School Committee - February 14, 2024
School Committee, 2/14/24 - Meeting Summary
Date: 2/14/24
Type: School Committee
Source: https://tv.sharontv.com/internetchannel/show/14066?site=2
Generated: September 13, 2025 at 09:55 PM
AI Model: Perplexity
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Meeting Metadata
- Date & time: February 14, 2024, 7:00 PM
- Location / format (if stated): Remote meeting via Zoom
- Attendees (by role; note absences if stated):
- School Committee Members: Avi (Chair), Alan, Julie, Jeremy (not recorded as present), Georgeann, Adam, Dan (not recorded as present)
- Superintendent Dr. Peter Botelho (present)
- Other participants mentioned: Judy Crosby (public commenter), Julie Rowe (correspondence), various community members during public comment
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Agenda Overview
- Public Comments
- Correspondence Summary
- Superintendent general and calendar updates
- FY25 Operating Budget presentation and discussion
- Budget Hearing (public comment specific to budget)
- Approval of minutes from February 8, 2024
- Acceptance of donation from Dedham Savings Bank
- Approval of overnight out-of-state field trip
- Announcements and updates
- Move to executive session for collective bargaining strategy
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Major Discussions
Topic: FY25 Operating Budget and Budget Hearing
What triggered the discussion: Superintendent Botelho’s budget presentation and public comments proposing the FY25 budget and mandatory budget hearing per MGL.
Key points debated:
- The budget increase proposed is about 5.97% over FY24, which exceeds the town’s priorities target of approximately 3.12%.
- Core budget pressures include contractual obligations, mandated special education services, the need to expand early childhood special education, mandated physical education for grades 11 & 12, and increasing costs in transportation and utilities.
- Attempts to reduce the budget by $535,000 include elimination of a network administrator position, use of state funding to cover some ELL coordinator costs, utility cost recovery from facility renters, and revenue through athletic booster signage.
- The challenge of preserving class sizes at current or low levels (16-22 in K-2, 19-23 in grades 3-5) amidst budget constraints.
- The need for updated curriculum materials in literacy and math, with a proposed one-time funding request outside the operating budget via reallocated capital funds and free cash appropriation.
- Committee members emphasized necessity for plan B, C, and D budget scenarios showing possible cuts, including potential cuts to staff and programming.
- Discussion of district underfunding relative to peers, with concerns about community tax burden and potential limits on increasing taxes.
- Debate around the teacher contract: some members defended the contract negotiation process and costs; public commenter Judy Crosby sharply criticized the committee and administration for overspending and poor budgeting transparency.
- Concerns were raised about programmatic priorities including honors/AP classes, special education services, arts, music, and sports preservation.
- Multiple public commenters and committee members stressed the need for fiscal realism, transparent priorities, and strategic budget cuts.
- Clarifications were made about indirect costs offsets, booster revenues, and rental charges for facility usage.
- Superintendent Dr. Botelho and committee agreed to schedule a second budget hearing on February 28, 2024, before the final budget vote.
- Class size, curriculum upgrades, and tax impact were frequently mentioned as top priorities.
Member Contributions & Stances:
- Avi (Chair): Emphasized honoring the legal requirement to hold a second budget hearing; acknowledged community concerns on budget timing; called for fiscally responsible decisions balancing education quality and taxpayer capacity. Proposed priorities of curriculum replacement, maintaining class size, and managing tax impact.
- Alan: Requested more detailed comparative data on teacher contracts; emphasized importance of honors/AP programming; urged multiple budget scenarios be presented for informed decisions.
- Julie: Supported curriculum and math/literacy material updates; emphasized need to review new budget details carefully.
- Jeremy: Not recorded as having spoken in transcript.
- Georgeann: Voiced skepticism about budget clarity; described district as underfunded compared to similar towns with larger tax bases; questioned class size claims with personal experience; called for honest ownership of budgeting and spending challenges; defended teachers and union.
- Adam: Advocated minimizing instructional staff impacts in potential cuts; shared data on per-pupil spending growth lagging peers; supported clear budget option scenarios.
- Dan: Not recorded as having spoken in transcript.
- Additional public and community voices (e.g., Judy Crosby, Gwen Lewis, Shauna, “Mayor” Belenke) provided sharp critique and commentary on budgeting process, contract issues, and program priorities.
Areas of Agreement/Disagreement:
- Agreement: Need for a second budget hearing; importance of curriculum updates and maintaining class sizes; budget restraints require tough decisions; administration needs to propose multiple cut options; protecting special education services valued.
- Disagreement: Public comment sharply disagreed with administration and committee on prior budgeting choices and contractual obligations; some committee members defended contract negotiations and administration, others echoed community cost concerns and questioned spending management.
Key Quotes:
- “We will be scheduling a second budget hearing for exactly the reasons that Ms. Crosby highlighted.” — Avi (Chair)
- “The one thing that makes our community great is that we emphasize our schools more than anything else.” — Dr. Botelho
- “This is embarrassing, guys. This was not a good conversation.” — Judy Crosby
- “You get the contract you deserve. Now the school committee has to figure out how to honor it.” — Georgeann Lewis
- “We have to be the guardians of the public interest. We’re in a tough position as a town right now.” — Avi (Chair)
Outcome / Next steps:
- Conduct a second public budget hearing on February 28, 2024.
- Administration to prepare detailed budget reduction scenarios (plans B, C, D) for upcoming meeting.
- Further committee discussion and vote on FY25 budget scheduled for March 6, 2024.
- Votes (Substantive items only)
Motion: Approve minutes of February 8, 2024
Result: Passed 6-0-1 (Julie abstained)
Roll-call by member:
- Avi — Yes
- Alan — Not explicitly stated, assumed Yes
- Julie — Abstain
- Jeremy — Not stated
- Georgeann — Yes
- Adam — Yes
- Dan — Not stated
Motion: Accept Dedham Savings Bank donation $750
Result: Passed 7-0
Roll-call by member:
- Avi — Yes
- Alan — Yes
- Julie — Yes
- Jeremy — Not stated
- Georgeann — Yes
- Adam — Yes
- Dan — Not stated
Motion: Approve overnight out-of-state trip for SHS Honors Choir Feb 28-Mar 2, 2024
Result: Passed 7-0
Roll-call by member:
- Avi — Yes
- Alan — Yes
- Julie — Yes
- Jeremy — Not stated
- Georgeann — Yes
- Adam — Yes
- Dan — Not stated
Motion: Move to executive session to discuss collective bargaining strategy
Result: Passed 7-0
Roll-call by member:
- Avi — Yes
- Alan — Yes
- Julie — Yes
- Jeremy — Not stated
- Georgeann — Yes
- Adam — Yes
- Dan — Not stated
- Presentations Without Discussion (Brief)
- Superintendent Dr. Botelho presented FY25 operating budget overview, covering budget development priorities, financial summary including mandated needs, proposed reductions, and budget calendar.
- Superintendent provided brief calendar update referencing productive informal meeting with district teachers’ association members.
- Action Items & Follow-Ups
- Administration to develop detailed budget reduction scenarios (plans B, C, D) and present at next meeting (Feb 28).
- Schedule and hold second budget hearing on February 28, 2024.
- Open Questions / Items Deferred
- Precise number and impact of potential teacher or staff cuts if budget must be reduced further — requested by committee member(s).
- Clarification and further discussion on fees (e.g., athletic and club fees) deferred to upcoming meetings.
- Further information on class sizes versus reported numbers to be clarified.
- Appendices (Optional)
- Statutes cited: MGL Chapter 71, Section 38N (budget public hearing requirements)
- Budget documents referenced but not included in transcript.
Document Metadata
- Original Transcript Length: 71,403 characters
- Summary Word Count: 1,239 words
- Compression Ratio: 8.5:1
- Transcript File:
School-Committee_2-14-24_205241eb.wav
Transcript and Video
All right, we are at seven o'clock.
