[SPEAKER_05]: Okay. We are back from executive session. And next up, we have the consent agenda. We have bills and payrolls, regular school committee minutes from February 5th, 2024. Is there a motion for approval? Motion for approval. Seconded by Member Reinfeld. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Getting the hang of it, and it's only meeting three. Good job, good job. Oh, four, okay, sorry. No reports of subcommittees, and we have three reports from our superintendent. First up is updates and comments. I'll turn it over to you, Dr. Edward-Vincent.
[SPEAKER_06]: Good evening. Happy Lunar New Year to our Asian American and Pacific Islander community members and all who celebrated it. Saturday marked the beginning of the Year of the Dragon. Lunar New Year celebrations are often focused on festive meals, gathering with family and loved ones and preparing for a healthy and fortunate year ahead. Also, it is that time for the lucky red envelopes, which are given out with money or special treats for children and everyone. The red envelopes are always welcome, and if you're fortunate to receive one, accept it with a big smile. I'd like to thank the Medford Human Rights Commission and the Medford Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the city for hosting a fun New Year celebration this past Saturday at our new library. Also, I'd like to take this moment to introduce a Harvard University education fellow, Miss Kimberly Lewis. I'm very excited to briefly introduce a new member of our Medford Mustangs team. Miss Kimberly Lewis is joining my office two days a week as a Harvard doctoral fellow. Miss Lewis is an experienced secondary educator, who was taught in Texas, California, Maryland, Washington DC, and the United Arab Emirates. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Ed. Through an extremely competitive process, Medford Public Schools was selected to be one of the highly sought after districts for Harvard residency. This fellowship is fully funded by the generosity of HGSE, and this partnership will provide our district with an additional opportunity to better meet the needs of all of our students. Ms. Lewis will be involved in our district's work and learn about the demands, opportunities, and challenges that face a superintendent on a daily basis. She will utilize this time to learn about the complex role and work of a superintendent of schools. I am extremely appreciative of the opportunity to work with Ms. Lewis and look forward to our collaboration as colleagues. Ms. Lewis is on the call and we are welcoming you to just greet the school committee.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, hi. Thank you for that lovely introduction, Dr. Vincent. Like Dr. Vincent said, my name is Kimberly, and I'm working on my doctorate in educational leadership. I've worked in education for the past 15 years, and I am super excited to include Medford as part of my learning experience. I've already gained a lot from working with Dr. Vincent in the past weeks, and I look forward to learning from you all as well. Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you, Ms. Lewis. Also this evening, I would like to just provide a brief update on our tiered focus monitoring review. Last week, DESE, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, conducted its triennial review of our English learner education programs. We're very grateful to Mr. Paul Teixeira, our EL director and his team, as well as all the Medford staff and faculty who helped facilitate this important oversight visit. So at tonight's meeting, I'm looking forward to inviting the committee to approve a generous donation by Tufts University to support Medford's Center for Citizenship and Social Responsibility, And next, we'll move on to a mid-year budget update from Mr. Gerry McCue, our district's finance director. Over recent years, we have talked at length about the significance and positive impact of pandemic-era funding sources, such as the federal government's ESSER program, usually known, it's the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which we call the acronym, sir. So we'll be discussing that a little bit. But we've also talked about how eventually those funding sources would be depleted, and our budgets would face a fiscal cliff. So this evening, we're going to have a presentation from Mr. McHugh, and he will cover the challenging news that we are facing a shortfall and provide a little more additional detail. But I do want to begin the conversation by stating clearly that our team is all hands on deck to respond to this situation. We will work actively every day with administrators and educators to weather this difficult scenario, communicate its significance to our community, and most of all, to ensure that Medford students continue to receive the high quality public education services they all deserve. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, Dr. Edouard-Vincent, and nice to meet you, Ms. Lewis. We have recommendation to approve a donation from Tufts University. Dr. Edouard-Vincent?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, I am asking the committee to approve a generous donation of $1,000 to the Center for Citizenship and Social Responsibility, CCSR. CCSR is funded by the Cummings Foundation, the Crystal Campbell Community Betterment Fund, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, and relies on thoughtful donations such as this. So my request is, will the committee approve the $1,000 donation from Tufts University?
