked off. We are going to have monitors in all of our preschool runs. GPS tracking software. Uh, one thing that surprised me with this is just a few years ago the school committee at that time tasked me with taking a look at this and I looked at it and it was at that time kind of like I guess I don't order that much but if you order things from Amazon once in a while you see the dot and sometimes the dot will be like two miles away and the Amazon driver is at your house. It was kind of like that just a few years ago. Uh, now it's refreshing instead of every four minutes, it's refreshing typically like every 10 seconds, 20 seconds. So, it's it's pretty accurate. Um, so that was that was a bit of a surprise to me. And the cost has gone way down. I want to say it was 40,000 few years ago. It's like what we're looking at potentially piloting is about 7,000 for the software. Uh, which is just much more doable. So, um, when we surveyed those 19 area communities, about 70% do not utilize GPS tracking software that's shared with parents and 31% did. Uh, tied directly to that, which I'll explain in a second, um, we don't have anybody dedicated to transportation. I did it kind of on my own for years and we hired Frank. Frank uh is in our director of operations and I basically tricked him into helping with transportation. It is everything about it is it's just it's not fun. Um so the two of us try to split as much as we can when we have questions and we get hundreds and hundreds of questions about

bus stops. For example, one of us drives out to the bus stop and we try to make it work in our daily route between schools. Um, but it's just the two of us doing everything in regard to the coordination and communication transportation. The one caveat to that that I'd add is principles certainly try to do a great job, but they're also when transportation for their school is taking place, I want them outside. I want them talking to parents, talking to kids. So, it's not like they're sitting there in front of the phone and a computer screen, you know, answering in real time. is much more reactive. Uh so again about number 63% of those 19 districts do have a person either a full-time or a part-time coordinator. The majority that do have coordination have a full-time person. So I mentioned that they come together and this is I think my last slide on this and going back to the GPS tracking software. I couldn't find anywhere in the state that might exist but I couldn't find any district that offers the GPS tracking software that doesn't also have a district coordinator. Um and that makes sense to me. Um, so in the area out of those 19, here's an overview of the six districts that do have the accessible GPS. The only one that doesn't have a coordinator actually does have a coordinator, but instead of the school district, Oxford P Oxford Public Schools paying to have a district coordinator. They pay, but it's through the transportation company. So whatever that salary is, I'm making it up. 60,000 that's just embedded in their contract as additional cost. um subscription. The reason I I had a really good

conversation with the director of transportation in Hopkins. Um so I called him and asked him about their system. They would I don't remember the name of St. Route maybe, but anyhow they started it. This is their first year. So I was really interested to see like how much work is it? If you have a good system or you just off and running and everything's good. in the first 90 days, he had to deal with 450 issues related to it. So, that's a that's a lot. That was even a lot for him, and that's his full-time job. Um, so I think that's a reality to keep in mind. The transportation coordinator pay range ranged from 65,000 to 100,000. My suggest or my recommendation is that I work with AA Transportation and set up a meeting with Zonar. That's the the company that we would use. We would use them because all of the equipment, the hardware is already embedded within their system. And all of the AA vehicles have the sonar. The the got a crash course on they all have a wand that connects. So, in theory, excuse me, in theory, you're the drive. I'm the driver and I go to my bus 2 in the morning. That bus doesn't start. The batteries dead. And I go to bus six instead. When I scan in, that should in theory all magically work out. And that little dot that you have, it's great. Um, if we So, I've been talking to Ron. I wanted to run it by you first. My thought is have a meeting with Ron in Zonar. Um it's definitely a lot of work that needs to take place over the summer that I can wrap my head around. We can probably make that work. Um if we were to pilot it in the coming year, the challenge and we're going to have to be exceptionally

clear with this is that we don't have staff to manage that those 450 calls. and we'll probably get to them, but that those are going to be on top of all the other calls that Frank and I do when we do a hundred other things. Um, but I think it's worth pursuing. Um, so we're a go for the monitors and I would suggest that I work with Zonar and AA um to ideally be putting before you a pilot of the system for the coming year. Obviously, if you tell me you want to somehow work into the budget, a transportation director, that would be great, but I don't expect that. Any questions?

Have a question? Yeah. Um, the monitors, are they pair of professionals or No, it's their monitors.

Great thing. Um, that was something that jumped out as interesting to me. For us to get a monitor, if it's a graft, an individual, we have to essentially beg somebody to do it because everybody's got a life. Like, think about an hour before school starts. When most people are getting their kid, their own kids on the bus, they're just, you know, doing their own thing. They have to go and be on a bus for that hour. That's super hard. And same with the end of the day. Um the that's a huge challenge, an impossibility, not even a challenge, is when if Cella, you're the uh bus monitor and instead of getting, you know, on that bus at 7:00, you're you've got the flu that day. We have nothing. There is just nobody at I'd have to arrange it at what 4:00 a.m. and find somebody to fill in for you. It's an impossibility. uh on AA's end they essentially have a a large pool of people that do that work. If they don't have work that day, they fill in as subdrivers. Uh so them finding them them being AA being in charge of the monitors is phenomenal for us. I don't have any.

So that would be for all the bus monitors that we use this, not just for the preschool, right? No, just preschool. They don't have that many. Okay. They have enough to cover and cover absences with preschool. Okay. Anything else? It's great. Okay. So, I will circle back once uh once we meet once that meeting. Okay. Okay. Now, we kind of broke the budget into three pieces, I think. Yeah. Where for the most part, I'm going to review slides that again, for the most part, with some few exceptions, you've we've already

talked about. Um, and then Christie is going to, I think, take the lead on talking about uh the use of stabilization and examining that. And then part three I asked if I could share some of the thoughts that I have as superintendent in terms of looking forward in big picture.

Uh so step one the plan initially was to have the preliminary budget essentially finalized all the lines laid out for you tonight following that select board meeting. there was a lot of talk and concern about actuals and the lines themselves. So rather than rush between then and tonight, um I've asked for permission to basically have until the 17th to do two things. One, get the lines as we want them, meaning if they don't line up well with actuals, have context with those lines to explain it. we'll be able to explain in person on the 24th, but that book that shares that that is shared publicly, I want to have that context and we want to get it right. Um, I'll talk about the online budget book that will be released at the same exact time with the preliminary FY27 budget on the 17th. And as you know, our next meeting or the committee's next meeting after February break on the 24th, we'll have a public hearing followed by discussion about the budget. And the thought, at least on my end, I think we've I've shared it was to um basically lay out by cost center all of the whatever's in that cost center and then take questions and then just move through the budget that way. Um, all right. Oh, I didn't put it. Sorry. So, we do have a new online budget book coming out on the 17th and will have links to all of our budget lines in that. Um, one of the things that we did add to it was basically a a Q&A section, frequently asked questions around uh why

