 As a preliminary matter, my name is Charlie Fosca chair of the finance committee permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. When I call your name please indicate that you are present. Thank you. Present. Shane Blundell. There. On Ellis. Here. The Kyahee Lee. Here. Mary Margaret. I'm here. I read the area. Present. Jonathan Wallace. Here. Brian Beck here. Peter Howard. President Krouffer. That's a good name out there. Here. John Deist. Ellen Jones. Here. Angela Kort. That's it. Altos. Here. George kosher. Here. Christine Deschler. Here. Here. David McKenna. Here. Thank you. Just came in. John dice. Okay. So. We have 21 members. Okay. going on with this agenda. So we have, Liz Diggins, you're here. Yes, I am. We have anticipated speakers tonight. Sandy Pooler in the beginning, and then we have some members of the school committee and the Arlington Development Schools, whose names I will recite when they're here. This open meeting, the Arlington Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we've been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the governor's order suspends the requirements to be able to meet a law to have all meetings at a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies or public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order, which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely. So long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to edigginsattown.arlington.ma.us.com. For this meeting, we're convening by Zoom app as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join and comment. Please note the meeting's being recorded and some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer, anything at your broadcast may be captured by the recording. All supporting materials provided to this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the chair notes otherwise. The chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda and after concluding marks, the chair will be down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, questions or motions. Please hold your comments until your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking and please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. If members wish to engage in colloquial members, please do so through the chair. I think this covers the important points of this document. So we'll move to the first item on the agenda. Thank you very much. The first item on the agenda is minutes. Peter Howard. Thank you, Charlie. The minutes were distributed last week. I got quite a few inputs. Revised them out last week, last yesterday. And I got several corrections, distributed them again with the corrections highlighted. And I got a few more from Charlie from Al Fausti, which were largely readability issues. I move that the minutes of the 29th be accepted. Second. So it's been moved and seconded. I don't know if I'm looking at the most recent version, Peter, but I did want to ask on the discussion of the letter to deputy manager, deputy manager Poole, I was going to suggest changing the word disapproval to comment commentary under article 10, 43, 43 ADUs. You like commentary? I do. So do I. So done. Thank you. And then Shane Blundell's name was misspelled. Article nine, under point nine, you had BLNO and DELL. And there was an extract. Article eight, there was an S in front of action. No action. That's been fixed. Okay, good. So it's been moved and seconded. Any further questions or comments? Charlie, could you say again, what's the word you like rather than disapprove? Commentary. Thank you. Charlie, this is Makaya. My last name is spelled incorrectly. I know I have a lot of vowels in my name. Okay. Under the number one introduction, it should be H-E-A-L-Y. Oh, there's no E? No E. Uh-oh. I've been making that mistake too. Oh, I did that mistake. That's my mistake. I apologize, Makaya. Okay, there's a lot of vowels. Yeah. Could you say that again, please? H-E-A-L-Y. H-E-A-L-Y. Yes. And that's, I think I have been dispelling that throughout the document. So I'll have to go back and fix that. I apologize, Makaya. I don't think you have. I think it's been correct. Oh, okay. So it's moved and seconded. Any further comments? Okay, we'll vote on the minutes. Grant Gibbian. Aye. Shane Lundell. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Kaya Healey. Yes. Mary Margaret Frankelman. Yes. Arif. Yes. Jonathan Wallach. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Peter Howard. Yes. Shailene Procrest. Yes. Darrell Harmer. Yes. Undiced. Yes. Allen Jones. Yes. Annie McCourt. Yes. O'Kellor. Yes. Al-Tashti. Yes. George Kosher. Yes. Christine Deschler, Dean Carmen. Yes. Pardon? Yes. And David McKenna. Yes. Did I get you, Christine? I voted yes. Okay, thank you. So the minutes are passed as modified unanimously. Thank you. Okay. So the first item on the agenda, well, I wanted to mention that there are a couple of budgets that we have to do and we'll capture some of them tonight. And then I also wanted to mention that we'll try to finish the warrant articles and remaining budgets on Monday. And I also like to see if we can get a report from each of the three working groups on Monday night, maybe five or 10 minutes just on the status of where things are. So Deputy Town Manager, Sandy Pooler is here with us to report on some collective bargaining progress and the impact on two budgets. Sandy. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, members of the committee. We are in a process of finishing off one set of collective bargaining agreements and moving to the next set. We have a police budget here that covers the contract period of FY19, 20 and 21. It was the last contract of the six town contracts that had yet to be settled. All other unions settled their contracts a couple of years ago, but the police patrol union decided that it wanted to go through an arbitration process and it had some very, I would say, extravagant asks. And I think they hoped that the arbitration panel would give them some of the things that they were asking for. We negotiated for a couple of years, then went into an arbitration process about a year ago and it took until this February to finally get a decision from the arbitration panel. This panel, it is binding on me to recommend the settlement to you to ask you for a favorable vote. And I will also say it is my personal opinion that this is a good settlement for the town. And I will explain the finances and a little bit about what's in the settlement. You have in front of you a memo from me. I did a revised salary page for the police department that puts the changes that are reflected in this arbitration award. And then a revised total budget for the police department revised salary pages just for the patrol union. I did not recreate new salary pages for the other ranking officers or civilians because those have not changed. Again, this is finishing the last of the business from our FY 19 to FY 21 contracts. During that period, we had set out an overall pattern with all of our town unions, essentially of a three to one COLA. And then with the public safety unions, we added about another 1.5% to that as what we thought of as sort of the cost of giving them raises and having them not go to the JLMC and go to arbitration. Every town union then settled on essentially a pattern of a two to one plus other components to their settlements that put money in other places. And that in fact is the pattern that you see here in this arbitration award. So it is a COLA pattern of 2% in FY 19, 2% in FY 20 and 1% in FY 21. The other significant thing that happened in this arbitration award is that this union was given two new steps. Each step is worth 1% above the step below it. That is the same pattern that the ranking officers have. They have six steps now and each one is worth 1%. The issue of steps was a significant issue for this union. They've been for years been thinking that they were falling behind other cities and towns because we would never give them steps. And one of the reasons we would never give them steps is that there's a provision in the ranking officers, in other words, the sergeants, lieutenants and captains contract that says that their pay is based on a percentage above patrol officers pay. We have argued for many years that that's an illegal provision in the ranking officers contract. But because we were always worried that if we gave the patrol officers more steps, the ranking officers would immediately go up. During the arbitration, this issue came to the fore and the lawyer representing the patrol officers also happens to represent the ranking officers. And during arbitration, he said, he did not think that that provision was valid anymore and that they were not going to try to enforce it. So we eventually got the ranking officers to sign a memorandum of agreement taking it out of their contract. That opened the door for us to be able to give steps to patrol officers. Now, I went through that long history to tell you all that because I think these new steps for the patrol officers, they fall within our pattern, our economic pattern, but they give them something that they've been looking for for a long time. And in that regard, I think they're important to include in this contract. So that's why I'm supportive of it. There was also a change in how we give pay, what used to be called Quinn bill pay. We used to have the Quinn bill here in Arlington when the state stopped funding it, we changed the provisions of the Quinn bill and we had a system whereby officers who had criminal justice degrees or master's degrees or law degrees, in their first, they would have to wait five years before they got any Quinn bill payment and they got half of whatever the regular Quinn bill payment was until they got to eight years and then they went to full Quinn. The union had asked that they all get full Quinn from day one. We opposed that. And the arbitration panel said that new officers being hired will get half Quinn for immediately if they have those degrees and have to wait five years before they get to full Quinn. We are fine with that. There are other provisions that are non-monetary that I mentioned in the memo which I won't go into unless there are questions but there are all things that the town asked for which we think are favorable to us in terms of managing overtime, managing sick leave and managing comp time. And we're very happy that the panel gave us those things. They also rejected other requests from the union to give way more vacation days than the union currently gets and some other things that they were looking for. I have to say that overall financially this is about $20,000 cheaper than what we had informally put on the table to the union. So the union should have taken our informal deal but they didn't. They went forward with arbitration fully and this is what the panel gave them. So we think financially it fits within the pattern and it does give us some ability to move forward on controlling things like, as I say, comp time and vacation. I'm gonna move quickly to the library contract because it's short and quick and then I'll be happy to answer any questions. The library contract is relative to the new fiscal year FY22. So whereas the police contract, this settlement covers the old period. What I presented to you under police is a new contract number for FY22 just tearing over this award. The library on the other hand with our professional library association we have negotiated a one year contract with them with a 1.5% COLA and an increase in $300 for each step on their longevity scale. We have longevity, so after five or 10 or 15 years people get a longevity payment and the library union wanted to increase those steps rather than get the 1.5% COLA that we've put on the table for everybody else. We have always said to our unions we are willing to move the money around in different places as long as the end of the day it costs the same. We also in their contract recognize Juneteenth and gives them a floating holiday which they have to use before the end of the calendar year each year. The there is a copy of that agreement at the back of the packet I sent you. It is unsigned at this point. Although late today I did get a signed copy from the union. We just need the manager to sign it. It has been ratified by the union. Finally, I'd just like to say the cost of each of these things. The police department budget needs to go up by $221,027 and the library budget needs to go up by $32,787. To increase those budgets for FY22, we would ask that you also decrease the salary reserve account that we put in the manager's budget by $253,994. So in other words, we're increasing departmental budgets and we'll decrease the salary reserve that we set aside. At some point we will come back. I will come back to you. I hope with other union contracts for the FY22 and also with an exact number for a retro payment for the police contract. All that will come under Article 61, which is the collective bargaining provision. But I don't know for sure if we will have other settlements before town meeting. Certainly encourage the unions to do that. And some of them are moving forward and some of them are stuck, I won't have to say. And with that, I'd be happy to take any questions. You're muted, Charlie. Jonathan Wallach. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy. Just a couple of questions. So if I understand what you're saying, the fiscal 22 number for the police for salaries reflects the cumulative amount for what they're getting paid as a result of the arbitration. And then at some point when you negotiate a new salary going forward, we're gonna then increase that number. If in fact you settle on something prior to this budget being set. And then next year for fiscal 23 we'll remove the cumulative amount that's in the fiscal year 22 budget for this arbitration and then just have whatever the amount is going forward for the negotiated contract. Am I saying that right? So in terms of removing, if in the packet I gave you a salary sheet, which I know you can't read, but it looks like this. This shows under the arbitration where everybody who's a patrol officer will be paid in FY 22. So whatever steps they're gonna get or anything else or they've got reassigned or so forth and so on. So that is gonna be the base of the FY 22 budget. It will be adjusted at some point reflecting a new collective bargaining agreement for FY 22. And once we have that you will get a new brand new sheet that will reflect that collective bargaining settlement and in reflected as to what the total lease budget should be. Right, but if I understand you correctly the fiscal year 22 number reflects in essence back pay for 20 and 21. No, the retro pay is not part of what we are here talking about today. Oh, okay, fine. Thank you, so I misunderstood. Thank you very much. Any other questions on either the police or the library? So I would just like to confirm. I think the reef has his hand up. Who does? Arif. Oh, maybe, oh, Arif. Sorry, I'm looking at the little. I raised the hand now. I couldn't raise, I couldn't find the hand. Okay, sorry. I'm just a quick question, Sandy. I am also looking at the salary detail I have it in front of me. I'm trying to understand something. So in FY 22, there's a min and a max for the salaries, right? So if I look at that one, say for example, I just take random, let's just take the first line, 54, 639 and 60,094. And now if you go to the right and you look at the base of FY 20, 2022, the base is 63, 147, let's say for the first person about follow me. Yes. And then you go all the way to the end at 68, but that base does not fall between the min and the max. So what is the differential there? That's my feeling to update the min and the max in this giant spreadsheet. And in fact, so the min is going to be what we have for the vacant positions are about three quarters of the way down. So it's 57, 415, that is the new min and the max for a patrol officer at this point will be 64, 416. So I just in my speed to get this thing done, which I sent out about 430 this afternoon. I just didn't think about updating the min and the max. I can send a revised sheet that has that. They're all linked together, but that's a good catch, Arith. I just didn't update it. Okay, thank you for the experiment. Thank you for the question. Any other questions? So, Sandy, I have a question just to confirm that these funds are in the manager's reserve account. We're moving this money out of the manager reserve account into the police and or library. And the total budget that we are dealing with doesn't change here, right? That's right. These have been reserved for, so it's in the budget and we're just moving the numbers around in different departments. It's essentially a transfer or realloc just making a better, more accurate budget before it goes to town. Okay, and Jonathan or Daryl, do you have any comments? Anything, any concerns? I do not. Okay, Jonathan's shaking the set. I don't think- No, nor do I. How are you feeling, Jonathan? Are you hanging in there? Foggy, achy. Okay, so let's take the police budget first. Daryl or Jonathan, do you wanna make a motion that's on that? Yeah. I move that we approve the increase of the police budget by what was it, 221,000? Oh, 22,000. 27,000, yeah. Is there a second? Second. Are there any further questions or comments on the police, the change in the police budget? Yes. Peter. 429, what? What's the number? 221,027. Thank you. Any further questions? Okay. Grant Gibion. Hi. Jane Blondell. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Makaya Haley. Yes. Mary Margaret. Yes. Arif Padaria. Hi. Jonathan Walik. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Peter Howard. Yes. Shaneleen Pokers. I abstain. Daryl Harmer. Yeah. John Dice. Yes. Ellen Jones. Yes. Annie LaCourt. Yes. Bill Keller. Yes. Al Tosti. Al Tosti. Yes. George Cozer. Yes. Christine Deschler. Yeah. Ian Carmen. Yes. And David McKenna. Yes. So that would be 20 in favor, let's say 19 in favor, one abstention with the chairman not voting. Thank you very much. So let's move on to the library budget. And Mary Margaret, would you like to make a motion on the library budget? Sure. I suggest we approve the 32,787 needed. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Any further questions on the library proposal? Hearing, actually I'm not looking at the screen so I'm just gonna say hearing none, but let me just check and make sure. Peter Howard. Okay, his hands down. No further questions. Grant Givian. Yes. Shane Blundell. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Mikaiah Healy. Yes. Mary Margaret. Yes. Brie Fadarian. Yes. Jonathan. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Peter Howard. Yes. Traylene Pookers. Yes. Darrell Harmer. Yes. John Dice. Yes. Allen Jones. Yes. Andy LaCourt. Yes. Bill Keller. Yes. Allen Tosti. Yes. George Koster. Yes. Christine Deschler. Yeah. Dean Korman. Yes. And David McKenna. Yes. Boat unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sandy. Did you have anything else that you wanted to add this evening? No, I just want to thank the committee very much for your support. These are very important agreements that we have with our staff and we appreciate your support and we've been forward. Mr. Chair, if there's any other questions for me, I'm happy to answer them. Otherwise, I would thank you for your time. I don't see any other questions. Thank you for your time and thanks to the management for their dedicated work in resolving these complicated negotiations. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you. Thanks. It's 8.02. We have 13 minutes until the school department will be here in force. So, Makaiya, would you like to take the human resources budget up? Sure. I'll try to speak fast as a newbie, but if you can pull up the HR budget, I'll share it also on my screen. So, Makaiya, you've muted yourself. Got it. Good. Got it. Good. All right. So if you want to feel the paper in between your hands, I'm on page 29 of the human resources budget. So we'll do this very quickly because it's easy. And as you can see, there aren't any changes from the year before. I think you're in the wrong page. Okay. Here we go. Okay. All right. Here we go. So as you can see, there aren't any changes to the budget. Salaries and wages are, are, have remained the same. They're, they're at their max. At this point. And. Hold on a second. Let me just get my note. Did you see my notes when I started sharing? Yes. Did you see the note that said breathe? Did you see the note that said breathe? Did you see the note that said breathe? Did you see the note that said breathe? Yeah. And you did. And you're great. Thank you. It's on the recording. I know that's going to be great. Hopefully it gets deleted soon. So. So everyone is at their max. And, and so yes, I just want to take a look down here. Yes. There is. A $50,000 amount for training. And the reason that we see that is because, you know, in different years, there are different number of people obviously. And so that conference number keeps changing. We asked, what is $50,000 pay for? What is that used for? And $30,000 went to pay for training with the national league of cities. And $20,000 is used for training. And the reason that we see that is because you know, in different years, the national league of cities and $20,000 is for training, hiring, promotional processes associated with public safety. And I can go more into detail about the assessment processes, but I don't think that it's necessarily, there's a lot of promotional components that they do for the, the public service divisions like police and fire. So that's what we're looking for. So free to interrupt too. If I'm like, stuttering or not saying the right things. Oh, it's fun. $3,700. That's the, is for under, under other purchases. Right here. And that was to cover ancillary costs, like shredding services or pre-employment physicals, drug screens for employees and advertising. So let's see if we take a look at longevity number on the first page. And then we flip to the salary side on the side. Hard to see. So let me zoom in a little bit. I always squint. I think I need classes. But the, it's basically the same versus 7,500. It's here. Here it is. That doesn't seem to add up. I'm going to go back up. Yep. That's what's up there. Oh, great. Perfect. Okay. So I just typed it incorrectly. So it's the same. The offsets are from water and sewer and someone else, someone else manages the offsets and the percentages as you all know, but what I learned. How much have they spent so far this year? I asked and they said that they will be within budget. That's great. And let's see. Do we have any questions? At this point. Any questions from a kayak on the. Human resources budget. And I'll see any hands up. Okay. So there are no hands up. So what kind of, do you want to make a motion for that budget at this point? Sure. Yes. I'd like to make the emotion to approve the budget as it is printed. That can. Okay. So it's moved and seconded. For. I just lost. Budget page. Can you read the number, please? The bottom line. 64. One more page versus. All right. I go off. 364696. All right. 364696. Right. So it's been moved and seconded for. 364696. Any other questions for Makaya on. The human resources budget. Okay. I should go on comment. Good job for what, for being on the committee for one day. Yes. I totally agree with that. Yeah. Great. Really good. Second. Okay. We'll see if she gets unanimous votes. That's going to be another test. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The human resources budget Grant Gibyan. Hi. Shane Blundell. Yes. John. Yes. Kaya. Yes. Mary Margaret. Yeah. Arif. Yes. Jonathan. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Peter. Shane. Yes. Daryl. Yeah. John Dice. Yes. Bill Teller? Yes. Al Tosti? Yes. George Kosher? Yes. Christine Deschler? Yeah. Dean Karman? Yes. And David McKenna? Yes. So it's the unanimous vote on the human resources budget. And it's a great job on the first night. We're not done yet, of course. There's still some more opportunities, but. Hit it out of the park. Hit it out of the park. Okay. So. So. Is Jane Morgan here yet? Is that. I can't see here. I sure am. Okay. So, uh, Jane, is the school department ready to, uh, move forward? I'm, we're always ready. I'm sure you are. This is the best night of our year. Okay. We are here and ready to go. We've been, we've been waiting around. No, we haven't been. So thank you for your flexibility on this. I was the one who sort of pushed this a little bit later. So I do. No problem. So can you identify who's on with you here tonight from the school department? I see. I would love to. Yeah. So, um, hi everybody. My name is Jane Morgan. I am the current acting chair of the Arlington school committee for another, uh, I've been serving for a couple of days and a few hours. Uh, I guess until April 10th until the town election. Um, I have been serving since June of 2020. So like a decade ago, uh, or at least it feels that way, uh, for our schools right now. So with me this evening or with us this evening, um, is our, uh, superintendent of schools. Dr. Kathleen Bodie. And, um, Dr. Kersi, Alison Ampey and, uh, Mr. Lynn Cardin, who are members with me of the budget subcommittee, Dr. Allison Ampey chairs that subcommittee, um, very ably. Um, and then we also have this evening with us, uh, Dr. Elizabeth Holman, who is, um, our new superintendent of schools, uh, effective, uh, July 1st. Uh, more than, uh, two years ago, uh, Dr. Bodie notified us that it was her intent to retire at the end of this school year and, uh, and what a school year it has been. She's certainly going out in a big way. Um, and, uh, so we, uh, the school committee hire Dr. Holman back in December of 2020. And she has been, uh, working on her transition planning. So I just wanted to give her a second to say hello to everybody this evening. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me. It's nice to zoom meet you. Um, and to listen in this evening, it's been evident to me and I've had a very warm welcome from everyone in Arlington that the schools are in a real position of strength after a very challenging year. Thanks to Dr. Bodie's leadership and the leadership of our team. So get back to business. I'm mostly here to listen in and thank you for including me. And I look forward to working with you all in the future and implementing this FY 22 budget. Well, thank, thank you. Dr. Homan, um, but welcome to Arlington. Um, Dean Carmen, did you want to make some introductory comments? Yeah, I'll, um, but before we start, I'll, I'll make two points for the, to the, to the committee. Um, the first is I do want to note and recognize the extraordinary accomplishment of our, of our school system this year. Um, you know, when the pandemic hit, they were, they were tasked with essentially building three schools and reopening them. And, and, you know, they have a school of kids that go Monday, Tuesday at home, three days, they have a school of kids that go in Thursday, Friday, home there, three days, and they have kids that are all remote. And on a process that I think would have taken in normal times, three, four years to do, they were given three or four weeks to do it. I mean, so they, they literally this year have been, you know, the saying of, you know, building the plane as it takes off, that's what they've been doing. Um, so I think they deserve, as I said to you guys in the fall or everyone in the fall, you deserve our praise and thanks for their, for their great work. As we move to the budget, the second thing I do want to bring up is there are probably going to be a lot of issues we talk about tonight. I do want to just sort of make my own comment on this that, um, most of these issues, all these issues we discussed tonight are essentially just technical points. You know, I've gone through, I've been all at all of their budget subcommittee meetings. I've watched their school committee meetings. Um, I want to make it clear upfront that there is not a sing, if I was in Dr. Brody or Mike Mason's position, there's not a single decision I would have made differently, like at all. Now we could, so we can discuss as we move forward on some technical points and admit procedures and policy and things like that. But all of the work they did, I'm, I will represent you was, was rock solid the entire way. So with that, as the backdrop, I will yield the floor to Mike and Kathy. Thank you, Dean. Um, Jane, uh, do you want to turn it over to Mike and Kathy at this point? I sure do. Okay. I think Dr. Brody is going to start. Go right ahead. Good evening, everyone. It's great to see you, even if it is on zoom. Um, so again, thank you for having us. This is to our annual. A meeting and, um, uh, to Dean come and thank you for your comments leading up to this. Um, most appreciate it. I have to say it has felt a lot like building a plane as, as we're flying. And just, you know, as we've gone through this year, having to do a lot of changes and adaptations, the amount of learning that has gone on may have taken also years to do in terms of our tech technology confidence. Um, and now we're faced with actually changing entirely again, as we begin this coming Monday with a full, uh, a full time in person return, uh, to, uh, to school. I will adjust as a perfect story. Comments is that we have, um, allowed parents to make a choice parents guardians, make a choice as to whether they were going to be returning from a remote, a remote, uh, Academy school to the in person. And actually what's very interesting is that we've had roughly about only 10%. So we have about 850 students in the elementary and a remote Academy and we have about 80 students returning, um, to in, to in person this coming Monday. But even with that, there's still an immense amount of planning has gone on. And I, I do want to call, um, you know, a special thank you and appreciation to the team I work with, which has been, uh, they've been a joy to work with and they are so confident and they, they get things done. Um, they have worked tirelessly this year to make sure that our students get the best possible education they, they can get and, uh, live up to the standards that the Arlington community. As in it has passed for our school district. And the trust that has been given by our parents this year to do a good job. So we have great teachers, great administrators, and without them, we would not be having the, the success we've had this year. So with that, um, I would like to just make a few preparatory comments about our presentation this evening. Most of it's going to be given by, um, Michael Mason, who I think everyone here knows is our chief financial officer for the district. And, um, he is going to, to give most of the presentation, but I will just say this before we begin, um, that there are a number of slides in the presentation and we're not going to go through all of them. They're really here for your information in terms of some of the background, um, of who, uh, first of all, what our vision is and mission and who contributed to making this, um, um, the, the plan for FY 22. And for that matter, previous budget plans. So we're not going to go through all of those. Um, Jane Morgan has already introduced, um, the school committee members that are here this evening. I don't know if there's any others. We have to go through the, I think we're in a 25 by 25 grid here. So I can't see everybody. But, um, I'm sure that there's others who will be joining us. So the, um, the agenda for this evening is that we're going to look at both the FY 19 and 20 budget review. And then take a look at the FY 20, 21 budget update and some of the expenses we've incurred this year due to COVID. And then we'll get into the FY 22 budget overview. We will then look at the five year plan. As well as just opening up for questions and both, um, um, like Mason, I will be available for questions. I'm sure members of the school committee who are here will also, uh, be available. So Mr. Mason, would you like to begin where we are? We'll probably go down to. Uh, you can tell us which slide we're going to be out. We'll start at slide number 10. That's our 10. Okay. Yeah. The budget process. You're all pretty much aware of anyway. We've had this, a similar slide every year. So, so if you, if you have your presentation. And I, are you going to share the screen? Yes, I am. Okay. Just trying to navigate. Zoom here. You're a high tech guy. Like. Thank you. I appreciate it. For some reason my zoom updated and it's all different right now. I know how much of it. Of an expert he is. Oh, this is interesting. Let me do this in a different way. So while we all sit awkwardly. All right. I talked a little bit more. You can talk a little bit more. I'm sorry. All right. So one of the things I'm sure many of you are familiar with, because you've heard that conversation we have. Up. All right. Say by the bell. All right. Go ahead. Sorry about that. Yes. I was just going to talk about full testing. That's all right. All right. So, uh, Kathy, uh, kind of a touch based on, on, on the agenda, there might have been a rearrangement of one particular slide. So, um, your numbers may be off down the line. If you're following the PDF that was provided before. Um, but I just want to state that in case you start to see that it looks different. But I'll, uh, possibly notify you when that will occur. Um, so good evening, everyone. Before we get into the FY 22 budget of the part of the presentation. I wanted to first start and take a look back at how the FY 19 and FY 20 budgets did compare. And how those blueprints held up to what actually happened in most years. So this slide that I'm starting off with, uh, compares FY 19. And FY 20. Budgets to, um, the actual expenditures. Um, And FY 19, the, the, the particular budget was created by my predecessor. Uh, that year, um, As reported in monthly expenditure reports during that timeframe when I first came on, um, You can always find our reports on the public public schools website. If you, if you haven't seen them, uh, The district had a little excess in special education FY 19. And, uh, that excess was driven by having a, A $1.2 million a balance from out of district tuition and transportation. However, um, that same year, uh, The, the budget for facilities was under budget. And it was under budgeted in two main areas. Um, utilities, which includes electricity and natural gas. That's the power and to heat our buildings. And also the budget didn't account for, uh, Some new contracts that were the district was, uh, Had bid out for, which included a vendor that was for snow removal. Um, and for some reason, uh, there was not as many that wasn't A lot of snow that particular year, but for each snow event, There was a substantial amount of money used for, um, For, uh, snow removal due to that particular new bid and Vendor that we were using for that year in the facilities Direct at the time did use that outside vendor and, And right now we're in the transition with the capital plan on Trying to implement more vehicles to do more of the internal Snow removal work, um, instead of relying on outside vendor. And, uh, therefore the department, the school department that year Was fortunate to have the access funds, um, Due to that special education to cover some of the, uh, Uh, Overspending in the other departments. That year also the school administration recommended to Move, uh, the remaining excess budget of the special education To a reserve, um, special education, uh, fund to address Any special education needs in the future. Um, and that and, and it was mainly once again due to the Out-of-district tuition. So if you look at this particular Slide under the FY 19 variance, this 1.2 million, There was a 900,000 that comes from facilities, Which kind of left us with this $250,000, A little bit less to move into the reserve. What I would also like to make notice that when I started my tenure in the middle of that fiscal year, I started, Uh, around January 2019. And as a part-time staff with during the transition to my Prior place of employment and really I started working in that February and, uh, that first weeks that I was there in February, I was tasked to complete the FY 20 budget. And it was not enough time for say to meet with every single Department head to develop a budget. That was going to be completely cohesive. So we, there were certain assumptions that I had to make When making FY 20 budget. So I at that time did level fund, uh, many budget Department budgets and in some areas I did provide, uh, An increase based on inflation. And so what you'll see is, um, without really, um, Knowing some of the trends that were possibly coming down the line and a possible pandemic, uh, The specialist out of district transportation, I mean, Tuition and transportation line slightly increased, But without knowing that there was going to be a substantial Decrease in the upcoming year. And so, um, and then on top of that, We, you know, we, we looked at spending trends. I had the team look at spending trends from FY 18, Because that was the only year we could look at an FY 18 Special education spending was a little different than what Was going to be the result of FY 19. Um, we also could not predict the fact that we were going to Have the pandemic. So this is part of the story of understanding FY 20 that We had a close operations the last three months of the fiscal year that closure led to many of the schools that In department heads, uh, administrators to pause the Normal operations and spending and focus on changing the Educational model from a full in person to a remote program And all while being left in the dark in some situations About understanding when will we reopen and, um, Or if we were going to be permanently, uh, Closed for the remainder of the year. Um, and at some point that that presented the year we did Find out, but you know, it was very, Very uncertain situation. Um, but during that closure also. What compounds this is that. A lot of our special education placements, Some of the programs were in pause too. And in a lot of the cases. We did see a reduction in spending and those in placements At the end of the year as well as a reduction in Transportation costs because we were, We were making some payments to reserve the transportation Vehicles, but we were not spending at the full rate, 100% rate. Many of the times we were spending between 60 to 75% Of what the rate was. So we were still seeing savings at the end of the year, Which didn't lead to the ultimate surplus, Which we once again recommended to the school committee as Administration to move money into a special reserve. To protect from any volatility from special education As well as, um, To cover, um, the, um, Pre payment about additional tuition because we didn't know what The budget was going to be an FY 22, I mean, FY 21, Excuse me, because we hadn't heard anything from the state Level, what was going to happen because due to the delays of So that brings us to FY 21. And like the previous side shows this is just expenditures on the The general fund appropriation if I didn't explain it, sorry. Um, and we had to maintain basically two different models as Dean said earlier. But it was, you know, he puts it as three different models, But a hybrid model and a fully remote model. And that that caused the developed many extra staffing that We needed to an extra hours throughout the summer that took To prepare for reopening. This all happened while being that different guidelines state Level and sometimes the guidelines would slightly change and we Would then also have to adjust as well on our plans. We also this year had to buy obviously, you know, many Organizations had to buy additional PPE. We had a contract vendors to ensure our buildings were Equipped with the right ventilation equipment or that they Were working appropriately. We also increased cleaning services to make sure that the Buildings were meeting the cleaning protocols that we were Agreeing with with our bargaining units. We also obviously had to hire many different types of staff To meet the student needs and among many other equipment that We purchased. So if you think about it, if you look at this, you would Think that the bottom line would be that we would reflect That $1.3 million that we prepaid in f y 20 Which show was the balance here in f y 21 right as a Protective balance but with all the extra expenditures, you'll See that yet we did carry. And we reduced special ed tuition a little bit this Particularly year and you'll see that we were still carrying A slight. Excess in out of district tuition, but the same amount was Currently we're holding almost about a million dollars of Covalent expenditures that have not yet to be placed on other Funding sources such as like the use of the care spots. And so I bet the many of the questions. Many of the members of finance committee has today is what We're likely to return back so what I would say is that We're basically almost guaranteed unless something substantially Changes or requirements that we were not foreseeing that We need to pay for this is amount that would likely go Back to the town and if there's any eligible items to be Claimed out of the cares municipal funds, these funds would Also likely go back and we turn to the town's general An overall fix