[SPEAKER_05]: Motion for approval by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member Reinfeld. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Next up, we have number three, mid-year fiscal year 24 budget update, Mr. Gerry McCue, Director of Finance. Welcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that good? Thank you, Madam Mayor, and it's very nice to meet many of you in person tonight. As the superintendent said, we began doing projections through the end of this fiscal year in January. In the fall, we had settled the administrator's contract, the building monitor's contract, And these contracts not only affected FY24 salaries, but there were retroactive salaries for FY23 and FY22 that are hitting in FY24. I wanted to get those new salaries kind of programmed in to the payroll system in order to do these projections. And Recently, I disclosed to the superintendent and the mayor that we are projecting a potential shortfall of $2.5 million. I caution that this is very preliminary at this point. There's always kind of a tension when you have a problem like this. Do you do a lot of research so you can have immediate answers or do you disclose as soon as possible? And I felt like we should be disclosing this to you right now as we kind of look into the various issues that could be, you know, causing the shortfall. So I prepared a document that, identifies three areas. There's a lot of, there are a number of accounts that are running over and some are running under and they offset each other, but these particular accounts I'm gonna call out to look at. And the first group is a number of accounts where we spent more in FY23 than we budgeted in FY24. So, trying to look into why that is. And some of these accounts we're really going to have to address in the FY25 budget. Our budget should be aligned to what the projected spending is in that account. For example, in legal expenses, we budgeted $5,000 in FY23. We wound up spending $95,000 in FY23. And then in FY24, we budgeted 5,000 again. And we're projected to spend by the end of the year $165,000. So there's, There's about half a dozen cases that the school department is involved in. We get bills every month for legal expenses as they work on these cases. Earlier in, in the, in the fall, we, we had a settlement and one of the cases of $75,000 that that hit this account so that's just an example of an account that, you know, could not may not be budgeted correctly. Another one is the homeless transportation. So every school district is required to provide transportation to homeless students. It's for very good reason. And in FY23, we budgeted $130,000 for homeless transportation. We spent over 700,000. In FY 24, again, we budgeted $130,000, and we're well on our way to spending over $500,000. We do get some money from the state to reimburse that, but it's not anywhere near what the actual expense is. And it's one of these things it's very hard to budget for because it's very unpredictable. And we could get notice tomorrow from a school district that has a homeless family in Medford and they're being bused back to that district, we participate in half that cost. But as hard as it is to budget for that, we should be cognizant of what we typically spend year in and year out and try to get our budget aligned to that. There's a number of salary accounts that still need to be investigated. Those budgets are built with particular positions behind them. And so we really have to look at who is expected to be charged to that account and who is actually being charged to that account. There can be differences in what was predicted versus the actual salary that's being paid. Another problem could be that the payroll system didn't change. If somebody transferred, say, from the Andrews to the McGlynn, did the payroll change to kind of reflect that salary should be charged to McGlynn now instead of Andrews? So those things should need to be investigated a little bit more. Another, issue that is really driving the deficit is there's three contracts that were in negotiations at the end of FY23, the administrator's contract, the building monitors, and the custodians. And it appears that there was a reserve established for the settlement of these contracts in FY23. There's an account called undistributed salaries, there was a budget of $1.1 million for those in that account. Unfortunately, those contracts did not get settled in FY23. They got settled in FY24, but the budget, the reserves that were there in FY23 were no longer in the budget in FY24. FY24, the appropriation was set at $250,000. So those new salaries for FY24 and the retroactive amounts that went along with them are causing some of the shortfall. And then the third kind of unfunded charge to the budget was that custodians had a wage settlement back in 2022. It was for over $570,000 and it was to be paid out over a three-year period. A small payment in May of 2022, a payment of about $250,000. $50,000 in August of 22, and another payment of about $250,000 in August of 23. And these payments ran through the custodian salary account. as was necessary in order to capture the tax withholdings that were necessary for those individuals. But nevertheless, that's kind of driving some of the shortfall. Now, we will be implementing some initiatives this