AI-generated transcript of MPS Budget Hearing

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following Zoom link, which is on the city and school website. And the meeting ID is 931-5182-7684. 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 or comment, and today's agenda is pursuant to general laws 71 section 38N. The Medford school committee will convene a public hearing to members of the community interested in either for or against in whole or in part the superintendent's recommended fiscal year 27 operating budget. I'll turn it over to the finance team.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Good evening, Madam Mayor, esteemed members of the school committee.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Do we need to call the roll first? Yes, roll call, please.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Here.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastropone.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Here.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Here.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Parks. Here. Member Reinfeld. Not yet. Member Ruseau is present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn. Present. Sorry, I'm reading this like it's the first time I've ever done it.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Six present, one absent as of right now. So we do have a quorum.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Okay, thank you. Can you all hear me? So good evening. We're here to present our fiscal year 27 preliminary operating budget. This presentation is responsible, thoughtful, and authentic representation of the work we have undertaken to support the growth and development of every student in Medford Public Schools. This budget cycle follows a year of significant progress. We continue to successfully operationalize our instructional vision. through new consolidated schedules district-wide at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, first time seen at the high school level. We've also implemented in the district 15 minutes of instructional time across the district, K through 12 plus. These changes alongside our commitment to our collective bargaining agreements are deeply rooted in our core value of belonging. However, we also must address and you will see this evening the realities of the current economic landscape. And like many districts across the Commonwealth, we are navigating an unavoidable rising costs in special education, transportation, and general operations to meet these challenges. Our leadership team has worked and continues to work alongside school and department leaders to ensure that we have intentional alignment with the evolving needs of our students, our staff and our community. This preliminary proposal this evening is the result of months of critical discussion, public feedback and a collaborative problem solving stance from our entire administrative team. I want to thank Gerry McCue, our budget analyst, our finance director, Noel Velez, for their continued and long efforts. This work is iterative, and it serves as a testament to our values of consistency and coherence that we are working quite hard to establish as through lines across every level of the district. We're moving toward a unified vision that ensures all resources support our shared educational and operational goals. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. McHugh and Mr. Velez to present the preliminary proposal.

[Kenneth Lord]: Thank you.

[Gerry McCue]: Thank you, Madam Superintendent. Good evening. We can go to the next slide. So, in our initial budget proposal described on April 6 was a little over 94M dollars. We've been working to reduce that budget increase to the extent possible. And tonight, the first few minutes of this meeting, we'll just walk you through the high points of how that reduction was accomplished. And we could go to the next slide. Member Mastroboni, you know, asked at the last meeting, like, how are we going to approach the, the reductions that we're about to make? And I thought that was an excellent idea and we, we, A number of these things is our normal approach to the budget, but it's good to write them down and share them with people to see how we. How we. arrive at some of the reductions we're proposing. And the first, of course, is to minimize direct impacts on students. We have to fully fund our collective bargaining agreements, align the budget with available funding or projected funding. adhere to the core values of Medford Public Schools, use best efforts to avoid layoffs, comply with special education and English language learner requirements, manage class sizes. We want to ensure that immediate capital maintenance needs are addressed. And as we've said in the last meeting, we do want to improve the opportunities for professional development, particularly with our largely veteran staff, and to begin to transition to better more rigorous instructional materials align with DESE's goals for high quality instruction materials. So that was kind of our guidance as we entered into this. We can go to the next slide. This is, I think Noel's going to take over from here.

