City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Budget and Finance FY27 hearing. Councillors, can I have a motion to resume from recess? So moved. Second. Motion has been made by the Vice Chair, seconded by the Council President. Discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. The ayes have it. I always say this, even though we're continuing a meeting, but just in case, pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2022, this meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee is being conducted both in person and via remote participation. A reminder that persons who would like to listen or view this meeting while in progress may either attend in person here in the City Council Chamber or may view the meeting through our Facebook page, YouTube page, Channel 22 on Comcast, and Channel 42 on Verizon. Councilors, tonight we will be hearing from Lawrence Public Schools and Greater Lawrence Technical School. I did receive some communication and I'm sure you have as well that I would like to read into the record. First, I will start with a parent that reached out stating that As a summary, this parent is advocating for transportation for Abbott, for the South Lawrence kids. They are concerned about budget issues affecting the school again. The parents and the PTO spoke of this concern to Mr. Caraballo early in the school year, specifically stating that transportation needed to be sorted out before more students were added. And the text message ends that it's becoming a bit tiresome having to advocate and fight for the same things year after year. Another email received on June 7th, 2026 from a constituent in District F, Luis Robles, Deer City Leadership. I am writing as a deeply concerned Lawrence resident and parent to urge the fully funded restoration of the Lawrence Public Schools proposed FY2027 transportation budget. Last year, families narrowly averted a disrupted transit crisis at Abbott Lawrence Academy. Parents and students should not have to endure that same stress and uncertainty again. have we learned nothing from last year's failures or are we intentionally manufacturing a crisis so politicians can swoop in at the last minute as saviors? I understand our fiscal landscape is tight and our current reliance on private bus contractors is financially unsustainable and unfair to taxpayers. The evidence is clear. The Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General has explicitly reported THAT A TOTAL LACK OF VENDOR COMPETITION AND RICH PRICING STRUCTURES ARE DRAINING SCHOOL DISTRICT BUDGETS ACROSS THE COMMONWEALTH. PRIVATE BUS COMPANIES HAVE Leveraged THE DRIVER SHORTAGE to corner a near monopoly forcing our schools into exorbitant contracts, especially for legally mandated special education and homeless student transit. However, these systematic failures between city government, state legislators, and private vendors have been known for years. A lack of political will to find a practical solution should not be used to punish our students and jeopardize their daily routines. Therefore, I strongly urge the City Council to lobby the Mayor's office and I urge the Mayor to update the budget to fully fund school transportation. The stability and safety of Lawrence's children are non-negotiable. We must stop asking our families to bear the burden of systematic political and corporate failures. The last email I have was sent to the City Council on May 25th, 2026, and this is from school committee member Jonathan Guzman. Subject, request for financial realignment to support Lawrence students in compliance with state education requirements. Dear Mayor, Council President, and honorable members of the city council. I am writing to request your leadership and partnership in addressing several urgent financial matters that directly affect Lawrence public schools, our students, and our families. These issues require coordinated action between the City of Lawrence, LPS, and Greater Lawrence Technical School to ensure that our educational funding structures are equitable, efficient, and aligned with state law. First, the fiscal year, the City of Lawrence, this fiscal year, the City of Lawrence is projected to contribute approximately 3.9 million to GLTS. Despite this significant investment, GLTS does not offer agricultural or related Chapter 74 vocational programs. Under Massachusetts Vocational Education Law, specifically the non-duplication rule, students have the right to attend another vocational school when their home vocational district does not offer the program they seek. Because GLTS does not provide this programming, Lawrence students appropriately enroll at Access North Shore Agricultural and Technical School. However, the 927,000 in tuition costs associated with these students should not fall solely on the City of Lawrence or LPS. It is consistent with the intent of Chapter 74 that GLTS assumes this tuition obligation as they are the designed vocational district for Lawrence and receive substantial annual funding from the city for that purpose. These funds should also be returned to LPS to support transportation and other mandated costs. I respectfully request that the city formally request that GLTS assumes the 927,000 Existec tuition obligation directly from Department 0031. In addition, since 2013, LPS has been required to pay approximately four million annually to the city for municipal administrative services under an existing memorandum of understanding, MOU, Many of these administrative functions can now be performed directly and more efficiently by LPS and the funds currently tied to this MOU could instead support essential student services, operational needs, and district priorities. I respectfully request that the city meet with LPS leadership to review the 2013 MOU in full to dissolve or revise this agreement to ensure it is efficient, equitable, transparent, and does not divert critical resources away from students and families. Another pressing concern is transportation funding. The city is responsible for the full cost of student transportation. This year, the transportation bill totals 13.4 million, yet only 11.7 million has been budgeted by the City of Lawrence, leaving LPS with a 1.7 million shortfall. As you know, under 603 CMR 10, transportation leases no longer than three years, although education and Chapter 74 vocational spending are not included in net school spending requirements. This guide places an unsustainable burden on LPS and must be addressed immediately. We are also entering the final year of the Student Opportunity Act, which has provided critical funding to districts like Lawrence. It is essential that the city engage with our legislative delegation now to ensure that Chapter 70 is updated so that the support provided under the Student Opportunity Act does not abruptly end. Waiting until funding expires will leave the district facing severe financial strain. Finally, by law, LPS cannot enter into leases longer than three years, nor can such leases be charged to Chapter 70, yet LPS continues to carry the burning of educational facility leases that should fall under the city's responsibility. With projected lease costs reaching 3.3 million in the coming years, the current approach, relocating students, families, and staff from building to building is not sustainable. The city must assume responsibility for these leases to ensure that students have stable, safe, and high quality learning environments. These issues are interconnected and urgent. Addressing them will require collaboration, transparency, and a shared commitment to the students and families of Lawrence. I respectfully ask that the city of Lawrence work closely with LPS to develop solutions that are fiscally responsible, equitable, and aligned with state law. Thank you for your attention and for your continued service to our community. Respectfully, Jonathan Guzman. For those that know, I don't do it as much for budget because we don't receive much, but other committees that I chair, I do receive emails, and I do read those emails into the record, whether good or bad. Also, they need to be respectful, but I do do that at the committee level and also at the full council level. i also should have i guess started with um welcoming the elected and appointed officials we have here i see school committee member mike armano here from lps i also see the vice chair of the glts school committee where are you all Welcome. Oh, Julio Mejia. Who else? Who else is here? I think you two might be the only. Mejia and Armando might be. All right, so two school committee members, and then we have the superintendent of GLTS, the CFO of LPS, and we have the head principal of LHS here, and is the superintendent from LPS here? Okay, great. All right, so we're going to get started. We do have LPS first on the agenda. So Jason or Mr. Carbaro, we are ready when you are.

Do you mind if I pull up a presentation or a few slides?

Can you get me here?

They have it. Oh, they have it? Okay, yeah. Was that a yes? Yes. Oh, okay. I think they'll pull it up in a second. First of all, good evening, honorable members of the city council. Bear with me. I'm going to kind of read this statement here kind of so we can stay on track with. With this meeting, thank you for your time tonight. I would like to thank everyone who has met us on the public stage the last two school committee meetings as well as one-on-one with myself and Superintendent Carrero. We had an opportunity to meet with elected officials, with appointed officials, with the state delegation and their questions about the relation between our spending and student achievement helped us understand even better the needs and concerns of our school community. Some of the feedback we received last year was around transparency. This year we had participation in our public budget hearings and we invited all of our elected officials to sit down with us and discuss the budget before presentation tonight. The Lawrence Public Schools budget is more than a financial document. It is a reflection of our values and our commitment to providing every student with a high quality education. Each year we carefully evaluate available funding and align spending with the programs and services that have the greatest impact on students. Fiscally, and I'll talk a little bit about the priorities of the district when it comes to education, and those are the priorities of our strategic plan and five-year plan that came out this year.

Mr. Cabrera, just let us know, too, what page so we can follow along with the numbers. Yes, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Fiscally, our priorities include student center resource allocation, staffing and compensation, academic programs and curriculum, facilities, safety and operations, financial sustainability and transparency. Like many school districts across the Commonwealth and the country, we face financial challenges, and we'll talk a little bit about that during the presentation, including the rise in operational costs and uncertainty in some funding sources. Our team continues to work closely with district leadership, and we'll continue to work closely with the school committee, the receiver, the administration, and this city council to ensure the resources are used responsibly and strategically. Since we're talking about challenges, I would like to clarify some information before we get into the budget part of this here, because I've heard the question, and the superintendent has heard the question from our elected officials and our appointed members of the school committee. I've been asked multiple times about a large number of staff being, and I'll quote, I'll do air quotes on this, laid off and staff receiving letters telling them that they do not have a job for next year. That is not the case. The vast majority of these letters are not layoff notices. They are standard part of the district's responsibility to ensure that all educators meet the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Education Department, DESE, licensure requirements and make progress toward the full certification. The letters ask educators to provide updates on where they are in the certification process, whether they have recently taken or are preparing to take the test, if they're completing any certification process, whether they have recently, I'm sorry, whether they're earning their advanced degrees or pursuing other licensure requirements. Our goal has always been to keep our teachers in our classrooms while supporting them through the licensure process. A large number of those have done so. We're happy for that. We have done what they were required to do, but we still got work to do. This process is about accountability and maintaining a highly qualified workforce for our students. When districts hire educators on their waivers, and that is the process by which we can have a teacher come and teach in our schools without having the certification, the expectation is that they will continue progressing to our full certification, and we are committed to helping them do so. Today, you'll hear about student enrollment decline and how it affects our funding. Based on the students lost, our state funding declined by 20 classrooms and almost $8 million. That is 20 classrooms worth of staff and materials for which we have no funding and for which we're trying to mitigate through right-sizing the district. This includes not funding some vacant positions through staff attrition and also restructuring operations so that every position aligns with our strategic plan, the goals of the district, and fiscal capacity. I saw the superintendent just walked in. Superintendent, do you want to come up? Where are you? If you want to say something before I go to the presentation.

I thought you were doing pretty good. Welcome, Superintendent. Thank you. Members of the City Council Subcommittee, Madam Chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, my apologies for coming in a little bit late. I have a date once a month with parents, whether it's the Walsh Council or my coffee hour, which is virtual. And I didn't want to disappoint them in saying goodbye to them for the year, thanking them for their participation, and anticipating what we want to cover next year. So I had about 100 parents online, and I wanted to make sure I was with them. So my apologies. But I know that Mr. Cabrera was here and ready to go. You know, I want to start with, I heard what the CFO was saying.

I like to keep things simple, okay?

And last year, we engaged in a full process of engaging all of our stakeholders that support public schools, but more importantly, our parents and those that provide support services for our kids. You know what, we came up with one thing, because we were struggling and fighting about what our mission is. And I want to give it to you very simple because it will flow through what we do with the budget book that we have. We're committed to empowering every student, and I'm going to emphasize that, every student to excel. And we're driven by that mission because we believe that every student is full of purpose, power, and promise. When we get our mindset wrapped around that, we can guarantee that success will happen for every student that we have. Success is measured in many different ways, but the important thing is that parents feel satisfied, that their children are learning, that they have opportunities, and there's definitely an opportunity for when they graduate from Lawrence Public Schools. It is no coincidence that we now are starting to see the type of graduation classes that we witnessed This past Friday we broke the city's historic record of graduation Last year we broke that record and this year we increased it and we will continue to do so That doesn't happen because all of a sudden we have all of these kids We've had all of these kids in the past before but it also reflected our dropout rate and some of the problems that we were having with kids. We no longer have those types of problems with kids because the strategy that we've implemented is to keep them busy, keep them interested with all of the things that all of you, because I know that you have visited our schools, and particularly our high school. that you can see and I thank you Ms. Infante because I see that passion in your eyes when you're sitting there with the student council and having these conversations. In order for us to make sure that we have all those quality enrichment programs, we gotta dedicate services to them. And we had a pretty good run for the last few years. But we face now the elimination of the Student Opportunity Act, which Lawrence Public Schools receives the most of any community to the tune of $57 million. That goes away after the next fiscal year. And we say, what are we going to do with everything that we've put in place? Okay, so some of the things that we have engaged in over the last couple of years, and in particular this year, as Mr. Cabrera said, is right-sizing the school district to make sure that we have certified teachers in every classroom, power professionals that are certified, and that we have staff to support teachers and programs around the district. So that's what we mean by making sure that we allocate or reallocate or shift funding to make sure that we don't miss that stride as to what's going on within the school district. Mr. Cabrera will go over with you on the budget book Every question that you might have he mentioned to you what that elephant in the room would be about putting right up front Questions that you might have there's a couple of other questions that we have to discuss and I know that you're aware of it But I want you to know that when I came to you last year. I felt a little bit embarrassed because of the budget book that we presented that we received from prior years and That's totally different. That tells the story of what's going on in our public schools. It highlights the work that our teachers and staff are doing with our kids. It lets you know what their challenges are. It puts right up front the money that we're investing in our schools, and it tells you how we're prioritizing them. I look forward to hearing from you. If the CFO can't answer a question, I am here to answer that question and if we need deeper conversation regarding a question, my head administrative staff is also sitting in the back and will be able to answer those questions for you. I hope that by the end of this discussion we have, you will continue to support us. You'll help us address maybe some of the shortfalls, and hopefully we can turn the page so at the end of this month we can put forth a budget to this community that they're going to be supportive of and say, yes, we can make this happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Superintendent Guerrero. Before we get into the numbers, I do want to give the opportunity, if they want, school committee member Mike Armano, is there anything else you would like to add to the introductory presentation or to the receiver? I don't know if the receiver is here, but the opportunity is there. You don't have to, but if you'd like to say a few words, you are.

Thank you for the opportunity.

THANK YOU.

IT'S AMAZING HOW THEY BECOME SHY. I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE NOT SHY IN MY OFFICE.

I BELIEVE IT. ALL RIGHT, MR. CAVARRO, WE'RE READY FOR YOU.

Thank you. I have printouts for the PowerPoint. Do you mind if I approach and give you that?

So we have Council Vice President Anna Levy online listening in to these hearings. Just listen.

All right, as Superintendent Guerrero said, we have members of our administration here for the different departments in case any question comes up related to our operations and our business. Superintendent talked a little bit about our mission and vision. This is part of This is part of our strategic plan. In building this budget, the mentality or the thought behind it was that our dollars align with our strategies, which also align with our mission and our vision. He read to you what our vision is, and it's up there on the screen. Just to educate the public a little bit about the process of how we come up with the budget.

want to let me see okay um real quick i want to clarify just i to me i it's it's common sense but just in case the four members of this committee are present any counselors that are listening in on zoom are not part of this committee and will not be engaging they're just educating themselves on the hearings so please continue yes thank you

All right. So this is the development process of the budget. Sometime in September, October, we get numbers from our enrollment numbers. And I'll talk a little bit about enrollment in a second. But October 1st is the date that the state uses to provide funding for the next fiscal year. So in October 1st, we get our official numbers. We certify them by the end of October. November, December, we start meeting with the administrators, the departments to talk about what the plan is for the next year. In January, sometime at the end of January, we get the governor's proposed budget, and we have an idea of how much money we will or will not have FOR THE FOLLOWING YEAR. IN MARCH, WE STARTED DRAFTING THE BUDGET. WE PRESENTED TO THE SUPERINTENDENT, THE RECEIVER. IN MAY, LIKE THIS YEAR, WE HAD OUR PUBLIC HEARING WITH THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE, WHICH TURNED OUT TO BE A VERY SUCCESSFUL ONE. AND JUNE AND JULY, THIS IS WHERE WE'RE AT NOW IN JUNE, WE'RE PRESENTING IT HERE IN FRONT OF YOU AND HOPEFULLY PASS THIS BUDGET TO BE EFFECTIVE JULY 1. School funding, like I said, school districts are funded based on October 1st enrollment of the prior year. So for fiscal year 27, this includes 12,955 students. Additional funds are also allocated for higher needs students. That includes English language learners, students below the poverty threshold, and those requiring special education. So we get additional funding for those on top of what the foundation is. Lawrence Public Schools funding sources include, and this is actually for the whole city of Lawrence, $232.2 million in Chapter 78, $17.1 million in city contributions, $21.6 million in state and federal grants, and then $13 million in school lunch reimbursements. This is enrollment trends. This is a very conservative projection of our enrollment. To give you an idea, we lost 358 students between last year, last school year, and this school year. So the number that we had on October 1st of 2024 was 350 more students than we had on October 1st of 2025. So for this, in this enrollment projection, this has us down to negative 83 students for next year. To give an idea, 358 students is about between seven and a half and eight million dollars. So you can do the math, and a third of that upwards of $2 million. And again, this is a very conservative one. We have some projections that have us at close to 200 students lost. Again, this is not a trend just for the city of Lawrence. It's a trend for the Commonwealth, and it's a trend across the country. Last year, the Commonwealth lost about almost 15,000 residents, and this is in part part of it, and there may be other factors that come into effect here, but just the movement of people is one thing that is affecting across the Commonwealth.

Can you repeat the number, please, Mr. Cabrera, 300?

84,000 residents. I don't know if I said 14,000, but 84,000.

How many students again did we lose? 358. So 358 students.