week to try to close this gap as best we can with existing funds. We will scrutinize new purchase orders to make sure we're only spending expense budgets on things that are absolutely necessary or where we're required to spend. We're gonna be scrutinizing any vacancies that we have to limit backfilling of vacancies only to those positions that are absolutely necessary. We're gonna review all the planned spending on grants and revolving funds that were part of the FY 24 budget to make sure that those were accurately implemented in the budget. We will also be reviewing existing encumbrances or encumbrances that are already in the system to make sure we're only encumbering what we need to get through the end of the year. As I said, there is, funds available for the homeless transportation, $170,000, so far what I can see in the system. We had a preliminary conversation with the mayor and her finance director, and we found out that the FY23 budget is not closed yet. There is a balance that the school department finished with in FY23, so potentially, There's funds there that can help with some of these retroactive payments for the contracts that had been settled. We're looking at the ESSA 3 account to see if there's any unspent or unprogrammed spending in that account that can be used to offset this shortfall. We're looking at other revolving funds that might have capacity and eligibility to to move some spending onto those. And we did, the city is looking to see if there's any funding in their capital program that could possibly be used for our capital needs as we go forward. So that's, First report, there'll be certainly more to come with this. And when we have kind of a plan that we feel is solid, we'll certainly come back and report to the school committee on how we're addressing this.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you for the update, Jerry. Member Ruseau.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much. I really appreciate this report. I know that it was a lot of manual labor. Unfortunately, we don't have the systems in place to make this a button you click, which I think in many districts, it's a button you click. So it's one of the reasons we don't get this stuff monthly. You know, we don't get a burn report, which many other districts, even the little collaborative short collaborative We get a burn report, and we just can't do that with our systems, which is disappointing in a conversation for another day. I have a few questions. I really appreciate the identification of the undistributed salaries line item. You know, this $1.1 million appropriation, that just went back to the city, and then in FY24, the appropriation was 250,000. Neither of those numbers together cover the expense is what I understand, correct?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if the contracts had settled in FY23, it might not have covered the full amount, but it was a pretty close estimate. And I will say that there could have been a not all of those funds were returned to the city because the balance that exists today is about $450,000. So I imagine once they realized that they had available funds in FY23, there was probably some year-end transactions to maybe charge things to general fund that weren't planned for initially in order to reduce charges on grants or revolving funds that could roll into FY24. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: you won't remember any of this, but on January 6th of 2020, we got our FY 2019 budget close out, and it lists what we budgeted, what we spent, and the differences, and it's sideways, so I can't really go through it too easily. And I don't believe we have received such a report since then, so I don't know. That means nothing for FY20, FY21, FY22, FY23. We have never seen a closeout that shows us that we budgeted $5,000 and spent $180,000 or whatever it is. And some of that is that it takes so long to close out because the systems are not, we're not using Munis and we're just using inappropriately outdated systems. But I think that if you have a closeout report for any of those years, I certainly would be grateful because I think when the committee is looking at our budget proposal, and we see a line item for 5,000, and we see that last year the line item was 5,000, the rational person sees that and says, oh, okay, that should be fine, right? But if we also could have a report at the same time that says, no, we budgeted 5,000, The superintendent's budget says $5,000, but it was $160,000 in spending. Well, that's a major conversation. And I would hope the committee can have that by the time we do the budget.
[SPEAKER_04]: Point of information. Sure. Point of information, Member McLaughlin. I believe we made a motion that we would have quarterly budget reports for actuals versus expended. in one of our previous meetings. I don't have it in front of me, but we've had this conversation certainly multiple times, but I believe it was a motion that was put forward. I would have to double check in the motions, but I believe that we said we would have actual versus expended versus projected, which is exactly what we're seeing here, which is nice. And it is remarkable that we haven't had this in the past and we very much need it. And I'm I just want to double check and see if that motion.
