Gloucester School Committee - Building & Finance Subcommittee, Oct. 7, 2026

We will start with introductions, and we'll start on this side. Stephanie Delisi, Recording Secretary. William Melvin, Vice Chair, Gloucester School Committee. Kathy Clancy, Gloucester School Committee. Melissa Prince, School Committee. Amy Pasquarello, Superintendent. Mike Jarvis, Director of Special Education. Cody Marshall, CFO. Sasthya Nugent, Finance Director. Thank you all for being here tonight. First order of business is we will hear from our Chief Financial Officer and their report. Are we going to go in order, Cody, or is there anything you want to take out of order? No, I think we're going to go in order. So we will start with student activity accounts. Okay, so we have a couple… we started our, you know, internal audit of student activities, and we're just following up on some housekeeping. This is our initial step into student activities for the year. There'll be more to come, and as we dig into it and look for,

other moves we can make to help consolidate, and just make sure everything's in good standing. So, the first order of business is to, I'm requesting an authorization and establishment of a new student activity. It's with the Gloucester High School. They're… Theater and Drama Club. Current advisor is Jessica Ruggles. It's just was not part of the list of student activities, so this is just the proper way to go about adding it. Also in the packet is the signed SAA1 form, as required by the school committee policy. To create it, so… Any questions on that? There's no financial.

thing going on, but this is just kind of to make it more official, or… Yeah, I just figured it's a fina… it will be a financial piece, you know, because it'll be money in and money out of an agency account if it's created, so… For your first stop, Dana? Yep. I, yeah, I totally understand why. the two new accounts need to be opened, but my question has to do with some of the other balances that are up there. Sure, yeah. So, it looks to me like some of them are probably no longer active, or have balances in them that did not get utilized Enough, so I would hope, I would love for you to kind of make an examination to see, I can't remember which one specifically made me think.

That if I pull it up I can I can give you just an example or two, but there were some that just seemed to be Yeah, like, like what's the Brave Bus Award? I've never heard of it. brave business award it's more or less a scholarship it is so that's active yeah but but no no it's so to follow up on what you're saying is this is the initial step we're actually going to do an audit great so I was going to do an audit to see any accounts that haven't had any fiscal movement in 24 months okay great and under Delsey guidelines that's cause for you know we can bring it to a vote to dissolve it into equally across all the other active accounts. So that's our interest, is to tighten up what's actually being used and make sure the money is available to, so an example of that is the ballroom dancing. Yes, yes, yes. And so when we were preparing for this, Cody pointed that out.

And the question, his question was, do we not present this yet, and proposed to clean it up first, and we decided to present what we have now, and tell you that our next step is to do exactly what Cody said, is to find those that have been dormant for 24 months, and then we'll come back to you with a vote to consolidate those, or spread those out. Can we bring the ballroom dancing back instead of closing the film? That's a whole different conversation. Yeah, that's why it involves discussions with building principals as well to make sure that they're, that they agree that it's dormant and not going to be used. Yeah, I understand. I have a question. So, a lot of this stuff is class… years. And one, and I'm not gonna name it, but, like, one of them has $15,000 in it from… years ago. So…

Was that… Huh? So, I'm trying not to give it away, so it doesn't identify me. I can speak to that one specifically. You what? I can speak to that one specifically. Yeah, I'm just wondering, well, I mean, my question is for all of them, but, like, what is the intention of a class when they leave money in it as opposed to doing something with it? Do they still add to it? I know, like, our class raised money for Swenson years ago, right? When they did the… Athletic part of the… gym, the workout area, over. So do you keep accounts open for things like that, or… I believe they're supposed to. They're supposed to set up their own banking. 180 days. Yeah, okay, 180. I wasn't sure if it was 180 days or a year, but they're supposed to…

You know, we're supposed to give them the money once they have established, a bank account with their president and their treasurer, and yeah, so… And their own FID for their class. We have a pipeline we go through. Okay. Actually, one of Bill's daughters recently went through it for her class. Cool. And, This specific amount that you're looking at right now is tricky. We've been following it up on it for a while. No one can seem to get the people together that can claim it. So we're actively, and have been actively, working on it for a couple years. But that balance right there, if you'll see it, it's… Yeah. That usually, and should have been moved off. And so, what the steps are is you work with the advisors.

