Welcome and thank you everybody for coming on this bright and sunny morning. This budget is an exceptionally difficult one and so we have some really meaty discussions to have this morning and throughout this budget setting period and I want to thank sort of exceptionally hard work that Dr. Slaughter has been doing along with our finance budget subcommittee and of the regional committee. They've been meeting very frequently here heard the feedback and from the four towns in December and taking that into what we'll be looking at today. So I just want to leave that. Thanks and I'll just do just encourage folks to stay muted if they are not speaking and I want to get I see there's a hand up and I want to talk about hands up. I'll do a quick orientation on that again, but I want to acknowledge that our state senator Comerford is here. So thank you very much for being present for us. I know you have another meeting in a little bit and we appreciate you being here as much as you're able to and in Representative Dom. So thank you both for being here. It's it always is very reassuring for me when our state representatives and state senators are so engaged in our local community and our local schools. So thank you both for making time out of your busy schedules to join us today. Really, really appreciate that. So just some logistics. The best case scenario I think for everyone is that everyone stays muted unless you're planning to speak. There's a raise hand feature at the bottom. It says raise hand and has an icon of a hand as as Jed has is using right now. And that worked really well at the last four town meeting in December. And so I'd ask people to use that same same format right now to be able to jump in as there are no current hands up. Our agenda for today is to go through a presentation about the budget. We got that we heard the feedback at our meeting in December. A lot's changed. We have a lot. We have a lot more knowns. You know, there's still some variables out there, but there's there are more things that are known now than when we were in December. So we've fine tuned some of our numbers. We've had incredible amounts of dialogue with our leadership team as well as staff, including as late as yesterday afternoon about what budget reductions might be proposed. There's a budget hearing next Tuesday about the regional school committee, where they'll be accepting public comments and questions. So today is really an opportunity to get a sense of where are we in this budget process? What are some positive variables that have come in? What are some more challenging variables? What are some unknowns? What's our first take at what our budget cut number might be? Last time we heard direct feedback that people wanted to see what those cuts would look like. So we're bringing that today. I want to note that this was presentation was sent to the regional school committee yesterday. They have not debated yet on the specific ads and cuts. So there this is the first public meeting that they are interacting with this information. So they probably will want to be a little restrained as compared to normal and talking about the budget cuts because they have that meeting coming in three days or four days. But I just want to note in process our timing. We've had a lot of things that we've been focused on as well as budget and so that's where we are in terms of process. We will, after we get through the budget part, have an opportunity for all the towns to get together in their own breakout room so they can discuss matters. We'll come back and hear feedback from each of the member towns. Maybe it's too optimistic but my optimism will shine that we were able to hopefully leave this meeting with a sense that the school committee and the administration have a sense of a direction and a response from the member towns and maybe even a response from a collective group of the member towns to move forward because in not so long we'll have to be recommending an assessment method as well as a budget to be voted early next month. And then we'll after that we'll have a quick presentation on capital and then we'll end the meeting as I said promptly by 11 o'clock. Any questions on the agenda or format for today? Mandy Jo. Not a question but I wanted to let Lynn know. I think we have a quorum of the council now. So I will assume that that council has been called to order by President Griezmer if that is sufficient. You want to nod your head? Ms. Griezmer thumbs up then. All right so I will I get to borrow the gavel you know like once a year so this is my second time so it's pretty exciting for me so thank you Lynn for for engaging me in that. We'll move forward with the actual presentation so again before I turn it over to Dr. Slaughter just want to thank everyone for the support these are really hard conversations you know I've been in this district 20 years I've been going to these meetings for about eight or nine of them they're very very challenging there's lots of different opinions there's many viewpoints and many realities in our four member towns and I just want to start from the place that I appreciate while we have differences while we there are different realities I really appreciated the willingness of the towns to talk to one another understand each other's situation and then move forward even if our assessment method continues to change we've moved forward the state looks at us a little bit like a unicorn that we don't have an assessment method from year to year but they also know that these four towns really support our schools and that's why they work with us on them so I want to start from that place of gratitude and appreciation and then I'll turn it over to Dr. Slaughter to get started and I will be there's a presentation I keep putting in the chat just in case someone just joined and they don't see it but the same presentation that I'll be presenting sharing the screen is there for you to access so if it's easier to follow along on the screen please do so if it's easier to follow open a new tab you can do that as well and Dr. Slaughter thank you for being here this morning my pleasure thank you all for being here it's a good morning to you all and I'll just briefly talk about the the order in which we'll take things I'll speak first to what we think our revenue projections are like then I'll speak to our expenses and changes from from what we saw in December then I'll get into some key points about the about the the budget coming up what we know what we don't know go through a little bit of history on where we've been and and and we'll we'll get into the details of the conversation at that at that point so if you advance the next slide please and so that's you know I just basically went over that we'll talk about capital plan at the end I will say quickly about capital I would like people's feedback if you see things on the capital plan or or if the assessment's relative to the capital plan you should take note of those we'll try to take a moment look at those at the end and provide feedback on that as well we may not have as much time for that but I want to make sure that people note that and and our keeping an eye on that as well because that also plays into the total amount that each of the communities has to offer and support our schools let's go to the next slide please so on our revenue projections number of these are similar to what we had in the past I'll just orange you I use a green yellow or red dot next to the different categories to to give some indication of how we think we're trending in that regard we've got new information since we last met so for example chapter 70 we've got a much better sense of chapter 70 we've increased the the estimate for that because governor's budget came out had a little more support for for for chapter 70 in school aid in general and so that's helpful to our to our our overall process unfortunately there the support for regional transportation is down a little bit we also have you know less uh reimbursable costs this year and so that's that's going to negatively impact our our our ability to support our schools chart tuition reimbursement we get reimbursement for the newest kids that go to charter so when new kids go to charter we get a reimbursement on the other hand we are paying tuition for all those kids that are going to to charter schools it's a bit of a neutral impact because the amount that it's you know gone down for reimbursement is also uh likewise on our expense side gone down to buy about about the same amount so you'll see that on the next slide uh e and d which is excess and deficiency that's uh essentially a free cash if you're a town finance person it's the same idea that free cash is limited at five percent of our operating budget is the maximum um given the way the end of last year played out uh it's looking like our free cash that's available to us it's less and therefore we'll have less available to support our budget this year which is why we put in only 400 000 of support from e and d whereas in the past we've had higher numbers than that um it's a it's a you know an artifact of of how the end of last year played out that that we have a little less cash on hand for that purpose um medicaid we provide medical services that are reimbursable by medicaid to our students um given the circumstances we've been in the last year we've done less of that so we've reduced the amount of revenue support we're going to receive from that that hasn't changed the e and d hasn't changed uh from from what we talked about in december uh but the other three at the top of the of the chart are are different from from uh from our discussions in december and have a you know a little bit positive a little bit negative effect in our in our budgeting next slide please so on the expense side um you know we've you know have the usual sort of payroll uh you know questions we have negotiations to do this year our contracts end on june 30th uh we have you know projected steps and a and a potential cola that that will be negotiating and so uh i'll be a bit vague in that regard because we don't want to negotiate in a meeting like this and uh but nonetheless we try to anticipate what those are going to look like in some reasonable fashion uh and they have a you know the typical uh driving force on our budget that they usually do um i think a positive uh or a thing that's changed that we have more information than we had in december is around regular ed tuition this is our charter choice vocational students uh we think as far as the charter assessment it's going to drop a little bit relative to uh earlier expectations but that's parallels the drop in revenue on the previous page so those kind of wash out with each other uh we think a small increase potentially in choice and vocational uh for next year our special education this