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Transcript (~52 min @ 1:08)

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▶ 1:15 Speaker 1: We do not have anyone in online at the moment. Okay, so we have no one

▶ 1:17 Jen Grigoraitis: for public comments. So I will motion by unanimous consent to close public comment. It's a public comment is now closed. We have the mailers Public Schools Budget on our agenda tonight and we are joined by Dr. Cuckenberger and school committee chair mcandrew. And while they get settled at the table. I will entertain a motion to suspend the rules so that we can hear from them motion to suspend the rules second. We have a motion to suspend the rules made by councilor Karm chady seconded by Vice chairmanelli all in favor any opposed. All right. The rules are suspended. I'm gonna say welcome to you both. It's a pleasure to be with you in person after so many years of doing this remotely and the floor is yours.

▶ 1:56 Jennifer McAndrew: Thank you so much. Good evening. Everyone. My name is Jen mcandrew of the privilegious service the chair of the Melrose school committee. I'm so happy to be joined by superintendent kuchenberger tonight. Thank you chair Grigoraitis and all members of the city council for your service to Melrose and I'm looking forward to our discussion tonight. I also want to thank my fellow school committee members the superintendent and her team and all the principals and Educators who were involved in the development of this budget. It's a real privilege to be before you to present. The malware's public schools just goal 23 budget request and we look forward to hearing your questions and discussing it with you as the materials before you and online describe. This is a sound budget that moves the district forward on key priorities including accelerating learning for all students, especially in the wake of the pandemic supporting youth mental health promoting social emotional well-being for all. And moving us forward in a fiscally responsible manner. As the superintendent will discuss the budget supports our existing high quality education programs across the district while also making Necessary and strategic Investments to meet the needs of our special education students and to respond to Growing enrollment, especially at the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School. We are also pleased to make good on a promise that we made last year to the community to try to make the Visual and Performing Arts director for six through 12 a full-time position, which this budget would support. Finally, let me add that the school committee reviewed the fiscal 23 budget proposal over several months with the superintendent with our principals and have fully supported this final budget proposal with the unanimous vote. I'm so grateful for the Melrose communities continued support of a strong school system in Melrose, and I'm proud to present this proposal tonight for your consideration with my thanks and I'll turn it over to the superintendent for more details at this time.

▶ 3:59 Speaker 2: Sure. Thank you so much chairman Andrew. I greatly appreciate that overview and an effort to not be redundant. I'll just give some add a few details to that and then be happy to answer any questions that you all may have about the fy22 school budget. The first thing I would want to highlight is the amount of collaboration that goes into building the school budget. This process really never ends for us. We're constantly looking at the budget refining the budget assessing student needs and making adjustments to to the budget within the parameters that the school committee approves. And then of course if ever there needs to be, you know anything out outside of what's initially approved, we always bring that back to the school committee. We also update them regularly on our year-to-date spending as the budget unfolds. So as a leadership team, we officially start the budget cycle back in November in November of each year. We typically start looking at enrollment and enrollment projections as Know our enrollment has been growing over the past several years and we're now at what I would call sort of like the plateau of that enrollment and our study our recent demographic study shows that we're going to see consistent enrollment now at this higher number of students per grade. So on average starting with our Rising sixth graders current fifth graders some who are celebrating tonight at their moving on ceremonies. That is the first class that's coming to the middle school. That's that's projected to be over 300 and so from here on out with the exception of our current second graders who are like 298, we're projecting to be over 300 for every class moving forward. So you see in this budget us asking for that additional assistant principle at the middle school given that enrollment is already at 8:50 in Rising. It really becomes a safety issue at this point in an additional assistant principal is needed. But we come to that decision to ask for this position and the others that are in the budget through a really collaborative process. So we start with that enrollment. We're looking at projections. We're looking at all of our staff across the district. We're asking ourselves, you know, do we know of anyone who's going to retire do we know of anyone who may resign or we know is moving do we know of anyone who we need to grow do we know of anyone who we need to let go and that's the beginning part of it because Personnel is 80 86 87 percent of our entire budget. So it's our fiscal duty to make sure that we're being as responsible as we can and also making sure that our students have the highest quality Educators in front of them each and every day So then we principles at the same time are thinking about new investment proposals and new Investments doesn't always mean new money. We're really Savvy and looking at our resources and thinking about reallocation redistribution. Where do we need to shift the way we're thinking about certain services and supports for kids. And so that's that that phase of the process is really exciting because it's when we get to be really creative we look at a lot of student data to determine what we're doing well and what we could be doing better or who we're serving well and who we could be serving better in terms of our students and then the principles and the directors get to submit those proposals and part of that submission is thinking about how would we fund this? Is it existing resources? Is there a possible Grant is there is it new money that we're asking for and we kind of do like our own little mini version of budget Shark Tank. So everybody gets to present their proposals and it's a multi-phase part. So like a three minute kind of elev. Your pitch of what it is and why it's important and how it's going to meet the needs of students. And then we rank them as into four categories. So required which typically means it has to do with health or safety or it's mandated through an IEP or some other mandate from the state. Some sort of legal requirement high priority, which means it needs to happen this year mid priority. Maybe I could wait a year for this but it's important they're all important and then low priority something we need to be thinking about and part of that is so that we can be projecting to the community what we see coming down the pike. So if you remember last year the assistant principal at the middle school ended up being a mid priority for us, but we promised you we would be coming back this year and making it a high priority and it in fact ultimately was our highest priority outside of the required Investments. So first principles are kind of just pitching it to their colleagues. We all listen we then

