I'm going to call the meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee to order. First order of business is the minutes. Do I have any comments or corrections? Make sure you check that you were in attendance. If you go down the street first, the way down under the sentence that the housing allowance is not considered a permanent part of the system is recompensed. The housing allowance, is that what you said? Yes. I suggest we take the word recompense to come. Sorry, I haven't found it yet. What words does the line start with? The line starts with the word recompense. Oh, okay. Ah, there it is. The housing allowance is not considered a permanent part of the position's compensation. Okay. Okay, any other corrections? Yeah, just to show that I was pressing the phone tonight, please. Ah, okay. We'll do it. Anybody else? Travis? I have a question on the reserve fund. Did we vote to take the 500 case? No, a nice deficit away. I don't think we specifically voted that. No, I think that was the intent, but I don't think we actually voted that. And of course, we don't vote the 500,000. We can't vote it, but... How can I change that? Ah, voted. How about with the understanding that? Okay. You could say voted the 1,465, Snowen reserve fund with the understanding that the 500,000 Snowen ice deficit would be eliminated. So who was the understanding with? Well, I think that... We only voted to go to 1,465, but I think with that, we don't need the larger reserve fund plus the 465. That would be the way to balance it. I heard the town manager say something different at that meeting, so I'm just questioning where the 500,000 shows up in our budget. Well, it doesn't. We don't actually vote it. It's just the whole budget is balanced with the thought that we'd have 500,000 deficit from this year rolling ahead. And since we're not going to have $500,000 deficit rolling ahead, you know, that's the way we pay for it. So actually, we don't have to vote on it because there's no deficit. There's no deficit to be rolled. Actually, Peter, you could almost say voted, you know, the reserve fund. To be paid for because there's no snow and ice deficit. Anticipated. Anticipated, good word. Okay, any other corrections? I have one, I think, under the budget seven treasurer on the back page. You have Citizens Bank is now handling the town's funds. I think it's Century Bank. Century Bank, yeah. So cross out Citizens and turn it to Century, which is now operating out of an old Mr. Donuts shop at North Cambridge. Okay, anybody else? Okay, can I have a motion? So moved. Second? Second. Okay, any other corrections or discussion? All those in favor of accepting the minutes is corrected. Please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Done. Okay, I'm assuming everybody has the public schools or the, oh, this is Garlington. Okay. I'm going to hand out now our proclamation on the Foundation Budget Review Commission. We're going to be actually hearing this a week from next Monday. So this is something we're going to be asked to consider. But this is so you can study it and come up with all kinds of questions. Okay, the main topic of 7.39, we're four minutes late. Please forgive us. Is the Arlington Public School budget? Hopefully you've all studied this and have lots of good questions. So to pretend voting, would you like to start the presentation? Good evening. First of all, thank you for having us tonight. It's always nice to join you. I'd like to introduce that pretty much everyone that you know here from the school committee have our chair, Paul Flickman, vice chair, Jennifer Sood, and Bill Payne. Dr. Anthony, another way. And from Central Office, Laura Shepkin, who is the assistant superintendent, many of you know, and Diane Johnson, who you also probably everyone know. Tonight we've put together a presentation to look at the FY17 budget. I'm going to go through it fairly quickly and leave more of the time for questions that you might have. So tonight when I review this, I'm going to look at the talk a little bit about the budget development process and timeline. Some of the FY16 year-to-date news. Major discussion points for the FY17 budget, which includes enrollment and the school enrollment task force, which I know Al would like to have more discussion on this evening. And then looking into the future of the technology plan and special education expenses and interventions. On the next page you have the school committee. You also have following that the budget timeline, which I think at this point you're pretty familiar with in the process that we go through, which actually begins in the early fall as we take a look at our budget with all of the administrators and this discussion with teachers. And in fact in December the elementary principals and the secondary principals meet with the school committee to talk about their perspective for the upcoming budget. Involved in the process are the principals and people who in central office. Also all of our curriculum coordinators and it's sort of, I think it's nice for you to have their names. And people who actually contribute to the production of the budget as well as helping with this presentation and the report to town meeting that you'll all be receiving sometime before, actually the night of the opening of town meeting. So as we look at the year to date instead of some major events for the school department, one has to do with Stratton. We have been moving forward with the construction project. The plan is still in place for construction to begin in June of this year and to be completed by August 2017. We had a change in modular companies in the last few weeks, but we are still remaining on the schedule to make, to have the modulars in place for the start of the school year. As you all know, the MSBA board invited the high school into the eligibility period. That vote occurred in January and there'll be a second vote at the end of May, in fact May 25th, in which they formally invite us to commence the process. As you all have read and are aware, we completed a space study analysis, which has been the topic of a lot of discussion over the last few months as well as an enrollment forecast. We had an update on that forecast in December and this was prepared by Dr. McKibbin. Also this fall in response to what we anticipate is a continued trend of enrollment growth. We have an enrollment task force, which we have several members in this room that are on that committee, to look at what our options are for how to address the enrollment growth in the schools. I'm talking a little bit about that in a minute, but in terms of enrollment, since FY 13 we have increased in the school department 534 new students, so our enrollment this year is 5,410. Now there are two types of enrollment projections we have. The school department has its own methodology of projecting enrollment, but it's based on a weighted average of the actuals from previous years. Basically it's just a mathematical formula, it's a straight line. If we were to use the school department projection analysis, we would expect an increase of 196 students for FY 17. Dr. McKibbin did a new update on his forecast from last summer in December and with that forecast he expects the district to see 121 students for FY 17. And it's important to note that one difference between the school department prediction and the Dr. McKibbin's is that we include students in on district placements and his projections do not, his forecast does not. Now depending upon which the prediction, the mathematical formula or the forecasting, one thing that both agree on is that the school district is going to hit 6000. The only difference is one that is going to happen. And the same thing that's true for the high school and having a high school have an enrollment of over 1600, again the only difference is the timeline. So the task force has been meeting since this fall and considered numerous options for how to provide additional space for the school department. And there's been a number of options that have been taken off the table and where the current thinking is right now, of course, we're moving forward with the high school. But in terms of how we're going to address the enrollment growth at Addison, we have two options and one is putting an addition on the existing building in possibly one of two locations. And the other is putting Gibbs back in service to the school department. And presently there is a study that the committee has voted to approve is that we'll be looking in much more depth at both of these options bringing in electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, structural cost estimators. So we expect that probably by the start of town meeting we will have a much better look at what the cost will be and the pros and cons of each one of those options. And of course we'll have to keep an eye on the evolving enrollment. I will make a note to say to you, though, that as of today we have already registered for next year 50 additional students which is more than we had at this time last year. So it's hard to say what we find with enrollment growth. That's at all levels, that's 50 students across the K-12. Most of our growth we see late spring, early summer. If you look at the next graph that you have, and by the way, for those that are watching this evening, we've had this, I should have said this at the beginning, we have uploaded this presentation onto the district website. And so if you go to Arlington Public Schools website you will find that there. And we will also make sure that it's in, probably the town will want this presentation as well. If you look at the next graph, the bar graphs, you can see what the trend is from 2011, 2010, 2011 school year out to 2020-21. And we really can't, in terms of our predictions in the school department, really go out much more than that because it is based on the students that are already in our school system. But the clear message of this graph is that we're increasing. If you look at the next bar graph, this bar graph, again, goes from the 2010-11 school year, but this goes out to 25-26 because this is Dr. McKibbin's numbers based on a forecast with a entirely different methodology. But again, the one thing that you can see is there's going to be an increase, but in his forecast it looks like a little bit of plateauing off as we get into the out years. In response to the enrollment growth that we have experienced in the district, I want to thank all of you and thank the town for helping to address this with the school department in providing additional revenue for our budget to meet this growing enrollment. So the enrollment has been growing faster than we predicted when the five-year plan was approved. As I said, in the last three years, we've had over 500 students. Previously, we called the growth factor, which was set at 25% of the per pupil cost for the additional enrollment each year. What will change for the FY17 budget is that that dollar amount will increase to $35. The next chart has a breakdown of what the FY17 growth factor has looks like with all of the parts of the budget for general education, special education, the kindergarten offset fee, which has remained constant since we were able to be reimbursed by the states through Chapter 70 for the full day program, and then the growth factor. As you can see, between FY16 and FY17, there'll be an increase from $530,000 to $973,000. Part of that increase is also applying the $35 to the growth over these last three years as well. So the Allington Public Schools has a very definite vision for our mission, and that is that we want to have every student be ready for college and career and active citizenship. And I emphasize every student because that statement informs a lot of the decisions we make around the budget. But we also are committed to the professional development to building staff capacity so that we're an ever-improving school district. We want to provide an excellent education, and we do at a very effective cost. The Allington Public Schools are in the 90th percentile of all school districts in the state, and I know that because the Department of Education has confirmed that percentile. But our per pupil cost is less than the state average. So I think that we are doing a very good job providing a very excellent education for a very effective cost. The other value we hold is to work in partnership with all town departments and certainly to remain in collaboration and communication with all stakeholders. So as we look at FY17, we are going to have some revenue increases, and we've had to think very deeply about what our priorities will be for next year because all that we feel that we should be funding is not going to be possible with the revenue that we will have. So what are our priorities for next year? Well, one is that we are now in the second year of new contracts, both for our teachers and our administrators, and we have a two percent increase for all staff that are outside of collective bargaining. This item alone represents slightly more than half of the additional revenue. We also have to adjust for enrollment growth and class size mitigation, and one place