February 2, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript

February 2, 2026 - School Committee

Autoscroll:

Welcome to the Whalen School Committee meeting. It is 6-12 p.m. on February 2nd, 2026. We have all of our school committee members present and our administrators at the table. And we are being recorded by WACAM. Does anybody have anything they wanted to talk about as a... Alright. Alright. We'll open for public comment at this time. We'll give you three minutes. If you want to come up and just... I don't know if you've ever been here for public comment. I have not. Okay, but you can sit at the table if you want. We just ask that you keep it within the purview of the school committee and respectful. And if you can state your name and your address just for our record, that would be great. And she'll just time you, so little chimes will go off. I'll try to be as rich as possible. No worries. Take your time. So I'm Andrew Carpenter. I live at 8 Orchard Lane in Wayland. I'm here in relation to Article DD on the town meeting warrant. Knowing that that parcel pertains to the school committee's ownership and current custody of it. So I want to thank, first of all, Chair Julia Gibbons and the members of the Wayland School Committee. I appreciate the Chair's note that this parcel, the parcel on Article DD on 25 Holiday Road, which is in the custody of the school committee, hasn't been discussed by the committee at this point yet. And it may be evaluated alongside other school-controlled parcels as part of ongoing facilities planning. And my concern isn't the wrap history or the facilities planning discussion. My concern is that Article DD funding can create momentum and implied permission unless bright-line guardrails are set at this point in writing and on the record. So I'm here for process guardrails on 25 Holiday Road as the Wayland Select Board advances the article and shapes that article for town meeting. So the three requests I have are, one, related to care and custody. I'm asking for the school committee to confirm that, well, we know they have care and custody, but in relation to that, that no town-funded engineering site work or concept work should occur on that parcel without an explicit school committee vote authorizing access or scope. Two, related to sequencing and the town meeting two-thirds vote requirement as established in Harris v. Town of Wayland in 1984, I'm asking that the committee also state clearly that no transfer or control for non-schooled purposes can occur unless and until town meeting approves the required two-thirds vote. And then thirdly, communications-related note, since Bill Whitney, the liaison on the select board for this item, has referenced discussions in the January 28th meeting and the end of the February status update that was mentioned in the finance workshop on January 28th. I'm asking for the committee for a statement that any communication to him or the select board will explicitly include that no transfer is authorized absent the two-thirds vote at the town meeting and that it won't be framed as a green light for development-oriented study before that sequence. And I'm not asking for an answer tonight, but my request is that a brief item on the next agenda or a written record of a response is fine as well, so that there's all the committees related to this are on the same page about the school committee's stance. That's all. Thank you very much. Thank you. 20 seconds to spare. All right. Great job. Thanks, yeah. I'll kick off our budget presentation. Budget season is underway. We're ready to go.
So I'm going to give some introductory remarks, and then we'll have some slides, and then we'll talk largely about general education first. We have a good team here prepared to answer questions, and then following that, we'll go to student services. So we'll have questions after each one to kind of break it up, and I'm sure you'll have questions. So here we go. The FY27 budget, and I always think when I introduce a budget, like, what's our goal? And our goal in this budget was to really maintain our programs, services, and supports, our really strong programs, services, and supports that we have in place right now to maintain, particularly in this financial environment. We also wanted to keep making progress on critical goals related to academic achievement, belonging in equity, social and emotional learning, and student services. You'll recall last year we developed a budget where we reduced more than 10 positions while largely maintaining our programs, services, and class size average. The shift was a result of accounting for enrollment reductions over a few years while capturing efficiencies in areas such as special education. While we once again sought to address efficiencies and find efficiencies wherever we could, it was not possible to reduce staffing anywhere close to what we did last year without having a real impact on class sizes, programs, and supports. We were able to eliminate one teaching position at TCW solely due to enrollment while maintaining favorable class size averages.
Wayland continues to strengthen special education by expanding district-wide programming and increasing co-teaching at all levels. Students with a range of disabilities are offered robust district programming that were previously not offered as a continuum at all levels. At the same time, the growing population of students with intensive disabilities requiring out-of-district placement has not declined at a time when we're seeing tuition increases as high as 32%. Given that it was difficult to reduce personnel and special education costs this year, we paid special attention to holding the line on our non-personnel services. Now, that was not easy to do. As all of you will recall, last year, we actually froze our non-personnel services relatively early in the year at the end of October. It's something you can't do again. However, we are holding the line across the board on non-personnel services, even in areas that pose some risk. For example, our aging buildings require substantial maintenance and repair, and it is not possible to increase that budget the way we would want to. This challenge speaks to the critical work of our Pre-K to 8 Long-Range Facilities Planning Advisory Group as we strive to develop a feasible plan that upgrades facilities to meet the needs of today's learners. Speaking of planning, our Portrait of a Learner work, which we're just undertaking now, offers us a unique opportunity to build among the many strengths that are inherent in our school district and community. While this budget does not include any new programs or initiatives, it is quite possible that our Portrait work may, in the coming year, result in new proposals designed to offer expanded opportunities for our students. I just want to acknowledge, you know, as we get into the presentation further, I want to thank our town officials, our town manager, finance director, select board, for making some financial decisions, and really our voters in Wayland as well, allowing us to increase revenue for our town. That really helped us this year, because without that, this would have been much more difficult, this budget year. That being said, we are well aware of the fact that beginning next year, the Wayland Public Schools will require a substantial infusion of new revenue just to maintain what we do now. Preparing a good budget is a difficult task, and I just want to acknowledge that it's a real privilege to work with administrators who hear deeply about excellent education and fiscal responsibility. That includes our principals, as well as our district team.
Now, while the financial challenges in this budget are real, we feel confident as a team that our Wayland students and families are going to be in excellent shape next year, and we're really optimistic about where we're headed. So, a little bit about what we're going to do tonight. I'm going to provide some context and some more information before we get into secondary and elementary teaching and learning, and then student services. So, first, I just kind of acknowledge this, but it's important to acknowledge that we're facing increasing airy pressure in a few areas, special education, transportation, and that's both special education and general education, transportation, and health insurance. Now, while health insurance is not in our budget, it is in the town budget, but it has an impact on our allocation. And I think about health insurance because we budgeted next year 12% for health insurance, and certainly special ed and tuition and transportation are all going up more than 10%. When you have, obviously, a property tax levy limit that is getting to its cap of 2.5%, those are the areas that put the most pressure on our budget. So, our challenge is to continue the forward momentum toward achieving key system goals, preserving the programs and supports that lead to positive outcomes while managing increased costs in the areas I just named. So, as I mentioned earlier, last year, over 10 positions were reduced for an adjusted enrollment decline for a couple of years. This year, that is not possible without impacting program supports and class size. Given that our personnel budget is over 83% of our overall budget, that puts real pressure on our budget process. So, a little bit about where we're headed. After a lot of review and work and work with our town officials and our team here, our tax levy budget is $57,724,431 in terms of our recommended budget, and that is a budget increase of 4.98%. So, I just, I always like, as part of context setting, where have we been over the past few years? FY 25, 4.96. FY 26, 4.48. And you can see this year, we're very close to where we've been the last couple of years.