to say that we're overspending due to the Covert related expenditures in general by that million Dollars that I reflect on the previous slide. We're also We did receive a lot of additional grant funds. That's covering from the department of elementary and secondary Education. Some of our Covert related expenses and up to today We've spent about 1.3 million dollars out of the Municipal side of the cares related funds. Overall, we spent about 4.1 million dollars between FY 20 and FY 21 This year alone is around 3.5 3.6 million dollars. So I with the bottom line is that if we didn't do As some moves as a as a school department and school Committee to prepay We would be having a different conversation right now about How our budget would work because there were so many Expending that we had to get that prepayment move and Was very key and it was very integral Decision that we had to make to be able to meet our Live within our means of our own budget this year. So now let's talk about the FY 22 budget. So we got off the previous historic Budgeting and how the expenditures played Against those blueprints this year I normally showed I showed the slide the last two years is a slide that represents All the revenue sources Between local contribution to town chapter 70 with state aid Grants and circuit breaker and this just this is just to show the trends. So This year we're on all of our funding sources were going up about four and a half percent Which is lower than our previous years that we've gotten Which makes sense because of the pandemic and Possible questions, but we're still a lot of uncertainty But state aid has an increased substantially due to enrollment and and That's that's going to be the case also with the Currently the town of the town allocation due to Being held harmless due to enrollment decrease, which I'll discuss a little later So this breaks down the current FY 22 Revenues you can't make a budget without understanding our revenues Overall, we're seeing a four point five million dollar increase From the town appropriation that includes the local contribution of the tax levy to and the And the state aid so we're seeing about a Six percent increase overall and We're seeing a decrease in grants due to what's getting substantial amount last year from The cares are related grants through the Department of elementary and secondary education There are some other grants that might be coming through the line we're not 100% sure And we'll be planning out the ones that we do know and And we're also seeing a reduction in circuit breaker because as our special education out of district tuition expenses decrease our circuit breaker revenue will decrease which is a reimbursement to offset those extraordinary costs and we're just seeing a slight deduction and some revolving and reimbursement as we Calibrate our budget for the fiscal 22 so that leaves us with a grand total of our operating budget on this under the school committee appropriation of 87 million 281,032 dollars which overalls and that increase about 3.6% This is another chart showing that 75%, which is most majority of our tax payers dollars pays for the school department's budget. And this year it's been reduced the percentage wise to state aid which is was down from 22% to 17%. It was an increase of about. Not a substantial increase but I'm like I said of the 1.3%, which was really about 30 $30 per pupil from our October 1st moment. This explains how we are spending our money. Our largest spending category is special education. Over $24 million will be dedicated to what we plan to spend on special education that includes an adjustment that I'll discuss in a future slide to how to district tuition. Then, then followed by secondary as the second level and closely followed by elementary spending secondary would include high school. So another thing we need to consider when developing the budget is the enrollment. So, if you remember a few slides ago we discussed the impact that enrollment. I said, once had on state aid, but it's also in fact impacts the formula that is used to find education at Arlington with the local agreed formula. One of the main questions that the school administration has as what will enrollment look like an FY 22. I think that's the guess is very difficult to understand what that aroma will look like. In this slide you will see that this this graph tracks enrollment growth, which is this gray or blueish gray line. This graph also shows that there was a there's a projection that we use that also factors into the long range plan. This was the original enrollment growth projection, and that was originally from FY 12 fiscal 2012 all the way to fiscal 2020. Eight years of enrollment growth that was until we see in a substantial decrease of a net loss of 2087 students that happened in fiscal 21. That was the original enrollment growth projection, and that was in the original plan. Still showing growth going up to fiscal 25. And it would probably would have shown growth in beyond that, depending on how the trends were working. But looking at an adjusted using the this year's we we we need to take a step back when we create the five year enrollment projection, it uses a five year weighted average. And so with this decrease this year, it was throwing the projections off completely, it was going in a downward direction, which probably was not likely to be the case going forward, based on what was happening in our own team in the real estate trends and all the different types of transactions that were current. So, I did some analysis, looking at the, the students that left the district. We then took four select groups. And those groups consisted of those that were being put into home school, those that were going to private school. They decided to hold their children back at the lower grades, and to try to figure out if there's the students would return to the district. And we then use the percentage of the people that we're going to send their kids back to then determine a rate that would then factor into adding those kids back into the base of FY 21 enrollment. We use the same five year weighted average from the previous trend, since this was an anomaly year to then develop an adjusted projection. That's what this yellow line is. This yellow line then shows that there will be growth, especially in FY 22. Here's the thing, these lines between the old projection and this adjusted projection are trying to show that the enrollment can be anywhere in between this or possibly higher, because we're not sure how many students are out there. And it's very difficult during this time to understand what parents are going to do in terms of enrolling their students. Some parents might be waiting for a transition year. Some parents may not some parents may be waiting to see when it went and how this, this implementation of bringing students back on April 5. And as we bring the middle schools back and towards the end of April, I believe April 27. You see how successful it is, before they decide to register their children. Finally, it's still up in the air, and but we have to be prepared for that we have to be prepared for what could be and not be caught in a position that we're not where we don't have enough resources to support the kids coming back. So, overall, we think about before on the original slide, we were getting an increase of additional $4.5 million on the town appropriation. When we take out our needs. And we have actually less, less money to use for the additions, or additional resources that we like to add to support our students, and that's why 22 taken off 2.3 to 2.4 million dollars, which would go towards contractual or salary increases that we know about that we need to do, based on certain obligations, as well as we're still under, we were still underfunding utilities in our budget. So, we were going to phase this in and we're increasing utilities again, another 260,000. And this should support the utilities, almost nearly 100% on the budget. And then the remainder. We were looking at doing some, some increases to departmental budgets, as we weren't, we hadn't done too many, many major adjustments in the previous years. And also looking at this red number shows that we're going to reduce, since we were having a little excess in out of district tuition, we're going to reduce after recalibrating and looking at certain trends, we're going to reduce our out of district tuition by $1.2 million, which then gives us a little bit more to then look at what we'll have left for the proposed additions. I provided you with the sheet, I'm not going to go through all of the additions, they're there for you to see them. Just to save time, we'll move past the next couple of slides. That's after this next slide, which just discusses, when we were developing the budget. We have to develop the budget, understanding that there's certain budget priorities and high and things that we were trying to accomplish. So we focus on ensuring that we at least had least attempt to provide a level service budget where we continue to keep class sizes at the same level as possible. And we also focused on trying to maintain the level of course offerings, the flexibility to offer more courses for courses that were filled due to demand of that offering. We also had discussions about how we can better serve the needs of students with special needs and provide support to subgroups to help those groups improve and achieve academic goals and decrease the achievement gap. As well as we were looking at enrollment trends and, and making sure we provide support and research towards the goal of equity inclusion and access and making sure we put some investments in the mathematics support in those three levels. So I will skip through these slides, and if there's any questions about them, you can ask towards the end. The last the last towards thing I want to talk about is the multi year plan. Two years ago we had, we created a multi year plan that we brought to the voters to provide for an override. And so many of the dishes to the FY 22 budget will request in the five year plan. When we as a district went through the budget development process. This year we had to definitely evaluate where we stood in regards to the five year plan. And we had to see if there was still a need for many of the request, but also look and see what we needed to provide for support for possible loss of learning due to the pandemic. And so we also had to look at requests that that we did not fill in FY 20 now or FY 21. And if we could try to accomplish any of those requests in the current budget. And as always, once we determine what we could like to add to the FY 22 budget, we got a reprioritized request going forward for those that we could keep in the budget. On the next slide. I mean, I'm sorry and on this slide on this there's a link for the five year plan that was original. But on the next slide. This is just a snapshot of the original plan by categories by the strategic priorities, and it was a post a $10 million request. And if we're, we're looking at it from the highest level. What we're looking forward to this update is five year update is you look at the there's two bars here. The top bar is it for the first two years from FY 20 and FY 21. If we fulfilled every request that we could, we would have, we would have been looking at about $5.2 million, $5.3 million worth of requests. We would have about 4.6 million remaining for FY 22, the FY 24. And what the bottom the bottom bar is showing that this is what we actually have been able to accomplish $3.1 million, the $3.2 million worth of request. And we have about 6.7 million left to go. And one was to look at it as, you know, so you'll see it as where 2.1 million behind the request that we where we would have liked it to be. If we were to separate these into equal segments, and we're about 40% away through the budget in FY 21, we're about 30% into the accomplishing that budget, and meaning we're going between nine to 10% behind the plan. And I want to provide as an update to the five year plan. And the last slide is a slide that was earlier in the budget. I mean in this presentation that you've received is now later here. And I'm going to end it with this is, this is where we're benchmarked compared to the town manager 12 districts that kind of around it appears themselves to. And as you may know, these are the, you know, we were once if you if you remember the slide last year, we were in the middle of the pack last year. We've dropped down three slots, those comparative districts. And this is the most up to date per pupil expenditure data that's available from department of elementary secondary education. And once we get newer data. I hope to be able to provide that somewhere on the public schools website. At this point, if you need any additional information about our budget, you can find it once again on the public schools website at the following link. And we'll now open it up for questions and I'll stop sharing. Thank you Mike. That was a was a great presentation. So, it's a lot to digest in a couple of minutes. Let me ask the members of the finance committee what questions you may have for, for, or Mike or for Kathy or for any of the school department representatives. Let's see I give me one second I have to get back to this. Okay, as Kathy noted before we can't see all people at one time here so are there any questions. Well, it looks like you've got everybody awestruck Mike. Hello, Charlie John Ellis has his hand up and so does Brian Beck. I'm sorry I was looking for the. So John Ellis. Thanks. I'm looking at the last year. And there were 22 positions to be added. I'm looking at the middle school for the middle school. 