we'll see that is at the Addison Middle School. We are going to fund an additional half cluster and also all of the specialists that are needed in order to support these students. We will have four reserve positions, but already we know that two are going to be for Thompson because we're going to be adding two modulars to Thompson next year. And the other two reserve positions are most likely going to be elementary. In fact, they're most likely going to be at Hardy. We know for certain that one of them will be at Hardy. We also need to increase nursing support at the middle school as well as social worker support both for a supported learning program as well as Addison. And we're going to fund a co-taught math. That means that you're going to have a general education teacher certified in the content area as well as a special education teacher. And then one of the other important areas is curriculum materials and for the district and also to have curriculum materials as we move forward in certain areas of our curriculum, math, science, but also to replace textbooks that are so outdated it's almost embarrassing. We had geography books that go back to the 1950s. I'm sure you know we're probably not using those books as much as we should because they're so outdated, but we do need to update those materials. And there's also a lot of unfunded mandates that the school department is under and that we will be using to fund that. If you go to the next page, you'll see a six-year comparison by budget transfer categories. So these are the major categories. We have elementary, secondary, special education, curriculum instruction, administration, and everything else. That's IT, facilities, transportation. Now, what you see in this is that in the first three categories, the categories that most directly affect our students in the classroom, elementary, secondary, and special ed, every year there's an increase in those budget areas. In contrast, if you look at the other three in curriculum and instruction, which is a lot of our professional development and other support materials, administration, and other, it's relatively flat over these six years. So whenever we have an increase in revenue, that money is funneling directly into supporting our students in their classroom. If you go to the next page, here is a quick overview summary of the FY17 proposed budget changes. So the net increase in revenue is $3.2 million, of which nearly 1.7 is going to contractual and salary increases, leaving about 1.5 for all the other priorities that we have identified. Now, there's another number here of 2.35, which represents the increases that we felt that were needed, but we are not going to be able to fund. And if you'd like a complete listing of that, it is in the superintendent's budget message in the book that you have. And for those watching that, the entire budget is also on the district website, and what you just need to do is to go to school committee at the top and go to budget and you'll find it. The next page, page 19, is a graph that you've seen before. It's basically taking the information you've already seen and displaying it a little differently in a circle graph. Just to see relatively the proportions that each one of these different cost centers represent of the total budget. So moving on, page, next page, funding the vision. So the FY17 revenues of the school department is $62.6 million. This represents a total of 5.4% increase from last year. Now, if you look just simply at town appropriations, that percentage is different, but as you know, the revenue for the school department encompasses other sources, one being grants and another being fees. Now, the town appropriation increase is a 3.4. The thing that we do know are the grants are projected to decline. We're almost certain that Title I is going to decline, which has actually provided quite a few positions for math and literacy intervention. The kindergarten grant at the moment is expected to decline, but there is the possibility that it'll get funded. And that would be terrific if it does, but at the moment that's not the expectation. So we have also fees and reimbursements are projected to increase by over 100,000, and that includes 250,000 prior year reserves. The FY16 circuit breaker payment of 1.8 will be used in FY17. And as you recall, we were able a number of years ago to get into a cycle where we're one year out. So we always know what our circuit breaker number is going to be. I remember years ago where that was always a floating number that we might not know until June or July, but we do know what that number is now. In the next page, the FY17 proposed budget funding summary takes the 62.6 and shows its distribution among the three major funding sources. Clearly the town appropriation is the major source of funding for the school department. One of the other areas that we remain very grateful to the town is to helping us support a technology plan. And I thank Capital Planning Committee again this year for continuing to fund the technology needs that we need. And I think we've said this before and it's worthwhile saying again, we're not looking to increase our technology to increase our technology. We really have a very definite plan for how we're going to use it. And we use it with some very key ideas in mind in terms of education and what goes on in the classroom. We want students to be able to work independently and collaboratively both. We want them, and this is really important, to be able to analyze and synthesize multiple forms of evidence. And I think that as our society becomes more complex, this skill is increasingly more important, both in work life and just in being a good citizen. You're bombarded with so much information, you need to be able to synthesize and have evidence for your point of view or for the work you're doing, which then provides you to be able to create some very robust arguments. And we have to be able to do that both orally written and digital form today. So as we look at the technology priorities for this next budget cycle, one thing that I don't know if you know is that the state is moving into what they call MCAS 2.0, which is the evolution of the MCAS. It's very clear that it's going to be very park-like, which is actually one of the reasons why the district this year is going to be assessing using park just to have the experience for our students and our staff. But one of the other parts of this change is that by 2019, the expectation in the state is that all students will be tested online. As we move into park this year, we have the Odyssey Middle School being tested online, as well as one of our elementary schools, and that's Bishop. MCAS, and now MCAS 2.0 Park, are not the only assessments that our students are increasingly being asked to be tested on digitally. One is the access tests for English language learners and also all of the national language exams. Teachers also need computers both for their instruction, which they increasingly are using all the time, as well as for the new educator evaluation system. Forty-five percent of our assistive technology for special education is five years or older, and those devices will be replaced in FY17. And we've already begun this year in doing a replacement plan for the Thompson one-to-one. One-third were replaced this year of the devices, and one-third next year, and then the last in 18. Okay, moving on, talking a little bit about special education and interventions. This is page 26. So when we look at special education costs, we are looking at a very defined set of costs. And I thank Diane Johnson for sticking to this over the years, because unless we do have that definition and we are rigorous in applying the definition, it's very hard to really compare special education costs year to year. The special education costs in Arlington includes all of the special education grant-funded costs, the legal and transportation costs that are directly supporting special education students. The definition of interventions in Arlington includes all of our math and literacy, RTI, academic challenge, enrichment, guidance, and the thing about interventions, they support not only special education students, but general education students who struggle. So why are both needed special education services as well as interventions? Well, special educations are legally mandated services. But we also have students that struggle who are not eligible for special education services, and these interventions support their growth. And I go back again to the vision. Our vision is that all students are able to be prepared for college and career. And one area that we look at in terms of the feedback we have from assessments is to look at how our high-need students are doing. And every year that gap is decreasing. We would like to see it decreasing faster than it is. But the only way that we're going to see that is if we invest in the kinds of interventions that are going to support these students. Another thing that is happening, it used to be that the services for ELL, our English Language Learners, were recommended interventions. They are no longer going to be recommended. They are going to be mandated. And there are very definite rules in terms of who can teach ELL students and how much intervention they need and pull out. It's a rather substantial mandate. So if you look to the next page, we have a five-year comparison showing intervention expenses. And again, we're looking at general education, interventions, special education, direct professional development, and administration infrastructure. So as you look from FY13 through, we have the actual through 15, and then we have 16 projected at the end, and of course 17 is definitely proposed. The thing that you'll notice for general education, which is the first column, is that we are investing in general education. But that is also a reflection of the enrollment growth that we have, because as our students enrollment grows, so does our cost. The thing to notice in the next one, which is a little bit lighter blue, this is our interventions. For the first two years, it was fairly flat. And then in FY15, it grew a little bit, but it has remained flat again. So even though general education costs are growing, our interventions are fairly flat. Special education also is growing. Now, for direct professional development, you can barely see the top of the bar in each one of these. But I don't want you to think that we're not committed to professional development. In fact, we are very committed, and we offer a variety of opportunities for teachers. In fact, there are professional development, people think of the speaker coming from the outside or going off to a conference. Those certainly are, and they're certainly worthwhile. But what the research shows is the most effective professional development in affecting student performance, is when teachers work together, they look at data together, make interventions based on that data, do walk-throughs with each other, have mentoring. And so those are the types of professional development we are more heavily investing in, and that is sometimes more of an investment of time. And then if you look at the administration and infrastructure, you'll see that again, well, there's been a slight increase, it's not been very much. And our priorities have been always to put the money back into the classroom. And this is no small issue either. As the mandates have increased from the state around teacher evaluation, the number of administrators we have to carry out those mandates has not grown. If you look at the next graph, this is special education expense by funding source. Most of the funding over these years has, the vast bulk of it has come from town appropriation. You can see the smaller bar, a blue bar, is circuit breaker. And I think the thing to notice about circuit breaker is how variable it has been, because it's always on your past, it's always passed on a formula on past expenses. And just like special education, those costs can vary from year to year. But fortunately we are now in a budget cycle where we can anticipate it using the year previous. And then special education grants total, you can see as the darker blue here. And the thing that is noticeable in that is that while the highest was FY 11, ever since then those grants have come down. And the next graph, you've seen something like this before, which is looking at special education and you've seen it before looking at it over 10 years. And you always see this kind of jagged line. And once again, from looking from FY 12 through the proposed FY 17, you will see a jagged line. As we look at FY 17 and you see that that's going up, I'm sure that you're thinking why. What do we know now why that is going up? Well, for one thing, as enrollment goes up, we're also going to be increasing special education costs. But as enrollment goes up, we also have in-district programs that we need to expand. And one area we're expanding is we're going to, part of those budget priorities was to have two special education teachers at the elementary, more social workers for special education programs. We also know that in terms of salaries, as a group, special education teachers are newer to the district. And as a result, that group disproportionately, salaries are going faster because they have step in lanes as well as the percent increase. Another major factor is our home services are growing. And these are students that need to have home services. In fact, our contractual number this year I think is around an increase of about 70,000 over expected. And we're seeing anticipating more even next year. Another area up is that we've had this year much more than last year. We have more extended, more requests for extended evaluations. And each time we have an extended evaluation of a student, that ranges in the cost of about 10,000 to 20,000. And the students that have extended evaluations, nearly 90% of those students will go into out of district placement. So the very fact that those requests are up is evidence that we're going to be seeing some uptick there as well. So those are some of the reasons why we're anticipating this growth. So that is the bulk of it. And I just would like to end by again thanking you and saying that the Arlington School Committee, I'm speaking for them, respectfully request your approval of the FY17 budget voted by the school committee on March 10th, 2016. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Dr. Bodie. Okay. I will throw it open to questions from the finance committee. You're overwhelmed. Let me, I'm sorry, Peter.  Does intervention and tutoring essentially the same thing? They can be. Yes. They can be definitely the same thing. But it's also more services. It could be social work. It could be guidance. It could be small group instruction. We do have tutors. It could be coaching of teachers. There's a lot of ways that we support teachers. Thank you. Okay. With the Arlington Middle School, it just seems in previous discussions and now that it's moving target of sorts. And by that, I mean, you have a pretty good idea of what the inflows are from the elementary schools. But it's not really clear how these new students are going to be accommodated in terms of being bussed someplace else, in terms of their siblings have another reason to school. I guess my real question is, is there a long-term plan to create a second middle school? Or we just, it seems like maybe we're just pushing things along and accommodating or taking care of each budget as it comes up. I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong, either. Well, that is actually the task before the school enrollment task force is to look at how we're going to accommodate this great enrollment. Next year is going to be tight in the school. We're going to be having much more shared classrooms and it's just going to feel a lot tighter as we increase the numbers. The following year, next year is the tipping point. The following year we need modular classrooms for the middle school. But as we look long-term, we're seeing that it's going to increase about another 250 students. And that's a significant number and certainly not possible in the existing building. The task force right now is looking at, well, should we add an addition? And if we do, should it be on the lot side, the forest side? I don't know. The front, actually it's the front of the school. Or it should be on the mass ab side down on the soccer field. That's one area. Another possibility is for the school department to take Gibbs back for school use. And we're looking at a study right now as to what the cost for renovation would be. Now, if the decision goes toward Gibbs, then there's another decision to be made. Is that going to be a single grade that goes to Gibbs or is it going to be a six through eight? And that's a decision the school committee will have to discuss and decide. But we can no longer, after next year, manage within the existing building. Just my own question. What's a half a cluster? I think I understand what a four cluster is. That's a good question. Four classes for the four subjects. What's a half a cluster? It means that you have two teachers for half that number of students. So a half cluster, it's going to be the eighth grade next year. A half cluster will have two teachers. One teacher has to be certified in math and science. And the other one English and social studies. So if a cluster is around 120 students, then a half cluster will be roughly around 60 students. And they will take their specials. Actually, one of the hard parts about having half clusters is scheduling specials. Because usually a cluster goes out as a cluster to all the different specials they might have with the art and music, family consumer science, technology. So they go out as clusters. So when you have a half cluster, it's going to present some scheduling challenges. Dr. Bote, I have some questions on the special education. Sure. And, you know, I've expressed in the past my concern that we have a guideline of a 7% increase in the special education budget. And I keep looking at these numbers every year. And I see historically that the increase is always less than 7%. Not always. Well, I'm taking a view that I've been looking at it for five or six years now. It seems that the average rate of increase is less than 7%.  And if I look at the presentations that you gave, I have some trouble correlating some different numbers here. So on page 17, you have the six-year comparison by budget transfer categories. I'm sure you can speak up. Budget transfer categories do not include grant money. And so that's why the numbers look different. The budget transfer categories correlate to the section in the budget book every section four. And it explicitly excludes grant money. It includes only town appropriation and revolving funds. So those numbers will not foot out to the entire special ed budget because that doesn't refer to grant money. Well, I mean, my understanding is that when we calculate the town contribution to the budget, we have a rate of increase that's based on, I think it's 3.5% or something like that, plus the growth factor on the general education and 7% on special education. And if I look on page 17, and Diane, you're saying that this is the town stuff, and I want to keep separate here the subject of expense and income. So this is, let's see, one, two, three, four-year average through fiscal year 16, so these are all actual. I calculate to be a 2.6% compound of growth rate. That's even further away from the 7% than the 5% that's in the book. And I'm not counting the proposed, I'm counting actuals, fiscal 12 through 16. So that's four years of growth. That is a subset of our entire growth. So that is not all of our growth in special education. You know, one of the things that makes our special education growth different is the great contribution, which is not part of that. So I haven't looked expressly at special education growth according to this limited view. If however you look at special education growth according to all special education expenditures, without regard to funding stores, I think, you know, my calculations say it averages out to about 6.9%, which you are correct is less than 7%. No, the 6.9%, I'm talking about actuals. The 6.9% includes the proposed fiscal year 17. Over how many years are each of you looking at? We're just looking at this time horizon from FY11. We are not going back in time. If we were to go further back in time, that would make that average higher. Mr. Foskett is correct that we have had less growth, but still significant volatility in this time horizon from FY11 to the president. Guess where I'm coming from here? I mean, when we get a special education grant, we get a grant, let's see how I can express this correctly. Do we spend the money because we get the grant or would we spend the money anyway? And if we spend the money anyway, we should be looking at expenses and then revenues. We spend the money anyway because it's mandated. The way we classify special education expenses is mandated. However, anything we can put in a grant, we will put in a grant. So we will spare the town appropriation to the maximum possible extent. Except that you don't because you budget it at 70%. In other words, the appropriation that's calculated for the town is based on a 7% calculation. So basically we're discussing slide 14, the detail of the FY17 growth factor. Right there. So if I'm understanding you correctly, what you're taking Umbridge with is the fact that we've been calculating 7% for a number of years now and that you don't feel it's justified. Am I correct? Well, I wouldn't use the term Umbridge. I'm trying to understand how we're reporting things and how we're budgeting. I think Umbridge is a little bit pejorative. What I'm saying is that we are, this is the formula that I understand that we have been applying. Okay. So we're calculating this budget every year based on a 7% growth. But the data that you show as historical can be as low as 2.5%. That is correct because the understanding has been in years when we have a bad spend here and we're spending, you know, we have 12 or 13% growth that we have to make that hole on our side. Which we have done historically. And that jagged bar graph really shows that very well. We have years of low growth and we have years of high growth. You know, we have this discussion every year and I continue to show the special ed expenses as they are because I want the special ed expenses to show what we can't get out of. Because someday the rain is going to dry up and we're going to have a drought and we're going to have to make cuts. And these are the things we cannot cut. So where is the, if the number is 2.5% or 2.6% and not 7% there's a 5% difference. 5% of 20 million dollars is a million dollars. So you should have a 5 million dollar reserve someplace. Where is it? Well, I think you know where it is. No, I don't. I'm asking you the question. I don't know where it is. It is going into helping us sustain our growth. Because the 35% of people are inadequate. So this is a discussion we have every year. Yes. And it's not being spent on special education. What I'm trying to say is this 7% metric is just plain wrong. And you've been saying that for several years. That's right. When we look at it historically, and I think it's really important to look at it this way, that we can't predict how special ed is going to go in the year. I remember a year where in August we had two students move in that needed residential placement. We never know this. Now, so the point is this. There are some years where we really have to cut back in other things for our students when it goes as high as 12%. And we've looked at that. When we set the five-year plan, we looked at a 10-year, 8-year. We've looked at all the different types of averages over time. And they averaged out to 70%. You're absolutely correct that in a given year, in fact, the last two years we've done very well. I have to say we've done very well. But we also were in a situation where we had an enrollment growth where the money that we had was inadequate. So I don't expect that's going to be the case next year given all the predictors that we're seeing right now. But that's going to be the case. We're probably going to need to use 7%. Hopefully not more than 7% next year. So when you look at special education, it's very difficult to do something different than what we're doing right now, honestly. How else would we do it? If you use the previous year's actual, that could be wrong. You could over-inflate the next year based on the actual, you could under-inflate, or you could not get out of your money. Dr. Boney, I've been on the finance committee for about 20 years, maybe 25 years. I mean, I have heard of, I mean, I know that the chaotic stochastic behavior of arrival of different types of special education students and what it costs to town at different times. However, I've been arguing probably for 20 of those 25 years that if you have a long-term average of 7%, you have a long-term average of 7%. But in the last 10 years, the school department has not had a long-term average of 7%. And when I pointed it out several years ago on the data that was given to me by Mrs. Johnson, she said at this meeting, oh, that's not right through the piece of paper out. And now we're looking at data she's given again. It says 2.5% compound growth. And I'm being told that, well, yeah, that's correct. Okay. So the way you manage this is you take the difference between the 2.5% and the 7%, and you put it in a bank account. And then you have a reserve for when the stochastic problems occur. And then, eventually, you can lower the rate that you have to spend that. But your argument is based on the fact that town appropriations is the only source. If you look at another graph, you'll see one thing that's happened with both Circuit Breaker and the grants. The grants have actually come down. So we're mandated to spend, to provide services. Now, that percentage that we get for those services can vary from the different sources. And what I think what we need to do is look at the totality of it. We want us to look at simply the appropriations for the town and have that be evidence that we're doing 7%. But if a federal grant goes