so this meeting is not owned by the board of selectmen so it's a joint meeting because all three committees are here so we'll invite the school committee to conduct the meeting ok entirety at our meeting on tuesday february twenty seventh just this past tuesday it for the viewing public at home there are three documents that will be presented over time and that will be available for you on line first and foremost as an executive session executive summary document that will be posted online that's a narrative that explains the context in the budget that we're proposing for f y nineteen a full document of all the slides that we show tonight will also be made available online for the public to view at their leisure after tonight's presentation and as always we will post the budget in its entirety to the entire public with all seven to eight hundred lines of the budget the all in budget for the for the public schools for fiscal nineteen as well so all those resources are at your disposal in online on the school i would first like to thank the school committee in also the numbers of the finance committee who meet every other tuesday and members of the warrick committee subcommittee to the school committee education subcommittee who also spent time with us and so we truly appreciate all their work and support i believe it should be clear up front that without the ton of ministrations office in patrice's work to ensure two year budget in a context of looking at this work over two years this f y nineteen budget would be very difficult to to ask for tonight but with a two year view of the town's finances we're hoping that we are able to convince you to there's going to be three parts the presentation tonight one will be how we use f y eighteen to inform our nineteen budgeting we'd like to go through one of the context of our expenditures the context of the revenue as it impacts our schools and a little bit of our budget history and current status the middle part of our section will be the impacts that we have on our district as it relates to enrollment i know that this is a familiar subject to the to the majority of the people in the room but we do have new citizens to the town and folks who are watching v who may not realize the extraordinary circumstances we face from roman in lastly we'll talk about the cost drivers in the budget highlights that we have for fiscal nine hundred i think i do my david letterman imitation just we would like to reinforce that over the past few years as we prepared for our teacher negotiations in preparation for the three years of override funds that we had available to us through the financial taskforce that it was very important for the school district to negotiate contracts for the unions that were within the financial taskforce forecast and expectations i would like to say that we have five member in terms of understanding that have contracts that meet that standard we also know that over time the special education line items in our budget have been truly difficult to manage and we believe we have a very good three year plan to manage those costs and have done so for a period of two years as well we also feel very comfortable that our f y eighteen budget through the second quarter update is meeting our expectation to be a balanced budget by june and as always we use a zero base budgets with our budget meetings with our leadership council to ensure that our allocations attach to our strategic plan if in fact we were a traditional district who didn't have a whole bunch of folks moving in in a lot of external impacts the budget that you're about to see would initially be about a three point seven percent increase but there are external impacts of the town that will go through tonight that show that the budget will be a little more than that as we look at our context of revenue  i always think it's important to identify where belmont sits in the context of the state as it relates to the per pupil expenditure which is the measurement that statewide that reflects the apples to apples comparison of districts to how much money they receive per student and how they're able to expend that to serve their students we look at that in relation to the state but we also look at it in relation to the communities that we like to compare ourselves to for other studies in those communities are listed on the page in front of you when we list ourselves at that group of towns we realize that we've become twenty fourth twenty fifth and twenty sixth in that scale of how we relate to the per pupil expenditures of other towns around us when we get to the list here all the districts lined up by what their people expenditures are over time starting at the top with cambridge going down to towns like waltham bedford  to public school spending and we measure that against what other districts spend at the state level and what the average per pupil expenditure is for the state we see that that amount is fifteen thousand five hundred  eleven dollars per child that's the state average belmont's spends thirteen thousand three hundred forty nine dollars that is a sixteen percent delta or twenty one hundred dollars less per student than the state when we look at our peers that we described earlier they spend on average eighteen thousand dollars per student and the belmont public school spends again thirteen three forty nine that's a thirty five percent delta in the amount of money spent per child in the district so it's nice to know that we work hard in our efficient with the funds that we expend in our allocations that we make each year our are done so efficiently in with i would say good outcomes for our children looking at that plant as a relates to a a line graph you can see on the top is our average of the cohort in the middle is the average of the state and below that is the average of the town so there is a significant gap that we face each year as it relates to funding as we continue to look at the district we want to give you some information that we always share that first and foremost we appreciate and value that we were able to receive an override in two thousand and fifteen that gave us stable and forecasted budgets for fifty f y sixteen seventeen and eighteen not only did this allow us to plan thoughtfully the positions that we would be able to add to our district in the funds would be able to expand but it also allowed us to hire early we actually know what our positions and share and we could go out and hire the best and the brightest candidates for our schools in april as opposed to having to wait till after a town meeting in june the infusion of money for special education was significant and it allowed our principals to  direct us to not have to freeze their budgets to move monies from text materials and supply lines to special education lines which was the historic past time prior to the overwrite so we look forward  last six years and it's forecast for the next ten to fifteen years the increase class sizes are as a result of that the increased need for additional space as a result of that health insurance and special education bills that we have that are mandated costs that have bills we must pay also have gone up and the need for us to provide some additional funding for our custodial support and over time substitute teachers that has been a line that has been in deficit recently and we've also negotiated in our new contract that we will be providing substitutes at the high school because we think our students need to be in front of a teacher or a substitute teacher if one is a so that's the context of our revenue in the context of our our resource allocations our size and roman very quickly i know the people in this room understand this issue but the viewing public might need to be reminded as we look at the chart that we have used historically we had thirty nine hundred students just a few years ago we now have forty five hundred thirty one that's an increase of six hundred thirty one students from october one of two thousand and eleven to october one of two thousand and seventeen i do know that that's more students right now because i have signed the enrollment and registration papers to let them into the schools we have had at least fifteen students since we got out of winter recess this doesn't clude students that come from all over our town and when we count our preschool pre k students