▶ 8:38 Speaker 3: go to go go to the rest of our business and we come

▶ 8:40 Speaker 2: back to a next meeting where we ask clarifying questions and that time and space in between is really important for reflection and consideration. Everybody's thinking about all of the proposals that they've heard and then we reprioritize them now that we've had like a k through a pre-k through postgrad lens. And so even though I might think this thing is really important for my building once I hear all of the competing priorities, I'm able to better assess what's going to be what's most high Leverage What is the most high leverage investment for our students at this time? And then through that process we're constantly working with the school committee learning about the state budget learning about what resources are coming our way collaborating with the mayor and the CFO Patrick De La Russo and making them aware of what what how our needs are shaping up because ultimately we don't ever want you you or the mayor or Patrick or the school committee to be surprised by what what are known needs are and a big portion of our budget every year is our contractual obligations. So teachers salary scales work a little differently. It's not just about a cost of living adjustment each year. They also move down the scale in terms of steps. So that's years of service and then they can move across the lanes based on their levels of education. And of course we want our teachers to be lifelong Learners and be continuously growing. So we also provide robust professional development in order to make those Lane changes possible. And all of that we're taking into consideration as we're building the budget we present to the school committee really early in the year. I had to kind of reconnect with the budget and remind myself of all the different steps because we've been busy with some other things this week. That that presentation that first comes to the school committee is the leadership teams proposal at that point. We have worked it together so much and collaborated together so much. It's not my budget. It's the teams budget. And then from there we're basically handing it to the school committee and saying here's how we've assessed the needs of our students based on our educational expertise and taking into consideration all the other factors the competing priorities across the city because we know that every department does really important work in the city and we need to be mindful of that. And then from there we start refining we usually learn about Chapter 70 numbers. We can assess our offsets more accurately. We have a clearer picture about personnel and staffing needs across the district, but that too is always evolving and changing. So that's why I said the process really doesn't ever end. There's always something in motion as I mentioned in the memo here. We're still waiting for the final state budget. We're all so still learning about Is going to be with us next year in terms of staff and who might be resigning or moving on to other things. So I can stop there if that's helpful. I know that chair MC Andrew shared with you our why behind the budget it really is about our students and I believe that this budget is a purely student-centered budget that allows us to address the most urgent needs of our students. It's continuing to accelerate their learning addressing their social emotional and mental health needs their behavioral health needs and making sure that we're providing success successful outcomes for all kids.

▶ 12:02 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you to your both are there counselors with questions? counselor garapay

▶ 12:10 Mark Garipay: Thank you. Thank you Andrew. Thank you, Dr. Krueger. Thank you for your time this afternoon. Do have a couple questions one is regarding the the SR funds the presented to us. In The Proposal how many positions are included right now being funded to yes, sir. Esther funds and Of those positions. What what is the plan as the grants expire to absorb those within the budget?