To get the class, The. The class president. Yeah, class officers usually. The officers together. And they have to all agree to who's going to take on the funds. There's been an issue with that that we're constantly, that we're still working on. So then my question is. Do we need a policy, or is it a… financial procedure? I mean, like, for example, so we have the class of 2027, right? So, they're established, the year is still open. Is there something that we should develop now, or have forms that are signed to say, you acknowledge that in 180 days after you graduate, or by October 1st of The same year, the money has to be withdrawn, and this is the… this is the plan to…

pass it back to you like you know is that a school committee policy that should be developed I think it just needs to be more apparent to the class officers towards the end of their senior year off on it before the years yeah encouraging them to create an account to get everything set up prior to graduation that way it can be more of a seamless transition and we still have them in the building so we can easily contact them If need be. It sounds like an operational procedure. I mean, unless you want to do a policy, but I feel like this is an operational thing that we could clean up the process for moving forward. Absolutely, and it's a great point, Melissa, and we actually have started to reach out sooner than later when the class is still in-house. That is something that we've started to work on. We're coming up with a clear, like, timeline.

that starts, like, okay, you know, 9-1, or their senior year, we start to move forward, something like that. So it is a good idea to… And do you have any procedures on your book? I do fiscal at my job, like, any abandonment after so many years? Like, do you have any procedures like that? Like, I know with where I work, after 3 years. it has to be deemed abandoned, and then the state takes it over as either abandoned property, or they do the outreach before they deem it abandoned. Do we have any procedures on the books, or in our processes here, that we only hold other groups money for so long… The closest one I could think of is similar to her saying if there's a dormant account for 24 months, then we would spread it among the other

I would be. reluctant to do that with class funds. Do we have the authority to do that? That's not our money, though, right? So I… I don't. So there are DESE guidelines in regards to that. We'll investigate those further, and that'll be our next steps. Okay. This is part of… that's why we're having the balances voted, because there's a lot of different investigations in different areas that lead in different directions that then open up The idea is for multiple. things to be discussed on our level for different ways of handling things going forward, where the funds are at and how they can be managed going forward. Right. I mean, I'm sure they'll be excited to hear this, because like I said, when they start setting up their class reunions, you know, they could take this money and go towards helping them after they've given their class gift, or done whatever they've done. Exactly. But, so it seems to me they would want to… there's a desire to want to close these accounts, as opposed to us hanging on to them.

I was surprised, two things. One, how much money was in the, you know, some of these classes have some money, and two, there's a little bit of work to… transfer it to like a private account, you know, into their own account, and then manage that account outside of the schools. Once that happens, we no longer have any ties to that financial. We just cut them a check. Which should be done automatically after 180 days, it would seem, right? When they create the account, who's going to be responsible for receiving the check after 180 days? Right. That simple. That would go on in the, hopefully in the same fiscal year or a separate fiscal year. I don't know if that matters. Or they make a vote to spread it equally among the.

remaining four grades. Yeah, right. They could, they could. Or they want to donate it to… The officers could agree to do that. …to something related to the school. Yeah. Exactly. One of the largest setbacks we seem to find is that once the children, once the… kids, or students, I should say, because they're not even, most of them are adults by the time they graduate, leave school, then they're into college. Right, and they care about it. they scatter and it's hard to get everyone to respond to email accounts and they have to put in writing their agreement to the process that's one of the fundamental pieces of the process so that does become problematic but if we have a contract that they sign saying we're going to distribute a check able to you at this address after 180 days it's off our books and then it's up to

And. To. Cash the check and account set up, though, for it. They do? Is that what you said? They have to have a bank, yeah, an FIA. They have to have a tax ID? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. More work than I thought it was. In 2027, they might be happy to have this money, because that would be their fifth year reunion, so… Right. Yeah. They might be happy to take it. Yeah. Great. And some classes actually have. agreed to purchase, like, a donation to the school or whatnot. I forget what class did it recently, but they bought something. Did they buy trees or chairs out front? Yeah, or help fix the sign. They fixed the sign. Yeah, I can't remember exactly, but yeah. But yeah, we'll definitely look into it, either tidy up procedures and report back with what we're gonna,

Okay. Alright, so this motion is to, just to be clear, the motion that you want us to take is to set up one account for the theater slash drama group, right? Yes. So it's one account? And where… any donations to them, where's that money been going? They've just been managing it? Yeah, they've been managing it, and with their, boosters, so… Because I know they collect money for their… plays and things like that. Right. Is that something that would go into the student activity account? Absolutely, yes. Should have been going in all the time. Yeah. I'd bring it to them all the time. Okay. Well, the student activity account is different than if you think about football. They take game receipts and that goes through student activity.