in our out of district students the belmont public schools now is responsible for over forty seven hundred students in the town of belmont as that serves it a member of the school committee to request to get an updated demographic report by using the latest numbers that we have in two thousand and eighteen to inform our next five ten and fifteen years just to make sure that those projections are in line with what we currently whether the same lesson more for the folks who have not been plugged into the work that we've been doing over the years we should say that we have modular classrooms at the high school in the middle school we were recently fortunate enough to get support from the capital committee for a modular spaces that will be at our burbank elementary school that will be put in place over the summer and ready for the fall that will allow us to open up five more elementary classroom thus reducing class size we have added kindergarten first grade and fourth grade teachers this year we have added another bust to make a total of eight to our district we continue to seem indicated services increase through our each students in our special education students and we have had to add partial positions in music's physical education nursing and guidance to support the increase in rome and each of these schools as they become larger in volume by students it is not just the classroom teacher that is needed it is also the periphery services that are part of a school each day that are needed as well the average year of graduation cohort runs from three hundred three which is the current senior class to three hundred eighty eight which is  current fourth grade class just to give you perspective the fifth grade classes three hundred eighty the fourth grade classes three eighty eight in the third grade class is somewhere around three hundred eighty students so we have the crest of the wave coming at three four and five and next year will be in four five and six to let you know what the roman looks like by the level of our district we added twenty seven elementary students sixty two middle school students thirty four high school students for an official total of one hundred twenty three from october one of sixteen to our top award of seventeen when we break down what that means for elementary class sizes our school committee has guidelines for class sizes that we try to abide by where budgetary really we were able to thirteen percent of our kindergartens are over that expectation fifty six of our first grade classrooms are above that expectation forty and forty one percent about third and fourth grade class second third grade classes in twenty five percent of our fourth grade classes the good news at the bottom is the adding of teachers has created i decrease in how many classes are above that mark so in two thousand and sixteen seventeen we had forty two percent of our elementary classes beyond the guidelines this year we have thirty five percent of our classes beyond the class size limits by adding the additional teachers in next year's budget that we will propose and adding the marginal classrooms we hope to reduce that number we would hope that that number would be zero at some short point in time at the middle school this trajectory of attendance of enrollment continues to grow i wish that will mark at the end somewhere bent down but it continues to go that way as you know the middle school is the most impacted by this in romans and will continue to receive the the trust of the wave of students so in the next four years it will have a projected in roman somewhere of over fifteen hundred students and i believe if pad proof was in the room she would say that that school was built for a lot less students than it currently holds the class size in fifth grade which is much like our elementary level where the students stay place during the day is about twenty seven students per class in our grade six seven eight average range continues to increase in even though students change for classes for math english and science there are still difficult class sizes to manage at that unique age group that is middle school similarly for our high school the nine year projection shows that we will have up to fifteen hundred fifty one students by two thousand and twenty three twenty four again where we are right now there is a continued clear increase at both the middle school and the high school for a roman and we really don't see that leveling off significantly a coming  down we do know through our roman forecasts that after we survive this crust that the new watermark will not be the old watermark of two hundred eighty or so students per grade that it should hold somewhere around three hundred sixty so the report that we are seeking to be updated by mckibben associates will give us a better understanding or a more recent understanding of what that a roman impact will be as always through our financial work in our roman work we like to keep track of two important subgroups of students that we work with and we have the pleasure of serving those are our students who are on i p's in in out of the ship placements and those students who come to us with english not as their first language with the reason why we bring these students in this population to your attention is that they have mandated services that we're obligated to provide by state law  our student population as you can see has grown significantly from october one of two thousand and twelve to two thousand and thirteen it went up by fifty four percent and then twenty nine percent twelve percent eight percent and then another twenty one percent this is an increasing growing population in our community that we enjoy the diversity of what we need to provide mandated services for when we look at what that means as it relates to their percentage of the entire school population our students who don't have english as their first language now represent seven point five percent of our student total student population to give you a bar to measure that by that is almost the same as the amount of students who in i p's in our entire district as a relates to the total population that we have group we have through february one hundred seven students who are placed out of district half of whom are placing collaboratives which is mostly the lab collaborative of which we are a member of in other collaboratives that are public school collaborative and some students who will receive their supports through private school day schools we show you this number which is the map of how those students were placed as they went through the school year last year only to give you the idea that these numbers fluctuate month to month this isn't a stagnant number that meets once a year in september and carries all the way through that it does go up and down throughout the year and we have to budget flexibly in accordingly to support that budget line so that is the context of our allocations the context of our roman and a quick look at our students who are  on in our district placement and yellow as unique mandated service students that we provide services for other any questions about enrollment or about the context of revenue or the context of the allocations as it relates to  item so patrice does have a number for that in her budget that you show later i'm also wondering are they in terms of the number of students and you know is there a crossover so that there are students in the e o l and in i e are they separate categories then there are students that receive support through ips that are also students who don't have english as their first language correct they are identified separately for this purposes of this list but they may be students that receive and remember that the students that we're showing on this list as a relates to students and i p's on the out of district students only not students who are in our schools receiving services in our school so about the new school building and the planning for the new school building does not address the class size in any way i mean i've usually you have to have a teacher to reduce  the teacher student ratio but does does the new building help us going forward in the arms of new buildings the new building helps us tremendously in a lot of different ways the first way helps us it's just provides us the space and the capacity to provide new space