FROM LAST FISCAL YEAR TO THIS FISCAL YEAR. AND OF COURSE WE DON'T HAVE THE NUMBERS FOR OCTOBER 1ST, BUT WE WOULD EXPECT THAT FOR THIS YEAR WE'LL BE DOWN STUDENTS. AND YOU CAN SEE THAT FOR YEAR 27, 28, 29 THE TREND IS KIND OF THE SAME AS FAR AS PROJECTIONS GOING LOSING STUDENTS. SCHOOL FUNDING FORMULA BREAKDOWN. THIS IS, WE START WITH $332 MILLION THAT THE STATE, THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS ALLOCATES FOR THE CITY OF LAWRENCE. THIS IS FOR ALL THE STUDENTS IN THE CITY OF LAWRENCE. Then we add the minimum local contribution, which the city this year's contribution minimum is $17.1 million. That gives us $349. Then we take some costs that are net school spending eligible. And that is, you know, from there we take charter tuition, school choice assessment, non-resident vocational tuition, and then municipal administrative related costs. Those are things that count towards our net school spending, which is the amount that we're required to spend as a city on the education of our students. THEN WE ADD UP SOME OF THE THINGS THAT ARE IN THE CHERRY SHEET. FOR EXAMPLE, THE CHARTER TUITION REIMBURSEMENT IS COUNTED AS REVENUE, AND THEN WE HAVE THREE ITEMS THERE THAT ARE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CITY AND DO NOT COUNT TOWARDS NET SCHOOL SPENDING. THERE ARE TWO NUMBERS THAT ARE GOING TO BE DIFFERENT. If you look at number 12, transportation has us at $13,448,000. In the city's proposed budget, that number is $11,762,000. Then on line 14, The city's proposed budget has us at $543,245. This proposed budget here is $1.6 million. We're asking for an appropriation of $319,259,018. And again, those things, transportation and leases, those are the contractual agreements that we have now with our landlords and with the vendor for transportation. Like I said, 603 CMR 10.00, I believe you have it, it's in the budget book as, I believe it's on as an appendix, but it starts on page, 164 is Appendix A on the book. There are, like I said, non-net school spending expenditures that are the responsibility of the city are funding for transportation services, support for adult education programs, leases that exceed three years in duration, and funding for Chapter 74 education. Yes, sir, 164, Appendix A. This... is the projected local funds revenue for Lawrence Public Schools. So this adds up to the $319 million in change that we're requesting. The revenue, like I said, comes mostly, 95% of it comes from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So when you take the $245 million, I put the $57 million separate. from the Chapter 70 funds even though they are Chapter 70 funds because that's something that after this year we do not have. I know that the legislature is working on recalculating the formula for Chapter 70 but right now it's an unknown. Those two make up 95% of the revenue that the schools get. The 17.1 goes into the formula by the minimum contribution from the city. These are our expenses. They equal the same amount of revenue. In compensation and benefits, our compensation and benefits are close to 80%, about 80% of our expenses. That is salaries for teachers, paras, staff, administrators, and the benefits that go with it. Goods and services, those are the contracts that we have for our district and things like educational supplies, professional development, tuition for our teachers, those kind of things. Then we have operations, that is the money that is spent, almost 21 million to keep the lights on. And then other charges, it's 14.5 million that go towards the pension of our retirees. So every year, beginning of the year, that money is put aside and that is the amount for this coming year. Some of the fiscal 27 fiscal challenges, fiscal year 27 fiscal challenges. Like I said earlier, our enrollment declined by 2.7%, 358 students. That's a loss of about $7.5 million. We had a, we started, we went into this budget season with a negative variance. And that is, you know, increased salaries, increased operations. And the contracts for goods and services are some of the things that we're trying to mitigate as we develop the budget and go into next year. Like I said earlier, leases, we have 1.6 million contractual obligation for fiscal year 27. Our salary is 10.8 million increase, and we have one major pending collective bargaining unit. I believe it's a part of professionals. OF THAT 10.8, SIX AND SOME CHANGES FOR THE CONTRACT WITH THE TEACHERS FOR THIS YEAR WHICH IS BARGAINING UNIT THAT HAS ABOUT 1,450 MEMBERS. TUITION, WHEN I SAY TUITION, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT SPECIAL EDUCATION. THOSE ARE THE MONEY THAT WE PAY FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS FOR WHICH WE DO NOT HAVE SERVICES IN THE CITY AND WE HAVE TO SEND THEM OUT. THAT IS NORTH OF $8 MILLION FOR NEXT YEAR. Health insurance increase, transportation, 13.4, contractual obligation for fiscal year 27, and then utilities have increased dramatically to the tune of about $6.3 million budgeted for next year based on actuals and a moderate increase for next year. This is going back to the strategic priorities. Every dollar that we spend, we try to line up with this chart right here. The priorities for strategic plan and for the district, for the superintendent and the leadership and the receiver and school committee, accelerate training, staff excellence, data informed decisions, student well-being, family partnerships, and responsive leadership. Again, every dollar that we spend, We align it to this and hopefully have outcomes for our children where all learners grow and achieve. Some key investments despite the challenges, some of these key investments, we're investing $5.1 million direct allocation for our English language learners that the funds that went into that, In fiscal year 25 was $1.6 million. That, as you see, went from $1.6 to $5.1 million next year, so we're proud of that investment. Also in special education, special learning services, from $29.7 million in fiscal year 25 to $38.3 for this coming year. Then we kind of, in being fiscally responsible, the operational budget for central oversight and integrity across all priorities, we are making sure that, one, accounts are used for what they're supposed to be used for and that the expenses go towards expenses that meet the requirement for that account. This is what I have as far as the presentation. I have some, we can go over the budget book and answer whatever questions you may have. Some of the notable variances on the book, so there are some top four negative variances. Superintendent's office on the book has a negative variance of negative 3.654 million. curriculum and instruction, Lawrence High School and facilities. We have the explanation there for those. And then some of the positive variances in budget and finance, special learning services as I said, transportation services, and then human resources. With that, I would like to open it up for any questions or comments. for tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Cabrera. The councillors. Let me give them a second. Let me give the councillors a second. Are you ready?

As ready as we can be.

Okay, all right. So, councillors, questions or comments?

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I would like to say thank you to the school and this administration for putting this budget together and to point out specific things that are important to the council. I think it's a good practice to actually be transparent about what are the variances that we should be looking into. Obviously, a lot of the situation when it comes to the main issues of the city started last year, and that was basically related to the transportation. Last year we were short. And if I remember correctly, that was about $2 million. Am I correct? That is correct, yes, sir. And that this year we the city level fund the line item. With a contractual obligation of 13 million. And and we only are getting a loss of 11 million 760 2000. 755 out for the fight. That's not us. So with the difference of about 2 million 15 917 dollars. That's according to page 103 of the City of Lawrence budget book. And the school budget, page 38. Can you talk to me from the school perspective why this is happening? Obviously, there is two sides of the situation. So let's hear them both.

Yeah, so... Why is it happening? The contract is larger than the allocation, than the appropriation, right?

That's the numeric logic.

Yeah. We have actually three contracts with NRT. One is for special education. transportation, which is the bulk, the vast majority of the budget for transportation. We have general education, which is the folks, the students that we bring down to the high school. AND THEN WE HAVE HOMELESS STUDENT TRANSPORTATION. THOSE ARE THE THREE CONTRACTS THAT WE HAVE. WE WERE, WE MANAGED TO GET A CONTRACT THIS PAST YEAR. IT WAS AFTER, IT TOOK A WHILE TO WORK IT OUT. BUT OUR BUDGET INCREASE OR THE CONTRACT ONLY, I DON'T WANT TO SAY ONLY BECAUSE IT'S SIGNIFICANT, BUT INCREASES BY 2% YEAR OVER YEAR. That is the $13.448 million is the amount that is going to require this year based on that contract and on the services that we're providing. I believe with this $11.7 million, that is enough to transport I would say, I don't know if the superintendent would talk on that, but if we were to find ourselves with 11.7, the priority would be given to the special education students to get them transported. That still leaves a gap for some of these other contracts like the one for general education, athletics, and field trips.

So essentially what you're telling me, obviously, as a chief financial officer is that potentially if we keep this budget as it is, general location transportation will be not stay for long, for lack of a better word, or it's not longer going to be available for a long period of time.

That is correct. Yes, sir.

So essentially, what you just said is that if we keep this number of $11.7 million, the main priority is going to be special ed education.

Yes, sir.

And the other two contracts that we have, which is for general education and for other activities, perhaps sport, they're not going to be the priority of the schools. Correct?

We will not be able to fund that, yes.

Okay. Let's hear from the couple before we continue questioning, and that way we can have the full story. So just give us that information from the administration perspective.

OF COURSE, GOOD EVENING, COUNSELORS. SO IT'S MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THE TWO MILLION GAP PRETTY MUCH COVERS THE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. AND CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG. THAT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING. the DESE's guidance, the city is required to fund transportation for special education as well as K through six who live more than two miles from their assigned school. The city is looking for alternatives. We, as a mother, I do understand the parents' concern. Also, as a family member that have younger children and public servant, the question here is not how important transportation is. The question is how are we gonna fund it. The city, along with the superintendent and the school, have had discussions regarding high school transportation with MIVA. MIVA is a transit authority that the Merrimack Valley uses. After the different discussions, MEVA, which serves 15 communities, including Lawrence, and offers a fare-free transportation for all riders at no cost. At a cost. At no cost.

Well, at a cost that we pay.

Well, that's my next sentence. The city does pay an assessment of a million three currently and it goes up by two and a half percent every year. So we do pay an assessment of a million three for this service. the superintendent and the administration have met with MIVA to find a solution to help our families and students. Following the review of all the high school buses routes, MIVA confirmed that all current yellow bus stops within a short walking distance of existing routes they will be able to accommodate. The authority further noted that Lawrence, due to its density and population, benefits from some of the strongest transit coverage and service frequency in the Merrimack Valley. They went on to say that the routes eight and nine provide direct service to Lawrence High every 15 minutes from the McGovern, which is the main location from EVA. Again, the city is willing to work with the school, the administration is hoping to come with an agreement to help the students. Again, we're not just saying, figure it out. We are trying to get solutions for our students so that they will be able to get the transportation that they need. It's different from the yellow bus transportation. We are working with MIVA, and it will be accommodating all the routes. So that's where we are right now.

All right, I'll share through you. So currently, we have a budget in front of us that promise the city of Lawrence the best quality of service that we can accommodate. But in the current budget, to be able to provide the basics of what we provide in the past, which is the most important part for our high school, which is transportation, we're not going to be able to fund it if we proceed with the current budget and this line item of $11.7 million, correct?

That's correct.

So after calculating, looking at it, and revising all these numbers, This is not a balanced budget related to the services that we were providing to the Lawrence resident.

It's a balanced budget based on the obligations that were required to do Pardesi and the Mass General Laws.

Yeah, that's correct on the obligations. I got that point. But we have a basic service that we provide in the past. And I don't want to make it sound like I'm pushing on the administration, but it is. This is not a balanced budget based on the services that we provide last year. And last year, we have similar discussion. We were looking at different alternatives. Because the discussion went around this line item specifically due to the fact that we were short for a specific amount that we didn't know. But based on the bill that we get of $2 million, or potentially, of last year's budget, that means that we passed last year a budget that

didn't have enough funds to be able to pay for all the services and now we are stuck with two million dollars deficit right but unlike last year we are offering a solution to the parents and the students and it's a solution that it's not it's not requiring much from anybody it's a little bit compromised MIVA is offering the services, they are covering all the routes and it's a free service and it's every 15 minutes and it's within walking distance from the different school stops that we currently have.

Yes, I understand, but in the meantime, just you need to understand my point of view, my perspective, I do not have the solution on a contract in front of me that they're going to be able to provide that service until I have that, I cannot assume that that's going to happen because as of right now, we have a shortage of 2.15 that we have on the budget based on the services that we provide last year. So I don't want you to, you know, feel like I'm attacking the budget, but the numbers doesn't add up.

No, and I understand. And the administration is aware. And they are offering, they're willing to meet that gap of $2 million. But unfortunately, the only way to do that is tapping into the excess levy capacity.

Perfect. Let me read the following. Hold on a second, please. Let me read the following. Dear city council members, we are entering to this year budget season. Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, respectfully urge you to argue the city of Lawrence city council members to fully prepare themselves to understand the municipal budget process, including the terminologies, ongoing operation expenses, fixed budgetary commitments, and the long-term implications of the decision made during the budget deliberation. We received this memo from the mayor on May 18, 2026. As far as I understand, I'm trying to understand the budget.

Mm-hmm.

That's what I'm trying to do here.

Not a problem. I can explain it to you.

And it's like I'm seeing a deficit. So please explain it again.

Absolutely. So per law, the city can go up 2.5% of our previous levy. Levy is the amount that the city taxes to the community. So we're doing 2.5 plus 1.5 of new growth. The total is $3.9 million.

So essentially we are increasing the taxes all the way to the top, similar to last year.

That's correct.

Okay.

So if there's any wishes to meet the gap within the school department, the administration is willing to submit a supplemental budget, tap it into the excess levy capacity. What is the excess levy capacity? Excess levy capacity is the amount of taxes that the municipality has not taxed in previous years. For example, we're doing two and a half this year. If we do not do two and a half percent, then that money stays in the levy. So basically for the last 10 years, there's $13 million that the municipality has not taxed its residents.

Okay, perfect. Let me ask you a question on that. Why don't we responsibly DO THAT NOW INSTEAD OF DOING A SUPPLEMENTARY BUDGET. BECAUSE THIS BUDGET RIGHT NOW, AS IT IS, BASED ON THE NEEDS THAT HAVE BEEN PRESENTED TO US THAT THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE ALREADY AGREED UPON, THE NEED FOR THE TRANSPORTATION IS 13,788,000. And the city is only putting, you know, $11.7 million. Why don't we go ahead and do that and responsibly tell the city of Lawrence, we are in a deficit. We are in a shortfall. We are physically responsible to these obligations. And that's why we're increasing the taxes to this amount. Instead of just, you know, doing what we're doing right now with the school that pretend to be the main priority for many, but it's not being reflected on the finance. So why don't we do that?

We can.

I think that the mayor should agree upon that and sit down with us on these hearings and talk to us about this is what we are as the city's finance.

Okay, I can relate the message.

And trust me, it's not about you because you're the CAFO. You help out tremendously on this budget. But I feel like the administration is not quite there yet. But still, they told us to learn the budget and not putting those numbers together.

Sure.

Go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Senior advisor. Good evening.

Good evening. Madam Chair Infante, Council President, Councilor Marmo and LaPlante. Good evening. Councilor LaPlante. I forgot the councilor. So in response to your question, you asked several questions and I think this is a very good opportunity to explain a little bit. The, as you know, and as the CAFO explained, there's a deficit, I mean, there's a short and unexpected situation that happened that we were made aware. Since the federal, the current administration that we have on the federal level stated that they're going to make changes in education. They were not going to support, they were mostly in favor of charter schools than public schools. The president, was good to his word. He said he was going to cut it, and they cut it. They cut the budget, the education budget. It's as if a family is, you know, was depending on two incomes, and all of a sudden, like all of us are going through, there's an increase in our expenses, whether it's gas, whether it's groceries, there are expenses. What the federal government did So for the public, maybe you know, but probably the public is not made aware because you have families that work. They cut the budget. So all the municipalities, not only Lawrence, is dealing with this situation. So how do cities generate revenue? CITIES GENERATE REVENUE THROUGH PROPERTY TAX, MOSTLY, THROUGH FEES, AND SOME OF THE ADMINISTRATORS' FEES, WHETHER IT'S POLICE DEPARTMENT BUILDING PERMITS AND ALSO THROUGH SPECIAL BUSINESS DISTRICTS. In our case, we have been doing well. There's a substantial growth in the community, but not enough to compensate for properties that are not being taxed. I've said this before. I think four years ago, I started to say it on behalf of the mayor. we have nine hundred and sixty million dollars property tax that we're not collecting whether it's city on government-owned buildings state buildings uh... the two courts that we have we have hundred eighty nine non-profit organizations i mean churches we have three hundred and sixty nine non-profit organizations some of them on the property some dead don't on the properties If you look at that and calculate, do your calculation, that's approximately the same amount of money that is we are in deficit right now. Not deficit, that would not be able to help us not raise the taxes. And that's approximately $10 million. Okay.

Let me tell you something, Mr. Advisor. We have obligations that we were able to cover in the previous years. That amount of nonprofit, that amount of churches, that amount of anything that you just mentioned right now has had sex on the city of Lawrence for years. You're saying that it's because of that. That's an insult to my intelligence. No, no, no. Give me one minute. I hear you out. We are in a shortfall. Let's admit it. Let's work on it. Let's do whatever we need to do and be physically responsible. Blaming others for the service that you're not providing or the administration is not providing, especially when it comes to education, is not the answer. It's not the answer. We have a shortfall of $2 million from last year when it comes to the transportation portion of it because that was the only line item in the school services that reduced all of the sorting. It was not because we didn't have the actual. It was because we reduced it because those were the only city obligations. when it comes to the school that is reflected on the budget. And to be able to balance last year's budget, we reduced it by $2 million. We have the bill there waiting now. Now we have another $2 million that we not been responsible, and we are not doing the right thing. And if we keep on pointing fingers, like the letter that we received on May 18 from the mayor saying, counselors, you are... You are not smart enough. Understand your terminologies and pass this budget. That's not a distraction that we're going to get into. What we need right now is $2,015,917. to be able to have transportation just like we have for the last 10 years, perhaps. I'm not gonna say five years on this mayor or this administration. For the last 10 year, 15 year, 20 years. The reason why we have that high school there and the main commitment that we made to this community is that we were gonna transport those kids to that high school. That building that cost us $114 million, I believe. Maybe something around there. So we have that responsibility. Let's sit down and stop the blame and do what we need to do. We have the levy capacity that the city of Lawrence haven't been taxed. The couple mentioned that responsibly. But you come up and give us another speech of we are full of nonprofit here. We are full of churches. And they don't pay taxes. We have had that for years and we don't have that shortfall on the transportation of the most needed and the future that we call it. We call them the future of the city of Lawrence, the students. So let's sit down and talk about it because in the meantime, this budget of fiscal year 2027, it is not balanced based on the services that we need to provide. Or if you have a contract with MIBA presented to us and we can analyze it and see if it is feasible. In the meantime, those services are essential and we are not providing those.

Thank you, Council President. Councilors, any other questions or comments? Councilor Marmo. I have quite, I'm going to ask my questions at the end.

I have quite a few, but since we're like already speaking on transportation, let me bring up my notes.

Also, speaking of notes, I also have my LPS and GLTS notes and questions in my laptops. If you hear the clickety-clack, I apologize.

It's just I didn't write them all this time around. I'll start off by saying thank you for this budget book. Quite a major improvement compared to last year's. Love the graphics. I'll commence by saying that I wished what was presented in this PowerPoint was provided in this budget book because I feel like a lot of the essential, like the things that are worrying us and it's supposed to be like the meat's of what we're discussing, the challenges, I feel like it should have been part of this budget book. So kind of like seeing this information now on the spot, it's a little disappointing to me because had I had it my way, I would have had this information at a minimum a week ago. When it comes to the transportation, I must say that I agree with our council president and I share his sentiments and the frustrations. Because I do remember vividly last budget and as much as I am vocal about cutting here and cutting there, I understand that the cuts that I was trying to make last year would not have even sufficed to address the needs of what is required for the services for Lawrence Public Schools. Please correct me if I'm wrong at any point. Based on my understanding, the past year or two, I'm not sure for how long, Lawrence Public Schools has been able to provide the resources of transportation based on using ESSER funds?

That is correct, yes.

Okay. And which, and again, correct me at any point, that shouldn't have been the case. It should have, you know, you guys are tapping into a piggy bank, which should have been on the city's, it should have been the city's, the city should have been accountable for those funds. But you guys, so for how long were you guys tapping into ESSER funds to supply the transportation services?