[Noel Velez]: Yes, Jerry, thank you so much for that early part. Thank you everyone for coming in today. So right now we're going to just give a quick review of where we were on April 6th of 2026 and where we currently are on May 12th of 2026. So in our first presentation, as we gave the overall base budget increase was $7.4 million. In this presentation today, we'll be showing you how we got to a overall base budget increase of $4 million. with some A, identified savings, and B, just being what I thought was fiscally responsible with some of our revenue accounts and showing how we're going to get to these numbers and take it from there. So if we go to the next slide, please. So over the next 10 slides, we'll be talking about how we got to the $3.3 million in net reduction. On slide six, we have deferrals proposals to fiscal year 2028. We have identified alternative sources of revenue, reduced requested new or increased spending proposals, and some staff reductions, which will ultimately bring us to $3.3 million in budget changes. On slide seven here, we refer to first as the deferral proposals of fiscal year 2028. We had originally, we're talking about removing the last of the paras from before and after school revolving to the general fund. We'll be leaving those paras who work for the before and after school program, we'll be leaving them on the revolving fund for next fiscal year. We spoke briefly about the reallocation of our community service director slash athletic director and his administrative assistant and moving their salaries over to the general fund. We'll be keeping those in revenue funded accounts, but we'll be dividing them up into a few different revenue accounts to make sure that specific community schools and athletics don't take too big of a hit. The position that we've had vacant, the technology and network director for fiscal year 27, for fiscal year 26, we will not be adding into that budget. Hopefully, we'll be looking to present it in fiscal year 28. We're going to defer the increase in substitute teachers line and defer a portion of the increase of our contracted maintenance for our facilities department. On slide eight, as we were referring to earlier, alternative sources of revenue, which we identified just over 1.5 million. We're going to charge certain current transportation, special education contracts to our circuit breaker. Remove capital maintenance projects in favor of a free cash proposal through the city. We have a revenue homeless transportation reimbursement account in which we'll be moving all of fiscal year 27 homeless transportation budget onto that revenue account line. Our vocational transportation will be charged to our vocational tuition revolving fund. Funding for the middle school robotics curriculum, it will now be state grant funded through earmark funding. and we'll be shifting general funding portion of the city year program to available state and federal grants. On slide nine, we have here some free cash requests we'll be making with the city, working with myself, Ken Lord, and Gerald McHugh with the guidance and superintendent. We have the Robert Topwater tank replacement at $250,000. Extraordinary maintenance funding to address the facilities, condition assessments we did with Habib, asking 75,000, the interactive panels for the classrooms, and the defibrillator AED replacements, which came in at just over $500,000. On slide 10 here, we have our reduced increase of spending request. So the yellow bus that we added in fiscal year 26, which was the late high school bus, due to low ridership, will not be budgeted in fiscal year 27. However, we will be looking to see if we will need to add it later on in the year, depending on both the demand and the request by the high school students. We reduced our proposal for new professional development and professional development supplies, spending by a third of the original request. We're going to hold on adding the art and computer teacher at the high school. And also, we'll also, by not adding a computer teacher, we'll also be saving approximately $25,000 and not having to create a third computer lab. With a current vacant custodian position, we'll be shifting that in favor of adding Maintenance positions will be our fourth maintenance position. We currently have a custodian who's been out on workers comp, which has been funded through the general fund. We believe that that position next year will be ultimate has been filled in. And ultimately, the position, the employee who on workers comp would not be filled in. And then the new EL teacher, which was requested at the middle school for pullout, won't be funded. We'll be working with the EL director, Chelsea, to reorganize her staff properly. On slide 11, over at the Brooks School, we'll be reducing one kindergarten teacher and a para. One, I'm sorry, at the Brooks School, we'll be reducing one grade four teacher to manage class sizes. And at the Roberts, we'll be reducing a kindergarten and a para teacher due to enrollment and a grade four teacher again. In the Missittuck, we'll be reducing one kindergarten teacher, but the teacher will be moved to a grade one classroom, as we will need a grade one classroom due to all the kindergarten students moving up. The paraposition that is normally with that kindergarten teacher at the Missittuck will not be funded. Staff reduction will be achieved through retirement or transfer to vacant positions, as there are a few vacant positions right now in some of our schools. There is currently a vacant student support assistant, which we will not be funding or hiring anyone in that position. And the same with an inclusion specialist, which is currently vacant for fiscal year 20, so we'll be eliminating that position, not funding it. So you'll see here on slide 12, with these reductions in staff, you'll still see that our proposal for the average class sizes through K-5 are still very healthy. They still stay under the CBA requirements for the Brooks, the McGlynn Elementary, the Mizzituck, and the Roberts. And then on slide 13, again, just a very nice, clean summary of what will be coming up next in which Jerry will be speaking about.