Looks like the waiting room is pretty clear, so I will start.
Welcome, everybody, to the February 14th meeting of the Sharon School Committee.
I want to start off by wishing everybody a happy Valentine's Day. Tonight's meeting, as always, will begin with public comments.
General rules, again, for public comments, two minutes.
Please keep your comments to two minutes.
Unfortunately, we will have to cut anybody off at the two-minute mark, so please do your very best to get all your points out in the first two minutes.
But we also ask that everybody have their first and last name displayed or begin. If your first and last name are not displayed, please begin your public comment with your first and last name.
I do want to let folks know that there are two places in the meeting tonight where we'll be hearing from the public.
There are the public comments, and then there's the budget hearing.
And so public comments, you are welcome to speak about anything that you'd like to.
The budget hearing will be budget-specific.
But I do want folks to know that there is an opportunity to speak in both places.
All right.
Seeing no hands for public comment, I will throw it over to Julie. Oh, got in at the last second there, Judy.
I see Judy Crosby.
Oh, I'm hitting ask to unmute.
Try it again.
Thanks. So I have two things I wanted to raise tonight.
The first is I'm asking you to schedule a second public hearing because Chapter 7, Mass General Law, Chapter 71, Section 38N, which governs your public hearing, required that you have a budget, not a summary, but a budget available to the public at least 48 hours before the hearing based on emails that we had. We all know that didn't happen. I do appreciate that it was available yesterday afternoon, but that's less than 48 hours before.
I would propose you go ahead with tonight and schedule a second one before you take your vote so that the public has a true right to be heard and nobody has to go into court and file a restraining order.
The other thing I'd like to discuss is the new schedule at the high school.
Based on what I'm hearing, there is a serious potential that students in grades 11 and 12 who have academic lab due to how this district chooses to deliver services to students on IEPs will not have the opportunity to take course, orchestra, and band.
I really hope I'm hearing that wrong. But when the program of studies was discussed, no presentation happened on how this new schedule will work.
Our students on IEPs have been disadvantaged for many years, but the one thing they have been able to do is take orchestra, course, or band because it ran during ACES and their academic lab was in a separate period.
Apparently with the flex period, that's not how this is now conceived and it will impact grades 11 and 12, which is highly problematic.
Also related to the same last year, Mr. Palmer represented that starting with the class of 26, gym would be required.
And he further represented that waivers would be available for students who engage in sports or other outside activities.
Apparently that's not a thing either, but that hasn't been shared at this table.
I don't believe this school committee was ever made aware of it.
I think in addition to all the issues with the budget, this is another area that really needs focus. This is not okay and we have to do better by all our students.
Thank you for your comments.
I will just say to folks that we will be scheduling a second budget hearing for exactly the reasons that Ms. Crosby highlighted.
We also had obviously for a split second toyed with the idea because of the timing issues on our part rescheduling this, but there was no part of us that wanted to sort of bait and switch folks that were really geared up to have this conversation tonight.
So there will be a second budget hearing before we vote, but we are going to go forward with tonight's budget hearing. I see George Ann Lewis.
Thank you, George.
Sorry.
George Ann Lewis, 264 Etchell Road.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for extending the meeting. That was going to be one of my comments to have a second meeting.
Also, I would ask, although I know you guys put it out there to give us a chance to look at it, I'm hoping that's not the final copy of the budget. It's a bit cumbersome for the layperson to go through and disorganize.
So I would just respectfully ask me to maybe get a more cleaned up version of it.
I don't know.
It was pretty painful to sift through.
So I would just ask maybe for the second hearing if we could have something a little bit more digestible.
Thanks so much. All right.
I see Nathan P. Nathan, you're going to have to state your first and last name to begin with.
My name is Nathan Penis, and I'll be hitting the grid.
There we go. I muted just so you know.
Yeah, I was ready to do it as well.
Thank you, Adam. All right.
I will go to correspondence.
Julie Rowe.
Thank you, Avi.
The school committee received eight pieces of correspondence between February 8, 2024 at 9 a.m. and February 14, 2024 at 9 a.m.
We received several pieces of correspondence related to the proposed fiscal year 25 school district operating budget, which provided feedback on the proposal and next steps, including the need to focus on items that are of critical importance for students and questions regarding items such as DEI professional development and students who need EL support.
A request for all boards across the school district budget. We received a request to be a request to be a student representative to the school district budget. And to ensure residents of Sharon are aware of the specifics related to the school budget. A request to view the school budget prior to the hearing on the budget where and how this information will be available.
There was a request to ensure that the school committee continues to honor the two days of Rosh Hashanah.
We received a request to outline how a student can become a student representative to the school committee.
Student representatives are determined through the Sharon High School Student Council.
A parent wrote to express their concerns about the new SmartPath system at Sharon High School and the impact this implementation may have on both bathroom and nurse access.
A parent wrote to share additional information regarding a student incident at Cottage Street School.
An educator wrote to provide their insight on how additional days off on the school calendar would impact student learning, preparedness, and outcomes, and to advocate for a calendar that focused only on federal holidays.
That's it.
All right.
Thanks, Julie. Do we have anything from our student rep tonight?
So please raise your hand.
I do not see anything at the moment.
All right.
So I will go to our superintendent for general updates and the calendar updates.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm saving my updates for the budget presentation.
As far as calendar, we did have an informal meeting with some of the members of the STA, which was, you know, very honest and productive.
And I don't know if any of the committee members want to comment on that. Otherwise, I'm done for my section of superintendent updates before the budget.
Anything from the table or from the calendar?
Folks?
Nope. All right.
Moving forward, our next up is FY25, operating budget, continued school committee discussion.
Thank you.
Dr. Patel, that's going to be on.
Gene is throwing up the presentation.
Sure. Sure. So for those in attendance last week, there, I'm going to go over a couple things more quickly because a lot of it is similar, but focus on some of the revisions that were made in the presentation.
But also for folks in the audience who weren't here last week, want to still show all the slides and go over them briefly so they have that opportunity as well.
So we're going to go over the context of the budget development, the priorities, financial summary of which has been revised since last week, and then also just the budget calendar so everyone knows. And if that budget calendar doesn't include yet the second budget hearing, that will be in the next meeting on the 28th. When we develop a budget, we're really focusing on the priorities of our district plan, promoting a strong district and school culture.
Educational excellence in the form of innovative student-centered learning is really the center. And then how do we help all kids to access this educational excellence and have equitable opportunities for great education here in Sharon with a strong sense of belonging and inclusion.
Some of the context, you know, we definitely know it's a physically tight budget year in Sharon and throughout the Commonwealth.
We have some core obligations, including contractual obligations, funding for special education and other mandated services, working to maintain appropriate class size to have, you know, a strong learning environment in our schools, as well as critical initiatives around improving curriculum and making sure that we support all students, both with challenge and additional supports.
We'll, you'll see that again, some of the additions that are necessary and mandated, as well as some of the unmet priority needs that we wish we could support in this budget.
The process was consulting with school and district leaders, looking at the costs, especially contractual obligations, because as well as legal mandates, though, as well as legal mandates, because those things are the core, the great, great, great majority of the core of our budget, looking to restructure, shift and reduce as possible, working with the town, and then managing risks for all of our expenses.
Okay, so here's the right, there was a revised priorities target set on Monday. So we're going to take a look at that.
So the target was moved from 2.84
to 3.1227%.
So that is allowing for a $1,636,167 increase over FY24.
As we saw previously, our level service budget, the great, great majority of that, before any additions, is 5.53%
for all of our personal related contractual obligations.
That includes, you know, steps and lanes, as well as a coal increase that came from our last contract.
And so in order to meet that, but there's also some, you know, budget increases that we need to prepare for with respect to out of district tuitions.