are we dependent right now on overrides? What do we have for revenue generation? Um, shared services is a piece. All of the questions that we all hear kind of all the all the time, at least I do. Uh, and to proactively speak to those. There's a case study about North Bridge, how things have played out there. So, um, I'm really thrilled with it. I'm excited for everybody to see the book. I think it's a lot easier to to access in today's day and age online. All right. So, as you know, this is a review. We're creating two budgets. We're going to have the level service budget. Go through that on the 24th. I've outlined in a rough way the reduction budget uh if we do have to reduce a little over a million dollars for FY27. What's been put forth and will be gone through on the at the next meeting is a level service budget. Um, it's the leanest level service budget that I've ever been a part of. Uh, it's intended just to maintain that operational status quo. It does not include with one exception, it does not include bringing back any of the 6.5 FTE that were that was reduced last year just to get us through FY26. The one exception is that HR director position. Uh right now I am the de facto HR director which is it is what it is but it's kind of ridiculous. Um and it's not sustainable. We can get through this year but it is not sustainable for another year. So we're not bringing any of those things back with the exception of that one position and that's dependent on needs for FY27. we have students student needs that trump that. We're just going to have to figure it

out. Um for in the creation of FY27, there were 6.5 positions requested to help stabilize, if not make us a little better for FY27. None of these positions are included in that level service FY27 budget. Central cost drivers shouldn't be a big surprise. Salaries out of district tuitions in transportation and then below that again the the HR position coming back.

Dr. Cummings just to be clear the HR position we had 110,000 in that line. So you're only adding back 13,000 to it. Correct. Um it was $140,000 line. You took out 30,000 you've added back 13. Um, not you're not adding back 123, you're adding 13. My position on is that we did have money in it, but uh a significant the great majority of that money was actually to fund or to pay Joanne Sland who was with us from July 1st through November as acting HR director. Okay. Yeah, you're right. She was technically the acting HR director. Okay. And it would have been

I just want to be sure that we're just saying the same numbers that it's 13, not 123. Okay. Um, so again, it I I won't read it to you, but we're we're we're not adding any of those things back. We're not including anything that would make us better for FY27 in terms of that level service budget. I also want to point out that the bullet you didn't talk about, which is does not replenish savings. We have spent down skip right over everything. Yep. So we have there is no cushion. There is nothing and we're replenishing nothing.

Yes. With circuit breaker being the big concern. Um I mean we're concerned about everything but circuit breaker uh the way things are looking now would certainly be probably under 50,000 but definitely under I would think under 100,000 going into FY27. We should have 1.5 million in that. Great difference. And Dr. They're coming to go back also to point out of those 6.5 positions that not including adding back those 6.5 positions. I mean, one of those positions was going regardless of that those cuts last year for that preschool teacher. You were reducing that that.5. Yes. So, it was six. Thank you for clarifying. You're welcome.

And then looking ahead, uh, going to what you just talked about, Leora, we've spent out revolver funds. Um, we've spent out circuit breaker for FY26. And we remain of course a minimum aid district with no significant funding ch changes anticipated. So any questions on that quick and dirty review of FY27. Okay. Tech tonight. You are. Yes. Kind of. You could be a tech director. doing it. Yeah, maybe

snowing. Okay,

so I wanted to speak on the special education funds. Last week we or rather three weeks ago, we talked briefly what seemed to be a little confusion. We've done a lot of leg work on this. Uh, researching minutes of meetings, watching old meetings, talking to the clerk's office, the town accountant, Evan, even Tim McCannernney, our old town administrator, to to find out information in regards to these funds. So, click why we had two funds. The stabilization fund was set up in 2017. That was for long-term savings. Both of these are for special ed just so we're clear. One was set up in 2017 and it was for long-term planning to smooth over cost volatility. The other was set up in 2018 and that was more for unanticipated unbudgeted in-ear costs. So kind of think of them as two different things. Like think of the first one as more like your 401k like you're going to put it away for a long time and the other one's just your savings account that you can access a little bit more easily for unanticipated costs. So, what's the difference on the two of them? Well, they both have different laws associated with each of them. And like I said, this this one from 2017 that's for long-term planning. It's slower. And in order to get the money from from that, you have to go back to town meeting, get a twothirds vote. The good thing about this is that there's no cap on it. You can put in as much money as you want. There's no cap to it and it has to be invested. Both of these actually have to be invested like conservatively. The stabilization fund though allows for a little bit more flexibility under state law. So that's just how that one is. But they're both have to be conservatively invested. The other one is using different mass general law.

It's for unanticipated costs. As I said, you can access it a lot faster. All you need for that to access it is the school committee's vote and the select board vote. You need them both. It's not one or the other, both. And so you can put up to 2% of net school spending. So that would mean for us where we have $50 million net school spending, we could put in approximately a million dollars per year. No balance. That's the max balance that it can hold. So Oh, it's for in-ear surprises. Oh, right.

Yeah. So those are the max like the the other one there's no cap. This one a million based on our budget today. Next. Okay. Okay. So what's the status on these? This was this is what took a lot of work. Back in 2017 it was approved at town meeting the stabilization fund. We're just going to look at that one right now. In 2017, it was approved. Not only was it approved, it was a there were two votes. It was approved and then there was a vote to approve to move $100,000 from free cash into that account. This has never been set up. Nobody is exactly sure why this was not set up. We I have gone through lengths to figure this out and nobody knows why. It's kind of the great mystery of the Scooby-Doo case here. Nobody knows why. So, as of right now, no money got put into it. No money has ever been put in further from that because it never got set up. And so, as a result, guess what? Our balance is zero. Then we had the reserve fund in 2018. It got approved at town meeting in May 2018. The weird thing with this was that there wasn't a vote to put 200,000 into it. So, I don't know where that came from exactly, but 200,000 got put into it from the general stabilization fund and the fund was established. We have since withdrawn $154,996 from it. The interest on this has earned $61,000. You might be saying, "Wow, where can I invest in that kind of return on my investment? Yeah,

I can interrupt your foot. I have a question. Go. Do you know first of all this you're an honorary number this is great tech and great and I really really appreciate. So you said that there was a withdrawal reserve. Yes. And if I go back to your previous slide, slide three, it said to vote to spend, it has to be a majority of the school committee and select. Correct. Now, I'll say that someone who has been here for a very long time, I have never voted for that. So, you are right. Scooby-Doo on the case. Yes, I do know. All right.

It was So, the thing with that account was when it was set up to nobody's fault, right? Yeah, we're not going to look at there was there was no indicator on that account. Typically there are indicators on an account saying in order to withdraw funds from this you must do X Y or Z. There was no indicator on that account. So when the school took out the $154,000 996 15496 they they forgot to come to us and forgot to go to the select board and nobody in the town accountant said hey to get that money you need to do this. As a result the town has self-reported to the state because of that.

