Good evening, everyone.

Welcome to the January 8th School Committee meeting.

This open meeting of the Sharon School Committee is being conducted remotely, consistent with an act relative to extending certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency signed into law on June 16, 2021, as amended and extended through March of 2025.

For this meeting, we are convening by video and teleconferencing via Zoom. Members of the public have been provided with access information so they can follow the meeting remotely.

All votes will be conducted via roll call. I would like to request if we have any commenters tonight, we would greatly appreciate it if you could turn on your camera, if you can, before you speak.

And I just wanted to give a quick update on Rohan Shukla, who is a sophomore who was injured on Thanksgiving during the football game.

The community continues to support the Shukla family as Rohan transitions to Spalding Rehab Hospital.

A GoFundMe for use in future rehabilitation efforts is still accepting donations.

A meal train for Rohan's family is also available with options for either bringing food on a given day or providing a DoorDash gift card.

Once again, his family, the entire Shukla family is grateful for your support.

So with that, I will open for public comment.

All right.

Adam, do you mind doing the timer?

Okay, thank you. All right.

We have a comment from Judy Crosby.

Thanks.

You got it. I got it. I'm not coming on camera.

If you want me on camera, meet in person, I'll be there.

I really, really, really hate to ask this tonight, but you're going to potentially vote on the program of studies.

This is highly personal, but there is no reason that there should not be a pre-specified grade in the precursor class, which if a student gets that grade or above, that a teacher does not recommend the student anyway.

Why do I say this? Because I have a child with a substantial disability.

It is a health impairment.

And during her career at Sharon High School, she experienced not once, not twice, but three times getting a grade that was higher than the precursor grade listed in the program of studies and not being recommended.

And each time her fantastic school guidance counselor dug into it for us, Ms. Dontremont, the answer from the teacher was, well, you know, she gets sick so much and she has so many surgeries and she's out so much. And I just thought, you know, it would be better if she didn't take the higher level class. So my kid got the messaging that her teachers didn't believe in her, that even though she was in fact showing she could do the work, that they didn't think she could do the work. How is that something this board can support?

And yet with what has been presented by this high school leadership team, that is exactly what you are about to allow to happen.

There should be no reason ever that if a student gets the required grade in the gating class that they don't get recommended for the higher level class.

It's shameful.

It's discriminatory.

It's what happens because you have humans involved in the process.

And I would really like to see the handbook or the program of studies modified.

So that cannot happen.

Lastly, those who override should be similarly identically situated as those who don't.

Okay. Thank you, Judy.

Are there any other questions from the public?

Seeing none, we shall move to our correspondence.

Shawna.

Thank you.

Let me just pull it up.

Is anyone?

One second.

Yep, I got it.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

Okay. The school committee has received 16 pieces of correspondence between December 18th, 2024 at 9 a.m. and January 18th, sorry, January 8th, 2025 at 9 a.m. A community member wrote to express their disappointment with the FY26 operating budget presentation and discussions that were held during the recent school committee meetings.

We received several editions of Millie's Metco newsletter highlighting various professional development opportunities for the faculty and staff, as well as upcoming winter holiday celebrations at Metco headquarters and the Metco districts.

A parent copied the school committee on a letter to SHS administration that provided feedback and shared concerns regarding the SHS absence policy guidelines.

We received the January edition of the Sharon High School Library newsletter.

We received a couple of letters from parents regarding their concerns, expressing their concerns regarding the introduction of snacks.

We received a letter that highlighted the importance of library programs at the elementary schools and the impact that potential budgetary restrictions and reductions would have on these programs and the students they serve. A parent wrote to express their concerns regarding the temperature in the specific classrooms at East Elementary School. And we received a number of letters related to the 2025-26 school year calendar.

These letters included the following suggestions.

First, to begin the school year before Labor Day. Second, to observe only federal holidays on the calendar.

Third, to reduce the number of half days on the calendar.

And finally, to include Friday, January 2nd, as the day off on the calendar.

