AI-generated transcript of Medford School Commmittee 04-24-24

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Please be advised that on Wednesday, April 24th, 2024, at 5 p.m., there'll be a special meeting of the Medford School Committee to be held remotely via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed live on the Medford Public Schools YouTube channel through Medford Community Media on your local cable, Compass channel nine, eight, or 22, and Verizon channel 43, 45, or 47. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following information. There is a Zoom link on the agenda. as well as a meeting ID number, 916-9555-0494. Questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing medfordsc at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting questions or comments must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, your question and comment. First is vote to approve two additional non-voting members of the Medford Comprehensive High School Building Committee, and we'll take that paper after we call the roll, please.

[Paul Ruseau]: One second. Member Branley.

[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Present.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.

[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Here.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Here. Member Olapade. Present. Member Reinfeld. Present. Member so present, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Present, seven present, zero absent. I'll start by just saying Member Graham, myself, and Dr. Edouard-Vincent met again yesterday to review, Monday actually, to review the 208 pages again to come up with two additional alternates or non-voting members, I should say. I will turn it over to Member Graham. Thanks.

[Jenny Graham]: I'm just going to share my screen, or I'm going to try to. Can you all see my screen? OK, good. OK, so let me just try to put it in slideshow mode and see if that makes it a little easier to see. OK, so just as a quick recap, on the 8th, we voted to seat the nine additional members, the nine additional voting members to the school building committee. And we took a vote to add member Rousseau as a non-voting member. and to add two additional non-voting members to the committee. So this slide is a list of our 15 voting members, which includes all the folks that we appointed back in February and those folks that we appointed on the 8th. I have been in contact with every single one of these folks. They're all excited. They're ready to go. And we look forward to publishing some bios and information about the committee soon. So those are our voting members. And then the other thing that we are doing to round out our committee is seating a number of folks as non-voting members of the committee. So this helps us make sure we're in compliance with all the rules and the requirements around the formation of the school building committee and that the committee does not, the voting members of the committee do not get so large that holding meetings becomes impossible. So on the 8th, we agreed that we were going to add two additional members to the committee. So my recommendation and the recommendation of myself, the mayor, and the superintendent is that we add Larry Brown to the committee as a non-voting member. He's a recently retired teacher from the vocational school. But when I spoke to him, I hear he's being sort of pulled back in to support. his program, so he's, I'll call him pseudo-retired in my language. And then the other person that we're recommending is Philip Santos, and he is a civil engineer and a parent of young children. So those are my two recommendations. Happy to take any questions.

[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to approve Larry Brown. I was kind of motioning.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion for approval by member Mso, seconded by member Reinfeld. All those in favor to approve Larry Brown.

[Paul Ruseau]: We have to take a roll call. Roll call, please. Member Branley?

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? Yes. Member Olapade? Member Olapade? Oh, did we just lose? No. Is that a yes from you, Member Olapade? Great. Member Reinfeld?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: So yes, Mayor Langelker?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. So in the affirmative, zero in the negative, motion is approved. Is there a motion on the floor to recommend Philips Santos was a civil engineer. I think that is a piece that we were missing, and also a parent of, I believe, two young children.

[Paul Ruseau]: Mayor, I had the motion to approve both of them, actually.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I thought you just did number nine. Sorry. That's what I heard. You heard number nine. OK, let's take one more vote, because that's what I heard, too.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I only heard one name. OK, one second.

[Jenny Graham]: So I will make the motion to approve Philips Santos.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion by Member Graham, seconded by Member Olapade. I second. Two seconds we have on the floor. Roll call, please.

[Paul Ruseau]: One moment. Member Bramley? Yes. Member Graham?

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Intoppa, sorry, out of order. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Rossa, yes. Mayor Longo, correct.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative, motion passes. Thank you, everybody.

[Jenny Graham]: So I will get in touch with these folks, and the committee will meet for the first time on April 30th. So we are getting started on schedule. Thanks, everyone.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have on the agenda number two fiscal year 25 budget update, potential new revenue sources, budget development and positions. I'll turn it over to our superintendent and Gerry McCue, our CFO.

