There are 247 town meeting members, 124 constitutes a quorum. The constable informs me that a quorum is present. The third session of the 260th annual town meeting will now come to order. Are there any new members of town meeting who were not sworn in last week? Let's please come to order, stop talking. Are there any new members who were not sworn in last week? Yes. I see one way back there. Okay, could you please rise if you're able? And raise your right hand. Do you swear that you will faithfully and impartially perform the duties of a town meeting member? Please answer I do. Thank you. And congratulations. Quick schedule review. We meet again for session four on Wednesday, May 9th, session five on Monday, May 14th, session six on Wednesday, May 16th. On Wednesday, this select board will kind of take a look at how we're doing, where we're at, and they may move to adjourn to Thursday, May 17th, or they may move to adjourn to the following Monday, depending on if they feel we need to start adding in extra sessions. So that's how we're looking so far. Other reminders from the moderator. The seats on the floor of the auditorium may be occupied only by town meeting members except for the front row, which may be used by members of the press and members of town committees and staff. Participating in the presentation or discussion of articles. Such persons must wear non-voter stickers, which are available at the check-in tables. The seats in front of me on the right are currently occupied by the library trustees and the library director, the assistant to the town manager and IT staff. The finance committee is seated to my left. Spectators and town meeting residents who are not town meeting members may be seated in the bleachers to the rear of the auditorium. New information for town meeting members can be found on the back table to my left over that way. Old information can be found on the back table to my right. Amherst Media provides gavel-to-gavel coverage of our proceedings on Public Access Channel 17. I again would like to thank their staff and volunteers. Videos of town meeting sessions are hugely popular and are replayed frequently, and can also be viewed on the Amherst Media website. Just checking if people are listening. If you wish to speak, you must raise your hand and be recognized. As per our bylaw change from the fall, you must hold up a card to indicate your position. Green indicates yes, red indicates no, and a white card indicates that you wish to speak without advocacy or to ask a question. When you're called on, please first state your name and precinct. If you forget, I will interrupt and ask you to do so. If you need more than three minutes or more than five when speaking to your motion, you must request additional time before speaking, and town meeting will vote on your request. If you're speaking from the floor, please speak into a microphone that will be provided once you are recognized. This will allow the viewers outside the auditorium to hear you. The microphone will be on when it is handed to you. Please hold it close to your mouth when you speak. Non-members who wish to speak should stand at the rear of the right-hand aisle. Any registered voter of the town of Amherst who is recognized by the moderator may speak without special permission. Others may speak with the permission of a majority. Please stand when you speak if you are physically able to do so. If you're making an amendment to a motion, the amendment must be presented in writing, with copies submitted to the town clerk, the moderator, town manager and staff, and the chair of the finance committee or whichever board is seated to my left. Procedural motions, such as a motion to refer or a motion to dismiss, do not need to be presented in writing. If you're making an amendment to a portion of the operating budget, please specify the dollar amount greater or less than the amount in the finance committee motion. If you make any motion from the floor, it must be the first thing you do after you have been recognized and have identified yourself. You cannot speak first and then make a motion. If you haven't already done so, please check your cell phone and make sure it is silenced or off. The election of three members to the town meeting coordinating committee and nine members to the town meeting advisory committee will take place during the May 14th session of town meeting. If you wish to be a member of either committee or if you wish to nominate someone else, nomination papers can be downloaded from the town meeting website. The nomination deadline is May 8th at 4.30 p.m. You can submit nomination papers and candidate statements here at town meeting or at the town clerk's office. The town meeting coordinating committee is limited to town meeting members. The town meeting advisory committee is open to all residents of Amherst. If at any point in time you're confused about the proceedings, it is appropriate to call a point of order and ask for a clarification. It's also okay to phone me, send me an email or see me prior to town meeting if you need an explanation of any kind. I'm going to have a quick review of electronic voting and then we will do a test. All votes taken at town meeting will initially be voice votes. After a voice vote, if the moderator or any member so requests, we will take an electronic vote. Make sure your device is turned on. When your device is on, you will see your device number on the LED display. If you see totally blank screen, press and release the power button located in the bottom right hand corner and a display will appear on the screen. Is there anybody who does not see a display on the screen with their device number? I see no hands, that's good. The only functional buttons are one, two and three. One is yes, two is no, three is abstain. You will never need to press any other button on the device. Other buttons will have no effect on your vote. A vote to abstain will be recorded, but it will not count towards the result. There may be a lag time of a few seconds from when you press the button to when your vote is displayed. But you do want to be sure to check your device. You'll see a message that says your vote was received, but you should also see on your device a display that says whether you voted yes, no or abstain. If at the end of the voting window you don't see your vote on your screen, please call to our attention right away. You may only vote with the device that has been assigned to you. At the end of the evening, please power off your device. To do so, you press and hold the power button until the LED display is clear. Always return your device when you leave town meeting. If you do not return your device, you will get a call from the town clerk's office the next morning, requesting that you immediately bring your device into the office. We're now going to do a test vote. We can get it up on the screen. Is there anybody who does not see the message received and the vote that they cast on their display? And we see yes, 76, no, 68. A close vote. And, Sean, you want to display the answer? Do you have that? Ah, so I believe the answer is yes if Mr. Walts here, he can confirm it. There are a whole lot of Democrats here in those days. Okay. Everybody happy with the way their device worked? Everybody satisfied there? Good. I don't have any knowledge of any procedural motions that people need, a reminder of tonight's agenda. We're going to begin with the library services portion of article 8 that explains why the library folks are sitting in front of you. After that is disposed of, we move to article 10, School District Assessment Method. Then article 8, Schools Elementary, followed by article 8, Schools Regional. And then we go back in order to article 11, article 12, and so on down the line. I now call on Ms. Shari, the library director, who's going to give a library services report. And this is a report that we already authorized under article 1 way back when. And by the way, before she begins, thank you all for showing up on time. We're back to our normal quorum time. Appreciate it, keep it up for the remainder of the annual town meeting please. Ms. Shari. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for having us tonight. Over the past five fiscal years, the library has been spending down at state aid reserves in order to stabilize our endowment, prepare for our future, and increase programming. But as is the case for all town departments, the libraries facing an exceedingly difficult operating budget in FY19 do primarily to health care costs. In addition to health care, the library's FY19 budget increase is also being driven by the implementation of benefits for part-time employees as well as the increase to minimum wage. In order to meet our FY19 budget, the trustees have approved two measures. The first one, an increased endowment draw rate from four to five percent. This will result in an increased contribution to our budget by $74,000. Five percent is a reasonable draw rate, but it is by no means ideal. This is especially true if, as we expect, returns on investments will be substantially lower in the future than they have been in the recent past. And number two, a much greater reliance on fundraising efforts. We hope that as we enter the 100th anniversary year of the library receiving its charter from the Commonwealth, it will generate a material reflection of the affection that Amherst has always shown for the town libraries and the value it places on our services. So let's talk trends. Regarding our expense trends from FY14 to FY17, salaries have increased 7.5 percent in total, operations have increased 9.2 percent in total, and utilities expenses have decreased by 15 percent. Our endowment, the library's endowment has been set up like all endowments to last in perpetuity. In FY09, the library's endowment fell from 9 million to 6 million. But as of March 31, 2018, the value of the endowment was restored to $8,007,585.24. Our withdrawals from it pay for about half of all non-personnel costs, such as utilities, maintenance, books, and insurance. In order to assure funding for the library remains in place indefinitely, the library trustees beginning in FY13 began reducing the draw rate toward a goal of 4 percent to more closely mirror the draw rates to similar institutions. This fiscally conservative approach had a dual impact. It grew the endowment back to $8 million, but it also decreased substantially the library's endowment as a funding source, resulting in an increased reliance on fundraising. So regarding our income trends, since FY13, the endowment draw has increased by 24 percent, and our fundraising and Sammy's revenue has increased by 81 percent. And our donations, we would genuinely be lost without our donors and the friends of the Jones library system. Last year, 676 people from 61 different towns donated over $81,000 to the library, and 45 different businesses donated over $14,000. So focusing on the FY19 budget, regarding our FY19 expenses, there will be a 3.5 percent increase to salaries, and there are three part-time positions that we won't be filling. These are not layoffs. These are just people who have left and were not filling. There will be a 23 percent increase to benefits. There will be a 2.82 percent decrease on materials expenditures. This does meet the state mandated level because of the formula of the more money we spend on benefits, the less money we have to spend on circulating materials. We will also be reducing some programming so that we can help fund the health insurance increase. And regarding our FY19 income, we have budgeted for a 3.5 percent increase for the town's appropriation to the library. The friends, library staff, and trustees are all working in concert towards a 31 percent increase to our fundraising goals, the proceeds of which go entirely to materials and programming. And finally, state aid as a revenue source reflects a 42 percent decrease because the library had built up a reserve in this account. But the reserve has been spent down over the past several years to offset our increased expenses, and the library must now rely solely on the state aid awarded in that current fiscal year. As always, on behalf of the trustees and staff of the Friends of the Library, I want to thank you for your support of the Jones Library. Thank you. Thank you. I now call on Mr. Sarat to make a motion for the library services portion of Article 8. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I move that the town approve the library services operating budget of $2,683,069 and that the town raise and appropriate $1,993,466 as its share of the budget. The motion has been made in seconded, and I believe, Ms. Sharra, you're speaking to the motion, or is Mr. Sarat speaking to the motion? I think we've actually spoken to the motion. Okay, so nothing further to add. Fine. Ms. Ratner for the Finance Committee. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. The Finance Committee recommended this budget by a vote of 7 to 0. Library services are provided at the Jones Library, the North Amherst Library, and the Muncie Memorial Library in South Amherst. The libraries are a town department, but they are also a separate corporation, the Jones Library Incorporated, governed by the Jones Library trustees. In the library budget on page 31 in the Finance Committee report, there are two columns for FY 18. One with the numbers similar to those found in last year's budget book, and one with adjustments for changes that occurred throughout the year, such as health insurance increases. Most of the expenses in the FY 19 budget offer salaries and benefits. The number of full-time equivalent employees is 27.5, the same as last year. Three part-time positions will not be filled, as Ms. Shari said. The increase in the budget is due mostly to increases in the personnel costs, including minimum wage increases in benefits for part-time employees, and the cost of benefits, particularly health insurance. For FY 19, benefits increased by $76,096, or 23.3%. The library budget has several sources of funding. Approximately 74.3% of support for this budget comes from the town appropriation. This appropriation increases 3.5% this year, to $1,993,466. The Jones Library Endowment will be contributing $371,862 for FY 19, an increase of $71,751, or 23.9% more than last year. In this budget, the spending rate from the endowment increases to 5%. This rate is 1% greater than the 4% spending rate investment managers have advised the library trustees to use to preserve the endowment for perpetuity. The library state aid line is about the same as last year. To receive state aid, there are several minimum requirements for towns and libraries. Municipalities must fund their libraries at certain levels based on formulas. Libraries must spend a certain percentage of their budgets on materials, and libraries must be open a certain number of hours. Amherst libraries meet all of the necessary requirements. Support from GIFs, Annual Fund Sammies, is expected to increase considerably for FY 19 due to increased fundraising efforts. The trustees may be drawing more from the endowment mid-year if fundraising goals are not met in order to avoid layoffs. Thank you. Thank you. Select Board voted 3-0 with one absent, and Mr. Steinberg abstaining in favor of this budget. I don't believe they need to speak unless I see a hand, and I don't. And this will require a majority for passage. If you look on page 31 and 32 of the Finance Committee booklet, you can see the line item details of library services and detailed descriptions. I'm