▶ 12:40 Speaker 2: Great question. You've probably heard of a lot of districts adding significant numbers of positions through their Sr funds. This is something that we've been really cautious about because we want to make sure that we're not creating a fiscal cliff and you know, when the funds aren't out, we're coming to you and saying, okay now we need to increase the budget by the significant amount when you look at page four of the initial memo that's in the left side of your folder if you still have an organized that way The positions here. None of them are full-time employees and that's intentional as well. Because any time we fund employees through grants. We have to then pay additional mtrs. And obviously we want to maximize the potential of of that grant funding. So these 12 substitutes that you see here. We call them daily student supports at the beginning of the pandemic. We knew that it was going to be critical to make sure that we had people in our building supporting our students that new our covid protocols that had been trained on those protocols and that we're reliable because we couldn't do what we typically have done before the pandemic which is we have a list of people who every morning the principles would go down the list and call are you available today? Are you available today? Can you come in today? That wasn't going to be the best method? So we shifted to this model of daily student supports still part-time position. So they're not benefits eligible. We increase the pay to be more competitive because our sub rate was I think $80 when I started here. and so now it's a hundred and ten dollars and We we could guarantee them a consistent schedule either two days a week or three days a week and so basically principles would get in a 1.0 full-time equivalent, but it would be to two different people right and that consistent schedule was such a stress reliever because principles knew Julie's coming Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Jen's coming Thursday Friday. I know I have at least one person in the building for coverage. Our goal was to hire three. Full-time equivalents using the answer funds that never came to fruition. We were never able to recruit that many people but we plan to continue this model of Subs because we on a daily basis. We always need at least one person to cover meetings to cover a class and we believe that that consistency someone who knows our buildings knows our way of doing things is really important. So it's a significant investment here, but it's not when when this money goes away. We've already started this year putting more money into our sub line. We'll just gradually transition to our sub line and it won't probably be at the same high level the first year that I worked in the district. We had just seventy thousand dollars budgeted for Subs, which quick math tells you that's not enough even if you just needed one sub in the district each and every day, so we're trying to be more listed realistic about the need and using these Esser funds to offset that So that's the one thing the other positions you see here are the academic interventionists. So at the beginning Of the Esser funding this year. We put additional academic interventionists in each of the buildings because we knew we would need to accelerate student learning and we knew that more students would need that small group targeted support. We already had some in the building that are funded through Title One grants. These These are additional and based on what our student learning data is looking like at the elementary level. Our teachers have done an awesome job accelerating learning. We're presenting that on Tuesday night. It's definitely worth a listen. I couldn't be prouder of the progress that our students have made and so I can see us doing one of two things thinking about redefining kind of what academic intervention is to do in our building to support our kids and or going back to our pre-pandemic model, which was that there's interventionists and every building but just not as many as we're providing right now. And then the other things that you see budgeted here aren't positions. We were intentional about that. We know that we're going to have these computer licenses that need to be renewed when Esser money's run out, but we're being each year kind of phasing more and more back into the operating budget so that we don't have a big Cliff coming forward and that's you can see that even here. I'm telling you. I'm projecting what we're doing with Esther funds and fy23 and you can see what's left to be scheduled in fy24 and we still have a little bit of wig over for some unexpected things that could happen in the next two years.

▶ 17:14 Speaker 4: Great. Thank you.

▶ 17:19 Mark Garipay: I also noticed in the elementary schools. There's some fluctuation increases decreases in the director salaries. And is is that just reallocation of resources? Yep schools were

▶ 17:34 Speaker 4: decreased consider

▶ 17:36 Speaker 2: ably sure. Yeah, there's really two things that are happening there in our smaller Schools Franklin Hoover Horace, man. They have just one administrator. They're building principal we do but they have special ed coordinators that service the building on a regular basis those special ed coordinators were housed at central office. When I first started in the district this year the principles even though their schools are smaller. They still have you know, 280 to 300 students and staff in their buildings every day one of the new investment proposals that was shift to low priority was to add like a point five assistant principle at these small buildings. That wasn't something that we were going to bring forward. It wasn't even in our initial proposal. So what we did instead was we took those special ed coordinators who are administrators and place them in the building. So there's one at Hoover now one at Horseman and one that's housed at the Franklin to be that second administrator. If and when the principal needs to be at Our office for a meeting or is out or anything like that and the second part of that. So we're just correcting it and saying they really should be charged to that school that they serve and also the teamsters that's the bargaining group that includes special ed coordinators directors and assistant principals. They just settled their contract last year. So there was a some pay adjustment. based on their new scale

▶ 19:00 Speaker 4: if we can just go to.

▶ 19:03 Mark Garipay: special ed

▶ 19:10 Mark Garipay: NF why 20 and 21

▶ 19:15 Mark Garipay: he spent well, I spent 2.6 roughly in 21. We budgeted one for and 22 spent 2.9. We only have 1.5 budgeted for 2023 a week under funding that and will the school department be coming back to the to the city for additional funds halfway through the year. Should we be increasing that right now or?

▶ 19:39 Speaker 2: Sure, that's a great question. We're watching. So these these two line items that you're mentioning the tuition collaborative and the tuition on public those are out of District placements. And so we have projections and we think about our projections in three ways. We have our known students who are already placed out of District. We have sort of our Unknown Known. So these are students who you know, we're working with families or maybe there's a request or there's a need but they aren't yet placed out of district and then we have our unknowns. These are students who we don't know yet who might move into Melrose already with an out of District placement. So we take all of that into consideration when we're making our budget protections and our asks, and so I think the best thing to do here counselor Gary P would be to look at these two line items together and total them and you'll see that in the fy23 budget. It's around the same amount of money around that three million dollar Mark. We're just splitting it evenly between those two types of placements and that can be adjusted as we Onto the budget throughout the year once we know actual enrollment numbers.

