All right.

Welcome to the January 7th meeting of the Sharon School Committee.

As always, we'll begin with public comments.

Before we lay the ground rules for public comments down or go forward, George Ann Lewis has asked for the floor to make a statement or say something.

The floor is yours, George Ann.

Well, thanks, Avi. I just wanted to share with everyone that Jeremy Kay is not in the meeting tonight.

He's enjoying their new family member, Barclay.

So Mandy, Summer, and him are celebrating the birth of their son. Thanks.

All right. Congratulations to Jeremy and his family. And now to public comment.

As always, we ask everybody to limit their comments to two minutes, please.

Keep comments to things within the purview of the Sharon School Committee.

Is there a member of the school committee willing to keep time?

Yep. I'm on it.

Thank you, Adam. All right.

First up, Judith Crosby.

Thanks.

I noted on your agenda that you have presentation of proposed kindergarten fees, discussion, and vote.

Since those fees have not yet been discussed at your table, and nobody in the public has any idea what is going to be proposed, I think it would be an incredibly poor decision to vote those tonight.

Since you don't allow public comment or questions during the core of your meeting when things are presented, the only opportunity people have to comment is either by sending you an email after your meeting or speaking at your next meeting, both of which will be completely pointless if you vote them tonight.

Given that you all got basically schooled by the high schoolers on your very poorly conceived club fees, where you were all super impressed by the work they did and the data they had, which are fees that you had voted in on no data and just the say-so of your leadership, I'd like you to at least consider not voting these tonight, make the presentation, and let the public have their say and share their concerns, and maybe some will even have other solutions.

That's my request.

Thanks.

All right. Seeing no other hands, I will throw it to our Secretary, Alan Matanko, for correspondence.

Thanks, Lavi. Hi, everybody. Happy New Year to everyone.

The school committee received 85 pieces of correspondence between December 17, 2025, at 9 a.m. and January 7, 2026, at 9 a.m.

We received a letter asking for a comment or information about Sharon High School personnel issue.

Sharon High School students had a petition with signatures to support proposed amendments to the club and activity fee policy, which they then subsequently presented at the meeting on the 17th. The student also emailed following the meeting to thank the committee for the opportunity to present their proposal.

A community member who gave public comment on 1217 also forwarded a thank you to the committee and superintendent regarding supply issues. Several groups sent notices of upcoming events, including a Medco digital holiday greeting card, a notice from the Northbrook County Sheriff's Office for Winter Coat Drive, the Sharon Cultural Council's January newsletters, and an invitation to a retirement party for a member of the Sharon Library staff from the Board of Trustees.

The director is retiring.

A community member reached out to request additional information regarding agenda items at tonight's meeting. There was a response from a member of the school committee, and then there was a far further fall correspondence from the individual to the committee about issues related to the 27 budget.

And then the school committee received a number of emails from an individual concerning issues, not at all related to the Sharon Public Schools, which we were just copied.

And that is correspondence.

Thanks, Alan.

We don't have a student rep tonight, and so I will throw it to Dr. Patel for general updates.

Great. Thank you. Just a couple general updates before we get to the other items on our agenda.

First of all, we had two...

Two more students when you talk about the pluses and minuses over the next last month.

So for a total of 13 greater number of students over the course of the year thus far.

As far as hiring, since our last...

Since our... Since our...

I think the last time I presented, which is probably in November, we've had...

We had a physical therapist in IA, in our Leap Low Program, IA in our Learning Center at East, food technician, IA in Pathways at the high school, IA in Bridges at the middle school.

We contracted out a position at the middle school because of an inability to fill the second position with an IA.

Building sub, food technician, school assistant.

You can see most of those are people moving on to other...

Other work or other reasons for resignation, and then some transfers and a retirement.

And some of the things that are up and coming.

On the 14th Heights, it's going to have its winter concert at the middle school.

This cottage is going to have a cultural fail on the 29th.

Winter athletics are in full swing.

And we're having another one of our superintendent community conversations.

