[Lungo-Koehn]: Comenzaremos. Tenemos la reunión del Comité de la Escuela Medford fechada el jueves 20 de marzo de 2025 a las 5.30 p.m. Será un comité de toda la reunión y se mantendrá de forma remota solo a través de Zoom. La reunión se puede ver a través de Medford Community Media en Comcast y Verizon. Los participantes pueden iniciar sesión o llamar mediante el siguiente enlace o número de llamada. La identificación de la reunión es 9521257. 8486. Se pueden enviar preguntas o comentarios durante la reunión enviando un correo electrónico a MedfordSc en Medford.k12.ma.us. Aquellos que envíen preguntas o comentarios deben incluir la siguiente información, su nombre y apellido, su dirección de Metro Street, su pregunta o comentarios. El comité de toda la reunión está siendo llamado a centrarse en la visión general de la propuesta de presupuesto del año fiscal 26 y será presentado por el Sr. Gerald McHugh, nuestro analista de presupuesto. Y le pediré al miembro Ruseau que llame a la lista antes de que se lo entreguemos, Sr. McHugh. Gracias. Miembro Branley. Sí, hola, presente. Sí, hola, presente.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Miembro Graham. Miembro Graham.
[Graham]: Mi botón no funciona, aquí.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Aquí. Miembro Olapade. Veo uno pronto.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Simplemente sin morir, así que diga una vez más, el miembro Olapade.
[Graham]: Hola a todos. No puedo, mi cámara no me deja encenderlo. Oh, lo arreglaré. Gracias.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Y estás aquí. Estás aquí. Sí, miembro Ridenfeld. Presente. Miembro del Subridero, Alcalde Lengelker.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Presente, siete, presente, cero ausente. A continuación, lo volveremos directamente al Sr. McHugh, nuestro analista de presupuesto. Gracias, gracias.
[Gerry McCue]: Gracias, señora alcalde. Tengo que compartir mi pantalla aquí.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Compartir la pantalla. Bueno.
[Gerry McCue]: Okay. Is this, people can see this now? All right. Well, we have concluded all our budget meetings at the school department. We've prepared a draft budget. And this is what we're gonna go over tonight, kind of the results of a lot of work by school staff and administrators here at Medford School System. We've had our meetings, as I said, As we talked about at the last committee of the whole, there were a number of new positions requested by principals and by directors. We are taking the position that, you know, we're gonna hold on those positions for now. Well, certainly there's budget considerations with adding a lot of new positions, but the two main reasons are that, We do have, or we are planning on adopting a new schedule for the high school, and we don't know what implications that might have on staffing. And of course, the federal grant status for next school year is a bit muddled right now. I suspect that, As we get closer to the summer, Desi may be able to give us some guidance on the status of those grants. We are planning as if we're gonna receive the grants we have this year, next year, but it's something that we're closely monitoring. And I will say, as you'll see, is that we are not contemplating any across the board staffing cuts that were necessary to balance the FY25 budget. So, basically the budget is in a lot better shape in FY25. So, the majority of the current staffing is funded in the budget proposal. The first Two categories is that we have to increase our current budgets to account for contract labor agreements that are expiring on June 30, and negotiations with those unions are underway. And we also have to adjust line items to take into account step increases that Many staff are entitled to, pursuant to their collective bargaining agreements. Any salary adjustments that were made during the year have to be accounted for in FY26. And any salary annualizations also have to be accounted for. We're gonna go through a list of budget adjustments that are necessary because, The current budgets are not aligned with their spending. We have one change we want to make due to food service regulations, and in a couple of instances we've lost grant funding, and we're going to account for that in FY 26. So the first line is to adjust the athletic budget by 32,500. And some line items within that budget have been level funded for a number of years. The coaches line and contract services in particular are not adjusted for the current level of spending, the number of teams where that are competing, et cetera. So we'll boost for that. During the course of this year, we had to add three one-on-one power positions. And this is mainly due to new students that entered our district with these positions on the IEPs. So we're required to put those on. They're currently working this year and we're going to adjust the budget next year to make sure there's funding for them. We do right currently, Medford charges its lunch monitors to the lunch fund, which is not appropriate or not allowed under the food service regulations, so we're proposing to shift those positions to the general fund. We lost grant funding for two important software applications that we use. One's called ST Math, the other is MAP Assessment Program. These are currently funded by grants this year. They're not eligible for grants next year, so we're going to include those in the budget. We have an administrative suite of software applications. Frontline is one. We have an internet service provider. We have cybersecurity applications. the ticketing system, the Raptor system for visitors. So these, all these applications were not fully funded and we're taking money from other areas of the school budget. And so in 26, we wanna get those applications fully funded and have the, you know, because they're critical to the operations of the school department. This year, we added an academic lead position, which is essentially a building, full-time building substitute teacher at the high school level. We added one to the vocational program due to vacancies. Some of the