So we did 23, 24, 24, 25 years. Twenty-five, twenty-six. Okay. It was, I got it written down somewhere, but it was about close to $7 million in those three years, yes.

So technically the city owes you $7 million on top of the deficit that we're having in order to provide those services now.

Is the way I'm seeing it. I wouldn't say they owe us, but those funds were used to cover that.

I would say they owe if it's required for the city to provide it, and then you guys are, again, tapping into a piggy bank that you could have used those to make certain expenditures on certain programs. It could have gone towards salary. It could have gone towards operating costs. So, again, you know?

Definitely, yes. Yes.

So since 2023, I'm not sure who to direct this question to, but I'm assuming it's you, CAFO. And as much as I like you as a person, I have to ask these questions given the role that you have. Who should I blame or who should be considered responsible knowing that since 2023, you guys are tapping into your ESSER funds Knowing that you're going to be running out of these funds, why are we trying to scramble, trying to analyze, trying to collaborate, work together? Like why are we addressing these challenges now? Like where, I'm trying to have an understanding as to what was the communication like between the school and the administration. Did you guys consistently advocate it and just continuously were told the funds weren't there? Were we just comfortable using ESSER funds, thinking that those funds were never going to be running out anytime soon?

Well, so a couple of things. I cannot speak for 99% of the ESSER funds because they sunset... at the time that we came in, that the superintendent came in. So by the time we came in, we had in ESSER funds $1.4 million left. That was it. Most of the ESSER funds that we received were put into, you know, things that the school system needed. We put a lot into the buildings, into our school buildings. ESSER, you know, last year ESSER on transportation was not a thing. It wasn't, you know, we, the funds were used because they were used to cover for shortfalls. I cannot speak of what happened in 23, 24, 24, 25 on those funds. So I don't know if, I don't know that I have an answer. to your question. The transportation is the responsibility of the city. There is no way around that. That the ESSER funds were used, yes. ESSER funds were used.

Okay. So I'm just going to take a mental note. My opinion, my perspective is that The city owes the Lawrence Public Schools seven million on top of the deficit that we're seeing now unless we're able to potentially address those needs given the proposed initiatives that our council president was mentioning. But I also have concerns with that. Despite the fact that we're talking about high school students when it comes to this transportation shortfall, they're still kids. Um, I'm not going to say what year I graduated, but I remember freshman year, you're like 13, 14 years old. They like, these are kids. Um, and I just cannot fathom, especially considering this past winter season was, was horrible. I just can't, I don't, I don't want to see a child walk to school. And I know that potentially mentioning Miva as, uh, as a potential solution, but given the explanation that our council president made, until I'm able to see a contract, I cannot even begin to assess how I feel about it. Who's gonna be responsible for the kids if there's ever an emergency? Does it fall on MEVA? There's just so many, factors that come into play, and I'm just wondering as to who would be responsible when it comes to the students that are choosing to use these services. How will we address delays? I'm sure that sometimes, yeah, they run every 15 minutes, sometimes they're not always on time. Would that affect students? If they're tardy, I don't know, there's just so many questions and I'm not sure if you guys have the answer to that right now.

Oh, go ahead if you have anything to say. If I may say, after the same concern that you're bringing up is the same concern that we hear in school committee, same concerns that the superintendent hears in his office. That is the same concerns that when we talk to the state, it's the same thing. And that's why we're asking for an appropriation that covers that cost.

yeah that that is our budget our budget is asking for for the city of lawrence to cover uh that cost i'm just disappointed because again you're telling me since 2023 you guys have been tapping into your esser funds and i feel like that should have been the point the time frame that the administration should have looked into okay you guys are tapping into your esser funds that was like a freebie you know like a moment to potentially reflect as to how could we work towards being able to provide them with the funding that corresponds to the city. But year after year I feel like potentially we got comfortable or the administration got comfortable in not having to provide those funds and now we see ourselves with not having those funds left and pretty much trying to figure things out. And again, my disappointment is the fact that we're literally waiting now to address it. But I'm gonna put a pin on that unless you have anything further to say regarding transportation because there are other things regarding the budget that I want to tap into. But if there is, Councilor LaPlante, We want to stick with the same subject. By all means, I want to pass the microphone to you.

Do you have anything to add to transportation, Council Member Platt? Sure.

Yeah, so thanks. I got a lot to say as well. I'll focus strictly on just on the transportation portion. And thank you. First of all, we've already heard, and... that this is an unbalanced budget. It's an unbalanced budget. And I realize that there's a caveat, but when we say the words, this is an unbalanced budget, that means that this is an unlawful budget. We as a community, any municipality, including the state, only the federal government can offer an unbalanced budget. They print their money, we don't. We have to provide a balanced budget. Or it's unlawful and we should be voting against an unbalanced budget. But this is not. The bottom line number is $489,903. I'm sorry, $489,903,032. Revenues equal expenditures. That's number one. Number two. When we say about the excess levy capacity, and there's $13 million, and if we could rewind me talking about the budget for the last, I don't know how many years, regarding the excess levy capacity that if you came here from Mars and you're listening to excess levy capacity, I have no idea what that is. Well, all that means is that we have not been taxing to the levy every year. That's all that means. We could do that, but we haven't been doing that. As a matter of fact, I would like to get from the capo for the last 10 years, the years that we have not taxed up to the levy. I don't expect that tonight, but I would like that because this goes to the nut of the argument regarding transportation, which is we don't have enough money. One of this committee has recommended that, well, what we should do is tap into the excess levy capacity. And in my brain, all that means is tax increase. That's what that means. I've sat around saying, at some point, there's going to be a mayor and a city council without any vote of the populace can go ahead reach into the excess tax levy, pull that out and say, we're increasing. We have a $13 million. We can increase that $13 million without a two and a half override, without going to residence, without a vote. I don't like that. I don't think we should do that. I think that when we have that $13 million, we should be very, very judicious. And while it's on my watch... When we have a solution, we may not like the solution. But we have a solution. And quite frankly, if we're being honest, it's a fairly unique solution. We're using a transportation structure that's already available to us. And we're now leveraging that. We've already paid for it, essentially. We're leveraging that. To what? To provide transportation and no additional cost to the taxpayers. None. I think it's creative. That's the position that we're in. I don't see where we're going to be finding an additional... If we're going to go to that additional whatever it is, one point whatever million, then we're going to have to increase revenues by an additional one point, and we're already at the tax levy, which means we're going to go over. Don't count on me. Don't count on me on supporting us going into the excess tax capacity. I am not going to be doing that. That to me is the red line. We don't need to. I won't be supporting that. So that's my comment on the transportation issue. So I'll give you back your floor and I'll talk later.

So you also have the transportation? Okay. I have one thing to add for transportation. As the chair of the budget, I've been in constant communication regarding LPS as budgets, specifically the transportation portion and city outcomes and what would be feasible and what would be not and the worries, et cetera. I wasn't going to comment on transportation as I believe my colleagues asked majority of the questions or made comments that I would have made, but one thing is popping up in mind that I can't seem to shake off. Us as a city, as a municipality, we were so quick to be merry and jolly when we renovated two schools, when we increased also the seating capacity of those schools. And although this transportation issue is subject to one area of the overall Lawrence Public Schools, to me this opens the door, this opens a can of worms for the entire district for the future. And I have to... I agree with my colleague, Councillor Marmo, something that I actually didn't think of until I heard you say it. I don't understand why we haven't thought of transportation in the last few years in our planning for the future. SO THAT'S MY INPUT ON TRANSPORTATION. EVERYTHING ELSE HAS BEEN COVERED. COUNCIL PRESIDENT.

THANK YOU. I TRULY APPRECIATE THIS OPPORTUNITY BECAUSE I KNOW THAT WE ALMOST FINISHED ON TRANSPORTATION. BUT THERE IS SOMETHING THAT WE'RE MISSING. CAN YOU GO PLEASE SOMEBODY FROM THE SCHOOL DEPARTMENT? CAN WE OPEN THE BUDGET BOOK I'm starting on page 49. I highlight line item 5330 in most of the schools. which is basically the public transportation. Starting on there, I see that in fiscal year 2025, there was a $2,425 on public transportation, and then in 2026, it was nothing, and then it was nothing for this fiscal year. And so far, Zone 1, that line item has been 5330, has been reduced or cut except for a few schools. So tell me a little bit about that line item that is also transportation, but how does it differentiate from the main topic that we have here? Because if it is cut on different schools that have anything to do with anything that was not discussed, please explain to me.

Yeah, so object 5330, that's people transportation at the school level. That's the object that we use for field trips. So that's a school plans a field trip for this year or two field trips and they need transportation and that's the object code that we use. If you, let me just give an example. If you go to page, for example, 107, for example, that's the SES. the School for Exceptional Studies. If you look at item 5330, you'll see that for fiscal year 27 projected, they have $7,000. So that school is planning on having one, two, three, whatever many field trips, and they put it in their budget to account for that. Some of the schools, let me see if there's another one. If you go to page 105 right before that, That school is putting $4,000. So those are costs, 5330, that are at the discretion of the school if they're going to have a field trip and they put the money aside for that at their level with the operational funds that we give them.

So essentially the school has a discretion whether or not they want to spend that money on field trip or anything else?

CORRECT. AND IT'S NOT RELATED TO THE MAIN BUDGET. CORRECT. IT'S NOT RELATED TO THE TRANSPORTATION. THEY PAY FOR THAT AS AN AD HOC IF THEY WANT TO USE IT. OKAY.

SO THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CITY OBLIGATION. PERHAPS IT'S JUST THE OPERATIONAL BUDGET THAT THEY USE FOR SOMETHING ELSE. CORRECT. YES, SIR.

OKAY.

SO LET ME ASK A QUESTION. YES, SIR. DID THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SCHOOL, PERHAPS THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION, PUT INTO THAT LINE ITEM TO BE REDUCED?

No, no, no, no. So we, what we have done since we got here, we distribute funds, we say equitable, and it is equitable. So if you have 500 students, you get money for 500 students, right? So each school, it doesn't matter if they're in Mount Vernon or Tower Hill or Prospect Hill, depending on the number of students, they get an allocation for their operations. And if they, socials, decide to, you know, Spend it on people transportation, they spend it on that. Some folks spend it on extra duty for their teachers and extra duty for paraprofessionals and educational supplies. That's their money with the autonomy that they have to use the money in whatever area they want to use it in.

So, and let me ask you my final question when it comes to that. Yes, sir. Don't we have like unionized requirements for the student to learn? Like perhaps if we know that the student at seventh grade actually learn more by doing this type of trips, why don't we recommend it all throughout?

Remember, schools have autonomy to... to teach their kids how they want to teach. So one thing that we are doing, one, to stay true to our strategic plan and to stay fiscally responsible is centralizing some of, I don't want to say centralizing, but kind of making some of the things be the same across all schools, like curriculum, for example. Instead of having 31 different curriculums, it's fiscally responsible and better outcome for the child to have that less of a choice. Some of these things, the principals teach their school the best way that they feel they can teach. If field trips is one thing that they feel strong about, they put money towards it. If it's not, they don't. I mean, I agree to some point.

But I think that somehow we need to kind of like you know manage that every student in the city of Lawrence have a variety of opportunity but the main course of learning should be all the standards and another word should be the the the same but anyway thank you so much thank you manager for giving me this opportunity thank you I think that you gave me the opportunity that you took away from me last year

Councilors, any other questions or comments pertaining to the LPS budget moving on from transportation? Councilor Marmo.

So I want to tap into, you mentioned in your speech the, what was the number of how many paraprofessionals that were, you said you didn't want to use the word layoff, right?

Correct.

Because it's technically not a layoff.

Correct.

It's that you're waiting for them to obtain their certification?

Correct.

If they don't obtain certification, are these positions remaining open? Is there a deadline for them to meet these certifications in order for potentially you guys having these job postings up and active in order to fill those positions?

Yes, and I don't want to speak for HR director who happens to be here, but there is a timeline. I don't know if you want to.

I'm sorry.

But there is a timeline for our folks, you know, for our staff to get their proof of whatever it is. It depends on the union. It depends on the contractual language.

So there is a deadline then?

Yes. Okay. And those, and you know, you asked about positions. If you go to the LPS website right now, there are upwards of 175 postings right now for teachers. And we have, I think I have about 60 more that I'm going through the approval process to approve. So we are hiring for those positions of people that have waivers, people that are uncertified or do not have a license.

How soon is communication given to these, because I'm assuming it's not just paraprofessionals, or is it just them that are required? To obtain certification. Whoever is required, whichever employee is required to obtain certification, how soon within the school year before you're handing out the fact that this would be their last day, are they provided communication from the school?

So the HR department works with staff throughout the year, throughout the whole year.

So they're aware.

Yes, so we had a number of 170 or 180 teachers, for example, at the beginning of the year, for which we advocated for them to get a waiver, to come work for our district. So those 180 teachers, on day one, When they got the job, they already knew that they had a waiver. Part of the requirement of the waiver, as I said earlier, is that they show progress towards getting their license and their certification. So those folks knew on day one. And HR has been in communication with these folks throughout the year. making sure, and there is a large number of folks that have shown proof and they, you know, after they get the letter, they show proof and they come off the list. But that is something that is, you know, required by DESE and is a part of our contractual agreements on the date. Different unions have different timeframes, some of them may be June 30th, some of them may be June 15th, it just, it depends.

Has the school identified the challenges for them to obtain the certifications? Is it that it's difficult? Is it time? What was that?

All right, so Brenda wants the HR director to come up and speak to that.

Please stay here. Good evening to all. My name is Lizbeth Gonzalez, and I'm the executive director for Human Capital. Oh, pleasure meeting you. Nice to meet you.

Welcome. So I'm not sure if you wanted to answer the previous question or any information that you're able to provide.

Some of the questions. So the district had engaged in a audit, district-wide audit, but not only for teachers. We've done administrators, we've done teachers, and we've also done paraprofessionals. They do have different deadlines. For example, the paraprofessionals have until June 30th to submit their credential. If I may recall correctly, some of the questions were around notification. So the Power Professionals notification went out last year in the summer letting them know that based on the audit we had identified that they did not meet the credentials and we gave them all through this school year for them to obtain credentials along with supports meaning the district provides prep programs for them, the district provide vouchers for them, the district provide open sections to help them actually register for the exam you mentioned about challenges so it is a very lengthy application so the district open up you know a site to help them you know just navigate that process based on the challenges

Okay, thank you. I appreciate kind of going in a little deeper, because I'm just trying to understand and making sure that we're doing our part in retaining the teachers that we have and not see them go to a different district. So I'm not sure if that's another reason, but okay.

I just want to add a little more, right, when it comes to the teachers. When the teachers are hired right from the beginning, you know, we give them a conditional offer letter based on having licensure or a DESE waiver. So they are informed right from the beginning of the year that the district apply and receive a waiver, that the waiver is only for one year. And it also states the ways of them to be, for DESE to approve another waiver, so in other words, DECI requires that the district post the position, does an extensive search in the hopes of finding a highly qualified candidate, meaning someone who's licensed. And so because of the nature of the requirements from DECI, the district is not able just to continue, say, oh, you're on a waiver, you're making continuous progress. The district is required to go out and do a search for looking for a qualified candidate. before requesting a secondary waiver, which also requires that the employee is making continuous progress. So we engage in a process of one, notifying the employees that you are in this position, you're in a waiver, your waiver will expire at the end of the year. Two, this is what the district is required to do, meaning posting for a minimum number of days in the hopes of finding someone who's highly qualified. and three, to ensure in collecting documentation from the employees as to what continuous progress they've made, whether they attempted to take the MTELs, whether they are in a program on their own, whether they're in a program with the district. So collecting that information in preparation for if the time comes, if the district needs to request a second waiver for those teachers.

Okay. So I'm assuming they have to the 30th of this month and then those that provided grade and those that don't, basically those positions will be actively open for the public to apply. That is correct. Okay.

It's also about timing, right? So it all depends on when they get the exam and the last step. So we also encourage them to, even if they get to the, after the deadline and they haven't met those requirements, they're more than welcome to come back and reapply to, you know, be rehired for the district once they're after the credentials. Okay.

So I would like to know, because what I'm hearing is very informational and it appears that the school district is being as helpful as they can. However, there seems to still be some type of miscommunication because the paraprofessionals or teachers, employees, they reach out to us or other school committee community members and they say that they're going to get laid off. But what I'm hearing is they have until June 30th, there's constant communication. So where is that disconnect in communication?

Yeah, I mean, it could be the understanding, right, the communication that we provide right from the beginning. There's at least a minimum of two communications in writing. For example, the group of teachers clearly said, you know, you're on a waiver, this ends, you know, you have to be licensed by the end of the year in order to be considered for a job. So when you read a language that says in order to be considered for a job for next year, they can interpret that as a layoff part. I can't speak for the individuals that you're hearing from. I can only assume that the communication that is provided is interpreted in different ways. Right, right. Thank you. We have been in contact with the union, you know, as providing the list, providing them updates as to where the individuals are at. Happy to report that a lot of teachers have become licensed, you know, so the numbers continue to go down, and the same thing goes with power professionals.

So, Marmo? I believe our budget session should be over by the 27th. Are you guys able to provide communication to us as to, out of the 30, how many were able to obtain certification? This is probably one of God knows how many other things. By the time we're done with your portion of the budget, I'm not sure what my colleagues would request from you guys. And this is just coming from a place of curiosity. Nothing major when it comes to the budget itself, but I'm curious as to like out of the 30, how many were able to obtain the certification and how many?

Are you referring to the power professionals? Correct. Okay, so the district started with 117 around there? Say that again? The district started with about 117 power professionals that did not have credentials. Oh, why do I have 30? Because as we have been able to help them, you know, get credentials, and the numbers continue to go down, yes. And so every day the number changes. I want to just get a quick number back here from one of my staff, because we're done in the 20s now. So as of today, 29. So it's just 29? Yep. Okay, all right.

Okay.

My questions is done when it comes to that portion of the budget. I'm going to segue into Mr. Cabrera. Page 35, I'm seeing a cut on education supplies and a cut on operating supplies. If you could touch on that. Which page again? Oh, page 35.