This time, last time we did in the morning, we're going to do this one in the early evening at five o'clock at the middle school. And we'll focus on middle school curriculum initiatives.

And this is a picture of, we had about 20, 22 of our Boston resident students from our MECO program, along with 22 of their friends who are Sharon residents, attend the Celtics game on Monday with Director Hands and myself and her staff.

And they were, it was a great fun.

I had three workers at the Celtics facility come out and come up to me out of the blue. And basically thank us for coming and talked about how well behaved and just fun that our kids were.

And that was, again, just totally random people just coming up to me and complimenting our kids.

They were great and they had fun. It was a great event that Director Hands organized through some special grant that she was able to acquire.

And then as far as other things in the district, we have early release on the 14th, no school or Martin Luther King Day the 19th.

February vacation is only about five weeks away. So it's going, going to go fast.

We have some school committee meetings on the 21st where we'll continue with budget as well as competency determination plan, which is something that's being required by the state to replace MCAS as being the sole competency determination factor.

And tonight we'll continue with our budget conversations.

Also have the first part of the program of studies as well as discussing the kindergarten fee with a possible vote. And that's it for that.

All right.

Are there any questions about the general updates before Dr. Botello goes to updated budget?

All right.

Dr. Botello, updated budget presentation, please. And so you'll see, you received a new number of things related to budget.

First of all, the presentation, if you looked at the notes on it, so the first part of it is really kind of background information.

I just included that for the packet itself and for the public in case there are people who haven't been following along with previous meetings.

So the real presentation begins on page 25.

And Megan's going to throw that up.

You also received a document, like a five or six page document with some questions that came up at our last budget subcommittee there, just questions related to budget.

So you have those for your edification as well.

And the first couple of slides are kind of replaced.

So when we kind of broke down a level service budget, it was an increase of about 3.69.

And then we looked at the really the essential additions that we were looking to have this year. And that was another 1.67.

Then those were the personnel ones, but then another $236,000 that goes towards supplies, materials, and curriculum in professional development to try to make up for some of the cuts we've had over the last five years.

Adding up to a total recommended budget before offsets at 5.78.

We had a number of offsets that could reduce that by $785,000.

And so when we look at where we're at with the preliminary budget with offsets, it was a 4.3%,

37% increase requested.

We start off with the priorities initial increase at 2.7. So that's a gap of $935,580.

And then we're also looking using the 3.4,

which is the hopeful number that we will learn at the end of the month, which is a $544,000 gap between the, if we accepted all of the proposals that I put forth. And again, the history is that when we have that second priorities meeting and we learn more about state funding as well as other factors that we've been able to have priorities give at least a modest increase.

And so we're hopeful for that as well. And I know the town administrator is hopeful. He's not, he's waiting till a little bit further in the month to share those numbers for priorities to make a decision on.

So as I presented last time, based upon if we get the hope for 3.4 about that, these are the offsets and positions that I would expect that we'd have to consider to cut. First of all, a number of offsets, including money expected from new hires, lane change adjustments, funding, being able to move half of a salary of one of our special education admin assistants to a grant that's a regular ongoing grant.

So it's not something we'd have to worry about. We had more than $35,000 in fuel bus credits from our fuel bus contract this year. So we expect that $35,000 would be something we could expect for next year.

It would be looking at not reinstating the social studies teacher that was initially in my proposals.

And then looking at a number of elementary cuts that would be possible due to enrollment shifts.

A grade five cottage, which would result in 22 per class, which you'll see in future slides is very much aligned or even lower than some of the other schools.

A grade three that would result in 23 per class.

And then a grade one that would start off with 22 per class.

Grade one is the place where we have kids move in, but we do have some room to absorb kids at East, which has room. So I feel comfortable that we could do this cut and still maintain equitable class sizes across grade ones.

And then reducing some of those non-personnel requests a bit in order to make the budget, as well as unfortunately, not reinstating, well, it's a position I've never seen, but a position that was cut in my first year and really would be beneficial to add another administrative staff to support central office administrators.