going to go through the line items one at a time very quickly to see if people have specific questions, then open it up to general questions. So, anybody have questions on the first line item, Salaries Work Study? I see a hand in the front row over here with a white card. Yes, John Fox, Precinct 10. I'm just curious. The footnote says that the town most library payroll and information technology supported by the town is not charged to the library budget. So, it's a little confusing to understand how you build in. Could you hold the microphone real close to your mouth? Yes, so it's a little confusing when you see a large amount in expenditures for those amounts, and I guess they're reimbursed by further down, but could somebody explain why the library is burdened by higher payroll expenses than the rest if the town is handling most of them? Anybody in the front wants to, they can raise your hand if you want to be recognized. Yes, Miss Sherry. So, I'm not sure I understand the question entirely, but let me give it a try. So, the town's IT department advocates for an IT budget for us, just like they do the other town departments. And so, for us that's $25,000, it's found in the JCPC budget, and so it's not reflected here. Excuse me, you do need to wait for me to recognize you. Yes, sir, you may proceed. And speak really close to your mic. No, no, I've recognized somebody on the library board here. I believe your question was about payroll. Okay, the payroll is paid by the town. The staff are considered employees of the town, and so this is simply information about what the town is spending on the library. Thank you. Let's see if we have other questions or statements or comments. Anything else on the salaries work study line? Anything on benefits? I see a hand in the front row over there. Jeff Lee, precinct seven. The town manager told us the other night that the town is moving away from self-insurance in order to have better predictability in the health costs from year to year. Is the library doing the same? Ms. Sherry. Again, we are town employees, so all of our health insurance costs are wrapped in with the town's health insurance costs, and this is just, you know, alligated percentage-wise to us. Thank you. Anything on materials? How about operations? See no hands. CWMARS? Maintenance, oh, I see one right there in the aisle. I'll agree, ma'am, precinct one. Does somebody explain the variability in the CWMARS budget from year to year? Ms. Sherry. I'm sorry. Sure. CWMARS is primarily funded by the state and membership dues, membership assessments to the member libraries, and so depending on how much money is in the state coffers to appropriate to CWMARS, member libraries pay the remainder, and so that's why the fluctuation. Thank you. Any discussion on maintenance repairs? Utilities, programming, special collections. Up I see a hand in the front there. Kitty Axelson Berry from precinct six. Programming, there doesn't seem to be a lot of money in programming, and it's gone down by 50%. So does that mean that you're going to have less programming? Ms. Sherry. Yes. Somebody wants to help us out and donate money. We're opening it up to any further discussion on the library budget, and you guys don't need to point. I can see out here, okay. Yes, I see a hand there with a white card. Andrew Parker in precinct five. My family uses the programming. That's shocking. We're losing 50% of our programming. Can someone actually explain what we're cutting and how we made and came to that decision because it seems like you went for pretty standard but going half of it. I just want some more information about what we're cutting and why you guys came to that conclusion because I'm kind of upset about that. That's kind of crazy. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Sherry. Health care. That's entirely health care. And trying to weigh the difference between how many cuts to make versus how much money to take out of the endowment. You know, ideally we'd still be at the 4% draw for the endowment. So, but because all of our donations go towards programming materials, everybody here at the table, along with the staff and the friends of the library, we're going to really be reaching out to every single one of you asking for increased donations this year. So our goal is to actually not have to decrease the programming to this extent, but health care. Is there further discussion before I come to a vote? I see, I guess, is there, yes, way over there in the corner.  I could barely see it. So hold your hand up nice and high. And now I did see you now, but... This is what happens when you're short. Denise Barverette, precinct nine. I have a question about fundraising. How much was budgeted to be... How much was budgeted for fundraising in fiscal year 18 as opposed to what actually came in through fundraising? Thank you. Ms. Sherry. Well, we haven't finished 18 yet. We still have another annual fund letter to go out, so we're still hoping for another 30 to 40 thousand dollars for this year. So I can't really, I can't answer that question yet. Because fiscal year 18 is not done yet. It's okay. No, you can't raise your hand to respond. But I see another white card three rows back next to the aisle there. Laura Quilter, precinct nine. I just wanted to follow up quickly on the question earlier. We did get an answer about why programming budget was being cut, but I was hoping to hear a little bit more specificity about the kinds of programming that's being cut, like adult services, children's services, or some other kind of services. Thank you. Ms. Sherry. Thank you for asking. So we've already made a lot of cuts, you know, the low hanging fruit kind of cuts. And so the things that were left have to do with, you know, possibly closing earlier at night, closing other mornings during the week, things like that, cutting more money towards materials expenses. And so, again, because of the fundraising efforts, hoping to raise money so that we could still have the programming, that's kind of what we were hoping for. Regarding what kinds of programming will be cut, we don't know. The requests often come through the friends and the Woodbury fund money, and it will depend on what staff, what they plan, and what projects they put forward to the friends, and how much money, how big that pot of money will end up being. So I just don't know yet which programs. Thank you. Yes, I see a hand back there, a second from the Iowa Wake card. Definitely, my dad, I'm precinct five. So I'm a little confused about why these programs are being cut, and your answer was that it was because of health care costs. But a few moments ago, we were told that your employees of the town and that the town is taking care of the health care costs. So can you explain that to me? I'm confused. It's sort of one or the other, maybe. Ms. Sherry. So we are town employees. The town's appropriation to the library pays the majority of our benefits and salaries. It doesn't pay all of it. So at the end of the day, when you run the numbers, there is still a budget gap, and so cuts needed to be made. And after lots of meetings with staff and trustees, it was decided that programming would be the least painful to the fewest number of people. Thank you. Yes, in the red shirt there with the white card. Maria Kapicki, precinct eight. The report from the select board was that there was one abstention, and I'm wondering if that could be explained further. Mr. Steinberg, if you wish to, you can explain your abstention. Ms. Sherry. Mr. Steinberg's wife works for the library, so he legally had to abstain. Thank you. Further discussion for a vote? Yes, second row from the back there with the white card. Michael Burke was precinct two. I recognize that special collections is the smallest item on the line. And I'm looking at FY16, 13,000, FY17, 7,000, FY18, 2,000. I submit that the special collections is one of the few things that makes the Amherst Library extremely special relative to other libraries around the country. I think it may be short-sighted to short that line as much as it has been shorted, and I realize that the answer may be relative to the other answers that we've had about priorities. But nonetheless, I would like to urge that that line be higher and also ask for an explanation as to why it is as low as it is. Ms. Sherry. Thank you for asking. Yes, so special collections has its own set of restricted funds just for itself, so that pot of money actually can't be spent on anything else for the library. But right now our special collections department is working on this very large digitization project, but it's using CPAC and JCPC funds for that, which is found in the JCPC budget. It's not reflected here. So there are no cuts to special collections at all. Ready to come to a vote? Yes, right in the front here again. Kitty Axelson Berry from Precinct Six. Has the library explored divestment from fossil fuels and weaponry and other items like that and its investment policy? And what has it done about it? Somebody want to speak to this? Yes, let me proceed. What we are doing at this point is investing in a series of index funds for the most part in terms of stocks. Bonds structurally really can't be done that way and so it is similar to an index fund, but it's not exactly that. As an index fund, there are some funds which are structured around exclusions and they're called ESG. Environmental, I can't remember all of the initials anymore, but there are such funds. They have a very short history. They are generally more expensive than what we're doing. The amount that we have in any particular stock is comparatively small, frankly. An index fund that we invest in owns 3,000 US stocks and it owns probably another couple of thousand international stocks. So the amount that we have in any particular fund is not substantial. It would not make an impact of any kind at this point for us to be doing that. It would increase our costs and it's never clear whether it would have any impact on returns, but it is not something that it makes sense for us to do at this time. Thank you. Yes, down in the front row. Denise Barber at Precinct 9. I just wanted to rephrase my previous question. How much money did you plan on raising through fundraising for fiscal year 2018? Ms. Shari. So under GIFs, annual fund SAMIs, that's $116,000. Thank you. Is there further discussion before we come to a vote? I see no hands. We will now come to a vote. On the motion before you, this requires a majority for passage. All those in favor of the motion before you for the Library Services portion of Article 8, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. The ayes have it. Library folks can now be released and the school committee folks can come up to the front. We will actually next be discussing Article 10, the assessment method. So if IT folks could get that up on the screen, that would be good. We will now be moving on to Article 10 and I call on Mr. Nakajima to make a motion. I move in terms of the article. Motion has been made and seconded and I believe Mr. Mangiano is going to be speaking to the motion. Hello, Sean Mangano, Director of Finance for the school district. That's better. So each year the school committee must select an assessment method to allocate the costs of the regional school budget to the member towns of the region. This year the school committee and town officials met many times over the summer and fall to review the assessment method and various other pieces of data. As you may recall, we've been sort of an in-between phase the last couple of years. This year the method that was brought back to the school committee and which was ultimately approved is the method on the screen behind me, which, one second, right there. So this is actually a combination of two methods that we've used over the past 20 years. And it represents a compromise among town officials and the school committee to try to find a method that works for all four towns. So I'm going to start at the bottom. The beginning of this assessment is based on the statutory formula. And that's a state method. It's a formula that calculates an assessment floor for each member town. And that floor is based on income, property values, enrollment, and a few other pieces of data that go into the formula. But essentially, it calculates a floor for each member town or the region. And so for FY 19, the assessment method factors in 20% of that floor. The rest of the assessment is based on our regional agreement. And that uses a five-year rolling average of enrollment to allocate most of the assessment. And a small sliver of the assessment is allocated based on EQV, which is on property values. So the combination of those two methods, the 20% based on the floor and the rest based on the regional agreement combined to produce the total assessment for FY 19. If you go to the next slide, please. So I won't spend a lot of time on this slide. This was in the packet in the back of the room and it was also put on the website. But this is the calculation. If you have any questions on the calculation, I'm happy to answer those. If you go to one more. So one of the questions I get that we've had in the past is how does this compare to the other options that we've used in the past 20 years? So on this chart, the green line is the regional agreement method and what the assessment would have looked like for Amherst under that method. The red line is the statutory assessment method and the blue line with triangles is the actual assessment method. So in some years we've used the regional agreement method, so the blue line is right on top of the green line. In other years we've used the statutory method and in quite a few years we've also been in between those two lines. For F119 that's where we are. We're in between those two lines for Amherst's assessment and so the assessment is a little bit higher than what it would be under the regional agreement but it's lower than what it would be under the statutory method and it makes sense because it's a combination of those two methods. And so the last thing I'll say is that this is a modified assessment method for F119. It's neither statutory nor regional agreement. So it's technically, it requires an amendment to the regional agreement to use it for F119 and it requires approval at all four town meetings. And I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. Ms. Teilman for the Finance Committee. Recommends this motion, this article by a vote of 6-0-1 absent. Thank you. And Mr. Steinberg for the Select Board. The Select Board recommends this motion to you 3-0 with one abstention and one member absent for the meeting. This is a very complicated problem every year and as you know if you've been in town meeting in the past several years, we've had a succession of one-year agreements with the other towns that we have voted and that is the circumstance again this year. It is difficult because, as was indicated in the Finance Committee report, there has been a feeling among some towns that ability to pay is a significant factor that ought to be considered. The problem with ability to pay is you have to define what is meant by ability to pay and that is why it has become such a difficult process and will continue to be for some time. We worked very hard with our neighboring communities to come to an agreement that would work for this year that any change in assumptions will interfere with what is a very difficult, both legal and political process. So that's as far as I can go without spending much more time than I have but we do recommend this to you. Thank you. This requires a majority vote for passage. Is there discussion before we come to a vote? And I see a hand in the back of the center section there. Pat, Church, Precinct 5. I have just a question. My understanding is that all four towns have to have their town meetings vote on this and endorse it, right? So what happens when we don't have town meeting? Mr. Monjana. So we're looking into that. I believe it will be a city council vote for the town of Amherst instead of a town meeting vote but we may need to look at the wording of the regional agreement and I think that references town meetings specifically. So it's a good question. I see a hand right on the aisle here. Hilda Greenbaum, Precinct 1. Is this still based on a five-year rolling average of the number of children from each town or has that changed with the new method? Yep. So hang on. I know it's silly but raise your hand and we can recognize. Yes, you may speak. So the blue portion or roughly 80% of the assessment is still based on the five-year rolling average of enrollment of the students. Thank you. Further discussion before we come to a vote? Yes, Ms. Tauman. The other three towns voted for this yet? My understanding of there have been two town meetings. Pelham has their town meeting this coming Saturday and I think we would have heard if somebody voted against it. Is that correct? Yeah. Further discussion before a vote? I see no hands who will now come to a vote and the motion before us under Article 10 requires a majority. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. All those opposed please say no. The ayes have it. I hear unanimously. We are now dropping back to Article 8, the elementary school budget. But first we're going to hear a report from the superintendent which was approved way back under Article 1. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. To Mr. Moderator, members of town meeting the Amherst community. It is a pleasure to speak to you tonight regarding the state of the Amherst and the regional school districts along with the school committee, assistant superintendent Cunningham and finance director Mangano. We greatly appreciate the support that the schools receive from our families and from the broader community of Amherst as well as those from Leverett, Pelham and Sheetsbury at the regional level. We are truly a community that values children and deeply values their education. Our faculty and staff are fortunate to work with the students from our community who represent a broad range of diverse learners. Our wonderful students are recognized locally, statewide and nationally for their academic, athletic and artistic accomplishments and for their work on behalf of social justice. This year, thanks to our talented faculty, our districts were ranked 11th best in Massachusetts and tops in western Massachusetts by a reputable website that considers multiple factors in its calculations. For the first time in many years, we have fewer students from our town, both at the elementary and secondary level, attending charter schools. The number of students choosing out of our district has declined in the past year and the number of choice applications from other towns, students from other towns has increased. This year, we took in feedback from our community to take affirmative steps to improve our school system. We formed an enrollment working group comprised of families, community members and staff members to investigate and develop strategies to address concerns about the enrollment trends and policies at the elementary level. This group brought together community members who were on both sides of the elementary building project debate to work collaboratively to develop recommendations and ideas to improve our district. In fact, quite a few town meeting members who are here tonight were part of that group which developed reports on a range of options such as special education programming, declining enrollment, socio-economic balance and preschool access. One group proposed further exploration of starting a dual language program at the elementary level, which we are exploring intensely at the current time. At the secondary level, we will be entering a thorough process of community-engaged strategic planning to inform our direction not just next year, but for the years into the future. We have implemented annual school climate surveys for students to better understand how they experience our secondary schools and so we can utilize that data to improve their experience. We collaborated with our students at all levels on the National Walkout Day in March. They wanted to walk out, many of them wanted to walk out to express their concern about school safety and we ensured that all of our students, regardless of whether they chose to participate or not, felt supported in exercising their First Amendment rights. We also are including a capital request to study master planning and master building usage at the secondary level, which is a frequently asked about topic, especially with the current fiscal picture. Additionally, based on community feedback, we successfully transitioned this year from having an outside management company operating our food service program to an in-house food service operation. As a result, I'm glad to report that our food tastes better, it's healthier, the menu options are much more responsive to what students tell us and more meals are being served than in past years. We also implemented a restorative practices program at the high school this year. We are already reaping the benefits of this program based on student and staff feedback as seen both anecdotally and from school climate surveys. In tight fiscal times, we have successfully applied for and received grants to assist us in our critical work. The first is an efficiency and regionalization grant from the Department of Revenue that supported the Regional School District Planning Board that was formed by votes from Amherst and Pelham Town meetings in the past fall. This competitive grant will be utilized to more deeply engage both communities in exploring the benefits, drawbacks, and potential models of regionalizing our elementary school districts. We were also part of a consortium of regional districts who applied via Five Colleges Inc. for a grant to support a parapathway program which was awarded to support the diversification of our teaching force. While we are very pleased that the racial diversity of our educators has increased two years in a row, we strive to improve that moving forward and need multiple strategies to continue this essential effort. We successfully managed unanticipated budget challenges this year, especially as you may have heard mid-year health insurance increases by freezing budgets and leaving administrative positions vacant. These same increases resulted in significant budget reductions in the FY19 budget. Working with our school committee, our talented administrative team, and multiple engagements with the staff and the community, we identified ways to cut over $500,000 from the Amherst budget level services and over $1 million from the regional budget that we are currently intact. Although extremely difficult decisions had to be made, we feel confident that we will be able to offer the high quality educational experience that our students in our district deserve. While we strive to strengthen and expand our programming, we are faced with financial hurdles. State fiscal challenges have resulted in very low increases to local school funding, shifting a greater burden of funding our students' educations onto the town. We have attempted to constrict spending to ensure that staffing is consistent with our enrollment. The proposed central office staffing next year is at its lowest level in the past 20 years, which has spared deeper cuts to the schools. We will continue to work collaboratively with town officials to explore ways of maintaining financially sustainable schools while meeting the educational goals that our community has for our children. As always, thank you for your continued support of the Amherst and regional public school districts. Thank you. Thank you. I now call on Ms. Ordonez to make a motion under School Elementary Section of Article 8. I move in term of the article. No, no, you have to read the motion actually. I'm sorry. It's behind you, but we can't hear you if you turn around, so there's a flaw there. I'll hold this. I move that the town raise an appropriate 23,227,365 for the Amherst Elementary Schools. Motion has been made and seconded. You may speak to your motion. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to address town meeting tonight. As Dr. Morris stated earlier, our students and educators continue to make us proud with their academic accomplishments and with their dedication to ensuring a more equitable and just world for all. As part of our Amherst School Committee budget report, I wanted to bring you up to speed with the specific relevance to town meeting. Just one year ago, our committee requested $250,000 to begin an in-depth examination of the site where the current Fort River Elementary School is located. Town meeting approved the article granting us the funds to undertake this important work, and soon after, the Amherst School Committee underwent an extensive process to recruit Amherst parents, educators, local experts and community members to form this Ability Study School Building Committee, the body responsible for overseeing this project. The building committee has been meeting regularly since that time, organizing itself to develop a community communications process, and recently to finalize an RFQ so that it can begin soliciting applications from firms that will lead us through the nine month intensive environmental, structural and design review process that will result in recommendations for how we might move forward. At the same time, the Amherst School Committee reviewed and approved new applications from our town to the state to assist with funding either renovations or replacement of both Fort River and Wildwood Elementary Schools. We expect to hear back on both applications by early 2019, and if not accepted into the pipeline, we will consider applying again. The district will also begin work on replacing the Wildwood boiler this summer once school lets out. As many of you will remember, we requested funding from town meeting to help replace a failing boiler at the school. The new boiler will significantly improve operation, maintenance and energy costs for the district, and will ensure that our students and educators are warm during the winter months. We look forward to working with the town of Amherst and community in the future to ensure that our students and educators can have the healthy, educationally sound learning environments they deserve. This past academic year was a very tough budget year for our town schools, as Dr. Morris already stated earlier. Our committee had to consider difficult budget decisions that cut approximately $500,000 from our budgets, but that tried to have minimal impact to student learning and curricula. Specifically, our superintendent and committee ensured that we didn't lose any of our staff teaching specials like art, music, technology and library staff, as well as our much needed special education and ELL teachers. We understand the value that all our educators bring to our schools, and agree with you that we must do what we can to protect the broad educational experience that has become a hallmark of our district schools. Unfortunately, difficult budget decisions is an all too common scenario that not just Amherst, across the Commonwealth and across our country are having to repeat every year as health care costs soar, federal resources dry up and state governments slash educational funding. For example, we all know how important quality preschool is to our children and communities, how we all benefit from diverse student bodies that bring a broad spectrum of experience and skills to our schools, how by investing in the social and emotional well-being of our children alongside the academic, we make better students and community members. And yet, when our schools must rely on property taxes and intermittent state funding, we find ourselves having to make too many hard choices about the very values that we hold dear. This is a cycle that must stop and our committee's members and superintendent are working to explore how we can effectively advocate on behalf of our town and our schools with our state elected leaders. The 2019 budget presented before you tonight for Amherst Elementary Schools is for 23,227,365 and represents months of hard work by the superintendent, assistant superintendent, district finance director, our Amherst school committee and our educators, principals and many others. We ask that you approve this budget tonight so that we may continue to provide a quality public education to the children of this community and set them up for future success. Thank you. Ms. Teilman for the finance committee. Mr. moderator, may I have two extra minutes please? Without objection, you may proceed. The finance committee voted unanimously to support and recommend the 23,227,365 dollars for their elementary school budget. Before I begin though, if you will turn the page 34 of your green booklet. I'm sorry. I'm looking at the green light, the orange. Wish it were green with money. Under capital projects the very first line we're not giving the elementary schools $732 million in capital. Some of you may have caught that before the meeting and those of you who are just finding it now take off the last three numbers. It's only $732,500 for capital. As some of you review this budget, if you're comparing budgets from one year to the next, it's important to know that within the school budgets money can be moved across departments and areas because all town meeting does is approve the bottom line. Which is unlike the town budget where we approve budgets by departments so that when there's a shortfall and we need to move money we have to come back to town meeting as we did under Article 4 where we move some money for health insurance reasons and to balance this year's budget. So I think it's nice to have the ability to be able to move without coming back to town meeting. However, even though they can move money, they cannot use more than what has been appropriated. The elementary budget begins on page 33. It represents 36 percent of the town's operating budget. On page 33 on the left hand column, I'm just going to take you through this, there are the payroll accounts and then you'll see the expense accounts. The capital spending is not in this part of their budget. The 732,500 for capital is some of the equipment is IT equipment and the first phase of HVAC system for all schools, some security items, exterior doors and Fort River roof repair along with others. Once you look through the capital budget, you'll see where all of those are. The bottom of the page or the middle of the page on 33 that gives you the budget they're proposing for this year. It is only at 3.1 percent and that's because in 2015 the tuition costs for charter and choice out were paid by the school district. After that the state suggested that the town pay for that. So that's calculated in and if those were still in the budget their school budget would be a 3.5 percent increase. On page 36 are the education reductions their holds and parts of time and they reflect some classroom reorganization declining enrollments and projected budget support. Let's see if I can do this. Ready? On the chart above are selected areas and their cost and percentages compared to 2009. Regular education has gone down by a little over 3 percent.  