Next, a parent wrote to request that the school can withhold the district administration accountable for follow-through on obligations related to student-specific issues. And finally, a community member wrote to share their concerns regarding the district's compliance with the public's records request regulations and the need for timely and complete responses.

So, thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Shawna.

And I would like to see if Brendan Wen is available.

Our, uh, thank you. Okay, great.

All right, Brendan.

Thanks for coming back. Thank you, Julie.

Okay, so students, uh, have returned to SHS from a delightful break and they picked up right where we left off with lots of excitement and energy.

The music teachers, Mr. McGee, Ms. Ethier, and Ms. Glenister are excited to report that an all-time high of 63 Eagles attended the Southeastern Massachusetts District Festival audition back in November, and 43 of those were accepted.

And of those 43, 21 students received recommendations to audition for the Allstate Festival later this month.

And amazing 41 students will be attending the Senior District Music Festival at New Bedford High School this Friday and Saturday, January's 10 and 11. Speech and debate members are participating in eight tournaments over the next eight weeks. Seventy members of the DECA team will be participating in a two-day district competition in Mansfield Thursday and Friday this week. Mock Trial has their first trial next Wednesday.

Model UN has a competition on January 25th in Lexington.

And our Eagle Winter Athletes are soaring with huge success for almost every team. Student Council is excitedly organizing the Winter Pep Rally for January 31st. And students are excited for the opportunity to connect with retired members of the community through the Council on Aging for presentations to share experiences related to their clubs. The freshman and sophomore student leaders are in the throes of planning a combined winter dance for early March. The junior leaders are hosting a Winter Wonderland at the high school this Saturday, as well as getting excited for the May prom. And of course, the senior class officers are busy planning their exciting June events. In the midst of all this exciting extracurriculars, students are preparing for mid-year exams, collaborating with teachers to create study guides, and reviewing the learning that they have done over the past few months. And although Ms. Keenan is going to present on attendance and phone policy updates this evening, we'd also like to add some observations about student perspectives of these changes.

Many students report that using the phone caddy is effective and not intrusive at all.

And one member of this committee said that during the fire drill, it was easy to grab the phone on the way out and therefore alleviated her concern about that. Senior privilege was also implemented this term and students who are academically solid and have good attendance are allowed to use the last 20 minutes of ACEs period to leave early. Many seniors appreciate avoiding the traffic jam at the end of the day, or for those who have after school activities, it gives students a chance to run home for a while before activities start later on. The new attendance policy is appreciated and offers incentives for maintaining good attendance and arriving to school on time. Some students on this committee expressed frustration that they have one or two unexcused absences because they stayed home with a cold, something that might not necessarily generate a doctor's note, but students also realize that it's important for them to know how much our student leaders value attendance and its impact on our education.

Therefore, the new policies are stricter but encourage students to be mindful about missing school. Members of this committee discussed this afternoon how much work we miss when we're absent and we value our education and understand why this policy has the best interest of our students' education at heart. On behalf of the advisory board, we wish the school committee and community members a happy new year and invite all of you to attend our winter small ensemble concert at 7pm at the high school this Saturday night.

It's free to the public and promises to be an amazing event.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Brendan, and I wish I were going to be in town this weekend to attend.

But again, you said it was this Saturday at the high school at 7pm.

So, the winter small ensemble concert is going to be at 7 this Thursday, so tomorrow actually.

Oh, you said Thursday.

I'm sorry, I thought you said Saturday.

Okay, so let me let me clarify.

Our winter small ensemble is Thursday this Thursday at 7pm. And then the senior district festival is going to be this Saturday at New Bedford High. Oh, okay.

Thank you. And I hope you can stick around later when we have our discussion about the new policies.

But if you can't, we understand.

Thank you very much.

And now we move to the next item on the agenda, which is superintendent updates.

I will toss this to Peter.

Yeah, first of all, I want to just thank Brendan, you know, for doing both presenting what's going on in the school, but also sharing your perspectives and the perspective of fellow students.