So if we have the 3.4 and we went with these changes, then we would be actually about 10,000 to the good. So when we look at kind of class sizes across the district in one chart, this is something that one of the subcommittee members had requested.

Our current average for K-2 is 20.6,

and we would go up to about 21.3. If we made the changes that I suggested, we're at 21.3 in grade three through five, and that would go up to about 22.

In grade six, we're at 18.7.

But if we made those, as I've discussed, basically shifting two positions from grade six up to grade eight, because we have a small grade six coming in and a larger grade eight than this year coming into grade eight, that would result in an average class size of about 18.7 in grade six going up to 20.8.

Grade seven would remain similar, but actually a little bit less because of the smaller class from 19.3

to 18.7.

In grade eight, which has an average of 20.5 this year with those two cuts we made last year would be a little bit lower because we'd shift those positions up to be 19.27.

If there was greater cuts that needed to be made because the priorities number did not go up to 3.4

and the middle school was being looked at, if eighth grade maintained those two position cuts while also cutting grade six, the result would be putting grade eight to an average of 23.1.

That is the average.

And then with kids taking different courses for math as well as world language, that ends up being a range of 17 to 27.

So that's why one of the reasons why you see that I have not recommended that for this year.

But if we go on, you'll see why actually that should be possible if necessary in future years, because after this year, we get to a place where the middle school actually has about five years of more modest enrollment, which would allow for not only one grade to have the reduction of two positions.

But you'll see that in a second.

You can go on to this.

Yeah.

Go back one more. Okay.

Okay. So again, this back one more. Yeah, right there.

So again, kindergarten, we're looking to add two positions because of the census data, which is saying that we definitely are going to need at least two additional positions.

Looking for that potential reduction in grade one at heights, which would put us right around 22, 21, and still have room at grade one at east for when we sometimes have more than typical new students coming into grade one, usually around, you know, 10 kids.

We have space for them at east, plus maybe a couple at heights as well and a couple at cottage.

And grade two would stay the same number.

And then this is a kind of scenario one where we'd have one addition in grade four cottage because of the grade three group moving up, which is quite big.

But that means we'd have a more typical group in grade three so we can make that reduction very easily.

Having a smaller group in grade five, which would allow for another reduction at cottage in grade five.

And then grade three at east, if necessary, could have a reduction and have class sizes right about 23, which is compared to cottage in heights, which are around 22, would be doable.

But we're certainly kind of, you know, having that 22, 23 being more of the norm with some of the cuts that we've needed to make.

And then this next one, all this shows is if we did not reach the 3.4,

we'd have to make a decision about additional cuts and one additional cut that could be considered would be the grade four at east.

but that would put us up at 24, 25.

And so that is something that I don't support, but certainly if we had to go deeper than the 3.4,

someplace between 3.4 and 2.7,

this, like the middle school, additional middle school cuts and some of the other cuts I'll share would have to be considered.

So again, looking at this, especially the middle school, again, I think it's wisest if possible for next year to just move two positions from grade six up to grade eight.

And that would still allow for reasonable class sizes in grade six and also reasonable class sizes in grade eight. The following year, because we have another smaller group, even smaller than this year, going into grade six, we could probably, we could have, you know, probably two additional reductions at the middle school and still maintain class sizes that, you know, average around 20, but then have a range.

So that is, again, why I'm really not supporting additional cuts at the middle school this year. it's more of a moving, you know, from grade six to grade eight, but then in the future knowing that if we have difficult years, we have like a five-year period where we could maintain similar class sizes to what we have now and make some additional reductions at the middle school.

And we usually do that through retirements.

We always have retirements, so we're usually able to maintain all of our great teachers and allow our awesome retirees to go off into their next stages while not having to lay people off. That's always what we try to do.

Okay, so again, if we don't, when we come to, I think it's January 26th, it's at the end of the presentation, we'll find out about the new priorities number.

If it's below 3.4

or even stays up to 2.7,

there's a number of cuts that we'd have to consider.

One would be not reinstating the math interventionist, which is part of the proposals that I supported going forward.

So that's not a cut. It's just not adding that position.