A little bit of context in terms of personnel, which makes up, you know, as I said, over 83% of our budget. You'll see that this year our personnel budget's 4%. Last year, because we reduced so many positions, it was actually 2.74%, and then FY 25 is 4.77. Now, we'll take a look at the next slide, which will give you a sense why. You see in FY 26 last year, our increase in non-personnel was 14%. This year, it's 9.7. FY 25 is 6%. We'll talk later on about non-personnel, but you should note that the three budget drivers that I talked about were all non-personnel. Health insurance is obviously indirectly related to personnel. So a little bit about, you know, as all of you think about a budget, I always think about five pillars of a school budget, and every district has to make decisions about these pillars in terms of where to devote resources. And certainly, Whelan Public Schools have a long history of program breadth and offering electives. We can go across the board that some districts don't have, whether it's drama at the middle school, whether it's various electives at the high school. Not all districts have certainly the music program that we do across the board, beginning in elementary. And those are obviously, you know, require resources. Next, educational infrastructure. That involves everything that goes into supporting classrooms, math coaches, support at the district level. It really includes now technology, which is a permanent educational infrastructure, which is really, obviously, required today. Class sizes. Those are some of the big decisions districts make. It's obviously having favorable class sizes is expensive. Student services. We'll talk about that. Every district that has excellent general education certainly should have excellent special education. That's a big part of student services, but mental health is also part of student services as we think about counselors, psychologists, et cetera. And lastly, I talked earlier about facilities and operations. This is often the area, you know, I really shouldn't put this last because what ends up happening is that so many districts put all the resources in the first four and then we get the hardest one is facilities and operations because none of us want to sacrifice education. But I talked about earlier that we had to hold the line on maintenance because we didn't want to take anything away from other four areas. The one thing about facilities and operations, it's the one area that you can pay off like a mortgage when you're renovating or rebuilding. You can pay that off over 30 years. So some of this money, of course, is in a capital budget, not in an operating budget, which we're talking about tonight.
So I'm not going to read our goals because I referred to them earlier, but obviously a part of the budget process is always goals. We see academic achievement, belonging, equity, social, emotional, all, of course, where we devote resources. And next is our other goals, student services, community, and operational, which I just talked about.
And a little bit about, certainly, research, evaluation, analysis. Data becomes important in our budget process. We take a look at enrollment, class sections. We now have a program to look at class sections, a really good data program. Ronnie does extensive work on program supports and caseloads and certainly taking a look at facilities and operations, everything we'll talk about on Wednesday night.
So what our budget does include, it includes a continuation of all programs and electives and continued expansion of special education programming. So at the elementary level, we are down. I will tell you that our enrollment, we have two different enrollment projections. We may be down a little bit more, down 24. You see in the budget books, we have the McGibbon projections and we have the NASDAQ projections. McGibbons are a little higher. But what we know for next year is that our enrollment is declining for the third straight year. This year, we were projected at 139. We actually had 168. Next year, we're like in the low 170s. We're now getting into a trend and the new normal is probably around, we'll see what next year is. We're projected around 174. Of course, kindergarten, we can get surprises, but a lot of it's based on birth rate as well as historic in-migration. It could be a little larger. We anticipate perhaps, well, we'll definitely have the same number of sections as probably the current year. We have a few on the bubble, so we will shift staff as necessary with our enrollment fluctuations.
The middle school, down 36. Spanish immersion will expand to eighth grade. Class size average will be comparable to this year. If you spread 36 around, it doesn't necessarily meet with the team structure that we would definitely have any reductions in staff. And at the high school, that is where the big eighth grade class is moving in and is much larger than the class leaving. So class sizes will be comparable. We do note, though, that in a small number of sections in a large ninth grade, there could be an increase and some elective sections may be capped. I will say, if we have extra resources at the end of the budget process, we may have to look at the high school. The one thing you all know because you've been around this table a couple of years is you don't know about high school because students sign up for classes. But that's something we will certainly watch and Alice and I just talked about that today and a couple of areas in particular we're going to have to watch. We don't have enough in this initial budget to do a lot at the high school but it's something we're going to watch as we go on. And Children's Way, this is to adjust for enrollment. There will still be favorable class sizes but I think, you know, Ronnie feels pretty comfortable and we've talked about this reducing one teacher. We had a teacher leave so that will not result in a job loss. And a little bit about inflation adjustments, we'll talk about inflation adjustments but we are seeing it across the board. I'll give you some examples. For example, in out-of-district tuition it ranges from five to thirty percent. Just a little bit about tuition. DESE does not set tuition. It's OSD, there's a special division operational services division that does that. Our superintendents association certainly has had some questions about that over the years as have our student services colleagues just because obviously it goes way above what districts can handle. And special ed transportation is up over twenty-three percent. General ed transportation about five percent. So you're seeing a real, even athletic buses is six point six seven percent. While it does not seem like a lot, even six point six seven percent, think about it, it is above our budget allocation. Homeless transportation, while not a huge number, has increased and we're adjusting for that budget-wise. Ronnie will talk more about our circuit breaker reimbursement. We're counting on about two point four million. Circuit breaker reimbursement of course is reimbursement for the state for students on high-cost tuitions. Building maintenance, the only change, Kirsteen will talk about this on Wednesday night, is that we're shifting to a contracted service to get our schools ready. But as I mentioned earlier, our building maintenance is pretty much level funded. And lastly, we talked about this at the budget and Heath will be here Wednesday, third year or four year investment in hockey aimed at reducing fees.
So this is our schedule. We're going to have discussion Wednesday night and next Wednesday night and possible vote on the 11th. But if not, we'll come back after the February break because we have a meeting scheduled on the 25th. So I will turn it over to Betsy. We'll talk a little bit about teaching and learning unless you have any initial questions. You do the questions after Betsy, either way.
I don't have initial questions.
Sounds good. Mark, let me. Oh, you. Can you just leave this up? Oh, okay. I brought mine up. Okay. Either way. Okay. I didn't know if you needed to look at it.
You go here and then your principals can, we'll get the principals up after your presentation. They look very ready. Very ready.