The sports that collect ticket fees also have boosters. That's a totally separate piece. They don't all mingle. They're their own nonprofit. So this will help drama do that. Yeah. They have boosters and they have… And all athletics fees are on athletics revolving according to DOR rather on student activity. Okay, so I'm seeing two motions, the… to approve the student activities, their objectives, and balances as presented. Yeah, so one is to vote the authorization to establish an amenor activity, and the other is to vote the balances and intent As currently presented, that, you know, it's voting. As of 6.30, those are the balances in those accounts, so we just need… it's good practice under DESE guidelines to vote the balances and intent of a given activity every year to make sure it's clear. The first recommended

action is on, slide 4. Yeah, no, I see that. I'm just trying to figure out, like, do all the discussion and then do the two motions right after each other. So, I guess, I understand the first motion. But the second motion, Where it says… To approve the student activities. So that's just the list of accounts? Yep. Their objectives. So we… how are we approving their objectives? Like, help me understand that. I listed it as one of the columns in the… it's like a third column. It's pretty much… it's a descriptor. We don't have… You'll see in the SSA form for the drama club, but there, you know, it's a more concise.

purpose and intent. We don't really have that drawn up for the other ones, so I just kind of… it's really just their descriptor base now, and if we come up with better or more accurate, purposes or intent, or if you want to question one that's more or less… Well, I see that the objective… they're pretty clear. Right, that's what I've heard. With the exception of the class ones, right? And those are the ones we're discussing, because it just says the class. So we don't necessarily have an objective for them. Yeah. But, that's okay. I just want to make sure that the motion matches exactly what we are approving. Yeah. So, the objectives are more so for the other… ones, not the class ones, you know, the class ones we're gonna deal with. Right. The driving factor behind this, too, is because on our last

audit, we received a finding for not having doing that, even though it's more of a recommended thing by DESE, rather than a requirement, we still received a finding, so I'm just trying to avoid the next time we're audited that, so… Okay. And did they see this chart to know what you were presenting and gonna suggest that we approve? Or did they give you a recommendation for this? These are the three categories that you have to vote on. the activity, the objective, and the balance, right? Yeah, it was a recommendation in the audit report from a couple years ago. So we have two motions that we need to take. I just want to make sure we understand them and are ready to… Do that. If anybody wants to do that, they're welcome to do it. Okay, first motion, I move that we recommend

To the. Full school committee the establishment of a new student activity account for the Gloucester High School theater slash drama club for similar to Mass General Law chapter 70 section 47. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The vote carries. And we have one more motion. I move that we recommend to the full committee. to approve student activities, their objectives and balances as presented pursuant to Mass General Law Chapter 70, Section 47. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The bill carries. Okay. Great.

Thank you. Okay, next order is special education. Yeah, so. The first item agenda under special education is the circuit breaker. Overview refresher, and then what we, the listing came out for what we're gonna get for reimbursement for FY27. And a slide here just in case anybody's not privy to, I know many of the members know what goes on with Circuit Breaker and what it is, but just as a reminder. It's a program to the Commonwealth. It provides financial assistance for public schools to offset the cost of delivering high-cost special education services to students, mainly out of district.

Service costs that are eligible for reimbursement. Include any educational tuition instructional services for and associated transportation for out of district programs Pricing is set by the state and other public entities outside of the Circuit Breaker Program. On the operation of the service division. OSD. The costs include private program tuition rates, individually authorized student program rates, collaborative tuition rates, then in-district service rates and transportation costs. I list an example of the claim. from the FY27 that we did, I can go over it if people would like, it's there for reference. I think you can say it real quick. Okay. If it hurts to hear it enough. So, if the gross expenses for a student for tuition, services, and transportation adds up to $150,000,

We would subtract the threshold in FY26. That threshold was 53,000. $431 giving us $96,569 for a net claim. Then both the reimbursement rates for FY26 came in at 75%. That's both transportation, tuition and services and transportation. So in order to figure out what we were able to get for reimbursement, we take that 96,000 number and multiply it by 75%. And that means we would get an estimated claim of $72,426.75. And then, contrarily, it means the net district cost of this… the net district cost is $77,000.