shops have a certain adult to student ratio attached to them. So when one teacher is out, it creates a problem and it really became important to have a regular building sub for the vocational program that could learn the students, learn the programs that are offered there to support the the director and the students. We've also have a history of using nurse daily substitutes when there's absences to the extent that they are available. And we have never had a budget for that. So we're gonna propose adding some money to the health services line to cover substitutes. For security monitors, we had kind of two separate issues. One, in the course of putting together this budget, we found that we did not sufficiently budget in FY25 for the number of security monitors we had. We had budgeted one less than we actually had on the rolls. And then during the course of FY25, we added a night shift security monitor because we had no way to provide coverage, dinner coverage for the other night shift security monitor. And in addition, there were concerns about a door that was unmonitored regularly over on the pool side of the building So that person was able to monitor that door as well. So in FY26, we're going to fix those budgets by adding enough money to fund 14 security monitors district-wide. And then at the beginning of FY25, engaged with City Year to have two schools receive City Year services. Those services are $100,000 per school. A portion of that 100,000 is charged to the before and after school program because their day overlaps into that program. But we essentially took money from our salary reserves to fund that this year. We wanna restore that money back to the salary reserve budget. And so we're looking to add the $130,000 to the two schools that receive those services. In addition, we've been working very hard with the, with that buildings and grounds department to try to right size those budgets. Um, this year we have some assistance from Paul Riggi from the city has been very helpful, uh, in, um, doing this review of operations. But the two main areas that need funding this year are, uh, to really right size our maintenance budget. So I put here a list of. just a variety of maintenance areas that have to be covered. And we've gone through and assigned them what we think is an appropriate budget. And out of that $457,000 increase, about 122,000 is attributable to more money for maintenance you know, we're establishing a grounds maintenance account and equipment repair and replacement account. And then also to address the extraordinary maintenance needs or capital needs, sometimes they're called in the schools and looking at the capital plan that was approved by the school committee and other projects that came up in the course of budget development, essentially. And so we're looking to increase that external maintenance line by $330,000. In that, we desperately need to replace the air conditioning systems in our tech rooms. Almost all of them have failed. So we wanna make sure we have enough money to go and begin to replace those. We are anticipating a replacement of a fire alarm panel at the Missittuck. And then to establish a count, some budget bandwidth to replace shades and blinds in the schools as needed, sometimes door replacements needed, you know, minor roof repairs, bike rack installations, things like that we're looking to accomplish in 2026. We do have some new spending we're gonna recommend within our network infrastructure. I should preface this by saying that we've captured all of the instructional software that we use, administrative software that we use, we've got them into their own accounts in the different programs that maintain these. And it's almost $800,000 worth of software that is operated as necessary for instruction and school operations. So we're proposing a new position of director of network and technology services that can lead that area into the future. A network technician that will work alongside of the current position that we have. We have one position described right now for network maintenance and really have to build up some capacity in that area. And then of course, we didn't have money for replacing equipment that's in the network. So we have servers and power supplies that have reached the end of their useful life and we need to begin replacing those. Likewise in special education, our transportation line is increasing in FY26 and by about $104,000. And I'm gonna give a separate, there's gonna be separate slides for special education, tuition and transportation a little bit later. Some, Students qualify for extended year programming and those roles are increasing. So $53,000 of this amount is to accommodate those new students in extended year program. And then we have a project transition that you might know about. This is a program for 18 to 22 special needs, students, it's, you know, primarily focuses on life skills. And to this date, they did not have a budget, they kind of cobbled together budget funding from different sources. So $12,000, I think is money well spent for this group of students. Uh, the high schools also requesting to expand or, uh, to increase the amount of money they have for the summer program. Actually, there's, there's no, um, general fund budget for the summer program. It, it, at one point it was, um, I guess it was contemplated that it would be strictly fee based. But over the years, students that need to attend the summer program sometimes qualify for a fee reduction or a waiver of the fee. So this $30,000 will provide the school with an opportunity to get more students into the program. properly funded. I don't know if you remember last at the last committee a whole meeting, the summer school revolving fund was in deficit and this is gonna go a ways to correct that. And then we also have in the security monitor contract, the ability to hire daily substitutes. We haven't done so yet, but we should, if we intend to do that, we should establish a small budget in the security program to fund daily subs. And then the guidance department would like to expand eligibility for PSA, AT