depends on the student needs who we have and what they need uh we think those those costs are going to go down a little bit uh and that's helpful to our budget uh and our informational insurance and particularly around our health insurance that's the biggest one in the in the bunch uh we we've got a pretty solid number we've got that on monday of 1.11 percent we factored that in so we factored that in so that's helped uh you know mitigate the inflationary pressure on the budget a little bit because it's not uh we were we were working with about two percent uh estimate before so it's a little less that helps us out our pension obligations have been fixed and so those have remained unchanged from from our december meeting um but all of those things uh you know sort of play push and pull on our our budget and what's available to us and and ultimately what ends up being what we need from each of the member towns for an assessment um next slide please so a few things uh you know an interesting not interesting necessarily uh in a good way but just curiously interesting is that our budget for the state uh really only got settled about a month ago and because of that our actual final final you know chapter 70 uh uh support was finally finalized uh it didn't change really very much from what we had before but nonetheless fiscal 21 is sort of set as far as where we are but what it also sets is what's called minimum minimum contributions and that's a number that we use uh in any of those statutory calculations and so that that getting that number set uh does impact the uh the calculations and did impact the calculations in a small way but not you know it was it was different so if you're looking at this at a slide we'll show it a few minutes compared to what we saw in in december some things are going to change a little bit because those assessments uh and those minimum contribution changes do have an impact on our on our calculations um I think as as we proceed the next year uh we have a couple of items here about uncertainty relative to the kids that we'll have how many we'll have will be is a bit of an open question and how they may wish to interact with our school district may be and is an open question and so statewide uh as I heard described in a meeting yesterday the overall drop in enrollment will this year was uh over 30 000 students statewide that's typically the typical change in the year is a few thousand maybe five at the largest so this is like eight or ten years worth of of student change in a single year statewide um and so that's part of why I think the governor and and the legislators are are thinking about supporting the schools in the broader sense around chapter 70 uh in a similar way as they have in past years even though there was a significant drop in enrollment because I think they feel a number of students are going to return to us um and I think that's true for us as well we had a a little less than five percent drop this year uh in this in the regional school district as far as students and uh you know it's hard to know how many will come back and and it is difficult in in tight economic times to plan for that uh that kind of a change and and the the kinds of changes we might need to make relative to our our instructional model relative to those kids and what what they may choose and what they may need to do relative to their education after our last meeting the school committee had a number of conversations and and directed the district staff to to uh to present a budget with about a million dollars worth of cuts and so what we'll see uh in in the following pages is is what that starts to look like and so uh once we make that million dollars in cuts our operating budget uh for the school district is estimated at thirty two million nine thousand seven hundred seventy seven dollars uh next slide please and so what we see as we look at this year uh that's a point four two percent drop from last year last year was a point oh seven or a very small but but nonetheless still uh you know real uh dollar difference from the from the previous year so the last couple of years we've dropped in actual dollars used and spent on education in our district if you go back a fourth year we had about a million and one hundred thousand dollars in cuts so it's been a tough run as far as uh you know our our school district and our you know budget and and what it is uh able to support uh because we've had a a true decline in real dollars of of support for for our programs and and services that we provide and so next slide please and so I think these next two slides I'll I'll let the yeah I was going to pause here um basically what happens after this slide is we'll get real specific on the proposed reductions and then we'll talk about assessment methods but before we get to the proposed reductions and assessment methods assessment methods excuse me I wanted to pause and see if there were any questions for Doug at this point certainly you can ask at the end of you know kind of the more full presentation but um just wanted to check in with the group and see if there was any questions for Dr. Slaughter um yep and I see Sarah best but in general um don't trust me to see everybody so if you use a raise hand button that would be helpful Sarah best sorry old habits I guess um so I just want to confirm so in the make sure I'm hearing you correctly in the last four years there's been roughly three million dollars worth of cuts so I can answer that one so there was one year that we had a positive variance I know it's shocking so the the four-year average is it was totals to a 2.6 million dollars worth of cuts so we're averaging about 650 000 of cuts to our level service budget each year for the last four years okay thank you so much thanks okay not seeing any other questions uh one nice I'll do a couple slides and then turn it back to you Doug if that's okay um and again just want to remind folks the next couple slides may get a little small on your screen there's two ways to manage that one is to pin there's a little thumbtack if you haven't done it ready to film to click on that for the presentation or double click sometimes depending on your device works to make it larger also this presentation uh is was shared in the chat so if you want to follow along on your own screen but just the slides start getting the nice big letters have one more slides worth of nice font size and then it gets really tiny so I just want to warn people about that that you may want to be I'll talk through everything as well Dr. Slaughter but the nice large numbers and letters their shelf life is one slide so here it is so in order to get to that million dollar reduction in our level services budget we're proposing a total of 15.9 FTE so that's full time equivalent so what that means is in terms of positions we would have just about 16 fewer positions in the regional district than we do currently those reductions are occurring across our organization you know as much as possible we tried to tie them to student enrollment as Dr. Slaughter knows what student enrollment is going to be next year is is a real open question so that creates some challenges in doing that but in general we've had some trending and as other western mass districts have a decline in student enrollment and so we have tried to work with that to make the reductions have as low impact as possible but the reality is we will likely have some increases in class size we'll likely have some fewer elective offer fewer elective offerings and we'll have some reduction in programming that result from these reductions there's no way to tie a million dollars of cuts in 16 positions to declining enrollment and just to speak to that briefly so if we have a declining enrollment of four percent it's not like you can cut four percent of the classes it just means that there are fewer bodies in classes but we're not making widgets we design schedules that are quite fixed so you can't really realize those cuts I know Senator Comerford I just point out it works for many districts in western Massachusetts who have declining enrollment and I've been in conversations with other superintendents and Senator Comerford and Representative Dom on this phenomenon yes you can make some but it's not a one-for-one court like you can't make a one-to-one cut for a decline in enrollment those of you in Shoot Spare and Lever and Pelham who have one teacher per grade level or many one teacher per grade level elementary schools also realize this phenomenon that if you have 18 kids or 16 kids in fourth grade your costs go down very marginally and so that's one of the challenges of declining enrollment and trying to realize reductions based on that we made a very explicit effort to not fill vacancies know where people perhaps retirements were anticipated so the total of RIF which is Reduction Fortress Notices that go to permanent staff members is 1.6 RIFs that's cut across three people to be explicit about it in this proposal and that's both because we like the staff we have we've done a great job hiring our diversity in the last from five years ago down now five years ago between all three districts I worked for we had just a shade over a hundred educators of color or BIPOC educators and we now have 157 and we're committed to that and we reducing that would really take away from the goals of the community as well as the school committee in the district about having a diverse faculty also fiscally it just makes sense you know when when we lay people off we pay unemployment and so you're not actually saving as much as you think you're saving if you go down that road so we did try to take advantage of some natural vacancies to not refill some reorganizations so it's about 16 positions but many fewer than that in terms of actual people getting layoffs that doesn't reduce the impact on students I want to be really clear about that and you know we're talking about adults and finances and then when we talk about students the fact that someone's not laid off but a position is not filled has the exact same impact on the students in our district and we also have non-personnel reductions but when 80 percent of your budgets and people you can't cut a million dollars without looking at the people side of things so I'll talk through this again this is where it gets really small and you may want to click and open a tab with the other one but I'll be talking through all of these positions again the school committee has not they've had this information they have not had it in a public meeting so I just want to let folks know that this is not the school committee hasn't blessed this at all they haven't had a chance to discuss it yet so this is the administration's draft of what it's sending so at the district administration level we have a family center outreach position