$573.25. So 75% sounds like a lot, but in the end, it's not really 75%. Because we start with 53,000 and then add 25% more. And keep in mind that threshold increases every year. And the values, especially for in-district services, doesn't. Or, not at the same rate. So, it's so hard to claim in-district, and you can't claim in-district transportation. Only out-of-district transportation. Cool. I think there's some advocacy that should happen at the state level. maybe at our conference with MASC, we can bring something like that up. I just think, you know, we keep… I realize there's a budget review commission, thankfully, that's moving forward, but part of that really should address special education funding. There's just so many specific expenses that

we don't get… that we're on the that we districts have to pay yeah that you know some could be medically related so why isn't the state picking up 100 of that you know but do they get Medicare reimbursement though So, as a district, we could, for direct services, we don't at this time, but we could. Why don't we? On the administrative level, that just hasn't been the practice yet. We're looking at that right now, as far as what the next steps would be. So, years ago we did, and the money goes right to the city, not to the schools, because we used to have to fight with them about that, but it would show up on the budget on the city side. I'm talking… it wasn't that much money. At the time. No, well, I mean compared to the cost of special education, no, it's not a lot of money, but it's something, right? But at least you got the claim in.

I believe there are some districts that work with the city to have an MOU so that a certain proportion, say 80% or whatever, would come to the schools. That's something that I'd be willing to have a discussion with city side, if we're going to put in the work to get this reimbursement. I would want to… Have some sort of agreement that. Some of that money, if not all that money, comes to the schools. Yep. We used to have that. Right, if we're doing the work for you. If we do all the work. Yeah, the nurses do it, right? The nurses used to do it anyway. So it's anything under healthcare. It's through UMass, and we have our, what I call a buffer system that buffers our claim and helps advise our claim. It's for medical, so that could be ABA services, that could be speech and language services, that could be, say, psychological services.

That could be DCBA services, certainly nursing. So it's under the umbrella of health, and it's for students that are receiving Bass Health that we get that. It just seems the amount of services that we do now compared to 10 years ago or 15 when we were doing this have increased drastically. So maybe it's worth the effort. There's nothing automatic that can go in. I don't know how that, the claims part works. Yeah, it's another degree of work. In the years I've been doing this, the pushback or the difficulty is that the service providers would say that they want to know who the providers are, who the students who are eligible, because why would they submit a claim and do all that work if they're ineligible?

Right. The hard part of that is that that's a… goalpost, if you will, because kids come on and off MassHealth. So my commitment to that as an administrator is that I use PCG, put them to work, because they work for us, and get a quarterly report so that we get that renewed, so that gives them kind of an impetus to say, okay, good, you're looking out for us. We'll do this work. Right. And I mean, you know how, how many clients or students are meeting with these specialists. that we have, I mean, the data is there. Yeah. I will say about Circuit Breaker, all the years I've been doing this, 75% is the high watermark. I'm not suggesting that's great, but I'm just saying that that has historically been the high watermark. And then the other part is, if you

chose to go move forward, and I can certainly, provide additional support, there's a lobbying, group, and it's, no surprise, MAPS, right? MAPS is the lobbying group which advocates for are those replacements. So they want circuit breaker reimbursement for obvious reasons, right? So they have infrastructure there to really move forward and, and try to lobby the, legislature. So it's something to keep in mind. What does MAP stand for? Good question. Okay. So Chapter 766 approves schools, but MAPS is, I don't know. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, I agree. People going to bat for more transparency for those schools' budgets as well. Yeah.

Just as a general question, Mike. Sure. advocacy at the state level should be for, obviously, more funding, but if we drill down a little bit, like, it doesn't seem right to me, just on the surface, that the district should be in charge of… I'll just throw it to transportation, let's say, like, I'm just putting that out there. Medical, you know, we're picking up things that Aren't kind of in love, in love. I don't know, the realm of what would kind of normally be for the general population, and it's become ridiculously expensive, too, so… It has. So that's right in the reauthorization of IDEA 04 that has not been reauthorized. And I'm surprised it hasn't. Not to suggest it'll have less demands, but foreseeably transportation's under that because it's related services to get to a location where specially designed instruction is. And medical care is interchangeable.

So I agree with you in my view. And I talked with Bruce Tarr about this years ago, is that, and this is beyond this scope, right? But just, just. Residents, right? Residential facilities, 24-7, 365. Like, there's a medical need there. And like, so why would that just be focusing in on local communities where it should all should be? health insurance whether it's a broader pool right so there seems to be like that so no one's denying the service yeah it's I think the buckets or the bucket right we should look at we should look at that differently Right, and it seems to me, I mean, we're obviously not the only district that's struggling with this. All districts are getting handicapped by this.

