Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2018-05-21
Attendance
Manisha Bewtra ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Scott M. Forbes ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Kate Lipper-Garabedian ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Participation
- Departmental Budget Hearing May 21, 2018
- Orders
- ORDER-2018-183 : City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2019 in the amount of $79,399,945.73 (Seventy-Nine Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Nine Thousand, Nine Hundred Forty-Five Dollars and Seventy-Three Cents).
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MAY 21, 2018 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Budget Hearing 7:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Jennifer L. Lemmerman Chair Present Scott M. Forbes Vice Chair Present Peter D. Mortimer Ward 6 Alderman Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Manisha Bewtra Alderman at Large Present Kate Lipper-Garabedian Alderman at Large Present Shawn M. MacMaster Ward 5 Alderman Present Michael P. Zwirko President/ Ex-officio Member Present
ORDER-2018-183 Operating Budgets (City, School, Regional School) City of Melrose Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2019 in the amount of $79,399,945.73 (Seventy-Nine Million, Three Hundred Ninety-Nine Thousand, Nine Hundred Forty-Five Dollars and Seventy-Three Cents). Appropriations Committee City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 5/22/2018 3:08 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Good evening. The hour being 730 on May 21st, 2018. I call to order the Appropriations Committee of the Melrose Board of Aldermen. This meeting is being recorded by MMTV. It is available online as well on the MMTV website and the City of Melrose website. I am the chair, Alderman Lemmerman. I am joined tonight by committee members Alderman Forbes, Alderman Mortimer, Alderman Boisselle, Alderman Tramontozzi, Alderman Wright, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman Buccia, Alderman Lipper-Garabedian, Alderman McMaster, and President Zwirko. A few notes before we begin this evening. I noticed that we have a few more people in the chamber than we've had in some past nights, and so I wanted to reiterate some process housekeeping that I mentioned during our first budget hearing,
▶ 0:53 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: which really is just that Information on fiscal procedures for the Board of Aldermen can be found in article 6 of the city charter But there are two important pieces that I just wanted to note which is that the board must adopt a city operating budget within 45 days of when it is sent down by the mayor's office and That the board can delete or decrease an amount of any item in the budget. We cannot increase any item any any difference if we were to decrease an item in the budget would go back to the mayor to be reallocated public comment happens at every meeting and we encourage it and welcome it the rules of order limit comment to 10 minutes per speaker and comment must be relevant to the items that are on the
▶ 1:39 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: agenda for the evening and that pertains to us as well as the deliberating alderman and also to note that there will be a public hearing on this particular budget in addition to any public comment we do during our meetings and that's on June 4th at 8 p.m. in addition Thorp a water and sewer public hearing scheduled for June 7th at 8 p.m. as well as an ambulance fund public hearing which is I'm sorry what date was that June 11th at 8 p.m. as well thank you okay is there a motion to open the floor moved madam second we have a motion to open the floor for public comment by Alderman Mortimer second by alderman forbes all in favor aye any opposed this is now the portion of the meeting where any member of the public can come before us to speak on the items before us on the agenda
▶ 2:30 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: is there anyone wishing to speak this evening motion to close public participation madam chairman we have a motion to close public participation by alderman mortimer second by alderman Boisselle all in favor any opposed it's now closed and we will move to the one item we have on our agenda which is order 2018-183 the city of melrose operating budget for fiscal year 2019 in the amount of 79 million three hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred forty five dollars and seventy three cents we do have uh that two budget hearings on our agenda this evening i will note um before we dive into those that we do have a full board meeting this evening as well it's scheduled to start at 7 45 anticipate we will still be deliberating in the appropriations
▶ 3:22 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: committee at that point we of course our rules allow for a half hour cushion to start a meeting from its scheduled time however we do have two public hearings on the agenda this evening unrelated to this they are national grid items at 8 and 8 15 so we will have to recess the Appropriations Committee by about 10 of in order to have time to start the full board meeting and get to those public hearings and we will return if need be after after that the first department we have on our agenda this evening is 399 vocational school and Essex Aggie it's in the amount of eight hundred thousand ninety four dollars and we have Jay Pecone with us this evening to speak on that do we have a motion to suspend the rules madam chair second motion to
▶ 4:11 suspend the rules by Alderman Mortimer seconded by Alderman Poicelle all in favor we'd like to invite you up please good evening good evening madam chairman thank you for being here good evening my name is Henry Hooten and I'm the Melrose elected official at the vocational school I represent city of Melrose on the school committee and any questions I know we're here for the budget I wanted discuss the budget and any questions pertaining to the budget we'll answer before I begin I'd like to turn it over and introduce you to mr. David DeBarry our superintendent on my next right next to me and James for calling the business manager as well I wish to explain somewhat very quickly what is going on
▶ 5:19 at the vocational school first of all you're aware of the fact that the vocational school is built right behind wakefield school so that's what we know second it was built in 1968 which means Thorp a lot of infrastructure that's wearing down and everything else however that's another issue that these gentlemen will talk about there are two factors that we have have to deal with one is the minimum contribution which is given to us by the state we have no control over that and the other is the total assessment that is the minimum minimum contribution plus any budgetary things that we have to offer this year the budget minimum contribution went down is now six hundred thousand dollars in for four hundred and fourteen dollars is a
▶ 6:17 decrease of ninety eight thousand six hundred and twelve dollars on the total assessment which is what we all we have to end up paying last year it was seven hundred ninety two thousand dollars approximately this year it's six hundred in eighty four thousand dollars approximately which is a decrease of about one hundred and eight thousand dollars this thing this part of the budget includes transportation and other factors involved in the budget so you can see that there are two things that from a financial standpoint Melrose has decreased this aspect of the budget primarily because of the fact that we only have we have eight less children going to the vocational school than we had last year
▶ 7:09 other towns have their population has really increased up at the vocational school and they are assuming larger assessments we have roughly 293 students that are going to be graduating in about two weeks up there 11 are from Melrose. This year, 21 students have applied for acceptance at the vocational school. I don't say that all of them will either get in or be eligible or choose to end up there, but 21 is a bigger number than what we've been dealing with. We accept students in grade 9 and grade 10 another factor I think we should understand is what is being taught at the vocational school first of all we are offering vocational programs such as auto body auto technology business technology carpentry cosmetology
▶ 8:21 culinary arts dental assistant drafting and design design and visual communication early childhood health assistant health and ventilation metal fabrication plumbing and robotics for the first time we offer robotics no the second year we've offered a robotics what was happening in the past is youngsters were expressing a desire to take robotics and we're leaving melrose and picking a school that had strictly robotics which meant that the city of melrose was paying for transportation and other aspects of the individual's tuition we now have our own robotics program which we hope to save money on as well the other thing i want to say too is last year we were very fortunate that we had a lottery and the lottery indicated that the city of melrose
▶ 9:25 was going to receive as eligible receive a ten thousand dollars worth of labor in regard to the vocational school and what they're planning to do is is what the mayor that was here previously wanted a sign program so we're probably designing a sign program for that factor so we we are doing a lot of things up there and i'll let these gentlemen tell you about what exactly is in the budget thank you thank you madam chair so as mr hooten said i'm currently superintendent at northeast and we like to refer to northeast as also melrose's other high school i'm just going to take a minute because i'd like to save time at the end for questions but historically I've been able to come up here and give you some examples of
▶ 10:17 some of the progress we've made in the past year and and and I'd like to do that right now this year 68 of our students received the Abigail Adam scholarship based on their MCAS scores in their merit of those students we had two Melrose juniors who received that award Andrew Durant and Michael Iacone very proud of those boys as Henry had mentioned earlier we also implemented a robotics and automation program the most important part of that implementation as it has to do with our budget is it was 100% grant funded so we were able to use funding from our Perkins grant to get the program up and going and most recently we received a grant from the governor's office a capital skills grant to further equip the shop so the majority I'd say 99% of the the funding
▶ 11:17 going forward into next year is also from these grants every year we compete in a contest it's called skills USA it's an amazing contest that's in a national competition we compete regionally winners go forward they compete on a state level and then if we're lucky going forward students can compete on a national level this year has been our best year we received four gold medals in the state competition which means those students will go on to compete in the national competition in Louisville so it's a very exciting time within the school one of the the last things I always like to talk about is our dropout rate as of this year we are one-tenth of a percent of a dropout as our dropout rate one of the highest in the state I think that's really important when I
▶ 12:12 talk about these last statistics that over 21% of our students are on IEPs 51% of our students are considered high needs 36% are considered economically disadvantaged so when you compare similar towns and similar schools with those high rates and we look at our dropout rate in our high rate of the out of Abigail Adams scholarships and some of the other great things our kids achieve we're real proud of them so I will move on to the fun stuff that the budget for mr. Picone to present thank you so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the budget process what we go through on an annual basis so the goal of the FY 19 budget and the goal of any budget that we set to create is we have two goals in mind we want to minimize financial impact to