[Gerry McCue]: Okay, thank you Noel. So we want to tell you what has survived and is still in our budget proposal. You can go to the next slide. Well, I guess before we do that, well, this this is a this is a summary of what's in the budget proposal. Our salary increases are. Some required special ed spending that we've discussed in prior meetings. A lot of this happened in FY26 and is annualized in 27, added to the budget. Other increases in the facilities, particularly the cleaning contract, which Created a 200,000 dollar budget hit in FY27 along with utilities, some technology, required spending, et cetera. Our revised school-based spending is now 360,000 dollars and our facilities request is now 109,000 dollars. As part of this process from April 6 to today, we were able to increase identified savings by $575,000, and that gets us down to a budget increase of almost $4.1 million. And as we said, CBA and other salary requirements for next year. Cost of that is 2.784. Next slide, and then this is kind of the category of spending that we can't postpone or redirect or eliminate. We had two teachers at Curtis Tufts that we were charging to revolving fund. that had become inactive, but we were using the fund balance for as long as we could. Those teachers have to be transferred to the general fund in FY27. We talked about eight one-on-one paraprofessionals that we were required to add to the budget in FY26 due to move-ins that had IEPs that uh, had that 1 on 1 requirement. We, uh, also in FY 26, we had to create a second access program, a classroom, uh, at the McGlynn Elementary. Um, and that has to be, uh, fixed in the budget in FY 27. And then we have to add in FY 27 an access program that had previously been combined with another program at the McGlynn Middle because enrollment was low, but enrollment is increasing now and we have to go back to two separate programs. And we have about 22 students projected to be in our Project transition group, that's our special needs students that are in post graduate program until they reach the age 22. There's 1 teacher in that program now, but with 22 students, it's requiring us to add a 2nd teacher. We anticipate that more students will be participating in extended year programming this year where those funds will be added in 27. We also had to add two paras, one at the Brooklyn elementary 1 at the Roberts based on the student needs in particular classrooms. We are adding a grade 1 teacher at the due to class size considerations. We have to fully fund the cleaning. Contract for the compacts in the high school, we expect heat and electricity costing increased by close to 200,000 dollars. We also know from. the trending of the last three years that custodial supplies need to increase to meet the needs of our schools. We have to replace a virtualization server that's integral to our network. We were able to fund a new electronic health record software for our health services program from a school health grant in 26, but we must pick that up in 27. It's not a lot no longer eligible for that grant. And then based on trend analysis, our unemployment account has increased, has been level funded for the last couple of years, but the expenses have increased in that account. Uh, for school based spending, we are still proposing that we create a full time position. In the music department, currently, we have a 0.6 elementary band teacher and we're proposing to make that full time. So that teacher can. provide elective options in the afternoon at the high school. A translator at the McGlynn, we do not have a translator for Portuguese translations currently, and that's a high demand. And we're recommending that that position be added in 27. It's possible that there could be some savings with contractual translations, but we'll have to wait and see if we can make those adjustments next year. We do want to fund a new middle school ELA curriculum. Uh, 1, a, uh, a formal curriculum program does not exist currently in the middle schools. And, um, it's highly recommended that we move in that direction and that will be, uh, the selection of that, um, new curriculum will be based on. A team that will be put together over the summer for next year. Um, we talked about the fact that we want to increase spending. uh, for professional development and high quality, uh, school materials. Um, we also proposing an adjustment to the athletic program. This, this has been, since I've been here, this is, um, something that, um, you know, we, we, we're not on solid ground with that budget. This, Proposal right sizes this budget it also. Fully funds the coaches stipends that were negotiated in the new. CBA the transportation. Addresses a problem with middle school sports transportation. Was never in the budget so. that is now with some additional funds for rate increases next year and other expenses that just had to be right sized. We also created a budget for the revolving fund to make sure that that was being used to effectively support the athletic program. And then we're providing a little bit of money for the Curtis Tufts to have a graduation ceremony, which is a great idea and well worth it. Continuing with school-based spending, we do want to increase the amount of money we provide for band transportation so the band can attend more competitions next year. We also need to fully fund our NWEIA map assessment application and then We have been utilizing this student performance management platform from Open Architects this year on a trial basis. It's very well received by our administrative staff. And we're proposing that we start funding that about $21,000 a year. And then provide a more robust content protection platform for our network. And that's for student safety. And then for Facilities technology where we have been funding a custodian. Who is on a long term disability with no prospect of returning to work. That we can, we will not fund that position so we can add a 4th. Competent to the. the maintenance crew. We still maintain our contractual minimums in the custodian contract. We've reduced the contracted maintenance requests by $100,000, so we're still looking to increase those accounts by about $180,000. Small amount of money for equipment repairs just to right size that budget and then upgrading our cyber security. Package will cost about 41,000 dollars. So this slide just kind of is a recap of the savings we had previously identified to get to $490,000 worth of savings. And then in this second exercise, we've been able to increase budget savings by $575,000 to get to a savings of over a million dollars to fund some of our proposals. And next slide next slide. Okay, and I'm going to turn it over to Noel right now.