▶ 20:44 Mark Garipay: Okay. Thank you. And

▶ 20:50 Mark Garipay: revolving accounts Athletics in music eventually, I'd love to get to a point where we don't have to charge anything for for sports and and for garage. Do we usually carry a balance in the revolving account? So we draw them down?

▶ 21:12 Speaker 2: every year it depends on the account. So right now like in our food service account, we have a balance in our athletic and music accounts. There's little money in there. We do try to when we're calculating the offsets. So the budget is made up of of a few main parts, right? There's the Chapter 70 money. That's the money that we get from the state. There's our offsets. That's the money that we collect through various Revenue sources tuition these types of fees that you're mentioning circuit breaker is part of that offset and then there's the cities appropriation and so for us we're always looking at the that portion of the offsets and saying okay how much have we earned in the last five years in each of these areas? How much have we pulled from revolving accounts? How much do we need to leave in the revolving like circuit breaker? We don't we don't empty that out. So to speak and pull that all into our our budget each year. We try to leave a little bit of a buffer because that changes each year. And enrollment numbers so we do pretty much spend it down. If is the right way to think about it each year for for the music fees and for the athletic fees and we agree with you. We wish that we didn't have to charge fees either. In fact, we brought a proposal before the school committee to eliminate the instrumental music fees that happened during the school day, but that's a hundred thousand dollar investment. So if that's a goal of the city, we have to kind of take a look at it as over several years so that it's not one big impact on the budget all at once but maybe we can start to chip away at it and I know our visual Performing Arts director who in this budget we take from 0.6 full-time equivalent to a 1.0 just sent me an email the other day and he's like I'm not giving up yet had are there any grants out there that we could find to help cover this cost? Because we really are one of the only districts that charges that fee for something that happens during the school day. And then there's different philosophies and schools of thought about things that happen after the school day that are optional and choice but we do have scholarship funds for any family who's not able to cover those costs. It becomes particularly hard, even for families who are financially stable if they have three four five children. So we we do

▶ 23:29 Speaker 5: have a cap a family cap.

▶ 23:31 Mark Garipay: I mean, I'd also like to get to the point where on the facilities revolving account, which is the rentals of the gymnasium and I'd like to try to get some sort of agreement between the city and the schools where We can fund throw some more money towards the schools so we can not have to charge direct Department, which actually in turn is. Is charging the residents and you know, we need to get the kids active. So anything we can do to love to be involved to try to figure out a way to to work that out so we can so we we can do the fee that gets back charged back to the city which in return gets charged to the residents. So I know it's it's been like that for years and I know a lot of people probably in this building don't might not like me saying that but I think we got to find a way to do whatever we can to reduce the costs for our rec programs and you're buildings are the city building but they run by run by the schools are a big part of that. So I would be more than happy to work and so we can to try to help with that in order to get the get direct Department pleasure bless her fees great. Those are all the questions I have right now. Thank you.

▶ 24:57 Robb Stewart: Thank you counselor Stewart. Thank you madam chair. Thank you, Ms. McAndrews and Dr. Cuckenberger for being here tonight also. Thank you for putting together very well formed package nice and organized very helpful. The one piece of information that really jumps out on the page at me is the dramatic increase in Chapter 70, which is great. It's very helpful to providing budget Force and and offsets. A lot of things. The question that I have for you tonight is even in looking at the numbers. And the historical numbers of Chapter 70 it it seems like it's an overcompensation for trying to make up right and I know there were level-funded for a year and then it was slow.

▶ 25:51 Robb Stewart: I just want to get your perspective on how that's going to impact. Subsequent years and the budgeting that we plan this year and the example that I'm giving is do we expect that chapter 7 is going to stay at that level or is it going to drop back? Do we have plans for when it gets dry if it does indeed drop back and how that impact us, not for 23, but for 24 and 25

▶ 26:15 Speaker 2: Great questions. So in your packet on the right side. The second to last packet on the right side is a memo about the student Opportunity Act. So the reason why we're seeing such an increase here in Chapter 70 is that implementation of the of the student Opportunity Act. So we do expect to see this level of funding for the next few years and what I was required to do like any other superintendent in the Commonwealth was to submit a plan for how are we going to use these additional funds and so we could have thought about what we wanted to add in terms of new positions and things like that. But that in my opinion wouldn't be the most fiscally responsible thing to do what we were able to do in the revision of the student Opportunity Act plan that Desi put out this year. So we had submitted one the former superintendent had submitted a plan and then we we had the opportunity to revise it. So we went into those indicators that are in the on the last page there and we said what are we already doing that we can calculate in terms of? For SOA money so that we're not just adding more to the budget and creating something that would be unsustainable for the city. But rather we're connecting the dots to the good work that we're already doing that aligns to these evidence-based practices because we're well in our way here in Melrose. We didn't need a big a whole new plan to take us in a different direction. We just need something to kind of Grease the wheels and keep us rolling, right? So that's what our SOA plan does for us. And also in this in this plan submission. I was able to identify other things that align to these evidence-based practices that the city is investing in through our chapter seventy funds but also through free cash or grants and other funding sources, so it really does take a more holistic look at all of our budget our whole budget and I'm hopeful that when the department sees how districts are using that money that that'll lead to further changes in the funding formula so that we can maintain this high level of programming.