down, then how do we pay for, then the more the town services has to kick in? Or vice versa. And we've seen both of that over time. Diane, you've produced a sheet the last several years that had it over the last 10 years, what the average was. And I think that's what the Long Term Planning Committee does look at. And do you have that available? Would it be available? I do not. That sheet, I had to build out of desperation when I came here because I couldn't go back in time except by using the end of the year report. And the information I have to pull together, it just doesn't fit together very nicely with the way we report to the state. So if you look at this section on special education and the budget book, which is section 11, I believe. This only goes back to FY13, but I have the data back to FY11. And having calculated it from FY11 forward, and I'm sorry it's not in this view because I can't. But the overall rate across those years is, I believe, 6.9% from the time horizon of FY11. And this includes everything. This is all of the things that we're expending that are strictly defined as meeting the needs of special education students only. It doesn't include the interventions, which would be perfectly legitimate to say are special education expenses. And the vast majority of the students receiving reading services are special ed kids. We're counting that on the general ed and not counting that on the state. So this doesn't have the full time horizon back to FY11. But if we did, then we would show that I'm pretty confident that it's 6.9% averaging across that time horizon from FY11 to the present. And this is the view that we really need to look at because this is the all-in view. This is what we're spending on special education. This is where we spent it and on what we spent it. Defined strictly. We have not changed the definition of SPED. So this is a real apples to apples across time. Now, this is total $20 million 507. And you have the... This is a different view. This does not include grant money. So, you know, when we try to put these different reports, they're very different views. And so I'm sorry for the confusion. But if you really want to look at special education expenses, this is the section we need to look at. So which section should we look at? Section 10. So $20 million 507.602. Correct. And that includes whatever money you do for grants. Correct. Yeah, I think obviously this is another million four over what you have on this chart. Correct. And that represents the grant money that's not counted in that chart. The budget transfer categories are the way the school committee votes the budget to control the budget from within. And grants stand outside those line item controls that they exercise because grants are independent projects. And so that is done to reflect their needs. But it's not a good basis of comparison to be looking at an expense across the entire district. Question. Okay, Charlie and then Dean. If you are spending X from grants, shouldn't you be calculating the town contribution based on the growth in the difference? In other words, that's the 2.6% is the growth in the town spending. It's not 7%. I disagree. Dean. All right. So first, thanks for coming in. And thanks for the book. I really like this book. I think I said this every year, but it is very easy to drill down to whatever you want to see and figure it out. So I do appreciate you pulling it together. Again, I can take the question on special ed as well. So I'm not going to disagree with the 7% growth rate of the year. Budgetary number. But what I think is interesting is let's say our five-year special ed increase is 7%. Well, at the same time, our student enrollment has gone up a staggering amount. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head right now. So if you just assume for a second that the population of your children receiving special education services doesn't change, even though the budgetary increase is 7%, which we started doing in 2012, I mean, you could conclude that we are seeing a slowing down of special ed costs. Because I would assume if we'd have a thousand kids more, it wouldn't be 7% anymore. I agree with you and I'd like to support that on two things. Alison Elmer, our special ed director, mentioned to me today that we are holding steady in terms of our percentage of students receiving special ed services. So that's a good sign. So even though our overall growth is increasing, we are increasing numbers of special ed students, but they are not out of step with the overall enrollment growth. The other thing I think we're really seeing bear fruit is our interventions work. That at one point our special ed costs were really escalating because we were unable to provide the intervention services. That in many cases give the kids what they need before it's necessary to get them formalized into special education. That when you don't have a good intervention program, you have General Ed, and then you have the kids that are unsuccessful, and when there's nothing in between they have no choice, their parents push them towards special education. But now we have a robust intervention program. We have a reading program, we have math coaching, we're doing math interventions, and so we're reaching the needs of more kids before they reach the special ed threshold. So I think that shows a couple of good things that we've done for infrastructure and investments we've made to help contain special ed costs. That said, special ed is a tiger that you always have by the tail, and you can't really control those costs.  Right, but I think that maybe the positive thing about this, in some ways special ed, the 7% is really a fixed cost, whatever that may be, plus a growth factor on the rising enrollment of the kids coming in to the system. And I do think it's a positive thing because there were many years we were sitting here looking at that 7% wondering if it was ever going to slow down under any circumstance. And it seems like we didn't have the other problems. We might have seen a slow one, just some degree. And I worry that if enrollment growth continues to stop our budget, and we cannot continue to invest in those interventions to keep pace with the greater enrollment, then we are going to see at some point the payoff in an uptick in spend. But you know, right now we're not able to extend reading services to as many children as truly need them because we can't grow the reading program because we're busy trying to keep the class sizes down. And there isn't enough money there. And I'm afraid that if we can't keep putting money into those interventions, we're going to see the spike eventually pay off in spend, which is what we don't want to see. So my next question is, we talked for many years, probably my entire time on the Finance Committee, about in-district program for special education. So because it would be more cost-effective to keep the kids in the community and things like that. So obviously that must have an effect on our school facilities. It does. I never thought about it at the time. I kind of woke up in November and realized. Well, the SLC classrooms, as you know, are designed to be much more intensive programs for hiring students. And so the ratio of students to teachers is much different. A classroom to take a building like the Stratton that was originally designed to hold 30 kids, maybe holding six in the SLC program that's housed there. And with that six, a teacher, two or three aides, and a number of related service providers. It's a much more expensive delivery. But even if you're spending the same amount of money on the educational resources as you would sending them out of district, you're at least not paying transportation and you're meeting the dictates of least restrictive environment. But it heats up space. You're absolutely right. It's fair to say though that the victory that we have in saving cost within district special education is also on the other side hurting all the facilities. Absolutely. Because we now have nine rooms, whatever. And the specialty needs that come with these intensive programs, social work, OT, speech. These are providers that need space to work in that isn't necessarily a classroom. Sometimes they push into the classroom, but other times they pull the children out to treat them. So what we really need is more office space and therapeutic space. I don't agree with that. The school life of Stratton didn't build for that. My wife and I went to school in another community and she tells me all the time about the closet that they have a room right now so I can fully agree with you there. And newer schools, if you look at the Thompson and how that was designed, there is some nice related service provider space. As with the Pierce, they were designed with this in mind. And when we're reconstructing the Stratton, this is a change we're going to make. We're going to take a classroom and break it up and put it into related service provider space. But then again, it's lost forever. It's a classroom as enrollment grows. Got it. Okay. So then the last question I have, because I just want to make sure I understand how this book works. So if I go to section 10, we were on it so I might as well just go there. So we have the FY17 level service column. And then next to it's the FY17 edition. Should those tie to the front of the book? They tie to the superintendent's budget message, which is section 2. Right. And if you go into the spreadsheets in section 2, they will tie back to the first section. If we get there and I'll tell you the page number. Right. So that's what that column does for representatives. Correct. It's too late into it. You can tie all of these out into the budget centers that they live in. And you can see that throughout the budget, through any of the views. Excellent. Okay. Thank you. John. Excuse me. This is one more comment I'd like to make. It wasn't made with respect to us for the writing centers. You're absolutely right in facilities. I still think that they're more cost effective. But I think another piece of this is really important is that by not having our children have to go to an odd district placement. We keep them part of the community in which they live. And I know that special education parents prefer that. They'd much rather have them in our online public schools. And that's not all the time. Because sometimes there are students that we do not have the resources for. Or it's not a cost effective model. But for those students that can, it's a preferred option. Okay. John. I just went back to page 9 and did a simple calculation. We have 534 new students in the past three years. The total now is 5,410. So that's over 10% over three years. So. Actually four years. Like 3% a year. Just due to, yes, just due to the decent population. We are definitely absorbing an tremendous number of students. Okay. Paul. How much will you be putting into the special ed reserve? I think it's too soon to tell. I think we really have to see how the year comes out. I mean, according to this page, 7 and 7 of section 10, you're running like a $600,000 surplus in special ed. We are running significantly under budget and out of district tuition at the moment. However, there's two factors that make me not want to commit to anything at this point. One is that we've seen an uptake in the number of referred 45-day placements. These are placements where students are sent out for an extended evaluation out of district. And as Dr. Vody said earlier, 90% of those end up in out of district tuition. I'm also holding back because as the weather warms up, we see it every year things pop up and kids go out of district in the spring. And so at this point, while it's looking excellent, I wouldn't want to bet on anything right now. Thank you. Hey, Bill. I was going to say, when I grew up and I went through a school system in my town, there's no such thing as special ed. We're all grouped together. And one thing that strikes me is some of these bar graphs are very linear. But when I look at the special ed percentage growth from year to year, it's very striking. And it tells me it's a real imponderable. Because you have so many, I said before, moving targets, there's so many things going on at once that how can you possibly plan ahead? By the same goal that I grew with Charlie, that if you're going to use the number like a 7%, and those funds aren't being used, that we hold those funds someplace for a rainy day. And maybe I'm not quoting you exactly, Charlie, but that there may become a rainy day. And suddenly this is up here. And it's one area we don't want to be cutting services. Well, in your reserve fund right now, there's $200,000 from last year that we are going to put into the Special Education Stabilization Fund at the Tom Meeting now. Whether we can add some money to that, that remains to be seen. But at least, because we had to drain, remember this, we had to drain $500,000 out of it a couple of years ago. So again, for that exact reason, it's just the volatility. So we're going to at least have that much in there and hopefully a little bit more. Okay, Peter. On a different subject, do you have any plans to put civic