I think it's incredibly valuable and you're doing that in a really great way and a really thoughtful way. It really helps, I think, gauge our discussion with students in mind. So, thank you for doing that.

As far as updates, Jane's going to put that up.

Just to begin with, we'll continue our formal kind of budget discussions at our next meeting on January 22nd and look forward to the formal public budget hearing on February 12th. And we'll make sure that we publicize that to community members.

In the meantime, we're certainly continuing to have those discussions at the admin level and looking at the impact of proposed budget reductions, trying to analyze and project enrollment numbers in different grades in different classrooms to really get as specific as we can on those impacts.

And for our next meeting, we'll have, you know, kind of more detail on those impacts, as well as potential add back prioritizations at different special, specific levels of funding for discussion by the committee.

And it kind of along those lines, they welcome any individual members of the committee if they want to reach out to me or to Ellen to kind of, you know, understand in some greater detail prior to our discussion, feel free to reach out in the next couple weeks. General updates.

Curtis St. Onge is here at this meeting.

He's joined us as our new facilities director and is really hit the ground running with a lot of kind of busy stuff as we get into the winter.

So we thank him for jumping on board and for his responsiveness.

He's been working alongside Ken Wirtz in the transition, along with our great team of facilities folks throughout the district.

In addition, we had a regular kind of standard site visit from the MSBA. They do a facilities assessment survey across the Commonwealth.

So they visited all buildings in Sharon.

They do this every several years in order to collect information about buildings throughout the Commonwealth and provide that information to the state based upon, you know, the aggregate, like what's going on throughout the entire state, but also what's going on in different communities.

We also over the longer breaks, we try to have a really deep cleaning of all buildings, especially with the cold weather and flu and other different, you know, viruses that going around.

We want to make sure that we're maximizing that opportunity over the long break to have a deep clean. And so that was done over the break. And in the last kind of bullet on the last slide was that cold weather definitely put strains on our buildings and some of our older systems as far as plumbing and heating within our buildings.

And we experienced some issues, especially at east. So we had three pipe breaks that caused flooding that impacted four classrooms over the break. Facility seams were immediately on site and dried out the spaces and that was closely supervised.

We then contracted with outside ventures to confirm that the spaces do not have any residual moisture and that they will not be, you know, any danger of mold being present in those spaces that we dried out. We also had related to, sorry about that, those pipe breaks.

We had three classrooms that, or heaters in three classrooms that required additional parts.

In addition to those classrooms associated with the pipe breaks, we also had additional classrooms that were having issues with heating at east. This facilities team has been working to address these issues and we have contractors on site. We'll continue to do so until all issues are resolved.

In all of the impacted classrooms, we are supplementing heat with portable units. And we've also procured, which we just were receiving very soon, larger capacity portable units to provide more effective heating.

Because although the supplemental portable units, smaller ones are helpful, we really need larger ones to be more effective.

We plan to have these in place tomorrow.

We also had a report, a concern raised about gas odor in the cafeteria at east.

The facility team in Eversource conducted a thorough inspection of the cafeteria in the kitchen and did not identify any gas leaks. It was determined that the odor was attributed to the industrial stove and a contractor was on site in the morning and serviced the equipment.

During these inspections, and we had a further inspection by Eversource this afternoon, they also identified another issue with a valve in the stove that needed repair.

And these repairs will be completed as soon as possible. And Eversource will return to re-inspect the stove and kind of give us the heads up to use that again.

Throughout the whole process, whenever we have any issue like this, our first assessment is making sure that everything is safe.

And at all times, Eversource has confirmed that the buildings were safe to attend as we were assessing the issue. They first do just kind of a monitoring of basic safety as far as anything that might be in the air or dangerous.

And they overall, again, throughout the whole process, confirmed that we needed to fix these things, but that it was safe to be in the buildings.

And a communication about that, all that information went out to East families as well today.

Full-day kindergarten.

So the district timeline to open up kindergarten registration, we aim to do that on February 1st in order to have all our timelines aligned.

And letters are sent to all potential incoming kindergarten families in late January prior to the registration portal being opened.

Letters include information on a kindergarten program, including full-day kindergarten commitment forms with tuition payment schedule options.

We're hoping, if possible, that the school committee consider the kindergarten fee this evening so that we can really make sure that we meet all these deadlines.

All other fees will be discussed in late January and early February.

The full-day kindergarten fee was last year, and what we're proposing for this year is $3,635 to maintain that fee for next year.

Payments include options for free full-day kindergarten or reduced rate of $1,127 based on eligibility for free and reduced lunch. There's also scholarship opportunities for families that don't qualify for free and reduced lunch, but that struggle with the $3,635 payment.

Also, there's payment plans where people can pay over several months in order to spread out the payments.

This year, we have $3,635 payment.

This year, we have $159 full tuition payment pairs.

We have two that are reduced discount.

We have 44 that are free and reduced lunch or have other identifications that allow them to get free tuition, three district scholarships.

And then we had prorated some people who began mid-year.

We expect that the revolving count is going to bring in about $600,000 to help offset the cost for kindergarten.

Again, the district goal, which we were able to attain, is to have as many students as possible enroll in full-day kindergarten.

So we just had six families who didn't, and that was predominantly based upon a preference, not based upon a financial need.

Kindergarten fees are offset the salaries, and so about 47% of the salaries are paid using the fee. The other portion of salaries is paid using operational costs. We recognize that our goal is to someday eliminate this fee, but with the budget circumstances of this year, we're not proposing that for this year.

But the district is asking for the school committee to consider a decision regarding the full-day kindergarten fee tonight and to uphold the fee of that $3,625 fee for next year. Okay.

Peter, I wasn't sure if you wanted to stop here and allow them a time to take the vote before you move on to the calendar or how you want to do it.

Why don't we move through, and then let's keep the slides up in case people need to reference them when we come back and discuss. Okay. Okay.

Okay.

So the 25-26 calendar, there are three versions that we currently have and we shared with the association.

One has all students and staff beginning prior to Labor Day, and our day 180, that's last day of school with no snow days, is on June 12th. Version 2 only has staff beginning before, and that has our last day on June 16th. And version 3 has all staff and students beginning after Labor Day, and that has last day on June 18th. All of these calendars include a day off for Rosh Hashanah, day one Yom Kippur, and Good Friday.

They also have half days before Thanksgiving and winter break, half day for Diwali, and half day for Eid.

Lunar New Year is on a weekend, so it's not included this year. We expect that January 2nd will be a day that the SDA and perhaps the committee will want to discuss.

I did just before this meeting get some initial feedback, and the SDA is hoping to meet with us, you know, with some of the leadership of the school committee and myself next week to discuss.

Their initial preference is for a version similar to version 1 that has staff and students starting before Labor Day and ending earlier.

I also know that they want to discuss some other elements, including but not limited to January 2nd and the day before Thanksgiving.

So we'll set up a time to meet, and we'll have that information prior to our next meeting, and hopefully an opportunity for the committee to vote.

And then I added one more slide, Jane, so if you can go into the last one.

Just that we sent out a notification today about their, throughout the country, there's been a PowerSchool potential cyber security breach.

So PowerSchool is our student information system, which holds a lot of important student information as well as some staff information.

We sent out a notice about this to families today once we got greater detail from PowerSchool, though we're waiting for even more detail.

But so there's a potential cyber security issue that could compromise student record information and data.

PowerSchool does not anticipate any public misuse of this, but any time our information is shared, you know, inappropriately, it's a concern for all of us. So we'll be getting more information from them.

They also intend to provide identity protection services and credit monitoring as necessary if anyone had information that was, that they're concerned about.

We'll learn again more about that as well. So as we get information, as we work with PowerSchool, and we're also working with our attorneys that, you know, understand these issues well, we'll share that more with the community.

But we do get an initial communication today, and I'm sure other districts are experiencing the same thing, because PowerSchool is a very popular system in the state and the nation.

So, Jane, now, if Julie wants, we can go back to kindergarten and calendar for discussion.

Well, let me start it like this. So let me ask the committee if they have questions on things other than kindergarten or the calendar.

Does anyone, did anyone want to know about the upcoming budget stuff or anything like that?

No.

Okay, Dan.

Yeah, I wanted to commend the administration for being so responsive on these operational issues with the heating and the gas smell.

We received correspondence about them, and I'm really heartened that we were able to respond the way we did right away.

These are fundamental issues about kids being warm enough and being safe in school. And we did get some correspondence related to parents who had offered equipment and purchases to help the schools respond.

My hope is that that won't be necessary and we can pay for this out of the budget.

I think that money would be much better spent on teachers and students and supplies.

So I just wanted to check that the administration agrees and if they have any guidance for those people.

I think it's a credit to our community that parents had offered that, and it's wonderful.

But I would hope we can take care of that through the budget.

So I just wanted to thank you. Absolutely, Dan. If we haven't, I know our intention was to reach out to those families and thank them and tell them we have it.

We will have our own heaters and such. But if we haven't, we will definitely make that communication.

While we, again, we definitely appreciate that. I know I've offered things like that to my schools in the past, but it's nice, but it's not necessary.

We'll do it. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, Dan.

And now let's move on to the full day kindergarten discussion.

Is there anyone who would like to kick us off?

Anyone?

Dan.

I'll do it.

You're on a roll.

Yeah.

So I appreciate the discussion.

First of all, I think the timing is good and it'll be good to get this resolved so families can plan.

I understand it's a bad budget year.

That much is clear.

Many of us have said that we'd like to fund full day kindergarten.

If only there were money to do it.

But there isn't this year.

And that's not wrong.

It's a valid position.

On the other hand, I think every year is going to be this way. This year is a worse budget year than last year.

Next year is going to be a worse budget year than this year is.

If you've seen that movie Office Space, he says, like, every day you see me as the worst day of my life.

Like, that's going to be our budget from now on. Like, every year is going to be the worst year. And I think that's why every school committee that has come before has not gotten full day kindergarten done.

Right. It's because they had a bad budget year. Every year is a bad budget year. So, you know, if we were expecting that situation to change, I would be willing to delay.

I don't see that changing.

And I've said all this before.

You know, most other districts in Massachusetts have solved this over the past. There's been a lot of movement on this issue in other districts over the past just few years alone.

Really, we've become an outlier on this. And to me, personally, this is just my opinion.

I think it's embarrassing for a district that says we value education to charge families for kindergarten.

I would like to do something about it this year, recognizing the budget situation.

We can talk about what's possible.

I'm willing to compromise on this. If we can't eliminate the fee, I would want to reduce it. Maybe not by a lot, but just start getting things going in the right direction.

Do the right thing.

Maybe it's $1,000.

I don't know. But doing nothing, I don't think I can put my name on the record voting for something like that.

Thank you, Dan.

Avi.

Thanks, Julie. A year ago, so little story.

I was looking through for a little project that I was doing unrelated to school committee.

I was looking through Sharon Advocates from the last 50 years.

Somebody had a box of them that they'd given me, and I was looking through these Sharon Advocates.

And it's actually very interesting how cyclical things are in Sharon.

Over the last 50 years, the same three or four headlines exist year in and year out. Namely, the schools are short funding.

It's funny to see, Dr. Botello, that superintendents in the mid-70s in Sharon were dealing with the same funding issues you're dealing with now. So we're delivering education near the top of the state, just as this district continues to do.

And we're being told by different bodies in town, at times it was Selectport, at times it was FinCon, that there just wasn't enough money in the school needed to be able to do it with less. So none of these things are new.

None of these things are groundbreaking.

Dan, in 1996, I clipped out an article talking about Full Day K. At that time, they were talking about it existing.

It wasn't until about seven years later or so that they were talking about how to fund it.

I say all that to say this.

In principle, I agree with Dan quite a bit.

Dan and I speak about this often. I feel like Dan, who was not on the committee at the time that kindergarten fees were fully eliminated, is very much as much a supporter as myself and Tanya Lewis were.

So I feel his pain in this budget cycle because I've been in that exact seat that he sits in where it just felt like eliminating the kindergarten fee was the most important thing. But what I feel is really important for me to stress to this committee tonight is that last year, and we can't unring the bell, but last year I thought and I expressed it then that it was a rash decision to offer up the kindergarten money.

I didn't think that that was the right place to go.

Here we are a year later. I would say it would be just as rash a decision to affect this fee based on principles.

The reality is that we've already begun a very in-depth budget process.

We had three meetings in the month of December in which we spoke pretty in-depth about budget.

I've already sat at a priorities meeting along with Adam Shane and discussed what the town is able to do. I've been in constant contact since then with our town administrator and tried to understand what might shake out one way or the other, where we could get a half a percent here or only a tenth of a percent here, I would say that we'd be playing with fire to affect any change in this fee.

Now, Dan, what I might suggest, as radical as this is going to sound, where I could meet you halfway is that out of seven of us, five members, I'm not one of them, are guaranteed to be sitting here as part of next year's budget process unless they choose to resign between now and then. But there are five members of this committee whose terms will extend without having to run for re-election to a point where they will be involved in next year's budget process.

I would support you, Dan, if we began working with admin now and even took a formal vote at some point to eliminate the kindergarten fee as of next year.

Like, not for our students next year, but as of next budget cycle. But because the only thing that I think is rash here is trying to make these kinds of financial decisions at this point in the process.

But I do share with you, Dan, that there's never going to be a good year.

And so, you know, again, I'd have to look at the numbers.

We'd have to work with Ellen and Peter to understand the ramifications of a decision like that. But I would feel a lot more comfortable supporting the idea with a full calendar year for our administration to figure out how to solve that problem and for our town to decide how those funds would come to be, as opposed to entertaining affecting the fee, even by a small amount this year.

We're talking about 150-something students, even affecting $1,000.

I mean, look, $159,000.

We've seen the cuts. I can't justify accepting any one of those cuts that I've seen on the screen in exchange for that change.

As much as kindergarten fees really being eliminated matter to me, I just, I would not be able to do that. I'd be a yes in support of accepting this fee as is. But again, I'd also be a supporter, Dan, if you wanted to begin the process right now, even right with a formal vote in the coming weeks, to set a date in the very foreseeable future in which the fee will no longer exist.

Thank you, Avi.

Dan, did you want to respond?

Sure.

I appreciate the willingness to work on this, Avi, and the thoughtfulness behind it. I don't see any principled reason to delay this.

I understand the point about having ample time to give it. I'm not sure circumstances on the ground will be different next year, and I see it as very likely it will actually be worse.

I'm also concerned about voting now to bind the next school committee.

The way I see it, we're on the committee now.

We have an opportunity now.

We know what the circumstances are now. So I'd like to start us on the path.

You know, it's one thing to leave it for another day. But if we can even knock off $500, it's a step in the right direction.

It's $80,000 in a year where we're going to cut positions.

We're going to cut services. You know, there are other possibilities out there.

We don't know where the priorities process is going to land.

We can vote for it, and then we can talk about how to fund it this year.

And that would be my preference.

But I understand other people have other perspectives, and that's valid, too. I want to let Alan come in, chime in.

Yeah, I don't know that I have an answer.

I want to just say how it feels at this point, and that is that this is very much a budget decision that feels detached from the budget as we're making it this evening. And I think that's part of what the problem in some ways felt like last year as an observer was that, you know, a split-second decision, a last-minute decision was made about this particular item as it related to the budget at large.

And I think sort of only later did we come to grips with what that really meant. And so in the same way, while I heard very loud and clear on the meeting with families running for this position that one of the priorities that they came up to meet with is that a lot of families want to see this fee eliminated, I think taking a decision this evening that takes a position, let's say, that eliminates the fee or reduces the fee without at the same time having an honest and thorough discussion, but what that would mean to our budget, I think makes for a half-hearted discussion, right?