Again, it would be considering that grade 4 position at East, which would be 24-25.

We'd have to look at potential cuts at the high school in the math and science departments.

those, you know, result in higher class size as well as some sections of courses or in sections of electives and, you know, including, you know, potential sections of APs that would be in jeopardy.

We never know exactly what cuts that would result in until kids enroll.

school.

But, you know, as I've had in the past, I can share what our hypothesis would be about, you know, some of those cuts would be similar to last year. year.

I wouldn't see that we'd always have to consider additional high school teachers because our English department is pretty slim already and we've already made cuts in social studies and arts the last several years. So, that's something we could consider, but I think it would really be detrimental.

I think if we were going to need to consider cuts at the high school, it would have to be looking deeply at the math and science. But, again, hopefully none of this is necessary because I think, you know, we're going to land more at the 3-3-4 than the 2-7, but these are things to consider.

Additional things to consider would be, again, looking at, you know, not just doing the shift at the middle school from 6th to 8th, but actually making two additional cuts.

That would keep, you know, the smaller number of staff in grade 8 resulting in an average class size of about, you know, 22, but a range of 17 to 27.

Also, we have elementary and literacy specialists.

They really do incredibly important work at the elementary to provide Tier 2 interventions for kids, but certainly that would be in a bad year, something we'd have to consider.

Some members of the committee asked us to look at the middle school world language offerings.

I looked at that and that's in your packet as well.

I really think it would be very, very detrimental to cut the Chinese program.

We have a very strong group of kids who take that and it really hurts them to not be able to begin that in middle school, plus that would end up increasing class sizes in Spanish and French.

I think if we were in a bad year and needed to consider some reduction in middle school world language, it might be to reduce Spanish from a 3, we currently have a 3.6

FTE, so four individuals, three are full-time and 1.6

and looking at that 0.6

FTE, that would result in higher class sizes in Spanish, but that is, Spanish has lower enrollment than French with the same number of staff, so that's something we want to crunch numbers and look at.

We also do, though, have Spanish students, more of our students with IEPs tend to take Spanish and we really try to provide opportunities for students with special needs to take a world language because it's so important in this day and age and we try to keep those class sizes smaller so that would certainly hinder our ability to keep them as small as we would like, but something would need to be considered if we had to do additional cuts beyond the 3.4.

Elementary instrumental music is something that, again, I think really, we've got a really strong, great group of kids who participate in that.

I don't support a cut of that, but something that, you know, certainly the committee could consider if necessary, but I'm hopeful that it wouldn't be a necessary thing because we do have kids who would not be participating in instrumental music if they didn't have that opportunity in school. Certainly some kids would be beyond, but this really provides an opportunity for any kid who wants to participate can, and I think that's really important.

And we know that music as well as world language not only develops those skills, but also really works the mind development in a way that's really beneficial to learning in general. so again, I'm just presenting these as things that are possibilities, not things that I advocate for.

And then obviously there's other elements.

Again, all these legally are possible, but really would hinder our ability to stand as a district that has a wide range of programs.

So looking at some of the after-school clubs at the middle of high school, looking at some of the athletic programs, someone asked me to break down the football program.

Also, again, something that I have very, very strongly stood against is coming back on our curriculum coordinators, both because they're so essential in improvements in curriculum and instruction, but secondarily because if we shift to still having some level of curriculum support through a department model or something like that, the savings is not as great as the cost of supporting them right now and the payoff I think is much less.

So right now we have this meeting tonight and then we have another meeting on the 21st to continue to discuss.

On the 20, I want to make sure I got that right. I'm thinking it's the 26th, not the 29th, but it's on that Monday.

My head's saying 26th, but I'm reading 29th.

But that Monday, that's when priorities meet and the town administrator and treasurer will put forth our obviously, am I right or wrong, 26th or 20th?

26th would be a Monday. No, you've got it right because the 28th would be a Wednesday.

Okay, so 26th.

So that's when we'll find out the final number again. It almost always goes up from the 2.7.

Hopefully, it will go a little bit over 3 and will be in better shape, but we'll find that out then.

