[Lungo-Koehn]: Nou pral kòmanse. Nou gen reyinyon Komite Lekòl Medford ki gen dat Jedi, 20 mas, 2025 a 5.30 p.m. Li pral yon komite nan reyinyon an antye ak ki te fèt adistans atravè Zoom sèlman. Reyinyon an ka wè nan Medford Kominote Media sou Comcast ak Verizon. Patisipan yo ka ouvri sesyon an oswa rele nan lè l sèvi avèk lyen sa a oswa rele-an nimewo. ID reyinyon an se 9521257. 8486. Kesyon oswa kòmantè ka soumèt pandan reyinyon an pa Hamelin Medfordsc nan Medford.K12.Ma.us. Moun sa yo ki soumèt kesyon oswa kòmantè dwe gen ladan enfòmasyon sa yo, premye ak dènye non ou, adrès Metro Street ou a, kesyon ou oswa kòmantè. Komite a nan reyinyon an antye yo te rele yo konsantre sou BECA a nan ane fiskal la 26 pwopozisyon bidjè epi yo pral prezante pa Mesye Gerald McHugh, analis bidjè nou an. Apre sa, mwen pral mande manm Ruseau yo rele woulo liv la anvan nou vire l 'sou ou, Mesye McHugh. Mèsi. Manm Branley. Yeah, alo, prezan. Wi, bonjou, prezan.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Manm Graham. Manm Graham.
[Graham]: Bouton mwen an pa travay, isit la.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Isit la. Manm Olapade. Mwen wè yon sèl byento.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Li jis unmuted, se konsa di yon sèl plis tan, manm Olapade.
[Graham]: Hi, tout moun. Mwen pa kapab, kamera mwen pa pral kite m 'vire l' sou. Oh, mwen pral ranje sa. Mèsi.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Epi ou isit la. Ou isit la. Wi, manm Ridenfeld. Prezan. Manm nan sub-prezidan an, Majistra Lengelker.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Prezante, sèt, prezan, zewo absan. Next moute, nou pral jis vire l 'dwa sou Mesye McHugh, analis bidjè nou an. Mèsi, mèsi.
[Gerry McCue]: Mèsi, Madam Majistra. Mwen dwe pataje ekran mwen isit la.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Pataje ekran. Oke.
[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]: Ann wè.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Si mwen kapab, nan chèz la, poze yon kesyon.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Asire w.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Paske 5.5% ogmante sou ane fiskal 25 Lè sa a, ou mansyone $ 4 milyon dola a, paske se wi, nou bezwen depanse ki wout la votè yo atann nou yo ap depanse li. Men, nou menm tou nou ka itilize kèk nan lajan sa a pou bagay sa yo nou dekri nan kesyon yo, ki mwen panse ta kouvri yon anpil nan sa ou te gen nan ki $ 500,000 ranje pou antretyen. Se konsa, se ke yo te enkli yo dwe peye pou soti nan 4 milyon dola a, oswa se ki enkli nan ogmantasyon an 5.5%? Paske nou evidamman pa vle sèvi ak 4 milyon dola a extenuate yon sitiyasyon kote nou ap kenbe pèsonèl ke nou pa kapab peye desann liy lan ak jis ap resevwa nan yon lòt twou. Se konsa, ou ka petèt eksplike sa? Èske ki pote sa a desann nan 5%?
[Gerry McCue]: $ 4 milyon dola a, nou pa pral konnen jiskaske negosyasyon yo rete. Men, nou espere ke yon pòsyon nan ki pral peye soti nan FY25, patikilyèman pou aplikasyon an orè. Epi li ta ka ke kèk, nan règleman final la, ke kèk lajan jwenn peye soti nan FY25. Mwen pa antisipe nou pral gen tout 4 milyon dola a, men ka gen yon balans nan tiyo. Ak osi lwen ke kesyon an sèt lajan, ki nan deja kalite kwit nan nan liy anba a. Li te itilize yo, nou soumèt yon bidjè siplemantè. Se konsa, yon anpil nan sa yo pozisyon ak depans ki te kouvri nan bidjè a siplemantè yo te pote nan FY26, se konsa ke lajan an fondamantalman matirite pou.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Wi, mwen konnen se twa milyon yo matirite pou, li nan kat milyon dola a, se konsa nou rezève yon pòsyon sèten pou kontra yo ki pa jiska 30 jen? Mwen devine, ki sa ki yon sèl-fwa depans nou ka itilize konsa gen nan pa yon ogmantasyon 5.5%? Paske nou te ajoute bagay sa yo.