6.3 the elementary including one assistant principal. This year, overall seven reserve. I can't exactly tell how many overall you have in the new one but to two assistant to an emphasis principles. So my question is, did you actually hire in fiscal 21 those. 29 additional positions. And the proposal or what maybe, maybe you are unable to because of over there or something like that. Kathy, would you like me to answer this. You can talk about the total number and positions we had to hire. Yeah, so many of the positions that were in the FY 21 budget. We were able to eventually hire some of those. They're still being carried in the budget as needs. If they were not hired. And then we did have to add additional positions in FY 21 to meet the COVID related needs, or having the two different models going. So additional staffing was definitely needed to be able to host a remote model and then also be able to support the students in a hybrid model, where students would come in two days a week and three days off and doing a remote one. It was there another second I'm trying to remember all the statements you made in terms of, I hope I answered in terms of the FY 21 portion of your question. So, there were 22.9 and fiscal 21 and I was wondering, did you hire all of those and and how many total new ones are there in fiscal. So, how many new ones are in fiscal 22 is what you asked. Yeah. So, there, overall, there's a net change in positions for fiscal 22, which is, and I can actually let me put up a slide, and maybe this might help. You see, you have it like individual like secondary and yeah, but I don't just don't see the total. The position control document in here. So, I can show here, this, this, this particular slide explains it a little differently in a summarize. And so, FY 21, these are the positions that were approved. And then after the fact there were some additional positions that we did need. This is what we ended up in FY 21. This year, we're having about 38 positions going to be added, and we're reducing the positions, certain select positions by 18.2 for a net increase of around 20 positions. Does that, does that better help you, John? That does. And I guess that just the final question is maybe for Dr. Bode, I'm not sure, but you know, like the override we were going to get more mass support that was going to be social workers in the middle school there's going to be assistant principals and and then you had some different needs because of all these different requirements and to schools for coronavirus. And those things that were committed to and were in the previous budget, are those still going to be filled? John, if you look at the list of positions that we are going to actively look for, include social workers. In fact, originally we're going to just have a split social worker between Gibbs and Austin, but given the needs we perceive will be here for more support for social, emotional and needs of the students. We're going to have a social worker at each school. There is in the budget support for learning needs, which include math interventions. And yes, we did hire additional math intervention teacher this year. We had a situation where we had three of our elementary schools did not have math intervention support and we did hire for that this year. So now all of our elementary schools have some math intervention support. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Jesse. So, Brian, back to you have your hand up. Yes, I did. I had a quick, well, mine to be quick, I have no idea. I had a question about the enrollment, which obviously is the main driver of the budget, or at least it appears to be the fact that it took a dent this year. So, first question, if you have the knowledge of what happened to those students, where did they go. Yeah, I'm happy. I'm sorry. Actually, I did that really complete analysis on this in terms of the students that left and why and where they went. One second just to pull up. Make sure that I have here. We actually did send a survey out to the students that had not left Arlington, because we do have students, international students, other families that move out of state, move out of move out of Arlington and another community. But we did, we did send a survey out just to see what the what parents wanted to do parents guardians want to do next year. Do you have. Yeah, I think you do. I'm going to share the screen give me one second. So, this was a thank you for blowing it up. Yes, yes, of course. I know some of our eyes are, you know, need to work a little bit harder to see things in your screen depending on your screen so this was part of an analysis that I did for student exit data. This is this was data that we collected when a student left the district. And was coded into our, our, our student information system. So, the ones that were highlighted these were the categories of the students that I actually are families that I surveyed. These were the students that were easily identifiable as students that would probably come back or will have a possibility of coming back. Those that moved out of the district or move to specifically to other countries or another state or Italian city, I did not actually survey. But there could be, there could be some situations where they might do come back. Some of them were like students to have parents that lived in different towns and places so the parent decided to send their child to another place temporarily during this time frame, and then they might come back. So, but there was those special instances that I wasn't going to get into the details in terms of my analysis. So overall, what it shows is that the 287 students we lost is a net loss is not. So you have students that graduate every year. And then you have students that come in at the bottom in the lower grades. So that's what you'll see at the bottom is the graduation students. And above that is students that either transferred from APS to a different school, or we didn't have maybe a few didn't have enough sufficient data me to determine that, which was really immaterial. So about 700 students left the district for various reasons, but there was enough that came back to the district that did the net of 287 student loss. Well, I guess as I look at your chart. I'm homeschooling if somebody's home school that could see them coming back immediately, what if the schools resume, I am going on the assumption that starting in September things will start to normalize, especially after the news today that the Pfizer vaccine is 100% effective on 12 to 15 year olds. I assume they'll do more research on the younger kids as well. But would it be expected that somebody who sent their child, especially at a younger age to a private school would bring them back. Would that be an expectation. And some instances, I did see in the survey results that students were going to come back from private schools, it all depends on the family situation. And then there were some instances where families to put comments, where they said they will, they were going to send their children back, but it may not be until a year or two because of waiting to the next transition. Okay. All right. Thank you. Alan Jones. Hi Mike out one just a technical question I was looking at your slides 14 and 15 and I just seemed like some of the numbers are different I don't think the pie chart adds up to the 87 to 801032. So you might just want to look at that then. I'll definitely double check that. What you said slide number 14 for 14 is the table. Yeah, that does total 87 to 801032. But then we'll look at 15 and I add the five numbers together and get about a half a million dollars off. So yeah, maybe I'll have to double check. Not a big deal. The broader question I had, you mentioned in the revenue sources that the grants are projected grants are down by a million two. There's the American rescue plan and who knows what else might show up. What's the, how do you handle if you have sort of unexpected grant revenue. You know what what happens to that. You know let's say you got two million for the American rescue plan how was that handled. Well, I think that is a good question and I think that it may be best suited that Kathy might put some input in terms of when we're made aware of a funding source. We, you know, look at what the requirements are and how to apply for that funding source and what how could we best use it. And you know, our goal as a school district, as long as I've been here is as always to try to take advantage of every grant that we could possibly take advantage of. We then Kathy typically assigns off to key key key employees to then come up with plans on how to implement any grant and apply for the grant and see if we can get awarded. I will then now heat off the Kathy to see if. Well, I think you mentioned the, the federal stimulus might we are the money actually hasn't come to Jesse yet, but it's going to be distributed through the title one formula, which means for Arlington we will get about 1.1. I think about 1.1 maybe slightly more than that. We haven't been given our allocation yet. That money can be spent over two fiscal years. So, I will say that our first priority right now for that money was sort of spending anticipating that's going to come as is our summer program. Last year we had an expanded title one summer five week program for students to have some extra support and instruction in math and literacy. This year we're planning to do exactly the same thing, but maybe a little bit more expanded than we did last year. In fact, we were just talking about this this afternoon, what this might look like. We have, we have a committee that is is together right now and it's actually a lot of people who worked on last year's summer program, and that is a priority going forward this year. In fact, the federal stimulus money they want at least 20% of the money spent on programs to help students who may need have some learning needs as a result of this year. Okay, that one of the things that we have been doing as you, as you know over the last many years is increasing our number of interventions in our school system. By that I mean math interventionist reading teachers. And which has a direct impact indirect but direct impact for student learning and particularly we're looking to support direct student learning, and that that percent of our budget is been been growing over the years. And I expect that that's where the probably the primary place we want to use this money is to increase those kinds of support. Okay, I guess you know my, you know, always a concern is spending one time money for long term obligations. There was another department where it seemed like some positions were grant funded the grants went away, but the positions still exist. So then, you know that rolls over to the tax fund so I mean using one time money for one time expenses is a good thing. It's pretty much that. Certainly, that's what happens sometimes you though I will say, then you have a grant, and the position becomes so important that you try to figure out another way to maintain that kind of service. But pretty much that, you know, we don't the grant money for something that particular thing that we were funding goes away. So, the things that we have our eye on right now, and considerable playing effort is for the summer. I will say another thing talking about one time expenses is that we've, I think that it's going to be important for the district to maintain the online tools that we have invested in over the over the years so it's not really a position as it is supports that we have for students. The other thing I think we're really going to need to look at and this is a little more complicated may seem we have about 4000 devices on loan to families right now. When the students who have these loans are going to be coming back into school we have them go back and forth. But I think that we're going to have to take a real look at what more we need in the way of technology and I know that capital planning to me has been very generous and allocating monies for this need and I see that continuing to be the case. So, there are a lot of expenses, the things that we hadn't even thought about having to fund this year that probably are going to have some continued effort, financial effort. Thank you Dr about it. Thank you Kathy. Yes. Mason, I just have a few questions. One of them I is just a confusion between two totals. You have a grand total on of the page with all of the revenues of 87 million 281 032. And on page nine, which is just before it, you have a grand total of 86 million 793 200. And it's a difference of 487,000 and change typo or are they two different numbers. Sorry, I'm trying to just butt in that's the difference between page 14 and 15. So I think they're related. Maybe a calibration of refreshing the charts. I'll double check it and get back to you. Okay. In terms of that to the question I had was on special ed. First of all, you mentioned that you've been putting aside money for special education reserve. A few hundred thousand each year. So, like as of today, how much is in the special ed reserve. It's about it's between 650 to 700,000 this sitting in there. Okay. And do you have a sense what that number might be by June 30 21. We haven't made any recommendations to move any additional funds into the reserve this year. All right. We've been we had discussions about possibly what we can look at turning back. We sense certainty of future budgets and change the climate. Major efforts on the long range planning committee to help the school department was on special education, which we have allowed that number to grow by 7% a year was based upon studies done, I guess several years ago that showed over 10 years. The average growth in special education expenditures was 7%. But if I'm just taking a look at a couple like the last four years, I looked