[SPEAKER_00]: My plan for FY 25 is to show you actual spending in FY 23. A good practice for you to review is what's the proposed budget for the next fiscal year, what's the budget for the current fiscal year, and then what was the actual spending for the year behind that. So we'll have an FY25 proposal, we'll have an FY24 budget, and FY23 actual spending. So you can, you know, be able to take a look at, you know, what that, if the budget makes sense versus what we might've spent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you. And I just have one more question and then I'll let my colleagues jump in. Looking at the FY20 budget, which nobody has in front of them but me, but near the very end of the budget book, and this is something that Medford has been doing for a very long time, there is a long list of positions that are not in any way, shape or form anything other than normal operations. Let's see, we have a director, we have secretaries, we have teachers, we have tech people, another director, another director, some paras, all of which are actually regular operating normal part of running a school district. And $1.85 million worth of staff is actually listed as being on grants from revolving, the grants of course is different, but much of this is just from revolving accounts. And so I'm aware having talked to other finance directors like the one at the short collaborative, that this is very unusual. I won't go any further than that. But my question to you is this, How does, if there's such a thing as a normal district, if we put all of these people on the budget, which we should do, and then we have these revolving accounts that build up funds, how does a normal district dispose of those funds? Do they just, at the end of the year, like, hey, we have 1.5 extra million dollars from afterschool or whatever the number is, do we, we don't just let that build up forever or become a, private checkbook for the superintendent to do fun things in the district. Do we write a check and transfer it back to the city so that it can become part of the budget. How does, what does a district normally do with all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I, I actually researched that when I first got here because, you know, some of the balances are. we could use some of those balances to help with our general fund budget, but it's not, you don't have the ability to simply transfer it. So for instance, the before and after school program is funded entirely from fees that are charged to parents and it's pretty robust and it has a large balance in it, Typically for revolving funds, you're supposed to spend that money. That has to be a relationship between what you're collecting it for, and what you're spending it on. And you're right, what we can do as a district is that we can start looking at expenses that are being provided on behalf of that program in the general fund. You could do a facilities assessment, for instance. We're providing the classroom space, we're cleaning it, we're providing heat. There could be an administrative expense charged as well. So there has to be methodologies to make sure it's fair to the program, but We're spending a lot on processing, payroll processing, encumbrances for those programs, and some of that funding can be recouped. I just last week finished a methodology to charge the food service program for electricity and natural gas that they're using in the cafeteria. So I have to, share this with the director and some of my colleagues, but I think we can recover like $54,000, $55,000 from the lunch fund to kind of help support the buildings grounds department with those expenses. So that's how you would do it. I was hoping that maybe you could with, you know, an appropriation from the city council that could move funds in that way that that would, it doesn't appear that that kind of exists. There's only, there's a lot of language around if you close down a fund, you know, where that money goes to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Graham. Thank you. This might be a question for the superintendent, but who is responsible for approving operations and maintenance over time?
[SPEAKER_06]: It would be the director of building and grounds, but also the overtime is closely linked to community schools. So with all of the rentals that are happening on weekends, and it's not the normal Monday to Friday weekday. So some of those, some of the time would be automatically, it would need to be overtime because it's happening outside of the school day. And depending on the number of people that are using the facility, or if it's happening after school, there are large groups of people, they have to go back and clean those areas that normally would not be used. So the facility is used a lot, especially the high school campus. So yes, and the McGlynn Complex is the other building. Those two have, I think, the highest rental costs.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in that vein then, are you checking that the overtime that's attributable to revenue for rentals is being charged off? So I guess my question is, Is somebody just grossly overspending overtime, or is this just an accounting issue that needs to be resolved, and that there actually is no problem with that account?
[SPEAKER_05]: On top of that, if I may, just because I understand we have events, but to have a discrepancy of 183 fiscal year 23, and then a $120,000 jump, how many more events in 2024? or this fiscal year, I should say, more than the last fiscal year, is a huge question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the director of Buildings and Grounds does sign the overtime payroll. The overtime that's attributable to events, church groups, and community schools, pool, that overtime is charged to those revolving funds. What I'm not sure, there is kind of overtime that's baked into the contract, and I'm I'm wondering if that like mandatory overtime was ever kind of taken into account in building the overtime budget. So for instance, during January and February, there's building checks that go on. So a number of custodians are involved in going to the building. Saturday and Sunday with minimum hours to make sure the heat's functioning. Now, that's, you know, something maybe to be addressed in the next contract with them. But in the meantime, you know, we have to calculate what that amounts to and then make sure that's provided for in the overtime budget. There's night checks, there's a lot of overtime going to covering people that are out. Some are out on long-term leave. Some might just be out vacation or sickness or whatever. So because of minimum manning that's in the contract, those shifts all get covered in the overtime budget.