And then you and Ronnie can swap. So David talked about the big context of the budget, sort of within teaching and learning. As you said, this budget is designed to really maintain and continue with the programs that we have. As you look at the specific teaching and learning budget, the biggest financial changes is there's one position that's going to need out of a grant our elementary instructional coach. She was paid for under a grant last year and will not be this coming year. Instead, we're going to have three teaching assistant positions. So kind of swapping those out and that saves some MTRS mandatory contributions there. So it's a, well, it looks like teaching and learning is going up a lot. It's just a transfer there. And then some of the other increases are around consolidating certain budget lines and then some miscellaneous increases. For example, you saw that there is an increase in some different supply lines. For example, our Wayfinder journals that if you remember in the spring, they came in and talked about how lovingly the students feel about these journals. They're no longer going to be covered in our subscription so we'll need to pay for those separately. So that's just an example. In terms of teaching and learning, our elementary budget will continue with our Bridges 3rd edition implementation. So that will be the second full year of Bridges 3 or the fourth year overall of Bridges in general. Our SEL will be heading into a second year. We'll have Wayfinder. We have some PD coming up right after the break with Wayfinder where we're going to be working on Waypoints which is the data collection system that's connected to Wayfinder. So we'll be excited to really dive into that next year. As David mentioned, co-teaching will continue. We'll continue that model where it makes most sense for cohort sizes and still allows us to meet all of our other special education obligations for students that are not in a co-tapped program. And our biggest sort of financial ask is not through our operating budget next year but as we've discussed is through the capital budget which would give us an opportunity to leverage some grant writing. You may recall we get a $361,000 PRISM grant and so that would help offset half the cost of our pre-K to three curriculum adoption. And as Sarah so beautifully described the extensive process we're going through in terms of choosing that. At the secondary levels, as David mentioned, our Spanish immersion work continues. We'll be moving into eighth grade. We've already begun quite a bit of planning for the high school as well. We have Corey Matthews who's an expert in curriculum development at the secondary level for dual language programs. He's going to be doing some PD with that team both this spring and into the summer. At the middle school level you've heard Debra talk about accountable talks and even learning so we'll continue that work and really be looking at some of the academic outcomes connected to that in next year. We are excited to begin operationalizing the executive function strategies that we're learning through Sarah Ward's presentations. She's been once to the secondary level coming again in February for a second super Wednesday and then our final super Wednesday she'll be back with our elementary team. The high school has created a new MTSS team this year. They're really developing their implementation action plan and next year we'll be working on implementing that. So those are some of the highlights at our secondary level. And then kind of broader K-12 David's mentioned our portraits of a learner work. We've been working with a small team this fall and we're excited to expand that to a larger stakeholder group. We've got three sessions coming up there and had some also some focus groups. We'll continue to utilize open architects that will support our attendance work that we've been doing as well as kind of thinking through intervention to FST process. We've been meeting with the team to really think about that a little more deeply. We'll continue our restorative justice training. Our budget allows for a couple more rounds through grants and some restorative justice training. We just had two trainings in January so another 40 educators were trained. We'll have two more this summer. We'll continue the Warm Demander PD that really helps us think through our cultural response teaching moves. We're excited that our dev lead teachers are going to be funded in an operating budget. They've been covered in grants the past two years and we'll continue our AI work, PD development there as well as beginning to pilot some AI with our students.
Some big picture and some questions here alongside my colleagues who can probably. Some of these things don't, can you go one slide back? Some of these things don't think have a budget impact per se like Portrait of Alvarna that's just kind of focus groups and things like that. Maybe not next year but for example putting the DEV LTs in the operating budget that does have a budget impact. Is there anything that's being taken out of the budget to accommodate for that? Anything that has a budget, a positive budget impact or negative however you look at it, I'm curious what we're moving around in order to accommodate for that. So I would say you've got a number of things. So different PD money tops that we use for different pieces over time and different years to ebb and flow those. For example, the PRISM grant is going to pay for a lot of the PD around our ELA so PD that we may have put money towards there can be used for different things as pieces of ebb and flow.
And just for clarity, those are stipends. They're not like full FTEs. So that's just a small segment. So like something that's going into the operating budget. Is that just like a straight up increase? Because there were some components that were previously grant funded that we know we're no longer going to receive grant funding for and or as Betsy described, there's going to be some PD that we would have had to budget into the teaching and learning section that we did not. So it's like a tradeoff. So more of a budget neutral. But then in future years, the grant money will go away and we will have harder decisions to make. It's going away actually this year. So this is actually new in the budget for next year. No, no. What I understood is the PRISM grant is covering PD for ELA. So that is lessening the PD that the district is funding in 27. So it allows that money to be used for other things or shifted. But then in 28, if the grant funding for PD isn't available, we will have to confront those tradeoffs again either from finding external resources, increasing revenue, or looking at how we allocate that for 28. Correct? Yeah, and I think that's really true every year. Yep. Different things are prioritized in different fashions, so you pay more in one area one year and a little bit less in others and you continue to do those tradeoffs. In that vein, so the IDEA grant that will be covering three TAs, how many years is that grant for? That's every year. Every year. Well, as long as the federal government wants to. Sure. The entitlement grants have been a little, as you know, we lost our Title I funding and our Title III funding. Once I anticipate we won't get our Title IV funding this coming year, and Title II is a big, giant question mark, and that's everywhere. So it's more of a question mark for 28 just to be aware. Exactly, exactly. And I think in terms of grants, too, as Allison and I, David and I were discussing, we do have some other positions that have been covered by like our ICP grants, our Integrated Patient's Career Pathways grants, and we've got two more years on those grants, and then after that we would need to figure out, and that's really supported like our journalism program and some other pieces, and if we lose that fund, well, when that funding dries up, we need to figure out what positions are nice to have versus must have.
We know we're just anticipating one FTE down at the Children's Way next year. We're anticipating enrollment will be the same as this year, or less? For special education or for TCW? TCW, where we lose. It's in my slide, but... I know we'll talk about it later, but... Yeah, but yes. Our enrollment is... Got it. That's what we're... Okay. Thanks, honey.
I did just have one follow-up question on the ELA. It's a four-year subscription commitment, correct? It would be for four years. And so the PRISM grant covers half of that subscription for the curriculum or just materials and training? For all of those components for the four-year implementation. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. And there's another PRISM grant that's coming out that we'll see if we can hop on that one for a 4-5 piece too, potentially.
There may be more money coming in that area, given that the legislature recently passed the bill, and one of the critiques of the bill is, is this an unfunded mandate? So I would perhaps look for more money coming in that area. I just wanted to circle back to your question, Christina, and I would say that I think in the event that we're hearing only one reduction in headcount, which we know is happening through attrition and also due to enrollment, I think the areas where we would want to be sure we were aware before approving anything would be any cuts to the services, which I kind of heard as your question, right? So like if there are cuts that are being made that aren't being called out specifically here in order to fund those DEVLTs moving into the operating budget, which I understand they're not, there may be other areas where there are, and so I think we'd just appreciate those things being called out. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, so that's kind of, you know, stipends in a shift. I think I know the one area where we're watching carefully is the high school, do the enrollment want students sign up? So that's the area we're watching. If there's an influx of elementary and a couple of the bubble grades, you know, bubble grades break two ways. They either increase or decrease. So if the four bubble grades all increase, we would have a bit of a challenge, but we're kind of splitting the difference there. So those are the areas where we're... Anybody have any other questions related to the specific area?