exams, trying to get more juniors and sophomores to be able to take that program. And the world language department would also like to expand their assessments down to eighth grade. So students entering high school can be properly placed in the right level for whatever language they're signing up for. So each of those categories was a $2,000 increase to their existing budgets. We do have a little bit of savings to put towards this to offset. We have a student, we don't anticipate right now needing a tuition and transportation allotment for out of district vocational student. We have one student now who we expect to graduate this year. We currently have five student supervisory assistant positions. One of them are vacant. We would not fund the vacant position and that would leave four positions, one each for each of the elementary schools. And then to fund the $30,000 summer program, we're gonna reduce the supply budget at the high school principal's office, which I have discussed with the principal that still leaves her with a healthy budget of about $93,000 after that. So we have a total savings of $101,000. So for special education, um, there were a couple of, couple of things happening in transportation and tuition that aren't going to be readily called out in the budget. One is that, uh, for our new special ed transportation contract, the rates went up, um, significantly in FY 25, uh, it increased what we budgeted by 500, almost $557,000. We had balances in our circuit breaker funds, which we use to close that gap this year. Next year, we will need to continue to use circuit breaker funds towards the transportation budget in the same amount. And then in our uh, budget requests, we're looking to add $104,000, uh, to the general fund budget to cover the projected spending in FY 26. Uh, likewise in tuition, uh, in FY 25, we had a $5.5 million budget for tuition and the tuition budget is, um, funded from three sources, one, the general fund, two, IDEA grant, and three, circuit breaker funds. All the tuitions were increased by the state by 3.87%. We also adjusted the budget for graduating students, students that are aging out of the system, move-ins that happened this year that are responsibility of Medford now, and new placements from within our district. We did get a little bit lucky with this budget in that some of the students aging out are in residential programs, which are very expensive. So we actually had a drop in our overall tuition right now. Of course, you know, next year we may bring new out of district placements at some point, but for now we were able to level fund the general fund budget and we'll continue to charge about $850,000 to IDEA and then the remainder would be funded by Circuit Breaker. So between, we feel confident that The circuit breaker funds we'll receive in FY26 will cover the 1.6 in tuition and the 557,000 in transportation. And there should still be some left over in case we have any new tuitions to deal with in 26. So this is just a summary of the grouping that we did increase comes up to over $4.5 million. And we know that that's not gonna be the budget that we get, but it's the budget that we would like to have based on the work we've done with staff. It's a 5.5% increase. Uh, it's about 2.8% more than the city has given us in a preliminary, uh, projected school budget. Um, we do have, uh, we included in, in the budget. It's already baked in that we will continue to, uh, implement chargebacks to certain programs that use our, uh, facilities and our administrative services. And what we're working on now for the public hearing is looking to see what opportunities we have to close the funding gap and get as close as we can to what the city is projecting. What we're looking at right now is, you know, balances that are in our revolving funds that might be able to take on some positions. We are looking, making sure we have all our positions that are funded in grants properly allocated to those grants. We do think we have this, the question aid funds that, uh, the voters approved that provided, uh, $4 million for. High school, uh, new schedule implementation for teacher, um, salaries and for paraprofessional salaries there, uh, because those contracts were, um, in place for FYI 25 and the money was available in FYI 25. to the extent that, and we won't really know this for certain until negotiations conclude, but I'm thinking that there'll be a balance in that $4 million that we should figure out a way to carry that into FY26 to make sure that first, $4 million gets paid out the way the voters approved it. So I'm gonna, I think we can anticipate using question eight funds in 26 to help with those collective bargaining agreements that get approved either before this year or early next year. There's also, $391,000 in homeless transportation reimbursement that the state provides. And we would like to use that to offset our homeless transportation account and kind of get us closer to that city number. So that at the public hearing on Monday, we'll be able to provide a list of other opportunities that we identify to help fund the budget we're presenting tonight.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Vamos a ver.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Si puedo, desde la silla, hacer una pregunta.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Seguro.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Porque el aumento del 5.5% sobre el año fiscal 25 Y luego mencionó el traspaso de $ 4 millones, porque sí, necesitamos gastar eso de la forma en que los votantes esperan que lo gastemos. Pero también podemos usar parte de ese dinero para cosas que describimos en las preguntas, lo que creo que cubriría mucho de lo que tenía en ese rango de $ 500,000 para el mantenimiento. Entonces, ¿se incluye que se pague de los 4 millones, o está incluido en el aumento del 5.5%? Debido a que obviamente no queremos usar los 4 millones para atenuar una situación en la que mantenemos al personal que no podemos pagar en el futuro y simplemente entramos en otro hoyo. Entonces, ¿puedes explicar eso? ¿Eso reducirá esto al 5%?