Administrative services are up less than a percent. Transportation has stayed basically the same but you'll see the rise in health insurance which is 3.5 percent. It's an issue and as you heard earlier the town manager has explained that. There are more comparisons on page 38. There we go. Some of you ask how do our schools compare in terms of per pupil cost for Amherst and Region and this is a chart that's taken from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. It compares total expenditures of each school district and from there it derives the per pupil cost. Amherst continues to be well above the state average for its school funding. It is in the top 12 percent of cities and towns in the state in terms of per pupil cost and for this budget the cost is estimated to be $22,989 per student in the elementary school. Okay. Is my time up? Probably. Probably. Seeing as how it's a third of our budget I'm going to let you continue unless there's objection. If people object we can have a vote but I'm just going to let you continue. I'm just about done. Okay and on page 40 are the enrollments. So the project in enrollment for next year is a 1065. From 10 years ago by 19 percent we count choice in students as part of our enrollment figures. This year there are 197 students in out of district placements but overall in the valley enrollments are declining and that's due to lower birth rates. They have choices of charter, choice out, private schools so we're not unusual in terms of that. Of the 1,171 students in the elementary schools this year an average of 44 percent receive free lunch. Let's see. Let's see. English language learners are 16 percent and 21 percent of our students receive some form of special services. Throughout the year the administration and the Amherst School Committee review and discuss the budget and adjust the line items as appropriate and as the needs show up along the way. At this time the Finance Committee urges you to approve the budget. Thank you for the extra time. Thank you. Select Board voted 3-0 in favor with one member absent and Mr. Slaughter abstaining this time. And this requires majority votes and as Ms. Tiemann said the Finance Committee booklet section on elementary schools begins on page 33. And again I'm going to go through just the payroll accounts line by line and then open it up to general discussion after that. So is the discussion on regular instruction? I see no hands. How about special instruction? I see no hands. Support services. School administration. Central administration. Facilities. No hands. Transportation. We'll open up now general discussion. Is there discussion before we come to a vote on the elementary budget? I see a hand. Fourth row right near the aisle there. Okay, Moran precinct four. I'm a little puzzled. Where does the money that we pay for the charter school students in charter school, where would that show up in the budget? Mr. Magano. So it's on the town side of the budget. I think there's a section on assessments and that's where it shows up but it's not part of the school budget. It's part of the town, the larger town budget. I'm looking at Sonya who might know. I'm not sure where it is in the town budget. Yes, again, Mr. Magano. Just a quick reminder, the way it used to work is the town would pay the charter and choice tuition in the year, the actual year that it was incurred and the school would then budget a couple years later to reimburse the town so that it showed up in two places and that's why the state said we don't like that. It kind of looks like you're paying charter tuition twice even though it's not going to go up. So we decided to just take the school portion out. But again it comes out of the increases in charter and choice tuition come out of our annual financial guidance from the finance committee in terms of how much our budget can go up so that's why it was a 3.1 instead of a 3.5 percent increase. Further discussion before a vote. Yes, second row right here in the front. Second row.  Does the question identify yourself? I do have a question that pertains directly to the elementary school budget may also refer to the regional school budget or regional school district. Okay. My question regarding our budget. I'm curious to answer that. My question is why is it very difficult for our school districts to hire licensed qualified educators? I'm looking at since some media attention has been focused on the Amherst regional middle school you know we lag behind the state average on education. I think there's the number of core classes that are taught by highly qualified educators. And so that's one point I'd like to make. And is it an issue of trying to save money? That's why we have interim positions and we're putting on licensed unwavered candidates or people on the payroll. There's no financial element to our second question that I heard you ask. I think in terms of the first one we've consistently tried to find licensed educators and we are doing a review right now of the licensing of all our educators and administrators because we want to tighten that up. So I think we endeavor to do better in the future of ensuring licensed educators in all of our classrooms to see a hand in the back corner there. Vince O'Connor precinct one. So I wonder if two comments. One is about the allocation of the expense of charter schools or the deduction of the charter school costs being in the town budget because that's where the chapter 70 money go. Unlike the regional schools the elementary schools do not receive chapter 70 money. It goes to the town we've always given most of it and maybe all of it and plus some to the elementary schools but so that might be the issue. I do have a question actually three questions. One is the per pupil cost that is referred to in the elementary budget reflect all of the students who are being educated or does it in fact follow the charter school method of allocating per pupil cost by subtracting the choice in students from the total number of students and then only dividing your total costs by the number of students that are attending the elementary schools here. So that's the first question. The second question comes from page 36 under support services and budget cuts my question is about the two questions. One is about the after school voucher. Does this reduction mean that there will be one how many after school you have programs I think in all of the elementary schools how many students are in those after school programs and does this budget reduction mean that there will be no subsidized tuitions for the after school programs so only those who can pay the full tuition will be able to attend the after school program in the elementary schools and finally for a regular instruction at the very bottom of the budget cuts there is a description of intervention paraeducators $100,000 reduction and I wonder if you could just explain that as clearly as you can. Thank you. Yes. So the first question on the per pupil spending those numbers reflect everything that's spent on Amherst students so it includes the charter and choice tuition costs it also includes any money spent from grants or revolving funds it includes any services provided by the town that's not even in the school budget but like a proportion of the town staff that do some of the processing so it really includes everything that's spent on students. The second question about the after school voucher so that line in the budget is relatively new maybe the last three or four years after this cut there will still be $15,000 in the school budget for vouchers and there's another $10,000 we get from Amherst college at least for next year so in total we'll have $25,000 still and the nonprofits that run our after school programs also have their own allocations for that so while it will be reduced we'll still have some funds for that and I'll try to get the number of how many students that amount supports for the next time and Ms. Morris Thank you and for the third question the intervention paraeducator reduction we have last four or five years had math coaches at the elementary level and they assisted us greatly in the integration of a new curriculum, new math curriculum as we looked at the budget reductions what that cut essentially does is it aligns the math coaches with similar teacher leaders in literacy called the reading specialist and so it does increase their teaching time and reduce the professional development time given that our curriculum has now been integrated as a resulting cut because they'll be teaching students paraeducators will be reassigned I'm glad to share that no paraeducator will be rift or reduced it's going to be a shift in responsibilities and roles for the paraeducator but essentially it's putting more energy towards the teaching of students because our math curriculum has been implemented for a couple years now Thank you I see a hand right in the center there Alan Powell Precinct 4 under the line item labeled contingencies it's gone over the past couple of years from a thousand dollars to over half a million am I missing something Yes, yes you are you're missing something so when this budget was voted we were still in contract negotiations so we budget a placeholder for the outcome of the contract negotiations with all of our units in control accounts so those increases aren't reflected up above yet we've resolved some of those since that time but that's why the control accounts are so high Yes hand right there, second row from the back Maureen Rav, Precinct 9 can you speak to the donations given from all the higher institutions here as we're talking about you helped to create the pipeline program can you speak to what we're doing in concert with them and how it's affecting our students right now Yes Go ahead, yes So with the Parapathways program that we have we did receive some funding through the consortium that funding is shared with about three other districts and we're using the funds to help work on culture change in each of the districts to help hire more staff of color and help the administrators to understand how to retain staff of color we are looking at helping to pay our Paras, Pareducators while they are in training so that they are not worried about whether it's having to find another job pay for childcare, pay for transportation pay for books we help to work towards their tuition we contribute a certain amount and a certain amount is added from the grant to in kind to pay for it so most of the funding goes towards taking care of those items to make sure that the program runs well and we've also used the funds to hire as a consortium hire a director and a program coordinator for the discussion yes way over against the wall there Jim Oldham precinct 5 this is Miss Moderator a small observation about the budget presentation that perhaps the finance committee could look at for the future it's a small point but the other night when we were doing the town's budget there was some confusion about the percentage increases and the basis of those percentages in the town budget is the past year so it's the change over the previous year whereas on the school budget we're seeing the fraction the difference between last year and this year calculated as a percentage of the current year budget and just when I'm trying to look at you know across budgets how things are changed what the basis is for how that percentage is calculated is different in the two sides of the budget it's a small point but it would be nice to have it consistent in our finance book and I see a hand in the third row there Janet McGowan precinct 8 I have two questions one was how much is Amher sending out to other schools and towns and is this an increase that's question one the second one is about the Fort River Feasibility Committee and I'm wondering if they're going to be going out to visit other schools that have renovated to close open classrooms and look at their experience get some hands on or anyone care to speak to this yes I don't have the exact number for charter and choice because it isn't part of the school budget I will say again the what Mike Dr. Morris mentioned in the beginning which is our charter enrollment went down from last year to this year and our choice tuition went down our choice enrollment went down so the choice number most likely went down because that is a flat $5,000 per kid so in general I did go down with enrollment coming back in the charter the tuition amount does go up each year a little bit so even if we brought a couple students back in it's possible that cost rose a little bit but we did bring students back in so the charter numbers in the millions and the choice numbers in the $100,000 range but I'll get the exact numbers for the next time yes Dr. Sheen the Fort River Feasibility Committee no decision has been made right now about doing any kind of site visits or location visits for schools that have been renovated that had open class and format one of the key things that was mentioned earlier is the RFQ for design services for the feasibility committee for Fort River site was issued on May 2nd and explicitly within that RFQ we're asking for analysis a full range of analysis for the existing building and site for everything including renovation of the existing building partial demolition in addition as well as new construction so I think it could be anticipated that for successful respondents they're going to have some experience or perspective and bring in expertise around what the feasibility would be and costs an associated program would be for a renovation of the existing building ready to come to a vote I see a hand in the back there Carol Gray, Precinct 7 so I have a follow-up on the question about after-school tuition vouchers you mentioned that there's still 15,000 in that item and that Amherst College is going to give 10,000 it looks to me like you're still 15,000 less than before and you said you're going to answer questions next time around but we have to vote now so if you could please tell us how many kids approximately are going to be affected but also when my kid was in elementary school programs so I don't understand tuition for what what types of programs who's getting the vouchers how many kids are affected and why was there a choice made to cut 15,000 from the line item that affects the kids who need money most Mr. Morris Thank you so our after-school programs are not operated by our school district each of them is an independent agency some one works with LSSC with the town I'm sorry about that my apologies and I'll speak slower sorry about that each of our three Amherst elementary schools has an after-school program that is not run by the school district we provide in-kind support with some coordination between those three one of them is run by LSSC through the town and the other two are run as independent after-school programs we're atypical and happily atypical that we try to provide ongoing support for vouchers the reality is that each of the programs has access to vouchers through state systems that's not through our district and when we were faced with a level of budget reduction that we had we tried to look everywhere particularly to maintain our core programming our arts our specials our class size things that we know people rightfully expect from us that the district is able to provide so it is a reduction I don't want to pretend that