for seven to twelve students it also provides a space and capacity for i k three students in our four five six students in the buildings that remain as it relates to class size it gives us the ability to put teachers in more rooms and would then sit yes that the budget the operating operating budget that follows would need to be able to follow what the the allocation in the resources to put teachers in those classrooms our goal through this budget in the next budget i get is to not just keep asking for positions because we want more the goal of this budget in the next budget is to say if our forecasted budget if our forecast will peak at four hundred but stay at about three sixty then we should start budgeting incrementally to get to that point where we can have enough teachers to support three hundred sixty students per great so someone out there might say when you see how many teachers i'm asking you for tonight and i'm saving that it's a good book few auto just wait on we're doing so with the expectation that when we reach the level of staffing that's appropriate and commensurate with the amount of students we have we're good  we're not going to ask for more than that we understand that the town has fiscal challenges like every town we're trying to build up the staffing allocation to meet the enrollment size of the district and we're using right now three hundred sixty pro grade to use that teacher to student ratio or grade to staff ratio two to work towards and we would like to do so incrementally so we don't get to this point we're asking for tremendous amount of teachers all in l r in any one given year so we do believe that the school project in the high school project does wonders for the town school system for a lot of different reasons thank you that's a question john just on in terms of romans you know we've seen a dramatic increase over the past we know that in roman will go up and down over the course of a decade or a generation of sorts in one nine hundred seventy i think someone high school was really really big and it had gone up and down and slowly as they had gone up and down a new water mark of about two hundred  sixty students began to develop between the ninety's and the early two thousand right now that we're going up to four hundred that new watermark is going to go all the way back down to sixty will rest somewhere at about three sixty so when we see it when we see the water we will start to see the elementary water recedes somewhere in two thousand and twenty five but it will recede to about three hundred sixty students per grade that's what we can anticipate as the average it won't receive back down to to sixty that we've lifted up that water level to a new mark that they think is going to hold so the projections show the four hundreds will start to go away maybe you'll get a couple of three forty's in there as well because you're drawing a line across that graph but they anticipate the district being at about three hundred sixty students per grade in the in the interesting part that's that's you know the demark demographers might be able to show you better but these grades don't just started kindergarten at three fifteen state three fifty all the way through to kindergarten it started at three fifty last year as a first grade this year three hundred seventy one students so we just have students coming through to belmont so so that i mean it every grade throughout the whole year year over year and so we think the water recedes back to about an average of three hundred  sixty students per grade during or around two thousand and twenty three twenty five so the point you're making therefore is that over the next two or three budget season you have continued involvement increases that's correct i mean just just needs looking at that having perspective that's correct so because the folks behind it is still pretty high the folks that we're adding are usually staying in place at the elementary level an example would be because we hadn't had the module is in yet this year we had a fourth grade teacher and an extra fourth grade class t one book we had an extra first grade to burrow butler and we had an extra third grade at butler at butler so and then we had an extra kindergarten at the burbank and we had an extra third grade at the burbank so next year with the modules coming online we'll take that fourth grade teacher and take them from the wind brooke and put him over the burbank modulus so we're starting to reallocate resources within where the students are going and where we want them to go into the model so from that perspective we're trying to reallocate within the elementary level we added two grade five teachers three years ago at the beginning of the crust at the middle school and we have to add two more fifth grade teachers this year because we were averaging twenty six per student with twelve teachers now we're averaging twenty seven with fourteen teachers now we need to go up to sixteen if in fact that number goes back down a fifth grade in those class sizes go to like twenty one to twenty two we could take that team of fifth grade teachers and allocate them somewhere else in the middle school or actually at the high school if depending on what the wave of the enrollment absolutely the the amount of special education space that we asked the new program that we haven't got the final feedback on yet back for the s b a not only increases the space for special education but it also add sub sub or programming for a lab or sub sub or programming like space for the high school to utilize every member because that's going to be a seven to twelve school we could actually accommodate middle school programming in high school program e when we vacate the middle school and we make it up or elementary at the cherry with only three grades at the our per elementary we like to begin to bring that there's going to be space there also for us to accommodate potentially in house programming so we i was at a lab board meeting today in bedford they've added a couple of in house programs that compliment lab even though we're part of that for this part allowed to still able to have their own if they have a cohort of students that actually have the same service delivery we could actually have that program without web so we're always looking to do that we just never had the space and now we have the capacity to about that i don't think yeah and i agree i mean cambridge is in a class of itself for people expenditure period and that's why we need that i think the state number the state average number is the one that we would pay attention to and if anybody did the math ra very do the math twenty one hundred dollars times forty seven hundred students is ten million dollars one hundred thousand dollars ten million to get to the state average to get to the state average but just to follow on that point  child it's like a three it's a like a three four when it's a reduction in cost it's students in front of quote our own teachers they don't have to travel to one of our last number districts even though they're friendly inclusionary settings it's still not your home school right there next to the students they play soccer with on saturday they're engaged in the community in their own school it's a win win win for everybody it's good to hear thank you ok so we see the cost drivers as based in strategic plan based cost drivers and external base cost drivers the strategic plan based cost drivers obviously of the enrollment that we see and have seen and will continue to see and also the addition of professional not professional staff that we would need the increase in supports and services for students with mandated services in providing a level of support around text materials  we really not we have not been adding to the budget of our directors as it relates to that and there have been significant gaps in how we can support the classroom teacher with the things that they need to engage students  drivers that we see our health insurance that will go up by eleven percent in f y nineteen and also the continued indexing based on the financial taskforce that was developed over five years ago of seven percent for those mandated costs for out of district students so we're going to go through three scenarios one that shows what the roll forward number is and what that percentage increase would be one that shows