Then on February 4th, we have the public budget forum, which is part of our school committee meeting on that meeting. so we'll allow the public to give their feedback on the budget and they will be able to do so knowing what the set priorities number is at.

And we'll also be able to kind of comment further on the budget based upon that known number. We have another meeting on the 25th, which gives an opportunity for school committee to discuss the revised budget as well as the public forum.

Then March 4th, we're scheduled to... Yep.

Julie is...

Go ahead, Julie. I think Julie has info on when the priorities meeting is...

Go ahead, Julie. Thank you, Avi.

I'm on the priorities committee and it's not clear from the town website, but my calendar that I wrote this in a while ago is January 29th, which is Thursday.

Okay, maybe that's why it's confused. I feel like I saw Monday and I saw January 29th.

No, it's the 29th.

Okay, so it's Thursday the 29th. Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

So, and then on the 4th, we're scheduled to vote and then the 16th scheduled to share our proposed budget with FinCom.

So, you know, again, we've been looking at these numbers and this information a bit earlier this year, so I feel like we'll be in good stead.

The biggest thing I think for all of us is like knowing what that real number is because, you know, but then having any other discussion to make decisions either way in the next couple weeks. so that's my budget presentation.

Again, there's a bunch of additional information that will be for the committee and the public.

The committee may have read it already, but certainly will have more time to review it prior to our next meeting.

Thank you, Dr. Patello. Are there questions from the table?

Julie?

Thank you.

Thank you, Avi. and I just have given us a lot to chew on and I've seen all of the stuff in the, I read all the stuff, but I just had a couple of quick questions.

So, I saw you say that the special ed assistant, you would offset that they're, like we'd still keep the special ed assistant, but now their pay would come from a grant. Is that correct?

Half of their pay would come from a special education focused grant that we get every year and that we have room for within that grant to pay for half the salary.

Okay.

And then the class sizes, when, so do the IAs, how many IAs, when are the IAs in the classes and when do they stop being in the classes?

Well, in kindergarten, if we typically, unless the kindergarten size is very low, have a kindergarten aid in there in every class.

After that, IAs are connected to our special needs students, so it's based upon kids' IEPs.

And so, you know, many of our IAs might be connected to a student with moderate special needs, or some of our IAs moderate special needs, so they might be, you know, an IA in a class that's really helping along with the teacher to support, you know, five or six kids.

And then there are other kiddos, whether they're in our specialized programs or just having more pronounced need who might have an IA that's either one-on-one or working with a small group of kids, two or three or four kids.

So it's all dependent upon the programming that's part of the kids' IEP.

Now, certainly when principals and student services folks and teachers are scheduling, they're trying to have a balance of students with special needs across classrooms, which both allows for kids to, you know, have a good ratio of special needs with general education students, but also allows for the benefit of IAs, which both benefit our special needs students, but in turn also benefit our teachers and our general kids spread around classrooms.

But you can't guarantee that they're there, except for right.

Yeah, I know. I just realized that I sounded really dumb asking that question because I knew that three kids at age.

So, but for some people, I think they got it now. So I think yeah.

Okay.

So it's just one more quick question.

The clubs that you were saying are eliminating the clubs, which I'm not saying to do, but what I'm just sharing is this is how much we budget for clubs.

And so any portion, that's the greatest amount.

We would never want to do that.

That's, you know, it's more, I was asked to share what is not legally required and what is the factor.

Right. And so would those numbers include the theater productions and like the director for theaters and all of that?

Those numbers do include those things.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you. I don't advocate for that at all.

Oh, I was just asking.

Thank you.

Adam.

Thank you, Avi.

Thank you, Avi.

And thank you, Dr. Dello.

I'd really just want to say thank you, really. I think the, you know, from the last meeting and in the budget subcommittee, I think we asked to really understand all of the different options and try to understand, you know, what the value of the different kind of pieces are and what it would mean were we to kind of add or subtract something from the budget. And I feel like there's a lot of information I need to go through even more of it. And I think the information that was responsive to the budget subcommittee was also very robust.