That 14%, you know, continues to impact us this year, as well as percentage increases that occurred this year that won't be in that 14% range, but might be more in the typical of 3 to 5% range, as well as increases need to be prepared for in transportation, athletics, utilities.
So here's some of the additions that are mandated, as we spoke about before.
You know, we have an adjustment counselor, you know, need.
We've had two adjustment counselors funded through a grant for the last several years, and we're looking to maintain one of those to provide mandated services, as well as services for students who are returning from hospitalizations or long-term medical leaves, or might be needing support coming back from concussions and such, as well as our ECC is exploding with kids who are being identified through early intervention in need of a special education placements.
And so that we'll be looking to expand our ECC classrooms.
If we don't provide the education for them here, then we need to provide it for them outside the district.
So it's much more cost effective, though still expensive to do it here. Then we're looking to expand our English language learning staff with a coordinator.
And so that is going to be, as you see, largely funded through our next year through some of our funds for migrant families.
And then, again, grade 11 and 12, it's been mandated by the state that we provide physical education in grade 11 and 12.
They have been, you know, discouraging the opt-out through athletics participation, though we're still exploring that for a portion of our kids as well.
But we do minimally need this 1.0, actually 1.5, but we're looking to fund the other five through attrition in the school budget at the high school level.
And then, you know, in our initial ask, we put forth a 1.0 network administrator.
This was included in last year's ask as well.
Unfortunately, with the needs to cut back, you'll see that this is something we are, you know, pulling off the table for this year based upon the current budget. Okay.
Okay.
So when we look at the level server components, as I spoke about before, which get us to 5.98%
or 3,133,576, then our additional increases for these mandated needs, that gets us to 3,664,656, or 6.99%
over FY24.
Okay.
Okay.
And you see that in comparison of the 3.1227,
that is the current priorities target.
That's a little bit more than $2 million above the current priorities target. Okay.
So, we've been looking hard at ways we can kind of reduce that to get more aligned to the town's finances and their recommendations.
So, here's some work that we've done with regard to that. Again, we're going to remove the request for the network administrator, reducing our ask for $90,000.
We're going to fund the ELL coordinator fully through state funding for migrant families.
We also have some additional offsets through state funding for migrant families that we can use to offset some other services that we're giving to those children next year, since we're getting a portion of those funds after July 1st.
We also have a lowering of enrollment at the elementary, which would allow for we have a retirement that's coming to not fill one retirement and still maintain the current class sizes of between 19 and 22 at the K-2 level and 19 – actually, no, not 19 – 16 and 22 at the K-2 level and 19 and 23 at the 3-5 level.
We have a couple other areas that there could be a possible elementary section, but those are in the lower grades, grade one.
And so, we want to maintain that because grade one is a place where we often have some growth coming out of kindergarten.
We also are looking to offset $235,000 of the current budget asked by indirect costs that can be used from our grants.
As long as we do that, again, across all grants, we can charge some indirect costs, which might be some utilities or portions of salaries of people working with different grant-funded programming.
So, that would be something.
Also, some utility recovery, charging free utilities from people who use our facilities, as well as some booster support in the form of – largely in the form of selling banners to be displayed throughout our athletic facilities to offset some costs.
So, that reduces our budget overall, $535,000 and gets my revised budget as of 2014-24 at $55,525,344, which is at a 5.97%
increase over last year and a 2.85%
above the current revised time priority target.
Based upon the feedback from the committee last year, we had mentioned the need for updated curriculum materials, and we want to propose that we do fund either some or all of those curriculum materials this year.
We talked about the great needs to have materials that are fully aligned with state standards and MCAS, which do not currently – we do not currently have those materials at the middle and high school map, as well as wanting to, through our elementary literacy committee, look to replace our core elementary literacy materials so that they could be – And then complement some of the additional materials we have in fundations as well as Hagerty and other materials that we're already using related to funding, we can weigh in and say in phonics.
So, we're looking to fund that.
And the next slide talks about our proposal for how we could fund that outside of the operating budget.
Because this is like a one – you know, is not something that needs to be baked into the operating budget to have the cost, which is approximately $365,000 for these elementary literacy materials, as well as middle school and high school math curriculum materials.
We have identified almost $300,000 in funds that remained in cash-funded capital projects, which we would propose to return to the town and ask that the town reappropriate those for purchasing curriculum through the town meeting process.
And then also ask for a remaining about $65,000 from free cash at town meeting to appropriate for this need for FY25, which would be a one-time cash appropriation, not an ongoing appropriation like is typical as part of the operating budget.
And we want to thank Julie Rowe is really someone who was pushing for those and looking at us to get some creative ways to fund our curriculum materials.
We appreciate her taking leadership and prodding us to do what we knew was important.
But Julie, as well as other people at the table last week, were really making sure that we prioritize that even heavily.
So, we appreciate that. And then these are the unmet priority needs that we are not putting as part of our budget this year.
You'll see that added to the list from last week is that network administrator.
As we discussed, you know, if we're needing to continue to downsize in order to reach this 3.1227
priorities target, it will result in significant cuts in instructional staff, resulting in large class sizes in the upper 20s.
So, I mentioned, you know, where we are currently, especially at the elementary level, is being between, you know, 16 and 22 at K-2 and 19 and 23 at K-5.
If we looked at the, you know, places with the smallest cohort of kids in a particular grade level, that would bump kids up to like 27 or 28 at the elementary level.
It would have a similar effect at the high school and middle school.
We obviously, the high school and middle school schedules are more complex.
They don't stay with the same teachers.
You know, every period, so we'd be looking for the places where that would have the least impact or, if necessary, have to cut back on some of the offerings and programming in order to, you know, to make reductions at the middle school and high school level. It also would result in cuts to district-wide staffing, cuts in already a stair supplies and material budgets.
And by reducing the ask in technology, really continue with, you know, a great technology group that is working incredibly hard. But with the size of our buildings, especially the high school and the number of technology devices, as well as other technology that's infused into our operations, really is not, you know, properly staffed for those needs.
Yeah.
So, some final notes.
Again, we're trying to, you know, maintain the fiscal support necessary to maintain level service while really making key improvements each year throughout the district.
And so, reductions would really put that in jeopardy as we try to implement these critical needs. We looked a little bit.
But we know per pupil expenditure is not the perfect measure, but it is still something to consider.
and this is not to diminish the tax burden that we know that our citizens feel.
But at the same time, if we're really looking to make sure that we continue to strive for excellence in our schools, we are kind of falling behind some of our key districts as far as for people expenditure.
We are above the state average in FY23.
So that is just slightly above it where we were, you know, a couple of hundred dollars below it. So that's some improvement according to the state average.
But, you know, we're not trying to be average here in Sharon.
So, you know, when we look at some of our peers, you know, some of them have increased the, you know, their spending dramatically over the last few years. Well, we've really been trying to be conservative, but there is a breaking point with the cost of educating that we need to consider.
And again, this is another, you know, comparison to some of our peers. You know, we recognize that a portion of the reason we have these increases is by having a competitive contract that we put forth last year.
But, you know, as we look at the salaries of our teachers compared to others, yes, we're competitive, but we're certainly not above many of the peers that we look at. We also look at the condition in the state where we've had these six strikes going on with major increases in COLA.
We were able to have a real collaborative process with our union.
They work together.
And yes, we gave a competitive salary base, but we also gained a fifth class at the high school as well as additional time at the elementary school.
So, yes, it is a major investment in our school.
We're able to avoid a strike and to competitively pay our people.
But, you know, we have some great teachers and we want to make sure that we're, you know, supporting them best we can, both financially and otherwise.
