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.