[SPEAKER_03]: And can, I think, In a related question, can somebody take an action item to sit with the head of buildings and grounds and come up with a staffing plan that allows us to budget appropriately next time? Because it seems like there's maybe a budgeting issue, but also if this is in fact accurate and we're way overspending our overtime budget, like we need to have a different plan so that we're not blowing our overtime budget because we don't have the money to do that. So I think somebody needs to sit with the Director of Buildings and Grounds and make a staffing plan that we can both operate to in the future, but also sort of get things under control in the right now, because otherwise we're gonna way overspend instead of somewhat overspend, right? So I think that is pretty critical, because that's one of the big items that jumps out. A couple of- Is that a motion, Member Graham? I think I'm just asking that that happen. I can happy to make a motion. So I'd like to make a motion that the administration work with the director of buildings and grounds and create a staffing plan so that future budgeting can contemplate planned overtime, and we can curtail overtime spending for the remainder of the school year.
[SPEAKER_05]: And if somebody wouldn't mind adding, considering that the contract has not changed to see that it's 140,000 more this fiscal year projected versus last, if the committee could get a breakdown of exactly what the reasoning is for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes. So one issue that might be causing the projection model to overestimate in this area is that we're using overtime in January. to project through the end of the year. So the building checks will cease at the end of February, and that might reduce, it's not gonna eliminate the deficit, but we'll be continuing to run the model through the remainder of the year, that shortfall is gonna be a moving target. Hopefully it's getting reduced as we go along and identify areas that are causing the shortfall and make that cease.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. I think the other thing that I want to make sure we acknowledge is that we for the four years that I've been on the committee, we've been talking about making sure we have adequate budgets in various line items like technology replacement and building maintenance. So I think we all sort of know and feel like we're not maintaining our buildings appropriately. But each time we have that conversation, then we encounter a budget issue where we don't have enough money. And in order to do that on paper, in order to increase a budget, you know, a budget for building maintenance on paper, it would mean like cutting somebody who works with kids. And so I think the committee has sort of generally said that's, that's not what they want to do. And so therefore, like the creative budgeting happens, which is an exercise on paper. But it is sort of it is a really terrible practice to have, I think the conundrum that we have always faced is We each year we set out to do something better and differently and each year the budget numbers just do not reflect an ability to do that. So I know that last year we received a whole series of memos about what our plan could be and then when we got our allocation from the city what our plan had to be, and they're, they were different plan they're completely different plans. and so it included things like, you know, ESSER's sort of an easy one, but we were going to have $50,000 left in ESSER to roll into this summer and could fund some summer programming. And then once we got, you know, sort of the allocation, we approved a budget, but then once we got the allocation from the city, it became clear that we could not sit on that money because that would mean cutting a staff member somewhere else in order to like leave that money in reserve. And we've just not been willing to do that. having gone through all of that over the last, you know, four years, but certainly last year that there was a huge exercise in like, where can we find this money in order to not have to cut staff? Because what the city was able and willing to provide to the schools was not enough to do the basic things that we were feeling like we needed to do. And there were some, there were some new things that we had to do or planned to, you know, and plan to do. And so I know that sort of complicates the picture each and every time, but I would like to see an actual budget that reflects what the budget should be so that even if we have to make those decisions and changes, like everyone can realize that our building maintenance budget should be half a million dollars and we budgeted 150. And so therefore, really should be no surprise when we come in at half a million dollars that we're over by $350,000. So I'm hoping that as you build the budget can really reflect like what does a district of our size need to account for in things like legal expenses and building maintenance and technology replacement and we just we have like never been able to get there for a whole variety of reasons but It is, I think, fairly unsustainable. The other thing I'll say is we, in the series of memos that helped us sort of craft the budget last year, there were lots of positions explicitly being tagged to non-operating fund accounts. So I think that work to sort of scrub and reconcile that all of that has charged out correctly will be a huge portion of this answer. in terms of, because I went back and when I saw this on the agenda, I went back and read one of those and I was like, yeah, there's a whole bunch of stuff here that we said we would do elsewhere, like there's some vocational line items and all kinds of other things. So I think that's really important work that has to be done before we really understand how big of a deficit are we really talking about. And then I think I have one more question and then I'll let some of my colleagues speak, but There's been comments from teachers in the community that they are being told that the schools will run out of paper. And I'm trying to understand where that's coming from, and whether we have advised teachers that we're going to run out of paper. And I'd like to make a motion that we do not run out of paper in this school year, because it's just Like it is, it is critical to operating and so I really want to get to the bottom of like where this information is coming from because it's being broadly distributed on social media. believe I know the original poster. It's a wonderful teacher. It was one of my daughter's teachers. I really don't believe he's making it up. I believe he's hearing it from somewhere from some somebody and that maybe that somebody is very well intentioned but if we're gonna run out of paper, I wanna know about it before we run out of paper because we can't run out of paper. Second.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, we first have the motion for a staffing plan and an explanation on the additional 130 and overtime for operation and maintenance by Member Graham, seconded by? Second. Member Reinfeld, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. And motion by Member Graham to not run out of paper, seconded by Member Ruseau. All those in favor?