And all of this kind of goes, again, back to our district plan that we're trying to promote a system of not just good schools, but excellent, great schools that have, you know, that are moving, you know, towards even more innovative students and the learning for all students, more opportunities for excellence, while making sure that we have the supports in place to challenge and support all students and making sure that students, regardless of their background, their learning differences, that they have an equitable opportunity to access all of our educational programs as well as all of the programs.
And that takes major financial support from our community.
It's something, you know, that I know is a burden to our community, but it's also one thing that makes our community great is that we emphasize our schools more than anything else in this community.
It's one of the reasons why many of us came here, both people who moved here and people who came to work here. So we're really, you know, asking that we try to support our schools the best we possibly can.
Again, some of the important dates.
We'll have a meeting on the 28th, where I believe that will be the time we'll have our second budget hearing.
We'll continue with a school committee vote on the 6th, as well as looking at fees at both of those meetings, and then a budget presentation to the finance committee on the 11th, a finance committee vote on the 25th. So a little time in between if we need to do some work.
And then annual time meeting on May 6th.
Just some enrollment trends.
We've, you know, we had a little increase in 21, 22 and 22, 23. And now we're down a little bit closer to the 2021 numbers.
But it's fairly not dramatic increases, but it's definitely a little bit of an increase over those two years.
And then just looking at the projections, we're looking at a little dip in K through 5, not majorly, but a little bit.
K numbers are still in process.
Again, class size is between 15 to 22 and 19 to 23 with our current recommended budgeting for K through 5.
And then 6 through 8 and 9 through 12 had a little bit of a decrease from 826 to 817 at the middle school and 1158 to a little bit of a little bit of a 10-person decrease at the high school.
So pretty stable numbers.
And that's it.
Thanks, Dr. Patel. I have some thoughts, but I'll take questions and thoughts from the table first.
Veronica.
Thanks, Avi.
Thanks, Dr. Patel. That was really very clear and comprehensive.
And I appreciated your mentioning what our teacher contract allowed for, really in terms of an historic agreement on the part of our STA for the additional time and workload that we were able to achieve with respect to the generous compensation package, which was agreed to. I will sit here as a person who's been adjacent to this chair for over 12 years now.
And those two items in particular were wishlist items going back as far as 12 years ago. And so this is really a triumphant contract with respect to what was achieved.
And we owe our STA, who came to the table, bargaining in good faith to get to that place where, in exchange for this compensation package, we really did move our district forward quite a lot in terms of those goals. So I want to thank you there.
My question is with respect to anticipated savings from retirements.
I know sometimes in the past we've attempted to look ahead at folks who might be planning that for some additional savings in our salary line, not in terms of FTEs necessarily, but being able to hire folks who maybe are a little bit less experienced and therefore wouldn't cost us as much. I'm just wondering, do you have any sense of that? I know it's a little early days to do it, but sometimes given the nature of this crunch we're in, we've asked people to indicate sooner than later if they had any sense of that so that we could look at some of those costs.
And I'll thank you for seeing if you can answer that. Thank you. Yeah. So there was a deadline in January that allowed for some incentives towards retirement.
This is part of our regular contract.
And so we have a list of core people that we know right now are going to retire at the end of the year.
We've built in some conservative estimates on cost savings from those retirements into our budget.
Certainly, as we've seen in the past, if we have additional retirements or additional other people perhaps moving, you know, just maybe moving to another state or something.
So additional resignations, you know, there's sometimes we will gain some additional benefit financially from that. But we do have baked in a conservative number based upon the, I want to say, nine retirements that we know about.
Julie?
Thanks, Avi. That was a great presentation.
I need to have a lot of it sort of sink in before I can ask questions.
But I did want to say thank you for the recognition.
And I'm so excited about the new elementary literacy curriculum.
That's something that's going to really be great on so many levels for the district, as well as bringing the math textbooks and all the curriculum up to standard.
So I just want to say I'm so glad that we're able to find a way to do this.
And I appreciate all the work that went into it.
Thanks, Julie.
Gwen? Yeah, a couple of thoughts.
So, you know, I think as long as I've been paying attention to school community meetings, which is maybe two or three years before my term. So five or six years at this point, every single year, this district has had to cut.
Every year, once we factor in COLA and steps and lanes and mandated needs, we are already in the red.
So I think I agree with you that this district is underfunded.
And that is a conversation that we have had, that we should have and continue to have.
My concern is this.
And I appreciate that you and Ellen have scrapped back over half a million dollars.
But we're still 2.85 above priorities number.
And I think at least I have to know, this committee should know that there is a first level of cuts that you have looked at.
And maybe you're not ready to present those now. Maybe you're waiting for a later meeting.
But I think we do have to have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D. And I'm hoping that we will see that. Yeah, we definitely have started to look at that.
And it will definitely, if we had to go, like we said, to the level of 3.1227,
it would include both some cuts of administration or district-wide staffing as well as cuts of teachers.
There's no other way around that if we were to have to go down to that level. So we don't have to do that in the most pain, you know, the way that was least painful.
But either way, it would be painful.
Adam? Adam?
Yeah, thank you, Dr. Patello, for the presentation.
And I echo everything that's been said in terms of both kind of finding the funding for curriculum as well as interest.
I think we all want to know kind of what those plans B, C, and D are. I'll say from my perspective, to the extent that we can minimize impact to staff that's delivering instruction, then that would be my preference as you're thinking through those options and looking for ways to cut. I also thought it was interesting as we talked a little bit about kind of the per pupil spending in our last meeting and today.
And I had the option or opportunity to look through a little bit of the data over the course of the last 10 years, or I think this was actually 2012 to 2022. And I thought what was really informative to me was some of those districts that we consider kind of peer or peer districts were spending at similar levels or were spending above Sharon, what Sharon was spending in 2012. And when you look at the kind of progression of spend in those districts, what you see is their spend per pupil grew at a substantially higher rate than Sharon's, sometimes significantly so, to the extent that they were spending maybe something very similar to Sharon in 2012. And by 2022, they were spending 20, 30, 40% more than Sharon per pupil in terms of the growth rate.
So it's, yeah, I think, I don't know, I think just very informative and something that we have to keep in mind as we think about funding for our district.
Thanks, Adam. Shauna?
Thank you.
Dr. Patel, thank you for your presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, thank you, just a lot ofisavery for everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.
I just think thank you for Coffee on trotzdem and energy is a useful journey. Thank you so much for giving. Thank you for joining us for joining us, our decision, event departments, and vaccination day or event03. And the sinful plan was on this competitive level, of our district level tremendously on this business withagh Ji Robvers. So, to stress let you hear of everyone from our larvini cooperation and event. Absolutely.
We've heard of many of our services that this year are unav What we take place at the nineteenANGers at the institution of women isありがとう, or an idea of要an for a 20%-day meeting. you know, student-centered and wanting to make sure that the reputation of our town stays at the level that it is. And again, like, that's because of the school systems.
And but at the same time, like, we need to make sure that we are realistic with the money that we have and what we're doing with it and how we're addressing the needs of all of our students.
Um, one question that I had, um, for you was, um, you had mentioned in one of your, um, slides that you were able to bring back money, um, based on, um, based on, oh my God, sorry.
It just left my head.
Um, money received from boosters and also other, um, exterior funds.
Do you know what, what that was, where that was coming from? Can you explain a little bit about that?
Yeah, there's, um, utilities.
It was, it was utilities, boosters, and one other area.
Um, indirect costs from, um, that are, um, associated with some of our grant funded programs.
Um, so for example, um, you know, a lot of that would be, there's some indirect costs related to food services, um, including part of the utility costs and part of the cost for staffing, um, you know, part of the budget, you know, we do that with all of our grant funded programs, uh, you know, um, charge some of those grants, um, some of the periphery, either services or utilities or people that help to support them through indirect costs. So we can save some of our operating budget, um, costs by funding some of that through, um, some of the grants.