▶ 13:06 our member communities and we understand we're a partner in this with with all our communities we don't want to increase the assessment past a point where it'd be uncomfortable for our cities and towns we understand you're under the guise of prop two and a half considering how much revenue you can raise on an annual basis and that's constrained I know Melrose is a 96% residential tax base so the amount of revenue that you can raise on an annual basis is limited and I understand we also understand that and we're very cognizant of the fact that you have other departments that need to be funded fully so when we put together our budget we want to make sure that we're taking those things into consideration all the while we want to provide an adequate
▶ 13:50 level of funding to support student learning and foster educational excellence because ultimately that's what we're here to do as Melrose's other school we want to provide an excellent education for the students of Melrose that come to Northeast so regionalization exists by definition to offer services that are reduced costs to the member communities and our initial budget goal when we set out we want to keep our assessment costs at or below a three percent increase which is a four hundred and twenty three thousand dollars in the last year I'm happy to report that our actual assessment increase we're able to keep at three hundred thirty six thousand one one seven which is a two point two eight percent increase now it is a slight
▶ 14:41 uptick in the total assessment cost but there are considerable amount of operating costs that exist in this budget that did not exist in previous budgets and I'll get into that in a little bit so we were able to realize this small assessment increased by two factors and both come from state funding our chapter 70 formula FY 19 indicates we're projected to receive nine million five ninety seven 852 of chapter 70 funding and our transportation reimbursement is projected to be eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars so why that's significant and our chapter 70 funding going to nine million five ninety seven eight fifty two that's four hundred and forty five thousand dollars more than we received in chapter 70 last year then our budgeted aid that we
▶ 15:39 received in FY 18 so we're gonna use all of that to offset the member communities assessments which we did in the FY 19 budget we also intend and we did use the $880,000 which is equates to around 72% reimbursement for regional transportation is exclusive to regionals we're reimbursed on our transportation costs at a 72% rate so that $880,000 it was also used to offset the FY 19 budget and additionally we intend to use 1.4 million dollars from our other funding sources to further reduce the assessment costs now in this operating budget we We have $1 million in operating costs that is attributed to the fact that we've just been invited to the MSBA program. That $1 million is going to be used for a feasibility study
▶ 16:37 that we need to appropriate in order to use that money in the FY19 budget. If we didn't include it as part of the budget process, we would have to go back to each member community and get a unanimous vote. on using this funding, so we wanted to include it as a part of the budget process. But I am happy to report that $1 million, that is going to be completely offset with revenue that we've been able to save over a multi-year process. We knew that this expense was upcoming, and we wanted to take steps to be able to fund that. So that $1 million does not affect anyone's assessment, does not result in any increase of assessment to the member communities. So when in total we plan to use $2,280,000 of other funds to reduce the member assessment.
▶ 17:29 And the resulting revenue increase over the FY18 budget results in $1,495,687 more than we used last year to offset the member assessment. so our funding our operating budget cost is it went up significantly for the following reasons we again increased funding to finance a school but building design study which was required by law also increases in GIC health insurance costs as we know health insurance goes up on an annual basis regardless of what carrier you're with we have GIC and and we're projected to go up about $110,000 for health insurance costs. Increases in transportation costs. We're entering our last year of our transportation contract. We went up $10 per trip. That equates to about $64,000 more
▶ 18:32 in funding that we're gonna need for next year. Additional professional support staffing to meet student needs. We only have a 1.0 increase in our budget for an FTE. half of that being the fact that our given the state of our federal awards federal grants we had to pull one of our positions that's normally funded by a grant into the budget and the other 0.5 is a PE staff that we need to support the students and contractual salary obligations our steps and lanes went up about five hundred thousand dollars based on their collective bargaining settlements so all told our operating budget went up 1 million 831 804 but i will point out million of that is for the op for the feasibility study that we needed to appropriate
▶ 19:29 but of that 1 million 831 804 again i i mentioned that we're using 1 million 495 687 to offset that increase and the resulting total assessment increase for all member communities is 336 000 117 as I mentioned however as mr. Hooten mentioned the assessment is based on numerous things it's based on your income and property wealth I'm sorry let's go back it's based on your minimum contribution which is a Department of Revenue form a formula that is determined by income and property wealth and it also is determined on your population that goes to the school the department of revenue determined the minimum contribution to decrease by a significant margin I believe Thorp a 98,000 I don't have that in front of me
▶ 20:22 but with the additional loss of students of point of eight students that means your decrease or increase or decrease um for fy19 is 108 131 as a result so at this time if anybody has any questions i'd be happy to answer thank you uh at this time i so far have one alderman in queue um i will note that we are at 751 um and we do need to recess for the full board motion of recess madam chair i'm the one alderman in queue but i'll uh reserve my comments until uh after the break i'm sorry we have to do this to you uh yeah we apologize to keep you a little bit extra um as i mentioned at the beginning we do have some public hearings that must start on time and so we have to open for those um and then we'll come back to this as quickly as possible
▶ 21:19 Peter D. Mortimer: um president that's point of order i think we could squeeze four minutes in if you'd like if we adjourned at 7 55 that should give us enough time to start to do the roll call and start the public hearing we can take it right to the end and see where we get uh so alderman mortimer would you like to withdraw your motion um certainly yeah and then you have the floor thank you very much madam chair um i want to commend you um for all the good work you do up at the vote i know dozens of uh students who've uh who have uh gone through the vote and are doing very well uh i met one the other day of our martinez i just happened to bump into him uh in uh malden square and it's just a great program you have up there uh the hands-on
▶ 22:05 Peter D. Mortimer: type work that you do uh i want to make clear to uh people that uh your budget is pretty much what it is for us there can be a lot of conversation here tonight and apparently it's It's going to be later, but Thorp an amount that you need and that the state DOE, used to be called the DOE, now it's the D-O-S-E, but they tell us what we have to pay you and we have to pay you. There can be no cutting from this. We can go through all the linguistic gyrations and histrionics that we want, but if we don't pay you what you say we have to pay you, And they'll just take it from our cherry sheet from our chapter 90 traffic money or from our chapter 70 educational money So we have to pay you what we have to pay you. That's the bad news. The good news is that you do a great job
▶ 23:04 Peter D. Mortimer: and You turn out a very good product there Unfortunately, we're all dealing with schools that are getting older. We have a bunch of them we've built a couple of new ones, but we also have other ones that are have been built in the 30s, the Winthrop School in Ward 6 was built in the 30s. And we just went with the modular classrooms, which worked out great. I don't know if you've ever considered that, but that's just food for your thought in the future. And the last thing I want to say, aside from, I'd like to keep it a little positive, is yesterday we were at several of the aldermen, Alderman Bewtra, Alderman Medeiros, Alderman's Worko. We were at an Eagle Scout convocation, the promotion of a scout to Eagle Scout.
▶ 23:55 Peter D. Mortimer: It was who you mentioned, Michael Iacone. And he's a great young man, and he certainly is a testament to not only the quality of the knowledge in the education that you provide at the vocational school, but also to the type of character, the character which is probably just as important that comes out of the kids who graduate from your school. so thank you very much at this time would you prefer that i make a motion to move the bottom line or a motion to recess as i thought might happen our queue has grown so we will have to recess i will i will then make a motion to recess madam chair and uh thank you presidents werco and madam chairman for allowing to give me to get my comments in before the recess thank you very much
▶ 48:50 any opposed that order passes we now go back to we now return to the calendar motion to uh recess the full board meeting to return to the appropriations um hearings at this Yes, Kai. Second. The motion made to recess by Alderman Mortimer has been seconded by Alderman Wright. On discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We are now in recess. Now I'll call the Appropriations Committee back to order. Thank you gentlemen for your patience. No problem. We will return to our questions from members of the committee for you. And next in QIA, Alderman Wright. Good evening. First, I just want to say, Eleanor Ferna was always very proud to talk about her son's graduation from the VOC, and now that she's mayor, she's not here, but I will state that
▶ 50:55 Francis X. Wright Jr.: on her behalf. I also, a relative, my brother graduated from the VOC, from the machine shop program, which no longer exists, but I suppose it's been replaced with robotics. Yeah, same location, in fact. Yeah, and he went on to work with Arthur D. Little and some of the best scientists in the world out of MIT and Harvard, making prototypes, as his boss described, he could do it from the most intricate of plans or from the back of a napkin. So he learned all those skills at the Vogue. My question is, it's not so much related to this budget this year, but with regards to the potential for building a new school in the MSBA. do you know what your reimbursement rate will be yes a minimum of 72% so that's a
▶ 51:43 Francis X. Wright Jr.: great rate so that's something hopefully all the communities in the Vogue district can get together and fund the best of schools because the technology has changed so much in the skills that you're teaching up there that I think that building needs to be brought up to a state of the state-of-the-art 21st century building and I hope it I hope it comes to fruition and as all them and more of us stated there isn't a lot of anything we could do to your budget but pass it and I will be proud and happy to do so right Alderman Forbes Alderman Wright asked my question so I'm all set thank you madam chair Alderman Medeiros thank you thank you very much echo the statements that were made here this is a great great school and a lot of good
▶ 52:34 work for our students and provide them with skills that can really take them into you know right into very lucrative careers and we appreciate that and with that I was hoping that I could ask what your other funding sources are what what they consist of where you're taking the 1.4 million dollars so $400,000 and that's a fund that's carry it doesn't we can't go over our 5% requirement and so So $400,000 is coming from there. So the $1 million has been put aside from budget surpluses that we've been able to achieve. Luckily, because we've had winters that have been favorable for the past couple of years. And through other salary savings, we've been able to put about $1 million aside. We will have all of that funding by the end of this fiscal year.