[Gerry McCue]: Yeah, nou pral ak sa a, sa a se travay nou demen ak pandan fen semèn nan se wè, ou konnen, ki sa yo resous yo nou ka pote yo dwe jwenn ki 5.5% desann. Se konsa, sa a, ou konnen, ki pral travay nou yo travay sou sa. Men, um, a, pral gen kèk pòsyon nan 4 milyon dola yo ke mwen panse ke yo ap toujou disponib pou pwofesè ak kontra parapwofesyonèl nan 26. Lè sa a, nan kou, lòt bagay la nou dwe konesans nan se ke evantyèlman lè lajan sa a kouri soti, li te dwe ranplase nan bidjè a oswa pozisyon yo dwe koupe Men, se konsa nou ta dwe entansyonèl sou ki jan nou vle kalite van desann soti nan tou sa lajan soti nan kesyon uit vin woule nan 26.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, ak èspere ke gen nan plis pwogrè anvan jis semèn pwochèn, paske ak yon $ 7.5 milyon dola pase sou desizyon, ou pa ta Nou te, mwen panse ke nou tout te espere petèt pa dwe nan yon pozisyon kote nou te koupe anyen si nou te planifye kòrèkteman. Se konsa, èspere ke gen nan plis travay ki pral fè. Se konsa, nou pa nan wè foto sa a se kòm yon ogmantasyon 5.5% ak li nan yon ti jan pi plis dosil.
[Gerry McCue]: Yeah.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Oke.
[Gerry McCue]: Nou nan menm paj la.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Oke. Mèsi. Manm Graham.
[Graham]: Mèsi poutèt ou, se konsa mwen jis te vle ajoute yon bagay kèk. Se konsa, Lendi swa, odyans bidjè nou an, se tou senpleman ankadreman demann nou yo nan dwa bidjè minisipal la bay gouvènman minisipal la. Se konsa. Sa a se kote nou ap di tout moun, ki gen ladan konsèy la ak majistra -a, e mwen konnen ou isit la, men sa a se sa nou kwè ke nou bezwen. Sa a 5.5% ogmantasyon se aktyèlman pa diferan pase sa ki te ogmantasyon nou an dekri nan Chapit 70. Se konsa, lè mwen gade nimewo yo chapit 70, Yo dekri ke pòsyon nou an ta pral moute pa 5.5% oswa yon bagay tankou apeprè la. Se konsa, ki nimewo ki konsistan avèk menm sa ki eta a. Dekri ke nimewo nou an ta sanble kounye a. Li pi konplike pase sa, men mwen panse direksyon. Nimewo sa a se pa tankou, sòt de soti nan limit. Pwosesis bidjè a ke nou te mete deyò gen yon lòt etap pita nan pwobableman pouvwa ak nan mwa jen pou li ale nan rekonsilyasyon konplè nan sa ki gouvènman an minisipal se kapab bay, ki ka mande pou chanjman nan sa nou dekri ak apwouve kòm demann nou an, dwa? Se konsa, sa a se demann nou an. Gen yon etap de ki di, Si demann nou an diferan pase sa vil la finalman ka bay ki baze sou sa ki majistra -a rekòmande ki baze sou sa ki konsèy la pwouve, Lè sa a, nou dwe pran yon lòt vòt yo apwouve. Tankou, yon bidjè balanse, dwa? Lòt bagay ke mwen pral mansyone, paske nou gen anpil nouvo manm se. Nenpòt ki lè ke nou nan negosyasyon aktif ak sendika yo pwofesè an patikilye, fwa sa a nan bidjè a se kòm ensèten jan li ka petèt dwe. Paske soti nan anplwaye 800-ich nou an, prèske 500 nan yo chita nan sendika a pwofesè yo. Se konsa, san yo pa klè sou sa jis ankò, Um, gen nan yon anpil nan ensèten ki ant kounye a ak jen, èspere ke dwèt janbe lòt, nou pral, tankou, jwenn sètitid sou, epi, tankou, mete, ou konnen, gen yon chemen pou pi devan ki pral pèmèt nou rafine nimewo sa a ak reyalite olye pou yo. Ou konnen, jis tankou nou tande pale de Bob yè swa, tankou, nou ap planifye, men nimewo sa yo yo sòt de toujou chanje. Se konsa, mwen panse ke. Lè mwen sonje ale atravè tout pwosesis sa a yon kèk ane tounen, kote nou te nan fen yon kontra pwofesè, li te menm bagay la. Sòt nan fason, mwen sèten santi sou, tankou, sa ki te pral rive ak ki kote li te ale nan peyi. Se konsa, mwen devine, tankou, an jeneral, mwen jis vle asire w ke moun yo ki ap koute. Konprann ke yon, sa a se yon demann. B, gen yon pwosesis rekonsilyasyon, ak C, ensèten a ki Jerry a gen fè fas ak kounye a gen chans rive nan kontinye chanje ant demann ak bidjè balanse ak