[Noel Velez]: Thank you Jerry for that last few slides here. We're just going to review over where we started our budget last year. If you can go to slide 26, please. So in fiscal year 26, we started off with a general fund of $85,490,000. Of course, we have our stabilization fund that will be coming in at just over $1 million, which puts our total appropriation-based budget for fiscal year 26 for Medford Public Schools at $86,575,549. We are proposing for an appropriation increase in budget savings of $4,096,649, which comes out to a total base budget of $90,683,398, which we believe will be funded through fiscal year 27 appropriation general fund of $89,933,398. and our stabilization fund that we would then add in at $750,000. On slide 27, the city's general fund budget target is $87,750,000. The Metro Public Schools preliminary budget recommendation for the general fund is $89,933,398, which comes up to a variance difference of $2,083,398. While we understand this is a budget gap, here are a few things we will continue to keep reviewing in absence of being fully funded. Reviewing staffing needs for the high school schedule in fiscal year 27. The special education paraprofessional staffing regarding making sure that we are being compliant and using our staff properly and making sure our classrooms have every professional paraprofessional they need to meet all the needs of special education. New spending proposals that Gerald just spoke about earlier, we have to review those. and a base budget for additional saving opportunities, just reviewing those overall. And then on slide 29, oh, I'm sorry, Jerry, go ahead.

[Gerry McCue]: So this proposal would require three votes from the school committee, one, two, for a general fund appropriation, the second for the stabilization fund transfer, and the third would be a request from Free Cash for the maintenance and capital improvement needs that are identified. And that I believe concludes our presentation, so we can open it up to questions.

[Unidentified]: Member Graham and then Member Ruseau.

[Jenny Graham]: Thank you for this. It was super clear and easy to follow. I had 2 questions about. Reductions that have been made since we last talked 1 is about the inclusion specialist and the other is about the network director. The inclusion specialist is a role that we explicitly added with the supplemental money from the override and specifically. was done in conversation with parents of our special education students. And I think they've been anxiously awaiting for that role to be filled. And it's been a very long time, but I don't think the need is going away. And I think, in fact, they would tell you, if you ask them today, that there's even more need than there's ever been for that kind of a role, particularly with the growth in the project transitions piece. And then the network Director role that's not being filled, like, I'm super concerned about that because I feel like Ken runs around on roller skates all day long every day, and he can't keep doing that if we want him to come to work. So every day. And so how are we going to address not filling that role?

[Suzanne Galusi]: Ken, I don't know if you want to start. I do know just to address the inclusion specialist, it is not that it is not a priority. It 100% is a priority. Joan Bowen may want to chime in, but I do know it's been tremendously difficult to fill. There've been several kind of iterations of interviews and haven't been successful in finding someone. So part of this was maybe taking like a, collective thoughtful pause to see if there's a way we could be re-looking at the job description and maybe how we're posting for the position, because it's been very challenging to try and fill. Like I said, there may be more that Joan wants to chime in. And I know Ken can speak to the network position. We're just repurposing a few things this year.

[Kenneth Lord]: So we've just recently hired a new network administrator that's going to start July 1. Our network technician has been on medical leave. So both of those staff members will be back on board soon, and a new person July 1. And we're going to reevaluate how we're managing the department once we're fully staffed again. Part of the roller skate routine right now is we have a lot of people on a medical leave right now, so.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Member Ruseau?

[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. A few questions, but one is a request. And I don't know if we've asked for this before, but we should have. And I don't think we actually have. I would like there to be an appendix to the budget that gets published with the budget. It's not a separate document that somebody has to find that lists every single, and there's four columns I want on that. The amount, position, these are for people that were sticking on revolving accounts that really should be in our actual budget. I want the amount of each position, how much money it is, the position title, which revolving account is covering it, and also where in the budget would it be if it was not in fact being sidelined out of the budget. And then a total at the bottom of that page. Because, you know, I know I've been on this Jenny's been on this number grants been on this for years about the transparency of our budgets. And as we face the unattractive idea of just getting rid of a whole bunch of staff. or putting them onto this secret pile of money, which isn't a secret, but it's not in the budget. So when somebody is new, whether they're in the public or the next school committee member, they're going to look at the budget number and they're going to look at the year over year and they're going to think we got a certain percent increase. And that's a fiction. That is not what it costs to operate the district. And, you know, I've done this for all the budgets going back to the 80s. do you think I have a clue how much of all of the people that worked in the district were really not even on the budget? Of course I don't. There's no way to ever know. And so I think going forward it would make sense that every budget include a very explicit list of every single position we are not including in the budget and how we're paying for them and where they should have been. Also like, you know, when there's turnover in central office or every year, you don't have to like figure out who's there. You could look at that. So that is a request. I don't feel like I need an emotion because I feel like you all would do that. Yeah.