▶ 53:46 so that's why I'm very happy to report that we didn't have to include that in the actual assessment of the member communities so the budget surpluses are similar to what we would consider free cash on the city side it's similar when we have because we have we have where our own district basically we have to budget for worst-case scenarios when it comes to snow removal health insurance increases things like that when it comes back more favorable and we we have we realize a little bit of savings and we're able to through school committee votes move some of that money the end of the year to be able to because again we rented we're going to anticipate this this major cost that was coming up and
▶ 54:35 Monica C. Medeiros: we were wondering how we're gonna be able to fund that so through that multi-year process that's thank you we appreciate that and the responsibility of planning ahead and and trying to make it work in terms of this building project how do you anticipate that affecting the member communities moving forward is it something where are we going to see something mid-year where would be asked to fund part of the bond repayment or is this something that would be yeah so we have to go to the complete feasibility process with which is lengthy so it could be some time before we come to the board and request you to vote in the approve part of the bond and would you anticipate that that would be within the regular budget cycle or do you think that would be something
▶ 55:26 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: that would be separate that completely separate yeah thank you thank you thank Thank you. Any other aldermen with questions? Alderman . Thank you for being here. I'm pleased to hear you have a capital skills grant. That's a program that's run on the Executive Office of Education where I work, so that's great. I wondered, I looked at your student population. I see you're only about 4% English learners, but I am aware that we have the LOOK Act that was recently passed, and then DESE has regulations regarding the SEI endorsement. I didn't necessarily see anything in the packet here that discussed perhaps additional professional development or work that will be needed to do for your staff, but I just wondered if that's on the horizon for you.
▶ 56:13 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: We were fortunate enough when the SEI was implemented to take advantage of some free courses for our staff. So the majority of our staff were either trained at that point or our new staff had come in with the new requirements prior to employment to be SDI trained okay that's great and then just one question about the budget I saw that Thorp a line for to FTE for school committee is that am i reading that right for a hundred and eighty three thousand two hundred dollars as a request I might I just wondered if you could clarify that page seven this is the very first line before superintendent's office okay so which so you're looking at so school committee you're looking at the FY 19 request
▶ 57:13 correct so in there that includes our treasurer in our school committee our school committee secretary if you want the 20 so Thorp only a change of $20,000 right okay I just I think I was looking at our Melrose public school budget and I don't see a line for school committee so I wasn't quite clear the roles that the folks covered there would play yeah so the school committee that's just basically broken out by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's their round end-of-year report functions if you will so 1000 series is a school committee and that's it's just broken out that way and there happens to be a lot of different expenses that are included in there okay but only two staff members great thank you you're welcome thank you we have a motion to move the
▶ 58:10 Monica C. Medeiros: bottom line madam chair second the motion to move the bottom line by alderman mortimer second by alderman on discussion any further questions or comments all in alderman medeiros and for point of clarification this is for the regional school for northeast uh metropolitan regional vocational the six hundred eighty four thousand one hundred fifty three dollars we'll have somebody speak about essex aggie i'm sorry and we'll have somebody speak about essex aggie before we move the entire regional school budget we have do we have another speaker coming this evening we may have mr del russo or the superintendent if you have if there are additional questions we can bring mr del russo up i actually and i i did have one additional question sorry you had said that
▶ 58:58 Monica C. Medeiros: there uh are eight fewer students attending this year but that there are 21 applying and 11 that have graduated right um so fewer people have have applied or more people no no same same amount same amount were some not accepted uh some yeah they don't meet the requirements that are necessary as far as that goes Thank you. Alderman DeRose, do you wish to bring up Mr. Del Rosso for questions for the remainder? Yes, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Del Rosso. So the other half of this, or I shouldn't say half because it's not quite half, it's $115,941, is the Essex Aggie, Essex Tech vocational school budget. school budget so we also do send some students from melrose to to essex tech that's right you're
▶ 1:00:10 the chair you are correct in my consultation with the superintendent the number that we have right now to budget for is seven students and some perspective in 18 we originally budgeted for six students it appears that only five actual ended up so there should be some revenue left over in this year's operating budget because of that but again on a budget basis we're budgeting for seven students we were told and these are first for classes that are not offered at Melrose high school nor are offered at at Northeast if I made through the chin I'm not an expert in these courses so pardon me Thorp animal science what horticulture exploratory environmental science and technology and again animal science things like that so very
▶ 1:01:11 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: specific and and we have an obligation to try to to meet the needs and desires of the students that live here in Melrose even if we can't offer them through traditional channels thank you very much we have a motion that's been made and seconded to move the bottom line of the full amount of this department 399 in the amount of eight hundred thousand ninety four dollars all in favor aye aye any opposed this item will be moved forward to the full budget thank you very much thank you thank you thank you next on our agenda we have department number 300 melrose public schools in the amount of 27 million five hundred ninety six thousand eight hundred and twenty four dollars with us this evening we
▶ 1:02:04 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: have superintendents to meet taymor as well as several members of the school committee we are under suspension of rules and we bring our officials forward we have the chair mr school with us good evening and thank you very much uh for including us this evening i am here one of our members did have to leave but virtually our full committee is here uh representing for us this evening so we're very grateful for that and certainly for the opportunity to present this budget to you tonight I will say that the focus as always of our budgets is on equity for all students every student who attends the Melrose public schools is equally deserving of an equitable education which is not necessarily an equal education and you will see that reflected throughout this
▶ 1:02:59 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: budget secondly I will note that the whole child is very much kept in mind so as we reflected on our funding sources and our expenditures we felt it very important to reflect the interests and the needs of the whole child as you very likely know many of you are in the audience for many of our meetings this This is probably one of the most scrutinized budgets in memory, and no stone certainly was left unturned. We probably received well over 300 emails. We received many phone calls, and we met with many people in person to discuss the budget. We looked at fees. We looked at the Early Childhood Center as a self-supporting, to ensure that that was self-supporting organization that we were not funding that we looked we looked
▶ 1:04:01 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: at our revolving accounts as you very well know some days it does rain it's dripping pretty good right now so we're pretty cognizant of that and we did still take a recommend taking a great deal of money from our revolving accounts which is always a concern we believe that this this process was tremendously thorough starting early and as you know it was sent back to the mayor for reconsideration returned to us with an additional hundred and seventy five thousand dollars and we accepted that amount at that time and the superintendent and our assistant director of finance and administrative affairs Mary Ann Farrell worked very hard down to line items of seven hundred and fifty dollars to really explore how we could cut money that was basically
▶ 1:04:59 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: very much needed so this is a sacrificial budget there are things that are needed by the district that we will not have we feel that this is the best we could do at this time and we're grateful for everyone's sacrifice as always we thank you in advance for focusing on the big picture given that the the committee has been exhaustive in its work and we would ask you for passage and recommendation to the full board thank you at this time i will turn it over to superintendent tamar good evening everyone as miss Driscoll said this was a difficult budget season we have a growing enrollment when I first came into this district we had approximately 3,500 students including early childhood we are now over 3,900 we are to some degrees victims of our own success as you know with your support we
▶ 1:06:11 added five modular classrooms and in spite of that effort we have to add a 16th k for the coming season and we are putting two classrooms at the early childhood center so that there is a cohort of students and staff at that building for k typically when i started kindergarten registration 92 to 95 percent of the parents received their first choice this year only 79 received their first choice we are a growing city i think most of you know that as you walk downtown you see how popular we have become as a place for young professional families on top of it all like many districts across the state we have a number of problems that are beyond our control aside from the budget issues and dwindling state and federal dollars
▶ 1:07:06 um we are seeing an uptick in some of our neediest populations while our overall special ed special education population has not increased the characteristics of those children have increased i recently attended a meeting with william james college so many of you may know them they provide the interface service for the city we are one of their success stories because we have referred so many families to them for matches. And as Dr. Convino said to us in that meeting, you have to start reconciling your educational system to the fact that we now believe four out of 20 children have mental health issues. On top of it all, if you do follow the information on autism spectrum disorder, several years