Chances are what's going to happen is we're going to take a vote select board's then going to take a vote. I mean, it's kind of null and void. Like, it doesn't like we we used it for a mistake somebody made. We didn't know it's missing. It's not a big deal. It just got taken out. Uh because there was no sort of flag on that account. The schools used very well said. Just the one thing I'd add is it was used. Yeah. We used it in last year, 2025. FY25. It got taken out. Just in case you want to know the year that it got taken out, it was taken out in FY25. Like I said, of no fault. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. of anybody's and as a result the town is self-reporting this. So that's where we're at. But

again, if you'd like to invest in Bartholomew Investments, you too can make 61,000 on a $200,000 investment. And as such, we have right now a balance in there of 106,000. Okay. So, Ding. Yeah. Can I say something? Yeah. because I know you're about to go somewhere really awesome, but I just want to say how frustrating to whoever it was that worked so hard in 2017 because this must have been a real pain in the butt to get this all through and then have nothing happen. That's all. I'm just going to say that frustrating and people were really mean about it and here we are with zero dollars. I hope that that's well appreciated. Continue on. Here we go.

Okay. So, at one point during this research, it was told to me, well, you know, the reason why we set up the second account was because we couldn't get the first account. But that's not true. You can you can have both accounts. They're both different accounts. The Mass General law allows for both. They complement each other. One's for emergencies, one's for long-term savings, right? There's no conflict and there's different thresholds. There's different approvals. There's no reason why you can't have them both. In fact, the fact that we have voted on them both is amazing. Astounding. We're rocking it. Go ahead. That's the thing. So, because of this, I' I've spoken with Evan and while I'm not, it's kind of up in the air whether or not a vote is really required. I think that it's better to take a vote than to not take a vote. So, my first request is that we take a vote. Um, why did you close it?

Sorry. What are you doing? I regret it. Same. Okay, you ready? Keep your hands away. Move your hands. Okay, good job. Okay. So, I would like to make a motion to the to the board to request uh to the town to see if the town will establish and fund a special education stabilization fund for the purpose of reserving funds to pay expenses related to special education as authorized by chapter 40 section 5B of the general laws with initial appropriation of $100,000 consistent with the vote approved at town meeting in May 2017. Second.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? I have a question. Yeah. Is this a warrant article or not? No, it would not be a warrant. It's already been established. There would be no need for this to go back to the town because this was voted on by the town. So, as long as we're in accordance to with what was voted on, which the $100,000 was voted on and the establishment of this account had already been voted on, this is the fact that we're even voting on it is kind of like topping on the cake here. So, this is just to re tell the town or Evan to set this up. So, basically, we're voting to to just say we Yeah, we want this this this be set up. Yes.

Uh Greg has a point order. Do we take public comment? We don't, but I'm okay with understanding the the ramifications of this.

It was Nope. Definitely was not. No, it was not. I would May 27 town meeting special education stabilization fund upon motion of Sarah voted to pass over this article. The moderator motion carried. Article 14 transfer funds to special education stabilization fund upon motion of Jennifer Thomas. Mod Evan and I have both looked into this. Okay. All right. It was on the agenda, but they were passed over. I mean, my memor is old, but makes sense. Yeah. I mean, we can double check. Evan and I have both agreed that this Evan saw it. Yes.

I think it back. I mean, we can bring this back to Evan and see what he says. This was where it's going anyway. Okay. I think we still are within our rights to make the request, right? So, okay. Any other discussion? All in favor? Great. Yeah. Well, maybe that's where the next one came from. So, remember with your fingers? Oh, I thought you were done. No, remember we were we were having that whole thing the thing. Okay. Sorry.

You're so close. Oh, next. Okay. So, this was this we'd like to bring to the floor in town meeting. So, this this account we'd like to continue to fund it. We It kind of has the second account.

This is the second one. This is kind of dropped off. The whole purpose of this is to is as a savings account. I'd like to see that this actually um after tonight, like going on annually, be part of our budget documents and be voted on with our budget on an annual basis. Uh, and so I'd like to make a motion to see if the town will vote to transfer 200,000 of free cash or other available funds to the special education reserve fund established in May 2018 under provisions of chapter 40 section 13E of the general laws or take any other action relative there too. Second.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? My only discussion would be that we're going I'd like to put in 200,000 at this point due to the fact that this has been uh dormant for so long, but I think a more appropriate number going forward on a yearly basis would be 100,000. So, it's a one time 200. That's what I would suggest, but that's only me. Well, we're just making this question, right? Anyone have anything else? Yeah, really impressive texting. Really concerned about

all in favor. All right, great. Thanks, Christie. Done. Awesome work. Really, really good work. Next time I would love to be your partner. Your diligence is Impressive. May 17th, 2017. Keep on going. Keep going.

All right. So, um, took 15 years for me to to do this, but I requested to the through the chair just for a few minutes at least, um, to share my thoughts in terms of looking ahead with the budget and basically just sharing my thoughts. I want to be crystal clear that the thoughts are mine. I'm not speaking obviously for any of you. They're just mine. Um, I've been living in Grafton for about 28 years and I've had the honor of being superintendent of schools for the past 15. Four of my own kids went through our schools. Loved it. Uh, you might be familiar with the the fable about the Emperor's New Clothes. And I think about that a lot. Um, every few years when we have these budget struggles, I tend one of the things that jumps out in my mind. There's a lot of great themes in it. Uh, the theme that really jumps out is about obvious truths being ignored in my opinion and I want to share my perspective on that. So, I believe that the real question at hand, which isn't always talked about, is does the town fundamentally want to make an additional investment, continued additional investment to maintain a good school system? And it's really, it's a tough question, but it's really a yes or no. It's what it's going to boil down to. If yes, I don't believe there's another option other than increasing taxation. That I don't take lightly at all. I paid taxes in town. I don't know anybody personally who wants to pay more in taxes. Don't know it. I know a lot of people seems like more than even in the past are really hurting financially. I want to say I fully understand that. If no, I think my one of my biggest jobs is making it clear to the community because I work for you, but I really work for

the town and I'm employed by the town to make it crystal clear what the impact is if that hard decision is made and make it crystal clear that that in my opinion with 34 years in education that that decision is not reversible. That's kind of my job. If if the vote in the end, if it goes to a vote and the vote is no, I can live with that if I know that the citizens or the taxpayers in grafted made that informed decision. So, our fundamental problem, and a lot of this should just be review, and it's just my thoughts, but we're we're obviously facing a structural deficit. If you look at that little dotted line, that's required school spending here in Grafton. you see it going, you know, up at a certain rate down in the with those columns, the orange columns, that's the money that we receive as a town through Chapter 7, which is the vehicle for state educational aid to our school district. You'll see that the dotted line continuously goes up in that flat, very, very, very flat series of orange columns. doesn't move much at all. That's that right there in my mind captures where we're stuck with proper with two and a half in place. We can only raise through so much without an override. We can't cover that gap the way we're structured right now. That's just that that's the reality in grafting. So, fundamentally, we have two choices. We either decrease services and live within our means, if you will, or we have an override increase the revenue as a minimum aid district. So, we receive the absolute minimum increase annually that a district in