I'll have a presentation in 20 more days or so, and that will help outline some of that. Good. I'll look forward to that. October 28th. Oh, okay. Do we have, students that are transported in district, say, from one school to another, to receive services? Yes. Yeah. We do. And that's not… we can't name them. Not claimable. Per the rules of DESE. Really? So our district-wide programs, yeah, at the elementary level. If you're in a program at West Parish and you are in the Ketchmere or Plum Cove, we provide transportation. Right. Yeah. It's kind of backwards. It actually should be the other way in a lot of ways. Right.

Right. Hmm. Interesting. So… What is the update? We've talked about the reimbursement. Yeah, so I'm gonna give the reimbursement update. Thank you for that, Dr. Jaffe. The file came out, and we're gonna be receiving quarterly payments of just over a million dollars, resulting in a total reimbursement of just above $4.1 million. And I already mentioned this, but both tuition services as well as transportation got reimbursed at 75%, which Mike noted. Pretty much the high watermark here for circuit breaker reimbursement. So I put forth a chart to show you the total and what we're expecting to use from that reimbursement in its current year for both tuition and transportation.

We expect to use just short of $3 million of it for tuition, and just over $800,000 of transportation. Leaving a carryover into FY28 of $348,382. Which is, substantially lower than what we usually bring. This past year it was 1.7. To FY20? What was this year? No, this past year was 2.1, right? It's 1.7 different. Less. Just for circuit breaker, I'm saying it was 1.726. Oh, just the circuit breaker, yes. Yeah, just circuit breaker. Those are less of the claim. No, I'm talking about less of what we're… so we're using a lot more real-time circuit breaker reimbursement than we ever have due to… just due to the budget. So we carry…

1. This is 1.9, but 1.9. Yeah, we have, there's encumbrances that affect it, but yeah. So we got, we carried 1.9 into this year's budget. Next year, we'll be covering, carrying 348,000. Wow. So, 3 years ago, 3 years ago, we carried 2.1. Wow. So, when you meet with managers. tomorrow, we'll be sharing this information, yes. Let's get that conversation and understanding sooner than later before… it's only a matter of how many weeks before we start developing budget, right? So, instead of that being something that we say at the end. We'll be part of our presentations tomorrow. Not to all the managers, but to the… Okay, let's see.

Okay. We'll figure it out by… April. you It's a lot to figure out. Huh? I said it's a lot to figure out. Well, there's a lot of… a lot of… past history where circuit breaker was a larger amount, so when it came down to the final budget decision, it's like, yeah, yeah, but you got your circuit breaker, right? It's like, well, we don't have our circuit breaker, right? So, 10 years ago versus today is different. I think that message needs to be strong and clear for those that still believe that. Circuit Breaker is a good buffer for us where it's not so much now, we depend on it. Well, I want to rephrase it. Circuit Breaker has been coming in at a…

consistent. Consistent rate of reimbursement, give or take some percents that we don't get. hasn't been happening is our budget being funded the level at which that allows us to maintain a carryover balance from year to year that is in line with both what's recommended from DESE right what's isn't there a target of having at least a quarter's payment carried over. Yeah, you're allowed to carry over a full year of reimbursement if you want. You're allowed to carry over a full year, so sometimes you're able… and so that is… So as we had lower budgets, we've had to… Use that just like we use special education reserves so we have no. We have no buffer. Right. This year we're using it in real time because of the budget that we were given this year and to mitigate even more cuts than we.

that we have. So I agree with the rephrasing. I think the the first message is easier for them to understand, because they don't want to block that out that they didn't fund us. There you go. But I get what you're saying, so… I think, just sticking to the message that we are only going to be carrying over $300,000 a year because of… budget situation. And that's going to get gobbled up quickly. Yeah. Like, that's not even… Right. That's a student-run residential placement. Yeah, right. And that could happen before the year's even over. We don't carry that over, right? Right. So, when do we get the money in? May? We get it, what, for this? Yeah. It's quarterly. Quarterly. So the first payment already came in. So, technically, we could have a student move in district during the school year and wipe that out. One residential placement could go to half a million, right? Yeah, or just under.

So we don't know that that's the carryover, that's the projected estimate. Right, right, this is a pure estimate, and I will mention that, you know. this shouldn't come as a shock, maybe the carryover, but these are line items that were assumed inside the budget, and how we were going to utilize Circuit Breaker. This was the plan to make the budget work, right? Yeah, exactly. I just wanted to reiterate that. Yeah, it's just not our usual plan. Right. Well, this has been doing those for a couple years, because we haven't been funded appropriately for a couple years. Okay. Anything else we want to add to Circuit Breaker? No. Okay. NAC quarterly update. So, as a new board member of the North Shore Education Consortium.