▶ 1:08:01 Years ago, that was 1 in 100. It dropped to 1 in 66. They now think it's 1 in 45. On top of it all, thank you to medical science. We have many children that survive difficult births, but with that comes very serious needs. What we have begun to see, and Ms. White-Lambright and I have discussed this with Donna Rosso, early childhood director is an uptick in multi-handicapped children we will be doing an assessment a needs assessment this year to try to forecast what we will need in the schools in the coming years so we hit on top of that we when I came into this district we had about 85 English as a second language students this year I have 167 and that is not including my families who opt out of
▶ 1:08:55 EL services because they in order to have EL services at the elementary level you need to attend Lincoln and Roosevelt and now Hoover which basically takes Winthrop and Horace Mann off the options and if a family has a strong desire they will opt out so we are a changing population we're proud of our population we're proud of our commitment to service every child that comes to through melrose stores but it is labor intensive it is costly and it is always changing if you expect these classrooms to look like they did even five years ago they no longer do and i will tell you i know two of the aldermen have new babies or relatively new babies i will venture by the time that their children enter kindergarten they will look even more different classrooms
▶ 1:09:53 than they do today so with that we are trying to create a budget that emphasizes the need for inclusive practices teaching and curriculum that targets every student on a more individualized basis one size fits all no longer works when you have a diverse student body with different needs and different abilities you have to be more proactive on providing an individualized education to that end some of you may be familiar with our exploration of competency based education which provides for a more individualized and personalized approach based on mastery of skills and proficiencies as exhibited by ongoing assessment we are fortunate that we had a two-year grant from the bar foundation to begin
▶ 1:10:50 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: that work and we have reapplied for another two years the bar foundation and great schools partnership is very interested in the work we are doing in melrose because they believe that what we we are doing should be what all children across the commonwealth are receiving an individualized education that meets children where they are not based on seat time but based on the student's ability and needs so with that i'm willing to take any questions thank you miss seymour alderman liberty thank you for being here tonight and to the school committee for being here as well um i think that both um mr school and superinton have given a nice overview of the very deliberated and introvert process that your budget reflects a number of us
▶ 1:11:41 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: have come to your meetings and so saw that the budget that we have in front of us as a final is actually the fourth I think document that looks like this but has changed over time and it was preceded by a memo that you prepared for the school committee in January I believe so Thorp been a lot of effort and work to undertake and I commend you for that and thank you for sort of describing the process to the public particularly maybe there are folks watching tonight who don't tune in necessarily from your meetings so just in terms of the the bottom line that we see here could you just sort of summarize for us and then the public as well that the twenty seven million five hundred ninety six thousand eight hundred twenty four may not reflect does
▶ 1:12:25 does that reflect all of the the money that the city is spending on the schools or in fact I believe that maybe perhaps through the DPW perhaps the the health department there are some costs that are captured elsewhere as well I'm thank you for that question miss Lippe-Garabedian actually the budget the 27 million plus only represents what you are obligated to give us it is not what we need to run the school district without getting into a very detailed explanation of what your obligation is under foundation budget and net school spending when all the money's arm added up we do meet our obligation so again 27 million is what you are giving us what goes into the final calculation is the cost of DPW
▶ 1:13:10 running our buildings if you remember many years ago prior to my coming DPW took over the maintenance of our buildings at that time I believe two million dollars was moved off the budget to them Mr. Schenner will tell you it cost him more than two million dollars but that is captured by Miss Farrell at the end-of-year report health costs are captured in the end-of-year report a few years ago and maybe miss Lippa Garabedian can give me the exact date the state decided that you could calculate into that that total package the cost of retirees insurance so when you talk about that we have an approximately an eleven thousand nine hundred dollar per pupil that is not eleven thousand nine hundred dollars being spent on every student it's
▶ 1:14:00 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: eleven thousand nine hundred dollars is the average of all the monies that Melrose provides to operate the school system on top of it we supplement the budget through revolving funds grants and other revenue sources such as our rentals for over four million dollars it costs approximately 32 million dollars for the teaching and learning operations and that's an important distinction because that's all we are asking of you you provide us those other costs through other departments thank you and when you work on state budget projections obviously the the state fiscal year starts at the same time that our municipal fiscal year begins so the budget process is ongoing right now where are you basing the projection on the house ways and means budget or that
▶ 1:14:53 where does that number come from when you think about what you expect the for example the seven chapter 78 to be yes guess so quite honestly we have taken the approach that whatever our number was in one year if you're lucky you'll be have the same amount the next year we don't overestimate so let me give you an example circuit breaker you all know circuit breaker I don't know if you understand how it operates if you don't just let me know but circuit breaker is a moving target and it's subject to appropriation at the state level in my career I've had circuit breaker reimbursement as little as 40% and as high as 75 percent so when ms farrell and i begin this process we take whatever we got this year
▶ 1:15:45 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: and we decrease it by 10 because we always know don't count on what we were given in any given year we went into this process calculating 65 percent for circuit breaker because we got 75 this year lo and behold um the governor's first budget was at 65 percent i told miss farrell lower your estimate to 60 percent um the only pleasant surprise i've had in a long time is i think that it may end up at 72 percent um so but that is not a given until they finish um the budget on Beacon Hill okay and then turning to the the changelog for your final budget on May 8th I note that and we've heard from some folks that there are four positions that likely will be eliminated at the middle school and that in part
▶ 1:16:42 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: reflects that the enrollment at the middle school is going to be lower next year I understand that that will impact the team model that you have and that many parents feel very strongly about I'm wondering what will happen when the growing elementary school population starts to migrate and elevate to the middle school and when that will happen will you have to start hiring back positions as early as the 2019-20 school year yes that's a possibility so I don't like to call it a bubble I refer to it as more of a wave starting next year I will have 15 sections in grade 3 15 sections in grade 2 15 sections in grade 1 and 16 sections in grade K that will make its way up through the elementary to the middle and eventually to the high school the high school is having its own
▶ 1:17:37 growth spirit because we are having so many students return from private parochial and charter that it's had its own separate growth spirit so when those numbers hit the middle school we will have to add back the teachers so that we can expand the bring back the team model to what it is it's a little bit it's that's a simplistic answer it's really not that simplistic so what is a possibility is if our K in 1920 or 2021 falls to 14 sections let's say that gives me one FTE so instead of needing four FTEs I will need three FTEs so it's sort of like a rolling number to some degree depending on what you need at the lower grades one area of concern though probably more than the middle school right now is the high school we're running several classes over 30
▶ 1:18:37 including AP courses which are quite demanding for the teachers and the students you know our teachers are very professional they don't want to deny our kids anything and they'll and they're saying sure give me another kid give me another kid but it has become very difficult what we did at the middle school last year is we borrowed staff from the we excuse me the high school borrowed staff from the middle school so because the eighth grade had begun to fall off a little mr. Conway could take a section of an English teacher a section of a social studies a section of a science teacher and send them over to the high school he will not be able to do that in the future in the current budget there is one more high school teacher we actually needed at least
▶ 1:19:32 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: three plus another guidance counselor and because as the high school grows and in size we need more counselors as well for those of you who are not familiar i shouldn't call them guidance counselors anymore it's an old habit they they have been renamed school counselors they do more than tell you please apply to these colleges they are very punch involved in students social emotional well-being on a daily basis okay and then i guess just as a final question or just for the public the document that we have online as well as each of the iterative budgets that you all considered include at the end of it some multi district comparisons in terms of our per pupil spending and could you just sort of summarize that information for us so a new resource from the
▶ 1:20:27 Department of Elementary and Secondary Education desi mr. water is this radar resource allocation and district action reports which allows me to go in and compete make comparisons so miss Farrell did the reports for me she compared us to our scene communities we're one of ten scene communities that's our special education collaborative and to our of course Middlesex leave community communities to whom we are often compared and if you look at those we are the lowest per pupil in comparison to our neighbors and that is also reflected in our teachers salaries and in our administrators salaries so but I will say with pride I think we're doing better than most of them educationally I think our kids are getting a first-rate education that is highly competitive and
▶ 1:21:23 that is because we mean and we have managed to do the best we can with the resources we have been given sorry one last question the competency-based education work that's been ongoing that two-year grant you've reapplied for when will you find out whether you receive June great thank you very much for being here thank you additional questions or comments from the committee alderman Alderman Ford. You don't want it? I'll take it. All right. Thank you very much. I guess I'm going to come at it from a different angle. Teacher's contract, is that going to be due next year? Is that discussion going to be next year? Yes, it expires in the summer of 19, so we'll probably go into negotiations sometime midwinter.