that's unfilled that position does works particularly on youth empowerment and youth initiatives so that would not be refilled reduction in high school administration about half a position with the reorganization of roles and responsibilities a reduction of interpreters that are used for ELL students with ELL students since we did use the CARES Act to fund a number of Chromebooks and technology we're cutting that from the budget because the federal government paid for it this year so we don't have to put in the budget for next year however at some point that'll have to be recycled through our facilities team we have some positions that we're having a hard time filling and we've consolidated and we're going to have that same model going forward it's a vacant position in food service we're not refilling bilingual psychologists that we're not filling and just we're just going to do just for evaluations not as much as we want that person to do we don't anticipate lots of visitors in person in our schools next year even though we do expect kids to be back and so reducing a reduction position at central office seemed to make sense because we are reducing so many positions there's savings in health insurance and some turnover savings that we're anticipating some reduction in administration shifting it to the Amherst elementary school we have some positions that are shared between two or three of our districts and looking at how we can be more efficient here at the high school level we're looking at just about two position 1.8 positions in the core five which is the world language plus what people think of as a core four so reductions based and that we love it more specifics one students sign up for classes that's the way it works at the high school you can't predict where the reduction would be until students actually register and you know what sections you need to have reduction in paras that's directly tied to reduction in students at the high school level there's an americorp position we really love to work with students who are struggling in an intervention but it was a cut that we need to we felt like we need to make a reduced by a dean at the high school who does kind of support of outreach for students who may be occasionally make bad choices so we'll have to reorganize how we how we support that there's reduction during this one truly due to declining enrollment as well in special education and partial reductions to a clerical position at summit academy which is our alternative day campus which is located at the regional high school site there's a vacant para educator position and we are having an increase in tuition in students from other districts so we feel like we can increase that's it should have been maybe represented a little differently by me i apologize but that's it's new money coming in not a cut to anything at summit so we have students from other communities who want to access the services at summit and we don't accept those students for free we support the it supports the taxpayers of all four communities when we do that at the middle school we'd be looking to reduce a half team which is two general ed teachers there's a vacant art position for next year and not filling that there's also a vacant school adjustment council which is a kind of like a guidance council working with students primarily who have special ed needs so we wouldn't be filling that and reorganizing at the high school we'd be reducing and these are middle school high school positions half of our dance program again not because we don't value the dance but we have a vacancy and then also similarly reducing pe and health at at a little more than half of a position so to summarize these are cuts well not impacting directly the jobs of a tremendous number of educators in our district they will have a direct impact on the experience of students in terms of their class sizes in terms of their elective offerings at the middle school high school level as well as the function of our district so they're very painful to make we try to do our best to again balance many many factors here but to suggest that they you know it would be fair to suggest these won't impact the students in grades seven through 12 significantly and you know you know there'll be a lot of feedback I'm sure on Tuesday night at the school committee the budget hearing about many of these cuts and the impact that many of them will have on our students and short story there's no good way to do this if there was any quote unquote fat to be cut which I don't believe there really was it would have been done over the last couple years when we cut another 2.6 million dollars from our level services budget so this is what we're going to be proposing to the school committee on Tuesday and before we get to the assessments I want to pause and see if there are any questions that any of the community here has about the million dollars and the cuts that are being expressed here okay oh I'm sorry Mandy Jo yeah I I don't know whether this is the correct time to ask this which is why it took me a little bit and it's not in some I guess it's a question but it's also a comment you're talking a lot about the effects this has on people but you know I'm a counselor so I'm not looking at just a school budget and so I want to preface it with we have to deal with all budgets and when I look at the school budget as compared to other school budgets our per student per pupil costs are exceedingly high you know the state average is 16 495 long meadow is which is rated similar to ours is 15 263 per student yet ours is at the region 22 000 plus per student and so you know when that translates into real dollars at the regional level that translates to a difference of about eight million dollars that we're spending in addition in our budget per year at the region level only compared to the state average or long meadow and you know on a percentage wise that's approximately 44 percent higher than long meadows budget for seven to twelve it's a lot of money and so I have a hard time understanding how we are spending so much and are we getting that increase in benefit for that increase in expenses and that's what I don't see in these presentations of what are we getting for that extra eight million dollars that long meadow for example is not getting or that north hampton you know north hampton is not as comparable but that's something that I don't see in these presentations of where is all of that extra money kind of going it's not that we're not funding our schools we are well in some sense you could almost say overfunding them and so that's it's not it's a comment it's a concern of mine um and and I don't see in these presentations are our students performing 40 percent better than long meadow 40 percent better than north hampton are they getting a 40 percent better education or even a 30 percent better education um where is that information and and is it time for us to be looking at our budgets related to that sure so um I'm happy to respond to that so um I don't have it a handy of I could get it to you probably by the end of the meeting with Dr. Slaughter talks again I wonder what the ELL percentage is in long meadow I wonder what the low income percentage is in long meadow I feel very confident that there's not a family center in long meadow I feel very confident that they don't maintain our ELL staffing that we do it here and I also it's a wonderful school district I'm not trying to be criticized long meadow but I think if you're looking for comparables I'm not sure I would choose long meadow as the comparable um and we certainly could become a more traditional school district you know and save money there's no doubt in my mind that we could have larger class sizes and less electives which sort of is starting to what be what's happening and reduce our costs but I think when we're talking about a district that has cut as much as it's cut had literally negative budgets the last two years I think we are trying to do our best to maintain the services that this particular community demands and that other communities have different priorities and that's not a criticism of other communities but I think from my vantage point and what the school committee hears regularly uh is not for less things uh are fewer classes or more students in classes people do not seem comfortable with that in our member communities and and that's not to critique communities that are I think this played out in the Secretary of Education hearings this week at the federal level about class size and whether it's worth the investment I think there's a little legitimate discussion to be had here not at all being critical Mandy Jo of your perspective but what you'd find and we did a purple study Sean remember about six seven years ago is that we have more teachers more para educators than most districts and because of that we have lower class size more electives and more support services than the average district we have a bright program which I could speak an awful lot about for students who are struggling social emotionally most districts in western massachusetts do not have that if you go to eastern massachusetts you know this map you can look at and they're all over the lower all over the place so you know I think we are being responsible we haven't made this level of significant cuts for four years in a row easily and certainly it's something that if the community would like a more traditional school and core sequence it's something we can do and you know I think that's up to the community to ask for and I think if people are hearing that from the community then that should be a conversation that that we have I saw Mr Sullivan had a question our hand up if you matter of his question or a comment yeah I have a question I've been on the regional school committee now for six years and the bulk of that time we've spent focused on the high school and not so much in the middle school and I'm just curious we just added that dance program to the middle school last last year and is that the one that's being removed now yeah it would have I would have impacts at both the middle school and the high school Steve I think I see Andy had his hand up yes I'm sort of following up on where we've been you know I've been watching the school budgets as you know for quite a number of years through my various roles on the old finance committee select board now the council and you know we've had a continuing trend of decreasing enrollments and trying to maintain our program and I was wondering is if we move forward what kind of strategies we might be thinking about in a forward-looking way that would allow us to be creative in trying to maintain a range of program for our students but also being mindful of the fact that as four towns together and with state support that we're just not meeting