[SPEAKER_00]: Aye.
[SPEAKER_05]: All those opposed? Thank you. Motion passes. Member Ruseau.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I may, we have not issued anything on paper, and I would say throughout this process, we have to prioritize the needs of the classroom first, and then everything else is after that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I appreciate that. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you. You know, when I'm looking at this, there's this spreadsheet you gave us. All these numbers are of course are concerning, but there is a general up in addition to the running out of paper thing there's this. drumbeat that we don't have substitutes. And somehow in FY23, we budgeted a quarter of a million dollars, but spent almost $900,000 on substitutes, which is hard to do if we don't have substitutes. So I don't know where that money is going, or if there's a perception that just because there was a day without a substitute, that there are no substitutes. I know that generalizing can happen, but this number does not tell the story that the community and some teachers definitely are telling, that there's never any substitutes. How do you spend a million dollars on substitutes if there aren't any, or 900,000. But we appropriated, again, a totally inappropriate number. FY23 was not a, quote, pandemic year. And so, like the previous year where there was lots of people out for you know, because everybody was testing. I mean, I know the pandemic really is, you know, some people would say it's not over and I can't disagree with that. But, you know, to appropriate only even less in FY 24, and then to already be projected to spend twice the appropriation that I just I'm confused about why we're even trying to appropriate, why are we putting numbers down in our budget book at all on a lot of these things they're just made up numbers to squeeze into a number we've been handed on a slip of paper from the city. But to be fair, some of these numbers were in our budget book, before we got that appropriation, you know, the $5,000 I looked back in some of the older budgets, my very first budget, it said $2,000. The next one that said $30,000. So it looked like somebody was like, hey, we probably should go up. Now, of course, I don't have actuals. So I don't know what the actuals were. But You know this substitute line though and there's another story in here because we're definitely spending a lot of money on substitutes and it's worth noting we pay less for substitutes than most other districts, so it's even more people and and substitute hours that are happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first let me say that. It's not unusual for a school district to budget less than they would normally use for substitutes because some of those substitutes are gonna be used for teacher vacancies that occur during the year. So there's likely gonna be surpluses in those salary accounts to kind of offset some of the substitute spending. But you do have to have a substitute budget that's right size to, you know, what your actual need is. The other thing is that principals will pull teachers in to cover classrooms. So there's classroom teachers, and then there's specialist teachers, music, art, phys ed. Those teachers can be pulled in during their prep period to cover that class. And so that's, driving a lot of the spending because it is true that we could use more substitutes. And we do really have to address the salaries that we're paying, we're not competitive with surrounding districts. in attracting substitutes. We are looking at a staffing, a substitute staffing firm that would recruit substitutes. They would essentially pay them the rate that we tell them to pay, and then they get an upcharge for their profit and their overhead. That has to go out to bid. But that's kind of one way we're trying to solve this problem. But that's what's driving the number. We're filling the substitute slots internally, and that's more expensive than if we were able to hire a substitute off the street to cover that class.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, that's actually, I would never have guessed that that line meant that. Is there any, you have plenty of work on your plate, but is there any way you can divide this line item in the future so that charges that when we're paying teachers for lost prep times, that that's a separate line item than substitutes we're hiring in? Because certainly like, they seem like totally like, can we get enough substitutes, this line item, tells a very different story than what it turns out to be accurate. And I would really like to know that, especially when we go into the next teacher contract, like, you know, how much are we actually spending on last prep period, which right now I don't think we could easily tell, at least not from here, maybe in the budget.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, we could put that into motion for FY 25 to kind of capture that data, but it is, there is difficult, there's three or four systems at play, the accounting system, there's the frontline system, the Harper's payroll system, and they don't easily talk to each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, thank you. And then, I think you touched on the security wages already, but I'm just, is a lot of this expense related to things like the bathrooms and the, you haven't been here long enough for all of our multi-year debate, discussion, community conversation on the safety of our bathrooms and stuff like that. But when we're paying administrators or anybody else to monitor bathrooms, assuming we're paying them, I think we are. Are those getting put into security wages or is that literally just people who are in the security union?