I have learned that we are supposed to give a quarterly update. of what's happening there. So, this first quarter's update, I'm just letting you know how many students at the end of last school year we were sending to the North Shore. Education Consortium. We had 12 at Kevin O'Grady, 4 at the North Shore Lower Academy, 4 at the Upper Academy, 2 at Topsfield Vocational Academy, and 1 at Recovery High School, which has recently been rebranded to Phoenix school and not just rebranded but they've revised the program so. 53 students were being transported to placements through, the NEC transportation contract, and 12 students were receiving vision services, and 12 hours of contracted services through connection were utilized through La Pasa Public Schools last year.

That's what we had last year, and this year's numbers, I believe, are Similar, but in flux, we have students coming in and going out, and so, So the 53 students are being transported. Do they stay there all day? So that's regionally done. So that's not all going to, KO… oh, sorry, North Shore. North Shore. Okay. So that's regional transportation. Okay. So that's that new initiative, that, that, that, North Shore Educational Consortium, did to working with NICS as the provider to try to network and try to find efficiencies, within. the transportation, so that's 53 students. Have we seen any efficiencies yet? We haven't seen drastic ones, but they're hopeful to be better this year, is what I'm told. So, for example, a student that is in Rockport, they might pick up a student in Rockport, and then come through Gloucester, stop into Manchester, and then go off to… and so it… we split the cost of that run.

I think… I'm told that last year they were kind of getting the process up and running, and they're feeling like we're gonna see the… The savings this year? Okay. We'll see. We'll be watching. Okay. It's a mammoth project for that one provider, I can tell you that, and so that, too. I'm sorry. So the 12 students that are receiving vision services, they go there for their vision services for the education all day? Oh, sorry. So yes, so it could, well, it's, so there could be students at the consortium that get the vision service, but also come here. So it could be twofold. It could be both. Okay. Yeah. So there's more than 50, well, there's 23 enrolled, but 53 students. 53 through the transportation. Transportation is to any out of district school. It's not just that. Okay.

Not just the consortium. Yeah. Okay. They're just the, they're the broker in the, for the collaborative contract to take any of our out-of-district students to their out-of-district placement, regardless if it's… So we have 50 students being placed out-of-district, 23 are in Mobile Valley. 53 that are having transportation. So they might go to Futures, or Lighthouse, or any of the other places, but that are not part of the consortium. Okay. Any questions on that? Bill? No. Thank you very much. All right. Our district tuition. Yeah, moving over to out-of-district tuition. I mean, Mike can speak to it, but these are the numbers behind it. We've had a little bit of change since the last time. You'll see some…

Populated numbers in the referrals column, One is due to, and a change from Yeah Day to completely, completely resident if I'm not mistaken, and 1 is a new referral to the consortium. So, there, so it's just, without getting into immense detail, so we have one, one child that has, intensive needs, at school and at home, and that's ramped up, and that requires a more of a home services work done. data was collected, and it's, it's an intensive need situation, so that's going to have to move to a res ed. We have that in motion.

Which could take some time. So unanticipated when we develop budget, but anticipated because of the work that's being done now. Correct. Meaning they can come. Yes. Yes. New students? No, current student that was in an out-of-district placement during the day. But it now needs a residential, which is much more expensive. So it won't be a… A $450,000 bite. because we already paid for the day placement. It was on a single-run transportation. I think there was a monitor there, too. It was the high-level needs situation. And then home services. So all that will be eliminated, but budgeted for previously, so now it will be the difference between that and then… So, 265 is the difference after… Looking at the services the student was receiving, plus the…

out-of-district tuition that was already being paid? So the 265 represents the change from day to fully reset, as well as So there's two students that are reflected in that 265. One is a new referral. Okay. And that's why it's only one, because the second one is the… I guess upgrade, for lack of a better word, if you will, to fully resident. So that's not one student costing $265, that's two students. No, two students, one referral. Not even one child, because one was already involved. Yeah. And the difference in cost after you separate, deduct all those services. Because I didn't want to double count that student because he's already counted up on the private day. Okay, got it. Mike, does the current count on collaborative and public, it's gone from 26, we approved 26, current count is 23. Does that mean that 3, we've kind of migrated back into our schools, or what does that mean? Or is it just the count wasn't… the count was just off a little bit?