the budget how it increases by the should teach it plan demands that we have on our budget and one that shows the external demands that we have that i would call bills that we have to pay we got so if we rolled everybody forward on the staff of the belmont public schools and we were like most towns that didn't have one hundred twenty five students coming in every year and we had to pay a little more insurance for the folks that we have because we have to because the rates went up and we had more charges against our insurance we would only be asking for three point seven percent increase that includes all contractual obligations all salary all steps in the lanes the added insurance that was budgeted a in the cost went up this year so we have to roll that into next year and we're working through that right now in our q two and i q three if we just had to do that like they're probably doing somewhere else in the commonwealth tonight in front of a nice town meeting or nice  selectmen our committee would be asking for a traditional three point seven percent increase that would be one point nine million dollars i wish i could tell you that this was the last page of the presentation when we talk about what we need for in rome and we were able to secure through capital funding modular classrooms that we have to put teachers in at the elementary level so we're asking for two classroom teachers who will join you ask for for and it's for a it's for an elementary school that has a k one two three four five where the other three teachers we already have them because we've already added the kindergarten to burbank we already out of the grade three of burbank and we're going to do when brooke teacher over so the two teachers plus the wynberg teacher plus the two that the burbank already has makes up the five that we need to build that strand to and now that school being a fourth street school to that's that's how we're we're organizing and reallocating resources  that with those classrooms come exhilarate services like physical education art music special education this list is actually larger from the elementary principals because we need a little more guidance we could actually use a little more special education support and we might need depending on the increase and yellow students more english language learners support but we've moderated this to nine positions because we are obviously trying to  as best we can be efficient with our ask during these hard financial times at the middle school as i suggested earlier we have the crust of students coming up to the grade five and so we need to add a team of tuesday teachers at the middle school you have one teacher who does english and history and a second team a teacher who does math and science to gether they make a team that address two classrooms of students with those two teachers added we hope to get the class size down from twenty seven twenty eight to twenty four twenty five when we look at the other needs of the middle school we have over fourteen hundred students at our middle school and we have only two assistant principals we have a lot of families that need to be contacted we have a lot of children in need guidance and supervision we have a lot of eleven through fourteen year olds who despite the fact it might be callous to runs what i would consider one of the best middle schools in america but they need support and that kind of work that kind of administrative support to work with families work with children work with teachers and ensure that that team model supports children that very unique age so we're asking for an assistant principal as well at the high school there are many needs for class size across all of the disciplines not able to provide a list of a point to english or a point for science or a point three physics and we decided to lead in richard's  allocate two and a half teacher f t e s and meet with the leadership council one more time before he decides what they would look like so this is our draft one this could shift because of  of how we begin to roll it out but this is what the district feels is the need right now we do know that we could list in year two in year three or even if we were able to list more for year one five or six more folks that would go right to the classrooms and write to students remember with these ads and with the generous ads of the town in the three previous years we still have students in middle school there and study halls and we still have students at the high school they don't have a full schedule yes  you just gave us the figure of just over ten million dollars if we were you know additional in the budget if we were to approach the state average of people spending and i just wonder what you think is missing from our school department based on that how would we spend it if we had it i mean you talk about instructional material maybe it's just spread through the whole system because we're just tight everywhere but is there something that's actually you know a platform that i think absolutely so we're asking a leadership council to make a three  budget i tried to tell i tried to frame that request in needs in not want because we're really not on a watch stage in the town but i can tell you what we don't have that we could sure use we don't have any math coaches th district we don't have any extra math support we don't have we barely have enough math what we call r t i at the elementary school other districts have math support math r t i enmasse specialists and now coaches we have zero we have enough students per grade to probably have one or two assistant principals at both the middle school in the high school and probably half time assistance at now the burbank definitely the wind broke and probably the wiling to we only have one license social worker in the whole district we have six psychologists we only have one licensed social worker and we have no adjustment consulates so our mental health protocol or articulation of services is shaped differently because of the different types of services we some folks we have in the folks that we don't have we could use more guidance more licensed social workers or adjustment consuls depending on what your format is in every district we do not have team chairs at any of our schools team chairs are the one person who know special education almost like an administrator who runs the meetings and the team meetings to decide what the disability is the child may have meets with the family as a team and decides what those services should look like as it relates to the disability that team chair is an objective person that kind of is a gate keeper of services for children right now we have teachers do that and they're great at it but they do that and they teach and when you ask a teacher does john feel in need this well his diagnosis says he does but couldn't you use that to well yes up because i'm the one working with him every day i would like to give him that too we need that objective person to kind of have those formal conversations that will result in maybe a more efficient and effective process and also better information in better serving our parents with information about what services they can get where they can get them making agencies available to folks we just don't have that administrative presence in each school at the middle school we just need more electives we could really use more technology more robotics more exciting science and math combinations at both our middle school and in our high school in our world language program starts in sixth grade in a real different way because we have students experience it by half a year and some some districts are really going towards elementary middle and high school were languages it's a very small planet these days and have an appreciation for another language another culture is super important so there's a common i could probably go more but those of things that other folks haven't that are really important to support students and families and i think that the town of don't want to service those types of things john remember it was three years ago when you talked about with your daughter was still in the high school and there were kids that were just have free periods and i was like i couldn't believe it because i should have known that so through all of these seasons that we've increased  additional positions