antre nan konsantre. Se konsa, tout sa yo di, Mèsi poutèt ou, Jerry, pou mete sa a ansanm, paske li pèmèt nou wè sa ki totalite nan sitiyasyon an se. Apre sa, mwen panse pou yon reyèlman, reyèlman lontan tan, komite lekòl la pa janm te rive nan wè sa ki totalite nan sitiyasyon an te epi li mennen nan bagay sa yo tankou. Bidjè antretyen underfunded kwonikman ke nou ap kounye a ap eseye kale soti nan SO. Sa a, mwen pa mwen pa panse sa a se yon, tankou, yon bidjè sovaj nan okenn fason. Apre sa, mwen menm mwen pa panse ke li nan tankou yon final, tankou, katastwofik. Nimewo, mwen jis panse, tankou, sa a se kote nou yo nan pwosesis la ak. Mwen byen kontan ke nou ap pale nan langaj klè sou sa nou kwè ke distri a bezwen sèvi elèv yo paske se yon moso ki te tèlman manke pou lontan. Epi kounyeya nou ka ansanm pran desizyon ke nou bezwen fè ant kounye a ak nan fen mwa jen yo ka resevwa kote nou bezwen ale ak pou li ale nan ki bidjè balanse. Mwen jis vle di gras a Jerry li te fè yon travay reyèlman bon, espesyalman ak tankou tout ensèten a ki egziste pou nou kounye a epi li pa li pa jis kontra a pwofesè nou gen senk kontra renouvle sou Jiyè yon sèl konsa gen nan yon anpil gen nan yon anpil nan pati k ap deplase sa. Li pa ka voye boul kristal li pwobableman kase lide li. Se konsa, li vrèman difisil yo konnen, tankou, kote tout bagay sa yo bagay sa yo pral peyi, men nou ap eseye travay nan tout nan sa. Se konsa, mwen jis te vle mete ki deyò a, tou de nan yon pèspektiv pwosesis ak soti nan yon, tankou. Wi, sa a se sèten. Wi, sa sanble. Petèt alarmant, men. Mwen, mwen panse, tankou. Se tankou bon plas la yo dwe nan mwa mas, ki se, nan chemen an, pi bonè pase nou te janm nan kote sa a. Se konsa, tout bagay sa yo konsidere, tankou, mwen rele aswè a yon genyen, menm si li pa tankou yon dunk pafè slam, dwa? Tankou, mwen panse ke nou sou track dwat la. Mèsi.
[Gerry McCue]: Mèsi.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Mèsi. Mwen pral kenbe lafwa a, mwen devine. Si pa gen okenn lòt kesyon, di ou mèsi pou prezantasyon ou, Jerry. Mwen gade pou pi devan pou travay kontinye ou ak petèt kèk ajisteman nan Lendi. E paske nan kou ou tout konnen kò sa a ak konsèy vil la ak tèt mwen reyèlman te priyorite lekòl piblik nou yo. Apre sa, mwen dakò ak manm Graham, nou te difere antretyen pou byen lwen twò lontan. Se konsa, gen nan gwo pwogrè ki te fèt. Gran balanse sa a yon ti kras pi byen. Se konsa, mande a se yon bagay ki, ou konnen, petèt lavil la ka reyèlman jwenn nan, ou konnen, rezonab mande. Apre sa, mwen konnen manm Reinfeld mande yè swa, ou konnen, kèk nan sèvis yo nan vil ki te mete yo sou kenbe paske nan nou ap eseye reyèlman finanse lekòl yo kòm pi bon nou ka dènye ane yo plizyè. Se konsa, ou konnen, gen nan travay fè sou lavil la ak lekòl yo ak èspere ke nou pral rive la nan pwochen mwa a oswa konsa. Èske gen yon mosyon pou ajoune si pa gen plis kesyon? Mouvman pou ajoune. Manm Branley apiye pa?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Dezyèm.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Manm Inpa? Mwen pral pa vwa. Mwen espere ke mwen ap fè ok. Woule apèl, tanpri.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Manm Branley? Wi. Manm Graham?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yon lòt fwa ankò.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Padon, èske ou ka tande mwen?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Mwen te resevwa ou la.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Sonje antre? Wi. Sonje Olapade? Wi. Sonje reinfeld?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Wi.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Sonje byen, se konsa wi, Majistra Lungo-Koehn.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Wi, sèt nan afimatif, zewo nan negatif la. Reyinyon an ranvwaye.