it's not a reduction I think the points well taken and we feel like we're able to continue to provide ongoing support both in terms of financial support for vouchers as well as technical support for each of the programs to access more vouchers from other sources as well thank you ready to come to a vote yes I see a hand the second row there Vera Duangmini Cage, Precinct 7 I'm looking at the handout that was provided in the back of the room and I'm looking at the page where it says staffing data staffing data by race so we are our student demographics is increasingly diverse and in the elementary school it's majority of students of color and at the regional level it hovers around 50 or something percent I believe the I have a question about the chart here does that include is that exclusive to full-time equivalents or are there part-time folks included in the stats somebody care to respond yes Mr. Morris so I'll start by saying it includes all staff so full-time equivalents but maybe I'll share more data to that point moderator yes so four years ago the number I'll speak to licensed professional staff we were currently at just about 20% staff members of color for licensed staff which is a little different that was all staff what you're talking about and four years ago we were at 14% so we've seen a significant uptick over the last particularly the last two years in the increase of staff of color particularly at the professional licensed level thank you yes go ahead I'd also like to add that as well as seeing an increase over the past four or five years of the hiring of diverse staff we are also at a high of 90% of our diverse staff that are staying with our district for this I'm going to call on you twice in town meeting rule say I need to well I'm going to call on other people first okay yes way over there next to the aisle Tony Cunningham on page 35 it talks about 48 students residing in tax exempt housing and that this has been under study since 2015 I was just wondering if there is any updates on the progress of the discussions in the university providing more funding towards the school for those children thank you so at the most recent our school committee meeting which I believe was April 24th the school committee reviewed an executive summary which described the process being used of the study that we are partnering with the town of Amherst and the University of Massachusetts on and there'll be that was a relatively brief two or three page executive summary and it'll be a continued topic of conversation I'm sure over the next few months as the full report gets developed thank you I see a green card on the aisle there I move that we increase the budget for the elementary school by you held up a green card I'm not going to accept a motion with a green card a green card indicates that you're speaking you may be seated and perhaps I'll see if anyone else wants to speak what color do you want me to hold up a white card should be used if you wish to make a motion green card is in favor of the motion before us red card is opposed to the motion before us yes on the aisle second from the back right there yes of roads of proofing set seven I move in terms of reasons question motion for the previous question has been made in seconded I hear a point of order who's got a point of order I'm sorry Mr. moderator but our rules of order are designed to facilitate the running of the meeting not to quash debate and it struck me that what just happened quashes debate absolutely I would love to speak to that and I spoke to it last fall as well when I see a red card or green card I really try and keep a balance between the white cards and the red or the green so I'm attracted to a red or a green if there haven't been that many and it's and it indicates to me somebody who wishes to speak in favor of what's on the floor or read against and I made it clear last fall and I'm making clear again now that a red or green that's what it means and a white is what you use if you question or if you need to make a motion so I felt that a green card whether intentional or not kind of lured me into recognizing that speaker and I'm not saying it was intentional or not but I'm not going to accept a motion to change things if it's a red card or green card that's my ruling and that's what we're going with I feel the red and green cards are a great tool and I love it when they're used appropriately and that's what I'm looking for so we have before us a motion for the previous question has been made and seconded we will now come to a two-thirds vote if two-thirds of you vote to end debate we will then come to a vote on the motion before us everybody clear on what we're voting on now okay all those in favor of the motion for the previous question please say aye opposed please say no okay let's do it once more voice vote without yelling okay all those in favor of the motion of the previous question please say aye opposed please say no no I do not hear two-thirds um to be honest when I stare around like this it's usually because I'm looking for people who haven't spoken yet but everybody has so yes right here on the aisle Carol Gray precinct seven I move that we increase the budget for the elementary school by $15,000 to keep level funding for after school tuition waivers I need that in writing please for copies yes absolutely that's what I state very clearly at the beginning of every meeting one to the finance committee one there yes thank you you may speak to your motion I think it's really important to keep funding keep our safety net in all aspects of our town often times poverty is also that affects disproportionately because of our unfair society disproportionately affects racial minorities immigrants this is not where we should cut and I hope that if this passes it will send a message to the school committee that that is not where you cut you don't cut the programs that are helping to have an equal playing field I'm sure that in the past that additional 15,000 was used we haven't heard any numbers about how many kids are affected this is important these are real kids lives Frank Eddy had said in a prior meeting that poor families often have to pick which kid gets to do sports because it costs too much to have multiple kids do sports we should live in a world where that is never a discussion around the dinner table and yet we don't but our town should at least care enough to realize that that is where you maintain funding you never cut there that is not one of them particularly in the Trump era with immigrants and poor people feeling the brunt of policies affecting them more than ever if you want to help kids stay out of trouble you give them after school programs this is exactly where we need to maintain funding I hope 15,000 is a drop in the bucket in the overall budget but it sends a message that we care about an equal playing field we care about trying to have a society that doesn't preference people of higher economic classes and we are going to be there for the people who need economic help the most in our town I hope you vote yes thank you when we come to a vote perhaps very soon we will first vote on the larger amount if that passes then we will have disposed of this portion of the budget if that fails we would then vote on the lower amount is there discussion before we come to a vote? yes for a throw there I see a red card I just point out that we only vote the bottom line for the school budget we do not vote specific line items within the budget so what we would actually be doing is moving to increase the budget by 15,000 period thank you yes Mr. Steinberg I mentioned in a previous session of town meeting that the select board's view is that we recommend a budget amount based upon what is in the motion and do not recommend any changes either increases or decreases to that amount I explained also in the first day that we were listening to budgets before we actually heard any motions that this has been a very difficult budget year and and the way that any budget year starts is that we have a process that allocates an amount to each of the major functional areas the elementary schools regional schools, library and the town departments and there's a whole process where the four groups work very closely together and very cooperatively together in order to each achieve its goals but to stay within those amounts so that we can control the budget going forward and it is that practice that is very integral to the kind of budget development that we have and I therefore have to caution always against any changes that will alter the budget that is developed through that process because the other functional areas will always be then tempted to say well why not us and there are equal arguments that could be made across all areas so that is why the select board has always held to the position that amendments that alter amounts up and down are contrary to a very carefully crafted budget process and not recommended thank you discussion before I come to a vote yes Ms. Talman some information for the meeting 61 percent of this budget is devoted to schools that equates to 40 million students in the community so 15,000 may be out there thank you yes all the way in the back row there Jeff Mazer precinct 3 so just my thought is when you have to do line item changes in the middle of a process and you don't know what is going to be coming down it seems like it's a vote for something before everything is done and I'm wondering if it's possible to amend later on after we're all done with all the different all the different warrants to be able to say okay at the end I would like to make an amendment to a previously approved budget line item for a change so that all the money changes can all be done at the same time so we know what has been done at other things that come down the line because last year we had a change in the middle and then there was someone else wanted to do another change and it seems like the order causes an issue because then whoever is prioritized first maybe gets first dibs in terms of other departments thank you I'll address that I understand your point the short answer is no we're doing it the way we're doing it and actually this is one of the last items in the budget so it's not really a case of the first thing that we hear we're dealing with anyway but I also want to point out that the previous speaker referred to making a change to a line item in a budget we are not doing that remember all we are doing the motion even though that was the wording that was accepted the motion is really to raise this budget by $15,000 the purpose is not something town meeting can vote on the school committee gets the money and they decide what to do with the extra money we can and obviously have made a recommendation in this motion but it is strictly recommendation we are just voting on the bottom line is there further discussion before we come to a vote am I hear a point of order yes the presentation of the article I'm Aaron Hayden precinct 8 the presentation of the article left us all distracted and I have not heard a second oh a second to the to the motion oh there was a second to the motion there was I did and I said there was a second okay I'm sorry okay further discussion before a vote yeah green card right there third in from the aisle Janet Keller precinct 1 I have great respect for the budget process and I'm speaking out of personal experience and what these kinds of programs can mean for kids who don't have what other kids have and also from kids I've mentored and the amount relative amount relative to the budget this is a big thing for those kids it's a relatively small thing for this budget and I'm voting for it thank you and now I'm calling on the red card that I see second from the back room thank you Sarah LaCour precinct 9 as much as I appreciate the issues and concerns regarding the children in the after school program I trust in the budget process and as painful and complicated as it was and I trust in Dr. Morris and our school committee my concern with this is that $15,000 will have to come out of something else and that puts them in another difficult situation and my concern is we don't know what children or young people that will affect I think we need to trust that they have done this very very difficult hard work and accept that they have done their job as responsibly of possible taking all consideration for every student within the system thank you yes third row back white card right there Mary Sarah precinct 3 my question about budgets is where does that 15,000 come from is it stabilization I mean is it free cash stabilization because we're adding 15,000 to the school budget is that correct yes that's correct we're not reorganizing the school budget we're adding to it all we can do is add to the bottom line yes so I'm just asking where that 15,000 would come from Ms. Talman would come from free cash which as other people have famously quoted is not really free okay I see a green card in the front row way down there Denise Barbara precinct 9 considering often at the end of the year we hear that there's a million dollar surplus in the school funds it seems like we might be able to find 15,000 dollars in there should there be another large surplus thank you time for a vote guess not right on the aisle here green card yeah Kent and our precinct one been in town meeting a long time I respect all the effort that goes into this I have not ever I don't not sure it's true that we should always respect the budget process and that the select board always believes that and we are town meeting members this is our chance to express our view even though we respect the views of everybody else and when there's something like this this happens all the time where people make recommendations to get the sense you know of town meeting and town meeting you know has a right to express its sense they may not have never thought about this most of us in here probably haven't thought about the implications of the 15,000 dollar cut of people who most of us in this room aren't really not those people and so I think it's important for amendments like this to come and I think it's an expression of the will of the town based on 254 members not however many people came together with this budget which yes I do respect that budget process I know how hard people work with this but that doesn't mean that it's perfect we're all human beings none of us are perfect no process is perfect so I just think this is a time to take this 15,000 dollars which probably could be cut from someplace else we didn't want to take it out of free cash or put toward something else but it's you know the expression of where it wants to go to is really the heart what I'm voting on and I think most of the people who prepare this budget will take that you know expression to heart also so thank you yes third row right in the center there motion of the previous question has been made and seconded if two thirds of you vote yes we will then come to an immediate vote on the article 8 elementary school budget all those in favor of the motion for the previous question please say aye opposed please say no moderator here's two thirds we will now come to a vote on the larger amount which is 23,242,365 this is a majority vote if it passes we have disposed of the elementary portion of the budget if it fails we then drop down everybody with me everyone understand what we're voting for all those in favor of the larger amount of 23,242,365 dollars for the schools elementary budget please say aye opposed please say no the ayes