here we've been able to address the some of that you just said that we we still have kids at the middle school students of the middle school and high school that are free periods and nothing to do what have we been able to at least address some of that sort of the number of interventions or ads that we've provided has been you know i foresee mitigated by the amount of students that continue to come in we've added the requirement that physical education must be taken in school at the high school for grades nine ten and eleven now some students like that and some students don't the reason why we like it is because it puts students in a class during the school day in front of a professional person where kids now is doing rock climbing yoga outdoor sports but they're engaged during the day they're not in a hallway just sitting looking at their i pad or talking to their friend we added creative writing we've added robotics we have a robotics club now so we have added some of those things that take some of the students out of the hallway but the way that the amount of staff that we have we have not been able to give everybody a class seven periods a day now in our community with our our the culture of our high school being somewhat of an open campus and have students having independence and some free periods we kind of want our juniors and seniors to have some of that we don't mind having that independence with our seniors and juniors but it might be nice to be able to restrict us unions sophomores and freshman and have them have a full schedule of  this budget season we've continued to talk about the need to sort of revisit sort of long term financial planning you know how do we address all these things and all our capital needs as well we how much where's all that money coming from but it has at least our per pupil expenditure has a just stayed flat have we increase has it increased at all i mean i get it we have increased in roman so sometimes you just sort of treading water so there's only positive news there that we had some incremental increase so that the f y sixteen number that we provided was the first year of our override so that would have been the monies in the tempest that were were put into the budget the f y seventy number came out on two one on monday so we weren't able to put the f y seventy number which is the state number into this i fully acknowledge that the time does not have the kind of money to support keeping up with that state average i provided as a context only to show that we are trying to be efficient with our funding we are keeping within the norms that we have and there are some just some external pressures that are full well understand that it's great that we're continue to be measured as a level one school district to me says wonderful but it's evident as i've sat here in the word camino here you know almost eight years we don't seem to be making any kind of a dent in sort of closing the gap with the state average and i don't i don't what the answers are especially when we're faced with again pretty significant capital projects like you know with the high school and others that truth use additional resources in the budget from an operati point of view would have to do that eventually anyway just to keep i mean we did the override before remember we were there just pay our bills and keep keep we were pretty much dead at that point and we had to pay or bills and sort of address the continued roman increases in like he said it was new shiny toys or whistles are a good thing for fraser using constantly just it's frustrating that you know we continue to sort of have increases which is fine because we need them but we can in even with that we don't we haven't made any significant sort of so one good news story that i would predict that conversation is that today i met with amanda fernandez who is a belmont resident and she's a newly elected member of the board of the elementary and secondary education and she came to meet with me today and she's a wonderful person and she talked about what the needs are the district and i know that at the statewide level we're always looking at equity and access as a primary driver for supporting education across all of the children that we serve throughout the commonwealth but what i did let her know very clearly and i provided her this budget conveniently and i took out the state for people so again the the new funding formula that senate chain diaz of boston spent three years on with a substantial amount of support from the senate in the house of representatives which is supported by our delegation to the state house while brownsburg was amazing as is dave rogers that is a game changer for suburban districts that have been left out in that formula there is numbers that go into that formula that when adjusted for wealth of a district or average house price or average income starts to really negatively impact this tricks that have no commercial base but high populations of student students that really have a hard time keeping up with the the you will operat budgets of their of their difference so supporting that work and trying to get that state delegation at beacon hill to move on that one piece could be a real lever of change for a lot of districts like the one that the  review commission of that's correct so there is there is hope then there are people talking about it and there is a recognition of the inequity of the funding formula or in general in the negative impact on towns like belmont that i know some folks will say well what everything's ok were you know what's the big deal well it is a big deal we have forty seven hundred children that deserve a lot of the things that we feel we need to bring them and that funding formula could help us with that right so those are the needs in if we were  able to just have to deal with the enrollment in the external impact of enrollment that would be one piece that was a one point six percent increase in addition to the three point seven we also have this year the mandated bills that we pay every year one of which is health insurance that's going up by eleven percent and if you take that eleven percent which equals seven hundred sixteen thousand and then you add that additional number of then the ninety eight years that we would bring on an average of about ten thousand dollars a person per staff member that line goes up to over eight hundred thousand alone in the school budget so insurance is an eight hundred thousand dollar anchor on on this this budget for the schools we also obviously would like to continue the seven percent increase in special education that we were afforded through the financial taskforce we've seen great strides in predictability and consistency for those line items to be funded in a very effective way using general fund money circuit breaker money federal i d e a money that all support that budget line item and we have a three year plan that we update each year to ensure that we don't ever have to come back to like i had to do in my first year hello i mean we have patrice governor newtown administrator for treason my first year i had to introduce myself as john feal new superintendent and by the way can you give me seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars  so so we don't have to do that to the district again we are really being thoughtful and should teach about how we expend the revenues that support that line so this results in another two point three percent increase and here's the spreadsheet that will actually be in the town budget received and that patrice will move forward tonight here you have all the lines that we use here we have the f y eighteen budget in the rollover factor and the numbers that we outlined as one point six percent of the increase the lines that we have through in rome and that's two point three that i described sorry this is the rollover number three point seven this is the enrollment number of one point six this is the mandated bills that we have to pay that's two point three and that results in the seven point six percent increase for the schools we are we will show you this in the pike where our teacher salaries make up twenty nine percent of that but our salaries in general make up almost seventy percent of our budget for special education tuition interest potations about fourteen percent fringe benefits about fourteen