And I think we'll need to review that and kind of form our opinions as we wait to get the final numbers. But I know it's a lot of work that went into putting all of this together.

And as you mentioned, this is generally earlier than we have had this information historically.

So I appreciate both the collection of information as well as kind of the editorial nature of what you've added to help us as a committee and the general public understand what it would mean were we to add or subtract various pieces of the budget. So thank you.

I think Avi was calling on Dan, but I think Avi was muted. I said Dan, but I was muted.

We were all waiting patiently for you to call because we didn't want to step over our bounds.

Yeah, I also appreciated the supplemental information, information, which I know that information probably took a lot to put together.

So many thanks to the administration and thank you to the budget sub committee for helping to work with the administration and prepare that for the committee. I know it was helpful for me to organize my thinking around some of these proposals. and I did note that some of the information was included, such as enrollment and some of the information about world languages in the presentation tonight.

Something else I noticed in that supplemental information was a breakdown of the sports programs, cost per student, enrollment in each program. program.

I noticed that some sports are significantly more costly than others, either in aggregate or on a per student basis.

The topic of athletic fees has come up before, whether some sports should have their fees increased or getting creative about the funding models for certain sports.

Is that something we should be considering this year? I noticed football was at the top of the list in terms of cost per student, perhaps also cost in aggregate.

It had listed 50 students, but I've heard anecdotally from people that there might not be that many students in that program, and it didn't seem to square with the number that I saw online for the roster. So is that 50 enrollees number accurate for football?

And is the high cost for that program and perhaps some of these other programs, I'm not trying to pick on football, but there are other sports in that category as well. It looks like field hockey might be up there, some of the others. Is that something the administration is looking into or you might recommend, if not necessarily eliminating the programs, of course, but increasing the fees for them? We weren't planning to recommend that, but certainly that's there for your information, and if the committee wanted to make, you know, to discuss that and make a suggestion, that's not something we were providing that information. Yeah, football certainly is one of the ones that has a higher cost for students, but we also have, you know, a number of others that are over, you know, kind of in that same range, so it's not so egregious.

Right.

And stuff, and so, and they're, you know, they're all kind of, you know, they've got football, but then we've got both boys and girls basketball and softball and sailing and, you know, just pretty key, you know, sports, and I mean, I think we do look at the overall number, but also look at the cost per student. That 50 is fairly accurate.

Now, there, I will see if there's, you know, in numerous sports, you sometimes have a drop off from the beginning of the season to the end, so I can look into more on what exactly that 50 is based on, and again, it could have been that at the beginning of the season, we began with 50, and that the numbers did go down a bit, which is not atypical, especially in sports where I play.

You know, there's a lot of players and not everyone playing, you know, kind of full-time.

You know, when you have a basketball team and you have 15 players, though only five play at a time, you know, they're all very, very involved, and having more than one or two kids drop is rare, but with something like football where, you know, the bench is incredibly important and the practice players are incredibly important, you do have sometimes a drop-off from that.

Okay, thank you. And my last question was if those numbers were based on a year or two ago before the football team moved leagues.

I believe we moved from the Hockmock League to an independent league, and I've heard that some transportation costs associated with the new league might be higher than they were before, is there any information you could provide on that?

I don't have it offhand, but I can get you that. I'll get you information about transportation as well as the participation numbers.

All right, thank you.

Yep.

Ellen, I see your hand is up. Do you have numbers on that?

So I just wanted to provide clarification on the numbers for participation.

That was the fall sports was accurate.

It was provided by the athletic director's office about a month ago.

And with respect to the cost for football and transportation, that was something that actually the budget subcommittee had asked about.

And now that the fall sports program has wrapped up and we're getting all the bills, the last of the transportation bills and everything processed, we'll be able to provide a report back.

Thank you.

General Keenan, I'd seen your hand up. Sounds like overlap between the answers.

All right. Sounds good.

All right.

Next up, Georgianne.

Thank you, Avi.

Dr.

Patel, I appreciate you doing a deep dive.