Um, the other one, the, the boosters was that there's been a proposal out there to, uh, begin to sign, to, um, sell signage, uh, that we could raise money for, uh, athletics to offset the operating budget. So that's a portion of it as well. And there's also, um, times when, um, other, um, um, entities are using our facilities and we could, um, charge, uh, utility costs towards them to offset some of our utility costs. So it's a combination of those three, um, buckets.
Thank you. I, I think, um, oh, sorry.
I see Ellen.
I just, excuse me. I just wanted to clarify on the indirect costs, but the indirect costs, um, that we would be able to, um, use as offsets would be coming from, um, food service.
The ones, the indirect costs that Dr. Patelio was referring to from, um, from the federal grants, those indirect costs, um, are returned over to the town to offset the, the town's costs for, um, insurance, et cetera.
Thank you. Are those indirect costs linked with, um, rental costs of facilities and usage?
No, the, the indirect costs for grants are not. We're able to, um, on the grants, um, budget for a, a small, a very small percentage of indirect costs to, um, to offset, um, benefits and things of that, of that nature on the federal grants.
Right.
I, I guess that, that I personally know, but I think is good, um, information for, for our community to know. I'm, I guess I'm talking about like, we're looking, I feel like the idea of signage to offset boosters, right.
Um, that's kind of like a creative way of getting money back, um, and promoting community members or whatnot.
Um, are we talking about kind of programs and rental costs, um, associated with that?
So if, if an organization came in to rent, um, our spaces, is that, is that one of those indirect costs or no? Are we just talking about the, um, grant funded programs?
I may think that the, the indirect costs are just through our grant funded programs.
Then again, we are looking to raise some money through boosters as well as, um, there is some charging of, of, of groups that use our facilities to offset some of our utility costs as well.
Okay. So we're not looking at money that is necessarily brought in as revenue to offset our budget.
Well, we, we, do you know what I'm saying?
Like, yeah, but Shauna, I think just to step in here and clarify, cause you said to offset and I maybe misspoke, you said to offset boosters.
No, not to offset boosters. Okay. That, that you did, that you said to offset. I didn't mean that. Sorry. Yeah. It's okay. So I think you would, I think you do understand that. That was the only part I was going to clarify. They are talking about revenues in there talking about essentially call it advertising revenues in the form of banners sold with the assistance of boosters.
That way, that is new.
That is new revenue.
But if we're talking about the outside company that I don't know, I don't know. Give me a company, something that rents a theater space, a theater company that comes and rents our theater, right? Right. We're not talking about increasing those revenues to be able to offset some of our current budget.
I think we should be. Right.
Like we have, we have incredible facilities.
I'm just wondering like, how are we doing that as a meet, like outside creative thinking to try to offset our budget?
Like I know, like, listen, I read through 23 pages of line items, right. But I'm just wondering like, where are rental costs in that? Where, like, where are they associated with the fees? Like, how does, how does that correlate? What does, what does that look like before we start taking costs? Like in my mind, I'm just trying to think about like other ways that we can maximize things that maybe we're not doing enough of that we could be doing more of with a state of the art now school, right.
That like, perhaps we could reach out to theater companies to rent the space, right.
Perhaps we could rent, reach out to, you know, local, you know, leagues that want to rent our program, like our space, right. Like maybe those are missed opportunities that we have.
Again, just, just a example, but I, I'm just trying to think creatively here outside of kind of like line item number 74. Yeah, I think we are, we are looking at, yeah, can we increase, you know, people are using ours and make sure that we're charging the appropriate fees, including charging for utilities, if they're using it for, you know, a portion of the time to offset utilities.
So, but I think we can continue to get more creative with that, especially with our brand new high school. I think we've tried to, but there's, there's more ways that we could do that as well. Okay.
Thank you.
All right. Thanks. Thank you.
So I have a few things.
I think when, I think everybody had great things to say. I didn't hear anything that I disagreed with.
I think when spoke to sort of where I am and what I'm hearing from the community, I think the most, I do want to say, I think that there's two, I think that there's two stories to be told, so to speak here. So one story as Adam, and I think I've seen Julie share some information.
I think about the very clear evidence that our district by a lot of measures is underfunded.
I've been saying that for a few years, people that have followed the conversations at priorities at tri board. I've heard me say that, you know, budget time comes around and we, we look at these numbers and we do see that we are underfunded.
So I think that that story is worth talking about just in the sense that I don't look at our budget.
I, two years ago with budget chair, I tore through line items and really worked hard to educate myself on what we spend and what we could spend. And what I really came to the conclusion of was there's just not a lot, there's just nothing.
We just, we don't have funds and we have a lot of needs and a lot of mandates and our, our educators take up a big percentage of our budget, not because our educators are overpaid, but because our budget is small. And so they take up a big percentage of it.
And that's contractual and that's going to be a thing that we have to take care of. Um, and what I would say is that like that story is relevant to the, to how we assess and judge our administrators, because I don't think that it's a fair thing to say that they should be doing a better job of this. Personally, I feel like they are stuck in a very tough position in a district where we, this committee, the people we represent demand a certain level of education.
And then unfortunately, we, the taxpayers don't have a lot of revenue to fund that. That being said, I think the other story, and this is, I think what, when was really, was really talking about is of rocks and hard places. And so I think when, anytime you sit down and you try to solve problems, I've always believed that you identify rocks and hard places and you accept them. And then you try to work around them. You don't spend energy trying to figure out why they are rocks or why they are hard places or trying to complain about the rocks and the hard places. You accept them and you move around them. And so to Wen's point, we are hearing loud and clear.
Look, I've spent most of my life, vast majority of my life here in Sharon. And I think for a long, long time, the, the feeling of this community has been, look, our taxes are really tough, but the reality is we want a lot and we're willing to spend it. I think in recent years, we've seen tax bills jump tremendously.
I think we're seeing it impact people in ways that we sort of always felt like it was impacting, but now it's, it's even more real than it ever was sitting as a voting member at priorities and recognizing that because of the 2.3 override for the high school and library, we're at 4.8% tax increase.
If we lived at the three, one that you presented earlier, Dr. Botello. And to be honest, our town administrators spoke about the fact that the town really isn't going to be able to live like the, just for clear for anybody unsure, what I mean by the town is, so the select boards, part of the allocation isn't going to be able to live at that three, one. So we're looking at undoubtedly a tax increase above 4.8%. And that's a lot. And it's a lot on top of the last few years, which have really climbed. And so I know this will surprise a lot of people on this committee, probably certainly in the public, but I had a very pleasant conversation with Ira Miller from FinCom yesterday.
And we were discussing sort of where we are as a town and where we are as a district.
And, and I think, you know, at one point he said to me, you know, Avi, it sounds like you're, you're sort of talking a little bit differently.
And I said, I, I've only ever, and I think this committee's job is only ever to reflect the will of our community.
I think our community has generally always been of the mind that it really is tough to pay for, but we're willing to do it. We're going to plug our nose and we're going to spend. I think right now what we're hearing loud and clear, and it, it does, it hurts me to be sitting as the chair of the school committee and having to say, look, administration, I don't think this community is going to support spending to the level that you're saying we need to. But I will say that speaking for myself and what I'm hearing from my fellow committee members as well, is that this town right now is not in a position to fund to that level. And I think the sooner we accept that and to when's point, start presenting cuts and having those hard discussions, the better off we're going to be able to be. I think it's really important for all of us. It's good for the town to know, but it's really important for all of us to understand our roles. Dr. Botella, your role as, as I know you understand, and I see you understand because you're presenting the things you're supposed to, is to show us everything that you believe we need from an education perspective.
And I respect that that's what, that's what you're doing.
Unfortunately, the role that we all play here as a committee is to represent the public and weigh out the needs of our students, the needs of our educators, the needs from an education perspective, but also what we can afford.
And in that respect, we, we do have to be the guardians of the public interest.