the increase in costs with available revenue are the things that we've learned from the COVID experience and the remote teaching that might provide lessons in the future when we don't have COVID hanging over our heads but we can learn from those experiences are there things that we can do in sharing with other districts so that there are cross-district programs to defray costs what kind of strategies are out there that we can think about for our future yeah so I think a couple things it's a great question I mean one which doesn't have financial impact but is being studied in terms of the larger COVID piece is around we have because of our COVID schedule we have a later start time at our middle school and high school and so school committee encouraged me to explore whether to make that change and that's been studied for multiple times in my 20 years in the district you know so I think there are similar types of things unfortunately COVID only costs more for schools I saw a school committee the other night just commit that they're not doing any remote learning for anyone next year because running parallel systems which may be what some districts are thinking about next year doing in person for those who want and and remote for those who don't it's really inefficient and it costs a lot of money we have some federal support coming in and that'll help us next year with PPE and things of that nature but I think one of the challenges that we have and we'll get to it probably on the next slide is that regional schools in general are struggling right there's regional schools that are deciding whether they want to stay regional at this regional districts whether they want to stay regional because as money's gotten tight for towns across the Commonwealth and these four towns are no different than anyone else that you have a lot of fixed costs and some real challenges that the assessment methodology question is something that really hampers the ability to be efficient and particularly in split districts like ours where the minimum contribution at the elementary level doesn't have a resulting it has an impact on the region but it's not actually reflected because they're two different districts in other words if minimum contribution goes it can go up at the region and down at the elementary level for all of our member towns in a K to 12 region I'm not talking about trying to regionalize don't get me wrong but it is just explaining some of the conundrum and the inefficiency in our system we don't get the balance so it might be a little better at the elementary and a little harder at the region in K to 12 districts they're able to balance those and we're not so we end up with a lot of tension financially as a result of that and when you see the next slide you're going to see two towns paying you know on any almost you know any of the models that were being discussed at the last four town meeting two towns paying well above zero percent and two towns paying below and so that makes it very very challenging at the regional level to have predictable budgets year in year out it makes it very hard for the towns to have predictable budget school assessments you're in and you're out so I'm sorry I'm in the bearer of bad news today I did a lot of that the last 24 hours I think but about this with staff but the reality is we have an inefficient model in general and year after year we continue to have the same conversation and it makes it very very challenging to have predictable budgets year in year out uh see Sean and actually I saw Kathy and then Sean I believe hi I just um you know I don't want to jump into curriculum which is much more what you all think about in schools but just building on some of what Andy was just saying and then Mandy's question have we to what extent have we or could we explore um a relationship with Amherst college and UMass that for math science and language courses some of what they're teaching to their incoming freshmen could be offered to our juniors and seniors um when my kid was in the high school he actually took math courses at UMass and a friend of his took physics courses at Amherst um and it was and I don't whether that can be in lieu of something like an AP course so that you don't reduce and then secondly on the dance program and this is just something I know from um my link to New York City there's a very innovative um math engineer person who graduated from MIT who's a dancer and she's doing STEM for dance classes which combines STEM knowledge and dance and cross fertilizes and there may be grant programs for innovative programs like that so you're again you're you're getting a twofer on it that kids who want to dance or learning STEM and STEM kids are learning how to dance and um it's particularly been geared to minority students uh Hispanic and um uh black who don't take those classes or are fearful of it and pulls them in and it's got a very high success rate of keeping people in school and having them change what their aspirations are so I just think you know there are grant programs out there that might for some of the things we're reducing um it's not a substitute for putting it in the budget but might supplement thank you anything like that you know please send to me and Doug or get sent to me and I can get it on this has been a year we've been incredibly successful with grants um and we want to keep that momentum rolling so please send any grants that you see anyone on the call sees please send them to me and we'll look at it and we've got a good system going and we've gotten literally hundreds of thousand dollars in grants and a variety of topics from mental health to food services here with it's been a good year that way Sean and then Peter are you talking about me Mike I thought I saw your hand go up but maybe not I got knocked out and then joined back in so I think that's what it was but I'll just make a quick point um just because there might be some new members that are here to this this four-time meeting um the region has you know done two has spent a lot of time exploring cost saving measures in the past three or four years we've done multiple regionalization studies um the region did uh you know explored consolidation of the high school and middle school and so you know my recollections there wasn't a ton of support either from the the towns or from uh from town families you know into those different uh options but I know the region has explored some pretty significant cost save cost reduction measures um you know probably the two biggest ones that can be explored so um I don't know if there's more to do on any of those Mike um but just want everyone to know that the region have been doing stuff to try to save costs yeah thanks Sean and and uh I'll comment briefly on that and I'll get to you Peter if that's humanry for a second so sorry to call on you when you were not raising your hand but I appreciate your comments Sean um yeah so we explored you know this came up in in this meeting a couple years ago you know could seven through twelve fit the high school at the time we started a year and a half ago or two years ago it would have had to have been a major expansion uh and the moment you have to have an expansion then the whole rest of the building has to be outfit with a number of upgrades and the number got big really quickly and was an eight-digit number six great to the middle school was actually something that you know the town of Amherst may explore um in coming because in coming months because that was seen as a doable uh a cost neutral or a cost beneficial model actually um so you know there is that piece we've also moved some of the Academy would close that building move move that to the high school which is saving a hundred thousand dollars a hundred thousand dollars every single year uh because of the efficiency that's been realized in that so we have been looking at cost saving measures that don't affect students as directly um but you know there's only so many well as you can times you can go to that well and it starts drying up Peter yes thank you so um yeah I just wanted to say that the point raised earlier about you know what what are we getting for the extra money spent with regards to um per pupil spending I think is an excellent question and it's exactly the kind of question um that towns should be asking about especially when schools are asking to to continue funding um during a very challenging budget time to say the least um but you know the the point I would I would want people to consider as as they're as we're all trying to strike this balance is it's very difficult to quantitatively extract what value you're getting out of a school budget in in a in a quantitative fashion I'll just use a group that Dr. Morris didn't mention that increases our cost per student which is special education so you know anywhere from one in five to one in six kids or on an IEP and we make a value decision as a community and a group of communities to invest in in district programs for students with medium level intensive needs for students with high level intensive special needs we have a co-teaching program where inclusion is is a value in which we want students with significant um special needs or behavioral needs in the same classroom as they're normally developing peers um instead of just putting them in a resource room which which would be which would be um you know legal um we we make a decision that we want professional development for staff who don't work directly with um uh special ed uh students as their primary job so that when they are included they're they're able to access that and we do the same thing for um uh single level of resource um for uh investment in students uh who were English is not their first language and for students who are coming from um economically disadvantaged backgrounds for students who are coming from trauma trauma is a major new uh and it unfortunately expanding um aspect of of the student profile coming into our district and we make a choice that's not legally required um to invest significantly uh for student services at at every level for inclusion and for professional development for staff all of that investment no student populations produce a very high level of qualitative value that's not going to show up in MCAS scores it's not going to show up um and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't measure it it doesn't mean that those questions aren't valuable to be asked but uh this all comes back to the fact that like Dr. Morris said this isn't widgets and you can't just run the spreadsheet and say you know is the school budget efficient or not um the end of the day you know Tracy Novick if you follow her great state level advocate for education is fine of saying a budget is what we value and it's not to say that everybody here doesn't value high