▶ 28:20 Robb Stewart: In our schools, great. Thank you. the other question ahead is and I'm sorry don't know this, but the The new negotiations with teachers union. When is that? When do we expect that to happen one? It's

▶ 28:35 Speaker 2: actively happening. Now. The school committee has been has been negotiating. I think today was the 12th session that they've had and because of the pandemic we actually have three contracts up right now. Our para contract is up for a renewal our teacher contract or Unit A. That's all of our certified staff. Our largest bargaining group is up at the end of this year and so is transportation. And so that's actively happening now and what we do is we budget for known contractual obligations. So that's those steps in Lanes. I was talking about even if we had a zero percent increase in cost of living that is a guarantee. We already have agreed to those things. And then we again Project based on what funding is available. What's a reasonable amount to allocate towards negotiating within the limits and the constraints of what? City can support and handle and we also know that Melrose has a very small commercial base. So every dollar we're putting in this budget is coming out of a taxpayer's pocket. And so we take that responsibility very seriously and try to balance, you know, compensating our employees in a way that keeps them competitive without creating a budget that's unsustainable or an untenable burden on our taxpayers.

▶ 29:55 Robb Stewart: And and does does inflation impact. These negotiations as we're seeing as we're all seeing right now.

▶ 30:05 Speaker 2: Sure, I think I mean it affects the individuals when we're talking about negotiations. We're talking about our people right our employees and we have over 600 employees who make school happen every day for our kids. So, of course, you know, I know that they're feeling the the strain of of the cost of living the inflation the prices of gas for myself. I have a little Nissan Murano and the other day it was over a hundred dollars when I filled it up and I almost passed out at the gas station. That was the first time I've ever experienced that right and so our teachers are feeling that too. And so when it comes down to say, okay, what's my value? What's my worth in terms of compensation? Of course, that's part of the conversation but there's no like formula that triggers a certain increase if

▶ 30:50 Robb Stewart: that's what you mean. Yeah. I'm just I'm mostly concerned with is it going to impact the numbers that you put forward to us right now or if you compensated for that?

▶ 31:00 Speaker 2: So I would not be able to the school committee would not be able to negotiate monies that are not approved in this budget so that this becomes the four walls if you will or the limit of what we're able to do and that those are hard conversations to have but of course, you know anyone who's ever negotiated contracts. It's always where it ends up.

▶ 31:19 Jennifer McAndrew: If I could just add to that I would just add that and thank you for that question counselor Stewart that the inflation picture impacts the entire school budget as it does the entire city budget not just the contract and so we're you know that includes for example Food Services transportation and really everything that the district buys and is buying so we're thinking about that across the district and being very careful in our budgeting across the district including in the contract negotiations.

▶ 31:52 Speaker 2: Disagree and one other point to add to that that was very well said when you look at Transportation costs under special education because most of our children walk to school. You know, one thing I'm thinking about is when we set this budget the war in Ukraine hadn't started yet and we weren't seeing fuel costs as high as they are but we were already seeing very high Transportation costs. So that is one of those unknowns or moving Parts in this budget that we just don't know yet like how great great that impact will be

▶ 32:21 Robb Stewart: Based on this information. Do you think that if things continue to go that way they are going you may need to come back to us.

▶ 32:32 Speaker 6: for additional funding

▶ 32:34 Speaker 2: I mean, I never want to plan on that or prepare a budget that that plans on that the other thing that that that's happening in the school budget. All the time is we're constantly hiring so we have sometimes what's called breakage where we have a position in the budget. It could be someone at you know, a certain step in Lane that person leaves the district for whatever reason and then we have the opportunity to hire and you know, when when the best candidate is also a more affordable candidate. Obviously we try to do that and that's what allows us to balance the budget throughout the year. So I wouldn't want to say yes, we're definitely probably gonna you know, we're definitely coming back. But of course anything could happen when we're talking about a human organization serving humans and uncontrollable external costs, but we do have we will constantly be looking at you know, what have we budgeted what have we spent today? And what are we projecting moving forward? We never

▶ 33:30 Jen Grigoraitis: stop doing that. Good good. Thank you. I have counselor Karm chady and then do I have anyone else in q?