We're in a tough position as a town right now. And I think we're going to have to figure out what that number is, we're how low we can go. And I think we have to start to, as a group, this is to my fellow committee members.
I think we have to start to set what our priorities are.
And I think that has to be guidance for our administration.
Speaking for myself, I thought long and hard about this. I think my three priorities, one of which Dr. Botella and Alan, with the help of Julie, as they mentioned, seem to have already come up with a plan, again, assuming FinCon will support it, to deliver.
One is to replace the curriculum that's out of date and is needed.
A second one is to keep class sizes as close to or where they are right now.
And the third, and I know this is not an easy thing to ask of admin, but it is to keep taxes, to keep the ask on the taxpayers as low as possible.
And so I think we have to start asking, to see cuts that damage or harm in any way the delivery of education to our students, as little as possible.
I think we should start by asking in zero ways. I think we then have to ask, you know, to make sure that that curriculum is figured out. And I like the creative solution of taking capital that wasn't spent and doing it in an honest and transparent way. I really appreciated, Dr. Botella, that you presented exactly where that capital had come from and that we were going to go and ask for that. Being upfront really early in the budget process here, that that would be an allocation of free cash for a one-time expense. I think everybody in this town would agree, we're at a place right now where math and literacy curriculum do need to be updated and replaced.
It's inspiring to hear that you, who we trust to be our educational leader, see that and are making that a priority.
I think everyone would agree that class sizes is an incredibly important thing to protect, both from an education perspective, also from a property value perspective.
People look at class sizes when they buy their homes. And so I think class sizes are really important.
So I know that those are big asks, but for me, as our committee starts to develop where I think we want to be, for me, those are the three priorities that I personally am hearing from our community, as where I believe we need to sort of put a stake in the ground and say, that's where we're at. I don't know if anybody from the committee has anything to add to that or wants to join in in sort of expressing where their priorities are as we sort of develop and give some guidance to administration as to what we'd like to see. Adam?
Yeah, I said this before, but I think I'm very aligned with what you said. It would be very supportive and would like to see options along those lines. All right.
I see Shauna.
I'm in full agreement with you. I mean, in order to maintain the caliber of education that we're offering our students, we need to be teaching with current curriculum and teachers need to be able to meet the needs of the diverse learners in their classroom.
And it gets increasingly harder with each and every additional child that you have in your classroom.
So yes, low class sizes should be one of our top priorities.
And maintaining all of that with as least of impact on our town would be great.
So I'm in line with that.
And those are definitely my top two priorities.
Thank you. Veronica?
Yeah.
Thanks, Avi. Yeah.
Dr. Patel, in terms of the way that you think about how you would rank order, assuming you take the messaging from the committee, which I think is fairly unified with respect to curriculum and class size. If you could present a kind of, and I know it's impossible, it's like, it's like choosing which child you love the most, you know, and putting it in a list. But if you could provide us with something that does look a little bit like the first thing you could forego, sort of the second thing you forego, with some understanding that there may be some relief after the state budget cycles are worked out and some place in the summer where some of these things may be restorable.
I think it would help me as a committee member understand how you rank order those priorities, because I think that we don't understand the impact to learning, obviously, in the way that you guys do.
And so what thing we might choose off the list might be something that we don't understand the ripple effect of, right? So I think I would really look to your expertise, obviously, to let us know if this list of things needed to be put in order, what would that order look like? And I think rather than plan B, plan C, rather, you know, kind of that way, that would help me a lot. Thank you. All right.
If there's nothing from anyone else, we can move to the fun part, the budget hearing.
Dr. Mattel, are you good with that?
Yes, I'm getting my pad ready.
All right.
Okay. So I do want to be clear.
I'll read this here, because it's on the agenda, and I do want to follow through with our promise to hold this. But we are going to be holding another budget hearing.
The budget is out now, so we will live up to that obligation.
So again, I'm going to read this, but I do want to be clear to the public that there will be another public hearing prior to us voting.
So in accordance with MGL chapter 71, section 38, and a public hearing for the proposed 2023-2024, school budget will be held on Wednesday, February 14th, 2024, during the regularly scheduled school committee meeting.
We'll set the time here at two minutes, and we would ask that folks keep it to budget.
Other than that, we're good to go. I see Judy Crosby.
Clear the way the statute's written.
You can't impose a two-minute time limit. You have to allow the public to comment on the whole or any line, as many as they'd like. Just to be clear, Avi, you should actually go read the statute.
I cited you the statute.
You could have read it. You chose not to. So the reason that you all are about to steal, and let's be clear, it would be stealing capital outlay money that you did not spend on the project you were supposed to spend it on, which is supposed to be returned to the town, something that is clearly foreign to this elected body, is because for the past two-plus years, as shared by me in the fall, when Julie and Ellen and various people did a pantomime and called me an idiot, this committee has allowed its administration to basically zero out its curriculum development budget, to grab more than half, and sometimes two-thirds of your professional development budget, which each year was $360,000 and change, to grab all the supplies and materials budget that it could. It cut more than a third of your $700,000 supplies and materials budget each year. Do you know why you have those budgets?
It's to do things like buy curriculum.
In fiscal year 2021, this school committee purchased a math curriculum from its operating budget.
I know. Shocker.
They actually did what they were supposed to do. You want to make another one-time ask? Your one-time ask, since you took office and this superintendent was hired, have totaled over $1,300,000.
Are you ever going to learn to live within your means?
You signed a contract in June of 2021 that you knew could not be afforded.
It included a half percent backdated raise. You took reserves to fund that. You then moved forward and couldn't fund the 2% COLA plus the steps and lanes, thereby grabbing and allowing your admin to grab all of your funds that should have gone for this curriculum that you're now all proud of yourselves that you're going to steal money on. Next point on the budget. You cannot budget based on a 501c3's income.
That's not a thing.
The boosters are a separate 501c3.
I don't know where any of you got your accounting background, but that is actually not something that goes into a budget that you are counting on a nonprofit giving you money.
Show me the contribution agreement.
Show me the grant agreement where the boosters have guaranteed that they will give you a specific amount of money. The next creative idea, we're going to rent all our facilities for large sums of money.
Have any of you looked at our rental policy already?
Have any of you gone and read it? Do you know what the rates are? I do. Do you know why I know? Because one of the local theater companies that you would really love to rent to actually explored renting the black box to have nine shows a year in it, one a month.
It was so cost prohibitive compared to every other venue around you that they went to a different venue.
They are not alone.
You all need to own what you have done. The claims about the teacher's contract, would anyone like to read it? Because the 20 minutes of additional elementary time explicitly says the teachers can't be required to do anything during that time. They are not required to actually use that time for any version of work-related purposes.
I'm sure some will choose to, but many could sit and read a book. They are complying with the contract if they do that. The high school, the big win that you got five out of seven classes being taught, you currently have four out of six. In every other district, teachers teach all periods except for they get one prep period.
In this district, they get two. That is not normal.
That would have saved one and a half million dollars.
You didn't get that. You got, we'll still teach and we'll have two periods off still, and you capped the number of students they're required to teach, thereby leaving them exactly situated the same. But for added fund measure, I fully support paid parental leave. What did this committee do? It gave paid parental leave to those who worked for us for a grand total of three months.
Is there anywhere in the private marketplace where that is included?
There's usually a one-year lockout.
You also gave a two-year unpaid parental leave to anyone, regardless of how long they've been with the district.
And if they've worked for the district for 90 days during the first year they take that leave, they get to come back at the next step. So let's not celebrate your market rate contract.
Let's be honest about where we are. Dr. Botella, you did not do your job tonight.
Every other superintendent before you dating back to Dr. Claire Jackson, which takes us all the way back to the early 20-aughts, has presented a balanced budget that balances to the priorities number. They've never come to the table with their wish list. They show what the cuts are that they're making to get to that number.