[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Good evening, Mayor and members of the school committee. We're pleased this evening to present our third budget update to you. Everyone has been really working diligently, but I just want to thank Mr. Gerry McCue in advance for all that he's been doing to really help us this year. And so this evening, he will be talking about potential new revenue sources, continued budget development process and positions that we're looking at. So I want to pass the baton on to Jerry and thank you for this moment. Jerry, you're on mute right now. Thank you.

[Gerry McCue]: Thank you, Madam Superintendent, and good evening to the school committee. I'm attempting to share my screen. Can everyone see that now?

[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Yes.

[Gerry McCue]: Okay, thank you. Tonight I'm mainly going to focus on some potential sources of new revenue that we could use to support the budget. First, I wanted to talk about kind of where we're at as we're coming to the end of the budget development process or certainly the preliminary budget and getting ready for public hearing next month. We would continue to hone the budget for savings, and I use the term workable savings because we have to kind of make sense out of some of the things we're doing, how the work will get accomplished. We continue to look at staffing to align to class size and class schedules. We're looking at prior year spending to inform our budget needs in FY25. We're looking to reorganize certain support functions to gain efficiencies in that area. We want to ensure that we're eliminating any structural deficits that we're finding in the budget. And we've talked about this in prior meetings. The homeless transportation account is kind of the big one in this category, but those budgets really have to get right-sized. And that's kind of one-time spending that those budgets will just be more or less maintained in the future. We're managing a transition away from ESSA funding, which many school departments are facing in Massachusetts. And we will ensure that all our contractual obligations, collective bargaining agreements are fully funded. And we'll be proposing staffing that will allow us to manage some of our cost centers, you'll see a proposal for a transportation coordinator, for example, that we, there are, in my view, there are savings to be made by being more strategic in procuring our transportation and kind of managing it through the end of the, through the fiscal year. and make sure we're, you know, we have sufficient staff to meet our compliance and reporting our obligations. And one example of this is, you know, we have a lot of reporting to the Massachusetts Teachers Retirement System, and it's very difficult to keep up with their informational needs. But it's something that we need to do so our teachers can have accurate information on file when it comes time for them to think about retirement. So that work will just continue right up to the time that we will develop a draft budget and be prepared to have a full description of how we're arriving at a balanced budget at the public hearing. So for some revenue sources, you know, we've talked about implementing a chargeback system for certain areas. So we have programs that use our facilities that are cleaned by us, that have heat and electricity provided by us for administrative purposes. considerations, you know, our HR department and our payroll department processing time sheets and issuing checks and taking care of benefits that these individuals are provided that work in programs that charge a fee for their service. So an example of this would be our before and after school program. So we proposed three areas that would implement chargebacks for. food service program, just for utilities that they use, facilities. We developed a methodology around classrooms used. And for administrative, we're just looking at recouping the costs of our business office, HR department, and technology department. And those would be proportionally allocated to some of these programs. And that money would come back in to offset some of the expenses. For example, the utility expense in our buildings and grounds department when it comes to the food service chargeback. The, I would propose to use the facilities chargeback account to help support our building repair account. And the administrative chargeback could go to fund some new positions we're gonna propose in FY25 for compliance and reporting. So this will help relieve the general fund budget from some of these expenses. The other area I looked at was are there positions that we could legitimately charge to our revolving funds? And I was particularly targeting two revolving funds that have balances that had been underutilized in prior years. This would be more kind of a one-time opportunity, because once we draw down those balances, they'd no longer be available. So we'd have to kind of bring these positions back into the general fund sometime in the future. But I would target salaries of approximately $100,000, one position in our vocational program and one position in the MedFed early education program, again, to provide some additional resources to our FY25 budget. The mayor is looking for potential funding in her capital accounts for some of our needs. So she's already agreed to fund the recommissioning services for four elementary schools and two middle schools. I was proposing in our budget to have a recommissioning program for at least one school and kind of try to do it over time. But it's really excellent if we can do all these schools at once. It's going to provide a wealth of data to do some proper capital planning. and we'll be able to kind of reduce our proposal in this area by an amount that would be funded by the city's capital funds. And then the mayor has told me she would also look to see if it's possible to fund some of our Chromebook and Apple device refresh proposal. Um, and that's kind of a, to be determined right now. But, um, we do have a lot of devices that were purchased. Um, uh, I believe with opera money over, you know, during COVID. And, uh, so we have a significant, you know, over, uh, about $2 million worth of devices that have to be replenished over five years. So our proposal is to kind of begin to do a refresh. So we have new devices, 20% of our inventories is brand new each year. And so that there could be additional resources from the city to help fund that. We also have some good news on the Chapter 70 front. We were budgeted at the $30 minimum when the governor released her budget. The House right now began deliberations on their version of the budget today. But from news reports, leadership of the House of Representatives intends to increase that per pupil amount to $104 per student. So, you know, there's many districts in the Commonwealth that are only receiving minimum student aid, and so it's just not enough to kind of meet the challenges that school districts have. So it's good that the legislature is trying to address that. This amount, I believe the Senate at a minimum would agree with this amount, and it's likely that they may also try to increase it beyond $104. If we were to receive $104 per student in the final budget, that would be an increase in Chapter 70 of $470,000. So we would have to work that out with the city to be able to access that. But that's a potential extra funding that will come into the city that could be put towards our budget. So when you add all this up, you get a little over a million dollars in support. And that combined with some increase in appropriation from the city and some savings that we'll be proposing at the public hearing, hopefully that will be sufficient to meet our needs in FY25. So I don't know if anyone would have, we'll make this slide deck available on the school committee shared drive. And I don't know if folks have any questions about these initiatives.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau, then Member Graham.