I'm interested to learn more about the AI work, but not necessarily tonight. That's... I'm just talking to Jen. AI, first week in... April, April, wait, we just mentioned April. Sorry. April.
Anything else for our... Anything for our principal? We'll shift gears on any... I'd love to ask the question for any and all of you that are sitting there. Are there things that you really need that are not addressed in the budget? It's not necessarily a nice to have more of a must-have that aren't here.
Yeah. Yeah, and please, come on up. Come on up. Sure. Is that all right? I did too. Okay. Sure. Do the slides. Okay. That's it. Am I supposed to sit here? Anywhere you want. That's a fantastic question. I just have to... I personally just want to thank the leadership team, our close collaboration as we can get our students,
that we really look for next year and meeting our students' needs and the work that we've done this year, which is really exciting and maintaining them. So I personally feel as though there's nothing that we need at this point. I feel confident in what we're proposing. I think at Clay Pitt we've looked at enrollment and been able to move some resources around to adequately address the new community. We're in a really good place to deliver a level of illnesses.
Yeah, I think this is also not the year of the budget, right? And so I think that that's something that we are keeping in mind. I think, you know, long-term, I think a math interventionist would be really valuable for our schools and I would say that that would be an important need in the future, but we also recognize that this is not the year for that. And, you know, we're just so appreciative of the budget and, you know, adding co-teaching this year has been such a win in so many ways and so we appreciate that the budget allows us to be doing co-teaching in multiple classrooms at all three schools.
I do hold my breath a little bit as we look at the increase in enrollment at the high school. And as David mentioned, there will be ongoing conversations, especially as the course selection process gets underway at the end of this month. I mean, we're going to be spending a lot of time this spring looking at numbers, looking at requests, making staffing allocation decisions all around the reality of no additional staffing and wisely allocating what we already have to best support 50-plus additional ninth graders. So I will keep you posted. I'm sure it will be ongoing conversation. I also feel like right now our class sizes are nice. And so we have some room to pinch and be creative with existing staffing. And as Brian notes, we get it. It's not the year to sort of dream big. We want to do well with what we have and best support all of our learners. And so I do feel like with some good creative problem solving, we'll be able to do that. So as we have our eighth graders move on to ninth grade, we will be welcoming a new group of sixth graders that aren't as large as our kids moving on to the high school, but will keep us at a fairly steady enrollment. I know last year we had a reduction on a position that resulted in reworking the writing center, which is going well. So that's something we'd like to revisit in the future. One of the things that we've been really appreciative of as middle school is the funding that's available in the summers to do our development, especially around Spanish immersion, because that has been a really rich time for professional collaboration and preparation for the growth of that program over the years. And not only that program, but also the data gathering practices for our kids and special education and some other really important school-based work that can be done when folks can really concentrate on it. Spanish person going to eighth grade next year. Wow. I certainly appreciate and hear that you guys hear that this is not the year. However, please don't think that just because this isn't the year, every year could not be the year. So we want to make sure that we are hearing from you and that, you know, they're coming through with things where, you know, they might be nice to have, but they're really, like, we really need.
that question. Is there anything that you are hearing, don't let me drive this conversation, I just had one other question, from the educators kind of across the board that there's certain pockets of their needs that you don't feel are being met at one level or another? Makes everyone know. Yeah, pretty good. That's good news. And I think we all know facilities is a major concern for everyone across the board, so that's, like, the white elephant in the room. But we know that, but, like, aside from that, are there any areas that you feel are consistent concerns? Nothing within the budget. I think we're always looking for ways to increase the amount of personal development we have for teachers and, you know, having four Super Wednesdays and a few other Wednesdays we're able to do it, it often just never feels like enough. And so I think trying to fit all of that in is something that I know we're all constantly thinking about how to make it meaningful. I mean, you have PD that's, like, beautiful, is awesome once, and then teachers are implementing things the next day, but then it kind of over time goes away. And so having, and Betsy does such a great job of kind of aligning what our PD looks like each other. Bless you. Bless you. a lot more time because it's amazing what we can do. So that's always something that's kind of on our minds. I would say that. That's the word I was thinking of is time. Yeah. Time with each other, time with time learning, time with students. Let's all get some of that. I was just going to say, we could just, like, make that happen in the universe. And when you think about elementary school teachers, I think there are, as much as the three of us try to, like, if you have a recess incident, you can take 10 minutes, you can do the math lesson 10 minutes later. I think there is a lot of pressure at the elementary level to get through all of the curriculum. And we want teachers to go through the curriculum and we want to make sure they're educating the whole child. And so I do think that that's a pressure that they feel. Enjoy recess is not a good match for that, which we had all of last week. That can be challenging for a lot of kids. But I think that because of the minutes that are required with, you know, the reading pilot and bridges, which are all wonderful things, there's still not a lot of time for some of the other things that we would love to spend more time on. And Wayfinder's been a great win this year, our new SEL program. And if you ask most elementary school teachers, they would love to double the amount of SEL time they have with kids. But there's not enough hours in the week.
Thank you. I am curious about the outcomes of the co-taught classrooms. Are you seeing more time being spent in areas with students that really need that added support? And are you seeing a decrease in need for special education or additional services? I know it's very, very soon to tell. But have you seen that making an impact in other teachers that you've needed to pull in throughout the day otherwise? We're seeing a really positive impact to be honest with you. What's beautiful about it is that kids get just-in-time support versus scheduled support. When there's special educators in this room all day, they get support when they need it. And special educators have the luxury of stepping back to foster independence when a child doesn't need the support versus our push-in, pull-out model where it has to be really scheduled. So, you know, I think that the benefits are extreme really, truly for most kids. And we're thinking about how to meet the needs of kids who, for one reason or another, aren't great candidates for the co-taught model. We're thinking about how we allocate resources. But I think the next year's budget supports us being able to think creatively and meet the needs of all kiddos. But it's been exciting watching that it really has in our special educators. When you have that ability to collaborate together, the creative energy, having another adult as your thinking partner is really a rewarding way to teach. So they're really enjoying it on a professional level, which translates to kids getting what they need. Yeah. And I think we have to evaluate what co-teaching looks like. We tried one model this year, and there's been a lot of success with it. And there's pros and cons to it. There's many different models of co-teaching. And so as a district, we might decide that special ed teachers are in there half of the time next year or just in for DLA and math. So I think those are the important questions that we've asked ourselves this spring is what is that going to look like as we look at kind of a full year of data. But I think, yes. So it's definitely been a win, and we're curious about how we proceed forward and what's going to make the most impact for all the kids, as Marie was just saying. And also finding opportunities for those that are not co-teaching within the grade level to be able to see the benefits and to be able to collaborate and plan and also be a part of those thought partners where they can apply any modifications or any versatile design for learning within what they're doing in their room. The planning has been excellent, just to add to your point. The special education teacher in the grade levels and shows having all three schools and the grades are at loker, there's a lot of collaboration with a special education teacher in one classroom with the other two classrooms. So accommodations, modifications, that's been a beautiful thing to see.