have it we'll have an electronic vote windows in front of you you may vote anytime obviously everybody okay with their device looks like it's all working okay good yes is 102, no is 62 one abstention so the larger amount has passed 102,62 we now move on to the schools regional portion of the budget and I call on Mr. Nakajima of the school committee to make a motion I move that the town approve the Amherst Pellum regional school district operating in capital budget operating in 815,351 dollars and the town raise and appropriate 16,045,304 dollars as its share of that budget motion has been made and seconded you may speak to your motion thank you Mr. moderator the school committee voted 8 to 0 with one absent to support this budget you heard a number of really positive things that and trends earlier things that we're deeply proud of as a school district as you may know our theater program was recently honored by the sammies which I think is a great recognition of the excellence and dedication to town meeting in our town has supported for the arts and extracurricular activities you also heard about the food services program being brought back in house and the fact that not only we're serving better food but also it's being enjoyed by our students you also heard about our funding program to improve social welfare within our schools and reduce conflict so there are a number of things that we're deeply proud of the rankings as well that the superintendent talked about but there's absolutely no question that this year in particular provided a significant amount of stress for the regional school committee and for our member towns when debating and discussing this budget I know we're about to get into a robust discussion around this budget and in this case I feel comfortable speaking on behalf of the school committee because of the fact we had such a robust discussion and all of the members of the school committee are not happy about the fact that we're making the cuts that we're doing so when you're debating this and when you're offering your comments I wouldn't suggest that the school committee looked at these cuts and were excited to be making these cuts but we thought that we were doing something wonderful by cutting a million dollars out of our budget in fact it's extraordinarily challenging and I'm sure many members of the committee share your concerns about some of the cuts that had to be made but obviously in the context of our towns budget and flat state revenue we needed to do this I'd also echo something that Mr. Steinberg was talking about earlier around and I think if anything as somebody who had been deeply involved in his discussion as he had the regional assessment conversation was in fact very prolonged and at times very difficult between the member towns and in fact you can kind of see on the horizon significant challenges in debates between our four towns around supporting our regional budget it's one of the reasons why I'm so pleased that Schutzberg and Leverett have already voted in favor of the budget and we were discussing the regional assessment as a group of the four towns a number of the finance committee select board and the other school committee members there was in fact a debate that ended up edging from a question of methodology into core philosophy about what kind of schools we want to have and that's a profoundly challenging discussion to have as you saw earlier about the per pupil expenditures between different towns they do in fact vary widely and they have and develop very different philosophies of education around how you build up and program for your students and families in your community and yet I believe and I hope you agree that we're deep and I know the school committee does that we're deeply proud of the schools we have we're deeply proud of the work of our staff, of our leadership and of the quality environment we're providing for students Mr. Dhoni has mentioned earlier that our school committee is doing on a statewide basis one of the things I'd mention is there's a State Auditors Report that's a State Auditor Suzanne Bump did and released probably a month or two ago talking about some of these structural challenges and funding that regional school districts have some of which are unique to regional school districts and then there are other financial challenges that are common to school districts across the state I hope that our committee can continue to advocate for those changes as the State Auditor would hope we can do to try to improve funding because I think frankly the stresses that we're facing now aren't going away the budgetary problems and concerns we have between the towns aren't going away but I also believe based on all the feedback we've gotten from the community that the kind of schools that we're supporting and that our leadership is doing on your behalf every day represent the core values that we share as a community and so we as I said earlier our committee voted this budget and we look forward to your support for our schools now and going forward, thank you thank you I somewhat regret that I didn't do this before I started up this article but I do want to give people a very strictly limited five minute break people requested that in the past so we're going to take a five minute break now but we're going to all promise to come back in four and a half minutes five minutes is up folks let's get back to our seats please okay if you recall we left off with a fine presentation for Mr. Nakajima and now I call on Ms. Teilman for the finance committee Mr. Moderator may I try again for two extra minutes without objection you may proceed total of five minutes the finance committee unanimously voted to support and recommend this budget which represents 25% of the town's general fund the same as last year and as I said earlier the elementary and regional budgets combined represent 61% of the town's general fund budget or approximately $1.3 million which includes their capital requests the regional school district is a separate entity made up of grade 7 through 12 with students from the towns of Leverett Pellum, Shutsbury and Amherst it has its own budget with revenues that go directly to the region and on page 44 you'll see that the state revenues go to the region then you have member town assessments and you have reserves you'll notice that chapter 70 transportation, Medicaid reimbursements that's in Medicare those are for students who receive that aid and then the Charter School reimbursements go right to the region under reserves you see something called E&D and that is basically the reserve fund for the schools just as the town has one the fund balance for OPEB unfortunately is only $88,833 which I know this meeting was concerned about the assessment for the four towns make up 63.57% of the regional budget and you see it up there the other 36.43% comes from the items listed as state aid that makes a total of 100% and then there's some money from grants and other funds alright this is how it breaks out for the towns Amherst pays 16 million plus we pay 79.34% of the regional budget Pelham, Leverett and Shootsbury have lesser percentages and all four towns come to 20,224 224,381 the total assessments for the three towns are 4,179,078 or about 20% I like pie charts so that gives you an idea of what Amherst contributes and the other three towns so Amherst has the greatest share but it has the most students also and I'm showing this again that is the state per pupil cost it's over the last 10 years and it is again from their website and again Amherst is well above the state average for school funding it is in the top 12% and the per pupil cost for region this coming year will be 22,283 dollars on page 46 are the additions and reductions that you'll see earlier and then the select areas are on page 48 the regular education will go down next year to 21.03% special education has gone up and will continue to go up administrative services will remain the same again employee and retiree care insurance is an issue and we've heard that that is being addressed and then on 49 is the staffing summary and there will be a slight reduction of 9 and then we have student enrollment on page 50 the projected enrollment for next year is 1,315 students it's down by 25% from 10 years ago and we include choice in students as part of our account the out of district students is going to go down next year by 80 students and that was as the superintendent pointed out earlier and that's a good trend this school year 34% of students receive free and reduced lunch 7% of the students are English language learners 20% of the students receive some type of special services the high school graduation rate in 2017 was 92.5% the state average is 88.3% so Amherst does very well the regional school budget process for approval is different than the elementary budget process the regional assessment methods as you heard Mr. Steinberg say first had to be worked out negotiated then it must be approved by the regional school committee and then all four towns and then after that when the assessment method is approved only three of the four towns must approve of the budget and the assessments so at this time the finance committee urges town meeting to approve the budget and Amherst assessment thank you select board voted three in favor none opposed one absent and Mr. Slaughter abstaining for this budget this is a voting requirement of a majority and I now have a town meeting member who has submitted a motion that he would want to make so I call on Mr. O'Connor to make his motion I move to increase the bottom line of the appropriation to be made under the Amherst school's from $16,045,304 to $16,145,304 $16,045,304 of which shall be to satisfy Amherst FY 2019 regional school assessment and $100,000 which shall be a gift from the town of Amherst to the Amherst Pelham regional school district for the purpose of preserving the regional high school culinary arts program and the high school preschool motion has been made and seconded you may speak to your motion thank you for the opportunity to request town meeting to keep in place these two programs as many of you know staff reductions can be reversed when future demand is being allowed but the restoration of programs such as the elementary schools world language programs which were phased out in the 1990s is usually incredibly difficult the high school preschool actually pays about 80% of its cost through tuitions so $25,000 more or less will keep this program and the place within which it operates available to again begin the education of regional school students in this important field of work work that will become even more attractive when the $15 minimum wage becomes law in Massachusetts the culinary arts program is somewhat more complicated both because of its location in the high school building and its potential role in the move of some of the academy from its south Amherst commas campus to the regional high school my understanding from speaking with Mr. Mangano is that without additional funding that we some use the culinary arts facilities by some of the academy students but no access to culinary arts programming by regional high school students relocating some of the academy students to the high school building is a major undertaking that ought to be not to be complicated by depriving the vast majority of high school students of access to an existing school program that would be reserved for some academy students only without this appropriation let's talk money a gift of $100,000 to the regional school district rather than an increased appropriation of Amherst chair of $80,000 is necessary because at this point in the process an attempt to increase Amherst regional school assessment has gone to a rejection of the regional school budget a gift by the town would therefore fund the total cost of the regional schools of these programs why would the town do this the answer is quite simple the departure of one regional school student to a nearby vocational school would cost the regional schools $17,000 to $18,000 per year such departures would cost Amherst as its share of future regional budgets more than this entire gift the regional school administration has made reducing choice outs to vocational schools a priority last year their successful efforts saved the region about $160,000 maintaining a diverse program of high school electives is one of the keys to reducing regional school vocational school choice outs how would the offer of this gift likely be handled by the regional schools such a gift would require acceptance by the regional school committee an action that would most certainly not occur unless the committee was convinced that these restorations would not harm some of the academies transition to the high school building finally as we see from the list of regional school budget reduction this town is nowhere near to building itself out of the structural deficit that began when the former Amherst college fraternities became dormitories and were phased out from the town's property tax base in the 1980s the answer to our structural deficit is not endless annual school budget cuts we cannot persuade the university to step up to the plate to fund the 45 to 50 elementary school students that attend our schools from tax UMAS housing by budget cutting that reduces the quality of those schools and we will not succeed in persuading Amherst college to make a meaningful seven figure unrestricted contribution to our schools unless UMAS first contributes please vote yes for this amendment before I open up to discussion I want to call on folks from boroughs just to want to explain the process a little bit again what I think Mr. O'Connor explained very well why he's phrased the motion the way he did in terms of the donation so it won't affect the regional agreement he also explained very well I thought that the school committee would need to accept this donation and even at that point town meeting cannot instruct the regional school committee to vote we will vote first on the larger amount if that passes we are done if that fails we drop to the smaller amount okay Mr. Morris so a couple things to share on this and a bit of background so I apologize if it's a little more lung winded that like but I think it's important to share how we came to this decision so the first thing I want to say is that we tremendously appreciate the town of Amherst generosity we had to make $1.1 million in the finance committee booklet and had the finance committee in the town not supported us to go to three and a half percent originally it was two and a half percent we would have had hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional reductions so I just want to acknowledge the generosity of the town I also appreciate the suggestion and the motion in that we want to support our high school students with this comprehensive program of studies plus you as possible so I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that I've been hearing the discussion about the challenges that our budget cuts are creating tonight but I want to describe a bit about the budget process so we received estimates of budget reductions in the fall we developed lists of potential ads and cuts working with principals, district directors, staff we had multiple meetings with the secondary staff in their buildings to gather feedback and one of the original adductions was the culinary and preschool program it's not that they are tremendously valued by students, staff and the administration it's really a response to the gravity