[SPEAKER_00]: I would, I'm not sure. I would guess they might be hitting that substitute line as well. I don't think they'd be part of security wages, but What's really driving the security wages in FY24 was the fact that we paid these retros. So it's 24, 23, and 22 are all hitting that account. You don't see it on the administrators because they're not paid in one account. They're kind of distributed throughout the programs, but you can see it with the building monitors. They're all being charged to that one account.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, I know you said that earlier, I've already forgotten, sorry. No problem. And then I did have, what was my question? You already answered that already. In the building repairs, as Member Graham pointed out, we just keep budgeting for a number that doesn't make any sense, especially with an old building like the high school, but then it turns out all the other buildings as well. It does this include expenses when the city donate donates when the city covers capital expenses like you know rekeying doors or.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are cameras. It's a separate resource that we're able to access.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anything that's considered capital that the city is paying for directly, that's not even included in this number. Correct. And do you have a sense for what is the big ticket thing? I mean, I assume that, I don't know when this data came in, but like, is this covering the flooding we just had?
[SPEAKER_00]: made an educated guess that we would, we're already in deficit in that account. We spent a little over $300,000 in the first six months. I estimated that we would spend another $250,000 to get through the end of the year. And we may get some support for the city for that if they have the ability, but it's just that, that there has to be much better analysis of what needs to be budgeted for. There are things that are always gonna come up. There's always bathrooms that have to be repaired. There's always security cameras that have to be repaired. I would, I would hope that we could, we're kind of in a cycle where we wait until we get enough of a problem that we can go to the city and get a capital outlay, but we don't have an ability to kind of address these things in real time because we don't have enough money in our budget. And we had a fire alarm issue at the high school, is five different fire alarm systems in that building. So kind of tracking the nature of the problem was very difficult. We had a fire detail up at the high school to make sure that students and staff were safe. We had the flood, you know, things happen, life happens. and you just can't say, well, we're not gonna do that because we don't have enough money. We have to do it, but we have to make sure those budgets are right size so we can address problems as they come up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you. And I just wanna say one other thing about when we get to the budget, if the committee decides that we want to use reality as a basis for our budget, barring some gigantic unexpected increase in revenue, we'll be faced with the decision of, okay, we're going to put in $150,000 for legal, and we're going to lay off this number of people to do it. It's not a situation any of us wants. I should also point out that just pretending reality isn't there, I don't know who it serves. And this is the position we have been in year after year. And I'm not looking forward to the budget for this reason, but I think having those actuals right up against it, having reality on screen and in our books will at least allow us to say it out loud. Okay, we're gonna probably spend $500,000, we're going to budget 100,000 and just see what happens. Very exciting. It's really depressing, frankly. And this is going to be my sixth budget, I don't count the first one, new members, like the budget just happens to them. But it's going to be really my sixth budget, where I participated, where every year the buildings and grounds budget is 150,000, building repairs is $150,000. Each year that I looked at, and I can say quite confidently, there has never been a year where it was anywhere close to that. But short of an awful lot more money from the city, we're gonna have to choose to either be honest with the budget and lay off a whole lot of people. or just zero things out and see what happens. I just think it's a crappy choice that we have. And I appreciate that you're gonna at least allow us to see it in real time. and we can all make our decision to put $5,000 in the legal fund so that we can save the staff that is directly with the students. But then we're just gonna be here next year having the same conversation. We should all look at each other and be like, we're gonna have this exact same conversation next year. And it's going to be the worst deja vu, but thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd like to make a motion that we get an update sometime in March to let us know sort of all the work that you're doing. How is it changing the projections?