[Suzanne Galusi]: We can easily do that.

[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And then I have sort of a question about athletics. So the athletics line item includes things that aren't athletics like band, right?

[Gerry McCue]: It's... Yeah, band is separate. Band is budgeted for in the finance program. Oh. And then athletics is strictly athletics.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay okay so when the band's going off to do their competitions and we're paying for buses that's coming out of the fine arts or is that coming out?

[Gerry McCue]: They have a line item in that budget for band transportation.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay great. And I know that Rob, our new athletics director, has a very large amount of work to do. Is there going to be, or can we see at some point when it's ready, I'm guessing it's not ready yet, a line item how the athletics budget is going to get spent, you know, per sport. One of the things I've been asking for since I got elected was I want to know on a per-pupil basis how much are we spending other than academics on a per-pupil basis. And I understand that ask was not possible because this stuff wasn't even in spreadsheets and a lot of it wasn't in actual, there was no budget. It was just somebody would ask to get reimbursed for something on a sport and we would just write him a check. And so that makes it impossible to get that kind of information. So I'm hoping we're getting closer to the ability to actually see that and then really get a sense of like, what sports are we overprioritizing from a financial perspective at the expense, frankly, of kids in all the other activities. Because I find it hard to imagine that without that actually being laid out, and well understood, there's no chance that it accidentally comes out to be equitable. Like that's not, it's not how math works when nobody knows what's going on in that area. So is there a time when we think we would have a line item budget for how athletics is going to spend their money?

[Suzanne Galusi]: So I do know that Rob has been working on that. I think the challenging part of his transition this year is the exorbitant amount of time spent on community schools. And so that balance is there, but I know this has come up throughout the year. And so he has been working on those price points. I would also say just in full transparency that we're not really collecting a lot of user fees for participation in sports and clubs. And I know that that can be a double-edged sword, but that is also an area that we're kind of looking into to make sure we have accurate recordkeeping and data that just wasn't there before.

[Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. And I have one last question, and I'll let my colleagues go. without having a, I mean, in the past, and I just mean like last year, not, not in the seventies, um, we have, have we been transferring money into cover the athletics going in the red and where do we get that money from? Do we just take it from other revolving accounts?

[Gerry McCue]: No, that, um, the athletic revolving fund, uh, has, To the best of my recollection has had positive balances at the end of the year.

[Noel Velez]: Okay, so yeah, so usually the way we run it is. The athletic department 1st uses all their general fund budget and then once they're down, once they complete their general fund budget, we look and see how much we have in the revolving fund. And then we kind of expenditure that out for the rest of the year.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so that just sounds like another area where the actual budget doesn't reflect real spending. That one sounds harder to figure out though.

[Gerry McCue]: Yeah, but we did change that mindset in 27 because we have specific line items that are going to be attached to the revolving fund. So for instance, we don't have any site workers in a general fund budget because we've budgeted for those in the revolving fund. And certain equipment, so for instance, what often comes up is like, what happens if we go into post-season in certain sports? Or we're the champion in certain sports, and so there's extra expenses usually attached to that. We're budgeting those in the revolving fund, And then, of course, we try to make an estimate of how much we're going to collect, and we try to budget less than that in the revolving fund. So we want the accuracy that you're talking about, and we don't want the revolving fund to be used as kind of a petty cash account for the athletics. So that's the direction we're moving in.

[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you so much. Yeah.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Member Reinfeld. Thank you. Sorry. First of all, I'm sorry I was late. I had this in my calendar for 6pm. So I apologize because I did miss some of the beginning. So I had a similar question to Member Ruseau about the transportation, particularly for the arts program. I know our band has a lot of high needs in that area, but I know we're also trying to grow our theater program and send those folks to competitions and such. So making sure that we're budgeting for That transportation on par with what we're doing for athletics and then my question was around. The addition, they added art and computer teachers. It sounds like some of that computing is going to get rolled into. The computer computing lab, but I just wanted to ask whether we're going to see be seeing a problem. in not growing the arts program as we're trying to make the case with our new high school that now that we've made room in our schedule for arts we need the facilities for the arts and I know theater in particular was something that we've been looking at for as long as I've been on school committee and saying yes someday we're gonna we're gonna get that theater teacher we're gonna build up the arts program particularly once there's room for students to take this and I know MSVA does not look kindly on a space for a program that isn't built up. And I think we've just kind of barely started rebuilding the theater program. And so I'm concerned about making that, I guess it's not a cut, but not continuing that promise to grow the arts programs at the high school. So can you speak to that?