▶ 1:22:15 Scott M. Forbes: So that will be incorporated in next year's budget, that new allocation? currently we have four but we have four other contracts in negotiation mr forbes we have six unions yep okay um because for me i guess i'm trying to i'm i'm a numbers guy so i'm just trying to make sure that i dot all my eyes and cross on my teeth so business as usual this year we were operating or the request was two million dollars short give or take one two points providing the 800 000 that came from us in the form of medicaid reimbursement and then the supplemental right given the fact that teacher salaries in the district are well east of worcester are pretty much the lowest in the commonwealth i'm assuming that that's going to be leveraged for higher wages
▶ 1:23:03 Scott M. Forbes: which you're going to have to incorporate in your budget which is going to be even more of a pressure point for you exactly and then we haven't even talked about addressing anything regarding facilities or student enrollment right so i'm trying to figure out what the number actually is in real dollars i mean have you have you been able to sit down with people and try to forecast that out over the next couple of years i know we're talking about this year's budget but i just for me i'm just trying to i'm trying to figure out that what what the real number is going to be moving forward well i i'm hesitant to say because of course i cannot um predetermine negotiated settlements sure so i have to be careful sure so let me just give you some casual
▶ 1:23:46 figures are every 1% on the teachers contract is approximately two million dollars at this point in time and that's the teachers alone I have paraprofessionals union secretaries union drivers crossing guards administrators but I think it's safe to say to me in 2.1 for every 1% in the six union unions um looking at what i would need for staffing going forward looking at marian 800 000 we thought at least 800 000 we figured for staffing going forward and i think that and that that included an uptick of a quarter a million dollars in supplies technology licensures things like that for the growing enrollment um so that was that and then you always have the deficit the that that gap that i come back and
▶ 1:24:48 Scott M. Forbes: visit you in october for yep you know um as somebody described it to me it's um it's uh it's like planning on your tax return to pay your bills um that visit i have with you in october and um so Thorp you have that 800 000. okay so then we talked about the modular classrooms um i know when the idea was first presented to this board it was going to provide us with a couple years of relief but however due to student enrollment there really was no relief there was a one-year gap moving forward if we still have these enrollment numbers which if they do remain consistent uh are we going to be is there any ideas of how we're going to be able to provide additional classrooms with no space so um just to refresh everybody's memory um when denise gaffey
▶ 1:25:47 and i were working this through we should end with john schenner nasdaq the architects um we anticipated that we would have two years in which we would have um no swing space art on a cart music on a cart and i think that was supposed to be 20 21 21 22. um the incoming class that i have for this fall of approximately 345 students was not supposed to happen until 1920 so it's about a year ahead of schedule um so we knew that we'd have that two-year span span of time what is more interesting about those projections was even when they begin to decrease they never decreased below 315 my first year here my kindergarten class was 278 so going forward even after if this is the peak which we don't know which is another conversation you
▶ 1:26:45 Scott M. Forbes: know we're still going to have at least a 14 class strand if not a 15 class strand one solution quite frankly is we anticipate that the superintendent's offices will have to leave the high school that's a eight classrooms there and then we and then we would have to revisit our model but we're still but even when it begins to slide off it's it's still in the low 300s okay could you just briefly talk about if the I know Thorp been a lot of discussion about the Ripley school in the BB school and just kind of summarize what their current role is now as a revenue producer so and if they would actually be viable buildings as an option in future years just to kind of educate the board and also members of the public that are that are watching Ripley school
▶ 1:27:45 quite frankly is not viable for much it would make nice office space that's about it to bring the Ripley school up to speed to what is needed educationally is it's you know it's it's a cost-effectiveness analysis and it's not worth it the BB is not much better the BB is a better facility it looks like the Franklin like the like the Hoover it's only a 12 classroom so it's so when you so it so it's a it's a to clap what we call a to class strand you know to case two ones to two again technologically it is not up to speed with the rest of our buildings does not have the playground space that we would like for at least grades three through five but the problem with bringing the BB back online beyond the cost of bringing it up to the expectation that
▶ 1:28:44 we need is you have to add another principal another secretary another custodian um you know you're basically adding another whole administrative operational level staff level that also has a cost so um you know Thorp a lot of calculations here okay uh i just got a couple more questions i appreciate it um the ecc uh is that self-sustaining based upon the revenue that comes in and in all the expenses including the teacher salaries or not including the teachers including the teacher salaries the only piece that is not so self-sustaining is the special education programs about 35 students there are on ieps and under federal and state law we're required to provide them their services and absorb
▶ 1:29:31 those costs okay special ed law covers children from three to 22. so what happens during the year is we have children with needs coming out of early intervention and they can enter the ecc any time during the year and if they have they are at a level of need that they need a full program we pay for that cost and the teachers and the related services associated with those costs so based upon those anticipated or forecasting projections sometimes you're gonna run at a loss just simply because you don't know the number more people that have need more no really this year I have 311 coming in next year and so about 10% maybe about 11% are special students so we it was a 9% raise yeah so I think we will be okay and that will
▶ 1:30:20 Scott M. Forbes: absorb absorb the cost of the teacher salaries you do know that we brought the teachers into the Union yes and so there is an adjustment for that okay and then my final question I'm not sure if this is either for you or for mr. de la Russo but I know he's here so he'll be able to answer for me in January we had an appropriations meeting that had an order for seven hundred fifty thousand dollars that included roof repairs and out of that seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars three hundred thirty three thousand was earmarked for school repairs a hundred thousand dollars of for elevator service and then there was two hundred and thirty thousand dollars that it was left over from all the other
▶ 1:31:00 bond repairs so what we did is we marked that for repairs to the middle school stage so as you said part of that was left over from when we did the Learning Commons when we did the site the labs the science labs so they're earmarked for school repairs yep the auditorium is our biggest moneymaker it is imperative that we keep it in good shape and competitive with Wakefield since Wakefield's built their new school that's our main competition we make approximately $400,000 off of rentals a year so that that's important that we keep it in in that type of shape the elevator to 1975 building without that elevator we're not a DA compliant and that's a big problem understood on the elevator but I guess the question that I would have had and I'm not sure if this
▶ 1:31:58 Scott M. Forbes: is a if this is an accounting question or not but could that two hundred and $233,000 could have gone into and I know you're on an egg timer. You have a certain time to use the funds but could that have gone into a Repairs a maintenance account for FY 19 So then you could have taken that two hundred and thirty three thousand dollars and use that as part of your budget for this year Instead of just doing stage repairs Could you have saved that money and allocated it into your budget for this year? Which could have in turn maybe have saved a couple of teaching positions Like, would that have been possible? Is that possible? That's the question I wanted to ask. Yeah, through the chair to all of them.