[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jerry. The $30,000 is to study a recommissioning, correct? That's not to actually do recommissioning.

[Gerry McCue]: Right. Well, the recommissioning, what they will do is they'll go back and look at the original system designs of the buildings, how it's supposed to work. how it's currently working and then there'll be recommendations that come out of that to, you know, take corrective action. Some may be things that, you know, are recommended to be done immediately. Some recommendations may be kind of more to get on the radar for the next two or three years, but it will give us a lot of data around each school about the types of projects that we have to undertake to kind of bring them up to good operating condition. So, it is more of a study, but But it's a study with recommendations. It's similar to an audit, you know, when you take a look at the books and then there's recommendations for improvement.

[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. And then our hearing is on the 6th, correct? Is that when our budget hearing? Yes. So the budget will be posted on our school website by 5 p.m. on May 2nd, Thursday, correct?

[Gerry McCue]: Yeah. Well, the requirement is 48 hours prior to the meeting, but I think that would be good practice. It kind of includes the weekend, but we could keep it to business days.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I mean, I read the statute, and it's 48 hours, but 48 hours in the superintendent's office, which to me seems like they really did not intend to include weekends because We're not going to make the superintendent stay open all weekend so that can come and view it. So, I mean, I do hope that it's up there by the 2nd, we've in the past. We've had years where. Frankly, we just didn't post it at all. Even at the meeting, the public had no access to the budget. So I just want to make sure we don't make that mistake again. Because yeah.

[Gerry McCue]: Yeah, there's also a requirement to publish it in the newspaper, and that's a seven-day window. So in talking to Thomas, he said, because we don't have a local paper of record, we would probably publish that in the Globe, but we'd certainly get it on the website too.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I have a question out to the MASC distribution list today, because a lot of communities have lost local newspapers, and I'm just asking them what they're doing, because, you know, if you're way out in Western Mass, publishing it in the Boston Globe, I mean, the language of the law is your local or district, I mean, newspapers. And it's kind of hard to imagine anybody thinking you look in the Boston Globe for a Greenfield mass notice. So if I hear anything interesting back on that, I will certainly pass that along, because I do think somebody needs to update that statute, because the assumption that there's a newspaper everywhere is long gone.

[Gerry McCue]: Right. And it was written before Way before internet and technology.

[Paul Ruseau]: And then my final question is, and I think you did say this already, the Chapter 70 funds, those would go to the city and the city would decide whether to send them to the schools. We don't get them directly, correct?

[Gerry McCue]: Yeah. Well, the fact is that the city does provide more than the minimum contribution because they are paying for 100% of our health insurance They pay for charter school tuition. So they're meeting their minimum. Typically, the history is that they're usually provided more than the minimum. And so I put that caveat in because the city would have some kind of discretion to be willing to appropriate that. But I think if you look at the spirit of the SOA, we are teaching more English language learners. The SOA is being increased every year to recognize the cost of teaching entire school population, but also like special population. So, you know, hopefully, we can access some of that money.