Yes. So, let me start with the most obvious. Operational supplies. When we talk, and I want to, let me just rewind just a little bit when we talk about staffing. Like I said earlier, we lost 20 classrooms worth of children. So please understand that there are positions that are equivalent to that. So when we talk about balancing our budget, right, We cannot keep every position that we had this year for next year. So some of those positions will be, call it cut, repurposed, realigned. Something's going to happen with them. Same thing when we talk about operational supplies. One thing that in operational supplies, we didn't have... operational supplies that were centralized in a lot of the departments. So now in order for us to manage our fiscal responsibilities better, we have places where departments that are responsible to watch over the operational supplies that we put out. And there is not a, you know, the number of people that, or departments or schools that put operational supplies orders out there is more, a little bit more accountable in the way that we do business. So that is one of the ways that we mitigated some of the negative variances that we have. Operational supplies. Educational supplies, we do a lot based on our actuals, right? One thing that, and we have our department heads here, and educational supplies, In the last couple of years, one thing that Superintendent Guerrero and this leadership team has tried to do is normalize it, making sure that the curriculum that we teach our students is the same. So an eighth grader going to the high school from any middle school in the district has the same level of understanding of the material. In the past that was not the case. In the past, you have whatever many middle schools, six middle schools, and they may have six different curriculums in those schools. And kids get to the high school with different levels of understanding based on the curriculum. So we've kind of... home that in close close that loop and that is ways uh... that we save money because we don't have uh... that many curriculums so we stick to one curriculum we have more than one but we have two specific curriculums and save money that way by making sure that everyone is on the same uh... curriculum and not spending on six seven eight different curriculums uh... for middle school

Segueing into page 37. Yes. As I stated, I love this budget book, but when I'm looking at it right now, I'm looking at the different line items regarding administrators, principals, teachers. I would love to know how many administrators we have, how many principals, how many teachers, how many custodians, because for all I know, it could be like one nurse or two nurses. So given the variance, I would like to more or less be able to potentially be able to calculate what that is.

And they do break it down by school, but as you can imagine, we look at multiple budgets, so sometimes we're looking at the overview and getting into the details during these sessions. So yeah, that would be helpful for the future.

And I have part of my team here, so I know they're taking notes, and hopefully after our budget gets approved and we come up with a final, I'll make sure that that is in there for you.

And again, you know, each council is different and... No, no, I understand.

I understand.

So when it comes to the custodian, I'm seeing a decrease. Is it because we cut custodians? And the reason why I'm asking this is because of the new schools. So I'm wondering, like, why the decrease? Is it because we cut custodians?

If there's one thing we're not cutting is custodians. Okay. That is more in the actuals.

That's just, you know, we had... Are there positions that are actively open that we have to fill?

We have a hundred and... When I arrived here, we had... I got our director here too, but we had about 92 custodians. We're up to 108, 109. So that is based on actuals and adjusting the budget so that it reflects a true number of what we're spending on salaries based on what we have paid out this year.

So we're cutting their salary?

No, no, no.

I'm trying to make sure.

So in the past...

I'm seeing a variance of $156,000. So where is that? Break it down to me.

In the past, that was over budgeted. And one thing that we did with that department for custodians, we brought them all under one department. Before, you would see, and if you look at the schools, you would see that they don't have money allocated for custodians this year because we brought them all under the department. So before we had... two custodians at Arlington Elementary, and three at the middle school, and 18 at the high school, and it was hard to keep track of all those accounts, and when they were budgeted, they were not being budgeted to the specific. Now, we centralized that so we know that the money that we're budgeting is the money that we actually pay these folks minus, you know, the 156 was over budgeted for different positions across the district.

OK. OK. Yeah, yeah. OK. Safety officers, what I see them, I see 46 on page 122. I, again, it could be that you guys did provide that information in sectors depending on, let me see, did you guys do it? I'm looking at the real quick. You see, I don't, I wouldn't know. Give me one second, I wanna make sure I'm not incorrectly saying you didn't do something. I just happen to fall on page 44. So I'm seeing on page 122, a total of 46 safety offices, but then when I'm looking at page 44, the brain as just as an example, how do I know how many safety officers are in each school?

The department assigns that. So now they're under the departments. So the department assigns the safety for each.

Say that again? Okay, I understand. So 46 in total? Okay, and then my question was, how do I, I'm looking at this budget, how would I know how many safety officers are in each school? It's not given, right? Okay.

Correct. Okay. The staffing is centralized so they are all under the department. We can put in here just, I see that we have on that particular school, you're talking about the green, I see that we have custodians in there even though it says zero for next year. We can get that in there, even if it says zero for fiscal year 27. But they are centralized. based on, you know, we have now the ability to assign folks if someone is out, for example, we can grab, you know, our floaters and people and put them in different spots rather than having them at a school and they're needed somewhere else.

Yeah, okay. I get it. I cannot take . Oh, through you? I'm not done, but fine. Yeah, I give you the floor. I'm not done.

Yes. Just piggybacking on the safety, we have the safety of the person in charge. Oh, I didn't see him back there. Let me ask you the question. Yeah, I didn't see him back there.

Yeah, he's out of uniform.

Like you're struggling.

I didn't know he was here.

Let me say something about Flete before he... Can you introduce yourself? Yes, of course.

Could you please introduce yourself?

Hi, my name is Juan Flete.

Juan Flete.

Flete, let me say something about Flete before. He was the safety officer for the Guildmen, and he was the father figure of Los Dolores.

I knew I recognized him from somewhere.

I just didn't know. So that's why I like him so much, and that's why I put him on the spot. So tell us how you deal with the safety officer with about 47 people, how you manage?

So the smaller schools, like the green schools, like the one you brought up, they have one safety assigned to their school. The LFA, the green, the Tarbox, they have one. The bigger schools have two.

I would love to see that in the budget, even though I know they're floating, but I would love to see how many safety officers are in each school. Again, I'll state that I do understand the needs are gonna change and they vary from time to time. I know that I don't want you guys to feel restricted by kind of putting a number there, and then you might be questioned, well, you said you put that you only have one. But it would be nice for us to be able to assess, especially with the newer schools. Some of these schools, we're adding more students. So I can't see in this budget, so again... Please direct me if I'm wrong. On page 122, I'm seeing fiscal year 2027-46, safety officers. Did we increase from last, from 2026? Like the numbers from 2026? Is they the same?

Yeah, it's the same.

How is that even possible? How is that possible? To stay the same?

We don't have the previous year.

Oh, we don't have the...

Remember, the safety...

So we have an increase.

That number, no.

From last fiscal year's budget, it was still 46.

It's still the same. The thing is that we were using alternative schools, and they were smaller. Now they're all together, so those safeties went with those schools. So now you have more safety at one school because they're not separate now.

No, but it's more students in one school, though.

But now you have more safety in one school.

So for example, the Oliver had Oliver Elementary, Oliver Middle. Each one was assigned two safeties. When they go to the new place, they have enough to cover that building.

Okay. Council President.

Yeah, and it's important to recognize that before when they were in one school, they didn't look at the whole picture of what is happening in other schools because they were just assigned to that school. Now, centralizing it, they might be able to deploy more officers based on the need of that specific school. If something happened, an event happened, perhaps they have

But the most important part of that of the safety officer is that having the approach of

of having somebody that cares about the kids and looking at not only at the safety portion of the school, perhaps of the need of the student, be able to talk to them and be able to have them participate and interact with the safety officer is something that within your training have been reflected and have helped tremendously the students. So thank you for that.

Thank you.

But point noted and it'll be there.

Yeah, that's minor, minor. We haven't talking about, I had mentioned school safety officers on page 122. I'm seeing fiscal year 2027, but I didn't see 2026 numbers. Before I end on the school safety,

do you feel that you haven't if is not fully staff do you feel like that you need more safety officers because of trying to be having a balanced budget we know that that that is a lot of properly fine i feel comfortable and and and mister for the camp cannot yes or no but i feel comfortable with the number of safety is that we have uh... we get on those positions again it's a high liability position so as soon as we have a uh... opening we filled and we actually the process of hiring too to school safety officers here within the next couple of weeks. So as soon as one of those becomes available, they get filled to fulfill the need of the schools.

Okay. I want to touch on the leases.

Yes.

My understanding is that we're required and correct my vocabulary, three years is the limit for Lawrence Public Schools to cover, correct?

Correct.

So are you able to provide me a list, I'm not sure how big it is, as to how many leases do we currently have?

So this budget here has, this number is for three leases. We have the Adult Learning Center, which is out there on Broadway, on General Mills. We have, with the Archdiocese, we have two leases. One is... the Lawrence Family Public Academy, that's one of our babies school, pre-K and kindergarten schools. And then we have, we have St. Mary's right here down the street. Those are the three leases, those are the three leases that we have.

So the Learning Center, Lawrence Public Academy, and St. Mary's?

Correct.

Okay.

Those are the three leases noted on this budget book, yes.

Okay, and the ones not noted? Are there any other leases not noted?

Those are, we have another lease that is being renegotiated or talked about, but those three are the ones that we're asking for here.

Okay, and out of the three, are they still within the three-year limit or has any one of them expired?

So the adult learning center, again, is a responsibility of the city. We cannot use, you know, Chapter 70 funds to fund that. So that one is one. The Lawrence Family Public Academy, that has been at that location for a while. Eleven years? Nine, ten. 14 years. So that one has been there for 14 years. Again, that one is property of the Archdiocese. And then St. Mary's, we've been there for longer than three years. So those are the, at St. Mary's we have the early childhood, Lawrence Early Childhood Center. AT THIS TIME.

ARE ALL THREE OF THESE LEASES ARE AT A POINT WHERE NOW THE CITY NEEDS TO FUND IT OR ARE ANY OF THE THREE THAT YOU JUST MENTIONED STILL UNDER THE PURVIEW OF LAWRENCE PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

THE TWO FOR THE PRE-K, THE TWO WITH THE ARCHDIOCESE, THOSE ARE, YES, THEY HAVE BEEN THERE LONGER THAN THREE YEARS AND IT'S WITH STUDENTS. THE ADULT LEARNING CENTER WOULD BE THE CITY'S RESPONSIBILITY REGARDLESS. If it's one year, two year, three year, 10 years.

Okay. In this budget, is it being reflected that the city is actually taking on those expenditures?

So that is one of the variances between the proposed budget by the city and the proposed budget by the schools. The city and the proposed budget is allocating or appropriating $500,000 $543,000, which would be enough to cover the adult learning center. The other two leases are not reflected in the proposed budget by the city, but they are reflected on the budget that the school is presenting.

Okay, I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like I'm left confused. Is the city taking on their responsibility when it comes to any of the leases that already are past the three years?

Not in their proposed budget.

Okay, name me again besides the Adult Learning Center, which are the other leases that are not on the budget, but it should be falling on the city to cover?

Lawrence Family Public Academy.

Okay, so that's two leases.

And then St. Mary's, the early childhood center at St. Mary's.

So there's three leases in total right now that should fall under the city's responsibility, yet you guys are covering for it.

Well, this is for next year.

You guys are projected to cover for it? Correct, yes, correct. Okay, CAFO, could you please, because to me now, it's not just transportation for the, since 2023, it's also the leases that seem to be an issue. We still love you, Capital. We love you. Once this meeting is over, we'll be hopefully giving some hugs.

So there has been a lot of communication back and forth between the different leases. We are currently talking about and trying to negotiate a lease that ended and another one that we're working on. The city is fully aware and it will cover all the leases. Again, we do not have a final number. We are currently negotiating those leases to the best of everybody's ability. We do not have a number, final number, and we will be funding whatever is needed for the leases. I understand, counselor, it's frustrating. Unfortunately, we do not have the final number.

As of what date on all three leases, I would like to know, I want to know the date that it should have fallen on the city. Because I want to know for how long. The city has not been covering for this.

No, we have a lease that's going to end 6-30 of 2026, and we're looking to negotiate it for the next fiscal year.

But out of the three that they just mentioned... I want to know the dates of when it should have fallen on the city.

It will be FY27.

All three of them?

Yes.

Oh, okay.

Yes, yes.

No, it's not like... Oh, okay.

It's not like the last year. No, we have been covering a little bit of the leases, but now they're all going into the third year, and two of them were currently negotiated. So we will have final numbers hopefully soon. And at that point, we will have to come before council and appropriate additional funds if we need to.

Okay, yeah, I'm intrigued in terms of how, because this is part of the budget, and to discuss budget and not have certain things where it's a necessity to gain clarity.

Unfortunately, this is beyond our control. No, I know, I know, I'm just saying, on my end, it's hard for me to move forward. We are working with the school, and we're working with the landlords to renew those leases, so we don't have a final number yet.

Okay. It brings me to ask, Mr. Cabrera, let me see, let me see how do I word this. Has the school spent any money besides the transportation that we've already discussed, and let's just fingers crossed that we're not now tapping onto like the leases, is there any expenditures on LPS's end that you guys have been covering for that should have fallen on The city's the city side, whether it's I don't know, snow removal. I don't know. Like, I just want to make sure that I have an understanding. Have you guys paid for anything that should have been on the on the city's end?

No. No? We cover, you know, as far as facilities, we cover our facilities, maintenance, repairs. There are rules on how much we can spend on a repair. So anything over $150,000 would be an extraordinary cost. In the past, and I believe this was last year, Last year was the last year that we were able to use waivers for extraordinary maintenance, but those are costs that if something were to happen to one of these buildings and it's above $150,000, the city would have to cover that cost. That's...

Can you repeat that again?

So the limit on spending for facilities is $150,000 per project. So if something broke in one of these schools, if something malfunctioned, the limit, the most that we could provide provide to fix the issue is $150,000. Anything over $150,000, the city would be responsible for that cost. It is the City of Lawrence buildings, and they are the responsibility of the City of Lawrence. And if it's anything over $150,000, we would not be able to get a waiver to fix that. It would have to come in front of you for that to be appropriated.

Okay. So nothing else, just transportation and... Transportation and leases.

And that's it. That's where we're at.

Okay. I'm going to remember that. Yep. So, so far, what I'm going to, I'm going to end it for now because sometimes we get other questions that derive from potential questions of other counselors that kind of like become an eye opener for us. Love the budget book. I love to see the positive things as well. I'm a big believer that where there's, we're talking about a lot of like negative stuff. Nobody likes to talk about budget. It's heavy. But I love to see also, I want to see the scholarships. I want to see what are the college acceptances. You know, let's start highlighting the positive. I think that's a big motivating factor of why we do what we do and how could we do better? How could we make those numbers increase? If I'm seeing sports, how could we continue to invest in those sports? If we have programs, how many do we have, and how could we invest in those programs? You know, what are programs that you guys have been tapping into that you have yet to, you know, you haven't really, you know, haven't solidified yet, but they're like a projection or a near future of something that you guys are looking into, and how could us as counselors be able to, you know, contribute and be an asset to make sure that this gets approved on the city side of things. I'd love to see the artwork in the end of these, well, Mr. Carrera, you know how I feel about artwork and the role that I play in terms of trying to introduce murals into the city of Lawrence and I would, at a later point in time, love to find out if we're able to use some of these drawings. And I would love to know, because I see drawings here, it would be nice to see the student's name, the grade, and what school.

We're working on that as we speak.

I would love to potentially see maybe council president or maybe that's something with our mayor. I don't know if senior advisor is here. If we could, it reminded me of when we visited D.C., And they literally have a hall full of different artworks. And one of them was from a student from Lawrence. So it's pretty cool to see how we should be able to showcase the talent that we have here. Because there's a lot of talent. And again, sometimes we focus on the negativity and people like to speak on that. And my role is to try to find the positive and how we could tap into the talent that we have within our schools and focusing on that and how could we make that grow. So yeah, I would like to see how we could maybe potentially do some sort of gallery and showcase the students' artwork.

And if I may say just on behalf of everyone who's worked on this here, we appreciate the input. We'll continue to gather input and adding more things to this thing. I agree with you. I mean, I think our superintendent talks about it all the time and taking pride on our city and on our kids.

For those that can't see it, this is amazing.

Look at that.

I do need to keep it moving because I do have also good Lawrence Tech here. I'm going to jump in and add. about the artwork. Last time I visited Lawrence High School I noticed the portraits that the students drew of themselves and I was like blown away. One of the things that I love about going to Lawrence High is the student art displayed around the entire building. You can feel the energy, you can feel it's a high school, and I absolutely love that, so kudos to you guys for that. I have a few questions. I'm gonna jump in, because you heard from most of the counselors. I know we're going in sections, but you heard from most of the counselors, but not from me yet as much. I wanna jump into page 35, special education tuition increase. So I noticed that the entire line item is increasing by 5.9 million, but the majority of that increase is obviously the special learning, which we talked about a bit earlier. But what I would like to know in addition to what was discussed earlier, are there any projected additional out-of-state placements. I mean, out-of-district, not out-of-state, out-of-district placements that may not be fully included here, but because there's no concrete information just yet, IT WASN'T INCLUDED, BUT YOU'RE KEEPING AN EYE ON?

CORRECT. AND THOSE STUDENTS CAN BE HERE TOMORROW, YOU KNOW, WITH A WEEK LEFT, TWO WEEKS LEFT OF SCHOOL. WE NEVER KNOW WHEN THEY'RE COMING. SO ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE DID THIS YEAR, WE HAVE WHAT IS CALLED CIRCUIT BREAKER. THAT'S MONEY THAT THE STATE ALLOCATES TO THE SCHOOLS TO TAKE CARE OF UNEXPECTED expenses related to out-of-district placements, because one child can cost, like I said, $250,000, $300,000 for the year. One thing that we're doing now is making room in our circuit breaker, and that's part of the increase. We need to look at the $5 million. Making room in that circuit breaker so that in the event that something like that happens, we can cover for those costs. The cost for our district placement is going to be north of $12 million, close to $12 million. The money that we allocate here is supplemented by that circuit breaker that we get each year.

And what is the school district doing to perhaps, I mean, we have the increase in tuition costs for special education because we don't have the services. So what are we doing to alleviate some of that to reduce costs in the future?

Those are very specialized. Do we have someone?

We have Ms. Finch.

Ms. Finch, you wanna speak? We have our director of special education with us.

Good evening director. Good evening. My name is Brittany Lynch. I'm the senior special education director. Um, so in the district we have multiple specialized programs as well as our therapeutic day school. We have seen an increase of students who have come in with some significant health concerns because of their significant needs. We are not able to safely educate them here in the district. Um, some things that we are trying to expand upon is our supports for our students who have visual impairments. and we're working on getting those students back into the schools by creating a bigger department.

Okay, thank you. That is it for me, for that portion, thank you. I also saw on page 33 that there is an increase, and I'm hearing this across the board, I heard it from the capital in the beginning of budget hearing, but increase in health insurance. Talk to us a little bit about that. What is driving it from the school's perspective? I just want to see if it's similar to what we're seeing, the trend citywide.

That is just straight up cost of health insurance increase. We are, now we are... Hopefully we'll be fully staffed. We have more people today than we did two, three years ago. So that is part of it, but it's an overall increase across not only here in Lawrence and this budget, but across everywhere.