education back into the curriculum? It's never a lot. Given the situation and phase down to politics right now? I was surprised to hear that some school systems are not teaching civics or social studies or awareness of the world, and that's not been the case. We do that from elementary up. We have a curriculum for each grade, and we certainly have in the middle school, we were talking about clusters earlier, it's organized around four core subjects. Social studies being one of the four. So they have as a core subject in the middle school and at the high school, every student takes social studies. In fact, when I was looking at our new directors, Danny Congland's numbers for social studies, we actually have more kids taking social studies than we actually have students, which means that they're doubling up. They're seeing a doubling up in that field. So we have never stopped and we consider it a very core part of our educational program. What about the student town meeting that you used to have? I don't think that's going on anymore. Well, yes it is. In third grade, Mr. Hanner went again this year. We do have it. Is it going? Okay. We do. Okay, Ellen? I just want to say something good about the special education programs. I remember about 10 years ago when we were looking at double digit growth almost every year in sort of desperation, I asked the question, is there anything we can do about this or does it have to do with environmental issues or something? And the answer that I thought was great was intervention. I'm going to start with reading intervention, math intervention, and if I look at the chart on page 25 and you just sort of put a pen across it and I hope you can compare it to what happens. It just appears that special education is growing more slowly than general. So whether it's impacted by population growth or whatever, without any real data, it seems to me that maybe those interventions, as you said, those are doing a good job. And maybe we can look forward to some time in the future when we have sufficient reserve and if those programs continue to be successful, then we can start bending that 7% curve down. Clearly it has to be data driven. We have to agree on the right data. What are your entire different subjects about the growth in the middle schools? It's a question I have. If the decision would be made to not take back the Gibbs, would, has there been any discussion then about putting a surplus in using it and then to fund some of the other projects, selling it off the way the pros were sold off? In other words, if we don't need it now, what time in the future would be? If it would be a bad choice this year when it would become a good choice, it seems like it sort of declared a surplus at that point. Would that, has that been discussed? Not a task force per se, but it certainly, I wouldn't say it's been discussed. One of the things that we're learning and will probably have much better information at the end of this month, at the end of April, is really what kinds of renovations that building needs. This substantial. And if we don't use that building for a school and invest in it in the renovations, then I think the town will be facing some decisions around that. But I don't think it's been discussed, but I don't think any decision has been made. It's a little premature right now. As an honest neighbor, I'm sort of hoping we take back our gifts. But if we don't, then it just seems like it's an asset that could be liquidated. I'm sure that's going to be discussed. Can I just say one more thing about Peter's question? I actually toot the horn of the middle school on this. There's a competition, national competition called National History Competition. And our students work independently on projects around history topics, which is part of the whole, you have to understand your history as part of your civic education. And 13 of our teams, I think 13 or 14 of our teams are moving on to state competition. Last year we had a team of Guenton Nationals, but our team absolutely took every first, second and third in every category in the competition just a couple weeks ago. So we have a lot of students who are spending a lot of time on this topic, and I just want to give them a little plug in the advisors who work very hard. And we also have mock trials, a mock trial group at the high school who also did very well in state competitions quite recently. Sorry. I had to put that in there. Thank you all. Can I have a question on the growth factor calculation for fiscal 17 on page 14? And my question is, I understand there's been an increase from 25% to 35%. Last year my understanding of the calculation was it took 25% of the fiscal 13 for people costs and multiplied that by the number of new students projected, which was 169, and that came up to the 530,000. On page 9 of this handout tonight, you're projecting 196 students, and I'm wondering why 196 isn't where the 84 is. The 84 is the actual number of students. The per pupil growth factor is added into the long-range plan after we have actual students and what I'm projecting is students ahead. So when we get the actual number of students involved, they will affect the budget for 18. So it's a timing increase. And was last year that different because I thought last year it was what was being projected for the subsequent year as opposed to what actually happened? We projected higher for this year than we actually got. And so when we get the actual allocation, it's based on real numbers, not on projections. We use the projection numbers but was last year based on projections? No, it's always based on actual numbers. Okay. I'm just looking at the funding summary statement from a year ago, and it talked about increase to the fiscal 16 budget reflects growth from fiscal 15 of 169, but that's the actual you're talking about from a year ago. Thank you. And then just a comment because we do have this discussion every year on special ed cost and I think rather than have the discussion tonight and it's unfortunate we should be having a discussion whether it's through our subcommittee, whether we create a committee to sit down with you Diane, because challenge makes valid points, you make valid points in terms of what the history is but I look at this and we have six years of actual numbers now between what's in the end of the book and going back to fiscal 11 it comes out to 6.34% based on my calculation of the actuals to actual and then 15 to 16 is actual 15 to projected 16 expenses. So just to get an understanding what we're looking at is it actual to actual each year because when you calculate your 7% you're really basing it off of budget numbers from year to year from 16 to 17 are you basing it off your budgeted special ed from the town appropriation because you don't know what the 60 actual is. When I build the special ed budget I build it without regard to the 7% and building what we think we need which has created some controversy in prior years because I'm putting a budget in front of you that I think best represents what we're actually going to need the 7% is part of the calculation that's where that needs to happen. But when you talk about the 7% when you have the summary of page 14 of the town's appropriation that's the product of long range planning and the negotiations that go on there. That number bears no relationship to an actual expense just a number that's been carried over from year to year that's my point. At the end of the book and I'm happy to see it looks like the special ed expenses are going down this year between 100,000 or 600,000 depending on what number you use because I think originally last spring the special ed number was 19.3 million and as of September 8th it was 19.8 million so whatever that number is it's coming down but I still think it's a discussion we should have so that we don't have this dialogue every year we should come into this meeting with the school community and agreement these are the numbers over the last six years or eight years whatever you have data for and this is what the projection is because if the number needs to change up or down, we'll know. But that's long range planning? No I understand but you still with each passing year you have the benefit now because of changes you can't go back prior to fiscal 11 in terms of gathering the information with a lot of effort at the starting point we now have six years of data and it suggests a certain number and maybe agree to a time period is it seven years is it ten years whatever it is so that we come in we know what the formula is and where additional funds may go where shortfalls come out of it. Perhaps the 70% number was built over assuming looking back like ten years and saying this is the average of the ten years and seven percent was taken I think it would probably need some negotiations at a different level but I think it could be thought that this year the budget is going up seven percent so that's not a problem but let's say for next year you're going up six percent of the web I think it could be reasonable for us to expect it we're going to take that other one percent and do something such as interventions which would prevent the special education budget from going up or as been suggested by a couple of people it's going to be put in a reserve you know I think that's a reasonable activation on our part and I hope that you'll consider that to be able to show us the pace I think that's a great suggestion in fact I think that that's what Mr. Posca has said over time is that you're putting some of this money into the general ed and we do in years where we have less money having to expend you can do a little bit more in the way of support though when you set up your interventions you pretty much set them up at the beginning of the year you can add some tutoring as the year goes on if we can we would like to we mentioned the reading program which is really a marvelous program and very successful but I have to say we are not reaching all the students that we could we are not giving math intervention the elementary school to all the students that need it we're just not we can't we just don't have the personnel to do it are we doing a better job than we used to yes but there's a limit to what we can do and as I started talking about our budget we we're doing a lot we're getting tremendous results but our per pupil is still under the state average and that's a fact okay I had a couple questions one is you know I'm looking at the page 19 and it has instructional special education 19 million total 62 million that's about 30% 30% of your budget and yet I've always had this belief possibly wrong that special education ranges between 15 and 20% you know maybe if it's low it's down around 16 or 17 it's high it's around 18 or 19 is that number somehow different than this number yes that number is the percentage of students that receive special education services okay thank you and that percentage has come down a number of years ago was in the 20th in some school it's definitely below that and I think is it 16% okay great thank you very much and we just wanted to turn this over we got this letter from Arfa County Agricultural High School saying that a student from Arlington has applied for next year and so I was trying to figure out who to hand this off to this is vocational tuition this is the out of county tuition rate of 22,149 and 49 dollars and so since this is a student you no longer have to educate but they're just like the Minuteman students this should go to you because they would be a Minuteman if Minuteman had the program that that student is seeking so that's the only difference we don't have the right to say no to them and we have a student at Rista, Cambridge Ridge in Latin or Ridge School of Technical Arts in Cambridge and we have two at Essex what used to be Essex Aggie and all of those are just like Minuteman if Minuteman had all of those programs they'd be Minuteman students but they have the right to seek that programming in other schools and so I think it's really important for our long term view of what we're spending on vocational education that we keep all those bills together in the same place with Minuteman so how do you account for these can pay for the past well there haven't been that many in the past last fiscal year Andrew Flanagan requested a transfer from you guys to pay it from the same place as we pay Minuteman and I think in the future we should be paying them from the same place as we pay Minuteman because they are essentially Minuteman like satellite locations I think what you're trying to tell me is you don't want this you got it the fact is we paid it no that's next door I want him to keep that one we're eating this year because the warrant article is written in such a way that it doesn't allow for this since I think that's something that we need to think about going forward so this is this bill is sort of a notification that somebody's applied it doesn't even say whether they've accepted this so when Adam is not looking I'll give it to him okay is there additional questions Paul, John, Steve so just one note Al if the person is accepted and leaves then the projection of how many