▶ 1:32:41 If I understand the question correctly, if it was an appropriation from a bond or a note, typically it has to be for the life and the duration and similar properties for which you want to do additional work on. So in other words, if it was a 20 year note, then typically if you wanted to make an appropriation, then typically that new item you want to provide the funds to should be also required to be a minimum of a 20 years note. So it has to be some corresponding life duration. Farm Council would have to approve that to make sure that it's for a like purpose is a good way of saying it. and the life is very important you just can't you know if you can't take a 20-year item and make it all of a sudden use it for five yeah my question yeah my just question was if you could have
▶ 1:33:42 Scott M. Forbes: categorized it and used that as school repairs for this budget year which in turn would have gave you an extra 233 000 to play with i i that's that's the question that i and it was january so i'm not sure if you're looking at that and trying to project come springtime and trying to see where we have money where we can we possibly put a little money back into certain things and be able from accounting perspective use that as a bucket rather than doing a stage repair that that's really all the question i have yeah i mean i can look at that more specifically yes to the purpose of which we appreciate um generally that's how it works all right thank you thank you thank you all remember yours thank you um i might want mr tellaruso back we'll see um i want to make
▶ 1:34:30 Monica C. Medeiros: sure first of all that i'm clear on on which number we are voting on to approve here tonight because the number that was in our may 3rd budget is 27 596 824 and that seemed to make sense with the original city of melrose funding of twenty seven thousand four twenty one eight twenty four plus the new funding of one hundred and seventy five thousand however i see now of course my phone is ringing sorry everyone uh that the the budget that we received dated today may 21st shows a total of 31 000 the munis budget 31 531 974. so i'm just you're not voting on the munis budget you're voting on the amount of money you're appropriating to us what is in the munis budget is the amount of money that is necessary to run the school system and includes our grants our revolving funds
▶ 1:35:38 Monica C. Medeiros: includes fees it includes the Medicaid reimbursement no the number you are voting on is twenty seven million five hundred and ninety six thousand eight hundred and twenty four dollars so that's the number for anybody looking at home that's the number that's in the FY 19 operating budget document it's not the budget that it's not the attachment that is labeled FY 19 full budget and dated May 21st so just so it's clear that that's not what we're looking at so that being said so we are still things were handled a little bit differently this year from the school side that and hopefully i'm saying this correctly that rather than saying sort of backing into a number the school committee took a more kind of proactive approach and really
▶ 1:36:43 Monica C. Medeiros: did much more what you might call a needs-based budgeting really truly needs-based budgeting and so in doing that the school committee came up with a number and that number was dialed back down and so some cuts were made from what the school committee had determined were the budgets that were needed the figures that were needed can you talk a little bit about what is actually different and less than what was actually spent in FY18 versus what's going to be proposed in FY19 like what are the actual items that are being cut this so aside from the four teachers at the middle school so that if you look at um if you go back in our documents and you look at the change logs or if you look at the final document that was prepared by um miss farrell and you look at let's say um you know
▶ 1:38:00 a request across fy17 fy18 and fy19 you'll see what's been reduced primarily what we have done is we have cut back all our supplies and resources to the minimum amount necessary i think there was a conversation where i think art supplies are now being funded as a little as seven dollars per pupil so those are some of the things that were done we've cut contracts one of the things that was done that I don't know whether it's it's it's how it's captured here but we had mr. Ellis go go through all our IT issues all our IT costs he managed to cut sixty five thousand dollars worth from IT costs you know swapping out phone lines we reduced all the printers that we have moved Rizzo machines around rather than having two on a floor move
▶ 1:38:58 one to a floor so basically where you go first is you go back end because our primary goal is to keep teachers in front of students those are some of the things that that have been really reduced when you go through the budget line on and by line on you'll see some of these numbers are a little bit embarrassing I think mr. Conway made a point to me that let me just look at my notes that a few years ago our the middle school supply and materials budget was over a hundred thousand now it's seventy thousand so those are some of the things that we do first I will also say quite honestly that if it wasn't for our PTO s we would have a much more difficult journey than we currently have as our populations have grown they have paid for the additional
▶ 1:39:50 Chromebooks we need library books field trip buses buses are now 450 a trip by the way and so if it wasn't for our PTOs it would be a much more difficult situation and in overall this is showing a 4.1 percent increase for the schools can you talk about about what that is in the school budget so what it is is we have we are adding while we're cutting for other positions I think we're we're adding four elementary positions a high school position and an assistant principal so there is an increase in staffing there are six contracts on the table and that need to be honored and if you understand teachers contracts it's not just the Kohler it's step in Lane so while people may say oh it's a two percent Kohler or one percent Kohler when the time you go do step in Lane it
▶ 1:41:01 It can be as much as 6% to 7% actual impact and cost. So that's a lot of it is budgetary. Some of it's the new positions. Some of it's the increased costs of having more children. All our software licenses are per pupil subscriptions. So when you go up 100 students, that's 100 more students you need to pay for. We also have some materials that we must buy. Curriculum is changing. When I first came in front of you several years ago and you funded new books for us, at that point in time, curriculum changes were about five to seven years. They've dropped to about three to five years. AP Chem just changed their series again. We have no choice but to buy that series if our students are going to take AP Chemistry
▶ 1:41:51 and take the exam. year and this year we had to as grades move up every time they move up so I'm running about a 50 student difference I have to buy 50 more students worth of materials similarly in ESL this look for guy are obedient reference the look act I'm living in dread of the look act because I'm afraid it may mean new materials so those are some of the costs and lastly special ed out of district placements have a right to raise their rates and those go typically up about three percent and in terms of actually since you happen to mention the curriculum materials I did see there was some consideration for math that had been made I think it was put aside but I noticed I happen to look it up we have
▶ 1:42:50 three more years of the on the bond that we had paid and funded on the city side and actually to Alderman Lippert Garabedian's questions another item that you know we've been funding on through the city side is was a bond to pay for a new math curriculum and so we have the bond was to pay for much more than a new math curriculum Ms. Medeiros at that point we not only needed math books we needed social studies books we needed AP coursework books we needed general science books we needed a host of materials at that point I mean we had some we had some books that were 15 20 years old still in circulation that we needed to pull we did at that time we did not replace the middle school math books you had bought middle school math books or we had bought middle school
▶ 1:43:43 math books the year before I came in that's seven years ago already and the math curriculum frameworks were reissued in 2016 as were the ELA curriculum frameworks reissued in 2016 the science curriculum frameworks were adopted in 2016 the social studies curriculum frameworks will be here any day now and the digital literacy and computer science curriculum frameworks that were advisory or about to become mandatory and I understand that civics is going to be now being that's part of the social studies we're already doing it at the eighth grade we've been piloting it for two years we're sending people for training this summer because we will have the standards by the end of June in the change log there is apply the music and drama fees in FY 19 rather than FY
▶ 1:44:47 20 for $10,000 can you explain that so it's an activity fee for people who participate in drama and the band and orchestra again it's unfortunate but when your budget has difficulties we apply fees to the parents we've done it for athletics for several years now and there was so that's a new fee that's a new fee and I will say again drama parents were very gracious they approached me a year ago and said we would be willing to do this to contribute if you don't know we have an outstanding musical and drama department have won many state awards and I have very much enjoyed their performances i'm looking extraordinarily forward to the performance on uh wednesday night thank you performance and some original performances but those performances cost money yes yes they do
▶ 1:45:43 Monica C. Medeiros: so that leads me to ask now this this budget has been balanced by the medicaid and other funding sources and that's sort of a pass-through that we have expected from year to year just the way we get reimbursed and is that it comes through the general fund and then we pass this back to the school side the other funds that were used were revolving funds and I was hoping you could and I saw that there was a detailed list of the revolving funds how do you choose what comes from what I mean I know just like we're going through a new process to make sure we're setting the caps and we're making sure that if we're using fees for say collected for a health clinic flu shot that that goes back into the health department I know there must be
▶ 1:46:38 restrictions there are the same way how do you anything anything that's deemed a student activity fee has to be used for that student activity so when you look at the athletic fund it don't it pays the coaches it plays for equipment it pays for trainings among the coaches MIA has pretty stringent training rules every year if there is an eCamp fund which there is it only pays for eCamp you know every class at the high school has their own fund it only plays for their activities the only funds that are more general funds are the facility funds and the education stations funds ecc funds pay for ecc and pay for some office management we have taken over all their operations in order to streamline the ecc so
▶ 1:47:32 Monica C. Medeiros: we're offsetting some of those costs in the central office okay and i think i read that nearly 50 I think 50% of the students at the ECC are enrolling in the kindergarten yeah we use we know that typically 50% of the four-year-olds at ECC become Melrose K students and where do the other 50% go well Thorp Thorp Thorp three-year-olds okay so that's they come to us eventually we don't have a lot of out of Melrose people we have some of we have some staffs children there some Wakefield and Stoneham because they live nearby but we really do not have a lot and and homing you can talk a little bit about the projections that we're using is obviously it seems like we're having quite a way and that you know what we've anticipated as Alderman Forbes brought
▶ 1:48:34 Monica C. Medeiros: up what we anticipated being able to take us through a couple of years seems to be happening sooner what are we using to project what's going to happen so I'm in I'm in conversation right now about having another demographic study I'm having conversations with the mayor's office about how we would pay for that and we would use a different consulting firm than the one we did before because we would want basically a second opinion so we are exploring that at this time it seems like yeah we really need to have a plan yeah but it seems like you know some of the things that that I recall working on as a school committee member setting up the ecc and and getting that going and doing things to try to um you know get students to
▶ 1:49:32 Monica C. Medeiros: stay at the high school are actually starting to pay off and that's good and yet challenging yes exactly and some of the reason for doing that was so that you know we wouldn't have as much overhead and be able to pass that cost on through the students you know so that we could be more efficient and to some degree i think we've we've done that and we see that as we increase our population of students we therefore are decreasing that overhead and we do see the per pupil spending numbers come down at a certain point that doesn't uh isn't necessarily cost-effective anymore exactly reach a wall and we need and things change Thorp so much more electronic but I think it's very important that we do have a plan in good solid