I don't know how we can do that and not talk about and fully flesh out what the impact would be to our overall budget.

So I don't like kicking the can down the road.

I don't like not evaluating this without looking at the rest of our budget.

So I would put that to the committee and say, you know, I would want to try to find a solution there, somewhere in there.

Thanks, Alan. And Jeremy?

Yeah, I agree with Alan's point.

I mean, it would be nice to have a number on here for the budget impact of eliminating the fee and an understanding of what are those things that would be eliminated if we did eliminate the fee.

But I do agree.

I do think it's important for us to get some items like this done sooner rather than later so that we can really focus on fine-tuning the budget.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Avi?

Thanks, Julie. I just I struggle after comments like that.

Sometimes I'm not sure if we're all seeing the same thing. I saw a number tonight, guys.

I don't know if everyone understands this. Enrollment of kindergarten, because they are the first grade in our town, changes year to year.

You can predict it based on previous years, but it isn't a hardcore number. I saw a presentation tonight to the dollar of how much we projected to come in for this year. And I think based on an understanding for anybody who's been paying attention to the last four years of budget, we can say it's about $600,000.

That's the budget impact of that decision.

And I don't think anybody who is aware whether they're on the committee or out in the public doesn't know that that's about a $600,000 number. We talked about it when the town funded that $600,000 two years ago. We talked about it last year during this budget process when we decided to go back to a fee as a $600,000 impact.

And then we saw the number $599,000 on the screen earlier today. So that number does exist.

We also, during the budget process, which we have been presenting earlier than usual, not working on earlier, but presenting earlier than usual, we've seen the list of cuts.

We've also seen the list of what the things are that are being put back into the budget from before.

So it stands to reason that those are the cuts that you would be talking about, give or take about $600,000 of the ad backs that we've seen on screen and exist in our documents and exist for the public are what we would be talking about having to go without based on these numbers.

And again, like I don't know that that's, while it's complicated in some ways, I don't think it's complicated to figure out those numbers.

We have been handed that information.

So I feel very confident that those are all services that our students need.

And then the list of cuts that we've seen, I am willing to bet a whole lot, unfortunately, of our children's education that we are going to, no matter what happens, no matter what falls down with the priorities, unless money falls from the sky, unless the state does something that nobody is foreseeing, we are going to cut important services and important staff this year.

That's going to happen.

So every single dollar that we affect this fee by this year is a dollar more of important services and cuts that our children need that we're going to go without.

And to me, I believe in hierarchical thinking.

Look, to me, the kindergarten fee is so important.

We should never charge a kindergarten fee. But all of these things, all of these services, all of these staff are things that our children need, are things that our public school needs.

We're going to go without things that our students need. And in good conscience, I do not understand the idea of reducing a fee based on principle when it means real, actual, tangible cuts, direct cuts.

Adam or Shauna, do you want to say something?

Go ahead, Shauna. I agree with you, Avi.

I think in looking at the numbers that were presented today, the 599,000 range, the impact of that, those losses on our community is far greater than the impact, unfortunately, for 159 families.

It is unfortunate.

I do believe in free, full decay.

I think that, Dan, I agree with you.

I think it's embarrassing that we are such a high-performing district, yet we charge for kindergarten.

Fundamentally, I am opposed to it.

However, knowing the dire position that we're in right now financially, we can't afford $599,000 to give that up. And the impact of those positions on our students is exponential to that of, unfortunately, what kindergarten is impacted by. Thank you, Shauna.

Adam?

Yeah, there you go.

I can chime in as well.

So I also agree very much with pretty much everything that Avi said.

I think it was a rash decision last year, and I think we moved that pain that we would have experienced last year, and I think we should be very aware, right? It would have been very painful last year, and we just kind of pushed that forward.