No, it's accurate. We have that accounted for. And so I can tell you, I'll speak more to this on the 28th, but I can tell you that just by June, I'll use June, June 30th. right before the fiscal year begins. We had, two years ago, we had 71 students in our district placements. We did a lot of… we did some comprehensive work in building programs up. And investing in programs, so thank you very much for that. And in doing so, we were able to network and, with schools and families, and bring, return 8 students from out-of-district placements to the district. That was, somewhat offset because we also had some other students because of a high level of need that, that surpassed the district program because either drugs, weapons, or violence, in particular. They'll get into additional detail, that it was just difficult to, to.

Provide an education at this time for those youngsters. And so that's an indicator of such. So is that wash it? You know, there's a bit of a wash. So those three were most likely part of those several that we brought back. Yeah. And it's worth noting that even though we're three less students in the collaborative and public, that the cost is higher. The cost, right. And you'll never, like, you'll never recapture that, unfortunately, in that way. Even if we had the full 8 that we brought back and had no additional going out, it would still go up, because the cost went up. And in particular, the consortium went up 11%. Like, right? Which is, like, really, that's a big number. Well, that might be, yeah, that might be another…

Bullet point worth noting at tomorrow's manager's meeting, that we've reduced the number of And the cost is still high. Yeah, the cost is going up. So if you really want to do that, then. I mean, the benefits are better. But if we didn't bring. those 8 students back, the cost is still going up. That number would be a lot higher. It was over $2 million. Yeah. That would have been… we would have had significant cuts. I just think that's a fact that people just aren't that cognizant of. And I should really highlight that the title should say out-of-district tuition slash services as well, because you might see the cost go up if a child requires a one-to-one to be added to their education plan, and that's a cost that I just lump in with the tuition and record here. So it really should say tuition slash services to better

Fit the cost what we're representing. And the other part is, I'll say with, with res eds, so that's obviously going to get a big cut in the way of, of our, our fit-into circuit breaker very nicely. The hard part is, yeah, still have to front-load the money, right? So there's the hard part, but you do get reimbursed a significant amount. And the other part is that I try to exhaust every strategy possible in working with collaterals and/or agencies and on cost sharing. So they take on the residential side, whereas the district would take on the academic side, the school side. So that too has become, a couple years ago, DMH would have DMH beds.

since cut that out, and they no longer provide DMH beds. Where's DMH? Department of Mental Health, they no longer do that, or they do that very exclusively. It's not as high as it was. And not only that, those, like, they're all filled up. Like, I couldn't tell you, like, there's not a lot of space available. Because of the volume. Right. Wow. What a mess. I'd be interested, though, to see if there is any medical reimbursement out of all this, though. I mean, you would know better than I do. Is it worth it to take that on? It just seems to me anything is better than nothing, but if it's a lot of data collecting and time consuming.

So I recommend that, and we can hold our district placements to task in on that. We are leaving money on the table, and so we certainly can do that, and we can do that, we can really do it exclusively through, out-of-district placements, we could do that, or in concert with in-district, but I think that we just have to do our measured steps in on that, and so that we, we get clarity in on Who gets the money and then also, we have measured steps in rolling this out with our staff because it is, and working with our union because it's, it would be, Quasi, I'll say, quasi-new. things to do, but… They've done it before. It's been done before. It's been done before. It's been done before. It's been done before. It's been done before. It's been done before. It was not recently done. Right. I'm trying to be fair, and… But it fell under the contract language that we've had in the past, which hasn't…

It has been done in my time in Washington. Which is getting more. It was during Jonathan Pope years. Yeah. That we did it, because I remember having discussions with him about it. And before, even when I got on the committee, 20 years ago, we were doing it. Yeah. Okay? Okay. Transportation. This slide really hasn't changed since the last time, just because we still haven't received September bills, so I can't really estimate, but to speak on, to kind of… Reconfirm what Amy said. I had a North Shore Roundtable Business Managers Meeting today, and one of the big advocates, and I think part of their board who set up this collaborative contract with NEC and NICS, who was awarded

you know, like Amy said, they're hopeful for… to see benefits this year, because last year was such a set-up year, and with the billing, it's… it's a lot. It's a lot. So, so nothing changed on this from last time, but I still wanted to put it up here to make those points. Okay, any questions on transportation? I know there's thoughts, but do you want to put them in words? Lots of thoughts. Thank you for the opportunity, but I'll pass this time. Okay, alright. You can reserve it for the next one. Okay. And. Next is future meetings agreement. So, at our last meeting, we talked about us investigating, e-sections for possible,

movement of school committee meetings. I've since spoken to Principal Fusco, and he feels it'd be a great spot. I mean, it's a nice downtown location. Next, I just wanted to give you an update on next steps, is I'm working with Grant Harris on, the audio, and how we would configure the room, and so I should have a real proposal soon. The problem, I know. I just want to make sure it's still in motion. Excellent. And if and when it does, the community decides to make that move, we'll have to have a real communication campaign for the community to know if they want to attend a meeting, that that's where they'll go. For all the people that come. I know. But there are times they attend, so we'll make sure that it's out there on Parent Square, Facebook, and all the places.