of a seven-digit budget cut that we were facing and preschool for instance has had declining enrollment in their program and unfortunately has not been financially able to support multiple low income families with a reduced rate in recent years because the finances didn't support that. Culinary is a wonderful course for students but it's not a vocational like the vocational schools at Smith or Franklin Tech it's not a credit bearing or certificate bearing program like those programs it's not to dismiss it it is a wonderful program for our students but it was never meant to compete fully with those programs that have a different level of infrastructure and support so these cuts were on their original cut list principal Mark Jackson emailed all the parents and guardians as well about these reductions knowing that they would be affect our students and our reality has been with declining enrollment and the fiscal challenges that come along with that we've been unable to maintain the level of elective choices for our students and be fiscally responsible in that climate so after those decisions were made we had more cuts to make we looked at Summit Academy whose building had significant challenges infrastructure wise Summit Academy was previously known as Southeast Campus it's a state approved special education day school for students who need a smaller more therapeutic environment to access the curriculum all the students who attend Summit Academy attend by an IEP meeting a special education meeting that involves consent from the educators as well as the family and at the secondary level of students over 14 as well as the students the site had been located near the South Amherstown Common but with the declining enrollment across the district and budget reductions a space in the high school that had state-required Summit Academy needs a state-required separate space became available I don't know if we want to show the map Morris you're going way over your time so I don't know how much more you've got one minute if not then I'll stop you should stop and I can call on you again if you feel there's more important information sure thank you further discussion and yes Mr. Demling school committee Peter Demling Dr. Morris could you explain no it doesn't work that way sorry do you have something to say Mr. Demling so there was a comment earlier made that this program would continue to exist but it would only be exclusively offered to Summit Academy students that's not the case thank you yes Mr. Steinberg so on behalf of the select board I won't repeat what I had previously said other than to point out that we're now if this were to pass cumulatively totaling up to $175,000 in total amendments to budgets all of which would be coming out of free cash and I won't say anything more about that there are questions that select board is concerned about as to whether legally we can make a gift to the district we don't know the answer to that but it is something that needs to be considered but it is an effect trying to slide into budget amendment and it depends upon the school the regional school board school committee as to whether they will accept it will accept it for the purpose for which it has been suggested but the major point that I want to make is to harken back to the question that I raised earlier when we were talking about article 10 the whole process of establishing a regional budget and a regional assessment method is a very complicated four-town negotiation process or a dance and we start increasing the amount beyond what we initially say that is the amount that we believe is the appropriate amount for Amherst we are affecting how those discussions are going to take place in future years and I am extremely concerned about the future implications of this if this proceeds with the yes vote so I would be very strong in cautioning you against making that action thank you thank you I just wanted to add a couple of things in particular after early conversations earlier today with the superintendent Morris obviously the sentiment is deeply appreciated but a couple of things that Dr. Morris mentioned earlier were one that given the the realignment of the space within the high school building to accommodate the move for Summit Academy it is actually not immediately clear what room or facility we would have available to restart a culinary program and I think it's also true that it's not immediately clear what the capital funds we would have available to be able to move some of the equipment but put in events and things like that which goes to what Mr. Demling was saying earlier that it's not really an issue of installing a culinary program within the Academy and let me tell you that that's not the case the question would be if not there then where and the school district doesn't have an answer to that question right now to offer the school committee registration for school courses is already complete at the high school and so with students already having registered the demand for the courses not to say they wouldn't be there but the students have already sort of lined up what courses they're going to have and I don't know I hope I got that right good speaking trying to elaborate and by the way those were his final points yes on the aisle there white card Carol Gray precinct 7 I have a question for the finance committee in the past half decade have we ever put less than a million dollars into free cash at the end of the fiscal year Ms. Tommen I'm not sure I if Ms. Aldridge could answer that someone from the town's finance staff please I I just have not been here that long to know if we have ever put more than that in but remember free cash isn't really free it's going to go toward capital projects it goes for things other things we need and it's put aside just as our own budgets where we put money aside for unexpected things that come up and also for planning for the future so taking away at it little by little is is difficult we count on free cash to build our reserves and and I don't know if someone from town staff could tell questions questions maybe ask but don't aren't required to be answered is another point to understand yes I see a green card way in the back standing up Bonnie McCracken precinct six and I was originally going to come in and vote no and then I remembered what I had for supper tonight I had mac and cheese which my daughter learned to make in this culinary program and then I remember oh what did she do today she provided childcare as a nanny to one of our Amherst families where did she learn some of that skill in the preschool program I think there's a bigger benefit to this program beyond the hundred thousand dollars just knowing what my child get out of these and me personally out of this this program so I've changed my vote to yes because I also serve on a board of a non-profit and we've benefited by hiring the culinary program to provide refreshments for an annual meeting so there's much more that our culinary arts program could be doing and I think you know my daughter was never a vocational student she enjoyed the literature in the writing classes too much here in Amherst so it was not an option for us to look at vocational but these were her happy places to be in these two classes while attending the high school so thank you thank you I see a white card right against the aisle Lisa Barry precinct too it sounds like there are a lot of questions that have been raised the legality and whether the money can go to what it is meant to go for and whether the room and equipment hold the mic close to your mouth please oh sorry anyway I'm wondering if this would be a one-time thing or if we'd have to renew this gift every year if somebody feels they can't answer their question they're welcome to but there's no requirement to answer it if you don't have an answer yes Mr. Marjano it would depend on the budget situation the following year as of right now based on this budget situation it would have to be renewed each year to maintain the program but things could get better or worse so it really depends on the following year's budget thank you a white card second aisle from the back there Maureen Ram precinct nine can someone confirm or deny that in terms of our budget this year is it based on our assessment property taxes is it for the current year or is it our property taxes the raise is our budget is going to be over next year do you go ahead I believe this year's for the budget you're about to vote on determines next year's tax rates so your tax rates now don't reflect this budget I'm looking at Sonya who's nodding so I guess it's a good answer I see a red card over there in that forest of cards I'm voting against this motion I'm a on my fifth of eight straight years at the high school and I've seen a lot of budget cuts and a lot of them have been very painful and when I ask my two kids who are currently there and their friends what really matters they're more concerned with preserving social studies electives and English electives in their junior and senior years than they are foods it's a nice to have but it's not a program that is worth unintended consequences thank you yes throwback right there that's my white card regarding our reserves in the last ten years I think they've gone up close to nine million dollars so it's an average a little less than a million a year however in the last eight years it's been over a million a year just some information I got out of this nice orange book also about the taxes I don't think taxes are based on the budget taxes are based on on a two and a half percent increase and on new growth which is which is about new buildings I don't think the budget is looked at and then a new tax base is created so I just want that to be clear also a question is how many students on average have taken the culinary arts program if anybody knows the answer to that and without this gift how would the pre-school high school pre-school be affected if anybody could answer that thank you so I'll start with the pre-school so the pre-school is slated to close it does not have students enrolled in terms of three and four and five year olds that are the core of the program so I do candidly have concerns about the viability of finding enough three four and five year olds who are not enrolled in a pre-school to continue we worked with most of the students in the program right now we're hendering kindergarten with those who were not to find other placements in terms of the culinary there's two parts of the culinary the foods program one is actually a program where you go through the sequence of taking all the courses so there are currently ten students enrolled in that sequence there are more students who take it as a one-off elective but in terms of the actual program there are ten students thank you yes third row right here anti-trivial precinct three the superintendent was putting a map up before and I'm curious how if we were to keep the culinary and early childhood programs how those would coexist with the former east street school moving over my understanding is that those are two cost-cutting efforts that sort of depend on each other and I'm not sure how they would coexist if we did this yes Morris so I'm not sure it's going to be helpful I'm not sure either we you know I appreciate the town meeting member getting in touch with us today but there's not a logical space to move those programs to those programs I've already had significant other there's a map so for some of the academies move based on state requirements for an in-district special day program it was really the only space in the school that had external access for transportation for entry and we're putting a significant amount of capital expenses to make it conform and comply with students IEPs and the law and so because of that you can see that there's a significant number of classrooms that are being vacated by the high school which is making the rest of the high school much tighter on space so it's unclear to me where those programs would be located for next year it's also unclear to me the viability of doing that for just given that we're in May and registration as Mr. Nakajima shared it's complete we don't have any preschoolers in the preschool program it's I don't want to say it's impossible but I think the viability of making that change for the next school year is I have my significant doubts about that for the fiscal year 19 thank you yes second row right there in the center of the green card hi I'm Amber Kano Martin Precinct 2 I served on the enrollment working group on the preschool subcommittee and we actually found that there's not enough slots offered at Crocker farm there's a waiting list and so we don't have we have a significant portion not significant I don't remember the exact percentage but students who come into kindergarten without the benefit of preschool at all so I'm how can we justify cutting this program Mr. Mars first of all thank you for serving and that report was excellent and done at the Amherst school committee when we looked at those slots the number of students from the wait list were primarily low income if not almost exclusively low income and this program was not accepting waivers or fee reductions base in the last few years based on the financial viability of the program so in terms of solving the actually the problem that your group identified which is we have a significant number of families in our community we're not accessing preschool because of cost this program was not it was a wonderful program but it wasn't addressing that particular concern because students who needed subsidies or fee help were not supported to do so in this program yes second from the back on the aisle there yeah Paul right precinct seven I'm wondering if the wording of this motion sets conditions on the gift so that if it were not viable to revive these cuts that the gift would then be either denied or return to the town my understanding based on the emails that we're flying around is that the school committee can accept or reject the donation and in fact I don't know that they would but they could also accept the donation and use it for something else that they think is a higher priority again that it's not a reason the motion is giving a specific action to be taken with the funding but we actually don't have the authority to do that all we are voting on is the bottom line yes just one clarification with gifts we do have to spend it on the purpose that the gift is designated so if the gift was for a specific purpose we do have to spend it on that purpose because it's separate than the operating budget thank you good point right there in the center of the white card Andrew rose precinct four in previous years when I paid more attention to the school budget process there was always a list of what we will put back when in ridiculously late you know date that the state money really gets settled what those priorities are and I wonder if you have that prioritized cut list actually before I accept the response I just want to mention we are the debate so far has been focused on a hundred thousand dollars of a sixteen million dollar budget so if people have questions or things they want to discuss about any portion of the regional budget they should do so the discussion right now is not limited to the one hundred thousand dollars because when we come to a vote it's going to be on the whole budget so if you have issues that you want to discuss regarding any part of the budget you should be raising your hand so there was significant feedback