▶ 1:50:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: numbers to to back that up so thank you thank you thank you Alderman Wright thank you Madam chair uh just briefly following up on alderman Forbes uh points um i thought he asked but i'm not sure we got an answer um i think because of the way the conversation was flowing up because there was any intent not the answer or maybe i just didn't hear it um what is the rent annually for the bb school uh i think it's about two hundred thousand two hundred and twenty five thousand we just signed a new contract it has an automatic increase every year okay so i i have a memory of hearing a couple years ago that in order to bring that school back online it would cost the city in seven figures based on technology and ada and energy issues
▶ 1:51:25 Francis X. Wright Jr.: um so in addition i mean the rent is coming from the scene collaborative which provides services to i assume some of those students are from melrose yes they are and living right there in that neighborhood and being across from gooch park i see those students at the park regularly and those are some of i would say and i'm not an expert but some of the neediest students in the public school system and i know i took a tour there with representative broder and um they use that whole school at least at the time for only 60 students because of the nature of the needs of those students so i think that school does provide a purpose it provides income to the system and to bring it back online in addition to all the costs you talked about related to staffing it
▶ 1:52:20 Francis X. Wright Jr.: and an administrative staffing it we would be displacing a service to the neediest of students in Melrose and in the surrounding area so absolutely and thank you for recognizing that the other issue that I wanted to follow up on relates to health insurance costs and in addition to Alderman Forbes point as relates to the collective bargaining agreement for the teachers I mean teachers are offered GIC insurance and Melrose pays maybe Patrick can help 80 84 percent okay so we pay 84 percent this year as I recall the proposal was to increase the cost to subscribers considerably and the subscribers showed up in droves and it be and this is my viewpoint this being a statewide office election year they somehow managed to keep the cost at a level that's
▶ 1:53:34 Francis X. Wright Jr.: consistent with the past year next year they'll be putting out my understanding they'll be putting on an rfq for providers again and they'll be getting new new quotes and i would anticipate that they can't keep the cost of health insurance down for another year so with the city bearing 84 percent of any increase in cost or the cost overall and andy increase that will also be an added cost to this the city overall and therefore the school as part of the city system the school will bear that expense as well is that correct that's correct we've been very um aggressive about asking people not to take the insurance if they have another option and the first year that um proposal came out i think we had approximately 150 000 worth of
▶ 1:54:32 Francis X. Wright Jr.: savings um then the next year i think we drop to about under 100 and it's getting harder so we're almost tapping out those options among our staff those members who have have other ways of having insurance and opt out of oz okay so despite all the good intentions of the school committee this year and keeping costs down and cutting the original budget proposal um Thorp no uh light on the horizon when it comes to keeping costs down or level funded or as a matter of fact it's probably quite the opposite would that be fair right um you know i'm sure you're aware uh alderman wright about the efforts around the foundation budget review committee and the efforts at beacon hill to have better funding i think it's about a billion dollar deficit between what we
▶ 1:55:34 Michael P. Zwirko: what is made available and what we need and the primary drivers in that deficit are health insurance and lack of reimbursement and special ed costs but short of another lawsuit i don't see those monies coming forward to cover those costs well i would i for one would encourage the mayor to take part in any such lawsuit should should should that become an option but thank you superintendent thank you thank you madam chair thank you for your time here this evening also to the members of the school committee as well as mr delarusso and other members of the school administration um i do a couple questions for you this evening um the first one i i wanted to just right out of the gate uh talk about the middle school um so the it's a two-folded question so the
▶ 1:56:37 Michael P. Zwirko: enrollment population in the middle school is going through a little bit of a dip right now and will be for the next how many years approximately we probably have five one more year one more year i'm not counting 19 20 because i'm those kids are already coming to me so in light of in light of that this budget reflects that decreased enrollment that dip and I'm concerned about that because I want to know how disruptive that will be in the sense of the team model that you spoke to earlier so the question I'm asking is is could you briefly explain the team model and the impact that the the impacts that these positions at the middle school will do to that model so the team model is a philosophical approach to middle school based on the
▶ 1:57:25 belief that early adolescents need more supports than your typical older adolescent at the high school they need a model in which it's basically a school within a school model so you have a small group of kids they have all the same teachers they get to know them well and there is a lot more emotional support around their maturation and Thorp a lot more academic support because I was a middle school teacher it's a wonderful place to teach there is a joke you have to be a little crazy to teach middle school because you're riding an emotional roller coaster all the time with the kids but so that is a model that started I'd say 40 years ago and grew in popularity some of you may old enough to have remembered going to junior highs before that caught on so in
▶ 1:58:23 terms of the curriculum the instruction the quality of that the team model does not necessarily have an impact because that is work that is done ongoing regardless of what what kind of model you have if you have a middle school a a junior high a hybrid model we're still committed to that curriculum work that we're doing and that high quality instruction the problem comes in the supports and how well people know students there will be no impact at the sixth grade the sixth grade is a transitional year it is a most worrisome year for parents of young children just coming into the middle school and we recognize the need to really wrap those children with adults that get to know them well and have eyes on them all the time at the seventh
▶ 1:59:15 grade there will still be a team model what will change is eighth grade teachers will teach some seventh grade team subjects it's not uncommon when cities and towns have a budget problem at the middle school level to go to what they call a combined or split team it's a seventh and eighth grade team so I may teach two sections of ELA in grade seven, two sections of grade ELA in grade eight, but those kids are still teamed, so they're with the same kids most of the day. People get to know them. It's just a combined model. Another approach that, quite frankly, Brent and I discussed, because it's what happens, is you do away with social studies, and you have a three-person team, and everybody on
▶ 2:00:02 the team has to teach social studies because you're allowed to teach 20% of your time out of subject we did not believe in that model we have a strong social studies program we have a strong civics program already at the middle school we weren't willing to sacrifice that the eighth grade team we already had a looser team model and part of the reason we had a looser team model at the eighth grade is I have to remember back I want to say three or four years ago when the state pushed us to reconsider our math sequence in what algebra one in the eighth grade looked like so you used to have algebra one in the eighth grade that was sort of like a half a year of algebra over one year rather intensive
▶ 2:00:49 high school algebra one and we slowly moved to the model of the state prefers where we have a combined seventh eighth grade intensive math and those kids then go into algebra one that is high school algebra one and to do that we had to loosen the team model because we did not have enough kids who would be on each of the three teams to fill an algebra one class and I could not afford afford to run 10, 10, and 10. We began to loosen it then. We also began to loosen it for foreign language because foreign language, in the eighth grade is the first year the kids take foreign language every day. In sixth grade, they get a sampling. In seventh grade, they take it every other day. In eighth grade, they take it every day. Well, again, I don't
▶ 2:01:42 have enough teachers and enough money to have three Spanish teachers, three French teachers, Italian teachers three German teachers three Latin teachers so again the team model got a little loose and so kids could make their language preferences so the big shift is that seven eighth grade combined team next year but the team model philosophy will still be in place it'll be a mixed team instead the eighth grade is interesting to watch because as the competency based education takes hold and as we get more individualized we have students in the 8th grade that are ready to take high school courses and one of the things we have had to do to facilitate that is align the high school in the middle school schedule
▶ 2:02:35 totally and it's been a slow process so two years ago the only thing that was aligned was a block and that was mainly for the kids in band in our orchestra last year we were aligned I would say about 80% next year we will be aligned a hundred percent between the two buildings kids who are taking high school algebra one now take it at the high school Latin one we now do at the high school and I fully expect that kids will be moving into other classes at the high school as well it's at the same time at the middle school we took what was the wood shop and we have reinvented it for a hands-on learn hands-on learning experience in woodworking and high school kids go over to the middle school for that all our music programs are now based at the middle school
▶ 2:03:30 because when you built the middle school you built acoustically correct rooms so it made sense for all the high school music courses now to be over there as well so we really have begun to think of this as a campus and especially in the eighth grade we need a little bit more ability to for the kids to pursue their interests and move between the buildings the maker spaces at the high school Learning Commons is at the high school so we're trying to accommodate kids interest to some degree and that has had just as much impact on loosening that structure and thank you for the answer and sorry to ask a question to describe that but it's very important so folks understand what that model contains and
▶ 2:04:14 Michael P. Zwirko: also the impacts that that's going to have on a whole spectrum of students at that level and in a follow-up to that if if you're tinkering or removing or breaking the model down a little bit or being dynamic and how the models applied with this budget how well what will the impacts be or how could how can you put Humpty Dumpty back together again you know three years when the enrollments rise I mean I guess I guess I'm concerned about if these impacts will be lasting impacts well first of all in order to totally do away with the middle school model and go back to a junior high model the school committee would have to vote for it they voted that they voted that model in okay that is the philosophical approach that we have taken to middle school that is
▶ 2:05:08 similar to the philosophical approach that we have taken to neighborhood schools or semi-neighborhood schools into school choice there are other models out there that I've worked in I've worked in k8 I've worked in a district where I had a k2 and a 3-5 I've worked in districts where I had k4s and 5-8 middle school that and again in terms of the quality of the instruction we deliver in the curriculum it is not bound by the model the model is basically a philosophical approach of the cities and as long as the city remains committed to the middle school then we have to find a way to make sure that we maintain it and fund it but at the same time you know we're we're making difficult choices I have 345 case coming in I could you know your choice
▶ 2:06:04 on that is to have 15 K's and to have classes of 28 29 and K again are there places that do it I will venture to say they're doing it in California every day where they're now running course classes of 40 in some communities but we have made a choice to keep our case as low as possible so again many of these things are choices that we're making. And is the team model one that you support? Is the team model what? One that you support. I support the team model for the sixth and seventh grade. I have to tell you one of the interesting things about having a career as long as mine is watching the difference in curriculum and the expectations for kids but also watching the difference in how kids come prepared.