Massachusetts can receive. That's an increase going into next year. It's $75 per student. It's ranged historically from 30 to about 150. You could somebody could see that $233,000 and be like, "Yeah, that's that's not a bad increase." But if you think of it as a whole, I just to help put it in perspective, if you think of our preliminary $50.5 million budget, that would be equivalent to, if you think of that like the Boston Marathon, 26 plus miles. $233 would be two football fields and 12 yards. Not not fun. So that 233 that doesn't move the the needle for us at all. Happy to have it, but it's woefully short. I want to talk about the the history that of of overrides basically here in Grafton. in 2015 or really in 2014, but around 2015 going into FY15, we were facing a dire financial outlook. The gap was about 855,000 for the school. So, we're looking at a very similar funding cliff, if you will. Way back when, we had never even had an override, I believe, in the history of grafting, but with the same exact issues were were facing us. and the select board fincom school committee had a public televised meeting in the library of high school. And when I think back of over my 15 years, if there was one kind of proudest moment of this me personally, proud not of my behavior or anything that I said, but as a town was that meeting. It's a few of the people in the room were there. We had real conversations about what we wanted from

education for our town. We were headed towards limited and dysfunctional funding. That was our means. And if not, we had real hard honest conversations about do we go with stable funding like just stay whole or we talked about strong funding and great funding to be even better. And we laid out on this document the top part advanced math, uh, immersion programming, vocational programming, increasing AP courses, all this awesome stuff. We had a really hard discussion. I of course am superintendent. I want strong or great. That would be fantastic. But we settled on stable and and that that's okay. And the idea be around stable right in the middle was the district is whole. We pay competitive wages. Class sizes are within recommended ranges. Supports are in place for special education and counseling. Maintenance and custodial needs are being met. That was the agreement. All it was a hard conversation, but talk about a great democratic meeting. That's my memory of it. Jump ahead to around 2020. Well, let me go back a little. on the first override it passed and kind of the deal was we're going to be stable if we can use our money and be super efficient. We're going to try to do some of those extra things which we did uh when the opportunity presents itself where basically don't come back for five years like don't come ask yeah make it work for five years and we did exactly that we went back five years later the same discussions I don't recall as many of the good great discussions it was like we've got a good thing going it was also the beginning of a COVID you'll remember in mass on the 800 degree field um so It was very understandable and we were happy with stable. We did that

again. Didn't see us for five years even with COVID which is saying something. Got to last year and just that momentum was gone for a whole host of reasons and we said collective group said okay we'll work on it throughout the year and that never really came to fruition. Um we obviously to get through the year made reductions and we spent out our savings. Um and close this but throughout since back in 2014 there was always the hope that state funding would be it would change and be more beneficial. did change the Student Opportunity Act, but the great majority of the additional funding has gone to the cities and they're in tremendous need. I I get that, but we've been minimal aid as long as I can remember. So, anybody who's been involved or been paying attention for a long time, none of none of what we're talking about should be a surprise at all. So, where do we stand today? I want to be very clear that from my opinion, the fact that we're even having the discussions that we're all having is so the sole reason that we're able to be in the somewhat comparatively luxurious position that we're in that we've been stable since 2014 2015 is because of the generosity and the support of the taxpayers. We would be unbelievably dysfunctional if we didn't have those two over. There is no question about that. U so I want to make sure I'm being very thankful to the historically u sustained support of our taxpayers. So this is where we sit right now where if you think of vertically if you put

320 districts vertically uh from lowest spending to highest spending we are 12th from the bottom. We're in the bottom 4% in terms of spending of districts in Massachusetts. This is all based on per pupil data, which is the gold standard of applesto apples comparison of spending between districts. It's really simple. They take all of the expenses that go towards education. We're educating students in any given town across the state, including insurance for all of our employees. and they divide it by the number of students. That allows you to compare us to again any of the other 319 roughly districts. So, we're 12th from the bottom. So, when I hear that we've got a spending problem, you can't spend much less than than we do. Could we spend less? Of course, guys. I could cut pencils. I could cut people. We could. But, as I'll show you, you're not going to continue to get return on investment we get. I don't know of a district anywhere near us that gets the results that we get. I I cannot find one. And almost no matter what we do, we're not going to ever really move out of that bottom five, maybe 7% because the costs would be unbelievable. We're talking about large costs with just an override. You'd have to add millions and billions. The closest area district to us is North Bridge, which has been struggling mightily for a long time. They're 32nd from the bottom. So, just to give it a little bit of scope for us to catch them right now, we'd have to add 2.7 million this year just to catch them. That's not ever going to happen.

The only way we catch people is if they fall apart and come down to our level. All that said, so that's where we are. We consistently any student measure that I can think of and I challenge may maybe somebody can prove me wrong, but student outcomes that we produce are fantastic. They're at or above the state average. I don't know of anything that isn't. Even when we see somewhere on MCCAST that we're not at the state average, it's like, oh my gosh, you know, red flag. Let's get on it immediately. Our culture, the climate in our schools, test results, number of AP courses, performance on AP exams, our college acceptances, the experiences, the arts. We talked about involvement of students like, and maybe I'm jaded. I'm sure I am actually. But if you ask or talk about Grafton with somebody from Grafton or otherwise and ask them about the town, one of the big things they're going to talk about is the schools. Like that's just a that's that's a fact. So that return on investment, I wish we invested more. I wish we had that luxury. I think we could do even better things. But that's phenomenal. like and I think sometimes that's taken for granted that that's just the way it is. Going way back to the first override, I talked incessantly about the old Corolla. I don't know if any of you have had it, but I had an old Corolla. But we're like the one with the half the things don't work, but it just keeps on going. It's got 300 and something thousand miles and it's performing. you're you're not getting passed by traffic like you're standing still on 495. Somehow it just

keeps going and it's in some circles maybe embarrassing, but there's a lot of a lot of great things with that old Corolla. So, if we're going to spend even less like we're going to we're already in the basement, but we're going to go into like where the sump pump is and have significant reductions for us. Not sure if you're familiar with this movie, but you might as well light the Corolla on fire. There is z no way that we can have that return on investment and significantly reduce there. There's just no way. After the last select board meeting, there's obviously a lot of talk. I answered 8 million different emails about it. Again, we're a minimal aid district, so we get 75 bucks per student, around $230,000. And the community advocate obviously covered just that meeting. And the title of their article, override debate angers residents and divides selectively. So, we're at let's say rough, these are rough number, but roughly $16,000 a little more per student that we spend here in bracket. We're again we're talking about overspending and all everything that comes with that like we must be doing all the host of things that I'll touch on that are all horrible but fundamentally we must be overspending. Yesterday in the globe I see this article and it caught my attention. It was on the front page. Cambridge spends big on schools. Some students benefit more than others. They spent they're near we're right at the bottom. They're right at the top. They spend $39,000 per student per year when we're at 16. They're sixth from the top, if you will. They're also a minimal aid district. So that community has decided on a bionic level that they want to invest in their schools where of course