at two different charts and I came up with a 424.2% annual growth and a 5.7% annual growth. Do you have the number for the last 10 years of growth in special education? Of the actuals both with without and with interventions. Without without. We don't put interventions out into the special education numbers. That's all in general funds. We keep that we've been trying to keep those special education costs pretty consistent of what we count year to year. We do have a slide. On showing the special education over the last few years. I can we have the old slide to show you exactly what you're talking about the regression line is a lot of years were higher 12% and other years it was down five, but the regression line. Over the 10 years was about 6.99. So 7% was what is how we arrived at that number. We continue to have some years were higher and lower. We actually have a slide on that. I couldn't put it up. Okay. Can you can you guys see the slide. I'm not sure what you see my computer is different. Yes, we said. Okay. This slide is all this the information can be fine with the Department of elementary and secondary education. All the expenses for special education from fiscal 2008, the fiscal 2019 2020s information has yet to be published from the Department of elementary and secondary education secondary education but what I will say is that the figure is not too far off from 2019 figure. And so this chart shows the total town funding expenditures this excludes revolving or any grant related expenditures or circuit breaker that is not included in these figures. And so, um, from this period this the, the, the red, the red line is showing the percent change or the changes per year so it goes up and down in terms of how much a change may have. So for example I know in 2012 it was a year where I can show you another chart where out of district tuition had jumped that particular year. It's always been a question of the volatility of, at least in my eyes, is what out of district tuition is going to look like. So if I, if I can I'll move to the next slide here, which will then show this is just in district special education expenditures. This is not including out of district. And for the most part except for what may have occurred between 2010 and 2011 we've seen substantial growth in the in district special education. That is what the district can control in terms of the services that we offer internally to our service to our, our special education students in district and what it doesn't this isn't this this chart won't explain is how that that correlates to the special education enrollment in in for the in district moment. And then the last slide I really prepared was to show that I said remember that 25% jump in fiscal 2012. This is the out of district tuition and transportation expenditures, and it significantly jumped in 2012. And what this shows is that the part that we don't always control is the out of district placements. And some of it we can't control if we can provide the services in in district but we don't control who moves into the community who may have special needs for that matter. There was a time when there was a program like your main Lawrence that was in the district, where we did have additional special education costs as well during that time frame. So that would be reflective here, the overall trend, we did see increases in 2018 was the highest year yet. And that also reflected the following year which is 2019 we had a substantial decrease and that was what you saw for part of the surplus that we dealt with enough by 19 in as well as another decrease that would show that this number goes lower in FY 20 but if you look at the patterns, you have these peaks and valleys. And so it goes up a little comes down goes up goes down a little few years starts to trend back up. And there's a possibility as we've gone down the last few years that we might start to see a trend back upwards, especially in a time where we've might have a lot of emotional support issues that might need to be addressed. And then there's another loss of learning that might translate into some other type of issue. I'm not necessarily a professional in that manner. The special education department team is a great team. And I'd imagine that there's a possibility that we might see upticks in the result of this pandemic. You, is this encoded in your in the presentation that you would send to us. I will send an updated presentation with the changes in these numbers that, you know, the updates to correct the figures that people have mentioned and I will include some of these slides today. That'd be great now these are expenditures not budgets. These are expenditures. These are all from Department of Elementary and secondary education. Okay, answer your question. The average is still between 6 to 7% over that period I don't show that regression line here. Okay, but I don't have the exact percentage for you right now. Thank you very much. Thanks. Any la Corte. Thank you. So I've got a question about the pie chart for revenues. I'm sorry expenses on page 16. If you have a slice there you call grants, which I by which I think you mean expenditures for grant funded activities. If I look at that breakdown and your actual budget, Michael, I see that about 50% of that maybe a little bit more than 50% of that is actually for special education. I see that rather than showing that slice as grants that you should roll it into the places where it's spent. So that half of that should actually be in special education and the other half should actually be in probably other given what it's covering, which includes me, etc. Otherwise it's really unclear what that money is being spent on if you're going to represent it in a pie chart and I'm sorry to be picky, except that it changes the view of those slices of the pie. And it clarifies where that money is actually going and you can see the 2897 as revenue in the revenue pie chart. I appreciate that that feedback I guess I didn't explain clearly why it's shown the way it's shown. And I can explain that now. So thank you for asking this question, or mentioning this comment. No, no, no, no, it's a great comment because some of my some of my part of the presentation shows how finance committee. I think there's every year I provide the categories based on how it's requested from this committee, and it actually is different than how the school committee votes it. This slide is actually based on the policy of the school committee. So the school committee has it us vote, they vote on it based on grants as a whole, regardless of the type of grant, because the grants have specific purposes, and they, they may, they do not, they may change unless we're getting a different type of grant. And so, so far it's always been long in together so I think I'll take that feedback and bring it back to the budget subcommittee and discuss whether they would like to make such an adjustment on their end. But as well as I can always change this slide just for this committee to show it the way you would like to see it. All right. So it's certainly how I prefer to see it I can see that the grant what you're getting in grants from the revenue side, and on the expense side I just wanted to wear money's going as grants is not an activity although obviously I have your detailed page and I figured it out. So, you know, if I'm the only person who cares, I'll translate, but I thought I'd mention it. And I just wanted to mention one other thing which is on the analysis that Al Tosti was mentioning about special education. My recollection of that analysis which I worked on I think with Percy was that we actually discovered that it was about on 9% on average so if over the last 10 years one special education costs down to 7% a year and met the actual allocation, which was not as high as what the analysis show we probably needed then I think we're doing really good on getting efficient and effective programming and special education so I just wanted to call that out because it was a real problem for a long time, and it seems like we've achieved an improvement. And that's everything. Thank you. Thank you, Annie. So, are there other questions now for for Mike or Kathy or anybody in the school department. Charlie, can I just follow up the comment from Annie pointed out. Sure, go right ahead. I really appreciate you that you pointed that out, Annie, because there's been a lot of work in the special education department to really provide the services students need. And I think you see that with some of the trends out of district placement. So I think they will very much appreciate the fact that you acknowledge the work that they and all the teachers in our district are trying to make sure that they're in the right place, which is parents prefer if there's their child needs can be met in district. And that's, that's been the goal, and I'm glad you noticed it. Thank you. Other questions or comments. Okay. Well, I think I'd like to make a couple, a couple of comments if I might. First of all, Mike, thank you for a really outstanding presentation. So there's a lot of good information and rich information there. I'd like to bring the conversation back to an area that Al Tosti referred to earlier, which is our, our plan, our long term planning process as a town. And, you know, we're in a situation right now, where in a couple of years, we're going to be facing another override requirement. And that requirement is probably going to call for something like 17 million or $20 million tax increase on the community. So, you know, I'm looking at the town budgets and the school budgets, from the viewpoint of how can we mitigate this, this impending high cost, because I think when you're talking about tax increases, but that order of magnitude, on top of the taxes that you know, their services, plus the investment that we're making in the New York and high school and that we've made another capital investments in the town, you're talking a substantial burden on the on the average citizen. So, roughly speaking in the planning process in the last number of years, we have followed a growth rate, I think it was three or three and a half percent for the general education, 7% for SPED, and then we had a per pupil growth formula for increasing for the student population increase, which I think is at 50% of the state certified per pupil cost. Now, Mike, in the in the presentation that you just gave, it looked to me like, like we were are out of district education costs are running somewhere between $1.5 and $2 million lower per year than in earlier years. And this correlates with what I've found looking at, I spent some time looking at the state SPED reports that you know you can get all the reports for different towns including Arlington. And my calculations indicate that the compound growth rate on the special education from 2011 to 2021 is about 3.8% on on their numbers. Now there is a 12% growth number there in one year, but if you look at the growth rate over that decade, if the compound growth rate is about 3.8%, which is substantially under the 7% that the town has been budgeting. Where I'm coming from is that I think that from my view, and I'm speaking as an individual here, the town has has always supported the Arlington school system, and that's been in these, these operating formulas that's been in capital spending, and, you know, variety of different ways. But right now, we're looking at another big increase in the school buddies. You have in this budget, you have COVID costs, which I know you have incurred COVID costs but I didn't see any, any netting out of CARES Act funds against those COVID costs and I don't know whether that's in there or not in there. But my understanding is that there are somewhere many as many as three COVID grants that the school department has got, and there's two COVID grants or COVID funding sources that will come through the town for the schools, you know, in excess of a million dollars, at least for the latter two, and possibly some big number I'm not close to this to the three school grants. So, in your slide, I think it's slide 14 or whatever one of the slides you actually show on the out of district tuition, a drop in, I think it's from 19 to 20 or 20 to 21 is a, it's almost $4 million is a big drop in the, in the out of district tuition. So, it seems to me, you know, we're, we're one town here, we have common problems we have streets to fix we have students to educate we have police to keep us safe, parks to maintain. And in, you know, all of us should be thinking about how to constrain costs, so that we can, you know, move forward with reasonable amount of, of, you know, where it might be financial caution or something like that to protect taxpayers as we move forward. You know, I'd like to ask, is the school department thinking about the fact that if the special education costs are going down. If we have these reserves these, I mean, I, in one year you took the special education surplus and use it to pay maintenance expenses. In another, another year you have another special education surplus and you use it for something else. But that just simply says we're not managing the other parts of the budget. And I can understand in the middle of the coven, you know, you've got to make ends meet you've got to get things done. But we have a trend here, and that is these out of district costs are lower than they have been in the past. And if the town has stepped up and increase the amount of special education funding when you needed it, the town should actually be getting the benefit of that back when it's not necessary. Now, I, I was looking at your, there was a, there was a proposed budget on the on the school department website dated February 25. And, and then there was another one that was