students there will be next year will go down by one will save money in the in that what I'm saying is that the eighth grader is not going to a high school we can discuss that later okay John, did you have another this is a question that's a little bit afield from the financial questions but do we do a breakfast in the classroom in any of the schools and in particular in the East the reason I asked the question is because I've become aware of school districts and even in relatively better financial more able towns that there are schools where there's a lot of disadvantaged kids and they're providing in some of those schools and this very very money bill to do this was called breakfast in the classroom with all the kids in the school in the classroom get some breakfast we're not giving breakfast to all the students but we have a we have a free reduced lunch program to provide breakfast as well as lunch the breakfasts are available for students of needs to buy if they wish I would just suggest that you might look at this the reason we were saying that hungry kids eat teachers and breakfast is such an important thing for kids and this has been reasonably successful I've heard well quite successful in a number of disadvantaged communities it seems to me that in the East we might think about something like this and especially since there's federal money available I had read about those studies and they haven't successful you have to have a certain threshold to be available to have the federal money available to do across the board we do not meet that threshold but I will say that the whole town has to be at the sub-circle I don't think it's for an individual school I don't think we'd meet the threshold either but I could look at it but I will say this that at one of our schools that you're probably referring to there is food available all day long there is fresh fruit there's other types of all healthy snacks and students come down when they feel hungry and I think that one of the things that we have seen and I want to give a shout out to Arlington Eats because they've just been terrific in providing bags of food to go home at night and certainly over the weekend and there's now a summer program as well in which people can come in and have lunch and take food one thing that has we have seen is that behavior issues have gone down and performance is going up and it does have an effect and so in many cases the correlation is strong between kids that have enough to eat and their ability to attend to what's going on in school I'll just make one final statement and that's that in this way stand out from the others whereas if it's everybody getting breakfast in the classroom then there's no distinction yes and that's what I managed I think I can look at it again have our director of food service look at it but when we did at one point we weren't at the threshold we would be eligible for that money and that's exactly what I do they don't want any distinction between between students but with it available to every student in the school I think that line has somewhat blurred another thing that we have done too you should be aware kids now if they have a number see when you go to check out nobody knows whether you have your free reviews or if you're getting pain I think you should basically all do the same thank you Steven just a quick question in light of the unfortunate incidents at the high school with the hoax has there been any discussion either through facilities or any further identification of the need for more security just in terms of locking doors additional videos or any amounts in the budget that may you cover that situation particularly at the high school because it just never ceases to amaze me how many doors are out there and how easy it is to get into that building and I'm just wondering if that is something some people say something that is hard to get in that building I know there's been people that are sitting here that are locked out but we try very hard to do that one of the things there are so many doors sometimes what a student will do especially with a door in a more obscure area put something in there to keep it open but we're constantly in vigilance about that we're doing some upgrade on hardware in fact we have quite a bit of money not quite a bit I forget exactly in the tens of thousands I think maybe 60,000 is going to be available to change hardware because what's happened over time is they people and around things always students too they Jimmy the doors to way that they can always just kick it and it'll open so we're changing those I know we're looking at greater surveillance cameras to have better resolution than we have right now we have a process of the high school where students people have to check in and get badges and in fact one of the things we're thinking of investing in next year is a machine where a lot of high schools have where you give your driver's license and you get is actually a picture ID to go around rather than just a fill out so we're working on all the time these particular hoaxes had really nothing to do with the physical security of the building this was the FBI is working out so I really don't know where the status of the investigations this was had to do with people calling in and leaving these messages that you have to take seriously I understand it was offline I'm just thinking if people won't be supplied if there is some additional safeguards that are being thought about I'm glad to hear it sounds like there is I will say and I was actually out at Minuteman this morning on another issue and they have that system where you turn in your license doesn't look like it takes up much room and hopefully something that can be done of course half the time if you knock at the door the student will let you in they're a little trusty too trusty in the time but we've been working on that one too but there are so many doors and of course as we look at the high school in the next going down the road in terms of renovation we have to look at that issue in terms of the doors that are available for supervision okay Peter I've got a simple question what's FOSS full option full option science system okay Brian on page 14 on the growth factor I'm trying to understand the poor pupil cost of 13,085 does we multiply it by the population you get $70 million sorry if you take the poor pupil cost of 13,085 that shifts every year you realize and so we're using the most current per pupil so if you go back in time there would be different numbers but if you multiply it by today's population you get $70 million yeah but that that's in excess of the total budget but you have to remember that from the state per pupil also includes some degree of capital cost and includes some benefits the benefits for the school department which are significant in the town budget not in the school budget right which means they shouldn't be included here no they're part of per pupil no I understand but if you're looking for the increases we're already paying for the increases for the human resources which will be health insurance pension costs are all through the town budget so wouldn't this number be reduced by that percentage well you're only giving formally 25 now 35% of that number anyway well regardless of what the number is I mean isn't that correct I don't understand if you take the number of students in the population in the student population which is 5410 if you just simply multiply it by this cost the number comes out to $70 million in change it's in excess of what you have in the school budget I'm presuming it's because of the human resources cost which is health insurance and pension but those budgets are funded and they're increased and we fund them separately so that portion should be reduced from this number because we're already paying for it the increase in that that's what it's 35% I'm sorry it's 35% so that's 65% of the cost are excluded I understand what's for the buildings and the benefits etc this 35% is meant to address the variable cost of students coming into the system okay Allen? I guess maybe to turn around is to clarify it where did the 13,080 what was the calculation that ended up with 13,080? that comes from the state the end of the year report where the state takes school related expenditures from both and it normalizes it so you can compare apples to apples on a statewide basis and that seemed like a good metric what is a district spending on school education and this is ours and it's below the state average it was a metric you could drive yourself to madness trying to come up with what does it cost to educate a kid and we decided not to and just go for some low hanging fruit which was the per pupil cost great thank you I just wanted to clarify it for the millions of viewers and that way we have a state a number that's generated by somebody else who has no stake in it so it seems like a reasonable thing to do okay other questions okay would any of the school committee members have any comments they'd like to make on this okay that's great I think that you've made a great presentation I'd like to thank you very much for coming and I should know how it turns out okay the school department and the town manager are recommending an appropriation from the town for the school budget of 57 million 001333 what is the will of the committee second okay moved and seconded discussion Charlie yes I'd like to make a comment here and Steve I disagree with your point before this is not a coronation this is a review of this budget when I see a million or more dollars that's not justified in my mind not explained fully I'm going to talk about it and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't talk about it I don't hear it I didn't say you shouldn't talk about it you suggested that we should settle this at some other venue what I'm suggesting Charlie is and I agree with a lot of the points you make but we know the budget's been voted by the school committee the number has been brought forward by the manager as well okay we're not going to change that number tonight and rather than have this discussion here you know I understand your frustration but I think better to do it in advance of this meeting next year because now you've done it for 20 years and you're still not satisfied so maybe we should try something else actually I've only done it for five years and I started doing it when she threw the last document away when that document demonstrated that the special education clause were constantly going down and she stood right in front of us and she gave us the document two days before she stood in front of us and threw it away and we've got four or five years of actually it's three or four years of data here that says the same thing and they refuse to recognize it and one of my point is that this money if it's not being spent in special education should be put in a reserve so that we don't hear all the time that oh we've got four more special students this year and it's costing so much money they should have the reserve there I agree with you in that case I'd like to make an amendment to it the finance committee school subcommittee of Dick, Dean, Rohit you just have your three don't you? yeah okay that next year because you guys go to the budget subcommittees of the school committee that you encourage as much as possible that if the special education budget is going to be less than 7% that either that money the difference goes into reserve or spent on funds that will specifically keep the special education down and I guess that would be prevention type programs but that they show that so after that, John and the reason that we probably have the 7% this year is because of what Dean pointed out which is the increase in population and it seems to me that the growth factor just at 7% or something like that evaluated over past history what to as well account for increases or decreases in population so I think there would be a different kind of a different kind of calculation that includes what you pointed out because the budget makes more sense when I realize that we have this increase in population which amounts to like 3% a year and I think that's a factor but I think last year if the expense projections come in as a forecast we know enrollments going up the increase between 15 and 16 will be 2.85% and that's with probably the largest growth that we've seen in the past four or five years so it may not necessarily be a direct relation between enrollments and special ed but one other thing Charlie they sent you frustration but last year I didn't even want to vote the budget because of this issue on the 7% and it got put forward to this year so that's why I suggest okay it hasn't been working asking every single year and I take your suggestion and step further on and suggest before we close down for the year the school department as to what the actual increase is in special ed since fiscal 11 so at least that's agreed upon because that seems to be the furthest back we can go to based on what they say and the information that she has any other discussion okay Brian I'm going back to these the regular gen ed I thought that was going to be a 