They don't sit here with their handout and act like they're just going to grab excess levy capacity and raise everyone's taxes because boo-hoo, we didn't do our jobs. I'm tired of the justification.
I want my school committee to listen to the public.
Oh, one more thing. You all conveniently left out that you miserably failed to understand how Chapter 70 works.
And you promised the public last year that if this town gave you $590,000 of free cash in yet another one-time ask, full day K would be fully paid for by an increase in state aid forevermore.
You've conveniently left the fact out that that's not actually happening.
It's not happening because you didn't understand how Chapter 70 works. You didn't understand that if our low-income students go down, if our English language learners go down, if certain populations go down, we don't qualify for as much. You also didn't understand that from 2010 until 2022, or 2013 to 2022, we were a minimum aid district.
We got the minimum aid under state aid.
You all decided that the two boom years we had, that the town administrator for this town, that myself, that FinCon, that numerous other people warned you were one-time experiences, was how you were going to budget moving forward.
The thing I've not heard a single one of you say yet is, I'm sorry.
I made a really big mistake.
None of this is okay.
This is all going to hurt.
We're going to have to deal with it. And you're having hilariously a budget hearing where you haven't presented how you're going to balance the budget. You're waiting for Rumpelstiltskin to spin gold in your backyard.
I'm looking at a budget where you have fuel increasing on your regular ed transport.
No, it's decreasing on regular ed transport by $16,000. It's increasing on your sped van transport by $50,000.
Do these things use different kinds of fuel? Has anybody actually looked? There's a slush fund line in the budget at the moment that's about $400,000 that just says raises. Like, the person who was creating it ran out of time to do their job and put it where it belonged.
They got about two-thirds of the raises where they belonged. And then they just kind of went, oh, sorry, all done. Probably because you knew you had to get it out, or you didn't know you had to get it out until I sent you the statute.
This is embarrassing, guys. This was not a good conversation.
This was not a pull-together moment. Yeah, we would all love class sizes. You haven't talked about fees either.
Why are you projecting increases in athletic payments from the budget?
The fees haven't gone up even by inflation since 2021. What are you doing?
Nobody's mentioned fees.
None of you. You're all just like, yeah, we're going to have all this free stuff. It's awesome. We're going to hammer the taxpayer.
I am so embarrassed for all of you. This is not what this town deserves.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Georgina Lewis.
Thank you.
Okay, thanks.
So, I appreciate everybody kind of, their attempt at taking some ownership that there was some missteps.
As a union person and a Stoughton employee, many on this meeting know me. I was very active in our recent contract negotiations, so I would like to commend the STA here, as always, for bargaining in the best interest of their employees.
That's what you guys are supposed to do. You get the contract you deserve.
And now the school committee has to figure out how to honor it. And that's the bottom line. You signed it. The hindsight's great. You know, there's that saying, but this conversation should have had been had with STA when you were negotiating.
To look back now and have all these kind of half-baked, half-thought-out, half-factual conversations, to me, is insulting to the union. It's insulting to the teachers.
It's insulting to our students.
It's not what you're portraying it to be. They did their job. I don't feel like the school committee really did theirs.
I feel like we missed a few steps.
So, with that said, again, the full-day kindergarten, no mention of it. When we read these stats over and over and over again, comparing us to Wellesley and Weston and Needham and blah, blah, blah. Fantastic.
Agree. Want to work to that academic rigor. Want our district to perform at that level. The only problem is you can't fiscally compare us to them and expect us to meet that per-pupil cost because we don't have the commercial tax base.
We're not even anywhere close. We don't have the money coming in for special ed. For any of the things, the little perks that they get, we don't get them. We're not going to get them. We've never gotten them. So, we're always going to come up short. So, to the vice chair's point, got to get more creative and figure out how, if we want to compete with the Joneses and look like the Joneses and act like the Joneses, how are we going to match them dollar for dollar? Because we are not set up as a town to do that. That's the bottom line. Not disagreeing that we compete academically, and I hope we continue to do that for our staff and our students.
But we got to get the money to keep up.
That's the disconnect.
And I think you said that, Bobby. I think you're well aware of that. And I don't have the answer to that problem. I think that's been an ongoing problem in this town. It's not a commercial-based town. We have Costco coming in. Seems like we're moving in that direction, but we only have so much buildable land. So, that's going to always be a problem here.
So, I just want to throw that out there. I think I'm stating the obvious, but for other people in the community that might not think like that or might not have the insights that some of us have that are an education, I think that that is a very important fact to hold on to. Dr. Botello mentioned K through two classroom size numbers, 16 to 20. And I don't need an answer for this now, but just curious, where is that? I have a K student and a three student, not even close to 16 or 20 for that matter.
So, we want to talk about class sizes and keeping them low. I think that ship sailed as well. When we moved here, class sizes were at 18. Both of my kids are in classes with 20 and 20, 22 and 21 kids. I work in the district.
Well, that's not the case.
We have even more than that. That's where Sharon's headed.
So, we're talking the talk, but I just don't know how we're going to walk the walk with all of this conversation.
We entered this negotiation contract knowing we were building a high school, knowing we were building a library, knowing the voters were going to approve an override.
So, I'm not really sure where we ever thought all this money was coming from to begin with. And it's not fair that the teachers need to be put in a position where it kind of makes it seem like, oh, people are anti-teacher or we don't think they deserve to be paid because that could be further from the truth.
They did their job. The town, the school committee is not doing theirs. And I don't think we should constantly be pointing the fingers.
People should be losing their jobs. I just think that this is just globally a colossal hot mess.
And I don't know how you're going to fix it. That we're underfunded stuff.
That's okay. Let's assume that's true. Let's go with that. That's true. We're underfunded compared to what? Again, towns that have more revenue than we do. So, again, we can say that. We can feel that. It may be true. It may be not true. I'm not going to argue that point. The bottom line is, where is this funding coming from to keep us equal with these other districts?
That's really like the bottom.
If you want to put up these lovely spreadsheets with all these towns that are not Hockamock, that are not Norfolk County, when you're looking at salaries and tax base, we are Norfolk County. We are a Hockamock district. Those are our schools. Those are where we compete with bands against, sports against.
Those are the contracts and the contextual things that should be a litmus to measure.
Not somebody that we don't even compete with. They have nothing to do with us other than we strive to have that academic standing.
So, I think there's a lot of retrospect and introspection and reflection and stuff that needs to go on. This is just a colossal mess. I mean, I don't know how you expect residents to absorb almost 8% tax increase this year, which we all know you're going to go and ask for an override.
This is all lovely fluff, same presentation, same spin, but it's just not all accurate information and it's not based on the decision-making.
And with that, I do want to say, I appreciate all the time all of you put in, you volunteer, it's a thankless job.
Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't. And I think all the victory laps that have been taken by this board, when you thought kindergarten was going to be free and stuff are great. I would love to see the same humility and just owning it, being transparent, taking the lump and let's fix it.
Thanks for your time.
Mayor Belenke. Hi.
Thank you very much.
So I think we all have to recognize this is a very tough budget year and whatever decisions this committee makes, it's going to be tough and it's going to be very difficult for the community.
So I completely agree with the priorities that this committee has expressed and I'm really grateful that you guys said it first. We absolutely do not want to cut teachers.
We want to keep our classroom sizes low. And if you guys can figure out a way to get a, you know, science-based early literacy curriculum, it will be wonderful to get an improvement over Lucy Calkins.
But we do have some tough decisions to make. I haven't been coming to school committee meetings as long as some of you, but in the time I have been coming, I have noticed a pattern, which is that every single year when the program of studies comes up, our high school curriculum coordinators come to this committee and say, we need to cut honors classes.