Yeah, I mean, the student aspect and the learning aspect sounds beautiful, right? So from like a business standpoint, it sounds like it's also more effective and efficient. Maybe? I think we'll find out, right? To be continued. I mean, right, it was a shift. It was not a resource added, as you know. It was a shift. Well, it's also not like a one-size-fits-all model. Right. Like, it's not like we could have three classrooms that were all the classrooms in second grade that are all co-taught. So that's the other piece that's like a good balancing act. Well, is the intention for next year, maybe we don't know, if you have a fourth grade classroom that was co-taught next year, is there a fifth grade co-taught classroom to benefit those kids who were co-taught and who really thrived? Do we know? We don't work. I think we're still here. We're starting those conversations.
We're starting those, like, it'll be at each school and looking at, you know, numbers from the cohorts we had at the beginning of the year to where we are now to where we will be, they shift, new needs arise, and then kids also, you know, come off. So we'll be looking at that and see at each school. How does it shift? Do we have a big cohort in second grade? Do we have a, you know, I need a fifth grade? Some of the things that I'm part of with Dyslexia Institute with Sarah Sontag, and it's really kind of thinking about how we pair kids, how we group kids, and so that's You're more than welcome to come and visit our co-taught classroom. We'd love to have you. I've heard it's
I do have just one more question on the contracted services for the building management. It sounds like we're going to outsource those. I imagine that's for a dozen of different reasons. On school readiness, is that? That's the main. Do we typically do that? No. No. And it is a shift, but the necessity was that we really didn't have the deep clean that everybody was hoping for, and there was a lot of damage from some of the circumstances, so we just want to be able to bring in the contractor, do the work, and then let our custodians do the deep waxing and things like that in the spaces, and especially in the lucky building that has the summer programming that we have to really turn that transition around. So we wanted to be able to just prioritize that and have it really focused on getting them ready for the upcoming year. And is that for all the buildings? But it's limited to summer, like one time.
We'll have a chance to dig into special ed, athletics,
maybe we should hold like a school committee meeting in one of the hotel classrooms. I only say that because we would have to notice it if we wanted to all go. There was more than two of us that one time. Mr. Jones is like no.
We're happy to set that up for you all. We could split up multiple classes. We could definitely do that.
Anything else for this team before they head out? Has anybody else had 100% attendance? No, I'm waiting for that.
chance to wear our tiara for a second again. We haven't been closed in. I did tell you that was the one day Griffin almost stayed home and I was so happy with him. I'm so worried if my kids are sick that we're going to
go. He's ready to go. Ready to go. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're going to shift here.
So I just started with our student services district goals just the framework around our development of programs that are vertically aligned and effectively communicated and our
so to start our 25 26 some updates our language based program is now has expanded so it's grades 3 all the way to 12 we're continuing our consultation with landmark which is great our therapeutic learning centers formally skip ARC and ALRT they are now all called TLC we have continued our consultation with Triumph and we actually for both our language based program and our therapeutic learning centers have program like manuals that are almost ready to go so two thirds of the way there our milestones achieve sales and life skills program so that's at our elementary milestones and achieve sales is at middle scope and life skills is at high school we continue our consultation with ASPIRE our TTB that's our 18 to 22 program that we just started this year we actually partnered with Framingham State through the mass program where you can have kids go on college campuses and take classes so we partnered with them and our students are spending two days a week on Framingham State campus and then they've also been partnering with local businesses as you heard we've co-teaching implemented in all elementary schools we actually have
and debriefing with the teachers we're offering some courses this spring through Landmark and it looks like they're going to be on writing and executive functioning participation in the Dyslexia Institute and then Sarah Ward so that that second goal around executive functioning or focusing on professional development and then working to bring all that together so this is just some of our numbers again this is a snapshot the current numbers are based on October 1st they have changed but this is October 1st and then next year this is just anticipated based on October 1st numbers what we see so you can see that TCW enrollment we have a big cohort of kids going to kindergarten next year that high school that big grade 8 is going up which is that so there has been like you can see there's a slight decrease in our population over the class for years and why is that we've worked really hard on our SST process and our MTSS process which is continual it's a work in progress but we've been working really hard on that we've increased our interventionist support we have a really good solid tier one instruction with bridges and now with our ELA curriculum our introduction of our special education administrators running IEP meetings and determining eligibility we all just went to a professional development on determining eligibility just around some of more of the nuances we've had a lot of professional development and progress on our disproportionality and we're no longer disproportionate in finding our black and brown students eligible for special education at a higher rate than other students so that PD has really helped and then there's also been an overall decline even though we've had a decrease in our special education numbers our shift has been that we've had we have more intense needs so although although our overall numbers have decreased our needs have intensified our current special ed population is demonstrating increased need for intensive supports a lot around the social emotional and behavioral and then also some physical disabilities so if we have students that come in and need a wheelchair or hearing equipment those are all you know expensive items and that you know adds to our overall budget given the needs of the students our current staffing does allow us to maintain our services we do not need we can't there's no room to cut but we don't need to add we currently have 102 students in our program can I ask is that true even with this bubble going up to the high school that jump in enrollment and nine looked very big increasing a year which one just from the middle oh middle and high school yes because I'll get to that but actually that need our enroll our numbers at high school are actually a little low this year you can actually see they're lower than middle school so it is a jump but it's because our numbers are so low this year it's actually more in line with what we typically have it's just this year for the first year ever we have a lower number of kids on IEPs at the high school than at the middle school which is interesting so it looks like a big jump but we're well staffed to service it we currently have 102 students in our programs and that represents 21% of our population overall and then since the development of programs such as our language-based program we've really been able to service our students in the district which has been great sorry can you tell me 102 students in our existing programs and that represents 21% of special education so there's like 500 and some odd kids in special education so 102 represents about 20 and those are just the ones that are like in our programs but the rest of them are just on like pull-out services you mean yeah okay I just wanted to make sure okay inclusion got it co-teaching maybe just related services things got it okay thank you sorry some additional funding sources that we're looking for we're very excited we were awarded the 213 grant for $50,000 which is used to help there's new regulations coming in August around the use of time out rooms and restraints so there was a competitive grant and we got it and the funds are going to be used for professional development and summer work to review our processes and our protocols around the use of time out spaces and restraints and then we're looking to potentially tuition in some students to our language-based program at the elementary level we have room in the lower grades in third and fourth really I'll write a question that one what does that mean like do they stay until they go to 12th or