[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes, please know it's not a reflection of not promising to grow a program. And what it is is just pausing as the high school is still continuing their student course selection work. And the principal is having ongoing conversations with each department leader. I would say the preliminary data does show that we don't need an additional computer tech teacher in order to fulfill the student's course selections. That is not necessarily the case for the art teacher, but we are waiting just to finish. I believe it's this week where students have to have their final selections in. And so we're just going to have a little bit more data for the next iteration of work.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Okay, because I know it can be a slow process to grow some of these programs and looking at what's being met by an after-school need and what's being met by in-school need. And I know we experimented with some of the music programs and music electives, and we saw some really increased enrollments and some low enrollments. So I just want to make sure we're keeping that at the forefront, knowing that we are actively trying to build that program as we make the case for facilities that we need in a new high school.

[Suzanne Galusi]: 100%, and I think this year with the new schedule, we saw a 300% increase in arts course enrollments for both music and fine arts. As you know, we've had a little bit of a stumbling block trying to grow, to your point, the drama program. So one of the things that Principal Cabral has been trying to do is be creative in like a grassroots effort. with of course the partnership with director Suzanne Fee in trying to grow that base through the humanities department and in collaboration with Dr. Chiesa so that I know they were looking at a dramatic literature class to try and hopefully kind of build numbers that way so that we would have a little bit more success in fiscal year 28 really bringing in a dedicated theater position.

[Erika Reinfeld]: That was going to be one of my suggestions. And then also doing things like that around the challenge courses at the middle school to build the pipeline, not just wait till high school to get this. And also even looking creatively at things like our athletics department. And do we offer dance class? I could see a musical theater class or just movement in general. So I think that's a really important case to make. So thank you for laying that out.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Mastroboni.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you. A couple of quick questions. First, thank you for the hard work to the SPS team. You identified just over half a million dollars of capital projects to send to the mayor and city council for free cash appropriation. Has there been discussion with the administration and agreement on getting that in and approved?