And is it safe to say that generally the same response goes to the 1.5 million increase in the heating fuel cost? Yeah. I know that's a big topic statewide, but I'm just.

And I was just showing the superintendent today one of our data presentations on energy expenses, and that is, you know, we've seen an increase of 20% just since January, January, February, 20% on heating and fuel and electricity. So for next year, based on the actuals for this year, And a modest increase of that, we're looking at over $6 million spent on electric and heating and fuel, or gas rather.

I also saw on page 33 that, and I know this is going to be sensitive, so whatever you can share in public, but if you can't share it, that's fine too. There is an increase in legal services of $300,000. Yes. What can you share publicly about that?

So that came out of, before we had legal services in different departments, we put it all under human resources. So now human resources handles that account. If you go to the human resources page, you'll see that they have an increase when it comes to that, and that is just centralizing so that we have better control and be able to physically maneuver those costs.

Okay.

On page 31, there is a decrease in federal grant, in federal grants of 2.2 million. Yes. And you list, you know, the major reductions, Title I, Title II, Title III, Title IV, and Gear Up. What are, what would you say are the programs that would be most vulnerable to future reductions if we keep seeing this trend?

Most vulnerable? Well, really all of them. You know, we get these grants because we have the need, right? The need is not going to go away. The funding, you know, goes away. Last year, for example, with this current, the administration in DC, there were a lot of talks about Title III, which has to do with immigrants and English language learners and those students. You know, we acted, what we did was we moved salaries out of there and put goods and services. So in case that is ever gone or cut or reduced, that we don't affect the people and just, you know, adjust when it comes to goods and services. Title I is... YOU KNOW, WE HAVE POSITIONS THAT GET PAID OUT OF THAT. ALL THOSE POSITIONS WERE MOVED INTO OUR LOCAL BUDGETS AT THE SCHOOLS SO WE DON'T LOSE THE TEACHERS. THE TEACHERS ARE THERE, BUT THE FUNDS ARE NOT THERE. THOSE ARE, YOU KNOW, IDEA, THAT'S OUR SPECIAL EDUCATION. AGAIN, WE'RE STILL WAITING ON NUMBERS FOR THE NEXT CYCLE OF FEDERAL GRANTS, AND WE'LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS. WE'RE HOPING FOR THE BEST. And and hopefully we get what we're expecting so we can continue the services that were provided.

Yeah, my last question for now at least. Do we have any individual school that's operating? I just lost my question. That is operating significantly below capacity.

No. We have, I believe, you know, the school that we had that lost the most students was something like, you know, 38. You know, our student ratios are stable across. They're not, they don't defer much from years past. So, no, those, you know, when we lose the students, we reallocate teachers and resources to maintain the student ratio that we're accustomed to.

What is the student ratio?

So the student ratio, if you talk about teacher to student, is about 12 to one. Let me see, I saw it in here. Yeah, 12 to one, 21 average class size, K through 12.

Is that with the paraprofessionals?

No, that's just teachers. So we have 12,955 students, and our teachers union is about 1,450. So if you take that number and divide it, if we're talking just straight up numbers, it's about 12 or so.

Thank you. I saw Councilor LaPlante, you rose your hand earlier. You have the floor.

Thank you so much. We've got a couple of just broad overview comments. Some are connected and some aren't. So let's start with number one. Our budget, this book is worth about $489 million, this book right here. It's a budget book, right? The LPS that we're talking about tonight, the Lawrence Public School System, is $317 million out of the 489. Did a little brief math. Clearly over 50%. It's about 65% of our $489 million budget goes to the Lawrence public school system. Sometimes it's important that we know that the bulk, if we can measure, if we can measure importance by dollars, Our budget reflects that our school system is the most important part of our government priorities. More important than policing, more important than the fire department, more important than anybody else. If we were to equate by dollars how much taxpayer resources are presented, LPS specifically, and education goes beyond that in our budget is number one. I just want to throw that overview as a, number one, as an overview.

Yes, sir.

Second thing, I was reading the, I was reading the Boston Globe over the weekend, and an article struck me. And the article was on, now I've got to pull it up, let's hope I can do that, or this is going to be really short. The article deals with municipalities dealing with budget cuts and layoffs. I just think it's important as we go through this, and this is new to me, and I wanted my colleagues here to know this, that according to the Globe, there were two that they focused on. One is Malden, which is having cuts between 29 and 32 positions. And the other one is New Bedford. They're eliminating 94 positions. And then just bear with me, there's a longer list here after further research that shows what other municipalities are considering for layoffs. Here we go. Amherst, Belcher Town, Brookline, Braintree, Bridgewater, Easton, Franklin, Grafton, Hudson, Lexington, Framingham, Linfield, Melrose, Natick, Needham, North Andover, Northridge, South Hadley, Spencer, Stoneham, Westford, Weymouth, Winthrop, and there are others. So I just want to put some context as we start narrowing down, this is a bigger picture, our budget that, yeah, we're facing some tough stuff, but wow, I don't know how we're evading or avoiding any kind of massive layoffs here in our city and any cuts, significant cuts, let's be honest, in education or anyplace else. So I just, those are a couple of things that I wanted to throw out there, just kind of big picture. Third big picture thing. When we look at this budget, again, let me pull it up with my prop. If you look at this budget, the first question that I really should be asking, and I'm going to right now, is how would $317 million measure success? Now, you can probably give me an hour of stuff. I can't take that hour. But maybe this is a better question to Mr. Carrero. But I'm really curious as to how do we measure, when I go back to the taxpayers or whatever, at $317 million is what we're spending, 65% of our budget. And I'm going to say, yeah, we are achieving results. Just kind of give me a synopsis as to what are we achieving with that money.

So I don't want to speak for Superintendent Guerrero. I'm sure that his input would be a lot more enlightening than mine. I can tell you just looking at things like at the high school, when we talk about graduation rate and AP class placement and results in testing and We just invested, as I put up earlier, we went up to $5.1 million for our English language learners. Their score actually went up from last year to this year after implementing that for two years. Those are some of the things that we see. Do we have work to do? Most definitely. Our special needs... population, we have one percent of them that meet the state standard or the average in math and two percent in English language arts. So those are the things that we continue to look at and find ways to get achievement when we talk about achievement. I don't know if that answers your question, but

It does. I mean, I looked at the budget, and maybe it's in here. If it is, tell me what page we're talking about our metrics. I have vision in here. I've got, you know, kind of like a mission statement and the five steps and priorities of focus. I see strategies in the line with missions and visions. What I didn't pull up, at least easily, I didn't pull up in here... The real important thing, which is, are our kids getting educated? And how can we show they're getting educated? We used to have MCAS. I'm not even sure that's still around. But how do we show that they're being educated and they're either going to another school going to a higher education through a college, or they're getting a job. Those are the metrics, right? As far as I'm concerned, we want, when they get out of this school, those are the two paths that I want them to succeed in and do well in. And that's what this book should be about. And this should just be the methodology by which we get there. But I don't know where the end line is, where the goal line is. I know what the vision, but I don't know what the goal line is. So perhaps, if it's not in here, perhaps, if you're looking for suggestions, throw that in there. Because someone like myself wants to know, are we meeting expectations? Are we meeting these things?

Yes, sir. I agree.

All right.

Mr. President.

Thank you, Councilor LaPlante. I just want to excuse myself. I need to have all the responsibilities of work that I need to take care of. Thank you, everybody, for showing up. Thank you, the school department. Thank you, all of the principals and everybody that showed up tonight. I apologize for not keeping hearing you guys out, but I mean, you're good hands. Thank you.

Thank you for your time, sir.

Councilor Plante.

Yeah, thank you. All right, so two bigger other issues as well that I just want to highlight that are not necessarily in the book, in their budget book, but are important. We did talk about transportation. We talked about transportation, and the crux of the transportation, I think, was safety. I think that was the crux, right? Let me submit this to you. If we're so concerned about student safety, In the wintertime, why aren't we doing what we need to be doing to make sure that the sidewalks are shoveled? And don't tell me that this, and when I say that, I mean, yeah, I think the city can do a better job, of course. But I'm a resident, I'm a homeowner. I have responsibilities to shovel out my sidewalk. I own a corner. So both sides of my street, I have to shovel out. What are we doing? If we're serious about this, What are we as residents, what are we doing as a community to try to attack or deal with this? Because if a student's safety is really critical, then we should be doing that little bit. And I just want to bring Mr. Carrero up because I've been talking publicly about this. I think I'm okay to say this. So I'll ask you a very, how should I, a pointed question. Mr. Carrero, and thank you for being here. Talk to me a little bit about snow, snow emergencies and the impact it has on our schools, and I'm gonna lead you to the water here. How do you foresee this taking place next year when we have a significant snow event?

First of all, I want you to know that we're focused and concentrating on sand, beach sand these days.

Well. Okay? ALL I CAN TELL YOU IS I AM FOREVER THANKFUL THAT ELECTIONS DON'T TAKE PLACE IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH, BECAUSE I DON'T THINK ANY OF US WOULD EVER WIN.

COUNSELOR, THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION, AND I KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING, AND YOU AND I HAVE MANY CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THAT. I WANT TO JUST BACK UP A SECOND, BECAUSE WE HAD A TOUGH WINTER THIS YEAR. BUT I TAKE THE LIBERTY OF GETTING IN THE TRUCK AND GOING WITH MY FACILITIES DIRECTOR TO LOOK AT OUR SCHOOLS. Every single one of our schools, all the parking lots were plowed, and counselors, you would have noticed that every street on the sidewalk on the school side of the street were down to the pavement. That is not our responsibility. That is the city's responsibility. But our collaborative effort, we make sure that we jump in and help because we're talking about safety for our kids and our families. And I know that that's a bone of contention for a lot of residents when they look at the schools and they say even their sidewalks are down to the pavement. But that's because we make sure that we can do that. Snow is going to be a major issue in this community starting next year because we saw it this year. And I have a reputation, unfortunately, of that. He doesn't cancel school, but that comes from years of working with parents or what have you. But looking at our city inner streets, neighborhoods, There's cars parked everywhere. What does that mean? That means that our Department of Public Works are not going to be able to get those streets clean in one day. So if we have snow in the evening, we can cancel school just one day. If we have any type of snowstorm that is eight inches or more, you're looking at minimum two days of school cancellation. And it's not because the schools aren't ready. It's because our neighborhoods aren't ready. Because DPW has had to work on the major streets and some of the subordinate streets of trying to clear snow with all of the cars that you have there. So it's gonna delay the whole process. If you remember this past winter, we had a coordinated program to open up all of our city schools. So any schools that were in the neighborhood, we allowed residents to park in there to keep cars out of both sides of the sidewalks in their neighborhoods. And we said, so long as we can get them out by six o'clock the next day, and if we didn't, they can stay there as we continue to clean up. So we've intensified the communication in terms of coordinating. SNOW REMOVAL AND COLLABORATING WITH THE CITY. AND MAKING SURE THAT OUR SCHOOLS STAY CLEAN. THAT'S WHERE WE'RE AT WITH SNOW AND WHAT I PREDICT FOR NEXT YEAR. WE'RE GOING TO CONTINUE TO WORK.

BUT I COULD USE YOUR HELP WITH, SUPERINTENDENT, ON THIS ISSUE IS USE THE WEIGHT OF YOUR POSITION AND WHAT YOU BRING TO YOUR POSITION.

ARE YOU SAYING THAT I WEIGH A LOT?

I'M SAYING WHEN IT COMES TO AUTHORITY IN THIS CITY, YES, YOU DO. I THINK THAT WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT, A, WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT OUR POPULATION, I THINK PEOPLE THINK THIS IS THE CITY'S RESPONSIBILITY DUE TO RESIDENTIAL STREETS. IT'S A BIT OF A SHOCK WHEN THEY LEARN THAT THAT'S NOT THE CASE. folks, but we have, as you know, and we can go into this way, upside down homeowners, land renters, it's an upside down situation in our city. We have to get the landlords out there, they're making their money, they should be shoveling as well, and our homeowners, we should all be doing it. But I could use your assistance on that, number one, to get that word out, and when I talk to ISD, and I will give ISD some flowers tonight, they finally, this year, did a little, this is on Winthrop Ave, for example, which I represent, which leads the way to the high school. They did some ticketing this year and some enforcement, so it was a little bit better this year than years past, but we can't take our foot off the accelerator. So everybody who's really interested about safety, and making sure our kids get to school safely, we gotta make sure the sidewalks are cleared, because that is a critical component of safety, or else they're walking in the middle of the street. So I could use your help with that. Let me go to the next point, and then I'm done with this. I, you, you may have heard that I've ever, I've reputation now as being someone concerned about the housing growth in our city. I was a little surprised to see that the trends a little bit have started to level out and maybe go down a little bit. Um, So we've just lost, I think it was 385 in this past year.

I don't know what those... 379, I think. Okay, I'm sorry.

Sure. So it's leveling off. There was a huge spike in 2000, I think, 16. I think that's when the spike took place, went upwards. But, you know, I'm going to comment, and I don't think I need a reaction. You can. I don't think that you're at the table. when we deal with these major issues in my district. We're looking at a major complex of 360 units on Osgoode Street. I know on Lowell Street, I think that might be in my district councilor's district, Lowell Street might be, they're looking at another massive apartment complex there. I know that in aggregate, we have ADUs that are spouting out throughout. So the thing here is I find it really hard to believe that we're not having a growth, but yet we are going down this road of increased housing. It defies logic to me. And I would certainly would, if you're not at the table at these wraparounds, I think someone from your department should be and ask the questions to the developers How many students do you expect to be here? And where do you think they're going to be going to school? And do we have the capacity to intake those students? And can we do that? So that's my point. And where are we right now? Do we foresee another addition, another request for more space?

I think based on what you just commented on and the different areas that there's going to be growth in terms of housing, and if you are talking to the tune of, I think you said in your area, Don?

There's over 300 units that is prepared to go up, and that's just on Osgoode Street, and there's... Yeah, and there's other things on Lowell Street. Plus, every time you go to a ZBA meeting or a planning meeting, you will see two here, six here, four here. It's a death by a thousand cuts.

I was about to comment. Two here, three there is not too bad. I guess those are just little slits, right? But when you talk 300 units... it's not for elderly, it's for families, and what we gotta figure out from the experts is how do they project, when you have 300 units, what do they project for kind of families that would be there, so what would that add up for students? Obviously, whenever you talk about in a complex that's going to have 50 or more students, 50 students disrupt the culture within the school. And I'm not talking about ethnic culture, I'm talking about programming culture, school culture. For an educator, 50 students is a lot of students. So I am more than happy to make sure that as these wraparound meetings that we're discussing, building, there is someone from my office to represent me to provide the subcommittee with numbers, at least locations of schools, how many students are in those schools, And obviously as I stayed in tune to that, what I have to do is manipulate and look to see if we have to shift schools or we have to change bus routes for where students go to school. We can do a little bit of that. We have some wiggle room. That I know. But not to the tune of putting 300 units up. Wherever you put a 300 unit complex, if that's what you're talking about, we gotta plan. We have to plan because if we're gonna absorb those students, we have to plan where to do that.

So I wish I could invite you to the wraparounds but that is a function of the mayor's office. The mayor brings them in, so it would have to be a mayoral invite. I can't invite you to the party. I'm not the host, so I can't invite you. But I am interested in knowing the impacts, and I just think it's important. Maybe through this medium, if folks in the mayor's office are watching our discussion this evening, maybe they'll take note, and I certainly will try to talk to Mr. Spanner as well and just say, listen, when you do these things, WHAT DAMAGE ARE YOU DOING BY BRINGING THE SCHOOLS, A $317 MILLION DEPARTMENT INTO THE TABLE AND WITH X NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES, ET CETERA, ET CETERA. ANYWAY, SO I JUST WANTED TO TALK ABOUT THAT AND YOU DID. SO THANK YOU AND LET'S SEE WHAT WE CAN DO TO BRING SOME COMMON SENSE TO OUR HOUSING GROWTH IN THE CITY. I WANT TO BRING MR. CABRERA BACK IF THAT'S ALL RIGHT WITH YOU. ABSOLUTELY. HE DESERVES TO BE ON THE HOT SEAT A LITTLE BIT MORE, I THINK. So I'm going to drill down just a little bit. I don't think this is going to take long. I say that now. Page 38. So what I did was when I went through the budget book, I just really looked for, I mean, we could spend more than the time we're spending here tonight. And this is a function, frankly, of the school committee and their deal, right? So I just want to touch on a few things. Anything over $5 million, I want to know about. So on, those are the big ones, right? So on page 38, I see object number 5241, repair and maintenance buildings and grounds. There is a reduction of 6.1 million. Explain that to me.

All right, so if you look at the, so you're talking about 5241 is the object. If you look at 5240, also says repairs and maintenance. So one is... repairs and maintenance of equipment other is repairs and maintenance of grounds of buildings we moved 2.1 million of that line or from that object to the next object to make sure again that it reflects the the true source of the expenditure because before you know we were just paying everything out of 52 41 and and that was it and then the rest is uh IN HONESTY, JUST ADJUSTING TO OUR FISCAL CAPACITY. WE HAVE OUR BUILDINGS ARE IN GOOD SHAPE RIGHT NOW. WE HAVE A DIRECTOR THAT FEELS COMFORTABLE WITH THE BUDGET THAT WE'RE PUTTING FORTH. HE CAN TAKE CARE OF Those buildings, like I said before, in the past we had to budget for big expenses, HVAC, those kind of things. Now those things we're not allowed to pay for. So we can say, you know, the biggest expense that I'm going to have in a project is $150,000. So that is where that other $4 million comes from. IT'S, WE GOT TO ADJUST OUR BUDGET SOMEWHERE, AND THAT IS ONE OF THE PLACES WHERE WE ARE ADJUSTED, BUT NOT WITHOUT TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION OUR DIRECTOR OF FACILITIES OF MAKING SURE THAT HE'S COMFORTABLE IN MAINTAINING THE BUILDINGS THAT WE HAVE THE WAY THAT WE HAVE THEM WITH THE MONEY THAT IS BEING ALLOCATED TO THAT.

ALL RIGHT. LET'S GO QUICKLY. I THINK ON 5320 TUITION AND SPECIAL LEARNING SERVICE, I THINK YOU TOUCHED ON THAT ALREADY THIS EVENING. THAT'S A $5.9 MILLION INCREASE.

YES, AND YES, THAT IS CONSERVATIVE. THAT WAS THE BUSING. THAT IS THE OUT OF DISTRICT TUITION. TUITION.