we're not getting there. We're not getting to North Bridge. But it really caught my attention that if you read the article, it wasn't a lot of point and I left some copies there. It wasn't like whining like oh my god spend too much. It that wasn't the issue. It was that the return on investment there was some disparity in the results and I found it fascinating, shocking but here we are at the very bottom and I and maybe I missed it but I haven't heard or had a single question about that return on investment and what we get for results. It's all about that we must be overspending. So it was shockingly the the polar in terms of what what I was looking at to give a little context and I want to be crystal clear. We are never even you can't even talk about flirting with getting into the Cambridge area and nor am I even looking to I'm just looking to not have less than we have. But with Cambridge, if you applied what they get per student to to graph with the same per pupil spend, that's an additional $71 million a year. Like I would like give a leg to get an extra million to see what we could make happen. I can't even wrap my brain around 71 million. Um, so it it's worth thinking about. So, going back to that real question at hand, this is what I think we're we should be talking about when I that's not really what I'm hearing. I'm hearing a lot of the whatifs and those are multiaceted. Um, and they're not new. This this slide was from the first override and this was like the red herrings. These are all the things on the left. We overspend, teachers are overpaid, too many admin, more fees will take care of it, and help is on the way. Uh, none of those play

out. But this goes back over a decade. So lately in my email box, I get this. The schools definitely spent too much. We have too much fill in the blank. That's getting a lot harder for people because we've been reducing. Um, spend within your means. That's super popular this year. Hiding money. That's brand new. I don't know where I'm hiding money, but anyhow, I'm hiding money. We pay staff too much. That's a big one. and it must be in like the budget lines. We're going to accountant our way through this fiscal dilemma that we're in. For many, that makes perfect sense. I want to be clear that when I get emails and I answer every single one of them, I talk to people all day. I've been doing this for 15 years, big part of my job. Uh I'm not knocking people for asking questions. That's that's great. Uh for many that it just makes perfect sense. They're new to town. They just haven't been paying attention. Their kids are now school age. They're just more curious. It can be anything. I'll take questions all day long about anything. I want to be real clear about that. I also think it's really natural if you haven't been involved to just assume there's a spending problem. Towards the end of COVID, my wife got laid off unexpectedly. That shocked us. And I went home and I look back and I cringe, but I think about it a lot. And that night I was lecturing her about we've got to get rid of Netflix. Um she had bought some kind of like fancy coffee maker that has to go back. Uh she has to and I even said like she needs to stop getting her hair done. That went over hor. But that's where my brain was. Like we've got a we've got we've got a a problem. It must be a spending problem. Of course it was a funding problem. like of course it was and we figured it out and everything worked out great, but I fell into that knee-jerk reaction that

it had to be spending. For some that do know better and have been involved, I I believe it's just purely a distraction and having that real hard conversation about the real problem at hand. That's not an easy thing to do in a real real way. Um, so I I find I think of this every time we every five years or the last two years in a row when we get into a financial jam, that's when the the bubble goes over the raft in my world where people start looking for example at other departments. The school department first like sewer department or something in terms of increases. all becomes very insular and very conveniently the world outside of grafting no longer matters in terms of the the schools the education in grafting the outside world matters a tremendous tremendous amount um we have we can't just pick and choose what we offer what we teach the pace at which we go with some things the testing etc we have all kinds of mandates and things that we just have to do student readiness and their ability to compete doesn't if if we just lived in the little bubble of Grafton or if we were an island state in the middle of the Pacific that we might be having a different conversation but our Delaney Boovier who's absolutely wonderful I don't know where she's applying to school but wherever it is they're lucky to have her when she applies to Northeastern she's applying against or competing against the Cambridge kids.

There isn't a little, you know, flag or sticker on hers that says, "Oh, just just so you know, we're really low per pupil." And have you seen the common in graphics? It's super cute. It it doesn't matter. Um, and then salaries. Salaries is a big one. We overpay.

Again, if we were an island in the middle of the Pacific, I don't know. I don't think it maybe it wouldn't matter but it does matter here and I'll talk about salaries. Our biggest group by far is our our teachers. So let's take a look at that. I pulled three data points if you will. Beginning of the career, mid-career, and final step towards the end of your career. This is not handpicked. These are all the same districts that have bought us. No exception to it. They get all of these teachers get a cola. costs of living adjustment and steps and lanes. Steps being typically, and not every teacher gets it, but for every year of service, you get a step. Lanes would be you go from a bachelor's degree to a master's, you get a master's, you get a doctorate, whatever. So that that's not by any means every um apples to apples. These are all the 2526 school year. You can find all of this online. This isn't a secret. Every one of these districts has steps and lanes and every one of them has a code. Every single one of these districts had at least a 3% cola for 2526. The exception is Milbury and they had three and a half%. Okay. So with our 3% in steps and lanes, we're we're working with incredibly limited resources to be as competitive as possible if we're not killing You're trying, but you're a new teacher, which you're already hard to find. You want to hire new teachers at a school. That would be awesome. Are they coming to Grafton? And this is just the area right around us. It doesn't include Worcester, which definitely pays better, or go east where it's going to be substantially. That's beginning of your career.

Mid-career, I picked masters 10 because they all had that. So, you've got a master's degree, which you have to have, and you've been teaching for at least 10 years. Again, the same position. So, when I hear, oh, we're overpaying and whatever, we're trying our hardest to be as competitive as possible, but we want to be at the very least in the middle. We finally get competitive once you're basically at the top step. So the very top step we are lit literally in the middle uh among these seven districts including us. So that's great but that's a not even five people are on top step. So, here we are. Um, we've if we played out that we've um kind of torched the the Corolla and and as long as that's informed, I can again I can live with that. It's not what I want. Of course, you wouldn't be be foolish to be hiring me if I wanted that. But if that happens, we're going to be probably dead last unless somebody else falls apart a little faster than us. But if we have to cut a million, we're going to be in bad shape. I can guarantee with 100% certainty, whether I'm superintendent or somebody else is your superintendent, you are not going to. Reality is not keeping up the return on investment that we're able to pull off. I'm not even sure how exactly we do it. We do it by the skin of our teeth. But to then reduce by a million dollars plus, there is just no way that you're going to get that investment. You could say that's fear-mongering. I'm sure somebody will, but that's the reality. There is no way we would enter into, and this is my own