[Gerry McCue]: Los $ 4 millones, no vamos a saber hasta que se resuelvan las negociaciones. Pero esperamos que una parte de eso se pague en el año fiscal 2015, particularmente para la implementación del cronograma. Y podría ser que algunos, en el acuerdo final, se paguen en el año fiscal 2015. No anticipo que tendremos los 4 millones completos, pero puede haber un equilibrio para aprovechar. Y en cuanto a la pregunta siete dinero, eso ya está un poco horneado en el resultado final. Fue acostumbrado, presentamos un presupuesto suplementario. Entonces, muchas de esas posiciones y gastos que se cubrieron con el presupuesto suplementario se están llevando al año fiscal26, por lo que el dinero básicamente se contabiliza.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Sí, sé que los tres millones se tienen en cuenta, son los cuatro millones, entonces, ¿estamos reservando una cierta porción para los contratos que no están hasta el 30 de junio? Supongo que, ¿qué costos únicos podemos usar para que no haya un aumento del 5.5%? Porque hemos estado agregando cosas.
[Gerry McCue]: Sí, vamos a esto con esto, este es nuestro trabajo mañana y durante el fin de semana es ver, ya sabes, cuáles son los recursos que podemos aportar para obtener ese 5.5%. Así que ese es nuestro trabajo para trabajar en eso. Pero, um, El, habrá una parte de los 4 millones que creo que seguirá disponible para los contratos de maestros y paraprofesionales en 26. Y luego, por supuesto, la otra cosa de la que tenemos que ser conscientes es que eventualmente, cuando se agota ese dinero, debe reemplazarse en el presupuesto o las posiciones deben ser reducidas Pero, por lo tanto, debemos ser intencionales acerca de cómo queremos relajarnos de cualquier dinero de la pregunta que ocho se lleva a 26.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Sí, y espero que haya más progreso antes de la próxima semana, porque con una anulación de $ 7.5 millones, no Estábamos, creo que todos esperábamos que tal vez no estuvieran en una posición en la que tuviéramos que cortar algo si planeamos correctamente. Así que espero que haya más trabajo que se haga. Así que no estamos en ver que esta imagen sea como un aumento del 5.5% y es un poco más manejable.
[Gerry McCue]: Sí.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Bueno.
[Gerry McCue]: Estamos en la misma página.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Bueno. Gracias. Miembro Graham.
[Graham]: Gracias, así que solo quería agregar algunas cosas. Entonces, el lunes por la noche, nuestra audiencia de presupuesto es simplemente enmarcar nuestra solicitud al derecho de presupuesto municipal al gobierno municipal. Entonces. Aquí es donde le estamos diciendo a todos, incluidos el Consejo y el Alcalde, y sé que estás aquí, pero esto es lo que creemos que necesitamos. Ese aumento del 5.5% en realidad no es diferente de lo que nuestro aumento se describió en el Capítulo 70. Entonces, cuando miré los números del capítulo 70, Describieron que nuestra porción aumentaría en un 5.5% o algo así como aproximadamente. Entonces ese número es consistente incluso con lo que el estado. Describió que nuestro número se vería en este momento. Es más complicado que eso, pero creo que direccionalmente. Ese número no es como, una especie de límites. El proceso presupuestario que hemos presentado tiene otro paso más tarde en mayo y en junio para llegar a la reconciliación total de lo que el gobierno municipal puede proporcionar, lo que puede requerir cambios en lo que describimos y aprobamos como nuestra solicitud, ¿verdad? Entonces esta es nuestra solicitud. Hay un paso dos que dice: Si nuestra solicitud es diferente de lo que la ciudad finalmente puede proporcionar en función de lo que el alcalde recomienda en base a lo que demuestra el consejo, entonces tenemos que tomar otro voto para aprobar. Como, un presupuesto equilibrado, ¿verdad? La otra cosa que mencionaré, porque tenemos muchos miembros nuevos es. Cada vez que estamos en negociaciones activas con la Unión de Maestros en particular, esta vez en el presupuesto es tan incierto como sea posible. Porque de nuestro personal de 800 ish, casi 500 de ellos se sientan en la Unión de Maestros. Entonces, sin claridad sobre eso todavía, Um, hay mucha incertidumbre que entre ahora y junio, con suerte, los dedos cruzados, nos gustan, tendremos certeza y, como, decir, ya sabes, tener un camino hacia adelante que nos permita