▶ 33:39 Manjula Karamcheti: First thank you for being here and thank you for all the time energy and effort that goes into proposing the school budget. I was able to view a lot of the school committee meeting. So I don't have a ton of questions. I do want to say that I really appreciate the budget theme of you've mental health Etc accelerating learning outcomes for all students and social social emotional well-being for all I think where we are as a community these things are imperative for the schools and for the city and for our kids so definitely appreciate the theme. And I'm able to you know, going through the budget and the new positions, you know, I'm able to see the connection between the theme and what's been added. I think the one thing I have a question about is diversity Equity inclusion and belonging being in such an important part of Youth mental health accelerating learning outcomes and social emotional well-being what I don't see is any direct sort of line items related to that in additional positions or anything and noticing in the SOA that culturally responsive teaching and other strategies to create Equity is one of our priority goals as is diversifying the educator administrator Workforce. So I guess what I'm interested in is Given, there are no line items in the budget or positions. How do you see us reaching those goals?

▶ 35:12 Speaker 2: Those are great questions. So Tuesday night's going to be a jam-packed evening. We're going to present on our progress towards our strategy which speaks to those things very clearly in the district. Currently. We are using all of our human resources to do to achieve those goals, right? So we have a culturally responsive practices cohort of teachers that have been meeting all your long and will continue to meet and expand and add a new cohort next year. We have a culture responsive Leadership Academy cohort, which is administrators from the district that have been participating and that's funded through a grant so there's no line item here that's calling that out specifically last year. We invested in a de I shared Dei coordinator position. So that's in the operating budget, but it's not called out as a new investment. We'll continue. That work our leadership team through our contracted services and professional development lines. We worked with a consultant from the equity process and principles directors assistant superintendents and myself met monthly for our own internal leadership Equity PLC where the consultant really pushes us and challenges our thinking and thinking about these topics and we're also able to bring problems of practice to the table and kind of work it like a consultancy group that that has been invaluable that work will continue next year. So it's not a new investment and you know, honestly, it's so embedded in everything that we do every dollar that you're putting in this budget is working toward achieving those goals. If you were to look at principles individual professional practice goals, you would see multiple principles having a goal around establishing creating cultivating a sense of belonging for students and staff through various strategic actions. So It's just not it's not a side thing for us. It's what we do. We know it's our forever work. And so our job is to take the resources we have and make sure it aligns to that strategy and we're actually living it each and every day.

▶ 37:16 Manjula Karamcheti: And you feel like you have what you need to for to lead that work given if it is embedded. It's sort of you know, as a superintendent as an assistant superintendent the principles where multiple hats and do multiple things. Like is there the time to really work towards embedding that work with no one sort of In that position to lead it.

▶ 37:40 Speaker 2: So we have lots of leaders who are leading different aspects of that work the culturally proficients. The culturally responsive practices cohort is Led. This year was led by Jess Patty who's our director of social-emotional learning and Lori Greenwood who's our 612 math coordinator the Dei task force that we have that I didn't mention earlier was co-led this year by Dr. Margaret Adams and Jess Patty our SEO coordinator. Jess is a big lead for us because of the way we think about social emotional learning and and how important sense of belonging it is. And inclusion is in order to create that safe learning environment, Jess Patty also LED with Tim Daly who's our six twelve social studies coordinator a black lives matter book club with teachers, and if you were to look at our professional development plan for the summer alone, you would see so much evidence of the way that we're called to building capacity so that we it's not Be the job of one person right? It's the job of all of us and we all have equal ownership, even though we're in different places on our journey. We can step up and lead or be vulnerable and learn alongside our colleagues. So that's more our approach to it. We do have that designated Dei coordinator who has really helped us lunch Affinity groups this year for staff and students has done some professional development with our team around implicit bias and hiring practices. We wrote a whole new hiring handbook this year and every single hiring committee that we bring together. We start with implicit bias training of anyone who's on it parents if you participated in that modula as well students that everybody gets trained and then we Implement practices based on feedback from each hiring committee to improve that so It's happening in so many places I could really we could talk about this for days, but I am 100% confident that. We have the resources. We need to continue to to move the needle and maintain the momentum, but more importantly we have the commitment from our Educators our leaders and our classroom level Educators to make this a priority and we're even working on our own, you know creating Norms so that we can safely call each other out when we observe unconscious by a certain implicit bias in our in our day-to-day work.

▶ 40:05 Jennifer McAndrew: And if I could just add one thing to that and thank you for that question counselor. I think the other as a school Committee Member, I see all of that work from from the team reflected throughout all of their practice at all grade levels and at all schools and it really is very present in their presentations to us and in the work that we see in the reports that we get. I would just add that one aspect and maybe invite the superintendent to say just a little bit more that we're also thinking about deij and the context of our curriculum materials and those Investments which are often very big Investments for the district and thinking about the it's not just like Ela it's not just reading and books. It's also, you know in the throughout all of the curriculum math social studies Etc. And even in foreign language, in fact, we're you know, our foreign language our Global languages department is King a lot about diversity and even changes in how they they're teaching practice occurs. So I would just say that that's another place where you wouldn't see like deij materials called out in the curriculum materials because it's embedded in all of our curriculum materials in all of our curriculum review purchases. And I know we have that is a line item and also a request before the council. So I just want to invite you to maybe mention something about about materials and how we're thinking about DJ in that context.

▶ 41:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, and we've done we've made significant Investments through grants and through the operating budget to purchase more. Reflective literature and we talk a lot about like not only creating windows and mirrors but sliding glass doors. So meeting each educator where they are the other day. I was in I was at the winter school on Monday supporting the staff of course and working with the principal but I was covering a fifth grade class and the social studies book that they have is copyright from 2000. And so I was a little shocked by that definitely looks like it's 22 years old. Lots of lots of hands have used that book. And so I talked to the teacher about how is this supporting your instruction? Because we were talking about the branches of government and she said we've done a lot we've moved away from using that as like the core text but there are still some things like the branches of government that I can use that text and it's a really good concrete source for students to have in their hands. But in other ways, we've either created our own materials accessed online materials, but what I really appreciated she said and when we come across a term or you know, it's still will reference like Indians in the in the in the book. She used that as an example. We use it as a talking point in the classroom and we talk about how does that feel to see that and usually it's the students pointing it out because they have this has been their experience right by the time they're in fifth grade here in the Melrose Public Schools there. They're already well on their way of being Invest in many ways and we see that through their Capstone projects. I mean if you if I were just to pull up the eighth grade civics project topics. You would be like, okay, it's there it because I could tell you all day long what we're doing as the adults but the real evidence is what are our kids saying? What are our kids doing? What projects are they choosing when they have choice to research Something That Matters to them and can positively impact others. So those are just a few ways that it's living and proving to be effective in our curriculum. Thank you for the both of you

▶ 43:46 Manjula Karamcheti: for those very thoughtful answers. So the only other question I had is somewhat again related to the same topic of Dei and belonging but it's actually related to Athletics and if this isn't the right time, then you know, we can always move it to another thing, but I have definitely gotten sort of reports from students and families about some of the inequities in terms of Athletics in terms. Of like funding and field time and sort of I guess I'm interested in sort of how the athletic budget is developed and then within that in terms of thinking about again opportunities to have kind of like counselor garapay was saying more students involved and more students moving. What are the the ways in which we can expand our offerings.

▶ 44:35 Speaker 2: Sure. so One of the things that we do when we're making decisions is we look at what data do we have? And what is what is the data actually saying about field access is one of those things that oftentimes will be brought up about Fred Green. I'll use just as an example. And so my when I hear that question, I'll say to Stephen. Can you show me the actual numbers of when our you know female identifying Sports versus male identifying Sports accessing the field and I don't have that data right in front of me. I wish I did but I certainly can share that with you and what we learn is that there's the feeling that you know, our male athletes are having more access to Fred Green than our female athletes, but the data doesn't bear that out. And so just that awareness and knowing that when Mr. Fogerty scheduling he's that is something he's cognizant of is one way and again that doesn't take more money it takes time it takes skill and that's the professional development right and those having those conversations one of the things that we want to do. So and Steven and I have been talking about this is we want to do a Title Nine audit. I think that's a good way again to get the evidence and say okay. What is what are the facts so that when we go to implement an improvement we make sure we're solving the right problem and it's not just one that's based on perceptions or feelings or any one the person who happens to be bringing it to our attention instead. We're looking at it in a more holistic way.

▶ 46:06 Speaker 2: Thank you very much.

▶ 46:08 Jen Grigoraitis: Any other counselors with questions before I jump in with just one? All right, two comments and one question. The first is to say because this is our final night of budget hearings that you absolutely win the prize for most comprehensive materials. I really do appreciate I think we all do having a paper copy and the Melrose branding is very nice. I also just wanted to acknowledge since you mentioned Dr. Adams that I know she's moving on probably at the end of this month and just personally to say how wonderful it has been to have her in our district. And I know she's been before this body. So please give her our thanks. And then the one question I had was I wanted to bring it back to special education and was hoping you could talk a little bit about some of the positions that are in here because I really see a theme around trying to keep all of our Learners including our most specialized Learners in District. And I think that really to me weaves together what counselor Stewart was talking about of trying to mitigate some of those costs like transportation that we have no control over while also what counselor Here Pay was highlighting trying to keep all of our kids in our community, which I think is incredibly important that they're in school with Peers with their neighbors with the kids they've grown up with so could you talk a little bit about what some of these positions are doing to kind of help us? Keep those Learners in District? Yeah.