posted, I don't know exactly what it was posted that was March 25. And I looked, I mean, I can show it on the screen if you're interested, but I think you know the numbers. The out of district tuition in the first budget was the combined categories with something, I'll say $8 million. And the, in the second category in the approved budget, it was more than $2 million less. Okay. However, the total budgets in those two representations were $87 million and change for the total budget and $80 million and change for the town appropriation. So you took $2 million out of the special education budget, and you put it someplace else. Where did it go. And what, and why, why aren't we thinking about how to, how to help the town out. And, you know, get some of the, get some of the pressure off taxpayers. I don't know who the question, maybe I'm just ranting here. But I don't know who the question is directed to, but I would like to think that the school committee and the school department is thinking about these things because the day is going to come when there's going to be some other problem and you're going to need more money. Yeah. I'm happy to take the first, the last part of that, Charlie. And then I know that. That James. Yeah, sorry. I can't. I have to get you on the right screen here. Yeah. So I know that Michael can speak to the, to the, to the COVID expenditures he has that in a slide and it's, it is pretty close to a million dollars I believe that in his presentation he, he did say that that was the money that shouldn't be eligible for reimbursement that, that would also be returned to the town at the end of this year, but I'll let him speak to that. And I think, you know, I think that piece here also that's really important is that, you know, we, we, we did an override with commitments around the budget, right, that were 3.5% and specific commitments around the general education budget and the special education budget. So, you know, we did go to the voters with that in June. If I may interrupt, Jane. I guess it's your committee, Charlie, so thank you. Those were, those were, those were in the, in the planning process. That's just the general planning process of times that for a long time. Yes, but I mean we, we campaigned on them. Right. So the, the arrangement that we made with the voters was around these increases to the different pieces of the school budget. So, are you saying then that you're going to stand by the 7% increase in the special education budget, even if you've got $2 million a year and insert pluses that you're not and put it someplace else. I think that we need to go back and look at that I think that there have been challenges with budgeting for out of district tuition and it's something that the team has worked on adjusting for looking into looking at looking at FY 22. And, you know, I think that we certainly feel more comfortable at this point that we have a special education reserve funds that has some funding in it, which, which provides us the ability to, to, to, you know, to buffer some of those, those changes but I mean, out of district tuition is super volatile. So I, I'll let, I'll let Curcie I see her hand up as well so I want to let give her a chance to add on to this. Curcie. Thank you. I would agree with what Jane said that special education is highly volatile. It's true that we've had a couple good years. One of them was in the setting of a pandemic, and although we haven't heard of specific instances of how that may have affected families decisions whether or not to have their children and out of district placement or not it's hard to see that it would. But it isn't privy to that kind of detail because we're not supposed to know what's going on in personal people's lives. But the reason we had allocated 7% to begin with, and as Annie said my recollection is that what we came up the number we come up with was 8.5% and then it was talked down to 7% as being a reasonable number. The reason we had that is to cover the years that are both good and bad. And I haven't done analysis since that time, but when I did it then, if we wanted to go with a lower percentage and have a reserve that would handle things. At that point I kept the reserve I calculated was somewhere in the several millions or more. And we can certainly look into that as a different way of handling budgeting. But that seems like a very high reserve. It's certainly not what we have now it's not what we're allowed to have our budget or reserve I think has a one million or one million and change cap. So, this is something that budget has planned to take up and look at, but we're going to be doing this over the summer. We have too much work with the school department, and we have a new superintendent coming on. And we think that's the better time to take a look at this. But it does appear that we're seeing somewhat less volatility than we were 10, 10, 20 years ago, but there it's still highly volatile. The other thing is that you're also, if I understand correctly, asking us to save money at a time when parents are going to be expecting the absolute utmost from their schools. And in a pandemic now for over a year case have been getting different. The highest quality education that we can provide but it's been under extremely difficult circumstances, both for our students, our families, and our teachers, and we're going to want to try and do some catch up. If we start tightening our belts and nickel and diming things, we're going to see savings because people are going to move away from Arlington, they're going to feel that their students are not being supported. And they are going to feel that this is not a place where they want to live. And I don't think that's what we want. So, you know, yeah, there's tradeouts I understand that it's going, you know that the override coming is potentially big but we also have hopefully meant some money from the stimulus that some of which will be able to be used for schools but maybe some of it can be used for the stabilization fund. So, I don't know. Thank you. Thank you, Kersi. I would just like to comment that I think when we're looking at numbers that have been flowing through this budget and then reallocated that are in the multiple millions, you know, million and a half here and million and a half there. Over the last several years. That's not nickel diming. This is serious money. So it's not it's not an unreasonable request. When we have coven funds which I don't see reconciled here. When we have what I think that Mike's done an excellent job in tracking that the changes in the out of district and presenting the changes in the out of district, which in which, when we go up in the presentation tonight, somewhat track the same thoughts that I had looking at it from other sources, but we're talking about substantial funds. And I think it's not unreasonable that the school department think about what it really needs in the time when we have a drop in the school population, when the costs of special education are going down. And, you know, to understand what the implications are for the taxpayers. That's the, that's the question that I'm asking. And, and candidly, from my own personal viewpoint, I don't see that in the proposed fiscal 22 budget. So, is it a question or is it a recommendation? I just am not. I mean, who's asking that question. Jane, sorry, was is it a, is there a question or is it a recommend? No, I'm, my question is, well, I did ask the question earlier. Now, what is, what is the school department going to do to help address some of these pressures on the town and the taxpayers. And I think they're significant. And I think there's room for based on the information that we've seen, there's room to do that. And so I, you know, I think, I think my request would be that the school department take a look at that. Yes, that's my personal request. Yeah. Somebody else have a chip. Yeah, Mike, go ahead, Mike. I just want to, you know, make some corrections. I think that you spoke about the budget changes between the special education budget. Between the February 25 post budget to the March 25 proposed budget. Yes. So I can just share my slides again and explain. You know, bring up what the changes were. And so, I'm not sure if you remember this slide here. This was the proposed changes slide. And this is the amount that should be reflected between the two different budgets where special education out of district tuition was being decreased by 1.2 million dollars between the two budgets. So if you have a different number, I'd like to try to explain that. I think I might. If. If also, there's a couple other things that just want to help you. Can I, can I just share the screen with you for one second? Of course, of course. I can figure out how to do this. Okay. This, this is. This is what I've taken from your budgets. This is this on the left is these categories six, eight, nine, five, or I can't even slow small Charlie could you zoom in a little bit. Yeah, let me do that. Sorry. I can't read it from here so you probably can't read it from there. Let me you also read this and go to the full slide show. There you go. Okay. Get this out of the way here. So, so in the, in the proposed budget as I can, I just clip, I did a conversion of the spreadsheet to, I mean, the PDF spreadsheet and just clip this stuff out. Okay. So in the 22 proposed budget, the February 22nd budget, this added up. This ended up to 8.9 million. That would be this category and that category. And then in the, in the cost center, I'm sorry, in the approved budget, it was 5.97. So that's the difference of almost $3 million. And I'm just asking why they go and why, you know, oh, okay. I think I see what your, your question is. So, I'll double check that those figures but my understanding when we made the adjustments to the updated budget there was an error in some of the formulas. And that's what you're seeing, but the net reduction was 1.2 so I would not look at the February 25th number as ballot figures at all for those categories so there was some double counting in that those numbers. Which you can see why it's substantially higher by a million dollars that would actually not be the case. Okay, well, I mean, this is one point that I picked up. Yeah, there were, I think in the, in the presentation that you gave, there were three years where there were surpluses. I'm using the term surplus as the negative of a reduction in the budget. But each year, it's somewhere around 1315 million. Okay, now I know you applied these to other things. But I'm, I'm trying to suggest that there's a trend here. Okay. And we should be thinking about how this fits into the overall strategy of the town. That's what I'm asking for. The other, the other point you made is made a point of expenditures dropped from $4 million and you point out what you're referring to. Is that in my presentation. Yeah, there was something. May I may I may I bring up my presentation at this point. Yeah, I have to find it was slide 14 or 15 or something. I'll pull it up. I just want to see it. Yeah. Okay, on slide 10. I'm sorry page 10, at least the one that you just sent out. Okay. There's a $3 million surplus in the special education in fiscal 20 the variance and in fiscal 19 there's a 1.3. So between those two years for million dollars. Oh, you're referring to you're doing an additive additive. Well, I'm just saying, yeah, it was 1.3 in fiscal 19 and it's 3.2 in fiscal 20. I mean, I would, I wouldn't, I would not, I would not suggest putting information out as that way. What I would, I would suggest, and I try to do my best explaining what happened between the two fiscal years. No, Mike, you did, you did a great job. I understand the bottom line. Okay, I completely understand the bottom line. I understand the COVID, I understand the fact that the maintenance budgets went out of whack. Those things can be addressed over the longer term, but we can also address what the out of district special education costs are. We can't just every year be putting them someplace else. And the budget going up indefinitely. I think that if, if the special education out of district costs were really driving this, then we should be paying it. But if it's not, we shouldn't be. That's the point I'm trying to make it I'm trying to suggest it that this, I think the school department has a, you know, I realized all of the pressures on this on the on the school committee and on the school department and demands that the parents I mean, my kids went that are like the schools. My grandson was going to their own school so I know, I know what you're going through, but we also have the taxpayers to think about. So, I don't want to beat this into the ground I just made a couple of comments and I'm sorry to have. I just wanted you to understand that because your comment your original comment was, and I wrote it down was special education from FY 19 to FY 20 dropped $4 million. And if other people are watching and those that are listening today. They would understand that the expenditures would have been $4 million less between the two years. No, I actually not variance is the two surpluses added up to $4 million over the two years. And that's, that's what you meant that's why I was just trying to clarify. And then the other thing is I want to just want to make sure you understand is the covert the covert related grants and Jane explained it pretty clearly. In terms of the turn back of what's sitting on the general fund. The interesting thing is, as over time, the municipal funds, and, and they were the FEMA related funds as well. Some of the, what they would approve as expenses to be claimed changed. And, but what didn't change was that the municipal care funds could not cover costs such as teacher salaries and whatnot. The Department of elementary