level public schools but but at the end of the day that that those are the investments and we should still be going over this budget with a fine-toothed comb to extract the efficiencies like Mr. Mangano mentioned but that we've been doing um but at the end of the day you know we're not going to get to a point where we say this is the dollar and this is why that dollar results in quantitative value it's it's it's a different thing when we're talking about school budgets so I see two hands up and then I three hands up I'm gonna think I'm gonna if Kathy has another comment I'll ask her to hold it um I just want to there's another part which probably people here worry are interested in rather which is assessments so I'm happy to have a couple more questions but I think if we go home and no one has assessments to talk about then we probably won't feel like it was a successful meeting today um so Bob and then George and then we'll move on Bob are you oh you gotta I think you have to unmute Bob it should be at the bottom a little microphone button that probably is red and you want to put it on there you go thank you Bob yeah there we go I just wanted to make a comment and perhaps ask a question uh it seems to me that uh my my understanding is that there's been a long term uh decline in enrollment in the region over time and I wanted to just elucidate one point which is a follow-up uh what Andy Steinberg and Mandy said which is uh that you know uh making adjustments in the in the organization making structural changes in the organization that reflect the declining enrollment is really not the same as a cut in my I think that has to be made clear it's just an adjustment to changing reality I know it's very difficult I know that you're not making widgets I know that institutional change is extremely hard particularly when you're trying to contract a budget and you have a lot of people involved and dependent on the budget and who feel genuinely that it increases resources will increase their ability to do a good job and so forth but it's important for us as financial officers to be mindful of the cost per student and other other metrics that we can use to adjust to a say what's happening here I think that calling a cut an adjustment you made that's based on enrollment and I'd like to see the long-term enrollment numbers at some stage uh is not the same as a cut and it should be clear that it's not a cut it's just an adjustment and spending reflecting underlying reality uh and ultimately long-term structural change might be the offing that's also very difficult that's what Sean was referring to I think uh but the the main driver that really is uh sort of the elephant the room from me here in this budget is the salary increase of whatever it is over four percent uh I wonder is that been on the table is something to discuss this year that could somehow reduce the stressors on this budget for services thank you Bob appreciate appreciate your thoughtful comments and George yeah Mike just very quickly really just echoing Bob's comment when I think about a budget where 80 percent of it is involved with personnel and I look at the fiscal 22 budget and the one-line item that stands out I know it's a projection you don't know what the real numbers will be but you see a 4.2 percent increase in salaries and that's the vast amount of it's what uh 17 million I mean it's a it's a huge amount of the budget so um that's something that just concerns me deeply that that kind of increased when you're looking at all the rest of the line items are zeroed out or in a negative basically and yet we see a 4.2 percent increase in salaries um I know it's a projection but that's something that deeply concerns me thank you sure and uh before I get to Ron with the last comment before I transition I'll just make a brief comment on that that um I think all teacher you know public school um teacher contracts have step increases in Massachusetts are the vast majority of them and and um so when we see that dollar amount you're right to call it out Bob and George um as something that's a major factor it there's no doubt it is um that's really you know to look at a zero um is a really different thing than public schools are able to do because whatever the COLA that costs a living increase the step increase which about half the staff get contributes to that increase in salaries so um just being cautious because you know negotiation we don't have contracts for next year with our staff and want to be very conscious of not negotiating in public but I just want to describe what is in that number so that it's clear it's not a a 4 percent raise that we that that folks are assuming um and Ron you have the last comment if you'd like to make it before we go to assessments uh just to indicate that uh the CPI for the last three years has been 1.8 percent for the previous three years have been 1.7 percent and I understand your comment about the step increases thank you Ron so I'm going to turn this back over to Doug who is going to show two charts again this is going to be small font um and this one is kind of showing that some of the historical pieces uh and then uh we'll take a look at some options for next year so Doug I'm gonna just because it's already almost 10 o'clock uh and everyone has this presentation if you could just sort of describe what this is instead of going into details because I think I want to make sure that the talents have enough time to describe the options that we're looking at for the next fiscal year absolutely I'll just point out basically three things on this on this chart one is uh you'll notice across the top is the description of the different assessment methods we've used over the last several years and also in that same sort of general top section you'll see how our uh sort of overall budget has changed over that same time period what I'll point out at the bottom of the screen is the uh average you know the five-year rolling average is uh for each town is listed across the years and then at the very bottom the very last slide on the on the sheet is the desi enrollment so if you go to the state website look at the the uh October enrollment numbers which is is part of what they use for for the purposes of chapter 70 and that sort of thing and the reason why those differ by a significant amount is the the the five-year rolling average is based on our uh the students were financially responsible for and the October number uh that's at the very bottom of the screen uh is indicating more sort of kids that are actually in the in the building with us and so if you look across those two there's a there's a bit of a difference there and part of that speaks to our ability to keep kids in our district as our overall population of kids has declined over the last few years uh our our enrollment in the building has not changed as significantly until this last year um and so they've been small decreases uh over the last couple years in our actual enrollment in the building and then we had a much more significant drop this year as did almost every school district so that those are the things I'll point out for you to look at across those those years and you can see the different methodologies we've used um and so I think the only other thing I'll say and this is actually a preface to the next slide which if you want to go ahead and switch that slide uh Dr. Morse that's fine uh when we talk about a uh the uh statutory method uh you know that uses the what's called the minimum contribution to do the calculation we're using that um and we're using uh that is applied to our overall you know sort of assessment that we need any that is above that minimum contribution is uh by definition our regional agreement method which is a five-year rolling average is used to cover the rest of of that budget so when we're using a percentage of of the uh statutory method we're taking that raw number of what uh each each town's uh minimum contribution is multiplying it by that percentage and using that piece as the basis and then the remainder of our budget is then assessed uh via our our five-year rolling average um and so it's not you know it's not a situation where you know if we're using a 45% method the other uh 55% is is the regional assessment method uh it's it's a little different than that it's a it's a more complicated unfortunately uh calculation than that but what we have on this slide and and I actually put colors across the bottom so we weren't you know trying to for yes our way through the the coloring and getting hung up on that um so I put colors along one bottom to reference the different uh options that are available to us uh just to orient you the far right is the regional agreement method that's a five-year rolling average of of student uh enrollment and that that's not just kids in our building that's the full financially responsible enrollment number um immediately to the left of that is this the fully statutory method which uses a single years uh minimum contributions to do the calculation and then the other columns are progressively different amounts of statutory method to support the budget and then the residual with our five-year rolling average um and so uh we have our current method uses 45% that's the left most column and we progress up through to 100% uh as as the options there and then the impact that you guys are going to want to look at is the bottom of that uh the bottom four rows of of that of that chart where each of your particular assessments are are drawn out in detail relative to uh the overall amount to be assessed um so I think I'll I'll stop there and let you guys take a moment to to read that uh detail a little bit more closely and then potentially post questions that you have about that um I saw Bethany I think your hand you might have been up a slide ago but I just want to I saw your hand go up I didn't want to interrupt Dr. Slaughter but did you have a comment or question you wanted to make Bethany yeah um first off Dr. Slaughter thank you for including this additional information there are a few members from the regional committee that asked for it the other night and you've done a beautiful job with it it paints um for me very it just fills out the picture of what's going on and what's going what happened for a number of years um in terms of declining enrollment what I would be interested in knowing at some point is um about the charter numbers and the choice out over those five years as well or six years here um because I think that helps too I think one of the things that we in Amherst and and the surrounding districts have is the pressure of charter schools location of them um and some of our programming in the region is a response to that so we have that that added pressure in Amherst specifically to work through that so I'm just curious about those numbers