▶ 47:21 Speaker 2: Thank you for that question. So Physicians that you see in in the budget are what we call required Investments because they are essential to us meeting our students' IEP IEPs and an IEP is an individualized education plan that a student that a team of Educators along with the parents and the student one possible form together to determine what are the accommodations modifications services and supports that a student will need in order to have to access their free and appropriate education which every student has a right to and so in order to for us to do that. We have to make sure that we have adequate Staffing levels two things that we're seeing is that At the preschool level our numbers of students coming in requiring individualized Education Services. So that could be anything from speech to otpt academic support emotional support social support is as high high now before the school year has started as a typically has been when the year ends and you know at that age level students are always turning three and coming to us because they as soon as they turn three we want them as early as possible because that's how we best support them and give them the tools they need to be successful. But it's also a huge financial a huge return on investment, right? So for like every dollar we spend at the preschool level. It's like a return of nine plus probably higher now. SmartWatches, I they're like distracting right daughter softball coach. So this year we have already known 41 or 42 three and four year olds coming to us requiring those kind of specialized Services. That's why you're seeing an additional preschool teacher here part of what the opening up this preschool classroom does for us. It also gives us more space to invite typically developing peers who are tuition paying peers. This position will pay for itself and then some and so it's a it's a no-brainer investment and plus every minute we have with our kids. We're saving off what longer term needs they might need. So we're really excited about that and to have that additional position at the ECC the TLC position that you see so the TLC is getting rebranded so that it aligns with our programs all the way up through postgrad. So the DLC which is our developmental Learning Center. So these are students who have varying neurodiverse needs some might have like an Autism Spectrum. Disorder diagnosis of varying levels some may be nonverbal and be using communication Tools in order to communicate with with their peers and with their teachers and paraprofessionals. This program is such an asset to Melrose. We started it several years ago and it has grown over time every single one of those students that's able to be serviced in that program also has the opportunity to be included in their mainstream classrooms with their typically developing peers. So they get this intensive support in service and a small group mostly one-on-one setting and then they also get to be in the classroom with their peers when it's appropriate and beneficial for them. And of course, it's beneficial for their peers as well. So we need an additional teacher for that program because the numbers are up. We have 17 students projected for next year three students that were in the program are moving to the Middle School. We're reestablishing that program at the middle school. With existing staff, so we're just reallocating there. But what we're learning is that in order for us to best serve these students and allow them to have maximum access to that inclusive learning environment. It's a lot of preparation and planning so a student might be in a classroom for 40 minutes for a math lesson, but the teacher the special ed teacher in the Gen ed teacher need to collaborate they need to determine what materials what's the access point? So that student can access that age appropriate grade level curriculum, which is also what we know. We know the research makes very clear is how we accelerate learning so that has been incredible. So that's the other position and then the fourth or the third position is at the high school. It's a special ed teacher. We're looking for kind of a magical unicorn that will be special ed certified and math certified so that we can provide that targeted support to students in that specific content area and that will add to the the whole special ed team at the high school.

▶ 51:54 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you for that. That's really helpful Vice chairmanly

▶ 51:58 Leila Migliorelli: before I motion to move the bottom line. I just want to say thank you. This is just hearing what you just said to a lot of thoughtful work that goes into planning a budget that in my just personal opinion you you need way more resources for and I you know, I think I like to see it very thoughtfully, you know with the themes and adding people strategically at you know, I I can just imagine there's so much more you would love to do if you have the resources and in my opinion, I think public education is just chronically underfunded so really thank you for for doing all this hard work and for the school committees full and thorough processing betting this budget before it comes to us. So with that I just like to make a motion to move

▶ 52:40 Jen Grigoraitis: the bottom line Second so we have a motion to move the bottom line on Department 300 made by Vice chairman seconded by counselor Stewart. Is there any discussion

▶ 52:48 Speaker 6: Seeing none Mr. Clark. Can you please call the roll? Vice chair maclarelli. Yes. Counselor McMaster. Yes Council. Gerepe. Yes counselor Stewart. Yes Council crime Shady. Yes. President sonella. Yes and Cherry gradus.

▶ 53:04 Jen Grigoraitis: That is seven. Yes, seven. Yes. And so that bottom line is moved. Thank you both very much. And if you'll bear with us for one moment we can there is a free cash order before us related to the school. So I was hoping we could take care of that while we have Dr. Cucumberger and Sharon McAndrews. So, is there a motion to take order 2022-137 out of order so moved?