percent and when we look at some of the assumptions that we're making as we check ourselves as the process first of all we're asking for a general fund budget of fifty six million nine hundred eighty five thousand five hundred ninety two dollars we're rolling forward everybody and adding nine positions as outlined tonight we are working through the mandated bills that we have to pay in the eleven percent increase in health insurance we will continue to use the seven percent index factor of the financial taskforce for a special education which again h us well in our three year financial plan for special education we are assuming level funding for state and federal grants which quite frankly is a question mark we have concerns at the state level around circuit breaker we have concerns at the federal level as it relates to i d e a in title one and we're getting advice from the massachusetts association of school superintendents that that money is always not guaranteed to be level funded in the future so we are keeping a close eye now but we are making that assumption will remain the same enough why nineteen and we want to make sure that we're transparent that we are using circuit breaker and allocations strategically to support the school department's multi year plan for special education tuitions this is been an ongoing conversation with this board this group in the work committee we are using full day kindergarten revolving account because the revolving account still exists because we charge students for kindergarten we did lose the grant two fiscal years ago but we still have to charge to provide that service and we do offset that account in those funds with salaries of our state your aides and some of our teachers and we continue to use a school building revolving account to support the facilities department town wide and obviously for school expenses as it relates to supporting our infrastructure of our schools our next steps are we presented our school committee our draft one we're here tonight to present as well and we hope to have further discussion about our party and i can't say thank you enough to the opportunity to present the budget with such a significant ask i recognize and humbly state that is it is a lot of money that we're asking for i think we broke down the types of requests we have and how some of these are mandated expenses and bills and some of them are related directly funds over the next two years to support the time budget so if you have any questions i'll gladly it's them and i appreciate the work of the school committee and i have to say quite frankly tony to college arrow has in the in my absence and being more involved in our building project has taken over all of this work and i truly value his hard work on this budget day to day week to week month to month and yet here so they can very much tony as well and you know the questions yes john at the end of the day he looks like the total education budget is increasing by about seven point six percent year over year and obviously the budget the tax revenues are not increasing at that rate so and there are a lot of factors you've identified that are unfortunately out of our control really a lot of people decide to move to boma that's something we have to react to but for the seemingly few things that are potentially within our control i was looking at looking at the health insurance line and just a few years ago i think our health insurance premiums were i have a zero increase or a very small increase and then last year i think there were nine percent another eleven percent or something we can identify in terms of plan to sign and some other feature that could be addressed in trying to control health insurance expense or is this something that again is outside of our control this is to disassemble advances that not try to give one answer and i can either let patrice or philis into the second question because that's the health insurance piece is a town managed or supervised work on the school side of it i think that when we begin to look at it in it's hard to say this outloud but i think health insurance in the and how we look at that eighty twenty seventy five rolled that into the town employees and will graduate new folks in that way and then as it relates to how the health insurance metrics work in terms of being self insured and what that looks like and why eleven percent now i would leave to the that the town of ministry in his office to kind of explain i wouldn't necessarily say i understand that fully he would not be able to report on it well  ok so john's right and his answer in regards to the collective bargaining agreements there is some probably room during the next negotiations and we just the town's just finishing up negotiations so those contracts are pretty much set for the next couple of years so in the next round one of my points in my presentation is to really look at that during the next contract negotiation round to see if we can get some concessions from the union and the other piece to the eleven percent this year and nine percent last year is the last runs and the high number of claims that the town has had that is pushing up their rate that's something that can be on the town's control there are another number of things that i have seen within the plan design as it exists as right now those are discussions that have to be brought to the insurance advisory committee which i've already talked to the h r department about so there are there are things we can do now and there are things that we can do during the next round  thank you very much i just want to stay for the record that we reached our quorum at seven o six pm so the school committee had officially be in order o i will say that just in terms of procedural copies of my presentation of going around and copies of the budget will be online tomorrow i want to start by really just thinking the board and selectman for the opportunity to be in the position of town minister i would also like to thank the department heads i've worked in many communities and i have to say that the department the department heads and the staff that staffs them is one of the best i've ever worked with in my career that is a true testament to the employees that work in this town i also want to think  and i would like to especially thank floyd kerman he has been true support especially in helping me prepare to give this budget to all of you this evening and of course i cannot leave oakland castro he has been amazing he has really been able to bring me up to speed on this budget in a very short period of time so i just want to make sure i think of them so without delay so i wanted to go through a budget and the first part i'd like to usually give is the budget highlights i'd like to say that this is a level service budget for the town eight hundred sixty million dollars budget five point six percent increase over f y eighteen as john just stated in his presentation the schools are up seven point six percent over last year the town side is up three point four percent this includes a one point five million transfer from the stabilization fund as john mentioned the public schools is fifty seven million dollars budget the minutemen tech assessment is eight hundred forty seven thousand dollars benefits and insurance are at three point three million and that service increase is two hundred twenty three thousand this is the modulars that were passed at the town meeting last year this is the burbank modulars pension the pension budget sits at seven point nine million and open at five hundred thousand so we're looking at the budget you look at the what the priorities of the town are it's very clear that we don't want her to use for the town our education which sits at half roughly half of the budget  after that it's public safety which is police fire and d p w and then i know the town has really been working on capital infrastructure as one of its main purdy's this is an expenditure summary  as you can see from the summary again the schools can't stress that enough the minutemen which i already went over benefits insurance ten point three percent increase the state assessment and overlay is up t point three percent other town departments which is really the side of the of the budget is sits at forty million dollars which is a three point four percent increase debt service is up four point