and I know that it is very um it is a very real thing the declining enrollment around here so I know those choice numbers are not going to make up that difference of what happened 10 or 15 years ago as to what's happening today but um that might fill out the picture a little bit more um I'm not asking for that today I realize you probably don't have those numbers on hand but just that charter um especially has an impact in Amherst and that we have responded to that yeah I can just share briefly the overview is that our charter numbers have flattened so they were going up pretty significantly in the last two three years we've seen a minor decline or flattening of those numbers um and you know we're seeing that at some of our sending just elementary districts as well so we're hoping that that flattening isn't just a regional trend it's actually going to be reflected in the numbers that we have in the Amherst elementary schools I'll say that that that numbers went down in Pelham elementary school that numbers went down of charter out so if we can they have good experiences to keep them in the district they hit middle school and high school hopefully that pretends good things in the future the the other thing I will add is on that on that historical slide that preceded the one that's on screen if you look at that at the bottom you kind of get a sense of it um you know it's it's a combination of vocational charter choice in in the five-year averages but what you see is the overall enrollment that we're financially responsible for is dropping around 2 per cent per year over the last five or so years whereas our our sort of in-district in-person kids are only dropping in the one percent district one percent per year which means uh you know there's an overall decline in you know in kids to be educated that's one piece of it but the other piece is that we're retaining more kids and few are going to uh to those other options that are available to them so I'm just going to do a bit of a time check it's 10.05 now um so what I want to suggest is we'll do five minutes with any questions about the assessment methodology is being presented uh and then by 10 after I'd like to make sure that all the towns are able to get into um kind of spaces I you know and be able to talk about this you know I do want to comment a bit about um where we came up with these uh Doug you sort of did it it's okay if you expand on it a little bit so the guidance we've received from revised guidance um that's uh guided this uh um Leverett uh described in I think November or December uh that a maximum of a 1.5 percent increase um Amherst revised theirs and a 1.5 percent increase was the guidance received from the town of Amherst uh and Pelham and Sheetsbury we received guidance from Sheetsbury orally at the last meeting that moving towards the statutory method was a really critical piece for the town of Sheetsbury and the town of Pelham um I won't speak for Mr. Tricky but I think indicated a willingness to try to work with the other towns to make sure the regional system continued to be a strong educational that the education that they've since received continued to be strong so we we plotted in a million dollars of cuts because that with the feedback we received from the school committee was not more than a million dollars of cuts um you can see that there's a number of different assessment methodologies put out there 45 percent is where we are currently and then we got requests from different towns for different so thank you Doug and I love the number of the naming system at the bottom for colors um sure Sean is oh shucks saying that he didn't think of this uh five years ago um and that's really helpful um but you know we're hoping to receive feedback on again uh what towns can do um within the constraints that the school committee has shared with us um in terms of the budget um amounts that we have there Ron um and you know I think you can see your hand up I'd like to hear from John Tricky his reaction to the assessment for the town of Pelham so I would just I'd probably hold because I would recommend that maybe you meet as a town of Pelham and talk about it and I promise I'll call on Mr. Tricky first how about that Ron uh when the towns come back uh you know but if people have questions I think there's a good time for clarifying questions but I want to make sure that that folks do get into meet with their member towns um and before they come back with more specific thought um James I think I see your hand up uh James you're still muted I'm sorry thanks thanks Michael just a quick question for Doug the farthest right column uh could you describe that or explain that a little bit what the methodology is that goes into the green column uh thank you so that far right column is is the regional agreement method and and what we use is a five-year rolling average and so of our uh of the uh total student count so it's it's the financially responsible because that's uh the full number of students at each of our communities is sending into the into the public education realm um and so uh we compile an FTE basically uh at the end of each fiscal year of the kids that are in our four communities uh and so the most recent number in that average is the end of fiscal 20 which was the end of last school year and then the the four preceding that are are averaged uh to create uh a percentage that we are applying to that to that uh assessment uh that overall assessment that we need to have so it's a fairly straightforward it makes it a uh same dollar per kid uh payment that each community is paying is the simple way to describe that so once we get that that uh percentage then each each community is paying the same amount per child uh for for the kids that they have hey any other questions folks would like to offer not seeing any we're one minute early that's always good so what I'd like to oh Ron is your that was from earlier I'm guessing okay um so I have the break I have the breakout rooms for Amherst and Leverett they shared them with me um so for those member towns I imagine that Sheetsbury and Pelham have figured out their own breakout rooms and shared it differently um but I didn't have it so I can't post it here you can definitely put it in the chat if there's any confusion uh it's 10 10 now uh I my instinct is to try to come back in 15 minutes uh because I think people are going to need to come back and we need to have a group discussion so um I'm going to push the groups to try to really be back at 10 25 knowing that we may have another time to caucus before we close up shop today but I think it's really important that we really have a robust conversation after the groups get together and what I'll pledge is if we need to get back in groups we'll do that and we can fly through capital or even you know do that at a different time or in different format but I want to make sure that we really get to have this conversation now so 10 10 now I'll see everybody back here at 10 25 uh Amherst and Leverett breakout rooms are there and uh for again for Pelham and Sheetsbury either people know them if you want to put them in the chat anyone can add anything in the chat and I'll see in 15 thanks everybody um so as I said before to Mr. Menino that I would come back and start with Pelham and Mr. Tricky uh for his thoughts about uh this us method or anything else he wants to share okay can you hear me we had a problem we had a problem uh with the finance committee zoom meeting in the fact that the video worked for me but the voice did not so after many attempts at trying to connect and even that didn't work well we really didn't have a chance to discuss it openly but let me give you my thoughts about the situation for Pelham if you all remember last year when we were putting together 21 budget we had a budget in place in March for all the towns that were basically in agreement but then those numbers all dropped in June before the final budgets were passed so if we look at what Pelham was really looking at last year as a starting point for this year we were around I think 918,000 so the jump from jump from the current 891 to 45 percent of 922 is basically close to what we would have spent this year anyway so I look at that number as the starting point to where Pelham has to increase um and therefore everything uh is not a major upper for the town um and so therefore if we continue along looking at the percentages moving towards statutory um I think Pelham would be very uh happy to go with happy we don't want to spend any more money we have to but we could handle the 55 or 65 percent uh average moving toward the 100 statutory the issue that I do uh look at for all towns is if you look at the three small towns in the region all of our overall town assessment uh assessments of the towns have been going up steadily and especially for shoot spree and leverage over the last five years you've seen substantial increases and we saw a shoot sprees tax rate and um leverage went down shoot sprees tax rate went down noticeably Pelham went down some and Amherst went up so overall it sounds like the assessments in the towns are getting more expensive which in that case may have started to affect how the eqv is going to start to look in the future years just something to keep an eye on I would say Pelham uh would be able to handle the 55 percent or 65 percent thank you very much Sean uh we'll keep with today's theme of going in reverse alphabetical order so leverage would be next hi this is Julie um yeah we talked about it I mean obviously as we've said over and over again we prefer the regional school method as being the fairest but given the willing to compromise we would be very satisfied with staying with the 45 percent if we have to go to 55 we will we really absolutely do not want to go beyond that um you know out of concern for you know Amherst and Pelham also um we all have you know tax um tax cap problems coming down the road and we've worked really hard to stave it off as much as possible um so I don't think that any town has uh you know a better stance in terms of that but that's where we're at we really want to stick with the 45 um under duress we'll go to 55 thank you Julie um for Amherst that you win or Andy it is okay thank you although I certainly ask Andy to join um Amherst is very very concerned we have a regional agreement that regional agreement was made many many years ago and it's beginning to feel like it's on the back of Amherst and so we really are very vehemently saying we can do the 45 we really cannot do anything else and we absolutely do want to make sure that there is a study done that looks at cost and efficiency and creative ways to bring overall cost of education in line and I think I will read it at that for the moment is anybody from Amherst like to add the only thing I would add to that is uh just to explain that piece I think the way we found was that today's four town meeting the first part of it had a really healthy one we really appreciated and we don't want to wait until next year's four town meeting cycle starts continue that discussion that we really like to see that discussion continue as a four town discussion and happen off of the cycle of the budget so that we can move forward with um those value discussions that we were having earlier thank you indy um shootsberry i'm not sure who would like to speak for shootsberry hi uh michael jim walton i'm representing shootsberry and the finance committee great thanks thanks um so much is this reverse did you say reverse alphabetical or we started with reverse reverse plus shootsberry well we started with shootsberry then went palom and next time if we go around we'll start with levered and we'll make our way around all right i got it i got the system all right first uh john made a comment regarding a lower tax rate he saw the most recent version of shootsberry um a bunch of that was a one time uh out of free cash to address some issues that we had come in into this year uh so we still are running up against our limit or our our limit there uh on a overall annual basis and dug i just like to thank you for adding that 75 percent statutory option to your options here so that's the purple the purple option you added in here um and just uh just going back to the shootsberry position i'd say we've been quite consistent with our position over quite a few years and that is to get the full statutory uh within a reasonable amount of time and that means a full statutory with a five-year roll on average uh we've made some progress we've made it to 45 percent last year uh our objective is to get the full statutory and it continues to be that same objective to get there within a couple years and uh and we think we need to make significant progress getting there in this fiscal year 22 uh we continue to support the five-year roll on average which takes out quite a bit of the volatility in this and just just a general comment we here at shootsberry we continue to place a lot of value on the relationship we have with the other three towns and and the importance of this regional school and what has brought for us in our kids and i think that's really the reason we have been i think from a shootsberry perspective quite uh supportive with a gradual progress uh toward the statutory method with the twist of the five-year roll on average uh statutory is working for most towns a vast majority of towns and cities in in uh in massachusetts and and we think it can work work here too thanks okay so uh what our typical practice is a little awkward with the virtual but is that we hear from the towns and then we give an opportunity um if there wants to be inter-town dialogue so to speak so i'm not going to end the dialogue i know we heard from each town but i want to open it up to see if there are additional comments that anyone in this group would like to make now that all four towns have opportunity to share their perspective and their opinion oh i'm sorry were you not done i apologize jim if i cut you off yeah just just one other comment we feel we need to in order to get to where we think we've needed to be for quite some time uh we need to be at the 75 statutory going into this fiscal year 22 that's that's the final comment yep jim sorry i did i'm you know there was this time lag on these things so i apologize if i started speaking no no no no problem thanks yep um so if people again want to jump in please just you know use that raise hand feature please um if they'd like to speak i'll try my best to keep things in order of our hands go up um jet i think your hand was up first thank you i i would just like to say um particularly for shoot spirit to hear we in levitt are looking to go in the exact opposite direction uh and they're looking for the regional agreement to uh be our end goal as opposed to statutory one of the concerns is that if we go towards statutory the only way we can really get there is by reducing the total overall budget or else you'll wind up uh sinking amour so to speak and that's why that doesn't make sense to move in that direction so we are asking not to go there and to stay at the 45 uh 35 percent would be better but we're not even putting that on the table at this point because of uh covid and this is not the time to fight is the time to figure how to make things work as smoothly and easily as possible thank you thanks jet i think i see george george your hands up i believe yes um so i just want to remind everyone that um we've had numerous working groups to review the statutory method and all the other methods and talk about what's really best for the region in the most recent group determined that the five-year rolling average on the statutory was a reasonable method an achievable method and ticked all the boxes of all the criteria that we were interested in in making sure that we had an assessment that we could live in live with for the long term so that we don't have to spend so much time on these assessment conversations so i do want to remind everyone that we've really moved away from the five-year rolling average and i don't know why we we continue to talk about it as a method because i disagree with it i think there's people in other towns that do the other thing is this difference in dollars at the 45 to the 100 method to me seems really small relative to the numbers that we've dealt with in the past and the variances that we've seen in the past and honestly i was encouraged by what i saw here in that the incremental increase of some 45 to 55 to 65 to 75 seemed very achievable maybe not in this year going to 100 does not make sense this year we agree but i personally think that when things start to get back to whatever normal is going to look like and i think i'm also curious to know if doug would be able to tell it well to finish my thought i think these numbers are achievable and my last thought is i am curious to know how covid and the loss of revenue that we all know that america's has faced and had to manage how is that going to i think john said it how is that going to affect their eqv how is that going to affect their minimum contribution in the years to follow um i'd be i think that's something we probably want to wrap our hands around anyways heads around thank you very much thanks george i saw julie then andy uh i also was a part of the regional assessment group and basically we compromised with shoots berry um levered has never wanted to keep progressing towards the 100 statutory method i don't think amherst has either um we cannot maintain the level of services in this school if we do that because amherst for one cannot afford it and neither could elaborate thanks julie uh andy i saw your hand next yes um i mean i think the reason we keep coming back to the uh regional assessment method of the five-year average of uh enrollment is that that's what we all agreed to when we joined the region we had a compact at 40 years ago and we joined the region and so it has has a value that in a principle that served us well for many years there's been fluctuation in how it's affected towns have been times when amherst is paying more and times that you we pay less i think that's probably true for most towns because there is a rolling average factor into it um the reality is that you know the comment was made that the uh set the statutory assessment method works for number of regions that may be true it does not work for our region each region is unique we have a we're in an unusual situation with one large community with a huge number of additional pressures on its budget that are not borne by other towns and uh that um tend to make it a very different reality for us and uh i think that the point that julie made that if we continue on a path where the end result is the statutory method it is going to destroy this region because it's going to destroy the quality of education there is no way that we could maintain the kind of budget that this region needs and uh and get to that end result uh is that bob next i just want to make a couple comments one i think andy's right that's unique uh region amherst regional schools a unique uh region but every a region of course is unique and it's not unusual for us the anchor town and a region to be larger than the uh the satellites however i'd like to say that amherst also has resources that other towns do not have in terms of their tax base and i know it's a very difficult year for them but in terms of the statutory method in chute spree town politics i just think we all should understand that this is a movement that came from grassroots that people felt that we paid approximately two and a half million dollars more than we would have paid if we had adopted statutory uh when it came out which was many years after the region was formed by the way uh but and it's a progressive uh instrument that does it some leveling of ability to pay uh and we all support progressive initiatives and the chute spree town meeting uh is well very likely to be upset if we bring to them uh we show them no progress towards this goal which has been uh uh expressed by the town in town meeting over the last several years so just so you know uh this budget does have to be approved as a volunteer uh by every town for i mean this assessment method has to be approved rather by every town and chute spree town meeting may not approve this which would then cause it to revert to statutory uh by law so let's not forget that aspect of this thing that Mandy Jo sorry Mandy Jo's hand next and i think Becky's hand i think is up as well so when i recognize Mandy Jo and then Becky thank you and um i'm with the Amherstown council i've been having troubles figuring out who's with what town so i thought i'd identify that um the regional agreement method as Andy said was agreed to a while ago but one thing that rings true with me about that method is that the per pupil cost for every pupil and every town is the same then it seems the most fair you know and and one thing i would like to ask Doug and them is with all these other methods we don't see which towns are paying more per pupil we had a discussion earlier today about per pupil costs and where are they with anything other than the full regional agreement method Amherst or Pelham you know you look at some of these i don't know which ones would which are paying a lot more per pupil than chutesbury or leverant and that seems unfair fundamentally to me given what we agreed to when we entered this region and i think that's where some you know where um leverant and Amherst are potentially now really concerned is part of that issue is it doesn't seem fundamentally fair to have some towns in this region paying more per pupil costs