SO OUT OF DISTRICT TUITION IS THE CHILDREN THAT WE HAVE PLACED OUTSIDE OF OUR DISTRICT.

OKAY. NEXT PAGE, 00, SO, OKAY, WE TALKED ABOUT THAT. 0072, BUDGET AND FINANCE, THAT IS INCREASED BY $11 MILLION. CORRECT.

So $11 million on that we have, we added to that line $1.9 million for after school activities. That's one. I mentioned energy costs when it comes to electricity and gas, increase in health insurance, uh... of that of the money in budget on finance twenty eight million twenty eight and a half million dollars go towards health insurance and fifteen fourteen million go towards the pension so that's the big bulk of it uh... the increases are like i said earlier health insurance after school program and now we have another department and the uh... energy costs uh... for us next one is uh... 0043 special learning services that's 5.6 million dollar increase yes that's the same uh that's special education so that goes hand in hand with the what you talked about the tuition the 50 uh 5320 in page 38 right um that is that department that's 11 that's 11 that's 11 and a half million dollars we're spending on special ed We spend a lot more than that. You said 11 million. On both of those two items, I'm just, I'm adding those two up. Well, it's inclusive. So the department is inclusive of that, sir. Okay. So that 5.6 includes the 5.9 for tuition.

Okay. There's on page 114. Yes, sir. We are spending... We are spending 1.4, almost $1.5 million in DEIB. Correct. Can you explain what that's being spent on?

So diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, that is SOA money that we received, a Student Opportunity Act funds that we received year after year for that topic, DEIB. Let me just give an example of what that professional service is for. That's for diversification of our workforce, of our teacher force. So, for example, we have teachers and paraprofessionals that are going to UMass Lowell, Marymount College, Northern Essex, is there a school called Leslie? Yeah, so we pay for diversification and professional development of our staff and that is what that money goes to and that is part of the Student Opportunity Act funds allocated for that. We actually graduate in, we have, we graduate in 13, I believe, paraprofessionals, for example, from Merrimack College that are going to go into teaching. We graduated some folks with a master's in public administration. So those type of things are the things that are paid with those funds.

So if you will qualify under this DEI, it's almost like a scholarship you're able to get to go to any one of these institutions for a specific, whether it's master's degree in public education, whatever it is that you just mentioned. Is that what that's being used for? For further education?

Yes, for staff diversification. So they look for the, for example, ML educators, which we have a deficiency in. What? Multilingual, English, ESL teachers. I'm not good at the buzzwords. ESL teachers, for example, is one of the programs that we have. So we have that. FOLKS GOING INTO SPECIAL EDUCATION, THAT'S ANOTHER GROUP. SO THAT IS WHAT THOSE FUNDS ARE USED FOR, SIR.

AND WE SAID THIS MONEY, THIS BIG POCKET OF MONEY IS GOING TO BE DRYING UP AFTER THIS YEAR. Is that the understanding?

So it depends what happens, right? In the last three years, our budget from the state has grown 9% on average, 9%. This year, it grew by 4.6%. And that is still with the Student Opportunity Act in place. One of the things that we were able, that I've been discussing and we were able to discuss with our state delegation is just that, right? If House Sustainable, if we go back to the days of 3%, how does that affect us, right? And right now, there have been multiple conversations and discussions about the formula for Chapter 70, and those are things that right now we know nothing about, and I would hope, just for the sake of of our children, really, that there is something that is similar to what we've been seeing for the last four or five years to cover for the deficiencies that we have.

Last question, political, lightning bolt question. I'm going to say it on books. I realize the politics of this issue, so I'll say both versions of it. What are the undocumented or illegal aliens, undocumented individual or illegal aliens, depending on which side you're on, in our school system? How many do we have that would fit either one of those boxes, if any?

I don't know that I keep track of that, but...

Yeah, no, he tracks the numbers, I track the students, right? Okay. We are not allowed to, as a public school district, put that in our enrollment projections or on any of the applications. So we don't know of any students in the district that is undocumented or as you refer to, illegal. When we do know about them is when our counselors sit down with them in 12th grade and it's time to apply for college applications. If there are undocumented students, they would get charged out of country, foreign student tuition. versus if they were in district and have Social Security and all the other things that go with it, they would be eligible for all of the other benefits. But that's where it comes out. After they've been with us for 12 years, we don't know. in that last final month and they start filling out applications from college is when we run into these situations where they have conversations with their guidance counselors about the challenges of college. And again, since we don't track that, we're not required to and we're not allowed to, we don't know that until we run into that in senior year.

I'm just curious, after the senior year, you just said earlier, someone said, we had the largest number of high school graduates in the history of Lawrence High School. How many of those got tripped up, if you will, in that application process?

Our data points is that they've graduated. from Lawrence Public Schools. As to where they're going, we have to take that at face value when they tell us what their plans for after high school is. Well, I'm gonna go on to college, that's a data point. I'm gonna go work. I'm going into the service. I do appreciate the counselor's comments and yours about, and I know that our team has been taking notes. I like the idea of putting on, it'll be tricky because we just graduated them last Friday, but to get them in the budget books, scholarships, how much, where the students are going, all of those points I think is important. You mentioned, Mr. LaPlante, about This is a budget book, but this has to reflect something. What are the successes? Why? Why Lawrence Public Schools? And we're going to work very hard to tell that story, because there is a story to tell here, and it's been going on for several years now. I can tell you that we have a lot of families outside of Lawrence Public Schools that will do anything possible to get their kids enrolled in our public schools to take advantage of our special education program. Our special education programs are probably better than any special education program in the entire Merrimack Valley. Our budget reflects that. We have a tremendous program. Our ML population, the work that's being done in our classrooms, the fact that two years in a row we've exceeded the state average on our access testing tells you that our kids are learning English at a faster pace than the others that we have.

That should be in this book.

The fact that we now have expanded our exam school to soon have 800 high school students and 200 seventh and eighth grade students for a total of 1,000 that are going to go to bigger and better places than anybody. That project got off just last year. The fact that we're expanding now, we're taking and incorporating a full academy of arts and performing arts. okay, is reflective of what's going on in our middle schools and what our high school students are doing, including one that just won two major national awards for presentation, and our award-winning program that we just finished with AVIDA, okay? These are not accidents. These are things that are happening, but we are a victim of our own circumstances, of our own self-fulfilling prophecy, that if you tell them enough that they're no good, they won't come. The self-esteem falls. That doesn't happen anymore. We have the largest early college program in the state of Massachusetts and the first of its kind and the most successful. That's happening at Lawrence High School. We're hearing what you're saying. Your budget book next year might be a little bit better because we're going to allow for our staff to include that there.

Let me interrupt and then I'm going to relinquish the rest of my time, which is this. I've always been impressed by the number of Lawrence High School graduates who have made the decision to serve our country. And I've asked every year to get the names of those individuals so I could go ahead, and we used to be able to, in this council chambers, award and wish them good luck as they head to service or come back from camp, and then we can welcome them back before they get deployed.

Consider it done.

It's been a long time, and it's been a burr in my saddle that I've been able to get that information for the past few years.

I would be remiss if I didn't ask permission from the council just last comments. Number one, I want to commend our CFO and his team that's here. Please, your team, stand up a second. It was their vision. It was their vision.

Can we actually go? I would like to go around. Council Marmo, sorry. Council Marmo did this the other night with new faces, and she just had people introduce themselves real quick and their title, and that's it. We do have a lot of faces that we recognize.

Can all my LPS team please stand up, and starting with this side, just introduce yourself and your title. Oh, there they are. They're not sleeping. You did that purposely to get you to work.

You brought an army. I will start with this gentleman here. Yep.

Guillermo Mendez, I'm an assistant director of .

Welcome.

Emily .

Back here, yeah.

Jim White, Lawrence Public Schools Adult Learning Center principal. Chris Martin, director of communications.

Behind you, Chris. Yes, thank you for the work that you all do. And one last plug for LPS before we wrap up LPS. I was, you talked about the pride within the students, Superintendent, and I saw that firsthand last time I was at LPS three, four weeks ago, maybe a month ago. Unidos Academy. Wow. I left there. I mean, you can ask Mr. Caraballo. What I saw in the classrooms was amazing. So for those watching at home and for those here that don't know what Unidos Academy is, is an academy within Lawrence High School. I believe they start in ninth grade, right? That gathers students. students that have immigrated from other countries, I mean, they're six months, one year out. Newcomers. Newcomers, yeah, fresh, you know, newcomers. And they're learning the curriculum, but it's at a, I wouldn't say a different pace, but what I saw in that classroom is, was, I remember a young man answering an algebra equation and he was answering it very slowly because it had to be in English. But when the teacher said yes, like that is correct, the face, like I went like this to Victor. He was just so happy and you saw the pride. And I haven't seen that, an entire academy dedicated to helping incoming students. And I was blown away. And I'm glad. Thank you, Mr. Caravaggio, for walking me through those classrooms. And I hope it grows. because in terms of services and needs, staffing-wise and everything, because I left there so happy. It was amazing.

Mr. Caravaggio, our class essayist, was that a UNIDO student on Friday? Yes, it was a UNIDO student that delivered his speech. The student has been here for pretty much like a year and some change.

So it's beautiful to see that class development that happened today.

yeah yeah it's again i i saw it firsthand i think we were there for sitting there for like 20 minutes mr caravaggio or so and i i encourage my colleagues to go visit because i i was not expecting what i saw and again i left there very happy and excited so thank you for doing that we appreciate your visit i know that council of marble

uh works with myself and our team she helps beautify our schools especially the mural projects that we have around the city and i know mr plan always contacts me i we have a great relationship with the council our uh doors are always open if there's one thing that i think that um Upsets me is when we constantly hear that we shy away from transparency and that's something that I want to eradicate and Take that out. We're public schools. We're open to the public parents need to be able to come in Stakeholders supporters need to be able to see what's going on in our schools I think the more that that happens the more opportunities opportunities get created for our students So I appreciate the support and and obviously your visits and collaboration on projects. So thank you so much On behalf of Lawrence Public Schools, we thank you for the opportunity to present the budget. We hope that we've done a thorough job. There's always room for improvement. We have those, and we're going to continue to strive and work to make sure that we provide the services necessary for our students to succeed. So thank you, Madam Chair, Budget and Finance. Thank you, Ms. Marble, Councillor Platt. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you, Lawrence Public Schools. Thank you for holding in there. Also, thank you for GLTS for your patience.

Nothing further.

Nothing further. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. Thank you.

Alrighty.

Behave, counselor. Behave.

You know. Those are closed. Those are closed. Now we have GLTS. Superintendent LaVoy, school committee member, vice chair Julio Mejia. And director of finance, Melissa.

Melissa Martel.

Melissa Martel. Superintendent, you have the floor for the intro.

You don't have presentations, do you? Good evening, city council members, graduates of Greater Lawrence Technical School.

Let me see, what year did you graduate?

Thanks.

Graduates and former school committee members.

And former school committee members. You already know our budget. Let me begin by on behalf of our school students, faculty, administrators, and school committee, thank you for your continued support of GLTS and being a partner in helping us educate our students giving them the best opportunities we can to succeed upon graduation from Greater Lawrence. So thank you very much for that. I'm just going to quickly hit upon just a few strategic goals and budget priorities, which are on page 12 of our budget book. Does everyone have our budget book?

Yes, before we do that, same thing with LPS. I want to give the opportunity to the school committee member, if you have anything to add or any introductory comments, you're more than welcome.

No, just thank you for the support, and we will thank you for our budget.

We're grateful for it. At that point, that's an introductory comment.

I will speak on behalf of the school committee.

Your name and position?

Yeah, Julio Mejia, Vice Chair of the Greater Lawrence Technical School Committee. I'll let the superintendent give his remarks, but I think, you know, on my behalf, uh... i think the strategic goals that we've put together as a school committee is pushing the district in the right direction and also the investments that the different communities have allowed the district to pursue in terms of the aviation program uh... and some of the other programming that we've been able to pursue and the improvements that have been done in the district and in terms of uh... providing opportunities to students when it comes to student support services uh... but also in our chapter seventy four programming and the implementation of other MTSS, which I'm sure LPS has also been working on in terms of high quality instruction. So thank you and we hope you consider our budget.

Thank you. Superintendent?

So our goal is to prioritize teaching and learning strategies that support students' academic growth in both vocational and academic discipline. Objective, allocate resources effectively to improve educational quality while sustaining last Last year's priorities and advanced new strategic initiatives, new priorities for 2027 are in bold. And I'll just read the bold aspect of each of the priorities. Priority one is to develop and implement our MTSS, our Multi-Tier System of Support. which is to advance the MTSS integration into our curriculum instruction and assessments, enhance Tier 2 and 3 interventions, expanding reading, addressing performance gaps identified through i-Ready assessments, implementing structured math interventions, programming for students performing below grade level, and strengthening tier one instruction. And professional development provides sustainable professional learning for academic and CTE teachers to implement new curriculum effectively and support CTE faculty in revising sharp and related theory curricula to meet industry standards. Priority two is our growing enrollment uh... and expanding programming requirement requiring strategic staffing and investment as uh... one of our major priorities is to continue to grow and continue to expand the school through the offering of new programs and expansion of the building uh... which we are just about to embark on another addition uh... this summer we'll be doing uh... drawings for our uh... uh... health new health building uh... addition And priority three is technology and student support services. This is to upgrade districts wide technology infrastructure, including hardware and instructional software. And then priority four, diversity, equity, and inclusion. allocate resources for professional development, focus on research-based DEI practices, and strengthening the school culture by fostering inclusion environments that positively impact staff, students, and faculty. So with that, are there any questions on that? One of the things I do want to say that our underlying, you hear about a mission all the time, but our number one mission is to prepare our students to be successful in the careers pursue upon graduation, be able to enter the workforce with success. That's our number one mission. And if we prepare students to succeed in the workforce, we feel like they will also succeed upon going on to college for those students that do select that pathway, as we believe that it takes the same amount of academic skills and knowledge to succeed at the workforce as it does to succeed going on to college.

I do have, and we're still, I thank you for that. We're still on the strategic goals, correct? strategic goals? Okay, so you asked if we had comments or questions. I do have a comment pertaining to strategic goals. I think overall it's great, and I love seeing the teaching support and staff support. but I wish there was something more directly tied to the vocational education. I see that we're looking to support CTE teachers as programs grow, but how does that look like? How are programs growing? We're focusing on the health side of things, but Industries across the board are growing rapidly. And this is one thing that I'm continuously criticizing about vocational education across the board in the Commonwealth. It's becoming too academic. It's a vocational school. There's a reason why it's not a comprehensive high school. And I'm seeing it a lot. And I feel like, not feel, I... What I am observing is that vocational ed is steering away from the core, and that's vocational technical education. And I'm seeing more focus on academic, I'm seeing more focus on social-emotional learning, and et cetera, which are all very important things. But again, that's not the core or the foundational reason as to why we have vocational technical education across the Commonwealth. And another thing that I want to point out within these strategic goals, I was a school committee member from 2018 to 2022. I then was... joined the team at Greater Lawrence Tech from 2020 to 2022, I believe. And from what I remember from my school committee times and also from my employment times is that DEI was always a priority. However, at the beginning of this budget book, I was looking earlier at the organizational chart for the administration, the organizational chart for the academic component of the school. Since my time there, I have noticed five new faces within the administration and five new faces within the academic. And I just see one person of color added. and the administrative leadership team. And this is supposed to be a priority for years now. And I don't see much improvement across the administration team. So I, to me, you have this as number five, as a number four priority, but really I'm questioning how much of a priority is it for the school when it's been this long and I'm not seeing improvement. There's improvement teachers and staff wise. Yes, I see that, but Leadership starts at the top. Changes start at the top. So what's the message that the school is trying to give to the rest of the school and to the rest of the community when they're saying this is a priority, but really their leadership doesn't reflect that?

Yeah. So, unfortunately, and I mean I can stand here and tell you that hiring administrators of color is important to us, but the biggest challenge we have is finding administrators of color, number one, to apply, and that's still a major challenge for us. we've done we've been in part of the Department of Ed workshops on this trying to recruit people of color in our staff for administration what we found is there's a small pool that fits or that even applies never mind people of color people in general we are having a difficult time finding uh as vocational teachers and as and in leadership in vocational education on the past we've tried to hire within our at least within our staff for those who are talented and are skilled and prepared to enter the administrative level but I can show you application after application, and we have very few people of color that apply. I've gone on and done workshops. We belong to some organizations. that are supportive, are supposed to be helping us in finding people of color, and we still struggle with that. So it's not like it's not important to us. It is important to us. Our hopes is to continue to train staff within the ranks that are teachers of color that can become administrators and the challenge you find is that A lot of your vocational teachers, in order to be able to become an administrator, need to get their bachelor's degree. And so many stop at getting their licensure with 32 credits. And so then it's difficult for staff within the school who are of color to actually have the opportunity to become an administrator within the school.

And this is really important to me, especially because I was the first Hispanic woman elected onto the GLTS school committee, and that wasn't too long ago. And aside from being a graduate, when I am at GLTS, I see majority of kids of color. And even when I visit Lawrence High, students do... can analyze and can detect disconnect. As great as a teacher is, as great as a guidance counselor can be, they do detect when they're not fully being heard or when educators are trying to be understanding or trying to be sympathetic, empathetic, but they really don't know deep down what the student is going through. And I'm saying this because it's a feedback that I received when I was walking through Lawrence High last year. And that stuck with me because you saw the diversity in this room tonight, but it's still a factor that students can feel and detect. So I just want to make sure, and I know how great GLTS is. I'M GIVING YOU CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK RIGHT NOW, BUT OVERALL, I KNOW HOW GREAT THE SCHOOL IS, BUT I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN MAKING CHANGES OR IMPROVEMENTS.

YEAH, AND I WOULD INVITE YOU AT ANY TIME TO COME AND MEET WITH ME AND TALK ABOUT ANY IDEAS OR STRATEGIES THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE THAT WE COULD CONSIDER AND LOOK AT THAT WOULD HELP US IN THAT AREA. THANK YOU. ALWAYS HAPPY TO LISTEN.

ANY OTHER COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS?

SINCE YOU ASKED, YEAH, THE PRIORITY SECTION, I JUST VERY QUICKLY, THIS, I DON'T MEAN ANY OFFENSE BY THIS, A LOT OF OVERTHINKING TOOK PLACE ON THESE FOUR PRIORITIES.

OVERTHINKING.