I know we didn't want to we had some discussion about the 2.7 number because obviously that's not why we want to where we want to be. And I think it's really important to highlight all of the reasons we don't want to be there. And I think you did a really good job of pointing out the detriments and the losses that we'd have for student services, staff, if we're forced to work in that amount. So I appreciate you highlighting that. I know you're not in favor of any of those cuts or any of those moves.

But I appreciate you taking the time to, you know, support the subcommittee's rationale for us doing that so that we can work to get where we want to be. So I echo kind of all of Adam's sentiments.

I appreciated the follow-up.

I'm going to probably shoot you some questions.

I had similar questions with Dan. I was under the impression the past couple of years we've had 35 kids on the football team.

And I think we ended up with around 25.

So my question was with all of those sports, because obviously baseball, softball, they're not running right now.

Are those like the team caps of the how many kids we allow per sport?

Or are they just based on like the trends from last year?

I just think it's important.

Like, is that the average?

So I don't know. I think it was maybe baseball.

One of the sports had like 40 kids, 44. Is that like what we average on those sports?

Go ahead, Alan.

I'm just going to ask a question at a time now. Go ahead.

So the with respect to the enrollment for winter and spring sports, that was based upon the actuals for last year. As when this was completed, we only had the fall sports registration completed.

That's what I figured. OK.

And those are all of our sports that we offer?

That's everything that we offer.

Oh, wow. I was expecting some more.

So I think that's it. If I have any other questions, I'll probably just send them to you guys once, you know, to Adam's point. We really need to kind of dig into all that stuff you presented us. So thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Avi. The I think it was Dan's questions caused me to remember another question that I had, which was about the athletics.

We have a category here that includes district wide unallocated costs.

What does that mean?

Ellen, you want to describe that?

Explain that. Sure.

District wide unallocated would be programming costs that don't belong to one exact program.

For instance, the salary for the athletic director, the salary for the athletic trainer, you know, insurance costs, miscellaneous office costs or office supplies, things of that nature.

So that's what the unallocated is. And we try to distribute that amongst. Okay.

Um, okay.

So.

It looks like my, that, that was actually my, um, oh, the other question was what drives those, like not the unallocated costs. Cause I guess those are kind of more or less the same, but like what drives the, the costs of the sports, like in the, in the call I came now, I can't just lost it. Okay. Um, with the, like, so there's a column that says, um, you know, like the cost per cost per student without those, like, no, without that.

So what drives that mainly?

Is that like the coaches?

Is it cause football has a lot of equipment? Like what is. So it's, it's the, the cost per support includes the cost of the coaches, uh, the cost of transportation, um, to scrimmages and away games.

Um, it also includes the cost, uh, when we have games that are home, it includes the, um, the game day staff from the high school, um, site supervisors, individuals who are, um, collecting and selling tickets. It also includes, uh, police details.

It includes, um, the, um, officials that we, um, that we have through, uh, the MIAA.

Um, it includes, you know, that whole host of, you know, every single thing that's involved with, um, with, with running a game at home, as well as then the costs of transporting our students.

Okay.

And like equipment, is that.

So equipment and supplies are included as well.

Okay.

Thank you so much. You all appreciate it. Yep. All right.

Thank you for a great presentation.

Thank you for a lot of great questions, um, and your brevity, uh, to my colleagues.

Uh, next up, we're going to just take this in slightly different order. We'll do the kindergarten fee discussion next, and then we'll go to program of studies.

Thank you.

So full day kindergarten, uh, the registration opens on February 1st.

So, uh, we would like the committee to consider voting, um, the fee for the 26, 27 school year.

Uh, we will be sending letters to all potential incoming kindergarten families in late January prior to the registration portal opening.

Um, the letters will include all of the information regarding our full day kindergarten program, um, including the commitment forms and to wit the tuition payment schedule options.

Um, also all the documents, um, with the letter will, can be accessed on the district website.

Uh, we, again, we're requesting that the committee consider the kindergarten fee this evening to ensure that the district can maintain the timeline for kindergarten registration.