term, not like a famous thing, but a cycle of dysfunction, fiscal dysfunction, if you will, where and this is super predictable. This will not by any means be unique to grafting in any way, shape or form. You start by reducing programming. So Alexa is anything that you don't have to have. A lot of the things that in the context of this meeting, we've touched on we've touched on the arts, you've touched on uh world language, a lot of things that are phenomenal for us, athletics, all these things that we we're not mandated to have. We're mandated to have a lot, but a lot we're not. Um, so you reduce programming, increase class sizes. We bring in, I mentioned we've brought in over the last decade over $8 million through school choice. So we have 132 students, I believe, tuitioning in from other districts to us because we offer great services and a great school system. We're a very good school system. um they're driving every day to and from the Grafton public schools once and that's to avoid where they're coming from. Like they're leaving to avoid whatever their reality is in their community. For us, the two communities we draw the most students from by far are Worcester and Northbridge. Um, so they're opting to have all that trouble to avoid something. So without a doubt, that well is going to dry up. Of course, it might not be overnight, but it'll be within certainly within two years. It won't be like automatic. Um, and then we have in the whole town of Grafton about is it 55 I think students go out to other districts. Many times um their

parents are in school systems that they go with and it kind of makes sense, right? Um so two things happen. The school choice coming in goes down and school choice going out goes up. That's just how it works. With fewer supports, larger class sizes, it puts more pressure on special education. Talked about that a great deal this year. Out of district tuition costs go up. like we've done all this programming, we can't contain that and more people go out of district. That has tremendous cost with it. That leads to again that next year more reductions in programming. You do hit a point where there's only so many programs you can reduce because you hit up against mandated things, but you then you have larger class sizes and you can see that cycle to see it play out. You don't have to look far. North Bridge is a fantastic example for us. Some people it surprises them. Back in the 90s, early 2000s, they were reputation-wise, they were a really strong school district, every bit as strong as we are. Uh I know a few of the principles that used to be there back then, and they're among the best educators I know. In 2006, they ran into the same fiscal problems that we are running into. So, they're facing that lift. they have an override and it didn't pass. So, they went into dysfunction. It's 2026 now. That was 20 years ago. They it they've been in that cycle for 20 years. You don't get out of it. You don't. And I put out these these two questions and you're not going to find it. I don't think you're going to find an answer. I've searched for years, but can you name a single school district that's bounced back from dis functional funding? I don't know of one. And can you name a single town with a dysfunctional school system and a good

to great reputation? It's probably easier than number one, but that's a hard question. Okay, almost done. I promise. So, here we are. We've got the preliminary roughly five $50.5 million. Oh, this is to touch on the other theme was around lines and actuals. uh that 50.5 million which is going to be voted on in some version by by you and then it's going to go forward to the town. That money is dis dispersed in the school department lines. There are about there are just over 400 lines. That's our best estimate of what that funding whatever that that funding is. In our case, we're looking for very much a level service budget. That's going to be our best guess as to what we're going to spend it on in the next the following school year. Unlike the municipal side, people do miss this. They have all kinds of regulations on mo movement among movement of money among lines. That's why they have like a reserve account if you will. Um it's very difficult. There is not a town administrator in the state of Massachusetts that wouldn't in one second want to have more ability to move money from line to line. We don't increase or change the amount of money, but the line that it's dedicated to is locked in where it's not locked in for us. We are very good, maybe even exceptional at estimating what we need in making it work. But I can 100% guarantee 100% that whatever we lay out for a plan, it's not going to go according to plan. That's guaranteed. Like Tyson said, once everybody's got a plan until they're punched in the mouth. Sometimes I think you guys pay me or the

town pays me to kind of deal with getting punched in the mouth almost daily. I can't think of a day that that doesn't play out. And by that I mean something unexpected that we have to deal with and it comes with a cost 99 times out of 100. Thinking back to last week, five just five normal days guys. Nothing particularly weird about it. So that's five days 2.7% of the school year. These are just some of the things that were dealt with and they all have financial implications and all complex and challenging. The heating system at Milbury Street stopped working. Basically, uh that's a massive problem. It's not something, oh, I didn't have a line for that. Oh, we didn't have any money left. You know, they'll be okay. Of course, that's not the case. One long-term serious medical leave where we've got to pay to fill it. We're probably going to have to go through an agency. That's twice the amount of money. That's really complex. Couldn't have seen that coming even a week before, never mind, you know, 17 months before. I stands at good old South Elementary School. I don't know who designed it. I hope they don't listen to this, but good lord. We had to hire a crew to go up there and clear the ice because if you've seen the building, it's just built like four ice. Uh, two resignations. So, we've got to deal with the ramifications of that. Short-term planning, long-term planning, the septic system. We only have one septic system in this district and it's at North Grafton. And somebody over there was flushing those white, you know, the the wipes and they all froze and the whole system shut down. So, we have to get that repaired last week. And last but not least, Friday midday, um the headend room, that's the room at the high school that holds all of our servers that cannot get super hot but without HVAC will get super hot. Both units quit on

the same day. So when we talk about coming up with a plan, it's really no different than with like your family um except you multiply it by maybe 5,000. that here we are in the 2526 school year in February and what we're going to put before you is our best thinking in our best effort to estimate what we are going to spend everything on up to 17 months ahead. That's a long time. I just want to be realistic about it. Imagine doing that for your family. I didn't know I'd need a new transmission two days ago, but I do today. and I I don't have an option. I've got to deal with it. Um, and we're using actuals, which that actuals play a role, but it's it's a role. It's not the end all be of a school year, not this school year, but last school year. So in conclusion, I hope this any way I say it, it comes across as us bragging. And when I say us, I mean us as a a school district provides an unbelievable return on investment for the taxpayers in Grafton. And I hope that's not taken for granted. I know that the decision before us is incredibly challenging, incredibly hard. I I I do get that. Um but I felt and feel like as superintendent, I needed to to lay that out, lay and share my perspective with all of you. And I hope the town and I can take any questions you have.

Anyone? I'm gonna say Chris. Nobody else wants to go. I I will wait till the end if if there's I was planning to have you at the end, but if anybody else would like to go, please go ahead. I mean, that's very boring. Go ahead. Okay, Dr. Cummings, thank you so much for that presentation. I wish that I had seen it before just at the second. Yep, I did it today. Yeah, I know. So, as I was sitting here too, uh you spoke of a children's book. I like children's books, too.

One of my favorite books is Hurry Up Harry. So, while all of this is true, and we've known this for quite some time, at this point, what has been asked was a budget in relation to as we had stated three weeks ago and as was stated back in January that you'd be providing. I do appreciate all of this. That's not to go unsaid. In addition to that, you speak on the teacher the teachers in this. So I happen to have this is the teachers salaries 2026 2027. Now you're a thousand% right. They receive a 3% cola. But based on this, if a teacher increases a step, the percentage increase will range from 6.14% to 8.65%. That includes the 3% cola. The average increase would be 7.16%. Based on this as well, if a teacher increases a lane, the percentage increase will range from 4.62% to 7.46%, which would include the 3% cola. The average would being 5.65. If a teacher increased a step and a lane, the range goes from 7.85 to 12.69, including the 3% cola, the average being 9.19%. So, while I do agree that the cola amount is 3%, it is a a little not playing with numbers to insinuate that that's that's all that they're going to get. That's no teacher only going to get a 3% raise. That's not unless they took a freeze.