[Gerry McCue]: Um, there's been no discussion to date. Um, this kind of evolved out of our effort to reduce the budget as much as we could. Um, in the past, um, the city has, um, provided us with, uh, some free cash appropriations, um, you know, in, in, in return for kind of not funding fully what our request has been. So we thought it might be good for us to specifically lay out what we might want to see in that free cash proposal. And that, you know, that helped us get our overall spending increase down by shifting those expenses on to alternative revenue source.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you, I guess, um, for me, the, the risk of that free cash approval. Getting submitted by submitted by the mayor and approved by the city council, the risk of that going through or not going through is very low, but it's not 0. so I would love to know that, you know, that's something that we can count on. Yeah. So, second of 3, is there anything you can share and maybe this is I think this is probably for superintendent Lucy. Is there anything you can share for us about the approach this? I mean, this budget to me is well below level service, which. is not great. But you've made reductions in staffing and in supplies and services, ordinary maintenance lines. My understanding is the most important driver for student success is having adults in the room with them and keeping our staffing high. What was the philosophy that you had in choosing which of these reductions? I think there was mention of it a little bit at the beginning, but specifically in terms of why a combination of positions and ordinary maintenance and not one or the other. I'll stop there.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Yeah, no, that's a great question. First of all, I do want to say, we really have not. I don't want to say, like, cut positions every year at the elementary level. we do look at enrollment. And as we know from year to year, enrollment shifts. And so you have bubbles that kind of move through grade levels. So that what you see there is just the same work that we do every year following enrollment trends. And so ironically, what we saw last year was every single school needed an additional kindergarten. And some of those, quite frankly, did not necessarily materialize in terms of a need. And we did see a lot of low enrollment at kindergarten. Right now, our enrollment for the incoming class of kindergarten is much lower than we have typically seen. in the past couple years. And so looking at that, as well as the census data, what we see right now is the Brooks would need to maintain that additional fifth grade kindergarten. The other three elementary schools would not. One of the conversations we did have, and I have been watching, the Population of the is also ever changing with each year, and they are kind of growing more father apart from the. Socio economic area that they were in and so. That is 1 thing that we are watching in terms of the eligibility quite honestly for title 1. I did mention it at a meeting before. The president has also changed. There's a shift in how we're qualifying the poverty level. And so we are starting to see that that is impacting the community of the Mississippi. It is not impacting the community of the McGlynn and that continues to be our neediest school, our neediest population. And as such, that is a school where we prioritized having lower class sizes, maybe than we have at like the Brooks or the Roberts. However, all of our class sizes, as you could see on the slide that Mr. McHugh projected are still well below CBA limits. All of them are below an average of 20 students per class and our CBA limits are 21 or 22, 24, 25 as you go up in the grades. So it's really not that we are. cutting teachers, we're just looking at enrollment. And that is also what is happening at every level as we're looking at student selection and student assignment from level to level. Did that answer your question fully or were there other positions that you were curious about?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: That helps. I mean, there was the inclusion specialist and the student support assistant. Right. But, you know, I, I hear I hear what you're saying. Um, my last question and something I said a minute ago is, um. You know, I, I want to hear, uh, or I want, I was, I was wondering what the, like, trying to ask about the plan, um, because. In terms of getting, getting us fully funded, um. We still have a gap of $2 million between the budget that is being shared with us and the resources that we've been assigned from the mayor at this time. I want to understand what work is being done to either identify additional general fund revenue or get additional resources to meet this so we don't get into an even further cut situation. you know, there's sort of three levels. There's the lowest amount of resources right now, which is what's been provided to us, this reduced version of a budget, but there's also, you know, the budget that we envision for the district, right, which is something that we can't even conceive of at this point because we're really limited. Just trying to understand, you know, how we get from where we're at tonight to the resources we need to fund at least this budget.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Jerry to kind of chime in on that, but I do want to just address two pieces. One, I think it is important, especially for people listening, the SSA position, the student support position, was a position that was put in during the pandemic, during COVID, and it was a position, correct me if I'm wrong, what is it, 19 hours a week? It was one of those positions that was put in as almost like a flexible position to support with lunch, maybe to support in classrooms. It was 19 hours. Yes. During COVID, 19 hours a week. And we've just phased them out. We did not cut them. The last SSA has moved on from the district and we're not filling those positions anymore as we move away from COVID. We still have, um, Instructional leads almost like what you would refer to as like a building sub positions in every building. We have paraprofessional positions in every building. We just aren't filling those cobit positions that were created. And the other piece that I would just, um. What was the 2nd PC had asked forgot. I'm so sorry, what was the other piece you had asked?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: I think the important question for me is, you know, what work have you done with the mayor and her team to identify how we're going to deal with this last 2M dollars? I'm really not interested in that coming from further reductions to the school budget.

[Unidentified]: Yeah.

[Gerry McCue]: Well, once the budget gets finalized, it will be sent to the mayor's office and we're certainly open to discussions on how to get this gap closed. I would note that the new charter requires such a discussion Much earlier in the process, which I think is a great improvement to the current process. So that we can kind of collaboratively. So, so we, we have an opportunity to kind of have the, the city folks understand some of the things we're up against. And the big thing for me this year is that we just have all this. Special education and facility spending that is just locked in almost 2M dollars and. You know, if it wasn't for that would be who could be right where we needed to be, but hopefully this is kind of a aberration and not. A regular feature of the budget. I will say that, you know, we, we have had a few discussions with the city and of course, they have their own financial pressures that they're dealing with. What we're recommending tonight, we believe is, you know, our best efforts to kind of. Recognize those limitations as well as making sure that we're meeting the needs of our students. We do still have some work to do with the high school schedule that might. not result in any savings, but it could allow us to go forward with that arts position that we want, or it could provide some other savings once we understand the number of teachers we're gonna need to meet the needs of the high school students next year. Same thing with the paraprofessionals. That staff, really has to be managed every year in terms of budget, because as we've talked about for this budget, sometimes we add staff to support the particular needs of a student or groups of students, but then those needs could change in the subsequent year. You have to kind of look at each year separately to make sure you have the number of staff that you really need to support our students. There's really not that much more wiggle room we have to shift positions around. I think what we did this go around is we kind of did a combination of reducing our requests that we got from principals and directors by a little bit, but still tried to maintain some of what they asked. And then we looked at the base budget and we were able to, with managing class sizes, we were able to squeeze out some positions there. But you know, most, you know, and I, I think the city is also, um, has, has indicated, although I don't know what the number is that they might be in a position to increase their, um, their current appropriation, uh, by a certain amount. Um, but I think whatever gap that's left over, to be honest, is going to have to come from the base budget.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Yeah, that's what I'm really worried about. Thank you.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Just from me, this is Mayor Brianna, I think Jerry's right. Our city staff has had a meeting with the school department. I think it was early last week to see where we were at, and we have checked in. Myself and my chief of staff are working through line item by line item, one department at a time. We're probably halfway through, and we're trying to cut city side budgets as much as we can. But I think in the end, there's going to be some more money we can give to the schools. We also have the Medford Family Network that everybody's very worried about, and that's not inexpensive. That's $240,000 in itself. So I think you're going to have some pot of money, but it's not going to be anywhere close to the $2 million. So I think there's going to be some work that my chief of staff and I continue to do, some work based on the new data and enrollment. trends and whatever the school department can do to reduce that $2 million gap. But there's going to have cuts on the city side. I'm going to have to make cuts on the city side. assuming we're gonna be in the same boat on the school side, as every city and town and district is going through this, because on the city side, we do have the health insurance that went up approximately 10%. And we are covering the new debt that has come online for the HVAC work being done at the Andrews and McGlynn. So costs are rising and cities and towns are struggling. I know, I know, um, Brookline just did a 20 $4 million override, I think the biggest in state's history. So this is not uncommon all over. And I just hope we can work together, school and city side, to continue to whittle that down so we can close that gap. Member Ruseau?