Next slide, please.

So we are requesting, uh, that the tuition stay the same as it is for, um, the 25, 26 school year.

Currently, our kindergarten tuition is $3,635.

We offer payment plans, um, as well as options for free full day kindergarten, as well as a reduced rate for full day kindergarten of $1,127.

And that's based on eligibility, um, for free and reduced lunch rates.

We also have scholarship options as well as full fee payment plans, which allows for payments to be made, um, over several months.

And as always, we are, we work with every family, um, if there is any type of a financial, you know, challenge or difficulty, we want all of our, our kiddos to be able to, um, have full day kindergarten.

So our stats for this year, we have, um, 166 students, uh, with full tuition payments. We have four who are at a reduced discount.

We have 12 who are at no charge.

We have three, um, who have received district scholarship. And we have one, um, who is prorated, um, begin mid-year, um, multi-st, excuse me.

And then our expected income for the 25-26 school year is $619,966.

Next slide, please.

So again, our goal is to have as many students enroll, um, in full day kindergarten as possible, which is why we work, um, with our families to make sure that, you know, again, we don't want anybody not taking advantage of full day kindergarten, um, if there's any type of a financial concern.

Our fees offset, um, salaries and fringe benefits of the full, full day program. It covers about 49% of our salaries.

Um, and again, we recognize the critical importance of full day kindergarten and also acknowledge that we are one of the few remaining districts, um, in the Commonwealth that does not provide full, free day kindergarten.

Um, so again, we're asking that, um, the school committee consider a decision this evening regarding the kindergarten tuition, um, and just to hold the tuition at the current, uh, 25-26 rate for 26-27.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Ellen.

So before anybody weighs in, I do just want to say I'm going to exercise, um, my discretion here and, and unless folks feel overwhelming, Lee, I'm not going to ask for a vote tonight.

Um, looking at when that's going to be sent out, we do have a meeting between now and then on the 21st.

And if, you know, based on the fact that this fee was upheld last year, it's not being asked to be changed. And we've only had one member change since last year. I think it's, it's a fair assumption unless folks voice differently here tonight that the, the fee will, in fact, most likely I assume remain the same. Uh, that being said, there, there doesn't appear to be a reason given that we have a meeting between now and when that goes out to take that step.

Now, um, this is obviously an item that people feel very passionately in our community at the very least, even if, even if there isn't an appetite to change what's happening with that fee this year, I do think that the folks who want to express themselves to us during public comment next meeting want to email us between now and then have the right to do that before any of us vote.

So just getting that out of the way here, I'll entertain any questions, comments, feelings about the kindergarten fee from table.

Um, especially any of those that differ from my, my feeling to either not take a vote tonight or my assumption that we'll uphold this fee.

Georgian.

Thanks.

Ellen.

I just, I'm hooked on some semantics here. Fairly. What do you mean by fairly accurate?

Do you, is there an anticipation something's going to change?

I just, I feel like that's like a little bit loaded. So could you just, I don't think that's how it was intended. So can you just clarify that for me? It was not intended to be fully loaded.

Yeah, I know.

Right. It's based upon, I mean, we have, we certainly could have a kiddo move in.

Um, and that would, you know, a couple of students move in mid-year and that would, you know, increase our cost. We could have a student who is in kindergarten right now, who is tuition paying, um, become eligible for, um, for free kindergarten, for IEP for special education purposes, we could have students, um, students move out in which case the tuition would, um, would be discontinued as of the day that they, the last day in the district.

So we're, we're pretty much on target.

Um, you know, we have collections, the major, vast majority of the collections are completed, um, you know, by the end of December. So we'll be able to, you know, really in, as we reconcile out in January, know exactly where we stand, but there is always a little bit of fluctuation, um, just because of, you know, the fluidity with, um, with move-ins and, and things like that. But typically at this point in the school year, I'm confident of where we will be.

And, uh, Avi, just to comment back to you, and I mean this lightly, I'd love it if we had no kindergarten fee, but I don't know if that's in the cards, but, um, thanks, Ellen.