have to ask why wouldn't we extend it to second grade instead of offering I understand tuition base is helpful to our district but why wouldn't we extend it to second grade when we know it's helpful or first grade yeah that's also something that we're thinking about adding it to another grade we have to add another teacher we can't do it we can't expand to another grade with our current staffing we could add kids in the third and fourth grade level at our current staffing so it is something I'm looking for the following year to expand to first and second second particularly but we don't have the resources to do that yet but it is something I am looking we talked about it Erin so I'm glad you asked because we talked about Ryan I talked about it but remember this budget is like straight maintained I understand but if we have a different standard I do think it is something to look at so it's a really good fair question that we we've talked about it it's just we have as you know we have two teachers in there and they cover grades three four and five if we were going to do two three four and five we would need another teacher we can't have two teachers covering because they we would need another staff I understand how many kids per grade do we have I'm doing some math in my head our fifth grade is the highest it's about eight and our third and fourth are lower at like four or five that's why we can go up to eight in each grade we don't why are they at four and five why are they so much lower we've been doing a lot of work in the other schools with there's a lot more trained teachers
doing a lot of training around differentiation and evidence based supports and really and with co-teaching I'm hoping we'll see even the teachers there's just not as big of a need because we have so many more services and supports and teachers are just providing different services now you know although at happy hall and local we don't have the language based program we're using you know language based practices in those buildings and we're seeing a lot of success one more question then I'll stop no please given that it is out of the local schools the program exactly are there students that qualify it qualify for the program and this would be for all the programs in local or happy hollow but choose not to go very rarely yes and they often end up going like if they're recommended for third and they say no they may end up going in fourth I've had that happen maybe once or twice but it's very rare people are usually like yes get me in there but we're very we're very clear on the exit I mean entrance criteria teachers are very well aware of it and we have a really great Jen and Megan who are the teachers and then Naomi who's the special administrator you know we observe kids quite a bit we also really try that move from a school you know to move from happy hollow to go to clay pit it is a big deal so we're also another reason why we're seeing a decrease is we're intensifying services at the home school so before we would even look to see if there is a movement we'll put in we'll increase services and monitor the progress and if we're seeing progress then we wouldn't necessarily make so we're increasing services one more please with a slight adjustment to the entrance criteria for those third and fourth graders where there might be capacity do you think that would open up a window of students in Whelan that needed the support I'm sorry say that again with like a slight adjustment to those entrance criteria so it's really important that we keep the entrance criteria the where it is because it's a very specific cohort of students that benefit that if you open it up it ends up then you're not really you're not really adhering to the fidelity of this program and why it works so well if you if you open it up and you say well they kinda it really can impact the overall program I understand so yeah so that's why we're increasing services you know we'll increase and we'll do other things but we really you know are with a lot of work with Landmark around how to make sure we're best utilizing the resources and also like sharing the resources so like Jen and Matt at that middle school for instance put together this great writing protocol like and I shared it you know it's being shared out so things that they're creating and doing we're using you know outside of the program thank you can I ask a question yeah I mean I had like pilot year my son was in it so I feel like we've seen it from start to now so okay go ahead sorry I'm done I'm done with mine no my question is is there any if this is something that we're able to do is there any opportunity to take advantage of like say this is just an example Weston had some kids that needed to come over into 3-4 LBC is there any opportunity for us to take advantage of services that they provide in district for some that we can't for our Whalen students we do not at Weston but we do we do that
bigger districts that have you know like a district like Newton or I mean they have they're bigger so they have more programs I mean for a small district we have quite a robust programming which is amazing I have to say typically you wouldn't see this level of programming in a small district you would see a bigger district because you just don't have the cohorts but we do actually and when I get into
there's nobody knocking on my door yet so it's all just potential this is just you've seen this it's our programs and we're in line now you can see that we
cohort we just don't have that and then scope and sales that's for our students who need the most intensive supports more one-on-one and are more self-separate so this is just a breakdown of what our programs cost because often people think are the programs worth it what do they cost so this is just a breakdown of how many students are
and then the total cost per student and then what it would cost for an out of district placement is in blue so really having the programs beyond it being best practice the law having students in their community least restrictive environment it's also fiscally beneficial to
I imagine it's different if you're transporting in district yeah it is transportation is quite costly for out of district and this is strictly calm tuition and these are just average costs I'm going to go into more detail in the next slide question what does it cost for us to take one elementary school teacher and get them Orton Gillingham certified or in Gillingham or Wilson training costs about $3,500 for the year but would they be done in one year in theory so maybe $7,000 for like $3,500 for the whole training so period right but it could take a year and a half you have to do a practicum right like I did it 25 years ago and it was 40 lessons now it's I think 60 lessons that you have to do I mean you have to get a student from book one all the way to book like four point when I did it 4.2 so ideally it should take
so that once do get intensive support for the entire year as compliments of the program and the learning right and we have a lot of teachers now trained and any new teachers so like we had a new special educator she's getting trained this year so it's my
and then new teachers initially they do the three day and then the full year and so do we bake that in when we're costing out that comes I put that out of my special ed operating budget sometimes I
down you know of different types of out of district placements so there's out of district private that's our most restrictive those are our 766 approved private schools and that was the tuition David is saying is that by OSD that some of those schools are going up 32 percent you
collaborative it's a little bit less restrictive it's called a public it's not a private placement it's a public placement sometimes it's in a public school as I said we're a member of tech collaborative but I
and then that OOD public we actually have two students this is least restrictive this is like tuitioning in so we have two students who
has a pretty good range of programming we do have students at all the collaboratives but we also they also offer professional development and if you're a member you get a discount are there other collaboratives that you could see us trying to become a member of that would be beneficial for us in the short term or I mean the
students there I don't know a lab is a little bit further away we have a couple of students there it's hard to say it can be kind of costly we want to make sure we're yeah only if it was cost efficient obviously I mean something that we keep an eye on but it