and secondary education only gave us a limited amount of money and we blew through that money with the additional positions that we needed to hire to run the programs this year. So, in the 900,000 there were some salaries that are not going to be eligible. There is some testing costs that might be eligible or will likely be eligible and will be reimbursed at a particular percentage rate. And those are the costs that I'm referring to that will will claim, and then will be turned back to the general fund. There are some costs that are tied to cleaning supplies mid and midway through the process that they did change what was eligible and a lot of those clean supplies are not going to be covered fully at 75%. There's a lesser rate of reimbursement of us, those cleaning supplies. That's not the control of the town of Arlington or the school committee or the school department that was beyond our control. So, that's what I was trying to explain in that that COVID slide. If you look back to the total expenditures, we've spent 3.6 million dollars for it's COVID and FY 21 alone. And of that was 900,000 to a million on that general fund. And so, I hope that if you could, if you could, let me make another request if I might provide for the finance committee, a sort of a COVID accounting. Okay, your COVID expenses, and then all of the income sources that the extraordinary income that whether it's CARES Act or the through the town or the school or grants or whatever, so that we can have an understanding of how those funds flow. Okay, because I believe this town should also be paying you some additional funds out of their distribution channel of CARES Act. Well, if I could, if you can let me share my screen one more time so I can kind of show that. And if you're looking for a more detailed report than beyond to what I provided I think what that that that slide does provide what you're asking from the highest level view. And it shows the different funding sources. Maybe I didn't clarify that. But if you go back to the slide, it does show that mainly we currently have the town funds. And then we have what Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, through their CARES distribution funds. We've received so we've received. We recently recently received a random payment from the department for extra funds to deal with COVID. All schools will receive the two payments. That was about $100,000. Now that we got $1.3 million for the CVRF, which was mainly used to reopen schools. We got a per pupil allocation based on October one numbers of I forget the exact number at this at this moment in terms of the per pupil. But Mike, if you could just provide us just just a spreadsheet or something with some of the details that would be very helpful. Okay. And the second thing is, I am very interested in knowing, precisely, let's say for 18, 19, 20 and 21, what the out of district tuition is during the year in other words, assume that you had to pay every month, an invoice to cover the tuition costs. So ignore money coming over from last year and ignore conferences from the for the next year. Just what are the out of district services charging the town during each of those years. That's that's that would be some very interesting information. I'll provide that with the updated presentation. I did tell earlier, we asked a question that that that was in that slide and it does tell you the amounts per year from 2008 to 2019. Okay, that'd be great. Yeah. Okay. Okay, thank you very much for tolerating my questions. I don't know if they could be classified as questions, as opposed to accusations or something like that. So, but I, I, so are there any other questions from the committee for the school department. So, Mike, I want to thank you for, and Kathy for a really good, really good presentation. I think that Dean. I'm sorry with it. Who's question. There are some hands up Charlie. Okay, I'll go ahead. Okay, keep it loose that screen. Michael don't worry about putting up with him we have to do it for the whole year and we've survived. Do you on the special ed reserve. You mentioned that you have at the current time about 650 to 700,000. Do you have a goal in mind. In other words, and this might be a broader than just for you Michael but you have a goal in mind what do you think would be an adequate special special education reserve fund to have. That's a good question. Um, I think Kathy may know the answer a little better than what she would feel comfortable as a superintendent. What I would say is that a good stabilization amount for special ed will probably be closer to $2 million. And it shouldn't go above that amount. I would, I would heed to Kathy Kathy to provide what she believes. I would concur. We actually have been asking ourselves that question as well, Al, and looking to other places what they would they do with the reserve account. But I think that that is very close to where we should be where we are right now. You know, if we have one residential and maybe one or two out of district that we did not budget for that would be it. In fact, it would not even be enough. That's a question we are looking into but I would concur this probably it's certainly more than we have, and it's certainly more than a million. But I think a million at a baseline would be the minimum we should go at. Okay, thank you. And, um, I know we're only three quarters of the way through the year. But, you know, projecting ahead. I think part of what Charlie was saying is we'd really appreciate the talent appreciate. You know, looking to return any funds, not used above what you think you need to make the next step in the special education reserve. You stepped up last June, with about 460,000 and depending on circumstances especially of course nobody exactly knows what the federal funds are going to be allowed to be used for. But what funds return to free cash would certainly be appreciated. So, thank you for your presentation. Appreciate it. Alan Jones. Well, going back to the special ed reserve it seems like there's a there's mathematics that can be applied to that, like we do snow and ice basically but more of a meta comment related to the override and special education and other numbers. If I was a skeptical taxpayer watching this meeting and I heard Charlie say 3% and I heard cures he say 7% and air any say 9% and say you people don't know what you're doing. We need to be transparent and credible so I don't want to let that slide I think we need to resolve that, you know, between 3% and 9%. What's the real number and maybe there are other numbers we need to do the same thing for. That's my comment. What do you mean this was an analysis is done in like 2011 and was available to long range planning committee we talked about it like for meetings. Okay, well 2011 is probably, you know, maybe irrelevant at this point I just want us to use the same number. That's all. That was how we set the 7% parameter. Okay, I'm just saying that 7% parameters on real data. I'm only saying we need transparency and credibility and it'd be nice if we all use the same numbers and we can work that out. Thank you. Any other questions. Dean, you're going to make some comments. I am going to make some comments. I'm going to read them because very rarely I don't want to screw it out. As many of you know, this is Dr. about his last budget presentation before the finance committee, and she'll be retiring at the end of the school year. In recognition of her many years of service, I felt that it was important to conclude our budget hearing by recognizing Dr. Brody for her many years of distinguished service and leadership to the Arlington public schools. Dr. Brody is without question one of if not the most consequential superintendent in the town's history. Her accomplishments are numerous, but tonight I will limit my remarks to four. The first accomplishment I will I will highlight is when Dr. Brody started in the system. She faced a school committee that was deeply divided a teacher's union teachers that were at odds with the administration. In a community that seemed to be breaking at the seams. I don't want to spend a lot of times dwelling on time dwelling on this. Dr. Brody recognized the climate at the time by reminding everyone that Dr. Brody took charge of the district when her predecessor resigned effective immediately after walking out of an arbitration hearing for a personal decision he initiated to her soft spoken to meter and collaborative leadership style, a bit of divide in this community on the school committee and with our teachers quickly went away. The school committee is highly functional and collaborative relationship between administration and teachers is constructive policy differences are handled professionally and collaboratively. Accomplishment number two is school enrollment growth. Dr. Brody assumed the role of superintendent with a rising school enrollment that was straining the school's operating budget. Again, through collaboratively her collaborative leadership style. Dr. Brody work with the town manager and other stakeholders to come up with a funding formula, which we call the net new student or the perp net perp people formula, which is first 25%, then 50%. Accomplishment number three. Dr. Brody has proven to be the most prolific construction manager in the history of this town. But she first took over as superintendent. We had rebuilt five of our seven elementary schools, but had to stuck the Thompson in the school. Dr. Brody work with the town and capital planning committee to come up with a short term plan to invest in those schools while we waited for a larger strategy. She then worked with the same same stakeholders to successfully achieve MSBA funding for the Thompson school and work with the capital planning committee to get the stratum rebuilt when school enrollment growth several years later when school enrollment growth stressed our collective school capacity beyond belief. We co-chaired the school enrollment task force that led to the rebuilt and reopening of the Gibbs sixth grade only school and in addition to the Thompson. Finally on the capital front from 2017 through 2019 Dr. Brody helped lead the process that culminated in the town fulfilling the promise it first made to the voters in the 1970s that it would rebuild Arlington High School. And lastly, I would highlight what I believe to be Dr. Brody's fourth big accomplishment, leaving this district in great shape. If you've ever had the pleasure of working with Mr. Mason, Dr. McNeil, the principals and district administrators, you quickly realize that Dr. Brody likes hiring talented people. This was best exemplified in the search that led to the selection of our next superintendent, Dr. Holman. The search process was focused on maintaining the gains of the last decade and how to take the district even higher. There was no bitterness. There was no anxiety that this district was at a tipping point or that we needed to solve a major problem. The search, which was tasked, the school community was tasked to accomplish was a luxury of going from great to even greater. That is the true testament to Dr. Brody's leadership over the last 10 years and her many accomplishments. I will end my remarks by making a resolution of moving a motion for the committee and it reads as follows. Resolved that the Arlington Finance Committee, thanks Dr. Kathleen Brody, for her many years of dedicated service to the Arlington public schools, that the committee recognizes her numerous accomplishments as superintendents that have led to a stronger school system, and that the committee wishes her well in her retirement. Thank you. Second. Second. Well in favor. Hi. Hi. Hi. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy. Oh, thank, well, thank you. And to Dean, thank you very much. When you actually put all of those together. I think about it. Each time there was, it was pretty much for a big focus and we have accomplished a lot together. I think, I think all of you, the kind of service you give the Arlington community has been so supportive of our schools and I want to recognize that this would not, these buildings would not have happened without that kind of support. And there's a lot to be proud of as a community. I couldn't agree with you more I have a great team. And that's actually one of the most important jobs I have is to make sure that the leadership in a district is have the right people with the right priorities values and competency so that we do improve. Ultimately, as we all know, this is all about the children. And if we can say that we're doing our very best to help them grow and be as rich their potential. Then we've accomplished a lot, but we also want them to do it in a good environment and I think, I think we're pretty good. I, I watch that high school go up outside my window and I wish I could be here to see more of it go up but I'll be certainly watching it closely through the website and driving by just to see where it is but going to be a great school. But anyway, I appreciate you recognizing all of these things and I, my heartfelt thank you to all of you for your support over the years. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy. So, I think that brings our meeting to an end. We're past the magic hour of 10pm, which is the normal adjournment. So if there are no other questions with with our thanks to the entire school committee and especially to Dr. Bode and Mike Mason. There's a motion to adjourn would be in order. I'll move a second or a second. Second, it's been moved and seconded. Are there any objections. Hearing no objections. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Jane. Thank you, Kathy. Alan has a question. Alan talks. Hands up. Thanks everyone. Good night. I think it was a mistake. Good night. Okay, thank you.