[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Ruseau. And Member Graham.

[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Two questions. The first is the use of capital funds for things like Chromebooks, that would be like a one-time fix, right? That would not be an ongoing way to replenish Chromebooks?

[Gerry McCue]: Yeah.

[Jenny Graham]: OK.

[Gerry McCue]: Yeah, I think we still have to kind of push for building some capacity in the general fund budget for this particular item. But I think, you know, I'm grateful the mayor is kind of looking at, you know, what our needs are. And it so happens that she might have some more flexibility with capital money for this purpose than she does, you know, with the general fund. So it would, you know, but it would be, it would kind of be a one time thing. We'd have to be looking at the same proposal for FY 26.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, if I could too. I think we're struggling now, obviously, because of the fiscal cliff, not only ESSER that ran out in September, that's past September, but ARPA that's running out in December. So you are seeing a big fiscal cliff. So the hope would be to have Chromebooks in the general fund budget every year, and that is a goal that I think we need to strive for. But to get through this year without using one-time funds would be a big accomplishment, and it would free up some ARPA funding to hopefully be able to do the recommissioning of, I think, $250,000 or so, plus some Chromebooks. And we're doing the same thing on the city side. You know, there's positions we've shifted to CDBG or positions we might be reducing a bit but we're trying to keep our refunded positions in the budget as we are trying to do on the school side so there's just some adjusting we're doing now knowing full well that in fiscal year 26 we're going to have to take that on full time and then the contracts we're paying through ARPA through 26 will have to come on the budget after that. So we are fully preparing to put more things into the budget over the next several years. I think this budget is just extremely important to try to get by without any loss and shifting capital, including Chromebooks to one-time funding is just the way to get by this year. But we've made progress. First year of COVID, we spent 12 million in one-time monies, and then I think I believe it was eight, then four, then last year, the school spent the three. So this year we're trying to clear out that one-time funding use, and then hopefully we'll be progressing further and doing more best practices as the years go on.

[Jenny Graham]: Got it. The other question I had, the Chapter 70 money, is 470 the net gain, or is that what it would be if it was funded at $100? So is it 470 minus 135, or? No, it would be 470 over what we are receiving this year. Oh, OK. Got it. Thank you.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Graham. Member Reinfeld?

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes. In regard to the chargebacks and the revolving funds, we haven't seen the rate cards for some of the revolving funds that are coming up. Are we going to be seeing that before the hearing so we know where roughly those rates are?

[Gerry McCue]: Yeah. I know that's being worked on, and I think you may see it at the Monday night meeting. Great.

[Erika Reinfeld]: member Graham.

[Jenny Graham]: Sorry, I forgot to put my hand down.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I was like, that was quick. No, sorry. Thank you. You can continue, Jerry. Thank you.

[Gerry McCue]: Well, that's actually all I had tonight. I know it said positions on the agenda. I was more thinking of the positions we were trying to identify the charge to revolving funds, but If folks were interested in any kind of thing particular on that topic, I can respond. No.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: If anybody else has any questions, it's okay to end early. We have long meetings on Monday, long meetings on Tuesday. So, no, we appreciate the update and the hard work you and the superintendent and the team are doing over at the schools. We're doing the same hard work over on the city side, just trying to close the gap and not just close the gap from the city side budgets, but also close the gap so we can hopefully provide more to the schools. That is the goal on the city side. working throughout April vacation and continuing on this week, trying to balance the budget and make sure that our school committee and city council are happy with what's in it and we provide for our kids and staff.

[Marice Edouard-Vincent]: Great. Mayor, I just wanted to confirm that we are working diligently on getting those rate cards as up to date as possible to present at Monday's meeting so that we can continue the conversation and hopefully increase some of the rates to help with the budget for next year.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Great, great, thank you.

[Paul Ruseau]: Motion to adjourn?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion to adjourn by Member Ruseau, seconded by? Second. Member Graham, roll call please.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley? Yes. Yes.

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes.