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October 22, 2025 – School Committee – Video & Transcript

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October 22, 2025 - School Committee

 
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It is 6, 12 p.m. Welcome to the Wayland School Committee meeting on October 22nd, 2025. We have Betsy Cullen, Erin Muller, and Erin Gibbons, and we have David Fleischman, Betsy Gabron, Kirsteen Pedersen, and Ronnie Kessler present, and we are being reported by WICAN. Who is here for public comment? Two? I'm going to give you three minutes. Just give me one second before you start. Can somebody time for me? Yes. If you can just keep it respectful and on purview for the school committee. And if you can just say your name and address for the... I'm Beda Charya. I live in 7th Baker Road, Salaam Mubarak, or Happy New Year, in Hindi. Two weeks ago, I requested the Wayland School Committee to recognize Diwali in some way. That could have been in the form of a school holiday, proclamation, service activity, or time set aside during the school day to learn about the cultural significance of Diwali. Unfortunately, no action was taken by the school committee, and Diwali passed on Monday the 25th. Diwali is a holiday celebrated by many Wayland students and their family. New York City and neighboring towns like Westboro, Halston, and Hockington designated Diwali as a school holiday in the same way. They have recognized other major cultural and religious holidays. California recently declared it a state holiday. Diwali isn't just for Indian families. It's a celebration of light over darkness, a celebration that transcends religious boundaries, and a holiday that is important to 10 million Americans. I want you to think about your favorite holiday or favorite family traditions and how those moments make you feel. Those are the same feelings I have celebrating Diwali, and I want to bring the same sentiment to the school, district, and my peers. Since the last time I saw you guys two weeks ago, I was at 150 signatures. Now I'm at around 200 signatures on my Change.org petition to make this a school holiday, showing people in Wayland I have been showing their support. So let's continue the conversation to bring this holiday to our wonderful community of Wayland. Thank you.
Thank you.
One second.
You ready? Mm-hmm. Okay. Go ahead. Hi. Sheetal Acharya, 7 Bayfield Road. Just to echo my son's comments, I definitely support Diwali as a school-wide holiday. My husband, Nish, and I, and he is a Wayland alum, we were just talking yesterday that in 2000 he wrote the first Diwali proclamation for the White House when he worked for the Clinton administration. And here we are 25 years later, and we're still asking communities to recognize a holiday that's celebrated by 10 million Americans and many in the Wayland community. And I appreciate that change takes time, but VEIT has accumulated almost 200 signatures, and this is not the first time this subject of religious holidays has come up because you granted Lunar New Year last year. I guess I feel a little bit disappointed because public sentiment is being ignored, and this is not the inclusive community that we cultivate in Wayland. So I guess the question I have here is, what is it going to take to take this topic to come out of public comments and onto an agenda item that makes it more thoughtful discussion?
Thank you.
Is that everybody for public comment? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. We'll turn it over to Section 3. All right. Spanish Immersion Update. As you all know, Spanish Immersion has moved into seventh grade this year, and the planning, so I'm going to turn it over to Betsy who will introduce our two colleagues who both have been at the school committee table before. So I always like to acknowledge when it's the first time testifying. It can be an intimidating group. So, you know, Liliana, Elena, they're like experienced, so whatever you throw at them, they'll be able to handle it. Welcome. Nice to see you both. Thank you. And I just want to acknowledge we would have our middle school colleagues here as well, but they had, on top of their school day, they then had conferences until 520, and we figured that would be a long enough day. So they are with us in spirit and have certainly been with us in the planning along the way. Awesome. Thank you. So tonight, as David said, we're going to talk about Spanish Immersion, sort of starting in 25, but where are we headed from here? Do we have this in our folder? I don't think so. Yes. We do? Oh, I just need to update that. Hold on. Oh, is it? It's yellow. Is it? I think we might need permission. Oh, I think it's not shared. Yeah. I'm going to hit request. Okay, go ahead. You've refreshed. Oh, okay. I was going to say, apologies. You're going to get a cascade of... Yeah. Yeah. There it is. Got it. Everybody wants it. So, as we start tonight's presentation, we thought if we could go back, please. As we start tonight's presentation, we thought it would be a nice idea to have some inspiration. This picture was taken last spring when some high schoolers came to visit our kindergarteners in the Spanish immersion program. And we have done this a couple of times with several grades in elementary school. And it has been a very important opportunity for both groups of students to see themselves as models and also as partners in this long time adventure of becoming bilingual bilingual. And this is a beautiful way as we try to show our students that languages, a second language, really is a superpower and it can take you out of your school walls. And it can actually help you connect to the society as a global citizen. It's a theme in our planning. So, we will start by talking about that first Spanish immersion cohort and who was just at the middle school for the first year last year and what were some of the things that we learned from that time. So, last year we established three new teams. We had the vertical K-12 teams. So, we had vertical teams before but this was a real Spanish immersion focus to it. We created a middle school Spanish immersion team which was combined of our cross-departmental ELA and social studies teacher as well as Liliana was involved with that group as well as Clara Sands, the curriculum leader. So, they met regularly. Throughout the year, they worked hard to keep families informed of what was going on in curricularies through their bi-weekly newsletters and invited families to join the Spanish Immersion Parent Council. The real learnings along the way. The first year of transition, we did a lot between leaders kind of transitioning information and while there were some visits, we really learned that it works best when the teachers communicate more regularly and so that's what we set up for the 6th to 7th grade year. I'm sorry. The 5th to 6th grade year for cohort 2 and the 6th to 7th grade year. The teachers are spending a lot of time together around that. I think reminding, reminding ourselves that this is a work in progress throughout the way. You know, there's this, I think we have really type A motivated teachers who want to get everything right, right off the bat and giving ourselves a little grace as we, as it's still a work in progress and we're figuring things out along the way. One of the things that they realized was how important it is to have a closer collaboration between the two content areas that are being taught in Spanish. And really to do some aligning of the topics covered so that they're supporting each other along the journey. And so because of that, we've ensured that teachers have a common planning time. So the two 6th grade teachers have a common planning time this year and the two 7th grade teachers have a common planning time. And they're thinking about the ways in which the literacy can support the social studies and vice versa. We also realized that there was a strong desire to have a bilingual special educator TA. And so that was a real priority around hiring this summer. And they did hire a candidate who has some Spanish speaking background. One of the things we didn't do was have a native speaker at the table at the interview. So they certainly have a lot of Spanish but not the same level of proficiency as would be ideal. Good to know. So we spent a lot of last year really sort of visioning for the future. And we'll share a little bit about our process and the mission and vision that we came up with. Great. And as we have always done for the Spanish Immersion Program and for all the things Wayland related, we look at other districts, we look at research, and the first one is the Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education, which is a great framework created by Cal. Also known, the long name is Center for Applied Linguistics. And it's a step-by-step guide to guarantee that the programs have all of the components that they need, including assessment, accountability, human resources, etc. And the second book is Fulfilling the Promise of Baliteracy, which is a guide for teachers and administrators to create a program that is sustainable and is especially important for programs that are transitioning from elementary to the secondary level. So we really look at those two resources and we continue looking at those as well as we started actually thinking about all of these back in 2023 and reaching out to other districts nationwide, not only in Massachusetts. Last January, well, we did some learning walks in the fall and visited the classrooms at different levels. And then we began in January with a half-day visioning session. So we ran through a futures protocol. You can see one of many chart papers that we filled with ideas and brainstormed along the way. And one of the things that became clear as we looked at the research, talked about our current resources, both really our personnel and who we have. We knew we were having retirement in science. We'd originally thought we'd try to hire a bilingual science teacher so that we could offer classes in science. And the more we thought about it and looked at the research, we were worried a bit about the gap between the last time students had had their science class taught in Spanish to eighth grade. And worried that there was, you know, I've been in a lot of the Spanish immersion classes and a number, and there's just a lot of vocabulary work and pre-teaching that has to be done all the time. And if they hadn't had some of the basics in sixth and seventh grade science, which are, even though the topic's different, there's a lot of just general science vocabulary with worries that they would not have the same full, rich, science eighth grade experience in having to do some of those pieces. Additionally, we weren't sure we were going to be able to find a bilingual earth science teacher. So we thought a lot about, like, what is the continuity along the way, and we looked at, you know, we have a couple of amazing social studies teachers who can offer their social studies instruction in Spanish, and that can be done in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. So this year's Danielle Fernandez is teaching the seventh grade, Di is teaching the sixth grade, and then she's already doing the planning to go teach the eighth grade as well. So the kids will actually get to loop with her and have her a second time. And then we were thinking through, like, what does that mean for the high school, which we will get to. But as we're in this meeting, we realized, well, we're having this great visioning meeting without the social studies department here, because it was not on it. So then throughout the spring, we had a number of meetings, first with leadership, and then with the teachers who'd be involved, and spend some time communicating internally, and then iterated planning based on feedback, both at the middle school and the high school level. So another piece that came out of these visioning sessions was a mission statement. I'm going to hand it over to Elena here. Yeah. I'll maybe give you a minute to kind of read through. The three bolded terms are three pillars, sort of, to the program. What we want high school graduates to be bilingual, biliterate, and globally minded. Maybe take a second to read through that. I'll focus a little more on the vision statement, which is how we intend to put that into practice. So in order to create the bilingual, biliterate, and culturally proficient students, we thought about how can we take this learning that they've done in the middle school, partnering between Spanish language arts and social studies, and continue to deliver a robust, well-rounded curriculum that incorporates content that goes beyond a traditional Spanish classroom content, and also connect them with the community around us and the global community. As well as identifying how to continue to support proficiency for learners across the proficiency spectrum with diverse needs. And so we started to think about this concept of pathways, which we will call RUTAS. So as we head down the road and what we're proposing for the high school Spanish immersion students, we want to kind of check all those boxes where we have options, enough options to meet our needs, without so many options that, you know, we drown in choices. And so balancing, thinking of all the things that Betsy has talked about in terms of staffing. And when we get to the high school level, also really considering scheduling, electives, and the holistic student who might want to take orchestra or two sciences, and how do we kind of fit all of those pieces into their life while still maintaining their growth in Spanish proficiency. So the RUTAS that we've come up with allow for some flexibility, but a lot of rich programming, with the goal that a Spanish immersion student will graduate with a minimum of 725 high school hours in the target language in Spanish across a variety of different curriculum options. So as you see, this is la ruta mas tipica, sort of your tip, what you would typically expect an entering ninth grade Spanish immersion student to go through as they consider their Spanish language arts courses. Those are on the left. We intend to create two new Spanish language arts courses that are focused on the needs of the Spanish immersion students, building their literacy skills in a way that is unique to our pre-existing courses in world language. As well as to sort of workshop-y type experiences in cultural studies that would integrate and sort of cross over with the literacy skills that they're developing in their Spanish language arts classes. So for example, if in their Spanish language arts class they are reading Pablo Neruda's poetry, in their cultural studies class they might be looking at Chilean history and the cultural context in which those poems were written. I just kind of made that up to see how they would interconnect. Our goal with, especially the cultural studies options, are to be more of like elective types. There are two credits as opposed to four, which in the high school world means that a class that would typically meet in six out of the eight letter days for a four credit, a two credit option meets three out of the six, three out of the eight really, three letter days. So it's a half amount of time. So it's kind of like a one and a half is what we're looking for. We want to make sure that students have a little more than one of their eight classes in Spanish. But two out of eight was a little too many to figure out how to schedule. And one out of eight was not enough. So one and a half is the magic number. And I would say we have a lot of debates that they just take their ninth grade social studies curriculum in Spanish. And because of all the things we've talked about, the ways in which so much pre-teaching needs to happen, and the content moves pretty quickly in that modern, excuse me, in that world cultures class, we were, we did not want to set them up to not like be ready to take the AP classes and things like that. There's so many standards. And we, we also wanted to ensure that the curriculum was an authentic exploration of language and culture. And so we, we didn't want to end up with a situation where we're sort of like translating, here's a unit on Buddhism that we've just put in Spanish, right? Like, or here's the Silk Road in Spanish. We want to study the Spanish speaking world in a rich, authentic way. And, um, so we wanted the freedom to be able to integrate those, those historical contexts in a way that makes sense for the Spanish speaking lens. Um, that didn't totally translate with world history in ninth grade and certainly not with American history. You know, Jorge Washington just didn't like vibe with, um, the cultural vision of having, um, globally minded citizens. So you can see there's also some options there on the right. We're hoping to offer, um, for students to get to that magic number 24, which is our, our goal of hitting that 725 hours. They'll take four Spanish language arts classes, um, which as they get to junior and senior year could look a lot of different ways. Liliana and I have started to talk with, um, places like Syracuse University about dual enrollment opportunities. We're going to continue to explore those paths. We have a preexisting AP language class. We can look into whether it makes sense to offer an AP literature class. Um, and again, on the right, we have a preexisting Spanish film class. Um, but starting to, uh, look further out into creating sort of what summer intensive options could look like. Travel options, community service, co-op, um, and other capstone-y type things. Our hope is that kids can kind of work their way up the tree to get to that magic number in a way that meets their needs. Um, and offers some flexibility. Again, without too much flexibility. Kind of keeping it within those bounds is the goal. Um, so that's like a potential, uh, look like straight down the middle is what I've just talked about. The sort of the typical route. Um, but we want to recognize that there might be some students who come to us who aren't at a proficiency level where they're quite ready to enter, for example, the Spanish language arts one class. And so we can try to meet their needs with our preexisting world language classrooms to get them up to the proficiency levels where then they can kind of come back in or out as they feel meets their needs. Um, and this also provides the opportunity for us to fold in our native and heritage speaking students, um, who aren't currently super well served with a world language classroom. We can fold them into the mix. We also have some super, uh, polyglot extraordinaires who might be interested in joining into the mix, whether by cultural studies or through the Spanish language arts. So that's one way that we can sort of combat attrition, which is, I think, typical for, um, high school programs as kids move or maybe go to private school or whatever. We can kind of defeat that by bringing in, um, additional students who would benefit from this type of programming and who might say, I can get to 725, like, I want to do that. Um, and so in that sense we can kind of fold in as many kids as are interested in, in that journey. I got it. I got it. Um, so just kind of, uh, in sum, um, our rutas include four years of Spanish language arts, which is a combination of pre-existing world language courses and new courses that we will create to meet the needs of our emergent students. Four semesters of cultural studies and other electives, um, to make sure that students can continue to take the electives outside of language that interests them. Um, and we're hoping to really extend beyond the walls of, uh, Wayland High School, uh, in the summer and in the community and hopefully in the world, um, and perhaps in New York. That's the Syracuse reference. Okay. Um, so that is, those are the big ideas. Oh, am I? Yeah. That's it. Yay! Any questions or, um, things that we can clarify? Incredibly impressed of where this program has come. I think we've all kind of seen it start at the beginning. And to see it grow throughout the high school is pretty amazing. Um, I don't have a student in this program, so I don't have personal experience with it, but it, I mean, the growth is exciting. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Um, thank you all. Um, agreed. Very exciting. Um, I know this is a journey that predates even the first student in the program for many. Um, so thank you. It's a great to see the visioning. Um, more couple of, I mean, I think a lot of this will play out as it goes. Um, but it's great to see, and I love the inclusion of feeding in other students into this. It would be wonderful to see the opportunity of some of the global citizen cultural studies work to figure out how we expand that to other students. Um, I know it's very language dependent, but I think the thematic there is really important, um, at this juncture. The question I had is, in the middle school, particularly, any learnings around how to integrate the presence of the program and some of those cultural learnings with students who aren't in the program. So I know we have some learnings around that at local, um, in, as the population grows, I think that becomes easier. But I know that's something that I was interested in thinking about how we can help make it feel like a whole district and whole school initiative. And I think there are benefits to the exposure of multilingual citizenry and diversity in the building that it would be good to make sure that we are harnessing as much of that for students, even if they aren't selected in a lottery and in the program over time. Absolutely. And I think there is this, um, there's this sort of tension between, not tension is probably the wrong word, but, like, what's the balance between world languages, which there are four of in the middle school, and Spanish immersion, which is not just a world language class, it's beyond that. And, you know, we're trying to, if you walk around the middle school, you'll see every teacher's classroom is in four different languages. You know, they have everything listed, all of the languages. Um, so, so you don't sort of see the same, um, distinct celebration of just the Spanish that you do at, like, Loca. Um, you know, one of my favorite days is during World Language Week, which happens in, um, March at the middle school, where they, they always have a, um, group that, a cultural group that will come in, and all of the students in the school are invited, who are bilingual to introduce the group in their home language. And you hear, we've, you know, there's like 40 different languages. And it's, it's just a beautiful thing. And, um, I am sure the introductions from our Spanish immersion students will be even richer than, you know, just my name is, and I speak this at home, and those kind of pieces. Um, so I do think there is that, that question, right? Like, how much should it be sort of focused on? But even what you just said is leaning into the diversity piece. And what it does is just increase the population of students who are multilingual. And so even that alone, it's, it's an interesting perspective. And I, I champion the four language in every classroom. I think that's great. Yeah. You know, there's over a hundred students who go home and discuss their, their, their world from the day in a different language every night. Thank you. It's great to see you guys again. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, Lonnie. Sure. Can you just stay up there, please? I, if I didn't know why. Thank you so much, Jelena. Thank you. Thank you. There we are. So I think the theme, I'm going to continue with the theme of planning for the future, which is really exciting, you know, because the role of the school district is to work with the students in front of you. At the same time, we have to think about the future, whether it's languages and culture, or it's the buildings where we work with our students. So, um, we have done much more of the former in Wayland than the latter in terms of facilities planning. So tonight, um, we're going to give you an update on our facilities master planning process. Um, all of you should have received a message from me. Uh, let's see. La, that was, yes, what's, where are we? Monday. Monday. Yes. Just discussing, uh, our master facilities plan. This is, of course, an important school committee goal, um, to develop a pre-K to eight master facilities plan. Um, where we are, we, um, just a little background. We had an initial evaluation team, uh, after our RFP. Kirsten did a great job putting that out. Betsy participated, um, in the initial evaluation. Uh, and we had three finalists. Um, we were really lucky to have really an excellent response to our RFP. And we had three excellent finalists. Um, actually four of us participated in interviewing finalists. This was an important part of your finalist team. We had others, other, other parents involved, which was great. And, um, we selected HMFH. It was a very competitive process. They have a lot of experience, um, with facilities master plans. And, um, we have already started meeting with HMFH every Friday. With our, the three of us at our college from HMFH. Really developing, um, a path between now and the end of the calendar year. And so I wanted to share that with all of you tonight, um, of where we're headed. An important part of, is, this is really the community engagement phase. And at the same time, HMFH and their engineers is really doing an assessment of our buildings. They'll be in our buildings actually next, next week. Um, because we need to know what are the conditions of our buildings. What are some of the challenges that we're going to face in the near term to keep these buildings functioning. We know some of them already because you've been here a couple of months and you already, uh, get requests about certain challenges. We have, um, Kirsteen's seen that. So, where we are, I just want to outline between now and the next couple of months because it's really important. Um, we're having, we have our master plan advisory group. We're having a virtual meeting next Monday where we'll talk about the planning process. Our, uh, advisory group is made up of the three of us. A school committee member, a community member, several parents, two representatives of the Whalen Education Association. Um, and then the, I want to just point to you to two very important visioning sessions that we are having on November 3rd and 17th. Um, these are sessions, two sessions. The first one will be about what do we think the future of learning is going to be in pre-K to eight over the next, you know, I don't want to say decade because we build schools for decades. Um, and so we're gonna think about learning. After all, if you are participating in this process in the 1950s, no one would have imagined that 20 years, less than 20 years later, Massachusetts in 1973 would be the first state to introduce special education. And, of course, two years later, public law 94-142, federal, federal. Let's hope it continues. Yes, that's what Ronnie is saying. But, actually, it is the, uh, 50th anniversary of 94-142 this year. So, I'm not gonna talk about history. That's for another class. We won't do that. But it is an important time in special education, certainly. But to envision what, where are we now, um, in terms of what should learning look like. Um, and the second is, given the future of learning, um, from 4-630, we're looking for the same group. And the other thing I should note is, in these two sessions, as I wrote about in my communication, we're looking for multiple stakeholders. So, we're gonna have teachers, administrators, parents, community members as part of this visioning session. It will be facilitated, uh, for somebody who does a lot of this work. He's working on this project with HMFH. He worked for other firms as well. Um, and then the second session, the first session will be at the Council on Aging in the Community Center. So, our folks will get a sense of what it's like to be in a new building. And once we do that, we thought the second session, we couldn't think of a better location than Happy Hollow. So, we'll get a sense of our buildings, some people may not have been in our buildings, of what it's like after being in a newer building. So, that's what we'll be doing. Um, and we'll be talking about, given the future of learning, what should our schools be as we think about, um, um, how many, what should school size be, grade configuration, given the developmentally of what we have ahead. Um, that will be the second part, uh, and there's not necessarily that we're gonna change. Many districts don't. But it's certainly worth discussing, given the future of learning, what should certain structures be. We are looking for, you know, roughly 35 to 40 people. We're doing active recruiting. We have some people who have already RSVP'd. Um, and it's, these are really important sessions. And there'll be other opportunities. But again, we're looking for people who can attend both sessions, because they build on each other. After that, we'll have a session with our administrative council members, particularly those in pre-K to eight. Um, and we'll talk about some of the what-ifs based on the visioning sessions. We will also then, for example, hear from certain stakeholder groups internally, special education, because, um, that has changed, of course, so much since our schools were built. What do we see in terms of special education in the future of Wayland? For example, how many schools should have district-wide programs? Um, where should our integrated preschool be located, as we think about that articulation, given that it also includes students, um, some students on IEPs. And then we'll do some more work with our principals. We'll bring it back to the advisory group, um, in the middle of the month. And then we anticipate, in January, we have an opening community forum to get more feedback from the community, based on what we've learned in these sessions. And then there'll be some more, more work done after that. We're not sure about the community forum, because it's going to take them time to get all of this information together, in terms of it's not only about the future, but what's the real story with our current buildings? Mm-hmm. And where they are, and what are the challenges, and what's, what's, of course, we always start with what's working well. And, um, but I do want to outline between now and the end of the calendar year, um, what you can anticipate. And feel free to jump in if I left anything out. November 3rd and 17th are both, um, both Monday nights. That just worked. We had a lot of challenges. We needed available buildings and calendars. Um, Tuesday night, our firm can't do Tuesday nights. Wednesday nights, of course, are harder, and we didn't really want to do it. Thursday nights are not ideal, always. So, that's where we landed. Indeed. And they'll be from 4 to 6.30. Healthy snacks are guaranteed, in case anybody was, was wondering. Oh. And those are facilitated, right? Yes. Right. Okay. Yep. And any of our HMH consultants will facilitate it, they will be there as well. And we'll be there, because we really want to hear some of the feedback. And it'll be active. It's going to be people working in groups, with questions, and brainstorming, and ideas. And the follow-up session on the 17th will be the same. Okay. I guess my question is, after all of the visioning sessions, what's next? What's the next step? Yep. After the visioning sessions, there's going to be some more. And also, there's visioning and also some meetings, specific internal stakeholders, Aaron, to really get people working in certain areas. You know, a meeting, you know, just with principals and assistant principals, our student services folks. But then we're going to bring it back to an open community forum as well. We'll have a date on that. And really, we want time for community deliberation, so people can take a look at options and get feedback. And ultimately, it's bringing, you know, those options to you. We won't have one option. We'll have a menu of options that are doable. And then it's time for deliberation. But there will be, really, a community process as well. Because schools, at the end of the day, are really, you know, the most important community, some of the most important community resources we have. And there's always trade-offs when we make decisions about planning. But we're excited about the process and think it's a really... You know, some of the feedback we get is, like, Wayland needs to be doing this. I would say that's the feedback we get. And it takes buy-in, you know, from an entire community in order to support either the rebuilding or renovation. That's kind of the terminology I would use. Because nothing is decided now. We obviously, we'll have a lot of options. Do any of these include people from the town side of, like, administration? So, Michael, select board, finance committee. Are we including outreach to them for any of these groups? Yes. I mean, we'll get a time for that. The visioning session, I would say, will be primarily people who are in some ways involved in the schools. Not totally, but we... I shared my letter. I just sent it in terms of the whole community. Their newsletter is kind of at the start of the month. But Jalen, who works with Michael, is going to post it on their Facebook page. And so we welcome some residents. And we will, for the open kind of community forums, invite, we hope to invite everybody, kind of options. Because there's a lot of history in Wayland about school options and keeping schools open or closed and all that. So we will, when we have those sessions, Aaron, definitely, and certainly at the visioning sessions, where we're welcoming, we've sent some invitations to people who have been active in schools in the past, who have been involved as well. We would love that for those visioning sessions to not just have... We're looking to have, like, I would say the 35, if we could have several people who aren't involved in the schools right now, that would really be helpful, because I think they bring a history and context that a lot of people could move from. As a matter of fact, we already have an RSVPDS from a former school committee member. So that is something we're looking forward to, and we are trying to recruit a few... They don't want to be former school committee members, but an example of somebody who's involved in the district a long time, and we're looking for several others. And certainly keeping our select board well-informed. And when we have our, particularly our community forum, we think that's a really good time to have other elected officials there on the open forum, which will not be limited to 35 and 40. We'll send an invite, actually, to everybody. The only reason for the visioning sessions, if you need a certain number to make it kind of manageable. Is the idea to put the community forum at, like, the field house? In all seriousness? I know you're serious, yeah. We haven't gotten there yet. Is that... Might be a good idea. I think if the RSVP sort of... Yeah. Indicates that that's basically... Yeah. We think that's really to put a lot of, like, a lot of advance notice and, you know, real community meetings about, like, where are we headed in terms of these facilities. I think that we put TBD for that very reason, because we need to think about where we are and target that very carefully, because that'll be, you know, and in my experience, sometimes you have a couple of communities. We might do one on a Sunday afternoon and another one during the week. I think, in my experience, those have to really be inclusive and get as many people involved as possible. And accessible to a wide range. Yeah, very accessible, which is why I thought about the Sunday afternoon. That's more community. The reason we're doing, you know, we do the visioning sessions during the week, from 4 to 6.30, is because we do need some staff at the visiting sessions, and the community board is something different. We communicate the staff at the end in a different way. It was the hope to have from... I know it's pre-K to 8, but obviously there's different perspectives and focus points in the pre-K, elementary and middle. There's the hope that we'll get some participation across those sort of three segments. Yeah, so in the RSVP, we already have a pre-K participant, and we have elementary and middle. Let me check the RSVP. That's great. So that's great. And our principals will be there at the visioning sessions as well. It would be interesting to maybe hear some feedback from high school administration and teachers, too. Their schools, you know, 10 years now. So, right? 10? I think it's 10. So, it may be helpful just to hear their feedback, like, you know, maybe things they might have thought about differently or things that have evolved quicker than, I don't know. Yeah. It's a good point. And we will, in terms of reporting back to all of you, I think there are a couple of points. We'll report back after, you know, we learn more from the engineering firm in terms of kind of highlights. We'll try to keep you well informed on that. And then, we'll work. I think we'll figure out the next agenda item. But I wanted to put it on now to let you know that we will keep you very well informed and have this as an agenda item as necessary throughout this entire process. Love it. Progress. Let's see. Will you turn on our power over there, underneath your table? Oh, sure. Please. Please and thank you. Oh, I was wondering why. I know. You can pull it up. I don't know if she has slides. I think it's just, I think they're just PDFs. So, we can pull them up. Is it on or does it be plugged in? No. Something's not lighting up. Do you want to try to plug that into yours, please? Absolutely. At any moment, I'm going to go dark on my computer. There's one of them that controls all of them. Yeah. There's no light on this one, though. It's over on your side, Kirsteen. Um. I can't see. I can't see. I can't see. No light. What is it? You don't necessarily see. I don't know if you see the light. I mean, I can just. I can just put my computer down. There's one right there. Yeah. Oh, I can try. Oh. Oh, it's like. Yeah. Yeah. That was unplugged. We can unplug it again. Yeah. I think that has to plug in over there. No, it's working. Here. I think. I'm unplugging. Sorry. This one has to go over here. Oh. Sorry, guys, for the disruption. Oh, there it's on. Okay. Can we include that? I'll try not. In the building. Well, we have an easy. Not a daisy chained. Very timely. Or extension cord. Erin, you might need to flip that one. Very timely. Daisy chained extension cord. There you go. There you go. Okay. Looking forward to more modern technology. All right. The next item I just highlighted, like, the feedback on the goals. The changes, do you see it in yellow? There were no changes other than the additions that you highlighted in yellow, right? Those are what I had in my mind. See, I'm happy to... Because sometimes during the year I add things also sneak in me in. It would have been a goal, you know. So I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I'll throw on some more yellow. I can do that with the evaluation group to check in if there's something that maybe... you know, there's occasions that that should have been... There's no rule that says you can't amend that. Do you have any questions? Can we table this until everyone's here? Do you want to? I feel like last time everybody was here and we had these edits for David. I think if the three of us approve of the edits, I mean, I'm of the opinion that they would approve of them. I don't know how you guys feel. I'm fine to move forward. I think everybody had an opportunity to weigh in. I don't have any questions. I'm comfortable. Agreed. I'm of the opinion we should take a vote and let them get to work.
Okay. Anybody want to make a motion? I will move to approve the superintendent's individual goals, 2025-26 school year, as revised. I will second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? None.
Thank you. Thank you. Take those and you'll put them into kind of a line with the rubric format, right? Oh, yeah. I forgot. Is that DESE? Is that the agency we're talking about? Yeah. Okay. That's right. Yeah. We'll do that. So, next one, in two weeks from now, we'll have our annual meeting in Boston at Medco. In terms of, in addition to an update from Latoya, I thought it would be a good time to hear about, from Caroline, about the grant we received, our third year of receiving, you know, the Hate Crime Prevention Grant, which is really, really good. I think it is our third, I don't, I think that they, they told us it was our final, yeah, you can only go so far with government funding. Thankfully, it is state funding, because that's about all you can even count on in this day and age, and then, given what's going on, we don't know how long. So, we'll talk about that grant, our plans for the grant. We're going to meet next week to have a couple of other items. We'll also get back to you on kind of the structure for that meeting, because typically, we gather upstairs first, but there's another meeting that's been reserved. Okay. So, we'll have to see. I should also announce that Medco has a new CEO, Candace Sumner, somebody I know, who worked in the Newton Public Schools for a bit, as well as other places. She's a former, from years ago, Medco student, and she's well-published, and she's worked in the school district as both a teacher and administrator. Candace is only the third CEO in the history of Medco, which is amazing. And that's largely because Gene McGuire was there from 1966 to 2016. Wow. So, that was a long tenure. And then, Millie Abarhey-Thomas, who just left this summer, and now Candace is there. So, we'll talk more about that. LaToya will also talk about Medco 2.0, which is really some new goals for Medco and the organization. Not just, so she'll talk some about what's going on in the district, but also about Medco's overall kind of philosophy and what with the district. So, that'll be interesting. And Betsy and I have been at meetings about Medco 2.0 as well. Do we have David? Yes. I'm curious. Have we asked, and you guys may have already done this, what they want to hear from us? Is there anything, any topics that they would like us to be prepared to speak on or would like to add to the agenda? Let me find out. We will check when we, with, with what I love to speak. So, we'll send you a message. Okay. That's a good question. Okay. So, absolutely check. Thank you.
So, are we not sure of our target run, gathering time? Yeah, we'll get back to you on that. Because of this shift that we just learned about, which is the upstairs room. So, that could affect time. Sure. So, we will do that in short order.
It's going on, are we? It's amazing. I don't know. It's, yes, the, it beats my typical preschool committee salad. It really does. Your salads are amazing looking. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. It's actually a whole... He's very invested. It pretty much beats every dinner, though. It's so good. Yes. Okay. All right. So, we are going to go on to financial matters. I'm going to give, like, a tiny, here's what I'm doing. I'm going to give a tiny bit of context, but I'm not going to steal your thunder. Thank you. All right. So, you know, with financial stuff, because I... So kind. So kind. So, because you were not here last year, I just want to give a little context. As our school committee members and community know, last year was an incredibly challenging financial year. We actually knew by this time last year that our budget was not going to balance unless we took action. And it was shortly thereafter that we put in what I would call a partial spending freeze. The district functioned, but there were certainly challenges in terms of... It was basically, in school districts, you almost have to defer purchasing. To some extent, you can cancel some purchases. And remember, once school started, our staff is here for the year because we need teachers and we need custodians, we need teaching assistants, we need administrative assistants. So it was, you know, where we could, not doing certain purchases, equipment, supplies, yet, as we talked earlier about giving, you know, this is not a place where we can cut maintenance in the middle of the year because things happen. Thankfully, through a lot of excellent work, Kirstie and we'll talk about, we did get through the year, what I would say is that you can't do this a second year because you use non-recurring revenues to plug holes. You'll reaffirm that, so I don't see... You're creeping in. I'm creeping in. I was just going to say, you're like, get into the thunder. So that is all. Wait, it's like a buzzer or something. The good news is, because I watch this so closely, like finances, if we don't stay financially afloat, like that. It's important. So I'm going to take it, I'm going to stop there because you must be wondering what is going on this year and what are our projections. Well, let's hear from our new director of finance and operations in her first end of year and first quarterly report. How's that? Hey, Kirstie! Thank you. No soundtrack? I've been known in previous districts to give financial reports myself, so I'm getting better. Well, I certainly appreciate the intro and what I was going to also summarize for the fourth quarter is how fortunate I feel that I am given the challenges and hardships endured last year and that you really need to applaud your administration for upholding all of those swift changes and making sure that they held the line throughout the year to get that done. That is certainly quite an endeavor and I am very happy to be able to report that those actions were successfully mitigated and we ended the fiscal year 25 in a very slight positive. All right. That's great. How slight? $4,800. Okay. That's pretty good. So, we can now say we do give back.
Don't get used to that. I don't like to get money back. So, yes, again, I won't ad nauseum read through everything, but we did spend and encumber a total of $52,625,896 from FY25, so that just left a slight turnover amount and that was due to variances in some of our open POs that we had already paid and subsequently closed, so it wasn't for the valiant efforts that were made for zero. We did have a number of federal and state grants that were utilized last year as well, including the FY24 and 25. Again, the federal grants are carryover, so they roll from subsequent years, so there was some spending from those and we do still have a small timeline for rolling into this fiscal year that we will finalize and use all of those resources that we had allocated within the federal and state grants that we have received in those subsequent years.
So, we did have, again, all of the fund balances. We know that those were challenges. A lot of the revolving accounts were utilized to help offset and get us whole, so just to say, you know, the summary for FY25, that it was utilizing the special revenue fund balances that were offset to cover all of the unexpected costs and clear any deficits. So, while in trying to do that, it's important to recognize, as David mentioned, that the reliance on fund balances creates a significant fiscal challenge for future years, meaning for FY26. So, there's no longer any cushion of that sort. And relying on one-time fund balances to cover structural and operational deficits is not a sustainable practice. And this is for all of our stakeholders to hear, just so that there's an understanding that this is not typically the way that a school department finalizes the year. And, again, just a reminder that absence of these stabilization funds and special revolvings, it makes the FY26 more vulnerable to unexpected costs or revenue shortfalls that we might have even programmatically within those special funds. So, that's just a cautionary tale to prevent future reliance on these sources and to use them for their specified purpose, which is... So, that is our closeout for FY25, and that is a solid ring-a-ding bell for, yay, we made it! It was... There were pressure... You're lucky you started when you did, okay? It was tough out there. Last year, it was really hard, and I think everyone on our team really deserves credit. I would have survived had I started this time last year, for sure. Happy to answer any questions, or would you like me to go into fiscal 26? Can you give me one minute? Sorry. I'm going to sound like a really big idiot. Highly unlikely. Probably not. Uh, the Special Revenue Fund page has this column that says, Remaining Requirement, and some of them are shown as negatives, but then there's a Q4 balance. Can you just tell me what the remaining requirement is? So, um, from my perspective, I feel that's a little bit of a confusing term, so that's really... Okay. I'm changing that in my... Okay. Use your... Just for clarification. Okay. I found it confusing myself. Okay. Basically what it represents is what is the anticipated cost to get through the final, the final, final of a fiscal year in that context. Okay. Okay. And the Q4 balance would have been anything that was, um, identified, um, in a balance, which, uh, that was just based on a projection, again. So this is a different type of formatting that I just inherited and used in that context, but, um, just for clarity, I'll be kind of changing the wording. Okay. Thank you. Any questions on this one before we go to Q1? Or... Hmm? No. Okay. Um, I actually do have a question. Sorry. When I go to the custodial maintenance line item, um, I think it's page one, and it shows available budget negative, does that reflect... Those categories were overspent. Right. Yes. Does that reflect, like, hard costs? Or is that also, is that just, like, hard... Facilities, uh, facilities and custodial... Actual people? Yes. Okay. So it's people and actual work that was done and, like, items and whatnot? Okay. And does this account for any fee payments collected to offset custodial costs for, like, groups using the space? Those are special revenues. So they sit somewhere else. This is strictly operating budget. Okay. So this is gross, if you will, not net of any fees. This is isolated, specific to budget. Okay. And I think I know the answer to this question, but special education, that is straight out of our budget and does not include what we would have, um, paid through the... Circuit breaker? No, no, the fund. The, um... The, um... Oh, special education reserve. Reserve. Yeah. That's not reflected. This is, like, straight up cost. And budget only. Other sources are within the other sources. So the special, um, reserve or stabilization fund would show those reflected in that fund. Okay. This is straight up how it was budgeted originally when it was approved and then where it shook out. Right. Okay. Thank you. Are you ready for fiscal 26? I'm okay if everybody else is. Okay. So this year, uh, we received a 4.8% increase in our appropriation, uh, totaling $54,987,318. And this is the first quarter. So it only represents costs from July 1 through 9.30. So even though we know, well, gee, I know that there's things that... This is, again, snapshot in time. Um, so again, looking at, um, the challenges, uh, that have been experienced previously, we really wanted to, um, focus on maximizing cost savings through any consolidated purchasing, leveraging our state contracts and joint purchase groups that we can try to maximize our, our value for the dollar and get, um, consolidations and discounts where we can. Uh, as of September 20th, we had, um, spent and encumbered, uh, 25.7%. Again, this system does not encumber payroll. So I didn't have that reflected, but going into the future quarters, I will do a projection for, with, that I will identify, uh, payroll encumbrance. So there was still a lot of transition happening at the start of the school year. So I wanted to make sure that any changes that we had give us a true number and then we'll project out for the next quarters. And so I will include that, um, starting in quarter two. And again, I try to, um, provide the, the reports as pure as they are. So that's why you get a, a mutus snapshot. That's what it is. Um, the total is the year to date expense plus the encumbrances. That's what makes up the $14,107,721. And that is... Um, so then I... No, you did. It's in the report. Did it? Oh, okay. The $6 million and the $8 million that combined is the $14. Okay, great. Um, so then I like to kind of put, um, just have a little monitoring of potential budget pressures that could happen and that's in any given year. We, we know that that is, um, again, you prepare budget a year in advance, a lot changes. So we just have to kind of identify and keep, keep an eye on that. Um, transportation is one of those kind of unpredictable, um, areas. This year we've had a significant amount of McKinney-Vento homeless transportation, which exceeded our budget currently by $35,000. Um, and the athletic bus account, that may be running short just depending on, um, how their teams do during the seasons and if there's additional trips, things like that, um, that line item just looks a little bit low in terms of the contracted rate. So if there's successful teams, which we want VA, that could be a bubble on our transportation. Um, then obviously... Yes, sorry. The... Can you just refresh my memory on the McKinney-Vento? And if that's, that we're transporting people out or if we're transporting them in? Is it both? Um, it's, it's in. So, um, if, uh, or out, actually I should say it's both. It depends on the situation. Some, um, if we have, if a student becomes unhoused, um, during the school year, they have, so say a Wayland student becomes unhoused and moves to Natick, they have a right to stay in Wayland, so then we would split the cost of transportation with Natick. Um, if a student ends up in DCF care, um, we would have to take that cost, um, to transport them here. If a student from Bedford ends up being unhoused due to, like, a fire and ends up staying with relatives in Wayland, we have to split that cost with Bedford to bring them back to Bedford. And this is, um, this is federal? Yeah, this is a federal. This is federal legislation passed by Congress. It's very hard to, to, to figure, to estimate and to project because the fire one is a true example. Like, I, um, you could, you just don't know. Like, um, and, um, we try to work with towns and split and, um, Marcello's great about, um, seeking out transportation and getting lots of bids and figuring it out. But it's, we, we have, um, like, the law says we have to transport, um. Understood. I just, I thought there was, yeah, okay. No, I appreciate that because we went through this one other time, but it only, it comes up infrequently enough. Right, and then I might have to refresh. And the budget reflected what had been a current pattern for the past two years. Right, but you have this one fluctuation and you get one, yeah, and it's $50,000. Right. Right now you are forecasting that we're going to exceed or we are already passed. We are already. We've already used all of the budgeted amount. Yes. Okay. But that, the particular situations could continue to change. Yes, we've budgeted out a whole year, but a student's situation could change at any time. Like, either no longer needing it or a situation needing it. Or, it's starting to need it. Okay. So, it's, it's very challenging to, um, predict. On the radar. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. Todd for the feedback. And, uh, obviously, facilities is always on the radar. Um, all the repairs, uh, and maintenance. We're just, um, not keeping pace with the budget allocations that we have available. Uh, so we have to really prioritize safety, HVAC, um, building envelope over some of the other things that would be nice to have that would, um, help spaces. Um, and we will be, again, that's the big purpose, uh, well, for the facilities, um, envisioning process to give us more, um, tangible information on how to prepare and present for the capital requests going forward. So, the, the current, uh, pressure points are manageable right now, and, uh, we feel, I feel comfortable that, um, we, we can handle them, absorb them right now, but we will continue to monitor them, uh, as well as other non-essential line items in quarter two and three to, uh, uh, prevent a year-end deficit and prevent, um, a spending freeze at all possible costs. Uh, then we have the special education summary. And, uh, with Ronnie's health and efficiency, she has been very, uh, prompt with providing all the information and, um, exact costs. So, again, ensuring that all students, uh, have highly quality resources for them to thrive where they are, our fiscal planning is deeply rooted in the foundational principles of IDEA. And, again, providing the, uh, faith-tailored instruction is a moral obligation and key investment in the future of our entire community. And, so, our budget is strategically allocating funds to meet the unique needs of all learners and ensuring that equity and empowering every student to reach their full potential. And, with that, we're happy to report that we have currently met the needs of our known out-of-district tuition and transportation costs, totaling $5,949,523. And, we have the sources outlined. And, again, we have this number in total because you budget for the entire year. These are placements that most likely will be in place for the year. And, so, this is our known right now. And, our, uh, sources for meeting that, again, the operating budget will, uh, provide $3,686,353. The combined circuit breaker reimbursement, this also includes a fund balance carryover and the additional, uh, supplement that we received in July. So, that total is $2,293,705. So, again, with the operating budget and circuit breaker offset, that's a total of $5,980,058 towards the known costs, uh, which we identified above. So, that leaves us a large delta of about $30,000. And, some, um, very, uh, stringent, uh, keeping an eye on our expenses where we can. And, the Special Education Stabilization Reserve Fund, if needed, um, again, that still has the $500,000 that we have. Well done, Ronnie. I was just gonna say, way to go, Ronnie. Yeah. And, whoever's working with you on that, because that is, like, the best news we've heard about special education in a long time. For a long time. Yeah. So, thank you. Yeah. It's an ongoing. We just saw green. But, we'll, we'll, we'll, we're gonna take the good dudes today. Yes. Yeah. It's green. Usually, we already know we're gonna use what's in the Stabilization Fund. Yeah. No, we're not. Well, first quarter. We made it. We made it. Yeah. There you go. It's great. Uh, so, moving along to the federal and state grants, uh, we're, in 2026, we've seen a, uh, shift in grant funding. Obviously, the federal allocations shrank. Um, well, we have new competitive state grant awards that we've received. You've heard about the hate crimes for the third year in a row. That's fantastic. And, we've also included the one-time legislative fair share earmark for 45,000. And, the, um, innovation pathway we've received for 50,000. So, there's been, uh, a lot of great programming, uh, awards that we were able to get, um, approved this year. So, that's fantastic. Despite the federal, um, funds, uh, depleting. Uh, so, I've identified the amounts, their category. The other large, uh, grant that, uh, I'm sure Betsy has, uh, informed you of is the CRISM. That's a very long acronym. I don't know what that fully stands for. But, we've got $367,000 for that program to pilot and implement. So, that is fantastic. So, great work there. Again, um, the administrative team really going out and finding these opportunities and competing for these monies that is, is not easy to come by. So, um, fantastic efforts there. Yes. Good job Betsy. And everyone else. Okay. Right, cause that's, yeah. Right. Fantastic. This, uh, first quarter had some residual, uh, amounts from the final carryovers for our FY24 and some FY25 funds. Um, these are all earmarked to be fully expended, um, at the end of this fiscal year. And we will be, um, finalizing, uh, reporting next year, um, the 2025, uh, grants that have, uh, still had a small amounts that were, uh, being finalized. And we've also got, um, in the state grants, we did, uh, complete the METCO REI grant from 2025. That was complete. We have a carryover grant that, uh, covers the early September summer programs and that's available through December of this year. And then the regular METCO application that goes through June, uh, 30th, 2026. And so all of the grant totals, again, for all of the year amounts that we have, that's, that's quite a substantial amount of additional resources for the district over $3 million in all funding sources. So that's fantastic. We have the special revenue funds, and these are the fee-based programs. As you were inquiring about that too, that, um, anything that we charge, um, a fee for, or a rental, anything like that goes in their specific, it's a specific program and use and source is what the, um, the guidance from Mass General Law indicates us to, to use them for. So we do have a number of these programs that are identified for that purpose. Um, the Children's Way, we did adjust, well, I've adjusted as a precaution the, uh, budget that we will be looking at. Um, we still have not, um, fully filled all of the openings. So our revenue is lower than predicted from last year. So just to make sure that we stay on track there, uh, we're reducing that budget so that, um, we don't get into an overspending situation for that category. And there are required indirect costs that are associated with each of these major programs that they are, um, it's a, uh, school town, um, MOA that's part of those expenses that are covered within that operating program area. So, question on that. What kind of movement or traction are we getting with respect to discussions with Michael in and moving the, uh, after-school programming over to the rec department? Significant cost savings for the town. So moving cost savings for the, tell me more. Big. To fall under rec in the town and not the school program. Well that's, whose money, that doesn't cost... Yeah, it's a big expenditure for... You're talking about for the, you're talking about for the town? Budget in general. Well they have, it's their own program budget that they have to ensure that their... Revenue. Right. That their revenue is part of that. Yeah. But it can cost a lot less if we're not running it. And it goes, we've talked about this before. Yeah, we would have to do an analysis, we would have to do an analysis of that. Um, we haven't talked to him lately about that. We're doing some kind of internal discussions about that. Um, because there are a lot of factors involved in terms of a lot of issues, but it's something intermittently about, um, a discussion about it recently. So we can kind of report back after we do some further analysis, which is I think we're at the analysis stage now. Start of the conversation. Start of the conversation. Okay. There's some regulatory, there's a lot of steps involved to switch something like that from a regulatory. You know, it's EEC regulators. Okay. Yeah. Versus DESC, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of steps. In terms of the, you know, in terms of TCW, that's about, um, we are open for additional slots for general education students. That's where we have our openings right now, um, in terms of revenue. Did we anticipate from just a population or demographic sense a dip, or is that not? Um, not, I mean, a small dip. Um, it's tricky, uh, because, you know, programming, it's a larger conversation, but I think it's just tricky the hours of the program. Okay. Um, enrollment has been down. And since people need, you know, um. Sure. Betsy, I think you're asking a really good question, because we're in the process of, you know, we're a demographic study. We're going to report on that at the second meeting in November. And what we see in looking at the early data is that the birth rate is down. And that, that would have an impact on three and four year olds, right? So, if we're running literally 40 to 50 in some cases, compared to larger elementary classes, fewer students, that could have an impact. Um, because there's two ways that, you know, if you think about enrollment in kindergarten, it comes from birth rate, and it comes from in migration. And if both those things are slowing down a little bit, uh, which we have some data suggesting that, that could have an impact. Yeah. No, and your point about, we, as we think about visioning for the pre-K piece, I think your point is well taken, Ronnie, that like, understanding the demographics of what families increasingly need or looking for in terms of programming, length of day, and all of that starts to be very relevant as we anticipate sort of the needed size or capacity of the program, depending on what you want to think about. Right. Um, something else that's, you know, part of visioning, um, which I should have alluded to, is, is after school space as well, because, um, when these schools were built, it was the time of Ozzie and Harriet. Um, we did not have, um, kids went home for lunch. So, it was a different time in terms of after school programs as well. So that's just kind of another visioning part. Absolutely. Which is really important. And a seismic shift. I mean, I think across all of society. Yes. The demand and all of that. So that's something else to really consider, and it's an example of why we do this vision exercise as an example. Okay. So on the, uh, special revenue chart, if you look at that very final column, I did rename that to projected end of year balance. So if that is clearer, then that's, that's what I was trying to accomplish and showing. That's what would be looking at based on the beginning, beginning balances, the budget, and then anticipated budget expenses for that program. And that's what we would be projecting for the year end. And we do have a, it, it's reflecting a, uh, negative balance in transportation. That's only if we utilize all of the funds within that, um, collection. And that may not be the case. So there, you know, by law we can't close a, uh, program in the negative. So these will all be adjusted and reflected as we go into this. And the, uh, quarter one summary is that we are running on track for spending, and that we have really focused on maximizing value through our consolidated purchasing. And our financial health is stable, but requires proactive, uh, management and close monitoring into quarters two and three. And while our current pressure points are manageable, we want to, um, be cautious and continue about monitoring and spending constraints in essential areas that we are able to, in order to avoid any of your deficits. So that's the goal. Any questions? I'm good. That was very powerful. Thank you. Kristi. I like the change and the calm. It helped me. It helped me too. No, I really appreciate you offering your vantage point of what you're watching and what you should have top of mind or ask for deeper, um, background on. Thank you so much. Nice format too. It made it very easy to understand. I know we said it, but just to close on a positive note again, we all like, thank you for all the careful management last year and the attention and all the grant work. It's not small effort to go in and it's a huge validation of the effort people are putting in when we're awarded the grants. My quick, quick little tech update. Um, we are a part of the education cooperative. They publish quarterly updates that they simply want us to share out with our committee. It's the quarterly update is in our folder. If you'd like to take a review, um, in essence, just a quick update. They enrolled two new member districts, King Phillip and Sharon public schools. Um, there was approximately a little over $600,000 in deficit, which they had anticipated. They did some renovations on one of their newer schools. Um, so anticipated, but the great news is, is their enrollment is up five and a half percent. And they now serve 112 students across their three campuses. So you can go ahead, take a read, peruse, but those are the highlights. That's it. Anybody have questions? Do you want to, is there any info in addition with respect to the trip? I mean, this is the same one that comes across every year, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm answering my own questions that I've asked in years past. We provide their own transportation, which we love. It's like training for having a baby. Midnight crises. Wakes the students in the middle of the night. Crises always happen overnight. Of course they do. Of course they do. Really? This is methods for fundraising. It's just that the students pay. Right? Unless there's one of those, unless there's one of those funds, I think the students just pay the fee on this one. Um, we looked at this last year. I think there is a small amount. Um, we talked about this last year about like reserve funds for students. No, no, no. I'm trying to remember aloud. I'm not all saying. I'm like, hi. You're answering your own question. I'm totally doing it. I'm remembering, um, verbally, which perhaps I shouldn't do. Um, yes. So this was a fee cost. My recollection, what Susan advised, is there may be small amounts at each school that can be tapped into if there are students that need to petition to have financial support to go. This also built in three scholarships to the cost charged to each kid. Oh, I think we had this conversation. Maybe this is the trip that prompted this conversation because we talked about would there be a way to have that, follow that model in other situations, including, you know, trips abroad or other things that are heavily financial. So this is a... It certainly did prompt that. ...reminder that we could pick up that thread. And I think one of the questions was the, like, the spending parameters and regs around uses of those funds. Right. Like, who meant from one fund to another? Well, because some I thought were general and some were specific and we didn't have a... Yeah. Yeah. I think we lost that thread before we got a little more precision in sort of what the distribution is. I'm going to look back at my email, though, because we did ask for this at the table and I think Susan did send us a follow-up on that. We did. She followed up. I know there was something. And then I think we didn't... At the time, I don't know that there was anything that compelled us to sort of bring it back to make... To consider any significant change that would allow more flexibility. But that was the goal. We can... I'll dust off my memory of that. But I think this is this trip that prompted that because it is built into... The trip ships account. Trip ship accounts. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yep. I have it right here. I'll send it to you, Betsy. Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing is we didn't know what... We didn't have a lot of benchmarking on how other districts do this. So I think this came up similar in time to when we were talking about some of our interest in exploring other possible sources of donations or other sources of sponsorships or other sort of revenue items for targeted uses. Also something that's probably worth bringing back to our mental minds as we think. Very mental. But not overnight because then it's crisis-oriented. Okay. But thank you for noting that because this is the trip that prompted us to talk about that. I feel like you did. Yeah. I agree. I just recirculated that email with all of the guidelines that Susan gave us. I put you on it, Kirstie. Thank you. Any other issues on consent agenda? None for me. None for me either. Does anybody want to... I move to approve the consent agenda. I'll second. As presented. As presented. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I miss Christina. That's her fault. Yeah. She wasn't here for that. I wasn't here for that. Christina's taken it on. Christina's taken it on. Sorry. Do we have any matters not reasonably anticipable ever? No. No? No. Okay. I move to enter Executive Session for the purposes of reviewing and approving Executive Session minutes with intent to redact and release said minutes as permitted by MGL Chapter 30A Section 22 for October 8th, 2025. School Committee will be joined by Diane Marabella, Recording Secretary. School Committee will adjourn an Executive Session and will not reconvene an open session. Do I have a second? I'll second. Betsy? Yes. Aaron? Yes. Aaron? Yes. Thank you all. Thank you.