nine percent this is excluded and  debt and capital from my understanding the capital budget is pretty much increased by two and a half percent each year this capital the capital that you see there this is the discretionary capital for the department it's i'm talking about major capital here so this is the expenditure summary and apply form as you can see the schools take up a half of the operating budget with the other town departments at forty million coming in second you have benefits sitting at ten percent state an assessment overlay a two percent debt service four percent and then  some of the major capital expenditures in this year's budget public schools health insurance as john mentioned is going up eleven percent last year it was nine percent as boy asked pension is up seven point three percent  is up thirty three percent this this thirty three percent is based on an agreed upon formula that the warrant committee i guess said stablished and it's based off of your free cash balance and the health department these are all positions that we felt that were reoccurring expenses meaning that if we put them in the one thousand budget they would show up in the twenty budget and one of my guiding plus fees in creating any budget is reoccurring expenses if you cannot identify reoccurring revenue i would also like to add that one of the things we did add this year is the youth commission coordinator that is going into the health budget  that is a twenty four thousand dollar budget line however we decreased another line within the budget so we didn't have to come up with the recurring revenue this is a five year expenditure comparison i think sometimes when you're creating a budget for fiscal year it's good to look forward but it's also good to look back over a period of time if you look at the facilities department the reason why that is up so significantly is there was a merger of the department between the schools and the  again this is something very similar which is over a ten year period and what you're looking at is the percentage in the increase of one thousand over two thousand and  debt this is the debt that the town holds within its levy doesn't come from any type of debt exclusion what you see is nominally increases over a period of time in f y seventeen the reason for that increase is the school fire alarm system public safety radios and belmont center the number reflected in f y nineteen which is one point one million the two hundred thirty nine thousand  excluded debt service is long term debt this is debt that goes oh over twenty years this is outside of levy through debt exclusion and it will come off eventually  one of the other things i wanted to point out in this budget is the full time equivalents for the town side since two thousand and fourteen there have been a steady increase in in certain positions i would like to stress that only one of these positions which is the community development department that is a full time position with a benefit all these other positions don't necessarily mean people it could be a thirty hour we can ploy that  we see ten additional so it's it's not people it's more just hours over a period of time the last one in f one one thousand is the health service coordinator and again this is without the schools or the enterprise this is solely the town side want to just give a quick side of the enterprise funds i know the enterprise funds are so sustaining for the town but i just wanted you to see a reflection of where they are where they were in eighteen and where they are nineteen i will say that the  enterprise funds are using two hundred seventy five thousand dollars each of retained earnings to offset their rates and the enterprise funds also pay the town indirect cost which will go over when i get to the revenue so the revenue state aid at eleven point three million is becoming revenue the eleven point eight percent increase this is based on the governor's number this could change over the course of the legislature legislative process local receipts are up one point eight percent and again available funds is four point six million this includes one point six million in free cash and one point five million in stabilisation this is just a break out of the state aid in chapter seventy as you can see we're receiving about a million dollars more in chap seventy money this year and general municipal aid is a whopping seventy thousand dollars increase to the town again this is a chart of the revenue summary property tax of course is the main revenue for the town followed by state aid local receipts and then other again this represents recurring and non recurring revenue so i wanted to give you a comparison between revenue and expenditures from two thousand and fourteen i think it's important to show that the town is exceeding its expenditures over its revenue you know the question is how do you have a balanced budget if the expenditures are more than the revenue quite simply the difference is the free cash we backed out the free cash or any stabilization which we considered one time revenue to show you that there's a difference between expenditures  revenue and from year to year roughly about two million dollars you get to f y nineteen it's starting to grow because you're taking that one point five million dollars out of stabilisation you're now relying more on one time money what happens is when you shatter that to twenty and twenty one the despair disparity between expenditures and revenues grows even more the reason why this is important is because of this certified free cash so if i could cash has gone up you want to see free cash going up this like what you had as an f y fifteen you free cash started to decline and has declined ever cent if you're starting to rely more more on one time revenue and your one time revenue is starting to the client at some point you are going to fall off a cliff so this is what we this is a slide that shows only we current revenue says and have free cash for stabilization you have the property tax which is allowed and were allowed to tax two and a half percent that's two point one million new additional revenue for f y nineteen is five point one million dollars out of this new additional revenue the schools are receiving four million dollars of that to the town's one point three the town is the schools are receiving seventy eight percent of all of the town's new revenue for the town's only receiving twenty two percent i will tell you point of fact to that one point three million our salary increases on the town side is one point three million so this is again looking at a five year and putting recurring revenue into these numbers you can see one thousand nine hundred over f y fourteen your property taxes are growing state aid is i would say minimally growing and then local receipts and available funds again ten year comparison same thing property taxes are growing state aid if you look at the state aid number because we were looking at this earlier and we thought we had made a mistake when it comes to the state usually probably not the seven point eight number in l nine we got seven point nine million in fourteen these were the years where i don't know if you guys remember but there was the years of the one nine hundred cuts to the state and state aid just looked like it was going to start going down the steady going up state aid is from a ten year period only went up three point five million dollars and again this is the revenue comparisons  so this is just an informational chart for the property tax the formula for determining the base levee is your base levee times two and a half plus your new growth pl will equal your total base levy what's important about this chart for me as i look forward to planning is the new growth number your new growth number is probably sitting on average about six hundred thousand you have a good use you have your bad years but that's an important number because it's going to determine what your revenue is obviously for the next year so this year we have an estimated billable new levy capacity from property tax at one point one million so john talked about a two year plan so looking looking forward when when i do a budget when i work on a budget i don't work on just the budget year that's up ahead i'm always looking forward to the next year sometimes two for f y nineteen we have a balanced