And of course, on the agenda. Okay. Any questions on… Budget transfers. We'll do that too. Okay, there's, 3 of them here that… reached the threshold we'd like to discuss. One of them is within the school lunch revolving fund. It's just moving, it's moving $20,000 from their food supply, district-wide food supply account. to equipment, Sorry, other way around. It's increasing the food supply account and reducing the equipment account. We just need more budget for food and eating products that apply district-wide rather than school site specific. That's just at a request from. Food Service Director Wendy. So we don't have any equipment that is deemed to fail?

Fingers crossed. Got the grease trap all squared away. Okay. Eklund Cove. Stoves are working well. Refrigerators are going. Yeah, I think Beeman might have a slight issue with freezer due to ventilation, but it's being worked on. We're working with DPW to fix that. Okay. Otherwise, but good reports from Wendy. The second one is we're increasing special education contracted services by $75,000 and decreasing the transportation leases. If you remember, we had that reserved for leases, and it got taken on by the city, so we're… Reallocating some of that savings. To help with the increased costs and needs for speech therapy services across the district.

And the last one? The last one is moving $16,000. From the district-wide business office supply account to the district-wide business office contracted services account, and that's for… YMCA noon supervisor contract, Yeah, I didn't really see too much of a line item, but it's something we do every year, so I'll take a deeper look into that, but it's just to cover the… The cost of that contract? So the district office budget has the… Elementary schools, are you sorry, Supervisor? Just 'cause it's district-wide, there's some at three different schools or four schools, I believe, so. Which is typically where the expenses come out of over the past few years.

I move that we accept the budget transfers as presented. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Vote carried. Okay, is there anything else? I just want to bring up one item. Months ago, and I don't know what month. We were discussing arms on the buses. And looking into costs, when we were talking about, I think what Peabody had been doing with getting a camera program, and, I know the subcommittee discussed it, and I think there was a little bit of a conversation at the full committee level, too, and that we were going to look at, the cost of purchasing the arms that go down across

the other side of the road that, can sometimes be put on by our own mechanics, and it's just a purchase of the product. And I had sent, former Superintendent Lemus some information on a company that was doing that, and then we were developing budget, and we never got back to it. But I would just, I would like to renew that look. To determine… if there's an ability to do that and the cost of it. So could you forward what you sent to the former student both myself and Cody? It was just the name of a company but yeah I can. And I think it was local, too, or maybe not. But anyway, I don't know if there's still an interest. I know there's still discussion on bus safety, and me driving to work every day, I actually see it happen on Western Ave. And I just think those arms are doing…

A good product, too. Circumvent people trying to… go, because they're gonna end up breaking the arm if they do. I know there's a lot that has… with the video, and the surveillance, and the police department, and having ordinance created, and having a police chief in place to figure out who's gonna if anybody has the availability on the police department, their time to monitor all that. I know that's a much bigger conversation, but the arms seem like a simple… So we should, if there's funds available, could be grants available, I don't know, but just at least look into it to see what the viability of it. It's also a very visible way of reminding drivers what the rules are. Yeah.

Even if we have surveillance or whatever, you have to do a campaign about you're going to get tickets and blah blah blah, so at least the person who, and I think my recall is that. the offenders. It's not that people go around a bus, it's the people probably oncoming to the bus. Right. So this is a message, and so anybody else who sees someone blowing through behind them will say. Yeah, right, it'll just… And even if it's something we do two or three a year, right, at least start the process. I don't know, I have no idea what the costs are. If I remember, I want to say $600 or $700 each, but that could be completely wrong. We'll have to look. But it'd be interesting to see if there's, I mean, I only did a quick Google search, so I didn't do an intense…

specific Massachusetts location or anything like that, but I'm happy to pass on what I used to have. Okay. I think if it's the will. Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Alright, anything else? might be a good use of it. Delis. Save us. It's not huge. Yeah. One-time money, right? If you ever see any one-time money, I mean, I know we could spend money in a million different ways here, but it just seems… No. Seems like we got the job done, which is safety of the students. Wake the community up to be safe on our buses. Okay. Thank you. Is there a motion to adjourn, or is there anything else? There is. Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you, Stephanie.

Thank you, Bob.