approximately 500 in district and 44 of them are currently in our district positions our out of district is no for our out of district it's 44 and I thought you you said a few moments ago we were approximately 500 total which would be 9 to 10 percent sorry it's 8 percent and how does that compare to average in the commonwealth for other districts does anybody watch that I'm actually I'm in like an out of district group and we kind of compared it's pretty comparable our numbers are pretty steady we're pretty comparable to other districts like of the same size right so Betsy in terms of asking that question size is a big factor because as you mentioned districts like more programs however we have in some cases some of the same programming you might not have for example a program for some medically fragile kids because of cohorts that's something that a smaller district wouldn't have typically and it's about often times it's about cohort size and bigger districts are bigger cohort size which is why they run programs that being said you have plenty of kids who go out the district in large districts as well because of the need of residential placements kids for social and emotional reasons can't be in a traditional school setting which is the biggest number I would say about 8-10% maybe 7-12% is pretty difficult it does get tricky for a student who is medically complex that's like we don't have a program for that so that's like an automatic no but I think it helps to put in context since it is every year we talk at budget about double digit increases over which we have limited control so understanding where there isn't as much ability for us to influence those cost drivers I think it's helpful to understand if we are in the mainstream and an average in terms of what other districts are seeing we're pretty much and also the group of students which districts like Whalen had historically been losing are students who would like be in the LBC particularly in upper elementary and then middle school that's the area wouldn't you say Ronnie that was most of all losing students that we especially it is rare to be able to have a language based program all the way through 12th grade that is you know something I think that we should all be really proud of that we have that and two really great teachers at that level who have been working really hard and we're seeing a lot of great results but it allows you know you want to be in high school with your peers so we are you know to have it all the way to 12th grade is great thank you more family I got one on every level I have heard recently a lot of feedback from kids at the high school level that we talk you know about having a trusted adult and a place to go they very much feel that that classroom and that kind of dynamic at the high school is their place to go so I I've heard that it is the best part of some students' days the teachers really help them they're focusing on writing versus reading or they're able to learn with their homework so I think the adaption that you've made at the high school level is definitely trending in the right direction that's great to hear so really awesome teachers doing a lot of really cool work there there's some great stuff happening in high school and that's from a lot of kids just from one and it's good to hear any other questions on this I just thought I didn't know if you you know I just wanted to break it down because we say out of district but it's actually there's different and then I didn't include residential in this which we actually don't have so what does an out of district cost a tuition can range anything anywhere from $74,000 to $265,000 a year average cost of tuition for a private is $128,000 and average cost of a collaborative is about $93,000 typically they go up 5% each year so when we're budgeting what's in there I've built in 5% increase there are about 10 schools that have increased over that and they have to get OSD approval for that which they've gotten so we've budgeted that like there's two schools that have gone up 32% and like I said I just found out when our collaborative is going up 10% so to kind of readjust that a little bit and then the average cost of transportation for one out of district student is about $60,000 a year and you know some students are eligible for services up to 22% so we can have you know students in district from age 3 all the way to 22% this is just move-in laws and this is why budgeting for special education can be a little bit tricky I mean there's a lot of reasons but this is one of the reasons if a student attends an out-of-district public or collaborative and moves into Wayland at any time we start funding that tuition and transportation immediately so if a student's living in Natick and goes to accept and they move to Wayland we take over that tuition that day if a student attends a private school an out-of-district private school and moves in before April 1st Wayland becomes responsible July 1 so they give us a little reprieve and if any student moves in after April 1st we actually have a whole year to plan so April 1st is like that deadline and then if a student who attends in a district has parents who live in two different communities those districts split the cost just a little background yes can we verify that they have to enroll so they would enroll in our district and then they have to enroll in their other district as well but how can we enforce that on someone how can we enforce it what we do is something called if we need to the state has a department called an LEA assignment where you submit to the state makes the decision and then they come down and say who's fiscally responsible so typically there's not an issue where parents do enroll in both districts and then and also transportation if you need transportation we need to know where you live circuit breaker this year is 53 431 so that's threshold it goes up a little bit each year hoping for 75% reimbursement over threshold only 766 approved schools are eligible unless you get special approval so I just don't want people to think like we're funding all private schools like it has to be an approved out of district program in order to be reimbursed I don't know what transportation reimbursement is going to be we put in 50% as a we think last year they were hoping to reimburse 75% they did not so to be conservative we put in 50% we cannot claim any in-district transportation and again reimbursement percentages are really just an estimate and it's based on what state money and available this is a silly question but when you say it costs $60,000 for transportation that's not what we pay that's total so we at 50% they would reimburse us $30,000 or $120,000 so we pay $60,000 and then we have to pay that up front and then hopefully we get reimbursed but we did not get you know like we got like 44% last year I think so and like any in-district costs are McKinney-Vento costs we don't get any sort of break of that right so can we go back just back to the move-in law section this is the important component because if you look at April 1st and you look at our budgeting cycle this is what we're facing is kind of a compounded issue is that a move-in cost is not a one-time cost it's your that first year initial cost and then you have to project a plan for that so sometimes it doesn't it's not cyclical on our fiscal year or our budgeting cycle and so that's why you're seeing some pretty you know significant increases not because our out-of-district counts or significant placements are going up but we have to make sure that we you know we continue to include those that have moved in after the budgeting cycle so each year we're going up significant costs in that category so if you have a so if I have a student that moves in April 2nd they're not included in this year's budget they'll be included in the next year's budget but then moving forward or if I had a student that moved in who moves in March 31st I haven't captured them for next year but we're gonna have to figure it out and get them in so like I said the collaboratives you pick it up right away am I remembering correctly that we inherit the prior district's eligibility determination and placement and then you don't come up until they're ready for reassessment right if it's assigned IEP and placement we have to honor it how often is that happening move in every year but not all out of district placement move in not all not all of our move in's are out of district but they're so every year there are move in's do you ever get out of district move out's probably not as much no good question that's a hundred thousand give or take that you yeah every year at least a couple yeah there's like circuit breaker for some of that there is it's hard because we don't get we have to put out the money we have to put it out we don't get circuit breaker we don't I get nervous with circuit breaker because it's all dependent it could change and it's a year after so we can't say we're waiting on circuit breaker that we're going to get we still have to pay the current year that the service is done is this is another silly question but is that impacted at all by the volume of kids that are sent out so if we sent out 100 students one year is our circuit breaker reimbursement going to be higher than if we only sent out 50 yeah so last year we did have a big increase and we got extraordinary relief we're not going to meet that I don't anticipate us meeting it this year but like Kirstie was saying when you have a move in student and that cost you know balloons a little bit your budget the state has that extraordinary relief built in for one year so if your costs really so say we have like three kids move in and we unanticipated extraordinary relief can offset that a little bit but again you don't find out about that until May so it's all you find everything out after the budget it's all our best guess right this was presented in a really easy way to understand it I mean truly like you I feel like you just put the facts out there try to keep it you know just the facts and also it's very it's also you know when we say out of district the fact that there are different levels of that and I don't know that the cost really you know it is the same you know as a salary basically as a placement so and then you know so I'm just trying to provide some context and I want to thank Ronnie for her detail in this this is exceptional and I've worked with a lot of communities and I mean she is spot on and we worked really close with getting this budget conservative but real and also we were transparent in how we showed the offset of circuit breaker because again we are taking our best