TO ME, IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE. What should be the top priorities? Getting a good education that's going to either provide you to either continue on with a secondary degree or to go ahead and get a good job. That should be the priority. I mean, all this other stuff, I don't know. We sometimes feel like we need to provide a lot of things and to validate something, right? Not just your organization. lots of organizations do it, and sometimes we gotta make it, what's the KISS simple, the KISS theory, keep it simple, stupid? We need to work toward bringing it down to the bare, so that's more, it's not a criticism in a way that I think you're doing an awful job, from my perspective, it's constructive criticism, since you asked, what do I think about it? That's what I, I would change this drastically and maybe have two or three principles and just say that's our priority, that's what we're trying to accomplish.

But it takes these kinds of strategic priorities to get to the point where students are prepared and ready to succeed when they graduate. To help them with all, MTSS helps us better understand what the needs are of the kids so that we can offer them the coursework and the support that they need in any particular, whether it be a class or whether it be in the shop, we need to understand all that and throw through the multi-tier system which helps us determine what their needs are and where they belong and everything from academic, vocational, emotional, We need to understand all of that to help those students find success when they're in school. Then the challenges of students today are greater than ever in terms of, you know, if a student's struggling emotionally, you can give them all the math and science you want, their mind is not focused on learning. They're focused on the struggles that they have. And we have more and more kids like that today than we've ever had. But we're also finding more and more success overall when you look at this year we had 200 students in co-op. one of our largest numbers ever. But the great thing about that number, we had very few students come back during the school year that weren't finding success out in the workforce. So that's just a sign that by the time they get to be a senior that they're prepared to go to work and start to succeed. And it takes strong academic skills to succeed in any career today. If your academic skills are strong, you know, you can communicate, you can do math, you can do science, you're gonna more likely succeed in any one of our careers. And then also, given the academic part of each trade, related theory is so critical to success, to be able to reason, to think, to apply academic skills and knowledge to make decisions on the job is more and more important than it's ever been. Kids will learn the handed-on skills very quickly. If I'm sending a student out to work for a contractor, a carpentry, a carpenter, a general contractor, The thinking skills and the ability to reason and make good decisions will drive them up the ladder very quickly because they develop the hands-ons eight hours a day really quickly. But it's the thinking skills and the academic skills that are going to drive them to really succeed in any one of our careers. So it is important. And we found that once, you know, because of the MCAS, that's what drove us to do better academically. But I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on that.

Thank you.

Councilor Marmo? Not to be super heavy and getting stuck with the strategic goals, because I do want to move further along with this budget. What I will say is... Apologies in advance superintendent, because, um, you have two former students and two former school committee members there. And I think it's safe to say that, um, Madam chair and myself deeply love the school. We love what the purpose of the school is, and the students that attend there, and wanting the best for the school. So please receive our, we don't like the word criticism when it comes to these budget sessions, but as an opportunity. I would say use it, take our comments as an opportunity. And diving into a little bit of that opportunity of my sentiments when I see your strategic goals is that to me the perspective that I get as a former school committee member is that they tend to remain the same. Again, I don't want to get stuck with the DEI, but I share the same sentiments as my colleague here, because I remember that this was a common strategic goal, and it's already been a few years. So to me, I'm looking To you to provide me as to what have you done? What has your team done to improve in that? Because this is not the first time that this is listed as a goal and as a priority. So we're talking about if madam chair, you said you were there since what year?

And then I came right after 2018. This has been a priority. 21, 20, 2018, 2018. So, um,

I don't wanna say that I'm hearing excuses, but sometimes it comes across that way when you're saying that you're not getting the candidates that are applying for it. I understand that there's challenges across the board, but at the same time, I'm made to feel when I hear that as it's excuses. And again, I'm gonna hold you guys to it to provide me as to what the school has done. You know, what have been your action plan and the initiatives that you guys have taken to improve at least in that? Because the reason why I'm bringing the DEI up is because I've seen it already for several years. And it just continues to be... Numbered as a strategic goal and at this point I would love to you know for you guys to Make improvements in that and then let's focus on another strategic goal that the school school needs which brings me to You made a comment that the mission of the school is to prepare students for the workforce and I know I'm getting ahead of myself but this is tying into the strategic goals and When I'm looking at your co-ops, the numbers are low. Oh, page 21. I'm sorry that I'm jumping the gun, but the only reason why I'm jumping the gun is because I feel that this should be a strategic goal. If it's within your mission statement to prepare students for the workforce, then your co-op is not reflecting that. These numbers are low, and some of the programs, there's some that none of the students are working. So to me, that should be a priority. If that's your mission, that should be your priority. And again, I know that I'm getting ahead of myself, so when we move to this section, I'm going to ask questions as to what are we doing to improve those numbers. Some of the shops, I'm actually in shock. at the fact that there are either no students in co-op or the numbers are very low, so I'm intrigued as to what's happening, what are the challenges. But yeah, that's something I felt that I have to get it off my chest, and again, I hope that you don't take this commentary in a negative way, but looking at it as a room for opportunity and growth, and If you have two former school committee members that are bringing this up as an issue, I hope that you understand that this is something that you should be focusing on, and that way we're able to move on to some other goals and priorities that I feel that the school desperately needs to shift their focus on.

And then going back to your comment about the co-op is, again, what I mentioned. This is a vocational technical school. And we're still seeing, I don't know if that happened when you were there, but a huge emphasis on academics, which is equally important, but again, not the core or the foundation of what vocational technical education is and should be about. So let's find out. Let's hear more. Let's hear more. Continue, superintendent. We love you so much. We want to make sure that you're the best in the state.

Yeah, so we had 420 graduates this year and 200 on co-op. That's the best we've, probably one of the best years we've ever had. We've got a new co-op director that's really amazing and terrific. Do we have, we have certain programs that are struggling. and for various reasons. And then we have other programs that are excelling, putting just about, we have programs where every, like electrical, every student in electrical ends up on call. Every student in medical system, HVAC system, automotive. So we have certain programs that are doing very well and are strong programs. And then we have other programs that need to improve in terms of their curriculum, in terms of their instruction and those programs we're working with. We know what those programs are and we'll continue to work with those programs and improve the quality of instruction and improve the opportunities for those particular programs. If you look at our construction programs, let's say, so this year, we are invested in our construction program this year with building a passive house. So we're training kids in all the latest and newest designs and equipment in the Clean Energy Center. We've gotten over $1.5 million in clean energy grants. we have more than any other school in the commonwealth when it comes to clean energy research work that we're doing around that that we're teaching our kids in the construction field there is no vocational school that's doing as much as we are in that area in terms of technology for hvac for carpentry plumbing if you want to come on site you can see our home that we're building the only one of its kind in any vocational school in Massachusetts. We've invested this year hundreds of hours training our staff. All of our construction staff have taken specific coursework in order to be able to train all of them. So we are always upgrading our curriculum to meet the needs of technology, to meet the needs of industry for the future. not only in equipment. We've gotten millions of dollars worth of grants to upgrade our equipment in every one of our career areas. Recently, we had our advisory committee and they made all kinds of recommendations of what we needed to do in terms of changing curriculum. in upgrading our curriculum and adding new equipment. And I would say we've done about 90, we've met 90% of those recommendations in terms of changes that we needed to make in getting new equipment. That happens from grants and from our capital improvement budget, from good planning, and understanding what the industry needs in the future, which we find from our advisory committee. So we are definitely focused on our vocational programs. The automotive program has grown. They used to get 25 students. They've taken over 30 students in the program and we've grown. We've added an electric car laboratory, the only one of its kind in Massachusetts. So we repair electric vehicles in a specific lab to train students how to repair electric vehicles. WE'RE PUTTING IN RIGHT NOW A NEW SPRAY BOOTH THAT THE ONLY KIND OF SPRAY BOOTH YOU CAN DO TO SPRAY ELECTRIC CARS BECAUSE STANDARD SPRAY BOOTH YOU CAN'T SPRAY ELECTRIC CARS. THAT'S ONE THING. WE'RE PUTTING IN ADDITION ON auto body to expand more space so that we have more room to train new techniques and bring in new equipment in order to train our kids. I can go down the list of every single program of what we're doing for the future to train and prepare kids for the jobs of the future. Our kids are getting the jobs of the future. Some of them go out teaching the employers some of the things they learned from Greater Lawrence that's ahead of the curve. And that's our philosophy. Our mission is always to be prepared for the future in terms of what we're teaching them for tomorrow, not for yesterday. So the state just came out last year with an all-new state frameworks. So we had a team of teachers that were in a program this school year working with the Department of Education to start developing new curriculum based on the frameworks. There was five other schools. This was their second year. At the end of this year, it was just reported, we were ahead of those other five schools in the curriculum we were doing. You know why? because we utilize AI in the development of our curriculum. We're way ahead of the game in terms of training teachers and students and AI. So we're very innovative in everything that we do. And in terms of academics, we firmly believe if you look at without interventions and understanding. 80% of our freshman class last year came in below grade level in reading. So, consequently, we had to hire four reading teachers to get their grade. If students are all below grade level in reading, We can't ignore that. We have to make sure we help them because they're not going to be successful as a carpenter, plumber, or any other career if their reading skills are way down. So yeah, we take our academics very seriously because success won't happen unless we do. We just hired two additional math teachers to work with. because we have a lot of kids coming in with low math skills and performance. So we fired some extra teachers specifically to work with those kids, the new freshman class coming in because their math skills are so low.

And I'm assuming the majority of that is from the city of Lawrence because the majority of the students are from the city of Lawrence.

Yes.

I have to put it out there.

It's true. And I'm not saying it's anybody's fault. It's just a fact. It's a fact of where we come from. And you have to remember, we draw our kids from four districts, right? 30 different middle schools with 30 different kinds of curriculums and approach to teaching and learning, and we've got to figure out where they are in terms of their grade level of education Abilities and performance and then how are we going to fill the gaps and that's what that's what multi MTSS is all about Assessing that determining that and then providing so so if you look in if you also look in tier one one of the things we've started is we we've been working with the Department of Ed to To develop new high quality instructional materials which this is our second year at mathematics a brand new curriculum and And then this is our first year in ELA implementing this brand new curriculum, which has been recommended by the Department of Ed. We've worked with trainers from the Department of Ed to implement these curriculums because that's how, because the academics are important. And we take, and so I think we believe that we've got to get our kids, our students to a place where they can, they don't have to be, you know, no calculus, but they have to be able to do Algebra 1 and do, We had a conversation the other day about bringing math students in for math. They said, maybe the first year we spend on just getting them up to grade level in math and then we'll give them Algebra 1 because we put them in Algebra 1 and they keep struggling for the next four years of math because they're so far behind when they come to us. So we have to look at how can we get them to grade level so that we can give them more advanced work in the academic areas.

All right, moving on superintendent. Thank you for the explanation.

So if you look at page 27, that's where the numbers begin. So for our budget this year, state aid chapter 70 from the state, we're getting $42,612,739, which is an increase of $1,165,317. The increases are due to taking in more students I think we had about 58 more students in our October 1st report, so that automatically is going to increase the numbers, our budget coming in. our state uh... aid uh... and then we had a hundred thousand miscellaneous revenue lawrence's uh... assessment uh... for the upcoming school year one million seven hundred sixty four thousand two hundred ninety one increase of thirty four thousand twenty two and that was due to seven students an increase of seven more students uh... coming uh... this year than we had the year previous year We do know that we had 58 last year, going into this October 1st, we're looking at about another additional 60 more students. Our intent is to keep growing, so that's why we're expanding our health and medical programs to almost 60% more students in those programs because of the demand and need in our community. And so that means we'll be bringing in probably somewhere between close to another 200 students over the next three to four years. Which will help Lawrence a little bit because we'll take more students from Lawrence. and increase our student enrollment. And it's because of demands there because we know that Lawrence General purchasing the Methuen Hospital and their needs are greater where we work and meet with them on a regular basis. And so we understand what the needs are in the health programs. We're expanding pathways in that area to include three new pathways because there's a need in radiology is one of them because there's a need in there. We're building partnerships with Northern Essex Community College where we would take building classroom space at the college so that the kids can get dual credit and leave upon graduation 30 credits in their medical program towards an associate's degree in health. But in any case, so in non-foundation education, uh... regional transportation is one point seven one million seven hundred forty three thousand nine hundred sixty five for uh... transportation which is an increased thirty nine thousand seven hundred eighty eight from uh... from state And transportation from the city of Lawrence is $2,143,614, which is an increase of $51,000. And when it comes to non-foundation, that's based on the percentage of students we have from the city of Lawrence, given what the total budget is. So we have 69, I think it was about 69% of our enrollment on October 1st was from students from the city of Lawrence. So when it comes to our busing, they pay 69% of the additional cost for busing, which is how we come up with that particular assessment. And then in E&D, we're moving $2 million in our... Can you remind us what District E&D is? It's access and deficiency, our access, and it's basically a savings account that we have to put towards anything that we might need for unexpected things because we can't raise revenue. It's one way of basically having a savings account. So we took $2 million of that account, moved it into our savings account, into our budget this year, one, to purchase the hangar for $975,000, and then two, put towards the addition for the architectural fees and other things.

Thank you.

Other fees that might be coming up for the planning and growth of the school. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Marmo.

You just mentioned the aviation. Just going back to page 21, is there a reason? Because I know freshmen, you had your first class. Why aren't they a part of this budget? They're not part of the chart. I can't see how many students from this freshman class chose that program as an option.

The one-on-one program?

Say that again? No, aviation?

Oh, the aviation program? Yeah, it's not part of it. This is our first year, so we, the students in aviation, In aviation, there are, I believe, 20 students. They just selected the program two months ago. That's our first class.

Yeah, but it's not part of the book. So how many students?

Twenty.

Twenty.

So they wouldn't reflect on the... I don't think they're reflected in this number because this was...

So, yeah, because I'm noticing ninth grade, they're all X'd out. But if the ninth graders... CHOSE THE PROGRAM, DID WE NOT HAVE THOSE NUMBERS IN TIME TO PREPARE THIS BOOK? BECAUSE THIS WAS DELIVERED TO US BACK IN MARCH.

THIS BOOK WAS PUT TOGETHER IN MARCH.

OKAY. SO, YEAH. AND THE CHOICES ARE MADE IN APRIL.

SO WE DIDN'T HAVE THE NUMBERS. MIDDLE OF APRIL. CAN YOU EMAIL US THOSE NUMBERS, THE FRESHMAN NUMBERS?

SURE. I CAN SEND YOU THE NUMBERS. AND INCLUDE AVIATION. YEAH. Yeah.

Okay. I was wondering why it was all X. I was like, what? They already chose their shops.

Yeah. Okay. Before we can counsel the plan, any questions pertaining to this section of the foundation numbers? Okay. Continue, Superintendent. They were in the E&D.

What was that?

You can continue. You can continue. We're still on page 27.

Page 7?

27. 27? That's where you were at. Oh, yes.

You said 57, right? I'm mumbling too at this point.

I like how you think. Our total estimated revenue is $59,375,465, which is a per student cost of $27,644. So when you look at our per-student cost of $27,644, that's made up of different categories within each per-student cost, which includes English learners, low-income students. You get additional funds for each one of these categories. So for English learners, you get a certain amount of money. low-income, special ed, vocational student, and then our Student Opportunity Act funds that we get make up the total per student costs of $27,641, and that makes up our total budget of $59,375,465. for a difference of increase of 4,339,599, which is a result of the increase in student population that we have and which helps to keep us a solid budget that we can continue to fund our programs at a high level. So we also get a lot of additional funds besides, you know, Chapter 70 and our assessments both from the from the state and our communities. We have funds that come in from our After Dark program. We bring in a lot of funds for the workforce development, close to one and a half to two million, depending on how many programs we work, our evening programs, which doesn't cost the community any money. That all comes from the state. We trained about 420 evening program students this year. Next September we have 12 new programs starting up for the adult workforce development program. We place a high percentage of those in jobs upon finishing their programs. We also have an apprenticeship program that brings in funds. our federal grants, state grants, and we also get corporate foundation grants. So just to give an example, working with a foundation, a corporation now that's gonna give us between one and two million dollars to put towards our new building for the health programs. So we go out and look for grants and that helps to reduce the pressure on buying equipment, making sure that we have the latest and meet the needs of all our programs in terms of in terms of both what the curriculum calls for, in terms of materials, and in terms of equipment and tools. So if we run an evening program, let's say, and right now we just were awarded $1.2 million to run our next fall programs, there might be $200,000 or $300,000 in there for programs equipment and materials that we can help not only support the evening programs, but also help support our day programs so that continues to keep us strong and not put the burden on our communities. And the most important thing with all of that is that We're strengthening the city's economy by training both day students and evening students for the workforce and get good paying jobs and strengthen their future. And many of our students, about 40% of them, depending on each year, 40 to 50% go on to post-secondary education, most of them two-year post-secondary, and many of them into apprenticeships.

I don't think there's any questions. Any questions? No, no, they would have. You can continue. If I don't stop you, Superintendent, just keep going. Just keep going. But I appreciate the consideration, though.

We try to keep our student teacher ratio under 25 in our academic classes. There might be a few here and there that are over 25, but then there are also quite a few that are well below 25. And we have many inclusion classes where there are co-teachers in a lot of our academic classes as well. We try to keep the special ed population in any particular class somewhere between six and eight students. So.

Yeah, yeah, just keep, if we're not stopping you, just keep going. It's easy. That's actually good. We should be warning this.

Well, yeah.

I think he's a little nervous.

So, what's that?

You want me to ask questions?

Oh, if you have a question, sure.

All right, so we're in time. Walk us through... We already spoke a little bit about the revenue chart, right? The people.

Yeah, I'm more in like, I have a question on page 34, but I don't know.

Page 34.

Walk us to page 34, the FY27 budget by function.

Page 34?

Mm-hmm.

The grants?

No, no, it's the budget by function.

Oh, by function. All right, so the budget by function, it's just a breakdown of where the funds are targeted. So you can see instruction is over 50% of our budget, 51.44%. And then administration is 5.48%. Programs in other school districts, 0.17%. Capital is our capital budget, 5.6%. Debt and retirement services, 0.60%. Fixed charges, 20%. Maintenance eight point two percent in people services nine point eight two which people services really a lot of that Supports instruction in a lot of ways so that's close to another ten percent of our budget so So you have to remember that in a vocational or a regional district, we're taking care of our building, our facilities. It's like a budget you'd have for a city, a municipality, all the different departments we have in order to maintain our building, everything from... I'll give you an example. This winter, a large section of our roof, sheathing, our... tore off. We had about two, maybe 400 square feet of roofing blow off the roof, and so we had to repair that in the middle of the winter. That's just an example. So we have to take care of our own building. So that was, I don't remember, somewhere around $100,000, $125,000 to repair that. So we go to a capital improvement budget to get the funds for that. So all I'm saying is that we have a lot of costs that we have to pay for our snow plowing. We have to pay for all our utilities, all of that. So there are a lot of costs beyond just instruction and teaching and learning to maintain almost 500,000 square feet of building.