You're absolutely correct. That's goes for Grafton, Massachusetts. That's the state of Okay, I'm just the United States. Right. Right. In addition, the average teacher salary in Grafton for FY26 is $92,000. It's not 56,000. It's not 83,000. The average teacher salary in FY26 is being paid right now is 92,000.

Okay. The median teacher salary in Grafton is 95,86. So I just I don't want to say anything that you're saying is not correct. Clearly there are lots of things that are correct. I just want to make sure that when we present that we're presenting as most honestly as we can be. So with with that framed that way is your what is your point? Well, what was your point? I guess that we're not particularly competitive like we're trying to be competitive but the thought right but the average teacher salary in the state was about 91,000 if you look back to to dese when you

you know average is challenging too average is going to be if we were a school district that I don't know go fast forward 10 years and our experienced teachers that we're incredibly lucky to have and have many of them have retired if we can get people new people to come to Grafton, the average would obviously change, right? But all these numbers would then change dramatically. It would not just change for your district alone. The other Okay. So, I'm not going to argue with you about this. I'm just letting you know that those are the those are the numbers that we have. We can both agree to the fundamental. Can we can we just agree that these are the the correct numbers?

Yes. That I shared correctly from the contract. Yes. and that I shared correctly from the with the median and some and what the the changes would be and what was the point with that what your same as your point I'm just stating the facts of what there are overpay I'm not stating that we're overpaying I'm not saying anything I'm just saying what the facts are Dr. Go ahead. So, you spoke of a Toyota Corolla, right? Yes, you are. You are a Toyota Corolla. And I am with 300,000 miles. And I am a Toyota MR2. Did you ever have an MR2? Sounds expensive.

Okay. MR2 is just as good as the Corolla. It was a little bit faster. So, the point being, I love everything you've done and I love the fact that you're going to be creating a new budget book. Mhm. I wish that we had it today. I I am extremely disheartened at this point because I personally personally have spent hundreds of hours on this budget and not only on my own time, but also with you and with Kathleen going over these numbers. Mhm. The fact that we don't have one today is disheartening and that is how I feel. Now, when we look at the numbers, Dr. Cummings,

I appreciate how you feel. I feel as if if I did have an HR director and if I did have an assistant superintendent, I could have addressed your feelings more appropriately. Okay. We do have a finance director. And that's where this comes from. Sure, we do. So when my question to you I guess at this point is the budget numbers that I'm looking at for your total the total amount I I is right now 50 million 50 million.5.

So that's a 6.32% increase. I told you earlier that I'd be asking you in regards to that because the question being is that last year before the cuts the increase went up 6.24%. So this is again above that but if we look forward in the projections as I was talking even with Evan today it goes to 5.57 6 5.68 5.66 5.67 67. My question being that in the next two years we're going to be looking at salary adjustments again. I do not understand why is there not actually a bump up when we look at FY 20 to 29. Why is it? Because as you know when you change contracts the amount goes up right the first year it's a bubble up. I don't understand how we're looking at a level amount as our projection instead of a bump up because in reality, I mean, there could be the the off chance that you're not requesting enough if you look at the bump.

Um I I off the top of my head, I can't speak to that, but I I can get information on what went into the projection. Sure.

Right. Um, so that's a question in regards to the projection in regards to the 6.32. If like, hey, I would love for you to have $80 million. Sure. But clearly we're that's not happening. Given that we're looking at further savings as a as a as a school committee going forward and safety nets of such more placed more into place, do you believe that you're going to be able to reduce this down at all for when we present this to the select board?

So, just so I'm clear, you want us to spend even less than we do now. You're requesting us. You're not spending anything in FY27 right now. Just so that we're both clear. Nothing has been spent. These are all right. But we're object all that. The takeaway is we're going to spend less. That's not the right.

The takeaway is that so when you budget So so I I mean I I have a very clear understanding of your budget. Just so that we're we're both clear. When you go through the lines of the non salary at this point, you are you are projecting you're budgeting 25% more than you spent in FY25 on as I stating non-sary. 25% more 10% more than you budgeted last year for non-sary. Okay. In FY25, you spent on non-sary 8.9 million. You I'm sorry, you budgeted 8.9 million. My my mistake. you spent 8.7 million. The 241,000 then went to fund salaries. At this point, we have gone through all the salaries and in fact, we're increasing the salary side of the budget. I don't think that it's unreasonable or an unjust thought that the that the sal that the non-s salary side at this point could be reduced especially with the safety net of other funding available. The only scenario that I could see and it would have to be vetted and you'd have to find out if it was even obviously legal and is if you did the safety net being the special ed stabilization and reduce knowing that's there assuming we need it being where we are is to reduce that line or lines by the equivalent.

Well, I mean clearly that wouldn't be legal if you're using it as a funding source. That's not what I'm stating to do. What I'm stating to do is, as you've stated thousand times, honestly, this whole budgeting process, I'm going to tell you, is very odd given, especially given the point that you can move money however you see fit. I don't understand at this point why we even have Excuse me. Yeah, thank goodness we can. Why? What? Well, thank goodness you can. Yes. Why we even have more than one line in the budget? Because if you I'm fine with one line. Yes. Because honestly, more fine with that,

right? And if so then if you're looking at bottom line budgeting, right, and you're looking at that the 6.32, that's extremely high. Like if even if that came down to 5.75, you're you're reducing it by like 300,000. And when we looked back at last year's projections, like the projection was that you were going to be going up by never does it hit into the sixes. The sixes is like even when I spoke with Ev like that's like boom, way up. And I don't really understand that number given that we didn't have a salary adjustment this year. I could understand it last year with the 6.24. I can't understand it this year. Okay. My job is to help you. So and so yeah. So I'm hoping

I do hear that we're over you hear a lot of things. Do do you see things too that we can reduce or no? Dr. Cummings. I just want to see the budget in relation to the actuals at this point. All right. I I will provide that. I've lost a lot of sleep over a lot of things over 15 years. Never for one minute did I lose a sleep over actuals from two years back. Well, I have lost countless hours of sleep over this and spent

countless hours at 3 in the morning on this. So, yeah, I have lost sleep over this and I have lost sleep thinking about our students and hoping that we can get this through. So given what we know from the select board, given what we've heard in that select board meeting,

I think we all want what's best for the students and and if the select board at this point is stating a thousand times over, we want to see it this way. We want to see it this way, let's just give it to them that way. We said this we said this in meeting back in January, we said this three weeks ago in meeting. And again, I'm going to say I personally feel disappointed that we don't have that to show today. Well, I I feel fantastic that we're we're going to wait until the 17th and do our very best to get that as correct as possible to put your concerns and anybody else's concerns at ease. So, I'm looking forward to the 17th.