at the public meetings that the regional school committee held and I think some of that work that you mentioned already happened so we were able to restore things there was a potential shift to vocational models which would have limited some students access to not vocational school but a specific vocational school the school committee received significant feedback and that was amended there was a cut to someone who was involved in coaching around co-teaching and special education that came from community members there was a proposed cut to the middle school guidance department the committee heard feedback as the administration that cut was changed so I think that process played out a bit over the course from December which we started a little earlier this year in terms of our budget hearings and four town meetings through March so it's not to suggest that we couldn't continue but I do think the give and take of community feedback on the budget and actual changes to what was presented and then voted in several ways and there was a lot of attention to the regional budget given the high level of cuts that were required yes in the back corner with the green card been so kind of precinct one so I make one point the physical facilities of the culinary arts program are not going anywhere they're not going to be moved they're going to stay where they are and be used by some of the academy just because of the nature of the facilities cooking facilities and so forth as I understand it from speaking with Mr. Mangano this morning and this afternoon but I'm actually concerned about the information that's come out about the fact that we have a study that said that there are underserved students in the district in terms of preschool the preschool has been identified as an important issue to be focused on and that this preschool program instead of saying okay let's take the money that we might have spent elsewhere in another facility on expanding preschool we don't have to build a new facility we have one in place why not I mean nothing in the motion requires that X amount of dollars be one purpose and X amount be for the other purpose a smaller access to the culinary arts program and using the larger amount of money to the 100,000 to really invite in underserved students provide subsidies and so forth I think would be a perfectly reasonable way to use the 100,000 and the school committee is maybe bound by the purposes but is not bound by there's no amount attached to the purpose and so I would again urge people to vote for this amendment I think that it would it has the potential to accomplish some real good for the district to maintain a small amount of programming that might be important for some students at the regional high school but also has the potential of increasing the availability of preschool to children who might otherwise not benefit from such activities yes I'm going to vote against this amendment as I I'm going to vote against this amendment for the same reason that I voted against an amendment last week and that I vote against nearly all amendments to increase budget on the floor of town meeting we've already increased by 60,000 on one amendment to 15 on another fortunately we voted down one for 25,000 dollars that's putting our budget totally out of whack I think it's a bad precedent and I think we whether we agree with the idea that this hundred thousand dollars would be well spent I think it's a mistake to vote for it besides we don't know where the money is coming from next year or the year after if you have items you want to discuss regarding the other 16 million dollars of the budget I'd look I'd really I'd like to see those hands now for a little bit as opposed to talking about the budget yes over there in the finance committee Mr. moderator just want to respond to a remark that was made earlier the budget does in fact affect the tax rate and the town can't set its tax rate until it has a balanced budget so I'd just like to provide that information to the meeting thank you yes the white card there in the third row Janet McGowan precinct 8 on page 48 regional budget there's a line and it points out that the percentage of the budget that's going projected for regular education is 21% and as I understand that covers regular education is about 80% of the kids in the middle and high school and for fiscal year 18 when I saw on a chart it was 28.4 41% that seems like a really shocking change to me and it seems to me a really low number to spend on the large majority of kids and I wondered how that fit how you can sort of explain that and how it compares to other middle and high school budgets in the area or statewide McGowan I'm not sure about the chart and the finance committee report the only thing I could think of is that that includes programs which would be vocational tuition, charter and choice because that is sort of regular education as well but in terms of how the school breaks out its budget this is sort of the breakdown we always use in terms of how we compare to other districts I think it really varies to district to district do you have charter schools nearby you know how big the town is it's very specific to each community I think our most comparable community is probably Northampton so we could bring back a comparison if that's helpful but we don't have that tonight yes all the way against the wall there at the green card Marla Jamate precinct 7 Mr. Moderator may I speak to the issue of the $100,000 yes you may thank you I have a child who attended the high school preschool and I just want to talk a little bit about that experience was like that preschool is really a jam there are a lot of teachers in the district who send their own children there because it's so very good one of the benefits it has over the preschool that is offered at Crocker farm are extended hours which are a little bit more compatible with the schedules for most working people and that's why I chose to send my daughter there the program itself is also quite rigorous and children were learning things like handwriting and preliminary reading and literacy skills the other piece of that program which is so fabulous is that the high school students work in that program for credit related to certain courses I believe it's developmental psychology or child development other such courses that have a logical connection to the experience of working in the preschool and some really wonderful relationships develop between high school students and very young children and my daughter was always thrilled to run into a teenager in town who would read her exuberantly and say hey I used to teach you at the preschool so it's really an integrated part of the high school and it serves many functions besides just being a preschool alone it provides an opportunity for mentoring and I think helps to expand the horizons for the high school students as well I just also want to say the culinary arts program is very much connected in a way to the high school preschool and that it's right next door and one lovely thing that I recall happening is like on a Friday afternoon when the kids in culinary arts had made cookies or whatever that they would then bring those to the preschool children to enjoy and it was really just a lovely thing and as far as the low enrollment at that preschool I was always puzzled about why that was an issue and yet I would talk to people in the community you know oh why don't you try the high school preschool and they'd say oh I never really heard about it is it on the district website and I really think the issue there comes down to one of marketing and that if this wonderful preschool could be marketed more aggressively clearly there's a tremendous need and demand for preschool in this town and that was made very clear to all of us in the whole process of considering the future of the district and I would encourage people to vote for this amendment thank you yes I see a white card right there if I throw back so Meg Gage precinct 1 regarding the overall budget I'm very impressed in a bad way and happy to see all the things that were cut on page 46 and it sobered me to seeing what to understand in detail how difficult the budget year is by seeing that list and sorry you all had to do such hard work does the no sabbatical approved conflict with negotiated union negotiated terms or are these all compliant with union agreements I'm not asking I'm not being pro or con it's sobering to read the list and that one drew my attention yes so the agreement the union contract has a clause that talks about sabbatical requests and the only piece I think the piece that's highly relevant here is that it can't be denied based on budget constraints so when staff members make sabbatical request they do go to the school committee and they're judged on their merits not judged based on if it's a better or worse fiscal year and so this was a year where none were approved but it was disconnected to the budget challenges we were having so consistent with the agreed upon contract thank you yes right in the front row here with the white card yes John Fox precinct 10 just one quick question on the 100,000 if the town voted in favor of it but if the committee decided that only the high school preschool program made sense I take it that you could accept a portion of the 100,000 to fund that program and not accept the rest is that correct who's got an answer this doesn't happen a lot so we're going to have to I mean we're not going to do that but we're going to have to you know the town as they mentioned they're going to have to make sure they can give a gift and we're going to have to research the rules around accepting a gift yes all the way against the wall there Jim Oldham precinct 5 so thinking about the budget at large and the struggles Amherst schools are excellent and we really appreciate them the cuts are very sad and the struggles of the superintendent and the school committee are to try to do things with this little while maintaining things as good as they can be is appreciated like the previous speaker I've been very struck having two children seven years apart I can attest to how the schools are different from just seven years ago I have a daughter in the high school now we're we've seen the options within the math program changed when she came in as a freshman the social studies programs are changing significantly with the elective loss of electives and options the music program a few years ago was shrunk someone mentioned going back further we lost this predates our experience but there used to be languages in the elementary schools and so on and I guess you know I very much sympathize with what you struggle with and I guess the question is where are we going from here what does the future look like for the schools I worry about what the children coming up are going to experience yes, Dr. Morris it's a big question but I'll try to offer a brief answer given the time so I think we all collectively share the same concern that you you expressed and some of it's financial and frankly some of it's enrollment based so when you have a high school that has 12, 13, 1500 students it allows for a broader range of electives than you do when this high school right now has less than a thousand students it's absolutely financial but some of it's trying to define what high school can we offer what is the community value given that we have this decline that's mostly based on not students exiting the district but it's mostly based on just families how many families have children and some of the demographic variables and there's no good answer if we continue to decline to get to 800 students we're not going to be able to offer so determining what electives we have what electives we offer I think the thing that gives me hope is that we're really entering a strategic planning process trying to identify those needs we're getting great feedback from students for instance on a climate survey we didn't ask about that question particularly but they're telling us a lot about their experience and I think the other thing that is evolving is we're adding electives in other areas so we're adding in the last couple years we've added a whole swath of engineering and it's based on what students our high school students register for and the fact that their feet are determining which direction we go in I have a lot of confidence they'll lead us in the right direction that way I'm hoping we're close to a vote yeah I see that back of the two white cards that are being held up right there yes Chris we're at a little precinct too I call the previous question motion of the previous question we'll have an electric vote if two thirds of you vote yes we will then come to an immediate vote on the higher of the two numbers that we see before us for the regional budget all those in favor of the motion for the previous question please say I oppose please say no moderator here's two thirds we'll have an electric vote for the previous question the vote is 121 yes 10 no we have achieved two thirds we get the number amounts on the screen in front of us now we are now voting on the motion you see before us which is a total amount of $16,145,304 with 100,000 of that being a gift from the town of Amherst as it says in the motion this requires a majority if this passes we are done if this fails we drop down to the original motion all those in favor of the motion before you please say I oppose please say no noes have it we'll have an electronic vote on this as well I hear a point of order could you stop the window and we'll start again afterwards yes what's the point of order what was that dead battery we have a device that's not working just one our tech crew is leaping into action once we get this resolved we are having an electronic vote on the motion that's on the screen requires a majority everybody all set now okay you may open up the vote again hang on stop point of order yes we are we just had a voice vote on that motion the moderator declared that it failed but electronic vote was requested we're still voting on this okay whenever you're ready this is the larger amounts still yes we're voting on the larger amount the vote is yes 68 no 110 the larger amount has failed we now come to an immediate vote on the original motion which will in just a moment be on the screen before us just everybody knows what we're voting on yes the motion of the previous question means we're ending debate we first vote on the higher amount then we vote on the lower amount we don't start debate again after the vote on the higher amount so we are now coming to an immediate vote on the motion before you which was the original motion requires a majority everybody clear on what we're doing here good all those in favor of the motion before you please say aye opposed please say no moderator here's a majority I now call on Mr. Slaughter to make a motion wait before I call on Mr. Slaughter to make a motion he may move to hear another article he may not so let's wait and see what he does but in either case hey hey I need people to pay attention in either case when we finally do adjourn please be sure to turn your electronic devices off and then return them please be sure to pick up all trash around you to save time and effort of the custodians and tonight we had a quorum at 704 I challenge you to make it 703 on Wednesday Mr. Slaughter I move to adjourn till Wednesday May 9th at 7pm motions made and seconded not debatable all those in favor of adjourning till Wednesday night May 9th is that correct say aye any opposed the ayes have it