level service budget for the town f y twenty we are projecting a balanced level service budget for the town how we get to that is  nineteen we're using one point five million and stabilisation for twenty we're going to use pretty much the rest of what's in stabilisation which will be exhausted in f y twenty so at that point knowing that free cash is declining potentially declining that we won't have any more probably money left in stabilisation then at f y twenty one you're looking at a possibl there are some factors to consider obviously the school increase is a factor again they're taking seventy percent of all the new revenue for nineteen and their increasing seven point six percent in expenditures from f eighteen you're decreasing in free cash and your decrease in the stabilization fund which could eventually start to affect the bond rating revenue and expenditures are increasing at different rates the town side is barely keeping up with the new additional revenue as i stated we're receiving one point three of that new revenue for every one thousand but it's taken right away because salary contractual salary increases are one point three million discretionary capital expend twenty but we have some strategies moving forward so today we met with some of the members from the collins i don't know if some of you know that the tennessee to grant to start looking at financial policies and long term forecasting that's a way we can start to address and look out and try to determine what we can do moving forward i would propose a possible standing agenda item on the and say ok how is it running what's needed in terms of people recently we had two vacancies in the facilities department so we're currently looking at that and trying to see if there is chances to restructure those those positions capital planning again we were meeting in the we're meeting in the with the common sense today i think we really need to start looking at a five year in depth capital plan there are some proposals and plans that i have that i'd like to present over the next year to the capital planning committee to start to maybe look at capital in a different way there's always opportunity for grants there are there is grant money out there that could offset some of your operating needs one of those examples are complete streets and mass works grants looking at collective bargaining contracts in f  twenty is crucial to moving forward i think that it's a opportunity to really start to see see what what the town can still can do about health insurance and plan design and things like that i think that the town needs to start thinking about in terms of these things coming forward how that's going to impact service whether or not it's going to impact service and what those decisions are what they should be and then finally i think another strategy moving forward is looking for regional opportunities there are out there i know the the state is in favor of some regional opportunities this grant money out there to lease to some studies towards that  might be a way to start investigating those areas so i just began want to say thank you to everyone involved in helping me put this presentation together and now take some  of information or a peek or sniff at all from our state legislators in terms of where the legislative budget million dollars i can tell you they have a meeting next week with senator fr it would be helpful to think we will do this mean sort of presenting them were self insured in the last claims issue has created eleven percent increase which is significant just the role for that and what all went into that is it out why was it just a one time thing does it need to go up eleven percent and you know not challenging what i know we use a consult to look at these things but showing looking at that more closely would be helpful as well for the  lot of experience and i think exit for example the complete streets grant i've already met with the community development director i met with last week we're really starting to try and move that project for d i just the other day spoke to the community and he met with the b s e group that's looking at traffic volume and out of that meeting he said that he came up with the multiple projects for the complete streets grant so you know i look at it from a different point of view i think there are resources out there that we're not utilizing for example the regional planning agencies i when i was in charley my regional planning in d c was crucial in getting me three million dollars in a grant the community block grants and they're there to help towns and assist them in things like that so you know one of my big philosophies with budgets is honestly the position really needs recurring revenue behind it and you know it as much as i think grant writing is a need i do think there are other areas that we can tap into to get the same service without having to invest money into the trees delighted to see that the projection is for a balanced budget for a four twenty because it was by no means a sure thing you were go is this question i say this is merely a projection or do you see a significant risk to achieving a bell's budget for twenty at this point you know i think based on the conversations i've had with this john seeing the numbers and seeing what's in civilization i think that if four right now it's four million and we're taken one point five zero it will be a two point five we dream completely next year in order to balance a budget and how much free cash who will be using next year it really depends on whatever the free cash number is year which i can't predict i know there is a formular that i've seen policy based on how much free cash we can use this year where we're using one point six which you know i don't think is  percent i guess i'm not familiar with the belmont like yet but there is there an enterprise theirself the state well they should be self sustaining so any guards to grants i think it gets tricky and i think the school department has a perfect example of this you had a kindergarten grant that one day just went away and now the potential has you know the school department has to find money to supplement that grants king can be a little dangerous especially if they go so given some of the history i've received thankfully through most of the people in this room i do think there are opportunities i would hesitate to say with it publicly but i do you have a couple of ideas on how to to move forward on a couple of revenue ing hopefully generating options for the town if the trees i think one thing would be good to for the public to understand is at least seeing all this that we clearly see the situation we're in and the challenges that are in front of us and we're going to be using this time to strategize and solve the problem and move forward i think that that should be the message that people get is that while we roll out sometimes we could be considered grim numbers it's good to get them out there and then we can deal with them and that's what we intend to do yeah absolutely i think that over the next year and a half is really the work of doing that trying to figure out how to meet the challenges you know we haven't really talked about the major capital building projects on the horizon so i think that it's really time to just start with a focusing on how to solve a if somebody wants me to flesh out an idea or a proposal i'm more than happy to do that seeing from this is if it's true that one thousand and twenty really but to be balanced out of the general stabilization funds that we will have gotten five years out of the override which actually is in of itself i think relative to expectations before reasonably good but i think what we're seeing is that you know if if can things continue as we see them we will hit a wall of this within one and that is i think pretty consistent with what we thought was right with the original override it's unfortunately a challenge to the town we have to face we'll have gotten i think through the five years which i think  was on the better side of what people were hopefully looking for but you know i think this injection you have in the in the grant that you've gotten for the long term forecasting i think is exactly right and we've got to spend the next couple years with thinking about what this next five years plus the like and how do we handle that