[SPEAKER_05]: Point of information. The 18th, on or about the 18th meeting. point of information member McLaughlin.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just want to double check too on the quarterly for the actual versus projected versus budgeted. So on that motion. So I think we, you know, should be getting a quarterly report, which would be around March, April, based on that motion that already exists. But I don't have the motion number. I have to go back to the minutes or something, but so is that I will second in lieu of us checking that. but I think we also need to check because we should have a motion in place that's quarterly, budgeted, actual, projected, deficit, as has been discussed previously. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so motion for approval by member Graham, seconded by member McLaughlin. All those in favor?
[SPEAKER_03]: Aye.
[SPEAKER_05]: All those opposed for a budget update, March 18th, no hearing and seeing none, motion passes. And I'm assuming Mr. McHugh, you're gonna keep digging, have more information for us on the 18th. Okay. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Presentations of the public, there are There aren't any nor continued or new business, we do have a resolution offered by member Ruseau member all a party, 2024-nine the result the name of the school building committee be named the Medford comprehensive high school building committee. Further, the superintendent will secure the domain, mhs project.org and set up a website dedicated to this project, and further, the chairperson of said committee will be vice chair of the Medford School Committee, member Jenny Graham. Member Ruseau or member Olapade?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to speak? I'll start. One second, let me just get the language back up. So in our last meeting, we were I think we had motions and we all seem to really want to have an FAQ. And I think an FAQ is certainly critical. It needs to hang off of something. I looked around at project websites that existed for surrounding communities. They were frankly, nobody was very creative in their school building project website URL. And I just copied, I think, I don't know if it was Arlington or Somerville, just use MHSproject.org, it could be anything, as long as it's not too long. And I did look to make sure it was available, at least until this got published, and hopefully nobody went and snagged it. So I think, you know, having that having us have the actual URL gives us a starting point for folks to actually put up an FAQ system, which I highly recommend we just look at the FAQs for other districts because mostly they're just going to be the same questions. And then the other thing was to actually name the committee. And I know we have a policy on advisory committees, but this is not an advisory committee, which is like, well, what is it? It's a special kind of committee that's part of the law that authorizes the MSBA building stuff. So that's why I'm not following the advisory committee policy we have, because it's not an advisory committee. An advisory committee doesn't actually make decisions. They make decisions, well, they make decisions, but then they come to us and then we make the decision. I think a building committee makes actual decisions that are the decision. So I think that's probably the biggest difference. And then, so I did choose, I just, again, I'm open to changes to these things, but the Medford Comprehensive High School Building Committee, it's a little long. It was always gonna be long. And then the final part was to name Vice Chair Graham as the chair of the committee. I looked around, the school committee member is usually the chair of the building committee. I think it's, you know, in our renaming committee, we didn't have a school committee member as, was there a member at all on there? No. But you know, and you know, nothing to, not to speak badly of anybody on that committee, but having somebody who is like regularly using Roberts rules, understands open meeting law is like not optional. And we did build that into the advisory committee policy, which we bid, we drafted a couple of years ago. So I think it's very important to have a current school committee member who can, from day one, know how to run the meetings, know about open meeting law, So that's why, and obviously somebody who's willing to serve as the chair is kind of an important piece. So I do not wish to be the chair. And so I asked Member Graham if she would like to be chair and she is able and willing. So that's why I've made this motion.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, Member Ruseau. Thank you both for your resolution. Is there a motion on the floor then? Motion for approval by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member Olapade. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes. We do not have any reports requested. Our next regular scheduled meeting is March 4th, 2024, here at the Alden Memorial Chambers, Metro City Hall, in addition to Zoom.
[SPEAKER_03]: Motion to adjourn?
[SPEAKER_05]: by Member Branley, seconded by Member Graham. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion to adjourn is approved.
[SPEAKER_02]: No school tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_05]: No school tomorrow. Yes. Shovel your neighbor.