guess on what she is tracking in these costs we are already applying that so that's where we also come in with a little bit of risk factor going into the subsequent year not knowing if we're going to have a move in after we present it not knowing how things are going to fall through not knowing that the state is truly going to give us the amount of circuit breaker that they've identified so we're trying to be as transparent as we can in that process and again this was an excellent way to illustrate and explain it so thank Ronnie for that not on you for me you did great okay I have a number of questions but I don't know if I'm going to do those tonight or Wednesday well what are they the budget book questions that didn't get answered tonight so that was I was going to if it's not specific to these well one is curriculum instruction so that one arguably is and then I have like elementary school personnel budget changes I had questions I mean you could potentially ask them now and we could dock at them yeah so I'm happy to have it answered Wednesday I can just say it now so I would say on the elementary schools and middle school we're seeing everywhere from 24 to close to 30 percent non-personnel reductions I think I'd just like to understand what's driving those given those are already small budgets I realize it's small dollars but to those schools that's a big shift so I think I'd like to understand that very easily we worked with the principals preparing this budget cycle and what I kind of inherited notice is that there were there's a lot of the same category budget lines for the same item and what that has created with a lot of small little budget items within a particular building that have no difference in the sense of what DESI reporting requires us to submit and
happening is if that $200 line item needed $25 we're having to go through the process of a piece of paper to do a budget transfer to do all these additional things so what we did is we consolidated so when you look at the appendix budget there's a note the far right column has notation and it identifies the consolidation accounts so he did not take away any of that non-personnel money it was consolidated to bring 35 line items down to maybe eight or nine much
was we put in the special education costs that were already being handled from the district level so instead of having resources that might not be utilized because that's not really where they're kind of overlooking we put it up into the special education section up at the top and we're on this section and the same thing with the instructional software which is that was just shifted we allocated to the full district IT so that there is equity among what licenses are being purchased for the various schools so that everybody has access to the same and that there's consistency and also some economies of scale where we can get some better pricing if we're doing it in the bulk so your elementary schools if we are ordering three licenses for three different buildings if we do it in one bundle we're going to get a better cost so those were just shifts so it was not a reduction but it was a reclassification and reallocation to the departmental program I like consolidation is the 132,000 on curriculum instruction journals or something else the 31% no I'm sorry it's personnel 31% increase in personnel shift because the position had been partially funded in the grant last year so those are the DEB no that's the one position that was the switch oh the instructional and it was funded in FY25 but there was just some reallocation and the reason that we shifted it back is because we'll get better
MTRS percentage and we'll have more access to additional training services and cover three TAs under that amount so again that was essentially a shift in the teacher coming back in TAs being allocated to the grant so it's really an increase of like $3,000 but it actually comes out in the negative 4.31 in the stipend in grant right it's like almost yes it's almost neutral yeah I can hold other questions to Wednesday you said you only want me to do ones that are topical tonight I think if you have other ones and you know about them I would suggest sending them in advance and that way if there's something that can be prepared for in advance of Wednesday night to be answered whether it be topic specific or something that like Kirsteen just needs a little bit of time or whatever it might be and then the other thing that I briefly talked about this today before our meeting but Kirsteen if it makes sense to you it seemed to be helpful in previous years to consolidate questions that you might get from Kirsteen or
something like that into just one document with the explanation and that way that just gets kind of shared and people have it
to have to go forward the question that you asked like we all heard the answer but it's not something that might be helpful for finance or whatever okay does anybody have any other questions or items you guys want to ask in previous years I
what are we waiting for so governor healy produced her budget actually just at the end of january and as you all read about state aid to municipalities was lower than it's been in a while and our chapter 78 wasn't quite as high it wasn't too far off what Brian budgeted it was a little bit lower doesn't have
Massachusetts the governor's budget is just the final budget comes from the legislature and so that's where we'll know where we end up it will only go one way and that's higher but that being said if you think about the pressure right now on the state there are a lot of areas transportation I mean you know 50% of the Massachusetts budget is Medicaid and think about the federal cuts and the impact some of that gets reimbursed Medicaid is like a circuit breaker it gets reimbursed by the federal government the year after but there's still so there's a lot of fiscal pressures Christina so I don't know where we will end up there's one other area that we will know in early February and that's health insurance and you know if you follow health insurance closely you're seeing real spikes last year we had a historically low increase because in our health insurance plan West suburban they use some reserves to keep the number low one thing we know it's hard to use reserves two years in a row so we have budgeted our town budget 12% for health insurance so if that's lower you know we have a little more breathing room so like what goes through my mind is a little breathing room would be helpful as you heard if we talked about high school in certain pieces so if somehow our health insurance plan is lower than 12% that's going to help and we will know that I would say in a week a week or a week and a half we hopefully will know by the 11th and that could give us some breathing room but that's the last piece of information we never know what the final state budget of course is until much later but hopefully it goes in only one direction up I just don't know how much in this environment I was just wondering if while you're here Ronnie not that you won't be here on Wednesday but did you want to talk at all about the amount that we are talking about asking for to be put into the SPED reserve fund this year yeah so we talked about that because that requires an article town meeting we met about that last week with Michael and Brian Kirstie and I did and what we're talking about is 300,000 so that would be the expected use is 250 this year right out of 500 that's in there again we have not well no no I understand but if we if that's where we kind of come out and we things break
get and we do request 300 we would be at like around 550 525 ish going into fiscal year 27 and the goal is to always be over around five in the stabilization yeah it's there for the unforeseen like this is the first year we haven't correct this is the first year we haven't been directed to deplete it as soon as funded yeah we shouldn't be using that as a budget offset so I just wanted to kind of should my thought was should it be asking for you know another five or something would it be smarter I don't just an ask good at this juncture okay that that was a good start and I think that if we are able to continue
and be a little more prepared within our operating side that that will help and you know continue to contribute to that stabilization fund so that we don't have these catastrophic years where if well that's right I'm thinking just two move ins is that entire fund right next year that's gone right I think tonight's presentation you know people watching you know a real sense of why you need this fund but if you guys are comfortable with 300 I think now I think sorry I'm like I mean we're what do we have February March April I think yeah we've budgeted out everything we think we have for the end of the year nobody's going to hold you to it right I just you know if we get to move ins in the next month then we're going to come to me please then that situation changes but you know I always have things that I think are months and months you know like ahead and all that's been captured I can't think of anything else I would read specific to things that we've covered tonight as everybody else I'll be here on Wednesday if you have more questions come up okay do we have any matters not anticipated I do not I would entertain a motion to adjourn so move do we have a second second all in favor aye any opposed none we are adjourned at 8 49 750 749 okay sorry