▶ 2:06:52 you know and the best analogy that I can give people is if you got out of nursery school and you knew five colors and five numbers you were rocking you were on your way now I have including my own granddaughter doing mental math that's the standard now so everything has sort of ratcheted up and we can have a very long conversation about student stress and what that means and things like that but that is the reality of the business I'm in if you look at the frameworks the frameworks now begin pre-k what is the child expected to know when they leave pre-k what are they expected to know when they leave K so by the time I look at many eighth graders the work they're doing quite frankly is surpassing the work I taught 20 years ago and so I have to be open to what do
▶ 2:07:50 Michael P. Zwirko: they need not to what I would want to do but what do they need and that drives our decisions it's a dynamic response for sure yeah yeah so the other questions I had I just had a couple more here you talked earlier about special education spending and the the statistic you said was four out of twenty or essentially one out of five students has some sort of a mental health issue can you just generally speak because they are as you as you pointed out this district this has that we have needs there and those needs that seem to have been growing and if you could just expound on that a little bit further please so actually I've asked Miss White-Lambright to present on this tomorrow night to the school committee because of you know as I said one of the
▶ 2:08:45 things that we do as a district is we do constant program reviews and we are always assessing our needs and again Miss Rosso is sort of like our canary in the in the coal mine and she tells us what's coming at us and we've been having a number of challenges with young children who are behaviorally disordered who don't have the ability to control their emotions or their bodies and will often act out in schools to a degree that is unsafe for themselves and unsafe for other children at the other end we have older children who are going through serious mental health issues that we also sometimes have safety concerns about those are the extremes in between the number of children that we're seeing with anxiety depression obsessive behaviors is seriously
▶ 2:09:42 concerning you know we're doing a host of training again using a lot of grants using a lot of collaborative resources seem collaborative to whom we belong has been great Middlesex youth partnership has been great as a huge mental health training for us but we have children who come to us with serious behavioral health needs that's beyond and above our commitment to every child's social emotional well-being because when you talk about 21st century skills for children quite frankly where that lies for their future employment is their interpersonal and social skills so we have an obligation to address that as well with every child but like I said above and beyond we have some children with some serious challenges our children on the autism spectrum if you
▶ 2:10:38 are familiar with the work in autism you have high-functioning children that look like everybody in this room who function like everybody in this room but may have some behaviors that need redirection and training around and then you have children who are significantly handicapped cognitively and behaviorally our goal is to keep as many children as possible in Melrose we only have 43 children out of district right now out of 3,911 and that's ages 3 through 22 we have built programs constantly we've built behavior programs and now have a behavior program at the elementary school the middle school and two at the high school we've built autism programs we've built programs for developmentally challenged children again pre-k through high school we have programs
▶ 2:11:29 because our commitment is to keeping our kids here most of those kids have a wonderful experience but occasionally we have a kid who we cannot service for a variety of reasons and we work with the family to make the decision that is best for that child and place them out but meanwhile the majority of our kids do stay with us and many of them have as I said behavioral health needs learning needs physical needs that we need to that it's our moral and legal obligation to help address thank you for that and I think you said it so Thorp a moral obligation there you know the reason I asked these questions because I think it's very important to help you know paint the picture for the folks here not
▶ 2:12:17 Michael P. Zwirko: only in this horseshoe but also the folks at home you know the painstaking decisions that need to be made in order to get to where we are today I would argue that this budgets inadequate it certainly may meet the obligations but it feels inadequate you know the schools and the school systems I also want to reiterate because you alluded to this as well an overwhelmingly amount of the students as well as people that have either graduated from there or have children that graduated from there have very positive experiences in the Melrose public school system they do whether it's in the arts program the visual arts and performance arts that you had mentioned the athletic program music program when you know when we send our kids to marching parades across the
▶ 2:13:03 Michael P. Zwirko: country you know we're very we have a great amount of Melrose pride and I think that you know we need to recognize that with all these lifts and shifts there are real as mr. school alluded to earlier there are sacrifices that are being made and I I question how many further sacrifices can be made without suffering from a death of the thousand cuts as they say so you know I think it's very important that that we pass this budget tonight and that we look where we can for ways to help alleviate areas I know that we were all solicited by the mayor to look at areas for potential revenue you know this is a conversation that is not going to end this evening although this line item may so I just you know I say that because it's very important as we've been
▶ 2:13:57 Michael P. Zwirko: hearing a lot from our own constituents as well as administrative professionals teachers and it's you know it's it's getting to be a really tough pill to swallow so I think it's these are they go beyond philosophical questions it's it's it's about moral obligations that we have so I could I could make further comments but at this time those are all the questions I had madam chair thank you for your answers first time who have not yet oliver medeiros thank you and uh being that it's late i'll try to get right to it but i do appreciate the format of the budget i think it's thank you um i i did not see and it's it's one thing that it's an area that i probably hear most from concerns about parents
▶ 2:14:58 actually is is staff retention and i didn't see it specifically addressed in well it is if you read my narrative it's woven into my narrative the things that we're doing to try to keep staff and i know um we have tremendous professional development a lot of support among the teachers for each other i think they do do a great job i'm wondering as we lose staff are the people who we are hiring being hired at a higher rate no and that's an excellent question Ms. Medeiros again that's one of the constraints of a budget so when Ms. Farrell and I look at replacing staff I set a number and quite frankly it's a number at which we feel that we can afford I usually set it at master step three which is around fifty four thousand dollars
▶ 2:15:55 Monica C. Medeiros: that does give me some play if I hire somebody at a lower step I may have a little bit of extra money to use for high to fill positions typically high to fill positions are science math and special education so um you know it's it's it's playing the averages but that is that is a serious consideration and I know in our discussions say maybe about two years ago just after that contract was settled there was a lot of discussion about the teacher pay and there was a lot of discussion that are you know for instance what's been mentioned here today we get we give 84 percent for the health insurance which is which is higher than some other districts and that we have a lot of teachers who are newer teachers and so they may be naturally kind of on the
▶ 2:16:50 lower end of the pay scale then somebody who's coming with a whole lot of experience obviously right so are we seeing those newer teachers come in kind of getting a taste for things and then leaving are we doing any kind of exit interview we do exit interviews all the time so it's interesting we lose people for a variety of reasons sometimes it's because we do not want to retain them they're not meeting our standard sometimes it is for money and sometimes quite frankly it's because they can't afford to live here and when you end up buying a house in New Hampshire or Leominster and you're driving here every day you reach a point where it gets real old and you try to work closer to home I have a little uptick in because we do hire young staff teachers who leave
▶ 2:17:50 because quite frankly the cost of childcare is you know they do that cost analysis you know at the end of the day I'm paying the daycare more than I'm getting taking home and they may step away for a couple of years so that that's another factor we see we see we do a lot of incentive to keep our people here we like to take the approach that even when we have had a setback it's given us an opportunity so three years ago when we had to cut three content directors because of cost savings we created what we call content facilitators which was an advancement stage for young teachers who may be interested in becoming an administrator one day they get a stipend they help with a lot of the curriculum and assessment work and we have that and at
▶ 2:18:40 the elementary level it's called an elementary instructional leader again giving them that incentive to stay with Salem State in the fall we're beginning a two-year program on a Leadership Academy and it will be on site here and thankfully because the person running it is a Melrose resident we leverage that As you said, we do tremendous PD, and that sometimes works against us, because I have staff that leave and tell us, oh my God, I'm coasting where I'm at. They even haven't heard a half of what we do, because we train them so well. On the administrative level, it is a problem. We're not competitive. I did some analysis in terms of our elementary principals in the same collaborative area. My colleagues that were willing to share information with me,
▶ 2:19:38 eight of them shared their information. We're the lowest paid on our elementary principals. We're the lowest paid on our high school principal. We're the third lowest paid on our middle school principal. When you look at our starting salary for our teachers, while we may be actually we're a little bit and we're in the middle of the pack the real issue is when we get to the top of the scale we stop climbing while other districts continue to climb um you know and ironically when i look at these numbers um you know there are teachers making within eight thousand dollars of our principals and our principals work 260 days a year and i think most of you know you see them day and night um so um you know that is a problem
▶ 2:20:30 Monica C. Medeiros: thank you appreciate that and and Thorp no publicly available uh source for this information unless we were to go into perhaps some of the budget city by city right desi used to post everybody's contract online they stopped doing it um but you'd have to go into every city's website and see what you could find out and did other principals are not under any kind of union contract so they're independently right negotiating for themselves yeah okay thank you very much thank you thank you the will of the board with this department line motion to move the bottom line second motion to move the bottom line made by president Search second by alderman medeiros any discussion what is i'd like to identify the bottom line at this point absolutely the bottom
▶ 2:21:30 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: line for department number 300 is 27 million 596 824 dollars would you repeat that 300 department number 300 the melrose public school budget is 27 million 596 824 dollars thank you all in favor of the motion to move the bottom line aye any opposed that will be moved forward to the full budget thank you very much thank you everyone motion to adjourn the committee on appropriations we have a motion to adjourn made by presidents work oh second by Alderman Mortimer all in favor of adjourning we are now adjourned we will return next to the full board for the remainder of that agenda hereby calling the full board back to order out of recess from earlier this evening we did end at the calendar on the calendar I will note that there are seven orders