refinar este número con hechos en lugar de. Sabes, al igual que escuchamos de Bob anoche, como, estamos planeando, pero estos números siempre están cambiando. Así que creo que eso. Cuando recuerdo haber pasado por este proceso hace unos años, donde estábamos al final de un contrato de maestro, fue lo mismo. Una manera, estoy seguro de que iba a suceder y dónde iba a aterrizar. Entonces, supongo, como, en general, solo quiero asegurarme de que las personas que escuchen. Comprenda que a, esta es una solicitud. B, hay un proceso de reconciliación, y C, la incertidumbre con la que Jerry tiene que lidiar en este momento es probable que continúe cambiando entre solicitudes y presupuesto equilibrado y se enfoca. Entonces todo eso para decir, Gracias, Jerry, por armar esto, porque nos permite ver cuál es la totalidad de la situación. Y creo que durante mucho tiempo, el comité escolar nunca pudo ver cuál era la totalidad de la situación y condujo a cosas como. Presupuestos de mantenimiento con fondos insuficientes crónicamente que ahora estamos tratando de despegar de eso. Esto, no creo que esto sea un presupuesto salvaje de ninguna manera. Y tampoco creo que sea como una final, como, catastrófica. Número, solo pienso, como, aquí es donde estamos en el proceso y. Me alegra que estemos hablando en lenguaje sencillo sobre lo que creemos que el distrito necesita servir a los estudiantes porque esa es una pieza que faltaba durante tanto tiempo. Y ahora podemos tomar las decisiones que debemos tomar entre ahora y finales de junio para llegar a donde necesitamos ir y llegar a ese presupuesto equilibrado. Solo quiero agradecer a Jerry que hizo un gran trabajo, especialmente con toda la incertidumbre que existe para nosotros en este momento y no es que no sea solo el contrato de maestros, tenemos cinco contratos que renovamos en julio, por lo que hay muchas partes móviles. No puede que sus bolas de cristal probablemente se rompan. Por lo tanto, es realmente difícil saber, como, dónde aterrizarán todas esas cosas, pero estamos tratando de superar todo eso. Así que solo quería exponer eso, tanto desde una perspectiva del proceso como desde A, como. Sí, esto es incierto. Sí, esto parece. Tal vez alarmante, pero. Yo, creo, como. Es como el lugar correcto para estar en marzo, que es, por cierto, antes de lo que hemos estado en este lugar. Así que todo lo considerado, como, llamo a esta noche una victoria, incluso si no es como una volcada perfecta, ¿verdad? Como, creo que estamos en el camino correcto. Gracias.
[Gerry McCue]: Gracias.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Gracias. Mantendré la fe, supongo. Si no hay otras preguntas, gracias por su presentación, Jerry. Espero su trabajo continuo y tal vez algunos ajustes el lunes. Y, por supuesto, todos conocen este organismo y el Ayuntamiento y yo realmente hemos priorizado nuestras escuelas públicas. Y estoy de acuerdo con el miembro Graham, hemos diferido el mantenimiento durante demasiado tiempo. Así que se ha logrado un gran progreso. Genial para equilibrar esto un poco mejor. Entonces, la pregunta es algo que, ya sabes, tal vez la ciudad realmente pueda llegar a la pregunta razonable. Y sé que el miembro Reinfeld preguntó anoche, ya sabes, algunos de los servicios de la ciudad que se han puesto en espera debido a que tratamos de financiar realmente las escuelas lo mejor que podamos los últimos años. Entonces, ya sabes, hay trabajo que hacer en la ciudad y las escuelas y espero que llegaremos allí dentro del próximo mes más o menos. ¿Hay una moción para suspender si no hay más preguntas? Moción para suspender. Miembro Branley secundado por?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Segundo.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Miembro INTOPPA? Voy por voces. Espero estar bien. Roll Llamar, por favor.
[Adam Hurtubise]: ¿Miembro Branley? Sí. ¿Miembro Graham?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Una vez más.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Lo siento, ¿puedes oírme?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Te tengo allí.
[Adam Hurtubise]: ¿Recuerdas la intoppa? Sí. ¿Recuerdas a Olapade? Sí. ¿Recuerdas Reinfeld?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Sí.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Remember, so yes, Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Sí, siete afirmativos, cero en lo negativo. La reunión se aplazan.