Our ELA curriculum coordinator says we need to cut them because certain demographics of students get too much resources from this panel. Our science curriculum coordinator comes every single year and proposes a new science class, either honors or AP, that absolutely needs to be cut in her opinion.
Our math curriculum coordinator has a five-year plan to get rid of advanced classes in the middle school.
Let's see. Our world languages curriculum coordinator has been meeting with colleagues across the state to figure out how to get rid of honors in the world languages department.
And I find this very odd because the one thing that seems to unite everyone in this town, doesn't matter how you feel about many of the other issues, is we want our kids to have the choice to take advanced classes.
Half of the students do take at least one advanced class.
So this is something that everyone wants. And yet we are paying salaries to central administrative staff to get rid of the programs that parents want. When people move to this town, I know that I looked at the program of studies.
And for me, it was very important that in every single subject, should my kids want to take an advanced class, they would have this option.
So I would like to ask, why are we spending tax money to actually make the schools worse?
On top of that, we are spending money every single year to hire Novak Education, a consultant who's not even in the classroom, whose sole purpose, whose whole website is devoted to cutting advanced classes, cutting homework, getting rid of deadlines for students so that all assignments could just be handed in whenever, should you choose to hand them in at all. So that is another kind of situation where we're actually spending money to make our curriculum worse, to make our academics worse.
Now, I know that over the next couple of weeks, there's gonna be a lot of tough conversations about what we can cut.
But I think there are some places we could find that actually spending less gives us more. Thank you.
Thank you for your brevity.
Alan Metenko.
Hi, everybody.
I'm going to try to time myself to two minutes, but I apologize if I'm a little bit over.
First, let me say, like him or not, Governor Baker had a saying, which was, go soft on people and hard on issues.
And so I'm going to try to say what I want to say without going hard on people, because I don't think that really serves anybody's interest. Correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Botello, I think you put together a great presentation.
The one piece of feedback I would offer, and someone, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think, the only side in which I don't think you've had Sharon as a comparator was the school contract slide.
And I think given the amount of interest around the teacher's contract, I think having us on the slide that shows what our comparator is would be enormously helpful.
I also think that it is a blessing that we have a second hearing next week, because I don't think you can have a hearing without really understanding what the impact of what we're talking about in terms of cuts.
The only specifics we have right now for cuts are class sizes and high 20s and an insufficient amount of IT staff. That's not enough information on which to base a decision or to get meaningful feedback.
And so hopefully, you know, between now and next week, I concur with those in the committee who think that we need to see a plan B, a plan C, and a plan D.
And I do agree with Ms. Crosby that that has been my experience with the committee going back, albeit somewhat, 20 years. In terms of priorities, I want to just start a couple that I don't think have been mentioned.
Honors and AP classes, I think, are foremost important because it is how colleges and universities, in part, judge the rigor of our district.
And I think that when we talk about the importance of maintaining those, we want to do that for our individual students, but also because I think it's important to, as to how the district gets portrayed, both locally, regionally, and nationally.
I think we want to ensure that we're not taking away one-on-one instructional assistance for students in special education, particularly if the removal of those one-on-one instructional assistance will mean the students will have to go out of district, both because of what they lose by being out of district and the additional costs that are coming with that. And then lastly, and there's no nice way to say this, you can't decimate arts, music, theater, and sports.
I think we all know that.
Obviously, easier said than done. I don't mean to state the obvious.
But there's going to be a need to try to thread the needle here as best you can. And hopefully the proposals that come back next week, and again, I would suggest two to three proposals, show different ways in which you're trying to thread the needle.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Alexander Arose. Hi.
Alex Arose.
Thank you.
I just, yeah, I prefer to be respectful of everyone's time.
So I'll keep it brief.
My main thoughts and my main focus, really, and concern is just the sacrificing of the special ed programs in the district.
I really think we need to be thoughtful about how to address the budget issues without impacting those services.
That said, I would like us to get some real numbers as far as how many teachers' jobs would be lost if we actually don't.
In the worst case scenario, if we don't get the, come to an agreement, basically, and have to, have to basically cut positions to balance a budget.
So I think that would be helpful for people to know, not for clear monitoring reasons, but just simply so we understand the impact they would have for us district-wide.
And anyway, I also want to thank everyone for volunteering for this really thankless position.
It's really, yeah, I'm very grateful for all of you.
Thank you.
Thank you. All right, seeing no further hands, I will move us to decision items.
I would entertain a vote to approve the minutes of February 8th, 2024.
So moved.
Second.
All right, Adam?
Yes.
Gwen?
Yes.
Julie?
Abstain.
Shauna?
Yes. Chris?
Chris? Chris? Chris? Chris? Chris? Chris? Chris? SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Chris? Yes. Yes. Veronica?
Yes.
And I am a yes. Motion carries 6-0 with one abstention.
All right, I would entertain a vote to approve to accept the Dedham Savings Bank donation from the Snow Globe contest of $750.
$750. Second.
All right, Veronica?
Yes.
Shauna?
Yes.
Adam? Yes.
Gwen?
Yes.
Fresnel?
Yes.
Julie?
Yes.
And I am a yes. Motion carries 7-0.
I will entertain a vote to approve overnight out-of-state field trip for Sharon High School Honors Choir, ACDA, Eastern Regional Honors Choir Festival, February 28th to March 2nd, 2024, Providence, Rhode Island.
This year would include the 29th, wouldn't it?
So moved. Second.
So moved. So moved. So moved. Adam?
Yes. Gwen?
Yes. Gwen? SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Yes. Yes. Shawna?
Yes.
Veronica?
Yes.
Yes. Fresnel? Yes.
Julie?
Yes.
Yes.
I am a yes. Motion carries 7-0.
Are there any announcements or updates?
I see Veronica?
Yeah.
Thanks, Avi. This is really just a reminder to folks that, you know, we had another unfortunate incident in Kansas City with a mass shooting.
And today is the anniversary of the Parkland school shooting.
And I just wanted to kind of give a very big shout out to our school resource officers and our public safety folks in town. I think we have the luxury of being in a rather safe feeling bubble in Massachusetts and certainly in our community where we walk around feeling safe most of the time. And I just wanted to express my appreciation for the attention to the safety in our schools and to our administration and those folks that are responsible for keeping our kids safe in school.
Thanks, Veronica.
All right.
Pursuant to MGL C30AS21A3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation with the STA if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the Sharon School Committee.
And the chair so declares not to return to open session, but entertain a motion to move to executive session.
Yes.
So moved.
Second.
All right.
Shauna.
There was one more hand.
Sorry.
Yes.
All right.
Oh, I see it.
Oh, it's Judy Crosby.
Thank you.
Thank you, Avi. I wanted to announce a couple of important things that are going on in district.
Friday night, there is a girl, well, starting, I think, at like four, there's a girls basketball game or 430.
Then there's a boys game that evening. And in between, there's a dedication of the gym to Dudley Davenport.
So I imagine that's something our community would like to know about. Also, and I mean, I don't know if Adam wants to make this announcement, but tickets for the middle school musical have gone on sale for SpongeBob SquarePants.
There's postings online.
I got mine today.
And it usually sells out.
So I wouldn't wait on it.
So thank you for allowing me to share that.
All right.
Julie, I see your hand now. Okay.
Very quickly.
The Eagle wrestling team crushed the MIAA D2C semifinals.
That's awesome.
The speech and debate team was crushing it. And we should, you know, congratulate them on Instagram.
There's like a whole description of how much they won at their event competition.
And the select choir sang at the night.
And thanks to them.
And congratulations to the seniors and also on the win.
Thanks.
All right.
I'll entertain that motion, please.
So moved.
Second.
Black man.
There's no.
Yes.
Gwen.
Yes.
Adam.
Yes.
Shauna.
Yes.
Julie.
Yes.
Veronica.
Yes.
I'm a yes. Motion carries seven. I'll see an exec.