[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to comment on how amazing the student art show was at the Arts Collaborative. It was incredible. And not for the first time, the Arts Collaborative is entirely too small for our needs. The business in the back had to tow people because they were taking up their parking and I look forward to having a much bigger space to showcase our students. But it was incredible. I've been to this event before and this year was a shocking increase in the volume of art. I don't want to say it was better art, because I mean, first of all, I'm not a critic, but also I wouldn't want to compare it to last year's art. But there was so much more art It was really amazing and I wanted to congratulate the district and the students and also the voters for passing the override because that new schedule allowed for there to be so many more people participating. So that's what our, and it's still, I believe, open if you want to go see it. I think it's running for a week or two and it's definitely worth your time. Thank you. Thank you.

[Jenny Graham]: Is it okay if I ask a couple of questions and make a motion? Yes, member Graham. I also went to the art show and. The 1 of the teachers said, this is what the override did. It's true when you invest, it's visible in schools. And so it was like, really. Just lovely and nice to hear that the community understands that the investment that they made is visible in lots of ways across the district and it's. Also, like, incredible to hear that from teachers, like, I know we had lots and lots of negotiations with our teachers last year and we asked them to step up and do more than they've ever done before. And the art show is a good example of what happens when you invest. So I couldn't agree more that that was just a really nice way to. And what was otherwise kind of a rough week for me last week and busy. So it was delightful. Jerry, I was hoping you could pull up the slide with your 3 asks on it. So that we can all see it.

[Gerry McCue]: Yeah, Will is controlling the slides and it's the last slide, Will.

[Jenny Graham]: And then I guess I would say for those people watching and for, um, Mike and Jessica, because they're new, like. It's, it's not unusual for, like, part of our process by design is to tell the community what we need. I would call this like, hybrid of what we need. So we, we laid out what we needed before, but our request to the municipality is really intended to be about what Medford public schools needs. And then if there is, um. a difference between that number and the allocation that the city is able to provide to education, then we take a 2nd vote that presents like a balanced budget. But in the past. All of that happened in 1 fell swoop and what we lost was all the conversation about what we need and cannot fund. And so I would agree with the characterization that this is not quite level service. It's pretty close, I guess. But it certainly isn't what anybody is particularly happy with. So having said that, I fully support what the superintendent has put forward. And I would like to make a motion that we accept all three of these recommendations. and that if funding allows that we will reinstate that inclusion specialist position ASAP. I am expecting upset phone calls already because I know that that position and what its potential is means a lot to our families. So the motion is to accept these three recommendations and to prioritize the reinstatement of the inclusion specialist as soon as the budget allows.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I'm going to abstain from the vote. I'm sure you all understand why, as I struggle to try to balance the full overall city and school budget, but please call the roll.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastroboni? Yes. Member Olabate? Yes. Member Parkes? Yes. Member Reinfeld?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn? Abstain.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Six in the affirmative, one abstaining. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Second. Roll call, please.

[Paul Ruseau]: Who was the two? I'm sorry.

[Jenny Graham]: It was me and Erica.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, thank you. Member Graham?

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastroboni?

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Parks? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau, yes.