3.5% increase for your 100% that's a point in my mind the there were three parts of this one was the increase in the regular education budget which is 3.5% the other was the increase in the special ed age which was 7% and then about 2 or 3 years ago maybe more on long range planning because this was the you know the school enrollment was based on we need some relief because of the school enrollment and so the formula that was determined was 25% times the per pupil average spending is determined by the state times the last year's actual increase in enrollment and but those numbers are calculated separately on this sheet on this page 14 so the gen ed cost is just that one line on it would include the special ed or the increase factor but it includes the growth factor 973.524 is in the increase of 1.758.662 this wasn't the best description you'll see it in the long range planning calculation that does that and so the number was increased from 25% to 35% but the growth factor I see what's going on okay any other discussion Paul this was the I've never heard a discussion of how it changed from 25% to 35% the the schools came in this year to long range planning looking for an increase of about 11.4% in their budget and so going back and forth and back and forth several of us thought that was way out of line with what the town could afford but also with some recognition that they had some fairly strong needs that the compromise was to go from 25% of per people cost to 35% of per people cost and to make that retroactive back a couple of years now by the way I want to keep repeating this everybody knows if the enrollment goes down next year their budget gets adjusted down by that amount so I don't expect that will happen but at some point these numbers change so that was the plan to go to 35% was sort of my compromise the manager worked it back and forth with the superintendent with the school committee and his recommendation was we do 35% but we make it retroactive so I gave him an extra push of cash this year and then next year it'll only be one year obviously 35% times the enrollment increase whatever that is and I think it's a reasonable number they are correct they're below the state average and per people spending they seem to do a pretty good job with it I think that pushing them like was discussed here is the only difference obviously if it's over 7% they get to eat it if it's under 7% try to spend the money in such a way to prevent it from going over 7% in the future is what I was suggesting any further discussion? Alan? I think the original request for growth factor was 75% at the per pupil cost no that should come out of the reserve fund all this money that should be accumulating at reserve fund that's where that 67% should come by the way I did talk to the superintendent about the actually e-mail nobody ever talks anymore and they'll probably put in a request for the 200,000 we can't transfer the 200,000 directly into the special education civilization fund it has to be transferred to the school budget and then the school department asks the town meeting to transfer 200,000 plus whatever else they can come up with into the special education stabilization fund so actually you try to get a letter from them asking for the $200,000 transfer okay any further discussion on the school budget? okay second okay good so motion has been made in second for 57001333 with the proviso that the finance committee special school subcommittee work with the school committee budget subcommittee to make sure that if the special education is going up less than 7% that that money either be set aside in reserve or set aside specifically to prevent the increase in special education okay any further discussion all those in favor please say aye opposed okay unanimous okay could you let them know of our okay it is 924 so we can get some other things done John do you think you could do the rank in the okay okay Brian oh wait a minute I'm sorry sorry David we can do the election budget okay so let's go to the election budget page 27 yep I'm passing out the revised okay the election budget as you notice on the handoff I also gave out a page for the adjustments that we made in the budget that we already built around for our records they reduced the election budget now to 1,040 1,040 650 we've got the line 5100 the wages that primarily is the cost of the police detail as well as public works for the election and to give you an example we have 10 voting precincts 10 voting polls 21 precincts and it takes approximately 20 plus police officers of the day and the salaries are calculated for the police officers on that day it's time and a half the individual officers rate so if you had a patrolman with education centers if you had a side same thing okay I'm sorry that's under 5219 no it's 5100 salary in addition it's the public works people that prior to the voting day that money they deliver all the material for that voting if you move down to 5,2808 rental buildings that's the congregation church that is rented for the recent 20 5219 election offices poll workers salaries there was an increase voted for the voucher payment on the individual employees that work that day there's approximately 168 workers that work election polls on the election day and it's broken down to its thumb a warden, a clerk just based on one increases a warden, a clerk four tellers or inspectors and two people that relieve them for both lunch and dinner so for our 10 on increases there's 160 people just working the polls with the other soft supplies other purchase services 52 36 that includes the voting machines what happens there is they have to program for every election whatever is on the ballot and what's happening with these machines and it's going to come up eventually they no longer make that model voting machine and it's harder and harder to obtain parts that should belong to those machines break down they're going to have to come in and make a capital request for new voting machines and also you'll notice that early voting there's the $10,000 for early voting and what that is it's really up it's in flux right now what I mean by that is they haven't been officially told from a secretary of state on what they're supposed to do for this early election other than they have to have and it varies from a discussion of having one voting poll two voting polls or maybe three voting polls that's one discussion recently there's been a discussion that perhaps maybe they might have a 10 day period where you can in a 10 day period and it has to be a month before the general election where you can go vote in that 10 day period it's very similar to like voting absentee ballot but the so they don't know what they're going to end up with and they're going to have one voting poll two voting polls, three voting poll and they're going to have a 10 day period if they haven't had anything from the state vice checkbook for the flux office and also the slickness office they put a $10,000 into they know they're going to have to have it they put that in and they otherwise unclassified if you notice that was $1,000 so they decided not to include that the now ironically this is based upon three elections but there might be a fourth election and that depends upon whether financial situations depending upon whether the first cycle middle cycle whether they have an override get excluded and whatnot so that could be coming down the pike in addition they received there is somewhat a refund on certain elections on the state and they did receive recently $7,006 but that's they're holding that right now to see what is required maybe they're going to have a special election and also waiting for another reimbursement as well and that goes to the Treasury first and then back to the Selections election in the Selections office not only for election it's related to expenditures so that's it that's the adjustments that were made on the election salaries and budget so I recommend that we go for $152,650 as presented okay questions Charlie Dave the $44,430 the salaries and wages $5,100 so the police, DPW, etc these are people already working for the town is those funds subtracted from the other departments I believe what happens is it's how they calculate this is after the election because you don't know ahead of time who the office is going to be and what right they're going to be so that then they grade the they grade the and subtract it so we're counting it as an increase in the budget but it's actually not an increase in the budget now they must have to bring police officers in on overtime because every police officer working the polls what happens is the officer working to give them a poll will cut it down now let's say for instance you have three voting polls in one location we'll have one officer come in one half hour before the polls hold like in the last election 6.30 that officer stays from 6.30 to 4 o'clock in the afternoon that officer is believed at 4 o'clock the next officer comes in and stays to closing but it's not really either their duty until they come to the clerk's office and they put by the operations cabinet in charge of the details so that's where you get the would you use your sector officers to do poll watching I mean don't they have other duties no you wouldn't the only time the sector officer would be at a poll if there's a call for assistance or something like that so this must all be overtime it's all overtime it's based upon there's a difference in detail rates if one was working for say a utility on a mass app that's what they call outside detail rate inside working for the town we're going to have the individual officer's rate and that's where it can vary from one officer to another all the way up okay so it is an actual increase in expense and plus plus building is also with the contractual range for the next three years is it that's about it Alan you mentioned new voting machines I wanted to make sure the capital planning is aware of a local start-up named Clear Vote which is making excellent voting machines from generic off-the-shelf components that are much reduced costs well maybe it's not capital in maybe just software but this so the budget we're voting here is more than 80,000 less than the original so I guess you've earned your pay I might pay it in an awesome way yeah but I'm just sort of wondering what happened between the 222,000 and the 142,000 let's say times three what happened was they took the last election last year when they went times three who is that I will not okay it was just just a technical error that has been rectified just a technical error typographical yeah all this stuff is generated off with a brand new using for the operation of this budget remember we didn't have Sandy here until the end of January so I think probably mistakes like this happen we're doing our job okay Paul I would say that it happens along with the control office they know a lot more about the elections than they once did hey as long as we caught it Paul the 2017 fiscal year 2017 they're the same number of elections as in fiscal year 2015 unless there's an extra election right there were three there were possibly four there was early election so looking at line 5219 and the 2015 actual 2017 request that's a significant increase for the same number of elections right also remember there was an increase in this oddly rate what was that increase this is for the poll workers right poll workers it's now the water receives 160 I'm sorry 175 the clerk receives 150 the inspectors believe it's 120 and the relief workers did not there was no increase in the relief workers that's what it is now before it was 160 for the water and it was one I think one clarity for the clerk and I believe the inspectors it was $100 or $100 did you say 16 or 15 16 we had 15 and 17 2015 and 2017 looking at those two numbers right and the numbers you came up with sound like a 20% increase in the in the total cost of one polling place well election workers $885 times 10 equals 895 times the times 10 is each one is also paid $10 a stipend for the use of the cell phone because of all these places there are no it equals out to be 21 times 18 795 and what was it the last time I don't know in 2015 what was the rate what was the cost for one polling all I can tell you is this it was a warden gets last last time a warden would get $1 I'm sorry the warden got $150 plus $10 that would be $160 the clerk would get $130 and the tellers would get $100 and the the release workers would get $10 what does the teller get this year I believe the teller gets I'm not sure if it's $110 or $120 I'm not sure so yeah the total difference is like less than 20% he's trying to get to housing why is there a 50% increase right the increase is 50% but the pay rate looks like it went out by about 20% it did are there more people well it's 168 times it's 21 times it's the same number of people in 2017 2015 prices went up 20% so the budget should go up 20% and instead it's going up more than 50% they got a raise the raise is about 20% you got it then how can the raise is 20% how can the total cost go up 50% are you looking at the bottom line I would like the bottom line but I don't