And now that effectively sits on top of the additional pain we would face this year. And so throughout this budgeting process, we've talked about how we actually have cut too much from administration in some cases and need to restore some positions, specifically with regard to special education, but also in the high school.

I don't know, Dan, if your idea is to actually not restore those administrative positions, but I think we already feel the pain from that, or if the idea is to reduce teaching staff further.

But I think that the cuts are already very deep, and I don't know how we can justify that this year, given the situation we're in.

I agree it's painful.

I actually kind of wish we had accepted that pain last year, and I think that would have been potentially kind of a better decision kind of in keeping with the values that we all share in terms of offering free full-day kindergarten.

But we are unfortunately in the situation we're in.

So I don't think we can make that change this year.

I think I saw Dan's hand.

Yeah, because I was asked, I can clarify what I mean.

I see our budget discussion as underway right now.

I see this in tandem with that discussion and part of it.

So I don't see it as detached from it.

We're talking about fundamentally what are, you know, some people have suggested what are must-haves, what are nice-to-haves, and so on.

I can only speak for myself.

I consider kindergarten a fundamental service, a core service.

So I would put it as a fundamental must-have service.

There are many things in our district that we could charge a fee for if we wanted to, but we don't.

Just because of the weird political history, we happen to charge a fee for kindergarten.

But I consider it a full service, and I think we should prioritize it highly.

I don't think it's a foregone conclusion what we are going to cut specifically.

We can talk in terms of likelihoods.

I think we've identified some additional options that the administration promised they would preserve and we'd have a full hearing about. One of those is potentially restructuring the coordinator framework in our schools to work a little differently.

I don't know for a fact how the priorities process is going to come out.

I don't know that anybody does.

There are possibilities that we would recognize as a town that things are starting to break in our schools and our schools really need more money.

So I don't think it's a foregone conclusion yet that that discussion is not going to end that way. So I would like to preserve the option.

Now, people have made clear where they stand on this issue, so I can get a sense of where this committee is going to land.

All I can speak for is my own position and where I land. So I just wanted to clarify my thinking there. Thank you.

Avi. With every bit of respect for Dan that I have, which is a tremendous amount, and again, acknowledging that Dan and I fully agree about full-day kindergarten as a need, I will say that I also just got a very clear sense of where the committee would land.

The three people who expressed support for what I had to say are colleagues who sat on this committee through multiple budget processes with me. I learned the hard way, as most of us did last year, that the most painful thing with these fees is the communication around it to parents and the timeline with which parents get it. So with all that said, I would make a motion to accept the recommendation from administration of the fee of $3,635.

I didn't actually get to talk yet.

Can you, can we, does anyone, does anyone second the motion to accept the fee?

I'll second and then we can have discussion.

Okay. Is there anyone who would like to discuss that motion?

Sorry, Julie, did you want to, I know we kind of cut you off. Oh, no, that's fine.

That's fine. I just, I don't know how to say this either, so I don't want it to come out wrong.

Last year was really hard.

We had a lot of bad numbers that was really hard.

We had a lot of money that amount of money that we had for a designated for full day kindergarten.

Whoever said that, yes, we, we, we kicked the ball to this year. And we did because as a committee, we were, we saw all these different cuts and thought we can't do that.

So now we don't have that this year. Um, I took a lot of heat because I think I was the one who said, can we use this?

And Avi and I have had multiple discussions.

We had discussions then we have discussions now. Um, I personally talked to a lot of parents who were extremely ticked off and I said to them, I understand.

I support free full day kindergarten too, but this was the least bad decision.

And I think we need to think about our budget this year and we need to start with the priorities number.

We can't assume we'll be getting something else. And I think it's really important for us to have a sense of the trade-offs involved because we cannot have our cake and eat it too. And if we did get $500,000, $600,000, would we then say that's for full day kindergarten?

Or would we use it on some of these other things that we'd otherwise be cutting?

And I think that's what I'm hearing from Dan is that, you know, all the, all the teachers, et cetera, he would say that's not as important as free full day kindergarten.