I'd like to say something. Um, with all due respect to the select board, and I'm really pleased to see three members here in the room, and there might be some on Zoom. Um, the select board doesn't approve the school budget. Look at the town charter. We approve the school budget, and we approve the bottom line number. If the town charter allowed us to vote on a budget today before the budget hearing, I would be interested to have us vote on it because the fact is we could spend the $50.5 million and still be woefully underfunded. But the fact is we I appreciate what you're saying, Christie, but the select board doesn't approve our budget and we're acting like they do. We present our budget to them and they will make decisions based on it. But we're not building it for the select board. We're building it for the students.

Right. I see. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I appreciate what you're saying. I'm just stating that like back in September when we got presented how the superintendent was going to be presenting his budget, we were told it was going to be done a certain way. In December, it wasn't done that way. went back asked when's it going to be done the way that we had all agreed on as as Evan has stated it would be like the town's budgets would be done as we've stated thousand times. So at this point I just feel as though like I just I just want this behind us. I can't tell you the amount of hours. They just want it behind us. And in relation to what we've said, what we've kind of promised, we promised the select board this. We promised this in meeting. Dr. Cummings made that promise. We'll

No, I understand. Come on. I Well, neither was making making the vote two weeks ago for the select board. It wasn't blood oath that they make that vote. I'm not saying anything other than the fact that I wish that we had the budget to go over as a group prior to the budget hearing and to so that we as a group could say look we did everything you wanted to do but again try to hurry up that's a good

but again who's telling us what to do we have to do right by the students I'm not concerned with what some other group is telling us to do I respect them greatly and I know they're an important part of this equation But we have to build the budget with the students and the school district in mind, not what people are asking for. And the situation we are in right now is we're going to get a budget book next week. So talking about why we don't have a budget book is not particularly a good use of time.

It's also not a good use of my time that I've that we've done been talking in circles and that we are a week out and and I still have not seen a book come out of this office. all your work, but nobody asked you to do 100 hours. And perhaps that is why things have taken longer because he's had to meet with a bunch of people. Thanks. I mean, this is I mean, he's a week late. I I you just I appreciate it, but we didn't Nobody like we didn't vote to change the budget. You You're going to tell me to stop. No, no. presented. I really

I think you're super helpful and I really appreciate it. And also, we all work hundreds of hours. That's our job here. Like, no, my job isn't to make the budget book. If I want like we have so many armchair superintendent and finance people, eventually it'll be making your replacement easier. There's so many people who can do it better, apparently. Okay, quiet. You don't mean that. I don't. I know. I'm sorry. It's I mean, it's clearly emotional, but

I just I want to get back to our job here, which is to put forth the best budget to continue to serve the audience, which is the students and the families. And when we keep saying that people are asking things from us, that's lovely. But we're approving the budget. I go ahead.

Okay. To be clear, I mean, I've also been asked to look at the budget and to the point where last week when we had nothing, I was told we're waiting on you to come in. So, it's not as though I'm not and and and I that was not I do not as you stated, I do not work for the school district. So, so anybody waiting on me to come in should never be should not be waiting that information. So, it's very it's it it's frustrating and we can we can all share in the frustration that we all wish that this were done today. Okay, so that's all I'm stating.

We keep saying keep throwing different things to look at the budget. We're going to get this nice neat sounds like cool way that we're going to look at it. It's going to be really good. I'd rather have it be I do want it I want it I want everyone who looks at it to understand it because so if it takes another week to make it understandable in the corporate world things are often more than a weekly and they have giant finance departments. It's is it ideal? Absolutely not. I definitely wanted to go through it because I want to vote on it next time

after our hearing. So yeah, we're all going to have to put some work in when we get it next week. And I know the select board wants to see it like last week. So, but again, love you guys. Totally appreciate you're here. I'm not building it for you. Well, I'm not building it at all, but So, but the number's not changing really anyway. Like, that's correct. It's the difference. So, we overpaid the gas bill, but we underpaid this like it. So, like I said, the I'm happy with the 50.5 and we're still woefully underfunded at that level.

So, I appreciate all of you and you especially Christie because I know you spend a ton of time on this. Please don't think that we don't appreciate that. We do. And I think it's going to be better for it in the end, right? Like that's what the thing is. It's like a messy process, but in the end, like it's such good work and it'll be worth it in the end, it's just education and government is slow. Just is daytoday. It's fast. Does anyone other than the three chatter boxes have something to say? You were good. Good job.

Thanks, D. Thank you for that presentation. Uh, our student representatives aren't here because of the weather. I didn't want them out on the roads. Um, so future agenda, we should probably take a look at next week's agenda and see what needs to be added given some of the the fees come back for preschool and uh, facilities. Uh-huh. And a budget vote. What time are you here? So the hearing's at 6:30, Jay. Correct. We hear

But unlike last year where we we're just live the whole time set up as two separate Zooms. So if it does, it probably will go 30 minutes, but if it doesn't, we can just take a break, restart. Okay, great. Anyone have anything else that needs to be added to the agendas? Leon, did you just say a vote? When was when's the vote? Um, I mean, we typically in the meeting after the budget hearing do do a vote on the budget. I believe that in the town charter that it's seven days after a public hearing. The next meeting. Yeah. Not earlier than the next meeting, right? Well, no. Early than next meeting. The 10th. Yeah.

No, we're not saying the same thing. The next meeting. The next meeting is the meeting. We looked I didn't pick up on that. No, I thought it was whatever meeting came after the budget, which could be that same day. No, it's seven days after. Okay, thank you, Greg. Okay. Yeah, we could add a meeting on March 3rd to vote on the budget. I don't either. March 3rd meeting. Y can we do that? Yeah,

we can do whatever we want. Sure.

Okay. Go on the budget March 3rd. Okay. Anyone have anything else on the calendar? Okay. Meeting minutes? I'll take a Oh, wait. Sorry. Be back. Should we state that how we're meeting with the high school students this week? Just Oh, it's for It is Friday. It's Friday. Yeah. Just so that people are you having an agenda for that meeting? Is there It's pretty short. We're going to hear them. Uh I'll share with the committee what um Tracy kind of asked them to be prepared to discuss,

but it'll be posted. Yes, there will be a general agenda posted. Okay, Madame Chair, I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes dated January 20th, 2026. Second. Motion made and seconded. Any additional discussion? Hearing none. All in favor. Great. Motion carries. Anyone have questions on the warrants comments? Nope. Okay. Then I think we don't have any policy as far as I know. Right. Just as a matter of knowledge, uh Laura and I will be meeting this week to discuss AI.

Okay. Great. Uh no correspondence, no executive session. So I declare the meeting adjourned. Good night, Grafton. Thank you.