know the bottom line he was looking at line number 5219 that's what he was looking at there is a 7000 which is the other polling machines all I'm looking at is the one line 5219 who has those numbers that Paul could get them from the Clark's office the right end is the Selectman's office the one office takes care of the workers not the Clark's office payroll is broken and good luck have you talked to payroll they should be getting W2's no the increase from 15 to 16 it comes out of a culture it's not a payroll account control I'm out of the treasures okay so that specific thing you're looking at going from 35,000 to 56,000 under 2219 is what you'd like some more detail on it's the same number of elections there was only two elections in 2015 there should have been three the same as 2017 calendar 2014 state primary and state general and then a town election so you'd have three it actually was an increase from 15 to 16 because you have an increase in the wages of 2000 but you also have a drop from three elections to two elections 2016 there are three elections because of the presidential primary in 16 16 that's right it's only two it's a town election and a primary and the year before it was three that the town plus two states so it's consistent from 2016 to 2017 the numbers consistent it's about one election more but from 2015 to 2016 so I guess I should go back and look at the minutes from last year see what the explanation was last year I mean if you round it if two elections there so call it 40,000 that means 20,000 per election 6,000 it's exactly it's consistent the question could have been asked here before I'll go back and look at the minutes from last year and see what's the next explanation other questions okay David are you recommending 142,650 second okay any further discussion all those in favor please say aye opposed unanimous state today three 16 16 okay is that doing for you David yes okay Brian do you have retirement yet I don't do retirement you don't do retirement insurance we're meeting with them on the 23rd but then X1C okay so you meet with them are there any other budgets to present okay Grant do you have just those two warn articles by chance I do okay why don't we vote those two warn articles down the minutes are 44 yeah 44 is the sewer okay sewer the total amount they're financing 800,000 from MRWARA and they're asking for 100 cash 900,000 okay so they're they want an $800,000 loan and 100,000 in cash why would they ask for cash for from the enterprise fund okay so we don't worry about that because that will take place in the budget okay so they're looking for an $800,000 NWARA loan under article 41 which is sewer that's correct okay for those new people this is where the NWARA overcharges us and then loans us our money back for free at no interest but these are interest-free loans we have to do it in separate articles we can't do it under the capital budget and usually what it's a five-year loan and then we pay them back through the budget so this is authorizing the borrowing and the treasure goes out and borrows it and then we pay it back debt service through the enterprise budget okay any questions maybe we can act like Japan and charge them to lend us money okay do I have a motion so okay seconded okay all those in favor of $800,000 authorizing an $800,000 NWARA interest-free loan for sewer please say aye okay favorable action okay favorable action unanimous $316,000 $16,000 okay and then how about the article 42 which is water water and again an easy cash a 100-day cash in the budget so they're asking for a loan okay so in 1.1 million NWARA loan for water are there any questions for discussion okay do I have a motion so moved okay any further okay all those in favor of authorizing a $1.1 million NWARA interest-free loan for water mains please say aye okay unanimous team okay we've had the position reclassifications are done budgets we're working on capital budget we get next week uh do you have any recisions too go with that appropriation the review we've done 39 we've done 40 we've done 41 42 we've done 43 is the we'll hear that next week we've got a minute man I suppose everybody I assume everybody got the electronic copies from Steven on the minute man budget by the way I got one that was okay and one that said warning virus that was a PowerPoint presentation on the new building so I can if you can PDF it and send it out for those of us with ancient okay um committees and commissions um we haven't really voted those but why don't I put those in a different format and we'll do those later ATEC is coming back in on a week from Monday um with a revised or presentation Alan you've been working with them on that okay good okay town celebrations and town miscellaneous I'll put together so we can vote that uh maybe next week sometime if we have time water bodies we've 48's done uh 47's done 48's done uh 49 I move favorable action okay do I have a second second okay this is where we authorize them uh for the new people uh if uh if you're uh you know you start off at 80% and then gradually you're going to go down compared to it this is to prevent people from going below 50% uh they have to uh have been a 25 year town employee uh and there's a couple other provisions which prevent people from taking advantage uh but it's an authorization to keep people from falling too far um so moved and seconded for favorable action, any questions okay all those in favor please say aye opposed unanimous 316 16 uh okay the OPEP trust um you do that next Monday okay that would be fine because we I assume the manager doesn't have any extra money to throw in so it'll just be the usual cash we have the number but I just don't have it on my fingertips long term stabilization 51 we've already voted um overlay reserve do you know if the assessors have released actually we had a funny conversation put the assessor on that he didn't know what the number was because the board of assessors was discussing it with the town manager so I guess the town manager is going to make that recommendation okay so ask manager okay the special education stabilization fund uh we might hold on that to uh because they might have you know basically you'll get us the letter for the transfer the 200,000 there and then they'll ask town meeting to put that back they might have some more money you know in there um funds and cemetery Monday Monday okay now use the free cash Allen what's the free cash number I'm sorry four million five thirty seven two nine okay four million five three seven two nine nine okay every year what we've done is we've authorized or the uh certified free cash we use half into the budgets roll half into into the following year uh this year because of various elements the free cash was higher than usual um so half of the certified free cash is four million five three seven two nine nine um do I have a motion so move okay second okay so this is the amount that will be the tax rate which basically means we just sort of use it for the whole appropriation the balance of it will roll into free cash for next year uh any questions or discussion okay uh all those in favor please say aye opposed okay unanimous three sixteen sixteen uh a fiscal stabilization fund that'll be the last one to do basically that's our balancing um community preservation gosh uh you're our representative on the cpu barely uh yeah most of the capital planning committee's representative somehow that so I'm going to be going to that meeting on Monday the 28th okay and I have no idea what what we're going to be recommending well I sort of made an issue that they're not meeting enough um but I don't know how many times you know they've met um now the c our advice our role is an advisory in other words usually we've had three bodies which report to town meeting redevelopment board board of selection and the finance committee with this cpa we have a fourth body that reports directly to it so the recommendation that will be before town meeting will be the recommendation of the cpa however you know we could always chime in if we don't like what they're doing um but we gotta hear from them um so if you could try to give some sense of I mean when they might be willing to make a presentation to us okay my last one okay thank you uh resolution for community preservation and then the last two are resolutions that the select one will be doing okay that moves us along nine fifty five okay we got pretty close to the uh so next week meeting on Monday and uh and Wednesday we'll be hearing the capital budget on Monday we'll be hearing the minute man on Wednesday uh minute man the select one will decide a task force to study the you know minute man building uh and it's sort of comprised of the people who have sort of been meeting anyway on it uh the agreement's done now we have to get into the uh whether we really want this budget or this uh building or not and uh my guess is and Stephen uh had he said now they're going to vote or have they already voted um they voted last Tuesday night to bond uh they had some sort of death fell on this 144 I don't know 500,000 dollars but they said a clock's ticking we are 60 days okay so there's 60 days for somebody to vote no the minute somebody votes no they will put they will go directly to the referendum question in all 16 towns so uh Stephen could you just sort of touch basis and find out uh I don't know maybe uh well he'll probably actually know next Wednesday but try to keep track of if anybody's voted no um on it because I think I think one of the towns actually meets this month yeah well I think Lincoln meets this weekend even though they'll be withdrawing they still have to vote they still have to vote on that so uh yeah you can keep track of that and see what we're doing and Alan just wanted to let people want to leave but he has the two he had the two handouts that I sent everybody and I'll just send the powerpoint presentation he also had a schedule of projected debt service and I said to him there's going to be plenty of time to talk about that after our subcommittee meets I don't know if that's something that would it's hypothetical I mean he can present it but it just feels like it's maybe not something that he needs to address next Wednesday well one issue that we'll need to know a little bit about fairly soon is um yeah when will the first debt service payments is he going to go out and bond the whole thing right now because interest rates are so ridiculously low or is he going to ban it out and as they need it and then bond it a couple years down the road um this will be we really need to know that as soon as possible because if this passes we'll need a debt exclusion otherwise we're going to have a million seven in debt service hit our budget and we just need to have a sense of when is that going to hit our budget and that'll tell us when we need to have the debt exclusion so um if you have a chance to talk to him about his thoughts on that that would be that would be important can it be um contingent about a debt exclusion can we say yes if the town approves a debt exclusion no we have to we have they go forward we have to vote no to stop it so you you can't vote a contingent no it's really difficult even if you don't know that's right you still subject to the reference yeah and then and it's a special election it's only open what eight hours or something when most town elections are open like 12 or 13 and I don't know if we could put a debt exclusion on that ballot anyway and even if we could it might not be the best timing to do it so how to put a debt exclusion September primary or the November state ballot just to save money on elections well we won't have a state election this year or you're talking the year after November presidential yes we could put a I think we could put a debt exclusion on the November ballot we would have to have it to the Secretary of State by like early August or something like that on there John I would determine interest rates for a loan to the Mid-Band School would be some aggregation of what individual towns would pay for instance okay I'm sure the interest rate on the bonds yeah well the district will sell the bonds right and that'll just be whatever the market is so right now it'll probably be below four percent you know when the town goes out it's a combination of what is the market for bonds and what's our credit rating so for the Mid-Band is it a combination of what the market is and the credit ratings of all of the town yeah I mean they look at the district too the possible exception of a couple communities you know they're all triple A Arlington, Belmont, Lexington Weston you know Dover we have one of the wealthiest unfortunate districts well my guess is it would go out as a triple A possibly a triple A is for a general obligation bond these would probably be more revenue slash general obligation and based on what they're financing the interest rate could be well it'll be a general obligation bond it would still be a general obligation bond it's the general obligation of the district which means the general obligation indirectly of the towns of its members on them okay are there any other questions eating adjourn