than other towns and that might be a significant number and i think as Andy said it could be something that leads to this disintegration of the union or some real problems with this this regional school district i also think and and i'll say the same thing um you know what um chutesbury's you know people are saying about where town meeting might be might ring the same for if it's forced to go that way with Amherst and i can't speak for the whole town council but but you know we all know that one town can can you know derail all agreements and that also for for Mindy and Joe our senator and representative that are on this call that is really one of the things that that gives any one town and outsize influence especially when you look at this peach statutory method when one town can say oh hey if we don't vote for it we've just saved a hundred plus thousand dollars or whatever and so that's a that's almost a disincentive to try and negotiate and i just wanted to put that out there that that some of the problems we face are due to where things default at the state level if we can't reach an agreement but i also want to say we've had school committees that have been and reticent to do anything other than what is contractually obligated particularly this year and agreement and yet we've got towns asking us to go against that agreement this year regarding the assessment method and i think we need to be consistent with we have a regional agreement we should stick by that agreement so i'm just going to note the time it's um i'll get you Becky i promise i won't forget you um it's 1051 uh we'll take a couple more brief comments um i want to just note that the tension between ability to pay and uh equal per pupil is not new to many of us on the call i'm not saying it's not real for everyone on the call but um you know it is there are real differences of opinion that are being highlighted and i just want to note that they're you know i think the challenge that we will face as a district is when we get competing visions from competing towns um that'll be a topic the school committee i'm sure will discuss on Tuesday night when they have a budget hearing but um i just want to highlight that that this is a it's not the first time uh that we're hearing these divisions and i'm glad we're hearing them again because i'd much rather than be voiced than them to be silenced and people not able to just discuss these differences so um i'm sorry Dorothy i i said three and i'm gonna i'm gonna stick to that because we have to talk about capital um and Doug will do that in five minutes or less which is maybe satisfying to some and not for others but Becky's been very patient so i apologize Becky and i did not forget about you thank you um thank you um i am incredibly disheartened by the line that Amherst has taken we have uh worked at least eight years consistently and patiently to move towards the direction of ability to pay and equity um there were finally some acknowledgments um in the regional uh committees that were formed um and this um abrupt dismissal of those efforts i find shocking um and as far as a practical matter goes um the equity issue has been out there for a long time and the denial that it exists is um is not okay um the understanding of the statutory method needs to be fully um researched because again with a new crop of people and a new form of government in Amherst the folks that are making these decisions and coming to the table did not go through that process and go through you know the step by step acknowledgments of how communities work and how they differ um practically speaking shoots very uh was at over 24 dollars per thousand um in FY 20 we managed to bring that down for a reprieve by using free cash um we can't sustain that we can't do with that much longer so practically speaking we'll be up against the 25 so you know within a year if we don't repeat that kind of um methodology so the ability to even physically entertain increases going back towards this um the regular agreement that has was you know been argued about for the last 20 years uh will put shoots very over 25 in the first year you go in that direction so our ability to address your change in direction you know just physically and uh theoretically does not exist so um you need to add that into the calculations thank you very much thanks i only see one hand left and and uh we'll take the comment um melody um just want to note that it's 1054 so if we could try to wrap this part up with this last comment and then a dug will um breeze through capital we'll probably just show the slide and see if there's any questions just because of time sorry melody to keep you waiting thank you and i will be very quick i'm brand new to shoots for his finance committee and i just want to make an observation that the regional system seems like a level tax and that's never fair to uh that always disadvantages poorer people so um that's all i wanted to throw out there thank you okay so i'm just going to conclude this part by saying um we're clearly not at a place where all four towns have agreement um i'm sure the regional school committee will discuss this on Tuesday night and identify next steps whether it's another four town meeting in coming weeks or what they choose to do i won't make i won't hazard guesses but i will hazard a guess that it'll come up in conversation and that um probably on behalf of that committee i'll reach back out to members after that discussion for next steps that people take because we're not leaving today with um what seems like a consensus way to path forward so dug um again i'm just going to i think i may just roll with this because i'm already up um if that's okay with you um on capital uh we are really going to try to end on time which means it'll be very brief you all have this presentation the link is in the chat um and i can put it in if anyone didn't get it or you can email me and i can send it to you but in terms of capital all right there we go so um a lot of these are just things that we delayed last year we took a number of things off capital uh given covid last spring uh knowing that there was so much uncertainty so we have some work to do with the walk-in cooler uh some unit ventilators need to be replaced exhaust fans all these things exhaust fans in particular you know we've done a thorough analysis of the ventilation in all of our buildings uh in all of our all of my districts and so when you do that you find things that need to be replaced and so there are some exhaust fans that if they're under the useful life they were on the original capital plan but now we know more specifically that they need to be replaced um if we had time Steve Sullivan from shoot spray we talk a lot about the design work for a girl's locker room but we're not going to do that but it's sorely needed um some data center upgrades um there's some parking lot work that needs to happen um some american disability act we had a an audit done two years ago of our um accessibility and we are legally obligated as well as ethically obligated to take forward steps in terms of improving the accessibility of our buildings um there's a pump room project and and you know you set a capital budget and then you find out more when you start actually looking at it so there's some additional funds needed to complete that and district-wide um just asbestos management you know federally has taken a next step up level up and that's a good thing and so we want to make sure we're complying with all the asbestos management we need to do um and there's a potential renewable energy study with the town of Amherst looking about how to um lower energy costs long term and so this could be a partnership between the region and the town um about what solar um canopies or where we would put them that would get the most bang for our buck and have a good payback so we need to study that um in the slides again I'm not going to go over it specifically nor is Doug right now because of time there's a proposal on the related debt um and then the debt schedule going out all the way until FY 28 so again we can come back to that clearly this isn't the last conversation I imagine we'll have um before the budgets get passed but um I see there's one hand up so Mandy Jo um you can comment and then I think I'll conclude the meeting after Mandy Jo just two quick questions I don't expect answers to any of them today and one of which will come back to joint capital planning I think will be more relevant on Thursday when Amherst joint capital planning meets um where one of them might be able to what are these HVAC um could some of the HVAC capital leads that are listed be paid for with potential cares COVID relief disaster relief funding um and if so how does that work into that that's the one question I don't expect an answer to and the other one is the renewable energy study says with the town of Amherst these are my understanding is they are um for non-town owned property their regional own property so what would um how would that partnership work in terms of Amherst taking on debt that might only benefit the region in terms of regional capital and what type of you know reduction or not in Amherst capital payments might that entail if Amherst pays for more than its regional assessment portion of studies like that so I get to I'll get to say I will give you an answer uh it's an answer I used to give a lot I don't get to do it that much as you should really talk to Sean he will be the person that has the answer to those questions so uh it's fun for me to say that again so but really good questions really important ones and I think the CARES Act you know Sean's really managed that for the town and worked well with the other towns in the region on that uh with Doug so I would start with Sean and he can connect with Doug and and get the answers to those things um so it's 10 59 so we are gonna end on time I want to thank everyone for coming I want to acknowledge that there were some really strong disagreements uh about a path forward and I think you know what I want to say is that I'm really glad that people were to express them uh obviously we would love if there was a conclusion that everyone could walk away feeling like oh yeah we know the plan that cool they didn't happen today at the same time we we heard from lots of towns we heard some different opinions I imagine this will be a topic at many boards and committees meetings over the next couple weeks uh certainly the school committee on Tuesday uh but beyond that and we will be back in touch on next steps but thanks everyone for coming today hope you enjoy the rest of your Saturday and thank you so much and I'll just assume that all boards and committees are adjourned so if people are okay with that then I think we can roll with it have a good rest of the weekend everybody thank you