Councilor Platt.

Thank you. So I'll just, since I had some comments at the end, I'll just do them now. Just two overarching questions or comments. Actually, questions. No, comments. I'm just getting late. What struck me really kind of shocking was your comment earlier regarding our students from Lawrence are going to your school and they're not measuring up and you got to bring them up. That just struck me, especially we just finished an LPS for like three hours. And I walked out of thinking, this is fantastic. We're doing great jobs. You know, we're doing really well. And then when the rubber hits the road and go to your school. Our students aren't measuring up. I'm guessing most of those are from a public school. There may be some parochial school students.

But they're not all your students. I know I get that.

I get that.

I can't say that those are all Lawrence students. I never said that. All right. But that's not unusual. Okay. So if they're coming in, we expect them to be at eighth grade level in math, and they're coming in at seventh grade level, they're below grade level. They may not be that far off. Some may be.

Fourth grade level so maybe in third grade level so they're all over the place So we did as quite point of information for council the black since he wasn't part of the budget and Finance Committee last term last budget hearing we did hear from GLTS that 70% of their freshman class at that time Well, we're reading below reading level, and I was the one who asked, okay, of that 70%, how many was the percentage of the students from Lawrence? And out of that percentage, it was 70% of those students were.

70% of the 70% were from Lawrence. Okay, well.

So I think that's why it wasn't, but yeah.

That's not to, it's not to... It's not to criticize Lawrence. You've got Methuen kids that are below grade. No, it's not to criticize. It's not across. Lawrence is not unusual to that.

Well, it just troubles me. You would expect, I would expect, I would expect that when you graduate from your first eight grades, wherever you are, I mean, I love our friends and family in Methuen and Andover and North End. I love them all. But I care about the folks in Lawrence. with our kids aren't quite measuring up and we need to reach back to bring them up to speed. And then what's shocking to me is this, you've got a wait list. And I'm guessing the wait list is based on aptitude, correct? You take a test, right? So you're taking the best.

It used to be like that.

You don't take the test.

Kids don't take the test. Before, like now it's lottery, so it doesn't matter.

Now it's lottery.

How long has it been lottery?

It's our first year lottery.

You mean I could have gotten in this year?

But even the aptitude test, it's been a while.

The assessment had nothing to do with grades. I shouldn't say that. There were points for grades, but they didn't take an assessment before coming to the school. They took assessments after they were accepted, so we know what level we need to start them in math.

I guess the real answer to this question is, before the lottery... Did you have as much having to train up the students as after the lottery? If the answer is, it's the same.

We don't know yet because we don't know what level... reading levels and the math levels of the kids coming in this year under the lottery. Typically we had more information before because we had to get their grades and their MCAS scores and their assessments before they got to us. They were getting points for that. Now none of that counts, so we don't get any of that information until they arrive.

I'm not on the GLTS. It's a fight for others, not for me. But my last point was the chair. You graduated from there, right? What year?

2012.

Did you graduate from there?

Oh, wow. Please don't make me say that year. Be proud of your year. Oh, five.

When I was in Methuen last week, one of the counselors said, I know more millionaires who graduated from Illinois than anywhere else.

I heard about that.

So the chair was saying this. She was saying that she had just the kind of a reaction that there seems to be a shift, a shift from... vocational to a shift toward more college-based or academic-based stuff. Who said there was a shift that way? Pardon me? Who said there was a shift? I don't want to point fingers, but the chair did.

I said it. I said it.

So my, Mary Ann.

I mean in terms of what we do in school.

Yeah. At GLTS. So is that just a vocational school? It's like, she's, Mary Ann.

I said it's across the, because remember, I also worked at Access Tech for a bit. Yeah. And socialize with other vocational schools as well. And it's a shift that I've noticed.

It's consistent across all vocational schools.

So here's my point or question, maybe it's both, is that maybe that's what the market is driving you to. Maybe that's what parents or students want. They want to be able to go to a place where they can delve in both and they have this amazing opportunity to do a trade and or con combo or do the academics to me. And I realized what you're saying. I mean, if I, if, if I had a young one right now that I was going to say, I would encourage them to go to vocational school because talk about options. If you can, we've been, it's the best of both possible worlds at no cost. It just seems like a no brainers. And then because of the, because of technology being what it is, I mean, I'm proud to have gone to the high school that I went, Austin Prep, I can tell you the year of yours.

Well, you're a counselor?

84, and I'm a proud graduate, proud graduate. You know, prepared me well for college, which is what that school was designed to do, and did well in college, prepared well. But I just think we're shifting now. The college education model seems to be dare I say, cheapened now because these things and the ability to get information and to be able to do some of the, some of the academic things that you needed a person for is seemingly lessened. And so, and we're going to need people to go inside and fix that HVAC system and people who are going to, that plumbing, there's no AI going to fix the plumbing. That's going to be, you need a person to do that. And so the, The vocational school, I think, are going to continue to go in this direction. So we need to put the resources on there. So, I mean, I'm glad we're going through the budget. Don't get me wrong. But I also sense that's the idea. I don't want to, I don't know everything. And I just speculate that part of the answer for the shift is because of, partially because, maybe because of that, because people want to have, we want to have options. And I think you're the only school in town that really has those kinds of options. Every other school is just, you're going down the, you're going down academic bill. And that's the difference. So anyway.

So actually, motion to pass 10. So moved, second. Motion has been made by the Vice Chair, seconded by Councilor LaPlante. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye, the ayes have it. To your point, Councilor LaPlante, so I recall when I was at Access Tech putting together a one pager for the superintendent there. that she was going to present to the associations of superintendents. And one of the data points that I... design, well, beautified for her, right, because it was a whole spreadsheet, but it was interesting, it was the effects on comprehensive high schools adding Chapter 74 programming, and how that was affecting enrollment in that vocational school, and I know that some programming may be coming to Lawrence High as well. So how, we're talking about, it's great having the best of both worlds under one roof, but we are seeing comprehensive high schools adding more vocational education. How are you forecasting that for Greater Lawrence Tech? How is it impacting it now, either financially or planning-wise? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Well, it's not impacting us at all now. I mean, we had approximately 1,400 applicants, 500 seats. So there's really no impact to us in terms of other, whether, Methuen has Chapter 74 programs, and Lawrence may be looking at some Chapter 74 programs. But that's what I believe, that most comprehensive schools that offer Chapter 74 programs, their approach, the way they address curriculum, the time they give Chapter 74, doesn't compare to the depth that we give. at a standard vocational school. It's not to say they're not offering good things, they are. And also offering opportunities for kids they wouldn't have. I think it's a good thing, actually, that they have that opportunity, because if you want to be an electrician, if you get 500 hours as opposed to 1,200 hours, You know enough to get a job and get into an apprenticeship program. You know that's what you want to do with your life. You've got some basic knowledge and skills. So you may not get as much as you would if you went to Greater Lawrence, but you're still getting an opportunity to... get your foot in the door of a particular career. So, no, I think it's a good thing. There's enough need that I'm not really concerned. The important thing for us is to be the best program we can be. So if we get the best electrical program in the Merrimack Valley, where is everybody going to want to go? They'll want to go to Grand Lawrence and get their electrical training at Grand Lawrence. It's up to us to be the best we can be So some of our programs are the best in the state some are not the best in the state Vocational program I can tell you, you know, our electrical program is probably one of the best in the state Look at another program saying maybe that's not There's a lot And some schools do better at certain things than others. But we always strive to be the best we can be. And a lot of it depends on getting the best instructors. Success starts with your instructor more than anything. You have the best equipment, best space, best thing in the world. But if you don't have the best teachers, it starts with high-quality teachers more than anything. And those are the hardest things to find.

I understand.

So I have to ask this because this has been a hot topic. Superintendent, your salary.

Yeah, my salary is not right in the book.

um let's let's let's talk about that for a bit and i understand that you know this is a budget that was already approved by your school committee however i don't know about my colleagues but i have received phone calls uh pertaining to that and i do want to give you the opportunity to at least explain and and uh walk us through that a little bit so that we can understand it from this municipality my salary next year is 350 it shows 370 right

Because I took no increases any longer. As long as I continue to work, I have anywhere from a two- to three-year addition. My contract goes for another two to three years, depending on a few things. But, yeah, and so it won't change. It'll stay that same number until I retire. And it started with, so my contract started, has grown since I started 16 years ago. When I started, I was one of the lowest paid superintendents in the state, and...

I was a sophomore when you started.

Yeah, and so then, yeah. And so I negotiated my contract with certain clauses in it, and my contract continued to grow. And so the question is, what makes me different than any other superintendent in terms of what's the value to the school, what's the value to the community based on what I do, right? When you have a lot of time, I can go from A to Z and tell you exactly what I've done from the day I started to where the school is today, starting with there's 800 more kids in the school today than when I started, that there's eight more programs in the school than when I started. that we bring in over $2 million a year in workforce development. We brought in zero when I started. There are a litany of things I can list of what makes me worth the money that I get. And the money that I bring in and the changes that I've contributed to the school and the opportunities I provided, that's what makes the difference. But I can give you a whole long, I can send you a whole long list of things that I've accomplished over the last 16 years. And then I can give you a list of another superintendent in another vocational school and tell you what all they've accomplished.

My colleagues are interested. I lived it. I saw the difference, so I know what you're...

When I started at Greater Lawrence Tech, Greater Lawrence was the third lowest performing high school in Massachusetts. Now we're in around the 35th percentile, depending on any particular year. So, I mean, those are the things that make a difference.

We were also in MCAS was still very prominent. I recall I forget the year but GLTS did reach level one MCAS. Remember that GLTS was the first to bring the after dark program in the Commonwealth. I'm very proud of all the school committee members at that time, still proud of that, and it's growing, and now it's implemented across the state. So I get it, but it's still, we're here to discuss the numbers, and that is a concern that at least, I have received, and I don't know if my colleagues have, but my colleague has received. So we have to ensure to ask these questions. And actually before we, anybody else has a comment on that or a question?

Okay, it has to be on page 34. Oh, okay, okay.

All right, so would you like to add anything, Councilor Marmo?

Correct me if I'm wrong. That's stated within the numbers on page 34, your salary.

Would it be under administration? That was before I did not take a raise. I told the school committee that I would no longer take any more increases after I reached 350. I think it was 350.

I'm so sorry, Superintendent, if you don't mind speaking a little bit closer to the mic.

Oh, so I told the committee. Thank you. Sorry. Oh, my God. So I told the committee I would no longer take any more increases in my salaries until I retire.

In this new contract?

In my new contract from now moving forward. So next year I'll make the same salary I made this year and the following year the same salary.

So before getting this new contract, what was your salary? Again, I know you said it.

$350,000. I just finished. I'm still in. I had a five-year contract or six-year contract.

So you're currently at $350,000? Yes. 350. And this contract brings you to?

350. I'm not going any higher. I'm not taking any increases any until I retire. So I have, my contract can go up to three more years starting September. But, and I'm not going to get an increase any one of those three years.

So, no, I understand that part. Within that new contract, it's 350 and no increases. Right. Prior to the new contract, what is your salary? It's 350?

No, I started each year, I've gotten COLA, and I had a clause in my contract that I could sell back a week's vacation. It went on my base salary, so that drove my contract up.

What's the salary?

My salary? Now? 350. Each year it's gone up about 10, it could have gone up 7%, 8%, each year it's different.

The last time you had an increase before the 350, what were you? 320?

No, it was probably about 25,000 less.

Okay. I was just trying to find that number. Okay. Yeah. So you negotiate a new contract that right at 350.

If I'm at 300,000 and I get a call of 3%, let's say around that, I think it might have been 3%. And then I have performance clause in my contract. I have to meet a certain performance. And if I meet that performance, I get another 1%. So it makes it 4%. Then I can sell back a week's vacation. It's written into my contract and was agreed to, right? So that's probably another 2%. So that's total 6%. 6% of $300,000 is $18,000 raise in one year. I understand.

I understand how, like, when it comes to negotiations. That's how I got to where I'm at. Yeah.

Over time, it goes up quickly when you have those clauses in your contract, when you negotiate your contract.

I understand contracts and the COLA, but I also understand that, again, I'm going to rewind back when I was a school committee member there and I think at that point your contract was being renegotiated. And even then that was, that was a hot topic. Um, so it just continuously seems to, um, be inflated just dramatically over the years. And when you're, um, not to take away your, your accomplishments, um, at all, but when you are comparing it to, um, the average salary of our surrounding communities and what those superintendents, you know, what those salaries are and, um, also comparing it to, um, um, Vocational schools, your salary is like skyrocketed compared to like everybody else. So again, I'm not trying to take away from your accomplishments, but I also am looking at it that it's coming with a cost and it's a heavy one at that. I'm curious to see, and I'm not sure if this information you're able to provide to us, The contract, your contract, was that a unanimous vote from the school committee? Unanimous?

I don't remember the original. I mean, it goes back 10 years. It goes back 10 years. The vice chair is nodding his head yes. You can't compare what I do to what any of the other superintendents do. It's a whole different job. Vocational schools? What they accomplish versus what... I'm involved in a lot of things that they're not even involved in. And the same thing with other vocational schools. Let's take Shaoxing Tech. They get great scores. They do really well, right? Walk in that school, right? I worked there for five years, right? The school looks today like it did 20 years ago. No changes, no new programs, no more students. They just, right? Look at Greater Lawrence, since I've taken over Greater Lawrence in the last 16 years, where it was 16 years ago, where it is today. That's what you get paid for. And look at my performance. My first 10 years, my performance was 99.5 out of 100. The last couple years, it hasn't been as good.

What do you mean by that 99?

Let's say 100% of my performance. Every year, I get evaluated. And my evaluations were as high as they could go year after year after year because of my performance and what I brought to the table and what I've accomplished over that time. And eight years ago, MASS, I was selected superintendent of the year about eight years ago. So I mean, across other superintendents, I've had success compared to other superintendents. So the superintendent in Lexington probably makes the most, is somewhere around where my salary is. She has a, she's superintendent of Lexington, right? A high performance district, affluent district. She does well, because she's in an affluent community.

For starters, what I'll say is I'm a little disappointed to hear that it was unanimous. Again, I don't want to take away from your accomplishments, and I know each one of my colleagues, their measurement of, how do I word this? To measure the justification of your salary, I'll say for me, because I'm pretty sure each one of us would have different type of barometers that they would have in place. My barometer would be What I would be measuring is graduation rates, how many students are graduating already, again, because that's what our main mission is, is the workforce development side of things. So how many of our students are graduating and working? How many of our students are not at a below grade reading level, how many of them are not below a math grade level. So to me, that's what I would measure to justify the increase of your salary. Again, not to take away how the facility is beautiful. The programs that we have there are awesome.

In all those areas that you just said,

have been much better than when I took over the school in every single one of those measures that you just said. But here's the thing that you don't understand, right? This is the thing you don't understand. When I started, there was zero workforce development programs. Now we train four to 500 unemployed and underemployed citizens that have better jobs today that are contributing to our community in a way that no other superintendent at GLTS ever did, right? That's important. That's very important. We have more kids on co-op now than we've ever had in the history of the school. We have more kids succeeding on the job.

I would love to see those numbers, Superintendent.

What's that?

I would love to see those numbers. Again, you know... I would love to take your word for it, but I would like to see the numbers.

There was no workforce development programs in the school when I started. There was zero. There was no after dark program in the school. I started it in the state. There was CTI programs that are providing all technical high schools with way more money for workforce development. How do you think that came about? That came about because of the work that I did with a consortium of other superintendents to put pressure on the state to give it back in the day when we were working closely with Department of Labor to get funding to come directly to the school instead of coming to the workforce board and instead of going to the community college where then we were getting the money. Now it comes directly to us. We can offer more training. I started that initiative back almost eight years ago.

Those are all things that I did.

I believe you. I believe you.

Well, that's what justifies my... Yeah. Well, how do you justify anybody's salary?

Well, I want to see it in the budget. What's that? I want to see it in the budget, though. We're talking about numbers here. And, you know, if you're going to be referencing how these numbers have increased... under your leadership i want to be able to see that um so again just uh i want to use this as a moment you know as an opportunity for maybe this budget book to be uh improved um in terms of the types of the type of information that is necessary for us to see um your salary, again, it wouldn't be a major topic of discussion and, uh, you know, requesting information, detailed information at that to make sure that, you know, it, it feels justified. But at this point I feel like I have no authority to change that. So I feel like I'm speaking to kind of gain an understanding, but not to be able to change what's already been done because I have no authority to do so. Um, But at the end of the day, I feel like if I'm asking questions as to what justifies your salary increase, as it would be the salary increase of any administrator or any instructor that kind of calls attention, we're going to ask those questions.

Yeah, that's fine. You can ask. And I'm explaining to you why. That's all I'm doing. I'm not upset or angry or anything, but I'm just trying to explain to you why.

Councilor Platt.

I think the very final portion of my colleague from District C's comments hit it on the head. This is a GLTS Commission or Education Commission decision over time. It's not here. Fine to ask the questions, fine to see where we are, but ultimately, at the end of the day, We have a budget. I think we have one number to vote on. Is that one number or two numbers for this one? Just one number for the assessments. That's all we're voting on at the end of the day. It's good. I'm not criticizing. Ask the questions. But there's nothing we can do about it. And anyway, so you have done something remarkable to make sure that your board keeps voting in favor of these things. So you were able to convince... Over how many years? You said you've been on this? 16. 16 years. Over 16 years, you've been able to convince board member after board member after board member that the work that you've done justifies an increase to where you are today. So I don't see your day-to-day stuff. That's what the board's for. That's what the board's for. And so they know. I have no idea.

But my salary doesn't change. We're not assessing you for more money because of my salary. No, no, we're not saying that. The state determines your assessment, and then we have to build our budget within what we know Fund what our revenue is and so my salary is just one piece of that and then making sure we have We're meeting our priorities which is teaching and learning what happens in the classroom is our priority and having enough teachers having enough Resources having enough equipment staying up to date with everything all of that has happened Regardless of what my set what my salary is and I tend to say that that happened because of what because of my work And a lot of other people. I'm not here to say it's all me. Definitely not all me. We have a great team. Great administrators, great teachers. It happens because we have a great school of great people doing all good things. But it just so happens I'm fortunate enough to be the superintendent of a lot of people doing good things.